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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Maid, by E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Maid
+
+Author: E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2010 [EBook #33028]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND MAID ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Rachael Schultz and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+             MAN AND MAID
+
+                  BY
+
+              E. NESBIT
+
+    [Illustration: Publisher's Logo]
+
+                LONDON
+            T. FISHER UNWIN
+            ADELPHI TERRACE
+
+                 MCMVI
+
+        [_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+                  TO
+             ADA BREAKELL
+      MY DEAREST AND OLDEST FRIEND
+
+
+
+
+             MAN AND MAID
+
+
+
+
+          By the same Author.
+
+  _Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s._
+
+
+         The Treasure Seekers.
+
+         Five Children and It.
+
+    Nine Unlikely Tales for Children.
+
+          The Would-be-Goods.
+
+         New Treasure Seekers.
+
+
+        LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+       I.  THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE                         1
+
+      II.  THE POWER OF DARKNESS                          32
+
+     III.  THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED      60
+
+      IV.  RACK AND THUMBSCREW                            84
+
+       V.  THE MILLIONAIRESS                             103
+
+      VI.  THE HERMIT OF "THE YEWS"                      134
+
+     VII.  THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR                       158
+
+    VIII.  MISS MOUSE                                    178
+
+      IX.  THE OLD WIFE                                  201
+
+       X.  THE HOUSE OF SILENCE                          224
+
+      XI.  THE GIRL AT THE TOBACCONIST'S                 245
+
+     XII.  WHILE IT IS YET DAY                           268
+
+    XIII.  ALCIBIADES                                    287
+
+
+
+
+MAN AND MAID
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE
+
+
+The most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me was my going back
+to town on that day. I am a reasonable being; I do not do such things. I
+was on a bicycling tour with another man. We were far from the mean
+cares of an unremunerative profession; we were men not fettered by any
+given address, any pledged date, any preconcerted route. I went to bed
+weary and cheerful, fell asleep a mere animal--a tired dog after a day's
+hunting--and awoke at four in the morning that creature of nerves and
+fancies which is my other self, and which has driven me to all the
+follies I have ever kept company with. But even that second self of
+mine, whining beast and traitor as it is, has never played me such a
+trick as it played then. Indeed, something in the result of that day's
+rash act sets me wondering whether after all it could have been I, or
+even my other self, who moved in the adventure; whether it was not
+rather some power outside both of us ... but this is a speculation as
+idle in me as uninteresting to you, and so enough of it.
+
+From four to seven I lay awake, the prey of a growing detestation of
+bicycling tours, friends, scenery, physical exertion, holidays. By seven
+o'clock I felt that I would rather perish than spend another day in the
+society of the other man--an excellent fellow, by the way, and the best
+of company.
+
+At half-past seven the post came. I saw the postman through my window as
+I shaved. I went down to get my letters--there were none, naturally.
+
+At breakfast I said: "Edmundson, my dear fellow, I am extremely sorry;
+but my letters this morning compel me to return to town at once."
+
+"But I thought," said Edmundson--then he stopped, and I saw that he had
+perceived in time that this was no moment for reminding me that, having
+left no address, I could have had no letters.
+
+He looked sympathetic, and gave me what there was left of the bacon. I
+suppose he thought that it was a love affair or some such folly. I let
+him think so; after all, no love affair but would have seemed wise
+compared with the blank idiocy of this sudden determination to cut short
+a delightful holiday and go back to those dusty, stuffy rooms in Gray's
+Inn.
+
+After that first and almost pardonable lapse, Edmundson behaved
+beautifully. I caught the 9.17 train, and by half-past eleven I was
+climbing my dirty staircase.
+
+I let myself in and waded through a heap of envelopes and wrappered
+circulars that had drifted in through the letter-box, as dead leaves
+drift into the areas of houses in squares. All the windows were shut.
+Dust lay thick on everything. My laundress had evidently chosen this as
+a good time for her holiday. I wondered idly where she spent it. And now
+the close, musty smell of the rooms caught at my senses, and I
+remembered with a positive pang the sweet scent of the earth and the
+dead leaves in that wood through which, at this very moment, the
+sensible and fortunate Edmundson would be riding.
+
+The thought of dead leaves reminded me of the heap of correspondence. I
+glanced through it. Only one of all those letters interested me in the
+least. It was from my mother:--
+
+                                        "ELLIOT'S BAY, NORFOLK,
+                                             _17th August_.
+
+     "DEAR LAWRENCE,--I have wonderful news for you. Your
+     great-uncle Sefton has died, and left you half his immense
+     property. The other half is left to your second cousin Selwyn.
+     You must come home at once. There are heaps of letters here for
+     you, but I dare not send them on, as goodness only knows where
+     you may be. I do wish you would remember to leave an address. I
+     send this to your rooms, in case you have had the forethought
+     to instruct your charwoman to send your letters on to you. It
+     is a most handsome fortune, and I am too happy about your
+     accession to it to scold you as you deserve, but I hope this
+     will be a lesson to you to leave an address when next you go
+     away. Come home at once.--Your loving Mother,
+
+                                        "MARGARET SEFTON.
+
+     "_P.S._--It is the maddest will; everything divided evenly
+     between you two except the house and estate. The will says you
+     and your cousin Selwyn are to meet there on the 1st September
+     following his death, in presence of the family, and decide
+     which of you is to have the house. If you can't agree, it's to
+     be presented to the county for a lunatic asylum. I should think
+     so! He was always so eccentric. The one who doesn't have the
+     house, etc., gets £20,000 extra. Of course you will choose
+     _that_.
+
+     "_P.P.S._--Be sure to bring your under-shirts with you--the air
+     here is very keen of an evening."
+
+I opened both the windows and lit a pipe. Sefton Manor, that gorgeous
+old place,--I knew its picture in Hasted, cradle of our race, and so
+on--and a big fortune. I hoped my cousin Selwyn would want the £20,000
+more than he wanted the house. If he didn't--well, perhaps my fortune
+might be large enough to increase that £20,000 to a sum that he _would_
+want.
+
+And then, suddenly, I became aware that this was the 31st of August, and
+that to-morrow was the day on which I was to meet my cousin Selwyn and
+"the family," and come to a decision about the house. I had never, to my
+knowledge, heard of my cousin Selwyn. We were a family rich in
+collateral branches. I hoped he would be a reasonable young man. Also,
+I had never seen Sefton Manor House, except in a print. It occurred to
+me that I would rather see the house before I saw the cousin.
+
+I caught the next train to Sefton.
+
+"It's but a mile by the field way," said the railway porter. "You take
+the stile--the first on the left--and follow the path till you come to
+the wood. Then skirt along the left of it, cater across the meadow at
+the end, and you'll see the place right below you in the vale."
+
+"It's a fine old place, I hear," said I.
+
+"All to pieces, though," said he. "I shouldn't wonder if it cost a
+couple o' hundred to put it to rights. Water coming through the roof and
+all."
+
+"But surely the owner----"
+
+"Oh, he never lived there; not since his son was taken. He lived in the
+lodge; it's on the brow of the hill looking down on the Manor House."
+
+"Is the house empty?"
+
+"As empty as a rotten nutshell, except for the old sticks o' furniture.
+Any one who likes," added the porter, "can lie there o' nights. But it
+wouldn't be me!"
+
+"Do you mean there's a ghost?" I hope I kept any note of undue elation
+out of my voice.
+
+"I don't hold with ghosts," said the porter firmly, "but my aunt was in
+service at the lodge, and there's no doubt but _something_ walks there."
+
+"Come," I said, "this is very interesting. Can't you leave the station,
+and come across to where beer is?"
+
+"I don't mind if I do," said he. "That is so far as your standing a drop
+goes. But I can't leave the station, so if you pour my beer you must
+pour it dry, sir, as the saying is."
+
+So I gave the man a shilling, and he told me about the ghost at Sefton
+Manor House. Indeed, about the ghosts, for there were, it seemed, two; a
+lady in white, and a gentleman in a slouch hat and black riding cloak.
+
+"They do say," said my porter, "as how one of the young ladies once on a
+time was wishful to elope, and started so to do--not getting further
+than the hall door; her father, thinking it to be burglars, fired out of
+the window, and the happy pair fell on the doorstep, corpses."
+
+"Is it true, do you think?"
+
+The porter did not know. At any rate there was a tablet in the church
+to Maria Sefton and George Ballard--"and something about in their death
+them not being divided."
+
+I took the stile, I skirted the wood, I "catered" across the meadow--and
+so I came out on a chalky ridge held in a net of pine roots, where dog
+violets grew. Below stretched the green park, dotted with trees. The
+lodge, stuccoed but solid, lay below me. Smoke came from its chimneys.
+Lower still lay the Manor House--red brick with grey lichened mullions,
+a house in a thousand, Elizabethan--and from its twisted beautiful
+chimneys no smoke arose. I hurried across the short turf towards the
+Manor House.
+
+I had no difficulty in getting into the great garden. The bricks of the
+wall were everywhere displaced or crumbling. The ivy had forced the
+coping stones away; each red buttress offered a dozen spots for
+foothold. I climbed the wall and found myself in a garden--oh! but such
+a garden. There are not half a dozen such in England--ancient box
+hedges, rosaries, fountains, yew tree avenues, bowers of clematis (now
+feathery in its seeding time), great trees, grey-grown marble
+balustrades and steps, terraces, green lawns, one green lawn, in
+especial, girt round with a sweet briar hedge, and in the middle of
+this lawn a sundial. All this was mine, or, to be more exact, might be
+mine, should my cousin Selwyn prove to be a person of sense. How I
+prayed that he might not be a person of taste! That he might be a person
+who liked yachts or racehorses or diamonds, or motor-cars, or anything
+that money can buy, not a person who liked beautiful Elizabethan houses,
+and gardens old beyond belief.
+
+The sundial stood on a mass of masonry, too low and wide to be called a
+pillar. I mounted the two brick steps and leaned over to read the date
+and the motto:
+
+     "Tempus fugit manet amor."
+
+The date was 1617, the initials S. S. surmounted it. The face of the
+dial was unusually ornate--a wreath of stiffly drawn roses was traced
+outside the circle of the numbers. As I leaned there a sudden movement
+on the other side of the pedestal compelled my attention. I leaned over
+a little further to see what had rustled--a rat--a rabbit? A flash of
+pink struck at my eyes. A lady in a pink dress was sitting on the step
+at the other side of the sundial.
+
+I suppose some exclamation escaped me--the lady looked up. Her hair was
+dark, and her eyes; her face was pink and white, with a few little
+gold-coloured freckles on nose and on cheek bones. Her dress was of pink
+cotton stuff, thin and soft. She looked like a beautiful pink rose.
+
+Our eyes met.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said I, "I had no idea----" there I stopped and
+tried to crawl back to firm ground. Graceful explanations are not best
+given by one sprawling on his stomach across a sundial.
+
+By the time I was once more on my feet she too was standing.
+
+"It is a beautiful old place," she said gently, and, as it seemed, with
+a kindly wish to relieve my embarrassment. She made a movement as if to
+turn away.
+
+"Quite a show place," said I stupidly enough, but I was still a little
+embarrassed, and I wanted to say something--anything--to arrest her
+departure. You have no idea how pretty she was. She had a straw hat
+in her hand, dangling by soft black ribbons. Her hair was all
+fluffy-soft--like a child's. "I suppose you have seen the house?" I
+asked.
+
+She paused, one foot still on the lower step of the sundial, and her
+face seemed to brighten at the touch of some idea as sudden as welcome.
+
+"Well--no," she said. "The fact is--I wanted frightfully to see the
+house; in fact, I've come miles and miles on purpose, but there's no one
+to let me in."
+
+"The people at the lodge?" I suggested.
+
+"Oh no," she said. "I--the fact is I--I don't want to be shown round. I
+want to explore!"
+
+She looked at me critically. Her eyes dwelt on my right hand, which lay
+on the sundial. I have always taken reasonable care of my hands, and I
+wore a good ring, a sapphire, cut with the Sefton arms: an heirloom, by
+the way. Her glance at my hand preluded a longer glance at my face. Then
+she shrugged her pretty shoulders.
+
+"Oh well," she said, and it was as if she had said plainly, "I see that
+you are a gentleman and a decent fellow. Why should I not look over the
+house in your company? Introductions? Bah!"
+
+All this her shrug said without ambiguity as without words.
+
+"Perhaps," I hazarded, "I could get the keys."
+
+"Do you really care very much for old houses?"
+
+"I do," said I; "and you?"
+
+"I care so much that I nearly broke into this one. I should have done it
+quite if the windows had been an inch or two lower."
+
+"I am an inch or two higher," said I, standing squarely so as to make
+the most of my six-feet beside her five-feet-five or thereabouts.
+
+"Oh--if you only would!" said she.
+
+"Why not?" said I.
+
+She led the way past the marble basin of the fountain, and along the
+historic yew avenue, planted, like all old yew avenues, by that
+industrious gardener our Eighth Henry. Then across a lawn, through a
+winding, grassy, shrubbery path, that ended at a green door in the
+garden wall.
+
+"You can lift this latch with a hairpin," said she, and therewith lifted
+it.
+
+We walked into a courtyard. Young grass grew green between the grey
+flags on which our steps echoed.
+
+"This is the window," said she. "You see there's a pane broken. If you
+could get on to the window-sill, you could get your hand in and undo
+the hasp, and----"
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, you'll let me in by the kitchen door."
+
+I did it. My conscience called me a burglar--in vain. Was it not my own,
+or as good as my own house?
+
+I let her in at the back door. We walked through the big dark kitchen
+where the old three-legged pot towered large on the hearth, and the old
+spits and firedogs still kept their ancient place. Then through another
+kitchen where red rust was making its full meal of a comparatively
+modern range.
+
+Then into the great hall, where the old armour and the buff-coats and
+round-caps hang on the walls, and where the carved stone staircases run
+at each side up to the gallery above.
+
+The long tables in the middle of the hall were scored by the knives of
+the many who had eaten meat there--initials and dates were cut into
+them. The roof was groined, the windows low-arched.
+
+"Oh, but what a place!" said she; "this must be much older than the rest
+of it----"
+
+"Evidently. About 1300, I should say."
+
+"Oh, let us explore the rest," she cried; "it is really a comfort not to
+have a guide, but only a person like you who just guesses comfortably at
+dates. I should hate to be told _exactly_ when this hall was built."
+
+We explored ball-room and picture gallery, white parlour and library.
+Most of the rooms were furnished--all heavily, some magnificently--but
+everything was dusty and faded.
+
+It was in the white parlour, a spacious panelled room on the first
+floor, that she told me the ghost story, substantially the same as my
+porter's tale, only in one respect different.
+
+"And so, just as she was leaving this very room--yes, I'm sure it's this
+room, because the woman at the inn pointed out this double window and
+told me so--just as the poor lovers were creeping out of the door, the
+cruel father came quickly out of some dark place and killed them both.
+So now they haunt it."
+
+"It is a terrible thought," said I gravely. "How would you like to live
+in a haunted house?"
+
+"I couldn't," she said quickly.
+
+"Nor I; it would be too----" my speech would have ended flippantly, but
+for the grave set of her features.
+
+"I wonder who _will_ live here?" she said. "The owner is just dead. They
+say it is an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course one is not afraid
+now"--the sunlight lay golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the
+floor--"but at night, when the wind wails, and the doors creak, and the
+things rustle, oh, it must be awful!"
+
+"I hear the house has been left to two people, or rather one is to have
+the house, and the other a sum of money," said I. "It's a beautiful
+house, full of beautiful things, but I should think at least one of the
+heirs would rather have the money."
+
+"Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder whether the heirs know about the
+ghost? The lights can be seen from the inn, you know, at twelve o'clock,
+and they see the ghost in white at the window."
+
+"Never the black one?"
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose so."
+
+"The ghosts don't appear together?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "whoever it is that manages such things knows that
+the poor ghosts would like to be together, so it won't let them."
+
+She shivered.
+
+"Come," she said, "we have seen all over the house; let us get back into
+the sunshine. Now I will go out, and you shall bolt the door after me,
+and then you can come out by the window. Thank you so much for all the
+trouble you have taken. It has really been quite an adventure...."
+
+I rather liked that expression, and she hastened to spoil it.
+
+"... Quite an adventure going all over this glorious old place, and
+looking at everything one wanted to see, and not just at what the
+housekeeper didn't mind one's looking at."
+
+She passed through the door, but when I had closed it and prepared to
+lock it, I found that the key was no longer in the lock. I looked on the
+floor--I felt in my pockets, and at last, wandering back into the
+kitchen, discovered it on the table, where I swear I never put it.
+
+When I had fitted that key into the lock and turned it, and got out of
+the window and made that fast, I dropped into the yard. No one shared
+its solitude with me. I searched garden and pleasure grounds, but never
+a glimpse of pink rewarded my anxious eyes. I found the sundial again,
+and stretched myself along the warm brick of the wide step where she had
+sat: and called myself a fool.
+
+I had let her go. I did not know her name; I did not know where she
+lived; she had been at the inn, but probably only for lunch. I should
+never see her again, and certainly in that event I should never see
+again such dark, soft eyes, such hair, such a contour of cheek and chin,
+such a frank smile--in a word, a girl with whom it would be so
+delightfully natural for me to fall in love. For all the time she had
+been talking to me of architecture and archæology, of dates and periods,
+of carvings and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling in love with
+the idea of falling in love with her. I had cherished and adored this
+delightful possibility, and now my chance was over. Even I could not
+definitely fall in love after one interview with a girl I was never to
+see again! And falling in love is so pleasant! I cursed my lost chance,
+and went back to the inn. I talked to the waiter.
+
+"Yes, a lady in pink had lunched there with a party. Had gone on to the
+Castle. A party from Tonbridge it was."
+
+Barnhurst Castle is close to Sefton Manor. The inn lays itself out to
+entertain persons who come in brakes and carve their names on the walls
+of the Castle keep. The inn has a visitors' book. I examined it. Some
+twenty feminine names. Any one might be hers. The waiter looked over my
+shoulder. I turned the pages.
+
+"Only parties staying in the house in this part of the book," said the
+waiter.
+
+My eye caught one name. "Selwyn Sefton," in a clear, round, black
+hand-writing.
+
+"Staying here?" I pointed to the name.
+
+"Yes, sir; came to-day, sir."
+
+"Can I have a private sitting-room?"
+
+I had one. I ordered my dinner to be served in it, and I sat down and
+considered my course of action. Should I invite my cousin Selwyn to
+dinner, ply him with wine, and exact promises? Honour forbade. Should I
+seek him out and try to establish friendly relations? To what end?
+
+Then I saw from my window a young man in a light-checked suit, with a
+face at once pallid and coarse. He strolled along the gravel path, and
+a woman's voice in the garden called "Selwyn."
+
+He disappeared in the direction of the voice. I don't think I ever
+disliked a man so much at first sight.
+
+"Brute," said I, "why should he have the house? He'd stucco it all over
+as likely as not; perhaps let it! He'd never stand the ghosts,
+either----"
+
+Then the inexcusable, daring idea of my life came to me, striking me
+rigid--a blow from my other self. It must have been a minute or two
+before my muscles relaxed and my arms fell at my sides.
+
+"I'll do it," I said.
+
+I dined. I told the people of the house not to sit up for me. I was
+going to see friends in the neighbourhood, and might stay the night with
+them. I took my Inverness cape with me on my arm and my soft felt hat in
+my pocket. I wore a light suit and a straw hat.
+
+Before I started I leaned cautiously from my window. The lamp at the bow
+window next to mine showed me the pallid young man, smoking a fat,
+reeking cigar. I hoped he would continue to sit there smoking. His
+window looked the right way; and if he didn't see what I wanted him to
+see some one else in the inn would. The landlady had assured me that I
+should disturb no one if I came in at half-past twelve.
+
+"We hardly keep country hours here, sir," she said, "on account of so
+much excursionist business."
+
+I bought candles in the village, and, as I went down across the park in
+the soft darkness, I turned again and again to be sure that the light
+and the pallid young man were still at that window. It was now past
+eleven.
+
+I got into the house and lighted a candle, and crept through the dark
+kitchens, whose windows, I knew, did not look towards the inn. When I
+came to the hall I blew out my candle. I dared not show light
+prematurely, and in the unhaunted part of the house.
+
+I gave myself a nasty knock against one of the long tables, but it
+helped me to get my bearings, and presently I laid my hand on the stone
+balustrade of the great staircase. You would hardly believe me if I were
+to tell you truly of my sensations as I began to go up these stairs. I
+am not a coward--at least, I had never thought so till then--but the
+absolute darkness unnerved me. I had to go slowly, or I should have lost
+my head and blundered up the stairs three at a time, so strong was the
+feeling of something--something uncanny--just behind me.
+
+I set my teeth. I reached the top of the stairs, felt along the walls,
+and after a false start, which landed me in the great picture gallery, I
+found the white parlour, entered it, closed the door, and felt my way to
+a little room without a window, which we had decided must have been a
+powdering-room.
+
+Here I ventured to re-light my candle.
+
+The white parlour, I remembered, was fully furnished. Returning to it I
+struck one match, and by its flash determined the way to the
+mantelpiece.
+
+Then I closed the powdering-room door behind me. I felt my way to the
+mantelpiece and took down the two brass twenty-lighted candelabra. I
+placed these on a table a yard or two from the window, and in them set
+up my candles. It is astonishingly difficult in the dark to do anything,
+even a thing so simple as the setting up of a candle.
+
+Then I went back into my little room, put on the Inverness cape and the
+slouch hat, and looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. I must wait. I sat
+down and waited. I thought how rich I was--the thought fell flat; I
+wanted this house. I thought of my beautiful pink lady; but I put that
+thought aside; I had an inward consciousness that my conduct, more
+heroic than enough in one sense, would seem mean and crafty in her eyes.
+Only ten minutes had passed. I could not wait till twelve. The chill of
+the night and of the damp, unused house, and, perhaps, some less
+material influence, made me shiver.
+
+I opened the door, crept on hands and knees to the table, and, carefully
+keeping myself below the level of the window, I reached up a trembling
+arm, and lighted, one by one, my forty candles. The room was a blaze of
+light. My courage came back to me with the retreat of the darkness. I
+was far too excited to know what a fool I was making of myself. I rose
+boldly, and struck an attitude over against the window, where the
+candle-light shone upon as well as behind me. My Inverness was flung
+jauntily over my shoulder, my soft, black felt twisted and slouched over
+my eyes.
+
+There I stood for the world, and particularly for my cousin Selwyn, to
+see, the very image of the ghost that haunted that chamber. And from my
+window I could see the light in that other window, and indistinctly the
+lounging figure there. Oh, my cousin Selwyn, I wished many things to
+your address in that moment! For it was only a moment that I had to feel
+brave and daring in. Then I heard, deep down in the house, a sound, very
+slight, very faint. Then came silence. I drew a deep breath. The silence
+endured. And I stood by my lighted window.
+
+After a very long time, as it seemed, I heard a board crack, and then a
+soft rustling sound that drew near and seemed to pause outside the very
+door of my parlour.
+
+Again I held my breath, and now I thought of the most horrible story Poe
+ever wrote--"The Fall of the House of Usher"--and I fancied I saw the
+handle of that door move. I fixed my eyes on it. The fancy passed: and
+returned.
+
+Then again there was silence. And then the door opened with a soft,
+silent suddenness, and I saw in the doorway a figure in trailing white.
+Its eyes blazed in a death-white face. It made two ghostly, gliding
+steps forward, and my heart stood still. I had not thought it possible
+for a man to experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I had
+masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this accursed house. Well, the other
+ghost--the real one--had come to meet me. I do not like to dwell on that
+moment. The only thing which it pleases me to remember is that I did not
+scream or go mad. I think I stood on the verge of both.
+
+The ghost, I say, took two steps forward; then it threw up its arms, the
+lighted taper it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back against
+the door with its arms across its face.
+
+The fall of the candle woke me as from a nightmare. It fell solidly, and
+rolled away under the table.
+
+I perceived that my ghost was human. I cried incoherently: "Don't, for
+Heaven's sake--it's all right."
+
+The ghost dropped its hands and turned agonised eyes on me. I tore off
+my cloak and hat.
+
+"I--didn't--scream," she said, and with that I sprang forward and caught
+her in my arms--my poor, pink lady--white now as a white rose.
+
+I carried her into the powdering-room, and left one candle with her,
+extinguishing the others hastily, for now I saw what in my extravagant
+folly had escaped me before, that my ghost exhibition might bring the
+whole village down on the house. I tore down the long corridor and
+double locked the doors leading from it to the staircase, then back to
+the powdering-room and the prone white rose. How, in the madness of that
+night's folly, I had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my
+understanding. But I had done it. Now I rubbed her hands with the
+spirit. I rubbed her temples, I tried to force it between her lips, and
+at last she sighed and opened her eyes.
+
+"Oh--thank God--thank God!" I cried, for indeed I had almost feared that
+my mad trick had killed her. "Are you better? oh, poor little lady, are
+you better?"
+
+She moved her head a little on my arm.
+
+Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I gave her more brandy. She took
+it, choked, raised herself against my shoulder.
+
+"I'm all right now," she said faintly. "It served me right. How silly it
+all is!" Then she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.
+
+It was at this moment that we heard voices on the terrace below. She
+clutched at my arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears glistening on
+her cheeks.
+
+"Oh! not any more, not any more," she cried. "I can't bear it."
+
+"Hush," I said, taking her hands strongly in mine. "I've played the
+fool; so have you. We must play the man now. The people in the village
+have seen the lights--that's all. They think we're burglars. They can't
+get in. Keep quiet, and they'll go away."
+
+But when they did go away they left the local constable on guard. He
+kept guard like a man till daylight began to creep over the hill, and
+then he crawled into the hayloft and fell asleep, small blame to him.
+
+But through those long hours I sat beside her and held her hand. At
+first she clung to me as a frightened child clings, and her tears were
+the prettiest, saddest things to see. As we grew calmer we talked.
+
+"I did it to frighten my cousin," I owned. "I meant to have told you
+to-day, I mean yesterday, only you went away. I am Lawrence Sefton, and
+the place is to go either to me or to my cousin Selwyn. And I wanted to
+frighten him off it. But you, why did you----?"
+
+Even then I couldn't see. She looked at me.
+
+"I don't know how I ever could have thought I was brave enough to do it,
+but I did want the house so, and I wanted to frighten you----"
+
+"To frighten _me_. Why?"
+
+"Because I am your cousin Selwyn," she said, hiding her face in her
+hands.
+
+"And you knew me?" I asked.
+
+"By your ring," she said. "I saw your father wear it when I was a little
+girl. Can't we get back to the inn now?"
+
+"Not unless you want every one to know how silly we have been."
+
+"I wish you'd forgive me," she said when we had talked awhile, and she
+had even laughed at the description of the pallid young man on whom I
+had bestowed, in my mind, her name.
+
+"The wrong is mutual," I said; "we will exchange forgivenesses."
+
+"Oh, but it isn't," she said eagerly. "Because I knew it was you, and
+you didn't know it was me: you wouldn't have tried to frighten _me_."
+
+"You know I wouldn't." My voice was tenderer than I meant it to be.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"And who is to have the house?" she said.
+
+"Why you, of course."
+
+"I never will."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, because!"
+
+"Can't we put off the decision?" I asked.
+
+"Impossible. We must decide to-morrow--to-day I mean."
+
+"Well, when we meet to-morrow--I mean to-day--with lawyers and chaperones
+and mothers and relations, give me one word alone with you."
+
+"Yes," she answered, with docility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Do you know," she said presently, "I can never respect myself again? To
+undertake a thing like that, and then be so horribly frightened. Oh! I
+thought you really _were_ the other ghost."
+
+"I will tell you a secret," said I. "I thought _you_ were, and I was
+much more frightened than you."
+
+"Oh well," she said, leaning against my shoulder as a tired child might
+have done, "if you were frightened too, Cousin Lawrence, I don't mind so
+very, very much."
+
+It was soon afterwards that, cautiously looking out of the parlour
+window for the twentieth time, I had the happiness of seeing the local
+policeman disappear into the stable rubbing his eyes.
+
+We got out of the window on the other side of the house, and went back
+to the inn across the dewy park. The French window of the sitting-room
+which had let her out let us both in. No one was stirring, so no one
+save she and I were any the wiser as to that night's work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was like a garden party next day, when lawyers and executors and
+aunts and relations met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor House.
+
+Her eyes were downcast. She followed her Aunt demurely over the house
+and the grounds.
+
+"Your decision," said my great-uncle's solicitor, "has to be given
+within the hour."
+
+"My cousin and I will announce it within that time," I said and I at
+once gave her my arm.
+
+Arrived at the sundial we stopped.
+
+"This is my proposal," I said: "we will say that we decide that the
+house is yours--we will spend the £20,000 in restoring it and the
+grounds. By the time that's done we can decide who is to have it."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"Oh, we'll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like."
+
+"I'd rather decide now," she said; "_you_ take it."
+
+"No, _you_ shall."
+
+"I'd rather you had it. I--I don't feel so greedy as I did yesterday,"
+she said.
+
+"Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way."
+
+"Do--do take the house," she said very earnestly.
+
+Then I said: "My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make
+you an offer of marriage."
+
+"_Oh!_" she breathed.
+
+"And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too
+slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline
+the house. Then, if you are obdurate, it will become an asylum. Don't be
+obdurate. Pretend to take the house and----"
+
+She looked at me rather piteously.
+
+"Very well," she said, "I will pretend to take the house, and when it is
+restored----"
+
+"We'll spin the penny."
+
+So before the waiting relations the house was adjudged to my cousin
+Selwyn. When the restoration was complete I met Selwyn at the sundial.
+We had met there often in the course of the restoration, in which
+business we both took an extravagant interest.
+
+"Now," I said, "we'll spin the penny. Heads you take the house, tails it
+comes to me."
+
+I spun the coin--it fell on the brick steps of the sundial, and stuck
+upright there, wedged between two bricks. She laughed; I laughed.
+
+"It's not _my_ house," I said.
+
+"It's not _my_ house," said she.
+
+"Dear," said I, and we were neither of us laughing then, "can't it be
+_our_ house?"
+
+And, thank God, our house it is.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE POWER OF DARKNESS
+
+
+It was an enthusiastic send-off. Half the students from her Atelier were
+there, and twice as many more from other studios. She had been the belle
+of the Artists' Quarter in Montparnasse for three golden months. Now she
+was off to the Riviera to meet her people, and every one she knew was at
+the Gare de Lyons to catch the pretty last glimpse of her. And, as had
+been more than once said late of an evening, "to see her was to love
+her." She was one of those agitating blondes, with the naturally rippled
+hair, the rounded rose-leaf cheeks, the large violet-blue eyes that look
+all things and mean Heaven alone knows how little. She held her court
+like a queen, leaning out of the carriage window and receiving bouquets,
+books, journals, long last words, and last longing looks. All eyes were
+on her, and her eyes were for all--and her smile. For all but one, that
+is. Not a single glance went Edward's way, and Edward, tall, lean,
+gaunt, with big eyes, straight nose, and mouth somewhat too small, too
+beautiful, seemed to grow thinner and paler before one's eyes. One pair
+of eyes at least saw the miracle worked, the paling of what had seemed
+absolute pallor, the revelation of the bones of a face that seemed
+already covered but by the thinnest possible veil of flesh.
+
+And the man whose eyes saw this rejoiced, for he loved her, like the
+rest, or not like the rest; and he had had Edward's face before him for
+the last month, in that secret shrine where we set the loved and the
+hated, the shrine that is lighted by a million lamps kindled at the
+soul's flame, the shrine that leaps into dazzling glow when the candles
+are out and one lies alone on hot pillows to outface the night and the
+light as best one may.
+
+"Oh, good-bye, good-bye, all of you," said Rose. "I shall miss you--oh,
+you don't know how I shall miss you all!"
+
+She gathered the glances of her friends and her worshippers on her own
+glance, as one gathers jewels on a silken string. The eyes of Edward
+alone seemed to escape her.
+
+"Em voiture, messieurs et dames."
+
+Folk drew back from the train. There was a whistle. And then at the very
+last little moment of all, as the train pulled itself together for the
+start, her eyes met Edward's eyes. And the other man saw the meeting,
+and he knew--which was more than Edward did.
+
+So, when the light of life having been borne away in the retreating
+train, the broken-hearted group dispersed, the other man, whose name by
+the way was Vincent, linked his arm in Edward's and asked cheerily:
+"Whither away, sweet nymph?"
+
+"I'm off home," said Edward. "The 7.20 to Calais."
+
+"Sick of Paris?"
+
+"One has to see one's people sometimes, don't you know, hang it all!"
+was Edward's way of expressing the longing that tore him for the old
+house among the brown woods of Kent.
+
+"No attraction here now, eh?"
+
+"The chief attraction has gone, certainly," Edward made himself say.
+
+"But there are as good fish in the sea----?"
+
+"Fishing isn't my trade," said Edward.
+
+"The beautiful Rose!----" said Vincent.
+
+Edward raised hurriedly the only shield he could find. It happened to be
+the truth as he saw it.
+
+"Oh," he said, "of course, we're all in love with her--and all
+hopelessly."
+
+Vincent perceived that this was truth, as Edward saw it.
+
+"What are you going to do till your train goes?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. Café, I suppose, and a vilely early dinner."
+
+"Let's look in at the Musée Grévin," said Vincent.
+
+The two were friends. They had been school-fellows, and this is a link
+that survives many a strain too strong to be resisted by more intimate
+and vital bonds. And they were fellow-students, though that counts for
+little or much--as you take it. Besides, Vincent knew something about
+Edward that no one else of their age and standing even guessed. He knew
+that Edward was afraid of the dark, and why. He had found it out that
+Christmas that the two had spent at an English country house. The house
+was full: there was a dance. There were to be theatricals. Early in the
+new year the hostess meant to "move house" to an old convent, built in
+Tudor times, a beautiful place with terraces and clipped yew trees,
+castellated battlements, a moat, swans, and a ghost story.
+
+"You boys," she said, "must put up with a shake-down in the new house. I
+hope the ghost won't worry you. She's a nun with a bunch of keys and no
+eyes. Comes and breathes softly on the back of your neck when you're
+shaving. Then you see her in the glass, and, as often as not, you cut
+your throat." She laughed. So did Edward and Vincent, and the other
+young men; there were seven or eight of them.
+
+But that night, when sparse candles had lighted "the boys" to their
+rooms, when the last pipe had been smoked, the last good-night said,
+there came a fumbling with the handle of Vincent's door. Edward entered
+an unwieldy figure clasping pillows, trailing blankets.
+
+"What the deuce?" queried Vincent in natural amazement.
+
+"I'll turn in here on the floor, if you don't mind," said Edward. "I
+know it's beastly rot, but I can't stand it. The room they've put me
+into, it's an attic as big as a barn--and there's a great door at the
+end, eight feet high--raw oak it is--and it leads into a sort of
+horror-hole--bare beams and rafters, and black as Hell. I know I'm an
+abject duffer, but there it is--I can't face it."
+
+Vincent was sympathetic, though he had never known a night-terror that
+could not be exorcised by pipe, book, and candle.
+
+"I know, old chap. There's no reasoning about these things," said he,
+and so on.
+
+"You can't despise me more than I despise myself," Edward said. "I feel
+a crawling hound. But it is so. I had a scare when I was a kid, and it
+seems to have left a sort of brand on me. I'm branded 'coward,' old man,
+and the feel of it's not nice."
+
+Again Vincent was sympathetic, and the poor little tale came out. How
+Edward, eight years old, and greedy as became his little years, had
+sneaked down, night-clad, to pick among the outcomings of a
+dinner-party, and how, in the hall, dark with the light of an "artistic"
+coloured glass lantern, a white figure had suddenly faced him--leaned
+towards him it seemed, pointed lead-white hands at his heart. That next
+day, finding him weak from his fainting fit, had shown the horror to be
+but a statue, a new purchase of his father's, had mattered not one
+whit.
+
+Edward had shared Vincent's room, and Vincent, alone of all men, shared
+Edward's secret.
+
+And now, in Paris, Rose speeding away towards Cannes, Vincent said:
+"Let's look in at the Musée Grévin."
+
+The Musée Grévin is a wax-work show. Your mind, at the word, flies
+instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Madame
+Tussaud, and you think you know what wax-works mean. But you are wrong.
+The exhibition of Madame Tussaud--in these days, at any rate--is the
+work of _bourgeois_ for a _bourgeois_ class. The Musée Grévin contains
+the work of artists for a nation of artists. Wax, modelled and retouched
+till it seems as near life as death is: this is what one sees at the
+Musée Grévin.
+
+"Let's look in at the Musée Grévin," said Vincent. He remembered the
+pleasant thrill the Musée had given him, and wondered what sort of a
+thrill it would give his friend.
+
+"I hate museums," said Edward.
+
+"This isn't a museum," Vincent said, and truly; "it's just wax-works."
+
+"All right," said Edward indifferently. And they went. They reached the
+doors of the Musée in the grey-brown dusk of a February evening.
+
+One walks along a bare, narrow corridor, much like the entrance to the
+stalls of the Standard Theatre, and such daylight as there may be fades
+away behind one, and one finds oneself in a square hall, heavily
+decorated, and displaying with its electric lights Loie Fuller in her
+accordion-pleated skirts, and one or two other figures not designed to
+quicken the pulse.
+
+"It's very like Madame Tussaud's," said Edward.
+
+"Yes," Vincent said; "isn't it?"
+
+Then they passed through an arch, and behold, a long room with waxen
+groups life-like behind glass--the _coulisses_ of the Opéra, Kitchener
+at Fashoda--this last with a desert background lit by something
+convincingly like desert sunlight.
+
+"By Jove!" said Edward, "that's jolly good."
+
+"Yes," said Vincent again; "isn't it?"
+
+Edward's interest grew. The things were so convincing, so very nearly
+alive. Given the right angle, their glass eyes met one's own, and
+seemed to exchange with one meaning glances.
+
+Vincent led the way to an arched door labelled: "Gallerie de la
+Revolution."
+
+There one saw, almost in the living, suffering body, poor Marie
+Antoinette in prison in the Temple, her little son on his couch of rags,
+the rats eating from his platter, the brutal Simon calling to him from
+the grated window; one almost heard the words, "Ho la, little Capet--are
+you asleep?"
+
+One saw Marat bleeding in his bath--the brave Charlotte eyeing him--the
+very tiles of the bath-room, the glass of the windows with, outside, the
+very sunlight, as it seemed, of 1793 on that "yellow July evening, the
+thirteenth of the month."
+
+The spectators did not move in a public place among wax-work figures.
+They peeped through open doors into rooms where history seemed to be
+re-lived. The rooms were lighted each by its own sun, or lamp, or
+candle. The spectators walked among shadows that might have oppressed a
+nervous person.
+
+"Fine, eh?" said Vincent.
+
+"Yes," said Edward; "it's wonderful."
+
+A turn of a corner brought them to a room. Marie Antoinette fainting,
+supported by her ladies; poor fat Louis by the window looking literally
+sick.
+
+"What's the matter with them all?" said Edward.
+
+"Look at the window," said Vincent.
+
+There was a window to the room. Outside was sunshine--the sunshine of
+1792--and, gleaming in it, blonde hair flowing, red mouth half open,
+what seemed the just-severed head of a beautiful woman. It was raised on
+a pike, so that it seemed to be looking in at the window.
+
+"I say!" said Edward, and the head on the pike seemed to sway before his
+eyes.
+
+"Madame de Lamballe. Good thing, isn't it?" said Vincent.
+
+"It's altogether too much of a good thing," said Edward. "Look
+here--I've had enough of this."
+
+"Oh, you must just see the Catacombs," said Vincent; "nothing bloody,
+you know. Only Early Christians being married and baptized, and all
+that."
+
+He led the way, down some clumsy steps to the cellars which the genius
+of a great artist has transformed into the exact semblance of the old
+Catacombs at Rome. The same rough hewing of rock, the same sacred
+tokens engraved strongly and simply; and among the arches of these
+subterranean burrowings the life of the Early Christians, their
+sacraments, their joys, their sorrows--all expressed in groups of
+wax-work as like life as Death is.
+
+"But this is very fine, you know," said Edward, getting his breath again
+after Madame de Lamballe, and his imagination loved the thought of the
+noble sufferings and refrainings of these first lovers of the Crucified
+Christ.
+
+"Yes," said Vincent for the third time; "isn't it?"
+
+They passed the baptism and the burying and the marriage. The tableaux
+were sufficiently lighted, but little light strayed to the narrow
+passage where the two men walked, and the darkness seemed to press,
+tangible as a bodily presence, against Edward's shoulder. He glanced
+backward.
+
+"Come," he said, "I've had enough."
+
+"Come on, then," said Vincent.
+
+They turned the corner--and a blaze of Italian sunlight struck at their
+eyes with positive dazzlement. There lay the Coliseum--tier on tier of
+eager faces under the blue sky of Italy. They were level with the
+arena. In the arena were crosses; from them drooped bleeding figures. On
+the sand beasts prowled, bodies lay. They saw it all through bars. They
+seemed to be in the place where the chosen victims waited their turn,
+waited for the lions and the crosses, the palm and the crown. Close by
+Edward was a group--an old man, a woman--children. He could have touched
+them with his hand. The woman and the man stared in an agony of terror
+straight in the eyes of a snarling tiger, ten feet long, that stood up
+on its hind feet and clawed through the bars at them. The youngest
+child, only, unconscious of the horror, laughed in the very face of it.
+Roman soldiers, unmoved in military vigilance, guarded the group of
+martyrs. In a low cage to the left more wild beasts cringed and seemed
+to growl, unfed. Within the grating on the wide circle of yellow sand
+lions and tigers drank the blood of Christians. Close against the bars a
+great lion sucked the chest of a corpse on whose blood-stained face the
+horror of the death-agony was printed plain.
+
+"Good God!" said Edward. Vincent took his arm suddenly, and he started
+with what was almost a shriek.
+
+"What a nervous chap you are!" said Vincent complacently, as they
+regained the street where the lights were, and the sound of voices and
+the movement of live human beings--all that warms and awakens nerves
+almost paralysed by the life in death of waxen immobility.
+
+"I don't know," said Edward. "Let's have a vermouth, shall we? There's
+something uncanny about those wax things. They're like life--but they're
+much more like death. Suppose they moved? I don't feel at all sure that
+they don't move, when the lights are all out, and there's no one there."
+He laughed. "I suppose you were never frightened, Vincent?"
+
+"Yes, I was once," said Vincent, sipping his absinthe. "Three other men
+and I were taking turns by twos to watch a dead man. It was a fancy of
+his mother's. Our time was up, and the other watch hadn't come. So my
+chap--the one who was watching with me, I mean--went to fetch them. I
+didn't think I should mind. But it was just like you say."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, I kept thinking: suppose it should move--it was so like life. And
+if it did move, of course it would have been because it _was_ alive,
+and I ought to have been glad, because the man was my friend. But all
+the same, if it had moved I should have gone mad."
+
+"Yes," said Edward; "that's just exactly it."
+
+Vincent called for a second absinthe.
+
+"But a dead body's different to wax-works," he said. "I can't understand
+any one being frightened of _them_."
+
+"Oh, can't you?" The contempt in the other's tone stung him. "I bet you
+wouldn't spend a night alone in that place."
+
+"I bet you five pounds I do!"
+
+"Done!" said Edward briskly. "At least, I would if you'd got five
+pounds."
+
+"But I have. I'm simply rolling. I've sold my Dejanira, didn't you know?
+I shall win your money, though, anyway. But _you_ couldn't do it, old
+man. I suppose you'll never outgrow that childish scare."
+
+"You might shut up about that," said Edward shortly.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of; some women are afraid of mice or
+spiders. I say, does Rose know you're a coward?"
+
+"Vincent!"
+
+"No offence, old boy. One may as well call a spade a spade. Of course,
+you've got tons of moral courage, and all that. But you _are_ afraid of
+the dark--and wax-works!"
+
+"Are you trying to quarrel with me?"
+
+"Heaven in its mercy forbid; but I bet _you_ wouldn't spend a night in
+the Musée Grévin and keep your senses."
+
+"What's the stake?"
+
+"Anything you like."
+
+"Make it, that if I do, you'll never speak to Rose again--and what's
+more, that you'll never speak to me," said Edward, white-hot, knocking
+down a chair as he rose.
+
+"Done!" said Vincent; "but you'll never do it. Keep your hair on.
+Besides, you're off home."
+
+"I shall be back in ten days. I'll do it then," said Edward, and was off
+before the other could answer.
+
+Then Vincent, left alone, sat still, and over his third absinthe
+remembered how, before she had known Edward, Rose had smiled on him;
+more than on the others, he had thought. He thought of her wide, lovely
+eyes, her wild-rose cheeks, the scented curves of her hair, and then and
+there the devil entered into him.
+
+In ten days Edward would undoubtedly try to win his wager. He would try
+to spend the night in the Musée Grévin. Perhaps something could be
+arranged before that. If one knew the place thoroughly! A little scare
+would serve Edward right for being the man to whom that last glance of
+Rose's had been given.
+
+Vincent dined lightly, but with conscientious care--and as he dined, he
+thought. Something might be done by tying a string to one of the
+figures, and making it move, when Edward was going through that
+impossible night among the effigies that are so like life--so like
+death. Something that was not the devil said: "You may frighten him out
+of his wits." And the devil answered: "Nonsense! do him good. He
+oughtn't to be such a schoolgirl."
+
+Anyway, the five pounds might as well be won to-night as any other
+night. He would take a great coat, sleep sound in the place of horrors,
+and the people who opened it in the morning to sweep and dust would bear
+witness that he had passed the night there. He thought he might trust to
+the French love of a sporting wager to keep him from any bother with the
+authorities.
+
+So he went in among the crowd, and looked about among the wax-works for
+a place to hide in. He was not in the least afraid of these lifeless
+images. He had always been able to control his nervous tremors. He was
+not even afraid of being frightened, which, by the way, is the worst
+fear of all. As one looks at the room of the poor little Dauphin, one
+sees a door to the left. It opens out of the room on to blackness. There
+were few people in the gallery. Vincent watched, and in a moment when he
+was alone he stepped over the barrier and through this door. A narrow
+passage ran round behind the wall of the room. Here he hid, and when the
+gallery was deserted he looked out across the body of little Capet to
+the gaolers at the window. There was a soldier at the window, too.
+Vincent amused himself with the fancy that this soldier might walk round
+the passage at the back of the room and tap him on the shoulder in the
+darkness. Only the head and shoulders of the soldier and the gaoler
+showed, so, of course, they could not walk, even if they were something
+that was not wax-work.
+
+Presently he himself went along the passage and round to the window
+where they were. He found that they had legs. They were full-sized
+figures dressed completely in the costume of the period.
+
+"Thorough the beggars are, even the parts that don't show--artists, upon
+my word," said Vincent, and went back to his doorway, thinking of the
+hidden carving behind the capitols of Gothic cathedrals.
+
+But the idea of the soldier who might come behind him in the dark stuck
+in his mind. Though still a few visitors strolled through the gallery,
+the closing hour was near. He supposed it would be quite dark then. And
+now he had allowed himself to be amused by the thought of something that
+should creep up behind him in the dark, he might possibly be nervous in
+that passage round which, if wax-works could move, the soldier might
+have come.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "one might easily frighten oneself by just fancying
+things. Suppose there were a back way from Marat's bath-room, and
+instead of the soldier Marat came out of his bath, with his wet towels
+stained with blood, and dabbed them against your neck."
+
+When next the gallery was empty he crept out. Not because he was
+nervous, he told himself, but because one might be, and because the
+passage was draughty, and he meant to sleep.
+
+He went down the steps into the Catacombs, and here he spoke the truth
+to himself.
+
+"Hang it all!" he said, "I _was_ nervous. That fool Edward must have
+infected me. Mesmeric influences, or something."
+
+"Chuck it and go home," said Commonsense.
+
+"I'm damned if I do!" said Vincent.
+
+There were a good many people in the Catacombs at the moment--live
+people. He sucked confidence from their nearness, and went up and down
+looking for a hiding-place.
+
+Through rock-hewn arches he saw a burial scene--a corpse on a bier
+surrounded by mourners; a great pillar cut off half the still, lying
+figure. It was all still and unemotional as a Sunday School oleograph.
+He waited till no one was near, then slipped quickly through the
+mourning group and hid behind the pillar. Surprising--heartening too--to
+find a plain rushed chair there, doubtless set for the resting of tired
+officials. He sat down in it, comforted his hand with the commonplace
+lines of its rungs and back. A shrouded waxen figure just behind him to
+the left of his pillar worried him a little, but the corpse left him
+unmoved as itself. A far better place this than that draughty passage
+where the soldier with legs kept intruding on the darkness that is
+always behind one.
+
+Custodians went along the passages issuing orders. A stillness fell.
+Then suddenly all the lights went out.
+
+"That's all right," said Vincent, and composed himself to sleep.
+
+But he seemed to have forgotten what sleep was like. He firmly fixed his
+thoughts on pleasant things--the sale of his picture, dances with Rose,
+merry evenings with Edward and the others. But the thoughts rushed by
+him like motes in sunbeams--he could not hold a single one of them, and
+presently it seemed that he had thought of every pleasant thing that had
+ever happened to him, and that now, if he thought at all, he must think
+of the things one wants most to forget. And there would be time in this
+long night to think much of many things. But now he found that he could
+no longer think.
+
+The draped effigy just behind him worried him again. He had been trying,
+at the back of his mind, behind the other thoughts, to strangle the
+thought of it. But it was there--very close to him. Suppose it put out
+its hand, its wax hand, and touched him. But it was of wax: it could not
+move. No, of course not. But suppose it _did_?
+
+He laughed aloud, a short, dry laugh that echoed through the vaults. The
+cheering effect of laughter has been over-estimated, perhaps. Anyhow, he
+did not laugh again.
+
+The silence was intense, but it was a silence thick with rustlings and
+breathings, and movements that his ear, strained to the uttermost, could
+just not hear. Suppose, as Edward had said, when all the lights were
+out, these things did move. A corpse was a thing that had moved--given a
+certain condition--Life. What if there were a condition, given which
+these things could move? What if such conditions were present now? What
+if all of them--Napoleon, yellow-white from his death sleep--the beasts
+from the Amphitheatre, gore dribbling from their jaws--that soldier with
+the legs--all were drawing near to him in this full silence? Those
+death masks of Robespierre and Mirabeau, they might float down through
+the darkness till they touched his face. That head of Madame de Lamballe
+on the pike might be thrust at him from behind the pillar. The silence
+throbbed with sounds that could not quite be heard.
+
+"You fool," he said to himself, "your dinner has disagreed with you,
+with a vengeance. Don't be an ass. The whole lot are only a set of big
+dolls."
+
+He felt for his matches, and lighted a cigarette. The gleam of the match
+fell on the face of the corpse in front of him. The light was brief, and
+it seemed, somehow, impossible to look, by that light, in every corner
+where one would have wished to look. The match burnt his fingers as it
+went out; and there were only three more matches in the box.
+
+It was dark again, and the image left on the darkness was that of the
+corpse in front of him. He thought of his dead friend. When the
+cigarette was smoked out, he thought of him more and more, till it
+seemed that what lay on the bier was not wax. His hand reached forward,
+and drew back more than once. But at last he made it touch the bier,
+and through the blackness travel up along a lean, rigid arm to the wax
+face that lay there so still. The touch was not reassuring. Just so, and
+not otherwise, had his dead friend's face felt, to the last touch of his
+lips: cold, firm, waxen. People always said the dead were "waxen." How
+true that was! He had never thought of it before. He thought of it now.
+
+He sat still, so still that every muscle ached, because if you wish to
+hear the sounds that infest silence, you must be very still indeed. He
+thought of Edward, and of the string he had meant to tie to one of the
+figures.
+
+"That wouldn't be needed," he told himself. And his ears ached with
+listening--listening for the sound that, it seemed, _must_ break at last
+from that crowded silence.
+
+He never knew how long he sat there. To move, to go up, to batter at the
+door and clamour to be let out--that one could have done if one had had
+a lantern, or even a full matchbox. But in the dark, not knowing the
+turnings, to feel one's way among these things that were so like life
+and yet were not alive--to touch, perhaps, these faces that were not
+dead, and yet felt like death. His heart beat heavily in his throat at
+the thought.
+
+No, he must sit still till morning. He had been hypnotised into this
+state, he told himself, by Edward, no doubt; it was not natural to him.
+
+Then suddenly the silence was shattered. In the dark something moved.
+And, after those sounds that the silence teemed with, the noise seemed
+to him thunder-loud. Yet it was only a very, very little sound, just the
+rustling of drapery, as though something had turned in its sleep. And
+there was a sigh--not far off.
+
+Vincent's muscles and tendons tightened like fine-drawn wire. He
+listened. There was nothing more: only the silence, the thick silence.
+
+The sound had seemed to come from a part of the vault where, long ago,
+when there was light, he had seen a grave being dug for the body of a
+young girl martyr.
+
+"I will get up and go out," said Vincent. "I have three matches. I am
+off my head. I shall really be nervous presently if I don't look out."
+
+He got up and struck a match, refused his eyes the sight of the corpse
+whose waxen face he had felt in the blackness, and made his way through
+the crowd of figures. By the match's flicker they seemed to make way for
+him, to turn their heads to look after him. The match lasted till he got
+to a turn of the rock-hewn passage. His next match showed him the burial
+scene: the little, thin body of the martyr, palm in hand, lying on the
+rock floor in patient waiting, the grave-digger, the mourners. Some
+standing, some kneeling, one crouched on the ground.
+
+This was where that sound had come from, that rustle, that sigh. He had
+thought he was going away from it: instead, he had come straight to the
+spot where, if anywhere, his nerves might be expected to play him false.
+
+"Bah!" he said, and he said it aloud, "the silly things are only wax.
+Who's afraid?" His voice sounded loud in the silence that lives with the
+wax people. "They're only wax," he said again, and touched with his
+foot, contemptuously, the crouching figure in the mantle.
+
+And, as he touched it, it raised its head and looked vacantly at him,
+and its eyes were mobile and alive. He staggered back against another
+figure, and dropped the match. In the new darkness he heard the
+crouching figure move towards him. Then the darkness fitted in round him
+very closely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What was it exactly that sent poor Vincent mad: you've never told me?"
+Rose asked the question. She and Edward were looking out over the pines
+and tamarisks, across the blue Mediterranean. They were very happy,
+because it was their honeymoon.
+
+He told her about the Musée Grévin and the wager, but he did not state
+the terms of it.
+
+"But why did he think you would be afraid?"
+
+He told her why.
+
+"And then what happened?"
+
+"Why, I suppose he thought there was no time like the present--for his
+five pounds, you know--and he hid among the wax-works. And I missed my
+train, and _I_ thought there was no time like the present. In fact,
+dear, I thought if I waited I should have time to make certain of
+funking it, so I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and
+sat down right in one of the wax-work groups--they couldn't see me from
+the passage where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply
+went to sleep; and I woke up--and there was a light, and I heard some
+one say: 'They're only wax,' and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of
+the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one
+of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was
+trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I'd got near me, he began to
+scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one
+in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They
+have to put his food beside him while he's asleep. It's horrible. I
+can't help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow."
+
+"Of course it's not," said Rose. "Poor Vincent! Do you know I never
+_really_ liked him." There was a pause. Then she said: "But how was it
+_you_ weren't frightened?"
+
+"I was," he said, "horribly frightened. I--I--it sounds idiotic, but I
+thought I should go mad at first--I did really: and yet I _had_ to go
+through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the
+Catacombs, the people who died for--for things, don't you know, died in
+such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm--and believing it was
+all all right. And I thought about what they'd gone through. It sounds
+awful rot I know, dear--but I expect I was sleepy. Those wax people,
+they sort of seemed as if they were alive, and were telling me there
+wasn't anything to be frightened about. I felt as if I were one of them,
+and they were all my friends, and they'd wake me if anything went wrong,
+so I just went to sleep."
+
+"I think I understand," she said. But she didn't.
+
+"And the odd thing is," he went on, "I've never been afraid of the dark
+since. Perhaps his calling me a coward had something to do with it."
+
+"I don't think so," said she. And she was right. But she would never
+have understood how, nor why.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED
+
+
+"There he goes--isn't he simply detestable!" She spoke suddenly, after a
+silence longer than was usual to her; she was tired, and her voice was a
+note or two above its habitual key. She blushed, a deep pink blush of
+intense annoyance, as the young man passed down the long platform among
+the crowd of city men and typewriting girls, patiently waiting for the
+belated train to allow them to go home from work.
+
+"Oh, do you think he heard? Oh, Molly--I believe he did!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said Molly briskly, "of course he didn't. And I must say I
+don't think he's so bad. If he didn't look so sulky he wouldn't be
+_half_ bad, really. If his eyebrows weren't tied up into knots, I
+believe he'd look quite too frightfully sweet for anything."
+
+"He's exactly like that Polish model we had last week. Oh, Molly, he's
+coming back again."
+
+Again he passed the two girls. His expression was certainly not amiable.
+
+"How long have you known him?" Molly asked.
+
+"I _don't_ know him. I tell you I only see him on the platform at Mill
+Vale. He and I seem to be the only people--the only decent
+people--who've found out the new station. He goes up by the 9.1 every
+day, and so do I. And the train's always late, so we have the platform
+and the booking office to ourselves. And there we sit, or stand, or
+walk, morning after morning like two stuck pigs in a trough of silence."
+
+"Don't jumble your metaphors, though you very nearly carried it off with
+the trough, I own. Stuck pigs don't walk--in troughs, or anywhere else."
+
+"Well, you know what I mean----"
+
+"But what do you want the wretched man to do? He can't speak to you: it
+wouldn't be proper----"
+
+"Proper--why not? We're human beings, not wild beasts. At least, I'm a
+human being."
+
+"And he's a beast--I see."
+
+"I wish I were a man," said Nina. "There he is again. His nose goes up
+another half inch every time he passes me. What's he got to be so
+superior about? If I were a man I'd certainly pass the time of day with
+a fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend from ten to forty minutes
+with it six days out of the seven."
+
+"I expect he's afraid you'd want to marry him. My brother Cecil says men
+are always horribly frightened about that."
+
+"Your brother Cecil!" said Nina scornfully. "Yes; that's just the sort
+of thing anybody's brother Cecil _would_ say. He simply looks down on me
+because I go third. He only goes second himself, too. Here's the
+train----"
+
+The two Art students climbed into their third-class carriage, and their
+talk, leaving Nina's fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling brook
+about the feet of great rocks, busied itself with the old Italian
+Masters, painting as a mission, and the aims of Art--presently running
+through flatter country and lapping round perspective, foreshortening,
+tones, values high lights and the preposterous lisp of the anatomy
+lecturer.
+
+Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to
+meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of
+the platform.
+
+"And we haven't so much as a rib of an umbrella between us," sighed
+Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the "best" hat which
+signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. "You're right: that
+man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of
+us. Oh, it's too bad! He's putting it down--he's running. He runs rather
+well. He's exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room."
+
+"Only his manners have not that repose that stamps the cast. Come
+on--don't stand staring after him like that. We'd better run, too."
+
+"He'll think we're running after him. Oh, bother----"
+
+A moment of indecision, and Nina had turned her skirt over her head, and
+the two ran home to the little rooms where Nina lived--in the house of
+an old servant. Nina had no world of relations--she was alone. In the
+world of Art she had many friends, and in the world of Art she meant to
+make her mark. For the present she was content to make the tea, and then
+to set feet on the fender for a cosy evening.
+
+"Did you see him coming out of church?" Nina asked next day. "He looked
+sulkier than ever."
+
+"I can't think why you bother about him," said the other girl. "He's not
+really interesting. What do you call him?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Why, everything has a name, even a pudding. _I_ made a name for him at
+once. It is 'the stranger who might have been observed----'"
+
+They laughed. After the early dinner they went for a walk. None of your
+strolls, but a good steady eight miles. Coming home, they met the
+stranger: and then they talked about him again. For, fair reader, I
+cannot conceal from you that there are many girls who do think and talk
+about young men, even when they have not been introduced to them. Not
+really nice girls like yourself, fair reader--but ordinary, commonplace
+girls who have not your delicate natures, and who really do sometimes
+experience a fleeting sensation of interest even in the people whose
+names they don't know.
+
+Next morning they saw him at the station. The 9.1 took the bit in its
+teeth, and instead of being, as usual, the 9.30 something, became merely
+the 9.23. So for some twenty odd minutes the stranger not only might
+have been, but was, observed by four bright and critical eyes. I don't
+mean that my girls stared, of course. Perhaps you do not know that there
+are ways of observing strangers other than by the stare direct. He
+looked sulkier than ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too, was far
+from staring, so far that the indignant Nina broke out in a distracted
+whisper: "There! you see! I'm not important enough for him even to
+perceive my existence. I'm always expecting him to walk on me. I wonder
+whether he'd apologise when he found I wasn't the station door-mat?"
+
+The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to himself in his second-class
+carriage when the train had started.
+
+"'Simply detestable!' But how one talks prose without knowing it, all
+along the line! How can I ever have come enough into her line of vision
+to be distinguished by an epithet! And why this one? Detestable!"
+
+The epithet, however distinguishing, seemed somehow to lack charm.
+
+At Cannon Street Station the stranger looked sulkier than Nina had ever
+seen him. She said so, adding: "Than I've ever seen him? Oh--I'm
+wandering. He looks sulkier than I've ever seen any one--sulkier than
+I've ever dreamed possible. Pig----"
+
+Through the week, painting at the school and black and white work in the
+evenings filled Nina's mind to the exclusion even of strangers who
+might, in more leisured moments, seem worthy of observation. She was
+aware of the sulky one on platforms, of course, but talking about him to
+Molly was more amusing somehow than merely thinking of him. When it came
+to thinking, the real, the earnest things of life--the Sketch Club, the
+chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize, the intricate hideousness of
+bones and muscles--took the field and kept it, against strangers and
+acquaintances alike.
+
+Saturday, turning this week's scribbled page to the fair, clear page of
+next week, brought the stranger back to her thoughts, and to eyes now
+not obscured by close realities.
+
+He passed her on the platform, with a dozen bunches of violets in his
+hands.
+
+Outside, on the railway bridge, the red and green lamps glowed dully
+through deep floods of yellow fog. The platform was crowded, the train
+late. When at last it steamed slowly in, the crowd surged towards it.
+The third-class carriages were filled in the moment. Nina hurried along
+the platform peering into the second-class carriages. Full also.
+
+Then the guard opened the way for her into the blue-cloth Paradise of a
+first-class carriage; and, just as the train gave the shudder of disgust
+which heralds its shame-faced reluctant departure, the door opened
+again, and the guard pushed in another traveller--the "stranger who
+might----" of course. The door banged, the train moved off with an air
+of brisk determination. A hundred yards from the platform it stopped
+dead.
+
+There were no other travellers in that carriage. When the train had
+stood still for ten minutes or so, the stranger got up and put his head
+out of the window. At that instant the train decided to move again. It
+did it suddenly, and, exhausted by the effort, stopped after half a
+dozen yards' progress with so powerful a turn of the brake that the
+stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and his elbow nearly knocked
+her hat off.
+
+He raised his own apologetically--but he did not speak even then.
+
+"The wretch!" said Nina hotly; "he might at least have begged my
+pardon."
+
+The stranger sat down again, and began to read the _Spectator_. Nina had
+no papers. The train moved on an inch or two, and the reddening yellow
+of the fog seemed like a Charity blanket pressed against each window.
+Three of the bunches of violets shook and vibrated and slipped, the
+train moved again and they fell on the floor of the carriage. Nina
+watched their trembling in an agony of irritation induced by the fog,
+the delay, and the persistent silence of her companion. When the flowers
+fell, she spoke.
+
+"You've dropped your flowers," she said. Again a bow, a silent bow, and
+the flowers were picked up.
+
+"Oh, I'm desperate!" Nina said inwardly. "He must be mad--or dumb--or
+have a vow of silence--I wonder which?"
+
+The train had not yet reached the next station, though it had left the
+last nearly an hour before.
+
+"Which is it? Mad, dumb, or a monk? I _will_ find out. Well, it's his
+own fault; he shouldn't be so aggravating. I'm going to speak to him.
+I've made up my mind."
+
+In the interval between decision and action the train in a sudden brief
+access of nervous energy got itself through a station, and paused a
+furlong down the line exhausted by the effort.
+
+The stranger had put down his _Spectator_ and was gazing gloomily out at
+the fog.
+
+Nina drew a deep breath, and said--at least she nearly said: "What a
+dreadful fog!"
+
+But she stopped. That seemed a dull beginning. If she said that he would
+think she was commonplace, and she had that sustaining inward
+consciousness, mercifully vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being
+really rather nice, and not commonplace at all. But what should she say?
+If she said anything about the colour of the fog and Turner or Whistler,
+it might be telling, but it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began
+about books--the _Spectator_ suggested this--she would stand as a prig
+confessed. If she spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor
+soon exposed. If----But Nina took out her watch and resolved: "When the
+little hand gets to the quarter I _will_ speak. Whatever I say, I'll
+say something."
+
+And when the big hand did get to the quarter Nina did speak.
+
+"Why shouldn't we talk?" she said.
+
+He looked at her; and he seemed to be struggling silently with some
+emotion too deep for words.
+
+"It's so silly to sit here like mutes," Nina went on hurriedly--a little
+frightened, now she had begun, but more than a little determined not to
+be frightened. "If we were at a dance we shouldn't know any more of each
+other than we do now--and you'd have to talk then. Why shouldn't we
+now?"
+
+Then the stranger spoke, and at the first sentence Nina understood
+exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk.
+Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn't dare to
+pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But
+in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took
+exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between
+London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the
+stranger talked the whole way.
+
+He walked with her to the door of her lodging, and she offered him her
+hand without that moment of hesitation which would have been natural to
+any heroine, because she had debated the question of that handshake all
+the way from the station, and made up her mind just as they reached the
+church, a stone's throw from her home. When the door closed on her he
+went slowly back to the churchyard to lay his violets on a grave. Nina
+saw them there next day when she came out of church. She saw him too,
+and gave him a bow and a very small smile, and turned away quickly. The
+bow meant: "You see I'm not going to speak to you. You mustn't think I
+want to be always talking to you." The smile meant: "But you mustn't
+think I'm cross. I'm not--only----"
+
+In the hot, stuffy "life-room" at the Slade next day Molly teased with
+ill-judged bread-crumbs an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and chattered
+softly to Nina, who in the Saturday solitude had drawn her easel behind
+her friend's "donkey." "It's all very well here when you first come in,
+but when once you _are_ warm, oh dear, how warm you are! Why do models
+want such boiling rooms? Why can't they be soaked in alum or myrrh or
+something to harden their silly skins so that they won't mind a breath
+of decent air? And I believe the model's deformed--she certainly is from
+where I am. Oh, look at my arm! I ask you a little--look at the beastly
+thing. Foreshortened like this it looks like a fillet of veal with a
+pound of sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my own and only
+Nina--save the sinking ship!"
+
+"It ought to go more like _that_," Nina said with indicative brush, "and
+don't keep on rubbing out so fiercely. You'll get paralysed with
+bread--it's a disease, you know. I heard Tonks telling you so only the
+other day----"
+
+"It's rather a good phrase: I wonder where he got it? He was rather nice
+that day," said Molly. "Oh, this arm! It's no good--I believe the
+model's moved--I tell you I _must_." More bread. Nina re-absorbed in her
+canvas. "Yours is coming well. What's the matter with you to-day? You're
+very mousy. Has the 'stranger who might' been scowling more than usual?
+Or have you got a headache? I'm sure this atmosphere's enough to make
+you. Did you see him this morning? Have you fainted at his feet yet?
+Has he relented in the matter of umbrellas? I'm sure he can't have
+passed the whole week without some act of grumpiness."
+
+Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut eyes at the model's
+beautiful form and stupid face.
+
+"I went down in the same carriage with him on Thursday," she said
+slowly.
+
+"You did? Did he rush into the third class, where angels like himself
+ought to fear to tread?"
+
+"There was a fog. Thirds all full, and seconds too. The guard bundled us
+both in, and the train started--and it took three or four hours to get
+down."
+
+"Any one else in the carriage?"
+
+"Not so much as a mouse."
+
+"What _did_ you do?"
+
+"Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get
+from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for
+about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and
+took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a
+word. He didn't even say he thought I was the door-mat. And then some
+cabbages of his fell off the seat."
+
+"Sure they weren't thistles?"
+
+"Vegetables of some sort. And I said: 'You've dropped your----whatever
+they were.' And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I'm-
+sure-I-don't-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave
+that bread alone."
+
+Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as
+though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and
+sparrows.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"Well?" said Nina.
+
+"Why ever didn't you ask him to put the window up, or down, or
+something? I would have--just to hear if he has a voice."
+
+"It wouldn't have been any good. He'd just have bowed again, and I'd had
+enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we
+were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our
+tongues out, and why on earth shouldn't we talk?"
+
+"You never did!"
+
+"Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said----"
+
+A long pause.
+
+"What?"
+
+"He told me why he never spoke to strangers."
+
+"What a slap in the face! You poor----"
+
+"Oh, he didn't say it like _that_, you silly idiot. And it was quite a
+good reason."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me exactly what he said."
+
+"He said, 'I--I--I----' At any rate, I'm satisfied, and I rather wish we
+hadn't called him pigs and beasts, and things like that."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"Aren't you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well--you leave it to
+my guessing? Of course it's quite evident he's hopelessly in love with
+you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his passion. But,
+encouraged by your advances----"
+
+"Molly, go on with that arm, and don't be a vulgar little donkey."
+
+Molly obeyed. Presently: "Cross-patch," she said.
+
+"I'm not," said Nina, "but I want to work, and I like you best when
+you're not vulgar."
+
+"You're very rude."
+
+"No: only candid."
+
+Molly's wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five
+minutes. Then: "Did you talk to him much?"
+
+"Heaps."
+
+"All the way down?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Is he nice?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Is he clever?"
+
+"I want to work."
+
+"Well, what I want to know is, and then I'll let you alone--what did you
+talk about? Tell me that, and I won't ask another question."
+
+"We talked," said Nina deliberately, taking a clean brush, "we talked
+about your brother Cecil. No, I shan't tell you what we said, or why we
+talked about him, or anything. You've had your one question, now shut
+up."
+
+"Nina," said Molly calmly, "if I didn't like you so much I should hate
+you."
+
+"That certainty about the other has always been the foundation of our
+mutual regard," said Nina calmly.
+
+Then they laughed, and began to work in earnest.
+
+The next time Molly mentioned the "stranger who might have been
+observed" Nina laughed, and said: "The subject is forbidden; it makes
+you vulgar."
+
+"And you disagreeable."
+
+"Then it's best to avoid it. Best for you and best for me."
+
+"But do you ever see him now?"
+
+"On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1, and I still have the use of
+my eyes."
+
+"Does he ever talk to you like he did that Thursday?"
+
+"No--never. And I'm not going to talk about him to you, so it's no good.
+Your turn to choose a subject. You won't? Then it becomes my turn. What
+a long winter this is! We seem to have taken years to get from November
+to February!"
+
+The time went more quickly between February and May. It was when the
+country was wearing its full dress of green and the hawthorn pearls were
+opening into baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was Nina's fortune to
+be put, by the zealous indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an
+express train for Beechwood--the wrong station--the wrong line.
+
+The "stranger who might have been observed," on this occasion was not
+observed, but observer. He saw and recognised the porter's error,
+hesitated a moment, and then leaped into a carriage just behind hers. So
+that when, after a swift journey made eventful by agonised recognition
+of the fleeting faces of various stations where she might have changed
+and caught her own train, Nina reached Beechwood, the stranger's hand
+was ready to open the door for her.
+
+"There's no train for ages," he said in tones deliberate, almost
+hesitating. "Shall we walk home? It's only six miles."
+
+"But you--aren't you going somewhere here?"
+
+"No--I--I--I saw the porter put you in--and I thought--at least--anyway
+you will walk, won't you?"
+
+They walked. When they reached Beechwood Common, he said: "Won't you
+take my arm?" And she took it. Her hands were ungloved; the other hand
+was full of silver may and bluebells. The sun shot level shafts of gold
+between the birch trees across the furze and heather.
+
+"How beautiful it is!" she said.
+
+"We've known each other three months," said he.
+
+"But I've seen you every day, and we've talked for hours and hours in
+those everlasting trains," she said, as if in excuse.
+
+"I've seen you every day for longer than that; the first time was on the
+3rd of October."
+
+"Fancy remembering that!"
+
+"I have a good memory."
+
+A silence.
+
+Nina broke it, to say again: "How pretty!" She knew she had said it
+before, or something like it, but she could think of nothing else--and
+she wanted to say something.
+
+He put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. She looked up at him
+quickly.
+
+"Well?" he said, stopping to look down into her eyes and tightening his
+clasp on her hand. "Are you sorry you came to Beechwood?"
+
+"No----"
+
+"Then be glad. My dear, I wish you could ever be as glad as I am."
+
+Then they walked on, still with his hand on hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nina and Molly sat on a locker swinging their feet and eating their
+lunch in the Slade corridor next day. Nina was humming softly under her
+breath.
+
+"What are you so happy for all of a sudden?" Molly asked. "Your
+sketch-club things are the worst I've ever seen, and the Professor was
+down on you like a hundred of bricks this morning."
+
+"I'm not happy," said Nina, turning away what seemed to Molly a new
+face.
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Nothing. Oh yes--by the way, I'm going to be married."
+
+"Not _really_?"
+
+"Check this unflattering display of incredulity--I am."
+
+"Really and truly? And you never told me a thing. I hate slyness and
+secretiveness. Nina, who is it? Do I know him?"
+
+Nina named a name.
+
+"Never even heard of him. But where did you meet him? It really is
+rather deceitful of you."
+
+"I always meant to tell you, only there was nothing to tell till
+yesterday except----"
+
+"Except everything," said Molly. "Well, tell me now."
+
+Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin
+pinafore.
+
+"Promise not to be horrid, and I will."
+
+"I won't--I promise I won't."
+
+"Then it's--it's him--the 'stranger who might'--you know. And I really
+should have told you, though there wasn't anything to tell, only--don't
+laugh."
+
+"I'm not. Can't you see I'm not? Only what?"
+
+"Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, 'Why shouldn't
+we talk?' And he said, 'I--I--I--be--be--be--because I stammer so.' And
+he _did_. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours
+to get out those few words, and I didn't know where to look. And I felt
+such a brute because of the things we'd said about him, that I had no
+sense left; and I told him straight out how I'd wondered he never even
+said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the
+9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then
+I said I wasn't glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice
+about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of
+stammering, and he went to him at once: and he's almost all right now."
+
+"Good gracious!" said Molly. "Are you sure--but why didn't he get cured
+long ago?"
+
+"He had a mother: she stammered frightfully--after the shock of his
+father's death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her.
+And--anyway he didn't. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother's
+feelings, or something. I don't quite understand. And he said it didn't
+seem to matter when she was dead. And he's an artist. He sells his
+pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea."
+
+"It all sounds a little thin; but if you're pleased, I'm sure I am."
+
+"I am," said Nina.
+
+"But what did he say when he asked you?"
+
+"He didn't ask me," said Nina.
+
+"But surely he said he'd loved you since the first moment he saw you?"
+
+Nina had to admit it.
+
+"Then you see I wasn't such a vulgar little donkey after all."
+
+"Yes, you were. You hadn't any business even to _think_ such things,
+much less say them. Why, even _I_ didn't dare to think it for--oh--for
+ever so long. But I'll forgive it--and if it's good it shall be a pretty
+little bridesmaid, it shall."
+
+"When is it to be?" asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder.
+
+"Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we're only wasting time by waiting.
+You see we're both alone."
+
+But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend's transfigured face,
+perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they.
+
+And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine
+times at the Students' Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her
+dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation.
+
+Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and
+followed slowly.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RACK AND THUMBSCREW
+
+
+Her eyelids were red and swollen, her brown hair, flattened out of its
+pretty curves, clung closely to her head. Ink stained her hands, and
+there was even a bluish smear of it on her wrist. A tray with tea-things
+stood among the litter of manuscript on her table. The tea-pot had only
+cold tea-leaves in it; the bread and butter was untouched.
+
+She put down the pen, and went to the window. The rose-tint of the
+sunset was reflected on the bank of mist and smoke beyond the river.
+Above, where the sky was pale and clear, a star or two twinkled
+contentedly.
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+Already the beautiful garments of the evening mist, with veiled lights
+in the folds of it, was embroidered sparsely with the early litten lamps
+of impatient workers, and as she gazed, the embroidery was enriched by
+more and more yellow and white and orange--the string of jewels along
+the embankment, the face of the church clock.
+
+She turned from the window to the room, and lighted her own lamp, for
+the room was now deeply dusk. It was a large, low, pleasant room. It had
+always seemed pleasant to her through the five years in which she had
+worked, and played, and laughed, and cried there. Now she wondered why
+she had not always hated it.
+
+The stairs creaked. The knocker spoke. She caught her head in both
+hands.
+
+"My God!" she said, "this is too much!"
+
+Yet she went to the door.
+
+"Oh--it's only you," she said, and, with no other greeting, walked back
+into the room, and sat down at the table.
+
+The newcomer was left to close the outer door, and to follow at her own
+pleasure. The newcomer was another girl, younger, prettier, smarter. She
+turned her head sidewise, like a little bird, and looked at her friend
+with very bright eyes. Then she looked round the room.
+
+"My dear Jane," she said, "whatever have you been doing to yourself?"
+
+"Nothing," said her dear Jane very sulkily.
+
+"Oh, if genius burns--your stairs are devilish--but if you'd rather I
+went away----"
+
+"No, don't go, Milly. I'm perfectly mad." She jumped up and waved her
+outstretched arms over the mass of papers on the table. "Look at all
+this--three days' work--rot--abject rot! I wish I was dead. I was
+wondering just now whether it would hurt much if one leaned too far out
+of the window--and---- No, I didn't do it--as you see."
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the other prosaically.
+
+"Nothing. That's just it. I'm perfectly well--at least I was--only now
+I'm all trembly with drink." She pointed to the tea-cups. "It's the
+chance of my life, and I can't take it. I can't work: my brain's like
+batter. And everything depends on my idiot brain--it has done for these
+five years. That's what's so awful. It all depends on me--and I'm going
+all to pieces."
+
+"I told you so!" rejoined the other. "You would stay in town all the
+summer and autumn, slaving away. I knew you'd break down, and now you've
+done it."
+
+"I've slaved for five years, and I've never broken down before."
+
+"Well, you have now. Go away at once. Take a holiday. You'll work like
+Shakespeare and Michelangelo after it."
+
+"But I _can't_--that's just it. It's those stories for the _Monthly
+Multitude_; I'm doing a series. I'm behind _now_: and if I don't get it
+done this week, they'll stop the series. It's what I've been working for
+all these years. It's the best chance I've ever had, and it's come
+_now_, when I can't do it. Your father's a doctor: isn't there any
+medicine you can take to make your head more like a head and less like a
+suet pudding?"
+
+"Look here," said Milly, "I really came in to ask you to come away with
+us at Whitsuntide; but you ought to go away _now_. Just go to our
+cottage at Lymchurch. There's a dear old girl in the village--Mrs
+Beale--she'll look after you. It's a glorious place for work. Father did
+reams down there. You'll do your stuff there right enough. This is only
+Monday. Go to-morrow."
+
+"Did he? I will. Oh yes, I will. I'll go to-night, if there's a train."
+
+"No, you don't, my dear lunatic. You are now going to wash your face
+and do your hair, and take me out to dinner--a real eighteenpenny dinner
+at Roches. I'll stand treat."
+
+It was after dinner, as the two girls waited for Milly's omnibus, that
+the word of the evening was spoken.
+
+"I do hope you'll have a good quiet time," Milly said; "and it really is
+a good place for work. Poor Edgar did a lot of work there last year.
+There's a cabinet with a secret drawer that he said inspired him with
+mysterious tales, and---- There's my 'bus."
+
+"Why do you say _poor_ Edgar?" Jane asked, smiling lightly.
+
+"Oh, hadn't you heard? Awfully sad thing. He sailed from New York a
+fortnight ago. No news of the ship. His mother's in mourning. I saw her
+yesterday. Quite broken down. Good-bye. _Do_ take care of yourself, and
+get well and jolly."
+
+Jane stood long staring after the swaying bulk of the omnibus, then she
+drew a deep breath and went home.
+
+Edgar was dead. What a brute Milly was! But, of course, Edgar was
+nothing to Milly--nothing but a pleasant friend. How slowly people
+walked in the streets! Jane walked quickly--so quickly that more than
+one jostled foot-passenger stopped to stare after her.
+
+She had known that he was coming home--and when. She had not owned to
+herself that the constant intrusion of that thought, "He is here--in
+London," the wonder as to when and how she should see him again, had
+counted for very much in these last days of fierce effort and resented
+defeat.
+
+She got back to her rooms. She remembers letting herself in with her
+key. She remembers that some time during the night she destroyed all
+those futile beginnings of stories. Also, that she found herself saying
+over and over again, and very loud: "There are the boys--you know there
+are the boys." Because, when you have two little brothers to keep, you
+must not allow yourself to forget it.
+
+But for the rest she remembers little distinctly. Only she is sure that
+she did not cry, and that she did not sleep.
+
+In the morning she found her rooms very tidy and her box packed. She had
+put in the boys' portraits, because one must always remember the boys.
+
+She got a cab and she caught a train, and she reached the seaside
+cottage. Its little windows blinked firelit welcome to her, as she
+blundered almost blindly out of the station fly and up the narrow path
+edged with sea-shells.
+
+Milly had telegraphed. Mrs Beale was there, tremulous, kindly,
+effective; with armchairs wheeled to the April fire--cups of tea, timid,
+gentle solicitude.
+
+"My word, Miss, but you do look done up," said she. "The kettle's just
+on the boil, and I'll wet you a cup o' tea this instant minute, and I've
+a perfect picture of a chick a-roastin' ready for your bit o' dinner."
+
+Jane leaned back in the cushioned chair and looked round the quiet,
+pleasant little room. For the moment it seemed good to have a new place
+to be unhappy in.
+
+But afterwards, when Mrs Beale had gone and she was alone in the house,
+there was time to think--all the time there had ever been since the
+world began--all the time that there would ever be till the world ended.
+Of that night, too, Jane cannot remember everything; but she knows that
+she did not sleep, and that her eyes were dry: very dry and burning, as
+though they had been licked into place between their lids by a tongue
+of flame. It was a long night: a spacious night, with room in it for
+more memories of Edgar than she had known herself mistress of.
+
+Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at Oxford, superior to the point of
+the intolerable; Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent--always
+friend; Edgar going to America to lecture, and make the fortune that--he
+said--would make all things possible. He had said that on the last
+evening, when a lot of them--boys and girls, journalists, musicians, art
+students--had gone to see him off at Euston. He had said it at the
+instant of farewell, and had looked a question. Had she said "Yes"--or
+only thought it? She had often wondered that, even when her brain was
+clear.
+
+Then--she pushed away the next thought with both hands, and drove
+herself back to the day when the schoolboy next door whom she had
+admired and hated, saved her pet kitten from the butcher's dog--an
+heroic episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar's voice, the touch of
+his hand, the swing of his waltz-step--the way his eyes smiled before
+his mouth did. How bright his eyes were--and his hands were very strong.
+He was strong every way: he would fight for his life--even with the
+sea. Great, smooth, dark waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet
+room; she could hear the sound of them on the beach. Why had she come
+near the sea? It was the same sea that---- She pushed the waves away with
+both hands. The church clock struck two.
+
+"You mustn't go mad, you know," she told herself very gently and
+reasonably, "because of the boys."
+
+Her hands had got clenched somehow, her whole body was rigid. She
+relaxed the tense muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept up the
+hearth.
+
+The new flame her touch inspired flickered a red reflection on the face
+of the cabinet--the cabinet with the secret drawer that had "inspired
+Edgar with mysterious tales."
+
+Jane went to it, and patted it, and stroked it, and coaxed it to tell
+her its secret. But it would not.
+
+"If it would only inspire _me_," she said, "if I could only get an idea
+for the story, I could do it now--this minute. Lots of people work best
+at night. My brain's really quite clear again now, or else I shouldn't
+be able to remember all these silly little things. No, no," she cried to
+a memory of a young man kissing a glove, a little creeping memory that
+came to sting. She trampled on it.
+
+Next day Jane walked four miles to see a doctor and get a sleeping
+draught.
+
+"You see," she explained very earnestly, "I have some work to finish,
+and if I don't sleep I can't. And I must do it. I can't tell you how
+important it is."
+
+The doctor gave her something in a bottle when he had asked a few
+questions, and she went back to the cottage to go on bearing what was
+left of the interminable, intolerable day.
+
+That was the day when she set out the fair white writing paper, and the
+rosy blotting-paper, and the black ink and the black fountain pen, and
+sat and looked at them for hours and hours. She prayed for help--but no
+help came.
+
+"I'm probably praying to the wrong people," she said, when through the
+dusk the square of paper showed vague as a tombstone in twilit
+grass--"the wrong people--No, there are no tombstones in the sea--the
+wrong people. If St Anthony helps you to find things, and the other
+saints help you to be good, perhaps the dead people who used to write
+themselves are the ones to help one to write!"
+
+Jane is ashamed to be quite sure that she remembers praying to Dante and
+Shakespeare, and at last to Christina Rossetti, because she was a woman
+and loved her brothers.
+
+But no help came. The old woman fussed in and out with wood for the
+fire--candles--food. Very kindly, it appears, but Jane wished she
+wouldn't. Jane thinks she must have eaten some of the food, or the old
+woman would not have left her as she did.
+
+Jane took the draught, and went to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mrs Beale came into the sitting-room next morning, a neat pile of
+manuscript lay on the table, and when she took a cup of tea to Jane's
+bedside, Jane was sleeping so placidly that the old woman had not the
+heart to disturb her, and set the tea down on a chair by the pillow to
+turn white and cold.
+
+When Jane came into the sitting-room, she stood long looking at the
+manuscript. At last she picked it up, and, still standing, read it
+through. When she had finished, she stood a long time with it in her
+hand. At last she shrugged her shoulders and sat down. She wrote to
+Milly.
+
+     "Here is the story. I don't know how I've done it, but here it
+     is. Do read it--because I really am a little mad, and if it's
+     any good, send it in at once to the _Monthly Multitude_. I
+     slept all last night. I shall soon be well now. Everything is
+     so delightful, and the air is splendid. A thousand thanks for
+     sending me here. I am enjoying the rest and change
+     immensely.--Your grateful
+
+                                        "JANE."
+
+She read it through. Her smile at the last phrase was not pretty to see.
+
+When the long envelope was posted, Jane went down to the quiet shore and
+gazed out over the sunlit sands to the opal line of the far receding
+tide.
+
+The story was written. There was an end to the conflict of agonies, so
+now the fiercer agony had the field to itself.
+
+"I suppose I shall learn to bear it presently," she told herself. "I
+wish I had not forgotten how to cry. I am sure I ought to cry. But the
+story is done, anyway. I daresay I shall remember how to cry before the
+next story has to be done."
+
+There were two more nights and one whole day. The nights had islands of
+sleep in them--hot, misty islands in a river of slow, crawling, sluggish
+hours. The day was light and breezy and sunny, with a blue sky
+cloud-flecked. The day was worse than the nights, because in the day she
+remembered all the time who she was, and where.
+
+It was on the last day of the week. She was sitting rigid in the little
+porch, her eyes tracing again and again with conscious intentness the
+twisted pattern of the budding honeysuckle stalks. A rattle of wheels
+suddenly checked came to her, and she untwisted her stiff fingers and
+went down the path to meet Milly--a pale Milly, with red spots in her
+cheeks and fierce, frowning brows--a Milly who drew back from the
+offered kiss and spoke in tones that neither had heard before.
+
+"Come inside. I want to speak to you."
+
+The new disaster thus plainly heralded moved Jane not at all. There was
+no room in her soul for any more pain. In the little dining-room,
+conscientiously "quaint" with its spotted crockery dogs and corner
+cupboard shining with willow pattern tea-cups, Milly shut the door and
+turned on her friend.
+
+"Now," she said, "I came down to see you, because there are some things
+I couldn't write--even to you. You can go back to the station in the
+cab, I've told the man to wait. And I hope I shall never see your face
+again."
+
+"What do you mean?" Jane asked the question mechanically, and not at all
+because she did not know the answer.
+
+"You know what I mean," the other answered, still with white fury. "I've
+found you out. You thought you were safe, and Edgar was dead, and no one
+would know. But as it happens _I_ knew; and so shall everybody else."
+
+Jane moistened dry lips, and said: "Knew what?" and held on by the
+table.
+
+"You didn't think he'd told _me_ about it, did you?" Milly flashed--"but
+he did."
+
+"I think you must tell _me_ what you mean," Jane said, and shifted her
+hold from table to armchair.
+
+"Oh, certainly." Milly tossed her head, and Jane's fingers tightened on
+the chair-back. "Yes, I don't wonder you look ill--I suppose you were
+sorry when you'd done it. But it's no use being sorry; you should have
+thought of all that before."
+
+"Tell me," said Jane, low.
+
+"I'll tell you fast enough. You shall see I do know. Well, then, that
+story you sent me--you just copied it from a story of Edgar's that was
+in the old cabinet. He wrote it when he was here; and he said it wasn't
+good, and I said it was, and then he said he'd leave it in the secret
+drawer, and see how it looked when he came back. And you found it. And
+you thought you were very clever, I daresay, and that Edgar was dead,
+and no one would know. But I knew, and----"
+
+"Yes," Jane interrupted, "you said that before. So you think I found
+Edgar's manuscript? If I did it I must have done it in my sleep. I used
+to walk in my sleep when I was a child. You believe me, Milly, don't
+you?"
+
+"No," said Milly, "I don't."
+
+"Then I'll say nothing more," said Jane with bitter dignity. "I will go
+at once, and I will try to forgive your cruelty. _I_ would never have
+doubted _your_ word--never. I am very ill--look at me. I had a sleeping
+draught, and I suppose it upset me: such things have happened. You've
+known me eight or nine years: have you ever known me do a dishonourable
+thing, or tell a lie? The dishonour is in yourself, to believe such
+things of me."
+
+Jane had drawn herself up, and stood, tall and haggard, her dark eyes
+glowing in their deep sockets. The other woman was daunted. She
+hesitated, stammered half a word, and was silent.
+
+"Good-bye," said Jane; "and I hope to God no one will ever be such a
+brute to you as you have been to me." She turned, but before she reached
+the door Milly had caught her by the arm.
+
+"No, don't, don't!" she cried. "I _do_ believe you, I do! You poor
+darling! You must have done it in your sleep. Oh, forgive me, Jane dear.
+I'll never tell a soul, and Edgar----"
+
+"Ah," said Jane, turning mournful eyes on her, "Edgar would have
+believed in me."
+
+And at that Milly understood--in part, at least--and held out her arms.
+
+"Oh, you poor dear! and I never even guessed! Oh, forgive me!" and she
+cried over Jane and kissed her many times. "Oh, my dear!" she said, as
+Jane yielded herself to the arms and her face to the kisses, "I've got
+something to tell you. You must be brave."
+
+"No--no more," Jane said shrilly; "I can't bear any more. I don't want
+to know how it happened, or anything. He's dead--that's enough."
+
+"But----" Milly clung sobbing to her, sobbing with sympathy and
+agitation.
+
+Jane pushed her back, held her at arm's length and looked at her with
+eyes that were still dry.
+
+"You're a good little thing, after all," she said. "Yes--now I'll tell
+you. You were quite right. It was a lie--but half of it was true--the
+half I told you--but I wanted you to believe the other half too. I did
+walk in my sleep, and I must have opened that cabinet and taken Edgar's
+story out, because I found myself standing there with it in my hands.
+And he was dead, and---- Oh, Milly. I knew he was dead, of course, and
+yet he was there--I give you my word he was there, and I heard him say
+'Take it, take it, take it!' quite plainly, like I'm speaking to you
+now. And I took it; and I copied it out--it took me nearly all
+night--and then I sent it to you. And I'd never have told you the truth
+as long as you didn't believe me--never--never. But now you do believe
+me I won't lie to you. There! Let me go. I think I was mad then, and I
+know I am now. Tell every one. I don't care."
+
+But Milly threw her arms round her again. The love interest had
+overpowered the moral sense. What did the silly story, or the theft, or
+the lie matter--what were they, compared with the love-secret she had
+surprised?
+
+"My darling Jane," she said, holding her friend closely and still
+weeping lavishly, "don't worry about the story: I quite understand.
+Let's forget it. You've got quite enough trouble to bear without that.
+But there's one thing, it's just as well I found out before the story
+was published. Because Edgar isn't dead. His ship has been towed in:
+he's at home."
+
+Jane laughed.
+
+"Don't cry, dear," said Milly; "I'll help you to bear it. Only--oh dear,
+how awful it is for you!--he's going to be married."
+
+Jane laughed again; and then she thinks the great, green waves really
+did rise up all round the quaint dining-room--rise mountains high, and,
+falling, cover her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jane was ill so long that Milly had to tell Edgar about the story after
+all, and they sent it in, and it was published in Jane's name. So the
+little brothers were all right. And he wrote the next story for her too,
+and they corrected the proofs together.
+
+Jane has always thought it a pity that Milly had not troubled to ask the
+name of the girl whom Edgar intended to marry, because the name proved,
+on enquiry, to be Jane.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MILLIONAIRESS
+
+
+I
+
+It is a dismal thing to be in London in August. The streets are up for
+one thing, and your cab can never steer a straight course for the place
+you want to go to. And the trees are brown in the parks, and every one
+you know is away, so that there would be nowhere to go in your cab, even
+if you had the money to pay for it, and you could go there without
+extravagance.
+
+Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable breakfast-table in the
+rooms he shared with his friend, and cursed his luck. His friend was
+away by the sea, and he was here in the dirty and sordid blackness of
+his Temple chambers. But he had no money for a holiday; and when
+Dornington had begged him to accept a loan, he had sworn at Dornington,
+and Dornington had gone off not at all pleased. And now Dornington was
+by the sea, and he was here. The flies buzzed in the panes and round the
+sticky marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the open window. There was no
+work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce,
+an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients
+sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase--clients for Robinson on the
+second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third.
+Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o'clock. The young
+man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea,
+which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.
+
+"Suppose it is a client----" He broke off with a laugh. He had never
+been able to cure himself of that old hope that some day the feet of a
+client--a wealthy client--would pause at his door, but the feet had
+always gone by--as these would do. The steps did indeed pass his door,
+paused, came back, and--oh wonder! it was _his_ knocker that awoke the
+Temple echoes.
+
+He glanced at the table. It was hopeless. He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I daresay it's only a bill," he said, and went to see.
+
+The newcomer was impatient, for even as Guillemot opened the door, the
+knocker was in act to fall again.
+
+"Is Mr Guillemot---- Oh, Stephen, I should have known you anywhere!"
+
+A radiant vision in a white linen gown--a very smart tailor-made-looking
+linen gown--and a big white hat was standing in his doorway, shaking him
+warmly by the hand.
+
+"Won't you ask me in?" asked the vision, smiling in his bewildered face.
+
+He drew back mechanically, and closed the door after him as she went in.
+Then he followed her into the room that served him for office and
+living-room, and stood looking at her helplessly.
+
+"You don't know me a bit," she said; "it's a shame to tease you. I'll
+take off my hat and veil; you will know me then. It's these fine
+feathers!"
+
+And take them off she did--in front of the fly-spotted glass on the
+mantel-piece; then she turned a bright face on him, a pretty mobile
+face, crowned with bright brown hair. And still he stood abashed.
+
+"I never thought you would have forgotten the friend of childhood's
+hour," she began again. "I see I must tell you in cold blood."
+
+"Why, it's Rosamund!" he cried suddenly. "Do forgive me! I never, never
+dreamed---- My dear Rosamund, you aren't really changed a bit it's
+only--your hair being done up and----"
+
+"And the fine feathers," said she, holding out a fold of her dress.
+"They are very pretty feathers, aren't they?"
+
+"Very," said he. And then suddenly a silence of embarrassment fell
+between them.
+
+The girl broke it with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous.
+
+"How funny it all is!" she said. "I went to New York with my uncle when
+dear papa died--and then I went to Girton, and now poor uncle's dead,
+and----" Her eye fell on the tablecloth. "I'm going to clear away this
+horrid breakfast of yours," she said.
+
+"Oh, please!" he pleaded, taking the marmalade jar up in his helpless
+hands. She took the jar from him.
+
+"Yes, I am," she said firmly; "and you can just sit down and try to
+remember who I am."
+
+He obediently withdrew to the window-seat and watched her as she took
+away the ugly crockery and the uglier food to hide them in his little
+kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely
+childhood in a country rectory--the long, dull days with no playfellows;
+then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund
+Rainham--and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with
+the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were
+playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him--poor Stephen, he
+hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and
+Stephen's father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a
+way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy,
+Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him
+into his home to be Stephen's little brother and friend. Then the long
+happy time when the three children were always together: walking,
+boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of
+tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise
+and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was
+dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother's brother. Then
+the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered
+as a pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought to see Rosamund
+again--had certainly never longed very ardently to see her; at any rate,
+since the year of her going. And now--here she was, grown to womanhood
+and charm, clearing away his breakfast things! He could hear the tap
+running, and knew that she must be washing her hands at the sink, using
+the horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves embedded in it. Now she
+was drying her hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen door. No; she
+came in drying her pink fingers on her handkerchief.
+
+"What a horrid old charwoman you must have!" she said; "everything is
+six inches deep in dust--and all your crockery is smeary."
+
+"I am sorry it's not nicer," he said. "Oh, but it's good to see you
+again! What times we used to have! Do you remember when we burned your
+dolls on the 5th of November?"
+
+"I should think I did. And do you remember when I painted your new
+tool-chest and the handles of your saws and gimlets and things with pale
+green enamel? I thought you would be so pleased."
+
+She had taken her place, as she spoke, in the depths of the one
+comfortable chair, and he answered from his window-seat; and in a moment
+the two were launched on a flood of reminiscences, and the flight of
+time was not one of the things they remembered. The hour and the
+quarters sounded, and they talked on. But the insistence of noon, boomed
+by the Law Courts' clock, brought Miss Rainham to her feet.
+
+"Twelve!" she cried. "How time goes! And I've never told you what I came
+for. Look here. I'm frightfully rich; I only heard it last week. My
+uncle never seemed very well off. We lived very simply, and I used to do
+the washing-up and the dusting and things; and now he's died and left me
+all his money. I don't know where he kept it all. The people on the
+floor above here wrote me about it. I was going to see them, and I saw
+your name; and I simply couldn't pass it. Look here, Stephen--are you
+very busy?"
+
+"Not too busy to do anything you want. I'm glad you've had luck. What
+can I do for you?"
+
+"Will you really do anything I want? Promise."
+
+"Of course I promise." He looked at her and wondered if she knew how
+hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had
+been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had
+turned his head a little.
+
+"Good! You must be my solicitor."
+
+"But I can't. Jones----"
+
+"Bother Jones!" she said. "I shan't go near him. I won't be worried by
+Jones. What is the use of having a fortune--and it's a big fortune, I
+can tell you--if I mayn't even choose my own solicitor? Look here,
+Stephen--really--I have no relations and no friends in England--no man
+friends, I mean--and you won't charge me more than you ought, but you
+will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin--and you are Mortimer
+Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?"
+
+It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all
+their youth with them.
+
+"Oh, Dornington is all right. He'd be awfully sick if you called him
+Dora nowadays. He's got on a little--not much. He goes in for
+journalism. He's at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me
+generally."
+
+"Yes--I know; I saw his name on the door." And Stephen did not wonder
+till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.
+
+"Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now
+tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very
+name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are
+going to look after everything for me."
+
+He resisted--she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite
+in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as
+to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.
+
+"You must arrange everything," she said; "I won't be bothered. Now I
+must go. Jones is human, after all. He knew I should want money, and he
+sent me quite a lot. And I am going away for a holiday--just to see what
+it feels like to be rich."
+
+"You're not going about alone, I hope," said Stephen. And then, for the
+first time, he remembered that beautiful young ladies are not allowed to
+clear away tea-things in the Temple, without a chaperon--even for their
+solicitors.
+
+"No; Constance Grant is with me. You don't know her. I got to know her
+at Girton. She's a dear."
+
+"Look here," he said, awkwardly standing behind her as she pinned her
+hat and veil in front of his glass, "when you come back I'll come to see
+you. But you mustn't come here again; it's--it's not customary." She
+smiled at his reflection in the glass.
+
+"Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions! So absurd! Not going to see
+one's old friend _and_ one's _solicitor_! However, I won't come where
+I'm not wanted----"
+
+"You know----" he began reproachfully; but she interrupted.
+
+"Oh yes, it's all right. Now remember that all my affairs are in your
+hands, and when I come back you will have to tell me exactly what I am
+worth--between eight and fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say; but
+_that's_ nonsense, isn't it? Good-bye."
+
+And with a last switch of white skirts against the dirty wainscot, and a
+last wave of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down the staircase.
+
+Stephen drew a long breath. "It can't be fourteen hundred thousand," he
+said slowly; "but I wish to goodness it wasn't four-pence."
+
+
+II
+
+The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the
+sun--yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off,
+where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea,
+little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through
+the shallow water.
+
+On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village;
+her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold
+of the sand.
+
+Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a
+young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white,
+and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her
+accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.
+
+"It is the prettiest wear in the world," she had told Constance Grant;
+"and when you're poor, it's the most impossible. But now I can have a
+clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well."
+
+"I'm not sure about the conscience," Constance had answered with her
+demure smile. "Think of the millions of poor people."
+
+"Oh, bother!" Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily.
+"Thank Heaven, I've enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other
+people happy too. And the first step is that no one's to know I'm rich,
+so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday."
+
+"I loathe play-acting," Constance had said, but she had submitted, and
+now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the
+seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.
+
+"And so your holiday's over in three days," she was saying to the young
+man beside her; "it's been a good time, hasn't it?"
+
+He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at
+a certain point the heap collapsed.
+
+"What are you thinking of? Poems again?"
+
+"I had a verse running in my head," he said apologetically; "it has
+nothing to do with anything."
+
+"Write it down at once," she said imperiously, and he obediently
+scribbled in his notebook, while she took up the work of building the
+stone heap--it grew higher under her light fingers.
+
+"Read it!" she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he
+read:
+
+    "Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
+      Long leaning wings across the sea and land;
+    The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight
+      The treasure-house of their deserted sand;
+    And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
+    Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.
+
+    Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer
+      Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet,
+    White rippled pools where late deep waters were,
+      And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,
+    And the grey wind in sole supremacy
+    O'er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea."
+
+"Opal and amber cold," she repeated; "it's not like that now. It's
+sapphire and gold and diamonds."
+
+"Yes," he said; "but that was how it was last week----"
+
+"Before I came----"
+
+"Yes, before you came;" his tone put a new meaning into her words.
+
+"I'm glad I brought good weather," she said cheerfully, and the little
+stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.
+
+"You brought the light of the world," he said, and caught her hand and
+held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall
+gave them good-day. "What made you come to Lymchurch?" he said
+presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked
+down at her hand and his.
+
+"I knew you were here," she said. His eyes met hers. "I always meant to
+see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of
+you."
+
+"You have not changed," he said; "your face has not changed, only you
+are older, and----"
+
+"I'm twenty-two; you needn't reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a
+month."
+
+He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, looking out to sea, "that you
+and I were made for each other?"
+
+"No; never."
+
+He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.
+
+"Ah--no--don't look like that, dear; it never occurred to me--I think I
+must have always known it somehow, only----"
+
+"Only what?--do you really?--only what?" A silence. Then, "Only what?"
+he asked again.
+
+"Only I was so afraid it would never occur to _you_!"
+
+There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist--their
+faces were very near.
+
+"We shall be very, very poor, I'm afraid," he said presently.
+
+"I can go on teaching."
+
+"No"--his voice was decided--"my wife shan't work--at least not anywhere
+but in our home. You won't mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit,
+will you? I shall get on now I've something to work for. Oh, my dear,
+thank God I've enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We've
+nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up.
+All that's mine is thine, lassie."
+
+"And all that's mine--Oh! Stephen!"
+
+For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two
+yards from them.
+
+The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham's head was on Mr
+Dornington's shoulder. They sprang up.
+
+"Why, Stephen!" echoed Andrew, "this--this is good of you! You remember
+Rosamund? We have just found out that----" But Rosamund had turned, and
+was walking quickly away over the sand.
+
+Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: "You've made good
+use of your time, old man. I congratulate you." His tone was cold.
+
+"There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,"
+Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other's.
+
+"None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you.
+Whether it's fair to the girl is another question."
+
+In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was
+now Dornington's turn to fill and light.
+
+"Of course it's your own affair," said Guillemot, chafing at the
+silence, "but I think you might have given the heiress a chance.
+However, it's each for himself, I suppose, and----"
+
+"Heiress?"
+
+"Yes, the heiress--the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I've been
+looking into her affairs: it _is_ just about a million."
+
+"Rather cheap chaff, isn't it?"
+
+"It's a very lucky thing for you," said Stephen savagely. "Perhaps I
+ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington--I see we look
+at the thing differently--but I must say, I shouldn't have cared to grab
+at such luck myself."
+
+Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at
+his friend.
+
+"I see," he said slowly. "And her fortune is really so much? I didn't
+think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it's no good
+making a row about it; I don't want to quarrel with my best friend. Go
+along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to
+Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she'll show you where I live.
+I'm going for a bit of a walk."
+
+Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund's beckoning hand at
+the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading
+to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew
+Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone
+bag in his hands.
+
+Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves;
+they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted
+herself to talk gaily.
+
+As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened
+straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive
+fashion of Lymchurch.
+
+"'E gave me a letter for you," said the child, and Rosamund took it,
+giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.
+
+"Excuse me," she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the
+hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses.
+She read the letter, frowned, read it again. "Constance, you might get
+the coffee."
+
+Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.
+
+"This is _your_ doing," she said with a concentrated fury that brought
+him to his feet facing her. "Why did you come and meddle! You've told
+him I was rich--the very thing I didn't mean him to know till--till he
+couldn't help himself. You've spoilt everything! And now he's gone--and
+he'll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day.
+You will, if there's any justice in the world!"
+
+He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his
+voice was equable.
+
+"I am extremely sorry," he said, "but after all, there's very little
+harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy,
+and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you've
+succeeded. He evidently 'loves you for yourself alone.' Write and tell
+him to come back: he'll come."
+
+"How little you know him," she said, "after all these years! Even I know
+him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly
+I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could
+make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don't mind, it's true. And I
+had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again!
+I will never speak to you again! No, I don't mean that----" She hid her
+face in her hands.
+
+"Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn't know, I couldn't know. I will
+bring him back to you--I swear it! Only trust me."
+
+"You can't," she said; "it's all over."
+
+"Let me tell you something. If you hadn't had this money--but if you
+hadn't had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought
+of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don't
+tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in
+the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh,
+forgive me!"
+
+"It's no good," she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance
+Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking
+out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked.
+
+"I've made a fool of myself," he said, forgetting, as he looked at her
+kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.
+
+"Could I do anything?"
+
+"You're her friend," he said. "Miss Grant, I'm going down to the sea, if
+you could come down with me and let me talk--but I've no right to bother
+you."
+
+"I'll come," said Constance. "I'll come by-and-by when I've cleared
+lunch away. It's no bother. As you say, I'm her friend."
+
+
+III
+
+Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she
+wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of
+the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to
+town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless,
+fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare
+to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a
+returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a
+letter in Stephen's hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.
+
+     "DEAR OLD CHAP," it ran, "I'm off to my father's. I can't bear
+     it. I can't face you or any one. I wish to God I'd never told
+     you anything about Rosamund Rainham's money. There isn't any
+     money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least
+     idea that it wasn't good, but I feel as if I ought to have
+     known. There's a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that's the
+     end of her million. It wasn't really my fault, of course. She
+     doesn't blame me.--Yours,
+
+                                        "STEPHEN GUILLEMOT."
+
+Then he opened her letters--read them all--in the order of the dates on
+the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man--read them
+with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them.
+First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride
+and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he
+not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in
+every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:
+
+     "DEAR ANDREW,--I want you to understand that all is over
+     between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right.
+     I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,
+
+                                        "ROSAMUND."
+
+He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen's
+letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to
+woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love:
+the girl with only a "beggarly hundred in consols" had her pride too.
+
+The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had
+brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He
+caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.
+
+A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand
+against it--it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against
+him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky
+black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully,
+though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post,
+and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled,
+his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp
+disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house
+under the sea-wall.
+
+Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things--her
+love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the
+question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took
+his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains
+were drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay
+open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat
+down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke.
+It was an awkward moment.
+
+Rosamund broke the silence.
+
+"It is very friendly of you to come and see me," she said. "It is very
+lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London."
+
+"She has gone back to her teaching?"
+
+"Yes; I wanted her to stay, but----"
+
+"I've heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is
+his fault."
+
+"Poor, dear boy!" She spoke musingly. "Of course it wasn't his fault. It
+all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to
+have done nothing with it except," she added with a laugh and a glance
+at her fur-trimmed dress, "to buy a most extravagant number of white
+dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash--the
+spare room's the first door at the top of the stairs--and I'll get you
+some supper."
+
+When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was
+setting out silver and glass.
+
+"Another relic of my brief prosperity," she said, touching the forks and
+spoons. "I'm glad I don't have to eat with nickel-plated things."
+
+She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched
+Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so
+fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been
+here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her--not as her
+guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick
+of his--one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora,
+and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.
+
+"Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?"
+
+"I forgive you from my heart," she said, "if I have anything to
+forgive."
+
+But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet
+he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to
+suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows
+in her dear face?
+
+"You have been unhappy," he said.
+
+"Well," she laughed, "I wasn't exactly pleased to lose my fortune."
+
+"Dear," he said desperately, "won't you try to forgive me? It seemed
+right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless----"
+
+"I'd enough for both--or thought I had," she said obstinately.
+
+"Ah, but don't you see----"
+
+"I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen
+than----"
+
+"Forgive me!" he pleaded; "take me back."
+
+"Oh no"--she tossed her bright head--"Stephen might think me mercenary;
+I couldn't bear _that_. You see you are richer than I am now. How much
+did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you
+to a penniless----"
+
+"Rosamund, do you mean it?"
+
+"I do mean it. And, besides----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't love you any more." The bright head drooped and turned away.
+
+"I have killed your love. I don't wonder. Forgive me for bothering you.
+Good-bye!"
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid, nothing desperate. Only work hard and try to
+forgive you."
+
+"Forgive _me_? You have nothing to forgive."
+
+"No, nothing--if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?"
+
+"Good-bye!" she said. "You are staying at the 'Ship'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't let's part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning.
