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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beggars on Horseback, by F. Tennyson Jesse
+
+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: Beggars on Horseback
+
+Author: F. Tennyson Jesse
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #33911]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+
+
+
+
+_NEW SIX SHILLING NOVELS_
+
+    OLD DELABOLE.
+    _By_ EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
+
+    OF HUMAN BONDAGE.
+    _By_ WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM.
+
+    THE FREELANDS.
+    _By_ JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+    MUSLIN. _By_ GEORGE MOORE.
+
+    OFF SANDY HOOK.
+    _By_ RICHARD DEHAN.
+
+    THE LITTLE ILIAD. _By_ MAURICE HEWLETT.
+    _Illustrated by_ SIR PHILIP BURNE-JONES, Bart.
+
+    THE IMMORTAL GYMNASTS.
+    _By_ MARIE CHER.
+
+    MRS. CROFTON.
+    _By_ MARGUERITE BRYANT.
+
+    THE LATER LIFE.
+    _By_ LOUIS COUPERUS.
+
+    CARFRAE'S COMEDY.
+    _By_ GLADYS PARRISH.
+
+    THE BOTTLE-FILLERS.
+    _By_ EDWARD NOBLE.
+
+    CHAPEL.
+    _By_ D. MILES LEWIS.
+
+    LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+    21 Bedford Street, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+    BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+
+    BY F. TENNYSON JESSE
+    AUTHOR OF "THE MILKY WAY," ETC
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    LONDON      MCMXV
+    WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+_London: William Heinemann_, 1915
+
+
+
+
+    THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
+    WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE
+    TO
+    MISS HANNAH MERCY ROBERTS
+    (NAN)
+    AS A SMALL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+    OF A LARGE DEBT
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                PAGE
+
+    A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS         1
+
+    THE LADDER                    29
+
+    THE GREATEST GIFT             81
+
+    THE MASK                     109
+
+    A GARDEN ENCLOSED            135
+
+    THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS      181
+
+    WHY SENATH MARRIED           203
+
+    THE COFFIN SHIP              227
+
+    _The stories in this volume are printed
+    in chronological order._
+
+
+
+
+A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS
+
+
+Archie Lethbridge arrived in Provence thoroughly satisfied with life. He
+had just sold a big picture; was contemplating, with every prospect of
+success, giving a "one-man-show" in London of the work he would do in
+Provence; and the girl he loved had accepted him.
+
+Miss Gwendolen Gould was eminently eligible--her income, though
+comfortable, was not large enough to brand her husband as a
+fortune-hunter; she was pretty in a well-bred way that satisfied the eye
+without causing it to turn and gaze after her; and above all, she could
+be relied upon never to do, say, or think an unusual thing. Like all
+painters, when they are conventionally minded, Archie was the fine
+flower of propriety--he owned to enough wild oats of his own sowing to
+save him from inferiority in the society of his fellow-men, and he held
+exceedingly rigid views on the subject of his womenkind. Gwendolen
+might--doubtless had, for she was one of the large army of young women
+brought up to no profession save that of sex--give this or that man a
+kiss at a dance, but she would never have saved all of passion and
+possibilities for one man, and lavished them on him, regardless of
+suitable circumstances. Archie's name (that he hoped one day to adorn
+with some coveted letters at which he now pretended to sneer) would be
+perfectly safe with Gwendolen.
+
+The only drawback to his complete content was that his fair, sleek
+person showed signs of getting a trifle too plump--for he was only young
+as a man who is nearly "arrived" counts youth. On the whole, however, it
+was with a feeling of settled attainment that Archie left Nice and
+proceeded to strike up into the Alpes Maritimes, totally unprepared for
+any bizarre or inexplicable event--he would have laughed satirically at
+the bare idea.
+
+To do him justice, he worked hard, and he had a tremendous facility and
+a certain charm that concealed his lack of true artistic sensitiveness.
+There is probably nothing more difficult to interpret in paint than an
+olive-tree--the incredible grey brilliance of the thing, each leaf set
+at a slightly different angle, and refracting the light till the whole
+tree seems made of blown mist and sharp-cut shadows. Archie painted
+olives under every effect; sparkling in the sun, fog-grey on a grey day,
+and pale with the shimmering under-side of straining leaves against a
+storm-dark sky. He also painted very dirty children picking the ranked
+violets and stocks that grew along the olive terraces, and this he
+achieved without once descending into the realms of the "pretty-pretty,"
+while at the same time infusing just the right amount of sentiment to
+ensure a sale.
+
+He painted here and there from Grasse to Le Broc, and then one day,
+feeling he had taken all he could from the soft-scented land of olives
+and flowers, he hired a motor to convey him up into the Back o' Beyond,
+and drop him there. Once he met a couple of women bearing on their heads
+the sheaves of tight little red rosebuds that look exactly like bundles
+of radishes, and caught a whiff of the strange, bitter-sweet smell of
+the newly cut stems. Then he passed an old shepherd in a cloak of faded
+blue, with sheepskin legs cross-gartered to the knee, taking his lean,
+golden-brown flock up into the mountains.
+
+After that he saw no living thing, neither bird nor beast nor human, for
+many miles. Rounded hills, opening out from each other in endless
+succession and covered from crest to base with harsh yellow grass, and
+strewn with grey boulders. Deep gullies that at one time had been set
+alight and now were scorched and brown like plague-pits, with here and
+there a patch of pale stones showing up lividly from the charred thorns
+and blackened soil. Archie shivered, partly because of the keen wind
+blowing down from the great plateau beyond the hills, partly because
+something savage in the scene gripped at him.
+
+The car throbbed on, higher and higher, till the road, winding acutely
+along the edge of precipices, developed a surface that caused his
+chauffeur to swear gently to himself. Valley after valley opened out,
+long and narrow, and Archie noticed signs of a long-past cultivation in
+the curved terraces into which the bed of each valley was cut, forming
+an endless series of semicircles. There was no trace of any crop, and
+the whole effect was as of some rude amphitheatre where prehistoric man
+had sat and watched gladiatorial shows.
+
+The car, sticking now and then in a rut, or jolting violently over
+stones, finally crested the last rise, and Archie found himself on a
+vast stretch of land ringed in by sharp-edged hills, like some dead,
+gigantic crater; to the right, far away on a slope of the mountain
+ring, lay a grey straggling town that looked hacked out of the hardened
+lava. The only sign of life was in a patch of vividly green grass near
+at hand, where hundreds of crocuses had burned their way up through the
+earth and showed like a bed of thin blue flames.
+
+Archie directed the contemptuous chauffeur towards the town, and they
+finally drew up at the inn--a little green-shuttered affair, with a
+stone-flagged passage, and a tortoise-shell cat drowsing beside the
+door. Outside a _buvette_ opposite was a marble-topped table at which
+sat a couple of workmen drinking cider. An evanescent gleam of sun shone
+out, and the tawny liquid caught and held it, making each glass throw on
+to the table a bubble of gold fire enmeshed in the delicate shadow of
+the vessel itself. Archie stood transfixed for a moment with pleasure,
+then, as the gleam faded and died, he entered the inn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like most people with the creative temperament, Archie Lethbridge was
+the prey of environment. The unborn child is not more influenced by the
+surroundings of its mother than a book or picture by those of its
+creator. Draginoules took such a deep, sure grip of Archie that it did
+more than merely affect his work--it began to upset his neatly arranged
+values, and, since Nature abhors a vacuum, to substitute fresh ones in
+their place. Draginoules, in short, behaved like a master of scenic
+effects; it allowed a couple of days for the background to permeate
+Archie's consciousness, and, when he was ripe for it, introduced the
+human element, which, to a man of his type, means a woman.
+
+It was one morning when he was washing brushes in the dim inn kitchen
+that he saw her first. She came out of the _buvette_ to serve some
+workmen, and Archie stopped dead in the act of swirling a cobalt-laden
+brush round and round in the hollowed yellow soap he held. He always saw
+the whole scene in memory as clearly as he saw it then--the low-fronted
+_buvette_, the glass of the door refracting the light as it still
+quivered from her passage; the pools of blue shadow that lay under the
+table and chairs on the pavement; the blouse-clad figures of the
+workmen, particularly a young man with a deeply burnt back to his neck;
+and the girl herself, holding aloft a tray of liqueur glasses, that
+winked like little eyes. All this he saw framed by the darkness of the
+kitchen and cut sharply into squares by the black bars of the window;
+then, as he mechanically went on frothing blue-stained bubbles out of
+the soap, he said to himself, "I must paint that girl."
+
+He soon found out that she was the niece of the stout couple who kept
+the _buvette_, and that her name was Désirée Prévost. As they mentioned
+her most people shrugged their shoulders. Oh, no, there was nothing
+against the girl--though it was true her eyebrows met in a thick bar
+across her nose, and old people had always said that was a sign of the
+Loup-Garou; enlightened moderns, however, did not really hold by that.
+The town was proud of her looks, for it considered her _très bien_, the
+highest expression of praise from a Provençal, who is a dour kind of
+person, taking his pleasures as sadly as the proverbial Englishman, and
+whose chief aim in life is to place one sou on the top of another, and
+when possible insert a third in between.
+
+Archie approached the aunt of Désirée on the subject of sittings with
+some trepidation, but met with an agreeable pliancy from her, and a calm
+though indifferent assent from Désirée herself. She had a high opinion
+of her own value, and no amount of appreciation surprised her.
+
+Scanning her afresh as they stood on the pavement making final
+arrangements, Archie inwardly congratulated himself. From the heavy
+brass-coloured hair massed with a sculptured effect round her
+well-poised head, to the firmly planted feet, admirably proportioned to
+the rest of her, she was entirely right for his purpose--she seemed the
+spirit of Draginoules incarnate. Owing to the opaque pallor of her skin,
+her level bar of fair eyebrow and heavily folded lids, her big, finely
+modelled nose and faintly tinted mouth, all took on a sculptured quality
+that made for repose; the very shadows of her face were delicate in
+tone, mere breaths of shadows. Yet she was excessively vital, but it was
+a smouldering, restrained vitality suggestive of a quiescent crater. Her
+face was too individual to be perfect--the nose over big; the brow too
+narrow for the full modelling across the cheekbones, but she had an
+egg-like curve from turn of jaw to pointed chin. When she laughed her
+teeth showed large and strong, and her throat was the loveliest Archie
+had ever seen--magnificently big--and she had a trick of tilting her
+head back that made the smoothly knitted muscles of her neck swell a
+little under the white skin. As he painted her Archie used to find
+himself racking his brains for some speech that would make her head take
+that upward poise, so that he could watch the play of throat.
+
+He chose his background well; a sheltered spot in a fold of hill just
+beyond the town, where a slim young oak sapling still retained its
+copper-hued autumn leaves, that seemed almost fiery against the deep,
+soft blue of the sky. He had conceived of her as standing under the
+oak-tree, so that, to him, working lower down on the slope she too
+showed against the sky, seemingly caught in a network of delicate
+boughs. Being below her he was also the richer by the soft,
+three-cornered shadow under her chin, and the whole of her became a tone
+of exquisite delicacy, as of shadowed ivory, in the setting of sky--that
+sky of southern spring which seems literally drenched in light. The
+tawny note of the oak-leaves was to be repeated in some sheep, which,
+though kept subservient to the figure of Désirée, were to supply the
+motive of the picture--or so Archie thought till the sudden freak that
+made him introduce the fauns.
+
+Désirée was all for robing herself in her best--a black silk bodice with
+a high collar, and a be-trained, jet-spangled skirt, but Archie coaxed
+her into wearing the dress he first saw her in; a mere wrapper of
+indefinite prune colour, belted in at the waist to show the lines of her
+deep chested, long flanked figure, and cut so low as to leave her throat
+bare from the pit of it. Her sleeves were rolled back to the elbow and
+her arms showed milk-white as far as the reddened wrists and the big,
+work-roughened hands that held a hazel switch across her thighs.
+
+Archie was Anglo-Saxon enough to feel a slight stiffness at the first
+sitting, but Désirée was a stranger to the sensation of tied tongue.
+
+"I like the English," she announced. "Not many of them come here, but I
+have not spent my life in Draginoules, no, indeed! I was in a laundry
+once at La Madeleine. Do you know it? It is where they take in the
+washing of Nice. So I used to go much into Nice, and an English lady
+there painted me. She had a talent! She made me look beautiful. In
+Draginoules, do you know what they call me? They call me _l'Anglaise
+manquée_!"
+
+"Because you like the English so?" asked Archie. His French was
+considerably purer than hers, she spoke it with the Provençal accent
+that sounds exactly like a Cockney twang.
+
+"Because I have the nature, the habits of an English woman. Oh, I assure
+you! I like to live out of doors--to be out all day with one's bread and
+a bottle of wine and sleep on the hillside--that is what I call living.
+I always open my window at night, though my aunt says it is a folly. I
+could go to England if I chose, as a maid. My English lady would have
+me. Ah! how I long to see England. One gets so tired with Draginoules."
+
+"But your friends--you would be sorry to leave them?"
+
+"Oh, for that, I do not care about the people of Draginoules. It was my
+mother's place, not mine. I was born in Lyons, where my father was a
+silk-weaver. But he was a bad kind of man, so I came to my aunt to live.
+I do not think much of the people of Draginoules. They all like me, but
+I do not like them!"
+
+"Why don't you go to England, then? Though I think you are far better
+here!" quoth Archie, on whom the glamour of the place was strong.
+
+"My fiancé would kill himself," said Désirée serenely.
+
+"Oh--you are fiancée?" murmured Archie, wondering why he felt that
+absurd mingling of relief and regret.
+
+"To Auguste Colombini. He is a mechanician in Nice. We are to marry when
+he gets a rise. _Hélas! je ne serai plus fille!_"
+
+Her words, so simply and directly spoken, caught at Archie's
+imagination--"_Hélas! je ne serai plus fille!_"
+
+"What a _vierge farouche_!" he said to himself. "If I can get that
+feeling into my picture!" Aloud he said: "And your fiancé--he is very
+devoted, then?"
+
+"He adores me. It is a perfect folly, see you, to feel for anyone what
+he does for me. He is mad about me."
+
+She spoke with a calm arrogance that was very effective. How sure she
+was of her man! Was it a peculiarity of temperament in her or her fiancé
+that made such confidence possible? Archie flattered himself he was
+something of a student of human nature, and he absorbed all of Désirée
+that he could get in a spirit positively approaching that of the
+journalist.
+
+When a man and woman fall into the habit of discussing the intimate
+things, such as love and marriage; and, above all, of comparing the
+sexes; disaster, even if only a temporary one, is apt to follow. Archie
+returned to the themes next time she posed for him.
+
+"So you think a man can care too much for a woman?" he asked, and
+stopped for a moment with raised brush to watch her answer. She shrugged
+her shoulders slightly, yet enough to make the folds of her wrapper
+strain upward for a fleeting moment.
+
+"As to that I think women are worth it. But it is foolish to care
+everything for one person."
+
+"You could care for others, then--as well as M. Colombini?" asked
+Archie with a sudden stir at his pulses.
+
+"I? One can care a little--here and there. But commit a folly for a man,
+that is a thing I would never do. And I am very fond of Auguste. If I
+did not think we should be happy and faithful I should not marry him. I
+look round on all the married people I know, and see nothing but
+betrayal everywhere. Here a husband plays his wife false, there she in
+her turn cheats him. Bah!--it is not good, that!"
+
+"How right you are!" said Archie virtuously. "But you do not then think
+it necessary to care as much for Auguste as he cares for you?"
+
+"_Damme_, no! How should I? He pleases me, and he is good--I can respect
+him. And I like him to kiss me . . ." the most charming look of
+self-consciousness mingled with reminiscence flitted over her face--"but
+for him--he is mad when he kisses me. Women do not care like that. It is
+a folly. And it is always happier, Monsieur, when it is the husband who
+cares the most. That is how men are made."
+
+Oh, yes, thought Archie, she was a woman after all, this _vierge
+farouche_, and more unashamedly woman, franker in her admissions of
+knowledge--for she admitted in her expressive face and gestures more
+than she actually said--than any woman of his world. He worked in
+silence for a while then told her to rest.
+
+She flung herself on the turf with an abandonment of limb and muscle
+usually only seen in young animals, and he came and lay a little below
+her and lit a cigarette. Désirée lay serenely, her face upturned, and he
+studied her thoughtfully.
+
+"Surely very few of your countrywomen are as blonde as you?" he asked
+her. "Your eyes are blue, and your brows and lashes a faint brown and
+your hair is----"
+
+He paused, at a loss how to describe her hair. It was not golden, rather
+that strong brass-colour that, had he seen it on a sophisticated
+townswoman he would have dubbed "peroxide." It was oddly metallic hair,
+not only in its colour, but in the carven ripples of it where she wore
+it pulled across her low brow and massed in heavy braids round her head.
+That way of wearing her hair right down to her brows, except for a
+narrow white triangle of forehead showing, boy-like, at one side, gave
+her an oddly animal look--using the word in its best sense. A look as of
+some low-browed, heavy-tressed faun, fearless and unashamed--it was only
+in her eyes that mystery lay.
+
+"My hair?" she exclaimed, showing her big white teeth in a laugh as
+frank as a boy's; "but that, you know, is not natural! It was an
+accident!"
+
+"An accident! How on earth----?"
+
+"Why, I was doing the _ménage_ for a chemist and his wife over the
+border, at Cannes. And she had hair like this, and one day she gave me a
+little bottle and said: 'Désirée, you're a good girl, but you don't know
+how to make the best of yourself. You put some of this on your head.' I
+rubbed some on, one side only, just to see what would happen, and next
+day I found one half of my head golden--golden like the sun. 'Mon Dieu!'
+I said, 'but what do I look like, one half yellow and one half brown!'
+So I poured it on all over. It is nothing now because I have not put on
+the stuff for so long, but at one time it was beautiful. Such hair!
+Below my waist, and gold, oh, such a gold! Now it wants doing again."
+
+She ducked her head down for him to see the crown of it, and he
+perceived from the parting outwards two inches of unabashed dark
+hair--almost blue it looked by contrast with the circling wrappings of
+yellow. Archie, immensely tickled at finding this splendid young savage
+in the Back o' Beyond with dyed hair, could but shout with mirth, and
+Désirée, totally unoffended, joined in. When he went back that evening
+he felt he knew her far better than on the preceding day. In intimacies
+between men and women each day marks a distinct phase, making a series
+of steps; and the only possible thing to do is to see that the steps do
+not lead downwards. Like most people when on those magic stairs, Archie
+gave no heed to the question.
+
+The next day he unconsciously took up their conversation of the day
+before--a sure sign of intimacy if ever there were one. They were
+resting again, for he said it was too hot to work; and the sunset effect
+he wanted was growing later every day.
+
+"So you could care a little for some one else before you marry Auguste?"
+he suggested lightly enough, and looking away from her to the snow
+mountains that bared white fangs in the blue of the sky.
+
+She laughed a little, stretched herself, drooped her lids, was in a
+flash, and for a flash, entirely woman--alluring, withdrawing, sure of
+herself. As she gained in poise Archie felt his own tenure on
+self-control slipping away from him.
+
+"Could you?" he persisted, his eyes by now back on her changing face.
+
+"How does one care? What is it?" she evaded. "I do not think _you_ would
+be able to tell me. You are so cold, so English, you would care just as
+much as would be pleasant and never enough to make you uncomfortable!"
+
+The penetration of this remark displeased Archie.
+
+"But you are like that yourself," he objected. "You are the most cool,
+calculating girl I ever met--everything you say shows it."
+
+She rolled over slightly on the grass, so that her head, the chin thrust
+forward on her cupped hands, was brought nearer to him but kept at the
+provocative three-quarter angle suggestive of withdrawal. Her thick
+heavy lids were drooped, but suddenly they flickered and half-rose to
+show a gleam so wild, so unlike anything he had ever seen in her, that
+Archie caught his breath. It was as though some alien spirit, a pagan,
+woodland thing, was looking at him through the eyes of the
+self-possessed, level-headed young woman, who at times even seemed more
+_bourgeois_ than peasant.
+
+"Désirée! How beautiful you are!" he cried.
+
+"As beautiful as Mademoiselle your fiancée?" asked Désirée.
+
+With a run Archie descended into the commonplace, and Désirée became for
+him nothing but a pretty girl who went rather too far.
+
+"Englishmen do not care to discuss the lady of their choice," he said
+grandiloquently. "May I ask how you knew I was fiancé?"
+
+"I have seen her picture in your room," said Désirée frankly; "the
+patronne told me there was one there. She is pretty, but yes, very
+pretty. Her hair is so beautifully done in all those little rolls, one
+would say it must be false. She is altogether mignonne, one would say
+the head of a doll!"
+
+Désirée was absolutely sincere in thinking she was giving Miss Gwendolen
+Gould the highest praise possible. She would willingly have exchanged
+her splendid muscular body for the slim, corseted form of Miss Gould,
+and have bartered her strongly modelled head for the small, regular
+features and Marcel-waved hair of the other girl. It was only his
+perception of this that kept Archie from anger, and as it was the truth
+of the praise hit him sharply. That night he sat down before the
+miniature and conscientiously tried to conjure up the emotions of a
+lover. The experiment was a failure.
+
+When he came to go to bed he found, to his amazement, a sprig of myrtle
+lying on his pillow--just a spray of leaves and a cluster of the purple
+berries with their little frilled heads.
+
+"How did that get there I wonder?" he asked himself, and then stooped,
+with an exclamation of disgust. A corner of the turned back sheet that
+trailed on the floor was lightly powdered with earth as though a muddy
+shoe had stood on it. The footprint--if footprint it were--was oddly
+impossible in shape, short and rounded, more like the mark of a hoof.
+
+"Can the patronne's goat have got up here? I saw it wandering in the
+passage to-day," thought Archie vexedly. "Beastly animal to drop
+half-chewed green food all over my pillow!"
+
+The injured man thumped his pillow and turned it over, so that the
+despised myrtle sprig lay crushed beneath it. Then he went to bed and to
+sleep.
+
+"I dreamt of you all night, Désirée," he told her next day.
+
+"I was pursuing you round rocks and over streams and through undergrowth
+all night long. You were you and yet you weren't. Somehow I got the
+impression that it was you as you would have been hundreds and thousands
+of years ago. And I kept on losing you and then little satyrs beckoned
+at me to show me the way you'd gone, and I stumbled on after the hoofs
+that were always flashing up just ahead--just vanishing round corners."
+
+"Satyrs? What are they?" asked Désirée.
+
+Archie explained as picturesquely as possible, but was brought to a stop
+by a curious change in Désirée's eyes. They wore the strained, misty
+look of the person who is trying hard to catch at some long-lost memory.
+Again he was startled by that strange feeling that something else was
+looking from between those placid lids of hers.
+
+"But I know," she began--"those creatures you are telling me--_what_ is
+it I know about them?" She broke off and shook herself impatiently.
+"Bah! It is gone. And then what happened--did you find me at the end?"
+
+"I can't quite remember," said Archie slowly "Something happened, but
+what it was is all blurred. I believe you're a wood-nymph, Désirée--a
+wood-nymph whose father was a satyr--and he chased and caught your
+mother and took her down through his tangle of undergrowth with his
+hands in her hair, never heeding her screams. You have very definite
+little points at the top of your ears, you know! We all have them a bit
+to remind us of our wild-dog days, but yours are the most so I've ever
+seen. Do you never take off all your clothes and go creeping and
+slipping through the woods at night, to bathe in one of the crater-pools
+by the light of the moon?"
+
+"How did you know?" She turned wide, startled eyes on him, her quickened
+breath fluttered her gown distressfully.
+
+"What!--you do it, then?" exclaimed Archie.
+
+"No! no! What folly are you talking!" She sprang to her feet and slipped
+behind the oak-sapling, as though it were a defence against some danger;
+across the boughs he saw her puzzled, fearful eyes. As he watched her
+the expression of alarm faded--she put up her hand to her hair, gave it
+a quieting pat and tucked some stray strands into place, then she looked
+across at the easel.
+
+"It must be time to work again!" she exclaimed. "Have we been resting
+long, M'sieu? I feel as though I'd been asleep and you'd just awakened
+me." She yawned as she spoke, stretching her strong arms in a slow, wide
+circle, the muscles of her shoulders rounding forward and making two
+little hollows appear above her collar-bones. The sight aroused the
+artist in Archie, and he too scrambled up, and betook himself to work.
+The sheep and goats that he had bribed the shepherd to pasture there
+happened to "come" as he wanted them that evening, and he began to work
+away at them in silence. One of the goats, a piebald, shaggy creature,
+reared itself up on its hind legs, with its fore-feet against the tree
+trunk, and began to nibble at the foliage. Something about the pose of
+the creature sent a swift suggestion to Archie's mind, and he just had
+time to rough in the legs, with their slight outward tilt, the hoofs
+set firmly apart and the tail sticking out and up from the sharply
+curved-in rump, before the animal dropped on all fours and moved away.
+Archie, with the smile of the creator in his eyes, worked on, and the
+goat's legs merged into the beginnings of a slim human body with the
+hands leaning against the tree and the head, tilted on one side, peering
+around at the figure of Désirée. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of
+annoyance.
+
+"There is some one watching us from those myrtle bushes. Confound the
+beggar--some one from the village, I suppose."
+
+Désirée turned sharply, just in time to see a brown face grinning
+through the leaves. It was a face compact of curiously slanting
+lines--upward-twitched tufts of brows, upward wrinkles at the corners of
+the narrow eyes, and a slanting mouth that laughed above a pointed,
+thrusting chin.
+
+"That! That is only my little brother, M'sieu. It is one of God's
+innocents and lame on both feet. Sylvestre! Come out and speak to
+M'sieu--no one will hurt you."
+
+The bushes rustled and parted and an odd little figure, apparently that
+of a boy of about ten, came scrambling out with a queer, lungeing action
+from the hips. The child's legs were deformed, but he swung himself
+forward at a marvellous speed on a pair of clumsy crutches. Archie saw
+that when he was not laughing his brown eyes were wide and grave, with a
+look of innocence in them that contrasted oddly with the knowing gleam
+they showed a minute earlier.
+
+"But he is exactly what I want for the picture!" cried Archie, running
+his hand through the boy's tangled curls and tilting his face gently
+backwards. "He is exactly like the things I was telling you of. He must
+sit to me."
+
+He deftly tugged the boy's shirt out of his belt and peeled it off him,
+exposing a thin little brown body with a skin as fine as silk. When he
+felt the sun on his bare flesh the child made guttural sounds of
+delight, flinging himself backwards on the ground; and, supported by his
+elbows, letting his head tip back till his curls touched the grass. As
+the shielding locks fell away, Archie saw with a thrill which was almost
+repulsion, that dark brown hair grew thickly out of the boy's ears. . . .
+
+"Would he stay still, do you think?" he asked Désirée.
+
+"He will if I tell him," replied Désirée. "Come to me, Sylvestre," and
+drawing the child to her she stroked his head and whispered to him with
+a motherly gesture of which Archie would not have thought her capable.
+He had listened to her exceedingly modern views on the subject of the
+family, and her own strictly limited intentions in that respect.
+
+After the addition of Sylvestre the picture made great strides, even if
+the intimacy between Archie and Désirée advanced less rapidly than
+before. And yet every now and again, in sudden flashes of wildness, in a
+half-uttered phrase totally at variance with her normal self--little
+things that she seemed to remember from some forgotten whole, Désirée
+would give him that impression of being two people at once; and always,
+on these occasions, she was as puzzled as he, and with an added touch of
+something that seemed almost shame. For the everyday Désirée, that calm,
+practical and comely young woman, Archie's friendliness was touched by
+nothing warmer than the inevitable element of sex; but the shy, bold
+thing that sometimes peeped from between her lids, that thing that
+seemed to take possession of her beautiful body, and mock and allure and
+chill him in a breath, that thing was waking an answering spirit in
+himself, and he knew it. Miss Gould's portrait was unable to protect him
+from wakeful nights, when he turned his pillow again and again to find a
+cool surface for his cheek, nights when he would at last fling off the
+clothes and lean out of the window to watch the steel-blue dawn turn to
+the blessed light of everyday. He was living in a state of tension, and
+it seemed to him that some great event was holding its breath to spring,
+as though the very trees and rocks, the brooding sky and quiescent
+pools, were all in some conspiracy, hoodwinking yet preparing him for
+the moment of revelation.
+
+It was on to the sensitive surface of this mood that a letter from
+Gwendolen, announcing her speedy arrival on the Riviera dropped like a
+dart, tearing the delicate tissues and stringing the fibres to the
+necessity for haste. Gwendolen, aunt-dragoned, and Baedeker in hand,
+meant the return to the acceptance of the old values that had once
+filled him with complacency. And yet, with all the jarring sense of
+intrusion that Gwendolen's advent instilled, there mingled a feeling
+that was almost relief--as though he were being saved, against his will,
+but with his judgment, from something too disturbing and beautiful to be
+quite comfortable.
+
+Three or four days after receiving Gwendolen's letter, he put the last
+touches to the picture and informed Désirée he would need her no more.
+She received the news quite calmly, apparently without regret--thus do
+women tactlessly fail in what is expected of them. Archie felt absurdly
+flat as he wrapped up his wet brushes in a week-old sheet of the _Petit
+Niçois_. He also felt very virtuous, and told himself it was not many
+men who would have refrained from making love to the girl under the
+circumstances. It is astonishing what a comfortless thing is the glow of
+conscious virtue--it is bright in hue but gives off no warmth.
+
+There was a little hut, used for stacking wood, close to where he
+worked, and here, thanks to the courtesy of the owner, he was wont to
+put his picture for the night. Désirée, as usual, helped him to carry it
+in and plant the legs of the easel firmly into the earthen floor. He had
+worked late, and the sun had just slipped behind the far ridge of the
+mountains; the tiny hut was filled with a deepening half-light, the
+stacked brush-wood seemed wine-coloured in the warm shadow, here and
+there a peeled twig stood out luminously. By the open door hoof-marks in
+the trampled earth showed that the patronne's mule had been carrying
+away wood that morning. That was as palpable as the fact that it must
+have been Sylvestre's deformed foot which had soiled Archie's sheet, yet
+those marks re-created the atmosphere of his dream, and seemed, in the
+sudden confusion mounting to his brain at the warmth and nearness of
+Désirée, to mix madly with Sylvestre, and rustled undergrowth and the
+glimmer of elusive hoofs round myrtle-bushes--and the glimmer of
+something whiter and more elusive still.
+
+He could hear Désirée's breathing beside him--not as even as usual, but
+deeper-drawn and uncertain, and turning, he met the sidelong glance of
+her eyes.
+
+"Désirée . . . you said you sometimes slipped out at night and played in
+the woods--and the pools. Take me out with you to-night and show me
+where you go and what you do. . . . I'll be awfully good, I swear I
+will--you're not a woman, you're a nymph, a strange, uncanny thing. I
+believe you meet your kinsfolk there and dance with them--Désirée!"
+
+She looked at him for a moment in silence. In her eyes her normal and
+her unknown selves contended.
+
+"It is true I often go out as you say, something drives me, but I do not
+know why myself. And I get very tired and can never remember clearly
+what it has been like. It is as though I did it almost in my sleep, or
+had dreamt it."
+
+"It _is_ a dream--everything's a dream, and I've got to wake up soon.
+Let's have this bit of dream together--Désirée!"
+
+She yielded. They took bread and wine and apples for a midnight feast,
+and set off together over the lava-fields to the woods that tufted the
+mountain slopes. Through the deep, soft night the pallor of her face and
+throat glimmered as through dark water. She held his hand to guide him
+over the fissures and round the piled boulders, once he slipped on a
+hummock of harsh grass, and felt her grow rigid on the instant to check
+his fall. They were very silent, until, seated at the edge of the woods,
+they ate their supper, and then they laughed softly together like
+children, with fragmentary speech; and once Désirée sang a snatch of a
+Provençal song; Archie, who knew his Mistral, joining in.
+
+Presently, when they fell on silence again, it seemed the wood was full
+of noises--stealthy footfalls, snapping of dry twigs, the rustling of
+parted shrubs. As the late moon, almost at the full, swam up the sky,
+making the distant snow-peaks gleam like white flames against the dusky
+blue, and shimmering on the pools cupped here and there over the
+hollowed expanse below, Archie could have sworn that the penetrating
+light showed quick-glancing faces and bright eyes from the thicket. . . .
+Once a great white owl did sail out with a beating of wings; so close to
+them that they could see the stiff brows that bristled over his lambent
+orbs, and once a strong smell and a gleam of black and white told of a
+wild cat tracking her prey.
+
+They buried the disfiguring remnants of their little feast, and then
+Archie solemnly poured out what was left of the red wine on to the slope
+below.
+
+"For the gods!" he announced, "the liquor for us and the dregs for
+them!"
+
+"Ah!" cried Désirée, as though his action pricked sleeping memories to
+life, "now I remember it all again! I forget when I go home, but then
+the next time everything is clear again, and so it goes on."
+
+She disappeared in a jutting spur of the wood, and Archie scrambled to
+his feet and followed her. As he broke through to the further edge,
+which hung over a wide pool, he caught his foot in something
+soft--Désirée's clothes that lay in a circle, just as she had slipped
+out of them.
+
+She stood at the pool's brim, her hands clasping at the back of her
+head; a thing to dream of. She was so lovely that all feeling died save
+a passionate appreciation, keen to the verge of pain; she was so lovely
+that of necessity she awoke an impersonal motion. Slowly she stretched
+herself, and as the muscles rippled into curves and sank, the delicate
+shadows ebbed and breathed out again on the pearl-white of her body.
+Archie's every nerve was strung not to lose one line or one breath of
+tone.
+
+Putting out a foot she touched the water, so that little tremors soft as
+feathers fled over the surface; then, as she waded in, deeper and
+deeper, the water parted round her in flakes of brightness that shook
+and mixed up and broke away. When she rose, dripping wet, the moonlight
+refracted off her, was mirrored in the water, and thrown back again on
+her--a magic shuttle weaving an aura of whiteness. Long arrows of light
+fled back through the pool as she waded to shore, where she stood for a
+moment motionless; head slightly forward, arms hanging, and one hip
+thrown outwards as she poised her weight. Myriads of tiny,
+crescent-shaped drops clung to her limbs like fish-scales, so that she
+seemed more mermaiden than wood-nymph, but Archie's eyes proclaimed her
+Artemis--she would have calmed a satyr as she stood. Thoughts of forest
+glades were chill, sweet sports were held, and the wildest hoof was
+tamed to the childlike kinship with Nature that is pagan innocence,
+floated through his mind like visible things.
+
+Suddenly she became conscious of his presence, and gave one glance in
+which invitation and a certain calm aloofness seemed to mingle.
+
+"Désirée!" stammered Archie, "Désirée!"
+
+All at once excitement tingled through him, blurring his ideas, just as
+chloroform sets the blood pricking with thousands of points and edges,
+while dizzying the brain. She stayed still a second longer; then,
+either the fearful nymph swayed her utterly, or, as it seemed to
+Archie, a sudden rejection of him, the clumsy, civilized mortal, sprang
+into her eyes. She flung up her head, turned, and was gone in the tangle
+of the woods. Without more than a second's hesitation he plunged in
+after her.
+
+To Archie, whenever he looked back, that night seemed an orgy of
+chase-gone-mad; gathering in force as it went and sweeping into its
+resistless flow the most incongruous of elements.
+
+He ran after her, stumbling, tripping, whipped across the face by
+brambles. Everything in life was crystallized into the desire to catch
+up, to track her to the enchanted green where, with her, he could become
+part of a remote free life he had never imagined before. All his own
+personality, except that in him which was hers, had ceased to
+exist--work, Gwendolen, the great world, and the inn at Draginoules,
+were wiped out of knowledge by the force of his concentration on one
+thing. The arbitrary line drawn between the actual and the unreal, the
+credible and the impossible, sanity and so-called madness, was swept
+away. She, the descendant of the gods knew what strange race--a race
+that perhaps had lingered in these crater-fastnesses and myrtle groves
+long after it had died off the rest of the earth--was fleeing before him
+through a wood alive with brightened eyes and quickened hoofs; and in
+her veins the slender strain of blood derived from some goat-legged,
+tall-eared thing--a strain asleep through the generations of her
+ancestors, had mastered all the rest of her heritage, and was triumphant
+in her soul as in Sylvestre's body. She ran on, swiftly, and without
+effort, and Archie ran after her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dawn broke at last, reluctant, chill, showing the woods clear-edged and
+motionless as though cut out of steel, glimmering on the quiet pools and
+the ribbed lava slopes, though the hollow of the plain still held a
+great lake of shadow.
+
+Désirée's clothes lay no longer by the pool where she had bathed; no
+trace of human presence remained; even the marshy edge showed only
+trampled hoof-marks, as though some goat-footed herd had watered there.
+
+To Archie, breaking through the undergrowth at the edge of the wood, it
+seemed incredible that everything should look so much as usual. Still
+more he felt the wonder when, with the broad sunlight, he reached his
+inn. He himself felt so shaken in soul that even the thought of the
+Englishman's panacea--a cold bath--failed to appeal to him as a solution
+of all trouble. Plucked out of his accustomed place, flung by the sport
+of what strange gods he knew not, into a headlong medley of undreamed
+emotions, his values had been so violently disrupted that he could not
+have told which held true worth--the normal life of Gwendolens and
+one-man shows and newspaper criticisms, or what had passed in the woods
+that night. And, whatever strange rite he had surprised, and whether it
+were golden actuality that a man might live happy because he had once
+seen, or the mere wildness of a dream, there had been something about it
+which taught him not to blaspheme the revelation. He did not tell
+himself that the _vin ordinaire_ must have gone to his head, or that he
+had been a romantic fool worked on by moonlight. This was remarkable,
+for few people are strong enough not to profane the past.
+
+So much of grace held by him even when he found a letter awaiting him to
+tell of Gwendolen's arrival with the obedient aunt at Cannes, whither
+she summoned him. He debated whether to say good-bye to Désirée or not.
+The matter was settled for him by meeting her accidently outside the
+_buvette_. She was looking pale and jaded, not at all at her best, but
+her eyes were blankly unknowing and clear of all embarrassment. She said
+good-bye with charming unemotional friendliness and informed him that
+she was going to be married very soon--Monsieur Colombini had had a rise
+that justified it. Here was anti-climax enough, even if the cold bath,
+the letter and the prose of packing were not sufficient. And yet, since
+it had not been Désirée, the frank peasant, who had shown Archie the
+wonders of that night, his memories remained. Half-fearful and half
+splendid, not enough to make him walk with the vision beautiful, but
+merely enough to spoil his pictures for the public, because instead of
+being content with the merely obvious he was now always trying for
+something beyond his powers to express. Enough also, to prick him to an
+occasional weary clear-eyed knowledge of his Gwendolen--a knowledge that
+was hardly criticism, for he admitted his kinship with her world. And
+what it was that companioned him, that he strove to show in his
+pictures, he never entirely told; for just as no woman ever tells what
+it is her sex has and the other lacks--that something which makes all
+the difference--just as no man tells a woman what it is he and his
+fellows talk about when the last skirt has trailed from the
+dinner-table, so no one ever tells the whole truth about the beloved.
+
+
+
+
+THE LADDER
+
+
+I
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+(_Account taken from a contemporary journal_)
+
+"To-day, March 3, the Court being sat in the Castle at Launceston, about
+eight o'clock in the morning, the prisoner was set to the bar.
+
+"Sophia Bendigo, of the parish of St. Annan in this county, was
+indicted, for that she, not having the fear of God before her eyes, but
+being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on October 20,
+in the 24th year of his Majesty's reign, and again since, to wit, on
+October 21, with force and arms upon the body of Constantine Bendigo,
+Gent., her father, did make an assault, and in her malice aforethought,
+did kill and murder, by putting into some water-gruel a certain powder
+called arsenic, and afterwards giving to him, the said Constantine
+Bendigo, a potion thereof, knowing it to be mixed with the powder
+aforesaid, so that he, the said Constantine, was poisoned, and of which
+poison, he, the said Constantine, died, on the 22nd of the said month of
+October; against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and
+dignity.
+
+"The Counsel for the Crown were the Hon. Mr. Bathwick; Mr. Sergeant
+Wheeler; Mr. Grice, Town Clerk of Launceston; Mr. Rose, Mr. Kirton, and
+the Hon. Mr. Harrington: And for the prisoner, Mr. Ford, Mr. Bennett and
+Mr. Walton.
+
+"The Counsel for the Crown having opened the indictment, proceeded to
+inform the Court and Jury that this prosecution was carried on by the
+order, and at the expense of his Majesty (who is ever watchful to
+preserve the lives, liberties, and properties of his subjects) against
+the prisoner at the bar, Sophia Bendigo, for one of the most atrocious
+crimes; the cruel, inhuman, and deliberate murder of her own father:
+That the prisoner at the bar was the daughter and only child of Mr.
+Constantine Bendigo, Squire of Troon, in the hundred of Penwith, a
+gentleman both by his birth and education; that as she was the only, so
+she was the beloved child of her father, who had spared no pains in
+giving her a genteel, as well as a pious education; that her father,
+indeed, had used this pious fraud (if he might be allowed that
+expression) in saying that her fortune would be £10,000, to the end, he
+supposed, that his daughter might be married suitable to such a fortune.
+That in June of the preceding year one Capt. William Lucius Crandon came
+to Penwith map-making, and hearing that Miss Bendigo was a £10,000
+fortune, and having a mind to marry this fortune, notwithstanding he had
+a wife and child alive, contrived to get acquainted with this family;
+how well he succeeded, and how sadly for this family, this unhappy
+catastrophe has shown. That Mr. Bendigo, having been informed that Mr.
+Crandon was married, he desired his daughter to break off all
+correspondence with him; that instead of doing so, she acquainted Mr.
+Crandon with her father's command, who, instead of clearing his
+character to her father's satisfaction, contrives the means and
+persuades this beloved, this tenderly indulged daughter, to be an actor
+in her father's destruction.
+
+"That the Captain left Cornwall at the end of September, since when, on
+the miscarriage of his plans, he had disappeared entirely; and soon
+after he is gone, we find this wicked scheme beginning to be put into
+execution. That on October 20, Mr. Bendigo found himself much disordered
+after taking some tea, that next day, the prisoner having made him
+another dish of tea, deceased had thought it to taste odd and sent it
+downstairs; that Crandon, to hasten the work of destruction, sent a
+letter to the prisoner, making use of an allegorical expression, not to
+spare the powder, in order to keep the rust off the pebbles. That the
+tea being too thin to admit of a larger quantity at the time, you will
+find by the witnesses that shall be produced, that the prisoner did mix
+a large quantity of the powder in a pan of water-gruel and gave some of
+it to her father next day which had such terrible effects as to occasion
+his death on the morning of the 23rd. That he would call the physicians
+first, and they would prove that what was administered to the deceased
+was poison and the cause of his death.
+
+"Mr. Harvey, of St. Annan, and Dr. Polwhele, of Penzance, were then
+called and both sworn; and Mr. Harvey said that, being on the evening of
+the 22nd sent for to Mr. Bendigo, he thus made his complaints: That he
+had a violent burning pain, saying it was a ball of fire in his guts,
+that he vomited much since taking some tea two days before and again
+after taking some gruel that evening, that he had a cold sweat, hiccups,
+prickings all over his body, which he compared to a number of needles.
+He desired to drink, but could not swallow, his pulse intermitted, his
+tongue swelled, his throat was excoriated, his breath difficult and
+interrupted. Towards morning he grew worse, became delirious and sank
+gradually, dying about six o'clock in the morning.
+
+"Being asked if he thought Mr. Bendigo was poisoned, witness answered,
+He really believed he was, for that the symptoms, while living, were
+like those of a person who had taken arsenic; and the appearances after
+death, like those that were poisoned by arsenic."[A]
+
+"King's Counsel: Did you also make an examination of the powder found in
+the gruel?
+
+"Mr. Harvey: I did. I threw it upon a hot iron; boiled ten grains in
+water and divided the concoction, after filtering it into five equal
+parts. Into one I put oil of vitriol, into another tartar, into the
+third spirit of sal ammoniac, into the fourth spirit of salt, and into
+the fifth spirit of wine. I tried it also with syrup of violets, and
+made the like experiments with the same quantity of white arsenic which
+I bought in Penzance. It answered exactly to every one of them, and
+therefore I believed it to be white arsenic.
+
+"Mr. Harvey further deposed that Mr. Bendigo told him that he suspected
+poison, and that he believed it came to his daughter with the serpentine
+beads, for that his daughter had had a present of those damned pebbles
+that morning; that if he, this witness, would look in the gruel, he
+might find something, that when he, this witness, asked Mr. Bendigo whom
+he imagined gave him the poison, he replied, A poor love-sick girl, but
+I forgive her; what will not a woman do for the man she loves?
+
+"That later on the evening of the 22nd, Mr. Bendigo being a trifle
+easier, consented to see Miss, that he, this witness, was present when
+Miss came into the chamber, and fell down upon her knees, saying, Oh!
+sir, forgive me! Do what you will with me, and I'll never see Crandon
+more if you will but forgive me. To which Mr. Bendigo replied, I forgive
+thee, but thou shouldst have remembered that I am thy father, upon which
+Miss said, Oh, sir, your goodness strikes daggers to my soul; sir, I
+must down on my knees and pray that you will not curse me. He replied,
+No, child, I bless thee and pray that God may bless thee and let thee
+live to repent. Miss then declared she was innocent of this illness, and
+he replied, that he feared she was not, and that some of the powder was
+in such hands as would show it against her. Witness added that deceased,
+before Miss Bendigo's entry, had bidden him look to the remainder of the
+gruel.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: Who was it sent for you when deceased was taken
+ill?
+
+"Harvey: James Ruffiniac,[B] the steward, fetched me and said it was at
+the command of Miss Bendigo, who said, to-morrow will not satisfy me,
+you must go now, which he did.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: All the years you have known Miss Bendigo what has
+been her behaviour to her father? Has she not always done everything
+that an affectionate child could for her father's ease?
+
+"Harvey: She always behaved like a dutiful daughter, as far as ever I
+knew, and seemed to do everything in her power for her father's recovery
+whenever he was indisposed.
+
+"King's Counsel: Did she tell you that she had put anything into her
+father's gruel and that she feared it might in some measure occasion his
+death?
+
+"Harvey: She never did.
+
+"Dr. Polwhele, having been sworn at the same time as Mr. Harvey, and
+stood in Court close by him, was now asked by the King's Counsel if he
+was present at the opening of Mr. Bendigo and whether the observations
+made by Mr. Harvey were true: he said he was present and made the same
+observations himself. He was then asked what was his opinion of the
+cause of the death of Mr. Bendigo, and he replied, by poison absolutely.
+
+"Eliza Ruffiniac, being sworn, said, that on the afternoon of the 20th,
+her master being unwell, from (as they thought at the time) an attack of
+bile, Miss Bendigo, the prisoner at the bar, made him a dish of tea.
+That after taking it he was very sick, but seemed easier next day, when
+Miss again made him some tea which he did not drink. That next evening
+he sent for the witness and asked for some water-gruel to be made; that
+Miss on hearing of it, said, I will make it, that there's no call for
+you to leave your ironing; that Miss was a long time stirring the gruel
+in the pantry, and on coming into the kitchen said, I have been taking
+of my father's gruel, and I think I shall often eat of it; I have taken
+a great fancy to it.
+
+"King's Counsel: Do you recollect that one Keast, the cook-maid, had
+been taken ill with drinking some tea the day before, and tell the Court
+how it was.
+
+"E. Ruffiniac: Hester Keast brought down the tea from my master's room
+and afterwards drank it in the scullery, where I found her crying out
+she was dying, being taken very ill with a violent vomiting and pains
+and a great thirst.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: On that occasion, how did Miss Bendigo behave?
+
+"E. Ruffiniac: She made Hester Keast go to her bed and sent her a large
+quantity of weak broth and white wine whey.
+
+"King's Counsel: Did you ever see Miss Bendigo burn any papers, and
+when?
+
+"E. Ruffiniac: On the evening of the 22nd, Miss brought a great many
+papers in her apron down into the kitchen and put them on the fire, then
+thrust them into it with a stick and said, now, thank God, I am pretty
+easy, and then went out of the kitchen; that this witness and Hester
+Keast were in the kitchen at the time; that they, observing something to
+burn blue, it was raked out and found to be a paper of powder that was
+not quite consumed; that there was this inscription on the paper; Powder
+to clean the pebbles, and that this paper, she, the witness, delivered
+to Dr. Polwhele next day. Being shown a paper, with the above
+inscription on it, partly burnt, she said she believed the paper to be
+the same the prisoner put into the fire and she took out.
+
+"This witness was asked if she ever heard the prisoner use any unseemly
+expressions against her father, and what they were? Replied, many times;
+sometimes she damned him for an old rascal; and once when she was in the
+dairy and the prisoner passing at the time outside, she heard her say,
+Who would not send an old father to hell for ten thousand pounds?
+
+"Hester Keast, the cook-maid, deposed, That, on the 21st she bore down
+her master's dish of tea and drank of it, being afterwards taken very
+ill, that on the next day, being down in the kitchen after her master
+was taken ill, Lylie Ruffiniac brought a pan with some gruel in it to
+the table and said, Hester, did you ever see any oatmeal so white? that
+this witness replied, That oatmeal? Why, it is flour! and Lylie replied,
+I never saw flour so gritty in my life; that they showed it to Mr.
+Harvey, the apothecary, who took it away with him.
+
+"James Ruffiniac was next called and sworn.
+
+"King's Counsel: When your master was dead, did you not have some
+particular conversation with the prisoner? Recollect yourself, and tell
+my Lord and the Jury what it was.
+
+"J. Ruffiniac: After my master was dead, Miss Bendigo asked me if I
+would live along with her, and I said no, and she then said, If you will
+go with me, your fortune will be made; I asked her what she wanted me to
+do and she replied, Only to hire a post-chaise to go to London. I was
+shocked at the proposal and absolutely refused her request. On this she
+put on a forced laugh, and said, I was only joking with you.
+
+"Charles Le Petyt, Clerk in Holy Orders, was next called and sworn, and
+said, That, meeting Miss Bendigo in St. Annan when the crowd was
+insulting her, he took her into the inn, and spoke with her there,
+asking if she would not return home under his protection; she answered
+yes, that upon this he got a closed post-chaise and brought her home;
+that upon her coming home she asked him what she should do, that he,
+having heard her, said that they should fix the guilt upon Crandon if
+she could produce anything to that end, but in some agony she replied
+she had destroyed all evidences of his guilt.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: Do you, Mr. Le Petyt, believe that the Prisoner had
+any intention to go off, from what appeared to you, and if she was not
+very ready to come back with you from the inn?
+
+"Le Petyt: She was very ready to come back, and desired me to protect
+her from the mob, and she had, I am sure, no design to make an escape.
+
+"Here the Counsel for the Crown rested their proof against the prisoner,
+and she was thereupon called to make her defence.
+
+"Prisoner: My Lord, in my unhappy plight, if I should use any terms that
+may be thought unfitting, I hope I shall be forgiven, for it will not be
+with any desire to offend. My Lord, some time before my father's death,
+I unhappily became acquainted with Captain Crandon. This, after a time,
+gave offence to my father, and he grew very angry with me over Captain
+Crandon. I am passionate, which I know is a fault, and when I have found
+my father distrustful over Captain Crandon, I may have let fall an angry
+expression, but never to wish him injury, I have always done all in my
+power to tend him, as the witnesses against me have not denied. When my
+father was dead, being ill and unable to bear confinement in the house,
+I took a walk over to St. Annan, but I was insulted, and a mob raised
+about me, so that when Mr. Le Petyt came to me I desired his protection
+and to go home with him, which I did.
+
+"I will not deny, my Lord, that I did put some powder into my father's
+gruel; but I here solemnly protest, as I shall answer it at the great
+tribunal, and God knows how soon, that I had no evil intention in
+putting the powder in his gruel: It was put in to procure his love and
+not his death.
+
+"Then she desired that several witnesses might be called in her defence,
+who all allowed that Miss Bendigo always behaved to her father in a
+dutiful and affectionate manner. And Anne Lear and Elizabeth Pollard,
+women occasionally employed at Troon, deposed that they had heard Lylie
+Ruffiniac say, Damn the black bitch (meaning the prisoner), I hope I
+shall see her walk up a ladder and swing.
+
+"The prisoner having gone through her defence, the King's Counsel, in
+reply, observed, That the prisoner had given no evidence in
+contradiction of the facts established by the witnesses for the crown;
+that indeed, Anne Lear and Elizabeth Pollard had sworn to an expression
+of Lylie Ruffiniac, which, if true, served to show ill-will in Ruffiniac
+towards the prisoner, but that he thought the incident was too slight to
+deserve any manner of credit. That the other witnesses, produced by the
+prisoner, served only to prove that Mr. Bendigo was a very fond,
+affectionate and indulgent parent, therefore there could be no pretence
+of giving him powders or anything else to promote in him an affection
+for his daughter. That if the Jury believed the prisoner to be innocent,
+they would take care to acquit her: but if they believed her guilty,
+they would take care to acquit their own consciences.[C]
+
+"The prisoner desired leave to speak in answer to what the King's
+Counsel had said, which being granted, she said, The gentleman was
+mistaken in thinking the powders were given to her father to produce his
+affection to her, for that they were given to procure her father's love
+to Captain Crandon.
+
+"The judge summed up the evidence in a clear and impartial manner to the
+Jury, and they, without going out of Court, brought in their verdict:
+Guilty, Death.
+
+"After sentence of death was pronounced upon her she, in a very solemn
+and affecting manner, prayed the Court that she might have as much time
+as could be allowed her to prepare for her great and immortal state. The
+Court told her she should have a convenient time allowed her; but
+exhorted her, in the meantime, to lose not a moment, but incessantly to
+implore the mercy of that Being to Whom alone mercy belongs."
+
+
+II
+
+FIRST STEPS
+
+To the making of such a scene as that recounted in the contemporary
+journal, much had gone during the months so crudely analysed. That
+damning pile of evidence had been building itself up, touch upon touch,
+since the first moment when Sophie Bendigo's eyes lit on the instigator
+of the trouble; and the causes of her own share in it had been
+strengthening from far earlier even than that. In after years the Wise
+Woman of Bosullow would recount that when the baby Sophie was brought to
+her to be passed for luck through the ringed stone of the Men-an-Tol,
+she had foretold for her the rise in life that eventually came about.
+True, the terms of the prophecy had been so vague that beyond the fact
+that a ladder, metaphorical or otherwise, was to play a part in Sophie's
+career, Mr. Bendigo had not been much the wiser. The mother had lain in
+the bleak moorland churchyard for several years now, but she had had
+time, during the most malleable years of a girl's life, the early teens,
+to impress Sophie with a sense of destiny. Not for her the vulgar loves
+and joys of other country girls, to her some one shining, resplendent,
+would come flashing down, and Sophie must learn to bear with powdered
+hair and hoops against that moment. For London, of course, would be her
+splendid bourne, and as to saying that hoops got in the way of her
+legs--why, hoops were the mode and to a hoop she must come. Since Mrs.
+Bendigo had died, worn out by the terrible combination of the Squire's
+slow cruelty and his suave tongue, Sophie had given up the struggle with
+hoops and powder, but she still lived for and by her vision of the
+future. If Sophie Bendigo had not glanced over her shoulder in Troon
+Lane, thereby presenting an exceptional face at the most alluring of
+angles--chin up and eyes innocently sidelong--to the view of Mr.
+Crandon, she might never have climbed so high. When she saw Mr. Crandon,
+his white wig tied with a black ribbon, and an excellent paste pin
+flashing from his cravat, riding up the lane, she never doubted that her
+star had risen at last.
+
+Sophie Bendigo was of the pure Celtic type still preserved among the
+intermarrying villages of West Penwith. Her rather coarse hair was a
+burnt black, so were her thick, straight brows, but her eyes were of
+that startlingly vivid blue one only meets in Cornish women and Cornish
+seas. There was something curiously Puck-like about Sophie; the
+cheekbones wide and jaw pointed, while her mouth was long, the thin,
+finely cut lips curving up at the ends, and there was a freakish flaunt
+at the corners of her brows--Crandon thought of piskies as he looked.
+She wore a plain white gown, low in the throat and short in the sleeve,
+and she carried an apron-load of elder-flower, the pearly blossoms of it
+showing faintly green against the deader white of the linen.
+
+"Excuse me, but does this lead to St. Annan?" asked Crandon, bending a
+little towards her. Sophie felt one swift pang lest he should be riding
+out of her life straightway, and swiftly answered:
+
+"You are out of your way," she told him, "this lane only leads to our
+house. You must go back to the highway and follow it past the 'Nineteen
+Merry Maidens' and turn on to your right--but it is a matter of three or
+four miles."
+
+For a moment they remained looking at each other, then Crandon said:
+
+"Is there perhaps an inn near here where I and my mare could rest? We
+have come from Zennor this morning, and she is newly shod."
+
+"There is no need for an inn," said Sophie, "we are always glad to rest
+a traveller at Troon Manor. I am Sophie Bendigo."
+
+Crandon smilingly dismounted and walked by her side up the lane.
+
+"It would be ungracious to refuse when the Fates have led me and Venus
+herself seconds the invitation. . . . Have you just risen from the sea, I
+wonder, that your eyes still hold its hue?"
+
+Sophie, used only to the clumsy overtures of the county squires, flushed
+with pleasure, not at the allusion, which she did not understand, but at
+the air of gallantry which pervaded the man. She glanced up admiringly
+between her narrowed lids--Crandon was accustomed to such glances, so
+had his girl-wife in Scotland looked at him, before he deserted her and
+her child. He meditated no harm to this girl, no plan was formulated in
+his mind; and as to the ten thousand pounds, of which so much was heard
+later on, no whisper of it had then reached his ears. The road had led
+to her, her own face lured him on, and a few hours of a pretty girl on
+such a June day, where was the harm? The innocence and spontaneity of
+his feelings gave the Captain a delightful glow of conscious virtue, and
+he walked beside Sophie with a slight swagger of enjoyment.
+
+The drive was a mere rutted cart-track; hemlock, foxgloves, purple
+knapweed, blue scabious and tall, thin-stemmed buttercups grew along the
+tangled hedges, and the blackberry flowers patterned the brambles with
+pearliness. The luminous chequer-work of sun and shadow fell over
+Sophie's white gown, and the green light, filtering through the trees,
+reflected on her face and on her glossy head, so that she seemed to be
+walking in the depths of the sea, and Crandon's simile gained in
+aptness.
+
+At the bend of the lane they came on the Manor House, its whitewash
+dazzling in the sunshine, even the shadows thrown on it by the eaves and
+sills were so clear they gave a curious effect of being as light as the
+rest. Only the Bendigo arms--a clenched fist--carved on the granite
+lintel, had been left untouched by the whitewash, and showed a sullen
+grey. A few fawn-coloured fowls, blazing like copper in the sunshine,
+pecked at the dusty ground, and some white pigs, looking as utterly
+naked as only white pigs can, snuffled at a rubbish heap, their big ears
+flapping. A tall, lean woman, clad in a dirty silk dressing-jacket of
+bright yellow, was talking to a labourer by the dairy door. There was
+something oddly suggestive of secrecy in the turn of their shoulders and
+their bent heads, and the woman's soiled finery made her thin face--that
+of a shrewd but comely peasant, framed in an untidy pompadour of
+reddish-brown hair--seem oddly incongruous. The man lapsed into
+insignificance beside her, yet something of likeness in their sharpened
+lines, and in the tinge of hot colour showing up through them,
+proclaimed them kin. They were Lylie Ruffiniac, Squire Bendigo's
+housekeeper, and her brother James, who acted as bailiff on the estate.
+Sophie, her head turned towards her companion, did not see them, but
+Crandon did, and was pricked at once to curiosity. Living as he did by
+his wits, his every fibre was quickened to superficial alertness, though
+of intellectual effort he was almost incapable. An old journal for 1752
+that published, in addition to its account of the trial, some "Memoirs
+of the Life of Lucius William Crandon, Esq.," had enough acumen to
+remark: "He was not, however, destitute of parts, for he would often
+surprise those who entertained a mean opinion of his abilities, by
+schemes and concertions which required more genius than they thought he
+had been master of. . . . As he was not of sufficient learning to qualify
+him either for law or for physic, he turned his thought towards the
+army, where a very moderate share of literature is sufficient, and where
+few voices disqualify a man from making a figure. . . ." And a figure
+Lucius Crandon certainly made--a figure that caused the woman in the
+yellow jacket to stop and stare, then to disappear into the house by a
+side-door--Crandon received the impression that she had gone to warn
+some one of his approach.
+
+
+III
+
+THE WOOING
+
+It is said that rogues know each other by instinct--certain it is that
+the Squire and Captain Crandon had no need of disguises once they had
+crossed glances, and therefore each man cloaked himself with an
+elaborate pretence of being unable to see through the other's garment.
+It was not by any wish of Squire Bendigo's that Captain Crandon heard of
+the rumour of the ten thousand pounds, but when one has circulated a
+report with diligence for several years it is impossible to withdraw it
+at will, and so the Squire found, and it only needed this report of
+Sophie's marriage portion for Crandon to attempt the capture in earnest;
+what happened to the map history does not relate, but the Captain
+stayed at the "Bendigo Arms," making explorations in the familiar but
+always surprising country of a woman's mind. A mind simpler, more
+passionate, and more one-ideaed than any he had met before, a mind at
+once proud, confiding and reckless--a mind fitted, both by the quality
+of it and its loneliness, to be easily influenced by the flattery of
+love.
+
+Sophie Bendigo had a fixed belief in her star. The predictions of the
+Wise Woman and of her eager mother, and her own knowledge of her
+superiority to the people among whom she moved, all tended to give her
+that confidence in her fate which does not think misfortune possible.
+She had always led a hard life with her best of fathers, the smiling old
+rogue who had never been heard to address a rude word to her, and who
+was harsh and immutable as granite. She had always waited, with such
+sureness she had not even felt impatience, for her opportunity to come,
+and mingled with the half-shy, half-innocently sensuous imaginings of a
+young girl on the subject of love, ran a streak of personal ambition, a
+hardness inherited from her father.
+
+At first, before he had found out beyond a doubt that the Captain was a
+needy fortune-hunter, the Squire allowed his visits at Troon, and
+Crandon soon grew to be on terms of intimacy with the members of the
+household. These consisted of the Bendigos, father and daughter, Lylie
+Ruffiniac, her brother, and the servant, a girl called Hester Keast. The
+three latter were supposed to live more or less in the back premises and
+take their meals in the kitchen, but once when Crandon surprised Lylie
+Ruffiniac with the Squire, there were two glasses of spirits and water
+on the table, and, several weeks after, when he had to meet Sophie by
+stealth and at night, he saw a light being carried from the servants'
+quarters towards the Squire's room. As for Hester Keast, she was a
+pretty girl in her way--a way at once heavier and less strong than
+Sophie's. She had the dewy brown eyes, the easily affected, over-thin
+skin, and the soft red mouth, blurred at the edges, which betray
+incapacity for resistance. There was no harm in the girl, she was merely
+a young animal, with very little instinct of self-protection to
+counteract her utter lack of morals. Crandon kissed her behind the door
+on his second visit, and James Ruffiniac's wooing of her had long passed
+the preliminary stages--so long that with him ideas of marriage were
+growing misty, the thing seemed so unnecessary. Lylie's blood was
+controlled by scheming, and the most charitable explanation of the
+Squire's tortuous nature was that some mental or moral twist in him made
+him love evil for its own sake, and embrace it as his good. Such was the
+household where, for the last three years, Sophie had lived, practically
+alone--her egoism had done her that much service, it had won her
+aloofness. Crandon, who was by nature predisposed to think the worst of
+humanity, made the mistake, at first, of thinking Sophie's innocence
+assumed--it seemed a thing so incredible in that house of hidden
+schemings and furtive amours. When he found that partly a natural
+fastidiousness, and partly her young crudity had kept her clean in
+thought and knowledge as well as in deed, he wisely guessed there must
+be some outside influence on the side of the angels, and scenting
+opposition to his own schemes, he set himself to discover all he could.
+That was not difficult in such a sparsely inhabited district, hemmed in
+on three sides by the sea, and he soon made, at St. Annan's Vicarage,
+the acquaintance of its vicar, Mr. Charles le Petyt. He no sooner set
+eyes on the clergyman's plain and frail physique, with the burning eyes
+and quick nervous hands, than he knew he was right to fear him as an
+influence, though he could scorn him as a rival.
+
+Charles and Sophie had practically grown up together, Charles' six years
+of seniority making him stand in the place of an elder brother to her,
+until he had become her urgent lover. Charles' father, the former Vicar
+of St. Annan, had given Sophie what little education she possessed--a
+medley of mythology and history, some incorrect geography, and a
+smattering of literature--all the things that go to fire the
+imagination. Mixed with these was a mass of all the wild legendary lore
+of the Duchy, solemnly believed in by the common people at that date,
+and by no means without its effect on the gentry. Sophie would not have
+been of her race and time if she had not had faith in charms, witches,
+death-warnings and love-potions; and in Charles the spiritual sense was
+so acute that, though from sheer sensitiveness it rejected the more
+vulgar superstitions, it responded like a twanged string to the breath
+of a less gross world. The finer side of Sophie, the delicate feeling
+for the beautiful, which owed so much of its existence to Charles,
+received a severe shock when she discovered the change in his viewing of
+her. She had been so used to think of him as her brother, and as her
+leader in the intangible matters which were sealed books to the rest at
+Troon, that the discovery of warm, human sentiments in him filled her
+with repulsion, and she took to avoiding him as much as she had sought
+him before. Poor Charles, whose earthly love, though as reverent, was as
+fiery as his heavenly affections, and who was handicapped by the lover's
+inability to understand that his devotion can be repellent, suffered
+acutely. It was some time before he understood that Sophie was so
+accustomed to see him burning with a white flame that she could not
+forgive him for being alight with a red one as well. A more sensual
+love, and coarser in its expression than his could ever be, would have
+revolted her less coming from a less exalted man--Mr. Le Petyt paid for
+the high opinion she held him in. If Lucius Crandon had never come to
+Troon, Sophie would in time have grown used to the idea of Charles as a
+husband, for there is no combination of circumstances, incredible as it
+appears to youth, that time does not soften and make bearable. But
+Sophie, destiny-ridden, gave no heed to Charles, save as a friend who
+had made her dread him even while she was still fond of him, and Lucius
+Crandon stepped in just when her nerves, awakened to the existence of
+actual love, were beginning to calm from the shock and even to set
+towards curiosity--just when she was most receptive. Pitiful and
+ignorant Sophie, whose only protection from gross housemates and a
+hot-blooded, cold-hearted lover, was a dreamer as guileless as herself!
+
+With all his unworldliness, the unfailing instinct of the
+spiritual-minded warned Mr. Le Petyt against the Captain, and when the
+Squire, strangely friendly, sent word asking his vicar to come and see
+him on urgent business, Mr. Le Petyt guessed to what matter the
+business related. He found the Squire seated in his writing-room, a
+glass of rare old smuggled brandy before him and a packet of letters on
+his knee. The Squire was a big, pursy man, with a large and oddly
+impassive face, where even the hanging folds of flesh seemed rigid; only
+his small eyes, of a clear light grey, twinkled like chips of cut steel
+from between his wrinkled lids. His bull neck, wide as his head across
+the nape, sagged in a thick fold over his cravat, and his thighs swelled
+against the close-fitting cloth of his riding-breeches. The only
+contradiction to the stolidity of the man was his hands, and they were
+never still, but were for ever fiddling with something; with his
+waistcoat buttons, his rings, with a paper-knife, or the cutlery at
+table, or with any live thing they could get. Charles Le Petyt well
+remembered how, as a small boy, he had come on him superintending the
+reaping, and fingering a puppy behind his back. Whether the Squire was
+aware of what he was doing or whether his fingers did their work
+instinctively, without his brain, Charles never could decide, but when
+the Squire, turning away from the reapers, unlocked his hands, the puppy
+lay limp across his palm--the life choked out of it. The Squire stood
+still for a moment, looking at the little body, and then, moving away in
+a straight line from the labourers, so that it was concealed from them,
+he dropped it into a rabbit-hole and stuffed it down with his cane. Sick
+to the heart, little Charles stood at gaze, and glancing up, the Squire
+saw he was watched, and for a moment his impassive features were
+convulsed with rage--he looked as though he would have liked to treat
+Charles as he had the puppy. The memory of that day would have been
+enough, without the sight of Sophie's dread of her father, to prevent
+Mr. Le Petyt from joining in the general praise of Squire Bendigo.
+
+The two men made a great contrast as they sat opposite to each other in
+the little room, the Squire solid and imperturbable, the parson
+transparent in mind and physical texture, the quick colour flying up
+under his skin with his emotions. The dust lay thickly over the table
+and books, for Sophie, the careful housewife, was seldom admitted here,
+and however Lylie Ruffiniac spent the hours when she was closeted with
+the Squire, it was evidently not in work. The evening light shone into
+the low-browed room through an ash-tree by the window, filling the air
+with a luminous gloom, gilding the dust films, gleaming on Mr. Le
+Petyt's shoe-buckles, and making a bright crescent in the glass of
+spirits which the Squire was jerking between his finger and thumb.
+
+"You want to consult me on something?" began the younger man, going
+straight to the point. The Squire, with a gesture of protest for such
+methods, nevertheless fell into an agreeing humour.
+
+"The fact is, Charles," he began, with that disarming air of candour
+none assumed better than he, "I have had cause to be uneasy at the
+intimacy between my dear but headstrong daughter and this Captain
+Crandon, so I wrote to a trustworthy man I know in London to find out
+all he could for me. His letter came to-day by Mr. Borlace, who was
+riding down in all haste from London to his wife's bedside--thus does
+Providence permit the trials of others to be of use to us."
+
+Here he paused, but Mr. Le Petyt, throwing in no suitable remark, he
+continued:
+
+"I will read you some extracts from the letter, and you shall judge for
+yourself whether a parent's anxiety has not been justified. Let me
+see--ah, here we are! 'I find' (says my informant) 'that about the year
+1744 Crandon became acquainted with a Miss Isabel Thirsk, then at her
+uncle's. Miss Thirsk was remarkably genteel, delicate, and of a very
+amiable disposition, which gained her a great number of admirers. Her
+uncle, observing that Crandon always discovered an inclination of
+conversing with his niece alone, desired him to explain himself fully on
+a point so very delicate. Crandon declared he counted Miss Thirsk on the
+most honourable terms, but the young lady's uncle desired that Crandon's
+visits should be less frequent, lest his niece should suffer in her
+reputation. Soon after, this gentleman's affairs caused him to be absent
+from his home for some time, during which Crandon proposed a private
+marriage, which the young lady consented to, and for some time they
+lived together without any of their relations being privy to it. The
+natural consequence arising, and her uncle, some time after his return,
+suspecting it, she readily acknowledged she was with child, and
+protested she was married to Crandon four months before, adding, that
+her husband, who was soon to set out for London, had not yet publicly
+acknowledged her for his wife. Accordingly the uncle dispatched a
+messenger to Crandon demanding full acknowledgment of his wife before
+his departure for England. Crandon wrote in answer that he never
+intended to deny his marriage with Miss Thirsk, and that he would ever
+love her with conjugal tenderness, but that at the moment he had to
+hasten to London, which he did. There he every day saw young fellows
+making their fortunes by marriage, and he imagined nothing but his being
+married could hinder him from being as successful as the rest, thus he
+began to neglect a person whose beauty and virtue merited a more worthy
+spouse. When he returned to Scotland that country was involved in a
+civil war, and rebellion raging in its bowels. He found all the
+relations of Miss Thirsk joined in the mad expedition and in all
+probability would suffer at the hands of their country for disturbing
+its peace. He therefore concluded that it was not in their power to give
+him any disturbance, and, consequently, it was a good opportunity for
+renouncing his wife. The affair, at last, after various meetings and
+expostulations of friends, came to a trial before the Lords of Session
+in Scotland, who found the marriage valid and settled fifty pounds a
+year on the lady, which she now enjoys by their decree.'"
+
+The Squire put down the papers.
+
+"So much for Captain Crandon!" he said, in a glow of rage at the man for
+trying to deceive him, mingled with pride in his own acuteness and a
+dash of assumed piety: "Who but a person, something worse than a
+villain, could ever have indulged a thought of using so innocent, so
+lovely a being as Miss Thirsk in such a monstrous manner! Surely Divine
+justice will pursue him for this unnatural, this unheard-of piece of
+brutality!"
+
+"Divine justice has at least saved Sophie from the same fate," replied
+Mr. Le Petyt. His first feeling was for her, his second, to his own
+shame, was the relief of the jealous lover.
+
+"Ah--Sophie!" said the Squire thoughtfully--"that is where I crave your
+help. She is headstrong, poor child, sadly headstrong, but your opinions
+have always had weight with her. You have an influence, Charles. Use it
+to save my unhappy child from this villain Crandon."
+
+"I would save her from all villainy if I could," said Mr. Le Petyt.
+
+The Squire pulled the bell-rope, and on the appearance of Lylie,
+splendid in what even the guileless parson could not but see was a new
+silk, stiff enough to stand up by itself, the Squire told her curtly to
+desire "Miss's" presence. Lylie withdrew with downdropped lids, and a
+few minutes later Sophie appeared. She glanced quickly from one man to
+the other, and scenting a conspiracy, remained standing, her head up,
+and her hands strongly clasped behind her. She was against the window,
+so that subtleties of expression were lost to Mr. Le Petyt, and only the
+aloofness of her pose struck at him miserably, as confounding him and
+her father together. The big white muslin cap she wore showed delicately
+dark against the daylight, the outstanding frill of it framing the solid
+shadow of face and neck with a semi-transparent halo, and a yoke of
+light lay across her shoulders--to Mr. Le Petyt's quick fancy she looked
+like some virgin-saint of old at her trial.
+
+"Sophie," said the Squire gently, "I feel I should not be doing my duty
+by my dear daughter if I did not inform her that her lover, Lucius
+Crandon, is a married man."
+
+He watched, smiling. She stood a little tense, but with scorn of him and
+not with fear, and he went on:
+
+"He married a Miss Isabel Thirsk, by whom he had a child----"
+
+A slight convulsion swept over Sophie, passed, and left her rigid, and
+the Squire continued:
+
+"A lovely child, I believe--a boy, and the image of his father. . . . But
+that is not the chief matter of interest. Captain Crandon deserted his
+young and trusting wife, and appealed against the validity of the
+marriage. The law decided against him, and condemned him to pay fifty
+pounds a year for her support. It was a sad scandal, a very sad scandal.
+You, my sweet child, do not know the wickedness of the world as I do,
+therefore I must shield you from it--in short, I forbid you to have
+speech with Captain Crandon again."
+
+"Is that all?" asked Sophie.
+
+"All--save that I should much regret having to lock you up in your room
+to enforce obedience."
+
+"And you, Charles?" cried Sophie, "are you, too, in this plot to speak
+ill of an absent man?"
+
+"Sophie," cried Mr. Le Petyt, "do not take it so, I beg of you. There
+seems only too little doubt that what your father says is true."
+
+"You are against me, too!" said Sophie cruelly. "Papa, I am going to
+meet Captain Crandon now, and I shall ask him for the truth."
+
+"Sophie! You will not believe him?" exclaimed Mr. Le Petyt, half-rising
+in his agitation.
+
+"Every word he says," cried Sophie, with a little laugh of utter
+confidence. Her hand was on the latch, and the Squire, restrained by Mr.
+Le Petyt's presence, dared not put out a hand to stop her by force. For
+half a moment more the three emotions held--the scorn of the girl, the
+distress of the one man and the vindictiveness of the other, then the
+door had closed behind Sophie as the will to see her lover swept her on;
+and the taunt, one-ideaed feeling of the men fell into complexity as
+they turned first towards each other, then away, in the gathering dusk.
+
+Sophie found Crandon awaiting her by the dam above Vellan-Crowse mill.
+The daylight was all but gone and a darkly soft glamour seemed to hold
+the full-foliaged trees and shadowed water in a hush of expectation.
+There was still enough of red reflecting from the West to make the grass
+and leaves a vivid though subdued green; but of the hollow in the
+bushes, where the lovers met, darkness already seemed to make a nest.
+Everything to lull the mind and stir the heart and blood was there, and
+Sophie's generous trust, her pride in taking his word against the world,
+were not more powerful allies of Crandon's tongue than the time and the
+place. It was of little avail later to marvel that his ingenious
+reconstruction of events won upon her; his garbled confession of a
+_liaison_ with Isabel Thirsk, and denial of the marriage, his statement
+of Miss Thirsk's infidelities, and his evident nobility in voluntarily
+allowing her an income. As for the sin itself--"It was before I met you.
+You could make me what you will."
+
+Sophie, only too willing to be convinced, sat by him in the little
+clearing, and listened almost in silence. Behind them on both sides the
+hazel-bushes made a faintly whispering screen of darkness, at their feet
+the mill-dam lay silent save for the occasional plop-plop of the tiny
+trout rising at late flies, on the further bank the hedge was a network
+of tangled black against the deepening sky, while overhead the elms and
+sycamores were pierced by the first faint stars. The two were set in a
+hushed sphere of aloofness, and for Sophie it was the world. "Trust me,
+my sweet Sophie--only trust me!" was whispered in her ear, and when she
+answered that she did, and he told her that if it were really so she
+would not draw away from him, she let his arms creep round her and his
+mouth come to hers. Weeks of carefully calculated love making had gone
+to make her pliable, kisses at which all the chill girlhood of her would
+earlier have shuddered, as it had at the same thing in Charles Le Petyt,
+she now bore, if not yet with passion, yet with the woman's tolerance of
+it in the man she loves. Crandon knew it was the moment to bind her to
+him irrevocably, for he guessed that to a woman of her type faithfulness
+is a necessity of self-respect, and with him desire was one with
+deliberate planning. Whether he threw a spell of words over her, or
+whether the mere force of his thought pleaded with her to prove she
+trusted him utterly, Sophie could never have told. She only knew that
+the still night, the soft air, the rustling leaves and the pricking
+stars, his presence, dimly seen but deeply felt, and the beating in her
+own frame, all cried to her, "It was for this that I was born! For this,
+for this, for this!"
+
+
+IV
+
+THE SPELL
+
+Every one, on looking back at the past, even from the near standpoint of
+a few months, realizes how it falls into separate phases, unnoticed at
+the time, but nevertheless distinct. When she had reached her apex,
+Sophie saw how that night by the mill-dam had shut down one phase for
+ever, and ushered in a new one. Deceptions, and constant evading of her
+father's suspicions, secret meetings, to connive at which it became a
+bitter necessity to bribe the servants, hard Lylie and slow-tongued
+James--while at the same time instinct warned her to keep the thing from
+Hester Keast--all these were wearisome and galling, but by the quality
+of affairs with Crandon fell into insignificance, merely an added
+irritation, flies on a wound.
+
+What first suggested to Crandon his idea of the love-potion was the
+discovery of Sophie's credulousness. Like all West Country folk,
+especially in those days, she was a firm believer in witches and spells,
+to an extent incredible to a Saxon. As late as the latter half of the
+nineteenth century an old woman was accused by a farmer of ill-wishing
+his bullocks and was brought to trial; while a "cunning man," or
+"white-witch," lived until lately in the northern part of the Duchy. A
+century earlier, therefore, when Cornwall was practically cut off from
+England, when even the coach came no further than Saltash, and
+travellers continued on horseback or in a "kitterine"; when newspapers
+were unknown, and books only found in parsonages or the biggest of the
+country houses; when animals were burned alive as sacrifices to fortune,
+and any man out at night went in fear of ghosts and the devil, then
+there was no one, of whatever rank, who did not believe in witchcraft.
+That Sophie, lonely, romantic, with the superstitious blood of the Celt
+unadulterated in her veins, should give credence to such things, was
+inevitable; and when Crandon suggested giving a love-potion to the
+Squire, so that he might feel his heart warmed towards his would-be
+son-in-law, she seized at what was to her more a certainty than a hope.
+
+It was an afternoon in late September, and she and Crandon had met in a
+wood about a mile away from Troon, when he first mooted his plan; she
+sat beside him on one of the great grey boulders with which the sloping
+floor of the wood was covered, and listened with growing eagerness. It
+was a damp, steamy day, gold and tawny leaves, blown down in one night's
+gale, were drifted thickly in the fissures of the rocks and over the
+patches of vividly green moss; and livid orange fungi grew on the
+tree-boles. Sophie, always affected by externals, shuddered a little and
+drew closer to Crandon. Slipping his hand under the heavy knot of her
+hair, he laid it against the nape of her neck, and as she closed her
+eyes in the pleasure of his touch he looked down at her with a queer
+expression on his narrow face.
+
+"You have the loveliest neck in the world, my Sophie," he said, making
+his hands meet round it as he spoke, "see--I make you a living necklace
+for it."
+
+Sophie tucked in her chin, and bending her head, kissed the clasping
+fingers. Although he was not of those men to whom the attained woman
+gains in attractions, yet there were still things about Sophie--little
+flashes and gleams, swift touches, that fired him afresh. She stirred
+him now, yet he was cold enough to be glad of the stir because it gave
+him added eloquence for his purpose.
+
+"I will get you a better necklace," he told her. "Nothing very fine, or
+what would the Squire think? I have been collecting choice bits of
+serpentine, and had them cut out and polished, and you shall have a
+necklace of them--the stones of your own country. Your throat will warm
+them, my Sophie, as it would warm my hands if they were cold in death."
+
+"Death!" murmured Sophie, shuddering again, "we should not speak of it,
+lest it hear us."
+
+"Then we will talk of love instead--of our love, Sophie."
+
+"Alas, that way too lies sorrow! Lucius, what is the end to be? My
+father would kill me if he knew."
+
+"Does he hate me so?"
+
+She nodded, with the look of dumb fear in her eyes that thought of the
+Squire always brought there.
+
+"Dear heart, we will change his hate to love. There is a way--if you
+will trust me and obey me."
+
+A tremor of exquisite delight thrilled through her at the words. She had
+no arts of allurement, no strength of will to make her play the coquette
+with him, and she was unable, for the purpose of leading him on and
+tantalizing him to fresh excitement, to deny herself the joy of being
+his slave.
+
+"Obey you!" she said, slipping a little lower on her rock so that her
+back-tilted head lay against his knee as she looked up at him, "I am
+yours for you to do with as you will."
+
+Stooping, he kissed the swelling curve of her throat, and privately
+marvelled at her for being such a fool.
+
+"Sweetheart," he began softly, "we will call in the aid of higher powers
+than our own. You know my mother was a Scotswoman, and she had the
+second sight, like your old Madgy Figgy of the Men-an-tol. She was
+learned in all kinds of charms, too. Well I remember as a child seeing
+her staunch the flow of blood from an old servant by crossing two
+charmed sticks from the hearth over him and saying a charm."
+
+"It was Madgy Figgy who told about my ladder," Sophie said, "she has
+many charms, I know. She carries the water from St. Annan's spring to
+the church whenever there's to be a christening. No one baptized in
+water from St. Annan's spring can die by hanging, every one knows
+that. Was your mother as learned in charms as old Madgy?"
+
+"She was a wise woman in more than mere charms, yet we will not slight
+her knowledge of them, since through that we will win your father's
+affection for me."
+
+"If it could be!" cried Sophie.
+
+"It can be. Listen, my sweet. My dear mother, in dying, left me, among
+books of the craft of healing and suchlike things, an old love-charm she
+had had from a Wise Woman in the Highlands. It is nothing but a little
+white powder, yet it affects the very heart-strings of him who takes
+it."
+
+"Could it turn my father's heart towards you? Lucius, how happy we
+should all be. . . . But surely it might make him love some one else
+instead--Mr. Le Petyt, perhaps?"
+
+"You should know better than that, my foolish Sophie. These things all
+depend on the intention of he who gives them. You have but to
+concentrate on me while you give it him, and all will be well."
+
+"He would be furious if he guessed," objected Sophie.
+
+"Neither he nor anyone else must guess, or the charm will fail. I will
+send it to you in packets with the serpentine beads, and mark it 'Powder
+to clean the pebbles.'"
+
+"Why not give it to me?" asked Sophie.
+
+"Because I have to go away for a time, my sweet. Not for very long--" as
+Sophie made a movement of distress, "but I have business I must see to
+in town. I will send you the beads to remember me by in my absence. Will
+you wear them for my sake, Sophie."
+
+"I will wear them night and day, but I need no reminders of you, Lucius.
+But you--will you forget me in London? It is so big and far away and
+full of great ladies who will put your poor Sophie out of remembrance.
+Lucius, Lucius. . . ."
+
+"My sweet, silly little Sophie," he whispered, soothing her as she clung
+to him, "how can you misjudge me so? Is not one black hair from your
+head, one glance from your blue eyes, dearer to me than all the women in
+the world? What have I done that you should think so ill of me?"
+
+"Forgive me, dear. I know men are not like women, and I cannot see what
+there is in me to hold you--except my love for you. No other women could
+love you half so well, Lucius. It is my only gift, but it at least could
+not be bettered by anyone."
+
+"I know it, my sweet," he told her, "and when your father is of a better
+mind towards me you shall give me your love before all the world, and
+then I need no longer travel alone. Would you like to see London, heart
+of mine?"
+
+"Ah, with you!" breathed Sophie. "Once, before I met you, I thought of
+nothing but London, and how I meant some day to be a great lady there,
+but now I think of nothing but to be with you. Perhaps, after all, this
+is what the Wise Woman meant and my golden ladder is my love for you,
+and I've climbed on it from loneliness to joy."
+
+"A Jacob's ladder, for the feet of an angel, then, my Sophie."
+
+"If it could only reach from here to London! Oh, Lucius, need you go?"
+
+"I must, my sweet. Don't make it harder for me."
+
+That checked her plaint at once, as he knew it would.
+
+"When do you go?" she asked quietly.
+
+"In a day or two, sweetheart. Ah, Sophie, how shall I live without you?"
+
+While she comforted him, forgetting self, he made a mental calculation
+as to how soon he could get away. He kissed Sophie's hair somewhat
+absently.
+
+"I will write to you, heart of mine," he murmured, "and I will contrive
+so that he finds I have gone completely away, and that will lull any
+suspicion he may have against us. And while I am gone you will be
+working for us, my Sophie. Do not be alarmed if at first the powder
+seems to cause an indisposition. It has to expel the evil humours from a
+man before it can turn his nature to good. Give it to him in a small
+quantity once or twice, and he will vomit and be rid of this
+disaffection towards me, and the rest will work beneficially. Your
+father will arise and call you blessed, my Sophie, for having sworn him
+the evil of his own heart. Do not write me word when anything definite
+happens--I am leaving my servant at Penzance, and he will post up to me
+at once when you give him news."
+
+"And then--then you will come down again, and we shall all be able to be
+happy. Perhaps my father will even dismiss Lylie Ruffiniac when his
+heart is turned towards you. That woman frightens me, Lucius. She is
+always looking at me as though she wished me away. No one loves me
+except yourself--and poor Charles. Hester avoids me, and James never did
+speak a word to me that he could avoid. Lucius, sometimes it seems to me
+that he and Lylie and Hester have all grown to hate me, that they would
+harm me if they could. It frightens me--Lucius, Lucius, what shall I do
+when you have left me?"
+
+Crandon fought down his boredom and gave himself over to consoling her,
+with now and again a surreptitious glance at the watch dangling from his
+fob. He had another interview to go through--with Lylie Ruffiniac. She
+had to be fostered in the belief that he was going to take Sophie away
+as soon as possible, leaving the housekeeper free to influence the
+Squire--for Lylie's ambition rose to being legitimate mistress of the
+Manor, and Sophie once gone, she saw no reason why she should not attain
+her end. She knew that the ten thousand pounds was a mere myth, but that
+she kept hidden from Crandon, even bringing forward, as women can,
+apparently casual little pieces of information that would all tend to
+fix him in his belief. Crandon had been wise to impress on Sophie the
+necessity for keeping the love-potion hidden from every one--Lylie, who
+had a fine nose for a rogue, would have been in possession of his
+scheme--a scheme so devastating to her own--at once. As soon as safety
+and decency permitted he would carry Sophie off, go through the ceremony
+of marriage with her in a place where he was not known, gain possession
+of the money--and clear out of England for good. This was his last throw
+of the dice in his own country--let him but win the stake and he would
+disappear and enjoy his fortune elsewhere.
+
+He took a last glance at his watch, a last kiss of Sophie's mouth, and
+scrambled to his feet. He walked back with Sophie as near Troon as was
+safe, then took an affectionate good-night of her, and started off for
+the cove to meet Lylie Ruffiniac.
+
+"Thank the gods, that hard-headed vixen of a Lylie won't want me to kiss
+her!" he reflected as he went. "Ah, there's a woman might have been some
+help to me if I'd met her in the shoes of Isabel or of this Sophie.
+Lucius, my son, you are playing a very risky game, but the stakes are
+worth it. Ten thousand pounds, a fresh country--and entirely new women!"
+
+
+V
+
+THE LOVE-POTION
+
+Two weeks after Crandon's departure the first instalment of serpentine
+beads arrived for Sophie. There was no concealing the fact, and Sophie
+replied to her father's suave inquiries that the beads were a keepsake
+from a friend. Enclosed with them was a tiny packet of white powder, on
+which was written "Powder to clean the pebbles," and this Sophie
+secreted at once.
+
+A few days later the Squire was unwell with a violent headache and
+bilious attack resulting from too much port and smuggled brandy the
+night before--Sophie suggested that she should make him a dish of tea.
+In the night he was taken with violent sickness, but by the next day he
+had not only recovered from that but apparently actually benefited by
+it, as it had cured him of the result of his orgy. Next day, to continue
+the cure, Sophie again sent him up some tea, but this time the Squire
+thought it tasted odd, and Hester, on bearing away the dish, finding
+that the rare beverage was left untouched, hid it in the scullery and
+drank it that evening. She was soon taken with violent pains and
+sickness and a raging thirst, and it was in this condition that Lylie
+found her.
+
+"My life, Hester, what have 'ee got?" asked Lylie.
+
+"The pains of death, I do think," gasped Hester. "Oh, oh!"
+
+Lylie looked at her unsympathetically.
+
+"Simme you'm whist wi' en," she observed, "scrawlen' like that. Some bad
+you do look, though, there's no denyen'."
+
+"I'm dyen'!" wailed Hester.
+
+Sophie, who had come into the kitchen, heard the commotion, and went
+into the scullery.
+
+"Why, Hester, what ails you?" she exclaimed. "Lylie, what has happened?"
+
+"'Tes the pains o' death, she do say," replied Lylie, "but 'tes nawthen
+but to be in the bed and somethen' hot that she needs."
+
+"She must get to bed at once. Here, Lylie, you take her arm that side
+and I'll take this. She's getting quieter."
+
+Indeed, the worst spasms were over: Hester, weak and exhausted, was put
+to bed, and Sophie, her dislike of the girl forgotten in compassion,
+sent up weak broth and white wine whey. Late that evening as Lylie sat
+with the Squire, he asked her what all the noise had been about.
+
+"'Tes that maid Hester," said Lylie indifferently, "she'd taken
+somethen' that went agen her and was vomiten' all evenin'. Some bad she
+did vomit, and Miss and I had to get her overstairs to the bed."
+
+The Squire stirred in his chair and very slowly brought his eyes round
+to Lylie.
+
+"What time did the sickness take her?" he asked.
+
+"Soon after she'd put your tray to the kitchen, measter. Look 'ee, now,
+at this lutestring piece I got to Penzance church-town. It do sore need
+a ribbon to go wi' en. What do 'ee say to given' I a crown to buy et
+with, eh, measter?"
+
+"Shalt have thy crown, woman," said the Squire shortly, "but leave me be
+now. I want no more for the night. And tell Miss I wish to speak with
+her to-morrow forenoon."
+
+Lylie, somewhat offended, but mollified by the unexpectedly easy capture
+of the crown, withdrew, and next morning, as Sophie was busier than
+usual in household tasks--Hester still being confined to her bed--she
+delivered the Squire's message. It was with a heart fluttering with hope
+that Sophie went to his room. He was not yet out of bed, and, wrapped in
+a dingy dressing-gown, much stained with snuff and wine, his big jowl
+unshaven and his bald head innocent of wig (that ornament hung rakishly
+askew on a chair-back) he looked anything but a pleasant object. Sophie
+stopped short on the threshold.
+
+"You sent for me, sir?" she asked.
+
+"'Tis nothing of any importance, my dear," said the Squire smoothly,
+"merely to tell you how recovered I am. How blooming you look, my
+Sophie--more like my own daughter than you have since this shadow fell
+between us."
+
+Indeed, Sophie, in her flutter of hope and excitement, showed a glowing
+face. Her heart softened at the kindliness of her father's tone.
+
+"Oh, sir"--she began, "if only this shadow--if you would only let it
+lift--if you would only believe in me--in him!"
+
+"Who knows," said the Squire benignly, "but that I may see cause to
+change my opinions. You will understand, my dear daughter, that a father
+is in so responsible a position, he must not accept an affair of the
+kind lightly, without due inquiry. Perhaps the fellow who sent me that
+report was prejudiced, who knows? I might, in justice, inquire further.
+But you are not wearing your beads, my child."
+
+"They--they have not all come yet," she faltered, "but I received some
+more yesterday."
+
+"The roses on thy cheeks are the best adornment in a father's eye," said
+the Squire, "and now tell Lylie to bring me some broth with brandy in
+it, and bless thee, my child. And," he added to himself as she left the
+room, "I do not think I shall be taken with sickness again yet awhile."
+
+Sophie's easily persuaded reason and her affectionate nature were swayed
+to gratitude, and she reproached herself because something in her was
+repulsed by the old man's blandness. She ran downstairs and out into
+the yard singing under her breath, and saw the postboy coming up the
+drive. He had a packet for her which she took up to her room to open.
+There were a dozen or so more of the polished pebbles, cut into beads,
+and a short note in which Crandon assured her of his undying affection,
+and ended by saying, "Do not spare the powder in order to keep the rust
+off the pebbles."
+
+That afternoon Charles Le Petyt came over to Troon and walked with
+Sophie in the garden. He was full of joy to see the increased brightness
+of her look, and soon detected a softening in her tone when she spoke of
+her father--Crandon's name they avoided by silent consent.
+
+"You may yet be happy with your father, Sophie," said Mr. Le Petyt with
+the hopefulness of the born idealist, and Sophie, confident in her
+supernatural knowledge, agreed.
+
+"And I reproach myself that sometimes I have been wicked enough to wish
+I might never see him again," she said as they walked slowly towards the
+house door, past the open dairy windows, "and indeed, Charles, I think
+it must have been the Devil himself who sometimes suggested to me how
+much happier I should be if he were dead. I have seemed to hear a
+whisper: 'Who would not wish an old father dead for ten thousand
+pounds?'--because that meant freedom and--peace."
+
+"My poor Sophie," replied Charles pressing her hand.
+
+He stayed and took tea with her and the Squire, and the latter went to
+bed soon after he had left. The weather had turned rainy, autumn seemed
+invaded by a tang of winter that evening, and the Squire, who was
+subject to fits of shivering, had a huge fire lit, and demanded hot
+gruel of Lylie.
+
+"There's no occasion for you to leave your ironing, Lylie," remarked
+Sophie when they were in the kitchen, and the woman acquiescing, Sophie
+went into the pantry. She was gone some time, and when she reappeared
+Lylie glanced up from the ironing of her turned satin slip. Sophie
+caught the glance, and fore-stalling a question, remarked carelessly:
+
+"I have been stirring the gruel and eating some of the oatmeal out of
+it, for I've taken a great fancy to it. I believe I shall often eat from
+my father's gruel."
+
+She stirred it round over the fire as she spoke.
+
+"I'll take it overstairs," said Lylie, who viewed the friendlier
+relations between father and daughter with dislike. Sophie turned the
+gruel out into a basin and set the saucepan down on the hob.
+
+"I will see to it," she retorted hurriedly, but Lylie seized the basin
+and bore it out of the kitchen.
+
+Not a quarter of an hour later the Squire's screams echoed through the
+house. He was very sick, hiccuped like a person bitten by a mad dog, and
+cried out that he was burnt up with fire. Sophie, terrified, insisted on
+James riding at once to St. Annan's for the apothecary, and herself
+banished from the Squire's room by the commands he managed to
+articulate, she stayed against his door outside, every now and then
+pressing her fingers to her ears when a more awful sound than common
+came from within.
+
+He was a trifle easier when the apothecary arrived and applied remedies,
+and Lylie took advantage of the lull to creep swiftly to the kitchen
+and pick up the saucepan Sophie had left on the hob. Hester, whom all
+the outcry had brought from her bed, watched her movements curiously.
+Lylie lit two candles and bore the pan to the light.
+
+"Come and look here, Hester," said Lylie slowly, feeling some of the
+sediment from the pan between her finger and thumb, as she spoke, "Did
+you ever see oatmeal so white?"
+
+"Oatmeal!" said Hester, "why, 'tes as white as flour."
+
+"'Tes more gritty'n flour. I see et all, Hester. Have 'ee never heard
+that poison's white and gritty? Measter's poisoned, and tes Miss that's
+done et."
+
+A slight sound came from the kitchen door and both women looked round,
+but Sophie, whose foot had been on the threshold, had turned and fled
+upstairs to the door of her father's room again, where she flung herself
+on the floor and pressed her forehead against the wooden panel. In that
+long drawn moment of listening the truth had rushed in over her
+consciousness--and overwhelmed reason and self-control.
+
+The door opened and the apothecary stumbled over her.
+
+"Miss Bendigo--" he began in compassion, then some words to which the
+Squire had just given vent flashed back at him and he hesitated.
+
+"Bring her in," ordered the patient hoarsely.
+
+Sophie scrambled to her feet and went towards the bed. She fell on her
+knees beside it.
+
+"Oh, sir, forgive me, I didn't know, I didn't know," she babbled, "send
+me where you will, only forgive me and get well . . . I'll never see or
+hear from or write to him more, if you'll but forgive me, I shall be
+happy. Papa, papa!"
+
+Over Sophie's head the Squire beckoned the apothecary into the room.
+Then:
+
+"I do forgive thee," he murmured, speaking with difficulty and veiling
+his eyes with his thin wrinkled lids, "but thou should'st have
+remembered I am your father. As for the villain Crandon, hadst thou
+loved me thou wouldst curse him and the ground he walks on."
+
+"Oh, sir," said Sophie, to whom the words of pardon alone had
+penetrated, "your kindness strikes at my soul. Sir, on my knees I pray
+you will not curse me."
+
+"_I_ curse thee!" gasped the Squire, forcing his distorted mouth into a
+semblance of the old bland smile, "no, child, I bless thee and hope God
+will bless thee, and I pray thou mayest live to repent and amend. . . .
+Leave me, lest thou should'st say something to thy prejudice--"
+apparently, thought the apothecary, who was himself trembling with
+horror, this martyred father had forgotten the presence of a listener.
+"Go to the clergyman, Mr. Le Petyt, he will take care of thee. Alas,
+poor man, I am sorry for him. . . ."
+
+"Papa, I am innocent, I swear to you I am. I never knew. I am innocent
+of this. . . ."
+
+"I fear thou art not quite innocent and that there is some powder in
+such hands as will appear against thee. Harvey take away my poor
+misguided child."
+
+Sophie stumbled blindly from the room and went upstairs. Mr. Harvey
+hesitated a moment, saw the patient almost comatose, and went down to
+the kitchen. There Lylie still pored over the saucepan, which she thrust
+out at him.
+
+"See, Mr. Harvey," she demanded, "what's this stuff in wi' the gruel?
+Can 'ee tell me that?"
+
+Mr. Harvey examined the contents of the pan carefully, tried some on his
+finger, and shook his cautious head.
+
+"I cannot be very positive," he replied at length, "but at least it can
+have no business in the gruel. Give me white paper and I will take some
+home and test it when it is dry."
+
+Lylie helped him scrape the sediment into a sheet of paper, and he
+folded it up and pocketed it. He then gave instructions to the two women
+to heat more water for fomentations while he returned to the sick room.
+Finding the Squire still comatose, he sat with his fingers on the
+intermittent pulse. Meanwhile Sophie, in whom fear, the most sickening
+of all emotions had awakened, crept downstairs, holding her breath past
+her father's room, down to the kitchen. Lylie happened to be in the
+scullery at the moment, Hester, still weak from morbid excitement as
+well as illness, was seated in a shadowy corner of the kitchen. Sophie
+crept in, looked fearfully round her, listened, and then began to stuff
+some papers into the grate. She thrust them into the heart of the flames
+and then breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Now I am more easy, thank
+God," she murmured, and slipped out of the kitchen as cautiously as she
+had come. Lylie, from behind the crack of the scullery door, went
+towards the grate, where she was joined by Hester. . . .
+
+A little later all was noise again, the Squire had been seized with
+violent spasms, raving and hiccuping like a madman, unable to swallow as
+much as a sip of water. Towards the small hours he grew delirious, then
+sank gradually; with the dawn he died.
+
+Sophie sat rigid in her room, paler than the paling day. She looked back
+over the past, recalling little speeches of Crandon's which, had she
+been less simple, less adoring, must have warned her of his plan. She
+saw the skill with which he had trapped her, she saw what he hoped to
+gain, she saw how he would lose nothing. It was she who had to pay. At
+the thought fear, natural, human fear, caught at her again and she
+sprang to her feet, a thing distraught. Escape--she must escape, get
+away from this dread that was closing in on her. She tied on cloak and
+hood and feverishly crammed all the money that for months she had been
+saving against her marriage into a little bag. On the stairs she ran
+into James Ruffiniac, and with her hands on his coat, pressing, begging,
+silent suppliants, she made him come into the dining-room.
+
+"James," she said, "do you want to make your fortune? You do, do you
+not? If you will come with me, it is made."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" asked James.
+
+"Only to hire a postchaise to go to London, and I'll give you fifteen
+guineas now, and more when we come there. Only to do that. And in London
+you would make your fortune."
+
+"Not on my life," he told her. "What you'm done you must see the end of.
+'Tes your guilty soul makes you flee. I'll have to tell of this."
+
+"I--I was merely jesting," faltered Sophie, "to see if you would.
+James--" but he had swung on his heel and left her.
+
+No one molested Sophie, but towards midday Hester put her head in at the
+bedroom door to inform her, with a hardly restrained gusto, that Dr.
+Polwhele had come over from Penzance and was going to open the body.
+Sick to the soul, Sophie put on her outdoor things once more and struck
+out over the moors, walking blindly to try and get away from the horror
+that was in her. As she went all the strength of her nature, inherited
+from the father who could keep up a pose and plan a revenge on an
+agonized death-bed; the strength, which had concentrated itself during
+her girlhood on her ambitions, that had then made her love for Crandon,
+now turned to a deep hatred and rage that seemed to settle, cold and
+hard, on the very muscles of her body. She knew the hatred, the fierce
+resentment, that the trapped thing feels against the trapper, and added
+to it was the shame of a woman whose love has been made a mockery. And
+if, unacknowledged even to herself, was the pricking feeling that, could
+she have been spared discovery, she would not deeply have minded being
+the innocent cause of her own release, who is there with heart so
+uncomplex as to be in a position to condemn her. . . .
+
+She tramped on and on, and presently found herself out on the St. Annan
+high-road. The thought of Charles came to her as a point where she could
+turn for help, for he had been absent all night at a distant part of the
+parish, ministering to a dying man, but he would surely be back by now;
+if she were not quick he would already have set off for Troon on hearing
+the news. Battling against the rain-laden wind, she bent her head and
+made her way into the village. There little groups of people were
+standing about, intent, arguing. At sight of her a common feeling
+animated them, the various little centres of discussion broke, joined
+together, swept towards her. She had an impression of shaking fists,
+angry sounds, rude contacts, and the smell of many rain-wet bodies
+pressing in around her. The panic of crowds seized her, she screamed,
+and screamed again, not recognizing the voice of Charles Le Petyt
+answering her as he made his way through the press. He struck the faces
+away from him right and left, and his blazing passage made men fall
+back. Putting an arm round Sophie he drew her up the steps of the inn
+and through the door, which he shut and barred.
+
+"Take me away, Charles, take me away," she moaned, and he, his arms
+round her dear trembling body, answered:
+
+"I will take you home. You are quite safe with me, Sophie. When we get
+back you must tell me everything and I will think of a way to help you.
+Stay here a moment, dear."
+
+He put her in a chair, sent the frightened host for a glass of wine, and
+ordered a chaise to be got ready at the back. Sophie drank the wine
+passively, and passively let Charles put her in the chaise. She lay
+silent against him all the way back to Troon, but once there, in the
+parlour, her brain cleared, and she told him everything. Charles Le
+Petyt listened, always keeping his hand tenderly over hers, though when
+she let him understand what for months she had been to Crandon, his free
+hand gripped hard on the edge of his chair.
+
+"What am I to do?" she asked when she had made an end.
+
+"Is there no way by which the guilt can be fastened where it belongs--on
+Crandon?" he asked passionately, and in her distress Sophie sprang up
+and, walking to the window, hit the shut pane with her hand.
+
+"I have destroyed everything that could have taken him," she said. "Take
+my key--here it is--search my press, my box, see if you can find
+anything. I will come with you."
+
+Alas! Sophie had ravished her room too well, and search fell fruitless.
+The two desisted at last and stared at each other with pallid faces.
+
+"Oh--Sophie!" cried Mr. Le Petyt, and, breaking into tears, she flung
+herself into his arms. They were clinging together, wet cheek against
+wet cheek, when the town-sergeant came thundering at the door.
+
+
+VI
+
+ATTAINMENT
+
+(_Account taken from a contemporary journal_)
+
+"Saturday, April 4. This morning Miss Bendigo was executed at
+Launceston, in the same black petelair she was dressed in at her trial,
+had on a pair of black gloves, and her hands and arms tied with black
+paduasoy ribbons. On the Friday night she sent to the sheriff, who, she
+was informed, was come to town to be present at her execution, and
+desired that he would give her till eight o'clock the next morning, and
+she would be ready as soon after as he pleased. On Friday, at about
+twelve o'clock, she took the Sacrament and signed a declaration
+concerning the crime for which she was to suffer; in which she denied
+knowing that the powders she had administered to her father had any
+poisonous quality in them; and also made therein a confession of her
+faith. Her behaviour at the gallows was becoming a person in her
+unhappy circumstances, and drew not only great compassion, but tears,
+from most of the spectators. When she got up about seven steps of the
+ladder, she turned herself upon it and had a little trembling, saying:
+'I am afraid I shall fall.' After she had turned herself upon the
+ladder, the Rev. Mr. Le Petyt, who attended her, asked whether she had
+anything to say to the public. She said yes, and made a speech to the
+following purport: 'That, as she was then going to appear before a just
+God, she did not know that the powders, which were believed to be the
+death of her father, would have done him any harm, therefore she was
+innocently the cause of his death, but as she hoped for mercy, what she
+had done had been in innocence and love.' Then she stooped towards Mr.
+Le Petyt and she was seen to be remarkably eager in taking the parting
+kiss from him, which she did. The hangman then desired her to pull the
+white kerchief, tied over her head for that purpose, over her eyes,
+which she failing to do, a person standing by stepped up the ladder and
+pulled it down. Then, giving the signal by holding out a little book she
+had in her hand, she was turned off. Before she went out of the gaol she
+gave the sheriff's man a guinea to drink, and took two guineas in her
+hands with her, which she gave to the executioner. Her body was placed
+in a coffin of maplewood, lined with white satin, on the lid only
+'Sophia Bendigo, aged 18. April 4, 1752.' It is understood that Mr. Le
+Petyt carried the coffin to St. Annan and buried it, by Miss Bendigo's
+request, in the grave of her mother. At the execution, notwithstanding
+the early hour, there was the greatest concourse of people ever seen on
+such an occasion."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREATEST GIFT
+
+
+Edmond Bernardy was in that state of mind when everything joyous is an
+insult and everything sorrowful an added stab. When the horror had first
+settled on him he fought it wildly; then succeeded a numbed condition of
+the nerves, when will and reason lay dormant, and he surrendered himself
+to instinct--and instinct had brought him to the lonely passes, the
+snow-enfolded peaks, and the dream-ridden little cities of Provence.
+
+It was in the days before railways were thought of, when gentlemen still
+did the "grand tour," and did it by post-chaise. Bernardy, whose
+finances were of the uncertain kind usual with even a successful poet,
+and whose mood was for the leisurely, preferred, once he had attained
+the coast of Provence by ship, to strike up inland on foot. In spite of
+himself, his surroundings began to soothe him, justifying the instinct
+which led him, and that had its root deeper than he suspected.
+Bernardy's mother had been a Provençale, and it was in one of the little
+mountain cities that his English father had met her, and she had only
+left her birthplace a few weeks before Edmond himself was born. It was
+owing to her that he possessed a deep love for little cities; though
+this was the first time that he had ever come to his mother's country.
+
+As a boy he, like all right-minded children, possessed a little city of
+the imagination where he sat enthroned, king of the be-pennoned turrets
+and circling walls. With Bernardy the idea of the little city had become
+an obsession, entering even into his dreams at night, causing him to
+lead, even more than most children, that curious inner life of which
+waxing adolescence must so surely lose grip. His peculiar and vivid
+genius, though technically the joy of his fellow writers, never lost a
+quality of uncanny vision that sometimes disconcerted an age given over
+to the flamboyance of Byron, and this quality was the natural outcome of
+his withdrawal, as a child, into his secret life. That life was a
+complicated and delicate thing, no mere floating vagueness of dreams,
+but a fabric deliberately planned and reared, with a wealth of cunning
+detail to persuade him of reality. He could remember now how convinced
+he had been that the town his mind had made was as real as any city he
+and his mother visited in their precarious existence--sometimes he could
+recall, for a vivid flash, actual streets and houses of his imagination.
+
+Hill cities share with islands the fascination that only aloofness can
+give, and the thought of the huddled towns cresting the Alpes-Maritimes
+had tugged at Bernardy's cord of memory, bringing back, not only his
+mother's stories of her own country, but also the recollections of his
+dream-city, so like these he was seeing now. They are towns of fluted
+roofs and mellow walls, of shutters flung wide like wings, of courtyards
+that are wells of blue shadow, and towers that stand up, golden-white,
+into the sunshine. Here Bernardy would come to a town perched,
+eagle-wise upon a crag, with a forest of irregular turrets piercing the
+sky; there to a little city which fitted over some rounded mountain-top
+like a cap, the arching outline of its roofs following faithfully the
+curve of the ground with a fruit-like suavity of contour. Everywhere,
+away from the cities, lay the olive-slopes, like a great sea, charmed,
+at the moment of most tumultuous movement, into stillness, the waves of
+it interfolding in vast hollows that never broke; only now and again a
+wind tossed the pale undersides of leaves to a semblance of spray.
+
+These valleys, so mysterious at dawn and dusk, and in the day so oddly
+toy-like with their tiny, red-roofed oil-mills and the striped effect of
+the olive-terraces; these reticent, though seemingly candid, little
+townships above them; these mountains that at sunsetting were stained a
+burning copper filmed with amethyst--all seemed to Bernardy to be under
+a spell, caught in a web of magic as real, though not as visible, as the
+web of dappled shadow each olive-tree flung over the ground beside it.
+Bernardy told himself that here he could pass a long life happily,
+instead of which he had to prepare for death, for the deliberate
+blotting out, for him, of all this beauty.
+
+He had never been a gross liver or a gross thinker, yet many a
+sensualist would now have been in a better case than he--for he had
+always used his quality of spiritual vision--in him so strong as to be
+almost an added sense--merely to beat back upon and intensify material
+things. An unbeliever or a man of happy-go-lucky nature could have
+extracted all the savour possible out of what remained to him of life,
+and left what was to come on the knees of the gods--Bernardy was too
+ardent a devotee of life, and life, as he understood it, was a
+comprehensive term. It meant the training and enjoyment of every
+faculty, the critical appreciation of everything he met, the absorption
+of beauty and the production of it. Also he feared the physical act of
+death as an animal fears it, with a contraction of the muscles and a
+chilling of the blood--feared it so that sometimes the sweat would break
+out over his face and he would bite back a cry.
+
+Looking back on his life Bernardy could say that it had been good, and
+he saw for how much more the little things had counted than the big. A
+sunny day, congenial companions, good wine and tobacco, and, above all,
+the joy of creation--how well worth while they were. Taken as a whole
+they outweighed the fondest woman in the world, and that though Bernardy
+had been a fine lover. Yet it was because of a woman that he was to kill
+himself three weeks from now, and the fantastic nature of the affair
+made him feel like a man in a dream. It amused him that it should have
+been the one conventional period of his life--a couple of months in an
+English rectory, which had hurled him into such an extravagant
+situation.
+
+The Rector, an avowed eccentric, and strongly influenced by the Byronic
+wave then at the crest, decided it was his duty to brave society and
+take notice of his brother's son--especially as the said son was a
+figure in the literary worlds of Paris and London. The Rector's
+daughter, Lucy, was sweet and fresh and English, and not in the least
+clever, and Bernardy, who had never met anyone like her before, fell
+madly in love. The combination of his passion; of a rival deeply bitten
+with romanticism and a sense of his own importance and of the high-flown
+ideas of the period, resulted in a violent quarrel and what was then a
+favoured species of duel. Bernardy and his rival, telling themselves
+that they were sparing Lucy the shock of an actual encounter, drew lots
+to decide which should take his own life. Bernardy had lost, and,
+leaving the bewildered Lucy to her fantastic roll-collared baronet,
+retired to spend his two months' grace in his own country of France.
+
+Behold him, entered on his last three weeks, toiling up a mountain pass,
+his shirt open at the chest and his tightly strapped trousers somewhat
+the worst for dust--a fine figure of a man in a thin, fiery way, with
+singularly child-like eyes set in a network of wrinkles--the result of
+having spent his thirty odd years with a lavish though fastidious hand.
+Sickened suddenly of the ordered olive slopes, he went on and up till he
+had left the sleek country behind him, and entered the region that looks
+like a burnt-out landscape of the moon. At last he came to the mouth of
+a gorge, one side of it rising up sheer into the sunlight, while the
+other seemed to hang to the earth like a dark curtain. Looking up,
+Bernardy saw, perched at the rim of the sunlit cliff, a little town. In
+some places its sloping flanks were built right over the edge, as though
+they had been poured out, while molten, from a giant spoon. It was so
+many hundred feet above him that he could only just distinguish it was a
+town, and not a mere huddle of pale-hued boulders; so high it gave the
+effect of being on the edge of the world. Bernardy knew, beyond a doubt,
+that he must attain this town, and he cast about to find a way.
+Obviously there must be a track on the other side, as the cliff was
+bare of so much as a shrub, and yet no path was to be discerned on its
+scarred and abrupt surface. Eventually Bernardy made his way round a
+fold of gorge and up a steep, winding track to a gently sloping stretch
+of country that led up to the town from behind.
+
+Throwing himself upon the short, thorn-entangled grass, he locked his
+hands behind his head and gazed under half-shut lids at the little town
+which he now saw dark against the sky. He lay, idly counting the towers
+of it, till his lids grew too heavy to stay open, and his fingers fell
+apart, and with his head pillowed on his arm, he slept.
+
+When he awoke the day was at its brief height, and he scrambled to his
+feet with an odd feeling that was more than a mere sense of rest. It was
+as though a sponge had been deftly passed over his mind, leaving it a
+clean, smooth surface, ready to receive new impressions, unbiased by
+anything that was past, the confiding, expectant attitude of a young
+child. He had forgotten nothing, it was rather that all his old
+arrangement of values had been swept aside, leaving him free to assess
+things anew. And, although, for all he could remember, his sleep had
+been dreamless, yet he was haunted by half-recollections which pricked
+at and eluded him. As he went towards the town something in the sweeping
+lines of the fortifications seemed vaguely familiar, and again fragments
+of a dream, at which he snatched in vain, floated by him.
+
+Passing under the cool shadow of the gateway he stood wondering which
+way to go; then, saying to himself, "I'll go past the Mayor's house,
+I always liked it because of the painted walls," he turned to the
+right, and walked several paces before the strangeness of his own
+words struck him. "What can I have meant?" he asked himself, "and
+yet--I seem to remember a house, a white house, with a painted
+frieze of fruit and birds, and the Mayoress was a funny, fat old
+thing who made _échédets_. . . ."
+
+With his heart beating fast, he turned the corner and found himself at
+the house he sought. The more he looked at it the more he remembered it,
+and details crowded on him. He walked down the alley at the side, and
+found a stone stairway he knew quite well, a stairway that led to a
+carved door. He stumbled into the street again like a man distraught.
+
+"Has the horror turned my brain?" he thought. "Well, what matter, if it
+makes it easier to die?"
+
+The whole street struck him as familiar, but not until he turned into
+the Square did knowledge flash upon him.
+
+"It's my town!" he cried aloud, "it's my town!"
+
+He felt no perplexity at the incredible nature of the thing, a calming
+influence, too gracious to be akin to his former stupor, stole over him;
+he moved as in a dream, with no responsibility, but full enjoyment. The
+naked plane-trees made a silvery network against the cold, pure blue of
+the winter sky; into a raised washhouse across the Square the sun shone
+obliquely, and the many-hued skirts of the stooping women made vivid
+blotches of colour that harmonized with the rhythmic splash of the water
+as only music of sight can with music of sound. Dark against the
+cream-washed wall of the church, that seemed almost lambent in the glare
+of the sun, sat a row of burnt-out old men with shrivelled throats, and
+on the steps of the fountain were two old women in black, one wearing a
+white cap of folded wings, the other the wide-brimmed black straw hat
+common to the peasantry. The lady of the hat plunged her brown old
+fingers into the thin arc of water, and Bernardy saw how the drops that
+clung to her hand glittered like diamonds before she shook them off to
+pit the dust with pock-marks. With that intense sympathy which had done
+much to make him an artist, Bernardy tried for a moment to think himself
+into the mind of the black-hatted old woman, and to imagine the Square
+and his own figure from her mental and physical point of view. It was a
+favourite trick of his, but one of which latterly the strain had been
+too much for him. Sometimes he would succeed so well for a flash that it
+only made the impalpable but stern barrier of personality more definite
+even while almost seeming to overleap it. "If I could only achieve the
+thing properly," thought Bernardy, "I suppose I should attain exchange
+of identity, or at least be absorbed into that of the old lady. And
+then--no more of this black horror, and the shell of me would, I
+suppose, disfigure the gravel."
+
+He lifted the heavy, leathern curtain over the church door and entered.
+Within the air struck cool, though heavy with stale incense; gradually
+the gleam of gilding, then separate colours and degrees of dusk and
+pallor detached themselves from the darkness, and he saw he was in the
+typical little church of the neighbourhood--a rococo affair decked with
+rows of plaster saints on painted brackets, each with its little bunch
+of flowers in a china mug in front of it. Beneath all the superfluous
+decoration there was a pleasing austerity and sturdiness of line; solid
+pillars and a low-groined roof made a square-set, beetle-browed little
+building, at once tawdry and stark. To Bernardy's receptive mind there
+was something peculiarly charming about these churches where everything
+spoke of religion being taken in the right way--as a mere matter of
+course. A lighted wick, floating in a jam-jar of oil, caught his eye
+and, moving forward, he saw it burned before a crèche.
+
+For a few minutes he stood before it in silence, then he laughed aloud
+in sheer enjoyment. All the other crèches he had seen boasted figures of
+plaster or china; here, apparently, the expense had been too great, and
+the characters were represented by dolls, ordinary wooden dolls with
+shiny, painted, black hair and stuff clothes. The Mother herself was
+dressed in stiff, spangled muslin, with a veil like a _première
+communiante_, and a wreath of orange blossom--a confusion of ideas that
+had its humour. St. Joseph, in good broadcloth coat and the tightest of
+trousers, held the other post of honour, and nearer the spectators,
+though facing away from them to the little Christ-Child, were ranged the
+shepherds, with--surely an innovation--their wives. The shepherds
+themselves supplied the crowning touch, for they wore real knitted
+stockings of worsted, and shoes with stitched leather soles, a fact
+admirably displayed by the kneeling position of their wearers. The wives
+held little baskets full of beads, meant to represent eggs; and woolly
+lambs with red-cotton tongues stood about at regular intervals. All the
+dolls looked old, and as though they had seen a less gentle service, and
+Bernardy wondered what child in that remote place was of sufficient
+wealth to own dolls. He was charmed into mirth, and as he thought how
+tenderly and kindly the real personages represented must laugh as they
+looked down at the little set-piece, he tried to trace, in some trick of
+light and shadow, a fleeting smile on the doll-faces. Without warning,
+his horror closed on him again, and turning he went heavily down the
+church.
+
+As he neared the door the two old women of the market square came in;
+still laughing and chattering, they went past him, slowly and stiffly,
+with the uneven clumping of old feet. Some curious premonition--a
+feeling that something was about to happen--made Bernardy watch them.
+
+Suddenly the old woman in the hat caught sight of the crèche, and with
+the swift transition of the South, she stopped short in her chatter and
+clutched her companion's arm:
+
+"Ah!" she said, "_c'est le bon Jésus, qui donne courage!_"
+
+Every note of her harsh old voice thrilled Bernardy's nerves like a
+sudden clarion. It seemed to him the most luminous moment of his life.
+There are brief seconds when a rent in the outer film of this world
+comes against a rent in what we are pleased to call the "next," though
+it is really co-existent with our own. Then it is that we can catch a
+glimpse of something that is at another angle, a differently tilted
+spiritual plane, so to speak, from our own, and for which our minds
+would, ordinarily, need a different focus. The old woman had torn a
+peephole for Edmond--perhaps, for all he knew, in that moment of
+sympathetic concentration in the Square, their personalities had
+mingled, and so made him sensitive to the premonition that gripped him
+as she passed. He only knew that her phrase--and being a phrase-monger
+himself he had a passion for them--struck him as magnificent. He would
+have thought less of it had she said it of the Christ on the Cross, but
+she spoke of the Christ-Child. Or if she had spoken of peace, but her
+words were "qui donne courage."
+
+"_C'est le bon Jésus, qui donne courage!_"
+
+Bernardy stood quite still, wondering what her life had been that
+"courage" should be the word that instinctively sprang to her lips. The
+two women were still peering in at the crèche, but while White Cap was
+recognizing all her acquaintances, so to speak, and hailing them by
+name, the other old woman stared straight in front of her, repeating her
+phrase very fast, over and over again. Suddenly she turned, and coming
+down the church to where Bernardy stood, peered up into his face. For
+the last time she repeated it, but with a slight difference, her hand on
+his wrist:
+
+"Tu sais, mon brave," she said, "tu sais, c'est l'Enfant qui donne
+courage!"
+
+Bernardy went out into the sunlight feeling at once calmed and
+exhilarated, yet still with that odd sense of waiting, as of something
+holding its breath. All the afternoon he haunted the little wind-swept
+town, and towards evening he leant upon the parapet that hung over the
+sheer mountain-side. Hundreds of feet below him the valley was lapped in
+darkness and he watched the shadow thrown by the opposite range creep up
+towards him, the edge of it in deeply curved waves, like a purple tide.
+The chill of sunset was in the air when he made his way to the inn, and
+he noted that, although the sight of a stranger must be of the utmost
+rarity, he excited no comment. Could it be, he wondered, that they
+instinctively knew him for one of themselves, these people of his
+dream-city, or were they dreams too? In how leisurely a manner they
+passed along the streets--the Faun-like youths, brown-necked and
+bold-eyed; the firm-set women with their black hair so sleekly and
+heavily massed about their heads that it seemed carved out of ebony, and
+the quiet-eyed old people with indrawn mouths!
+
+When he reached the inn, a grey pile of round-flanked towers that was
+built on the eastern edge, his memories awoke again, and in the
+courtyard they surged over him--memories of sitting enthroned in just
+such a castle as this. He remembered, too, that there had always been
+something he was not allowed to know--was it a door that had been kept
+locked, or a forbidden book, or some hidden person whom he had
+perpetually tried to meet and never succeeded? Whatever it was, he felt
+he would soon discover it.
+
+Nothing occurred to stimulate his memory during supper. The stout
+patronne chatted to him of her inn, which had been the Seigneur's
+chateau till thirty years before, when the last owner died in great
+poverty. Had Monsieur seen and admired the beautiful crèche in the
+church? The little figures were the dolls which once belonged to
+Mademoiselle de Clerissac. The patronne was not old enough to remember
+it very distinctly, but she believed Mademoiselle had met with trouble,
+which was why she went away. After all, it was natural, she had red
+blood in her, both the old Seigneur and his father having married
+peasant girls. If Monsieur was interested in such things old Marie, who
+had been Mademoiselle de Clerissac's nurse, still lived in a room in the
+chateau. She was fabulously old, and had to be tended like a baby by
+her granddaughter, and it was true she had long wandered in her wits,
+but undoubtedly she could see visions, both of the past and future. No,
+Bernardy not only felt no interest in the actual history of the place,
+but even shrank from knowledge. It seemed to make his dream-city less
+dream-like and less his.
+
+Once in the dim passage leading to his room, he found he had forgotten
+which was his door. Carrying his lighted candle head-high, he explored
+the far end of the passage, and came on a rather smaller door than the
+rest, studded with nail-heads set in a peculiar pattern. It flashed on
+Bernardy that it led to the room he had never been allowed to enter--he
+even remembered the scar where one nail was missing. Pushing up the
+latch, he opened the door and passed through, the light of the candle
+he carried shining full on his face, so that he was plainly visible to
+anyone in the room, while he himself was too dazzled to see. There was
+a table at his left hand, and he put the candle down on it before
+advancing into the room.
+
+There was a fire of smouldering logs on the hearth, and beside it sat an
+old, old woman. Her hands, with their knotted and discoloured veins,
+hung over the arms of her chair, under her chin a hollow cut up sharply.
+She stared at Bernardy from red-rimmed, rheumy eye-sockets, mumbling her
+mouth with a sucking movement grotesquely suggestive of a baby. Behind
+her, wrapped in the soft shadow, with fugitive gleams of firelight
+bringing out now a cheekbone, now the curve of chin, or of breast, stood
+a much younger woman--she seemed about thirty or perhaps a little more.
+They gazed at Bernardy in a calm silence for several seconds, while he
+stared at them. Then the younger woman stepped forward into the light,
+and Bernardy saw how big and strong she was, deep-chested and
+long-flanked, with a wide forehead and heavily folded lids. Against the
+white of her apron her hands and wrists showed coarse and reddened, but
+the big neck, where it disappeared into the kerchief, was white as milk.
+
+"Monsieur mistakes the room," she said, in a deep voice whose Provençal
+twang was blurred into softness. "My grandmother is very old, and
+Monsieur will excuse her not wishing him good evening."
+
+Bernardy, confused and bewildered, hesitated a moment, and it was the
+old woman who broke the silence. She seemed to be staring not so much at
+Bernardy as at some mental vision of him.
+
+"Candide, he has come at last," she said, slowly and clearly, "you must
+give him the letters."
+
+The woman called Candide dropped her heavy lids for a moment, while, to
+Bernardy's wonder a blush mounted to the roots of her pale, smoothly
+banded hair. Then she went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a
+packet of letters and a small, paper-covered book, which she handed to
+him in silence. The old woman had closed her reddish lids, thickly woven
+over with small, raised veins, and there was nothing left for Bernardy
+but to take the packet and go to his own room. He found it easily, for
+the door stood open now, and he sat himself by the fire and began to
+read. In spite of the instinct which had led him, he still had not
+guessed what he should find. The breath of dawn was stirring the
+curtains before he put the papers down.
+
+The entries in the journal were very brief, and the first bore a date of
+some thirty-five years earlier:
+
+    "It is now two years since I left school," said the journal,
+    "and I think I have improved in my hand-writing, also my crewel
+    stitch. Papa was vexed with me to-day because the soup was too
+    thin. It was the second straining from the same fowl, but we
+    could not afford to kill another. I hear there is a stranger, an
+    Englishman, in the town. He is voyaging for his education. I
+    wish that was how they educated women."
+
+The next entry was written the following night:
+
+    "Papa found there was an English Milord staying here, and has
+    brought him to the chateau to dinner. He says even if the de
+    Clerissacs have lost their wealth that is no reason why they
+    should lose their manners. I had a fresh fowl killed and wore my
+    muslin. I hear skirts are getting full and mine are very narrow.
+    He has nice eyes and is so young--almost as young as I am."
+
+Several months elapsed before the next entry. Bernardy read it with
+dimmed eyes.
+
+    "I am going away--I am going to try and find him. It is not his
+    fault that everything has happened; I ought to have known,
+    because I am the woman. He will be miserable when I find him and
+    tell him what I have gone through, and I cannot bear to make him
+    miserable. I would protect him from it if I could. But there
+    will be the baby, and I must protect that too. Papa says I am no
+    daughter of his, but I cannot see what I have done that is
+    dreadful. I have done right--I am a woman now, and I know. How
+    could it have been better for me to grow old and thin and never
+    give to anyone? It is always good to give. I am leaving this
+    behind me in the secret shelf of my cupboard, with all the
+    letters I wrote him--the ones he gave me back and the ones I
+    never sent. . . . I shall never come here again, and I love it
+    like my soul. I will always pray our child will come here. He
+    will not be born here, but perhaps he will come here to die,
+    even if I cannot. The candle is guttering and I must go. Papa
+    says I may not bear his name any longer, and old Marie is
+    letting me take hers. I am no longer de Clerissac, but must sign
+    myself
+        "CANDIDE BERNARDY."
+
+The first few letters were mere formal little notes--inviting the Milord
+to dine, at the instance of Monsieur de Clerissac, thanking him for
+taking herself and old Marie out driving in his post-chaise, suggesting
+an hour when he might care to go wild-cat shooting with old Marie's son.
+Then came a letter in a more intimate key.
+
+    "You should not have sent to Nice for the books" (it ran), "yet
+    I should be ungrateful not to thank you. If you care to come and
+    see the violet-bed I was telling you of I will thank you in
+    person. Papa says would you like one of Minèrve's next litter,
+    but I say you will not be here then? Besides, in England, are
+    not your dogs of the chase of the best? Accept, Milord, my most
+    grateful thanks and remembrances.
+        "C. DE C."
+
+There was only a fragment of the letter next in sequence, that ran as
+follows:
+
+    ". . . and if you really wish it, I will with pleasure embroider a
+    collar for the pup. Papa says I am to say he is glad you are
+    staying on, as he never meets a gentleman here. It is amiable of
+    you to admire my singing, though I fear it is sadly uncultured
+    after what you are used to, but I too love the Provençal songs.
+    You suggest Sunday evening to come and begin translating them
+    into French, that would suit us admirably. My father is, alas!
+    in bed with the gout, but perhaps you would be kind enough to go
+    up and see him? It is true our garden is lovely by
+    moonlight--you do not see then how neglected it is, but I am not
+    sure if I ought to show it to you then. Perhaps if . . ."
+
+The rest of the page was missing, and Bernardy picked up the next
+letter.
+
+    "Bien-aimé" (he read), "how can I write you and what can I say?
+    What do the women of your world say when they feel as I do? Ah!
+    I hope you do not know, I hope you have never made any other
+    woman feel what I do. Every one must adore you, but only I must
+    love you. There, I have said it! Edmund, I love you. But it is
+    not so very dreadful to say it, is it, since, you love me? I
+    cannot play with the truth to you, Edmund. To you I must always
+    be
+        "CANDIDE."
+
+A week later a frightened chord was sounded.
+
+    "Edmund," she wrote, "do not again kiss me as you did last
+    night. I feel wicked creeping out to meet you as it is, and last
+    night--Edmund, you made me feel ashamed. It was not like
+    kissing, it was as though you wished to eat me. Do not think me
+    unkind, but I am feeling afraid, even of you. That is unkind--
+    forgive me.
+        "CANDIDE."
+
+Another week, and the key had shifted again.
+
+    ". . . it is true. I love you so that you can kiss me even like
+    you did that time. It terrifies me and I feel cold and weak, but
+    it is enough that you say it is the most splendid thing you have
+    ever known. Edmund, will you be angry if I say that I regret the
+    days before we knew we loved? Everything was in a golden mist
+    like you see in the valley at sunrise, and now I keep on feeling
+    I do not understand you. Why do you say you cannot tell your
+    father you love me? I am well-born, though it is true I have no
+    _dot_, but, indeed, I am a good manager, and you say I am even
+    prettier than the English ladies. Oh! I am lonely and
+    frightened, and I want your arms round me. Now that I have said
+    that, you cannot reproach me with being cold. . . ."
+
+    "Your note has just come" (ran the next letter), "and I am oh!
+    so miserable for you. You are not to think I am unhappy--I am
+    happy to have loved you. If thinking about me adds to your
+    unhappiness, I can even say--do not think about me. I can
+    understand you cannot marry unless your fiancée has a _dot_,
+    because of your estate. It is best that you should go, but you
+    may see me to say good-bye. My dear one, my poor heart, what can
+    I do to help you?"
+
+That was all of the letters to Milord--the letters he had given back.
+Next came letters that were never sent.
+
+    "Chéri" (ran the first of them), "at last I can write out all
+    that is in my heart, since you will never see these pages. I
+    must write, or I shall go mad. . . . I don't regret, in spite of
+    my shame and bewilderment, for I gave to you. I cannot even feel
+    wicked, but I should not care if I did. I love you all the more
+    now I know you are not what I thought. You are not a god or even
+    a hero, you are a man, and so you are a child--my child, whose
+    head I held on my breast. You have told me to write to you if I
+    need your help. How can that be? All that is left to me is to
+    live out my life here in dreams. I imagine your presence all
+    day. If the door opens behind me and some one enters, I pretend
+    it is you till the last moment possible--until Papa or one of
+    the servants comes round my chair and speaks to me. I have been
+    loved, and I love--that is a great deal to live on."
+
+That night she went on with the same letter.
+
+    "Edmund, Edmund, it is not enough--I want you. My heart is
+    breaking. I can only lie with my eyes shut and my face pressed
+    down, and something beats out. 'I want you, I want you.' My
+    heart broke when you wrote me your last note and I had to reply
+    cheerfully because of you. I am not so cowardly but that I can
+    still be glad you do not know my heart broke. _Edmund, I want
+    you, I want you._"
+
+The last of the unsent letters to Milord was written several months
+later.
+
+    "Why did I say hearts broke? They don't break, they go dead.
+    Edmund, I wonder if, wherever you are, you are thinking of me?
