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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Entire Short Works of George Meredith
+by George Meredith
+#105 in our series by George Meredith
+
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+Title: The Entire Short Works of George Meredith
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4499]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Entire Short Works of George Meredith
+*********This file should be named gn05v10.txt or gn05v10.zip********
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+
+
+THE ENTIRE SHORT WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+     Farina
+     Case of General Opel
+     The Tale of Chloe
+     The House on the Beach
+     The Gentleman of Fifty
+     The Sentimentalists
+     Miscellaneous Prose
+
+
+
+FARINA
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+THE WHITE ROSE CLUB
+
+In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of
+Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance,
+there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and
+the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb
+Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen; than
+whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient mother-
+city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice and white
+under the shadow of his own fig-tree.
+
+Vine-hills, among the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened in
+the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne; basalt-
+quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the Romans to
+the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders.  He could have
+bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's Tower to
+Rheineck.  Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud,
+beheld old Gottlieb's rafts endlessly stealing on the moonlight through
+the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar.  A wailful host were the wives
+of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!
+
+This worthy citizen of Cologne held vasty manuscript letters of the
+Kaiser addressed to him:
+
+'Dear Well-born son and Subject of mine, Gottlieb!' and he was easy with
+the proudest princes of the Holy German Realm.  For Gottlieb was a money-
+lender and an honest man in one body.  He laid out for the plenteous
+harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with too much rigour.  'I sow
+my seed in winter,' said he, 'and hope to reap good profit in autumn; but
+if the crop be scanty, better let it lie and fatten the soil.'
+
+'Old earth's the wisest creditor,' he would add; 'she never squeezes the
+sun, but just takes what he can give her year by year, and so makes sure
+of good annual interest.'
+
+Therefore when people asked Gottlieb how he had risen to such a pinnacle
+of fortune, the old merchant screwed his eye into its wisest corner, and
+answered slyly, 'Because I 've always been a student of the heavenly
+bodies'; a communication which failed not to make the orbs and systems
+objects of ardent popular worship in Cologne, where the science was long
+since considered alchymic, and still may be.
+
+Seldom could the Kaiser go to war on Welschland without first taking
+earnest counsel of his Well-born son and Subject Gottlieb, and lightening
+his chests.  Indeed the imperial pastime must have ceased, and the Kaiser
+had languished but for him.  Cologne counted its illustrious citizen
+something more than man.  The burghers doffed when he passed; and
+scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural
+respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had
+walked through the awe-struck game.
+
+But, for the young men of Cologne he had a higher claim to reverence as
+father of the fair Margarita, the White Rose of Germany; a noble maiden,
+peerless, and a jewel for princes.
+
+The devotion of these youths should give them a name in chivalry.  In her
+honour, daily and nightly, they earned among themselves black bruises and
+paraded discoloured countenances, with the humble hope to find it
+pleasing in her sight.  The tender fanatics went in bands up and down
+Rhineland, challenging wayfarers and the peasantry with staff and beaker
+to acknowledge the supremacy of their mistress.  Whoso of them journeyed
+into foreign parts, wrote home boasting how many times his head had been
+broken on behalf of the fair Margarita; and if this happened very often,
+a spirit of envy was created, which compelled him, when he returned, to
+verify his prowess on no less than a score of his rivals.  Not to possess
+a beauty-scar, as the wounds received in these endless combats were
+called, became the sign of inferiority, so that much voluntary maiming
+was conjectured to be going on; and to obviate this piece of treachery,
+minutes of fights were taken and attested, setting forth that a certain
+glorious cut or crack was honourably won in fair field; on what occasion;
+and from whom; every member of the White Rose Club keeping his particular
+scroll, and, on days of festival and holiday, wearing it haughtily in his
+helm.  Strangers entering Cologne were astonished at the hideous
+appearance of the striplings, and thought they never had observed so ugly
+a race; but they were forced to admit the fine influence of beauty on
+commerce, seeing that the consumption of beer increased almost hourly.
+All Bavaria could not equal Cologne for quantity made away with.
+
+The chief members of the White Rose Club were Berthold Schmidt, the rich
+goldsmith's son; Dietrich Schill, son of the imperial saddler; Heinrich
+Abt, Franz Endermann, and Ernst Geller, sons of chief burghers, each of
+whom carried a yard-long scroll in his cap, and was too disfigured in
+person for men to require an inspection of the document.  They were
+dangerous youths to meet, for the oaths, ceremonies, and recantations
+they demanded from every wayfarer, under the rank of baron, were what few
+might satisfactorily perform, if lovers of woman other than the fair
+Margarita, or loyal husbands; and what none save trained heads and
+stomachs could withstand, however naturally manful.  The captain of the
+Club was he who could drink most beer without intermediate sighing, and
+whose face reckoned the proudest number of slices and mixture of colours.
+The captaincy was most in dispute between Dietrich Schill and Berthold
+Schmidt, who, in the heat and constancy of contention, were gradually
+losing likeness to man.  'Good coin,' they gloried to reflect, 'needs no
+stamp.'
+
+One youth in Cologne held out against the standing tyranny, and chose to
+do beauty homage in his own fashion, and at his leisure.  It was Farina,
+and oaths were registered against him over empty beer-barrels.  An axiom
+of the White Rose Club laid it down that everybody must be enamoured of
+Margarita, and the conscience of the Club made them trebly suspicious of
+those who were not members.  They had the consolation of knowing that
+Farina was poor, but then he was affirmed a student of Black Arts, and
+from such a one the worst might reasonably be feared.  He might bewitch
+Margarita!
+
+Dietrich Schill was deputed by the Club to sound the White Rose herself
+on the subject of Farina, and one afternoon in the vintage season, when
+she sat under the hot vine-poles among maiden friends, eating ripe
+grapes, up sauntered Dietrich, smirking, cap in hand, with his scroll
+trailed behind him.
+
+'Wilt thou?' said Margarita, offering him a bunch.
+
+'Unhappy villain that I am!' replied Dietrich, gesticulating fox-like
+refusal; 'if I but accept a favour, I break faith with the Club.'
+
+'Break it to pleasure me,' said Margarita, smiling wickedly.
+
+Dietrich gasped.  He stood on tiptoe to see if any of the Club were by,
+and half-stretched out his hand.  A mocking laugh caused him to draw it
+back as if stung.  The grapes fell.  Farina was at Margarita's feet
+offering them in return.
+
+'Wilt thou?' said Margarita, with softer stress, and slight excess of
+bloom in her cheeks.
+
+Farina put the purple cluster to his breast, and clutched them hard on
+his heart, still kneeling.
+
+Margarita's brow and bosom seemed to be reflections of the streaming
+crimson there.  She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at
+the symbol.  Her companions clapped hands.  Farina's eyes yearned to her
+once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry.
+
+Fury helped Dietrich to forget his awkwardness.  He touched Farina on the
+shoulder with two fingers, and muttered huskily: 'The Club never allow
+that.'
+
+Farina bowed, as to thank him deeply for the rules of the Club.  'I am
+not a member, you know,' said he, and strolled to a seat close by
+Margarita.
+
+Dietrich glared after him.  As head of a Club he understood the use of
+symbols.  He had lost a splendid opportunity, and Farina had seized it.
+Farina had robbed him.
+
+'May I speak with Mistress Margarita?' inquired the White Rose chief, in
+a ragged voice.
+
+'Surely, Dietrich! do speak,' said Margarita.
+
+'Alone?' he continued.
+
+'Is that allowed by the Club?' said one of the young girls, with a saucy
+glance.
+
+Dietrich deigned no reply, but awaited Margarita's decision.  She
+hesitated a second; then stood up her full height before him; faced him
+steadily, and beckoned him some steps up the vine-path.  Dietrich bowed,
+and passing Farina, informed him that the Club would wring satisfaction
+out of him for the insult.
+
+Farina laughed, but answered, 'Look, you of the Club! beer-swilling has
+improved your manners as much as fighting has beautified your faces.  Go
+on; drink and fight! but remember that the Kaiser's coming, and fellows
+with him who will not be bullied.'
+
+'What mean you?' cried Dietrich, lurching round on his enemy.
+
+'Not so loud, friend,' returned Farina.  'Or do you wish to frighten the
+maidens?  I mean this, that the Club had better give as little offence as
+possible, and keep their eyes as wide as they can, if they want to be of
+service to Mistress Margarita.'
+
+Dietrich turned off with a grunt.
+
+'Now!' said Margarita.
+
+She was tapping her foot.  Dietrich grew unfaithful to the Club, and
+looked at her longer than his mission warranted.  She was bright as the
+sunset gardens of the Golden Apples.  The braids of her yellow hair were
+bound in wreaths, and on one side of her head a saffron crocus was stuck
+with the bell downward.  Sweetness, song, and wit hung like dews of
+morning on her grape-stained lips.  She wore a scarlet corset with bands
+of black velvet across her shoulders.  The girlish gown was thin blue
+stuff, and fell short over her firm-set feet, neatly cased in white
+leather with buckles.  There was witness in her limbs and the way she
+carried her neck of an amiable, but capable, dragon, ready, when aroused,
+to bristle up and guard the Golden Apples against all save the rightful
+claimant.  Yet her nether lip and little white chin-ball had a dreamy
+droop; her frank blue eyes went straight into the speaker: the dragon
+slept.  It was a dangerous charm.  'For,' says the minnesinger, 'what
+ornament more enchants us on a young beauty than the soft slumber of a
+strength never yet called forth, and that herself knows not of!  It sings
+double things to the heart of knighthood; lures, and warns us; woos, and
+threatens.  'Tis as nature, shining peace, yet the mother of storm.'
+
+'There is no man,' rapturously exclaims Heinrich von der Jungferweide,
+'can resist the desire to win a sweet treasure before which lies a dragon
+sleeping.  The very danger prattles promise.'
+
+But the dragon must really sleep, as with Margarita.
+
+'A sham dragon, shamming sleep, has destroyed more virgins than all the
+heathen emperors,' says old Hans Aepfelmann of Duesseldorf.
+
+Margarita's foot was tapping quicker.
+
+'Speak, Dietrich!' she said.
+
+Dietrich declared to the Club that at this point he muttered, 'We love
+you.'  Margarita was glad to believe he had not spoken of himself.  He
+then informed her of the fears entertained by the Club, sworn to watch
+over and protect her, regarding Farina's arts.
+
+'And what fear you?' said Margarita.
+
+'We fear, sweet mistress, he may be in league with Sathanas,' replied
+Dietrich.
+
+'Truly, then,' said Margarita, 'of all the youths in Cologne he is the
+least like his confederate.'
+
+Dietrich gulped and winked, like a patient recovering wry-faced from an
+abhorred potion.
+
+'We have warned you, Fraulein Groschen!' he exclaimed.  'It now becomes
+our duty to see that you are not snared.'
+
+Margarita reddened, and returned: 'You are kind.  But I am a Christian
+maiden and not a Pagan soldan, and I do not require a body of tawny
+guards at my heels.'
+
+Thereat she flung back to her companions, and began staining her pretty
+mouth with grapes anew.
+
+
+
+
+THE TAPESTRY WORD
+
+Fair maids will have their hero in history.  Siegfried was Margarita's
+chosen.  She sang of Siegfried all over the house.  'O the old days of
+Germany, when such a hero walked!' she sang.
+
+'And who wins Margarita,' mused Farina, 'happier than Siegfried, has in
+his arms Brunhild and Chrimhild together!'
+
+Crowning the young girl's breast was a cameo, and the skill of some
+cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the
+Drachenfels.  Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.
+
+This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste
+expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb's unmarried sister,
+who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon.  She was a frail-
+fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack of
+lemon, and who reigned in her brother's household when the good wife was
+gone.  Margarita's robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt
+Lisbeth's sealed stock of virtue.
+
+'She must be watched, such a madl as that,' said Aunt Lisbeth. 'Ursula!
+what limbs she has!'
+
+Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing
+was discovered against her.  This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own
+suspicion was her best witness.  She allowed that Margarita dissembled
+well.
+
+'But,' said she to her niece, 'though it is good in a girl not to flaunt
+these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say--Be
+what you seem, my little one!'
+
+'And that am I!' exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.
+
+'Right good, my niece,' Lisbeth squealed; 'but now Frau Groschen lies in
+God's acre, you owe your duty to me, mind!  Did you confess last week?'
+
+'From beginning to end,' replied Margarita.
+
+Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita's cameo.
+
+'And still you wear that thing?'
+
+'Why not?' said Margarita.
+
+'Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place save Satan?  Oh, thou
+poor lost child! that the eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there!
+and thou become his snare to others, Margarita!  What was that Welsh
+wandering juggler but the foul fiend himself, mayhap, thou maiden of sin!
+They say he has been seen in Cologne lately.  He was swarthy as Satan and
+limped of one leg.  Good Master in heaven, protect us! it was Satan
+himself I could swear!'
+
+Aunt Lisbeth crossed brow and breast.
+
+Margarita had commenced fingering the cameo, as if to tear it away; but
+Aunt Lisbeth's finish made her laugh outright.
+
+'Where I see no harm, aunty, I shall think the good God is,' she
+answered; 'and where I see there's harm, I shall think Satan lurks.'
+
+A simper of sour despair passed over Aunt Lisbeth.  She sighed, and was
+silent, being one of those very weak reeds who are easily vanquished and
+never overcome.
+
+'Let us go on with the Tapestry, child,' said she.
+
+Now, Margarita was ambitious of completing a certain Tapestry for
+presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his last
+campaign on the turbaned Danube.  The subject was again her beloved
+Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels.  Whenever Aunt Lisbeth
+indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita's
+frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce.  They
+were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece.
+Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth the Dragon.  They shared the
+crag between them.  A roguish gleam of the Rhine toward Nonnenwerth could
+be already made out, Roland's Corner hanging like a sentinel across the
+chanting island, as one top-heavy with long watch.
+
+Aunt Lisbeth was a great proficient in the art, and had taught Margarita.
+The little lady learnt it, with many other gruesome matters, in the
+Palatine of Bohemia's family.  She usually talked of the spectres of
+Hollenbogenblitz Castle in the passing of the threads.  Those were dismal
+spectres in Bohemia, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of
+midnight.  They uttered noises that wintered the blood, and revealed
+sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff!
+
+Margarita placed herself on a settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt
+Lisbeth sat facing her.  An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the
+Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a
+temperate light.  Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of
+divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried's
+helm and horns.
+
+'I told you of the steward, poor Kraut, did I not, child?' inquired Aunt
+Lisbeth, quietly clearing her throat.
+
+'Many times!' said Margarita, and went on humming over her knee
+
+                         'Her love was a Baron,
+                            A Baron so bold;
+                         She loved him for love,
+                            He loved her for gold.'
+
+'He must see for himself, and be satisfied,' continued Aunt Lisbeth; 'and
+Holy Thomas to warn him for an example!  Poor Kraut!'
+
+'Poor Kraut!' echoed Margarita.
+
+              'The King loved wine, and the Knight loved wine,
+                  And they loved the summer weather:
+               They might have loved each other well,
+                  But for one they loved together.'
+
+'You may say, poor Kraut, child!' said Aunt Lisbeth.  'Well! his face was
+before that as red as this dragon's jaw, and ever after he went about as
+white as a pullet's egg.  That was something wonderful!' 'That was it!'
+chimed Margarita.
+
+                   'O the King he loved his lawful wife,
+                       The Knight a lawless lady:
+                    And ten on one-made ringing strife,
+                       Beneath the forest shady.'
+
+'Fifty to one, child!' said Aunt Lisbeth: 'You forget the story.  They
+made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there.
+The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead,
+burning blue and damp.'
+
+'Not to-night, aunty dear!  It frightens me so,' pleaded Margarita, for
+she saw the dolor coming.
+
+'Night! when it's broad mid-day, thou timid one!  Good heaven take pity
+on such as thou!  The dish was seven feet in length by four broad.  Kraut
+measured it with his eye, and never forgot it.  Not he!  When the dish-
+cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!
+
+"'I did not feel uncomfortable then," Kraut told us.  "It seemed
+natural."
+
+'His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little
+wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like.  There was the mole on his chin, and
+the pucker under his left eyelid.  Well! the Baron carved.  All the
+guests were greedy for a piece of him.  Some cried out for breast; some
+for toes.  It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that!  The Baroness
+said, "Cheek!"'
+
+'Ah!' shrieked Margarita, 'that can I not bear!  I will not hear it,
+aunt; I will not!'
+
+'Cheek!' Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.
+
+Margarita put her fingers to her ears.
+
+'Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd.  Of course he was
+horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the
+first tremble of it was over.  He had plunged into the bath of horrors,
+and there he was.  I 've heard that you must pronounce the names of the
+Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three
+minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall
+disappear.  So they say.  "Oh! dear heaven of mercy!"  says Kraut, "what
+I felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!"'
+
+Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita's fright.  She
+was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and
+hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.
+
+She said severely, 'Where did you learn that song you were last singing,
+Margarita?  Speak, thou girl!'
+
+Margarita laughed.
+
+              'The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
+                  They taught me how to sing:
+               And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
+                  And the eagle lend his wing.'
+
+'I will not hear these shameless songs,' exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.
+
+              'For I would view the lands they view,
+                  And be where they have been:
+               It is not enough to be singing
+                  For ever in dells unseen !'
+
+A voice was heard applauding her.  'Good! right good!  Carol again,
+Gretelchen!  my birdie!'
+
+Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway.  She tripped
+toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting.  Gottlieb
+glanced at the helm of Siegfried.
+
+'Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete!
+Very pretty!  And that's Drachenfels?  Bones of the Virgins! what a
+bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in
+Deutschland in love with him.  Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after
+all, I believe!  Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried.  So chirrup on,
+my darling!'
+
+'Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,' replied Margarita,
+untwisting some silver threads.
+
+'Do thy father's command, girl!' said Aunt Lisbeth.
+
+                   'And doing his command,
+                       Should I do a thing of ill,
+                    I'd rather die to his lovely face,
+                       Than wanton at his will.'
+
+'There--there,' said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; 'you see,
+Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to.  Not another girl in
+blessed Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!--than--
+I can't repeat them!--don't ask me!--She's becoming a Frankish girl!'
+
+'What ballad's that?' said Gottlieb, smiling.
+
+'The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness.  And she
+loved him--loved him----'
+
+'As you love Siegfried, you little one?'
+
+'More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried.  Ah!
+if I had seen Siegfried!  Never mind.  She loved him; but she loved
+Virtue more.  And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave
+her for loving Winkried, the Devil's son, because she loved Virtue more,
+and He rescued her as she was being dragged down--down--down, and was
+half fainting with the smell of brimstone--rescued her and had her
+carried into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before
+all men, as a hope to little maidens.
+
+                   'And when I thought that I was lost
+                       I found that I was saved,
+                    And I was borne through blessed clouds,
+                       Where the banners of bliss were waved.'
+
+'And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils' sons, girl?'
+was Aunt Lisbeth's comment.
+
+'Do look at Lisbeth's Dragon, little Heart! it's so like!' said Margarita
+to her father.
+
+Old Gottlieb twitted his hose, and chuckled.
+
+'She's my girl! that may be seen,' said he, patting her, and wheezed up
+from his chair to waddle across to the Dragon.  But Aunt Lisbeth tartly
+turned the Dragon to the wall.
+
+'It is not yet finished, Gottlieb, and must not be looked at,' she
+interposed.  'I will call for wood, and see to a fire: these evenings of
+Spring wax cold': and away whimpered Aunt Lisbeth.
+
+Margarita sang:
+
+                   'I with my playmates,
+                       In riot and disorder,
+                    Were gathering herb and blossom
+                       Along the forest border.'
+
+'Thy mother's song, child of my heart!' said Gottlieb; 'but vex not good
+Lisbeth: she loves thee!'
+
+                   'And do you think she loves me?
+                       And will you say 'tis true?
+                    O, and will she have me,
+                       When I come up to woo?'
+
+'Thou leaping doe! thou chattering pie!' said Gottlieb.
+
+                   'She shall have ribbons and trinkets,
+                       And shine like a morn of May,
+                    When we are off to the little hill-church,
+                       Our flowery bridal way.'
+
+'That she shall; and something more !' cried Gottlieb.  'But, hark thee,
+Gretelchen; the Kaiser will be here in three days.  Thou dear one! had I
+not stored and hoarded all for thee, I should now have my feet on a
+hearthstone where even he might warm his boot.  So get thy best dresses
+and jewels in order, and look thyself; proud as any in the land.  A
+simple burgher's daughter now, Grete; but so shalt thou not end, my
+butterfly, or there's neither worth nor wit in Gottlieb Groschen!'
+
+'Three days!' Margarita exclaimed; 'and the helm not finished, and the
+tapestry-pieces not sewed and joined, and the water not shaded off.--Oh!
+I must work night and day.'
+
+'Child!  I'll have no working at night!  Your rosy cheeks will soon be
+sucked out by oil-light, and you look no better than poor tallow Court
+beauties--to say nothing of the danger.  This old house saw Charles the
+Great embracing the chief magistrate of his liege city yonder.  Some
+swear he slept in it.  He did not sneeze at smaller chambers than our
+Kaisers abide.  No gold ceilings with cornice carvings, but plain wooden
+beams.'
+
+                   'Know that the men of great renown,
+                       Were men of simple needs:
+                    Bare to the Lord they laid them down,
+                       And slept on mighty deeds.'
+
+'God wot, there's no emptying thy store of ballads, Grete: so much shall
+be said of thee.  Yes; times are changeing: We're growing degenerate.
+Look at the men of Linz now to what they were!  Would they have let the
+lads of Andernach float down cabbage-stalks to them without a shy back?
+And why?  All because they funk that brigand-beast Werner, who gets
+redemption from Laach, hard by his hold, whenever he commits a crime
+worth paying for.  As for me, my timber and stuffs must come down stream,
+and are too good for the nixen under Rhine, or think you I would
+acknowledge him with a toll, the hell-dog?  Thunder and lightning!  if
+old scores could be rubbed out on his hide!'
+
+Gottlieb whirled a thong-lashing arm in air, and groaned of law and
+justice.  What were they coming to!
+
+Margarita softened the theme with a verse:
+
+                   'And tho' to sting his enemy,
+                    Is sweetness to the angry bee,
+                    The angry bee must busy be,
+                    Ere sweet of sweetness hiveth he.