+Let's part friends, then."
+
+In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in
+calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood
+in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to
+him through the crisp October air. Then the _ping_ of a bicycle bell
+sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen.
+
+They shook hands, and Stephen's eyebrows went up.
+
+"Is it all right?" he asked. "I knew you'd come here when I came home
+last night and found you'd had my letter."
+
+"No; it's not all right. She won't have me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Pride or revenge, or something. Don't let's talk about it."
+
+"All right. I want some breakfast; we left town by the 7.20. I'm
+starving."
+
+"Who are 'we'?"
+
+"Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund would be wanting a _chaperon_ or a
+bridesmaid, or something, so I brought her and her bicycle."
+
+"Always thoughtful," said Andrew, with something like a laugh.
+
+Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they met the two girls. Rosamund
+looked radiant. Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of last night?
+The wind that ruffled her brown hair had blown roses into her cheeks.
+
+"Do you forgive me?" whispered Stephen when they met.
+
+"That depends," she answered.
+
+They all walked on together, and presently Stephen and Constance fell
+behind.
+
+Then Rosamund spoke.
+
+"You really think I ought to crush my pride, and--and----"
+
+Hope laughed in Andrew's face--laughed and fled--for he looked in the
+face of Miss Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding in it.
+
+"Yes," he said almost sullenly.
+
+"That is as much as to say that you were wrong."
+
+"I--perhaps I was wrong. What does it matter?"
+
+"It matters greatly. Suppose I had my money now would you run away from
+me?"
+
+"I--I suppose I should act as I did before."
+
+"Then you don't care for me any more than you did?"
+
+"I love you a thousand times more," he cried, turning angry, haggard
+eyes to her. "Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would send me from you
+now but yourself----"
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+"Then stay," she said, "for it's a farce, and my money is as safe as
+houses."
+
+He scowled at her.
+
+"It's all a trick? You've played with me? Good-bye, and God forgive
+you!"
+
+He turned to go, but Constance, coming up from behind them, caught his
+arm.
+
+"Don't be such an idiot," she said. "_She_ had nothing to do with it.
+She thought her money was gone. You don't suppose _she_ would have
+played such a trick even to win _your_ valuable affections. You don't
+deserve your luck, Mr Dornington."
+
+Rosamund was looking at him with wet eyes, and her lips trembled.
+
+"Constance only told me this morning," she said. "She and Stephen
+planned it, to get you--to make me--to--to----"
+
+"And then she nearly spoilt it all by being as silly as you were.
+Whatever does it matter which of you has the money?"
+
+"Nothing," said Rosamund valiantly; "I see that plainly. Don't you,
+Andrew?"
+
+"I see nothing but you, Rosamund," he said, and they turned and walked
+along the sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.
+
+"That's all right," said Stephen; "but, by Jove, I've had enough of
+playing Providence and managing other people's affairs."
+
+"She was very sweet about it," said Constance, walking on.
+
+"Well she may be; she has her heart's desire. But it was not easy. What
+a blessing she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn't have done it but for
+you."
+
+"I am very glad to have been of some service," said Constance demurely.
+
+"I couldn't have got on without you. I can't get on without you ever
+again."
+
+"But that's nonsense," said Miss Grant.
+
+"You won't make me, Constance? There's no confounded money to come
+between _us_."
+
+He caught at the hand that swung by her side.
+
+"But you said you loved _her_, and that was why----"
+
+"Ah, but that was a thousand years ago. And it was nonsense, even then,
+Constance."
+
+And so two others went along the sea-wall in the October sunshine,
+happily, like children, hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE HERMIT OF "THE YEWS"
+
+
+Maurice Brent knew a great deal about the Greek anthology, and very
+little about women. No one but himself had any idea how much he knew of
+the one, and no one had less idea than himself how little he knew of the
+other. So that when, a stranger and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a
+smart house-party, he began to fall in love with Camilla, it seemed to
+be no one's business to tell him, what everybody else knew, that Camilla
+had contracted the habit of becoming engaged at least once a year. Of
+course this always happened in the country, because it was there that
+Camilla was most bored. No other eligible young man happened to be free
+at the moment: Camilla never engaged herself to ineligibles. The habit
+of years is not easily broken: Camilla became engaged to Maurice, and,
+for the six months of the engagement, he lived in Paradise. A fool's
+Paradise, if you like, but Paradise all the same.
+
+About Easter time Camilla told him, very nicely and kindly, that she had
+mistaken her own heart--she hoped he would not let it make him very
+unhappy. She would always wish him the best of good fortune, and
+doubtless he would find it in the affection of some other girl much
+nicer and more worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla. Camilla
+was right--no one could have been less worthy of him than she: but after
+all it was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla he felt that he
+wanted, not any other girl at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.
+
+He took it very quietly: sent her a note so cold and unconcerned that
+Camilla was quite upset, and cried most of the evening, and got up next
+day with swollen eyelids and a very bad temper. She was not so sure of
+her power as she had been--and the loss of such a certainty is never
+pleasant.
+
+He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished house, and found one--by
+letter, which seemed to be the very thing he wanted. "Handsomely and
+conveniently furnished five miles from a railway station--a well-built
+house standing in its own grounds of five acres--garden, orchard
+pasture, magnificent view." Being as unversed in the ways of house
+agents as in those of women, he took it on trust, paid a quarter's rent,
+and went down to take possession. He had instructed the local house
+agent to find a woman who would come in for a few hours daily to "do for
+him."
+
+"I'll have no silly women living in the house," said he.
+
+It was on an inclement June evening that the station fly set him down in
+front of his new house. The drive had been long and dreary, and seemed
+to Maurice more like seventy miles than seven. Now he let down the
+carriage window and thrust his head into the rain to see his new house.
+It was a stucco villa, with iron railings in the worst possible taste.
+It had an air at once new and worn out; no one seemed ever to have lived
+in it, and yet everything about it was broken and shabby. The door stuck
+a little at first with the damp, and when at last it opened and Maurice
+went over his house, he found it furnished mainly with oil-cloth and
+three-legged tables, and photographs in Oxford frames--like a seaside
+lodging-house. The house was clean, however, and the woman in
+attendance was clean, but the atmosphere of the place was that of a
+vault. He looked out through the streaming panes at the magnificent view
+so dwelt upon in the house agents' letters. The house stood almost at
+the edge of a disused chalk quarry; far below stretched a flat plain,
+dotted here and there with limekilns and smoky, tall chimneys. The five
+acres looked very bare and thistly, and the rain was dripping heavily
+from a shivering, half-dead cypress on to a draggled, long-haired grass
+plot. Mr Brent shivered too, and ordered a fire.
+
+When the woman had gone, he sat long by the fire in one of those cane
+and wood chairs that fold up--who wants a chair to fold up?--so common
+in lodging-houses. Unless you sit quite straight in these chairs you
+tumble out of them. He gazed at the fire, and thought, and dreamed. His
+dreams were, naturally, of Camilla; his thoughts were of his work.
+
+"I've taken the house for three years," said he. "Well, one place is as
+good as another to be wretched in. But one room I must furnish--for you
+can't work on oil-cloth."
+
+So next day he walked to Rochester and bought some old bureaux, and
+chairs, and book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some brass things,
+unpacked his books and settled down to the hermit's life to which he had
+vowed himself. The woman came every morning from her cottage a mile
+away, and left at noon. He got his meals himself--always chops, or
+steaks, or eggs--and presently began to grow accustomed to the place.
+When the sun shone it was not so bad. He could make no way against the
+thorns and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly grew into a very
+wilderness. But a wilderness is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers
+had survived long neglect, and here and there put out red, or white, or
+yellow buds. And he worked away at his book about Greek poetry.
+
+He almost believed that he was contented; he had never cared for people
+so much as for books, and now he saw no people, and his books began to
+crowd his shelves. No one passed by "The Yews"--so called, he imagined,
+in extravagant compliment to the decaying cypress--for it stood by a
+grass-grown by-way that had once connected two main roads, each a couple
+of miles distant. These were now joined by a better road down in the
+valley, and no one came past Maurice's window save the milk, the bread,
+the butcher, and the postman.
+
+Summer turned brown and dry and became autumn, autumn turned wet and
+chilly and grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven blew cold and
+damp through the cracks of the ill-built house.
+
+Maurice was glad when the spring came; he had taken the house for three
+years, and he was a careful man, and also, in his way, a determined. Yet
+it was good to look out once more on something green, and to see
+sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter now. In all these ten months
+nothing whatever had happened to him. He had never been beyond his five
+acres--and no one had been to see him. He had no relations, and friends
+soon forget; besides, after all, friends, unlike relations, cannot go
+where they are not invited.
+
+It was on the Saturday before Easter that the quarryside fell in.
+Maurice was working in his study when he heard a sudden crack and a
+slow, splitting sound, and then a long, loud, rumbling noise, like
+thunder, that echoed and re-echoed from the hills on each side. And,
+looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above
+the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the
+cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.
+
+"I suppose it's all safe enough here," he said, and went back to his
+manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he
+found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. "I wonder if any
+one was hurt?" he said; "the road runs just below, of course. I wonder
+whether there'll be any more of it--I wonder?" A wire jerked, the
+cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang
+to his feet. "Who on earth----" he said. "The house isn't safe after
+all, perhaps, and they've come to tell me."
+
+As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the
+comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a
+woman's hat.
+
+He opened the door--it stuck as usual--but he got it open. There stood a
+girl holding a bicycle.
+
+"Oh!" she said, without looking at him, "I'm so sorry to trouble you--my
+bicycle's run down--and I'm afraid it's a puncture, and could you let me
+have some water, to find the hole--and if I might sit down a minute."
+
+Her voice grew lower and lower.
+
+He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took
+two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs--there
+were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat
+pegs.
+
+He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her
+veil's white meshes.
+
+He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back
+against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.
+
+"I'm afraid you're ill," he said gently. But the girl made no answer.
+Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two
+steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a
+student of Greek could see that she had fainted.
+
+"Oh Lord!" said he.
+
+He got her hat and veil off--he never knew how, and he wondered
+afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and
+short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her
+head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and her forehead with
+vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap,
+at the foot of his staircase.
+
+Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not
+allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently
+and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his
+sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground--he had no sofa--and sat
+beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of the
+_Athenæum_, and watching the pinched, pallid face for some sign of
+returning life. It came at last, in a flutter of the eyelids, a
+long-drawn, gasping breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky--brandy
+he esteemed as a mere adjunct of channel boats--lifted her head and held
+the glass to her lips. The blood had come back to her face in a rush of
+carnation; she drank--choked--drank--he laid her head down and her eyes
+opened. They were large, clear grey eyes--very bewildered-looking just
+now--but they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips transformed the
+face.
+
+"Good gracious," said he, "she's pretty! Pretty? she's beautiful!"
+
+She was. That such beauty should so easily have hidden itself behind a
+green-tinted mask, with sunken eyelid, seemed a miracle to the
+ingenuous bookworm.
+
+"You're better now," said he with feverish banality. "Give me your
+hands--so--now can--yes, that's right--here, this chair is the only
+comfortable one----"
+
+She sank into the chair, and waved away the more whisky which he eagerly
+proffered. He stood looking at her with respectful solicitude.
+
+After a few moments she stretched her arms like a sleepy child, yawned,
+and then suddenly broke into laughter. It had a strange sound. No one
+had laughed in that house since the wet night when Mr Brent took
+possession of it, and he had never been able to bring himself to believe
+that any one had ever laughed there before.
+
+Then he remembered having heard that women have hysterical fits as well
+as fainting fits, and he said eagerly: "Oh don't! It's all right--you
+were faint--the heat or something----"
+
+"Did I faint?" she asked with interest. "I never fainted before.
+But--oh--yes--I remember. It was rather horrible. The quarry tumbled
+down almost on me, and I just stopped short--in time--and I came round
+by this road because the other's stopped up, and I was so glad when I
+saw the house. Thank you so much; it must have been an awful bother. I
+think I had better start soon----"
+
+"No, you don't; you're not fit to ride alone yet," said he to himself.
+Aloud he said: "You said something about a puncture--when you are better
+I'll mend it. And, look here--have you had any lunch?"
+
+"No," said she.
+
+"Then--if you'll allow me." He left the room, and presently returned
+with the tray set for his own lunch; then he fetched from the larder
+everything he could lay hands on: half a cold chicken, some cold meat
+pudding, a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these confusedly on the
+table. "Now," he said, "come and try to eat."
+
+"It's very good of you to bother," she said, a little surprise in her
+tone, for she had expected "lunch" to be a set formal meal at which some
+discreet female relative would preside. "But aren't you--don't you--do
+you live alone, then?"
+
+"Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings. I'm sorry she's gone: she could
+have arranged a better lunch for you."
+
+"Better? why, it's lovely!" said she, accepting the situation with frank
+amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in
+its place.
+
+Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one
+serves a queen--but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite
+her. During lunch they talked.
+
+After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while;
+then it was past three o'clock.
+
+"You won't go yet," he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him
+a great stake. "Let me make you some tea--I can, I assure you--and let
+us see if the tyre holds up----"
+
+"Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness----"
+
+"Well, then," said he desperately, "take pity on a poor hermit! I give
+you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not
+in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my
+bedmaker."
+
+"But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?"
+
+"I thought I didn't, then."
+
+"Well--now you know better, why don't you come back and talk to people
+in the ordinary way?"
+
+This was the first and last sign she gave that the circumstances in
+which she found herself with him were anything but ordinary.
+
+"I have a book to finish," said he. "Would you like to have tea in the
+wilderness or in here?" He wisely took her consent for granted this
+time, and his wisdom was justified.
+
+They had tea in the garden. The wilderness blossomed like a rose, to
+Maurice's thinking. In his mind he was saying over and over again: "How
+bored I must have been all this time! How bored I must have been!"
+
+It seemed to him that his mind was opening, like a flower, and for the
+first time. He had never talked so well, and he knew it--all the seeds
+of thought, sown in those long, lonely hours, bore fruit now. She
+listened, she replied, she argued and debated.
+
+"Beautiful--and sensible," said Maurice to himself. "What a wonderful
+woman!" There was, besides, an alertness of mind, a quick brightness of
+manner that charmed him. Camilla had been languid and dreamy.
+
+Suddenly she rose to her feet.
+
+"I must go," she said, "but I have enjoyed myself so much. You are an
+ideal host: thank you a thousand times. Perhaps we shall meet again some
+day, if you return to the world. Do you know, we've been talking and
+wrangling for hours and hours and never even thought of wondering what
+each other's names are--I think we've paid each other a very magnificent
+compliment, don't you?"
+
+He smiled and said: "My name is Maurice Brent."
+
+"Mine is Diana Redmayne. If it sounds like somebody in the _Family
+Herald_, I can't help it." He had wheeled the bicycle into the road, and
+she had put on hat and gloves and stood ready to mount before she said:
+"If you come back to the world I shall almost certainly meet you. We
+seem to know the same people; I've heard your name many times."
+
+"From whom?" said he.
+
+"Among others," said she, with her foot on the pedal, "from my cousin
+Camilla. Good-bye."
+
+And he was left to stare down the road after the swift flying figure.
+
+Then he went back into the lonely little house, and about half-past
+twelve that night he realised that he had done no work that day, and
+that those hours which had not been spent talking to Diana Redmayne, had
+been spent in thinking about her.
+
+"It's not because she's pretty and clever," he said; "and it's not even
+because she's a woman. It's because she's the only intelligent human
+being I've spoken to for nearly a year."
+
+So day after day he went on thinking about her.
+
+It was three weeks later that the bell again creaked and jangled, and
+again through the spotted glass he saw a woman's hat. To his infinite
+disgust and surprise, his heart began to beat violently.
+
+"I grow nervous, living all alone," he said. "Confound this door! how it
+does stick--I must have it planed."
+
+He got the door opened, and found himself face to face with--Camilla.
+
+He stepped back, and bowed gravely.
+
+She looked more beautiful than ever--and he looked at her, and wondered
+how he could ever have thought her even passably pretty.
+
+"Won't you ask me in?" she said timidly.
+
+"No," said he, "I am all alone."
+
+"I know," she said. "I have only just heard you're living here all
+alone, and I came to say--Maurice--I'm sorry. I didn't know you cared so
+much, or----"
+
+"Don't," he said, stopping the confession as a good batsman stops a
+cricket ball. "Believe me, I've not made myself a hermit because of--all
+that. I had a book to write--that was all. And--and it's very kind of
+you to come and look me up, and I wish I could ask you to come in,
+but---- And it's nice of you to take an interest in an old friend--you
+said you would, didn't you, in the letter--and--I've taken the advice
+you gave me."
+
+"You mean you've fallen in love with some one else."
+
+"You remember what you said in your letter."
+
+"Some one nicer and worthier, I said," returned Camilla blankly, "but I
+never thought---- And is she?"
+
+"Of course she seems so to me," said he, smiling at her to express
+friendly feeling.
+
+"Then--good-bye--I wish you the best of good fortune."
+
+"You said that in your letter, too," said he. "Good-bye."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"I mustn't tell even you that, until I have told her," he smiled again.
+
+"Then good-bye," said Camilla shortly; "forgive me for troubling you so
+unnecessarily."
+
+He found himself standing by his door--and Camilla on her bicycle sped
+down the road, choking with tears of anger and mortification and deep
+disappointment. Because she knew now that she loved him as much as it
+was in her to love any one, and because she, who had humbled so many,
+had now at last humbled herself--and to no purpose.
+
+Maurice Brent left his door open and wandered down across his five
+acres, filled with amazement. Camilla herself had not been more deeply
+astonished at the words he had spoken than he had been. A moment before
+he had not even thought that he was in love, much less contemplated any
+confession of it: and now seemingly without his will he stood committed
+to this statement. Was it true, or had he only said it to defend himself
+against those advances of hers in which he merely saw a new trap? He had
+said it in defence--yes--but it was true, for all that; this was the
+wonderful part of it. And so he walked in the wilderness, lost in
+wonder; and as he walked he noted the bicycles that passed his
+door--along his unfrequented road, by ones and twos and threes--for this
+was a Saturday, and the lower road was still lying cold and hidden under
+its load of chalk, and none might pass that way. This road was hot and
+dusty, and folk went along it continually. He strolled to his ugly iron
+gate and looked over, idly. Perhaps, some day, she would come that way
+again--she would surely stop--especially if he were at the gate--and
+perhaps stay and talk a little. As if in mocking answer to the new-born
+thought came a flash of blue along the road; Diana Redmayne rode by at
+full speed--bowed coldly--and then at ten yards' distance turned and
+waved a white-gloved hand, with a charming smile. Maurice swore softly,
+and went indoors to think.
+
+His work went but slowly on that day--and in the days that followed. On
+the next Friday he went over to Rochester, and in the dusk of the
+evening he walked along the road, about a mile from "The Yews," and
+then, going slowly, he cast handfuls of something dark from his hand,
+and kicked the white dust over it as it lay.
+
+"I feel like the enemy sowing tares," said he.
+
+Then he went home, full of anxious anticipation. The next day was hot
+and bright. He took his armchair into the nightmare of a verandah, and
+sat there reading; only above the top of the book his eyes could follow
+the curve of the white road. This made it more difficult to follow the
+text. Presently the bicyclists began to go past, by ones and twos and
+threes; but a certain percentage was wheeling its machines--others
+stopped within sight to blow up their tyres. One man sat down under the
+hedge thirty yards away, and took his machine to pieces; presently he
+strolled up and asked for water. Brent gave it, in a tin basin,
+grudgingly, and without opening the gate.
+
+"I overdid it," he said, "a quarter of a pound would have been enough;
+yet I don't know--perhaps it's well to be on the safe side. Yet three
+pounds was perhaps excessive."
+
+Late in the afternoon a pink figure wheeling a bicycle came slowly down
+the road. He sat still, and tried to read. In a moment he should hear
+the click of the gate: then he would spring up and be very much
+astonished. But the gate did not click, and when next he raised his eyes
+the pink blouse had gone by, and was almost past the end of the five
+acres. Then he did spring up--and ran.
+
+"Miss Redmayne, can't I help you? What is it? Have you had a spill?" he
+said as he overtook her.
+
+"Puncture," said she laconically.
+
+"You're very unfortunate. Mayn't I help you to mend it?"
+
+"I'll mend it as soon as I get to a shady place."
+
+"Come into the wilderness. See--here's the side gate. I'll fetch some
+water in a moment."
+
+She looked at him doubtfully, and then consented. She refused tea, but
+she stayed and talked till long after the bicycle was mended.
+
+On the following Saturday he walked along the road, and back, and along,
+and again the place was alive with angry cyclists dealing, each after
+his fashion, with a punctured tyre. He came upon Miss Redmayne sitting
+by the ditch mending hers. That was the time when he sat on the roadside
+and told her all about himself--reserving only those points where his
+life had touched Camilla's.
+
+The week after he walked the road again, and this time he overtook Miss
+Redmayne, who was resolutely wheeling her bicycle back in the way by
+which she had come.
+
+"Let me wheel it for you," he said. "Whither bound?"
+
+"I'm going back to Rochester," she said. "I generally ride over to see
+my aunts at Felsenden on Saturdays, but I fear I must give it up, or go
+by train; this road isn't safe."
+
+"Not safe?" he said with an agitation which could not escape her notice.
+
+"Not safe," she repeated. "Mr Brent, there is a very malicious person in
+this part of the country--a perfectly dreadful person."
+
+"What do you mean?" he managed to ask.
+
+"These three Saturdays I have come along this road; each time I have had
+a puncture. And each time I have found embedded in my tyre the evidence
+of some one's malice. This is one piece of evidence." She held out her
+ungloved hand. On its pink palm lay a good sized tin-tack. "Once might
+be accident; twice a coincidence; three times is too much. The road's
+impossible."
+
+"Do you think some one did it on purpose?"
+
+"I know it," she said calmly.
+
+Then he grew desperate.
+
+"Try to forgive me," he said. "I was so lonely, and I wanted so
+much----"
+
+She turned wide eyes on him.
+
+"You!" she cried, and began to laugh.
+
+Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.
+
+"Then you didn't know it was me?" said the Greek student.
+
+"You!" she said again. "And has it amused you--to see all these poor
+people in difficulties, and to know that you've spoilt their poor little
+holiday for them--and three times, too."
+
+"I never thought about _them_," he said; "it was you I wanted to see.
+Try to forgive me; you don't know how much I wanted you." Something in
+his voice kept her silent. "And don't laugh," he went on. "I feel as if
+I wanted nothing in the world but you. Let me come to see you--let me
+try to make you care too."
+
+"You're talking nonsense," she said, for he stopped on a note that
+demanded an answer. "Why, you told Camilla----"
+
+"Yes--but you--but I meant _you_. I thought I cared about her once--but
+I never cared really with all my heart and soul for any one but you."
+
+She looked at him calmly and earnestly.
+
+"I'm going to forget all this," she said; "but I like you very much, and
+if you want to come and see me, you may. I will introduce you to my
+aunts at Felsenden as--as a friend of Camilla's. And I will be friends
+with you; but nothing else ever. Do you care to know my aunts?"
+
+Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes. One came to him now, and he
+said: "I care very much."
+
+"Then help me to mend my bicycle, and you can call there to-morrow. It's
+'The Grange'--you can't miss it. No, not another word of nonsense,
+please, or we can't possibly be friends."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He helped her to mend the bicycle, and they talked of the beauty of
+spring and of modern poetry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at "The Grange," Felsenden, that Maurice next saw Miss
+Redmayne--and it was from "The Grange," Felsenden, that, in September,
+he married her.
+
+"And why did you say you would never, never be anything but a friend?"
+he asked her on the day when that marriage was arranged. "Oh! you nearly
+made me believe you! Why did you say it?"
+
+"One must say something!" she answered. "Besides, you'd never have
+respected me if I'd said 'yes' at once."
+
+"Could you have said it? Did you like me then?"
+
+She looked at him, and her look was an answer. He stooped and gravely
+kissed her.
+
+"And you really cared, even then? I wish you had been braver," he said a
+little sadly.
+
+"Ah, but," she said, "I didn't know you then--you must try to forgive
+me, dear. Think how much there was at stake! Suppose I had lost you!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR
+
+
+Aunt Kate was the great comfort of Kitty's existence. Always kindly,
+helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish
+question too difficult for her tender heart--her delicate insight. How
+different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty's fate to live.
+Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she
+spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake
+and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the
+bluest Girtonian green with envy. She had read a great deal, too--the
+really solid works that are such a nuisance to get through, and that
+leave a mark on one's mind like the track of a steamroller. That was
+Aunt Eliza's doing. Kitty ought to have been grateful--but she wasn't.
+She didn't want to be improved with solid books. She wanted to write
+books herself. She did write little tales when her aunt was out on
+business, which was often, and she dreamed of the day when she should
+write beautiful books, poems, romances. These Aunt Eliza classed roughly
+as "stuff and nonsense"; and one day, when she found Kitty reading the
+_Girls' Very Own Friend_, she tore that harmless little weekly across
+and across and flung it into the fire. Then she faced Kitty with flushed
+face and angry eyes.
+
+"If I ever catch you bringing such rubbish into the house again,
+I'll--I'll stop your music lessons."
+
+This was a horrible threat. Kitty went twice a week to the Guildhall
+School of Music. She had no musical talent whatever, but the journey to
+London and back was her one glimpse of the world's tide that flowed
+outside the neat, gloomy, ordered house at Streatham. Therefore Kitty
+was careful that Aunt Eliza should not again "catch her bringing such
+rubbish into the house." But she went on reading the paper all the same,
+just as she went on writing her little stories. And presently she got
+one of her little stories typewritten, and sent it to the _Girls' Very
+Own Friend_. It was a silly little story--the heroine was _svelte_, I
+am sorry to say, and had red-gold hair and a soft, _trainante_
+voice--and the hero was a "frank-looking young Englishman, with a
+bronzed face and honest blue eyes." The plot was that with which I
+firmly believe every career of fiction begins--the girl who throws over
+her lover because he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out that it
+was not her lover, but his brother or cousin. We have all written this
+story in our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than many, but not
+nearly so badly as most of us.
+
+And the _Girls' Very Own Friend_ accepted the story and printed it, and
+in its columns notified to "George Thompson" that the price, a whole
+guinea, was lying idle at the office till he should send his address.
+For, of course, Kitty had taken a man's name for her pen-name, and
+almost equally, of course, had called herself "George." George Sand
+began it, and it is a fashion which young authors seem quite unable to
+keep themselves from following.
+
+Kitty longed to tell some one of her success--to ask admiration and
+advice; but Aunt Eliza was more severe and less approachable than usual
+that week. She was busy writing letters. She had always a sheaf of
+dull-looking letters to answer, so Kitty could only tell Mary in the
+kitchen under vows of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only said: "Well,
+to be sure, Miss, it's beautiful! I suppose you wrote the story down out
+of some book?"
+
+Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to apply to her for intellectual
+sympathy.
+
+"I will write to Aunt Kate," said she, "_she_ will understand. Oh, how I
+wish I could see her! She must be a dear, soft, pussy, cuddly sort of
+person. Why shouldn't I go and see her? I will."
+
+And on this desperate resolve she acted.
+
+Now I find it quite impossible any longer to conceal from the
+intelligent reader that the reason why Kitty had never seen Aunt Kate
+was that "Aunt Kate" was merely the screen which sheltered from a vulgar
+publicity the gifted person who wrote the "Answers to Correspondents"
+for the _Girls' Very Own Friend_.
+
+In fear and trembling, and a disguised handwriting; with a feigned name
+and a quickly-beating heart, Kitty, months before, had written to this
+mysterious and gracious being. In the following week's number had
+appeared these memorable lines:
+
+     "_Sweet Nancy._--So pleased, dear, with your little letter.
+     Write to me quite freely. I love to help my girls."
+
+So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly as any girl of eighteen
+ever writes: her hopes and fears, her household troubles, her literary
+ambitions. And in the columns of the _Girls' Very Own Friend_ Aunt Kate
+replied with all the tender grace and delightful warmth that
+characterised her utterances.
+
+The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred to Kitty as she was "putting
+on her things" to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw the plain
+"everyday" hat from her, and pulled her best hat from its tissue-paper
+nest in the black bandbox. She put on her best blouse--the
+cream-coloured one with the browny lace on it, and her best brown silk
+skirt. She recklessly added her best brown shoes and gloves, and the
+lace pussy-boa. (I don't know what the milliner's name for the thing is.
+It goes round the neck, and hangs its soft and fluffy ends down nearly
+to one's knees.) Then she looked at herself in the glass, gave a few
+last touches to her hair and veil, and nodded to herself.
+
+"You'll do, my dear," said Kitty.
+
+Aunt Eliza was providentially absent at Bath nursing a sick friend, and
+the black-bugled duenna, hastily imported from Tunbridge Wells, could
+not be expected to know which was Kitty's best frock, and which the
+gloves that ought only to have been worn at church.
+
+When Kitty's music lesson was over, she stood for a moment on the steps
+of the Guildhall School, looking down towards the river. Then she
+shrugged her pretty shoulders.
+
+"I don't care. I'm going to," she said, and turned resolutely towards
+Tudor Street. Kitty had been to a high school: therefore she was not
+obviously shy. She asked her way frankly and easily of carman, or clerk,
+or errand-boy; and though, at the door of the dingy office in a little
+court off Fleet Street, her heart beat thickly as she read the
+blue-enamelled words, _Girls' Very Own Friend_, her manner as she walked
+into the office betrayed no nervousness, and, indeed, struck the
+grinning idle office boy as that of "a bloomin' duchess."
+
+"I want to see----" she began; and then suddenly the awkwardness of her
+position struck her. She did not know Aunt Kate's surname. Abruptly to
+ask this grinning lout for "Aunt Kate" seemed absolutely indecorous. "I
+want to see the editor," she ended.
+
+She waited in the grimy office while the boy disappeared through an
+inner door, marked in dingy white letters with the magic words,
+"Editor--Private." A low buzz of voices came to her through the door.
+She looked at the pigeon-holes where heaps of back numbers of the
+_Girls' Very Own_ lay in a dusty retirement. She looked at the insurance
+company's tasteless almanack that hung all awry on the wall, and still
+the buzz went on. Then suddenly some one laughed inside, and the laugh
+did not please Kitty. The next moment the boy returned, grinning more
+repulsively than ever, and said: "Walk this way."
+
+She walked that way, past the boy; the door fell to behind her, and she
+found herself in a cloud of tobacco smoke, compressed into a small
+room--a very dusty, untidy room--in which stood three young men. Their
+faces were grave and serious, but Kate could not forget that one of
+them had laughed, and laughed _like that_. Her chin went up about a
+quarter of an inch further.
+
+"I am sorry to have disturbed you," she said severely. "I wanted to
+see--to see the lady who signs herself Aunt Kate."
+
+There was a moment of silence which seemed almost breathless. Two of the
+young men exchanged a glance, but though Kitty perceived it to be
+significant, she could not interpret its meaning. Then one of the three
+turned to gaze out of the window at the blackened glass roof of the
+printing office below. Kitty felt certain he was concealing a smile; and
+the second hurriedly arranged a bundle of papers beside him.
+
+The third young man spoke, and Kitty liked the gentle drawl, the
+peculiar enunciation. The poor girl, in her Streatham seclusion, had
+never before heard the "Oxford voice."
+
+"I am very sorry," he said, "but 'Aunt Kate' is not here to-day.
+Perhaps--is there anything I could do?"
+
+"No, thank you," said Kitty, wishing herself miles away; the tobacco
+smoke choked her, the backs of the two other men seemed an outrage. She
+turned away with a haughty bow, and went down the grimy stairs full of
+fury. She could have slapped herself. How could she have been such a
+fool as to come there? There were feet coming down the stair behind
+her--she quickened her pace. The feet came more quickly. She stopped on
+the landing and turned with an odd feeling of being at bay. It was the
+fair-haired young man with the Oxford voice.
+
+"I am so very sorry," he said gently, "but I did not know. I did not
+expect to see--I mean, I did not know who you were. And we had all been
+smoking--I am so sorry," he said again, rather lamely.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Kitty, more shyly than she had ever spoken in
+her life. She liked his eyes and his voice as much as she loathed the
+expressive backs of his two companions.
+
+"If you could come again: perhaps Aunt Kate will be here on Thursday. I
+know she will be sorry to miss you," the young man went on.
+
+"I think I won't call again, thank you," said Kitty. "I--I'll write,
+thank you; it is all right. I oughtn't to have come. Good-bye."
+
+There was nothing for it but to stand back and let her pass. The editor
+went back slowly to his room. His friends had relighted their pipes.
+
+"Appeased the outraged goddess?" asked one of them.
+
+"Good old Aunt Kate!" said the other.
+
+"Shut up, Sellars!" said the editor, frowning.
+
+"Now, which of your correspondents is it?" pondered Sellars, ruffling
+the bundle of papers in his hand. "Is it 'Wild Woodbine,' who wants to
+know what will make her hands white? Chilcott, did you see her hands? Oh
+no, of course--_bien chaussée, bien gantée_. All brown, too. Is it
+'Sylph'?--no; she wants a pattern for a Zouave. What is a Zouave, if you
+please, Mr Editor?"
+
+"Dry up!" said the editor, but Sellars was busy with the papers.
+
+"Eureka! I know her. She's 'Nut-brown Maid'--here's the letter--wants to
+know if she may talk to 'a young gentleman she has not been properly
+introduced to'--spells it 'interoduced,' too----"
+
+The editor snatched the papers out of the other's hands.
+
+"Now clear out," said he; "I'm busy."
+
+"Am I dreaming?" said Sellars pensively; "or is this the editor who
+invited us to collaborate with him in his 'Answers to Correspondents'?"
+
+"I am the editor who will kick you down the entire five flights if he is
+driven to it. You won't drive him, will you?"
+
+The two laughed, but they took up their hats and went; Sellars put his
+head round the door for a last word.
+
+"What price love at first sight?" said he, and the office ruler dented
+the door as he disappeared round it. The editor, left alone, sat down in
+his chair and looked helplessly round him.
+
+"Well!" he said musingly, "well, well, well, well!" Then after a long
+silence he took up his pen and began the "Answers to Correspondents."
+
+     "_Dieu-donnée._--Your hair is a very nice colour. I should not
+     advise Aureoline.
+
+     "_Shy Fairy._--By all means consult your mother. Heliotrope
+     would suit your complexion, if it is, as you say, of a
+     brilliant fairness.
+
+     "_Contadina._--No, I should not advise scarlet velvet with the
+     pale blue. Try myrtle green."
+
+Presently he threw down the pen. "I suppose I shall never see her
+again," he said, and he actually sighed.
+
+But he did see her again. For on her way home poor Kitty's imagination
+suddenly spread its wings and alighted accurately on the truth; she
+formed a sufficiently vivid picture of what had happened in the office
+after she left. She _knew_ that those other young men--"the pigs," she
+called them to herself--had speculated as to whether she was "Little
+One," who wanted to make her hair curl, and to know whether short waists
+would be worn; or "Moss Rose," who was anxious about her complexion, and
+the proper way to treat a jibbing sweetheart. So that very night she
+wrote a note to Aunt Kate, but she did not sign it "Sweet Nancy" in the
+old manner, and she did not disguise her hand. She signed it George
+Thompson, in inverted commas, and she said that she would call on
+Thursday.
+
+And on Thursday she called. And was shown into the editor's room at
+once.
+
+The editor rose to greet her.
+
+"Aunt Kate is not here," said he hurriedly; "but if you can spare a few
+moments I should like to talk to you about business; I did not know the
+other day that you were the author of that charming story 'Evelyn's
+Error.'"
+
+The room was clear of tobacco smoke--the editor was alone--some red
+roses lay on the table. Kitty caught herself wondering for whom he had
+bought them. The chair he offered her was carefully dusted. She took
+it--and he began to talk about her story; criticising, praising,
+blaming, and that so skilfully that criticism seemed a subtle flattery,
+and the very blame conveyed a compliment. Then he asked for more
+stories. And a new heaven and a new earth seemed to unroll before the
+girl's eyes. If she could only write--and succeed--and----
+
+"Will you come again?" he said at last. "Aunt Kate----"
+
+"Oh," she said, with eyes shining softly, "it doesn't matter about Aunt
+Kate now! I shall be so busy trying to write stories."
+
+"The fact is----" said the editor slowly, racking his brains for a
+reason that should bring her to the office again--"the fact is--_I_ am
+Aunt Kate."
+
+Kitty sprang to her feet. Her face flamed scarlet. She stood silent a
+moment. Then: "_You?_" she cried. "Oh, it's _not_ fair--it's mean--it's
+shameful! Oh--how could you! And girls write to _you_--and they think
+it's a woman--and they tell you about their troubles. It's horrible!
+It's underhand--it's abominable! I hate you for it. Every one ought to
+know. I shall write to the papers."
+
+"Please, please," said the editor hurriedly and humbly--"it's not my
+fault. It _is_ a lady who does it generally, but she had to go away--and
+I couldn't get any one else to do it. And I didn't see--till after you'd
+been the other day--that it wasn't fair. And I was going to ask if _you_
+would do it--the correspondence, I mean--just for this week. I wish you
+would!"
+
+"Could I?" she said doubtfully.
+
+"Of course you could! And if you'd bring the copy on Monday--about two
+columns, you know--we could go through it together and----"
+
+"Well, I'll try," said Kitty abruptly, reaching out for the sheaf of
+letters which he was gathering together.
+
+And now who was happier than Kitty, seated behind her locked bedroom
+door advising "Dieu-donnée" and "Shy Fairy" and "Contadina" out of the
+unfathomable depths of her girlish inexperience. Her advice looked
+wonderfully practical, though, in print, she thought, as with a thrill
+of pride and joy she corrected the first proofs. And she wrote stories,
+too, and they, too, were printed. It was indeed a bright and beautiful
+world. Aunt Eliza stayed away for five glorious weeks. Kitty, with an
+enthralling sense of reckless wickedness, gave up her useless music
+lessons, and in going three times a week to the office experienced a
+glowing consciousness of the joy and dignity of honest toil.
+
+The editor, by the way, during these five weeks fell in love with Kitty,
+exactly as he had known he would do when first he saw her grey eyes.
+Kitty had never been so happy in all her life. The child honestly
+believed hers to be the happiness that comes from congenial work. And
+her editor was so clever and so kind! No one ever smoked in the office
+now, and there were always roses. And Kitty took them home with her, so
+that now there was no need to wonder for whom he had bought them.
+
+Then came the inevitable hour. He met her one day with a clouded face
+and a letter in his hand.
+
+"It's all over," he said; "the real original old Aunt Kate is coming
+back. She's the dearest old thing, so kind and jolly--but--but--but--
+whatever shall we do?"
+
+"I can still write stories, I suppose," said Kitty, but she realised
+with a gasp that congenial toil would not be quite, quite the same
+without congenial companionship.
+
+"Yes," said he, picking up the bunch of red roses, "but--here are your
+flowers--don't you know yet that I can't possibly do without you? In a
+few months I'm to have the editorship of a new weekly, a much better
+berth than this. If only you would----"
+
+"Write the correspondence?" said Kitty, brightening; "of course I will.
+I don't know what I should do without----"
+
+"I wish," he interrupted, "that I could think it was _me_ you couldn't
+do without." Her pretty eyes met his over the red roses, and he caught
+her hands with the flowers in them. "Is it? Oh, say you can't do without
+me either. Say it, say it!"
+
+"I--I--don't want to do without you," said Kitty at last. He was holding
+her hands fast, and she was trying, not very earnestly, perhaps, to pull
+them away. The pair made a pretty picture.
+
+"Oh, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" he said softly, and then the door opened, and
+suddenly, without the least warning, a middle-aged lady became a
+spectator of the little tableau. The newcomer wore a mantle with beads
+on it, a black bonnet wherein nodded a violet flower--and beads and
+flower and bonnet were absolutely familiar to each of the astonished
+ones now standing consciously with the breadth of the office between
+them. For in that middle-aged lady the editor recognised Aunt Kate, the
+pleasant, sensible, companionable woman who for years had written those
+sympathetic "Answers to Correspondents" in the _Girls' Very Own Friend_.
+And at the same moment Kitty recognised, beyond all possibility of
+doubt, Aunt Eliza--her own grim, harsh, uncongenial Aunt Eliza.
+
+Kitty cowered--in her frightened soul she cowered. But her little figure
+drew itself up, and the point of her chin rose a quarter of an inch.
+
+"Aunt Eliza," she said firmly, "I know you will----"
+
+"_Your Aunt Eliza_, Kitty?" cried the editor.
+
+"'Kitty'?" said the aunt.
+
+And now the situation hung all too nicely balanced on the extreme edge
+of the absolutely impossible. Would this middle-aged lady--an aunt
+beyond doubt--an aunt who so long had played a double _rôle_, assume,
+now that one _rôle_ must be chosen, the part of Aunt Eliza the Terrible
+or of Aunt Kate the Kind? The aunt was dumb. Kitty was dumb. But the
+editor had his wits about him, and Kate, though shaken, was not
+absolutely paralysed.
+
+"It's almost too good to be true," he said, "that _my_ Aunt Kate is
+really _your_ Aunt Eliza. Aunt Kate, Kitty and I have just decided that
+we can't do without each other. I am so glad that you are the first to
+wish us joy."
+
+At his words all the "Kate" in the aunt rose triumphant, trampling down
+the "Eliza."
+
+"My dear boy," she said--and she said it in a voice which Kitty had
+never heard before--the sound of that voice drew Kitty like a magnet.
+She did the only possible thing--she put her arms timidly round her
+aunt's neck and whispered: "Oh, don't be Aunt Eliza any more, be Aunt
+Kate!"
+
+It was Aunt Kate's arms undoubtedly that went round the girl. Certainly
+not Aunt Eliza's.
+
+"I will take a walk down Fleet Street," said the editor discreetly.
+
+Then there were explanations in the office.
+
+"But why," said Kitty, when all the questions had been asked and
+answered, "why were you Aunt Eliza to me, and Aunt Kate to him?"
+
+"My dear, one must spoil somebody, and I was determined not to spoil
+_you_; I wanted to save you. All my life was ruined because I was a
+spoiled child--and because I tried to write. I had such dreams, such
+ambitions--just like yours, you silly child! But then I was never
+clever--perhaps you may be--and it all ended in my losing my lover. He
+married a nice, quiet, domestic girl, and I never made name or fame at
+all--I never got anything taken but fashion articles--and 'Answers to
+Correspondents.' Now, that's the whole tale. Don't mention it again."
+
+"But you did love me, even when----"
+
+"Of course I did," said Aunt Kate in the testy tones of Aunt Eliza; "or
+why should I have bothered at all about whether you were going to be
+happy or not? Now, Kitty, you're not to expect me to gush. I've
+forgotten how to be sentimental except on paper."
+
+"I don't want to be sentimental," said Kitty, a little injured, "neither
+does----"
+
+Here the editor came in.
+
+"You don't want to be sentimental either," Kitty went on; "do you--Mr
+Editor?"
+
+The editor looked a little doubtful.
+
+"I want to be happy, at any rate," said he, "and I mean to be."
+
+"And he can't be happy unless you smile on him. Smile on him, Auntie!"
+cried a new, radiant Kitty, to whom aunts no longer presented any
+terrors. "Say 'Bless you, my children!' Auntie--do!"
+
+"Get along with your nonsense!" said Aunt Eliza. Or was it Aunt Kate?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MISS MOUSE
+
+
+They were poor, not with the desperate poverty that has to look on both
+sides of a penny, but with the decent bearable poverty that must look at
+a shilling with attention, and with respect at half-a-crown. There was
+money for the necessities of life, the mother said, but no money to
+waste. This was what she always tried to say when Maisie came in with
+rainbow representations of the glories of local "sales" piteous pictures
+of beautiful things going almost for nothing--things not absolutely
+needed, but which would "come in useful." Maisie's dress was never
+allowed those touches of cheap finery which would have made it
+characteristic of her. Her clothes were good, and she had to patch and
+mend and contrive so much that sometimes it seemed to her as though all
+her life was going by in the effort to achieve, by a distasteful
+process, a result which she abhorred. For her artistic sense was too
+weak to show her how the bright, soft freshness of her tints gained by
+contrast with the dull greys and browns and drabs that were her mother's
+choice--good wearing colours, from which the pink and white of her face
+rose triumphantly, like a beautiful flower out of a rough calyx.
+
+The house was like Maisie, in that it never seemed to have anything
+new--none of those bright, picturesque cushions and screens and
+Japaneseries which she adored through the plate-glass windows of the big
+local draper. The curtains were of old damask, faded but rich; the
+furniture was mahogany, old and solid; the carpets were Turkey and
+Aubusson--patched and darned this last, but still beautiful. Maisie knew
+all about old oak--she had read her _Home Hints_ and her _Gentlewoman's
+Guide_--but she had no idea that mahogany could be fashionable. None of
+the photographs of the drawing-rooms of celebrities in her favourite
+papers were anything like the little sitting-room where her mother sat
+knitting by the hearth, surrounded by the relics of a house that had
+been handsome in the 'sixties, when it was her girlhood's home. Maisie
+hated it all: the chairs covered in Berlin-wool needlework, the dark,
+polished surfaces of the tables and bureaux, the tinkling lustres of
+Bohemian glass, the shining brass trivet on which the toast kept itself
+warm, the crude colours of the tea-service, the smell of eau-de-Cologne
+mingling with the faint scent of beeswax and cedar-wood. She would have
+liked to change the old water-colours in their rubbed gilt frames for
+dark-mounted autotypes. How should she know that those hideous pigs were
+Morlands, and that the cow picture was a David Cox. She would have liked
+Japanese blue transfers instead of the gold-and-white china--old
+Bristol, by the way, but Maisie knew nothing of Bristol. The regular,
+sober orderliness of the house chafed and fretted her; the recurrent
+duties, all dull; the few guests who came to tea. Decent poverty cannot
+give dinner parties or dances. She visited her school friends, and when
+she came home again it seemed to her sometimes as though the atmosphere
+of the place would choke her.
+
+"I want to go out and earn my own living," she said to her cousin Edward
+one Sunday afternoon when her mother was resting and he and she were
+roasting chestnuts on the bars of the dining-room fire. "I'm simply
+useless here."
+
+Edward was a second cousin. To him the little house was the ideal home,
+just as Maisie was--well, not, perhaps, the ideal girl, but the only
+girl in the world, which comes to much the same thing. But he never told
+her so: he dared not risk losing the cousin's place and missing for ever
+the lover's.
+
+So, in his anxiety lest she should know how much he cared, he scolded
+her a good deal. But he took her to picture galleries and to _matinées_,
+and softened her life in a hundred ways that she never noticed. He was
+only "Poor old Edward," and he knew it.
+
+"How can you?" he said. "Why, what on earth would Aunt do without you?
+Here, have this one--it's a beauty."
+
+"I ought to have been taught a trade, like other poor girls," she went
+on, waving away the roasted chestnut. "Lots of the girls I was at school
+with are earning as much as a pound a week now--typewriting or painting
+birthday cards, and some of them are in the Post Office--and I do
+nothing but drudge away at home. It's too bad."
+
+Edward would have given a decent sum at that moment to be inspired with
+exactly the right thing to say. As it was he looked at her helplessly.
+
+"I don't understand, I'm afraid," said he.
+
+"You never do," she answered crossly. There was a silence in which she
+felt the growth of a need to justify herself--to herself as well as to
+him. "Why, don't you see," she urged, "it's my plain duty to go out and
+earn something. Why, we're as poor as ever we can be--I haven't any
+pocket-money hardly--I can't even buy presents for people. I have to
+_make_ presents out of odds and ends of old things, instead of buying
+them, like other girls."
+
+"I think you make awfully pretty things," he said; "much prettier than
+any one can buy."
+
+"You're thinking of that handkerchief-case I gave Aunt Emma at
+Christmas. Why, you silly, it was only a bit of one of mother's old
+dresses. I do wish you'd talk to mother about it. I might go out as
+companion or something."
+
+The word came before the thought, but the thought was brought by the
+word and the thought stayed.
+
+That very evening Maisie began to lay siege to her mother's desired
+consent.
+
+She put her arguments very neatly, so neatly that it was hard for the
+mother to oppose them without being betrayed into an attitude that would
+seem grossly selfish.
+
+She sat looking into the fire, thinking of all the little, unceasing
+sacrifices that had been her life ever since Maisie had been hers--even
+the giving up of that treasured silk, her wedding dress, last Christmas,
+because Maisie wanted something pretty to make Christmas presents out
+of. She remembered it all; and now this new great sacrifice was called
+for. She had given up to Maisie everything but her taste in dress, and
+now it seemed that she was desired to give up even Maisie herself. But
+the other sacrifices had been for Maisie's good or for her pleasure.
+Would this one be for either?
+
+She saw her little girl alone among strangers, snubbed, looked down
+upon, a sort of upper servant with none of a servant's privileges; she
+nerved herself to what was always to her an almost unbearable effort.
+Her heart was beating and her hands trembling as she said: "My dear,
+it's quite impossible; I couldn't possibly allow it."
+
+"I must say I don't see why," said Maisie, with tears in her voice.
+
+Her mother dropped the mass of fleecy white wool and the clinking
+knitting needles and grasped the arms of her chair intensely. Her eyes
+behind the spectacles clouded with tears. It seemed to her that her
+child should surely understand the agony it was to her mother to refuse
+her anything.
+
+"I could earn money for you--it's not myself I'm thinking about," the
+girl went on; the half-lie came out quite without her conscious
+volition. "I wish you didn't always think I do everything for selfish
+reasons."
+
+"I don't, my dear," said the mother feebly.
+
+"I'm sure it's my duty," Maisie went on, with more tears than ever in
+her voice. "I'm eighteen, and I ought to be earning something, instead
+of being a burden to you."
+
+The mother looked hopelessly into the fire. She had always tried to
+explain things to Maisie; how was it that Maisie never understood?
+
+"I'm sure," said Maisie, echoing her mother's thought, "I always try to
+tell you how I think about things, and you never seem to understand. Of
+course, I won't go if you wish it, but I _do_ think----"
+
+She left the room in tears, and the mother remained to torment herself
+with the eternal questions, What had she done wrong? Why was Maisie not
+contented? What could she do to please her? Would nothing please her but
+the things that were not for her good--smart clothes, change, novelty?
+How could she bear her life if Maisie was not pleased?
+
+She went down to supper shivering with misery and apprehension. What a
+meal it would be with Maisie cold and aloof, polite and indifferent! But
+Maisie was cheerful, gay almost, and her mother felt a passion of
+gratitude to her daughter for not being sulky or unapproachable. Maisie,
+however, was only stepping back to jump the better.
+
+The same scene, with intenser variations, was played about twice a week
+till the girl got her way, as she always did in the end, except in the
+matter of cheap finery. Taste in dress was as vital to the mother as her
+religion. Then, through the influence of an old governess of her
+mother's, Maisie got her wish. She was to go as companion to an old
+lady, the mother of Lady Yalding, and she was to live at Yalding Towers.
+Here was splendour--here would be life, incident, opportunity! For her
+reading had sometimes strayed from _Home Hints_ to the _Family Herald_,
+and she knew exactly what are the chances of romance to a humble
+companion in the family of a lady of title.
+
+And now Maisie's mother gave way to her, finally and completely, even on
+the question of dress. The old wardrobe was ransacked to find materials
+to fit her out with clothes for her new venture. It was a beautiful time
+for Maisie. New things, and old things made to look as good as new, or
+better. It was like having a trousseau. The mother lavished on her child
+every inch of the old lace, every one of the treasured trinkets--even
+the little old locket that had been the dead husband's first love-gift.
+
+And Maisie, in the flutter of her excitement and anticipation, was
+loving and tender and charming, and the mother had her reward.
+
+Edward opposed a stolid and stony disapproval to all the new enthusiasm.
+He said little because he feared to say too much.
+
+"Poor little Maisie!" he said. "You'll soon find out that you didn't
+know when you were well off."
+
+"Edward, I hate you," said Maisie, and she thought she did.
+
+But when all the beautiful new clothes were packed and her cab was at
+the door, some sense of what she was leaving did come to the girl, and
+she flung her arms round her mother in an embrace such as she had never
+given in her life.
+
+"I don't want to go," she cried. "Mummy darling, I've been a little
+beast about it. I won't go if you say you'd rather not. Shall I send the
+cab away? I will if you say so, my own dear old Mummy!"
+
+Maisie's mother was not a very wise woman, but she was not fool enough
+to trust this new softness.
+
+"No, no, dearest," she said; "go and try your own way. God bless you, my
+darling! You'll miss the train if you stay. God bless you, my darling!"
+
+And Maisie went away crying hard through the new veil with the black
+velvet spots on it; as for the mother--but she was elderly, and plain,
+and foolishly fond, and her emotions can have but little interest for
+the readers of romances.
+
+And now Maisie, for the first time, knew the meaning of home. And before
+she had been at Yalding a week she had learned to analyse home and to
+give names to its constituents: love, interest, sympathy, liberty--these
+were some.
+
+At Yalding Towers Maisie was nothing to any one. No one knew or cared
+one single little bit of a straw whether she was unhappy or no. Her time
+was filled, and overfilled, by the attentions exacted by an old,
+eccentric, and very disagreeable lady. When she put on, for the first
+evening, the least pretty of the pretty dresses she had brought with
+her, the old lady looked at her with a disapproval almost rising to
+repulsion, and said: "I expect you to wear black; and a linen collar and
+cuffs."
+
+So another black dress had to be ordered from home, and all the pretty,
+dainty things lay creasing themselves with disuse in the ample drawers
+and cupboards of her vast, dreary bedroom.
+
+Her employer was exacting and irritable. When on the third day Maisie
+broke into tears under the constant flood of nagging, the old lady told
+her to go away and not to come back till she could control her temper.
+
+"I'll come back when you send for me, and not before, you hateful old
+thing!" said Maisie to herself.
+
+And she sat down in her fireless bedroom and wrote a long letter to her
+mother, saying how happy she felt, and how kind every one was, and what
+a lovely and altogether desirable place was Yalding Towers. Who shall
+say whether pride or love, or both, dictated that letter?
+
+When her employer did send for her, it was to tell her, very sharply,
+that one more such exhibition of sullenness would cost her her
+situation. So she had to learn to school herself. And she did it. But
+the learning was hard, very hard, and in the learning she grew thinner,
+and some of the pretty pink in her cheeks faded away.
+
+Lady Yalding, when she swept in, in beautiful dream-dresses, always
+spoke to the companion quite kindly and nicely and pleasantly, but there
+were none of those invitations to come into the drawing-room after
+dinner which the _Family Herald_ had led her to expect. Lady Yalding was
+always charming to every one, and Maisie tortured herself with the
+thought that it was only because she had no opportunity to explain
+herself that Lady Yalding failed to see how very much out of the common
+she was. She read Ruskin industriously, and once she left her own book
+of Browning selections that Edward had given her in the conservatory.
+She imagined Lady Yalding returning it to her with, "So, are you fond
+of poetry?" or, "It's delightful to find that you are a lover of
+Browning!" But the book was brought back to her by a footman, and the
+old lady lectured her for leaving her rubbish littering about.
+
+But towards Christmas a change came. Maisie had hoped--more intensely
+than she had ever in her life hoped for anything--for a few days' grace,
+for a sight of her mother, and the mahogany, and the damask curtains,
+and--yes--of Edward. But the old lady, who really was exceptionally
+horrid, wondered how she could ask for a holiday when she had only been
+in her situation six weeks.
+
+Then the old lady went off at half an hour's notice to spend Christmas
+with her other daughter--Maisie would have suspected a "row" if Lady
+Yalding had been a shade less charming--and the girl was left. Thus it
+happened that Lord Yalding's brother lounged into Lady Yalding's room
+one day, and said: "Who's the piteous black mouse you've tamed?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Jim?" said Lady Yalding.
+
+"The crushed apple-blossom in a black frock--one meets her about the
+corridors. Gloomy sight. Chestnut hair. Princess-in-exile sort of look."
+
+"Oh, _that_! It's mother's companion."
+
+"Poor little devil!" said the Honourable James. "What does she do now
+the cat's away? I beg your pardon--my mind was running on mice."
+
+"Do? I don't know," said Lady Yalding a little guiltily. "She's a good,
+quiet little thing--literary tastes, reads Browning, and all that sort
+of rot. She's all right."
+
+"Why don't you give her a show? She'd take the shine out of some of the
+girls here if you had her dressed."
+
+"My dear Jim," Lady Yalding said, "she's all right as she is. What's the
+good of turning the child's head and giving her notions out of her
+proper station?"
+
+"If I were that child I'd like to have a little bit of a fling just for
+once. The poor little rat looks starved, as though it hadn't laughed for
+a year. Then it's Christmas--peace and goodwill, and all that, don't you
+know. If I were you I'd ask her down a bit----"
+
+Lady Yalding thought--a thing she rarely did.
+
+"Well," she said, "it _is_ pretty slow for her, I suppose. I'll send her
+home to her people."
+
+"On Christmas Eve? Fog and frost, and the trains all anyhow? Fanny,
+Fanny!"
+
+"Oh, very well. We'll have her down, and go the whole hog. Only don't
+make a fool of the child, Jim; she's a good little thing."
+
+And that was how the dream-dressed Lady Yalding came to sweep into the
+old lady's sitting-room--it was as full of mahogany, by the way, as
+Maisie's home in Lewisham--and spoke so kindly of Maisie's loneliness,
+that the girl could have fallen down and worshipped at her Paris shoes.
+
+When Maisie, in the figured lavender satin that had been her mother's,
+swept across the great hall on the arm of the Honourable James, she felt
+that this indeed was life. Here was the great world with its infinite
+possibilities.
+
+"How did you get on?" his sister-in-law asked him later.
+
+"Oh, it's quite a decent sort of little mouse," he said. "Wants to make
+sure you see how cultivated it is, quotes poetry--what?--and talks about
+art. It's a little touching and all that to see how busy it is putting
+all its poor little stock in the tiny shop-window."
+
+Maisie, alone in her room, was walking up and down, trailing the
+lavender satin, recalling with kindled eyes and red-rose cheeks every
+word, every look of her cavalier. How kindly he had spoken, yet how
+deferentially; how he had looked, how he had smiled! At dinner she
+supposed it was his business to talk to her. But afterwards, when she
+was sitting, a little forlornly and apart from the noisy chatter of the
+bright-plumaged house-party, how he had come straight over to her
+directly the gentlemen came into the drawing-room! And she felt that she
+had not been wanting to herself on so great an occasion.
+
+"I _know_ I talked well. I'm certain he saw directly that I wasn't a
+silly idiot."
+
+She lay long awake, and, as the men trooped up the stairs, she tried to
+fancy that she could already distinguish his footsteps.
+
+The letter she wrote to her mother next day was, compared to those other
+lying letters, as a lit chandelier to a stable-lantern. And the mother
+knew the difference.
+
+"Poor darling!" she thought. "She must have been very miserable all
+this time. But she's happy now, God bless her!"
+
+By the week's end, every thought, every dream, every hope of Maisie's
+life was centred in the Honourable James; her tenderness, her ambition
+turned towards him as flowers to the sun.
+
+And her happiness lighted a thousand little candles all around her. No
+one could see the candles, of course, but every one saw the radiant
+illumination of her beauty. And the other men of the house-party saw it
+too. Even Lord Yalding distinguished her by asking whether she had read
+some horrid book about earthworms.
+
+"You're making a fool of that girl, Jim," said Lady Yalding. "I really
+think it's too bad."
+
+"My good Fanny, don't be an adorable idiot! I'm only trying to give the
+poor little duffer a good time. There's nothing else to do. The other
+girls really are--now, you know they are, Fanny--between ourselves----"
+
+"They're all duty people, of course," she said. "Well, only do be
+careful."
+
+He was careful. He subdued his impulses to tenderness and gentle
+raillery. He talked seriously to little Miss Mouse, and presently he
+found that she was seriously talking to him--telling him, for instance,
+how she wrote poetry, and how she longed to show it to some one and ask
+whether it really was so bad as she sometimes feared.
+
+What could he do but beg her to show it to him? But there he pulled
+himself up short.
+
+"There's skating to-morrow. We're going to drive over to Dansent. Would
+you like to come?"
+
+Her grey eyes looked up quickly, and the long lashes drooped over them.
+She had read of that trick in a book, and for the life of him he could
+not help knowing it. Her answer to his question came from a book, too,
+though it also came from her heart.
+
+"Ah," she said, "you know!"
+
+Then the Honourable James was honestly frightened. Next day he had a
+telegram, and departed abruptly. And as abruptly the old lady returned.
+
+And now Maisie had a secret joy to feed on--a manna to sustain her in
+the wilderness of her tiresome life. She thought of _him_. He loved her;
+she was certain of it. Miss Mouse could imagine no reason but love for
+the kindness he had shown her. He had gone away without a word, but that
+was for some good reason. Probably he had gone to confess to his mother
+how he had given his whole heart to a penniless orphan--well, she was
+half an orphan, anyway. But the days slipped by and he did not come
+back. All that bright time at Christmas had faded like a picture from a
+magic-lantern when the slide is covered. Lady Yalding was quite nice and
+kind, but she left Maisie to the work Maisie was paid for.
+
+Maisie's mother perceived, through Maisie's studied accounts of her
+happiness, more than a glimpse of the reality.
+
+Then, at last, when the days grew unbearable, Maisie wrote to him, a
+prim little letter with agitated heart-beats between the lines, where
+he, being no fool, did not fail to find them. Yet he had to answer the
+letter. He did it briefly.
+
+     "DEAR MISS ROLLESTON," he wrote, "I have received your letter
+     and the little poem, which is very nice. Poems about Spring are
+     the pleasantest kind, I think.--With kind regards, I am yours
+     sincerely."
+
+It was not, as you may see, worth the heartache with which Maisie
+watched for it.
+
+It was when she wrote again, and sent more verses, that he decided he
+must not mince matters.
+
+     "DEAR MISS ROLLESTON," was his second letter, "it is good of
+     you to write again. Now I do hope you won't be offended with me
+     for what I am going to say. I am so much older than you, you
+     know, and I know you are alone at Yalding, with no one to
+     advise you, so it must be my duty to do it, though, for my own
+     sake, I should, of course, like to advise you quite
+     differently. It was a great pleasure to me to hear from you,
+     but I must not allow myself that pleasure again, even if you
+     were willing to give it to me. It would not be fair to you to
+     let you write any more to a man who is not related to you. Try
+     to forgive me for being unselfish and acting in your interests
+     and not my own."
+
+And again, with kind regards, he was hers sincerely.
+
+"Poor, pretty little duffer!" he said, as he closed the envelope. "But
+it's not real. Don't I know the sort of thing? She's simply bored to
+death down there. And it's all my fault, anyhow. By Jove! I'll never
+try to do any one a good turn again as long as I live. Fanny was
+perfectly right."
+
+The letter came by the second post, when Maisie was engaged in drearily
+reading her employer to sleep after lunch.
+
+It lay on her lap, but she kept her eyes from it and read on
+intelligibly if not with expression.
+
+The old lady dozed.
+
+Maisie opened her letter. And before she could even have had time to put
+up a hand to save herself, her Spanish castle was tumbling about her
+ears. A curious giddy feeling seemed to catch at the back of her neck,
+the room gave a sickening half-turn. She caught at her self-control.
+
+"Not here. I mustn't faint here. Not with his letter in my hand."
+
+She got out of the room somehow, and somehow she got into hat and jacket
+and boots, put her quarter's salary in her purse, and walked out of the
+front door and straight down the great drive that she had come up four
+months ago with such bright hopes. She went to the station, and she took
+a train, and she never stopped nor stayed till she was at home again.
+She pushed past the frightened maid, and, pale and shabby, with
+black-ringed eyes and dusty black gown, she burst into her mother's
+room. The scent of eau-de-Cologne and bees'-wax and buttered toast met
+her, and it was as the perfume of Paradise. Edward was there--but she
+was in no mood to bother about Edward. She threw herself on her knees
+and buried her face in the knitting on her mother's lap, and felt thin
+arms go round her.
+
+"It's nothing. I'm tired of it all. I've come home," was all she said.
+But presently she reached out a hand to Edward, and he took it and held
+it, as it were, absently, and the three sat by the fire and spoke little
+and were content.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To her dying day Maisie will never forget the sense of peace, of
+enfolding care, and love unchanging and unchangeable that came to her as
+she woke next morning to find her mother standing by her bed with a cup
+of tea in her hands.
+
+"Oh, Mummy darling," she cried, throwing her arms round her mother and
+nearly upsetting the tea, "I haven't had a single drop of in-bed tea all
+the time I've been away!"
+
+That was all she found words to tell her mother. Later there was Edward,
+and she told him most things, but, I imagine, not all. But the mother
+was content without spoken confidences. She knew that Maisie had
+suffered, and that now she had her little girl again, to wrap warm in
+her love as before. This was happiness enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This story, I know, is instructive enough for a Sunday School prize. It
+ought to be tagged at the end with a Moral. I can't help it: it is true.
+Of course, it is not what usually happens. Many companions, no doubt,
+marry Honourable James's, or even Dukes, and are never at all glad to
+get home to their mothers and their Edwards. But Maisie was different.
+She feels now a sort of grateful tenderness for Yalding Towers, because,
+but for the dream she dreamed there she might never have really
+awakened--never have known fully and without mistake what it was in life
+that she truly cared for. And such knowledge is half the secret of
+happiness. That, by the way, is really the moral of this story.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE OLD WIFE
+
+
+"Yes; married by the 30th of June, introduce my wife to the tenants on
+Christmas Eve, or no fortune. That was my uncle's last and worst joke;
+he was reputed a funny man in his time. The alternatives are pretty
+ghastly either way."
+
+"Doesn't that rather depend?" Sylvia queried, with a swift blue glance
+from under veiling lashes.
+
+Michael answered her with a look, the male counterpart of her own, from
+dark Devon eyes, the upper lid arched in a perfect semicircle over pure
+grey. "Yes; but my wife must have a hundred a year of her own in
+Consols, to protect me from fortune-hunters--lone, lorn lamb that I am!"
+
+Sylvia emphasised the sigh with which she admitted her indigence. Her
+pretty eyebrows owned plaintively that she, a struggling artist, had no
+claim against the nation.
+
+"Mary has just a hundred a year," she said, her voice low-toned as she
+looked across the room to where, demure in braided locks and grey
+camlet, her companion sat knitting.
+
+"I daresay," Michael answered indifferently, following her eyes' flight
+and her tone's low pitch; "but she's young. I shall advertise for an
+elderly housekeeper. And _qui vivra verra_."
+
+The words, lightly cast on the thin soil of a foolish word-play with a
+pretty woman, bore fruit.
+
+A week later Michael Wood stood aghast before a tray heaped with
+letters, answers to his advertisement:
+
+     "Housekeeper wanted. Must be middle-aged. The older the better.
+     Salary, £500 a year."
+
+Not much, he had thought, £500 a year--if, by paying it, he might win a
+wife who would entitle him to an annual £15,000, whose declining years
+he might kindly cheer, and whose death would set him free to marry a
+wife whom he could love. His fancy drifted pleasantly towards Sylvia.
+
+Michael was a lazy man, who bristled with business instincts. He
+telephoned to the nearest "typewriters' association" for a secretary,
+and to this young woman he committed the charge of answering the letters
+which his advertisement had drawn forth. The answer was to be the same
+to all:
+
+     "Call at 17 Hare Court, Temple, between 11 and 1."
+
+And the dates fixed for such calling were arranged to allow about fifty
+interviews daily for the next week or two, for Michael was a bold man as
+well as a lazy one. The next morning, faultlessly dressed, with
+carnations in his buttonhole, he composed himself in his pleasant
+oak-furnished room to await his first batch of callers.
+
+They came. And Michael, strong in his unswerving determination not to
+forfeit his chance of inheriting the £15,000 a year left him under his
+mad uncle's mad will, saw them all, one after the other.
+
+But he did not like any of them. They were old; that he did not mind--it
+was, indeed, of the essence of the contract. But they were frowsy, too,
+with reticules of scarred brownish leather, and mangy fur trimmings,
+worn fringes, and beaded mantles, whence time and poverty had clawed
+handfuls of the bright beads. Each of them was, as a wife, even as a
+wife in name, impossible. The task of rejection was softened to his hand
+by the fact that not one of them could boast the necessary hundred a
+year in Consols.
+
+The interviews over, Michael, his spirit crushed by the spectacle of so
+many women anxious to find a refuge at an age when their children and
+grandchildren should, in their own homes, have been rising up to call
+them blessed, went to lounge a restorative hour in Sylvia's bright
+little studio, and laugh with her over his dilemma. He would have liked
+to sigh with her, too, but the pathos of the homeless old women escaped
+her. She saw only the humour of the situation.
+
+"There's no harm done, if it amuses you," she said, "but you'll never
+marry an old woman."
+
+"Fifteen thousand pounds a year," said Michael softly.
+
+Next day more poor old ladies, all eager, anxious, ineligible.
+
+It was on the third day that the old lady in dove-colour came in, sweet
+as a pressed flower in an old love-letter, dainty as a pigeon in spring.
+Her white hair, the white lace of her collar, the black lace of her
+mantle, her beautiful little hands in their perfect, dove-coloured
+gloves, all appealed irresistibly to Michael's æsthetic sense.
+
+"What an ideal housekeeper!" he said to himself, as he placed a chair
+for her. And then an odd thrill of discomfort and shame shot through
+him. This delicate, dainty old lady--he was to insult her by a form of
+marriage, and then to live near her, waiting for her death? No; it was
+impossible--the whole thing was impossible. He found himself in the
+middle of a sentence.
+
+"And so I fear I am already suited."
+
+The old lady raised eyebrows as delicate as Sylvia's own.
+
+"Hardly, I think," she said, "since your servant admitted me to an
+interview with you. May I ask you one or two questions before you
+finally decide against me?"
+
+The voice was low and soft--the voice men loved in the early sixties,
+before the shrill shriek became the voice of fashionable ladies.
+
+"Certainly," Michael said. He could hardly say less, and in the tumult
+of embarrassment that had swept over him, he could not for his life have
+said more.
+
+The old lady went on. "I am competent to manage a house. I can read
+aloud fairly well. I am a good nurse in case of sickness; and I am
+accustomed to entertain. But I gather from the amount of the salary
+offered that some other duties would be required of me?"
+
+"That's clever of her, too," Michael thought; "none of the others saw
+that."
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Would you enlighten me," she went on, "as to the nature of the services
+you would require?"
+
+"Ah--yes--of course," he said glibly, and then stopped short.
+
+"From your hesitation," said the old lady, with unimpaired
+self-possession, "I gather that the matter involves an explanation of
+some delicacy, or else--pardon the egotism--that my appearance is
+personally unpleasing to you."
+
+"No--oh, _no_," Michael said very eagerly; "on the contrary, if I may
+say so, it is just because you are so--so--exactly my ideal of an old
+lady, that I feel I can't go on with the business; and that's put
+stupidly, so that it sounds like an insult. Please forgive me."
+
+She looked him straight in the eyes through her gold-rimmed spectacles.
+
+"You see, I am old enough to be your grandmother," she said. "Why not
+tell me the truth?"
+
+And, to his horror and astonishment, he told it.
+
+"And that's what I meant to do," he ended. "It was a mad idea, and I see
+now that if I do it at all I must marry some one who is not--who is not
+like you. You have made me ashamed of myself."
+
+A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded cheek. The old lady put up her
+gloved hand and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She got up and
+walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.
+
+"If you _are_ going to do it," she said in a voice that was hardly
+audible, "I have been used to live among beautiful surroundings--I
+should like to end my days among them. I do not come of a long-lived
+family. You would not have long to wait for your freedom and your second
+wife."
+
+Never in all his days had Michael known so sharp an agony of
+embarrassment.
+
+"When must you be married," the old lady went on calmly, "to ensure your
+fortunes and estates?"
+
+"In about a month."
+
+"Well, Mr Wood, I make you a formal offer of marriage, and for
+reference I can give you my banker and my solicitor----"
+
+Her voice was calm; it was his voice that trembled as he answered: "You
+are too good. I can't see that it would be fair to you. May I think
+about it till to-morrow?"
+
+The contrast between the old lady's dainty correctness of attire and
+speech, and the extraordinary unconventionality of her proposal, made
+Michael's brain reel. She turned from the window, again looked him
+fairly in the eyes, and said: "You will not find me unconventional in
+other matters. This is purely an affair of business, and I approach it
+in a business spirit. You would be giving a home to one who wants it,
+and I should be helping you to what you need still more. I have never
+been married. I never wished to marry; and when I am dead---- Don't look
+so horror-stricken. I should not die any sooner because you--you had
+married me. My name is Thrale--Frances Thrale. That is my card that you
+have been pulling to pieces while you have been talking to me. Shall I
+come and see you again at this time to-morrow? It is not a subject on
+which I should wish either to write or to receive letters."
+
+He could only acquiesce. At the door the old lady turned.
+
+"If you think I look so old as to make your marriage too absurd," she
+said--and now, for the first time, her voice trembled--"I could dye my
+hair."
+
+"Oh no," Michael said, "your hair is beautiful. Good-bye, and thank
+you."
+
+As the old lady went down the dusty Temple stairs she stamped a small
+foot angrily on the worn oak.
+
+"Fool!" she said, "how could you? Hateful, shameless, unwomanly! And
+it's all for nothing, too. He'll never do it. It's _too_ mad!"
+
+Michael went straight to Sylvia, and told his tale.
+
+"And I felt I couldn't," he said; "she is the daintiest, sweetest little
+old lady. I couldn't marry her and see her every day and live in the
+hope of her death."
+
+"I don't see why not," Sylvia said, a little coldly. "She wouldn't die
+any sooner because you married her, and, anyway, she can't have long to
+live."
+
+The words were almost those of the little old lady herself. Yet--or
+perhaps for that very reason--they jarred on Michael's mood. He
+alleged business, and cut short his call.
+
+Next day Miss Thrale called again. Mr Wood was sorry to have given her
+so much trouble. He had decided that the idea was too wild, and must be
+abandoned.
+
+"Is it because I am too old?" said the old lady wistfully; "would you
+marry me if I were young?"
+
+"Upon my word, I believe I would," Michael surprised himself by saying.
+That it was not the answer Miss Thrale expected was evident from her
+smile of sudden amusement.
+
+"May I say," she said, "in return for what, in its way, is a compliment,
+that I like you very much. I would take care of you, and I shall perhaps
+not live more than a year or two."
+
+The tremor of her voice touched him. The £15,000 a year pulled at his
+will. In that instant he saw the broad glades of waving bracken, the big
+trees of the park, the sober face of the great house he might inherit,
+looking out over the smooth green lawns. He looked again at the little
+lady. After all, he was more than thirty. The world would laugh--well,
+they laughed best who laughed last. And, after a few years, there
+would be Sylvia--pretty, charming, enchanting Sylvia. He put the thought
+of her roughly away. Not because he was ashamed of it, but because it
+hurt him. The thought that Sylvia should wait for a dead woman's shoes
+had seemed natural; what hurt him was that she herself should see
+nothing unnatural in such waiting.
+
+The silence had grown to the limit that spells discomfort; the ticking
+of the tall clock, the rustle of the plane tree's leaves outside the
+window, the discords of Fleet Street harmonised by distance, all
+deepened the silence and italicised it. She spoke.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+The plane tree's leaves murmured eloquently of the great oaks in the
+park. The old lady's eyes looked at him appealingly through the
+pale-smoked glasses. How she would like that old place! And his
+debts--he could pay them all.
+
+"I will," he said suddenly; "if you will, I will; and I pray you may
+never regret it."
+
+"I don't think _you_ will regret it," she said gently; "it is a truly
+kind act to me."
+
+Bank and solicitor, duly consulted, testified to Miss Thrale's
+respectability and to her income--the requisite hundred a year in
+Consols. And on a certain day in June Michael Wood woke from a feverish
+dream, in which obstinacy and the longing for money had fought with many
+better things and worsted them, to find himself married to a
+white-haired woman of sixty.
+
+The awakening took place in his rooms in the Temple. He had yielded to
+the little old lady's entreaties, and consented, most willingly, to
+forego the "wedding journey," in this case so sad a mockery.
+
+The set was a large one--five rooms; it seemed that they might live
+here, and neither irk the other.
+
+And she was in the room he had caused to be prepared for her--dainty and
+neat as herself--and he, left alone in the room where he had first seen
+her, crossed his arms on the table, and thought. His wedding-day! And it
+might have been Sylvia, the rustle of whose dress he could hear in the
+next room. He groaned. Then he laid his head on his arms and cried--like
+a child that has lost its favourite toy: for he saw, suddenly, that
+respect for his old wife must keep him from ever seeing Sylvia now; and
+life looked grey as the Thames in February twilight.
+
+A timid hand on his shoulder startled him to the raising of his
+tear-stained face. The little old lady stood beside him.
+
+"Ah, don't!" she said softly--"don't! Believe me, it will be all right.
+Your old wife won't live more than a year--I know it. Take courage."
+
+"_Don't!_" he said in his turn; "it's a wicked thing I've done. Forgive
+me! If only we could have been friends. I can't bear to think I shall
+make you unhappy."
+
+"My dear boy," she said, "we are friends. I am your housekeeper. In a
+year at latest you will see the last of my white hairs. Be brave."
+
+He could not understand the pang her words gave him.
+
+And now began, for these two, a strange life. In those Temple
+rooms--ideal nest for young lovers--Mrs Wood, the white-haired, kept
+house with firm and capable little hands. Comfort, which Michael's lazy
+nature loved but could not achieve, reigned peacefully. The old lady
+kept much to her own rooms, but whenever he needed talk she was there.
+And she could talk. She had read much, reflected much. In her mind his
+own ideas found mating germs, and bore fruit of beautiful dreams, great
+thoughts. His verses--neglected this long time, since Sylvia did not
+care for poetry--flourished once more.
+
+And music--Sylvia's taste in music had been Sullivan; the old wife
+touched the piano with magic fingers, and Bach, Beethoven, Wagner came
+to transfigure the Temple rooms. Michael had never been so
+contented--never so wretched; for, as the quiet weeks went by, the
+leaves fell from the plane tree, and the time drew near when he must
+show his wife to the tenants--his white-haired wife. In these months a
+very real friendship had grown up between them. Michael had never met a
+woman, old or young, whose tastes chimed so tunefully with his own. Ah!
+what a pity he had not met a _young_ woman with these tastes--this soul.
+And now, liking, friendship, affection--all the finer, nobler side of
+love--he could indeed feel for his old wife; but love--lovers' love,
+that would set the seal on all the rest--this he might never know,
+except for some other woman, who would succeed to his wife's title.
+
+Badly as Michael had behaved, I think it is permissible to be sorry for
+him. His wife, in fact, was very sorry.
+
+One day he met Sylvia in the park, and all the other side of him
+thrilled with pleasure. He sat by her an hour, his eyes drinking in her
+fresh beauty, while his soul shrivelled more and more. Ah! why could she
+not _talk_, as his wife could, instead of merely chattering?
+
+His wife looked sad that evening. He asked the reason.
+
+"I saw you in the park to-day," she said. "Are you going to see her?
+Don't compromise her: it's not worth while."
+
+He kissed her hand in its black mitten, and in a flash of pain saw the
+black funeral, when she should be carried from his house, and he be left
+free to marry Sylvia.
+
+And now the days had dropped past; so even was their flow that it seemed
+rapid, and in another week it would be Christmas.
+
+"And I must show you to the tenants," said he.
+
+"My poor boy," she said--it was just as she had risen to bid him good
+night--"be brave. Perhaps it won't be so bad as you think. Good night."
+
+He sat still after she had left him, gazing into the fire, and thinking
+thoughts in which now the estate and the fortune played but little part.
+At last he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well," he said, "I have no lover, no wife; but I have a companion, a
+friend--one in a million." And again the black funeral trailed its slow
+length before his eyes, and he shuddered.
+
+I have not sought to deceive the reader. He knows as well as I do that
+at this moment the door opened, and a young and beautiful woman stood on
+the threshold. Her eyes were shining; round her neck were gleaming
+pearls. She was playing for a high stake, and being a true woman she had
+disdained no honest artifice that might help her. She wore shining white
+silk, severely plain, and her brown hair was dressed high on her head. A
+woman one shade less intuitive would have let the dusky masses fall over
+a lace-covered tea-gown.
+
+"Michael," she said, "I am your wife. Are you going to forgive me?"
+
+He raised himself slowly from his chair, and his eyes dwelt on detail
+after detail of the beauty before him.
+
+"My wife!" he said. "You are a stranger!"
+
+"I _did_ disguise myself well. My sister told me about your
+advertisement; she lives with Sylvia Maddox. We each have a hundred
+pounds a year. At first I did it for fun; but when I had seen how--how
+nice you were--my mother is very poor. There are no excuses. But are you
+going to forgive me?" Any other woman, to whom forgiveness meant all
+that it meant to her, might have kneeled at his feet. Frances stood
+erect by the door. "Anyway," she said, biting her lip, "I have saved you
+from Sylvia. For the sake of that, forgive me."
+
+That stung him, as she had known it would.
+
+"Forgive you?" he said. "Never. You've spoiled my life." But he took a
+step towards her as he spoke.
+
+She took an equal step back.
+
+"Take courage," she said. "Who knows but I may die before next June,
+after all. Good night."
+
+"I hate you," he said, and took another step forward. But the door
+closed in his face.
+
+Next morning the old lady, white haired and mittened, appeared behind
+the breakfast tea. Michael almost thought he had dreamed, till her eyes,
+now without their glasses, met his timidly.
+
+"Let us end this play-acting, at least," he said. Ten minutes of fuming
+ended in tepid tea poured by a beautiful brown-haired girl.
+
+He watched her in silence.
+
+"It's horrible," he broke out. "You're a strange woman, and there you
+sit, pouring tea out as if---- Who are you? I don't know you."
+
+"Don't you?" she said quietly. And then he remembered all the old talks
+with the old wife.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "I don't want to be a brute."
+
+"It's no use my saying I'm sorry," she said.
+
+"_Are_ you?" He leaned forward to put the question.
+
+"We must make the best of it," she said. "Perhaps---- Look here, don't
+let's speak of it till after Christmas; let's just go on as we did
+before."
+
+So the days wore on. But the situation when Michael lived in torment in
+the company of his old wife was simplicity itself compared to his new
+life with a wife--young, beautiful, and a stranger, yet in all
+essentials his dearest friend. This discomfort grew daily--hourly
+branching out into ever fresh embarrassments--new and harassing,
+vexatious, half understood, wholly resented.
+
+The wife had her burden to bear also. The laundress had only known the
+old wife as "Mrs Wood."
+
+"She thought I was your mother," the wife said when Michael propounded
+the difficulty. But the laundress's attitude to the new Mrs Wood had a
+sting that was almost punishment enough to the wife, had Michael only
+known, for all that she had done amiss.
+
+The hour of departure for the Christmas festivities at Wood Grange came
+as a relief from the persistent pinpricks of unexplained emotion which
+tormented him. His wife was young and beautiful, yet he was only
+conscious of repulsion. He hated her for her trickery. But most he hated
+her because she had cheated him of the old wife--the friend, the
+_confidante_, who had grown to be so much, and so much the best part, in
+his life. For now there was no confidence between the two--no talk, no
+reading, no music to brighten the Temple rooms. They lived in an almost
+complete silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every window of the Grange shone out with yellow light across the snow.
+For once Christmas had been kind and seasonable--a white sheet covered
+the world. Holly gleamed against old oak. Priceless silver, saved from
+the smelting-pot in Cromwell's hard days, shone above white napery on
+the long tables. The tenants' dinner was over, and now was the moment
+when, according to the will, Michael Wood's wife must be presented to
+the tenants then assembled.
+
+The slender figure in white woollen cloth and white fur, with Christmas
+roses at its breast, stood on the daïs at the end of the great hall, and
+the tenants cheered themselves hoarse at the mere sight of her beautiful
+face, her kind eyes.
+
+"It went off very well," Michael said when, the last guest gone, the
+last shutter closed, the last servant departed, the two stood alone in
+the long drawing-room.
+
+"Yes; think if you had had to present to them the old white-haired
+wife----"
+
+"I loved the old wife," he said obstinately; but his voice was not quite
+steady.
+
+"I wish," she said, playing with the Christmas roses she wore, "I wish
+you would try to forgive me. It was horribly wrong; but I began it as a
+joke. You see, I had only just come over from the convent where I was
+brought up. I thought it would be such fun: I was always good at
+theatricals. I will never do anything silly again. And to-morrow I'll go
+away, and you need never see me again. And you _have_ got the money and
+the old place, haven't you? And I got them for you--and--do forgive me.
+It began as a silly schoolgirl's joke indeed."
+
+"But--a convent! You have read and thought----"
+
+"It was my father. He made me read and think; and when he died all the
+money went, and my mother is poor. Oh, Michael, don't be so flinty! Say
+you forgive me before I go! It all began in a joke!"
+
+"Began. Yes. But why did you go on?"
+
+"Because I--I didn't like Sylvia--and I liked you--rather--but I won't
+be a nuisance. I'll go back to mother. Say you forgive me. I'll go by
+the first train in the morning."
+
+"The first train," said Michael absently, "is the 9.17; but to-morrow is
+Christmas Day--I daresay they'll run the same as on Sunday."
+
+She took her white cloak from the settle by the fire.
+
+"Good night," she said sadly; "you are very hard. Won't you even shake
+hands?"
+
+"We had no roses at our wedding," he said, still absently; "but there
+are roses at Christmas." He raised his hand to the white flowers she
+wore, and touched them softly. "White roses, too, for a wedding," he
+said.
+
+"Good night!" she said again.
+
+"And you will go to your mother to-morrow by the 9.17 train, or the
+10.5, if the trains run the same as on Sunday. And I am to forgive you,
+and shake hands before we part. Well, well!"
+
+He took the hand she held out, caught the other, and stood holding them,
+his grey eyes seeking hers. Her head thrown back, her hands stretched
+out, she looked at him from arm's length.
+
+"Dear!" he said.
+
+A mute glance questioned him. Then lashes longer than Sylvia's veiled
+the dark eyes.
+
+He spoke again. "Dear!"
+
+"You know you hate me," she said.
+
+He raised her hands to his lips.
+
+"Have you forgotten Sylvia?"
+
+"Absolutely, thank God! And you--I--after all, we are married, though
+there were no roses at our June wedding."
+
+Again her eyes questioned mutely.
+
+He leaned forward and touched the Christmas roses with his lips. Then he
+dropped her hands and caught her by the shoulders.
+
+"Oh! foolish, foolish, foolish people!" he said. "We two are man and
+wife. My wife! my wife! my wife! We are, aren't we?"
+
+"I suppose we are," she said, and her face leaned a little towards his.
+
+"Well, then!" said he.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
+
+
+The thief stood close under the high wall, and looked to right and left.
+To the right the road wound white and sinuous, lying like a twisted
+ribbon over the broad grey shoulder of the hill; to the left the road
+turned sharply down towards the river; beyond the ford the road went
+away slowly in a curve, prolonged for miles through the green marshes.
+
+No least black fly of a figure stirred on it. There were no travellers
+at such an hour on such a road.
+
+The thief looked across the valley, at the top of the mountain flushed
+with sunset, and at the grey-green of the olives about its base. The
+terraces of olives were already dusk with twilight, but his keen eyes
+could not have missed the smallest variance or shifting of their lights
+and shadows. Nothing stirred there. He was alone.
+
+Then, turning, he looked again at the wall behind him. The face of it
+was grey and sombre, but all along the top of it, in the crannies of the
+coping stones, orange wallflowers and sulphur-coloured snapdragons shone
+among the haze of feathery-flowered grasses. He looked again at the
+place where some of the stones had fallen from the coping--had fallen
+within the wall, for none lay in the road without. The bough of a mighty
+tree covered the gap with its green mantle from the eyes of any chance
+wayfarer; but the thief was no chance wayfarer, and he had surprised the
+only infidelity of the great wall to its trust.
+
+To the chance wayfarer, too, the wall's denial had seemed absolute,
+unanswerable. Its solid stone, close knit by mortar hardly less solid,
+showed not only a defence, it offered a defiance--a menace. But the
+thief had learnt his trade; he saw that the mortar might be loosened a
+little here, broken a little there, and now the crumbs of it fell
+rustling on to the dry, dusty grass of the roadside. He drew back, took
+two quick steps forward, and, with a spring, sudden and agile as a
+cat's, grasped the wall where the gap showed, and drew himself up. Then
+he rubbed his hands on his knees, because his hands were bloody from the
+sudden grasping of the rough stones, and sat astride on the wall.
+
+He parted the leafy boughs and looked down; below him lay the stones
+that had fallen from the wall--already grass was growing upon the mound
+they made. As he ventured his head beyond the green leafage, the level
+light of the sinking sun struck him in the eyes. It was like a blow. He
+dropped softly from the wall and stood in the shadow of the
+tree--looking, listening.
+
+Before him stretched the park--wide and still; dotted here and there
+with trees, and overlaid with gold poured from the west. He held his
+breath and listened. There was no wind to stir the leaves to those
+rustlings which may deceive and disconcert the keenest and the boldest;
+only the sleepy twitter of birds, and the little sudden soft movements
+of them in the dusky privacy of the thick-leaved branches. There was in
+all the broad park no sign of any other living thing.
+
+The thief trod softly along under the wall where the trees were
+thickest, and at every step he paused to look and listen.
+
+It was quite suddenly that he came upon the little lodge near the great
+gates of wrought iron with the marble gate-posts bearing upon them the
+two gaunt griffins, the cognisance of the noble house whose lands these
+were. The thief drew back into the shadow and stood still, only his
+heart beat thickly. He stood still as the tree trunk beside him,
+looking, listening. He told himself that he heard nothing--saw
+nothing--yet he became aware of things. That the door of the lodge was
+not closed, that some of its windows were broken, and that into its
+little garden straw and litter had drifted from the open door: and that
+between the stone step and the threshold grass was growing inches high.
+When he was aware of this he stepped forward and entered the lodge. All
+the sordid sadness of a little deserted home met him here--broken crocks
+and bent pans, straw, old rags, and a brooding, dusty stillness.
+
+"There has been no one here since the old keeper died. They told the
+truth," said the thief; and he made haste to leave the lodge, for there
+was nothing in it now that any man need covet--only desolation and the
+memory of death.
+
+So he went slowly among the trees, and by devious ways drew a little
+nearer to the great house that stood in its walled garden in the middle
+of the park. From very far off, above the green wave of trees that broke
+round it, he could see the towers of it rising black against the sunset;
+and between the trees came glimpses of its marble white where the faint
+grey light touched it from the east.
+
+Moving slowly--vigilant, alert, with eyes turning always to right and to
+left, with ears which felt the intense silence more acutely than they
+could have felt any tumult--the thief reached the low wall of the
+garden, at the western side. The last redness of the sunset's reflection
+had lighted all the many windows, and the vast place blazed at him for
+an instant before the light dipped behind the black bar of the trees,
+and left him face to face with a pale house, whose windows now were
+black and hollow, and seemed like eyes that watched him. Every window
+was closed; the lower ones were guarded by jalousies; through the glass
+of the ones above he could see the set painted faces of the shutters.
+
+From far off he had heard, and known, the plash-plash of fountains, and
+now he saw their white changing columns rise and fall against the
+background of the terrace. The garden was full of rose bushes trailing
+and unpruned; and the heavy, happy scent of the roses, still warm from
+the sun, breathed through the place, exaggerating the sadness of its
+tangled desolation. Strange figures gleamed in the deepening dusk, but
+they were too white to be feared. He crept into a corner where Psyche
+drooped in marble, and, behind her pedestal, crouched. He took food from
+his pockets and ate and drank. And between the mouthfuls he listened and
+watched.
+
+The moon rose, and struck a pale fire from the face of the house and
+from the marble limbs of the statues, and the gleaming water of the
+fountains drew the moonbeams into the unchanging change of its rise and
+fall.
+
+Something rustled and stirred among the roses. The thief grew rigid: his
+heart seemed suddenly hollow; he held his breath. Through the deepening
+shadows something gleamed white; and not marble, for it moved, it came
+towards him. Then the silence of the night was shattered by a scream, as
+the white shape glided into the moonlight. The thief resumed his
+munching, and another shape glimmered after the first. "Curse the
+beasts!" he said, and took another draught from his bottle, as the white
+peacocks were blotted out by the shadows of the trees, and the stillness
+of the night grew more intense.
+
+In the moonlight the thief went round and about the house, pushing
+through the trailing briers that clung to him--and now grown bolder he
+looked closely at doors and windows. But all were fast barred as the
+doors of a tomb. And the silence deepened as the moonlight waxed.
+
+There was one little window, high up, that showed no shutter. He looked
+at it; measured its distance from the ground and from the nearest of the
+great chestnut trees. Then he walked along under the avenue of chestnuts
+with head thrown back and eyes fixed on the mystery of their interlacing
+branches.
+
+At the fifth tree he stopped; leaped to the lowest bough, missed it;
+leaped again, caught it, and drew up his body. Then climbing, creeping,
+swinging, while the leaves, agitated by his progress, rustled to the
+bending of the boughs, he passed to that tree, to the next--swift,
+assured, unhesitating. And so from tree to tree, till he was at the
+last tree--and on the bough that stretched to touch the little window
+with its leaves.
+
+He swung from this. The bough bent and cracked, and would have broken,
+but that at the only possible instant the thief swung forward, felt the
+edge of the window with his feet, loosed the bough, sprang, and stood,
+flattened against the mouldings, clutching the carved drip-stone with
+his hands. He thrust his knee through the window, waiting for the tinkle
+of the falling glass to settle into quietness, opened the window, and
+crept in. He found himself in a corridor: he could see the long line of
+its white windows, and the bars of moonlight falling across the inlaid
+wood of its floor.
+
+He took out his thief's lantern--high and slender like a tall
+cup--lighted it, and crept softly along the corridor, listening between
+his steps till the silence grew to be like a humming in his ears.
+
+And slowly, stealthily, he opened door after door; the rooms were
+spacious and empty--his lantern's yellow light flashing into their
+corners told him this. Some poor, plain furniture he discerned, a
+curtain or a bench here and there, but not what he sought. So large was
+the house, that presently it seemed to the thief that for many hours he
+had been wandering along its galleries, creeping down its wide stairs,
+opening the grudging doors of the dark, empty rooms, whose silence spoke
+ever more insistently in his ears.
+
+"But it is as he told me," he said inwardly: "no living soul in all the
+place. The old man--a servant of this great house--he told me; he knew,
+and I have found all even as he said."
+
+Then the thief turned away from the arched emptiness of the grand
+staircase, and in a far corner of the hall he found himself speaking in
+a whisper because now it seemed to him that nothing would serve but that
+this clamorous silence should be stilled by a human voice.
+
+"The old man said it would be thus--all emptiness, and not profit to a
+man; and he died, and I tended him. Dear Jesus! how our good deeds come
+home to us! And he told me how the last of the great family had gone
+away none knew whither. And the tales I heard in the town--how the great
+man had not gone, but lived here in hiding---- It is not possible. There
+is the silence of death in this house."
+
+He moistened his lips with his tongue. The stillness of the place seemed
+to press upon him like a solid thing. "It is like a dead man on one's
+shoulders," thought the thief, and he straightened himself up and
+whispered again: "The old man said, 'The door with the carved griffin,
+and the roses enwreathed, and the seventh rose holds the secret in its
+heart.'"
+
+With that the thief set forth again, creeping softly across the bars of
+moonlight down the corridor.
+
+And after much seeking he found at last, under the angle of the great
+stone staircase behind a mouldering tapestry wrought with peacocks and
+pines, a door, and on it carved a griffin, wreathed about with roses. He
+pressed his finger into the deep heart of each carven rose, and when he
+pressed the rose that was seventh in number from the griffin, he felt
+the inmost part of it move beneath his finger as though it sought to
+escape. So he pressed more strongly, leaning against the door till it
+swung open, and he passed through it, looking behind him to see that
+nothing followed. The door he closed as he entered.
+
+And now he was, as it seemed, in some other house. The chambers were
+large and lofty as those whose hushed emptiness he had explored--but
+these rooms seemed warm with life, yet held no threat, no terror. To the
+dim yellow flicker from the lantern came out of the darkness hints of a
+crowded magnificence, a lavish profusion of beautiful objects such as he
+had never in his life dreamed of, though all that life had been one
+dream of the lovely treasures which rich men hoard, and which, by the
+thief's skill and craft, may come to be his.
+
+He passed through the rooms, turning the light of his lantern this way
+and that, and ever the darkness withheld more than the light revealed.
+He knew that thick tapestries hung from the walls, velvet curtains
+masked the windows; his hand, exploring eagerly, felt the rich carving
+of chairs and presses; the great beds were hung with silken cloth
+wrought in gold thread with glimmering strange starry devices. Broad
+sideboards flashed back to his lantern's questionings the faint white
+laugh of silver; the tall cabinets could not, with all their reserve,
+suppress the confession of wrought gold, and, from the caskets into
+whose depths he flashed the light, came the trembling avowal of rich
+jewels. And now, at last, that carved door closed between him and the
+poignant silence of the deserted corridors, the thief felt a sudden
+gaiety of heart, a sense of escape, of security. He was alone, yet
+warmed and companioned. The silence here was no longer a horror, but a
+consoler, a friend.
+
+And, indeed, now he was not alone. The ample splendours about him, the
+spoils which long centuries had yielded to the grasp of a noble
+family--these were companions after his own heart.
+
+He flung open the shade of his lantern and held it high above his head.
+The room still kept half its secrets. The discretion of the darkness
+should be broken down. He must see more of this splendour--not in
+unsatisfying dim detail, but in the lit gorgeous mass of it. The narrow
+bar of the lantern's light chafed him. He sprang on to the dining-table,
+and began to light the half-burnt chandelier. There were a hundred
+candles, and he lighted all, so that the chandelier swung like a vast
+living jewel in the centre of the hall. Then, as he turned, all the
+colour in the room leapt out at him. The purple of the couches, the
+green gleam of the delicate glass, the blue of the tapestries, and the
+vivid scarlet of the velvet hangings, and with the colour sprang the
+gleams of white from the silver, of yellow from the gold, of
+many-coloured fire from strange inlaid work and jewelled caskets, till
+the thief stood aghast with rapture in the strange, sudden revelation of
+this concentrated splendour.
+
+He went along the walls with a lighted candle in his hand--the wax
+dripped warm over his fingers as he went--lighting one after another,
+the tapers in the sconces of the silver-framed glasses. In the state
+bedchamber he drew back suddenly, face to face with a death-white
+countenance in which black eyes blazed at him with triumph and delight.
+Then he laughed aloud. He had not known his own face in the strange
+depths of this mirror. It had no sconces like the others, or he would
+have known it for what it was. It was framed in Venice glass--wonderful,
+gleaming, iridescent.
+
+The thief dropped the candle and threw his arms wide with a gesture of
+supreme longing.
+
+"If I could carry it all away! All, all! Every beautiful thing! To sell
+some--the less beautiful, and to live with the others all my days!"
+
+And now a madness came over the thief. So little a part of all these
+things could he bear away with him; yet all were his--his for the
+taking--even the huge carved presses and the enormous vases of solid
+silver, too heavy for him to lift--even these were his: had he not found
+them--he, by his own skill and cunning? He went about in the rooms,
+touching one after the other the beautiful, rare things. He caressed the
+gold and the jewels. He threw his arms round the great silver vases; he
+wound round himself the heavy red velvet of the curtain where the
+griffins gleamed in embossed gold, and shivered with pleasure at the
+soft clinging of its embrace. He found, in a tall cupboard,
+curiously-shaped flasks of wine, such wine as he had never tasted, and
+he drank of it slowly--in little sips--from a silver goblet and from a
+green Venice glass, and from a cup of rare pink china, knowing that any
+one of his drinking vessels was worth enough to keep him in idleness for
+a long year. For the thief had learnt his trade, and it is a part of a
+thief's trade to know the value of things.
+
+He threw himself on the rich couches, sat in the stately carved chairs,
+leaned his elbows on the ebony tables. He buried his hot face in the
+chill, smooth linen of the great bed, and wondered to find it still
+scented delicately as though some sweet woman had lain there but last
+night. He went hither and thither laughing with pure pleasure, and
+making to himself an unbridled carnival of the joys of possession.
+
+In this wise the night wore on, and with the night his madness wore
+away. So presently he went about among the treasures--no more with the
+eyes of a lover, but with the eyes of a Jew--and he chose those precious
+stones which he knew for the most precious, and put them in the bag he
+had brought, and with them some fine-wrought goldsmith's work and the
+goblet out of which he had drunk the wine. Though it was but of silver,
+he would not leave it. The green Venice glass he broke and the cup, for
+he said: "No man less fortunate than I, to-night, shall ever again drink
+from them." But he harmed nothing else of all the beautiful things,
+because he loved them.
+
+Then, leaving the low, uneven ends of the candles still alight, he
+turned to the door by which he had come in. There were two doors, side
+by side, carved with straight lilies, and between them a panel wrought
+with the griffin and the seven roses enwreathed. He pressed his finger
+in the heart of the seventh rose, hardly hoping that the panel would
+move, and indeed it did not; and he was about to seek for a secret
+spring among the lilies, when he perceived that one of the doors wrought
+with these had opened itself a little. So he passed through it and
+closed it after him.
+
+"I must guard my treasures," he said. But when he had passed through the
+door and closed it, and put out his hand to raise the tattered tapestry
+that covered it from without, his hand met the empty air, and he knew
+that he had not come out by the door through which he had entered.
+
+When the lantern was lighted, it showed him a vaulted passage, whose
+floor and whose walls were stone, and there was a damp air and a
+mouldering scent in it, as of a cellar long unopened. He was cold now,
+and the room with the wine and the treasures seemed long ago and far
+away, though but a door and a moment divided him from it, and though
+some of the wine was in his body, and some of the treasure in his hands.
+He set about to find the way to the quiet night outside, for this
+seemed to him a haven and a safeguard since, with the closing of that
+door, he had shut away warmth, and light, and companionship. He was
+enclosed in walls once more, and once more menaced by the invading
+silence that was almost a presence. Once more it seemed to him that he
+must creep softly, must hold his breath before he ventured to turn a
+corner--for always he felt that he was not alone, that near him was
+something, and that its breath, too, was held.
+
+So he went by many passages and stairways, and could find no way out;
+and after a long time of searching he crept by another way back to come
+unawares on the door which shut him off from the room where the many
+lights were, and the wine and the treasure. Then terror leaped out upon
+him from the dark hush of the place, and he beat on the door with his
+hands and cried aloud, till the echo of his cry in the groined roof
+cowed him back into silence.
+
+Again he crept stealthily by strange passages, and again could find no
+way except, after much wandering, back to the door where he had begun.
+
+And now the fear of death beat in his brain with blows like a hammer. To
+die here like a rat in a trap, never to see the sun alight again, never
+to climb in at a window, or see brave jewels shine under his lantern,
+but to wander, and wander, and wander between these inexorable walls
+till he died, and the rats, admitting him to their brotherhood, swarmed
+round the dead body of him.
+
+"I had better have been born a fool," said the thief.
+
+Then once more he went through the damp and the blackness of the vaulted
+passages, tremulously searching for some outlet, but in vain.
+
+Only at last, in a corner behind a pillar, he found a very little door
+and a stair that led down. So he followed it, to wander among other
+corridors and cellars, with the silence heavy about him, and despair
+growing thick and cold like a fungus about his heart, and in his brain
+the fear of death beating like a hammer.
+
+It was quite suddenly in his wanderings, which had grown into an aimless
+frenzy, having now less of search in it than of flight from the
+insistent silence, that he saw at last a light--and it was the light of
+day coming through an open door. He stood at the door and breathed the
+air of the morning. The sun had risen and touched the tops of the towers
+of the house with white radiance; the birds were singing loudly. It was
+morning, then, and he was a free man.
+
+He looked about him for a way to come at the park, and thence to the
+broken wall and the white road, which he had come by a very long time
+before. For this door opened on an inner enclosed courtyard, still in
+damp shadow, though the sun above struck level across it--a courtyard
+where tall weeds grew thick and dank. The dew of the night was heavy on
+them.
+
+As he stood and looked, he was aware of a low, buzzing sound that came
+from the other side of the courtyard. He pushed through the weeds
+towards it; and the sense of a presence in the silence came upon him
+more than ever it had done in the darkened house, though now it was day,
+and the birds sang all gaily, and the good sun shone so bravely
+overhead.
+
+As he thrust aside the weeds which grew waist-high, he trod on something
+that seemed to writhe under his feet like a snake. He started back and
+looked down. It was the long, firm, heavy plait of a woman's hair. And
+just beyond lay the green gown of a woman, and a woman's hands, and her
+golden head, and her eyes; all about the place where she lay was the
+thick buzzing of flies, and the black swarming of them.
+
+The thief saw, and he turned and he fled back to his doorway, and down
+the steps and through the maze of vaulted passages--fled in the dark,
+and empty-handed, because when he had come into the presence that
+informed that house with silence, he had dropped lantern and treasure,
+and fled wildly, the horror in his soul driving him before it. Now fear
+is more wise than cunning, so, whereas he had sought for hours with his
+lantern and with all his thief's craft to find the way out, and had
+sought in vain, he now, in the dark and blindly, without thought or
+will, without pause or let, found the one way that led to a door, shot
+back the bolts, and fled through the awakened rose garden and across the
+dewy park.
+
+He dropped from the wall into the road, and stood there looking eagerly
+to right and left. To the right the road wound white and sinuous, like a
+twisted ribbon over the great, grey shoulder of the hill; to the left
+the road curved down towards the river. No least black fly of a figure
+stirred on it. There are no travellers on such a road at such an hour.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE GIRL AT THE TOBACCONIST'S
+
+
+John Selwyn Selborne cursed for the hundredth time the fool that had
+bound him captive at the chariot wheels of beauty. That is to say, he
+cursed the fool he had been to trust himself in the automobile of that
+Brydges woman. The Brydges woman was pretty, rich, and charming;
+omniscience was her pose. She knew everything: consequently she knew how
+to drive a motor-car. She learned the lesson of her own incompetence at
+the price of a broken ankle and a complete suit of bruises. Selborne
+paid for his trusting folly with a broken collar-bone and a deep cut on
+his arm. That was why he could not go to Portsmouth to see the last of
+his young brother when he left home for the wars.
+
+This was why he cursed. The curse was mild--it was indeed less a curse
+than an invocation.
+
+"Defend us from women," he said; "above all from the women who think
+they know."
+
+The grey gloom that stood for dawn that day crept through the curtains
+and made ghosts of the shadows that lingered still in his room. He
+stretched himself wearily, and groaned as the stretched nerves vibrated
+to the chord of agony.
+
+"There's no fool like an old fool," said John Selwyn Selborne. He had
+thirty-seven years, and they weighed on him as the forty-seven when
+their time came would not do.
+
+He had said good-bye to the young brother the night before; here in this
+country inn, the nearest to the scene of the enlightenment of the
+Brydges woman. And to-day the boy sailed. John Selborne sighed.
+Twenty-two, and off to the wars, heart-whole. Whereas he had been
+invalided at the very beginning of things and now, when he was well and
+just on the point of rejoining--the motor-car and the Brydges woman! And
+as for heart-whole ... the Brydges woman again.
+
+He fell asleep. When he awoke there was full sunshine and an orchestra
+of awakened birds in the garden outside. There was tea--there were
+letters. One was from Sidney--Sidney, who had left him not twelve hours
+before.
+
+He tore it open, and hurt his shoulder in the movement.
+
+     "DEAR JOHN," said the letter, "I wanted to tell you last night,
+     but you seemed so cheap, I thought I'd better not bother you.
+     But it's just come into my head that perhaps I may get a bullet
+     in my innards, and I want you to know. So here goes. There's a
+     girl I mean to marry. I know she'll say Yes, but I can't ask
+     her till I come back, of course. I don't want to have any
+     humbug or concealing things from you; you've always been so
+     decent to me. I know you hate jaw, so I won't go on about that.
+     But I must tell you I met her first when she was serving in a
+     tobacconist's shop. And her mother lets lodgings. You'll think
+     this means she's beneath me. Wait till you see her. I want you
+     to see her, and make friends with her while I'm away."
+
+Here followed some lover's raptures, and the address of the lady.
+
+John Selborne lay back and groaned.
+
+Susannah Sheepmarsh, tobacconist's assistant, lodging-house keeper's
+daughter, and Sidney Selborne, younger son of a house whose pride was
+that it had been proud enough to refuse a peerage.
+
+John Selborne thought long and deeply.
+
+"I suppose I must sacrifice myself," he said. "Little adventuress! 'How
+easy to prove to him,' I said, 'that an eagle's the game her pride
+prefers, though she stoops to a wren instead.' The boy'll hate me for a
+bit, but he'll thank me later. Yalding? That's somewhere on the Medway.
+Fishing? Boating? Convalescence is good enough. Fiction aid us! What
+would the villain in a book do to come between fond lovers? He would
+take the lodgings: at least he would try. And one may as well do
+something."
+
+So he wrote to Mrs Sheepmarsh--she had rooms to let, he heard. Terms?
+And Mrs Sheepmarsh wrote back; at least her reply was typewritten, which
+was a bit of a shock. She had rooms. They were disengaged. And the terms
+were thus and such.
+
+Behold John Selwyn Selborne then, his baggage neatly labelled with his
+first and second names, set down on the little platform of Yalding
+Station. Behold him, waggonette-borne, crossing the old stone bridge and
+the golden glory of the Leas, flushed with sunset.
+
+Mrs Sheepmarsh's house was long and low and white. It had a classic
+porch, and at one end a French window opened through cascades of jasmine
+to a long lawn. There were many trees. A middle-aged lady in decent
+black, with a white cap, and white lace about her neck, greeted him with
+formal courtesy. "This way," she said, and moved for him to follow her
+through a green gate and down a shrubbery that led without disguise or
+pretence straight away from the house. It led also to a little white
+building embowered in trees. "Here," said the lady. She opened the door.
+"I'll tell the man to bring your luggage. Good evening----"
+
+And she left him planted there. He had to bend his head to pass under
+the low door, and he found himself in a tiny kitchen. Beyond were a
+sitting-room and two bedchambers. All fitted sparsely, but with old
+furniture, softly-faded curtains, quiet and pleasant to look upon. There
+were roses in a jug of Grès de Flandre on the gate-table in the
+sitting-room.
+
+"What a singular little place!" he said. "So these are the lodgings. I
+feel like a dog in a kennel. I suppose they will throw me a bone
+by-and-by--or, at any rate, ask me what kind of bones I prefer."
+
+He unpacked his clothes and laid his belongings in the drawers and
+cupboards; it was oddly charming that each shelf or drawer should have
+its own little muslin bag of grey lavender. Then he took up a book and
+began to read. The sunset had died away, the daylight seemed to be
+glowing out of the low window like a tide, leaving bare breadths of
+darkness behind. He lighted candles. He was growing hungry--it was past
+eight o'clock.