+    You are certainly not thinking that soon you will see me. I
+    have been trying to decide what to do for the best, and now Papa
+    says I shall not stay here till what he calls my shame is born.
+    I will not stay where my hope and my joy is called my shame, and
+    though I would never ask you anything for myself, I must ask if
+    for the child. I am coming to England, and I must start now or I
+    shall not arrive in time. I shall leave all my letters behind
+    with my journal. I do not even know what I feel when I think of
+    seeing you again.
+        "CANDIDE DE CLERISSAC."
+
+There was still one paper more, an envelope that had come by courier and
+was addressed to Marie Bernardy. It had been opened, but inside was an
+enclosure of which the seals were still unbroken. Without any shock of
+surprise Bernardy saw it was addressed to him.
+
+    "My son" (he read), "my little son, who, when you read this,
+    will be a grown man, I who have not quite lost my birthright of
+    prevision, know that some day you will go to my town and read
+    this. Will you be in trouble, my little son? Something tells me
+    you will be near the end, and so I write this to help you. You
+    are lying on my lap now, and I think we shall have many years to
+    wander in together, and you will grow away from me, but when you
+    read this you will find me again, and something more as well. My
+    son, I got no further than Paris, bearing you beneath my heart.
+    There I heard from his priest-brother that he had been killed
+    hunting, and there you were born. So you are mine, you belong to
+    no one but me. Listen, my son. Life is good, but a clean death
+    is good too. Never be afraid of one or the other. And when you
+    read this in the home that was mine, put fear away and be a man.
+    Find the one with whom you can face whatever comes without
+    flinching, and when you have found her, never let her go till
+    your arms must loose for good. My son, I was wrong to say that
+    hearts went dead, they are merely numbed for a time if only we
+    are never weak enough to regret. Always remember that it is the
+    good woman who gives and the good man who creates, and take what
+    is left to you of life and make with it. I am not merely
+    imagining you as you read; I am actually with you, I have fused
+    the present and the future into one, and I can see the
+    dawn-light barring the floor through the slats of the shutters,
+    and you are sitting by an empty hearth. Go out, my child, into
+    the dawn. Edmond, my son, however long it is before you join me,
+    I am to all eternity
+        "YOUR MOTHER."
+
+Bernardy staggered to his feet and went to the window, and the
+steel-cold bars of light from the slats ran up over him as he
+approached. Flinging the shutters wide, he leant out, and drew deep
+breaths of the chill, sweet air. The yews and overgrown hedges of the
+garden were still velvety with shadow, but beyond the ramparts the
+delicate pallor of dawn was already tinged with a faint fire. So had his
+mother, half-timid child, half peasant, and entirely woman, often
+watched with him beneath her heart. Yet as Bernardy saw the rose light
+strengthen, his thoughts left his mother for that other Candide who had
+reddened so unaccountably the night before--that Candide who must be
+called after his mother. He was still thinking of her as he went
+downstairs and through the open door that led into the garden.
+
+He crossed to the furthest rampart of it, that hung over the cliff edge,
+and sat down to watch the dawn. Away to a line of silver that told of
+the sea the country looked as though dappled in grey and gold, for the
+valleys were pools of shadow veined by the brightening ranges of the
+mountains. There was a transparency about the morning, a clarity of
+young green in leaf and grass, a glimmer of fragile dew globes and
+gossamer webs on the brambles, that all made for an agreeing lightness
+of that bubble the soul, and Bernardy was soothed to the core of him.
+Cupping his chin in his hands, he sat there, drenched in the ineffable
+light that seemed to make of the air some divine element, enveloping
+every edge in brightness, refracting from each leaf and vibrating with a
+diamond quality on the mists in the valley below. The pattern of events
+was beginning to clear for him as the world was cleared by the
+sunrise--it only needed some master event to be complete. He thought of
+the sleep into which he had fallen outside the town, and which had wiped
+his mind clear of resentment, and freed it for new impressions: he
+remembered the shock when he had first recognized the walls, his growing
+excitement as thing after thing was familiar to him, the blinding flash
+of the moment when he realized he had found his dream-city. On the crest
+of receptiveness he had entered the church, and the phrase of the old
+peasant woman had caught at his imagination. Looking back, he saw how it
+was the extraordinary serenity of the townsfolk that seemed their
+dominant characteristic--they were wrapped in it as in an atmosphere,
+they were clear-eyed, clear-skinned, clear-souled. From the moment when
+he recognized the nail-studded door till he put down the last of his
+mother's letters, his comprehensions had flowed outward in widening
+circles. In his new knowledge of his father and mother he saw himself
+more clearly than ever before. He remembered his mother, a silent,
+quiet-eyed woman, nearly always bent over her needlework--and he saw her
+as the eager, ignorant girl, full of romantic dreams; saw her change
+into the half-timid, half-reckless lover; followed her through her
+lonely grief to the attainment of quiet. She, too, could say it had been
+good--and with how far more reason than he! He saw his father--weak,
+hot-headed, swayed by passion and selfishness and regret--his father who
+had preferred conventional safety to this hill-hung garden in Provence,
+where he could have dreamt the greatest dream of all. He saw himself as
+he was, and there followed a twin-vision of how he would be lying cold
+and pulseless in a few weeks' time, and of how he might have lived in
+this city of dreams had he found it with his life still his own. He
+would indeed have dreamt the greatest dream of all--the dream that was
+life at its fullest. "It is the good woman who gives and the good man
+who creates. Take what is left to you of life and make with it" . . . so
+wrote his mother, and like an answer flashed the words of the peasant
+woman in the church, "C'est l'enfant qui donne courage!"
+
+_The greatest dream of all!_
+
+He looked up and saw Candide, large and serene, coming towards him down
+the path, her skirts swinging from her broad hips. He stood up, and for
+a moment they faced each other in silence.
+
+She was just thirty and in some ways looked more, because of the
+solidity of her well-poised figure; and her clear eyes, rimmed with
+black round each iris, were not the ignorant eyes of a child, they were
+the eyes of a woman who faces knowledge naturally and patiently.
+Big-boned, and, but for the whiteness of her skin, with a something
+rockhewn about her face, her only beauty was that of health and a
+certain assurance which spoke of perfect poise. She was what Bernardy,
+in that moment's clarity of vision, knew her for--a woman born to be
+mother of men. He took a step towards her with the gesture of a
+frightened child, and with her big hands over his she drew him to the
+stone bench and sat beside him. He told her everything, simply and
+quickly, because he hated explanations, and was impatient that they were
+necessary to her. When he had made an end she said:
+
+"Do you know why I blushed last night when my grandmother recognized
+you?"
+
+"No," replied Bernardy, startled out of himself yet pricked to interest.
+
+"Because my grandmother has always made me wait for you. . . ."
+
+"Candide! Candide!" cried Bernardy, the child merged in the waxing
+possessiveness of the man, "shall we dream my last few weeks together,
+you and I?"
+
+"You do not love me, that is so, is it not?" she asked.
+
+"I am not in love with you, no. That is all spent. If you were any other
+woman I would lie to you. But it seems to me it matters very little
+whether I am or not. It is not that I feel I cannot love, but as though
+I had got through it and out the other side. . . ."
+
+"No, it does not matter," said Candide. "What matters is that I can give
+to you and you to me. We will make life, you and I."
+
+"Yes," agreed Bernardy, "we will make life," and as his arms went round
+her and his lips found hers everything that had puzzled him fell
+naturally into its place. He had always created in his verse, but it was
+for this his mother had borne him, it was this that the old woman in the
+church had meant, it was for this that the woman at his side had waited.
+It mattered very little that he himself would not live to see the life
+he made, the chief thing was to create, and he saw life as the greatest
+gift man could make to God.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASK
+
+
+When Vashti Bath was "led out" by the two most eligible young men in the
+village, the other women spoke their minds pretty freely on the subject;
+and when she progressed to that further stage known as "arm-a-crook,"
+and still refrained from making the fateful choice, comment waxed
+bitter. The privilege of proposal belongs in Cornwall to that sex
+commonly called "the weaker"--a girl goes through the various stages of
+courtship conducted out of doors, and if she decides to marry the young
+man, asks him to "step in" one evening when he has seen her home, after
+which the engagement is announced. Vashti, in the most brazen way, was
+sampling two suitors at a time, and those two the most coveted men in
+Perran-an-zenna, and therein lay the sting for the women-folk.
+
+"What is there to her, I should like to knaw?" the lay-reader's wife
+demanded of her friends at a somewhat informal prayer meeting. "She'm an
+ontidy kind o' maid who don't knaw one end of needle from t'other. When
+her stockin' heels go into holes she just pulls them further under her
+foot, till sometimes she do have to garter half way down her leg!"
+
+"She'm ontidy sure 'nough," agreed a widow woman of years and
+experience, "but she'm a rare piece o' red and white, and menfolk are
+feeble vessels. If a maid's a fine armful they never think on whether
+she won't be a fine handful. And Vashti do have a way wi' her."
+
+That was the whole secret--Vashti had a way with her. She was a splendid
+slattern--showing the ancient Celtic strain in her coarse, abundant
+black hair, level brows, and narrow, green-blue eyes, with a trace of
+Jew in the hawk-like line of nose and the prominent chin curved a little
+upwards from her throat. A few years, and she would be lean and haggard,
+but now she was a fine, buoyant creature, swift and tumultuous, with a
+mouth like a flower. For all the slovenliness of her clothes she had a
+trick of putting them on which an Englishwoman never has as a
+birthright, and rarely achieves. Vashti could tie a ribbon so that every
+man she passed turned to look after her.
+
+Perran-an-zenna is a mining village, and some of the menfolk work in the
+tin mines close at hand, and some in the big silver mine four miles
+away. James Glasson, the elder and harsher-featured of Vashti's lovers,
+worked in the latter, and there was every prospect of his becoming a
+captain, as he had a passion for mechanics and for chemistry, and was
+supposed to be experimenting with a new process that would cheapen the
+cost of extracting the silver. Willie Strick, the younger, handsomer,
+more happy-go-lucky of the two men, went to "bal" in the tin mines, and
+was disinclined to save, but then his aged grandmother, with whom he
+lived, had been busy saving for twenty years. Strick was an eager lover,
+quick to jealousy--Glasson was uncommunicative even to Vashti, and
+careless of her opinions. Though the jealousy irked her it flattered her
+too, but on the other hand, Glasson's carelessness, even while it piqued
+her, made her covet him all the more.
+
+This was how matters stood one evening in late March when Vashti had
+gone up to the moors to fetch in the cows--not her own, no Bath had been
+thrifty enough for that, but belonging to the farm where she worked. As
+she walked along in the glowing light, the white road winking up at her
+through a hole in her swinging skirt, and a heavy coil of hair jerking a
+little lower on the nape of her neck with each vigorous stride, Vashti
+faced the fact that matters could continue as they were no longer. At
+bottom Vashti was as hard as granite, she meant to have what she wanted;
+her only trouble was she had not quite settled what it was she did want.
+Like all her race, she had a strain of fatalism in her, that prompted
+her to choose whichever of the two men she should next chance to
+meet--and the woman in her suggested that at least such a declaration on
+the part of fate would give her the necessary impetus towards deciding
+upon the other.
+
+Lifting her eyes from the regular, pendulum-like swing of her skirt that
+had almost mesmerized her lulled vision, she saw, dark against the
+sunset, the figure of a man. She knew it to be either James or Willie
+because of the peculiar square set of the shoulders and the small
+head--for the two men were, like most people in that intermarrying
+district, cousins, with a superficial trick of likeness, and an almost
+exact similarity of voice. A prescience of impending fate weighed on
+Vashti; the gaunt shaft of the disused Wheal Zenna mine, that stood up
+between her and the approaching man, seemed like a menacing finger. The
+man reached it first and stood leaning up against it, one foot on the
+rubble of granite that was scattered around, his arm, with the miner's
+bag slung over it, resting across his raised knee. Vashti half thought
+of going back, even without the cows, but it was already time the poor
+beasts were milked, and curiosity lured her on. She went across the
+circle of greener grass surrounding the shaft, and found Glasson
+awaiting her.
+
+To every woman comes a time in life when she is ripe for the decisive
+man; and it is often a barren hour when he fails to appear. For Vashti
+the hour and the man had come together, and she knew it as she met
+Glasson's look. Putting out his hands, ingrained with earth in the
+finest seams of them, he laid them heavily on her shoulders, like a
+yoke. His bag swung forward and hit her on the chest, but neither of
+them noticed it.
+
+"Vashti, you'm got to make'n end," he said. "One way or t'other. Which
+es et to be?"
+
+She shook under his gaze, her lids drooped, but she tried to pout out
+her full underlip with a pretence of petulance. Suddenly his grip
+tightened.
+
+"So 'ee won't tell me? Then by God, I'll do the tellin'! You'm my woman,
+do'ee hear? Mine, and neither Will Strick nor any other chap shall come
+between us two."
+
+Wheeling her round, he held her against the rough side of the shaft and
+bent his face to hers; she felt his lips crush on her own till she could
+have cried out with pain if she had been able to draw breath. When he
+let her go her breast heaved, and she stood with lowered head holding
+her hand across her mouth.
+
+"Now we'll get the cows, my lass," said Glasson quietly, "and take'n
+home, and then you shall ask me to step in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the short, fierce courtship that followed Vashti saw very little
+of Willie Strick, though she heard he talked much of emigrating, vowing
+he would disappear in the night and not come home until he had made a
+fortune. All of Vashti's nature was in abeyance save for one emotion--a
+stunned, yet pleasurable, submission. It was not until several months
+after her marriage that she began to feel again the more ordinary and
+yet more complex sensations of everyday life. If she had to the full a
+primitive woman's joy in being possessed, she had also the instinctive
+need for possessing her man utterly, and James Glasson was only partly
+hers. It was borne in on her that by far the larger side of him was his
+own, never to be given to any woman. Ambition and an uncanny
+secretiveness made up the real man; he had set himself to winning his
+wife chiefly because the want of her distracted him from his work and
+fretted him.
+
+He bent the whole of life to his purposes, without any parade of power,
+but with a laborious care that gradually settled on Vashti like a
+blight. When she realized that no matter how rightly she wore her little
+bits of finery, he no longer noticed them, realized that she was merely
+a necessity to him as his woman--something to be there when she was
+wanted, she began to harden. He still had a fascination for her when he
+chose to exert it--his very carelessness and sureness of her were what
+made the fascination, but gradually it wore thinner and slacker, and a
+sullen resentment began to burn through her seeming submission.
+
+The Glasson's cottage was tucked away in a hollow of the moor, only the
+chimney of it visible from Perran-an-zenna, and Vashti began to chafe
+under the isolation, and to regret she had never been at more pains to
+make friends among her own sex.
+
+As summer drew to its full, Vashti watched the splendid pageant of it in
+the sky and moor with unappreciative eyes. If anyone had told her that
+her soul had been formed by the country of her birth and upbringing, she
+would have thought it sheer lunacy, but her parents were not more
+responsible for Vashti than the land itself. The hardness and bleakness,
+the inexpressible charm of it, the soft, indolent airs, scented with
+flowers, or pungent with salt; above all, that reticence that makes for
+lonely thoughts, these things had, generation by generation, moulded her
+forbears, and their influence was in her blood. Even the indifference
+with which she saw arose from her oneness with her own country, and in
+this she was like all true Cornish folk before and since--they belong to
+Cornwall body and soul. The quality of reticence had become
+secretiveness in James Glasson--he took a childish pleasure in keeping
+any little happening from the world in general and Vashti in particular,
+and the consequence was that, in her, strength was hardening into
+relentlessness.
+
+One market day she was returning from Penzance--a drive of some eight
+miles, accomplished in the cart of their nearest neighbour--with a paper
+parcel on her knee, which she kept on fingering under the rug as though
+to make sure it was still there. At the neighbour's farm she got out,
+thanked him, and started to walk the remaining mile over the moor, with
+the precious parcel laid carefully on the top of the basket of household
+goods. It had been one of those days when the air seems to have a misty
+quality that makes it almost visible--a delicate effulgence that
+envelops every object far and near, blurring harsh outlines and giving
+an effect as though trees and plants stood up into an element too subtle
+for water and too insistent for ether. The cloud shadows gave a
+plum-like bloom to the miles of interfolding hills, and inset among the
+grey-green of the moor the patches of young bracken showed vivid as
+slabs of emerald. Lightly as balls of thistledown the larks hopped
+swiftly over the heather on their thin legs, the self-heal and
+bird's-foot trefoil made a carpet of purple and yellow; from the
+heavy-scented gorse came the staccato notes of the crickets, while in a
+distant copse a cuckoo called faintly on her changed, June note. As
+Vashti rounded the corner of the rutted track and the cottage came into
+view, she paused. The deeply sloping slate roof was iridescent as a
+pigeon's breast, and the whitewashed walls were burnished with gold by
+the late sunlight, while against the faded peacock blue of the fence the
+evening primroses seemed luminous. Even to Vashti it all looked
+different, transmuted. Her fingers pressed the shiny paper of the parcel
+till it crackled and a smile tugged at her lips. After all, it was not
+bad to be young and handsome on an evening in June, to be returning to a
+home of her own, with, under her arm, a parcel that, to her, was an
+event. Vashti had bought that thing dear to the heart of the
+country-woman, a length of rich black dress silk; she meant to make it
+up herself, and though her stitches were clumsy, she knew she could cut
+and drape a gown better than many a conscientious sempstress. And
+then--then she would take her place as wife to the most discussed man in
+all that part of Penwith and hold up her head at Meeting. Even James
+himself could not but treat her differently when she had black silk on
+her back.
+
+She went through to the outhouse, which James used as a workshop, and
+tried the door. It was locked. "James!" she cried, rattling the latch,
+"James!"
+
+She heard him swear softly, then came the sound of something hastily put
+down and a cupboard door being shut. Then Glasson opened the door a few
+inches, and stood looking down at her.
+
+"Get into kitchen," he said briefly, "can't 'ee see I'm busy?"
+
+Already Vashti's pleasure in her purchase was beginning to fade, but she
+stood her ground, though wrathfully.
+
+"You needn' think you'm the only person with secrets," she flashed: "I'd
+a fine thing to show 'ee here, if you'd a mind to see it--now I shall
+keep'n to myself."
+
+"Woman's gear!" gibed Glasson, "you'm been buying foolishness over to
+market. Get the supper or I shan't have time for a bite before I go to
+see t' captain."
+
+"That's all you think on," she retorted; "you and your own business."
+
+"That's all you should think on, either," he said, pulling her towards
+him with a hand on the back of her neck, and kissing her on her
+unresponsive mouth. She stood sullenly; then, when he dropped his hand,
+went into the house. She heard him turn the key in the lock as she went.
+That night she cried hot tears of anger on to the new dress length, and
+next day she went across the moor and met Willie Strick on his way home
+to Perran-an-zenna.
+
+That was the first of many meetings, for Willie's resentment faded away
+before the old charm of Vashti's presence. In spite of his handsome
+face, he was oddly like James. The backs of their heads were similar
+enough to give Vashti a little shock whenever she passed behind her
+husband as he sat at table, or each time that Willie lay beside her on
+the moor, his head on her lap. She would pull the curly rings of his
+hair out over her fingers, and even while she admired the glint of it,
+some little memory of a time when James' hair had glinted in the sun or
+candlelight, pricked at her--not with any feeling for him except
+resentment, but at first it rather spoiled her lover for her. They had
+to meet by stealth, but that was easy enough, as James was now on an
+afternoon core, and Willie on a morning one. To do the latter justice,
+he had tried, at the beginning, a feeble resistance to the allure that
+Vashti had for him, not from any scruple of conscience, but because his
+pleasure-loving nature shrank from anything that might lead to
+unpleasantness. And, careless as he seemed of his wife, James Glasson
+would be an ugly man to deal with if he discovered the truth. So far
+there had been nothing except the love-making of a limited though
+expressive vocabulary, and Vashti curbed him and herself for three
+whole weeks. She was set on possessing Willie's very soul--here, at
+least, was a man whom she could so work upon that he would always be
+hers even to the most reluctant outpost of his being. By the end of
+those weeks, her elusiveness, the hint of passion in her, and the steady
+force of her will, had enslaved Strick hopelessly: he was maddened,
+reckless, and timid all at once.
+
+"Vashti, it's got to end," he said desperately, as he walked with her
+one evening as near to the cottage as he dared, and as he spoke he slid
+an arm round her waist. To his surprise, she yielded and swayed towards
+him so that her shoulder touched his; in the sunset light her upturned
+face glimmered warm and bewilderingly full of colour.
+
+"Wait a bit, lad," she breathed. "James goes up to London church town
+to-morrow to see one of the managers--happen he'll be gone a week or
+more. . . ."
+
+He felt her soft mouth on his cheek for a moment and his arms went round
+her--the next moment came a crash that seemed to split the sky, and from
+the outhouse leapt a whistling column of flame.
+
+Stricken with a superstitious terror, Willie screamed--loudly and
+thinly, like a woman. Vashti recoiled, flung up her hands, then rushed
+towards the burning outhouse.
+
+"James is in there!" she cried. "Oh, get'en out, get'en out!"
+
+The flame had been caused by an explosion, but there was not much
+inflammatory stuff for it to feed on, and a thick smoke, reeking of
+chemicals, hung above the outhouse. As Vashti, followed by the shaking
+Strick, reached the door, it swung open and a Thing stood swaying a
+moment on the step.
+
+It seemed to the lovers' first horrified glimpse that all of Glasson's
+face had been blown away. The whole of one side of it was covered by an
+enormous blister, a nightmare thing, which, as the woman gazed at it,
+burst and fell into blackness. The same moment Glasson dropped his
+length across the threshold.
+
+"The doctor, go for doctor," whispered Vashti with dry lips, "as quick
+as you can--I--I dursn't turn 'en over."
+
+So Glasson lay with what had been his face against a patch of grass,
+while Willie ran, horror-ridden, to Perran-an-zenna for the doctor.
+
+Dry-eyed, Vashti watched by her husband for three nights, and all
+praised her wifely devotion. She sat by the gleam of a flickering
+nightlight, her eyes on the bandaged face--the linen was only slit just
+as much as was necessary for breathing.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Glasson," said the doctor cheerily, as he finished his
+inspection on the third night, "I can give you good news. Your husband
+will live, and will keep the sight of one eye. But--though of course
+wonders can be done with modern surgery--we can't build up what's gone.
+He'll always have to wear a mask, Mrs. Glasson."
+
+When he had gone Vashti went and stood by the bed, looking down on the
+unconscious man, who lay breathing heavily--how easy it would be to lay
+a hand over that slit in the linen--a few minutes, and this nightmare
+would be over. She half put out her hand, then drew it back. She was
+not yet capable of cold-blooded crime.
+
+Lighting a candle, she took from a drawer a paper parcel, which she
+unfolded on the little table. As the still untouched folds of the black
+dress length, with a few little hard-edged blots on it that meant tears,
+came into view, Vashti's self-control broke down. She wept stormily, her
+head along her arms. Release had flaunted so near to her, and was
+withdrawn, and her horror of the Thing on the bed was mingled with a
+pity for it that ate into her mind. She dried her burning eyes, and
+picking up the scissors, began to cut a mask out of the tear-stained
+breadths; her invincible habit of considering herself forbade her, even
+at that moment, to use the good yards for such a purpose.
+
+The candle-flame was showing wan in the grey of the dawning when Vashti
+put the last stitches to the mask--she had made it very deep, so that it
+would hang to just below the jawbone, and she had laboriously
+buttonhole-stitched round the one eye-hole, and sewn tape-strings firmly
+to the sides, top and bottom. The mask was finished.
+
+James Glasson's figure, a trifle stooped and groping, with that sinister
+black curtain from cap to collar, soon ceased to be an object of fearful
+curiosity in Perran-an-zenna; even the children became so used to it
+that they left off calling out as he passed. He grew more silent and
+morose than ever, and his secretiveness showed itself in all sorts of
+ingenious petty ways.
+
+Vashti had the imaginative streak of her race, and life in the lonely
+cottage with this masked personality took on the quality of nightmare.
+She felt his one eye watching her continually, and was tormented by the
+thought, "How much does he know?" Who could tell? Had he seen anything
+from the outhouse window when she had rashly let Willie come so near, or
+did he know who it was who had fetched the doctor? Sometimes a meaning
+word seemed to show that he knew everything, sometimes she argued that
+he could only guess. The black mask filled the whole of her life, the
+thought of it was never out of her mind, not even when she was working
+on her old farm, for she had to be breadwinner now. She found herself
+dwelling on what lay behind the mask, wondering whether it could be as
+bad as that black expanse, and once she woke herself at night,
+screaming: "Tear 'en down, Willie! Tear the black mask down!" and then
+lay trembling, wondering whether her husband had heard. For days he said
+nothing and she felt herself safe; then one night he turned to her.
+"There's no air," he complained. "Can't 'ee take down t' curtains? If
+'ee can't do anything else, why--tear 'en down, tear 'en down!"
+
+He had mimicked her very voice, and silent with fear, she took down the
+curtain, her fingers shaking so that the rings jingled together along
+the rod. One day, when he was working in the garden, he turned to face
+the wind. She saw him sideways against the sky, and the black mask, held
+taut at brow and chin by the strings, was being blown inward. She never
+forgot the horror of that concave line against the sky.
+
+She came to regard the mask with superstitious awe; it seemed James
+Glasson's character materialized--the outward expression of the inner
+man. Nervous and cowed to abjectness as she was, she felt near the end
+of her endurance. The perpetual scheming to meet Willie unknown to her
+husband--a difficulty now the latter was nearly always about the
+house-place, and the wearing uncertainty of "How much does he know?"
+were fraying her nerves. Some two months after the accident the crash
+came.
+
+James had gone to Truro to see a surgeon there, and had announced his
+intention of spending the night with cousins. The utter bliss of being
+alone, and having the cottage free from the masked presence for even one
+day acted like a balm on Vashti. She forbade Willie to come near her
+till the evening, partly from motives of prudence, but chiefly because
+she craved for solitude. By the afternoon she was more her old,
+sufficient, well-poised self, and when evening drew on she busied
+herself about her little preparations in the kitchen with a colour
+burning in her cheeks and a softened light in her eyes. That evening
+Vashti Glasson was touched with a grace of womanliness she had never
+worn for her husband. Every harmless and tender instinct of the lover
+was at work in her, making her choose her nicest tablecloth, arrange a
+cluster of chrysanthemums in an ornate glass vase, put a long-discarded
+ribbon of gaudy pink in her hair. Then she took off her working frock of
+dirty, ill-mended serge, and shook out in triumph the folds of the black
+silk, now made up in all its glory, and hideous with cheap jet. It
+converted her from a goddess of the plough to a red-wristed, clumsy girl
+of the people; and when her hair was dressed in the fashionable lumps,
+with a fringe-net hardening the outlines, she looked like a shop-girl,
+but she herself admired the effect intensely.
+
+When three taps at the window told that Strick was outside, the colour
+flew to her face, making her so beautiful that she triumphed even over
+her costume; she had become a high priestess of Love, and was not to be
+cheated of any of the ritual. She was decked out as for a bridal; no
+more rough-and-ready wooing and winning for her. But Strick's passion
+was somewhat daunted by all the preparations for his welcome; the
+kitchen looked unusual, and so did she, and he hung back for a moment on
+the threshold.
+
+"What's come to 'ee?" he asked, foolishly agape.
+
+"'Tes a weddin' gown made for you," said Vashti simply.
+
+"But 'tes black!" he stammered. "'Tes ill luck on a black bridal,
+Vassie."
+
+"Ours is no white bridal, lad," she told him. "Come in and set
+down--yes, take that chair," and she pushed Glasson's accustomed seat
+forward for her lover.
+
+Conversation languished during the meal--Willie Strick was bewildered by
+the oddness of everything, Vashti included; his was no level head to
+plan any details or set a scene--Vashti won by stealth, anywhere and
+anyhow, was all he had thought of or wished for. Hers was the
+master-mind and he was helpless before it, and while she inflamed him
+she frightened him too.
+
+A full moon swam up over the line of distant sea that showed in a dip of
+the moorland, and the lamp began to smell and burn low. They had
+finished supper, and Willie was drinking rather freely of the whisky
+she had set before him. Vashti turned out the lamp, and as she did so a
+sudden harsh noise sent the heart to her throat, while Willie sprang up
+fearfully. It was only the poker, that, caught by the full skirt of the
+black silk frock, had been sent clattering to the ground, but it made
+them stare at each other in a stricken panic for a speechless minute.
+The white light of the moon shone clearly into the room, throwing a
+black pattern of window-shadow over the disordered supper table, where
+the chrysanthemums, overturned by Willie's movement, lay across an empty
+dish, and in the silence the two startled people could hear the rhythmic
+sound of the water as it drip-drip-dripped on to the floor.
+
+Vashti was the first to recover herself. "Us be plum foolish, Willie!"
+she said, with an attempt at a laugh. "Do believe us both thought it was
+James, and him safe to Truro."
+
+"If 'tes," said Strick madly, "he shan't take 'ee from me now. I'll have
+'ee, I swear it."
+
+Vashti did not answer--with fascinated eyes she was watching the door
+slowly open--she could see the strip of moonlit brightness, barred by
+the darkness of an arm, grow wider and wider. She knew, before the
+form--so terribly like Willie's, now its masked face was against the
+light--appeared, that it was her husband.
+
+Quite what happened next she could not have told. The little room seemed
+full and dark with fear--blind, unreasoning fear, that beat even about
+her head. The long-drawn-out crash of the overturned table added to her
+confusion--then quite suddenly the sounds of struggling ceased and one
+man rose to his feet. In the dimness of the room, seeing only the shape
+of him, she could not tell whether it were James or Willie, until he
+turned his face to the moonlight, and she saw, with a throb of relief,
+Strick's face.
+
+"Get a light, Vassie," he whispered. "I fear he's dead."
+
+She lit a candle and they knelt down by Glasson. In falling his head had
+hit the fender, and blood was trickling on to the floor. She ripped open
+his shirt and felt for his heart as well as her trembling fingers would
+allow. She lifted his arm and let it fall--it dropped a dead weight on
+to the tiled floor. It seemed to her excited fancy that already he was
+turning cold.
+
+"Willie, you've killed 'en!" she whispered. They both spoke low, as
+though they thought the dead man could overhear.
+
+"I didn't hit 'en," babbled Willie. "He stumbled and fell and hit his
+head--they'll make me swing for this--what shall us do, what shall us
+do?"
+
+"Wait--I must think," commended the woman. She pressed her hands to her
+forehead, and sat very still.
+
+"Have 'ee thought?" whispered Willie anxiously.
+
+"Yes--I've thought. Willie, you'm rare and like--he--and that'll save
+us."
+
+"What do 'ee mean?" asked Willie, thinking the shock had turned her
+brain.
+
+"The mask!" replied Vashti, "the mask!"
+
+Then, kneeling by the still body, they talked in whispers--she unfolding
+her plan--he recoiling from it, weakly protesting, and then giving way.
+
+They were to take the dead man between them to the disused mine shaft
+and throw him down, then Willie was to wear the black mask, and take
+Glasson's place, until they could sail for America together. Like all
+simple plans, it had a touch of genius. Willie's constant talk of
+emigrating, his oft-heard boasts of slipping away in the night and not
+coming back till he had made a fortune, would all help to cover up his
+disappearance. And who was to connect it with Vashti and her silent,
+eccentric, black-masked husband--who would speak to him or her on the
+subject? And if they did--she could always invent a plausible answer,
+while he was safeguarded by the fact that the strongest point of
+likeness between the two men was their voices. The most dissimilar thing
+about them had been their faces.
+
+"I won't wear his mask," said Willie shuddering; "I couldn't put 'en
+against me. You must make me another."
+
+"I'll make 'en now," said Vashti. She rose to her feet, and setting the
+candle on the seat of a chair, looked about her.
+
+"You must put the room to rights," she commanded. "Make 'en look as
+though James and I had just had our bit o' supper. Mop up the water and
+sweep all the broken cloam together--and--and take him to the
+passage-way."
+
+"You'm not going to lave me alone wi' he?" cried Willie aghast.
+
+"Edn room for me to work here. I'l be up overstairs making the mask.
+Keep t' curtain over the window."
+
+Upstairs, she seized scissors and hacked a square out of the front of
+her gown. Then she sat and sewed as she had sewed once before, when her
+husband had lain motionless on the bed. Every now and then came small
+sounds of things being moved from down below, then a heavy fall and the
+sound of something being dragged.
+
+"How's et goin', Willie?" she called out.
+
+"'Tes all right," he called back. "I've put 'en in passage."
+
+The moon was near setting when the mask was finished, and she went to
+the top of the stairs with it in her hand.
+
+"There 'tes," she whispered. "I'll drop it down. Put it in your pocket
+and I'll change my gown. 'Tes time we were stirrin'."
+
+The mask fluttered down in the darkness, and she went back to her room
+and changed swiftly into the old serge.
+
+It was a ghastly journey to the old mine shaft, the heavy form of the
+dead man sagging between them. They dared have no light, and went
+stumbling over tussocks and ruts; but as both would have known the way
+blindfold, they found the shaft without difficulty. They scrambled up
+the sloping rubble of stones and tipped the body over the jagged hole in
+the side of the shaft, and after what seemed an interminable silence
+there came a thud from several hundred feet below them, then another, as
+though the body had rebounded, then all was stillness.
+
+Vashti leant up against the side of the shaft, as she had leant when
+James kissed her there, and shut her eyes; the sweat running down her
+brow had matted her lashes together into thick points, and the drops
+tickled her neck so that she put up her hand to it. Both she and the man
+were drawing the deep, hoarse breaths of exhaustion, and for a few
+minutes they rested in silence--then he spoke. "You must be comin' back
+along o' me now," he told her, "the dawn'll be showin' soon."
+
+"Yes, yes," cried Vashti, starting up, "us may meet some one going to
+bal, sure 'nough."
+
+"'Tes all right--I've got t'mask on. Come."
+
+He closed his fingers over her arm so harshly that she winced, and
+together they made their way back in the cold, bleak hush that preceded
+the autumnal dawn. Gradually, as they went, some glimmerings of what her
+life would be henceforth appeared to the woman. The fear of neighbours,
+the efforts to appear neutral, the memory of that slowly opening door,
+and the still thing by the fender, the consciousness of what lay at the
+bottom of the disused shaft; and, above all, the terrible reminder of
+her husband in the masked Willie--it would be like living with a
+ghost. . . .
+
+Once back at the cottage, he drew her within and let the door swing to
+behind them. She moved away to find a light, but he caught her.
+
+"Won't 'ee give me so much as a kiss, and me with red hands because of
+you?" he asked.
+
+She felt the mask brush her cheek, and broke away with a cry. She heard
+him laugh as she lit a candle, and turned towards him.
+
+"A black bridal!" he cried wildly; "did you think 'twas a black bridal?
+'Tes a red one, do 'ee hear?"
+
+"Willie," she begged him, "take off t'mask now we'm alone."
+
+"Aren't 'ee afeared?" he asked.
+
+"'Tes safe enough till mornin', and I do hate that mask more'n the
+devil. Take 'en off."
+
+"I'll take 'en off--to please you, lass."
+
+He seized the mask violently by the hem and ripped it away--and she saw
+it was her husband.
+
+"You fool!" he said slowly, following her as she backed away from him,
+her mouth slack with fear, her eyes staring, her whole being showing her
+as almost bereft of her senses. "You fool to think to fool me! You was
+quick enough to say I was dead; I'm not so easy killed, Vassie. No so
+easy killed as your lover was--just the carven'-knife between his
+shoulders when he was stoopin' down, that's all. He was fearful of
+lookin' at the dead man; he never knew the dead man was lookin' at he.
+You heard him fall, Vassie, and thought it was him movin' me----"
+
+"Put t'mask on," wailed Vashti, pressing her fingers against her eyes;
+"put t'mask on again, for the love o' God!"
+
+"There's been enough o' masks," he retorted grimly. "You've got to bear
+to see me now; me, not your lover that you've helped to tip over Wheal
+Zenna shaft. Eh, you fool, did 'ee think I didn' knaw? I've knawed all
+these months; I've seen 'ee meet 'en; I told 'ee I was going to stop the
+night over to Truro so as to catch 'ee together; I listened outside the
+house; I let 'ee think I was dead, and heard t' the plan you thought to
+make. Only half a man am I, wi' no mouth left to kiss with? I've an eye
+left to see with, and an ear to hear with, and a hand to strike with,
+and a tongue to teach 'ee with."
+
+"I'll tell on 'ee," said Vashti, "I'll tell the police on 'ee. Murderer,
+that's what you are."
+
+"I doan't think 'ee will, my dear. 'Tedn a tale as'll do you any good--a
+woman who cheats her husband, and tries to kill 'en, and helps to carry
+a body two miles over moor and tip 'en down shaft. And what have 'ee to
+complain on, I should like to knaw? When I wear t'mask you can pretend
+I'm Willie--handsome Willie. Willie who can kiss a maid and make a fine
+upstandin' husband. Willie was goin' to be me, why shudn' you think I
+was Willie? Do 'ee, my dear, if 'tes any comfort to 'ee."
+
+He slipped on the mask as he spoke and knotted the strings. The door had
+swung open, and the candle flame shook in the draught as though trying,
+in fear, to strain away from the wick. The steel-cold light of dawn grew
+in the sky and filtered into the room, showing all the sordid litter of
+it; the frightened woman, with a pink ribbon awry in her disordered
+hair, and the ominous figure of the masked man. He came towards her
+round the table.
+
+"'Tes our bridal night, lass!" he said. "Why do 'ee shrink away? Mind
+you that 'tes Willie speakin'! Don't let us think on James Glasson dead
+to the bottom 'o the shaft. I'm Willie--brave Willie who loves 'ee. . . ."
+
+As his arms came out to catch her, she saw his purpose in his eye, and
+remembered his words, "A red bridal, lass, a red bridal!"
+
+At the last moment she woke out of her stupor, turned, and ran, he after
+her. Across the little garden, down the moorland road, over heather and
+slippery boulders and clinging bracken, startling the larks from their
+nests, scattering the globes of dew. Once she tried to make for a
+side-track that led to Perran-an-zenna, but he headed her off, and once
+again she was running, heavily now, towards Wheal Zenna mineshaft. He
+was gaining on her, and her breath was nearly spent. Both were going
+slowly, hardly above a stumbling walk, as the shaft came in sight; the
+drawing of their breath sounded harsh as the rasping of a file through
+the still air. As she neared the shaft she turned her head and saw him
+almost on her, and saw the gleam of something in his uplifted hand. She
+gathered together all her will, concentrated in those few moments all
+the strength of her nature, determined to cheat him at the last. Up the
+rubble of stones she scrambled, one gave beneath her foot and sent her
+down, and abandoning the effort, she lay prone, awaiting the end.
+
+But Vashti's luck held--it was the man who was to lose. A couple of
+miners who had been coming up the path from Perran-an-zenna had seen the
+chase and followed hot foot, unnoticed by the two straining, frantic
+creatures, who heard nothing but the roaring in their own ears. They
+caught Glasson as he ran across the patch of grass to the shaft, and he
+doubled up without a struggle in their arms. Physical and mental powers
+had failed together, and from that day James Glasson was a hopeless
+idiot--harmless and silent. Vashti had won indeed.
+
+Admirable woman of affairs that she was, she took a good sleep before
+confronting the situation; then she made up her story and stuck to it.
+Willie's name was never mentioned, and his disappearance, so long
+threatened, passed as a minor event, swamped in the greater stir of
+Glasson's attempt to murder his wife. His madness had taken the one form
+that made Vashti safe--he had gone mad on secretiveness. How much he
+remembered not even she knew, but not a word could anyone drag from
+him. He would lay his finger where his nose should have been against the
+mask, and wag his head slyly. "Naw, naw, I was never one for tellin',"
+he would say. "James Glasson's no such fool that he can't keep 'enself
+to 'enself."
+
+He lived on for several years in the asylum, and Vashti, after the free
+and easy fashion of the remote West, took to herself another husband.
+She went much to chapel, and there was no one more religious than she,
+and no one harder on the sins and vanities of young women. One thing in
+particular she held in what seemed an unreasoning abhorrence--and that
+was a black silk gown.
+
+
+
+
+A GARDEN ENCLOSED
+
+
+Why Sophia Jervis went to Sant' Ambrogio she herself could not have
+told; to all outward seeming she merely drifted there, influenced by the
+many little urgencies of travel--the name seen casually in a guide-book
+and all unnoticed stamping itself on her brain; a chance mention of the
+place caught from some fellow-traveller, aided by the fact that the
+time-table had happened to open at the words "Sant' Ambrogio"--these
+were the trifles by which the power stronger than herself guided Sophia,
+with such cunning manipulation, such a fine lack of insistence even on
+the trifles, that she was unaware of any power at work. Also she was in
+that numbed condition which mercifully follows any great straining of
+emotion; even pain lay quiescent, though rather in a swoon than a
+sleep--a mere blankness from which it would struggle up more insistent
+than before.
+
+When Sophia alighted from the train at the nearest station for Sant'
+Ambrogio, and found the carriage she had ordered awaiting her, she was
+not in the mood to take joy in anything she saw; and yet, as the wiry
+little Tuscan horse trotted swiftly along she found herself, though not
+actually responding, at least offering no blank wall of resistance to
+the country around. To say country, as though a landscape consisted of
+mere earth and vegetation, is to make an incomplete statement; the
+quality of the light, the harmony or discordance where man's work meets
+Nature; and, above all, the intangible atmosphere, rarer and more vital
+than the actual enveloping air, that is the soul of a country--all these
+are of more potency than the position of a clump of trees or the
+existence of a particular crop. And nowhere is this atmosphere more
+elusive but more compelling than in Tuscany at spring time. Sophia was
+too deadened to respond, but she felt the echo of the thing, as it were,
+in much the same way that a stone-deaf person feels vibrations run
+through the floor and up his chair to his spine when certain chords are
+played on an organ.
+
+It is a drive of about five miles from the railway station to Sant'
+Ambrogio, and the road winds across the plain, sometimes rising and
+falling, always leading towards the rim of interfolding hills. In the
+vineyards the vines, naked at first glance, were just beginning to
+flower, and the rows of pollarded planes from which they were festooned
+showed a glory of young leaf. The maize was a couple of feet in height,
+and where the sun shone through the blades of it they looked like thin
+green flames. The heat was intense, and the air seemed stifled with the
+subtle smell of the dust that lay thickly over the road and powdered the
+grassy edges. The whole plain of Tuscany, apparently empty of human
+life, and consequently filled with a sense of utter peace, seemed a vast
+green platter brimming with a divine ether and held up towards the
+heavens by the steady hands of genii. Only Sophia's carriage showed like
+a black insect winging a course fast enough to itself but slow to the
+gaze of any being who, looking down on this dish held for the gods,
+could see the whole expanse of it at once.
+
+Everywhere was a sense of light--light steeping the sky, drenching the
+earth, and vibrating in the spaces between; light that gave a gracious
+blur to edges, that refracted from each subtle difference of plane and
+angle; light that permeated the very shadows so that they seemed
+semi-transparent. One with this sense of light, as body is one with
+soul, was the sense of colour--tender greens, at once pure and delicate;
+blues that paled to the merest breath or merged in a soft purple. The
+wideness of the view gave full value to the exquisitely fine curves
+which composed it--the curves of outline where hills and long sweeping
+slopes came against the sky, and the curves of surfaces, which
+inter-folded and led into each other like the waters of a vast lake
+where Time has stayed his foot and the spellbound water holds for ever
+the slopes and gradations blown into being by an arrested wind.
+
+Something--an emotion impersonal in itself yet arousing the personality
+in her--began to stir at Sophia's heart; then, as the carriage rounded a
+curve in the road and she received the shock of Sant' Ambrogio against
+the distant arch of the sky, sudden tears burned in her eyelids. Leaning
+back as well as she could against the uncompromising cushions, she gazed
+from between lids half-closed so as to narrow her vision on the one
+thing.
+
+Sant' Ambrogio is a little city of towers, some twenty of them, varying
+in height, all clustered together within the circling walls and pricking
+the sky like a group of tall-stemmed flowers in a garden. The town
+seems to have grown rather than been built on the crest of the only
+great hill for miles, but the ripples of the plain all converge towards
+it, leading the eye naturally up to this little crown of Tuscany. When
+they considered a tower a reminder of God, the ancients were not without
+a deeper spiritual foundation than they knew of; there is nothing of
+more direct psychological significance than line, and the many
+upward-springing lines of Sant' Ambrogio made it seem a thing so lightly
+poised as almost to be hanging from the heavens. A sense of something
+winged, which, though just resting on the earth, yet had plumes ready
+pricked for flight, impressed itself on Sophia's brain as she gazed.
+
+"This might have been beautiful for me if only I could still feel," was
+her swift thought, and she closed her eyes to let the gleam of light
+thus evoked sink into her mind. As she lay with her consciousness turned
+inwards, the deadened fibres of her began to stir; pain moved in its
+swoon, and, waking, took the keenest form of all--remembrance. Quite
+suddenly there flashed before her mental vision the loggia at the top of
+the old palace in Florence where she and Richard had said good-bye. She,
+who was to see the cords of passion grow slack, had there seen them
+stretched at their tensest, and the memory of it clutched at her heart
+with that pity for him which had kept her calm for his comfort. Now,
+mingled with it, was her own pain, which, at the time, her thought for
+him had overwhelmed. She saw again his face as she had seen it then--his
+thin, hawk-like profile dark and sharply-cut against the evening sky.
+With the memory of the pain that had gone through her at that moment,
+the power to feel stirred again, and it was that moment which struck at
+her anew. Her hands fastened suddenly on the hot sides of the carriage.
+
+"Oh, oh!" she said in the low voice that overwhelming sorrow can wring
+from the tongue, a soliloquy terrible in its unself-consciousness: "oh,
+oh! I can't bear it; I can't bear it!"
+
+As the horse slowed down at the beginning of the hill, the first
+poignancy of Sophia's reawakened feeling passed off, and she lay back,
+her hands laying palm upwards in her lap. With entry into the town came
+coolness; the ancient architects of the South knew better than to favour
+the broad streets planned by their descendants, and the narrow ways
+threaded so cunningly between the tall cliffs of houses were cool as
+shadowed streams. The greyness of the paved street fell like a
+suggestion of peace on Sophia after the searching sunlight of the plain,
+and the acuteness of her mental trouble subsided in response to the
+sense of physical ease; she had regained her grip of herself when the
+carriage drew up at the door of the Albergo Santo Spirito.
+
+The Albergo is a whitewashed building set round a courtyard; clean,
+unfretted by detail, full of dim, sweet spaces and gay domestic sounds.
+Sophia, aware of its charm, yet realized, on looking back afterwards,
+that she had also been aware that the inn was for her but the
+ante-chamber to some other place or state, as yet unrevealed. At the
+time she was only conscious that a sense of waiting held the calm air,
+though, if she had thought to ask herself the question, she would have
+said that life held nothing for which it could be worth her while to
+wait.
+
+After she had washed her face and hands in the bare little whitewashed
+room assigned to her, she went out to wander about the town till dinner.
+Motorists have not yet spoiled the population of Sant' Ambrogio, and,
+unmolested by any clamour for alms, Sophia passed along the shady
+street, where the black-haired, kerchiefed women, with their fine,
+rock-hewn faces and deep-set eyes, were knitting at their house doors.
+In the big, cool church, whose walls of banded black and white marble
+were quieted by the dim light, which just showed the dark gargoyles
+writhing like things of a dream over cornice and capital, Sophia knelt
+down, more to wrap herself in the peace of it than to pray. The very
+keenness of her cry for peace made her fail, and rising she wandered
+round the church till she came to the little chapel on whose walls the
+life of the town's saint, Beata, has been painted by some "Ignoto" who
+must have had a touch of genius. Sophia stood and gazed at the various
+scenes. Santa Beata, a child with corn-coloured hair lying along her
+back, running away from her resentful playmates, a set of curly-headed,
+sly, pinching, clear-eyed ragamuffins, such as those who quarrel and
+play in the streets of Sant' Ambrogio to this day. Santa Beata, wrapped
+in a cloud, conversing with the Beloved, while the children search the
+field vainly for her--the Beloved Himself being naïvely expressed by
+what looked like a small bonfire, but proved, in a strange medley of
+legend and Old Testament story, to be a burning bush. Santa Beata vowing
+herself to virginity and lying down on the narrow maiden bed she never
+left again; Santa Beata being visited by cherubim--little burning heads
+with awful eyes and folded wings--blown in at the door, while through
+the window showed the plain of Tuscany, pale silvery greens and blues,
+and in the distance Sant' Ambrogio himself, wafted on a cloud,
+approached the town to bear the saint away. By her side crouched her old
+mother, a knotted burnt-out woman with long wrists, just a literal
+transcript of many a prematurely old peasant mother before and since,
+her patient eyes seeing no one but her daughter.
+
+The more she looked at Santa Beata the more Sophia, who without thinking
+much about it had a realization of her own type, was struck by the
+resemblance between them. The red-brown hair folded about Sophia's head
+was darker than the locks that lay combed out over the saint's pillow,
+but the long oval of the faces, the girlish thinness of modelling and
+the narrow eyes set in heavily folded lids over rather prominent
+cheekbones, were the same; and the same, too, were the pointed chins and
+the delicately full lips tucked in at the corners like those of a child.
+Santa Beata had only been sixteen at the time of her death and Sophia
+was twenty-two, but the earlier ripening of the South made the apparent
+years swing level. Suddenly Sophia turned away, fierce envy of this
+untroubled girl who had finished long ago with the business of life
+surging in her heart. The memory of the past weeks seemed shameful and
+she herself not fit to hold intercourse with other girls--girls to whom
+things had not happened. In that moment Sophia knew she had lost her
+girlhood none the less surely for having saved her virginity, which
+three things had helped to guard--a clarity of pre-vision which bade her
+not give Richard even what he most desired, because it showed her that
+it must inevitably work him misery; the knowledge that he did not love
+her finely enough for such a gift to be fitting; and thirdly, the
+strongest thing of all--that no one who is accustomed, however
+imperfectly, to walk in the spiritual world, can lightly forgo the
+privilege. "I should have been afraid of losing touch," Sophia said long
+after, when she saw how that fear had constrained her. Now, looking at
+Santa Beata and realizing more vividly than ever before the power which
+virginity, as an idea, has always swayed, she felt she had forfeited, by
+her gain in experience, communion with those who were still virginal in
+soul as well as in body. On the steps of the church she passed some
+children playing--children still at the age when their heads are very
+big and round--and she remembered how, in a half-ruined castle Richard
+and she had visited together, two little peasant girls, clear-eyed,
+freckled young creatures, had taken them for husband and wife; and how
+one demanded shyly whether she had a baby at home. "No, I have no baby,"
+Sophia had said quietly, and the child replied: "What a pity! He would
+be sweet, your baby. . . ."
+
+"He would be sweet . . . my baby," thought Sophia, staring at the big
+round heads and little necks with that pang of yearning pity without
+which she could never look on children. It is a great truth that no
+woman has ever loved a man unless she has wanted to bear him a child,
+and the knowledge that she would never make this greatest of all
+offerings to Richard pressed on Sophia's heart. She was not one of those
+women who desire children as an end in themselves, to whom they would
+mean more than the husband; she was of those who long to bear them to
+the loved man because for him the utmost must be suffered and given;
+but for any other man it would be a thing unspeakable. Therefore she saw
+the best put out of life for her, and she hurried away from the children
+on the steps. Turning down a narrow lane she came to a door in the wall,
+and pushing it open she looked into what seemed a lake of green light,
+flecked with swaying rounds of sun and chequered with deeper green
+shadows--a garden run luxuriantly wild. Sophia stepped inside, and on
+her right, built half against and half on the wall, she saw a little
+ochre-washed house with faded blue shutters. Wandering on, she came to
+some lilacs in hard, red bud that hung over a well, and passing under
+the arch they made she found the further end of the garden. There a
+flight of uneven old steps led to the top of the wall, and she went up
+them. At the head of the steps, the wall--which was the outer
+fortification of the town--widened into a circle some twenty feet
+across, with a stone seat inset in the parapet that ran round it, and a
+sundial without a hand in the middle. Sophia stood still and drew a long
+breath--the place, in its look of eld and aloofness, was so exactly like
+some enchanted spot in a fairy-story. Crossing the flagstones she looked
+out over the miles of plain lying below her; here and there were patches
+of olive-trees, not growing in masses like a grey-green sea as they did
+further north where he and she had seen them, but planted far apart;
+from where Sophia stood they looked like nothing so much as clouds of
+dust puffing up from the ground.
+
+Sophia stretched herself long and slowly; then throwing off her hat, she
+laid her arms along the parapet and her sleek head down upon them.
+
+"Oh, I wish I hadn't come," she moaned. "I'm going to feel again. . . ."
+
+Her hand went out to the little hanging bag she carried and drew back
+again, then setting her mouth, she made herself unfasten the clasp and
+take out a bundle of letters which she laid on the seat beside her. As
+her eyes lit on the familiar writing a deadly nausea took hold of her,
+she felt physically sick and put her hand up to her throat to check its
+contraction. A letter from him always affected her in that way, so that
+she sat, sick and faint, unable to open it, and now these oft-read
+letters were as potent as ever. She noted with a vague, impersonal
+surprise that her hands were shaking, and folding them in her lap she
+sat still, forcing her thoughts, in spite of the pain it stirred in her,
+to go back over the past two weeks.
+
+
+II
+
+On looking back the whole time seemed set in a clear, sunlit atmosphere
+of its own as in a magic sphere where the present had always taken a
+more than normal clearness of edge and the past and future ceased to be.
+It struck her as curious that the prevailing note of those weeks should
+have been a sense of utter peace; not realizing that, peace being the
+thing his frayed nerves craved, she therefore supplied it, wrapping him
+round with it, living so in him and for him that while with him she
+received the impression of peace herself, only having sensations of her
+own when they were apart. His need--that was the great thing, and though
+she had not stopped to analyse what his need was, she had felt it was
+for soothing and rest.
+
+She was a writer, and on the money made by her first book she came to
+Italy, and in Florence she met him, a painter of some note, of whom she
+had vaguely heard in London. Although he was twenty years older than
+she, their minds chimed from the first; one of them had only to half say
+a thing for the other to understand it. At the beginning there was
+nothing between them but friendship, tinged--though for her quite
+unconsciously--with the element of sex. For him, he had since told her,
+things were very different from the moment he met her; to the average
+woman the term "physical attraction" is so meaningless that she stared
+in uncomprehension when he told her how profoundly she had troubled him
+from the first. For this girl, whose pulses had never been fluttered to
+quickness, and who, though in imagination she could project herself into
+passion, always shrank from any sign of it in actuality, was reserved
+the doubtful compliment of stirring the passionate side of the man's
+nature more violently than it had ever been before. He kept the ugly
+thing well hidden, and she never guessed at it until her own pity and
+trust and affection made her unwittingly tempt him beyond endurance.
+Pity, allied to the intellectual pleasure they took in each other, moved
+her first, for he was unhappy, and she, too, had the habit of pain. She
+remembered the first whole day they had taken together; how they climbed
+up to San Miniato and found a field in which they lay and talked, and
+how he came back with her to the thirteenth-century palace beside the
+Arno where she lodged. She had a little room with a painted ceiling,
+and the infant Bacchus and adoring nymphs disporting themselves in
+bas-relief on the mantelpiece, a room looking over the brown fluted
+roofs of Florence; but the great loggia where he and she sat faced the
+Arno, and they had coffee and cigarettes and watched the swift blue
+night fall over Florence while the swarm of lights waked broken
+reflections in the swirling water. On the loggia they exchanged a brief
+mention of their troubles, both commonplace enough; hers a childhood
+with parents who perpetually quarrelled, the mother a hard worldly woman
+who eventually took to drugs, and a father who had at last left for
+another woman the home which was so unbearable; while Sophia herself had
+only shaken off the horrors of it and earned her own living, barely
+enough at that, a few months earlier.
+
+Richard's trouble was his wife, who seemed not unlike Sophia's mother.
+He was both too kindly and too weak--for his was one of those
+temperaments that shrink from any display of unpleasantness--to have
+mastered her brutally and for good--and strong enough to go on living in
+the same house with her because, although she made his life a weariness,
+she was an intensely conventional woman to whom the position of a wife
+separated from her husband before all the world would have been
+intolerable. Between him and Sophia the fact that they both knew the
+terror of not being able to slip out even to post a letter without
+dreading what they might find on going back, made a bond of sympathy.
+
+Sophia, ignorant as she was, could not be a young, and, for some people,
+a beautiful woman, without having learned a few stray scraps of wisdom,
+and one was that when a man began to confide his troubles to her it was
+as well to see less of him. But Sophia let herself drift, because she
+liked being with the man so much; and also the fact that he was from her
+own place, that the relentless gods had brought him to Florence to meet
+her, and would, in due course, send them both back to where, henceforth,
+they would know each other, gave her a curious feeling of being
+entrapped in some web too powerful to break. She never blamed him or let
+him blame himself for what inevitably happened.
+
+"Sophia, my sweet," he wrote her in one of the letters she now picked up
+at random. "I didn't deliberately set to work to make love to you. I
+knew your beauty inflamed me and your wit delighted me. But when we
+first met I thought we should just see each other a few times and
+quarrel and laugh, and I should revel in your looks and no harm done.
+And now little Miss Jervis has turned into Sophia, and either I must
+have Sophia for ever and ever mine, or I ought to have stuck to an
+elderly uncle line and come away with no tears for her and no
+self-loathing for me, and no need to lie and shuffle and make her share
+in the lies and shuffles for the future."
+
+"You'll never do that, dear," thought Sophia, laying the letter down.
+"When I have to come back to London we'll meet honestly, or not at
+all. For there's nothing on earth that's worth living in a sea of lies
+for. . . ." She remembered how he had asked her if she would come and
+see his wife, so that he and she might meet on an accepted footing,
+and how the doubtful taste of the proposition had jarred her. He
+argued that because they would be honestly "playing the game" by his
+wife, Sophia need not mind the meeting; his knowledge of women was
+curiously insensitive and blunt, and he had no conception of how
+impossible it would be for Sophia to sit quietly and see another woman
+doing the honours of his house. In this he was not entirely to blame,
+for Sophia so contrived to hoodwink him that he never quite knew she
+loved him, certainly never knew the force of her love. He thought of
+her as a reckless, innocent child stung to lavish giving out of
+affection and pity, and so, to begin with, she had been. The woman
+Sophia kept up what had become a pose, not only from the pride of a
+maiden, but also because some instinct told her that sooner or later
+he would rather be able to think she had not given more.
+
+For the first few days either of them would have declared that all was
+well and there was no danger, yet each day marked a distinct step
+further on, a definite phase passed through. Sometimes they wandered
+about Florence, in the Boboli and the Cascine gardens, or upon the windy
+heights of Fiesole; sometimes he hired a queer little carriage with
+swift, bedecked horses, and they drove far out into the country, not
+getting home till night. The day before the revelation came was one of
+the most exquisite they spent together, one of which Sophia could still
+hardly bear to think. Leaving the carriage at a little village, they
+wandered on foot into a lovely valley, and laughed because he called it
+"old mastery," pointing out the Turneresque effect of a ruined castle
+set high amidst a mass of olives which were being blown pale against it.
+Presently they came to a stream that stormed down the valley and fell
+into seven successive pools; deep, still pools, as green as ice, with
+sunlit bubbles sent driving through them by the impetus of the clear
+arch of descending water. Beside the largest pool, on a smooth grey slab
+of rock screened by the over-hanging cliff, they sat and ate their lunch
+of bread and hard-boiled eggs and wine, and the sun shone on the glossy
+red-brown hair so cunningly folded about Sophia's head, and shone in the
+depths of her grey eyes and on her tanned skin. When they had finished
+she lay a little below him, closing her eyes to feel the blown spray
+drift against her lids, and she never knew till he told her that his
+hand had been on her hair the whole time, and never knew till later
+still that she had been loving him even then. The day passed in a
+perfect harmony of speech and silences, and all the time Sophia was
+giving--giving peace and mothering and delight, giving the sky and the
+earth and the very air they breathed. Only some one who has ever made a
+gift of a day knows the joy that it is--how each golden moment,
+conscious of its own beauty, hangs poised like a held breath; how the
+sun and wind and flowers and the upward curves of the supporting earth
+are all parts of the gift, making the giver a god who pours out creation
+for his friend.
+
+The next day they took train to Pisa on a more sophisticated errand,
+since he had undertaken to make a sketch of the tower for a friend who
+was "sheeking" some Italian backgrounds. Sophia wandered happily about
+the town while he did so, and then they met for lunch in the garden of
+an old inn.
+
+"I'm afraid of to-day," he told her, "because it can't be as perfect as
+yesterday. Nothing could--that's the worst of a day like that."
+
+"I'll _make_ it as perfect," Sophia replied, and she kept her word. She
+still had no idea she loved him, she only knew that she wanted to shield
+and protect him, that she was happy with him and felt the power to make
+him happy, and that she trusted him utterly. Without realizing it, she
+tempted him cruelly by her very trust, and that day her calm
+recklessness of speech, her gaze that meeting his so straight and
+untroubled, disturbed him so profoundly, were too much for him.
+
+"Take off your glove," he said suddenly.
+
+Sophia's notions of love had been culled from books, and she considered
+it inseparable from what she termed "thrills." How was she to know that
+a woman, especially what is called a "nice" woman, can love without the
+promptings of the pulses? Because she felt no sensuous "thrill" as the
+tone of command, it never occurred to her to think she could be in love,
+wherein she was making another common literary mistake--that of thinking
+that every woman enjoys being mastered. Sophia found her joy in ready
+compliance with the demands of the beloved, not in arranging set scenes
+of clashing wills and conciliations. Taking off her glove, she gave him
+her hand.
+
+"When I say that I want to kiss you now," he said, "it doesn't mean in
+the way it would have, even a day or two ago. I told you then you
+affected me . . . but now it would be because I love you."
+
+Sophia's hand moved slightly in his.
+
+"Yes," she said hesitatingly, "in a way--of course. I know you're very
+fond of me--and all that."
+
+"In _the_ way," he returned, "and I'm not fit to hold your hand. D'you
+know what the life of an average man is like--especially of a man in my
+circumstances?"
+
+"You mean--women?"
+
+"Yes--bought women," he said brutally. "Does it make a lot of difference
+to you?"
+
+Sophia, refusing to let her mind so much as dwell with any effort of
+realization on his confession, closed her hand firmly over his.
+
+"It doesn't make any difference. Nothing does. If I could look after
+you--if you were free to be looked after--you wouldn't have to go to
+other women any more. I care about you more than about any man I've ever
+met."
+
+"And I don't care about you more than any woman I've ever met. You're
+unique and you're you, but I've been in love a good many times. And
+there's always the big one I've told you about. I feel I've so little
+left to give, and yet--by God, Sophia! I _could_ give to you, even
+battered old I!"
+
+"I'd be such a wife to you," said Sophia proudly, clenching her free
+hand, "that I should fear no other woman on earth."
+
+"And you wouldn't need to . . . Sophia!" he cried. "How you would give!"
+
+"And we mustn't, either of us," said Sophia, and to soften the speech
+she bent her head swiftly and kissed the hand she held.
+
+"My dear . . . !" he said huskily, and Sophia led the way out of the
+garden.
+
+That night, after he had left her at her shabby old palace, he went back
+to his hotel and sat up, smoking heavily, most of the night. Towards
+morning, he wrote her a letter--the first in order of those beside her
+on the seat. She took it up now and read it once again:
+
+"Sophia, Sophia," it ran, "I'm in the depths of misery. What have I done
+to you and what is going to come of it all? When this time is over? When
+we're back in London and out of lotus land? You know--stolen interviews
+and weeks without meeting, and that old and awful struggle between the
+'game' at home and my inclinations abroad. And I've hardly written so
+far when I'm feeling better. Dear, what does all that matter? I feel the
+shadow of that coming gloom on me already, but how glorious the
+sunshine's been for me! I'm not going to think or worry--yet. What will
+happen when I'm back in London must happen, but if I had you by me now I
+shouldn't care a damn for that. I feel stupid and stockish. There are
+such millions of things I want to say to you, Sophia--and they're mostly
+middle-aged things. That's the worst of it. Warnings I feel I ought to
+give you about myself and my temper and my terrible ease in giving way
+to adverse circumstances. I've told you I'm not big enough or strong
+enough for you to care for me except as a useful old pal. You'll find me
+out and hate me. All sorts of ghastly bogies are waiting to jump out at
+me. They'll get me. But you, dear, you gracious, reckless woman-child,
+whatever you think of me in the future you can't rob me of to-day and
+yesterday and all those days, and especially to-day. Things like that
+are too sacred to write about, almost to think of. And we're deadly
+honest with each other, that's a great thing. The more I dream of you
+the more I want you here, now. I simply can't write, I've been nearly as
+high this afternoon as I shall ever get, perhaps quite--and one has to
+pay for that. Oh, my dear; please God, you'll never pay for me! Sophia,
+you're very dear to me. Richard. You poor child--you glorious woman!"
+
+The next day both fell from their high altitude. They had driven to a
+little half-deserted town, a white, dead, staring, crumbling place--a
+place of blind windows and glaring silences. Both felt a sense of
+tension, and leaving the carriage they wandered round the walls, and
+climbing over a broken gap sat down on a grassy spur of the hillside,
+with their backs to the terrible little town. As usual, by now, they
+talked about themselves, chiefly of him, and he told her that though
+several women had been fond of him as a friend and liked to "mother" him
+even as she did, no one of them had cared for him in another way or
+kissed him as a lover kisses. He slipped an arm round her shoulders as
+he spoke. Sophia was as ignorant as an infant of what kissing like a
+lover might be, and in a rush of pity and affection she turned her face
+up towards him.
+
+"Oh, it isn't as if we were going on afterwards like this," she said;
+"this is just a bit cut out of life for me to give you. It's taking
+nothing from her, she doesn't want to give you anything. And I want to
+make this bit as splendid as I can for you."
+
+He felt her shoulder touch his as she leant her warm young body towards
+him, he saw the glory of her eager eyes and mouth, and he caught her to
+him, crushing her fiercely. . . . Sophia wondered if this awful kiss were
+ever going to stop; she had never known there was such a way of
+kissing--a hard pressure, a sucking of her very soul--and she was filled
+with horror under it. When he loosed her she turned and buried her face
+against the wall. For a while they sat in silence, then she saw him
+kissing her coat, her sleeve, then her head was pressed back against
+the wall and his mouth came to hers again. She stayed passive, dazed. In
+silence they went to the carriage and drove away, and almost silently
+they parted. Sophia spent the night in a misery of shame, he spent it in
+mingled excitement and remorse: fearful lest he had aroused in her a
+passion which would need to be satisfied at the cost of social disaster.
+
+Next day they talked of nothing in particular in a desultory way and did
+not refer to what had happened until, wandering through one of the
+wooded mountain slopes beyond Florence, they came on a tiny sportsman's
+hut with a roof of red-fluted tiles and a huge chimney. Sophia peeped
+and went in; he followed. Within, the hut was only about five feet
+square; flame-coloured leaves had drifted in through the open doorway
+and lay piled on the hearth; on the wall were some names rudely scrawled
+in charcoal.
+
+"How did you sleep?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"I didn't. I was thinking what I should say to you to-day."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Never, never again be like you were yesterday. I didn't know it was
+like that. It was dreadful. I can't bear it."
+
+He took her hands and held them.
+
+"Never, I promise you. I had an awful night. I didn't know what to think
+or wish or do. Let's get out of this hut. It's too small."
+
+The rest of the day they spent happily under the trees, and it seemed to
+her that the sense of rest and peace was stronger than if it had never
+been broken. Very soon came their last day together. They drove to a
+deserted castle on a hill, called Castello di Luna, and as they went
+Sophia turned to him.
+
+"To-day's the last," she said, "and I'm going to make it the most
+beautiful present of all to you. We'll pretend, like children. We'll
+pretend there's only to-day in the world, that there are no obligations
+beyond here and now, that we are happy people--we'll pretend."
+
+He gathered her in his arms and kissed her again and again fiercely, but
+not with the abandonment which had frightened her before, and her heart
+turned heavy within her and she knew she loved him. They stayed till
+evening in the neglected garden of the old castle, left discreetly alone
+by Lucia and Amadea, the little peasant custodians who lived with a
+beetle-browed mother and a score of younger children in the tower over
+the gate. It was Lucia who ventured an opinion as to Sophia's baby, and
+Sophia emptied her pocket-bottle of lavender water over the little
+girls' blue-check handkerchiefs and told Richard to give them five
+_lire_ apiece against the day when they should have babies of their own.
+
+Then, in the quiet old garden, he and she sat and talked and were
+silent, and, with her arms round him, she drew his head on to her
+breast, and they played the dangerous game of saying what they would do
+when they were married.
+
+"Your baby would be sweet!" he quoted to her. "Would you dare even that
+for me, Sophia?"
+
+"Would I not?" she breathed.
+
+"Oh, I can't give up hoping it may all become possible!" he cried at
+last, but she shuddered a little. "Don't," she said, "it's building on a
+grave."
+
+But her heart ached at the sweetness of the vision. She never felt any
+temptation to fling her cap over the windmill for him, partly because it
+is very true that "_Les bonnes femmes n'ont pas ces tentations-là_,"
+partly because of the much greater things she wanted to give--a hearth
+that would always warm him, a pillow that would always rest him, and on
+the hearth a cradle--and these were things that he could not come at
+through a back door.
+
+They said good-bye on the loggia in Florence, and that night he left for
+Leghorn. He wrote to her in the train; and bringing her thoughts back to
+the present by an effort, Sophia picked up the letter now.
+
+    "Sophia, Sophia," she read, "is it only you who pay? My sweet, I
+    hope you will never feel what I felt as I went home. The bare
+    truth is I am a coward and a cad, besides being a fool. I began
+    it, and if I didn't know where it was going to lead to I was a
+    fool to play with fire, and I was a cad to go on. Dear, I'd
+    rather go through years of anything you feel than ten minutes of
+    what I'm feeling. But I've got to stick it henceforth when I'm
+    not buoyed up with your presence. It's been so gorgeous, you've
+    been so heavenly, that I'd do it all again. But now besides the
+    awful want of you there's the clear vision of what I am, and
+    it's hideous. I haven't the pluck or the passion to carry you
+    right off before all the world whether you would or no, nor the
+    sense and the honesty and the decency to be just friends with
+    you. Oh, Sophia, I hate myself for it, and hate myself most for
+    being glad, deep down, that I _did_ get what you gave me. I
+    can't find anything solid or honest in me anywhere, except my
+    feeling for you and my joy in our time together, and I've no
+    right to that. This is cruelly unlike what I've preached to you
+    about possessing for ever past joys. I suppose I shall forget my
+    own wickedness and even come to regret that I didn't take
+    more--take _all_ by force or guile--for perhaps, after all, it's
+    better to be a downright brute than a half-and-halfer. If so,
+    shan't I be even more unworthy of all you've given me, you
+    sweet, foolish, lavish child? If you were here now, Sophia, I
+    shouldn't be feeling all this. You'd only have to smile at me
+    and I should get back my pride in having won what I have won.
+    But without you I seem to see more clearly what I am. My sweet,
+    wouldn't you be happier if you saw me so, too? All I feel now is
+    a desperate need of you, your hands and your hair and your eyes
+    and your mouth and your voice and your wit and your dear
+    mothering. And next month? Secret meetings and concerted lies,
+    and all the rest of the filthy game? And I drag you into it all
+    because I want you and because my affairs make it necessary to
+    do it or part for good. I'm trying to look at it clearly and see
+    all the worst--misunderstandings, preoccupation, work, moods,
+    fears, all the things that are going to prevent a wretched thing
+    like me from being where he wants to be and doing what he could
+    for you. I wish from the bottom of my soul the train would smash
+    up and kill me to-night. Oh, if there were only the past few
+    weeks to consider it would be simple enough. I've had such a
+    time as I've never had before, and you made it. You said you
+    would and you did. You've given me such a time as a woman never
+    gave a man in our circumstances before. But there's you and the
+    world and the future to consider. It's very small moral
+    satisfaction to me that I didn't deliberately set to work to
+    make love to you. It grew, as you showed me more and more how
+    adorable you were, how gracious and desirable and generous and
+    trusting, you dear nymph of the woods, virgin-mother, friend and
+    lover and comforter. It's no good going on like this, man's a
+    self-deceiving kind of brute, and perhaps before long all the
+    glory of the days of you, you, you, will fit in quite
+    comfortably and the poison of self-hatred cease to hurt. I stop
+    to-morrow night at the Grand Hotel, Livorno. Will you write to
+    me there, sweet? If I could really be sorry for it all I should
+    like myself better. But I can't. I can only hate myself for
+    glorying in what I got by such means. Write to me--I'm
+    frightened and alone.
+        "RICHARD."
+
+    "My sweet," the next letter began, "your letter has come. It's
+    what I knew it would be, so brave and sweet and good that I can
+    only wonder at you all the more. It soothes and heals and cheers
+    me, and once more I am drinking your life-blood and using your
+    youth and splendour to live on. Is there anything you wouldn't
+    do for my comfort? When I fell asleep this morning about dawn I
+    dreamt of you and woke all hot and frightened, because I thought
+    I heard you moaning, a horrible, strangled moan. Did I? Oh, my
+    dear, I hope not. I can't get at the truth all these miles away.
+    You see, that brave, wise letter of yours might have meant a
+    huge effort of the will and brain, and not be a direct outflow
+    from the you that gave me those days. Shall I ever see that you
+    again, I wonder? Your letter's like the touch of your lips on my
+    forehead--cooling, healing, bracing and most sweet. Dear, you're
+    not only all I've told you before that you are, but you're wise
+    as well. Oh! child, girl, most wonderfully woman-wise. My sweet,
+    what you could do for me if only we could belong to each other.
+    Sophia, I'm trying hard to knock it into my head that we can't,
+    but I can see now that the trouble's going to be, not remorse or
+    anxiety, but just the big, aching lack of you, and not of your
+    beauty so much as of your tenderness and wit and your weak,
+    clinging strength. Oh, Sophia, I'm writing a lot of rot, but it
+    isn't rot really. I mean, you understand. D'you remember the day
+    when you said you'd exactly fitted that long body of yours into
+    the ground? That's how I feel when I rest my mind on yours, only
+    it's the ground and not me that does the shaping."
+
+The next letter was from Marseilles. The last page, which Sophia read
+through twice, ran thus:
+
+    "So good-bye to it all, but not good-bye to Sophia. Dear, I
+    believe very strongly in spiritual converse (I can't find the
+    word I want for it). But don't you feel that my arms _are_ round
+    you? I can feel your head on my shoulder and your hair against
+    my cheek. I mean that it isn't just cheating oneself with vain
+    imaginations to meet like that. I mean to go on thinking of you
+    hard and the vision soothes, not aggravates, the longing, and I
+    will meet you like that at our Castello di Luna. But oh, my
+    dear, I wish it were really true _now_! There is so much I want
+    from you and must go on wanting. Come to me in thought, my
+    sweet, until we can see and touch and hear each other again. We
+    will always say to each other whatever is in our hearts and
+    minds. And so I'm just starting to go back--Sophia, I can't say
+    'home.' Home means what you are. Oh, I thought I should go back
+    gaily and take it all up, but it makes me sick with dread. I
+    ought never to have got out of harness. It's better to go on
+    till one drops than to taste freedom and have to give it up.
+    Sweet, your eyes and your mouth and your hair are with me
+    always. Don't call me a materialist, and say it's only your
+    body's beauty that I value. You're sweet to me through and
+    through. Oh, Sophia, come often to meet me in Monte Luna. And
+    there is Lucia to say sweet, impossible things to make us dream.
+    _Ti bacio gl'occhi._
+        "RICHARD."
+
+Sophia opened the last sheet of paper. It enfolded three primroses, and
+on it was written "_Primavere per la Primavera_." She looked at them a
+moment, then wrapped them up again and put letters and flowers back in
+the bag. Behind her the sun was near to setting, and the blaze of it lay
+full on the towers, making them a bright tawny-grey against the sky of
+deep steel-colour, and turning to tongues of flame the tufts of yellow
+gillyflowers--Santa Beata's own plant--that sprang out here and there
+from the sheer masonry. Some jackdaws flew out of the nearest belfry,
+and circled round it, black amid the brightness. Sophia sprang up and
+walked to and fro.
+
+"I shall feel again, if I stay here. Unbearably. I wish I hadn't come.
+I'll go away to-morrow. _Richard, Richard, Richard!_"
+
+But on the morrow, instead of leaving Sant' Ambrogio, Sophia moved from
+the inn to the little house in the walled garden. Not until she was
+installed there did she discover that though the house was comparatively
+modern, the garden was the very one where Santa Beata had seen her
+visions and dreamed her dreams.
+
+
+III
+
+The first morning she spent in the place in the wall, writing him a
+letter.
+
+    "My dear boy," she wrote, "by the time you get this you will be
+    back in the thick of things. If I have given you anything that
+    will help you to go on it's all I want. You must just look on
+    this past month as a holiday snatched from the lap of the gods,
+    and realize, what you're always telling me, that what one's once
+    had one has for always. For there can't be any more, and I'm not
+    even going to write to you. Oh, I feel as though I were failing
+    you in not writing, but I always meant not to, even when you
+    were making plans about it. Letters keep up an atmosphere, and
+    that's better not. Yes, I know what you mean about spiritual
+    meeting. I'm sort of fused with you as I write. I'm not here--or
+    even in the future with you--as you read, for I've pulled the
+    future to me and made it now, now, now, and I'm with you, in the
+    present, as you read this, and I'm drawing your tired head to
+    me, and I feel the very way the thick stuff of your coat arches
+    up under the pressure of my arm. I am you in every bit of me as
+    I write; not yours, but you. But, for the future, in that way
+    only. I felt nothing wrong in all I gave you here, because you
+    needed what I had to give and we were hurting nobody. I'm sure
+    that's the great thing, to hurt nobody, and that includes you
+    and even me. It would be hurting both of us if we were to go on
+    writing because it would keep it all up and we shouldn't be
+    able to meet again just as friends, and if we make the break we
+    shall; we are strong--or weak--enough for that. Richard, let
+    your answer to this be a long one, won't you? Try and tell me
+    everything I shall want to hear in it because it will be all I
+    shall have to live on. Dear child, take care of yourself, don't
+    overwork and don't forget that open windows are the best thing
+    for that throat of yours. Don't let things at home worry you
+    more than you can help, and always remember there's no need to
+    worry about me at all.
+        "SOPHIA."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the time that she was waiting for the answer to her letter Sophia
+lived at tension, finding relief in the making of her last gift to
+him--for she wrote him a poem, and in spite of the deliberate placidity
+of the thing it eased the fierce pressure of her thoughts in the way
+that only creation can. Sophia was soon to enter on her greatest
+strength of feeling. Richard felt more intensely at the time than at
+looking back, when his emotions were stale to him, and he marvelled at
+the strength they had had; Sophia never knew till the actual hour was
+past what the depth of her emotion was. Partly this was that in their
+weeks together the need for calm and clarity on her side was so great,
+that when with him her being was absorbed in his and so her own feelings
+had no room for conscious movement until afterwards. There are times,
+when affairs are at the crest, when, by its intensity, sensation seems
+numb, but all the while each little thing seen by both inward and
+outward vision is registered on the mind with peculiar sharpness of
+edge; only to be realized when the wave of incident has passed, and even
+then a period of numbness may intervene before realization enters the
+soul, deep-driven by the intolerance of memory. Sophia was living in
+that tense numbness now, but through it external things made their
+potency felt. She grew to know every corner of the little town, and
+during the day she would wander several times into the cool dim church,
+to breathe the silence and the peace of it. And "Richard . . ." she
+prayed, "Richard . . ." She knew of no definite thing to ask for him, she
+could not pray he might be free, and happiness was an illusion she had
+learned to dread; she could only turn his name over and over in her
+mind, lift it up, hold it up and out with all the strength of her will.
+Still, in spite of this focusing of her life--a focusing that was to
+grow even more passionate in long, hot London months to come--there was
+no unity about it, little sights and impulses fraught with value, yet
+failed to show any coherent reason; some great cord that could bind
+everything together was still not gathered up.
+
+One afternoon she wandered out of the town by the big gates, and turning
+to look back at the sweeping wall she saw a narrow path that girdled its
+base, rising and falling over the rippling flanks of the hill. As she
+looked at it some dim memory stirred in her--she remembered having read
+in her childhood that in olden days a man might own as much land as he
+could encompass in one walk, returning to his starting-point. The
+root-instinct of enclosure was in the idea, and Sophia had a sudden
+fancy to make the unconscious town her own by the old method. Without
+thinking of much beyond the physical act, she started along the little
+track noting idly yet definitely the look of the stones along the
+spreading base of the fortifications and the sickles of light made by
+the sky's reflection on the curving-over grass blades on the other side
+of the path. She went slowly and when she had half-girdled the town she
+lay down on a smooth slope, and, locking her hands behind her head,
+gazed over the fertile plain. On an almond-tree near a nightingale began
+to sing; against the first pink of sunset she saw his little body as a
+slightly ruffled blot. She let her mind fill with the song so that it
+became the accompaniment to her thought, and slowly the first glimpse of
+comprehension began for her.
+
+First she fell to wondering what the plain would look like seen from
+above--from the point of view of God. "The human mind, looking from
+such a standpoint, would have to concentrate on one thing at a time
+if it wanted to attain any idea but a general vagueness," thought
+Sophia. "One would have to focus on mountain-ranges, or rivers, or
+railway-lines. . . ."
+
+She lay imagining it, seeing how the shining network of railroads formed
+a web over the roundness of the world; thinking how it would seem to
+this poised mind a mere web and nothing more. A meaningless web; instead
+of thousands of roads each leading to a different destination and intent
+on its own business. But if the mind, as well as the point of vision,
+were that of a god, then each line would be fraught with its
+individuality--and not merely because each led somewhere; there was more
+to it than that--Sophia struggled towards it. . . . A different time had
+seen the making of each railroad, different men worked at the making of
+them, men with souls which had thought and felt as they laid the steel
+ribbons on which other souls would be rushed along without guessing
+anything of the thoughts and feelings. And yet, surely those emotions
+could not die. . . . Perhaps, one evening, a workman, straightening his
+back and drawing his hand over his wet forehead, had looked towards the
+sunset, and in the vague irrational way some scenes are registered on
+the mind for always, that aspect of sky and darkening hedge against it
+would stay in his memory, oddly mixed with the feel of the wet drops on
+his hand and the easing of the muscles across his back, to be recalled
+by any similar moment for the rest of his life. If so, how steeped with
+humanity those few yards of steel would be! And, apart from the emotions
+connected with it by the sense of sight, what an important part the
+railroad must play to the men and their wives and children to whom it
+meant food and fire! And then, the lines finished, each train going over
+them would pile the human associations thicker yet, heaping up all the
+feelings, according to their intensity, of the people in the trains. A
+god, looking down, instead of merely seeing the network of steel, would
+see as well all the human emotions still clinging to the places where
+they were lived--a mystical web woven over tangible things, growing
+deeper with the years. "Which," said Sophia, the first gleam of personal
+light flashing through her, "is why walking round a place makes it yours
+if you do it for that. My seeing of this path will be here always, I'm
+making a belt of consciousness round the town. It's my city! My city set
+upon a hill!"
+
+She scrambled to her feet and for a moment leant her cheek against the
+rough stone of the wall, then she went on round the town and in at the
+great gate.
+
+That evening she sat in Beata's garden, finishing her poem to Richard.
+Elate as she was, she still had no hint of what her discovery meant, or
+of how the garden would bring the final revelation to her, but even then
+she felt the soothing influence that held it and her as she wrote out
+her poem. It went to him without a title, but for herself she headed it:
+
+    TO THE FORBIDDEN LOVER
+
+    That time I gave you half-a-moon of days
+    In the dear Southern land of many moods
+    She lured us up among her hill-ringed ways
+    Far from the ordered gardens, far from where,
+    Sacring the sky, the Christs hang on their roods.
+    We saw the sea-grey slopes of olive-trees
+    Blown foamy-pale, from the cloud-ridden air
+    Fell the swift shadows on those leafy seas.
+
+    To lakes of hardened lava we would come,
+    Scarred, as by whirlpools, with cold crater-rings
+    Or packed in furrows, like mammoth slugs grown numb
+    At some disaster of creation's dawn--
+    A burnt-out lunar landscape of dead things.
+    And there some kindlier whim of path would show
+    Rocks that might echo to a piping Faun,
+    Or hide a huntress nymph with spear and bow.
+
+    Pan-haunted is that valley where we lay
+    (Lay, till lulled senses slid into a dream)
+    Watching sun-wrought reflections of ripples play
+    And break in shining scales through that green pool,
+    Deepest of seven strung on a ribbon of stream
+    That seven times wings the air in curving flight.
+    And from the gleaming arc blew spray to cool
+    Lids that were rosy films against the light.
+
+    A hut with fluted roof we found one morn,
+    A fairy-story hut; an empty shrine
+    Haply once dear to comrades less forlorn,
+    For on the walls were names of lover-folk.
+    And there we ate our bread and drank our wine,
+    A Sacrament of Fellowship; only dregs
+    We poured to envious gods, and laughing broke
+    Thrush-like, against a stone, our brown-shelled eggs.
+
+    Dearest that castle set in sun and winds
+    Remote as though upon Olympus hung,
+    Yet with a human tang that drew our minds
+    To gentle restful things; an open door,
+    Warm hearths, silk-curtained beds, and shutters flung
+    Wing-wide to let us watch the stars pulsating.
+    Now through closed slats their light must bar the floor
+    And on the hearth the ash be grey with waiting.
+
+    And when for daily troubles you make dole
+    (Now that the miles have set you far away)
+    Then to our little castle come in soul.
+    There, where the two girl-children thought us wed,
+    There, surely, I need never say you nay;
+    But, where the hollow curves between the breast
+    And rounded shoulder, draw your weary head,
+    And, when the day's lid droops, there give you rest.
+
+    The weakness of you I can hold to me,
+    For since at the world's door the babes unborn
+    Must vainly beat for us; oh, I will be
+    A Virgin-Mother to the child in you. . . .
+    And comradeship is good when sweetly sworn,
+    Being no less tender for its commonplace
+    And for its lack of fetters no less true--
+    Take what you may, my dear, and with good grace.
+
+It was Sophia's first and only love-letter, and she sent it when she got
+back to England, as a summons to that friendship in which she could have
+given as richly as in love; and for which, although he had planned it so
+eagerly, he had too much knack of passion and too little depth of
+feeling.
+
+
+IV
+
+The following evening his letter came, and Sophia, noting the thinness
+of it compared with those others she had had, knew how his need of her
+had slackened. She took the letter to her refuge on the wall and sat for
+a while unable to read it, the old nausea upon her. Then she took a firm
+grip of herself and opened the envelope. As she read it seemed as though
+a great blow were struck at her heart. She knew she had expected this,
+yet the actuality was worse to bear than she had thought.
+
+Richard laughed at her intention of not writing, and himself wrote her
+little over a page. He began, as usual, "Sophia, my sweet," and made a
+brief reference to his wife--"She has not had a bad phase yet--and
+things are quiet, but what is that when one wants sympathy and passion?
+I feel I am caught up in the old life again and something seems to have
+gone snap in me. Write to me--for you will write--to my club." The
+assurance of his tone jarred Sophia, but what hurt her cruelly was his
+brevity. The fact that she had wanted this letter to be a long one had
+honestly seemed to him of no importance when set against the fact that
+he was not in the mood to write it; for he was the creature of his moods
+and consequently unheeding of those which other folk might wish to have
+indulged.
+
+Sophia read the letter over and over, and then quite suddenly felt she
+could not look at it again, and for the first time since the whole
+affair began, she cried. Crouched on the seat she hid her face while the
+sobs tore at her and the tears ran over her crossed wrists, and she
+heard the sound of her own sobs coming to her from a great distance.
+After a while she sat up, dried her wet face and made herself confront
+the new aspect of things. She saw that up till now she had not been
+wholly unhappy, for she had had the past. If he were going to prove
+unworthy the past would no longer be hers to glory in but would become a
+time of shame. If--as prevision showed her--she was to know him as unfit
+for what she had given, the giving would cease to be her happiness. For
+Sophia was still so ignorant she thought mere companionship and the
+spiritual force of her feeling had been a continuous giving. The
+knowledge that from a man's point of view she had given nothing at all
+was spared her. Since the parting she had repeated over and over to
+herself two sentences from his letters--"_Virgin Mother, friend and
+lover and comforter_" and "_Home means where you are_." If he could
+still mean those things she would be perfectly content that he should
+never again express them; if he were to mean them less as the old life
+and the old allegiance gripped him, then they would cease to be true and
+she could not live on them in memory. Few men are strong enough to leave
+the past alone, many are so afraid of its re-appearance that they try to
+bury it alive--was he going to deal this last and most cruel blow, a
+future that would destroy the past? The pitiful part of it all was that
+Sophia would never have seen him again sooner than try to revive what
+had happened; had he continued to make love to her she would have
+refused to let him--all she asked was that the past might be unprofaned.
+Reading his letter she began for the first time to realize the
+selfishness of his brilliant, lovable drifting nature, and in that
+moment her love of him took its firmest hold of her. The merciful phase
+of numbness was over, and she entered the deep waters at last. She had
+no strength left to struggle, she could only let them go over her head
+and await their passing. For her month of joy she was to pay in a year's
+pain, and she entered on the payment now.
+
+It was the payment for what she had gone without that hit Sophia
+hardest. In what she had given was the supreme comfort--"It was for
+him"; and this upheld her even when her want of him was worst, when she
+lay the whole night through on the floor of the wall-refuge, thoughts
+and pulses knocking out "I want you . . . I want you . . ." against the
+stones. It upheld her when, towards dawn, she paced the garden, pausing
+every now and then to lean her cheek against the dew-wet lilac leaves;
+or when she tangled her hands in the grass till the damp blades
+whimpered as she pulled her fingers up them. Sound was a help to her,
+and when she roused the grass to cries or stirred the bushes to quick
+whispering the voice in herself was quieter. She was never violent to
+anything in the garden, and when action became hurried she turned it
+upon herself, beating her hands against her thighs. And always "It was
+for him" upheld her through the darkest times of paying for what she had
+given.
+
+For what she had gone without that help was lacking. It was not passion,
+which, when with him, she had never felt, that plucked at her
+unbearably, it was the thwarted fruit of passion that haunted and
+reproached her. Before his letter came, dream-babies had clustered round
+her, wringing their little hands behind a closed transparent door, but
+these were visions of what might have been had circumstances been
+different--them she could bear. Now thought narrowed and gained in
+meaning: one baby surged towards her, cried to her, smiled at her, lay
+in air always just away from her breast--one baby that was what might
+have been even as things were. How would it matter what other women he
+loved better if she had only given him what no other woman had? She saw
+herself his slayer in that she had not made life for him in the way a
+woman can make it for her lover, by taking it of his and creating afresh
+with it. Her own life would be such a small price to pay. For Sophia was
+a born creator, and the seeming futility of all she was undergoing, and
+the barrenness it bound her to, filled her with a sense of waste.
+
+It was not until the compulsion which bread-winners know was making it
+clear to Sophia that her last days at Sant' Ambrogio were come, that the
+influences at work upon her ever since her arrival, that had first
+revealed themselves to her in her walk round the town, fused and
+concentrated.
+
+The day had been unbearably hot, and Sophia lay behind closed
+_persiani_, the green of the leaves without reflecting on to the
+whitewashed walls so that the room seemed a pool of green dusk. Sophia
+read a little old Latin _Vita Sanctæ Beatæ_, which she pondered over
+when, in the cool of the evening, she sought the place in the wall.
+
+"She found something," thought Sophia; "I wonder what it was? Peace, of
+course, but what got her to it? For outwardly her life was as bare as
+mine--and she had never known even what I know of--things. And yet,
+they say that in religion there is every experience. . . . I wonder if the
+babies she might have borne if she'd married some fellow-peasant ever
+beat at her reproachfully? And if so, what it was she found? She lived
+here, I suppose, walked in the garden and sat in my place in the wall--I
+wonder what she felt here. . . ."
+
+All was very quiet and still on the wall, and for the first time since
+Richard's letter had come Sophia's aching was a little soothed, the taut
+fibres of her relaxed and her mind slid into receptivity. Then a more
+positive change began to make itself felt to her, though she could not
+have traced its birth or growth if she had tried.
+
+The first note of difference was a physical one. Sophia was
+short-sighted and saw the world in a blur; now her sight began to take
+precision of outline and then the things at which she was looking
+changed too. The towers were more numerous, and from some of them flags
+fluttered out, and not till long after did Sophia remember that there
+had been no breeze that evening. Looking for the house over the
+tree-tops of the garden she saw that it had shrunk oddly, and an outer
+stairway crawled up its wall. On the sundial lay a rosary of dark
+beads--Sophia could see its steel cross glitter in the evening light.
+
+These were outward changes, on their heels came the inward change that
+made them seem natural to her. It was as though she were in one of those
+dreams when the dreamer knows who he is and that he will soon wake up,
+and yet does and says the most incongruous things; with this
+difference--Sophia had a curious feeling that it was some one else's
+dream which had taken hold of her. She struggled against it at first as
+against an anæsthetic, but the thing crept over her like a tide.
+
+A child's cry came from the town, and Sophia felt a sudden contraction
+at the heart, and with a thrill realized that this new Person in her
+felt it also--that they were at one. With that shock of mutual sensation
+the fusion became more nearly complete; of Sophia's own consciousness
+was left only enough to know that she was still herself, hearing,
+seeing, and feeling what some one else had heard and seen and felt
+before her in that place. She knew, too, that the drama played in her
+soul ever since she came to Sant' Ambrogio, a wordless drama in which no
+human being had taken part, was drawing to a climax, and that the human
+element had invaded it at last. She was about to learn what it was for
+which those weeks, especially that hour outside the wall, had prepared
+her.
+
+The air was very clear, and to the long sight with which Sophia was
+seeing, seemed preternaturally so, as though everything were set in a
+vast crystal which made visible each pebble and grass-blade. A numbness
+stole over her body, her hands ached with cold before they, too, lost
+sensation, and in this numbed frame her consciousness gathered
+intensity. Then with a shock, as sudden as a plunge into cold water, her
+mind slid on to what seemed another though not an alien plane. Her
+mind's eye saw all the old points of view, the accepted angles of
+vision, as though torn up and scattered like flung wreckage over the
+shining shore of the world that swung below her; things which had seemed
+big were small, all relative sizes were altered, perspective itself
+seemed run mad, except that after the first breath the knowledge that
+this was the true angle swept over her--that she, or rather, the Person
+whose vision she was receiving, was looking at the spiritual world from
+the point at which she herself had vaguely imagined gazing at the
+physical.
+
+Round this spiritual globe she saw the Breath of God hang as the air
+hangs round the earth, and she saw it full of ebbing and flowing like a
+current-whorled river. She saw how no wind left emptiness where it had
+been, but how the elastic tissue thinned out, spread, gathered together,
+ran here and there so that no outflow was without its inevitable
+influence of contraction: the whole sphere of air was a medley of
+pattern, always rhythmic and interchanging. She felt how this elasticity
+was brought into play over the surface of the spiritual world, how
+actions, sins, pains of mind and body, rack this way and that as they
+would, were always enveloped by the divine Breath, even as on the
+material globe not a wave can break or a leaf stir but the river of air
+holds true. Always the movements of the Breath made a pattern, as
+invisible to the soul in the midst of it as the wind-pattern is to those
+on earth, a pattern inevitable in the sense that achieved beauty always
+strikes the eye, as being inevitable in its rightness.
+
+Then, this measure of universal comfort given, sensation narrowed and
+concentrated, not on her soul, but on the soul which had felt long ago,
+probably far more intensely, what she was seeing by it and through it
+now.
+
+As Sophia felt the anguish of the Person who had absorbed her, she
+realized it was the same as hers--the fear and pain of barrenness.
+Whether she had known all along that it was the repeat, the echo, of a
+vision of Beata's that was on her, or whether she only knew it then, she
+could never have told. No actual child that might have been cried to
+the Beata consciousness, only natural longings apart from any one
+person, yet the anguish bit keenly, for with it went fear--the deadly
+fear lest barrenness should be deliberate sin against life. Powerless to
+help, Sophia saw the thought turn in the other's mind, and with that
+they both entered into the last phase of the vision. Here Sophia, who
+had not trained herself, like Beata, to prolonged sustaining of the
+will, flagged and began to fail. A brightness that was too strong for
+her, a sense as of great Shapes, a looming Presence, swept on to her,
+wrapped her round, overweighted her. She struggled to keep up with the
+Beata consciousness, for she knew if only she could succeed in that she
+would find the answer to her own sorrow and Beata's fear. The outer
+world had begun to come back, the towers of the town showed as through a
+mist, some growing more and more definite; some, those of Beata's day,
+wavering uncertainly. . . . She strained her flagging nerves, caught at
+her subsiding energies in one last effort. . . . A divine warmth suffused
+her breast; sky and air were filled with the gleam of a fiery Child that
+flashed towards her, filled her arms; and sank, not away, but into her
+very soul and, like quick stars, she saw the wounds on His hands and
+feet.
+
+With that she knew, as Beata had known, that this was the reward of
+virginity, that each virgin could mother the Christ-child afresh. She
+knew that to those to whom the joy of making a living body with its
+corresponding soul is denied, creation is not stilled, that there need
+be no barrenness in a garden enclosed. For she saw that there is no
+sterility save that of the wilful mind.
+
+With a shock the present reeled into its place; spiritual vision was
+past and physical vision lost keenness as her own blurred sight swam
+back to her; and, worn out, hardly conscious of her own life, but filled
+with peace, Sophia lay along the seat in the kindly dusk.
+
+She was still to know month upon month of pain; sometimes acute as when
+she stayed out of doors all night and made sounds and hurt herself
+physically to distract her mind's distress; but mostly an ache that bore
+on her like a weight, sometimes invading dreams and always by her
+bedside when she awakened. She was to find that for the friendship she
+could have made so exquisite he had no gift; she was to feel the many
+hurts his lack of thoughtfulness inflicted; she was to bear the
+unhappiness of seeing him unworthy of all that might have been so good
+in him as he let himself drift into flirtations where not one of his
+finer senses was touched. She was to feel one sharpest hour of any, when
+the time came, which, if she had given herself would have seen his child
+in her arms. . . .
+
+And through everything, through the dreadful London months of loneliness
+and the cruder physical hardships of extreme poverty; through her weary
+clear-eyed knowledge of him she was to come back perpetually to the
+refrain--that surprised herself after a few weeks of comparative calm
+when she hoped she was "getting over it"--of "How I love him." She had
+no high-flown theories of love; she knew he was not what is tritely
+called "the right man," he was more--he was the one she loved well
+enough to forgive for not being the "right one," and in those moments
+there was no evading the simple fact that she would have given all the
+rest of her life to have been his wife for one year and have borne him a
+child.
+
+But, through and above and around all that, went the memory of Beata's
+vision which she too had seen. The vision itself was often dark and
+meaningless to her in the actuality of her love and pain, but of the
+knowledge that she had had it she was never bereft. Also, it was hers to
+create those pleasant fruits and chief spices of which the greatest
+love-song in the world tells as growing only in a garden enclosed.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS
+
+
+On a grey day a girl was walking along a crescent of sand that curved at
+the cliff's base. As she went the water welled up in the slanting
+hollows left by her feet, and the fat, evil-looking leaves of the cliff
+plants glistened with spray moisture; even the swollen fingers of the
+marsh samphire, that all seemed to point at the girl as she passed, each
+bore a tremulous drop at the tip. At the end of the little beach the
+girl paused, and then turned to look out to sea, balancing herself on a
+slab of wet shiny granite, where the cone-shaped shellfish clustered and
+from which the long green weed floated out and in on the heave of the
+tide. The girl held back the red hair that whipped about her forehead
+and stared from under an arched palm.
+
+"'Tes naught but a plaguey dolphin, d'believe," she muttered, yet still
+stayed for one more glimpse of the dark thing that was bobbing up
+through the curdling foam-pattern. A stinging scatter of spray blew into
+her eyes, blinding her, and when she looked again the dark thing had
+come nearer, and she saw it to be the body of a man caught in the
+ratlines of some shrouds that the sea's action had lapped around the
+mast they had once guarded. Were it not that his chin was hitched over
+the ratlines, so that he was borne along with his face--a pale blot
+among the paler blots of the foam--upturned, he would doubtless have
+sunk, for he was not lashed to the mast in any way. A huge foam patch
+had formed in the web made by the tangled shrouds, so that his head and
+shoulders showed clearly against the creaming halo, on which his long
+hair, dark with wet and released from its queue, lay streaked away from
+his tilted face. The girl called to him twice in her strong, rough
+voice; then, since even if he still lived he was past any consciousness
+of doing so, she kept her energies for the saving of him. Wading in as
+deep as she dared--not more than up to her hips, for even then the heave
+and suction of the water threatened to knock her off her feet--she clung
+on to a ridge of rock with one hand, and, leaning forward, made snatches
+at the spar whenever it surged towards her. To her dismay she saw that
+with every heave his legs must be catching against some rocks, for his
+head began to sink away from the supporting ratlines, and when at last
+she caught one end of the spar she only succeeded in drawing it away
+from him. His head disappeared; for a moment the dark hole in the midst
+of the foam-circle held, then broke, and was overrun as the whiteness
+closed upon it. The next minute a surge of undercurrent brought him
+knocking against her legs; she just managed to hold on with one hand
+while with the other she plunged down at him. Her fingers met the cold
+sleekness of his face, then caught in his tangled hair, and, drawing
+herself up backwards against the rock-ledges, she pulled him with her,
+step by step. A few moments more and she had staggered up the narrow
+strip of beach with her burden dragging from her arms. Tumbling him
+along the drier sand at the cliff's foot, she knelt beside him, and
+with hands trembling from the strain that had been put upon the muscles,
+she pulled apart the clinging shirt that was so sodden it seemed to peel
+from off him. She felt at his heart, then laid her ear to the pale
+glistening chest where the dark hair was matted to a point between the
+breasts; she beat that pale chest with her hand, and at last saw the
+faint red respond to the blows of her fingers. On that much of hope she
+desisted, seemed to hesitate, then half-hauling him up by a hand beneath
+each shoulder, she began dragging him towards where the cliff curved
+outwards again to the sea. At a point some three or four feet from the
+ground the cliff overhung so that it was possible to imagine creeping
+beneath it at low tide, though a curtain of glossy spleen-wort hung down
+so thickly it was difficult to tell. Going upon her knees, the girl
+crawled backwards under the dripping dark green fringe, and pulled the
+man in after her. Within, a tunnel, in which it was soon possible to
+walk upright, led at a gradual incline up to what was apparently the
+heart of the cliff, which here was honeycombed into those smugglers'
+caves of the West of which even now all the secrets are not known. Up
+this incline she got herself and him, and at last dragged him
+triumphantly into the big cave where she and her father, Bendigo Keast,
+stored the smuggled goods in which they traded so successfully. It was
+very dark, but with accustomed hands she felt for the small iron box in
+which the flint and tinder were kept; soon a tiny flame sprang to life,
+and she passed it on to a wick that floated limply in a little cup of
+stinking fish-oil on the floor. In the mere breath of light thus given
+the rows of stacked barrels loomed dimly, the outermost curve of each
+gleaming faintly, while between them the shadow lay banded.
+
+Thomasin Keast ran some brandy from a little keg near into her palm and
+tilted it between the man's teeth, then slopped the raw spirit over his
+shirt, drenching it again. Then--not stripping him, for the modesty of a
+Cornish woman, who thinks shame to show even her feet, prevented
+that--she filled her hands with brandy and ran them in under his
+clothes, rubbing tirelessly up and down till the flesh began to dry and
+tingle. Around his reddened neck, where the soft young beard merged into
+wet curls, she rubbed; over his shoulders, where the big pectoral
+muscles came swelling past his armpits like a cape, then down the
+serried ribs that she could knead the supple flesh around, past the
+curve-in of the whole body beneath them, to the gracious slimness of the
+flanks and the nervous indentation of the groins between the trunk and
+the springing arches of the thighs. So Thomasin knelt in the gloom of
+the cave, and all the time that his life was coming painfully and
+reluctantly back to him under her strong, glowing hands, she felt as
+though some presage of new life were flowing into herself. The old saw
+has it that the saving of a drowning man brings ill-luck to his rescuer;
+but Thomasin, as she watched grow in his features that intangible
+something which makes the face human instead of a mere mask, scorned the
+superstition; and still more she scorned it as her urgent hands felt the
+rising beat of his pulses and arteries. For during that time his hidden
+form became so known to her that his every curve and muscle, the very
+feel of the strong-growing hair upon him softening into down as his skin
+dried, all impressed themselves clearly on her memory for ever, and she
+felt him hers--hers by right of discovery as well as right of salvage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomasin Keast and her father lived in a little four-square cottage set
+about half a mile from the headland--a half-mile of thorn and bracken,
+of tumbled boulders and wedges of furze almost as solid. Here in the
+spring the yellow-hammer and the linnet, the stonechat and the whinchat,
+shrilled their first notes, and at dawn the greybird thrust a thirsty
+beak into the dewy blackthorn blossoms; here the dun-coloured rabbits
+darted in and out of their burrows with a gleam of white scuts. Here,
+too, Keast and his daughter herded the moorland ponies that,
+well-soaped, were loaded with the barrels of spirit and packets of lace
+which had been brought from France at dark of the moon. The cottage was
+of rough grey granite, with a roof crusted with yellow stonecrop that
+looked as though it had been spilled molten over the slates. On either
+side of the door a great wind-buttress, reaching to the eaves, swept out
+like a sheltering wing.
+
+This was the place to which Thomasin Keast brought her man on that
+stormy evening. Dusk was already making the air deeply, softly blue, and
+through it the whitewashed lintel gleamed out almost as clearly as the
+phosphorescent fish nailed against the wall. Half-leading,
+half-supporting him, Thomasin steered the stranger between the
+buttresses and through the narrow doorway into the living-room. A peat
+fire glowed on the hearth and against it the figure of a crouching man
+showed dark. At the noise in the doorway he thrust an armful of furze on
+to the fire, and the quick crackling flare that followed threw a
+reflection like the flashing of summer lightning over the whitewashed
+walls, sending the shadows scurrying into the corners and revealing the
+man whose big hand, ridged with raised veins that ran up to the wrist,
+was still upon the furze-stem.
+
+Bendigo Keast was not long past his prime of strength and could still
+have out-wrestled many a younger man. Through his jersey the working of
+his enormous shoulders showed as plainly as those of a cat beneath her
+close fur, and under his chin the reddish beard could not hide the knots
+of his powerful throat. His eyes, blue and extraordinarily alert, were
+half-hidden by the purpled lids, and the massive folds of his cheeks
+that came down in a furrow on either side of his slightly incurved
+mouth, looked hard as iron. Like most seamen when within doors, he was
+in his stockings, and as he rose and his bulk swayed forward his feet
+broadened a little and gripped at the uneven flagstones like those of a
+great ape.
+
+Thomasin spoke first.
+
+"'Tes a man I found drownen', da," she said, and in her voice uneasiness
+mingled with a readiness for defiance. "He'm most dead wi' salt water,
+and cold. Us must get en to the bed to wance. Da . . ."
+
+"Where did ee find en?" asked Bendigo Keast, without moving.
+
+"To cove."
+
+"Did a see aught?"
+
+"How should a, and him nigh drowned?" evaded Thomasin; then, as the
+stranger sank on to the settle and let his wet brown head fall limply
+back against it, she went over to a crock of milk that stood in the
+window-sill and poured some into a saucepan.
+
+"Get en to the bed, da," she said more sharply. "I'll see to your
+supper. He must have nawthen but milk for the night."
+
+Bendigo came forward, and, swinging his long arms round the man, carried
+him off up the stairs that led from the living-room into the first of
+the two tiny bedrooms. He soon came down again.
+
+"Tell me how tes a smells of brandy?" he demanded.
+
+"I rubbed en down wi' et to put life into en." Thomasin spoke quietly,
+but the sound of her stirring spoon grew less rhythmical.
+
+"Then a did see?"
+
+"Da, listen to me," said Thomasin, turning round. "S'pose a did see,
+what then? He'm naught but a foreigner from up-country, and wouldn't
+know to give we away. And--s'posen he'm minded to stay by us--well, you
+d'knaw we'm needing another hand. We must find one somewhere, and
+there's none o' the chaps to the church-town would come in wi' us,
+because us have allus stood by oursel' and made our own profits. But now
+Dan's dead, you d'knaw as well's I us must get another hand to help in
+the _Merrymaid_. If you wern't so strong and I as good as a man, it
+would ha' needed four of us to ha' run her."
+
+"How can us knaw whether to trust en?" asked Bendigo suspiciously. "Tes
+bad luck to save a man from the sea, they do say."
+
+"Don't decide nawthen tell you've talked wi' en," advised Thomasin. "May
+be the poor chap was too mazed to take notice o' what he saw. Us'll knaw
+to-morrow."
+
+And next day the rescued man was sitting by the hearth, somewhat stiff
+from bruises, but otherwise with his wiry frame none the worse. His
+looks had strikingly improved, for now that the soft beard, which had
+never known a razor, was dry, it peaked forward a little, whereas when
+wet it had clung to his too narrow jaw and revealed a lax line of chin.
+
+His story was soon told--the brig on which he was mate had been
+returning from France when a squall overtook her, and she became a total
+wreck. He had clung to the floating spar for several hours before losing
+consciousness, when the tangled ratlines had borne him up and the tide
+had swept him into the shoreward current which set round the headland.
+
+"And the first thing I knew," he ended, "was your face, mistress,
+bending over me in your cave. . . ."
+
+Keast shot a glance at his daughter. They had exchanged looks before, at
+the man's mention of France, and now Bendigo flung a few veiled phrases,
+with here and there a cant term common to smugglers, at his guest, who
+understood him perfectly, and himself became entirely frank. His name,
+he said, was Robin Start, and that there was mixed blood in him he
+admitted. A more gracious race showed itself in his quick turns of wrist
+and eye, his ease of phrase, in his ready gallantry towards Thomasin.
+Yes, said Robin Start, his mother was a Frenchwoman, and had taught him
+her tongue--a fact he found useful in his dealings on the other side of
+the Channel.
+
+A bargain is an intricate and subtle thing in Cornwall, a thing of
+innuendoes and reservations, and the one Bendigo Keast struck with the
+stranger was not without subtleties on both sides. Robin Start had quite
+understood all he had seen in the cave, and had made a mental note of
+the way out, which gave him a hold over Bendigo. On the other hand,
+Robin, who suffered paroxysms of craving for safety in the intervals of
+delighting in danger, knew it was safer to come in with Bendigo and make
+something for himself smuggling than it would be for him to think of
+escaping from that muscular father and daughter if he declined. As for
+Keast, it was true that since his nephew Dan had been knocked on the
+head by a swing of the boom, he needed some one to take the lad's place.
+A bottle of smuggled rum sealed the bargain, and then, for the first
+time in her life, Thomasin was talked to as a woman. To her father a
+partner; a mere fellow-man to the dark, silent Daniel who now lay in the
+lap of the tides; shunned by the envious villagers, and looked at
+askance by the Government men, Thomasin had never known of the sphere
+which began to be revealed to her that evening. For one thing, she was
+plain, though in certain lights or effects of wind she looked fine
+enough in a high-boned, rock-hewn way. She was what is called in that
+part of the world a "red-headed Dane," and her broad, strongly modelled
+face was thickly powdered with freckles. Though she was only twenty-two,
+hundreds of nights of exposure to wind and wet had roughened her skin,
+but at the opening of her bodice, where a hint of collar-bones showed
+like a bar beneath the firm flesh, her skin was privet-white. The slim,
+brown-haired Robin with his quick eyes was a contrast in looks and
+manners to anyone she had ever met, and mingled with her awe and wonder
+of him was the fierce sense of possession that had entered into her when
+she passed her hands over and over him in the cave. Also she felt
+maternal towards him because, though he must have been nigh upon
+thirty, he was one of those men who have a quality of appeal.
+
+It was a stormy autumn that year, and little was possible in the way of
+business; but for Thomasin, who up till now had lived so whole-heartedly
+for her partnership with her father, it became that time of which at
+least the mirage appears to every one once in life. For her happiness
+she and Robin repainted her other love, the _Merrymaid_, together;
+giving her a new black coat and a white ribbon, and changing the green
+of her upright stem to blue. The _Merrymaid_ was constantly adopting
+little disguises of the sort, running sometimes under barked sails,
+sometimes under white, and alternating between a jib and a gaff-topsail
+with a square head. Then in the long winter evenings the Keasts and
+Robin would sit by the fire, Bendigo pulling at his clay pipe, and
+Thomasin knitting a perpetual grey stocking--surely as innocent and
+law-abiding an interior as could have been found!--while Robin told them
+tales of all he had seen and done. Bendigo now and then gave a grunt
+that might have been of dissent, interest, or merely of incipient sleep,
+but Thomasin sat enthralled by the soft tones that to her mind could
+have lured a bird from the egg. Robin told of the thick yellow sea
+towards the north of China, so distinct from the blue sea around that it
+looked more like a vast shoal of sand, stretching for mile upon mile. He
+told, too, of the reddish dust, fine as mist, which once fell for days
+over his ship when he was far out at sea; it fell until the decks seemed
+like a dry soft beach, and lungs and eyes and at last their very souls
+seemed filled with it. His captain said it was blown along the upper
+air all the way from the Mongolian plains, but he himself thought it
+came from Japan, that country of volcanoes. Thomasin's ideas of
+volcanoes were derived from a broadside she had once seen which
+represented Vesuvius apparently on fire from the base, but she felt sure
+the mysterious sand was of the devil, and must come from somewhere hot.
+
+So Robin talked and Thomasin listened, and with the coming of spring new
+portents woke in her blood and stirred the air. Robin began to slip his
+hand up her arm when he stood beside her in the shadow of the
+wind-buttresses, and when they went down to the caves he would make
+opportunities to press against her in the passages. The sheer animal
+magnetism of the girl allured him, and he found her crude and hitherto
+fierce aloofness going to his head. Though frequently now he felt a
+sudden passion of distaste for the physical strength of this father and
+daughter sweep over him, yet would come another passion, waked by the
+wonder of it that still lay in Thomasin's eyes--and he would think of
+what a pleasure was at his hand in Thomasin's potentialities for passion
+and the freshness of her. . . .
+
+She herself was reluctant yet, for all her hot blood and untrained
+nature, partly because of the ingrained suspicion of soft things her
+upbringing had engendered, partly because of the eternal instinct which
+prompts withdrawal for the purpose of luring on. But in her heart she
+knew--she knew when the spring was on the cliffs, and he and she lay on
+the thymy grass watching for the fish-shoals; when around Robin's
+turf-pillowed head the rose-specked, flesh-hued cups of the sea-milkwort
+stood up brimming with the jewelled air as with a divine nectar; when
+among the cushions of silvery lichen and grey-green moss the scented
+gorse flung a riot of yellow, and the mating birds answered each other
+on a note like secret laughter. Then Thomasin would sometimes close her
+eyes for the happiness she dared not yet acknowledge; yet those days of
+soft joy and beauty were as nothing to the night of hard work and danger
+that finally brought her surging blood to acknowledge him as lord--that
+night when all the dominant male in him was of necessity stung to the
+surface by danger.
+
+They were running a cargo of thirty barrels over from France--he, she,
+and her father. The _Merrymaid_, which was sloop-rigged and of about
+twenty tons burden, was quite enough for the three to handle, laden as
+she was with the corded tubs slung together with the stones already
+attached; for it was proposed to sink the cargo and then run on to
+harbour openly, a thing frequently done when the Preventive men were
+known to be on the watch. Robin was suffering from one of his
+nerve-revulsions; he dared show no sign of it, but as he sat in the
+bows, keeping a look-out through the darkness, he told himself that if
+this trip were brought off in safety it would be the last as far as he
+was concerned. He could stand the portentous figure of Bendigo looming
+at him through the little cottage no more, and he knew what to do. . . .
+As for Thomasin, he would not lose her--a woman surely sticks by her
+man. And if not, she would never harm him; and there were other women in
+the world--for the appeal Thomasin had for him was of sex, and not of
+personality.
+
+Thomasin sat with her arm along the tiller, keeping the _Merrymaid_ on
+a nor'-nor'-west course so as to make the Lizard light. They were
+running under their foresail and close-reefed mainsail only, for the
+south-west wind for which they had waited was swelling to storm-fury.
+The _Merrymaid_ lay right over, the water scolding past her dipping
+gunwale and the clots of spindrift that whirled over the side gleaming
+like snowflakes in the darkness, which was of that intense quality which
+becomes vibrant to long staring. Robin, straining his eyes, was only
+aware of the danger when they were almost on it, but his voice shrieked
+out on the instant to Thomasin: "Hard-a-port!" and again, in a desperate
+hurry of sound, "Hard-a-port!"
+
+Thomasin jambed the helm up as Bendigo, with the agility of long use to
+sudden danger, eased off the sheets; and then Thomasin could see what
+menaced them. A Preventive boat, like themselves with no light save the
+wretched glimmer over the compass, had been lying to under her mizzen,
+and already her men were making sail. Thomasin sat gripping the tiller
+while the voices of her menfolk came to her ears.
+
+"The topsail!" shouted Robin; but Bendigo's voice made answer: "Not till
+us has to--it might rip mast off in this gale. Try the jib. . . ."
+
+They set the jib and shook out the reefs in the mainsail, and the
+_Merrymaid_ answered to it like a racehorse to the whip. She quivered
+all her length, the tiller pushed like a sentient thing against
+Thomasin's palm and they went reeling on.
+
+For nearly an hour they ran before the wind, helped by the flood-tide,
+and all the time the Preventive boat was slowly gaining on them, for she
+was carrying a larger stretch of canvas. She was nearly upon them when
+the sound of breaking surf told that they were nearing the Manacles, and
+the tide was still fairly low. Suddenly Robin's voice came again, this
+time with a thrill in it: "Now's our chance!" he called. "We'll hoist
+the topsail and make a run for it inside of the Manacles."
+
+He was at the mast as he spoke, and Thomasin heard the thin scream of
+the unoiled sheave as the topsail halliards ran through it. The next
+moment the mast creaked and bent; the almost useless jib slackened as
+the other sails took all of the wind, and the _Merrymaid_ shook her nose
+and plunged into the broken water that gleamed between the blackness of
+the mainland and the Manacles.
+
+"They'll never dare follow!" cried Bendigo; and even as he did so, the
+Preventive boat, trusting to her superior speed to make good, began to
+come round to the wind so as to pass the Manacles on the outer side. The
+added strain proved too much, and her mast snapped with a report like a
+gunshot--the one clean, sharp sound through all that flurry of rushing,
+edgeless noise, and it told its own tale to the eager ears on the
+_Merrymaid_. She, under the influence of the topsail, was burying her
+bows at every plunge, and Thomasin knew, by the sudden cessation of the
+tiller's tug, that the rudder had lifted clear of the racing water, only
+to drive into it again with a blow that sent her reeling. Thomasin's
+fight with the boat she loved began in real earnest. Yawing stubbornly,
+the _Merrymaid_ pulled against the tiller so that the rough wood seemed
+to burn into Thomasin's flesh, so hard had she to grip it to keep the
+boat's head from going up into the wind.
+
+With the breath failing in her throat, she had none left to cry for
+help; she could only wrestle with the tiller, which, all the weight of
+the yawing _Merrymaid_ against it, seemed about to crush her.
+
+Then hands came over hers in the darkness, and even at that moment her
+flesh knew Robin's.
+
+"Tell me if I make a mistake; you know this hell-pool better than me,"
+he called to her through the noise of the surf; and, with an easing of
+the muscles so exquisite as to be almost a pain in itself, she felt him
+absorb the weight of the boat into his grip. With the lifting of that
+strain from her shoulders and arms came the realization of how
+mercilessly his hands were grinding hers against the tiller, yet that
+pain sent the first tremor of unadulterated passion through her that she
+had ever felt, because it was the first time he had hurt her. There was
+no need for her to call directions to him--he and she were so welded in
+one at the tiller that the unconscious pull of her arm beneath his told
+him, in his state of receptive tension, what to do more surely than any
+words. That was their true mating--not what followed after--but there in
+the stern of the reeling _Merrymaid_; for all that was least calculated
+and finest in Robin had leapt to the need of it, and their consciousness
+was fused as completely in the fight for life as the pain in their hands
+was at the tiller.
+
+They were through--through and safe, and five minutes more saw them
+round the point and in the calmer water, where they slipped the cargo,
+and soon after they had made the harbour under easy sail, innocent of
+contraband from stem to stern.
+
+All danger over, Thomasin felt oddly faint, and let her father go on
+ahead across the moor while she hung heavily on Robin's arm, her numbed
+hands slowly tingling back to life as they went. Arrived at the
+cottage, a faint light, that went out even as they looked, told of
+Bendigo's entry, and Robin set the lantern he carried on the flagstones
+between the buttresses. Thomasin leant back against one of them, and the
+dim light, flickering upwards, softened her marked bones and brightened
+her eyes. Every defect of skin was hidden; it showed pale, and her mouth
+velvet dark upon it. Robin's lips fastened on her throat below her ear
+and stayed there till she stirred and gave a little cry, then his mouth
+moved on and up till it found hers. The kiss deepened between them; his
+head bent, hers upstretched. Time stayed still for one moment, during
+which she wanted nothing further--she was not conscious of the ground
+beneath her or the pain in her back-tilted neck, not even of his
+supporting arms or the throbbing of him against her--all her being was
+fused at the lips, and she felt as though hanging in space from his
+mouth alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robin Start waited till the cargo had been safely run and sold, and then
+he went across the moor to the village and made a compact with the
+Preventive men. The excitement of that night had had its usual way with
+him, and he wished never to meet danger again as long as he lived. He
+was suffering from a somewhat similar revulsion as regarded Thomasin,
+though there he knew the old allure would raise its head again for him.
+Bendigo's suspicious guard of him had relaxed, partly because the elder
+man admitted that it was Robin's nerve which had planned the dash that
+saved them, partly because he guessed how it was with his daughter, and
+thought Robin safely theirs. . . . And Robin had at last done that which
+had been in his mind ever since the beginning, and had sold the secret
+of the caves to his Majesty's Government. Nervous of being overheard in
+the village inn, Robin took the two head men with him over the moor to
+the headland, safe in the knowledge that Bendigo was drinking heavily in
+the cottage--the way in which he always rewarded himself for a
+successful run. Robin showed the men the cunningly hidden entrances to
+the passages, and then for a few minutes they all three stood making
+their final arrangements. Robin found it wonderfully simple, the step
+once taken. It was agreed that the officers of the law were to surround
+the cottage that night after its inmates were abed, all save Robin, who
+was to be sitting in the kitchen ready to open the door. No harm was to
+be done to the girl--and, indeed, the Preventive men knew enough of
+Cornish juries to know that Bendigo Keast himself would get an
+acquittal; but his claws would be drawn, which was all they wanted.
+Robin, unaware of this peculiarity of a Cornish jury, would have been
+considerably alarmed had he known of it. Bendigo free to revenge himself
+had not entered into the scheme of the man from up-country, where the
+law was a less individual matter.
+
+"At ten o'clock then, my man," were the last words of the Preventive
+officer; but he added to his companion as they walked away: "The dirty
+double-mouth!" and the distaste of the official for the necessary
+informer was in his voice. "At ten o'clock," echoed Robin, and then was
+aware of a quick rustling behind him--much the noise that a big adder
+makes as it leaves its way through a dry tuft of grass. The sun was
+already setting, and the glamorous light made vision uncertain, yet
+Robin thought he saw a movement of the gorse more than the breeze
+warranted. The bush in question was one of those which concealed an
+opening to the caves, and Robin pulled it aside and peered into the
+darkness. Silence and stillness rewarded him, and he swung his legs over
+and descended a little way. All was quiet and empty in that passage; he
+turned into another--that, too, was innocent of any presence save his.
+He went through up that exit, and, still uneasy, stared across the moor.
+If anyone--if by chance Thomasin had been in the passage, she could have
+slipped out that way while he was entering by the other, and be out of
+sight by now. . . . The sweat sprang on to Robin's brow. Then he took
+counsel with himself. There was no reason why Thomasin should be at the
+caves; nothing was doing there. It would be the most unlikely thing on
+earth, because neither she nor her father ever ran the unnecessary risk
+of going there between the cargoes. Robin knew this, and felt
+reassured--how, after all, could he imagine that Thomasin, sick at the
+reaction she felt in him, might have gone to re-gather force at the
+place where she had first felt him hers? . . . He thought over what he had
+said, and took still more heart when he remembered he had not let fall a
+word that showed a light holding of Thomasin; and that, he told himself,
+was the only thing a woman could not forgive. He felt it safe to count
+on passion as against the habit of a mere business partnership, which
+was all her relationship with her father had ever been. Dimly Robin was
+aware that all her spiritual life had gone into that partnership, into
+the feeling of her family against the world that had become an obsession
+with her until he had brought another interest into her life; but Robin
+Start would not have believed an angel from heaven who had told him that
+the habit of years could be stronger with a woman than a new passion.
+And, as regarded most women, Robin would probably have been right.
+Besides, it was impossible that any one could have been there, and
+Thomasin was his. . . . He gave himself a little shake and set off to the
+cottage, and such was the force of his revulsion against a life of
+dangers and the sinister suggestiveness of the Keasts' muscular
+superiority, that he felt his heart lighter than it had been for months
+past. He was even pleasurably, though subconsciously, aware of the
+poignant beauty of the evening, and noted the rich shrilling of a thrush
+from the alders by the stream. It was one of those evenings when, for a
+few minutes, the light holds a peculiarly rosy quality that refracts
+from each sharply angled surface of leaf or curved grass-blade; steeps
+even the shadows with wine-colour, and imparts a reddish purple to every
+woody shoot, from the trunks of trees to the stray twigs of thorn
+piercing the turf. Wine-coloured showed the stems of the alders, the
+lines of blackthorn hedges, the distant drifts of elms whose branches
+were still only faintly misted with buds. Beneath Robin's feet the
+yellow red-tipped blossoms of the bird's-foot trefoil borrowed of the
+flushed radiance till they seemed as though burning up through the
+ardent grass, and on the alders the catkins gleamed like still thin
+flakes of fire. The whole world for a few magic moments was lapped in an
+unharmful flame that had glow without heat, and through the gentle glory
+of it Robin went home.
+
+At ten o'clock that night, with no lanterns to betray them, half a dozen
+Preventive men, followed by several of the leading men in the village,
+who had got wind of the affair and were eager to see the self-sufficient
+Keasts brought to book, all came up over the moor through the darkness.
+No light showed in the cottage as they neared it, but that was merely
+because the buttress, sweeping at right angles to the window, obscured
+it from the approach. The buttress once rounded, the men saw the light
+shining as Robin Start had promised. The officer motioned the others to
+stay quiet, and then--he was a mere lad, and eager to be the first in
+everything--he tiptoed to the window and peeped through.
+
+Robin Start was sitting quietly in the armchair, a candle burning on the
+stool beside him. There was nothing alarming in that, yet the next
+moment the boy at the window stepped back with a great cry.
+
+"He's got two mouths!" he shrieked. "He's got two mouths!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far out on the dark Channel father and daughter were drawing away in the
+_Merrymaid_, the rising wind and some other urgent thing at their backs,
+but the sense of justice done as their solace.
+
+And in the cottage, his wrists tightly roped to the arms of the chair
+and his silky beard shaved away, sat Robin Start. The footlight effect
+of the candle eliminated all shadow under his sloping chin, making it
+seem one with his throat, and that was cut from ear to ear. For the only
+thing on which he had not calculated was that before such treachery as
+his passion drops like a shot bird.
+
+The candle flame flared up as the last of the tallow ran in a pool round
+the yielding wick, and for one distorted moment the edges of the slit
+throat flickered to the semblance of a smile. Then the flame reeled and
+sank, and, spark by spark, the red of the glowing wick died into the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+WHY SENATH MARRIED
+
+
+Asenath Lear was neither a pretty woman nor a particularly young one,
+but having in the first instance embraced spinsterhood voluntarily, she
+was cheerfully resigned to its enforced continuance. All the world knew
+she had been "asked" by Samuel Harvey of the Upper Farm, and though all
+the world considered her a fool for refusing him, it still could not
+throw in her face the taunt that she had never had a chance.
+
+She had said no to Samuel because at that time she was young
+enough--being but twenty--to nurse vague yearnings for something more
+romantic than the stolid Sam, but the years fled taking with them the
+bloom that had been her only beauty, and romance never showed so much as
+the tip of a wing-feather.
+
+"I'm doubtful but that you were plum foolish to send Sam'l Harvey to
+another woman's arms, Senath," her mother told her once, "but there, I
+never was one for driving a maid. There's a chance yet; ef you'll look
+around you'll see 'tes the plain-featured women as has the husbands."
+
+"'Tes because the pretty ones wouldn't have en, I fear," said Senath on
+a gleam of truth, but with a very contented laugh, "men's a pack of
+trouble in the flesh. I would ha' wed sure 'nough ef et hadn' been that
+when you get to knaw a man you see him as somethen' so different from
+your thought of him."
+
+"Eh, you and your thoughts . . ." cried the petulant old mother, quoting
+better than she knew, "they'll have to be your man and your childer,
+too."
+
+Senath, the idealist, was well content that it should be so, and when
+her mother's death left her her own mistress, she went to live in a tiny
+cottage up on the moors with no companions but those thoughts--the
+thoughts at once crude and vague, but strangely penetrating--of an
+untaught mind whose natural vigour has been neither guided nor cramped
+by education.
+
+Her cottage, that stood four-square in the eye of the wind, was set
+where the moorland began, some few fields away from the high road. At
+the back was the tiny garden where Senath coaxed some potatoes and beans
+from out the grudging earth; and two apple trees, in an ecstasy of
+contortion, supported the clothes-line from which great sheets,
+golden-white in the sun, bellied like sails, or enigmatic garments of
+faded pinks and blues proclaimed the fact that Senath "took in washing."
+
+On the moor in front of the cottage stood nineteen stones, breast-high,
+set in a huge circle. Within this circle the grass, for some reason, was
+of a more vivid green than on the rest of the moor, and against it the
+stones on the nearer curve showed a pale grey, while the further ones
+stood up dark against the sky, for beyond them the moor sloped slightly
+to the cliffs and the sea.
+
+These stones were known as the "Nineteen Merry Maidens," and legend had
+it that once they were living, breathing girls, who had come up to that
+deserted spot to dance upon a Sunday. As they twirled this way and that
+in their sinful gyrations, the doom of petrification descended on them,
+as it did on the merry-makers of old when Perseus dangled the Gorgon's
+head aloft. So the nineteen maidens stand to this day, a huge fairy-ring
+of stone, like those smaller ones of fragile fungi that also enclose a
+circle of greener grass in the radius of their stems. Two luckless men,
+whom the maidens had beguiled to pipe for them, turned and fled, but
+they, too, were overtaken by judgment in a field further on along the
+road, and stand there to this day, a warning against the profanation of
+the Sabbath.
+
+When Senath was asked why she had taken such a lonely cottage, she
+replied that it was on account of the Merry Maidens--they were such
+company for her. Often, of an evening, she would wander round the
+circle, talking aloud after the fashion of those who live alone. She had
+given each of the stones a name, and every one of them seemed, to her
+starved fancy, to have a personality of its own. Senath Lear, what with
+the mixed strains of blood that were her Cornish heritage, and the added
+influence of isolation, was fast becoming an old maid, and a wisht one
+at that, when something happened which set the forces of development
+moving in another direction. Senath herself connected it with her first
+visit to the Pipers, whom hitherto, on account of their sex, she had
+neglected for the Merry Maidens.
+
+One market day--Thursday--Senath set off to a neighbouring farm to buy
+herself a little bit of butter. The way there, along the high road, lay
+past the field where the Pipers stood in their perpetual penance, and
+Senath could see them sticking up gaunt against the luminous sky for
+some time before she came up with them. For, as was only fitting, the
+Pipers were much taller than the Maidens, being, indeed, some twelve
+feet high.
+
+Senath walked briskly along, a sturdy, full-chested figure, making, in
+her black clothes (Sunday-best, "come down"), the only dark note in the
+pale colours of early spring that held land and air. The young grass
+showed tender, the intricate webs made by the twisted twigs of the bare
+thorn-trees gleamed silvery. On the pale lopped branches of the elders,
+the first crumpled leaves were just beginning to unfold. The long grass
+in an orchard shone with the drifted stars of thousands of narcissi,
+which a faint breeze woke to a tremulous twinkling. The road was thick
+with velvety white dust, for it was some time since rain had fallen, and
+the black of Senath's skirt was soon powdered into greyness. As she
+went, she wondered what it was that gave the air such a tang of summer,
+until she suddenly realized it was the subtle but unmistakable smell of
+the dust that brought to her mind long, sunny days, when such a smell
+was as much part of the atmosphere as the foliage or the heat. Now there
+was still a chill in the air, but she hardly felt it in the force of
+that suggestiveness.
+
+"Sim' me I'm naught but a bit of stone like they Pipers," she said to
+herself, as she paused to look up at them, towering above her. Then a
+whimsical thought struck her. "I'll lave the Maidens be for a while and
+take my walk to the Pipers," she thought, "tes becoming enough in a
+woman o' my years, I should think."
+
+She smiled at her mild jest and plodded on to the farm.
+
+It was a fairly large house, with a roof still partly thatch, but mostly
+replaced by slate. In front of it, a trampled yard reached to the low
+wall of piled boulders and the road. Senath found the mistress of it
+leaning on the wall, ready to exchange a word with the occupants of the
+various market-carts as they drove homewards, and the business of the
+butter was soon transacted. Yet, for some odd reason, Senath was not
+anxious to take up her basket and go. Perhaps it was that touch of the
+unusual in the false hint of summer; perhaps, too, her decision to vary
+the course of her evening walk and the playmates of her imagination;
+but, whatever it was, she was vaguely aware of a prompting towards human
+contact. The two women sat on the low wall and chatted in a desultory
+fashion for a few minutes. Then the farmer's wife, shading her eyes with
+her hand, looked along the road.
+
+"Your eyes are younger'n mine, Senath Lear," she said. "Tell me, edn
+that Sam'l Harvey of Upper Farm comen in his trap?"