+
+The arch thrill of his daughter's voice tickled Gottlieb.  'That's it,
+birdie!  You and the proverb are right.  I don't know which is best
+
+                        'Better hive
+                         And keep alive
+                         Than vengeance wake
+                         With that you take.'
+
+A clatter in the cathedral square brought Gottlieb on his legs to the
+window.  It was a company of horsemen sparkling in harness.  One
+trumpeter rode at the side of the troop, and in front a standard-bearer,
+matted down the chest with ochre beard, displayed aloft to the good
+citizens of Cologne, three brown hawks, with birds in their beaks, on an
+azure stardotted field.
+
+'Holy Cross!' exclaimed Gottlieb, low in his throat; 'the arms of Werner!
+Where got he money to mount his men?  Why, this is daring all Cologne in
+our very teeth!  'Fend that he visit me now!  Ruin smokes in that
+ruffian's track.  I 've felt hot and cold by turns all day.'
+
+The horsemen came jingling carelessly along the street in scattered twos
+and threes, laughing together, and singling out the maidens at the gable-
+shadowed windows with hawking eyes.  The good citizens of Cologne did not
+look on them favourably.  Some showed their backs and gruffly banged
+their doors: others scowled and pocketed their fists: not a few slunk
+into the side alleys like well-licked curs, and scurried off with
+forebent knees.  They were in truth ferocious-looking fellows these
+trusty servants of the robber Baron Werner, of Werner's Eck, behind
+Andernach.  Leather, steel, and dust, clad them from head to foot; big
+and black as bears; wolf-eyed, fox-nosed.  They glistened bravely in the
+falling beams of the sun, and Margarita thrust her fair braided yellow
+head a little forward over her father's shoulder to catch the whole
+length of the grim cavalcade.  One of the troop was not long in
+discerning the young beauty.  He pointed her boldly out to a comrade, who
+approved his appetite, and referred her to a third.  The rest followed
+lead, and Margarita was as one spell-struck when she became aware that
+all those hungry eyes were preying on hers.  Old Gottlieb was too full of
+his own fears to think for her, and when he drew in his head rather
+suddenly, it was with a dismal foreboding that Werner's destination in
+Cologne was direct to the house of Gottlieb Groschen, for purposes only
+too well to be divined.
+
+'Devil's breeches!' muttered Gottlieb; 'look again, Grete, and see if
+that hell-troop stop the way outside.'
+
+Margarita's cheeks were overflowing with the offended rose.
+
+'I will not look at them again, father.'
+
+Gottlieb stared, and then patted her.
+
+'I would I were a man, father!'
+
+Gottlieb smiled, and stroked his beard.
+
+'Oh! how I burn!'
+
+And the girl shivered visibly.
+
+'Grete! mind to be as much of a woman as you can, and soon such raff as
+this you may sweep away, like cobwebs, and no harm done.'
+
+He was startled by a violent thumping at the streetdoor, and as brazen a
+blast as if the dead were being summoned.  Aunt Lisbeth entered, and
+flitted duskily round the room, crying:
+
+'We are lost: they are upon us! better death with a bodkin!  Never shall
+it be said of me; never! the monsters!'
+
+Then admonishing them to lock, bar, bolt, and block up every room in the
+house, Aunt Lisbeth perched herself on the edge of a chair, and reversed
+the habits of the screech-owl, by being silent when stationary.
+
+'There's nothing to fear for you, Lisbeth,' said Gottlieb, with
+discourteous emphasis.
+
+'Gottlieb! do you remember what happened at the siege of Mainz? and poor
+Marthe Herbstblum, who had hoped to die as she was; and Dame
+Altknopfchen, and Frau Kaltblut, and the old baker, Hans Topf's sister,
+all of them as holy as abbesses, and that did not save them! and nothing
+will from such godless devourers.'
+
+Gottlieb was gone, having often before heard mention of the calamity
+experienced by these fated women.
+
+'Comfort thee, good heart, on my breast,' said Margarita, taking Lisbeth
+to that sweet nest of peace and fortitude.
+
+'Margarita! 'tis your doing! have I not said--lure them not, for they
+swarm too early upon us!  And here they are! and, perhaps, in five
+minutes all will be over!
+
+Herr Je!--What, you are laughing!  Heavens of goodness, the girl is
+delighted!'
+
+Here a mocking ha-ha! accompanied by a thundering snack at the door,
+shook the whole house, and again the trumpet burst the ears with fury.
+
+This summons, which seemed to Aunt Lisbeth final, wrought a strange
+composure in her countenance.  She was very pale, but spread her dress
+decently, as if fear had departed, and clasped her hands on her knees.
+
+'The will of the Lord above must be done,' said she; 'it is impious to
+complain when we are given into the hand of the Philistines.  Others have
+been martyred, and were yet acceptable.'
+
+To this heroic speech she added, with cold energy: 'Let them come!'
+
+'Aunt,' cried Margarita, 'I hear my father's voice with those men.
+Aunty!  I will not let him be alone.  I must go down to him.  You will be
+safe here.  I shall come to you if there's cause for alarm.'
+
+And in spite of Aunt Lisbeth's astonished shriek of remonstrance, she
+hurried off to rejoin Gottlieb.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAGER
+
+Ere Margarita had reached the landing of the stairs, she repented her
+haste and shrank back.  Wrapt in a thunder of oaths, she distinguished:
+''Tis the little maiden we want; let's salute her and begone! or cap your
+skull with something thicker than you've on it now, if you want a whole
+one, happy father!'
+
+'Gottlieb von Groschen I am,' answered her father, 'and the Kaiser----'
+
+''S as fond of a pretty girl as we are!  Down with her, and no more
+drivelling!  It's only for a moment, old Measure and Scales!'
+
+'I tell you, rascals, I know your master, and if you're not punished for
+this, may I die a beggar!' exclaimed Gottlieb, jumping with rage.
+
+'May you die as rich as an abbot!  And so you will, if you don't bring
+her down, for I've sworn to see her; there 's the end of it, man!'
+
+'I'll see, too, if the laws allow this villany !' cried Gottlieb.
+'Insulting a peaceful citizen! in his own house! a friend of your
+emperor!  Gottlieb von Groschen!'
+
+'Groschen?  We're cousins, then!  You wouldn't shut out your nearest kin?
+Devil's lightning!  Don't you know me?  Pfennig?  Von Pfennig!  This
+here's Heller: that's Zwanziger: all of us Vons, every soul!  You're
+not decided?  This'll sharpen you, my jolly King Paunch!'
+
+And Margarita heard the ruffian step as if to get swing for a blow.  She
+hurried into the passage, and slipping in front of her father, said to
+his assailant:
+
+'You have asked for me!  I am here!'
+
+Her face was colourless, and her voice seemed to issue from between a
+tightened cord.  She stood with her left foot a little in advance, and
+her whole body heaving and quivering: her arms folded and pressed hard
+below her bosom: her eyes dilated to a strong blue: her mouth ashy white.
+A strange lustre, as of suppressed internal fire, flickered over her.
+
+'My name 's Schwartz Thier, and so 's my nature!' said the fellow with a
+grin; 'but may I never smack lips with a pretty girl again, if I harm
+such a young beauty as this!  Friendly dealing's my plan o' life.'
+
+'Clear out of my house, then, fellow, and here's money for you,' said
+Gottlieb, displaying a wrathfully-trembling handful of coin.
+
+'Pish! money! forty times that wouldn't cover my bet!  And if it did?
+Shouldn't I be disgraced? jeered at for a sheep-heart?  No, I'm no ninny,
+and not to be diddled.  I'll talk to the young lady!  Silence, out there!
+all's going proper': this to his comrades through the door.  'So, my
+beautiful maiden! thus it stands:  We saw you at the window, looking like
+a fresh rose with a gold crown on.  Here are we poor fellows come to
+welcome the Kaiser.  I began to glorify you.  "Schwartz Thier!"  says
+Henker Rothhals to me, "I'll wager you odds you don't have a kiss of that
+fine girl within twenty minutes, counting from the hand-smack!"  Done!
+was my word, and we clapped our fists together.  Now, you see, that's
+straightforward!  All I want is, not to lose my money and be made a fool
+of--leaving alone that sugary mouth which makes mine water'; and he drew
+the back of his hand along his stubbled jaws: 'So, come! don't hesitate!
+no harm to you, my beauty, but a compliment, and Schwartz Thier's your
+friend and anything else you like for ever after.  Come, time's up,
+pretty well.'
+
+Margarita leaned to her father a moment as if mortal sickness had seized
+her.  Then cramping her hands and feet, she said in his ear, 'Leave me to
+my own care; go, get the men to protect thee'; and ordered Schwartz Thier
+to open the door wide.
+
+Seeing Gottlieb would not leave her, she joined her hands, and begged
+him.  'The good God will protect me!  I will overmatch these men.  Look,
+my father! they dare not strike me in the street: you they would fell
+without pity.  Go! what they dare in a house, they dare not in the
+street.'
+
+Schwartz Thier had opened the door.  At sight of Margarita, the troop
+gave a shout.
+
+'Now!  on the doorstep, full in view, my beauteous one! that they may see
+what a lucky devil I am--and have no doubts about the handing over.'
+
+Margarita looked behind.  Gottlieb was still there, every member of him
+quaking like a bog under a heavy heel.  She ran to him.  'My father!  I
+have a device wilt thou spoil it, and give me to this beast?  You can do
+nothing, nothing! protect yourself and save me!'
+
+'Cologne!  broad day!' muttered Gottlieb, as if the enormity had
+prostrated his belief in facts; and moved slowly back.
+
+Margarita strode to the door-step.  Schwartz Thier was awaiting her, his
+arm circled out, and his leering face ducked to a level with his
+victim's.  This rough show of gallantry proved costly to him.  As he was
+gently closing his iron hold about her, enjoying before hand with grim
+mouthridges the flatteries of triumph, Margarita shot past him through
+the door, and was already twenty paces beyond the troop before either of
+them thought of pursuing her.  At the first sound of a hoof, Henker
+Rothhals seized the rider's bridle-rein, and roared: 'Fair play for a
+fair bet! leave all to the Thier!' The Thier, when he had recovered from
+his amazement, sought for old Gottlieb to give him a back-hit, as
+Margarita foresaw that he would.  Not finding him at hand, out lumbered
+the fellow as swiftly as his harness  would allow, and caught a glimpse
+of Margarita rapidly fleeting up the cathedral square.
+
+'Only five minutes, Schwartz Thier!' some of the troop sung out.
+
+'The devil can do his business in one,' was the retort, and Schwartz
+Thier swung himself on his broad-backed charger, and gored the fine beast
+till she rattled out a blast of sparkles from the flint.
+
+In a minute he drew up in front of Margarita.
+
+'So! you prefer settling this business in the square.
+
+Good! my choice sweetheart!' and he sprang to her side.
+
+The act of flight had touched the young girl's heart with the spirit of
+flight.  She crouched like a winded hare under the nose of the hound, and
+covered her face with her two hands.  Margarita was no wisp in weight,
+but Schwartz Thier had her aloft in his arm as easily as if he had tossed
+up a kerchief.
+
+'Look all, and witness!' he shouted, lifting the other arm.
+
+Henker Rothhals and the rest of the troop looked, as they came trotting
+to the scene, with the coolness of umpires: but they witnessed something
+other than what Schwartz Thier proposed.  This was the sight of a
+formidable staff, whirling an unfriendly halo over the head of the Thier,
+and descending on it with such honest intent to confound and overthrow
+him, that the Thier succumbed to its force without argument, and the
+square echoed blow and fall simultaneously.  At the same time the wielder
+of this sound piece of logic seized Margarita, and raised a shout in the
+square for all true men to stand by him in rescuing a maiden from the
+clutch of brigands and ravishers.  A crowd was collecting, but seemed to
+consider the circle now formed by the horsemen as in a manner charmed,
+for only one, a fair slender youth, came forward and ranged himself
+beside the stranger.
+
+'Take thou the maiden: I'll keep to the staff,' said this latter,
+stumbling over his speech as if he was in a foreign land among old roots
+and wolfpits which had already shaken out a few of his teeth, and made
+him cautious about the remainder.
+
+'Can it be Margarita!' exclaimed the youth, bending to her, and calling
+to her: 'Margarita!  Fraulein Groschen!'
+
+She opened her eyes, shuddered, and said: 'I was not afraid!  Am I safe?'
+
+'Safe while I have life, and this good friend.'
+
+'Where is my father?'
+
+'I have not seen him.'
+
+'And you--who are you?  Do I owe this to you?'
+
+'Oh! no! no!  Me you owe nothing.'
+
+Margarita gazed hurriedly round, and at her feet there lay the Thier with
+his steel-cap shining in dints, and three rivulets of blood coursing down
+his mottled forehead.  She looked again at the youth, and a blush of
+recognition gave life to her cheeks.
+
+'I did not know you.  Pardon me.  Farina! what thanks can reward such
+courage!  Tell me! shall we go?'
+
+'The youth eyed her an instant, but recovering himself, took a rapid
+survey, and called to the stranger to follow and help give the young
+maiden safe conduct home.
+
+'Just then Henker Rothhals bellowed, 'Time's up!' He was answered by a
+chorus of agreement from the troop.  They had hitherto patiently acted
+their parts as spectators, immovable on their horses.  The assault on the
+Thier was all in the play, and a visible interference of fortune in
+favour of Henker Rothhals.  Now general commotion shuttled them, and the
+stranger's keen hazel eyes read their intentions rightly when he lifted
+his redoubtable staff in preparation for another mighty swoop, this time
+defensive.  Rothhals, and half a dozen others, with a war-cry of curses,
+spurred their steeds at once to ride him down.  They had not reckoned the
+length and good-will of their antagonist's weapon.  Scarce were they in
+motion, when round it whizzed, grazing the nostrils of their horses with
+a precision that argued practice in the feat, and unhorsing two, Rothhals
+among the number.  He dropped heavily on his head, and showed signs of
+being as incapable of combat as the Thier.  A cheer burst from the crowd,
+but fell short.
+
+The foremost of their number was struck flat to the earth by a fellow of
+the troop.
+
+Calling on St. George, his patron saint, the stranger began
+systematically to make a clear ring in his path forward.  Several of the
+horsemen essayed a cut at his arm with their long double-handed swords,
+but the horses could not be brought a second time to the edge of the
+magic circle; and the blood of these warriors being thoroughly up, they
+now came at him on foot.  In their rage they would have made short work
+with the three, in spite of the magistracy of Cologne, had they not been
+arrested by cries of 'Werner!  Werner!'
+
+At the South-west end of the square, looking Rhinewards, rode the
+marauder Baron, in full armour, helm and hauberk, with a single retainer
+in his rear.  He had apparently caught sight of the brawl, and, either
+because he distinguished his own men, or was seeking his natural element,
+hastened up for his share in it, which was usually that of the king of
+beasts.  His first call was for Schwartz Thier.  The men made way, and he
+beheld his man in no condition to make military responses.  He shouted
+for Henker Rothhals, and again the men opened their ranks mutely,
+exhibiting the two stretched out in diverse directions, with their feet
+slanting to a common point.  The Baron glared; then caught off his mailed
+glove, and thrust it between his teeth.  A rasping gurgle of oaths was
+all they heard, and presently surged up,
+
+'Who was it?'
+
+Margarita's eyes were shut.  She opened them fascinated with horror.
+There was an unearthly awful and comic mixture of sounds in Werner's
+querulous fury, that was like the noise of a complaining bear, rolling up
+from hollow-chested menace to yawning lament.  Never in her life had
+Margarita such a shock of fear.  The half gasp of a laugh broke on her
+trembling lips.  She stared at Werner, and was falling; but Farina's arm
+clung instantly round her waist.  The stranger caught up her laugh, loud
+and hearty.
+
+'As for who did it, Sir Baron,' he cried, is a cheery tone, 'I am the
+man!  As you may like to know why--and that's due to you and me both of
+us--all I can say is, the Black Muzzle yonder lying got his settler for
+merry-making with this peaceful maiden here, without her consent--an
+offence in my green island they reckon a crack o' the sconce light
+basting for, I warrant all company present,' and he nodded sharply about.
+'As for the other there, who looks as if a rope had been round his neck
+once and shirked its duty, he counts his wages for helping the devil in
+his business, as will any other lad here who likes to come on and try.'
+
+Werner himself, probably, would have given him the work he wanted; but
+his eye had sidled a moment over Margarita, and the hardly-suppressed
+applause of the crowd at the stranger's speech failed to bring his ire
+into action this solitary time.
+
+'Who is the maiden?' he asked aloud.
+
+'Fraulein von Groschen,' replied Farina.
+
+'Von Groschen!  Von Groschen! the daughter of Gottlieb Groschen?--
+Rascals!' roared the Baron, turning on his men, and out poured a mud-
+spring of filthy oaths and threats, which caused Henker Rothhals, who had
+opened his eyes, to close them again, as if he had already gone to the
+place of heat.
+
+'Only lend me thy staff, friend,' cried Werner.
+
+'Not I!  thwack 'em with your own wood,' replied the stranger, and fell
+back a leg.
+
+Werner knotted his stringy brows, and seemed torn to pieces with the
+different pulling tides of his wrath.  He grasped the mane of his horse
+and flung abroad handfuls, till the splendid animal reared in agony.
+
+'You shall none of you live over this night, villains!  I 'll hang you,
+every hag's son!  My last orders were,--Keep quiet in the city, ye
+devil's brood.  Take that! and that!' laying at them with his bare sword.
+'Off with you, and carry these two pigs out of sight quickly, or I'll
+have their heads, and make sure o' them.'
+
+The latter injunction sprang from policy, for at the head of the chief
+street there was a glitter of the city guard, marching with shouldered
+spears.
+
+'Maiden,' said Werner, with a bull's bow, 'let me conduct thee to thy
+father.'
+
+Margarita did not reply; but gave her hand to Farina, and took a step
+closer to the stranger.
+
+Werner's brows grew black.
+
+'Enough to have saved you, fair maid,' he muttered hoarsely.  'Gratitude
+never was a woman's gift.  Say to your father that I shall make excuses
+to him for the conduct of my men.'
+
+Whereupon, casting a look of leisurely scorn toward the guard coming up
+in the last beams of day, the Baron shrugged his huge shoulders to an
+altitude expressing the various contemptuous shades of feudal coxcombry,
+stuck one leather-ruffled arm in his side, and jolted off at an easy
+pace.
+
+'Amen!' ejaculated the stranger, leaning on his staff.  'There are Barons
+in my old land; but never a brute beast in harness.'
+
+Margarita stood before him, and took his two hands.
+
+'You will come with me to my father!  He will thank you.  I cannot.  You
+will come?'
+
+Tears and a sob of relief started from her.
+
+The city guard, on seeing Werner's redoubtable back turned, had adopted
+double time, and now came panting up, while the stranger bent smiling
+under a fresh overflow of innocent caresses.  Margarita was caught to her
+father's breast.
+
+'You shall have vengeance for this, sweet chuck,' cried old Gottlieb in
+the intervals of his hugs.
+
+'Fear not, my father; they are punished': and Margarita related the story
+of the stranger's prowess, elevating him into a second Siegfried.  The
+guard huzzaed him, but did not pursue the Baron.
+
+Old Gottlieb, without hesitation, saluted the astonished champion with a
+kiss on either cheek.
+
+'My best friend!  You have saved my daughter from indignity!  Come with
+us home, if you can believe that a home where the wolves come daring us,
+dragging our dear ones from our very doorsteps.  Come, that we may thank
+you under a roof at least.  My little daughter! Is she not a brave lass?'
+
+'She's nothing less than the white rose of Germany,' said the stranger,
+with a good bend of the shoulders to Margarita.
+
+'So she's called,' exclaimed Gottlieb; 'she 's worthy to be a man!'
+
+'Men would be the losers, then, more than they could afford,' replied the
+stranger, with a ringing laugh.
+
+'Come, good friend,' said Gottlieb; 'you must need refreshment.  Prove
+you are a true hero by your appetite.  As Charles the Great said to
+Archbishop Turpin, "I conquered the world because Nature gave me a
+gizzard; for everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach."
+Come, all!  A day well ended, notwithstanding!'
+
+
+
+
+THE SILVER ARROW
+
+At the threshold of Gottlieb's house a number of the chief burgesses of
+Cologne had corporated spontaneously to condole with him.  As he came
+near, they raised a hubbub of gratulation.  Strong were the expressions
+of abhorrence and disgust of Werner's troop in which these excellent
+citizens clothed their outraged feelings; for the insult to Gottlieb was
+the insult of all.  The Rhinestream taxes were provoking enough to
+endure; but that the licence of these free-booting bands should extend to
+the homes of free and peaceful men, loyal subjects of the Emperor, was a
+sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes, as the saying went,
+and must now be met as became burgesses of ancient Cologne, and by joint
+action destroyed.
+
+'In! in, all of you!' said Gottlieb, broadening his smile to suit the
+many.  'We 'll talk about that in-doors.  Meantime, I've got a hero to
+introduce to you: flesh and blood!  no old woman's coin and young girl's
+dream-o'day: the honest thing, and a rarity, my masters.  All that over
+some good Rhine-juice from above Bacharach.  In, and welcome, friends!'
+
+Gottlieb drew the stranger along with him under the carved old oak-wood
+portals, and the rest paired, and reverentially entered in his wake.
+Margarita, to make up for this want of courtesy, formed herself the last
+of the procession.  She may have had another motive, for she took
+occasion there to whisper something to Farina, bringing sun and cloud
+over his countenance in rapid flushes.  He seemed to remonstrate in dumb
+show; but she, with an attitude of silence, signified her wish to seal
+the conversation, and he drooped again.  On the door step she paused a
+moment, and hung her head pensively, as if moved by a reminiscence.  The
+youth had hurried away some strides.  Margarita looked after him.  His
+arms were straightened to his flanks, his hands clenched, and straining
+out from the wrist.  He had the aspect of one tugging against the
+restraint of a chain that suddenly let out link by link to his whole
+force.