+
+"I believe the old lady has forgotten my existence," he said, and
+therewith opened his cottage door and went out into the lighter twilight
+of the garden. The shrubbery walks were winding. He took the wrong
+turning, and found himself entering on the narrow lawn. From the French
+window among the jasmine came lamplight--and voices.
+
+"No servant, no food? My good mother, you've entertained a lunatic
+unawares."
+
+"He had references."
+
+"Man cannot live by references alone. The poor brute must be
+starving--unless he's drunk."
+
+"Celia! I do wish you wouldn't----"
+
+John Selborne hastening by, put a period to the conversation by boots
+crunching heavily and conscientiously on the gravel. Both voices
+ceased. He presented himself at the lamp-lit oblong of the window.
+
+Within that lamplight glowed on the last remnants of a meal--dinner, by
+the glasses and the fruit. Also on the lady in the cap, and on a
+girl--the one, doubtless, who had evolved the lunatic idea. Both faces
+were turned towards him. Both women rose: there was nothing for it but
+advance. He murmured something about intrusion--"awfully sorry, the
+walks wind so," and turned to go.
+
+But the girl spoke: "Oh, wait a moment. Is this Mr Selwyn, mother?"
+
+"My daughter, Miss Sheepmarsh--Mr Selwyn," said the mother reluctantly.
+
+"We were just talking about you," said the girl, "and wondering whether
+you were ill or anything, or whether your servant hasn't turned up, or
+something."
+
+"Miss Sheepmarsh." He was still speechless. This the little adventuress,
+the tobacconist's assistant? This girl with the glorious hair severely
+braided, the round face, the proud chin, the most honest eyes in the
+world? She might be sister to the adventuress--cousin, perhaps? But the
+room, too--shining mahogany, old china, worn silver, and fine
+napery--all spoke of a luxury as temperate as refined: the luxury of
+delicate custom, of habit bred in the bone; no mushroom growth of gross
+self-indulgence, but the unconscious outcome of generations of clear
+self-respect.
+
+"Can we send anything over for you?" the elder lady asked. "Of course
+we----"
+
+"We didn't mean by 'entirely private' that we would let our tenant
+starve," the girl interrupted.
+
+"There is some mistake." Selborne came to himself suddenly. "I thought I
+was engaging furnished apartments with er--attendance."
+
+The girl drew a journal from a heap on the sofa.
+
+"This was the advertisement, wasn't it?" she asked.
+
+And he read:
+
+     "Four-roomed cottage, furnished, in beautiful grounds. Part of
+     these are fenced in for use of tenant of cottage. And in the
+     absence of the family the whole of the grounds are open to
+     tenant. When at home the family wish to be entirely private."
+
+"I never saw this at all," said Selborne desperately. "My--I mean I was
+told it was furnished lodgings. I am very sorry I have no servant and
+no means of getting one. I will go back to London at once. I am sorry."
+
+"The last train's gone," said Miss Sheepmarsh. "Mother, ask Mr Selborne
+to come in, and I'll get him something to eat."
+
+"My dear," said the mother, "surely Mary----"
+
+"My dear mother," said the girl, "you know Mary is having her supper."
+
+The bewildered Selborne presently found himself seated at the
+white-spread, silver-sparkling table, served with food and drink by this
+Hebe with the honest eyes. He exerted himself to talk with the
+mother--not of the difference between a lodger and a tenant, but of
+music, art, and the life of the great world.
+
+It was the girl who brought the conversation down from the gossip of
+Courts and concert-rooms to the tenant's immediate needs.
+
+"If you mean to stay, you could have a woman in from the village," said
+she.
+
+"But wouldn't you rather I went?" he said.
+
+"Why should we? We want to let the cottage, or we shouldn't have
+advertised it. I'll get you some one to-morrow. Mrs Bates would be the
+very thing, mother. And you'll like her, Mr Selwyn. She's a great
+dear----"
+
+Sure enough, the next morning brought a gentle, middle-aged woman to "do
+for" Mr Selwyn. And she did excellently. And three slow days passed. He
+got a boat and pulled up and down the green willow-fringed river. He
+tried to fish; he read somewhat, and he thought more. And he went in and
+out of his cottage, which had its own private path debouching on the
+highway. Many times a day he went in and out, but he saw no more the red
+hair, the round face, and the honest eyes.
+
+On the fourth day he had nursed his interest in the girl to a strong,
+well-grown sentiment of curiosity and attraction. Coming in at his own
+gate, he saw the mother leaving hers, with sunshade and cardcase--an
+afternoon of calls evidently setting in.
+
+Now or never! The swift impulse took him, and before he had time to
+recall the terms of that advertisement, he had passed the green fence of
+division, and his feet were on the wandering ways of the shrubbery. He
+felt, as he went, a glow of gratitude to the fate which was rewarding
+his care of his brother's future with an interest like this. The
+adventuress?--the tobacconist's assistant?--he could deal with her
+later.
+
+Through the garden's green a gleam of white guided--even, it seemed,
+beckoned.
+
+He found the girl with the red hair and the honest eyes in a hammock
+swung between two cedars.
+
+"Have pity on me," he said abruptly.
+
+She raised her eyes from her book.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" she said. "I am so glad. Get a chair from under the
+weeping ash, and sit down and talk."
+
+"This turf is good enough for me," said he; "but are you sure I'm not
+trespassing?"
+
+"You mean the advertisement? Oh, that was just because we had some
+rather awful people last year, and we couldn't get away from them, and
+mother wanted to be quite safe; but, of course, you're different. We
+like you very much, what we've seen of you." This straightforward
+compliment somehow pleased him less than it might have done. "The other
+people were--well, he was a butterman. I believe he called himself an
+artist."
+
+"Do you mean that you do not like persons who are in trade," he asked,
+thinking of the tobacconist's assistant.
+
+"Of course I don't mean that," she said; "why, I'm a Socialist!
+Butterman just means a person without manners or ideals. But I do like
+working people better than shoppy people, though I know it's wrong."
+
+"How can an involuntary liking or disliking be wrong?" he asked.
+
+"It's snobbish, don't you think? We ought to like people for what they
+are, not for what they have, or what they work at."
+
+"If you weren't so pretty, and hadn't that delightful air of having just
+embraced the Social Gospel, you'd be a prig," he said to himself. To her
+he said: "Roughly speaking, don't you think the conventional
+classifications correspond fairly well with the real ones?"
+
+"No," she answered roundly.
+
+And when the mother returned, weary from her calls, she found her tenant
+and her daughter still discussing the problems of good and evil, of
+heredity and environment, of social inequalities and the injustice of
+the world. The girl fought for her views, and she fought fairly, if
+fiercely. It was the first of many such fights. When he had gone the
+mother protested.
+
+"Dearest," said the girl, "I can't help it! I must live my own life, as
+people say in plays. After all, I'm twenty-six. I've always talked to
+people if I liked them--even strangers in railway carriages. And people
+aren't wild beasts, you know: everything is always all right. And this
+man can talk; he knows about things. And he's a gentleman. That ought to
+satisfy you--that and his references. Don't worry, there's a darling.
+Just be nice to him yourself. He's simply a godsend in a place like
+this."
+
+"He'll fall in love with you, Celia," said the mother warningly.
+
+"Not he!" said the daughter. But the mother was right.
+
+Living alone in the queer little cottage, the world, his accustomed
+life, the Brydges woman, all seemed very far away. Miss Sheepmarsh was
+very near. Her frank enjoyment of his talk, her gay acceptance of their
+now almost constant companionship, were things new in his experience of
+women, and might have warned him that she at least was heart-whole. They
+would have done had he ever faced the fact that his own heart had caught
+fire. He bicycled with her along the pleasant Kentish lanes; he rowed
+with her on the little river of dreams; he read to her in the quiet of
+the August garden; he gave himself up wholly to the pleasure of those
+hours that flew like moments--those days that passed like hours. They
+talked of books and of the heart of books--and inevitably they talked of
+themselves. He talked of himself less than most men, but he learned much
+of her life. She was an ardent social reformer; had lived in an
+Art-and-Culture-for-the-People settlement in Whitechapel; had studied at
+the London School of Economics. Now she had come back to be with her
+mother, who needed her. She and her mother were almost alone in the
+world; there was enough to live on, but not too much. The letting of the
+little house had been Celia's idea: its rent was merely for "luxuries."
+He found out from the mother, when she came to tolerate him, that the
+"luxuries" were Celia's--the luxuries of helping the unfortunate,
+feeding the hungry, and clothing little shivering children in winter
+time.
+
+And all this while he had not heard a word of sister or cousin--of any
+one whom he might identify as the tobacconist's assistant.
+
+It was on an evening when the level sunbeams turned the meadows by the
+riverside to fine gold, and the willows and alders to trees of Paradise,
+that he spoke suddenly, leaning forward on his sculls. "Have you," he
+asked, looking into her face, "any relation who is in a shop?"
+
+"No," said she; "why?"
+
+"I only wondered," said he coldly.
+
+"But what an extraordinary thing to wonder!" she said. "Do tell me what
+made you think of it."
+
+"Very well," he said, "I will. The person who told me that your mother
+had lodgings, also told me that your mother had a daughter who served in
+a shop."
+
+"Never!" she cried. "What a hateful idea!"
+
+"A tobacconist's shop," he persisted; "and her name was Susannah
+Sheepmarsh."
+
+"Oh," she answered, "that was me." She spoke instantly and frankly, but
+she blushed crimson.
+
+"And you're ashamed of it,--Socialist?" he asked with a sneer, and his
+eyes were fierce on her burning face.
+
+"I'm not! Row home, please. Or I'll take the sculls if you're tired, or
+your shoulder hurts. I don't want to talk to you any more. You tried to
+trap me into telling a lie. You don't understand anything at all. And
+I'll never forgive you."
+
+"Yes, you will," he said to himself again and again through the silence
+in which they plashed down the river. But when he was alone in his
+cottage, the truth flew at him and grappled him with teeth and claws. He
+loved her. She loved, or had loved--or might have loved--or might
+love--his brother. He must go: and the next morning he went without a
+word. He left a note for Mrs Sheepmarsh, and a cheque in lieu of notice;
+and letter and cheque were signed with his name in full.
+
+He went back to the old life, but the taste of it all was gone. Shooting
+parties, house parties, the Brydges woman even, prettier than ever, and
+surer of all things: how could these charm one whose fancy, whose heart
+indeed, wandered for ever in a green garden or by a quiet river with a
+young woman who had served in a tobacconist's shop, and who would be
+some day his brother's wife?
+
+The days were long, the weeks seemed interminable. And all the time
+there was the white house, as it had been; there were mother and
+daughter living the same dainty, dignified, charming life to which he
+had come so near. Why had he ever gone there? Why had he ever
+interfered? He had meant to ensnare her heart just to free his brother
+from an adventuress. An adventuress! He groaned aloud.
+
+"Oh, fool! But you are punished!" he said; "she's angry now--angrier
+even than that evening on the river, for she knows now that even the
+name you gave her to call you by was not the one your own people use.
+This comes of trying to act like an ass in a book."
+
+The months went on. The Brydges woman rallied him on his absent air. She
+spoke of dairymaids. He wondered how he could ever have found her
+amusing, and whether her vulgarity was a growth, or had been merely
+hidden.
+
+And all the time Celia and the white house were dragging at his
+heart-strings. Enough was left of the fool that he constantly reproached
+himself for having been, to make him sure that had he had no brother,
+had he met her with no duty to the absent to stand between them she
+would have loved him.
+
+Then one day came the South African mail, and it brought a letter from
+his brother, the lad who had had the sense to find a jewel behind a
+tobacconist's counter, and had trusted it to him.
+
+The letter was long and ineffective. It was the postscript that was
+vital.
+
+     "I say, I wonder whether you've seen anything of Susannah? What
+     a young fool I was ever to think I could be happy with a girl
+     out of a shop. I've met the real and only one now--she's a
+     nurse; her father was a clergyman in Northumberland. She's such
+     a bright little thing, and she's never cared for any one before
+     me. Wish me luck."
+
+John Selborne almost tore his hair.
+
+"Well, I can't save him across half the world! Besides----"
+
+At thirty-seven one should have outgrown the wild impulses of youth. He
+said this to himself, but all the same it was the next train to Yalding
+that he took.
+
+Fate was kind; at Yalding it had almost always been kind. The glow of
+red firelight shone out over the snow through the French window among
+the brown jasmine stalks.
+
+Mrs Sheepmarsh was out, Miss Sheepmarsh was at home. Would he step this
+way?
+
+He stepped into the presence of the girl. She rose from the low chair by
+the fire, and the honest eyes looked angrily at him.
+
+"Look here," he said, as the door closed between them and the
+maid-servant, "I've come to tell you things. Just this once let me talk
+to you; and afterwards, if you like, I can go away and never come back."
+
+"Sit down," she said coldly. "I don't feel friends with you at all, but
+if you want to speak, I suppose you must."
+
+So then he told her everything, beginning with his brother's letter, and
+ending with his brother's letter.
+
+"And, of course, I thought it couldn't be you, because of your being
+called Celia; and when I found out it really was you, I had to go away,
+because I wanted to be fair to the boy. But now I've come back."
+
+"I think you're the meanest person I ever knew," she said; "you thought
+I liked your brother, and you tried to make me like you so that you
+might throw me over and show him how worthless I was. I hate you and
+despise you."
+
+"I didn't really try," he said miserably.
+
+"And you took a false name to deceive us."
+
+"I didn't: it really is my second name."
+
+"And you came here pretending to be nice and a gentleman, and----" She
+was lashing herself to rage, with the lash of her own voice, as women
+will. John Selborne stood up suddenly.
+
+"Be quiet," he said, and she was quiet. "I won't hear any more
+reproaches, unless---- Listen, I've done wrong--I've owned it. I've
+suffered for it. God knows I've suffered. You liked me in the summer:
+can't you try to like me again? I want you more than anything else in
+the world. Will you marry me?"
+
+"Marry you," she cried scornfully; "you who----"
+
+"Pardon me," he said. "I have asked a question. Give me no for an
+answer, and I will go. Say yes, and then you may say anything else you
+like. Yes or no. Shall I go or stay? Yes or no. No other word will do."
+
+She looked at him, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing with
+indignation. A world of scorn showed in the angle of the chin, the poise
+of her head. Her lips opened. Then suddenly her eyes met his, and she
+knew that he meant what he said. She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Don't--don't cry, dear one," he said. "What is it? You've only to
+choose. Everything is for you to decide."
+
+Still she did not speak.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said, and turned. But she caught at him blindly.
+
+"Don't--don't go!" she cried. "I didn't think I cared about you in the
+summer, but since you went away, oh, you don't know how I've wanted
+you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," he said, when her tears were dried, "aren't you going to scold
+me?"
+
+"Don't!" said she.
+
+"At least tell me all about my brother--and why he thought you would be
+so ready to marry him."
+
+"That? Oh, that was only his conceit. You know I always do talk to
+people in railway carriages and things. I suppose he thought it was only
+him I talked to."
+
+"And the name?"
+
+"I--I thought if I said my name was Susannah he wouldn't get
+sentimental."
+
+"You 'took a false name to deceive him'?"
+
+"Don't--oh, don't!"
+
+"And the tobacco shop?"
+
+"Ah--that rankles?" She raised her head to look at him.
+
+"Not it," he answered coolly. "I simply don't believe it."
+
+"Why? But you're quite right. It was a woman in my district in London,
+and I took the shop for her for three days, because her husband was
+dying, and she couldn't get any one else to help her. It was--it was
+rather fun--and--and----"
+
+"And you wouldn't tell me about it, because you didn't want me to know
+how proud you were of it."
+
+"Proud? Ah, you do understand things! The man died, and I had given her
+those three days with him. I wasn't proud, was I?--only glad that I
+could. So glad--so glad!"
+
+"But you let my brother think----"
+
+"Oh yes, I let him think it was my trade; I thought it might make him
+not be silly. You see, I always knew he couldn't understand things."
+
+"Celia?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And have you really forgiven me?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I forgive you! But I never should have if---- There's mother
+at the front door. Let me go. I want to let her in myself."
+
+"If?"
+
+"Let me go. If----"
+
+"If?"
+
+"If you hadn't understood and----"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"If you hadn't come back to me!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHILE IT IS YET DAY
+
+
+"And is it really true? Are you going to govern the Fortunate Islands?"
+
+"I am, indeed--or rather, to be accurate, I am going to deputy-govern
+them--I mean, father is--for a year."
+
+"A whole year!" he said, looking down at her fan. "What will London do
+without you?"
+
+"London will do excellently," she answered--"and that's my pet fan, and
+it's not used to being tied into knots." She took it from him.
+
+"And what shall I do without you?"
+
+"Oh! laugh and rhyme and dance and dine. You'll go out to the proper
+number of dinners and dances, and make the proper measure of pretty
+little speeches and nice little phrases; and you'll do your reviews, and
+try to make them as like your editor's as you can; and you'll turn out
+your charming little rondeaux and triolets, and the year will simply
+fly. Heigho! I'm glad I'm going to see something big, if it's only the
+Atlantic."
+
+"You are very cruel," he said.
+
+"Am I? But it's not cruel to be cruel if nobody's hurt, is it? And I am
+so tired of nice little verses and pretty little dances and dainty
+little dinners. Oh, if I were only a man!"
+
+"Thank God you're not!" said he.
+
+"If I were a man, I would do just one big thing in my life, even if I
+had to settle down to a life of snippets and trifles afterwards."
+
+Her eyes were shining. They always glittered, but now they were starry.
+The drifted white folds across her breast stirred to her quickened
+breath.
+
+"If you loved me, Sybil, I could do something great!" said he.
+
+"But I _don't_," she said--"at any rate, not now; and I've told you so a
+dozen times. My dear Rupert, the man who needs a woman to save him isn't
+worth the saving."
+
+"What would you call a big thing?" he asked. "Must I conquer an empire
+for you, or start a new religion? Or shall I merely get the Victoria
+Cross, or become Prime Minister?"
+
+"Don't sneer," said she; "it doesn't become you at all. You've no idea
+how horrid you look when you're sneering. Why don't you----? Oh! but
+it's no good! By the way, what a charming cover Housman has designed for
+your _Veils and Violets_! It's a dear little book. Some of the verses
+are quite pretty."
+
+"Go on," said he, "rub it in. I know I haven't done much yet; but
+there's plenty of time. And how can one do any good work when one is for
+ever sticking up one's heart like a beastly cocoanut for you to shy at?
+If you'd only marry me, Sybil, you should see how I would work!"
+
+"May I refer you to my speech--not the last one, but the one before
+that."
+
+He laughed; then he sighed.
+
+"Ah, my Pretty," he said, "it was all very well, and pleasant enough to
+be scolded by you when I could see you every day; but now----"
+
+"How often," she asked calmly, "have I told you that you must not call
+me that? It was all very well when we were children; but now----"
+
+"Look here," he said, leaning towards her, "there's not a soul about;
+they're in the middle of the Lancers. Let me kiss you once--it can't
+matter to you--and it will mean so very much to me."
+
+"That's just it," she said; "if it didn't mean----"
+
+"Then it shan't mean anything but good-bye. It's only about eight years
+since you gave up the habit of kissing me on every occasion."
+
+She looked down, then she looked to right and left, then suddenly she
+looked at him.
+
+"Very well," she said suddenly.
+
+"No," he said; "I won't have it unless it _does_ mean something."
+
+There was a silence. "Our dance, I think?" said the voice of one bending
+before her, and she was borne away on the arm of the partner from whom
+she had been hiding.
+
+Rupert left early. He had not been able to secure any more dances with
+her. She left late. When she came to think the evening over, she sighed
+more than once. "I wish I loved him a little less, or a little more,"
+she said; "and I wish--yes, I do wish he had. I don't suppose he'll care
+a bit for me when I come back."
+
+So she set sail for the Fortunate or other Isles, and in dainty verses
+on loss and absence he found some solace for the pain of parting with
+her. Yet the pain was a real thing, and grew greater, and life seemed to
+have no taste, even tobacco no charm. She had always been a part of his
+life since the days when nothing but a sunk fence divided his father's
+park from her father's rabbit-warren. He grew paler, and he developed a
+wrinkle or two, and a buoyant friend meeting him in Piccadilly assured
+him that he looked very much off colour, and in his light-hearted way
+the friend advised the sort of trip round the world from which yesterday
+had seen his own jovial return.
+
+"Do you all the good in the world, my boy. 'Pon my soul, you have a
+tired sort of look, as if you'd got some of these jolly new diseases
+people have taken to dying of lately--appendi-what's-its-name, you know,
+and things like that. You book your passage to Marseilles at once. So
+long! You take my tip."
+
+What Rupert took was a cab. He looked at himself in one of the little
+horseshoe mirrors. He certainly did look ill; and he felt ill--tired,
+bored, and nothing seemed worth while. He drove to a doctor friend, who
+punched and prodded him and listened with tubes at his chest and back,
+looked grave, and said: "Go to Strongitharm--he's absolutely at _the_
+top. Twenty-guinea fee. But it's better to know where we are. You go to
+Strongitharm."
+
+Rupert went, and Strongitharm gave his opinion. He gave it with a voice
+that trembled with sympathy, and he supplemented it with
+brandy-and-soda, which he happened to have quite handy.
+
+Then Rupert disappeared from London and from his friends--disappeared
+suddenly and completely. He had plenty of money, and no relations near
+enough to be inconveniently anxious. He went away and he left no
+address, and he did not even write excuses to the people with whom he
+should have danced and dined, nor to the editor whose style he should
+have gone on imitating.
+
+The buoyant friend rejoiced at the obvious and natural following of his
+advice.
+
+"He was looking a little bit below himself, you know, and I said: 'Go
+round the world; there's nothing like it,' and, by Jove! he went. Now,
+that's the kind of man I like--knows good advice when he gets it, and
+acts on it right off."
+
+So the buoyant one spread the rumour that ran its course and died, and
+had to be galvanised into life once more to furnish an answer to Sybil's
+questionings, when, returning from the Fortunate or other Isles, she
+asked for news of her old friend. And the rumour did not satisfy her.
+She had had time to think--there was plenty of time to think in those
+Islands whose real name escapes me--and she knew very much more than she
+had known on the evening when Rupert had broken her pet fan and asked
+for a kiss which he had not taken. She found herself quite fervently
+disbelieving in the grand tour theory--and the disbelief was so strong
+that it distorted life and made everything else uninteresting. Sybil
+took to novel-reading as other folks have in their time taken to drink.
+She was young, and she could still lose herself in a book. One day she
+lost herself most completely in a new novel from Mudie's, a book that
+every one was talking about. She lost herself; and suddenly, in a
+breathless joy that was agony too, she found _him_. This was his book.
+No one but Rupert could have written it--all that description of the
+park, and the race when she rode the goat and he rode the pig--and--she
+turned the pages hastily. Ah yes, Rupert had written this! She put the
+book down and she dressed herself as prettily as she knew how, and she
+went in a hansom cab to the office of the publisher of that book, and on
+the way she read. And more and more she saw how great a book it was, and
+how no one but Rupert could have written just that book. Thrill after
+thrill of pride ran through her. He had done this _for her_--because of
+what she had said.
+
+Arrived at the publisher's, she was met by a blank wall. Neither partner
+was visible. The senior clerk did not know the address of the author of
+"Work While it is Yet Day," nor the name of him; and it was abundantly
+evident that even if he had known, he would not have told.
+
+Sybil's prettiness and her charm so wrought upon this dry-as-dust
+person, however, that he volunteered the address of the literary agent
+through whom the book had been purchased. And Sybil found him on a first
+floor in one of those imposing new buildings in Arundel Street. He was
+very nice and kind, but he could not give his client's name without his
+client's permission.
+
+The disappointment was bitter.
+
+"But I'll send a letter for you," he tried to soften it with.
+
+Sybil's self-control almost gave way. A tear glistened on her veil.
+
+"I do want to see him most awfully," she said, "and I know he wants to
+see me. It was I who rode the goat in the book, you know----"
+
+She did not realise how much she was admitting, but the literary agent
+did.
+
+"Look here," he said smartly, "I'll wire to him at once; and if he says
+I may, I'll give you the address. Can you call in an hour?"
+
+Sybil wandered on the Embankment for a conscientious hour, and then went
+back.
+
+The literary agent smiled victory.
+
+"The answer is 'Yes,'" he said, and handed her a slip of paper--
+
+     "THREE CHIMNEYS,
+          NEAR PADDOCK WOOD,
+                       KENT."
+
+"Have you a time-table?" asked she.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dusty, hired fly lumbered and jolted along the white roads, and in
+it, as in the train, Sybil read the novel, the book every one was
+talking about--the great book--and her heart was full to overflowing of
+joy and pride and other things.
+
+The carriage shook itself fiercely and stopped, and she looked up from
+the last page of the book with eyes that swam a little, to find herself
+at the broken wooden gate of a low, white house, shabbily blindless, and
+a long way off its last painting and whitewashing.
+
+She paid for the carriage and dismissed it. She would walk back to the
+station with _him_. She passed in at the rickety gate and up the flagged
+path, and a bell in answer to her touch jangled loudly, as bells do in
+empty houses.
+
+Her dress was greeny, with lace about it of the same colour as very nice
+biscuits, and her hat seemed to be made entirely of yellow roses. She
+was not unconscious of these facts.
+
+Steps sounded within, and they, like the bell, seemed to sound in an
+empty house. The door opened, and there was Rupert. Sybil's lips were
+half-parted in a smile that should match the glow of gladness that must
+shine on his face when he saw her--Her--the unattainable, the
+unapproachable, at his very door. But her smile died away, for his face
+was grave. Only in his eyes something that was bright and fierce and
+like a flame leapt up and shone a moment.
+
+"You!" he said.
+
+And Sybil answered as most people do to such questions: "Yes, me." There
+was a pause: her eyes wandered from his to the blank face of the house,
+the tangle of the untidy garden. "Mayn't I come in?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; oh yes, come in!"
+
+She crossed the threshold--the doorstep was dank with green mould--and
+followed him into a room. It was a large room, and perfectly bare: no
+carpet, no curtains, no pictures. Loose bricks were arranged as a
+fender, and dead embers strewed the hearth. There was a table; there was
+a chair; there were scattered papers, pens, and ink. From the window one
+saw the neglected garden, and beyond it the round shoulders of the
+hills.
+
+He drew forward the one chair, and she sat down. He stood with his back
+to the fireless grate.
+
+"You are very, very pretty," he said suddenly. And the explanation of
+his disappearance suddenly struck her like a blow between the eyes. But
+she was not afraid. When all a woman's thoughts, day and night for a
+year, have been given to one man, she is not afraid of him; no, not even
+if he be what Sybil for one moment feared that this man was. He read the
+fear in her eyes.
+
+"No, I'm not mad," he said. "Sybil, I'm very glad you came. Come to
+think of it, I'm very glad to see you. It is better than writing. I was
+just going to write out everything, as well as I could. I expect I
+should have sent it to you. You know I used to care for you more than I
+did for any one."
+
+Sybil's hands gripped the arms of the windsor chair. Was he really--was
+it through her that he was----
+
+"Come out," she said. "I hate this place; it stifles me. And you've
+lived here--worked here!"
+
+"I've lived here for eleven months and three days," he said. "Yes, come
+out."
+
+So they went out through the burning July sun, and Sybil found a
+sheltered spot between a larch and a laburnum.
+
+"Now," she said, throwing off her hat and curling her green, soft
+draperies among the long grass. "Come and sit down and tell me----"
+
+He threw himself on the grass.
+
+"Sure it won't bore you?" he asked.
+
+She took his hand and held it. He let her take it; but his hand did not
+hold hers.
+
+"I seem to remember," he said, "the last time I saw you--you were going
+away, or something. You told me I ought to do something great; and I
+told you--or, anyway, I thought to myself--that there was plenty of time
+for that. I'd always had a sort of feeling that I _could_ do something
+great whenever I chose to try. Well--yes, you did go away, of course; I
+remember perfectly--and I missed you extremely. And some one told me I
+looked ill; and I went to my doctor, and he sent me to a big swell, and
+_he_ said I'd only got about a year to live. So then I began to think."
+
+Her fingers tightened on the unresponsive hand.
+
+"And I thought: Here I've been thirty years in this world. I've the
+experience of twenty-eight and a half--I suppose the first little bit
+doesn't count. If I'd had time, I meant to write another book, just to
+show exactly what a man feels when he knows he's only got a year to
+live, and nothing done--nothing done."
+
+"I won't believe it," she said. "You don't _look_ ill; you're as lean as
+a greyhound, but----"
+
+"It may come any day now," he went on quietly; "but I've done something.
+The book--it _is_ great. They all say so; and I know it, too. But at
+first! Just think of gasping out your breath, and feeling that all the
+things you had seen and known and felt were wasted--lost--going out with
+you, and that you were going out like the flame of a candle, taking
+everything you might have done with you."
+
+"The book _is_ great," she said; "you _have_ done something."
+
+"Yes. But for those two days I stayed in my rooms in St James's Street,
+and I thought, and thought, and thought, and there was no one to care
+where I went or what I did, except a girl who was fond of me when she
+was little, and she had gone away and wasn't fond of me any more. Oh,
+Sybil--I feel like a lunatic--I mean you, of course; but you never
+cared. And I went to a house agent's and got the house unfurnished, and
+I bought the furniture--there's nothing much except what you've seen,
+and a bed and a bath, and some pots and kettles; and I've lived alone in
+that house, and I've written that book, with Death sitting beside me,
+jogging my elbow every time I stopped writing, and saying, 'Hurry up;
+I'm waiting here for you, and I shall have to take you away, and you'll
+have done nothing, nothing, nothing.'"
+
+"But you've done the book," said Sybil again. The larch and the garden
+beyond were misty to her eyes. She set her teeth. He must be comforted.
+Her own agony--that could be dealt with later.
+
+"I've ridden myself with the curb," he said. "I thought it all
+out--proper food, proper sleep, proper exercise. I wouldn't play the
+fool with the last chance; and I pulled it off. I wrote the book in four
+months; and every night, when I went to sleep, I wondered whether I
+should ever wake to go on with the book. But I did wake, and then I used
+to leap up and thank God, and set to work; and I've done it. The book
+will live--every one says it will. I shan't have lived for nothing."
+
+"Rupert," she said, "dear Rupert!"
+
+"Thank you," he said forlornly; "you're very kind." And he drew his
+limp hand from hers, and leaned his elbows on the grass and his chin on
+his hands.
+
+"Oh, Rupert, why didn't you write and tell me?"
+
+"What was the use of making you sad? You were always sorry for maimed
+things--even the worms the gardener cut in two with his spade."
+
+She was struggling with a growing desire to scream and shriek, and to
+burst out crying and tear the grass with her hands. He no longer loved
+her--that was the lesser evil. She could have borne that--have borne
+anything. But he was going to die! The intensity of her belief that he
+was going to die caught her by the throat. She defended herself
+instinctively.
+
+"I don't believe it," she said.
+
+"Don't believe what?"
+
+"That you're going to die."
+
+He laughed; and when the echo of that laugh had died away in the quiet
+garden, she found that she could no longer even say that she did not
+believe.
+
+Then he said: "I am going to die, and all the values of things have
+changed places. But I have done something: I haven't buried my talent
+in a napkin. Oh, my Pretty, go away, go away! You make a fool of me
+again! I had almost forgotten how to be sorry that you couldn't love me.
+Go away, go away! Go, go!"
+
+He threw out his hands, and they lay along the grass. His face went down
+into the tangled green, and she saw his shoulders shaken with sobs. She
+dragged herself along the grass till she was close to him; then she
+lifted his shoulders, and drew his head on to her lap, and clasped her
+arms round him.
+
+"My darling, my dear, my own!" she said. "You're tired, and you've
+thought of nothing but your hateful book--your beautiful book, I
+mean--but you do love me really. Not as I love you, but still you do
+love me. Oh, Rupert, I'll nurse you, I'll take care of you, I'll be your
+slave; and if you have to die, I shall die too, because there'll be
+nothing left for me to do for you."
+
+He put an arm round her. "It's worth dying to hear that," he said, and
+brought his face to lie against her waist.
+
+"But you shan't die. You must come back to London with me now--this
+minute. The best opinion----"
+
+"I had the best," he said. "Kiss me, my Pretty; oh, kiss me now that it
+does mean something! Let me dream that I'm going to live, and that you
+love me."
+
+He lifted his face, and she kissed him.
+
+"Rupert, you're _not_ going to die. It can't be true. It isn't true. It
+shan't be true."
+
+"It is; but I don't mind now, except for you. I'm a selfish beast. But
+this is worth it all, and I _have_ done something great. You told me
+to."
+
+"Tell me," she said, "who was the doctor? Was he really the best?"
+
+"It was Strongitharm," he said wearily.
+
+She drew a long breath and clasped him closer. Then she pushed him away
+and sprang to her feet.
+
+"Stand up!" she said. "Let me look at you!"
+
+He stood up, and she caught him by the elbows and stood looking at him.
+Twice she tried to speak, and twice no voice obeyed; then she said
+softly, huskily: "Rupert, listen! It's all a horrid dream. Wake up.
+Haven't you seen the papers? Strongitharm went mad several months ago.
+It was drink. He told _all_ his patients they were going to die of this
+new disease of his that he'd invented. It's all his madness. You're
+well--I know it. Oh, Rupert, you aren't going to die, and we love each
+other! Oh, God is very good!"
+
+He drew a long breath.
+
+"Are you sure? It's like coming back from chloroform; and yet it hurts,
+and yet--but I wrote the book! Oh, Sybil, I shall never write another
+great book!"
+
+"Ah yes, you will--you shall," she said, looking at him with wet eyes.
+
+"I have you," he said. "Oh, thank God, I have you! but I shall never
+write another great book."
+
+And he never has.
+
+But he is very happy. And Sybil cannot see that his later works are not
+in the same field with the first. She thinks the critics fools. And he
+loves her the more for her folly.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+ALCIBIADES
+
+
+"Oh, _do_ let me have him in the carriage with me; he won't hurt any
+one, he's a perfect angel."
+
+"Angels like him travels in the dog-box," said the porter.
+
+Judy ended an agonised search for her pocket.
+
+"Would you be offended," she said, "if I offered you half-a-crown?"
+
+"Give the guard a bob, Miss." The hand curved into a cup resting on the
+carriage window, answered her question. "It's more'n enough for him,
+being a single man, whereas me, I'm risking my situation and nine
+children at present to say no more, when I----"
+
+The turn of a railway key completed the sentence.
+
+Judy and the angel were alone. He was a very nice angel--long-haired and
+brownly-black--his race the Aberdeen, his name Alcibiades. He put up a
+respectful and adoring nose, and his mistress kissed him between the
+eyes.
+
+"How could they try to part us," she asked, "when there's only us two
+left?"
+
+Alcibiades, with swimming eyes, echoed in a little moan of true love the
+question: "How could they?"
+
+The question was put again by both later in the day. Judy was to stay
+with an aunt while her mother sailed to Madeira to meet there the father
+returning from South Africa, full of wounds and honour, and to spend on
+the Island what was left of the winter. Now it was December.
+
+A thick fog covered London with a veil of ugliness; the cabman was
+aggrieved and aggrieving--Alcibiades had tried to bite him--and Judy was
+on the verge of tears when the fog at last lifted, and allowed her to be
+driven to her aunt's suburban house, yellow brickish, with a slate roof
+and a lean forecourt, wherein cypresses, stunted and blackened, spoke
+eloquently of lives more blank than the death whose emblem they were.
+
+Through the slits of the drab Venetian blinds, gaslight streamed into
+the winter dusk.
+
+"There'll be tea, anyhow," sighed Judy, recklessly overpaying the
+cabman.
+
+Inside the house where the lights were, the Aunt was surrounded by a
+dozen ladies of about her own age and station; "Tabbies" the world might
+have called them. All were busy with mysteries of many coloured silks
+and satins, lace and linen; at least all held such in their hands. The
+gathering was in fact a "working party" for the approaching bazaar. But
+the real work of bazaars is not done at parties.
+
+"Yes," the Aunt was saying, "so nice for dear Julia. I'm truly glad that
+she should begin her visit with a little gaiety. In parting or sorrow we
+should always seek to distract the mind, should we not, dear Mrs
+Biddle?"
+
+"The young are all too easily distracted by the shows of this world,"
+said dear Mrs Biddle heavily.
+
+And several ladies murmured approval.
+
+"But you can't exactly call a church bazaar the shows of this world, can
+you?" urged the Aunt, sitting very upright, all black and beady.
+
+"It's the thin end of the Rubicon sometimes," said Mrs Biddle.
+
+"Then why----" began the youngest Tabby--and then the door bell rang,
+and every one said: "Here she is!"
+
+The prim maid announced her, and she took two steps forward, and stood
+blinking in the gaslight with her hat on one side, and no gloves. Every
+one noticed that at once.
+
+"Come in, my dear," said the Aunt, rustling forward. "I have a few
+friends this afternoon, and--Oh, my gracious, what has happened!"
+
+What had happened was quite simple. In her rustling advance some
+wandering trail of the Aunt's black beadiness had caught on the knotted
+fringe of the table-cloth, and drawn this after her. A mass of silk and
+lace and ribbon lay sprinkled along the edges of the table where the
+Tabbies sat; a good store of needles, scissors, and cotton reels mingled
+with it. Now all this swept to the floor on the moving table-cloth, at
+the very instant when a rough brownly-black, long-eared person with a
+sharp nose and very muddy paws bounded into the room, to the full length
+of his chain. His bound landed him in the very middle of the
+ribbon-lace-cotton-reel confusion. Judy caught the dog up in her arms,
+and her apologies would have melted my heart, or yours, dear reader, in
+an instant. But Tabbies are Tabbies, and a bazaar is a bazaar. No more
+sewing was done that day; what was left of the afternoon proved all too
+short for the disentangling, the partial cleansing of the desecrated
+lace-cotton-reel-silk-muddle. And Alcibiades was tied up in the
+back-kitchen to the wheel of the patent mangle; he howled without
+ceasing.
+
+"My dear," said the Aunt, when tea was over, and the last Tabby had
+found her goloshes and gone home in them, "you are most welcome under
+any roof of mine, but--(may I ask you to close the baize door at the top
+of the kitchen stairs--thank you--and now this one--I am obliged. One
+cannot hear oneself speak for that terrible animal)--you must get rid of
+the cur to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, Aunt! he's not a cur--he's pure-bred."
+
+"Thank you," said the Aunt, "I believe I am as good a judge of dogs as
+any lady. My own dear Snubs has only been dead a year and two months
+last Tuesday. I know that a well-bred dog should have smooth hair, at
+any rate----"
+
+The mother of Snubs had been distantly related to a family of
+respectable middle-class fox-terriers.
+
+"I am very sorry," said Judy. She meant apology, but the Aunt took it
+for sympathy, and softened somewhat.
+
+"A nice little smooth-coated dog now," she said, "a fox-terrier, or an
+Italian greyhound; you see I am not ignorant of the names of various
+patterns of dog. I will get you one myself; we will go to the Dogs' Home
+at Battersea, where really nice dogs are often sold quite cheap. Or
+perhaps they might take your poor cur in exchange."
+
+Judy began to cry.
+
+"Yes, cry, my dear," said the Aunt kindly; "it will do you a world of
+good."
+
+When the Aunt was asleep--she had closed her ears to the protests of
+Alcibiades with wadding left over from a handkerchief sachet--Judy crept
+down in her woolly white dressing-gown, and coaxed the kitchen fire back
+to life. Then she sat in front of it, on the speckless rag carpet, and
+nursed Alcibiades and scolded him, and explained that he really must be
+a good dog, and that we all have something to put up with in this life.
+
+"You know, Alby dear," she said, "it's not very nice for me either, but
+_I_ don't howl and try to upset mangles. Don't you be afraid, dear: you
+shan't go to the Dogs' Home."
+
+So kindly, yet strongly, did she urge her point that Alcibiades, tied to
+the leg of the kitchen table, consented to sleep quietly for the rest of
+the night.
+
+Next day, when the Aunt enquired searchingly as to Judy's powers of
+fancywork, and what she would do for the bazaar, Judy declared outright
+that she did not know one end of a needle from the other.
+
+"But I can paint a little," she said, "and I am rather good at
+wood-carving."
+
+"That will be very nice." The Aunt already saw, in fancy, her stall
+outshine those of all other Tabbies, with glories of sabots and
+tambourines decorated with rosy sprays "hand-painted," and carved white
+wood boxes just the size to hold nothing useful.
+
+"And I'll do you some," said Judy; "only I can't work if I'm distracted
+about Alby--my dog, you know. Oh, Aunt, _do_ let him stay! He really is
+valuable, and he hasn't made a bit of noise since last night."
+
+"It is quite useless," the Aunt was sternly beginning--then suddenly her
+voice changed. "Is the cur _really_ valuable?" she asked.
+
+"Uncle Reggie gave five guineas for him when he was a baby boy," said
+Judy eagerly, "and he's worth much more now."
+
+"But he must be very old--when your Uncle Reggie was a boy----"
+
+"I mean when Alcibiades was a boy."
+
+"And who is Alcibiades?"
+
+Judy began all over again, and urged one or two new points.
+
+"I don't want to be harsh," said the Aunt at last, "you _shall_ have the
+little breakfast room to paint and carve in as you suggest. Of course I
+couldn't have shavings and paint pots lying about all over the
+dining-room and drawing-room. And you shall keep your cur."
+
+"Oh, Aunty," cried Judy, "you are a darling!"
+
+"Yes," the Aunt went on complacently, "you shall keep your cur till the
+bazaar, and then we will sell it for the benefit of the Fund for the
+Amelioration of the Daughters of the Country Clergy."
+
+And from this decision no tears and no entreaties would move her.
+
+Judy made a den for herself and Alcibiades in the little breakfast room.
+There was no painting light--so she looked out a handful of the sketches
+that she had done last summer and framed them. Most of her time she
+spent in writing to her friends to know whether any one could take care
+of a darling dog, who was a perfect angel. And alas! no one could--or
+would.
+
+With the connivance of the cook, Alcibiades had a bed in a box in the
+den, and from the very first he would at a word conceal himself in it
+the moment the step of the Aunt sounded on the oil-cloth-covered stairs.
+The sketches were framed, and some of the frames were lightly carved.
+The Aunt was enchanted, but, on the subject of Alcibiades, adamant.
+
+And now it was the day of the bazaar. Judy had run wires along the wall
+of the schoolroom behind her Aunt's stall, and from it hung the best of
+the sketches. She had arranged the stall herself, glorifying it with the
+Eastern shawls and draperies that her father had sent her from India. It
+did far outshine any other stall, even that of Lady Bates, the wife of
+the tallow Knight. The Aunt was really grateful--truly appreciative.
+But her mind was made up about the "cur."
+
+"If it really _is_ worth anything we'll sell it. If not----" She paused
+on the dark hint, and Judy's miserable fancy lost itself among ropes and
+rivers and rat-poison.
+
+To Alcibiades the bazaar was as much a festival as to any Tabby of them
+all. He had been washed, which is terrible at the time, but makes you
+self-respecting afterwards, a little puffed-up even. He had been allowed
+to come out by the front door, with his mistress in her beautiful dress
+that reminded him of rabbits. No one but Alcibiades himself will ever
+know what tortures of shame and misery, fighting with joy and affection,
+he had endured on those other occasions when he had been smuggled out of
+the back door in the early morning to take the damp air with his beloved
+lady and she had worn a shabby mackintosh and a red tam-o-shanter.
+To-day he wore a blue ribbon; it was uncomfortable, but he knew it spelt
+distinction. He rode in a carriage. It was not like the little
+governess-cart which had carried him and his mistress through the lanes
+about Maidstone; but it was a carriage, and a large horse was his
+slave. His mistress herself had tied his blue ribbon; it was she, too,
+who adjusted the chain that attached him to a strong staple driven in
+just above the schoolroom wainscotting. The chain allowed him to sit at
+her feet as she stood by the stall waiting for purchasers, and scanning
+the face of each newcomer in an eager anxiety to find there the
+countenance of some one who really loved dogs.
+
+But the people were most awful, and she had to own it to herself. There
+were Tabbies by the dozen, and young ladies by the score--young ladies
+all dressed differently, yet all alike in the fashion of the year before
+last; all vacant-faced, smiling agreeably because they knew they ought
+to smile--the young of the Tabby kind--Tabby kittens, in fact. No doubt
+they were really worthy and interesting, but they did not seem so to
+Judy.
+
+There was a sprinkling of men--middle-aged mostly, and bald. There were
+a few youths; by some fatality all were fair, and reminded Judy of pork.
+A Tabby stopped at her stall, turned over all things and bought a beaded
+table-napkin ring. The purchase and the purchaser seemed to Judy to
+typify her whole life and surroundings. All her soul reached out to the
+Island. She sighed, then she looked up. The crowd had thickened since
+she last surveyed it. Four steps led down to the schoolroom from the
+outer world: on the top step was a lady, well dressed--oh! marvel!--and
+beside her a man--a gentleman. Well, Judy supposed all these poor dear
+people were gentlefolk, but these two were of her world. As she gazed
+her eyes and those of the man met; the lady was lost in the crowd, and
+Judy saw her no more. The man made straight for the stall where were the
+framed sketches, the white dress, fur-trimmed, the russet hair and green
+eyes of Judy, and the brownly-black, blue-ribboned Alcibiades. But
+before he reached them a wave of buyers broke on the shore of Judy's
+stall, and he had been watching her for nearly half an hour before a
+young woman's long-deferred choice of a Christmas gift for a grandfather
+fell happily on a pair of purple bed-socks, and, for the moment, Judy
+breathed free.
+
+"I told you so," said the Aunt, rattling money in a leather bag; "I
+_knew_ just before Christmas was _the_ time. Everybody _has_ to give
+Christmas presents to all their relations. You see! the things are going
+like wildfire."
+
+"Yes, Aunt," said Judy. Alcibiades took advantage of the momentary calm
+to lick her hand exhaustively. Judy wondered wearily what had become of
+the man, the only man in that cheerless assembly who looked as though he
+liked dogs. "He must have been trying to get somewhere else," she said;
+"he just looked in here by mistake, and when he saw the sort of people
+we were, he--well--I don't wonder," she sighed, and, raising her eyes,
+met his.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said he. He meant apology.
+
+She took it for enquiry, and smiled. "Do you want to buy something?" she
+asked.
+
+Her smile was more tired than she knew.
+
+"I suppose I do," he said; "one does at bazaars, don't you know."
+
+"Do you want a Christmas present?" asked Judy, businesslike; "if so, and
+if you will tell me what kind of relation you want it for, perhaps I can
+find something that they'd like."
+
+"Could you? Now, that is really good. I want things for two aunts, three
+cousins, a little sister, and my mother--but I needn't get _hers_ here
+unless you've got something you think really--By Jove!"--his eyes had
+caught the sketches--"are _those_ for sale?"
+
+"That is rather the idea," said Judy. Her spirits were rising, though
+she couldn't have told you why. "Things at a bazaar are usually for
+sale, aren't they?"
+
+"Everything?" said he--and he stroked the not resentful neck of
+Alcibiades; "this good little beast isn't in the market, I'm afraid?"
+
+"Why? Would you buy him?"
+
+"I'd think twice before I said no. My mother is frightfully fond of
+dogs."
+
+Quite unreasonably Judy felt that she did not want to sell Alcibiades as
+a present to any one's mother.
+
+"The sketches," she said.
+
+"The sketches," said he; "why, there's Maidstone Church and Farley and
+Teston Lock and Allington. How much are they?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"I must have some. May I have a dozen? They're disgracefully cheap, and
+I feel like an American pork man buying works of art by the dozen--for
+they _are_ jolly good--and it brings back old times. I was quartered
+there once."
+
+"I knew it," she said to herself. Alcibiades stood up with his paws on
+her arm. "Be quiet," she said to him; "you mustn't talk now. I'm busy."
+
+Alcibiades gave her a reproachful look, and lay down.
+
+The stranger smiled; a very jolly smile, Judy thought.
+
+"Ripping little beast, isn't he?" said the stranger.
+
+"I suppose you're invalided home?" she said. She couldn't help it. A man
+in the Service. One who had been quartered at Maidstone, her own dear
+Maidstone. He was no longer a stranger.
+
+"Yes," he said; "beastly bore. But I shall be all right in two or three
+months; I hope the fighting won't be all over by then."
+
+"Have you sold this gentleman anything?" said the Aunt firmly, "because
+Mrs Biddle wants to look at some d'oyleys."
+
+"I'm just selling something," answered Judy. Then she turned to him and
+spoke softly. "I say, do you really like dogs?" said she.
+
+"Of course I do." The young man opened surprised grey eyes at her, as
+who should say: "Now, do I look like a man who doesn't like dogs?"
+
+"Well, then," she said, "Alcibiades _is_ for sale."
+
+"Is that his name? Why?"
+
+"Oh, surely you know: wasn't it Alcibiades who gave up being dictator or
+something rather than have his dog's ears cut off?"
+
+"I seem to remember something of the sort," he said.
+
+"Well," said she, "his price is twenty guineas, but----"
+
+He whistled very softly.
+
+"Yes--I know," she said, "but I'll--yes, Aunt, in one moment!" She went
+on in an agonised undertone: "His price is twenty guineas. Say you'll
+have him. Say it _loud_. You won't really have to pay anything for
+him--No, I'm not mad."
+
+"I'll give you twenty guineas for the dog," said the man, standing
+straight and soldierly against the tumbled mass of mats and pin-cushions
+and chair-backs.
+
+The Aunt drew a long breath and turned to minister to Mrs Biddle's deep
+need of d'oyleys.
+
+"Come and have tea," said the stranger; "you're tired out."
+
+"No--I can't. Of course I can't--but I'll take you over to Mrs Piddock's
+stall and----" She led him away. "Look here," she said, "I'm sure you're
+a decent sort. Here's the money to pay for him. My aunt says if I don't
+sell him she'll have him killed. Will you keep him for me till my people
+come home? Oh, do--he really _is_ an angel. And give me your name and
+address. You must think me a maniac, but I am so horribly fond of him.
+Will you?"
+
+"Of course I will," he said heartily, "but I shall pay for him. I'll
+write a cheque: you can pay me when you get him back. Thank you--yes, I
+am sure that pin-cushion would delight my aunt."
+
+Judy, with burning cheeks, found her way back to her stall.
+
+"Oh, Alcibiades," she said, unfastening the blue ribbon, "I'm sure he's
+nice. Don't bite him, there's a dear!"
+
+A cheque signed "Richard Graeme" and a card with an address came into
+Judy's hands, and the chain of Alcibiades left them.
+
+"I know you'll be good to him," she said; "don't give him meat, only
+biscuit, and sulphur in his drinking water. But you know all that.
+You've got me out of a frightful hole, and I'll bless you as long as I
+live. Good-bye." She stooped to the Aberdeen, now surprised and pained.
+"Good-bye, my dear old boy!"
+
+And Alcibiades, stubborn resistance in every line of his figure, in
+every hair of his coat, was dragged away through the crowded bazaar.
+
+Judy went to bed very tired. The bazaar had been a success, and the
+success had been talked over and the money counted till late in the
+evening--nearly eleven, that is, which is late for Tabbies--yet she woke
+at four. Some one was calling her. It was--no, he was gone--her eyes
+pricked at the thought--yet--surely that could be the voice of no other
+than Alcibiades? She sat up in bed and listened. It was he! That was his
+dear voice whining at the side gate. Those were his darling paws
+scratching the sacred paint off it.
+
+Judy swept down the stairs like a silent whirlwind, turned key, drew
+bolts, and in a moment she and the cur were "sobbing in each other's
+arms."
+
+She carried him up to her room, washed his dear, muddy paws, and spread
+her golf cape that he might lie on the bed beside her.
+
+In chilliest, earliest dawn she rose and dressed. She found a wire that
+had supported her pictures at the bazaar, and she wrote a note and tied
+it to the collar of Alcibiades, where she noticed and untied a frayed
+end of rope. This was the note:
+
+     "He has run home to me. Why did you take the chain off? He
+     always bites through cord. Don't beat him for it; he'll soon
+     forget me."
+
+The tears came into her eyes as she wrote it; it seemed to her so very
+pathetic. She did not quite believe that Alcibiades would soon forget
+her--but if he did----?
+
+The note did not lack pathos, either, in the eyes of Captain Graeme,
+when, two hours later, he found it under the chin of a mournfully
+howling Alcibiades, securely attached by picture wire to the railings of
+his mother's house.
+
+The Captain took a turn on the Heath, and thought. And his thoughts were
+these: "She's the prettiest girl I've seen since I came home. It's
+deuced dull here. Shouldn't wonder if she's dull too, poor little girl."
+
+Then he went home and cut a glove in pieces and sewed the pieces
+together, slowly but solidly as soldiers and sailors do sew. So that
+when, two nights later, the claws and the voice of Alcibiades roused
+Judy from sleep--her aunt most fortunately slept on the other side of
+the house--she found, after the first rapturous hug of reunion, a
+something under the hand that caressed the neck of Alcibiades.
+
+The gaslight in her own room defined the something as a bag of leather,
+the tan leather of which gentlemen's gloves are made. There was a bit of
+worn strap hanging below it. Within was a note.
+
+     "A thousand thanks for bringing him home. If he _should_ run
+     away again, please let me know. And don't trouble to send him
+     back. I'll call for him, if I may.
+
+                                        "RICHARD GRAEME."
+
+Judy would very much have liked to let Captain Graeme call, but there
+are such things as aunts.
+
+She tied another note to the "cur's" collar and wired him once more to
+the Paragon House railings. The note said:
+
+     "It's no use. He can bite through leather. Do use a chain."
+
+Next time Alcibiades returned he dragged a half yard of fine chain. It
+was neatly filed, but Judy was a woman and the detail escaped her.
+
+That morning she and Alcibiades slept late, the dressing-bell was
+ringing as she woke.
+
+The cook helped; the Aunt most fortunately had a luncheon engagement
+with a Tabby in Sidcup. Alcibiades being promised a walk later,
+consented to wait, trifling with a bone, in silence and the coal cellar.
+At eleven Judy rewarded his patience. She went out with him, and somehow
+it seemed wise to put on a pleasant-coloured dress, and one's best furs
+and one's prettiest hat.
+
+"I am afraid I shall see him," she told herself; "but," she added, "I am
+much more afraid that my aunt will see Alcibiades." On the edge of the
+Heath she met him. "Here's the dear dog," she said. "Oh, can't you find
+a stronger chain?"
+
+"I'll try," said he. "What a ripping day, isn't it? Oh, are you going
+straight back? I wish we'd met anywhere but at a bazaar."
+
+"So do I," she said heartfeltly, and caressed the now careless Aberdeen:
+it was at a bazaar that she had had to sell that angel.
+
+"Mayn't I walk home with you?" he said. And she could not think of any
+polite way of saying no, though she knew just how terrible Alcibiades
+would make the final parting.
+
+Next morning the chain dragged by Alcibiades was slightly thicker; it
+also was filed, and this too Judy failed to notice. Early as it was she
+did not go out in the mackintosh but in something simple and blue, with
+kingfisher's wings in her hat.
+
+The morning was thinly bright. Alcibiades saw a cat and chased it
+towards Morden College just as Judy met Captain Graeme. It was, for her,
+impossible not to follow the "cur." And how could the Captain do
+otherwise than follow, too? And if two people walk together it is
+churlish not to talk.
+
+Next day the chain was thicker, the hour propitious, and the walk
+longer; that was the day when she found out that he had known her father
+in South Africa.
+
+The days passed with a delightful monotony. The Aunt and her pet Tabbies
+all day, a sound sleep, an early waking, a heavenly meeting with
+Alcibiades at the back door, the restoring of him to his master. And
+every day the chain grew heavier, the walks longer, the talks more
+interesting and more intimate.
+
+It was very wrong, of course, but what was the girl to do? You cannot be
+rude to a man who is saving your dog, your darling, from rat-poisons,
+rivers and ropes. And if dogs _will_ break chains, why--so will girls.
+
+It was on Christmas Day that the spell was shattered. Judy awoke at the
+accustomed time, but no welcome whine, no pathetic scrabble of eager
+paws broke the respectable stillness of the Aunt's house. Judy listened.
+She even crept down to the side gate. A feeling of misery, of real
+physical faintness came over her. Alcibiades was not there! he had not
+come! He had, indeed, forgotten her.
+
+The conviction that the master of Alcibiades would be the last to
+appreciate the new attachment of his dog comforted her a little; but for
+all that the day was grey, life seemed well-nigh worthless. Judy now had
+leisure to reconsider her position, and she was not pleased with
+herself. It was in the thick of the Christmas beef that the thought
+awoke.
+
+"_He_ is tired of meeting me; he has locked Alcibiades up. If he hadn't,
+the darling _must_ have come." Since this solution left Alcibiades
+without a stain upon his faithful character, it ought to have been
+comforting, but it wasn't.
+
+She felt her cheeks flush.
+
+"Good gracious, child," said the Aunt, "what are you turning that
+curious purple colour for? If the fire's too much for you, let Mary put
+the screen to the back of your chair, for goodness' sake."
+
+When the plum-pudding's remains had passed away and the perfunctory
+dessert was over the Aunt retired to rest.
+
+Judy was left to face the grey afternoon alone. She sat staring into the
+fire till her eyes ached. She felt very lonely, very injured, very
+forlorn. There was a footfall on the steps--a manly tread; a knock at
+the door--a kind of I have-a-perfect-right-to-knock-here-if-I-like sort
+of knock.
+
+Judy jumped up to look in the glass and pat her hair, for no one but an
+idiot could have helped knowing who it was that stepped and knocked.
+
+He came in.
+
+"Alone?" said he. "What luck! I asked for the Aunt. Meant to say Friend
+of your Father's, and all that. But this is better. Judy, I couldn't
+stand it.... She's coming. I can hear her."
+
+There was indeed a sound of stout house boots trampling overhead, of
+drawers being pulled out, of wardrobe doors being opened.
+
+"I wish everything was different," said he; "but, oh Judy, darling, do
+say yes! say it now, this minute; and then when she comes down I can
+tell her we're engaged--see?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's all very well," said Judy, two hours later, when, with the licence
+of an engaged young lady, she said good-bye to her lover at the front
+door. "You say you do--and--and yes, of course, I'm glad--but Alcibiades
+doesn't love me any more."
+
+"Doesn't he? you wait till I bring him to-morrow!"
+
+"But he never came this morning."
+
+"Poor little beast! Judy, the fact is I've gone on making the chain
+heavier and heavier, and this morning--well, it was too much for him. He
+couldn't drag it all the way: it was a regular ship's cable, don't you
+know? I came up with him at Blackheath Station, and he was so done I had
+to carry him all the way home in my arms. He's quite all right again
+now; I left him at home, tied to the fire-irons in my bedroom."
+
+"Then he _does_ love me, after all," said Judy.
+
+"Well, he's not the only one," said the Captain.
+
+And at that moment came from the other side of the front door the
+familiar whine, the well-known scratching mingled with strange clanking
+noises.
+
+Next instant three happy people were embracing on the door-mat amid the
+sobs of Judy, the laughter of her lover, the yelps of Alcibiades, and
+the deafening rattle of a poker, a pair of tongs, and half a shovel.
+
+
+
+
+  PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+                       Transcriber's Note
+
+
+     Punctuation has been standardized. Hyphenation has been retained
+     as it appears in the original publication. The following changes
+     were made to the original text:
+
+       Page 21,  "candelabre" changed to "candelabra"
+                 (two brass twenty-lighted candelabra)
+
+       Page 32,  duplicate "the" removed from text
+                 (Half the students)
+
+       Page 39,  "accordian" changed to "accordion"
+                 (her accordion-pleated skirts)
+
+       Page 99,  "stammererd" changed to "stammered"
+                 (stammered half a word)
+
+       Page 197, "her's" changed to "hers"
+                 (he was hers sincerely)
+
+       Page 276, duplicate "in" removed
+                 (Can you call in an hour?)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Maid, by E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Man And Maid, by E. Nesbit.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Maid, by E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Maid
+
+Author: E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2010 [EBook #33028]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND MAID ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Rachael Schultz and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
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+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1 class="padtop">MAN AND MAID</h1>
+
+<p class="center smlfont padtop">BY</p>
+
+<p class="center lrgfont smlpadb">E. NESBIT</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 213px;">
+<img src="images/tp.png" width="213" height="208" alt="{Publisher&#39;s Logo}" title="{Publisher&#39;s Logo}" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center smlpadt">LONDON<br />
+T. FISHER UNWIN<br />
+<span class="smlfont">ADELPHI TERRACE<br />
+MCMVI</span></p>
+
+<p class="center padbase">[<i>All rights reserved.</i>]</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center padtop padbase">TO<br />
+<span class="midfont">ADA BREAKELL</span><br />
+MY DEAREST AND OLDEST FRIEND</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1 class="padtop smlpadb">MAN AND MAID</h1>
+
+<div class="border">
+<p class="center midfont">By the same Author.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s.</i></p>
+
+<p class="tinypadt"><b>The Treasure Seekers.<br />
+Five Children and It.<br />
+Nine Unlikely Tales for Children.<br />
+The Would-be-Goods.<br />
+New Treasure Seekers.</b></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 20%;" />
+
+<p class="center">LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2 class="padtop">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="center padbase">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td></td><td align="right"><span class="smlfont">PAGE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Haunted Inheritance</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Power of Darkness</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Stranger who might have been Observed</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Rack and Thumbscrew</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Millionairess</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Hermit of &ldquo;The Yews&rdquo;</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Aunt and the Editor</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Miss Mouse</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Old Wife</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The House of Silence</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Girl at the Tobacconist&rsquo;s</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XII.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">While it is Yet Day</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIII.&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Alcibiades</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1 class="padtop">MAN AND MAID</h1>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">I<br />
+<br />
+THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE</h2>
+
+
+<p>The most extraordinary thing that ever
+happened to me was my going back to town
+on that day. I am a reasonable being; I
+do not do such things. I was on a bicycling
+tour with another man. We were far from
+the mean cares of an unremunerative profession;
+we were men not fettered by any
+given address, any pledged date, any preconcerted
+route. I went to bed weary and
+cheerful, fell asleep a mere animal&mdash;a tired
+dog after a day&rsquo;s hunting&mdash;and awoke at
+four in the morning that creature of nerves
+and fancies which is my other self, and which
+has driven me to all the follies I have ever
+kept company with. But even that second
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+self of mine, whining beast and traitor as
+it is, has never played me such a trick as it
+played then. Indeed, something in the result
+of that day&rsquo;s rash act sets me wondering
+whether after all it could have been I, or
+even my other self, who moved in the
+adventure; whether it was not rather some
+power outside both of us ... but this is a
+speculation as idle in me as uninteresting to
+you, and so enough of it.</p>
+
+<p>From four to seven I lay awake, the prey
+of a growing detestation of bicycling tours,
+friends, scenery, physical exertion, holidays.
+By seven o&rsquo;clock I felt that I would rather
+perish than spend another day in the society
+of the other man&mdash;an excellent fellow, by
+the way, and the best of company.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past seven the post came. I saw
+the postman through my window as I shaved.
+I went down to get my letters&mdash;there were
+none, naturally.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast I said: &ldquo;Edmundson, my
+dear fellow, I am extremely sorry; but my
+letters this morning compel me to return
+to town at once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I thought,&rdquo; said Edmundson&mdash;then
+he stopped, and I saw that he had perceived
+in time that this was no moment for reminding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+me that, having left no address, I could
+have had no letters.</p>
+
+<p>He looked sympathetic, and gave me what
+there was left of the bacon. I suppose he
+thought that it was a love affair or some such
+folly. I let him think so; after all, no love affair
+but would have seemed wise compared with
+the blank idiocy of this sudden determination
+to cut short a delightful holiday and go back
+to those dusty, stuffy rooms in Gray&rsquo;s Inn.</p>
+
+<p>After that first and almost pardonable lapse,
+Edmundson behaved beautifully. I caught
+the 9.17 train, and by half-past eleven I was
+climbing my dirty staircase.</p>
+
+<p>I let myself in and waded through a heap
+of envelopes and wrappered circulars that
+had drifted in through the letter-box, as
+dead leaves drift into the areas of houses in
+squares. All the windows were shut. Dust
+lay thick on everything. My laundress had
+evidently chosen this as a good time for her
+holiday. I wondered idly where she spent
+it. And now the close, musty smell of the
+rooms caught at my senses, and I remembered
+with a positive pang the sweet scent of the
+earth and the dead leaves in that wood through
+which, at this very moment, the sensible and
+fortunate Edmundson would be riding.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+The thought of dead leaves reminded me
+of the heap of correspondence. I glanced
+through it. Only one of all those letters
+interested me in the least. It was from my
+mother:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<div class="address">
+<p class="center">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Elliot&rsquo;s Bay, Norfolk</span>,<br />
+<i>17th August</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear Lawrence</span>,&mdash;I have wonderful news
+for you. Your great-uncle Sefton has died,
+and left you half his immense property. The
+other half is left to your second cousin Selwyn.
+You must come home at once. There are
+heaps of letters here for you, but I dare not
+send them on, as goodness only knows where
+you may be. I do wish you would remember
+to leave an address. I send this to your
+rooms, in case you have had the forethought
+to instruct your charwoman to send your
+letters on to you. It is a most handsome
+fortune, and I am too happy about your
+accession to it to scold you as you deserve,
+but I hope this will be a lesson to you to
+leave an address when next you go away.
+Come home at once.&mdash;Your loving Mother,</p>
+
+<p class="sig">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Margaret Sefton</span>.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>P.S.</i>&mdash;It is the maddest will; everything
+divided evenly between you two except the
+house and estate. The will says you and
+your cousin Selwyn are to meet there on
+the 1st September following his death, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+presence of the family, and decide which of
+you is to have the house. If you can&rsquo;t agree,
+it&rsquo;s to be presented to the county for a lunatic
+asylum. I should think so! He was always
+so eccentric. The one who doesn&rsquo;t have the
+house, etc., gets £20,000 extra. Of course
+you will choose <i>that</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>P.P.S.</i>&mdash;Be sure to bring your under-shirts
+with you&mdash;the air here is very keen of an
+evening.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I opened both the windows and lit a pipe.
+Sefton Manor, that gorgeous old place,&mdash;I
+knew its picture in Hasted, cradle of our
+race, and so on&mdash;and a big fortune. I hoped
+my cousin Selwyn would want the £20,000
+more than he wanted the house. If he didn&rsquo;t&mdash;well,
+perhaps my fortune might be large
+enough to increase that £20,000 to a sum
+that he <i>would</i> want.</p>
+
+<p>And then, suddenly, I became aware that
+this was the 31st of August, and that
+to-morrow was the day on which I was to
+meet my cousin Selwyn and &ldquo;the family,&rdquo;
+and come to a decision about the house. I
+had never, to my knowledge, heard of my
+cousin Selwyn. We were a family rich in
+collateral branches. I hoped he would be a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+reasonable young man. Also, I had never
+seen Sefton Manor House, except in a print.
+It occurred to me that I would rather see
+the house before I saw the cousin.</p>
+
+<p>I caught the next train to Sefton.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s but a mile by the field way,&rdquo; said
+the railway porter. &ldquo;You take the stile&mdash;the
+first on the left&mdash;and follow the path till
+you come to the wood. Then skirt along
+the left of it, cater across the meadow at
+the end, and you&rsquo;ll see the place right below
+you in the vale.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a fine old place, I hear,&rdquo; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All to pieces, though,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I
+shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if it cost a couple o&rsquo;
+hundred to put it to rights. Water coming
+through the roof and all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But surely the owner&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he never lived there; not since his
+son was taken. He lived in the lodge; it&rsquo;s
+on the brow of the hill looking down on the
+Manor House.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is the house empty?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As empty as a rotten nutshell, except
+for the old sticks o&rsquo; furniture. Any one who
+likes,&rdquo; added the porter, &ldquo;can lie there o&rsquo;
+nights. But it wouldn&rsquo;t be me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean there&rsquo;s a ghost?&rdquo; I hope I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+kept any note of undue elation out of my
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t hold with ghosts,&rdquo; said the porter
+firmly, &ldquo;but my aunt was in service at the
+lodge, and there&rsquo;s no doubt but <i>something</i>
+walks there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;this is very interesting.
+Can&rsquo;t you leave the station, and come across
+to where beer is?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind if I do,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That
+is so far as your standing a drop goes. But
+I can&rsquo;t leave the station, so if you pour my
+beer you must pour it dry, sir, as the saying
+is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I gave the man a shilling, and he told
+me about the ghost at Sefton Manor House.
+Indeed, about the ghosts, for there were, it
+seemed, two; a lady in white, and a gentleman
+in a slouch hat and black riding cloak.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They do say,&rdquo; said my porter, &ldquo;as how
+one of the young ladies once on a time was
+wishful to elope, and started so to do&mdash;not
+getting further than the hall door; her father,
+thinking it to be burglars, fired out of the
+window, and the happy pair fell on the
+doorstep, corpses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it true, do you think?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The porter did not know. At any rate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+there was a tablet in the church to Maria
+Sefton and George Ballard&mdash;&ldquo;and something
+about in their death them not being divided.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I took the stile, I skirted the wood, I
+&ldquo;catered&rdquo; across the meadow&mdash;and so I
+came out on a chalky ridge held in a net
+of pine roots, where dog violets grew. Below
+stretched the green park, dotted with trees.
+The lodge, stuccoed but solid, lay below me.
+Smoke came from its chimneys. Lower still
+lay the Manor House&mdash;red brick with grey
+lichened mullions, a house in a thousand,
+Elizabethan&mdash;and from its twisted beautiful
+chimneys no smoke arose. I hurried across
+the short turf towards the Manor House.</p>
+
+<p>I had no difficulty in getting into the great
+garden. The bricks of the wall were everywhere
+displaced or crumbling. The ivy had
+forced the coping stones away; each red
+buttress offered a dozen spots for foothold.
+I climbed the wall and found myself in a
+garden&mdash;oh! but such a garden. There are
+not half a dozen such in England&mdash;ancient
+box hedges, rosaries, fountains, yew tree
+avenues, bowers of clematis (now feathery
+in its seeding time), great trees, grey-grown
+marble balustrades and steps, terraces, green
+lawns, one green lawn, in especial, girt round
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+with a sweet briar hedge, and in the middle
+of this lawn a sundial. All this was mine,
+or, to be more exact, might be mine, should
+my cousin Selwyn prove to be a person of
+sense. How I prayed that he might not be
+a person of taste! That he might be a
+person who liked yachts or racehorses or
+diamonds, or motor-cars, or anything that
+money can buy, not a person who liked
+beautiful Elizabethan houses, and gardens
+old beyond belief.</p>
+
+<p>The sundial stood on a mass of masonry,
+too low and wide to be called a pillar. I
+mounted the two brick steps and leaned over
+to read the date and the motto:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">&ldquo;Tempus fugit manet amor.&rdquo;</div>
+
+<p>The date was 1617, the initials S. S. surmounted
+it. The face of the dial was
+unusually ornate&mdash;a wreath of stiffly drawn
+roses was traced outside the circle of the
+numbers. As I leaned there a sudden movement
+on the other side of the pedestal compelled
+my attention. I leaned over a little
+further to see what had rustled&mdash;a rat&mdash;a
+rabbit? A flash of pink struck at my eyes.
+A lady in a pink dress was sitting on the
+step at the other side of the sundial.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+I suppose some exclamation escaped me&mdash;the
+lady looked up. Her hair was dark, and
+her eyes; her face was pink and white, with
+a few little gold-coloured freckles on nose
+and on cheek bones. Her dress was of pink
+cotton stuff, thin and soft. She looked like
+a beautiful pink rose.</p>
+
+<p>Our eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I had no
+idea&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; there I stopped and tried to crawl
+back to firm ground. Graceful explanations
+are not best given by one sprawling on his
+stomach across a sundial.</p>
+
+<p>By the time I was once more on my feet
+she too was standing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a beautiful old place,&rdquo; she said
+gently, and, as it seemed, with a kindly wish
+to relieve my embarrassment. She made a
+movement as if to turn away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite a show place,&rdquo; said I stupidly
+enough, but I was still a little embarrassed,
+and I wanted to say something&mdash;anything&mdash;to
+arrest her departure. You have no idea
+how pretty she was. She had a straw hat in
+her hand, dangling by soft black ribbons.
+Her hair was all fluffy-soft&mdash;like a child&rsquo;s.
+&ldquo;I suppose you have seen the house?&rdquo; I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+She paused, one foot still on the lower
+step of the sundial, and her face seemed to
+brighten at the touch of some idea as sudden
+as welcome.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well&mdash;no,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The fact is&mdash;I
+wanted frightfully to see the house; in fact,
+I&rsquo;ve come miles and miles on purpose, but
+there&rsquo;s no one to let me in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The people at the lodge?&rdquo; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&mdash;the fact is I&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t want to be shown round. I want
+to explore!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me critically. Her eyes
+dwelt on my right hand, which lay on
+the sundial. I have always taken reasonable
+care of my hands, and I wore a
+good ring, a sapphire, cut with the Sefton
+arms: an heirloom, by the way. Her glance
+at my hand preluded a longer glance at
+my face. Then she shrugged her pretty
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh well,&rdquo; she said, and it was as if she
+had said plainly, &ldquo;I see that you are a gentleman
+and a decent fellow. Why should I not
+look over the house in your company? Introductions?
+Bah!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All this her shrug said without ambiguity
+as without words.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; I hazarded, &ldquo;I could get the
+keys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you really care very much for old
+houses?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;and you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I care so much that I nearly broke into
+this one. I should have done it quite if the
+windows had been an inch or two lower.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am an inch or two higher,&rdquo; said I,
+standing squarely so as to make the most
+of my six-feet beside her five-feet-five or
+thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&mdash;if you only would!&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said I.</p>
+
+<p>She led the way past the marble basin of
+the fountain, and along the historic yew
+avenue, planted, like all old yew avenues,
+by that industrious gardener our Eighth
+Henry. Then across a lawn, through a
+winding, grassy, shrubbery path, that ended
+at a green door in the garden wall.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can lift this latch with a hairpin,&rdquo;
+said she, and therewith lifted it.</p>
+
+<p>We walked into a courtyard. Young
+grass grew green between the grey flags on
+which our steps echoed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is the window,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;You
+see there&rsquo;s a pane broken. If you could get
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+on to the window-sill, you could get your
+hand in and undo the hasp, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll let me in by the kitchen door.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I did it. My conscience called me a burglar&mdash;in
+vain. Was it not my own, or as good
+as my own house?</p>
+
+<p>I let her in at the back door. We walked
+through the big dark kitchen where the
+old three-legged pot towered large on the
+hearth, and the old spits and firedogs still
+kept their ancient place. Then through
+another kitchen where red rust was making
+its full meal of a comparatively modern
+range.</p>
+
+<p>Then into the great hall, where the old
+armour and the buff-coats and round-caps
+hang on the walls, and where the carved
+stone staircases run at each side up to the
+gallery above.</p>
+
+<p>The long tables in the middle of the hall
+were scored by the knives of the many who
+had eaten meat there&mdash;initials and dates were
+cut into them. The roof was groined, the
+windows low-arched.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but what a place!&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;this
+must be much older than the rest of it&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Evidently. About 1300, I should say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Oh, let us explore the rest,&rdquo; she cried;
+&ldquo;it is really a comfort not to have a guide,
+but only a person like you who just guesses
+comfortably at dates. I should hate to be
+told <i>exactly</i> when this hall was built.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We explored ball-room and picture gallery,
+white parlour and library. Most of the rooms
+were furnished&mdash;all heavily, some magnificently&mdash;but
+everything was dusty and
+faded.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the white parlour, a spacious
+panelled room on the first floor, that she
+told me the ghost story, substantially the
+same as my porter&rsquo;s tale, only in one respect
+different.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so, just as she was leaving this very
+room&mdash;yes, I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s this room, because
+the woman at the inn pointed out this
+double window and told me so&mdash;just as the
+poor lovers were creeping out of the door,
+the cruel father came quickly out of some
+dark place and killed them both. So now
+they haunt it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a terrible thought,&rdquo; said I gravely.
+&ldquo;How would you like to live in a haunted
+house?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nor I; it would be too&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; my speech
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+would have ended flippantly, but for the
+grave set of her features.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder who <i>will</i> live here?&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;The owner is just dead. They say it is
+an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course
+one is not afraid now&rdquo;&mdash;the sunlight lay
+golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the
+floor&mdash;&ldquo;but at night, when the wind wails,
+and the doors creak, and the things rustle,
+oh, it must be awful!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hear the house has been left to
+two people, or rather one is to have the
+house, and the other a sum of money,&rdquo;
+said I. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a beautiful house, full of
+beautiful things, but I should think at least
+one of the heirs would rather have the
+money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder
+whether the heirs know about the ghost?
+The lights can be seen from the inn, you
+know, at twelve o&rsquo;clock, and they see the
+ghost in white at the window.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never the black one?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, I suppose so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The ghosts don&rsquo;t appear together?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;whoever it is that
+manages such things knows that the poor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+ghosts would like to be together, so it won&rsquo;t
+let them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shivered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;we have seen all over
+the house; let us get back into the sunshine.
+Now I will go out, and you shall bolt the
+door after me, and then you can come out
+by the window. Thank you so much for
+all the trouble you have taken. It has
+really been quite an adventure....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I rather liked that expression, and she
+hastened to spoil it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;... Quite an adventure going all over this
+glorious old place, and looking at everything
+one wanted to see, and not just at what the
+housekeeper didn&rsquo;t mind one&rsquo;s looking at.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She passed through the door, but when I
+had closed it and prepared to lock it, I
+found that the key was no longer in the
+lock. I looked on the floor&mdash;I felt in my
+pockets, and at last, wandering back into
+the kitchen, discovered it on the table, where
+I swear I never put it.</p>
+
+<p>When I had fitted that key into the lock
+and turned it, and got out of the window
+and made that fast, I dropped into the yard.
+No one shared its solitude with me. I
+searched garden and pleasure grounds, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+never a glimpse of pink rewarded my
+anxious eyes. I found the sundial again,
+and stretched myself along the warm brick
+of the wide step where she had sat: and
+called myself a fool.</p>
+
+<p>I had let her go. I did not know her
+name; I did not know where she lived;
+she had been at the inn, but probably only
+for lunch. I should never see her again,
+and certainly in that event I should never
+see again such dark, soft eyes, such hair,
+such a contour of cheek and chin, such a
+frank smile&mdash;in a word, a girl with whom
+it would be so delightfully natural for me
+to fall in love. For all the time she had
+been talking to me of architecture and
+archæology, of dates and periods, of carvings
+and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling
+in love with the idea of falling in love with
+her. I had cherished and adored this
+delightful possibility, and now my chance
+was over. Even I could not definitely fall
+in love after one interview with a girl I was
+never to see again! And falling in love is
+so pleasant! I cursed my lost chance, and
+went back to the inn. I talked to the
+waiter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, a lady in pink had lunched there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+with a party. Had gone on to the Castle.
+A party from Tonbridge it was.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Barnhurst Castle is close to Sefton Manor.
+The inn lays itself out to entertain persons
+who come in brakes and carve their names
+on the walls of the Castle keep. The inn
+has a visitors&rsquo; book. I examined it. Some
+twenty feminine names. Any one might be
+hers. The waiter looked over my shoulder.
+I turned the pages.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only parties staying in the house in this
+part of the book,&rdquo; said the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>My eye caught one name. &ldquo;Selwyn
+Sefton,&rdquo; in a clear, round, black hand-writing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Staying here?&rdquo; I pointed to the name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir; came to-day, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can I have a private sitting-room?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had one. I ordered my dinner to be
+served in it, and I sat down and considered
+my course of action. Should I invite my
+cousin Selwyn to dinner, ply him with wine,
+and exact promises? Honour forbade.
+Should I seek him out and try to establish
+friendly relations? To what end?</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw from my window a young man
+in a light-checked suit, with a face at once
+pallid and coarse. He strolled along the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+gravel path, and a woman&rsquo;s voice in the
+garden called &ldquo;Selwyn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared in the direction of the
+voice. I don&rsquo;t think I ever disliked a man
+so much at first sight.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brute,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;why should he have the
+house? He&rsquo;d stucco it all over as likely as
+not; perhaps let it! He&rsquo;d never stand the
+ghosts, either&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the inexcusable, daring idea of my
+life came to me, striking me rigid&mdash;a blow
+from my other self. It must have been a
+minute or two before my muscles relaxed
+and my arms fell at my sides.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>I dined. I told the people of the house
+not to sit up for me. I was going to see
+friends in the neighbourhood, and might stay
+the night with them. I took my Inverness
+cape with me on my arm and my soft felt
+hat in my pocket. I wore a light suit and
+a straw hat.</p>
+
+<p>Before I started I leaned cautiously from
+my window. The lamp at the bow window
+next to mine showed me the pallid young
+man, smoking a fat, reeking cigar. I hoped
+he would continue to sit there smoking.
+His window looked the right way; and if
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+he didn&rsquo;t see what I wanted him to see
+some one else in the inn would. The landlady
+had assured me that I should disturb
+no one if I came in at half-past twelve.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We hardly keep country hours here, sir,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;on account of so much excursionist
+business.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I bought candles in the village, and, as
+I went down across the park in the soft darkness,
+I turned again and again to be sure
+that the light and the pallid young man
+were still at that window. It was now past
+eleven.</p>
+
+<p>I got into the house and lighted a candle,
+and crept through the dark kitchens, whose
+windows, I knew, did not look towards the
+inn. When I came to the hall I blew
+out my candle. I dared not show light
+prematurely, and in the unhaunted part of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>I gave myself a nasty knock against one
+of the long tables, but it helped me to get
+my bearings, and presently I laid my hand
+on the stone balustrade of the great staircase.
+You would hardly believe me if I were to
+tell you truly of my sensations as I began
+to go up these stairs. I am not a coward&mdash;at
+least, I had never thought so till then&mdash;but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+the absolute darkness unnerved me. I
+had to go slowly, or I should have lost my
+head and blundered up the stairs three at a
+time, so strong was the feeling of something&mdash;something
+uncanny&mdash;just behind me.</p>
+
+<p>I set my teeth. I reached the top of the
+stairs, felt along the walls, and after a false
+start, which landed me in the great picture
+gallery, I found the white parlour, entered it,
+closed the door, and felt my way to a little
+room without a window, which we had
+decided must have been a powdering-room.</p>
+
+<p>Here I ventured to re-light my candle.</p>
+
+<p>The white parlour, I remembered, was fully
+furnished. Returning to it I struck one match,
+and by its flash determined the way to the
+mantelpiece.</p>
+
+<p>Then I closed the powdering-room door
+behind me. I felt my way to the mantelpiece
+and took down the two brass twenty-lighted
+candelabra. I placed these on a table
+a yard or two from the window, and in them
+set up my candles. It is astonishingly difficult
+in the dark to do anything, even a thing so
+simple as the setting up of a candle.</p>
+
+<p>Then I went back into my little room,
+put on the Inverness cape and the slouch
+hat, and looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+I must wait. I sat down and waited. I
+thought how rich I was&mdash;the thought fell
+flat; I wanted this house. I thought of my
+beautiful pink lady; but I put that thought
+aside; I had an inward consciousness that
+my conduct, more heroic than enough in
+one sense, would seem mean and crafty in
+her eyes. Only ten minutes had passed. I
+could not wait till twelve. The chill of the
+night and of the damp, unused house, and,
+perhaps, some less material influence, made
+me shiver.</p>
+
+<p>I opened the door, crept on hands and
+knees to the table, and, carefully keeping
+myself below the level of the window, I
+reached up a trembling arm, and lighted, one
+by one, my forty candles. The room was a
+blaze of light. My courage came back to
+me with the retreat of the darkness. I was
+far too excited to know what a fool I was
+making of myself. I rose boldly, and struck
+an attitude over against the window, where
+the candle-light shone upon as well as behind
+me. My Inverness was flung jauntily over
+my shoulder, my soft, black felt twisted and
+slouched over my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>There I stood for the world, and particularly
+for my cousin Selwyn, to see, the very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+image of the ghost that haunted that chamber.
+And from my window I could see the light
+in that other window, and indistinctly the
+lounging figure there. Oh, my cousin Selwyn,
+I wished many things to your address in that
+moment! For it was only a moment that I
+had to feel brave and daring in. Then I
+heard, deep down in the house, a sound, very
+slight, very faint. Then came silence. I drew
+a deep breath. The silence endured. And I
+stood by my lighted window.</p>
+
+<p>After a very long time, as it seemed, I
+heard a board crack, and then a soft rustling
+sound that drew near and seemed to pause
+outside the very door of my parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Again I held my breath, and now I thought
+of the most horrible story Poe ever wrote&mdash;&ldquo;The
+Fall of the House of Usher&rdquo;&mdash;and I
+fancied I saw the handle of that door move.
+I fixed my eyes on it. The fancy passed:
+and returned.</p>
+
+<p>Then again there was silence. And then
+the door opened with a soft, silent suddenness,
+and I saw in the doorway a figure in
+trailing white. Its eyes blazed in a death-white
+face. It made two ghostly, gliding
+steps forward, and my heart stood still. I
+had not thought it possible for a man to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I
+had masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this
+accursed house. Well, the other ghost&mdash;the
+real one&mdash;had come to meet me. I do not
+like to dwell on that moment. The only
+thing which it pleases me to remember is that
+I did not scream or go mad. I think I stood
+on the verge of both.</p>
+
+<p>The ghost, I say, took two steps forward;
+then it threw up its arms, the lighted taper
+it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back
+against the door with its arms across its face.</p>
+
+<p>The fall of the candle woke me as from a
+nightmare. It fell solidly, and rolled away
+under the table.</p>
+
+<p>I perceived that my ghost was human. I
+cried incoherently: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The ghost dropped its hands and turned
+agonised eyes on me. I tore off my cloak
+and hat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;didn&rsquo;t&mdash;scream,&rdquo; she said, and with
+that I sprang forward and caught her in my
+arms&mdash;my poor, pink lady&mdash;white now as a
+white rose.</p>
+
+<p>I carried her into the powdering-room, and
+left one candle with her, extinguishing the
+others hastily, for now I saw what in my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+extravagant folly had escaped me before, that
+my ghost exhibition might bring the whole
+village down on the house. I tore down the
+long corridor and double locked the doors
+leading from it to the staircase, then back to
+the powdering-room and the prone white rose.
+How, in the madness of that night&rsquo;s folly, I
+had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my
+understanding. But I had done it. Now I
+rubbed her hands with the spirit. I rubbed
+her temples, I tried to force it between her
+lips, and at last she sighed and opened her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&mdash;thank God&mdash;thank God!&rdquo; I cried,
+for indeed I had almost feared that my mad
+trick had killed her. &ldquo;Are you better?
+oh, poor little lady, are you better?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She moved her head a little on my arm.</p>
+
+<p>Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I
+gave her more brandy. She took it, choked,
+raised herself against my shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right now,&rdquo; she said faintly. &ldquo;It
+served me right. How silly it all is!&rdquo; Then
+she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this moment that we heard voices
+on the terrace below. She clutched at my
+arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears
+glistening on her cheeks.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! not any more, not any more,&rdquo; she
+cried. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t bear it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; I said, taking her hands strongly
+in mine. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve played the fool; so have
+you. We must play the man now. The
+people in the village have seen the lights&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+all. They think we&rsquo;re burglars. They
+can&rsquo;t get in. Keep quiet, and they&rsquo;ll go
+away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But when they did go away they left the
+local constable on guard. He kept guard like
+a man till daylight began to creep over the
+hill, and then he crawled into the hayloft and
+fell asleep, small blame to him.</p>
+
+<p>But through those long hours I sat beside
+her and held her hand. At first she clung to
+me as a frightened child clings, and her tears
+were the prettiest, saddest things to see. As
+we grew calmer we talked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did it to frighten my cousin,&rdquo; I owned.
+&ldquo;I meant to have told you to-day, I mean
+yesterday, only you went away. I am
+Lawrence Sefton, and the place is to go either
+to me or to my cousin Selwyn. And I
+wanted to frighten him off it. But you, why
+did you&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Even then I couldn&rsquo;t see. She looked at
+me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how I ever could have
+thought I was brave enough to do it, but I
+did want the house so, and I wanted to
+frighten you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To frighten <i>me</i>. Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because I am your cousin Selwyn,&rdquo; she
+said, hiding her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you knew me?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By your ring,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I saw your
+father wear it when I was a little girl. Can&rsquo;t
+we get back to the inn now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not unless you want every one to know
+how silly we have been.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d forgive me,&rdquo; she said when
+we had talked awhile, and she had even
+laughed at the description of the pallid young
+man on whom I had bestowed, in my mind,
+her name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The wrong is mutual,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;we will
+exchange forgivenesses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but it isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said eagerly. &ldquo;Because
+I knew it was you, and you didn&rsquo;t
+know it was me: you wouldn&rsquo;t have tried
+to frighten <i>me</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo; My voice was
+tenderer than I meant it to be.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And who is to have the house?&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Why you, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, because!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t we put off the decision?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Impossible. We must decide to-morrow&mdash;to-day
+I mean.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, when we meet to-morrow&mdash;I mean
+to-day&mdash;with lawyers and chaperones and
+mothers and relations, give me one word
+alone with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, with docility.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she said presently, &ldquo;I
+can never respect myself again? To undertake
+a thing like that, and then be so horribly
+frightened. Oh! I thought you really <i>were</i>
+the other ghost.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will tell you a secret,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I
+thought <i>you</i> were, and I was much more
+frightened than you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh well,&rdquo; she said, leaning against my
+shoulder as a tired child might have done,
+&ldquo;if you were frightened too, Cousin Lawrence,
+I don&rsquo;t mind so very, very much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was soon afterwards that, cautiously
+looking out of the parlour window for the
+twentieth time, I had the happiness of seeing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+the local policeman disappear into the stable
+rubbing his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>We got out of the window on the other
+side of the house, and went back to the inn
+across the dewy park. The French window
+of the sitting-room which had let her out
+let us both in. No one was stirring, so no
+one save she and I were any the wiser as
+to that night&rsquo;s work.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was like a garden party next day, when
+lawyers and executors and aunts and relations
+met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor
+House.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were downcast. She followed
+her Aunt demurely over the house and the
+grounds.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your decision,&rdquo; said my great-uncle&rsquo;s
+solicitor, &ldquo;has to be given within the hour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My cousin and I will announce it within
+that time,&rdquo; I said and I at once gave her my
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the sundial we stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is my proposal,&rdquo; I said: &ldquo;we will say
+that we decide that the house is yours&mdash;we
+will spend the £20,000 in restoring it and the
+grounds. By the time that&rsquo;s done we can
+decide who is to have it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+&ldquo;But how?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, we&rsquo;ll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny,
+or anything you like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather decide now,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;<i>you</i>
+take it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, <i>you</i> shall.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather you had it. I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t feel so
+greedy as I did yesterday,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the
+same way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do&mdash;do take the house,&rdquo; she said very
+earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>Then I said: &ldquo;My cousin Selwyn, unless
+you take the house, I shall make you an
+offer of marriage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oh!</i>&rdquo; she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And when you have declined it, on the
+very proper ground of our too slight acquaintance,
+I will take my turn at declining. I will
+decline the house. Then, if you are obdurate,
+it will become an asylum. Don&rsquo;t be obdurate.
+Pretend to take the house and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me rather piteously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I will pretend to
+take the house, and when it is restored&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll spin the penny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So before the waiting relations the house
+was adjudged to my cousin Selwyn. When
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+the restoration was complete I met Selwyn
+at the sundial. We had met there often in
+the course of the restoration, in which business
+we both took an extravagant interest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll spin the penny.
+Heads you take the house, tails it comes
+to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I spun the coin&mdash;it fell on the brick steps
+of the sundial, and stuck upright there,
+wedged between two bricks. She laughed;
+I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not <i>my</i> house,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not <i>my</i> house,&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear,&rdquo; said I, and we were neither of us
+laughing then, &ldquo;can&rsquo;t it be <i>our</i> house?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And, thank God, our house it is.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">II<br />
+<br />
+THE POWER OF DARKNESS</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was an enthusiastic send-off. Half the
+students from her Atelier were there, and
+twice as many more from other studios. She
+had been the belle of the Artists&rsquo; Quarter in
+Montparnasse for three golden months. Now
+she was off to the Riviera to meet her people,
+and every one she knew was at the Gare de
+Lyons to catch the pretty last glimpse of her.
+And, as had been more than once said late of
+an evening, &ldquo;to see her was to love her.&rdquo;
+She was one of those agitating blondes, with
+the naturally rippled hair, the rounded rose-leaf
+cheeks, the large violet-blue eyes that
+look all things and mean Heaven alone
+knows how little. She held her court like a
+queen, leaning out of the carriage window and
+receiving bouquets, books, journals, long last
+words, and last longing looks. All eyes were
+on her, and her eyes were for all&mdash;and her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+smile. For all but one, that is. Not a single
+glance went Edward&rsquo;s way, and Edward, tall,
+lean, gaunt, with big eyes, straight nose, and
+mouth somewhat too small, too beautiful,
+seemed to grow thinner and paler before
+one&rsquo;s eyes. One pair of eyes at least saw
+the miracle worked, the paling of what had
+seemed absolute pallor, the revelation of the
+bones of a face that seemed already covered
+but by the thinnest possible veil of flesh.</p>
+
+<p>And the man whose eyes saw this rejoiced,
+for he loved her, like the rest, or not like the
+rest; and he had had Edward&rsquo;s face before him
+for the last month, in that secret shrine where
+we set the loved and the hated, the shrine
+that is lighted by a million lamps kindled at
+the soul&rsquo;s flame, the shrine that leaps into
+dazzling glow when the candles are out and
+one lies alone on hot pillows to outface the
+night and the light as best one may.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, good-bye, good-bye, all of you,&rdquo; said
+Rose. &ldquo;I shall miss you&mdash;oh, you don&rsquo;t
+know how I shall miss you all!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She gathered the glances of her friends and
+her worshippers on her own glance, as one
+gathers jewels on a silken string. The eyes
+of Edward alone seemed to escape her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Em voiture, messieurs et dames.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+Folk drew back from the train. There
+was a whistle. And then at the very last
+little moment of all, as the train pulled
+itself together for the start, her eyes met
+Edward&rsquo;s eyes. And the other man saw
+the meeting, and he knew&mdash;which was more
+than Edward did.</p>
+
+<p>So, when the light of life having been
+borne away in the retreating train, the
+broken-hearted group dispersed, the other
+man, whose name by the way was Vincent,
+linked his arm in Edward&rsquo;s and asked
+cheerily: &ldquo;Whither away, sweet nymph?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m off home,&rdquo; said Edward. &ldquo;The
+7.20 to Calais.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sick of Paris?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One has to see one&rsquo;s people sometimes,
+don&rsquo;t you know, hang it all!&rdquo; was Edward&rsquo;s
+way of expressing the longing that tore
+him for the old house among the brown
+woods of Kent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No attraction here now, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The chief attraction has gone, certainly,&rdquo;
+Edward made himself say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But there are as good fish in the
+sea&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fishing isn&rsquo;t my trade,&rdquo; said Edward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The beautiful Rose!&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+Edward raised hurriedly the only shield
+he could find. It happened to be the
+truth as he saw it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of course, we&rsquo;re all in
+love with her&mdash;and all hopelessly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Vincent perceived that this was truth,
+as Edward saw it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do till your train
+goes?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Café, I suppose, and a
+vilely early dinner.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s look in at the Musée Grévin,&rdquo;
+said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>The two were friends. They had been
+school-fellows, and this is a link that
+survives many a strain too strong to be
+resisted by more intimate and vital bonds.
+And they were fellow-students, though that
+counts for little or much&mdash;as you take it.
+Besides, Vincent knew something about
+Edward that no one else of their age and
+standing even guessed. He knew that
+Edward was afraid of the dark, and why.
+He had found it out that Christmas that
+the two had spent at an English country
+house. The house was full: there was a
+dance. There were to be theatricals. Early
+in the new year the hostess meant to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+&ldquo;move house&rdquo; to an old convent, built in
+Tudor times, a beautiful place with terraces
+and clipped yew trees, castellated battlements,
+a moat, swans, and a ghost story.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You boys,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;must put up
+with a shake-down in the new house. I
+hope the ghost won&rsquo;t worry you. She&rsquo;s
+a nun with a bunch of keys and no eyes.
+Comes and breathes softly on the back of
+your neck when you&rsquo;re shaving. Then you
+see her in the glass, and, as often as not,
+you cut your throat.&rdquo; She laughed. So did
+Edward and Vincent, and the other young
+men; there were seven or eight of them.</p>
+
+<p>But that night, when sparse candles had
+lighted &ldquo;the boys&rdquo; to their rooms, when
+the last pipe had been smoked, the last
+good-night said, there came a fumbling
+with the handle of Vincent&rsquo;s door. Edward
+entered an unwieldy figure clasping pillows,
+trailing blankets.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What the deuce?&rdquo; queried Vincent in
+natural amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll turn in here on the floor, if you
+don&rsquo;t mind,&rdquo; said Edward. &ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s
+beastly rot, but I can&rsquo;t stand it. The room
+they&rsquo;ve put me into, it&rsquo;s an attic as big as
+a barn&mdash;and there&rsquo;s a great door at the end,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+eight feet high&mdash;raw oak it is&mdash;and it leads
+into a sort of horror-hole&mdash;bare beams and
+rafters, and black as Hell. I know I&rsquo;m an
+abject duffer, but there it is&mdash;I can&rsquo;t face
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Vincent was sympathetic, though he had
+never known a night-terror that could not
+be exorcised by pipe, book, and candle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know, old chap. There&rsquo;s no reasoning
+about these things,&rdquo; said he, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t despise me more than I despise
+myself,&rdquo; Edward said. &ldquo;I feel a crawling
+hound. But it is so. I had a scare when I
+was a kid, and it seems to have left a sort
+of brand on me. I&rsquo;m branded &lsquo;coward,&rsquo; old
+man, and the feel of it&rsquo;s not nice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again Vincent was sympathetic, and the
+poor little tale came out. How Edward,
+eight years old, and greedy as became his
+little years, had sneaked down, night-clad, to
+pick among the outcomings of a dinner-party,
+and how, in the hall, dark with the
+light of an &ldquo;artistic&rdquo; coloured glass lantern,
+a white figure had suddenly faced him&mdash;leaned
+towards him it seemed, pointed lead-white
+hands at his heart. That next day,
+finding him weak from his fainting fit, had
+shown the horror to be but a statue, a new
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+purchase of his father&rsquo;s, had mattered not
+one whit.</p>
+
+<p>Edward had shared Vincent&rsquo;s room, and
+Vincent, alone of all men, shared Edward&rsquo;s
+secret.</p>
+
+<p>And now, in Paris, Rose speeding away
+towards Cannes, Vincent said: &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s look
+in at the Musée Grévin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Musée Grévin is a wax-work show.
+Your mind, at the word, flies instantly to
+the excellent exhibition founded by the
+worthy Madame Tussaud, and you think
+you know what wax-works mean. But you
+are wrong. The exhibition of Madame
+Tussaud&mdash;in these days, at any rate&mdash;is
+the work of <i>bourgeois</i> for a <i>bourgeois</i> class.
+The Musée Grévin contains the work of
+artists for a nation of artists. Wax, modelled
+and retouched till it seems as near life as
+death is: this is what one sees at the Musée
+Grévin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s look in at the Musée Grévin,&rdquo; said
+Vincent. He remembered the pleasant thrill
+the Musée had given him, and wondered what
+sort of a thrill it would give his friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hate museums,&rdquo; said Edward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t a museum,&rdquo; Vincent said, and
+truly; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s just wax-works.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Edward indifferently.
+And they went. They reached the doors
+of the Musée in the grey-brown dusk of a
+February evening.</p>
+
+<p>One walks along a bare, narrow corridor,
+much like the entrance to the stalls of the
+Standard Theatre, and such daylight as
+there may be fades away behind one, and
+one finds oneself in a square hall, heavily
+decorated, and displaying with its electric
+lights Loie Fuller in her accordion-pleated
+skirts, and one or two other figures not
+designed to quicken the pulse.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very like Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said
+Edward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Vincent said; &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then they passed through an arch, and
+behold, a long room with waxen groups life-like
+behind glass&mdash;the <i>coulisses</i> of the Opéra,
+Kitchener at Fashoda&mdash;this last with a
+desert background lit by something convincingly
+like desert sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; said Edward, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s jolly
+good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Vincent again; &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Edward&rsquo;s interest grew. The things were
+so convincing, so very nearly alive. Given
+the right angle, their glass eyes met one&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+own, and seemed to exchange with one
+meaning glances.</p>
+
+<p>Vincent led the way to an arched door
+labelled: &ldquo;Gallerie de la Revolution.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There one saw, almost in the living, suffering
+body, poor Marie Antoinette in prison in
+the Temple, her little son on his couch of rags,
+the rats eating from his platter, the brutal
+Simon calling to him from the grated window;
+one almost heard the words, &ldquo;Ho la, little
+Capet&mdash;are you asleep?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One saw Marat bleeding in his bath&mdash;the
+brave Charlotte eyeing him&mdash;the very tiles of
+the bath-room, the glass of the windows with,
+outside, the very sunlight, as it seemed, of
+1793 on that &ldquo;yellow July evening, the
+thirteenth of the month.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The spectators did not move in a public
+place among wax-work figures. They peeped
+through open doors into rooms where history
+seemed to be re-lived. The rooms were
+lighted each by its own sun, or lamp, or
+candle. The spectators walked among
+shadows that might have oppressed a nervous
+person.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fine, eh?&rdquo; said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Edward; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A turn of a corner brought them to a room.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+Marie Antoinette fainting, supported by her
+ladies; poor fat Louis by the window looking
+literally sick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with them all?&rdquo; said
+Edward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look at the window,&rdquo; said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>There was a window to the room. Outside
+was sunshine&mdash;the sunshine of 1792&mdash;and,
+gleaming in it, blonde hair flowing, red mouth
+half open, what seemed the just-severed head
+of a beautiful woman. It was raised on a
+pike, so that it seemed to be looking in at
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I say!&rdquo; said Edward, and the head on the
+pike seemed to sway before his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Madame de Lamballe. Good thing, isn&rsquo;t
+it?&rdquo; said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s altogether too much of a good thing,&rdquo;
+said Edward. &ldquo;Look here&mdash;I&rsquo;ve had enough
+of this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you must just see the Catacombs,&rdquo;
+said Vincent; &ldquo;nothing bloody, you know.
+Only Early Christians being married and
+baptized, and all that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He led the way, down some clumsy steps
+to the cellars which the genius of a great
+artist has transformed into the exact semblance
+of the old Catacombs at Rome. The same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+rough hewing of rock, the same sacred tokens
+engraved strongly and simply; and among the
+arches of these subterranean burrowings the
+life of the Early Christians, their sacraments,
+their joys, their sorrows&mdash;all expressed in
+groups of wax-work as like life as Death is.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But this is very fine, you know,&rdquo; said
+Edward, getting his breath again after
+Madame de Lamballe, and his imagination
+loved the thought of the noble sufferings
+and refrainings of these first lovers of the
+Crucified Christ.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Vincent for the third time;
+&ldquo;isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They passed the baptism and the burying
+and the marriage. The tableaux were
+sufficiently lighted, but little light strayed to
+the narrow passage where the two men
+walked, and the darkness seemed to press,
+tangible as a bodily presence, against Edward&rsquo;s
+shoulder. He glanced backward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on, then,&rdquo; said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>They turned the corner&mdash;and a blaze of
+Italian sunlight struck at their eyes with
+positive dazzlement. There lay the Coliseum&mdash;tier
+on tier of eager faces under the blue
+sky of Italy. They were level with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+arena. In the arena were crosses; from
+them drooped bleeding figures. On the sand
+beasts prowled, bodies lay. They saw it all
+through bars. They seemed to be in the
+place where the chosen victims waited their
+turn, waited for the lions and the crosses,
+the palm and the crown. Close by Edward
+was a group&mdash;an old man, a woman&mdash;children.
+He could have touched them
+with his hand. The woman and the man
+stared in an agony of terror straight in the
+eyes of a snarling tiger, ten feet long, that
+stood up on its hind feet and clawed through
+the bars at them. The youngest child, only,
+unconscious of the horror, laughed in the
+very face of it. Roman soldiers, unmoved
+in military vigilance, guarded the group of
+martyrs. In a low cage to the left more
+wild beasts cringed and seemed to growl, unfed.
+Within the grating on the wide circle
+of yellow sand lions and tigers drank the
+blood of Christians. Close against the bars
+a great lion sucked the chest of a corpse
+on whose blood-stained face the horror of
+the death-agony was printed plain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; said Edward. Vincent took
+his arm suddenly, and he started with what
+was almost a shriek.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+&ldquo;What a nervous chap you are!&rdquo; said
+Vincent complacently, as they regained the
+street where the lights were, and the sound
+of voices and the movement of live human
+beings&mdash;all that warms and awakens nerves
+almost paralysed by the life in death of waxen
+immobility.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Edward. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s have
+a vermouth, shall we? There&rsquo;s something
+uncanny about those wax things. They&rsquo;re
+like life&mdash;but they&rsquo;re much more like death.
+Suppose they moved? I don&rsquo;t feel at all
+sure that they don&rsquo;t move, when the lights
+are all out, and there&rsquo;s no one there.&rdquo;
+He laughed. &ldquo;I suppose you were never
+frightened, Vincent?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I was once,&rdquo; said Vincent, sipping
+his absinthe. &ldquo;Three other men and I were
+taking turns by twos to watch a dead man.
+It was a fancy of his mother&rsquo;s. Our time was
+up, and the other watch hadn&rsquo;t come. So my
+chap&mdash;the one who was watching with me, I
+mean&mdash;went to fetch them. I didn&rsquo;t think I
+should mind. But it was just like you say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I kept thinking: suppose it should
+move&mdash;it was so like life. And if it did
+move, of course it would have been because
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+it <i>was</i> alive, and I ought to have been glad,
+because the man was my friend. But all the
+same, if it had moved I should have gone
+mad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Edward; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s just exactly
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Vincent called for a second absinthe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But a dead body&rsquo;s different to wax-works,&rdquo;
+he said. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t understand any one being
+frightened of <i>them</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, can&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; The contempt in the
+other&rsquo;s tone stung him. &ldquo;I bet you wouldn&rsquo;t
+spend a night alone in that place.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I bet you five pounds I do!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Done!&rdquo; said Edward briskly. &ldquo;At least,
+I would if you&rsquo;d got five pounds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I have. I&rsquo;m simply rolling. I&rsquo;ve
+sold my Dejanira, didn&rsquo;t you know? I shall
+win your money, though, anyway. But <i>you</i>
+couldn&rsquo;t do it, old man. I suppose you&rsquo;ll
+never outgrow that childish scare.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You might shut up about that,&rdquo; said
+Edward shortly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s nothing to be ashamed of; some
+women are afraid of mice or spiders. I say,
+does Rose know you&rsquo;re a coward?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Vincent!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No offence, old boy. One may as well
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+call a spade a spade. Of course, you&rsquo;ve got
+tons of moral courage, and all that. But you
+<i>are</i> afraid of the dark&mdash;and wax-works!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you trying to quarrel with me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven in its mercy forbid; but I bet <i>you</i>
+wouldn&rsquo;t spend a night in the Musée Grévin
+and keep your senses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the stake?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anything you like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Make it, that if I do, you&rsquo;ll never speak
+to Rose again&mdash;and what&rsquo;s more, that you&rsquo;ll
+never speak to me,&rdquo; said Edward, white-hot,
+knocking down a chair as he rose.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Done!&rdquo; said Vincent; &ldquo;but you&rsquo;ll never
+do it. Keep your hair on. Besides, you&rsquo;re
+off home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall be back in ten days. I&rsquo;ll do it
+then,&rdquo; said Edward, and was off before the
+other could answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then Vincent, left alone, sat still, and over
+his third absinthe remembered how, before she
+had known Edward, Rose had smiled on him;
+more than on the others, he had thought.
+He thought of her wide, lovely eyes, her
+wild-rose cheeks, the scented curves of her
+hair, and then and there the devil entered
+into him.</p>
+
+<p>In ten days Edward would undoubtedly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+try to win his wager. He would try to
+spend the night in the Musée Grévin.
+Perhaps something could be arranged before
+that. If one knew the place thoroughly!
+A little scare would serve Edward right for
+being the man to whom that last glance of
+Rose&rsquo;s had been given.</p>
+
+<p>Vincent dined lightly, but with conscientious
+care&mdash;and as he dined, he thought.
+Something might be done by tying a string
+to one of the figures, and making it move,
+when Edward was going through that impossible
+night among the effigies that are
+so like life&mdash;so like death. Something that
+was not the devil said: &ldquo;You may frighten
+him out of his wits.&rdquo; And the devil
+answered: &ldquo;Nonsense! do him good. He
+oughtn&rsquo;t to be such a schoolgirl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, the five pounds might as well
+be won to-night as any other night. He
+would take a great coat, sleep sound in the
+place of horrors, and the people who opened
+it in the morning to sweep and dust would
+bear witness that he had passed the night
+there. He thought he might trust to the
+French love of a sporting wager to keep him
+from any bother with the authorities.</p>
+
+<p>So he went in among the crowd, and looked
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+about among the wax-works for a place to
+hide in. He was not in the least afraid of
+these lifeless images. He had always been
+able to control his nervous tremors. He
+was not even afraid of being frightened,
+which, by the way, is the worst fear of all.
+As one looks at the room of the poor little
+Dauphin, one sees a door to the left. It
+opens out of the room on to blackness.
+There were few people in the gallery.
+Vincent watched, and in a moment when
+he was alone he stepped over the barrier
+and through this door. A narrow passage
+ran round behind the wall of the room.
+Here he hid, and when the gallery was
+deserted he looked out across the body of
+little Capet to the gaolers at the window.
+There was a soldier at the window, too.
+Vincent amused himself with the fancy that
+this soldier might walk round the passage
+at the back of the room and tap him on
+the shoulder in the darkness. Only the head
+and shoulders of the soldier and the gaoler
+showed, so, of course, they could not walk,
+even if they were something that was not
+wax-work.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he himself went along the
+passage and round to the window where
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+they were. He found that they had legs.
+They were full-sized figures dressed completely
+in the costume of the period.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thorough the beggars are, even the parts
+that don&rsquo;t show&mdash;artists, upon my word,&rdquo;
+said Vincent, and went back to his doorway,
+thinking of the hidden carving behind the
+capitols of Gothic cathedrals.</p>
+
+<p>But the idea of the soldier who might come
+behind him in the dark stuck in his mind.