+
+Senath turned her clear, long-sighted eyes down the road and nodded.
+
+"He'll be driving out Manuel Harvey to the Farm," Mrs. Cotton went on.
+"You do knaw, or maybe your don't, seein' you live so quiet, that since
+Sam's been a widow-man, Upper Farm's too big for he to live in in
+comfort. He's comin' to live in church-town and look after his interests
+in building. You do knaw that he's putting up a row of cottages to let
+to they artisesses. And Upper Farm he's let to Manuel Harvey."
+
+"Is he any kin to en?" asked Senath, interested, as any woman would have
+been, in this budget of news about her old suitor.
+
+"No, less they'm so far removed no one remembers et. There's a power of
+Harveys in this part of the world. Manuel do come from Truro way."
+
+The high gig had been coming quickly nearer, and now drew up before the
+two women.
+
+"Evenen, Mis' Cotton. Evenen, Senath," said Sam, with undisturbed
+phlegm. "Could'ee blige we weth some stout twine? The off-rein has
+broken and us have only put en together for the moment wi' a bit o'
+string Mr. Harvey here had in's pocket."
+
+Mrs. Cotton bustled off into the house, and Sam climbed down, the gig
+bounding upwards when relieved from his weight. He was a big, fair man,
+his moustache distinctly lighter than his weather-beaten face, and since
+the days when he had courted Senath the whites of his eyes had become
+yellowish round the muddy hazel of the iris. Senath looked from him to
+Manuel, still in the gig, and as she did so, something unknown stirred
+at her pulses, very faintly.
+
+Manuel Harvey was dark, and though his eyes, too, were hazel, it was
+that clear green-grey, thickly rimmed with black, that is to be seen in
+the people of that part of the world who have a strain of Spanish blood
+in them, dating from the wrecks of the Armada. Those eyes, beneath their
+straight brows, met Senath's, and in that moment idle curiosity passed
+into something else.
+
+Many women and most men marry for a variety of reasons not unconnected
+with externals. There has been much spoken and written on the subject
+of "affinities," a term at the best insecure, and often pernicious, but
+very occasionally, when the two people concerned are elemental creatures
+with little perception of those half-shades which are the bane of
+civilization, there does occur a flashing recognition which defies known
+laws of liking, and this it was which came to Manuel and Senath now.
+
+"Falling in love" is ordinarily a complex, many-sided thing, compact of
+doubts and hesitations, fluctuating with the mood and with that powerful
+factor, the opinions of others. It is subject to influence by
+trivialities, varying affections and criticisms, and the surface of it
+is an elastic tissue setting this way and that, as thoughts ebb and flow
+from moment to moment, even though far beneath it may remain
+unperturbed. Yet every now and then come together two of that vanishing
+race who are capable of feeling an emotion in the round--the whole
+sphere of it. This sense of a spherical emotion came to Senath as she
+would have pictured the onslaught of a thunder-ball, save that this fire
+had the quality of warming without scorching utterly.
+
+Looking up, as she stood there stricken motionless, she saw him
+transfigured to a glowing lambency by the blaze of the setting sun full
+on his face; and he, staring down, saw her against it. Her linen sun
+bonnet, which had slipped back on her shoulders and was only held by the
+strings beneath her chin, was brimming with sunlight, like some magic
+pilgrim's pack; and her eyes, opened widely in her worn, delicately
+seamed face, gained in blueness from the shadow her face and neck made
+against the brightness. Even so, to most people she would have appeared
+only a wholesome-looking woman in early middle life, who had kept the
+clear and candid gaze of childhood; a woman rather ungainly and
+thick-set. Manuel saw her as what, for him, she was--a deep-bosomed
+creature, cool of head and warm of heart--a woman worth many times over
+the flimsy girls who would pass her with a pitying toss of the head.
+Manuel thought none of this consciously; he was only aware of a pricking
+feeling of interest and attraction, and had he been asked his opinion
+would have said she seemed a fine, upstanding woman enough. Then, when
+Mrs. Cotton came out again with the twine and a big packing-needle, he,
+too, climbed down and, his fingers being younger and more supple than
+Sam's, attended to the stitching of the rein.
+
+"Must be gwain on, I b'lieve," announced Sam, when this was in progress.
+"Can't us giv'ee a lift, Senath? I'm sure us wont mind sitten familiar
+if you don't, will us, Manuel, my dear?"
+
+"Why, no, thank'ee, Sam," said Senath quickly, "I do rare and like a bit
+of a walk before goin' to the bed. Evenen to you, and thank you, Sam.
+Evenen, Mr. Harvey."
+
+He raised a face into which the blood had come with stooping over the
+rein.
+
+"Evenen, Miss Lear," he muttered.
+
+She started down the road at a good pace so as to have turned off before
+they came up with her, but she heard the clip-clop of the horse's hoofs
+as she drew alongside with the Pipers, and she turned in towards them
+through a gap in the hedge. She pushed a way among bracken and clinging
+brambles, and as she reached them the sun slipped behind the S. Just
+hills, and in the glamorous mingling of the afterglow with the swift
+dusk she stood, as the gig, the two men in it apparently borne along
+level with the top of the hedge by some mysterious agency, passed by.
+
+For a while she stood there, the dew gathering on stone and twig and
+leaf. She glanced up at the two dark columns reared above, her hand
+against the rough surface of the nearer one.
+
+"Must give en names, too," she said, with a backward thought for her
+Merry Maidens. "Why shoulden I call they after Sam and his new tenant?
+That one can be Sam,"--looking at the stumpier and wider of the two,
+"and the tall one, he can be Manuel."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is little to tell of the love of Senath and Manuel save that it
+was swift, unspeakably dear, and put beyond the possibility of
+fulfilment by the death of the man. The slight accident of a rusty nail
+that ran into his foot, enhanced by the lack of cleanliness of the true
+peasant, and Manuel, for such a trifling cause, ceased to be. They were
+fated lovers; fated, having met, to love, and, so Senath told herself in
+the first hours of her bitterness, fated never to grasp their joy. The
+time had been so short, as far as mere weeks went, so infinitely long in
+that they had it for ever. After the funeral in the moorland churchyard,
+Senath went into her cottage and was seen of no one for many days. Then
+she reappeared, and to the scandal of the world it was seen that she had
+discarded her black. She went about her work silently as ever, but
+seemed to shun meeting her fellow-creatures less than formerly. A bare
+year after Manuel's death she had married Samuel Harvey.
+
+No one wondered more than Sam himself how this had come about. If the
+marriage had been a matter of several months earlier, the common and
+obvious interpretation as to its necessity would have been current
+everywhere, and Sam would have had his meed of half-contemptuous pity.
+As it was, no one knew better than Sam that the other Harvey's wooing
+had gone no further than that wonderful kiss to which middle-aged
+people, who have missed the thing in their youth, can bring more
+reverential shyness than any blushing youth or girl.
+
+Had it been any other than Senath, folk would not have been so
+surprised. A woman may get along very well single all her days if she
+has never been awakened to another way of life, but give her a taste of
+it and it is likely to become a thing that she must have. Yet few made
+the mistake of thinking that that was how it was with Senath. A strongly
+spiritual nature leaves its impress on even the most clayey of those
+with whom it comes in contact, and all knew Senath to be not quite as
+they were. Yet she married the red-necked Samuel Harvey, and they went
+to live together at the Upper Farm. And, as to any superior delicacy,
+Senath showed less than most. A few kind souls there were who thought,
+with the instinctive tact of the sensitive Celt, that it might hurt her
+to hear the name "Mrs. Harvey" which would have been hers had she
+married Manuel. On the contrary, just as though she were some young
+bride, elated at her position, she asked that even old friends should
+call her by the new title.
+
+Sam was genuinely fond of Senath, and mingled with his fondness was a
+certain pride at having won what he had set out to win so many years
+ago; yet, it was so many years that he had been in a fair way to forget
+all about it till, one evening, he met Senath as he was driving home
+from market, much as when he had been with Manuel a year before. It had
+struck him as odd, for Senath was not apt to be upon the highway at that
+time, and although she was going in an opposite direction she asked for
+a lift back in his gig. When they came to the track that led off to her
+cottage, he tied up the mare and went with her to advise her as to her
+apple-trees, which were suffering from blight, and by the time he left,
+half an hour later, they were promised to each other. How it came about,
+Sam never quite understood; the only thing he was sure about was that it
+had been entirely his doing. Yet he couldn't help wondering a bit,
+though it all seemed to follow on so naturally at the time, that it was
+not until he was on his way back to the Upper Farm that he felt puzzled.
+He was still wondering about it, and her, when the parson joined their
+hands in the bleak, cold church, and Senath stood, beneath her
+unbecoming daisied hat, looking as bleak and cold as the granite walls
+around her.
+
+Later, Sam found this to be a misleading impression. Never was bride
+more responsive, in the eager passive fashion of shut eyes and quiet,
+still mouth, than was Senath. Only now and again, in the first weeks of
+their life together, she would give a start, and a look of terror and
+blank amazement would leap across her face, as though she were suddenly
+awakened out of a trance.
+
+Men of Sam's condition and habit of mind do not, by some merciful law
+of nature, make ardent lovers, and life soon settled down comfortably
+enough on the farm. Senath was a capable housewife, and, what with the
+dairy-work and cooking and superintending the washing, and such extra
+work as looking after any sickly lamb or calf, she had plenty to do. And
+yet, in the midst of so much activity, every now and then Sam was struck
+by a queer little feeling of aloofness in Senath--not any withdrawing
+physically, but a feeling as though her mind were elsewhere. He might
+find her sitting on the settle with her eyes closed, although she was
+obviously awake, and an expression of half-fearful joy on her face, as
+on that of a person who is listening to some lovely sound and holding
+his breath for fear lest the least noise on his own part should frighten
+it into stillness.
+
+However, Sam was not an imaginative man, and since the house shone with
+cleanliness such as it had never known, the shining not of mere
+scouring, but of the fine gloss only attained by loving care, he did not
+trouble his head. Women were queer at the best of times, and besides, a
+few months after the marriage, reason for any additional queerness on
+the part of Senath became known to him. After she had told him the news,
+Sam, ever inarticulate, but moved to the rarely felt depths of his
+nature, went out into a field that was getting its autumn ploughing, and
+his heart sang as he guided the horses down the furrow. Even as he was
+doing now, and his father had done before him, so should his son do
+after him, and the rich earth would turn over in just this lengthening
+wave at the blade of the ploughshare for future generations of Harveys
+yet to come. Like most men with any feeling for the land in them, Sam
+was sure his child must be a son.
+
+And to him, who had not hoped for such a thing in marrying Senath, to
+him this glory was coming. Everything seemed to him wonderful that day;
+the pearly pallor of the dappled sky; the rooks and screaming gulls that
+wheeled and dipped behind his plough; the bare swaying elms, where the
+rooks' nests clung like gigantic burrs. Dimly, and yet for him keenly,
+he was aware of all these things, as a part of a great phenomenon in
+which he held pride of place.
+
+When he came in, his way led through the yard, where a new farm-cart,
+just come home, stood under the shed in all the bravery of its blue body
+and vermilion wheels. Senath had crept round in the shed to the back and
+was studying the tailboard, one hand against it.
+
+"Looken to see all's well to the rear as to the front?" called Sam
+jovially. "That's a proper farmer's wife."
+
+Senath started violently and dropped her hand, looking away before she
+did so. "It looks fine," was all she said, and went within doors,
+passing him. A small portent, so slight Sam did not even know it for
+what it was, and yet something in her look and manner seemed to chill
+him to the bones of him. Then, and after, he put anything unfathomable
+in her ways down to her condition, and so turned what might have been a
+source of discomfort to the account of his joy.
+
+The blossom was thick upon the apple-trees when Senath's boy was born.
+He had a long fight of entry, and when the sky was paling and flushing
+with the reluctant dawn, Sam, who had spent the night alternately
+snoring on the settle and creeping upstairs in his stockinged-feet,
+heard the first wailing of his son. He heard, too, the clank of the
+milk-pails in the yard without, the lowing of an impatient cow, and the
+crowing--above all sounds the most melancholy to anyone upon a sleepless
+pillow--of a triumphant cock. As he heard all these common noises about
+his own place, he realized how much more dear they had all become to him
+by reason of what was in the room above. He knew that his wife had what
+is inadequately called a "bad time," but although the boards over his
+head had creaked for hours to the anxious tread of doctor and of nurse,
+not a cry had come until this one that heart and ear told him was from
+his child. He went upstairs once more, creeping less this time, and
+knocked timidly at the door, then coughed to show who it was. The nurse,
+a thin, yellow-haired London woman doing parish-nursing for her
+health--a woman he hated while he feared her--opened the door a slit and
+looked unsympathetically at him.
+
+"I was wanten to knaw . . ." began Sam.
+
+"None the better for hearing you," snapped the nurse. "She must have
+absolute quiet."
+
+"I dedn't go for to mane that," explained Sam naively, "but the cheild?
+'Tes a boy?"
+
+"Oh, it's a boy, and doing all right," said the nurse, and shut the door
+in his face.
+
+Sam went downstairs and put his head under the yard-pump, and laved his
+bare red arms in its flow, as men might bathe in the waters of perpetual
+youth. The great rejuvenation of a new birth had come upon him. For that
+is what it resolves itself into--the advent of a son to a middle-aged
+man. Sam felt his term of life taking immortal lease.
+
+Later in the day, the news that his son was weakly was broken to him,
+but made very little impression. The child could not die, because it was
+his. To other men, the common lot of humanity, but not so near home.
+
+The morning was at its height, all around romance and mystery had
+dissolved in the broad shining, when they told Sam his wife wished to
+see him, but that he must be careful not to excite her as she was not
+yet beyond the danger-point.
+
+When he saw her, the burning colour in her face strong against the white
+of her pillows, he thought they must be exaggerating, and he patted her
+hand cheerfully.
+
+"You've done fine, Senath, lass," he assured her. "'Tes a brave an'
+handsome chap, is young Samuel."
+
+"Not Samuel," answered Senath. Her voice, though low, was composed.
+
+"What then?" asked Sam, remembering his wife was at a time when she must
+be humoured as far as speech went, anyway.
+
+"Manuel," said Senath. Then, at his start of dissent: "Yes, Manuel."
+
+"You'm my wife, not his," said Sam. "The cheild's my cheild, not his,
+and et shall be called for ets father."
+
+"I'm Manuel's wife," said Senath, "and et's Manuel's cheild."
+
+Sam calmed down, for he was now sure that his wife was light-headed. It
+was a common symptom, he had been told.
+
+"No," said Senath, answering his thought, "I'm not that wisht, Sam. I'm
+in my right mind, and I'm only waiten on you to go. I'm waiten to go,
+Sam, I'm waiten to go."
+
+"What do you mean, lass?"
+
+"I'm waiten till I've told 'ee why I wedded you, Sam. It was because of
+Manuel."
+
+She lay still a moment and then went on:
+
+"Of course I had et in my thoughts to die a maid and go to him as he
+left me. A woman allus thinks that to begin with. And then et began to
+come clear to me--all the future. How I'd go on getting older and more
+withered and wi' nawthen to show for my life. And when I saw Manuel
+agan, he'd say: 'Where's the woman I loved? Where's her blue eyes, and
+the fine breast of her?' And I'd have to say: 'Wasted, gone, dried-up,
+Manuel.' I wanted him. I wanted Manuel as I never thought a woman could
+want anything but peace, and he was taken from me. So I determined in my
+heart I'd go to Manuel, and go with somethen to take to en. I married
+you, Sam, because you had the same name, and was the same height, and
+when I shut my eyes, I could fancy my head was on his breast, and that
+et was his heart beaten at my ear. That's why I made folk call me 'Mrs.
+Harvey': so I could force myself to think et was Manuel Harvey's wife I
+was. That's why I used to look at your name painted up, ef et was but on
+the tailboard of a cart. I used to hide the front of et, so that I could
+pictur' 'Manuel' written under my hand. Sometimes I'd pictur' et so hard
+and fierce that when I took my hand away, I expected to see er there,
+and the sight of 'Samuel' was like a blow. I got to knaw that, and to
+look away before I took my hand off."
+
+Again she stopped and lay awhile as though gathering energy; then the
+indomitable voice went on:
+
+"At first, when you took me in your arms, et was near to turning me mad,
+and I thought I couldn't go on wi' et; but I got better and better at
+imagining et was Manuel, though et was like to kill me every time I woke
+up. For et was like waking up every time I had to let the strain of my
+imagining go for a moment. And each time et left me feelen weaker and
+more kind of wisht than before. But I was glad of that, for et all
+brought me nearer. When you wedded me, I swear I'd got so I made et
+Manuel, and not you, who was holding me, and for nine months I've borne
+his cheild beneath my broken heart. I've made et his."
+
+She drew the little sentient bundle nearer to her, as though to defend
+it from him. He stared at her, then spoke slackly, trying to urge force
+into his voice.
+
+"'Tes all nawthen but in your mind, all that. It's what's real as
+matters."
+
+"Don't you remember, Sam, how the wise woman to church-town had a spite
+against Will Jacka's Maggie, and told her her cheild was goin' to be an
+idiot; and how et preyed on the mind of her, and the boy has no
+mouth-speech in him to this day? That was only in her mind. And how, in
+the Book, Jacob put the peeled wands before the eyes of the sheep, and
+the lambs came all ring-straked and speckled? I've put the thought of
+this before the eye of my mind; I've thought et into bein' Manuel's
+cheild, even as I belong to him and him only. And 'tes to him I'm taken
+et."
+
+Sam turned and stumbled from the room, down to the kitchen, and dropped
+upon the settle. The next moment, a sudden flash of fear sent him to his
+feet. He tore up the stairs, knocked into the nurse as she came out of
+her room, and swept her along with him.
+
+Senath had her shawl folded thickly over the baby's face, and she had
+turned over so that her body lay upon it as she clasped it to her
+breast. But the baby still lived, and when they had taken it from her,
+she fell into a sullen silence, through which the tide of her life, too,
+began to creep back steadily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten years later, three little boys were playing in the yard at the Upper
+Farm. One was a few years older than the other two, who were obviously
+twins, fair and round and apple-cheeked, with bright brown eyes like
+little animals, and slackly open mouths. The other boy was of nervous
+make, with black hair that fell into eyes at once more human and more
+forlorn. He was very dirty, but he had stuck a yellow jonquil through a
+hole in his jersey. They were playing at moulding little men out of the
+mud, and setting them about an inverted flower-pot which did duty for a
+house. Suddenly, one of the little boys pushed away the mud-farmer which
+the eldest had placed at the arched break in the rim, which was the
+house door, and stuck his own much more primitive effort there instead.
+
+"You'm not to put your man there, Manuel," he screamed. "That's the door
+like where father do stand of a Sunday. My man must stand there, because
+every one do say you'm a changeling and no proper son at all."
+
+Manuel scrambled to his feet and ran across the yard; his hard little
+boots clattered as he went. He ran into the kitchen, where his mother,
+stout and comfortable-looking, was baking. The dim room was filled with
+the good smell of hot bread and pastry.
+
+"Mother, mother," sobbed Manuel, "Sam's said et again. He says I'm not
+like da's son; that I'm naught but a changeling."
+
+Senath raised a flushed face from her work and kept the rolling-pin
+still a moment while her eldest-born spoke, but she did it mechanically.
+
+"If you'd only try not to be so odd-like and so different to the rest o'
+the family," she complained, "the boys would'n say it so often. There,
+take this hot split and lave me be."
+
+At ten years old, neither wounded pride nor the worse hurt of always
+feeling a something unexplained about himself that did not fit in with
+his surroundings, was proof against hot pastry, and Manuel went away
+with it, though slowly, to a spot he knew of beside the mill-leat. There
+a robin was building her nest in the alders, and there, too, if he lay
+very still, with shut eyes, he could imagine all sorts of wonderful
+things that the brook was saying. How he was really not the son of these
+people at all, but of some wonderful prince, who would come upon a
+coal-black charger, like the one in the old fairy-book, and take him
+away, away from this discordant house where he felt such a very lonely
+little boy. . . .
+
+In the kitchen, Senath, about to resume her work, saw that the jonquil
+had dropped from his jersey to the floor, where it lay shining, a fallen
+star. Senath stood staring at it for a minute. For one flash,
+bewildering and disconcerting, like the sudden intrusion of last night's
+dream into the affairs of to-day, she saw herself again--that self she
+never thought of as being the precursor of the present Senath, but as a
+totally different person altogether, whom, try as she would, she could
+not connect up. She had long ago given up trying, busy with her man and
+the boys. The two younger were little trouble enough beyond the ordinary
+vexatiousness of childhood, but there was something about Manuel which
+was different, and which often annoyed Sam, who liked to brag about his
+eldest boy, and tried always to make him out as exactly like himself.
+But she was conscious that the Senath of long ago would have understood.
+Now, as she stared at the jonquil, it seemed to her that that Senath was
+she herself again, though she had grown to despise the dreaming,
+fanciful creature of her muffled memory--perhaps there had been
+something fierce and great about her, that the present Senath could
+never capture again.
+
+The moment passed, and she let the flower lie where it was, and
+presently, when Sam, the successful husband, came in ruddy and clamorous
+for his tea, his heavy boot trampled it, all discoloured, into a crack
+of the stone flags. The little boys came tumbling in, too, also
+clamorous, after the way of men-folk.
+
+"Where's Manuel?" demanded Sam.
+
+Both little shrill voices were obsequious with the information that he
+had gone towards the leat.
+
+"Day-dreamen, I'll be bound," said Sam, his mouth full of hot split.
+"Eh, well, so were you, missus, at one time of day. Life'll soon knock
+et out of him, like et has of you. And you'm all the better wi'out et,
+arn't 'ee, lass?"
+
+She said "Yes," and would have thought so if it had not been for the
+memory of that moment, already faded, when she had seen the jonquil. As
+it was, she sent a quick thought out to the boy who lay playing with
+imaginings by the alders; a thought of vague regret and a faint hope
+that it might not be with him quite as it had been with her. And whether
+the thought reached his unknowing self or not, to Manuel's fancy the
+leat had a finer tale and brighter hopes to tell him that evening than
+usual, and he was at the age when, although he knew the corresponding
+fall on entering the house must be the more severe, he never doubted
+that the dreams were worth it.
+
+
+
+
+THE COFFIN SHIP
+
+
+Of all the ships that traded from the Islands to the mainland, the
+_Spirito Santo_ had the worst reputation. She was known as a "hungry"
+vessel; her chief mate was a French Creole from Martinique who had been
+trained aboard a Yankee clipper, and her captain was a blue-nose who
+behaved as such. Since, on the outward voyage, the crew generally
+consisted of men who had made the Islands too hot to hold them, and, on
+the return trip, of half-dazed sailors who had been doped by crimps,
+there was a certain superficial variety about it--a variety merely of
+individuals and not of kind.
+
+The _Spirito Santo_ had been a good enough ship in her day, and had
+weathered a typhoon in the China seas and a hurricane in the Atlantic,
+but she was one of the earliest steam vessels built, and had started
+life as a side-wheeler; her paddles having been changed for a single
+screw and simple engines, of the kind guaranteed to combine the greatest
+possible consumption of fuel with a correspondingly large waste of
+steam.
+
+She was a wooden vessel, iron still being looked at askance when her
+keel was laid, and her lines were those of the true sailing-ship, with
+bows that bulged out almost square from either side of her cutwater,
+above which her long bowsprit raked the air. The result was that she
+steamed as a wind-jammer, with her bows delaying her speed by their
+large surface of resistance; and went better under canvas, with her
+screw running free. She was barque-rigged, that is to say she carried
+trysails on her fore and main, below the lovely tower of royals,
+topgallant sails and top-sails which even her stumpy sticks and too-wide
+yards could not make ungraceful. Her long thin funnel amidships looked
+as though it had got there by mistake, and indeed she belonged rather to
+the class of auxiliary steam than that of auxiliary sail, in spite of
+the motive with which she had conceived. In fact, her trouble was that
+in a world where steamships, and iron ones at that, were beginning more
+and more to snatch at trade, and where the great racing clippers still
+broke records, the _Spirito Santo_, being neither one thing nor the
+other, had become a losing proposition. Her owners grudged tar on her
+sides as sorely as kids of meat to the men, and no shabbier trader than
+the _Spirito Santo_ nosed her way from Port of Spain to the Golden Gate.
+Yet she got there all right, bullied and driven, got there on cheap coal
+and rotten rigging, though her engines seemed as though they must beat a
+hole in her straining sides and her planks part from sheer exhaustion.
+She held together as a coherent and reliable whole partly because, with
+all her lack of grace, she was a sweet ship in a seaway if one knew her
+idiosyncrasies, partly because her skipper could nurse a ship through
+anything while the hull stayed afloat. And the _Spirito Santo_ took some
+handling, for in spite of her wide yards and tonnage to the tune of
+seven hundred, she only drew fourteen feet and was as tricky as a cat.
+Her skipper coaxed her and humoured her, bullied her at just the right
+moment, in short, treated her as though she had been a woman--only Joab
+Elderkin would not have taken the trouble over any she-thing of flesh
+and blood.
+
+Elderkin was the best-feared man in the Caribbean. He had a thin sinewy
+frame and a very soft voice which he never raised in ordinary
+conversation, and this gave a curious effect of monotony to whatever he
+was saying. Never drunk at sea, he was always perfectly sober on land
+except for the first twenty-four hours after landing, when he soaked
+steadily. Even his movements were gentle, as though to match his voice
+and the dark eyes, deep-set in his prematurely wizened face, held the
+wistful puzzled sadness of a monkey's. His language was unparalleled for
+profanity, and to the most hardened there was something of terror in the
+appalling flow of words issuing on such an unruffled softness of
+intonation. In those days the master of a vessel had almost unlimited
+power within the area of his ship's rails. If, goaded by ill-use, a man
+struck his officer, he was quite likely to be shot straightway, and on
+reporting the matter the captain would be praised for his promptness in
+quelling mutiny at its rising. Floggings with the cat or the yoke-rope,
+brutal mishandling with knuckle-dusters and belaying-pins, were the
+quick and common resort on the slightest count, and Captain Joab
+Elderkin was famous for his technique in all these methods. His ship
+literally merited the trite description of a floating hell, and one boy
+aboard her had died of a broken heart. The child had failed in an
+attempt to get ashore at Frisco, been brought back and flogged at the
+mizzen rigging, and afterwards turned his face to the dark forecastle
+wall, refused food and died. The little incident had added to Elderkin's
+unsavoury reputation, but it was this reputation which made him a man
+after his owners' hearts. He was not likely to suffer from scruples, and
+it is needless to say that the _Spirito Santo_, a free-lance trading
+from what port she chose, carried a good deal now and again on which she
+never paid duty. Her skipper's only form of conscience was his
+seamanship. The owners might grudge paint, but every bit of brass-work
+on board shone like gold, and the decks were holy-stoned till the men
+sobbed over their aching knees. At twenty-three he had held command of a
+full-rigged ship trading to China. Now, since the _Spirito Santo_ was
+becoming more and more of a falling investment, he rarely made the
+passage round into the Pacific, and, Atlantic-bound, dodging from the
+Islands to Colon and down the coast as far as Rio, Elderkin was wont to
+refer to the time when he really had been a sailor. . . .
+
+It was his conscience as a seaman that the owners were up against when
+they called the captain into consultation over the diminishing returns
+of the _Spirito Santo_, and proposed to him the course that is regarded
+by sailors the world over as the great betrayal.
+
+To anyone without a nice sense for spiritual values, everything is
+merely a matter of price, and Elderkin's fee for the loss of his ship
+and with her his soul was higher than the partners could have wished.
+They were greasy men, with the Spanish strain, that too often, in those
+latitudes, means a hint of the negro as well, and their office was on
+the outskirts of the dirty vulture-ridden Port of Spain of those days.
+The room was bare, and upon the blotchy whitewash of the wall there
+hung nothing but a map and a few advertisements. The mosquitoes sang
+through the unscreened windows; outside, in the dusty strip of bleached
+earth between the house and the road, a hedge of hibiscus was in bloom.
+In the glaring sunshine the flaunting back-curled blossoms seemed afire
+as they shot their thin vermeil tongues out into the air made so alive
+with light. To Elderkin, as he sat in the dimmed room, full of green
+reflections from the vegetation without, came the unpleasant thought
+that it was as though he were under seas . . . and the flaming tongues of
+the hibiscus were some evil sea-growth, mocking at his plight.
+
+He leaned forward and helped himself again from the bottle of whisky
+that stood upon the bare table. When he lifted it a crescent of gold
+fled across the table, slipping back again when he set the bottle down,
+as a ripple of reflected light runs through water. Elderkin had often
+seen a gleam like it when watching a small bright fish flash through a
+pool.
+
+His reluctant mind responded to the kick of the liquor: the dirty little
+room, the watchful eyes of the partners as they sat on either side of
+him in their soiled linen suits, no longer seemed so unpleasant to him,
+accustomed as he was to the sordidness that, if care is not exercised,
+so soon overtakes an interior in the tropics. His caution still remained
+to him, and he sounded the scheme at every point, finding the partners
+were prepared, full of urgings, advices, rosy forecasts, cunning
+details. On the homeward voyage, that would be best . . . he could
+take her out in ballast, bring her back loaded to her limit and beyond
+it. . . . Those were days before the Plimsoll mark, and vessels often left
+port--even great English ports--so loaded that their scuppers were all
+but awash, and not only left but perhaps attempted the passage round the
+Horn itself. There would be no difficulty about that, but Captain
+Elderkin must, of course, not sail from a Peruvian harbour as the
+authorities there had an unpleasant habit of marking a load-line on
+every ship that cleared and seeing that she did not go above it.
+Besides, a cargo was awaiting him in Chili, and the partners were
+prepared about that too. It was to be a double deal, the actual copper
+and nitrates, with a small amount of gold, which she would go out to
+take was, by arrangement with a certain official known to the partners,
+to be changed for sand and stones. Just a sprinkling of nitrate at the
+top, perhaps, since nitrate is loaded in bulk. It was risky, but on the
+other hand it was a thing often carried through with success, and
+Elderkin, who knew all the tricks and possibilities of both coasts,
+could see his way with reasonable clarity. The partners advised Captain
+Elderkin not to attempt bringing the _Spirito Santo_ round the Horn, as
+he might have more difficulty in saving himself; if the accident
+occurred on the Pacific side it would be better for many reasons. If he
+were picked up by a passing ship he must, of course, see to it that the
+_Spirito Santo_ was too far gone for salvage, or that would indeed make
+matters worse with a vengeance. An accident with the steering-gear--they
+had reason to know that Olsen, the chief engineer, would come in on
+it--when off a weather shore, would probably be the best solution. But,
+naturally, there was no need to instruct so clever a sailor as Captain
+Elderkin in his part of the affair . . . more smiles and whisky.
+
+Joab Elderkin sat and absorbed it all, with little expression on his
+sad, gentle face, his thin mouth remained imperturbable under the heavy
+dark moustache, only in his high and narrow temples a pulse beat. As he
+drank he raised his price, till at last the point was reached above
+which the partners refused to go and below which he would not descend.
+At that point they came to their agreement, and Joab Elderkin went out
+of the office having sold his only form of honour on a gamble which
+stood to put him on the way towards attaining a ship of his own. For
+that was the desire of his heart, and until now had seemed as impossible
+of realization as the phantom vessel of a dream. Probably for no other
+inducement under the skies would he have given another ship's salvation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The month of August found the _Spirito Santo_, all sail set, running
+down the Pacific coast before a north-westerly wind. Elderkin watched
+the weather carefully, for he had no idea of losing his life, or, for
+the matter of that, the lives of any of his crew who could be allowed to
+retain them with safety to himself and the partners. For there is always
+the personal equation to be studied in a matter of this kind, and
+Elderkin had given much thought to the members of his crew. He had
+hoped, while always fearing the futility of it, that the first mate,
+Isidore Lemaire, might be kept in ignorance. For a while it seemed as
+though this were so, but since leaving port Elderkin had felt doubtful
+of the creole. Lemaire had a furtive way with him at the best of times,
+a hint as of something that crept and glided rather than walked
+normally, but then so had many of his race. He was supposed to be a
+white--in the expressive Island phrase, he "passed for white"--but on
+the French and Spanish and even the Danish islands the objection to
+racial mingling is not nearly so strong as in the colonies that have
+always been English. Also, Lemaire came from Martinique, which, after
+Haiti, is the headquarters of Obeah, and worse, of voodoo. Even quite
+good families in decaying Martinique had dealings with the unclean
+thing, and St. Pierre was known, even among sailors, for a hotbed of
+strange vices. All this was why Lemaire made such a powerful mate, for
+the crew, except for the red-headed Danish engineer from St. Thomas,
+were either half-castes from the Islands and the southern continent, or
+full-blooded negroes; which was to say that superstition was so part of
+them that the last vestige of it would only run out with the last drop
+of blood from their bodies. Elderkin knew better than to penetrate the
+forecastle, but he was aware of the bottles filled with dead
+cockroaches, bits of worsted and the rest of the paraphernalia for the
+casting of spells, which hung there. He himself had found that the only
+way to keep his steward off his whisky was to decorate his locker with a
+similar charm, and since he had done so had suffered no more from
+pilfering. All this was obeah, harmless enough, and if now and then, a
+white cock was sacrificed in the forecastle and a seaman went somewhat
+mad on its blood, Elderkin ignored the matter. But Lemaire was, he knew,
+suspected by the crew of darker dealings. There had been a rumour that
+the reason Lemaire left Martinique was because the disappearance of a
+planter's child was like to be laid at his door, and the rumour was
+enough to make the niggers cringe before him. This was a master, perhaps
+the friend of papalois and mamalois, with the power of life and death.
+Elderkin loathed him--there are things from which the most hardened
+white man shrinks, and it would have to be one utterly unregenerate who
+could dabble his hands in voodooism. Nevertheless, the suspicion made
+Lemaire the best nigger-driver in the length and breadth of the
+Caribbean, and Elderkin made use of him for that reason. Now, for the
+first time, he began to feel the man's peculiarities getting on his own
+nerves. A word dropped now and again, odd looks from the protuberant and
+opaque brown eyes, were making him wonder if the mate guessed, whether
+it would be better to take him into the secret and trust to his never
+reaching shore. . . .
+
+They were nearing the forties when Lemaire spoke. The day was wet, with
+a strong wind, all the morning they had been driving through tingling
+veils of rain and spray, shipping green water that slopped over the
+holds and poured in foaming torrents along the dipping scuppers. All day
+the wind--which till then had thrummed through the rigging and held the
+sails in their stiffened curves so steadily that the _Spirito Santo_
+kept a fairly even keel--had been falling on fitfulness. Loaded as she
+was, the seas that raced past her, almost level with her deck, seemed
+higher than they really were. An odd darkness held the air and through
+it everything bright--the flashes of foam, a wheeling bird, or rare
+shoal of flying fish--showed up with startling pallor. In the second
+dog-watch Lemaire came to Elderkin in the chart-room.
+
+Most men have a weakness and Elderkin's--probably because he never made
+a confidant of a human being--was the dangerous one of pen and paper. He
+was making calculations on the fly-leaf of an old Bible which had been
+unearthed with a lot of other junk from a locker. Calculations about
+ships--the varying costs of handling a four-masted schooner and a
+barque, the advantages of chartering a small screw steamer; calculations
+of routes and cargoes, of many things, but always calculations. . . .
+
+The curious darkness had swamped the chart-room, and made the
+discoloured clasps of the Bible and the brighter brass of the ship's
+fittings gleam out; made the captain's always pale face seem waxen,
+showed two sallow flames in the mate's ophidian eyes. For a moment the
+two men looked at each other in silence, then Lemaire spoke.
+
+"I see you figger it all out," he observed. "Don't forget me, dat's all.
+I come in on dis, my friend. _Sacré nom de Dieu_"--on a sudden flash of
+menace--"did you think I was going to get not'ing out of it? Or perhaps
+you was going to drown me, eh?"
+
+Elderkin had got to his feet, and was watching the other man steadily.
+When he spoke, his voice was as low and tired as ever.
+
+He asked what the blank the blank mate thought he was talking about.
+Lemaire explained that he was talking about the scuttling of the
+_Spirito Santo_, and that the captain knew it as blank well as he did.
+
+"While the ship remains afloat, kindly remember that I am in command,
+Mr. Lemaire, and address me with proper respect. If you do so I'll
+discuss business with you. If not, I'll see that you go to hell along
+with the ship. Savvy, you herring-gutted son of a frog-eater, you?"
+
+Lemaire savvied. He had grown sickly hued with anger, but he spread his
+dark hands in apology, so that the pinkish palms seemed to flash in the
+unnatural gloom.
+
+Then they got to business. What Elderkin had feared had
+happened--Lemaire's suspicions were aroused in port over the loading of
+the _Spirito Santo_, over the paucity of the stores taken aboard, over
+the many oddnesses that reveal themselves to a cunning mind when
+something beyond the normal is in progress. Elderkin remembered the
+night when Lemaire and the successfully bribed official had gone
+together, as he had then thought, to a rowdy house--it must have been on
+that occasion that the stronger man won definite confirmation from the
+weaker. Now there was nothing for it but to let Lemaire in on the
+deal--for the present.
+
+"You are not t'inking of a storm, no?" asked the mate, when both men had
+laid their cards upon the table. "With our boats we should not stand a
+chance. . . . A fire, perhaps? We are car'n some cotton, sah, and it might
+have been packed damp."
+
+"Too risky. I thought of all that. We can only trust our boats to takes
+us a little way. I must pile her up near the mainland. There's a reef I
+know of----"
+
+"A reef!" scoffed Lemaire, "and you de best skipper on either side! Who
+d'you s'pose believe dat? Not unless we first had an accident to de
+engines, anyway. What about Olsen? Does he--know?"
+
+"Yes. It could not be carried through without him."
+
+"Ah, I see. . . . Only poor Lemaire was to be kept out. . . . And
+dis reef?"
+
+"It's uncharted. I found it years ago. I had reasons for not wanting it
+known where I'd been and I never reported. It's a tricky place, the sea
+don't break true on it, sets in sideways. Beyond it's flat to the shore.
+No risk of salvage; it's out of the course, and a wooden ship goes to
+pieces at once, anyway."
+
+"Where is it, dis reef?"
+
+Elderkin drew his pencil down the chart to an indented bit of coast not
+a couple of degrees below the fortieth parallel. Lemaire sweated to
+think how near he had been to risk.
+
+"If this north-west gale holds, and we are to have an accident which
+made her unmanageable," went on Elderkin, "we should be driven ashore,
+on to that reef. Or at least we could always say so afterwards."
+
+"We might arrange so's Olsen was neber able to give us de lie . . ."
+suggested Lemaire, glancing sidelong at the other.
+
+"If needful."
+
+But when the tussle over terms was ended and Lemaire had gone forth,
+Elderkin swore to himself that it was the mate who should never again
+see the Islands rise above the rim of the sea. He cursed, and for a few
+moments as he sat at the chart-room table, he allowed himself the luxury
+of hating the course on which he had embarked. A man cannot give his
+soul into the keeping of any one idea, whether that idea be embodied in
+another person or in a mode of life, without suffering a profound
+disturbance if he violently part from it; and for many years now
+Elderkin's soul had been one with his ship. She was ugly, cranky, she
+bore a name as a hell-ship that he had earned for her, but together they
+had won through much; men had died on her, blood run upon her decks,
+misery and pride and drunkenness and strange doings permeated her very
+frame. She was as the flesh of his flesh, and only that dream-ship of
+his own which floated in a mirage before his mind could have made him
+unfaithful to her. He was in the position of a man who has lived with a
+despised but deeply felt mistress, and who at last thinks he holds the
+ideal woman, the bride, the untouched, within his grasp, at the price of
+the severance of the old ties. And, like a reproachful ghost, as though
+she were dead already, the appeal of the old reprobate of the seas kept
+pricking at him, day and night, throughout the ordered watches that drew
+her towards her end.
+
+He had sold his soul to gain his soul, a not altogether uncommon
+bargain. "If I can only have this one thing I will Be Good ever after,"
+is a cry that must have caused amusement above and below as many times
+as there are mortals upon the earth. In Elderkin's case the "one thing"
+was a ship of his own, and now that she loomed at last over his horizon,
+he found that it was this old Hagar of the high seas, the mistress and
+not the wife, who, in spite of himself, absorbed his consciousness. All
+the ugliness of his betrayal of her was thrown sharply into notice by
+the compact with his mate; and, shot by a sharper distaste than ever
+before, he covered his eyes for a minute, in an attempt to focus his
+will undistracted. It was successful; Elderkin, little as he knew it,
+was an idealist, however perverted a one, and idealism was with him in
+this venture, beckoning to him in the dip and curtsy of a dream vessel,
+her bright canvas burning with perpetual sunlight. . . . He dropped his
+hands and straightened himself, and his eye fell on the Bible in which
+he had made his calculations, and where he had also noted down his
+covenant with Lemaire. It had fallen open, by the chance movement of his
+arms, at a different place, and he found he was reading a few lines
+before he knew what he was about.
+
+Too imperceptibly for him to have noticed the progress of it, the light
+had strengthened in the chart-room, for a stormy sun had penetrated the
+gloom, and the heavy black letters stood out distinctly on the yellowed
+page. A sudden flash of memory leapt through Elderkin's mind--the memory
+of a day long ago in his childhood.
+
+He had been brought up in New England by a rigid old grandmother until
+he ran away to sea, his Nova Scotian blood too strong for him. But his
+mother's Puritan strain was with him nevertheless, had held by him if in
+nothing else but a certain Biblical flavour in his oaths. Now there
+flashed across his mind a dreary Sunday when he was a little boy--one of
+many like it, but this particular one had stuck in his memory. And,
+probably because of the yellow light flooding the chart-room, the memory
+surged up at him, for on that Sunday he had escaped to the barn,
+although with no better spoils than a book of Old Testament stories, and
+lain there, heels in the air and elbows on the straw, reading the story
+of the Flood in just such a stormy yellow glow as this. A gale had
+followed, rain-laden, and his childish mind had half-feared,
+half-hoped, that a flood was coming, down which he could float
+triumphantly in some makeshift ark . . . as to his grandmother, he might
+rescue her and he might not, but if he did, of course, she would be so
+overcome with gratitude and admiration that she would never again abase
+his dignity with a certain limber cane. Then, in a lull of the gale, the
+gleam had shone out once more, and by its light he read on; read how God
+had promised there should never come a flood over all the earth again,
+and had made a rainbow as a sign of it. Rather dull of God, he thought
+in his disappointment. The storm raged so that he dared not slip back to
+the house, not because of any fear of the elements, but because his
+grandmother would notice if his clothes got wet; so he had stayed on,
+his mind thronged with imaginary adventures, till the storm was over.
+Then he had gone back to the house, feeling curiously flat after the
+excitement wind always produced in him. A faint yet, pictorially, a
+vivid memory of that strained hour of varying emotions swept across him
+now in a moment's space, as he gazed at the page before him. The next
+moment he understood why--it was not only the light that reproduced that
+afternoon of long ago, but also the words at which he was looking--the
+two things together had fused a section of time from thirty years
+earlier into a section of the present. He read the verses through, but a
+few phrases knocked at his mind to the exclusion of the rest. The word
+"covenant," especially, so hard upon his pact with Lemaire, seemed to
+stare up at him. . . .
+
+"And I will establish a covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be
+cut off any more by the waters of a flood. . . . And God said, This is the
+token of the covenant which I make between me and you, and every living
+creature that is with you. . . . I do set my bow in the cloud, and it
+shall be the token of a covenant. . . . And it shall come to pass when
+I shall bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud, and I shall remember the covenant which is between me and
+you. . . ."
+
+Elderkin sat at gaze like a man in a trance, unable for a few moments to
+disassociate that hour in the barn from the present--not sure which was
+the present, so vivid was the illusion and so sharp the knock on his
+dormant spiritual sense. His hands, which were trembling oddly, went out
+to grasp the edge of the table, not for the physical support, but more
+that a common sensation should reassure his mind. Then he rose, and
+backing away from the Book as though it would spring at him, he went
+out.
+
+The wind had dropped, but the _Spirito Santo_ was rolling her
+bulwarks--those solid structures which were traps for all the water
+shipped--into the confused sea that the dead wind had left. She was
+travelling badly, her heavy load robbed her of the elasticity which
+would have enabled her to rise to the onslaught of each successive wave.
+
+The _Spirito Santo_ boasted no bridge, the roof of the chart-room, which
+was situated on the poop, just forward of the mizzen-mast, doing duty
+instead. The wheel, which was uncovered, was set at the break of the
+poop, between the rail and the chart-house. Elderkin climbed the ladder
+to the top of the chart-house, and then stood there, struck to sudden
+stillness. He never glanced at the binnacle to see if the man were
+keeping the course, or noted the wiry figure of the mate as he tramped
+back and forth; his whole being was arrested by the portent which held
+the sky. And all the long-dormant but never wholly cast-off beliefs of
+his childhood awoke in his blood.
+
+A curtain of luminous, ashen-pink cloud was drawn across the sky from
+horizon to zenith, absolutely smooth and unbroken, and against it arched
+a rainbow, spanning the horizon and coming down mistily into the sea. So
+close the opalescent feet of it looked that it seemed as though the
+ship's bows were heading through the phantom portals of some new world,
+but high in air the summit of the curve, clear and burnished as
+cut-glass, looked infinitely far away. As Elderkin stood at gaze,
+particles of sun-bright cloud floated slowly across the right of the
+arch, like little morsels of golden wool.
+
+Elderkin, his fingers clutching a wet stanchion, was aware of a curious
+feeling coming over him. He felt he had seen just that effect
+before--that curtain of ashen pink, the rainbow against it, the flock of
+little golden-bright morsels, floating slowly across it . . . and had seen
+it in connexion with something of vital importance. Yet, try as he
+would, he could not capture the thought--memory--dream--whatever it was,
+of which he was so sure in the back of his mind that he felt it waiting
+for him to recognize it every moment. . . . All sorts of bewildering
+little half-memories flitted across his mind, and refused to be captured
+or placed. Queer, irrational little things they were, incongruous and
+wildly senseless; he felt dizzy chasing them, but he knew if he gave up
+concentrating even for an instant, the whole thing would be gone. Yet
+piece together these half-memories that pricked at him he could not,
+they were elusive as moths and as unsubstantial. He knew that there was
+one key to them and that if he could only find it they would become
+sense, though not sense of this world--it was as though they were in a
+different focus and on a different plane, but they would become clear if
+only he could find the key. . . .
+
+As he stared the little particles of cloud in front of the rainbow
+slowly dissolved and melted into the ashen pink of the cloud-curtain,
+from that, too, the glow was fading, and the arch itself began slowly to
+die into the air. Elderkin found himself in the chart-room again; he sat
+down and shut his eyes, striving to remember. He could not recollect
+having dreamt such a thing, and yet the feeling aroused in him was
+exactly that provoked when, on the day following a very vivid dream, it
+will keep on intruding in fragments, each time to be shaken off as the
+mind readjusts itself to the normal after the moment's blurring of edge.
+Suddenly it occurred to him that he must have seen that effect only a
+few days before and he opened his diary, in which, his vice being pen
+and paper, he noted down matters not important enough for the "Remarks"
+space in the log. He hunted the pages back and forth, and in the midst
+of his futile search his mind seemed to give a click and he was switched
+back into the normal again. He sat looking at the book in his hands and
+realized that he had never seen that especial effect before, that he had
+most certainly never noted it down; the mere idea that he had now seemed
+as silly as a dream when the mind has struggled fully awake, though when
+he had first thought of it and taken the notebook up, it had seemed as
+possible as the same dream when the sleeper is in the midst of it. He
+still felt curiously dizzy, though his head was clearing slowly: things
+seemed commonplace around him once more; he could not even remember
+distinctly what his sensations had been. He only knew that in that
+trance-like state, of a moment--of æons--earlier, he had known he had
+seen before that which he then saw, and seen it connected with something
+he could not catch. Whether he ever had seen it, perhaps on that
+incompletely remembered day of storm which had flashed back to him on
+this afternoon; or whether, already worked up by his conscience, by the
+interview with Lemaire, and, to his sensitized mind, by the words in the
+Bible, the sudden effect on him of seeing that bow set in the flaming
+cloud, had produced a brainstorm, he could never know. He would have
+thought it blasphemy to wonder whether nothing more spiritual than the
+driven blood in his skull was responsible for that queer switching off
+the track; but whatever it was, the effect of it, on his awakened moral
+sense, was prodigious. He did not doubt that he had received a divine
+visitation, that for him the heavens had been decked with pomp, that the
+workings of God, in particular and exquisite relation to himself, were
+manifest in the ordered sequence of that day. His own stirrings at the
+violation of his solitary code had gone deeper with him than he knew,
+preparing him for further troubling, then the pact with Lemaire, driving
+in all the distasteful side of the business more keenly still, the
+coincidence of that word "covenant" coming on the heels of his covenant
+with the mate, that word used in the Bible passage to suggest the
+eternal pact between man's soul and its creator, the memory it evoked,
+and, to crown all, the finding of the seal of it set in the heavens
+themselves--all these things rushed together, fused, and struck into his
+being.
+
+He fell on his knees in the chart-room and praised God; praised Him in
+the phraseology of his Puritan forebears, as he had heard Him praised
+when a little boy, whose heedless ears had not seemed to take in the
+words battering about them.
+
+Joab Elderkin had got religion. He had been converted.
+
+When he scrambled to his feet he came to, so to speak, on a different
+sphere from any he had ever known. He seized up the Bible again, his
+hands shaken by the strongest passion known to civilized man, the only
+acquired attribute, besides the making of fire, and of intoxicating
+liquor, which marks him off fundamentally from the other mammals. He
+read again the passage that had flamed into his ken earlier, he read
+the promises of the Almighty, he read of how men were called the
+Sons of God. He saw himself and all his fellow humans not merely
+calling God Father by a kindly sufferance towards adopted children,
+but as beings created of the same substance, their souls as much made
+of the essence of God as their bodies of the essence of their earthly
+fathers, and the thought mounted to his head like wine. The swift
+darkness of the tropics had fallen, but full of his new conception
+of his fellow-creatures--"every living creature that was with him"
+of the verses--he, when he opened the chart-room door, flared forth
+into a night of gods.
+
+All the next day the glory held, both in the air and in Elderkin's mind.
+The Pacific was rainbow-haunted; phantom archways through which the
+bowsprits seemed about to soar; pillars of prismatic colour that melted
+into air; broken shafts of it that flashed out in every sunlit burst of
+spray upon the decks. Even in the two plumes of spray for ever winging
+from either side of her cutwater, a curve of burnished colours hung, as
+though piercing down into the translucent green, through whose depths
+the drowning surf was driven in paler clouds. The wind still held on and
+the _Spirito Santo_ made what way she could under steam and canvas,
+through the confused seas that slopped aboard her and buffeted her from
+all sides at once. It was of supreme significance to Elderkin that the
+north-westerly wind on which he had counted for his purpose, should have
+died away in the self-same hour that, as he phrased it, the wind of the
+spirit blew into his soul. The barometer was falling rapidly, in spite
+of the stiller air, and he had had the royals and outer jib and
+gaff-topsail stowed. What with her reduced sail, the influence of her
+steam, and the lumpy seas, the _Spirito Santo_ was behaving her worst,
+riding slugglishly with a heavy reluctant motion as though she hardly
+considered it worth the effort of keeping her blunt nose above water at
+all. Elderkin felt her sulkiness, and it seemed to him as though,
+instead of helping to save her, she was possessed of an evil spirit bent
+on thwarting him. He watched her closely, and spent the day on the poop,
+and though he said little, every one was aware of something new and
+strange about him. The crew commented among themselves on his
+abstraction and the poverty of his abuse; Lemaire thought he held the
+key to it, but Olsen, the freckled Dane, grew uneasy. He was having
+trouble with his engines, which should have been overhauled long ago,
+and would inevitably have been renovated this trip had it been
+undertaken with a normal objective. If the voyage were unduly prolonged
+he would be hard put to it for fuel; it would not take very much to send
+his boilers crashing from the rusty stays that held them; added to which
+every degree further south, now they were in the forties, diminished
+their chances of safety. As there was no longer any wind to contend
+with, Olsen was all for steaming towards shore at once, for his
+sea-sense combined with the barometer to tell him of trouble ahead.
+
+Olsen was a taciturn creature, who cared for no one in the world but his
+half-caste children--bright, large-stomached little creatures, whom he
+had left playing in the dust in front of his gaily painted wooden house
+in St. Thomas. For their sakes he put up with his fat, slovenly wife and
+her swarms of relations of various shades of brown. It was only for the
+children's sake that he had stuck to the _Spirito Santo_, for it suited
+him to be able to get home as often as he might, and even when the
+_Spirito Santo_ did not touch St. Thomas he could always pick up with a
+mail-packet or a sailing ship of some kind. It was his ambition to send
+both boy and girl to New York for their education, now that the Civil
+War had made it possible for anyone with a touch of colour to make good.
+Therefore he nursed his crazy engines as though he loved them, but he
+decided that the sooner the accident occurred the better. In the second
+dog-watch, he, as Lemaire had done the day before, went to Elderkin in
+the chart-room.
+
+He found the captain with an open book in front of him: he was not
+reading, but making calculations on the margin. He glanced up at Olsen
+and his tired eyes brightened for a moment. Then:
+
+"Ask Mr. Lemaire to come here," he ordered, "and come back yourself."
+
+Olsen made his way to the top of the chart-house, where Lemaire was
+pacing, full of anxiety, and delivered the order. Lemaire came with a
+mixture of civility and an assumption of confederacy in his manner, but
+Elderkin took no more notice of it than of Olsen's waiting stolidity. He
+closed the Bible and confronted the two men.
+
+"Well, Olsen," he said, "you were wanting to see me about something?"
+
+"It is about this affair," answered Olsen, "there is no good to be got
+by waiting, sir. I tell you plainly my engines will not stand so very
+much. And the way she is loaded, if we come up against anything in the
+way of a sea----"
+
+"And you?" asked Elderkin of the mate.
+
+"I am sure dat what Olsen say is right. It must be now or never."
+
+"It is going to be never," replied Elderkin in his usual soft tones.
+
+The two men stared at him, then the quicker Latin flashed into speech.
+He demanded, with a lapse into Island patois now and again, what the
+blank blank blank the captain thought he was doing. Elderkin sat through
+it unmoved.
+
+"I will not speak to you as you have just done to me," he began,
+"because hairy, forsaken Frenchy as you are, you are still a son of God,
+even as I am. Praise the Lord with me, for He has shown me into what an
+abyss of sin I had fallen. Do you hear what I say? I am captain aboard
+this ship, Mr. Lemaire, and I order you to praise God for having
+delivered us while there is yet time."
+
+Lemaire stared at his superior officer in total silence for a moment
+instead of complying. Then he turned to Olsen. The freckled Dane grasped
+the situation the first. He saw that the skipper was not trying to do
+them down as Lemaire, when he found his tongue again, accused him: that
+this was not some deep-laid trick to keep them out of the profits. Olsen
+had seen many religious revivals in the Islands and he knew the signs.
+
+"See here, Mr. Elderkin," he said, stepping forward; "I've my side of it
+to think of. I've not suddenly got holy. I'm thinking of my children,
+same as I was before. You've never thought for anyone but yourself. I
+only shipped this voyage because it meant being able to do what I want
+for them. I've only stuck to this hell-ship for them. There's been
+things done aboard here that would have sunk the ship if sin could sink
+her. You can't clean your bloody ship by talking of God now. We all made
+an agreement and let's stand by it like men. Sink the ship, sir, and the
+top of the sea'll be the sweeter for it."
+
+"I've been a sinful man all my days," agreed Elderkin, "but my eyes have
+been opened, the Lord be thanked. . . . I have been saved and by the grace
+of God I mean to save the ship."
+
+"It'll take more than the grace of God to keep my engines working,"
+commented Olsen.
+
+"And suppose we refuse?" asked Lemaire. "We are two to one, Mr.
+Elderkin. Remember, sah--if the captain is sick it is de mate who take
+charge of de ship. . . ."
+
+"Mutiny? You? Do you imagine, Mossoo, that I couldn't hold my own ship
+against any half-breed afloat?"
+
+"Damn you!" screamed the mate, his skin darkening with his angry blood.
+"If you not take care we will say you are mad, yes, mad. De men have
+only got to hear religion coming out of your face to believe it. De
+ship's not safe, and we must scuttle her now, d'you hear?"
+
+"The men!" repeated Elderkin. "Let me tell you there never was a dago
+crew yet that I couldn't lick. I'll save this ship against the lot of
+you, I'll save her against herself--God helping me," he added.
+
+"But we shall be ruined, all of us," urged Olsen. "What do you suppose
+they will say to us at Port of Spain, Mr. Elderkin? They won't be
+pleased to see the _Spirito Santo_ come crawling into the roadstead with
+a faked cargo and all that good insurance money wasted. . . . We shall all
+be ruined men, I tell you. . . . What will become of us?"
+
+"We shall never get into Port of Spain," spoke Lemaire, "we shall never
+round the Horn. It's coming on to blow now. She can't live through it, I
+tell you. It's sinking her now and saving ourselves and making a
+damn-big pile out of it, or it's all going down togeder."
+
+"Then we will all go down together," said Elderkin; "if my repentance is
+too late the Lord will not let me save the ship nor yet my soul."
+
+"I don't give a curse in hell for your soul, or anyone else's," cried
+the mate. "I tell you it's madness. Only a miracle could keep de ship
+afloat."
+
+"There has already been one miracle aboard her," said Elderkin. "Who are
+we to set limits to the power of the Almighty? It is a small thing to
+keep a senseless structure of wood and iron afloat in comparison with
+making the blackest of sinners see the true light, which the Lord has
+done between two dog-watches. Yesterday I was profaning the Book with my
+calculations of sinful gain made out upon its pages, to-day I have been
+calculating how many years I have spent in following my lusts, and were
+the years as many as the waves of the sea, I have prayed the Lord that
+the weeks of striving in front of us may wipe out the years."
+
+"He is mad," remarked Olsen, philosophically.
+
+Lemaire turned swiftly on the engineer. "We must take charge," he urged
+in a low voice, his back to the captain, "and then you must do what I
+say. We will run her close inshore, and . . ."
+
+Whether Elderkin heard above the growing clamour of the ship or not--for
+the woodwork had begun to crackle like a wheezy concertina and the slap
+of green water breaking sounded in a scurrying frequency--he knew what
+the mate was planning. A rim of something cold on the back of Lemaire's
+neck made his speech fade on his lips, and he and Olsen stood motionless
+while Elderkin spoke, Olsen's light eyes looking at the fanatical dark
+ones above the gun.
+
+"I am master of this ship, and what I say goes, or I'll put daylight
+through your dirty body," said Elderkin, pressing the muzzle in till the
+dark seamed skin on the mate's neck turned greenish in a circle around
+the iron. "As for you, Olsen, you're white, though you're a Dutchman,
+and I look to you to stick. What about the engines?"
+
+"I am sorry about this," replied Olsen, with seeming inconsequence, "but
+what must be will be. I will do the best with my engines. But if ever we
+see port again, I have done with you and your ship and your religion. I
+have my children to think of. I will go below."
+
+And he pulled the chart-room door open. As though his doing so were the
+signal to some malignancy without, a sudden blow of wind struck the
+ship; a crash sounded along her decks and on the moment a surge of water
+flooded into the chart-room. A sudden squall from the south-west, such
+as sometimes arises like a thunderclap in those latitudes at that time
+of year, had caught the _Spirito Santo_ in the confusion of the heavy
+cross seas. That first blow heeled her over, over, over . . . it seemed as
+though she were dipping swiftly far beyond the angle of safety; further
+and further. There was nothing to be done for the moment but clutch on
+to whatever was nearest; cries of terror from the dagos sounded thinly
+even through the clamour of wind and sea and crashing of gear. Then came
+that agonizing moment when a vessel, heeled over as far as possible,
+seems to hesitate, remains poised for the fraction of a second that
+partakes of the quality of eternity, between recovery and the
+hair's-breadth more that means foundering.
+
+Then, with a groaning of timbers like some mammoth animal in pain, a
+thick jarring of machinery, and a clattering of everything movable
+aboard her, the _Spirito Santo_ came slowly up again. If that gust of
+wind had held a minute longer she would have rolled herself, her faked
+cargo, and her huddled lives, down towards the bed of the Pacific; sins
+and religions, material hopes and spiritual aspirations, alike marked by
+one fading trail of air bubbles.
+
+Elderkin found he was holding Lemaire round the waist, while Olsen was
+on his hands and knees in the lather of water streaming off the floor.
+
+"The Lord has decided," said Elderkin, "we have now no choice. Get
+below, Olsen." He was heaving himself into his oilskins as he spoke,
+ordered in his movements but speedy, considering the terrible lurching
+of the vessel. His fight to save the _Spirito Santo_, to save her
+against herself, had begun.
+
+He found her topgallant sails thrashing out like blinds from a window,
+for the topgallant sheets had carried away, while the foresail and
+fore-topmast-staysail were like to flap themselves to rags. He bellowed
+his orders above the clamour of the ropes and guys, that were all
+shrieking and wailing on different notes as though the ship were
+suddenly endowed with the gift of tongues. The men fought their way up
+the rigging, and, lying along the slippery yard-arms, wrestled with
+clew-lines that whipped about as if possessed, while the wet and
+iron-hard canvas beat back and forth with reports like gunshots. But the
+men succeeded at length and Elderkin felt that the first tiny stage in
+his great battle was won.
+
+Already the sea was running in great slopes of blackish green, streaked
+and scarred with livid whiteness; from the poop the whole of the ship
+was filled with a swirling mist of spray that wreathed about the masts,
+only parting here and there to show one boiling flood of broken water
+that poured across the waist from upreared starboard rail to submerged
+port scuppers. The forecastle was flooded; from the forecastle head, as
+the ship pitched, a torrent poured on to the hatches, and when the next
+moment she dived forward, rushing down a long valley that seemed to
+slope to the heart of the ocean, two rivers poured out of her
+hawse-holes. Elderkin, as she dived, called down the tube--the only
+means of communicating with the engine-room except the still more
+primitive one of messengers--to stop her. And when it looked as though
+she could never recover to meet that oncoming mountain, but must dive
+into it and be smothered, her bows rose once more, up and up, till they
+raked the swollen clouds, while a wall of whiteness thundered past on
+either side. As Elderkin called for "full" again, his face was as calm
+as that of a little child. All that night the storm increased, and wove
+air and water into one great engine of destruction, and all night
+Elderkin stayed lashed to the rail of the chart-house, which was
+momentarily in danger of being washed away like a rabbit-hutch. It was
+impossible to keep the binnacle alight, and no stars were visible;
+steering was a mere groping by the feel of the wind. Dawn seemed hardly
+a lightening, so dark hung the massed clouds, of a curious rusty-brown
+colour, packed one above the other, overlapping so as to form a solid
+roof. Only between their lower rim and the slate-grey sea, an occasional
+glimpse of horizon showed where a thin line of molten pallor ran. Brown,
+white and steel-grey, with the masts and rigging sharp and black against
+it all, and the decks, dark and wet, now refracting what light there
+was as the ship rolled one way, now falling on deadness again as she
+rolled the other.
+
+With the dawning, Elderkin was unlashed and took the wheel himself,
+aided by a seaman, for it took two men to stand its kicking. To him came
+Olsen, still phlegmatic, almost as black as one of his dago squad.
+Gripping the poop-rail with one hand, with the other he laid hold of the
+captain's oilskin, and leant as near as possible to shout his news, but
+even so Elderkin could only catch a word here and there.
+
+"Won't stand . . . stays parting . . ." came to him.
+
+"Keep her at it," he yelled back.
+
+But a sudden shout came from Olsen, while the man at the wheel literally
+turned colour and closed his eyes. Only Elderkin, with a look that
+seemed queerly of exultation on his face, stared ahead to where a vast
+wall of water, so high it glimmered greenly, was rolling towards them
+over the broken, tossing sea. That was exactly what it looked like, as
+though it were a body distinct and separate from the rest of the raging
+water, some great fold pushed up from the Antarctic region and urged
+across the ocean, on and on. . . . It bore down on the infinitesimal ship
+and her clinging ants of crew, bore down, blotting out the sky, till
+suddenly it was so near it became one with the rest of the sea, as
+though the whole surface were curving over into a hollow sphere. It
+thundered upon them; then, its glassy concavity reared to an incredible
+height, it toppled over and broke in one roaring cataract of foam.
+
+What happened next no one remaining in the _Spirito Santo_ could ever
+have told. Three men were washed overboard; one had his legs so broken
+that the splintered bones drove into the deck where he was hurled down.
+There were a few long-drawn seconds when all thought she had gone under,
+for the rushing sea had climbed level with the chart-house roof, while
+the air was so thick with spume and spray it would have been difficult
+to say where the sea left off being solid and became fused with the
+wind. Then, with a roaring and a sucking like that when a wave,
+shattered, streams off a cliff, the water poured off decks and hatches
+in long lacings of dazzling white. The _Spirito Santo_ still lived.
+
+But it seemed she was mortally wounded, for she was jarring all her
+length, even the twisted stanchions vibrated as though some malignant
+force within her had broken loose; and when Elderkin tried to bring her
+head up to the wind, the wheel spun in his hands as easily and uselessly
+as a child's toy.
+
+"The rudder . . ." cried Olsen, "she is gone. . . ."
+
+Elderkin retained his clarity of aspect and gave his orders collectedly;
+only when the dago crew clung miserably to any support and refused to
+obey, he pulled out his gun and drove them to their stations. Hove-to,
+with only her spanker, close-reefed main-topsail and fore-staysail set,
+there was a chance of keeping her off the coast till the sea should
+quiet down enough to allow of a jury rudder being rigged. Meanwhile, as
+the men were setting the sails she rolled horribly in the trough of the
+sea; rolled fit to break her heart. Elderkin, on the poop, shouting at
+the men reefing the topsail, saw something that for the first moment of
+horror seemed fraught with the supernatural. Years of neglect, of rust,
+of corrosion from salt, had in reality gone to bring about what he then
+saw, with dishonesty and money-grubbing meanness behind the rust and
+corrosion. For, with a scream of ripping iron and the sharp snapping of
+guys, the _Spirito Santo_ rolled her funnel clean off at the root, the
+casing along with it. It crashed upon the deck, and the next moment was
+swept overboard, carrying away the port bulwarks. A gust of heat and a
+murky torrent of foul smoke blew flatly from the cavity that gaped in
+the ship's vitals; then a flood of water, luminously pale in the growing
+daylight, filmed across the deck amidships and poured over the ragged
+rim of the wound. The _Spirito Santo_ rolled upon the water, little more
+than a helpless wreck.
+
+Lemaire, who was lying on the top of the chart-house, gripping the rail,
+screamed out that they were done for; even Olsen, turning his blackened
+face to the captain, shouted that the game was up; as to the dagos, each
+yelled where he lay. This time Elderkin had to use his gun before he
+could get the ship hove-to. At sight of one of their number lying limp
+in the scuppers, the crew obeyed once more, while Olsen, sticking by his
+caste, and Lemaire, seeing still a faint chance for life, worked with
+them to cover the jagged hole with the stoutest timbers they could find.
+What was left of the fires was drawn, the planks over the hole shored up
+from below with timbers, tarpaulins stretched a-top of all and fastened
+down by a great batten bolted through the sodden deck; and, during all
+the hours of work amid wind and water, Elderkin watched the ship, saw
+that she did not come too much up into the wind nor fall off into the
+trough of the sea; kept the men at it when, time and again, they would
+have given up. Gun in one hand and Bible in the other, he read out
+threats of the Almighty's, intermingled with his own. And, at last, the
+jury-hatch was finished, and a further stage of the battle won.
+
+Now came the most trying hours of all, when there no longer remained
+anything possible to do, when hands fell on inaction and bodies were
+free to feel sore and cold, and minds were vacant of everything but an
+animal despondency. Olsen lit a fire on the iron floor by the boilers,
+and here, for the most part, the miserable men crouched during the rest
+of the day and the following night. Elderkin, after he had slept the
+sudden and over-powering sleep of the worn-out man, awoke to his first
+doubts. As long as there had been continuous need for action, that and
+the stern joy of a fight had shut out everything else for him; now that
+there was nothing to be done but hoist the inner jib when she came up
+too much into the wind and lower it when she paid off again, a need so
+recurring it was almost mechanical, he became as much a prey to inner
+questionings as his ship was to the winds. What tormented him was the
+thought that if the _Spirito Santo_ had foundered in this south-west
+gale all hands would have inevitably been lost, whereas had he kept by
+his agreement to scuttle her earlier all could probably have been saved.
+Was he then become a murderer by having decided as he had, and would it
+have been more righteous to keep on his evil course? Elderkin, to whom
+for the first time the lives of his men had become of a value other than
+commercial, was tormented by the thought of the three washed overboard
+by the great wave; and the curses of the man who had died a few hours
+after his legs were shattered re-echoed through his mind. It was not so
+much that these men had met death--Elderkin had too often stared it in
+the face to think overmuch of that--but that they were cut off in the
+midst of their sins, with blasphemies on lip and soul. Elderkin's creed
+allowed of no gracious after-chances, he saw the entities he had known
+and bullied in the flesh, as having become blind particles of
+consciousness burning in undying fires. . . .
+
+With dawn and a further dropping of the wind, which had been lessening
+all night, he searched again the pages of his Bible, and he followed the
+instinctive trail of human nature when he thrust the niceties of values
+from him and determined to hold by what was right and wrong at the
+springs of his action. When he went out on to the poop and met the crisp
+but now friendly wind, saw the glitter of sunshine on peacock waves,
+that still broke into white crests, but without malignance, he knew that
+the Lord was on his side. How was it possible he had ever thought
+otherwise? He must indeed be weak in the ways of grace that his first
+testing should awake such questionings within him. As the weight of
+despondency and sick dread fell off him in the cold sunlight, Elderkin
+flung up his arms and shouted for joy. Lemaire, crawling up, found him
+on his knees upon the top of the battered chart-house, improvising a
+paen of thanksgiving.
+
+All that day the men worked at rigging a jury rudder and patching up the
+port bulwarks. Then Olsen, who kept them as doggedly at it as the
+skipper himself, conceived a plan whereby his engines could once again
+play a part. He collected sheet-iron and stout pieces of wood, and
+with these he contrived a jury-funnel, fitting steam-jets at the base to
+maintain the draught to the furnaces. The freakish erection held
+together well, though it looked oddly stumpy in place of the thin,
+raking smoke-stack; Olsen secured it by guys of iron chain. At last all
+was complete, and once again a plume of dirty smoke trailed from between
+the sticks of the _Spirito Santo_. The men slept as they fell, but by
+then the rudder and smoke-stack had converted her from a blind cripple
+into an intelligent whole which could work independently of the
+direction of wind and current. A further stage of the battle was won,
+and with every victory Elderkin felt greater confidence in the Lord and
+in himself.
+
+By the next day it had grown very cold, and the men began to prepare
+shapeless and weather-worn garments against the bitterness of the Horn.
+Even Lemaire, who kept on repeating sullenly that they could never round
+it, knew that the only chance now was to carry on, and, his face seeming
+to pale with the first breath of the cold, hugged himself in a great
+padded coat. Food was already beginning to run short, and only by
+serving out double quantities of the raw West Indian rum were the men
+kept going at all. The ship herself could be heartened with no such
+encouragement, and although she was now snoring at a fair pace through
+the smother of foam that kept the lee-scuppers covered with a running
+river, yet her foul sides and wicked loading absorbed half her speed.
+She was a wet ship at the best of times, now she was sodden to her
+trucks, and the showers of icy rain that blew down on the westerly gale
+every now and then, wetted in a worse fashion, for rain-water chills to
+the bone right through oilskins. One day an exhausted Cape pigeon fell
+on board, and the little bird was eaten raw by the first man who got to
+it; sometimes a great albatross sailed on level unmoving wings around
+the labouring ship, and mollymawks screamed and circled, but none fell a
+victim to the hungry crew. There was a certain amount of salt junk left
+aboard, but the chief diet was nothing but hard-tack, and that was
+mouldy. Elderkin remained unmoved by any consideration save how to get
+her round the Horn, and he made Olsen save the dwindling fuel as much as
+possible for the attempt, lest they should be kept beating back and
+forth for weeks till exhaustion of ship and men sent them under. So the
+days went on, and the great Cape Horn greybeards rolled up with
+glistening flanks and white crests that broke and poured down them in
+thunder. Cold rains, wind squalls, her own condition and that of the men
+aboard her, all fought against the _Spirito Santo_, till it seemed as
+though the strongly set will of her captain were the only thing that
+kept her alive--alive and obedient however sulky, to the intelligence
+that drove her.
+
+Still she kept going, steaming and sailing into the stormy sunsets till
+at last she was off Cape Stiff itself, showing unspeakably bleak and
+gaunt through the driving mist; only now and then were the black cliffs
+visible, going down into a smoking line of foam.
+
+If a bad storm had hit her off the promontory nothing could have saved
+her, but the wind, though the strong westerly gale of the "roaring
+forties," held less of violence than ordinary, and although she rolled
+till it seemed she would dip her yards, and the water could hardly be
+pumped out of her as fast as it poured in, yet she pulled through, as
+she had pulled through the south-westerly gale and the disasters that
+followed. Elderkin, who had somehow expected his great tussle off the
+Horn, felt an odd sensation that was almost disappointment.
+
+On looking back afterwards, Elderkin saw that the voyage was, as it
+were, divided clearly into two by the passing of the Horn--on the
+Pacific side the actual physical blows of material damage and storm, on
+the Atlantic the more wearing struggle against spiritual opposition. The
+men, headed by Lemaire, began to murmur.
+
+For one thing, the last possible scrap of fuel had been burned by the
+time they were passing the Falklands, and they were left with nothing
+but their canvas to carry them home. As far as keeping her steady went,
+she was better under sail than steam, and also, like every true sailor,
+Elderkin felt more in harmony with the weather when using only canvas.
+For a steamer goes independently of the wind, ignores it, shoves her
+nose in its face, and the wind pays her back by becoming an enemy, but a
+sailing-ship lives by wind, humours it, coaxes the last hair's-breadth
+of it, and the wind, flattered, ignores that all the time it is being
+managed and made of use.
+
+But the sails of the _Spirito Santo_ were old and mildewed, she carried
+little spare canvas, and, worst of all, if they should come into a calm,
+those on board her might starve to death before they sighted help. All
+these things the men knew, and knowing, began to rebel. Lemaire, too, no
+longer seconded Elderkin, and he and Olsen bore the burden of
+nigger-driving alone--and Olsen, although he was loyal, made his
+discontent apparent. A terrible loneliness of mind fell upon Elderkin.
+He felt himself accursed of all men, but he still held on; each
+successive incident of his fight, instead of wearing his resistance
+down, went to strengthen it. The crisis came when after weeks of
+crawling and standing still, hurrying on with any advantage of breeze
+that presented itself, yet afraid to carry too much canvas, the _Spirito
+Santo_ was nearing the fortieth parallel once more.
+
+It was a grey, squally day, with the south-westerly wind keeping the
+sails bellied forward, and the gusts of rain driving so hard that the
+water in the brimming scuppers was lashed to paleness; the pumps were in
+pretty constant use now, and the fetid bilge-water washed over the decks
+in floods of a dark reddish colour, as though the _Spirito Santo_ were
+bleeding internally. A sullen moodiness held air and sea and mind of
+those who looked; that grinding reluctance of the _Spirito Santo_ had
+passed into the men's bones, they moved slowly if ordered to do
+anything, their shrunken flesh was a mass of sea-boils and, since the
+lime-juice and potatoes were exhausted, scurvy had broken out. Elderkin
+himself looked like some mediæval picture of the Baptist: he had grown a
+beard that came to a sparse point, and his sombre eyes glowed from
+behind the disordered streaks of hair that fell over them, while his
+skin, so tightly stretched over the bones, had taken on a waxen texture.
+To the men who came crowding on to the after-deck to voice their
+resentment, he had the air of a madman, as he stood erect at the break
+of the poop, his figure dark against the grey pallor of the sky. For a
+few minutes he stood scanning them quietly, and they stared back at him.
+In marshalling them where he had, Lemaire had made an error in
+psychology; for the mere fact that they had to look up to Elderkin on
+the poop affected both him and them unconsciously.
+
+"What do you want?" asked the skipper quietly. Lemaire stepped forward
+as spokesman.
+
+"We want to get out of dis shop and make for the shore, dat's what we
+want, and dat's what we'll do."
+
+"Ah . . . how?"
+
+"We'll take de law into our own hands. If we sink her now we can make
+for the mout' of de Plate, or we might be picked up sooner. I've told de
+men; I've told how we was all goin' to be rich an' safe and would have
+been trowin' our money around ashore by now if you hadn't got de
+praise-de-Lord bug in your head."
+
+"What Massa Lemaire say quite true, sah," called out a burly negro,
+whose black face was greyed over in patches from disease, "an' we aren't
+goin' to stand dis any longer. If you won't sink her we're goin' to, or
+we'll all be dead men."
+
+"We're dead now, dead and rotting," shrieked the bo'sun, on a sudden
+note of frenzy that pierced the air like a thrown blade, "who ever saw
+live men rot?" And he held up a hand which scurvy, on an open wound, had
+literally rotted so that the tendons hung down like weed. He shook the
+maimed thing at Elderkin. "Look at this"--"And this . . ."--"And
+this . . ." came up to Elderkin in angry shouts. The men, intoxicated
+by the sudden venting of their wrongs, began to swarm up the ladders to
+the poop deck.
+
+Elderkin felt new life urge through his veins, the pressure of the dead
+weeks behind sloughed off him, as the thinning veils of sleep drop away
+from the waking consciousness in the morning. He did not pull out his
+gun, but kept his hands in his pockets and faced the snarling,
+tentative, ugly pack of them.
+
+Then he talked, not raising his voice more than was needful for the
+grinding and creaking of the ship's labour and the weary complaining of
+the wind-tortured rigging.
+
+"So you'd mutiny, would you?" he began in his soft voice, "well, first
+you'll listen to me. Down off that gang-way, you there . . . that's
+better. Well, I guess I know what you men are saying to yourselves--that
+I'm one man against the lot of you, and now we're no longer fighting to
+keep the ship afloat for our lives, you can easy get the better of me.
+That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
+
+A murmur of assent, half-threatening, half-shame-faced, came from below.
+To Elderkin, looking down, the men appeared as blots of deeper colour
+against the pale glimmer of the wet deck; their upturned faces had the
+abrupt fore-shortening that imparts a touch of the ludicrous, but those
+faces were set in folds which told of hardened determination, behind the
+swellings and boils which glistened in the watery light, so that
+Elderkin could see each disfigurement as clearly as pebbles in a pool
+unshaded from the sky.
+
+"The mate tells you you'll get a lot of money if you go home and say
+you've sunk the ship. You won't. He will, as Judas did for betraying his
+Lord, but you'll just be got rid of, if you don't keep your mouths
+shut. You're wrong, as you've been all your lives, as I've been till
+now. But I've a stronger man on my side than all of you herring-gutted
+sons of a gun would make rolled together. I've the Lord on my side. You
+think nothing of that, do you? The Lord's up in heaven and won't notice
+what you do, and you ain't feared of the likes of Him anyway. . . . Aren't
+you? Why d'you think it is you have bloody sacrifices there in the
+fo'c'sle--oh, yes, I know about it all--why d'you suppose you cringe to
+that nigger there"--pointing to the mate--"with his black history of
+murdered children and flesh eaten in secret when the sacred drum beats
+at the full of the moon? Why d'you suppose you're scared sick of a dirty
+bug and a bit of wool in an old bottle, or of my Bible that I've set up
+on a shelf? It's because you know there's something behind--behind your
+ju-jus and behind my ju-ju. . . . You not fear the Lord! Why, you fear Him
+with every devilish performance you concoct. You're afraid all the
+time--of the something behind. And my ju-ju is greater than your ju-ju,
+so you're more afraid of mine, and of me. Could your ju-ju bring you
+through the great storm alive? All of you--and that damned baby-eater
+there--you was all yelling at your ju-jus and they couldn't wag one of
+their accursed fingers to help you. Who saved you and brought you out
+alive? White men and the white men's God. You know there's something
+behind, and what's behind me is bigger'n what's behind you. . . ."
+
+He suddenly pulled his hand out of the capacious pocket of his coat, and
+the men cowered swiftly, but instead of a gun he held his Bible out
+over the rail, threatening them not with its insignificant fabric but
+with its unknown import. A couple of Jamaican negroes fell on their
+knees and writhed upon the deck, making uncouth noises, their eyes
+turning palely upwards, their limbs convulsed.
+
+"Praise de Lord!" they yelled. "Praise de Lord wid us, brudders! End of
+de world and judgment comin'. Save us, massa, save us. . . ." And a dago
+from the southern continent fell to crossing himself and gabbling his
+prayers.
+
+"You fools!" cried Lemaire, thrusting through the heaving knot of men,
+"don't you listen to his talk. Talk won't fill our stomachs or cure our
+skins. How's he going to feed you? Ask him dat."
+
+"Yes--what are we to eat? Give us food and we'll keep on!" shouted the
+bo'sun. "Can your God make food?"
+
+"My God provided manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness and
+He'll provide for us now if we trust in Him. He will send us meat for
+our bellies and drink for our throats."
+
+"How . . . ? Where is it, dis food?" taunted Lemaire; and Elderkin, his
+hand pointing, answered, "There . . ."
+
+The men swung round to gaze, and saw a fugitive gleam of sunlight on her
+shining tower of cotton canvas, a great four-masted American barque
+beating to windward only a few miles away. Elderkin and his ju-ju were
+saved, and Lemaire's vision of dollars was routed by the men's vision of
+food. The distress signals were run up, and by that night the _Spirito
+Santo_ carried enough provisions of a rude kind to last her, with care
+and luck--meaning a rigid discipline of practically wreck-rations and
+fair winds--to see her safely home again. Elderkin thought that at last
+the testings of his faith were over, that the weary ship would blow
+towards port on a divinely appointed wind, and that his sacrifice and
+conversion were accepted on high. For the image he had had in his mind
+on that day of revelation in the chart-house had been of one Titanic
+struggle, not of this succession of conflicts which sometimes rose to
+crisis point but more often meant fighting against the terrible
+depression of day after day's inaction, driven half-crazy by the
+unceasing moaning of the rigging. Sustained bad weather gets on a
+sailor's nerves not because of any danger but simply by dint of the
+repetition of noises; there is only one thing more unbearable to mind
+and temper, and that is to be becalmed. Thought of any such happening
+was far from those on board the _Spirito Santo_, for the south-westerly
+wind urged her on past the Plate, and then a baffling head wind blew her
+out of the treacherous skies, and for over a week she beat back and
+forth, making hardly any headway. The rations were still further
+reduced, and then just as the men were beginning to make trouble again,
+the _Spirito Santo_ caught up with the south-west trades. Once again she
+made the seas roar past her, for now, regardless of her depth in the
+water, Elderkin made all the sail he could. Day after day slipped past
+with the slipping foam, and the gaunt creatures aboard felt a stirring
+of relief. And then, in the Doldrums, they ran into a dead calm. . . .
+
+Only anyone who has been becalmed on a tropical sea knows the terror
+that it is. Of all feelings of helplessness it is probably the most
+acute. Without steam or motor a ship is as powerless as though she were
+anchored to the sea-bottom with iron cables. Men have gone mad of it,
+and men did go mad of it in the starving _Spirito Santo_. She lay, as
+famished for a breeze as they for bread, upon a surface of molten glass,
+her sails limp as a dead bird's wing, the pitch soft in her seams, and
+the only sound in the circle of the horizon the faint creak-creak of her
+yards against the masts. Cabins and forecastle were unbearable, yet on
+deck the vertical sun had driven all but the thinnest lines of shadow
+out of being. The nights were almost as hot as the days and always the
+false cross gleamed from a cloudless sky, and the true Cross swam up
+lying on her back and trailing the pointers behind her, slowly righting
+herself as she rose and driving the pitiless brilliancy of the Milky Way
+before her. The drinking-water, what there was of it, stank; and the
+dried mouths of the men could hardly manage the mouldy hard-tack which
+captain and crew shared alike. And there was nothing to be done, nothing
+that could be done. The men were past revolt now, they could only
+shamble dizzily about. There was nothing to be done--except pray, and
+Elderkin prayed, though his lips moved almost soundlessly. He thought
+much these days, and he remembered--probably because of the dead
+stillness around--an old seafaring fable that in the calm heart of a
+cyclone life is to be found--that there birds and butterflies of every
+size and colour crowd, till the air is hung with brightness. He saw the
+individual soul of man as the hollow calm in the midst of life, cut off
+by the circling storm from all other air, and told himself that it
+could be the refuge for beauties of praise . . . he strove to make this
+aching solitude of mind wherein he was, rich as the fabled heart of the
+cyclone. . . .
+
+Then, just as the first faint breath made her ripple the water at her
+bows, he discovered that, worn out by her successive batterings, the
+_Spirito Santo_ was literally falling apart. He looked over her side and
+saw that she was spewing oakum from her seams, while she settled lower
+and lower in the water.
+
+The discovery acted like cool wind on Elderkin--it was unthinkable that
+they should perish now, not so very far from home, after all he had won
+through, and he prepared to meet this disaster also. He had prudently
+kept one last cask of rum unbroached, and this fluid life he now served
+out to the men. Then he drove them, as before with gun or Bible, but
+this time with rum; drove them to the task of frapping the leaking ship.
+Four great chain cables were passed under her and hove tight with
+Spanish windlasses on deck--a series of giant tourniquets to keep in her
+life. And when that too was accomplished, it was as though the power
+above at last was satisfied, and the wind strengthened that was to bear
+the _Spirito Santo_ home.
+
+Nearly six months after leaving port with provisions enough for one;
+with her rotten ratlines hanging in little tags, her jury smoke-stack
+idle between the patched sails that seemed as though one more puff of
+wind would tear them from the battered yards, her spewing sides kept
+together with cables, and her broken bulwarks level with the water--a
+nightmare vessel manned by ghosts--she crawled into the roadstead at
+Port of Spain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a few years after, a ragged white man haunted the drink-shops of the
+Islands and hung about the ports--a man without a ship. The owners of
+the _Spirito Santo_ were broken by the safe return of that faked cargo,
+but they had passed the word round that her skipper was to be broken
+too. He who had been so self-controlled in the old unregenerate days now
+drank steadily, but it was only when he was very drunk he talked. And
+even then it was difficult to make out what he said--it was all such a
+jumble of some strange fight between two ships, and of how the ways of
+the Lord were so mysterious that it was often impossible for a man to
+tell upon which side righteousness might be found.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Here follows in the original a minute description of the
+post-mortem.
+
+[B] Pronounced Roughneck.
+
+[C] At that date Prisoner's Counsel was not allowed to make a speech
+for the defence.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON & EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the
+original publication, except as follows:
+
+Page 62
+She carries the water from St. Ann's _changed to_
+She carries the water from St. Annan's
+
+Page 95
+Once in the din passage leading _changed to_
+Once in the dim passage leading
+
+Page 151
+Pisa on a more sophiscated errand _changed to_
+Pisa on a more sophisticated errand
+
+Page 209
+Seneath turned her clear, long-sighted _changed to_
+Senath turned her clear, long-sighted
+
+Page 241
+was an idealist, however preverted a one _changed to_
+was an idealist, however perverted a one
+
+Page 252
+Then he turned to Oslen _changed to_
+Then he turned to Olsen
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Beggars on Horseback, by F. Tennyson Jesse
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beggars on Horseback, by F. Tennyson Jesse
+
+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: Beggars on Horseback
+
+Author: F. Tennyson Jesse
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #33911]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK</h1>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+
+<div id="box1">
+
+<p class="center"><i>NEW SIX SHILLING NOVELS</i></p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="indent">OLD DELABOLE.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Eden Phillpotts</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">OF HUMAN BONDAGE.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">William Somerset Maugham</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">THE FREELANDS.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">John Galsworthy</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">MUSLIN. <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">George Moore</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">OFF SANDY HOOK.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Richard Dehan</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">THE LITTLE ILIAD. <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Maurice
+Hewlett</span>. <i>Illustrated by</i> <span class="smcap">Sir Philip
+Burne-Jones</span>, Bart.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">THE IMMORTAL GYMNASTS.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Marie Cher</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">MRS. CROFTON.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Marguerite Bryant</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">THE LATER LIFE.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Louis Couperus</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">CARFRAE'S COMEDY.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Gladys Parrish</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">THE BOTTLE-FILLERS.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Edward Noble</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="indent">CHAPEL.<br />
+<i>By</i> <span class="smcap">D. Miles Lewis</span>.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="center">LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN<br />
+21 Bedford Street, W.C.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="400" height="385" alt="Frontispiece" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+
+<div id="box2">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="title">BEGGARS ON</span><br />
+<span class="title2">HORSEBACK</span><br />
+
+<span class="smcap author">By F. TENNYSON JESSE</span><br />
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE MILKY WAY," ETC</p>
+
+<hr class="double" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 180px;">
+<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="180" height="180" alt="Logo" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="pub">LONDON &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; MCMXV<br />
+WILLIAM HEINEMANN</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<p class="centerleft"><i>London: William Heinemann</i>, 1915</p>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+
+
+<p class="center lh">THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED<br />
+
+WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE<br />
+
+TO<br />
+
+<big>MISS HANNAH MERCY ROBERTS<br />
+(NAN)</big><br />
+
+AS A SMALL ACKNOWLEDGMENT<br />
+OF A LARGE DEBT<br /></p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2>
+
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+<th class="thr" colspan="2">PAGE</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE LADDER</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#ii">29</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE GREATEST GIFT</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#iii">81</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE MASK</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#iv">109</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">A GARDEN ENCLOSED</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#v">135</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#vi">181</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">WHY SENATH MARRIED</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#vii">203</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">THE COFFIN SHIP</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#viii">227</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The stories in this volume are printed in chronological order.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span>
+<a name="i" id="i"></a>A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS
+
+</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span><br />
+A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Archie Lethbridge</span> arrived in Provence thoroughly satisfied with life. He
+had just sold a big picture; was contemplating, with every prospect of
+success, giving a "one-man-show" in London of the work he would do in
+Provence; and the girl he loved had accepted him.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Gwendolen Gould was eminently eligible&mdash;her income, though
+comfortable, was not large enough to brand her husband as a
+fortune-hunter; she was pretty in a well-bred way that satisfied the eye
+without causing it to turn and gaze after her; and above all, she could
+be relied upon never to do, say, or think an unusual thing. Like all
+painters, when they are conventionally minded, Archie was the fine
+flower of propriety&mdash;he owned to enough wild oats of his own sowing to
+save him from inferiority in the society of his fellow-men, and he held
+exceedingly rigid views on the subject of his womenkind. Gwendolen
+might&mdash;doubtless had, for she was one of the large army of young women
+brought up to no profession save that of sex&mdash;give this or that man a
+kiss at a dance, but she would never have saved all of passion and
+possibilities for one man, and lavished them on him, regardless of
+suitable circumstances. Archie's name (that he hoped one day to adorn
+with some coveted letters at which he now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> pretended to sneer) would be
+perfectly safe with Gwendolen.</p>
+
+<p>The only drawback to his complete content was that his fair, sleek
+person showed signs of getting a trifle too plump&mdash;for he was only young
+as a man who is nearly "arrived" counts youth. On the whole, however, it
+was with a feeling of settled attainment that Archie left Nice and
+proceeded to strike up into the Alpes Maritimes, totally unprepared for
+any bizarre or inexplicable event&mdash;he would have laughed satirically at
+the bare idea.</p>
+
+<p>To do him justice, he worked hard, and he had a tremendous facility and
+a certain charm that concealed his lack of true artistic sensitiveness.
+There is probably nothing more difficult to interpret in paint than an
+olive-tree&mdash;the incredible grey brilliance of the thing, each leaf set
+at a slightly different angle, and refracting the light till the whole
+tree seems made of blown mist and sharp-cut shadows. Archie painted
+olives under every effect; sparkling in the sun, fog-grey on a grey day,
+and pale with the shimmering under-side of straining leaves against a
+storm-dark sky. He also painted very dirty children picking the ranked
+violets and stocks that grew along the olive terraces, and this he
+achieved without once descending into the realms of the "pretty-pretty,"
+while at the same time infusing just the right amount of sentiment to
+ensure a sale.</p>
+
+<p>He painted here and there from Grasse to Le Broc, and then one day,
+feeling he had taken all he could from the soft-scented land of olives
+and flowers, he hired a motor to convey him up into the Back o' Beyond,
+and drop him there. Once he met a couple of women bearing on their heads
+the sheaves of tight little red<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> rosebuds that look exactly like bundles
+of radishes, and caught a whiff of the strange, bitter-sweet smell of
+the newly cut stems. Then he passed an old shepherd in a cloak of faded
+blue, with sheepskin legs cross-gartered to the knee, taking his lean,
+golden-brown flock up into the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>After that he saw no living thing, neither bird nor beast nor human, for
+many miles. Rounded hills, opening out from each other in endless
+succession and covered from crest to base with harsh yellow grass, and
+strewn with grey boulders. Deep gullies that at one time had been set
+alight and now were scorched and brown like plague-pits, with here and
+there a patch of pale stones showing up lividly from the charred thorns
+and blackened soil. Archie shivered, partly because of the keen wind
+blowing down from the great plateau beyond the hills, partly because
+something savage in the scene gripped at him.</p>
+
+<p>The car throbbed on, higher and higher, till the road, winding acutely
+along the edge of precipices, developed a surface that caused his
+chauffeur to swear gently to himself. Valley after valley opened out,
+long and narrow, and Archie noticed signs of a long-past cultivation in
+the curved terraces into which the bed of each valley was cut, forming
+an endless series of semicircles. There was no trace of any crop, and
+the whole effect was as of some rude amphitheatre where prehistoric man
+had sat and watched gladiatorial shows.</p>
+
+<p>The car, sticking now and then in a rut, or jolting violently over
+stones, finally crested the last rise, and Archie found himself on a
+vast stretch of land ringed in by sharp-edged hills, like some dead,
+gigantic crater; to the right, far away on a slope of the mountain
+ring,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> lay a grey straggling town that looked hacked out of the hardened
+lava. The only sign of life was in a patch of vividly green grass near
+at hand, where hundreds of crocuses had burned their way up through the
+earth and showed like a bed of thin blue flames.</p>
+
+<p>Archie directed the contemptuous chauffeur towards the town, and they
+finally drew up at the inn&mdash;a little green-shuttered affair, with a
+stone-flagged passage, and a tortoise-shell cat drowsing beside the
+door. Outside a <i>buvette</i> opposite was a marble-topped table at which
+sat a couple of workmen drinking cider. An evanescent gleam of sun shone
+out, and the tawny liquid caught and held it, making each glass throw on
+to the table a bubble of gold fire enmeshed in the delicate shadow of
+the vessel itself. Archie stood transfixed for a moment with pleasure,
+then, as the gleam faded and died, he entered the inn.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Like most people with the creative temperament, Archie Lethbridge was
+the prey of environment. The unborn child is not more influenced by the
+surroundings of its mother than a book or picture by those of its
+creator. Draginoules took such a deep, sure grip of Archie that it did
+more than merely affect his work&mdash;it began to upset his neatly arranged
+values, and, since Nature abhors a vacuum, to substitute fresh ones in
+their place. Draginoules, in short, behaved like a master of scenic
+effects; it allowed a couple of days for the background to permeate
+Archie's consciousness, and, when he was ripe for it, introduced the
+human element, which, to a man of his type, means a woman.</p>
+
+<p>It was one morning when he was washing brushes in the dim inn kitchen
+that he saw her first. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> came out of the <i>buvette</i> to serve some
+workmen, and Archie stopped dead in the act of swirling a cobalt-laden
+brush round and round in the hollowed yellow soap he held. He always saw
+the whole scene in memory as clearly as he saw it then&mdash;the low-fronted
+<i>buvette</i>,the glass of the door refracting the light as it still
+quivered from her passage; the pools of blue shadow that lay under the
+table and chairs on the pavement; the blouse-clad figures of the
+workmen, particularly a young man with a deeply burnt back to his neck;
+and the girl herself, holding aloft a tray of liqueur glasses, that
+winked like little eyes. All this he saw framed by the darkness of the
+kitchen and cut sharply into squares by the black bars of the window;
+then, as he mechanically went on frothing blue-stained bubbles out of
+the soap, he said to himself, "I must paint that girl."</p>
+
+<p>He soon found out that she was the niece of the stout couple who kept
+the <i>buvette</i>, and that her name was D&eacute;sir&eacute;e Pr&eacute;vost. As they mentioned
+her most people shrugged their shoulders. Oh, no, there was nothing
+against the girl&mdash;though it was true her eyebrows met in a thick bar
+across her nose, and old people had always said that was a sign of the
+Loup-Garou; enlightened moderns, however, did not really hold by that.
+The town was proud of her looks, for it considered her <i>tr&egrave;s bien</i>, the
+highest expression of praise from a Proven&ccedil;al, who is a dour kind of
+person, taking his pleasures as sadly as the proverbial Englishman, and
+whose chief aim in life is to place one sou on the top of another, and
+when possible insert a third in between.</p>
+
+<p>Archie approached the aunt of D&eacute;sir&eacute;e on the subject<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> of sittings with
+some trepidation, but met with an agreeable pliancy from her, and a calm
+though indifferent assent from D&eacute;sir&eacute;e herself. She had a high opinion
+of her own value, and no amount of appreciation surprised her.</p>
+
+<p>Scanning her afresh as they stood on the pavement making final
+arrangements, Archie inwardly congratulated himself. From the heavy
+brass-coloured hair massed with a sculptured effect round her
+well-poised head, to the firmly planted feet, admirably proportioned to
+the rest of her, she was entirely right for his purpose&mdash;she seemed the
+spirit of Draginoules incarnate. Owing to the opaque pallor of her skin,
+her level bar of fair eyebrow and heavily folded lids, her big, finely
+modelled nose and faintly tinted mouth, all took on a sculptured quality
+that made for repose; the very shadows of her face were delicate in
+tone, mere breaths of shadows. Yet she was excessively vital, but it was
+a smouldering, restrained vitality suggestive of a quiescent crater. Her
+face was too individual to be perfect&mdash;the nose over big; the brow too
+narrow for the full modelling across the cheekbones, but she had an
+egg-like curve from turn of jaw to pointed chin. When she laughed her
+teeth showed large and strong, and her throat was the loveliest Archie
+had ever seen&mdash;magnificently big&mdash;and she had a trick of tilting her
+head back that made the smoothly knitted muscles of her neck swell a
+little under the white skin. As he painted her Archie used to find
+himself racking his brains for some speech that would make her head take
+that upward poise, so that he could watch the play of throat.</p>
+
+<p>He chose his background well; a sheltered spot in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> fold of hill just
+beyond the town, where a slim young oak sapling still retained its
+copper-hued autumn leaves, that seemed almost fiery against the deep,
+soft blue of the sky. He had conceived of her as standing under the
+oak-tree, so that, to him, working lower down on the slope she too
+showed against the sky, seemingly caught in a network of delicate
+boughs. Being below her he was also the richer by the soft,
+three-cornered shadow under her chin, and the whole of her became a tone
+of exquisite delicacy, as of shadowed ivory, in the setting of sky&mdash;that
+sky of southern spring which seems literally drenched in light. The
+tawny note of the oak-leaves was to be repeated in some sheep, which,
+though kept subservient to the figure of D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, were to supply the
+motive of the picture&mdash;or so Archie thought till the sudden freak that
+made him introduce the fauns.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;sir&eacute;e was all for robing herself in her best&mdash;a black silk bodice with
+a high collar, and a be-trained, jet-spangled skirt, but Archie coaxed
+her into wearing the dress he first saw her in; a mere wrapper of
+indefinite prune colour, belted in at the waist to show the lines of her
+deep chested, long flanked figure, and cut so low as to leave her throat
+bare from the pit of it. Her sleeves were rolled back to the elbow and
+her arms showed milk-white as far as the reddened wrists and the big,
+work-roughened hands that held a hazel switch across her thighs.</p>
+
+<p>Archie was Anglo-Saxon enough to feel a slight stiffness at the first
+sitting, but D&eacute;sir&eacute;e was a stranger to the sensation of tied tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"I like the English," she announced. "Not many of them come here, but I
+have not spent my life in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> Draginoules, no, indeed! I was in a laundry
+once at La Madeleine. Do you know it? It is where they take in the
+washing of Nice. So I used to go much into Nice, and an English lady
+there painted me. She had a talent! She made me look beautiful. In
+Draginoules, do you know what they call me? They call me <i>l'Anglaise
+manqu&eacute;e</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you like the English so?" asked Archie. His French was
+considerably purer than hers, she spoke it with the Proven&ccedil;al accent
+that sounds exactly like a Cockney twang.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have the nature, the habits of an English woman. Oh, I assure
+you! I like to live out of doors&mdash;to be out all day with one's bread and
+a bottle of wine and sleep on the hillside&mdash;that is what I call living.
+I always open my window at night, though my aunt says it is a folly. I
+could go to England if I chose, as a maid. My English lady would have
+me. Ah! how I long to see England. One gets so tired with Draginoules."</p>
+
+<p>"But your friends&mdash;you would be sorry to leave them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, for that, I do not care about the people of Draginoules. It was my
+mother's place, not mine. I was born in Lyons, where my father was a
+silk-weaver. But he was a bad kind of man, so I came to my aunt to live.
+I do not think much of the people of Draginoules. They all like me, but
+I do not like them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go to England, then? Though I think you are far better
+here!" quoth Archie, on whom the glamour of the place was strong.</p>
+
+<p>"My fianc&eacute; would kill himself," said D&eacute;sir&eacute;e serenely.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+"Oh&mdash;you are fianc&eacute;e?" murmured Archie, wondering why he felt that
+absurd mingling of relief and regret.</p>
+
+<p>"To Auguste Colombini. He is a mechanician in Nice. We are to marry when
+he gets a rise. <i>H&eacute;las! je ne serai plus fille!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Her words, so simply and directly spoken, caught at Archie's
+imagination&mdash;"<i>H&eacute;las! je ne serai plus fille!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"What a <i>vierge farouche</i>!" he said to himself. "If I can get that
+feeling into my picture!" Aloud he said: "And your fianc&eacute;&mdash;he is very
+devoted, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He adores me. It is a perfect folly, see you, to feel for anyone what
+he does for me. He is mad about me."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with a calm arrogance that was very effective. How sure she
+was of her man! Was it a peculiarity of temperament in her or her fianc&eacute;
+that made such confidence possible? Archie flattered himself he was
+something of a student of human nature, and he absorbed all of D&eacute;sir&eacute;e
+that he could get in a spirit positively approaching that of the
+journalist.</p>
+
+<p>When a man and woman fall into the habit of discussing the intimate
+things, such as love and marriage; and, above all, of comparing the
+sexes; disaster, even if only a temporary one, is apt to follow. Archie
+returned to the themes next time she posed for him.</p>
+
+<p>"So you think a man can care too much for a woman?" he asked, and
+stopped for a moment with raised brush to watch her answer. She shrugged
+her shoulders slightly, yet enough to make the folds of her wrapper
+strain upward for a fleeting moment.</p>
+
+<p>"As to that I think women are worth it. But it is foolish to care
+everything for one person."</p>
+
+<p>"You could care for others, then&mdash;as well as M.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> Colombini?" asked
+Archie with a sudden stir at his pulses.</p>
+
+<p>"I? One can care a little&mdash;here and there. But commit a folly for a man,
+that is a thing I would never do. And I am very fond of Auguste. If I
+did not think we should be happy and faithful I should not marry him. I
+look round on all the married people I know, and see nothing but
+betrayal everywhere. Here a husband plays his wife false, there she in
+her turn cheats him. Bah!&mdash;it is not good, that!"</p>
+
+<p>"How right you are!" said Archie virtuously. "But you do not then think
+it necessary to care as much for Auguste as he cares for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Damme</i>, no! How should I? He pleases me, and he is good&mdash;I can respect
+him. And I like him to kiss me&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." the most charming look of
+self-consciousness mingled with reminiscence flitted over her face&mdash;"but
+for him&mdash;he is mad when he kisses me. Women do not care like that. It is
+a folly. And it is always happier, Monsieur, when it is the husband who
+cares the most. That is how men are made."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes, thought Archie, she was a woman after all, this <i>vierge
+farouche</i>, and more unashamedly woman, franker in her admissions of
+knowledge&mdash;for she admitted in her expressive face and gestures more
+than she actually said&mdash;than any woman of his world. He worked in
+silence for a while then told her to rest.</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself on the turf with an abandonment of limb and muscle
+usually only seen in young animals, and he came and lay a little below
+her and lit a cigarette. D&eacute;sir&eacute;e lay serenely, her face upturned, and he
+studied her thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+"Surely very few of your countrywomen are as blonde as you?" he asked
+her. "Your eyes are blue, and your brows and lashes a faint brown and
+your hair is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, at a loss how to describe her hair. It was not golden, rather
+that strong brass-colour that, had he seen it on a sophisticated
+townswoman he would have dubbed "peroxide." It was oddly metallic hair,
+not only in its colour, but in the carven ripples of it where she wore
+it pulled across her low brow and massed in heavy braids round her head.
+That way of wearing her hair right down to her brows, except for a
+narrow white triangle of forehead showing, boy-like, at one side, gave
+her an oddly animal look&mdash;using the word in its best sense. A look as of
+some low-browed, heavy-tressed faun, fearless and unashamed&mdash;it was only
+in her eyes that mystery lay.</p>
+
+<p>"My hair?" she exclaimed, showing her big white teeth in a laugh as
+frank as a boy's; "but that, you know, is not natural! It was an
+accident!"</p>
+
+<p>"An accident! How on earth&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I was doing the <i>m&eacute;nage</i> for a chemist and his wife over the
+border, at Cannes. And she had hair like this, and one day she gave me a
+little bottle and said: 'D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, you're a good girl, but you don't know
+how to make the best of yourself. You put some of this on your head.' I
+rubbed some on, one side only, just to see what would happen, and next
+day I found one half of my head golden&mdash;golden like the sun. 'Mon Dieu!'
+I said, 'but what do I look like, one half yellow and one half brown!'
+So I poured it on all over. It is nothing now because I have not put on
+the stuff for so long, but at one time it was beautiful.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> Such hair!
+Below my waist, and gold, oh, such a gold! Now it wants doing again."</p>
+
+<p>She ducked her head down for him to see the crown of it, and he
+perceived from the parting outwards two inches of unabashed dark
+hair&mdash;almost blue it looked by contrast with the circling wrappings of
+yellow. Archie, immensely tickled at finding this splendid young savage
+in the Back o' Beyond with dyed hair, could but shout with mirth, and
+D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, totally unoffended, joined in. When he went back that evening
+he felt he knew her far better than on the preceding day. In intimacies
+between men and women each day marks a distinct phase, making a series
+of steps; and the only possible thing to do is to see that the steps do
+not lead downwards. Like most people when on those magic stairs, Archie
+gave no heed to the question.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he unconsciously took up their conversation of the day
+before&mdash;a sure sign of intimacy if ever there were one. They were
+resting again, for he said it was too hot to work; and the sunset effect
+he wanted was growing later every day.</p>
+
+<p>"So you could care a little for some one else before you marry Auguste?"
+he suggested lightly enough, and looking away from her to the snow
+mountains that bared white fangs in the blue of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little, stretched herself, drooped her lids, was in a
+flash, and for a flash, entirely woman&mdash;alluring, withdrawing, sure of
+herself. As she gained in poise Archie felt his own tenure on
+self-control slipping away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you?" he persisted, his eyes by now back on her changing face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+"How does one care? What is it?" she evaded. "I do not think <i>you</i> would
+be able to tell me. You are so cold, so English, you would care just as
+much as would be pleasant and never enough to make you uncomfortable!"</p>
+
+<p>The penetration of this remark displeased Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are like that yourself," he objected. "You are the most cool,
+calculating girl I ever met&mdash;everything you say shows it."</p>
+
+<p>She rolled over slightly on the grass, so that her head, the chin thrust
+forward on her cupped hands, was brought nearer to him but kept at the
+provocative three-quarter angle suggestive of withdrawal. Her thick
+heavy lids were drooped, but suddenly they flickered and half-rose to
+show a gleam so wild, so unlike anything he had ever seen in her, that
+Archie caught his breath. It was as though some alien spirit, a pagan,
+woodland thing, was looking at him through the eyes of the
+self-possessed, level-headed young woman, who at times even seemed more
+<i>bourgeois</i> than peasant.</p>
+
+<p>"D&eacute;sir&eacute;e! How beautiful you are!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"As beautiful as Mademoiselle your fianc&eacute;e?" asked D&eacute;sir&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>With a run Archie descended into the commonplace, and D&eacute;sir&eacute;e became for
+him nothing but a pretty girl who went rather too far.</p>
+
+<p>"Englishmen do not care to discuss the lady of their choice," he said
+grandiloquently. "May I ask how you knew I was fianc&eacute;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen her picture in your room," said D&eacute;sir&eacute;e frankly; "the
+patronne told me there was one there. She is pretty, but yes, very
+pretty. Her hair is so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> beautifully done in all those little rolls, one
+would say it must be false. She is altogether mignonne, one would say
+the head of a doll!"</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;sir&eacute;e was absolutely sincere in thinking she was giving Miss Gwendolen
+Gould the highest praise possible. She would willingly have exchanged
+her splendid muscular body for the slim, corseted form of Miss Gould,
+and have bartered her strongly modelled head for the small, regular
+features and Marcel-waved hair of the other girl. It was only his
+perception of this that kept Archie from anger, and as it was the truth
+of the praise hit him sharply. That night he sat down before the
+miniature and conscientiously tried to conjure up the emotions of a
+lover. The experiment was a failure.</p>
+
+<p>When he came to go to bed he found, to his amazement, a sprig of myrtle
+lying on his pillow&mdash;just a spray of leaves and a cluster of the purple
+berries with their little frilled heads.</p>
+
+<p>"How did that get there I wonder?" he asked himself, and then stooped,
+with an exclamation of disgust. A corner of the turned back sheet that
+trailed on the floor was lightly powdered with earth as though a muddy
+shoe had stood on it. The footprint&mdash;if footprint it were&mdash;was oddly
+impossible in shape, short and rounded, more like the mark of a hoof.</p>
+
+<p>"Can the patronne's goat have got up here? I saw it wandering in the
+passage to-day," thought Archie vexedly. "Beastly animal to drop
+half-chewed green food all over my pillow!"</p>
+
+<p>The injured man thumped his pillow and turned it over, so that the
+despised myrtle sprig lay crushed beneath it. Then he went to bed and to
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+"I dreamt of you all night, D&eacute;sir&eacute;e," he told her next day.</p>
+
+<p>"I was pursuing you round rocks and over streams and through undergrowth
+all night long. You were you and yet you weren't. Somehow I got the
+impression that it was you as you would have been hundreds and thousands
+of years ago. And I kept on losing you and then little satyrs beckoned
+at me to show me the way you'd gone, and I stumbled on after the hoofs
+that were always flashing up just ahead&mdash;just vanishing round corners."</p>
+
+<p>"Satyrs? What are they?" asked D&eacute;sir&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>Archie explained as picturesquely as possible, but was brought to a stop
+by a curious change in D&eacute;sir&eacute;e's eyes. They wore the strained, misty
+look of the person who is trying hard to catch at some long-lost memory.
+Again he was startled by that strange feeling that something else was
+looking from between those placid lids of hers.</p>
+
+<p>"But I know," she began&mdash;"those creatures you are telling me&mdash;<i>what</i> is
+it I know about them?" She broke off and shook herself impatiently.
+"Bah! It is gone. And then what happened&mdash;did you find me at the end?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't quite remember," said Archie slowly "Something happened, but
+what it was is all blurred. I believe you're a wood-nymph, D&eacute;sir&eacute;e&mdash;a
+wood-nymph whose father was a satyr&mdash;and he chased and caught your
+mother and took her down through his tangle of undergrowth with his
+hands in her hair, never heeding her screams. You have very definite
+little points at the top of your ears, you know! We all have them a bit
+to remind us of our wild-dog days, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> yours are the most so I've ever
+seen. Do you never take off all your clothes and go creeping and
+slipping through the woods at night, to bathe in one of the crater-pools
+by the light of the moon?"</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know?" She turned wide, startled eyes on him, her quickened
+breath fluttered her gown distressfully.</p>
+
+<p>"What!&mdash;you do it, then?" exclaimed Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"No! no! What folly are you talking!" She sprang to her feet and slipped
+behind the oak-sapling, as though it were a defence against some danger;
+across the boughs he saw her puzzled, fearful eyes. As he watched her
+the expression of alarm faded&mdash;she put up her hand to her hair, gave it
+a quieting pat and tucked some stray strands into place, then she looked
+across at the easel.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be time to work again!" she exclaimed. "Have we been resting
+long, M'sieu? I feel as though I'd been asleep and you'd just awakened
+me." She yawned as she spoke, stretching her strong arms in a slow, wide
+circle, the muscles of her shoulders rounding forward and making two
+little hollows appear above her collar-bones. The sight aroused the
+artist in Archie, and he too scrambled up, and betook himself to work.
+The sheep and goats that he had bribed the shepherd to pasture there
+happened to "come" as he wanted them that evening, and he began to work
+away at them in silence. One of the goats, a piebald, shaggy creature,
+reared itself up on its hind legs, with its fore-feet against the tree
+trunk, and began to nibble at the foliage. Something about the pose of
+the creature sent a swift suggestion to Archie's mind, and he just had
+time to rough in the legs, with their slight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> outward tilt, the hoofs
+set firmly apart and the tail sticking out and up from the sharply
+curved-in rump, before the animal dropped on all fours and moved away.
+Archie, with the smile of the creator in his eyes, worked on, and the
+goat's legs merged into the beginnings of a slim human body with the
+hands leaning against the tree and the head, tilted on one side, peering
+around at the figure of D&eacute;sir&eacute;e. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of
+annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>"There is some one watching us from those myrtle bushes. Confound the
+beggar&mdash;some one from the village, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;sir&eacute;e turned sharply, just in time to see a brown face grinning
+through the leaves. It was a face compact of curiously slanting
+lines&mdash;upward-twitched tufts of brows, upward wrinkles at the corners of
+the narrow eyes, and a slanting mouth that laughed above a pointed,
+thrusting chin.</p>
+
+<p>"That! That is only my little brother, M'sieu. It is one of God's
+innocents and lame on both feet. Sylvestre! Come out and speak to
+M'sieu&mdash;no one will hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>The bushes rustled and parted and an odd little figure, apparently that
+of a boy of about ten, came scrambling out with a queer, lungeing action
+from the hips. The child's legs were deformed, but he swung himself
+forward at a marvellous speed on a pair of clumsy crutches. Archie saw
+that when he was not laughing his brown eyes were wide and grave, with a
+look of innocence in them that contrasted oddly with the knowing gleam
+they showed a minute earlier.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is exactly what I want for the picture!" cried Archie, running
+his hand through the boy's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> tangled curls and tilting his face gently
+backwards. "He is exactly like the things I was telling you of. He must
+sit to me."</p>
+
+<p>He deftly tugged the boy's shirt out of his belt and peeled it off him,
+exposing a thin little brown body with a skin as fine as silk. When he
+felt the sun on his bare flesh the child made guttural sounds of
+delight, flinging himself backwards on the ground; and, supported by his
+elbows, letting his head tip back till his curls touched the grass. As
+the shielding locks fell away, Archie saw with a thrill which was almost
+repulsion, that dark brown hair grew thickly out of the boy's ears.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>"Would he stay still, do you think?" he asked D&eacute;sir&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>"He will if I tell him," replied D&eacute;sir&eacute;e. "Come to me, Sylvestre," and
+drawing the child to her she stroked his head and whispered to him with
+a motherly gesture of which Archie would not have thought her capable.
+He had listened to her exceedingly modern views on the subject of the
+family, and her own strictly limited intentions in that respect.</p>
+
+<p>After the addition of Sylvestre the picture made great strides, even if
+the intimacy between Archie and D&eacute;sir&eacute;e advanced less rapidly than
+before. And yet every now and again, in sudden flashes of wildness, in a
+half-uttered phrase totally at variance with her normal self&mdash;little
+things that she seemed to remember from some forgotten whole, D&eacute;sir&eacute;e
+would give him that impression of being two people at once; and always,
+on these occasions, she was as puzzled as he, and with an added touch of
+something that seemed almost shame. For the everyday D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, that calm,
+practical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> and comely young woman, Archie's friendliness was touched by
+nothing warmer than the inevitable element of sex; but the shy, bold
+thing that sometimes peeped from between her lids, that thing that
+seemed to take possession of her beautiful body, and mock and allure and
+chill him in a breath, that thing was waking an answering spirit in
+himself, and he knew it. Miss Gould's portrait was unable to protect him
+from wakeful nights, when he turned his pillow again and again to find a
+cool surface for his cheek, nights when he would at last fling off the
+clothes and lean out of the window to watch the steel-blue dawn turn to
+the blessed light of everyday. He was living in a state of tension, and
+it seemed to him that some great event was holding its breath to spring,
+as though the very trees and rocks, the brooding sky and quiescent
+pools, were all in some conspiracy, hoodwinking yet preparing him for
+the moment of revelation.</p>
+
+<p>It was on to the sensitive surface of this mood that a letter from
+Gwendolen, announcing her speedy arrival on the Riviera dropped like a
+dart, tearing the delicate tissues and stringing the fibres to the
+necessity for haste. Gwendolen, aunt-dragoned, and Baedeker in hand,
+meant the return to the acceptance of the old values that had once
+filled him with complacency. And yet, with all the jarring sense of
+intrusion that Gwendolen's advent instilled, there mingled a feeling
+that was almost relief&mdash;as though he were being saved, against his will,
+but with his judgment, from something too disturbing and beautiful to be
+quite comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Three or four days after receiving Gwendolen's letter, he put the last
+touches to the picture and informed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> D&eacute;sir&eacute;e he would need her no more.
+She received the news quite calmly, apparently without regret&mdash;thus do
+women tactlessly fail in what is expected of them. Archie felt absurdly
+flat as he wrapped up his wet brushes in a week-old sheet of the <i>Petit
+Ni&ccedil;ois</i>. He also felt very virtuous, and told himself it was not many
+men who would have refrained from making love to the girl under the
+circumstances. It is astonishing what a comfortless thing is the glow of
+conscious virtue&mdash;it is bright in hue but gives off no warmth.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little hut, used for stacking wood, close to where he
+worked, and here, thanks to the courtesy of the owner, he was wont to
+put his picture for the night. D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, as usual, helped him to carry it
+in and plant the legs of the easel firmly into the earthen floor. He had
+worked late, and the sun had just slipped behind the far ridge of the
+mountains; the tiny hut was filled with a deepening half-light, the
+stacked brush-wood seemed wine-coloured in the warm shadow, here and
+there a peeled twig stood out luminously. By the open door hoof-marks in
+the trampled earth showed that the patronne's mule had been carrying
+away wood that morning. That was as palpable as the fact that it must
+have been Sylvestre's deformed foot which had soiled Archie's sheet, yet
+those marks re-created the atmosphere of his dream, and seemed, in the
+sudden confusion mounting to his brain at the warmth and nearness of
+D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, to mix madly with Sylvestre, and rustled undergrowth and the
+glimmer of elusive hoofs round myrtle-bushes&mdash;and the glimmer of
+something whiter and more elusive still.</p>
+
+<p>He could hear D&eacute;sir&eacute;e's breathing beside him&mdash;not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> as even as usual, but
+deeper-drawn and uncertain, and turning, he met the sidelong glance of
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"D&eacute;sir&eacute;e .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. you said you sometimes slipped out at night and played in
+the woods&mdash;and the pools. Take me out with you to-night and show me
+where you go and what you do.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I'll be awfully good, I swear I
+will&mdash;you're not a woman, you're a nymph, a strange, uncanny thing. I
+believe you meet your kinsfolk there and dance with them&mdash;D&eacute;sir&eacute;e!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a moment in silence. In her eyes her normal and
+her unknown selves contended.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true I often go out as you say, something drives me, but I do not
+know why myself. And I get very tired and can never remember clearly
+what it has been like. It is as though I did it almost in my sleep, or
+had dreamt it."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> a dream&mdash;everything's a dream, and I've got to wake up soon.
+Let's have this bit of dream together&mdash;D&eacute;sir&eacute;e!"</p>
+
+<p>She yielded. They took bread and wine and apples for a midnight feast,
+and set off together over the lava-fields to the woods that tufted the
+mountain slopes. Through the deep, soft night the pallor of her face and
+throat glimmered as through dark water. She held his hand to guide him
+over the fissures and round the piled boulders, once he slipped on a
+hummock of harsh grass, and felt her grow rigid on the instant to check
+his fall. They were very silent, until, seated at the edge of the woods,
+they ate their supper, and then they laughed softly together like
+children, with fragmentary speech; and once D&eacute;sir&eacute;e sang a snatch of a
+Proven&ccedil;al song; Archie, who knew his Mistral, joining in.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, when they fell on silence again, it seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> the wood was full
+of noises&mdash;stealthy footfalls, snapping of dry twigs, the rustling of
+parted shrubs. As the late moon, almost at the full, swam up the sky,
+making the distant snow-peaks gleam like white flames against the dusky
+blue, and shimmering on the pools cupped here and there over the
+hollowed expanse below, Archie could have sworn that the penetrating
+light showed quick-glancing faces and bright eyes from the thicket.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+Once a great white owl did sail out with a beating of wings; so close to
+them that they could see the stiff brows that bristled over his lambent
+orbs, and once a strong smell and a gleam of black and white told of a
+wild cat tracking her prey.</p>
+
+<p>They buried the disfiguring remnants of their little feast, and then
+Archie solemnly poured out what was left of the red wine on to the slope
+below.</p>
+
+<p>"For the gods!" he announced, "the liquor for us and the dregs for
+them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, as though his action pricked sleeping memories to
+life, "now I remember it all again! I forget when I go home, but then
+the next time everything is clear again, and so it goes on."</p>
+
+<p>She disappeared in a jutting spur of the wood, and Archie scrambled to
+his feet and followed her. As he broke through to the further edge,
+which hung over a wide pool, he caught his foot in something
+soft&mdash;D&eacute;sir&eacute;e's clothes that lay in a circle, just as she had slipped
+out of them.</p>
+
+<p>She stood at the pool's brim, her hands clasping at the back of her
+head; a thing to dream of. She was so lovely that all feeling died save
+a passionate appreciation, keen to the verge of pain; she was so lovely
+that of necessity she awoke an impersonal motion. Slowly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> she stretched
+herself, and as the muscles rippled into curves and sank, the delicate
+shadows ebbed and breathed out again on the pearl-white of her body.
+Archie's every nerve was strung not to lose one line or one breath of
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>Putting out a foot she touched the water, so that little tremors soft as
+feathers fled over the surface; then, as she waded in, deeper and
+deeper, the water parted round her in flakes of brightness that shook
+and mixed up and broke away. When she rose, dripping wet, the moonlight
+refracted off her, was mirrored in the water, and thrown back again on
+her&mdash;a magic shuttle weaving an aura of whiteness. Long arrows of light
+fled back through the pool as she waded to shore, where she stood for a
+moment motionless; head slightly forward, arms hanging, and one hip
+thrown outwards as she poised her weight. Myriads of tiny,
+crescent-shaped drops clung to her limbs like fish-scales, so that she
+seemed more mermaiden than wood-nymph, but Archie's eyes proclaimed her
+Artemis&mdash;she would have calmed a satyr as she stood. Thoughts of forest
+glades were chill, sweet sports were held, and the wildest hoof was
+tamed to the childlike kinship with Nature that is pagan innocence,
+floated through his mind like visible things.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she became conscious of his presence, and gave one glance in
+which invitation and a certain calm aloofness seemed to mingle.</p>
+
+<p>"D&eacute;sir&eacute;e!" stammered Archie, "D&eacute;sir&eacute;e!"</p>
+
+<p>All at once excitement tingled through him, blurring his ideas, just as
+chloroform sets the blood pricking with thousands of points and edges,
+while dizzying the brain. She stayed still a second longer; then,
+either<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> the fearful nymph swayed her utterly, or, as it seemed to
+Archie, a sudden rejection of him, the clumsy, civilized mortal, sprang
+into her eyes. She flung up her head, turned, and was gone in the tangle
+of the woods. Without more than a second's hesitation he plunged in
+after her.</p>
+
+<p>To Archie, whenever he looked back, that night seemed an orgy of
+chase-gone-mad; gathering in force as it went and sweeping into its
+resistless flow the most incongruous of elements.</p>
+
+<p>He ran after her, stumbling, tripping, whipped across the face by
+brambles. Everything in life was crystallized into the desire to catch
+up, to track her to the enchanted green where, with her, he could become
+part of a remote free life he had never imagined before. All his own
+personality, except that in him which was hers, had ceased to
+exist&mdash;work, Gwendolen, the great world, and the inn at Draginoules,
+were wiped out of knowledge by the force of his concentration on one
+thing. The arbitrary line drawn between the actual and the unreal, the
+credible and the impossible, sanity and so-called madness, was swept
+away. She, the descendant of the gods knew what strange race&mdash;a race
+that perhaps had lingered in these crater-fastnesses and myrtle groves
+long after it had died off the rest of the earth&mdash;was fleeing before him
+through a wood alive with brightened eyes and quickened hoofs; and in
+her veins the slender strain of blood derived from some goat-legged,
+tall-eared thing&mdash;a strain asleep through the generations of her
+ancestors, had mastered all the rest of her heritage, and was triumphant
+in her soul as in Sylvestre's body. She ran on, swiftly, and without
+effort, and Archie ran after her.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+Dawn broke at last, reluctant, chill, showing the woods clear-edged and
+motionless as though cut out of steel, glimmering on the quiet pools and
+the ribbed lava slopes, though the hollow of the plain still held a
+great lake of shadow.</p>
+
+<p>D&eacute;sir&eacute;e's clothes lay no longer by the pool where she had bathed; no
+trace of human presence remained; even the marshy edge showed only
+trampled hoof-marks, as though some goat-footed herd had watered there.</p>
+
+<p>To Archie, breaking through the undergrowth at the edge of the wood, it
+seemed incredible that everything should look so much as usual. Still
+more he felt the wonder when, with the broad sunlight, he reached his
+inn. He himself felt so shaken in soul that even the thought of the
+Englishman's panacea&mdash;a cold bath&mdash;failed to appeal to him as a solution
+of all trouble. Plucked out of his accustomed place, flung by the sport
+of what strange gods he knew not, into a headlong medley of undreamed
+emotions, his values had been so violently disrupted that he could not
+have told which held true worth&mdash;the normal life of Gwendolens and
+one-man shows and newspaper criticisms, or what had passed in the woods
+that night. And, whatever strange rite he had surprised, and whether it
+were golden actuality that a man might live happy because he had once
+seen, or the mere wildness of a dream, there had been something about it
+which taught him not to blaspheme the revelation. He did not tell
+himself that the <i>vin ordinaire</i> must have gone to his head, or that he
+had been a romantic fool worked on by moonlight. This was remarkable,
+for few people are strong enough not to profane the past.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+So much of grace held by him even when he found a letter awaiting him to
+tell of Gwendolen's arrival with the obedient aunt at Cannes, whither
+she summoned him. He debated whether to say good-bye to D&eacute;sir&eacute;e or not.
+The matter was settled for him by meeting her accidently outside the
+<i>buvette</i>. She was looking pale and jaded, not at all at her best, but
+her eyes were blankly unknowing and clear of all embarrassment. She said
+good-bye with charming unemotional friendliness and informed him that
+she was going to be married very soon&mdash;Monsieur Colombini had had a rise
+that justified it. Here was anti-climax enough, even if the cold bath,
+the letter and the prose of packing were not sufficient. And yet, since
+it had not been D&eacute;sir&eacute;e, the frank peasant, who had shown Archie the
+wonders of that night, his memories remained. Half-fearful and half
+splendid, not enough to make him walk with the vision beautiful, but
+merely enough to spoil his pictures for the public, because instead of
+being content with the merely obvious he was now always trying for
+something beyond his powers to express. Enough also, to prick him to an
+occasional weary clear-eyed knowledge of his Gwendolen&mdash;a knowledge that
+was hardly criticism, for he admitted his kinship with her world. And
+what it was that companioned him, that he strove to show in his
+pictures, he never entirely told; for just as no woman ever tells what
+it is her sex has and the other lacks&mdash;that something which makes all
+the difference&mdash;just as no man tells a woman what it is he and his
+fellows talk about when the last skirt has trailed from the
+dinner-table, so no one ever tells the whole truth about the beloved.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+<a name="ii" id="ii"></a>THE LADDER</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span><br />
+THE LADDER</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+I<br />
+<br />
+THE TRIAL</h3>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>Account taken from a contemporary journal</i>)</p>
+
+<p class="noi">"<span class="smcap">To-day</span>, March 3, the Court being sat in the Castle at Launceston, about
+eight o'clock in the morning, the prisoner was set to the bar.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophia Bendigo, of the parish of St. Annan in this county, was
+indicted, for that she, not having the fear of God before her eyes, but
+being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on October 20,
+in the 24th year of his Majesty's reign, and again since, to wit, on
+October 21, with force and arms upon the body of Constantine Bendigo,
+Gent., her father, did make an assault, and in her malice aforethought,
+did kill and murder, by putting into some water-gruel a certain powder
+called arsenic, and afterwards giving to him, the said Constantine
+Bendigo, a potion thereof, knowing it to be mixed with the powder
+aforesaid, so that he, the said Constantine, was poisoned, and of which
+poison, he, the said Constantine, died, on the 22nd of the said month of
+October; against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+"The Counsel for the Crown were the Hon. Mr. Bathwick; Mr. Sergeant
+Wheeler; Mr. Grice, Town Clerk of Launceston; Mr. Rose, Mr. Kirton, and
+the Hon. Mr. Harrington: And for the prisoner, Mr. Ford, Mr. Bennett and
+Mr. Walton.</p>
+
+<p>"The Counsel for the Crown having opened the indictment, proceeded to
+inform the Court and Jury that this prosecution was carried on by the
+order, and at the expense of his Majesty (who is ever watchful to
+preserve the lives, liberties, and properties of his subjects) against
+the prisoner at the bar, Sophia Bendigo, for one of the most atrocious
+crimes; the cruel, inhuman, and deliberate murder of her own father:
+That the prisoner at the bar was the daughter and only child of Mr.
+Constantine Bendigo, Squire of Troon, in the hundred of Penwith, a
+gentleman both by his birth and education; that as she was the only, so
+she was the beloved child of her father, who had spared no pains in
+giving her a genteel, as well as a pious education; that her father,
+indeed, had used this pious fraud (if he might be allowed that
+expression) in saying that her fortune would be &pound;10,000, to the end, he
+supposed, that his daughter might be married suitable to such a fortune.
+That in June of the preceding year one Capt. William Lucius Crandon came
+to Penwith map-making, and hearing that Miss Bendigo was a &pound;10,000
+fortune, and having a mind to marry this fortune, notwithstanding he had
+a wife and child alive, contrived to get acquainted with this family;
+how well he succeeded, and how sadly for this family, this unhappy
+catastrophe has shown. That Mr. Bendigo, having been informed that Mr.
+Crandon was married, he desired his daughter to break<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> off all
+correspondence with him; that instead of doing so, she acquainted Mr.
+Crandon with her father's command, who, instead of clearing his
+character to her father's satisfaction, contrives the means and
+persuades this beloved, this tenderly indulged daughter, to be an actor
+in her father's destruction.</p>
+
+<p>"That the Captain left Cornwall at the end of September, since when, on
+the miscarriage of his plans, he had disappeared entirely; and soon
+after he is gone, we find this wicked scheme beginning to be put into
+execution. That on October 20, Mr. Bendigo found himself much disordered
+after taking some tea, that next day, the prisoner having made him
+another dish of tea, deceased had thought it to taste odd and sent it
+downstairs; that Crandon, to hasten the work of destruction, sent a
+letter to the prisoner, making use of an allegorical expression, not to
+spare the powder, in order to keep the rust off the pebbles. That the
+tea being too thin to admit of a larger quantity at the time, you will
+find by the witnesses that shall be produced, that the prisoner did mix
+a large quantity of the powder in a pan of water-gruel and gave some of
+it to her father next day which had such terrible effects as to occasion
+his death on the morning of the 23rd. That he would call the physicians
+first, and they would prove that what was administered to the deceased
+was poison and the cause of his death.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Harvey, of St. Annan, and Dr. Polwhele, of Penzance, were then
+called and both sworn; and Mr. Harvey said that, being on the evening of
+the 22nd sent for to Mr. Bendigo, he thus made his complaints: That he
+had a violent burning pain, saying it was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> ball of fire in his guts,
+that he vomited much since taking some tea two days before and again
+after taking some gruel that evening, that he had a cold sweat, hiccups,
+prickings all over his body, which he compared to a number of needles.
+He desired to drink, but could not swallow, his pulse intermitted, his
+tongue swelled, his throat was excoriated, his breath difficult and
+interrupted. Towards morning he grew worse, became delirious and sank
+gradually, dying about six o'clock in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Being asked if he thought Mr. Bendigo was poisoned, witness answered,
+He really believed he was, for that the symptoms, while living, were
+like those of a person who had taken arsenic; and the appearances after
+death, like those that were poisoned by arsenic."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<p>"King's Counsel: Did you also make an examination of the powder found in
+the gruel?</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Harvey: I did. I threw it upon a hot iron; boiled ten grains in
+water and divided the concoction, after filtering it into five equal
+parts. Into one I put oil of vitriol, into another tartar, into the
+third spirit of sal ammoniac, into the fourth spirit of salt, and into
+the fifth spirit of wine. I tried it also with syrup of violets, and
+made the like experiments with the same quantity of white arsenic which
+I bought in Penzance. It answered exactly to every one of them, and
+therefore I believed it to be white arsenic.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Harvey further deposed that Mr. Bendigo told him that he suspected
+poison, and that he believed it came to his daughter with the serpentine
+beads,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> for that his daughter had had a present of those damned pebbles
+that morning; that if he, this witness, would look in the gruel, he
+might find something, that when he, this witness, asked Mr. Bendigo whom
+he imagined gave him the poison, he replied, A poor love-sick girl, but
+I forgive her; what will not a woman do for the man she loves?</p>
+
+<p>"That later on the evening of the 22nd, Mr. Bendigo being a trifle
+easier, consented to see Miss, that he, this witness, was present when
+Miss came into the chamber, and fell down upon her knees, saying, Oh!