+
+'Farina!' she called; and wound him back with a run.  'Farina!  You do
+not think me ungrateful?  I could not tell my father in the crowd what
+you did for me.  He shall know.  He will thank you.  He does not
+understand you now, Farina.  He will.  Look not so sorrowful.  So much I
+would say to you.'
+
+So much was rushing on her mind, that her maidenly heart became unruly,
+and warned her to beware.
+
+The youth stood as if listening to a nightingale of the old woods, after
+the first sweet stress of her voice was in his ear.  When she ceased, he
+gazed into her eyes.  They were no longer deep and calm like forest
+lakes; the tender-glowing blue quivered, as with a spark of the young
+girl's soul, in the beams of the moon then rising.
+
+'Oh, Margarita!' said the youth, in tones that sank to sighs: 'what am I
+to win your thanks, though it were my life for such a boon!'
+
+He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it.  Twice his lips dwelt upon
+those pure fingers.
+
+'Margarita: you forgive me: I have been so long without hope.  I have
+kissed your hand, dearest of God's angels!'
+
+She gently restrained the full white hand in his pressure.
+
+'Margarita!  I have thought never before death to have had this sacred
+bliss.  I am guerdoned in advance for every grief coming before death.'
+
+She dropped on him one look of a confiding softness that was to the youth
+like the opened gate of the innocent garden of her heart.
+
+'You pardon me, Margarita?  I may call you my beloved? strive, wait,
+pray, hope, for you, my star of life?'
+
+Her face was so sweet a charity!
+
+'Dear love!  one word!--or say nothing, but remain, and move not.  So
+beautiful you are!  Oh, might I kneel to you here; dote on you; worship
+this white hand for ever.'
+
+The colour had passed out of her cheeks like a blissful western red
+leaving rich paleness in the sky; and with her clear brows levelled at
+him, her bosom lifting more and more rapidly, she struggled against the
+charm that was on her, and at last released her hand.
+
+'I must go.  I cannot stay.  Pardon you?  Who might not be proud of your
+love!--Farewell!'
+
+She turned to move away, but lingered a step from him, hastily touching
+her bosom and either hand, as if to feel for a brooch or a ring.  Then
+she blushed, drew the silver arrow from the gathered gold-shot braids
+above her neck, held it out to him, and was gone.
+
+Farina clutched the treasure, and reeled into the street.  Half a dozen
+neighbours were grouped by the door.
+
+'What 's the matter in Master Groschen's house now?' one asked, as he
+plunged into the midst of them.
+
+'Matter?' quoth the joy-drunken youth, catching at the word, and mused
+off into raptures; 'There never was such happiness!  'Tis paradise
+within, exile without.  But what exile!  A star ever in the heavens to
+lighten the road and cheer the path of the banished one'; and he loosened
+his vest and hugged the cold shaft on his breast.
+
+'What are you talking and capering at, fellow?' exclaimed another: 'Can't
+you answer about those shrieks, like a Christian, you that have just come
+out of the house?  Why, there's shrieking now!  It 's a woman.  Thousand
+thunders! it sounds like the Frau Lisbeth's voice.  What can be happening
+to her?'
+
+'Perhaps she's on fire,' was coolly suggested between two or three.
+
+'Pity to see the old house burnt,' remarked one.
+
+'House!  The woman, man! the woman!'
+
+'Ah!' replied the other, an ancient inhabitant of Cologne, shaking his
+head, 'the house is oldest!'
+
+Farina, now recovering his senses, heard shrieks that he recognized as
+possible in the case of Aunt Lisbeth dreading the wickedness of an
+opposing sex, and alarmed by the inrush of old Gottlieb's numerous
+guests.  To confirm him, she soon appeared, and hung herself halfway out
+of one of the upper windows, calling desperately to St. Ursula for aid.
+He thanked the old lady in his heart for giving him a pretext to enter
+Paradise again; but before even love could speed him, Frau Lisbeth was
+seized and dragged remorselessly out of sight, and he and the rosy room
+darkened together.
+
+Farina twice strode off to the Rhine-stream; as many times he returned.
+It was hard to be away from her.  It was harder to be near and not close.
+His heart flamed into jealousy of the stranger.  Everything threatened to
+overturn his slight but lofty structure of bliss so suddenly shot into
+the heavens.  He had but to remember that his hand was on the silver
+arrow, and a radiance broke upon his countenance, and a calm fell upon
+his breast.  'It was a plight of her troth to me,' mused the youth.  'She
+loves me!  She would not trust her frank heart to speak.  Oh, generous
+young girl! what am I to dare hope for such a prize? for I never can be
+worthy.  And she is one who, giving her heart, gives it all.  Do I not
+know her?  How lovely she looked thanking the stranger!  The blue of her
+eyes, the warm-lighted blue, seemed to grow full on the closing lids,
+like heaven's gratitude.  Her beauty is wonderful.  What wonder, then,
+if he loves her?  I should think him a squire in his degree.  There are
+squires of high birth and low.'
+
+So mused Farina with his arms folded and his legs crossed in the shadow
+of Margarita's chamber.  Gradually he fell into a kind of hazy doze.  The
+houses became branded with silver arrows.  All up the Cathedral stone was
+a glitter, and dance, and quiver of them.  In the sky mazed confusion of
+arrowy flights and falls.  Farina beheld himself in the service of the
+Emperor watching these signs, and expecting on the morrow to win glory
+and a name for Margarita.  Glory and the name now won, old Gottlieb was
+just on the point of paternally blessing them, when a rude pat aroused
+him from the delicious moon-dream.
+
+'Hero by day! house-guard by night!  That tells a tale,' said a cheerful
+voice.
+
+The moon was shining down the Cathedral square and street, and Farina
+saw the stranger standing solid and ruddy before him.  He was at first
+prompted to resent such familiar handling, but the stranger's face was
+of that bland honest nature which, like the sun, wins everywhere back a
+reflection of its own kindliness.
+
+'You are right,' replied Farina; 'so it is!'
+
+'Pretty wines inside there, and a rare young maiden.  She has a throat
+like a nightingale, and more ballads at command than a piper's wallet.
+Now, if I hadn't a wife at home.'
+
+'You're married?' cried Farina, seizing the stranger's hand.
+
+'Surely; and my lass can say something for herself on the score of brave
+looks, as well as the best of your German maids here, trust me.'
+
+Farina repressed an inclination to perform a few of those antics which
+violent joy excites, and after rushing away and back, determined to give
+his secret to the stranger.
+
+'Look,' said he in a whisper, that opens the private doors of a
+confidence.
+
+But the stranger repeated the same word still more earnestly, and brought
+Farina's eyes on a couple of dark figures moving under the Cathedral.
+
+'Some lamb's at stake when the wolves are prowling,' he added: ''Tis now
+two hours to the midnight.  I doubt if our day's work be over till we
+hear the chime, friend.'
+
+'What interest do you take in the people of this house that you watch
+over them thus?' asked Farina.
+
+The stranger muffled a laugh in his beard.
+
+'An odd question, good sooth.  Why, in the first place, we like well
+whatso we have done good work for.  That goes for something.  In the
+second, I've broken bread in this house.  Put down that in the reckoning.
+In the third; well! in the third, add up all together, and the sum
+total's at your service, young sir.'
+
+Farina marked him closely.  There was not a spot on his face for guile to
+lurk in, or suspicion to fasten on.  He caught the stranger's hand.
+
+'You called me friend just now.  Make me your friend.  Look, I was going
+to say: I love this maiden!  I would die for her.  I have loved her long.
+This night she has given me a witness that my love is not vain.  I am
+poor.  She is rich.  I am poor, I said, and feel richer than the Kaiser
+with this she has given me!  Look, it is what our German girls slide in
+their back-hair, this silver arrow!'
+
+'A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!' exclaimed the stranger.
+
+'Then, I was going to say--tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and
+wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk.  Only to wealth, or high
+baronry, will her father give her!'
+
+The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as
+elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their
+mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!
+
+'Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I
+should say, wait a while and watch your chance.  But you're a boy of
+pluck: I serve in the Kaiser's army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be
+here in three days.  If you 're of that mind then, I doubt little you may
+get posted well: but, look again! there's a ripe brew yonder.  Marry, you
+may win your spurs this night even; who knows?--'S life!  there's a tall
+fellow joining those two lurkers.'
+
+'Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?'
+
+'Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year's
+apprenticeship:
+
+              "I learnt to watch the rats and mice
+                  At play, with never a candle-end.
+               They play'd so well; they sang so nice;
+                  They dubb'd me comrade; called me friend!"
+
+So says the ballad of our red-beard king's captivity.  All evil has a
+good:
+
+              "When our toes and chins are up,
+               Poison plants make sweetest cup"
+
+as the old wives mumble to us when we're sick.  Heigho! would I were in
+the little island well home again, though that were just their song of
+welcome to me, as I am a Christian.'
+
+'Tell me your name, friend,' said Farina.
+
+'Guy's my name, young man: Goshawk's my title.  Guy the Goshawk!  so they
+called me in my merry land.  The cap sticks when it no longer fits.  Then
+I drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a
+feather.  Now, what would be my nickname?
+
+              "A change so sad, and a change so bad,
+                  Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing:
+               Change is a curse, for it's all for the worse:
+                  Age creeps up, and youth is flying!"
+
+and so on, with the old song.  But here am I, and yonder's a game that
+wants harrying; so we'll just begin to nose about them a bit.'
+
+He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out of
+the moonlight.  The two figures and the taller one were evidently
+observing them; for they also changed their position and passed behind an
+angle of the Cathedral.
+
+'Tell me how the streets cross all round the Cathedral you know the
+city,' said the stranger, holding out his hand.
+
+Farina traced with his finger a rough map of the streets on the
+stranger's hand.
+
+'Good! that's how my lord always marks the battlefield, and makes me show
+him the enemy's posts.  Forward, this way!'
+
+He turned from the Cathedral, and both slid along close under the eaves
+and front hangings of the houses.  Neither spoke.  Farina felt that he
+was in the hands of a skilful captain, and only regretted the want of a
+weapon to make harvest of the intended surprise; for he judged clearly
+that those were fellows of Werner's band on the look-out.  They wound
+down numberless intersections of narrow streets with irregular-built
+houses standing or leaning wry-faced in row, here a quaint-beamed
+cottage, there almost a mansion with gilt arms, brackets, and devices.
+Oil-lamps unlit hung at intervals by the corners, near a pale Christ on
+crucifix.  Across the passages they hung alight.  The passages and alleys
+were too dusky and close for the moon in her brightest ardour to
+penetrate; down the streets a slender lane of white beams could steal:
+'In all conscience,' as the good citizens of Cologne declared, 'enough
+for those heathen hounds and sons of the sinful who are abroad when God's
+own blessed lamp is out.'  So, when there was a moon, the expense of oil
+was saved to the Cologne treasury, thereby satisfying the virtuous.
+
+After incessant doubling here and there, listening to footfalls, and
+themselves eluding a chase which their suspicious movements aroused, they
+came upon the Rhine.  A full flood of moonlight burnished the knightly
+river in glittering scales, and plates, and rings, as headlong it rolled
+seaward on from under crag and banner of old chivalry and rapine.  Both
+greeted the scene with a burst of pleasure.  The grey mist of flats on
+the south side glimmered delightful to their sight, coming from that
+drowsy crowd and press of habitations; but the solemn glory of the river,
+delaying not, heedless, impassioned-pouring on in some sublime conference
+between it and heaven to the great marriage of waters, deeply shook
+Farina's enamoured heart.  The youth could not restrain his tears, as if
+a magic wand had touched him.  He trembled with love; and that delicate
+bliss which maiden hope first showers upon us like a silver rain when she
+has taken the shape of some young beauty and plighted us her fair
+fleeting hand, tenderly embraced him.
+
+As they were emerging into the spaces of the moon, a cheer from the
+stranger arrested Farina.
+
+'Seest thou? on the wharf there! that is the very one, the tallest of the
+three.  Lakin! but we shall have him.'
+
+Wrapt in a long cloak, with low pointed cap and feather, stood the person
+indicated.  He appeared to be meditating on the flow of the water,
+unaware of hostile presences, or quite regardless of them.  There was a
+majesty in his height and air, which made the advance of the two upon him
+more wary and respectful than their first impulse had counselled.  They
+could not read his features, which were mantled behind voluminous folds:
+all save a pair of very strange eyes, that, even as they gazed directly
+downward, seemed charged with restless fiery liquid.
+
+The two were close behind him: Guy the Goshawk prepared for one of those
+fatal pounces on the foe that had won him his title.  He consulted Farina
+mutely, who Nodded readiness; but the instant after, a cry of anguish
+escaped from the youth:
+
+'Lost!  gone!  lost!  Where is it?  where!  the arrow!  The Silver Arrow!
+My Margarita!'
+
+Ere the echoes of his voice had ceased lamenting into the distance, they
+found themselves alone on the wharf.
+
+
+
+
+THE LILIES OF THE VALLEY
+
+'He opened like a bat!' said the stranger.
+
+'His shadow was red!' said Farina.
+
+'He was off like an arrow!' said the stranger.
+
+'Oh!  pledge of my young love, how could I lose thee!' exclaimed the
+youth, and his eyes were misted with tears.
+
+Guy the Goshawk shook his brown locks gravely.
+
+'Bring me a man, and I 'll stand up against him, whoever he be, like a
+man; but this fellow has an ill scent and foreign ways about him, that he
+has!  His eye boils all down my backbone and tingles at my finger-tips.
+Jesu, save us!'
+
+'Save us!' repeated Farina, with the echo of a deadened soul.
+
+They made the sign of the Cross, and purified the place with holy
+ejaculations.
+
+'I 've seen him at last; grant it be for the last time!  That's my
+prayer, in the name of the Virgin and Trinity,' said Guy.  'And now let's
+retrace our steps: perchance we shall hunt up that bauble of yours, but
+I'm not fit for mortal work this night longer.'
+
+Burdened by their black encounter, the two passed again behind the
+Cathedral.  Farina's hungry glances devoured each footmark of their
+track.  Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees, and
+groped for his lost treasure with a miser's eager patience of agony,
+drawing his hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices
+of the thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm.  Despair grew heavy
+in his breast.  At every turning he invoked some good new saint to aid
+him, and ran over all the propitiations his fancy could suggest and his
+religious lore inspire.  By-and-by they reached the head of the street
+where Margarita dwelt.  The moon was dipping down, and paler, as if
+touched with a warning of dawn.  Chill sighs from the open land passed
+through the spaces of the city.  On certain coloured gables and wood-
+crossed fronts, the white light lingered; but mostly the houses were
+veiled in dusk, and Gottlieb's house was confused in the twilight with
+those of his neighbours, notwithstanding its greater stateliness and the
+old grandeur of its timbered bulk.  They determined to take up their
+position there again, and paced on, Farina with his head below his
+shoulders, and Guy nostril in air, as if uneasy in his sense of smell.
+
+On the window-ledge of a fair-fitted domicile stood a flower-pot, a rude
+earthen construction in the form of a river-barge, wherein grew some
+valley lilies that drooped their white bells over the sides.
+
+The Goshawk eyed them wistfully.
+
+'I must smell those blessed flowers if I wish to be saved!' and he
+stamped resolve with his staff.
+
+Moved by this exclamation, Farina gazed up at them.
+
+'How like a company of maidens they look floating in the vessel of life!'
+he said.
+
+Guy curiously inspected Farina and the flower-pot, shrugged, and with his
+comrade's aid, mounted to a level with it, seized the prize and
+redescended.
+
+'There,' he cried, between long luxurious sniffs, 'that chases him out of
+the nostril sooner than aught else, the breath of a fresh lass-like
+flower!  I was tormented till now by the reek of the damned rising from
+under me.  This is heaven's own incense, I think !'
+
+And Guy inhaled the flowers and spake prettily to them.
+
+'They have a melancholy sweetness, friend,' said Farina.  'I think of
+whispering Fays, and Elf, and Erl, when their odour steals through me.
+Do not you?'
+
+'Nay, nor hope to till my wits are clean gone,' was the Goshawk's reply.
+'To my mind, 'tis an honest flower, and could I do good service by the
+young maiden who there set it, I should be rendering back good service
+done; for if that flower has not battled the devil in my nose this night,
+and beaten him, my head's a medlar!'
+
+'I scarce know whether as a devout Christian I should listen to that,
+friend,' Farina mildly remonstrated.  'Lilies are indeed emblems of the
+saints; but then they are not poor flowers of earth, being transfigured,
+lustrous unfadingly.  Oh, Cross and Passion!  with what silver serenity
+thy glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells!  I look on the white
+sea of the saints.  I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom.  All
+beauty is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown on
+Sorrow, and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy
+everlasting.  Colourless peace!  Oh, my beloved!  So walkest thou for my
+soul on the white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy
+spotless virgin linen; bearing in thy hand the lily, and leaning thy
+cheek to it, where the human rose is softened to a milky bloom of red,
+the espousals of heaven with earth; over thee, moving with thee, a wreath
+of sapphire stars, and the solitude of purity around!'
+
+'Ah!' sighed the Goshawk, dandling his flower-pot; 'the moon gives
+strokes as well's the sun.  I' faith, moon-struck and maid-struck in one!
+He'll be asking for his head soon.  This dash of the monk and the
+minstrel is a sure sign.  That 's their way of loving in this land: they
+all go mad, straight off.  I never heard such talk.'
+
+Guy accompanied these remarks with a pitiful glance at his companion.
+
+'Come, Sir Lover! lend me a help to give back what we've borrowed to its
+rightful owner.  'S blood! but I feel an appetite.  This night-air takes
+me in the wind like a battering ram.  I thought I had laid in a stout
+four-and-twenty hours' stock of Westphalian Wurst at Master Groschen's
+supper-table.  Good stuff, washed down with superior Rhine wine; say your
+Liebfrauenmilch for my taste; though, when I first tried it, I grimaced
+like a Merry-Andrew, and remembered roast beef and Glo'ster ale in my
+prayers.'
+
+The Goshawk was in the act of replacing the pot of lilies, when a blow
+from a short truncheon, skilfully flung, struck him on the neck and
+brought him to the ground.  With him fell the lilies.  He glared to the
+right and left, and grasped the broken flower-pot for a return missile;
+but no enemy was in view to test his accuracy of aim.
+
+The deep-arched doorways showed their empty recesses the windows slept.
+
+'Has that youth played me false?' thought the discomfited squire, as he
+leaned quietly on his arm.  Farina was nowhere near.
+
+Guy was quickly reassured.
+
+'By my fay, now!  that's a fine thing!  and a fine fellow!  and a fleet
+foot!  That lad 'll rise!  He'll be a squire some day.  Look at him.
+Bowels of a'Becket!  'tis a sight!  I'd rather see that, now, than old
+Groschen 's supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river
+of Rudesheimer!  Tussle on!  I'll lend a hand if there's occasion; but
+you shall have the honour, boy, an you can win it.'
+
+This crying on of the hound was called forth by a chase up the street, in
+which the Goshawk beheld Farina pursue and capture a stalwart runaway,
+who refused with all his might to be brought back, striving every two and
+three of his tiptoe steps to turn against the impulse Farina had got on
+his neck and nether garments.
+
+'Who 'd have thought the lad was so wiry and mettlesome, with his soft
+face, blue eyes, and lank locks?  but a green mead has more in it than
+many a black mountain.  Hail, and well done!  if I could dub you knight,
+I would: trust me!' and he shook Farina by the hand.
+
+Farina modestly stood aside, and allowed the Goshawk to confront his
+prisoner.
+
+'So, Sir Shy-i'the-dark!  gallant Stick-i'the-back!  Squire Truncheon,
+and Knight of the noble order of Quicksilver Legs! just take your stand
+at the distance you were off me when you discharged this instrument at my
+head.  By 'r lady!  I smart a scratch to pay you in coin, and it's lucky
+for you the coin is small, or you might reckon on it the same, trust me.
+Now, back!'
+
+The Goshawk lunged out with the truncheon, but the prisoner displayed no
+hesitation in complying, and fell back about a space of fifteen yards.
+
+'I suppose he guesses I've never done the stupid trick before,' mused
+Guy, 'or he would not be so sharp.'  Observing that Farina had also
+fallen back in a line as guard, Guy motioned him to edge off to the right
+more, bawling, 'Never mind why!'
+
+'Now,' thought Guy, 'if I were sure of notching him, I'd do the speech
+part first; but as I'm not--throwing truncheons being no honourable
+profession anywhere--I'll reserve that.  The rascal don't quail.  We'll
+see how long he stands firm.'
+
+The Goshawk cleared his wrist, fixed his eye, and swung the truncheon
+meditatively to and fro by one end.  He then launched off the shoulder a
+mighty down-fling, calmly, watching it strike the prisoner to earth, like
+an ox under the hammer.
+
+'A hit!' said he, and smoothed his wrist.
+
+Farina knelt by the body, and lifted the head on his breast.  'Berthold!
+Berthold!' he cried; 'no further harm shall hap to you, man!  Speak!'
+
+'You ken the scapegrace?' said Guy, sauntering up.
+
+''Tis Berthold Schmidt, son of old Schmidt, the great goldsmith of
+Cologne.'
+
+'St. Dunstan was not at his elbow this time!'
+
+'A rival of mine,' whispered Farina.
+
+'Oho!' and the Goshawk wound a low hiss at his tongue's tip.  'Well!  as
+I should have spoken if his ears had been open: Justice struck the blow;
+and a gentle one.  This comes of taking a flying shot, and not standing
+up fair.  And that seems all that can be said.  Where lives he?'
+
+Farina pointed to the house of the Lilies.
+
+'Beshrew me! the dog has some right on his side.  Whew! yonder he lives?
+He took us for some night-prowlers.  Why not come up fairly, and ask my
+business?
+
+Smelling a flower is not worth a broken neck, nor defending your premises
+quite deserving a hole in the pate.  Now, my lad, you see what comes of
+dealing with cut and run blows; and let this be a warning to you.'
+
+They took the body by head and feet, and laid him at the door of his
+father's house.  Here the colour came to his cheek, and they wiped off
+the streaks of blood that stained him.  Guy proved he could be tender
+with a fallen foe, and Farina with an ill-fated rival.  It was who could
+suggest the soundest remedies, or easiest postures.  One lent a kerchief
+and nursed him; another ran to the city fountain and fetched him water.