+Though still a few visitors strolled through
+the gallery, the closing hour was near. He
+supposed it would be quite dark then. And
+now he had allowed himself to be amused
+by the thought of something that should
+creep up behind him in the dark, he might
+possibly be nervous in that passage round
+which, if wax-works could move, the soldier
+might have come.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;one might easily
+frighten oneself by just fancying things.
+Suppose there were a back way from
+Marat&rsquo;s bath-room, and instead of the
+soldier Marat came out of his bath, with
+his wet towels stained with blood, and
+dabbed them against your neck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When next the gallery was empty he
+crept out. Not because he was nervous,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+he told himself, but because one might be,
+and because the passage was draughty, and
+he meant to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>He went down the steps into the Catacombs,
+and here he spoke the truth to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hang it all!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I <i>was</i> nervous.
+That fool Edward must have infected me.
+Mesmeric influences, or something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Chuck it and go home,&rdquo; said Commonsense.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m damned if I do!&rdquo; said Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>There were a good many people in the
+Catacombs at the moment&mdash;live people.
+He sucked confidence from their nearness,
+and went up and down looking for a
+hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>Through rock-hewn arches he saw a
+burial scene&mdash;a corpse on a bier surrounded
+by mourners; a great pillar cut off half the
+still, lying figure. It was all still and
+unemotional as a Sunday School oleograph.
+He waited till no one was near, then
+slipped quickly through the mourning group
+and hid behind the pillar. Surprising&mdash;heartening
+too&mdash;to find a plain rushed chair
+there, doubtless set for the resting of tired
+officials. He sat down in it, comforted his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+hand with the commonplace lines of its
+rungs and back. A shrouded waxen figure
+just behind him to the left of his pillar
+worried him a little, but the corpse left
+him unmoved as itself. A far better place
+this than that draughty passage where the
+soldier with legs kept intruding on the
+darkness that is always behind one.</p>
+
+<p>Custodians went along the passages
+issuing orders. A stillness fell. Then
+suddenly all the lights went out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said Vincent, and
+composed himself to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>But he seemed to have forgotten what
+sleep was like. He firmly fixed his thoughts
+on pleasant things&mdash;the sale of his picture,
+dances with Rose, merry evenings with
+Edward and the others. But the thoughts
+rushed by him like motes in sunbeams&mdash;he
+could not hold a single one of them,
+and presently it seemed that he had
+thought of every pleasant thing that had
+ever happened to him, and that now, if he
+thought at all, he must think of the things
+one wants most to forget. And there
+would be time in this long night to think
+much of many things. But now he found
+that he could no longer think.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+The draped effigy just behind him worried
+him again. He had been trying, at the
+back of his mind, behind the other thoughts,
+to strangle the thought of it. But it was
+there&mdash;very close to him. Suppose it put
+out its hand, its wax hand, and touched
+him. But it was of wax: it could not
+move. No, of course not. But suppose
+it <i>did</i>?</p>
+
+<p>He laughed aloud, a short, dry laugh that
+echoed through the vaults. The cheering
+effect of laughter has been over-estimated,
+perhaps. Anyhow, he did not laugh again.</p>
+
+<p>The silence was intense, but it was a
+silence thick with rustlings and breathings,
+and movements that his ear, strained to
+the uttermost, could just not hear. Suppose,
+as Edward had said, when all the lights were
+out, these things did move. A corpse was
+a thing that had moved&mdash;given a certain
+condition&mdash;Life. What if there were a
+condition, given which these things could
+move? What if such conditions were
+present now? What if all of them&mdash;Napoleon,
+yellow-white from his death
+sleep&mdash;the beasts from the Amphitheatre,
+gore dribbling from their jaws&mdash;that soldier
+with the legs&mdash;all were drawing near to him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+in this full silence? Those death masks
+of Robespierre and Mirabeau, they might
+float down through the darkness till they
+touched his face. That head of Madame de
+Lamballe on the pike might be thrust at
+him from behind the pillar. The silence
+throbbed with sounds that could not quite
+be heard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You fool,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;your dinner
+has disagreed with you, with a vengeance.
+Don&rsquo;t be an ass. The whole lot are only
+a set of big dolls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He felt for his matches, and lighted a
+cigarette. The gleam of the match fell on
+the face of the corpse in front of him. The
+light was brief, and it seemed, somehow,
+impossible to look, by that light, in every
+corner where one would have wished to look.
+The match burnt his fingers as it went out;
+and there were only three more matches in
+the box.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark again, and the image left on
+the darkness was that of the corpse in front
+of him. He thought of his dead friend.
+When the cigarette was smoked out, he
+thought of him more and more, till it
+seemed that what lay on the bier was not
+wax. His hand reached forward, and drew
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+back more than once. But at last he made
+it touch the bier, and through the blackness
+travel up along a lean, rigid arm to the wax
+face that lay there so still. The touch was
+not reassuring. Just so, and not otherwise,
+had his dead friend&rsquo;s face felt, to the last
+touch of his lips: cold, firm, waxen. People
+always said the dead were &ldquo;waxen.&rdquo; How
+true that was! He had never thought of
+it before. He thought of it now.</p>
+
+<p>He sat still, so still that every muscle
+ached, because if you wish to hear the sounds
+that infest silence, you must be very still
+indeed. He thought of Edward, and of the
+string he had meant to tie to one of the
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That wouldn&rsquo;t be needed,&rdquo; he told himself.
+And his ears ached with listening&mdash;listening
+for the sound that, it seemed, <i>must</i>
+break at last from that crowded silence.</p>
+
+<p>He never knew how long he sat there.
+To move, to go up, to batter at the door
+and clamour to be let out&mdash;that one could
+have done if one had had a lantern, or even
+a full matchbox. But in the dark, not
+knowing the turnings, to feel one&rsquo;s way
+among these things that were so like life
+and yet were not alive&mdash;to touch, perhaps,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+these faces that were not dead, and yet felt
+like death. His heart beat heavily in his
+throat at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>No, he must sit still till morning. He
+had been hypnotised into this state, he told
+himself, by Edward, no doubt; it was not
+natural to him.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the silence was shattered.
+In the dark something moved. And, after
+those sounds that the silence teemed with,
+the noise seemed to him thunder-loud.
+Yet it was only a very, very little sound,
+just the rustling of drapery, as though something
+had turned in its sleep. And there
+was a sigh&mdash;not far off.</p>
+
+<p>Vincent&rsquo;s muscles and tendons tightened
+like fine-drawn wire. He listened. There
+was nothing more: only the silence, the
+thick silence.</p>
+
+<p>The sound had seemed to come from a
+part of the vault where, long ago, when
+there was light, he had seen a grave being
+dug for the body of a young girl martyr.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will get up and go out,&rdquo; said Vincent.
+&ldquo;I have three matches. I am off my head.
+I shall really be nervous presently if I don&rsquo;t
+look out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He got up and struck a match, refused
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+his eyes the sight of the corpse whose waxen
+face he had felt in the blackness, and made
+his way through the crowd of figures. By
+the match&rsquo;s flicker they seemed to make way
+for him, to turn their heads to look after
+him. The match lasted till he got to a turn
+of the rock-hewn passage. His next match
+showed him the burial scene: the little, thin
+body of the martyr, palm in hand, lying
+on the rock floor in patient waiting, the
+grave-digger, the mourners. Some standing,
+some kneeling, one crouched on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>This was where that sound had come from,
+that rustle, that sigh. He had thought he
+was going away from it: instead, he had
+come straight to the spot where, if anywhere,
+his nerves might be expected to play him
+false.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; he said, and he said it aloud, &ldquo;the
+silly things are only wax. Who&rsquo;s afraid?&rdquo;
+His voice sounded loud in the silence that
+lives with the wax people. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re only
+wax,&rdquo; he said again, and touched with his
+foot, contemptuously, the crouching figure in
+the mantle.</p>
+
+<p>And, as he touched it, it raised its head
+and looked vacantly at him, and its eyes
+were mobile and alive. He staggered back
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+against another figure, and dropped the
+match. In the new darkness he heard the
+crouching figure move towards him. Then
+the darkness fitted in round him very closely.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>&ldquo;What was it exactly that sent poor
+Vincent mad: you&rsquo;ve never told me?&rdquo; Rose
+asked the question. She and Edward were
+looking out over the pines and tamarisks,
+across the blue Mediterranean. They were
+very happy, because it was their honeymoon.</p>
+
+<p>He told her about the Musée Grévin and
+the wager, but he did not state the terms
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But why did he think you would be
+afraid?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He told her why.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And then what happened?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I suppose he thought there was
+no time like the present&mdash;for his five pounds,
+you know&mdash;and he hid among the wax-works.
+And I missed my train, and <i>I</i> thought there
+was no time like the present. In fact, dear,
+I thought if I waited I should have time to
+make certain of funking it, so I hid there,
+too. And I put on my big black capuchon,
+and sat down right in one of the wax-work
+groups&mdash;they couldn&rsquo;t see me from the passage
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+where you walk. And after they put the lights
+out I simply went to sleep; and I woke up&mdash;and
+there was a light, and I heard some one
+say: &lsquo;They&rsquo;re only wax,&rsquo; and it was Vincent.
+He thought I was one of the wax people,
+till I looked at him; and I expect he thought
+I was one of them even then, poor chap.
+And his match went out, and while I was
+trying to find my railway reading-lamp that
+I&rsquo;d got near me, he began to scream, and
+the night watchman came running. And
+now he thinks every one in the asylum is
+made of wax, and he screams if they come
+near him. They have to put his food beside
+him while he&rsquo;s asleep. It&rsquo;s horrible. I can&rsquo;t
+help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course it&rsquo;s not,&rdquo; said Rose. &ldquo;Poor
+Vincent! Do you know I never <i>really</i> liked
+him.&rdquo; There was a pause. Then she said:
+&ldquo;But how was it <i>you</i> weren&rsquo;t frightened?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;horribly frightened. I&mdash;I&mdash;it
+sounds idiotic, but I thought I should
+go mad at first&mdash;I did really: and yet I
+<i>had</i> to go through with it. And then I got
+among the figures of the people in the Catacombs,
+the people who died for&mdash;for things,
+don&rsquo;t you know, died in such horrible ways.
+And there they were, so calm&mdash;and believing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+it was all all right. And I thought about
+what they&rsquo;d gone through. It sounds awful
+rot I know, dear&mdash;but I expect I was
+sleepy. Those wax people, they sort of
+seemed as if they were alive, and were
+telling me there wasn&rsquo;t anything to be
+frightened about. I felt as if I were one
+of them, and they were all my friends, and
+they&rsquo;d wake me if anything went wrong,
+so I just went to sleep.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I understand,&rdquo; she said. But
+she didn&rsquo;t.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the odd thing is,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+never been afraid of the dark since. Perhaps
+his calling me a coward had something to
+do with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so,&rdquo; said she. And she
+was right. But she would never have understood
+how, nor why.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">III<br />
+<br />
+THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE
+BEEN OBSERVED</h2>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;There he goes&mdash;isn&rsquo;t he simply detestable!&rdquo;
+She spoke suddenly, after a silence longer
+than was usual to her; she was tired, and
+her voice was a note or two above its
+habitual key. She blushed, a deep pink
+blush of intense annoyance, as the young
+man passed down the long platform among
+the crowd of city men and typewriting girls,
+patiently waiting for the belated train to
+allow them to go home from work.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, do you think he heard? Oh, Molly&mdash;I
+believe he did!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said Molly briskly, &ldquo;of course
+he didn&rsquo;t. And I must say I don&rsquo;t think
+he&rsquo;s so bad. If he didn&rsquo;t look so sulky he
+wouldn&rsquo;t be <i>half</i> bad, really. If his eyebrows
+weren&rsquo;t tied up into knots, I believe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+he&rsquo;d look quite too frightfully sweet for
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s exactly like that Polish model we
+had last week. Oh, Molly, he&rsquo;s coming back
+again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again he passed the two girls. His
+expression was certainly not amiable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How long have you known him?&rdquo; Molly
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>don&rsquo;t</i> know him. I tell you I only see
+him on the platform at Mill Vale. He and
+I seem to be the only people&mdash;the only
+decent people&mdash;who&rsquo;ve found out the new
+station. He goes up by the 9.1 every day,
+and so do I. And the train&rsquo;s always late, so
+we have the platform and the booking office
+to ourselves. And there we sit, or stand,
+or walk, morning after morning like two
+stuck pigs in a trough of silence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t jumble your metaphors, though
+you very nearly carried it off with the
+trough, I own. Stuck pigs don&rsquo;t walk&mdash;in
+troughs, or anywhere else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you know what I mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what do you want the wretched man
+to do? He can&rsquo;t speak to you: it wouldn&rsquo;t
+be proper&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Proper&mdash;why not? We&rsquo;re human beings,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+not wild beasts. At least, I&rsquo;m a human
+being.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he&rsquo;s a beast&mdash;I see.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish I were a man,&rdquo; said Nina. &ldquo;There
+he is again. His nose goes up another half
+inch every time he passes me. What&rsquo;s he got
+to be so superior about? If I were a man
+I&rsquo;d certainly pass the time of day with a
+fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend
+from ten to forty minutes with it six days
+out of the seven.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect he&rsquo;s afraid you&rsquo;d want to marry
+him. My brother Cecil says men are always
+horribly frightened about that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your brother Cecil!&rdquo; said Nina scornfully.
+&ldquo;Yes; that&rsquo;s just the sort of thing
+anybody&rsquo;s brother Cecil <i>would</i> say. He
+simply looks down on me because I go
+third. He only goes second himself, too.
+Here&rsquo;s the train&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The two Art students climbed into their
+third-class carriage, and their talk, leaving
+Nina&rsquo;s fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling
+brook about the feet of great rocks, busied
+itself with the old Italian Masters, painting
+as a mission, and the aims of Art&mdash;presently
+running through flatter country and lapping
+round perspective, foreshortening, tones, values
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+high lights and the preposterous lisp of the
+anatomy lecturer.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students
+jumped from their carriage to meet a wind
+that swept grey curtains of rain across the
+bleak length of the platform.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And we haven&rsquo;t so much as a rib of an
+umbrella between us,&rdquo; sighed Molly, putting
+her white handkerchief over the &ldquo;best&rdquo; hat
+which signalised her Saturday to Monday
+with her friend. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right: that man is
+a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big
+enough for all three of us. Oh, it&rsquo;s too bad!
+He&rsquo;s putting it down&mdash;he&rsquo;s running. He
+runs rather well. He&rsquo;s exactly like the cast
+of the Discobolus in the Antique Room.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only his manners have not that repose
+that stamps the cast. Come on&mdash;don&rsquo;t stand
+staring after him like that. We&rsquo;d better run,
+too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll think we&rsquo;re running after him. Oh,
+bother&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A moment of indecision, and Nina had
+turned her skirt over her head, and the two
+ran home to the little rooms where Nina
+lived&mdash;in the house of an old servant. Nina
+had no world of relations&mdash;she was alone.
+In the world of Art she had many friends,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+and in the world of Art she meant to make
+her mark. For the present she was content
+to make the tea, and then to set feet on the
+fender for a cosy evening.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you see him coming out of church?&rdquo;
+Nina asked next day. &ldquo;He looked sulkier
+than ever.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t think why you bother about him,&rdquo;
+said the other girl. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not really interesting.
+What do you call him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, everything has a name, even a
+pudding. <i>I</i> made a name for him at once.
+It is &lsquo;the stranger who might have been
+observed&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They laughed. After the early dinner they
+went for a walk. None of your strolls, but
+a good steady eight miles. Coming home,
+they met the stranger: and then they
+talked about him again. For, fair reader,
+I cannot conceal from you that there are
+many girls who do think and talk about
+young men, even when they have not been
+introduced to them. Not really nice girls
+like yourself, fair reader&mdash;but ordinary,
+commonplace girls who have not your
+delicate natures, and who really do sometimes
+experience a fleeting sensation of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+interest even in the people whose names
+they don&rsquo;t know.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning they saw him at the
+station. The 9.1 took the bit in its teeth,
+and instead of being, as usual, the 9.30
+something, became merely the 9.23. So for
+some twenty odd minutes the stranger not
+only might have been, but was, observed
+by four bright and critical eyes. I don&rsquo;t
+mean that my girls stared, of course.
+Perhaps you do not know that there are
+ways of observing strangers other than by
+the stare direct. He looked sulkier than
+ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too,
+was far from staring, so far that the
+indignant Nina broke out in a distracted
+whisper: &ldquo;There! you see! I&rsquo;m not important
+enough for him even to perceive
+my existence. I&rsquo;m always expecting him
+to walk on me. I wonder whether he&rsquo;d
+apologise when he found I wasn&rsquo;t the
+station door-mat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to
+himself in his second-class carriage when the
+train had started.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Simply detestable!&rsquo; But how one talks
+prose without knowing it, all along the line!
+How can I ever have come enough into her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+line of vision to be distinguished by an epithet!
+And why this one? Detestable!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The epithet, however distinguishing, seemed
+somehow to lack charm.</p>
+
+<p>At Cannon Street Station the stranger
+looked sulkier than Nina had ever seen him.
+She said so, adding: &ldquo;Than I&rsquo;ve ever seen
+him? Oh&mdash;I&rsquo;m wandering. He looks sulkier
+than I&rsquo;vsquo;ve ever seen any one&mdash;sulkier than I&rsquo;ve
+ever dreamed possible. Pig&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Through the week, painting at the school
+and black and white work in the evenings
+filled Nina&rsquo;s mind to the exclusion even of
+strangers who might, in more leisured
+moments, seem worthy of observation. She
+was aware of the sulky one on platforms, of
+course, but talking about him to Molly was
+more amusing somehow than merely thinking
+of him. When it came to thinking, the real,
+the earnest things of life&mdash;the Sketch Club,
+the chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize,
+the intricate hideousness of bones and muscles&mdash;took
+the field and kept it, against strangers
+and acquaintances alike.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday, turning this week&rsquo;s scribbled page
+to the fair, clear page of next week, brought
+the stranger back to her thoughts, and to
+eyes now not obscured by close realities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+He passed her on the platform, with a
+dozen bunches of violets in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, on the railway bridge, the red
+and green lamps glowed dully through deep
+floods of yellow fog. The platform was
+crowded, the train late. When at last it
+steamed slowly in, the crowd surged towards
+it. The third-class carriages were filled in the
+moment. Nina hurried along the platform
+peering into the second-class carriages. Full
+also.</p>
+
+<p>Then the guard opened the way for her
+into the blue-cloth Paradise of a first-class
+carriage; and, just as the train gave the
+shudder of disgust which heralds its shame-faced
+reluctant departure, the door opened
+again, and the guard pushed in another
+traveller&mdash;the &ldquo;stranger who might&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; of
+course. The door banged, the train moved off
+with an air of brisk determination. A hundred
+yards from the platform it stopped dead.</p>
+
+<p>There were no other travellers in that
+carriage. When the train had stood still for
+ten minutes or so, the stranger got up and
+put his head out of the window. At that
+instant the train decided to move again. It
+did it suddenly, and, exhausted by the effort,
+stopped after half a dozen yards&rsquo; progress with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+so powerful a turn of the brake that the
+stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and
+his elbow nearly knocked her hat off.</p>
+
+<p>He raised his own apologetically&mdash;but he
+did not speak even then.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The wretch!&rdquo; said Nina hotly; &ldquo;he might
+at least have begged my pardon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The stranger sat down again, and began
+to read the <i>Spectator</i>. Nina had no papers.
+The train moved on an inch or two, and the
+reddening yellow of the fog seemed like a
+Charity blanket pressed against each window.
+Three of the bunches of violets shook and
+vibrated and slipped, the train moved again
+and they fell on the floor of the carriage.
+Nina watched their trembling in an agony
+of irritation induced by the fog, the delay,
+and the persistent silence of her companion.
+When the flowers fell, she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve dropped your flowers,&rdquo; she said.
+Again a bow, a silent bow, and the flowers
+were picked up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m desperate!&rdquo; Nina said inwardly.
+&ldquo;He must be mad&mdash;or dumb&mdash;or have a
+vow of silence&mdash;I wonder which?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The train had not yet reached the next
+station, though it had left the last nearly
+an hour before.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Which is it? Mad, dumb, or a monk? I
+<i>will</i> find out. Well, it&rsquo;s his own fault; he
+shouldn&rsquo;t be so aggravating. I&rsquo;m going to
+speak to him. I&rsquo;ve made up my mind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the interval between decision and action
+the train in a sudden brief access of nervous
+energy got itself through a station, and
+paused a furlong down the line exhausted
+by the effort.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger had put down his <i>Spectator</i>
+and was gazing gloomily out at the fog.</p>
+
+<p>Nina drew a deep breath, and said&mdash;at
+least she nearly said: &ldquo;What a dreadful fog!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But she stopped. That seemed a dull
+beginning. If she said that he would think
+she was commonplace, and she had that
+sustaining inward consciousness, mercifully
+vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being
+really rather nice, and not commonplace at
+all. But what should she say? If she said
+anything about the colour of the fog and
+Turner or Whistler, it might be telling, but
+it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began
+about books&mdash;the <i>Spectator</i> suggested this&mdash;she
+would stand as a prig confessed. If she
+spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor
+soon exposed. If&mdash;&mdash;But Nina took
+out her watch and resolved: &ldquo;When the little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+hand gets to the quarter I <i>will</i> speak. Whatever
+I say, I&rsquo;ll say something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And when the big hand did get to the
+quarter Nina did speak.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t we talk?&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her; and he seemed to be
+struggling silently with some emotion too
+deep for words.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s so silly to sit here like mutes,&rdquo; Nina
+went on hurriedly&mdash;a little frightened, now
+she had begun, but more than a little
+determined not to be frightened. &ldquo;If we
+were at a dance we shouldn&rsquo;t know any
+more of each other than we do now&mdash;and
+you&rsquo;d have to talk then. Why shouldn&rsquo;t we
+now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the stranger spoke, and at the first
+sentence Nina understood exactly what reason
+had decided the stranger that they should not
+talk. Yet now they did. If this were a work
+of fiction I shouldn&rsquo;t dare to pretend that the
+train took more than two hours to get to Mill
+Vale. But in a plain record of fact one must
+speak the truth. The train took exactly two
+hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven
+miles between London and Mill Vale. After
+that first question and reply Nina and the
+stranger talked the whole way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+He walked with her to the door of her
+lodging, and she offered him her hand
+without that moment of hesitation which
+would have been natural to any heroine,
+because she had debated the question of
+that handshake all the way from the station,
+and made up her mind just as they reached
+the church, a stone&rsquo;s throw from her home.
+When the door closed on her he went slowly
+back to the churchyard to lay his violets on
+a grave. Nina saw them there next day
+when she came out of church. She saw him
+too, and gave him a bow and a very small
+smile, and turned away quickly. The bow
+meant: &ldquo;You see I&rsquo;m not going to speak
+to you. You mustn&rsquo;t think I want to be
+always talking to you.&rdquo; The smile meant:
+&ldquo;But you mustn&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m cross. I&rsquo;m
+not&mdash;only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the hot, stuffy &ldquo;life-room&rdquo; at the Slade
+next day Molly teased with ill-judged bread-crumbs
+an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and
+chattered softly to Nina, who in the Saturday
+solitude had drawn her easel behind her
+friend&rsquo;s &ldquo;donkey.&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well here
+when you first come in, but when once you
+<i>are</i> warm, oh dear, how warm you are!
+Why do models want such boiling rooms?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+Why can&rsquo;t they be soaked in alum or myrrh
+or something to harden their silly skins so
+that they won&rsquo;t mind a breath of decent air?
+And I believe the model&rsquo;s deformed&mdash;she
+certainly is from where I am. Oh, look at
+my arm! I ask you a little&mdash;look at the
+beastly thing. Foreshortened like this it
+looks like a fillet of veal with a pound of
+sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my
+own and only Nina&mdash;save the sinking
+ship!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It ought to go more like <i>that</i>,&rdquo; Nina
+said with indicative brush, &ldquo;and don&rsquo;t keep
+on rubbing out so fiercely. You&rsquo;ll get
+paralysed with bread&mdash;it&rsquo;s a disease, you
+know. I heard Tonks telling you so only
+the other day&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather a good phrase: I wonder
+where he got it? He was rather nice that
+day,&rdquo; said Molly. &ldquo;Oh, this arm! It&rsquo;s no
+good&mdash;I believe the model&rsquo;s moved&mdash;I tell
+you I <i>must</i>.&rdquo; More bread. Nina re-absorbed
+in her canvas. &ldquo;Yours is coming
+well. What&rsquo;s the matter with you to-day?
+You&rsquo;re very mousy. Has the &lsquo;stranger who
+might&rsquo; been scowling more than usual?
+Or have you got a headache? I&rsquo;m sure
+this atmosphere&rsquo;s enough to make you.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+Did you see him this morning? Have
+you fainted at his feet yet? Has he
+relented in the matter of umbrellas? I&rsquo;m
+sure he can&rsquo;t have passed the whole week
+without some act of grumpiness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut
+eyes at the model&rsquo;s beautiful form and
+stupid face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I went down in the same carriage with
+him on Thursday,&rdquo; she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You did? Did he rush into the third
+class, where angels like himself ought to
+fear to tread?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There was a fog. Thirds all full, and
+seconds too. The guard bundled us both
+in, and the train started&mdash;and it took
+three or four hours to get down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Any one else in the carriage?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not so much as a mouse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What <i>did</i> you do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do? What could I do? We sat in
+opposite corners as far as we could get from
+each other, exchanging occasional glances of
+mutual detestation for about an hour and
+a half. He knocked me down and walked
+on me once, and took his hat off very politely
+and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a
+word. He didn&rsquo;t even say he thought I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+was the door-mat. And then some cabbages
+of his fell off the seat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure they weren&rsquo;t thistles?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Vegetables of some sort. And I said:
+&lsquo;You&rsquo;ve dropped your&mdash;&mdash;whatever they
+were.&rsquo; And he just bowed again in a
+thank-you-very-much-but-I&rsquo;m-sure-I-don&rsquo;t-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours
+sort of way. Do leave that bread alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Molly, lost in the interest of the recital,
+was crumbling the bread as though the floor
+of the life-room were the natural haunt of
+doves and sparrows.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Nina.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why ever didn&rsquo;t you ask him to put
+the window up, or down, or something? I
+would have&mdash;just to hear if he has a voice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t have been any good. He&rsquo;d
+just have bowed again, and I&rsquo;d had enough
+bows to last a long time. No: I just said
+straight out that we were a couple of idiots
+to sit there gaping at each other with our
+tongues out, and why on earth shouldn&rsquo;t
+we talk?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You never did!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Or words to that effect, anyhow. And
+then he said&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+A long pause.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He told me why he never spoke to
+strangers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a slap in the face! You poor&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he didn&rsquo;t say it like <i>that</i>, you silly
+idiot. And it was quite a good reason.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What was it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me exactly what he said.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He said, &lsquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; At any rate, I&rsquo;m
+satisfied, and I rather wish we hadn&rsquo;t called
+him pigs and beasts, and things like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you going to tell me the reason?
+Oh, very well&mdash;you leave it to my guessing?
+Of course it&rsquo;s quite evident he&rsquo;s hopelessly
+in love with you, and never ventured to
+speak for fear of betraying his passion. But,
+encouraged by your advances&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Molly, go on with that arm, and don&rsquo;t
+be a vulgar little donkey.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Molly obeyed. Presently: &ldquo;Cross-patch,&rdquo;
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; said Nina, &ldquo;but I want to work,
+and I like you best when you&rsquo;re not vulgar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very rude.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+&ldquo;No: only candid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Molly&rsquo;s wounded pride, besieged by her
+curiosity, held out for five minutes. Then:
+&ldquo;Did you talk to him much?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heaps.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All the way down?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is he nice?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is he clever?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want to work.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what I want to know is, and
+then I&rsquo;ll let you alone&mdash;what did you talk
+about? Tell me that, and I won&rsquo;t ask
+another question.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We talked,&rdquo; said Nina deliberately,
+taking a clean brush, &ldquo;we talked about
+your brother Cecil. No, I shan&rsquo;t tell you
+what we said, or why we talked about him,
+or anything. You&rsquo;ve had your one question,
+now shut up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nina,&rdquo; said Molly calmly, &ldquo;if I didn&rsquo;t like
+you so much I should hate you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That certainty about the other has always
+been the foundation of our mutual regard,&rdquo;
+said Nina calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Then they laughed, and began to work in
+earnest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+The next time Molly mentioned the
+&ldquo;stranger who might have been observed&rdquo;
+Nina laughed, and said: &ldquo;The subject is
+forbidden; it makes you vulgar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you disagreeable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s best to avoid it. Best for you
+and best for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But do you ever see him now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1,
+and I still have the use of my eyes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does he ever talk to you like he did that
+Thursday?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;never. And I&rsquo;m not going to talk
+about him to you, so it&rsquo;s no good. Your
+turn to choose a subject. You won&rsquo;t? Then
+it becomes my turn. What a long winter
+this is! We seem to have taken years to get
+from November to February!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The time went more quickly between
+February and May. It was when the
+country was wearing its full dress of green
+and the hawthorn pearls were opening into
+baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was
+Nina&rsquo;s fortune to be put, by the zealous
+indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an
+express train for Beechwood&mdash;the wrong
+station&mdash;the wrong line.</p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;stranger who might have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+observed,&rdquo; on this occasion was not observed,
+but observer. He saw and recognised the
+porter&rsquo;s error, hesitated a moment, and then
+leaped into a carriage just behind hers. So
+that when, after a swift journey made eventful
+by agonised recognition of the fleeting faces
+of various stations where she might have
+changed and caught her own train, Nina
+reached Beechwood, the stranger&rsquo;s hand was
+ready to open the door for her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no train for ages,&rdquo; he said in tones
+deliberate, almost hesitating. &ldquo;Shall we walk
+home? It&rsquo;s only six miles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you&mdash;aren&rsquo;t you going somewhere
+here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;I saw the porter put you in&mdash;and
+I thought&mdash;at least&mdash;anyway you will
+walk, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They walked. When they reached Beechwood
+Common, he said: &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you take
+my arm?&rdquo; And she took it. Her hands
+were ungloved; the other hand was full of
+silver may and bluebells. The sun shot level
+shafts of gold between the birch trees across
+the furze and heather.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How beautiful it is!&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve known each other three months,&rdquo;
+said he.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve seen you every day, and we&rsquo;ve
+talked for hours and hours in those everlasting
+trains,&rdquo; she said, as if in excuse.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen you every day for longer than
+that; the first time was on the 3rd of
+October.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fancy remembering that!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have a good memory.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A silence.</p>
+
+<p>Nina broke it, to say again: &ldquo;How pretty!&rdquo;
+She knew she had said it before, or something
+like it, but she could think of nothing else&mdash;and
+she wanted to say something.</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand over hers as it lay on his
+arm. She looked up at him quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said, stopping to look down into
+her eyes and tightening his clasp on her hand.
+&ldquo;Are you sorry you came to Beechwood?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then be glad. My dear, I wish you
+could ever be as glad as I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then they walked on, still with his hand
+on hers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Nina and Molly sat on a locker swinging
+their feet and eating their lunch in the Slade
+corridor next day. Nina was humming
+softly under her breath.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+&ldquo;What are you so happy for all of a
+sudden?&rdquo; Molly asked. &ldquo;Your sketch-club
+things are the worst I&rsquo;ve ever seen, and the
+Professor was down on you like a hundred
+of bricks this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not happy,&rdquo; said Nina, turning away
+what seemed to Molly a new face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing. Oh yes&mdash;by the way, I&rsquo;m
+going to be married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not <i>really</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Check this unflattering display of
+incredulity&mdash;I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really and truly? And you never told
+me a thing. I hate slyness and secretiveness.
+Nina, who is it? Do I know him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nina named a name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never even heard of him. But where
+did you meet him? It really is rather deceitful
+of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I always meant to tell you, only there
+was nothing to tell till yesterday except&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Except everything,&rdquo; said Molly. &ldquo;Well,
+tell me now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun
+crumbs off her green muslin pinafore.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Promise not to be horrid, and I will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t&mdash;I promise I won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s him&mdash;the &lsquo;stranger who
+might&rsquo;&mdash;you know. And I really should
+have told you, though there wasn&rsquo;t anything
+to tell, only&mdash;don&rsquo;t laugh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not. Can&rsquo;t you see I&rsquo;m not? Only
+what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, when I spoke to him that day in
+the train, I said, &lsquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t we
+talk?&rsquo; And he said, &lsquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;be&mdash;be&mdash;be&mdash;because
+I stammer so.&rsquo; And he <i>did</i>.
+You never heard anything like it. It was
+awful. He took hours to get out those few
+words, and I didn&rsquo;t know where to look.
+And I felt such a brute because of the things
+we&rsquo;d said about him, that I had no sense
+left; and I told him straight out how I&rsquo;d
+wondered he never even said he wondered how
+late the train was when we were waiting for
+the 9.1, and I was glad it was stammering
+and not disagreeableness. And then I said
+I wasn&rsquo;t glad he stammered, but so sorry;
+and he was awfully nice about it, and I told
+him about that man who cured your brother
+Cecil of stammering, and he went to him at
+once: and he&rsquo;s almost all right now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good gracious!&rdquo; said Molly. &ldquo;Are you
+sure&mdash;but why didn&rsquo;t he get cured long ago?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He had a mother: she stammered frightfully&mdash;after
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+the shock of his father&rsquo;s death,
+or something, and he got into the way of it
+from her. And&mdash;anyway he didn&rsquo;t. I think
+it was so as not to hurt his mother&rsquo;s feelings,
+or something. I don&rsquo;t quite understand.
+And he said it didn&rsquo;t seem to matter when
+she was dead. And he&rsquo;s an artist. He sells
+his pictures too, and he teaches. He has a
+studio in Chelsea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It all sounds a little thin; but if you&rsquo;re
+pleased, I&rsquo;m sure I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am,&rdquo; said Nina.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what did he say when he asked you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t ask me,&rdquo; said Nina.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But surely he said he&rsquo;d loved you since
+the first moment he saw you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nina had to admit it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you see I wasn&rsquo;t such a vulgar little
+donkey after all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you were. You hadn&rsquo;t any business
+even to <i>think</i> such things, much less say them.
+Why, even <i>I</i> didn&rsquo;t dare to think it for&mdash;oh&mdash;for
+ever so long. But I&rsquo;ll forgive it&mdash;and
+if it&rsquo;s good it shall be a pretty little
+bridesmaid, it shall.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When is it to be?&rdquo; asked Molly, still
+adrift in a sea of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we&rsquo;re
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+only wasting time by waiting. You see we&rsquo;re
+both alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend&rsquo;s
+transfigured face, perceived sadly that it was
+she who was alone, not they.</p>
+
+<p>And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot
+with whom she had danced nine times at the
+Students&rsquo; Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion
+hitherto her dearest memory, now offered no
+solid consolation.</p>
+
+<p>Nina went away, singing softly under her
+breath. Molly sighed and followed slowly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">IV<br />
+<br />
+RACK AND THUMBSCREW</h2>
+
+
+<p>Her eyelids were red and swollen, her brown
+hair, flattened out of its pretty curves, clung
+closely to her head. Ink stained her hands,
+and there was even a bluish smear of it on
+her wrist. A tray with tea-things stood
+among the litter of manuscript on her table.
+The tea-pot had only cold tea-leaves in it;
+the bread and butter was untouched.</p>
+
+<p>She put down the pen, and went to the
+window. The rose-tint of the sunset was
+reflected on the bank of mist and smoke
+beyond the river. Above, where the sky was
+pale and clear, a star or two twinkled contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>She stamped her foot.</p>
+
+<p>Already the beautiful garments of the
+evening mist, with veiled lights in the folds
+of it, was embroidered sparsely with the early
+litten lamps of impatient workers, and as she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+gazed, the embroidery was enriched by more
+and more yellow and white and orange&mdash;the
+string of jewels along the embankment, the
+face of the church clock.</p>
+
+<p>She turned from the window to the room,
+and lighted her own lamp, for the room was
+now deeply dusk. It was a large, low, pleasant
+room. It had always seemed pleasant to her
+through the five years in which she had
+worked, and played, and laughed, and cried
+there. Now she wondered why she had not
+always hated it.</p>
+
+<p>The stairs creaked. The knocker spoke.
+She caught her head in both hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My God!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;this is too much!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Yet she went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&mdash;it&rsquo;s only you,&rdquo; she said, and, with no
+other greeting, walked back into the room, and
+sat down at the table.</p>
+
+<p>The newcomer was left to close the outer
+door, and to follow at her own pleasure. The
+newcomer was another girl, younger, prettier,
+smarter. She turned her head sidewise, like
+a little bird, and looked at her friend with
+very bright eyes. Then she looked round
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Jane,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;whatever have
+you been doing to yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said her dear Jane very sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, if genius burns&mdash;your stairs are
+devilish&mdash;but if you&rsquo;d rather I went
+away&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t go, Milly. I&rsquo;m perfectly mad.&rdquo;
+She jumped up and waved her outstretched
+arms over the mass of papers on the table.
+&ldquo;Look at all this&mdash;three days&rsquo; work&mdash;rot&mdash;abject
+rot! I wish I was dead. I
+was wondering just now whether it would
+hurt much if one leaned too far out of the
+window&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash; No, I didn&rsquo;t do it&mdash;as
+you see.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; asked the other
+prosaically.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing. That&rsquo;s just it. I&rsquo;m perfectly
+well&mdash;at least I was&mdash;only now I&rsquo;m all
+trembly with drink.&rdquo; She pointed to the
+tea-cups. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the chance of my life, and
+I can&rsquo;t take it. I can&rsquo;t work: my brain&rsquo;s
+like batter. And everything depends on my
+idiot brain&mdash;it has done for these five years.
+That&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s so awful. It all depends on
+me&mdash;and I&rsquo;m going all to pieces.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you so!&rdquo; rejoined the other.
+&ldquo;You would stay in town all the summer
+and autumn, slaving away. I knew you&rsquo;d
+break down, and now you&rsquo;ve done it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve slaved for five years, and I&rsquo;ve never
+broken down before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you have now. Go away at once.
+Take a holiday. You&rsquo;ll work like Shakespeare
+and Michelangelo after it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I <i>can&rsquo;t</i>&mdash;that&rsquo;s just it. It&rsquo;s those
+stories for the <i>Monthly Multitude</i>; I&rsquo;m doing
+a series. I&rsquo;m behind <i>now</i>: and if I don&rsquo;t
+get it done this week, they&rsquo;ll stop the series.
+It&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve been working for all these
+years. It&rsquo;s the best chance I&rsquo;ve ever had,
+and it&rsquo;s come <i>now</i>, when I can&rsquo;t do it.
+Your father&rsquo;s a doctor: isn&rsquo;t there any
+medicine you can take to make your head
+more like a head and less like a suet
+pudding?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Milly, &ldquo;I really came
+in to ask you to come away with us at
+Whitsuntide; but you ought to go away
+<i>now</i>. Just go to our cottage at Lymchurch.
+There&rsquo;s a dear old girl in the village&mdash;Mrs
+Beale&mdash;she&rsquo;ll look after you. It&rsquo;s a glorious
+place for work. Father did reams down there.
+You&rsquo;ll do your stuff there right enough.
+This is only Monday. Go to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did he? I will. Oh yes, I will. I&rsquo;ll
+go to-night, if there&rsquo;s a train.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you don&rsquo;t, my dear lunatic. You
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+are now going to wash your face and do
+your hair, and take me out to dinner&mdash;a
+real eighteenpenny dinner at Roches. I&rsquo;ll
+stand treat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was after dinner, as the two girls waited
+for Milly&rsquo;s omnibus, that the word of the
+evening was spoken.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do hope you&rsquo;ll have a good quiet time,&rdquo;
+Milly said; &ldquo;and it really is a good place
+for work. Poor Edgar did a lot of work
+there last year. There&rsquo;s a cabinet with a
+secret drawer that he said inspired him with
+mysterious tales, and&mdash;&mdash; There&rsquo;s my &rsquo;bus.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why do you say <i>poor</i> Edgar?&rdquo; Jane
+asked, smiling lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, hadn&rsquo;t you heard? Awfully sad
+thing. He sailed from New York a fortnight
+ago. No news of the ship. His mother&rsquo;s
+in mourning. I saw her yesterday. Quite
+broken down. Good-bye. <i>Do</i> take care of
+yourself, and get well and jolly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane stood long staring after the swaying
+bulk of the omnibus, then she drew a deep
+breath and went home.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was dead. What a brute Milly was!
+But, of course, Edgar was nothing to Milly&mdash;nothing
+but a pleasant friend. How slowly
+people walked in the streets! Jane walked
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+quickly&mdash;so quickly that more than one
+jostled foot-passenger stopped to stare after
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She had known that he was coming home&mdash;and
+when. She had not owned to herself
+that the constant intrusion of that thought,
+&ldquo;He is here&mdash;in London,&rdquo; the wonder as to
+when and how she should see him again, had
+counted for very much in these last days of
+fierce effort and resented defeat.</p>
+
+<p>She got back to her rooms. She remembers
+letting herself in with her key. She remembers
+that some time during the night
+she destroyed all those futile beginnings of
+stories. Also, that she found herself saying
+over and over again, and very loud: &ldquo;There
+are the boys&mdash;you know there are the boys.&rdquo;
+Because, when you have two little brothers
+to keep, you must not allow yourself to
+forget it.</p>
+
+<p>But for the rest she remembers little distinctly.
+Only she is sure that she did not
+cry, and that she did not sleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning she found her rooms very
+tidy and her box packed. She had put in
+the boys&rsquo; portraits, because one must always
+remember the boys.</p>
+
+<p>She got a cab and she caught a train, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+she reached the seaside cottage. Its little
+windows blinked firelit welcome to her, as
+she blundered almost blindly out of the
+station fly and up the narrow path edged
+with sea-shells.</p>
+
+<p>Milly had telegraphed. Mrs Beale was
+there, tremulous, kindly, effective; with armchairs
+wheeled to the April fire&mdash;cups of tea,
+timid, gentle solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My word, Miss, but you do look done
+up,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;The kettle&rsquo;s just on the boil,
+and I&rsquo;ll wet you a cup o&rsquo; tea this instant
+minute, and I&rsquo;ve a perfect picture of a chick
+a-roastin&rsquo; ready for your bit o&rsquo; dinner.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane leaned back in the cushioned chair
+and looked round the quiet, pleasant little
+room. For the moment it seemed good to
+have a new place to be unhappy in.</p>
+
+<p>But afterwards, when Mrs Beale had gone
+and she was alone in the house, there was
+time to think&mdash;all the time there had ever
+been since the world began&mdash;all the time
+that there would ever be till the world ended.
+Of that night, too, Jane cannot remember
+everything; but she knows that she did not
+sleep, and that her eyes were dry: very dry
+and burning, as though they had been licked
+into place between their lids by a tongue of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+flame. It was a long night: a spacious night,
+with room in it for more memories of Edgar
+than she had known herself mistress of.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at
+Oxford, superior to the point of the intolerable;
+Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent&mdash;always
+friend; Edgar going to
+America to lecture, and make the fortune
+that&mdash;he said&mdash;would make all things possible.
+He had said that on the last evening, when
+a lot of them&mdash;boys and girls, journalists,
+musicians, art students&mdash;had gone to see him
+off at Euston. He had said it at the instant
+of farewell, and had looked a question. Had
+she said &ldquo;Yes&rdquo;&mdash;or only thought it? She
+had often wondered that, even when her brain
+was clear.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;she pushed away the next thought
+with both hands, and drove herself back to
+the day when the schoolboy next door whom
+she had admired and hated, saved her pet
+kitten from the butcher&rsquo;s dog&mdash;an heroic
+episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar&rsquo;s
+voice, the touch of his hand, the swing of
+his waltz-step&mdash;the way his eyes smiled before
+his mouth did. How bright his eyes were&mdash;and
+his hands were very strong. He was
+strong every way: he would fight for his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+life&mdash;even with the sea. Great, smooth, dark
+waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet
+room; she could hear the sound of them
+on the beach. Why had she come near
+the sea? It was the same sea that&mdash;&mdash; She
+pushed the waves away with both
+hands. The church clock struck two.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t go mad, you know,&rdquo; she
+told herself very gently and reasonably,
+&ldquo;because of the boys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her hands had got clenched somehow, her
+whole body was rigid. She relaxed the tense
+muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept
+up the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>The new flame her touch inspired flickered
+a red reflection on the face of the cabinet&mdash;the
+cabinet with the secret drawer that had
+&ldquo;inspired Edgar with mysterious tales.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane went to it, and patted it, and stroked
+it, and coaxed it to tell her its secret. But
+it would not.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it would only inspire <i>me</i>,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if
+I could only get an idea for the story, I
+could do it now&mdash;this minute. Lots of people
+work best at night. My brain&rsquo;s really quite
+clear again now, or else I shouldn&rsquo;t be able
+to remember all these silly little things. No,
+no,&rdquo; she cried to a memory of a young man
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+kissing a glove, a little creeping memory
+that came to sting. She trampled on it.</p>
+
+<p>Next day Jane walked four miles to see a
+doctor and get a sleeping draught.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she explained very earnestly,
+&ldquo;I have some work to finish, and if I don&rsquo;t
+sleep I can&rsquo;t. And I must do it. I can&rsquo;t
+tell you how important it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The doctor gave her something in a bottle
+when he had asked a few questions, and she
+went back to the cottage to go on bearing what
+was left of the interminable, intolerable day.</p>
+
+<p>That was the day when she set out the
+fair white writing paper, and the rosy blotting-paper,
+and the black ink and the black fountain
+pen, and sat and looked at them for hours and
+hours. She prayed for help&mdash;but no help
+came.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m probably praying to the wrong people,&rdquo;
+she said, when through the dusk the square
+of paper showed vague as a tombstone in
+twilit grass&mdash;&ldquo;the wrong people&mdash;No, there
+are no tombstones in the sea&mdash;the wrong
+people. If St Anthony helps you to find
+things, and the other saints help you to be
+good, perhaps the dead people who used to
+write themselves are the ones to help one
+to write!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+Jane is ashamed to be quite sure that she
+remembers praying to Dante and Shakespeare,
+and at last to Christina Rossetti,
+because she was a woman and loved her
+brothers.</p>
+
+<p>But no help came. The old woman fussed
+in and out with wood for the fire&mdash;candles&mdash;food.
+Very kindly, it appears, but Jane
+wished she wouldn&rsquo;t. Jane thinks she must
+have eaten some of the food, or the old
+woman would not have left her as she
+did.</p>
+
+<p>Jane took the draught, and went to bed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When Mrs Beale came into the sitting-room
+next morning, a neat pile of manuscript
+lay on the table, and when she took a cup
+of tea to Jane&rsquo;s bedside, Jane was sleeping
+so placidly that the old woman had not the
+heart to disturb her, and set the tea down
+on a chair by the pillow to turn white and
+cold.</p>
+
+<p>When Jane came into the sitting-room,
+she stood long looking at the manuscript.
+At last she picked it up, and, still standing,
+read it through. When she had finished,
+she stood a long time with it in her hand.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+At last she shrugged her shoulders and sat
+down. She wrote to Milly.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;Here is the story. I don&rsquo;t know how
+I&rsquo;ve done it, but here it is. Do read it&mdash;because
+I really am a little mad, and if it&rsquo;s
+any good, send it in at once to the <i>Monthly
+Multitude</i>. I slept all last night. I shall soon
+be well now. Everything is so delightful, and
+the air is splendid. A thousand thanks for
+sending me here. I am enjoying the rest
+and change immensely.&mdash;Your grateful</p>
+
+<p class="sig">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Jane</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>She read it through. Her smile at the
+last phrase was not pretty to see.</p>
+
+<p>When the long envelope was posted, Jane
+went down to the quiet shore and gazed
+out over the sunlit sands to the opal line
+of the far receding tide.</p>
+
+<p>The story was written. There was an
+end to the conflict of agonies, so now the
+fiercer agony had the field to itself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose I shall learn to bear it
+presently,&rdquo; she told herself. &ldquo;I wish I had
+not forgotten how to cry. I am sure I
+ought to cry. But the story is done, anyway.
+I daresay I shall remember how to
+cry before the next story has to be done.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There were two more nights and one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+whole day. The nights had islands of sleep
+in them&mdash;hot, misty islands in a river of slow,
+crawling, sluggish hours. The day was
+light and breezy and sunny, with a blue sky
+cloud-flecked. The day was worse than the
+nights, because in the day she remembered
+all the time who she was, and where.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the last day of the week. She
+was sitting rigid in the little porch, her eyes
+tracing again and again with conscious
+intentness the twisted pattern of the budding
+honeysuckle stalks. A rattle of wheels
+suddenly checked came to her, and she
+untwisted her stiff fingers and went down
+the path to meet Milly&mdash;a pale Milly, with
+red spots in her cheeks and fierce, frowning
+brows&mdash;a Milly who drew back from the
+offered kiss and spoke in tones that neither
+had heard before.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come inside. I want to speak to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The new disaster thus plainly heralded
+moved Jane not at all. There was no room
+in her soul for any more pain. In the little
+dining-room, conscientiously &ldquo;quaint&rdquo; with
+its spotted crockery dogs and corner cupboard
+shining with willow pattern tea-cups, Milly
+shut the door and turned on her friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I came down to see
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+you, because there are some things I couldn&rsquo;t
+write&mdash;even to you. You can go back to
+the station in the cab, I&rsquo;ve told the man to
+wait. And I hope I shall never see your
+face again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; Jane asked the
+question mechanically, and not at all because
+she did not know the answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; the other
+answered, still with white fury. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+found you out. You thought you were
+safe, and Edgar was dead, and no one
+would know. But as it happens <i>I</i> knew;
+and so shall everybody else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane moistened dry lips, and said: &ldquo;Knew
+what?&rdquo; and held on by the table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d told <i>me</i> about
+it, did you?&rdquo; Milly flashed&mdash;&ldquo;but he did.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you must tell <i>me</i> what you
+mean,&rdquo; Jane said, and shifted her hold from
+table to armchair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, certainly.&rdquo; Milly tossed her head,
+and Jane&rsquo;s fingers tightened on the chair-back.
+&ldquo;Yes, I don&rsquo;t wonder you look ill&mdash;I
+suppose you were sorry when you&rsquo;d done
+it. But it&rsquo;s no use being sorry; you should
+have thought of all that before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said Jane, low.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you fast enough. You shall
+see I do know. Well, then, that story you
+sent me&mdash;you just copied it from a story
+of Edgar&rsquo;s that was in the old cabinet.
+He wrote it when he was here; and he said
+it wasn&rsquo;t good, and I said it was, and then
+he said he&rsquo;d leave it in the secret drawer,
+and see how it looked when he came back.
+And you found it. And you thought you
+were very clever, I daresay, and that Edgar
+was dead, and no one would know. But
+I knew, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Jane interrupted, &ldquo;you said that
+before. So you think I found Edgar&rsquo;s
+manuscript? If I did it I must have done
+it in my sleep. I used to walk in my
+sleep when I was a child. You believe me,
+Milly, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Milly, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll say nothing more,&rdquo; said Jane
+with bitter dignity. &ldquo;I will go at once, and
+I will try to forgive your cruelty. <i>I</i> would
+never have doubted <i>your</i> word&mdash;never. I am
+very ill&mdash;look at me. I had a sleeping
+draught, and I suppose it upset me: such
+things have happened. You&rsquo;ve known me
+eight or nine years: have you ever known
+me do a dishonourable thing, or tell a lie?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+The dishonour is in yourself, to believe such
+things of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane had drawn herself up, and stood, tall
+and haggard, her dark eyes glowing in their
+deep sockets. The other woman was daunted.
+She hesitated, stammered half a word, and
+was silent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; said Jane; &ldquo;and I hope to
+God no one will ever be such a brute to
+you as you have been to me.&rdquo; She turned,
+but before she reached the door Milly had
+caught her by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I <i>do</i> believe
+you, I do! You poor darling! You must
+have done it in your sleep. Oh, forgive me,
+Jane dear. I&rsquo;ll never tell a soul, and
+Edgar&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Jane, turning mournful eyes
+on her, &ldquo;Edgar would have believed in me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And at that Milly understood&mdash;in part,
+at least&mdash;and held out her arms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you poor dear! and I never even
+guessed! Oh, forgive me!&rdquo; and she cried over
+Jane and kissed her many times. &ldquo;Oh, my
+dear!&rdquo; she said, as Jane yielded herself to
+the arms and her face to the kisses, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+got something to tell you. You must be
+brave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;no more,&rdquo; Jane said shrilly; &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t bear any more. I don&rsquo;t want to know
+how it happened, or anything. He&rsquo;s dead&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Milly clung sobbing to her,
+sobbing with sympathy and agitation.</p>
+
+<p>Jane pushed her back, held her at arm&rsquo;s
+length and looked at her with eyes that were
+still dry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a good little thing, after all,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;now I&rsquo;ll tell you. You were
+quite right. It was a lie&mdash;but half of it
+was true&mdash;the half I told you&mdash;but I wanted
+you to believe the other half too. I did
+walk in my sleep, and I must have opened
+that cabinet and taken Edgar&rsquo;s story out,
+because I found myself standing there with
+it in my hands. And he was dead, and&mdash;&mdash; Oh,
+Milly. I knew he was dead, of course,
+and yet he was there&mdash;I give you my word
+he was there, and I heard him say &lsquo;Take it,
+take it, take it!&rsquo; quite plainly, like I&rsquo;m
+speaking to you now. And I took it; and
+I copied it out&mdash;it took me nearly all night&mdash;and
+then I sent it to you. And I&rsquo;d never
+have told you the truth as long as you didn&rsquo;t
+believe me&mdash;never&mdash;never. But now you do
+believe me I won&rsquo;t lie to you. There! Let
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+me go. I think I was mad then, and I know
+I am now. Tell every one. I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But Milly threw her arms round her again.
+The love interest had overpowered the moral
+sense. What did the silly story, or the theft,
+or the lie matter&mdash;what were they, compared
+with the love-secret she had surprised?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My darling Jane,&rdquo; she said, holding her
+friend closely and still weeping lavishly, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t
+worry about the story: I quite understand.
+Let&rsquo;s forget it. You&rsquo;ve got quite enough
+trouble to bear without that. But there&rsquo;s
+one thing, it&rsquo;s just as well I found out before
+the story was published. Because Edgar
+isn&rsquo;t dead. His ship has been towed in:
+he&rsquo;s at home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t cry, dear,&rdquo; said Milly; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll help
+you to bear it. Only&mdash;oh dear, how awful
+it is for you!&mdash;he&rsquo;s going to be married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jane laughed again; and then she thinks
+the great, green waves really did rise up all
+round the quaint dining-room&mdash;rise mountains
+high, and, falling, cover her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Jane was ill so long that Milly had to tell
+Edgar about the story after all, and they sent
+it in, and it was published in Jane&rsquo;s name.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+So the little brothers were all right. And he
+wrote the next story for her too, and they
+corrected the proofs together.</p>
+
+<p>Jane has always thought it a pity that
+Milly had not troubled to ask the name of
+the girl whom Edgar intended to marry,
+because the name proved, on enquiry, to be
+Jane.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">V<br />
+<br />
+THE MILLIONAIRESS</h2>
+
+<p class="center lrgfont smlpadb">I</p>
+
+<p>It is a dismal thing to be in London in
+August. The streets are up for one thing,
+and your cab can never steer a straight course
+for the place you want to go to. And the
+trees are brown in the parks, and every one
+you know is away, so that there would be
+nowhere to go in your cab, even if you had
+the money to pay for it, and you could go
+there without extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable
+breakfast-table in the rooms he shared
+with his friend, and cursed his luck. His
+friend was away by the sea, and he was
+here in the dirty and sordid blackness of
+his Temple chambers. But he had no money
+for a holiday; and when Dornington had
+begged him to accept a loan, he had sworn
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+at Dornington, and Dornington had gone off
+not at all pleased. And now Dornington
+was by the sea, and he was here. The flies
+buzzed in the panes and round the sticky
+marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the
+open window. There was no work to do.
+Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in
+fact and perforce, an idler. No business came
+to him. All day long the steps of clients
+sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase&mdash;clients
+for Robinson on the second, for Jones
+on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the
+third. Even now steps were coming, though
+it was only ten o&rsquo;clock. The young man
+glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked
+cloth stained with tea, which his laundress
+had spread for his breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose it is a client&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He broke off
+with a laugh. He had never been able to
+cure himself of that old hope that some day
+the feet of a client&mdash;a wealthy client&mdash;would
+pause at his door, but the feet had always
+gone by&mdash;as these would do. The steps did
+indeed pass his door, paused, came back, and&mdash;oh
+wonder! it was <i>his</i> knocker that awoke
+the Temple echoes.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at the table. It was hopeless.
+He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I daresay it&rsquo;s only a bill,&rdquo; he said, and
+went to see.</p>
+
+<p>The newcomer was impatient, for even as
+Guillemot opened the door, the knocker was
+in act to fall again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is Mr Guillemot&mdash;&mdash; Oh, Stephen, I
+should have known you anywhere!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A radiant vision in a white linen gown&mdash;a
+very smart tailor-made-looking linen gown&mdash;and
+a big white hat was standing in his doorway,
+shaking him warmly by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you ask me in?&rdquo; asked the vision,
+smiling in his bewildered face.</p>
+
+<p>He drew back mechanically, and closed the
+door after him as she went in. Then he
+followed her into the room that served him
+for office and living-room, and stood looking
+at her helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know me a bit,&rdquo; she said;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s a shame to tease you. I&rsquo;ll take off my
+hat and veil; you will know me then. It&rsquo;s
+these fine feathers!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And take them off she did&mdash;in front of the
+fly-spotted glass on the mantel-piece; then
+she turned a bright face on him, a pretty
+mobile face, crowned with bright brown hair.
+And still he stood abashed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never thought you would have forgotten
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+the friend of childhood&rsquo;s hour,&rdquo; she began
+again. &ldquo;I see I must tell you in cold blood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s Rosamund!&rdquo; he cried suddenly.
+&ldquo;Do forgive me! I never, never dreamed&mdash;&mdash; My
+dear Rosamund, you aren&rsquo;t really changed
+a bit it&rsquo;s only&mdash;your hair being done up
+and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the fine feathers,&rdquo; said she, holding
+out a fold of her dress. &ldquo;They are very
+pretty feathers, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very,&rdquo; said he. And then suddenly a
+silence of embarrassment fell between them.</p>
+
+<p>The girl broke it with a laugh that was
+not quite spontaneous.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How funny it all is!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+went to New York with my uncle when
+dear papa died&mdash;and then I went to Girton,
+and now poor uncle&rsquo;s dead, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Her
+eye fell on the tablecloth. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to clear
+away this horrid breakfast of yours,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, please!&rdquo; he pleaded, taking the
+marmalade jar up in his helpless hands.
+She took the jar from him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I am,&rdquo; she said firmly; &ldquo;and you can
+just sit down and try to remember who I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He obediently withdrew to the window-seat
+and watched her as she took away the ugly
+crockery and the uglier food to hide them in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+his little kitchen; and as he watched her he
+remembered many things. The lonely childhood
+in a country rectory&mdash;the long, dull days
+with no playfellows; then the arrival of the
+new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund
+Rainham&mdash;and almost at the same time, it
+seemed, the invalid lady with the little boy
+who lodged at the Post Office. Then there
+were playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer
+and teach him&mdash;poor Stephen, he hardly
+knew what play or laughter meant. Then
+the invalid lady died, and Stephen&rsquo;s father
+awoke from his dreams amid his old books,
+as he had a way of doing now and then,
+enquired into the circumstances of the boy,
+Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless
+and homeless, took him into his home
+to be Stephen&rsquo;s little brother and friend.
+Then the long happy time when the three
+children were always together: walking, boating,
+birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling;
+the storm of tears from Rosamund when
+the boys went to College; the shock of surprise
+and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen
+heard that the doctor was dead and that Rosamund
+had gone to America to her mother&rsquo;s
+brother. Then the fulness of living, the old
+days almost forgotten, or only remembered as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+a pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought
+to see Rosamund again&mdash;had certainly never
+longed very ardently to see her; at any rate,
+since the year of her going. And now&mdash;here
+she was, grown to womanhood and charm,
+clearing away his breakfast things! He could
+hear the tap running, and knew that she must
+be washing her hands at the sink, using the
+horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves
+embedded in it. Now she was drying her
+hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen
+door. No; she came in drying her pink
+fingers on her handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a horrid old charwoman you must
+have!&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;everything is six inches
+deep in dust&mdash;and all your crockery is
+smeary.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry it&rsquo;s not nicer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Oh,
+but it&rsquo;s good to see you again! What times
+we used to have! Do you remember when
+we burned your dolls on the 5th of
+November?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should think I did. And do you
+remember when I painted your new tool-chest
+and the handles of your saws and
+gimlets and things with pale green enamel?
+I thought you would be so pleased.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had taken her place, as she spoke, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+the depths of the one comfortable chair, and
+he answered from his window-seat; and in
+a moment the two were launched on a flood
+of reminiscences, and the flight of time was
+not one of the things they remembered. The
+hour and the quarters sounded, and they
+talked on. But the insistence of noon,
+boomed by the Law Courts&rsquo; clock, brought
+Miss Rainham to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Twelve!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;How time goes!
+And I&rsquo;ve never told you what I came for.
+Look here. I&rsquo;m frightfully rich; I only
+heard it last week. My uncle never seemed
+very well off. We lived very simply, and
+I used to do the washing-up and the dusting
+and things; and now he&rsquo;s died and left me
+all his money. I don&rsquo;t know where he kept
+it all. The people on the floor above here
+wrote me about it. I was going to see them,
+and I saw your name; and I simply couldn&rsquo;t
+pass it. Look here, Stephen&mdash;are you very
+busy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not too busy to do anything you want.
+I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve had luck. What can I do
+for you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will you really do anything I want?
+Promise.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I promise.&rdquo; He looked at her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+and wondered if she knew how hard it would
+be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr
+Guillemot had been fancy free, and this
+gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had
+turned his head a little.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good! You must be my solicitor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t. Jones&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bother Jones!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t go
+near him. I won&rsquo;t be worried by Jones.
+What is the use of having a fortune&mdash;and it&rsquo;s
+a big fortune, I can tell you&mdash;if I mayn&rsquo;t
+even choose my own solicitor? Look here,
+Stephen&mdash;really&mdash;I have no relations and no
+friends in England&mdash;no man friends, I mean&mdash;and
+you won&rsquo;t charge me more than you
+ought, but you will charge me enough. Oh,
+I feel like Mr Boffin&mdash;and you are Mortimer
+Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you
+call him Dora still?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was the first question she had asked
+about the boy who had shared all their
+youth with them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Dornington is all right. He&rsquo;d be
+awfully sick if you called him Dora nowadays.
+He&rsquo;s got on a little&mdash;not much. He goes
+in for journalism. He&rsquo;s at Lymchurch just
+now; he lives here with me generally.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I know; I saw his name on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+door.&rdquo; And Stephen did not wonder till
+later why she had not mentioned that name
+earlier in the interview.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here, give me paper and pens, the best
+there is time to procure. Now tell me what
+to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I
+loathe his very name; that I know I could
+never bear the sight of him; and that you
+are going to look after everything for
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He resisted&mdash;she pleaded; and at last the
+letter was written, not quite in those terms,
+and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed
+her as to the method of giving a
+Power of Attorney.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must arrange everything,&rdquo; she said;
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t be bothered. Now I must go. Jones
+is human, after all. He knew I should want
+money, and he sent me quite a lot. And I
+am going away for a holiday&mdash;just to see what
+it feels like to be rich.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going about alone, I hope,&rdquo;
+said Stephen. And then, for the first time,
+he remembered that beautiful young ladies
+are not allowed to clear away tea-things in
+the Temple, without a chaperon&mdash;even for
+their solicitors.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; Constance Grant is with me. You
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+don&rsquo;t know her. I got to know her at Girton.
+She&rsquo;s a dear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, awkwardly standing
+behind her as she pinned her hat and veil in
+front of his glass, &ldquo;when you come back I&rsquo;ll
+come to see you. But you mustn&rsquo;t come here
+again; it&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s not customary.&rdquo; She smiled
+at his reflection in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions!
+So absurd! Not going to see one&rsquo;s old friend
+<i>and</i> one&rsquo;s <i>solicitor</i>! However, I won&rsquo;t come
+where I&rsquo;m not wanted&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he began reproachfully;
+but she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, it&rsquo;s all right. Now remember
+that all my affairs are in your hands, and
+when I come back you will have to tell me
+exactly what I am worth&mdash;between eight and
+fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say;
+but <i>that&rsquo;s</i> nonsense, isn&rsquo;t it? Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And with a last switch of white skirts
+against the dirty wainscot, and a last wave
+of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down
+the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen drew a long breath. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be
+fourteen hundred thousand,&rdquo; he said slowly;
+&ldquo;but I wish to goodness it wasn&rsquo;t four-pence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center lrgfont smlpadt smlpadb">II</p>
+
+<p>The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks
+shone yellow in the sun&mdash;yellower for
+the pools of blue water left between them.
+Far off, where the low white streak marked
+the edge of the still retreating sea, little
+figures moved slowly along, pushing the
+shrimping-nets through the shallow water.</p>
+
+<p>On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a
+girl sat sketching the village; her pink gown
+and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot
+on the gold of the sand.</p>
+
+<p>Further along the beach, under the end of
+the grass-grown sea-wall, a young man and
+woman basked in the August sun. Her
+sunshade was white, and so were her gown
+and the hat that lay beside her. Since her
+accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had
+worn nothing but white.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is the prettiest wear in the world,&rdquo; she
+had told Constance Grant; &ldquo;and when you&rsquo;re
+poor, it&rsquo;s the most impossible. But now I
+can have a clean gown every day, and a clean
+conscience as well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure about the conscience,&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+Constance had answered with her demure
+smile. &ldquo;Think of the millions of poor
+people.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, bother!&rdquo; Miss Rainham had laughed,
+not heartlessly, but happily. &ldquo;Thank Heaven,
+I&rsquo;ve enough to be happy myself and make
+heaps of other people happy too. And the
+first step is that no one&rsquo;s to know I&rsquo;m rich,
+so remember that we are two high-school
+teachers on a holiday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I loathe play-acting,&rdquo; Constance had said,
+but she had submitted, and now she sat
+sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown
+watched the seagulls and shrimpers from
+under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so your holiday&rsquo;s over in three days,&rdquo;
+she was saying to the young man beside her;
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s been a good time, hasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer; he was piling up the
+pebbles in a heap, and always at a certain
+point the heap collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you thinking of? Poems
+again?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had a verse running in my head,&rdquo; he
+said apologetically; &ldquo;it has nothing to do with
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Write it down at once,&rdquo; she said imperiously,
+and he obediently scribbled in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+notebook, while she took up the work of
+building the stone heap&mdash;it grew higher under
+her light fingers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Read it!&rdquo; she said, when the scribbling
+of the pencil stopped, and he read:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Long leaning wings across the sea and land;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight</span><br />
+<span class="i2">The treasure-house of their deserted sand;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And where the nearer waves curl white and low,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.</span><br />
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">White rippled pools where late deep waters were,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the grey wind in sole supremacy</span><br />
+<span class="i0">O&rsquo;er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.&rdquo;</span><br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Opal and amber cold,&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+not like that now. It&rsquo;s sapphire and gold
+and diamonds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but that was how it
+was last week&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Before I came&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, before you came;&rdquo; his tone put a
+new meaning into her words.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I brought good weather,&rdquo; she
+said cheerfully, and the little stone heap
+rattled itself down under her hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+&ldquo;You brought the light of the world,&rdquo;
+he said, and caught her hand and held it.
+There was a silence. A fisherman passing
+along the sea-wall gave them good-day.
+&ldquo;What made you come to Lymchurch?&rdquo; he
+said presently, and his hand lay lightly on
+hers. She hesitated, and looked down at her
+hand and his.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew you were here,&rdquo; she said. His
+eyes met hers. &ldquo;I always meant to see you
+again some day. And you knew me at once.
+That was so nice of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have not changed,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;your
+face has not changed, only you are older,
+and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m twenty-two; you needn&rsquo;t reproach
+me with it. Yours is the same to a month.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He moved on his elbow a little nearer to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Has it ever occurred to you,&rdquo; he asked,
+looking out to sea, &ldquo;that you and I were
+made for each other?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; never.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked out to sea still, and his face
+clouded heavily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah&mdash;no&mdash;don&rsquo;t look like that, dear; it
+never occurred to me&mdash;I think I must have
+always known it somehow, only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Only what?&mdash;do you really?&mdash;only what?&rdquo;
+A silence. Then, &ldquo;Only what?&rdquo; he asked
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only I was so afraid it would never occur
+to <i>you</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was no one on the wide, bare sands
+save the discreet artist&mdash;their faces were
+very near.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We shall be very, very poor, I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo;
+he said presently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can go on teaching.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;his voice was decided&mdash;&ldquo;my wife
+shan&rsquo;t work&mdash;at least not anywhere but in
+our home. You won&rsquo;t mind playing at love
+in a cottage for a bit, will you? I shall get
+on now I&rsquo;ve something to work for. Oh,
+my dear, thank God I&rsquo;ve enough for the
+cottage! When will you marry me? We&rsquo;ve
+nothing to wait for, no relations to consult,
+no settlements to draw up. All that&rsquo;s mine
+is thine, lassie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And all that&rsquo;s mine&mdash;Oh! Stephen!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>For, with a scattering of shingle, a man
+dropped from the sea-wall two yards from
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The situation admitted of no disguise,
+for Miss Rainham&rsquo;s head was on Mr
+Dornington&rsquo;s shoulder. They sprang up.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Why, Stephen!&rdquo; echoed Andrew, &ldquo;this&mdash;this
+is good of you! You remember
+Rosamund? We have just found out that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+But Rosamund had turned, and was
+walking quickly away over the sand.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it
+before he said: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve made good use of
+your time, old man. I congratulate you.&rdquo;
+His tone was cold.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is no reason why I should not
+make good use of my time,&rdquo; Dornington
+answered, and his tone had caught the chill
+of the other&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;None whatever. You have secured the
+prize, and I congratulate you. Whether
+it&rsquo;s fair to the girl is another question.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In moments of agitation a man instinctively
+feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington&rsquo;s
+turn to fill and light.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course it&rsquo;s your own affair,&rdquo; said
+Guillemot, chafing at the silence, &ldquo;but I
+think you might have given the heiress a
+chance. However, it&rsquo;s each for himself, I
+suppose, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heiress?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, the heiress&mdash;the Millionairess, if you
+prefer it. I&rsquo;ve been looking into her affairs:
+it <i>is</i> just about a million.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Rather cheap chaff, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very lucky thing for you,&rdquo; said
+Stephen savagely. &ldquo;Perhaps I ought not
+to grudge it to you. But I must say,
+Dornington&mdash;I see we look at the thing
+differently&mdash;but I must say, I shouldn&rsquo;t
+have cared to grab at such luck myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dornington had thrust his hands into
+his pockets, and stood looking at his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;And her fortune
+is really so much? I didn&rsquo;t think it had been
+so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it&rsquo;s
+no good making a row about it; I don&rsquo;t
+want to quarrel with my best friend. Go
+along to my place, will you? Or stay: come
+and let me introduce you to Miss Grant,
+and you can walk up with her; she&rsquo;ll show
+you where I live. I&rsquo;m going for a bit of a
+walk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later Stephen, in response
+to Rosamund&rsquo;s beckoning hand at the
+window, was following Miss Grant up the
+narrow flagged path leading to the cottage
+which Rosamund had taken. And ten
+minutes later Andrew Dornington was
+striding along the road to the station with
+a Gladstone bag in his hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+Stephen lunched at the cottage. The
+girls served the lunch themselves; they had
+no hired service in the little cottage.
+Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.</p>
+
+<p>As the meal ended, a fair-haired child
+stood in the door that opened straight from
+the street into the sitting-room, after the
+primitive fashion of Lymchurch.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;E gave me a letter for you,&rdquo; said the
+child, and Rosamund took it, giving in
+exchange some fruit from the pretty
+disordered table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; she said, with the rose in
+her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing
+was the hand-writing she had seen in many
+pencilled verses. She read the letter,
+frowned, read it again. &ldquo;Constance, you
+might get the coffee.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Constance went out. Then the girl turned
+on her guest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is <i>your</i> doing,&rdquo; she said with a
+concentrated fury that brought him to his
+feet facing her. &ldquo;Why did you come and
+meddle! You&rsquo;ve told him I was rich&mdash;the
+very thing I didn&rsquo;t mean him to know till&mdash;till
+he couldn&rsquo;t help himself. You&rsquo;ve spoilt everything!
+And now he&rsquo;s gone&mdash;and he&rsquo;ll never
+come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+some day. You will, if there&rsquo;s any justice in
+the world!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked as though he suffered for it
+even now, but when he spoke his voice was
+equable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am extremely sorry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but after
+all, there&rsquo;s very little harm done. You should
+have warned me that you meant to play a
+comedy, and I would have taken any part
+you assigned me. However, you&rsquo;ve succeeded.
+He evidently &lsquo;loves you for yourself alone.&rsquo;
+Write and tell him to come back: he&rsquo;ll
+come.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How little you know him,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;after all these years! Even I know him
+better than that. That was why I pretended
+not to be rich. Directly I knew about the
+money I made up my mind to find him and
+try if I could make him care. I know
+it sounds horrid; I don&rsquo;t mind, it&rsquo;s true.
+And I had done it; and then you came.
+Oh, I hope I shall never see you again!
+I will never speak to you again! No, I don&rsquo;t
+mean that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She hid her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn&rsquo;t
+know, I couldn&rsquo;t know. I will bring him
+back to you&mdash;I swear it! Only trust me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Let me tell you something. If you hadn&rsquo;t
+had this money&mdash;but if you hadn&rsquo;t had this
+money I should never have seen you. But
+I have thought of nothing but you ever since
+that day you came to the Temple. I don&rsquo;t
+tell you this to annoy you, only to show
+you that I would do anything in the world
+to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive
+me, dear! Oh, forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no good,&rdquo; she said; but she gave
+him her hand. When Constance Grant came
+back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot
+alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers
+and the hollyhocks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made a fool of myself,&rdquo; he said,
+forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes,
+that three hours ago she was only a name
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could I do anything?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re her friend,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Miss Grant,
+I&rsquo;m going down to the sea, if you could
+come down with me and let me talk&mdash;but
+I&rsquo;ve no right to bother you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come,&rdquo; said Constance. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come
+by-and-by when I&rsquo;ve cleared lunch away.
+It&rsquo;s no bother. As you say, I&rsquo;m her friend.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center lrgfont smlpadt smlpadb">III</p>
+
+<p>Rosamund stayed on at the little house
+behind the sea-wall, and she wrote letters,
+long and many, which accumulated on the
+mantel-piece of the rooms in the Temple.
+Andrew found them there when he returned
+to town in the middle of October. The
+room was cheerless, tenantless, fireless. He
+lit the gas and looked through his letters.
+He did not dare to open those which came
+from her. There were bills, invitation cards,
+a returned manuscript or two, a cheque for
+a magazine article, and a letter in Stephen&rsquo;s
+hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight
+earlier.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear old Chap</span>,&rdquo; it ran, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m off to my
+father&rsquo;s. I can&rsquo;t bear it. I can&rsquo;t face you
+or any one. I wish to God I&rsquo;d never told
+you anything about Rosamund Rainham&rsquo;s
+money. There isn&rsquo;t any money: it was
+all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the
+least idea that it wasn&rsquo;t good, but I feel as if
+I ought to have known. There&rsquo;s a beggarly
+hundred or so in consols: that&rsquo;s the end of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+her million. It wasn&rsquo;t really my fault, of
+course. She doesn&rsquo;t blame me.&mdash;Yours,</p>
+
+<p class="sig">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Stephen Guillemot</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then he opened her letters&mdash;read them all&mdash;in
+the order of the dates on the postmarks,
+for even in love Andrew was an orderly man&mdash;read
+them with eyes that pricked and
+smarted. There were four or five of them.
+First, the frank pleading of affection, then
+the coldness of hurt pride and love; then,
+doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he
+away? Would he not at least answer?
+Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed
+in every word. Then came the last letter
+of all, written a fortnight ago:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear Andrew</span>,&mdash;I want you to understand
+that all is over between us. I know
+you wished it, and now I see you are right.
+I could never have been anything to you but
+your loving friend,</p>
+
+<p class="sig">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Rosamund</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>He read it through twice; it was a greater
+shock to him than Stephen&rsquo;s letter had been.
+Then he understood. The Millionairess
+might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride
+had fought with and conquered his love: the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+girl with only a &ldquo;beggarly hundred in consols&rdquo;
+had her pride too.</p>
+
+<p>The early October dusk filled the room.
+Andrew caught up the bag he had brought
+with him, slammed the door, and blundered
+down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom
+in Fleet Street and the last train to
+Lymchurch.</p>
+
+<p>A furious south-wester was waiting for him
+there. He could hardly stand against it&mdash;it
+blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing
+against him as he staggered down the
+road from the station. The night was inky
+black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch,
+and he fought it manfully, though every now
+and then he was fain to cling to a gateway
+or a post, and hold on till the gust had passed.
+Thus, breathless and dishevelled, his tie under
+his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in
+crisp disorder, he reached at last the haven of
+the little porch of the house under the sea-wall.</p>
+
+<p>Rosamund herself opened the door; her
+eyes showed him two things&mdash;her love and
+her pride. Which would be the stronger?
+He remembered how the question had been
+answered in his own case, and he shivered
+as she took his hand and led him into the
+warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred
+on the rug; a book lay open on the table:
+all breathed of the sober comfort of home.
+She sat down on the other side of the hearth
+and looked at him. Neither spoke. It was
+an awkward moment.</p>
+
+<p>Rosamund broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is very friendly of you to come and see
+me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It is very lonely for me now.
+Constance has gone back to London.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She has gone back to her teaching?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; I wanted her to stay, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard from Stephen. He is very
+wretched; he seems to think it is his fault.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor, dear boy!&rdquo; She spoke musingly.
+&ldquo;Of course it wasn&rsquo;t his fault. It all seems
+like a dream, to have been so rich for a little
+while, and to have done nothing with it
+except,&rdquo; she added with a laugh and a
+glance at her fur-trimmed dress, &ldquo;to buy a
+most extravagant number of white dresses.
+How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go
+and have a wash&mdash;the spare room&rsquo;s the first
+door at the top of the stairs&mdash;and I&rsquo;ll get
+you some supper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When he came down again, she had laid
+a cloth on the table and was setting out
+silver and glass.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Another relic of my brief prosperity,&rdquo; she
+said, touching the forks and spoons. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+glad I don&rsquo;t have to eat with nickel-plated
+things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She talked gaily as they ate. The home
+atmosphere of the room touched Dornington.
+Rosamund herself, in her white gown,
+had never appeared so fair and desirable.
+And but for his own mad pride he might
+have been here now, sharing her pretty little
+home life with her&mdash;not as her guest, but as
+her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing
+was an old trick of his&mdash;one of those that
+had earned him his feminine nickname of
+Dora, and in the confusion his blushing
+brought him, he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I forgive you from my heart,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;if I have anything to forgive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But in her tone was the resentment of
+a woman who does not forgive. Yet he had
+been right. He had sacrificed himself; and
+if he had chosen to suffer? But what about
+the blue lines under her dear eyes, the
+hollows in her dear face?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have been unhappy,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t exactly
+pleased to lose my fortune.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Dear,&rdquo; he said desperately, &ldquo;won&rsquo;t you
+try to forgive me? It seemed right. How
+could I sacrifice you to a penniless&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d enough for both&mdash;or thought I had,&rdquo;
+she said obstinately.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but don&rsquo;t you see&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see that you cared more for not being
+thought mercenary by Stephen than&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo; he pleaded; &ldquo;take me back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no&rdquo;&mdash;she tossed her bright head&mdash;&ldquo;Stephen
+might think me mercenary; I
+couldn&rsquo;t bear <i>that</i>. You see you are richer
+than I am now. How much did you tell
+me you made a year by your writing? How
+can I sacrifice you to a penniless&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rosamund, do you mean it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do mean it. And, besides&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t love you any more.&rdquo; The bright
+head drooped and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have killed your love. I don&rsquo;t wonder.
+Forgive me for bothering you. Good-bye!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; she asked
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be afraid, nothing desperate.
+Only work hard and try to forgive you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive <i>me</i>? You have nothing to
+forgive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+&ldquo;No, nothing&mdash;if you had left off loving
+me? Have you? Is it true?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You are staying
+at the &lsquo;Ship&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s part in anger. I shall be on
+the sea-wall in the morning. Let&rsquo;s part
+friends, then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Andrew went into the fresh
+air. The trees, still gold in calmer homes,
+stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch.
+He stood in the sunlight, and in
+spite of himself some sort of gladness came
+to him through the crisp October air. Then
+the <i>ping</i> of a bicycle bell sounded close
+behind him, and there was Stephen.</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands, and Stephen&rsquo;s eyebrows
+went up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it all right?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I knew
+you&rsquo;d come here when I came home last
+night and found you&rsquo;d had my letter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s not all right. She won&rsquo;t have me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pride or revenge, or something. Don&rsquo;t
+let&rsquo;s talk about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right. I want some breakfast; we
+left town by the 7.20. I&rsquo;m starving.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who are &lsquo;we&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund
+would be wanting a <i>chaperon</i> or a bridesmaid,
+or something, so I brought her and her
+bicycle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Always thoughtful,&rdquo; said Andrew, with
+something like a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they
+met the two girls. Rosamund looked radiant.
+Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of
+last night? The wind that ruffled her brown
+hair had blown roses into her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you forgive me?&rdquo; whispered Stephen
+when they met.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That depends,&rdquo; she answered.</p>
+
+<p>They all walked on together, and presently
+Stephen and Constance fell behind.</p>
+
+<p>Then Rosamund spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You really think I ought to crush my
+pride, and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hope laughed in Andrew&rsquo;s face&mdash;laughed
+and fled&mdash;for he looked in the face of Miss
+Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said almost sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is as much as to say that you were
+wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;perhaps I was wrong. What does it
+matter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+&ldquo;It matters greatly. Suppose I had my
+money now would you run away from me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;I suppose I should act as I did before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t care for me any more than
+you did?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I love you a thousand times more,&rdquo; he
+cried, turning angry, haggard eyes to her.
+&ldquo;Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would
+send me from you now but yourself&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She clapped her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then stay,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for it&rsquo;s a farce, and
+my money is as safe as houses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He scowled at her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all a trick? You&rsquo;ve played with me?
+Good-bye, and God forgive you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He turned to go, but Constance, coming up
+from behind them, caught his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be such an idiot,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;<i>She</i>
+had nothing to do with it. She thought her
+money was gone. You don&rsquo;t suppose <i>she</i>
+would have played such a trick even to win
+<i>your</i> valuable affections. You don&rsquo;t deserve
+your luck, Mr Dornington.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rosamund was looking at him with wet
+eyes, and her lips trembled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Constance only told me this morning,&rdquo;
+she said. &ldquo;She and Stephen planned it, to
+get you&mdash;to make me&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+&ldquo;And then she nearly spoilt it all by being
+as silly as you were. Whatever does it matter
+which of you has the money?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said Rosamund valiantly; &ldquo;I
+see that plainly. Don&rsquo;t you, Andrew?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see nothing but you, Rosamund,&rdquo; he
+said, and they turned and walked along the
+sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said Stephen; &ldquo;but, by
+Jove, I&rsquo;ve had enough of playing Providence
+and managing other people&rsquo;s affairs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She was very sweet about it,&rdquo; said Constance,
+walking on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well she may be; she has her heart&rsquo;s
+desire. But it was not easy. What a blessing
+she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn&rsquo;t
+have done it but for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am very glad to have been of some
+service,&rdquo; said Constance demurely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t have got on without you. I
+can&rsquo;t get on without you ever again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But that&rsquo;s nonsense,&rdquo; said Miss Grant.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t make me, Constance? There&rsquo;s
+no confounded money to come between <i>us</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He caught at the hand that swung by
+her side.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you said you loved <i>her</i>, and that
+was why&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Ah, but that was a thousand years ago.
+And it was nonsense, even then, Constance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And so two others went along the sea-wall
+in the October sunshine, happily, like
+children, hand in hand.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">VI<br />
+<br />
+THE HERMIT OF &ldquo;THE YEWS&rdquo;</h2>
+
+
+<p>Maurice Brent knew a great deal about
+the Greek anthology, and very little about
+women. No one but himself had any idea
+how much he knew of the one, and no
+one had less idea than himself how little he
+knew of the other. So that when, a stranger
+and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a smart
+house-party, he began to fall in love with
+Camilla, it seemed to be no one&rsquo;s business
+to tell him, what everybody else knew, that
+Camilla had contracted the habit of becoming
+engaged at least once a year. Of course
+this always happened in the country, because
+it was there that Camilla was most bored.
+No other eligible young man happened
+to be free at the moment: Camilla never
+engaged herself to ineligibles. The habit
+of years is not easily broken: Camilla
+became engaged to Maurice, and, for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+six months of the engagement, he lived in
+Paradise. A fool&rsquo;s Paradise, if you like,
+but Paradise all the same.</p>
+
+<p>About Easter time Camilla told him,
+very nicely and kindly, that she had mistaken
+her own heart&mdash;she hoped he would not let
+it make him very unhappy. She would
+always wish him the best of good fortune,
+and doubtless he would find it in the affection
+of some other girl much nicer and more
+worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla.
+Camilla was right&mdash;no one could have been
+less worthy of him than she: but after all it
+was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla
+he felt that he wanted, not any other girl
+at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.</p>
+
+<p>He took it very quietly: sent her a note
+so cold and unconcerned that Camilla was
+quite upset, and cried most of the evening,
+and got up next day with swollen eyelids
+and a very bad temper. She was not so
+sure of her power as she had been&mdash;and the
+loss of such a certainty is never pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished
+house, and found one&mdash;by letter, which
+seemed to be the very thing he wanted.
+&ldquo;Handsomely and conveniently furnished
+five miles from a railway station&mdash;a well-built
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+house standing in its own grounds of
+five acres&mdash;garden, orchard pasture, magnificent
+view.&rdquo; Being as unversed in the ways
+of house agents as in those of women, he
+took it on trust, paid a quarter&rsquo;s rent, and
+went down to take possession. He had
+instructed the local house agent to find a
+woman who would come in for a few hours
+daily to &ldquo;do for him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have no silly women living in the
+house,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>It was on an inclement June evening that
+the station fly set him down in front of his
+new house. The drive had been long and
+dreary, and seemed to Maurice more like
+seventy miles than seven. Now he let down
+the carriage window and thrust his head into
+the rain to see his new house. It was a stucco
+villa, with iron railings in the worst possible
+taste. It had an air at once new and worn
+out; no one seemed ever to have lived in it,
+and yet everything about it was broken and
+shabby. The door stuck a little at first with
+the damp, and when at last it opened and
+Maurice went over his house, he found it
+furnished mainly with oil-cloth and three-legged
+tables, and photographs in Oxford
+frames&mdash;like a seaside lodging-house. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+house was clean, however, and the woman
+in attendance was clean, but the atmosphere
+of the place was that of a vault. He looked
+out through the streaming panes at the
+magnificent view so dwelt upon in the house
+agents&rsquo; letters. The house stood almost at
+the edge of a disused chalk quarry; far
+below stretched a flat plain, dotted here
+and there with limekilns and smoky, tall
+chimneys. The five acres looked very bare
+and thistly, and the rain was dripping heavily
+from a shivering, half-dead cypress on to a
+draggled, long-haired grass plot. Mr Brent
+shivered too, and ordered a fire.</p>
+
+<p>When the woman had gone, he sat long
+by the fire in one of those cane and wood
+chairs that fold up&mdash;who wants a chair to
+fold up?&mdash;so common in lodging-houses.
+Unless you sit quite straight in these chairs
+you tumble out of them. He gazed at the
+fire, and thought, and dreamed. His dreams
+were, naturally, of Camilla; his thoughts
+were of his work.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve taken the house for three years,&rdquo;
+said he. &ldquo;Well, one place is as good as
+another to be wretched in. But one room
+I must furnish&mdash;for you can&rsquo;t work on oil-cloth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+So next day he walked to Rochester and
+bought some old bureaux, and chairs, and
+book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some
+brass things, unpacked his books and settled
+down to the hermit&rsquo;s life to which he had
+vowed himself. The woman came every
+morning from her cottage a mile away, and
+left at noon. He got his meals himself&mdash;always
+chops, or steaks, or eggs&mdash;and presently
+began to grow accustomed to the place.
+When the sun shone it was not so bad.
+He could make no way against the thorns
+and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly
+grew into a very wilderness. But a wilderness
+is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers
+had survived long neglect, and here and there
+put out red, or white, or yellow buds. And
+he worked away at his book about Greek
+poetry.</p>
+
+<p>He almost believed that he was contented;
+he had never cared for people so much as
+for books, and now he saw no people, and
+his books began to crowd his shelves. No
+one passed by &ldquo;The Yews&rdquo;&mdash;so called, he
+imagined, in extravagant compliment to the
+decaying cypress&mdash;for it stood by a grass-grown
+by-way that had once connected two
+main roads, each a couple of miles distant.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+These were now joined by a better road
+down in the valley, and no one came past
+Maurice&rsquo;s window save the milk, the bread,
+the butcher, and the postman.</p>
+
+<p>Summer turned brown and dry and became
+autumn, autumn turned wet and chilly and
+grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven
+blew cold and damp through the cracks of the
+ill-built house.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was glad when the spring came;
+he had taken the house for three years, and
+he was a careful man, and also, in his way,
+a determined. Yet it was good to look out
+once more on something green, and to see
+sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter
+now. In all these ten months nothing whatever
+had happened to him. He had never
+been beyond his five acres&mdash;and no one had
+been to see him. He had no relations, and
+friends soon forget; besides, after all, friends,
+unlike relations, cannot go where they are not
+invited.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the Saturday before Easter that
+the quarryside fell in. Maurice was working
+in his study when he heard a sudden crack
+and a slow, splitting sound, and then a long,
+loud, rumbling noise, like thunder, that echoed
+and re-echoed from the hills on each side.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+And, looking from his window, he saw the
+cloud of white dust rise high above the edge
+of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to
+join the cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose it&rsquo;s all safe enough here,&rdquo; he
+said, and went back to his manuscripts. But
+he could not work. At last something had
+happened; he found himself shaken and
+excited. He laid down the pen. &ldquo;I wonder
+if any one was hurt?&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;the road
+runs just below, of course. I wonder whether
+there&rsquo;ll be any more of it&mdash;I wonder?&rdquo; A
+wire jerked, the cracked bell sounded harshly
+through the silence of the house. He sprang
+to his feet. &ldquo;Who on earth&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;The house isn&rsquo;t safe after all, perhaps, and
+they&rsquo;ve come to tell me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the
+hall he saw through the comfortless white-spotted
+glass of his front door the outline of
+a woman&rsquo;s hat.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door&mdash;it stuck as usual&mdash;but
+he got it open. There stood a girl holding a
+bicycle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said, without looking at him,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so sorry to trouble you&mdash;my bicycle&rsquo;s
+run down&mdash;and I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s a puncture,
+and could you let me have some water, to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+find the hole&mdash;and if I might sit down a
+minute.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her voice grew lower and lower.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door wide and put out his
+hand for the bicycle. She took two steps
+past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down
+on the stairs&mdash;there were no chairs: the
+furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat
+pegs.</p>
+
+<p>He saw now that she was very pale; her
+face looked greenish behind her veil&rsquo;s white
+meshes.</p>
+
+<p>He propped the machine against the door,
+as she leaned her head back against the ugly
+marbled paper of the staircase wall.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;re ill,&rdquo; he said gently. But
+the girl made no answer. Her head slipped
+along the varnished wall and rested on the
+stair two steps above where she sat. Her
+hat was crooked and twisted; even a student
+of Greek could see that she had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh Lord!&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>He got her hat and veil off&mdash;he never knew
+how, and he wondered afterwards at his own
+cleverness, for there were many pins, long and
+short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair
+and put it under her head; he took off
+her gloves and rubbed her hands and her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+forehead with vinegar, but her complexion
+remained green, and she lay, all in a heap,
+at the foot of his staircase.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered that fainting people
+should be laid flat and not allowed to lie
+about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very
+gently and gingerly picked the girl up in his
+arms and carried her into his sitting-room.
+Here he laid her on the ground&mdash;he had no
+sofa&mdash;and sat beside her on the floor, patiently
+fanning her with a copy of the <i>Athenæum</i>,
+and watching the pinched, pallid face for some
+sign of returning life. It came at last, in a
+flutter of the eyelids, a long-drawn, gasping
+breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky&mdash;brandy
+he esteemed as a mere adjunct of
+channel boats&mdash;lifted her head and held the
+glass to her lips. The blood had come back
+to her face in a rush of carnation; she drank&mdash;choked&mdash;drank&mdash;he
+laid her head down and
+her eyes opened. They were large, clear grey
+eyes&mdash;very bewildered-looking just now&mdash;but
+they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips
+transformed the face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good gracious,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s pretty!
+Pretty? she&rsquo;s beautiful!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She was. That such beauty should so easily
+have hidden itself behind a green-tinted mask,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+with sunken eyelid, seemed a miracle to the
+ingenuous bookworm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re better now,&rdquo; said he with feverish
+banality. &ldquo;Give me your hands&mdash;so&mdash;now
+can&mdash;yes, that&rsquo;s right&mdash;here, this chair is the
+only comfortable one&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She sank into the chair, and waved away
+the more whisky which he eagerly proffered.
+He stood looking at her with respectful
+solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments she stretched her
+arms like a sleepy child, yawned, and then
+suddenly broke into laughter. It had a
+strange sound. No one had laughed in that
+house since the wet night when Mr Brent
+took possession of it, and he had never been
+able to bring himself to believe that any one
+had ever laughed there before.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered having heard that
+women have hysterical fits as well as fainting
+fits, and he said eagerly: &ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t! It&rsquo;s all
+right&mdash;you were faint&mdash;the heat or something&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did I faint?&rdquo; she asked with interest.
+&ldquo;I never fainted before. But&mdash;oh&mdash;yes&mdash;I
+remember. It was rather horrible. The
+quarry tumbled down almost on me, and I
+just stopped short&mdash;in time&mdash;and I came
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+round by this road because the other&rsquo;s stopped
+up, and I was so glad when I saw the house.
+Thank you so much; it must have been an
+awful bother. I think I had better start
+soon&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you don&rsquo;t; you&rsquo;re not fit to ride
+alone yet,&rdquo; said he to himself. Aloud he
+said: &ldquo;You said something about a puncture&mdash;when
+you are better I&rsquo;ll mend it. And,
+look here&mdash;have you had any lunch?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll allow me.&rdquo; He left the
+room, and presently returned with the tray
+set for his own lunch; then he fetched from
+the larder everything he could lay hands on:
+half a cold chicken, some cold meat pudding,
+a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these
+confusedly on the table. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;come and try to eat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very good of you to bother,&rdquo; she said,
+a little surprise in her tone, for she had
+expected &ldquo;lunch&rdquo; to be a set formal meal at
+which some discreet female relative would
+preside. &ldquo;But aren&rsquo;t you&mdash;don&rsquo;t you&mdash;do
+you live alone, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings.
+I&rsquo;m sorry she&rsquo;s gone: she could have arranged
+a better lunch for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Better? why, it&rsquo;s lovely!&rdquo; said she, accepting
+the situation with frank amusement, and
+she gave a touch or two to the table to set
+everything in its place.</p>
+
+<p>Then they lunched together. He would
+have served her standing, as one serves a
+queen&mdash;but she laughed again, and he took
+the place opposite her. During lunch they
+talked.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch they mended the punctured
+tyre, and talked all the while; then it was
+past three o&rsquo;clock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t go yet,&rdquo; he said then, daring
+greatly for what seemed to him a great
+stake. &ldquo;Let me make you some tea&mdash;I can,
+I assure you&mdash;and let us see if the tyre holds
+up&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your
+cleverness&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said he desperately, &ldquo;take
+pity on a poor hermit! I give you my
+word, I have been here ten months and three
+days, and I have not in that time spoken a
+single word to any human being except my
+bedmaker.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if you want to talk to people why
+did you begin being a hermit?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought I didn&rsquo;t, then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;now you know better, why don&rsquo;t
+you come back and talk to people in the
+ordinary way?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was the first and last sign she gave
+that the circumstances in which she found
+herself with him were anything but ordinary.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have a book to finish,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Would
+you like to have tea in the wilderness or
+in here?&rdquo; He wisely took her consent
+for granted this time, and his wisdom was
+justified.</p>
+
+<p>They had tea in the garden. The wilderness
+blossomed like a rose, to Maurice&rsquo;s thinking.
+In his mind he was saying over and over
+again: &ldquo;How bored I must have been all
+this time! How bored I must have been!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him that his mind was
+opening, like a flower, and for the first time.
+He had never talked so well, and he knew
+it&mdash;all the seeds of thought, sown in those
+long, lonely hours, bore fruit now. She
+listened, she replied, she argued and debated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Beautiful&mdash;and sensible,&rdquo; said Maurice
+to himself. &ldquo;What a wonderful woman!&rdquo;
+There was, besides, an alertness of mind, a
+quick brightness of manner that charmed
+him. Camilla had been languid and dreamy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I must go,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I have enjoyed
+myself so much. You are an ideal host:
+thank you a thousand times. Perhaps we
+shall meet again some day, if you return to
+the world. Do you know, we&rsquo;ve been talking
+and wrangling for hours and hours and
+never even thought of wondering what each
+other&rsquo;s names are&mdash;I think we&rsquo;ve paid each
+other a very magnificent compliment, don&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and said: &ldquo;My name is Maurice
+Brent.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mine is Diana Redmayne. If it sounds
+like somebody in the <i>Family Herald</i>, I can&rsquo;t
+help it.&rdquo; He had wheeled the bicycle into
+the road, and she had put on hat and gloves
+and stood ready to mount before she said:
+&ldquo;If you come back to the world I shall
+almost certainly meet you. We seem to
+know the same people; I&rsquo;ve heard your
+name many times.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From whom?&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Among others,&rdquo; said she, with her foot
+on the pedal, &ldquo;from my cousin Camilla.
+Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he was left to stare down the road
+after the swift flying figure.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went back into the lonely little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+house, and about half-past twelve that night
+he realised that he had done no work that
+day, and that those hours which had not
+been spent talking to Diana Redmayne, had
+been spent in thinking about her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not because she&rsquo;s pretty and clever,&rdquo;
+he said; &ldquo;and it&rsquo;s not even because she&rsquo;s a
+woman. It&rsquo;s because she&rsquo;s the only intelligent
+human being I&rsquo;ve spoken to for nearly a
+year.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So day after day he went on thinking about
+her.</p>
+
+<p>It was three weeks later that the bell again
+creaked and jangled, and again through the
+spotted glass he saw a woman&rsquo;s hat. To his
+infinite disgust and surprise, his heart began
+to beat violently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I grow nervous, living all alone,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Confound this door! how it does stick&mdash;I
+must have it planed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He got the door opened, and found himself
+face to face with&mdash;Camilla.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped back, and bowed gravely.</p>
+
+<p>She looked more beautiful than ever&mdash;and
+he looked at her, and wondered how he could
+ever have thought her even passably pretty.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you ask me in?&rdquo; she said timidly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I am all alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have only just
+heard you&rsquo;re living here all alone, and I came
+to say&mdash;Maurice&mdash;I&rsquo;m sorry. I didn&rsquo;t know
+you cared so much, or&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he said, stopping the confession
+as a good batsman stops a cricket ball.
+&ldquo;Believe me, I&rsquo;ve not made myself a hermit
+because of&mdash;all that. I had a book to write&mdash;that
+was all. And&mdash;and it&rsquo;s very kind of
+you to come and look me up, and I wish I
+could ask you to come in, but&mdash;&mdash; And it&rsquo;s
+nice of you to take an interest in an old
+friend&mdash;you said you would, didn&rsquo;t you, in
+the letter&mdash;and&mdash;I&rsquo;ve taken the advice you
+gave me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean you&rsquo;ve fallen in love with
+some one else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You remember what you said in your
+letter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some one nicer and worthier, I said,&rdquo;
+returned Camilla blankly, &ldquo;but I never
+thought&mdash;&mdash; And is she?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course she seems so to me,&rdquo; said he,
+smiling at her to express friendly feeling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then&mdash;good-bye&mdash;I wish you the best of
+good fortune.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You said that in your letter, too,&rdquo; said
+he. &ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I mustn&rsquo;t tell even you that, until I
+have told her,&rdquo; he smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then good-bye,&rdquo; said Camilla shortly;
+&ldquo;forgive me for troubling you so unnecessarily.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He found himself standing by his door&mdash;and
+Camilla on her bicycle sped down the
+road, choking with tears of anger and mortification
+and deep disappointment. Because she
+knew now that she loved him as much as it
+was in her to love any one, and because she,
+who had humbled so many, had now at last
+humbled herself&mdash;and to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice Brent left his door open and
+wandered down across his five acres, filled
+with amazement. Camilla herself had not
+been more deeply astonished at the words he
+had spoken than he had been. A moment
+before he had not even thought that he was in
+love, much less contemplated any confession
+of it: and now seemingly without his will he
+stood committed to this statement. Was it
+true, or had he only said it to defend himself
+against those advances of hers in which he
+merely saw a new trap? He had said it in
+defence&mdash;yes&mdash;but it was true, for all that;
+this was the wonderful part of it. And so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+he walked in the wilderness, lost in wonder;
+and as he walked he noted the bicycles that
+passed his door&mdash;along his unfrequented
+road, by ones and twos and threes&mdash;for this
+was a Saturday, and the lower road was still
+lying cold and hidden under its load of chalk,
+and none might pass that way. This road
+was hot and dusty, and folk went along it
+continually. He strolled to his ugly iron
+gate and looked over, idly. Perhaps, some
+day, she would come that way again&mdash;she
+would surely stop&mdash;especially if he were at
+the gate&mdash;and perhaps stay and talk a little.
+As if in mocking answer to the new-born
+thought came a flash of blue along the road;
+Diana Redmayne rode by at full speed&mdash;bowed
+coldly&mdash;and then at ten yards&rsquo; distance
+turned and waved a white-gloved hand, with
+a charming smile. Maurice swore softly, and
+went indoors to think.</p>
+
+<p>His work went but slowly on that day&mdash;and
+in the days that followed. On the next
+Friday he went over to Rochester, and in
+the dusk of the evening he walked along the
+road, about a mile from &ldquo;The Yews,&rdquo; and
+then, going slowly, he cast handfuls of something
+dark from his hand, and kicked the
+white dust over it as it lay.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I feel like the enemy sowing tares,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went home, full of anxious
+anticipation. The next day was hot and
+bright. He took his armchair into the
+nightmare of a verandah, and sat there reading;
+only above the top of the book his eyes
+could follow the curve of the white road.
+This made it more difficult to follow the text.
+Presently the bicyclists began to go past, by
+ones and twos and threes; but a certain
+percentage was wheeling its machines&mdash;others
+stopped within sight to blow up their tyres.
+One man sat down under the hedge thirty
+yards away, and took his machine to pieces;
+presently he strolled up and asked for water.
+Brent gave it, in a tin basin, grudgingly, and
+without opening the gate.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I overdid it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;a quarter of a
+pound would have been enough; yet I don&rsquo;t
+know&mdash;perhaps it&rsquo;s well to be on the safe side.
+Yet three pounds was perhaps excessive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon a pink figure wheeling
+a bicycle came slowly down the road. He
+sat still, and tried to read. In a moment
+he should hear the click of the gate: then
+he would spring up and be very much
+astonished. But the gate did not click, and
+when next he raised his eyes the pink blouse
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+had gone by, and was almost past the end
+of the five acres. Then he did spring up&mdash;and
+ran.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Redmayne, can&rsquo;t I help you? What
+is it? Have you had a spill?&rdquo; he said as
+he overtook her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Puncture,&rdquo; said she laconically.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very unfortunate. Mayn&rsquo;t I help
+you to mend it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll mend it as soon as I get to a shady
+place.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come into the wilderness. See&mdash;here&rsquo;s
+the side gate. I&rsquo;ll fetch some water in a
+moment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him doubtfully, and then
+consented. She refused tea, but she stayed
+and talked till long after the bicycle was
+mended.</p>
+
+<p>On the following Saturday he walked
+along the road, and back, and along, and
+again the place was alive with angry cyclists
+dealing, each after his fashion, with a
+punctured tyre. He came upon Miss
+Redmayne sitting by the ditch mending
+hers. That was the time when he sat on
+the roadside and told her all about himself&mdash;reserving
+only those points where his life
+had touched Camilla&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+The week after he walked the road again,
+and this time he overtook Miss Redmayne,
+who was resolutely wheeling her bicycle
+back in the way by which she had come.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me wheel it for you,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Whither bound?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going back to Rochester,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;I generally ride over to see my aunts at
+Felsenden on Saturdays, but I fear I must
+give it up, or go by train; this road isn&rsquo;t
+safe.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not safe?&rdquo; he said with an agitation
+which could not escape her notice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not safe,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Mr Brent,
+there is a very malicious person in this
+part of the country&mdash;a perfectly dreadful
+person.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; he managed to
+ask.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These three Saturdays I have come along
+this road; each time I have had a puncture.
+And each time I have found embedded in
+my tyre the evidence of some one&rsquo;s malice.
+This is one piece of evidence.&rdquo; She held
+out her ungloved hand. On its pink palm
+lay a good sized tin-tack. &ldquo;Once might be
+accident; twice a coincidence; three times
+is too much. The road&rsquo;s impossible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Do you think some one did it on
+purpose?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; she said calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Then he grew desperate.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Try to forgive me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was
+so lonely, and I wanted so much&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She turned wide eyes on him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You!&rdquo; she cried, and began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you didn&rsquo;t know it was me?&rdquo; said
+the Greek student.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You!&rdquo; she said again. &ldquo;And has it
+amused you&mdash;to see all these poor people
+in difficulties, and to know that you&rsquo;ve spoilt
+their poor little holiday for them&mdash;and three
+times, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never thought about <i>them</i>,&rdquo; he said;
+&ldquo;it was you I wanted to see. Try to forgive
+me; you don&rsquo;t know how much I wanted
+you.&rdquo; Something in his voice kept her silent.
+&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t laugh,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;I feel
+as if I wanted nothing in the world but
+you. Let me come to see you&mdash;let me try
+to make you care too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re talking nonsense,&rdquo; she said, for he
+stopped on a note that demanded an answer.
+&ldquo;Why, you told Camilla&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;but you&mdash;but I meant <i>you</i>. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+thought I cared about her once&mdash;but I never
+cared really with all my heart and soul for
+any one but you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him calmly and earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to forget all this,&rdquo; she said;
+&ldquo;but I like you very much, and if you
+want to come and see me, you may. I will
+introduce you to my aunts at Felsenden as&mdash;as
+a friend of Camilla&rsquo;s. And I will be
+friends with you; but nothing else ever.
+Do you care to know my aunts?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes.
+One came to him now, and he said:
+&ldquo;I care very much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then help me to mend my bicycle, and
+you can call there to-morrow. It&rsquo;s &lsquo;The
+Grange&rsquo;&mdash;you can&rsquo;t miss it. No, not another
+word of nonsense, please, or we can&rsquo;t possibly
+be friends.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He helped her to mend the bicycle, and
+they talked of the beauty of spring and of
+modern poetry.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was at &ldquo;The Grange,&rdquo; Felsenden, that
+Maurice next saw Miss Redmayne&mdash;and it
+was from &ldquo;The Grange,&rdquo; Felsenden, that, in
+September, he married her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+&ldquo;And why did you say you would never,
+never be anything but a friend?&rdquo; he asked her
+on the day when that marriage was arranged.
+&ldquo;Oh! you nearly made me believe you!
+Why did you say it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One must say something!&rdquo; she answered.
+&ldquo;Besides, you&rsquo;d never have respected me if
+I&rsquo;d said &lsquo;yes&rsquo; at once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could you have said it? Did you like
+me then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, and her look was an
+answer. He stooped and gravely kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you really cared, even then? I wish
+you had been braver,&rdquo; he said a little sadly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you
+then&mdash;you must try to forgive me, dear.
+Think how much there was at stake!
+Suppose I had lost you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">VII<br />
+<br />
+THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR</h2>
+
+
+<p>Aunt Kate was the great comfort of
+Kitty&rsquo;s existence. Always kindly, helpful,
+sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight,
+no girlish question too difficult for her tender
+heart&mdash;her delicate insight. How different
+from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was
+Kitty&rsquo;s fate to live. Aunt Eliza was severe,
+methodical, energetic. In household matters
+she spared neither herself nor her niece.
+Kitty could darn and mend and bake and
+dust and sweep in a way which might have
+turned the parents of the bluest Girtonian
+green with envy. She had read a great deal,
+too&mdash;the really solid works that are such a
+nuisance to get through, and that leave a
+mark on one&rsquo;s mind like the track of a steamroller.
+That was Aunt Eliza&rsquo;s doing. Kitty
+ought to have been grateful&mdash;but she wasn&rsquo;t.
+She didn&rsquo;t want to be improved with solid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+books. She wanted to write books herself.
+She did write little tales when her aunt was
+out on business, which was often, and she
+dreamed of the day when she should write
+beautiful books, poems, romances. These
+Aunt Eliza classed roughly as &ldquo;stuff and
+nonsense&rdquo;; and one day, when she found
+Kitty reading the <i>Girls&rsquo; Very Own Friend</i>,
+she tore that harmless little weekly across and
+across and flung it into the fire. Then she
+faced Kitty with flushed face and angry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I ever catch you bringing such rubbish
+into the house again, I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll stop your music
+lessons.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was a horrible threat. Kitty went
+twice a week to the Guildhall School of
+Music. She had no musical talent whatever,
+but the journey to London and back was her
+one glimpse of the world&rsquo;s tide that flowed
+outside the neat, gloomy, ordered house at
+Streatham. Therefore Kitty was careful that
+Aunt Eliza should not again &ldquo;catch her
+bringing such rubbish into the house.&rdquo; But
+she went on reading the paper all the same,
+just as she went on writing her little stories.