+sir, forgive me! Do what you will with me, and I'll never see Crandon
+more if you will but forgive me. To which Mr. Bendigo replied, I forgive
+thee, but thou shouldst have remembered that I am thy father, upon which
+Miss said, Oh, sir, your goodness strikes daggers to my soul; sir, I
+must down on my knees and pray that you will not curse me. He replied,
+No, child, I bless thee and pray that God may bless thee and let thee
+live to repent. Miss then declared she was innocent of this illness, and
+he replied, that he feared she was not, and that some of the powder was
+in such hands as would show it against her. Witness added that deceased,
+before Miss Bendigo's entry, had bidden him look to the remainder of the
+gruel.</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner's Counsel: Who was it sent for you when deceased was taken
+ill?</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey: James Ruffiniac,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> the steward, fetched me and said it was at
+the command of Miss Bendigo, who said, to-morrow will not satisfy me,
+you must go now, which he did.</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner's Counsel: All the years you have known<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> Miss Bendigo what has
+been her behaviour to her father? Has she not always done everything
+that an affectionate child could for her father's ease?</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey: She always behaved like a dutiful daughter, as far as ever I
+knew, and seemed to do everything in her power for her father's recovery
+whenever he was indisposed.</p>
+
+<p>"King's Counsel: Did she tell you that she had put anything into her
+father's gruel and that she feared it might in some measure occasion his
+death?</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey: She never did.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Polwhele, having been sworn at the same time as Mr. Harvey, and
+stood in Court close by him, was now asked by the King's Counsel if he
+was present at the opening of Mr. Bendigo and whether the observations
+made by Mr. Harvey were true: he said he was present and made the same
+observations himself. He was then asked what was his opinion of the
+cause of the death of Mr. Bendigo, and he replied, by poison absolutely.</p>
+
+<p>"Eliza Ruffiniac, being sworn, said, that on the afternoon of the 20th,
+her master being unwell, from (as they thought at the time) an attack of
+bile, Miss Bendigo, the prisoner at the bar, made him a dish of tea.
+That after taking it he was very sick, but seemed easier next day, when
+Miss again made him some tea which he did not drink. That next evening
+he sent for the witness and asked for some water-gruel to be made; that
+Miss on hearing of it, said, I will make it, that there's no call for
+you to leave your ironing; that Miss was a long time stirring the gruel
+in the pantry, and on coming into the kitchen said, I have been taking
+of my father's gruel, and I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> I shall often eat of it; I have taken
+a great fancy to it.</p>
+
+<p>"King's Counsel: Do you recollect that one Keast, the cook-maid, had
+been taken ill with drinking some tea the day before, and tell the Court
+how it was.</p>
+
+<p>"E. Ruffiniac: Hester Keast brought down the tea from my master's room
+and afterwards drank it in the scullery, where I found her crying out
+she was dying, being taken very ill with a violent vomiting and pains
+and a great thirst.</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner's Counsel: On that occasion, how did Miss Bendigo behave?</p>
+
+<p>"E. Ruffiniac: She made Hester Keast go to her bed and sent her a large
+quantity of weak broth and white wine whey.</p>
+
+<p>"King's Counsel: Did you ever see Miss Bendigo burn any papers, and
+when?</p>
+
+<p>"E. Ruffiniac: On the evening of the 22nd, Miss brought a great many
+papers in her apron down into the kitchen and put them on the fire, then
+thrust them into it with a stick and said, now, thank God, I am pretty
+easy, and then went out of the kitchen; that this witness and Hester
+Keast were in the kitchen at the time; that they, observing something to
+burn blue, it was raked out and found to be a paper of powder that was
+not quite consumed; that there was this inscription on the paper; Powder
+to clean the pebbles, and that this paper, she, the witness, delivered
+to Dr. Polwhele next day. Being shown a paper, with the above
+inscription on it, partly burnt, she said she believed the paper to be
+the same the prisoner put into the fire and she took out.</p>
+
+<p>"This witness was asked if she ever heard the prisoner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> use any unseemly
+expressions against her father, and what they were? Replied, many times;
+sometimes she damned him for an old rascal; and once when she was in the
+dairy and the prisoner passing at the time outside, she heard her say,
+Who would not send an old father to hell for ten thousand pounds?</p>
+
+<p>"Hester Keast, the cook-maid, deposed, That, on the 21st she bore down
+her master's dish of tea and drank of it, being afterwards taken very
+ill, that on the next day, being down in the kitchen after her master
+was taken ill, Lylie Ruffiniac brought a pan with some gruel in it to
+the table and said, Hester, did you ever see any oatmeal so white? that
+this witness replied, That oatmeal? Why, it is flour! and Lylie replied,
+I never saw flour so gritty in my life; that they showed it to Mr.
+Harvey, the apothecary, who took it away with him.</p>
+
+<p>"James Ruffiniac was next called and sworn.</p>
+
+<p>"King's Counsel: When your master was dead, did you not have some
+particular conversation with the prisoner? Recollect yourself, and tell
+my Lord and the Jury what it was.</p>
+
+<p>"J. Ruffiniac: After my master was dead, Miss Bendigo asked me if I
+would live along with her, and I said no, and she then said, If you will
+go with me, your fortune will be made; I asked her what she wanted me to
+do and she replied, Only to hire a post-chaise to go to London. I was
+shocked at the proposal and absolutely refused her request. On this she
+put on a forced laugh, and said, I was only joking with you.</p>
+
+<p>"Charles Le Petyt, Clerk in Holy Orders, was next called and sworn, and
+said, That, meeting Miss Bendigo in St. Annan when the crowd was
+insulting her, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> took her into the inn, and spoke with her there,
+asking if she would not return home under his protection; she answered
+yes, that upon this he got a closed post-chaise and brought her home;
+that upon her coming home she asked him what she should do, that he,
+having heard her, said that they should fix the guilt upon Crandon if
+she could produce anything to that end, but in some agony she replied
+she had destroyed all evidences of his guilt.</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner's Counsel: Do you, Mr. Le Petyt, believe that the Prisoner had
+any intention to go off, from what appeared to you, and if she was not
+very ready to come back with you from the inn?</p>
+
+<p>"Le Petyt: She was very ready to come back, and desired me to protect
+her from the mob, and she had, I am sure, no design to make an escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Here the Counsel for the Crown rested their proof against the prisoner,
+and she was thereupon called to make her defence.</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner: My Lord, in my unhappy plight, if I should use any terms that
+may be thought unfitting, I hope I shall be forgiven, for it will not be
+with any desire to offend. My Lord, some time before my father's death,
+I unhappily became acquainted with Captain Crandon. This, after a time,
+gave offence to my father, and he grew very angry with me over Captain
+Crandon. I am passionate, which I know is a fault, and when I have found
+my father distrustful over Captain Crandon, I may have let fall an angry
+expression, but never to wish him injury, I have always done all in my
+power to tend him, as the witnesses against me have not denied. When my
+father was dead, being ill and unable to bear confinement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> in the house,
+I took a walk over to St. Annan, but I was insulted, and a mob raised
+about me, so that when Mr. Le Petyt came to me I desired his protection
+and to go home with him, which I did.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not deny, my Lord, that I did put some powder into my father's
+gruel; but I here solemnly protest, as I shall answer it at the great
+tribunal, and God knows how soon, that I had no evil intention in
+putting the powder in his gruel: It was put in to procure his love and
+not his death.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she desired that several witnesses might be called in her defence,
+who all allowed that Miss Bendigo always behaved to her father in a
+dutiful and affectionate manner. And Anne Lear and Elizabeth Pollard,
+women occasionally employed at Troon, deposed that they had heard Lylie
+Ruffiniac say, Damn the black bitch (meaning the prisoner), I hope I
+shall see her walk up a ladder and swing.</p>
+
+<p>"The prisoner having gone through her defence, the King's Counsel, in
+reply, observed, That the prisoner had given no evidence in
+contradiction of the facts established by the witnesses for the crown;
+that indeed, Anne Lear and Elizabeth Pollard had sworn to an expression
+of Lylie Ruffiniac, which, if true, served to show ill-will in Ruffiniac
+towards the prisoner, but that he thought the incident was too slight to
+deserve any manner of credit. That the other witnesses, produced by the
+prisoner, served only to prove that Mr. Bendigo was a very fond,
+affectionate and indulgent parent, therefore there could be no pretence
+of giving him powders or anything else to promote in him an affection
+for his daughter. That if the Jury believed the prisoner to be innocent,
+they would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> take care to acquit her: but if they believed her guilty,
+they would take care to acquit their own consciences.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The prisoner desired leave to speak in answer to what the King's
+Counsel had said, which being granted, she said, The gentleman was
+mistaken in thinking the powders were given to her father to produce his
+affection to her, for that they were given to procure her father's love
+to Captain Crandon.</p>
+
+<p>"The judge summed up the evidence in a clear and impartial manner to the
+Jury, and they, without going out of Court, brought in their verdict:
+Guilty, Death.</p>
+
+<p>"After sentence of death was pronounced upon her she, in a very solemn
+and affecting manner, prayed the Court that she might have as much time
+as could be allowed her to prepare for her great and immortal state. The
+Court told her she should have a convenient time allowed her; but
+exhorted her, in the meantime, to lose not a moment, but incessantly to
+implore the mercy of that Being to Whom alone mercy belongs."</p>
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>II<br />
+<br />
+FIRST STEPS</h3>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">To</span> the making of such a scene as that recounted in the contemporary
+journal, much had gone during the months so crudely analysed. That
+damning pile of evidence had been building itself up, touch upon touch,
+since the first moment when Sophie Bendigo's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> eyes lit on the instigator
+of the trouble; and the causes of her own share in it had been
+strengthening from far earlier even than that. In after years the Wise
+Woman of Bosullow would recount that when the baby Sophie was brought to
+her to be passed for luck through the ringed stone of the Men-an-Tol,
+she had foretold for her the rise in life that eventually came about.
+True, the terms of the prophecy had been so vague that beyond the fact
+that a ladder, metaphorical or otherwise, was to play a part in Sophie's
+career, Mr. Bendigo had not been much the wiser. The mother had lain in
+the bleak moorland churchyard for several years now, but she had had
+time, during the most malleable years of a girl's life, the early teens,
+to impress Sophie with a sense of destiny. Not for her the vulgar loves
+and joys of other country girls, to her some one shining, resplendent,
+would come flashing down, and Sophie must learn to bear with powdered
+hair and hoops against that moment. For London, of course, would be her
+splendid bourne, and as to saying that hoops got in the way of her
+legs&mdash;why, hoops were the mode and to a hoop she must come. Since Mrs.
+Bendigo had died, worn out by the terrible combination of the Squire's
+slow cruelty and his suave tongue, Sophie had given up the struggle with
+hoops and powder, but she still lived for and by her vision of the
+future. If Sophie Bendigo had not glanced over her shoulder in Troon
+Lane, thereby presenting an exceptional face at the most alluring of
+angles&mdash;chin up and eyes innocently sidelong&mdash;to the view of Mr.
+Crandon, she might never have climbed so high. When she saw Mr. Crandon,
+his white wig tied with a black ribbon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> and an excellent paste pin
+flashing from his cravat, riding up the lane, she never doubted that her
+star had risen at last.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie Bendigo was of the pure Celtic type still preserved among the
+intermarrying villages of West Penwith. Her rather coarse hair was a
+burnt black, so were her thick, straight brows, but her eyes were of
+that startlingly vivid blue one only meets in Cornish women and Cornish
+seas. There was something curiously Puck-like about Sophie; the
+cheekbones wide and jaw pointed, while her mouth was long, the thin,
+finely cut lips curving up at the ends, and there was a freakish flaunt
+at the corners of her brows&mdash;Crandon thought of piskies as he looked.
+She wore a plain white gown, low in the throat and short in the sleeve,
+and she carried an apron-load of elder-flower, the pearly blossoms of it
+showing faintly green against the deader white of the linen.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, but does this lead to St. Annan?" asked Crandon, bending a
+little towards her. Sophie felt one swift pang lest he should be riding
+out of her life straightway, and swiftly answered:</p>
+
+<p>"You are out of your way," she told him, "this lane only leads to our
+house. You must go back to the highway and follow it past the 'Nineteen
+Merry Maidens' and turn on to your right&mdash;but it is a matter of three or
+four miles."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment they remained looking at each other, then Crandon said:</p>
+
+<p>"Is there perhaps an inn near here where I and my mare could rest? We
+have come from Zennor this morning, and she is newly shod."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no need for an inn," said Sophie, "we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> are always glad to rest
+a traveller at Troon Manor. I am Sophie Bendigo."</p>
+
+<p>Crandon smilingly dismounted and walked by her side up the lane.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be ungracious to refuse when the Fates have led me and Venus
+herself seconds the invitation.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Have you just risen from the sea, I
+wonder, that your eyes still hold its hue?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophie, used only to the clumsy overtures of the county squires, flushed
+with pleasure, not at the allusion, which she did not understand, but at
+the air of gallantry which pervaded the man. She glanced up admiringly
+between her narrowed lids&mdash;Crandon was accustomed to such glances, so
+had his girl-wife in Scotland looked at him, before he deserted her and
+her child. He meditated no harm to this girl, no plan was formulated in
+his mind; and as to the ten thousand pounds, of which so much was heard
+later on, no whisper of it had then reached his ears. The road had led
+to her, her own face lured him on, and a few hours of a pretty girl on
+such a June day, where was the harm? The innocence and spontaneity of
+his feelings gave the Captain a delightful glow of conscious virtue, and
+he walked beside Sophie with a slight swagger of enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>The drive was a mere rutted cart-track; hemlock, foxgloves, purple
+knapweed, blue scabious and tall, thin-stemmed buttercups grew along the
+tangled hedges, and the blackberry flowers patterned the brambles with
+pearliness. The luminous chequer-work of sun and shadow fell over
+Sophie's white gown, and the green light, filtering through the trees,
+reflected on her face and on her glossy head,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> so that she seemed to be
+walking in the depths of the sea, and Crandon's simile gained in
+aptness.</p>
+
+<p>At the bend of the lane they came on the Manor House, its whitewash
+dazzling in the sunshine, even the shadows thrown on it by the eaves and
+sills were so clear they gave a curious effect of being as light as the
+rest. Only the Bendigo arms&mdash;a clenched fist&mdash;carved on the granite
+lintel, had been left untouched by the whitewash, and showed a sullen
+grey. A few fawn-coloured fowls, blazing like copper in the sunshine,
+pecked at the dusty ground, and some white pigs, looking as utterly
+naked as only white pigs can, snuffled at a rubbish heap, their big ears
+flapping. A tall, lean woman, clad in a dirty silk dressing-jacket of
+bright yellow, was talking to a labourer by the dairy door. There was
+something oddly suggestive of secrecy in the turn of their shoulders and
+their bent heads, and the woman's soiled finery made her thin face&mdash;that
+of a shrewd but comely peasant, framed in an untidy pompadour of
+reddish-brown hair&mdash;seem oddly incongruous. The man lapsed into
+insignificance beside her, yet something of likeness in their sharpened
+lines, and in the tinge of hot colour showing up through them,
+proclaimed them kin. They were Lylie Ruffiniac, Squire Bendigo's
+housekeeper, and her brother James, who acted as bailiff on the estate.
+Sophie, her head turned towards her companion, did not see them, but
+Crandon did, and was pricked at once to curiosity. Living as he did by
+his wits, his every fibre was quickened to superficial alertness, though
+of intellectual effort he was almost incapable. An old journal for 1752
+that published, in addition to its account of the trial, some "Memoirs
+of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> Life of Lucius William Crandon, Esq.," had enough acumen to
+remark: "He was not, however, destitute of parts, for he would often
+surprise those who entertained a mean opinion of his abilities, by
+schemes and concertions which required more genius than they thought he
+had been master of.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. As he was not of sufficient learning to qualify
+him either for law or for physic, he turned his thought towards the
+army, where a very moderate share of literature is sufficient, and where
+few voices disqualify a man from making a figure.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." And a figure
+Lucius Crandon certainly made&mdash;a figure that caused the woman in the
+yellow jacket to stop and stare, then to disappear into the house by a
+side-door&mdash;Crandon received the impression that she had gone to warn
+some one of his approach.</p>
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>III<br />
+<br />
+THE WOOING</h3>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">It</span> is said that rogues know each other by instinct&mdash;certain it is that
+the Squire and Captain Crandon had no need of disguises once they had
+crossed glances, and therefore each man cloaked himself with an
+elaborate pretence of being unable to see through the other's garment.
+It was not by any wish of Squire Bendigo's that Captain Crandon heard of
+the rumour of the ten thousand pounds, but when one has circulated a
+report with diligence for several years it is impossible to withdraw it
+at will, and so the Squire found, and it only needed this report of
+Sophie's marriage portion for Crandon to attempt the capture in earnest;
+what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> happened to the map history does not relate, but the Captain
+stayed at the "Bendigo Arms," making explorations in the familiar but
+always surprising country of a woman's mind. A mind simpler, more
+passionate, and more one-ideaed than any he had met before, a mind at
+once proud, confiding and reckless&mdash;a mind fitted, both by the quality
+of it and its loneliness, to be easily influenced by the flattery of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie Bendigo had a fixed belief in her star. The predictions of the
+Wise Woman and of her eager mother, and her own knowledge of her
+superiority to the people among whom she moved, all tended to give her
+that confidence in her fate which does not think misfortune possible.
+She had always led a hard life with her best of fathers, the smiling old
+rogue who had never been heard to address a rude word to her, and who
+was harsh and immutable as granite. She had always waited, with such
+sureness she had not even felt impatience, for her opportunity to come,
+and mingled with the half-shy, half-innocently sensuous imaginings of a
+young girl on the subject of love, ran a streak of personal ambition, a
+hardness inherited from her father.</p>
+
+<p>At first, before he had found out beyond a doubt that the Captain was a
+needy fortune-hunter, the Squire allowed his visits at Troon, and
+Crandon soon grew to be on terms of intimacy with the members of the
+household. These consisted of the Bendigos, father and daughter, Lylie
+Ruffiniac, her brother, and the servant, a girl called Hester Keast. The
+three latter were supposed to live more or less in the back premises and
+take their meals in the kitchen, but once when Crandon surprised Lylie
+Ruffiniac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> with the Squire, there were two glasses of spirits and water
+on the table, and, several weeks after, when he had to meet Sophie by
+stealth and at night, he saw a light being carried from the servants'
+quarters towards the Squire's room. As for Hester Keast, she was a
+pretty girl in her way&mdash;a way at once heavier and less strong than
+Sophie's. She had the dewy brown eyes, the easily affected, over-thin
+skin, and the soft red mouth, blurred at the edges, which betray
+incapacity for resistance. There was no harm in the girl, she was merely
+a young animal, with very little instinct of self-protection to
+counteract her utter lack of morals. Crandon kissed her behind the door
+on his second visit, and James Ruffiniac's wooing of her had long passed
+the preliminary stages&mdash;so long that with him ideas of marriage were
+growing misty, the thing seemed so unnecessary. Lylie's blood was
+controlled by scheming, and the most charitable explanation of the
+Squire's tortuous nature was that some mental or moral twist in him made
+him love evil for its own sake, and embrace it as his good. Such was the
+household where, for the last three years, Sophie had lived, practically
+alone&mdash;her egoism had done her that much service, it had won her
+aloofness. Crandon, who was by nature predisposed to think the worst of
+humanity, made the mistake, at first, of thinking Sophie's innocence
+assumed&mdash;it seemed a thing so incredible in that house of hidden
+schemings and furtive amours. When he found that partly a natural
+fastidiousness, and partly her young crudity had kept her clean in
+thought and knowledge as well as in deed, he wisely guessed there must
+be some outside influence on the side of the angels, and scenting
+opposition to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> his own schemes, he set himself to discover all he could.
+That was not difficult in such a sparsely inhabited district, hemmed in
+on three sides by the sea, and he soon made, at St. Annan's Vicarage,
+the acquaintance of its vicar, Mr. Charles le Petyt. He no sooner set
+eyes on the clergyman's plain and frail physique, with the burning eyes
+and quick nervous hands, than he knew he was right to fear him as an
+influence, though he could scorn him as a rival.</p>
+
+<p>Charles and Sophie had practically grown up together, Charles' six years
+of seniority making him stand in the place of an elder brother to her,
+until he had become her urgent lover. Charles' father, the former Vicar
+of St. Annan, had given Sophie what little education she possessed&mdash;a
+medley of mythology and history, some incorrect geography, and a
+smattering of literature&mdash;all the things that go to fire the
+imagination. Mixed with these was a mass of all the wild legendary lore
+of the Duchy, solemnly believed in by the common people at that date,
+and by no means without its effect on the gentry. Sophie would not have
+been of her race and time if she had not had faith in charms, witches,
+death-warnings and love-potions; and in Charles the spiritual sense was
+so acute that, though from sheer sensitiveness it rejected the more
+vulgar superstitions, it responded like a twanged string to the breath
+of a less gross world. The finer side of Sophie, the delicate feeling
+for the beautiful, which owed so much of its existence to Charles,
+received a severe shock when she discovered the change in his viewing of
+her. She had been so used to think of him as her brother, and as her
+leader in the intangible matters which were sealed books to the rest at
+Troon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> that the discovery of warm, human sentiments in him filled her
+with repulsion, and she took to avoiding him as much as she had sought
+him before. Poor Charles, whose earthly love, though as reverent, was as
+fiery as his heavenly affections, and who was handicapped by the lover's
+inability to understand that his devotion can be repellent, suffered
+acutely. It was some time before he understood that Sophie was so
+accustomed to see him burning with a white flame that she could not
+forgive him for being alight with a red one as well. A more sensual
+love, and coarser in its expression than his could ever be, would have
+revolted her less coming from a less exalted man&mdash;Mr. Le Petyt paid for
+the high opinion she held him in. If Lucius Crandon had never come to
+Troon, Sophie would in time have grown used to the idea of Charles as a
+husband, for there is no combination of circumstances, incredible as it
+appears to youth, that time does not soften and make bearable. But
+Sophie, destiny-ridden, gave no heed to Charles, save as a friend who
+had made her dread him even while she was still fond of him, and Lucius
+Crandon stepped in just when her nerves, awakened to the existence of
+actual love, were beginning to calm from the shock and even to set
+towards curiosity&mdash;just when she was most receptive. Pitiful and
+ignorant Sophie, whose only protection from gross housemates and a
+hot-blooded, cold-hearted lover, was a dreamer as guileless as herself!</p>
+
+<p>With all his unworldliness, the unfailing instinct of the
+spiritual-minded warned Mr. Le Petyt against the Captain, and when the
+Squire, strangely friendly, sent word asking his vicar to come and see
+him on urgent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> business, Mr. Le Petyt guessed to what matter the
+business related. He found the Squire seated in his writing-room, a
+glass of rare old smuggled brandy before him and a packet of letters on
+his knee. The Squire was a big, pursy man, with a large and oddly
+impassive face, where even the hanging folds of flesh seemed rigid; only
+his small eyes, of a clear light grey, twinkled like chips of cut steel
+from between his wrinkled lids. His bull neck, wide as his head across
+the nape, sagged in a thick fold over his cravat, and his thighs swelled
+against the close-fitting cloth of his riding-breeches. The only
+contradiction to the stolidity of the man was his hands, and they were
+never still, but were for ever fiddling with something; with his
+waistcoat buttons, his rings, with a paper-knife, or the cutlery at
+table, or with any live thing they could get. Charles Le Petyt well
+remembered how, as a small boy, he had come on him superintending the
+reaping, and fingering a puppy behind his back. Whether the Squire was
+aware of what he was doing or whether his fingers did their work
+instinctively, without his brain, Charles never could decide, but when
+the Squire, turning away from the reapers, unlocked his hands, the puppy
+lay limp across his palm&mdash;the life choked out of it. The Squire stood
+still for a moment, looking at the little body, and then, moving away in
+a straight line from the labourers, so that it was concealed from them,
+he dropped it into a rabbit-hole and stuffed it down with his cane. Sick
+to the heart, little Charles stood at gaze, and glancing up, the Squire
+saw he was watched, and for a moment his impassive features were
+convulsed with rage&mdash;he looked as though he would have liked to treat
+Charles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> as he had the puppy. The memory of that day would have been
+enough, without the sight of Sophie's dread of her father, to prevent
+Mr. Le Petyt from joining in the general praise of Squire Bendigo.</p>
+
+<p>The two men made a great contrast as they sat opposite to each other in
+the little room, the Squire solid and imperturbable, the parson
+transparent in mind and physical texture, the quick colour flying up
+under his skin with his emotions. The dust lay thickly over the table
+and books, for Sophie, the careful housewife, was seldom admitted here,
+and however Lylie Ruffiniac spent the hours when she was closeted with
+the Squire, it was evidently not in work. The evening light shone into
+the low-browed room through an ash-tree by the window, filling the air
+with a luminous gloom, gilding the dust films, gleaming on Mr. Le
+Petyt's shoe-buckles, and making a bright crescent in the glass of
+spirits which the Squire was jerking between his finger and thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to consult me on something?" began the younger man, going
+straight to the point. The Squire, with a gesture of protest for such
+methods, nevertheless fell into an agreeing humour.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, Charles," he began, with that disarming air of candour
+none assumed better than he, "I have had cause to be uneasy at the
+intimacy between my dear but headstrong daughter and this Captain
+Crandon, so I wrote to a trustworthy man I know in London to find out
+all he could for me. His letter came to-day by Mr. Borlace, who was
+riding down in all haste from London to his wife's bedside&mdash;thus does
+Providence permit the trials of others to be of use to us."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+Here he paused, but Mr. Le Petyt, throwing in no suitable remark, he
+continued:</p>
+
+<p>"I will read you some extracts from the letter, and you shall judge for
+yourself whether a parent's anxiety has not been justified. Let me
+see&mdash;ah, here we are! 'I find' (says my informant) 'that about the year
+1744 Crandon became acquainted with a Miss Isabel Thirsk, then at her
+uncle's. Miss Thirsk was remarkably genteel, delicate, and of a very
+amiable disposition, which gained her a great number of admirers. Her
+uncle, observing that Crandon always discovered an inclination of
+conversing with his niece alone, desired him to explain himself fully on
+a point so very delicate. Crandon declared he counted Miss Thirsk on the
+most honourable terms, but the young lady's uncle desired that Crandon's
+visits should be less frequent, lest his niece should suffer in her
+reputation. Soon after, this gentleman's affairs caused him to be absent
+from his home for some time, during which Crandon proposed a private
+marriage, which the young lady consented to, and for some time they
+lived together without any of their relations being privy to it. The
+natural consequence arising, and her uncle, some time after his return,
+suspecting it, she readily acknowledged she was with child, and
+protested she was married to Crandon four months before, adding, that
+her husband, who was soon to set out for London, had not yet publicly
+acknowledged her for his wife. Accordingly the uncle dispatched a
+messenger to Crandon demanding full acknowledgment of his wife before
+his departure for England. Crandon wrote in answer that he never
+intended to deny his marriage with Miss Thirsk, and that he would ever
+love her with conjugal tenderness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> but that at the moment he had to
+hasten to London, which he did. There he every day saw young fellows
+making their fortunes by marriage, and he imagined nothing but his being
+married could hinder him from being as successful as the rest, thus he
+began to neglect a person whose beauty and virtue merited a more worthy
+spouse. When he returned to Scotland that country was involved in a
+civil war, and rebellion raging in its bowels. He found all the
+relations of Miss Thirsk joined in the mad expedition and in all
+probability would suffer at the hands of their country for disturbing
+its peace. He therefore concluded that it was not in their power to give
+him any disturbance, and, consequently, it was a good opportunity for
+renouncing his wife. The affair, at last, after various meetings and
+expostulations of friends, came to a trial before the Lords of Session
+in Scotland, who found the marriage valid and settled fifty pounds a
+year on the lady, which she now enjoys by their decree.'"</p>
+
+<p>The Squire put down the papers.</p>
+
+<p>"So much for Captain Crandon!" he said, in a glow of rage at the man for
+trying to deceive him, mingled with pride in his own acuteness and a
+dash of assumed piety: "Who but a person, something worse than a
+villain, could ever have indulged a thought of using so innocent, so
+lovely a being as Miss Thirsk in such a monstrous manner! Surely Divine
+justice will pursue him for this unnatural, this unheard-of piece of
+brutality!"</p>
+
+<p>"Divine justice has at least saved Sophie from the same fate," replied
+Mr. Le Petyt. His first feeling was for her, his second, to his own
+shame, was the relief of the jealous lover.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+"Ah&mdash;Sophie!" said the Squire thoughtfully&mdash;"that is where I crave your
+help. She is headstrong, poor child, sadly headstrong, but your opinions
+have always had weight with her. You have an influence, Charles. Use it
+to save my unhappy child from this villain Crandon."</p>
+
+<p>"I would save her from all villainy if I could," said Mr. Le Petyt.</p>
+
+<p>The Squire pulled the bell-rope, and on the appearance of Lylie,
+splendid in what even the guileless parson could not but see was a new
+silk, stiff enough to stand up by itself, the Squire told her curtly to
+desire "Miss's" presence. Lylie withdrew with downdropped lids, and a
+few minutes later Sophie appeared. She glanced quickly from one man to
+the other, and scenting a conspiracy, remained standing, her head up,
+and her hands strongly clasped behind her. She was against the window,
+so that subtleties of expression were lost to Mr. Le Petyt, and only the
+aloofness of her pose struck at him miserably, as confounding him and
+her father together. The big white muslin cap she wore showed delicately
+dark against the daylight, the outstanding frill of it framing the solid
+shadow of face and neck with a semi-transparent halo, and a yoke of
+light lay across her shoulders&mdash;to Mr. Le Petyt's quick fancy she looked
+like some virgin-saint of old at her trial.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie," said the Squire gently, "I feel I should not be doing my duty
+by my dear daughter if I did not inform her that her lover, Lucius
+Crandon, is a married man."</p>
+
+<p>He watched, smiling. She stood a little tense, but with scorn of him and
+not with fear, and he went on:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+"He married a Miss Isabel Thirsk, by whom he had a child&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A slight convulsion swept over Sophie, passed, and left her rigid, and
+the Squire continued:</p>
+
+<p>"A lovely child, I believe&mdash;a boy, and the image of his father.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. But
+that is not the chief matter of interest. Captain Crandon deserted his
+young and trusting wife, and appealed against the validity of the
+marriage. The law decided against him, and condemned him to pay fifty
+pounds a year for her support. It was a sad scandal, a very sad scandal.
+You, my sweet child, do not know the wickedness of the world as I do,
+therefore I must shield you from it&mdash;in short, I forbid you to have
+speech with Captain Crandon again."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?" asked Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"All&mdash;save that I should much regret having to lock you up in your room
+to enforce obedience."</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Charles?" cried Sophie, "are you, too, in this plot to speak
+ill of an absent man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie," cried Mr. Le Petyt, "do not take it so, I beg of you. There
+seems only too little doubt that what your father says is true."</p>
+
+<p>"You are against me, too!" said Sophie cruelly. "Papa, I am going to
+meet Captain Crandon now, and I shall ask him for the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie! You will not believe him?" exclaimed Mr. Le Petyt, half-rising
+in his agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Every word he says," cried Sophie, with a little laugh of utter
+confidence. Her hand was on the latch, and the Squire, restrained by Mr.
+Le Petyt's presence, dared not put out a hand to stop her by force. For
+half a moment more the three emotions held&mdash;the scorn of the girl, the
+distress of the one man and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> the vindictiveness of the other, then the
+door had closed behind Sophie as the will to see her lover swept her on;
+and the taunt, one-ideaed feeling of the men fell into complexity as
+they turned first towards each other, then away, in the gathering dusk.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie found Crandon awaiting her by the dam above Vellan-Crowse mill.
+The daylight was all but gone and a darkly soft glamour seemed to hold
+the full-foliaged trees and shadowed water in a hush of expectation.
+There was still enough of red reflecting from the West to make the grass
+and leaves a vivid though subdued green; but of the hollow in the
+bushes, where the lovers met, darkness already seemed to make a nest.
+Everything to lull the mind and stir the heart and blood was there, and
+Sophie's generous trust, her pride in taking his word against the world,
+were not more powerful allies of Crandon's tongue than the time and the
+place. It was of little avail later to marvel that his ingenious
+reconstruction of events won upon her; his garbled confession of a
+<i>liaison</i> with Isabel Thirsk, and denial of the marriage, his statement
+of Miss Thirsk's infidelities, and his evident nobility in voluntarily
+allowing her an income. As for the sin itself&mdash;"It was before I met you.
+You could make me what you will."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie, only too willing to be convinced, sat by him in the little
+clearing, and listened almost in silence. Behind them on both sides the
+hazel-bushes made a faintly whispering screen of darkness, at their feet
+the mill-dam lay silent save for the occasional plop-plop of the tiny
+trout rising at late flies, on the further bank the hedge was a network
+of tangled black against the deepening sky, while overhead the elms and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+sycamores were pierced by the first faint stars. The two were set in a
+hushed sphere of aloofness, and for Sophie it was the world. "Trust me,
+my sweet Sophie&mdash;only trust me!" was whispered in her ear, and when she
+answered that she did, and he told her that if it were really so she
+would not draw away from him, she let his arms creep round her and his
+mouth come to hers. Weeks of carefully calculated love making had gone
+to make her pliable, kisses at which all the chill girlhood of her would
+earlier have shuddered, as it had at the same thing in Charles Le Petyt,
+she now bore, if not yet with passion, yet with the woman's tolerance of
+it in the man she loves. Crandon knew it was the moment to bind her to
+him irrevocably, for he guessed that to a woman of her type faithfulness
+is a necessity of self-respect, and with him desire was one with
+deliberate planning. Whether he threw a spell of words over her, or
+whether the mere force of his thought pleaded with her to prove she
+trusted him utterly, Sophie could never have told. She only knew that
+the still night, the soft air, the rustling leaves and the pricking
+stars, his presence, dimly seen but deeply felt, and the beating in her
+own frame, all cried to her, "It was for this that I was born! For this,
+for this, for this!"</p>
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>IV<br />
+<br />
+THE SPELL</h3>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Every</span> one, on looking back at the past, even from the near standpoint of
+a few months, realizes how it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> falls into separate phases, unnoticed at
+the time, but nevertheless distinct. When she had reached her apex,
+Sophie saw how that night by the mill-dam had shut down one phase for
+ever, and ushered in a new one. Deceptions, and constant evading of her
+father's suspicions, secret meetings, to connive at which it became a
+bitter necessity to bribe the servants, hard Lylie and slow-tongued
+James&mdash;while at the same time instinct warned her to keep the thing from
+Hester Keast&mdash;all these were wearisome and galling, but by the quality
+of affairs with Crandon fell into insignificance, merely an added
+irritation, flies on a wound.</p>
+
+<p>What first suggested to Crandon his idea of the love-potion was the
+discovery of Sophie's credulousness. Like all West Country folk,
+especially in those days, she was a firm believer in witches and spells,
+to an extent incredible to a Saxon. As late as the latter half of the
+nineteenth century an old woman was accused by a farmer of ill-wishing
+his bullocks and was brought to trial; while a "cunning man," or
+"white-witch," lived until lately in the northern part of the Duchy. A
+century earlier, therefore, when Cornwall was practically cut off from
+England, when even the coach came no further than Saltash, and
+travellers continued on horseback or in a "kitterine"; when newspapers
+were unknown, and books only found in parsonages or the biggest of the
+country houses; when animals were burned alive as sacrifices to fortune,
+and any man out at night went in fear of ghosts and the devil, then
+there was no one, of whatever rank, who did not believe in witchcraft.
+That Sophie, lonely, romantic, with the superstitious blood of the Celt
+unadulterated in her veins, should give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> credence to such things, was
+inevitable; and when Crandon suggested giving a love-potion to the
+Squire, so that he might feel his heart warmed towards his would-be
+son-in-law, she seized at what was to her more a certainty than a hope.</p>
+
+<p>It was an afternoon in late September, and she and Crandon had met in a
+wood about a mile away from Troon, when he first mooted his plan; she
+sat beside him on one of the great grey boulders with which the sloping
+floor of the wood was covered, and listened with growing eagerness. It
+was a damp, steamy day, gold and tawny leaves, blown down in one night's
+gale, were drifted thickly in the fissures of the rocks and over the
+patches of vividly green moss; and livid orange fungi grew on the
+tree-boles. Sophie, always affected by externals, shuddered a little and
+drew closer to Crandon. Slipping his hand under the heavy knot of her
+hair, he laid it against the nape of her neck, and as she closed her
+eyes in the pleasure of his touch he looked down at her with a queer
+expression on his narrow face.</p>
+
+<p>"You have the loveliest neck in the world, my Sophie," he said, making
+his hands meet round it as he spoke, "see&mdash;I make you a living necklace
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie tucked in her chin, and bending her head, kissed the clasping
+fingers. Although he was not of those men to whom the attained woman
+gains in attractions, yet there were still things about Sophie&mdash;little
+flashes and gleams, swift touches, that fired him afresh. She stirred
+him now, yet he was cold enough to be glad of the stir because it gave
+him added eloquence for his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I will get you a better necklace," he told her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> "Nothing very fine, or
+what would the Squire think? I have been collecting choice bits of
+serpentine, and had them cut out and polished, and you shall have a
+necklace of them&mdash;the stones of your own country. Your throat will warm
+them, my Sophie, as it would warm my hands if they were cold in death."</p>
+
+<p>"Death!" murmured Sophie, shuddering again, "we should not speak of it,
+lest it hear us."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we will talk of love instead&mdash;of our love, Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas, that way too lies sorrow! Lucius, what is the end to be? My
+father would kill me if he knew."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he hate me so?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, with the look of dumb fear in her eyes that thought of the
+Squire always brought there.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear heart, we will change his hate to love. There is a way&mdash;if you
+will trust me and obey me."</p>
+
+<p>A tremor of exquisite delight thrilled through her at the words. She had
+no arts of allurement, no strength of will to make her play the coquette
+with him, and she was unable, for the purpose of leading him on and
+tantalizing him to fresh excitement, to deny herself the joy of being
+his slave.</p>
+
+<p>"Obey you!" she said, slipping a little lower on her rock so that her
+back-tilted head lay against his knee as she looked up at him, "I am
+yours for you to do with as you will."</p>
+
+<p>Stooping, he kissed the swelling curve of her throat, and privately
+marvelled at her for being such a fool.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweetheart," he began softly, "we will call in the aid of higher powers
+than our own. You know my mother was a Scotswoman, and she had the
+second sight, like your old Madgy Figgy of the Men-an-tol.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> She was
+learned in all kinds of charms, too. Well I remember as a child seeing
+her staunch the flow of blood from an old servant by crossing two
+charmed sticks from the hearth over him and saying a charm."</p>
+
+<p>"It was Madgy Figgy who told about my ladder," Sophie said, "she has
+many charms, I know. She carries the water from St.
+<a name="Annan" id="Annan"></a><ins title="Original has Ann's">Annan's</ins>
+spring to the church whenever there's to be a christening. No one
+baptized in water from St. Annan's spring can die by hanging, every one
+knows that. Was your mother as learned in charms as old Madgy?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was a wise woman in more than mere charms, yet we will not slight
+her knowledge of them, since through that we will win your father's
+affection for me."</p>
+
+<p>"If it could be!" cried Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"It can be. Listen, my sweet. My dear mother, in dying, left me, among
+books of the craft of healing and suchlike things, an old love-charm she
+had had from a Wise Woman in the Highlands. It is nothing but a little
+white powder, yet it affects the very heart-strings of him who takes
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Could it turn my father's heart towards you? Lucius, how happy we
+should all be.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. But surely it might make him love some one else
+instead&mdash;Mr. Le Petyt, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"You should know better than that, my foolish Sophie. These things all
+depend on the intention of he who gives them. You have but to
+concentrate on me while you give it him, and all will be well."</p>
+
+<p>"He would be furious if he guessed," objected Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither he nor anyone else must guess, or the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> charm will fail. I will
+send it to you in packets with the serpentine beads, and mark it 'Powder
+to clean the pebbles.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not give it to me?" asked Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have to go away for a time, my sweet. Not for very long&mdash;" as
+Sophie made a movement of distress, "but I have business I must see to
+in town. I will send you the beads to remember me by in my absence. Will
+you wear them for my sake, Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>"I will wear them night and day, but I need no reminders of you, Lucius.
+But you&mdash;will you forget me in London? It is so big and far away and
+full of great ladies who will put your poor Sophie out of remembrance.
+Lucius, Lucius.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"My sweet, silly little Sophie," he whispered, soothing her as she clung
+to him, "how can you misjudge me so? Is not one black hair from your
+head, one glance from your blue eyes, dearer to me than all the women in
+the world? What have I done that you should think so ill of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, dear. I know men are not like women, and I cannot see what
+there is in me to hold you&mdash;except my love for you. No other women could
+love you half so well, Lucius. It is my only gift, but it at least could
+not be bettered by anyone."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it, my sweet," he told her, "and when your father is of a better
+mind towards me you shall give me your love before all the world, and
+then I need no longer travel alone. Would you like to see London, heart
+of mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, with you!" breathed Sophie. "Once, before I met you, I thought of
+nothing but London, and how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> I meant some day to be a great lady there,
+but now I think of nothing but to be with you. Perhaps, after all, this
+is what the Wise Woman meant and my golden ladder is my love for you,
+and I've climbed on it from loneliness to joy."</p>
+
+<p>"A Jacob's ladder, for the feet of an angel, then, my Sophie."</p>
+
+<p>"If it could only reach from here to London! Oh, Lucius, need you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must, my sweet. Don't make it harder for me."</p>
+
+<p>That checked her plaint at once, as he knew it would.</p>
+
+<p>"When do you go?" she asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"In a day or two, sweetheart. Ah, Sophie, how shall I live without you?"</p>
+
+<p>While she comforted him, forgetting self, he made a mental calculation
+as to how soon he could get away. He kissed Sophie's hair somewhat
+absently.</p>
+
+<p>"I will write to you, heart of mine," he murmured, "and I will contrive
+so that he finds I have gone completely away, and that will lull any
+suspicion he may have against us. And while I am gone you will be
+working for us, my Sophie. Do not be alarmed if at first the powder
+seems to cause an indisposition. It has to expel the evil humours from a
+man before it can turn his nature to good. Give it to him in a small
+quantity once or twice, and he will vomit and be rid of this
+disaffection towards me, and the rest will work beneficially. Your
+father will arise and call you blessed, my Sophie, for having sworn him
+the evil of his own heart. Do not write me word when anything definite
+happens&mdash;I am leaving my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> servant at Penzance, and he will post up to me
+at once when you give him news."</p>
+
+<p>"And then&mdash;then you will come down again, and we shall all be able to be
+happy. Perhaps my father will even dismiss Lylie Ruffiniac when his
+heart is turned towards you. That woman frightens me, Lucius. She is
+always looking at me as though she wished me away. No one loves me
+except yourself&mdash;and poor Charles. Hester avoids me, and James never did
+speak a word to me that he could avoid. Lucius, sometimes it seems to me
+that he and Lylie and Hester have all grown to hate me, that they would
+harm me if they could. It frightens me&mdash;Lucius, Lucius, what shall I do
+when you have left me?"</p>
+
+<p>Crandon fought down his boredom and gave himself over to consoling her,
+with now and again a surreptitious glance at the watch dangling from his
+fob. He had another interview to go through&mdash;with Lylie Ruffiniac. She
+had to be fostered in the belief that he was going to take Sophie away
+as soon as possible, leaving the housekeeper free to influence the
+Squire&mdash;for Lylie's ambition rose to being legitimate mistress of the
+Manor, and Sophie once gone, she saw no reason why she should not attain
+her end. She knew that the ten thousand pounds was a mere myth, but that
+she kept hidden from Crandon, even bringing forward, as women can,
+apparently casual little pieces of information that would all tend to
+fix him in his belief. Crandon had been wise to impress on Sophie the
+necessity for keeping the love-potion hidden from every one&mdash;Lylie, who
+had a fine nose for a rogue, would have been in possession of his
+scheme&mdash;a scheme so devastating to her own&mdash;at once. As soon as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> safety
+and decency permitted he would carry Sophie off, go through the ceremony
+of marriage with her in a place where he was not known, gain possession
+of the money&mdash;and clear out of England for good. This was his last throw
+of the dice in his own country&mdash;let him but win the stake and he would
+disappear and enjoy his fortune elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>He took a last glance at his watch, a last kiss of Sophie's mouth, and
+scrambled to his feet. He walked back with Sophie as near Troon as was
+safe, then took an affectionate good-night of her, and started off for
+the cove to meet Lylie Ruffiniac.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank the gods, that hard-headed vixen of a Lylie won't want me to kiss
+her!" he reflected as he went. "Ah, there's a woman might have been some
+help to me if I'd met her in the shoes of Isabel or of this Sophie.
+Lucius, my son, you are playing a very risky game, but the stakes are
+worth it. Ten thousand pounds, a fresh country&mdash;and entirely new women!"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>V<br />
+<br />
+THE LOVE-POTION</h3>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Two</span> weeks after Crandon's departure the first instalment of serpentine
+beads arrived for Sophie. There was no concealing the fact, and Sophie
+replied to her father's suave inquiries that the beads were a keepsake
+from a friend. Enclosed with them was a tiny packet of white powder, on
+which was written "Powder to clean the pebbles," and this Sophie
+secreted at once.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+A few days later the Squire was unwell with a violent headache and
+bilious attack resulting from too much port and smuggled brandy the
+night before&mdash;Sophie suggested that she should make him a dish of tea.
+In the night he was taken with violent sickness, but by the next day he
+had not only recovered from that but apparently actually benefited by
+it, as it had cured him of the result of his orgy. Next day, to continue
+the cure, Sophie again sent him up some tea, but this time the Squire
+thought it tasted odd, and Hester, on bearing away the dish, finding
+that the rare beverage was left untouched, hid it in the scullery and
+drank it that evening. She was soon taken with violent pains and
+sickness and a raging thirst, and it was in this condition that Lylie
+found her.</p>
+
+<p>"My life, Hester, what have 'ee got?" asked Lylie.</p>
+
+<p>"The pains of death, I do think," gasped Hester. "Oh, oh!"</p>
+
+<p>Lylie looked at her unsympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Simme you'm whist wi' en," she observed, "scrawlen' like that. Some bad
+you do look, though, there's no denyen'."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm dyen'!" wailed Hester.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie, who had come into the kitchen, heard the commotion, and went
+into the scullery.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Hester, what ails you?" she exclaimed. "Lylie, what has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes the pains o' death, she do say," replied Lylie, "but 'tes nawthen
+but to be in the bed and somethen' hot that she needs."</p>
+
+<p>"She must get to bed at once. Here, Lylie, you take her arm that side
+and I'll take this. She's getting quieter."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+Indeed, the worst spasms were over: Hester, weak and exhausted, was put
+to bed, and Sophie, her dislike of the girl forgotten in compassion,
+sent up weak broth and white wine whey. Late that evening as Lylie sat
+with the Squire, he asked her what all the noise had been about.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes that maid Hester," said Lylie indifferently, "she'd taken
+somethen' that went agen her and was vomiten' all evenin'. Some bad she
+did vomit, and Miss and I had to get her overstairs to the bed."</p>
+
+<p>The Squire stirred in his chair and very slowly brought his eyes round
+to Lylie.</p>
+
+<p>"What time did the sickness take her?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon after she'd put your tray to the kitchen, measter. Look 'ee, now,
+at this lutestring piece I got to Penzance church-town. It do sore need
+a ribbon to go wi' en. What do 'ee say to given' I a crown to buy et
+with, eh, measter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shalt have thy crown, woman," said the Squire shortly, "but leave me be
+now. I want no more for the night. And tell Miss I wish to speak with
+her to-morrow forenoon."</p>
+
+<p>Lylie, somewhat offended, but mollified by the unexpectedly easy capture
+of the crown, withdrew, and next morning, as Sophie was busier than
+usual in household tasks&mdash;Hester still being confined to her bed&mdash;she
+delivered the Squire's message. It was with a heart fluttering with hope
+that Sophie went to his room. He was not yet out of bed, and, wrapped in
+a dingy dressing-gown, much stained with snuff and wine, his big jowl
+unshaven and his bald head innocent of wig (that ornament hung rakishly
+askew on a chair-back)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> he looked anything but a pleasant object. Sophie
+stopped short on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"You sent for me, sir?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis nothing of any importance, my dear," said the Squire smoothly,
+"merely to tell you how recovered I am. How blooming you look, my
+Sophie&mdash;more like my own daughter than you have since this shadow fell
+between us."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Sophie, in her flutter of hope and excitement, showed a glowing
+face. Her heart softened at the kindliness of her father's tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir"&mdash;she began, "if only this shadow&mdash;if you would only let it
+lift&mdash;if you would only believe in me&mdash;in him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows," said the Squire benignly, "but that I may see cause to
+change my opinions. You will understand, my dear daughter, that a father
+is in so responsible a position, he must not accept an affair of the
+kind lightly, without due inquiry. Perhaps the fellow who sent me that
+report was prejudiced, who knows? I might, in justice, inquire further.
+But you are not wearing your beads, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"They&mdash;they have not all come yet," she faltered, "but I received some
+more yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"The roses on thy cheeks are the best adornment in a father's eye," said
+the Squire, "and now tell Lylie to bring me some broth with brandy in
+it, and bless thee, my child. And," he added to himself as she left the
+room, "I do not think I shall be taken with sickness again yet awhile."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie's easily persuaded reason and her affectionate nature were swayed
+to gratitude, and she reproached herself because something in her was
+repulsed by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> old man's blandness. She ran downstairs and out into
+the yard singing under her breath, and saw the postboy coming up the
+drive. He had a packet for her which she took up to her room to open.
+There were a dozen or so more of the polished pebbles, cut into beads,
+and a short note in which Crandon assured her of his undying affection,
+and ended by saying, "Do not spare the powder in order to keep the rust
+off the pebbles."</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Charles Le Petyt came over to Troon and walked with
+Sophie in the garden. He was full of joy to see the increased brightness
+of her look, and soon detected a softening in her tone when she spoke of
+her father&mdash;Crandon's name they avoided by silent consent.</p>
+
+<p>"You may yet be happy with your father, Sophie," said Mr. Le Petyt with
+the hopefulness of the born idealist, and Sophie, confident in her
+supernatural knowledge, agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"And I reproach myself that sometimes I have been wicked enough to wish
+I might never see him again," she said as they walked slowly towards the
+house door, past the open dairy windows, "and indeed, Charles, I think
+it must have been the Devil himself who sometimes suggested to me how
+much happier I should be if he were dead. I have seemed to hear a
+whisper: 'Who would not wish an old father dead for ten thousand
+pounds?'&mdash;because that meant freedom and&mdash;peace."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Sophie," replied Charles pressing her hand.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed and took tea with her and the Squire, and the latter went to
+bed soon after he had left. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> weather had turned rainy, autumn seemed
+invaded by a tang of winter that evening, and the Squire, who was
+subject to fits of shivering, had a huge fire lit, and demanded hot
+gruel of Lylie.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no occasion for you to leave your ironing, Lylie," remarked
+Sophie when they were in the kitchen, and the woman acquiescing, Sophie
+went into the pantry. She was gone some time, and when she reappeared
+Lylie glanced up from the ironing of her turned satin slip. Sophie
+caught the glance, and fore-stalling a question, remarked carelessly:</p>
+
+<p>"I have been stirring the gruel and eating some of the oatmeal out of
+it, for I've taken a great fancy to it. I believe I shall often eat from
+my father's gruel."</p>
+
+<p>She stirred it round over the fire as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take it overstairs," said Lylie, who viewed the friendlier
+relations between father and daughter with dislike. Sophie turned the
+gruel out into a basin and set the saucepan down on the hob.</p>
+
+<p>"I will see to it," she retorted hurriedly, but Lylie seized the basin
+and bore it out of the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Not a quarter of an hour later the Squire's screams echoed through the
+house. He was very sick, hiccuped like a person bitten by a mad dog, and
+cried out that he was burnt up with fire. Sophie, terrified, insisted on
+James riding at once to St. Annan's for the apothecary, and herself
+banished from the Squire's room by the commands he managed to
+articulate, she stayed against his door outside, every now and then
+pressing her fingers to her ears when a more awful sound than common
+came from within.</p>
+
+<p>He was a trifle easier when the apothecary arrived and applied remedies,
+and Lylie took advantage of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> lull to creep swiftly to the kitchen
+and pick up the saucepan Sophie had left on the hob. Hester, whom all
+the outcry had brought from her bed, watched her movements curiously.
+Lylie lit two candles and bore the pan to the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and look here, Hester," said Lylie slowly, feeling some of the
+sediment from the pan between her finger and thumb, as she spoke, "Did
+you ever see oatmeal so white?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oatmeal!" said Hester, "why, 'tes as white as flour."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes more gritty'n flour. I see et all, Hester. Have 'ee never heard
+that poison's white and gritty? Measter's poisoned, and tes Miss that's
+done et."</p>
+
+<p>A slight sound came from the kitchen door and both women looked round,
+but Sophie, whose foot had been on the threshold, had turned and fled
+upstairs to the door of her father's room again, where she flung herself
+on the floor and pressed her forehead against the wooden panel. In that
+long drawn moment of listening the truth had rushed in over her
+consciousness&mdash;and overwhelmed reason and self-control.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and the apothecary stumbled over her.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Bendigo&mdash;" he began in compassion, then some words to which the
+Squire had just given vent flashed back at him and he hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her in," ordered the patient hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie scrambled to her feet and went towards the bed. She fell on her
+knees beside it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir, forgive me, I didn't know, I didn't know," she babbled, "send
+me where you will, only forgive me and get well .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I'll never see or
+hear from or write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> to him more, if you'll but forgive me, I shall be
+happy. Papa, papa!"</p>
+
+<p>Over Sophie's head the Squire beckoned the apothecary into the room.
+Then:</p>
+
+<p>"I do forgive thee," he murmured, speaking with difficulty and veiling
+his eyes with his thin wrinkled lids, "but thou should'st have
+remembered I am your father. As for the villain Crandon, hadst thou
+loved me thou wouldst curse him and the ground he walks on."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir," said Sophie, to whom the words of pardon alone had
+penetrated, "your kindness strikes at my soul. Sir, on my knees I pray
+you will not curse me."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> curse thee!" gasped the Squire, forcing his distorted mouth into a
+semblance of the old bland smile, "no, child, I bless thee and hope God
+will bless thee, and I pray thou mayest live to repent and amend.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+Leave me, lest thou should'st say something to thy prejudice&mdash;"
+apparently, thought the apothecary, who was himself trembling with
+horror, this martyred father had forgotten the presence of a listener.
+"Go to the clergyman, Mr. Le Petyt, he will take care of thee. Alas,
+poor man, I am sorry for him.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, I am innocent, I swear to you I am. I never knew. I am innocent
+of this.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear thou art not quite innocent and that there is some powder in
+such hands as will appear against thee. Harvey take away my poor
+misguided child."</p>
+
+<p>Sophie stumbled blindly from the room and went upstairs. Mr. Harvey
+hesitated a moment, saw the patient almost comatose, and went down to
+the kitchen. There Lylie still pored over the saucepan, which she thrust
+out at him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+"See, Mr. Harvey," she demanded, "what's this stuff in wi' the gruel?
+Can 'ee tell me that?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Harvey examined the contents of the pan carefully, tried some on his
+finger, and shook his cautious head.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot be very positive," he replied at length, "but at least it can
+have no business in the gruel. Give me white paper and I will take some
+home and test it when it is dry."</p>
+
+<p>Lylie helped him scrape the sediment into a sheet of paper, and he
+folded it up and pocketed it. He then gave instructions to the two women
+to heat more water for fomentations while he returned to the sick room.
+Finding the Squire still comatose, he sat with his fingers on the
+intermittent pulse. Meanwhile Sophie, in whom fear, the most sickening
+of all emotions had awakened, crept downstairs, holding her breath past
+her father's room, down to the kitchen. Lylie happened to be in the
+scullery at the moment, Hester, still weak from morbid excitement as
+well as illness, was seated in a shadowy corner of the kitchen. Sophie
+crept in, looked fearfully round her, listened, and then began to stuff
+some papers into the grate. She thrust them into the heart of the flames
+and then breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Now I am more easy, thank
+God," she murmured, and slipped out of the kitchen as cautiously as she
+had come. Lylie, from behind the crack of the scullery door, went
+towards the grate, where she was joined by Hester.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>A little later all was noise again, the Squire had been seized with
+violent spasms, raving and hiccuping like a madman, unable to swallow as
+much as a sip of water. Towards the small hours he grew delirious, then
+sank gradually; with the dawn he died.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+Sophie sat rigid in her room, paler than the paling day. She looked back
+over the past, recalling little speeches of Crandon's which, had she
+been less simple, less adoring, must have warned her of his plan. She
+saw the skill with which he had trapped her, she saw what he hoped to
+gain, she saw how he would lose nothing. It was she who had to pay. At
+the thought fear, natural, human fear, caught at her again and she
+sprang to her feet, a thing distraught. Escape&mdash;she must escape, get
+away from this dread that was closing in on her. She tied on cloak and
+hood and feverishly crammed all the money that for months she had been
+saving against her marriage into a little bag. On the stairs she ran
+into James Ruffiniac, and with her hands on his coat, pressing, begging,
+silent suppliants, she made him come into the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"James," she said, "do you want to make your fortune? You do, do you
+not? If you will come with me, it is made."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want me to do?" asked James.</p>
+
+<p>"Only to hire a postchaise to go to London, and I'll give you fifteen
+guineas now, and more when we come there. Only to do that. And in London
+you would make your fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Not on my life," he told her. "What you'm done you must see the end of.
+'Tes your guilty soul makes you flee. I'll have to tell of this."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I was merely jesting," faltered Sophie, "to see if you would.
+James&mdash;" but he had swung on his heel and left her.</p>
+
+<p>No one molested Sophie, but towards midday Hester put her head in at the
+bedroom door to inform her, with a hardly restrained gusto, that Dr.
+Polwhele had come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> over from Penzance and was going to open the body.
+Sick to the soul, Sophie put on her outdoor things once more and struck
+out over the moors, walking blindly to try and get away from the horror
+that was in her. As she went all the strength of her nature, inherited
+from the father who could keep up a pose and plan a revenge on an
+agonized death-bed; the strength, which had concentrated itself during
+her girlhood on her ambitions, that had then made her love for Crandon,
+now turned to a deep hatred and rage that seemed to settle, cold and
+hard, on the very muscles of her body. She knew the hatred, the fierce
+resentment, that the trapped thing feels against the trapper, and added
+to it was the shame of a woman whose love has been made a mockery. And
+if, unacknowledged even to herself, was the pricking feeling that, could
+she have been spared discovery, she would not deeply have minded being
+the innocent cause of her own release, who is there with heart so
+uncomplex as to be in a position to condemn her.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>She tramped on and on, and presently found herself out on the St. Annan
+high-road. The thought of Charles came to her as a point where she could
+turn for help, for he had been absent all night at a distant part of the
+parish, ministering to a dying man, but he would surely be back by now;
+if she were not quick he would already have set off for Troon on hearing
+the news. Battling against the rain-laden wind, she bent her head and
+made her way into the village. There little groups of people were
+standing about, intent, arguing. At sight of her a common feeling
+animated them, the various little centres of discussion broke, joined
+together, swept towards her. She had an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> impression of shaking fists,
+angry sounds, rude contacts, and the smell of many rain-wet bodies
+pressing in around her. The panic of crowds seized her, she screamed,
+and screamed again, not recognizing the voice of Charles Le Petyt
+answering her as he made his way through the press. He struck the faces
+away from him right and left, and his blazing passage made men fall
+back. Putting an arm round Sophie he drew her up the steps of the inn
+and through the door, which he shut and barred.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away, Charles, take me away," she moaned, and he, his arms
+round her dear trembling body, answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I will take you home. You are quite safe with me, Sophie. When we get
+back you must tell me everything and I will think of a way to help you.
+Stay here a moment, dear."</p>
+
+<p>He put her in a chair, sent the frightened host for a glass of wine, and
+ordered a chaise to be got ready at the back. Sophie drank the wine
+passively, and passively let Charles put her in the chaise. She lay
+silent against him all the way back to Troon, but once there, in the
+parlour, her brain cleared, and she told him everything. Charles Le
+Petyt listened, always keeping his hand tenderly over hers, though when
+she let him understand what for months she had been to Crandon, his free
+hand gripped hard on the edge of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to do?" she asked when she had made an end.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no way by which the guilt can be fastened where it belongs&mdash;on
+Crandon?" he asked passionately, and in her distress Sophie sprang up
+and, walking to the window, hit the shut pane with her hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+"I have destroyed everything that could have taken him," she said. "Take
+my key&mdash;here it is&mdash;search my press, my box, see if you can find
+anything. I will come with you."</p>
+
+<p>Alas! Sophie had ravished her room too well, and search fell fruitless.
+The two desisted at last and stared at each other with pallid faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;Sophie!" cried Mr. Le Petyt, and, breaking into tears, she flung
+herself into his arms. They were clinging together, wet cheek against
+wet cheek, when the town-sergeant came thundering at the door.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>VI<br />
+<br />
+ATTAINMENT</h3>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>Account taken from a contemporary journal</i>)</p>
+
+<p class="noi">"<span class="smcap">Saturday</span>, April 4. This morning Miss Bendigo was executed at
+Launceston, in the same black petelair she was dressed in at her trial,
+had on a pair of black gloves, and her hands and arms tied with black
+paduasoy ribbons. On the Friday night she sent to the sheriff, who, she
+was informed, was come to town to be present at her execution, and
+desired that he would give her till eight o'clock the next morning, and
+she would be ready as soon after as he pleased. On Friday, at about
+twelve o'clock, she took the Sacrament and signed a declaration
+concerning the crime for which she was to suffer; in which she denied
+knowing that the powders she had administered to her father had any
+poisonous quality in them; and also made therein a confession of her
+faith. Her behaviour at the gallows was becoming a person in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+unhappy circumstances, and drew not only great compassion, but tears,
+from most of the spectators. When she got up about seven steps of the
+ladder, she turned herself upon it and had a little trembling, saying:
+'I am afraid I shall fall.' After she had turned herself upon the
+ladder, the Rev. Mr. Le Petyt, who attended her, asked whether she had
+anything to say to the public. She said yes, and made a speech to the
+following purport: 'That, as she was then going to appear before a just
+God, she did not know that the powders, which were believed to be the
+death of her father, would have done him any harm, therefore she was
+innocently the cause of his death, but as she hoped for mercy, what she
+had done had been in innocence and love.' Then she stooped towards Mr.
+Le Petyt and she was seen to be remarkably eager in taking the parting
+kiss from him, which she did. The hangman then desired her to pull the
+white kerchief, tied over her head for that purpose, over her eyes,
+which she failing to do, a person standing by stepped up the ladder and
+pulled it down. Then, giving the signal by holding out a little book she
+had in her hand, she was turned off. Before she went out of the gaol she
+gave the sheriff's man a guinea to drink, and took two guineas in her
+hands with her, which she gave to the executioner. Her body was placed
+in a coffin of maplewood, lined with white satin, on the lid only
+'Sophia Bendigo, aged 18. April 4, 1752.' It is understood that Mr. Le
+Petyt carried the coffin to St. Annan and buried it, by Miss Bendigo's
+request, in the grave of her mother. At the execution, notwithstanding
+the early hour, there was the greatest concourse of people ever seen on
+such an occasion."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+<a name="iii" id="iii"></a>THE GREATEST GIFT</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+THE GREATEST GIFT</p>
+
+
+<p class="noi">
+<span class="smcap">Edmond Bernardy</span> was in that state of mind when everything joyous is an
+insult and everything sorrowful an added stab. When the horror had first
+settled on him he fought it wildly; then succeeded a numbed condition of
+the nerves, when will and reason lay dormant, and he surrendered himself
+to instinct&mdash;and instinct had brought him to the lonely passes, the
+snow-enfolded peaks, and the dream-ridden little cities of Provence.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the days before railways were thought of, when gentlemen still
+did the "grand tour," and did it by post-chaise. Bernardy, whose
+finances were of the uncertain kind usual with even a successful poet,
+and whose mood was for the leisurely, preferred, once he had attained
+the coast of Provence by ship, to strike up inland on foot. In spite of
+himself, his surroundings began to soothe him, justifying the instinct
+which led him, and that had its root deeper than he suspected.
+Bernardy's mother had been a Proven&ccedil;ale, and it was in one of the little
+mountain cities that his English father had met her, and she had only
+left her birthplace a few weeks before Edmond himself was born. It was
+owing to her that he possessed a deep love for little cities; though
+this was the first time that he had ever come to his mother's country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+As a boy he, like all right-minded children, possessed a little city of
+the imagination where he sat enthroned, king of the be-pennoned turrets
+and circling walls. With Bernardy the idea of the little city had become
+an obsession, entering even into his dreams at night, causing him to
+lead, even more than most children, that curious inner life of which
+waxing adolescence must so surely lose grip. His peculiar and vivid
+genius, though technically the joy of his fellow writers, never lost a
+quality of uncanny vision that sometimes disconcerted an age given over
+to the flamboyance of Byron, and this quality was the natural outcome of
+his withdrawal, as a child, into his secret life. That life was a
+complicated and delicate thing, no mere floating vagueness of dreams,
+but a fabric deliberately planned and reared, with a wealth of cunning
+detail to persuade him of reality. He could remember now how convinced
+he had been that the town his mind had made was as real as any city he
+and his mother visited in their precarious existence&mdash;sometimes he could
+recall, for a vivid flash, actual streets and houses of his imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Hill cities share with islands the fascination that only aloofness can
+give, and the thought of the huddled towns cresting the Alpes-Maritimes
+had tugged at Bernardy's cord of memory, bringing back, not only his
+mother's stories of her own country, but also the recollections of his
+dream-city, so like these he was seeing now. They are towns of fluted
+roofs and mellow walls, of shutters flung wide like wings, of courtyards
+that are wells of blue shadow, and towers that stand up, golden-white,
+into the sunshine. Here Bernardy would come to a town perched,
+eagle-wise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> upon a crag, with a forest of irregular turrets piercing the
+sky; there to a little city which fitted over some rounded mountain-top
+like a cap, the arching outline of its roofs following faithfully the
+curve of the ground with a fruit-like suavity of contour. Everywhere,
+away from the cities, lay the olive-slopes, like a great sea, charmed,
+at the moment of most tumultuous movement, into stillness, the waves of
+it interfolding in vast hollows that never broke; only now and again a
+wind tossed the pale undersides of leaves to a semblance of spray.</p>
+
+<p>These valleys, so mysterious at dawn and dusk, and in the day so oddly
+toy-like with their tiny, red-roofed oil-mills and the striped effect of
+the olive-terraces; these reticent, though seemingly candid, little
+townships above them; these mountains that at sunsetting were stained a
+burning copper filmed with amethyst&mdash;all seemed to Bernardy to be under
+a spell, caught in a web of magic as real, though not as visible, as the
+web of dappled shadow each olive-tree flung over the ground beside it.
+Bernardy told himself that here he could pass a long life happily,
+instead of which he had to prepare for death, for the deliberate
+blotting out, for him, of all this beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He had never been a gross liver or a gross thinker, yet many a
+sensualist would now have been in a better case than he&mdash;for he had
+always used his quality of spiritual vision&mdash;in him so strong as to be
+almost an added sense&mdash;merely to beat back upon and intensify material
+things. An unbeliever or a man of happy-go-lucky nature could have
+extracted all the savour possible out of what remained to him of life,
+and left what was to come on the knees of the gods&mdash;Bernardy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> was too
+ardent a devotee of life, and life, as he understood it, was a
+comprehensive term. It meant the training and enjoyment of every
+faculty, the critical appreciation of everything he met, the absorption
+of beauty and the production of it. Also he feared the physical act of
+death as an animal fears it, with a contraction of the muscles and a
+chilling of the blood&mdash;feared it so that sometimes the sweat would break
+out over his face and he would bite back a cry.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back on his life Bernardy could say that it had been good, and
+he saw for how much more the little things had counted than the big. A
+sunny day, congenial companions, good wine and tobacco, and, above all,
+the joy of creation&mdash;how well worth while they were. Taken as a whole
+they outweighed the fondest woman in the world, and that though Bernardy
+had been a fine lover. Yet it was because of a woman that he was to kill
+himself three weeks from now, and the fantastic nature of the affair
+made him feel like a man in a dream. It amused him that it should have
+been the one conventional period of his life&mdash;a couple of months in an
+English rectory, which had hurled him into such an extravagant
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>The Rector, an avowed eccentric, and strongly influenced by the Byronic
+wave then at the crest, decided it was his duty to brave society and
+take notice of his brother's son&mdash;especially as the said son was a
+figure in the literary worlds of Paris and London. The Rector's
+daughter, Lucy, was sweet and fresh and English, and not in the least
+clever, and Bernardy, who had never met anyone like her before, fell
+madly in love. The combination of his passion; of a rival<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> deeply bitten
+with romanticism and a sense of his own importance and of the high-flown
+ideas of the period, resulted in a violent quarrel and what was then a
+favoured species of duel. Bernardy and his rival, telling themselves
+that they were sparing Lucy the shock of an actual encounter, drew lots
+to decide which should take his own life. Bernardy had lost, and,
+leaving the bewildered Lucy to her fantastic roll-collared baronet,
+retired to spend his two months' grace in his own country of France.</p>
+
+<p>Behold him, entered on his last three weeks, toiling up a mountain pass,
+his shirt open at the chest and his tightly strapped trousers somewhat
+the worst for dust&mdash;a fine figure of a man in a thin, fiery way, with
+singularly child-like eyes set in a network of wrinkles&mdash;the result of
+having spent his thirty odd years with a lavish though fastidious hand.
+Sickened suddenly of the ordered olive slopes, he went on and up till he
+had left the sleek country behind him, and entered the region that looks
+like a burnt-out landscape of the moon. At last he came to the mouth of
+a gorge, one side of it rising up sheer into the sunlight, while the
+other seemed to hang to the earth like a dark curtain. Looking up,
+Bernardy saw, perched at the rim of the sunlit cliff, a little town. In
+some places its sloping flanks were built right over the edge, as though
+they had been poured out, while molten, from a giant spoon. It was so
+many hundred feet above him that he could only just distinguish it was a
+town, and not a mere huddle of pale-hued boulders; so high it gave the
+effect of being on the edge of the world. Bernardy knew, beyond a doubt,
+that he must attain this town, and he cast about to find a way.
+Obviously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> there must be a track on the other side, as the cliff was
+bare of so much as a shrub, and yet no path was to be discerned on its
+scarred and abrupt surface. Eventually Bernardy made his way round a
+fold of gorge and up a steep, winding track to a gently sloping stretch
+of country that led up to the town from behind.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing himself upon the short, thorn-entangled grass, he locked his
+hands behind his head and gazed under half-shut lids at the little town
+which he now saw dark against the sky. He lay, idly counting the towers
+of it, till his lids grew too heavy to stay open, and his fingers fell
+apart, and with his head pillowed on his arm, he slept.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke the day was at its brief height, and he scrambled to his
+feet with an odd feeling that was more than a mere sense of rest. It was
+as though a sponge had been deftly passed over his mind, leaving it a
+clean, smooth surface, ready to receive new impressions, unbiased by
+anything that was past, the confiding, expectant attitude of a young
+child. He had forgotten nothing, it was rather that all his old
+arrangement of values had been swept aside, leaving him free to assess
+things anew. And, although, for all he could remember, his sleep had
+been dreamless, yet he was haunted by half-recollections which pricked
+at and eluded him. As he went towards the town something in the sweeping
+lines of the fortifications seemed vaguely familiar, and again fragments
+of a dream, at which he snatched in vain, floated by him.</p>
+
+<p>Passing under the cool shadow of the gateway he stood wondering which
+way to go; then, saying to himself, "I'll go past the Mayor's house, I
+always liked it because of the painted walls," he turned to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> right,
+and walked several paces before the strangeness of his own words struck
+him. "What can I have meant?" he asked himself, "and yet&mdash;I seem to
+remember a house, a white house, with a painted frieze of fruit and
+birds, and the Mayoress was a funny, fat old thing who made <i>&eacute;ch&eacute;dets</i>.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>With his heart beating fast, he turned the corner and found himself at
+the house he sought. The more he looked at it the more he remembered it,
+and details crowded on him. He walked down the alley at the side, and
+found a stone stairway he knew quite well, a stairway that led to a
+carved door. He stumbled into the street again like a man distraught.</p>
+
+<p>"Has the horror turned my brain?" he thought. "Well, what matter, if it
+makes it easier to die?"</p>
+
+<p>The whole street struck him as familiar, but not until he turned into
+the Square did knowledge flash upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my town!" he cried aloud, "it's my town!"</p>
+
+<p>He felt no perplexity at the incredible nature of the thing, a calming
+influence, too gracious to be akin to his former stupor, stole over him;
+he moved as in a dream, with no responsibility, but full enjoyment. The
+naked plane-trees made a silvery network against the cold, pure blue of
+the winter sky; into a raised washhouse across the Square the sun shone
+obliquely, and the many-hued skirts of the stooping women made vivid
+blotches of colour that harmonized with the rhythmic splash of the water
+as only music of sight can with music of sound. Dark against the
+cream-washed wall of the church, that seemed almost lambent in the glare
+of the sun, sat a row of burnt-out old men with shrivelled throats, and
+on the steps of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> fountain were two old women in black, one wearing a
+white cap of folded wings, the other the wide-brimmed black straw hat
+common to the peasantry. The lady of the hat plunged her brown old
+fingers into the thin arc of water, and Bernardy saw how the drops that
+clung to her hand glittered like diamonds before she shook them off to
+pit the dust with pock-marks. With that intense sympathy which had done
+much to make him an artist, Bernardy tried for a moment to think himself
+into the mind of the black-hatted old woman, and to imagine the Square
+and his own figure from her mental and physical point of view. It was a
+favourite trick of his, but one of which latterly the strain had been
+too much for him. Sometimes he would succeed so well for a flash that it
+only made the impalpable but stern barrier of personality more definite
+even while almost seeming to overleap it. "If I could only achieve the
+thing properly," thought Bernardy, "I suppose I should attain exchange
+of identity, or at least be absorbed into that of the old lady. And
+then&mdash;no more of this black horror, and the shell of me would, I
+suppose, disfigure the gravel."</p>
+
+<p>He lifted the heavy, leathern curtain over the church door and entered.
+Within the air struck cool, though heavy with stale incense; gradually
+the gleam of gilding, then separate colours and degrees of dusk and
+pallor detached themselves from the darkness, and he saw he was in the
+typical little church of the neighbourhood&mdash;a rococo affair decked with
+rows of plaster saints on painted brackets, each with its little bunch
+of flowers in a china mug in front of it. Beneath all the superfluous
+decoration there was a pleasing austerity and sturdiness of line; solid
+pillars and a low-groined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> roof made a square-set, beetle-browed little
+building, at once tawdry and stark. To Bernardy's receptive mind there
+was something peculiarly charming about these churches where everything
+spoke of religion being taken in the right way&mdash;as a mere matter of
+course. A lighted wick, floating in a jam-jar of oil, caught his eye
+and, moving forward, he saw it burned before a cr&egrave;che.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes he stood before it in silence, then he laughed aloud
+in sheer enjoyment. All the other cr&egrave;ches he had seen boasted figures of
+plaster or china; here, apparently, the expense had been too great, and
+the characters were represented by dolls, ordinary wooden dolls with
+shiny, painted, black hair and stuff clothes. The Mother herself was
+dressed in stiff, spangled muslin, with a veil like a <i>premi&egrave;re
+communiante</i>, and a wreath of orange blossom&mdash;a confusion of ideas that
+had its humour. St. Joseph, in good broadcloth coat and the tightest of
+trousers, held the other post of honour, and nearer the spectators,
+though facing away from them to the little Christ-Child, were ranged the
+shepherds, with&mdash;surely an innovation&mdash;their wives. The shepherds
+themselves supplied the crowning touch, for they wore real knitted
+stockings of worsted, and shoes with stitched leather soles, a fact
+admirably displayed by the kneeling position of their wearers. The wives
+held little baskets full of beads, meant to represent eggs; and woolly
+lambs with red-cotton tongues stood about at regular intervals. All the
+dolls looked old, and as though they had seen a less gentle service, and
+Bernardy wondered what child in that remote place was of sufficient
+wealth to own dolls. He was charmed into mirth, and as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> thought how
+tenderly and kindly the real personages represented must laugh as they
+looked down at the little set-piece, he tried to trace, in some trick of
+light and shadow, a fleeting smile on the doll-faces. Without warning,
+his horror closed on him again, and turning he went heavily down the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>As he neared the door the two old women of the market square came in;
+still laughing and chattering, they went past him, slowly and stiffly,
+with the uneven clumping of old feet. Some curious premonition&mdash;a
+feeling that something was about to happen&mdash;made Bernardy watch them.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the old woman in the hat caught sight of the cr&egrave;che, and with
+the swift transition of the South, she stopped short in her chatter and
+clutched her companion's arm:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she said, "<i>c'est le bon J&eacute;sus, qui donne courage!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Every note of her harsh old voice thrilled Bernardy's nerves like a
+sudden clarion. It seemed to him the most luminous moment of his life.
+There are brief seconds when a rent in the outer film of this world
+comes against a rent in what we are pleased to call the "next," though
+it is really co-existent with our own. Then it is that we can catch a
+glimpse of something that is at another angle, a differently tilted
+spiritual plane, so to speak, from our own, and for which our minds
+would, ordinarily, need a different focus. The old woman had torn a
+peephole for Edmond&mdash;perhaps, for all he knew, in that moment of
+sympathetic concentration in the Square, their personalities had
+mingled, and so made him sensitive to the premonition that gripped him
+as she passed. He only knew that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> her phrase&mdash;and being a phrase-monger
+himself he had a passion for them&mdash;struck him as magnificent. He would
+have thought less of it had she said it of the Christ on the Cross, but
+she spoke of the Christ-Child. Or if she had spoken of peace, but her
+words were "qui donne courage."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est le bon J&eacute;sus, qui donne courage!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardy stood quite still, wondering what her life had been that
+"courage" should be the word that instinctively sprang to her lips. The
+two women were still peering in at the cr&egrave;che, but while White Cap was
+recognizing all her acquaintances, so to speak, and hailing them by
+name, the other old woman stared straight in front of her, repeating her
+phrase very fast, over and over again. Suddenly she turned, and coming
+down the church to where Bernardy stood, peered up into his face. For
+the last time she repeated it, but with a slight difference, her hand on
+his wrist:</p>
+
+<p>"Tu sais, mon brave," she said, "tu sais, c'est l'Enfant qui donne
+courage!"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardy went out into the sunlight feeling at once calmed and
+exhilarated, yet still with that odd sense of waiting, as of something
+holding its breath. All the afternoon he haunted the little wind-swept
+town, and towards evening he leant upon the parapet that hung over the
+sheer mountain-side. Hundreds of feet below him the valley was lapped in
+darkness and he watched the shadow thrown by the opposite range creep up
+towards him, the edge of it in deeply curved waves, like a purple tide.
+The chill of sunset was in the air when he made his way to the inn, and
+he noted that, although the sight of a stranger must be of the utmost
+rarity, he excited no comment. Could it be,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> he wondered, that they
+instinctively knew him for one of themselves, these people of his
+dream-city, or were they dreams too? In how leisurely a manner they
+passed along the streets&mdash;the Faun-like youths, brown-necked and
+bold-eyed; the firm-set women with their black hair so sleekly and
+heavily massed about their heads that it seemed carved out of ebony, and
+the quiet-eyed old people with indrawn mouths!</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the inn, a grey pile of round-flanked towers that was
+built on the eastern edge, his memories awoke again, and in the
+courtyard they surged over him&mdash;memories of sitting enthroned in just
+such a castle as this. He remembered, too, that there had always been
+something he was not allowed to know&mdash;was it a door that had been kept
+locked, or a forbidden book, or some hidden person whom he had
+perpetually tried to meet and never succeeded? Whatever it was, he felt
+he would soon discover it.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing occurred to stimulate his memory during supper. The stout
+patronne chatted to him of her inn, which had been the Seigneur's
+chateau till thirty years before, when the last owner died in great
+poverty. Had Monsieur seen and admired the beautiful cr&egrave;che in the
+church? The little figures were the dolls which once belonged to
+Mademoiselle de Clerissac. The patronne was not old enough to remember
+it very distinctly, but she believed Mademoiselle had met with trouble,
+which was why she went away. After all, it was natural, she had red
+blood in her, both the old Seigneur and his father having married
+peasant girls. If Monsieur was interested in such things old Marie, who
+had been Mademoiselle de Clerissac's nurse, still lived in a room in the
+chateau. She was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> fabulously old, and had to be tended like a baby by
+her granddaughter, and it was true she had long wandered in her wits,
+but undoubtedly she could see visions, both of the past and future. No,
+Bernardy not only felt no interest in the actual history of the place,
+but even shrank from knowledge. It seemed to make his dream-city less
+dream-like and less his.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the
+<a name="dim" id="dim"></a><ins title="Original has din">dim</ins> passage leading to his room, he found he had
+forgotten which was his door. Carrying his lighted candle head-high, he
+explored the far end of the passage, and came on a rather smaller door
+than the rest, studded with nail-heads set in a peculiar pattern. It
+flashed on Bernardy that it led to the room he had never been allowed to
+enter&mdash;he even remembered the scar where one nail was missing. Pushing
+up the latch, he opened the door and passed through, the light of the
+candle he carried shining full on his face, so that he was plainly
+visible to anyone in the room, while he himself was too dazzled to see.
+There was a table at his left hand, and he put the candle down on it
+before advancing into the room.</p>
+
+<p>There was a fire of smouldering logs on the hearth, and beside it sat an
+old, old woman. Her hands, with their knotted and discoloured veins,
+hung over the arms of her chair, under her chin a hollow cut up sharply.
+She stared at Bernardy from red-rimmed, rheumy eye-sockets, mumbling her
+mouth with a sucking movement grotesquely suggestive of a baby. Behind
+her, wrapped in the soft shadow, with fugitive gleams of firelight
+bringing out now a cheekbone, now the curve of chin, or of breast, stood
+a much younger woman&mdash;she seemed about thirty or perhaps a little more.
+They gazed at Bernardy in a calm silence for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> several seconds, while he
+stared at them. Then the younger woman stepped forward into the light,
+and Bernardy saw how big and strong she was, deep-chested and
+long-flanked, with a wide forehead and heavily folded lids. Against the
+white of her apron her hands and wrists showed coarse and reddened, but
+the big neck, where it disappeared into the kerchief, was white as milk.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur mistakes the room," she said, in a deep voice whose Proven&ccedil;al
+twang was blurred into softness. "My grandmother is very old, and
+Monsieur will excuse her not wishing him good evening."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardy, confused and bewildered, hesitated a moment, and it was the
+old woman who broke the silence. She seemed to be staring not so much at
+Bernardy as at some mental vision of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Candide, he has come at last," she said, slowly and clearly, "you must
+give him the letters."</p>
+
+<p>The woman called Candide dropped her heavy lids for a moment, while, to
+Bernardy's wonder a blush mounted to the roots of her pale, smoothly
+banded hair. Then she went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a
+packet of letters and a small, paper-covered book, which she handed to
+him in silence. The old woman had closed her reddish lids, thickly woven
+over with small, raised veins, and there was nothing left for Bernardy
+but to take the packet and go to his own room. He found it easily, for
+the door stood open now, and he sat himself by the fire and began to
+read. In spite of the instinct which had led him, he still had not
+guessed what he should find. The breath of dawn was stirring the
+curtains before he put the papers down.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+The entries in the journal were very brief, and the first bore a date of
+some thirty-five years earlier:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"It is now two years since I left school," said the journal,
+"and I think I have improved in my hand-writing, also my crewel
+stitch. Papa was vexed with me to-day because the soup was too
+thin. It was the second straining from the same fowl, but we
+could not afford to kill another. I hear there is a stranger, an
+Englishman, in the town. He is voyaging for his education. I
+wish that was how they educated women."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The next entry was written the following night:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Papa found there was an English Milord staying here, and has
+brought him to the chateau to dinner. He says even if the de
+Clerissacs have lost their wealth that is no reason why they
+should lose their manners. I had a fresh fowl killed and wore my
+muslin. I hear skirts are getting full and mine are very narrow.
+He has nice eyes and is so young&mdash;almost as young as I am."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Several months elapsed before the next entry. Bernardy read it with
+dimmed eyes.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"I am going away&mdash;I am going to try and find him. It is not his
+fault that everything has happened; I ought to have known,
+because I am the woman. He will be miserable when I find him and
+tell him what I have gone through, and I cannot bear to make him
+miserable. I would protect him from it if I could. But there
+will be the baby, and I must protect that too. Papa says I am no
+daughter of his, but I cannot see what I have done that is
+dreadful. I have done<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> right&mdash;I am a woman now, and I know. How
+could it have been better for me to grow old and thin and never
+give to anyone? It is always good to give. I am leaving this
+behind me in the secret shelf of my cupboard, with all the
+letters I wrote him&mdash;the ones he gave me back and the ones I
+never sent.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I shall never come here again, and I love it
+like my soul. I will always pray our child will come here. He
+will not be born here, but perhaps he will come here to die,
+even if I cannot. The candle is guttering and I must go. Papa
+says I may not bear his name any longer, and old Marie is
+letting me take hers. I am no longer de Clerissac, but must sign
+myself</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Candide Bernardy.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The first few letters were mere formal little notes&mdash;inviting the Milord
+to dine, at the instance of Monsieur de Clerissac, thanking him for
+taking herself and old Marie out driving in his post-chaise, suggesting
+an hour when he might care to go wild-cat shooting with old Marie's son.
+Then came a letter in a more intimate key.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"You should not have sent to Nice for the books" (it ran), "yet
+I should be ungrateful not to thank you. If you care to come and
+see the violet-bed I was telling you of I will thank you in
+person. Papa says would you like one of Min&egrave;rve's next litter,
+but I say you will not be here then? Besides, in England, are
+not your dogs of the chase of the best? Accept, Milord, my most
+grateful thanks and remembrances.</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">C. de C.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There was only a fragment of the letter next in sequence, that ran as
+follows:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>".&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;and if you really wish it, I will with pleasure embroider a
+collar for the pup. Papa says I am to say he is glad you are
+staying on, as he never meets a gentleman here. It is amiable of
+you to admire my singing, though I fear it is sadly uncultured
+after what you are used to, but I too love the Proven&ccedil;al songs.
+You suggest Sunday evening to come and begin translating them
+into French, that would suit us admirably. My father is, alas!
+in bed with the gout, but perhaps you would be kind enough to go
+up and see him? It is true our garden is lovely by
+moonlight&mdash;you do not see then how neglected it is, but I am not
+sure if I ought to show it to you then. Perhaps if&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The rest of the page was missing, and Bernardy picked up the next
+letter.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"Bien-aim&eacute;" (he read), "how can I write you and what can I say?
+What do the women of your world say when they feel as I do? Ah!
+I hope you do not know, I hope you have never made any other
+woman feel what I do. Every one must adore you, but only I must
+love you. There, I have said it! Edmund, I love you. But it is
+not so very dreadful to say it, is it, since, you love me? I
+cannot play with the truth to you, Edmund. To you I must always
+be</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Candide</span>."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A week later a frightened chord was sounded.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"Edmund," she wrote, "do not again kiss me as you did last
+night. I feel wicked creeping out to meet you as it is, and last
+night&mdash;Edmund, you made me feel ashamed. It was not like
+kissing, it was as though you wished to eat me. Do not think me
+unkind, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> I am feeling afraid, even of you. That is unkind&mdash;forgive
+me.</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Candide.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Another week, and the key had shifted again.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>".&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;it is true. I love you so that you can kiss me even like
+you did that time. It terrifies me and I feel cold and weak, but
+it is enough that you say it is the most splendid thing you have
+ever known. Edmund, will you be angry if I say that I regret the
+days before we knew we loved? Everything was in a golden mist
+like you see in the valley at sunrise, and now I keep on feeling
+I do not understand you. Why do you say you cannot tell your
+father you love me? I am well-born, though it is true I have no
+<i>dot</i>, but, indeed, I am a good manager, and you say I am even
+prettier than the English ladies. Oh! I am lonely and
+frightened, and I want your arms round me. Now that I have said
+that, you cannot reproach me with being cold.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Your note has just come" (ran the next letter), "and I am oh!
+so miserable for you. You are not to think I am unhappy&mdash;I am
+happy to have loved you. If thinking about me adds to your
+unhappiness, I can even say&mdash;do not think about me. I can
+understand you cannot marry unless your fianc&eacute;e has a <i>dot</i>,
+because of your estate. It is best that you should go, but you
+may see me to say good-bye. My dear one, my poor heart, what can
+I do to help you?"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>That was all of the letters to Milord&mdash;the letters he had given back.
+Next came letters that were never sent.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+"Ch&eacute;ri" (ran the first of them), "at last I can write out all
+that is in my heart, since you will never see these pages. I
+must write, or I shall go mad.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I don't regret, in spite of
+my shame and bewilderment, for I gave to you. I cannot even feel
+wicked, but I should not care if I did. I love you all the more
+now I know you are not what I thought. You are not a god or even
+a hero, you are a man, and so you are a child&mdash;my child, whose
+head I held on my breast. You have told me to write to you if I
+need your help. How can that be? All that is left to me is to
+live out my life here in dreams. I imagine your presence all
+day. If the door opens behind me and some one enters, I pretend
+it is you till the last moment possible&mdash;until Papa or one of
+the servants comes round my chair and speaks to me. I have been
+loved, and I love&mdash;that is a great deal to live on."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>That night she went on with the same letter.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"Edmund, Edmund, it is not enough&mdash;I want you. My heart is
+breaking. I can only lie with my eyes shut and my face pressed
+down, and something beats out. 'I want you, I want you.' My
+heart broke when you wrote me your last note and I had to reply
+cheerfully because of you. I am not so cowardly but that I can
+still be glad you do not know my heart broke. <i>Edmund, I want
+you, I want you.</i>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The last of the unsent letters to Milord was written several months
+later.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"Why did I say hearts broke? They don't break, they go dead.
+Edmund, I wonder if, wherever you are, you are thinking of me?
+You are certainly not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> thinking that soon you will see me. I
+have been trying to decide what to do for the best, and now Papa
+says I shall not stay here till what he calls my shame is born.
+I will not stay where my hope and my joy is called my shame, and
+though I would never ask you anything for myself, I must ask if
+for the child. I am coming to England, and I must start now or I
+shall not arrive in time. I shall leave all my letters behind
+with my journal. I do not even know what I feel when I think of
+seeing you again.</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Candide de Clerissac.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There was still one paper more, an envelope that had come by courier and
+was addressed to Marie Bernardy. It had been opened, but inside was an
+enclosure of which the seals were still unbroken. Without any shock of
+surprise Bernardy saw it was addressed to him.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"My son" (he read), "my little son, who, when you read this,
+will be a grown man, I who have not quite lost my birthright of
+prevision, know that some day you will go to my town and read
+this. Will you be in trouble, my little son? Something tells me
+you will be near the end, and so I write this to help you. You
+are lying on my lap now, and I think we shall have many years to
+wander in together, and you will grow away from me, but when you
+read this you will find me again, and something more as well. My
+son, I got no further than Paris, bearing you beneath my heart.
+There I heard from his priest-brother that he had been killed
+hunting, and there you were born. So you are mine, you belong to
+no one but me. Listen, my son. Life is good, but a clean death
+is good too.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> Never be afraid of one or the other. And when you
+read this in the home that was mine, put fear away and be a man.
+Find the one with whom you can face whatever comes without
+flinching, and when you have found her, never let her go till
+your arms must loose for good. My son, I was wrong to say that
+hearts went dead, they are merely numbed for a time if only we
+are never weak enough to regret. Always remember that it is the
+good woman who gives and the good man who creates, and take what
+is left to you of life and make with it. I am not merely
+imagining you as you read; I am actually with you, I have fused
+the present and the future into one, and I can see the
+dawn-light barring the floor through the slats of the shutters,
+and you are sitting by an empty hearth. Go out, my child, into
+the dawn. Edmond, my son, however long it is before you join me,
+I am to all eternity</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Your Mother</span>."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Bernardy staggered to his feet and went to the window, and the
+steel-cold bars of light from the slats ran up over him as he
+approached. Flinging the shutters wide, he leant out, and drew deep
+breaths of the chill, sweet air. The yews and overgrown hedges of the
+garden were still velvety with shadow, but beyond the ramparts the
+delicate pallor of dawn was already tinged with a faint fire. So had his
+mother, half-timid child, half peasant, and entirely woman, often
+watched with him beneath her heart. Yet as Bernardy saw the rose light
+strengthen, his thoughts left his mother for that other Candide who had
+reddened so unaccountably the night before&mdash;that Candide who must be
+called after his mother. He was still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> thinking of her as he went
+downstairs and through the open door that led into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed to the furthest rampart of it, that hung over the cliff edge,
+and sat down to watch the dawn. Away to a line of silver that told of
+the sea the country looked as though dappled in grey and gold, for the
+valleys were pools of shadow veined by the brightening ranges of the
+mountains. There was a transparency about the morning, a clarity of
+young green in leaf and grass, a glimmer of fragile dew globes and
+gossamer webs on the brambles, that all made for an agreeing lightness
+of that bubble the soul, and Bernardy was soothed to the core of him.
+Cupping his chin in his hands, he sat there, drenched in the ineffable
+light that seemed to make of the air some divine element, enveloping
+every edge in brightness, refracting from each leaf and vibrating with a
+diamond quality on the mists in the valley below. The pattern of events
+was beginning to clear for him as the world was cleared by the
+sunrise&mdash;it only needed some master event to be complete. He thought of
+the sleep into which he had fallen outside the town, and which had wiped
+his mind clear of resentment, and freed it for new impressions: he
+remembered the shock when he had first recognized the walls, his growing
+excitement as thing after thing was familiar to him, the blinding flash
+of the moment when he realized he had found his dream-city. On the crest
+of receptiveness he had entered the church, and the phrase of the old
+peasant woman had caught at his imagination. Looking back, he saw how it
+was the extraordinary serenity of the townsfolk that seemed their
+dominant characteristic&mdash;they were wrapped in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> it as in an atmosphere,
+they were clear-eyed, clear-skinned, clear-souled. From the moment when
+he recognized the nail-studded door till he put down the last of his
+mother's letters, his comprehensions had flowed outward in widening
+circles. In his new knowledge of his father and mother he saw himself
+more clearly than ever before. He remembered his mother, a silent,
+quiet-eyed woman, nearly always bent over her needlework&mdash;and he saw her
+as the eager, ignorant girl, full of romantic dreams; saw her change
+into the half-timid, half-reckless lover; followed her through her
+lonely grief to the attainment of quiet. She, too, could say it had been
+good&mdash;and with how far more reason than he! He saw his father&mdash;weak,
+hot-headed, swayed by passion and selfishness and regret&mdash;his father who
+had preferred conventional safety to this hill-hung garden in Provence,
+where he could have dreamt the greatest dream of all. He saw himself as
+he was, and there followed a twin-vision of how he would be lying cold
+and pulseless in a few weeks' time, and of how he might have lived in
+this city of dreams had he found it with his life still his own. He
+would indeed have dreamt the greatest dream of all&mdash;the dream that was
+life at its fullest. "It is the good woman who gives and the good man
+who creates. Take what is left to you of life and make with it" .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. so
+wrote his mother, and like an answer flashed the words of the peasant
+woman in the church, "C'est l'enfant qui donne courage!"</p>
+
+<p><i>The greatest dream of all!</i></p>
+
+<p>He looked up and saw Candide, large and serene, coming towards him down
+the path, her skirts swinging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> from her broad hips. He stood up, and for
+a moment they faced each other in silence.</p>
+
+<p>She was just thirty and in some ways looked more, because of the
+solidity of her well-poised figure; and her clear eyes, rimmed with
+black round each iris, were not the ignorant eyes of a child, they were
+the eyes of a woman who faces knowledge naturally and patiently.
+Big-boned, and, but for the whiteness of her skin, with a something
+rockhewn about her face, her only beauty was that of health and a
+certain assurance which spoke of perfect poise. She was what Bernardy,
+in that moment's clarity of vision, knew her for&mdash;a woman born to be
+mother of men. He took a step towards her with the gesture of a
+frightened child, and with her big hands over his she drew him to the
+stone bench and sat beside him. He told her everything, simply and
+quickly, because he hated explanations, and was impatient that they were
+necessary to her. When he had made an end she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know why I blushed last night when my grandmother recognized
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Bernardy, startled out of himself yet pricked to interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Because my grandmother has always made me wait for you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Candide! Candide!" cried Bernardy, the child merged in the waxing
+possessiveness of the man, "shall we dream my last few weeks together,
+you and I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You do not love me, that is so, is it not?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not in love with you, no. That is all spent. If you were any other
+woman I would lie to you. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> it seems to me it matters very little
+whether I am or not. It is not that I feel I cannot love, but as though
+I had got through it and out the other side.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it does not matter," said Candide. "What matters is that I can give
+to you and you to me. We will make life, you and I."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Bernardy, "we will make life," and as his arms went round
+her and his lips found hers everything that had puzzled him fell
+naturally into its place. He had always created in his verse, but it was
+for this his mother had borne him, it was this that the old woman in the
+church had meant, it was for this that the woman at his side had waited.
+It mattered very little that he himself would not live to see the life
+he made, the chief thing was to create, and he saw life as the greatest
+gift man could make to God.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+<a name="iv" id="iv"></a>THE MASK</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span><br />
+THE MASK
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">When</span> Vashti Bath was "led out" by the two most eligible young men in the
+village, the other women spoke their minds pretty freely on the subject;
+and when she progressed to that further stage known as "arm-a-crook,"
+and still refrained from making the fateful choice, comment waxed
+bitter. The privilege of proposal belongs in Cornwall to that sex
+commonly called "the weaker"&mdash;a girl goes through the various stages of
+courtship conducted out of doors, and if she decides to marry the young
+man, asks him to "step in" one evening when he has seen her home, after
+which the engagement is announced. Vashti, in the most brazen way, was
+sampling two suitors at a time, and those two the most coveted men in
+Perran-an-zenna, and therein lay the sting for the women-folk.</p>
+
+<p>"What is there to her, I should like to knaw?" the lay-reader's wife
+demanded of her friends at a somewhat informal prayer meeting. "She'm an
+ontidy kind o' maid who don't knaw one end of needle from t'other. When
+her stockin' heels go into holes she just pulls them further under her
+foot, till sometimes she do have to garter half way down her leg!"</p>
+
+<p>"She'm ontidy sure 'nough," agreed a widow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> woman of years and
+experience, "but she'm a rare piece o' red and white, and menfolk are
+feeble vessels. If a maid's a fine armful they never think on whether
+she won't be a fine handful. And Vashti do have a way wi' her."</p>
+
+<p>That was the whole secret&mdash;Vashti had a way with her. She was a splendid
+slattern&mdash;showing the ancient Celtic strain in her coarse, abundant
+black hair, level brows, and narrow, green-blue eyes, with a trace of
+Jew in the hawk-like line of nose and the prominent chin curved a little
+upwards from her throat. A few years, and she would be lean and haggard,
+but now she was a fine, buoyant creature, swift and tumultuous, with a
+mouth like a flower. For all the slovenliness of her clothes she had a
+trick of putting them on which an Englishwoman never has as a
+birthright, and rarely achieves. Vashti could tie a ribbon so that every
+man she passed turned to look after her.</p>
+
+<p>Perran-an-zenna is a mining village, and some of the menfolk work in the
+tin mines close at hand, and some in the big silver mine four miles
+away. James Glasson, the elder and harsher-featured of Vashti's lovers,
+worked in the latter, and there was every prospect of his becoming a
+captain, as he had a passion for mechanics and for chemistry, and was
+supposed to be experimenting with a new process that would cheapen the
+cost of extracting the silver. Willie Strick, the younger, handsomer,
+more happy-go-lucky of the two men, went to "bal" in the tin mines, and
+was disinclined to save, but then his aged grandmother, with whom he
+lived, had been busy saving for twenty years. Strick was an eager lover,
+quick to jealousy&mdash;Glasson was uncommunicative even to Vashti, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+careless of her opinions. Though the jealousy irked her it flattered her
+too, but on the other hand, Glasson's carelessness, even while it piqued
+her, made her covet him all the more.</p>
+
+<p>This was how matters stood one evening in late March when Vashti had
+gone up to the moors to fetch in the cows&mdash;not her own, no Bath had been
+thrifty enough for that, but belonging to the farm where she worked. As
+she walked along in the glowing light, the white road winking up at her
+through a hole in her swinging skirt, and a heavy coil of hair jerking a
+little lower on the nape of her neck with each vigorous stride, Vashti
+faced the fact that matters could continue as they were no longer. At
+bottom Vashti was as hard as granite, she meant to have what she wanted;
+her only trouble was she had not quite settled what it was she did want.
+Like all her race, she had a strain of fatalism in her, that prompted
+her to choose whichever of the two men she should next chance to
+meet&mdash;and the woman in her suggested that at least such a declaration on
+the part of fate would give her the necessary impetus towards deciding
+upon the other.</p>
+
+<p>Lifting her eyes from the regular, pendulum-like swing of her skirt that
+had almost mesmerized her lulled vision, she saw, dark against the
+sunset, the figure of a man. She knew it to be either James or Willie
+because of the peculiar square set of the shoulders and the small
+head&mdash;for the two men were, like most people in that intermarrying
+district, cousins, with a superficial trick of likeness, and an almost
+exact similarity of voice. A prescience of impending fate weighed on
+Vashti; the gaunt shaft of the disused Wheal Zenna mine, that stood up
+between her and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> the approaching man, seemed like a menacing finger. The
+man reached it first and stood leaning up against it, one foot on the
+rubble of granite that was scattered around, his arm, with the miner's
+bag slung over it, resting across his raised knee. Vashti half thought
+of going back, even without the cows, but it was already time the poor
+beasts were milked, and curiosity lured her on. She went across the
+circle of greener grass surrounding the shaft, and found Glasson
+awaiting her.</p>
+
+<p>To every woman comes a time in life when she is ripe for the decisive
+man; and it is often a barren hour when he fails to appear. For Vashti
+the hour and the man had come together, and she knew it as she met
+Glasson's look. Putting out his hands, ingrained with earth in the
+finest seams of them, he laid them heavily on her shoulders, like a
+yoke. His bag swung forward and hit her on the chest, but neither of
+them noticed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Vashti, you'm got to make'n end," he said. "One way or t'other. Which
+es et to be?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook under his gaze, her lids drooped, but she tried to pout out
+her full underlip with a pretence of petulance. Suddenly his grip
+tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"So 'ee won't tell me? Then by God, I'll do the tellin'! You'm my woman,
+do'ee hear? Mine, and neither Will Strick nor any other chap shall come
+between us two."</p>
+
+<p>Wheeling her round, he held her against the rough side of the shaft and
+bent his face to hers; she felt his lips crush on her own till she could
+have cried out with pain if she had been able to draw breath. When he
+let her go her breast heaved, and she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> stood with lowered head holding
+her hand across her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we'll get the cows, my lass," said Glasson quietly, "and take'n
+home, and then you shall ask me to step in."</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>During the short, fierce courtship that followed Vashti saw very little
+of Willie Strick, though she heard he talked much of emigrating, vowing
+he would disappear in the night and not come home until he had made a
+fortune. All of Vashti's nature was in abeyance save for one emotion&mdash;a
+stunned, yet pleasurable, submission. It was not until several months
+after her marriage that she began to feel again the more ordinary and
+yet more complex sensations of everyday life. If she had to the full a
+primitive woman's joy in being possessed, she had also the instinctive
+need for possessing her man utterly, and James Glasson was only partly
+hers. It was borne in on her that by far the larger side of him was his
+own, never to be given to any woman. Ambition and an uncanny
+secretiveness made up the real man; he had set himself to winning his
+wife chiefly because the want of her distracted him from his work and
+fretted him.</p>
+
+<p>He bent the whole of life to his purposes, without any parade of power,
+but with a laborious care that gradually settled on Vashti like a
+blight. When she realized that no matter how rightly she wore her little
+bits of finery, he no longer noticed them, realized that she was merely
+a necessity to him as his woman&mdash;something to be there when she was
+wanted, she began to harden. He still had a fascination for her when he
+chose to exert it&mdash;his very carelessness and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> sureness of her were what
+made the fascination, but gradually it wore thinner and slacker, and a
+sullen resentment began to burn through her seeming submission.</p>
+
+<p>The Glasson's cottage was tucked away in a hollow of the moor, only the
+chimney of it visible from Perran-an-zenna, and Vashti began to chafe
+under the isolation, and to regret she had never been at more pains to
+make friends among her own sex.</p>
+
+<p>As summer drew to its full, Vashti watched the splendid pageant of it in
+the sky and moor with unappreciative eyes. If anyone had told her that
+her soul had been formed by the country of her birth and upbringing, she
+would have thought it sheer lunacy, but her parents were not more
+responsible for Vashti than the land itself. The hardness and bleakness,
+the inexpressible charm of it, the soft, indolent airs, scented with
+flowers, or pungent with salt; above all, that reticence that makes for
+lonely thoughts, these things had, generation by generation, moulded her
+forbears, and their influence was in her blood. Even the indifference
+with which she saw arose from her oneness with her own country, and in
+this she was like all true Cornish folk before and since&mdash;they belong to
+Cornwall body and soul. The quality of reticence had become
+secretiveness in James Glasson&mdash;he took a childish pleasure in keeping
+any little happening from the world in general and Vashti in particular,
+and the consequence was that, in her, strength was hardening into
+relentlessness.</p>
+
+<p>One market day she was returning from Penzance&mdash;a drive of some eight
+miles, accomplished in the cart of their nearest neighbour&mdash;with a paper
+parcel on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> her knee, which she kept on fingering under the rug as though
+to make sure it was still there. At the neighbour's farm she got out,
+thanked him, and started to walk the remaining mile over the moor, with
+the precious parcel laid carefully on the top of the basket of household
+goods. It had been one of those days when the air seems to have a misty
+quality that makes it almost visible&mdash;a delicate effulgence that
+envelops every object far and near, blurring harsh outlines and giving
+an effect as though trees and plants stood up into an element too subtle
+for water and too insistent for ether. The cloud shadows gave a
+plum-like bloom to the miles of interfolding hills, and inset among the
+grey-green of the moor the patches of young bracken showed vivid as
+slabs of emerald. Lightly as balls of thistledown the larks hopped
+swiftly over the heather on their thin legs, the self-heal and
+bird's-foot trefoil made a carpet of purple and yellow; from the
+heavy-scented gorse came the staccato notes of the crickets, while in a
+distant copse a cuckoo called faintly on her changed, June note. As
+Vashti rounded the corner of the rutted track and the cottage came into
+view, she paused. The deeply sloping slate roof was iridescent as a
+pigeon's breast, and the whitewashed walls were burnished with gold by
+the late sunlight, while against the faded peacock blue of the fence the
+evening primroses seemed luminous. Even to Vashti it all looked
+different, transmuted. Her fingers pressed the shiny paper of the parcel
+till it crackled and a smile tugged at her lips. After all, it was not
+bad to be young and handsome on an evening in June, to be returning to a
+home of her own, with, under her arm, a parcel that, to her,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> was an
+event. Vashti had bought that thing dear to the heart of the
+country-woman, a length of rich black dress silk; she meant to make it
+up herself, and though her stitches were clumsy, she knew she could cut
+and drape a gown better than many a conscientious sempstress. And
+then&mdash;then she would take her place as wife to the most discussed man in
+all that part of Penwith and hold up her head at Meeting. Even James
+himself could not but treat her differently when she had black silk on
+her back.</p>
+
+<p>She went through to the outhouse, which James used as a workshop, and
+tried the door. It was locked. "James!" she cried, rattling the latch,
+"James!"</p>
+
+<p>She heard him swear softly, then came the sound of something hastily put
+down and a cupboard door being shut. Then Glasson opened the door a few
+inches, and stood looking down at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Get into kitchen," he said briefly, "can't 'ee see I'm busy?"</p>
+
+<p>Already Vashti's pleasure in her purchase was beginning to fade, but she
+stood her ground, though wrathfully.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn' think you'm the only person with secrets," she flashed: "I'd
+a fine thing to show 'ee here, if you'd a mind to see it&mdash;now I shall
+keep'n to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Woman's gear!" gibed Glasson, "you'm been buying foolishness over to
+market. Get the supper or I shan't have time for a bite before I go to
+see t' captain."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all you think on," she retorted; "you and your own business."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+"That's all you should think on, either," he said, pulling her towards
+him with a hand on the back of her neck, and kissing her on her
+unresponsive mouth. She stood sullenly; then, when he dropped his hand,
+went into the house. She heard him turn the key in the lock as she went.
+That night she cried hot tears of anger on to the new dress length, and
+next day she went across the moor and met Willie Strick on his way home
+to Perran-an-zenna.</p>
+
+<p>That was the first of many meetings, for Willie's resentment faded away
+before the old charm of Vashti's presence. In spite of his handsome
+face, he was oddly like James. The backs of their heads were similar
+enough to give Vashti a little shock whenever she passed behind her
+husband as he sat at table, or each time that Willie lay beside her on
+the moor, his head on her lap. She would pull the curly rings of his
+hair out over her fingers, and even while she admired the glint of it,
+some little memory of a time when James' hair had glinted in the sun or
+candlelight, pricked at her&mdash;not with any feeling for him except
+resentment, but at first it rather spoiled her lover for her. They had
+to meet by stealth, but that was easy enough, as James was now on an
+afternoon core, and Willie on a morning one. To do the latter justice,
+he had tried, at the beginning, a feeble resistance to the allure that
+Vashti had for him, not from any scruple of conscience, but because his
+pleasure-loving nature shrank from anything that might lead to
+unpleasantness. And, careless as he seemed of his wife, James Glasson
+would be an ugly man to deal with if he discovered the truth. So far
+there had been nothing except the love-making of a limited though
+expressive vocabulary,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> and Vashti curbed him and herself for three
+whole weeks. She was set on possessing Willie's very soul&mdash;here, at
+least, was a man whom she could so work upon that he would always be
+hers even to the most reluctant outpost of his being. By the end of
+those weeks, her elusiveness, the hint of passion in her, and the steady
+force of her will, had enslaved Strick hopelessly: he was maddened,
+reckless, and timid all at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Vashti, it's got to end," he said desperately, as he walked with her
+one evening as near to the cottage as he dared, and as he spoke he slid
+an arm round her waist. To his surprise, she yielded and swayed towards
+him so that her shoulder touched his; in the sunset light her upturned
+face glimmered warm and bewilderingly full of colour.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit, lad," she breathed. "James goes up to London church town
+to-morrow to see one of the managers&mdash;happen he'll be gone a week or
+more.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>He felt her soft mouth on his cheek for a moment and his arms went round
+her&mdash;the next moment came a crash that seemed to split the sky, and from
+the outhouse leapt a whistling column of flame.</p>
+
+<p>Stricken with a superstitious terror, Willie screamed&mdash;loudly and
+thinly, like a woman. Vashti recoiled, flung up her hands, then rushed
+towards the burning outhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"James is in there!" she cried. "Oh, get'en out, get'en out!"</p>
+
+<p>The flame had been caused by an explosion, but there was not much
+inflammatory stuff for it to feed on, and a thick smoke, reeking of
+chemicals, hung<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> above the outhouse. As Vashti, followed by the shaking
+Strick, reached the door, it swung open and a Thing stood swaying a
+moment on the step.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to the lovers' first horrified glimpse that all of Glasson's
+face had been blown away. The whole of one side of it was covered by an
+enormous blister, a nightmare thing, which, as the woman gazed at it,
+burst and fell into blackness. The same moment Glasson dropped his
+length across the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor, go for doctor," whispered Vashti with dry lips, "as quick
+as you can&mdash;I&mdash;I dursn't turn 'en over."</p>
+
+<p>So Glasson lay with what had been his face against a patch of grass,
+while Willie ran, horror-ridden, to Perran-an-zenna for the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Dry-eyed, Vashti watched by her husband for three nights, and all
+praised her wifely devotion. She sat by the gleam of a flickering
+nightlight, her eyes on the bandaged face&mdash;the linen was only slit just
+as much as was necessary for breathing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Glasson," said the doctor cheerily, as he finished his
+inspection on the third night, "I can give you good news. Your husband
+will live, and will keep the sight of one eye. But&mdash;though of course
+wonders can be done with modern surgery&mdash;we can't build up what's gone.
+He'll always have to wear a mask, Mrs. Glasson."</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone Vashti went and stood by the bed, looking down on the
+unconscious man, who lay breathing heavily&mdash;how easy it would be to lay
+a hand over that slit in the linen&mdash;a few minutes, and this nightmare
+would be over. She half put out her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> hand, then drew it back. She was
+not yet capable of cold-blooded crime.</p>
+
+<p>Lighting a candle, she took from a drawer a paper parcel, which she
+unfolded on the little table. As the still untouched folds of the black
+dress length, with a few little hard-edged blots on it that meant tears,
+came into view, Vashti's self-control broke down. She wept stormily, her
+head along her arms. Release had flaunted so near to her, and was
+withdrawn, and her horror of the Thing on the bed was mingled with a
+pity for it that ate into her mind. She dried her burning eyes, and
+picking up the scissors, began to cut a mask out of the tear-stained
+breadths; her invincible habit of considering herself forbade her, even
+at that moment, to use the good yards for such a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The candle-flame was showing wan in the grey of the dawning when Vashti
+put the last stitches to the mask&mdash;she had made it very deep, so that it
+would hang to just below the jawbone, and she had laboriously
+buttonhole-stitched round the one eye-hole, and sewn tape-strings firmly
+to the sides, top and bottom. The mask was finished.</p>
+
+<p>James Glasson's figure, a trifle stooped and groping, with that sinister
+black curtain from cap to collar, soon ceased to be an object of fearful
+curiosity in Perran-an-zenna; even the children became so used to it
+that they left off calling out as he passed. He grew more silent and
+morose than ever, and his secretiveness showed itself in all sorts of
+ingenious petty ways.</p>
+
+<p>Vashti had the imaginative streak of her race, and life in the lonely
+cottage with this masked personality<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> took on the quality of nightmare.
+She felt his one eye watching her continually, and was tormented by the
+thought, "How much does he know?" Who could tell? Had he seen anything
+from the outhouse window when she had rashly let Willie come so near, or
+did he know who it was who had fetched the doctor? Sometimes a meaning
+word seemed to show that he knew everything, sometimes she argued that
+he could only guess. The black mask filled the whole of her life, the
+thought of it was never out of her mind, not even when she was working
+on her old farm, for she had to be breadwinner now. She found herself
+dwelling on what lay behind the mask, wondering whether it could be as
+bad as that black expanse, and once she woke herself at night,
+screaming: "Tear 'en down, Willie! Tear the black mask down!" and then
+lay trembling, wondering whether her husband had heard. For days he said
+nothing and she felt herself safe; then one night he turned to her.
+"There's no air," he complained. "Can't 'ee take down t' curtains? If
+'ee can't do anything else, why&mdash;tear 'en down, tear 'en down!"</p>
+
+<p>He had mimicked her very voice, and silent with fear, she took down the
+curtain, her fingers shaking so that the rings jingled together along
+the rod. One day, when he was working in the garden, he turned to face
+the wind. She saw him sideways against the sky, and the black mask, held
+taut at brow and chin by the strings, was being blown inward. She never
+forgot the horror of that concave line against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>She came to regard the mask with superstitious awe; it seemed James
+Glasson's character materialized&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> outward expression of the inner
+man. Nervous and cowed to abjectness as she was, she felt near the end
+of her endurance. The perpetual scheming to meet Willie unknown to her
+husband&mdash;a difficulty now the latter was nearly always about the
+house-place, and the wearing uncertainty of "How much does he know?"
+were fraying her nerves. Some two months after the accident the crash
+came.</p>
+
+<p>James had gone to Truro to see a surgeon there, and had announced his
+intention of spending the night with cousins. The utter bliss of being
+alone, and having the cottage free from the masked presence for even one
+day acted like a balm on Vashti. She forbade Willie to come near her
+till the evening, partly from motives of prudence, but chiefly because
+she craved for solitude. By the afternoon she was more her old,
+sufficient, well-poised self, and when evening drew on she busied
+herself about her little preparations in the kitchen with a colour
+burning in her cheeks and a softened light in her eyes. That evening
+Vashti Glasson was touched with a grace of womanliness she had never
+worn for her husband. Every harmless and tender instinct of the lover
+was at work in her, making her choose her nicest tablecloth, arrange a
+cluster of chrysanthemums in an ornate glass vase, put a long-discarded
+ribbon of gaudy pink in her hair. Then she took off her working frock of
+dirty, ill-mended serge, and shook out in triumph the folds of the black
+silk, now made up in all its glory, and hideous with cheap jet. It
+converted her from a goddess of the plough to a red-wristed, clumsy girl
+of the people; and when her hair was dressed in the fashionable lumps,
+with a fringe-net hardening the outlines, she looked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> like a shop-girl,
+but she herself admired the effect intensely.</p>
+
+<p>When three taps at the window told that Strick was outside, the colour
+flew to her face, making her so beautiful that she triumphed even over
+her costume; she had become a high priestess of Love, and was not to be
+cheated of any of the ritual. She was decked out as for a bridal; no
+more rough-and-ready wooing and winning for her. But Strick's passion
+was somewhat daunted by all the preparations for his welcome; the
+kitchen looked unusual, and so did she, and he hung back for a moment on
+the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"What's come to 'ee?" he asked, foolishly agape.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes a weddin' gown made for you," said Vashti simply.</p>
+
+<p>"But 'tes black!" he stammered. "'Tes ill luck on a black bridal,
+Vassie."</p>
+
+<p>"Ours is no white bridal, lad," she told him. "Come in and set
+down&mdash;yes, take that chair," and she pushed Glasson's accustomed seat
+forward for her lover.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation languished during the meal&mdash;Willie Strick was bewildered by
+the oddness of everything, Vashti included; his was no level head to
+plan any details or set a scene&mdash;Vashti won by stealth, anywhere and
+anyhow, was all he had thought of or wished for. Hers was the
+master-mind and he was helpless before it, and while she inflamed him
+she frightened him too.</p>
+
+<p>A full moon swam up over the line of distant sea that showed in a dip of
+the moorland, and the lamp began to smell and burn low. They had
+finished supper, and Willie was drinking rather freely of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> whisky
+she had set before him. Vashti turned out the lamp, and as she did so a
+sudden harsh noise sent the heart to her throat, while Willie sprang up
+fearfully. It was only the poker, that, caught by the full skirt of the
+black silk frock, had been sent clattering to the ground, but it made
+them stare at each other in a stricken panic for a speechless minute.
+The white light of the moon shone clearly into the room, throwing a
+black pattern of window-shadow over the disordered supper table, where
+the chrysanthemums, overturned by Willie's movement, lay across an empty
+dish, and in the silence the two startled people could hear the rhythmic
+sound of the water as it drip-drip-dripped on to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Vashti was the first to recover herself. "Us be plum foolish, Willie!"
+she said, with an attempt at a laugh. "Do believe us both thought it was
+James, and him safe to Truro."</p>
+
+<p>"If 'tes," said Strick madly, "he shan't take 'ee from me now. I'll have
+'ee, I swear it."</p>
+
+<p>Vashti did not answer&mdash;with fascinated eyes she was watching the door
+slowly open&mdash;she could see the strip of moonlit brightness, barred by
+the darkness of an arm, grow wider and wider. She knew, before the
+form&mdash;so terribly like Willie's, now its masked face was against the
+light&mdash;appeared, that it was her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Quite what happened next she could not have told. The little room seemed
+full and dark with fear&mdash;blind, unreasoning fear, that beat even about
+her head. The long-drawn-out crash of the overturned table added to her
+confusion&mdash;then quite suddenly the sounds of struggling ceased and one
+man rose to his feet. In the dimness of the room, seeing only the shape
+of him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> she could not tell whether it were James or Willie, until he
+turned his face to the moonlight, and she saw, with a throb of relief,
+Strick's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Get a light, Vassie," he whispered. "I fear he's dead."</p>
+
+<p>She lit a candle and they knelt down by Glasson. In falling his head had
+hit the fender, and blood was trickling on to the floor. She ripped open
+his shirt and felt for his heart as well as her trembling fingers would
+allow. She lifted his arm and let it fall&mdash;it dropped a dead weight on
+to the tiled floor. It seemed to her excited fancy that already he was
+turning cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Willie, you've killed 'en!" she whispered. They both spoke low, as
+though they thought the dead man could overhear.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't hit 'en," babbled Willie. "He stumbled and fell and hit his
+head&mdash;they'll make me swing for this&mdash;what shall us do, what shall us
+do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait&mdash;I must think," commended the woman. She pressed her hands to her
+forehead, and sat very still.</p>
+
+<p>"Have 'ee thought?" whispered Willie anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I've thought. Willie, you'm rare and like&mdash;he&mdash;and that'll save
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"What do 'ee mean?" asked Willie, thinking the shock had turned her
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>"The mask!" replied Vashti, "the mask!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, kneeling by the still body, they talked in whispers&mdash;she unfolding
+her plan&mdash;he recoiling from it, weakly protesting, and then giving way.</p>
+
+<p>They were to take the dead man between them to the disused mine shaft
+and throw him down, then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> Willie was to wear the black mask, and take
+Glasson's place, until they could sail for America together. Like all
+simple plans, it had a touch of genius. Willie's constant talk of
+emigrating, his oft-heard boasts of slipping away in the night and not
+coming back till he had made a fortune, would all help to cover up his
+disappearance. And who was to connect it with Vashti and her silent,
+eccentric, black-masked husband&mdash;who would speak to him or her on the
+subject? And if they did&mdash;she could always invent a plausible answer,
+while he was safeguarded by the fact that the strongest point of
+likeness between the two men was their voices. The most dissimilar thing
+about them had been their faces.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't wear his mask," said Willie shuddering; "I couldn't put 'en
+against me. You must make me another."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make 'en now," said Vashti. She rose to her feet, and setting the
+candle on the seat of a chair, looked about her.</p>
+
+<p>"You must put the room to rights," she commanded. "Make 'en look as
+though James and I had just had our bit o' supper. Mop up the water and
+sweep all the broken cloam together&mdash;and&mdash;and take him to the
+passage-way."</p>
+
+<p>"You'm not going to lave me alone wi' he?" cried Willie aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Edn room for me to work here. I'l be up overstairs making the mask.
+Keep t' curtain over the window."</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs, she seized scissors and hacked a square out of the front of
+her gown. Then she sat and sewed as she had sewed once before, when her
+husband had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> lain motionless on the bed. Every now and then came small
+sounds of things being moved from down below, then a heavy fall and the
+sound of something being dragged.</p>
+
+<p>"How's et goin', Willie?" she called out.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes all right," he called back. "I've put 'en in passage."</p>
+
+<p>The moon was near setting when the mask was finished, and she went to
+the top of the stairs with it in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"There 'tes," she whispered. "I'll drop it down. Put it in your pocket
+and I'll change my gown. 'Tes time we were stirrin'."</p>
+
+<p>The mask fluttered down in the darkness, and she went back to her room
+and changed swiftly into the old serge.</p>
+
+<p>It was a ghastly journey to the old mine shaft, the heavy form of the
+dead man sagging between them. They dared have no light, and went
+stumbling over tussocks and ruts; but as both would have known the way
+blindfold, they found the shaft without difficulty. They scrambled up
+the sloping rubble of stones and tipped the body over the jagged hole in
+the side of the shaft, and after what seemed an interminable silence
+there came a thud from several hundred feet below them, then another, as
+though the body had rebounded, then all was stillness.</p>
+
+<p>Vashti leant up against the side of the shaft, as she had leant when
+James kissed her there, and shut her eyes; the sweat running down her
+brow had matted her lashes together into thick points, and the drops
+tickled her neck so that she put up her hand to it. Both she and the man
+were drawing the deep, hoarse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> breaths of exhaustion, and for a few
+minutes they rested in silence&mdash;then he spoke. "You must be comin' back
+along o' me now," he told her, "the dawn'll be showin' soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," cried Vashti, starting up, "us may meet some one going to
+bal, sure 'nough."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes all right&mdash;I've got t'mask on. Come."</p>
+
+<p>He closed his fingers over her arm so harshly that she winced, and
+together they made their way back in the cold, bleak hush that preceded
+the autumnal dawn. Gradually, as they went, some glimmerings of what her
+life would be henceforth appeared to the woman. The fear of neighbours,
+the efforts to appear neutral, the memory of that slowly opening door,
+and the still thing by the fender, the consciousness of what lay at the
+bottom of the disused shaft; and, above all, the terrible reminder of
+her husband in the masked Willie&mdash;it would be like living with a ghost.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>Once back at the cottage, he drew her within and let the door swing to
+behind them. She moved away to find a light, but he caught her.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't 'ee give me so much as a kiss, and me with red hands because of
+you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She felt the mask brush her cheek, and broke away with a cry. She heard
+him laugh as she lit a candle, and turned towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"A black bridal!" he cried wildly; "did you think 'twas a black bridal?
+'Tes a red one, do 'ee hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Willie," she begged him, "take off t'mask now we'm alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't 'ee afeared?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes safe enough till mornin', and I do hate that mask more'n the
+devil. Take 'en off."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+"I'll take 'en off&mdash;to please you, lass."</p>
+
+<p>He seized the mask violently by the hem and ripped it away&mdash;and she saw
+it was her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"You fool!" he said slowly, following her as she backed away from him,
+her mouth slack with fear, her eyes staring, her whole being showing her
+as almost bereft of her senses. "You fool to think to fool me! You was
+quick enough to say I was dead; I'm not so easy killed, Vassie. No so
+easy killed as your lover was&mdash;just the carven'-knife between his
+shoulders when he was stoopin' down, that's all. He was fearful of
+lookin' at the dead man; he never knew the dead man was lookin' at he.
+You heard him fall, Vassie, and thought it was him movin' me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Put t'mask on," wailed Vashti, pressing her fingers against her eyes;
+"put t'mask on again, for the love o' God!"</p>
+
+<p>"There's been enough o' masks," he retorted grimly. "You've got to bear
+to see me now; me, not your lover that you've helped to tip over Wheal
+Zenna shaft. Eh, you fool, did 'ee think I didn' knaw? I've knawed all
+these months; I've seen 'ee meet 'en; I told 'ee I was going to stop the
+night over to Truro so as to catch 'ee together; I listened outside the
+house; I let 'ee think I was dead, and heard t' the plan you thought to
+make. Only half a man am I, wi' no mouth left to kiss with? I've an eye
+left to see with, and an ear to hear with, and a hand to strike with,
+and a tongue to teach 'ee with."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell on 'ee," said Vashti, "I'll tell the police on 'ee. Murderer,
+that's what you are."</p>
+
+<p>"I doan't think 'ee will, my dear. 'Tedn a tale as'll do you any good&mdash;a
+woman who cheats her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> husband, and tries to kill 'en, and helps to carry
+a body two miles over moor and tip 'en down shaft. And what have 'ee to
+complain on, I should like to knaw? When I wear t'mask you can pretend
+I'm Willie&mdash;handsome Willie. Willie who can kiss a maid and make a fine
+upstandin' husband. Willie was goin' to be me, why shudn' you think I
+was Willie? Do 'ee, my dear, if 'tes any comfort to 'ee."</p>
+
+<p>He slipped on the mask as he spoke and knotted the strings. The door had
+swung open, and the candle flame shook in the draught as though trying,
+in fear, to strain away from the wick. The steel-cold light of dawn grew
+in the sky and filtered into the room, showing all the sordid litter of
+it; the frightened woman, with a pink ribbon awry in her disordered
+hair, and the ominous figure of the masked man. He came towards her
+round the table.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes our bridal night, lass!" he said. "Why do 'ee shrink away? Mind
+you that 'tes Willie speakin'! Don't let us think on James Glasson dead
+to the bottom 'o the shaft. I'm Willie&mdash;brave Willie who loves 'ee.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>As his arms came out to catch her, she saw his purpose in his eye, and
+remembered his words, "A red bridal, lass, a red bridal!"</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment she woke out of her stupor, turned, and ran, he after
+her. Across the little garden, down the moorland road, over heather and
+slippery boulders and clinging bracken, startling the larks from their
+nests, scattering the globes of dew. Once she tried to make for a
+side-track that led to Perran-an-zenna, but he headed her off, and once
+again she was running, heavily now, towards Wheal Zenna mineshaft.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> He
+was gaining on her, and her breath was nearly spent. Both were going
+slowly, hardly above a stumbling walk, as the shaft came in sight; the
+drawing of their breath sounded harsh as the rasping of a file through
+the still air. As she neared the shaft she turned her head and saw him
+almost on her, and saw the gleam of something in his uplifted hand. She
+gathered together all her will, concentrated in those few moments all
+the strength of her nature, determined to cheat him at the last. Up the
+rubble of stones she scrambled, one gave beneath her foot and sent her
+down, and abandoning the effort, she lay prone, awaiting the end.</p>
+
+<p>But Vashti's luck held&mdash;it was the man who was to lose. A couple of
+miners who had been coming up the path from Perran-an-zenna had seen the
+chase and followed hot foot, unnoticed by the two straining, frantic
+creatures, who heard nothing but the roaring in their own ears. They
+caught Glasson as he ran across the patch of grass to the shaft, and he
+doubled up without a struggle in their arms. Physical and mental powers
+had failed together, and from that day James Glasson was a hopeless
+idiot&mdash;harmless and silent. Vashti had won indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Admirable woman of affairs that she was, she took a good sleep before
+confronting the situation; then she made up her story and stuck to it.
+Willie's name was never mentioned, and his disappearance, so long
+threatened, passed as a minor event, swamped in the greater stir of
+Glasson's attempt to murder his wife. His madness had taken the one form
+that made Vashti safe&mdash;he had gone mad on secretiveness. How much he
+remembered not even she knew, but not a word<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> could anyone drag from
+him. He would lay his finger where his nose should have been against the
+mask, and wag his head slyly. "Naw, naw, I was never one for tellin',"
+he would say. "James Glasson's no such fool that he can't keep 'enself
+to 'enself."</p>
+
+<p>He lived on for several years in the asylum, and Vashti, after the free
+and easy fashion of the remote West, took to herself another husband.
+She went much to chapel, and there was no one more religious than she,
+and no one harder on the sins and vanities of young women. One thing in
+particular she held in what seemed an unreasoning abhorrence&mdash;and that
+was a black silk gown.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+<a name="v" id="v"></a>A GARDEN ENCLOSED</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+A GARDEN ENCLOSED</p>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Why</span> Sophia Jervis went to Sant' Ambrogio she herself could not have
+told; to all outward seeming she merely drifted there, influenced by the
+many little urgencies of travel&mdash;the name seen casually in a guide-book
+and all unnoticed stamping itself on her brain; a chance mention of the
+place caught from some fellow-traveller, aided by the fact that the
+time-table had happened to open at the words "Sant' Ambrogio"&mdash;these
+were the trifles by which the power stronger than herself guided Sophia,
+with such cunning manipulation, such a fine lack of insistence even on
+the trifles, that she was unaware of any power at work. Also she was in
+that numbed condition which mercifully follows any great straining of
+emotion; even pain lay quiescent, though rather in a swoon than a
+sleep&mdash;a mere blankness from which it would struggle up more insistent
+than before.</p>
+
+<p>When Sophia alighted from the train at the nearest station for Sant'
+Ambrogio, and found the carriage she had ordered awaiting her, she was
+not in the mood to take joy in anything she saw; and yet, as the wiry
+little Tuscan horse trotted swiftly along she found herself, though not
+actually responding, at least offering no blank wall of resistance to
+the country around. To say country, as though a landscape consisted of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+mere earth and vegetation, is to make an incomplete statement; the
+quality of the light, the harmony or discordance where man's work meets
+Nature; and, above all, the intangible atmosphere, rarer and more vital
+than the actual enveloping air, that is the soul of a country&mdash;all these
+are of more potency than the position of a clump of trees or the
+existence of a particular crop. And nowhere is this atmosphere more
+elusive but more compelling than in Tuscany at spring time. Sophia was
+too deadened to respond, but she felt the echo of the thing, as it were,
+in much the same way that a stone-deaf person feels vibrations run
+through the floor and up his chair to his spine when certain chords are
+played on an organ.</p>
+
+<p>It is a drive of about five miles from the railway station to Sant'
+Ambrogio, and the road winds across the plain, sometimes rising and
+falling, always leading towards the rim of interfolding hills. In the
+vineyards the vines, naked at first glance, were just beginning to
+flower, and the rows of pollarded planes from which they were festooned
+showed a glory of young leaf. The maize was a couple of feet in height,
+and where the sun shone through the blades of it they looked like thin
+green flames. The heat was intense, and the air seemed stifled with the
+subtle smell of the dust that lay thickly over the road and powdered the
+grassy edges. The whole plain of Tuscany, apparently empty of human
+life, and consequently filled with a sense of utter peace, seemed a vast
+green platter brimming with a divine ether and held up towards the
+heavens by the steady hands of genii. Only Sophia's carriage showed like
+a black insect winging a course fast enough to itself but slow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> to the
+gaze of any being who, looking down on this dish held for the gods,
+could see the whole expanse of it at once.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere was a sense of light&mdash;light steeping the sky, drenching the
+earth, and vibrating in the spaces between; light that gave a gracious
+blur to edges, that refracted from each subtle difference of plane and
+angle; light that permeated the very shadows so that they seemed
+semi-transparent. One with this sense of light, as body is one with
+soul, was the sense of colour&mdash;tender greens, at once pure and delicate;
+blues that paled to the merest breath or merged in a soft purple. The
+wideness of the view gave full value to the exquisitely fine curves
+which composed it&mdash;the curves of outline where hills and long sweeping
+slopes came against the sky, and the curves of surfaces, which
+inter-folded and led into each other like the waters of a vast lake
+where Time has stayed his foot and the spellbound water holds for ever
+the slopes and gradations blown into being by an arrested wind.</p>
+
+<p>Something&mdash;an emotion impersonal in itself yet arousing the personality
+in her&mdash;began to stir at Sophia's heart; then, as the carriage rounded a
+curve in the road and she received the shock of Sant' Ambrogio against
+the distant arch of the sky, sudden tears burned in her eyelids. Leaning
+back as well as she could against the uncompromising cushions, she gazed
+from between lids half-closed so as to narrow her vision on the one
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>Sant' Ambrogio is a little city of towers, some twenty of them, varying
+in height, all clustered together within the circling walls and pricking
+the sky like a group of tall-stemmed flowers in a garden. The town<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+seems to have grown rather than been built on the crest of the only
+great hill for miles, but the ripples of the plain all converge towards
+it, leading the eye naturally up to this little crown of Tuscany. When
+they considered a tower a reminder of God, the ancients were not without
+a deeper spiritual foundation than they knew of; there is nothing of
+more direct psychological significance than line, and the many
+upward-springing lines of Sant' Ambrogio made it seem a thing so lightly
+poised as almost to be hanging from the heavens. A sense of something
+winged, which, though just resting on the earth, yet had plumes ready
+pricked for flight, impressed itself on Sophia's brain as she gazed.</p>
+
+<p>"This might have been beautiful for me if only I could still feel," was
+her swift thought, and she closed her eyes to let the gleam of light
+thus evoked sink into her mind. As she lay with her consciousness turned
+inwards, the deadened fibres of her began to stir; pain moved in its
+swoon, and, waking, took the keenest form of all&mdash;remembrance. Quite
+suddenly there flashed before her mental vision the loggia at the top of
+the old palace in Florence where she and Richard had said good-bye. She,
+who was to see the cords of passion grow slack, had there seen them
+stretched at their tensest, and the memory of it clutched at her heart
+with that pity for him which had kept her calm for his comfort. Now,
+mingled with it, was her own pain, which, at the time, her thought for
+him had overwhelmed. She saw again his face as she had seen it then&mdash;his
+thin, hawk-like profile dark and sharply-cut against the evening sky.
