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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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