+And presently she got one of her little stories
+typewritten, and sent it to the <i>Girls&rsquo; Very
+Own Friend</i>. It was a silly little story&mdash;the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+heroine was <i>svelte</i>, I am sorry to say, and
+had red-gold hair and a soft, <i>trainante</i> voice&mdash;and
+the hero was a &ldquo;frank-looking young
+Englishman, with a bronzed face and honest
+blue eyes.&rdquo; The plot was that with which
+I firmly believe every career of fiction begins&mdash;the
+girl who throws over her lover because
+he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out
+that it was not her lover, but his brother or
+cousin. We have all written this story in
+our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than
+many, but not nearly so badly as most of
+us.</p>
+
+<p>And the <i>Girls&rsquo; Very Own Friend</i> accepted
+the story and printed it, and in its columns
+notified to &ldquo;George Thompson&rdquo; that the
+price, a whole guinea, was lying idle at the
+office till he should send his address. For,
+of course, Kitty had taken a man&rsquo;s name for
+her pen-name, and almost equally, of course,
+had called herself &ldquo;George.&rdquo; George Sand
+began it, and it is a fashion which young
+authors seem quite unable to keep themselves
+from following.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty longed to tell some one of her success&mdash;to
+ask admiration and advice; but Aunt
+Eliza was more severe and less approachable
+than usual that week. She was busy writing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+letters. She had always a sheaf of dull-looking
+letters to answer, so Kitty could
+only tell Mary in the kitchen under vows
+of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only
+said: &ldquo;Well, to be sure, Miss, it&rsquo;s beautiful!
+I suppose you wrote the story down out of
+some book?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to
+apply to her for intellectual sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will write to Aunt Kate,&rdquo; said she,
+&ldquo;<i>she</i> will understand. Oh, how I wish I
+could see her! She must be a dear, soft,
+pussy, cuddly sort of person. Why shouldn&rsquo;t
+I go and see her? I will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And on this desperate resolve she acted.</p>
+
+<p>Now I find it quite impossible any longer
+to conceal from the intelligent reader that
+the reason why Kitty had never seen Aunt
+Kate was that &ldquo;Aunt Kate&rdquo; was merely
+the screen which sheltered from a vulgar
+publicity the gifted person who wrote the
+&ldquo;Answers to Correspondents&rdquo; for the <i>Girls&rsquo;
+Very Own Friend</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In fear and trembling, and a disguised
+hand-writing; with a feigned name and a
+quickly-beating heart, Kitty, months before,
+had written to this mysterious and gracious
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+being. In the following week&rsquo;s number had
+appeared these memorable lines:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Sweet Nancy.</i>&mdash;So pleased, dear, with
+your little letter. Write to me quite freely.
+I love to help my girls.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly
+as any girl of eighteen ever writes: her
+hopes and fears, her household troubles, her
+literary ambitions. And in the columns of
+the <i>Girls&rsquo; Very Own Friend</i> Aunt Kate
+replied with all the tender grace and
+delightful warmth that characterised her
+utterances.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred
+to Kitty as she was &ldquo;putting on her things&rdquo;
+to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw
+the plain &ldquo;everyday&rdquo; hat from her, and pulled
+her best hat from its tissue-paper nest in the
+black bandbox. She put on her best blouse&mdash;the
+cream-coloured one with the browny
+lace on it, and her best brown silk skirt.
+She recklessly added her best brown shoes
+and gloves, and the lace pussy-boa. (I don&rsquo;t
+know what the milliner&rsquo;s name for the thing
+is. It goes round the neck, and hangs its
+soft and fluffy ends down nearly to one&rsquo;s
+knees.) Then she looked at herself in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+glass, gave a few last touches to her hair
+and veil, and nodded to herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do, my dear,&rdquo; said Kitty.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Eliza was providentially absent at Bath
+nursing a sick friend, and the black-bugled
+duenna, hastily imported from Tunbridge
+Wells, could not be expected to know
+which was Kitty&rsquo;s best frock, and which the
+gloves that ought only to have been worn
+at church.</p>
+
+<p>When Kitty&rsquo;s music lesson was over,
+she stood for a moment on the steps of
+the Guildhall School, looking down towards
+the river. Then she shrugged her pretty
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care. I&rsquo;m going to,&rdquo; she said,
+and turned resolutely towards Tudor Street.
+Kitty had been to a high school: therefore
+she was not obviously shy. She asked her
+way frankly and easily of carman, or clerk,
+or errand-boy; and though, at the door of
+the dingy office in a little court off Fleet
+Street, her heart beat thickly as she read
+the blue-enamelled words, <i>Girls&rsquo; Very Own
+Friend</i>, her manner as she walked into the
+office betrayed no nervousness, and, indeed,
+struck the grinning idle office boy as that
+of &ldquo;a bloomin&rsquo; duchess.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I want to see&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she began; and then
+suddenly the awkwardness of her position
+struck her. She did not know Aunt Kate&rsquo;s
+surname. Abruptly to ask this grinning lout
+for &ldquo;Aunt Kate&rdquo; seemed absolutely indecorous.
+&ldquo;I want to see the editor,&rdquo; she
+ended.</p>
+
+<p>She waited in the grimy office while the
+boy disappeared through an inner door,
+marked in dingy white letters with the
+magic words, &ldquo;Editor&mdash;Private.&rdquo; A low buzz
+of voices came to her through the door. She
+looked at the pigeon-holes where heaps of
+back numbers of the <i>Girls&rsquo; Very Own</i> lay
+in a dusty retirement. She looked at the
+insurance company&rsquo;s tasteless almanack that
+hung all awry on the wall, and still the buzz
+went on. Then suddenly some one laughed
+inside, and the laugh did not please Kitty.
+The next moment the boy returned, grinning
+more repulsively than ever, and said: &ldquo;Walk
+this way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She walked that way, past the boy; the
+door fell to behind her, and she found herself
+in a cloud of tobacco smoke, compressed
+into a small room&mdash;a very dusty, untidy room&mdash;in
+which stood three young men. Their
+faces were grave and serious, but Kate could
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+not forget that one of them had laughed,
+and laughed <i>like that</i>. Her chin went up
+about a quarter of an inch further.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry to have disturbed you,&rdquo; she
+said severely. &ldquo;I wanted to see&mdash;to see the
+lady who signs herself Aunt Kate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence which
+seemed almost breathless. Two of the young
+men exchanged a glance, but though Kitty
+perceived it to be significant, she could not
+interpret its meaning. Then one of the
+three turned to gaze out of the window at
+the blackened glass roof of the printing office
+below. Kitty felt certain he was concealing
+a smile; and the second hurriedly arranged
+a bundle of papers beside him.</p>
+
+<p>The third young man spoke, and Kitty liked
+the gentle drawl, the peculiar enunciation.
+The poor girl, in her Streatham seclusion,
+had never before heard the &ldquo;Oxford voice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but &lsquo;Aunt
+Kate&rsquo; is not here to-day. Perhaps&mdash;is there
+anything I could do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, thank you,&rdquo; said Kitty, wishing herself
+miles away; the tobacco smoke choked
+her, the backs of the two other men seemed
+an outrage. She turned away with a haughty
+bow, and went down the grimy stairs full
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+of fury. She could have slapped herself.
+How could she have been such a fool as to
+come there? There were feet coming down
+the stair behind her&mdash;she quickened her
+pace. The feet came more quickly. She
+stopped on the landing and turned with an
+odd feeling of being at bay. It was the
+fair-haired young man with the Oxford
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am so very sorry,&rdquo; he said gently,
+&ldquo;but I did not know. I did not expect to
+see&mdash;I mean, I did not know who you were.
+And we had all been smoking&mdash;I am so
+sorry,&rdquo; he said again, rather lamely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; said Kitty, more shyly
+than she had ever spoken in her life. She
+liked his eyes and his voice as much as she
+loathed the expressive backs of his two
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you could come again: perhaps Aunt
+Kate will be here on Thursday. I know she
+will be sorry to miss you,&rdquo; the young man
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I won&rsquo;t call again, thank you,&rdquo;
+said Kitty. &ldquo;I&mdash;I&rsquo;ll write, thank you; it
+is all right. I oughtn&rsquo;t to have come.
+Good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing for it but to stand
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+back and let her pass. The editor went back
+slowly to his room. His friends had relighted
+their pipes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Appeased the outraged goddess?&rdquo; asked
+one of them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good old Aunt Kate!&rdquo; said the other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up, Sellars!&rdquo; said the editor,
+frowning.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, which of your correspondents is it?&rdquo;
+pondered Sellars, ruffling the bundle of papers
+in his hand. &ldquo;Is it &lsquo;Wild Woodbine,&rsquo; who
+wants to know what will make her hands
+white? Chilcott, did you see her hands?
+Oh no, of course&mdash;<i>bien chaussée, bien gantée</i>.
+All brown, too. Is it &lsquo;Sylph&rsquo;?&mdash;no; she
+wants a pattern for a Zouave. What is a
+Zouave, if you please, Mr Editor?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dry up!&rdquo; said the editor, but Sellars was
+busy with the papers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eureka! I know her. She&rsquo;s &lsquo;Nut-brown
+Maid&rsquo;&mdash;here&rsquo;s the letter&mdash;wants to know if
+she may talk to &lsquo;a young gentleman she has
+not been properly introduced to&rsquo;&mdash;spells it
+&lsquo;interoduced,&rsquo; too&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The editor snatched the papers out of the
+other&rsquo;s hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now clear out,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m busy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Am I dreaming?&rdquo; said Sellars pensively;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+&ldquo;or is this the editor who invited us to
+collaborate with him in his &lsquo;Answers to
+Correspondents&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am the editor who will kick you down
+the entire five flights if he is driven to it.
+You won&rsquo;t drive him, will you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The two laughed, but they took up their
+hats and went; Sellars put his head round
+the door for a last word.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What price love at first sight?&rdquo; said he,
+and the office ruler dented the door as he
+disappeared round it. The editor, left alone,
+sat down in his chair and looked helplessly
+round him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; he said musingly, &ldquo;well, well,
+well, well!&rdquo; Then after a long silence he
+took up his pen and began the &ldquo;Answers to
+Correspondents.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Dieu-donnée.</i>&mdash;Your hair is a very nice
+colour. I should not advise Aureoline.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Shy Fairy.</i>&mdash;By all means consult your
+mother. Heliotrope would suit your complexion,
+if it is, as you say, of a brilliant
+fairness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Contadina.</i>&mdash;No, I should not advise
+scarlet velvet with the pale blue. Try myrtle
+green.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Presently he threw down the pen. &ldquo;I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+suppose I shall never see her again,&rdquo; he said,
+and he actually sighed.</p>
+
+<p>But he did see her again. For on her
+way home poor Kitty&rsquo;s imagination suddenly
+spread its wings and alighted accurately on the
+truth; she formed a sufficiently vivid picture
+of what had happened in the office after she
+left. She <i>knew</i> that those other young men&mdash;&ldquo;the
+pigs,&rdquo; she called them to herself&mdash;had
+speculated as to whether she was &ldquo;Little
+One,&rdquo; who wanted to make her hair curl,
+and to know whether short waists would be
+worn; or &ldquo;Moss Rose,&rdquo; who was anxious
+about her complexion, and the proper way
+to treat a jibbing sweetheart. So that very
+night she wrote a note to Aunt Kate, but
+she did not sign it &ldquo;Sweet Nancy&rdquo; in the
+old manner, and she did not disguise her
+hand. She signed it George Thompson, in
+inverted commas, and she said that she would
+call on Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>And on Thursday she called. And was
+shown into the editor&rsquo;s room at once.</p>
+
+<p>The editor rose to greet her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aunt Kate is not here,&rdquo; said he hurriedly;
+&ldquo;but if you can spare a few moments I
+should like to talk to you about business;
+I did not know the other day that you were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+the author of that charming story &lsquo;Evelyn&rsquo;s
+Error.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The room was clear of tobacco smoke&mdash;the
+editor was alone&mdash;some red roses lay on
+the table. Kitty caught herself wondering
+for whom he had bought them. The chair he
+offered her was carefully dusted. She took
+it&mdash;and he began to talk about her story;
+criticising, praising, blaming, and that so skilfully
+that criticism seemed a subtle flattery,
+and the very blame conveyed a compliment.
+Then he asked for more stories. And a new
+heaven and a new earth seemed to unroll
+before the girl&rsquo;s eyes. If she could only
+write&mdash;and succeed&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will you come again?&rdquo; he said at last.
+&ldquo;Aunt Kate&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she said, with eyes shining softly,
+&ldquo;it doesn&rsquo;t matter about Aunt Kate now!
+I shall be so busy trying to write stories.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The fact is&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; said the editor slowly,
+racking his brains for a reason that should
+bring her to the office again&mdash;&ldquo;the fact is&mdash;<i>I</i>
+am Aunt Kate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Kitty sprang to her feet. Her face flamed
+scarlet. She stood silent a moment. Then:
+&ldquo;<i>You?</i>&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s <i>not</i> fair&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+mean&mdash;it&rsquo;s shameful! Oh&mdash;how could you!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+And girls write to <i>you</i>&mdash;and they think it&rsquo;s
+a woman&mdash;and they tell you about their
+troubles. It&rsquo;s horrible! It&rsquo;s underhand&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+abominable! I hate you for it. Every one
+ought to know. I shall write to the papers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, please,&rdquo; said the editor hurriedly
+and humbly&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s not my fault. It <i>is</i> a
+lady who does it generally, but she had to
+go away&mdash;and I couldn&rsquo;t get any one else
+to do it. And I didn&rsquo;t see&mdash;till after you&rsquo;d
+been the other day&mdash;that it wasn&rsquo;t fair. And
+I was going to ask if <i>you</i> would do it&mdash;the
+correspondence, I mean&mdash;just for this week.
+I wish you would!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could I?&rdquo; she said doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you could! And if you&rsquo;d
+bring the copy on Monday&mdash;about two
+columns, you know&mdash;we could go through
+it together and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll try,&rdquo; said Kitty abruptly,
+reaching out for the sheaf of letters which
+he was gathering together.</p>
+
+<p>And now who was happier than Kitty,
+seated behind her locked bedroom door
+advising &ldquo;Dieu-donnée&rdquo; and &ldquo;Shy Fairy&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;Contadina&rdquo; out of the unfathomable
+depths of her girlish inexperience. Her
+advice looked wonderfully practical, though,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+in print, she thought, as with a thrill of pride
+and joy she corrected the first proofs. And
+she wrote stories, too, and they, too, were
+printed. It was indeed a bright and beautiful
+world. Aunt Eliza stayed away for five
+glorious weeks. Kitty, with an enthralling
+sense of reckless wickedness, gave up her
+useless music lessons, and in going three
+times a week to the office experienced a
+glowing consciousness of the joy and dignity
+of honest toil.</p>
+
+<p>The editor, by the way, during these five
+weeks fell in love with Kitty, exactly as he
+had known he would do when first he saw
+her grey eyes. Kitty had never been so
+happy in all her life. The child honestly
+believed hers to be the happiness that comes
+from congenial work. And her editor was
+so clever and so kind! No one ever smoked
+in the office now, and there were always
+roses. And Kitty took them home with
+her, so that now there was no need to wonder
+for whom he had bought them.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the inevitable hour. He met
+her one day with a clouded face and a letter
+in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all over,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;the real original
+old Aunt Kate is coming back. She&rsquo;s the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+dearest old thing, so kind and jolly&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;whatever
+shall we do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can still write stories, I suppose,&rdquo;
+said Kitty, but she realised with a gasp that
+congenial toil would not be quite, quite
+the same without congenial companionship.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he, picking up the bunch of
+red roses, &ldquo;but&mdash;here are your flowers&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+you know yet that I can&rsquo;t possibly do
+without you? In a few months I&rsquo;m to
+have the editorship of a new weekly, a
+much better berth than this. If only you
+would&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Write the correspondence?&rdquo; said Kitty,
+brightening; &ldquo;of course I will. I don&rsquo;t know
+what I should do without&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; he interrupted, &ldquo;that I could
+think it was <i>me</i> you couldn&rsquo;t do without.&rdquo;
+Her pretty eyes met his over the red roses,
+and he caught her hands with the flowers
+in them. &ldquo;Is it? Oh, say you can&rsquo;t do
+without me either. Say it, say it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;don&rsquo;t want to do without you,&rdquo;
+said Kitty at last. He was holding her hands
+fast, and she was trying, not very earnestly,
+perhaps, to pull them away. The pair made
+a pretty picture.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Oh, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!&rdquo; he said softly,
+and then the door opened, and suddenly,
+without the least warning, a middle-aged
+lady became a spectator of the little tableau.
+The newcomer wore a mantle with beads
+on it, a black bonnet wherein nodded a
+violet flower&mdash;and beads and flower and
+bonnet were absolutely familiar to each of
+the astonished ones now standing consciously
+with the breadth of the office between them.
+For in that middle-aged lady the editor
+recognised Aunt Kate, the pleasant, sensible,
+companionable woman who for years had
+written those sympathetic &ldquo;Answers to
+Correspondents&rdquo; in the <i>Girls&rsquo; Very Own
+Friend</i>. And at the same moment Kitty
+recognised, beyond all possibility of doubt,
+Aunt Eliza&mdash;her own grim, harsh, uncongenial
+Aunt Eliza.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty cowered&mdash;in her frightened soul
+she cowered. But her little figure drew
+itself up, and the point of her chin rose a
+quarter of an inch.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aunt Eliza,&rdquo; she said firmly, &ldquo;I know
+you will&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Your Aunt Eliza</i>, Kitty?&rdquo; cried the
+editor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Kitty&rsquo;?&rdquo; said the aunt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+And now the situation hung all too nicely
+balanced on the extreme edge of the absolutely
+impossible. Would this middle-aged
+lady&mdash;an aunt beyond doubt&mdash;an aunt who
+so long had played a double <i>rôle</i>, assume,
+now that one <i>rôle</i> must be chosen, the part
+of Aunt Eliza the Terrible or of Aunt Kate
+the Kind? The aunt was dumb. Kitty was
+dumb. But the editor had his wits about
+him, and Kate, though shaken, was not
+absolutely paralysed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s almost too good to be true,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;that <i>my</i> Aunt Kate is really <i>your</i> Aunt
+Eliza. Aunt Kate, Kitty and I have just
+decided that we can&rsquo;t do without each other.
+I am so glad that you are the first to wish
+us joy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At his words all the &ldquo;Kate&rdquo; in the
+aunt rose triumphant, trampling down the
+&ldquo;Eliza.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear boy,&rdquo; she said&mdash;and she said it
+in a voice which Kitty had never heard before&mdash;the
+sound of that voice drew Kitty like a
+magnet. She did the only possible thing&mdash;she
+put her arms timidly round her aunt&rsquo;s
+neck and whispered: &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be Aunt
+Eliza any more, be Aunt Kate!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was Aunt Kate&rsquo;s arms undoubtedly that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+went round the girl. Certainly not Aunt
+Eliza&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will take a walk down Fleet Street,&rdquo;
+said the editor discreetly.</p>
+
+<p>Then there were explanations in the office.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But why,&rdquo; said Kitty, when all the
+questions had been asked and answered, &ldquo;why
+were you Aunt Eliza to me, and Aunt Kate
+to him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, one must spoil somebody, and
+I was determined not to spoil <i>you</i>; I wanted
+to save you. All my life was ruined because
+I was a spoiled child&mdash;and because I tried to
+write. I had such dreams, such ambitions&mdash;just
+like yours, you silly child! But then I
+was never clever&mdash;perhaps you may be&mdash;and
+it all ended in my losing my lover. He
+married a nice, quiet, domestic girl, and I
+never made name or fame at all&mdash;I never
+got anything taken but fashion articles&mdash;and
+&lsquo;Answers to Correspondents.&rsquo; Now, that&rsquo;s
+the whole tale. Don&rsquo;t mention it again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you did love me, even when&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I did,&rdquo; said Aunt Kate in the
+testy tones of Aunt Eliza; &ldquo;or why should
+I have bothered at all about whether you
+were going to be happy or not? Now,
+Kitty, you&rsquo;re not to expect me to gush.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+I&rsquo;ve forgotten how to be sentimental except
+on paper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be sentimental,&rdquo; said
+Kitty, a little injured, &ldquo;neither does&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here the editor came in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want to be sentimental either,&rdquo;
+Kitty went on; &ldquo;do you&mdash;Mr Editor?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The editor looked a little doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want to be happy, at any rate,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;and I mean to be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he can&rsquo;t be happy unless you smile
+on him. Smile on him, Auntie!&rdquo; cried a
+new, radiant Kitty, to whom aunts no longer
+presented any terrors. &ldquo;Say &lsquo;Bless you, my
+children!&rsquo; Auntie&mdash;do!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Get along with your nonsense!&rdquo; said
+Aunt Eliza. Or was it Aunt Kate?</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">VIII<br />
+<br />
+MISS MOUSE</h2>
+
+
+<p>They were poor, not with the desperate
+poverty that has to look on both sides of a
+penny, but with the decent bearable poverty
+that must look at a shilling with attention,
+and with respect at half-a-crown. There was
+money for the necessities of life, the mother
+said, but no money to waste. This was what
+she always tried to say when Maisie came in
+with rainbow representations of the glories
+of local &ldquo;sales&rdquo; piteous pictures of beautiful
+things going almost for nothing&mdash;things not
+absolutely needed, but which would &ldquo;come
+in useful.&rdquo; Maisie&rsquo;s dress was never allowed
+those touches of cheap finery which would
+have made it characteristic of her. Her
+clothes were good, and she had to patch
+and mend and contrive so much that sometimes
+it seemed to her as though all her life
+was going by in the effort to achieve, by a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+distasteful process, a result which she abhorred.
+For her artistic sense was too weak to show
+her how the bright, soft freshness of her tints
+gained by contrast with the dull greys and
+browns and drabs that were her mother&rsquo;s
+choice&mdash;good wearing colours, from which
+the pink and white of her face rose triumphantly,
+like a beautiful flower out of a rough
+calyx.</p>
+
+<p>The house was like Maisie, in that it never
+seemed to have anything new&mdash;none of those
+bright, picturesque cushions and screens and
+Japaneseries which she adored through the
+plate-glass windows of the big local draper.
+The curtains were of old damask, faded but
+rich; the furniture was mahogany, old and
+solid; the carpets were Turkey and Aubusson&mdash;patched
+and darned this last, but still
+beautiful. Maisie knew all about old oak&mdash;she
+had read her <i>Home Hints</i> and her
+<i>Gentlewoman&rsquo;s Guide</i>&mdash;but she had no idea
+that mahogany could be fashionable. None
+of the photographs of the drawing-rooms of
+celebrities in her favourite papers were anything
+like the little sitting-room where her
+mother sat knitting by the hearth, surrounded
+by the relics of a house that had been handsome
+in the &rsquo;sixties, when it was her girlhood&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+home. Maisie hated it all: the chairs covered
+in Berlin-wool needlework, the dark, polished
+surfaces of the tables and bureaux, the tinkling
+lustres of Bohemian glass, the shining brass
+trivet on which the toast kept itself warm,
+the crude colours of the tea-service, the smell
+of eau-de-Cologne mingling with the faint
+scent of beeswax and cedar-wood. She would
+have liked to change the old water-colours in
+their rubbed gilt frames for dark-mounted
+autotypes. How should she know that those
+hideous pigs were Morlands, and that the
+cow picture was a David Cox. She would
+have liked Japanese blue transfers instead of
+the gold-and-white china&mdash;old Bristol, by
+the way, but Maisie knew nothing of Bristol.
+The regular, sober orderliness of the house
+chafed and fretted her; the recurrent duties,
+all dull; the few guests who came to tea.
+Decent poverty cannot give dinner parties
+or dances. She visited her school friends,
+and when she came home again it seemed
+to her sometimes as though the atmosphere
+of the place would choke her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want to go out and earn my own living,&rdquo;
+she said to her cousin Edward one Sunday
+afternoon when her mother was resting and
+he and she were roasting chestnuts on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+bars of the dining-room fire. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m simply
+useless here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Edward was a second cousin. To him the
+little house was the ideal home, just as Maisie
+was&mdash;well, not, perhaps, the ideal girl, but
+the only girl in the world, which comes to
+much the same thing. But he never told
+her so: he dared not risk losing the cousin&rsquo;s
+place and missing for ever the lover&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>So, in his anxiety lest she should know
+how much he cared, he scolded her a good
+deal. But he took her to picture galleries
+and to <i>matinées</i>, and softened her life in a
+hundred ways that she never noticed. He
+was only &ldquo;Poor old Edward,&rdquo; and he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why, what
+on earth would Aunt do without you? Here,
+have this one&mdash;it&rsquo;s a beauty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I ought to have been taught a trade, like
+other poor girls,&rdquo; she went on, waving away
+the roasted chestnut. &ldquo;Lots of the girls I
+was at school with are earning as much as
+a pound a week now&mdash;typewriting or painting
+birthday cards, and some of them are in
+the Post Office&mdash;and I do nothing but drudge
+away at home. It&rsquo;s too bad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Edward would have given a decent sum at
+that moment to be inspired with exactly the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+right thing to say. As it was he looked at
+her helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand, I&rsquo;m afraid,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You never do,&rdquo; she answered crossly.
+There was a silence in which she felt the
+growth of a need to justify herself&mdash;to herself
+as well as to him. &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you see,&rdquo;
+she urged, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s my plain duty to go out and
+earn something. Why, we&rsquo;re as poor as ever
+we can be&mdash;I haven&rsquo;t any pocket-money hardly&mdash;I
+can&rsquo;t even buy presents for people. I
+have to <i>make</i> presents out of odds and ends
+of old things, instead of buying them, like
+other girls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you make awfully pretty things,&rdquo;
+he said; &ldquo;much prettier than any one can
+buy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re thinking of that handkerchief-case
+I gave Aunt Emma at Christmas. Why,
+you silly, it was only a bit of one of mother&rsquo;s
+old dresses. I do wish you&rsquo;d talk to mother
+about it. I might go out as companion or
+something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The word came before the thought, but
+the thought was brought by the word and
+the thought stayed.</p>
+
+<p>That very evening Maisie began to lay
+siege to her mother&rsquo;s desired consent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+She put her arguments very neatly, so
+neatly that it was hard for the mother to
+oppose them without being betrayed into an
+attitude that would seem grossly selfish.</p>
+
+<p>She sat looking into the fire, thinking of
+all the little, unceasing sacrifices that had
+been her life ever since Maisie had been hers&mdash;even
+the giving up of that treasured silk, her
+wedding dress, last Christmas, because Maisie
+wanted something pretty to make Christmas
+presents out of. She remembered it all; and
+now this new great sacrifice was called for.
+She had given up to Maisie everything but her
+taste in dress, and now it seemed that she
+was desired to give up even Maisie herself.
+But the other sacrifices had been for Maisie&rsquo;s
+good or for her pleasure. Would this one
+be for either?</p>
+
+<p>She saw her little girl alone among strangers,
+snubbed, looked down upon, a sort of upper
+servant with none of a servant&rsquo;s privileges;
+she nerved herself to what was always to her
+an almost unbearable effort. Her heart was
+beating and her hands trembling as she said:
+&ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s quite impossible; I couldn&rsquo;t
+possibly allow it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must say I don&rsquo;t see why,&rdquo; said Maisie,
+with tears in her voice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+Her mother dropped the mass of fleecy
+white wool and the clinking knitting needles
+and grasped the arms of her chair intensely.
+Her eyes behind the spectacles clouded with
+tears. It seemed to her that her child should
+surely understand the agony it was to her
+mother to refuse her anything.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I could earn money for you&mdash;it&rsquo;s not
+myself I&rsquo;m thinking about,&rdquo; the girl went
+on; the half-lie came out quite without
+her conscious volition. &ldquo;I wish you didn&rsquo;t
+always think I do everything for selfish
+reasons.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t, my dear,&rdquo; said the mother feebly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s my duty,&rdquo; Maisie went on,
+with more tears than ever in her voice. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+eighteen, and I ought to be earning something,
+instead of being a burden to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The mother looked hopelessly into the fire.
+She had always tried to explain things to
+Maisie; how was it that Maisie never understood?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; said Maisie, echoing her mother&rsquo;s
+thought, &ldquo;I always try to tell you how I
+think about things, and you never seem to
+understand. Of course, I won&rsquo;t go if you
+wish it, but I <i>do</i> think&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She left the room in tears, and the mother
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+remained to torment herself with the eternal
+questions, What had she done wrong? Why
+was Maisie not contented? What could she
+do to please her? Would nothing please her
+but the things that were not for her good&mdash;smart
+clothes, change, novelty? How could
+she bear her life if Maisie was not pleased?</p>
+
+<p>She went down to supper shivering with
+misery and apprehension. What a meal it
+would be with Maisie cold and aloof, polite
+and indifferent! But Maisie was cheerful,
+gay almost, and her mother felt a passion of
+gratitude to her daughter for not being sulky
+or unapproachable. Maisie, however, was
+only stepping back to jump the better.</p>
+
+<p>The same scene, with intenser variations,
+was played about twice a week till the girl
+got her way, as she always did in the end,
+except in the matter of cheap finery. Taste
+in dress was as vital to the mother as her
+religion. Then, through the influence of an
+old governess of her mother&rsquo;s, Maisie got
+her wish. She was to go as companion to
+an old lady, the mother of Lady Yalding,
+and she was to live at Yalding Towers. Here
+was splendour&mdash;here would be life, incident,
+opportunity! For her reading had sometimes
+strayed from <i>Home Hints</i> to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+<i>Family Herald</i>, and she knew exactly what
+are the chances of romance to a humble
+companion in the family of a lady of title.</p>
+
+<p>And now Maisie&rsquo;s mother gave way to
+her, finally and completely, even on the
+question of dress. The old wardrobe was
+ransacked to find materials to fit her out
+with clothes for her new venture. It was a
+beautiful time for Maisie. New things, and
+old things made to look as good as new, or
+better. It was like having a trousseau. The
+mother lavished on her child every inch of
+the old lace, every one of the treasured
+trinkets&mdash;even the little old locket that had
+been the dead husband&rsquo;s first love-gift.</p>
+
+<p>And Maisie, in the flutter of her excitement
+and anticipation, was loving and tender
+and charming, and the mother had her reward.</p>
+
+<p>Edward opposed a stolid and stony disapproval
+to all the new enthusiasm. He
+said little because he feared to say too much.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor little Maisie!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll
+soon find out that you didn&rsquo;t know when
+you were well off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Edward, I hate you,&rdquo; said Maisie, and
+she thought she did.</p>
+
+<p>But when all the beautiful new clothes
+were packed and her cab was at the door,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+some sense of what she was leaving did come
+to the girl, and she flung her arms round
+her mother in an embrace such as she had
+never given in her life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to go,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Mummy
+darling, I&rsquo;ve been a little beast about it. I
+won&rsquo;t go if you say you&rsquo;d rather not. Shall
+I send the cab away? I will if you say so,
+my own dear old Mummy!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maisie&rsquo;s mother was not a very wise woman,
+but she was not fool enough to trust this
+new softness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no, dearest,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;go and try
+your own way. God bless you, my darling!
+You&rsquo;ll miss the train if you stay. God bless
+you, my darling!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And Maisie went away crying hard through
+the new veil with the black velvet spots on
+it; as for the mother&mdash;but she was elderly,
+and plain, and foolishly fond, and her emotions
+can have but little interest for the readers
+of romances.</p>
+
+<p>And now Maisie, for the first time, knew
+the meaning of home. And before she had
+been at Yalding a week she had learned to
+analyse home and to give names to its constituents:
+love, interest, sympathy, liberty&mdash;these
+were some.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+At Yalding Towers Maisie was nothing to
+any one. No one knew or cared one single
+little bit of a straw whether she was unhappy
+or no. Her time was filled, and overfilled,
+by the attentions exacted by an old, eccentric,
+and very disagreeable lady. When she put
+on, for the first evening, the least pretty of
+the pretty dresses she had brought with her,
+the old lady looked at her with a disapproval
+almost rising to repulsion, and said: &ldquo;I
+expect you to wear black; and a linen
+collar and cuffs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So another black dress had to be ordered
+from home, and all the pretty, dainty things
+lay creasing themselves with disuse in the
+ample drawers and cupboards of her vast,
+dreary bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Her employer was exacting and irritable.
+When on the third day Maisie broke into
+tears under the constant flood of nagging,
+the old lady told her to go away and not to
+come back till she could control her temper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come back when you send for me,
+and not before, you hateful old thing!&rdquo; said
+Maisie to herself.</p>
+
+<p>And she sat down in her fireless bedroom
+and wrote a long letter to her mother, saying
+how happy she felt, and how kind every one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+was, and what a lovely and altogether desirable
+place was Yalding Towers. Who shall say
+whether pride or love, or both, dictated that
+letter?</p>
+
+<p>When her employer did send for her, it
+was to tell her, very sharply, that one more
+such exhibition of sullenness would cost her
+her situation. So she had to learn to school
+herself. And she did it. But the learning
+was hard, very hard, and in the learning she
+grew thinner, and some of the pretty pink
+in her cheeks faded away.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Yalding, when she swept in, in
+beautiful dream-dresses, always spoke to the
+companion quite kindly and nicely and
+pleasantly, but there were none of those
+invitations to come into the drawing-room
+after dinner which the <i>Family Herald</i> had
+led her to expect. Lady Yalding was always
+charming to every one, and Maisie tortured
+herself with the thought that it was only
+because she had no opportunity to explain
+herself that Lady Yalding failed to see how
+very much out of the common she was. She
+read Ruskin industriously, and once she left
+her own book of Browning selections that
+Edward had given her in the conservatory.
+She imagined Lady Yalding returning it to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+her with, &ldquo;So, are you fond of poetry?&rdquo; or,
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s delightful to find that you are a lover
+of Browning!&rdquo; But the book was brought
+back to her by a footman, and the old lady
+lectured her for leaving her rubbish littering
+about.</p>
+
+<p>But towards Christmas a change came.
+Maisie had hoped&mdash;more intensely than she
+had ever in her life hoped for anything&mdash;for
+a few days&rsquo; grace, for a sight of her
+mother, and the mahogany, and the damask
+curtains, and&mdash;yes&mdash;of Edward. But the
+old lady, who really was exceptionally horrid,
+wondered how she could ask for a holiday
+when she had only been in her situation six
+weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Then the old lady went off at half an
+hour&rsquo;s notice to spend Christmas with her
+other daughter&mdash;Maisie would have suspected
+a &ldquo;row&rdquo; if Lady Yalding had been a shade
+less charming&mdash;and the girl was left. Thus
+it happened that Lord Yalding&rsquo;s brother
+lounged into Lady Yalding&rsquo;s room one day,
+and said: &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the piteous black mouse
+you&rsquo;ve tamed?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon, Jim?&rdquo; said Lady
+Yalding.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The crushed apple-blossom in a black
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+frock&mdash;one meets her about the corridors.
+Gloomy sight. Chestnut hair. Princess-in-exile
+sort of look.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, <i>that</i>! It&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s companion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor little devil!&rdquo; said the Honourable
+James. &ldquo;What does she do now the cat&rsquo;s
+away? I beg your pardon&mdash;my mind was
+running on mice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do? I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Lady Yalding
+a little guiltily. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a good, quiet little
+thing&mdash;literary tastes, reads Browning, and
+all that sort of rot. She&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you give her a show? She&rsquo;d
+take the shine out of some of the girls here
+if you had her dressed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Jim,&rdquo; Lady Yalding said, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s
+all right as she is. What&rsquo;s the good of
+turning the child&rsquo;s head and giving her notions
+out of her proper station?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I were that child I&rsquo;d like to have a
+little bit of a fling just for once. The poor
+little rat looks starved, as though it hadn&rsquo;t
+laughed for a year. Then it&rsquo;s Christmas&mdash;peace
+and goodwill, and all that, don&rsquo;t you
+know. If I were you I&rsquo;d ask her down a
+bit&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Yalding thought&mdash;a thing she rarely
+did.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it <i>is</i> pretty slow for
+her, I suppose. I&rsquo;ll send her home to her
+people.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On Christmas Eve? Fog and frost, and
+the trains all anyhow? Fanny, Fanny!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, very well. We&rsquo;ll have her down,
+and go the whole hog. Only don&rsquo;t make a
+fool of the child, Jim; she&rsquo;s a good little
+thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And that was how the dream-dressed Lady
+Yalding came to sweep into the old lady&rsquo;s
+sitting-room&mdash;it was as full of mahogany, by
+the way, as Maisie&rsquo;s home in Lewisham&mdash;and
+spoke so kindly of Maisie&rsquo;s loneliness, that the
+girl could have fallen down and worshipped
+at her Paris shoes.</p>
+
+<p>When Maisie, in the figured lavender satin
+that had been her mother&rsquo;s, swept across the
+great hall on the arm of the Honourable
+James, she felt that this indeed was life.
+Here was the great world with its infinite
+possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did you get on?&rdquo; his sister-in-law
+asked him later.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s quite a decent sort of little
+mouse,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Wants to make sure
+you see how cultivated it is, quotes poetry&mdash;what?&mdash;and
+talks about art. It&rsquo;s a little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+touching and all that to see how busy it
+is putting all its poor little stock in the
+tiny shop-window.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maisie, alone in her room, was walking
+up and down, trailing the lavender satin,
+recalling with kindled eyes and red-rose
+cheeks every word, every look of her cavalier.
+How kindly he had spoken, yet how
+deferentially; how he had looked, how he
+had smiled! At dinner she supposed it was
+his business to talk to her. But afterwards,
+when she was sitting, a little forlornly and
+apart from the noisy chatter of the bright-plumaged
+house-party, how he had come
+straight over to her directly the gentlemen
+came into the drawing-room! And she felt
+that she had not been wanting to herself on
+so great an occasion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>know</i> I talked well. I&rsquo;m certain he
+saw directly that I wasn&rsquo;t a silly idiot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She lay long awake, and, as the men
+trooped up the stairs, she tried to fancy that
+she could already distinguish his footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>The letter she wrote to her mother next
+day was, compared to those other lying
+letters, as a lit chandelier to a stable-lantern.
+And the mother knew the difference.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor darling!&rdquo; she thought. &ldquo;She must
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+have been very miserable all this time. But
+she&rsquo;s happy now, God bless her!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By the week&rsquo;s end, every thought, every
+dream, every hope of Maisie&rsquo;s life was
+centred in the Honourable James; her
+tenderness, her ambition turned towards him
+as flowers to the sun.</p>
+
+<p>And her happiness lighted a thousand
+little candles all around her. No one could
+see the candles, of course, but every one
+saw the radiant illumination of her beauty.
+And the other men of the house-party saw
+it too. Even Lord Yalding distinguished
+her by asking whether she had read some
+horrid book about earthworms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re making a fool of that girl, Jim,&rdquo;
+said Lady Yalding. &ldquo;I really think it&rsquo;s too
+bad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My good Fanny, don&rsquo;t be an adorable
+idiot! I&rsquo;m only trying to give the poor
+little duffer a good time. There&rsquo;s nothing
+else to do. The other girls really are&mdash;now,
+you know they are, Fanny&mdash;between
+ourselves&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re all duty people, of course,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;Well, only do be careful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was careful. He subdued his impulses
+to tenderness and gentle raillery. He talked
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+seriously to little Miss Mouse, and presently
+he found that she was seriously talking to
+him&mdash;telling him, for instance, how she
+wrote poetry, and how she longed to show
+it to some one and ask whether it really was
+so bad as she sometimes feared.</p>
+
+<p>What could he do but beg her to show
+it to him? But there he pulled himself up
+short.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s skating to-morrow. We&rsquo;re going
+to drive over to Dansent. Would you
+like to come?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her grey eyes looked up quickly, and
+the long lashes drooped over them. She
+had read of that trick in a book, and for
+the life of him he could not help knowing
+it. Her answer to his question came from
+a book, too, though it also came from her
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you know!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the Honourable James was honestly
+frightened. Next day he had a telegram,
+and departed abruptly. And as abruptly
+the old lady returned.</p>
+
+<p>And now Maisie had a secret joy to feed
+on&mdash;a manna to sustain her in the wilderness
+of her tiresome life. She thought of
+<i>him</i>. He loved her; she was certain of it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+Miss Mouse could imagine no reason but
+love for the kindness he had shown her.
+He had gone away without a word, but
+that was for some good reason. Probably he
+had gone to confess to his mother how he
+had given his whole heart to a penniless
+orphan&mdash;well, she was half an orphan, anyway.
+But the days slipped by and he did
+not come back. All that bright time at
+Christmas had faded like a picture from a
+magic-lantern when the slide is covered.
+Lady Yalding was quite nice and kind, but
+she left Maisie to the work Maisie was paid
+for.</p>
+
+<p>Maisie&rsquo;s mother perceived, through Maisie&rsquo;s
+studied accounts of her happiness, more than
+a glimpse of the reality.</p>
+
+<p>Then, at last, when the days grew unbearable,
+Maisie wrote to him, a prim little letter
+with agitated heart-beats between the lines,
+where he, being no fool, did not fail to find
+them. Yet he had to answer the letter.
+He did it briefly.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear Miss Rolleston</span>,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;I
+have received your letter and the little poem,
+which is very nice. Poems about Spring are
+the pleasantest kind, I think.&mdash;With kind
+regards, I am yours sincerely.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not, as you may see, worth the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+heartache with which Maisie watched for it.</p>
+
+<p>It was when she wrote again, and sent
+more verses, that he decided he must not
+mince matters.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear Miss Rolleston</span>,&rdquo; was his second
+letter, &ldquo;it is good of you to write again.
+Now I do hope you won&rsquo;t be offended with
+me for what I am going to say. I am so much
+older than you, you know, and I know you
+are alone at Yalding, with no one to advise
+you, so it must be my duty to do it, though, for
+my own sake, I should, of course, like to advise
+you quite differently. It was a great pleasure
+to me to hear from you, but I must not allow
+myself that pleasure again, even if you were
+willing to give it to me. It would not be fair
+to you to let you write any more to a man
+who is not related to you. Try to forgive
+me for being unselfish and acting in your
+interests and not my own.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And again, with kind regards, he was hers
+sincerely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor, pretty little duffer!&rdquo; he said, as he
+closed the envelope. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not real.
+Don&rsquo;t I know the sort of thing? She&rsquo;s
+simply bored to death down there. And
+it&rsquo;s all my fault, anyhow. By Jove! I&rsquo;ll
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+never try to do any one a good turn again
+as long as I live. Fanny was perfectly right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The letter came by the second post, when
+Maisie was engaged in drearily reading her
+employer to sleep after lunch.</p>
+
+<p>It lay on her lap, but she kept her eyes
+from it and read on intelligibly if not with
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady dozed.</p>
+
+<p>Maisie opened her letter. And before she
+could even have had time to put up a hand
+to save herself, her Spanish castle was
+tumbling about her ears. A curious giddy
+feeling seemed to catch at the back of her
+neck, the room gave a sickening half-turn.
+She caught at her self-control.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not here. I mustn&rsquo;t faint here. Not
+with his letter in my hand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She got out of the room somehow, and
+somehow she got into hat and jacket and
+boots, put her quarter&rsquo;s salary in her purse,
+and walked out of the front door and straight
+down the great drive that she had come up
+four months ago with such bright hopes. She
+went to the station, and she took a train,
+and she never stopped nor stayed till she
+was at home again. She pushed past the
+frightened maid, and, pale and shabby, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+black-ringed eyes and dusty black gown, she
+burst into her mother&rsquo;s room. The scent of
+eau-de-Cologne and bees&rsquo;-wax and buttered
+toast met her, and it was as the perfume of
+Paradise. Edward was there&mdash;but she was in
+no mood to bother about Edward. She threw
+herself on her knees and buried her face in
+the knitting on her mother&rsquo;s lap, and felt
+thin arms go round her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing. I&rsquo;m tired of it all. I&rsquo;ve
+come home,&rdquo; was all she said. But presently
+she reached out a hand to Edward, and he
+took it and held it, as it were, absently, and
+the three sat by the fire and spoke little and
+were content.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>To her dying day Maisie will never forget
+the sense of peace, of enfolding care, and love
+unchanging and unchangeable that came to
+her as she woke next morning to find her
+mother standing by her bed with a cup of
+tea in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Mummy darling,&rdquo; she cried, throwing
+her arms round her mother and nearly upsetting
+the tea, &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t had a single drop of
+in-bed tea all the time I&rsquo;ve been away!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That was all she found words to tell her
+mother. Later there was Edward, and she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+told him most things, but, I imagine, not all.
+But the mother was content without spoken
+confidences. She knew that Maisie had
+suffered, and that now she had her little
+girl again, to wrap warm in her love as
+before. This was happiness enough.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>This story, I know, is instructive enough
+for a Sunday School prize. It ought to be
+tagged at the end with a Moral. I can&rsquo;t
+help it: it is true. Of course, it is not
+what usually happens. Many companions, no
+doubt, marry Honourable James&rsquo;s, or even
+Dukes, and are never at all glad to get home
+to their mothers and their Edwards. But
+Maisie was different. She feels now a sort
+of grateful tenderness for Yalding Towers,
+because, but for the dream she dreamed
+there she might never have really awakened&mdash;never
+have known fully and without
+mistake what it was in life that she truly
+cared for. And such knowledge is half the
+secret of happiness. That, by the way, is
+really the moral of this story.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">IX<br />
+<br />
+THE OLD WIFE</h2>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; married by the 30th of June, introduce
+my wife to the tenants on Christmas
+Eve, or no fortune. That was my uncle&rsquo;s
+last and worst joke; he was reputed a funny
+man in his time. The alternatives are pretty
+ghastly either way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t that rather depend?&rdquo; Sylvia
+queried, with a swift blue glance from under
+veiling lashes.</p>
+
+<p>Michael answered her with a look, the
+male counterpart of her own, from dark
+Devon eyes, the upper lid arched in a perfect
+semicircle over pure grey. &ldquo;Yes; but my
+wife must have a hundred a year of her
+own in Consols, to protect me from fortune-hunters&mdash;lone,
+lorn lamb that I am!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia emphasised the sigh with which she
+admitted her indigence. Her pretty eyebrows
+owned plaintively that she, a struggling artist,
+had no claim against the nation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Mary has just a hundred a year,&rdquo; she
+said, her voice low-toned as she looked across
+the room to where, demure in braided locks
+and grey camlet, her companion sat knitting.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I daresay,&rdquo; Michael answered indifferently,
+following her eyes&rsquo; flight and her tone&rsquo;s low
+pitch; &ldquo;but she&rsquo;s young. I shall advertise for
+an elderly housekeeper. And <i>qui vivra verra</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The words, lightly cast on the thin soil of
+a foolish word-play with a pretty woman,
+bore fruit.</p>
+
+<p>A week later Michael Wood stood aghast
+before a tray heaped with letters, answers to
+his advertisement:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;Housekeeper wanted. Must be middle-aged.
+The older the better. Salary, £500 a
+year.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Not much, he had thought, £500 a year&mdash;if,
+by paying it, he might win a wife who
+would entitle him to an annual £15,000,
+whose declining years he might kindly cheer,
+and whose death would set him free to marry
+a wife whom he could love. His fancy drifted
+pleasantly towards Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>Michael was a lazy man, who bristled
+with business instincts. He telephoned to
+the nearest &ldquo;typewriters&rsquo; association&rdquo; for a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+secretary, and to this young woman he committed
+the charge of answering the letters
+which his advertisement had drawn forth.
+The answer was to be the same to all:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;Call at 17 Hare Court, Temple, between
+11 and 1.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And the dates fixed for such calling were
+arranged to allow about fifty interviews daily
+for the next week or two, for Michael was
+a bold man as well as a lazy one. The next
+morning, faultlessly dressed, with carnations in
+his buttonhole, he composed himself in his
+pleasant oak-furnished room to await his first
+batch of callers.</p>
+
+<p>They came. And Michael, strong in his
+unswerving determination not to forfeit his
+chance of inheriting the £15,000 a year left
+him under his mad uncle&rsquo;s mad will, saw
+them all, one after the other.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not like any of them. They
+were old; that he did not mind&mdash;it was,
+indeed, of the essence of the contract. But
+they were frowsy, too, with reticules of
+scarred brownish leather, and mangy fur
+trimmings, worn fringes, and beaded mantles,
+whence time and poverty had clawed handfuls
+of the bright beads. Each of them was,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+as a wife, even as a wife in name, impossible.
+The task of rejection was softened to his
+hand by the fact that not one of them could
+boast the necessary hundred a year in Consols.</p>
+
+<p>The interviews over, Michael, his spirit
+crushed by the spectacle of so many women
+anxious to find a refuge at an age when
+their children and grandchildren should, in
+their own homes, have been rising up to call
+them blessed, went to lounge a restorative hour
+in Sylvia&rsquo;s bright little studio, and laugh
+with her over his dilemma. He would have
+liked to sigh with her, too, but the pathos
+of the homeless old women escaped her. She
+saw only the humour of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no harm done, if it amuses you,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;but you&rsquo;ll never marry an old
+woman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fifteen thousand pounds a year,&rdquo; said
+Michael softly.</p>
+
+<p>Next day more poor old ladies, all eager,
+anxious, ineligible.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the third day that the old lady
+in dove-colour came in, sweet as a pressed
+flower in an old love-letter, dainty as a pigeon
+in spring. Her white hair, the white lace
+of her collar, the black lace of her mantle,
+her beautiful little hands in their perfect,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+dove-coloured gloves, all appealed irresistibly
+to Michael&rsquo;s æsthetic sense.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What an ideal housekeeper!&rdquo; he said to
+himself, as he placed a chair for her. And
+then an odd thrill of discomfort and shame
+shot through him. This delicate, dainty old
+lady&mdash;he was to insult her by a form of
+marriage, and then to live near her, waiting
+for her death? No; it was impossible&mdash;the
+whole thing was impossible. He found himself
+in the middle of a sentence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so I fear I am already suited.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The old lady raised eyebrows as delicate
+as Sylvia&rsquo;s own.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hardly, I think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;since your
+servant admitted me to an interview with
+you. May I ask you one or two questions
+before you finally decide against me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The voice was low and soft&mdash;the voice men
+loved in the early sixties, before the shrill
+shriek became the voice of fashionable ladies.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; Michael said. He could hardly
+say less, and in the tumult of embarrassment
+that had swept over him, he could not for
+his life have said more.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady went on. &ldquo;I am competent
+to manage a house. I can read aloud fairly
+well. I am a good nurse in case of sickness;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+and I am accustomed to entertain. But I
+gather from the amount of the salary offered
+that some other duties would be required of
+me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s clever of her, too,&rdquo; Michael
+thought; &ldquo;none of the others saw that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He bowed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you enlighten me,&rdquo; she went on,
+&ldquo;as to the nature of the services you would
+require?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah&mdash;yes&mdash;of course,&rdquo; he said glibly, and
+then stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From your hesitation,&rdquo; said the old lady,
+with unimpaired self-possession, &ldquo;I gather that
+the matter involves an explanation of some
+delicacy, or else&mdash;pardon the egotism&mdash;that
+my appearance is personally unpleasing to
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;oh, <i>no</i>,&rdquo; Michael said very eagerly;
+&ldquo;on the contrary, if I may say so, it is just
+because you are so&mdash;so&mdash;exactly my ideal of
+an old lady, that I feel I can&rsquo;t go on with
+the business; and that&rsquo;s put stupidly, so
+that it sounds like an insult. Please forgive
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked him straight in the eyes through
+her gold-rimmed spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, I am old enough to be your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+grandmother,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Why not tell me
+the truth?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And, to his horror and astonishment, he
+told it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s what I meant to do,&rdquo; he ended.
+&ldquo;It was a mad idea, and I see now that if I
+do it at all I must marry some one who is
+not&mdash;who is not like you. You have made
+me ashamed of myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded
+cheek. The old lady put up her gloved hand
+and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She
+got up and walked to the window, and stood
+there, looking out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you <i>are</i> going to do it,&rdquo; she said in a
+voice that was hardly audible, &ldquo;I have been
+used to live among beautiful surroundings&mdash;I
+should like to end my days among them.
+I do not come of a long-lived family. You
+would not have long to wait for your freedom
+and your second wife.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Never in all his days had Michael known
+so sharp an agony of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When must you be married,&rdquo; the old lady
+went on calmly, &ldquo;to ensure your fortunes
+and estates?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In about a month.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Mr Wood, I make you a formal
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+offer of marriage, and for reference I can give
+you my banker and my solicitor&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was calm; it was his voice that
+trembled as he answered: &ldquo;You are too good.
+I can&rsquo;t see that it would be fair to you.
+May I think about it till to-morrow?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The contrast between the old lady&rsquo;s dainty
+correctness of attire and speech, and the
+extraordinary unconventionality of her proposal,
+made Michael&rsquo;s brain reel. She
+turned from the window, again looked him
+fairly in the eyes, and said: &ldquo;You will
+not find me unconventional in other matters.
+This is purely an affair of business, and I
+approach it in a business spirit. You would
+be giving a home to one who wants it, and
+I should be helping you to what you need
+still more. I have never been married. I
+never wished to marry; and when I am
+dead&mdash;&mdash; Don&rsquo;t look so horror-stricken. I
+should not die any sooner because you&mdash;you
+had married me. My name is Thrale&mdash;Frances
+Thrale. That is my card that you
+have been pulling to pieces while you have
+been talking to me. Shall I come and see
+you again at this time to-morrow? It is
+not a subject on which I should wish
+either to write or to receive letters.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+He could only acquiesce. At the door
+the old lady turned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you think I look so old as to make
+your marriage too absurd,&rdquo; she said&mdash;and
+now, for the first time, her voice trembled&mdash;&ldquo;I
+could dye my hair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; Michael said, &ldquo;your hair is
+beautiful. Good-bye, and thank you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As the old lady went down the dusty
+Temple stairs she stamped a small foot
+angrily on the worn oak.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;how could you?
+Hateful, shameless, unwomanly! And it&rsquo;s
+all for nothing, too. He&rsquo;ll never do it.
+It&rsquo;s <i>too</i> mad!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Michael went straight to Sylvia, and told
+his tale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I felt I couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;she
+is the daintiest, sweetest little old lady. I
+couldn&rsquo;t marry her and see her every day
+and live in the hope of her death.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why not,&rdquo; Sylvia said, a
+little coldly. &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t die any sooner
+because you married her, and, anyway, she
+can&rsquo;t have long to live.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The words were almost those of the little
+old lady herself. Yet&mdash;or perhaps for that
+very reason&mdash;they jarred on Michael&rsquo;s mood.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+He alleged business, and cut short his
+call.</p>
+
+<p>Next day Miss Thrale called again. Mr
+Wood was sorry to have given her so much
+trouble. He had decided that the idea
+was too wild, and must be abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it because I am too old?&rdquo; said the
+old lady wistfully; &ldquo;would you marry me
+if I were young?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Upon my word, I believe I would,&rdquo;
+Michael surprised himself by saying. That
+it was not the answer Miss Thrale expected
+was evident from her smile of sudden
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May I say,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;in return for
+what, in its way, is a compliment, that I
+like you very much. I would take care of
+you, and I shall perhaps not live more than
+a year or two.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tremor of her voice touched him.
+The £15,000 a year pulled at his will. In
+that instant he saw the broad glades of
+waving bracken, the big trees of the park,
+the sober face of the great house he might
+inherit, looking out over the smooth green
+lawns. He looked again at the little lady.
+After all, he was more than thirty. The
+world would laugh&mdash;well, they laughed best
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+who laughed last. And, after a few years,
+there would be Sylvia&mdash;pretty, charming,
+enchanting Sylvia. He put the thought of
+her roughly away. Not because he was
+ashamed of it, but because it hurt him.
+The thought that Sylvia should wait for a
+dead woman&rsquo;s shoes had seemed natural;
+what hurt him was that she herself should
+see nothing unnatural in such waiting.</p>
+
+<p>The silence had grown to the limit that
+spells discomfort; the ticking of the tall
+clock, the rustle of the plane tree&rsquo;s leaves
+outside the window, the discords of Fleet
+Street harmonised by distance, all deepened
+the silence and italicised it. She spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>The plane tree&rsquo;s leaves murmured eloquently
+of the great oaks in the park. The old lady&rsquo;s
+eyes looked at him appealingly through the
+pale-smoked glasses. How she would like
+that old place! And his debts&mdash;he could
+pay them all.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will,&rdquo; he said suddenly; &ldquo;if you will,
+I will; and I pray you may never regret it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think <i>you</i> will regret it,&rdquo; she
+said gently; &ldquo;it is a truly kind act to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bank and solicitor, duly consulted, testified
+to Miss Thrale&rsquo;s respectability and to her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+income&mdash;the requisite hundred a year in
+Consols. And on a certain day in June
+Michael Wood woke from a feverish dream,
+in which obstinacy and the longing for
+money had fought with many better things
+and worsted them, to find himself married
+to a white-haired woman of sixty.</p>
+
+<p>The awakening took place in his rooms in
+the Temple. He had yielded to the little
+old lady&rsquo;s entreaties, and consented, most
+willingly, to forego the &ldquo;wedding journey,&rdquo;
+in this case so sad a mockery.</p>
+
+<p>The set was a large one&mdash;five rooms; it
+seemed that they might live here, and
+neither irk the other.</p>
+
+<p>And she was in the room he had caused
+to be prepared for her&mdash;dainty and neat as
+herself&mdash;and he, left alone in the room where
+he had first seen her, crossed his arms on the
+table, and thought. His wedding-day! And
+it might have been Sylvia, the rustle of whose
+dress he could hear in the next room. He
+groaned. Then he laid his head on his arms
+and cried&mdash;like a child that has lost its
+favourite toy: for he saw, suddenly, that
+respect for his old wife must keep him from
+ever seeing Sylvia now; and life looked grey
+as the Thames in February twilight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+A timid hand on his shoulder startled him
+to the raising of his tear-stained face. The
+little old lady stood beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she said softly&mdash;&ldquo;don&rsquo;t!
+Believe me, it will be all right. Your old
+wife won&rsquo;t live more than a year&mdash;I know
+it. Take courage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Don&rsquo;t!</i>&rdquo; he said in his turn; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a
+wicked thing I&rsquo;ve done. Forgive me! If
+only we could have been friends. I can&rsquo;t
+bear to think I shall make you unhappy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear boy,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;we are friends.
+I am your housekeeper. In a year at latest
+you will see the last of my white hairs. Be
+brave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He could not understand the pang her
+words gave him.</p>
+
+<p>And now began, for these two, a strange
+life. In those Temple rooms&mdash;ideal nest for
+young lovers&mdash;Mrs Wood, the white-haired,
+kept house with firm and capable little
+hands. Comfort, which Michael&rsquo;s lazy nature
+loved but could not achieve, reigned peacefully.
+The old lady kept much to her own
+rooms, but whenever he needed talk she was
+there. And she could talk. She had read
+much, reflected much. In her mind his own
+ideas found mating germs, and bore fruit of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+beautiful dreams, great thoughts. His verses&mdash;neglected
+this long time, since Sylvia did
+not care for poetry&mdash;flourished once more.</p>
+
+<p>And music&mdash;Sylvia&rsquo;s taste in music had
+been Sullivan; the old wife touched the piano
+with magic fingers, and Bach, Beethoven,
+Wagner came to transfigure the Temple
+rooms. Michael had never been so contented&mdash;never
+so wretched; for, as the quiet weeks
+went by, the leaves fell from the plane tree,
+and the time drew near when he must show
+his wife to the tenants&mdash;his white-haired wife.
+In these months a very real friendship had
+grown up between them. Michael had never
+met a woman, old or young, whose tastes
+chimed so tunefully with his own. Ah! what
+a pity he had not met a <i>young</i> woman with
+these tastes&mdash;this soul. And now, liking,
+friendship, affection&mdash;all the finer, nobler side
+of love&mdash;he could indeed feel for his old
+wife; but love&mdash;lovers&rsquo; love, that would set
+the seal on all the rest&mdash;this he might never
+know, except for some other woman, who
+would succeed to his wife&rsquo;s title.</p>
+
+<p>Badly as Michael had behaved, I think it
+is permissible to be sorry for him. His wife,
+in fact, was very sorry.</p>
+
+<p>One day he met Sylvia in the park, and all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+the other side of him thrilled with pleasure.
+He sat by her an hour, his eyes drinking in
+her fresh beauty, while his soul shrivelled
+more and more. Ah! why could she not
+<i>talk</i>, as his wife could, instead of merely
+chattering?</p>
+
+<p>His wife looked sad that evening. He
+asked the reason.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I saw you in the park to-day,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Are you going to see her? Don&rsquo;t compromise
+her: it&rsquo;s not worth while.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand in its black mitten,
+and in a flash of pain saw the black funeral,
+when she should be carried from his house,
+and he be left free to marry Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>And now the days had dropped past; so
+even was their flow that it seemed rapid,
+and in another week it would be Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I must show you to the tenants,&rdquo;
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My poor boy,&rdquo; she said&mdash;it was just as
+she had risen to bid him good night&mdash;&ldquo;be
+brave. Perhaps it won&rsquo;t be so bad as you
+think. Good night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He sat still after she had left him, gazing
+into the fire, and thinking thoughts in which
+now the estate and the fortune played but
+little part. At last he shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have no lover, no
+wife; but I have a companion, a friend&mdash;one
+in a million.&rdquo; And again the black funeral
+trailed its slow length before his eyes, and
+he shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>I have not sought to deceive the reader.
+He knows as well as I do that at this moment
+the door opened, and a young and beautiful
+woman stood on the threshold. Her eyes
+were shining; round her neck were gleaming
+pearls. She was playing for a high stake,
+and being a true woman she had disdained no
+honest artifice that might help her. She wore
+shining white silk, severely plain, and her
+brown hair was dressed high on her head.
+A woman one shade less intuitive would
+have let the dusky masses fall over a lace-covered
+tea-gown.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Michael,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I am your wife. Are
+you going to forgive me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He raised himself slowly from his chair,
+and his eyes dwelt on detail after detail of
+the beauty before him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My wife!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are a
+stranger!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>did</i> disguise myself well. My sister
+told me about your advertisement; she
+lives with Sylvia Maddox. We each have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+a hundred pounds a year. At first I did
+it for fun; but when I had seen how&mdash;how
+nice you were&mdash;my mother is very poor.
+There are no excuses. But are you going
+to forgive me?&rdquo; Any other woman, to
+whom forgiveness meant all that it meant
+to her, might have kneeled at his feet.
+Frances stood erect by the door. &ldquo;Anyway,&rdquo;
+she said, biting her lip, &ldquo;I have saved
+you from Sylvia. For the sake of that,
+forgive me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That stung him, as she had known it
+would.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Never. You&rsquo;ve
+spoiled my life.&rdquo; But he took a step towards
+her as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>She took an equal step back.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take courage,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Who knows
+but I may die before next June, after all.
+Good night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hate you,&rdquo; he said, and took another
+step forward. But the door closed in his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning the old lady, white haired and
+mittened, appeared behind the breakfast tea.
+Michael almost thought he had dreamed, till
+her eyes, now without their glasses, met his
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Let us end this play-acting, at least,&rdquo; he
+said. Ten minutes of fuming ended in tepid
+tea poured by a beautiful brown-haired girl.</p>
+
+<p>He watched her in silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s horrible,&rdquo; he broke out. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a
+strange woman, and there you sit, pouring
+tea out as if&mdash;&mdash; Who are you? I don&rsquo;t
+know you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she said quietly. And then
+he remembered all the old talks with the old
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+want to be a brute.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use my saying I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Are</i> you?&rdquo; He leaned forward to put the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must make the best of it,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;&mdash; Look here, don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s speak
+of it till after Christmas; let&rsquo;s just go on
+as we did before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the days wore on. But the situation
+when Michael lived in torment in the company
+of his old wife was simplicity itself compared
+to his new life with a wife&mdash;young, beautiful,
+and a stranger, yet in all essentials his dearest
+friend. This discomfort grew daily&mdash;hourly
+branching out into ever fresh embarrassments&mdash;new
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+and harassing, vexatious, half understood,
+wholly resented.</p>
+
+<p>The wife had her burden to bear also. The
+laundress had only known the old wife as
+&ldquo;Mrs Wood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She thought I was your mother,&rdquo; the wife
+said when Michael propounded the difficulty.
+But the laundress&rsquo;s attitude to the new Mrs
+Wood had a sting that was almost punishment
+enough to the wife, had Michael only
+known, for all that she had done amiss.</p>
+
+<p>The hour of departure for the Christmas
+festivities at Wood Grange came as a relief
+from the persistent pinpricks of unexplained
+emotion which tormented him. His wife was
+young and beautiful, yet he was only conscious
+of repulsion. He hated her for her trickery.
+But most he hated her because she had cheated
+him of the old wife&mdash;the friend, the <i>confidante</i>,
+who had grown to be so much, and so much
+the best part, in his life. For now there was
+no confidence between the two&mdash;no talk, no
+reading, no music to brighten the Temple
+rooms. They lived in an almost complete
+silence.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Every window of the Grange shone out
+with yellow light across the snow. For once
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+Christmas had been kind and seasonable&mdash;a
+white sheet covered the world. Holly
+gleamed against old oak. Priceless silver,
+saved from the smelting-pot in Cromwell&rsquo;s
+hard days, shone above white napery on the
+long tables. The tenants&rsquo; dinner was over,
+and now was the moment when, according
+to the will, Michael Wood&rsquo;s wife must be
+presented to the tenants then assembled.</p>
+
+<p>The slender figure in white woollen cloth
+and white fur, with Christmas roses at its
+breast, stood on the daïs at the end of the
+great hall, and the tenants cheered themselves
+hoarse at the mere sight of her beautiful face,
+her kind eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It went off very well,&rdquo; Michael said when,
+the last guest gone, the last shutter closed,
+the last servant departed, the two stood alone
+in the long drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; think if you had had to present to
+them the old white-haired wife&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I loved the old wife,&rdquo; he said obstinately;
+but his voice was not quite steady.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; she said, playing with the
+Christmas roses she wore, &ldquo;I wish you
+would try to forgive me. It was horribly
+wrong; but I began it as a joke. You see,
+I had only just come over from the convent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+where I was brought up. I thought it would
+be such fun: I was always good at theatricals.
+I will never do anything silly again. And
+to-morrow I&rsquo;ll go away, and you need never
+see me again. And you <i>have</i> got the money
+and the old place, haven&rsquo;t you? And I got
+them for you&mdash;and&mdash;do forgive me. It began
+as a silly schoolgirl&rsquo;s joke indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But&mdash;a convent! You have read and
+thought&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was my father. He made me read
+and think; and when he died all the money
+went, and my mother is poor. Oh, Michael,
+don&rsquo;t be so flinty! Say you forgive me
+before I go! It all began in a joke!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Began. Yes. But why did you go on?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because I&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t like Sylvia&mdash;and I
+liked you&mdash;rather&mdash;but I won&rsquo;t be a nuisance.
+I&rsquo;ll go back to mother. Say you forgive me.
+I&rsquo;ll go by the first train in the morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first train,&rdquo; said Michael absently,
+&ldquo;is the 9.17; but to-morrow is Christmas
+Day&mdash;I daresay they&rsquo;ll run the same as on
+Sunday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She took her white cloak from the settle
+by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; she said sadly; &ldquo;you are
+very hard. Won&rsquo;t you even shake hands?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+&ldquo;We had no roses at our wedding,&rdquo; he
+said, still absently; &ldquo;but there are roses at
+Christmas.&rdquo; He raised his hand to the
+white flowers she wore, and touched them
+softly. &ldquo;White roses, too, for a wedding,&rdquo;
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good night!&rdquo; she said again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you will go to your mother to-morrow
+by the 9.17 train, or the 10.5, if the trains run
+the same as on Sunday. And I am to forgive
+you, and shake hands before we part. Well,
+well!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He took the hand she held out, caught
+the other, and stood holding them, his grey
+eyes seeking hers. Her head thrown back,
+her hands stretched out, she looked at him
+from arm&rsquo;s length.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear!&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>A mute glance questioned him. Then lashes
+longer than Sylvia&rsquo;s veiled the dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke again. &ldquo;Dear!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know you hate me,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>He raised her hands to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you forgotten Sylvia?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Absolutely, thank God! And you&mdash;I&mdash;after
+all, we are married, though there were
+no roses at our June wedding.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again her eyes questioned mutely.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+He leaned forward and touched the
+Christmas roses with his lips. Then he
+dropped her hands and caught her by the
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! foolish, foolish, foolish people!&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;We two are man and wife. My
+wife! my wife! my wife! We are, aren&rsquo;t
+we?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose we are,&rdquo; she said, and her face
+leaned a little towards his.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then!&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">X<br />
+<br />
+THE HOUSE OF SILENCE</h2>
+
+
+<p>The thief stood close under the high wall,
+and looked to right and left. To the right
+the road wound white and sinuous, lying
+like a twisted ribbon over the broad grey
+shoulder of the hill; to the left the road
+turned sharply down towards the river;
+beyond the ford the road went away slowly
+in a curve, prolonged for miles through the
+green marshes.</p>
+
+<p>No least black fly of a figure stirred on
+it. There were no travellers at such an hour
+on such a road.</p>
+
+<p>The thief looked across the valley, at the
+top of the mountain flushed with sunset, and
+at the grey-green of the olives about its
+base. The terraces of olives were already
+dusk with twilight, but his keen eyes could
+not have missed the smallest variance or
+shifting of their lights and shadows. Nothing
+stirred there. He was alone.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+Then, turning, he looked again at the wall
+behind him. The face of it was grey and
+sombre, but all along the top of it, in the
+crannies of the coping stones, orange wallflowers
+and sulphur-coloured snapdragons
+shone among the haze of feathery-flowered
+grasses. He looked again at the place where
+some of the stones had fallen from the coping&mdash;had
+fallen within the wall, for none lay
+in the road without. The bough of a mighty
+tree covered the gap with its green mantle
+from the eyes of any chance wayfarer; but
+the thief was no chance wayfarer, and he
+had surprised the only infidelity of the great
+wall to its trust.</p>
+
+<p>To the chance wayfarer, too, the wall&rsquo;s
+denial had seemed absolute, unanswerable.
+Its solid stone, close knit by mortar hardly
+less solid, showed not only a defence, it
+offered a defiance&mdash;a menace. But the thief
+had learnt his trade; he saw that the mortar
+might be loosened a little here, broken a
+little there, and now the crumbs of it fell
+rustling on to the dry, dusty grass of the
+roadside. He drew back, took two quick
+steps forward, and, with a spring, sudden
+and agile as a cat&rsquo;s, grasped the wall where
+the gap showed, and drew himself up. Then
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+he rubbed his hands on his knees, because
+his hands were bloody from the sudden
+grasping of the rough stones, and sat astride
+on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>He parted the leafy boughs and looked
+down; below him lay the stones that had
+fallen from the wall&mdash;already grass was growing
+upon the mound they made. As he
+ventured his head beyond the green leafage,
+the level light of the sinking sun struck him
+in the eyes. It was like a blow. He dropped
+softly from the wall and stood in the shadow
+of the tree&mdash;looking, listening.</p>
+
+<p>Before him stretched the park&mdash;wide and
+still; dotted here and there with trees, and
+overlaid with gold poured from the west.
+He held his breath and listened. There was
+no wind to stir the leaves to those rustlings
+which may deceive and disconcert the keenest
+and the boldest; only the sleepy twitter of
+birds, and the little sudden soft movements
+of them in the dusky privacy of the thick-leaved
+branches. There was in all the broad
+park no sign of any other living thing.</p>
+
+<p>The thief trod softly along under the wall
+where the trees were thickest, and at every
+step he paused to look and listen.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite suddenly that he came upon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+the little lodge near the great gates of
+wrought iron with the marble gate-posts
+bearing upon them the two gaunt griffins,
+the cognisance of the noble house whose
+lands these were. The thief drew back into
+the shadow and stood still, only his heart
+beat thickly. He stood still as the tree
+trunk beside him, looking, listening. He
+told himself that he heard nothing&mdash;saw
+nothing&mdash;yet he became aware of things.
+That the door of the lodge was not closed,
+that some of its windows were broken, and
+that into its little garden straw and litter
+had drifted from the open door: and that
+between the stone step and the threshold
+grass was growing inches high. When he
+was aware of this he stepped forward and
+entered the lodge. All the sordid sadness of
+a little deserted home met him here&mdash;broken
+crocks and bent pans, straw, old rags, and a
+brooding, dusty stillness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There has been no one here since the
+old keeper died. They told the truth,&rdquo; said
+the thief; and he made haste to leave the
+lodge, for there was nothing in it now that
+any man need covet&mdash;only desolation and
+the memory of death.</p>
+
+<p>So he went slowly among the trees, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+by devious ways drew a little nearer to the
+great house that stood in its walled garden
+in the middle of the park. From very far
+off, above the green wave of trees that broke
+round it, he could see the towers of it rising
+black against the sunset; and between the
+trees came glimpses of its marble white
+where the faint grey light touched it from
+the east.</p>
+
+<p>Moving slowly&mdash;vigilant, alert, with eyes
+turning always to right and to left, with ears
+which felt the intense silence more acutely
+than they could have felt any tumult&mdash;the
+thief reached the low wall of the garden, at the
+western side. The last redness of the sunset&rsquo;s
+reflection had lighted all the many windows,
+and the vast place blazed at him for an instant
+before the light dipped behind the black bar
+of the trees, and left him face to face with a
+pale house, whose windows now were black
+and hollow, and seemed like eyes that watched
+him. Every window was closed; the lower
+ones were guarded by jalousies; through the
+glass of the ones above he could see the set
+painted faces of the shutters.</p>
+
+<p>From far off he had heard, and known,
+the plash-plash of fountains, and now he saw
+their white changing columns rise and fall
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+against the background of the terrace. The
+garden was full of rose bushes trailing and
+unpruned; and the heavy, happy scent of
+the roses, still warm from the sun, breathed
+through the place, exaggerating the sadness
+of its tangled desolation. Strange figures
+gleamed in the deepening dusk, but they
+were too white to be feared. He crept into
+a corner where Psyche drooped in marble,
+and, behind her pedestal, crouched. He took
+food from his pockets and ate and drank.
+And between the mouthfuls he listened and
+watched.</p>
+
+<p>The moon rose, and struck a pale fire from
+the face of the house and from the marble
+limbs of the statues, and the gleaming water
+of the fountains drew the moonbeams into
+the unchanging change of its rise and fall.</p>
+
+<p>Something rustled and stirred among the
+roses. The thief grew rigid: his heart
+seemed suddenly hollow; he held his breath.
+Through the deepening shadows something
+gleamed white; and not marble, for it moved,
+it came towards him. Then the silence of
+the night was shattered by a scream, as the
+white shape glided into the moonlight. The
+thief resumed his munching, and another
+shape glimmered after the first. &ldquo;Curse the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+beasts!&rdquo; he said, and took another draught
+from his bottle, as the white peacocks were
+blotted out by the shadows of the trees,
+and the stillness of the night grew more
+intense.</p>
+
+<p>In the moonlight the thief went round
+and about the house, pushing through the
+trailing briers that clung to him&mdash;and now
+grown bolder he looked closely at doors and
+windows. But all were fast barred as the
+doors of a tomb. And the silence deepened
+as the moonlight waxed.</p>
+
+<p>There was one little window, high up,
+that showed no shutter. He looked at it;
+measured its distance from the ground and
+from the nearest of the great chestnut trees.
+Then he walked along under the avenue of
+chestnuts with head thrown back and eyes
+fixed on the mystery of their interlacing
+branches.</p>
+
+<p>At the fifth tree he stopped; leaped to the
+lowest bough, missed it; leaped again, caught
+it, and drew up his body. Then climbing,
+creeping, swinging, while the leaves, agitated
+by his progress, rustled to the bending of
+the boughs, he passed to that tree, to the
+next&mdash;swift, assured, unhesitating. And so
+from tree to tree, till he was at the last
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+tree&mdash;and on the bough that stretched to
+touch the little window with its leaves.</p>
+
+<p>He swung from this. The bough bent
+and cracked, and would have broken, but
+that at the only possible instant the thief
+swung forward, felt the edge of the window
+with his feet, loosed the bough, sprang, and
+stood, flattened against the mouldings, clutching
+the carved drip-stone with his hands.
+He thrust his knee through the window,
+waiting for the tinkle of the falling glass to
+settle into quietness, opened the window, and
+crept in. He found himself in a corridor:
+he could see the long line of its white
+windows, and the bars of moonlight falling
+across the inlaid wood of its floor.</p>
+
+<p>He took out his thief&rsquo;s lantern&mdash;high and
+slender like a tall cup&mdash;lighted it, and crept
+softly along the corridor, listening between
+his steps till the silence grew to be like a
+humming in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>And slowly, stealthily, he opened door after
+door; the rooms were spacious and empty&mdash;his
+lantern&rsquo;s yellow light flashing into their
+corners told him this. Some poor, plain
+furniture he discerned, a curtain or a bench
+here and there, but not what he sought. So
+large was the house, that presently it seemed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+to the thief that for many hours he had
+been wandering along its galleries, creeping
+down its wide stairs, opening the grudging
+doors of the dark, empty rooms, whose
+silence spoke ever more insistently in his
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But it is as he told me,&rdquo; he said inwardly:
+&ldquo;no living soul in all the place. The old
+man&mdash;a servant of this great house&mdash;he told
+me; he knew, and I have found all even
+as he said.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the thief turned away from the arched
+emptiness of the grand staircase, and in a far
+corner of the hall he found himself speaking
+in a whisper because now it seemed to him
+that nothing would serve but that this
+clamorous silence should be stilled by a
+human voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The old man said it would be thus&mdash;all
+emptiness, and not profit to a man; and he
+died, and I tended him. Dear Jesus! how
+our good deeds come home to us! And he
+told me how the last of the great family had
+gone away none knew whither. And the tales
+I heard in the town&mdash;how the great man had
+not gone, but lived here in hiding&mdash;&mdash; It is
+not possible. There is the silence of death
+in this house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+He moistened his lips with his tongue.
+The stillness of the place seemed to press
+upon him like a solid thing. &ldquo;It is like a
+dead man on one&rsquo;s shoulders,&rdquo; thought the
+thief, and he straightened himself up and
+whispered again: &ldquo;The old man said, &lsquo;The
+door with the carved griffin, and the roses
+enwreathed, and the seventh rose holds the
+secret in its heart.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that the thief set forth again, creeping
+softly across the bars of moonlight down the
+corridor.</p>
+
+<p>And after much seeking he found at last,
+under the angle of the great stone staircase
+behind a mouldering tapestry wrought with
+peacocks and pines, a door, and on it carved
+a griffin, wreathed about with roses. He
+pressed his finger into the deep heart of each
+carven rose, and when he pressed the rose
+that was seventh in number from the griffin,
+he felt the inmost part of it move beneath
+his finger as though it sought to escape. So
+he pressed more strongly, leaning against the
+door till it swung open, and he passed through
+it, looking behind him to see that nothing
+followed. The door he closed as he entered.</p>
+
+<p>And now he was, as it seemed, in some
+other house. The chambers were large and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+lofty as those whose hushed emptiness he had
+explored&mdash;but these rooms seemed warm with
+life, yet held no threat, no terror. To the dim
+yellow flicker from the lantern came out of the
+darkness hints of a crowded magnificence, a
+lavish profusion of beautiful objects such as
+he had never in his life dreamed of, though
+all that life had been one dream of the lovely
+treasures which rich men hoard, and which,
+by the thief&rsquo;s skill and craft, may come to
+be his.</p>
+
+<p>He passed through the rooms, turning the
+light of his lantern this way and that, and
+ever the darkness withheld more than the
+light revealed. He knew that thick tapestries
+hung from the walls, velvet curtains masked
+the windows; his hand, exploring eagerly,
+felt the rich carving of chairs and presses;
+the great beds were hung with silken cloth
+wrought in gold thread with glimmering
+strange starry devices. Broad sideboards
+flashed back to his lantern&rsquo;s questionings the
+faint white laugh of silver; the tall cabinets
+could not, with all their reserve, suppress the
+confession of wrought gold, and, from the
+caskets into whose depths he flashed the
+light, came the trembling avowal of rich
+jewels. And now, at last, that carved door
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+closed between him and the poignant silence
+of the deserted corridors, the thief felt a
+sudden gaiety of heart, a sense of escape, of
+security. He was alone, yet warmed and
+companioned. The silence here was no longer
+a horror, but a consoler, a friend.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, now he was not alone. The
+ample splendours about him, the spoils which
+long centuries had yielded to the grasp of a
+noble family&mdash;these were companions after his
+own heart.</p>
+
+<p>He flung open the shade of his lantern and
+held it high above his head. The room still
+kept half its secrets. The discretion of the
+darkness should be broken down. He must
+see more of this splendour&mdash;not in unsatisfying
+dim detail, but in the lit gorgeous mass
+of it. The narrow bar of the lantern&rsquo;s light
+chafed him. He sprang on to the dining-table,
+and began to light the half-burnt chandelier.
+There were a hundred candles, and he lighted
+all, so that the chandelier swung like a vast
+living jewel in the centre of the hall. Then,
+as he turned, all the colour in the room leapt
+out at him. The purple of the couches, the
+green gleam of the delicate glass, the blue of
+the tapestries, and the vivid scarlet of the
+velvet hangings, and with the colour sprang
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+the gleams of white from the silver, of yellow
+from the gold, of many-coloured fire from
+strange inlaid work and jewelled caskets, till
+the thief stood aghast with rapture in the
+strange, sudden revelation of this concentrated
+splendour.</p>
+
+<p>He went along the walls with a lighted
+candle in his hand&mdash;the wax dripped warm
+over his fingers as he went&mdash;lighting one
+after another, the tapers in the sconces of
+the silver-framed glasses. In the state bedchamber
+he drew back suddenly, face to face
+with a death-white countenance in which
+black eyes blazed at him with triumph and
+delight. Then he laughed aloud. He had
+not known his own face in the strange depths
+of this mirror. It had no sconces like the
+others, or he would have known it for what
+it was. It was framed in Venice glass&mdash;wonderful,
+gleaming, iridescent.</p>
+
+<p>The thief dropped the candle and threw
+his arms wide with a gesture of supreme
+longing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I could carry it all away! All, all!
+Every beautiful thing! To sell some&mdash;the
+less beautiful, and to live with the others
+all my days!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And now a madness came over the thief.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+So little a part of all these things could he
+bear away with him; yet all were his&mdash;his
+for the taking&mdash;even the huge carved presses
+and the enormous vases of solid silver, too
+heavy for him to lift&mdash;even these were his:
+had he not found them&mdash;he, by his own skill
+and cunning? He went about in the rooms,
+touching one after the other the beautiful,
+rare things. He caressed the gold and the
+jewels. He threw his arms round the great
+silver vases; he wound round himself the
+heavy red velvet of the curtain where the
+griffins gleamed in embossed gold, and
+shivered with pleasure at the soft clinging
+of its embrace. He found, in a tall cupboard,
+curiously-shaped flasks of wine, such
+wine as he had never tasted, and he drank
+of it slowly&mdash;in little sips&mdash;from a silver
+goblet and from a green Venice glass, and
+from a cup of rare pink china, knowing that
+any one of his drinking vessels was worth
+enough to keep him in idleness for a long
+year. For the thief had learnt his trade,
+and it is a part of a thief&rsquo;s trade to know
+the value of things.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself on the rich couches, sat
+in the stately carved chairs, leaned his elbows
+on the ebony tables. He buried his hot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+face in the chill, smooth linen of the great
+bed, and wondered to find it still scented
+delicately as though some sweet woman had
+lain there but last night. He went hither
+and thither laughing with pure pleasure,
+and making to himself an unbridled carnival
+of the joys of possession.</p>
+
+<p>In this wise the night wore on, and with
+the night his madness wore away. So
+presently he went about among the treasures&mdash;no
+more with the eyes of a lover, but
+with the eyes of a Jew&mdash;and he chose those
+precious stones which he knew for the most
+precious, and put them in the bag he had
+brought, and with them some fine-wrought
+goldsmith&rsquo;s work and the goblet out of
+which he had drunk the wine. Though it
+was but of silver, he would not leave it.
+The green Venice glass he broke and the cup,
+for he said: &ldquo;No man less fortunate than I,
+to-night, shall ever again drink from them.&rdquo;
+But he harmed nothing else of all the beautiful
+things, because he loved them.</p>
+
+<p>Then, leaving the low, uneven ends of
+the candles still alight, he turned to the
+door by which he had come in. There
+were two doors, side by side, carved with
+straight lilies, and between them a panel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+wrought with the griffin and the seven
+roses enwreathed. He pressed his finger
+in the heart of the seventh rose, hardly
+hoping that the panel would move, and
+indeed it did not; and he was about to
+seek for a secret spring among the lilies,
+when he perceived that one of the doors
+wrought with these had opened itself a
+little. So he passed through it and closed
+it after him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must guard my treasures,&rdquo; he said.
+But when he had passed through the door
+and closed it, and put out his hand to raise
+the tattered tapestry that covered it from
+without, his hand met the empty air, and
+he knew that he had not come out by the
+door through which he had entered.</p>
+
+<p>When the lantern was lighted, it showed
+him a vaulted passage, whose floor and
+whose walls were stone, and there was a
+damp air and a mouldering scent in it, as
+of a cellar long unopened. He was cold
+now, and the room with the wine and the
+treasures seemed long ago and far away,
+though but a door and a moment divided
+him from it, and though some of the wine
+was in his body, and some of the treasure
+in his hands. He set about to find the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+way to the quiet night outside, for this
+seemed to him a haven and a safeguard
+since, with the closing of that door, he had
+shut away warmth, and light, and companionship.
+He was enclosed in walls once more,
+and once more menaced by the invading
+silence that was almost a presence. Once
+more it seemed to him that he must creep
+softly, must hold his breath before he
+ventured to turn a corner&mdash;for always he
+felt that he was not alone, that near him
+was something, and that its breath, too, was
+held.</p>
+
+<p>So he went by many passages and stairways,
+and could find no way out; and after
+a long time of searching he crept by
+another way back to come unawares on the
+door which shut him off from the room
+where the many lights were, and the wine
+and the treasure. Then terror leaped out
+upon him from the dark hush of the place,
+and he beat on the door with his hands and
+cried aloud, till the echo of his cry in the
+groined roof cowed him back into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Again he crept stealthily by strange
+passages, and again could find no way
+except, after much wandering, back to the
+door where he had begun.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+And now the fear of death beat in his
+brain with blows like a hammer. To die
+here like a rat in a trap, never to see the
+sun alight again, never to climb in at a
+window, or see brave jewels shine under his
+lantern, but to wander, and wander, and
+wander between these inexorable walls till
+he died, and the rats, admitting him to their
+brotherhood, swarmed round the dead body
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had better have been born a fool,&rdquo; said
+the thief.</p>
+
+<p>Then once more he went through the damp
+and the blackness of the vaulted passages,
+tremulously searching for some outlet, but
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Only at last, in a corner behind a pillar,
+he found a very little door and a stair that
+led down. So he followed it, to wander
+among other corridors and cellars, with the
+silence heavy about him, and despair growing
+thick and cold like a fungus about his heart,
+and in his brain the fear of death beating
+like a hammer.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite suddenly in his wanderings,
+which had grown into an aimless frenzy,
+having now less of search in it than of flight
+from the insistent silence, that he saw at last
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+a light&mdash;and it was the light of day coming
+through an open door. He stood at the door
+and breathed the air of the morning. The
+sun had risen and touched the tops of the
+towers of the house with white radiance;
+the birds were singing loudly. It was
+morning, then, and he was a free man.</p>
+
+<p>He looked about him for a way to come at
+the park, and thence to the broken wall and
+the white road, which he had come by a very
+long time before. For this door opened on
+an inner enclosed courtyard, still in damp
+shadow, though the sun above struck level
+across it&mdash;a courtyard where tall weeds grew
+thick and dank. The dew of the night was
+heavy on them.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood and looked, he was aware of a
+low, buzzing sound that came from the other
+side of the courtyard. He pushed through
+the weeds towards it; and the sense of a
+presence in the silence came upon him more
+than ever it had done in the darkened house,
+though now it was day, and the birds sang
+all gaily, and the good sun shone so bravely
+overhead.</p>
+
+<p>As he thrust aside the weeds which grew
+waist-high, he trod on something that seemed
+to writhe under his feet like a snake. He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+started back and looked down. It was the
+long, firm, heavy plait of a woman&rsquo;s hair.
+And just beyond lay the green gown of
+a woman, and a woman&rsquo;s hands, and her
+golden head, and her eyes; all about the
+place where she lay was the thick buzzing
+of flies, and the black swarming of them.</p>
+
+<p>The thief saw, and he turned and he fled
+back to his doorway, and down the steps and
+through the maze of vaulted passages&mdash;fled
+in the dark, and empty-handed, because when
+he had come into the presence that informed
+that house with silence, he had dropped
+lantern and treasure, and fled wildly, the
+horror in his soul driving him before it.
+Now fear is more wise than cunning, so,
+whereas he had sought for hours with his
+lantern and with all his thief&rsquo;s craft to find
+the way out, and had sought in vain, he now,
+in the dark and blindly, without thought or
+will, without pause or let, found the one way
+that led to a door, shot back the bolts, and
+fled through the awakened rose garden and
+across the dewy park.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped from the wall into the road,
+and stood there looking eagerly to right and
+left. To the right the road wound white
+and sinuous, like a twisted ribbon over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+great, grey shoulder of the hill; to the left
+the road curved down towards the river.
+No least black fly of a figure stirred on it.
+There are no travellers on such a road at
+such an hour.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">XI<br />
+<br />
+THE GIRL AT THE TOBACCONIST&rsquo;S</h2>
+
+
+<p>John Selwyn Selborne cursed for the
+hundredth time the fool that had bound
+him captive at the chariot wheels of beauty.
+That is to say, he cursed the fool he had
+been to trust himself in the automobile of
+that Brydges woman. The Brydges woman
+was pretty, rich, and charming; omniscience
+was her pose. She knew everything: consequently
+she knew how to drive a motor-car.
+She learned the lesson of her own
+incompetence at the price of a broken ankle
+and a complete suit of bruises. Selborne
+paid for his trusting folly with a broken
+collar-bone and a deep cut on his arm. That
+was why he could not go to Portsmouth to
+see the last of his young brother when he
+left home for the wars.</p>
+
+<p>This was why he cursed. The curse was
+mild&mdash;it was indeed less a curse than an
+invocation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Defend us from women,&rdquo; he said;
+&ldquo;above all from the women who think they
+know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The grey gloom that stood for dawn that
+day crept through the curtains and made
+ghosts of the shadows that lingered still in
+his room. He stretched himself wearily, and
+groaned as the stretched nerves vibrated to
+the chord of agony.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no fool like an old fool,&rdquo; said John
+Selwyn Selborne. He had thirty-seven years,
+and they weighed on him as the forty-seven
+when their time came would not do.</p>
+
+<p>He had said good-bye to the young brother
+the night before; here in this country inn,
+the nearest to the scene of the enlightenment
+of the Brydges woman. And to-day the boy
+sailed. John Selborne sighed. Twenty-two,
+and off to the wars, heart-whole. Whereas
+he had been invalided at the very beginning
+of things and now, when he was well and
+just on the point of rejoining&mdash;the motor-car
+and the Brydges woman! And as for
+heart-whole ... the Brydges woman again.</p>
+
+<p>He fell asleep. When he awoke there was
+full sunshine and an orchestra of awakened
+birds in the garden outside. There was
+tea&mdash;there were letters. One was from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+Sidney&mdash;Sidney, who had left him not twelve
+hours before.</p>
+
+<p>He tore it open, and hurt his shoulder in
+the movement.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Dear John</span>,&rdquo; said the letter, &ldquo;I wanted
+to tell you last night, but you seemed so
+cheap, I thought I&rsquo;d better not bother you.
+But it&rsquo;s just come into my head that perhaps
+I may get a bullet in my innards, and I want
+you to know. So here goes. There&rsquo;s a girl I
+mean to marry. I know she&rsquo;ll say Yes, but
+I can&rsquo;t ask her till I come back, of course.
+I don&rsquo;t want to have any humbug or concealing
+things from you; you&rsquo;ve always been
+so decent to me. I know you hate jaw, so
+I won&rsquo;t go on about that. But I must tell
+you I met her first when she was serving
+in a tobacconist&rsquo;s shop. And her mother
+lets lodgings. You&rsquo;ll think this means she&rsquo;s
+beneath me. Wait till you see her. I
+want you to see her, and make friends with
+her while I&rsquo;m away.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here followed some lover&rsquo;s raptures, and the
+address of the lady.</p>
+
+<p>John Selborne lay back and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Susannah Sheepmarsh, tobacconist&rsquo;s assistant,
+lodging-house keeper&rsquo;s daughter, and
+Sidney Selborne, younger son of a house
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+whose pride was that it had been proud
+enough to refuse a peerage.</p>
+
+<p>John Selborne thought long and deeply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose I must sacrifice myself,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Little adventuress! &lsquo;How easy to
+prove to him,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;that an eagle&rsquo;s the
+game her pride prefers, though she stoops
+to a wren instead.&rsquo; The boy&rsquo;ll hate me for
+a bit, but he&rsquo;ll thank me later. Yalding?
+That&rsquo;s somewhere on the Medway. Fishing?
+Boating? Convalescence is good enough.
+Fiction aid us! What would the villain in
+a book do to come between fond lovers? He
+would take the lodgings: at least he would
+try. And one may as well do something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So he wrote to Mrs Sheepmarsh&mdash;she had
+rooms to let, he heard. Terms? And Mrs
+Sheepmarsh wrote back; at least her reply
+was typewritten, which was a bit of a shock.
+She had rooms. They were disengaged.
+And the terms were thus and such.</p>
+
+<p>Behold John Selwyn Selborne then, his
+baggage neatly labelled with his first and
+second names, set down on the little platform
+of Yalding Station. Behold him, waggonette-borne,
+crossing the old stone bridge and the
+golden glory of the Leas, flushed with sunset.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Sheepmarsh&rsquo;s house was long and low
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+and white. It had a classic porch, and at
+one end a French window opened through
+cascades of jasmine to a long lawn. There
+were many trees. A middle-aged lady in
+decent black, with a white cap, and white
+lace about her neck, greeted him with formal
+courtesy. &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; she said, and moved
+for him to follow her through a green gate
+and down a shrubbery that led without
+disguise or pretence straight away from the
+house. It led also to a little white building
+embowered in trees. &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said the lady.
+She opened the door. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell the man to
+bring your luggage. Good evening&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And she left him planted there. He had
+to bend his head to pass under the low door,
+and he found himself in a tiny kitchen.
+Beyond were a sitting-room and two bedchambers.
+All fitted sparsely, but with old
+furniture, softly-faded curtains, quiet and
+pleasant to look upon. There were roses in
+a jug of Grès de Flandre on the gate-table in
+the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a singular little place!&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;So these are the lodgings. I feel like a
+dog in a kennel. I suppose they will throw
+me a bone by-and-by&mdash;or, at any rate, ask
+me what kind of bones I prefer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+He unpacked his clothes and laid his
+belongings in the drawers and cupboards; it
+was oddly charming that each shelf or drawer
+should have its own little muslin bag of grey
+lavender. Then he took up a book and began
+to read. The sunset had died away, the daylight
+seemed to be glowing out of the low
+window like a tide, leaving bare breadths of
+darkness behind. He lighted candles. He
+was growing hungry&mdash;it was past eight
+o&rsquo;clock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I believe the old lady has forgotten my
+existence,&rdquo; he said, and therewith opened his
+cottage door and went out into the lighter
+twilight of the garden. The shrubbery walks
+were winding. He took the wrong turning,
+and found himself entering on the narrow
+lawn. From the French window among the
+jasmine came lamplight&mdash;and voices.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No servant, no food? My good mother,
+you&rsquo;ve entertained a lunatic unawares.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He had references.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Man cannot live by references alone.
+The poor brute must be starving&mdash;unless
+he&rsquo;s drunk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Celia! I do wish you wouldn&rsquo;t&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>John Selborne hastening by, put a period to
+the conversation by boots crunching heavily
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+and conscientiously on the gravel. Both voices
+ceased. He presented himself at the lamp-lit
+oblong of the window.</p>
+
+<p>Within that lamplight glowed on the last
+remnants of a meal&mdash;dinner, by the glasses
+and the fruit. Also on the lady in the cap,
+and on a girl&mdash;the one, doubtless, who had
+evolved the lunatic idea. Both faces were
+turned towards him. Both women rose:
+there was nothing for it but advance. He
+murmured something about intrusion&mdash;&ldquo;awfully
+sorry, the walks wind so,&rdquo; and
+turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl spoke: &ldquo;Oh, wait a moment.
+Is this Mr Selwyn, mother?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My daughter, Miss Sheepmarsh&mdash;Mr
+Selwyn,&rdquo; said the mother reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We were just talking about you,&rdquo; said
+the girl, &ldquo;and wondering whether you were
+ill or anything, or whether your servant hasn&rsquo;t
+turned up, or something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Sheepmarsh.&rdquo; He was still speechless.
+This the little adventuress, the tobacconist&rsquo;s
+assistant? This girl with the glorious hair
+severely braided, the round face, the proud
+chin, the most honest eyes in the world?
+She might be sister to the adventuress&mdash;cousin,
+perhaps? But the room, too&mdash;shining
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+mahogany, old china, worn silver, and fine
+napery&mdash;all spoke of a luxury as temperate
+as refined: the luxury of delicate custom, of
+habit bred in the bone; no mushroom growth
+of gross self-indulgence, but the unconscious
+outcome of generations of clear self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can we send anything over for you?&rdquo; the
+elder lady asked. &ldquo;Of course we&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t mean by &lsquo;entirely private&rsquo; that
+we would let our tenant starve,&rdquo; the girl
+interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is some mistake.&rdquo; Selborne came to
+himself suddenly. &ldquo;I thought I was engaging
+furnished apartments with er&mdash;attendance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girl drew a journal from a heap on
+the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This was the advertisement, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>And he read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;Four-roomed cottage, furnished, in beautiful
+grounds. Part of these are fenced in for
+use of tenant of cottage. And in the absence
+of the family the whole of the grounds are
+open to tenant. When at home the family
+wish to be entirely private.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never saw this at all,&rdquo; said Selborne
+desperately. &ldquo;My&mdash;I mean I was told it
+was furnished lodgings. I am very sorry I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+have no servant and no means of getting
+one. I will go back to London at once.
+I am sorry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The last train&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; said Miss Sheepmarsh.
+&ldquo;Mother, ask Mr Selborne to come
+in, and I&rsquo;ll get him something to eat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said the mother, &ldquo;surely
+Mary&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear mother,&rdquo; said the girl, &ldquo;you
+know Mary is having her supper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The bewildered Selborne presently found
+himself seated at the white-spread, silver-sparkling
+table, served with food and drink
+by this Hebe with the honest eyes. He
+exerted himself to talk with the mother&mdash;not
+of the difference between a lodger and
+a tenant, but of music, art, and the life of
+the great world.</p>
+
+<p>It was the girl who brought the conversation
+down from the gossip of Courts and
+concert-rooms to the tenant&rsquo;s immediate
+needs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you mean to stay, you could have a
+woman in from the village,&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But wouldn&rsquo;t you rather I went?&rdquo; he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why should we? We want to let the
+cottage, or we shouldn&rsquo;t have advertised it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+I&rsquo;ll get you some one to-morrow. Mrs Bates
+would be the very thing, mother. And
+you&rsquo;ll like her, Mr Selwyn. She&rsquo;s a great
+dear&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, the next morning brought
+a gentle, middle-aged woman to &ldquo;do for&rdquo;
+Mr Selwyn. And she did excellently. And
+three slow days passed. He got a boat and
+pulled up and down the green willow-fringed
+river. He tried to fish; he read somewhat,
+and he thought more. And he went in and
+out of his cottage, which had its own private
+path debouching on the highway. Many
+times a day he went in and out, but he
+saw no more the red hair, the round face,
+and the honest eyes.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day he had nursed his
+interest in the girl to a strong, well-grown
+sentiment of curiosity and attraction. Coming
+in at his own gate, he saw the mother leaving
+hers, with sunshade and cardcase&mdash;an afternoon
+of calls evidently setting in.</p>
+
+<p>Now or never! The swift impulse took
+him, and before he had time to recall
+the terms of that advertisement, he had
+passed the green fence of division, and his
+feet were on the wandering ways of the
+shrubbery. He felt, as he went, a glow of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+gratitude to the fate which was rewarding
+his care of his brother&rsquo;s future with an interest
+like this. The adventuress?&mdash;the tobacconist&rsquo;s
+assistant?&mdash;he could deal with her later.</p>
+
+<p>Through the garden&rsquo;s green a gleam of
+white guided&mdash;even, it seemed, beckoned.</p>
+
+<p>He found the girl with the red hair and
+the honest eyes in a hammock swung between
+two cedars.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have pity on me,&rdquo; he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes from her book.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s you!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am so glad.
+Get a chair from under the weeping ash, and
+sit down and talk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This turf is good enough for me,&rdquo; said
+he; &ldquo;but are you sure I&rsquo;m not trespassing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean the advertisement? Oh, that
+was just because we had some rather awful
+people last year, and we couldn&rsquo;t get away
+from them, and mother wanted to be quite
+safe; but, of course, you&rsquo;re different. We
+like you very much, what we&rsquo;ve seen of you.&rdquo;
+This straightforward compliment somehow
+pleased him less than it might have done.
+&ldquo;The other people were&mdash;well, he was a
+butterman. I believe he called himself an
+artist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean that you do not like persons
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+who are in trade,&rdquo; he asked, thinking of the
+tobacconist&rsquo;s assistant.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I don&rsquo;t mean that,&rdquo; she said;
+&ldquo;why, I&rsquo;m a Socialist! Butterman just means
+a person without manners or ideals. But I
+do like working people better than shoppy
+people, though I know it&rsquo;s wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can an involuntary liking or disliking
+be wrong?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s snobbish, don&rsquo;t you think? We
+ought to like people for what they are, not
+for what they have, or what they work at.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you weren&rsquo;t so pretty, and hadn&rsquo;t that
+delightful air of having just embraced the
+Social Gospel, you&rsquo;d be a prig,&rdquo; he said to
+himself. To her he said: &ldquo;Roughly speaking,
+don&rsquo;t you think the conventional classifications
+correspond fairly well with the real ones?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered roundly.</p>
+
+<p>And when the mother returned, weary
+from her calls, she found her tenant and
+her daughter still discussing the problems
+of good and evil, of heredity and environment,
+of social inequalities and the injustice
+of the world. The girl fought for her views,
+and she fought fairly, if fiercely. It was
+the first of many such fights. When he
+had gone the mother protested.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Dearest,&rdquo; said the girl, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help it!
+I must live my own life, as people say
+in plays. After all, I&rsquo;m twenty-six. I&rsquo;ve
+always talked to people if I liked them&mdash;even
+strangers in railway carriages. And
+people aren&rsquo;t wild beasts, you know: everything
+is always all right. And this man can
+talk; he knows about things. And he&rsquo;s a
+gentleman. That ought to satisfy you&mdash;that
+and his references. Don&rsquo;t worry, there&rsquo;s
+a darling. Just be nice to him yourself. He&rsquo;s
+simply a godsend in a place like this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll fall in love with you, Celia,&rdquo; said
+the mother warningly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not he!&rdquo; said the daughter. But the
+mother was right.</p>
+
+<p>Living alone in the queer little cottage,
+the world, his accustomed life, the Brydges
+woman, all seemed very far away. Miss
+Sheepmarsh was very near. Her frank enjoyment
+of his talk, her gay acceptance of their
+now almost constant companionship, were
+things new in his experience of women, and
+might have warned him that she at least
+was heart-whole. They would have done
+had he ever faced the fact that his own
+heart had caught fire. He bicycled with
+her along the pleasant Kentish lanes; he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+rowed with her on the little river of dreams;
+he read to her in the quiet of the August
+garden; he gave himself up wholly to the
+pleasure of those hours that flew like moments&mdash;those
+days that passed like hours. They
+talked of books and of the heart of books&mdash;and
+inevitably they talked of themselves.
+He talked of himself less than most men,
+but he learned much of her life. She was
+an ardent social reformer; had lived in an
+Art-and-Culture-for-the-People settlement in
+Whitechapel; had studied at the London
+School of Economics. Now she had come
+back to be with her mother, who needed
+her. She and her mother were almost alone
+in the world; there was enough to live on,
+but not too much. The letting of the little
+house had been Celia&rsquo;s idea: its rent was
+merely for &ldquo;luxuries.&rdquo; He found out from
+the mother, when she came to tolerate him,
+that the &ldquo;luxuries&rdquo; were Celia&rsquo;s&mdash;the luxuries
+of helping the unfortunate, feeding the hungry,
+and clothing little shivering children in winter
+time.</p>
+
+<p>And all this while he had not heard a word
+of sister or cousin&mdash;of any one whom he might
+identify as the tobacconist&rsquo;s assistant.</p>
+
+<p>It was on an evening when the level sunbeams
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+turned the meadows by the riverside
+to fine gold, and the willows and alders to
+trees of Paradise, that he spoke suddenly,
+leaning forward on his sculls. &ldquo;Have you,&rdquo;
+he asked, looking into her face, &ldquo;any relation
+who is in a shop?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I only wondered,&rdquo; said he coldly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what an extraordinary thing to
+wonder!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Do tell me what made
+you think of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I will. The person
+who told me that your mother had lodgings,
+also told me that your mother had a daughter
+who served in a shop.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;What a hateful
+idea!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A tobacconist&rsquo;s shop,&rdquo; he persisted; &ldquo;and
+her name was Susannah Sheepmarsh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;that was me.&rdquo; She
+spoke instantly and frankly, but she blushed
+crimson.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re ashamed of it,&mdash;Socialist?&rdquo;
+he asked with a sneer, and his eyes were
+fierce on her burning face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not! Row home, please. Or I&rsquo;ll
+take the sculls if you&rsquo;re tired, or your
+shoulder hurts. I don&rsquo;t want to talk to you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+any more. You tried to trap me into telling
+a lie. You don&rsquo;t understand anything at all.
+And I&rsquo;ll never forgive you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you will,&rdquo; he said to himself again
+and again through the silence in which they
+plashed down the river. But when he
+was alone in his cottage, the truth flew at
+him and grappled him with teeth and claws.
+He loved her. She loved, or had loved&mdash;or
+might have loved&mdash;or might love&mdash;his
+brother. He must go: and the next
+morning he went without a word. He left
+a note for Mrs Sheepmarsh, and a cheque
+in lieu of notice; and letter and cheque were
+signed with his name in full.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the old life, but the taste
+of it all was gone. Shooting parties, house
+parties, the Brydges woman even, prettier
+than ever, and surer of all things: how could
+these charm one whose fancy, whose heart
+indeed, wandered for ever in a green garden
+or by a quiet river with a young woman
+who had served in a tobacconist&rsquo;s shop, and
+who would be some day his brother&rsquo;s wife?</p>
+
+<p>The days were long, the weeks seemed
+interminable. And all the time there was
+the white house, as it had been; there were
+mother and daughter living the same dainty,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+dignified, charming life to which he had
+come so near. Why had he ever gone
+there? Why had he ever interfered? He
+had meant to ensnare her heart just to
+free his brother from an adventuress. An
+adventuress! He groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, fool! But you are punished!&rdquo; he
+said; &ldquo;she&rsquo;s angry now&mdash;angrier even than
+that evening on the river, for she knows
+now that even the name you gave her to
+call you by was not the one your own
+people use. This comes of trying to act like
+an ass in a book.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The months went on. The Brydges woman
+rallied him on his absent air. She spoke of
+dairymaids. He wondered how he could ever
+have found her amusing, and whether her
+vulgarity was a growth, or had been merely
+hidden.</p>
+
+<p>And all the time Celia and the white
+house were dragging at his heart-strings.
+Enough was left of the fool that he constantly
+reproached himself for having been,
+to make him sure that had he had no brother,
+had he met her with no duty to the absent
+to stand between them she would have loved
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Then one day came the South African
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+mail, and it brought a letter from his brother,
+the lad who had had the sense to find a
+jewel behind a tobacconist&rsquo;s counter, and had
+trusted it to him.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was long and ineffective. It
+was the postscript that was vital.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&ldquo;I say, I wonder whether you&rsquo;ve seen anything
+of Susannah? What a young fool I
+was ever to think I could be happy with a
+girl out of a shop. I&rsquo;ve met the real and
+only one now&mdash;she&rsquo;s a nurse; her father was
+a clergyman in Northumberland. She&rsquo;s such
+a bright little thing, and she&rsquo;s never cared for
+any one before me. Wish me luck.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>John Selborne almost tore his hair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t save him across half the
+world! Besides&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At thirty-seven one should have outgrown
+the wild impulses of youth. He said this
+to himself, but all the same it was the next
+train to Yalding that he took.</p>
+
+<p>Fate was kind; at Yalding it had almost
+always been kind. The glow of red firelight
+shone out over the snow through the French
+window among the brown jasmine stalks.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Sheepmarsh was out, Miss Sheepmarsh
+was at home. Would he step this way?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+He stepped into the presence of the girl.
+She rose from the low chair by the fire, and
+the honest eyes looked angrily at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, as the door closed
+between them and the maid-servant, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+come to tell you things. Just this once let
+me talk to you; and afterwards, if you
+like, I can go away and never come back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; she said coldly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+feel friends with you at all, but if you want
+to speak, I suppose you must.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So then he told her everything, beginning
+with his brother&rsquo;s letter, and ending with his
+brother&rsquo;s letter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And, of course, I thought it couldn&rsquo;t be
+you, because of your being called Celia; and
+when I found out it really was you, I had
+to go away, because I wanted to be fair to
+the boy. But now I&rsquo;ve come back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re the meanest person I ever
+knew,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you thought I liked your
+brother, and you tried to make me like you
+so that you might throw me over and show
+him how worthless I was. I hate you and
+despise you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t really try,&rdquo; he said miserably.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you took a false name to deceive us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t: it really is my second name.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+&ldquo;And you came here pretending to be nice
+and a gentleman, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She was lashing
+herself to rage, with the lash of her own
+voice, as women will. John Selborne stood
+up suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be quiet,&rdquo; he said, and she was quiet. &ldquo;I
+won&rsquo;t hear any more reproaches, unless&mdash;&mdash; Listen,
+I&rsquo;ve done wrong&mdash;I&rsquo;ve owned it.
+I&rsquo;ve suffered for it. God knows I&rsquo;ve suffered.
+You liked me in the summer: can&rsquo;t you
+try to like me again? I want you more
+than anything else in the world. Will you
+marry me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Marry you,&rdquo; she cried scornfully; &ldquo;you
+who&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have asked
+a question. Give me no for an answer, and
+I will go. Say yes, and then you may say
+anything else you like. Yes or no. Shall
+I go or stay? Yes or no. No other word
+will do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, her head thrown back,
+her eyes flashing with indignation. A world
+of scorn showed in the angle of the chin,
+the poise of her head. Her lips opened.