+With the memory of the pain that had gone through her at that moment,
+the power<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> to feel stirred again, and it was that moment which struck at
+her anew. Her hands fastened suddenly on the hot sides of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!" she said in the low voice that overwhelming sorrow can wring
+from the tongue, a soliloquy terrible in its unself-consciousness: "oh,
+oh! I can't bear it; I can't bear it!"</p>
+
+<p>As the horse slowed down at the beginning of the hill, the first
+poignancy of Sophia's reawakened feeling passed off, and she lay back,
+her hands laying palm upwards in her lap. With entry into the town came
+coolness; the ancient architects of the South knew better than to favour
+the broad streets planned by their descendants, and the narrow ways
+threaded so cunningly between the tall cliffs of houses were cool as
+shadowed streams. The greyness of the paved street fell like a
+suggestion of peace on Sophia after the searching sunlight of the plain,
+and the acuteness of her mental trouble subsided in response to the
+sense of physical ease; she had regained her grip of herself when the
+carriage drew up at the door of the Albergo Santo Spirito.</p>
+
+<p>The Albergo is a whitewashed building set round a courtyard; clean,
+unfretted by detail, full of dim, sweet spaces and gay domestic sounds.
+Sophia, aware of its charm, yet realized, on looking back afterwards,
+that she had also been aware that the inn was for her but the
+ante-chamber to some other place or state, as yet unrevealed. At the
+time she was only conscious that a sense of waiting held the calm air,
+though, if she had thought to ask herself the question, she would have
+said that life held nothing for which it could be worth her while to
+wait.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+After she had washed her face and hands in the bare little whitewashed
+room assigned to her, she went out to wander about the town till dinner.
+Motorists have not yet spoiled the population of Sant' Ambrogio, and,
+unmolested by any clamour for alms, Sophia passed along the shady
+street, where the black-haired, kerchiefed women, with their fine,
+rock-hewn faces and deep-set eyes, were knitting at their house doors.
+In the big, cool church, whose walls of banded black and white marble
+were quieted by the dim light, which just showed the dark gargoyles
+writhing like things of a dream over cornice and capital, Sophia knelt
+down, more to wrap herself in the peace of it than to pray. The very
+keenness of her cry for peace made her fail, and rising she wandered
+round the church till she came to the little chapel on whose walls the
+life of the town's saint, Beata, has been painted by some "Ignoto" who
+must have had a touch of genius. Sophia stood and gazed at the various
+scenes. Santa Beata, a child with corn-coloured hair lying along her
+back, running away from her resentful playmates, a set of curly-headed,
+sly, pinching, clear-eyed ragamuffins, such as those who quarrel and
+play in the streets of Sant' Ambrogio to this day. Santa Beata, wrapped
+in a cloud, conversing with the Beloved, while the children search the
+field vainly for her&mdash;the Beloved Himself being na&iuml;vely expressed by
+what looked like a small bonfire, but proved, in a strange medley of
+legend and Old Testament story, to be a burning bush. Santa Beata vowing
+herself to virginity and lying down on the narrow maiden bed she never
+left again; Santa Beata being visited by cherubim&mdash;little burning heads
+with awful eyes and folded wings&mdash;blown in at the door,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> while through
+the window showed the plain of Tuscany, pale silvery greens and blues,
+and in the distance Sant' Ambrogio himself, wafted on a cloud,
+approached the town to bear the saint away. By her side crouched her old
+mother, a knotted burnt-out woman with long wrists, just a literal
+transcript of many a prematurely old peasant mother before and since,
+her patient eyes seeing no one but her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>The more she looked at Santa Beata the more Sophia, who without thinking
+much about it had a realization of her own type, was struck by the
+resemblance between them. The red-brown hair folded about Sophia's head
+was darker than the locks that lay combed out over the saint's pillow,
+but the long oval of the faces, the girlish thinness of modelling and
+the narrow eyes set in heavily folded lids over rather prominent
+cheekbones, were the same; and the same, too, were the pointed chins and
+the delicately full lips tucked in at the corners like those of a child.
+Santa Beata had only been sixteen at the time of her death and Sophia
+was twenty-two, but the earlier ripening of the South made the apparent
+years swing level. Suddenly Sophia turned away, fierce envy of this
+untroubled girl who had finished long ago with the business of life
+surging in her heart. The memory of the past weeks seemed shameful and
+she herself not fit to hold intercourse with other girls&mdash;girls to whom
+things had not happened. In that moment Sophia knew she had lost her
+girlhood none the less surely for having saved her virginity, which
+three things had helped to guard&mdash;a clarity of pre-vision which bade her
+not give Richard even what he most desired, because it showed her that
+it must inevitably work him misery; the knowledge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> that he did not love
+her finely enough for such a gift to be fitting; and thirdly, the
+strongest thing of all&mdash;that no one who is accustomed, however
+imperfectly, to walk in the spiritual world, can lightly forgo the
+privilege. "I should have been afraid of losing touch," Sophia said long
+after, when she saw how that fear had constrained her. Now, looking at
+Santa Beata and realizing more vividly than ever before the power which
+virginity, as an idea, has always swayed, she felt she had forfeited, by
+her gain in experience, communion with those who were still virginal in
+soul as well as in body. On the steps of the church she passed some
+children playing&mdash;children still at the age when their heads are very
+big and round&mdash;and she remembered how, in a half-ruined castle Richard
+and she had visited together, two little peasant girls, clear-eyed,
+freckled young creatures, had taken them for husband and wife; and how
+one demanded shyly whether she had a baby at home. "No, I have no baby,"
+Sophia had said quietly, and the child replied: "What a pity! He would
+be sweet, your baby.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"He would be sweet .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. my baby," thought Sophia, staring at the big
+round heads and little necks with that pang of yearning pity without
+which she could never look on children. It is a great truth that no
+woman has ever loved a man unless she has wanted to bear him a child,
+and the knowledge that she would never make this greatest of all
+offerings to Richard pressed on Sophia's heart. She was not one of those
+women who desire children as an end in themselves, to whom they would
+mean more than the husband; she was of those who long to bear them to
+the loved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> man because for him the utmost must be suffered and given;
+but for any other man it would be a thing unspeakable. Therefore she saw
+the best put out of life for her, and she hurried away from the children
+on the steps. Turning down a narrow lane she came to a door in the wall,
+and pushing it open she looked into what seemed a lake of green light,
+flecked with swaying rounds of sun and chequered with deeper green
+shadows&mdash;a garden run luxuriantly wild. Sophia stepped inside, and on
+her right, built half against and half on the wall, she saw a little
+ochre-washed house with faded blue shutters. Wandering on, she came to
+some lilacs in hard, red bud that hung over a well, and passing under
+the arch they made she found the further end of the garden. There a
+flight of uneven old steps led to the top of the wall, and she went up
+them. At the head of the steps, the wall&mdash;which was the outer
+fortification of the town&mdash;widened into a circle some twenty feet
+across, with a stone seat inset in the parapet that ran round it, and a
+sundial without a hand in the middle. Sophia stood still and drew a long
+breath&mdash;the place, in its look of eld and aloofness, was so exactly like
+some enchanted spot in a fairy-story. Crossing the flagstones she looked
+out over the miles of plain lying below her; here and there were patches
+of olive-trees, not growing in masses like a grey-green sea as they did
+further north where he and she had seen them, but planted far apart;
+from where Sophia stood they looked like nothing so much as clouds of
+dust puffing up from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia stretched herself long and slowly; then throwing off her hat, she
+laid her arms along the parapet and her sleek head down upon them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+"Oh, I wish I hadn't come," she moaned. "I'm going to feel again.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>Her hand went out to the little hanging bag she carried and drew back
+again, then setting her mouth, she made herself unfasten the clasp and
+take out a bundle of letters which she laid on the seat beside her. As
+her eyes lit on the familiar writing a deadly nausea took hold of her,
+she felt physically sick and put her hand up to her throat to check its
+contraction. A letter from him always affected her in that way, so that
+she sat, sick and faint, unable to open it, and now these oft-read
+letters were as potent as ever. She noted with a vague, impersonal
+surprise that her hands were shaking, and folding them in her lap she
+sat still, forcing her thoughts, in spite of the pain it stirred in her,
+to go back over the past two weeks.</p>
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>On looking back the whole time seemed set in a clear, sunlit atmosphere
+of its own as in a magic sphere where the present had always taken a
+more than normal clearness of edge and the past and future ceased to be.
+It struck her as curious that the prevailing note of those weeks should
+have been a sense of utter peace; not realizing that, peace being the
+thing his frayed nerves craved, she therefore supplied it, wrapping him
+round with it, living so in him and for him that while with him she
+received the impression of peace herself, only having sensations of her
+own when they were apart. His need&mdash;that was the great thing, and though
+she had not stopped to analyse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> what his need was, she had felt it was
+for soothing and rest.</p>
+
+<p>She was a writer, and on the money made by her first book she came to
+Italy, and in Florence she met him, a painter of some note, of whom she
+had vaguely heard in London. Although he was twenty years older than
+she, their minds chimed from the first; one of them had only to half say
+a thing for the other to understand it. At the beginning there was
+nothing between them but friendship, tinged&mdash;though for her quite
+unconsciously&mdash;with the element of sex. For him, he had since told her,
+things were very different from the moment he met her; to the average
+woman the term "physical attraction" is so meaningless that she stared
+in uncomprehension when he told her how profoundly she had troubled him
+from the first. For this girl, whose pulses had never been fluttered to
+quickness, and who, though in imagination she could project herself into
+passion, always shrank from any sign of it in actuality, was reserved
+the doubtful compliment of stirring the passionate side of the man's
+nature more violently than it had ever been before. He kept the ugly
+thing well hidden, and she never guessed at it until her own pity and
+trust and affection made her unwittingly tempt him beyond endurance.
+Pity, allied to the intellectual pleasure they took in each other, moved
+her first, for he was unhappy, and she, too, had the habit of pain. She
+remembered the first whole day they had taken together; how they climbed
+up to San Miniato and found a field in which they lay and talked, and
+how he came back with her to the thirteenth-century palace beside the
+Arno where she lodged. She had a little room with a painted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> ceiling,
+and the infant Bacchus and adoring nymphs disporting themselves in
+bas-relief on the mantelpiece, a room looking over the brown fluted
+roofs of Florence; but the great loggia where he and she sat faced the
+Arno, and they had coffee and cigarettes and watched the swift blue
+night fall over Florence while the swarm of lights waked broken
+reflections in the swirling water. On the loggia they exchanged a brief
+mention of their troubles, both commonplace enough; hers a childhood
+with parents who perpetually quarrelled, the mother a hard worldly woman
+who eventually took to drugs, and a father who had at last left for
+another woman the home which was so unbearable; while Sophia herself had
+only shaken off the horrors of it and earned her own living, barely
+enough at that, a few months earlier.</p>
+
+<p>Richard's trouble was his wife, who seemed not unlike Sophia's mother.
+He was both too kindly and too weak&mdash;for his was one of those
+temperaments that shrink from any display of unpleasantness&mdash;to have
+mastered her brutally and for good&mdash;and strong enough to go on living in
+the same house with her because, although she made his life a weariness,
+she was an intensely conventional woman to whom the position of a wife
+separated from her husband before all the world would have been
+intolerable. Between him and Sophia the fact that they both knew the
+terror of not being able to slip out even to post a letter without
+dreading what they might find on going back, made a bond of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia, ignorant as she was, could not be a young, and, for some people,
+a beautiful woman, without having learned a few stray scraps of wisdom,
+and one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> was that when a man began to confide his troubles to her it was
+as well to see less of him. But Sophia let herself drift, because she
+liked being with the man so much; and also the fact that he was from her
+own place, that the relentless gods had brought him to Florence to meet
+her, and would, in due course, send them both back to where, henceforth,
+they would know each other, gave her a curious feeling of being
+entrapped in some web too powerful to break. She never blamed him or let
+him blame himself for what inevitably happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Sophia, my sweet," he wrote her in one of the letters she now picked up
+at random. "I didn't deliberately set to work to make love to you. I
+knew your beauty inflamed me and your wit delighted me. But when we
+first met I thought we should just see each other a few times and
+quarrel and laugh, and I should revel in your looks and no harm done.
+And now little Miss Jervis has turned into Sophia, and either I must
+have Sophia for ever and ever mine, or I ought to have stuck to an
+elderly uncle line and come away with no tears for her and no
+self-loathing for me, and no need to lie and shuffle and make her share
+in the lies and shuffles for the future."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never do that, dear," thought Sophia, laying the letter down.
+"When I have to come back to London we'll meet honestly, or not at all.
+For there's nothing on earth that's worth living in a sea of lies for.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."
+She remembered how he had asked her if she would come and see his
+wife, so that he and she might meet on an accepted footing, and how the
+doubtful taste of the proposition had jarred her. He argued that because
+they would be honestly "playing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> the game" by his wife, Sophia need not
+mind the meeting; his knowledge of women was curiously insensitive and
+blunt, and he had no conception of how impossible it would be for Sophia
+to sit quietly and see another woman doing the honours of his house. In
+this he was not entirely to blame, for Sophia so contrived to hoodwink
+him that he never quite knew she loved him, certainly never knew the
+force of her love. He thought of her as a reckless, innocent child stung
+to lavish giving out of affection and pity, and so, to begin with, she
+had been. The woman Sophia kept up what had become a pose, not only from
+the pride of a maiden, but also because some instinct told her that
+sooner or later he would rather be able to think she had not given more.</p>
+
+<p>For the first few days either of them would have declared that all was
+well and there was no danger, yet each day marked a distinct step
+further on, a definite phase passed through. Sometimes they wandered
+about Florence, in the Boboli and the Cascine gardens, or upon the windy
+heights of Fiesole; sometimes he hired a queer little carriage with
+swift, bedecked horses, and they drove far out into the country, not
+getting home till night. The day before the revelation came was one of
+the most exquisite they spent together, one of which Sophia could still
+hardly bear to think. Leaving the carriage at a little village, they
+wandered on foot into a lovely valley, and laughed because he called it
+"old mastery," pointing out the Turneresque effect of a ruined castle
+set high amidst a mass of olives which were being blown pale against it.
+Presently they came to a stream that stormed down the valley and fell
+into seven successive pools;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> deep, still pools, as green as ice, with
+sunlit bubbles sent driving through them by the impetus of the clear
+arch of descending water. Beside the largest pool, on a smooth grey slab
+of rock screened by the over-hanging cliff, they sat and ate their lunch
+of bread and hard-boiled eggs and wine, and the sun shone on the glossy
+red-brown hair so cunningly folded about Sophia's head, and shone in the
+depths of her grey eyes and on her tanned skin. When they had finished
+she lay a little below him, closing her eyes to feel the blown spray
+drift against her lids, and she never knew till he told her that his
+hand had been on her hair the whole time, and never knew till later
+still that she had been loving him even then. The day passed in a
+perfect harmony of speech and silences, and all the time Sophia was
+giving&mdash;giving peace and mothering and delight, giving the sky and the
+earth and the very air they breathed. Only some one who has ever made a
+gift of a day knows the joy that it is&mdash;how each golden moment,
+conscious of its own beauty, hangs poised like a held breath; how the
+sun and wind and flowers and the upward curves of the supporting earth
+are all parts of the gift, making the giver a god who pours out creation
+for his friend.</p>
+
+<p>The next day they took train to Pisa on a more
+<a name="sophisticated" id="sophisticated"></a><ins title="Original has sophiscated">sophisticated</ins> errand, since he had undertaken to make a
+sketch of the tower for a friend who was "sheeking" some Italian
+backgrounds. Sophia wandered happily about the town while he did so, and
+then they met for lunch in the garden of an old inn.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid of to-day," he told her, "because it can't be as perfect as
+yesterday. Nothing could&mdash;that's the worst of a day like that."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+"I'll <i>make</i> it as perfect," Sophia replied, and she kept her word. She
+still had no idea she loved him, she only knew that she wanted to shield
+and protect him, that she was happy with him and felt the power to make
+him happy, and that she trusted him utterly. Without realizing it, she
+tempted him cruelly by her very trust, and that day her calm
+recklessness of speech, her gaze that meeting his so straight and
+untroubled, disturbed him so profoundly, were too much for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off your glove," he said suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia's notions of love had been culled from books, and she considered
+it inseparable from what she termed "thrills." How was she to know that
+a woman, especially what is called a "nice" woman, can love without the
+promptings of the pulses? Because she felt no sensuous "thrill" as the
+tone of command, it never occurred to her to think she could be in love,
+wherein she was making another common literary mistake&mdash;that of thinking
+that every woman enjoys being mastered. Sophia found her joy in ready
+compliance with the demands of the beloved, not in arranging set scenes
+of clashing wills and conciliations. Taking off her glove, she gave him
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"When I say that I want to kiss you now," he said, "it doesn't mean in
+the way it would have, even a day or two ago. I told you then you
+affected me .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. but now it would be because I love you."</p>
+
+<p>Sophia's hand moved slightly in his.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said hesitatingly, "in a way&mdash;of course. I know you're very
+fond of me&mdash;and all that."</p>
+
+<p>"In <i>the</i> way," he returned, "and I'm not fit to hold your hand. D'you
+know what the life of an average man is like&mdash;especially of a man in my
+circumstances?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+"You mean&mdash;women?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;bought women," he said brutally. "Does it make a lot of difference
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Sophia, refusing to let her mind so much as dwell with any effort of
+realization on his confession, closed her hand firmly over his.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't make any difference. Nothing does. If I could look after
+you&mdash;if you were free to be looked after&mdash;you wouldn't have to go to
+other women any more. I care about you more than about any man I've ever
+met."</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't care about you more than any woman I've ever met. You're
+unique and you're you, but I've been in love a good many times. And
+there's always the big one I've told you about. I feel I've so little
+left to give, and yet&mdash;by God, Sophia! I <i>could</i> give to you, even
+battered old I!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd be such a wife to you," said Sophia proudly, clenching her free
+hand, "that I should fear no other woman on earth."</p>
+
+<p>"And you wouldn't need to .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Sophia!" he cried. "How you would give!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we mustn't, either of us," said Sophia, and to soften the speech
+she bent her head swiftly and kissed the hand she held.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;!" he said huskily, and Sophia led the way out of the
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>That night, after he had left her at her shabby old palace, he went back
+to his hotel and sat up, smoking heavily, most of the night. Towards
+morning, he wrote her a letter&mdash;the first in order of those beside her
+on the seat. She took it up now and read it once again:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+"Sophia, Sophia," it ran, "I'm in the depths of misery. What have I done
+to you and what is going to come of it all? When this time is over? When
+we're back in London and out of lotus land? You know&mdash;stolen interviews
+and weeks without meeting, and that old and awful struggle between the
+'game' at home and my inclinations abroad. And I've hardly written so
+far when I'm feeling better. Dear, what does all that matter? I feel the
+shadow of that coming gloom on me already, but how glorious the
+sunshine's been for me! I'm not going to think or worry&mdash;yet. What will
+happen when I'm back in London must happen, but if I had you by me now I
+shouldn't care a damn for that. I feel stupid and stockish. There are
+such millions of things I want to say to you, Sophia&mdash;and they're mostly
+middle-aged things. That's the worst of it. Warnings I feel I ought to
+give you about myself and my temper and my terrible ease in giving way
+to adverse circumstances. I've told you I'm not big enough or strong
+enough for you to care for me except as a useful old pal. You'll find me
+out and hate me. All sorts of ghastly bogies are waiting to jump out at
+me. They'll get me. But you, dear, you gracious, reckless woman-child,
+whatever you think of me in the future you can't rob me of to-day and
+yesterday and all those days, and especially to-day. Things like that
+are too sacred to write about, almost to think of. And we're deadly
+honest with each other, that's a great thing. The more I dream of you
+the more I want you here, now. I simply can't write, I've been nearly as
+high this afternoon as I shall ever get, perhaps quite&mdash;and one has to
+pay for that. Oh, my dear; please God, you'll<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> never pay for me! Sophia,
+you're very dear to me. Richard. You poor child&mdash;you glorious woman!"</p>
+
+<p>The next day both fell from their high altitude. They had driven to a
+little half-deserted town, a white, dead, staring, crumbling place&mdash;a
+place of blind windows and glaring silences. Both felt a sense of
+tension, and leaving the carriage they wandered round the walls, and
+climbing over a broken gap sat down on a grassy spur of the hillside,
+with their backs to the terrible little town. As usual, by now, they
+talked about themselves, chiefly of him, and he told her that though
+several women had been fond of him as a friend and liked to "mother" him
+even as she did, no one of them had cared for him in another way or
+kissed him as a lover kisses. He slipped an arm round her shoulders as
+he spoke. Sophia was as ignorant as an infant of what kissing like a
+lover might be, and in a rush of pity and affection she turned her face
+up towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it isn't as if we were going on afterwards like this," she said;
+"this is just a bit cut out of life for me to give you. It's taking
+nothing from her, she doesn't want to give you anything. And I want to
+make this bit as splendid as I can for you."</p>
+
+<p>He felt her shoulder touch his as she leant her warm young body towards
+him, he saw the glory of her eager eyes and mouth, and he caught her to
+him, crushing her fiercely.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Sophia wondered if this awful kiss were
+ever going to stop; she had never known there was such a way of
+kissing&mdash;a hard pressure, a sucking of her very soul&mdash;and she was filled
+with horror under it. When he loosed her she turned and buried her face
+against the wall. For a while they sat in silence, then she saw him
+kissing her coat, her sleeve, then her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> head was pressed back against
+the wall and his mouth came to hers again. She stayed passive, dazed. In
+silence they went to the carriage and drove away, and almost silently
+they parted. Sophia spent the night in a misery of shame, he spent it in
+mingled excitement and remorse: fearful lest he had aroused in her a
+passion which would need to be satisfied at the cost of social disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Next day they talked of nothing in particular in a desultory way and did
+not refer to what had happened until, wandering through one of the
+wooded mountain slopes beyond Florence, they came on a tiny sportsman's
+hut with a roof of red-fluted tiles and a huge chimney. Sophia peeped
+and went in; he followed. Within, the hut was only about five feet
+square; flame-coloured leaves had drifted in through the open doorway
+and lay piled on the hearth; on the wall were some names rudely scrawled
+in charcoal.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you sleep?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't. I was thinking what I should say to you to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never again be like you were yesterday. I didn't know it was
+like that. It was dreadful. I can't bear it."</p>
+
+<p>He took her hands and held them.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, I promise you. I had an awful night. I didn't know what to think
+or wish or do. Let's get out of this hut. It's too small."</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the day they spent happily under the trees, and it seemed to
+her that the sense of rest and peace was stronger than if it had never
+been broken. Very soon came their last day together. They drove<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> to a
+deserted castle on a hill, called Castello di Luna, and as they went
+Sophia turned to him.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day's the last," she said, "and I'm going to make it the most
+beautiful present of all to you. We'll pretend, like children. We'll
+pretend there's only to-day in the world, that there are no obligations
+beyond here and now, that we are happy people&mdash;we'll pretend."</p>
+
+<p>He gathered her in his arms and kissed her again and again fiercely, but
+not with the abandonment which had frightened her before, and her heart
+turned heavy within her and she knew she loved him. They stayed till
+evening in the neglected garden of the old castle, left discreetly alone
+by Lucia and Amadea, the little peasant custodians who lived with a
+beetle-browed mother and a score of younger children in the tower over
+the gate. It was Lucia who ventured an opinion as to Sophia's baby, and
+Sophia emptied her pocket-bottle of lavender water over the little
+girls' blue-check handkerchiefs and told Richard to give them five
+<i>lire</i> apiece against the day when they should have babies of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the quiet old garden, he and she sat and talked and were
+silent, and, with her arms round him, she drew his head on to her
+breast, and they played the dangerous game of saying what they would do
+when they were married.</p>
+
+<p>"Your baby would be sweet!" he quoted to her. "Would you dare even that
+for me, Sophia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would I not?" she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I can't give up hoping it may all become possible!" he cried at
+last, but she shuddered a little. "Don't," she said, "it's building on a
+grave."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+But her heart ached at the sweetness of the vision. She never felt any
+temptation to fling her cap over the windmill for him, partly because it
+is very true that "<i>Les bonnes femmes n'ont pas ces tentations-l&agrave;</i>,"
+partly because of the much greater things she wanted to give&mdash;a hearth
+that would always warm him, a pillow that would always rest him, and on
+the hearth a cradle&mdash;and these were things that he could not come at
+through a back door.</p>
+
+<p>They said good-bye on the loggia in Florence, and that night he left for
+Leghorn. He wrote to her in the train; and bringing her thoughts back to
+the present by an effort, Sophia picked up the letter now.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"Sophia, Sophia," she read, "is it only you who pay? My sweet, I
+hope you will never feel what I felt as I went home. The bare
+truth is I am a coward and a cad, besides being a fool. I began
+it, and if I didn't know where it was going to lead to I was a
+fool to play with fire, and I was a cad to go on. Dear, I'd
+rather go through years of anything you feel than ten minutes of
+what I'm feeling. But I've got to stick it henceforth when I'm
+not buoyed up with your presence. It's been so gorgeous, you've
+been so heavenly, that I'd do it all again. But now besides the
+awful want of you there's the clear vision of what I am, and
+it's hideous. I haven't the pluck or the passion to carry you
+right off before all the world whether you would or no, nor the
+sense and the honesty and the decency to be just friends with
+you. Oh, Sophia, I hate myself for it, and hate myself most for
+being glad, deep down, that I <i>did</i> get what you gave me. I
+can't find anything solid or honest in me anywhere, except my
+feeling for you and my joy in our time together, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> I've no
+right to that. This is cruelly unlike what I've preached to you
+about possessing for ever past joys. I suppose I shall forget my
+own wickedness and even come to regret that I didn't take
+more&mdash;take <i>all</i> by force or guile&mdash;for perhaps, after all, it's
+better to be a downright brute than a half-and-halfer. If so,
+shan't I be even more unworthy of all you've given me, you
+sweet, foolish, lavish child? If you were here now, Sophia, I
+shouldn't be feeling all this. You'd only have to smile at me
+and I should get back my pride in having won what I have won.
+But without you I seem to see more clearly what I am. My sweet,
+wouldn't you be happier if you saw me so, too? All I feel now is
+a desperate need of you, your hands and your hair and your eyes
+and your mouth and your voice and your wit and your dear
+mothering. And next month? Secret meetings and concerted lies,
+and all the rest of the filthy game? And I drag you into it all
+because I want you and because my affairs make it necessary to
+do it or part for good. I'm trying to look at it clearly and see
+all the worst&mdash;misunderstandings, preoccupation, work, moods,
+fears, all the things that are going to prevent a wretched thing
+like me from being where he wants to be and doing what he could
+for you. I wish from the bottom of my soul the train would smash
+up and kill me to-night. Oh, if there were only the past few
+weeks to consider it would be simple enough. I've had such a
+time as I've never had before, and you made it. You said you
+would and you did. You've given me such a time as a woman never
+gave a man in our circumstances before. But there's you and the
+world and the future to consider. It's very small moral
+satisfaction to me that I didn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> deliberately set to work to
+make love to you. It grew, as you showed me more and more how
+adorable you were, how gracious and desirable and generous and
+trusting, you dear nymph of the woods, virgin-mother, friend and
+lover and comforter. It's no good going on like this, man's a
+self-deceiving kind of brute, and perhaps before long all the
+glory of the days of you, you, you, will fit in quite
+comfortably and the poison of self-hatred cease to hurt. I stop
+to-morrow night at the Grand Hotel, Livorno. Will you write to
+me there, sweet? If I could really be sorry for it all I should
+like myself better. But I can't. I can only hate myself for
+glorying in what I got by such means. Write to me&mdash;I'm
+frightened and alone.</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Richard.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My sweet," the next letter began, "your letter has come. It's
+what I knew it would be, so brave and sweet and good that I can
+only wonder at you all the more. It soothes and heals and cheers
+me, and once more I am drinking your life-blood and using your
+youth and splendour to live on. Is there anything you wouldn't
+do for my comfort? When I fell asleep this morning about dawn I
+dreamt of you and woke all hot and frightened, because I thought
+I heard you moaning, a horrible, strangled moan. Did I? Oh, my
+dear, I hope not. I can't get at the truth all these miles away.
+You see, that brave, wise letter of yours might have meant a
+huge effort of the will and brain, and not be a direct outflow
+from the you that gave me those days. Shall I ever see that you
+again, I wonder? Your letter's like the touch of your lips on my
+forehead&mdash;cooling, healing, bracing and most sweet. Dear, you're
+not only all I've told you before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> that you are, but you're wise
+as well. Oh! child, girl, most wonderfully woman-wise. My sweet,
+what you could do for me if only we could belong to each other.
+Sophia, I'm trying hard to knock it into my head that we can't,
+but I can see now that the trouble's going to be, not remorse or
+anxiety, but just the big, aching lack of you, and not of your
+beauty so much as of your tenderness and wit and your weak,
+clinging strength. Oh, Sophia, I'm writing a lot of rot, but it
+isn't rot really. I mean, you understand. D'you remember the day
+when you said you'd exactly fitted that long body of yours into
+the ground? That's how I feel when I rest my mind on yours, only
+it's the ground and not me that does the shaping."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The next letter was from Marseilles. The last page, which Sophia read
+through twice, ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"So good-bye to it all, but not good-bye to Sophia. Dear, I
+believe very strongly in spiritual converse (I can't find the
+word I want for it). But don't you feel that my arms <i>are</i> round
+you? I can feel your head on my shoulder and your hair against
+my cheek. I mean that it isn't just cheating oneself with vain
+imaginations to meet like that. I mean to go on thinking of you
+hard and the vision soothes, not aggravates, the longing, and I
+will meet you like that at our Castello di Luna. But oh, my
+dear, I wish it were really true <i>now</i>! There is so much I want
+from you and must go on wanting. Come to me in thought, my
+sweet, until we can see and touch and hear each other again. We
+will always say to each other whatever is in our hearts and
+minds. And so I'm just starting to go back&mdash;Sophia, I can't say
+'home.' Home means what you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> are. Oh, I thought I should go back
+gaily and take it all up, but it makes me sick with dread. I
+ought never to have got out of harness. It's better to go on
+till one drops than to taste freedom and have to give it up.
+Sweet, your eyes and your mouth and your hair are with me
+always. Don't call me a materialist, and say it's only your
+body's beauty that I value. You're sweet to me through and
+through. Oh, Sophia, come often to meet me in Monte Luna. And
+there is Lucia to say sweet, impossible things to make us dream.
+<i>Ti bacio gl'occhi.</i></p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Richard.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Sophia opened the last sheet of paper. It enfolded three primroses, and
+on it was written "<i>Primavere per la Primavera</i>." She looked at them a
+moment, then wrapped them up again and put letters and flowers back in
+the bag. Behind her the sun was near to setting, and the blaze of it lay
+full on the towers, making them a bright tawny-grey against the sky of
+deep steel-colour, and turning to tongues of flame the tufts of yellow
+gillyflowers&mdash;Santa Beata's own plant&mdash;that sprang out here and there
+from the sheer masonry. Some jackdaws flew out of the nearest belfry,
+and circled round it, black amid the brightness. Sophia sprang up and
+walked to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall feel again, if I stay here. Unbearably. I wish I hadn't come.
+I'll go away to-morrow. <i>Richard, Richard, Richard!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>But on the morrow, instead of leaving Sant' Ambrogio, Sophia moved from
+the inn to the little house in the walled garden. Not until she was
+installed there did she discover that though the house was comparatively
+modern, the garden was the very one where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> Santa Beata had seen her
+visions and dreamed her dreams.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The first morning she spent in the place in the wall, writing him a
+letter.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="nb">"My dear boy," she wrote, "by the time you get this you will be
+back in the thick of things. If I have given you anything that
+will help you to go on it's all I want. You must just look on
+this past month as a holiday snatched from the lap of the gods,
+and realize, what you're always telling me, that what one's once
+had one has for always. For there can't be any more, and I'm not
+even going to write to you. Oh, I feel as though I were failing
+you in not writing, but I always meant not to, even when you
+were making plans about it. Letters keep up an atmosphere, and
+that's better not. Yes, I know what you mean about spiritual
+meeting. I'm sort of fused with you as I write. I'm not here&mdash;or
+even in the future with you&mdash;as you read, for I've pulled the
+future to me and made it now, now, now, and I'm with you, in the
+present, as you read this, and I'm drawing your tired head to
+me, and I feel the very way the thick stuff of your coat arches
+up under the pressure of my arm. I am you in every bit of me as
+I write; not yours, but you. But, for the future, in that way
+only. I felt nothing wrong in all I gave you here, because you
+needed what I had to give and we were hurting nobody. I'm sure
+that's the great thing, to hurt nobody, and that includes you
+and even me. It would be hurting both of us if we were to go on
+writing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> because it would keep it all up and we shouldn't be
+able to meet again just as friends, and if we make the break we
+shall; we are strong&mdash;or weak&mdash;enough for that. Richard, let
+your answer to this be a long one, won't you? Try and tell me
+everything I shall want to hear in it because it will be all I
+shall have to live on. Dear child, take care of yourself, don't
+overwork and don't forget that open windows are the best thing
+for that throat of yours. Don't let things at home worry you
+more than you can help, and always remember there's no need to
+worry about me at all.</p>
+
+<p class="nt right">"<span class="smcap">Sophia.</span>"</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>During the time that she was waiting for the answer to her letter Sophia
+lived at tension, finding relief in the making of her last gift to
+him&mdash;for she wrote him a poem, and in spite of the deliberate placidity
+of the thing it eased the fierce pressure of her thoughts in the way
+that only creation can. Sophia was soon to enter on her greatest
+strength of feeling. Richard felt more intensely at the time than at
+looking back, when his emotions were stale to him, and he marvelled at
+the strength they had had; Sophia never knew till the actual hour was
+past what the depth of her emotion was. Partly this was that in their
+weeks together the need for calm and clarity on her side was so great,
+that when with him her being was absorbed in his and so her own feelings
+had no room for conscious movement until afterwards. There are times,
+when affairs are at the crest, when, by its intensity, sensation seems
+numb, but all the while each little thing seen by both inward and
+outward vision is registered on the mind with peculiar sharpness of
+edge; only to be realized when the wave of incident has passed, and even
+then a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> period of numbness may intervene before realization enters the
+soul, deep-driven by the intolerance of memory. Sophia was living in
+that tense numbness now, but through it external things made their
+potency felt. She grew to know every corner of the little town, and
+during the day she would wander several times into the cool dim church,
+to breathe the silence and the peace of it. And "Richard&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." she
+prayed, "Richard&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." She knew of no definite thing to ask for him, she
+could not pray he might be free, and happiness was an illusion she had
+learned to dread; she could only turn his name over and over in her
+mind, lift it up, hold it up and out with all the strength of her will.
+Still, in spite of this focusing of her life&mdash;a focusing that was to
+grow even more passionate in long, hot London months to come&mdash;there was
+no unity about it, little sights and impulses fraught with value, yet
+failed to show any coherent reason; some great cord that could bind
+everything together was still not gathered up.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon she wandered out of the town by the big gates, and turning
+to look back at the sweeping wall she saw a narrow path that girdled its
+base, rising and falling over the rippling flanks of the hill. As she
+looked at it some dim memory stirred in her&mdash;she remembered having read
+in her childhood that in olden days a man might own as much land as he
+could encompass in one walk, returning to his starting-point. The
+root-instinct of enclosure was in the idea, and Sophia had a sudden
+fancy to make the unconscious town her own by the old method. Without
+thinking of much beyond the physical act, she started along the little
+track noting idly yet definitely the look of the stones along the
+spreading base of the fortifications<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> and the sickles of light made by
+the sky's reflection on the curving-over grass blades on the other side
+of the path. She went slowly and when she had half-girdled the town she
+lay down on a smooth slope, and, locking her hands behind her head,
+gazed over the fertile plain. On an almond-tree near a nightingale began
+to sing; against the first pink of sunset she saw his little body as a
+slightly ruffled blot. She let her mind fill with the song so that it
+became the accompaniment to her thought, and slowly the first glimpse of
+comprehension began for her.</p>
+
+<p>First she fell to wondering what the plain would look like seen from
+above&mdash;from the point of view of God. "The human mind, looking from such
+a standpoint, would have to concentrate on one thing at a time if it
+wanted to attain any idea but a general vagueness," thought Sophia. "One
+would have to focus on mountain-ranges, or rivers, or railway-lines.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>She lay imagining it, seeing how the shining network of railroads formed
+a web over the roundness of the world; thinking how it would seem to
+this poised mind a mere web and nothing more. A meaningless web; instead
+of thousands of roads each leading to a different destination and intent
+on its own business. But if the mind, as well as the point of vision,
+were that of a god, then each line would be fraught with its
+individuality&mdash;and not merely because each led somewhere; there was more
+to it than that&mdash;Sophia struggled towards it.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. A different time had
+seen the making of each railroad, different men worked at the making of
+them, men with souls which had thought and felt as they laid the steel
+ribbons on which other souls would be rushed along without guessing
+anything of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> the thoughts and feelings. And yet, surely those emotions
+could not die.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Perhaps, one evening, a workman, straightening his
+back and drawing his hand over his wet forehead, had looked towards the
+sunset, and in the vague irrational way some scenes are registered on
+the mind for always, that aspect of sky and darkening hedge against it
+would stay in his memory, oddly mixed with the feel of the wet drops on
+his hand and the easing of the muscles across his back, to be recalled
+by any similar moment for the rest of his life. If so, how steeped with
+humanity those few yards of steel would be! And, apart from the emotions
+connected with it by the sense of sight, what an important part the
+railroad must play to the men and their wives and children to whom it
+meant food and fire! And then, the lines finished, each train going over
+them would pile the human associations thicker yet, heaping up all the
+feelings, according to their intensity, of the people in the trains. A
+god, looking down, instead of merely seeing the network of steel, would
+see as well all the human emotions still clinging to the places where
+they were lived&mdash;a mystical web woven over tangible things, growing
+deeper with the years. "Which," said Sophia, the first gleam of personal
+light flashing through her, "is why walking round a place makes it yours
+if you do it for that. My seeing of this path will be here always, I'm
+making a belt of consciousness round the town. It's my city! My city set
+upon a hill!"</p>
+
+<p>She scrambled to her feet and for a moment leant her cheek against the
+rough stone of the wall, then she went on round the town and in at the
+great gate.</p>
+
+<p>That evening she sat in Beata's garden, finishing her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> poem to Richard.
+Elate as she was, she still had no hint of what her discovery meant, or
+of how the garden would bring the final revelation to her, but even then
+she felt the soothing influence that held it and her as she wrote out
+her poem. It went to him without a title, but for herself she headed it:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">To the Forbidden Lover</span></p>
+
+<div class="block">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That time I gave you half-a-moon of days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the dear Southern land of many moods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She lured us up among her hill-ringed ways<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far from the ordered gardens, far from where,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sacring the sky, the Christs hang on their roods.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We saw the sea-grey slopes of olive-trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blown foamy-pale, from the cloud-ridden air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fell the swift shadows on those leafy seas.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To lakes of hardened lava we would come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarred, as by whirlpools, with cold crater-rings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or packed in furrows, like mammoth slugs grown numb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At some disaster of creation's dawn&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A burnt-out lunar landscape of dead things.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there some kindlier whim of path would show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rocks that might echo to a piping Faun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or hide a huntress nymph with spear and bow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pan-haunted is that valley where we lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Lay, till lulled senses slid into a dream)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Watching sun-wrought reflections of ripples play<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And break in shining scales through that green pool,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deepest of seven strung on a ribbon of stream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That seven times wings the air in curving flight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from the gleaming arc blew spray to cool<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lids that were rosy films against the light.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A hut with fluted roof we found one morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fairy-story hut; an empty shrine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Haply once dear to comrades less forlorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For on the walls were names of lover-folk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there we ate our bread and drank our wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Sacrament of Fellowship; only dregs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We poured to envious gods, and laughing broke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrush-like, against a stone, our brown-shelled eggs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dearest that castle set in sun and winds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remote as though upon Olympus hung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet with a human tang that drew our minds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To gentle restful things; an open door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warm hearths, silk-curtained beds, and shutters flung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wing-wide to let us watch the stars pulsating.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now through closed slats their light must bar the floor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on the hearth the ash be grey with waiting.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when for daily troubles you make dole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Now that the miles have set you far away)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then to our little castle come in soul.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, where the two girl-children thought us wed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, surely, I need never say you nay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, where the hollow curves between the breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rounded shoulder, draw your weary head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, when the day's lid droops, there give you rest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The weakness of you I can hold to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For since at the world's door the babes unborn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must vainly beat for us; oh, I will be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Virgin-Mother to the child in you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And comradeship is good when sweetly sworn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being no less tender for its commonplace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for its lack of fetters no less true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take what you may, my dear, and with good grace.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>It was Sophia's first and only love-letter, and she sent it when she got
+back to England, as a summons to that friendship in which she could have
+given as richly as in love; and for which, although he had planned it so
+eagerly, he had too much knack of passion and too little depth of
+feeling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The following evening his letter came, and Sophia, noting the thinness
+of it compared with those others she had had, knew how his need of her
+had slackened. She took the letter to her refuge on the wall and sat for
+a while unable to read it, the old nausea upon her. Then she took a firm
+grip of herself and opened the envelope. As she read it seemed as though
+a great blow were struck at her heart. She knew she had expected this,
+yet the actuality was worse to bear than she had thought.</p>
+
+<p>Richard laughed at her intention of not writing, and himself wrote her
+little over a page. He began, as usual, "Sophia, my sweet," and made a
+brief reference to his wife&mdash;"She has not had a bad phase yet&mdash;and
+things are quiet, but what is that when one wants sympathy and passion?
+I feel I am caught up in the old life again and something seems to have
+gone snap in me. Write to me&mdash;for you will write&mdash;to my club." The
+assurance of his tone jarred Sophia, but what hurt her cruelly was his
+brevity. The fact that she had wanted this letter to be a long one had
+honestly seemed to him of no importance when set against the fact that
+he was not in the mood to write it; for he was the creature of his moods
+and consequently unheeding of those which other folk might wish to have
+indulged.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia read the letter over and over, and then quite suddenly felt she
+could not look at it again, and for the first time since the whole
+affair began, she cried. Crouched on the seat she hid her face while the
+sobs tore at her and the tears ran over her crossed wrists,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> and she
+heard the sound of her own sobs coming to her from a great distance.
+After a while she sat up, dried her wet face and made herself confront
+the new aspect of things. She saw that up till now she had not been
+wholly unhappy, for she had had the past. If he were going to prove
+unworthy the past would no longer be hers to glory in but would become a
+time of shame. If&mdash;as prevision showed her&mdash;she was to know him as unfit
+for what she had given, the giving would cease to be her happiness. For
+Sophia was still so ignorant she thought mere companionship and the
+spiritual force of her feeling had been a continuous giving. The
+knowledge that from a man's point of view she had given nothing at all
+was spared her. Since the parting she had repeated over and over to
+herself two sentences from his letters&mdash;"<i>Virgin Mother, friend and
+lover and comforter</i>" and "<i>Home means where you are</i>." If he could
+still mean those things she would be perfectly content that he should
+never again express them; if he were to mean them less as the old life
+and the old allegiance gripped him, then they would cease to be true and
+she could not live on them in memory. Few men are strong enough to leave
+the past alone, many are so afraid of its re-appearance that they try to
+bury it alive&mdash;was he going to deal this last and most cruel blow, a
+future that would destroy the past? The pitiful part of it all was that
+Sophia would never have seen him again sooner than try to revive what
+had happened; had he continued to make love to her she would have
+refused to let him&mdash;all she asked was that the past might be unprofaned.
+Reading his letter she began for the first time to realize the
+selfishness of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> brilliant, lovable drifting nature, and in that
+moment her love of him took its firmest hold of her. The merciful phase
+of numbness was over, and she entered the deep waters at last. She had
+no strength left to struggle, she could only let them go over her head
+and await their passing. For her month of joy she was to pay in a year's
+pain, and she entered on the payment now.</p>
+
+<p>It was the payment for what she had gone without that hit Sophia
+hardest. In what she had given was the supreme comfort&mdash;"It was for
+him"; and this upheld her even when her want of him was worst, when she
+lay the whole night through on the floor of the wall-refuge, thoughts
+and pulses knocking out "I want you&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I want you&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." against the
+stones. It upheld her when, towards dawn, she paced the garden, pausing
+every now and then to lean her cheek against the dew-wet lilac leaves;
+or when she tangled her hands in the grass till the damp blades
+whimpered as she pulled her fingers up them. Sound was a help to her,
+and when she roused the grass to cries or stirred the bushes to quick
+whispering the voice in herself was quieter. She was never violent to
+anything in the garden, and when action became hurried she turned it
+upon herself, beating her hands against her thighs. And always "It was
+for him" upheld her through the darkest times of paying for what she had
+given.</p>
+
+<p>For what she had gone without that help was lacking. It was not passion,
+which, when with him, she had never felt, that plucked at her
+unbearably, it was the thwarted fruit of passion that haunted and
+reproached her. Before his letter came, dream-babies had clustered round
+her, wringing their little hands behind a closed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> transparent door, but
+these were visions of what might have been had circumstances been
+different&mdash;them she could bear. Now thought narrowed and gained in
+meaning: one baby surged towards her, cried to her, smiled at her, lay
+in air always just away from her breast&mdash;one baby that was what might
+have been even as things were. How would it matter what other women he
+loved better if she had only given him what no other woman had? She saw
+herself his slayer in that she had not made life for him in the way a
+woman can make it for her lover, by taking it of his and creating afresh
+with it. Her own life would be such a small price to pay. For Sophia was
+a born creator, and the seeming futility of all she was undergoing, and
+the barrenness it bound her to, filled her with a sense of waste.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the compulsion which bread-winners know was making it
+clear to Sophia that her last days at Sant' Ambrogio were come, that the
+influences at work upon her ever since her arrival, that had first
+revealed themselves to her in her walk round the town, fused and
+concentrated.</p>
+
+<p>The day had been unbearably hot, and Sophia lay behind closed
+<i>persiani</i>, the green of the leaves without reflecting on to the
+whitewashed walls so that the room seemed a pool of green dusk. Sophia
+read a little old Latin <i>Vita Sanct&aelig; Beat&aelig;</i>, which she pondered over
+when, in the cool of the evening, she sought the place in the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"She found something," thought Sophia; "I wonder what it was? Peace, of
+course, but what got her to it? For outwardly her life was as bare as
+mine&mdash;and she had never known even what I know of&mdash;things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> And yet,
+they say that in religion there is every experience.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I wonder if the
+babies she might have borne if she'd married some fellow-peasant ever
+beat at her reproachfully? And if so, what it was she found? She lived
+here, I suppose, walked in the garden and sat in my place in the wall&mdash;I
+wonder what she felt here.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>All was very quiet and still on the wall, and for the first time since
+Richard's letter had come Sophia's aching was a little soothed, the taut
+fibres of her relaxed and her mind slid into receptivity. Then a more
+positive change began to make itself felt to her, though she could not
+have traced its birth or growth if she had tried.</p>
+
+<p>The first note of difference was a physical one. Sophia was
+short-sighted and saw the world in a blur; now her sight began to take
+precision of outline and then the things at which she was looking
+changed too. The towers were more numerous, and from some of them flags
+fluttered out, and not till long after did Sophia remember that there
+had been no breeze that evening. Looking for the house over the
+tree-tops of the garden she saw that it had shrunk oddly, and an outer
+stairway crawled up its wall. On the sundial lay a rosary of dark
+beads&mdash;Sophia could see its steel cross glitter in the evening light.</p>
+
+<p>These were outward changes, on their heels came the inward change that
+made them seem natural to her. It was as though she were in one of those
+dreams when the dreamer knows who he is and that he will soon wake up,
+and yet does and says the most incongruous things; with this
+difference&mdash;Sophia had a curious feeling that it was some one else's
+dream which had taken hold of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> her. She struggled against it at first as
+against an an&aelig;sthetic, but the thing crept over her like a tide.</p>
+
+<p>A child's cry came from the town, and Sophia felt a sudden contraction
+at the heart, and with a thrill realized that this new Person in her
+felt it also&mdash;that they were at one. With that shock of mutual sensation
+the fusion became more nearly complete; of Sophia's own consciousness
+was left only enough to know that she was still herself, hearing,
+seeing, and feeling what some one else had heard and seen and felt
+before her in that place. She knew, too, that the drama played in her
+soul ever since she came to Sant' Ambrogio, a wordless drama in which no
+human being had taken part, was drawing to a climax, and that the human
+element had invaded it at last. She was about to learn what it was for
+which those weeks, especially that hour outside the wall, had prepared
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The air was very clear, and to the long sight with which Sophia was
+seeing, seemed preternaturally so, as though everything were set in a
+vast crystal which made visible each pebble and grass-blade. A numbness
+stole over her body, her hands ached with cold before they, too, lost
+sensation, and in this numbed frame her consciousness gathered
+intensity. Then with a shock, as sudden as a plunge into cold water, her
+mind slid on to what seemed another though not an alien plane. Her
+mind's eye saw all the old points of view, the accepted angles of
+vision, as though torn up and scattered like flung wreckage over the
+shining shore of the world that swung below her; things which had seemed
+big were small, all relative sizes were altered, perspective itself
+seemed run mad, except that after the first breath the knowledge that
+this was the true<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> angle swept over her&mdash;that she, or rather, the Person
+whose vision she was receiving, was looking at the spiritual world from
+the point at which she herself had vaguely imagined gazing at the
+physical.</p>
+
+<p>Round this spiritual globe she saw the Breath of God hang as the air
+hangs round the earth, and she saw it full of ebbing and flowing like a
+current-whorled river. She saw how no wind left emptiness where it had
+been, but how the elastic tissue thinned out, spread, gathered together,
+ran here and there so that no outflow was without its inevitable
+influence of contraction: the whole sphere of air was a medley of
+pattern, always rhythmic and interchanging. She felt how this elasticity
+was brought into play over the surface of the spiritual world, how
+actions, sins, pains of mind and body, rack this way and that as they
+would, were always enveloped by the divine Breath, even as on the
+material globe not a wave can break or a leaf stir but the river of air
+holds true. Always the movements of the Breath made a pattern, as
+invisible to the soul in the midst of it as the wind-pattern is to those
+on earth, a pattern inevitable in the sense that achieved beauty always
+strikes the eye, as being inevitable in its rightness.</p>
+
+<p>Then, this measure of universal comfort given, sensation narrowed and
+concentrated, not on her soul, but on the soul which had felt long ago,
+probably far more intensely, what she was seeing by it and through it
+now.</p>
+
+<p>As Sophia felt the anguish of the Person who had absorbed her, she
+realized it was the same as hers&mdash;the fear and pain of barrenness.
+Whether she had known all along that it was the repeat, the echo, of a
+vision of Beata's that was on her, or whether she only knew it then, she
+could never have told. No actual child that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> might have been cried to
+the Beata consciousness, only natural longings apart from any one
+person, yet the anguish bit keenly, for with it went fear&mdash;the deadly
+fear lest barrenness should be deliberate sin against life. Powerless to
+help, Sophia saw the thought turn in the other's mind, and with that
+they both entered into the last phase of the vision. Here Sophia, who
+had not trained herself, like Beata, to prolonged sustaining of the
+will, flagged and began to fail. A brightness that was too strong for
+her, a sense as of great Shapes, a looming Presence, swept on to her,
+wrapped her round, overweighted her. She struggled to keep up with the
+Beata consciousness, for she knew if only she could succeed in that she
+would find the answer to her own sorrow and Beata's fear. The outer
+world had begun to come back, the towers of the town showed as through a
+mist, some growing more and more definite; some, those of Beata's day,
+wavering uncertainly.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. She strained her flagging nerves, caught at
+her subsiding energies in one last effort.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. A divine warmth suffused
+her breast; sky and air were filled with the gleam of a fiery Child that
+flashed towards her, filled her arms; and sank, not away, but into her
+very soul and, like quick stars, she saw the wounds on His hands and
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>With that she knew, as Beata had known, that this was the reward of
+virginity, that each virgin could mother the Christ-child afresh. She
+knew that to those to whom the joy of making a living body with its
+corresponding soul is denied, creation is not stilled, that there need
+be no barrenness in a garden enclosed. For she saw that there is no
+sterility save that of the wilful mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+With a shock the present reeled into its place; spiritual vision was
+past and physical vision lost keenness as her own blurred sight swam
+back to her; and, worn out, hardly conscious of her own life, but filled
+with peace, Sophia lay along the seat in the kindly dusk.</p>
+
+<p>She was still to know month upon month of pain; sometimes acute as when
+she stayed out of doors all night and made sounds and hurt herself
+physically to distract her mind's distress; but mostly an ache that bore
+on her like a weight, sometimes invading dreams and always by her
+bedside when she awakened. She was to find that for the friendship she
+could have made so exquisite he had no gift; she was to feel the many
+hurts his lack of thoughtfulness inflicted; she was to bear the
+unhappiness of seeing him unworthy of all that might have been so good
+in him as he let himself drift into flirtations where not one of his
+finer senses was touched. She was to feel one sharpest hour of any, when
+the time came, which, if she had given herself would have seen his child
+in her arms.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>And through everything, through the dreadful London months of loneliness
+and the cruder physical hardships of extreme poverty; through her weary
+clear-eyed knowledge of him she was to come back perpetually to the
+refrain&mdash;that surprised herself after a few weeks of comparative calm
+when she hoped she was "getting over it"&mdash;of "How I love him." She had
+no high-flown theories of love; she knew he was not what is tritely
+called "the right man," he was more&mdash;he was the one she loved well
+enough to forgive for not being the "right one," and in those moments
+there was no evading the simple fact that she would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> have given all the
+rest of her life to have been his wife for one year and have borne him a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>But, through and above and around all that, went the memory of Beata's
+vision which she too had seen. The vision itself was often dark and
+meaningless to her in the actuality of her love and pain, but of the
+knowledge that she had had it she was never bereft. Also, it was hers to
+create those pleasant fruits and chief spices of which the greatest
+love-song in the world tells as growing only in a garden enclosed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+<a name="vi" id="vi"></a>THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS</h2>
+
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS</p>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">On</span> a grey day a girl was walking along a crescent of sand that curved at
+the cliff's base. As she went the water welled up in the slanting
+hollows left by her feet, and the fat, evil-looking leaves of the cliff
+plants glistened with spray moisture; even the swollen fingers of the
+marsh samphire, that all seemed to point at the girl as she passed, each
+bore a tremulous drop at the tip. At the end of the little beach the
+girl paused, and then turned to look out to sea, balancing herself on a
+slab of wet shiny granite, where the cone-shaped shellfish clustered and
+from which the long green weed floated out and in on the heave of the
+tide. The girl held back the red hair that whipped about her forehead
+and stared from under an arched palm.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes naught but a plaguey dolphin, d'believe," she muttered, yet still
+stayed for one more glimpse of the dark thing that was bobbing up
+through the curdling foam-pattern. A stinging scatter of spray blew into
+her eyes, blinding her, and when she looked again the dark thing had
+come nearer, and she saw it to be the body of a man caught in the
+ratlines of some shrouds that the sea's action had lapped around the
+mast they had once guarded. Were it not that his chin was hitched over
+the ratlines, so that he was borne along with his face&mdash;a pale blot
+among the paler<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> blots of the foam&mdash;upturned, he would doubtless have
+sunk, for he was not lashed to the mast in any way. A huge foam patch
+had formed in the web made by the tangled shrouds, so that his head and
+shoulders showed clearly against the creaming halo, on which his long
+hair, dark with wet and released from its queue, lay streaked away from
+his tilted face. The girl called to him twice in her strong, rough
+voice; then, since even if he still lived he was past any consciousness
+of doing so, she kept her energies for the saving of him. Wading in as
+deep as she dared&mdash;not more than up to her hips, for even then the heave
+and suction of the water threatened to knock her off her feet&mdash;she clung
+on to a ridge of rock with one hand, and, leaning forward, made snatches
+at the spar whenever it surged towards her. To her dismay she saw that
+with every heave his legs must be catching against some rocks, for his
+head began to sink away from the supporting ratlines, and when at last
+she caught one end of the spar she only succeeded in drawing it away
+from him. His head disappeared; for a moment the dark hole in the midst
+of the foam-circle held, then broke, and was overrun as the whiteness
+closed upon it. The next minute a surge of undercurrent brought him
+knocking against her legs; she just managed to hold on with one hand
+while with the other she plunged down at him. Her fingers met the cold
+sleekness of his face, then caught in his tangled hair, and, drawing
+herself up backwards against the rock-ledges, she pulled him with her,
+step by step. A few moments more and she had staggered up the narrow
+strip of beach with her burden dragging from her arms. Tumbling him
+along the drier sand at the cliff's foot, she knelt beside him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> and
+with hands trembling from the strain that had been put upon the muscles,
+she pulled apart the clinging shirt that was so sodden it seemed to peel
+from off him. She felt at his heart, then laid her ear to the pale
+glistening chest where the dark hair was matted to a point between the
+breasts; she beat that pale chest with her hand, and at last saw the
+faint red respond to the blows of her fingers. On that much of hope she
+desisted, seemed to hesitate, then half-hauling him up by a hand beneath
+each shoulder, she began dragging him towards where the cliff curved
+outwards again to the sea. At a point some three or four feet from the
+ground the cliff overhung so that it was possible to imagine creeping
+beneath it at low tide, though a curtain of glossy spleen-wort hung down
+so thickly it was difficult to tell. Going upon her knees, the girl
+crawled backwards under the dripping dark green fringe, and pulled the
+man in after her. Within, a tunnel, in which it was soon possible to
+walk upright, led at a gradual incline up to what was apparently the
+heart of the cliff, which here was honeycombed into those smugglers'
+caves of the West of which even now all the secrets are not known. Up
+this incline she got herself and him, and at last dragged him
+triumphantly into the big cave where she and her father, Bendigo Keast,
+stored the smuggled goods in which they traded so successfully. It was
+very dark, but with accustomed hands she felt for the small iron box in
+which the flint and tinder were kept; soon a tiny flame sprang to life,
+and she passed it on to a wick that floated limply in a little cup of
+stinking fish-oil on the floor. In the mere breath of light thus given
+the rows of stacked barrels loomed dimly, the outermost curve of each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+gleaming faintly, while between them the shadow lay banded.</p>
+
+<p>Thomasin Keast ran some brandy from a little keg near into her palm and
+tilted it between the man's teeth, then slopped the raw spirit over his
+shirt, drenching it again. Then&mdash;not stripping him, for the modesty of a
+Cornish woman, who thinks shame to show even her feet, prevented
+that&mdash;she filled her hands with brandy and ran them in under his
+clothes, rubbing tirelessly up and down till the flesh began to dry and
+tingle. Around his reddened neck, where the soft young beard merged into
+wet curls, she rubbed; over his shoulders, where the big pectoral
+muscles came swelling past his armpits like a cape, then down the
+serried ribs that she could knead the supple flesh around, past the
+curve-in of the whole body beneath them, to the gracious slimness of the
+flanks and the nervous indentation of the groins between the trunk and
+the springing arches of the thighs. So Thomasin knelt in the gloom of
+the cave, and all the time that his life was coming painfully and
+reluctantly back to him under her strong, glowing hands, she felt as
+though some presage of new life were flowing into herself. The old saw
+has it that the saving of a drowning man brings ill-luck to his rescuer;
+but Thomasin, as she watched grow in his features that intangible
+something which makes the face human instead of a mere mask, scorned the
+superstition; and still more she scorned it as her urgent hands felt the
+rising beat of his pulses and arteries. For during that time his hidden
+form became so known to her that his every curve and muscle, the very
+feel of the strong-growing hair upon him softening into down as his skin
+dried, all impressed themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> clearly on her memory for ever, and she
+felt him hers&mdash;hers by right of discovery as well as right of salvage.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Thomasin Keast and her father lived in a little four-square cottage set
+about half a mile from the headland&mdash;a half-mile of thorn and bracken,
+of tumbled boulders and wedges of furze almost as solid. Here in the
+spring the yellow-hammer and the linnet, the stonechat and the whinchat,
+shrilled their first notes, and at dawn the greybird thrust a thirsty
+beak into the dewy blackthorn blossoms; here the dun-coloured rabbits
+darted in and out of their burrows with a gleam of white scuts. Here,
+too, Keast and his daughter herded the moorland ponies that,
+well-soaped, were loaded with the barrels of spirit and packets of lace
+which had been brought from France at dark of the moon. The cottage was
+of rough grey granite, with a roof crusted with yellow stonecrop that
+looked as though it had been spilled molten over the slates. On either
+side of the door a great wind-buttress, reaching to the eaves, swept out
+like a sheltering wing.</p>
+
+<p>This was the place to which Thomasin Keast brought her man on that
+stormy evening. Dusk was already making the air deeply, softly blue, and
+through it the whitewashed lintel gleamed out almost as clearly as the
+phosphorescent fish nailed against the wall. Half-leading,
+half-supporting him, Thomasin steered the stranger between the
+buttresses and through the narrow doorway into the living-room. A peat
+fire glowed on the hearth and against it the figure of a crouching man
+showed dark. At the noise in the doorway he thrust an armful of furze on
+to the fire, and the quick crackling flare that followed threw a
+reflection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> like the flashing of summer lightning over the whitewashed
+walls, sending the shadows scurrying into the corners and revealing the
+man whose big hand, ridged with raised veins that ran up to the wrist,
+was still upon the furze-stem.</p>
+
+<p>Bendigo Keast was not long past his prime of strength and could still
+have out-wrestled many a younger man. Through his jersey the working of
+his enormous shoulders showed as plainly as those of a cat beneath her
+close fur, and under his chin the reddish beard could not hide the knots
+of his powerful throat. His eyes, blue and extraordinarily alert, were
+half-hidden by the purpled lids, and the massive folds of his cheeks
+that came down in a furrow on either side of his slightly incurved
+mouth, looked hard as iron. Like most seamen when within doors, he was
+in his stockings, and as he rose and his bulk swayed forward his feet
+broadened a little and gripped at the uneven flagstones like those of a
+great ape.</p>
+
+<p>Thomasin spoke first.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes a man I found drownen', da," she said, and in her voice uneasiness
+mingled with a readiness for defiance. "He'm most dead wi' salt water,
+and cold. Us must get en to the bed to wance. Da&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did ee find en?" asked Bendigo Keast, without moving.</p>
+
+<p>"To cove."</p>
+
+<p>"Did a see aught?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should a, and him nigh drowned?" evaded Thomasin; then, as the
+stranger sank on to the settle and let his wet brown head fall limply
+back against it, she went over to a crock of milk that stood in the
+window-sill and poured some into a saucepan.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+"Get en to the bed, da," she said more sharply. "I'll see to your
+supper. He must have nawthen but milk for the night."</p>
+
+<p>Bendigo came forward, and, swinging his long arms round the man, carried
+him off up the stairs that led from the living-room into the first of
+the two tiny bedrooms. He soon came down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me how tes a smells of brandy?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I rubbed en down wi' et to put life into en." Thomasin spoke quietly,
+but the sound of her stirring spoon grew less rhythmical.</p>
+
+<p>"Then a did see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Da, listen to me," said Thomasin, turning round. "S'pose a did see,
+what then? He'm naught but a foreigner from up-country, and wouldn't
+know to give we away. And&mdash;s'posen he'm minded to stay by us&mdash;well, you
+d'knaw we'm needing another hand. We must find one somewhere, and
+there's none o' the chaps to the church-town would come in wi' us,
+because us have allus stood by oursel' and made our own profits. But now
+Dan's dead, you d'knaw as well's I us must get another hand to help in
+the <i>Merrymaid</i>. If you wern't so strong and I as good as a man, it
+would ha' needed four of us to ha' run her."</p>
+
+<p>"How can us knaw whether to trust en?" asked Bendigo suspiciously. "Tes
+bad luck to save a man from the sea, they do say."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't decide nawthen tell you've talked wi' en," advised Thomasin. "May
+be the poor chap was too mazed to take notice o' what he saw. Us'll knaw
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>And next day the rescued man was sitting by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> hearth, somewhat stiff
+from bruises, but otherwise with his wiry frame none the worse. His
+looks had strikingly improved, for now that the soft beard, which had
+never known a razor, was dry, it peaked forward a little, whereas when
+wet it had clung to his too narrow jaw and revealed a lax line of chin.</p>
+
+<p>His story was soon told&mdash;the brig on which he was mate had been
+returning from France when a squall overtook her, and she became a total
+wreck. He had clung to the floating spar for several hours before losing
+consciousness, when the tangled ratlines had borne him up and the tide
+had swept him into the shoreward current which set round the headland.</p>
+
+<p>"And the first thing I knew," he ended, "was your face, mistress,
+bending over me in your cave.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>Keast shot a glance at his daughter. They had exchanged looks before, at
+the man's mention of France, and now Bendigo flung a few veiled phrases,
+with here and there a cant term common to smugglers, at his guest, who
+understood him perfectly, and himself became entirely frank. His name,
+he said, was Robin Start, and that there was mixed blood in him he
+admitted. A more gracious race showed itself in his quick turns of wrist
+and eye, his ease of phrase, in his ready gallantry towards Thomasin.
+Yes, said Robin Start, his mother was a Frenchwoman, and had taught him
+her tongue&mdash;a fact he found useful in his dealings on the other side of
+the Channel.</p>
+
+<p>A bargain is an intricate and subtle thing in Cornwall, a thing of
+innuendoes and reservations, and the one Bendigo Keast struck with the
+stranger was not without subtleties on both sides. Robin Start had quite
+understood all he had seen in the cave, and had made a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> mental note of
+the way out, which gave him a hold over Bendigo. On the other hand,
+Robin, who suffered paroxysms of craving for safety in the intervals of
+delighting in danger, knew it was safer to come in with Bendigo and make
+something for himself smuggling than it would be for him to think of
+escaping from that muscular father and daughter if he declined. As for
+Keast, it was true that since his nephew Dan had been knocked on the
+head by a swing of the boom, he needed some one to take the lad's place.
+A bottle of smuggled rum sealed the bargain, and then, for the first
+time in her life, Thomasin was talked to as a woman. To her father a
+partner; a mere fellow-man to the dark, silent Daniel who now lay in the
+lap of the tides; shunned by the envious villagers, and looked at
+askance by the Government men, Thomasin had never known of the sphere
+which began to be revealed to her that evening. For one thing, she was
+plain, though in certain lights or effects of wind she looked fine
+enough in a high-boned, rock-hewn way. She was what is called in that
+part of the world a "red-headed Dane," and her broad, strongly modelled
+face was thickly powdered with freckles. Though she was only twenty-two,
+hundreds of nights of exposure to wind and wet had roughened her skin,
+but at the opening of her bodice, where a hint of collar-bones showed
+like a bar beneath the firm flesh, her skin was privet-white. The slim,
+brown-haired Robin with his quick eyes was a contrast in looks and
+manners to anyone she had ever met, and mingled with her awe and wonder
+of him was the fierce sense of possession that had entered into her when
+she passed her hands over and over him in the cave. Also she felt
+maternal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> towards him because, though he must have been nigh upon
+thirty, he was one of those men who have a quality of appeal.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stormy autumn that year, and little was possible in the way of
+business; but for Thomasin, who up till now had lived so whole-heartedly
+for her partnership with her father, it became that time of which at
+least the mirage appears to every one once in life. For her happiness
+she and Robin repainted her other love, the <i>Merrymaid</i>, together;
+giving her a new black coat and a white ribbon, and changing the green
+of her upright stem to blue. The <i>Merrymaid</i> was constantly adopting
+little disguises of the sort, running sometimes under barked sails,
+sometimes under white, and alternating between a jib and a gaff-topsail
+with a square head. Then in the long winter evenings the Keasts and
+Robin would sit by the fire, Bendigo pulling at his clay pipe, and
+Thomasin knitting a perpetual grey stocking&mdash;surely as innocent and
+law-abiding an interior as could have been found!&mdash;while Robin told them
+tales of all he had seen and done. Bendigo now and then gave a grunt
+that might have been of dissent, interest, or merely of incipient sleep,
+but Thomasin sat enthralled by the soft tones that to her mind could
+have lured a bird from the egg. Robin told of the thick yellow sea
+towards the north of China, so distinct from the blue sea around that it
+looked more like a vast shoal of sand, stretching for mile upon mile. He
+told, too, of the reddish dust, fine as mist, which once fell for days
+over his ship when he was far out at sea; it fell until the decks seemed
+like a dry soft beach, and lungs and eyes and at last their very souls
+seemed filled with it. His captain said it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> blown along the upper
+air all the way from the Mongolian plains, but he himself thought it
+came from Japan, that country of volcanoes. Thomasin's ideas of
+volcanoes were derived from a broadside she had once seen which
+represented Vesuvius apparently on fire from the base, but she felt sure
+the mysterious sand was of the devil, and must come from somewhere hot.</p>
+
+<p>So Robin talked and Thomasin listened, and with the coming of spring new
+portents woke in her blood and stirred the air. Robin began to slip his
+hand up her arm when he stood beside her in the shadow of the
+wind-buttresses, and when they went down to the caves he would make
+opportunities to press against her in the passages. The sheer animal
+magnetism of the girl allured him, and he found her crude and hitherto
+fierce aloofness going to his head. Though frequently now he felt a
+sudden passion of distaste for the physical strength of this father and
+daughter sweep over him, yet would come another passion, waked by the
+wonder of it that still lay in Thomasin's eyes&mdash;and he would think of
+what a pleasure was at his hand in Thomasin's potentialities for passion
+and the freshness of her.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>She herself was reluctant yet, for all her hot blood and untrained
+nature, partly because of the ingrained suspicion of soft things her
+upbringing had engendered, partly because of the eternal instinct which
+prompts withdrawal for the purpose of luring on. But in her heart she
+knew&mdash;she knew when the spring was on the cliffs, and he and she lay on
+the thymy grass watching for the fish-shoals; when around Robin's
+turf-pillowed head the rose-specked, flesh-hued cups of the sea-milkwort
+stood up brimming with the jewelled air as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> with a divine nectar; when
+among the cushions of silvery lichen and grey-green moss the scented
+gorse flung a riot of yellow, and the mating birds answered each other
+on a note like secret laughter. Then Thomasin would sometimes close her
+eyes for the happiness she dared not yet acknowledge; yet those days of
+soft joy and beauty were as nothing to the night of hard work and danger
+that finally brought her surging blood to acknowledge him as lord&mdash;that
+night when all the dominant male in him was of necessity stung to the
+surface by danger.</p>
+
+<p>They were running a cargo of thirty barrels over from France&mdash;he, she,
+and her father. The <i>Merrymaid</i>, which was sloop-rigged and of about
+twenty tons burden, was quite enough for the three to handle, laden as
+she was with the corded tubs slung together with the stones already
+attached; for it was proposed to sink the cargo and then run on to
+harbour openly, a thing frequently done when the Preventive men were
+known to be on the watch. Robin was suffering from one of his
+nerve-revulsions; he dared show no sign of it, but as he sat in the
+bows, keeping a look-out through the darkness, he told himself that if
+this trip were brought off in safety it would be the last as far as he
+was concerned. He could stand the portentous figure of Bendigo looming
+at him through the little cottage no more, and he knew what to do.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+As for Thomasin, he would not lose her&mdash;a woman surely sticks by her
+man. And if not, she would never harm him; and there were other women in
+the world&mdash;for the appeal Thomasin had for him was of sex, and not of
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>Thomasin sat with her arm along the tiller, keeping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> the <i>Merrymaid</i> on
+a nor'-nor'-west course so as to make the Lizard light. They were
+running under their foresail and close-reefed mainsail only, for the
+south-west wind for which they had waited was swelling to storm-fury.
+The <i>Merrymaid</i> lay right over, the water scolding past her dipping
+gunwale and the clots of spindrift that whirled over the side gleaming
+like snowflakes in the darkness, which was of that intense quality which
+becomes vibrant to long staring. Robin, straining his eyes, was only
+aware of the danger when they were almost on it, but his voice shrieked
+out on the instant to Thomasin: "Hard-a-port!" and again, in a desperate
+hurry of sound, "Hard-a-port!"</p>
+
+<p>Thomasin jambed the helm up as Bendigo, with the agility of long use to
+sudden danger, eased off the sheets; and then Thomasin could see what
+menaced them. A Preventive boat, like themselves with no light save the
+wretched glimmer over the compass, had been lying to under her mizzen,
+and already her men were making sail. Thomasin sat gripping the tiller
+while the voices of her menfolk came to her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"The topsail!" shouted Robin; but Bendigo's voice made answer: "Not till
+us has to&mdash;it might rip mast off in this gale. Try the jib.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>They set the jib and shook out the reefs in the mainsail, and the
+<i>Merrymaid</i> answered to it like a racehorse to the whip. She quivered
+all her length, the tiller pushed like a sentient thing against
+Thomasin's palm and they went reeling on.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly an hour they ran before the wind, helped by the flood-tide,
+and all the time the Preventive boat was slowly gaining on them, for she
+was carrying a larger stretch of canvas. She was nearly upon them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> when
+the sound of breaking surf told that they were nearing the Manacles, and
+the tide was still fairly low. Suddenly Robin's voice came again, this
+time with a thrill in it: "Now's our chance!" he called. "We'll hoist
+the topsail and make a run for it inside of the Manacles."</p>
+
+<p>He was at the mast as he spoke, and Thomasin heard the thin scream of
+the unoiled sheave as the topsail halliards ran through it. The next
+moment the mast creaked and bent; the almost useless jib slackened as
+the other sails took all of the wind, and the <i>Merrymaid</i> shook her nose
+and plunged into the broken water that gleamed between the blackness of
+the mainland and the Manacles.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll never dare follow!" cried Bendigo; and even as he did so, the
+Preventive boat, trusting to her superior speed to make good, began to
+come round to the wind so as to pass the Manacles on the outer side. The
+added strain proved too much, and her mast snapped with a report like a
+gunshot&mdash;the one clean, sharp sound through all that flurry of rushing,
+edgeless noise, and it told its own tale to the eager ears on the
+<i>Merrymaid</i>. She, under the influence of the topsail, was burying her
+bows at every plunge, and Thomasin knew, by the sudden cessation of the
+tiller's tug, that the rudder had lifted clear of the racing water, only
+to drive into it again with a blow that sent her reeling. Thomasin's
+fight with the boat she loved began in real earnest. Yawing stubbornly,
+the <i>Merrymaid</i> pulled against the tiller so that the rough wood seemed
+to burn into Thomasin's flesh, so hard had she to grip it to keep the
+boat's head from going up into the wind.</p>
+
+<p>With the breath failing in her throat, she had none<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> left to cry for
+help; she could only wrestle with the tiller, which, all the weight of
+the yawing <i>Merrymaid</i> against it, seemed about to crush her.</p>
+
+<p>Then hands came over hers in the darkness, and even at that moment her
+flesh knew Robin's.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me if I make a mistake; you know this hell-pool better than me,"
+he called to her through the noise of the surf; and, with an easing of
+the muscles so exquisite as to be almost a pain in itself, she felt him
+absorb the weight of the boat into his grip. With the lifting of that
+strain from her shoulders and arms came the realization of how
+mercilessly his hands were grinding hers against the tiller, yet that
+pain sent the first tremor of unadulterated passion through her that she
+had ever felt, because it was the first time he had hurt her. There was
+no need for her to call directions to him&mdash;he and she were so welded in
+one at the tiller that the unconscious pull of her arm beneath his told
+him, in his state of receptive tension, what to do more surely than any
+words. That was their true mating&mdash;not what followed after&mdash;but there in
+the stern of the reeling <i>Merrymaid</i>; for all that was least calculated
+and finest in Robin had leapt to the need of it, and their consciousness
+was fused as completely in the fight for life as the pain in their hands
+was at the tiller.</p>
+
+<p>They were through&mdash;through and safe, and five minutes more saw them
+round the point and in the calmer water, where they slipped the cargo,
+and soon after they had made the harbour under easy sail, innocent of
+contraband from stem to stern.</p>
+
+<p>All danger over, Thomasin felt oddly faint, and let her father go on
+ahead across the moor while she hung heavily on Robin's arm, her numbed
+hands slowly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> tingling back to life as they went. Arrived at the
+cottage, a faint light, that went out even as they looked, told of
+Bendigo's entry, and Robin set the lantern he carried on the flagstones
+between the buttresses. Thomasin leant back against one of them, and the
+dim light, flickering upwards, softened her marked bones and brightened
+her eyes. Every defect of skin was hidden; it showed pale, and her mouth
+velvet dark upon it. Robin's lips fastened on her throat below her ear
+and stayed there till she stirred and gave a little cry, then his mouth
+moved on and up till it found hers. The kiss deepened between them; his
+head bent, hers upstretched. Time stayed still for one moment, during
+which she wanted nothing further&mdash;she was not conscious of the ground
+beneath her or the pain in her back-tilted neck, not even of his
+supporting arms or the throbbing of him against her&mdash;all her being was
+fused at the lips, and she felt as though hanging in space from his
+mouth alone.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Robin Start waited till the cargo had been safely run and sold, and then
+he went across the moor to the village and made a compact with the
+Preventive men. The excitement of that night had had its usual way with
+him, and he wished never to meet danger again as long as he lived. He
+was suffering from a somewhat similar revulsion as regarded Thomasin,
+though there he knew the old allure would raise its head again for him.
+Bendigo's suspicious guard of him had relaxed, partly because the elder
+man admitted that it was Robin's nerve which had planned the dash that
+saved them, partly because he guessed how it was with his daughter, and
+thought Robin safely theirs.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. And Robin had at last done that which
+had been in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> mind ever since the beginning, and had sold the secret
+of the caves to his Majesty's Government. Nervous of being overheard in
+the village inn, Robin took the two head men with him over the moor to
+the headland, safe in the knowledge that Bendigo was drinking heavily in
+the cottage&mdash;the way in which he always rewarded himself for a
+successful run. Robin showed the men the cunningly hidden entrances to
+the passages, and then for a few minutes they all three stood making
+their final arrangements. Robin found it wonderfully simple, the step
+once taken. It was agreed that the officers of the law were to surround
+the cottage that night after its inmates were abed, all save Robin, who
+was to be sitting in the kitchen ready to open the door. No harm was to
+be done to the girl&mdash;and, indeed, the Preventive men knew enough of
+Cornish juries to know that Bendigo Keast himself would get an
+acquittal; but his claws would be drawn, which was all they wanted.
+Robin, unaware of this peculiarity of a Cornish jury, would have been
+considerably alarmed had he known of it. Bendigo free to revenge himself
+had not entered into the scheme of the man from up-country, where the
+law was a less individual matter.</p>
+
+<p>"At ten o'clock then, my man," were the last words of the Preventive
+officer; but he added to his companion as they walked away: "The dirty
+double-mouth!" and the distaste of the official for the necessary
+informer was in his voice. "At ten o'clock," echoed Robin, and then was
+aware of a quick rustling behind him&mdash;much the noise that a big adder
+makes as it leaves its way through a dry tuft of grass. The sun was
+already setting, and the glamorous light made vision uncertain, yet
+Robin thought he saw a movement of the gorse more than the breeze
+warranted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> The bush in question was one of those which concealed an
+opening to the caves, and Robin pulled it aside and peered into the
+darkness. Silence and stillness rewarded him, and he swung his legs over
+and descended a little way. All was quiet and empty in that passage; he
+turned into another&mdash;that, too, was innocent of any presence save his.
+He went through up that exit, and, still uneasy, stared across the moor.
+If anyone&mdash;if by chance Thomasin had been in the passage, she could have
+slipped out that way while he was entering by the other, and be out of
+sight by now.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The sweat sprang on to Robin's brow. Then he took
+counsel with himself. There was no reason why Thomasin should be at the
+caves; nothing was doing there. It would be the most unlikely thing on
+earth, because neither she nor her father ever ran the unnecessary risk
+of going there between the cargoes. Robin knew this, and felt
+reassured&mdash;how, after all, could he imagine that Thomasin, sick at the
+reaction she felt in him, might have gone to re-gather force at the
+place where she had first felt him hers?&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He thought over what he had
+said, and took still more heart when he remembered he had not let fall a
+word that showed a light holding of Thomasin; and that, he told himself,
+was the only thing a woman could not forgive. He felt it safe to count
+on passion as against the habit of a mere business partnership, which
+was all her relationship with her father had ever been. Dimly Robin was
+aware that all her spiritual life had gone into that partnership, into
+the feeling of her family against the world that had become an obsession
+with her until he had brought another interest into her life; but Robin
+Start would not have believed an angel from heaven who had told him that
+the habit of years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> could be stronger with a woman than a new passion.
+And, as regarded most women, Robin would probably have been right.
+Besides, it was impossible that any one could have been there, and
+Thomasin was his.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He gave himself a little shake and set off to the
+cottage, and such was the force of his revulsion against a life of
+dangers and the sinister suggestiveness of the Keasts' muscular
+superiority, that he felt his heart lighter than it had been for months
+past. He was even pleasurably, though subconsciously, aware of the
+poignant beauty of the evening, and noted the rich shrilling of a thrush
+from the alders by the stream. It was one of those evenings when, for a
+few minutes, the light holds a peculiarly rosy quality that refracts
+from each sharply angled surface of leaf or curved grass-blade; steeps
+even the shadows with wine-colour, and imparts a reddish purple to every
+woody shoot, from the trunks of trees to the stray twigs of thorn
+piercing the turf. Wine-coloured showed the stems of the alders, the
+lines of blackthorn hedges, the distant drifts of elms whose branches
+were still only faintly misted with buds. Beneath Robin's feet the
+yellow red-tipped blossoms of the bird's-foot trefoil borrowed of the
+flushed radiance till they seemed as though burning up through the
+ardent grass, and on the alders the catkins gleamed like still thin
+flakes of fire. The whole world for a few magic moments was lapped in an
+unharmful flame that had glow without heat, and through the gentle glory
+of it Robin went home.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock that night, with no lanterns to betray them, half a dozen
+Preventive men, followed by several of the leading men in the village,
+who had got wind of the affair and were eager to see the self-sufficient
+Keasts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> brought to book, all came up over the moor through the darkness.
+No light showed in the cottage as they neared it, but that was merely
+because the buttress, sweeping at right angles to the window, obscured
+it from the approach. The buttress once rounded, the men saw the light
+shining as Robin Start had promised. The officer motioned the others to
+stay quiet, and then&mdash;he was a mere lad, and eager to be the first in
+everything&mdash;he tiptoed to the window and peeped through.</p>
+
+<p>Robin Start was sitting quietly in the armchair, a candle burning on the
+stool beside him. There was nothing alarming in that, yet the next
+moment the boy at the window stepped back with a great cry.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got two mouths!" he shrieked. "He's got two mouths!"</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Far out on the dark Channel father and daughter were drawing away in the
+<i>Merrymaid</i>, the rising wind and some other urgent thing at their backs,
+but the sense of justice done as their solace.</p>
+
+<p>And in the cottage, his wrists tightly roped to the arms of the chair
+and his silky beard shaved away, sat Robin Start. The footlight effect
+of the candle eliminated all shadow under his sloping chin, making it
+seem one with his throat, and that was cut from ear to ear. For the only
+thing on which he had not calculated was that before such treachery as
+his passion drops like a shot bird.</p>
+
+<p>The candle flame flared up as the last of the tallow ran in a pool round
+the yielding wick, and for one distorted moment the edges of the slit
+throat flickered to the semblance of a smile. Then the flame reeled and
+sank, and, spark by spark, the red of the glowing wick died into the
+darkness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+<a name="vii" id="vii"></a>WHY SENATH MARRIED</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+WHY SENATH MARRIED</p>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Asenath Lear</span> was neither a pretty woman nor a particularly young one,
+but having in the first instance embraced spinsterhood voluntarily, she
+was cheerfully resigned to its enforced continuance. All the world knew
+she had been "asked" by Samuel Harvey of the Upper Farm, and though all
+the world considered her a fool for refusing him, it still could not
+throw in her face the taunt that she had never had a chance.</p>
+
+<p>She had said no to Samuel because at that time she was young
+enough&mdash;being but twenty&mdash;to nurse vague yearnings for something more
+romantic than the stolid Sam, but the years fled taking with them the
+bloom that had been her only beauty, and romance never showed so much as
+the tip of a wing-feather.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm doubtful but that you were plum foolish to send Sam'l Harvey to
+another woman's arms, Senath," her mother told her once, "but there, I
+never was one for driving a maid. There's a chance yet; ef you'll look
+around you'll see 'tes the plain-featured women as has the husbands."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes because the pretty ones wouldn't have en, I fear," said Senath on
+a gleam of truth, but with a very contented laugh, "men's a pack of
+trouble in the flesh. I would ha' wed sure 'nough ef et hadn' been that
+when you get to knaw a man you see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> him as somethen' so different from
+your thought of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, you and your thoughts&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." cried the petulant old mother, quoting
+better than she knew, "they'll have to be your man and your childer,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>Senath, the idealist, was well content that it should be so, and when
+her mother's death left her her own mistress, she went to live in a tiny
+cottage up on the moors with no companions but those thoughts&mdash;the
+thoughts at once crude and vague, but strangely penetrating&mdash;of an
+untaught mind whose natural vigour has been neither guided nor cramped
+by education.</p>
+
+<p>Her cottage, that stood four-square in the eye of the wind, was set
+where the moorland began, some few fields away from the high road. At
+the back was the tiny garden where Senath coaxed some potatoes and beans
+from out the grudging earth; and two apple trees, in an ecstasy of
+contortion, supported the clothes-line from which great sheets,
+golden-white in the sun, bellied like sails, or enigmatic garments of
+faded pinks and blues proclaimed the fact that Senath "took in washing."</p>
+
+<p>On the moor in front of the cottage stood nineteen stones, breast-high,
+set in a huge circle. Within this circle the grass, for some reason, was
+of a more vivid green than on the rest of the moor, and against it the
+stones on the nearer curve showed a pale grey, while the further ones
+stood up dark against the sky, for beyond them the moor sloped slightly
+to the cliffs and the sea.</p>
+
+<p>These stones were known as the "Nineteen Merry Maidens," and legend had
+it that once they were living, breathing girls, who had come up to that
+deserted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> spot to dance upon a Sunday. As they twirled this way and that
+in their sinful gyrations, the doom of petrification descended on them,
+as it did on the merry-makers of old when Perseus dangled the Gorgon's
+head aloft. So the nineteen maidens stand to this day, a huge fairy-ring
+of stone, like those smaller ones of fragile fungi that also enclose a
+circle of greener grass in the radius of their stems. Two luckless men,
+whom the maidens had beguiled to pipe for them, turned and fled, but
+they, too, were overtaken by judgment in a field further on along the
+road, and stand there to this day, a warning against the profanation of
+the Sabbath.</p>
+
+<p>When Senath was asked why she had taken such a lonely cottage, she
+replied that it was on account of the Merry Maidens&mdash;they were such
+company for her. Often, of an evening, she would wander round the
+circle, talking aloud after the fashion of those who live alone. She had
+given each of the stones a name, and every one of them seemed, to her
+starved fancy, to have a personality of its own. Senath Lear, what with
+the mixed strains of blood that were her Cornish heritage, and the added
+influence of isolation, was fast becoming an old maid, and a wisht one
+at that, when something happened which set the forces of development
+moving in another direction. Senath herself connected it with her first
+visit to the Pipers, whom hitherto, on account of their sex, she had
+neglected for the Merry Maidens.</p>
+
+<p>One market day&mdash;Thursday&mdash;Senath set off to a neighbouring farm to buy
+herself a little bit of butter. The way there, along the high road, lay
+past the field where the Pipers stood in their perpetual penance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> and
+Senath could see them sticking up gaunt against the luminous sky for
+some time before she came up with them. For, as was only fitting, the
+Pipers were much taller than the Maidens, being, indeed, some twelve
+feet high.</p>
+
+<p>Senath walked briskly along, a sturdy, full-chested figure, making, in
+her black clothes (Sunday-best, "come down"), the only dark note in the
+pale colours of early spring that held land and air. The young grass
+showed tender, the intricate webs made by the twisted twigs of the bare
+thorn-trees gleamed silvery. On the pale lopped branches of the elders,
+the first crumpled leaves were just beginning to unfold. The long grass
+in an orchard shone with the drifted stars of thousands of narcissi,
+which a faint breeze woke to a tremulous twinkling. The road was thick
+with velvety white dust, for it was some time since rain had fallen, and
+the black of Senath's skirt was soon powdered into greyness. As she
+went, she wondered what it was that gave the air such a tang of summer,
+until she suddenly realized it was the subtle but unmistakable smell of
+the dust that brought to her mind long, sunny days, when such a smell
+was as much part of the atmosphere as the foliage or the heat. Now there
+was still a chill in the air, but she hardly felt it in the force of
+that suggestiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"Sim' me I'm naught but a bit of stone like they Pipers," she said to
+herself, as she paused to look up at them, towering above her. Then a
+whimsical thought struck her. "I'll lave the Maidens be for a while and
+take my walk to the Pipers," she thought, "tes becoming enough in a
+woman o' my years, I should think."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+She smiled at her mild jest and plodded on to the farm.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fairly large house, with a roof still partly thatch, but mostly
+replaced by slate. In front of it, a trampled yard reached to the low
+wall of piled boulders and the road. Senath found the mistress of it
+leaning on the wall, ready to exchange a word with the occupants of the
+various market-carts as they drove homewards, and the business of the
+butter was soon transacted. Yet, for some odd reason, Senath was not
+anxious to take up her basket and go. Perhaps it was that touch of the
+unusual in the false hint of summer; perhaps, too, her decision to vary
+the course of her evening walk and the playmates of her imagination;
+but, whatever it was, she was vaguely aware of a prompting towards human
+contact. The two women sat on the low wall and chatted in a desultory
+fashion for a few minutes. Then the farmer's wife, shading her eyes with
+her hand, looked along the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Your eyes are younger'n mine, Senath Lear," she said. "Tell me, edn
+that Sam'l Harvey of Upper Farm comen in his trap?"</p>
+
+<p><a name="Senath" id="Senath"></a><ins title="Original has Seneath">Senath</ins> turned her clear, long-sighted eyes down the road and
+nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be driving out Manuel Harvey to the Farm," Mrs. Cotton went on.
+"You do knaw, or maybe your don't, seein' you live so quiet, that since
+Sam's been a widow-man, Upper Farm's too big for he to live in in
+comfort. He's comin' to live in church-town and look after his interests
+in building. You do knaw that he's putting up a row of cottages to let
+to they artisesses. And Upper Farm he's let to Manuel Harvey."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+"Is he any kin to en?" asked Senath, interested, as any woman would have
+been, in this budget of news about her old suitor.</p>
+
+<p>"No, less they'm so far removed no one remembers et. There's a power of
+Harveys in this part of the world. Manuel do come from Truro way."</p>
+
+<p>The high gig had been coming quickly nearer, and now drew up before the
+two women.</p>
+
+<p>"Evenen, Mis' Cotton. Evenen, Senath," said Sam, with undisturbed
+phlegm. "Could'ee blige we weth some stout twine? The off-rein has
+broken and us have only put en together for the moment wi' a bit o'
+string Mr. Harvey here had in's pocket."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cotton bustled off into the house, and Sam climbed down, the gig
+bounding upwards when relieved from his weight. He was a big, fair man,
+his moustache distinctly lighter than his weather-beaten face, and since
+the days when he had courted Senath the whites of his eyes had become
+yellowish round the muddy hazel of the iris. Senath looked from him to
+Manuel, still in the gig, and as she did so, something unknown stirred
+at her pulses, very faintly.</p>
+
+<p>Manuel Harvey was dark, and though his eyes, too, were hazel, it was
+that clear green-grey, thickly rimmed with black, that is to be seen in
+the people of that part of the world who have a strain of Spanish blood
+in them, dating from the wrecks of the Armada. Those eyes, beneath their
+straight brows, met Senath's, and in that moment idle curiosity passed
+into something else.</p>
+
+<p>Many women and most men marry for a variety of reasons not unconnected
+with externals. There has been much spoken and written on the subject
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> "affinities," a term at the best insecure, and often pernicious, but
+very occasionally, when the two people concerned are elemental creatures
+with little perception of those half-shades which are the bane of
+civilization, there does occur a flashing recognition which defies known
+laws of liking, and this it was which came to Manuel and Senath now.</p>
+
+<p>"Falling in love" is ordinarily a complex, many-sided thing, compact of
+doubts and hesitations, fluctuating with the mood and with that powerful
+factor, the opinions of others. It is subject to influence by
+trivialities, varying affections and criticisms, and the surface of it
+is an elastic tissue setting this way and that, as thoughts ebb and flow
+from moment to moment, even though far beneath it may remain
+unperturbed. Yet every now and then come together two of that vanishing
+race who are capable of feeling an emotion in the round&mdash;the whole
+sphere of it. This sense of a spherical emotion came to Senath as she
+would have pictured the onslaught of a thunder-ball, save that this fire
+had the quality of warming without scorching utterly.</p>
+
+<p>Looking up, as she stood there stricken motionless, she saw him
+transfigured to a glowing lambency by the blaze of the setting sun full
+on his face; and he, staring down, saw her against it. Her linen sun
+bonnet, which had slipped back on her shoulders and was only held by the
+strings beneath her chin, was brimming with sunlight, like some magic
+pilgrim's pack; and her eyes, opened widely in her worn, delicately
+seamed face, gained in blueness from the shadow her face and neck made
+against the brightness. Even so, to most people she would have appeared
+only a wholesome-looking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> woman in early middle life, who had kept the
+clear and candid gaze of childhood; a woman rather ungainly and
+thick-set. Manuel saw her as what, for him, she was&mdash;a deep-bosomed
+creature, cool of head and warm of heart&mdash;a woman worth many times over
+the flimsy girls who would pass her with a pitying toss of the head.
+Manuel thought none of this consciously; he was only aware of a pricking
+feeling of interest and attraction, and had he been asked his opinion
+would have said she seemed a fine, upstanding woman enough. Then, when
+Mrs. Cotton came out again with the twine and a big packing-needle, he,
+too, climbed down and, his fingers being younger and more supple than
+Sam's, attended to the stitching of the rein.</p>
+
+<p>"Must be gwain on, I b'lieve," announced Sam, when this was in progress.
+"Can't us giv'ee a lift, Senath? I'm sure us wont mind sitten familiar
+if you don't, will us, Manuel, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, thank'ee, Sam," said Senath quickly, "I do rare and like a bit
+of a walk before goin' to the bed. Evenen to you, and thank you, Sam.
+Evenen, Mr. Harvey."</p>
+
+<p>He raised a face into which the blood had come with stooping over the
+rein.</p>
+
+<p>"Evenen, Miss Lear," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>She started down the road at a good pace so as to have turned off before
+they came up with her, but she heard the clip-clop of the horse's hoofs
+as she drew alongside with the Pipers, and she turned in towards them
+through a gap in the hedge. She pushed a way among bracken and clinging
+brambles, and as she reached them the sun slipped behind the S. Just
+hills,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> and in the glamorous mingling of the afterglow with the swift
+dusk she stood, as the gig, the two men in it apparently borne along
+level with the top of the hedge by some mysterious agency, passed by.</p>
+
+<p>For a while she stood there, the dew gathering on stone and twig and
+leaf. She glanced up at the two dark columns reared above, her hand
+against the rough surface of the nearer one.</p>
+
+<p>"Must give en names, too," she said, with a backward thought for her
+Merry Maidens. "Why shoulden I call they after Sam and his new tenant?
+That one can be Sam,"&mdash;looking at the stumpier and wider of the two,
+"and the tall one, he can be Manuel."</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>There is little to tell of the love of Senath and Manuel save that it
+was swift, unspeakably dear, and put beyond the possibility of
+fulfilment by the death of the man. The slight accident of a rusty nail
+that ran into his foot, enhanced by the lack of cleanliness of the true
+peasant, and Manuel, for such a trifling cause, ceased to be. They were
+fated lovers; fated, having met, to love, and, so Senath told herself in
+the first hours of her bitterness, fated never to grasp their joy. The
+time had been so short, as far as mere weeks went, so infinitely long in
+that they had it for ever. After the funeral in the moorland churchyard,
+Senath went into her cottage and was seen of no one for many days. Then
+she reappeared, and to the scandal of the world it was seen that she had
+discarded her black. She went about her work silently as ever, but
+seemed to shun meeting her fellow-creatures less than formerly. A bare
+year after Manuel's death she had married Samuel Harvey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+No one wondered more than Sam himself how this had come about. If the
+marriage had been a matter of several months earlier, the common and
+obvious interpretation as to its necessity would have been current
+everywhere, and Sam would have had his meed of half-contemptuous pity.
+As it was, no one knew better than Sam that the other Harvey's wooing
+had gone no further than that wonderful kiss to which middle-aged
+people, who have missed the thing in their youth, can bring more
+reverential shyness than any blushing youth or girl.</p>
+
+<p>Had it been any other than Senath, folk would not have been so
+surprised. A woman may get along very well single all her days if she
+has never been awakened to another way of life, but give her a taste of
+it and it is likely to become a thing that she must have. Yet few made
+the mistake of thinking that that was how it was with Senath. A strongly
+spiritual nature leaves its impress on even the most clayey of those
+with whom it comes in contact, and all knew Senath to be not quite as
+they were. Yet she married the red-necked Samuel Harvey, and they went
+to live together at the Upper Farm. And, as to any superior delicacy,
+Senath showed less than most. A few kind souls there were who thought,
+with the instinctive tact of the sensitive Celt, that it might hurt her
+to hear the name "Mrs. Harvey" which would have been hers had she
+married Manuel. On the contrary, just as though she were some young
+bride, elated at her position, she asked that even old friends should
+call her by the new title.</p>
+
+<p>Sam was genuinely fond of Senath, and mingled with his fondness was a
+certain pride at having won<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> what he had set out to win so many years
+ago; yet, it was so many years that he had been in a fair way to forget
+all about it till, one evening, he met Senath as he was driving home
+from market, much as when he had been with Manuel a year before. It had
+struck him as odd, for Senath was not apt to be upon the highway at that
+time, and although she was going in an opposite direction she asked for
+a lift back in his gig. When they came to the track that led off to her
+cottage, he tied up the mare and went with her to advise her as to her
+apple-trees, which were suffering from blight, and by the time he left,
+half an hour later, they were promised to each other. How it came about,
+Sam never quite understood; the only thing he was sure about was that it
+had been entirely his doing. Yet he couldn't help wondering a bit,
+though it all seemed to follow on so naturally at the time, that it was
+not until he was on his way back to the Upper Farm that he felt puzzled.
+He was still wondering about it, and her, when the parson joined their
+hands in the bleak, cold church, and Senath stood, beneath her
+unbecoming daisied hat, looking as bleak and cold as the granite walls
+around her.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Sam found this to be a misleading impression. Never was bride
+more responsive, in the eager passive fashion of shut eyes and quiet,
+still mouth, than was Senath. Only now and again, in the first weeks of
+their life together, she would give a start, and a look of terror and
+blank amazement would leap across her face, as though she were suddenly
+awakened out of a trance.</p>
+
+<p>Men of Sam's condition and habit of mind do not,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> by some merciful law
+of nature, make ardent lovers, and life soon settled down comfortably
+enough on the farm. Senath was a capable housewife, and, what with the
+dairy-work and cooking and superintending the washing, and such extra
+work as looking after any sickly lamb or calf, she had plenty to do. And
+yet, in the midst of so much activity, every now and then Sam was struck
+by a queer little feeling of aloofness in Senath&mdash;not any withdrawing
+physically, but a feeling as though her mind were elsewhere. He might
+find her sitting on the settle with her eyes closed, although she was
+obviously awake, and an expression of half-fearful joy on her face, as
+on that of a person who is listening to some lovely sound and holding
+his breath for fear lest the least noise on his own part should frighten
+it into stillness.</p>
+
+<p>However, Sam was not an imaginative man, and since the house shone with
+cleanliness such as it had never known, the shining not of mere
+scouring, but of the fine gloss only attained by loving care, he did not
+trouble his head. Women were queer at the best of times, and besides, a
+few months after the marriage, reason for any additional queerness on
+the part of Senath became known to him. After she had told him the news,
+Sam, ever inarticulate, but moved to the rarely felt depths of his
+nature, went out into a field that was getting its autumn ploughing, and
+his heart sang as he guided the horses down the furrow. Even as he was
+doing now, and his father had done before him, so should his son do
+after him, and the rich earth would turn over in just this lengthening
+wave at the blade of the ploughshare for future generations of Harveys
+yet to come. Like most men with any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> feeling for the land in them, Sam
+was sure his child must be a son.</p>
+
+<p>And to him, who had not hoped for such a thing in marrying Senath, to
+him this glory was coming. Everything seemed to him wonderful that day;
+the pearly pallor of the dappled sky; the rooks and screaming gulls that
+wheeled and dipped behind his plough; the bare swaying elms, where the
+rooks' nests clung like gigantic burrs. Dimly, and yet for him keenly,
+he was aware of all these things, as a part of a great phenomenon in
+which he held pride of place.</p>
+
+<p>When he came in, his way led through the yard, where a new farm-cart,
+just come home, stood under the shed in all the bravery of its blue body
+and vermilion wheels. Senath had crept round in the shed to the back and
+was studying the tailboard, one hand against it.</p>
+
+<p>"Looken to see all's well to the rear as to the front?" called Sam
+jovially. "That's a proper farmer's wife."</p>
+
+<p>Senath started violently and dropped her hand, looking away before she
+did so. "It looks fine," was all she said, and went within doors,
+passing him. A small portent, so slight Sam did not even know it for
+what it was, and yet something in her look and manner seemed to chill
+him to the bones of him. Then, and after, he put anything unfathomable
+in her ways down to her condition, and so turned what might have been a
+source of discomfort to the account of his joy.</p>
+
+<p>The blossom was thick upon the apple-trees when Senath's boy was born.
+He had a long fight of entry, and when the sky was paling and flushing
+with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> reluctant dawn, Sam, who had spent the night alternately
+snoring on the settle and creeping upstairs in his stockinged-feet,
+heard the first wailing of his son. He heard, too, the clank of the
+milk-pails in the yard without, the lowing of an impatient cow, and the
+crowing&mdash;above all sounds the most melancholy to anyone upon a sleepless
+pillow&mdash;of a triumphant cock. As he heard all these common noises about
+his own place, he realized how much more dear they had all become to him
+by reason of what was in the room above. He knew that his wife had what
+is inadequately called a "bad time," but although the boards over his
+head had creaked for hours to the anxious tread of doctor and of nurse,
+not a cry had come until this one that heart and ear told him was from
+his child. He went upstairs once more, creeping less this time, and
+knocked timidly at the door, then coughed to show who it was. The nurse,
+a thin, yellow-haired London woman doing parish-nursing for her
+health&mdash;a woman he hated while he feared her&mdash;opened the door a slit and
+looked unsympathetically at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wanten to knaw&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." began Sam.</p>
+
+<p>"None the better for hearing you," snapped the nurse. "She must have
+absolute quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"I dedn't go for to mane that," explained Sam naively, "but the cheild?
+'Tes a boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's a boy, and doing all right," said the nurse, and shut the door
+in his face.</p>
+
+<p>Sam went downstairs and put his head under the yard-pump, and laved his
+bare red arms in its flow, as men might bathe in the waters of perpetual
+youth. The great rejuvenation of a new birth had come upon him. For that
+is what it resolves itself into&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> advent of a son to a middle-aged
+man. Sam felt his term of life taking immortal lease.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day, the news that his son was weakly was broken to him,
+but made very little impression. The child could not die, because it was
+his. To other men, the common lot of humanity, but not so near home.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was at its height, all around romance and mystery had
+dissolved in the broad shining, when they told Sam his wife wished to
+see him, but that he must be careful not to excite her as she was not
+yet beyond the danger-point.</p>
+
+<p>When he saw her, the burning colour in her face strong against the white
+of her pillows, he thought they must be exaggerating, and he patted her
+hand cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"You've done fine, Senath, lass," he assured her. "'Tes a brave an'
+handsome chap, is young Samuel."</p>
+
+<p>"Not Samuel," answered Senath. Her voice, though low, was composed.</p>
+
+<p>"What then?" asked Sam, remembering his wife was at a time when she must
+be humoured as far as speech went, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>"Manuel," said Senath. Then, at his start of dissent: "Yes, Manuel."</p>
+
+<p>"You'm my wife, not his," said Sam. "The cheild's my cheild, not his,
+and et shall be called for ets father."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Manuel's wife," said Senath, "and et's Manuel's cheild."</p>
+
+<p>Sam calmed down, for he was now sure that his wife was light-headed. It
+was a common symptom, he had been told.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Senath, answering his thought, "I'm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> not that wisht, Sam. I'm
+in my right mind, and I'm only waiten on you to go. I'm waiten to go,
+Sam, I'm waiten to go."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, lass?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm waiten till I've told 'ee why I wedded you, Sam. It was because of
+Manuel."</p>
+
+<p>She lay still a moment and then went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I had et in my thoughts to die a maid and go to him as he
+left me. A woman allus thinks that to begin with. And then et began to
+come clear to me&mdash;all the future. How I'd go on getting older and more
+withered and wi' nawthen to show for my life. And when I saw Manuel
+agan, he'd say: 'Where's the woman I loved? Where's her blue eyes, and
+the fine breast of her?' And I'd have to say: 'Wasted, gone, dried-up,
+Manuel.' I wanted him. I wanted Manuel as I never thought a woman could
+want anything but peace, and he was taken from me. So I determined in my
+heart I'd go to Manuel, and go with somethen to take to en. I married
+you, Sam, because you had the same name, and was the same height, and
+when I shut my eyes, I could fancy my head was on his breast, and that
+et was his heart beaten at my ear. That's why I made folk call me 'Mrs.
+Harvey': so I could force myself to think et was Manuel Harvey's wife I
+was. That's why I used to look at your name painted up, ef et was but on
+the tailboard of a cart. I used to hide the front of et, so that I could
+pictur' 'Manuel' written under my hand. Sometimes I'd pictur' et so hard
+and fierce that when I took my hand away, I expected to see er there,
+and the sight of 'Samuel' was like a blow. I got to knaw that, and to
+look away before I took my hand off."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+Again she stopped and lay awhile as though gathering energy; then the
+indomitable voice went on:</p>
+
+<p>"At first, when you took me in your arms, et was near to turning me mad,
+and I thought I couldn't go on wi' et; but I got better and better at
+imagining et was Manuel, though et was like to kill me every time I woke
+up. For et was like waking up every time I had to let the strain of my
+imagining go for a moment. And each time et left me feelen weaker and
+more kind of wisht than before. But I was glad of that, for et all
+brought me nearer. When you wedded me, I swear I'd got so I made et
+Manuel, and not you, who was holding me, and for nine months I've borne
+his cheild beneath my broken heart. I've made et his."</p>
+
+<p>She drew the little sentient bundle nearer to her, as though to defend
+it from him. He stared at her, then spoke slackly, trying to urge force
+into his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tes all nawthen but in your mind, all that. It's what's real as
+matters."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember, Sam, how the wise woman to church-town had a spite
+against Will Jacka's Maggie, and told her her cheild was goin' to be an
+idiot; and how et preyed on the mind of her, and the boy has no
+mouth-speech in him to this day? That was only in her mind. And how, in
+the Book, Jacob put the peeled wands before the eyes of the sheep, and
+the lambs came all ring-straked and speckled? I've put the thought of
+this before the eye of my mind; I've thought et into bein' Manuel's
+cheild, even as I belong to him and him only. And 'tes to him I'm taken
+et."</p>
+
+<p>Sam turned and stumbled from the room, down to the kitchen, and dropped
+upon the settle. The next moment, a sudden flash of fear sent him to his
+feet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> He tore up the stairs, knocked into the nurse as she came out of
+her room, and swept her along with him.</p>
+
+<p>Senath had her shawl folded thickly over the baby's face, and she had
+turned over so that her body lay upon it as she clasped it to her
+breast. But the baby still lived, and when they had taken it from her,
+she fell into a sullen silence, through which the tide of her life, too,
+began to creep back steadily.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>Ten years later, three little boys were playing in the yard at the Upper
+Farm. One was a few years older than the other two, who were obviously
+twins, fair and round and apple-cheeked, with bright brown eyes like
+little animals, and slackly open mouths. The other boy was of nervous
+make, with black hair that fell into eyes at once more human and more
+forlorn. He was very dirty, but he had stuck a yellow jonquil through a
+hole in his jersey. They were playing at moulding little men out of the
+mud, and setting them about an inverted flower-pot which did duty for a
+house. Suddenly, one of the little boys pushed away the mud-farmer which
+the eldest had placed at the arched break in the rim, which was the
+house door, and stuck his own much more primitive effort there instead.</p>
+
+<p>"You'm not to put your man there, Manuel," he screamed. "That's the door
+like where father do stand of a Sunday. My man must stand there, because
+every one do say you'm a changeling and no proper son at all."</p>
+
+<p>Manuel scrambled to his feet and ran across the yard; his hard little
+boots clattered as he went. He ran into the kitchen, where his mother,
+stout and comfortable-looking,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> was baking. The dim room was filled with
+the good smell of hot bread and pastry.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, mother," sobbed Manuel, "Sam's said et again. He says I'm not
+like da's son; that I'm naught but a changeling."</p>
+
+<p>Senath raised a flushed face from her work and kept the rolling-pin
+still a moment while her eldest-born spoke, but she did it mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'd only try not to be so odd-like and so different to the rest o'
+the family," she complained, "the boys would'n say it so often. There,
+take this hot split and lave me be."</p>
+
+<p>At ten years old, neither wounded pride nor the worse hurt of always
+feeling a something unexplained about himself that did not fit in with
+his surroundings, was proof against hot pastry, and Manuel went away
+with it, though slowly, to a spot he knew of beside the mill-leat. There
+a robin was building her nest in the alders, and there, too, if he lay
+very still, with shut eyes, he could imagine all sorts of wonderful
+things that the brook was saying. How he was really not the son of these
+people at all, but of some wonderful prince, who would come upon a
+coal-black charger, like the one in the old fairy-book, and take him
+away, away from this discordant house where he felt such a very lonely
+little boy.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen, Senath, about to resume her work, saw that the jonquil
+had dropped from his jersey to the floor, where it lay shining, a fallen
+star. Senath stood staring at it for a minute. For one flash,
+bewildering and disconcerting, like the sudden intrusion of last night's
+dream into the affairs of to-day, she saw herself again&mdash;that self she
+never thought of as being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> the precursor of the present Senath, but as a
+totally different person altogether, whom, try as she would, she could
+not connect up. She had long ago given up trying, busy with her man and
+the boys. The two younger were little trouble enough beyond the ordinary
+vexatiousness of childhood, but there was something about Manuel which
+was different, and which often annoyed Sam, who liked to brag about his
+eldest boy, and tried always to make him out as exactly like himself.
+But she was conscious that the Senath of long ago would have understood.
+Now, as she stared at the jonquil, it seemed to her that that Senath was
+she herself again, though she had grown to despise the dreaming,
+fanciful creature of her muffled memory&mdash;perhaps there had been
+something fierce and great about her, that the present Senath could
+never capture again.</p>
+
+<p>The moment passed, and she let the flower lie where it was, and
+presently, when Sam, the successful husband, came in ruddy and clamorous
+for his tea, his heavy boot trampled it, all discoloured, into a crack
+of the stone flags. The little boys came tumbling in, too, also
+clamorous, after the way of men-folk.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Manuel?" demanded Sam.</p>
+
+<p>Both little shrill voices were obsequious with the information that he
+had gone towards the leat.</p>
+
+<p>"Day-dreamen, I'll be bound," said Sam, his mouth full of hot split.
+"Eh, well, so were you, missus, at one time of day. Life'll soon knock
+et out of him, like et has of you. And you'm all the better wi'out et,
+arn't 'ee, lass?"</p>
+
+<p>She said "Yes," and would have thought so if it had not been for the
+memory of that moment, already faded, when she had seen the jonquil. As
+it was, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> sent a quick thought out to the boy who lay playing with
+imaginings by the alders; a thought of vague regret and a faint hope
+that it might not be with him quite as it had been with her. And whether
+the thought reached his unknowing self or not, to Manuel's fancy the
+leat had a finer tale and brighter hopes to tell him that evening than
+usual, and he was at the age when, although he knew the corresponding
+fall on entering the house must be the more severe, he never doubted
+that the dreams were worth it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+<a name="viii" id="viii"></a>THE COFFIN SHIP</h2>
+
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p class="heading"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span><br />
+THE COFFIN SHIP
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Of</span> all the ships that traded from the Islands to the mainland, the
+<i>Spirito Santo</i> had the worst reputation. She was known as a "hungry"
+vessel; her chief mate was a French Creole from Martinique who had been
+trained aboard a Yankee clipper, and her captain was a blue-nose who
+behaved as such. Since, on the outward voyage, the crew generally
+consisted of men who had made the Islands too hot to hold them, and, on
+the return trip, of half-dazed sailors who had been doped by crimps,
+there was a certain superficial variety about it&mdash;a variety merely of
+individuals and not of kind.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Spirito Santo</i> had been a good enough ship in her day, and had
+weathered a typhoon in the China seas and a hurricane in the Atlantic,
+but she was one of the earliest steam vessels built, and had started
+life as a side-wheeler; her paddles having been changed for a single
+screw and simple engines, of the kind guaranteed to combine the greatest
+possible consumption of fuel with a correspondingly large waste of
+steam.</p>
+
+<p>She was a wooden vessel, iron still being looked at askance when her
+keel was laid, and her lines were those of the true sailing-ship, with
+bows that bulged out almost square from either side of her cutwater,
+above which her long bowsprit raked the air. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> result was that she
+steamed as a wind-jammer, with her bows delaying her speed by their
+large surface of resistance; and went better under canvas, with her
+screw running free. She was barque-rigged, that is to say she carried
+trysails on her fore and main, below the lovely tower of royals,
+topgallant sails and top-sails which even her stumpy sticks and too-wide
+yards could not make ungraceful. Her long thin funnel amidships looked
+as though it had got there by mistake, and indeed she belonged rather to
+the class of auxiliary steam than that of auxiliary sail, in spite of
+the motive with which she had conceived. In fact, her trouble was that
+in a world where steamships, and iron ones at that, were beginning more
+and more to snatch at trade, and where the great racing clippers still
+broke records, the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, being neither one thing nor the
+other, had become a losing proposition. Her owners grudged tar on her
+sides as sorely as kids of meat to the men, and no shabbier trader than
+the <i>Spirito Santo</i> nosed her way from Port of Spain to the Golden Gate.
+Yet she got there all right, bullied and driven, got there on cheap coal
+and rotten rigging, though her engines seemed as though they must beat a
+hole in her straining sides and her planks part from sheer exhaustion.
+She held together as a coherent and reliable whole partly because, with
+all her lack of grace, she was a sweet ship in a seaway if one knew her
+idiosyncrasies, partly because her skipper could nurse a ship through
+anything while the hull stayed afloat. And the <i>Spirito Santo</i> took some
+handling, for in spite of her wide yards and tonnage to the tune of
+seven hundred, she only drew fourteen feet and was as tricky as a cat.
+Her skipper coaxed her and humoured her, bullied her at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> just the right
+moment, in short, treated her as though she had been a woman&mdash;only Joab
+Elderkin would not have taken the trouble over any she-thing of flesh
+and blood.</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin was the best-feared man in the Caribbean. He had a thin sinewy
+frame and a very soft voice which he never raised in ordinary
+conversation, and this gave a curious effect of monotony to whatever he
+was saying. Never drunk at sea, he was always perfectly sober on land
+except for the first twenty-four hours after landing, when he soaked
+steadily. Even his movements were gentle, as though to match his voice
+and the dark eyes, deep-set in his prematurely wizened face, held the
+wistful puzzled sadness of a monkey's. His language was unparalleled for
+profanity, and to the most hardened there was something of terror in the
+appalling flow of words issuing on such an unruffled softness of
+intonation. In those days the master of a vessel had almost unlimited
+power within the area of his ship's rails. If, goaded by ill-use, a man
+struck his officer, he was quite likely to be shot straightway, and on
+reporting the matter the captain would be praised for his promptness in
+quelling mutiny at its rising. Floggings with the cat or the yoke-rope,
+brutal mishandling with knuckle-dusters and belaying-pins, were the
+quick and common resort on the slightest count, and Captain Joab
+Elderkin was famous for his technique in all these methods. His ship
+literally merited the trite description of a floating hell, and one boy
+aboard her had died of a broken heart. The child had failed in an
+attempt to get ashore at Frisco, been brought back and flogged at the
+mizzen rigging, and afterwards turned his face to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> the dark forecastle
+wall, refused food and died. The little incident had added to Elderkin's
+unsavoury reputation, but it was this reputation which made him a man
+after his owners' hearts. He was not likely to suffer from scruples, and
+it is needless to say that the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, a free-lance trading
+from what port she chose, carried a good deal now and again on which she
+never paid duty. Her skipper's only form of conscience was his
+seamanship. The owners might grudge paint, but every bit of brass-work
+on board shone like gold, and the decks were holy-stoned till the men
+sobbed over their aching knees. At twenty-three he had held command of a
+full-rigged ship trading to China. Now, since the <i>Spirito Santo</i> was
+becoming more and more of a falling investment, he rarely made the
+passage round into the Pacific, and, Atlantic-bound, dodging from the
+Islands to Colon and down the coast as far as Rio, Elderkin was wont to
+refer to the time when he really had been a sailor.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>It was his conscience as a seaman that the owners were up against when
+they called the captain into consultation over the diminishing returns
+of the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, and proposed to him the course that is regarded
+by sailors the world over as the great betrayal.</p>
+
+<p>To anyone without a nice sense for spiritual values, everything is
+merely a matter of price, and Elderkin's fee for the loss of his ship
+and with her his soul was higher than the partners could have wished.
+They were greasy men, with the Spanish strain, that too often, in those
+latitudes, means a hint of the negro as well, and their office was on
+the outskirts of the dirty vulture-ridden Port of Spain of those days.
+The room was bare, and upon the blotchy whitewash of the wall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> there
+hung nothing but a map and a few advertisements. The mosquitoes sang
+through the unscreened windows; outside, in the dusty strip of bleached
+earth between the house and the road, a hedge of hibiscus was in bloom.
+In the glaring sunshine the flaunting back-curled blossoms seemed afire
+as they shot their thin vermeil tongues out into the air made so alive
+with light. To Elderkin, as he sat in the dimmed room, full of green
+reflections from the vegetation without, came the unpleasant thought
+that it was as though he were under seas .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and the flaming tongues of
+the hibiscus were some evil sea-growth, mocking at his plight.</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward and helped himself again from the bottle of whisky
+that stood upon the bare table. When he lifted it a crescent of gold
+fled across the table, slipping back again when he set the bottle down,
+as a ripple of reflected light runs through water. Elderkin had often
+seen a gleam like it when watching a small bright fish flash through a
+pool.</p>
+
+<p>His reluctant mind responded to the kick of the liquor: the dirty little
+room, the watchful eyes of the partners as they sat on either side of
+him in their soiled linen suits, no longer seemed so unpleasant to him,
+accustomed as he was to the sordidness that, if care is not exercised,
+so soon overtakes an interior in the tropics. His caution still remained
+to him, and he sounded the scheme at every point, finding the partners
+were prepared, full of urgings, advices, rosy forecasts, cunning
+details. On the homeward voyage, that would be best .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. he could take
+her out in ballast, bring her back loaded to her limit and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> beyond it.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Those
+were days before the Plimsoll mark, and vessels often left
+port&mdash;even great English ports&mdash;so loaded that their scuppers were all
+but awash, and not only left but perhaps attempted the passage round the
+Horn itself. There would be no difficulty about that, but Captain
+Elderkin must, of course, not sail from a Peruvian harbour as the
+authorities there had an unpleasant habit of marking a load-line on
+every ship that cleared and seeing that she did not go above it.
+Besides, a cargo was awaiting him in Chili, and the partners were
+prepared about that too. It was to be a double deal, the actual copper
+and nitrates, with a small amount of gold, which she would go out to
+take was, by arrangement with a certain official known to the partners,
+to be changed for sand and stones. Just a sprinkling of nitrate at the
+top, perhaps, since nitrate is loaded in bulk. It was risky, but on the
+other hand it was a thing often carried through with success, and
+Elderkin, who knew all the tricks and possibilities of both coasts,
+could see his way with reasonable clarity. The partners advised Captain
+Elderkin not to attempt bringing the <i>Spirito Santo</i> round the Horn, as
+he might have more difficulty in saving himself; if the accident
+occurred on the Pacific side it would be better for many reasons. If he
+were picked up by a passing ship he must, of course, see to it that the
+<i>Spirito Santo</i> was too far gone for salvage, or that would indeed make
+matters worse with a vengeance. An accident with the steering-gear&mdash;they
+had reason to know that Olsen, the chief engineer, would come in on
+it&mdash;when off a weather shore, would probably be the best solution. But,
+naturally, there was no need to instruct so clever a sailor as Captain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+Elderkin in his part of the affair .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. more smiles and whisky.</p>
+
+<p>Joab Elderkin sat and absorbed it all, with little expression on his
+sad, gentle face, his thin mouth remained imperturbable under the heavy
+dark moustache, only in his high and narrow temples a pulse beat. As he
+drank he raised his price, till at last the point was reached above
+which the partners refused to go and below which he would not descend.
+At that point they came to their agreement, and Joab Elderkin went out
+of the office having sold his only form of honour on a gamble which
+stood to put him on the way towards attaining a ship of his own. For
+that was the desire of his heart, and until now had seemed as impossible
+of realization as the phantom vessel of a dream. Probably for no other
+inducement under the skies would he have given another ship's salvation.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>The month of August found the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, all sail set, running
+down the Pacific coast before a north-westerly wind. Elderkin watched
+the weather carefully, for he had no idea of losing his life, or, for
+the matter of that, the lives of any of his crew who could be allowed to
+retain them with safety to himself and the partners. For there is always
+the personal equation to be studied in a matter of this kind, and
+Elderkin had given much thought to the members of his crew. He had
+hoped, while always fearing the futility of it, that the first mate,
+Isidore Lemaire, might be kept in ignorance. For a while it seemed as
+though this were so, but since leaving port Elderkin had felt doubtful
+of the creole. Lemaire had a furtive way with him at the best of times,
+a hint as of something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> that crept and glided rather than walked
+normally, but then so had many of his race. He was supposed to be a
+white&mdash;in the expressive Island phrase, he "passed for white"&mdash;but on
+the French and Spanish and even the Danish islands the objection to
+racial mingling is not nearly so strong as in the colonies that have
+always been English. Also, Lemaire came from Martinique, which, after
+Haiti, is the headquarters of Obeah, and worse, of voodoo. Even quite
+good families in decaying Martinique had dealings with the unclean
+thing, and St. Pierre was known, even among sailors, for a hotbed of
+strange vices. All this was why Lemaire made such a powerful mate, for
+the crew, except for the red-headed Danish engineer from St. Thomas,
+were either half-castes from the Islands and the southern continent, or
+full-blooded negroes; which was to say that superstition was so part of
+them that the last vestige of it would only run out with the last drop
+of blood from their bodies. Elderkin knew better than to penetrate the
+forecastle, but he was aware of the bottles filled with dead
+cockroaches, bits of worsted and the rest of the paraphernalia for the
+casting of spells, which hung there. He himself had found that the only
+way to keep his steward off his whisky was to decorate his locker with a
+similar charm, and since he had done so had suffered no more from
+pilfering. All this was obeah, harmless enough, and if now and then, a
+white cock was sacrificed in the forecastle and a seaman went somewhat
+mad on its blood, Elderkin ignored the matter. But Lemaire was, he knew,
+suspected by the crew of darker dealings. There had been a rumour that
+the reason Lemaire left Martinique was because the disappearance of a
+planter's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> child was like to be laid at his door, and the rumour was
+enough to make the niggers cringe before him. This was a master, perhaps
+the friend of papalois and mamalois, with the power of life and death.
+Elderkin loathed him&mdash;there are things from which the most hardened
+white man shrinks, and it would have to be one utterly unregenerate who
+could dabble his hands in voodooism. Nevertheless, the suspicion made
+Lemaire the best nigger-driver in the length and breadth of the
+Caribbean, and Elderkin made use of him for that reason. Now, for the
+first time, he began to feel the man's peculiarities getting on his own
+nerves. A word dropped now and again, odd looks from the protuberant and
+opaque brown eyes, were making him wonder if the mate guessed, whether
+it would be better to take him into the secret and trust to his never
+reaching shore.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>They were nearing the forties when Lemaire spoke. The day was wet, with
+a strong wind, all the morning they had been driving through tingling
+veils of rain and spray, shipping green water that slopped over the
+holds and poured in foaming torrents along the dipping scuppers. All day
+the wind&mdash;which till then had thrummed through the rigging and held the
+sails in their stiffened curves so steadily that the <i>Spirito Santo</i>
+kept a fairly even keel&mdash;had been falling on fitfulness. Loaded as she
+was, the seas that raced past her, almost level with her deck, seemed
+higher than they really were. An odd darkness held the air and through
+it everything bright&mdash;the flashes of foam, a wheeling bird, or rare
+shoal of flying fish&mdash;showed up with startling pallor. In the second
+dog-watch Lemaire came to Elderkin in the chart-room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+Most men have a weakness and Elderkin's&mdash;probably because he never made
+a confidant of a human being&mdash;was the dangerous one of pen and paper. He
+was making calculations on the fly-leaf of an old Bible which had been
+unearthed with a lot of other junk from a locker. Calculations about
+ships&mdash;the varying costs of handling a four-masted schooner and a
+barque, the advantages of chartering a small screw steamer; calculations
+of routes and cargoes, of many things, but always calculations.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>The curious darkness had swamped the chart-room, and made the
+discoloured clasps of the Bible and the brighter brass of the ship's
+fittings gleam out; made the captain's always pale face seem waxen,
+showed two sallow flames in the mate's ophidian eyes. For a moment the
+two men looked at each other in silence, then Lemaire spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you figger it all out," he observed. "Don't forget me, dat's all.
+I come in on dis, my friend. <i>Sacr&eacute; nom de Dieu</i>"&mdash;on a sudden flash of
+menace&mdash;"did you think I was going to get not'ing out of it? Or perhaps
+you was going to drown me, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin had got to his feet, and was watching the other man steadily.
+When he spoke, his voice was as low and tired as ever.</p>
+
+<p>He asked what the blank the blank mate thought he was talking about.
+Lemaire explained that he was talking about the scuttling of the
+<i>Spirito Santo</i>, and that the captain knew it as blank well as he did.</p>
+
+<p>"While the ship remains afloat, kindly remember that I am in command,
+Mr. Lemaire, and address me with proper respect. If you do so I'll
+discuss business with you. If not, I'll see that you go to hell along
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> the ship. Savvy, you herring-gutted son of a frog-eater, you?"</p>
+
+<p>Lemaire savvied. He had grown sickly hued with anger, but he spread his
+dark hands in apology, so that the pinkish palms seemed to flash in the
+unnatural gloom.</p>
+
+<p>Then they got to business. What Elderkin had feared had
+happened&mdash;Lemaire's suspicions were aroused in port over the loading of
+the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, over the paucity of the stores taken aboard, over
+the many oddnesses that reveal themselves to a cunning mind when
+something beyond the normal is in progress. Elderkin remembered the
+night when Lemaire and the successfully bribed official had gone
+together, as he had then thought, to a rowdy house&mdash;it must have been on
+that occasion that the stronger man won definite confirmation from the
+weaker. Now there was nothing for it but to let Lemaire in on the
+deal&mdash;for the present.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not t'inking of a storm, no?" asked the mate, when both men had
+laid their cards upon the table. "With our boats we should not stand a
+chance.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. A fire, perhaps? We are car'n some cotton, sah, and it might
+have been packed damp."</p>
+
+<p>"Too risky. I thought of all that. We can only trust our boats to takes
+us a little way. I must pile her up near the mainland. There's a reef I
+know of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A reef!" scoffed Lemaire, "and you de best skipper on either side! Who
+d'you s'pose believe dat? Not unless we first had an accident to de
+engines, anyway. What about Olsen? Does he&mdash;know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It could not be carried through without him."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+"Ah, I see.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Only poor Lemaire was to be kept out.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. And dis reef?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's uncharted. I found it years ago. I had reasons for not wanting it
+known where I'd been and I never reported. It's a tricky place, the sea
+don't break true on it, sets in sideways. Beyond it's flat to the shore.
+No risk of salvage; it's out of the course, and a wooden ship goes to
+pieces at once, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it, dis reef?"</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin drew his pencil down the chart to an indented bit of coast not
+a couple of degrees below the fortieth parallel. Lemaire sweated to
+think how near he had been to risk.</p>
+
+<p>"If this north-west gale holds, and we are to have an accident which
+made her unmanageable," went on Elderkin, "we should be driven ashore,
+on to that reef. Or at least we could always say so afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"We might arrange so's Olsen was neber able to give us de lie&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."
+suggested Lemaire, glancing sidelong at the other.</p>
+
+<p>"If needful."</p>
+
+<p>But when the tussle over terms was ended and Lemaire had gone forth,
+Elderkin swore to himself that it was the mate who should never again
+see the Islands rise above the rim of the sea. He cursed, and for a few
+moments as he sat at the chart-room table, he allowed himself the luxury
+of hating the course on which he had embarked. A man cannot give his
+soul into the keeping of any one idea, whether that idea be embodied in
+another person or in a mode of life, without suffering a profound
+disturbance if he violently part from it; and for many years now
+Elderkin's soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> had been one with his ship. She was ugly, cranky, she
+bore a name as a hell-ship that he had earned for her, but together they
+had won through much; men had died on her, blood run upon her decks,
+misery and pride and drunkenness and strange doings permeated her very
+frame. She was as the flesh of his flesh, and only that dream-ship of
+his own which floated in a mirage before his mind could have made him
+unfaithful to her. He was in the position of a man who has lived with a
+despised but deeply felt mistress, and who at last thinks he holds the
+ideal woman, the bride, the untouched, within his grasp, at the price of
+the severance of the old ties. And, like a reproachful ghost, as though
+she were dead already, the appeal of the old reprobate of the seas kept
+pricking at him, day and night, throughout the ordered watches that drew
+her towards her end.</p>
+
+<p>He had sold his soul to gain his soul, a not altogether uncommon
+bargain. "If I can only have this one thing I will Be Good ever after,"
+is a cry that must have caused amusement above and below as many times
+as there are mortals upon the earth. In Elderkin's case the "one thing"
+was a ship of his own, and now that she loomed at last over his horizon,
+he found that it was this old Hagar of the high seas, the mistress and
+not the wife, who, in spite of himself, absorbed his consciousness. All
+the ugliness of his betrayal of her was thrown sharply into notice by
+the compact with his mate; and, shot by a sharper distaste than ever
+before, he covered his eyes for a minute, in an attempt to focus his
+will undistracted. It was successful; Elderkin, little as he knew it,
+was an idealist, however
+<a name="perverted" id="perverted"></a><ins title="Original has preverted">perverted</ins> a one, and
+idealism was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> with him in this venture, beckoning to him in the dip and
+curtsy of a dream vessel, her bright canvas burning with perpetual
+sunlight.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. He dropped his hands and straightened himself, and his eye
+fell on the Bible in which he had made his calculations, and where he
+had also noted down his covenant with Lemaire. It had fallen open, by
+the chance movement of his arms, at a different place, and he found he
+was reading a few lines before he knew what he was about.</p>
+
+<p>Too imperceptibly for him to have noticed the progress of it, the light
+had strengthened in the chart-room, for a stormy sun had penetrated the
+gloom, and the heavy black letters stood out distinctly on the yellowed
+page. A sudden flash of memory leapt through Elderkin's mind&mdash;the memory
+of a day long ago in his childhood.</p>
+
+<p>He had been brought up in New England by a rigid old grandmother until
+he ran away to sea, his Nova Scotian blood too strong for him. But his
+mother's Puritan strain was with him nevertheless, had held by him if in
+nothing else but a certain Biblical flavour in his oaths. Now there
+flashed across his mind a dreary Sunday when he was a little boy&mdash;one of
+many like it, but this particular one had stuck in his memory. And,
+probably because of the yellow light flooding the chart-room, the memory
+surged up at him, for on that Sunday he had escaped to the barn,
+although with no better spoils than a book of Old Testament stories, and
+lain there, heels in the air and elbows on the straw, reading the story
+of the Flood in just such a stormy yellow glow as this. A gale had
+followed, rain-laden, and his childish mind had half-feared,
+half-hoped,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> that a flood was coming, down which he could float
+triumphantly in some makeshift ark .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. as to his grandmother, he might
+rescue her and he might not, but if he did, of course, she would be so
+overcome with gratitude and admiration that she would never again abase
+his dignity with a certain limber cane. Then, in a lull of the gale, the
+gleam had shone out once more, and by its light he read on; read how God
+had promised there should never come a flood over all the earth again,
+and had made a rainbow as a sign of it. Rather dull of God, he thought
+in his disappointment. The storm raged so that he dared not slip back to
+the house, not because of any fear of the elements, but because his
+grandmother would notice if his clothes got wet; so he had stayed on,
+his mind thronged with imaginary adventures, till the storm was over.