+Meantime the moon had dropped, and morning, grey and beamless, looked on
+the house-peaks and along the streets with steadier eye.  They now both
+discerned a body of men, far down, fronting Gottlieb's house, and drawn
+up in some degree of order.  All their charity forsook them at once.
+
+'Possess thyself of the truncheon,' said Guy: 'You see it can damage.
+More work before breakfast, and a fine account I must give of myself to
+my hostess of the Three Holy Kings!'
+
+Farina recovered the destructive little instrument.
+
+'I am ready,' said he.  'But hark!  there's little work for us there, I
+fancy.  Those be lads of Cologne, no grunters of the wild.  'Tis the
+White Rose Club.  Always too late for service.'
+
+Voices singing a hunting glee, popular in that age, swelled up the clear
+morning air; and gradually the words became distinct.
+
+                         The Kaiser went a-hunting,
+                              A-hunting, tra-ra:
+                    With his bugle-horn at springing morn,
+                    The Kaiser trampled bud and thorn:
+                                        Tra-ra!
+
+
+               And the dew shakes green as the horsemen rear,
+               And a thousand feathers they flutter with fear;
+               And a pang drives quick to the heart of the deer;
+                    For the Kaiser's out a-hunting,
+                                   Tra-ra!
+                         Ta, ta, ta, ta,
+                         Tra-ra, tra-ra,
+                         Ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra!
+
+the owner of the truncheon awoke to these reviving tones, and uttered a
+faint responsive 'Tra-ra!'
+
+'Hark again!' said Farina, in reply to the commendation of the Goshawk,
+whose face was dimpled over with the harmony.
+
+                    The wild boar lay a-grunting,
+                         A-grunting, tra-ra!
+               And, boom! comes the Kaiser to hunt up me?
+               Or, queak! the small birdie that hops on the tree?
+                                   Tra-ra!
+               O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!
+               For a maiden in bloom, or a full-blown dame,
+               Are the daintiest prey, and the windingest game,
+                    When Kaisers go a-hunting,
+                                   Tra-ra!
+                         Ha, ha, ha, ha,
+                              Tra-ra, tra-ra,
+                         Ha-ha, tra-ra, tra-ra!
+
+The voices held long on the last note, and let it die in a forest
+cadence.
+
+''Fore Gad! well done.  Hurrah!  Tra-ra, ha-ha, tra-ra!  That's a trick
+we're not half alive to at home,' said Guy.  'I feel friendly with these
+German lads.'
+
+The Goshawk's disposition toward German lads was that moment harshly
+tested by a smart rap on the shoulder from an end of German oak, and a
+proclamation that he was prisoner of the hand that gave the greeting, in
+the name of the White Rose Club.  Following that, his staff was wrested
+from him by a dozen stout young fellows, who gave him no time to get his
+famous distance for defence against numbers; and he and Farina were
+marched forthwith to the chorusing body in front of Gottlieb Groschen's
+house.
+
+
+
+
+THE MISSIVES
+
+Of all the inmates, Gottlieb had slept most with the day on his eyelids,
+for Werner hung like a nightmare over him.  Margarita lay and dreamed in
+rose-colour, and if she thrilled on her pillowed silken couch like a
+tense-strung harp, and fretted drowsily in little leaps and starts, it
+was that a bird lay in her bosom, panting and singing through the night,
+and that he was not to be stilled, but would musically utter the sweetest
+secret thoughts of a love-bewitched maiden.  Farina's devotion she knew
+his tenderness she divined: his courage she had that day witnessed.  The
+young girl no sooner felt that she could love worthily, than she loved
+with her whole strength.  Muffed and remote came the hunting-song under
+her pillow, and awoke dreamy delicate curves in her fair face, as it
+thinned but did not banish her dream.  Aunt Lisbeth also heard the song,
+and burst out of her bed to see that the door and window were secured
+against the wanton Kaiser.  Despite her trials, she had taken her spell
+of sleep; but being possessed of some mystic maiden belief that in cases
+of apprehended peril from man, bed was a rock of refuge and fortified
+defence, she crept back there, and allowed the sun to rise without her.
+Gottlieb's voice could not awaken her to the household duties she loved
+to perform with such a doleful visage.  She heard him open his window,
+and parley in angry tones with the musicians below.
+
+'Decoys!' muttered Aunt Lisbeth; 'be thou alive to them, Gottlieb!'
+
+He went downstairs and opened the street door, whereupon the scolding and
+railing commenced anew.
+
+'Thou hast given them vantage, Gottlieb, brother mine,' she complained;
+'and the good heavens only can say what may result from such
+indiscreetness.'
+
+A silence, combustible with shuffling of feet in the passage and on the
+stairs, dinned horrors into Aunt Lisbeth's head.
+
+'It was just that sound in the left wing of Hollenbogenblitz,' she said:
+'only then it was night and not morning.  Ursula preserve me!'
+
+'Why, Lisbeth!  Lisbeth!' cried Gottlieb from below.  'Come down! 'tis
+full five o' the morning.  Here's company; and what are we to do without
+the woman?'
+
+'Ah, Gottlieb! that is like men!  They do not consider how different it
+is for us!' which mysterious sentence being uttered to herself alone,
+enjoyed a meaning it would elsewhere have been denied.
+
+Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending.  They exchanged the
+good-morning of young maiden and old.
+
+'Go thou first,' said Aunt Lisbeth.
+
+Margarita gaily tripped ahead.
+
+'Girl!' cried Aunt Lisbeth, 'what's that thing in thy back hair?'
+
+'I have borrowed Lieschen's arrow, aunt.  Mine has had an accident.'
+
+'Lieschen's arrow!  An accident!  Now I will see to that after breakfast,
+Margarita.'
+
+'Tra-ra, ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra,' sang Margarita.
+
+                    'The wild boar lay a-grunting,
+                         A-grunting, tra-ra.'
+
+'A maiden's true and proper ornament!  Look at mine, child!  I have worn
+it fifty years.  May I deserve to wear it till I am called!  O Margarita!
+trifle not with that symbol.'
+
+             '"O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!"
+
+I am so happy, aunty.'
+
+'Nice times to be happy in, Margarita.'
+
+              "Be happy in Spring, sweet maidens all,
+               For Autumn's chill will early fall."
+
+So sings the Minnesinger, aunty; and
+
+             '"A maiden in the wintry leaf
+               Will spread her own disease of grief."
+
+I love the Minnesingers!  Dear, sweet-mannered men they are!  Such
+lovers!  And men of deeds as well as song: sword on one side and harp on
+the other.  They fight till set of sun, and then slacken their armour to
+waft a ballad to their beloved by moonlight, covered with stains of
+battle as they are, and weary!'
+
+'What a girl!  Minnesingers!  Yes; I know stories of those Minnesingers.
+They came to the castle--Margarita, a bead of thy cross is broken.  I
+will attend to it.  Wear the pearl one till I mend this.  May'st thou
+never fall in the way of Minnesingers.  They are not like Werner's troop.
+They do not batter at doors: they slide into the house like snakes.'
+
+'Lisbeth!  Lisbeth!' they heard Gottlieb calling impatiently.
+
+'We come, Gottlieb!' and in a low murmur Margarita heard her say: 'May
+this day pass without trouble and shame to the pious and the chaste.'
+
+Margarita knew the voice of the stranger before she had opened the door,
+and on presenting herself, the hero gave her a guardian-like salute.
+
+'One may see,' he said, 'that it requires better men than those of Werner
+to drive away the rose from that cheek.'
+
+Gottlieb pressed the rosy cheek to his shoulder and patted her.
+
+'What do you think, Grete?  You have now forty of the best lads in
+Cologne enrolled to protect you, and keep guard over the house night and
+day.  There!  What more could a Pfalzgrafin ask, now?  And voluntary
+service; all to be paid with a smile, which I daresay my lady won't
+refuse them.  Lisbeth, you know our friend.  Fear him not, good Lisbeth,
+and give us breakfast.  Well, sweet chuck, you're to have royal honours
+paid you.  I warrant they've begun good work already in locking up that
+idle moony vagabond, Farina--'
+
+'Him?  What for, my father?  How dared they!  What has he done?'
+
+'O, start not, my fairy maid!  A small matter of breakage, pet!  He tried
+to enter Cunigonde Schmidt's chamber, and knocked down her pot of lilies:
+for which Berthold Schmidt knocked him down, and our friend here, out of
+good fellowship, knocked down Berthold.  However, the chief offender is
+marched off to prison by your trusty guard, and there let him cool
+himself.  Berthold shall tell you the tale himself: he'll be here to
+breakfast, and receive your orders, mistress commander-in-chief.'
+
+The Goshawk had his eye on Margarita.  Her teeth were tight down on her
+nether lip, and her whole figure had a strange look of awkwardness, she
+was so divided with anger.
+
+'As witness of the affair, I think I shall make a clearer statement, fair
+maiden,' he interposed.  'In the first place, I am the offender.  We
+passed under the window of the Fraulein Schmidt, and 'twas I mounted to
+greet the lilies.  One shoot of them is in my helm, and here let me
+present them to a worthier holder.'
+
+He offered the flowers with a smile, and Margarita took them, radiant
+with gratitude.
+
+'Our friend Berthold,' he continued, 'thought proper to aim a blow at me
+behind my back, and then ran for his comrades.  He was caught, and by my
+gallant young hero, Farina; concerning whose character I regret that your
+respected father and I differ: for, on the faith of a soldier and true
+man, he's the finest among the fine fellows I've yet met in Germany,
+trust me.  So, to cut the story short, execution was done upon Berthold
+by my hand, for an act of treachery.  He appears to be a sort of captain
+of one of the troops, and not affectionately disposed to Farina; for the
+version of the affair you have heard from your father is a little
+invention of Master Berthold's own.  To do him justice, he seemed equally
+willing to get me under the cold stone; but a word from your good father
+changed the current; and as I thought I could serve our friend better
+free than behind bars, I accepted liberty.  Pshaw!  I should have
+accepted it any way, to tell the truth, for your German dungeons are
+mortal shivering ratty places.  So rank me no hero, fair Mistress
+Margarita, though the temptation to seem one in such sweet eyes was
+beginning to lead me astray.  And now, as to our business in the streets
+at this hour, believe the best of us.'
+
+'I will!  I do!' said Margarita.
+
+'Lisbeth!  Lisbeth!' called Gottlieb.  'Breakfast, little sister!  our
+champion is starving.  He asks for wurst, milk-loaves, wine, and all thy
+rarest conserves.  Haste, then, for the honour of Cologne is at stake.'
+
+Aunt Lisbeth jingled her keys in and out, and soon that harmony drew a
+number of domestics with platters of swine flesh, rolls of white wheaten
+bread, the perpetual worst, milk, wine, barley-bread, and household
+stores of dainties in profusion, all sparkling on silver, relieved by
+spotless white cloth.  Gottlieb beheld such a sunny twinkle across the
+Goshawk's face at this hospitable array, that he gave the word of onset
+without waiting for Berthold, and his guest immediately fell to, and did
+not relax in his exertions for a full half-hour by the Cathedral clock,
+eschewing the beer with a wry look made up of scorn and ruefulness, and
+drinking a well-brimmed health in Rhine wine all round.  Margarita was
+pensive: Aunt Lisbeth on her guard.  Gottlieb remembered Charles the
+Great's counsel to Archbishop Turpin, and did his best to remain on earth
+one of its lords dominant.
+
+'Poor Berthold!' said he.  ''Tis a good lad, and deserves his seat at my
+table oftener.  I suppose the flower-pot business has detained him.
+We'll drink to him: eh, Grete?'
+
+'Drink to him, dear father!--but here he is to thank you in person.'
+
+Margarita felt a twinge of pity as Berthold entered.  The livid stains of
+his bruise deepened about his eyes, and gave them a wicked light whenever
+they were fixed intently; but they looked earnest; and spoke of a combat
+in which he could say that he proved no coward and was used with some
+cruelty.  She turned on the Goshawk a mute reproach; yet smiled and loved
+him well when she beheld him stretch a hand of welcome and proffer a
+brotherly glass to Berthold.  The rich goldsmith's son was occupied in
+studying the horoscope of his fortunes in Margarita's eyes; but when
+Margarita directed his attention to Guy, he turned to him with a glance
+of astonishment that yielded to cordial greeting.
+
+'Well done, Berthold, my brave boy!  All are friends who sit at table,'
+said Gottlieb.  'In any case, at my table:
+
+                   "'Tis a worthy foe
+                    Forgives the blow
+                    Was dealt him full and fairly,"
+
+says the song; and the proverb takes it up with, "A generous enemy is a
+friend on the wrong side"; and no one's to blame for that, save old Dame
+Fortune.  So now a bumper to this jovial make-up between you.  Lisbeth!
+you must drink it.'
+
+The little woman bowed melancholy obedience.
+
+'Why did you fling and run?' whispered Guy to Berthold.
+
+'Because you were two against one.'
+
+'Two against one, man!  Why, have you no such thing as fair play in this
+land of yours?  Did you think I should have taken advantage of that?'
+
+'How could I tell who you were, or what you would do?' muttered Berthold,
+somewhat sullenly.
+
+'Truly no, friend!  So you ran to make yourself twenty to two?  But don't
+be down on the subject.  I was going to say, that though I treated you in
+a manner upright, 'twas perhaps a trifle severe, considering your youth:
+but an example's everything; and I must let you know in confidence, that
+no rascal truncheon had I flung in my life before; so, you see, I gave
+you all the chances.'
+
+Berthold moved his lips in reply; but thinking of the figure of defeat he
+was exhibiting before Margarita, caused him to estimate unfavourably what
+chances had stood in his favour.
+
+The health was drunk.  Aunt Lisbeth touched the smoky yellow glass with a
+mincing lip, and beckoned Margarita to withdraw.
+
+'The tapestry, child!' she said.  'Dangerous things are uttered after the
+third glass, I know, Margarita.'
+
+'Do you call my champion handsome, aunt?'
+
+'I was going to speak to you about him, Margarita.  If I remember, he has
+rough, good looks, as far as they go.  Yes: but thou, maiden, art thou
+thinking of him?  I have thrice watched him wink; and that, as we know,
+is a habit of them that have sold themselves.  And what is frail
+womankind to expect from such a brawny animal?'
+
+                   'And oh! to lace his armour up,
+                    And speed him to the field;
+                    To pledge him in a kissing-cup,
+                    The knight that will not yield!
+
+I am sure he is tender, aunt.  Notice how gentle he looks now and then.'
+
+'Thou girl!  Yes, I believe she is madly in love with him.  Tender, and
+gentle!  So is the bear when you're outside his den; but enter it,
+maiden, and try!  Thou good Ursula, preserve me from such a fate.'
+
+'Fear not, dear aunt!  Have not a fear of it!  Besides, it is not always
+the men that are bad.  You must not forget Dalilah, and Lot's wife, and
+Pfalzgrafin Jutta, and the Baroness who asked for a piece of poor Kraut.
+But, let us work, let us work!'
+
+Margarita sat down before Siegfried, and contemplated the hero.  For the
+first time, she marked a resemblance in his features to Farina: the same
+long yellow hair scattered over his shoulders as that flowing from under
+Siegfried's helm; the blue eyes, square brows, and regular outlines.
+'This is a marvel,' thought Margarita.  'And Farina! it was to watch over
+me that he roamed the street last night, my best one!  Is he not
+beautiful?' and she looked closer at Siegfried.
+
+Aunt Lisbeth had begun upon the dragon with her usual method, and was
+soon wandering through skeleton halls of the old palatial castle in
+Bohemia.  The woolly tongue of the monster suggested fresh horrors to
+her, and if Margarita had listened, she might have had fair excuses to
+forget her lover's condition; but her voice only did service like a piece
+of clock-work, and her mind was in the prison with Farina.  She was long
+debating how to win his release; and meditated so deeply, and exclaimed
+in so many bursts of impatience, that Aunt Lisbeth found her heart
+melting to the maiden. 'Now,' said she, 'that is a well-known story about
+the Electress Dowager of Bavaria, when she came on a visit to the castle;
+and, my dear child, be it a warning. Terrible, too!' and the little woman
+shivered pleasantly.  'She had--I may tell you this, Margarita--yes, she
+had been false to her wedded husband.--You understand, maiden; or, no!
+you do not understand: I understand it only partly, mind.
+False, I say----'
+
+'False--not true: go on, dear aunty,' said Margarita, catching the word.
+
+'I believe she knows as much as I do!' ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth; 'such are
+girls nowadays.  When I was young-oh! for a maiden to know anything then
+--oh! it was general reprobation.  No one thought of confessing it.  We
+blushed and held down our eyes at the very idea.  Well, the Electress!
+she was--you must guess.  So she called for her caudle at eleven o'clock
+at night.  What do you think that was?  Well, there was spirit in it: not
+to say nutmeg, and lemon, and peach kernels.  She wanted me to sit with
+her, but I begged my mistress to keep me from the naughty woman: and no
+friend of Hilda of Bayern was Bertha of Bohmen, you may be sure.  Oh!
+the things she talked while she was drinking her caudle.
+
+Isentrude sat with her,'and said it was fearful!--beyond blasphemy! and
+that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and
+glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap.  She was on a journey into
+Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there.
+Both were widows.  Well, it was a quarter to twelve.  The Electress
+dropped back on her pillow, as she always did when she had finished the
+candle.  Isentrude covered her over, heaped up logs on the fire, wrapped
+her dressing-gown about her, and prepared to sleep.  It was Winter, and
+the wind howled at the doors, and rattled the windows, and shook the
+arras--Lord help us!  Outside was all snow, and nothing but forest; as
+you saw when you came to me there, Gretelchen.  Twelve struck.  Isentrude
+was dozing; but she says that after the last stroke she woke with cold.
+A foggy chill hung in the room.  She looked at the Electress, who had not
+moved.  The fire burned feebly, and seemed weighed upon: Herr Je!--she
+thought she heard a noise.  No.  Quite quiet!  As heaven preserve her,
+says slip, the smell in that room grew like an open grave, clammily
+putrid.  Holy Virgin!  This time she was certain she heard a noise; but
+it seemed on both sides of her.  There was the great door leading to the
+first landing and state-room; and opposite exactly there was the panel of
+the secret passage.  The noises seemed to advance as if step by step, and
+grew louder in each ear as she stood horrified on the marble of the
+hearth.  She looked at the Electress again, and her eyes were wide open;
+but for all Isentrude's calling, she would not wake.  Only think!  Now
+the noise increased, and was a regular tramp-grate, tramp-screw sound-
+coming nearer and nearer: Saints of mercy!  The apartment was choking
+with vapours.  Isentrude made a dart, and robed herself behind a curtain
+of the bed just as the two doors opened.  She could see through a slit in
+the woven work, and winked her eyes which she had shut close on hearing
+the scream of the door-hinges--winked her eyes to catch a sight for
+moment--we are such sinful, curious creatures!--What she saw then, she
+says she shall never forget; nor I!  As she was a living woman, there she
+saw the two dead princes, the Prince Palatine of Bohemia and the Elector
+of Bavaria, standing front to front at the foot of the bed, all in white
+armour, with drawn swords, and attendants holding pine-torches.  Neither
+of them spoke.  Their vizors were down; but she knew them by their arms
+and bearing: both tall, stately presences, good knights in their day, and
+had fought against the Infidel!  So one of them pointed to the bed, and
+then a torch was lowered, and the fight commenced.  Isentrude saw the
+sparks fly, and the steel struck till it was shattered; but they fought
+on, not caring for wounds, and snorting with fury as they grew hotter.
+They fought a whole hour.  The poor girl was so eaten up with looking on,
+that she let go the curtain and stood quite exposed among them.  So, to
+steady herself, she rested her hand on the bed-side; and--think what she
+felt--a hand as cold as ice locked hers, and get from it she could not!
+That instant one of the princes fell.  It was Bohmen.  Bayern sheathed
+his sword, and waved his hand, and the attendants took up the slaughtered
+ghost, feet and shoulders, and bore him to the door of the secret
+passage, while Bayern strode after--'
+
+'Shameful!' exclaimed Margarita.  'I will speak to Berthold as he
+descends.  I hear him coming.  He shall do what I wish.'
+
+'Call it dreadful, Grete!  Dreadful it was.  If Berthold would like to
+sit and hear--Ah! she is gone.  A good girl!  and of a levity only on the
+surface.'
+
+Aunt Lisbeth heard Margarita's voice rapidly addressing Berthold.  His
+reply was low and brief.  'Refuses to listen to anything of the sort,'
+Aunt Lisbeth interpreted it.  Then he seemed to be pleading, and
+Margarita uttering short answers.  'I trust 'tis nothing a maiden should
+not hear,' the little lady exclaimed with a sigh.
+
+The door opened, and Lieschen stood at the entrance.
+
+'For Fraulein Margarita,' she said, holding a letter halfway out.
+
+'Give it,' Aunt Lisbeth commanded.
+
+The woman hesitated--''Tis for the Fraulein.'
+
+'Give it, I tell thee!' and Aunt Lisbeth eagerly seized the missive, and
+subjected it to the ordeal of touch.  It was heavy, and contained
+something hard.  Long pensive pressures revealed its shape on the paper.
+It was an arrow.  'Go!' said she to the woman, and, once alone, began,
+bee-like, to buzz all over it, and finally entered.  It contained
+Margarita's Silver Arrow.  'The art of that girl!'  And the writing said:
+
+     'SWEETEST MAIDEN!
+
+     'By this arrow of our betrothal, I conjure thee to meet me in all
+     haste without the western gate, where, burning to reveal to thee
+     most urgent tidings that may not be confided to paper, now waits,
+     petitioning the saints, thy
+
+                                        'FARINA.'
+
+Aunt Lisbeth placed letter and arrow in a drawer; locked it; and 'always
+thought so.' She ascended the stairs to consult with Gottlieb.  Roars of
+laughter greeted her just as she lifted the latch, and she retreated
+abashed.
+
+There was no time to lose.  Farina must be caught in the act of waiting
+for Margarita, and by Gottlieb, or herself.  Gottlieb was revelling.
+'May this be a warning to thee, Gottlieb,' murmured Lisbeth, as she
+hooded her little body in Margarita's fur-cloak, and determined that
+she would be the one to confound Farina.