+Then suddenly her eyes met his, and she
+knew that he meant what he said. She
+covered her face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t cry, dear one,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;What is it? You&rsquo;ve only to choose.
+Everything is for you to decide.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Still she did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-bye, then,&rdquo; he said, and turned.
+But she caught at him blindly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t go!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t
+think I cared about you in the summer,
+but since you went away, oh, you don&rsquo;t
+know how I&rsquo;ve wanted you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, when her tears were dried,
+&ldquo;aren&rsquo;t you going to scold me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At least tell me all about my brother&mdash;and
+why he thought you would be so ready
+to marry him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That? Oh, that was only his conceit.
+You know I always do talk to people in
+railway carriages and things. I suppose he
+thought it was only him I talked to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the name?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;I thought if I said my name was
+Susannah he wouldn&rsquo;t get sentimental.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You &lsquo;took a false name to deceive
+him&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t&mdash;oh, don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the tobacco shop?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Ah&mdash;that rankles?&rdquo; She raised her head
+to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not it,&rdquo; he answered coolly. &ldquo;I simply
+don&rsquo;t believe it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why? But you&rsquo;re quite right. It was
+a woman in my district in London, and I took
+the shop for her for three days, because her
+husband was dying, and she couldn&rsquo;t get any
+one else to help her. It was&mdash;it was rather
+fun&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you wouldn&rsquo;t tell me about it,
+because you didn&rsquo;t want me to know how
+proud you were of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Proud? Ah, you do understand things!
+The man died, and I had given her those
+three days with him. I wasn&rsquo;t proud, was I?&mdash;only
+glad that I could. So glad&mdash;so
+glad!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you let my brother think&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, I let him think it was my
+trade; I thought it might make him not
+be silly. You see, I always knew he
+couldn&rsquo;t understand things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Celia?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And have you really forgiven me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes, I forgive you! But I never
+should have if&mdash;&mdash; There&rsquo;s mother at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+front door. Let me go. I want to let
+her in myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me go. If&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t understood and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t come back to me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">XII<br />
+<br />
+WHILE IT IS YET DAY</h2>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;And is it really true? Are you going to
+govern the Fortunate Islands?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am, indeed&mdash;or rather, to be accurate,
+I am going to deputy-govern them&mdash;I mean,
+father is&mdash;for a year.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A whole year!&rdquo; he said, looking down
+at her fan. &ldquo;What will London do without
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;London will do excellently,&rdquo; she answered&mdash;&ldquo;and
+that&rsquo;s my pet fan, and it&rsquo;s not used to
+being tied into knots.&rdquo; She took it from him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what shall I do without you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! laugh and rhyme and dance and
+dine. You&rsquo;ll go out to the proper number
+of dinners and dances, and make the proper
+measure of pretty little speeches and nice
+little phrases; and you&rsquo;ll do your reviews, and
+try to make them as like your editor&rsquo;s as you
+can; and you&rsquo;ll turn out your charming little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+rondeaux and triolets, and the year will simply
+fly. Heigho! I&rsquo;m glad I&rsquo;m going to see
+something big, if it&rsquo;s only the Atlantic.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are very cruel,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Am I? But it&rsquo;s not cruel to be cruel if
+nobody&rsquo;s hurt, is it? And I am so tired of
+nice little verses and pretty little dances and
+dainty little dinners. Oh, if I were only a
+man!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank God you&rsquo;re not!&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I were a man, I would do just one
+big thing in my life, even if I had to settle
+down to a life of snippets and trifles afterwards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were shining. They always
+glittered, but now they were starry. The
+drifted white folds across her breast stirred
+to her quickened breath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you loved me, Sybil, I could do something
+great!&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I <i>don&rsquo;t</i>,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;at any rate,
+not now; and I&rsquo;ve told you so a dozen
+times. My dear Rupert, the man who
+needs a woman to save him isn&rsquo;t worth the
+saving.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What would you call a big thing?&rdquo; he
+asked. &ldquo;Must I conquer an empire for you,
+or start a new religion? Or shall I merely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+get the Victoria Cross, or become Prime
+Minister?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t sneer,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;it doesn&rsquo;t
+become you at all. You&rsquo;ve no idea how
+horrid you look when you&rsquo;re sneering. Why
+don&rsquo;t you&mdash;&mdash;? Oh! but it&rsquo;s no good! By
+the way, what a charming cover Housman
+has designed for your <i>Veils and Violets</i>!
+It&rsquo;s a dear little book. Some of the verses
+are quite pretty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;rub it in. I know I
+haven&rsquo;t done much yet; but there&rsquo;s plenty
+of time. And how can one do any good
+work when one is for ever sticking up one&rsquo;s
+heart like a beastly cocoanut for you to shy
+at? If you&rsquo;d only marry me, Sybil, you
+should see how I would work!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May I refer you to my speech&mdash;not the
+last one, but the one before that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed; then he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, my Pretty,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it was all very
+well, and pleasant enough to be scolded by
+you when I could see you every day; but
+now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How often,&rdquo; she asked calmly, &ldquo;have I
+told you that you must not call me that?
+It was all very well when we were children;
+but now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said, leaning towards her,
+&ldquo;there&rsquo;s not a soul about; they&rsquo;re in the
+middle of the Lancers. Let me kiss you once&mdash;it
+can&rsquo;t matter to you&mdash;and it will mean so
+very much to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just it,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;if it didn&rsquo;t
+mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then it shan&rsquo;t mean anything but good-bye.
+It&rsquo;s only about eight years since you
+gave up the habit of kissing me on every
+occasion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked down, then she looked to right
+and left, then suddenly she looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t have it unless it
+<i>does</i> mean something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. &ldquo;Our dance, I think?&rdquo;
+said the voice of one bending before her, and
+she was borne away on the arm of the partner
+from whom she had been hiding.</p>
+
+<p>Rupert left early. He had not been able
+to secure any more dances with her. She
+left late. When she came to think the
+evening over, she sighed more than once.
+&ldquo;I wish I loved him a little less, or a little
+more,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and I wish&mdash;yes, I do
+wish he had. I don&rsquo;t suppose he&rsquo;ll care a
+bit for me when I come back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+So she set sail for the Fortunate or other
+Isles, and in dainty verses on loss and absence
+he found some solace for the pain of parting
+with her. Yet the pain was a real thing,
+and grew greater, and life seemed to have
+no taste, even tobacco no charm. She had
+always been a part of his life since the days
+when nothing but a sunk fence divided his
+father&rsquo;s park from her father&rsquo;s rabbit-warren.
+He grew paler, and he developed a wrinkle
+or two, and a buoyant friend meeting him
+in Piccadilly assured him that he looked very
+much off colour, and in his light-hearted way
+the friend advised the sort of trip round the
+world from which yesterday had seen his own
+jovial return.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you all the good in the world, my
+boy. &rsquo;Pon my soul, you have a tired sort of
+look, as if you&rsquo;d got some of these jolly new
+diseases people have taken to dying of lately&mdash;appendi-what&rsquo;s-its-name,
+you know, and
+things like that. You book your passage to
+Marseilles at once. So long! You take my
+tip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What Rupert took was a cab. He looked
+at himself in one of the little horseshoe mirrors.
+He certainly did look ill; and he felt ill&mdash;tired,
+bored, and nothing seemed worth while.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+He drove to a doctor friend, who punched
+and prodded him and listened with tubes at
+his chest and back, looked grave, and said: &ldquo;Go
+to Strongitharm&mdash;he&rsquo;s absolutely at <i>the</i> top.
+Twenty-guinea fee. But it&rsquo;s better to know
+where we are. You go to Strongitharm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rupert went, and Strongitharm gave his
+opinion. He gave it with a voice that
+trembled with sympathy, and he supplemented
+it with brandy-and-soda, which he
+happened to have quite handy.</p>
+
+<p>Then Rupert disappeared from London
+and from his friends&mdash;disappeared suddenly
+and completely. He had plenty of money,
+and no relations near enough to be inconveniently
+anxious. He went away and he
+left no address, and he did not even write
+excuses to the people with whom he should
+have danced and dined, nor to the editor
+whose style he should have gone on imitating.</p>
+
+<p>The buoyant friend rejoiced at the obvious
+and natural following of his advice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was looking a little bit below himself,
+you know, and I said: &lsquo;Go round the world;
+there&rsquo;s nothing like it,&rsquo; and, by Jove! he
+went. Now, that&rsquo;s the kind of man I like&mdash;knows
+good advice when he gets it, and
+acts on it right off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+So the buoyant one spread the rumour that
+ran its course and died, and had to be
+galvanised into life once more to furnish an
+answer to Sybil&rsquo;s questionings, when, returning
+from the Fortunate or other Isles, she asked
+for news of her old friend. And the rumour
+did not satisfy her. She had had time to
+think&mdash;there was plenty of time to think in
+those Islands whose real name escapes me&mdash;and
+she knew very much more than she
+had known on the evening when Rupert
+had broken her pet fan and asked for a kiss
+which he had not taken. She found herself
+quite fervently disbelieving in the grand tour
+theory&mdash;and the disbelief was so strong that
+it distorted life and made everything else
+uninteresting. Sybil took to novel-reading
+as other folks have in their time taken to
+drink. She was young, and she could still
+lose herself in a book. One day she lost
+herself most completely in a new novel from
+Mudie&rsquo;s, a book that every one was talking
+about. She lost herself; and suddenly, in a
+breathless joy that was agony too, she found
+<i>him</i>. This was his book. No one but Rupert
+could have written it&mdash;all that description of
+the park, and the race when she rode the
+goat and he rode the pig&mdash;and&mdash;she turned the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+pages hastily. Ah yes, Rupert had written
+this! She put the book down and she dressed
+herself as prettily as she knew how, and she
+went in a hansom cab to the office of the
+publisher of that book, and on the way she
+read. And more and more she saw how
+great a book it was, and how no one but
+Rupert could have written just that book.
+Thrill after thrill of pride ran through her.
+He had done this <i>for her</i>&mdash;because of what
+she had said.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the publisher&rsquo;s, she was met by
+a blank wall. Neither partner was visible.
+The senior clerk did not know the address
+of the author of &ldquo;Work While it is Yet Day,&rdquo;
+nor the name of him; and it was abundantly
+evident that even if he had known, he
+would not have told.</p>
+
+<p>Sybil&rsquo;s prettiness and her charm so wrought
+upon this dry-as-dust person, however, that
+he volunteered the address of the literary
+agent through whom the book had been
+purchased. And Sybil found him on a first
+floor in one of those imposing new buildings
+in Arundel Street. He was very nice and
+kind, but he could not give his client&rsquo;s name
+without his client&rsquo;s permission.</p>
+
+<p>The disappointment was bitter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll send a letter for you,&rdquo; he tried
+to soften it with.</p>
+
+<p>Sybil&rsquo;s self-control almost gave way. A
+tear glistened on her veil.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do want to see him most awfully,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;and I know he wants to see me. It
+was I who rode the goat in the book, you
+know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She did not realise how much she was
+admitting, but the literary agent did.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he said smartly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll wire
+to him at once; and if he says I may, I&rsquo;ll
+give you the address. Can you call in
+an hour?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sybil wandered on the Embankment for
+a conscientious hour, and then went back.</p>
+
+<p>The literary agent smiled victory.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The answer is &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo;&rdquo; he said, and handed
+her a slip of paper&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Three Chimneys,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Near Paddock Wood,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Kent.&rdquo;</span></span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you a time-table?&rdquo; asked she.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The dusty, hired fly lumbered and jolted
+along the white roads, and in it, as in the
+train, Sybil read the novel, the book every
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+one was talking about&mdash;the great book&mdash;and
+her heart was full to overflowing of joy and
+pride and other things.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage shook itself fiercely and
+stopped, and she looked up from the last
+page of the book with eyes that swam a
+little, to find herself at the broken wooden
+gate of a low, white house, shabbily blindless,
+and a long way off its last painting and
+whitewashing.</p>
+
+<p>She paid for the carriage and dismissed it.
+She would walk back to the station with
+<i>him</i>. She passed in at the rickety gate and
+up the flagged path, and a bell in answer
+to her touch jangled loudly, as bells do in
+empty houses.</p>
+
+<p>Her dress was greeny, with lace about it
+of the same colour as very nice biscuits,
+and her hat seemed to be made entirely of
+yellow roses. She was not unconscious of
+these facts.</p>
+
+<p>Steps sounded within, and they, like the
+bell, seemed to sound in an empty house.
+The door opened, and there was Rupert.
+Sybil&rsquo;s lips were half-parted in a smile that
+should match the glow of gladness that must
+shine on his face when he saw her&mdash;Her&mdash;the
+unattainable, the unapproachable, at his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+very door. But her smile died away, for
+his face was grave. Only in his eyes something
+that was bright and fierce and like a
+flame leapt up and shone a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You!&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>And Sybil answered as most people do
+to such questions: &ldquo;Yes, me.&rdquo; There was
+a pause: her eyes wandered from his to the
+blank face of the house, the tangle of the
+untidy garden. &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I come in?&rdquo; she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; oh yes, come in!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She crossed the threshold&mdash;the doorstep
+was dank with green mould&mdash;and followed
+him into a room. It was a large room, and
+perfectly bare: no carpet, no curtains, no
+pictures. Loose bricks were arranged as a
+fender, and dead embers strewed the hearth.
+There was a table; there was a chair; there
+were scattered papers, pens, and ink. From
+the window one saw the neglected garden,
+and beyond it the round shoulders of the
+hills.</p>
+
+<p>He drew forward the one chair, and she
+sat down. He stood with his back to the
+fireless grate.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are very, very pretty,&rdquo; he said
+suddenly. And the explanation of his disappearance
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+suddenly struck her like a blow
+between the eyes. But she was not afraid.
+When all a woman&rsquo;s thoughts, day and night
+for a year, have been given to one man,
+she is not afraid of him; no, not even if
+he be what Sybil for one moment feared
+that this man was. He read the fear in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not mad,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sybil,
+I&rsquo;m very glad you came. Come to think
+of it, I&rsquo;m very glad to see you. It is better
+than writing. I was just going to write out
+everything, as well as I could. I expect I
+should have sent it to you. You know I
+used to care for you more than I did for
+any one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sybil&rsquo;s hands gripped the arms of the
+windsor chair. Was he really&mdash;was it
+through her that he was&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come out,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I hate this place;
+it stifles me. And you&rsquo;ve lived here&mdash;worked
+here!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve lived here for eleven months and
+three days,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes, come out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So they went out through the burning
+July sun, and Sybil found a sheltered spot
+between a larch and a laburnum.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, throwing off her hat and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+curling her green, soft draperies among the long
+grass. &ldquo;Come and sit down and tell me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure it won&rsquo;t bore you?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She took his hand and held it. He let her
+take it; but his hand did not hold hers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I seem to remember,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the last
+time I saw you&mdash;you were going away, or
+something. You told me I ought to do
+something great; and I told you&mdash;or, anyway,
+I thought to myself&mdash;that there was
+plenty of time for that. I&rsquo;d always had a
+sort of feeling that I <i>could</i> do something
+great whenever I chose to try. Well&mdash;yes,
+you did go away, of course; I remember
+perfectly&mdash;and I missed you extremely. And
+some one told me I looked ill; and I went
+to my doctor, and he sent me to a big swell,
+and <i>he</i> said I&rsquo;d only got about a year to
+live. So then I began to think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers tightened on the unresponsive
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I thought: Here I&rsquo;ve been thirty
+years in this world. I&rsquo;ve the experience of
+twenty-eight and a half&mdash;I suppose the first
+little bit doesn&rsquo;t count. If I&rsquo;d had time, I
+meant to write another book, just to show
+exactly what a man feels when he knows
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+he&rsquo;s only got a year to live, and nothing
+done&mdash;nothing done.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t believe it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You
+don&rsquo;t <i>look</i> ill; you&rsquo;re as lean as a greyhound,
+but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It may come any day now,&rdquo; he went on
+quietly; &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ve done something. The
+book&mdash;it <i>is</i> great. They all say so; and I
+know it, too. But at first! Just think of
+gasping out your breath, and feeling that
+all the things you had seen and known and
+felt were wasted&mdash;lost&mdash;going out with you,
+and that you were going out like the flame
+of a candle, taking everything you might
+have done with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The book <i>is</i> great,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you <i>have</i>
+done something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. But for those two days I stayed
+in my rooms in St James&rsquo;s Street, and I
+thought, and thought, and thought, and
+there was no one to care where I went or
+what I did, except a girl who was fond of
+me when she was little, and she had gone
+away and wasn&rsquo;t fond of me any more. Oh,
+Sybil&mdash;I feel like a lunatic&mdash;I mean you,
+of course; but you never cared. And I
+went to a house agent&rsquo;s and got the house
+unfurnished, and I bought the furniture&mdash;there&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+nothing much except what you&rsquo;ve
+seen, and a bed and a bath, and some pots
+and kettles; and I&rsquo;ve lived alone in that
+house, and I&rsquo;ve written that book, with
+Death sitting beside me, jogging my elbow
+every time I stopped writing, and saying,
+&lsquo;Hurry up; I&rsquo;m waiting here for you, and
+I shall have to take you away, and you&rsquo;ll
+have done nothing, nothing, nothing.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ve done the book,&rdquo; said Sybil
+again. The larch and the garden beyond
+were misty to her eyes. She set her teeth.
+He must be comforted. Her own agony&mdash;that
+could be dealt with later.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve ridden myself with the curb,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;I thought it all out&mdash;proper food,
+proper sleep, proper exercise. I wouldn&rsquo;t
+play the fool with the last chance; and I
+pulled it off. I wrote the book in four
+months; and every night, when I went to
+sleep, I wondered whether I should ever
+wake to go on with the book. But I did
+wake, and then I used to leap up and thank
+God, and set to work; and I&rsquo;ve done it.
+The book will live&mdash;every one says it will.
+I shan&rsquo;t have lived for nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rupert,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;dear Rupert!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; he said forlornly; &ldquo;you&rsquo;re
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+very kind.&rdquo; And he drew his limp hand
+from hers, and leaned his elbows on the
+grass and his chin on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Rupert, why didn&rsquo;t you write and
+tell me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What was the use of making you sad?
+You were always sorry for maimed things&mdash;even
+the worms the gardener cut in two
+with his spade.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She was struggling with a growing desire
+to scream and shriek, and to burst out
+crying and tear the grass with her hands.
+He no longer loved her&mdash;that was the lesser
+evil. She could have borne that&mdash;have borne
+anything. But he was going to die! The
+intensity of her belief that he was going to
+die caught her by the throat. She defended
+herself instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That you&rsquo;re going to die.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed; and when the echo of that
+laugh had died away in the quiet garden,
+she found that she could no longer even say
+that she did not believe.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said: &ldquo;I am going to die, and
+all the values of things have changed places.
+But I have done something: I haven&rsquo;t buried
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+my talent in a napkin. Oh, my Pretty, go
+away, go away! You make a fool of me
+again! I had almost forgotten how to be
+sorry that you couldn&rsquo;t love me. Go away,
+go away! Go, go!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He threw out his hands, and they lay
+along the grass. His face went down into
+the tangled green, and she saw his shoulders
+shaken with sobs. She dragged herself along
+the grass till she was close to him; then
+she lifted his shoulders, and drew his head
+on to her lap, and clasped her arms round
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My darling, my dear, my own!&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re tired, and you&rsquo;ve thought of nothing
+but your hateful book&mdash;your beautiful book,
+I mean&mdash;but you do love me really. Not as
+I love you, but still you do love me. Oh,
+Rupert, I&rsquo;ll nurse you, I&rsquo;ll take care of you,
+I&rsquo;ll be your slave; and if you have to die, I
+shall die too, because there&rsquo;ll be nothing left
+for me to do for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He put an arm round her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s worth
+dying to hear that,&rdquo; he said, and brought his
+face to lie against her waist.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you shan&rsquo;t die. You must come back
+to London with me now&mdash;this minute. The
+best opinion&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I had the best,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Kiss me, my
+Pretty; oh, kiss me now that it does mean
+something! Let me dream that I&rsquo;m going
+to live, and that you love me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his face, and she kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rupert, you&rsquo;re <i>not</i> going to die. It can&rsquo;t
+be true. It isn&rsquo;t true. It shan&rsquo;t be true.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is; but I don&rsquo;t mind now, except for
+you. I&rsquo;m a selfish beast. But this is worth
+it all, and I <i>have</i> done something great. You
+told me to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;who was the doctor?
+Was he really the best?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was Strongitharm,&rdquo; he said wearily.</p>
+
+<p>She drew a long breath and clasped him
+closer. Then she pushed him away and
+sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stand up!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let me look at
+you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stood up, and she caught him by the
+elbows and stood looking at him. Twice she
+tried to speak, and twice no voice obeyed;
+then she said softly, huskily: &ldquo;Rupert, listen!
+It&rsquo;s all a horrid dream. Wake up. Haven&rsquo;t
+you seen the papers? Strongitharm went mad
+several months ago. It was drink. He told
+<i>all</i> his patients they were going to die of this
+new disease of his that he&rsquo;d invented. It&rsquo;s all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+his madness. You&rsquo;re well&mdash;I know it. Oh,
+Rupert, you aren&rsquo;t going to die, and we love
+each other! Oh, God is very good!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you sure? It&rsquo;s like coming back from
+chloroform; and yet it hurts, and yet&mdash;but I
+wrote the book! Oh, Sybil, I shall never
+write another great book!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah yes, you will&mdash;you shall,&rdquo; she said,
+looking at him with wet eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Oh, thank God,
+I have you! but I shall never write another
+great book.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he never has.</p>
+
+<p>But he is very happy. And Sybil cannot
+see that his later works are not in the same
+field with the first. She thinks the critics
+fools. And he loves her the more for her
+folly.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="padtop smlpadb">XIII<br />
+<br />
+ALCIBIADES</h2>
+
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, <i>do</i> let me have him in the carriage
+with me; he won&rsquo;t hurt any one, he&rsquo;s a perfect
+angel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Angels like him travels in the dog-box,&rdquo;
+said the porter.</p>
+
+<p>Judy ended an agonised search for her
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you be offended,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if
+I offered you half-a-crown?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give the guard a bob, Miss.&rdquo; The hand
+curved into a cup resting on the carriage
+window, answered her question. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more&rsquo;n
+enough for him, being a single man, whereas
+me, I&rsquo;m risking my situation and nine children
+at present to say no more, when I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The turn of a railway key completed the
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Judy and the angel were alone. He was
+a very nice angel&mdash;long-haired and brownly-black&mdash;his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+race the Aberdeen, his name
+Alcibiades. He put up a respectful and
+adoring nose, and his mistress kissed him
+between the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How could they try to part us,&rdquo; she
+asked, &ldquo;when there&rsquo;s only us two left?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Alcibiades, with swimming eyes, echoed
+in a little moan of true love the question:
+&ldquo;How could they?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The question was put again by both later
+in the day. Judy was to stay with an aunt
+while her mother sailed to Madeira to meet
+there the father returning from South Africa,
+full of wounds and honour, and to spend on
+the Island what was left of the winter. Now
+it was December.</p>
+
+<p>A thick fog covered London with a veil
+of ugliness; the cabman was aggrieved and
+aggrieving&mdash;Alcibiades had tried to bite him&mdash;and
+Judy was on the verge of tears when
+the fog at last lifted, and allowed her to be
+driven to her aunt&rsquo;s suburban house, yellow
+brickish, with a slate roof and a lean forecourt,
+wherein cypresses, stunted and blackened,
+spoke eloquently of lives more blank than the
+death whose emblem they were.</p>
+
+<p>Through the slits of the drab Venetian
+blinds, gaslight streamed into the winter dusk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be tea, anyhow,&rdquo; sighed Judy,
+recklessly overpaying the cabman.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the house where the lights were,
+the Aunt was surrounded by a dozen ladies
+of about her own age and station; &ldquo;Tabbies&rdquo;
+the world might have called them. All were
+busy with mysteries of many coloured silks
+and satins, lace and linen; at least all held
+such in their hands. The gathering was in
+fact a &ldquo;working party&rdquo; for the approaching
+bazaar. But the real work of bazaars is
+not done at parties.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the Aunt was saying, &ldquo;so nice for
+dear Julia. I&rsquo;m truly glad that she should
+begin her visit with a little gaiety. In
+parting or sorrow we should always seek to
+distract the mind, should we not, dear Mrs
+Biddle?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The young are all too easily distracted
+by the shows of this world,&rdquo; said dear Mrs
+Biddle heavily.</p>
+
+<p>And several ladies murmured approval.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t exactly call a church bazaar
+the shows of this world, can you?&rdquo; urged
+the Aunt, sitting very upright, all black
+and beady.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the thin end of the Rubicon sometimes,&rdquo;
+said Mrs Biddle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Then why&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began the youngest Tabby&mdash;and
+then the door bell rang, and every one
+said: &ldquo;Here she is!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The prim maid announced her, and she
+took two steps forward, and stood blinking
+in the gaslight with her hat on one side,
+and no gloves. Every one noticed that at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come in, my dear,&rdquo; said the Aunt, rustling
+forward. &ldquo;I have a few friends this afternoon,
+and&mdash;Oh, my gracious, what has happened!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What had happened was quite simple. In
+her rustling advance some wandering trail
+of the Aunt&rsquo;s black beadiness had caught
+on the knotted fringe of the table-cloth, and
+drawn this after her. A mass of silk and
+lace and ribbon lay sprinkled along the
+edges of the table where the Tabbies sat; a
+good store of needles, scissors, and cotton
+reels mingled with it. Now all this swept
+to the floor on the moving table-cloth, at
+the very instant when a rough brownly-black,
+long-eared person with a sharp nose and
+very muddy paws bounded into the room,
+to the full length of his chain. His bound
+landed him in the very middle of the ribbon-lace-cotton-reel
+confusion. Judy caught
+the dog up in her arms, and her apologies
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+would have melted my heart, or yours, dear
+reader, in an instant. But Tabbies are
+Tabbies, and a bazaar is a bazaar. No more
+sewing was done that day; what was left of
+the afternoon proved all too short for the
+disentangling, the partial cleansing of the
+desecrated lace-cotton-reel-silk-muddle.
+And Alcibiades was tied up in the back-kitchen
+to the wheel of the patent mangle;
+he howled without ceasing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said the Aunt, when tea was
+over, and the last Tabby had found her
+goloshes and gone home in them, &ldquo;you are
+most welcome under any roof of mine, but&mdash;(may
+I ask you to close the baize door
+at the top of the kitchen stairs&mdash;thank you&mdash;and
+now this one&mdash;I am obliged. One
+cannot hear oneself speak for that terrible
+animal)&mdash;you must get rid of the cur
+to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Aunt! he&rsquo;s not a cur&mdash;he&rsquo;s pure-bred.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said the Aunt, &ldquo;I believe
+I am as good a judge of dogs as any lady.
+My own dear Snubs has only been dead a
+year and two months last Tuesday. I know
+that a well-bred dog should have smooth
+hair, at any rate&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+The mother of Snubs had been distantly
+related to a family of respectable middle-class
+fox-terriers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; said Judy. She meant
+apology, but the Aunt took it for sympathy,
+and softened somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A nice little smooth-coated dog now,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;a fox-terrier, or an Italian greyhound;
+you see I am not ignorant of the
+names of various patterns of dog. I will
+get you one myself; we will go to the
+Dogs&rsquo; Home at Battersea, where really nice
+dogs are often sold quite cheap. Or perhaps
+they might take your poor cur in exchange.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judy began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, cry, my dear,&rdquo; said the Aunt
+kindly; &ldquo;it will do you a world of good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When the Aunt was asleep&mdash;she had closed
+her ears to the protests of Alcibiades with
+wadding left over from a handkerchief sachet&mdash;Judy
+crept down in her woolly white dressing-gown,
+and coaxed the kitchen fire back
+to life. Then she sat in front of it, on the
+speckless rag carpet, and nursed Alcibiades
+and scolded him, and explained that he
+really must be a good dog, and that we all
+have something to put up with in this life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know, Alby dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+not very nice for me either, but <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t
+howl and try to upset mangles. Don&rsquo;t you
+be afraid, dear: you shan&rsquo;t go to the Dogs&rsquo;
+Home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So kindly, yet strongly, did she urge her
+point that Alcibiades, tied to the leg of the
+kitchen table, consented to sleep quietly for
+the rest of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, when the Aunt enquired
+searchingly as to Judy&rsquo;s powers of fancywork,
+and what she would do for the
+bazaar, Judy declared outright that she did
+not know one end of a needle from the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I can paint a little,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and
+I am rather good at wood-carving.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That will be very nice.&rdquo; The Aunt
+already saw, in fancy, her stall outshine
+those of all other Tabbies, with glories of
+sabots and tambourines decorated with rosy
+sprays &ldquo;hand-painted,&rdquo; and carved white
+wood boxes just the size to hold nothing
+useful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll do you some,&rdquo; said Judy; &ldquo;only
+I can&rsquo;t work if I&rsquo;m distracted about Alby&mdash;my
+dog, you know. Oh, Aunt, <i>do</i> let him
+stay! He really is valuable, and he hasn&rsquo;t
+made a bit of noise since last night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+&ldquo;It is quite useless,&rdquo; the Aunt was sternly
+beginning&mdash;then suddenly her voice changed.
+&ldquo;Is the cur <i>really</i> valuable?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Uncle Reggie gave five guineas for him
+when he was a baby boy,&rdquo; said Judy eagerly,
+&ldquo;and he&rsquo;s worth much more now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he must be very old&mdash;when your
+Uncle Reggie was a boy&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I mean when Alcibiades was a boy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And who is Alcibiades?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judy began all over again, and urged one
+or two new points.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be harsh,&rdquo; said the Aunt
+at last, &ldquo;you <i>shall</i> have the little breakfast
+room to paint and carve in as you suggest.
+Of course I couldn&rsquo;t have shavings and paint
+pots lying about all over the dining-room
+and drawing-room. And you shall keep your
+cur.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Aunty,&rdquo; cried Judy, &ldquo;you are a
+darling!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the Aunt went on complacently,
+&ldquo;you shall keep your cur till the bazaar, and
+then we will sell it for the benefit of the
+Fund for the Amelioration of the Daughters
+of the Country Clergy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And from this decision no tears and no
+entreaties would move her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+Judy made a den for herself and Alcibiades
+in the little breakfast room. There was no
+painting light&mdash;so she looked out a handful
+of the sketches that she had done last summer
+and framed them. Most of her time she
+spent in writing to her friends to know
+whether any one could take care of a darling
+dog, who was a perfect angel. And alas! no
+one could&mdash;or would.</p>
+
+<p>With the connivance of the cook, Alcibiades
+had a bed in a box in the den, and from the
+very first he would at a word conceal himself
+in it the moment the step of the Aunt
+sounded on the oil-cloth-covered stairs. The
+sketches were framed, and some of the
+frames were lightly carved. The Aunt was
+enchanted, but, on the subject of Alcibiades,
+adamant.</p>
+
+<p>And now it was the day of the bazaar.
+Judy had run wires along the wall of the
+schoolroom behind her Aunt&rsquo;s stall, and
+from it hung the best of the sketches. She
+had arranged the stall herself, glorifying it
+with the Eastern shawls and draperies that
+her father had sent her from India. It did
+far outshine any other stall, even that of
+Lady Bates, the wife of the tallow Knight.
+The Aunt was really grateful&mdash;truly appreciative.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+But her mind was made up about the
+&ldquo;cur.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it really <i>is</i> worth anything we&rsquo;ll sell
+it. If not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She paused on the dark hint,
+and Judy&rsquo;s miserable fancy lost itself among
+ropes and rivers and rat-poison.</p>
+
+<p>To Alcibiades the bazaar was as much a
+festival as to any Tabby of them all. He
+had been washed, which is terrible at the
+time, but makes you self-respecting afterwards,
+a little puffed-up even. He had been
+allowed to come out by the front door,
+with his mistress in her beautiful dress that
+reminded him of rabbits. No one but
+Alcibiades himself will ever know what
+tortures of shame and misery, fighting with
+joy and affection, he had endured on those
+other occasions when he had been smuggled
+out of the back door in the early morning
+to take the damp air with his beloved lady
+and she had worn a shabby mackintosh and
+a red tam-o-shanter. To-day he wore a
+blue ribbon; it was uncomfortable, but he
+knew it spelt distinction. He rode in a
+carriage. It was not like the little governess-cart
+which had carried him and his mistress
+through the lanes about Maidstone; but it
+was a carriage, and a large horse was his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+slave. His mistress herself had tied his blue
+ribbon; it was she, too, who adjusted the chain
+that attached him to a strong staple driven
+in just above the schoolroom wainscotting.
+The chain allowed him to sit at her feet as
+she stood by the stall waiting for purchasers,
+and scanning the face of each newcomer in
+an eager anxiety to find there the countenance
+of some one who really loved dogs.</p>
+
+<p>But the people were most awful, and she
+had to own it to herself. There were Tabbies
+by the dozen, and young ladies by the score&mdash;young
+ladies all dressed differently, yet all
+alike in the fashion of the year before last;
+all vacant-faced, smiling agreeably because
+they knew they ought to smile&mdash;the young
+of the Tabby kind&mdash;Tabby kittens, in fact.
+No doubt they were really worthy and
+interesting, but they did not seem so to
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sprinkling of men&mdash;middle-aged
+mostly, and bald. There were a few
+youths; by some fatality all were fair, and
+reminded Judy of pork. A Tabby stopped at
+her stall, turned over all things and bought
+a beaded table-napkin ring. The purchase
+and the purchaser seemed to Judy to typify
+her whole life and surroundings. All her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+soul reached out to the Island. She sighed,
+then she looked up. The crowd had thickened
+since she last surveyed it. Four steps led
+down to the schoolroom from the outer world:
+on the top step was a lady, well dressed&mdash;oh!
+marvel!&mdash;and beside her a man&mdash;a gentleman.
+Well, Judy supposed all these poor dear people
+were gentlefolk, but these two were of her
+world. As she gazed her eyes and those of
+the man met; the lady was lost in the crowd,
+and Judy saw her no more. The man made
+straight for the stall where were the framed
+sketches, the white dress, fur-trimmed, the
+russet hair and green eyes of Judy, and the
+brownly-black, blue-ribboned Alcibiades. But
+before he reached them a wave of buyers
+broke on the shore of Judy&rsquo;s stall, and he had
+been watching her for nearly half an hour
+before a young woman&rsquo;s long-deferred choice
+of a Christmas gift for a grandfather fell
+happily on a pair of purple bed-socks, and, for
+the moment, Judy breathed free.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you so,&rdquo; said the Aunt, rattling
+money in a leather bag; &ldquo;I <i>knew</i> just before
+Christmas was <i>the</i> time. Everybody <i>has</i> to
+give Christmas presents to all their relations.
+You see! the things are going like wildfire.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Aunt,&rdquo; said Judy. Alcibiades took
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+advantage of the momentary calm to lick her
+hand exhaustively. Judy wondered wearily
+what had become of the man, the only man
+in that cheerless assembly who looked as
+though he liked dogs. &ldquo;He must have been
+trying to get somewhere else,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;he
+just looked in here by mistake, and when he
+saw the sort of people we were, he&mdash;well&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t wonder,&rdquo; she sighed, and, raising her eyes,
+met his.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said he. He meant
+apology.</p>
+
+<p>She took it for enquiry, and smiled. &ldquo;Do
+you want to buy something?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Her smile was more tired than she knew.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose I do,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;one does at
+bazaars, don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you want a Christmas present?&rdquo; asked
+Judy, businesslike; &ldquo;if so, and if you will
+tell me what kind of relation you want it
+for, perhaps I can find something that they&rsquo;d
+like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could you? Now, that is really good.
+I want things for two aunts, three cousins,
+a little sister, and my mother&mdash;but I needn&rsquo;t
+get <i>hers</i> here unless you&rsquo;ve got something
+you think really&mdash;By Jove!&rdquo;&mdash;his eyes had
+caught the sketches&mdash;&ldquo;are <i>those</i> for sale?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+&ldquo;That is rather the idea,&rdquo; said Judy. Her
+spirits were rising, though she couldn&rsquo;t have
+told you why. &ldquo;Things at a bazaar are
+usually for sale, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Everything?&rdquo; said he&mdash;and he stroked the
+not resentful neck of Alcibiades; &ldquo;this good
+little beast isn&rsquo;t in the market, I&rsquo;m afraid?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why? Would you buy him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d think twice before I said no. My
+mother is frightfully fond of dogs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Quite unreasonably Judy felt that she did
+not want to sell Alcibiades as a present to
+any one&rsquo;s mother.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The sketches,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The sketches,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;why, there&rsquo;s
+Maidstone Church and Farley and Teston
+Lock and Allington. How much are they?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She told him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must have some. May I have a dozen?
+They&rsquo;re disgracefully cheap, and I feel like
+an American pork man buying works of art
+by the dozen&mdash;for they <i>are</i> jolly good&mdash;and
+it brings back old times. I was quartered
+there once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; she said to herself. Alcibiades
+stood up with his paws on her arm. &ldquo;Be
+quiet,&rdquo; she said to him; &ldquo;you mustn&rsquo;t talk
+now, I&rsquo;m busy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+Alcibiades gave her a reproachful look, and
+lay down.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger smiled; a very jolly smile,
+Judy thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ripping little beast, isn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; said the
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re invalided home?&rdquo; she
+said. She couldn&rsquo;t help it. A man in the
+Service. One who had been quartered at
+Maidstone, her own dear Maidstone. He
+was no longer a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;beastly bore. But I shall
+be all right in two or three months; I hope
+the fighting won&rsquo;t be all over by then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you sold this gentleman anything?&rdquo;
+said the Aunt firmly, &ldquo;because Mrs Biddle
+wants to look at some d&rsquo;oyleys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just selling something,&rdquo; answered
+Judy. Then she turned to him and spoke
+softly. &ldquo;I say, do you really like dogs?&rdquo;
+said she.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I do.&rdquo; The young man opened
+surprised grey eyes at her, as who should
+say: &ldquo;Now, do I look like a man who doesn&rsquo;t
+like dogs?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Alcibiades <i>is</i> for
+sale.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that his name? Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Oh, surely you know: wasn&rsquo;t it Alcibiades
+who gave up being dictator or something
+rather than have his dog&rsquo;s ears cut off?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I seem to remember something of the
+sort,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;his price is twenty
+guineas, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He whistled very softly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ll&mdash;yes,
+Aunt, in one moment!&rdquo; She went on in an
+agonised undertone: &ldquo;His price is twenty
+guineas. Say you&rsquo;ll have him. Say it <i>loud</i>.
+You won&rsquo;t really have to pay anything for
+him&mdash;No, I&rsquo;m not mad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give you twenty guineas for the dog,&rdquo;
+said the man, standing straight and soldierly
+against the tumbled mass of mats and pin-cushions
+and chair-backs.</p>
+
+<p>The Aunt drew a long breath and turned
+to minister to Mrs Biddle&rsquo;s deep need of
+d&rsquo;oyleys.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come and have tea,&rdquo; said the stranger;
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;re tired out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No&mdash;I can&rsquo;t. Of course I can&rsquo;t&mdash;but
+I&rsquo;ll take you over to Mrs Piddock&rsquo;s
+stall and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She led him away. &ldquo;Look
+here,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re a decent
+sort. Here&rsquo;s the money to pay for him.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+My aunt says if I don&rsquo;t sell him she&rsquo;ll have
+him killed. Will you keep him for me till
+my people come home? Oh, do&mdash;he really
+<i>is</i> an angel. And give me your name and
+address. You must think me a maniac, but
+I am so horribly fond of him. Will you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I will,&rdquo; he said heartily, &ldquo;but
+I shall pay for him. I&rsquo;ll write a cheque:
+you can pay me when you get him back.
+Thank you&mdash;yes, I am sure that pin-cushion
+would delight my aunt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judy, with burning cheeks, found her way
+back to her stall.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Alcibiades,&rdquo; she said, unfastening the
+blue ribbon, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s nice. Don&rsquo;t
+bite him, there&rsquo;s a dear!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A cheque signed &ldquo;Richard Graeme&rdquo; and
+a card with an address came into Judy&rsquo;s
+hands, and the chain of Alcibiades left them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know you&rsquo;ll be good to him,&rdquo; she
+said; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t give him meat, only biscuit,
+and sulphur in his drinking water. But
+you know all that. You&rsquo;ve got me out
+of a frightful hole, and I&rsquo;ll bless you as
+long as I live. Good-bye.&rdquo; She stooped to
+the Aberdeen, now surprised and pained.
+&ldquo;Good-bye, my dear old boy!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And Alcibiades, stubborn resistance in every
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+line of his figure, in every hair of his coat,
+was dragged away through the crowded
+bazaar.</p>
+
+<p>Judy went to bed very tired. The bazaar
+had been a success, and the success had been
+talked over and the money counted till late
+in the evening&mdash;nearly eleven, that is, which
+is late for Tabbies&mdash;yet she woke at four.
+Some one was calling her. It was&mdash;no, he
+was gone&mdash;her eyes pricked at the thought&mdash;yet&mdash;surely
+that could be the voice of
+no other than Alcibiades? She sat up in
+bed and listened. It was he! That was
+his dear voice whining at the side gate.
+Those were his darling paws scratching the
+sacred paint off it.</p>
+
+<p>Judy swept down the stairs like a silent
+whirlwind, turned key, drew bolts, and in
+a moment she and the cur were &ldquo;sobbing
+in each other&rsquo;s arms.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She carried him up to her room, washed
+his dear, muddy paws, and spread her golf
+cape that he might lie on the bed beside
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In chilliest, earliest dawn she rose and
+dressed. She found a wire that had supported
+her pictures at the bazaar, and she wrote a
+note and tied it to the collar of Alcibiades,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+where she noticed and untied a frayed end
+of rope. This was the note:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;He has run home to me. Why did you
+take the chain off? He always bites through
+cord. Don&rsquo;t beat him for it; he&rsquo;ll soon forget
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The tears came into her eyes as she wrote
+it; it seemed to her so very pathetic. She
+did not quite believe that Alcibiades would
+soon forget her&mdash;but if he did&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>The note did not lack pathos, either, in the
+eyes of Captain Graeme, when, two hours
+later, he found it under the chin of a mournfully
+howling Alcibiades, securely attached by
+picture wire to the railings of his mother&rsquo;s
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain took a turn on the Heath,
+and thought. And his thoughts were these:
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s the prettiest girl I&rsquo;ve seen since I
+came home. It&rsquo;s deuced dull here. Shouldn&rsquo;t
+wonder if she&rsquo;s dull too, poor little girl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then he went home and cut a glove in
+pieces and sewed the pieces together, slowly
+but solidly as soldiers and sailors do sew. So
+that when, two nights later, the claws and the
+voice of Alcibiades roused Judy from sleep&mdash;her
+aunt most fortunately slept on the other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+side of the house&mdash;she found, after the first
+rapturous hug of reunion, a something under
+the hand that caressed the neck of Alcibiades.</p>
+
+<p>The gaslight in her own room defined the
+something as a bag of leather, the tan leather
+of which gentlemen&rsquo;s gloves are made. There
+was a bit of worn strap hanging below it.
+Within was a note.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;A thousand thanks for bringing him home.
+If he <i>should</i> run away again, please let me
+know. And don&rsquo;t trouble to send him back.
+I&rsquo;ll call for him, if I may.</p>
+
+<p class="right">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Richard Graeme</span>.&rdquo;
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Judy would very much have liked to let
+Captain Graeme call, but there are such
+things as aunts.</p>
+
+<p>She tied another note to the &ldquo;cur&rsquo;s&rdquo; collar
+and wired him once more to the Paragon
+House railings. The note said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use. He can bite through leather.
+Do use a chain.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Next time Alcibiades returned he dragged a
+half yard of fine chain. It was neatly filed,
+but Judy was a woman and the detail escaped
+her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+That morning she and Alcibiades slept late,
+the dressing-bell was ringing as she woke.</p>
+
+<p>The cook helped; the Aunt most fortunately
+had a luncheon engagement with a Tabby in
+Sidcup. Alcibiades being promised a walk
+later, consented to wait, trifling with a bone,
+in silence and the coal cellar. At eleven Judy
+rewarded his patience. She went out with
+him, and somehow it seemed wise to put on
+a pleasant-coloured dress, and one&rsquo;s best furs
+and one&rsquo;s prettiest hat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am afraid I shall see him,&rdquo; she told
+herself; &ldquo;but,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;I am much more
+afraid that my aunt will see Alcibiades.&rdquo; On
+the edge of the Heath she met him. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s
+the dear dog,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh, can&rsquo;t you find a
+stronger chain?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;What a ripping day,
+isn&rsquo;t it? Oh, are you going straight back? I
+wish we&rsquo;d met anywhere but at a bazaar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So do I,&rdquo; she said heartfeltly, and caressed
+the now careless Aberdeen: it was at a
+bazaar that she had had to sell that angel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I walk home with you?&rdquo; he said.
+And she could not think of any polite way
+of saying no, though she knew just how
+terrible Alcibiades would make the final
+parting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+Next morning the chain dragged by
+Alcibiades was slightly thicker; it also was
+filed, and this too Judy failed to notice.
+Early as it was she did not go out in the
+mackintosh but in something simple and
+blue, with kingfisher&rsquo;s wings in her hat.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was thinly bright. Alcibiades
+saw a cat and chased it towards Morden
+College just as Judy met Captain Graeme.
+It was, for her, impossible not to follow the
+&ldquo;cur.&rdquo; And how could the Captain do otherwise
+than follow, too? And if two people
+walk together it is churlish not to talk.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the chain was thicker, the hour
+propitious, and the walk longer; that was the
+day when she found out that he had known
+her father in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The days passed with a delightful monotony.
+The Aunt and her pet Tabbies all day, a sound
+sleep, an early waking, a heavenly meeting
+with Alcibiades at the back door, the restoring
+of him to his master. And every day the
+chain grew heavier, the walks longer, the talks
+more interesting and more intimate.</p>
+
+<p>It was very wrong, of course, but what
+was the girl to do? You cannot be rude
+to a man who is saving your dog, your
+darling, from rat-poisons, rivers and ropes.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+And if dogs <i>will</i> break chains, why&mdash;so
+will girls.</p>
+
+<p>It was on Christmas Day that the spell
+was shattered. Judy awoke at the accustomed
+time, but no welcome whine, no pathetic
+scrabble of eager paws broke the respectable
+stillness of the Aunt&rsquo;s house. Judy listened.
+She even crept down to the side gate. A feeling
+of misery, of real physical faintness came
+over her. Alcibiades was not there! he had
+not come! He had, indeed, forgotten her.</p>
+
+<p>The conviction that the master of Alcibiades
+would be the last to appreciate the new
+attachment of his dog comforted her a little;
+but for all that the day was grey, life seemed
+well-nigh worthless. Judy now had leisure
+to reconsider her position, and she was not
+pleased with herself. It was in the thick of
+the Christmas beef that the thought awoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>He</i> is tired of meeting me; he has locked
+Alcibiades up. If he hadn&rsquo;t, the darling <i>must</i>
+have come.&rdquo; Since this solution left Alcibiades
+without a stain upon his faithful character,
+it ought to have been comforting, but it wasn&rsquo;t.</p>
+
+<p>She felt her cheeks flush.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good gracious, child,&rdquo; said the Aunt,
+&ldquo;what are you turning that curious purple
+colour for? If the fire&rsquo;s too much for you,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+let Mary put the screen to the back of your
+chair, for goodness&rsquo; sake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When the plum-pudding&rsquo;s remains had
+passed away and the perfunctory dessert
+was over the Aunt retired to rest.</p>
+
+<p>Judy was left to face the grey afternoon
+alone. She sat staring into the fire till her
+eyes ached. She felt very lonely, very injured,
+very forlorn. There was a footfall on the
+steps&mdash;a manly tread; a knock at the door&mdash;a
+kind of I have-a-perfect-right-to-knock-here-if-I-like
+sort of knock.</p>
+
+<p>Judy jumped up to look in the glass and
+pat her hair, for no one but an idiot could
+have helped knowing who it was that stepped
+and knocked.</p>
+
+<p>He came in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Alone?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;What luck! I asked
+for the Aunt. Meant to say Friend of your
+Father&rsquo;s, and all that. But this is better.
+Judy, I couldn&rsquo;t stand it.... She&rsquo;s coming.
+I can hear her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was indeed a sound of stout house
+boots trampling overhead, of drawers being
+pulled out, of wardrobe doors being opened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish everything was different,&rdquo; said he;
+&ldquo;but, oh Judy, darling, do say yes! say it
+now, this minute; and then when she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+comes down I can tell her we&rsquo;re engaged&mdash;see?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well,&rdquo; said Judy, two hours
+later, when, with the licence of an engaged
+young lady, she said good-bye to her lover
+at the front door. &ldquo;You say you do&mdash;and&mdash;and
+yes, of course, I&rsquo;m glad&mdash;but Alcibiades
+doesn&rsquo;t love me any more.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t he? you wait till I bring him
+to-morrow!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he never came this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor little beast! Judy, the fact is I&rsquo;ve
+gone on making the chain heavier and heavier,
+and this morning&mdash;well, it was too much for
+him. He couldn&rsquo;t drag it all the way: it
+was a regular ship&rsquo;s cable, don&rsquo;t you know?
+I came up with him at Blackheath Station,
+and he was so done I had to carry him all
+the way home in my arms. He&rsquo;s quite all
+right again now; I left him at home, tied
+to the fire-irons in my bedroom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then he <i>does</i> love me, after all,&rdquo; said
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s not the only one,&rdquo; said the
+Captain.</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment came from the other
+side of the front door the familiar whine,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+the well-known scratching mingled with
+strange clanking noises.</p>
+
+<p>Next instant three happy people were
+embracing on the door-mat amid the sobs
+of Judy, the laughter of her lover, the yelps
+of Alcibiades, and the deafening rattle of a
+poker, a pair of tongs, and half a shovel.<br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center smlpadt smlpadb">PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="tnborder">
+<h3>Transcriber&rsquo;s Note</h3>
+
+<p>Punctuation has been standardized. Hyphenation has been retained as it
+appears in the original publication. The following changes were made to the
+original text:</p>
+
+<div class="tnindent">
+<p>Page 21, &ldquo;candelabre&rdquo; changed to &ldquo;candelabra&rdquo;
+(two brass twenty-lighted candelabra)</p>
+
+<p>Page 32, duplicate &ldquo;the&rdquo; removed from text
+(Half the students)</p>
+
+<p>Page 39, &ldquo;accordian&rdquo; changed to &ldquo;accordion&rdquo;
+(her accordion-pleated skirts)</p>
+
+<p>Page 99, &ldquo;stammererd&rdquo; changed to &ldquo;stammered&rdquo;
+(stammered half a word)</p>
+
+<p>Page 197, &ldquo;her&rsquo;s&rdquo; changed to &ldquo;hers&rdquo; (he was
+hers sincerely)</p>
+
+<p>Page 276, duplicate &ldquo;in&rdquo; removed
+(Can you call in an hour?)</p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Maid, by E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Maid, by E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Maid
+
+Author: E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2010 [EBook #33028]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND MAID ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Rachael Schultz and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+             MAN AND MAID
+
+                  BY
+
+              E. NESBIT
+
+    [Illustration: Publisher's Logo]
+
+                LONDON
+            T. FISHER UNWIN
+            ADELPHI TERRACE
+
+                 MCMVI
+
+        [_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+                  TO
+             ADA BREAKELL
+      MY DEAREST AND OLDEST FRIEND
+
+
+
+
+             MAN AND MAID
+
+
+
+
+          By the same Author.
+
+  _Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s._
+
+
+         The Treasure Seekers.
+
+         Five Children and It.
+
+    Nine Unlikely Tales for Children.
+
+          The Would-be-Goods.
+
+         New Treasure Seekers.
+
+
+        LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+       I.  THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE                         1
+
+      II.  THE POWER OF DARKNESS                          32
+
+     III.  THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED      60
+
+      IV.  RACK AND THUMBSCREW                            84
+
+       V.  THE MILLIONAIRESS                             103
+
+      VI.  THE HERMIT OF "THE YEWS"                      134
+
+     VII.  THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR                       158
+
+    VIII.  MISS MOUSE                                    178
+
+      IX.  THE OLD WIFE                                  201
+
+       X.  THE HOUSE OF SILENCE                          224
+
+      XI.  THE GIRL AT THE TOBACCONIST'S                 245
+
+     XII.  WHILE IT IS YET DAY                           268
+
+    XIII.  ALCIBIADES                                    287
+
+
+
+
+MAN AND MAID
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE
+
+
+The most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me was my going back
+to town on that day. I am a reasonable being; I do not do such things. I
+was on a bicycling tour with another man. We were far from the mean
+cares of an unremunerative profession; we were men not fettered by any
+given address, any pledged date, any preconcerted route. I went to bed
+weary and cheerful, fell asleep a mere animal--a tired dog after a day's
+hunting--and awoke at four in the morning that creature of nerves and
+fancies which is my other self, and which has driven me to all the
+follies I have ever kept company with. But even that second self of
+mine, whining beast and traitor as it is, has never played me such a
+trick as it played then. Indeed, something in the result of that day's
+rash act sets me wondering whether after all it could have been I, or
+even my other self, who moved in the adventure; whether it was not
+rather some power outside both of us ... but this is a speculation as
+idle in me as uninteresting to you, and so enough of it.
+
+From four to seven I lay awake, the prey of a growing detestation of
+bicycling tours, friends, scenery, physical exertion, holidays. By seven
+o'clock I felt that I would rather perish than spend another day in the
+society of the other man--an excellent fellow, by the way, and the best
+of company.
+
+At half-past seven the post came. I saw the postman through my window as
+I shaved. I went down to get my letters--there were none, naturally.
+
+At breakfast I said: "Edmundson, my dear fellow, I am extremely sorry;
+but my letters this morning compel me to return to town at once."
+
+"But I thought," said Edmundson--then he stopped, and I saw that he had
+perceived in time that this was no moment for reminding me that, having
+left no address, I could have had no letters.
+
+He looked sympathetic, and gave me what there was left of the bacon. I
+suppose he thought that it was a love affair or some such folly. I let
+him think so; after all, no love affair but would have seemed wise
+compared with the blank idiocy of this sudden determination to cut short
+a delightful holiday and go back to those dusty, stuffy rooms in Gray's
+Inn.
+
+After that first and almost pardonable lapse, Edmundson behaved
+beautifully. I caught the 9.17 train, and by half-past eleven I was
+climbing my dirty staircase.
+
+I let myself in and waded through a heap of envelopes and wrappered
+circulars that had drifted in through the letter-box, as dead leaves
+drift into the areas of houses in squares. All the windows were shut.
+Dust lay thick on everything. My laundress had evidently chosen this as
+a good time for her holiday. I wondered idly where she spent it. And now
+the close, musty smell of the rooms caught at my senses, and I
+remembered with a positive pang the sweet scent of the earth and the
+dead leaves in that wood through which, at this very moment, the
+sensible and fortunate Edmundson would be riding.
+
+The thought of dead leaves reminded me of the heap of correspondence. I
+glanced through it. Only one of all those letters interested me in the
+least. It was from my mother:--
+
+                                        "ELLIOT'S BAY, NORFOLK,
+                                             _17th August_.
+
+     "DEAR LAWRENCE,--I have wonderful news for you. Your
+     great-uncle Sefton has died, and left you half his immense
+     property. The other half is left to your second cousin Selwyn.
+     You must come home at once. There are heaps of letters here for
+     you, but I dare not send them on, as goodness only knows where
+     you may be. I do wish you would remember to leave an address. I
+     send this to your rooms, in case you have had the forethought
+     to instruct your charwoman to send your letters on to you. It
+     is a most handsome fortune, and I am too happy about your
+     accession to it to scold you as you deserve, but I hope this
+     will be a lesson to you to leave an address when next you go
+     away. Come home at once.--Your loving Mother,
+
+                                        "MARGARET SEFTON.
+
+     "_P.S._--It is the maddest will; everything divided evenly
+     between you two except the house and estate. The will says you
+     and your cousin Selwyn are to meet there on the 1st September
+     following his death, in presence of the family, and decide
+     which of you is to have the house. If you can't agree, it's to
+     be presented to the county for a lunatic asylum. I should think
+     so! He was always so eccentric. The one who doesn't have the
+     house, etc., gets L20,000 extra. Of course you will choose
+     _that_.
+
+     "_P.P.S._--Be sure to bring your under-shirts with you--the air
+     here is very keen of an evening."
+
+I opened both the windows and lit a pipe. Sefton Manor, that gorgeous
+old place,--I knew its picture in Hasted, cradle of our race, and so
+on--and a big fortune. I hoped my cousin Selwyn would want the L20,000
+more than he wanted the house. If he didn't--well, perhaps my fortune
+might be large enough to increase that L20,000 to a sum that he _would_
+want.
+
+And then, suddenly, I became aware that this was the 31st of August, and
+that to-morrow was the day on which I was to meet my cousin Selwyn and
+"the family," and come to a decision about the house. I had never, to my
+knowledge, heard of my cousin Selwyn. We were a family rich in
+collateral branches. I hoped he would be a reasonable young man. Also,
+I had never seen Sefton Manor House, except in a print. It occurred to
+me that I would rather see the house before I saw the cousin.
+
+I caught the next train to Sefton.
+
+"It's but a mile by the field way," said the railway porter. "You take
+the stile--the first on the left--and follow the path till you come to
+the wood. Then skirt along the left of it, cater across the meadow at
+the end, and you'll see the place right below you in the vale."
+
+"It's a fine old place, I hear," said I.
+
+"All to pieces, though," said he. "I shouldn't wonder if it cost a
+couple o' hundred to put it to rights. Water coming through the roof and
+all."
+
+"But surely the owner----"
+
+"Oh, he never lived there; not since his son was taken. He lived in the
+lodge; it's on the brow of the hill looking down on the Manor House."
+
+"Is the house empty?"
+
+"As empty as a rotten nutshell, except for the old sticks o' furniture.
+Any one who likes," added the porter, "can lie there o' nights. But it
+wouldn't be me!"
+
+"Do you mean there's a ghost?" I hope I kept any note of undue elation
+out of my voice.
+
+"I don't hold with ghosts," said the porter firmly, "but my aunt was in
+service at the lodge, and there's no doubt but _something_ walks there."
+
+"Come," I said, "this is very interesting. Can't you leave the station,
+and come across to where beer is?"
+
+"I don't mind if I do," said he. "That is so far as your standing a drop
+goes. But I can't leave the station, so if you pour my beer you must
+pour it dry, sir, as the saying is."
+
+So I gave the man a shilling, and he told me about the ghost at Sefton
+Manor House. Indeed, about the ghosts, for there were, it seemed, two; a
+lady in white, and a gentleman in a slouch hat and black riding cloak.
+
+"They do say," said my porter, "as how one of the young ladies once on a
+time was wishful to elope, and started so to do--not getting further
+than the hall door; her father, thinking it to be burglars, fired out of
+the window, and the happy pair fell on the doorstep, corpses."
+
+"Is it true, do you think?"
+
+The porter did not know. At any rate there was a tablet in the church
+to Maria Sefton and George Ballard--"and something about in their death
+them not being divided."
+
+I took the stile, I skirted the wood, I "catered" across the meadow--and
+so I came out on a chalky ridge held in a net of pine roots, where dog
+violets grew. Below stretched the green park, dotted with trees. The
+lodge, stuccoed but solid, lay below me. Smoke came from its chimneys.
+Lower still lay the Manor House--red brick with grey lichened mullions,
+a house in a thousand, Elizabethan--and from its twisted beautiful
+chimneys no smoke arose. I hurried across the short turf towards the
+Manor House.
+
+I had no difficulty in getting into the great garden. The bricks of the
+wall were everywhere displaced or crumbling. The ivy had forced the
+coping stones away; each red buttress offered a dozen spots for
+foothold. I climbed the wall and found myself in a garden--oh! but such
+a garden. There are not half a dozen such in England--ancient box
+hedges, rosaries, fountains, yew tree avenues, bowers of clematis (now
+feathery in its seeding time), great trees, grey-grown marble
+balustrades and steps, terraces, green lawns, one green lawn, in
+especial, girt round with a sweet briar hedge, and in the middle of
+this lawn a sundial. All this was mine, or, to be more exact, might be
+mine, should my cousin Selwyn prove to be a person of sense. How I
+prayed that he might not be a person of taste! That he might be a person
+who liked yachts or racehorses or diamonds, or motor-cars, or anything
+that money can buy, not a person who liked beautiful Elizabethan houses,
+and gardens old beyond belief.
+
+The sundial stood on a mass of masonry, too low and wide to be called a
+pillar. I mounted the two brick steps and leaned over to read the date
+and the motto:
+
+     "Tempus fugit manet amor."
+
+The date was 1617, the initials S. S. surmounted it. The face of the
+dial was unusually ornate--a wreath of stiffly drawn roses was traced
+outside the circle of the numbers. As I leaned there a sudden movement
+on the other side of the pedestal compelled my attention. I leaned over
+a little further to see what had rustled--a rat--a rabbit? A flash of
+pink struck at my eyes. A lady in a pink dress was sitting on the step
+at the other side of the sundial.
+
+I suppose some exclamation escaped me--the lady looked up. Her hair was
+dark, and her eyes; her face was pink and white, with a few little
+gold-coloured freckles on nose and on cheek bones. Her dress was of pink
+cotton stuff, thin and soft. She looked like a beautiful pink rose.
+
+Our eyes met.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said I, "I had no idea----" there I stopped and
+tried to crawl back to firm ground. Graceful explanations are not best
+given by one sprawling on his stomach across a sundial.
+
+By the time I was once more on my feet she too was standing.
+
+"It is a beautiful old place," she said gently, and, as it seemed, with
+a kindly wish to relieve my embarrassment. She made a movement as if to
+turn away.
+
+"Quite a show place," said I stupidly enough, but I was still a little
+embarrassed, and I wanted to say something--anything--to arrest her
+departure. You have no idea how pretty she was. She had a straw hat
+in her hand, dangling by soft black ribbons. Her hair was all
+fluffy-soft--like a child's. "I suppose you have seen the house?" I
+asked.
+
+She paused, one foot still on the lower step of the sundial, and her
+face seemed to brighten at the touch of some idea as sudden as welcome.
+
+"Well--no," she said. "The fact is--I wanted frightfully to see the
+house; in fact, I've come miles and miles on purpose, but there's no one
+to let me in."
+
+"The people at the lodge?" I suggested.
+
+"Oh no," she said. "I--the fact is I--I don't want to be shown round. I
+want to explore!"
+
+She looked at me critically. Her eyes dwelt on my right hand, which lay
+on the sundial. I have always taken reasonable care of my hands, and I
+wore a good ring, a sapphire, cut with the Sefton arms: an heirloom, by
+the way. Her glance at my hand preluded a longer glance at my face. Then
+she shrugged her pretty shoulders.
+
+"Oh well," she said, and it was as if she had said plainly, "I see that
+you are a gentleman and a decent fellow. Why should I not look over the
+house in your company? Introductions? Bah!"
+
+All this her shrug said without ambiguity as without words.
+
+"Perhaps," I hazarded, "I could get the keys."
+
+"Do you really care very much for old houses?"
+
+"I do," said I; "and you?"
+
+"I care so much that I nearly broke into this one. I should have done it
+quite if the windows had been an inch or two lower."
+
+"I am an inch or two higher," said I, standing squarely so as to make
+the most of my six-feet beside her five-feet-five or thereabouts.
+
+"Oh--if you only would!" said she.
+
+"Why not?" said I.
+
+She led the way past the marble basin of the fountain, and along the
+historic yew avenue, planted, like all old yew avenues, by that
+industrious gardener our Eighth Henry. Then across a lawn, through a
+winding, grassy, shrubbery path, that ended at a green door in the
+garden wall.
+
+"You can lift this latch with a hairpin," said she, and therewith lifted
+it.
+
+We walked into a courtyard. Young grass grew green between the grey
+flags on which our steps echoed.
+
+"This is the window," said she. "You see there's a pane broken. If you
+could get on to the window-sill, you could get your hand in and undo
+the hasp, and----"
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, you'll let me in by the kitchen door."
+
+I did it. My conscience called me a burglar--in vain. Was it not my own,
+or as good as my own house?
+
+I let her in at the back door. We walked through the big dark kitchen
+where the old three-legged pot towered large on the hearth, and the old
+spits and firedogs still kept their ancient place. Then through another
+kitchen where red rust was making its full meal of a comparatively
+modern range.
+
+Then into the great hall, where the old armour and the buff-coats and
+round-caps hang on the walls, and where the carved stone staircases run
+at each side up to the gallery above.
+
+The long tables in the middle of the hall were scored by the knives of
+the many who had eaten meat there--initials and dates were cut into
+them. The roof was groined, the windows low-arched.
+
+"Oh, but what a place!" said she; "this must be much older than the rest
+of it----"
+
+"Evidently. About 1300, I should say."
+
+"Oh, let us explore the rest," she cried; "it is really a comfort not to
+have a guide, but only a person like you who just guesses comfortably at
+dates. I should hate to be told _exactly_ when this hall was built."
+
+We explored ball-room and picture gallery, white parlour and library.
+Most of the rooms were furnished--all heavily, some magnificently--but
+everything was dusty and faded.
+
+It was in the white parlour, a spacious panelled room on the first
+floor, that she told me the ghost story, substantially the same as my
+porter's tale, only in one respect different.
+
+"And so, just as she was leaving this very room--yes, I'm sure it's this
+room, because the woman at the inn pointed out this double window and
+told me so--just as the poor lovers were creeping out of the door, the
+cruel father came quickly out of some dark place and killed them both.
+So now they haunt it."
+
+"It is a terrible thought," said I gravely. "How would you like to live
+in a haunted house?"
+
+"I couldn't," she said quickly.
+
+"Nor I; it would be too----" my speech would have ended flippantly, but
+for the grave set of her features.
+
+"I wonder who _will_ live here?" she said. "The owner is just dead. They
+say it is an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course one is not afraid
+now"--the sunlight lay golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the
+floor--"but at night, when the wind wails, and the doors creak, and the
+things rustle, oh, it must be awful!"
+
+"I hear the house has been left to two people, or rather one is to have
+the house, and the other a sum of money," said I. "It's a beautiful
+house, full of beautiful things, but I should think at least one of the
+heirs would rather have the money."
+
+"Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder whether the heirs know about the
+ghost? The lights can be seen from the inn, you know, at twelve o'clock,
+and they see the ghost in white at the window."
+
+"Never the black one?"
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose so."
+
+"The ghosts don't appear together?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "whoever it is that manages such things knows that
+the poor ghosts would like to be together, so it won't let them."
+
+She shivered.
+
+"Come," she said, "we have seen all over the house; let us get back into
+the sunshine. Now I will go out, and you shall bolt the door after me,
+and then you can come out by the window. Thank you so much for all the
+trouble you have taken. It has really been quite an adventure...."
+
+I rather liked that expression, and she hastened to spoil it.
+
+"... Quite an adventure going all over this glorious old place, and
+looking at everything one wanted to see, and not just at what the
+housekeeper didn't mind one's looking at."
+
+She passed through the door, but when I had closed it and prepared to
+lock it, I found that the key was no longer in the lock. I looked on the
+floor--I felt in my pockets, and at last, wandering back into the
+kitchen, discovered it on the table, where I swear I never put it.
+
+When I had fitted that key into the lock and turned it, and got out of
+the window and made that fast, I dropped into the yard. No one shared
+its solitude with me. I searched garden and pleasure grounds, but never
+a glimpse of pink rewarded my anxious eyes. I found the sundial again,
+and stretched myself along the warm brick of the wide step where she had
+sat: and called myself a fool.
+
+I had let her go. I did not know her name; I did not know where she
+lived; she had been at the inn, but probably only for lunch. I should
+never see her again, and certainly in that event I should never see
+again such dark, soft eyes, such hair, such a contour of cheek and chin,
+such a frank smile--in a word, a girl with whom it would be so
+delightfully natural for me to fall in love. For all the time she had
+been talking to me of architecture and archaeology, of dates and periods,
+of carvings and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling in love with
+the idea of falling in love with her. I had cherished and adored this
+delightful possibility, and now my chance was over. Even I could not
+definitely fall in love after one interview with a girl I was never to
+see again! And falling in love is so pleasant! I cursed my lost chance,
+and went back to the inn. I talked to the waiter.
+
+"Yes, a lady in pink had lunched there with a party. Had gone on to the
+Castle. A party from Tonbridge it was."
+
+Barnhurst Castle is close to Sefton Manor. The inn lays itself out to
+entertain persons who come in brakes and carve their names on the walls
+of the Castle keep. The inn has a visitors' book. I examined it. Some
+twenty feminine names. Any one might be hers. The waiter looked over my
+shoulder. I turned the pages.
+
+"Only parties staying in the house in this part of the book," said the
+waiter.
+
+My eye caught one name. "Selwyn Sefton," in a clear, round, black
+hand-writing.
+
+"Staying here?" I pointed to the name.
+
+"Yes, sir; came to-day, sir."
+
+"Can I have a private sitting-room?"
+
+I had one. I ordered my dinner to be served in it, and I sat down and
+considered my course of action. Should I invite my cousin Selwyn to
+dinner, ply him with wine, and exact promises? Honour forbade. Should I
+seek him out and try to establish friendly relations? To what end?
+
+Then I saw from my window a young man in a light-checked suit, with a
+face at once pallid and coarse. He strolled along the gravel path, and
+a woman's voice in the garden called "Selwyn."
+
+He disappeared in the direction of the voice. I don't think I ever
+disliked a man so much at first sight.
+
+"Brute," said I, "why should he have the house? He'd stucco it all over
+as likely as not; perhaps let it! He'd never stand the ghosts,
+either----"
+
+Then the inexcusable, daring idea of my life came to me, striking me
+rigid--a blow from my other self. It must have been a minute or two
+before my muscles relaxed and my arms fell at my sides.
+
+"I'll do it," I said.
+
+I dined. I told the people of the house not to sit up for me. I was
+going to see friends in the neighbourhood, and might stay the night with
+them. I took my Inverness cape with me on my arm and my soft felt hat in
+my pocket. I wore a light suit and a straw hat.
+
+Before I started I leaned cautiously from my window. The lamp at the bow
+window next to mine showed me the pallid young man, smoking a fat,
+reeking cigar. I hoped he would continue to sit there smoking. His
+window looked the right way; and if he didn't see what I wanted him to
+see some one else in the inn would. The landlady had assured me that I
+should disturb no one if I came in at half-past twelve.
+
+"We hardly keep country hours here, sir," she said, "on account of so
+much excursionist business."
+
+I bought candles in the village, and, as I went down across the park in
+the soft darkness, I turned again and again to be sure that the light
+and the pallid young man were still at that window. It was now past
+eleven.
+
+I got into the house and lighted a candle, and crept through the dark
+kitchens, whose windows, I knew, did not look towards the inn. When I
+came to the hall I blew out my candle. I dared not show light
+prematurely, and in the unhaunted part of the house.
+
+I gave myself a nasty knock against one of the long tables, but it
+helped me to get my bearings, and presently I laid my hand on the stone
+balustrade of the great staircase. You would hardly believe me if I were
+to tell you truly of my sensations as I began to go up these stairs. I
+am not a coward--at least, I had never thought so till then--but the
+absolute darkness unnerved me. I had to go slowly, or I should have lost
+my head and blundered up the stairs three at a time, so strong was the
+feeling of something--something uncanny--just behind me.
+
+I set my teeth. I reached the top of the stairs, felt along the walls,
+and after a false start, which landed me in the great picture gallery, I
+found the white parlour, entered it, closed the door, and felt my way to
+a little room without a window, which we had decided must have been a
+powdering-room.
+
+Here I ventured to re-light my candle.
+
+The white parlour, I remembered, was fully furnished. Returning to it I
+struck one match, and by its flash determined the way to the
+mantelpiece.
+
+Then I closed the powdering-room door behind me. I felt my way to the
+mantelpiece and took down the two brass twenty-lighted candelabra. I
+placed these on a table a yard or two from the window, and in them set
+up my candles. It is astonishingly difficult in the dark to do anything,
+even a thing so simple as the setting up of a candle.
+
+Then I went back into my little room, put on the Inverness cape and the
+slouch hat, and looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. I must wait. I sat
+down and waited. I thought how rich I was--the thought fell flat; I
+wanted this house. I thought of my beautiful pink lady; but I put that
+thought aside; I had an inward consciousness that my conduct, more
+heroic than enough in one sense, would seem mean and crafty in her eyes.
+Only ten minutes had passed. I could not wait till twelve. The chill of
+the night and of the damp, unused house, and, perhaps, some less
+material influence, made me shiver.
+
+I opened the door, crept on hands and knees to the table, and, carefully
+keeping myself below the level of the window, I reached up a trembling
+arm, and lighted, one by one, my forty candles. The room was a blaze of
+light. My courage came back to me with the retreat of the darkness. I
+was far too excited to know what a fool I was making of myself. I rose
+boldly, and struck an attitude over against the window, where the
+candle-light shone upon as well as behind me. My Inverness was flung
+jauntily over my shoulder, my soft, black felt twisted and slouched over
+my eyes.
+
+There I stood for the world, and particularly for my cousin Selwyn, to
+see, the very image of the ghost that haunted that chamber. And from my
+window I could see the light in that other window, and indistinctly the
+lounging figure there. Oh, my cousin Selwyn, I wished many things to
+your address in that moment! For it was only a moment that I had to feel
+brave and daring in. Then I heard, deep down in the house, a sound, very
+slight, very faint. Then came silence. I drew a deep breath. The silence
+endured. And I stood by my lighted window.
+
+After a very long time, as it seemed, I heard a board crack, and then a
+soft rustling sound that drew near and seemed to pause outside the very
+door of my parlour.
+
+Again I held my breath, and now I thought of the most horrible story Poe
+ever wrote--"The Fall of the House of Usher"--and I fancied I saw the
+handle of that door move. I fixed my eyes on it. The fancy passed: and
+returned.
+
+Then again there was silence. And then the door opened with a soft,
+silent suddenness, and I saw in the doorway a figure in trailing white.
+Its eyes blazed in a death-white face. It made two ghostly, gliding
+steps forward, and my heart stood still. I had not thought it possible
+for a man to experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I had
+masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this accursed house. Well, the other
+ghost--the real one--had come to meet me. I do not like to dwell on that
+moment. The only thing which it pleases me to remember is that I did not
+scream or go mad. I think I stood on the verge of both.
+
+The ghost, I say, took two steps forward; then it threw up its arms, the
+lighted taper it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back against
+the door with its arms across its face.
+
+The fall of the candle woke me as from a nightmare. It fell solidly, and
+rolled away under the table.
+
+I perceived that my ghost was human. I cried incoherently: "Don't, for
+Heaven's sake--it's all right."
+
+The ghost dropped its hands and turned agonised eyes on me. I tore off
+my cloak and hat.
+
+"I--didn't--scream," she said, and with that I sprang forward and caught
+her in my arms--my poor, pink lady--white now as a white rose.
+
+I carried her into the powdering-room, and left one candle with her,
+extinguishing the others hastily, for now I saw what in my extravagant
+folly had escaped me before, that my ghost exhibition might bring the
+whole village down on the house. I tore down the long corridor and
+double locked the doors leading from it to the staircase, then back to
+the powdering-room and the prone white rose. How, in the madness of that
+night's folly, I had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my
+understanding. But I had done it. Now I rubbed her hands with the
+spirit. I rubbed her temples, I tried to force it between her lips, and
+at last she sighed and opened her eyes.
+
+"Oh--thank God--thank God!" I cried, for indeed I had almost feared that
+my mad trick had killed her. "Are you better? oh, poor little lady, are
+you better?"
+
+She moved her head a little on my arm.
+
+Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I gave her more brandy. She took
+it, choked, raised herself against my shoulder.
+
+"I'm all right now," she said faintly. "It served me right. How silly it
+all is!" Then she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.
+
+It was at this moment that we heard voices on the terrace below. She
+clutched at my arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears glistening on
+her cheeks.
+
+"Oh! not any more, not any more," she cried. "I can't bear it."
+
+"Hush," I said, taking her hands strongly in mine. "I've played the
+fool; so have you. We must play the man now. The people in the village
+have seen the lights--that's all. They think we're burglars. They can't
+get in. Keep quiet, and they'll go away."
+
+But when they did go away they left the local constable on guard. He
+kept guard like a man till daylight began to creep over the hill, and
+then he crawled into the hayloft and fell asleep, small blame to him.
+
+But through those long hours I sat beside her and held her hand. At
+first she clung to me as a frightened child clings, and her tears were
+the prettiest, saddest things to see. As we grew calmer we talked.
+
+"I did it to frighten my cousin," I owned. "I meant to have told you
+to-day, I mean yesterday, only you went away. I am Lawrence Sefton, and
+the place is to go either to me or to my cousin Selwyn. And I wanted to
+frighten him off it. But you, why did you----?"
+
+Even then I couldn't see. She looked at me.
+
+"I don't know how I ever could have thought I was brave enough to do it,
+but I did want the house so, and I wanted to frighten you----"
+
+"To frighten _me_. Why?"
+
+"Because I am your cousin Selwyn," she said, hiding her face in her
+hands.
+
+"And you knew me?" I asked.
+
+"By your ring," she said. "I saw your father wear it when I was a little
+girl. Can't we get back to the inn now?"
+
+"Not unless you want every one to know how silly we have been."
+
+"I wish you'd forgive me," she said when we had talked awhile, and she
+had even laughed at the description of the pallid young man on whom I
+had bestowed, in my mind, her name.
+
+"The wrong is mutual," I said; "we will exchange forgivenesses."
+
+"Oh, but it isn't," she said eagerly. "Because I knew it was you, and
+you didn't know it was me: you wouldn't have tried to frighten _me_."
+
+"You know I wouldn't." My voice was tenderer than I meant it to be.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"And who is to have the house?" she said.
+
+"Why you, of course."
+
+"I never will."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, because!"
+
+"Can't we put off the decision?" I asked.
+
+"Impossible. We must decide to-morrow--to-day I mean."
+
+"Well, when we meet to-morrow--I mean to-day--with lawyers and chaperones
+and mothers and relations, give me one word alone with you."
+
+"Yes," she answered, with docility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Do you know," she said presently, "I can never respect myself again? To
+undertake a thing like that, and then be so horribly frightened. Oh! I
+thought you really _were_ the other ghost."
+
+"I will tell you a secret," said I. "I thought _you_ were, and I was
+much more frightened than you."
+
+"Oh well," she said, leaning against my shoulder as a tired child might
+have done, "if you were frightened too, Cousin Lawrence, I don't mind so
+very, very much."
+
+It was soon afterwards that, cautiously looking out of the parlour
+window for the twentieth time, I had the happiness of seeing the local
+policeman disappear into the stable rubbing his eyes.
+
+We got out of the window on the other side of the house, and went back
+to the inn across the dewy park. The French window of the sitting-room
+which had let her out let us both in. No one was stirring, so no one
+save she and I were any the wiser as to that night's work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was like a garden party next day, when lawyers and executors and
+aunts and relations met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor House.
+
+Her eyes were downcast. She followed her Aunt demurely over the house
+and the grounds.
+
+"Your decision," said my great-uncle's solicitor, "has to be given
+within the hour."
+
+"My cousin and I will announce it within that time," I said and I at
+once gave her my arm.
+
+Arrived at the sundial we stopped.
+
+"This is my proposal," I said: "we will say that we decide that the
+house is yours--we will spend the L20,000 in restoring it and the
+grounds. By the time that's done we can decide who is to have it."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"Oh, we'll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like."
+
+"I'd rather decide now," she said; "_you_ take it."
+
+"No, _you_ shall."
+
+"I'd rather you had it. I--I don't feel so greedy as I did yesterday,"
+she said.
+
+"Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way."
+
+"Do--do take the house," she said very earnestly.
+
+Then I said: "My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make
+you an offer of marriage."
+
+"_Oh!_" she breathed.
+
+"And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too
+slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline
+the house. Then, if you are obdurate, it will become an asylum. Don't be
+obdurate. Pretend to take the house and----"
+
+She looked at me rather piteously.
+
+"Very well," she said, "I will pretend to take the house, and when it is
+restored----"
+
+"We'll spin the penny."
+
+So before the waiting relations the house was adjudged to my cousin
+Selwyn. When the restoration was complete I met Selwyn at the sundial.
+We had met there often in the course of the restoration, in which
+business we both took an extravagant interest.
+
+"Now," I said, "we'll spin the penny. Heads you take the house, tails it
+comes to me."
+
+I spun the coin--it fell on the brick steps of the sundial, and stuck
+upright there, wedged between two bricks. She laughed; I laughed.
+
+"It's not _my_ house," I said.
+
+"It's not _my_ house," said she.
+
+"Dear," said I, and we were neither of us laughing then, "can't it be
+_our_ house?"
+
+And, thank God, our house it is.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE POWER OF DARKNESS
+
+
+It was an enthusiastic send-off. Half the students from her Atelier were
+there, and twice as many more from other studios. She had been the belle
+of the Artists' Quarter in Montparnasse for three golden months. Now she
+was off to the Riviera to meet her people, and every one she knew was at
+the Gare de Lyons to catch the pretty last glimpse of her. And, as had
+been more than once said late of an evening, "to see her was to love
+her." She was one of those agitating blondes, with the naturally rippled
+hair, the rounded rose-leaf cheeks, the large violet-blue eyes that look
+all things and mean Heaven alone knows how little. She held her court
+like a queen, leaning out of the carriage window and receiving bouquets,
+books, journals, long last words, and last longing looks. All eyes were
+on her, and her eyes were for all--and her smile. For all but one, that
+is. Not a single glance went Edward's way, and Edward, tall, lean,
+gaunt, with big eyes, straight nose, and mouth somewhat too small, too
+beautiful, seemed to grow thinner and paler before one's eyes. One pair
+of eyes at least saw the miracle worked, the paling of what had seemed
+absolute pallor, the revelation of the bones of a face that seemed
+already covered but by the thinnest possible veil of flesh.
+
+And the man whose eyes saw this rejoiced, for he loved her, like the
+rest, or not like the rest; and he had had Edward's face before him for
+the last month, in that secret shrine where we set the loved and the
+hated, the shrine that is lighted by a million lamps kindled at the
+soul's flame, the shrine that leaps into dazzling glow when the candles
+are out and one lies alone on hot pillows to outface the night and the
+light as best one may.
+
+"Oh, good-bye, good-bye, all of you," said Rose. "I shall miss you--oh,
+you don't know how I shall miss you all!"
+
+She gathered the glances of her friends and her worshippers on her own
+glance, as one gathers jewels on a silken string. The eyes of Edward
+alone seemed to escape her.
+
+"Em voiture, messieurs et dames."
+
+Folk drew back from the train. There was a whistle. And then at the very
+last little moment of all, as the train pulled itself together for the
+start, her eyes met Edward's eyes. And the other man saw the meeting,
+and he knew--which was more than Edward did.
+
+So, when the light of life having been borne away in the retreating
+train, the broken-hearted group dispersed, the other man, whose name by
+the way was Vincent, linked his arm in Edward's and asked cheerily:
+"Whither away, sweet nymph?"
+
+"I'm off home," said Edward. "The 7.20 to Calais."
+
+"Sick of Paris?"
+
+"One has to see one's people sometimes, don't you know, hang it all!"
+was Edward's way of expressing the longing that tore him for the old
+house among the brown woods of Kent.
+
+"No attraction here now, eh?"
+
+"The chief attraction has gone, certainly," Edward made himself say.
+
+"But there are as good fish in the sea----?"
+
+"Fishing isn't my trade," said Edward.
+
+"The beautiful Rose!----" said Vincent.
+
+Edward raised hurriedly the only shield he could find. It happened to be
+the truth as he saw it.
+
+"Oh," he said, "of course, we're all in love with her--and all
+hopelessly."
+
+Vincent perceived that this was truth, as Edward saw it.
+
+"What are you going to do till your train goes?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. Cafe, I suppose, and a vilely early dinner."
+
+"Let's look in at the Musee Grevin," said Vincent.
+
+The two were friends. They had been school-fellows, and this is a link
+that survives many a strain too strong to be resisted by more intimate
+and vital bonds. And they were fellow-students, though that counts for
+little or much--as you take it. Besides, Vincent knew something about
+Edward that no one else of their age and standing even guessed. He knew
+that Edward was afraid of the dark, and why. He had found it out that
+Christmas that the two had spent at an English country house. The house
+was full: there was a dance. There were to be theatricals. Early in the
+new year the hostess meant to "move house" to an old convent, built in
+Tudor times, a beautiful place with terraces and clipped yew trees,
+castellated battlements, a moat, swans, and a ghost story.
+
+"You boys," she said, "must put up with a shake-down in the new house. I
+hope the ghost won't worry you. She's a nun with a bunch of keys and no
+eyes. Comes and breathes softly on the back of your neck when you're
+shaving. Then you see her in the glass, and, as often as not, you cut
+your throat." She laughed. So did Edward and Vincent, and the other
+young men; there were seven or eight of them.
+
+But that night, when sparse candles had lighted "the boys" to their
+rooms, when the last pipe had been smoked, the last good-night said,
+there came a fumbling with the handle of Vincent's door. Edward entered
+an unwieldy figure clasping pillows, trailing blankets.
+
+"What the deuce?" queried Vincent in natural amazement.
+
+"I'll turn in here on the floor, if you don't mind," said Edward. "I
+know it's beastly rot, but I can't stand it. The room they've put me
+into, it's an attic as big as a barn--and there's a great door at the
+end, eight feet high--raw oak it is--and it leads into a sort of
+horror-hole--bare beams and rafters, and black as Hell. I know I'm an
+abject duffer, but there it is--I can't face it."
+
+Vincent was sympathetic, though he had never known a night-terror that
+could not be exorcised by pipe, book, and candle.
+
+"I know, old chap. There's no reasoning about these things," said he,
+and so on.
+
+"You can't despise me more than I despise myself," Edward said. "I feel
+a crawling hound. But it is so. I had a scare when I was a kid, and it
+seems to have left a sort of brand on me. I'm branded 'coward,' old man,
+and the feel of it's not nice."
+
+Again Vincent was sympathetic, and the poor little tale came out. How
+Edward, eight years old, and greedy as became his little years, had
+sneaked down, night-clad, to pick among the outcomings of a
+dinner-party, and how, in the hall, dark with the light of an "artistic"
+coloured glass lantern, a white figure had suddenly faced him--leaned
+towards him it seemed, pointed lead-white hands at his heart. That next
+day, finding him weak from his fainting fit, had shown the horror to be
+but a statue, a new purchase of his father's, had mattered not one
+whit.
+
+Edward had shared Vincent's room, and Vincent, alone of all men, shared
+Edward's secret.
+
+And now, in Paris, Rose speeding away towards Cannes, Vincent said:
+"Let's look in at the Musee Grevin."
+
+The Musee Grevin is a wax-work show. Your mind, at the word, flies
+instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Madame
+Tussaud, and you think you know what wax-works mean. But you are wrong.
+The exhibition of Madame Tussaud--in these days, at any rate--is the
+work of _bourgeois_ for a _bourgeois_ class. The Musee Grevin contains
+the work of artists for a nation of artists. Wax, modelled and retouched
+till it seems as near life as death is: this is what one sees at the
+Musee Grevin.
+
+"Let's look in at the Musee Grevin," said Vincent. He remembered the
+pleasant thrill the Musee had given him, and wondered what sort of a
+thrill it would give his friend.
+
+"I hate museums," said Edward.
+
+"This isn't a museum," Vincent said, and truly; "it's just wax-works."
+
+"All right," said Edward indifferently. And they went. They reached the
+doors of the Musee in the grey-brown dusk of a February evening.
+
+One walks along a bare, narrow corridor, much like the entrance to the
+stalls of the Standard Theatre, and such daylight as there may be fades
+away behind one, and one finds oneself in a square hall, heavily
+decorated, and displaying with its electric lights Loie Fuller in her
+accordion-pleated skirts, and one or two other figures not designed to
+quicken the pulse.
+
+"It's very like Madame Tussaud's," said Edward.
+
+"Yes," Vincent said; "isn't it?"
+
+Then they passed through an arch, and behold, a long room with waxen
+groups life-like behind glass--the _coulisses_ of the Opera, Kitchener
+at Fashoda--this last with a desert background lit by something
+convincingly like desert sunlight.
+
+"By Jove!" said Edward, "that's jolly good."
+
+"Yes," said Vincent again; "isn't it?"
+
+Edward's interest grew. The things were so convincing, so very nearly
+alive. Given the right angle, their glass eyes met one's own, and
+seemed to exchange with one meaning glances.
+
+Vincent led the way to an arched door labelled: "Gallerie de la
+Revolution."
+
+There one saw, almost in the living, suffering body, poor Marie
+Antoinette in prison in the Temple, her little son on his couch of rags,
+the rats eating from his platter, the brutal Simon calling to him from
+the grated window; one almost heard the words, "Ho la, little Capet--are
+you asleep?"
+
+One saw Marat bleeding in his bath--the brave Charlotte eyeing him--the
+very tiles of the bath-room, the glass of the windows with, outside, the
+very sunlight, as it seemed, of 1793 on that "yellow July evening, the
+thirteenth of the month."
+
+The spectators did not move in a public place among wax-work figures.
+They peeped through open doors into rooms where history seemed to be
+re-lived. The rooms were lighted each by its own sun, or lamp, or
+candle. The spectators walked among shadows that might have oppressed a
+nervous person.
+
+"Fine, eh?" said Vincent.
+
+"Yes," said Edward; "it's wonderful."
+
+A turn of a corner brought them to a room. Marie Antoinette fainting,
+supported by her ladies; poor fat Louis by the window looking literally
+sick.
+
+"What's the matter with them all?" said Edward.
+
+"Look at the window," said Vincent.
+
+There was a window to the room. Outside was sunshine--the sunshine of
+1792--and, gleaming in it, blonde hair flowing, red mouth half open,
+what seemed the just-severed head of a beautiful woman. It was raised on
+a pike, so that it seemed to be looking in at the window.
+
+"I say!" said Edward, and the head on the pike seemed to sway before his
+eyes.
+
+"Madame de Lamballe. Good thing, isn't it?" said Vincent.
+
+"It's altogether too much of a good thing," said Edward. "Look
+here--I've had enough of this."
+
+"Oh, you must just see the Catacombs," said Vincent; "nothing bloody,
+you know. Only Early Christians being married and baptized, and all
+that."
+
+He led the way, down some clumsy steps to the cellars which the genius
+of a great artist has transformed into the exact semblance of the old
+Catacombs at Rome. The same rough hewing of rock, the same sacred
+tokens engraved strongly and simply; and among the arches of these
+subterranean burrowings the life of the Early Christians, their
+sacraments, their joys, their sorrows--all expressed in groups of
+wax-work as like life as Death is.
+
+"But this is very fine, you know," said Edward, getting his breath again
+after Madame de Lamballe, and his imagination loved the thought of the
+noble sufferings and refrainings of these first lovers of the Crucified
+Christ.
+
+"Yes," said Vincent for the third time; "isn't it?"
+
+They passed the baptism and the burying and the marriage. The tableaux
+were sufficiently lighted, but little light strayed to the narrow
+passage where the two men walked, and the darkness seemed to press,
+tangible as a bodily presence, against Edward's shoulder. He glanced
+backward.
+
+"Come," he said, "I've had enough."
+
+"Come on, then," said Vincent.
+
+They turned the corner--and a blaze of Italian sunlight struck at their
+eyes with positive dazzlement. There lay the Coliseum--tier on tier of
+eager faces under the blue sky of Italy. They were level with the
+arena. In the arena were crosses; from them drooped bleeding figures. On
+the sand beasts prowled, bodies lay. They saw it all through bars. They
+seemed to be in the place where the chosen victims waited their turn,
+waited for the lions and the crosses, the palm and the crown. Close by
+Edward was a group--an old man, a woman--children. He could have touched
+them with his hand. The woman and the man stared in an agony of terror
+straight in the eyes of a snarling tiger, ten feet long, that stood up
+on its hind feet and clawed through the bars at them. The youngest
+child, only, unconscious of the horror, laughed in the very face of it.
+Roman soldiers, unmoved in military vigilance, guarded the group of
+martyrs. In a low cage to the left more wild beasts cringed and seemed
+to growl, unfed. Within the grating on the wide circle of yellow sand
+lions and tigers drank the blood of Christians. Close against the bars a
+great lion sucked the chest of a corpse on whose blood-stained face the
+horror of the death-agony was printed plain.
+
+"Good God!" said Edward. Vincent took his arm suddenly, and he started
+with what was almost a shriek.
+
+"What a nervous chap you are!" said Vincent complacently, as they
+regained the street where the lights were, and the sound of voices and
+the movement of live human beings--all that warms and awakens nerves
+almost paralysed by the life in death of waxen immobility.
+
+"I don't know," said Edward. "Let's have a vermouth, shall we? There's
+something uncanny about those wax things. They're like life--but they're
+much more like death. Suppose they moved? I don't feel at all sure that
+they don't move, when the lights are all out, and there's no one there."
+He laughed. "I suppose you were never frightened, Vincent?"
+
+"Yes, I was once," said Vincent, sipping his absinthe. "Three other men
+and I were taking turns by twos to watch a dead man. It was a fancy of
+his mother's. Our time was up, and the other watch hadn't come. So my
+chap--the one who was watching with me, I mean--went to fetch them. I
+didn't think I should mind. But it was just like you say."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, I kept thinking: suppose it should move--it was so like life. And
+if it did move, of course it would have been because it _was_ alive,
+and I ought to have been glad, because the man was my friend. But all
+the same, if it had moved I should have gone mad."
+
+"Yes," said Edward; "that's just exactly it."
+
+Vincent called for a second absinthe.
+
+"But a dead body's different to wax-works," he said. "I can't understand
+any one being frightened of _them_."
+
+"Oh, can't you?" The contempt in the other's tone stung him. "I bet you
+wouldn't spend a night alone in that place."
+
+"I bet you five pounds I do!"
+
+"Done!" said Edward briskly. "At least, I would if you'd got five
+pounds."
+
+"But I have. I'm simply rolling. I've sold my Dejanira, didn't you know?
+I shall win your money, though, anyway. But _you_ couldn't do it, old
+man. I suppose you'll never outgrow that childish scare."
+
+"You might shut up about that," said Edward shortly.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of; some women are afraid of mice or
+spiders. I say, does Rose know you're a coward?"
+
+"Vincent!"
+
+"No offence, old boy. One may as well call a spade a spade. Of course,
+you've got tons of moral courage, and all that. But you _are_ afraid of
+the dark--and wax-works!"
+
+"Are you trying to quarrel with me?"
+
+"Heaven in its mercy forbid; but I bet _you_ wouldn't spend a night in
+the Musee Grevin and keep your senses."
+
+"What's the stake?"
+
+"Anything you like."
+
+"Make it, that if I do, you'll never speak to Rose again--and what's
+more, that you'll never speak to me," said Edward, white-hot, knocking
+down a chair as he rose.
+
+"Done!" said Vincent; "but you'll never do it. Keep your hair on.
+Besides, you're off home."
+
+"I shall be back in ten days. I'll do it then," said Edward, and was off
+before the other could answer.
+
+Then Vincent, left alone, sat still, and over his third absinthe
+remembered how, before she had known Edward, Rose had smiled on him;
+more than on the others, he had thought. He thought of her wide, lovely
+eyes, her wild-rose cheeks, the scented curves of her hair, and then and
+there the devil entered into him.
+
+In ten days Edward would undoubtedly try to win his wager. He would try
+to spend the night in the Musee Grevin. Perhaps something could be
+arranged before that. If one knew the place thoroughly! A little scare
+would serve Edward right for being the man to whom that last glance of
+Rose's had been given.
+
+Vincent dined lightly, but with conscientious care--and as he dined, he
+thought. Something might be done by tying a string to one of the
+figures, and making it move, when Edward was going through that
+impossible night among the effigies that are so like life--so like
+death. Something that was not the devil said: "You may frighten him out
+of his wits." And the devil answered: "Nonsense! do him good. He
+oughtn't to be such a schoolgirl."
+
+Anyway, the five pounds might as well be won to-night as any other
+night. He would take a great coat, sleep sound in the place of horrors,
+and the people who opened it in the morning to sweep and dust would bear
+witness that he had passed the night there. He thought he might trust to
+the French love of a sporting wager to keep him from any bother with the
+authorities.
+
+So he went in among the crowd, and looked about among the wax-works for
+a place to hide in. He was not in the least afraid of these lifeless
+images. He had always been able to control his nervous tremors. He was
+not even afraid of being frightened, which, by the way, is the worst
+fear of all. As one looks at the room of the poor little Dauphin, one
+sees a door to the left. It opens out of the room on to blackness. There
+were few people in the gallery. Vincent watched, and in a moment when he
+was alone he stepped over the barrier and through this door. A narrow
+passage ran round behind the wall of the room. Here he hid, and when the
+gallery was deserted he looked out across the body of little Capet to
+the gaolers at the window. There was a soldier at the window, too.
+Vincent amused himself with the fancy that this soldier might walk round
+the passage at the back of the room and tap him on the shoulder in the
+darkness. Only the head and shoulders of the soldier and the gaoler
+showed, so, of course, they could not walk, even if they were something
+that was not wax-work.
+
+Presently he himself went along the passage and round to the window
+where they were. He found that they had legs. They were full-sized
+figures dressed completely in the costume of the period.
+
+"Thorough the beggars are, even the parts that don't show--artists, upon
+my word," said Vincent, and went back to his doorway, thinking of the
+hidden carving behind the capitols of Gothic cathedrals.
+
+But the idea of the soldier who might come behind him in the dark stuck
+in his mind. Though still a few visitors strolled through the gallery,
+the closing hour was near. He supposed it would be quite dark then. And
+now he had allowed himself to be amused by the thought of something that
+should creep up behind him in the dark, he might possibly be nervous in
+that passage round which, if wax-works could move, the soldier might
+have come.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "one might easily frighten oneself by just fancying
+things. Suppose there were a back way from Marat's bath-room, and
+instead of the soldier Marat came out of his bath, with his wet towels
+stained with blood, and dabbed them against your neck."
+
+When next the gallery was empty he crept out. Not because he was
+nervous, he told himself, but because one might be, and because the
+passage was draughty, and he meant to sleep.
+
+He went down the steps into the Catacombs, and here he spoke the truth
+to himself.
+
+"Hang it all!" he said, "I _was_ nervous. That fool Edward must have
+infected me. Mesmeric influences, or something."
+
+"Chuck it and go home," said Commonsense.
+
+"I'm damned if I do!" said Vincent.
+
+There were a good many people in the Catacombs at the moment--live
+people. He sucked confidence from their nearness, and went up and down
+looking for a hiding-place.
+
+Through rock-hewn arches he saw a burial scene--a corpse on a bier
+surrounded by mourners; a great pillar cut off half the still, lying
+figure. It was all still and unemotional as a Sunday School oleograph.
+He waited till no one was near, then slipped quickly through the
+mourning group and hid behind the pillar. Surprising--heartening too--to
+find a plain rushed chair there, doubtless set for the resting of tired
+officials. He sat down in it, comforted his hand with the commonplace
+lines of its rungs and back. A shrouded waxen figure just behind him to
+the left of his pillar worried him a little, but the corpse left him
+unmoved as itself. A far better place this than that draughty passage
+where the soldier with legs kept intruding on the darkness that is
+always behind one.
+
+Custodians went along the passages issuing orders. A stillness fell.
+Then suddenly all the lights went out.
+
+"That's all right," said Vincent, and composed himself to sleep.
+
+But he seemed to have forgotten what sleep was like. He firmly fixed his
+thoughts on pleasant things--the sale of his picture, dances with Rose,
+merry evenings with Edward and the others. But the thoughts rushed by
+him like motes in sunbeams--he could not hold a single one of them, and
+presently it seemed that he had thought of every pleasant thing that had
+ever happened to him, and that now, if he thought at all, he must think
+of the things one wants most to forget. And there would be time in this
+long night to think much of many things. But now he found that he could
+no longer think.
+
+The draped effigy just behind him worried him again. He had been trying,
+at the back of his mind, behind the other thoughts, to strangle the
+thought of it. But it was there--very close to him. Suppose it put out
+its hand, its wax hand, and touched him. But it was of wax: it could not
+move. No, of course not. But suppose it _did_?
+
+He laughed aloud, a short, dry laugh that echoed through the vaults. The
+cheering effect of laughter has been over-estimated, perhaps. Anyhow, he
+did not laugh again.
+
+The silence was intense, but it was a silence thick with rustlings and
+breathings, and movements that his ear, strained to the uttermost, could
+just not hear. Suppose, as Edward had said, when all the lights were
+out, these things did move. A corpse was a thing that had moved--given a
+certain condition--Life. What if there were a condition, given which
+these things could move? What if such conditions were present now? What
+if all of them--Napoleon, yellow-white from his death sleep--the beasts
+from the Amphitheatre, gore dribbling from their jaws--that soldier with
+the legs--all were drawing near to him in this full silence? Those
+death masks of Robespierre and Mirabeau, they might float down through
+the darkness till they touched his face. That head of Madame de Lamballe
+on the pike might be thrust at him from behind the pillar. The silence
+throbbed with sounds that could not quite be heard.
+
+"You fool," he said to himself, "your dinner has disagreed with you,
+with a vengeance. Don't be an ass. The whole lot are only a set of big
+dolls."
+
+He felt for his matches, and lighted a cigarette. The gleam of the match
+fell on the face of the corpse in front of him. The light was brief, and
+it seemed, somehow, impossible to look, by that light, in every corner
+where one would have wished to look. The match burnt his fingers as it
+went out; and there were only three more matches in the box.
+
+It was dark again, and the image left on the darkness was that of the
+corpse in front of him. He thought of his dead friend. When the
+cigarette was smoked out, he thought of him more and more, till it
+seemed that what lay on the bier was not wax. His hand reached forward,
+and drew back more than once. But at last he made it touch the bier,
+and through the blackness travel up along a lean, rigid arm to the wax
+face that lay there so still. The touch was not reassuring. Just so, and
+not otherwise, had his dead friend's face felt, to the last touch of his
+lips: cold, firm, waxen. People always said the dead were "waxen." How
+true that was! He had never thought of it before. He thought of it now.
+
+He sat still, so still that every muscle ached, because if you wish to
+hear the sounds that infest silence, you must be very still indeed. He
+thought of Edward, and of the string he had meant to tie to one of the
+figures.
+
+"That wouldn't be needed," he told himself. And his ears ached with
+listening--listening for the sound that, it seemed, _must_ break at last
+from that crowded silence.
+
+He never knew how long he sat there. To move, to go up, to batter at the
+door and clamour to be let out--that one could have done if one had had
+a lantern, or even a full matchbox. But in the dark, not knowing the
+turnings, to feel one's way among these things that were so like life
+and yet were not alive--to touch, perhaps, these faces that were not
+dead, and yet felt like death. His heart beat heavily in his throat at
+the thought.
+
+No, he must sit still till morning. He had been hypnotised into this
+state, he told himself, by Edward, no doubt; it was not natural to him.
+
+Then suddenly the silence was shattered. In the dark something moved.
+And, after those sounds that the silence teemed with, the noise seemed
+to him thunder-loud. Yet it was only a very, very little sound, just the
+rustling of drapery, as though something had turned in its sleep. And
+there was a sigh--not far off.
+
+Vincent's muscles and tendons tightened like fine-drawn wire. He
+listened. There was nothing more: only the silence, the thick silence.
+
+The sound had seemed to come from a part of the vault where, long ago,
+when there was light, he had seen a grave being dug for the body of a
+young girl martyr.
+
+"I will get up and go out," said Vincent. "I have three matches. I am
+off my head. I shall really be nervous presently if I don't look out."
+
+He got up and struck a match, refused his eyes the sight of the corpse
+whose waxen face he had felt in the blackness, and made his way through
+the crowd of figures. By the match's flicker they seemed to make way for
+him, to turn their heads to look after him. The match lasted till he got
+to a turn of the rock-hewn passage. His next match showed him the burial
+scene: the little, thin body of the martyr, palm in hand, lying on the
+rock floor in patient waiting, the grave-digger, the mourners. Some
+standing, some kneeling, one crouched on the ground.
+
+This was where that sound had come from, that rustle, that sigh. He had
+thought he was going away from it: instead, he had come straight to the
+spot where, if anywhere, his nerves might be expected to play him false.
+
+"Bah!" he said, and he said it aloud, "the silly things are only wax.
+Who's afraid?" His voice sounded loud in the silence that lives with the
+wax people. "They're only wax," he said again, and touched with his
+foot, contemptuously, the crouching figure in the mantle.
+
+And, as he touched it, it raised its head and looked vacantly at him,
+and its eyes were mobile and alive. He staggered back against another
+figure, and dropped the match. In the new darkness he heard the
+crouching figure move towards him. Then the darkness fitted in round him
+very closely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What was it exactly that sent poor Vincent mad: you've never told me?"
+Rose asked the question. She and Edward were looking out over the pines
+and tamarisks, across the blue Mediterranean. They were very happy,
+because it was their honeymoon.
+
+He told her about the Musee Grevin and the wager, but he did not state
+the terms of it.
+
+"But why did he think you would be afraid?"
+
+He told her why.
+
+"And then what happened?"
+
+"Why, I suppose he thought there was no time like the present--for his
+five pounds, you know--and he hid among the wax-works. And I missed my
+train, and _I_ thought there was no time like the present. In fact,
+dear, I thought if I waited I should have time to make certain of
+funking it, so I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and
+sat down right in one of the wax-work groups--they couldn't see me from
+the passage where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply
+went to sleep; and I woke up--and there was a light, and I heard some
+one say: 'They're only wax,' and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of
+the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one
+of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was
+trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I'd got near me, he began to
+scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one
+in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They
+have to put his food beside him while he's asleep. It's horrible. I
+can't help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow."
+
+"Of course it's not," said Rose. "Poor Vincent! Do you know I never
+_really_ liked him." There was a pause. Then she said: "But how was it
+_you_ weren't frightened?"
+
+"I was," he said, "horribly frightened. I--I--it sounds idiotic, but I
+thought I should go mad at first--I did really: and yet I _had_ to go
+through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the
+Catacombs, the people who died for--for things, don't you know, died in
+such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm--and believing it was
+all all right. And I thought about what they'd gone through. It sounds
+awful rot I know, dear--but I expect I was sleepy. Those wax people,
+they sort of seemed as if they were alive, and were telling me there
+wasn't anything to be frightened about. I felt as if I were one of them,
+and they were all my friends, and they'd wake me if anything went wrong,
+so I just went to sleep."
+
+"I think I understand," she said. But she didn't.
+
+"And the odd thing is," he went on, "I've never been afraid of the dark
+since. Perhaps his calling me a coward had something to do with it."
+
+"I don't think so," said she. And she was right. But she would never
+have understood how, nor why.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED
+
+
+"There he goes--isn't he simply detestable!" She spoke suddenly, after a
+silence longer than was usual to her; she was tired, and her voice was a
+note or two above its habitual key. She blushed, a deep pink blush of
+intense annoyance, as the young man passed down the long platform among
+the crowd of city men and typewriting girls, patiently waiting for the
+belated train to allow them to go home from work.
+
+"Oh, do you think he heard? Oh, Molly--I believe he did!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said Molly briskly, "of course he didn't. And I must say I
+don't think he's so bad. If he didn't look so sulky he wouldn't be
+_half_ bad, really. If his eyebrows weren't tied up into knots, I
+believe he'd look quite too frightfully sweet for anything."
+
+"He's exactly like that Polish model we had last week. Oh, Molly, he's
+coming back again."
+
+Again he passed the two girls. His expression was certainly not amiable.
+
+"How long have you known him?" Molly asked.
+
+"I _don't_ know him. I tell you I only see him on the platform at Mill
+Vale. He and I seem to be the only people--the only decent
+people--who've found out the new station. He goes up by the 9.1 every
+day, and so do I. And the train's always late, so we have the platform
+and the booking office to ourselves. And there we sit, or stand, or
+walk, morning after morning like two stuck pigs in a trough of silence."
+
+"Don't jumble your metaphors, though you very nearly carried it off with
+the trough, I own. Stuck pigs don't walk--in troughs, or anywhere else."
+
+"Well, you know what I mean----"
+
+"But what do you want the wretched man to do? He can't speak to you: it
+wouldn't be proper----"
+
+"Proper--why not? We're human beings, not wild beasts. At least, I'm a
+human being."
+
+"And he's a beast--I see."
+
+"I wish I were a man," said Nina. "There he is again. His nose goes up
+another half inch every time he passes me. What's he got to be so
+superior about? If I were a man I'd certainly pass the time of day with
+a fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend from ten to forty minutes
+with it six days out of the seven."
+
+"I expect he's afraid you'd want to marry him. My brother Cecil says men
+are always horribly frightened about that."
+
+"Your brother Cecil!" said Nina scornfully. "Yes; that's just the sort
+of thing anybody's brother Cecil _would_ say. He simply looks down on me
+because I go third. He only goes second himself, too. Here's the
+train----"
+
+The two Art students climbed into their third-class carriage, and their
+talk, leaving Nina's fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling brook
+about the feet of great rocks, busied itself with the old Italian
+Masters, painting as a mission, and the aims of Art--presently running
+through flatter country and lapping round perspective, foreshortening,
+tones, values high lights and the preposterous lisp of the anatomy
+lecturer.
+
+Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to
+meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of
+the platform.
+
+"And we haven't so much as a rib of an umbrella between us," sighed
+Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the "best" hat which
+signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. "You're right: that
+man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of
+us. Oh, it's too bad! He's putting it down--he's running. He runs rather
+well. He's exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room."
+
+"Only his manners have not that repose that stamps the cast. Come
+on--don't stand staring after him like that. We'd better run, too."
+
+"He'll think we're running after him. Oh, bother----"
+
+A moment of indecision, and Nina had turned her skirt over her head, and
+the two ran home to the little rooms where Nina lived--in the house of
+an old servant. Nina had no world of relations--she was alone. In the
+world of Art she had many friends, and in the world of Art she meant to
+make her mark. For the present she was content to make the tea, and then
+to set feet on the fender for a cosy evening.
+
+"Did you see him coming out of church?" Nina asked next day. "He looked
+sulkier than ever."
+
+"I can't think why you bother about him," said the other girl. "He's not
+really interesting. What do you call him?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Why, everything has a name, even a pudding. _I_ made a name for him at
+once. It is 'the stranger who might have been observed----'"
+
+They laughed. After the early dinner they went for a walk. None of your
+strolls, but a good steady eight miles. Coming home, they met the
+stranger: and then they talked about him again. For, fair reader, I
+cannot conceal from you that there are many girls who do think and talk
+about young men, even when they have not been introduced to them. Not
+really nice girls like yourself, fair reader--but ordinary, commonplace
+girls who have not your delicate natures, and who really do sometimes
+experience a fleeting sensation of interest even in the people whose
+names they don't know.