+Then he had gone back to the house, feeling curiously flat after the
+excitement wind always produced in him. A faint yet, pictorially, a
+vivid memory of that strained hour of varying emotions swept across him
+now in a moment's space, as he gazed at the page before him. The next
+moment he understood why&mdash;it was not only the light that reproduced that
+afternoon of long ago, but also the words at which he was looking&mdash;the
+two things together had fused a section of time from thirty years
+earlier into a section of the present. He read the verses through, but a
+few phrases knocked at his mind to the exclusion of the rest. The word
+"covenant," especially, so hard upon his pact with Lemaire, seemed to
+stare up at him.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>"And I will establish a covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be
+cut off any more by the waters of a flood.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. And God said, This is the
+token of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> covenant which I make between me and you, and every living
+creature that is with you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I do set my bow in the cloud, and it
+shall be the token of a covenant.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. And it shall come to pass when I
+shall bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the
+cloud, and I shall remember the covenant which is between me and you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin sat at gaze like a man in a trance, unable for a few moments to
+disassociate that hour in the barn from the present&mdash;not sure which was
+the present, so vivid was the illusion and so sharp the knock on his
+dormant spiritual sense. His hands, which were trembling oddly, went out
+to grasp the edge of the table, not for the physical support, but more
+that a common sensation should reassure his mind. Then he rose, and
+backing away from the Book as though it would spring at him, he went
+out.</p>
+
+<p>The wind had dropped, but the <i>Spirito Santo</i> was rolling her
+bulwarks&mdash;those solid structures which were traps for all the water
+shipped&mdash;into the confused sea that the dead wind had left. She was
+travelling badly, her heavy load robbed her of the elasticity which
+would have enabled her to rise to the onslaught of each successive wave.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Spirito Santo</i> boasted no bridge, the roof of the chart-room, which
+was situated on the poop, just forward of the mizzen-mast, doing duty
+instead. The wheel, which was uncovered, was set at the break of the
+poop, between the rail and the chart-house. Elderkin climbed the ladder
+to the top of the chart-house, and then stood there, struck to sudden
+stillness. He never glanced at the binnacle to see if the man were
+keeping the course, or noted the wiry figure of the mate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> as he tramped
+back and forth; his whole being was arrested by the portent which held
+the sky. And all the long-dormant but never wholly cast-off beliefs of
+his childhood awoke in his blood.</p>
+
+<p>A curtain of luminous, ashen-pink cloud was drawn across the sky from
+horizon to zenith, absolutely smooth and unbroken, and against it arched
+a rainbow, spanning the horizon and coming down mistily into the sea. So
+close the opalescent feet of it looked that it seemed as though the
+ship's bows were heading through the phantom portals of some new world,
+but high in air the summit of the curve, clear and burnished as
+cut-glass, looked infinitely far away. As Elderkin stood at gaze,
+particles of sun-bright cloud floated slowly across the right of the
+arch, like little morsels of golden wool.</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin, his fingers clutching a wet stanchion, was aware of a curious
+feeling coming over him. He felt he had seen just that effect
+before&mdash;that curtain of ashen pink, the rainbow against it, the flock of
+little golden-bright morsels, floating slowly across it .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. and had seen
+it in connexion with something of vital importance. Yet, try as he
+would, he could not capture the thought&mdash;memory&mdash;dream&mdash;whatever it was,
+of which he was so sure in the back of his mind that he felt it waiting
+for him to recognize it every moment.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. All sorts of bewildering
+little half-memories flitted across his mind, and refused to be captured
+or placed. Queer, irrational little things they were, incongruous and
+wildly senseless; he felt dizzy chasing them, but he knew if he gave up
+concentrating even for an instant, the whole thing would be gone. Yet
+piece together these half-memories that pricked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> at him he could not,
+they were elusive as moths and as unsubstantial. He knew that there was
+one key to them and that if he could only find it they would become
+sense, though not sense of this world&mdash;it was as though they were in a
+different focus and on a different plane, but they would become clear if
+only he could find the key.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>As he stared the little particles of cloud in front of the rainbow
+slowly dissolved and melted into the ashen pink of the cloud-curtain,
+from that, too, the glow was fading, and the arch itself began slowly to
+die into the air. Elderkin found himself in the chart-room again; he sat
+down and shut his eyes, striving to remember. He could not recollect
+having dreamt such a thing, and yet the feeling aroused in him was
+exactly that provoked when, on the day following a very vivid dream, it
+will keep on intruding in fragments, each time to be shaken off as the
+mind readjusts itself to the normal after the moment's blurring of edge.
+Suddenly it occurred to him that he must have seen that effect only a
+few days before and he opened his diary, in which, his vice being pen
+and paper, he noted down matters not important enough for the "Remarks"
+space in the log. He hunted the pages back and forth, and in the midst
+of his futile search his mind seemed to give a click and he was switched
+back into the normal again. He sat looking at the book in his hands and
+realized that he had never seen that especial effect before, that he had
+most certainly never noted it down; the mere idea that he had now seemed
+as silly as a dream when the mind has struggled fully awake, though when
+he had first thought of it and taken the notebook up, it had seemed as
+possible as the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> dream when the sleeper is in the midst of it. He
+still felt curiously dizzy, though his head was clearing slowly: things
+seemed commonplace around him once more; he could not even remember
+distinctly what his sensations had been. He only knew that in that
+trance-like state, of a moment&mdash;of &aelig;ons&mdash;earlier, he had known he had
+seen before that which he then saw, and seen it connected with something
+he could not catch. Whether he ever had seen it, perhaps on that
+incompletely remembered day of storm which had flashed back to him on
+this afternoon; or whether, already worked up by his conscience, by the
+interview with Lemaire, and, to his sensitized mind, by the words in the
+Bible, the sudden effect on him of seeing that bow set in the flaming
+cloud, had produced a brainstorm, he could never know. He would have
+thought it blasphemy to wonder whether nothing more spiritual than the
+driven blood in his skull was responsible for that queer switching off
+the track; but whatever it was, the effect of it, on his awakened moral
+sense, was prodigious. He did not doubt that he had received a divine
+visitation, that for him the heavens had been decked with pomp, that the
+workings of God, in particular and exquisite relation to himself, were
+manifest in the ordered sequence of that day. His own stirrings at the
+violation of his solitary code had gone deeper with him than he knew,
+preparing him for further troubling, then the pact with Lemaire, driving
+in all the distasteful side of the business more keenly still, the
+coincidence of that word "covenant" coming on the heels of his covenant
+with the mate, that word used in the Bible passage to suggest the
+eternal pact between man's soul and its creator, the memory it evoked,
+and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> to crown all, the finding of the seal of it set in the heavens
+themselves&mdash;all these things rushed together, fused, and struck into his
+being.</p>
+
+<p>He fell on his knees in the chart-room and praised God; praised Him in
+the phraseology of his Puritan forebears, as he had heard Him praised
+when a little boy, whose heedless ears had not seemed to take in the
+words battering about them.</p>
+
+<p>Joab Elderkin had got religion. He had been converted.</p>
+
+<p>When he scrambled to his feet he came to, so to speak, on a different
+sphere from any he had ever known. He seized up the Bible again, his
+hands shaken by the strongest passion known to civilized man, the only
+acquired attribute, besides the making of fire, and of intoxicating
+liquor, which marks him off fundamentally from the other mammals. He
+read again the passage that had flamed into his ken earlier, he read the
+promises of the Almighty, he read of how men were called the Sons of
+God. He saw himself and all his fellow humans not merely calling God
+Father by a kindly sufferance towards adopted children, but as beings
+created of the same substance, their souls as much made of the essence
+of God as their bodies of the essence of their earthly fathers, and the
+thought mounted to his head like wine. The swift darkness of the tropics
+had fallen, but full of his new conception of his
+fellow-creatures&mdash;"every living creature that was with him" of the
+verses&mdash;he, when he opened the chart-room door, flared forth into a
+night of gods.</p>
+
+<p>All the next day the glory held, both in the air and in Elderkin's mind.
+The Pacific was rainbow-haunted; phantom archways through which the
+bowsprits seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> about to soar; pillars of prismatic colour that melted
+into air; broken shafts of it that flashed out in every sunlit burst of
+spray upon the decks. Even in the two plumes of spray for ever winging
+from either side of her cutwater, a curve of burnished colours hung, as
+though piercing down into the translucent green, through whose depths
+the drowning surf was driven in paler clouds. The wind still held on and
+the <i>Spirito Santo</i> made what way she could under steam and canvas,
+through the confused seas that slopped aboard her and buffeted her from
+all sides at once. It was of supreme significance to Elderkin that the
+north-westerly wind on which he had counted for his purpose, should have
+died away in the self-same hour that, as he phrased it, the wind of the
+spirit blew into his soul. The barometer was falling rapidly, in spite
+of the stiller air, and he had had the royals and outer jib and
+gaff-topsail stowed. What with her reduced sail, the influence of her
+steam, and the lumpy seas, the <i>Spirito Santo</i> was behaving her worst,
+riding slugglishly with a heavy reluctant motion as though she hardly
+considered it worth the effort of keeping her blunt nose above water at
+all. Elderkin felt her sulkiness, and it seemed to him as though,
+instead of helping to save her, she was possessed of an evil spirit bent
+on thwarting him. He watched her closely, and spent the day on the poop,
+and though he said little, every one was aware of something new and
+strange about him. The crew commented among themselves on his
+abstraction and the poverty of his abuse; Lemaire thought he held the
+key to it, but Olsen, the freckled Dane, grew uneasy. He was having
+trouble with his engines, which should have been overhauled long ago,
+and would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> inevitably have been renovated this trip had it been
+undertaken with a normal objective. If the voyage were unduly prolonged
+he would be hard put to it for fuel; it would not take very much to send
+his boilers crashing from the rusty stays that held them; added to which
+every degree further south, now they were in the forties, diminished
+their chances of safety. As there was no longer any wind to contend
+with, Olsen was all for steaming towards shore at once, for his
+sea-sense combined with the barometer to tell him of trouble ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Olsen was a taciturn creature, who cared for no one in the world but his
+half-caste children&mdash;bright, large-stomached little creatures, whom he
+had left playing in the dust in front of his gaily painted wooden house
+in St. Thomas. For their sakes he put up with his fat, slovenly wife and
+her swarms of relations of various shades of brown. It was only for the
+children's sake that he had stuck to the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, for it suited
+him to be able to get home as often as he might, and even when the
+<i>Spirito Santo</i> did not touch St. Thomas he could always pick up with a
+mail-packet or a sailing ship of some kind. It was his ambition to send
+both boy and girl to New York for their education, now that the Civil
+War had made it possible for anyone with a touch of colour to make good.
+Therefore he nursed his crazy engines as though he loved them, but he
+decided that the sooner the accident occurred the better. In the second
+dog-watch, he, as Lemaire had done the day before, went to Elderkin in
+the chart-room.</p>
+
+<p>He found the captain with an open book in front of him: he was not
+reading, but making calculations on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> the margin. He glanced up at Olsen
+and his tired eyes brightened for a moment. Then:</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Mr. Lemaire to come here," he ordered, "and come back yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Olsen made his way to the top of the chart-house, where Lemaire was
+pacing, full of anxiety, and delivered the order. Lemaire came with a
+mixture of civility and an assumption of confederacy in his manner, but
+Elderkin took no more notice of it than of Olsen's waiting stolidity. He
+closed the Bible and confronted the two men.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Olsen," he said, "you were wanting to see me about something?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is about this affair," answered Olsen, "there is no good to be got
+by waiting, sir. I tell you plainly my engines will not stand so very
+much. And the way she is loaded, if we come up against anything in the
+way of a sea&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And you?" asked Elderkin of the mate.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure dat what Olsen say is right. It must be now or never."</p>
+
+<p>"It is going to be never," replied Elderkin in his usual soft tones.</p>
+
+<p>The two men stared at him, then the quicker Latin flashed into speech.
+He demanded, with a lapse into Island patois now and again, what the
+blank blank blank the captain thought he was doing. Elderkin sat through
+it unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not speak to you as you have just done to me," he began,
+"because hairy, forsaken Frenchy as you are, you are still a son of God,
+even as I am. Praise the Lord with me, for He has shown me into what an
+abyss of sin I had fallen. Do you hear what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> I say? I am captain aboard
+this ship, Mr. Lemaire, and I order you to praise God for having
+delivered us while there is yet time."</p>
+
+<p>Lemaire stared at his superior officer in total silence for a moment
+instead of complying. Then he turned to
+<a name="Olsen" id="Olsen"></a><ins title="Original has Oslen">Olsen</ins>. The freckled
+Dane grasped the situation the first. He saw that the skipper was not
+trying to do them down as Lemaire, when he found his tongue again,
+accused him: that this was not some deep-laid trick to keep them out of
+the profits. Olsen had seen many religious revivals in the Islands and
+he knew the signs.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Mr. Elderkin," he said, stepping forward; "I've my side of it
+to think of. I've not suddenly got holy. I'm thinking of my children,
+same as I was before. You've never thought for anyone but yourself. I
+only shipped this voyage because it meant being able to do what I want
+for them. I've only stuck to this hell-ship for them. There's been
+things done aboard here that would have sunk the ship if sin could sink
+her. You can't clean your bloody ship by talking of God now. We all made
+an agreement and let's stand by it like men. Sink the ship, sir, and the
+top of the sea'll be the sweeter for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been a sinful man all my days," agreed Elderkin, "but my eyes have
+been opened, the Lord be thanked.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. I have been saved and by the grace
+of God I mean to save the ship."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll take more than the grace of God to keep my engines working,"
+commented Olsen.</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose we refuse?" asked Lemaire. "We are two to one, Mr.
+Elderkin. Remember, sah&mdash;if the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> captain is sick it is de mate who take
+charge of de ship.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>"Mutiny? You? Do you imagine, Mossoo, that I couldn't hold my own ship
+against any half-breed afloat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you!" screamed the mate, his skin darkening with his angry blood.
+"If you not take care we will say you are mad, yes, mad. De men have
+only got to hear religion coming out of your face to believe it. De
+ship's not safe, and we must scuttle her now, d'you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"The men!" repeated Elderkin. "Let me tell you there never was a dago
+crew yet that I couldn't lick. I'll save this ship against the lot of
+you, I'll save her against herself&mdash;God helping me," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"But we shall be ruined, all of us," urged Olsen. "What do you suppose
+they will say to us at Port of Spain, Mr. Elderkin? They won't be
+pleased to see the <i>Spirito Santo</i> come crawling into the roadstead with
+a faked cargo and all that good insurance money wasted.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. We shall all
+be ruined men, I tell you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. What will become of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"We shall never get into Port of Spain," spoke Lemaire, "we shall never
+round the Horn. It's coming on to blow now. She can't live through it, I
+tell you. It's sinking her now and saving ourselves and making a
+damn-big pile out of it, or it's all going down togeder."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we will all go down together," said Elderkin; "if my repentance is
+too late the Lord will not let me save the ship nor yet my soul."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't give a curse in hell for your soul, or anyone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> else's," cried
+the mate. "I tell you it's madness. Only a miracle could keep de ship
+afloat."</p>
+
+<p>"There has already been one miracle aboard her," said Elderkin. "Who are
+we to set limits to the power of the Almighty? It is a small thing to
+keep a senseless structure of wood and iron afloat in comparison with
+making the blackest of sinners see the true light, which the Lord has
+done between two dog-watches. Yesterday I was profaning the Book with my
+calculations of sinful gain made out upon its pages, to-day I have been
+calculating how many years I have spent in following my lusts, and were
+the years as many as the waves of the sea, I have prayed the Lord that
+the weeks of striving in front of us may wipe out the years."</p>
+
+<p>"He is mad," remarked Olsen, philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>Lemaire turned swiftly on the engineer. "We must take charge," he urged
+in a low voice, his back to the captain, "and then you must do what I
+say. We will run her close inshore, and&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>Whether Elderkin heard above the growing clamour of the ship or not&mdash;for
+the woodwork had begun to crackle like a wheezy concertina and the slap
+of green water breaking sounded in a scurrying frequency&mdash;he knew what
+the mate was planning. A rim of something cold on the back of Lemaire's
+neck made his speech fade on his lips, and he and Olsen stood motionless
+while Elderkin spoke, Olsen's light eyes looking at the fanatical dark
+ones above the gun.</p>
+
+<p>"I am master of this ship, and what I say goes, or I'll put daylight
+through your dirty body," said Elderkin, pressing the muzzle in till the
+dark seamed skin on the mate's neck turned greenish in a circle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> around
+the iron. "As for you, Olsen, you're white, though you're a Dutchman,
+and I look to you to stick. What about the engines?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry about this," replied Olsen, with seeming inconsequence, "but
+what must be will be. I will do the best with my engines. But if ever we
+see port again, I have done with you and your ship and your religion. I
+have my children to think of. I will go below."</p>
+
+<p>And he pulled the chart-room door open. As though his doing so were the
+signal to some malignancy without, a sudden blow of wind struck the
+ship; a crash sounded along her decks and on the moment a surge of water
+flooded into the chart-room. A sudden squall from the south-west, such
+as sometimes arises like a thunderclap in those latitudes at that time
+of year, had caught the <i>Spirito Santo</i> in the confusion of the heavy
+cross seas. That first blow heeled her over, over, over .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. it seemed as
+though she were dipping swiftly far beyond the angle of safety; further
+and further. There was nothing to be done for the moment but clutch on
+to whatever was nearest; cries of terror from the dagos sounded thinly
+even through the clamour of wind and sea and crashing of gear. Then came
+that agonizing moment when a vessel, heeled over as far as possible,
+seems to hesitate, remains poised for the fraction of a second that
+partakes of the quality of eternity, between recovery and the
+hair's-breadth more that means foundering.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a groaning of timbers like some mammoth animal in pain, a
+thick jarring of machinery, and a clattering of everything movable
+aboard her, the <i>Spirito Santo</i> came slowly up again. If that gust of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+wind had held a minute longer she would have rolled herself, her faked
+cargo, and her huddled lives, down towards the bed of the Pacific; sins
+and religions, material hopes and spiritual aspirations, alike marked by
+one fading trail of air bubbles.</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin found he was holding Lemaire round the waist, while Olsen was
+on his hands and knees in the lather of water streaming off the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord has decided," said Elderkin, "we have now no choice. Get
+below, Olsen." He was heaving himself into his oilskins as he spoke,
+ordered in his movements but speedy, considering the terrible lurching
+of the vessel. His fight to save the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, to save her
+against herself, had begun.</p>
+
+<p>He found her topgallant sails thrashing out like blinds from a window,
+for the topgallant sheets had carried away, while the foresail and
+fore-topmast-staysail were like to flap themselves to rags. He bellowed
+his orders above the clamour of the ropes and guys, that were all
+shrieking and wailing on different notes as though the ship were
+suddenly endowed with the gift of tongues. The men fought their way up
+the rigging, and, lying along the slippery yard-arms, wrestled with
+clew-lines that whipped about as if possessed, while the wet and
+iron-hard canvas beat back and forth with reports like gunshots. But the
+men succeeded at length and Elderkin felt that the first tiny stage in
+his great battle was won.</p>
+
+<p>Already the sea was running in great slopes of blackish green, streaked
+and scarred with livid whiteness; from the poop the whole of the ship
+was filled with a swirling mist of spray that wreathed about the masts,
+only parting here and there to show one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> boiling flood of broken water
+that poured across the waist from upreared starboard rail to submerged
+port scuppers. The forecastle was flooded; from the forecastle head, as
+the ship pitched, a torrent poured on to the hatches, and when the next
+moment she dived forward, rushing down a long valley that seemed to
+slope to the heart of the ocean, two rivers poured out of her
+hawse-holes. Elderkin, as she dived, called down the tube&mdash;the only
+means of communicating with the engine-room except the still more
+primitive one of messengers&mdash;to stop her. And when it looked as though
+she could never recover to meet that oncoming mountain, but must dive
+into it and be smothered, her bows rose once more, up and up, till they
+raked the swollen clouds, while a wall of whiteness thundered past on
+either side. As Elderkin called for "full" again, his face was as calm
+as that of a little child. All that night the storm increased, and wove
+air and water into one great engine of destruction, and all night
+Elderkin stayed lashed to the rail of the chart-house, which was
+momentarily in danger of being washed away like a rabbit-hutch. It was
+impossible to keep the binnacle alight, and no stars were visible;
+steering was a mere groping by the feel of the wind. Dawn seemed hardly
+a lightening, so dark hung the massed clouds, of a curious rusty-brown
+colour, packed one above the other, overlapping so as to form a solid
+roof. Only between their lower rim and the slate-grey sea, an occasional
+glimpse of horizon showed where a thin line of molten pallor ran. Brown,
+white and steel-grey, with the masts and rigging sharp and black against
+it all, and the decks, dark and wet, now refracting what light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> there
+was as the ship rolled one way, now falling on deadness again as she
+rolled the other.</p>
+
+<p>With the dawning, Elderkin was unlashed and took the wheel himself,
+aided by a seaman, for it took two men to stand its kicking. To him came
+Olsen, still phlegmatic, almost as black as one of his dago squad.
+Gripping the poop-rail with one hand, with the other he laid hold of the
+captain's oilskin, and leant as near as possible to shout his news, but
+even so Elderkin could only catch a word here and there.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't stand .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. stays parting .&nbsp;.&nbsp;." came to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep her at it," he yelled back.</p>
+
+<p>But a sudden shout came from Olsen, while the man at the wheel literally
+turned colour and closed his eyes. Only Elderkin, with a look that
+seemed queerly of exultation on his face, stared ahead to where a vast
+wall of water, so high it glimmered greenly, was rolling towards them
+over the broken, tossing sea. That was exactly what it looked like, as
+though it were a body distinct and separate from the rest of the raging
+water, some great fold pushed up from the Antarctic region and urged
+across the ocean, on and on.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It bore down on the infinitesimal ship
+and her clinging ants of crew, bore down, blotting out the sky, till
+suddenly it was so near it became one with the rest of the sea, as
+though the whole surface were curving over into a hollow sphere. It
+thundered upon them; then, its glassy concavity reared to an incredible
+height, it toppled over and broke in one roaring cataract of foam.</p>
+
+<p>What happened next no one remaining in the <i>Spirito Santo</i> could ever
+have told. Three men were washed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> overboard; one had his legs so broken
+that the splintered bones drove into the deck where he was hurled down.
+There were a few long-drawn seconds when all thought she had gone under,
+for the rushing sea had climbed level with the chart-house roof, while
+the air was so thick with spume and spray it would have been difficult
+to say where the sea left off being solid and became fused with the
+wind. Then, with a roaring and a sucking like that when a wave,
+shattered, streams off a cliff, the water poured off decks and hatches
+in long lacings of dazzling white. The <i>Spirito Santo</i> still lived.</p>
+
+<p>But it seemed she was mortally wounded, for she was jarring all her
+length, even the twisted stanchions vibrated as though some malignant
+force within her had broken loose; and when Elderkin tried to bring her
+head up to the wind, the wheel spun in his hands as easily and uselessly
+as a child's toy.</p>
+
+<p>"The rudder&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." cried Olsen, "she is gone.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin retained his clarity of aspect and gave his orders collectedly;
+only when the dago crew clung miserably to any support and refused to
+obey, he pulled out his gun and drove them to their stations. Hove-to,
+with only her spanker, close-reefed main-topsail and fore-staysail set,
+there was a chance of keeping her off the coast till the sea should
+quiet down enough to allow of a jury rudder being rigged. Meanwhile, as
+the men were setting the sails she rolled horribly in the trough of the
+sea; rolled fit to break her heart. Elderkin, on the poop, shouting at
+the men reefing the topsail, saw something that for the first moment of
+horror seemed fraught with the supernatural. Years of neglect, of rust,
+of corrosion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> from salt, had in reality gone to bring about what he then
+saw, with dishonesty and money-grubbing meanness behind the rust and
+corrosion. For, with a scream of ripping iron and the sharp snapping of
+guys, the <i>Spirito Santo</i> rolled her funnel clean off at the root, the
+casing along with it. It crashed upon the deck, and the next moment was
+swept overboard, carrying away the port bulwarks. A gust of heat and a
+murky torrent of foul smoke blew flatly from the cavity that gaped in
+the ship's vitals; then a flood of water, luminously pale in the growing
+daylight, filmed across the deck amidships and poured over the ragged
+rim of the wound. The <i>Spirito Santo</i> rolled upon the water, little more
+than a helpless wreck.</p>
+
+<p>Lemaire, who was lying on the top of the chart-house, gripping the rail,
+screamed out that they were done for; even Olsen, turning his blackened
+face to the captain, shouted that the game was up; as to the dagos, each
+yelled where he lay. This time Elderkin had to use his gun before he
+could get the ship hove-to. At sight of one of their number lying limp
+in the scuppers, the crew obeyed once more, while Olsen, sticking by his
+caste, and Lemaire, seeing still a faint chance for life, worked with
+them to cover the jagged hole with the stoutest timbers they could find.
+What was left of the fires was drawn, the planks over the hole shored up
+from below with timbers, tarpaulins stretched a-top of all and fastened
+down by a great batten bolted through the sodden deck; and, during all
+the hours of work amid wind and water, Elderkin watched the ship, saw
+that she did not come too much up into the wind nor fall off into the
+trough of the sea; kept the men at it when, time and again, they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> would
+have given up. Gun in one hand and Bible in the other, he read out
+threats of the Almighty's, intermingled with his own. And, at last, the
+jury-hatch was finished, and a further stage of the battle won.</p>
+
+<p>Now came the most trying hours of all, when there no longer remained
+anything possible to do, when hands fell on inaction and bodies were
+free to feel sore and cold, and minds were vacant of everything but an
+animal despondency. Olsen lit a fire on the iron floor by the boilers,
+and here, for the most part, the miserable men crouched during the rest
+of the day and the following night. Elderkin, after he had slept the
+sudden and over-powering sleep of the worn-out man, awoke to his first
+doubts. As long as there had been continuous need for action, that and
+the stern joy of a fight had shut out everything else for him; now that
+there was nothing to be done but hoist the inner jib when she came up
+too much into the wind and lower it when she paid off again, a need so
+recurring it was almost mechanical, he became as much a prey to inner
+questionings as his ship was to the winds. What tormented him was the
+thought that if the <i>Spirito Santo</i> had foundered in this south-west
+gale all hands would have inevitably been lost, whereas had he kept by
+his agreement to scuttle her earlier all could probably have been saved.
+Was he then become a murderer by having decided as he had, and would it
+have been more righteous to keep on his evil course? Elderkin, to whom
+for the first time the lives of his men had become of a value other than
+commercial, was tormented by the thought of the three washed overboard
+by the great wave; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> the curses of the man who had died a few hours
+after his legs were shattered re-echoed through his mind. It was not so
+much that these men had met death&mdash;Elderkin had too often stared it in
+the face to think overmuch of that&mdash;but that they were cut off in the
+midst of their sins, with blasphemies on lip and soul. Elderkin's creed
+allowed of no gracious after-chances, he saw the entities he had known
+and bullied in the flesh, as having become blind particles of
+consciousness burning in undying fires.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>With dawn and a further dropping of the wind, which had been lessening
+all night, he searched again the pages of his Bible, and he followed the
+instinctive trail of human nature when he thrust the niceties of values
+from him and determined to hold by what was right and wrong at the
+springs of his action. When he went out on to the poop and met the crisp
+but now friendly wind, saw the glitter of sunshine on peacock waves,
+that still broke into white crests, but without malignance, he knew that
+the Lord was on his side. How was it possible he had ever thought
+otherwise? He must indeed be weak in the ways of grace that his first
+testing should awake such questionings within him. As the weight of
+despondency and sick dread fell off him in the cold sunlight, Elderkin
+flung up his arms and shouted for joy. Lemaire, crawling up, found him
+on his knees upon the top of the battered chart-house, improvising a
+paen of thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>All that day the men worked at rigging a jury rudder and patching up the
+port bulwarks. Then Olsen, who kept them as doggedly at it as the
+skipper himself, conceived a plan whereby his engines could once again
+play a part. He collected sheet-iron and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> stout pieces of wood, and
+with these he contrived a jury-funnel, fitting steam-jets at the base to
+maintain the draught to the furnaces. The freakish erection held
+together well, though it looked oddly stumpy in place of the thin,
+raking smoke-stack; Olsen secured it by guys of iron chain. At last all
+was complete, and once again a plume of dirty smoke trailed from between
+the sticks of the <i>Spirito Santo</i>. The men slept as they fell, but by
+then the rudder and smoke-stack had converted her from a blind cripple
+into an intelligent whole which could work independently of the
+direction of wind and current. A further stage of the battle was won,
+and with every victory Elderkin felt greater confidence in the Lord and
+in himself.</p>
+
+<p>By the next day it had grown very cold, and the men began to prepare
+shapeless and weather-worn garments against the bitterness of the Horn.
+Even Lemaire, who kept on repeating sullenly that they could never round
+it, knew that the only chance now was to carry on, and, his face seeming
+to pale with the first breath of the cold, hugged himself in a great
+padded coat. Food was already beginning to run short, and only by
+serving out double quantities of the raw West Indian rum were the men
+kept going at all. The ship herself could be heartened with no such
+encouragement, and although she was now snoring at a fair pace through
+the smother of foam that kept the lee-scuppers covered with a running
+river, yet her foul sides and wicked loading absorbed half her speed.
+She was a wet ship at the best of times, now she was sodden to her
+trucks, and the showers of icy rain that blew down on the westerly gale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+every now and then, wetted in a worse fashion, for rain-water chills to
+the bone right through oilskins. One day an exhausted Cape pigeon fell
+on board, and the little bird was eaten raw by the first man who got to
+it; sometimes a great albatross sailed on level unmoving wings around
+the labouring ship, and mollymawks screamed and circled, but none fell a
+victim to the hungry crew. There was a certain amount of salt junk left
+aboard, but the chief diet was nothing but hard-tack, and that was
+mouldy. Elderkin remained unmoved by any consideration save how to get
+her round the Horn, and he made Olsen save the dwindling fuel as much as
+possible for the attempt, lest they should be kept beating back and
+forth for weeks till exhaustion of ship and men sent them under. So the
+days went on, and the great Cape Horn greybeards rolled up with
+glistening flanks and white crests that broke and poured down them in
+thunder. Cold rains, wind squalls, her own condition and that of the men
+aboard her, all fought against the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, till it seemed as
+though the strongly set will of her captain were the only thing that
+kept her alive&mdash;alive and obedient however sulky, to the intelligence
+that drove her.</p>
+
+<p>Still she kept going, steaming and sailing into the stormy sunsets till
+at last she was off Cape Stiff itself, showing unspeakably bleak and
+gaunt through the driving mist; only now and then were the black cliffs
+visible, going down into a smoking line of foam.</p>
+
+<p>If a bad storm had hit her off the promontory nothing could have saved
+her, but the wind, though the strong westerly gale of the "roaring
+forties," held less of violence than ordinary, and although she rolled
+till<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> it seemed she would dip her yards, and the water could hardly be
+pumped out of her as fast as it poured in, yet she pulled through, as
+she had pulled through the south-westerly gale and the disasters that
+followed. Elderkin, who had somehow expected his great tussle off the
+Horn, felt an odd sensation that was almost disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>On looking back afterwards, Elderkin saw that the voyage was, as it
+were, divided clearly into two by the passing of the Horn&mdash;on the
+Pacific side the actual physical blows of material damage and storm, on
+the Atlantic the more wearing struggle against spiritual opposition. The
+men, headed by Lemaire, began to murmur.</p>
+
+<p>For one thing, the last possible scrap of fuel had been burned by the
+time they were passing the Falklands, and they were left with nothing
+but their canvas to carry them home. As far as keeping her steady went,
+she was better under sail than steam, and also, like every true sailor,
+Elderkin felt more in harmony with the weather when using only canvas.
+For a steamer goes independently of the wind, ignores it, shoves her
+nose in its face, and the wind pays her back by becoming an enemy, but a
+sailing-ship lives by wind, humours it, coaxes the last hair's-breadth
+of it, and the wind, flattered, ignores that all the time it is being
+managed and made of use.</p>
+
+<p>But the sails of the <i>Spirito Santo</i> were old and mildewed, she carried
+little spare canvas, and, worst of all, if they should come into a calm,
+those on board her might starve to death before they sighted help. All
+these things the men knew, and knowing, began to rebel. Lemaire, too, no
+longer seconded Elderkin,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> and he and Olsen bore the burden of
+nigger-driving alone&mdash;and Olsen, although he was loyal, made his
+discontent apparent. A terrible loneliness of mind fell upon Elderkin.
+He felt himself accursed of all men, but he still held on; each
+successive incident of his fight, instead of wearing his resistance
+down, went to strengthen it. The crisis came when after weeks of
+crawling and standing still, hurrying on with any advantage of breeze
+that presented itself, yet afraid to carry too much canvas, the <i>Spirito
+Santo</i> was nearing the fortieth parallel once more.</p>
+
+<p>It was a grey, squally day, with the south-westerly wind keeping the
+sails bellied forward, and the gusts of rain driving so hard that the
+water in the brimming scuppers was lashed to paleness; the pumps were in
+pretty constant use now, and the fetid bilge-water washed over the decks
+in floods of a dark reddish colour, as though the <i>Spirito Santo</i> were
+bleeding internally. A sullen moodiness held air and sea and mind of
+those who looked; that grinding reluctance of the <i>Spirito Santo</i> had
+passed into the men's bones, they moved slowly if ordered to do
+anything, their shrunken flesh was a mass of sea-boils and, since the
+lime-juice and potatoes were exhausted, scurvy had broken out. Elderkin
+himself looked like some medi&aelig;val picture of the Baptist: he had grown a
+beard that came to a sparse point, and his sombre eyes glowed from
+behind the disordered streaks of hair that fell over them, while his
+skin, so tightly stretched over the bones, had taken on a waxen texture.
+To the men who came crowding on to the after-deck to voice their
+resentment, he had the air of a madman, as he stood erect at the break
+of the poop, his figure dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> against the grey pallor of the sky. For a
+few minutes he stood scanning them quietly, and they stared back at him.
+In marshalling them where he had, Lemaire had made an error in
+psychology; for the mere fact that they had to look up to Elderkin on
+the poop affected both him and them unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" asked the skipper quietly. Lemaire stepped forward
+as spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>"We want to get out of dis shop and make for the shore, dat's what we
+want, and dat's what we'll do."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. how?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take de law into our own hands. If we sink her now we can make
+for the mout' of de Plate, or we might be picked up sooner. I've told de
+men; I've told how we was all goin' to be rich an' safe and would have
+been trowin' our money around ashore by now if you hadn't got de
+praise-de-Lord bug in your head."</p>
+
+<p>"What Massa Lemaire say quite true, sah," called out a burly negro,
+whose black face was greyed over in patches from disease, "an' we aren't
+goin' to stand dis any longer. If you won't sink her we're goin' to, or
+we'll all be dead men."</p>
+
+<p>"We're dead now, dead and rotting," shrieked the bo'sun, on a sudden
+note of frenzy that pierced the air like a thrown blade, "who ever saw
+live men rot?" And he held up a hand which scurvy, on an open wound, had
+literally rotted so that the tendons hung down like weed. He shook the
+maimed thing at Elderkin. "Look at this"&mdash;"And this&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."&mdash;"And this&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."
+came up to Elderkin in angry shouts. The men, intoxicated by the sudden
+venting of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> wrongs, began to swarm up the ladders to the poop
+deck.</p>
+
+<p>Elderkin felt new life urge through his veins, the pressure of the dead
+weeks behind sloughed off him, as the thinning veils of sleep drop away
+from the waking consciousness in the morning. He did not pull out his
+gun, but kept his hands in his pockets and faced the snarling,
+tentative, ugly pack of them.</p>
+
+<p>Then he talked, not raising his voice more than was needful for the
+grinding and creaking of the ship's labour and the weary complaining of
+the wind-tortured rigging.</p>
+
+<p>"So you'd mutiny, would you?" he began in his soft voice, "well, first
+you'll listen to me. Down off that gang-way, you there .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. that's
+better. Well, I guess I know what you men are saying to yourselves&mdash;that
+I'm one man against the lot of you, and now we're no longer fighting to
+keep the ship afloat for our lives, you can easy get the better of me.
+That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>A murmur of assent, half-threatening, half-shame-faced, came from below.
+To Elderkin, looking down, the men appeared as blots of deeper colour
+against the pale glimmer of the wet deck; their upturned faces had the
+abrupt fore-shortening that imparts a touch of the ludicrous, but those
+faces were set in folds which told of hardened determination, behind the
+swellings and boils which glistened in the watery light, so that
+Elderkin could see each disfigurement as clearly as pebbles in a pool
+unshaded from the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"The mate tells you you'll get a lot of money if you go home and say
+you've sunk the ship. You won't. He will, as Judas did for betraying his
+Lord, but you'll<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> just be got rid of, if you don't keep your mouths
+shut. You're wrong, as you've been all your lives, as I've been till
+now. But I've a stronger man on my side than all of you herring-gutted
+sons of a gun would make rolled together. I've the Lord on my side. You
+think nothing of that, do you? The Lord's up in heaven and won't notice
+what you do, and you ain't feared of the likes of Him anyway.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Aren't
+you? Why d'you think it is you have bloody sacrifices there in the
+fo'c'sle&mdash;oh, yes, I know about it all&mdash;why d'you suppose you cringe to
+that nigger there"&mdash;pointing to the mate&mdash;"with his black history of
+murdered children and flesh eaten in secret when the sacred drum beats
+at the full of the moon? Why d'you suppose you're scared sick of a dirty
+bug and a bit of wool in an old bottle, or of my Bible that I've set up
+on a shelf? It's because you know there's something behind&mdash;behind your
+ju-jus and behind my ju-ju.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. You not fear the Lord! Why, you fear Him
+with every devilish performance you concoct. You're afraid all the
+time&mdash;of the something behind. And my ju-ju is greater than your ju-ju,
+so you're more afraid of mine, and of me. Could your ju-ju bring you
+through the great storm alive? All of you&mdash;and that damned baby-eater
+there&mdash;you was all yelling at your ju-jus and they couldn't wag one of
+their accursed fingers to help you. Who saved you and brought you out
+alive? White men and the white men's God. You know there's something
+behind, and what's behind me is bigger'n what's behind you.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly pulled his hand out of the capacious pocket of his coat, and
+the men cowered swiftly, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> instead of a gun he held his Bible out
+over the rail, threatening them not with its insignificant fabric but
+with its unknown import. A couple of Jamaican negroes fell on their
+knees and writhed upon the deck, making uncouth noises, their eyes
+turning palely upwards, their limbs convulsed.</p>
+
+<p>"Praise de Lord!" they yelled. "Praise de Lord wid us, brudders! End of
+de world and judgment comin'. Save us, massa, save us.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;." And a dago
+from the southern continent fell to crossing himself and gabbling his
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>"You fools!" cried Lemaire, thrusting through the heaving knot of men,
+"don't you listen to his talk. Talk won't fill our stomachs or cure our
+skins. How's he going to feed you? Ask him dat."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;what are we to eat? Give us food and we'll keep on!" shouted the
+bo'sun. "Can your God make food?"</p>
+
+<p>"My God provided manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness and
+He'll provide for us now if we trust in Him. He will send us meat for
+our bellies and drink for our throats."</p>
+
+<p>"How&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;? Where is it, dis food?" taunted Lemaire; and Elderkin, his
+hand pointing, answered, "There&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;."</p>
+
+<p>The men swung round to gaze, and saw a fugitive gleam of sunlight on her
+shining tower of cotton canvas, a great four-masted American barque
+beating to windward only a few miles away. Elderkin and his ju-ju were
+saved, and Lemaire's vision of dollars was routed by the men's vision of
+food. The distress signals were run up, and by that night the <i>Spirito
+Santo</i> carried enough provisions of a rude kind to last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> her, with care
+and luck&mdash;meaning a rigid discipline of practically wreck-rations and
+fair winds&mdash;to see her safely home again. Elderkin thought that at last
+the testings of his faith were over, that the weary ship would blow
+towards port on a divinely appointed wind, and that his sacrifice and
+conversion were accepted on high. For the image he had had in his mind
+on that day of revelation in the chart-house had been of one Titanic
+struggle, not of this succession of conflicts which sometimes rose to
+crisis point but more often meant fighting against the terrible
+depression of day after day's inaction, driven half-crazy by the
+unceasing moaning of the rigging. Sustained bad weather gets on a
+sailor's nerves not because of any danger but simply by dint of the
+repetition of noises; there is only one thing more unbearable to mind
+and temper, and that is to be becalmed. Thought of any such happening
+was far from those on board the <i>Spirito Santo</i>, for the south-westerly
+wind urged her on past the Plate, and then a baffling head wind blew her
+out of the treacherous skies, and for over a week she beat back and
+forth, making hardly any headway. The rations were still further
+reduced, and then just as the men were beginning to make trouble again,
+the <i>Spirito Santo</i> caught up with the south-west trades. Once again she
+made the seas roar past her, for now, regardless of her depth in the
+water, Elderkin made all the sail he could. Day after day slipped past
+with the slipping foam, and the gaunt creatures aboard felt a stirring
+of relief. And then, in the Doldrums, they ran into a dead calm.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>Only anyone who has been becalmed on a tropical sea knows the terror
+that it is. Of all feelings of helplessness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> it is probably the most
+acute. Without steam or motor a ship is as powerless as though she were
+anchored to the sea-bottom with iron cables. Men have gone mad of it,
+and men did go mad of it in the starving <i>Spirito Santo</i>. She lay, as
+famished for a breeze as they for bread, upon a surface of molten glass,
+her sails limp as a dead bird's wing, the pitch soft in her seams, and
+the only sound in the circle of the horizon the faint creak-creak of her
+yards against the masts. Cabins and forecastle were unbearable, yet on
+deck the vertical sun had driven all but the thinnest lines of shadow
+out of being. The nights were almost as hot as the days and always the
+false cross gleamed from a cloudless sky, and the true Cross swam up
+lying on her back and trailing the pointers behind her, slowly righting
+herself as she rose and driving the pitiless brilliancy of the Milky Way
+before her. The drinking-water, what there was of it, stank; and the
+dried mouths of the men could hardly manage the mouldy hard-tack which
+captain and crew shared alike. And there was nothing to be done, nothing
+that could be done. The men were past revolt now, they could only
+shamble dizzily about. There was nothing to be done&mdash;except pray, and
+Elderkin prayed, though his lips moved almost soundlessly. He thought
+much these days, and he remembered&mdash;probably because of the dead
+stillness around&mdash;an old seafaring fable that in the calm heart of a
+cyclone life is to be found&mdash;that there birds and butterflies of every
+size and colour crowd, till the air is hung with brightness. He saw the
+individual soul of man as the hollow calm in the midst of life, cut off
+by the circling storm from all other air, and told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> himself that it
+could be the refuge for beauties of praise .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. he strove to make this
+aching solitude of mind wherein he was, rich as the fabled heart of the
+cyclone.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
+
+<p>Then, just as the first faint breath made her ripple the water at her
+bows, he discovered that, worn out by her successive batterings, the
+<i>Spirito Santo</i> was literally falling apart. He looked over her side and
+saw that she was spewing oakum from her seams, while she settled lower
+and lower in the water.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery acted like cool wind on Elderkin&mdash;it was unthinkable that
+they should perish now, not so very far from home, after all he had won
+through, and he prepared to meet this disaster also. He had prudently
+kept one last cask of rum unbroached, and this fluid life he now served
+out to the men. Then he drove them, as before with gun or Bible, but
+this time with rum; drove them to the task of frapping the leaking ship.
+Four great chain cables were passed under her and hove tight with
+Spanish windlasses on deck&mdash;a series of giant tourniquets to keep in her
+life. And when that too was accomplished, it was as though the power
+above at last was satisfied, and the wind strengthened that was to bear
+the <i>Spirito Santo</i> home.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly six months after leaving port with provisions enough for one;
+with her rotten ratlines hanging in little tags, her jury smoke-stack
+idle between the patched sails that seemed as though one more puff of
+wind would tear them from the battered yards, her spewing sides kept
+together with cables, and her broken bulwarks level with the water&mdash;a
+nightmare<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> vessel manned by ghosts&mdash;she crawled into the roadstead at
+Port of Spain.</p>
+
+<p class="center ws heading">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>For a few years after, a ragged white man haunted the drink-shops of the
+Islands and hung about the ports&mdash;a man without a ship. The owners of
+the <i>Spirito Santo</i> were broken by the safe return of that faked cargo,
+but they had passed the word round that her skipper was to be broken
+too. He who had been so self-controlled in the old unregenerate days now
+drank steadily, but it was only when he was very drunk he talked. And
+even then it was difficult to make out what he said&mdash;it was all such a
+jumble of some strange fight between two ships, and of how the ways of
+the Lord were so mysterious that it was often impossible for a man to
+tell upon which side righteousness might be found.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class ="white2" />
+
+<h2><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Here follows in the original a minute description of the
+post-mortem.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Pronounced Roughneck.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> At that date Prisoner's Counsel was not allowed to make a
+speech for the defence.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="white2" />
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED AT<br />
+THE BALLANTYNE PRESS<br />
+LONDON &amp; EDINBURGH</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="white" />
+
+<div id="box3">
+<p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the
+original publication, except as follows:</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 62<br />
+She carries the water from St. Ann's <i>changed to</i><br />
+She carries the water from St. <a href="#Annan">Annan's</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 95<br />
+Once in the din passage leading <i>changed to</i><br />
+Once in the <a href="#dim">dim</a> passage leading</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 151<br />
+Pisa on a more sophiscated errand <i>changed to</i><br />
+Pisa on a more <a href="#sophisticated">sophisticated</a> errand</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 209<br />
+Seneath turned her clear, long-sighted <i>changed to</i><br />
+<a href="#Senath">Senath</a> turned her clear, long-sighted</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 241<br />
+was an idealist, however preverted a one <i>changed to</i><br />
+was an idealist, however <a href="#perverted">perverted</a> a one</p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 252<br />
+Then he turned to Oslen <i>changed to</i><br />
+Then he turned to <a href="#Olsen">Olsen</a></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Beggars on Horseback, by F. Tennyson Jesse
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beggars on Horseback, by F. Tennyson Jesse
+
+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: Beggars on Horseback
+
+Author: F. Tennyson Jesse
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #33911]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+
+
+
+
+_NEW SIX SHILLING NOVELS_
+
+    OLD DELABOLE.
+    _By_ EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
+
+    OF HUMAN BONDAGE.
+    _By_ WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM.
+
+    THE FREELANDS.
+    _By_ JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+    MUSLIN. _By_ GEORGE MOORE.
+
+    OFF SANDY HOOK.
+    _By_ RICHARD DEHAN.
+
+    THE LITTLE ILIAD. _By_ MAURICE HEWLETT.
+    _Illustrated by_ SIR PHILIP BURNE-JONES, Bart.
+
+    THE IMMORTAL GYMNASTS.
+    _By_ MARIE CHER.
+
+    MRS. CROFTON.
+    _By_ MARGUERITE BRYANT.
+
+    THE LATER LIFE.
+    _By_ LOUIS COUPERUS.
+
+    CARFRAE'S COMEDY.
+    _By_ GLADYS PARRISH.
+
+    THE BOTTLE-FILLERS.
+    _By_ EDWARD NOBLE.
+
+    CHAPEL.
+    _By_ D. MILES LEWIS.
+
+    LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+    21 Bedford Street, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+    BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
+
+    BY F. TENNYSON JESSE
+    AUTHOR OF "THE MILKY WAY," ETC
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    LONDON      MCMXV
+    WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+_London: William Heinemann_, 1915
+
+
+
+
+    THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
+    WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE
+    TO
+    MISS HANNAH MERCY ROBERTS
+    (NAN)
+    AS A SMALL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+    OF A LARGE DEBT
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                PAGE
+
+    A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS         1
+
+    THE LADDER                    29
+
+    THE GREATEST GIFT             81
+
+    THE MASK                     109
+
+    A GARDEN ENCLOSED            135
+
+    THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS      181
+
+    WHY SENATH MARRIED           203
+
+    THE COFFIN SHIP              227
+
+    _The stories in this volume are printed
+    in chronological order._
+
+
+
+
+A SHEPHERDESS OF FAUNS
+
+
+Archie Lethbridge arrived in Provence thoroughly satisfied with life. He
+had just sold a big picture; was contemplating, with every prospect of
+success, giving a "one-man-show" in London of the work he would do in
+Provence; and the girl he loved had accepted him.
+
+Miss Gwendolen Gould was eminently eligible--her income, though
+comfortable, was not large enough to brand her husband as a
+fortune-hunter; she was pretty in a well-bred way that satisfied the eye
+without causing it to turn and gaze after her; and above all, she could
+be relied upon never to do, say, or think an unusual thing. Like all
+painters, when they are conventionally minded, Archie was the fine
+flower of propriety--he owned to enough wild oats of his own sowing to
+save him from inferiority in the society of his fellow-men, and he held
+exceedingly rigid views on the subject of his womenkind. Gwendolen
+might--doubtless had, for she was one of the large army of young women
+brought up to no profession save that of sex--give this or that man a
+kiss at a dance, but she would never have saved all of passion and
+possibilities for one man, and lavished them on him, regardless of
+suitable circumstances. Archie's name (that he hoped one day to adorn
+with some coveted letters at which he now pretended to sneer) would be
+perfectly safe with Gwendolen.
+
+The only drawback to his complete content was that his fair, sleek
+person showed signs of getting a trifle too plump--for he was only young
+as a man who is nearly "arrived" counts youth. On the whole, however, it
+was with a feeling of settled attainment that Archie left Nice and
+proceeded to strike up into the Alpes Maritimes, totally unprepared for
+any bizarre or inexplicable event--he would have laughed satirically at
+the bare idea.
+
+To do him justice, he worked hard, and he had a tremendous facility and
+a certain charm that concealed his lack of true artistic sensitiveness.
+There is probably nothing more difficult to interpret in paint than an
+olive-tree--the incredible grey brilliance of the thing, each leaf set
+at a slightly different angle, and refracting the light till the whole
+tree seems made of blown mist and sharp-cut shadows. Archie painted
+olives under every effect; sparkling in the sun, fog-grey on a grey day,
+and pale with the shimmering under-side of straining leaves against a
+storm-dark sky. He also painted very dirty children picking the ranked
+violets and stocks that grew along the olive terraces, and this he
+achieved without once descending into the realms of the "pretty-pretty,"
+while at the same time infusing just the right amount of sentiment to
+ensure a sale.
+
+He painted here and there from Grasse to Le Broc, and then one day,
+feeling he had taken all he could from the soft-scented land of olives
+and flowers, he hired a motor to convey him up into the Back o' Beyond,
+and drop him there. Once he met a couple of women bearing on their heads
+the sheaves of tight little red rosebuds that look exactly like bundles
+of radishes, and caught a whiff of the strange, bitter-sweet smell of
+the newly cut stems. Then he passed an old shepherd in a cloak of faded
+blue, with sheepskin legs cross-gartered to the knee, taking his lean,
+golden-brown flock up into the mountains.
+
+After that he saw no living thing, neither bird nor beast nor human, for
+many miles. Rounded hills, opening out from each other in endless
+succession and covered from crest to base with harsh yellow grass, and
+strewn with grey boulders. Deep gullies that at one time had been set
+alight and now were scorched and brown like plague-pits, with here and
+there a patch of pale stones showing up lividly from the charred thorns
+and blackened soil. Archie shivered, partly because of the keen wind
+blowing down from the great plateau beyond the hills, partly because
+something savage in the scene gripped at him.
+
+The car throbbed on, higher and higher, till the road, winding acutely
+along the edge of precipices, developed a surface that caused his
+chauffeur to swear gently to himself. Valley after valley opened out,
+long and narrow, and Archie noticed signs of a long-past cultivation in
+the curved terraces into which the bed of each valley was cut, forming
+an endless series of semicircles. There was no trace of any crop, and
+the whole effect was as of some rude amphitheatre where prehistoric man
+had sat and watched gladiatorial shows.
+
+The car, sticking now and then in a rut, or jolting violently over
+stones, finally crested the last rise, and Archie found himself on a
+vast stretch of land ringed in by sharp-edged hills, like some dead,
+gigantic crater; to the right, far away on a slope of the mountain
+ring, lay a grey straggling town that looked hacked out of the hardened
+lava. The only sign of life was in a patch of vividly green grass near
+at hand, where hundreds of crocuses had burned their way up through the
+earth and showed like a bed of thin blue flames.
+
+Archie directed the contemptuous chauffeur towards the town, and they
+finally drew up at the inn--a little green-shuttered affair, with a
+stone-flagged passage, and a tortoise-shell cat drowsing beside the
+door. Outside a _buvette_ opposite was a marble-topped table at which
+sat a couple of workmen drinking cider. An evanescent gleam of sun shone
+out, and the tawny liquid caught and held it, making each glass throw on
+to the table a bubble of gold fire enmeshed in the delicate shadow of
+the vessel itself. Archie stood transfixed for a moment with pleasure,
+then, as the gleam faded and died, he entered the inn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Like most people with the creative temperament, Archie Lethbridge was
+the prey of environment. The unborn child is not more influenced by the
+surroundings of its mother than a book or picture by those of its
+creator. Draginoules took such a deep, sure grip of Archie that it did
+more than merely affect his work--it began to upset his neatly arranged
+values, and, since Nature abhors a vacuum, to substitute fresh ones in
+their place. Draginoules, in short, behaved like a master of scenic
+effects; it allowed a couple of days for the background to permeate
+Archie's consciousness, and, when he was ripe for it, introduced the
+human element, which, to a man of his type, means a woman.
+
+It was one morning when he was washing brushes in the dim inn kitchen
+that he saw her first. She came out of the _buvette_ to serve some
+workmen, and Archie stopped dead in the act of swirling a cobalt-laden
+brush round and round in the hollowed yellow soap he held. He always saw
+the whole scene in memory as clearly as he saw it then--the low-fronted
+_buvette_, the glass of the door refracting the light as it still
+quivered from her passage; the pools of blue shadow that lay under the
+table and chairs on the pavement; the blouse-clad figures of the
+workmen, particularly a young man with a deeply burnt back to his neck;
+and the girl herself, holding aloft a tray of liqueur glasses, that
+winked like little eyes. All this he saw framed by the darkness of the
+kitchen and cut sharply into squares by the black bars of the window;
+then, as he mechanically went on frothing blue-stained bubbles out of
+the soap, he said to himself, "I must paint that girl."
+
+He soon found out that she was the niece of the stout couple who kept
+the _buvette_, and that her name was Desiree Prevost. As they mentioned
+her most people shrugged their shoulders. Oh, no, there was nothing
+against the girl--though it was true her eyebrows met in a thick bar
+across her nose, and old people had always said that was a sign of the
+Loup-Garou; enlightened moderns, however, did not really hold by that.
+The town was proud of her looks, for it considered her _tres bien_, the
+highest expression of praise from a Provencal, who is a dour kind of
+person, taking his pleasures as sadly as the proverbial Englishman, and
+whose chief aim in life is to place one sou on the top of another, and
+when possible insert a third in between.
+
+Archie approached the aunt of Desiree on the subject of sittings with
+some trepidation, but met with an agreeable pliancy from her, and a calm
+though indifferent assent from Desiree herself. She had a high opinion
+of her own value, and no amount of appreciation surprised her.
+
+Scanning her afresh as they stood on the pavement making final
+arrangements, Archie inwardly congratulated himself. From the heavy
+brass-coloured hair massed with a sculptured effect round her
+well-poised head, to the firmly planted feet, admirably proportioned to
+the rest of her, she was entirely right for his purpose--she seemed the
+spirit of Draginoules incarnate. Owing to the opaque pallor of her skin,
+her level bar of fair eyebrow and heavily folded lids, her big, finely
+modelled nose and faintly tinted mouth, all took on a sculptured quality
+that made for repose; the very shadows of her face were delicate in
+tone, mere breaths of shadows. Yet she was excessively vital, but it was
+a smouldering, restrained vitality suggestive of a quiescent crater. Her
+face was too individual to be perfect--the nose over big; the brow too
+narrow for the full modelling across the cheekbones, but she had an
+egg-like curve from turn of jaw to pointed chin. When she laughed her
+teeth showed large and strong, and her throat was the loveliest Archie
+had ever seen--magnificently big--and she had a trick of tilting her
+head back that made the smoothly knitted muscles of her neck swell a
+little under the white skin. As he painted her Archie used to find
+himself racking his brains for some speech that would make her head take
+that upward poise, so that he could watch the play of throat.
+
+He chose his background well; a sheltered spot in a fold of hill just
+beyond the town, where a slim young oak sapling still retained its
+copper-hued autumn leaves, that seemed almost fiery against the deep,
+soft blue of the sky. He had conceived of her as standing under the
+oak-tree, so that, to him, working lower down on the slope she too
+showed against the sky, seemingly caught in a network of delicate
+boughs. Being below her he was also the richer by the soft,
+three-cornered shadow under her chin, and the whole of her became a tone
+of exquisite delicacy, as of shadowed ivory, in the setting of sky--that
+sky of southern spring which seems literally drenched in light. The
+tawny note of the oak-leaves was to be repeated in some sheep, which,
+though kept subservient to the figure of Desiree, were to supply the
+motive of the picture--or so Archie thought till the sudden freak that
+made him introduce the fauns.
+
+Desiree was all for robing herself in her best--a black silk bodice with
+a high collar, and a be-trained, jet-spangled skirt, but Archie coaxed
+her into wearing the dress he first saw her in; a mere wrapper of
+indefinite prune colour, belted in at the waist to show the lines of her
+deep chested, long flanked figure, and cut so low as to leave her throat
+bare from the pit of it. Her sleeves were rolled back to the elbow and
+her arms showed milk-white as far as the reddened wrists and the big,
+work-roughened hands that held a hazel switch across her thighs.
+
+Archie was Anglo-Saxon enough to feel a slight stiffness at the first
+sitting, but Desiree was a stranger to the sensation of tied tongue.
+
+"I like the English," she announced. "Not many of them come here, but I
+have not spent my life in Draginoules, no, indeed! I was in a laundry
+once at La Madeleine. Do you know it? It is where they take in the
+washing of Nice. So I used to go much into Nice, and an English lady
+there painted me. She had a talent! She made me look beautiful. In
+Draginoules, do you know what they call me? They call me _l'Anglaise
+manquee_!"
+
+"Because you like the English so?" asked Archie. His French was
+considerably purer than hers, she spoke it with the Provencal accent
+that sounds exactly like a Cockney twang.
+
+"Because I have the nature, the habits of an English woman. Oh, I assure
+you! I like to live out of doors--to be out all day with one's bread and
+a bottle of wine and sleep on the hillside--that is what I call living.
+I always open my window at night, though my aunt says it is a folly. I
+could go to England if I chose, as a maid. My English lady would have
+me. Ah! how I long to see England. One gets so tired with Draginoules."
+
+"But your friends--you would be sorry to leave them?"
+
+"Oh, for that, I do not care about the people of Draginoules. It was my
+mother's place, not mine. I was born in Lyons, where my father was a
+silk-weaver. But he was a bad kind of man, so I came to my aunt to live.
+I do not think much of the people of Draginoules. They all like me, but
+I do not like them!"
+
+"Why don't you go to England, then? Though I think you are far better
+here!" quoth Archie, on whom the glamour of the place was strong.
+
+"My fiance would kill himself," said Desiree serenely.
+
+"Oh--you are fiancee?" murmured Archie, wondering why he felt that
+absurd mingling of relief and regret.
+
+"To Auguste Colombini. He is a mechanician in Nice. We are to marry when
+he gets a rise. _Helas! je ne serai plus fille!_"
+
+Her words, so simply and directly spoken, caught at Archie's
+imagination--"_Helas! je ne serai plus fille!_"
+
+"What a _vierge farouche_!" he said to himself. "If I can get that
+feeling into my picture!" Aloud he said: "And your fiance--he is very
+devoted, then?"
+
+"He adores me. It is a perfect folly, see you, to feel for anyone what
+he does for me. He is mad about me."
+
+She spoke with a calm arrogance that was very effective. How sure she
+was of her man! Was it a peculiarity of temperament in her or her fiance
+that made such confidence possible? Archie flattered himself he was
+something of a student of human nature, and he absorbed all of Desiree
+that he could get in a spirit positively approaching that of the
+journalist.
+
+When a man and woman fall into the habit of discussing the intimate
+things, such as love and marriage; and, above all, of comparing the
+sexes; disaster, even if only a temporary one, is apt to follow. Archie
+returned to the themes next time she posed for him.
+
+"So you think a man can care too much for a woman?" he asked, and
+stopped for a moment with raised brush to watch her answer. She shrugged
+her shoulders slightly, yet enough to make the folds of her wrapper
+strain upward for a fleeting moment.
+
+"As to that I think women are worth it. But it is foolish to care
+everything for one person."
+
+"You could care for others, then--as well as M. Colombini?" asked
+Archie with a sudden stir at his pulses.
+
+"I? One can care a little--here and there. But commit a folly for a man,
+that is a thing I would never do. And I am very fond of Auguste. If I
+did not think we should be happy and faithful I should not marry him. I
+look round on all the married people I know, and see nothing but
+betrayal everywhere. Here a husband plays his wife false, there she in
+her turn cheats him. Bah!--it is not good, that!"
+
+"How right you are!" said Archie virtuously. "But you do not then think
+it necessary to care as much for Auguste as he cares for you?"
+
+"_Damme_, no! How should I? He pleases me, and he is good--I can respect
+him. And I like him to kiss me . . ." the most charming look of
+self-consciousness mingled with reminiscence flitted over her face--"but
+for him--he is mad when he kisses me. Women do not care like that. It is
+a folly. And it is always happier, Monsieur, when it is the husband who
+cares the most. That is how men are made."
+
+Oh, yes, thought Archie, she was a woman after all, this _vierge
+farouche_, and more unashamedly woman, franker in her admissions of
+knowledge--for she admitted in her expressive face and gestures more
+than she actually said--than any woman of his world. He worked in
+silence for a while then told her to rest.
+
+She flung herself on the turf with an abandonment of limb and muscle
+usually only seen in young animals, and he came and lay a little below
+her and lit a cigarette. Desiree lay serenely, her face upturned, and he
+studied her thoughtfully.
+
+"Surely very few of your countrywomen are as blonde as you?" he asked
+her. "Your eyes are blue, and your brows and lashes a faint brown and
+your hair is----"
+
+He paused, at a loss how to describe her hair. It was not golden, rather
+that strong brass-colour that, had he seen it on a sophisticated
+townswoman he would have dubbed "peroxide." It was oddly metallic hair,
+not only in its colour, but in the carven ripples of it where she wore
+it pulled across her low brow and massed in heavy braids round her head.
+That way of wearing her hair right down to her brows, except for a
+narrow white triangle of forehead showing, boy-like, at one side, gave
+her an oddly animal look--using the word in its best sense. A look as of
+some low-browed, heavy-tressed faun, fearless and unashamed--it was only
+in her eyes that mystery lay.
+
+"My hair?" she exclaimed, showing her big white teeth in a laugh as
+frank as a boy's; "but that, you know, is not natural! It was an
+accident!"
+
+"An accident! How on earth----?"
+
+"Why, I was doing the _menage_ for a chemist and his wife over the
+border, at Cannes. And she had hair like this, and one day she gave me a
+little bottle and said: 'Desiree, you're a good girl, but you don't know
+how to make the best of yourself. You put some of this on your head.' I
+rubbed some on, one side only, just to see what would happen, and next
+day I found one half of my head golden--golden like the sun. 'Mon Dieu!'
+I said, 'but what do I look like, one half yellow and one half brown!'
+So I poured it on all over. It is nothing now because I have not put on
+the stuff for so long, but at one time it was beautiful. Such hair!
+Below my waist, and gold, oh, such a gold! Now it wants doing again."
+
+She ducked her head down for him to see the crown of it, and he
+perceived from the parting outwards two inches of unabashed dark
+hair--almost blue it looked by contrast with the circling wrappings of
+yellow. Archie, immensely tickled at finding this splendid young savage
+in the Back o' Beyond with dyed hair, could but shout with mirth, and
+Desiree, totally unoffended, joined in. When he went back that evening
+he felt he knew her far better than on the preceding day. In intimacies
+between men and women each day marks a distinct phase, making a series
+of steps; and the only possible thing to do is to see that the steps do
+not lead downwards. Like most people when on those magic stairs, Archie
+gave no heed to the question.
+
+The next day he unconsciously took up their conversation of the day
+before--a sure sign of intimacy if ever there were one. They were
+resting again, for he said it was too hot to work; and the sunset effect
+he wanted was growing later every day.
+
+"So you could care a little for some one else before you marry Auguste?"
+he suggested lightly enough, and looking away from her to the snow
+mountains that bared white fangs in the blue of the sky.
+
+She laughed a little, stretched herself, drooped her lids, was in a
+flash, and for a flash, entirely woman--alluring, withdrawing, sure of
+herself. As she gained in poise Archie felt his own tenure on
+self-control slipping away from him.
+
+"Could you?" he persisted, his eyes by now back on her changing face.
+
+"How does one care? What is it?" she evaded. "I do not think _you_ would
+be able to tell me. You are so cold, so English, you would care just as
+much as would be pleasant and never enough to make you uncomfortable!"
+
+The penetration of this remark displeased Archie.
+
+"But you are like that yourself," he objected. "You are the most cool,
+calculating girl I ever met--everything you say shows it."
+
+She rolled over slightly on the grass, so that her head, the chin thrust
+forward on her cupped hands, was brought nearer to him but kept at the
+provocative three-quarter angle suggestive of withdrawal. Her thick
+heavy lids were drooped, but suddenly they flickered and half-rose to
+show a gleam so wild, so unlike anything he had ever seen in her, that
+Archie caught his breath. It was as though some alien spirit, a pagan,
+woodland thing, was looking at him through the eyes of the
+self-possessed, level-headed young woman, who at times even seemed more
+_bourgeois_ than peasant.
+
+"Desiree! How beautiful you are!" he cried.
+
+"As beautiful as Mademoiselle your fiancee?" asked Desiree.
+
+With a run Archie descended into the commonplace, and Desiree became for
+him nothing but a pretty girl who went rather too far.
+
+"Englishmen do not care to discuss the lady of their choice," he said
+grandiloquently. "May I ask how you knew I was fiance?"
+
+"I have seen her picture in your room," said Desiree frankly; "the
+patronne told me there was one there. She is pretty, but yes, very
+pretty. Her hair is so beautifully done in all those little rolls, one
+would say it must be false. She is altogether mignonne, one would say
+the head of a doll!"
+
+Desiree was absolutely sincere in thinking she was giving Miss Gwendolen
+Gould the highest praise possible. She would willingly have exchanged
+her splendid muscular body for the slim, corseted form of Miss Gould,
+and have bartered her strongly modelled head for the small, regular
+features and Marcel-waved hair of the other girl. It was only his
+perception of this that kept Archie from anger, and as it was the truth
+of the praise hit him sharply. That night he sat down before the
+miniature and conscientiously tried to conjure up the emotions of a
+lover. The experiment was a failure.
+
+When he came to go to bed he found, to his amazement, a sprig of myrtle
+lying on his pillow--just a spray of leaves and a cluster of the purple
+berries with their little frilled heads.
+
+"How did that get there I wonder?" he asked himself, and then stooped,
+with an exclamation of disgust. A corner of the turned back sheet that
+trailed on the floor was lightly powdered with earth as though a muddy
+shoe had stood on it. The footprint--if footprint it were--was oddly
+impossible in shape, short and rounded, more like the mark of a hoof.
+
+"Can the patronne's goat have got up here? I saw it wandering in the
+passage to-day," thought Archie vexedly. "Beastly animal to drop
+half-chewed green food all over my pillow!"
+
+The injured man thumped his pillow and turned it over, so that the
+despised myrtle sprig lay crushed beneath it. Then he went to bed and to
+sleep.
+
+"I dreamt of you all night, Desiree," he told her next day.
+
+"I was pursuing you round rocks and over streams and through undergrowth
+all night long. You were you and yet you weren't. Somehow I got the
+impression that it was you as you would have been hundreds and thousands
+of years ago. And I kept on losing you and then little satyrs beckoned
+at me to show me the way you'd gone, and I stumbled on after the hoofs
+that were always flashing up just ahead--just vanishing round corners."
+
+"Satyrs? What are they?" asked Desiree.
+
+Archie explained as picturesquely as possible, but was brought to a stop
+by a curious change in Desiree's eyes. They wore the strained, misty
+look of the person who is trying hard to catch at some long-lost memory.
+Again he was startled by that strange feeling that something else was
+looking from between those placid lids of hers.
+
+"But I know," she began--"those creatures you are telling me--_what_ is
+it I know about them?" She broke off and shook herself impatiently.
+"Bah! It is gone. And then what happened--did you find me at the end?"
+
+"I can't quite remember," said Archie slowly "Something happened, but
+what it was is all blurred. I believe you're a wood-nymph, Desiree--a
+wood-nymph whose father was a satyr--and he chased and caught your
+mother and took her down through his tangle of undergrowth with his
+hands in her hair, never heeding her screams. You have very definite
+little points at the top of your ears, you know! We all have them a bit
+to remind us of our wild-dog days, but yours are the most so I've ever
+seen. Do you never take off all your clothes and go creeping and
+slipping through the woods at night, to bathe in one of the crater-pools
+by the light of the moon?"
+
+"How did you know?" She turned wide, startled eyes on him, her quickened
+breath fluttered her gown distressfully.
+
+"What!--you do it, then?" exclaimed Archie.
+
+"No! no! What folly are you talking!" She sprang to her feet and slipped
+behind the oak-sapling, as though it were a defence against some danger;
+across the boughs he saw her puzzled, fearful eyes. As he watched her
+the expression of alarm faded--she put up her hand to her hair, gave it
+a quieting pat and tucked some stray strands into place, then she looked
+across at the easel.
+
+"It must be time to work again!" she exclaimed. "Have we been resting
+long, M'sieu? I feel as though I'd been asleep and you'd just awakened
+me." She yawned as she spoke, stretching her strong arms in a slow, wide
+circle, the muscles of her shoulders rounding forward and making two
+little hollows appear above her collar-bones. The sight aroused the
+artist in Archie, and he too scrambled up, and betook himself to work.
+The sheep and goats that he had bribed the shepherd to pasture there
+happened to "come" as he wanted them that evening, and he began to work
+away at them in silence. One of the goats, a piebald, shaggy creature,
+reared itself up on its hind legs, with its fore-feet against the tree
+trunk, and began to nibble at the foliage. Something about the pose of
+the creature sent a swift suggestion to Archie's mind, and he just had
+time to rough in the legs, with their slight outward tilt, the hoofs
+set firmly apart and the tail sticking out and up from the sharply
+curved-in rump, before the animal dropped on all fours and moved away.
+Archie, with the smile of the creator in his eyes, worked on, and the
+goat's legs merged into the beginnings of a slim human body with the
+hands leaning against the tree and the head, tilted on one side, peering
+around at the figure of Desiree. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of
+annoyance.
+
+"There is some one watching us from those myrtle bushes. Confound the
+beggar--some one from the village, I suppose."
+
+Desiree turned sharply, just in time to see a brown face grinning
+through the leaves. It was a face compact of curiously slanting
+lines--upward-twitched tufts of brows, upward wrinkles at the corners of
+the narrow eyes, and a slanting mouth that laughed above a pointed,
+thrusting chin.
+
+"That! That is only my little brother, M'sieu. It is one of God's
+innocents and lame on both feet. Sylvestre! Come out and speak to
+M'sieu--no one will hurt you."
+
+The bushes rustled and parted and an odd little figure, apparently that
+of a boy of about ten, came scrambling out with a queer, lungeing action
+from the hips. The child's legs were deformed, but he swung himself
+forward at a marvellous speed on a pair of clumsy crutches. Archie saw
+that when he was not laughing his brown eyes were wide and grave, with a
+look of innocence in them that contrasted oddly with the knowing gleam
+they showed a minute earlier.
+
+"But he is exactly what I want for the picture!" cried Archie, running
+his hand through the boy's tangled curls and tilting his face gently
+backwards. "He is exactly like the things I was telling you of. He must
+sit to me."
+
+He deftly tugged the boy's shirt out of his belt and peeled it off him,
+exposing a thin little brown body with a skin as fine as silk. When he
+felt the sun on his bare flesh the child made guttural sounds of
+delight, flinging himself backwards on the ground; and, supported by his
+elbows, letting his head tip back till his curls touched the grass. As
+the shielding locks fell away, Archie saw with a thrill which was almost
+repulsion, that dark brown hair grew thickly out of the boy's ears. . . .
+
+"Would he stay still, do you think?" he asked Desiree.
+
+"He will if I tell him," replied Desiree. "Come to me, Sylvestre," and
+drawing the child to her she stroked his head and whispered to him with
+a motherly gesture of which Archie would not have thought her capable.
+He had listened to her exceedingly modern views on the subject of the
+family, and her own strictly limited intentions in that respect.
+
+After the addition of Sylvestre the picture made great strides, even if
+the intimacy between Archie and Desiree advanced less rapidly than
+before. And yet every now and again, in sudden flashes of wildness, in a
+half-uttered phrase totally at variance with her normal self--little
+things that she seemed to remember from some forgotten whole, Desiree
+would give him that impression of being two people at once; and always,
+on these occasions, she was as puzzled as he, and with an added touch of
+something that seemed almost shame. For the everyday Desiree, that calm,
+practical and comely young woman, Archie's friendliness was touched by
+nothing warmer than the inevitable element of sex; but the shy, bold
+thing that sometimes peeped from between her lids, that thing that
+seemed to take possession of her beautiful body, and mock and allure and
+chill him in a breath, that thing was waking an answering spirit in
+himself, and he knew it. Miss Gould's portrait was unable to protect him
+from wakeful nights, when he turned his pillow again and again to find a
+cool surface for his cheek, nights when he would at last fling off the
+clothes and lean out of the window to watch the steel-blue dawn turn to
+the blessed light of everyday. He was living in a state of tension, and
+it seemed to him that some great event was holding its breath to spring,
+as though the very trees and rocks, the brooding sky and quiescent
+pools, were all in some conspiracy, hoodwinking yet preparing him for
+the moment of revelation.
+
+It was on to the sensitive surface of this mood that a letter from
+Gwendolen, announcing her speedy arrival on the Riviera dropped like a
+dart, tearing the delicate tissues and stringing the fibres to the
+necessity for haste. Gwendolen, aunt-dragoned, and Baedeker in hand,
+meant the return to the acceptance of the old values that had once
+filled him with complacency. And yet, with all the jarring sense of
+intrusion that Gwendolen's advent instilled, there mingled a feeling
+that was almost relief--as though he were being saved, against his will,
+but with his judgment, from something too disturbing and beautiful to be
+quite comfortable.
+
+Three or four days after receiving Gwendolen's letter, he put the last
+touches to the picture and informed Desiree he would need her no more.
+She received the news quite calmly, apparently without regret--thus do
+women tactlessly fail in what is expected of them. Archie felt absurdly
+flat as he wrapped up his wet brushes in a week-old sheet of the _Petit
+Nicois_. He also felt very virtuous, and told himself it was not many
+men who would have refrained from making love to the girl under the
+circumstances. It is astonishing what a comfortless thing is the glow of
+conscious virtue--it is bright in hue but gives off no warmth.
+
+There was a little hut, used for stacking wood, close to where he
+worked, and here, thanks to the courtesy of the owner, he was wont to
+put his picture for the night. Desiree, as usual, helped him to carry it
+in and plant the legs of the easel firmly into the earthen floor. He had
+worked late, and the sun had just slipped behind the far ridge of the
+mountains; the tiny hut was filled with a deepening half-light, the
+stacked brush-wood seemed wine-coloured in the warm shadow, here and
+there a peeled twig stood out luminously. By the open door hoof-marks in
+the trampled earth showed that the patronne's mule had been carrying
+away wood that morning. That was as palpable as the fact that it must
+have been Sylvestre's deformed foot which had soiled Archie's sheet, yet
+those marks re-created the atmosphere of his dream, and seemed, in the
+sudden confusion mounting to his brain at the warmth and nearness of
+Desiree, to mix madly with Sylvestre, and rustled undergrowth and the
+glimmer of elusive hoofs round myrtle-bushes--and the glimmer of
+something whiter and more elusive still.
+
+He could hear Desiree's breathing beside him--not as even as usual, but
+deeper-drawn and uncertain, and turning, he met the sidelong glance of
+her eyes.
+
+"Desiree . . . you said you sometimes slipped out at night and played in
+the woods--and the pools. Take me out with you to-night and show me
+where you go and what you do. . . . I'll be awfully good, I swear I
+will--you're not a woman, you're a nymph, a strange, uncanny thing. I
+believe you meet your kinsfolk there and dance with them--Desiree!"
+
+She looked at him for a moment in silence. In her eyes her normal and
+her unknown selves contended.
+
+"It is true I often go out as you say, something drives me, but I do not
+know why myself. And I get very tired and can never remember clearly
+what it has been like. It is as though I did it almost in my sleep, or
+had dreamt it."
+
+"It _is_ a dream--everything's a dream, and I've got to wake up soon.
+Let's have this bit of dream together--Desiree!"
+
+She yielded. They took bread and wine and apples for a midnight feast,
+and set off together over the lava-fields to the woods that tufted the
+mountain slopes. Through the deep, soft night the pallor of her face and
+throat glimmered as through dark water. She held his hand to guide him
+over the fissures and round the piled boulders, once he slipped on a
+hummock of harsh grass, and felt her grow rigid on the instant to check
+his fall. They were very silent, until, seated at the edge of the woods,
+they ate their supper, and then they laughed softly together like
+children, with fragmentary speech; and once Desiree sang a snatch of a
+Provencal song; Archie, who knew his Mistral, joining in.
+
+Presently, when they fell on silence again, it seemed the wood was full
+of noises--stealthy footfalls, snapping of dry twigs, the rustling of
+parted shrubs. As the late moon, almost at the full, swam up the sky,
+making the distant snow-peaks gleam like white flames against the dusky
+blue, and shimmering on the pools cupped here and there over the
+hollowed expanse below, Archie could have sworn that the penetrating
+light showed quick-glancing faces and bright eyes from the thicket. . . .
+Once a great white owl did sail out with a beating of wings; so close to
+them that they could see the stiff brows that bristled over his lambent
+orbs, and once a strong smell and a gleam of black and white told of a
+wild cat tracking her prey.
+
+They buried the disfiguring remnants of their little feast, and then
+Archie solemnly poured out what was left of the red wine on to the slope
+below.
+
+"For the gods!" he announced, "the liquor for us and the dregs for
+them!"
+
+"Ah!" cried Desiree, as though his action pricked sleeping memories to
+life, "now I remember it all again! I forget when I go home, but then
+the next time everything is clear again, and so it goes on."
+
+She disappeared in a jutting spur of the wood, and Archie scrambled to
+his feet and followed her. As he broke through to the further edge,
+which hung over a wide pool, he caught his foot in something
+soft--Desiree's clothes that lay in a circle, just as she had slipped
+out of them.
+
+She stood at the pool's brim, her hands clasping at the back of her
+head; a thing to dream of. She was so lovely that all feeling died save
+a passionate appreciation, keen to the verge of pain; she was so lovely
+that of necessity she awoke an impersonal motion. Slowly she stretched
+herself, and as the muscles rippled into curves and sank, the delicate
+shadows ebbed and breathed out again on the pearl-white of her body.
+Archie's every nerve was strung not to lose one line or one breath of
+tone.
+
+Putting out a foot she touched the water, so that little tremors soft as
+feathers fled over the surface; then, as she waded in, deeper and
+deeper, the water parted round her in flakes of brightness that shook
+and mixed up and broke away. When she rose, dripping wet, the moonlight
+refracted off her, was mirrored in the water, and thrown back again on
+her--a magic shuttle weaving an aura of whiteness. Long arrows of light
+fled back through the pool as she waded to shore, where she stood for a
+moment motionless; head slightly forward, arms hanging, and one hip
+thrown outwards as she poised her weight. Myriads of tiny,
+crescent-shaped drops clung to her limbs like fish-scales, so that she
+seemed more mermaiden than wood-nymph, but Archie's eyes proclaimed her
+Artemis--she would have calmed a satyr as she stood. Thoughts of forest
+glades were chill, sweet sports were held, and the wildest hoof was
+tamed to the childlike kinship with Nature that is pagan innocence,
+floated through his mind like visible things.
+
+Suddenly she became conscious of his presence, and gave one glance in
+which invitation and a certain calm aloofness seemed to mingle.
+
+"Desiree!" stammered Archie, "Desiree!"
+
+All at once excitement tingled through him, blurring his ideas, just as
+chloroform sets the blood pricking with thousands of points and edges,
+while dizzying the brain. She stayed still a second longer; then,
+either the fearful nymph swayed her utterly, or, as it seemed to
+Archie, a sudden rejection of him, the clumsy, civilized mortal, sprang
+into her eyes. She flung up her head, turned, and was gone in the tangle
+of the woods. Without more than a second's hesitation he plunged in
+after her.
+
+To Archie, whenever he looked back, that night seemed an orgy of
+chase-gone-mad; gathering in force as it went and sweeping into its
+resistless flow the most incongruous of elements.
+
+He ran after her, stumbling, tripping, whipped across the face by
+brambles. Everything in life was crystallized into the desire to catch
+up, to track her to the enchanted green where, with her, he could become
+part of a remote free life he had never imagined before. All his own
+personality, except that in him which was hers, had ceased to
+exist--work, Gwendolen, the great world, and the inn at Draginoules,
+were wiped out of knowledge by the force of his concentration on one
+thing. The arbitrary line drawn between the actual and the unreal, the
+credible and the impossible, sanity and so-called madness, was swept
+away. She, the descendant of the gods knew what strange race--a race
+that perhaps had lingered in these crater-fastnesses and myrtle groves
+long after it had died off the rest of the earth--was fleeing before him
+through a wood alive with brightened eyes and quickened hoofs; and in
+her veins the slender strain of blood derived from some goat-legged,
+tall-eared thing--a strain asleep through the generations of her
+ancestors, had mastered all the rest of her heritage, and was triumphant
+in her soul as in Sylvestre's body. She ran on, swiftly, and without
+effort, and Archie ran after her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dawn broke at last, reluctant, chill, showing the woods clear-edged and
+motionless as though cut out of steel, glimmering on the quiet pools and
+the ribbed lava slopes, though the hollow of the plain still held a
+great lake of shadow.
+
+Desiree's clothes lay no longer by the pool where she had bathed; no
+trace of human presence remained; even the marshy edge showed only
+trampled hoof-marks, as though some goat-footed herd had watered there.
+
+To Archie, breaking through the undergrowth at the edge of the wood, it
+seemed incredible that everything should look so much as usual. Still
+more he felt the wonder when, with the broad sunlight, he reached his
+inn. He himself felt so shaken in soul that even the thought of the
+Englishman's panacea--a cold bath--failed to appeal to him as a solution
+of all trouble. Plucked out of his accustomed place, flung by the sport
+of what strange gods he knew not, into a headlong medley of undreamed
+emotions, his values had been so violently disrupted that he could not
+have told which held true worth--the normal life of Gwendolens and
+one-man shows and newspaper criticisms, or what had passed in the woods
+that night. And, whatever strange rite he had surprised, and whether it
+were golden actuality that a man might live happy because he had once
+seen, or the mere wildness of a dream, there had been something about it
+which taught him not to blaspheme the revelation. He did not tell
+himself that the _vin ordinaire_ must have gone to his head, or that he
+had been a romantic fool worked on by moonlight. This was remarkable,
+for few people are strong enough not to profane the past.
+
+So much of grace held by him even when he found a letter awaiting him to
+tell of Gwendolen's arrival with the obedient aunt at Cannes, whither
+she summoned him. He debated whether to say good-bye to Desiree or not.
+The matter was settled for him by meeting her accidently outside the
+_buvette_. She was looking pale and jaded, not at all at her best, but
+her eyes were blankly unknowing and clear of all embarrassment. She said
+good-bye with charming unemotional friendliness and informed him that
+she was going to be married very soon--Monsieur Colombini had had a rise
+that justified it. Here was anti-climax enough, even if the cold bath,
+the letter and the prose of packing were not sufficient. And yet, since
+it had not been Desiree, the frank peasant, who had shown Archie the
+wonders of that night, his memories remained. Half-fearful and half
+splendid, not enough to make him walk with the vision beautiful, but
+merely enough to spoil his pictures for the public, because instead of
+being content with the merely obvious he was now always trying for
+something beyond his powers to express. Enough also, to prick him to an
+occasional weary clear-eyed knowledge of his Gwendolen--a knowledge that
+was hardly criticism, for he admitted his kinship with her world. And
+what it was that companioned him, that he strove to show in his
+pictures, he never entirely told; for just as no woman ever tells what
+it is her sex has and the other lacks--that something which makes all
+the difference--just as no man tells a woman what it is he and his
+fellows talk about when the last skirt has trailed from the
+dinner-table, so no one ever tells the whole truth about the beloved.
+
+
+
+
+THE LADDER
+
+
+I
+
+THE TRIAL
+
+(_Account taken from a contemporary journal_)
+
+"To-day, March 3, the Court being sat in the Castle at Launceston, about
+eight o'clock in the morning, the prisoner was set to the bar.
+
+"Sophia Bendigo, of the parish of St. Annan in this county, was
+indicted, for that she, not having the fear of God before her eyes, but
+being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on October 20,
+in the 24th year of his Majesty's reign, and again since, to wit, on
+October 21, with force and arms upon the body of Constantine Bendigo,
+Gent., her father, did make an assault, and in her malice aforethought,
+did kill and murder, by putting into some water-gruel a certain powder
+called arsenic, and afterwards giving to him, the said Constantine
+Bendigo, a potion thereof, knowing it to be mixed with the powder
+aforesaid, so that he, the said Constantine, was poisoned, and of which
+poison, he, the said Constantine, died, on the 22nd of the said month of
+October; against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and
+dignity.
+
+"The Counsel for the Crown were the Hon. Mr. Bathwick; Mr. Sergeant
+Wheeler; Mr. Grice, Town Clerk of Launceston; Mr. Rose, Mr. Kirton, and
+the Hon. Mr. Harrington: And for the prisoner, Mr. Ford, Mr. Bennett and
+Mr. Walton.
+
+"The Counsel for the Crown having opened the indictment, proceeded to
+inform the Court and Jury that this prosecution was carried on by the
+order, and at the expense of his Majesty (who is ever watchful to
+preserve the lives, liberties, and properties of his subjects) against
+the prisoner at the bar, Sophia Bendigo, for one of the most atrocious
+crimes; the cruel, inhuman, and deliberate murder of her own father:
+That the prisoner at the bar was the daughter and only child of Mr.
+Constantine Bendigo, Squire of Troon, in the hundred of Penwith, a
+gentleman both by his birth and education; that as she was the only, so
+she was the beloved child of her father, who had spared no pains in
+giving her a genteel, as well as a pious education; that her father,
+indeed, had used this pious fraud (if he might be allowed that
+expression) in saying that her fortune would be L10,000, to the end, he
+supposed, that his daughter might be married suitable to such a fortune.
+That in June of the preceding year one Capt. William Lucius Crandon came
+to Penwith map-making, and hearing that Miss Bendigo was a L10,000
+fortune, and having a mind to marry this fortune, notwithstanding he had
+a wife and child alive, contrived to get acquainted with this family;
+how well he succeeded, and how sadly for this family, this unhappy
+catastrophe has shown. That Mr. Bendigo, having been informed that Mr.
+Crandon was married, he desired his daughter to break off all
+correspondence with him; that instead of doing so, she acquainted Mr.
+Crandon with her father's command, who, instead of clearing his
+character to her father's satisfaction, contrives the means and
+persuades this beloved, this tenderly indulged daughter, to be an actor
+in her father's destruction.
+
+"That the Captain left Cornwall at the end of September, since when, on
+the miscarriage of his plans, he had disappeared entirely; and soon
+after he is gone, we find this wicked scheme beginning to be put into
+execution. That on October 20, Mr. Bendigo found himself much disordered
+after taking some tea, that next day, the prisoner having made him
+another dish of tea, deceased had thought it to taste odd and sent it
+downstairs; that Crandon, to hasten the work of destruction, sent a
+letter to the prisoner, making use of an allegorical expression, not to
+spare the powder, in order to keep the rust off the pebbles. That the
+tea being too thin to admit of a larger quantity at the time, you will
+find by the witnesses that shall be produced, that the prisoner did mix
+a large quantity of the powder in a pan of water-gruel and gave some of
+it to her father next day which had such terrible effects as to occasion
+his death on the morning of the 23rd. That he would call the physicians
+first, and they would prove that what was administered to the deceased
+was poison and the cause of his death.
+
+"Mr. Harvey, of St. Annan, and Dr. Polwhele, of Penzance, were then
+called and both sworn; and Mr. Harvey said that, being on the evening of
+the 22nd sent for to Mr. Bendigo, he thus made his complaints: That he
+had a violent burning pain, saying it was a ball of fire in his guts,
+that he vomited much since taking some tea two days before and again
+after taking some gruel that evening, that he had a cold sweat, hiccups,
+prickings all over his body, which he compared to a number of needles.
+He desired to drink, but could not swallow, his pulse intermitted, his
+tongue swelled, his throat was excoriated, his breath difficult and
+interrupted. Towards morning he grew worse, became delirious and sank
+gradually, dying about six o'clock in the morning.
+
+"Being asked if he thought Mr. Bendigo was poisoned, witness answered,
+He really believed he was, for that the symptoms, while living, were
+like those of a person who had taken arsenic; and the appearances after
+death, like those that were poisoned by arsenic."[A]
+
+"King's Counsel: Did you also make an examination of the powder found in
+the gruel?
+
+"Mr. Harvey: I did. I threw it upon a hot iron; boiled ten grains in
+water and divided the concoction, after filtering it into five equal
+parts. Into one I put oil of vitriol, into another tartar, into the
+third spirit of sal ammoniac, into the fourth spirit of salt, and into
+the fifth spirit of wine. I tried it also with syrup of violets, and
+made the like experiments with the same quantity of white arsenic which
+I bought in Penzance. It answered exactly to every one of them, and
+therefore I believed it to be white arsenic.
+
+"Mr. Harvey further deposed that Mr. Bendigo told him that he suspected
+poison, and that he believed it came to his daughter with the serpentine
+beads, for that his daughter had had a present of those damned pebbles
+that morning; that if he, this witness, would look in the gruel, he
+might find something, that when he, this witness, asked Mr. Bendigo whom
+he imagined gave him the poison, he replied, A poor love-sick girl, but
+I forgive her; what will not a woman do for the man she loves?
+
+"That later on the evening of the 22nd, Mr. Bendigo being a trifle
+easier, consented to see Miss, that he, this witness, was present when
+Miss came into the chamber, and fell down upon her knees, saying, Oh!
+sir, forgive me! Do what you will with me, and I'll never see Crandon
+more if you will but forgive me. To which Mr. Bendigo replied, I forgive
+thee, but thou shouldst have remembered that I am thy father, upon which
+Miss said, Oh, sir, your goodness strikes daggers to my soul; sir, I
+must down on my knees and pray that you will not curse me. He replied,
+No, child, I bless thee and pray that God may bless thee and let thee
+live to repent. Miss then declared she was innocent of this illness, and
+he replied, that he feared she was not, and that some of the powder was
+in such hands as would show it against her. Witness added that deceased,
+before Miss Bendigo's entry, had bidden him look to the remainder of the
+gruel.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: Who was it sent for you when deceased was taken
+ill?
+
+"Harvey: James Ruffiniac,[B] the steward, fetched me and said it was at
+the command of Miss Bendigo, who said, to-morrow will not satisfy me,
+you must go now, which he did.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: All the years you have known Miss Bendigo what has
+been her behaviour to her father? Has she not always done everything
+that an affectionate child could for her father's ease?
+
+"Harvey: She always behaved like a dutiful daughter, as far as ever I
+knew, and seemed to do everything in her power for her father's recovery
+whenever he was indisposed.
+
+"King's Counsel: Did she tell you that she had put anything into her
+father's gruel and that she feared it might in some measure occasion his
+death?
+
+"Harvey: She never did.
+
+"Dr. Polwhele, having been sworn at the same time as Mr. Harvey, and
+stood in Court close by him, was now asked by the King's Counsel if he
+was present at the opening of Mr. Bendigo and whether the observations
+made by Mr. Harvey were true: he said he was present and made the same
+observations himself. He was then asked what was his opinion of the
+cause of the death of Mr. Bendigo, and he replied, by poison absolutely.
+
+"Eliza Ruffiniac, being sworn, said, that on the afternoon of the 20th,
+her master being unwell, from (as they thought at the time) an attack of
+bile, Miss Bendigo, the prisoner at the bar, made him a dish of tea.
+That after taking it he was very sick, but seemed easier next day, when
+Miss again made him some tea which he did not drink. That next evening
+he sent for the witness and asked for some water-gruel to be made; that
+Miss on hearing of it, said, I will make it, that there's no call for
+you to leave your ironing; that Miss was a long time stirring the gruel
+in the pantry, and on coming into the kitchen said, I have been taking
+of my father's gruel, and I think I shall often eat of it; I have taken
+a great fancy to it.
+
+"King's Counsel: Do you recollect that one Keast, the cook-maid, had
+been taken ill with drinking some tea the day before, and tell the Court
+how it was.
+
+"E. Ruffiniac: Hester Keast brought down the tea from my master's room
+and afterwards drank it in the scullery, where I found her crying out
+she was dying, being taken very ill with a violent vomiting and pains
+and a great thirst.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: On that occasion, how did Miss Bendigo behave?
+
+"E. Ruffiniac: She made Hester Keast go to her bed and sent her a large
+quantity of weak broth and white wine whey.
+
+"King's Counsel: Did you ever see Miss Bendigo burn any papers, and
+when?
+
+"E. Ruffiniac: On the evening of the 22nd, Miss brought a great many
+papers in her apron down into the kitchen and put them on the fire, then
+thrust them into it with a stick and said, now, thank God, I am pretty
+easy, and then went out of the kitchen; that this witness and Hester
+Keast were in the kitchen at the time; that they, observing something to
+burn blue, it was raked out and found to be a paper of powder that was
+not quite consumed; that there was this inscription on the paper; Powder
+to clean the pebbles, and that this paper, she, the witness, delivered
+to Dr. Polwhele next day. Being shown a paper, with the above
+inscription on it, partly burnt, she said she believed the paper to be
+the same the prisoner put into the fire and she took out.
+
+"This witness was asked if she ever heard the prisoner use any unseemly
+expressions against her father, and what they were? Replied, many times;
+sometimes she damned him for an old rascal; and once when she was in the
+dairy and the prisoner passing at the time outside, she heard her say,
+Who would not send an old father to hell for ten thousand pounds?
+
+"Hester Keast, the cook-maid, deposed, That, on the 21st she bore down
+her master's dish of tea and drank of it, being afterwards taken very
+ill, that on the next day, being down in the kitchen after her master
+was taken ill, Lylie Ruffiniac brought a pan with some gruel in it to
+the table and said, Hester, did you ever see any oatmeal so white? that
+this witness replied, That oatmeal? Why, it is flour! and Lylie replied,
+I never saw flour so gritty in my life; that they showed it to Mr.
+Harvey, the apothecary, who took it away with him.
+
+"James Ruffiniac was next called and sworn.
+
+"King's Counsel: When your master was dead, did you not have some
+particular conversation with the prisoner? Recollect yourself, and tell
+my Lord and the Jury what it was.
+
+"J. Ruffiniac: After my master was dead, Miss Bendigo asked me if I
+would live along with her, and I said no, and she then said, If you will
+go with me, your fortune will be made; I asked her what she wanted me to
+do and she replied, Only to hire a post-chaise to go to London. I was
+shocked at the proposal and absolutely refused her request. On this she
+put on a forced laugh, and said, I was only joking with you.
+
+"Charles Le Petyt, Clerk in Holy Orders, was next called and sworn, and
+said, That, meeting Miss Bendigo in St. Annan when the crowd was
+insulting her, he took her into the inn, and spoke with her there,
+asking if she would not return home under his protection; she answered
+yes, that upon this he got a closed post-chaise and brought her home;
+that upon her coming home she asked him what she should do, that he,
+having heard her, said that they should fix the guilt upon Crandon if
+she could produce anything to that end, but in some agony she replied
+she had destroyed all evidences of his guilt.
+
+"Prisoner's Counsel: Do you, Mr. Le Petyt, believe that the Prisoner had
+any intention to go off, from what appeared to you, and if she was not
+very ready to come back with you from the inn?
+
+"Le Petyt: She was very ready to come back, and desired me to protect
+her from the mob, and she had, I am sure, no design to make an escape.
+
+"Here the Counsel for the Crown rested their proof against the prisoner,
+and she was thereupon called to make her defence.
+
+"Prisoner: My Lord, in my unhappy plight, if I should use any terms that
+may be thought unfitting, I hope I shall be forgiven, for it will not be
+with any desire to offend. My Lord, some time before my father's death,
+I unhappily became acquainted with Captain Crandon. This, after a time,
+gave offence to my father, and he grew very angry with me over Captain
+Crandon. I am passionate, which I know is a fault, and when I have found
+my father distrustful over Captain Crandon, I may have let fall an angry
+expression, but never to wish him injury, I have always done all in my
+power to tend him, as the witnesses against me have not denied. When my
+father was dead, being ill and unable to bear confinement in the house,
+I took a walk over to St. Annan, but I was insulted, and a mob raised
+about me, so that when Mr. Le Petyt came to me I desired his protection
+and to go home with him, which I did.
+
+"I will not deny, my Lord, that I did put some powder into my father's
+gruel; but I here solemnly protest, as I shall answer it at the great
+tribunal, and God knows how soon, that I had no evil intention in
+putting the powder in his gruel: It was put in to procure his love and
+not his death.
+
+"Then she desired that several witnesses might be called in her defence,
+who all allowed that Miss Bendigo always behaved to her father in a
+dutiful and affectionate manner. And Anne Lear and Elizabeth Pollard,
+women occasionally employed at Troon, deposed that they had heard Lylie
+Ruffiniac say, Damn the black bitch (meaning the prisoner), I hope I
+shall see her walk up a ladder and swing.
+
+"The prisoner having gone through her defence, the King's Counsel, in
+reply, observed, That the prisoner had given no evidence in
+contradiction of the facts established by the witnesses for the crown;
+that indeed, Anne Lear and Elizabeth Pollard had sworn to an expression
+of Lylie Ruffiniac, which, if true, served to show ill-will in Ruffiniac
+towards the prisoner, but that he thought the incident was too slight to
+deserve any manner of credit. That the other witnesses, produced by the
+prisoner, served only to prove that Mr. Bendigo was a very fond,
+affectionate and indulgent parent, therefore there could be no pretence
+of giving him powders or anything else to promote in him an affection
+for his daughter. That if the Jury believed the prisoner to be innocent,
+they would take care to acquit her: but if they believed her guilty,
+they would take care to acquit their own consciences.[C]
+
+"The prisoner desired leave to speak in answer to what the King's
+Counsel had said, which being granted, she said, The gentleman was
+mistaken in thinking the powders were given to her father to produce his
+affection to her, for that they were given to procure her father's love
+to Captain Crandon.
+
+"The judge summed up the evidence in a clear and impartial manner to the
+Jury, and they, without going out of Court, brought in their verdict:
+Guilty, Death.
+
+"After sentence of death was pronounced upon her she, in a very solemn
+and affecting manner, prayed the Court that she might have as much time
+as could be allowed her to prepare for her great and immortal state. The
+Court told her she should have a convenient time allowed her; but
+exhorted her, in the meantime, to lose not a moment, but incessantly to
+implore the mercy of that Being to Whom alone mercy belongs."
+
+
+II
+
+FIRST STEPS
+
+To the making of such a scene as that recounted in the contemporary
+journal, much had gone during the months so crudely analysed. That
+damning pile of evidence had been building itself up, touch upon touch,
+since the first moment when Sophie Bendigo's eyes lit on the instigator
+of the trouble; and the causes of her own share in it had been
+strengthening from far earlier even than that. In after years the Wise
+Woman of Bosullow would recount that when the baby Sophie was brought to
+her to be passed for luck through the ringed stone of the Men-an-Tol,
+she had foretold for her the rise in life that eventually came about.
+True, the terms of the prophecy had been so vague that beyond the fact
+that a ladder, metaphorical or otherwise, was to play a part in Sophie's
+career, Mr. Bendigo had not been much the wiser. The mother had lain in
+the bleak moorland churchyard for several years now, but she had had
+time, during the most malleable years of a girl's life, the early teens,
+to impress Sophie with a sense of destiny. Not for her the vulgar loves
+and joys of other country girls, to her some one shining, resplendent,
+would come flashing down, and Sophie must learn to bear with powdered
+hair and hoops against that moment. For London, of course, would be her
+splendid bourne, and as to saying that hoops got in the way of her
+legs--why, hoops were the mode and to a hoop she must come. Since Mrs.
+Bendigo had died, worn out by the terrible combination of the Squire's
+slow cruelty and his suave tongue, Sophie had given up the struggle with
+hoops and powder, but she still lived for and by her vision of the
+future. If Sophie Bendigo had not glanced over her shoulder in Troon
+Lane, thereby presenting an exceptional face at the most alluring of
+angles--chin up and eyes innocently sidelong--to the view of Mr.
+Crandon, she might never have climbed so high. When she saw Mr. Crandon,
+his white wig tied with a black ribbon, and an excellent paste pin
+flashing from his cravat, riding up the lane, she never doubted that her
+star had risen at last.
+
+Sophie Bendigo was of the pure Celtic type still preserved among the
+intermarrying villages of West Penwith. Her rather coarse hair was a
+burnt black, so were her thick, straight brows, but her eyes were of
+that startlingly vivid blue one only meets in Cornish women and Cornish
+seas. There was something curiously Puck-like about Sophie; the
+cheekbones wide and jaw pointed, while her mouth was long, the thin,
+finely cut lips curving up at the ends, and there was a freakish flaunt
+at the corners of her brows--Crandon thought of piskies as he looked.
+She wore a plain white gown, low in the throat and short in the sleeve,
+and she carried an apron-load of elder-flower, the pearly blossoms of it
+showing faintly green against the deader white of the linen.
+
+"Excuse me, but does this lead to St. Annan?" asked Crandon, bending a
+little towards her. Sophie felt one swift pang lest he should be riding
+out of her life straightway, and swiftly answered:
+
+"You are out of your way," she told him, "this lane only leads to our
+house. You must go back to the highway and follow it past the 'Nineteen
+Merry Maidens' and turn on to your right--but it is a matter of three or
+four miles."
+
+For a moment they remained looking at each other, then Crandon said:
+
+"Is there perhaps an inn near here where I and my mare could rest? We
+have come from Zennor this morning, and she is newly shod."
+
+"There is no need for an inn," said Sophie, "we are always glad to rest
+a traveller at Troon Manor. I am Sophie Bendigo."
+
+Crandon smilingly dismounted and walked by her side up the lane.
+
+"It would be ungracious to refuse when the Fates have led me and Venus
+herself seconds the invitation. . . . Have you just risen from the sea, I
+wonder, that your eyes still hold its hue?"
+
+Sophie, used only to the clumsy overtures of the county squires, flushed
+with pleasure, not at the allusion, which she did not understand, but at
+the air of gallantry which pervaded the man. She glanced up admiringly
+between her narrowed lids--Crandon was accustomed to such glances, so
+had his girl-wife in Scotland looked at him, before he deserted her and
+her child. He meditated no harm to this girl, no plan was formulated in
+his mind; and as to the ten thousand pounds, of which so much was heard
+later on, no whisper of it had then reached his ears. The road had led
+to her, her own face lured him on, and a few hours of a pretty girl on
+such a June day, where was the harm? The innocence and spontaneity of
+his feelings gave the Captain a delightful glow of conscious virtue, and
+he walked beside Sophie with a slight swagger of enjoyment.
+
+The drive was a mere rutted cart-track; hemlock, foxgloves, purple
+knapweed, blue scabious and tall, thin-stemmed buttercups grew along the
+tangled hedges, and the blackberry flowers patterned the brambles with
+pearliness. The luminous chequer-work of sun and shadow fell over
+Sophie's white gown, and the green light, filtering through the trees,
+reflected on her face and on her glossy head, so that she seemed to be
+walking in the depths of the sea, and Crandon's simile gained in
+aptness.
+
+At the bend of the lane they came on the Manor House, its whitewash
+dazzling in the sunshine, even the shadows thrown on it by the eaves and
+sills were so clear they gave a curious effect of being as light as the
+rest. Only the Bendigo arms--a clenched fist--carved on the granite
+lintel, had been left untouched by the whitewash, and showed a sullen
+grey. A few fawn-coloured fowls, blazing like copper in the sunshine,
+pecked at the dusty ground, and some white pigs, looking as utterly
+naked as only white pigs can, snuffled at a rubbish heap, their big ears
+flapping. A tall, lean woman, clad in a dirty silk dressing-jacket of
+bright yellow, was talking to a labourer by the dairy door. There was
+something oddly suggestive of secrecy in the turn of their shoulders and
+their bent heads, and the woman's soiled finery made her thin face--that
+of a shrewd but comely peasant, framed in an untidy pompadour of
+reddish-brown hair--seem oddly incongruous. The man lapsed into
+insignificance beside her, yet something of likeness in their sharpened
+lines, and in the tinge of hot colour showing up through them,
+proclaimed them kin. They were Lylie Ruffiniac, Squire Bendigo's
+housekeeper, and her brother James, who acted as bailiff on the estate.
+Sophie, her head turned towards her companion, did not see them, but
+Crandon did, and was pricked at once to curiosity. Living as he did by
+his wits, his every fibre was quickened to superficial alertness, though
+of intellectual effort he was almost incapable. An old journal for 1752
+that published, in addition to its account of the trial, some "Memoirs
+of the Life of Lucius William Crandon, Esq.," had enough acumen to
+remark: "He was not, however, destitute of parts, for he would often
+surprise those who entertained a mean opinion of his abilities, by
+schemes and concertions which required more genius than they thought he
+had been master of. . . . As he was not of sufficient learning to qualify
+him either for law or for physic, he turned his thought towards the
+army, where a very moderate share of literature is sufficient, and where
+few voices disqualify a man from making a figure. . . ." And a figure
+Lucius Crandon certainly made--a figure that caused the woman in the
+yellow jacket to stop and stare, then to disappear into the house by a
+side-door--Crandon received the impression that she had gone to warn
+some one of his approach.
+
+
+III
+
+THE WOOING
+
+It is said that rogues know each other by instinct--certain it is that
+the Squire and Captain Crandon had no need of disguises once they had
+crossed glances, and therefore each man cloaked himself with an
+elaborate pretence of being unable to see through the other's garment.
+It was not by any wish of Squire Bendigo's that Captain Crandon heard of
+the rumour of the ten thousand pounds, but when one has circulated a
+report with diligence for several years it is impossible to withdraw it
+at will, and so the Squire found, and it only needed this report of
+Sophie's marriage portion for Crandon to attempt the capture in earnest;
+what happened to the map history does not relate, but the Captain
+stayed at the "Bendigo Arms," making explorations in the familiar but
+always surprising country of a woman's mind. A mind simpler, more
+passionate, and more one-ideaed than any he had met before, a mind at
+once proud, confiding and reckless--a mind fitted, both by the quality
+of it and its loneliness, to be easily influenced by the flattery of
+love.
+
+Sophie Bendigo had a fixed belief in her star. The predictions of the
+Wise Woman and of her eager mother, and her own knowledge of her
+superiority to the people among whom she moved, all tended to give her
+that confidence in her fate which does not think misfortune possible.
+She had always led a hard life with her best of fathers, the smiling old
+rogue who had never been heard to address a rude word to her, and who
+was harsh and immutable as granite. She had always waited, with such
+sureness she had not even felt impatience, for her opportunity to come,
+and mingled with the half-shy, half-innocently sensuous imaginings of a
+young girl on the subject of love, ran a streak of personal ambition, a
+hardness inherited from her father.
+
+At first, before he had found out beyond a doubt that the Captain was a
+needy fortune-hunter, the Squire allowed his visits at Troon, and
+Crandon soon grew to be on terms of intimacy with the members of the
+household. These consisted of the Bendigos, father and daughter, Lylie
+Ruffiniac, her brother, and the servant, a girl called Hester Keast. The
+three latter were supposed to live more or less in the back premises and
+take their meals in the kitchen, but once when Crandon surprised Lylie
+Ruffiniac with the Squire, there were two glasses of spirits and water
+on the table, and, several weeks after, when he had to meet Sophie by
+stealth and at night, he saw a light being carried from the servants'
+quarters towards the Squire's room. As for Hester Keast, she was a
+pretty girl in her way--a way at once heavier and less strong than
+Sophie's. She had the dewy brown eyes, the easily affected, over-thin
+skin, and the soft red mouth, blurred at the edges, which betray
+incapacity for resistance. There was no harm in the girl, she was merely
+a young animal, with very little instinct of self-protection to
+counteract her utter lack of morals. Crandon kissed her behind the door
+on his second visit, and James Ruffiniac's wooing of her had long passed
+the preliminary stages--so long that with him ideas of marriage were
+growing misty, the thing seemed so unnecessary. Lylie's blood was
+controlled by scheming, and the most charitable explanation of the
+Squire's tortuous nature was that some mental or moral twist in him made
+him love evil for its own sake, and embrace it as his good. Such was the
+household where, for the last three years, Sophie had lived, practically
+alone--her egoism had done her that much service, it had won her
+aloofness. Crandon, who was by nature predisposed to think the worst of
+humanity, made the mistake, at first, of thinking Sophie's innocence
+assumed--it seemed a thing so incredible in that house of hidden
+schemings and furtive amours. When he found that partly a natural
+fastidiousness, and partly her young crudity had kept her clean in
+thought and knowledge as well as in deed, he wisely guessed there must
+be some outside influence on the side of the angels, and scenting
+opposition to his own schemes, he set himself to discover all he could.
+That was not difficult in such a sparsely inhabited district, hemmed in
+on three sides by the sea, and he soon made, at St. Annan's Vicarage,
+the acquaintance of its vicar, Mr. Charles le Petyt. He no sooner set
+eyes on the clergyman's plain and frail physique, with the burning eyes
+and quick nervous hands, than he knew he was right to fear him as an
+influence, though he could scorn him as a rival.
+
+Charles and Sophie had practically grown up together, Charles' six years
+of seniority making him stand in the place of an elder brother to her,
+until he had become her urgent lover. Charles' father, the former Vicar
+of St. Annan, had given Sophie what little education she possessed--a
+medley of mythology and history, some incorrect geography, and a
+smattering of literature--all the things that go to fire the
+imagination. Mixed with these was a mass of all the wild legendary lore
+of the Duchy, solemnly believed in by the common people at that date,
+and by no means without its effect on the gentry. Sophie would not have
+been of her race and time if she had not had faith in charms, witches,
+death-warnings and love-potions; and in Charles the spiritual sense was
+so acute that, though from sheer sensitiveness it rejected the more
+vulgar superstitions, it responded like a twanged string to the breath
+of a less gross world. The finer side of Sophie, the delicate feeling
+for the beautiful, which owed so much of its existence to Charles,
+received a severe shock when she discovered the change in his viewing of
+her. She had been so used to think of him as her brother, and as her
+leader in the intangible matters which were sealed books to the rest at
+Troon, that the discovery of warm, human sentiments in him filled her
+with repulsion, and she took to avoiding him as much as she had sought
+him before. Poor Charles, whose earthly love, though as reverent, was as
+fiery as his heavenly affections, and who was handicapped by the lover's
+inability to understand that his devotion can be repellent, suffered
+acutely. It was some time before he understood that Sophie was so
+accustomed to see him burning with a white flame that she could not
+forgive him for being alight with a red one as well. A more sensual
+love, and coarser in its expression than his could ever be, would have
+revolted her less coming from a less exalted man--Mr. Le Petyt paid for
+the high opinion she held him in. If Lucius Crandon had never come to
+Troon, Sophie would in time have grown used to the idea of Charles as a
+husband, for there is no combination of circumstances, incredible as it
+appears to youth, that time does not soften and make bearable. But
+Sophie, destiny-ridden, gave no heed to Charles, save as a friend who
+had made her dread him even while she was still fond of him, and Lucius
+Crandon stepped in just when her nerves, awakened to the existence of
+actual love, were beginning to calm from the shock and even to set
+towards curiosity--just when she was most receptive. Pitiful and
+ignorant Sophie, whose only protection from gross housemates and a
+hot-blooded, cold-hearted lover, was a dreamer as guileless as herself!
+
+With all his unworldliness, the unfailing instinct of the
+spiritual-minded warned Mr. Le Petyt against the Captain, and when the
+Squire, strangely friendly, sent word asking his vicar to come and see
+him on urgent business, Mr. Le Petyt guessed to what matter the
+business related. He found the Squire seated in his writing-room, a
+glass of rare old smuggled brandy before him and a packet of letters on
+his knee. The Squire was a big, pursy man, with a large and oddly
+impassive face, where even the hanging folds of flesh seemed rigid; only
+his small eyes, of a clear light grey, twinkled like chips of cut steel
+from between his wrinkled lids. His bull neck, wide as his head across
+the nape, sagged in a thick fold over his cravat, and his thighs swelled
+against the close-fitting cloth of his riding-breeches. The only
+contradiction to the stolidity of the man was his hands, and they were
+never still, but were for ever fiddling with something; with his
+waistcoat buttons, his rings, with a paper-knife, or the cutlery at
+table, or with any live thing they could get. Charles Le Petyt well
+remembered how, as a small boy, he had come on him superintending the
+reaping, and fingering a puppy behind his back. Whether the Squire was
+aware of what he was doing or whether his fingers did their work
+instinctively, without his brain, Charles never could decide, but when
+the Squire, turning away from the reapers, unlocked his hands, the puppy
+lay limp across his palm--the life choked out of it. The Squire stood
+still for a moment, looking at the little body, and then, moving away in
+a straight line from the labourers, so that it was concealed from them,
+he dropped it into a rabbit-hole and stuffed it down with his cane. Sick
+to the heart, little Charles stood at gaze, and glancing up, the Squire
+saw he was watched, and for a moment his impassive features were
+convulsed with rage--he looked as though he would have liked to treat
+Charles as he had the puppy. The memory of that day would have been
+enough, without the sight of Sophie's dread of her father, to prevent
+Mr. Le Petyt from joining in the general praise of Squire Bendigo.
+
+The two men made a great contrast as they sat opposite to each other in
+the little room, the Squire solid and imperturbable, the parson
+transparent in mind and physical texture, the quick colour flying up
+under his skin with his emotions. The dust lay thickly over the table
+and books, for Sophie, the careful housewife, was seldom admitted here,
+and however Lylie Ruffiniac spent the hours when she was closeted with
+the Squire, it was evidently not in work. The evening light shone into
+the low-browed room through an ash-tree by the window, filling the air
+with a luminous gloom, gilding the dust films, gleaming on Mr. Le
+Petyt's shoe-buckles, and making a bright crescent in the glass of
+spirits which the Squire was jerking between his finger and thumb.
+
+"You want to consult me on something?" began the younger man, going
+straight to the point. The Squire, with a gesture of protest for such
+methods, nevertheless fell into an agreeing humour.
+
+"The fact is, Charles," he began, with that disarming air of candour
+none assumed better than he, "I have had cause to be uneasy at the
+intimacy between my dear but headstrong daughter and this Captain
+Crandon, so I wrote to a trustworthy man I know in London to find out
+all he could for me. His letter came to-day by Mr. Borlace, who was
+riding down in all haste from London to his wife's bedside--thus does
+Providence permit the trials of others to be of use to us."
+
+Here he paused, but Mr. Le Petyt, throwing in no suitable remark, he
+continued:
+
+"I will read you some extracts from the letter, and you shall judge for
+yourself whether a parent's anxiety has not been justified. Let me
+see--ah, here we are! 'I find' (says my informant) 'that about the year
+1744 Crandon became acquainted with a Miss Isabel Thirsk, then at her
+uncle's. Miss Thirsk was remarkably genteel, delicate, and of a very
+amiable disposition, which gained her a great number of admirers. Her
+uncle, observing that Crandon always discovered an inclination of
+conversing with his niece alone, desired him to explain himself fully on
+a point so very delicate. Crandon declared he counted Miss Thirsk on the
+most honourable terms, but the young lady's uncle desired that Crandon's
+visits should be less frequent, lest his niece should suffer in her
+reputation. Soon after, this gentleman's affairs caused him to be absent
+from his home for some time, during which Crandon proposed a private
+marriage, which the young lady consented to, and for some time they
+lived together without any of their relations being privy to it. The
+natural consequence arising, and her uncle, some time after his return,
+suspecting it, she readily acknowledged she was with child, and
+protested she was married to Crandon four months before, adding, that
+her husband, who was soon to set out for London, had not yet publicly
+acknowledged her for his wife. Accordingly the uncle dispatched a
+messenger to Crandon demanding full acknowledgment of his wife before
+his departure for England. Crandon wrote in answer that he never
+intended to deny his marriage with Miss Thirsk, and that he would ever
+love her with conjugal tenderness, but that at the moment he had to
+hasten to London, which he did. There he every day saw young fellows
+making their fortunes by marriage, and he imagined nothing but his being
+married could hinder him from being as successful as the rest, thus he
+began to neglect a person whose beauty and virtue merited a more worthy
+spouse. When he returned to Scotland that country was involved in a
+civil war, and rebellion raging in its bowels. He found all the
+relations of Miss Thirsk joined in the mad expedition and in all
+probability would suffer at the hands of their country for disturbing
+its peace. He therefore concluded that it was not in their power to give
+him any disturbance, and, consequently, it was a good opportunity for
+renouncing his wife. The affair, at last, after various meetings and
+expostulations of friends, came to a trial before the Lords of Session
+in Scotland, who found the marriage valid and settled fifty pounds a
+year on the lady, which she now enjoys by their decree.'"
+
+The Squire put down the papers.
+
+"So much for Captain Crandon!" he said, in a glow of rage at the man for
+trying to deceive him, mingled with pride in his own acuteness and a
+dash of assumed piety: "Who but a person, something worse than a
+villain, could ever have indulged a thought of using so innocent, so
+lovely a being as Miss Thirsk in such a monstrous manner! Surely Divine
+justice will pursue him for this unnatural, this unheard-of piece of
+brutality!"
+
+"Divine justice has at least saved Sophie from the same fate," replied
+Mr. Le Petyt. His first feeling was for her, his second, to his own
+shame, was the relief of the jealous lover.
+
+"Ah--Sophie!" said the Squire thoughtfully--"that is where I crave your
+help. She is headstrong, poor child, sadly headstrong, but your opinions
+have always had weight with her. You have an influence, Charles. Use it
+to save my unhappy child from this villain Crandon."
+
+"I would save her from all villainy if I could," said Mr. Le Petyt.
+
+The Squire pulled the bell-rope, and on the appearance of Lylie,
+splendid in what even the guileless parson could not but see was a new
+silk, stiff enough to stand up by itself, the Squire told her curtly to
+desire "Miss's" presence. Lylie withdrew with downdropped lids, and a
+few minutes later Sophie appeared. She glanced quickly from one man to
+the other, and scenting a conspiracy, remained standing, her head up,
+and her hands strongly clasped behind her. She was against the window,
+so that subtleties of expression were lost to Mr. Le Petyt, and only the
+aloofness of her pose struck at him miserably, as confounding him and
+her father together. The big white muslin cap she wore showed delicately
+dark against the daylight, the outstanding frill of it framing the solid
+shadow of face and neck with a semi-transparent halo, and a yoke of
+light lay across her shoulders--to Mr. Le Petyt's quick fancy she looked
+like some virgin-saint of old at her trial.
+
+"Sophie," said the Squire gently, "I feel I should not be doing my duty
+by my dear daughter if I did not inform her that her lover, Lucius
+Crandon, is a married man."
+
+He watched, smiling. She stood a little tense, but with scorn of him and
+not with fear, and he went on:
+
+"He married a Miss Isabel Thirsk, by whom he had a child----"
+
+A slight convulsion swept over Sophie, passed, and left her rigid, and
+the Squire continued:
+
+"A lovely child, I believe--a boy, and the image of his father. . . . But
+that is not the chief matter of interest. Captain Crandon deserted his
+young and trusting wife, and appealed against the validity of the
+marriage. The law decided against him, and condemned him to pay fifty
+pounds a year for her support. It was a sad scandal, a very sad scandal.
+You, my sweet child, do not know the wickedness of the world as I do,
+therefore I must shield you from it--in short, I forbid you to have
+speech with Captain Crandon again."
+
+"Is that all?" asked Sophie.
+
+"All--save that I should much regret having to lock you up in your room
+to enforce obedience."
+
+"And you, Charles?" cried Sophie, "are you, too, in this plot to speak
+ill of an absent man?"
+
+"Sophie," cried Mr. Le Petyt, "do not take it so, I beg of you. There
+seems only too little doubt that what your father says is true."
+
+"You are against me, too!" said Sophie cruelly. "Papa, I am going to
+meet Captain Crandon now, and I shall ask him for the truth."
+
+"Sophie! You will not believe him?" exclaimed Mr. Le Petyt, half-rising
+in his agitation.
+
+"Every word he says," cried Sophie, with a little laugh of utter
+confidence. Her hand was on the latch, and the Squire, restrained by Mr.
+Le Petyt's presence, dared not put out a hand to stop her by force. For
+half a moment more the three emotions held--the scorn of the girl, the
+distress of the one man and the vindictiveness of the other, then the
+door had closed behind Sophie as the will to see her lover swept her on;
+and the taunt, one-ideaed feeling of the men fell into complexity as
+they turned first towards each other, then away, in the gathering dusk.
+
+Sophie found Crandon awaiting her by the dam above Vellan-Crowse mill.
+The daylight was all but gone and a darkly soft glamour seemed to hold
+the full-foliaged trees and shadowed water in a hush of expectation.
+There was still enough of red reflecting from the West to make the grass
+and leaves a vivid though subdued green; but of the hollow in the
+bushes, where the lovers met, darkness already seemed to make a nest.
+Everything to lull the mind and stir the heart and blood was there, and
+Sophie's generous trust, her pride in taking his word against the world,
+were not more powerful allies of Crandon's tongue than the time and the
+place. It was of little avail later to marvel that his ingenious
+reconstruction of events won upon her; his garbled confession of a
+_liaison_ with Isabel Thirsk, and denial of the marriage, his statement
+of Miss Thirsk's infidelities, and his evident nobility in voluntarily
+allowing her an income. As for the sin itself--"It was before I met you.
+You could make me what you will."
+
+Sophie, only too willing to be convinced, sat by him in the little
+clearing, and listened almost in silence. Behind them on both sides the
+hazel-bushes made a faintly whispering screen of darkness, at their feet
+the mill-dam lay silent save for the occasional plop-plop of the tiny
+trout rising at late flies, on the further bank the hedge was a network
+of tangled black against the deepening sky, while overhead the elms and
+sycamores were pierced by the first faint stars. The two were set in a
+hushed sphere of aloofness, and for Sophie it was the world. "Trust me,
+my sweet Sophie--only trust me!" was whispered in her ear, and when she
+answered that she did, and he told her that if it were really so she
+would not draw away from him, she let his arms creep round her and his
+mouth come to hers. Weeks of carefully calculated love making had gone
+to make her pliable, kisses at which all the chill girlhood of her would
+earlier have shuddered, as it had at the same thing in Charles Le Petyt,
+she now bore, if not yet with passion, yet with the woman's tolerance of
+it in the man she loves. Crandon knew it was the moment to bind her to
+him irrevocably, for he guessed that to a woman of her type faithfulness
+is a necessity of self-respect, and with him desire was one with
+deliberate planning. Whether he threw a spell of words over her, or
+whether the mere force of his thought pleaded with her to prove she
+trusted him utterly, Sophie could never have told. She only knew that
+the still night, the soft air, the rustling leaves and the pricking
+stars, his presence, dimly seen but deeply felt, and the beating in her
+own frame, all cried to her, "It was for this that I was born! For this,
+for this, for this!"
+
+
+IV
+
+THE SPELL
+
+Every one, on looking back at the past, even from the near standpoint of
+a few months, realizes how it falls into separate phases, unnoticed at
+the time, but nevertheless distinct. When she had reached her apex,
+Sophie saw how that night by the mill-dam had shut down one phase for
+ever, and ushered in a new one. Deceptions, and constant evading of her
+father's suspicions, secret meetings, to connive at which it became a
+bitter necessity to bribe the servants, hard Lylie and slow-tongued
+James--while at the same time instinct warned her to keep the thing from
+Hester Keast--all these were wearisome and galling, but by the quality
+of affairs with Crandon fell into insignificance, merely an added
+irritation, flies on a wound.
+
+What first suggested to Crandon his idea of the love-potion was the
+discovery of Sophie's credulousness. Like all West Country folk,
+especially in those days, she was a firm believer in witches and spells,
+to an extent incredible to a Saxon. As late as the latter half of the
+nineteenth century an old woman was accused by a farmer of ill-wishing
+his bullocks and was brought to trial; while a "cunning man," or
+"white-witch," lived until lately in the northern part of the Duchy. A
+century earlier, therefore, when Cornwall was practically cut off from
+England, when even the coach came no further than Saltash, and
+travellers continued on horseback or in a "kitterine"; when newspapers
+were unknown, and books only found in parsonages or the biggest of the
+country houses; when animals were burned alive as sacrifices to fortune,
+and any man out at night went in fear of ghosts and the devil, then
+there was no one, of whatever rank, who did not believe in witchcraft.
+That Sophie, lonely, romantic, with the superstitious blood of the Celt
+unadulterated in her veins, should give credence to such things, was
+inevitable; and when Crandon suggested giving a love-potion to the
+Squire, so that he might feel his heart warmed towards his would-be
+son-in-law, she seized at what was to her more a certainty than a hope.
+
+It was an afternoon in late September, and she and Crandon had met in a
+wood about a mile away from Troon, when he first mooted his plan; she
+sat beside him on one of the great grey boulders with which the sloping
+floor of the wood was covered, and listened with growing eagerness. It
+was a damp, steamy day, gold and tawny leaves, blown down in one night's
+gale, were drifted thickly in the fissures of the rocks and over the
+patches of vividly green moss; and livid orange fungi grew on the
+tree-boles. Sophie, always affected by externals, shuddered a little and
+drew closer to Crandon. Slipping his hand under the heavy knot of her
+hair, he laid it against the nape of her neck, and as she closed her
+eyes in the pleasure of his touch he looked down at her with a queer
+expression on his narrow face.
+
+"You have the loveliest neck in the world, my Sophie," he said, making
+his hands meet round it as he spoke, "see--I make you a living necklace
+for it."
+
+Sophie tucked in her chin, and bending her head, kissed the clasping
+fingers. Although he was not of those men to whom the attained woman
+gains in attractions, yet there were still things about Sophie--little
+flashes and gleams, swift touches, that fired him afresh. She stirred
+him now, yet he was cold enough to be glad of the stir because it gave
+him added eloquence for his purpose.
+
+"I will get you a better necklace," he told her. "Nothing very fine, or
+what would the Squire think? I have been collecting choice bits of
+serpentine, and had them cut out and polished, and you shall have a
+necklace of them--the stones of your own country. Your throat will warm
+them, my Sophie, as it would warm my hands if they were cold in death."
+
+"Death!" murmured Sophie, shuddering again, "we should not speak of it,
+lest it hear us."
+
+"Then we will talk of love instead--of our love, Sophie."
+
+"Alas, that way too lies sorrow! Lucius, what is the end to be? My
+father would kill me if he knew."
+
+"Does he hate me so?"
+
+She nodded, with the look of dumb fear in her eyes that thought of the
+Squire always brought there.
+
+"Dear heart, we will change his hate to love. There is a way--if you
+will trust me and obey me."
+
+A tremor of exquisite delight thrilled through her at the words. She had
+no arts of allurement, no strength of will to make her play the coquette
+with him, and she was unable, for the purpose of leading him on and
+tantalizing him to fresh excitement, to deny herself the joy of being
+his slave.
+
+"Obey you!" she said, slipping a little lower on her rock so that her
+back-tilted head lay against his knee as she looked up at him, "I am
+yours for you to do with as you will."
+
+Stooping, he kissed the swelling curve of her throat, and privately
+marvelled at her for being such a fool.
+
+"Sweetheart," he began softly, "we will call in the aid of higher powers
+than our own. You know my mother was a Scotswoman, and she had the
+second sight, like your old Madgy Figgy of the Men-an-tol. She was
+learned in all kinds of charms, too. Well I remember as a child seeing
+her staunch the flow of blood from an old servant by crossing two
+charmed sticks from the hearth over him and saying a charm."
+
+"It was Madgy Figgy who told about my ladder," Sophie said, "she has
+many charms, I know. She carries the water from St. Annan's spring to
+the church whenever there's to be a christening. No one baptized in
+water from St. Annan's spring can die by hanging, every one knows
+that. Was your mother as learned in charms as old Madgy?"
+
+"She was a wise woman in more than mere charms, yet we will not slight
+her knowledge of them, since through that we will win your father's
+affection for me."
+
+"If it could be!" cried Sophie.
+
+"It can be. Listen, my sweet. My dear mother, in dying, left me, among
+books of the craft of healing and suchlike things, an old love-charm she
+had had from a Wise Woman in the Highlands. It is nothing but a little
+white powder, yet it affects the very heart-strings of him who takes
+it."
+
+"Could it turn my father's heart towards you? Lucius, how happy we
+should all be. . . . But surely it might make him love some one else
+instead--Mr. Le Petyt, perhaps?"
+
+"You should know better than that, my foolish Sophie. These things all
+depend on the intention of he who gives them. You have but to
+concentrate on me while you give it him, and all will be well."
+
+"He would be furious if he guessed," objected Sophie.
+
+"Neither he nor anyone else must guess, or the charm will fail. I will
+send it to you in packets with the serpentine beads, and mark it 'Powder
+to clean the pebbles.'"
+
+"Why not give it to me?" asked Sophie.
+
+"Because I have to go away for a time, my sweet. Not for very long--" as
+Sophie made a movement of distress, "but I have business I must see to
+in town. I will send you the beads to remember me by in my absence. Will
+you wear them for my sake, Sophie."
+
+"I will wear them night and day, but I need no reminders of you, Lucius.
+But you--will you forget me in London? It is so big and far away and
+full of great ladies who will put your poor Sophie out of remembrance.
+Lucius, Lucius. . . ."
+
+"My sweet, silly little Sophie," he whispered, soothing her as she clung
+to him, "how can you misjudge me so? Is not one black hair from your
+head, one glance from your blue eyes, dearer to me than all the women in
+the world? What have I done that you should think so ill of me?"
+
+"Forgive me, dear. I know men are not like women, and I cannot see what
+there is in me to hold you--except my love for you. No other women could
+love you half so well, Lucius. It is my only gift, but it at least could
+not be bettered by anyone."
+
+"I know it, my sweet," he told her, "and when your father is of a better
+mind towards me you shall give me your love before all the world, and
+then I need no longer travel alone. Would you like to see London, heart
+of mine?"
+
+"Ah, with you!" breathed Sophie. "Once, before I met you, I thought of
+nothing but London, and how I meant some day to be a great lady there,
+but now I think of nothing but to be with you. Perhaps, after all, this
+is what the Wise Woman meant and my golden ladder is my love for you,
+and I've climbed on it from loneliness to joy."
+
+"A Jacob's ladder, for the feet of an angel, then, my Sophie."
+
+"If it could only reach from here to London! Oh, Lucius, need you go?"
+
+"I must, my sweet. Don't make it harder for me."
+
+That checked her plaint at once, as he knew it would.
+
+"When do you go?" she asked quietly.
+
+"In a day or two, sweetheart. Ah, Sophie, how shall I live without you?"
+
+While she comforted him, forgetting self, he made a mental calculation
+as to how soon he could get away. He kissed Sophie's hair somewhat
+absently.
+
+"I will write to you, heart of mine," he murmured, "and I will contrive
+so that he finds I have gone completely away, and that will lull any
+suspicion he may have against us. And while I am gone you will be
+working for us, my Sophie. Do not be alarmed if at first the powder
+seems to cause an indisposition. It has to expel the evil humours from a
+man before it can turn his nature to good. Give it to him in a small
+quantity once or twice, and he will vomit and be rid of this
+disaffection towards me, and the rest will work beneficially. Your
+father will arise and call you blessed, my Sophie, for having sworn him
+the evil of his own heart. Do not write me word when anything definite
+happens--I am leaving my servant at Penzance, and he will post up to me
+at once when you give him news."
+
+"And then--then you will come down again, and we shall all be able to be
+happy. Perhaps my father will even dismiss Lylie Ruffiniac when his
+heart is turned towards you. That woman frightens me, Lucius. She is
+always looking at me as though she wished me away. No one loves me
+except yourself--and poor Charles. Hester avoids me, and James never did
+speak a word to me that he could avoid. Lucius, sometimes it seems to me
+that he and Lylie and Hester have all grown to hate me, that they would
+harm me if they could. It frightens me--Lucius, Lucius, what shall I do
+when you have left me?"