+
+Five minutes later Margarita returned.  Aunt Lisbeth was gone.  The
+dragon still lacked a tip to his forked tongue, and a stream of fiery
+threads dangled from the jaws of the monster.  Another letter was brought
+into the room by Lieschen.
+
+'For Aunt Lisbeth,' said Margarita, reading the address.  'Who can it be
+from?'
+
+'She does not stand pressing about your letters,' said the woman; and
+informed Margarita of the foregoing missive.
+
+'You say she drew an arrow from it?' said Margarita, with burning face.
+'Who brought this? tell me!' and just waiting to hear it was Farina's
+mother, she tore the letter open, and read:
+
+     'DEAREST LISBETH!
+
+     'Thy old friend writes to thee; she that has scarce left eyes to see
+     the words she writes.  Thou knowest we are a fallen house, through
+     the displeasure of the Emperor on my dead husband.  My son, Farina,
+     is my only stay, and well returns to me the blessings I bestow upon
+     him.  Some call him idle: some think him too wise.  I swear to thee,
+     Lisbeth, he is only good.  His hours are devoted to the extraction
+     of essences--to no black magic.  Now he is in trouble-in prison.
+     The shadow that destroyed his dead father threatens him.  Now, by
+     our old friendship, beloved Lisbeth!  intercede with Gottlieb, that
+     he may plead for my son before the Emperor when he comes--'
+
+Margarita read no more.  She went to the window, and saw her guard
+marshalled outside.  She threw a kerchief over her head, and left the
+house by the garden gate.
+
+
+
+
+THE MONK
+
+By this time the sun stood high over Cologne.  The market-places were
+crowded with buyers and sellers, mixed with a loitering swarm of
+soldiery, for whose thirsty natures winestalls had been tumbled up.
+Barons and knights of the empire, bravely mounted and thickly followed,
+poured hourly into Cologne from South Germany and North.  Here, staring
+Suabians, and round-featured warriors of the East Kingdom, swaggered up
+and down, patting what horses came across them, for lack of occupation
+for their hands.  Yonder, huge Pomeranians, with bosks of beard stiffened
+out square from the chin, hurtled mountainous among the peaceable
+inhabitants.  Troopers dismounted went straddling, in tight hose and
+loose, prepared to drink good-will to whomsoever would furnish the best
+quality liquor for that solemn pledge, and equally ready to pick a
+quarrel with them that would not.  It was a scene of flaring feathers,
+wide-flapped bonnets, flaunting hose, blue and battered steel plates,
+slashed woollen haunch-bags, leather-leggings, ensigns, and imperious
+boots and shoulders.  Margarita was too hurried in her mind to be
+conscious of an imprudence; but her limbs trembled, and she instinctively
+quickened her steps.  When she stood under the sign of the Three Holy
+Kings, where dwelt Farina's mother, she put up a fervent prayer of
+thanks, and breathed freely.
+
+'I had expected a message from Lisbeth,' said Frau Farina; 'but thou,
+good heart!  thou wilt help us?'
+
+'All that may be done by me I will do,' replied Margarita; 'but his
+mother yearns to see him, and I have come to bear her company.'
+
+The old lady clasped her hands and wept.
+
+'Has he found so good a friend, my poor boy!  And trust me, dear maiden,
+he is not unworthy, for better son never lived, and good son, good all!
+Surely we will go to him, but not as thou art.  I will dress thee.  Such
+throngs are in the streets: I heard them clattering in early this
+morning.  Rest, dear heart, till I return.'
+
+Margarita had time to inspect the single sitting-room in which her lover
+lived.  It was planted with bottles, and vases, and pipes, and cylinders,
+piling on floor, chair, and table.  She could not suppress a slight
+surprise of fear, for this display showed a dealing with hidden things,
+and a summoning of scattered spirits.  It was this that made his brow so
+pale, and the round of his eye darker than youth should let it be!  She
+dismissed the feeling, and assumed her own bright face as Dame Farina
+reappeared, bearing on her arm a convent garb, and other apparel.
+Margarita suffered herself to be invested in the white and black robes of
+the denial of life.
+
+'There!' said the Frau Farina, 'and to seal assurance, I have engaged a
+guard to accompany us.  He was sorely bruised in a street combat
+yesterday, and was billeted below, where I nursed and tended him, and he
+is grateful, as man should be-though I did little, doing my utmost--and
+with him near us we have nought to fear.'
+
+'Good,' said Margarita, and they kissed and departed.  The guard was
+awaiting them outside.
+
+'Come, my little lady, and with thee the holy sister!  'Tis no step from
+here, and I gage to bring ye safe, as sure as my name's Schwartz Thier!--
+Hey?  The good sister's dropping.  Look, now!  I'll carry her.'
+
+Margarita recovered her self-command before he could make good this
+offer.
+
+'Only let us hasten there,' she gasped.
+
+The Thier strode on, and gave them safe-conduct to the prison where
+Farina was confined, being near one of the outer forts of the city.
+
+'Thank and dismiss him,' whispered Margarita.
+
+'Nay! he will wait-wilt thou not, friend!  We shall not be long, though
+it is my son I visit here,' said Frau Farina.
+
+'Till to-morrow morning, my little lady!  The lion thanked him that
+plucked the thorn from his foot, and the Thier may be black, but he's not
+ungrateful, nor a worse beast than the lion.'
+
+They entered the walls and left him.
+
+For the first five minutes Schwartz Thier found employment for his
+faculties by staring at the shaky, small-paned windows of the
+neighbourhood.  He persevered in this, after all novelty had been
+exhausted, from an intuitive dread of weariness.  There was nothing to
+see.  An old woman once bobbed out of an attic, and doused the flints
+with water.  Harassed by increasing dread of the foul nightmare of
+nothing-to-do, the Thier endeavoured to establish amorous intelligence
+with her.  She responded with an indignant projection of the underjaw,
+evanishing rapidly.  There was no resource left him but to curse her with
+extreme heartiness.  The Thier stamped his right leg, and then his left,
+and remembered the old woman as a grievance five minutes longer.  When
+she was clean forgotten, he yawned.  Another spouse of the moment was
+wanted, to be wooed, objurgated, and regretted.  The prison-gate was in a
+secluded street.  Few passengers went by, and those who did edged away
+from the ponderous, wanton-eyed figure of lazy mischief lounging there,
+as neatly as they well could.  The Thier hailed two or three.  One took
+to his legs, another bowed, smirked, gave him a kindly good-day, and
+affected to hear no more, having urgent business in prospect.  The Thier
+was a faithful dog, but the temptation to betray his trust and pursue
+them was mighty.  He began to experience an equal disposition to cry and
+roar.  He hummed a ballad
+
+              'I swore of her I'd have my will,
+                  And with him I'd have my way:
+               I learn'd my cross-bow over the hill:
+                  Now what does my lady say?
+
+Give me the good old cross-bow, after all, and none of these lumbering
+puff-and-bangs that knock you down oftener than your man!
+
+              'A cross stands in the forest still,
+                  And a cross in the churchyard grey:
+               My curse on him who had his will,
+                  And on him who had his way!
+
+Good beginning, bad ending!  'Tisn't so always.  "Many a cross has the
+cross-bow built," they say.  I wish I had mine, now, to peg off that.
+old woman, or somebody.  I'd swear she's peeping at me over the gable,
+or behind some cranny.  They're curious, the old women, curse 'em!  And
+the young, for that matter.  Devil a young one here.
+
+              'When I'm in for the sack of a town,
+                  What, think ye, I poke after, up and down?
+               Silver and gold I pocket in plenty,
+                  But the sweet tit-bit is my lass under twenty.
+
+I should like to be in for the sack of this Cologne.  I'd nose out that
+pretty girl I was cheated of yesterday.  Take the gold and silver, and
+give me the maiden!  Her neck's silver, and her hair gold.  Ah! and her
+cheeks roses, and her mouth-say no more!  I'm half thinking Werner, the
+hungry animal, has cast wolf's eyes on her.  They say he spoke of her
+last night.  Don't let him thwart me.  Thunderblast him!  I owe him a
+grudge.  He's beginning to forget my plan o' life.'
+
+A flight of pigeons across the blue top of the street abstracted the
+Thier from these reflections.  He gaped after them in despair, and fell
+to stretching and shaking himself, rattling his lungs with loud reports.
+As he threw his eyes round again, they encountered those of a monk
+opposite fastened on him in penetrating silence.  The Thier hated monks
+as a wild beast shuns fire; but now even a monk was welcome.
+
+'Halloo!' he sung out.
+
+The monk crossed over to him.
+
+'Friend!' said he, 'weariness is teaching thee wantonness.  Wilt thou
+take service for a night's work, where the danger is little, the reward
+lasting?'
+
+'As for that,' replied the Thier, 'danger comes to me like greenwood to
+the deer, and good pay never yet was given in promises.  But I'm bound
+for the next hour to womankind within there.  They're my masters; as
+they've been of tough fellows before me.'
+
+'I will seek them, and win their consent,' said the monk, and so left
+him.
+
+'Quick dealing!' thought the Thier, and grew brisker.  'The Baron won't
+want me to-night: and what if he does?  Let him hang himself--though,
+if he should, 'twill be a pity I'm not by to help him.'
+
+He paced under the wall to its farthest course.  Turning back, he
+perceived the monk at the gateway.
+
+'A sharp hand!' thought the Thier.
+
+'Intrude no question on me,' the monk began; 'but hold thy peace and
+follow: the women release thee, and gladly.'
+
+'That's not my plan o' life, now!  Money down, and then command me': and
+Schwartz Thier stood with one foot forward, and hand stretched out.
+
+A curl of scorn darkened the cold features of the monk.
+
+He slid one hand into a side of his frock above the girdle, and tossed a
+bag of coin.
+
+'Take it, if 'tis in thee to forfeit the greater blessing,' he cried
+contemptuously.
+
+The Thier peeped into the bag, and appeared satisfied.
+
+'I follow,' said he; 'lead on, good father, and I'll be in the track of
+holiness for the first time since my mother was quit of me.'
+
+The monk hurried up the street and into the marketplace, oblivious of the
+postures and reverences of the people, who stopped to stare at him and
+his gaunt attendant.  As they crossed the square, Schwartz Thier spied
+Henker Rothhals starting from a wine-stall on horseback, and could not
+forbear hailing him.  Before the monk had time to utter a reproach, they
+were deep together in a double-shot of query and reply.
+
+'Whirr!' cried the Thier, breaking on some communication.  'Got her, have
+they? and swung her across stream?  I'm one with ye for my share, or call
+me sheep!'
+
+He waved his hand to the monk, and taking hold of the horse's rein, ran
+off beside his mounted confederate, heavily shod as he was.
+
+The monk frowned after him, and swelled with a hard sigh.
+
+'Gone!' he exclaimed, 'and the accursed gold with him!  Well did a voice
+warn me that such service was never to be bought!'
+
+He did not pause to bewail or repent, but returned toward the prison with
+rapid footsteps, muttering: 'I with the prison-pass for two; why was I
+beguiled by that bandit?  Saw I not the very youth given into my hands
+there, he that was with the damsel and the aged woman?'
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE AND THE RACE
+
+Late in the noon a horseman, in the livery of the Kaiser's body-guard,
+rode dry and dusty into Cologne, with tidings that the Kaiser was at
+Hammerstein Castle, and commanding all convocated knights, barons,
+counts, and princes, to assemble and prepare for his coming, on a certain
+bare space of ground within two leagues of Cologne, thence to swell the
+train of his triumphal entry into the ancient city of his empire.
+
+Guy the Goshawk, broad-set on a Flemish mare, and a pack-horse beside
+him, shortly afterward left the hotel of the Three Holy Kings, and
+trotted up to Gottlieb's door.
+
+'Tent-pitching is now my trade,' said he, as Gottlieb came down to him.
+'My lord is with the Kaiser.  I must say farewell for the nonce.  Is the
+young lady visible?'
+
+'Nor young, nor old, good friend,' replied Gottlieb, with a countenance
+somewhat ruffled.  'I dined alone for lack of your company.  Secret
+missives came, I hear, to each of them, and both are gadding.  Now what
+think you of this, after the scene of yesterday?--Lisbeth too!'
+
+'Preaches from the old text, Master Groschen; "Never reckon on womankind
+for a wise act."  But farewell!  and tell Mistress Margarita that I take
+it ill of her not giving me her maiden hand to salute before parting.
+My gravest respects to Frau Lisbeth.  I shall soon be sitting with you
+over that prime vintage of yours, or fortune's dead against me.'
+
+So, with a wring of the hand, Guy put the spur to his round-flanked
+beast, and was quickly out of Cologne on the rough roadway.
+
+He was neither the first nor the last of the men-at-arms hastening to
+obey the Kaiser's mandate.  A string of horse and foot in serpentine
+knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the
+spring-meadows bordering their line of passage.  Guy, with a nod for all,
+and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the
+gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance
+party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed
+with the mass.  Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and
+was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that 'the
+first night's camping would be a drencher.' In the West a black bank of
+cloud was blotting out the sun before his time.  Northeast shone bare
+fields of blue lightly touched with loosefloating strips and flakes of
+crimson vapour.  The furrows were growing purple-dark, and gradually a
+low moaning obscurity enwrapped the whole line, and mufed the noise of
+hoof, oath, and waggon-wheel in one sullen murmur.
+
+Guy felt very much like a chopped worm, as he wriggled his way onward in
+the dusk, impelled from the rear, and reduced to grope after the main
+body.  Frequent and deep counsel he took with a trusty flask suspended at
+his belt.  It was no pleasant reflection that the rain would be down
+before he could build up anything like shelter for horse and man.  Still
+sadder the necessity of selecting his post on strange ground, and in
+darkness.  He kept an anxious look-out for the moon, and was presently
+rejoiced to behold a broad fire that twinkled branchy beams through an
+east-hill orchard.
+
+'My lord calls her Goddess,' said Guy, wistfully.  'The title's
+outlandish, and more the style of these foreigners but she may have it
+to-night, an she 'll just keep the storm from shrouding her bright eye
+a matter of two hours.'
+
+She rose with a boding lustre.  Drifts of thin pale upper-cloud leaned
+down ladders, pure as virgin silver, for her to climb to her highest seat
+on the unrebellious half-circle of heaven.
+
+'My mind's made up!' quoth Guy to the listening part of himself.  'Out of
+this I'll get.'
+
+By the clearer ray he had discerned a narrow track running a white
+parallel with the general route.  At the expense of dislocating a mile of
+the cavalcade, he struck into it.  A dyke had to be taken, some heavy
+fallows crossed, and the way was straight before him.  He began to sneer
+at the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made the fellows he
+had left shine so poorly in comparison with the Goshawk, but a sight of
+two cavaliers in advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them he
+tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks of the heel, that made
+her fling out and show more mettle than speed.
+
+The objects of this fiery chase did not at first awake to a sense of
+being pursued.  Both rode with mantled visages, and appeared profoundly
+inattentive to the world outside their meditations.  But the Goshawk was
+not to be denied, and by dint of alternately roaring at them and
+upbraiding his two stumping beasts, he at last roused the younger of the
+cavaliers, who called to his companion loudly: without effect it seemed,
+for he had to repeat the warning.  Guy was close up with them, when the
+youth exclaimed:
+
+'Father! holy father!  'Tis Sathanas in person!'
+
+The other rose and pointed trembling to a dark point in the distance as
+he vociferated:
+
+'Not here! not here; but yonder!'
+
+Guy recognized the voice of the first speaker, and cried:
+
+'Stay!  halt a second!  Have you forgotten the Goshawk?'
+
+'Never!' came the reply, 'and forget not Farina!'
+
+Spur and fleeter steeds carried them out of hearing ere Guy could throw
+in another syllable.  Farina gazed back on him remorsefully, but the Monk
+now rated his assistant with indignation.
+
+'Thou weak one! nothing less than fool! to betray thy name on such an
+adventure as this to soul save the saints!'
+
+Farina tossed back his locks, and held his forehead to the moon.  All the
+Monk's ghostly wrath was foiled by the one little last sweet word of his
+beloved, which made music in his ears whenever annoyance sounded.
+
+'And herein,' say the old writers, 'are lovers, who love truly, truly
+recompensed for their toils and pains; in that love, for which they
+suffer, is ever present to ward away suffering not sprung of love: but
+the disloyal, who serve not love faithfully, are a race given over to
+whatso this base world can wreak upon them, without consolation or
+comfort of their mistress, Love; whom sacrificing not all to, they know
+not to delight in.'
+
+The soul of a lover lives through every member of him in the joy of a
+moonlight ride.  Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from
+the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things.  A
+true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over
+muddy stagnant pools.  He must be up in the great air.  He must strike
+all the strings of life.  Swiftness is his rapture.  In his wide arms he
+embraces the whole form of beauty.  Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-
+like his desires.  Then the fair moon is the very presence of his
+betrothed in heaven.  So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting
+glory; while the Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and silent beside him.
+So, crowning them in the sky, one half was all love and light; one,
+blackness and fell purpose.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMBAT ON DRACHENFELS
+
+Not to earth was vouchsafed the honour of commencing the great battle of
+that night.  By an expiring blue-shot beam of moonlight, Farina beheld a
+vast realm of gloom filling the hollow of the West, and the moon was soon
+extinguished behind sluggish scraps of iron scud detached from the
+swinging bulk of ruin, as heavily it ground on the atmosphere in the
+first thunder-launch of motion.
+
+The heart of the youth was strong, but he could not view without quicker
+fawning throbs this manifestation of immeasurable power, which seemed as
+if with a stroke it was capable of destroying creation and the works of
+man.  The bare aspect of the tempest lent terrors to the adventure he was
+engaged in, and of which he knew not the aim, nor might forecast the
+issue.  Now there was nothing to illumine their path but such forked
+flashes as lightning threw them at intervals, touching here a hill with
+clustered cottages, striking into day there a May-blossom, a patch of
+weed, a single tree by the wayside.  Suddenly a more vivid and continuous
+quiver of violet fire met its reflection on the landscape, and Farina saw
+the Rhine-stream beneath him.
+
+'On such a night,' thought he, 'Siegfried fought and slew the dragon!'
+
+A blast of light, as from the jaws of the defeated dragon in his throes,
+made known to him the country he traversed.  Crimsoned above the water
+glimmered the monster-haunted rock itself, and mid-channel beyond, flat
+and black to the stream, stretched the Nuns' Isle in cloistral peace.
+
+'Halt!' cried the Monk, and signalled with a peculiar whistle, to which
+he seemed breathlessly awaiting an answer.  They were immediately
+surrounded by longrobed veiled figures.
+
+'Not too late?' the Monk hoarsely asked of them.
+
+'Yet an hour!' was the reply, in soft clear tones of a woman's voice.
+
+'Great strength and valour more than human be mine,' exclaimed the Monk,
+dismounting.
+
+He passed apart from them; and they drew in a circle, while he prayed,
+kneeling.
+
+Presently he returned, and led Farina to a bank, drawing from some
+hiding-place a book and a bell, which he gave into the hands of the
+youth.
+
+'For thy soul, no word!' said the Monk, speaking down his throat as he
+took in breath.  'Nay! not in answer to me!  Be faithful, and more than
+earthly fortune is thine; for I say unto thee, I shall not fail, having
+grace to sustain this combat.'
+
+Thereupon he commenced the ascent of Drachenfels.
+
+Farina followed.  He had no hint of the Monk's mission, nor of the part
+himself was to play in it.  Such a load of silence gathered on his
+questioning spirit, that the outcry of the rageing elements alone
+prevented him from arresting the Monk and demanding the end of his
+service there.  That outcry was enough to freeze speech on the very lips
+of a mortal.  For scarce had they got footing on the winding path of the
+crags, when the whole vengeance of the storm was hurled against the
+mountain.  Huge boulders were loosened and came bowling from above: trees
+torn by their roots from the fissures whizzed on the eddies of the wind:
+torrents of rain foamed down the iron flanks of rock, and flew off in
+hoar feathers against the short pauses of darkness: the mountain heaved,
+and quaked, and yawned a succession of hideous chasms.
+
+'There's a devil in this,' thought Farina.  He looked back and marked the
+river imaging lurid abysses of cloud above the mountain-summit--yea!  and
+on the summit a flaming shape was mirrored.
+
+Two nervous hands stayed the cry on his mouth.
+
+'Have I not warned thee?' said the husky voice of the Monk.  'I may well
+watch, and think for thee as for a dog.  Be thou as faithful!'
+
+He handed a flask to the youth, and bade him drink.  Farina drank and
+felt richly invigorated.  The Monk then took bell and book.
+
+'But half an hour,' he muttered, 'for this combat that is to ring through
+centuries.'
+
+Crossing himself, he strode wildly upward.  Farina saw him beckon back
+once, and the next instant he was lost round an incline of the highest
+peak.
+
+The wind that had just screamed a thousand death-screams, was now awfully
+dumb, albeit Farina could feel it lifting hood and hair.  In the
+unnatural stillness his ear received tones of a hymn chanted below; now
+sinking, now swelling; as though the voices faltered between prayer and
+inspiration.  Farina caught on a projection of crag, and fixed his eyes
+on what was passing on the height.
+
+There was the Monk in his brown hood and wrapper, confronting--if he
+might trust his balls of sight--the red-hot figure of the Prince of
+Darkness.
+
+As yet no mortal tussle had taken place between them.  They were arguing:
+angrily, it was true: yet with the first mutual deference of practised
+logicians.  Latin and German was alternately employed by both.  It
+thrilled Farina's fervid love of fatherland to hear the German Satan
+spoke: but his Latin was good, and his command over that tongue
+remarkable; for, getting the worst of the argument, as usual, he revenged
+himself by parodying one of the Church canticles with a point that
+discomposed his adversary, and caused him to retreat a step, claiming
+support against such shrewd assault.
+
+'The use of an unexpected weapon in warfare is in itself half a victory.
+Induce your antagonist to employ it as a match for you, and reckon on
+completely routing him .  .  .' says the old military chronicle.
+
+'Come!' said the Demon with easy raillery.  'You know your game--I mine!
+I really want the good people to be happy; dancing, kissing, propagating,
+what you will.  We quite agree.  You can have no objection to me, but a
+foolish old prejudice--not personal, but class; an antipathy of the cowl,
+for which I pardon you!  What I should find in you to complain of--I have
+only to mention it, I am sure--is, that perhaps you do speak a little too
+much through your nose.'