+
+Next morning they saw him at the station. The 9.1 took the bit in its
+teeth, and instead of being, as usual, the 9.30 something, became merely
+the 9.23. So for some twenty odd minutes the stranger not only might
+have been, but was, observed by four bright and critical eyes. I don't
+mean that my girls stared, of course. Perhaps you do not know that there
+are ways of observing strangers other than by the stare direct. He
+looked sulkier than ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too, was far
+from staring, so far that the indignant Nina broke out in a distracted
+whisper: "There! you see! I'm not important enough for him even to
+perceive my existence. I'm always expecting him to walk on me. I wonder
+whether he'd apologise when he found I wasn't the station door-mat?"
+
+The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to himself in his second-class
+carriage when the train had started.
+
+"'Simply detestable!' But how one talks prose without knowing it, all
+along the line! How can I ever have come enough into her line of vision
+to be distinguished by an epithet! And why this one? Detestable!"
+
+The epithet, however distinguishing, seemed somehow to lack charm.
+
+At Cannon Street Station the stranger looked sulkier than Nina had ever
+seen him. She said so, adding: "Than I've ever seen him? Oh--I'm
+wandering. He looks sulkier than I've ever seen any one--sulkier than
+I've ever dreamed possible. Pig----"
+
+Through the week, painting at the school and black and white work in the
+evenings filled Nina's mind to the exclusion even of strangers who
+might, in more leisured moments, seem worthy of observation. She was
+aware of the sulky one on platforms, of course, but talking about him to
+Molly was more amusing somehow than merely thinking of him. When it came
+to thinking, the real, the earnest things of life--the Sketch Club, the
+chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize, the intricate hideousness of
+bones and muscles--took the field and kept it, against strangers and
+acquaintances alike.
+
+Saturday, turning this week's scribbled page to the fair, clear page of
+next week, brought the stranger back to her thoughts, and to eyes now
+not obscured by close realities.
+
+He passed her on the platform, with a dozen bunches of violets in his
+hands.
+
+Outside, on the railway bridge, the red and green lamps glowed dully
+through deep floods of yellow fog. The platform was crowded, the train
+late. When at last it steamed slowly in, the crowd surged towards it.
+The third-class carriages were filled in the moment. Nina hurried along
+the platform peering into the second-class carriages. Full also.
+
+Then the guard opened the way for her into the blue-cloth Paradise of a
+first-class carriage; and, just as the train gave the shudder of disgust
+which heralds its shame-faced reluctant departure, the door opened
+again, and the guard pushed in another traveller--the "stranger who
+might----" of course. The door banged, the train moved off with an air
+of brisk determination. A hundred yards from the platform it stopped
+dead.
+
+There were no other travellers in that carriage. When the train had
+stood still for ten minutes or so, the stranger got up and put his head
+out of the window. At that instant the train decided to move again. It
+did it suddenly, and, exhausted by the effort, stopped after half a
+dozen yards' progress with so powerful a turn of the brake that the
+stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and his elbow nearly knocked
+her hat off.
+
+He raised his own apologetically--but he did not speak even then.
+
+"The wretch!" said Nina hotly; "he might at least have begged my
+pardon."
+
+The stranger sat down again, and began to read the _Spectator_. Nina had
+no papers. The train moved on an inch or two, and the reddening yellow
+of the fog seemed like a Charity blanket pressed against each window.
+Three of the bunches of violets shook and vibrated and slipped, the
+train moved again and they fell on the floor of the carriage. Nina
+watched their trembling in an agony of irritation induced by the fog,
+the delay, and the persistent silence of her companion. When the flowers
+fell, she spoke.
+
+"You've dropped your flowers," she said. Again a bow, a silent bow, and
+the flowers were picked up.
+
+"Oh, I'm desperate!" Nina said inwardly. "He must be mad--or dumb--or
+have a vow of silence--I wonder which?"
+
+The train had not yet reached the next station, though it had left the
+last nearly an hour before.
+
+"Which is it? Mad, dumb, or a monk? I _will_ find out. Well, it's his
+own fault; he shouldn't be so aggravating. I'm going to speak to him.
+I've made up my mind."
+
+In the interval between decision and action the train in a sudden brief
+access of nervous energy got itself through a station, and paused a
+furlong down the line exhausted by the effort.
+
+The stranger had put down his _Spectator_ and was gazing gloomily out at
+the fog.
+
+Nina drew a deep breath, and said--at least she nearly said: "What a
+dreadful fog!"
+
+But she stopped. That seemed a dull beginning. If she said that he would
+think she was commonplace, and she had that sustaining inward
+consciousness, mercifully vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being
+really rather nice, and not commonplace at all. But what should she say?
+If she said anything about the colour of the fog and Turner or Whistler,
+it might be telling, but it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began
+about books--the _Spectator_ suggested this--she would stand as a prig
+confessed. If she spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor
+soon exposed. If----But Nina took out her watch and resolved: "When the
+little hand gets to the quarter I _will_ speak. Whatever I say, I'll
+say something."
+
+And when the big hand did get to the quarter Nina did speak.
+
+"Why shouldn't we talk?" she said.
+
+He looked at her; and he seemed to be struggling silently with some
+emotion too deep for words.
+
+"It's so silly to sit here like mutes," Nina went on hurriedly--a little
+frightened, now she had begun, but more than a little determined not to
+be frightened. "If we were at a dance we shouldn't know any more of each
+other than we do now--and you'd have to talk then. Why shouldn't we
+now?"
+
+Then the stranger spoke, and at the first sentence Nina understood
+exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk.
+Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn't dare to
+pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But
+in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took
+exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between
+London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the
+stranger talked the whole way.
+
+He walked with her to the door of her lodging, and she offered him her
+hand without that moment of hesitation which would have been natural to
+any heroine, because she had debated the question of that handshake all
+the way from the station, and made up her mind just as they reached the
+church, a stone's throw from her home. When the door closed on her he
+went slowly back to the churchyard to lay his violets on a grave. Nina
+saw them there next day when she came out of church. She saw him too,
+and gave him a bow and a very small smile, and turned away quickly. The
+bow meant: "You see I'm not going to speak to you. You mustn't think I
+want to be always talking to you." The smile meant: "But you mustn't
+think I'm cross. I'm not--only----"
+
+In the hot, stuffy "life-room" at the Slade next day Molly teased with
+ill-judged bread-crumbs an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and chattered
+softly to Nina, who in the Saturday solitude had drawn her easel behind
+her friend's "donkey." "It's all very well here when you first come in,
+but when once you _are_ warm, oh dear, how warm you are! Why do models
+want such boiling rooms? Why can't they be soaked in alum or myrrh or
+something to harden their silly skins so that they won't mind a breath
+of decent air? And I believe the model's deformed--she certainly is from
+where I am. Oh, look at my arm! I ask you a little--look at the beastly
+thing. Foreshortened like this it looks like a fillet of veal with a
+pound of sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my own and only
+Nina--save the sinking ship!"
+
+"It ought to go more like _that_," Nina said with indicative brush, "and
+don't keep on rubbing out so fiercely. You'll get paralysed with
+bread--it's a disease, you know. I heard Tonks telling you so only the
+other day----"
+
+"It's rather a good phrase: I wonder where he got it? He was rather nice
+that day," said Molly. "Oh, this arm! It's no good--I believe the
+model's moved--I tell you I _must_." More bread. Nina re-absorbed in her
+canvas. "Yours is coming well. What's the matter with you to-day? You're
+very mousy. Has the 'stranger who might' been scowling more than usual?
+Or have you got a headache? I'm sure this atmosphere's enough to make
+you. Did you see him this morning? Have you fainted at his feet yet?
+Has he relented in the matter of umbrellas? I'm sure he can't have
+passed the whole week without some act of grumpiness."
+
+Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut eyes at the model's
+beautiful form and stupid face.
+
+"I went down in the same carriage with him on Thursday," she said
+slowly.
+
+"You did? Did he rush into the third class, where angels like himself
+ought to fear to tread?"
+
+"There was a fog. Thirds all full, and seconds too. The guard bundled us
+both in, and the train started--and it took three or four hours to get
+down."
+
+"Any one else in the carriage?"
+
+"Not so much as a mouse."
+
+"What _did_ you do?"
+
+"Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get
+from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for
+about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and
+took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a
+word. He didn't even say he thought I was the door-mat. And then some
+cabbages of his fell off the seat."
+
+"Sure they weren't thistles?"
+
+"Vegetables of some sort. And I said: 'You've dropped your----whatever
+they were.' And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I'm-
+sure-I-don't-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave
+that bread alone."
+
+Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as
+though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and
+sparrows.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"Well?" said Nina.
+
+"Why ever didn't you ask him to put the window up, or down, or
+something? I would have--just to hear if he has a voice."
+
+"It wouldn't have been any good. He'd just have bowed again, and I'd had
+enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we
+were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our
+tongues out, and why on earth shouldn't we talk?"
+
+"You never did!"
+
+"Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said----"
+
+A long pause.
+
+"What?"
+
+"He told me why he never spoke to strangers."
+
+"What a slap in the face! You poor----"
+
+"Oh, he didn't say it like _that_, you silly idiot. And it was quite a
+good reason."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Tell me exactly what he said."
+
+"He said, 'I--I--I----' At any rate, I'm satisfied, and I rather wish we
+hadn't called him pigs and beasts, and things like that."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"Aren't you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well--you leave it to
+my guessing? Of course it's quite evident he's hopelessly in love with
+you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his passion. But,
+encouraged by your advances----"
+
+"Molly, go on with that arm, and don't be a vulgar little donkey."
+
+Molly obeyed. Presently: "Cross-patch," she said.
+
+"I'm not," said Nina, "but I want to work, and I like you best when
+you're not vulgar."
+
+"You're very rude."
+
+"No: only candid."
+
+Molly's wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five
+minutes. Then: "Did you talk to him much?"
+
+"Heaps."
+
+"All the way down?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Is he nice?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Is he clever?"
+
+"I want to work."
+
+"Well, what I want to know is, and then I'll let you alone--what did you
+talk about? Tell me that, and I won't ask another question."
+
+"We talked," said Nina deliberately, taking a clean brush, "we talked
+about your brother Cecil. No, I shan't tell you what we said, or why we
+talked about him, or anything. You've had your one question, now shut
+up."
+
+"Nina," said Molly calmly, "if I didn't like you so much I should hate
+you."
+
+"That certainty about the other has always been the foundation of our
+mutual regard," said Nina calmly.
+
+Then they laughed, and began to work in earnest.
+
+The next time Molly mentioned the "stranger who might have been
+observed" Nina laughed, and said: "The subject is forbidden; it makes
+you vulgar."
+
+"And you disagreeable."
+
+"Then it's best to avoid it. Best for you and best for me."
+
+"But do you ever see him now?"
+
+"On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1, and I still have the use of
+my eyes."
+
+"Does he ever talk to you like he did that Thursday?"
+
+"No--never. And I'm not going to talk about him to you, so it's no good.
+Your turn to choose a subject. You won't? Then it becomes my turn. What
+a long winter this is! We seem to have taken years to get from November
+to February!"
+
+The time went more quickly between February and May. It was when the
+country was wearing its full dress of green and the hawthorn pearls were
+opening into baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was Nina's fortune to
+be put, by the zealous indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an
+express train for Beechwood--the wrong station--the wrong line.
+
+The "stranger who might have been observed," on this occasion was not
+observed, but observer. He saw and recognised the porter's error,
+hesitated a moment, and then leaped into a carriage just behind hers. So
+that when, after a swift journey made eventful by agonised recognition
+of the fleeting faces of various stations where she might have changed
+and caught her own train, Nina reached Beechwood, the stranger's hand
+was ready to open the door for her.
+
+"There's no train for ages," he said in tones deliberate, almost
+hesitating. "Shall we walk home? It's only six miles."
+
+"But you--aren't you going somewhere here?"
+
+"No--I--I--I saw the porter put you in--and I thought--at least--anyway
+you will walk, won't you?"
+
+They walked. When they reached Beechwood Common, he said: "Won't you
+take my arm?" And she took it. Her hands were ungloved; the other hand
+was full of silver may and bluebells. The sun shot level shafts of gold
+between the birch trees across the furze and heather.
+
+"How beautiful it is!" she said.
+
+"We've known each other three months," said he.
+
+"But I've seen you every day, and we've talked for hours and hours in
+those everlasting trains," she said, as if in excuse.
+
+"I've seen you every day for longer than that; the first time was on the
+3rd of October."
+
+"Fancy remembering that!"
+
+"I have a good memory."
+
+A silence.
+
+Nina broke it, to say again: "How pretty!" She knew she had said it
+before, or something like it, but she could think of nothing else--and
+she wanted to say something.
+
+He put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. She looked up at him
+quickly.
+
+"Well?" he said, stopping to look down into her eyes and tightening his
+clasp on her hand. "Are you sorry you came to Beechwood?"
+
+"No----"
+
+"Then be glad. My dear, I wish you could ever be as glad as I am."
+
+Then they walked on, still with his hand on hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nina and Molly sat on a locker swinging their feet and eating their
+lunch in the Slade corridor next day. Nina was humming softly under her
+breath.
+
+"What are you so happy for all of a sudden?" Molly asked. "Your
+sketch-club things are the worst I've ever seen, and the Professor was
+down on you like a hundred of bricks this morning."
+
+"I'm not happy," said Nina, turning away what seemed to Molly a new
+face.
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Nothing. Oh yes--by the way, I'm going to be married."
+
+"Not _really_?"
+
+"Check this unflattering display of incredulity--I am."
+
+"Really and truly? And you never told me a thing. I hate slyness and
+secretiveness. Nina, who is it? Do I know him?"
+
+Nina named a name.
+
+"Never even heard of him. But where did you meet him? It really is
+rather deceitful of you."
+
+"I always meant to tell you, only there was nothing to tell till
+yesterday except----"
+
+"Except everything," said Molly. "Well, tell me now."
+
+Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin
+pinafore.
+
+"Promise not to be horrid, and I will."
+
+"I won't--I promise I won't."
+
+"Then it's--it's him--the 'stranger who might'--you know. And I really
+should have told you, though there wasn't anything to tell, only--don't
+laugh."
+
+"I'm not. Can't you see I'm not? Only what?"
+
+"Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, 'Why shouldn't
+we talk?' And he said, 'I--I--I--be--be--be--because I stammer so.' And
+he _did_. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours
+to get out those few words, and I didn't know where to look. And I felt
+such a brute because of the things we'd said about him, that I had no
+sense left; and I told him straight out how I'd wondered he never even
+said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the
+9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then
+I said I wasn't glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice
+about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of
+stammering, and he went to him at once: and he's almost all right now."
+
+"Good gracious!" said Molly. "Are you sure--but why didn't he get cured
+long ago?"
+
+"He had a mother: she stammered frightfully--after the shock of his
+father's death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her.
+And--anyway he didn't. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother's
+feelings, or something. I don't quite understand. And he said it didn't
+seem to matter when she was dead. And he's an artist. He sells his
+pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea."
+
+"It all sounds a little thin; but if you're pleased, I'm sure I am."
+
+"I am," said Nina.
+
+"But what did he say when he asked you?"
+
+"He didn't ask me," said Nina.
+
+"But surely he said he'd loved you since the first moment he saw you?"
+
+Nina had to admit it.
+
+"Then you see I wasn't such a vulgar little donkey after all."
+
+"Yes, you were. You hadn't any business even to _think_ such things,
+much less say them. Why, even _I_ didn't dare to think it for--oh--for
+ever so long. But I'll forgive it--and if it's good it shall be a pretty
+little bridesmaid, it shall."
+
+"When is it to be?" asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder.
+
+"Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we're only wasting time by waiting.
+You see we're both alone."
+
+But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend's transfigured face,
+perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they.
+
+And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine
+times at the Students' Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her
+dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation.
+
+Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and
+followed slowly.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RACK AND THUMBSCREW
+
+
+Her eyelids were red and swollen, her brown hair, flattened out of its
+pretty curves, clung closely to her head. Ink stained her hands, and
+there was even a bluish smear of it on her wrist. A tray with tea-things
+stood among the litter of manuscript on her table. The tea-pot had only
+cold tea-leaves in it; the bread and butter was untouched.
+
+She put down the pen, and went to the window. The rose-tint of the
+sunset was reflected on the bank of mist and smoke beyond the river.
+Above, where the sky was pale and clear, a star or two twinkled
+contentedly.
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+Already the beautiful garments of the evening mist, with veiled lights
+in the folds of it, was embroidered sparsely with the early litten lamps
+of impatient workers, and as she gazed, the embroidery was enriched by
+more and more yellow and white and orange--the string of jewels along
+the embankment, the face of the church clock.
+
+She turned from the window to the room, and lighted her own lamp, for
+the room was now deeply dusk. It was a large, low, pleasant room. It had
+always seemed pleasant to her through the five years in which she had
+worked, and played, and laughed, and cried there. Now she wondered why
+she had not always hated it.
+
+The stairs creaked. The knocker spoke. She caught her head in both
+hands.
+
+"My God!" she said, "this is too much!"
+
+Yet she went to the door.
+
+"Oh--it's only you," she said, and, with no other greeting, walked back
+into the room, and sat down at the table.
+
+The newcomer was left to close the outer door, and to follow at her own
+pleasure. The newcomer was another girl, younger, prettier, smarter. She
+turned her head sidewise, like a little bird, and looked at her friend
+with very bright eyes. Then she looked round the room.
+
+"My dear Jane," she said, "whatever have you been doing to yourself?"
+
+"Nothing," said her dear Jane very sulkily.
+
+"Oh, if genius burns--your stairs are devilish--but if you'd rather I
+went away----"
+
+"No, don't go, Milly. I'm perfectly mad." She jumped up and waved her
+outstretched arms over the mass of papers on the table. "Look at all
+this--three days' work--rot--abject rot! I wish I was dead. I was
+wondering just now whether it would hurt much if one leaned too far out
+of the window--and---- No, I didn't do it--as you see."
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the other prosaically.
+
+"Nothing. That's just it. I'm perfectly well--at least I was--only now
+I'm all trembly with drink." She pointed to the tea-cups. "It's the
+chance of my life, and I can't take it. I can't work: my brain's like
+batter. And everything depends on my idiot brain--it has done for these
+five years. That's what's so awful. It all depends on me--and I'm going
+all to pieces."
+
+"I told you so!" rejoined the other. "You would stay in town all the
+summer and autumn, slaving away. I knew you'd break down, and now you've
+done it."
+
+"I've slaved for five years, and I've never broken down before."
+
+"Well, you have now. Go away at once. Take a holiday. You'll work like
+Shakespeare and Michelangelo after it."
+
+"But I _can't_--that's just it. It's those stories for the _Monthly
+Multitude_; I'm doing a series. I'm behind _now_: and if I don't get it
+done this week, they'll stop the series. It's what I've been working for
+all these years. It's the best chance I've ever had, and it's come
+_now_, when I can't do it. Your father's a doctor: isn't there any
+medicine you can take to make your head more like a head and less like a
+suet pudding?"
+
+"Look here," said Milly, "I really came in to ask you to come away with
+us at Whitsuntide; but you ought to go away _now_. Just go to our
+cottage at Lymchurch. There's a dear old girl in the village--Mrs
+Beale--she'll look after you. It's a glorious place for work. Father did
+reams down there. You'll do your stuff there right enough. This is only
+Monday. Go to-morrow."
+
+"Did he? I will. Oh yes, I will. I'll go to-night, if there's a train."
+
+"No, you don't, my dear lunatic. You are now going to wash your face
+and do your hair, and take me out to dinner--a real eighteenpenny dinner
+at Roches. I'll stand treat."
+
+It was after dinner, as the two girls waited for Milly's omnibus, that
+the word of the evening was spoken.
+
+"I do hope you'll have a good quiet time," Milly said; "and it really is
+a good place for work. Poor Edgar did a lot of work there last year.
+There's a cabinet with a secret drawer that he said inspired him with
+mysterious tales, and---- There's my 'bus."
+
+"Why do you say _poor_ Edgar?" Jane asked, smiling lightly.
+
+"Oh, hadn't you heard? Awfully sad thing. He sailed from New York a
+fortnight ago. No news of the ship. His mother's in mourning. I saw her
+yesterday. Quite broken down. Good-bye. _Do_ take care of yourself, and
+get well and jolly."
+
+Jane stood long staring after the swaying bulk of the omnibus, then she
+drew a deep breath and went home.
+
+Edgar was dead. What a brute Milly was! But, of course, Edgar was
+nothing to Milly--nothing but a pleasant friend. How slowly people
+walked in the streets! Jane walked quickly--so quickly that more than
+one jostled foot-passenger stopped to stare after her.
+
+She had known that he was coming home--and when. She had not owned to
+herself that the constant intrusion of that thought, "He is here--in
+London," the wonder as to when and how she should see him again, had
+counted for very much in these last days of fierce effort and resented
+defeat.
+
+She got back to her rooms. She remembers letting herself in with her
+key. She remembers that some time during the night she destroyed all
+those futile beginnings of stories. Also, that she found herself saying
+over and over again, and very loud: "There are the boys--you know there
+are the boys." Because, when you have two little brothers to keep, you
+must not allow yourself to forget it.
+
+But for the rest she remembers little distinctly. Only she is sure that
+she did not cry, and that she did not sleep.
+
+In the morning she found her rooms very tidy and her box packed. She had
+put in the boys' portraits, because one must always remember the boys.
+
+She got a cab and she caught a train, and she reached the seaside
+cottage. Its little windows blinked firelit welcome to her, as she
+blundered almost blindly out of the station fly and up the narrow path
+edged with sea-shells.
+
+Milly had telegraphed. Mrs Beale was there, tremulous, kindly,
+effective; with armchairs wheeled to the April fire--cups of tea, timid,
+gentle solicitude.
+
+"My word, Miss, but you do look done up," said she. "The kettle's just
+on the boil, and I'll wet you a cup o' tea this instant minute, and I've
+a perfect picture of a chick a-roastin' ready for your bit o' dinner."
+
+Jane leaned back in the cushioned chair and looked round the quiet,
+pleasant little room. For the moment it seemed good to have a new place
+to be unhappy in.
+
+But afterwards, when Mrs Beale had gone and she was alone in the house,
+there was time to think--all the time there had ever been since the
+world began--all the time that there would ever be till the world ended.
+Of that night, too, Jane cannot remember everything; but she knows that
+she did not sleep, and that her eyes were dry: very dry and burning, as
+though they had been licked into place between their lids by a tongue
+of flame. It was a long night: a spacious night, with room in it for
+more memories of Edgar than she had known herself mistress of.
+
+Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at Oxford, superior to the point of
+the intolerable; Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent--always
+friend; Edgar going to America to lecture, and make the fortune that--he
+said--would make all things possible. He had said that on the last
+evening, when a lot of them--boys and girls, journalists, musicians, art
+students--had gone to see him off at Euston. He had said it at the
+instant of farewell, and had looked a question. Had she said "Yes"--or
+only thought it? She had often wondered that, even when her brain was
+clear.
+
+Then--she pushed away the next thought with both hands, and drove
+herself back to the day when the schoolboy next door whom she had
+admired and hated, saved her pet kitten from the butcher's dog--an
+heroic episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar's voice, the touch of
+his hand, the swing of his waltz-step--the way his eyes smiled before
+his mouth did. How bright his eyes were--and his hands were very strong.
+He was strong every way: he would fight for his life--even with the
+sea. Great, smooth, dark waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet
+room; she could hear the sound of them on the beach. Why had she come
+near the sea? It was the same sea that---- She pushed the waves away with
+both hands. The church clock struck two.
+
+"You mustn't go mad, you know," she told herself very gently and
+reasonably, "because of the boys."
+
+Her hands had got clenched somehow, her whole body was rigid. She
+relaxed the tense muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept up the
+hearth.
+
+The new flame her touch inspired flickered a red reflection on the face
+of the cabinet--the cabinet with the secret drawer that had "inspired
+Edgar with mysterious tales."
+
+Jane went to it, and patted it, and stroked it, and coaxed it to tell
+her its secret. But it would not.
+
+"If it would only inspire _me_," she said, "if I could only get an idea
+for the story, I could do it now--this minute. Lots of people work best
+at night. My brain's really quite clear again now, or else I shouldn't
+be able to remember all these silly little things. No, no," she cried to
+a memory of a young man kissing a glove, a little creeping memory that
+came to sting. She trampled on it.
+
+Next day Jane walked four miles to see a doctor and get a sleeping
+draught.
+
+"You see," she explained very earnestly, "I have some work to finish,
+and if I don't sleep I can't. And I must do it. I can't tell you how
+important it is."
+
+The doctor gave her something in a bottle when he had asked a few
+questions, and she went back to the cottage to go on bearing what was
+left of the interminable, intolerable day.
+
+That was the day when she set out the fair white writing paper, and the
+rosy blotting-paper, and the black ink and the black fountain pen, and
+sat and looked at them for hours and hours. She prayed for help--but no
+help came.
+
+"I'm probably praying to the wrong people," she said, when through the
+dusk the square of paper showed vague as a tombstone in twilit
+grass--"the wrong people--No, there are no tombstones in the sea--the
+wrong people. If St Anthony helps you to find things, and the other
+saints help you to be good, perhaps the dead people who used to write
+themselves are the ones to help one to write!"
+
+Jane is ashamed to be quite sure that she remembers praying to Dante and
+Shakespeare, and at last to Christina Rossetti, because she was a woman
+and loved her brothers.
+
+But no help came. The old woman fussed in and out with wood for the
+fire--candles--food. Very kindly, it appears, but Jane wished she
+wouldn't. Jane thinks she must have eaten some of the food, or the old
+woman would not have left her as she did.
+
+Jane took the draught, and went to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mrs Beale came into the sitting-room next morning, a neat pile of
+manuscript lay on the table, and when she took a cup of tea to Jane's
+bedside, Jane was sleeping so placidly that the old woman had not the
+heart to disturb her, and set the tea down on a chair by the pillow to
+turn white and cold.
+
+When Jane came into the sitting-room, she stood long looking at the
+manuscript. At last she picked it up, and, still standing, read it
+through. When she had finished, she stood a long time with it in her
+hand. At last she shrugged her shoulders and sat down. She wrote to
+Milly.
+
+     "Here is the story. I don't know how I've done it, but here it
+     is. Do read it--because I really am a little mad, and if it's
+     any good, send it in at once to the _Monthly Multitude_. I
+     slept all last night. I shall soon be well now. Everything is
+     so delightful, and the air is splendid. A thousand thanks for
+     sending me here. I am enjoying the rest and change
+     immensely.--Your grateful
+
+                                        "JANE."
+
+She read it through. Her smile at the last phrase was not pretty to see.
+
+When the long envelope was posted, Jane went down to the quiet shore and
+gazed out over the sunlit sands to the opal line of the far receding
+tide.
+
+The story was written. There was an end to the conflict of agonies, so
+now the fiercer agony had the field to itself.
+
+"I suppose I shall learn to bear it presently," she told herself. "I
+wish I had not forgotten how to cry. I am sure I ought to cry. But the
+story is done, anyway. I daresay I shall remember how to cry before the
+next story has to be done."
+
+There were two more nights and one whole day. The nights had islands of
+sleep in them--hot, misty islands in a river of slow, crawling, sluggish
+hours. The day was light and breezy and sunny, with a blue sky
+cloud-flecked. The day was worse than the nights, because in the day she
+remembered all the time who she was, and where.
+
+It was on the last day of the week. She was sitting rigid in the little
+porch, her eyes tracing again and again with conscious intentness the
+twisted pattern of the budding honeysuckle stalks. A rattle of wheels
+suddenly checked came to her, and she untwisted her stiff fingers and
+went down the path to meet Milly--a pale Milly, with red spots in her
+cheeks and fierce, frowning brows--a Milly who drew back from the
+offered kiss and spoke in tones that neither had heard before.
+
+"Come inside. I want to speak to you."
+
+The new disaster thus plainly heralded moved Jane not at all. There was
+no room in her soul for any more pain. In the little dining-room,
+conscientiously "quaint" with its spotted crockery dogs and corner
+cupboard shining with willow pattern tea-cups, Milly shut the door and
+turned on her friend.
+
+"Now," she said, "I came down to see you, because there are some things
+I couldn't write--even to you. You can go back to the station in the
+cab, I've told the man to wait. And I hope I shall never see your face
+again."
+
+"What do you mean?" Jane asked the question mechanically, and not at all
+because she did not know the answer.
+
+"You know what I mean," the other answered, still with white fury. "I've
+found you out. You thought you were safe, and Edgar was dead, and no one
+would know. But as it happens _I_ knew; and so shall everybody else."
+
+Jane moistened dry lips, and said: "Knew what?" and held on by the
+table.
+
+"You didn't think he'd told _me_ about it, did you?" Milly flashed--"but
+he did."
+
+"I think you must tell _me_ what you mean," Jane said, and shifted her
+hold from table to armchair.
+
+"Oh, certainly." Milly tossed her head, and Jane's fingers tightened on
+the chair-back. "Yes, I don't wonder you look ill--I suppose you were
+sorry when you'd done it. But it's no use being sorry; you should have
+thought of all that before."
+
+"Tell me," said Jane, low.
+
+"I'll tell you fast enough. You shall see I do know. Well, then, that
+story you sent me--you just copied it from a story of Edgar's that was
+in the old cabinet. He wrote it when he was here; and he said it wasn't
+good, and I said it was, and then he said he'd leave it in the secret
+drawer, and see how it looked when he came back. And you found it. And
+you thought you were very clever, I daresay, and that Edgar was dead,
+and no one would know. But I knew, and----"
+
+"Yes," Jane interrupted, "you said that before. So you think I found
+Edgar's manuscript? If I did it I must have done it in my sleep. I used
+to walk in my sleep when I was a child. You believe me, Milly, don't
+you?"
+
+"No," said Milly, "I don't."
+
+"Then I'll say nothing more," said Jane with bitter dignity. "I will go
+at once, and I will try to forgive your cruelty. _I_ would never have
+doubted _your_ word--never. I am very ill--look at me. I had a sleeping
+draught, and I suppose it upset me: such things have happened. You've
+known me eight or nine years: have you ever known me do a dishonourable
+thing, or tell a lie? The dishonour is in yourself, to believe such
+things of me."
+
+Jane had drawn herself up, and stood, tall and haggard, her dark eyes
+glowing in their deep sockets. The other woman was daunted. She
+hesitated, stammered half a word, and was silent.
+
+"Good-bye," said Jane; "and I hope to God no one will ever be such a
+brute to you as you have been to me." She turned, but before she reached
+the door Milly had caught her by the arm.
+
+"No, don't, don't!" she cried. "I _do_ believe you, I do! You poor
+darling! You must have done it in your sleep. Oh, forgive me, Jane dear.
+I'll never tell a soul, and Edgar----"
+
+"Ah," said Jane, turning mournful eyes on her, "Edgar would have
+believed in me."
+
+And at that Milly understood--in part, at least--and held out her arms.
+
+"Oh, you poor dear! and I never even guessed! Oh, forgive me!" and she
+cried over Jane and kissed her many times. "Oh, my dear!" she said, as
+Jane yielded herself to the arms and her face to the kisses, "I've got
+something to tell you. You must be brave."
+
+"No--no more," Jane said shrilly; "I can't bear any more. I don't want
+to know how it happened, or anything. He's dead--that's enough."
+
+"But----" Milly clung sobbing to her, sobbing with sympathy and
+agitation.
+
+Jane pushed her back, held her at arm's length and looked at her with
+eyes that were still dry.
+
+"You're a good little thing, after all," she said. "Yes--now I'll tell
+you. You were quite right. It was a lie--but half of it was true--the
+half I told you--but I wanted you to believe the other half too. I did
+walk in my sleep, and I must have opened that cabinet and taken Edgar's
+story out, because I found myself standing there with it in my hands.
+And he was dead, and---- Oh, Milly. I knew he was dead, of course, and
+yet he was there--I give you my word he was there, and I heard him say
+'Take it, take it, take it!' quite plainly, like I'm speaking to you
+now. And I took it; and I copied it out--it took me nearly all
+night--and then I sent it to you. And I'd never have told you the truth
+as long as you didn't believe me--never--never. But now you do believe
+me I won't lie to you. There! Let me go. I think I was mad then, and I
+know I am now. Tell every one. I don't care."
+
+But Milly threw her arms round her again. The love interest had
+overpowered the moral sense. What did the silly story, or the theft, or
+the lie matter--what were they, compared with the love-secret she had
+surprised?
+
+"My darling Jane," she said, holding her friend closely and still
+weeping lavishly, "don't worry about the story: I quite understand.
+Let's forget it. You've got quite enough trouble to bear without that.
+But there's one thing, it's just as well I found out before the story
+was published. Because Edgar isn't dead. His ship has been towed in:
+he's at home."
+
+Jane laughed.
+
+"Don't cry, dear," said Milly; "I'll help you to bear it. Only--oh dear,
+how awful it is for you!--he's going to be married."
+
+Jane laughed again; and then she thinks the great, green waves really
+did rise up all round the quaint dining-room--rise mountains high, and,
+falling, cover her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jane was ill so long that Milly had to tell Edgar about the story after
+all, and they sent it in, and it was published in Jane's name. So the
+little brothers were all right. And he wrote the next story for her too,
+and they corrected the proofs together.
+
+Jane has always thought it a pity that Milly had not troubled to ask the
+name of the girl whom Edgar intended to marry, because the name proved,
+on enquiry, to be Jane.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MILLIONAIRESS
+
+
+I
+
+It is a dismal thing to be in London in August. The streets are up for
+one thing, and your cab can never steer a straight course for the place
+you want to go to. And the trees are brown in the parks, and every one
+you know is away, so that there would be nowhere to go in your cab, even
+if you had the money to pay for it, and you could go there without
+extravagance.
+
+Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable breakfast-table in the
+rooms he shared with his friend, and cursed his luck. His friend was
+away by the sea, and he was here in the dirty and sordid blackness of
+his Temple chambers. But he had no money for a holiday; and when
+Dornington had begged him to accept a loan, he had sworn at Dornington,
+and Dornington had gone off not at all pleased. And now Dornington was
+by the sea, and he was here. The flies buzzed in the panes and round the
+sticky marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the open window. There was no
+work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce,
+an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients
+sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase--clients for Robinson on the
+second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third.
+Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o'clock. The young
+man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea,
+which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.
+
+"Suppose it is a client----" He broke off with a laugh. He had never
+been able to cure himself of that old hope that some day the feet of a
+client--a wealthy client--would pause at his door, but the feet had
+always gone by--as these would do. The steps did indeed pass his door,
+paused, came back, and--oh wonder! it was _his_ knocker that awoke the
+Temple echoes.
+
+He glanced at the table. It was hopeless. He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I daresay it's only a bill," he said, and went to see.
+
+The newcomer was impatient, for even as Guillemot opened the door, the
+knocker was in act to fall again.
+
+"Is Mr Guillemot---- Oh, Stephen, I should have known you anywhere!"
+
+A radiant vision in a white linen gown--a very smart tailor-made-looking
+linen gown--and a big white hat was standing in his doorway, shaking him
+warmly by the hand.
+
+"Won't you ask me in?" asked the vision, smiling in his bewildered face.
+
+He drew back mechanically, and closed the door after him as she went in.
+Then he followed her into the room that served him for office and
+living-room, and stood looking at her helplessly.
+
+"You don't know me a bit," she said; "it's a shame to tease you. I'll
+take off my hat and veil; you will know me then. It's these fine
+feathers!"
+
+And take them off she did--in front of the fly-spotted glass on the
+mantel-piece; then she turned a bright face on him, a pretty mobile
+face, crowned with bright brown hair. And still he stood abashed.
+
+"I never thought you would have forgotten the friend of childhood's
+hour," she began again. "I see I must tell you in cold blood."
+
+"Why, it's Rosamund!" he cried suddenly. "Do forgive me! I never, never
+dreamed---- My dear Rosamund, you aren't really changed a bit it's
+only--your hair being done up and----"
+
+"And the fine feathers," said she, holding out a fold of her dress.
+"They are very pretty feathers, aren't they?"
+
+"Very," said he. And then suddenly a silence of embarrassment fell
+between them.
+
+The girl broke it with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous.
+
+"How funny it all is!" she said. "I went to New York with my uncle when
+dear papa died--and then I went to Girton, and now poor uncle's dead,
+and----" Her eye fell on the tablecloth. "I'm going to clear away this
+horrid breakfast of yours," she said.
+
+"Oh, please!" he pleaded, taking the marmalade jar up in his helpless
+hands. She took the jar from him.
+
+"Yes, I am," she said firmly; "and you can just sit down and try to
+remember who I am."
+
+He obediently withdrew to the window-seat and watched her as she took
+away the ugly crockery and the uglier food to hide them in his little
+kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely
+childhood in a country rectory--the long, dull days with no playfellows;
+then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund
+Rainham--and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with
+the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were
+playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him--poor Stephen, he
+hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and
+Stephen's father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a
+way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy,
+Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him
+into his home to be Stephen's little brother and friend. Then the long
+happy time when the three children were always together: walking,
+boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of
+tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise
+and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was
+dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother's brother. Then
+the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered
+as a pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought to see Rosamund
+again--had certainly never longed very ardently to see her; at any rate,
+since the year of her going. And now--here she was, grown to womanhood
+and charm, clearing away his breakfast things! He could hear the tap
+running, and knew that she must be washing her hands at the sink, using
+the horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves embedded in it. Now she
+was drying her hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen door. No; she
+came in drying her pink fingers on her handkerchief.
+
+"What a horrid old charwoman you must have!" she said; "everything is
+six inches deep in dust--and all your crockery is smeary."
+
+"I am sorry it's not nicer," he said. "Oh, but it's good to see you
+again! What times we used to have! Do you remember when we burned your
+dolls on the 5th of November?"
+
+"I should think I did. And do you remember when I painted your new
+tool-chest and the handles of your saws and gimlets and things with pale
+green enamel? I thought you would be so pleased."
+
+She had taken her place, as she spoke, in the depths of the one
+comfortable chair, and he answered from his window-seat; and in a moment
+the two were launched on a flood of reminiscences, and the flight of
+time was not one of the things they remembered. The hour and the
+quarters sounded, and they talked on. But the insistence of noon, boomed
+by the Law Courts' clock, brought Miss Rainham to her feet.
+
+"Twelve!" she cried. "How time goes! And I've never told you what I came
+for. Look here. I'm frightfully rich; I only heard it last week. My
+uncle never seemed very well off. We lived very simply, and I used to do
+the washing-up and the dusting and things; and now he's died and left me
+all his money. I don't know where he kept it all. The people on the
+floor above here wrote me about it. I was going to see them, and I saw
+your name; and I simply couldn't pass it. Look here, Stephen--are you
+very busy?"
+
+"Not too busy to do anything you want. I'm glad you've had luck. What
+can I do for you?"
+
+"Will you really do anything I want? Promise."
+
+"Of course I promise." He looked at her and wondered if she knew how
+hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had
+been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had
+turned his head a little.
+
+"Good! You must be my solicitor."
+
+"But I can't. Jones----"
+
+"Bother Jones!" she said. "I shan't go near him. I won't be worried by
+Jones. What is the use of having a fortune--and it's a big fortune, I
+can tell you--if I mayn't even choose my own solicitor? Look here,
+Stephen--really--I have no relations and no friends in England--no man
+friends, I mean--and you won't charge me more than you ought, but you
+will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin--and you are Mortimer
+Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?"
+
+It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all
+their youth with them.
+
+"Oh, Dornington is all right. He'd be awfully sick if you called him
+Dora nowadays. He's got on a little--not much. He goes in for
+journalism. He's at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me
+generally."
+
+"Yes--I know; I saw his name on the door." And Stephen did not wonder
+till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.
+
+"Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now
+tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very
+name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are
+going to look after everything for me."
+
+He resisted--she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite
+in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as
+to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.
+
+"You must arrange everything," she said; "I won't be bothered. Now I
+must go. Jones is human, after all. He knew I should want money, and he
+sent me quite a lot. And I am going away for a holiday--just to see what
+it feels like to be rich."
+
+"You're not going about alone, I hope," said Stephen. And then, for the
+first time, he remembered that beautiful young ladies are not allowed to
+clear away tea-things in the Temple, without a chaperon--even for their
+solicitors.
+
+"No; Constance Grant is with me. You don't know her. I got to know her
+at Girton. She's a dear."
+
+"Look here," he said, awkwardly standing behind her as she pinned her
+hat and veil in front of his glass, "when you come back I'll come to see
+you. But you mustn't come here again; it's--it's not customary." She
+smiled at his reflection in the glass.
+
+"Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions! So absurd! Not going to see
+one's old friend _and_ one's _solicitor_! However, I won't come where
+I'm not wanted----"
+
+"You know----" he began reproachfully; but she interrupted.
+
+"Oh yes, it's all right. Now remember that all my affairs are in your
+hands, and when I come back you will have to tell me exactly what I am
+worth--between eight and fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say; but
+_that's_ nonsense, isn't it? Good-bye."
+
+And with a last switch of white skirts against the dirty wainscot, and a
+last wave of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down the staircase.
+
+Stephen drew a long breath. "It can't be fourteen hundred thousand," he
+said slowly; "but I wish to goodness it wasn't four-pence."
+
+
+II
+
+The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the
+sun--yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off,
+where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea,
+little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through
+the shallow water.
+
+On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village;
+her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold
+of the sand.
+
+Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a
+young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white,
+and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her
+accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.
+
+"It is the prettiest wear in the world," she had told Constance Grant;
+"and when you're poor, it's the most impossible. But now I can have a
+clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well."
+
+"I'm not sure about the conscience," Constance had answered with her
+demure smile. "Think of the millions of poor people."
+
+"Oh, bother!" Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily.
+"Thank Heaven, I've enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other
+people happy too. And the first step is that no one's to know I'm rich,
+so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday."
+
+"I loathe play-acting," Constance had said, but she had submitted, and
+now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the
+seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.
+
+"And so your holiday's over in three days," she was saying to the young
+man beside her; "it's been a good time, hasn't it?"
+
+He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at
+a certain point the heap collapsed.
+
+"What are you thinking of? Poems again?"
+
+"I had a verse running in my head," he said apologetically; "it has
+nothing to do with anything."
+
+"Write it down at once," she said imperiously, and he obediently
+scribbled in his notebook, while she took up the work of building the
+stone heap--it grew higher under her light fingers.
+
+"Read it!" she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he
+read:
+
+    "Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
+      Long leaning wings across the sea and land;
+    The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight
+      The treasure-house of their deserted sand;
+    And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
+    Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.
+
+    Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer
+      Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet,
+    White rippled pools where late deep waters were,
+      And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,
+    And the grey wind in sole supremacy
+    O'er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea."
+
+"Opal and amber cold," she repeated; "it's not like that now. It's
+sapphire and gold and diamonds."
+
+"Yes," he said; "but that was how it was last week----"
+
+"Before I came----"
+
+"Yes, before you came;" his tone put a new meaning into her words.
+
+"I'm glad I brought good weather," she said cheerfully, and the little
+stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.
+
+"You brought the light of the world," he said, and caught her hand and
+held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall
+gave them good-day. "What made you come to Lymchurch?" he said
+presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked
+down at her hand and his.
+
+"I knew you were here," she said. His eyes met hers. "I always meant to
+see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of
+you."
+
+"You have not changed," he said; "your face has not changed, only you
+are older, and----"
+
+"I'm twenty-two; you needn't reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a
+month."
+
+He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.
+
+"Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, looking out to sea, "that you
+and I were made for each other?"
+
+"No; never."
+
+He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.
+
+"Ah--no--don't look like that, dear; it never occurred to me--I think I
+must have always known it somehow, only----"
+
+"Only what?--do you really?--only what?" A silence. Then, "Only what?"
+he asked again.
+
+"Only I was so afraid it would never occur to _you_!"
+
+There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist--their
+faces were very near.
+
+"We shall be very, very poor, I'm afraid," he said presently.
+
+"I can go on teaching."
+
+"No"--his voice was decided--"my wife shan't work--at least not anywhere
+but in our home. You won't mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit,
+will you? I shall get on now I've something to work for. Oh, my dear,
+thank God I've enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We've
+nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up.
+All that's mine is thine, lassie."
+
+"And all that's mine--Oh! Stephen!"
+
+For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two
+yards from them.
+
+The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham's head was on Mr
+Dornington's shoulder. They sprang up.
+
+"Why, Stephen!" echoed Andrew, "this--this is good of you! You remember
+Rosamund? We have just found out that----" But Rosamund had turned, and
+was walking quickly away over the sand.
+
+Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: "You've made good
+use of your time, old man. I congratulate you." His tone was cold.
+
+"There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,"
+Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other's.
+
+"None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you.
+Whether it's fair to the girl is another question."
+
+In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was
+now Dornington's turn to fill and light.
+
+"Of course it's your own affair," said Guillemot, chafing at the
+silence, "but I think you might have given the heiress a chance.
+However, it's each for himself, I suppose, and----"
+
+"Heiress?"
+
+"Yes, the heiress--the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I've been
+looking into her affairs: it _is_ just about a million."
+
+"Rather cheap chaff, isn't it?"
+
+"It's a very lucky thing for you," said Stephen savagely. "Perhaps I
+ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington--I see we look
+at the thing differently--but I must say, I shouldn't have cared to grab
+at such luck myself."
+
+Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at
+his friend.
+
+"I see," he said slowly. "And her fortune is really so much? I didn't
+think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it's no good
+making a row about it; I don't want to quarrel with my best friend. Go
+along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to
+Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she'll show you where I live.
+I'm going for a bit of a walk."
+
+Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund's beckoning hand at
+the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading
+to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew
+Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone
+bag in his hands.
+
+Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves;
+they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted
+herself to talk gaily.
+
+As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened
+straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive
+fashion of Lymchurch.
+
+"'E gave me a letter for you," said the child, and Rosamund took it,
+giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.
+
+"Excuse me," she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the
+hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses.
+She read the letter, frowned, read it again. "Constance, you might get
+the coffee."
+
+Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.
+
+"This is _your_ doing," she said with a concentrated fury that brought
+him to his feet facing her. "Why did you come and meddle! You've told
+him I was rich--the very thing I didn't mean him to know till--till he
+couldn't help himself. You've spoilt everything! And now he's gone--and
+he'll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day.
+You will, if there's any justice in the world!"
+
+He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his
+voice was equable.
+
+"I am extremely sorry," he said, "but after all, there's very little
+harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy,
+and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you've
+succeeded. He evidently 'loves you for yourself alone.' Write and tell
+him to come back: he'll come."
+
+"How little you know him," she said, "after all these years! Even I know
+him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly
+I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could
+make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don't mind, it's true. And I
+had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again!
+I will never speak to you again! No, I don't mean that----" She hid her
+face in her hands.
+
+"Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn't know, I couldn't know. I will
+bring him back to you--I swear it! Only trust me."
+
+"You can't," she said; "it's all over."
+
+"Let me tell you something. If you hadn't had this money--but if you
+hadn't had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought
+of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don't
+tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in
+the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh,
+forgive me!"
+
+"It's no good," she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance
+Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking
+out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked.
+
+"I've made a fool of myself," he said, forgetting, as he looked at her
+kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.
+
+"Could I do anything?"
+
+"You're her friend," he said. "Miss Grant, I'm going down to the sea, if
+you could come down with me and let me talk--but I've no right to bother
+you."
+
+"I'll come," said Constance. "I'll come by-and-by when I've cleared
+lunch away. It's no bother. As you say, I'm her friend."
+
+
+III
+
+Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she
+wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of
+the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to
+town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless,
+fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare
+to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a
+returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a
+letter in Stephen's hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.
+
+     "DEAR OLD CHAP," it ran, "I'm off to my father's. I can't bear
+     it. I can't face you or any one. I wish to God I'd never told
+     you anything about Rosamund Rainham's money. There isn't any
+     money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least
+     idea that it wasn't good, but I feel as if I ought to have
+     known. There's a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that's the
+     end of her million. It wasn't really my fault, of course. She
+     doesn't blame me.--Yours,
+
+                                        "STEPHEN GUILLEMOT."
+
+Then he opened her letters--read them all--in the order of the dates on
+the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man--read them
+with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them.
+First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride
+and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he
+not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in
+every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:
+
+     "DEAR ANDREW,--I want you to understand that all is over
+     between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right.
+     I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,
+
+                                        "ROSAMUND."
+
+He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen's
+letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to
+woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love:
+the girl with only a "beggarly hundred in consols" had her pride too.
+
+The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had
+brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He
+caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.
+
+A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand
+against it--it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against
+him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky
+black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully,
+though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post,
+and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled,
+his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp
+disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house
+under the sea-wall.
+
+Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things--her
+love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the
+question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took
+his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains
+were drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay
+open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat
+down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke.
+It was an awkward moment.
+
+Rosamund broke the silence.
+
+"It is very friendly of you to come and see me," she said. "It is very
+lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London."
+
+"She has gone back to her teaching?"
+
+"Yes; I wanted her to stay, but----"
+
+"I've heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is
+his fault."
+
+"Poor, dear boy!" She spoke musingly. "Of course it wasn't his fault. It
+all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to
+have done nothing with it except," she added with a laugh and a glance
+at her fur-trimmed dress, "to buy a most extravagant number of white
+dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash--the
+spare room's the first door at the top of the stairs--and I'll get you
+some supper."
+
+When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was
+setting out silver and glass.
+
+"Another relic of my brief prosperity," she said, touching the forks and
+spoons. "I'm glad I don't have to eat with nickel-plated things."
+
+She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched
+Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so
+fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been
+here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her--not as her
+guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick
+of his--one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora,
+and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.
+
+"Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?"
+
+"I forgive you from my heart," she said, "if I have anything to
+forgive."
+
+But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet
+he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to
+suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows
+in her dear face?
+
+"You have been unhappy," he said.
+
+"Well," she laughed, "I wasn't exactly pleased to lose my fortune."
+
+"Dear," he said desperately, "won't you try to forgive me? It seemed
+right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless----"
+
+"I'd enough for both--or thought I had," she said obstinately.
+
+"Ah, but don't you see----"
+
+"I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen
+than----"
+
+"Forgive me!" he pleaded; "take me back."
+
+"Oh no"--she tossed her bright head--"Stephen might think me mercenary;
+I couldn't bear _that_. You see you are richer than I am now. How much
+did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you
+to a penniless----"
+
+"Rosamund, do you mean it?"
+
+"I do mean it. And, besides----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't love you any more." The bright head drooped and turned away.
+
+"I have killed your love. I don't wonder. Forgive me for bothering you.
+Good-bye!"
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid, nothing desperate. Only work hard and try to
+forgive you."
+
+"Forgive _me_? You have nothing to forgive."
+
+"No, nothing--if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?"
+
+"Good-bye!" she said. "You are staying at the 'Ship'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't let's part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning.
+Let's part friends, then."
+
+In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in
+calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood
+in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to
+him through the crisp October air. Then the _ping_ of a bicycle bell
+sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen.
+
+They shook hands, and Stephen's eyebrows went up.
+
+"Is it all right?" he asked. "I knew you'd come here when I came home
+last night and found you'd had my letter."
+
+"No; it's not all right. She won't have me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Pride or revenge, or something. Don't let's talk about it."
+
+"All right. I want some breakfast; we left town by the 7.20. I'm
+starving."
+
+"Who are 'we'?"
+
+"Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund would be wanting a _chaperon_ or a
+bridesmaid, or something, so I brought her and her bicycle."
+
+"Always thoughtful," said Andrew, with something like a laugh.
+
+Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they met the two girls. Rosamund
+looked radiant. Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of last night?
+The wind that ruffled her brown hair had blown roses into her cheeks.
+
+"Do you forgive me?" whispered Stephen when they met.
+
+"That depends," she answered.
+
+They all walked on together, and presently Stephen and Constance fell
+behind.
+
+Then Rosamund spoke.
+
+"You really think I ought to crush my pride, and--and----"
+
+Hope laughed in Andrew's face--laughed and fled--for he looked in the
+face of Miss Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding in it.
+
+"Yes," he said almost sullenly.
+
+"That is as much as to say that you were wrong."
+
+"I--perhaps I was wrong. What does it matter?"
+
+"It matters greatly. Suppose I had my money now would you run away from
+me?"
+
+"I--I suppose I should act as I did before."
+
+"Then you don't care for me any more than you did?"
+
+"I love you a thousand times more," he cried, turning angry, haggard
+eyes to her. "Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would send me from you
+now but yourself----"
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+"Then stay," she said, "for it's a farce, and my money is as safe as
+houses."
+
+He scowled at her.
+
+"It's all a trick? You've played with me? Good-bye, and God forgive
+you!"
+
+He turned to go, but Constance, coming up from behind them, caught his
+arm.
+
+"Don't be such an idiot," she said. "_She_ had nothing to do with it.
+She thought her money was gone. You don't suppose _she_ would have
+played such a trick even to win _your_ valuable affections. You don't
+deserve your luck, Mr Dornington."
+
+Rosamund was looking at him with wet eyes, and her lips trembled.
+
+"Constance only told me this morning," she said. "She and Stephen
+planned it, to get you--to make me--to--to----"
+
+"And then she nearly spoilt it all by being as silly as you were.
+Whatever does it matter which of you has the money?"
+
+"Nothing," said Rosamund valiantly; "I see that plainly. Don't you,
+Andrew?"
+
+"I see nothing but you, Rosamund," he said, and they turned and walked
+along the sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.
+
+"That's all right," said Stephen; "but, by Jove, I've had enough of
+playing Providence and managing other people's affairs."
+
+"She was very sweet about it," said Constance, walking on.
+
+"Well she may be; she has her heart's desire. But it was not easy. What
+a blessing she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn't have done it but for
+you."
+
+"I am very glad to have been of some service," said Constance demurely.
+
+"I couldn't have got on without you. I can't get on without you ever
+again."
+
+"But that's nonsense," said Miss Grant.
+
+"You won't make me, Constance? There's no confounded money to come
+between _us_."
+
+He caught at the hand that swung by her side.
+
+"But you said you loved _her_, and that was why----"
+
+"Ah, but that was a thousand years ago. And it was nonsense, even then,
+Constance."
+
+And so two others went along the sea-wall in the October sunshine,
+happily, like children, hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE HERMIT OF "THE YEWS"
+
+
+Maurice Brent knew a great deal about the Greek anthology, and very
+little about women. No one but himself had any idea how much he knew of
+the one, and no one had less idea than himself how little he knew of the
+other. So that when, a stranger and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a
+smart house-party, he began to fall in love with Camilla, it seemed to
+be no one's business to tell him, what everybody else knew, that Camilla
+had contracted the habit of becoming engaged at least once a year. Of
+course this always happened in the country, because it was there that
+Camilla was most bored. No other eligible young man happened to be free
+at the moment: Camilla never engaged herself to ineligibles. The habit
+of years is not easily broken: Camilla became engaged to Maurice, and,
+for the six months of the engagement, he lived in Paradise. A fool's
+Paradise, if you like, but Paradise all the same.
+
+About Easter time Camilla told him, very nicely and kindly, that she had
+mistaken her own heart--she hoped he would not let it make him very
+unhappy. She would always wish him the best of good fortune, and
+doubtless he would find it in the affection of some other girl much
+nicer and more worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla. Camilla
+was right--no one could have been less worthy of him than she: but after
+all it was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla he felt that he
+wanted, not any other girl at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.
+
+He took it very quietly: sent her a note so cold and unconcerned that
+Camilla was quite upset, and cried most of the evening, and got up next
+day with swollen eyelids and a very bad temper. She was not so sure of
+her power as she had been--and the loss of such a certainty is never
+pleasant.
+
+He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished house, and found one--by
+letter, which seemed to be the very thing he wanted. "Handsomely and
+conveniently furnished five miles from a railway station--a well-built
+house standing in its own grounds of five acres--garden, orchard
+pasture, magnificent view." Being as unversed in the ways of house
+agents as in those of women, he took it on trust, paid a quarter's rent,
+and went down to take possession. He had instructed the local house
+agent to find a woman who would come in for a few hours daily to "do for
+him."
+
+"I'll have no silly women living in the house," said he.
+
+It was on an inclement June evening that the station fly set him down in
+front of his new house. The drive had been long and dreary, and seemed
+to Maurice more like seventy miles than seven. Now he let down the
+carriage window and thrust his head into the rain to see his new house.
+It was a stucco villa, with iron railings in the worst possible taste.
+It had an air at once new and worn out; no one seemed ever to have lived
+in it, and yet everything about it was broken and shabby. The door stuck
+a little at first with the damp, and when at last it opened and Maurice
+went over his house, he found it furnished mainly with oil-cloth and
+three-legged tables, and photographs in Oxford frames--like a seaside
+lodging-house. The house was clean, however, and the woman in
+attendance was clean, but the atmosphere of the place was that of a
+vault. He looked out through the streaming panes at the magnificent view
+so dwelt upon in the house agents' letters. The house stood almost at
+the edge of a disused chalk quarry; far below stretched a flat plain,
+dotted here and there with limekilns and smoky, tall chimneys. The five
+acres looked very bare and thistly, and the rain was dripping heavily
+from a shivering, half-dead cypress on to a draggled, long-haired grass
+plot. Mr Brent shivered too, and ordered a fire.
+
+When the woman had gone, he sat long by the fire in one of those cane
+and wood chairs that fold up--who wants a chair to fold up?--so common
+in lodging-houses. Unless you sit quite straight in these chairs you
+tumble out of them. He gazed at the fire, and thought, and dreamed. His
+dreams were, naturally, of Camilla; his thoughts were of his work.
+
+"I've taken the house for three years," said he. "Well, one place is as
+good as another to be wretched in. But one room I must furnish--for you
+can't work on oil-cloth."
+
+So next day he walked to Rochester and bought some old bureaux, and
+chairs, and book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some brass things,
+unpacked his books and settled down to the hermit's life to which he had
+vowed himself. The woman came every morning from her cottage a mile
+away, and left at noon. He got his meals himself--always chops, or
+steaks, or eggs--and presently began to grow accustomed to the place.
+When the sun shone it was not so bad. He could make no way against the
+thorns and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly grew into a very
+wilderness. But a wilderness is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers
+had survived long neglect, and here and there put out red, or white, or
+yellow buds. And he worked away at his book about Greek poetry.
+
+He almost believed that he was contented; he had never cared for people
+so much as for books, and now he saw no people, and his books began to
+crowd his shelves. No one passed by "The Yews"--so called, he imagined,
+in extravagant compliment to the decaying cypress--for it stood by a
+grass-grown by-way that had once connected two main roads, each a couple
+of miles distant. These were now joined by a better road down in the
+valley, and no one came past Maurice's window save the milk, the bread,
+the butcher, and the postman.
+
+Summer turned brown and dry and became autumn, autumn turned wet and
+chilly and grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven blew cold and
+damp through the cracks of the ill-built house.
+
+Maurice was glad when the spring came; he had taken the house for three
+years, and he was a careful man, and also, in his way, a determined. Yet
+it was good to look out once more on something green, and to see
+sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter now. In all these ten months
+nothing whatever had happened to him. He had never been beyond his five
+acres--and no one had been to see him. He had no relations, and friends
+soon forget; besides, after all, friends, unlike relations, cannot go
+where they are not invited.
+
+It was on the Saturday before Easter that the quarryside fell in.
+Maurice was working in his study when he heard a sudden crack and a
+slow, splitting sound, and then a long, loud, rumbling noise, like
+thunder, that echoed and re-echoed from the hills on each side. And,
+looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above
+the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the
+cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.
+
+"I suppose it's all safe enough here," he said, and went back to his
+manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he
+found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. "I wonder if any
+one was hurt?" he said; "the road runs just below, of course. I wonder
+whether there'll be any more of it--I wonder?" A wire jerked, the
+cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang
+to his feet. "Who on earth----" he said. "The house isn't safe after
+all, perhaps, and they've come to tell me."
+
+As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the
+comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a
+woman's hat.
+
+He opened the door--it stuck as usual--but he got it open. There stood a
+girl holding a bicycle.
+
+"Oh!" she said, without looking at him, "I'm so sorry to trouble you--my
+bicycle's run down--and I'm afraid it's a puncture, and could you let me
+have some water, to find the hole--and if I might sit down a minute."
+
+Her voice grew lower and lower.
+
+He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took
+two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs--there
+were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat
+pegs.
+
+He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her
+veil's white meshes.
+
+He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back
+against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.
+
+"I'm afraid you're ill," he said gently. But the girl made no answer.
+Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two
+steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a
+student of Greek could see that she had fainted.
+
+"Oh Lord!" said he.
+
+He got her hat and veil off--he never knew how, and he wondered
+afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and
+short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her
+head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and her forehead with
+vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap,
+at the foot of his staircase.
+
+Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not
+allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently
+and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his
+sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground--he had no sofa--and sat
+beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of the
+_Athenaeum_, and watching the pinched, pallid face for some sign of
+returning life. It came at last, in a flutter of the eyelids, a
+long-drawn, gasping breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky--brandy
+he esteemed as a mere adjunct of channel boats--lifted her head and held
+the glass to her lips. The blood had come back to her face in a rush of
+carnation; she drank--choked--drank--he laid her head down and her eyes
+opened. They were large, clear grey eyes--very bewildered-looking just
+now--but they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips transformed the
+face.
+
+"Good gracious," said he, "she's pretty! Pretty? she's beautiful!"
+
+She was. That such beauty should so easily have hidden itself behind a
+green-tinted mask, with sunken eyelid, seemed a miracle to the
+ingenuous bookworm.
+
+"You're better now," said he with feverish banality. "Give me your
+hands--so--now can--yes, that's right--here, this chair is the only
+comfortable one----"
+
+She sank into the chair, and waved away the more whisky which he eagerly
+proffered. He stood looking at her with respectful solicitude.
+
+After a few moments she stretched her arms like a sleepy child, yawned,
+and then suddenly broke into laughter. It had a strange sound. No one
+had laughed in that house since the wet night when Mr Brent took
+possession of it, and he had never been able to bring himself to believe
+that any one had ever laughed there before.
+
+Then he remembered having heard that women have hysterical fits as well
+as fainting fits, and he said eagerly: "Oh don't! It's all right--you
+were faint--the heat or something----"
+
+"Did I faint?" she asked with interest. "I never fainted before.
+But--oh--yes--I remember. It was rather horrible. The quarry tumbled
+down almost on me, and I just stopped short--in time--and I came round
+by this road because the other's stopped up, and I was so glad when I
+saw the house. Thank you so much; it must have been an awful bother. I
+think I had better start soon----"
+
+"No, you don't; you're not fit to ride alone yet," said he to himself.
+Aloud he said: "You said something about a puncture--when you are better
+I'll mend it. And, look here--have you had any lunch?"
+
+"No," said she.
+
+"Then--if you'll allow me." He left the room, and presently returned
+with the tray set for his own lunch; then he fetched from the larder
+everything he could lay hands on: half a cold chicken, some cold meat
+pudding, a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these confusedly on the
+table. "Now," he said, "come and try to eat."
+
+"It's very good of you to bother," she said, a little surprise in her
+tone, for she had expected "lunch" to be a set formal meal at which some
+discreet female relative would preside. "But aren't you--don't you--do
+you live alone, then?"
+
+"Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings. I'm sorry she's gone: she could
+have arranged a better lunch for you."
+
+"Better? why, it's lovely!" said she, accepting the situation with frank
+amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in
+its place.
+
+Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one
+serves a queen--but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite
+her. During lunch they talked.
+
+After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while;
+then it was past three o'clock.
+
+"You won't go yet," he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him
+a great stake. "Let me make you some tea--I can, I assure you--and let
+us see if the tyre holds up----"
+
+"Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness----"
+
+"Well, then," said he desperately, "take pity on a poor hermit! I give
+you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not
+in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my
+bedmaker."
+
+"But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?"
+
+"I thought I didn't, then."
+
+"Well--now you know better, why don't you come back and talk to people
+in the ordinary way?"
+
+This was the first and last sign she gave that the circumstances in
+which she found herself with him were anything but ordinary.
+
+"I have a book to finish," said he. "Would you like to have tea in the
+wilderness or in here?" He wisely took her consent for granted this
+time, and his wisdom was justified.
+
+They had tea in the garden. The wilderness blossomed like a rose, to
+Maurice's thinking. In his mind he was saying over and over again: "How
+bored I must have been all this time! How bored I must have been!"
+
+It seemed to him that his mind was opening, like a flower, and for the
+first time. He had never talked so well, and he knew it--all the seeds
+of thought, sown in those long, lonely hours, bore fruit now. She
+listened, she replied, she argued and debated.
+
+"Beautiful--and sensible," said Maurice to himself. "What a wonderful
+woman!" There was, besides, an alertness of mind, a quick brightness of
+manner that charmed him. Camilla had been languid and dreamy.
+
+Suddenly she rose to her feet.
+
+"I must go," she said, "but I have enjoyed myself so much. You are an
+ideal host: thank you a thousand times. Perhaps we shall meet again some
+day, if you return to the world. Do you know, we've been talking and
+wrangling for hours and hours and never even thought of wondering what
+each other's names are--I think we've paid each other a very magnificent
+compliment, don't you?"
+
+He smiled and said: "My name is Maurice Brent."
+
+"Mine is Diana Redmayne. If it sounds like somebody in the _Family
+Herald_, I can't help it." He had wheeled the bicycle into the road, and
+she had put on hat and gloves and stood ready to mount before she said:
+"If you come back to the world I shall almost certainly meet you. We
+seem to know the same people; I've heard your name many times."
+
+"From whom?" said he.
+
+"Among others," said she, with her foot on the pedal, "from my cousin
+Camilla. Good-bye."
+
+And he was left to stare down the road after the swift flying figure.
+
+Then he went back into the lonely little house, and about half-past
+twelve that night he realised that he had done no work that day, and
+that those hours which had not been spent talking to Diana Redmayne, had
+been spent in thinking about her.
+
+"It's not because she's pretty and clever," he said; "and it's not even
+because she's a woman. It's because she's the only intelligent human
+being I've spoken to for nearly a year."
+
+So day after day he went on thinking about her.
+
+It was three weeks later that the bell again creaked and jangled, and
+again through the spotted glass he saw a woman's hat. To his infinite
+disgust and surprise, his heart began to beat violently.
+
+"I grow nervous, living all alone," he said. "Confound this door! how it
+does stick--I must have it planed."
+
+He got the door opened, and found himself face to face with--Camilla.
+
+He stepped back, and bowed gravely.
+
+She looked more beautiful than ever--and he looked at her, and wondered
+how he could ever have thought her even passably pretty.
+
+"Won't you ask me in?" she said timidly.
+
+"No," said he, "I am all alone."
+
+"I know," she said. "I have only just heard you're living here all
+alone, and I came to say--Maurice--I'm sorry. I didn't know you cared so
+much, or----"
+
+"Don't," he said, stopping the confession as a good batsman stops a
+cricket ball. "Believe me, I've not made myself a hermit because of--all
+that. I had a book to write--that was all. And--and it's very kind of
+you to come and look me up, and I wish I could ask you to come in,
+but---- And it's nice of you to take an interest in an old friend--you
+said you would, didn't you, in the letter--and--I've taken the advice
+you gave me."
+
+"You mean you've fallen in love with some one else."
+
+"You remember what you said in your letter."
+
+"Some one nicer and worthier, I said," returned Camilla blankly, "but I
+never thought---- And is she?"
+
+"Of course she seems so to me," said he, smiling at her to express
+friendly feeling.
+
+"Then--good-bye--I wish you the best of good fortune."
+
+"You said that in your letter, too," said he. "Good-bye."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"I mustn't tell even you that, until I have told her," he smiled again.
+
+"Then good-bye," said Camilla shortly; "forgive me for troubling you so
+unnecessarily."
+
+He found himself standing by his door--and Camilla on her bicycle sped
+down the road, choking with tears of anger and mortification and deep
+disappointment. Because she knew now that she loved him as much as it
+was in her to love any one, and because she, who had humbled so many,
+had now at last humbled herself--and to no purpose.
+
+Maurice Brent left his door open and wandered down across his five
+acres, filled with amazement. Camilla herself had not been more deeply
+astonished at the words he had spoken than he had been. A moment before
+he had not even thought that he was in love, much less contemplated any
+confession of it: and now seemingly without his will he stood committed
+to this statement. Was it true, or had he only said it to defend himself
+against those advances of hers in which he merely saw a new trap? He had
+said it in defence--yes--but it was true, for all that; this was the
+wonderful part of it. And so he walked in the wilderness, lost in
+wonder; and as he walked he noted the bicycles that passed his
+door--along his unfrequented road, by ones and twos and threes--for this
+was a Saturday, and the lower road was still lying cold and hidden under
+its load of chalk, and none might pass that way. This road was hot and
+dusty, and folk went along it continually. He strolled to his ugly iron
+gate and looked over, idly. Perhaps, some day, she would come that way
+again--she would surely stop--especially if he were at the gate--and
+perhaps stay and talk a little. As if in mocking answer to the new-born
+thought came a flash of blue along the road; Diana Redmayne rode by at
+full speed--bowed coldly--and then at ten yards' distance turned and
+waved a white-gloved hand, with a charming smile. Maurice swore softly,
+and went indoors to think.
+
+His work went but slowly on that day--and in the days that followed. On
+the next Friday he went over to Rochester, and in the dusk of the
+evening he walked along the road, about a mile from "The Yews," and
+then, going slowly, he cast handfuls of something dark from his hand,
+and kicked the white dust over it as it lay.
+
+"I feel like the enemy sowing tares," said he.
+
+Then he went home, full of anxious anticipation. The next day was hot
+and bright. He took his armchair into the nightmare of a verandah, and
+sat there reading; only above the top of the book his eyes could follow
+the curve of the white road. This made it more difficult to follow the
+text. Presently the bicyclists began to go past, by ones and twos and
+threes; but a certain percentage was wheeling its machines--others
+stopped within sight to blow up their tyres. One man sat down under the
+hedge thirty yards away, and took his machine to pieces; presently he
+strolled up and asked for water. Brent gave it, in a tin basin,
+grudgingly, and without opening the gate.
+
+"I overdid it," he said, "a quarter of a pound would have been enough;
+yet I don't know--perhaps it's well to be on the safe side. Yet three
+pounds was perhaps excessive."
+
+Late in the afternoon a pink figure wheeling a bicycle came slowly down
+the road. He sat still, and tried to read. In a moment he should hear
+the click of the gate: then he would spring up and be very much
+astonished. But the gate did not click, and when next he raised his eyes
+the pink blouse had gone by, and was almost past the end of the five
+acres. Then he did spring up--and ran.
+
+"Miss Redmayne, can't I help you? What is it? Have you had a spill?" he
+said as he overtook her.
+
+"Puncture," said she laconically.
+
+"You're very unfortunate. Mayn't I help you to mend it?"
+
+"I'll mend it as soon as I get to a shady place."
+
+"Come into the wilderness. See--here's the side gate. I'll fetch some
+water in a moment."
+
+She looked at him doubtfully, and then consented. She refused tea, but
+she stayed and talked till long after the bicycle was mended.
+
+On the following Saturday he walked along the road, and back, and along,
+and again the place was alive with angry cyclists dealing, each after
+his fashion, with a punctured tyre. He came upon Miss Redmayne sitting
+by the ditch mending hers. That was the time when he sat on the roadside
+and told her all about himself--reserving only those points where his
+life had touched Camilla's.
+
+The week after he walked the road again, and this time he overtook Miss
+Redmayne, who was resolutely wheeling her bicycle back in the way by
+which she had come.
+
+"Let me wheel it for you," he said. "Whither bound?"
+
+"I'm going back to Rochester," she said. "I generally ride over to see
+my aunts at Felsenden on Saturdays, but I fear I must give it up, or go
+by train; this road isn't safe."
+
+"Not safe?" he said with an agitation which could not escape her notice.
+
+"Not safe," she repeated. "Mr Brent, there is a very malicious person in
+this part of the country--a perfectly dreadful person."
+
+"What do you mean?" he managed to ask.
+
+"These three Saturdays I have come along this road; each time I have had
+a puncture. And each time I have found embedded in my tyre the evidence
+of some one's malice. This is one piece of evidence." She held out her
+ungloved hand. On its pink palm lay a good sized tin-tack. "Once might
+be accident; twice a coincidence; three times is too much. The road's
+impossible."
+
+"Do you think some one did it on purpose?"
+
+"I know it," she said calmly.
+
+Then he grew desperate.
+
+"Try to forgive me," he said. "I was so lonely, and I wanted so
+much----"
+
+She turned wide eyes on him.
+
+"You!" she cried, and began to laugh.
+
+Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.
+
+"Then you didn't know it was me?" said the Greek student.
+
+"You!" she said again. "And has it amused you--to see all these poor
+people in difficulties, and to know that you've spoilt their poor little
+holiday for them--and three times, too."
+
+"I never thought about _them_," he said; "it was you I wanted to see.
+Try to forgive me; you don't know how much I wanted you." Something in
+his voice kept her silent. "And don't laugh," he went on. "I feel as if
+I wanted nothing in the world but you. Let me come to see you--let me
+try to make you care too."
+
+"You're talking nonsense," she said, for he stopped on a note that
+demanded an answer. "Why, you told Camilla----"
+
+"Yes--but you--but I meant _you_. I thought I cared about her once--but
+I never cared really with all my heart and soul for any one but you."
+
+She looked at him calmly and earnestly.
+
+"I'm going to forget all this," she said; "but I like you very much, and
+if you want to come and see me, you may. I will introduce you to my
+aunts at Felsenden as--as a friend of Camilla's. And I will be friends
+with you; but nothing else ever. Do you care to know my aunts?"
+
+Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes. One came to him now, and he
+said: "I care very much."
+
+"Then help me to mend my bicycle, and you can call there to-morrow. It's
+'The Grange'--you can't miss it. No, not another word of nonsense,
+please, or we can't possibly be friends."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He helped her to mend the bicycle, and they talked of the beauty of
+spring and of modern poetry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at "The Grange," Felsenden, that Maurice next saw Miss
+Redmayne--and it was from "The Grange," Felsenden, that, in September,
+he married her.
+
+"And why did you say you would never, never be anything but a friend?"
+he asked her on the day when that marriage was arranged. "Oh! you nearly
+made me believe you! Why did you say it?"
+
+"One must say something!" she answered. "Besides, you'd never have
+respected me if I'd said 'yes' at once."
+
+"Could you have said it? Did you like me then?"
+
+She looked at him, and her look was an answer. He stooped and gravely
+kissed her.
+
+"And you really cared, even then? I wish you had been braver," he said a
+little sadly.
+
+"Ah, but," she said, "I didn't know you then--you must try to forgive
+me, dear. Think how much there was at stake! Suppose I had lost you!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR
+
+
+Aunt Kate was the great comfort of Kitty's existence. Always kindly,
+helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish
+question too difficult for her tender heart--her delicate insight. How
+different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty's fate to live.
+Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she
+spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake
+and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the
+bluest Girtonian green with envy. She had read a great deal, too--the
+really solid works that are such a nuisance to get through, and that
+leave a mark on one's mind like the track of a steamroller. That was
+Aunt Eliza's doing. Kitty ought to have been grateful--but she wasn't.
+She didn't want to be improved with solid books. She wanted to write
+books herself. She did write little tales when her aunt was out on
+business, which was often, and she dreamed of the day when she should
+write beautiful books, poems, romances. These Aunt Eliza classed roughly
+as "stuff and nonsense"; and one day, when she found Kitty reading the
+_Girls' Very Own Friend_, she tore that harmless little weekly across
+and across and flung it into the fire. Then she faced Kitty with flushed
+face and angry eyes.
+
+"If I ever catch you bringing such rubbish into the house again,
+I'll--I'll stop your music lessons."
+
+This was a horrible threat. Kitty went twice a week to the Guildhall
+School of Music. She had no musical talent whatever, but the journey to
+London and back was her one glimpse of the world's tide that flowed
+outside the neat, gloomy, ordered house at Streatham. Therefore Kitty
+was careful that Aunt Eliza should not again "catch her bringing such
+rubbish into the house." But she went on reading the paper all the same,
+just as she went on writing her little stories. And presently she got
+one of her little stories typewritten, and sent it to the _Girls' Very
+Own Friend_. It was a silly little story--the heroine was _svelte_, I
+am sorry to say, and had red-gold hair and a soft, _trainante_
+voice--and the hero was a "frank-looking young Englishman, with a
+bronzed face and honest blue eyes." The plot was that with which I
+firmly believe every career of fiction begins--the girl who throws over
+her lover because he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out that it
+was not her lover, but his brother or cousin. We have all written this
+story in our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than many, but not
+nearly so badly as most of us.
+
+And the _Girls' Very Own Friend_ accepted the story and printed it, and
+in its columns notified to "George Thompson" that the price, a whole
+guinea, was lying idle at the office till he should send his address.
+For, of course, Kitty had taken a man's name for her pen-name, and
+almost equally, of course, had called herself "George." George Sand
+began it, and it is a fashion which young authors seem quite unable to
+keep themselves from following.
+
+Kitty longed to tell some one of her success--to ask admiration and
+advice; but Aunt Eliza was more severe and less approachable than usual
+that week. She was busy writing letters. She had always a sheaf of
+dull-looking letters to answer, so Kitty could only tell Mary in the
+kitchen under vows of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only said: "Well,
+to be sure, Miss, it's beautiful! I suppose you wrote the story down out
+of some book?"
+
+Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to apply to her for intellectual
+sympathy.
+
+"I will write to Aunt Kate," said she, "_she_ will understand. Oh, how I
+wish I could see her! She must be a dear, soft, pussy, cuddly sort of
+person. Why shouldn't I go and see her? I will."
+
+And on this desperate resolve she acted.
+
+Now I find it quite impossible any longer to conceal from the
+intelligent reader that the reason why Kitty had never seen Aunt Kate
+was that "Aunt Kate" was merely the screen which sheltered from a vulgar
+publicity the gifted person who wrote the "Answers to Correspondents"
+for the _Girls' Very Own Friend_.
+
+In fear and trembling, and a disguised handwriting; with a feigned name
+and a quickly-beating heart, Kitty, months before, had written to this
+mysterious and gracious being. In the following week's number had
+appeared these memorable lines:
+
+     "_Sweet Nancy._--So pleased, dear, with your little letter.
+     Write to me quite freely. I love to help my girls."
+
+So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly as any girl of eighteen
+ever writes: her hopes and fears, her household troubles, her literary
+ambitions. And in the columns of the _Girls' Very Own Friend_ Aunt Kate
+replied with all the tender grace and delightful warmth that
+characterised her utterances.
+
+The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred to Kitty as she was "putting
+on her things" to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw the plain
+"everyday" hat from her, and pulled her best hat from its tissue-paper
+nest in the black bandbox. She put on her best blouse--the
+cream-coloured one with the browny lace on it, and her best brown silk
+skirt. She recklessly added her best brown shoes and gloves, and the
+lace pussy-boa. (I don't know what the milliner's name for the thing is.
+It goes round the neck, and hangs its soft and fluffy ends down nearly
+to one's knees.) Then she looked at herself in the glass, gave a few
+last touches to her hair and veil, and nodded to herself.
+
+"You'll do, my dear," said Kitty.
+
+Aunt Eliza was providentially absent at Bath nursing a sick friend, and
+the black-bugled duenna, hastily imported from Tunbridge Wells, could
+not be expected to know which was Kitty's best frock, and which the
+gloves that ought only to have been worn at church.
+
+When Kitty's music lesson was over, she stood for a moment on the steps
+of the Guildhall School, looking down towards the river. Then she
+shrugged her pretty shoulders.
+
+"I don't care. I'm going to," she said, and turned resolutely towards
+Tudor Street. Kitty had been to a high school: therefore she was not
+obviously shy. She asked her way frankly and easily of carman, or clerk,
+or errand-boy; and though, at the door of the dingy office in a little
+court off Fleet Street, her heart beat thickly as she read the
+blue-enamelled words, _Girls' Very Own Friend_, her manner as she walked
+into the office betrayed no nervousness, and, indeed, struck the
+grinning idle office boy as that of "a bloomin' duchess."
+
+"I want to see----" she began; and then suddenly the awkwardness of her
+position struck her. She did not know Aunt Kate's surname. Abruptly to
+ask this grinning lout for "Aunt Kate" seemed absolutely indecorous. "I
+want to see the editor," she ended.
+
+She waited in the grimy office while the boy disappeared through an
+inner door, marked in dingy white letters with the magic words,
+"Editor--Private." A low buzz of voices came to her through the door.
+She looked at the pigeon-holes where heaps of back numbers of the
+_Girls' Very Own_ lay in a dusty retirement. She looked at the insurance
+company's tasteless almanack that hung all awry on the wall, and still
+the buzz went on. Then suddenly some one laughed inside, and the laugh
+did not please Kitty. The next moment the boy returned, grinning more
+repulsively than ever, and said: "Walk this way."
+
+She walked that way, past the boy; the door fell to behind her, and she
+found herself in a cloud of tobacco smoke, compressed into a small
+room--a very dusty, untidy room--in which stood three young men. Their
+faces were grave and serious, but Kate could not forget that one of
+them had laughed, and laughed _like that_. Her chin went up about a
+quarter of an inch further.
+
+"I am sorry to have disturbed you," she said severely. "I wanted to
+see--to see the lady who signs herself Aunt Kate."
+
+There was a moment of silence which seemed almost breathless. Two of the
+young men exchanged a glance, but though Kitty perceived it to be
+significant, she could not interpret its meaning. Then one of the three
+turned to gaze out of the window at the blackened glass roof of the
+printing office below. Kitty felt certain he was concealing a smile; and
+the second hurriedly arranged a bundle of papers beside him.
+
+The third young man spoke, and Kitty liked the gentle drawl, the
+peculiar enunciation. The poor girl, in her Streatham seclusion, had
+never before heard the "Oxford voice."
+
+"I am very sorry," he said, "but 'Aunt Kate' is not here to-day.
+Perhaps--is there anything I could do?"
+
+"No, thank you," said Kitty, wishing herself miles away; the tobacco
+smoke choked her, the backs of the two other men seemed an outrage. She
+turned away with a haughty bow, and went down the grimy stairs full of
+fury. She could have slapped herself. How could she have been such a
+fool as to come there? There were feet coming down the stair behind
+her--she quickened her pace. The feet came more quickly. She stopped on
+the landing and turned with an odd feeling of being at bay. It was the
+fair-haired young man with the Oxford voice.
+
+"I am so very sorry," he said gently, "but I did not know. I did not
+expect to see--I mean, I did not know who you were. And we had all been
+smoking--I am so sorry," he said again, rather lamely.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Kitty, more shyly than she had ever spoken in
+her life. She liked his eyes and his voice as much as she loathed the
+expressive backs of his two companions.
+
+"If you could come again: perhaps Aunt Kate will be here on Thursday. I
+know she will be sorry to miss you," the young man went on.
+
+"I think I won't call again, thank you," said Kitty. "I--I'll write,
+thank you; it is all right. I oughtn't to have come. Good-bye."
+
+There was nothing for it but to stand back and let her pass. The editor
+went back slowly to his room. His friends had relighted their pipes.
+
+"Appeased the outraged goddess?" asked one of them.
+
+"Good old Aunt Kate!" said the other.
+
+"Shut up, Sellars!" said the editor, frowning.
+
+"Now, which of your correspondents is it?" pondered Sellars, ruffling
+the bundle of papers in his hand. "Is it 'Wild Woodbine,' who wants to
+know what will make her hands white? Chilcott, did you see her hands? Oh
+no, of course--_bien chaussee, bien gantee_. All brown, too. Is it
+'Sylph'?--no; she wants a pattern for a Zouave. What is a Zouave, if you
+please, Mr Editor?"
+
+"Dry up!" said the editor, but Sellars was busy with the papers.
+
+"Eureka! I know her. She's 'Nut-brown Maid'--here's the letter--wants to
+know if she may talk to 'a young gentleman she has not been properly
+introduced to'--spells it 'interoduced,' too----"
+
+The editor snatched the papers out of the other's hands.
+
+"Now clear out," said he; "I'm busy."
+
+"Am I dreaming?" said Sellars pensively; "or is this the editor who
+invited us to collaborate with him in his 'Answers to Correspondents'?"
+
+"I am the editor who will kick you down the entire five flights if he is
+driven to it. You won't drive him, will you?"
+
+The two laughed, but they took up their hats and went; Sellars put his
+head round the door for a last word.
+
+"What price love at first sight?" said he, and the office ruler dented
+the door as he disappeared round it. The editor, left alone, sat down in
+his chair and looked helplessly round him.
+
+"Well!" he said musingly, "well, well, well, well!" Then after a long
+silence he took up his pen and began the "Answers to Correspondents."
+
+     "_Dieu-donnee._--Your hair is a very nice colour. I should not
+     advise Aureoline.
+
+     "_Shy Fairy._--By all means consult your mother. Heliotrope
+     would suit your complexion, if it is, as you say, of a
+     brilliant fairness.
+
+     "_Contadina._--No, I should not advise scarlet velvet with the
+     pale blue. Try myrtle green."
+
+Presently he threw down the pen. "I suppose I shall never see her
+again," he said, and he actually sighed.
+
+But he did see her again. For on her way home poor Kitty's imagination
+suddenly spread its wings and alighted accurately on the truth; she
+formed a sufficiently vivid picture of what had happened in the office
+after she left. She _knew_ that those other young men--"the pigs," she
+called them to herself--had speculated as to whether she was "Little
+One," who wanted to make her hair curl, and to know whether short waists
+would be worn; or "Moss Rose," who was anxious about her complexion, and
+the proper way to treat a jibbing sweetheart. So that very night she
+wrote a note to Aunt Kate, but she did not sign it "Sweet Nancy" in the
+old manner, and she did not disguise her hand. She signed it George
+Thompson, in inverted commas, and she said that she would call on
+Thursday.
+
+And on Thursday she called. And was shown into the editor's room at
+once.
+
+The editor rose to greet her.
+
+"Aunt Kate is not here," said he hurriedly; "but if you can spare a few
+moments I should like to talk to you about business; I did not know the
+other day that you were the author of that charming story 'Evelyn's
+Error.'"
+
+The room was clear of tobacco smoke--the editor was alone--some red
+roses lay on the table. Kitty caught herself wondering for whom he had
+bought them. The chair he offered her was carefully dusted. She took
+it--and he began to talk about her story; criticising, praising,
+blaming, and that so skilfully that criticism seemed a subtle flattery,
+and the very blame conveyed a compliment. Then he asked for more
+stories. And a new heaven and a new earth seemed to unroll before the
+girl's eyes. If she could only write--and succeed--and----
+
+"Will you come again?" he said at last. "Aunt Kate----"
+
+"Oh," she said, with eyes shining softly, "it doesn't matter about Aunt
+Kate now! I shall be so busy trying to write stories."
+
+"The fact is----" said the editor slowly, racking his brains for a
+reason that should bring her to the office again--"the fact is--_I_ am
+Aunt Kate."
+
+Kitty sprang to her feet. Her face flamed scarlet. She stood silent a
+moment. Then: "_You?_" she cried. "Oh, it's _not_ fair--it's mean--it's
+shameful! Oh--how could you! And girls write to _you_--and they think
+it's a woman--and they tell you about their troubles. It's horrible!
+It's underhand--it's abominable! I hate you for it. Every one ought to
+know. I shall write to the papers."
+
+"Please, please," said the editor hurriedly and humbly--"it's not my
+fault. It _is_ a lady who does it generally, but she had to go away--and
+I couldn't get any one else to do it. And I didn't see--till after you'd
+been the other day--that it wasn't fair. And I was going to ask if _you_
+would do it--the correspondence, I mean--just for this week. I wish you
+would!"
+
+"Could I?" she said doubtfully.
+
+"Of course you could! And if you'd bring the copy on Monday--about two
+columns, you know--we could go through it together and----"
+
+"Well, I'll try," said Kitty abruptly, reaching out for the sheaf of
+letters which he was gathering together.
+
+And now who was happier than Kitty, seated behind her locked bedroom
+door advising "Dieu-donnee" and "Shy Fairy" and "Contadina" out of the
+unfathomable depths of her girlish inexperience. Her advice looked
+wonderfully practical, though, in print, she thought, as with a thrill
+of pride and joy she corrected the first proofs. And she wrote stories,
+too, and they, too, were printed. It was indeed a bright and beautiful
+world. Aunt Eliza stayed away for five glorious weeks. Kitty, with an
+enthralling sense of reckless wickedness, gave up her useless music
+lessons, and in going three times a week to the office experienced a
+glowing consciousness of the joy and dignity of honest toil.
+
+The editor, by the way, during these five weeks fell in love with Kitty,
+exactly as he had known he would do when first he saw her grey eyes.
+Kitty had never been so happy in all her life. The child honestly
+believed hers to be the happiness that comes from congenial work. And
+her editor was so clever and so kind! No one ever smoked in the office
+now, and there were always roses. And Kitty took them home with her, so
+that now there was no need to wonder for whom he had bought them.
+
+Then came the inevitable hour. He met her one day with a clouded face
+and a letter in his hand.
+
+"It's all over," he said; "the real original old Aunt Kate is coming
+back. She's the dearest old thing, so kind and jolly--but--but--but--
+whatever shall we do?"
+
+"I can still write stories, I suppose," said Kitty, but she realised
+with a gasp that congenial toil would not be quite, quite the same
+without congenial companionship.
+
+"Yes," said he, picking up the bunch of red roses, "but--here are your
+flowers--don't you know yet that I can't possibly do without you? In a
+few months I'm to have the editorship of a new weekly, a much better
+berth than this. If only you would----"
+
+"Write the correspondence?" said Kitty, brightening; "of course I will.
+I don't know what I should do without----"
+
+"I wish," he interrupted, "that I could think it was _me_ you couldn't
+do without." Her pretty eyes met his over the red roses, and he caught
+her hands with the flowers in them. "Is it? Oh, say you can't do without
+me either. Say it, say it!"
+
+"I--I--don't want to do without you," said Kitty at last. He was holding
+her hands fast, and she was trying, not very earnestly, perhaps, to pull
+them away. The pair made a pretty picture.
+
+"Oh, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" he said softly, and then the door opened, and
+suddenly, without the least warning, a middle-aged lady became a
+spectator of the little tableau. The newcomer wore a mantle with beads
+on it, a black bonnet wherein nodded a violet flower--and beads and
+flower and bonnet were absolutely familiar to each of the astonished
+ones now standing consciously with the breadth of the office between
+them. For in that middle-aged lady the editor recognised Aunt Kate, the
+pleasant, sensible, companionable woman who for years had written those
+sympathetic "Answers to Correspondents" in the _Girls' Very Own Friend_.
+And at the same moment Kitty recognised, beyond all possibility of
+doubt, Aunt Eliza--her own grim, harsh, uncongenial Aunt Eliza.
+
+Kitty cowered--in her frightened soul she cowered. But her little figure
+drew itself up, and the point of her chin rose a quarter of an inch.
+
+"Aunt Eliza," she said firmly, "I know you will----"
+
+"_Your Aunt Eliza_, Kitty?" cried the editor.
+
+"'Kitty'?" said the aunt.
+
+And now the situation hung all too nicely balanced on the extreme edge
+of the absolutely impossible. Would this middle-aged lady--an aunt
+beyond doubt--an aunt who so long had played a double _role_, assume,
+now that one _role_ must be chosen, the part of Aunt Eliza the Terrible
+or of Aunt Kate the Kind? The aunt was dumb. Kitty was dumb. But the
+editor had his wits about him, and Kate, though shaken, was not
+absolutely paralysed.
+
+"It's almost too good to be true," he said, "that _my_ Aunt Kate is
+really _your_ Aunt Eliza. Aunt Kate, Kitty and I have just decided that
+we can't do without each other. I am so glad that you are the first to
+wish us joy."
+
+At his words all the "Kate" in the aunt rose triumphant, trampling down
+the "Eliza."
+
+"My dear boy," she said--and she said it in a voice which Kitty had
+never heard before--the sound of that voice drew Kitty like a magnet.
+She did the only possible thing--she put her arms timidly round her
+aunt's neck and whispered: "Oh, don't be Aunt Eliza any more, be Aunt
+Kate!"
+
+It was Aunt Kate's arms undoubtedly that went round the girl. Certainly
+not Aunt Eliza's.
+
+"I will take a walk down Fleet Street," said the editor discreetly.
+
+Then there were explanations in the office.
+
+"But why," said Kitty, when all the questions had been asked and
+answered, "why were you Aunt Eliza to me, and Aunt Kate to him?"
+
+"My dear, one must spoil somebody, and I was determined not to spoil
+_you_; I wanted to save you. All my life was ruined because I was a
+spoiled child--and because I tried to write. I had such dreams, such
+ambitions--just like yours, you silly child! But then I was never
+clever--perhaps you may be--and it all ended in my losing my lover. He
+married a nice, quiet, domestic girl, and I never made name or fame at
+all--I never got anything taken but fashion articles--and 'Answers to
+Correspondents.' Now, that's the whole tale. Don't mention it again."
+
+"But you did love me, even when----"
+
+"Of course I did," said Aunt Kate in the testy tones of Aunt Eliza; "or
+why should I have bothered at all about whether you were going to be
+happy or not? Now, Kitty, you're not to expect me to gush. I've
+forgotten how to be sentimental except on paper."
+
+"I don't want to be sentimental," said Kitty, a little injured, "neither
+does----"
+
+Here the editor came in.
+
+"You don't want to be sentimental either," Kitty went on; "do you--Mr
+Editor?"
+
+The editor looked a little doubtful.
+
+"I want to be happy, at any rate," said he, "and I mean to be."
+
+"And he can't be happy unless you smile on him. Smile on him, Auntie!"
+cried a new, radiant Kitty, to whom aunts no longer presented any
+terrors. "Say 'Bless you, my children!' Auntie--do!"
+
+"Get along with your nonsense!" said Aunt Eliza. Or was it Aunt Kate?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MISS MOUSE
+
+
+They were poor, not with the desperate poverty that has to look on both
+sides of a penny, but with the decent bearable poverty that must look at
+a shilling with attention, and with respect at half-a-crown. There was
+money for the necessities of life, the mother said, but no money to
+waste. This was what she always tried to say when Maisie came in with
+rainbow representations of the glories of local "sales" piteous pictures
+of beautiful things going almost for nothing--things not absolutely
+needed, but which would "come in useful." Maisie's dress was never
+allowed those touches of cheap finery which would have made it
+characteristic of her. Her clothes were good, and she had to patch and
+mend and contrive so much that sometimes it seemed to her as though all
+her life was going by in the effort to achieve, by a distasteful
+process, a result which she abhorred. For her artistic sense was too
+weak to show her how the bright, soft freshness of her tints gained by
+contrast with the dull greys and browns and drabs that were her mother's
+choice--good wearing colours, from which the pink and white of her face
+rose triumphantly, like a beautiful flower out of a rough calyx.
+
+The house was like Maisie, in that it never seemed to have anything
+new--none of those bright, picturesque cushions and screens and
+Japaneseries which she adored through the plate-glass windows of the big
+local draper. The curtains were of old damask, faded but rich; the
+furniture was mahogany, old and solid; the carpets were Turkey and
+Aubusson--patched and darned this last, but still beautiful. Maisie knew
+all about old oak--she had read her _Home Hints_ and her _Gentlewoman's
+Guide_--but she had no idea that mahogany could be fashionable. None of
+the photographs of the drawing-rooms of celebrities in her favourite
+papers were anything like the little sitting-room where her mother sat
+knitting by the hearth, surrounded by the relics of a house that had
+been handsome in the 'sixties, when it was her girlhood's home. Maisie
+hated it all: the chairs covered in Berlin-wool needlework, the dark,
+polished surfaces of the tables and bureaux, the tinkling lustres of
+Bohemian glass, the shining brass trivet on which the toast kept itself
+warm, the crude colours of the tea-service, the smell of eau-de-Cologne
+mingling with the faint scent of beeswax and cedar-wood. She would have
+liked to change the old water-colours in their rubbed gilt frames for
+dark-mounted autotypes. How should she know that those hideous pigs were
+Morlands, and that the cow picture was a David Cox. She would have liked
+Japanese blue transfers instead of the gold-and-white china--old
+Bristol, by the way, but Maisie knew nothing of Bristol. The regular,
+sober orderliness of the house chafed and fretted her; the recurrent
+duties, all dull; the few guests who came to tea. Decent poverty cannot
+give dinner parties or dances. She visited her school friends, and when
+she came home again it seemed to her sometimes as though the atmosphere
+of the place would choke her.
+
+"I want to go out and earn my own living," she said to her cousin Edward
+one Sunday afternoon when her mother was resting and he and she were
+roasting chestnuts on the bars of the dining-room fire. "I'm simply
+useless here."
+
+Edward was a second cousin. To him the little house was the ideal home,
+just as Maisie was--well, not, perhaps, the ideal girl, but the only
+girl in the world, which comes to much the same thing. But he never told
+her so: he dared not risk losing the cousin's place and missing for ever
+the lover's.
+
+So, in his anxiety lest she should know how much he cared, he scolded
+her a good deal. But he took her to picture galleries and to _matinees_,
+and softened her life in a hundred ways that she never noticed. He was
+only "Poor old Edward," and he knew it.
+
+"How can you?" he said. "Why, what on earth would Aunt do without you?
+Here, have this one--it's a beauty."
+
+"I ought to have been taught a trade, like other poor girls," she went
+on, waving away the roasted chestnut. "Lots of the girls I was at school
+with are earning as much as a pound a week now--typewriting or painting
+birthday cards, and some of them are in the Post Office--and I do
+nothing but drudge away at home. It's too bad."
+
+Edward would have given a decent sum at that moment to be inspired with
+exactly the right thing to say. As it was he looked at her helplessly.
+
+"I don't understand, I'm afraid," said he.
+
+"You never do," she answered crossly. There was a silence in which she
+felt the growth of a need to justify herself--to herself as well as to
+him. "Why, don't you see," she urged, "it's my plain duty to go out and
+earn something. Why, we're as poor as ever we can be--I haven't any
+pocket-money hardly--I can't even buy presents for people. I have to
+_make_ presents out of odds and ends of old things, instead of buying
+them, like other girls."
+
+"I think you make awfully pretty things," he said; "much prettier than
+any one can buy."
+
+"You're thinking of that handkerchief-case I gave Aunt Emma at
+Christmas. Why, you silly, it was only a bit of one of mother's old
+dresses. I do wish you'd talk to mother about it. I might go out as
+companion or something."
+
+The word came before the thought, but the thought was brought by the
+word and the thought stayed.
+
+That very evening Maisie began to lay siege to her mother's desired
+consent.
+
+She put her arguments very neatly, so neatly that it was hard for the
+mother to oppose them without being betrayed into an attitude that would
+seem grossly selfish.
+
+She sat looking into the fire, thinking of all the little, unceasing
+sacrifices that had been her life ever since Maisie had been hers--even
+the giving up of that treasured silk, her wedding dress, last Christmas,
+because Maisie wanted something pretty to make Christmas presents out
+of. She remembered it all; and now this new great sacrifice was called
+for. She had given up to Maisie everything but her taste in dress, and
+now it seemed that she was desired to give up even Maisie herself. But
+the other sacrifices had been for Maisie's good or for her pleasure.
+Would this one be for either?
+
+She saw her little girl alone among strangers, snubbed, looked down
+upon, a sort of upper servant with none of a servant's privileges; she
+nerved herself to what was always to her an almost unbearable effort.
+Her heart was beating and her hands trembling as she said: "My dear,
+it's quite impossible; I couldn't possibly allow it."
+
+"I must say I don't see why," said Maisie, with tears in her voice.
+
+Her mother dropped the mass of fleecy white wool and the clinking
+knitting needles and grasped the arms of her chair intensely. Her eyes
+behind the spectacles clouded with tears. It seemed to her that her
+child should surely understand the agony it was to her mother to refuse
+her anything.
+
+"I could earn money for you--it's not myself I'm thinking about," the
+girl went on; the half-lie came out quite without her conscious
+volition. "I wish you didn't always think I do everything for selfish
+reasons."
+
+"I don't, my dear," said the mother feebly.
+
+"I'm sure it's my duty," Maisie went on, with more tears than ever in
+her voice. "I'm eighteen, and I ought to be earning something, instead
+of being a burden to you."
+
+The mother looked hopelessly into the fire. She had always tried to
+explain things to Maisie; how was it that Maisie never understood?
+
+"I'm sure," said Maisie, echoing her mother's thought, "I always try to
+tell you how I think about things, and you never seem to understand. Of
+course, I won't go if you wish it, but I _do_ think----"
+
+She left the room in tears, and the mother remained to torment herself
+with the eternal questions, What had she done wrong? Why was Maisie not
+contented? What could she do to please her? Would nothing please her but
+the things that were not for her good--smart clothes, change, novelty?
+How could she bear her life if Maisie was not pleased?
+
+She went down to supper shivering with misery and apprehension. What a
+meal it would be with Maisie cold and aloof, polite and indifferent! But
+Maisie was cheerful, gay almost, and her mother felt a passion of
+gratitude to her daughter for not being sulky or unapproachable. Maisie,
+however, was only stepping back to jump the better.
+
+The same scene, with intenser variations, was played about twice a week
+till the girl got her way, as she always did in the end, except in the
+matter of cheap finery. Taste in dress was as vital to the mother as her
+religion. Then, through the influence of an old governess of her
+mother's, Maisie got her wish. She was to go as companion to an old
+lady, the mother of Lady Yalding, and she was to live at Yalding Towers.
+Here was splendour--here would be life, incident, opportunity! For her
+reading had sometimes strayed from _Home Hints_ to the _Family Herald_,
+and she knew exactly what are the chances of romance to a humble
+companion in the family of a lady of title.
+
+And now Maisie's mother gave way to her, finally and completely, even on
+the question of dress. The old wardrobe was ransacked to find materials
+to fit her out with clothes for her new venture. It was a beautiful time
+for Maisie. New things, and old things made to look as good as new, or
+better. It was like having a trousseau. The mother lavished on her child
+every inch of the old lace, every one of the treasured trinkets--even
+the little old locket that had been the dead husband's first love-gift.
+
+And Maisie, in the flutter of her excitement and anticipation, was
+loving and tender and charming, and the mother had her reward.
+
+Edward opposed a stolid and stony disapproval to all the new enthusiasm.
+He said little because he feared to say too much.
+
+"Poor little Maisie!" he said. "You'll soon find out that you didn't
+know when you were well off."
+
+"Edward, I hate you," said Maisie, and she thought she did.
+
+But when all the beautiful new clothes were packed and her cab was at
+the door, some sense of what she was leaving did come to the girl, and
+she flung her arms round her mother in an embrace such as she had never
+given in her life.
+
+"I don't want to go," she cried. "Mummy darling, I've been a little
+beast about it. I won't go if you say you'd rather not. Shall I send the
+cab away? I will if you say so, my own dear old Mummy!"
+
+Maisie's mother was not a very wise woman, but she was not fool enough
+to trust this new softness.
+
+"No, no, dearest," she said; "go and try your own way. God bless you, my
+darling! You'll miss the train if you stay. God bless you, my darling!"
+
+And Maisie went away crying hard through the new veil with the black
+velvet spots on it; as for the mother--but she was elderly, and plain,
+and foolishly fond, and her emotions can have but little interest for
+the readers of romances.
+
+And now Maisie, for the first time, knew the meaning of home. And before
+she had been at Yalding a week she had learned to analyse home and to
+give names to its constituents: love, interest, sympathy, liberty--these
+were some.
+
+At Yalding Towers Maisie was nothing to any one. No one knew or cared
+one single little bit of a straw whether she was unhappy or no. Her time
+was filled, and overfilled, by the attentions exacted by an old,
+eccentric, and very disagreeable lady. When she put on, for the first
+evening, the least pretty of the pretty dresses she had brought with
+her, the old lady looked at her with a disapproval almost rising to
+repulsion, and said: "I expect you to wear black; and a linen collar and
+cuffs."
+
+So another black dress had to be ordered from home, and all the pretty,
+dainty things lay creasing themselves with disuse in the ample drawers
+and cupboards of her vast, dreary bedroom.
+
+Her employer was exacting and irritable. When on the third day Maisie
+broke into tears under the constant flood of nagging, the old lady told
+her to go away and not to come back till she could control her temper.
+
+"I'll come back when you send for me, and not before, you hateful old
+thing!" said Maisie to herself.
+
+And she sat down in her fireless bedroom and wrote a long letter to her
+mother, saying how happy she felt, and how kind every one was, and what
+a lovely and altogether desirable place was Yalding Towers. Who shall
+say whether pride or love, or both, dictated that letter?
+
+When her employer did send for her, it was to tell her, very sharply,
+that one more such exhibition of sullenness would cost her her
+situation. So she had to learn to school herself. And she did it. But
+the learning was hard, very hard, and in the learning she grew thinner,
+and some of the pretty pink in her cheeks faded away.
+
+Lady Yalding, when she swept in, in beautiful dream-dresses, always
+spoke to the companion quite kindly and nicely and pleasantly, but there
+were none of those invitations to come into the drawing-room after
+dinner which the _Family Herald_ had led her to expect. Lady Yalding was
+always charming to every one, and Maisie tortured herself with the
+thought that it was only because she had no opportunity to explain
+herself that Lady Yalding failed to see how very much out of the common
+she was. She read Ruskin industriously, and once she left her own book
+of Browning selections that Edward had given her in the conservatory.
+She imagined Lady Yalding returning it to her with, "So, are you fond
+of poetry?" or, "It's delightful to find that you are a lover of
+Browning!" But the book was brought back to her by a footman, and the
+old lady lectured her for leaving her rubbish littering about.
+
+But towards Christmas a change came. Maisie had hoped--more intensely
+than she had ever in her life hoped for anything--for a few days' grace,
+for a sight of her mother, and the mahogany, and the damask curtains,
+and--yes--of Edward. But the old lady, who really was exceptionally
+horrid, wondered how she could ask for a holiday when she had only been
+in her situation six weeks.
+
+Then the old lady went off at half an hour's notice to spend Christmas
+with her other daughter--Maisie would have suspected a "row" if Lady
+Yalding had been a shade less charming--and the girl was left. Thus it
+happened that Lord Yalding's brother lounged into Lady Yalding's room
+one day, and said: "Who's the piteous black mouse you've tamed?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Jim?" said Lady Yalding.
+
+"The crushed apple-blossom in a black frock--one meets her about the
+corridors. Gloomy sight. Chestnut hair. Princess-in-exile sort of look."
+
+"Oh, _that_! It's mother's companion."
+
+"Poor little devil!" said the Honourable James. "What does she do now
+the cat's away? I beg your pardon--my mind was running on mice."
+
+"Do? I don't know," said Lady Yalding a little guiltily. "She's a good,
+quiet little thing--literary tastes, reads Browning, and all that sort
+of rot. She's all right."
+
+"Why don't you give her a show? She'd take the shine out of some of the
+girls here if you had her dressed."
+
+"My dear Jim," Lady Yalding said, "she's all right as she is. What's the
+good of turning the child's head and giving her notions out of her
+proper station?"
+
+"If I were that child I'd like to have a little bit of a fling just for
+once. The poor little rat looks starved, as though it hadn't laughed for
+a year. Then it's Christmas--peace and goodwill, and all that, don't you
+know. If I were you I'd ask her down a bit----"
+
+Lady Yalding thought--a thing she rarely did.
+
+"Well," she said, "it _is_ pretty slow for her, I suppose. I'll send her
+home to her people."
+
+"On Christmas Eve? Fog and frost, and the trains all anyhow? Fanny,
+Fanny!"
+
+"Oh, very well. We'll have her down, and go the whole hog. Only don't
+make a fool of the child, Jim; she's a good little thing."
+
+And that was how the dream-dressed Lady Yalding came to sweep into the
+old lady's sitting-room--it was as full of mahogany, by the way, as
+Maisie's home in Lewisham--and spoke so kindly of Maisie's loneliness,
+that the girl could have fallen down and worshipped at her Paris shoes.
+
+When Maisie, in the figured lavender satin that had been her mother's,
+swept across the great hall on the arm of the Honourable James, she felt
+that this indeed was life. Here was the great world with its infinite
+possibilities.
+
+"How did you get on?" his sister-in-law asked him later.
+
+"Oh, it's quite a decent sort of little mouse," he said. "Wants to make
+sure you see how cultivated it is, quotes poetry--what?--and talks about
+art. It's a little touching and all that to see how busy it is putting
+all its poor little stock in the tiny shop-window."
+
+Maisie, alone in her room, was walking up and down, trailing the
+lavender satin, recalling with kindled eyes and red-rose cheeks every
+word, every look of her cavalier. How kindly he had spoken, yet how
+deferentially; how he had looked, how he had smiled! At dinner she
+supposed it was his business to talk to her. But afterwards, when she
+was sitting, a little forlornly and apart from the noisy chatter of the
+bright-plumaged house-party, how he had come straight over to her
+directly the gentlemen came into the drawing-room! And she felt that she
+had not been wanting to herself on so great an occasion.
+
+"I _know_ I talked well. I'm certain he saw directly that I wasn't a
+silly idiot."
+
+She lay long awake, and, as the men trooped up the stairs, she tried to
+fancy that she could already distinguish his footsteps.
+
+The letter she wrote to her mother next day was, compared to those other
+lying letters, as a lit chandelier to a stable-lantern. And the mother
+knew the difference.
+
+"Poor darling!" she thought. "She must have been very miserable all
+this time. But she's happy now, God bless her!"
+
+By the week's end, every thought, every dream, every hope of Maisie's
+life was centred in the Honourable James; her tenderness, her ambition
+turned towards him as flowers to the sun.
+
+And her happiness lighted a thousand little candles all around her. No
+one could see the candles, of course, but every one saw the radiant
+illumination of her beauty. And the other men of the house-party saw it
+too. Even Lord Yalding distinguished her by asking whether she had read
+some horrid book about earthworms.
+
+"You're making a fool of that girl, Jim," said Lady Yalding. "I really
+think it's too bad."
+
+"My good Fanny, don't be an adorable idiot! I'm only trying to give the
+poor little duffer a good time. There's nothing else to do. The other
+girls really are--now, you know they are, Fanny--between ourselves----"
+
+"They're all duty people, of course," she said. "Well, only do be
+careful."
+
+He was careful. He subdued his impulses to tenderness and gentle
+raillery. He talked seriously to little Miss Mouse, and presently he
+found that she was seriously talking to him--telling him, for instance,
+how she wrote poetry, and how she longed to show it to some one and ask
+whether it really was so bad as she sometimes feared.
+
+What could he do but beg her to show it to him? But there he pulled
+himself up short.