+
+Crandon fought down his boredom and gave himself over to consoling her,
+with now and again a surreptitious glance at the watch dangling from his
+fob. He had another interview to go through--with Lylie Ruffiniac. She
+had to be fostered in the belief that he was going to take Sophie away
+as soon as possible, leaving the housekeeper free to influence the
+Squire--for Lylie's ambition rose to being legitimate mistress of the
+Manor, and Sophie once gone, she saw no reason why she should not attain
+her end. She knew that the ten thousand pounds was a mere myth, but that
+she kept hidden from Crandon, even bringing forward, as women can,
+apparently casual little pieces of information that would all tend to
+fix him in his belief. Crandon had been wise to impress on Sophie the
+necessity for keeping the love-potion hidden from every one--Lylie, who
+had a fine nose for a rogue, would have been in possession of his
+scheme--a scheme so devastating to her own--at once. As soon as safety
+and decency permitted he would carry Sophie off, go through the ceremony
+of marriage with her in a place where he was not known, gain possession
+of the money--and clear out of England for good. This was his last throw
+of the dice in his own country--let him but win the stake and he would
+disappear and enjoy his fortune elsewhere.
+
+He took a last glance at his watch, a last kiss of Sophie's mouth, and
+scrambled to his feet. He walked back with Sophie as near Troon as was
+safe, then took an affectionate good-night of her, and started off for
+the cove to meet Lylie Ruffiniac.
+
+"Thank the gods, that hard-headed vixen of a Lylie won't want me to kiss
+her!" he reflected as he went. "Ah, there's a woman might have been some
+help to me if I'd met her in the shoes of Isabel or of this Sophie.
+Lucius, my son, you are playing a very risky game, but the stakes are
+worth it. Ten thousand pounds, a fresh country--and entirely new women!"
+
+
+V
+
+THE LOVE-POTION
+
+Two weeks after Crandon's departure the first instalment of serpentine
+beads arrived for Sophie. There was no concealing the fact, and Sophie
+replied to her father's suave inquiries that the beads were a keepsake
+from a friend. Enclosed with them was a tiny packet of white powder, on
+which was written "Powder to clean the pebbles," and this Sophie
+secreted at once.
+
+A few days later the Squire was unwell with a violent headache and
+bilious attack resulting from too much port and smuggled brandy the
+night before--Sophie suggested that she should make him a dish of tea.
+In the night he was taken with violent sickness, but by the next day he
+had not only recovered from that but apparently actually benefited by
+it, as it had cured him of the result of his orgy. Next day, to continue
+the cure, Sophie again sent him up some tea, but this time the Squire
+thought it tasted odd, and Hester, on bearing away the dish, finding
+that the rare beverage was left untouched, hid it in the scullery and
+drank it that evening. She was soon taken with violent pains and
+sickness and a raging thirst, and it was in this condition that Lylie
+found her.
+
+"My life, Hester, what have 'ee got?" asked Lylie.
+
+"The pains of death, I do think," gasped Hester. "Oh, oh!"
+
+Lylie looked at her unsympathetically.
+
+"Simme you'm whist wi' en," she observed, "scrawlen' like that. Some bad
+you do look, though, there's no denyen'."
+
+"I'm dyen'!" wailed Hester.
+
+Sophie, who had come into the kitchen, heard the commotion, and went
+into the scullery.
+
+"Why, Hester, what ails you?" she exclaimed. "Lylie, what has happened?"
+
+"'Tes the pains o' death, she do say," replied Lylie, "but 'tes nawthen
+but to be in the bed and somethen' hot that she needs."
+
+"She must get to bed at once. Here, Lylie, you take her arm that side
+and I'll take this. She's getting quieter."
+
+Indeed, the worst spasms were over: Hester, weak and exhausted, was put
+to bed, and Sophie, her dislike of the girl forgotten in compassion,
+sent up weak broth and white wine whey. Late that evening as Lylie sat
+with the Squire, he asked her what all the noise had been about.
+
+"'Tes that maid Hester," said Lylie indifferently, "she'd taken
+somethen' that went agen her and was vomiten' all evenin'. Some bad she
+did vomit, and Miss and I had to get her overstairs to the bed."
+
+The Squire stirred in his chair and very slowly brought his eyes round
+to Lylie.
+
+"What time did the sickness take her?" he asked.
+
+"Soon after she'd put your tray to the kitchen, measter. Look 'ee, now,
+at this lutestring piece I got to Penzance church-town. It do sore need
+a ribbon to go wi' en. What do 'ee say to given' I a crown to buy et
+with, eh, measter?"
+
+"Shalt have thy crown, woman," said the Squire shortly, "but leave me be
+now. I want no more for the night. And tell Miss I wish to speak with
+her to-morrow forenoon."
+
+Lylie, somewhat offended, but mollified by the unexpectedly easy capture
+of the crown, withdrew, and next morning, as Sophie was busier than
+usual in household tasks--Hester still being confined to her bed--she
+delivered the Squire's message. It was with a heart fluttering with hope
+that Sophie went to his room. He was not yet out of bed, and, wrapped in
+a dingy dressing-gown, much stained with snuff and wine, his big jowl
+unshaven and his bald head innocent of wig (that ornament hung rakishly
+askew on a chair-back) he looked anything but a pleasant object. Sophie
+stopped short on the threshold.
+
+"You sent for me, sir?" she asked.
+
+"'Tis nothing of any importance, my dear," said the Squire smoothly,
+"merely to tell you how recovered I am. How blooming you look, my
+Sophie--more like my own daughter than you have since this shadow fell
+between us."
+
+Indeed, Sophie, in her flutter of hope and excitement, showed a glowing
+face. Her heart softened at the kindliness of her father's tone.
+
+"Oh, sir"--she began, "if only this shadow--if you would only let it
+lift--if you would only believe in me--in him!"
+
+"Who knows," said the Squire benignly, "but that I may see cause to
+change my opinions. You will understand, my dear daughter, that a father
+is in so responsible a position, he must not accept an affair of the
+kind lightly, without due inquiry. Perhaps the fellow who sent me that
+report was prejudiced, who knows? I might, in justice, inquire further.
+But you are not wearing your beads, my child."
+
+"They--they have not all come yet," she faltered, "but I received some
+more yesterday."
+
+"The roses on thy cheeks are the best adornment in a father's eye," said
+the Squire, "and now tell Lylie to bring me some broth with brandy in
+it, and bless thee, my child. And," he added to himself as she left the
+room, "I do not think I shall be taken with sickness again yet awhile."
+
+Sophie's easily persuaded reason and her affectionate nature were swayed
+to gratitude, and she reproached herself because something in her was
+repulsed by the old man's blandness. She ran downstairs and out into
+the yard singing under her breath, and saw the postboy coming up the
+drive. He had a packet for her which she took up to her room to open.
+There were a dozen or so more of the polished pebbles, cut into beads,
+and a short note in which Crandon assured her of his undying affection,
+and ended by saying, "Do not spare the powder in order to keep the rust
+off the pebbles."
+
+That afternoon Charles Le Petyt came over to Troon and walked with
+Sophie in the garden. He was full of joy to see the increased brightness
+of her look, and soon detected a softening in her tone when she spoke of
+her father--Crandon's name they avoided by silent consent.
+
+"You may yet be happy with your father, Sophie," said Mr. Le Petyt with
+the hopefulness of the born idealist, and Sophie, confident in her
+supernatural knowledge, agreed.
+
+"And I reproach myself that sometimes I have been wicked enough to wish
+I might never see him again," she said as they walked slowly towards the
+house door, past the open dairy windows, "and indeed, Charles, I think
+it must have been the Devil himself who sometimes suggested to me how
+much happier I should be if he were dead. I have seemed to hear a
+whisper: 'Who would not wish an old father dead for ten thousand
+pounds?'--because that meant freedom and--peace."
+
+"My poor Sophie," replied Charles pressing her hand.
+
+He stayed and took tea with her and the Squire, and the latter went to
+bed soon after he had left. The weather had turned rainy, autumn seemed
+invaded by a tang of winter that evening, and the Squire, who was
+subject to fits of shivering, had a huge fire lit, and demanded hot
+gruel of Lylie.
+
+"There's no occasion for you to leave your ironing, Lylie," remarked
+Sophie when they were in the kitchen, and the woman acquiescing, Sophie
+went into the pantry. She was gone some time, and when she reappeared
+Lylie glanced up from the ironing of her turned satin slip. Sophie
+caught the glance, and fore-stalling a question, remarked carelessly:
+
+"I have been stirring the gruel and eating some of the oatmeal out of
+it, for I've taken a great fancy to it. I believe I shall often eat from
+my father's gruel."
+
+She stirred it round over the fire as she spoke.
+
+"I'll take it overstairs," said Lylie, who viewed the friendlier
+relations between father and daughter with dislike. Sophie turned the
+gruel out into a basin and set the saucepan down on the hob.
+
+"I will see to it," she retorted hurriedly, but Lylie seized the basin
+and bore it out of the kitchen.
+
+Not a quarter of an hour later the Squire's screams echoed through the
+house. He was very sick, hiccuped like a person bitten by a mad dog, and
+cried out that he was burnt up with fire. Sophie, terrified, insisted on
+James riding at once to St. Annan's for the apothecary, and herself
+banished from the Squire's room by the commands he managed to
+articulate, she stayed against his door outside, every now and then
+pressing her fingers to her ears when a more awful sound than common
+came from within.
+
+He was a trifle easier when the apothecary arrived and applied remedies,
+and Lylie took advantage of the lull to creep swiftly to the kitchen
+and pick up the saucepan Sophie had left on the hob. Hester, whom all
+the outcry had brought from her bed, watched her movements curiously.
+Lylie lit two candles and bore the pan to the light.
+
+"Come and look here, Hester," said Lylie slowly, feeling some of the
+sediment from the pan between her finger and thumb, as she spoke, "Did
+you ever see oatmeal so white?"
+
+"Oatmeal!" said Hester, "why, 'tes as white as flour."
+
+"'Tes more gritty'n flour. I see et all, Hester. Have 'ee never heard
+that poison's white and gritty? Measter's poisoned, and tes Miss that's
+done et."
+
+A slight sound came from the kitchen door and both women looked round,
+but Sophie, whose foot had been on the threshold, had turned and fled
+upstairs to the door of her father's room again, where she flung herself
+on the floor and pressed her forehead against the wooden panel. In that
+long drawn moment of listening the truth had rushed in over her
+consciousness--and overwhelmed reason and self-control.
+
+The door opened and the apothecary stumbled over her.
+
+"Miss Bendigo--" he began in compassion, then some words to which the
+Squire had just given vent flashed back at him and he hesitated.
+
+"Bring her in," ordered the patient hoarsely.
+
+Sophie scrambled to her feet and went towards the bed. She fell on her
+knees beside it.
+
+"Oh, sir, forgive me, I didn't know, I didn't know," she babbled, "send
+me where you will, only forgive me and get well . . . I'll never see or
+hear from or write to him more, if you'll but forgive me, I shall be
+happy. Papa, papa!"
+
+Over Sophie's head the Squire beckoned the apothecary into the room.
+Then:
+
+"I do forgive thee," he murmured, speaking with difficulty and veiling
+his eyes with his thin wrinkled lids, "but thou should'st have
+remembered I am your father. As for the villain Crandon, hadst thou
+loved me thou wouldst curse him and the ground he walks on."
+
+"Oh, sir," said Sophie, to whom the words of pardon alone had
+penetrated, "your kindness strikes at my soul. Sir, on my knees I pray
+you will not curse me."
+
+"_I_ curse thee!" gasped the Squire, forcing his distorted mouth into a
+semblance of the old bland smile, "no, child, I bless thee and hope God
+will bless thee, and I pray thou mayest live to repent and amend. . . .
+Leave me, lest thou should'st say something to thy prejudice--"
+apparently, thought the apothecary, who was himself trembling with
+horror, this martyred father had forgotten the presence of a listener.
+"Go to the clergyman, Mr. Le Petyt, he will take care of thee. Alas,
+poor man, I am sorry for him. . . ."
+
+"Papa, I am innocent, I swear to you I am. I never knew. I am innocent
+of this. . . ."
+
+"I fear thou art not quite innocent and that there is some powder in
+such hands as will appear against thee. Harvey take away my poor
+misguided child."
+
+Sophie stumbled blindly from the room and went upstairs. Mr. Harvey
+hesitated a moment, saw the patient almost comatose, and went down to
+the kitchen. There Lylie still pored over the saucepan, which she thrust
+out at him.
+
+"See, Mr. Harvey," she demanded, "what's this stuff in wi' the gruel?
+Can 'ee tell me that?"
+
+Mr. Harvey examined the contents of the pan carefully, tried some on his
+finger, and shook his cautious head.
+
+"I cannot be very positive," he replied at length, "but at least it can
+have no business in the gruel. Give me white paper and I will take some
+home and test it when it is dry."
+
+Lylie helped him scrape the sediment into a sheet of paper, and he
+folded it up and pocketed it. He then gave instructions to the two women
+to heat more water for fomentations while he returned to the sick room.
+Finding the Squire still comatose, he sat with his fingers on the
+intermittent pulse. Meanwhile Sophie, in whom fear, the most sickening
+of all emotions had awakened, crept downstairs, holding her breath past
+her father's room, down to the kitchen. Lylie happened to be in the
+scullery at the moment, Hester, still weak from morbid excitement as
+well as illness, was seated in a shadowy corner of the kitchen. Sophie
+crept in, looked fearfully round her, listened, and then began to stuff
+some papers into the grate. She thrust them into the heart of the flames
+and then breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Now I am more easy, thank
+God," she murmured, and slipped out of the kitchen as cautiously as she
+had come. Lylie, from behind the crack of the scullery door, went
+towards the grate, where she was joined by Hester. . . .
+
+A little later all was noise again, the Squire had been seized with
+violent spasms, raving and hiccuping like a madman, unable to swallow as
+much as a sip of water. Towards the small hours he grew delirious, then
+sank gradually; with the dawn he died.
+
+Sophie sat rigid in her room, paler than the paling day. She looked back
+over the past, recalling little speeches of Crandon's which, had she
+been less simple, less adoring, must have warned her of his plan. She
+saw the skill with which he had trapped her, she saw what he hoped to
+gain, she saw how he would lose nothing. It was she who had to pay. At
+the thought fear, natural, human fear, caught at her again and she
+sprang to her feet, a thing distraught. Escape--she must escape, get
+away from this dread that was closing in on her. She tied on cloak and
+hood and feverishly crammed all the money that for months she had been
+saving against her marriage into a little bag. On the stairs she ran
+into James Ruffiniac, and with her hands on his coat, pressing, begging,
+silent suppliants, she made him come into the dining-room.
+
+"James," she said, "do you want to make your fortune? You do, do you
+not? If you will come with me, it is made."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" asked James.
+
+"Only to hire a postchaise to go to London, and I'll give you fifteen
+guineas now, and more when we come there. Only to do that. And in London
+you would make your fortune."
+
+"Not on my life," he told her. "What you'm done you must see the end of.
+'Tes your guilty soul makes you flee. I'll have to tell of this."
+
+"I--I was merely jesting," faltered Sophie, "to see if you would.
+James--" but he had swung on his heel and left her.
+
+No one molested Sophie, but towards midday Hester put her head in at the
+bedroom door to inform her, with a hardly restrained gusto, that Dr.
+Polwhele had come over from Penzance and was going to open the body.
+Sick to the soul, Sophie put on her outdoor things once more and struck
+out over the moors, walking blindly to try and get away from the horror
+that was in her. As she went all the strength of her nature, inherited
+from the father who could keep up a pose and plan a revenge on an
+agonized death-bed; the strength, which had concentrated itself during
+her girlhood on her ambitions, that had then made her love for Crandon,
+now turned to a deep hatred and rage that seemed to settle, cold and
+hard, on the very muscles of her body. She knew the hatred, the fierce
+resentment, that the trapped thing feels against the trapper, and added
+to it was the shame of a woman whose love has been made a mockery. And
+if, unacknowledged even to herself, was the pricking feeling that, could
+she have been spared discovery, she would not deeply have minded being
+the innocent cause of her own release, who is there with heart so
+uncomplex as to be in a position to condemn her. . . .
+
+She tramped on and on, and presently found herself out on the St. Annan
+high-road. The thought of Charles came to her as a point where she could
+turn for help, for he had been absent all night at a distant part of the
+parish, ministering to a dying man, but he would surely be back by now;
+if she were not quick he would already have set off for Troon on hearing
+the news. Battling against the rain-laden wind, she bent her head and
+made her way into the village. There little groups of people were
+standing about, intent, arguing. At sight of her a common feeling
+animated them, the various little centres of discussion broke, joined
+together, swept towards her. She had an impression of shaking fists,
+angry sounds, rude contacts, and the smell of many rain-wet bodies
+pressing in around her. The panic of crowds seized her, she screamed,
+and screamed again, not recognizing the voice of Charles Le Petyt
+answering her as he made his way through the press. He struck the faces
+away from him right and left, and his blazing passage made men fall
+back. Putting an arm round Sophie he drew her up the steps of the inn
+and through the door, which he shut and barred.
+
+"Take me away, Charles, take me away," she moaned, and he, his arms
+round her dear trembling body, answered:
+
+"I will take you home. You are quite safe with me, Sophie. When we get
+back you must tell me everything and I will think of a way to help you.
+Stay here a moment, dear."
+
+He put her in a chair, sent the frightened host for a glass of wine, and
+ordered a chaise to be got ready at the back. Sophie drank the wine
+passively, and passively let Charles put her in the chaise. She lay
+silent against him all the way back to Troon, but once there, in the
+parlour, her brain cleared, and she told him everything. Charles Le
+Petyt listened, always keeping his hand tenderly over hers, though when
+she let him understand what for months she had been to Crandon, his free
+hand gripped hard on the edge of his chair.
+
+"What am I to do?" she asked when she had made an end.
+
+"Is there no way by which the guilt can be fastened where it belongs--on
+Crandon?" he asked passionately, and in her distress Sophie sprang up
+and, walking to the window, hit the shut pane with her hand.
+
+"I have destroyed everything that could have taken him," she said. "Take
+my key--here it is--search my press, my box, see if you can find
+anything. I will come with you."
+
+Alas! Sophie had ravished her room too well, and search fell fruitless.
+The two desisted at last and stared at each other with pallid faces.
+
+"Oh--Sophie!" cried Mr. Le Petyt, and, breaking into tears, she flung
+herself into his arms. They were clinging together, wet cheek against
+wet cheek, when the town-sergeant came thundering at the door.
+
+
+VI
+
+ATTAINMENT
+
+(_Account taken from a contemporary journal_)
+
+"Saturday, April 4. This morning Miss Bendigo was executed at
+Launceston, in the same black petelair she was dressed in at her trial,
+had on a pair of black gloves, and her hands and arms tied with black
+paduasoy ribbons. On the Friday night she sent to the sheriff, who, she
+was informed, was come to town to be present at her execution, and
+desired that he would give her till eight o'clock the next morning, and
+she would be ready as soon after as he pleased. On Friday, at about
+twelve o'clock, she took the Sacrament and signed a declaration
+concerning the crime for which she was to suffer; in which she denied
+knowing that the powders she had administered to her father had any
+poisonous quality in them; and also made therein a confession of her
+faith. Her behaviour at the gallows was becoming a person in her
+unhappy circumstances, and drew not only great compassion, but tears,
+from most of the spectators. When she got up about seven steps of the
+ladder, she turned herself upon it and had a little trembling, saying:
+'I am afraid I shall fall.' After she had turned herself upon the
+ladder, the Rev. Mr. Le Petyt, who attended her, asked whether she had
+anything to say to the public. She said yes, and made a speech to the
+following purport: 'That, as she was then going to appear before a just
+God, she did not know that the powders, which were believed to be the
+death of her father, would have done him any harm, therefore she was
+innocently the cause of his death, but as she hoped for mercy, what she
+had done had been in innocence and love.' Then she stooped towards Mr.
+Le Petyt and she was seen to be remarkably eager in taking the parting
+kiss from him, which she did. The hangman then desired her to pull the
+white kerchief, tied over her head for that purpose, over her eyes,
+which she failing to do, a person standing by stepped up the ladder and
+pulled it down. Then, giving the signal by holding out a little book she
+had in her hand, she was turned off. Before she went out of the gaol she
+gave the sheriff's man a guinea to drink, and took two guineas in her
+hands with her, which she gave to the executioner. Her body was placed
+in a coffin of maplewood, lined with white satin, on the lid only
+'Sophia Bendigo, aged 18. April 4, 1752.' It is understood that Mr. Le
+Petyt carried the coffin to St. Annan and buried it, by Miss Bendigo's
+request, in the grave of her mother. At the execution, notwithstanding
+the early hour, there was the greatest concourse of people ever seen on
+such an occasion."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREATEST GIFT
+
+
+Edmond Bernardy was in that state of mind when everything joyous is an
+insult and everything sorrowful an added stab. When the horror had first
+settled on him he fought it wildly; then succeeded a numbed condition of
+the nerves, when will and reason lay dormant, and he surrendered himself
+to instinct--and instinct had brought him to the lonely passes, the
+snow-enfolded peaks, and the dream-ridden little cities of Provence.
+
+It was in the days before railways were thought of, when gentlemen still
+did the "grand tour," and did it by post-chaise. Bernardy, whose
+finances were of the uncertain kind usual with even a successful poet,
+and whose mood was for the leisurely, preferred, once he had attained
+the coast of Provence by ship, to strike up inland on foot. In spite of
+himself, his surroundings began to soothe him, justifying the instinct
+which led him, and that had its root deeper than he suspected.
+Bernardy's mother had been a Provencale, and it was in one of the little
+mountain cities that his English father had met her, and she had only
+left her birthplace a few weeks before Edmond himself was born. It was
+owing to her that he possessed a deep love for little cities; though
+this was the first time that he had ever come to his mother's country.
+
+As a boy he, like all right-minded children, possessed a little city of
+the imagination where he sat enthroned, king of the be-pennoned turrets
+and circling walls. With Bernardy the idea of the little city had become
+an obsession, entering even into his dreams at night, causing him to
+lead, even more than most children, that curious inner life of which
+waxing adolescence must so surely lose grip. His peculiar and vivid
+genius, though technically the joy of his fellow writers, never lost a
+quality of uncanny vision that sometimes disconcerted an age given over
+to the flamboyance of Byron, and this quality was the natural outcome of
+his withdrawal, as a child, into his secret life. That life was a
+complicated and delicate thing, no mere floating vagueness of dreams,
+but a fabric deliberately planned and reared, with a wealth of cunning
+detail to persuade him of reality. He could remember now how convinced
+he had been that the town his mind had made was as real as any city he
+and his mother visited in their precarious existence--sometimes he could
+recall, for a vivid flash, actual streets and houses of his imagination.
+
+Hill cities share with islands the fascination that only aloofness can
+give, and the thought of the huddled towns cresting the Alpes-Maritimes
+had tugged at Bernardy's cord of memory, bringing back, not only his
+mother's stories of her own country, but also the recollections of his
+dream-city, so like these he was seeing now. They are towns of fluted
+roofs and mellow walls, of shutters flung wide like wings, of courtyards
+that are wells of blue shadow, and towers that stand up, golden-white,
+into the sunshine. Here Bernardy would come to a town perched,
+eagle-wise upon a crag, with a forest of irregular turrets piercing the
+sky; there to a little city which fitted over some rounded mountain-top
+like a cap, the arching outline of its roofs following faithfully the
+curve of the ground with a fruit-like suavity of contour. Everywhere,
+away from the cities, lay the olive-slopes, like a great sea, charmed,
+at the moment of most tumultuous movement, into stillness, the waves of
+it interfolding in vast hollows that never broke; only now and again a
+wind tossed the pale undersides of leaves to a semblance of spray.
+
+These valleys, so mysterious at dawn and dusk, and in the day so oddly
+toy-like with their tiny, red-roofed oil-mills and the striped effect of
+the olive-terraces; these reticent, though seemingly candid, little
+townships above them; these mountains that at sunsetting were stained a
+burning copper filmed with amethyst--all seemed to Bernardy to be under
+a spell, caught in a web of magic as real, though not as visible, as the
+web of dappled shadow each olive-tree flung over the ground beside it.
+Bernardy told himself that here he could pass a long life happily,
+instead of which he had to prepare for death, for the deliberate
+blotting out, for him, of all this beauty.
+
+He had never been a gross liver or a gross thinker, yet many a
+sensualist would now have been in a better case than he--for he had
+always used his quality of spiritual vision--in him so strong as to be
+almost an added sense--merely to beat back upon and intensify material
+things. An unbeliever or a man of happy-go-lucky nature could have
+extracted all the savour possible out of what remained to him of life,
+and left what was to come on the knees of the gods--Bernardy was too
+ardent a devotee of life, and life, as he understood it, was a
+comprehensive term. It meant the training and enjoyment of every
+faculty, the critical appreciation of everything he met, the absorption
+of beauty and the production of it. Also he feared the physical act of
+death as an animal fears it, with a contraction of the muscles and a
+chilling of the blood--feared it so that sometimes the sweat would break
+out over his face and he would bite back a cry.
+
+Looking back on his life Bernardy could say that it had been good, and
+he saw for how much more the little things had counted than the big. A
+sunny day, congenial companions, good wine and tobacco, and, above all,
+the joy of creation--how well worth while they were. Taken as a whole
+they outweighed the fondest woman in the world, and that though Bernardy
+had been a fine lover. Yet it was because of a woman that he was to kill
+himself three weeks from now, and the fantastic nature of the affair
+made him feel like a man in a dream. It amused him that it should have
+been the one conventional period of his life--a couple of months in an
+English rectory, which had hurled him into such an extravagant
+situation.
+
+The Rector, an avowed eccentric, and strongly influenced by the Byronic
+wave then at the crest, decided it was his duty to brave society and
+take notice of his brother's son--especially as the said son was a
+figure in the literary worlds of Paris and London. The Rector's
+daughter, Lucy, was sweet and fresh and English, and not in the least
+clever, and Bernardy, who had never met anyone like her before, fell
+madly in love. The combination of his passion; of a rival deeply bitten
+with romanticism and a sense of his own importance and of the high-flown
+ideas of the period, resulted in a violent quarrel and what was then a
+favoured species of duel. Bernardy and his rival, telling themselves
+that they were sparing Lucy the shock of an actual encounter, drew lots
+to decide which should take his own life. Bernardy had lost, and,
+leaving the bewildered Lucy to her fantastic roll-collared baronet,
+retired to spend his two months' grace in his own country of France.
+
+Behold him, entered on his last three weeks, toiling up a mountain pass,
+his shirt open at the chest and his tightly strapped trousers somewhat
+the worst for dust--a fine figure of a man in a thin, fiery way, with
+singularly child-like eyes set in a network of wrinkles--the result of
+having spent his thirty odd years with a lavish though fastidious hand.
+Sickened suddenly of the ordered olive slopes, he went on and up till he
+had left the sleek country behind him, and entered the region that looks
+like a burnt-out landscape of the moon. At last he came to the mouth of
+a gorge, one side of it rising up sheer into the sunlight, while the
+other seemed to hang to the earth like a dark curtain. Looking up,
+Bernardy saw, perched at the rim of the sunlit cliff, a little town. In
+some places its sloping flanks were built right over the edge, as though
+they had been poured out, while molten, from a giant spoon. It was so
+many hundred feet above him that he could only just distinguish it was a
+town, and not a mere huddle of pale-hued boulders; so high it gave the
+effect of being on the edge of the world. Bernardy knew, beyond a doubt,
+that he must attain this town, and he cast about to find a way.
+Obviously there must be a track on the other side, as the cliff was
+bare of so much as a shrub, and yet no path was to be discerned on its
+scarred and abrupt surface. Eventually Bernardy made his way round a
+fold of gorge and up a steep, winding track to a gently sloping stretch
+of country that led up to the town from behind.
+
+Throwing himself upon the short, thorn-entangled grass, he locked his
+hands behind his head and gazed under half-shut lids at the little town
+which he now saw dark against the sky. He lay, idly counting the towers
+of it, till his lids grew too heavy to stay open, and his fingers fell
+apart, and with his head pillowed on his arm, he slept.
+
+When he awoke the day was at its brief height, and he scrambled to his
+feet with an odd feeling that was more than a mere sense of rest. It was
+as though a sponge had been deftly passed over his mind, leaving it a
+clean, smooth surface, ready to receive new impressions, unbiased by
+anything that was past, the confiding, expectant attitude of a young
+child. He had forgotten nothing, it was rather that all his old
+arrangement of values had been swept aside, leaving him free to assess
+things anew. And, although, for all he could remember, his sleep had
+been dreamless, yet he was haunted by half-recollections which pricked
+at and eluded him. As he went towards the town something in the sweeping
+lines of the fortifications seemed vaguely familiar, and again fragments
+of a dream, at which he snatched in vain, floated by him.
+
+Passing under the cool shadow of the gateway he stood wondering which
+way to go; then, saying to himself, "I'll go past the Mayor's house,
+I always liked it because of the painted walls," he turned to the
+right, and walked several paces before the strangeness of his own
+words struck him. "What can I have meant?" he asked himself, "and
+yet--I seem to remember a house, a white house, with a painted
+frieze of fruit and birds, and the Mayoress was a funny, fat old
+thing who made _echedets_. . . ."
+
+With his heart beating fast, he turned the corner and found himself at
+the house he sought. The more he looked at it the more he remembered it,
+and details crowded on him. He walked down the alley at the side, and
+found a stone stairway he knew quite well, a stairway that led to a
+carved door. He stumbled into the street again like a man distraught.
+
+"Has the horror turned my brain?" he thought. "Well, what matter, if it
+makes it easier to die?"
+
+The whole street struck him as familiar, but not until he turned into
+the Square did knowledge flash upon him.
+
+"It's my town!" he cried aloud, "it's my town!"
+
+He felt no perplexity at the incredible nature of the thing, a calming
+influence, too gracious to be akin to his former stupor, stole over him;
+he moved as in a dream, with no responsibility, but full enjoyment. The
+naked plane-trees made a silvery network against the cold, pure blue of
+the winter sky; into a raised washhouse across the Square the sun shone
+obliquely, and the many-hued skirts of the stooping women made vivid
+blotches of colour that harmonized with the rhythmic splash of the water
+as only music of sight can with music of sound. Dark against the
+cream-washed wall of the church, that seemed almost lambent in the glare
+of the sun, sat a row of burnt-out old men with shrivelled throats, and
+on the steps of the fountain were two old women in black, one wearing a
+white cap of folded wings, the other the wide-brimmed black straw hat
+common to the peasantry. The lady of the hat plunged her brown old
+fingers into the thin arc of water, and Bernardy saw how the drops that
+clung to her hand glittered like diamonds before she shook them off to
+pit the dust with pock-marks. With that intense sympathy which had done
+much to make him an artist, Bernardy tried for a moment to think himself
+into the mind of the black-hatted old woman, and to imagine the Square
+and his own figure from her mental and physical point of view. It was a
+favourite trick of his, but one of which latterly the strain had been
+too much for him. Sometimes he would succeed so well for a flash that it
+only made the impalpable but stern barrier of personality more definite
+even while almost seeming to overleap it. "If I could only achieve the
+thing properly," thought Bernardy, "I suppose I should attain exchange
+of identity, or at least be absorbed into that of the old lady. And
+then--no more of this black horror, and the shell of me would, I
+suppose, disfigure the gravel."
+
+He lifted the heavy, leathern curtain over the church door and entered.
+Within the air struck cool, though heavy with stale incense; gradually
+the gleam of gilding, then separate colours and degrees of dusk and
+pallor detached themselves from the darkness, and he saw he was in the
+typical little church of the neighbourhood--a rococo affair decked with
+rows of plaster saints on painted brackets, each with its little bunch
+of flowers in a china mug in front of it. Beneath all the superfluous
+decoration there was a pleasing austerity and sturdiness of line; solid
+pillars and a low-groined roof made a square-set, beetle-browed little
+building, at once tawdry and stark. To Bernardy's receptive mind there
+was something peculiarly charming about these churches where everything
+spoke of religion being taken in the right way--as a mere matter of
+course. A lighted wick, floating in a jam-jar of oil, caught his eye
+and, moving forward, he saw it burned before a creche.
+
+For a few minutes he stood before it in silence, then he laughed aloud
+in sheer enjoyment. All the other creches he had seen boasted figures of
+plaster or china; here, apparently, the expense had been too great, and
+the characters were represented by dolls, ordinary wooden dolls with
+shiny, painted, black hair and stuff clothes. The Mother herself was
+dressed in stiff, spangled muslin, with a veil like a _premiere
+communiante_, and a wreath of orange blossom--a confusion of ideas that
+had its humour. St. Joseph, in good broadcloth coat and the tightest of
+trousers, held the other post of honour, and nearer the spectators,
+though facing away from them to the little Christ-Child, were ranged the
+shepherds, with--surely an innovation--their wives. The shepherds
+themselves supplied the crowning touch, for they wore real knitted
+stockings of worsted, and shoes with stitched leather soles, a fact
+admirably displayed by the kneeling position of their wearers. The wives
+held little baskets full of beads, meant to represent eggs; and woolly
+lambs with red-cotton tongues stood about at regular intervals. All the
+dolls looked old, and as though they had seen a less gentle service, and
+Bernardy wondered what child in that remote place was of sufficient
+wealth to own dolls. He was charmed into mirth, and as he thought how
+tenderly and kindly the real personages represented must laugh as they
+looked down at the little set-piece, he tried to trace, in some trick of
+light and shadow, a fleeting smile on the doll-faces. Without warning,
+his horror closed on him again, and turning he went heavily down the
+church.
+
+As he neared the door the two old women of the market square came in;
+still laughing and chattering, they went past him, slowly and stiffly,
+with the uneven clumping of old feet. Some curious premonition--a
+feeling that something was about to happen--made Bernardy watch them.
+
+Suddenly the old woman in the hat caught sight of the creche, and with
+the swift transition of the South, she stopped short in her chatter and
+clutched her companion's arm:
+
+"Ah!" she said, "_c'est le bon Jesus, qui donne courage!_"
+
+Every note of her harsh old voice thrilled Bernardy's nerves like a
+sudden clarion. It seemed to him the most luminous moment of his life.
+There are brief seconds when a rent in the outer film of this world
+comes against a rent in what we are pleased to call the "next," though
+it is really co-existent with our own. Then it is that we can catch a
+glimpse of something that is at another angle, a differently tilted
+spiritual plane, so to speak, from our own, and for which our minds
+would, ordinarily, need a different focus. The old woman had torn a
+peephole for Edmond--perhaps, for all he knew, in that moment of
+sympathetic concentration in the Square, their personalities had
+mingled, and so made him sensitive to the premonition that gripped him
+as she passed. He only knew that her phrase--and being a phrase-monger
+himself he had a passion for them--struck him as magnificent. He would
+have thought less of it had she said it of the Christ on the Cross, but
+she spoke of the Christ-Child. Or if she had spoken of peace, but her
+words were "qui donne courage."
+
+"_C'est le bon Jesus, qui donne courage!_"
+
+Bernardy stood quite still, wondering what her life had been that
+"courage" should be the word that instinctively sprang to her lips. The
+two women were still peering in at the creche, but while White Cap was
+recognizing all her acquaintances, so to speak, and hailing them by
+name, the other old woman stared straight in front of her, repeating her
+phrase very fast, over and over again. Suddenly she turned, and coming
+down the church to where Bernardy stood, peered up into his face. For
+the last time she repeated it, but with a slight difference, her hand on
+his wrist:
+
+"Tu sais, mon brave," she said, "tu sais, c'est l'Enfant qui donne
+courage!"
+
+Bernardy went out into the sunlight feeling at once calmed and
+exhilarated, yet still with that odd sense of waiting, as of something
+holding its breath. All the afternoon he haunted the little wind-swept
+town, and towards evening he leant upon the parapet that hung over the
+sheer mountain-side. Hundreds of feet below him the valley was lapped in
+darkness and he watched the shadow thrown by the opposite range creep up
+towards him, the edge of it in deeply curved waves, like a purple tide.
+The chill of sunset was in the air when he made his way to the inn, and
+he noted that, although the sight of a stranger must be of the utmost
+rarity, he excited no comment. Could it be, he wondered, that they
+instinctively knew him for one of themselves, these people of his
+dream-city, or were they dreams too? In how leisurely a manner they
+passed along the streets--the Faun-like youths, brown-necked and
+bold-eyed; the firm-set women with their black hair so sleekly and
+heavily massed about their heads that it seemed carved out of ebony, and
+the quiet-eyed old people with indrawn mouths!
+
+When he reached the inn, a grey pile of round-flanked towers that was
+built on the eastern edge, his memories awoke again, and in the
+courtyard they surged over him--memories of sitting enthroned in just
+such a castle as this. He remembered, too, that there had always been
+something he was not allowed to know--was it a door that had been kept
+locked, or a forbidden book, or some hidden person whom he had
+perpetually tried to meet and never succeeded? Whatever it was, he felt
+he would soon discover it.
+
+Nothing occurred to stimulate his memory during supper. The stout
+patronne chatted to him of her inn, which had been the Seigneur's
+chateau till thirty years before, when the last owner died in great
+poverty. Had Monsieur seen and admired the beautiful creche in the
+church? The little figures were the dolls which once belonged to
+Mademoiselle de Clerissac. The patronne was not old enough to remember
+it very distinctly, but she believed Mademoiselle had met with trouble,
+which was why she went away. After all, it was natural, she had red
+blood in her, both the old Seigneur and his father having married
+peasant girls. If Monsieur was interested in such things old Marie, who
+had been Mademoiselle de Clerissac's nurse, still lived in a room in the
+chateau. She was fabulously old, and had to be tended like a baby by
+her granddaughter, and it was true she had long wandered in her wits,
+but undoubtedly she could see visions, both of the past and future. No,
+Bernardy not only felt no interest in the actual history of the place,
+but even shrank from knowledge. It seemed to make his dream-city less
+dream-like and less his.
+
+Once in the dim passage leading to his room, he found he had forgotten
+which was his door. Carrying his lighted candle head-high, he explored
+the far end of the passage, and came on a rather smaller door than the
+rest, studded with nail-heads set in a peculiar pattern. It flashed on
+Bernardy that it led to the room he had never been allowed to enter--he
+even remembered the scar where one nail was missing. Pushing up the
+latch, he opened the door and passed through, the light of the candle
+he carried shining full on his face, so that he was plainly visible to
+anyone in the room, while he himself was too dazzled to see. There was
+a table at his left hand, and he put the candle down on it before
+advancing into the room.
+
+There was a fire of smouldering logs on the hearth, and beside it sat an
+old, old woman. Her hands, with their knotted and discoloured veins,
+hung over the arms of her chair, under her chin a hollow cut up sharply.
+She stared at Bernardy from red-rimmed, rheumy eye-sockets, mumbling her
+mouth with a sucking movement grotesquely suggestive of a baby. Behind
+her, wrapped in the soft shadow, with fugitive gleams of firelight
+bringing out now a cheekbone, now the curve of chin, or of breast, stood
+a much younger woman--she seemed about thirty or perhaps a little more.
+They gazed at Bernardy in a calm silence for several seconds, while he
+stared at them. Then the younger woman stepped forward into the light,
+and Bernardy saw how big and strong she was, deep-chested and
+long-flanked, with a wide forehead and heavily folded lids. Against the
+white of her apron her hands and wrists showed coarse and reddened, but
+the big neck, where it disappeared into the kerchief, was white as milk.
+
+"Monsieur mistakes the room," she said, in a deep voice whose Provencal
+twang was blurred into softness. "My grandmother is very old, and
+Monsieur will excuse her not wishing him good evening."
+
+Bernardy, confused and bewildered, hesitated a moment, and it was the
+old woman who broke the silence. She seemed to be staring not so much at
+Bernardy as at some mental vision of him.
+
+"Candide, he has come at last," she said, slowly and clearly, "you must
+give him the letters."
+
+The woman called Candide dropped her heavy lids for a moment, while, to
+Bernardy's wonder a blush mounted to the roots of her pale, smoothly
+banded hair. Then she went to a cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a
+packet of letters and a small, paper-covered book, which she handed to
+him in silence. The old woman had closed her reddish lids, thickly woven
+over with small, raised veins, and there was nothing left for Bernardy
+but to take the packet and go to his own room. He found it easily, for
+the door stood open now, and he sat himself by the fire and began to
+read. In spite of the instinct which had led him, he still had not
+guessed what he should find. The breath of dawn was stirring the
+curtains before he put the papers down.
+
+The entries in the journal were very brief, and the first bore a date of
+some thirty-five years earlier:
+
+    "It is now two years since I left school," said the journal,
+    "and I think I have improved in my hand-writing, also my crewel
+    stitch. Papa was vexed with me to-day because the soup was too
+    thin. It was the second straining from the same fowl, but we
+    could not afford to kill another. I hear there is a stranger, an
+    Englishman, in the town. He is voyaging for his education. I
+    wish that was how they educated women."
+
+The next entry was written the following night:
+
+    "Papa found there was an English Milord staying here, and has
+    brought him to the chateau to dinner. He says even if the de
+    Clerissacs have lost their wealth that is no reason why they
+    should lose their manners. I had a fresh fowl killed and wore my
+    muslin. I hear skirts are getting full and mine are very narrow.
+    He has nice eyes and is so young--almost as young as I am."
+
+Several months elapsed before the next entry. Bernardy read it with
+dimmed eyes.
+
+    "I am going away--I am going to try and find him. It is not his
+    fault that everything has happened; I ought to have known,
+    because I am the woman. He will be miserable when I find him and
+    tell him what I have gone through, and I cannot bear to make him
+    miserable. I would protect him from it if I could. But there
+    will be the baby, and I must protect that too. Papa says I am no
+    daughter of his, but I cannot see what I have done that is
+    dreadful. I have done right--I am a woman now, and I know. How
+    could it have been better for me to grow old and thin and never
+    give to anyone? It is always good to give. I am leaving this
+    behind me in the secret shelf of my cupboard, with all the
+    letters I wrote him--the ones he gave me back and the ones I
+    never sent. . . . I shall never come here again, and I love it
+    like my soul. I will always pray our child will come here. He
+    will not be born here, but perhaps he will come here to die,
+    even if I cannot. The candle is guttering and I must go. Papa
+    says I may not bear his name any longer, and old Marie is
+    letting me take hers. I am no longer de Clerissac, but must sign
+    myself
+        "CANDIDE BERNARDY."
+
+The first few letters were mere formal little notes--inviting the Milord
+to dine, at the instance of Monsieur de Clerissac, thanking him for
+taking herself and old Marie out driving in his post-chaise, suggesting
+an hour when he might care to go wild-cat shooting with old Marie's son.
+Then came a letter in a more intimate key.
+
+    "You should not have sent to Nice for the books" (it ran), "yet
+    I should be ungrateful not to thank you. If you care to come and
+    see the violet-bed I was telling you of I will thank you in
+    person. Papa says would you like one of Minerve's next litter,
+    but I say you will not be here then? Besides, in England, are
+    not your dogs of the chase of the best? Accept, Milord, my most
+    grateful thanks and remembrances.
+        "C. DE C."
+
+There was only a fragment of the letter next in sequence, that ran as
+follows:
+
+    ". . . and if you really wish it, I will with pleasure embroider a
+    collar for the pup. Papa says I am to say he is glad you are
+    staying on, as he never meets a gentleman here. It is amiable of
+    you to admire my singing, though I fear it is sadly uncultured
+    after what you are used to, but I too love the Provencal songs.
+    You suggest Sunday evening to come and begin translating them
+    into French, that would suit us admirably. My father is, alas!
+    in bed with the gout, but perhaps you would be kind enough to go
+    up and see him? It is true our garden is lovely by
+    moonlight--you do not see then how neglected it is, but I am not
+    sure if I ought to show it to you then. Perhaps if . . ."
+
+The rest of the page was missing, and Bernardy picked up the next
+letter.
+
+    "Bien-aime" (he read), "how can I write you and what can I say?
+    What do the women of your world say when they feel as I do? Ah!
+    I hope you do not know, I hope you have never made any other
+    woman feel what I do. Every one must adore you, but only I must
+    love you. There, I have said it! Edmund, I love you. But it is
+    not so very dreadful to say it, is it, since, you love me? I
+    cannot play with the truth to you, Edmund. To you I must always
+    be
+        "CANDIDE."
+
+A week later a frightened chord was sounded.
+
+    "Edmund," she wrote, "do not again kiss me as you did last
+    night. I feel wicked creeping out to meet you as it is, and last
+    night--Edmund, you made me feel ashamed. It was not like
+    kissing, it was as though you wished to eat me. Do not think me
+    unkind, but I am feeling afraid, even of you. That is unkind--
+    forgive me.
+        "CANDIDE."
+
+Another week, and the key had shifted again.
+
+    ". . . it is true. I love you so that you can kiss me even like
+    you did that time. It terrifies me and I feel cold and weak, but
+    it is enough that you say it is the most splendid thing you have
+    ever known. Edmund, will you be angry if I say that I regret the
+    days before we knew we loved? Everything was in a golden mist
+    like you see in the valley at sunrise, and now I keep on feeling
+    I do not understand you. Why do you say you cannot tell your
+    father you love me? I am well-born, though it is true I have no
+    _dot_, but, indeed, I am a good manager, and you say I am even
+    prettier than the English ladies. Oh! I am lonely and
+    frightened, and I want your arms round me. Now that I have said
+    that, you cannot reproach me with being cold. . . ."
+
+    "Your note has just come" (ran the next letter), "and I am oh!
+    so miserable for you. You are not to think I am unhappy--I am
+    happy to have loved you. If thinking about me adds to your
+    unhappiness, I can even say--do not think about me. I can
+    understand you cannot marry unless your fiancee has a _dot_,
+    because of your estate. It is best that you should go, but you
+    may see me to say good-bye. My dear one, my poor heart, what can
+    I do to help you?"
+
+That was all of the letters to Milord--the letters he had given back.
+Next came letters that were never sent.
+
+    "Cheri" (ran the first of them), "at last I can write out all
+    that is in my heart, since you will never see these pages. I
+    must write, or I shall go mad. . . . I don't regret, in spite of
+    my shame and bewilderment, for I gave to you. I cannot even feel
+    wicked, but I should not care if I did. I love you all the more
+    now I know you are not what I thought. You are not a god or even
+    a hero, you are a man, and so you are a child--my child, whose
+    head I held on my breast. You have told me to write to you if I
+    need your help. How can that be? All that is left to me is to
+    live out my life here in dreams. I imagine your presence all
+    day. If the door opens behind me and some one enters, I pretend
+    it is you till the last moment possible--until Papa or one of
+    the servants comes round my chair and speaks to me. I have been
+    loved, and I love--that is a great deal to live on."
+
+That night she went on with the same letter.
+
+    "Edmund, Edmund, it is not enough--I want you. My heart is
+    breaking. I can only lie with my eyes shut and my face pressed
+    down, and something beats out. 'I want you, I want you.' My
+    heart broke when you wrote me your last note and I had to reply
+    cheerfully because of you. I am not so cowardly but that I can
+    still be glad you do not know my heart broke. _Edmund, I want
+    you, I want you._"
+
+The last of the unsent letters to Milord was written several months
+later.
+
+    "Why did I say hearts broke? They don't break, they go dead.
+    Edmund, I wonder if, wherever you are, you are thinking of me?
+    You are certainly not thinking that soon you will see me. I
+    have been trying to decide what to do for the best, and now Papa
+    says I shall not stay here till what he calls my shame is born.
+    I will not stay where my hope and my joy is called my shame, and
+    though I would never ask you anything for myself, I must ask if
+    for the child. I am coming to England, and I must start now or I
+    shall not arrive in time. I shall leave all my letters behind
+    with my journal. I do not even know what I feel when I think of
+    seeing you again.
+        "CANDIDE DE CLERISSAC."
+
+There was still one paper more, an envelope that had come by courier and
+was addressed to Marie Bernardy. It had been opened, but inside was an
+enclosure of which the seals were still unbroken. Without any shock of
+surprise Bernardy saw it was addressed to him.
+
+    "My son" (he read), "my little son, who, when you read this,
+    will be a grown man, I who have not quite lost my birthright of
+    prevision, know that some day you will go to my town and read
+    this. Will you be in trouble, my little son? Something tells me
+    you will be near the end, and so I write this to help you. You
+    are lying on my lap now, and I think we shall have many years to
+    wander in together, and you will grow away from me, but when you
+    read this you will find me again, and something more as well. My
+    son, I got no further than Paris, bearing you beneath my heart.
+    There I heard from his priest-brother that he had been killed
+    hunting, and there you were born. So you are mine, you belong to
+    no one but me. Listen, my son. Life is good, but a clean death
+    is good too. Never be afraid of one or the other. And when you
+    read this in the home that was mine, put fear away and be a man.
+    Find the one with whom you can face whatever comes without
+    flinching, and when you have found her, never let her go till
+    your arms must loose for good. My son, I was wrong to say that
+    hearts went dead, they are merely numbed for a time if only we
+    are never weak enough to regret. Always remember that it is the
+    good woman who gives and the good man who creates, and take what
+    is left to you of life and make with it. I am not merely
+    imagining you as you read; I am actually with you, I have fused
+    the present and the future into one, and I can see the
+    dawn-light barring the floor through the slats of the shutters,
+    and you are sitting by an empty hearth. Go out, my child, into
+    the dawn. Edmond, my son, however long it is before you join me,
+    I am to all eternity
+        "YOUR MOTHER."
+
+Bernardy staggered to his feet and went to the window, and the
+steel-cold bars of light from the slats ran up over him as he
+approached. Flinging the shutters wide, he leant out, and drew deep
+breaths of the chill, sweet air. The yews and overgrown hedges of the
+garden were still velvety with shadow, but beyond the ramparts the
+delicate pallor of dawn was already tinged with a faint fire. So had his
+mother, half-timid child, half peasant, and entirely woman, often
+watched with him beneath her heart. Yet as Bernardy saw the rose light
+strengthen, his thoughts left his mother for that other Candide who had
+reddened so unaccountably the night before--that Candide who must be
+called after his mother. He was still thinking of her as he went
+downstairs and through the open door that led into the garden.
+
+He crossed to the furthest rampart of it, that hung over the cliff edge,
+and sat down to watch the dawn. Away to a line of silver that told of
+the sea the country looked as though dappled in grey and gold, for the
+valleys were pools of shadow veined by the brightening ranges of the
+mountains. There was a transparency about the morning, a clarity of
+young green in leaf and grass, a glimmer of fragile dew globes and
+gossamer webs on the brambles, that all made for an agreeing lightness
+of that bubble the soul, and Bernardy was soothed to the core of him.
+Cupping his chin in his hands, he sat there, drenched in the ineffable
+light that seemed to make of the air some divine element, enveloping
+every edge in brightness, refracting from each leaf and vibrating with a
+diamond quality on the mists in the valley below. The pattern of events
+was beginning to clear for him as the world was cleared by the
+sunrise--it only needed some master event to be complete. He thought of
+the sleep into which he had fallen outside the town, and which had wiped
+his mind clear of resentment, and freed it for new impressions: he
+remembered the shock when he had first recognized the walls, his growing
+excitement as thing after thing was familiar to him, the blinding flash
+of the moment when he realized he had found his dream-city. On the crest
+of receptiveness he had entered the church, and the phrase of the old
+peasant woman had caught at his imagination. Looking back, he saw how it
+was the extraordinary serenity of the townsfolk that seemed their
+dominant characteristic--they were wrapped in it as in an atmosphere,
+they were clear-eyed, clear-skinned, clear-souled. From the moment when
+he recognized the nail-studded door till he put down the last of his
+mother's letters, his comprehensions had flowed outward in widening
+circles. In his new knowledge of his father and mother he saw himself
+more clearly than ever before. He remembered his mother, a silent,
+quiet-eyed woman, nearly always bent over her needlework--and he saw her
+as the eager, ignorant girl, full of romantic dreams; saw her change
+into the half-timid, half-reckless lover; followed her through her
+lonely grief to the attainment of quiet. She, too, could say it had been
+good--and with how far more reason than he! He saw his father--weak,
+hot-headed, swayed by passion and selfishness and regret--his father who
+had preferred conventional safety to this hill-hung garden in Provence,
+where he could have dreamt the greatest dream of all. He saw himself as
+he was, and there followed a twin-vision of how he would be lying cold
+and pulseless in a few weeks' time, and of how he might have lived in
+this city of dreams had he found it with his life still his own. He
+would indeed have dreamt the greatest dream of all--the dream that was
+life at its fullest. "It is the good woman who gives and the good man
+who creates. Take what is left to you of life and make with it" . . . so
+wrote his mother, and like an answer flashed the words of the peasant
+woman in the church, "C'est l'enfant qui donne courage!"
+
+_The greatest dream of all!_
+
+He looked up and saw Candide, large and serene, coming towards him down
+the path, her skirts swinging from her broad hips. He stood up, and for
+a moment they faced each other in silence.
+
+She was just thirty and in some ways looked more, because of the
+solidity of her well-poised figure; and her clear eyes, rimmed with
+black round each iris, were not the ignorant eyes of a child, they were
+the eyes of a woman who faces knowledge naturally and patiently.
+Big-boned, and, but for the whiteness of her skin, with a something
+rockhewn about her face, her only beauty was that of health and a
+certain assurance which spoke of perfect poise. She was what Bernardy,
+in that moment's clarity of vision, knew her for--a woman born to be
+mother of men. He took a step towards her with the gesture of a
+frightened child, and with her big hands over his she drew him to the
+stone bench and sat beside him. He told her everything, simply and
+quickly, because he hated explanations, and was impatient that they were
+necessary to her. When he had made an end she said:
+
+"Do you know why I blushed last night when my grandmother recognized
+you?"
+
+"No," replied Bernardy, startled out of himself yet pricked to interest.
+
+"Because my grandmother has always made me wait for you. . . ."
+
+"Candide! Candide!" cried Bernardy, the child merged in the waxing
+possessiveness of the man, "shall we dream my last few weeks together,
+you and I?"
+
+"You do not love me, that is so, is it not?" she asked.
+
+"I am not in love with you, no. That is all spent. If you were any other
+woman I would lie to you. But it seems to me it matters very little
+whether I am or not. It is not that I feel I cannot love, but as though
+I had got through it and out the other side. . . ."
+
+"No, it does not matter," said Candide. "What matters is that I can give
+to you and you to me. We will make life, you and I."
+
+"Yes," agreed Bernardy, "we will make life," and as his arms went round
+her and his lips found hers everything that had puzzled him fell
+naturally into its place. He had always created in his verse, but it was
+for this his mother had borne him, it was this that the old woman in the
+church had meant, it was for this that the woman at his side had waited.
+It mattered very little that he himself would not live to see the life
+he made, the chief thing was to create, and he saw life as the greatest
+gift man could make to God.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASK
+
+
+When Vashti Bath was "led out" by the two most eligible young men in the
+village, the other women spoke their minds pretty freely on the subject;
+and when she progressed to that further stage known as "arm-a-crook,"
+and still refrained from making the fateful choice, comment waxed
+bitter. The privilege of proposal belongs in Cornwall to that sex
+commonly called "the weaker"--a girl goes through the various stages of
+courtship conducted out of doors, and if she decides to marry the young
+man, asks him to "step in" one evening when he has seen her home, after
+which the engagement is announced. Vashti, in the most brazen way, was
+sampling two suitors at a time, and those two the most coveted men in
+Perran-an-zenna, and therein lay the sting for the women-folk.
+
+"What is there to her, I should like to knaw?" the lay-reader's wife
+demanded of her friends at a somewhat informal prayer meeting. "She'm an
+ontidy kind o' maid who don't knaw one end of needle from t'other. When
+her stockin' heels go into holes she just pulls them further under her
+foot, till sometimes she do have to garter half way down her leg!"
+
+"She'm ontidy sure 'nough," agreed a widow woman of years and
+experience, "but she'm a rare piece o' red and white, and menfolk are
+feeble vessels. If a maid's a fine armful they never think on whether
+she won't be a fine handful. And Vashti do have a way wi' her."
+
+That was the whole secret--Vashti had a way with her. She was a splendid
+slattern--showing the ancient Celtic strain in her coarse, abundant
+black hair, level brows, and narrow, green-blue eyes, with a trace of
+Jew in the hawk-like line of nose and the prominent chin curved a little
+upwards from her throat. A few years, and she would be lean and haggard,
+but now she was a fine, buoyant creature, swift and tumultuous, with a
+mouth like a flower. For all the slovenliness of her clothes she had a
+trick of putting them on which an Englishwoman never has as a
+birthright, and rarely achieves. Vashti could tie a ribbon so that every
+man she passed turned to look after her.
+
+Perran-an-zenna is a mining village, and some of the menfolk work in the
+tin mines close at hand, and some in the big silver mine four miles
+away. James Glasson, the elder and harsher-featured of Vashti's lovers,
+worked in the latter, and there was every prospect of his becoming a
+captain, as he had a passion for mechanics and for chemistry, and was
+supposed to be experimenting with a new process that would cheapen the
+cost of extracting the silver. Willie Strick, the younger, handsomer,
+more happy-go-lucky of the two men, went to "bal" in the tin mines, and
+was disinclined to save, but then his aged grandmother, with whom he
+lived, had been busy saving for twenty years. Strick was an eager lover,
+quick to jealousy--Glasson was uncommunicative even to Vashti, and
+careless of her opinions. Though the jealousy irked her it flattered her
+too, but on the other hand, Glasson's carelessness, even while it piqued
+her, made her covet him all the more.
+
+This was how matters stood one evening in late March when Vashti had
+gone up to the moors to fetch in the cows--not her own, no Bath had been
+thrifty enough for that, but belonging to the farm where she worked. As
+she walked along in the glowing light, the white road winking up at her
+through a hole in her swinging skirt, and a heavy coil of hair jerking a
+little lower on the nape of her neck with each vigorous stride, Vashti
+faced the fact that matters could continue as they were no longer. At
+bottom Vashti was as hard as granite, she meant to have what she wanted;
+her only trouble was she had not quite settled what it was she did want.
+Like all her race, she had a strain of fatalism in her, that prompted
+her to choose whichever of the two men she should next chance to
+meet--and the woman in her suggested that at least such a declaration on
+the part of fate would give her the necessary impetus towards deciding
+upon the other.
+
+Lifting her eyes from the regular, pendulum-like swing of her skirt that
+had almost mesmerized her lulled vision, she saw, dark against the
+sunset, the figure of a man. She knew it to be either James or Willie
+because of the peculiar square set of the shoulders and the small
+head--for the two men were, like most people in that intermarrying
+district, cousins, with a superficial trick of likeness, and an almost
+exact similarity of voice. A prescience of impending fate weighed on
+Vashti; the gaunt shaft of the disused Wheal Zenna mine, that stood up
+between her and the approaching man, seemed like a menacing finger. The
+man reached it first and stood leaning up against it, one foot on the
+rubble of granite that was scattered around, his arm, with the miner's
+bag slung over it, resting across his raised knee. Vashti half thought
+of going back, even without the cows, but it was already time the poor
+beasts were milked, and curiosity lured her on. She went across the
+circle of greener grass surrounding the shaft, and found Glasson
+awaiting her.
+
+To every woman comes a time in life when she is ripe for the decisive
+man; and it is often a barren hour when he fails to appear. For Vashti
+the hour and the man had come together, and she knew it as she met
+Glasson's look. Putting out his hands, ingrained with earth in the
+finest seams of them, he laid them heavily on her shoulders, like a
+yoke. His bag swung forward and hit her on the chest, but neither of
+them noticed it.
+
+"Vashti, you'm got to make'n end," he said. "One way or t'other. Which
+es et to be?"
+
+She shook under his gaze, her lids drooped, but she tried to pout out
+her full underlip with a pretence of petulance. Suddenly his grip
+tightened.
+
+"So 'ee won't tell me? Then by God, I'll do the tellin'! You'm my woman,
+do'ee hear? Mine, and neither Will Strick nor any other chap shall come
+between us two."
+
+Wheeling her round, he held her against the rough side of the shaft and
+bent his face to hers; she felt his lips crush on her own till she could
+have cried out with pain if she had been able to draw breath. When he
+let her go her breast heaved, and she stood with lowered head holding
+her hand across her mouth.
+
+"Now we'll get the cows, my lass," said Glasson quietly, "and take'n
+home, and then you shall ask me to step in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the short, fierce courtship that followed Vashti saw very little
+of Willie Strick, though she heard he talked much of emigrating, vowing
+he would disappear in the night and not come home until he had made a
+fortune. All of Vashti's nature was in abeyance save for one emotion--a
+stunned, yet pleasurable, submission. It was not until several months
+after her marriage that she began to feel again the more ordinary and
+yet more complex sensations of everyday life. If she had to the full a
+primitive woman's joy in being possessed, she had also the instinctive
+need for possessing her man utterly, and James Glasson was only partly
+hers. It was borne in on her that by far the larger side of him was his
+own, never to be given to any woman. Ambition and an uncanny
+secretiveness made up the real man; he had set himself to winning his
+wife chiefly because the want of her distracted him from his work and
+fretted him.
+
+He bent the whole of life to his purposes, without any parade of power,
+but with a laborious care that gradually settled on Vashti like a
+blight. When she realized that no matter how rightly she wore her little
+bits of finery, he no longer noticed them, realized that she was merely
+a necessity to him as his woman--something to be there when she was
+wanted, she began to harden. He still had a fascination for her when he
+chose to exert it--his very carelessness and sureness of her were what
+made the fascination, but gradually it wore thinner and slacker, and a
+sullen resentment began to burn through her seeming submission.
+
+The Glasson's cottage was tucked away in a hollow of the moor, only the
+chimney of it visible from Perran-an-zenna, and Vashti began to chafe
+under the isolation, and to regret she had never been at more pains to
+make friends among her own sex.
+
+As summer drew to its full, Vashti watched the splendid pageant of it in
+the sky and moor with unappreciative eyes. If anyone had told her that
+her soul had been formed by the country of her birth and upbringing, she
+would have thought it sheer lunacy, but her parents were not more
+responsible for Vashti than the land itself. The hardness and bleakness,
+the inexpressible charm of it, the soft, indolent airs, scented with
+flowers, or pungent with salt; above all, that reticence that makes for
+lonely thoughts, these things had, generation by generation, moulded her
+forbears, and their influence was in her blood. Even the indifference
+with which she saw arose from her oneness with her own country, and in
+this she was like all true Cornish folk before and since--they belong to
+Cornwall body and soul. The quality of reticence had become
+secretiveness in James Glasson--he took a childish pleasure in keeping
+any little happening from the world in general and Vashti in particular,
+and the consequence was that, in her, strength was hardening into
+relentlessness.
+
+One market day she was returning from Penzance--a drive of some eight
+miles, accomplished in the cart of their nearest neighbour--with a paper
+parcel on her knee, which she kept on fingering under the rug as though
+to make sure it was still there. At the neighbour's farm she got out,
+thanked him, and started to walk the remaining mile over the moor, with
+the precious parcel laid carefully on the top of the basket of household
+goods. It had been one of those days when the air seems to have a misty
+quality that makes it almost visible--a delicate effulgence that
+envelops every object far and near, blurring harsh outlines and giving
+an effect as though trees and plants stood up into an element too subtle
+for water and too insistent for ether. The cloud shadows gave a
+plum-like bloom to the miles of interfolding hills, and inset among the
+grey-green of the moor the patches of young bracken showed vivid as
+slabs of emerald. Lightly as balls of thistledown the larks hopped
+swiftly over the heather on their thin legs, the self-heal and
+bird's-foot trefoil made a carpet of purple and yellow; from the
+heavy-scented gorse came the staccato notes of the crickets, while in a
+distant copse a cuckoo called faintly on her changed, June note. As
+Vashti rounded the corner of the rutted track and the cottage came into
+view, she paused. The deeply sloping slate roof was iridescent as a
+pigeon's breast, and the whitewashed walls were burnished with gold by
+the late sunlight, while against the faded peacock blue of the fence the
+evening primroses seemed luminous. Even to Vashti it all looked
+different, transmuted. Her fingers pressed the shiny paper of the parcel
+till it crackled and a smile tugged at her lips. After all, it was not
+bad to be young and handsome on an evening in June, to be returning to a
+home of her own, with, under her arm, a parcel that, to her, was an
+event. Vashti had bought that thing dear to the heart of the
+country-woman, a length of rich black dress silk; she meant to make it
+up herself, and though her stitches were clumsy, she knew she could cut
+and drape a gown better than many a conscientious sempstress. And
+then--then she would take her place as wife to the most discussed man in
+all that part of Penwith and hold up her head at Meeting. Even James
+himself could not but treat her differently when she had black silk on
+her back.
+
+She went through to the outhouse, which James used as a workshop, and
+tried the door. It was locked. "James!" she cried, rattling the latch,
+"James!"
+
+She heard him swear softly, then came the sound of something hastily put
+down and a cupboard door being shut. Then Glasson opened the door a few
+inches, and stood looking down at her.
+
+"Get into kitchen," he said briefly, "can't 'ee see I'm busy?"
+
+Already Vashti's pleasure in her purchase was beginning to fade, but she
+stood her ground, though wrathfully.
+
+"You needn' think you'm the only person with secrets," she flashed: "I'd
+a fine thing to show 'ee here, if you'd a mind to see it--now I shall
+keep'n to myself."
+
+"Woman's gear!" gibed Glasson, "you'm been buying foolishness over to
+market. Get the supper or I shan't have time for a bite before I go to
+see t' captain."
+
+"That's all you think on," she retorted; "you and your own business."
+
+"That's all you should think on, either," he said, pulling her towards
+him with a hand on the back of her neck, and kissing her on her
+unresponsive mouth. She stood sullenly; then, when he dropped his hand,
+went into the house. She heard him turn the key in the lock as she went.
+That night she cried hot tears of anger on to the new dress length, and
+next day she went across the moor and met Willie Strick on his way home
+to Perran-an-zenna.
+
+That was the first of many meetings, for Willie's resentment faded away
+before the old charm of Vashti's presence. In spite of his handsome
+face, he was oddly like James. The backs of their heads were similar
+enough to give Vashti a little shock whenever she passed behind her
+husband as he sat at table, or each time that Willie lay beside her on
+the moor, his head on her lap. She would pull the curly rings of his
+hair out over her fingers, and even while she admired the glint of it,
+some little memory of a time when James' hair had glinted in the sun or
+candlelight, pricked at her--not with any feeling for him except
+resentment, but at first it rather spoiled her lover for her. They had
+to meet by stealth, but that was easy enough, as James was now on an
+afternoon core, and Willie on a morning one. To do the latter justice,
+he had tried, at the beginning, a feeble resistance to the allure that
+Vashti had for him, not from any scruple of conscience, but because his
+pleasure-loving nature shrank from anything that might lead to
+unpleasantness. And, careless as he seemed of his wife, James Glasson
+would be an ugly man to deal with if he discovered the truth. So far
+there had been nothing except the love-making of a limited though
+expressive vocabulary, and Vashti curbed him and herself for three
+whole weeks. She was set on possessing Willie's very soul--here, at
+least, was a man whom she could so work upon that he would always be
+hers even to the most reluctant outpost of his being. By the end of
+those weeks, her elusiveness, the hint of passion in her, and the steady
+force of her will, had enslaved Strick hopelessly: he was maddened,
+reckless, and timid all at once.
+
+"Vashti, it's got to end," he said desperately, as he walked with her
+one evening as near to the cottage as he dared, and as he spoke he slid
+an arm round her waist. To his surprise, she yielded and swayed towards
+him so that her shoulder touched his; in the sunset light her upturned
+face glimmered warm and bewilderingly full of colour.
+
+"Wait a bit, lad," she breathed. "James goes up to London church town
+to-morrow to see one of the managers--happen he'll be gone a week or
+more. . . ."
+
+He felt her soft mouth on his cheek for a moment and his arms went round
+her--the next moment came a crash that seemed to split the sky, and from
+the outhouse leapt a whistling column of flame.
+
+Stricken with a superstitious terror, Willie screamed--loudly and
+thinly, like a woman. Vashti recoiled, flung up her hands, then rushed
+towards the burning outhouse.
+
+"James is in there!" she cried. "Oh, get'en out, get'en out!"
+
+The flame had been caused by an explosion, but there was not much
+inflammatory stuff for it to feed on, and a thick smoke, reeking of
+chemicals, hung above the outhouse. As Vashti, followed by the shaking
+Strick, reached the door, it swung open and a Thing stood swaying a
+moment on the step.
+
+It seemed to the lovers' first horrified glimpse that all of Glasson's
+face had been blown away. The whole of one side of it was covered by an
+enormous blister, a nightmare thing, which, as the woman gazed at it,
+burst and fell into blackness. The same moment Glasson dropped his
+length across the threshold.
+
+"The doctor, go for doctor," whispered Vashti with dry lips, "as quick
+as you can--I--I dursn't turn 'en over."
+
+So Glasson lay with what had been his face against a patch of grass,
+while Willie ran, horror-ridden, to Perran-an-zenna for the doctor.
+
+Dry-eyed, Vashti watched by her husband for three nights, and all
+praised her wifely devotion. She sat by the gleam of a flickering
+nightlight, her eyes on the bandaged face--the linen was only slit just
+as much as was necessary for breathing.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Glasson," said the doctor cheerily, as he finished his
+inspection on the third night, "I can give you good news. Your husband
+will live, and will keep the sight of one eye. But--though of course
+wonders can be done with modern surgery--we can't build up what's gone.
+He'll always have to wear a mask, Mrs. Glasson."
+
+When he had gone Vashti went and stood by the bed, looking down on the
+unconscious man, who lay breathing heavily--how easy it would be to lay
+a hand over that slit in the linen--a few minutes, and this nightmare
+would be over. She half put out her hand, then drew it back. She was
+not yet capable of cold-blooded crime.
+
+Lighting a candle, she took from a drawer a paper parcel, which she
+unfolded on the little table. As the still untouched folds of the black
+dress length, with a few little hard-edged blots on it that meant tears,
+came into view, Vashti's self-control broke down. She wept stormily, her
+head along her arms. Release had flaunted so near to her, and was
+withdrawn, and her horror of the Thing on the bed was mingled with a
+pity for it that ate into her mind. She dried her burning eyes, and
+picking up the scissors, began to cut a mask out of the tear-stained
+breadths; her invincible habit of considering herself forbade her, even
+at that moment, to use the good yards for such a purpose.
+
+The candle-flame was showing wan in the grey of the dawning when Vashti
+put the last stitches to the mask--she had made it very deep, so that it
+would hang to just below the jawbone, and she had laboriously
+buttonhole-stitched round the one eye-hole, and sewn tape-strings firmly
+to the sides, top and bottom. The mask was finished.
+
+James Glasson's figure, a trifle stooped and groping, with that sinister
+black curtain from cap to collar, soon ceased to be an object of fearful
+curiosity in Perran-an-zenna; even the children became so used to it
+that they left off calling out as he passed. He grew more silent and
+morose than ever, and his secretiveness showed itself in all sorts of
+ingenious petty ways.
+
+Vashti had the imaginative streak of her race, and life in the lonely
+cottage with this masked personality took on the quality of nightmare.
+She felt his one eye watching her continually, and was tormented by the
+thought, "How much does he know?" Who could tell? Had he seen anything
+from the outhouse window when she had rashly let Willie come so near, or
+did he know who it was who had fetched the doctor? Sometimes a meaning
+word seemed to show that he knew everything, sometimes she argued that
+he could only guess. The black mask filled the whole of her life, the
+thought of it was never out of her mind, not even when she was working
+on her old farm, for she had to be breadwinner now. She found herself
+dwelling on what lay behind the mask, wondering whether it could be as
+bad as that black expanse, and once she woke herself at night,
+screaming: "Tear 'en down, Willie! Tear the black mask down!" and then
+lay trembling, wondering whether her husband had heard. For days he said
+nothing and she felt herself safe; then one night he turned to her.
+"There's no air," he complained. "Can't 'ee take down t' curtains? If
+'ee can't do anything else, why--tear 'en down, tear 'en down!"
+
+He had mimicked her very voice, and silent with fear, she took down the
+curtain, her fingers shaking so that the rings jingled together along
+the rod. One day, when he was working in the garden, he turned to face
+the wind. She saw him sideways against the sky, and the black mask, held
+taut at brow and chin by the strings, was being blown inward. She never
+forgot the horror of that concave line against the sky.
+
+She came to regard the mask with superstitious awe; it seemed James
+Glasson's character materialized--the outward expression of the inner
+man. Nervous and cowed to abjectness as she was, she felt near the end
+of her endurance. The perpetual scheming to meet Willie unknown to her
+husband--a difficulty now the latter was nearly always about the
+house-place, and the wearing uncertainty of "How much does he know?"
+were fraying her nerves. Some two months after the accident the crash
+came.
+
+James had gone to Truro to see a surgeon there, and had announced his
+intention of spending the night with cousins. The utter bliss of being
+alone, and having the cottage free from the masked presence for even one
+day acted like a balm on Vashti. She forbade Willie to come near her
+till the evening, partly from motives of prudence, but chiefly because
+she craved for solitude. By the afternoon she was more her old,
+sufficient, well-poised self, and when evening drew on she busied
+herself about her little preparations in the kitchen with a colour
+burning in her cheeks and a softened light in her eyes. That evening
+Vashti Glasson was touched with a grace of womanliness she had never
+worn for her husband. Every harmless and tender instinct of the lover
+was at work in her, making her choose her nicest tablecloth, arrange a
+cluster of chrysanthemums in an ornate glass vase, put a long-discarded
+ribbon of gaudy pink in her hair. Then she took off her working frock of
+dirty, ill-mended serge, and shook out in triumph the folds of the black
+silk, now made up in all its glory, and hideous with cheap jet. It
+converted her from a goddess of the plough to a red-wristed, clumsy girl
+of the people; and when her hair was dressed in the fashionable lumps,
+with a fringe-net hardening the outlines, she looked like a shop-girl,
+but she herself admired the effect intensely.
+
+When three taps at the window told that Strick was outside, the colour
+flew to her face, making her so beautiful that she triumphed even over
+her costume; she had become a high priestess of Love, and was not to be
+cheated of any of the ritual. She was decked out as for a bridal; no
+more rough-and-ready wooing and winning for her. But Strick's passion
+was somewhat daunted by all the preparations for his welcome; the
+kitchen looked unusual, and so did she, and he hung back for a moment on
+the threshold.
+
+"What's come to 'ee?" he asked, foolishly agape.
+
+"'Tes a weddin' gown made for you," said Vashti simply.
+
+"But 'tes black!" he stammered. "'Tes ill luck on a black bridal,
+Vassie."
+
+"Ours is no white bridal, lad," she told him. "Come in and set
+down--yes, take that chair," and she pushed Glasson's accustomed seat
+forward for her lover.
+
+Conversation languished during the meal--Willie Strick was bewildered by
+the oddness of everything, Vashti included; his was no level head to
+plan any details or set a scene--Vashti won by stealth, anywhere and
+anyhow, was all he had thought of or wished for. Hers was the
+master-mind and he was helpless before it, and while she inflamed him
+she frightened him too.
+
+A full moon swam up over the line of distant sea that showed in a dip of
+the moorland, and the lamp began to smell and burn low. They had
+finished supper, and Willie was drinking rather freely of the whisky
+she had set before him. Vashti turned out the lamp, and as she did so a
+sudden harsh noise sent the heart to her throat, while Willie sprang up
+fearfully. It was only the poker, that, caught by the full skirt of the
+black silk frock, had been sent clattering to the ground, but it made
+them stare at each other in a stricken panic for a speechless minute.
+The white light of the moon shone clearly into the room, throwing a
+black pattern of window-shadow over the disordered supper table, where
+the chrysanthemums, overturned by Willie's movement, lay across an empty
+dish, and in the silence the two startled people could hear the rhythmic
+sound of the water as it drip-drip-dripped on to the floor.
+
+Vashti was the first to recover herself. "Us be plum foolish, Willie!"
+she said, with an attempt at a laugh. "Do believe us both thought it was
+James, and him safe to Truro."
+
+"If 'tes," said Strick madly, "he shan't take 'ee from me now. I'll have
+'ee, I swear it."
+
+Vashti did not answer--with fascinated eyes she was watching the door
+slowly open--she could see the strip of moonlit brightness, barred by
+the darkness of an arm, grow wider and wider. She knew, before the
+form--so terribly like Willie's, now its masked face was against the
+light--appeared, that it was her husband.
+
+Quite what happened next she could not have told. The little room seemed
+full and dark with fear--blind, unreasoning fear, that beat even about
+her head. The long-drawn-out crash of the overturned table added to her
+confusion--then quite suddenly the sounds of struggling ceased and one
+man rose to his feet. In the dimness of the room, seeing only the shape
+of him, she could not tell whether it were James or Willie, until he
+turned his face to the moonlight, and she saw, with a throb of relief,
+Strick's face.
+
+"Get a light, Vassie," he whispered. "I fear he's dead."
+
+She lit a candle and they knelt down by Glasson. In falling his head had
+hit the fender, and blood was trickling on to the floor. She ripped open
+his shirt and felt for his heart as well as her trembling fingers would
+allow. She lifted his arm and let it fall--it dropped a dead weight on
+to the tiled floor. It seemed to her excited fancy that already he was
+turning cold.
+
+"Willie, you've killed 'en!" she whispered. They both spoke low, as
+though they thought the dead man could overhear.
+
+"I didn't hit 'en," babbled Willie. "He stumbled and fell and hit his
+head--they'll make me swing for this--what shall us do, what shall us
+do?"
+
+"Wait--I must think," commended the woman. She pressed her hands to her
+forehead, and sat very still.
+
+"Have 'ee thought?" whispered Willie anxiously.
+
+"Yes--I've thought. Willie, you'm rare and like--he--and that'll save
+us."
+
+"What do 'ee mean?" asked Willie, thinking the shock had turned her
+brain.
+
+"The mask!" replied Vashti, "the mask!"
+
+Then, kneeling by the still body, they talked in whispers--she unfolding
+her plan--he recoiling from it, weakly protesting, and then giving way.
+
+They were to take the dead man between them to the disused mine shaft
+and throw him down, then Willie was to wear the black mask, and take
+Glasson's place, until they could sail for America together. Like all
+simple plans, it had a touch of genius. Willie's constant talk of
+emigrating, his oft-heard boasts of slipping away in the night and not
+coming back till he had made a fortune, would all help to cover up his
+disappearance. And who was to connect it with Vashti and her silent,
+eccentric, black-masked husband--who would speak to him or her on the
+subject? And if they did--she could always invent a plausible answer,
+while he was safeguarded by the fact that the strongest point of
+likeness between the two men was their voices. The most dissimilar thing
+about them had been their faces.
+
+"I won't wear his mask," said Willie shuddering; "I couldn't put 'en
+against me. You must make me another."
+
+"I'll make 'en now," said Vashti. She rose to her feet, and setting the
+candle on the seat of a chair, looked about her.
+
+"You must put the room to rights," she commanded. "Make 'en look as
+though James and I had just had our bit o' supper. Mop up the water and
+sweep all the broken cloam together--and--and take him to the
+passage-way."
+
+"You'm not going to lave me alone wi' he?" cried Willie aghast.
+
+"Edn room for me to work here. I'l be up overstairs making the mask.
+Keep t' curtain over the window."
+
+Upstairs, she seized scissors and hacked a square out of the front of
+her gown. Then she sat and sewed as she had sewed once before, when her
+husband had lain motionless on the bed. Every now and then came small
+sounds of things being moved from down below, then a heavy fall and the
+sound of something being dragged.
+
+"How's et goin', Willie?" she called out.
+
+"'Tes all right," he called back. "I've put 'en in passage."
+
+The moon was near setting when the mask was finished, and she went to
+the top of the stairs with it in her hand.
+
+"There 'tes," she whispered. "I'll drop it down. Put it in your pocket
+and I'll change my gown. 'Tes time we were stirrin'."
+
+The mask fluttered down in the darkness, and she went back to her room
+and changed swiftly into the old serge.
+
+It was a ghastly journey to the old mine shaft, the heavy form of the
+dead man sagging between them. They dared have no light, and went
+stumbling over tussocks and ruts; but as both would have known the way
+blindfold, they found the shaft without difficulty. They scrambled up
+the sloping rubble of stones and tipped the body over the jagged hole in
+the side of the shaft, and after what seemed an interminable silence
+there came a thud from several hundred feet below them, then another, as
+though the body had rebounded, then all was stillness.
+
+Vashti leant up against the side of the shaft, as she had leant when
+James kissed her there, and shut her eyes; the sweat running down her
+brow had matted her lashes together into thick points, and the drops
+tickled her neck so that she put up her hand to it. Both she and the man
+were drawing the deep, hoarse breaths of exhaustion, and for a few
+minutes they rested in silence--then he spoke. "You must be comin' back
+along o' me now," he told her, "the dawn'll be showin' soon."
+
+"Yes, yes," cried Vashti, starting up, "us may meet some one going to
+bal, sure 'nough."
+
+"'Tes all right--I've got t'mask on. Come."
+
+He closed his fingers over her arm so harshly that she winced, and
+together they made their way back in the cold, bleak hush that preceded
+the autumnal dawn. Gradually, as they went, some glimmerings of what her
+life would be henceforth appeared to the woman. The fear of neighbours,
+the efforts to appear neutral, the memory of that slowly opening door,
+and the still thing by the fender, the consciousness of what lay at the
+bottom of the disused shaft; and, above all, the terrible reminder of
+her husband in the masked Willie--it would be like living with a
+ghost. . . .
+
+Once back at the cottage, he drew her within and let the door swing to
+behind them. She moved away to find a light, but he caught her.
+
+"Won't 'ee give me so much as a kiss, and me with red hands because of
+you?" he asked.
+
+She felt the mask brush her cheek, and broke away with a cry. She heard
+him laugh as she lit a candle, and turned towards him.
+
+"A black bridal!" he cried wildly; "did you think 'twas a black bridal?
+'Tes a red one, do 'ee hear?"
+
+"Willie," she begged him, "take off t'mask now we'm alone."
+
+"Aren't 'ee afeared?" he asked.
+
+"'Tes safe enough till mornin', and I do hate that mask more'n the
+devil. Take 'en off."
+
+"I'll take 'en off--to please you, lass."
+
+He seized the mask violently by the hem and ripped it away--and she saw
+it was her husband.
+
+"You fool!" he said slowly, following her as she backed away from him,
+her mouth slack with fear, her eyes staring, her whole being showing her
+as almost bereft of her senses. "You fool to think to fool me! You was
+quick enough to say I was dead; I'm not so easy killed, Vassie. No so
+easy killed as your lover was--just the carven'-knife between his
+shoulders when he was stoopin' down, that's all. He was fearful of
+lookin' at the dead man; he never knew the dead man was lookin' at he.
+You heard him fall, Vassie, and thought it was him movin' me----"
+
+"Put t'mask on," wailed Vashti, pressing her fingers against her eyes;
+"put t'mask on again, for the love o' God!"
+
+"There's been enough o' masks," he retorted grimly. "You've got to bear
+to see me now; me, not your lover that you've helped to tip over Wheal
+Zenna shaft. Eh, you fool, did 'ee think I didn' knaw? I've knawed all
+these months; I've seen 'ee meet 'en; I told 'ee I was going to stop the
+night over to Truro so as to catch 'ee together; I listened outside the
+house; I let 'ee think I was dead, and heard t' the plan you thought to
+make. Only half a man am I, wi' no mouth left to kiss with? I've an eye
+left to see with, and an ear to hear with, and a hand to strike with,
+and a tongue to teach 'ee with."
+
+"I'll tell on 'ee," said Vashti, "I'll tell the police on 'ee. Murderer,
+that's what you are."
+
+"I doan't think 'ee will, my dear. 'Tedn a tale as'll do you any good--a
+woman who cheats her husband, and tries to kill 'en, and helps to carry
+a body two miles over moor and tip 'en down shaft. And what have 'ee to
+complain on, I should like to knaw? When I wear t'mask you can pretend
+I'm Willie--handsome Willie. Willie who can kiss a maid and make a fine
+upstandin' husband. Willie was goin' to be me, why shudn' you think I
+was Willie? Do 'ee, my dear, if 'tes any comfort to 'ee."
+
+He slipped on the mask as he spoke and knotted the strings. The door had
+swung open, and the candle flame shook in the draught as though trying,
+in fear, to strain away from the wick. The steel-cold light of dawn grew
+in the sky and filtered into the room, showing all the sordid litter of
+it; the frightened woman, with a pink ribbon awry in her disordered
+hair, and the ominous figure of the masked man. He came towards her
+round the table.
+
+"'Tes our bridal night, lass!" he said. "Why do 'ee shrink away? Mind
+you that 'tes Willie speakin'! Don't let us think on James Glasson dead
+to the bottom 'o the shaft. I'm Willie--brave Willie who loves 'ee. . . ."
+
+As his arms came out to catch her, she saw his purpose in his eye, and
+remembered his words, "A red bridal, lass, a red bridal!"
+
+At the last moment she woke out of her stupor, turned, and ran, he after
+her. Across the little garden, down the moorland road, over heather and
+slippery boulders and clinging bracken, startling the larks from their
+nests, scattering the globes of dew. Once she tried to make for a
+side-track that led to Perran-an-zenna, but he headed her off, and once
+again she was running, heavily now, towards Wheal Zenna mineshaft. He
+was gaining on her, and her breath was nearly spent. Both were going
+slowly, hardly above a stumbling walk, as the shaft came in sight; the
+drawing of their breath sounded harsh as the rasping of a file through
+the still air. As she neared the shaft she turned her head and saw him
+almost on her, and saw the gleam of something in his uplifted hand. She
+gathered together all her will, concentrated in those few moments all
+the strength of her nature, determined to cheat him at the last. Up the
+rubble of stones she scrambled, one gave beneath her foot and sent her
+down, and abandoning the effort, she lay prone, awaiting the end.
+
+But Vashti's luck held--it was the man who was to lose. A couple of
+miners who had been coming up the path from Perran-an-zenna had seen the
+chase and followed hot foot, unnoticed by the two straining, frantic
+creatures, who heard nothing but the roaring in their own ears. They
+caught Glasson as he ran across the patch of grass to the shaft, and he
+doubled up without a struggle in their arms. Physical and mental powers
+had failed together, and from that day James Glasson was a hopeless
+idiot--harmless and silent. Vashti had won indeed.
+
+Admirable woman of affairs that she was, she took a good sleep before
+confronting the situation; then she made up her story and stuck to it.
+Willie's name was never mentioned, and his disappearance, so long
+threatened, passed as a minor event, swamped in the greater stir of
+Glasson's attempt to murder his wife. His madness had taken the one form
+that made Vashti safe--he had gone mad on secretiveness. How much he
+remembered not even she knew, but not a word could anyone drag from
+him. He would lay his finger where his nose should have been against the
+mask, and wag his head slyly. "Naw, naw, I was never one for tellin',"
+he would say. "James Glasson's no such fool that he can't keep 'enself
+to 'enself."
+
+He lived on for several years in the asylum, and Vashti, after the free
+and easy fashion of the remote West, took to herself another husband.
+She went much to chapel, and there was no one more religious than she,
+and no one harder on the sins and vanities of young women. One thing in
+particular she held in what seemed an unreasoning abhorrence--and that
+was a black silk gown.
+
+
+
+
+A GARDEN ENCLOSED
+
+
+Why Sophia Jervis went to Sant' Ambrogio she herself could not have
+told; to all outward seeming she merely drifted there, influenced by the
+many little urgencies of travel--the name seen casually in a guide-book
+and all unnoticed stamping itself on her brain; a chance mention of the
+place caught from some fellow-traveller, aided by the fact that the
+time-table had happened to open at the words "Sant' Ambrogio"--these
+were the trifles by which the power stronger than herself guided Sophia,
+with such cunning manipulation, such a fine lack of insistence even on
+the trifles, that she was unaware of any power at work. Also she was in
+that numbed condition which mercifully follows any great straining of
+emotion; even pain lay quiescent, though rather in a swoon than a
+sleep--a mere blankness from which it would struggle up more insistent
+than before.
+
+When Sophia alighted from the train at the nearest station for Sant'
+Ambrogio, and found the carriage she had ordered awaiting her, she was
+not in the mood to take joy in anything she saw; and yet, as the wiry
+little Tuscan horse trotted swiftly along she found herself, though not
+actually responding, at least offering no blank wall of resistance to
+the country around. To say country, as though a landscape consisted of
+mere earth and vegetation, is to make an incomplete statement; the
+quality of the light, the harmony or discordance where man's work meets
+Nature; and, above all, the intangible atmosphere, rarer and more vital
+than the actual enveloping air, that is the soul of a country--all these
+are of more potency than the position of a clump of trees or the
+existence of a particular crop. And nowhere is this atmosphere more
+elusive but more compelling than in Tuscany at spring time. Sophia was
+too deadened to respond, but she felt the echo of the thing, as it were,
+in much the same way that a stone-deaf person feels vibrations run
+through the floor and up his chair to his spine when certain chords are
+played on an organ.
+
+It is a drive of about five miles from the railway station to Sant'
+Ambrogio, and the road winds across the plain, sometimes rising and
+falling, always leading towards the rim of interfolding hills. In the
+vineyards the vines, naked at first glance, were just beginning to
+flower, and the rows of pollarded planes from which they were festooned
+showed a glory of young leaf. The maize was a couple of feet in height,
+and where the sun shone through the blades of it they looked like thin
+green flames. The heat was intense, and the air seemed stifled with the
+subtle smell of the dust that lay thickly over the road and powdered the
+grassy edges. The whole plain of Tuscany, apparently empty of human
+life, and consequently filled with a sense of utter peace, seemed a vast
+green platter brimming with a divine ether and held up towards the
+heavens by the steady hands of genii. Only Sophia's carriage showed like
+a black insect winging a course fast enough to itself but slow to the
+gaze of any being who, looking down on this dish held for the gods,
+could see the whole expanse of it at once.
+
+Everywhere was a sense of light--light steeping the sky, drenching the
+earth, and vibrating in the spaces between; light that gave a gracious
+blur to edges, that refracted from each subtle difference of plane and
+angle; light that permeated the very shadows so that they seemed
+semi-transparent. One with this sense of light, as body is one with
+soul, was the sense of colour--tender greens, at once pure and delicate;
+blues that paled to the merest breath or merged in a soft purple. The
+wideness of the view gave full value to the exquisitely fine curves
+which composed it--the curves of outline where hills and long sweeping
+slopes came against the sky, and the curves of surfaces, which
+inter-folded and led into each other like the waters of a vast lake
+where Time has stayed his foot and the spellbound water holds for ever
+the slopes and gradations blown into being by an arrested wind.
+
+Something--an emotion impersonal in itself yet arousing the personality
+in her--began to stir at Sophia's heart; then, as the carriage rounded a
+curve in the road and she received the shock of Sant' Ambrogio against
+the distant arch of the sky, sudden tears burned in her eyelids. Leaning
+back as well as she could against the uncompromising cushions, she gazed
+from between lids half-closed so as to narrow her vision on the one
+thing.
+
+Sant' Ambrogio is a little city of towers, some twenty of them, varying
+in height, all clustered together within the circling walls and pricking
+the sky like a group of tall-stemmed flowers in a garden. The town
+seems to have grown rather than been built on the crest of the only
+great hill for miles, but the ripples of the plain all converge towards
+it, leading the eye naturally up to this little crown of Tuscany. When
+they considered a tower a reminder of God, the ancients were not without
+a deeper spiritual foundation than they knew of; there is nothing of
+more direct psychological significance than line, and the many
+upward-springing lines of Sant' Ambrogio made it seem a thing so lightly
+poised as almost to be hanging from the heavens. A sense of something
+winged, which, though just resting on the earth, yet had plumes ready
+pricked for flight, impressed itself on Sophia's brain as she gazed.
+
+"This might have been beautiful for me if only I could still feel," was
+her swift thought, and she closed her eyes to let the gleam of light
+thus evoked sink into her mind. As she lay with her consciousness turned
+inwards, the deadened fibres of her began to stir; pain moved in its
+swoon, and, waking, took the keenest form of all--remembrance. Quite
+suddenly there flashed before her mental vision the loggia at the top of
+the old palace in Florence where she and Richard had said good-bye. She,
+who was to see the cords of passion grow slack, had there seen them
+stretched at their tensest, and the memory of it clutched at her heart
+with that pity for him which had kept her calm for his comfort. Now,
+mingled with it, was her own pain, which, at the time, her thought for
+him had overwhelmed. She saw again his face as she had seen it then--his
+thin, hawk-like profile dark and sharply-cut against the evening sky.
+With the memory of the pain that had gone through her at that moment,
+the power to feel stirred again, and it was that moment which struck at
+her anew. Her hands fastened suddenly on the hot sides of the carriage.
+
+"Oh, oh!" she said in the low voice that overwhelming sorrow can wring
+from the tongue, a soliloquy terrible in its unself-consciousness: "oh,
+oh! I can't bear it; I can't bear it!"
+
+As the horse slowed down at the beginning of the hill, the first
+poignancy of Sophia's reawakened feeling passed off, and she lay back,
+her hands laying palm upwards in her lap. With entry into the town came
+coolness; the ancient architects of the South knew better than to favour
+the broad streets planned by their descendants, and the narrow ways
+threaded so cunningly between the tall cliffs of houses were cool as
+shadowed streams. The greyness of the paved street fell like a
+suggestion of peace on Sophia after the searching sunlight of the plain,
+and the acuteness of her mental trouble subsided in response to the
+sense of physical ease; she had regained her grip of herself when the
+carriage drew up at the door of the Albergo Santo Spirito.
+
+The Albergo is a whitewashed building set round a courtyard; clean,
+unfretted by detail, full of dim, sweet spaces and gay domestic sounds.
+Sophia, aware of its charm, yet realized, on looking back afterwards,
+that she had also been aware that the inn was for her but the
+ante-chamber to some other place or state, as yet unrevealed. At the
+time she was only conscious that a sense of waiting held the calm air,
+though, if she had thought to ask herself the question, she would have
+said that life held nothing for which it could be worth her while to
+wait.
+
+After she had washed her face and hands in the bare little whitewashed
+room assigned to her, she went out to wander about the town till dinner.
+Motorists have not yet spoiled the population of Sant' Ambrogio, and,
+unmolested by any clamour for alms, Sophia passed along the shady
+street, where the black-haired, kerchiefed women, with their fine,
+rock-hewn faces and deep-set eyes, were knitting at their house doors.
+In the big, cool church, whose walls of banded black and white marble
+were quieted by the dim light, which just showed the dark gargoyles
+writhing like things of a dream over cornice and capital, Sophia knelt
+down, more to wrap herself in the peace of it than to pray. The very
+keenness of her cry for peace made her fail, and rising she wandered
+round the church till she came to the little chapel on whose walls the
+life of the town's saint, Beata, has been painted by some "Ignoto" who
+must have had a touch of genius. Sophia stood and gazed at the various
+scenes. Santa Beata, a child with corn-coloured hair lying along her
+back, running away from her resentful playmates, a set of curly-headed,
+sly, pinching, clear-eyed ragamuffins, such as those who quarrel and
+play in the streets of Sant' Ambrogio to this day. Santa Beata, wrapped
+in a cloud, conversing with the Beloved, while the children search the
+field vainly for her--the Beloved Himself being naively expressed by
+what looked like a small bonfire, but proved, in a strange medley of
+legend and Old Testament story, to be a burning bush. Santa Beata vowing
+herself to virginity and lying down on the narrow maiden bed she never
+left again; Santa Beata being visited by cherubim--little burning heads
+with awful eyes and folded wings--blown in at the door, while through
+the window showed the plain of Tuscany, pale silvery greens and blues,
+and in the distance Sant' Ambrogio himself, wafted on a cloud,
+approached the town to bear the saint away. By her side crouched her old
+mother, a knotted burnt-out woman with long wrists, just a literal
+transcript of many a prematurely old peasant mother before and since,
+her patient eyes seeing no one but her daughter.
+
+The more she looked at Santa Beata the more Sophia, who without thinking
+much about it had a realization of her own type, was struck by the
+resemblance between them. The red-brown hair folded about Sophia's head
+was darker than the locks that lay combed out over the saint's pillow,
+but the long oval of the faces, the girlish thinness of modelling and
+the narrow eyes set in heavily folded lids over rather prominent
+cheekbones, were the same; and the same, too, were the pointed chins and
+the delicately full lips tucked in at the corners like those of a child.
+Santa Beata had only been sixteen at the time of her death and Sophia
+was twenty-two, but the earlier ripening of the South made the apparent
+years swing level. Suddenly Sophia turned away, fierce envy of this
+untroubled girl who had finished long ago with the business of life
+surging in her heart. The memory of the past weeks seemed shameful and
+she herself not fit to hold intercourse with other girls--girls to whom
+things had not happened. In that moment Sophia knew she had lost her
+girlhood none the less surely for having saved her virginity, which
+three things had helped to guard--a clarity of pre-vision which bade her
+not give Richard even what he most desired, because it showed her that
+it must inevitably work him misery; the knowledge that he did not love
+her finely enough for such a gift to be fitting; and thirdly, the
+strongest thing of all--that no one who is accustomed, however
+imperfectly, to walk in the spiritual world, can lightly forgo the
+privilege. "I should have been afraid of losing touch," Sophia said long
+after, when she saw how that fear had constrained her. Now, looking at
+Santa Beata and realizing more vividly than ever before the power which
+virginity, as an idea, has always swayed, she felt she had forfeited, by
+her gain in experience, communion with those who were still virginal in
+soul as well as in body. On the steps of the church she passed some
+children playing--children still at the age when their heads are very
+big and round--and she remembered how, in a half-ruined castle Richard
+and she had visited together, two little peasant girls, clear-eyed,
+freckled young creatures, had taken them for husband and wife; and how
+one demanded shyly whether she had a baby at home. "No, I have no baby,"
+Sophia had said quietly, and the child replied: "What a pity! He would
+be sweet, your baby. . . ."
+
+"He would be sweet . . . my baby," thought Sophia, staring at the big
+round heads and little necks with that pang of yearning pity without
+which she could never look on children. It is a great truth that no
+woman has ever loved a man unless she has wanted to bear him a child,
+and the knowledge that she would never make this greatest of all
+offerings to Richard pressed on Sophia's heart. She was not one of those
+women who desire children as an end in themselves, to whom they would
+mean more than the husband; she was of those who long to bear them to
+the loved man because for him the utmost must be suffered and given;
+but for any other man it would be a thing unspeakable. Therefore she saw
+the best put out of life for her, and she hurried away from the children
+on the steps. Turning down a narrow lane she came to a door in the wall,
+and pushing it open she looked into what seemed a lake of green light,
+flecked with swaying rounds of sun and chequered with deeper green
+shadows--a garden run luxuriantly wild. Sophia stepped inside, and on
+her right, built half against and half on the wall, she saw a little
+ochre-washed house with faded blue shutters. Wandering on, she came to
+some lilacs in hard, red bud that hung over a well, and passing under
+the arch they made she found the further end of the garden. There a
+flight of uneven old steps led to the top of the wall, and she went up
+them. At the head of the steps, the wall--which was the outer
+fortification of the town--widened into a circle some twenty feet
+across, with a stone seat inset in the parapet that ran round it, and a
+sundial without a hand in the middle. Sophia stood still and drew a long
+breath--the place, in its look of eld and aloofness, was so exactly like
+some enchanted spot in a fairy-story. Crossing the flagstones she looked
+out over the miles of plain lying below her; here and there were patches
+of olive-trees, not growing in masses like a grey-green sea as they did
+further north where he and she had seen them, but planted far apart;
+from where Sophia stood they looked like nothing so much as clouds of
+dust puffing up from the ground.
+
+Sophia stretched herself long and slowly; then throwing off her hat, she
+laid her arms along the parapet and her sleek head down upon them.
+
+"Oh, I wish I hadn't come," she moaned. "I'm going to feel again. . . ."
+
+Her hand went out to the little hanging bag she carried and drew back
+again, then setting her mouth, she made herself unfasten the clasp and
+take out a bundle of letters which she laid on the seat beside her. As
+her eyes lit on the familiar writing a deadly nausea took hold of her,
+she felt physically sick and put her hand up to her throat to check its
+contraction. A letter from him always affected her in that way, so that
+she sat, sick and faint, unable to open it, and now these oft-read
+letters were as potent as ever. She noted with a vague, impersonal
+surprise that her hands were shaking, and folding them in her lap she
+sat still, forcing her thoughts, in spite of the pain it stirred in her,
+to go back over the past two weeks.
+
+
+II
+
+On looking back the whole time seemed set in a clear, sunlit atmosphere
+of its own as in a magic sphere where the present had always taken a
+more than normal clearness of edge and the past and future ceased to be.
+It struck her as curious that the prevailing note of those weeks should
+have been a sense of utter peace; not realizing that, peace being the
+thing his frayed nerves craved, she therefore supplied it, wrapping him
+round with it, living so in him and for him that while with him she
+received the impression of peace herself, only having sensations of her
+own when they were apart. His need--that was the great thing, and though
+she had not stopped to analyse what his need was, she had felt it was
+for soothing and rest.
+
+She was a writer, and on the money made by her first book she came to
+Italy, and in Florence she met him, a painter of some note, of whom she
+had vaguely heard in London. Although he was twenty years older than
+she, their minds chimed from the first; one of them had only to half say
+a thing for the other to understand it. At the beginning there was
+nothing between them but friendship, tinged--though for her quite
+unconsciously--with the element of sex. For him, he had since told her,
+things were very different from the moment he met her; to the average
+woman the term "physical attraction" is so meaningless that she stared
+in uncomprehension when he told her how profoundly she had troubled him
+from the first. For this girl, whose pulses had never been fluttered to
+quickness, and who, though in imagination she could project herself into
+passion, always shrank from any sign of it in actuality, was reserved
+the doubtful compliment of stirring the passionate side of the man's
+nature more violently than it had ever been before. He kept the ugly
+thing well hidden, and she never guessed at it until her own pity and
+trust and affection made her unwittingly tempt him beyond endurance.
+Pity, allied to the intellectual pleasure they took in each other, moved
+her first, for he was unhappy, and she, too, had the habit of pain. She
+remembered the first whole day they had taken together; how they climbed
+up to San Miniato and found a field in which they lay and talked, and
+how he came back with her to the thirteenth-century palace beside the
+Arno where she lodged. She had a little room with a painted ceiling,
+and the infant Bacchus and adoring nymphs disporting themselves in
+bas-relief on the mantelpiece, a room looking over the brown fluted
+roofs of Florence; but the great loggia where he and she sat faced the
+Arno, and they had coffee and cigarettes and watched the swift blue
+night fall over Florence while the swarm of lights waked broken
+reflections in the swirling water. On the loggia they exchanged a brief
+mention of their troubles, both commonplace enough; hers a childhood
+with parents who perpetually quarrelled, the mother a hard worldly woman
+who eventually took to drugs, and a father who had at last left for
+another woman the home which was so unbearable; while Sophia herself had
+only shaken off the horrors of it and earned her own living, barely
+enough at that, a few months earlier.
+
+Richard's trouble was his wife, who seemed not unlike Sophia's mother.
+He was both too kindly and too weak--for his was one of those
+temperaments that shrink from any display of unpleasantness--to have
+mastered her brutally and for good--and strong enough to go on living in
+the same house with her because, although she made his life a weariness,
+she was an intensely conventional woman to whom the position of a wife
+separated from her husband before all the world would have been
+intolerable. Between him and Sophia the fact that they both knew the
+terror of not being able to slip out even to post a letter without
+dreading what they might find on going back, made a bond of sympathy.
+
+Sophia, ignorant as she was, could not be a young, and, for some people,
+a beautiful woman, without having learned a few stray scraps of wisdom,
+and one was that when a man began to confide his troubles to her it was
+as well to see less of him. But Sophia let herself drift, because she
+liked being with the man so much; and also the fact that he was from her
+own place, that the relentless gods had brought him to Florence to meet
+her, and would, in due course, send them both back to where, henceforth,
+they would know each other, gave her a curious feeling of being
+entrapped in some web too powerful to break. She never blamed him or let
+him blame himself for what inevitably happened.
+
+"Sophia, my sweet," he wrote her in one of the letters she now picked up
+at random. "I didn't deliberately set to work to make love to you. I
+knew your beauty inflamed me and your wit delighted me. But when we
+first met I thought we should just see each other a few times and
+quarrel and laugh, and I should revel in your looks and no harm done.
+And now little Miss Jervis has turned into Sophia, and either I must
+have Sophia for ever and ever mine, or I ought to have stuck to an
+elderly uncle line and come away with no tears for her and no
+self-loathing for me, and no need to lie and shuffle and make her share
+in the lies and shuffles for the future."
+
+"You'll never do that, dear," thought Sophia, laying the letter down.
+"When I have to come back to London we'll meet honestly, or not at
+all. For there's nothing on earth that's worth living in a sea of lies
+for. . . ." She remembered how he had asked her if she would come and
+see his wife, so that he and she might meet on an accepted footing,
+and how the doubtful taste of the proposition had jarred her. He
+argued that because they would be honestly "playing the game" by his
+wife, Sophia need not mind the meeting; his knowledge of women was
+curiously insensitive and blunt, and he had no conception of how
+impossible it would be for Sophia to sit quietly and see another woman
+doing the honours of his house. In this he was not entirely to blame,
+for Sophia so contrived to hoodwink him that he never quite knew she
+loved him, certainly never knew the force of her love. He thought of
+her as a reckless, innocent child stung to lavish giving out of
+affection and pity, and so, to begin with, she had been. The woman
+Sophia kept up what had become a pose, not only from the pride of a
+maiden, but also because some instinct told her that sooner or later
+he would rather be able to think she had not given more.
+
+For the first few days either of them would have declared that all was
+well and there was no danger, yet each day marked a distinct step
+further on, a definite phase passed through. Sometimes they wandered
+about Florence, in the Boboli and the Cascine gardens, or upon the windy
+heights of Fiesole; sometimes he hired a queer little carriage with
+swift, bedecked horses, and they drove far out into the country, not
+getting home till night. The day before the revelation came was one of
+the most exquisite they spent together, one of which Sophia could still
+hardly bear to think. Leaving the carriage at a little village, they
+wandered on foot into a lovely valley, and laughed because he called it
+"old mastery," pointing out the Turneresque effect of a ruined castle
+set high amidst a mass of olives which were being blown pale against it.
+Presently they came to a stream that stormed down the valley and fell
+into seven successive pools; deep, still pools, as green as ice, with
+sunlit bubbles sent driving through them by the impetus of the clear
+arch of descending water. Beside the largest pool, on a smooth grey slab
+of rock screened by the over-hanging cliff, they sat and ate their lunch
+of bread and hard-boiled eggs and wine, and the sun shone on the glossy
+red-brown hair so cunningly folded about Sophia's head, and shone in the
+depths of her grey eyes and on her tanned skin. When they had finished
+she lay a little below him, closing her eyes to feel the blown spray
+drift against her lids, and she never knew till he told her that his
+hand had been on her hair the whole time, and never knew till later
+still that she had been loving him even then. The day passed in a
+perfect harmony of speech and silences, and all the time Sophia was
+giving--giving peace and mothering and delight, giving the sky and the
+earth and the very air they breathed. Only some one who has ever made a
+gift of a day knows the joy that it is--how each golden moment,
+conscious of its own beauty, hangs poised like a held breath; how the
+sun and wind and flowers and the upward curves of the supporting earth
+are all parts of the gift, making the giver a god who pours out creation
+for his friend.
+
+The next day they took train to Pisa on a more sophisticated errand,
+since he had undertaken to make a sketch of the tower for a friend who
+was "sheeking" some Italian backgrounds. Sophia wandered happily about
+the town while he did so, and then they met for lunch in the garden of
+an old inn.
+
+"I'm afraid of to-day," he told her, "because it can't be as perfect as
+yesterday. Nothing could--that's the worst of a day like that."
+
+"I'll _make_ it as perfect," Sophia replied, and she kept her word. She
+still had no idea she loved him, she only knew that she wanted to shield
+and protect him, that she was happy with him and felt the power to make
+him happy, and that she trusted him utterly. Without realizing it, she
+tempted him cruelly by her very trust, and that day her calm
+recklessness of speech, her gaze that meeting his so straight and
+untroubled, disturbed him so profoundly, were too much for him.
+
+"Take off your glove," he said suddenly.
+
+Sophia's notions of love had been culled from books, and she considered
+it inseparable from what she termed "thrills." How was she to know that
+a woman, especially what is called a "nice" woman, can love without the
+promptings of the pulses? Because she felt no sensuous "thrill" as the
+tone of command, it never occurred to her to think she could be in love,
+wherein she was making another common literary mistake--that of thinking
+that every woman enjoys being mastered. Sophia found her joy in ready
+compliance with the demands of the beloved, not in arranging set scenes
+of clashing wills and conciliations. Taking off her glove, she gave him
+her hand.
+
+"When I say that I want to kiss you now," he said, "it doesn't mean in
+the way it would have, even a day or two ago. I told you then you
+affected me . . . but now it would be because I love you."
+
+Sophia's hand moved slightly in his.
+
+"Yes," she said hesitatingly, "in a way--of course. I know you're very
+fond of me--and all that."
+
+"In _the_ way," he returned, "and I'm not fit to hold your hand. D'you
+know what the life of an average man is like--especially of a man in my
+circumstances?"
+
+"You mean--women?"
+
+"Yes--bought women," he said brutally. "Does it make a lot of difference
+to you?"
+
+Sophia, refusing to let her mind so much as dwell with any effort of
+realization on his confession, closed her hand firmly over his.
+
+"It doesn't make any difference. Nothing does. If I could look after
+you--if you were free to be looked after--you wouldn't have to go to
+other women any more. I care about you more than about any man I've ever
+met."
+
+"And I don't care about you more than any woman I've ever met. You're
+unique and you're you, but I've been in love a good many times. And
+there's always the big one I've told you about. I feel I've so little
+left to give, and yet--by God, Sophia! I _could_ give to you, even
+battered old I!"
+
+"I'd be such a wife to you," said Sophia proudly, clenching her free
+hand, "that I should fear no other woman on earth."
+
+"And you wouldn't need to . . . Sophia!" he cried. "How you would give!"
+
+"And we mustn't, either of us," said Sophia, and to soften the speech
+she bent her head swiftly and kissed the hand she held.
+
+"My dear . . . !" he said huskily, and Sophia led the way out of the
+garden.
+
+That night, after he had left her at her shabby old palace, he went back
+to his hotel and sat up, smoking heavily, most of the night. Towards
+morning, he wrote her a letter--the first in order of those beside her
+on the seat. She took it up now and read it once again:
+
+"Sophia, Sophia," it ran, "I'm in the depths of misery. What have I done
+to you and what is going to come of it all? When this time is over? When
+we're back in London and out of lotus land? You know--stolen interviews
+and weeks without meeting, and that old and awful struggle between the
+'game' at home and my inclinations abroad. And I've hardly written so
+far when I'm feeling better. Dear, what does all that matter? I feel the
+shadow of that coming gloom on me already, but how glorious the
+sunshine's been for me! I'm not going to think or worry--yet. What will
+happen when I'm back in London must happen, but if I had you by me now I
+shouldn't care a damn for that. I feel stupid and stockish. There are
+such millions of things I want to say to you, Sophia--and they're mostly
+middle-aged things. That's the worst of it. Warnings I feel I ought to
+give you about myself and my temper and my terrible ease in giving way
+to adverse circumstances. I've told you I'm not big enough or strong
+enough for you to care for me except as a useful old pal. You'll find me
+out and hate me. All sorts of ghastly bogies are waiting to jump out at
+me. They'll get me. But you, dear, you gracious, reckless woman-child,
+whatever you think of me in the future you can't rob me of to-day and
+yesterday and all those days, and especially to-day. Things like that
+are too sacred to write about, almost to think of. And we're deadly
+honest with each other, that's a great thing. The more I dream of you
+the more I want you here, now. I simply can't write, I've been nearly as
+high this afternoon as I shall ever get, perhaps quite--and one has to
+pay for that. Oh, my dear; please God, you'll never pay for me! Sophia,
+you're very dear to me. Richard. You poor child--you glorious woman!"
+
+The next day both fell from their high altitude. They had driven to a
+little half-deserted town, a white, dead, staring, crumbling place--a
+place of blind windows and glaring silences. Both felt a sense of
+tension, and leaving the carriage they wandered round the walls, and
+climbing over a broken gap sat down on a grassy spur of the hillside,
+with their backs to the terrible little town. As usual, by now, they
+talked about themselves, chiefly of him, and he told her that though
+several women had been fond of him as a friend and liked to "mother" him
+even as she did, no one of them had cared for him in another way or
+kissed him as a lover kisses. He slipped an arm round her shoulders as
+he spoke. Sophia was as ignorant as an infant of what kissing like a
+lover might be, and in a rush of pity and affection she turned her face
+up towards him.
+
+"Oh, it isn't as if we were going on afterwards like this," she said;
+"this is just a bit cut out of life for me to give you. It's taking
+nothing from her, she doesn't want to give you anything. And I want to
+make this bit as splendid as I can for you."
+
+He felt her shoulder touch his as she leant her warm young body towards
+him, he saw the glory of her eager eyes and mouth, and he caught her to
+him, crushing her fiercely. . . . Sophia wondered if this awful kiss were
+ever going to stop; she had never known there was such a way of
+kissing--a hard pressure, a sucking of her very soul--and she was filled
+with horror under it. When he loosed her she turned and buried her face
+against the wall. For a while they sat in silence, then she saw him
+kissing her coat, her sleeve, then her head was pressed back against
+the wall and his mouth came to hers again. She stayed passive, dazed. In
+silence they went to the carriage and drove away, and almost silently
+they parted. Sophia spent the night in a misery of shame, he spent it in
+mingled excitement and remorse: fearful lest he had aroused in her a
+passion which would need to be satisfied at the cost of social disaster.
+
+Next day they talked of nothing in particular in a desultory way and did
+not refer to what had happened until, wandering through one of the
+wooded mountain slopes beyond Florence, they came on a tiny sportsman's
+hut with a roof of red-fluted tiles and a huge chimney. Sophia peeped
+and went in; he followed. Within, the hut was only about five feet
+square; flame-coloured leaves had drifted in through the open doorway
+and lay piled on the hearth; on the wall were some names rudely scrawled
+in charcoal.
+
+"How did you sleep?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"I didn't. I was thinking what I should say to you to-day."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Never, never again be like you were yesterday. I didn't know it was
+like that. It was dreadful. I can't bear it."
+
+He took her hands and held them.
+
+"Never, I promise you. I had an awful night. I didn't know what to think
+or wish or do. Let's get out of this hut. It's too small."
+
+The rest of the day they spent happily under the trees, and it seemed to
+her that the sense of rest and peace was stronger than if it had never
+been broken. Very soon came their last day together. They drove to a
+deserted castle on a hill, called Castello di Luna, and as they went
+Sophia turned to him.
+
+"To-day's the last," she said, "and I'm going to make it the most
+beautiful present of all to you. We'll pretend, like children. We'll
+pretend there's only to-day in the world, that there are no obligations
+beyond here and now, that we are happy people--we'll pretend."
+
+He gathered her in his arms and kissed her again and again fiercely, but
+not with the abandonment which had frightened her before, and her heart
+turned heavy within her and she knew she loved him. They stayed till
+evening in the neglected garden of the old castle, left discreetly alone
+by Lucia and Amadea, the little peasant custodians who lived with a
+beetle-browed mother and a score of younger children in the tower over
+the gate. It was Lucia who ventured an opinion as to Sophia's baby, and
+Sophia emptied her pocket-bottle of lavender water over the little
+girls' blue-check handkerchiefs and told Richard to give them five
+_lire_ apiece against the day when they should have babies of their own.
+
+Then, in the quiet old garden, he and she sat and talked and were
+silent, and, with her arms round him, she drew his head on to her
+breast, and they played the dangerous game of saying what they would do
+when they were married.
+
+"Your baby would be sweet!" he quoted to her. "Would you dare even that
+for me, Sophia?"
+
+"Would I not?" she breathed.
+
+"Oh, I can't give up hoping it may all become possible!" he cried at
+last, but she shuddered a little. "Don't," she said, "it's building on a
+grave."
+
+But her heart ached at the sweetness of the vision. She never felt any
+temptation to fling her cap over the windmill for him, partly because it
+is very true that "_Les bonnes femmes n'ont pas ces tentations-la_,"
+partly because of the much greater things she wanted to give--a hearth
+that would always warm him, a pillow that would always rest him, and on
+the hearth a cradle--and these were things that he could not come at
+through a back door.
+
+They said good-bye on the loggia in Florence, and that night he left for
+Leghorn. He wrote to her in the train; and bringing her thoughts back to
+the present by an effort, Sophia picked up the letter now.
+
+    "Sophia, Sophia," she read, "is it only you who pay? My sweet, I
+    hope you will never feel what I felt as I went home. The bare
+    truth is I am a coward and a cad, besides being a fool. I began
+    it, and if I didn't know where it was going to lead to I was a
+    fool to play with fire, and I was a cad to go on. Dear, I'd
+    rather go through years of anything you feel than ten minutes of
+    what I'm feeling. But I've got to stick it henceforth when I'm
+    not buoyed up with your presence. It's been so gorgeous, you've
+    been so heavenly, that I'd do it all again. But now besides the
+    awful want of you there's the clear vision of what I am, and
+    it's hideous. I haven't the pluck or the passion to carry you
+    right off before all the world whether you would or no, nor the
+    sense and the honesty and the decency to be just friends with
+    you. Oh, Sophia, I hate myself for it, and hate myself most for
+    being glad, deep down, that I _did_ get what you gave me. I
+    can't find anything solid or honest in me anywhere, except my
+    feeling for you and my joy in our time together, and I've no
+    right to that. This is cruelly unlike what I've preached to you
+    about possessing for ever past joys. I suppose I shall forget my
+    own wickedness and even come to regret that I didn't take
+    more--take _all_ by force or guile--for perhaps, after all, it's
+    better to be a downright brute than a half-and-halfer. If so,
+    shan't I be even more unworthy of all you've given me, you
+    sweet, foolish, lavish child? If you were here now, Sophia, I
+    shouldn't be feeling all this. You'd only have to smile at me
+    and I should get back my pride in having won what I have won.
+    But without you I seem to see more clearly what I am. My sweet,
+    wouldn't you be happier if you saw me so, too? All I feel now is
+    a desperate need of you, your hands and your hair and your eyes
+    and your mouth and your voice and your wit and your dear
+    mothering. And next month? Secret meetings and concerted lies,
+    and all the rest of the filthy game? And I drag you into it all
+    because I want you and because my affairs make it necessary to
+    do it or part for good. I'm trying to look at it clearly and see
+    all the worst--misunderstandings, preoccupation, work, moods,
+    fears, all the things that are going to prevent a wretched thing
+    like me from being where he wants to be and doing what he could
+    for you. I wish from the bottom of my soul the train would smash
+    up and kill me to-night. Oh, if there were only the past few
+    weeks to consider it would be simple enough. I've had such a
+    time as I've never had before, and you made it. You said you
+    would and you did. You've given me such a time as a woman never
+    gave a man in our circumstances before. But there's you and the
+    world and the future to consider. It's very small moral
+    satisfaction to me that I didn't deliberately set to work to
+    make love to you. It grew, as you showed me more and more how
+    adorable you were, how gracious and desirable and generous and
+    trusting, you dear nymph of the woods, virgin-mother, friend and
+    lover and comforter. It's no good going on like this, man's a
+    self-deceiving kind of brute, and perhaps before long all the
+    glory of the days of you, you, you, will fit in quite
+    comfortably and the poison of self-hatred cease to hurt. I stop
+    to-morrow night at the Grand Hotel, Livorno. Will you write to
+    me there, sweet? If I could really be sorry for it all I should
+    like myself better. But I can't. I can only hate myself for
+    glorying in what I got by such means. Write to me--I'm
+    frightened and alone.
+        "RICHARD."
+
+    "My sweet," the next letter began, "your letter has come. It's
+    what I knew it would be, so brave and sweet and good that I can
+    only wonder at you all the more. It soothes and heals and cheers
+    me, and once more I am drinking your life-blood and using your
+    youth and splendour to live on. Is there anything you wouldn't
+    do for my comfort? When I fell asleep this morning about dawn I
+    dreamt of you and woke all hot and frightened, because I thought
+    I heard you moaning, a horrible, strangled moan. Did I? Oh, my
+    dear, I hope not. I can't get at the truth all these miles away.
+    You see, that brave, wise letter of yours might have meant a
+    huge effort of the will and brain, and not be a direct outflow
+    from the you that gave me those days. Shall I ever see that you
+    again, I wonder? Your letter's like the touch of your lips on my
+    forehead--cooling, healing, bracing and most sweet. Dear, you're
+    not only all I've told you before that you are, but you're wise
+    as well. Oh! child, girl, most wonderfully woman-wise. My sweet,
+    what you could do for me if only we could belong to each other.
+    Sophia, I'm trying hard to knock it into my head that we can't,
+    but I can see now that the trouble's going to be, not remorse or
+    anxiety, but just the big, aching lack of you, and not of your
+    beauty so much as of your tenderness and wit and your weak,
+    clinging strength. Oh, Sophia, I'm writing a lot of rot, but it
+    isn't rot really. I mean, you understand. D'you remember the day
+    when you said you'd exactly fitted that long body of yours into
+    the ground? That's how I feel when I rest my mind on yours, only
+    it's the ground and not me that does the shaping."
+
+The next letter was from Marseilles. The last page, which Sophia read
+through twice, ran thus:
+
+    "So good-bye to it all, but not good-bye to Sophia. Dear, I
+    believe very strongly in spiritual converse (I can't find the
+    word I want for it). But don't you feel that my arms _are_ round
+    you? I can feel your head on my shoulder and your hair against
+    my cheek. I mean that it isn't just cheating oneself with vain
+    imaginations to meet like that. I mean to go on thinking of you
+    hard and the vision soothes, not aggravates, the longing, and I
+    will meet you like that at our Castello di Luna. But oh, my
+    dear, I wish it were really true _now_! There is so much I want
+    from you and must go on wanting. Come to me in thought, my
+    sweet, until we can see and touch and hear each other again. We
+    will always say to each other whatever is in our hearts and
+    minds. And so I'm just starting to go back--Sophia, I can't say
+    'home.' Home means what you are. Oh, I thought I should go back
+    gaily and take it all up, but it makes me sick with dread. I
+    ought never to have got out of harness. It's better to go on
+    till one drops than to taste freedom and have to give it up.
+    Sweet, your eyes and your mouth and your hair are with me
+    always. Don't call me a materialist, and say it's only your
+    body's beauty that I value. You're sweet to me through and
+    through. Oh, Sophia, come often to meet me in Monte Luna. And
+    there is Lucia to say sweet, impossible things to make us dream.
+    _Ti bacio gl'occhi._
+        "RICHARD."
+
+Sophia opened the last sheet of paper. It enfolded three primroses, and
+on it was written "_Primavere per la Primavera_." She looked at them a
+moment, then wrapped them up again and put letters and flowers back in
+the bag. Behind her the sun was near to setting, and the blaze of it lay
+full on the towers, making them a bright tawny-grey against the sky of
+deep steel-colour, and turning to tongues of flame the tufts of yellow
+gillyflowers--Santa Beata's own plant--that sprang out here and there
+from the sheer masonry. Some jackdaws flew out of the nearest belfry,
+and circled round it, black amid the brightness. Sophia sprang up and
+walked to and fro.
+
+"I shall feel again, if I stay here. Unbearably. I wish I hadn't come.
+I'll go away to-morrow. _Richard, Richard, Richard!_"
+
+But on the morrow, instead of leaving Sant' Ambrogio, Sophia moved from
+the inn to the little house in the walled garden. Not until she was
+installed there did she discover that though the house was comparatively
+modern, the garden was the very one where Santa Beata had seen her
+visions and dreamed her dreams.
+
+
+III
+
+The first morning she spent in the place in the wall, writing him a
+letter.
+
+    "My dear boy," she wrote, "by the time you get this you will be
+    back in the thick of things. If I have given you anything that
+    will help you to go on it's all I want. You must just look on
+    this past month as a holiday snatched from the lap of the gods,
+    and realize, what you're always telling me, that what one's once
+    had one has for always. For there can't be any more, and I'm not
+    even going to write to you. Oh, I feel as though I were failing
+    you in not writing, but I always meant not to, even when you
+    were making plans about it. Letters keep up an atmosphere, and
+    that's better not. Yes, I know what you mean about spiritual
+    meeting. I'm sort of fused with you as I write. I'm not here--or
+    even in the future with you--as you read, for I've pulled the
+    future to me and made it now, now, now, and I'm with you, in the
+    present, as you read this, and I'm drawing your tired head to
+    me, and I feel the very way the thick stuff of your coat arches
+    up under the pressure of my arm. I am you in every bit of me as
+    I write; not yours, but you. But, for the future, in that way
+    only. I felt nothing wrong in all I gave you here, because you
+    needed what I had to give and we were hurting nobody. I'm sure
+    that's the great thing, to hurt nobody, and that includes you
+    and even me. It would be hurting both of us if we were to go on
+    writing because it would keep it all up and we shouldn't be
+    able to meet again just as friends, and if we make the break we
+    shall; we are strong--or weak--enough for that. Richard, let
+    your answer to this be a long one, won't you? Try and tell me
+    everything I shall want to hear in it because it will be all I
+    shall have to live on. Dear child, take care of yourself, don't
+    overwork and don't forget that open windows are the best thing
+    for that throat of yours. Don't let things at home worry you
+    more than you can help, and always remember there's no need to
+    worry about me at all.
+        "SOPHIA."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the time that she was waiting for the answer to her letter Sophia
+lived at tension, finding relief in the making of her last gift to
+him--for she wrote him a poem, and in spite of the deliberate placidity
+of the thing it eased the fierce pressure of her thoughts in the way
+that only creation can. Sophia was soon to enter on her greatest
+strength of feeling. Richard felt more intensely at the time than at
+looking back, when his emotions were stale to him, and he marvelled at
+the strength they had had; Sophia never knew till the actual hour was
+past what the depth of her emotion was. Partly this was that in their
+weeks together the need for calm and clarity on her side was so great,
+that when with him her being was absorbed in his and so her own feelings
+had no room for conscious movement until afterwards. There are times,
+when affairs are at the crest, when, by its intensity, sensation seems
+numb, but all the while each little thing seen by both inward and
+outward vision is registered on the mind with peculiar sharpness of
+edge; only to be realized when the wave of incident has passed, and even
+then a period of numbness may intervene before realization enters the
+soul, deep-driven by the intolerance of memory. Sophia was living in
+that tense numbness now, but through it external things made their
+potency felt. She grew to know every corner of the little town, and
+during the day she would wander several times into the cool dim church,
+to breathe the silence and the peace of it. And "Richard . . ." she
+prayed, "Richard . . ." She knew of no definite thing to ask for him, she
+could not pray he might be free, and happiness was an illusion she had
+learned to dread; she could only turn his name over and over in her
+mind, lift it up, hold it up and out with all the strength of her will.
+Still, in spite of this focusing of her life--a focusing that was to
+grow even more passionate in long, hot London months to come--there was
+no unity about it, little sights and impulses fraught with value, yet
+failed to show any coherent reason; some great cord that could bind
+everything together was still not gathered up.
+
+One afternoon she wandered out of the town by the big gates, and turning
+to look back at the sweeping wall she saw a narrow path that girdled its
+base, rising and falling over the rippling flanks of the hill. As she
+looked at it some dim memory stirred in her--she remembered having read
+in her childhood that in olden days a man might own as much land as he
+could encompass in one walk, returning to his starting-point. The
+root-instinct of enclosure was in the idea, and Sophia had a sudden
+fancy to make the unconscious town her own by the old method. Without
+thinking of much beyond the physical act, she started along the little
+track noting idly yet definitely the look of the stones along the
+spreading base of the fortifications and the sickles of light made by
+the sky's reflection on the curving-over grass blades on the other side
+of the path. She went slowly and when she had half-girdled the town she
+lay down on a smooth slope, and, locking her hands behind her head,
+gazed over the fertile plain. On an almond-tree near a nightingale began
+to sing; against the first pink of sunset she saw his little body as a
+slightly ruffled blot. She let her mind fill with the song so that it
+became the accompaniment to her thought, and slowly the first glimpse of
+comprehension began for her.
+
+First she fell to wondering what the plain would look like seen from
+above--from the point of view of God. "The human mind, looking from
+such a standpoint, would have to concentrate on one thing at a time
+if it wanted to attain any idea but a general vagueness," thought
+Sophia. "One would have to focus on mountain-ranges, or rivers, or
+railway-lines. . . ."
+
+She lay imagining it, seeing how the shining network of railroads formed
+a web over the roundness of the world; thinking how it would seem to
+this poised mind a mere web and nothing more. A meaningless web; instead
+of thousands of roads each leading to a different destination and intent
+on its own business. But if the mind, as well as the point of vision,
+were that of a god, then each line would be fraught with its
+individuality--and not merely because each led somewhere; there was more
+to it than that--Sophia struggled towards it. . . . A different time had
+seen the making of each railroad, different men worked at the making of
+them, men with souls which had thought and felt as they laid the steel
+ribbons on which other souls would be rushed along without guessing
+anything of the thoughts and feelings. And yet, surely those emotions
+could not die. . . . Perhaps, one evening, a workman, straightening his
+back and drawing his hand over his wet forehead, had looked towards the
+sunset, and in the vague irrational way some scenes are registered on
+the mind for always, that aspect of sky and darkening hedge against it
+would stay in his memory, oddly mixed with the feel of the wet drops on
+his hand and the easing of the muscles across his back, to be recalled
+by any similar moment for the rest of his life. If so, how steeped with
+humanity those few yards of steel would be! And, apart from the emotions
+connected with it by the sense of sight, what an important part the
+railroad must play to the men and their wives and children to whom it
+meant food and fire! And then, the lines finished, each train going over
+them would pile the human associations thicker yet, heaping up all the
+feelings, according to their intensity, of the people in the trains. A
+god, looking down, instead of merely seeing the network of steel, would
+see as well all the human emotions still clinging to the places where
+they were lived--a mystical web woven over tangible things, growing
+deeper with the years. "Which," said Sophia, the first gleam of personal
+light flashing through her, "is why walking round a place makes it yours
+if you do it for that. My seeing of this path will be here always, I'm
+making a belt of consciousness round the town. It's my city! My city set
+upon a hill!"
+
+She scrambled to her feet and for a moment leant her cheek against the
+rough stone of the wall, then she went on round the town and in at the
+great gate.
+
+That evening she sat in Beata's garden, finishing her poem to Richard.
+Elate as she was, she still had no hint of what her discovery meant, or
+of how the garden would bring the final revelation to her, but even then
+she felt the soothing influence that held it and her as she wrote out
+her poem. It went to him without a title, but for herself she headed it:
+
+    TO THE FORBIDDEN LOVER
+
+    That time I gave you half-a-moon of days
+    In the dear Southern land of many moods
+    She lured us up among her hill-ringed ways
+    Far from the ordered gardens, far from where,
+    Sacring the sky, the Christs hang on their roods.
+    We saw the sea-grey slopes of olive-trees
+    Blown foamy-pale, from the cloud-ridden air
+    Fell the swift shadows on those leafy seas.
+
+    To lakes of hardened lava we would come,
+    Scarred, as by whirlpools, with cold crater-rings
+    Or packed in furrows, like mammoth slugs grown numb
+    At some disaster of creation's dawn--
+    A burnt-out lunar landscape of dead things.
+    And there some kindlier whim of path would show
+    Rocks that might echo to a piping Faun,
+    Or hide a huntress nymph with spear and bow.
+
+    Pan-haunted is that valley where we lay
+    (Lay, till lulled senses slid into a dream)
+    Watching sun-wrought reflections of ripples play
+    And break in shining scales through that green pool,
+    Deepest of seven strung on a ribbon of stream
+    That seven times wings the air in curving flight.
+    And from the gleaming arc blew spray to cool
+    Lids that were rosy films against the light.
+
+    A hut with fluted roof we found one morn,
+    A fairy-story hut; an empty shrine
+    Haply once dear to comrades less forlorn,
+    For on the walls were names of lover-folk.
+    And there we ate our bread and drank our wine,
+    A Sacrament of Fellowship; only dregs
+    We poured to envious gods, and laughing broke
+    Thrush-like, against a stone, our brown-shelled eggs.
+
+    Dearest that castle set in sun and winds
+    Remote as though upon Olympus hung,
+    Yet with a human tang that drew our minds
+    To gentle restful things; an open door,
+    Warm hearths, silk-curtained beds, and shutters flung
+    Wing-wide to let us watch the stars pulsating.
+    Now through closed slats their light must bar the floor
+    And on the hearth the ash be grey with waiting.
+
+    And when for daily troubles you make dole
+    (Now that the miles have set you far away)
+    Then to our little castle come in soul.
+    There, where the two girl-children thought us wed,
+    There, surely, I need never say you nay;
+    But, where the hollow curves between the breast
+    And rounded shoulder, draw your weary head,
+    And, when the day's lid droops, there give you rest.
+
+    The weakness of you I can hold to me,
+    For since at the world's door the babes unborn
+    Must vainly beat for us; oh, I will be
+    A Virgin-Mother to the child in you. . . .
+    And comradeship is good when sweetly sworn,
+    Being no less tender for its commonplace
+    And for its lack of fetters no less true--
+    Take what you may, my dear, and with good grace.
+
+It was Sophia's first and only love-letter, and she sent it when she got
+back to England, as a summons to that friendship in which she could have
+given as richly as in love; and for which, although he had planned it so
+eagerly, he had too much knack of passion and too little depth of
+feeling.
+
+
+IV
+
+The following evening his letter came, and Sophia, noting the thinness
+of it compared with those others she had had, knew how his need of her
+had slackened. She took the letter to her refuge on the wall and sat for
+a while unable to read it, the old nausea upon her. Then she took a firm
+grip of herself and opened the envelope. As she read it seemed as though
+a great blow were struck at her heart. She knew she had expected this,
+yet the actuality was worse to bear than she had thought.
+
+Richard laughed at her intention of not writing, and himself wrote her
+little over a page. He began, as usual, "Sophia, my sweet," and made a
+brief reference to his wife--"She has not had a bad phase yet--and
+things are quiet, but what is that when one wants sympathy and passion?
+I feel I am caught up in the old life again and something seems to have
+gone snap in me. Write to me--for you will write--to my club." The
+assurance of his tone jarred Sophia, but what hurt her cruelly was his
+brevity. The fact that she had wanted this letter to be a long one had
+honestly seemed to him of no importance when set against the fact that
+he was not in the mood to write it; for he was the creature of his moods
+and consequently unheeding of those which other folk might wish to have
+indulged.