+
+The Monk did not fall into the jocular trap by retorting in the same
+strain.
+
+'Laugh with the Devil, and you won't laugh longest,' says the proverb.
+
+Keeping to his own arms, the holy man frowned.
+
+'Avaunt, Fiend!' he cried.  'To thy kingdom below!  Thou halt raged over
+earth a month, causing blights, hurricanes, and epidemics of the deadly
+sins.  Parley no more!  Begone!'
+
+The Demon smiled: the corners of his mouth ran up to his ears, and his
+eyes slid down almost into one.
+
+'Still through the nose!' said he reproachfully.
+
+'I give thee Five Minutes!' cried the Monk.
+
+'I had hoped for a longer colloquy,' sighed the Demon, jogging his left
+leg and trifling with his tail.
+
+'One Minute !' exclaimed the Monk.
+
+'Truly so!' said the Demon.  'I know old Time and his habits better than
+you really can.  We meet every Saturday night, and communicate our best
+jokes.  I keep a book of them Down There!'
+
+And as if he had reason to remember the pavement of his Halls, he stood
+tiptoe and whipped up his legs.
+
+'Two Minutes!'
+
+The Demon waved perfect acquiescence, and continued:
+
+'We understand each other, he and I.  All Old Ones do.  As long as he
+lasts, I shall.  The thing that surprises me is, that you and I cannot
+agree, similar as we are in temperament, and playing for the long odds,
+both of us.  My failure is, perhaps, too great a passion for sport, aha!
+Well, 'tis a pity you won't try and live on the benevolent principle.
+I am indeed kind to them who commiserate my condition.  I give them all
+they want, aha!  Hem!  Try and not believe in me now, aha!  Ho!  .  .  .
+Can't you?  What are eyes?  Persuade yourself you're dreaming.  You can
+do anything with a mind like yours, Father Gregory!  And consider the
+luxury of getting me out of the way so easily, as many do.  It is my
+finest suggestion, aha!  Generally I myself nudge their ribs with the
+capital idea--You're above bribes?  I was going to observe--'
+
+'Three!'
+
+'Observe, that if you care for worldly honours, I can smother you with
+that kind of thing.  Several of your first-rate people made a bargain
+with me when they were in the fog, and owe me a trifle.  Patronage they
+call it.  I hook the high and the low.  Too-little and too-much serve me
+better than Beelzebub.  A weak stomach is certainly more carnally
+virtuous than a full one.  Consequently my kingdom is becoming too
+respectable.  They've all got titles, and object to being asked to poke
+the fire without--Honourable-and-with-Exceeding-Brightness-Beaming
+Baroness This!  Admirably-Benignant-Down-looking Highness That!
+Interrupts business, especially when you have to ask them to fry
+themselves, according to the rules .  .  .  Would you like Mainz and the
+Rheingau?  .  .  .  You don't care for Beauty--Puella, Puellae?  I have
+plenty of them, too, below.  The Historical Beauties warmed up at a
+moment's notice.  Modern ones made famous between morning and night--
+Fame is the sauce of Beauty.  Or, no--eh?'
+
+'Four!'
+
+'Not quite so fast, if you please.  You want me gone.  Now, where's
+your charity?  Do you ask me to be always raking up those poor devils
+underneath?  While I'm here, they've a respite.  They cannot think you
+kind, Father Gregory!  As for the harm, you see, I'm not the more
+agreeable by being face to face with you--though some fair dames do take
+to my person monstrously.  The secret is, the quantity of small talk I
+can command: that makes them forget my smell, which is, I confess,
+abominable, displeasing to myself, and my worst curse.  Your sort, Father
+Gregory, are somewhat unpleasant in that particular--if I may judge by
+their Legate here.  Well, try small talk.  They would fall desperately in
+love with polecats and skunks if endowed with small talk.  Why, they have
+become enamoured of monks before now!  If skunks, why not monks?  And
+again--'
+
+'Five!'
+
+Having solemnly bellowed this tremendous number, the holy man lifted his
+arms to begin the combat.
+
+Farina felt his nerves prick with admiration of the ghostly warrior
+daring the Second Power of Creation on that lonely mountain-top.  He
+expected, and shuddered at thought of the most awful fight ever yet
+chronicled of those that have taken place between heroes and the hounds
+of evil: but his astonishment was great to hear the Demon, while Bell was
+in air and Book aloft, retreat, shouting, 'Hold!'
+
+'I surrender,' said he sullenly.  'What terms?'
+
+'Instantaneous riddance of thee from face of earth.'
+
+'Good!--Now,' said the Demon, 'did you suppose I was to be trapped into a
+fight?  No doubt you wish to become a saint, and have everybody talking
+of my last defeat .  .  .  .  Pictures, poems, processions, with the
+Devil downmost!  No.  You're more than a match for me.'
+
+'Silence, Darkness!' thundered the Monk, 'and think not to vanquish thy
+victor by flatteries.  Begone!'
+
+And again he towered in his wrath.
+
+The Demon drew his tail between his legs, and threw the forked, fleshy,
+quivering end over his shoulder.  He then nodded cheerfully, pointed his
+feet, and finicked a few steps away, saying: 'I hope we shall meet
+again.'
+
+Upon that he shot out his wings, that were like the fins of the wyver-
+fish, sharpened in venomous points.
+
+'Commands for your people below?' he inquired, leering with chin awry.
+'Desperate ruffians some of those cowls.  You are right not to
+acknowledge them.'
+
+Farina beheld the holy man in no mood to let the Enemy tamper with him
+longer.
+
+The Demon was influenced by a like reflection; for, saying, 'Cologne is
+the city your Holiness inhabits, I think?' he shot up rocket-like over
+Rhineland, striking the entire length of the stream, and its rough-
+bearded castle-crests, slate-ledges, bramble-clefts, vine-slopes, and
+haunted valleys, with one brimstone flash.  Frankfort and the far Main
+saw him and reddened.  Ancient Trier and Mosel; Heidelberg and Neckar;
+Limberg and Lahn, ran guilty of him.  And the swift artery of these
+shining veins, Rhine, from his snow cradle to his salt decease, glimmered
+Stygian horrors as the Infernal Comet, sprung over Bonn, sparkled a fiery
+minute along the face of the stream, and vanished, leaving a seam of
+ragged flame trailed on the midnight heavens.
+
+Farina breathed hard through his teeth.
+
+'The last of him was awful,' said he, coming forward to where the Monk
+knelt and grasped his breviary, 'but he was vanquished easily.'
+
+'Easily?' exclaimed the holy man, gasping satisfaction: 'thou weakling!
+is it for thee to measure difficulties, or estimate powers?  Easily?
+thou worldling! and so are great deeds judged when the danger's past!
+And what am I but the humble instrument that brought about this wondrous
+conquest! the poor tool of this astounding triumph!  Shall the sword say,
+This is the battle I won!  Yonder the enemy I overthrow!  Bow to me, ye
+lords of earth, and worshippers of mighty acts?  Not so!  Nay, but the
+sword is honoured in the hero's grasp, and if it break not, it is
+accounted trusty.  This, then, this little I may claim, that I was
+trusty!  Trusty in a heroic encounter!  Trusty in a battle with earth's
+terror!  Oh!  but this must not be said.  This is to think too much!
+This is to be more than aught yet achieved by man!'
+
+The holy warrior crossed his arms, and gently bowed his head.
+
+'Take me to the Sisters,' he said.  'The spirit has gone out of me!  I am
+faint, and as a child!'
+
+Farina asked, and had, his blessing.
+
+'And with it my thanks!' said the Monk.  'Thou hast witnessed how he can
+be overcome!  Thou hast looked upon a scene that will be the glory of
+Christendom!  Thou hast beheld the discomfiture of Darkness before the
+voice of Light!  Yet think not much of me: account me little in this
+matter!  I am but an instrument! but an instrument!--and again, but an
+instrument!'
+
+Farina drew the arms of the holy combatant across his shoulders and
+descended Drachenfels.
+
+The tempest was as a forgotten anguish.  Bright with maiden splendour
+shone the moon; and the old rocks, cherished in her beams, put up their
+horns to blue heaven once more.  All the leafage of the land shook as to
+shake off a wicked dream, and shuddered from time to time, whispering of
+old fears quieted, and present peace.  The heart of the river fondled
+with the image of the moon in its depths.
+
+'This is much to have won for earth,' murmured the Monk.  'And what is
+life, or who would not risk all, to snatch such loveliness from the
+talons of the Fiend, the Arch-foe?  Yet, not I!  not I!  say not, 'twas I
+did this!'
+
+Soft praises of melody ascended to them on the moist fragrance of air.
+It was the hymn of the Sisters.
+
+'How sweet!' murmured the Monk.  'Put it from me!  away with it!'
+
+Rising on Farina's back, and stirruping his feet on the thighs of the
+youth, he cried aloud: 'I charge ye, whoso ye be, sing not this deed
+before the emperor!  By the breath of your nostrils; pause! ere ye
+whisper aught of the combat of Saint Gregory with Satan, and his victory,
+and the marvel of it, while he liveth; for he would die the humble monk
+he is.'
+
+He resumed his seat, and Farina brought him into the circle of the
+Sisters.  Those pure women took him, and smoothed him, lamenting, and
+filling the night with triumphing tones.
+
+Farina stood apart.
+
+'The breeze tells of dawn,' said the Monk; 'we must be in Cologne before
+broad day.'
+
+They mounted horse, and the Sisters grouped and reverenced under the
+blessings of the Monk.
+
+'No word of it!' said the Monk warningly.  'We are silent, Father!' they
+answered.  'Cologne-ward!' was then his cry, and away he and Farina,
+flew.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOSHAWK LEADS
+
+Morning was among the grey eastern clouds as they rode upon the camp
+hastily formed to meet the Kaiser.  All there was in a wallow of
+confusion.  Fierce struggles for precedence still went on in the
+neighbourhood of the imperial tent ground, where, under the standard of
+Germany, lounged some veterans of the Kaiser's guard, calmly watching the
+scramble.  Up to the edge of the cultivated land nothing was to be seen
+but brawling clumps of warriors asserting the superior claims of their
+respective lords.  Variously and hotly disputed were these claims, as
+many red coxcombs testified.  Across that point where the green field
+flourished, not a foot was set, for the Kaiser's care of the farmer, and
+affection for good harvests, made itself respected even in the heat of
+those jealous rivalries.  It was said of him, that he would have camped
+in a bog, or taken quarters in a cathedral, rather than trample down a
+green blade of wheat, or turn over one vine-pole in the empire.  Hence
+the presence of Kaiser Heinrich was never hailed as Egypt's plague by the
+peasantry, but welcome as the May month wherever he went.
+
+Father Gregory and Farina found themselves in the centre of a group ere
+they drew rein, and a cry rose, 'The good father shall decide, and all's
+fair,' followed by, 'Agreed!  Hail and tempest!  he's dropped down o'
+purpose.'
+
+'Father,' said one, 'here it is!  I say I saw the Devil himself fly off
+Drachenfels, and flop into Cologne.  Fritz here, and Frankenbauch, saw
+him too.  They'll swear to him: so 'll I.  Hell's thunder! will we.
+Yonder fellows will have it 'twas a flash o' lightning, as if I didn't
+see him, horns, tail, and claws, and a mighty sight 'twas, as I'm a
+sinner.'
+
+A clash of voices, for the Devil and against him, burst on this accurate
+description of the Evil spirit.  The Monk sank his neck into his chest.
+
+'Gladly would I hold silence on this, my sons,' said he, in a
+supplicating voice.
+
+'Speak, Father,' cried the first spokesman, gathering courage from the
+looks of the Monk.
+
+Father Gregory appeared to commune with himself deeply.  At last, lifting
+his head, and murmuring, 'It must be,' he said aloud:
+
+''Twas verily Satan, O my sons!  Him this night in mortal combat I
+encountered and overcame on the summit of Drachenfels, before the eyes of
+this youth; and from Satan I this night deliver ye! an instrument herein
+as in all other.'
+
+Shouts, and a far-spreading buzz resounded in the camp.  Hundreds had now
+seen Satan flying off the Drachenstein.  Father Gregory could no longer
+hope to escape from the importunate crowds that beset him for
+particulars.  The much-contested point now was, as to the exact position
+of Satan's tail during his airy circuit, before descending into Cologne.
+It lashed like a lion's.  'Twas cocked, for certain!  He sneaked it
+between his legs like a lurcher!  He made it stumpy as a brown bear's!
+He carried it upright as a pike!
+
+'O my sons!  have I sown dissension?  Have I not given ye peace?'
+exclaimed the Monk.
+
+But they continued to discuss it with increasing frenzy.
+
+Farina cast a glance over the tumult, and beheld his friend Guy beckoning
+earnestly.  He had no difficulty in getting away to him, as the fetters
+of all eyes were on the Monk alone.
+
+The Goshawk was stamping with excitement.
+
+'Not a moment to be lost, my lad,' said Guy, catching his arm.  'Here,
+I've had half-a-dozen fights already for this bit of ground.  Do you know
+that fellow squatting there?'
+
+Farina beheld the Thier at the entrance of a tumbledown tent.  He was
+ruefully rubbing a broken head.
+
+'Now,' continued Guy, 'to mount him is the thing; and then after the
+wolves of Werner as fast as horse-flesh can carry us.  No questions!
+Bound, are you?  And what am I?  But this is life and death, lad! Hark!'
+
+The Goshawk whispered something that sucked the blood out of Farina's
+cheek.
+
+'Look you--what's your lockjaw name?  Keep good faith with me, and you
+shall have your revenge, and the shiners I promise, besides my lord's
+interest for a better master: but, sharp! we won't mount till we're out
+of sight o' the hell-scum you horde with.'
+
+The Thier stood up and staggered after them through the camp.  There was
+no difficulty in mounting him horses were loose, and scampering about the
+country, not yet delivered from their terrors of the last night's
+tempest.
+
+'Here be we, three good men!' exclaimed Guy, when they were started, and
+Farina had hurriedly given him the heads of his adventure with the Monk.
+'Three good men!  One has helped to kick the devil: one has served an
+apprenticeship to his limb: and one is ready to meet him foot to foot any
+day, which last should be myself.  Not a man more do we want, though it
+were to fish up that treasure you talk of being under the Rhine there,
+and guarded by I don't know how many tricksy little villains.  Horses can
+be ferried across at Linz, you say?'
+
+'Ay, thereabout,' grunted the Thier.
+
+'We 're on the right road, then!' said Guy.  'Thanks to you both, I've
+had no sleep for two nights--not a wink, and must snatch it going--not
+the first time.'
+
+The Goshawk bent his body, and spoke no more.  Farina could not get a
+word further from him.  By the mastery he still had over his rein, the
+Goshawk alone proved that he was of the world of the living.  Schwartz
+Thier, rendered either sullen or stunned by the latest cracked crown he
+had received, held his jaws close as if they had been nailed.
+
+At Linz the horses were well breathed.  The Goshawk, who had been snoring
+an instant before, examined them keenly, and shook his calculating head.
+
+'Punch that beast of yours in the ribs,' said he to Farina.  'Ah! not a
+yard of wind in him.  And there's the coming back, when we shall have
+more to carry.  Well: this is my lord's money; but i' faith, it's going
+in a good cause, and Master Groschen will make it all right, no doubt;
+not a doubt of it.'
+
+The Goshawk had seen some excellent beasts in the stables of the Kaiser's
+Krone; but the landlord would make no exchange without an advance of
+silver.  This done, the arrangement was prompt.
+
+'Schwartz Thier!--I've got your name now,' said Guy, as they were
+ferrying across, 'you're stiff certain they left Cologne with the maiden
+yesternoon, now?'
+
+'Ah, did they! and she's at the Eck safe enow by this time.'
+
+'And away from the Eck this night she shall come, trust me!'
+
+'Or there will I die with her!' cried Farina.
+
+'Fifteen men at most, he has, you said,' continued Guy.
+
+'Two not sound, five true as steel, and the rest shillyshally.  'Slife,
+one lock loose serves us; but two saves us: five we're a match for,
+throwing in bluff Baron; the remainder go with victory.'
+
+'Can we trust this fellow?' whispered Farina.
+
+'Trust him!' roared Guy.  'Why, I've thumped him, lad; pegged and
+pardoned him.  Trust him?  trust me!  If Werner catches a sight of that
+snout of his within half-a-mile of his hold, he'll roast him alive.'
+
+He lowered his voice: 'Trust him?  We can do nothing without him.
+I knocked the devil out of him early this morning.  No chance for his
+Highness anywhere now.  This Eck of Werner's would stand a siege from the
+Kaiser in person, I hear.  We must into it like weasels; and out as we
+can.'
+
+Dismissing the ferry-barge with stern injunctions to be in waiting from
+noon to noon, the three leapt on their fresh nags.
+
+'Stop at the first village,' said Guy; 'we must lay in provision.  As
+Master Groschen says, "Nothing's to be done, Turpin, without provender."'
+
+'Goshawk!' cried Farina; 'you have time; tell me how this business was
+done.'
+
+The only reply was a soft but decided snore, that spoke, like a
+voluptuous trumpet, of dreamland and its visions.
+
+At Sinzig, the Thier laid his hand on Guy's bridle, with the words, 'Feed
+here,' a brief, but effective, form of signal, which aroused the Goshawk
+completely.  The sign of the Trauben received them.  Here, wurst reeking
+with garlic, eggs, black bread, and sour wine, was all they could
+procure.  Farina refused to eat, and maintained his resolution, in spite
+of Guy's sarcastic chiding.
+
+'Rub down the beasts, then, and water them,' said the latter.  'Made a
+vow, I suppose,' muttered Guy.
+
+'That's the way of those fellows.  No upright manly take-the-thing-as-it-
+comes; but fly-sky-high whenever there's a dash on their heaven.  What
+has his belly done to offend him?  It will be crying out just when we
+want all quiet.  I wouldn't pay Werner such a compliment as go without a
+breakfast for him.  Not I!  Would you, Schwartz Thier?'
+
+'Henker! not I!' growled the Thier.  'He'll lose one sooner.'
+
+'First snatch his prey, or he'll be making, God save us! a meal for a
+Kaiser, the brute.'
+
+Guy called in the landlady, clapped down the score, and abused the wine.
+
+'Sir,' said the landlady, 'ours is but a poor inn, and we do our best.'
+
+'So you do,' replied the Goshawk, softened; 'and I say that a civil
+tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine.'
+
+The landlady, a summer widow, blushed, and as he was stepping from the
+room, called him aside.
+
+'I thought you were one of that dreadful Werner's band, and I hate him.'
+
+Guy undeceived her.
+
+'He took my sister,' she went on, 'and his cruelty killed her.  He
+persecuted me even in the lifetime of my good man.  Last night he came
+here in the middle of the storm with a young creature bright as an angel,
+and sorrowful--'
+
+'He's gone, you're sure?' broke in Guy.
+
+'Gone!  Oh, yes!  Soon as the storm abated he dragged her on.  Oh!  the
+way that young thing looked at me, and I able to do nothing for her.'
+
+'Now, the Lord bless you for a rosy Christian!' cried Guy, and, in his
+admiration, he flung his arm round her and sealed a ringing kiss on each
+cheek.
+
+'No good man defrauded by that!  and let me see the fellow that thinks
+evil of it.  If I ever told a woman a secret, I 'd tell you one now,
+trust me.  But I never do, so farewell!  Not another?'
+
+Hasty times keep the feelings in a ferment, and the landlady was
+extremely angry with Guy and heartily forgave him, all within a minute.
+
+'No more,' said she, laughing: 'but wait; I have something for you.'
+
+The Goshawk lingered on a fretting heel.  She was quickly under his elbow
+again with two flasks leaning from her bosom to her arms.
+
+'There!  I seldom meet a man like you; and, when I do, I like to be
+remembered.  This is a true good wine, real Liebfrauenmilch, which I only
+give to choice customers.'
+
+'Welcome it is!' sang Guy to her arch looks; 'but I must pay for it.'
+
+'Not a pfennig!' said the landlady.
+
+'Not one?'
+
+'Not one !' she repeated, with a stamp of the foot.
+
+'In other coin, then,' quoth Guy; and folding her waist, which did not
+this time back away, the favoured Goshawk registered rosy payment on a
+very fresh red mouth, receiving in return such lively discount, that he
+felt himself bound in conscience to make up the full sum a second time.
+
+'What a man!' sighed the landlady, as she watched the Goshawk lead off
+along the banks; 'courtly as a knight, open as a squire, and gentle as a
+page!'
+
+
+
+
+WERNER'S ECK
+
+A league behind Andernach, and more in the wintry circle of the sun than
+Laach, its convenient monastic neighbour, stood the castle of Werner, the
+Robber Baron.  Far into the South, hazy with afternoon light, a yellow
+succession of sandhills stretched away, spouting fire against the blue
+sky of an elder world, but now dead and barren of herbage.  Around is a
+dusty plain, where the green blades of spring no sooner peep than they
+become grimed with sand and take an aged look, in accordance with the
+ungenerous harvests they promise.  The aridity of the prospect is
+relieved on one side by the lofty woods of Laach, through which the sun
+setting burns golden-red, and on the other by the silver sparkle of a
+narrow winding stream, bordered with poplars, and seen but a glistening
+mile of its length by all the thirsty hills.  The Eck, or Corner, itself,
+is thick-set with wood, but of a stunted growth, and lying like a dark
+patch on the landscape.  It served, however, entirely to conceal the
+castle, and mask every movement of the wary and terrible master.  A
+trained eye advancing on the copse would hardly mark the glimmer of the
+turrets over the topmost leaves, but to every loophole of the walls lies
+bare the circuit of the land.  Werner could rule with a glance the
+Rhine's course down from the broad rock over Coblentz to the white tower
+of Andernach.  He claimed that march as his right; but the Mosel was no
+hard ride's distance, and he gratified his thirst for rapine chiefly on
+that river, delighting in it, consequently, as much as his robber nature
+boiled over the bound of his feudal privileges.
+
+Often had the Baron held his own against sieges and restrictions, bans
+and impositions of all kinds.  He boasted that there was never a knight
+within twenty miles of him that he had not beaten, nor monk of the same
+limit not in his pay.  This braggadocio received some warrant from his
+yearly increase of licence; and his craft and his castle combined,
+made him a notable pest of the region, a scandal to the abbey whose
+countenance he had, and a frightful infliction on the poorer farmers
+and peasantry.