+
+"There's skating to-morrow. We're going to drive over to Dansent. Would
+you like to come?"
+
+Her grey eyes looked up quickly, and the long lashes drooped over them.
+She had read of that trick in a book, and for the life of him he could
+not help knowing it. Her answer to his question came from a book, too,
+though it also came from her heart.
+
+"Ah," she said, "you know!"
+
+Then the Honourable James was honestly frightened. Next day he had a
+telegram, and departed abruptly. And as abruptly the old lady returned.
+
+And now Maisie had a secret joy to feed on--a manna to sustain her in
+the wilderness of her tiresome life. She thought of _him_. He loved her;
+she was certain of it. Miss Mouse could imagine no reason but love for
+the kindness he had shown her. He had gone away without a word, but that
+was for some good reason. Probably he had gone to confess to his mother
+how he had given his whole heart to a penniless orphan--well, she was
+half an orphan, anyway. But the days slipped by and he did not come
+back. All that bright time at Christmas had faded like a picture from a
+magic-lantern when the slide is covered. Lady Yalding was quite nice and
+kind, but she left Maisie to the work Maisie was paid for.
+
+Maisie's mother perceived, through Maisie's studied accounts of her
+happiness, more than a glimpse of the reality.
+
+Then, at last, when the days grew unbearable, Maisie wrote to him, a
+prim little letter with agitated heart-beats between the lines, where
+he, being no fool, did not fail to find them. Yet he had to answer the
+letter. He did it briefly.
+
+     "DEAR MISS ROLLESTON," he wrote, "I have received your letter
+     and the little poem, which is very nice. Poems about Spring are
+     the pleasantest kind, I think.--With kind regards, I am yours
+     sincerely."
+
+It was not, as you may see, worth the heartache with which Maisie
+watched for it.
+
+It was when she wrote again, and sent more verses, that he decided he
+must not mince matters.
+
+     "DEAR MISS ROLLESTON," was his second letter, "it is good of
+     you to write again. Now I do hope you won't be offended with me
+     for what I am going to say. I am so much older than you, you
+     know, and I know you are alone at Yalding, with no one to
+     advise you, so it must be my duty to do it, though, for my own
+     sake, I should, of course, like to advise you quite
+     differently. It was a great pleasure to me to hear from you,
+     but I must not allow myself that pleasure again, even if you
+     were willing to give it to me. It would not be fair to you to
+     let you write any more to a man who is not related to you. Try
+     to forgive me for being unselfish and acting in your interests
+     and not my own."
+
+And again, with kind regards, he was hers sincerely.
+
+"Poor, pretty little duffer!" he said, as he closed the envelope. "But
+it's not real. Don't I know the sort of thing? She's simply bored to
+death down there. And it's all my fault, anyhow. By Jove! I'll never
+try to do any one a good turn again as long as I live. Fanny was
+perfectly right."
+
+The letter came by the second post, when Maisie was engaged in drearily
+reading her employer to sleep after lunch.
+
+It lay on her lap, but she kept her eyes from it and read on
+intelligibly if not with expression.
+
+The old lady dozed.
+
+Maisie opened her letter. And before she could even have had time to put
+up a hand to save herself, her Spanish castle was tumbling about her
+ears. A curious giddy feeling seemed to catch at the back of her neck,
+the room gave a sickening half-turn. She caught at her self-control.
+
+"Not here. I mustn't faint here. Not with his letter in my hand."
+
+She got out of the room somehow, and somehow she got into hat and jacket
+and boots, put her quarter's salary in her purse, and walked out of the
+front door and straight down the great drive that she had come up four
+months ago with such bright hopes. She went to the station, and she took
+a train, and she never stopped nor stayed till she was at home again.
+She pushed past the frightened maid, and, pale and shabby, with
+black-ringed eyes and dusty black gown, she burst into her mother's
+room. The scent of eau-de-Cologne and bees'-wax and buttered toast met
+her, and it was as the perfume of Paradise. Edward was there--but she
+was in no mood to bother about Edward. She threw herself on her knees
+and buried her face in the knitting on her mother's lap, and felt thin
+arms go round her.
+
+"It's nothing. I'm tired of it all. I've come home," was all she said.
+But presently she reached out a hand to Edward, and he took it and held
+it, as it were, absently, and the three sat by the fire and spoke little
+and were content.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To her dying day Maisie will never forget the sense of peace, of
+enfolding care, and love unchanging and unchangeable that came to her as
+she woke next morning to find her mother standing by her bed with a cup
+of tea in her hands.
+
+"Oh, Mummy darling," she cried, throwing her arms round her mother and
+nearly upsetting the tea, "I haven't had a single drop of in-bed tea all
+the time I've been away!"
+
+That was all she found words to tell her mother. Later there was Edward,
+and she told him most things, but, I imagine, not all. But the mother
+was content without spoken confidences. She knew that Maisie had
+suffered, and that now she had her little girl again, to wrap warm in
+her love as before. This was happiness enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This story, I know, is instructive enough for a Sunday School prize. It
+ought to be tagged at the end with a Moral. I can't help it: it is true.
+Of course, it is not what usually happens. Many companions, no doubt,
+marry Honourable James's, or even Dukes, and are never at all glad to
+get home to their mothers and their Edwards. But Maisie was different.
+She feels now a sort of grateful tenderness for Yalding Towers, because,
+but for the dream she dreamed there she might never have really
+awakened--never have known fully and without mistake what it was in life
+that she truly cared for. And such knowledge is half the secret of
+happiness. That, by the way, is really the moral of this story.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE OLD WIFE
+
+
+"Yes; married by the 30th of June, introduce my wife to the tenants on
+Christmas Eve, or no fortune. That was my uncle's last and worst joke;
+he was reputed a funny man in his time. The alternatives are pretty
+ghastly either way."
+
+"Doesn't that rather depend?" Sylvia queried, with a swift blue glance
+from under veiling lashes.
+
+Michael answered her with a look, the male counterpart of her own, from
+dark Devon eyes, the upper lid arched in a perfect semicircle over pure
+grey. "Yes; but my wife must have a hundred a year of her own in
+Consols, to protect me from fortune-hunters--lone, lorn lamb that I am!"
+
+Sylvia emphasised the sigh with which she admitted her indigence. Her
+pretty eyebrows owned plaintively that she, a struggling artist, had no
+claim against the nation.
+
+"Mary has just a hundred a year," she said, her voice low-toned as she
+looked across the room to where, demure in braided locks and grey
+camlet, her companion sat knitting.
+
+"I daresay," Michael answered indifferently, following her eyes' flight
+and her tone's low pitch; "but she's young. I shall advertise for an
+elderly housekeeper. And _qui vivra verra_."
+
+The words, lightly cast on the thin soil of a foolish word-play with a
+pretty woman, bore fruit.
+
+A week later Michael Wood stood aghast before a tray heaped with
+letters, answers to his advertisement:
+
+     "Housekeeper wanted. Must be middle-aged. The older the better.
+     Salary, L500 a year."
+
+Not much, he had thought, L500 a year--if, by paying it, he might win a
+wife who would entitle him to an annual L15,000, whose declining years
+he might kindly cheer, and whose death would set him free to marry a
+wife whom he could love. His fancy drifted pleasantly towards Sylvia.
+
+Michael was a lazy man, who bristled with business instincts. He
+telephoned to the nearest "typewriters' association" for a secretary,
+and to this young woman he committed the charge of answering the letters
+which his advertisement had drawn forth. The answer was to be the same
+to all:
+
+     "Call at 17 Hare Court, Temple, between 11 and 1."
+
+And the dates fixed for such calling were arranged to allow about fifty
+interviews daily for the next week or two, for Michael was a bold man as
+well as a lazy one. The next morning, faultlessly dressed, with
+carnations in his buttonhole, he composed himself in his pleasant
+oak-furnished room to await his first batch of callers.
+
+They came. And Michael, strong in his unswerving determination not to
+forfeit his chance of inheriting the L15,000 a year left him under his
+mad uncle's mad will, saw them all, one after the other.
+
+But he did not like any of them. They were old; that he did not mind--it
+was, indeed, of the essence of the contract. But they were frowsy, too,
+with reticules of scarred brownish leather, and mangy fur trimmings,
+worn fringes, and beaded mantles, whence time and poverty had clawed
+handfuls of the bright beads. Each of them was, as a wife, even as a
+wife in name, impossible. The task of rejection was softened to his hand
+by the fact that not one of them could boast the necessary hundred a
+year in Consols.
+
+The interviews over, Michael, his spirit crushed by the spectacle of so
+many women anxious to find a refuge at an age when their children and
+grandchildren should, in their own homes, have been rising up to call
+them blessed, went to lounge a restorative hour in Sylvia's bright
+little studio, and laugh with her over his dilemma. He would have liked
+to sigh with her, too, but the pathos of the homeless old women escaped
+her. She saw only the humour of the situation.
+
+"There's no harm done, if it amuses you," she said, "but you'll never
+marry an old woman."
+
+"Fifteen thousand pounds a year," said Michael softly.
+
+Next day more poor old ladies, all eager, anxious, ineligible.
+
+It was on the third day that the old lady in dove-colour came in, sweet
+as a pressed flower in an old love-letter, dainty as a pigeon in spring.
+Her white hair, the white lace of her collar, the black lace of her
+mantle, her beautiful little hands in their perfect, dove-coloured
+gloves, all appealed irresistibly to Michael's aesthetic sense.
+
+"What an ideal housekeeper!" he said to himself, as he placed a chair
+for her. And then an odd thrill of discomfort and shame shot through
+him. This delicate, dainty old lady--he was to insult her by a form of
+marriage, and then to live near her, waiting for her death? No; it was
+impossible--the whole thing was impossible. He found himself in the
+middle of a sentence.
+
+"And so I fear I am already suited."
+
+The old lady raised eyebrows as delicate as Sylvia's own.
+
+"Hardly, I think," she said, "since your servant admitted me to an
+interview with you. May I ask you one or two questions before you
+finally decide against me?"
+
+The voice was low and soft--the voice men loved in the early sixties,
+before the shrill shriek became the voice of fashionable ladies.
+
+"Certainly," Michael said. He could hardly say less, and in the tumult
+of embarrassment that had swept over him, he could not for his life have
+said more.
+
+The old lady went on. "I am competent to manage a house. I can read
+aloud fairly well. I am a good nurse in case of sickness; and I am
+accustomed to entertain. But I gather from the amount of the salary
+offered that some other duties would be required of me?"
+
+"That's clever of her, too," Michael thought; "none of the others saw
+that."
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Would you enlighten me," she went on, "as to the nature of the services
+you would require?"
+
+"Ah--yes--of course," he said glibly, and then stopped short.
+
+"From your hesitation," said the old lady, with unimpaired
+self-possession, "I gather that the matter involves an explanation of
+some delicacy, or else--pardon the egotism--that my appearance is
+personally unpleasing to you."
+
+"No--oh, _no_," Michael said very eagerly; "on the contrary, if I may
+say so, it is just because you are so--so--exactly my ideal of an old
+lady, that I feel I can't go on with the business; and that's put
+stupidly, so that it sounds like an insult. Please forgive me."
+
+She looked him straight in the eyes through her gold-rimmed spectacles.
+
+"You see, I am old enough to be your grandmother," she said. "Why not
+tell me the truth?"
+
+And, to his horror and astonishment, he told it.
+
+"And that's what I meant to do," he ended. "It was a mad idea, and I see
+now that if I do it at all I must marry some one who is not--who is not
+like you. You have made me ashamed of myself."
+
+A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded cheek. The old lady put up her
+gloved hand and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She got up and
+walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.
+
+"If you _are_ going to do it," she said in a voice that was hardly
+audible, "I have been used to live among beautiful surroundings--I
+should like to end my days among them. I do not come of a long-lived
+family. You would not have long to wait for your freedom and your second
+wife."
+
+Never in all his days had Michael known so sharp an agony of
+embarrassment.
+
+"When must you be married," the old lady went on calmly, "to ensure your
+fortunes and estates?"
+
+"In about a month."
+
+"Well, Mr Wood, I make you a formal offer of marriage, and for
+reference I can give you my banker and my solicitor----"
+
+Her voice was calm; it was his voice that trembled as he answered: "You
+are too good. I can't see that it would be fair to you. May I think
+about it till to-morrow?"
+
+The contrast between the old lady's dainty correctness of attire and
+speech, and the extraordinary unconventionality of her proposal, made
+Michael's brain reel. She turned from the window, again looked him
+fairly in the eyes, and said: "You will not find me unconventional in
+other matters. This is purely an affair of business, and I approach it
+in a business spirit. You would be giving a home to one who wants it,
+and I should be helping you to what you need still more. I have never
+been married. I never wished to marry; and when I am dead---- Don't look
+so horror-stricken. I should not die any sooner because you--you had
+married me. My name is Thrale--Frances Thrale. That is my card that you
+have been pulling to pieces while you have been talking to me. Shall I
+come and see you again at this time to-morrow? It is not a subject on
+which I should wish either to write or to receive letters."
+
+He could only acquiesce. At the door the old lady turned.
+
+"If you think I look so old as to make your marriage too absurd," she
+said--and now, for the first time, her voice trembled--"I could dye my
+hair."
+
+"Oh no," Michael said, "your hair is beautiful. Good-bye, and thank
+you."
+
+As the old lady went down the dusty Temple stairs she stamped a small
+foot angrily on the worn oak.
+
+"Fool!" she said, "how could you? Hateful, shameless, unwomanly! And
+it's all for nothing, too. He'll never do it. It's _too_ mad!"
+
+Michael went straight to Sylvia, and told his tale.
+
+"And I felt I couldn't," he said; "she is the daintiest, sweetest little
+old lady. I couldn't marry her and see her every day and live in the
+hope of her death."
+
+"I don't see why not," Sylvia said, a little coldly. "She wouldn't die
+any sooner because you married her, and, anyway, she can't have long to
+live."
+
+The words were almost those of the little old lady herself. Yet--or
+perhaps for that very reason--they jarred on Michael's mood. He
+alleged business, and cut short his call.
+
+Next day Miss Thrale called again. Mr Wood was sorry to have given her
+so much trouble. He had decided that the idea was too wild, and must be
+abandoned.
+
+"Is it because I am too old?" said the old lady wistfully; "would you
+marry me if I were young?"
+
+"Upon my word, I believe I would," Michael surprised himself by saying.
+That it was not the answer Miss Thrale expected was evident from her
+smile of sudden amusement.
+
+"May I say," she said, "in return for what, in its way, is a compliment,
+that I like you very much. I would take care of you, and I shall perhaps
+not live more than a year or two."
+
+The tremor of her voice touched him. The L15,000 a year pulled at his
+will. In that instant he saw the broad glades of waving bracken, the big
+trees of the park, the sober face of the great house he might inherit,
+looking out over the smooth green lawns. He looked again at the little
+lady. After all, he was more than thirty. The world would laugh--well,
+they laughed best who laughed last. And, after a few years, there
+would be Sylvia--pretty, charming, enchanting Sylvia. He put the thought
+of her roughly away. Not because he was ashamed of it, but because it
+hurt him. The thought that Sylvia should wait for a dead woman's shoes
+had seemed natural; what hurt him was that she herself should see
+nothing unnatural in such waiting.
+
+The silence had grown to the limit that spells discomfort; the ticking
+of the tall clock, the rustle of the plane tree's leaves outside the
+window, the discords of Fleet Street harmonised by distance, all
+deepened the silence and italicised it. She spoke.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+The plane tree's leaves murmured eloquently of the great oaks in the
+park. The old lady's eyes looked at him appealingly through the
+pale-smoked glasses. How she would like that old place! And his
+debts--he could pay them all.
+
+"I will," he said suddenly; "if you will, I will; and I pray you may
+never regret it."
+
+"I don't think _you_ will regret it," she said gently; "it is a truly
+kind act to me."
+
+Bank and solicitor, duly consulted, testified to Miss Thrale's
+respectability and to her income--the requisite hundred a year in
+Consols. And on a certain day in June Michael Wood woke from a feverish
+dream, in which obstinacy and the longing for money had fought with many
+better things and worsted them, to find himself married to a
+white-haired woman of sixty.
+
+The awakening took place in his rooms in the Temple. He had yielded to
+the little old lady's entreaties, and consented, most willingly, to
+forego the "wedding journey," in this case so sad a mockery.
+
+The set was a large one--five rooms; it seemed that they might live
+here, and neither irk the other.
+
+And she was in the room he had caused to be prepared for her--dainty and
+neat as herself--and he, left alone in the room where he had first seen
+her, crossed his arms on the table, and thought. His wedding-day! And it
+might have been Sylvia, the rustle of whose dress he could hear in the
+next room. He groaned. Then he laid his head on his arms and cried--like
+a child that has lost its favourite toy: for he saw, suddenly, that
+respect for his old wife must keep him from ever seeing Sylvia now; and
+life looked grey as the Thames in February twilight.
+
+A timid hand on his shoulder startled him to the raising of his
+tear-stained face. The little old lady stood beside him.
+
+"Ah, don't!" she said softly--"don't! Believe me, it will be all right.
+Your old wife won't live more than a year--I know it. Take courage."
+
+"_Don't!_" he said in his turn; "it's a wicked thing I've done. Forgive
+me! If only we could have been friends. I can't bear to think I shall
+make you unhappy."
+
+"My dear boy," she said, "we are friends. I am your housekeeper. In a
+year at latest you will see the last of my white hairs. Be brave."
+
+He could not understand the pang her words gave him.
+
+And now began, for these two, a strange life. In those Temple
+rooms--ideal nest for young lovers--Mrs Wood, the white-haired, kept
+house with firm and capable little hands. Comfort, which Michael's lazy
+nature loved but could not achieve, reigned peacefully. The old lady
+kept much to her own rooms, but whenever he needed talk she was there.
+And she could talk. She had read much, reflected much. In her mind his
+own ideas found mating germs, and bore fruit of beautiful dreams, great
+thoughts. His verses--neglected this long time, since Sylvia did not
+care for poetry--flourished once more.
+
+And music--Sylvia's taste in music had been Sullivan; the old wife
+touched the piano with magic fingers, and Bach, Beethoven, Wagner came
+to transfigure the Temple rooms. Michael had never been so
+contented--never so wretched; for, as the quiet weeks went by, the
+leaves fell from the plane tree, and the time drew near when he must
+show his wife to the tenants--his white-haired wife. In these months a
+very real friendship had grown up between them. Michael had never met a
+woman, old or young, whose tastes chimed so tunefully with his own. Ah!
+what a pity he had not met a _young_ woman with these tastes--this soul.
+And now, liking, friendship, affection--all the finer, nobler side of
+love--he could indeed feel for his old wife; but love--lovers' love,
+that would set the seal on all the rest--this he might never know,
+except for some other woman, who would succeed to his wife's title.
+
+Badly as Michael had behaved, I think it is permissible to be sorry for
+him. His wife, in fact, was very sorry.
+
+One day he met Sylvia in the park, and all the other side of him
+thrilled with pleasure. He sat by her an hour, his eyes drinking in her
+fresh beauty, while his soul shrivelled more and more. Ah! why could she
+not _talk_, as his wife could, instead of merely chattering?
+
+His wife looked sad that evening. He asked the reason.
+
+"I saw you in the park to-day," she said. "Are you going to see her?
+Don't compromise her: it's not worth while."
+
+He kissed her hand in its black mitten, and in a flash of pain saw the
+black funeral, when she should be carried from his house, and he be left
+free to marry Sylvia.
+
+And now the days had dropped past; so even was their flow that it seemed
+rapid, and in another week it would be Christmas.
+
+"And I must show you to the tenants," said he.
+
+"My poor boy," she said--it was just as she had risen to bid him good
+night--"be brave. Perhaps it won't be so bad as you think. Good night."
+
+He sat still after she had left him, gazing into the fire, and thinking
+thoughts in which now the estate and the fortune played but little part.
+At last he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well," he said, "I have no lover, no wife; but I have a companion, a
+friend--one in a million." And again the black funeral trailed its slow
+length before his eyes, and he shuddered.
+
+I have not sought to deceive the reader. He knows as well as I do that
+at this moment the door opened, and a young and beautiful woman stood on
+the threshold. Her eyes were shining; round her neck were gleaming
+pearls. She was playing for a high stake, and being a true woman she had
+disdained no honest artifice that might help her. She wore shining white
+silk, severely plain, and her brown hair was dressed high on her head. A
+woman one shade less intuitive would have let the dusky masses fall over
+a lace-covered tea-gown.
+
+"Michael," she said, "I am your wife. Are you going to forgive me?"
+
+He raised himself slowly from his chair, and his eyes dwelt on detail
+after detail of the beauty before him.
+
+"My wife!" he said. "You are a stranger!"
+
+"I _did_ disguise myself well. My sister told me about your
+advertisement; she lives with Sylvia Maddox. We each have a hundred
+pounds a year. At first I did it for fun; but when I had seen how--how
+nice you were--my mother is very poor. There are no excuses. But are you
+going to forgive me?" Any other woman, to whom forgiveness meant all
+that it meant to her, might have kneeled at his feet. Frances stood
+erect by the door. "Anyway," she said, biting her lip, "I have saved you
+from Sylvia. For the sake of that, forgive me."
+
+That stung him, as she had known it would.
+
+"Forgive you?" he said. "Never. You've spoiled my life." But he took a
+step towards her as he spoke.
+
+She took an equal step back.
+
+"Take courage," she said. "Who knows but I may die before next June,
+after all. Good night."
+
+"I hate you," he said, and took another step forward. But the door
+closed in his face.
+
+Next morning the old lady, white haired and mittened, appeared behind
+the breakfast tea. Michael almost thought he had dreamed, till her eyes,
+now without their glasses, met his timidly.
+
+"Let us end this play-acting, at least," he said. Ten minutes of fuming
+ended in tepid tea poured by a beautiful brown-haired girl.
+
+He watched her in silence.
+
+"It's horrible," he broke out. "You're a strange woman, and there you
+sit, pouring tea out as if---- Who are you? I don't know you."
+
+"Don't you?" she said quietly. And then he remembered all the old talks
+with the old wife.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "I don't want to be a brute."
+
+"It's no use my saying I'm sorry," she said.
+
+"_Are_ you?" He leaned forward to put the question.
+
+"We must make the best of it," she said. "Perhaps---- Look here, don't
+let's speak of it till after Christmas; let's just go on as we did
+before."
+
+So the days wore on. But the situation when Michael lived in torment in
+the company of his old wife was simplicity itself compared to his new
+life with a wife--young, beautiful, and a stranger, yet in all
+essentials his dearest friend. This discomfort grew daily--hourly
+branching out into ever fresh embarrassments--new and harassing,
+vexatious, half understood, wholly resented.
+
+The wife had her burden to bear also. The laundress had only known the
+old wife as "Mrs Wood."
+
+"She thought I was your mother," the wife said when Michael propounded
+the difficulty. But the laundress's attitude to the new Mrs Wood had a
+sting that was almost punishment enough to the wife, had Michael only
+known, for all that she had done amiss.
+
+The hour of departure for the Christmas festivities at Wood Grange came
+as a relief from the persistent pinpricks of unexplained emotion which
+tormented him. His wife was young and beautiful, yet he was only
+conscious of repulsion. He hated her for her trickery. But most he hated
+her because she had cheated him of the old wife--the friend, the
+_confidante_, who had grown to be so much, and so much the best part, in
+his life. For now there was no confidence between the two--no talk, no
+reading, no music to brighten the Temple rooms. They lived in an almost
+complete silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every window of the Grange shone out with yellow light across the snow.
+For once Christmas had been kind and seasonable--a white sheet covered
+the world. Holly gleamed against old oak. Priceless silver, saved from
+the smelting-pot in Cromwell's hard days, shone above white napery on
+the long tables. The tenants' dinner was over, and now was the moment
+when, according to the will, Michael Wood's wife must be presented to
+the tenants then assembled.
+
+The slender figure in white woollen cloth and white fur, with Christmas
+roses at its breast, stood on the dais at the end of the great hall, and
+the tenants cheered themselves hoarse at the mere sight of her beautiful
+face, her kind eyes.
+
+"It went off very well," Michael said when, the last guest gone, the
+last shutter closed, the last servant departed, the two stood alone in
+the long drawing-room.
+
+"Yes; think if you had had to present to them the old white-haired
+wife----"
+
+"I loved the old wife," he said obstinately; but his voice was not quite
+steady.
+
+"I wish," she said, playing with the Christmas roses she wore, "I wish
+you would try to forgive me. It was horribly wrong; but I began it as a
+joke. You see, I had only just come over from the convent where I was
+brought up. I thought it would be such fun: I was always good at
+theatricals. I will never do anything silly again. And to-morrow I'll go
+away, and you need never see me again. And you _have_ got the money and
+the old place, haven't you? And I got them for you--and--do forgive me.
+It began as a silly schoolgirl's joke indeed."
+
+"But--a convent! You have read and thought----"
+
+"It was my father. He made me read and think; and when he died all the
+money went, and my mother is poor. Oh, Michael, don't be so flinty! Say
+you forgive me before I go! It all began in a joke!"
+
+"Began. Yes. But why did you go on?"
+
+"Because I--I didn't like Sylvia--and I liked you--rather--but I won't
+be a nuisance. I'll go back to mother. Say you forgive me. I'll go by
+the first train in the morning."
+
+"The first train," said Michael absently, "is the 9.17; but to-morrow is
+Christmas Day--I daresay they'll run the same as on Sunday."
+
+She took her white cloak from the settle by the fire.
+
+"Good night," she said sadly; "you are very hard. Won't you even shake
+hands?"
+
+"We had no roses at our wedding," he said, still absently; "but there
+are roses at Christmas." He raised his hand to the white flowers she
+wore, and touched them softly. "White roses, too, for a wedding," he
+said.
+
+"Good night!" she said again.
+
+"And you will go to your mother to-morrow by the 9.17 train, or the
+10.5, if the trains run the same as on Sunday. And I am to forgive you,
+and shake hands before we part. Well, well!"
+
+He took the hand she held out, caught the other, and stood holding them,
+his grey eyes seeking hers. Her head thrown back, her hands stretched
+out, she looked at him from arm's length.
+
+"Dear!" he said.
+
+A mute glance questioned him. Then lashes longer than Sylvia's veiled
+the dark eyes.
+
+He spoke again. "Dear!"
+
+"You know you hate me," she said.
+
+He raised her hands to his lips.
+
+"Have you forgotten Sylvia?"
+
+"Absolutely, thank God! And you--I--after all, we are married, though
+there were no roses at our June wedding."
+
+Again her eyes questioned mutely.
+
+He leaned forward and touched the Christmas roses with his lips. Then he
+dropped her hands and caught her by the shoulders.
+
+"Oh! foolish, foolish, foolish people!" he said. "We two are man and
+wife. My wife! my wife! my wife! We are, aren't we?"
+
+"I suppose we are," she said, and her face leaned a little towards his.
+
+"Well, then!" said he.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
+
+
+The thief stood close under the high wall, and looked to right and left.
+To the right the road wound white and sinuous, lying like a twisted
+ribbon over the broad grey shoulder of the hill; to the left the road
+turned sharply down towards the river; beyond the ford the road went
+away slowly in a curve, prolonged for miles through the green marshes.
+
+No least black fly of a figure stirred on it. There were no travellers
+at such an hour on such a road.
+
+The thief looked across the valley, at the top of the mountain flushed
+with sunset, and at the grey-green of the olives about its base. The
+terraces of olives were already dusk with twilight, but his keen eyes
+could not have missed the smallest variance or shifting of their lights
+and shadows. Nothing stirred there. He was alone.
+
+Then, turning, he looked again at the wall behind him. The face of it
+was grey and sombre, but all along the top of it, in the crannies of the
+coping stones, orange wallflowers and sulphur-coloured snapdragons shone
+among the haze of feathery-flowered grasses. He looked again at the
+place where some of the stones had fallen from the coping--had fallen
+within the wall, for none lay in the road without. The bough of a mighty
+tree covered the gap with its green mantle from the eyes of any chance
+wayfarer; but the thief was no chance wayfarer, and he had surprised the
+only infidelity of the great wall to its trust.
+
+To the chance wayfarer, too, the wall's denial had seemed absolute,
+unanswerable. Its solid stone, close knit by mortar hardly less solid,
+showed not only a defence, it offered a defiance--a menace. But the
+thief had learnt his trade; he saw that the mortar might be loosened a
+little here, broken a little there, and now the crumbs of it fell
+rustling on to the dry, dusty grass of the roadside. He drew back, took
+two quick steps forward, and, with a spring, sudden and agile as a
+cat's, grasped the wall where the gap showed, and drew himself up. Then
+he rubbed his hands on his knees, because his hands were bloody from the
+sudden grasping of the rough stones, and sat astride on the wall.
+
+He parted the leafy boughs and looked down; below him lay the stones
+that had fallen from the wall--already grass was growing upon the mound
+they made. As he ventured his head beyond the green leafage, the level
+light of the sinking sun struck him in the eyes. It was like a blow. He
+dropped softly from the wall and stood in the shadow of the
+tree--looking, listening.
+
+Before him stretched the park--wide and still; dotted here and there
+with trees, and overlaid with gold poured from the west. He held his
+breath and listened. There was no wind to stir the leaves to those
+rustlings which may deceive and disconcert the keenest and the boldest;
+only the sleepy twitter of birds, and the little sudden soft movements
+of them in the dusky privacy of the thick-leaved branches. There was in
+all the broad park no sign of any other living thing.
+
+The thief trod softly along under the wall where the trees were
+thickest, and at every step he paused to look and listen.
+
+It was quite suddenly that he came upon the little lodge near the great
+gates of wrought iron with the marble gate-posts bearing upon them the
+two gaunt griffins, the cognisance of the noble house whose lands these
+were. The thief drew back into the shadow and stood still, only his
+heart beat thickly. He stood still as the tree trunk beside him,
+looking, listening. He told himself that he heard nothing--saw
+nothing--yet he became aware of things. That the door of the lodge was
+not closed, that some of its windows were broken, and that into its
+little garden straw and litter had drifted from the open door: and that
+between the stone step and the threshold grass was growing inches high.
+When he was aware of this he stepped forward and entered the lodge. All
+the sordid sadness of a little deserted home met him here--broken crocks
+and bent pans, straw, old rags, and a brooding, dusty stillness.
+
+"There has been no one here since the old keeper died. They told the
+truth," said the thief; and he made haste to leave the lodge, for there
+was nothing in it now that any man need covet--only desolation and the
+memory of death.
+
+So he went slowly among the trees, and by devious ways drew a little
+nearer to the great house that stood in its walled garden in the middle
+of the park. From very far off, above the green wave of trees that broke
+round it, he could see the towers of it rising black against the sunset;
+and between the trees came glimpses of its marble white where the faint
+grey light touched it from the east.
+
+Moving slowly--vigilant, alert, with eyes turning always to right and to
+left, with ears which felt the intense silence more acutely than they
+could have felt any tumult--the thief reached the low wall of the
+garden, at the western side. The last redness of the sunset's reflection
+had lighted all the many windows, and the vast place blazed at him for
+an instant before the light dipped behind the black bar of the trees,
+and left him face to face with a pale house, whose windows now were
+black and hollow, and seemed like eyes that watched him. Every window
+was closed; the lower ones were guarded by jalousies; through the glass
+of the ones above he could see the set painted faces of the shutters.
+
+From far off he had heard, and known, the plash-plash of fountains, and
+now he saw their white changing columns rise and fall against the
+background of the terrace. The garden was full of rose bushes trailing
+and unpruned; and the heavy, happy scent of the roses, still warm from
+the sun, breathed through the place, exaggerating the sadness of its
+tangled desolation. Strange figures gleamed in the deepening dusk, but
+they were too white to be feared. He crept into a corner where Psyche
+drooped in marble, and, behind her pedestal, crouched. He took food from
+his pockets and ate and drank. And between the mouthfuls he listened and
+watched.
+
+The moon rose, and struck a pale fire from the face of the house and
+from the marble limbs of the statues, and the gleaming water of the
+fountains drew the moonbeams into the unchanging change of its rise and
+fall.
+
+Something rustled and stirred among the roses. The thief grew rigid: his
+heart seemed suddenly hollow; he held his breath. Through the deepening
+shadows something gleamed white; and not marble, for it moved, it came
+towards him. Then the silence of the night was shattered by a scream, as
+the white shape glided into the moonlight. The thief resumed his
+munching, and another shape glimmered after the first. "Curse the
+beasts!" he said, and took another draught from his bottle, as the white
+peacocks were blotted out by the shadows of the trees, and the stillness
+of the night grew more intense.
+
+In the moonlight the thief went round and about the house, pushing
+through the trailing briers that clung to him--and now grown bolder he
+looked closely at doors and windows. But all were fast barred as the
+doors of a tomb. And the silence deepened as the moonlight waxed.
+
+There was one little window, high up, that showed no shutter. He looked
+at it; measured its distance from the ground and from the nearest of the
+great chestnut trees. Then he walked along under the avenue of chestnuts
+with head thrown back and eyes fixed on the mystery of their interlacing
+branches.
+
+At the fifth tree he stopped; leaped to the lowest bough, missed it;
+leaped again, caught it, and drew up his body. Then climbing, creeping,
+swinging, while the leaves, agitated by his progress, rustled to the
+bending of the boughs, he passed to that tree, to the next--swift,
+assured, unhesitating. And so from tree to tree, till he was at the
+last tree--and on the bough that stretched to touch the little window
+with its leaves.
+
+He swung from this. The bough bent and cracked, and would have broken,
+but that at the only possible instant the thief swung forward, felt the
+edge of the window with his feet, loosed the bough, sprang, and stood,
+flattened against the mouldings, clutching the carved drip-stone with
+his hands. He thrust his knee through the window, waiting for the tinkle
+of the falling glass to settle into quietness, opened the window, and
+crept in. He found himself in a corridor: he could see the long line of
+its white windows, and the bars of moonlight falling across the inlaid
+wood of its floor.
+
+He took out his thief's lantern--high and slender like a tall
+cup--lighted it, and crept softly along the corridor, listening between
+his steps till the silence grew to be like a humming in his ears.
+
+And slowly, stealthily, he opened door after door; the rooms were
+spacious and empty--his lantern's yellow light flashing into their
+corners told him this. Some poor, plain furniture he discerned, a
+curtain or a bench here and there, but not what he sought. So large was
+the house, that presently it seemed to the thief that for many hours he
+had been wandering along its galleries, creeping down its wide stairs,
+opening the grudging doors of the dark, empty rooms, whose silence spoke
+ever more insistently in his ears.
+
+"But it is as he told me," he said inwardly: "no living soul in all the
+place. The old man--a servant of this great house--he told me; he knew,
+and I have found all even as he said."
+
+Then the thief turned away from the arched emptiness of the grand
+staircase, and in a far corner of the hall he found himself speaking in
+a whisper because now it seemed to him that nothing would serve but that
+this clamorous silence should be stilled by a human voice.
+
+"The old man said it would be thus--all emptiness, and not profit to a
+man; and he died, and I tended him. Dear Jesus! how our good deeds come
+home to us! And he told me how the last of the great family had gone
+away none knew whither. And the tales I heard in the town--how the great
+man had not gone, but lived here in hiding---- It is not possible. There
+is the silence of death in this house."
+
+He moistened his lips with his tongue. The stillness of the place seemed
+to press upon him like a solid thing. "It is like a dead man on one's
+shoulders," thought the thief, and he straightened himself up and
+whispered again: "The old man said, 'The door with the carved griffin,
+and the roses enwreathed, and the seventh rose holds the secret in its
+heart.'"
+
+With that the thief set forth again, creeping softly across the bars of
+moonlight down the corridor.
+
+And after much seeking he found at last, under the angle of the great
+stone staircase behind a mouldering tapestry wrought with peacocks and
+pines, a door, and on it carved a griffin, wreathed about with roses. He
+pressed his finger into the deep heart of each carven rose, and when he
+pressed the rose that was seventh in number from the griffin, he felt
+the inmost part of it move beneath his finger as though it sought to
+escape. So he pressed more strongly, leaning against the door till it
+swung open, and he passed through it, looking behind him to see that
+nothing followed. The door he closed as he entered.
+
+And now he was, as it seemed, in some other house. The chambers were
+large and lofty as those whose hushed emptiness he had explored--but
+these rooms seemed warm with life, yet held no threat, no terror. To the
+dim yellow flicker from the lantern came out of the darkness hints of a
+crowded magnificence, a lavish profusion of beautiful objects such as he
+had never in his life dreamed of, though all that life had been one
+dream of the lovely treasures which rich men hoard, and which, by the
+thief's skill and craft, may come to be his.
+
+He passed through the rooms, turning the light of his lantern this way
+and that, and ever the darkness withheld more than the light revealed.
+He knew that thick tapestries hung from the walls, velvet curtains
+masked the windows; his hand, exploring eagerly, felt the rich carving
+of chairs and presses; the great beds were hung with silken cloth
+wrought in gold thread with glimmering strange starry devices. Broad
+sideboards flashed back to his lantern's questionings the faint white
+laugh of silver; the tall cabinets could not, with all their reserve,
+suppress the confession of wrought gold, and, from the caskets into
+whose depths he flashed the light, came the trembling avowal of rich
+jewels. And now, at last, that carved door closed between him and the
+poignant silence of the deserted corridors, the thief felt a sudden
+gaiety of heart, a sense of escape, of security. He was alone, yet
+warmed and companioned. The silence here was no longer a horror, but a
+consoler, a friend.
+
+And, indeed, now he was not alone. The ample splendours about him, the
+spoils which long centuries had yielded to the grasp of a noble
+family--these were companions after his own heart.
+
+He flung open the shade of his lantern and held it high above his head.
+The room still kept half its secrets. The discretion of the darkness
+should be broken down. He must see more of this splendour--not in
+unsatisfying dim detail, but in the lit gorgeous mass of it. The narrow
+bar of the lantern's light chafed him. He sprang on to the dining-table,
+and began to light the half-burnt chandelier. There were a hundred
+candles, and he lighted all, so that the chandelier swung like a vast
+living jewel in the centre of the hall. Then, as he turned, all the
+colour in the room leapt out at him. The purple of the couches, the
+green gleam of the delicate glass, the blue of the tapestries, and the
+vivid scarlet of the velvet hangings, and with the colour sprang the
+gleams of white from the silver, of yellow from the gold, of
+many-coloured fire from strange inlaid work and jewelled caskets, till
+the thief stood aghast with rapture in the strange, sudden revelation of
+this concentrated splendour.
+
+He went along the walls with a lighted candle in his hand--the wax
+dripped warm over his fingers as he went--lighting one after another,
+the tapers in the sconces of the silver-framed glasses. In the state
+bedchamber he drew back suddenly, face to face with a death-white
+countenance in which black eyes blazed at him with triumph and delight.
+Then he laughed aloud. He had not known his own face in the strange
+depths of this mirror. It had no sconces like the others, or he would
+have known it for what it was. It was framed in Venice glass--wonderful,
+gleaming, iridescent.
+
+The thief dropped the candle and threw his arms wide with a gesture of
+supreme longing.
+
+"If I could carry it all away! All, all! Every beautiful thing! To sell
+some--the less beautiful, and to live with the others all my days!"
+
+And now a madness came over the thief. So little a part of all these
+things could he bear away with him; yet all were his--his for the
+taking--even the huge carved presses and the enormous vases of solid
+silver, too heavy for him to lift--even these were his: had he not found
+them--he, by his own skill and cunning? He went about in the rooms,
+touching one after the other the beautiful, rare things. He caressed the
+gold and the jewels. He threw his arms round the great silver vases; he
+wound round himself the heavy red velvet of the curtain where the
+griffins gleamed in embossed gold, and shivered with pleasure at the
+soft clinging of its embrace. He found, in a tall cupboard,
+curiously-shaped flasks of wine, such wine as he had never tasted, and
+he drank of it slowly--in little sips--from a silver goblet and from a
+green Venice glass, and from a cup of rare pink china, knowing that any
+one of his drinking vessels was worth enough to keep him in idleness for
+a long year. For the thief had learnt his trade, and it is a part of a
+thief's trade to know the value of things.
+
+He threw himself on the rich couches, sat in the stately carved chairs,
+leaned his elbows on the ebony tables. He buried his hot face in the
+chill, smooth linen of the great bed, and wondered to find it still
+scented delicately as though some sweet woman had lain there but last
+night. He went hither and thither laughing with pure pleasure, and
+making to himself an unbridled carnival of the joys of possession.
+
+In this wise the night wore on, and with the night his madness wore
+away. So presently he went about among the treasures--no more with the
+eyes of a lover, but with the eyes of a Jew--and he chose those precious
+stones which he knew for the most precious, and put them in the bag he
+had brought, and with them some fine-wrought goldsmith's work and the
+goblet out of which he had drunk the wine. Though it was but of silver,
+he would not leave it. The green Venice glass he broke and the cup, for
+he said: "No man less fortunate than I, to-night, shall ever again drink
+from them." But he harmed nothing else of all the beautiful things,
+because he loved them.
+
+Then, leaving the low, uneven ends of the candles still alight, he
+turned to the door by which he had come in. There were two doors, side
+by side, carved with straight lilies, and between them a panel wrought
+with the griffin and the seven roses enwreathed. He pressed his finger
+in the heart of the seventh rose, hardly hoping that the panel would
+move, and indeed it did not; and he was about to seek for a secret
+spring among the lilies, when he perceived that one of the doors wrought
+with these had opened itself a little. So he passed through it and
+closed it after him.
+
+"I must guard my treasures," he said. But when he had passed through the
+door and closed it, and put out his hand to raise the tattered tapestry
+that covered it from without, his hand met the empty air, and he knew
+that he had not come out by the door through which he had entered.
+
+When the lantern was lighted, it showed him a vaulted passage, whose
+floor and whose walls were stone, and there was a damp air and a
+mouldering scent in it, as of a cellar long unopened. He was cold now,
+and the room with the wine and the treasures seemed long ago and far
+away, though but a door and a moment divided him from it, and though
+some of the wine was in his body, and some of the treasure in his hands.
+He set about to find the way to the quiet night outside, for this
+seemed to him a haven and a safeguard since, with the closing of that
+door, he had shut away warmth, and light, and companionship. He was
+enclosed in walls once more, and once more menaced by the invading
+silence that was almost a presence. Once more it seemed to him that he
+must creep softly, must hold his breath before he ventured to turn a
+corner--for always he felt that he was not alone, that near him was
+something, and that its breath, too, was held.
+
+So he went by many passages and stairways, and could find no way out;
+and after a long time of searching he crept by another way back to come
+unawares on the door which shut him off from the room where the many
+lights were, and the wine and the treasure. Then terror leaped out upon
+him from the dark hush of the place, and he beat on the door with his
+hands and cried aloud, till the echo of his cry in the groined roof
+cowed him back into silence.
+
+Again he crept stealthily by strange passages, and again could find no
+way except, after much wandering, back to the door where he had begun.
+
+And now the fear of death beat in his brain with blows like a hammer. To
+die here like a rat in a trap, never to see the sun alight again, never
+to climb in at a window, or see brave jewels shine under his lantern,
+but to wander, and wander, and wander between these inexorable walls
+till he died, and the rats, admitting him to their brotherhood, swarmed
+round the dead body of him.
+
+"I had better have been born a fool," said the thief.
+
+Then once more he went through the damp and the blackness of the vaulted
+passages, tremulously searching for some outlet, but in vain.
+
+Only at last, in a corner behind a pillar, he found a very little door
+and a stair that led down. So he followed it, to wander among other
+corridors and cellars, with the silence heavy about him, and despair
+growing thick and cold like a fungus about his heart, and in his brain
+the fear of death beating like a hammer.
+
+It was quite suddenly in his wanderings, which had grown into an aimless
+frenzy, having now less of search in it than of flight from the
+insistent silence, that he saw at last a light--and it was the light of
+day coming through an open door. He stood at the door and breathed the
+air of the morning. The sun had risen and touched the tops of the towers
+of the house with white radiance; the birds were singing loudly. It was
+morning, then, and he was a free man.
+
+He looked about him for a way to come at the park, and thence to the
+broken wall and the white road, which he had come by a very long time
+before. For this door opened on an inner enclosed courtyard, still in
+damp shadow, though the sun above struck level across it--a courtyard
+where tall weeds grew thick and dank. The dew of the night was heavy on
+them.
+
+As he stood and looked, he was aware of a low, buzzing sound that came
+from the other side of the courtyard. He pushed through the weeds
+towards it; and the sense of a presence in the silence came upon him
+more than ever it had done in the darkened house, though now it was day,
+and the birds sang all gaily, and the good sun shone so bravely
+overhead.
+
+As he thrust aside the weeds which grew waist-high, he trod on something
+that seemed to writhe under his feet like a snake. He started back and
+looked down. It was the long, firm, heavy plait of a woman's hair. And
+just beyond lay the green gown of a woman, and a woman's hands, and her
+golden head, and her eyes; all about the place where she lay was the
+thick buzzing of flies, and the black swarming of them.
+
+The thief saw, and he turned and he fled back to his doorway, and down
+the steps and through the maze of vaulted passages--fled in the dark,
+and empty-handed, because when he had come into the presence that
+informed that house with silence, he had dropped lantern and treasure,
+and fled wildly, the horror in his soul driving him before it. Now fear
+is more wise than cunning, so, whereas he had sought for hours with his
+lantern and with all his thief's craft to find the way out, and had
+sought in vain, he now, in the dark and blindly, without thought or
+will, without pause or let, found the one way that led to a door, shot
+back the bolts, and fled through the awakened rose garden and across the
+dewy park.
+
+He dropped from the wall into the road, and stood there looking eagerly
+to right and left. To the right the road wound white and sinuous, like a
+twisted ribbon over the great, grey shoulder of the hill; to the left
+the road curved down towards the river. No least black fly of a figure
+stirred on it. There are no travellers on such a road at such an hour.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE GIRL AT THE TOBACCONIST'S
+
+
+John Selwyn Selborne cursed for the hundredth time the fool that had
+bound him captive at the chariot wheels of beauty. That is to say, he
+cursed the fool he had been to trust himself in the automobile of that
+Brydges woman. The Brydges woman was pretty, rich, and charming;
+omniscience was her pose. She knew everything: consequently she knew how
+to drive a motor-car. She learned the lesson of her own incompetence at
+the price of a broken ankle and a complete suit of bruises. Selborne
+paid for his trusting folly with a broken collar-bone and a deep cut on
+his arm. That was why he could not go to Portsmouth to see the last of
+his young brother when he left home for the wars.
+
+This was why he cursed. The curse was mild--it was indeed less a curse
+than an invocation.
+
+"Defend us from women," he said; "above all from the women who think
+they know."
+
+The grey gloom that stood for dawn that day crept through the curtains
+and made ghosts of the shadows that lingered still in his room. He
+stretched himself wearily, and groaned as the stretched nerves vibrated
+to the chord of agony.
+
+"There's no fool like an old fool," said John Selwyn Selborne. He had
+thirty-seven years, and they weighed on him as the forty-seven when
+their time came would not do.
+
+He had said good-bye to the young brother the night before; here in this
+country inn, the nearest to the scene of the enlightenment of the
+Brydges woman. And to-day the boy sailed. John Selborne sighed.
+Twenty-two, and off to the wars, heart-whole. Whereas he had been
+invalided at the very beginning of things and now, when he was well and
+just on the point of rejoining--the motor-car and the Brydges woman! And
+as for heart-whole ... the Brydges woman again.
+
+He fell asleep. When he awoke there was full sunshine and an orchestra
+of awakened birds in the garden outside. There was tea--there were
+letters. One was from Sidney--Sidney, who had left him not twelve hours
+before.
+
+He tore it open, and hurt his shoulder in the movement.
+
+     "DEAR JOHN," said the letter, "I wanted to tell you last night,
+     but you seemed so cheap, I thought I'd better not bother you.
+     But it's just come into my head that perhaps I may get a bullet
+     in my innards, and I want you to know. So here goes. There's a
+     girl I mean to marry. I know she'll say Yes, but I can't ask
+     her till I come back, of course. I don't want to have any
+     humbug or concealing things from you; you've always been so
+     decent to me. I know you hate jaw, so I won't go on about that.
+     But I must tell you I met her first when she was serving in a
+     tobacconist's shop. And her mother lets lodgings. You'll think
+     this means she's beneath me. Wait till you see her. I want you
+     to see her, and make friends with her while I'm away."
+
+Here followed some lover's raptures, and the address of the lady.
+
+John Selborne lay back and groaned.
+
+Susannah Sheepmarsh, tobacconist's assistant, lodging-house keeper's
+daughter, and Sidney Selborne, younger son of a house whose pride was
+that it had been proud enough to refuse a peerage.
+
+John Selborne thought long and deeply.
+
+"I suppose I must sacrifice myself," he said. "Little adventuress! 'How
+easy to prove to him,' I said, 'that an eagle's the game her pride
+prefers, though she stoops to a wren instead.' The boy'll hate me for a
+bit, but he'll thank me later. Yalding? That's somewhere on the Medway.
+Fishing? Boating? Convalescence is good enough. Fiction aid us! What
+would the villain in a book do to come between fond lovers? He would
+take the lodgings: at least he would try. And one may as well do
+something."
+
+So he wrote to Mrs Sheepmarsh--she had rooms to let, he heard. Terms?
+And Mrs Sheepmarsh wrote back; at least her reply was typewritten, which
+was a bit of a shock. She had rooms. They were disengaged. And the terms
+were thus and such.
+
+Behold John Selwyn Selborne then, his baggage neatly labelled with his
+first and second names, set down on the little platform of Yalding
+Station. Behold him, waggonette-borne, crossing the old stone bridge and
+the golden glory of the Leas, flushed with sunset.
+
+Mrs Sheepmarsh's house was long and low and white. It had a classic
+porch, and at one end a French window opened through cascades of jasmine
+to a long lawn. There were many trees. A middle-aged lady in decent
+black, with a white cap, and white lace about her neck, greeted him with
+formal courtesy. "This way," she said, and moved for him to follow her
+through a green gate and down a shrubbery that led without disguise or
+pretence straight away from the house. It led also to a little white
+building embowered in trees. "Here," said the lady. She opened the door.
+"I'll tell the man to bring your luggage. Good evening----"
+
+And she left him planted there. He had to bend his head to pass under
+the low door, and he found himself in a tiny kitchen. Beyond were a
+sitting-room and two bedchambers. All fitted sparsely, but with old
+furniture, softly-faded curtains, quiet and pleasant to look upon. There
+were roses in a jug of Gres de Flandre on the gate-table in the
+sitting-room.
+
+"What a singular little place!" he said. "So these are the lodgings. I
+feel like a dog in a kennel. I suppose they will throw me a bone
+by-and-by--or, at any rate, ask me what kind of bones I prefer."
+
+He unpacked his clothes and laid his belongings in the drawers and
+cupboards; it was oddly charming that each shelf or drawer should have
+its own little muslin bag of grey lavender. Then he took up a book and
+began to read. The sunset had died away, the daylight seemed to be
+glowing out of the low window like a tide, leaving bare breadths of
+darkness behind. He lighted candles. He was growing hungry--it was past
+eight o'clock.
+
+"I believe the old lady has forgotten my existence," he said, and
+therewith opened his cottage door and went out into the lighter twilight
+of the garden. The shrubbery walks were winding. He took the wrong
+turning, and found himself entering on the narrow lawn. From the French
+window among the jasmine came lamplight--and voices.
+
+"No servant, no food? My good mother, you've entertained a lunatic
+unawares."
+
+"He had references."
+
+"Man cannot live by references alone. The poor brute must be
+starving--unless he's drunk."
+
+"Celia! I do wish you wouldn't----"
+
+John Selborne hastening by, put a period to the conversation by boots
+crunching heavily and conscientiously on the gravel. Both voices
+ceased. He presented himself at the lamp-lit oblong of the window.
+
+Within that lamplight glowed on the last remnants of a meal--dinner, by
+the glasses and the fruit. Also on the lady in the cap, and on a
+girl--the one, doubtless, who had evolved the lunatic idea. Both faces
+were turned towards him. Both women rose: there was nothing for it but
+advance. He murmured something about intrusion--"awfully sorry, the
+walks wind so," and turned to go.
+
+But the girl spoke: "Oh, wait a moment. Is this Mr Selwyn, mother?"
+
+"My daughter, Miss Sheepmarsh--Mr Selwyn," said the mother reluctantly.
+
+"We were just talking about you," said the girl, "and wondering whether
+you were ill or anything, or whether your servant hasn't turned up, or
+something."
+
+"Miss Sheepmarsh." He was still speechless. This the little adventuress,
+the tobacconist's assistant? This girl with the glorious hair severely
+braided, the round face, the proud chin, the most honest eyes in the
+world? She might be sister to the adventuress--cousin, perhaps? But the
+room, too--shining mahogany, old china, worn silver, and fine
+napery--all spoke of a luxury as temperate as refined: the luxury of
+delicate custom, of habit bred in the bone; no mushroom growth of gross
+self-indulgence, but the unconscious outcome of generations of clear
+self-respect.
+
+"Can we send anything over for you?" the elder lady asked. "Of course
+we----"
+
+"We didn't mean by 'entirely private' that we would let our tenant
+starve," the girl interrupted.
+
+"There is some mistake." Selborne came to himself suddenly. "I thought I
+was engaging furnished apartments with er--attendance."
+
+The girl drew a journal from a heap on the sofa.
+
+"This was the advertisement, wasn't it?" she asked.
+
+And he read:
+
+     "Four-roomed cottage, furnished, in beautiful grounds. Part of
+     these are fenced in for use of tenant of cottage. And in the
+     absence of the family the whole of the grounds are open to
+     tenant. When at home the family wish to be entirely private."
+
+"I never saw this at all," said Selborne desperately. "My--I mean I was
+told it was furnished lodgings. I am very sorry I have no servant and
+no means of getting one. I will go back to London at once. I am sorry."
+
+"The last train's gone," said Miss Sheepmarsh. "Mother, ask Mr Selborne
+to come in, and I'll get him something to eat."
+
+"My dear," said the mother, "surely Mary----"
+
+"My dear mother," said the girl, "you know Mary is having her supper."
+
+The bewildered Selborne presently found himself seated at the
+white-spread, silver-sparkling table, served with food and drink by this
+Hebe with the honest eyes. He exerted himself to talk with the
+mother--not of the difference between a lodger and a tenant, but of
+music, art, and the life of the great world.
+
+It was the girl who brought the conversation down from the gossip of
+Courts and concert-rooms to the tenant's immediate needs.
+
+"If you mean to stay, you could have a woman in from the village," said
+she.
+
+"But wouldn't you rather I went?" he said.
+
+"Why should we? We want to let the cottage, or we shouldn't have
+advertised it. I'll get you some one to-morrow. Mrs Bates would be the
+very thing, mother. And you'll like her, Mr Selwyn. She's a great
+dear----"
+
+Sure enough, the next morning brought a gentle, middle-aged woman to "do
+for" Mr Selwyn. And she did excellently. And three slow days passed. He
+got a boat and pulled up and down the green willow-fringed river. He
+tried to fish; he read somewhat, and he thought more. And he went in and
+out of his cottage, which had its own private path debouching on the
+highway. Many times a day he went in and out, but he saw no more the red
+hair, the round face, and the honest eyes.
+
+On the fourth day he had nursed his interest in the girl to a strong,
+well-grown sentiment of curiosity and attraction. Coming in at his own
+gate, he saw the mother leaving hers, with sunshade and cardcase--an
+afternoon of calls evidently setting in.
+
+Now or never! The swift impulse took him, and before he had time to
+recall the terms of that advertisement, he had passed the green fence of
+division, and his feet were on the wandering ways of the shrubbery. He
+felt, as he went, a glow of gratitude to the fate which was rewarding
+his care of his brother's future with an interest like this. The
+adventuress?--the tobacconist's assistant?--he could deal with her
+later.
+
+Through the garden's green a gleam of white guided--even, it seemed,
+beckoned.
+
+He found the girl with the red hair and the honest eyes in a hammock
+swung between two cedars.
+
+"Have pity on me," he said abruptly.
+
+She raised her eyes from her book.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" she said. "I am so glad. Get a chair from under the
+weeping ash, and sit down and talk."
+
+"This turf is good enough for me," said he; "but are you sure I'm not
+trespassing?"
+
+"You mean the advertisement? Oh, that was just because we had some
+rather awful people last year, and we couldn't get away from them, and
+mother wanted to be quite safe; but, of course, you're different. We
+like you very much, what we've seen of you." This straightforward
+compliment somehow pleased him less than it might have done. "The other
+people were--well, he was a butterman. I believe he called himself an
+artist."
+
+"Do you mean that you do not like persons who are in trade," he asked,
+thinking of the tobacconist's assistant.
+
+"Of course I don't mean that," she said; "why, I'm a Socialist!
+Butterman just means a person without manners or ideals. But I do like
+working people better than shoppy people, though I know it's wrong."
+
+"How can an involuntary liking or disliking be wrong?" he asked.
+
+"It's snobbish, don't you think? We ought to like people for what they
+are, not for what they have, or what they work at."
+
+"If you weren't so pretty, and hadn't that delightful air of having just
+embraced the Social Gospel, you'd be a prig," he said to himself. To her
+he said: "Roughly speaking, don't you think the conventional
+classifications correspond fairly well with the real ones?"
+
+"No," she answered roundly.
+
+And when the mother returned, weary from her calls, she found her tenant
+and her daughter still discussing the problems of good and evil, of
+heredity and environment, of social inequalities and the injustice of
+the world. The girl fought for her views, and she fought fairly, if
+fiercely. It was the first of many such fights. When he had gone the
+mother protested.
+
+"Dearest," said the girl, "I can't help it! I must live my own life, as
+people say in plays. After all, I'm twenty-six. I've always talked to
+people if I liked them--even strangers in railway carriages. And people
+aren't wild beasts, you know: everything is always all right. And this
+man can talk; he knows about things. And he's a gentleman. That ought to
+satisfy you--that and his references. Don't worry, there's a darling.
+Just be nice to him yourself. He's simply a godsend in a place like
+this."
+
+"He'll fall in love with you, Celia," said the mother warningly.
+
+"Not he!" said the daughter. But the mother was right.
+
+Living alone in the queer little cottage, the world, his accustomed
+life, the Brydges woman, all seemed very far away. Miss Sheepmarsh was
+very near. Her frank enjoyment of his talk, her gay acceptance of their
+now almost constant companionship, were things new in his experience of
+women, and might have warned him that she at least was heart-whole. They
+would have done had he ever faced the fact that his own heart had caught
+fire. He bicycled with her along the pleasant Kentish lanes; he rowed
+with her on the little river of dreams; he read to her in the quiet of
+the August garden; he gave himself up wholly to the pleasure of those
+hours that flew like moments--those days that passed like hours. They
+talked of books and of the heart of books--and inevitably they talked of
+themselves. He talked of himself less than most men, but he learned much
+of her life. She was an ardent social reformer; had lived in an
+Art-and-Culture-for-the-People settlement in Whitechapel; had studied at
+the London School of Economics. Now she had come back to be with her
+mother, who needed her. She and her mother were almost alone in the
+world; there was enough to live on, but not too much. The letting of the
+little house had been Celia's idea: its rent was merely for "luxuries."
+He found out from the mother, when she came to tolerate him, that the
+"luxuries" were Celia's--the luxuries of helping the unfortunate,
+feeding the hungry, and clothing little shivering children in winter
+time.
+
+And all this while he had not heard a word of sister or cousin--of any
+one whom he might identify as the tobacconist's assistant.
+
+It was on an evening when the level sunbeams turned the meadows by the
+riverside to fine gold, and the willows and alders to trees of Paradise,
+that he spoke suddenly, leaning forward on his sculls. "Have you," he
+asked, looking into her face, "any relation who is in a shop?"
+
+"No," said she; "why?"
+
+"I only wondered," said he coldly.
+
+"But what an extraordinary thing to wonder!" she said. "Do tell me what
+made you think of it."
+
+"Very well," he said, "I will. The person who told me that your mother
+had lodgings, also told me that your mother had a daughter who served in
+a shop."
+
+"Never!" she cried. "What a hateful idea!"
+
+"A tobacconist's shop," he persisted; "and her name was Susannah
+Sheepmarsh."
+
+"Oh," she answered, "that was me." She spoke instantly and frankly, but
+she blushed crimson.
+
+"And you're ashamed of it,--Socialist?" he asked with a sneer, and his
+eyes were fierce on her burning face.
+
+"I'm not! Row home, please. Or I'll take the sculls if you're tired, or
+your shoulder hurts. I don't want to talk to you any more. You tried to
+trap me into telling a lie. You don't understand anything at all. And
+I'll never forgive you."
+
+"Yes, you will," he said to himself again and again through the silence
+in which they plashed down the river. But when he was alone in his
+cottage, the truth flew at him and grappled him with teeth and claws. He
+loved her. She loved, or had loved--or might have loved--or might
+love--his brother. He must go: and the next morning he went without a
+word. He left a note for Mrs Sheepmarsh, and a cheque in lieu of notice;
+and letter and cheque were signed with his name in full.
+
+He went back to the old life, but the taste of it all was gone. Shooting
+parties, house parties, the Brydges woman even, prettier than ever, and
+surer of all things: how could these charm one whose fancy, whose heart
+indeed, wandered for ever in a green garden or by a quiet river with a
+young woman who had served in a tobacconist's shop, and who would be
+some day his brother's wife?
+
+The days were long, the weeks seemed interminable. And all the time
+there was the white house, as it had been; there were mother and
+daughter living the same dainty, dignified, charming life to which he
+had come so near. Why had he ever gone there? Why had he ever
+interfered? He had meant to ensnare her heart just to free his brother
+from an adventuress. An adventuress! He groaned aloud.
+
+"Oh, fool! But you are punished!" he said; "she's angry now--angrier
+even than that evening on the river, for she knows now that even the
+name you gave her to call you by was not the one your own people use.
+This comes of trying to act like an ass in a book."
+
+The months went on. The Brydges woman rallied him on his absent air. She
+spoke of dairymaids. He wondered how he could ever have found her
+amusing, and whether her vulgarity was a growth, or had been merely
+hidden.
+
+And all the time Celia and the white house were dragging at his
+heart-strings. Enough was left of the fool that he constantly reproached
+himself for having been, to make him sure that had he had no brother,
+had he met her with no duty to the absent to stand between them she
+would have loved him.
+
+Then one day came the South African mail, and it brought a letter from
+his brother, the lad who had had the sense to find a jewel behind a
+tobacconist's counter, and had trusted it to him.
+
+The letter was long and ineffective. It was the postscript that was
+vital.
+
+     "I say, I wonder whether you've seen anything of Susannah? What
+     a young fool I was ever to think I could be happy with a girl
+     out of a shop. I've met the real and only one now--she's a
+     nurse; her father was a clergyman in Northumberland. She's such
+     a bright little thing, and she's never cared for any one before
+     me. Wish me luck."
+
+John Selborne almost tore his hair.
+
+"Well, I can't save him across half the world! Besides----"
+
+At thirty-seven one should have outgrown the wild impulses of youth. He
+said this to himself, but all the same it was the next train to Yalding
+that he took.
+
+Fate was kind; at Yalding it had almost always been kind. The glow of
+red firelight shone out over the snow through the French window among
+the brown jasmine stalks.
+
+Mrs Sheepmarsh was out, Miss Sheepmarsh was at home. Would he step this
+way?
+
+He stepped into the presence of the girl. She rose from the low chair by
+the fire, and the honest eyes looked angrily at him.
+
+"Look here," he said, as the door closed between them and the
+maid-servant, "I've come to tell you things. Just this once let me talk
+to you; and afterwards, if you like, I can go away and never come back."
+
+"Sit down," she said coldly. "I don't feel friends with you at all, but
+if you want to speak, I suppose you must."
+
+So then he told her everything, beginning with his brother's letter, and
+ending with his brother's letter.
+
+"And, of course, I thought it couldn't be you, because of your being
+called Celia; and when I found out it really was you, I had to go away,
+because I wanted to be fair to the boy. But now I've come back."
+
+"I think you're the meanest person I ever knew," she said; "you thought
+I liked your brother, and you tried to make me like you so that you
+might throw me over and show him how worthless I was. I hate you and
+despise you."
+
+"I didn't really try," he said miserably.
+
+"And you took a false name to deceive us."
+
+"I didn't: it really is my second name."
+
+"And you came here pretending to be nice and a gentleman, and----" She
+was lashing herself to rage, with the lash of her own voice, as women
+will. John Selborne stood up suddenly.
+
+"Be quiet," he said, and she was quiet. "I won't hear any more
+reproaches, unless---- Listen, I've done wrong--I've owned it. I've
+suffered for it. God knows I've suffered. You liked me in the summer:
+can't you try to like me again? I want you more than anything else in
+the world. Will you marry me?"
+
+"Marry you," she cried scornfully; "you who----"
+
+"Pardon me," he said. "I have asked a question. Give me no for an
+answer, and I will go. Say yes, and then you may say anything else you
+like. Yes or no. Shall I go or stay? Yes or no. No other word will do."
+
+She looked at him, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing with
+indignation. A world of scorn showed in the angle of the chin, the poise
+of her head. Her lips opened. Then suddenly her eyes met his, and she
+knew that he meant what he said. She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Don't--don't cry, dear one," he said. "What is it? You've only to
+choose. Everything is for you to decide."
+
+Still she did not speak.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said, and turned. But she caught at him blindly.
+
+"Don't--don't go!" she cried. "I didn't think I cared about you in the
+summer, but since you went away, oh, you don't know how I've wanted
+you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," he said, when her tears were dried, "aren't you going to scold
+me?"
+
+"Don't!" said she.
+
+"At least tell me all about my brother--and why he thought you would be
+so ready to marry him."
+
+"That? Oh, that was only his conceit. You know I always do talk to
+people in railway carriages and things. I suppose he thought it was only
+him I talked to."
+
+"And the name?"
+
+"I--I thought if I said my name was Susannah he wouldn't get
+sentimental."
+
+"You 'took a false name to deceive him'?"
+
+"Don't--oh, don't!"
+
+"And the tobacco shop?"
+
+"Ah--that rankles?" She raised her head to look at him.
+
+"Not it," he answered coolly. "I simply don't believe it."
+
+"Why? But you're quite right. It was a woman in my district in London,
+and I took the shop for her for three days, because her husband was
+dying, and she couldn't get any one else to help her. It was--it was
+rather fun--and--and----"
+
+"And you wouldn't tell me about it, because you didn't want me to know
+how proud you were of it."
+
+"Proud? Ah, you do understand things! The man died, and I had given her
+those three days with him. I wasn't proud, was I?--only glad that I
+could. So glad--so glad!"
+
+"But you let my brother think----"
+
+"Oh yes, I let him think it was my trade; I thought it might make him
+not be silly. You see, I always knew he couldn't understand things."
+
+"Celia?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And have you really forgiven me?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I forgive you! But I never should have if---- There's mother
+at the front door. Let me go. I want to let her in myself."
+
+"If?"
+
+"Let me go. If----"
+
+"If?"
+
+"If you hadn't understood and----"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"If you hadn't come back to me!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHILE IT IS YET DAY
+
+
+"And is it really true? Are you going to govern the Fortunate Islands?"
+
+"I am, indeed--or rather, to be accurate, I am going to deputy-govern
+them--I mean, father is--for a year."
+
+"A whole year!" he said, looking down at her fan. "What will London do
+without you?"
+
+"London will do excellently," she answered--"and that's my pet fan, and
+it's not used to being tied into knots." She took it from him.
+
+"And what shall I do without you?"
+
+"Oh! laugh and rhyme and dance and dine. You'll go out to the proper
+number of dinners and dances, and make the proper measure of pretty
+little speeches and nice little phrases; and you'll do your reviews, and
+try to make them as like your editor's as you can; and you'll turn out
+your charming little rondeaux and triolets, and the year will simply
+fly. Heigho! I'm glad I'm going to see something big, if it's only the
+Atlantic."
+
+"You are very cruel," he said.
+
+"Am I? But it's not cruel to be cruel if nobody's hurt, is it? And I am
+so tired of nice little verses and pretty little dances and dainty
+little dinners. Oh, if I were only a man!"
+
+"Thank God you're not!" said he.
+
+"If I were a man, I would do just one big thing in my life, even if I
+had to settle down to a life of snippets and trifles afterwards."
+
+Her eyes were shining. They always glittered, but now they were starry.
+The drifted white folds across her breast stirred to her quickened
+breath.
+
+"If you loved me, Sybil, I could do something great!" said he.
+
+"But I _don't_," she said--"at any rate, not now; and I've told you so a
+dozen times. My dear Rupert, the man who needs a woman to save him isn't
+worth the saving."
+
+"What would you call a big thing?" he asked. "Must I conquer an empire
+for you, or start a new religion? Or shall I merely get the Victoria
+Cross, or become Prime Minister?"
+
+"Don't sneer," said she; "it doesn't become you at all. You've no idea
+how horrid you look when you're sneering. Why don't you----? Oh! but
+it's no good! By the way, what a charming cover Housman has designed for
+your _Veils and Violets_! It's a dear little book. Some of the verses
+are quite pretty."
+
+"Go on," said he, "rub it in. I know I haven't done much yet; but
+there's plenty of time. And how can one do any good work when one is for
+ever sticking up one's heart like a beastly cocoanut for you to shy at?
+If you'd only marry me, Sybil, you should see how I would work!"
+
+"May I refer you to my speech--not the last one, but the one before
+that."
+
+He laughed; then he sighed.
+
+"Ah, my Pretty," he said, "it was all very well, and pleasant enough to
+be scolded by you when I could see you every day; but now----"
+
+"How often," she asked calmly, "have I told you that you must not call
+me that? It was all very well when we were children; but now----"
+
+"Look here," he said, leaning towards her, "there's not a soul about;
+they're in the middle of the Lancers. Let me kiss you once--it can't
+matter to you--and it will mean so very much to me."
+
+"That's just it," she said; "if it didn't mean----"
+
+"Then it shan't mean anything but good-bye. It's only about eight years
+since you gave up the habit of kissing me on every occasion."
+
+She looked down, then she looked to right and left, then suddenly she
+looked at him.
+
+"Very well," she said suddenly.
+
+"No," he said; "I won't have it unless it _does_ mean something."
+
+There was a silence. "Our dance, I think?" said the voice of one bending
+before her, and she was borne away on the arm of the partner from whom
+she had been hiding.
+
+Rupert left early. He had not been able to secure any more dances with
+her. She left late. When she came to think the evening over, she sighed
+more than once. "I wish I loved him a little less, or a little more,"
+she said; "and I wish--yes, I do wish he had. I don't suppose he'll care
+a bit for me when I come back."
+
+So she set sail for the Fortunate or other Isles, and in dainty verses
+on loss and absence he found some solace for the pain of parting with
+her. Yet the pain was a real thing, and grew greater, and life seemed to
+have no taste, even tobacco no charm. She had always been a part of his
+life since the days when nothing but a sunk fence divided his father's
+park from her father's rabbit-warren. He grew paler, and he developed a
+wrinkle or two, and a buoyant friend meeting him in Piccadilly assured
+him that he looked very much off colour, and in his light-hearted way
+the friend advised the sort of trip round the world from which yesterday
+had seen his own jovial return.
+
+"Do you all the good in the world, my boy. 'Pon my soul, you have a
+tired sort of look, as if you'd got some of these jolly new diseases
+people have taken to dying of lately--appendi-what's-its-name, you know,
+and things like that. You book your passage to Marseilles at once. So
+long! You take my tip."
+
+What Rupert took was a cab. He looked at himself in one of the little
+horseshoe mirrors. He certainly did look ill; and he felt ill--tired,
+bored, and nothing seemed worth while. He drove to a doctor friend, who
+punched and prodded him and listened with tubes at his chest and back,
+looked grave, and said: "Go to Strongitharm--he's absolutely at _the_
+top. Twenty-guinea fee. But it's better to know where we are. You go to
+Strongitharm."
+
+Rupert went, and Strongitharm gave his opinion. He gave it with a voice
+that trembled with sympathy, and he supplemented it with
+brandy-and-soda, which he happened to have quite handy.
+
+Then Rupert disappeared from London and from his friends--disappeared
+suddenly and completely. He had plenty of money, and no relations near
+enough to be inconveniently anxious. He went away and he left no
+address, and he did not even write excuses to the people with whom he
+should have danced and dined, nor to the editor whose style he should
+have gone on imitating.
+
+The buoyant friend rejoiced at the obvious and natural following of his
+advice.
+
+"He was looking a little bit below himself, you know, and I said: 'Go
+round the world; there's nothing like it,' and, by Jove! he went. Now,
+that's the kind of man I like--knows good advice when he gets it, and
+acts on it right off."
+
+So the buoyant one spread the rumour that ran its course and died, and
+had to be galvanised into life once more to furnish an answer to Sybil's
+questionings, when, returning from the Fortunate or other Isles, she
+asked for news of her old friend. And the rumour did not satisfy her.
+She had had time to think--there was plenty of time to think in those
+Islands whose real name escapes me--and she knew very much more than she
+had known on the evening when Rupert had broken her pet fan and asked
+for a kiss which he had not taken. She found herself quite fervently
+disbelieving in the grand tour theory--and the disbelief was so strong
+that it distorted life and made everything else uninteresting. Sybil
+took to novel-reading as other folks have in their time taken to drink.
+She was young, and she could still lose herself in a book. One day she
+lost herself most completely in a new novel from Mudie's, a book that
+every one was talking about. She lost herself; and suddenly, in a
+breathless joy that was agony too, she found _him_. This was his book.
+No one but Rupert could have written it--all that description of the
+park, and the race when she rode the goat and he rode the pig--and--she
+turned the pages hastily. Ah yes, Rupert had written this! She put the
+book down and she dressed herself as prettily as she knew how, and she
+went in a hansom cab to the office of the publisher of that book, and on
+the way she read. And more and more she saw how great a book it was, and
+how no one but Rupert could have written just that book. Thrill after
+thrill of pride ran through her. He had done this _for her_--because of
+what she had said.
+
+Arrived at the publisher's, she was met by a blank wall. Neither partner
+was visible. The senior clerk did not know the address of the author of
+"Work While it is Yet Day," nor the name of him; and it was abundantly
+evident that even if he had known, he would not have told.
+
+Sybil's prettiness and her charm so wrought upon this dry-as-dust
+person, however, that he volunteered the address of the literary agent
+through whom the book had been purchased. And Sybil found him on a first
+floor in one of those imposing new buildings in Arundel Street. He was
+very nice and kind, but he could not give his client's name without his
+client's permission.
+
+The disappointment was bitter.
+
+"But I'll send a letter for you," he tried to soften it with.
+
+Sybil's self-control almost gave way. A tear glistened on her veil.
+
+"I do want to see him most awfully," she said, "and I know he wants to
+see me. It was I who rode the goat in the book, you know----"
+
+She did not realise how much she was admitting, but the literary agent
+did.
+
+"Look here," he said smartly, "I'll wire to him at once; and if he says
+I may, I'll give you the address. Can you call in an hour?"
+
+Sybil wandered on the Embankment for a conscientious hour, and then went
+back.
+
+The literary agent smiled victory.
+
+"The answer is 'Yes,'" he said, and handed her a slip of paper--
+
+     "THREE CHIMNEYS,
+          NEAR PADDOCK WOOD,
+                       KENT."
+
+"Have you a time-table?" asked she.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dusty, hired fly lumbered and jolted along the white roads, and in
+it, as in the train, Sybil read the novel, the book every one was
+talking about--the great book--and her heart was full to overflowing of
+joy and pride and other things.
+
+The carriage shook itself fiercely and stopped, and she looked up from
+the last page of the book with eyes that swam a little, to find herself
+at the broken wooden gate of a low, white house, shabbily blindless, and
+a long way off its last painting and whitewashing.
+
+She paid for the carriage and dismissed it. She would walk back to the
+station with _him_. She passed in at the rickety gate and up the flagged
+path, and a bell in answer to her touch jangled loudly, as bells do in
+empty houses.
+
+Her dress was greeny, with lace about it of the same colour as very nice
+biscuits, and her hat seemed to be made entirely of yellow roses. She
+was not unconscious of these facts.
+
+Steps sounded within, and they, like the bell, seemed to sound in an
+empty house. The door opened, and there was Rupert. Sybil's lips were
+half-parted in a smile that should match the glow of gladness that must
+shine on his face when he saw her--Her--the unattainable, the
+unapproachable, at his very door. But her smile died away, for his face
+was grave. Only in his eyes something that was bright and fierce and
+like a flame leapt up and shone a moment.
+
+"You!" he said.
+
+And Sybil answered as most people do to such questions: "Yes, me." There
+was a pause: her eyes wandered from his to the blank face of the house,
+the tangle of the untidy garden. "Mayn't I come in?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; oh yes, come in!"
+
+She crossed the threshold--the doorstep was dank with green mould--and
+followed him into a room. It was a large room, and perfectly bare: no
+carpet, no curtains, no pictures. Loose bricks were arranged as a
+fender, and dead embers strewed the hearth. There was a table; there was
+a chair; there were scattered papers, pens, and ink. From the window one
+saw the neglected garden, and beyond it the round shoulders of the
+hills.
+
+He drew forward the one chair, and she sat down. He stood with his back
+to the fireless grate.
+
+"You are very, very pretty," he said suddenly. And the explanation of
+his disappearance suddenly struck her like a blow between the eyes. But
+she was not afraid. When all a woman's thoughts, day and night for a
+year, have been given to one man, she is not afraid of him; no, not even
+if he be what Sybil for one moment feared that this man was. He read the
+fear in her eyes.
+
+"No, I'm not mad," he said. "Sybil, I'm very glad you came. Come to
+think of it, I'm very glad to see you. It is better than writing. I was
+just going to write out everything, as well as I could. I expect I
+should have sent it to you. You know I used to care for you more than I
+did for any one."
+
+Sybil's hands gripped the arms of the windsor chair. Was he really--was
+it through her that he was----
+
+"Come out," she said. "I hate this place; it stifles me. And you've
+lived here--worked here!"
+
+"I've lived here for eleven months and three days," he said. "Yes, come
+out."
+
+So they went out through the burning July sun, and Sybil found a
+sheltered spot between a larch and a laburnum.
+
+"Now," she said, throwing off her hat and curling her green, soft
+draperies among the long grass. "Come and sit down and tell me----"
+
+He threw himself on the grass.
+
+"Sure it won't bore you?" he asked.
+
+She took his hand and held it. He let her take it; but his hand did not
+hold hers.
+
+"I seem to remember," he said, "the last time I saw you--you were going
+away, or something. You told me I ought to do something great; and I
+told you--or, anyway, I thought to myself--that there was plenty of time
+for that. I'd always had a sort of feeling that I _could_ do something
+great whenever I chose to try. Well--yes, you did go away, of course; I
+remember perfectly--and I missed you extremely. And some one told me I
+looked ill; and I went to my doctor, and he sent me to a big swell, and
+_he_ said I'd only got about a year to live. So then I began to think."
+
+Her fingers tightened on the unresponsive hand.
+
+"And I thought: Here I've been thirty years in this world. I've the
+experience of twenty-eight and a half--I suppose the first little bit
+doesn't count. If I'd had time, I meant to write another book, just to
+show exactly what a man feels when he knows he's only got a year to
+live, and nothing done--nothing done."
+
+"I won't believe it," she said. "You don't _look_ ill; you're as lean as
+a greyhound, but----"
+
+"It may come any day now," he went on quietly; "but I've done something.
+The book--it _is_ great. They all say so; and I know it, too. But at
+first! Just think of gasping out your breath, and feeling that all the
+things you had seen and known and felt were wasted--lost--going out with
+you, and that you were going out like the flame of a candle, taking
+everything you might have done with you."
+
+"The book _is_ great," she said; "you _have_ done something."
+
+"Yes. But for those two days I stayed in my rooms in St James's Street,
+and I thought, and thought, and thought, and there was no one to care
+where I went or what I did, except a girl who was fond of me when she
+was little, and she had gone away and wasn't fond of me any more. Oh,
+Sybil--I feel like a lunatic--I mean you, of course; but you never
+cared. And I went to a house agent's and got the house unfurnished, and
+I bought the furniture--there's nothing much except what you've seen,
+and a bed and a bath, and some pots and kettles; and I've lived alone in
+that house, and I've written that book, with Death sitting beside me,
+jogging my elbow every time I stopped writing, and saying, 'Hurry up;
+I'm waiting here for you, and I shall have to take you away, and you'll
+have done nothing, nothing, nothing.'"
+
+"But you've done the book," said Sybil again. The larch and the garden
+beyond were misty to her eyes. She set her teeth. He must be comforted.
+Her own agony--that could be dealt with later.
+
+"I've ridden myself with the curb," he said. "I thought it all
+out--proper food, proper sleep, proper exercise. I wouldn't play the
+fool with the last chance; and I pulled it off. I wrote the book in four
+months; and every night, when I went to sleep, I wondered whether I
+should ever wake to go on with the book. But I did wake, and then I used
+to leap up and thank God, and set to work; and I've done it. The book
+will live--every one says it will. I shan't have lived for nothing."
+
+"Rupert," she said, "dear Rupert!"
+
+"Thank you," he said forlornly; "you're very kind." And he drew his
+limp hand from hers, and leaned his elbows on the grass and his chin on
+his hands.
+
+"Oh, Rupert, why didn't you write and tell me?"
+
+"What was the use of making you sad? You were always sorry for maimed
+things--even the worms the gardener cut in two with his spade."
+
+She was struggling with a growing desire to scream and shriek, and to
+burst out crying and tear the grass with her hands. He no longer loved
+her--that was the lesser evil. She could have borne that--have borne
+anything. But he was going to die! The intensity of her belief that he
+was going to die caught her by the throat. She defended herself
+instinctively.
+
+"I don't believe it," she said.
+
+"Don't believe what?"
+
+"That you're going to die."
+
+He laughed; and when the echo of that laugh had died away in the quiet
+garden, she found that she could no longer even say that she did not
+believe.
+
+Then he said: "I am going to die, and all the values of things have
+changed places. But I have done something: I haven't buried my talent
+in a napkin. Oh, my Pretty, go away, go away! You make a fool of me
+again! I had almost forgotten how to be sorry that you couldn't love me.
+Go away, go away! Go, go!"
+
+He threw out his hands, and they lay along the grass. His face went down
+into the tangled green, and she saw his shoulders shaken with sobs. She
+dragged herself along the grass till she was close to him; then she
+lifted his shoulders, and drew his head on to her lap, and clasped her
+arms round him.
+
+"My darling, my dear, my own!" she said. "You're tired, and you've
+thought of nothing but your hateful book--your beautiful book, I
+mean--but you do love me really. Not as I love you, but still you do
+love me. Oh, Rupert, I'll nurse you, I'll take care of you, I'll be your
+slave; and if you have to die, I shall die too, because there'll be
+nothing left for me to do for you."
+
+He put an arm round her. "It's worth dying to hear that," he said, and
+brought his face to lie against her waist.
+
+"But you shan't die. You must come back to London with me now--this
+minute. The best opinion----"
+
+"I had the best," he said. "Kiss me, my Pretty; oh, kiss me now that it
+does mean something! Let me dream that I'm going to live, and that you
+love me."
+
+He lifted his face, and she kissed him.
+
+"Rupert, you're _not_ going to die. It can't be true. It isn't true. It
+shan't be true."
+
+"It is; but I don't mind now, except for you. I'm a selfish beast. But
+this is worth it all, and I _have_ done something great. You told me
+to."
+
+"Tell me," she said, "who was the doctor? Was he really the best?"
+
+"It was Strongitharm," he said wearily.
+
+She drew a long breath and clasped him closer. Then she pushed him away
+and sprang to her feet.
+
+"Stand up!" she said. "Let me look at you!"
+
+He stood up, and she caught him by the elbows and stood looking at him.
+Twice she tried to speak, and twice no voice obeyed; then she said
+softly, huskily: "Rupert, listen! It's all a horrid dream. Wake up.
+Haven't you seen the papers? Strongitharm went mad several months ago.
+It was drink. He told _all_ his patients they were going to die of this
+new disease of his that he'd invented. It's all his madness. You're
+well--I know it. Oh, Rupert, you aren't going to die, and we love each
+other! Oh, God is very good!"
+
+He drew a long breath.
+
+"Are you sure? It's like coming back from chloroform; and yet it hurts,
+and yet--but I wrote the book! Oh, Sybil, I shall never write another
+great book!"
+
+"Ah yes, you will--you shall," she said, looking at him with wet eyes.
+
+"I have you," he said. "Oh, thank God, I have you! but I shall never
+write another great book."
+
+And he never has.
+
+But he is very happy. And Sybil cannot see that his later works are not
+in the same field with the first. She thinks the critics fools. And he
+loves her the more for her folly.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+ALCIBIADES
+
+
+"Oh, _do_ let me have him in the carriage with me; he won't hurt any
+one, he's a perfect angel."
+
+"Angels like him travels in the dog-box," said the porter.
+
+Judy ended an agonised search for her pocket.
+
+"Would you be offended," she said, "if I offered you half-a-crown?"
+
+"Give the guard a bob, Miss." The hand curved into a cup resting on the
+carriage window, answered her question. "It's more'n enough for him,
+being a single man, whereas me, I'm risking my situation and nine
+children at present to say no more, when I----"
+
+The turn of a railway key completed the sentence.
+
+Judy and the angel were alone. He was a very nice angel--long-haired and
+brownly-black--his race the Aberdeen, his name Alcibiades. He put up a
+respectful and adoring nose, and his mistress kissed him between the
+eyes.
+
+"How could they try to part us," she asked, "when there's only us two
+left?"
+
+Alcibiades, with swimming eyes, echoed in a little moan of true love the
+question: "How could they?"
+
+The question was put again by both later in the day. Judy was to stay
+with an aunt while her mother sailed to Madeira to meet there the father
+returning from South Africa, full of wounds and honour, and to spend on
+the Island what was left of the winter. Now it was December.
+
+A thick fog covered London with a veil of ugliness; the cabman was
+aggrieved and aggrieving--Alcibiades had tried to bite him--and Judy was
+on the verge of tears when the fog at last lifted, and allowed her to be
+driven to her aunt's suburban house, yellow brickish, with a slate roof
+and a lean forecourt, wherein cypresses, stunted and blackened, spoke
+eloquently of lives more blank than the death whose emblem they were.
+
+Through the slits of the drab Venetian blinds, gaslight streamed into
+the winter dusk.
+
+"There'll be tea, anyhow," sighed Judy, recklessly overpaying the
+cabman.
+
+Inside the house where the lights were, the Aunt was surrounded by a
+dozen ladies of about her own age and station; "Tabbies" the world might
+have called them. All were busy with mysteries of many coloured silks
+and satins, lace and linen; at least all held such in their hands. The
+gathering was in fact a "working party" for the approaching bazaar. But
+the real work of bazaars is not done at parties.
+
+"Yes," the Aunt was saying, "so nice for dear Julia. I'm truly glad that
+she should begin her visit with a little gaiety. In parting or sorrow we
+should always seek to distract the mind, should we not, dear Mrs
+Biddle?"
+
+"The young are all too easily distracted by the shows of this world,"
+said dear Mrs Biddle heavily.
+
+And several ladies murmured approval.
+
+"But you can't exactly call a church bazaar the shows of this world, can
+you?" urged the Aunt, sitting very upright, all black and beady.
+
+"It's the thin end of the Rubicon sometimes," said Mrs Biddle.
+
+"Then why----" began the youngest Tabby--and then the door bell rang,
+and every one said: "Here she is!"
+
+The prim maid announced her, and she took two steps forward, and stood
+blinking in the gaslight with her hat on one side, and no gloves. Every
+one noticed that at once.
+
+"Come in, my dear," said the Aunt, rustling forward. "I have a few
+friends this afternoon, and--Oh, my gracious, what has happened!"
+
+What had happened was quite simple. In her rustling advance some
+wandering trail of the Aunt's black beadiness had caught on the knotted
+fringe of the table-cloth, and drawn this after her. A mass of silk and
+lace and ribbon lay sprinkled along the edges of the table where the
+Tabbies sat; a good store of needles, scissors, and cotton reels mingled
+with it. Now all this swept to the floor on the moving table-cloth, at
+the very instant when a rough brownly-black, long-eared person with a
+sharp nose and very muddy paws bounded into the room, to the full length
+of his chain. His bound landed him in the very middle of the
+ribbon-lace-cotton-reel confusion. Judy caught the dog up in her arms,
+and her apologies would have melted my heart, or yours, dear reader, in
+an instant. But Tabbies are Tabbies, and a bazaar is a bazaar. No more
+sewing was done that day; what was left of the afternoon proved all too
+short for the disentangling, the partial cleansing of the desecrated
+lace-cotton-reel-silk-muddle. And Alcibiades was tied up in the
+back-kitchen to the wheel of the patent mangle; he howled without
+ceasing.
+
+"My dear," said the Aunt, when tea was over, and the last Tabby had
+found her goloshes and gone home in them, "you are most welcome under
+any roof of mine, but--(may I ask you to close the baize door at the top
+of the kitchen stairs--thank you--and now this one--I am obliged. One
+cannot hear oneself speak for that terrible animal)--you must get rid of
+the cur to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, Aunt! he's not a cur--he's pure-bred."
+
+"Thank you," said the Aunt, "I believe I am as good a judge of dogs as
+any lady. My own dear Snubs has only been dead a year and two months
+last Tuesday. I know that a well-bred dog should have smooth hair, at
+any rate----"
+
+The mother of Snubs had been distantly related to a family of
+respectable middle-class fox-terriers.
+
+"I am very sorry," said Judy. She meant apology, but the Aunt took it
+for sympathy, and softened somewhat.
+
+"A nice little smooth-coated dog now," she said, "a fox-terrier, or an
+Italian greyhound; you see I am not ignorant of the names of various
+patterns of dog. I will get you one myself; we will go to the Dogs' Home
+at Battersea, where really nice dogs are often sold quite cheap. Or
+perhaps they might take your poor cur in exchange."
+
+Judy began to cry.
+
+"Yes, cry, my dear," said the Aunt kindly; "it will do you a world of
+good."
+
+When the Aunt was asleep--she had closed her ears to the protests of
+Alcibiades with wadding left over from a handkerchief sachet--Judy crept
+down in her woolly white dressing-gown, and coaxed the kitchen fire back
+to life. Then she sat in front of it, on the speckless rag carpet, and
+nursed Alcibiades and scolded him, and explained that he really must be
+a good dog, and that we all have something to put up with in this life.
+
+"You know, Alby dear," she said, "it's not very nice for me either, but
+_I_ don't howl and try to upset mangles. Don't you be afraid, dear: you
+shan't go to the Dogs' Home."
+
+So kindly, yet strongly, did she urge her point that Alcibiades, tied to
+the leg of the kitchen table, consented to sleep quietly for the rest of
+the night.
+
+Next day, when the Aunt enquired searchingly as to Judy's powers of
+fancywork, and what she would do for the bazaar, Judy declared outright
+that she did not know one end of a needle from the other.
+
+"But I can paint a little," she said, "and I am rather good at
+wood-carving."
+
+"That will be very nice." The Aunt already saw, in fancy, her stall
+outshine those of all other Tabbies, with glories of sabots and
+tambourines decorated with rosy sprays "hand-painted," and carved white
+wood boxes just the size to hold nothing useful.
+
+"And I'll do you some," said Judy; "only I can't work if I'm distracted
+about Alby--my dog, you know. Oh, Aunt, _do_ let him stay! He really is
+valuable, and he hasn't made a bit of noise since last night."
+
+"It is quite useless," the Aunt was sternly beginning--then suddenly her
+voice changed. "Is the cur _really_ valuable?" she asked.
+
+"Uncle Reggie gave five guineas for him when he was a baby boy," said
+Judy eagerly, "and he's worth much more now."
+
+"But he must be very old--when your Uncle Reggie was a boy----"
+
+"I mean when Alcibiades was a boy."
+
+"And who is Alcibiades?"
+
+Judy began all over again, and urged one or two new points.
+
+"I don't want to be harsh," said the Aunt at last, "you _shall_ have the
+little breakfast room to paint and carve in as you suggest. Of course I
+couldn't have shavings and paint pots lying about all over the
+dining-room and drawing-room. And you shall keep your cur."
+
+"Oh, Aunty," cried Judy, "you are a darling!"
+
+"Yes," the Aunt went on complacently, "you shall keep your cur till the
+bazaar, and then we will sell it for the benefit of the Fund for the
+Amelioration of the Daughters of the Country Clergy."
+
+And from this decision no tears and no entreaties would move her.
+
+Judy made a den for herself and Alcibiades in the little breakfast room.
+There was no painting light--so she looked out a handful of the sketches
+that she had done last summer and framed them. Most of her time she
+spent in writing to her friends to know whether any one could take care
+of a darling dog, who was a perfect angel. And alas! no one could--or
+would.
+
+With the connivance of the cook, Alcibiades had a bed in a box in the
+den, and from the very first he would at a word conceal himself in it
+the moment the step of the Aunt sounded on the oil-cloth-covered stairs.
+The sketches were framed, and some of the frames were lightly carved.
+The Aunt was enchanted, but, on the subject of Alcibiades, adamant.
+
+And now it was the day of the bazaar. Judy had run wires along the wall
+of the schoolroom behind her Aunt's stall, and from it hung the best of
+the sketches. She had arranged the stall herself, glorifying it with the
+Eastern shawls and draperies that her father had sent her from India. It
+did far outshine any other stall, even that of Lady Bates, the wife of
+the tallow Knight. The Aunt was really grateful--truly appreciative.
+But her mind was made up about the "cur."
+
+"If it really _is_ worth anything we'll sell it. If not----" She paused
+on the dark hint, and Judy's miserable fancy lost itself among ropes and
+rivers and rat-poison.
+
+To Alcibiades the bazaar was as much a festival as to any Tabby of them
+all. He had been washed, which is terrible at the time, but makes you
+self-respecting afterwards, a little puffed-up even. He had been allowed
+to come out by the front door, with his mistress in her beautiful dress
+that reminded him of rabbits. No one but Alcibiades himself will ever
+know what tortures of shame and misery, fighting with joy and affection,
+he had endured on those other occasions when he had been smuggled out of
+the back door in the early morning to take the damp air with his beloved
+lady and she had worn a shabby mackintosh and a red tam-o-shanter.
+To-day he wore a blue ribbon; it was uncomfortable, but he knew it spelt
+distinction. He rode in a carriage. It was not like the little
+governess-cart which had carried him and his mistress through the lanes
+about Maidstone; but it was a carriage, and a large horse was his
+slave. His mistress herself had tied his blue ribbon; it was she, too,
+who adjusted the chain that attached him to a strong staple driven in
+just above the schoolroom wainscotting. The chain allowed him to sit at
+her feet as she stood by the stall waiting for purchasers, and scanning
+the face of each newcomer in an eager anxiety to find there the
+countenance of some one who really loved dogs.
+
+But the people were most awful, and she had to own it to herself. There
+were Tabbies by the dozen, and young ladies by the score--young ladies
+all dressed differently, yet all alike in the fashion of the year before
+last; all vacant-faced, smiling agreeably because they knew they ought
+to smile--the young of the Tabby kind--Tabby kittens, in fact. No doubt
+they were really worthy and interesting, but they did not seem so to
+Judy.
+
+There was a sprinkling of men--middle-aged mostly, and bald. There were
+a few youths; by some fatality all were fair, and reminded Judy of pork.
+A Tabby stopped at her stall, turned over all things and bought a beaded
+table-napkin ring. The purchase and the purchaser seemed to Judy to
+typify her whole life and surroundings. All her soul reached out to the
+Island. She sighed, then she looked up. The crowd had thickened since
+she last surveyed it. Four steps led down to the schoolroom from the
+outer world: on the top step was a lady, well dressed--oh! marvel!--and
+beside her a man--a gentleman. Well, Judy supposed all these poor dear
+people were gentlefolk, but these two were of her world. As she gazed
+her eyes and those of the man met; the lady was lost in the crowd, and
+Judy saw her no more. The man made straight for the stall where were the
+framed sketches, the white dress, fur-trimmed, the russet hair and green
+eyes of Judy, and the brownly-black, blue-ribboned Alcibiades. But
+before he reached them a wave of buyers broke on the shore of Judy's
+stall, and he had been watching her for nearly half an hour before a
+young woman's long-deferred choice of a Christmas gift for a grandfather
+fell happily on a pair of purple bed-socks, and, for the moment, Judy
+breathed free.
+
+"I told you so," said the Aunt, rattling money in a leather bag; "I
+_knew_ just before Christmas was _the_ time. Everybody _has_ to give
+Christmas presents to all their relations. You see! the things are going
+like wildfire."
+
+"Yes, Aunt," said Judy. Alcibiades took advantage of the momentary calm
+to lick her hand exhaustively. Judy wondered wearily what had become of
+the man, the only man in that cheerless assembly who looked as though he
+liked dogs. "He must have been trying to get somewhere else," she said;
+"he just looked in here by mistake, and when he saw the sort of people
+we were, he--well--I don't wonder," she sighed, and, raising her eyes,
+met his.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said he. He meant apology.
+
+She took it for enquiry, and smiled. "Do you want to buy something?" she
+asked.
+
+Her smile was more tired than she knew.
+
+"I suppose I do," he said; "one does at bazaars, don't you know."
+
+"Do you want a Christmas present?" asked Judy, businesslike; "if so, and
+if you will tell me what kind of relation you want it for, perhaps I can
+find something that they'd like."
+
+"Could you? Now, that is really good. I want things for two aunts, three
+cousins, a little sister, and my mother--but I needn't get _hers_ here
+unless you've got something you think really--By Jove!"--his eyes had
+caught the sketches--"are _those_ for sale?"
+
+"That is rather the idea," said Judy. Her spirits were rising, though
+she couldn't have told you why. "Things at a bazaar are usually for
+sale, aren't they?"
+
+"Everything?" said he--and he stroked the not resentful neck of
+Alcibiades; "this good little beast isn't in the market, I'm afraid?"
+
+"Why? Would you buy him?"
+
+"I'd think twice before I said no. My mother is frightfully fond of
+dogs."
+
+Quite unreasonably Judy felt that she did not want to sell Alcibiades as
+a present to any one's mother.
+
+"The sketches," she said.
+
+"The sketches," said he; "why, there's Maidstone Church and Farley and
+Teston Lock and Allington. How much are they?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"I must have some. May I have a dozen? They're disgracefully cheap, and
+I feel like an American pork man buying works of art by the dozen--for
+they _are_ jolly good--and it brings back old times. I was quartered
+there once."
+
+"I knew it," she said to herself. Alcibiades stood up with his paws on
+her arm. "Be quiet," she said to him; "you mustn't talk now. I'm busy."
+
+Alcibiades gave her a reproachful look, and lay down.
+
+The stranger smiled; a very jolly smile, Judy thought.
+
+"Ripping little beast, isn't he?" said the stranger.
+
+"I suppose you're invalided home?" she said. She couldn't help it. A man
+in the Service. One who had been quartered at Maidstone, her own dear
+Maidstone. He was no longer a stranger.
+
+"Yes," he said; "beastly bore. But I shall be all right in two or three
+months; I hope the fighting won't be all over by then."
+
+"Have you sold this gentleman anything?" said the Aunt firmly, "because
+Mrs Biddle wants to look at some d'oyleys."
+
+"I'm just selling something," answered Judy. Then she turned to him and
+spoke softly. "I say, do you really like dogs?" said she.
+
+"Of course I do." The young man opened surprised grey eyes at her, as
+who should say: "Now, do I look like a man who doesn't like dogs?"
+
+"Well, then," she said, "Alcibiades _is_ for sale."
+
+"Is that his name? Why?"
+
+"Oh, surely you know: wasn't it Alcibiades who gave up being dictator or
+something rather than have his dog's ears cut off?"
+
+"I seem to remember something of the sort," he said.
+
+"Well," said she, "his price is twenty guineas, but----"
+
+He whistled very softly.
+
+"Yes--I know," she said, "but I'll--yes, Aunt, in one moment!" She went
+on in an agonised undertone: "His price is twenty guineas. Say you'll
+have him. Say it _loud_. You won't really have to pay anything for
+him--No, I'm not mad."
+
+"I'll give you twenty guineas for the dog," said the man, standing
+straight and soldierly against the tumbled mass of mats and pin-cushions
+and chair-backs.
+
+The Aunt drew a long breath and turned to minister to Mrs Biddle's deep
+need of d'oyleys.
+
+"Come and have tea," said the stranger; "you're tired out."
+
+"No--I can't. Of course I can't--but I'll take you over to Mrs Piddock's
+stall and----" She led him away. "Look here," she said, "I'm sure you're
+a decent sort. Here's the money to pay for him. My aunt says if I don't
+sell him she'll have him killed. Will you keep him for me till my people
+come home? Oh, do--he really _is_ an angel. And give me your name and
+address. You must think me a maniac, but I am so horribly fond of him.
+Will you?"
+
+"Of course I will," he said heartily, "but I shall pay for him. I'll
+write a cheque: you can pay me when you get him back. Thank you--yes, I
+am sure that pin-cushion would delight my aunt."
+
+Judy, with burning cheeks, found her way back to her stall.
+
+"Oh, Alcibiades," she said, unfastening the blue ribbon, "I'm sure he's
+nice. Don't bite him, there's a dear!"
+
+A cheque signed "Richard Graeme" and a card with an address came into
+Judy's hands, and the chain of Alcibiades left them.
+
+"I know you'll be good to him," she said; "don't give him meat, only
+biscuit, and sulphur in his drinking water. But you know all that.
+You've got me out of a frightful hole, and I'll bless you as long as I
+live. Good-bye." She stooped to the Aberdeen, now surprised and pained.
+"Good-bye, my dear old boy!"
+
+And Alcibiades, stubborn resistance in every line of his figure, in
+every hair of his coat, was dragged away through the crowded bazaar.
+
+Judy went to bed very tired. The bazaar had been a success, and the
+success had been talked over and the money counted till late in the
+evening--nearly eleven, that is, which is late for Tabbies--yet she woke
+at four. Some one was calling her. It was--no, he was gone--her eyes
+pricked at the thought--yet--surely that could be the voice of no other
+than Alcibiades? She sat up in bed and listened. It was he! That was his
+dear voice whining at the side gate. Those were his darling paws
+scratching the sacred paint off it.
+
+Judy swept down the stairs like a silent whirlwind, turned key, drew
+bolts, and in a moment she and the cur were "sobbing in each other's
+arms."
+
+She carried him up to her room, washed his dear, muddy paws, and spread
+her golf cape that he might lie on the bed beside her.
+
+In chilliest, earliest dawn she rose and dressed. She found a wire that
+had supported her pictures at the bazaar, and she wrote a note and tied
+it to the collar of Alcibiades, where she noticed and untied a frayed
+end of rope. This was the note:
+
+     "He has run home to me. Why did you take the chain off? He
+     always bites through cord. Don't beat him for it; he'll soon
+     forget me."
+
+The tears came into her eyes as she wrote it; it seemed to her so very
+pathetic. She did not quite believe that Alcibiades would soon forget
+her--but if he did----?
+
+The note did not lack pathos, either, in the eyes of Captain Graeme,
+when, two hours later, he found it under the chin of a mournfully
+howling Alcibiades, securely attached by picture wire to the railings of
+his mother's house.
+
+The Captain took a turn on the Heath, and thought. And his thoughts were
+these: "She's the prettiest girl I've seen since I came home. It's
+deuced dull here. Shouldn't wonder if she's dull too, poor little girl."
+
+Then he went home and cut a glove in pieces and sewed the pieces
+together, slowly but solidly as soldiers and sailors do sew. So that
+when, two nights later, the claws and the voice of Alcibiades roused
+Judy from sleep--her aunt most fortunately slept on the other side of
+the house--she found, after the first rapturous hug of reunion, a
+something under the hand that caressed the neck of Alcibiades.
+
+The gaslight in her own room defined the something as a bag of leather,
+the tan leather of which gentlemen's gloves are made. There was a bit of
+worn strap hanging below it. Within was a note.
+
+     "A thousand thanks for bringing him home. If he _should_ run
+     away again, please let me know. And don't trouble to send him
+     back. I'll call for him, if I may.
+
+                                        "RICHARD GRAEME."
+
+Judy would very much have liked to let Captain Graeme call, but there
+are such things as aunts.
+
+She tied another note to the "cur's" collar and wired him once more to
+the Paragon House railings. The note said:
+
+     "It's no use. He can bite through leather. Do use a chain."
+
+Next time Alcibiades returned he dragged a half yard of fine chain. It
+was neatly filed, but Judy was a woman and the detail escaped her.
+
+That morning she and Alcibiades slept late, the dressing-bell was
+ringing as she woke.
+
+The cook helped; the Aunt most fortunately had a luncheon engagement
+with a Tabby in Sidcup. Alcibiades being promised a walk later,
+consented to wait, trifling with a bone, in silence and the coal cellar.
+At eleven Judy rewarded his patience. She went out with him, and somehow
+it seemed wise to put on a pleasant-coloured dress, and one's best furs
+and one's prettiest hat.
+
+"I am afraid I shall see him," she told herself; "but," she added, "I am
+much more afraid that my aunt will see Alcibiades." On the edge of the
+Heath she met him. "Here's the dear dog," she said. "Oh, can't you find
+a stronger chain?"
+
+"I'll try," said he. "What a ripping day, isn't it? Oh, are you going
+straight back? I wish we'd met anywhere but at a bazaar."
+
+"So do I," she said heartfeltly, and caressed the now careless Aberdeen:
+it was at a bazaar that she had had to sell that angel.
+
+"Mayn't I walk home with you?" he said. And she could not think of any
+polite way of saying no, though she knew just how terrible Alcibiades
+would make the final parting.
+
+Next morning the chain dragged by Alcibiades was slightly thicker; it
+also was filed, and this too Judy failed to notice. Early as it was she
+did not go out in the mackintosh but in something simple and blue, with
+kingfisher's wings in her hat.
+
+The morning was thinly bright. Alcibiades saw a cat and chased it
+towards Morden College just as Judy met Captain Graeme. It was, for her,
+impossible not to follow the "cur." And how could the Captain do
+otherwise than follow, too? And if two people walk together it is
+churlish not to talk.
+
+Next day the chain was thicker, the hour propitious, and the walk
+longer; that was the day when she found out that he had known her father
+in South Africa.
+
+The days passed with a delightful monotony. The Aunt and her pet Tabbies
+all day, a sound sleep, an early waking, a heavenly meeting with
+Alcibiades at the back door, the restoring of him to his master. And
+every day the chain grew heavier, the walks longer, the talks more
+interesting and more intimate.
+
+It was very wrong, of course, but what was the girl to do? You cannot be
+rude to a man who is saving your dog, your darling, from rat-poisons,
+rivers and ropes. And if dogs _will_ break chains, why--so will girls.
+
+It was on Christmas Day that the spell was shattered. Judy awoke at the
+accustomed time, but no welcome whine, no pathetic scrabble of eager
+paws broke the respectable stillness of the Aunt's house. Judy listened.
+She even crept down to the side gate. A feeling of misery, of real
+physical faintness came over her. Alcibiades was not there! he had not
+come! He had, indeed, forgotten her.
+
+The conviction that the master of Alcibiades would be the last to
+appreciate the new attachment of his dog comforted her a little; but for
+all that the day was grey, life seemed well-nigh worthless. Judy now had
+leisure to reconsider her position, and she was not pleased with
+herself. It was in the thick of the Christmas beef that the thought
+awoke.
+
+"_He_ is tired of meeting me; he has locked Alcibiades up. If he hadn't,
+the darling _must_ have come." Since this solution left Alcibiades
+without a stain upon his faithful character, it ought to have been
+comforting, but it wasn't.
+
+She felt her cheeks flush.
+
+"Good gracious, child," said the Aunt, "what are you turning that
+curious purple colour for? If the fire's too much for you, let Mary put
+the screen to the back of your chair, for goodness' sake."
+
+When the plum-pudding's remains had passed away and the perfunctory
+dessert was over the Aunt retired to rest.
+
+Judy was left to face the grey afternoon alone. She sat staring into the
+fire till her eyes ached. She felt very lonely, very injured, very
+forlorn. There was a footfall on the steps--a manly tread; a knock at
+the door--a kind of I have-a-perfect-right-to-knock-here-if-I-like sort
+of knock.
+
+Judy jumped up to look in the glass and pat her hair, for no one but an
+idiot could have helped knowing who it was that stepped and knocked.
+
+He came in.
+
+"Alone?" said he. "What luck! I asked for the Aunt. Meant to say Friend
+of your Father's, and all that. But this is better. Judy, I couldn't
+stand it.... She's coming. I can hear her."
+
+There was indeed a sound of stout house boots trampling overhead, of
+drawers being pulled out, of wardrobe doors being opened.
+
+"I wish everything was different," said he; "but, oh Judy, darling, do
+say yes! say it now, this minute; and then when she comes down I can
+tell her we're engaged--see?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's all very well," said Judy, two hours later, when, with the licence
+of an engaged young lady, she said good-bye to her lover at the front
+door. "You say you do--and--and yes, of course, I'm glad--but Alcibiades
+doesn't love me any more."
+
+"Doesn't he? you wait till I bring him to-morrow!"
+
+"But he never came this morning."
+
+"Poor little beast! Judy, the fact is I've gone on making the chain
+heavier and heavier, and this morning--well, it was too much for him. He
+couldn't drag it all the way: it was a regular ship's cable, don't you
+know? I came up with him at Blackheath Station, and he was so done I had
+to carry him all the way home in my arms. He's quite all right again
+now; I left him at home, tied to the fire-irons in my bedroom."
+
+"Then he _does_ love me, after all," said Judy.
+
+"Well, he's not the only one," said the Captain.
+
+And at that moment came from the other side of the front door the
+familiar whine, the well-known scratching mingled with strange clanking
+noises.
+
+Next instant three happy people were embracing on the door-mat amid the
+sobs of Judy, the laughter of her lover, the yelps of Alcibiades, and
+the deafening rattle of a poker, a pair of tongs, and half a shovel.
+
+
+
+
+  PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+                       Transcriber's Note
+
+
+     Punctuation has been standardized. Hyphenation has been retained
+     as it appears in the original publication. The following changes
+     were made to the original text:
+
+       Page 21,  "candelabre" changed to "candelabra"
+                 (two brass twenty-lighted candelabra)
+
+       Page 32,  duplicate "the" removed from text
+                 (Half the students)
+
+       Page 39,  "accordian" changed to "accordion"
+                 (her accordion-pleated skirts)
+
+       Page 99,  "stammererd" changed to "stammered"
+                 (stammered half a word)
+
+       Page 197, "her's" changed to "hers"
+                 (he was hers sincerely)
+
+       Page 276, duplicate "in" removed
+                 (Can you call in an hour?)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Maid, by E. (Edith) Nesbit
+
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