+
+Sophia read the letter over and over, and then quite suddenly felt she
+could not look at it again, and for the first time since the whole
+affair began, she cried. Crouched on the seat she hid her face while the
+sobs tore at her and the tears ran over her crossed wrists, and she
+heard the sound of her own sobs coming to her from a great distance.
+After a while she sat up, dried her wet face and made herself confront
+the new aspect of things. She saw that up till now she had not been
+wholly unhappy, for she had had the past. If he were going to prove
+unworthy the past would no longer be hers to glory in but would become a
+time of shame. If--as prevision showed her--she was to know him as unfit
+for what she had given, the giving would cease to be her happiness. For
+Sophia was still so ignorant she thought mere companionship and the
+spiritual force of her feeling had been a continuous giving. The
+knowledge that from a man's point of view she had given nothing at all
+was spared her. Since the parting she had repeated over and over to
+herself two sentences from his letters--"_Virgin Mother, friend and
+lover and comforter_" and "_Home means where you are_." If he could
+still mean those things she would be perfectly content that he should
+never again express them; if he were to mean them less as the old life
+and the old allegiance gripped him, then they would cease to be true and
+she could not live on them in memory. Few men are strong enough to leave
+the past alone, many are so afraid of its re-appearance that they try to
+bury it alive--was he going to deal this last and most cruel blow, a
+future that would destroy the past? The pitiful part of it all was that
+Sophia would never have seen him again sooner than try to revive what
+had happened; had he continued to make love to her she would have
+refused to let him--all she asked was that the past might be unprofaned.
+Reading his letter she began for the first time to realize the
+selfishness of his brilliant, lovable drifting nature, and in that
+moment her love of him took its firmest hold of her. The merciful phase
+of numbness was over, and she entered the deep waters at last. She had
+no strength left to struggle, she could only let them go over her head
+and await their passing. For her month of joy she was to pay in a year's
+pain, and she entered on the payment now.
+
+It was the payment for what she had gone without that hit Sophia
+hardest. In what she had given was the supreme comfort--"It was for
+him"; and this upheld her even when her want of him was worst, when she
+lay the whole night through on the floor of the wall-refuge, thoughts
+and pulses knocking out "I want you . . . I want you . . ." against the
+stones. It upheld her when, towards dawn, she paced the garden, pausing
+every now and then to lean her cheek against the dew-wet lilac leaves;
+or when she tangled her hands in the grass till the damp blades
+whimpered as she pulled her fingers up them. Sound was a help to her,
+and when she roused the grass to cries or stirred the bushes to quick
+whispering the voice in herself was quieter. She was never violent to
+anything in the garden, and when action became hurried she turned it
+upon herself, beating her hands against her thighs. And always "It was
+for him" upheld her through the darkest times of paying for what she had
+given.
+
+For what she had gone without that help was lacking. It was not passion,
+which, when with him, she had never felt, that plucked at her
+unbearably, it was the thwarted fruit of passion that haunted and
+reproached her. Before his letter came, dream-babies had clustered round
+her, wringing their little hands behind a closed transparent door, but
+these were visions of what might have been had circumstances been
+different--them she could bear. Now thought narrowed and gained in
+meaning: one baby surged towards her, cried to her, smiled at her, lay
+in air always just away from her breast--one baby that was what might
+have been even as things were. How would it matter what other women he
+loved better if she had only given him what no other woman had? She saw
+herself his slayer in that she had not made life for him in the way a
+woman can make it for her lover, by taking it of his and creating afresh
+with it. Her own life would be such a small price to pay. For Sophia was
+a born creator, and the seeming futility of all she was undergoing, and
+the barrenness it bound her to, filled her with a sense of waste.
+
+It was not until the compulsion which bread-winners know was making it
+clear to Sophia that her last days at Sant' Ambrogio were come, that the
+influences at work upon her ever since her arrival, that had first
+revealed themselves to her in her walk round the town, fused and
+concentrated.
+
+The day had been unbearably hot, and Sophia lay behind closed
+_persiani_, the green of the leaves without reflecting on to the
+whitewashed walls so that the room seemed a pool of green dusk. Sophia
+read a little old Latin _Vita Sanctae Beatae_, which she pondered over
+when, in the cool of the evening, she sought the place in the wall.
+
+"She found something," thought Sophia; "I wonder what it was? Peace, of
+course, but what got her to it? For outwardly her life was as bare as
+mine--and she had never known even what I know of--things. And yet,
+they say that in religion there is every experience. . . . I wonder if the
+babies she might have borne if she'd married some fellow-peasant ever
+beat at her reproachfully? And if so, what it was she found? She lived
+here, I suppose, walked in the garden and sat in my place in the wall--I
+wonder what she felt here. . . ."
+
+All was very quiet and still on the wall, and for the first time since
+Richard's letter had come Sophia's aching was a little soothed, the taut
+fibres of her relaxed and her mind slid into receptivity. Then a more
+positive change began to make itself felt to her, though she could not
+have traced its birth or growth if she had tried.
+
+The first note of difference was a physical one. Sophia was
+short-sighted and saw the world in a blur; now her sight began to take
+precision of outline and then the things at which she was looking
+changed too. The towers were more numerous, and from some of them flags
+fluttered out, and not till long after did Sophia remember that there
+had been no breeze that evening. Looking for the house over the
+tree-tops of the garden she saw that it had shrunk oddly, and an outer
+stairway crawled up its wall. On the sundial lay a rosary of dark
+beads--Sophia could see its steel cross glitter in the evening light.
+
+These were outward changes, on their heels came the inward change that
+made them seem natural to her. It was as though she were in one of those
+dreams when the dreamer knows who he is and that he will soon wake up,
+and yet does and says the most incongruous things; with this
+difference--Sophia had a curious feeling that it was some one else's
+dream which had taken hold of her. She struggled against it at first as
+against an anaesthetic, but the thing crept over her like a tide.
+
+A child's cry came from the town, and Sophia felt a sudden contraction
+at the heart, and with a thrill realized that this new Person in her
+felt it also--that they were at one. With that shock of mutual sensation
+the fusion became more nearly complete; of Sophia's own consciousness
+was left only enough to know that she was still herself, hearing,
+seeing, and feeling what some one else had heard and seen and felt
+before her in that place. She knew, too, that the drama played in her
+soul ever since she came to Sant' Ambrogio, a wordless drama in which no
+human being had taken part, was drawing to a climax, and that the human
+element had invaded it at last. She was about to learn what it was for
+which those weeks, especially that hour outside the wall, had prepared
+her.
+
+The air was very clear, and to the long sight with which Sophia was
+seeing, seemed preternaturally so, as though everything were set in a
+vast crystal which made visible each pebble and grass-blade. A numbness
+stole over her body, her hands ached with cold before they, too, lost
+sensation, and in this numbed frame her consciousness gathered
+intensity. Then with a shock, as sudden as a plunge into cold water, her
+mind slid on to what seemed another though not an alien plane. Her
+mind's eye saw all the old points of view, the accepted angles of
+vision, as though torn up and scattered like flung wreckage over the
+shining shore of the world that swung below her; things which had seemed
+big were small, all relative sizes were altered, perspective itself
+seemed run mad, except that after the first breath the knowledge that
+this was the true angle swept over her--that she, or rather, the Person
+whose vision she was receiving, was looking at the spiritual world from
+the point at which she herself had vaguely imagined gazing at the
+physical.
+
+Round this spiritual globe she saw the Breath of God hang as the air
+hangs round the earth, and she saw it full of ebbing and flowing like a
+current-whorled river. She saw how no wind left emptiness where it had
+been, but how the elastic tissue thinned out, spread, gathered together,
+ran here and there so that no outflow was without its inevitable
+influence of contraction: the whole sphere of air was a medley of
+pattern, always rhythmic and interchanging. She felt how this elasticity
+was brought into play over the surface of the spiritual world, how
+actions, sins, pains of mind and body, rack this way and that as they
+would, were always enveloped by the divine Breath, even as on the
+material globe not a wave can break or a leaf stir but the river of air
+holds true. Always the movements of the Breath made a pattern, as
+invisible to the soul in the midst of it as the wind-pattern is to those
+on earth, a pattern inevitable in the sense that achieved beauty always
+strikes the eye, as being inevitable in its rightness.
+
+Then, this measure of universal comfort given, sensation narrowed and
+concentrated, not on her soul, but on the soul which had felt long ago,
+probably far more intensely, what she was seeing by it and through it
+now.
+
+As Sophia felt the anguish of the Person who had absorbed her, she
+realized it was the same as hers--the fear and pain of barrenness.
+Whether she had known all along that it was the repeat, the echo, of a
+vision of Beata's that was on her, or whether she only knew it then, she
+could never have told. No actual child that might have been cried to
+the Beata consciousness, only natural longings apart from any one
+person, yet the anguish bit keenly, for with it went fear--the deadly
+fear lest barrenness should be deliberate sin against life. Powerless to
+help, Sophia saw the thought turn in the other's mind, and with that
+they both entered into the last phase of the vision. Here Sophia, who
+had not trained herself, like Beata, to prolonged sustaining of the
+will, flagged and began to fail. A brightness that was too strong for
+her, a sense as of great Shapes, a looming Presence, swept on to her,
+wrapped her round, overweighted her. She struggled to keep up with the
+Beata consciousness, for she knew if only she could succeed in that she
+would find the answer to her own sorrow and Beata's fear. The outer
+world had begun to come back, the towers of the town showed as through a
+mist, some growing more and more definite; some, those of Beata's day,
+wavering uncertainly. . . . She strained her flagging nerves, caught at
+her subsiding energies in one last effort. . . . A divine warmth suffused
+her breast; sky and air were filled with the gleam of a fiery Child that
+flashed towards her, filled her arms; and sank, not away, but into her
+very soul and, like quick stars, she saw the wounds on His hands and
+feet.
+
+With that she knew, as Beata had known, that this was the reward of
+virginity, that each virgin could mother the Christ-child afresh. She
+knew that to those to whom the joy of making a living body with its
+corresponding soul is denied, creation is not stilled, that there need
+be no barrenness in a garden enclosed. For she saw that there is no
+sterility save that of the wilful mind.
+
+With a shock the present reeled into its place; spiritual vision was
+past and physical vision lost keenness as her own blurred sight swam
+back to her; and, worn out, hardly conscious of her own life, but filled
+with peace, Sophia lay along the seat in the kindly dusk.
+
+She was still to know month upon month of pain; sometimes acute as when
+she stayed out of doors all night and made sounds and hurt herself
+physically to distract her mind's distress; but mostly an ache that bore
+on her like a weight, sometimes invading dreams and always by her
+bedside when she awakened. She was to find that for the friendship she
+could have made so exquisite he had no gift; she was to feel the many
+hurts his lack of thoughtfulness inflicted; she was to bear the
+unhappiness of seeing him unworthy of all that might have been so good
+in him as he let himself drift into flirtations where not one of his
+finer senses was touched. She was to feel one sharpest hour of any, when
+the time came, which, if she had given herself would have seen his child
+in her arms. . . .
+
+And through everything, through the dreadful London months of loneliness
+and the cruder physical hardships of extreme poverty; through her weary
+clear-eyed knowledge of him she was to come back perpetually to the
+refrain--that surprised herself after a few weeks of comparative calm
+when she hoped she was "getting over it"--of "How I love him." She had
+no high-flown theories of love; she knew he was not what is tritely
+called "the right man," he was more--he was the one she loved well
+enough to forgive for not being the "right one," and in those moments
+there was no evading the simple fact that she would have given all the
+rest of her life to have been his wife for one year and have borne him a
+child.
+
+But, through and above and around all that, went the memory of Beata's
+vision which she too had seen. The vision itself was often dark and
+meaningless to her in the actuality of her love and pain, but of the
+knowledge that she had had it she was never bereft. Also, it was hers to
+create those pleasant fruits and chief spices of which the greatest
+love-song in the world tells as growing only in a garden enclosed.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITH TWO MOUTHS
+
+
+On a grey day a girl was walking along a crescent of sand that curved at
+the cliff's base. As she went the water welled up in the slanting
+hollows left by her feet, and the fat, evil-looking leaves of the cliff
+plants glistened with spray moisture; even the swollen fingers of the
+marsh samphire, that all seemed to point at the girl as she passed, each
+bore a tremulous drop at the tip. At the end of the little beach the
+girl paused, and then turned to look out to sea, balancing herself on a
+slab of wet shiny granite, where the cone-shaped shellfish clustered and
+from which the long green weed floated out and in on the heave of the
+tide. The girl held back the red hair that whipped about her forehead
+and stared from under an arched palm.
+
+"'Tes naught but a plaguey dolphin, d'believe," she muttered, yet still
+stayed for one more glimpse of the dark thing that was bobbing up
+through the curdling foam-pattern. A stinging scatter of spray blew into
+her eyes, blinding her, and when she looked again the dark thing had
+come nearer, and she saw it to be the body of a man caught in the
+ratlines of some shrouds that the sea's action had lapped around the
+mast they had once guarded. Were it not that his chin was hitched over
+the ratlines, so that he was borne along with his face--a pale blot
+among the paler blots of the foam--upturned, he would doubtless have
+sunk, for he was not lashed to the mast in any way. A huge foam patch
+had formed in the web made by the tangled shrouds, so that his head and
+shoulders showed clearly against the creaming halo, on which his long
+hair, dark with wet and released from its queue, lay streaked away from
+his tilted face. The girl called to him twice in her strong, rough
+voice; then, since even if he still lived he was past any consciousness
+of doing so, she kept her energies for the saving of him. Wading in as
+deep as she dared--not more than up to her hips, for even then the heave
+and suction of the water threatened to knock her off her feet--she clung
+on to a ridge of rock with one hand, and, leaning forward, made snatches
+at the spar whenever it surged towards her. To her dismay she saw that
+with every heave his legs must be catching against some rocks, for his
+head began to sink away from the supporting ratlines, and when at last
+she caught one end of the spar she only succeeded in drawing it away
+from him. His head disappeared; for a moment the dark hole in the midst
+of the foam-circle held, then broke, and was overrun as the whiteness
+closed upon it. The next minute a surge of undercurrent brought him
+knocking against her legs; she just managed to hold on with one hand
+while with the other she plunged down at him. Her fingers met the cold
+sleekness of his face, then caught in his tangled hair, and, drawing
+herself up backwards against the rock-ledges, she pulled him with her,
+step by step. A few moments more and she had staggered up the narrow
+strip of beach with her burden dragging from her arms. Tumbling him
+along the drier sand at the cliff's foot, she knelt beside him, and
+with hands trembling from the strain that had been put upon the muscles,
+she pulled apart the clinging shirt that was so sodden it seemed to peel
+from off him. She felt at his heart, then laid her ear to the pale
+glistening chest where the dark hair was matted to a point between the
+breasts; she beat that pale chest with her hand, and at last saw the
+faint red respond to the blows of her fingers. On that much of hope she
+desisted, seemed to hesitate, then half-hauling him up by a hand beneath
+each shoulder, she began dragging him towards where the cliff curved
+outwards again to the sea. At a point some three or four feet from the
+ground the cliff overhung so that it was possible to imagine creeping
+beneath it at low tide, though a curtain of glossy spleen-wort hung down
+so thickly it was difficult to tell. Going upon her knees, the girl
+crawled backwards under the dripping dark green fringe, and pulled the
+man in after her. Within, a tunnel, in which it was soon possible to
+walk upright, led at a gradual incline up to what was apparently the
+heart of the cliff, which here was honeycombed into those smugglers'
+caves of the West of which even now all the secrets are not known. Up
+this incline she got herself and him, and at last dragged him
+triumphantly into the big cave where she and her father, Bendigo Keast,
+stored the smuggled goods in which they traded so successfully. It was
+very dark, but with accustomed hands she felt for the small iron box in
+which the flint and tinder were kept; soon a tiny flame sprang to life,
+and she passed it on to a wick that floated limply in a little cup of
+stinking fish-oil on the floor. In the mere breath of light thus given
+the rows of stacked barrels loomed dimly, the outermost curve of each
+gleaming faintly, while between them the shadow lay banded.
+
+Thomasin Keast ran some brandy from a little keg near into her palm and
+tilted it between the man's teeth, then slopped the raw spirit over his
+shirt, drenching it again. Then--not stripping him, for the modesty of a
+Cornish woman, who thinks shame to show even her feet, prevented
+that--she filled her hands with brandy and ran them in under his
+clothes, rubbing tirelessly up and down till the flesh began to dry and
+tingle. Around his reddened neck, where the soft young beard merged into
+wet curls, she rubbed; over his shoulders, where the big pectoral
+muscles came swelling past his armpits like a cape, then down the
+serried ribs that she could knead the supple flesh around, past the
+curve-in of the whole body beneath them, to the gracious slimness of the
+flanks and the nervous indentation of the groins between the trunk and
+the springing arches of the thighs. So Thomasin knelt in the gloom of
+the cave, and all the time that his life was coming painfully and
+reluctantly back to him under her strong, glowing hands, she felt as
+though some presage of new life were flowing into herself. The old saw
+has it that the saving of a drowning man brings ill-luck to his rescuer;
+but Thomasin, as she watched grow in his features that intangible
+something which makes the face human instead of a mere mask, scorned the
+superstition; and still more she scorned it as her urgent hands felt the
+rising beat of his pulses and arteries. For during that time his hidden
+form became so known to her that his every curve and muscle, the very
+feel of the strong-growing hair upon him softening into down as his skin
+dried, all impressed themselves clearly on her memory for ever, and she
+felt him hers--hers by right of discovery as well as right of salvage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomasin Keast and her father lived in a little four-square cottage set
+about half a mile from the headland--a half-mile of thorn and bracken,
+of tumbled boulders and wedges of furze almost as solid. Here in the
+spring the yellow-hammer and the linnet, the stonechat and the whinchat,
+shrilled their first notes, and at dawn the greybird thrust a thirsty
+beak into the dewy blackthorn blossoms; here the dun-coloured rabbits
+darted in and out of their burrows with a gleam of white scuts. Here,
+too, Keast and his daughter herded the moorland ponies that,
+well-soaped, were loaded with the barrels of spirit and packets of lace
+which had been brought from France at dark of the moon. The cottage was
+of rough grey granite, with a roof crusted with yellow stonecrop that
+looked as though it had been spilled molten over the slates. On either
+side of the door a great wind-buttress, reaching to the eaves, swept out
+like a sheltering wing.
+
+This was the place to which Thomasin Keast brought her man on that
+stormy evening. Dusk was already making the air deeply, softly blue, and
+through it the whitewashed lintel gleamed out almost as clearly as the
+phosphorescent fish nailed against the wall. Half-leading,
+half-supporting him, Thomasin steered the stranger between the
+buttresses and through the narrow doorway into the living-room. A peat
+fire glowed on the hearth and against it the figure of a crouching man
+showed dark. At the noise in the doorway he thrust an armful of furze on
+to the fire, and the quick crackling flare that followed threw a
+reflection like the flashing of summer lightning over the whitewashed
+walls, sending the shadows scurrying into the corners and revealing the
+man whose big hand, ridged with raised veins that ran up to the wrist,
+was still upon the furze-stem.
+
+Bendigo Keast was not long past his prime of strength and could still
+have out-wrestled many a younger man. Through his jersey the working of
+his enormous shoulders showed as plainly as those of a cat beneath her
+close fur, and under his chin the reddish beard could not hide the knots
+of his powerful throat. His eyes, blue and extraordinarily alert, were
+half-hidden by the purpled lids, and the massive folds of his cheeks
+that came down in a furrow on either side of his slightly incurved
+mouth, looked hard as iron. Like most seamen when within doors, he was
+in his stockings, and as he rose and his bulk swayed forward his feet
+broadened a little and gripped at the uneven flagstones like those of a
+great ape.
+
+Thomasin spoke first.
+
+"'Tes a man I found drownen', da," she said, and in her voice uneasiness
+mingled with a readiness for defiance. "He'm most dead wi' salt water,
+and cold. Us must get en to the bed to wance. Da . . ."
+
+"Where did ee find en?" asked Bendigo Keast, without moving.
+
+"To cove."
+
+"Did a see aught?"
+
+"How should a, and him nigh drowned?" evaded Thomasin; then, as the
+stranger sank on to the settle and let his wet brown head fall limply
+back against it, she went over to a crock of milk that stood in the
+window-sill and poured some into a saucepan.
+
+"Get en to the bed, da," she said more sharply. "I'll see to your
+supper. He must have nawthen but milk for the night."
+
+Bendigo came forward, and, swinging his long arms round the man, carried
+him off up the stairs that led from the living-room into the first of
+the two tiny bedrooms. He soon came down again.
+
+"Tell me how tes a smells of brandy?" he demanded.
+
+"I rubbed en down wi' et to put life into en." Thomasin spoke quietly,
+but the sound of her stirring spoon grew less rhythmical.
+
+"Then a did see?"
+
+"Da, listen to me," said Thomasin, turning round. "S'pose a did see,
+what then? He'm naught but a foreigner from up-country, and wouldn't
+know to give we away. And--s'posen he'm minded to stay by us--well, you
+d'knaw we'm needing another hand. We must find one somewhere, and
+there's none o' the chaps to the church-town would come in wi' us,
+because us have allus stood by oursel' and made our own profits. But now
+Dan's dead, you d'knaw as well's I us must get another hand to help in
+the _Merrymaid_. If you wern't so strong and I as good as a man, it
+would ha' needed four of us to ha' run her."
+
+"How can us knaw whether to trust en?" asked Bendigo suspiciously. "Tes
+bad luck to save a man from the sea, they do say."
+
+"Don't decide nawthen tell you've talked wi' en," advised Thomasin. "May
+be the poor chap was too mazed to take notice o' what he saw. Us'll knaw
+to-morrow."
+
+And next day the rescued man was sitting by the hearth, somewhat stiff
+from bruises, but otherwise with his wiry frame none the worse. His
+looks had strikingly improved, for now that the soft beard, which had
+never known a razor, was dry, it peaked forward a little, whereas when
+wet it had clung to his too narrow jaw and revealed a lax line of chin.
+
+His story was soon told--the brig on which he was mate had been
+returning from France when a squall overtook her, and she became a total
+wreck. He had clung to the floating spar for several hours before losing
+consciousness, when the tangled ratlines had borne him up and the tide
+had swept him into the shoreward current which set round the headland.
+
+"And the first thing I knew," he ended, "was your face, mistress,
+bending over me in your cave. . . ."
+
+Keast shot a glance at his daughter. They had exchanged looks before, at
+the man's mention of France, and now Bendigo flung a few veiled phrases,
+with here and there a cant term common to smugglers, at his guest, who
+understood him perfectly, and himself became entirely frank. His name,
+he said, was Robin Start, and that there was mixed blood in him he
+admitted. A more gracious race showed itself in his quick turns of wrist
+and eye, his ease of phrase, in his ready gallantry towards Thomasin.
+Yes, said Robin Start, his mother was a Frenchwoman, and had taught him
+her tongue--a fact he found useful in his dealings on the other side of
+the Channel.
+
+A bargain is an intricate and subtle thing in Cornwall, a thing of
+innuendoes and reservations, and the one Bendigo Keast struck with the
+stranger was not without subtleties on both sides. Robin Start had quite
+understood all he had seen in the cave, and had made a mental note of
+the way out, which gave him a hold over Bendigo. On the other hand,
+Robin, who suffered paroxysms of craving for safety in the intervals of
+delighting in danger, knew it was safer to come in with Bendigo and make
+something for himself smuggling than it would be for him to think of
+escaping from that muscular father and daughter if he declined. As for
+Keast, it was true that since his nephew Dan had been knocked on the
+head by a swing of the boom, he needed some one to take the lad's place.
+A bottle of smuggled rum sealed the bargain, and then, for the first
+time in her life, Thomasin was talked to as a woman. To her father a
+partner; a mere fellow-man to the dark, silent Daniel who now lay in the
+lap of the tides; shunned by the envious villagers, and looked at
+askance by the Government men, Thomasin had never known of the sphere
+which began to be revealed to her that evening. For one thing, she was
+plain, though in certain lights or effects of wind she looked fine
+enough in a high-boned, rock-hewn way. She was what is called in that
+part of the world a "red-headed Dane," and her broad, strongly modelled
+face was thickly powdered with freckles. Though she was only twenty-two,
+hundreds of nights of exposure to wind and wet had roughened her skin,
+but at the opening of her bodice, where a hint of collar-bones showed
+like a bar beneath the firm flesh, her skin was privet-white. The slim,
+brown-haired Robin with his quick eyes was a contrast in looks and
+manners to anyone she had ever met, and mingled with her awe and wonder
+of him was the fierce sense of possession that had entered into her when
+she passed her hands over and over him in the cave. Also she felt
+maternal towards him because, though he must have been nigh upon
+thirty, he was one of those men who have a quality of appeal.
+
+It was a stormy autumn that year, and little was possible in the way of
+business; but for Thomasin, who up till now had lived so whole-heartedly
+for her partnership with her father, it became that time of which at
+least the mirage appears to every one once in life. For her happiness
+she and Robin repainted her other love, the _Merrymaid_, together;
+giving her a new black coat and a white ribbon, and changing the green
+of her upright stem to blue. The _Merrymaid_ was constantly adopting
+little disguises of the sort, running sometimes under barked sails,
+sometimes under white, and alternating between a jib and a gaff-topsail
+with a square head. Then in the long winter evenings the Keasts and
+Robin would sit by the fire, Bendigo pulling at his clay pipe, and
+Thomasin knitting a perpetual grey stocking--surely as innocent and
+law-abiding an interior as could have been found!--while Robin told them
+tales of all he had seen and done. Bendigo now and then gave a grunt
+that might have been of dissent, interest, or merely of incipient sleep,
+but Thomasin sat enthralled by the soft tones that to her mind could
+have lured a bird from the egg. Robin told of the thick yellow sea
+towards the north of China, so distinct from the blue sea around that it
+looked more like a vast shoal of sand, stretching for mile upon mile. He
+told, too, of the reddish dust, fine as mist, which once fell for days
+over his ship when he was far out at sea; it fell until the decks seemed
+like a dry soft beach, and lungs and eyes and at last their very souls
+seemed filled with it. His captain said it was blown along the upper
+air all the way from the Mongolian plains, but he himself thought it
+came from Japan, that country of volcanoes. Thomasin's ideas of
+volcanoes were derived from a broadside she had once seen which
+represented Vesuvius apparently on fire from the base, but she felt sure
+the mysterious sand was of the devil, and must come from somewhere hot.
+
+So Robin talked and Thomasin listened, and with the coming of spring new
+portents woke in her blood and stirred the air. Robin began to slip his
+hand up her arm when he stood beside her in the shadow of the
+wind-buttresses, and when they went down to the caves he would make
+opportunities to press against her in the passages. The sheer animal
+magnetism of the girl allured him, and he found her crude and hitherto
+fierce aloofness going to his head. Though frequently now he felt a
+sudden passion of distaste for the physical strength of this father and
+daughter sweep over him, yet would come another passion, waked by the
+wonder of it that still lay in Thomasin's eyes--and he would think of
+what a pleasure was at his hand in Thomasin's potentialities for passion
+and the freshness of her. . . .
+
+She herself was reluctant yet, for all her hot blood and untrained
+nature, partly because of the ingrained suspicion of soft things her
+upbringing had engendered, partly because of the eternal instinct which
+prompts withdrawal for the purpose of luring on. But in her heart she
+knew--she knew when the spring was on the cliffs, and he and she lay on
+the thymy grass watching for the fish-shoals; when around Robin's
+turf-pillowed head the rose-specked, flesh-hued cups of the sea-milkwort
+stood up brimming with the jewelled air as with a divine nectar; when
+among the cushions of silvery lichen and grey-green moss the scented
+gorse flung a riot of yellow, and the mating birds answered each other
+on a note like secret laughter. Then Thomasin would sometimes close her
+eyes for the happiness she dared not yet acknowledge; yet those days of
+soft joy and beauty were as nothing to the night of hard work and danger
+that finally brought her surging blood to acknowledge him as lord--that
+night when all the dominant male in him was of necessity stung to the
+surface by danger.
+
+They were running a cargo of thirty barrels over from France--he, she,
+and her father. The _Merrymaid_, which was sloop-rigged and of about
+twenty tons burden, was quite enough for the three to handle, laden as
+she was with the corded tubs slung together with the stones already
+attached; for it was proposed to sink the cargo and then run on to
+harbour openly, a thing frequently done when the Preventive men were
+known to be on the watch. Robin was suffering from one of his
+nerve-revulsions; he dared show no sign of it, but as he sat in the
+bows, keeping a look-out through the darkness, he told himself that if
+this trip were brought off in safety it would be the last as far as he
+was concerned. He could stand the portentous figure of Bendigo looming
+at him through the little cottage no more, and he knew what to do. . . .
+As for Thomasin, he would not lose her--a woman surely sticks by her
+man. And if not, she would never harm him; and there were other women in
+the world--for the appeal Thomasin had for him was of sex, and not of
+personality.
+
+Thomasin sat with her arm along the tiller, keeping the _Merrymaid_ on
+a nor'-nor'-west course so as to make the Lizard light. They were
+running under their foresail and close-reefed mainsail only, for the
+south-west wind for which they had waited was swelling to storm-fury.
+The _Merrymaid_ lay right over, the water scolding past her dipping
+gunwale and the clots of spindrift that whirled over the side gleaming
+like snowflakes in the darkness, which was of that intense quality which
+becomes vibrant to long staring. Robin, straining his eyes, was only
+aware of the danger when they were almost on it, but his voice shrieked
+out on the instant to Thomasin: "Hard-a-port!" and again, in a desperate
+hurry of sound, "Hard-a-port!"
+
+Thomasin jambed the helm up as Bendigo, with the agility of long use to
+sudden danger, eased off the sheets; and then Thomasin could see what
+menaced them. A Preventive boat, like themselves with no light save the
+wretched glimmer over the compass, had been lying to under her mizzen,
+and already her men were making sail. Thomasin sat gripping the tiller
+while the voices of her menfolk came to her ears.
+
+"The topsail!" shouted Robin; but Bendigo's voice made answer: "Not till
+us has to--it might rip mast off in this gale. Try the jib. . . ."
+
+They set the jib and shook out the reefs in the mainsail, and the
+_Merrymaid_ answered to it like a racehorse to the whip. She quivered
+all her length, the tiller pushed like a sentient thing against
+Thomasin's palm and they went reeling on.
+
+For nearly an hour they ran before the wind, helped by the flood-tide,
+and all the time the Preventive boat was slowly gaining on them, for she
+was carrying a larger stretch of canvas. She was nearly upon them when
+the sound of breaking surf told that they were nearing the Manacles, and
+the tide was still fairly low. Suddenly Robin's voice came again, this
+time with a thrill in it: "Now's our chance!" he called. "We'll hoist
+the topsail and make a run for it inside of the Manacles."
+
+He was at the mast as he spoke, and Thomasin heard the thin scream of
+the unoiled sheave as the topsail halliards ran through it. The next
+moment the mast creaked and bent; the almost useless jib slackened as
+the other sails took all of the wind, and the _Merrymaid_ shook her nose
+and plunged into the broken water that gleamed between the blackness of
+the mainland and the Manacles.
+
+"They'll never dare follow!" cried Bendigo; and even as he did so, the
+Preventive boat, trusting to her superior speed to make good, began to
+come round to the wind so as to pass the Manacles on the outer side. The
+added strain proved too much, and her mast snapped with a report like a
+gunshot--the one clean, sharp sound through all that flurry of rushing,
+edgeless noise, and it told its own tale to the eager ears on the
+_Merrymaid_. She, under the influence of the topsail, was burying her
+bows at every plunge, and Thomasin knew, by the sudden cessation of the
+tiller's tug, that the rudder had lifted clear of the racing water, only
+to drive into it again with a blow that sent her reeling. Thomasin's
+fight with the boat she loved began in real earnest. Yawing stubbornly,
+the _Merrymaid_ pulled against the tiller so that the rough wood seemed
+to burn into Thomasin's flesh, so hard had she to grip it to keep the
+boat's head from going up into the wind.
+
+With the breath failing in her throat, she had none left to cry for
+help; she could only wrestle with the tiller, which, all the weight of
+the yawing _Merrymaid_ against it, seemed about to crush her.
+
+Then hands came over hers in the darkness, and even at that moment her
+flesh knew Robin's.
+
+"Tell me if I make a mistake; you know this hell-pool better than me,"
+he called to her through the noise of the surf; and, with an easing of
+the muscles so exquisite as to be almost a pain in itself, she felt him
+absorb the weight of the boat into his grip. With the lifting of that
+strain from her shoulders and arms came the realization of how
+mercilessly his hands were grinding hers against the tiller, yet that
+pain sent the first tremor of unadulterated passion through her that she
+had ever felt, because it was the first time he had hurt her. There was
+no need for her to call directions to him--he and she were so welded in
+one at the tiller that the unconscious pull of her arm beneath his told
+him, in his state of receptive tension, what to do more surely than any
+words. That was their true mating--not what followed after--but there in
+the stern of the reeling _Merrymaid_; for all that was least calculated
+and finest in Robin had leapt to the need of it, and their consciousness
+was fused as completely in the fight for life as the pain in their hands
+was at the tiller.
+
+They were through--through and safe, and five minutes more saw them
+round the point and in the calmer water, where they slipped the cargo,
+and soon after they had made the harbour under easy sail, innocent of
+contraband from stem to stern.
+
+All danger over, Thomasin felt oddly faint, and let her father go on
+ahead across the moor while she hung heavily on Robin's arm, her numbed
+hands slowly tingling back to life as they went. Arrived at the
+cottage, a faint light, that went out even as they looked, told of
+Bendigo's entry, and Robin set the lantern he carried on the flagstones
+between the buttresses. Thomasin leant back against one of them, and the
+dim light, flickering upwards, softened her marked bones and brightened
+her eyes. Every defect of skin was hidden; it showed pale, and her mouth
+velvet dark upon it. Robin's lips fastened on her throat below her ear
+and stayed there till she stirred and gave a little cry, then his mouth
+moved on and up till it found hers. The kiss deepened between them; his
+head bent, hers upstretched. Time stayed still for one moment, during
+which she wanted nothing further--she was not conscious of the ground
+beneath her or the pain in her back-tilted neck, not even of his
+supporting arms or the throbbing of him against her--all her being was
+fused at the lips, and she felt as though hanging in space from his
+mouth alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robin Start waited till the cargo had been safely run and sold, and then
+he went across the moor to the village and made a compact with the
+Preventive men. The excitement of that night had had its usual way with
+him, and he wished never to meet danger again as long as he lived. He
+was suffering from a somewhat similar revulsion as regarded Thomasin,
+though there he knew the old allure would raise its head again for him.
+Bendigo's suspicious guard of him had relaxed, partly because the elder
+man admitted that it was Robin's nerve which had planned the dash that
+saved them, partly because he guessed how it was with his daughter, and
+thought Robin safely theirs. . . . And Robin had at last done that which
+had been in his mind ever since the beginning, and had sold the secret
+of the caves to his Majesty's Government. Nervous of being overheard in
+the village inn, Robin took the two head men with him over the moor to
+the headland, safe in the knowledge that Bendigo was drinking heavily in
+the cottage--the way in which he always rewarded himself for a
+successful run. Robin showed the men the cunningly hidden entrances to
+the passages, and then for a few minutes they all three stood making
+their final arrangements. Robin found it wonderfully simple, the step
+once taken. It was agreed that the officers of the law were to surround
+the cottage that night after its inmates were abed, all save Robin, who
+was to be sitting in the kitchen ready to open the door. No harm was to
+be done to the girl--and, indeed, the Preventive men knew enough of
+Cornish juries to know that Bendigo Keast himself would get an
+acquittal; but his claws would be drawn, which was all they wanted.
+Robin, unaware of this peculiarity of a Cornish jury, would have been
+considerably alarmed had he known of it. Bendigo free to revenge himself
+had not entered into the scheme of the man from up-country, where the
+law was a less individual matter.
+
+"At ten o'clock then, my man," were the last words of the Preventive
+officer; but he added to his companion as they walked away: "The dirty
+double-mouth!" and the distaste of the official for the necessary
+informer was in his voice. "At ten o'clock," echoed Robin, and then was
+aware of a quick rustling behind him--much the noise that a big adder
+makes as it leaves its way through a dry tuft of grass. The sun was
+already setting, and the glamorous light made vision uncertain, yet
+Robin thought he saw a movement of the gorse more than the breeze
+warranted. The bush in question was one of those which concealed an
+opening to the caves, and Robin pulled it aside and peered into the
+darkness. Silence and stillness rewarded him, and he swung his legs over
+and descended a little way. All was quiet and empty in that passage; he
+turned into another--that, too, was innocent of any presence save his.
+He went through up that exit, and, still uneasy, stared across the moor.
+If anyone--if by chance Thomasin had been in the passage, she could have
+slipped out that way while he was entering by the other, and be out of
+sight by now. . . . The sweat sprang on to Robin's brow. Then he took
+counsel with himself. There was no reason why Thomasin should be at the
+caves; nothing was doing there. It would be the most unlikely thing on
+earth, because neither she nor her father ever ran the unnecessary risk
+of going there between the cargoes. Robin knew this, and felt
+reassured--how, after all, could he imagine that Thomasin, sick at the
+reaction she felt in him, might have gone to re-gather force at the
+place where she had first felt him hers? . . . He thought over what he had
+said, and took still more heart when he remembered he had not let fall a
+word that showed a light holding of Thomasin; and that, he told himself,
+was the only thing a woman could not forgive. He felt it safe to count
+on passion as against the habit of a mere business partnership, which
+was all her relationship with her father had ever been. Dimly Robin was
+aware that all her spiritual life had gone into that partnership, into
+the feeling of her family against the world that had become an obsession
+with her until he had brought another interest into her life; but Robin
+Start would not have believed an angel from heaven who had told him that
+the habit of years could be stronger with a woman than a new passion.
+And, as regarded most women, Robin would probably have been right.
+Besides, it was impossible that any one could have been there, and
+Thomasin was his. . . . He gave himself a little shake and set off to the
+cottage, and such was the force of his revulsion against a life of
+dangers and the sinister suggestiveness of the Keasts' muscular
+superiority, that he felt his heart lighter than it had been for months
+past. He was even pleasurably, though subconsciously, aware of the
+poignant beauty of the evening, and noted the rich shrilling of a thrush
+from the alders by the stream. It was one of those evenings when, for a
+few minutes, the light holds a peculiarly rosy quality that refracts
+from each sharply angled surface of leaf or curved grass-blade; steeps
+even the shadows with wine-colour, and imparts a reddish purple to every
+woody shoot, from the trunks of trees to the stray twigs of thorn
+piercing the turf. Wine-coloured showed the stems of the alders, the
+lines of blackthorn hedges, the distant drifts of elms whose branches
+were still only faintly misted with buds. Beneath Robin's feet the
+yellow red-tipped blossoms of the bird's-foot trefoil borrowed of the
+flushed radiance till they seemed as though burning up through the
+ardent grass, and on the alders the catkins gleamed like still thin
+flakes of fire. The whole world for a few magic moments was lapped in an
+unharmful flame that had glow without heat, and through the gentle glory
+of it Robin went home.
+
+At ten o'clock that night, with no lanterns to betray them, half a dozen
+Preventive men, followed by several of the leading men in the village,
+who had got wind of the affair and were eager to see the self-sufficient
+Keasts brought to book, all came up over the moor through the darkness.
+No light showed in the cottage as they neared it, but that was merely
+because the buttress, sweeping at right angles to the window, obscured
+it from the approach. The buttress once rounded, the men saw the light
+shining as Robin Start had promised. The officer motioned the others to
+stay quiet, and then--he was a mere lad, and eager to be the first in
+everything--he tiptoed to the window and peeped through.
+
+Robin Start was sitting quietly in the armchair, a candle burning on the
+stool beside him. There was nothing alarming in that, yet the next
+moment the boy at the window stepped back with a great cry.
+
+"He's got two mouths!" he shrieked. "He's got two mouths!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far out on the dark Channel father and daughter were drawing away in the
+_Merrymaid_, the rising wind and some other urgent thing at their backs,
+but the sense of justice done as their solace.
+
+And in the cottage, his wrists tightly roped to the arms of the chair
+and his silky beard shaved away, sat Robin Start. The footlight effect
+of the candle eliminated all shadow under his sloping chin, making it
+seem one with his throat, and that was cut from ear to ear. For the only
+thing on which he had not calculated was that before such treachery as
+his passion drops like a shot bird.
+
+The candle flame flared up as the last of the tallow ran in a pool round
+the yielding wick, and for one distorted moment the edges of the slit
+throat flickered to the semblance of a smile. Then the flame reeled and
+sank, and, spark by spark, the red of the glowing wick died into the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+WHY SENATH MARRIED
+
+
+Asenath Lear was neither a pretty woman nor a particularly young one,
+but having in the first instance embraced spinsterhood voluntarily, she
+was cheerfully resigned to its enforced continuance. All the world knew
+she had been "asked" by Samuel Harvey of the Upper Farm, and though all
+the world considered her a fool for refusing him, it still could not
+throw in her face the taunt that she had never had a chance.
+
+She had said no to Samuel because at that time she was young
+enough--being but twenty--to nurse vague yearnings for something more
+romantic than the stolid Sam, but the years fled taking with them the
+bloom that had been her only beauty, and romance never showed so much as
+the tip of a wing-feather.
+
+"I'm doubtful but that you were plum foolish to send Sam'l Harvey to
+another woman's arms, Senath," her mother told her once, "but there, I
+never was one for driving a maid. There's a chance yet; ef you'll look
+around you'll see 'tes the plain-featured women as has the husbands."
+
+"'Tes because the pretty ones wouldn't have en, I fear," said Senath on
+a gleam of truth, but with a very contented laugh, "men's a pack of
+trouble in the flesh. I would ha' wed sure 'nough ef et hadn' been that
+when you get to knaw a man you see him as somethen' so different from
+your thought of him."
+
+"Eh, you and your thoughts . . ." cried the petulant old mother, quoting
+better than she knew, "they'll have to be your man and your childer,
+too."
+
+Senath, the idealist, was well content that it should be so, and when
+her mother's death left her her own mistress, she went to live in a tiny
+cottage up on the moors with no companions but those thoughts--the
+thoughts at once crude and vague, but strangely penetrating--of an
+untaught mind whose natural vigour has been neither guided nor cramped
+by education.
+
+Her cottage, that stood four-square in the eye of the wind, was set
+where the moorland began, some few fields away from the high road. At
+the back was the tiny garden where Senath coaxed some potatoes and beans
+from out the grudging earth; and two apple trees, in an ecstasy of
+contortion, supported the clothes-line from which great sheets,
+golden-white in the sun, bellied like sails, or enigmatic garments of
+faded pinks and blues proclaimed the fact that Senath "took in washing."
+
+On the moor in front of the cottage stood nineteen stones, breast-high,
+set in a huge circle. Within this circle the grass, for some reason, was
+of a more vivid green than on the rest of the moor, and against it the
+stones on the nearer curve showed a pale grey, while the further ones
+stood up dark against the sky, for beyond them the moor sloped slightly
+to the cliffs and the sea.
+
+These stones were known as the "Nineteen Merry Maidens," and legend had
+it that once they were living, breathing girls, who had come up to that
+deserted spot to dance upon a Sunday. As they twirled this way and that
+in their sinful gyrations, the doom of petrification descended on them,
+as it did on the merry-makers of old when Perseus dangled the Gorgon's
+head aloft. So the nineteen maidens stand to this day, a huge fairy-ring
+of stone, like those smaller ones of fragile fungi that also enclose a
+circle of greener grass in the radius of their stems. Two luckless men,
+whom the maidens had beguiled to pipe for them, turned and fled, but
+they, too, were overtaken by judgment in a field further on along the
+road, and stand there to this day, a warning against the profanation of
+the Sabbath.
+
+When Senath was asked why she had taken such a lonely cottage, she
+replied that it was on account of the Merry Maidens--they were such
+company for her. Often, of an evening, she would wander round the
+circle, talking aloud after the fashion of those who live alone. She had
+given each of the stones a name, and every one of them seemed, to her
+starved fancy, to have a personality of its own. Senath Lear, what with
+the mixed strains of blood that were her Cornish heritage, and the added
+influence of isolation, was fast becoming an old maid, and a wisht one
+at that, when something happened which set the forces of development
+moving in another direction. Senath herself connected it with her first
+visit to the Pipers, whom hitherto, on account of their sex, she had
+neglected for the Merry Maidens.
+
+One market day--Thursday--Senath set off to a neighbouring farm to buy
+herself a little bit of butter. The way there, along the high road, lay
+past the field where the Pipers stood in their perpetual penance, and
+Senath could see them sticking up gaunt against the luminous sky for
+some time before she came up with them. For, as was only fitting, the
+Pipers were much taller than the Maidens, being, indeed, some twelve
+feet high.
+
+Senath walked briskly along, a sturdy, full-chested figure, making, in
+her black clothes (Sunday-best, "come down"), the only dark note in the
+pale colours of early spring that held land and air. The young grass
+showed tender, the intricate webs made by the twisted twigs of the bare
+thorn-trees gleamed silvery. On the pale lopped branches of the elders,
+the first crumpled leaves were just beginning to unfold. The long grass
+in an orchard shone with the drifted stars of thousands of narcissi,
+which a faint breeze woke to a tremulous twinkling. The road was thick
+with velvety white dust, for it was some time since rain had fallen, and
+the black of Senath's skirt was soon powdered into greyness. As she
+went, she wondered what it was that gave the air such a tang of summer,
+until she suddenly realized it was the subtle but unmistakable smell of
+the dust that brought to her mind long, sunny days, when such a smell
+was as much part of the atmosphere as the foliage or the heat. Now there
+was still a chill in the air, but she hardly felt it in the force of
+that suggestiveness.
+
+"Sim' me I'm naught but a bit of stone like they Pipers," she said to
+herself, as she paused to look up at them, towering above her. Then a
+whimsical thought struck her. "I'll lave the Maidens be for a while and
+take my walk to the Pipers," she thought, "tes becoming enough in a
+woman o' my years, I should think."
+
+She smiled at her mild jest and plodded on to the farm.
+
+It was a fairly large house, with a roof still partly thatch, but mostly
+replaced by slate. In front of it, a trampled yard reached to the low
+wall of piled boulders and the road. Senath found the mistress of it
+leaning on the wall, ready to exchange a word with the occupants of the
+various market-carts as they drove homewards, and the business of the
+butter was soon transacted. Yet, for some odd reason, Senath was not
+anxious to take up her basket and go. Perhaps it was that touch of the
+unusual in the false hint of summer; perhaps, too, her decision to vary
+the course of her evening walk and the playmates of her imagination;
+but, whatever it was, she was vaguely aware of a prompting towards human
+contact. The two women sat on the low wall and chatted in a desultory
+fashion for a few minutes. Then the farmer's wife, shading her eyes with
+her hand, looked along the road.
+
+"Your eyes are younger'n mine, Senath Lear," she said. "Tell me, edn
+that Sam'l Harvey of Upper Farm comen in his trap?"
+
+Senath turned her clear, long-sighted eyes down the road and nodded.
+
+"He'll be driving out Manuel Harvey to the Farm," Mrs. Cotton went on.
+"You do knaw, or maybe your don't, seein' you live so quiet, that since
+Sam's been a widow-man, Upper Farm's too big for he to live in in
+comfort. He's comin' to live in church-town and look after his interests
+in building. You do knaw that he's putting up a row of cottages to let
+to they artisesses. And Upper Farm he's let to Manuel Harvey."
+
+"Is he any kin to en?" asked Senath, interested, as any woman would have
+been, in this budget of news about her old suitor.
+
+"No, less they'm so far removed no one remembers et. There's a power of
+Harveys in this part of the world. Manuel do come from Truro way."
+
+The high gig had been coming quickly nearer, and now drew up before the
+two women.
+
+"Evenen, Mis' Cotton. Evenen, Senath," said Sam, with undisturbed
+phlegm. "Could'ee blige we weth some stout twine? The off-rein has
+broken and us have only put en together for the moment wi' a bit o'
+string Mr. Harvey here had in's pocket."
+
+Mrs. Cotton bustled off into the house, and Sam climbed down, the gig
+bounding upwards when relieved from his weight. He was a big, fair man,
+his moustache distinctly lighter than his weather-beaten face, and since
+the days when he had courted Senath the whites of his eyes had become
+yellowish round the muddy hazel of the iris. Senath looked from him to
+Manuel, still in the gig, and as she did so, something unknown stirred
+at her pulses, very faintly.
+
+Manuel Harvey was dark, and though his eyes, too, were hazel, it was
+that clear green-grey, thickly rimmed with black, that is to be seen in
+the people of that part of the world who have a strain of Spanish blood
+in them, dating from the wrecks of the Armada. Those eyes, beneath their
+straight brows, met Senath's, and in that moment idle curiosity passed
+into something else.
+
+Many women and most men marry for a variety of reasons not unconnected
+with externals. There has been much spoken and written on the subject
+of "affinities," a term at the best insecure, and often pernicious, but
+very occasionally, when the two people concerned are elemental creatures
+with little perception of those half-shades which are the bane of
+civilization, there does occur a flashing recognition which defies known
+laws of liking, and this it was which came to Manuel and Senath now.
+
+"Falling in love" is ordinarily a complex, many-sided thing, compact of
+doubts and hesitations, fluctuating with the mood and with that powerful
+factor, the opinions of others. It is subject to influence by
+trivialities, varying affections and criticisms, and the surface of it
+is an elastic tissue setting this way and that, as thoughts ebb and flow
+from moment to moment, even though far beneath it may remain
+unperturbed. Yet every now and then come together two of that vanishing
+race who are capable of feeling an emotion in the round--the whole
+sphere of it. This sense of a spherical emotion came to Senath as she
+would have pictured the onslaught of a thunder-ball, save that this fire
+had the quality of warming without scorching utterly.
+
+Looking up, as she stood there stricken motionless, she saw him
+transfigured to a glowing lambency by the blaze of the setting sun full
+on his face; and he, staring down, saw her against it. Her linen sun
+bonnet, which had slipped back on her shoulders and was only held by the
+strings beneath her chin, was brimming with sunlight, like some magic
+pilgrim's pack; and her eyes, opened widely in her worn, delicately
+seamed face, gained in blueness from the shadow her face and neck made
+against the brightness. Even so, to most people she would have appeared
+only a wholesome-looking woman in early middle life, who had kept the
+clear and candid gaze of childhood; a woman rather ungainly and
+thick-set. Manuel saw her as what, for him, she was--a deep-bosomed
+creature, cool of head and warm of heart--a woman worth many times over
+the flimsy girls who would pass her with a pitying toss of the head.
+Manuel thought none of this consciously; he was only aware of a pricking
+feeling of interest and attraction, and had he been asked his opinion
+would have said she seemed a fine, upstanding woman enough. Then, when
+Mrs. Cotton came out again with the twine and a big packing-needle, he,
+too, climbed down and, his fingers being younger and more supple than
+Sam's, attended to the stitching of the rein.
+
+"Must be gwain on, I b'lieve," announced Sam, when this was in progress.
+"Can't us giv'ee a lift, Senath? I'm sure us wont mind sitten familiar
+if you don't, will us, Manuel, my dear?"
+
+"Why, no, thank'ee, Sam," said Senath quickly, "I do rare and like a bit
+of a walk before goin' to the bed. Evenen to you, and thank you, Sam.
+Evenen, Mr. Harvey."
+
+He raised a face into which the blood had come with stooping over the
+rein.
+
+"Evenen, Miss Lear," he muttered.
+
+She started down the road at a good pace so as to have turned off before
+they came up with her, but she heard the clip-clop of the horse's hoofs
+as she drew alongside with the Pipers, and she turned in towards them
+through a gap in the hedge. She pushed a way among bracken and clinging
+brambles, and as she reached them the sun slipped behind the S. Just
+hills, and in the glamorous mingling of the afterglow with the swift
+dusk she stood, as the gig, the two men in it apparently borne along
+level with the top of the hedge by some mysterious agency, passed by.
+
+For a while she stood there, the dew gathering on stone and twig and
+leaf. She glanced up at the two dark columns reared above, her hand
+against the rough surface of the nearer one.
+
+"Must give en names, too," she said, with a backward thought for her
+Merry Maidens. "Why shoulden I call they after Sam and his new tenant?
+That one can be Sam,"--looking at the stumpier and wider of the two,
+"and the tall one, he can be Manuel."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is little to tell of the love of Senath and Manuel save that it
+was swift, unspeakably dear, and put beyond the possibility of
+fulfilment by the death of the man. The slight accident of a rusty nail
+that ran into his foot, enhanced by the lack of cleanliness of the true
+peasant, and Manuel, for such a trifling cause, ceased to be. They were
+fated lovers; fated, having met, to love, and, so Senath told herself in
+the first hours of her bitterness, fated never to grasp their joy. The
+time had been so short, as far as mere weeks went, so infinitely long in
+that they had it for ever. After the funeral in the moorland churchyard,
+Senath went into her cottage and was seen of no one for many days. Then
+she reappeared, and to the scandal of the world it was seen that she had
+discarded her black. She went about her work silently as ever, but
+seemed to shun meeting her fellow-creatures less than formerly. A bare
+year after Manuel's death she had married Samuel Harvey.
+
+No one wondered more than Sam himself how this had come about. If the
+marriage had been a matter of several months earlier, the common and
+obvious interpretation as to its necessity would have been current
+everywhere, and Sam would have had his meed of half-contemptuous pity.
+As it was, no one knew better than Sam that the other Harvey's wooing
+had gone no further than that wonderful kiss to which middle-aged
+people, who have missed the thing in their youth, can bring more
+reverential shyness than any blushing youth or girl.
+
+Had it been any other than Senath, folk would not have been so
+surprised. A woman may get along very well single all her days if she
+has never been awakened to another way of life, but give her a taste of
+it and it is likely to become a thing that she must have. Yet few made
+the mistake of thinking that that was how it was with Senath. A strongly
+spiritual nature leaves its impress on even the most clayey of those
+with whom it comes in contact, and all knew Senath to be not quite as
+they were. Yet she married the red-necked Samuel Harvey, and they went
+to live together at the Upper Farm. And, as to any superior delicacy,
+Senath showed less than most. A few kind souls there were who thought,
+with the instinctive tact of the sensitive Celt, that it might hurt her
+to hear the name "Mrs. Harvey" which would have been hers had she
+married Manuel. On the contrary, just as though she were some young
+bride, elated at her position, she asked that even old friends should
+call her by the new title.
+
+Sam was genuinely fond of Senath, and mingled with his fondness was a
+certain pride at having won what he had set out to win so many years
+ago; yet, it was so many years that he had been in a fair way to forget
+all about it till, one evening, he met Senath as he was driving home
+from market, much as when he had been with Manuel a year before. It had
+struck him as odd, for Senath was not apt to be upon the highway at that
+time, and although she was going in an opposite direction she asked for
+a lift back in his gig. When they came to the track that led off to her
+cottage, he tied up the mare and went with her to advise her as to her
+apple-trees, which were suffering from blight, and by the time he left,
+half an hour later, they were promised to each other. How it came about,
+Sam never quite understood; the only thing he was sure about was that it
+had been entirely his doing. Yet he couldn't help wondering a bit,
+though it all seemed to follow on so naturally at the time, that it was
+not until he was on his way back to the Upper Farm that he felt puzzled.
+He was still wondering about it, and her, when the parson joined their
+hands in the bleak, cold church, and Senath stood, beneath her
+unbecoming daisied hat, looking as bleak and cold as the granite walls
+around her.
+
+Later, Sam found this to be a misleading impression. Never was bride
+more responsive, in the eager passive fashion of shut eyes and quiet,
+still mouth, than was Senath. Only now and again, in the first weeks of
+their life together, she would give a start, and a look of terror and
+blank amazement would leap across her face, as though she were suddenly
+awakened out of a trance.
+
+Men of Sam's condition and habit of mind do not, by some merciful law
+of nature, make ardent lovers, and life soon settled down comfortably
+enough on the farm. Senath was a capable housewife, and, what with the
+dairy-work and cooking and superintending the washing, and such extra
+work as looking after any sickly lamb or calf, she had plenty to do. And
+yet, in the midst of so much activity, every now and then Sam was struck
+by a queer little feeling of aloofness in Senath--not any withdrawing
+physically, but a feeling as though her mind were elsewhere. He might
+find her sitting on the settle with her eyes closed, although she was
+obviously awake, and an expression of half-fearful joy on her face, as
+on that of a person who is listening to some lovely sound and holding
+his breath for fear lest the least noise on his own part should frighten
+it into stillness.
+
+However, Sam was not an imaginative man, and since the house shone with
+cleanliness such as it had never known, the shining not of mere
+scouring, but of the fine gloss only attained by loving care, he did not
+trouble his head. Women were queer at the best of times, and besides, a
+few months after the marriage, reason for any additional queerness on
+the part of Senath became known to him. After she had told him the news,
+Sam, ever inarticulate, but moved to the rarely felt depths of his
+nature, went out into a field that was getting its autumn ploughing, and
+his heart sang as he guided the horses down the furrow. Even as he was
+doing now, and his father had done before him, so should his son do
+after him, and the rich earth would turn over in just this lengthening
+wave at the blade of the ploughshare for future generations of Harveys
+yet to come. Like most men with any feeling for the land in them, Sam
+was sure his child must be a son.
+
+And to him, who had not hoped for such a thing in marrying Senath, to
+him this glory was coming. Everything seemed to him wonderful that day;
+the pearly pallor of the dappled sky; the rooks and screaming gulls that
+wheeled and dipped behind his plough; the bare swaying elms, where the
+rooks' nests clung like gigantic burrs. Dimly, and yet for him keenly,
+he was aware of all these things, as a part of a great phenomenon in
+which he held pride of place.
+
+When he came in, his way led through the yard, where a new farm-cart,
+just come home, stood under the shed in all the bravery of its blue body
+and vermilion wheels. Senath had crept round in the shed to the back and
+was studying the tailboard, one hand against it.
+
+"Looken to see all's well to the rear as to the front?" called Sam
+jovially. "That's a proper farmer's wife."
+
+Senath started violently and dropped her hand, looking away before she
+did so. "It looks fine," was all she said, and went within doors,
+passing him. A small portent, so slight Sam did not even know it for
+what it was, and yet something in her look and manner seemed to chill
+him to the bones of him. Then, and after, he put anything unfathomable
+in her ways down to her condition, and so turned what might have been a
+source of discomfort to the account of his joy.
+
+The blossom was thick upon the apple-trees when Senath's boy was born.
+He had a long fight of entry, and when the sky was paling and flushing
+with the reluctant dawn, Sam, who had spent the night alternately
+snoring on the settle and creeping upstairs in his stockinged-feet,
+heard the first wailing of his son. He heard, too, the clank of the
+milk-pails in the yard without, the lowing of an impatient cow, and the
+crowing--above all sounds the most melancholy to anyone upon a sleepless
+pillow--of a triumphant cock. As he heard all these common noises about
+his own place, he realized how much more dear they had all become to him
+by reason of what was in the room above. He knew that his wife had what
+is inadequately called a "bad time," but although the boards over his
+head had creaked for hours to the anxious tread of doctor and of nurse,
+not a cry had come until this one that heart and ear told him was from
+his child. He went upstairs once more, creeping less this time, and
+knocked timidly at the door, then coughed to show who it was. The nurse,
+a thin, yellow-haired London woman doing parish-nursing for her
+health--a woman he hated while he feared her--opened the door a slit and
+looked unsympathetically at him.
+
+"I was wanten to knaw . . ." began Sam.
+
+"None the better for hearing you," snapped the nurse. "She must have
+absolute quiet."
+
+"I dedn't go for to mane that," explained Sam naively, "but the cheild?
+'Tes a boy?"
+
+"Oh, it's a boy, and doing all right," said the nurse, and shut the door
+in his face.
+
+Sam went downstairs and put his head under the yard-pump, and laved his
+bare red arms in its flow, as men might bathe in the waters of perpetual
+youth. The great rejuvenation of a new birth had come upon him. For that
+is what it resolves itself into--the advent of a son to a middle-aged
+man. Sam felt his term of life taking immortal lease.
+
+Later in the day, the news that his son was weakly was broken to him,
+but made very little impression. The child could not die, because it was
+his. To other men, the common lot of humanity, but not so near home.
+
+The morning was at its height, all around romance and mystery had
+dissolved in the broad shining, when they told Sam his wife wished to
+see him, but that he must be careful not to excite her as she was not
+yet beyond the danger-point.
+
+When he saw her, the burning colour in her face strong against the white
+of her pillows, he thought they must be exaggerating, and he patted her
+hand cheerfully.
+
+"You've done fine, Senath, lass," he assured her. "'Tes a brave an'
+handsome chap, is young Samuel."
+
+"Not Samuel," answered Senath. Her voice, though low, was composed.
+
+"What then?" asked Sam, remembering his wife was at a time when she must
+be humoured as far as speech went, anyway.
+
+"Manuel," said Senath. Then, at his start of dissent: "Yes, Manuel."
+
+"You'm my wife, not his," said Sam. "The cheild's my cheild, not his,
+and et shall be called for ets father."
+
+"I'm Manuel's wife," said Senath, "and et's Manuel's cheild."
+
+Sam calmed down, for he was now sure that his wife was light-headed. It
+was a common symptom, he had been told.
+
+"No," said Senath, answering his thought, "I'm not that wisht, Sam. I'm
+in my right mind, and I'm only waiten on you to go. I'm waiten to go,
+Sam, I'm waiten to go."
+
+"What do you mean, lass?"
+
+"I'm waiten till I've told 'ee why I wedded you, Sam. It was because of
+Manuel."
+
+She lay still a moment and then went on:
+
+"Of course I had et in my thoughts to die a maid and go to him as he
+left me. A woman allus thinks that to begin with. And then et began to
+come clear to me--all the future. How I'd go on getting older and more
+withered and wi' nawthen to show for my life. And when I saw Manuel
+agan, he'd say: 'Where's the woman I loved? Where's her blue eyes, and
+the fine breast of her?' And I'd have to say: 'Wasted, gone, dried-up,
+Manuel.' I wanted him. I wanted Manuel as I never thought a woman could
+want anything but peace, and he was taken from me. So I determined in my
+heart I'd go to Manuel, and go with somethen to take to en. I married
+you, Sam, because you had the same name, and was the same height, and
+when I shut my eyes, I could fancy my head was on his breast, and that
+et was his heart beaten at my ear. That's why I made folk call me 'Mrs.
+Harvey': so I could force myself to think et was Manuel Harvey's wife I
+was. That's why I used to look at your name painted up, ef et was but on
+the tailboard of a cart. I used to hide the front of et, so that I could
+pictur' 'Manuel' written under my hand. Sometimes I'd pictur' et so hard
+and fierce that when I took my hand away, I expected to see er there,
+and the sight of 'Samuel' was like a blow. I got to knaw that, and to
+look away before I took my hand off."
+
+Again she stopped and lay awhile as though gathering energy; then the
+indomitable voice went on:
+
+"At first, when you took me in your arms, et was near to turning me mad,
+and I thought I couldn't go on wi' et; but I got better and better at
+imagining et was Manuel, though et was like to kill me every time I woke
+up. For et was like waking up every time I had to let the strain of my
+imagining go for a moment. And each time et left me feelen weaker and
+more kind of wisht than before. But I was glad of that, for et all
+brought me nearer. When you wedded me, I swear I'd got so I made et
+Manuel, and not you, who was holding me, and for nine months I've borne
+his cheild beneath my broken heart. I've made et his."
+
+She drew the little sentient bundle nearer to her, as though to defend
+it from him. He stared at her, then spoke slackly, trying to urge force
+into his voice.
+
+"'Tes all nawthen but in your mind, all that. It's what's real as
+matters."
+
+"Don't you remember, Sam, how the wise woman to church-town had a spite
+against Will Jacka's Maggie, and told her her cheild was goin' to be an
+idiot; and how et preyed on the mind of her, and the boy has no
+mouth-speech in him to this day? That was only in her mind. And how, in
+the Book, Jacob put the peeled wands before the eyes of the sheep, and
+the lambs came all ring-straked and speckled? I've put the thought of
+this before the eye of my mind; I've thought et into bein' Manuel's
+cheild, even as I belong to him and him only. And 'tes to him I'm taken
+et."
+
+Sam turned and stumbled from the room, down to the kitchen, and dropped
+upon the settle. The next moment, a sudden flash of fear sent him to his
+feet. He tore up the stairs, knocked into the nurse as she came out of
+her room, and swept her along with him.
+
+Senath had her shawl folded thickly over the baby's face, and she had
+turned over so that her body lay upon it as she clasped it to her
+breast. But the baby still lived, and when they had taken it from her,
+she fell into a sullen silence, through which the tide of her life, too,
+began to creep back steadily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten years later, three little boys were playing in the yard at the Upper
+Farm. One was a few years older than the other two, who were obviously
+twins, fair and round and apple-cheeked, with bright brown eyes like
+little animals, and slackly open mouths. The other boy was of nervous
+make, with black hair that fell into eyes at once more human and more
+forlorn. He was very dirty, but he had stuck a yellow jonquil through a
+hole in his jersey. They were playing at moulding little men out of the
+mud, and setting them about an inverted flower-pot which did duty for a
+house. Suddenly, one of the little boys pushed away the mud-farmer which
+the eldest had placed at the arched break in the rim, which was the
+house door, and stuck his own much more primitive effort there instead.
+
+"You'm not to put your man there, Manuel," he screamed. "That's the door
+like where father do stand of a Sunday. My man must stand there, because
+every one do say you'm a changeling and no proper son at all."
+
+Manuel scrambled to his feet and ran across the yard; his hard little
+boots clattered as he went. He ran into the kitchen, where his mother,
+stout and comfortable-looking, was baking. The dim room was filled with
+the good smell of hot bread and pastry.
+
+"Mother, mother," sobbed Manuel, "Sam's said et again. He says I'm not
+like da's son; that I'm naught but a changeling."
+
+Senath raised a flushed face from her work and kept the rolling-pin
+still a moment while her eldest-born spoke, but she did it mechanically.
+
+"If you'd only try not to be so odd-like and so different to the rest o'
+the family," she complained, "the boys would'n say it so often. There,
+take this hot split and lave me be."
+
+At ten years old, neither wounded pride nor the worse hurt of always
+feeling a something unexplained about himself that did not fit in with
+his surroundings, was proof against hot pastry, and Manuel went away
+with it, though slowly, to a spot he knew of beside the mill-leat. There
+a robin was building her nest in the alders, and there, too, if he lay
+very still, with shut eyes, he could imagine all sorts of wonderful
+things that the brook was saying. How he was really not the son of these
+people at all, but of some wonderful prince, who would come upon a
+coal-black charger, like the one in the old fairy-book, and take him
+away, away from this discordant house where he felt such a very lonely
+little boy. . . .
+
+In the kitchen, Senath, about to resume her work, saw that the jonquil
+had dropped from his jersey to the floor, where it lay shining, a fallen
+star. Senath stood staring at it for a minute. For one flash,
+bewildering and disconcerting, like the sudden intrusion of last night's
+dream into the affairs of to-day, she saw herself again--that self she
+never thought of as being the precursor of the present Senath, but as a
+totally different person altogether, whom, try as she would, she could
+not connect up. She had long ago given up trying, busy with her man and
+the boys. The two younger were little trouble enough beyond the ordinary
+vexatiousness of childhood, but there was something about Manuel which
+was different, and which often annoyed Sam, who liked to brag about his
+eldest boy, and tried always to make him out as exactly like himself.
+But she was conscious that the Senath of long ago would have understood.
+Now, as she stared at the jonquil, it seemed to her that that Senath was
+she herself again, though she had grown to despise the dreaming,
+fanciful creature of her muffled memory--perhaps there had been
+something fierce and great about her, that the present Senath could
+never capture again.
+
+The moment passed, and she let the flower lie where it was, and
+presently, when Sam, the successful husband, came in ruddy and clamorous
+for his tea, his heavy boot trampled it, all discoloured, into a crack
+of the stone flags. The little boys came tumbling in, too, also
+clamorous, after the way of men-folk.
+
+"Where's Manuel?" demanded Sam.
+
+Both little shrill voices were obsequious with the information that he
+had gone towards the leat.
+
+"Day-dreamen, I'll be bound," said Sam, his mouth full of hot split.
+"Eh, well, so were you, missus, at one time of day. Life'll soon knock
+et out of him, like et has of you. And you'm all the better wi'out et,
+arn't 'ee, lass?"
+
+She said "Yes," and would have thought so if it had not been for the
+memory of that moment, already faded, when she had seen the jonquil. As
+it was, she sent a quick thought out to the boy who lay playing with
+imaginings by the alders; a thought of vague regret and a faint hope
+that it might not be with him quite as it had been with her. And whether
+the thought reached his unknowing self or not, to Manuel's fancy the
+leat had a finer tale and brighter hopes to tell him that evening than
+usual, and he was at the age when, although he knew the corresponding
+fall on entering the house must be the more severe, he never doubted
+that the dreams were worth it.
+
+
+
+
+THE COFFIN SHIP
+
+
+Of all the ships that traded from the Islands to the mainland, the
+_Spirito Santo_ had the worst reputation. She was known as a "hungry"
+vessel; her chief mate was a French Creole from Martinique who had been
+trained aboard a Yankee clipper, and her captain was a blue-nose who
+behaved as such. Since, on the outward voyage, the crew generally
+consisted of men who had made the Islands too hot to hold them, and, on
+the return trip, of half-dazed sailors who had been doped by crimps,
+there was a certain superficial variety about it--a variety merely of
+individuals and not of kind.
+
+The _Spirito Santo_ had been a good enough ship in her day, and had
+weathered a typhoon in the China seas and a hurricane in the Atlantic,
+but she was one of the earliest steam vessels built, and had started
+life as a side-wheeler; her paddles having been changed for a single
+screw and simple engines, of the kind guaranteed to combine the greatest
+possible consumption of fuel with a correspondingly large waste of
+steam.
+
+She was a wooden vessel, iron still being looked at askance when her
+keel was laid, and her lines were those of the true sailing-ship, with
+bows that bulged out almost square from either side of her cutwater,
+above which her long bowsprit raked the air. The result was that she
+steamed as a wind-jammer, with her bows delaying her speed by their
+large surface of resistance; and went better under canvas, with her
+screw running free. She was barque-rigged, that is to say she carried
+trysails on her fore and main, below the lovely tower of royals,
+topgallant sails and top-sails which even her stumpy sticks and too-wide
+yards could not make ungraceful. Her long thin funnel amidships looked
+as though it had got there by mistake, and indeed she belonged rather to
+the class of auxiliary steam than that of auxiliary sail, in spite of
+the motive with which she had conceived. In fact, her trouble was that
+in a world where steamships, and iron ones at that, were beginning more
+and more to snatch at trade, and where the great racing clippers still
+broke records, the _Spirito Santo_, being neither one thing nor the
+other, had become a losing proposition. Her owners grudged tar on her
+sides as sorely as kids of meat to the men, and no shabbier trader than
+the _Spirito Santo_ nosed her way from Port of Spain to the Golden Gate.
+Yet she got there all right, bullied and driven, got there on cheap coal
+and rotten rigging, though her engines seemed as though they must beat a
+hole in her straining sides and her planks part from sheer exhaustion.
+She held together as a coherent and reliable whole partly because, with
+all her lack of grace, she was a sweet ship in a seaway if one knew her
+idiosyncrasies, partly because her skipper could nurse a ship through
+anything while the hull stayed afloat. And the _Spirito Santo_ took some
+handling, for in spite of her wide yards and tonnage to the tune of
+seven hundred, she only drew fourteen feet and was as tricky as a cat.
+Her skipper coaxed her and humoured her, bullied her at just the right
+moment, in short, treated her as though she had been a woman--only Joab
+Elderkin would not have taken the trouble over any she-thing of flesh
+and blood.
+
+Elderkin was the best-feared man in the Caribbean. He had a thin sinewy
+frame and a very soft voice which he never raised in ordinary
+conversation, and this gave a curious effect of monotony to whatever he
+was saying. Never drunk at sea, he was always perfectly sober on land
+except for the first twenty-four hours after landing, when he soaked
+steadily. Even his movements were gentle, as though to match his voice
+and the dark eyes, deep-set in his prematurely wizened face, held the
+wistful puzzled sadness of a monkey's. His language was unparalleled for
+profanity, and to the most hardened there was something of terror in the
+appalling flow of words issuing on such an unruffled softness of
+intonation. In those days the master of a vessel had almost unlimited
+power within the area of his ship's rails. If, goaded by ill-use, a man
+struck his officer, he was quite likely to be shot straightway, and on
+reporting the matter the captain would be praised for his promptness in
+quelling mutiny at its rising. Floggings with the cat or the yoke-rope,
+brutal mishandling with knuckle-dusters and belaying-pins, were the
+quick and common resort on the slightest count, and Captain Joab
+Elderkin was famous for his technique in all these methods. His ship
+literally merited the trite description of a floating hell, and one boy
+aboard her had died of a broken heart. The child had failed in an
+attempt to get ashore at Frisco, been brought back and flogged at the
+mizzen rigging, and afterwards turned his face to the dark forecastle
+wall, refused food and died. The little incident had added to Elderkin's
+unsavoury reputation, but it was this reputation which made him a man
+after his owners' hearts. He was not likely to suffer from scruples, and
+it is needless to say that the _Spirito Santo_, a free-lance trading
+from what port she chose, carried a good deal now and again on which she
+never paid duty. Her skipper's only form of conscience was his
+seamanship. The owners might grudge paint, but every bit of brass-work
+on board shone like gold, and the decks were holy-stoned till the men
+sobbed over their aching knees. At twenty-three he had held command of a
+full-rigged ship trading to China. Now, since the _Spirito Santo_ was
+becoming more and more of a falling investment, he rarely made the
+passage round into the Pacific, and, Atlantic-bound, dodging from the
+Islands to Colon and down the coast as far as Rio, Elderkin was wont to
+refer to the time when he really had been a sailor. . . .
+
+It was his conscience as a seaman that the owners were up against when
+they called the captain into consultation over the diminishing returns
+of the _Spirito Santo_, and proposed to him the course that is regarded
+by sailors the world over as the great betrayal.
+
+To anyone without a nice sense for spiritual values, everything is
+merely a matter of price, and Elderkin's fee for the loss of his ship
+and with her his soul was higher than the partners could have wished.
+They were greasy men, with the Spanish strain, that too often, in those
+latitudes, means a hint of the negro as well, and their office was on
+the outskirts of the dirty vulture-ridden Port of Spain of those days.
+The room was bare, and upon the blotchy whitewash of the wall there
+hung nothing but a map and a few advertisements. The mosquitoes sang
+through the unscreened windows; outside, in the dusty strip of bleached
+earth between the house and the road, a hedge of hibiscus was in bloom.
+In the glaring sunshine the flaunting back-curled blossoms seemed afire
+as they shot their thin vermeil tongues out into the air made so alive
+with light. To Elderkin, as he sat in the dimmed room, full of green
+reflections from the vegetation without, came the unpleasant thought
+that it was as though he were under seas . . . and the flaming tongues of
+the hibiscus were some evil sea-growth, mocking at his plight.
+
+He leaned forward and helped himself again from the bottle of whisky
+that stood upon the bare table. When he lifted it a crescent of gold
+fled across the table, slipping back again when he set the bottle down,
+as a ripple of reflected light runs through water. Elderkin had often
+seen a gleam like it when watching a small bright fish flash through a
+pool.
+
+His reluctant mind responded to the kick of the liquor: the dirty little
+room, the watchful eyes of the partners as they sat on either side of
+him in their soiled linen suits, no longer seemed so unpleasant to him,
+accustomed as he was to the sordidness that, if care is not exercised,
+so soon overtakes an interior in the tropics. His caution still remained
+to him, and he sounded the scheme at every point, finding the partners
+were prepared, full of urgings, advices, rosy forecasts, cunning
+details. On the homeward voyage, that would be best . . . he could
+take her out in ballast, bring her back loaded to her limit and beyond
+it. . . . Those were days before the Plimsoll mark, and vessels often left
+port--even great English ports--so loaded that their scuppers were all
+but awash, and not only left but perhaps attempted the passage round the
+Horn itself. There would be no difficulty about that, but Captain
+Elderkin must, of course, not sail from a Peruvian harbour as the
+authorities there had an unpleasant habit of marking a load-line on
+every ship that cleared and seeing that she did not go above it.
+Besides, a cargo was awaiting him in Chili, and the partners were
+prepared about that too. It was to be a double deal, the actual copper
+and nitrates, with a small amount of gold, which she would go out to
+take was, by arrangement with a certain official known to the partners,
+to be changed for sand and stones. Just a sprinkling of nitrate at the
+top, perhaps, since nitrate is loaded in bulk. It was risky, but on the
+other hand it was a thing often carried through with success, and
+Elderkin, who knew all the tricks and possibilities of both coasts,
+could see his way with reasonable clarity. The partners advised Captain
+Elderkin not to attempt bringing the _Spirito Santo_ round the Horn, as
+he might have more difficulty in saving himself; if the accident
+occurred on the Pacific side it would be better for many reasons. If he
+were picked up by a passing ship he must, of course, see to it that the
+_Spirito Santo_ was too far gone for salvage, or that would indeed make
+matters worse with a vengeance. An accident with the steering-gear--they
+had reason to know that Olsen, the chief engineer, would come in on
+it--when off a weather shore, would probably be the best solution. But,
+naturally, there was no need to instruct so clever a sailor as Captain
+Elderkin in his part of the affair . . . more smiles and whisky.
+
+Joab Elderkin sat and absorbed it all, with little expression on his
+sad, gentle face, his thin mouth remained imperturbable under the heavy
+dark moustache, only in his high and narrow temples a pulse beat. As he
+drank he raised his price, till at last the point was reached above
+which the partners refused to go and below which he would not descend.
+At that point they came to their agreement, and Joab Elderkin went out
+of the office having sold his only form of honour on a gamble which
+stood to put him on the way towards attaining a ship of his own. For
+that was the desire of his heart, and until now had seemed as impossible
+of realization as the phantom vessel of a dream. Probably for no other
+inducement under the skies would he have given another ship's salvation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The month of August found the _Spirito Santo_, all sail set, running
+down the Pacific coast before a north-westerly wind. Elderkin watched
+the weather carefully, for he had no idea of losing his life, or, for
+the matter of that, the lives of any of his crew who could be allowed to
+retain them with safety to himself and the partners. For there is always
+the personal equation to be studied in a matter of this kind, and
+Elderkin had given much thought to the members of his crew. He had
+hoped, while always fearing the futility of it, that the first mate,
+Isidore Lemaire, might be kept in ignorance. For a while it seemed as
+though this were so, but since leaving port Elderkin had felt doubtful
+of the creole. Lemaire had a furtive way with him at the best of times,
+a hint as of something that crept and glided rather than walked
+normally, but then so had many of his race. He was supposed to be a
+white--in the expressive Island phrase, he "passed for white"--but on
+the French and Spanish and even the Danish islands the objection to
+racial mingling is not nearly so strong as in the colonies that have
+always been English. Also, Lemaire came from Martinique, which, after
+Haiti, is the headquarters of Obeah, and worse, of voodoo. Even quite
+good families in decaying Martinique had dealings with the unclean
+thing, and St. Pierre was known, even among sailors, for a hotbed of
+strange vices. All this was why Lemaire made such a powerful mate, for
+the crew, except for the red-headed Danish engineer from St. Thomas,
+were either half-castes from the Islands and the southern continent, or
+full-blooded negroes; which was to say that superstition was so part of
+them that the last vestige of it would only run out with the last drop
+of blood from their bodies. Elderkin knew better than to penetrate the
+forecastle, but he was aware of the bottles filled with dead
+cockroaches, bits of worsted and the rest of the paraphernalia for the
+casting of spells, which hung there. He himself had found that the only
+way to keep his steward off his whisky was to decorate his locker with a
+similar charm, and since he had done so had suffered no more from
+pilfering. All this was obeah, harmless enough, and if now and then, a
+white cock was sacrificed in the forecastle and a seaman went somewhat
+mad on its blood, Elderkin ignored the matter. But Lemaire was, he knew,
+suspected by the crew of darker dealings. There had been a rumour that
+the reason Lemaire left Martinique was because the disappearance of a
+planter's child was like to be laid at his door, and the rumour was
+enough to make the niggers cringe before him. This was a master, perhaps
+the friend of papalois and mamalois, with the power of life and death.
+Elderkin loathed him--there are things from which the most hardened
+white man shrinks, and it would have to be one utterly unregenerate who
+could dabble his hands in voodooism. Nevertheless, the suspicion made
+Lemaire the best nigger-driver in the length and breadth of the
+Caribbean, and Elderkin made use of him for that reason. Now, for the
+first time, he began to feel the man's peculiarities getting on his own
+nerves. A word dropped now and again, odd looks from the protuberant and
+opaque brown eyes, were making him wonder if the mate guessed, whether
+it would be better to take him into the secret and trust to his never
+reaching shore. . . .
+
+They were nearing the forties when Lemaire spoke. The day was wet, with
+a strong wind, all the morning they had been driving through tingling
+veils of rain and spray, shipping green water that slopped over the
+holds and poured in foaming torrents along the dipping scuppers. All day
+the wind--which till then had thrummed through the rigging and held the
+sails in their stiffened curves so steadily that the _Spirito Santo_
+kept a fairly even keel--had been falling on fitfulness. Loaded as she
+was, the seas that raced past her, almost level with her deck, seemed
+higher than they really were. An odd darkness held the air and through
+it everything bright--the flashes of foam, a wheeling bird, or rare
+shoal of flying fish--showed up with startling pallor. In the second
+dog-watch Lemaire came to Elderkin in the chart-room.
+
+Most men have a weakness and Elderkin's--probably because he never made
+a confidant of a human being--was the dangerous one of pen and paper. He
+was making calculations on the fly-leaf of an old Bible which had been
+unearthed with a lot of other junk from a locker. Calculations about
+ships--the varying costs of handling a four-masted schooner and a
+barque, the advantages of chartering a small screw steamer; calculations
+of routes and cargoes, of many things, but always calculations. . . .
+
+The curious darkness had swamped the chart-room, and made the
+discoloured clasps of the Bible and the brighter brass of the ship's
+fittings gleam out; made the captain's always pale face seem waxen,
+showed two sallow flames in the mate's ophidian eyes. For a moment the
+two men looked at each other in silence, then Lemaire spoke.
+
+"I see you figger it all out," he observed. "Don't forget me, dat's all.
+I come in on dis, my friend. _Sacre nom de Dieu_"--on a sudden flash of
+menace--"did you think I was going to get not'ing out of it? Or perhaps
+you was going to drown me, eh?"
+
+Elderkin had got to his feet, and was watching the other man steadily.
+When he spoke, his voice was as low and tired as ever.
+
+He asked what the blank the blank mate thought he was talking about.
+Lemaire explained that he was talking about the scuttling of the
+_Spirito Santo_, and that the captain knew it as blank well as he did.
+
+"While the ship remains afloat, kindly remember that I am in command,
+Mr. Lemaire, and address me with proper respect. If you do so I'll
+discuss business with you. If not, I'll see that you go to hell along
+with the ship. Savvy, you herring-gutted son of a frog-eater, you?"
+
+Lemaire savvied. He had grown sickly hued with anger, but he spread his
+dark hands in apology, so that the pinkish palms seemed to flash in the
+unnatural gloom.
+
+Then they got to business. What Elderkin had feared had
+happened--Lemaire's suspicions were aroused in port over the loading of
+the _Spirito Santo_, over the paucity of the stores taken aboard, over
+the many oddnesses that reveal themselves to a cunning mind when
+something beyond the normal is in progress. Elderkin remembered the
+night when Lemaire and the successfully bribed official had gone
+together, as he had then thought, to a rowdy house--it must have been on
+that occasion that the stronger man won definite confirmation from the
+weaker. Now there was nothing for it but to let Lemaire in on the
+deal--for the present.
+
+"You are not t'inking of a storm, no?" asked the mate, when both men had
+laid their cards upon the table. "With our boats we should not stand a
+chance. . . . A fire, perhaps? We are car'n some cotton, sah, and it might
+have been packed damp."
+
+"Too risky. I thought of all that. We can only trust our boats to takes
+us a little way. I must pile her up near the mainland. There's a reef I
+know of----"
+
+"A reef!" scoffed Lemaire, "and you de best skipper on either side! Who
+d'you s'pose believe dat? Not unless we first had an accident to de
+engines, anyway. What about Olsen? Does he--know?"
+
+"Yes. It could not be carried through without him."
+
+"Ah, I see. . . . Only poor Lemaire was to be kept out. . . . And
+dis reef?"
+
+"It's uncharted. I found it years ago. I had reasons for not wanting it
+known where I'd been and I never reported. It's a tricky place, the sea
+don't break true on it, sets in sideways. Beyond it's flat to the shore.
+No risk of salvage; it's out of the course, and a wooden ship goes to
+pieces at once, anyway."
+
+"Where is it, dis reef?"
+
+Elderkin drew his pencil down the chart to an indented bit of coast not
+a couple of degrees below the fortieth parallel. Lemaire sweated to
+think how near he had been to risk.
+
+"If this north-west gale holds, and we are to have an accident which
+made her unmanageable," went on Elderkin, "we should be driven ashore,
+on to that reef. Or at least we could always say so afterwards."
+
+"We might arrange so's Olsen was neber able to give us de lie . . ."
+suggested Lemaire, glancing sidelong at the other.
+
+"If needful."
+
+But when the tussle over terms was ended and Lemaire had gone forth,
+Elderkin swore to himself that it was the mate who should never again
+see the Islands rise above the rim of the sea. He cursed, and for a few
+moments as he sat at the chart-room table, he allowed himself the luxury
+of hating the course on which he had embarked. A man cannot give his
+soul into the keeping of any one idea, whether that idea be embodied in
+another person or in a mode of life, without suffering a profound
+disturbance if he violently part from it; and for many years now
+Elderkin's soul had been one with his ship. She was ugly, cranky, she
+bore a name as a hell-ship that he had earned for her, but together they
+had won through much; men had died on her, blood run upon her decks,
+misery and pride and drunkenness and strange doings permeated her very
+frame. She was as the flesh of his flesh, and only that dream-ship of
+his own which floated in a mirage before his mind could have made him
+unfaithful to her. He was in the position of a man who has lived with a
+despised but deeply felt mistress, and who at last thinks he holds the
+ideal woman, the bride, the untouched, within his grasp, at the price of
+the severance of the old ties. And, like a reproachful ghost, as though
+she were dead already, the appeal of the old reprobate of the seas kept
+pricking at him, day and night, throughout the ordered watches that drew
+her towards her end.
+
+He had sold his soul to gain his soul, a not altogether uncommon
+bargain. "If I can only have this one thing I will Be Good ever after,"
+is a cry that must have caused amusement above and below as many times
+as there are mortals upon the earth. In Elderkin's case the "one thing"
+was a ship of his own, and now that she loomed at last over his horizon,
+he found that it was this old Hagar of the high seas, the mistress and
+not the wife, who, in spite of himself, absorbed his consciousness. All
+the ugliness of his betrayal of her was thrown sharply into notice by
+the compact with his mate; and, shot by a sharper distaste than ever
+before, he covered his eyes for a minute, in an attempt to focus his
+will undistracted. It was successful; Elderkin, little as he knew it,
+was an idealist, however perverted a one, and idealism was with him in
+this venture, beckoning to him in the dip and curtsy of a dream vessel,
+her bright canvas burning with perpetual sunlight. . . . He dropped his
+hands and straightened himself, and his eye fell on the Bible in which
+he had made his calculations, and where he had also noted down his
+covenant with Lemaire. It had fallen open, by the chance movement of his
+arms, at a different place, and he found he was reading a few lines
+before he knew what he was about.
+
+Too imperceptibly for him to have noticed the progress of it, the light
+had strengthened in the chart-room, for a stormy sun had penetrated the
+gloom, and the heavy black letters stood out distinctly on the yellowed
+page. A sudden flash of memory leapt through Elderkin's mind--the memory
+of a day long ago in his childhood.
+
+He had been brought up in New England by a rigid old grandmother until
+he ran away to sea, his Nova Scotian blood too strong for him. But his
+mother's Puritan strain was with him nevertheless, had held by him if in
+nothing else but a certain Biblical flavour in his oaths. Now there
+flashed across his mind a dreary Sunday when he was a little boy--one of
+many like it, but this particular one had stuck in his memory. And,
+probably because of the yellow light flooding the chart-room, the memory
+surged up at him, for on that Sunday he had escaped to the barn,
+although with no better spoils than a book of Old Testament stories, and
+lain there, heels in the air and elbows on the straw, reading the story
+of the Flood in just such a stormy yellow glow as this. A gale had
+followed, rain-laden, and his childish mind had half-feared,
+half-hoped, that a flood was coming, down which he could float
+triumphantly in some makeshift ark . . . as to his grandmother, he might
+rescue her and he might not, but if he did, of course, she would be so
+overcome with gratitude and admiration that she would never again abase
+his dignity with a certain limber cane. Then, in a lull of the gale, the
+gleam had shone out once more, and by its light he read on; read how God
+had promised there should never come a flood over all the earth again,
+and had made a rainbow as a sign of it. Rather dull of God, he thought
+in his disappointment. The storm raged so that he dared not slip back to
+the house, not because of any fear of the elements, but because his
+grandmother would notice if his clothes got wet; so he had stayed on,
+his mind thronged with imaginary adventures, till the storm was over.
+Then he had gone back to the house, feeling curiously flat after the
+excitement wind always produced in him. A faint yet, pictorially, a
+vivid memory of that strained hour of varying emotions swept across him
+now in a moment's space, as he gazed at the page before him. The next
+moment he understood why--it was not only the light that reproduced that
+afternoon of long ago, but also the words at which he was looking--the
+two things together had fused a section of time from thirty years
+earlier into a section of the present. He read the verses through, but a
+few phrases knocked at his mind to the exclusion of the rest. The word
+"covenant," especially, so hard upon his pact with Lemaire, seemed to
+stare up at him. . . .
+
+"And I will establish a covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be
+cut off any more by the waters of a flood. . . . And God said, This is the
+token of the covenant which I make between me and you, and every living
+creature that is with you. . . . I do set my bow in the cloud, and it
+shall be the token of a covenant. . . . And it shall come to pass when
+I shall bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud, and I shall remember the covenant which is between me and
+you. . . ."
+
+Elderkin sat at gaze like a man in a trance, unable for a few moments to
+disassociate that hour in the barn from the present--not sure which was
+the present, so vivid was the illusion and so sharp the knock on his
+dormant spiritual sense. His hands, which were trembling oddly, went out
+to grasp the edge of the table, not for the physical support, but more
+that a common sensation should reassure his mind. Then he rose, and
+backing away from the Book as though it would spring at him, he went
+out.
+
+The wind had dropped, but the _Spirito Santo_ was rolling her
+bulwarks--those solid structures which were traps for all the water
+shipped--into the confused sea that the dead wind had left. She was
+travelling badly, her heavy load robbed her of the elasticity which
+would have enabled her to rise to the onslaught of each successive wave.
+
+The _Spirito Santo_ boasted no bridge, the roof of the chart-room, which
+was situated on the poop, just forward of the mizzen-mast, doing duty
+instead. The wheel, which was uncovered, was set at the break of the
+poop, between the rail and the chart-house. Elderkin climbed the ladder
+to the top of the chart-house, and then stood there, struck to sudden
+stillness. He never glanced at the binnacle to see if the man were
+keeping the course, or noted the wiry figure of the mate as he tramped
+back and forth; his whole being was arrested by the portent which held
+the sky. And all the long-dormant but never wholly cast-off beliefs of
+his childhood awoke in his blood.
+
+A curtain of luminous, ashen-pink cloud was drawn across the sky from
+horizon to zenith, absolutely smooth and unbroken, and against it arched
+a rainbow, spanning the horizon and coming down mistily into the sea. So
+close the opalescent feet of it looked that it seemed as though the
+ship's bows were heading through the phantom portals of some new world,
+but high in air the summit of the curve, clear and burnished as
+cut-glass, looked infinitely far away. As Elderkin stood at gaze,
+particles of sun-bright cloud floated slowly across the right of the
+arch, like little morsels of golden wool.
+
+Elderkin, his fingers clutching a wet stanchion, was aware of a curious
+feeling coming over him. He felt he had seen just that effect
+before--that curtain of ashen pink, the rainbow against it, the flock of
+little golden-bright morsels, floating slowly across it . . . and had seen
+it in connexion with something of vital importance. Yet, try as he
+would, he could not capture the thought--memory--dream--whatever it was,
+of which he was so sure in the back of his mind that he felt it waiting
+for him to recognize it every moment. . . . All sorts of bewildering
+little half-memories flitted across his mind, and refused to be captured
+or placed. Queer, irrational little things they were, incongruous and
+wildly senseless; he felt dizzy chasing them, but he knew if he gave up
+concentrating even for an instant, the whole thing would be gone. Yet
+piece together these half-memories that pricked at him he could not,
+they were elusive as moths and as unsubstantial. He knew that there was
+one key to them and that if he could only find it they would become
+sense, though not sense of this world--it was as though they were in a
+different focus and on a different plane, but they would become clear if
+only he could find the key. . . .
+
+As he stared the little particles of cloud in front of the rainbow
+slowly dissolved and melted into the ashen pink of the cloud-curtain,
+from that, too, the glow was fading, and the arch itself began slowly to
+die into the air. Elderkin found himself in the chart-room again; he sat
+down and shut his eyes, striving to remember. He could not recollect
+having dreamt such a thing, and yet the feeling aroused in him was
+exactly that provoked when, on the day following a very vivid dream, it
+will keep on intruding in fragments, each time to be shaken off as the
+mind readjusts itself to the normal after the moment's blurring of edge.
+Suddenly it occurred to him that he must have seen that effect only a
+few days before and he opened his diary, in which, his vice being pen
+and paper, he noted down matters not important enough for the "Remarks"
+space in the log. He hunted the pages back and forth, and in the midst
+of his futile search his mind seemed to give a click and he was switched
+back into the normal again. He sat looking at the book in his hands and
+realized that he had never seen that especial effect before, that he had
+most certainly never noted it down; the mere idea that he had now seemed
+as silly as a dream when the mind has struggled fully awake, though when
+he had first thought of it and taken the notebook up, it had seemed as
+possible as the same dream when the sleeper is in the midst of it. He
+still felt curiously dizzy, though his head was clearing slowly: things
+seemed commonplace around him once more; he could not even remember
+distinctly what his sensations had been. He only knew that in that
+trance-like state, of a moment--of aeons--earlier, he had known he had
+seen before that which he then saw, and seen it connected with something
+he could not catch. Whether he ever had seen it, perhaps on that
+incompletely remembered day of storm which had flashed back to him on
+this afternoon; or whether, already worked up by his conscience, by the
+interview with Lemaire, and, to his sensitized mind, by the words in the
+Bible, the sudden effect on him of seeing that bow set in the flaming
+cloud, had produced a brainstorm, he could never know. He would have
+thought it blasphemy to wonder whether nothing more spiritual than the
+driven blood in his skull was responsible for that queer switching off
+the track; but whatever it was, the effect of it, on his awakened moral
+sense, was prodigious. He did not doubt that he had received a divine
+visitation, that for him the heavens had been decked with pomp, that the
+workings of God, in particular and exquisite relation to himself, were
+manifest in the ordered sequence of that day. His own stirrings at the
+violation of his solitary code had gone deeper with him than he knew,
+preparing him for further troubling, then the pact with Lemaire, driving
+in all the distasteful side of the business more keenly still, the
+coincidence of that word "covenant" coming on the heels of his covenant
+with the mate, that word used in the Bible passage to suggest the
+eternal pact between man's soul and its creator, the memory it evoked,
+and, to crown all, the finding of the seal of it set in the heavens
+themselves--all these things rushed together, fused, and struck into his
+being.
+
+He fell on his knees in the chart-room and praised God; praised Him in
+the phraseology of his Puritan forebears, as he had heard Him praised
+when a little boy, whose heedless ears had not seemed to take in the
+words battering about them.
+
+Joab Elderkin had got religion. He had been converted.
+
+When he scrambled to his feet he came to, so to speak, on a different
+sphere from any he had ever known. He seized up the Bible again, his
+hands shaken by the strongest passion known to civilized man, the only
+acquired attribute, besides the making of fire, and of intoxicating
+liquor, which marks him off fundamentally from the other mammals. He
+read again the passage that had flamed into his ken earlier, he read
+the promises of the Almighty, he read of how men were called the
+Sons of God. He saw himself and all his fellow humans not merely
+calling God Father by a kindly sufferance towards adopted children,
+but as beings created of the same substance, their souls as much made
+of the essence of God as their bodies of the essence of their earthly
+fathers, and the thought mounted to his head like wine. The swift
+darkness of the tropics had fallen, but full of his new conception
+of his fellow-creatures--"every living creature that was with him"
+of the verses--he, when he opened the chart-room door, flared forth
+into a night of gods.
+
+All the next day the glory held, both in the air and in Elderkin's mind.
+The Pacific was rainbow-haunted; phantom archways through which the
+bowsprits seemed about to soar; pillars of prismatic colour that melted
+into air; broken shafts of it that flashed out in every sunlit burst of
+spray upon the decks. Even in the two plumes of spray for ever winging
+from either side of her cutwater, a curve of burnished colours hung, as
+though piercing down into the translucent green, through whose depths
+the drowning surf was driven in paler clouds. The wind still held on and
+the _Spirito Santo_ made what way she could under steam and canvas,
+through the confused seas that slopped aboard her and buffeted her from
+all sides at once. It was of supreme significance to Elderkin that the
+north-westerly wind on which he had counted for his purpose, should have
+died away in the self-same hour that, as he phrased it, the wind of the
+spirit blew into his soul. The barometer was falling rapidly, in spite
+of the stiller air, and he had had the royals and outer jib and
+gaff-topsail stowed. What with her reduced sail, the influence of her
+steam, and the lumpy seas, the _Spirito Santo_ was behaving her worst,
+riding slugglishly with a heavy reluctant motion as though she hardly
+considered it worth the effort of keeping her blunt nose above water at
+all. Elderkin felt her sulkiness, and it seemed to him as though,
+instead of helping to save her, she was possessed of an evil spirit bent
+on thwarting him. He watched her closely, and spent the day on the poop,
+and though he said little, every one was aware of something new and
+strange about him. The crew commented among themselves on his
+abstraction and the poverty of his abuse; Lemaire thought he held the
+key to it, but Olsen, the freckled Dane, grew uneasy. He was having
+trouble with his engines, which should have been overhauled long ago,
+and would inevitably have been renovated this trip had it been
+undertaken with a normal objective. If the voyage were unduly prolonged
+he would be hard put to it for fuel; it would not take very much to send
+his boilers crashing from the rusty stays that held them; added to which
+every degree further south, now they were in the forties, diminished
+their chances of safety. As there was no longer any wind to contend
+with, Olsen was all for steaming towards shore at once, for his
+sea-sense combined with the barometer to tell him of trouble ahead.
+
+Olsen was a taciturn creature, who cared for no one in the world but his
+half-caste children--bright, large-stomached little creatures, whom he
+had left playing in the dust in front of his gaily painted wooden house
+in St. Thomas. For their sakes he put up with his fat, slovenly wife and
+her swarms of relations of various shades of brown. It was only for the
+children's sake that he had stuck to the _Spirito Santo_, for it suited
+him to be able to get home as often as he might, and even when the
+_Spirito Santo_ did not touch St. Thomas he could always pick up with a
+mail-packet or a sailing ship of some kind. It was his ambition to send
+both boy and girl to New York for their education, now that the Civil
+War had made it possible for anyone with a touch of colour to make good.
+Therefore he nursed his crazy engines as though he loved them, but he
+decided that the sooner the accident occurred the better. In the second
+dog-watch, he, as Lemaire had done the day before, went to Elderkin in
+the chart-room.
+
+He found the captain with an open book in front of him: he was not
+reading, but making calculations on the margin. He glanced up at Olsen
+and his tired eyes brightened for a moment. Then:
+
+"Ask Mr. Lemaire to come here," he ordered, "and come back yourself."
+
+Olsen made his way to the top of the chart-house, where Lemaire was
+pacing, full of anxiety, and delivered the order. Lemaire came with a
+mixture of civility and an assumption of confederacy in his manner, but
+Elderkin took no more notice of it than of Olsen's waiting stolidity. He
+closed the Bible and confronted the two men.
+
+"Well, Olsen," he said, "you were wanting to see me about something?"
+
+"It is about this affair," answered Olsen, "there is no good to be got
+by waiting, sir. I tell you plainly my engines will not stand so very
+much. And the way she is loaded, if we come up against anything in the
+way of a sea----"
+
+"And you?" asked Elderkin of the mate.
+
+"I am sure dat what Olsen say is right. It must be now or never."
+
+"It is going to be never," replied Elderkin in his usual soft tones.
+
+The two men stared at him, then the quicker Latin flashed into speech.
+He demanded, with a lapse into Island patois now and again, what the
+blank blank blank the captain thought he was doing. Elderkin sat through
+it unmoved.
+
+"I will not speak to you as you have just done to me," he began,
+"because hairy, forsaken Frenchy as you are, you are still a son of God,
+even as I am. Praise the Lord with me, for He has shown me into what an
+abyss of sin I had fallen. Do you hear what I say? I am captain aboard
+this ship, Mr. Lemaire, and I order you to praise God for having
+delivered us while there is yet time."
+
+Lemaire stared at his superior officer in total silence for a moment
+instead of complying. Then he turned to Olsen. The freckled Dane grasped
+the situation the first. He saw that the skipper was not trying to do
+them down as Lemaire, when he found his tongue again, accused him: that
+this was not some deep-laid trick to keep them out of the profits. Olsen
+had seen many religious revivals in the Islands and he knew the signs.
+
+"See here, Mr. Elderkin," he said, stepping forward; "I've my side of it
+to think of. I've not suddenly got holy. I'm thinking of my children,
+same as I was before. You've never thought for anyone but yourself. I
+only shipped this voyage because it meant being able to do what I want
+for them. I've only stuck to this hell-ship for them. There's been
+things done aboard here that would have sunk the ship if sin could sink
+her. You can't clean your bloody ship by talking of God now. We all made
+an agreement and let's stand by it like men. Sink the ship, sir, and the
+top of the sea'll be the sweeter for it."
+
+"I've been a sinful man all my days," agreed Elderkin, "but my eyes have
+been opened, the Lord be thanked. . . . I have been saved and by the grace
+of God I mean to save the ship."
+
+"It'll take more than the grace of God to keep my engines working,"
+commented Olsen.
+
+"And suppose we refuse?" asked Lemaire. "We are two to one, Mr.
+Elderkin. Remember, sah--if the captain is sick it is de mate who take
+charge of de ship. . . ."
+
+"Mutiny? You? Do you imagine, Mossoo, that I couldn't hold my own ship
+against any half-breed afloat?"
+
+"Damn you!" screamed the mate, his skin darkening with his angry blood.
+"If you not take care we will say you are mad, yes, mad. De men have
+only got to hear religion coming out of your face to believe it. De
+ship's not safe, and we must scuttle her now, d'you hear?"
+
+"The men!" repeated Elderkin. "Let me tell you there never was a dago
+crew yet that I couldn't lick. I'll save this ship against the lot of
+you, I'll save her against herself--God helping me," he added.
+
+"But we shall be ruined, all of us," urged Olsen. "What do you suppose
+they will say to us at Port of Spain, Mr. Elderkin? They won't be
+pleased to see the _Spirito Santo_ come crawling into the roadstead with
+a faked cargo and all that good insurance money wasted. . . . We shall all
+be ruined men, I tell you. . . . What will become of us?"
+
+"We shall never get into Port of Spain," spoke Lemaire, "we shall never
+round the Horn. It's coming on to blow now. She can't live through it, I
+tell you. It's sinking her now and saving ourselves and making a
+damn-big pile out of it, or it's all going down togeder."
+
+"Then we will all go down together," said Elderkin; "if my repentance is
+too late the Lord will not let me save the ship nor yet my soul."
+
+"I don't give a curse in hell for your soul, or anyone else's," cried
+the mate. "I tell you it's madness. Only a miracle could keep de ship
+afloat."
+
+"There has already been one miracle aboard her," said Elderkin. "Who are
+we to set limits to the power of the Almighty? It is a small thing to
+keep a senseless structure of wood and iron afloat in comparison with
+making the blackest of sinners see the true light, which the Lord has
+done between two dog-watches. Yesterday I was profaning the Book with my
+calculations of sinful gain made out upon its pages, to-day I have been
+calculating how many years I have spent in following my lusts, and were
+the years as many as the waves of the sea, I have prayed the Lord that
+the weeks of striving in front of us may wipe out the years."
+
+"He is mad," remarked Olsen, philosophically.
+
+Lemaire turned swiftly on the engineer. "We must take charge," he urged
+in a low voice, his back to the captain, "and then you must do what I
+say. We will run her close inshore, and . . ."
+
+Whether Elderkin heard above the growing clamour of the ship or not--for
+the woodwork had begun to crackle like a wheezy concertina and the slap
+of green water breaking sounded in a scurrying frequency--he knew what
+the mate was planning. A rim of something cold on the back of Lemaire's
+neck made his speech fade on his lips, and he and Olsen stood motionless
+while Elderkin spoke, Olsen's light eyes looking at the fanatical dark
+ones above the gun.
+
+"I am master of this ship, and what I say goes, or I'll put daylight
+through your dirty body," said Elderkin, pressing the muzzle in till the
+dark seamed skin on the mate's neck turned greenish in a circle around
+the iron. "As for you, Olsen, you're white, though you're a Dutchman,
+and I look to you to stick. What about the engines?"
+
+"I am sorry about this," replied Olsen, with seeming inconsequence, "but
+what must be will be. I will do the best with my engines. But if ever we
+see port again, I have done with you and your ship and your religion. I
+have my children to think of. I will go below."
+
+And he pulled the chart-room door open. As though his doing so were the
+signal to some malignancy without, a sudden blow of wind struck the
+ship; a crash sounded along her decks and on the moment a surge of water
+flooded into the chart-room. A sudden squall from the south-west, such
+as sometimes arises like a thunderclap in those latitudes at that time
+of year, had caught the _Spirito Santo_ in the confusion of the heavy
+cross seas. That first blow heeled her over, over, over . . . it seemed as
+though she were dipping swiftly far beyond the angle of safety; further
+and further. There was nothing to be done for the moment but clutch on
+to whatever was nearest; cries of terror from the dagos sounded thinly
+even through the clamour of wind and sea and crashing of gear. Then came
+that agonizing moment when a vessel, heeled over as far as possible,
+seems to hesitate, remains poised for the fraction of a second that
+partakes of the quality of eternity, between recovery and the
+hair's-breadth more that means foundering.
+
+Then, with a groaning of timbers like some mammoth animal in pain, a
+thick jarring of machinery, and a clattering of everything movable
+aboard her, the _Spirito Santo_ came slowly up again. If that gust of
+wind had held a minute longer she would have rolled herself, her faked
+cargo, and her huddled lives, down towards the bed of the Pacific; sins
+and religions, material hopes and spiritual aspirations, alike marked by
+one fading trail of air bubbles.
+
+Elderkin found he was holding Lemaire round the waist, while Olsen was
+on his hands and knees in the lather of water streaming off the floor.
+
+"The Lord has decided," said Elderkin, "we have now no choice. Get
+below, Olsen." He was heaving himself into his oilskins as he spoke,
+ordered in his movements but speedy, considering the terrible lurching
+of the vessel. His fight to save the _Spirito Santo_, to save her
+against herself, had begun.
+
+He found her topgallant sails thrashing out like blinds from a window,
+for the topgallant sheets had carried away, while the foresail and
+fore-topmast-staysail were like to flap themselves to rags. He bellowed
+his orders above the clamour of the ropes and guys, that were all
+shrieking and wailing on different notes as though the ship were
+suddenly endowed with the gift of tongues. The men fought their way up
+the rigging, and, lying along the slippery yard-arms, wrestled with
+clew-lines that whipped about as if possessed, while the wet and
+iron-hard canvas beat back and forth with reports like gunshots. But the
+men succeeded at length and Elderkin felt that the first tiny stage in
+his great battle was won.
+
+Already the sea was running in great slopes of blackish green, streaked
+and scarred with livid whiteness; from the poop the whole of the ship
+was filled with a swirling mist of spray that wreathed about the masts,
+only parting here and there to show one boiling flood of broken water
+that poured across the waist from upreared starboard rail to submerged
+port scuppers. The forecastle was flooded; from the forecastle head, as
+the ship pitched, a torrent poured on to the hatches, and when the next
+moment she dived forward, rushing down a long valley that seemed to
+slope to the heart of the ocean, two rivers poured out of her
+hawse-holes. Elderkin, as she dived, called down the tube--the only
+means of communicating with the engine-room except the still more
+primitive one of messengers--to stop her. And when it looked as though
+she could never recover to meet that oncoming mountain, but must dive
+into it and be smothered, her bows rose once more, up and up, till they
+raked the swollen clouds, while a wall of whiteness thundered past on
+either side. As Elderkin called for "full" again, his face was as calm
+as that of a little child. All that night the storm increased, and wove
+air and water into one great engine of destruction, and all night
+Elderkin stayed lashed to the rail of the chart-house, which was
+momentarily in danger of being washed away like a rabbit-hutch. It was
+impossible to keep the binnacle alight, and no stars were visible;
+steering was a mere groping by the feel of the wind. Dawn seemed hardly
+a lightening, so dark hung the massed clouds, of a curious rusty-brown
+colour, packed one above the other, overlapping so as to form a solid
+roof. Only between their lower rim and the slate-grey sea, an occasional
+glimpse of horizon showed where a thin line of molten pallor ran. Brown,
+white and steel-grey, with the masts and rigging sharp and black against
+it all, and the decks, dark and wet, now refracting what light there
+was as the ship rolled one way, now falling on deadness again as she
+rolled the other.
+
+With the dawning, Elderkin was unlashed and took the wheel himself,
+aided by a seaman, for it took two men to stand its kicking. To him came
+Olsen, still phlegmatic, almost as black as one of his dago squad.
+Gripping the poop-rail with one hand, with the other he laid hold of the
+captain's oilskin, and leant as near as possible to shout his news, but
+even so Elderkin could only catch a word here and there.
+
+"Won't stand . . . stays parting . . ." came to him.
+
+"Keep her at it," he yelled back.
+
+But a sudden shout came from Olsen, while the man at the wheel literally
+turned colour and closed his eyes. Only Elderkin, with a look that
+seemed queerly of exultation on his face, stared ahead to where a vast
+wall of water, so high it glimmered greenly, was rolling towards them
+over the broken, tossing sea. That was exactly what it looked like, as
+though it were a body distinct and separate from the rest of the raging
+water, some great fold pushed up from the Antarctic region and urged
+across the ocean, on and on. . . . It bore down on the infinitesimal ship
+and her clinging ants of crew, bore down, blotting out the sky, till
+suddenly it was so near it became one with the rest of the sea, as
+though the whole surface were curving over into a hollow sphere. It
+thundered upon them; then, its glassy concavity reared to an incredible
+height, it toppled over and broke in one roaring cataract of foam.
+
+What happened next no one remaining in the _Spirito Santo_ could ever
+have told. Three men were washed overboard; one had his legs so broken
+that the splintered bones drove into the deck where he was hurled down.
+There were a few long-drawn seconds when all thought she had gone under,
+for the rushing sea had climbed level with the chart-house roof, while
+the air was so thick with spume and spray it would have been difficult
+to say where the sea left off being solid and became fused with the
+wind. Then, with a roaring and a sucking like that when a wave,
+shattered, streams off a cliff, the water poured off decks and hatches
+in long lacings of dazzling white. The _Spirito Santo_ still lived.
+
+But it seemed she was mortally wounded, for she was jarring all her
+length, even the twisted stanchions vibrated as though some malignant
+force within her had broken loose; and when Elderkin tried to bring her
+head up to the wind, the wheel spun in his hands as easily and uselessly
+as a child's toy.
+
+"The rudder . . ." cried Olsen, "she is gone. . . ."
+
+Elderkin retained his clarity of aspect and gave his orders collectedly;
+only when the dago crew clung miserably to any support and refused to
+obey, he pulled out his gun and drove them to their stations. Hove-to,
+with only her spanker, close-reefed main-topsail and fore-staysail set,
+there was a chance of keeping her off the coast till the sea should
+quiet down enough to allow of a jury rudder being rigged. Meanwhile, as
+the men were setting the sails she rolled horribly in the trough of the
+sea; rolled fit to break her heart. Elderkin, on the poop, shouting at
+the men reefing the topsail, saw something that for the first moment of
+horror seemed fraught with the supernatural. Years of neglect, of rust,
+of corrosion from salt, had in reality gone to bring about what he then
+saw, with dishonesty and money-grubbing meanness behind the rust and
+corrosion. For, with a scream of ripping iron and the sharp snapping of
+guys, the _Spirito Santo_ rolled her funnel clean off at the root, the
+casing along with it. It crashed upon the deck, and the next moment was
+swept overboard, carrying away the port bulwarks. A gust of heat and a
+murky torrent of foul smoke blew flatly from the cavity that gaped in
+the ship's vitals; then a flood of water, luminously pale in the growing
+daylight, filmed across the deck amidships and poured over the ragged
+rim of the wound. The _Spirito Santo_ rolled upon the water, little more
+than a helpless wreck.
+
+Lemaire, who was lying on the top of the chart-house, gripping the rail,
+screamed out that they were done for; even Olsen, turning his blackened
+face to the captain, shouted that the game was up; as to the dagos, each
+yelled where he lay. This time Elderkin had to use his gun before he
+could get the ship hove-to. At sight of one of their number lying limp
+in the scuppers, the crew obeyed once more, while Olsen, sticking by his
+caste, and Lemaire, seeing still a faint chance for life, worked with
+them to cover the jagged hole with the stoutest timbers they could find.
+What was left of the fires was drawn, the planks over the hole shored up
+from below with timbers, tarpaulins stretched a-top of all and fastened
+down by a great batten bolted through the sodden deck; and, during all
+the hours of work amid wind and water, Elderkin watched the ship, saw
+that she did not come too much up into the wind nor fall off into the
+trough of the sea; kept the men at it when, time and again, they would
+have given up. Gun in one hand and Bible in the other, he read out
+threats of the Almighty's, intermingled with his own. And, at last, the
+jury-hatch was finished, and a further stage of the battle won.
+
+Now came the most trying hours of all, when there no longer remained
+anything possible to do, when hands fell on inaction and bodies were
+free to feel sore and cold, and minds were vacant of everything but an
+animal despondency. Olsen lit a fire on the iron floor by the boilers,
+and here, for the most part, the miserable men crouched during the rest
+of the day and the following night. Elderkin, after he had slept the
+sudden and over-powering sleep of the worn-out man, awoke to his first
+doubts. As long as there had been continuous need for action, that and
+the stern joy of a fight had shut out everything else for him; now that
+there was nothing to be done but hoist the inner jib when she came up
+too much into the wind and lower it when she paid off again, a need so
+recurring it was almost mechanical, he became as much a prey to inner
+questionings as his ship was to the winds. What tormented him was the
+thought that if the _Spirito Santo_ had foundered in this south-west
+gale all hands would have inevitably been lost, whereas had he kept by
+his agreement to scuttle her earlier all could probably have been saved.
+Was he then become a murderer by having decided as he had, and would it
+have been more righteous to keep on his evil course? Elderkin, to whom
+for the first time the lives of his men had become of a value other than
+commercial, was tormented by the thought of the three washed overboard
+by the great wave; and the curses of the man who had died a few hours
+after his legs were shattered re-echoed through his mind. It was not so
+much that these men had met death--Elderkin had too often stared it in
+the face to think overmuch of that--but that they were cut off in the
+midst of their sins, with blasphemies on lip and soul. Elderkin's creed
+allowed of no gracious after-chances, he saw the entities he had known
+and bullied in the flesh, as having become blind particles of
+consciousness burning in undying fires. . . .
+
+With dawn and a further dropping of the wind, which had been lessening
+all night, he searched again the pages of his Bible, and he followed the
+instinctive trail of human nature when he thrust the niceties of values
+from him and determined to hold by what was right and wrong at the
+springs of his action. When he went out on to the poop and met the crisp
+but now friendly wind, saw the glitter of sunshine on peacock waves,
+that still broke into white crests, but without malignance, he knew that
+the Lord was on his side. How was it possible he had ever thought
+otherwise? He must indeed be weak in the ways of grace that his first
+testing should awake such questionings within him. As the weight of
+despondency and sick dread fell off him in the cold sunlight, Elderkin
+flung up his arms and shouted for joy. Lemaire, crawling up, found him
+on his knees upon the top of the battered chart-house, improvising a
+paen of thanksgiving.
+
+All that day the men worked at rigging a jury rudder and patching up the
+port bulwarks. Then Olsen, who kept them as doggedly at it as the
+skipper himself, conceived a plan whereby his engines could once again
+play a part. He collected sheet-iron and stout pieces of wood, and
+with these he contrived a jury-funnel, fitting steam-jets at the base to
+maintain the draught to the furnaces. The freakish erection held
+together well, though it looked oddly stumpy in place of the thin,
+raking smoke-stack; Olsen secured it by guys of iron chain. At last all
+was complete, and once again a plume of dirty smoke trailed from between
+the sticks of the _Spirito Santo_. The men slept as they fell, but by
+then the rudder and smoke-stack had converted her from a blind cripple
+into an intelligent whole which could work independently of the
+direction of wind and current. A further stage of the battle was won,
+and with every victory Elderkin felt greater confidence in the Lord and
+in himself.
+
+By the next day it had grown very cold, and the men began to prepare
+shapeless and weather-worn garments against the bitterness of the Horn.
+Even Lemaire, who kept on repeating sullenly that they could never round
+it, knew that the only chance now was to carry on, and, his face seeming
+to pale with the first breath of the cold, hugged himself in a great
+padded coat. Food was already beginning to run short, and only by
+serving out double quantities of the raw West Indian rum were the men
+kept going at all. The ship herself could be heartened with no such
+encouragement, and although she was now snoring at a fair pace through
+the smother of foam that kept the lee-scuppers covered with a running
+river, yet her foul sides and wicked loading absorbed half her speed.
+She was a wet ship at the best of times, now she was sodden to her
+trucks, and the showers of icy rain that blew down on the westerly gale
+every now and then, wetted in a worse fashion, for rain-water chills to
+the bone right through oilskins. One day an exhausted Cape pigeon fell
+on board, and the little bird was eaten raw by the first man who got to
+it; sometimes a great albatross sailed on level unmoving wings around
+the labouring ship, and mollymawks screamed and circled, but none fell a
+victim to the hungry crew. There was a certain amount of salt junk left
+aboard, but the chief diet was nothing but hard-tack, and that was
+mouldy. Elderkin remained unmoved by any consideration save how to get
+her round the Horn, and he made Olsen save the dwindling fuel as much as
+possible for the attempt, lest they should be kept beating back and
+forth for weeks till exhaustion of ship and men sent them under. So the
+days went on, and the great Cape Horn greybeards rolled up with
+glistening flanks and white crests that broke and poured down them in
+thunder. Cold rains, wind squalls, her own condition and that of the men
+aboard her, all fought against the _Spirito Santo_, till it seemed as
+though the strongly set will of her captain were the only thing that
+kept her alive--alive and obedient however sulky, to the intelligence
+that drove her.
+
+Still she kept going, steaming and sailing into the stormy sunsets till
+at last she was off Cape Stiff itself, showing unspeakably bleak and
+gaunt through the driving mist; only now and then were the black cliffs
+visible, going down into a smoking line of foam.
+
+If a bad storm had hit her off the promontory nothing could have saved
+her, but the wind, though the strong westerly gale of the "roaring
+forties," held less of violence than ordinary, and although she rolled
+till it seemed she would dip her yards, and the water could hardly be
+pumped out of her as fast as it poured in, yet she pulled through, as
+she had pulled through the south-westerly gale and the disasters that
+followed. Elderkin, who had somehow expected his great tussle off the
+Horn, felt an odd sensation that was almost disappointment.
+
+On looking back afterwards, Elderkin saw that the voyage was, as it
+were, divided clearly into two by the passing of the Horn--on the
+Pacific side the actual physical blows of material damage and storm, on
+the Atlantic the more wearing struggle against spiritual opposition. The
+men, headed by Lemaire, began to murmur.
+
+For one thing, the last possible scrap of fuel had been burned by the
+time they were passing the Falklands, and they were left with nothing
+but their canvas to carry them home. As far as keeping her steady went,
+she was better under sail than steam, and also, like every true sailor,
+Elderkin felt more in harmony with the weather when using only canvas.
+For a steamer goes independently of the wind, ignores it, shoves her
+nose in its face, and the wind pays her back by becoming an enemy, but a
+sailing-ship lives by wind, humours it, coaxes the last hair's-breadth
+of it, and the wind, flattered, ignores that all the time it is being
+managed and made of use.
+
+But the sails of the _Spirito Santo_ were old and mildewed, she carried
+little spare canvas, and, worst of all, if they should come into a calm,
+those on board her might starve to death before they sighted help. All
+these things the men knew, and knowing, began to rebel. Lemaire, too, no
+longer seconded Elderkin, and he and Olsen bore the burden of
+nigger-driving alone--and Olsen, although he was loyal, made his
+discontent apparent. A terrible loneliness of mind fell upon Elderkin.
+He felt himself accursed of all men, but he still held on; each
+successive incident of his fight, instead of wearing his resistance
+down, went to strengthen it. The crisis came when after weeks of
+crawling and standing still, hurrying on with any advantage of breeze
+that presented itself, yet afraid to carry too much canvas, the _Spirito
+Santo_ was nearing the fortieth parallel once more.
+
+It was a grey, squally day, with the south-westerly wind keeping the
+sails bellied forward, and the gusts of rain driving so hard that the
+water in the brimming scuppers was lashed to paleness; the pumps were in
+pretty constant use now, and the fetid bilge-water washed over the decks
+in floods of a dark reddish colour, as though the _Spirito Santo_ were
+bleeding internally. A sullen moodiness held air and sea and mind of
+those who looked; that grinding reluctance of the _Spirito Santo_ had
+passed into the men's bones, they moved slowly if ordered to do
+anything, their shrunken flesh was a mass of sea-boils and, since the
+lime-juice and potatoes were exhausted, scurvy had broken out. Elderkin
+himself looked like some mediaeval picture of the Baptist: he had grown a
+beard that came to a sparse point, and his sombre eyes glowed from
+behind the disordered streaks of hair that fell over them, while his
+skin, so tightly stretched over the bones, had taken on a waxen texture.
+To the men who came crowding on to the after-deck to voice their
+resentment, he had the air of a madman, as he stood erect at the break
+of the poop, his figure dark against the grey pallor of the sky. For a
+few minutes he stood scanning them quietly, and they stared back at him.
+In marshalling them where he had, Lemaire had made an error in
+psychology; for the mere fact that they had to look up to Elderkin on
+the poop affected both him and them unconsciously.
+
+"What do you want?" asked the skipper quietly. Lemaire stepped forward
+as spokesman.
+
+"We want to get out of dis shop and make for the shore, dat's what we
+want, and dat's what we'll do."
+
+"Ah . . . how?"
+
+"We'll take de law into our own hands. If we sink her now we can make
+for the mout' of de Plate, or we might be picked up sooner. I've told de
+men; I've told how we was all goin' to be rich an' safe and would have
+been trowin' our money around ashore by now if you hadn't got de
+praise-de-Lord bug in your head."
+
+"What Massa Lemaire say quite true, sah," called out a burly negro,
+whose black face was greyed over in patches from disease, "an' we aren't
+goin' to stand dis any longer. If you won't sink her we're goin' to, or
+we'll all be dead men."
+
+"We're dead now, dead and rotting," shrieked the bo'sun, on a sudden
+note of frenzy that pierced the air like a thrown blade, "who ever saw
+live men rot?" And he held up a hand which scurvy, on an open wound, had
+literally rotted so that the tendons hung down like weed. He shook the
+maimed thing at Elderkin. "Look at this"--"And this . . ."--"And
+this . . ." came up to Elderkin in angry shouts. The men, intoxicated
+by the sudden venting of their wrongs, began to swarm up the ladders to
+the poop deck.
+
+Elderkin felt new life urge through his veins, the pressure of the dead
+weeks behind sloughed off him, as the thinning veils of sleep drop away
+from the waking consciousness in the morning. He did not pull out his
+gun, but kept his hands in his pockets and faced the snarling,
+tentative, ugly pack of them.
+
+Then he talked, not raising his voice more than was needful for the
+grinding and creaking of the ship's labour and the weary complaining of
+the wind-tortured rigging.
+
+"So you'd mutiny, would you?" he began in his soft voice, "well, first
+you'll listen to me. Down off that gang-way, you there . . . that's
+better. Well, I guess I know what you men are saying to yourselves--that
+I'm one man against the lot of you, and now we're no longer fighting to
+keep the ship afloat for our lives, you can easy get the better of me.
+That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
+
+A murmur of assent, half-threatening, half-shame-faced, came from below.
+To Elderkin, looking down, the men appeared as blots of deeper colour
+against the pale glimmer of the wet deck; their upturned faces had the
+abrupt fore-shortening that imparts a touch of the ludicrous, but those
+faces were set in folds which told of hardened determination, behind the
+swellings and boils which glistened in the watery light, so that
+Elderkin could see each disfigurement as clearly as pebbles in a pool
+unshaded from the sky.
+
+"The mate tells you you'll get a lot of money if you go home and say
+you've sunk the ship. You won't. He will, as Judas did for betraying his
+Lord, but you'll just be got rid of, if you don't keep your mouths
+shut. You're wrong, as you've been all your lives, as I've been till
+now. But I've a stronger man on my side than all of you herring-gutted
+sons of a gun would make rolled together. I've the Lord on my side. You
+think nothing of that, do you? The Lord's up in heaven and won't notice
+what you do, and you ain't feared of the likes of Him anyway. . . . Aren't
+you? Why d'you think it is you have bloody sacrifices there in the
+fo'c'sle--oh, yes, I know about it all--why d'you suppose you cringe to
+that nigger there"--pointing to the mate--"with his black history of
+murdered children and flesh eaten in secret when the sacred drum beats
+at the full of the moon? Why d'you suppose you're scared sick of a dirty
+bug and a bit of wool in an old bottle, or of my Bible that I've set up
+on a shelf? It's because you know there's something behind--behind your
+ju-jus and behind my ju-ju. . . . You not fear the Lord! Why, you fear Him
+with every devilish performance you concoct. You're afraid all the
+time--of the something behind. And my ju-ju is greater than your ju-ju,
+so you're more afraid of mine, and of me. Could your ju-ju bring you
+through the great storm alive? All of you--and that damned baby-eater
+there--you was all yelling at your ju-jus and they couldn't wag one of
+their accursed fingers to help you. Who saved you and brought you out
+alive? White men and the white men's God. You know there's something
+behind, and what's behind me is bigger'n what's behind you. . . ."
+
+He suddenly pulled his hand out of the capacious pocket of his coat, and
+the men cowered swiftly, but instead of a gun he held his Bible out
+over the rail, threatening them not with its insignificant fabric but
+with its unknown import. A couple of Jamaican negroes fell on their
+knees and writhed upon the deck, making uncouth noises, their eyes
+turning palely upwards, their limbs convulsed.
+
+"Praise de Lord!" they yelled. "Praise de Lord wid us, brudders! End of
+de world and judgment comin'. Save us, massa, save us. . . ." And a dago
+from the southern continent fell to crossing himself and gabbling his
+prayers.
+
+"You fools!" cried Lemaire, thrusting through the heaving knot of men,
+"don't you listen to his talk. Talk won't fill our stomachs or cure our
+skins. How's he going to feed you? Ask him dat."
+
+"Yes--what are we to eat? Give us food and we'll keep on!" shouted the
+bo'sun. "Can your God make food?"
+
+"My God provided manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness and
+He'll provide for us now if we trust in Him. He will send us meat for
+our bellies and drink for our throats."
+
+"How . . . ? Where is it, dis food?" taunted Lemaire; and Elderkin, his
+hand pointing, answered, "There . . ."
+
+The men swung round to gaze, and saw a fugitive gleam of sunlight on her
+shining tower of cotton canvas, a great four-masted American barque
+beating to windward only a few miles away. Elderkin and his ju-ju were
+saved, and Lemaire's vision of dollars was routed by the men's vision of
+food. The distress signals were run up, and by that night the _Spirito
+Santo_ carried enough provisions of a rude kind to last her, with care
+and luck--meaning a rigid discipline of practically wreck-rations and
+fair winds--to see her safely home again. Elderkin thought that at last
+the testings of his faith were over, that the weary ship would blow
+towards port on a divinely appointed wind, and that his sacrifice and
+conversion were accepted on high. For the image he had had in his mind
+on that day of revelation in the chart-house had been of one Titanic
+struggle, not of this succession of conflicts which sometimes rose to
+crisis point but more often meant fighting against the terrible
+depression of day after day's inaction, driven half-crazy by the
+unceasing moaning of the rigging. Sustained bad weather gets on a
+sailor's nerves not because of any danger but simply by dint of the
+repetition of noises; there is only one thing more unbearable to mind
+and temper, and that is to be becalmed. Thought of any such happening
+was far from those on board the _Spirito Santo_, for the south-westerly
+wind urged her on past the Plate, and then a baffling head wind blew her
+out of the treacherous skies, and for over a week she beat back and
+forth, making hardly any headway. The rations were still further
+reduced, and then just as the men were beginning to make trouble again,
+the _Spirito Santo_ caught up with the south-west trades. Once again she
+made the seas roar past her, for now, regardless of her depth in the
+water, Elderkin made all the sail he could. Day after day slipped past
+with the slipping foam, and the gaunt creatures aboard felt a stirring
+of relief. And then, in the Doldrums, they ran into a dead calm. . . .
+
+Only anyone who has been becalmed on a tropical sea knows the terror
+that it is. Of all feelings of helplessness it is probably the most
+acute. Without steam or motor a ship is as powerless as though she were
+anchored to the sea-bottom with iron cables. Men have gone mad of it,
+and men did go mad of it in the starving _Spirito Santo_. She lay, as
+famished for a breeze as they for bread, upon a surface of molten glass,
+her sails limp as a dead bird's wing, the pitch soft in her seams, and
+the only sound in the circle of the horizon the faint creak-creak of her
+yards against the masts. Cabins and forecastle were unbearable, yet on
+deck the vertical sun had driven all but the thinnest lines of shadow
+out of being. The nights were almost as hot as the days and always the
+false cross gleamed from a cloudless sky, and the true Cross swam up
+lying on her back and trailing the pointers behind her, slowly righting
+herself as she rose and driving the pitiless brilliancy of the Milky Way
+before her. The drinking-water, what there was of it, stank; and the
+dried mouths of the men could hardly manage the mouldy hard-tack which
+captain and crew shared alike. And there was nothing to be done, nothing
+that could be done. The men were past revolt now, they could only
+shamble dizzily about. There was nothing to be done--except pray, and
+Elderkin prayed, though his lips moved almost soundlessly. He thought
+much these days, and he remembered--probably because of the dead
+stillness around--an old seafaring fable that in the calm heart of a
+cyclone life is to be found--that there birds and butterflies of every
+size and colour crowd, till the air is hung with brightness. He saw the
+individual soul of man as the hollow calm in the midst of life, cut off
+by the circling storm from all other air, and told himself that it
+could be the refuge for beauties of praise . . . he strove to make this
+aching solitude of mind wherein he was, rich as the fabled heart of the
+cyclone. . . .
+
+Then, just as the first faint breath made her ripple the water at her
+bows, he discovered that, worn out by her successive batterings, the
+_Spirito Santo_ was literally falling apart. He looked over her side and
+saw that she was spewing oakum from her seams, while she settled lower
+and lower in the water.
+
+The discovery acted like cool wind on Elderkin--it was unthinkable that
+they should perish now, not so very far from home, after all he had won
+through, and he prepared to meet this disaster also. He had prudently
+kept one last cask of rum unbroached, and this fluid life he now served
+out to the men. Then he drove them, as before with gun or Bible, but
+this time with rum; drove them to the task of frapping the leaking ship.
+Four great chain cables were passed under her and hove tight with
+Spanish windlasses on deck--a series of giant tourniquets to keep in her
+life. And when that too was accomplished, it was as though the power
+above at last was satisfied, and the wind strengthened that was to bear
+the _Spirito Santo_ home.
+
+Nearly six months after leaving port with provisions enough for one;
+with her rotten ratlines hanging in little tags, her jury smoke-stack
+idle between the patched sails that seemed as though one more puff of
+wind would tear them from the battered yards, her spewing sides kept
+together with cables, and her broken bulwarks level with the water--a
+nightmare vessel manned by ghosts--she crawled into the roadstead at
+Port of Spain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a few years after, a ragged white man haunted the drink-shops of the
+Islands and hung about the ports--a man without a ship. The owners of
+the _Spirito Santo_ were broken by the safe return of that faked cargo,
+but they had passed the word round that her skipper was to be broken
+too. He who had been so self-controlled in the old unregenerate days now
+drank steadily, but it was only when he was very drunk he talked. And
+even then it was difficult to make out what he said--it was all such a
+jumble of some strange fight between two ships, and of how the ways of
+the Lord were so mysterious that it was often impossible for a man to
+tell upon which side righteousness might be found.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Here follows in the original a minute description of the
+post-mortem.
+
+[B] Pronounced Roughneck.
+
+[C] At that date Prisoner's Counsel was not allowed to make a speech
+for the defence.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON & EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the
+original publication, except as follows:
+
+Page 62
+She carries the water from St. Ann's _changed to_
+She carries the water from St. Annan's
+
+Page 95
+Once in the din passage leading _changed to_
+Once in the dim passage leading
+
+Page 151
+Pisa on a more sophiscated errand _changed to_
+Pisa on a more sophisticated errand
+
+Page 209
+Seneath turned her clear, long-sighted _changed to_
+Senath turned her clear, long-sighted
+
+Page 241
+was an idealist, however preverted a one _changed to_
+was an idealist, however perverted a one
+
+Page 252
+Then he turned to Oslen _changed to_
+Then he turned to Olsen
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Beggars on Horseback, by F. Tennyson Jesse
+
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