+
+The sun was beginning to slope over Laach, and threw the shadows of the
+abbey towers half-way across the blue lake-waters, as two men in the garb
+of husbandmen emerged from the wood.  Their feet plunged heavily and
+their heads hung down, as they strode beside a wain mounted with straw,
+whistling an air of stupid unconcern; but a close listener might have
+heard that the lumbering vehicle carried a human voice giving them
+directions as to the road they were to take, and what sort of behaviour
+to observe under certain events.  The land was solitary.  A boor passing
+asked whether toll or tribute they were conveying to Werner.  Tribute,
+they were advised to reply, which caused him to shrug and curse as he
+jogged on.  Hearing him, the voice in the wain chuckled grimly.  Their
+next speech was with a trooper, who overtook them, and wanted to know
+what they had in the wain for Werner.  Tribute, they replied, and won the
+title of 'brave pigs' for their trouble.
+
+'But what's the dish made of?' said the trooper, stirring the straw with
+his sword-point.
+
+'Tribute,' came the answer.
+
+'Ha!  You've not been to Werner's school,' and the trooper swung a sword-
+stroke at the taller of the two, sending a tremendous shudder throughout
+his frame; but he held his head to the ground, and only seemed to betray
+animal consciousness in leaning his ear closer to the wain.
+
+'Blood and storm!  Will ye speak?' cried the trooper.
+
+'Never talk much; but an ye say nothing to the Baron,'--thrusting his
+hand into the straw--'here's what's better than speaking.'
+
+'Well said!--Eh?  Liebfrauenmilch?  Ho, ho!  a rare bleed!'
+
+Striking the neck of the flask on a wheel, the trooper applied it to his
+mouth, and ceased not deeply ingurgitating till his face was broad to the
+sky and the bottle reversed.  He then dashed it down, sighed, and shook
+himself.
+
+'Rare news! the Kaiser's come: he'll be in Cologne by night; but first he
+must see the Baron, and I'm post with the order.  That's to show you how
+high he stands in the Kaiser's grace.  Don't be thinking of upsetting
+Werner yet, any of you; mind, now!'
+
+'That's Blass-Gesell,' said the voice in the wain, as the trooper trotted
+on: adding, ''gainst us.'
+
+'Makes six,' responded the driver.
+
+Within sight of the Eck, they descried another trooper coming toward
+them.  This time the driver was first to speak.
+
+'Tribute!  Provender!  Bread and wine for the high Baron Werner from his
+vassals over Tonnistein.'
+
+'And I'm out of it!  fasting like a winter wolf,' howled the fellow.
+
+He was in the act of addressing himself to an inspection of the wain's
+contents, when a second flask lifted in air, gave a sop to his curiosity.
+This flask suffered the fate of the former.
+
+'A Swabian blockhead, aren't you?'
+
+'Ay, that country,' said the driver.  'May be, Henker Rothhals happens to
+be with the Baron?'
+
+'To hell with him!  I wish he had my job, and I his, of watching the
+yellow-bird in her new cage, till she's taken out to-night, and then a
+jolly bumper to the Baron all round.'
+
+The driver wished him a fortunate journey, strongly recommending him to
+skirt the abbey westward, and go by the Ahr valley, as there was
+something stirring that way, and mumbling, 'Makes five again,' as he put
+the wheels in motion.
+
+'Goshawk!' said his visible companion; 'what do you say now?'
+
+'I say, bless that widow!'
+
+'Oh! bring me face to face with this accursed Werner quickly, my God !'
+gasped the youth.
+
+'Tusk!  'tis not Werner we want--there's the Thier speaking.  No, no,
+Schwartz Thier!  I trust you, no doubt; but the badger smells at a hole,
+before he goes inside it.  We're strangers, and are allowed to miss our
+way.'
+
+Leaving the wain in Farina's charge, he pushed through a dense growth of
+shrub and underwood, and came crouching on a precipitous edge of shrouded
+crag, which commanded a view of the stronghold, extending round it, as if
+scooped clean by some natural action, about a stone'sthrow distant, and
+nearly level with the look-out tower.  Sheer from a deep circular basin
+clothed with wood, and bottomed with grass and bubbling water, rose a
+naked moss-stained rock, on whose peak the castle firmly perched, like a
+spying hawk.  The only means of access was by a narrow natural bridge of
+rock flung from this insulated pinnacle across to the mainland.  One man,
+well disposed, might have held it against forty.
+
+'Our way's the best,' thought Guy, as he meditated every mode of gaining
+admission.  'A hundred men an hour might be lost cutting steps up that
+steep slate; and once at the top we should only have to be shoved down
+again.'
+
+While thus engaged, he heard a summons sounded from the castle, and
+scrambled back to Farina.
+
+'The Thier leads now,' said he, 'and who leads is captain.  It seems
+easier to get out of that than in.  There's a square tower, and a round.
+I guess the maiden to be in the round.  Now, lad, no crying out--You
+don't come in with us; but back you go for the horses, and have them
+ready and fresh in yon watered meadow under the castle.  The path down
+winds easy.'
+
+'Man!' cried Farina, 'what do you take me for?--go you for the horses.'
+
+'Not for a fool,' Guy rejoined, tightening his lip; 'but now is your time
+to prove yourself one.'
+
+'With you, or without you, I enter that castle!'
+
+'Oh!  if you want to be served up hot for the Baron's supper-mess, by all
+means.'
+
+'Thunder!' growled Schwartz Thier, 'aren't ye moving?'
+
+The Goshawk beckoned Farina aside.
+
+'Act as I tell you, or I'm for Cologne.'
+
+'Traitor!' muttered the youth.
+
+'Swearing this, that if we fail, the Baron shall need a leech sooner than
+a bride.'
+
+'That stroke must be mine!'
+
+The Goshawk griped the muscle of Farina's arm till the youth was
+compelled to slacken it with pain.
+
+'Could you drive a knife through a six-inch wood-wall?  I doubt this wild
+boar wants a harder hit than many a best man could give.  'Sblood!  obey,
+sirrah.  How shall we keep yon fellow true, if he sees we're at points?'
+
+'I yield,' exclaimed Farina with a fall of the chest; 'but hear I nothing
+of you by midnight--Oh! then think not I shall leave another minute to
+chance.  Farewell! haste! Heaven prosper you! You will see her, and die
+under her eyes.  That may be denied to me.  What have I done to be
+refused that last boon?'
+
+'Gone without breakfast and dinner,' said Guy in abhorrent tones.
+
+A whistle from the wain, following a noise of the castlegates being flung
+open, called the Goshawk away, and he slouched his shoulders and strode
+to do his part, without another word.  Farina gazed after him, and
+dropped into the covert.
+
+
+
+
+THE WATER-LADY
+
+'Bird of lovers!  Voice of the passion of love!  Sweet, deep, disaster-
+toning nightingale!' sings the old minnesinger; 'who that has not loved,
+hearing thee is touched with the wand of love's mysteries, and yearneth
+to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart; but who,
+listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak, yet
+faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires
+stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the
+angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to
+them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of the
+fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the tears
+stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious ladders
+inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl, rose-ruby, ether
+of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the insufferable Presences: and
+lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and waylay his eyelids, and a second
+time he is mocked, aspiring: and after the third swoon standeth Hope
+before him with folded arms, and eyes dry of the delusions of tears,
+saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy strength hath reached in thee
+so far! now shall I never die in thee !'
+
+'For surely,' says the minstrel, 'Hope is not born of earth, or it were
+perishable.  Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love
+straineth the heavens with.  This owe we to thy music, bridal
+nightingale!  And the difference of this celestial spirit from the
+smirking phantasy of whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the
+difference between painted day with its poor ambitious snares, and night
+lifting its myriad tapers round the throne of the eternal, the prophet
+stars of everlasting time!  And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and
+the one is unregretted, and the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of
+divine melancholy; her ears crowded with the pale surges that wrap this
+shifting shore; in her eyes a shape of beauty floating dimly, that she
+will not attain this side the water, but broodeth on evermore.
+
+'Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very
+edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one
+ecstasy, death-dividing bird!  Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and
+sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven!  Pour
+out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a
+priest of the inmost temple, 'tis drunken with fair intelligences!'
+
+Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.
+
+Strong and full sang the nightingales that night Farina held watch by the
+guilty castle that entombed his living beloved.  The castle looked itself
+a denser shade among the moonthrown shadows of rock and tree.  The meadow
+spread like a green courtyard at the castle's foot.  It was of lush deep
+emerald grass, softly mixed with grey in the moon's light, and showing
+like jasper.  Where the shadows fell thickest, there was yet a mist
+of colour.  All about ran a brook, and babbled to itself.  The spring
+crocus lifted its head in moist midgrasses of the meadow, rejoiced with
+freshness.  The rugged heights seemed to clasp this one innocent spot as
+their only garden-treasure; and a bank of hazels hid it from the castle
+with a lover's arm.
+
+'The moon will tell me,' mused Farina; 'the moon will signal me the hour!
+When the moon hangs over the round tower, I shall know 'tis time to
+strike.'
+
+The song of the nightingales was a full unceasing throb.
+
+It went like the outcry of one heart from branch to branch.  The four
+long notes, and the short fifth which leads off to that hurried gush of
+music, gurgling rich with passion, came thick and constant from under the
+tremulous leaves.
+
+At first Farina had been deaf to them.  His heart was in the dungeon with
+Margarita, or with the Goshawk in his dangers, forming a thousand
+desperate plans, among the red-hot ploughshares of desperate action.
+Finally, without a sense of being wooed, it was won.  The tenderness of
+his love then mastered him.
+
+'God will not suffer that fair head to come to harm!' he thought, and
+with the thought a load fell off his breast.
+
+He paced the meadows, and patted the three pasturing steeds.
+Involuntarily his sight grew on the moon.  She went so slowly.  She
+seemed not to move at all.  A little wing of vapour flew toward her; it
+whitened, passed, and the moon was slower than before.  Oh! were the
+heavens delaying their march to look on this iniquity?  Again and again
+he cried, 'Patience, it is not time!' He flung himself on the grass.  The
+next moment he climbed the heights, and was peering at the mass of gloom
+that fronted the sky.  It reared such a mailed head of menace, that his
+heart was seized with a quivering, as though it had been struck.  Behind
+lay scattered some small faint-winkling stars on sapphire fields, and a
+stain of yellow light was in a breach of one wall.
+
+He descended.  What was the Goshawk doing?  Was he betrayed?  It was
+surely now time?  No; the moon had not yet smitten the face of the
+castle.  He made his way through the hazel-bank among flitting
+nightmoths, and glanced up to measure the moon's distance.  As he did so,
+a first touch of silver fell on the hoary flint.
+
+'Oh, young bird of heaven in that Devil's clutch!'
+
+Sounds like the baying of boar-hounds alarmed him.  They whined into
+silence.
+
+He fell back.  The meadow breathed peace, and more and more the
+nightingales volumed their notes.  As in a charmed circle of palpitating
+song, he succumbed to languor.  The brook rolled beside him fresh as an
+infant, toying with the moonlight.  He leaned over it, and thrice
+waywardly dipped his hand in the clear translucence.
+
+Was it his own face imaged there?
+
+Farina bent close above an eddy of the water.  It whirled with a strange
+tumult, breaking into lines and lights a face not his own, nor the
+moon's; nor was it a reflection.  The agitation increased.  Now a wreath
+of bubbles crowned the pool, and a pure water-lily, but larger, ascended
+wavering.
+
+He started aside; and under him a bright head, garlanded with gemmed
+roses, appeared.  No fairer figure of woman had Farina seen.  Her visage
+had the lustrous white of moonlight, and all her shape undulated in a
+dress of flashing silver-white, wonderful to see.  The Lady of the Water
+smiled on him, and ran over with ripples and dimples of limpid beauty.
+Then, as he retreated on the meadow grass, she swam toward him, and
+taking his hand, pressed it to her.  After her touch the youth no longer
+feared.  She curved her finger, and beckoned him on.  All that she did
+was done flowingly.  The youth was a shadow in her silver track as she
+passed like a harmless wave over the closed crocuses; but the crocuses
+shivered and swelled their throats of streaked purple and argent as at
+delicious rare sips of a wine.  Breath of violet, and ladysmock, and
+valley-lily, mingled and fluttered about her.  Farina was as a man
+working the day's intent in a dream.  He could see the heart in her
+translucent, hanging like a cold dingy ruby.  By the purity of his nature
+he felt that such a presence must have come but to help.  It might be
+Margarita's guardian fairy!
+
+They passed the hazel-bank, and rounded the castlecrag, washed by the
+brook and, beneath the advancing moon, standing in a ring of brawling
+silver.  The youth with his fervid eyes marked the old weather-stains and
+scars of long defiance coming into colour.  That mystery of wickedness
+which the towers had worn in the dusk, was dissolved, and he endured no
+more the almost abashed sensation of competing littleness that made him
+think there was nought to do, save die, combating single-handed such
+massive power.  The moon shone calmly superior, like the prowess of
+maiden knights; and now the harsh frown of the walls struck resolution to
+his spirit, and nerved him with hate and the contempt true courage feels
+when matched against fraud and villany.
+
+On a fallen block of slate, cushioned with rich brown moss and rusted
+weather-stains, the Water-Lady sat, and pointed to Farina the path of the
+moon toward the round tower.  She did not speak, and if his lips parted,
+put her cold finger across them.  Then she began to hum a soft sweet
+monotony of song, vague and careless, very witching to hear.  Farina
+caught no words, nor whether the song was of days in dust or in flower,
+but his mind bloomed with legends and sad splendours of story, while she
+sang on the slate-block under sprinkled shadows by the water.
+
+He had listened long in trance, when the Water-Lady hushed, and stretched
+forth a slender forefinger to the moon.  It stood like a dot over the
+round tower.  Farina rose in haste.  She did not leave him to ask her
+aid, but took his hand and led him up the steep ascent.  Halfway to the
+castle, she rested.  There, concealed by bramble-tufts, she disclosed the
+low portal of a secret passage, and pushed it open without effort.  She
+paused at the entrance, and he could see her trembling, seeming to wax
+taller, till she was like a fountain glittering in the cold light.  Then
+she dropped, as drops a dying bet, and cowered into the passage.
+
+Darkness, thick with earth-dews, oppressed his senses.  He felt the
+clammy walls scraping close on him.  Not the dimmest lamp, or guiding
+sound, was near; but the lady went on as one who knew her way.  Passing a
+low-vaulted dungeon-room, they wound up stairs hewn in the rock, and came
+to a door, obedient to her touch, which displayed a chamber faintly
+misted by a solitary bar of moonlight.  Farina perceived they were above
+the foundation of the castle.  The walls gleamed pale with knightly
+harness, habergeons gaping for heads, breastplates of blue steel,
+halbert, and hand-axe, greaves, glaives, boar-spears, and polished spur-
+fixed heel-pieces.  He seized a falchion hanging apart, but the lady
+stayed his arm, and led to another flight of stone ending in a kind of
+corridor.  Noises of laughter and high feasting beset him at this point.
+The Lady of the Water sidled her head, as to note a familiar voice; and
+then drew him to a looped aperture.
+
+Farina beheld a scene that first dazzled, but, as it grew into shape,
+sank him with dismay.  Below, and level with the chamber he had left, a
+rude banqueting-hall glowed, under the light of a dozen flambeaux, with
+smoking boar's flesh, deer's flesh, stone-flagons, and horn-beakers.  At
+the head of this board sat Werner, scarlet with furious feasting, and on
+his right hand, Margarita, bloodless as a beautiful martyr bound to the
+fire.  Retainers of Werner occupied the length of the hall, chorusing the
+Baron's speeches, and drinking their own healths when there was no call
+for another.  Farina saw his beloved alone.  She was dressed as when he
+parted with her last.  The dear cameo lay on her bosom, but not heaving
+proudly as of old.  Her shoulders were drooped forward, and contracted
+her bosom in its heaving.  She would have had a humbled look, but for the
+marble sternness of her eyes.  They were fixed as eyes that see the way
+of death through all earthly objects.
+
+'Now, dogs!' cried the Baron, 'the health of the night!  and swell your
+lungs, for I'll have no cat's cry when Werner's bride is the toast.  Monk
+or no monk's leave, she's mine.  Ay, my pretty one! it shall be made
+right in the morning, if I lead all the Laach rats here by the nose.
+Thunder! no disrespect to Werner's bride from Pope or abbot.  Now, sing
+out!--or wait! these fellows shall drink it first.'
+
+He stretched and threw a beaker of wine right and left behind him, and
+Farina's despair stiffened his limbs as he recognized the Goshawk and
+Schwartz Thier strapped to the floor.  Their beards were already moist
+with previous libations similarly bestowed, and they received this in
+sullen stillness; but Farina thought he observed a rapid glance of
+encouragement dart from beneath the Goshawk's bent brows, as Margarita
+momentarily turned her head half-way on him.
+
+'Lick your chaps, ye beasts, and don't say Werner stints vermin good
+cheer his nuptial-night.  Now,' continued the Baron, growing huskier as
+he talked louder: 'Short and ringing, my devil's pups:--Werner and his
+Bride! and may she soon give you a young baron to keep you in better
+order than I can, as, if she does her duty, she will.'
+
+The Baron stood up, and lifted his huge arm to lead the toast.
+
+'Werner and his Bride!'
+
+Not a voice followed him.  There was a sudden intimation of the call
+being echoed; but it snapped, and ended in shuffling tones, as if the
+hall-door had closed on the response.
+
+'What 's this?' roared the Baron, in that caged wild beast voice
+Margarita remembered she had heard in the Cathedral Square.
+
+No one replied.
+
+'Speak! or I'll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!'
+
+'Herr Baron!' said Henker Rothhals impressively; 'the matter is, that
+there's something unholy among us.'
+
+The Baron's goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.
+
+'I'll make an unholy thing of him that says it,' and Werner lowered at
+them one by one.
+
+'Then I say it, Herr Baron!' pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his
+frontispiece: 'The Devil has turned against you at last.  Look up there--
+Ah, it's gone now; but where's the man sitting this side saw it not?'
+
+The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.
+
+'Now!  will any rascal here please to say so?'
+
+Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many
+in the act of confirming the assertion.
+
+'Stand out, Henker Rotthals !'
+
+Rotthals slid a hunting-knife up his wrist, and stepped back from the
+board.
+
+'Beast!' roared the Baron, 'I said I wouldn't shed blood to-night.  I
+spared a traitor, and an enemy----'
+
+'Look again!' said Rothhals; 'will any fellow say he saw nothing there.'
+
+While all heads, including Werner's, were directed to the aperture which
+surveyed them, Rothhals tossed his knife to the Goshawk unperceived.
+
+This time answers came to his challenge, but not in confirmation.  The
+Baron spoke with a gasping gentleness.
+
+'So you trifle with me?  I'm dangerous for that game.  Mind you of Blass-
+Gesell?  I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters of
+the road to hell for trial.'  Bellowing, 'Take that!' he discharged a
+broad blade, hitherto concealed in his right hand, straight at Rothhals.
+It fixed in his cheek and jaw, wringing an awful breath of pain from him
+as he fell against the wall.
+
+'There's a lesson for you not to cross me, children!' said Werner,
+striding his stumpy legs up and down the crashing board, and puffing his
+monstrous girth of chest and midriff.  'Let him stop there awhile, to
+show what comes of thwarting Werner!--Fire-devils! before the baroness,
+too!--Something unholy is there?  Something unholy in his jaw, I think!
+--Leave it sticking!  He's against meat last, is he?  I'll teach you who
+he's for!--Who speaks?'
+
+All hung silent.  These men were animals dominated by a mightier brute.
+
+He clasped his throat, and shook the board with a jump, as he squeaked,
+rather than called, a second time 'Who spoke?'
+
+He had not again to ask.  In this pause, as the Baron glared for his
+victim, a song, so softly sung that it sounded remote, but of which every
+syllable was clearly rounded, swelled into his ears, and froze him in his
+angry posture.
+
+              'The blood of the barons shall turn to ice,
+                  And their castle fall to wreck,
+               When a true lover dips in the water thrice,
+                  That runs round Werner's Eck.
+
+              'Round Werner's Eck the water runs;
+                  The hazels shiver and shake:
+               The walls that have blotted such happy suns,
+                  Are seized with the ruin-quake.
+
+              'And quake with the ruin, and quake with rue,
+                  Thou last of Werner's race!
+               The hearts of the barons were cold that knew
+                  The Water-Dame's embrace.
+
+              'For a sin was done, and a shame was wrought,
+                  That water went to hide:
+               And those who thought to make it nought,
+                  They did but spread it wide.
+
+              'Hold ready, hold ready to pay the price,
+                  And keep thy bridal cheer:
+               A hand has dipped in the water thrice,
+                  And the Water-Dame is here.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RESCUE
+
+The Goshawk was on his feet.  'Now, lass,' said he to Margarita, 'now is
+the time!'  He took her hand, and led her to the door.  Schwartz Thier
+closed up behind her.  Not a man in the hall interposed.  Werner's head
+moved round after them, like a dog on the watch; but he was dumb.  The
+door opened, and Farina entered.  He bore a sheaf of weapons under his
+arm.  The familiar sight relieved Werner's senses from the charm.  He
+shouted to bar the prisoners' passage.  His men were ranged like statues
+in the hall.  There was a start among them, as if that terrible noise
+communicated an instinct of obedience, but no more.  They glanced at each
+other, and remained quiet.
+
+The Goshawk had his eye on Werner.  'Stand back, lass!' he said to
+Margarita.  She took a sword from Farina, and answered, with white lips
+and flashing eyes, 'I can fight, Goshawk!'
+
+'And shall, if need be; but leave it to me now, returned Guy.
+
+His eye never left the Baron.  Suddenly a shriek of steel rang.  All fell
+aside, and the combatants stood opposed on clear ground.  Farina, took
+Margarita's left hand, and placed her against the wall between the Thier
+and himself.  Werner's men were well content to let their master fight it
+out.  The words spoken by Henker Rothhals, that the Devil had forsaken
+him, seemed in their minds confirmed by the weird song which every one
+present could swear he heard with his ears.  'Let him take his chance,
+and try his own luck,' they said, and shrugged.  The battle was between
+Guy, as Margarita's champion, and Werner.
+
+In Schwartz Thier's judgement, the two were well matched, and he
+estimated their diverse qualities from sharp experience.  'For short work
+the Baron, and my new mate for tough standing to 't!'  Farina's summary
+in favour of the Goshawk was, 'A stouter heart, harder sinews, and a good
+cause.  The combat was generally regarded with a professional eye, and
+few prayers.  Margarita solely there asked aid from above, and knelt to
+the Virgin; but her, too, the clash of arms and dire earnest of mortal
+fight aroused to eager eyes.  She had not dallied with heroes in her
+dreams.  She was as ready to second Siegfried on the crimson field as
+tend him in the silken chamber.
+
+It was well that a woman's heart was there to mark the grace and glory of
+manhood in upright foot-to-foot encounter.  For the others, it was a mere
+calculation of lucky hits.  Even Farina, in his anxiety for her, saw but
+the brightening and darkening of the prospect of escape in every attitude
+and hard-ringing blow.  Margarita was possessed with a painful
+exaltation.  In her eyes the bestial Baron now took a nobler form and
+countenance; but the Goshawk assumed the sovereign aspect of old heroes,
+who, whether persecuted or favoured of heaven, still maintained their
+stand, remembering of what stuff they were, and who made them.
+
+'Never,' say the old writers, with a fervour honourable to their
+knowledge of the elements that compose our being, 'never may this bright
+privilege of fair fight depart from us, nor advantage of it fail to be
+taken!  Man against man, or beast, singly keeping his ground, is as fine
+rapture to the breast as Beauty in her softest hour affordeth.  For if
+woman taketh loveliness to her when she languisheth, so surely doth man
+in these fierce moods, when steel and iron sparkle opposed, and their
+breath is fire, and their lips white with the lock of resolution; all
+their faculties knotted to a point, and their energies alive as the
+daylight to prove themselves superior, according to the laws and under
+the blessing of chivalry.'
+
+'For all,' they go on to improve the comparison, 'may admire and delight
+in fair blossoming dales under the blue dome of peace; but 'tis the rare
+lofty heart alone comprehendeth, and is heightened by, terrific
+splendours of tempest, when cloud meets cloud in skies black as the
+sepulchre, and Glory sits like a flame on the helm of Ruin'
+
+For a while the combatants aired their dexterity, contenting themselves
+with cunning cuts and flicks of the sword-edge, in which Werner first
+drew blood by a keen sweep along the forehead of the Goshawk.  Guy had
+allowed him to keep his position on the board, and still fought at his
+face and neck.  He now jerked back his body from the hip, and swung a
+round stroke at Werner's knee, sending him in retreat with a snort of
+pain.  Before the Baron could make good his ground, Guy was level with
+him on the board.
+
+Werner turned an upbraiding howl at his men.  They were not disposed to
+second him yet.  They one and all approved his personal battle with Fate,
+and never more admired him and felt his power; but the affair was
+exciting, and they were not the pillars to prop a falling house.
+
+Werner clenched his two hands to his ponderous glaive, and fell upon Guy
+with heavier fury.  He was becoming not unworth the little womanly
+appreciation Margarita was brought to bestow on him.  The voice of the
+Water-Lady whispered at her heart that the Baron warred on his destiny,
+and that ennobles all living souls.
+
+Bare-headed the combatants engaged, and the headpiece was the chief point
+of attack.  No swerving from blows was possible for either: ward, or
+take; a false step would have ensured defeat.  This also induced caution.
+Many a double stamp of the foot was heard, as each had to retire in turn.
+
+'Not at his head so much, he'll bear battering there all night long,'
+said Henker Rothhals in a breathing interval.  Knocks had been pretty
+equally exchanged, but the Baron's head certainly looked the least
+vulnerable, whereas Guy exhibited several dints that streamed freely.
+Yet he looked, eye and bearing, as fresh as when they began, and the
+calm, regular heave of his chest contrasted with Werner's quick gasps.
+His smile, too, renewed each time the Baron paused for breath, gave
+Margarita heart.  It was not a taunting smile, but one of entire
+confidence, and told all the more on his adversary.  As Werner led off
+again, and the choice was always left him, every expression of the
+Goshawk's face passed to full light in his broad eyes.
+
+The Baron's play was a reckless fury.  There was nothing to study in it.
+Guy became the chief object of speculation.  He was evidently trying to
+wind his man.
+
+He struck wildly, some thought.  Others judged that he was a random
+hitter, and had no mortal point in aim.  Schwartz Thier's opinion was
+frequently vented.  'Too round a stroke--down on him!  Chop-not slice!'
+
+Guy persevered in his own fashion.  According to Schwartz Thier, he
+brought down by his wilfulness the blow that took him on the left
+shoulder, and nigh broke him.  It was a weighty blow, followed by a thump
+of sound.  The sword-edge swerved on his shoulder-blade, or he must have
+been disabled.  But Werner's crow was short, and he had no time to push
+success.  One of the Goshawk's swooping under-hits half severed his right
+wrist, and the blood spirted across the board.  He gasped and seemed to
+succumb, but held to it still, though with slackened force.  Guy now
+attacked.  Holding to his round strokes, he accustomed Werner to guard
+the body, and stood to it so briskly right and left, that Werner grew
+bewildered, lost his caution, and gave ground.  Suddenly the Goshawk's
+glaive flashed in air, and chopped sheer down on Werner's head.  So
+shrewd a blow it was against a half-formed defence, that the Baron
+dropped without a word right on the edge of the board, and there hung,
+feebly grasping with his fingers.
+
+'Who bars the way now?' sang out Guy.
+
+No one accepted the challenge.  Success clothed him with terrors, and
+gave him giant size.
+
+'Then fare you well, my merry men all,' said Guy.  'Bear me no ill-will
+for this.  A little doctoring will right the bold Baron.'
+
+He strode jauntily to the verge of the board, and held his finger for
+Margarita to follow.  She stepped forward.  The men put their beards
+together, muttering.  She could not advance.  Farina doubled his elbow,
+and presented sword-point.  Three of the ruffians now disputed the way
+with bare steel.  Margarita looked at the Goshawk.  He was smiling calmly
+curious as he leaned over his sword, and gave her an encouraging nod.
+She made another step in defiance.  One fellow stretched his hand to
+arrest her.  All her maidenly pride stood up at once.  'What a glorious
+girl!' murmured the Goshawk, as he saw her face suddenly flash, and she
+retreated a pace and swung a sharp cut across the knuckles of her
+assailant, daring him, or one of them, with hard, bright eyes,
+beautifully vindictive, to lay hand on a pure maiden.
+
+'You have it, Barenleib!' cried the others, and then to Margarita: 'Look,
+young mistress! we are poor fellows, and ask a trifle of ransom, and then
+part friends.'
+
+'Not an ace!' the Goshawk pronounced from his post.
+
+'Two to one, remember.'
+
+'The odds are ours,' replied the Goshawk confidently.
+
+They ranged themselves in front of the hall-door.  Instead of accepting
+this challenge, Guy stepped to Werner, and laid his moaning foe length-
+wise in an easier posture.  He then lifted Margarita on the board, and
+summoned them with cry of 'Free passage!'  They answered by a sullen
+shrug and taunt.
+
+'Schwartz Thier!  Rothhals!  Farina!  buckle up, and make ready then,'
+sang Guy.
+
+He measured the length, of his sword, and raised it.  The Goshawk had not
+underrated his enemies.  He was tempted to despise them when he marked
+their gradually lengthening chaps and eyeballs.
+
+Not one of them moved.  All gazed at him as if their marrows were
+freezing with horror.
+
+'What's this?' cried Guy.
+
+They knew as little as he, but a force was behind them irresistible
+against their efforts.  The groaning oak slipped open, pushing them
+forward, and an apparition glided past, soft as the pallid silver of the
+moon.  She slid to the Baron, and put her arms about him, and sang to
+him.  Had the Water-Lady laid an iron hand on all those ruffians, she
+could not have held them faster bound than did the fear of her presence.
+The Goshawk drew his fair charge through them, followed by Farina, the
+Thier, and Rothhals.  A last glimpse of the hall showed them still as old
+cathedral sculpture staring at white light on a fluted pillar of the
+wall.
+
+
+
+
+THE PASSAGE OF THE RHINE
+
+Low among the swarthy sandhills behind the Abbey of Laach dropped the
+round red moon.  Soft lengths of misty yellow stole through the glens of
+Rhineland.  The nightingales still sang.  Closer and closer the moon came
+into the hushed valleys.
+
+There is a dell behind Hammerstein Castle, a ring of basking sward,
+girdled by a silver slate-brook, and guarded by four high-peaked hills
+that slope down four long wooded corners to the grassy base.  Here, it is
+said, the elves and earthmen play, dancing in circles with laughing feet
+that fatten the mushroom.  They would have been fulfilling the tradition
+now, but that the place was occupied by a sturdy group of mortals, armed
+with staves.  The intruders were sleepy, and lay about on the inclines.
+Now and then two got up, and there rang hard echoes of oak.  Again all
+were calm as cud-chewing cattle, and the white water ran pleased with
+quiet.
+
+It may be that the elves brewed mischief among them; for the oaken blows
+were becoming more frequent.  One complained of a kick: another demanded
+satisfaction for a pinch.  'Go to,' drawled the accused drowsily in both
+cases, 'too much beer last night!'  Within three minutes, the company
+counted a pair of broken heads.  The East was winning on the West in
+heaven, and the dusk was thinning.  They began to mark, each, whom he had
+cudgelled.  A noise of something swiftly in motion made them alert.  A
+roebuck rushed down one of the hills, and scampered across the sward.
+The fine beast went stretching so rapidly away as to be hardly distinct.
+
+'Sathanas once more!' they murmured, and drew together.
+
+The name passed through them like a watchword.
+
+'Not he this time,' cried the two new-comers, emerging from the foliage.
+'He's safe under Cologne--the worse for all good men who live there!  But
+come! follow to the Rhine! there 's work for us on the yonder side, and
+sharp work.'
+
+'Why,' answered several, 'we 've our challenge with the lads of
+Leutesdorf and Wied to-day.'
+
+'D' ye see this?' said the foremost of the others, pointing to a carved
+ivory white rose in his cap.
+
+'Brothers!' he swelled his voice, 'follow with a will, for the White Rose
+is in danger!'
+
+Immediately they ranked, and followed zealously through the buds of young
+bushes, and over heaps of damp dead leaves, a half-hour's scramble, when
+they defiled under Hammerstein, and stood before the Rhine.  Their leader
+led up the river, and after a hasty walk, stopped, loosened his hood, and
+stripped.
+
+'Now,' said he, strapping the bundle to his back, 'let me know the hound
+that refuses to follow his leader when the White Rose is in danger.'
+
+'Long live Dietrich!' they shouted.  He dropped from the bank, and waded
+in.  He was soon supported by the remainder of the striplings, and all
+struck out boldly into mid-stream.
+
+Never heard history of a nobler Passage of the Rhine than this made
+between Andernach and Hammerstein by members of the White Rose Club,
+bundle on back, to relieve the White Rose of Germany from thrall and
+shame!
+
+They were taken far down by the rapid current, and arrived panting to
+land.  The dressing done, they marched up the pass of Tonnistein, and
+took a deep draught at the spring of pleasant waters there open to
+wayfarers.  Arrived at the skirts of Laach, they beheld two farmer
+peasants lashed back to back against a hazel.  They released them, but
+could gain no word of information, as the fellows, after a yawn and a
+wink, started off, all heels, to make sure of liberty.  On the shores of
+the lake the brotherhood descried a body of youths, whom they hailed, and
+were welcomed to companionship.
+
+'Where's Berthold?' asked Dietrich.
+
+He was not present.
+
+'The more glory for us, then,' Dietrich said.
+
+It was here seriously put to the captain, whether they should not halt at
+the abbey, and reflect, seeing that great work was in prospect.
+
+'Truly,' quoth Dietrich, 'dying on an empty stomach is heathenish, and
+cold blood makes a green wound gape.  Kaiser Conrad should be hospitable,
+and the monks honour numbers.  Here be we, thirty and nine; let us go!'
+
+The West was dark blue with fallen light.  The lakewaters were growing
+grey with twilight.  The abbey stood muffled in shadows.  Already the
+youths had commenced battering at the convent doors, when they were
+summoned by the voice of the Goshawk on horseback.  To their confusion
+they beheld the White Rose herself on his right hand.  Chapfallen
+Dietrich bowed to his sweet mistress.
+
+'We were coming to the rescue,' he stammered.
+
+A laugh broke from the Goshawk.  'You thought the lady was locked up in
+the ghostly larder; eh!'
+
+Dietrich seized his sword, and tightened his belt.
+
+'The Club allows no jesting with the White Rose, Sir Stranger.'
+
+Margarita made peace.  'I thank you all, good friends.  But quarrel not,
+I pray you, with them that save me at the risk of their lives.'
+
+'Our service is equal,' said the Goshawk, flourishing, 'Only we happen to
+be beforehand with the Club, for which Farina and myself heartily beg
+pardon of the entire brotherhood.'
+
+'Farina!' exclaimed Dietrich.  'Then we make a prisoner instead of
+uncaging a captive.'
+
+'What 's this?' said Guy.
+
+'So much,' responded Dietrich.  'Yonder's a runaway from two masters: the
+law of Cologne, and the conqueror of Satan; and all good citizens are
+empowered to bring him back, dead or alive.'
+
+'Dietrich!  Dietrich!  dare you talk thus of the man who saved me?' cried
+Margarita.
+
+Dietrich sullenly persisted.
+
+'Then, look!' said the White Rose, reddening under the pale dawn; 'he
+shall not, he shall not go with you.'
+
+One of the Club was here on the point of speaking to the White Rose,--
+a breach of the captain's privilege.  Dietrich felled him unresisting
+to earth, and resumed:
+
+'It must be done, Beauty of Cologne! the monk, Father Gregory, is now
+enduring shame and scorn for lack of this truant witness.'
+
+'Enough! I go !' said Farina.
+
+'You leave me?' Margarita looked tender reproach.  Weariness and fierce
+excitement had given a liquid flame to her eyes and an endearing darkness
+round their circles that matched strangely with her plump youth.  Her
+features had a soft white flush.  She was less radiant, but never looked
+so bewitching.  An aspect of sweet human languor caught at the heart of
+love, and raised tumults.
+
+'It is a duty,' said Farina.
+
+'Then go,' she beckoned, and held her hand for him to kiss.  He raised it
+to his lips.  This was seen of all the Club.
+
+As they were departing with Farina, and Guy prepared to demand admittance
+into the convent, Dietrich chanced to ask how fared Dame Lisbeth.
+Schwartz Thier was by, and answered, with a laugh, that he had quite
+forgotten the little lady.
+
+'We took her in mistake for you, mistress!  She was a one to scream!  The
+moment she was kissed--mum as a cloister.  We kissed her, all of us, for
+the fun of it.  No harm--no harm!  We should have dropped her when we
+found we had the old bird 'stead of the young one, but reckoned ransom,
+ye see.  She's at the Eck, rattling, I's wager, like last year's nut in
+the shell!'
+
+'Lisbeth!  Lisbeth! poor Lisbeth; we will return to her.  Instantly,'
+cried Margarita.
+
+'Not you,' said Guy.
+
+'Yes!  I!'
+
+'No!' said Guy.
+
+'Gallant Goshawk!  best of birds, let me go!'
+
+'Without me or Farina, never!  I see I shall have no chance with my lord
+now.  Come, then, come, fair Irresistible!  come, lads.  Farina can
+journey back alone.  You shall have the renown of rescuing Dame Lisbeth.'
+
+'Farina!  forget not to comfort my father,' said Margarita.
+
+Between Margarita's society and Farina's, there was little dispute in the
+captain's mind which choice to make.  Farina was allowed to travel single
+to Cologne; and Dietrich, petted by Margarita, and gently jeered by Guy,
+headed the Club from Laach waters to the castle of the Robber Baron.
+
+
+
+
+THE BACK-BLOWS OF SATHANAS
+
+Monk Gregory was pacing the high road between the Imperial camp and
+suffering Cologne.  The sun had risen through interminable distances of
+cloud that held him remote in a succession of receding mounds and thinner
+veils, realm beyond realm, till he showed fireless, like a phantom king
+in a phantom land.  The lark was in the breast of morning.  The field-
+mouse ran along the furrows.  Dews hung red and grey on the weedy banks
+and wayside trees.  At times the nostril of the good father was lifted,
+and he beat his breast, relapsing into sorrowful contemplation.  Passed-
+any citizen of Cologne, the ghostly head sunk into its cowl.  'There's a
+black raven!' said many.  Monk Gregory heard them, and murmured, 'Thou
+hast me, Evil one!  thou hast me!'
+
+It was noon when Farina came clattering down from the camp.
+
+'Father,' said he, 'I have sought thee.'
+
+'My son!' exclaimed Monk Gregory with silencing hand, 'thou didst not
+well to leave me contending against the tongues of doubt.  Answer me not.
+The maiden! and what weighed she in such a scale?--No more!  I am
+punished.  Well speaks the ancient proverb:
+
+               "Beware the back-blows of Sathanas!"
+
+I, that thought to have vanquished him!  Vanity has wrecked me, in this
+world and the next.  I am the victim of self-incense.  I hear the demons
+shouting their chorus--"Here comes Monk Gregory, who called himself
+Conqueror of Darkness!"  In the camp I am discredited and a scoff; in the
+city I am spat upon, abhorred.  Satan, my son, fights not with his fore-
+claws.  'Tis with his tail he fights, O Farina!--Listen, my son!  he
+entered to his kingdom below through Cologne, even under the stones of
+the Cathedral Square, and the stench of him abominably remaineth,
+challenging the nostrils of holy and unholy alike.  The Kaiser cannot
+approach for him; the citizens are outraged.  Oh! had I held my peace in
+humbleness, I had truly conquered him.  But he gave me easy victory, to
+inflate me.  I shall not last.  Now this only is left, my son; that thou
+bear living testimony to the truth of my statement, as I bear it to the
+folly!'
+
+Farina promised, in the face of all, he would proclaim and witness to his
+victory on Drachenfels.
+
+'That I may not be ranked an impostor!' continued the Monk.  'And how
+great must be the virtue of them that encounter that dark spirit!  Valour
+availeth nought.  But if virtue be not in' ye, soon will ye be puffed to
+bursting with that devil's poison, self-incense.  Surely, my son, thou
+art faithful; and for this service I can reward thee.  Follow me yet
+again.'
+
+On the road they met Gottlieb Groschen, hastening to the camp.  Dismay
+rumpled the old merchant's honest jowl.  Farina drew rein before him.
+
+'Your daughter is safe, worthy Master Groschen,' said he.
+
+'Safe?' cried Gottlieb; 'where is she, my Grete?'
+
+Farina briefly explained.  Gottlieb spread out his arms, and was going to
+thank the youth.  He saw Father Gregory, and his whole frame narrowed
+with disgust.
+
+'Are you in company with that pestilent animal, that curse of Cologne!'
+
+'The good Monk--,' said Farina.
+
+'You are leagued with him, then, sirrah!  Expect no thanks from me.
+Cologne, I say, is cursed!  Meddling wretches!  could ye not leave Satan
+alone?  He hurt us not.  We were free of him.  Cologne, I say, is cursed!
+The enemy of mankind is brought by you to be the deadly foe of Cologne.'
+
+So saying, Gottlieb departed.
+
+'Seest thou, my son,' quoth the Monk, 'they reason not!'
+
+Farina was dejected.  Willingly would he, for his part, have left the
+soul of Evil a loose rover for the sake of some brighter horizon to his
+hope.
+
+No twinge of remorse accompanied Gottlieb.  The Kaiser had allotted him
+an encampment and a guard of honour for his household while the foulness
+raged, and there Gottlieb welcomed back Margarita and Aunt Lisbeth on the
+noon after his meeting with Farina.  The White Rose had rested at Laach,
+and was blooming again.  She and the Goshawk came trotting in advance of
+the Club through the woods of Laach, startling the deer with laughter,
+and sending the hare with her ears laid back all across country.  In vain
+Dietrich menaced Guy with the terrors of the Club: Aunt Lisbeth begged of
+Margarita not to leave her with the footmen in vain.  The joyous couple
+galloped over the country, and sprang the ditches, and leapt the dykes,
+up and down the banks, glad as morning hawks, entering Andernach at a
+round pace; where they rested at a hostel as capable of producing good
+Rhine and Mosel wine then as now.  Here they had mid-day's meal laid out
+in the garden for the angry Club, and somewhat appeased them on their
+arrival with bumpers of the best Scharzhofberger.  After a refreshing
+halt, three boats were hired.  On their passage to the river, they
+encountered a procession of monks headed by the Archbishop of Andernach,
+bearing a small figure of Christ carved in blackthorn and varnished: said
+to work miracles, and a present to the good town from two Hungarian
+pilgrims.
+
+'Are ye for Cologne?' the monks inquired of them.
+
+'Direct down stream!' they answered.
+
+'Send, then, hither to us Gregory, the conqueror of Darkness, that he may
+know there is gratitude on earth and gratulation for great deeds,' said
+the monks.
+
+So with genuflexions the travellers proceeded, and entered the boats by
+the Archbishop's White Tower.  Hammerstein Castle and Rheineck they
+floated under; Salzig and the Ahr confluence; Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth;
+Drachenfels and Bonn; hills green with young vines; dells waving fresh
+foliage.  Margarita sang as they floated.  Ancient ballads she sang that
+made the Goshawk sigh for home, and affected the Club with delirious love
+for the grand old water that was speeding them onward.  Aunt Lisbeth was
+not to be moved.  She alone held down her head.  She looked not Gottlieb
+in the face as he embraced her.  Nor to any questioning would she
+vouchsafe reply.  From that time forth, she was charity to woman; and the
+exuberant cheerfulness and familiarity of the men toward her soon grew
+kindly and respectful.  The dragon in Aunt Lisbeth was destroyed.  She
+objected no more to Margarita's cameo.
+
+The Goshawk quickly made peace with his lord, and enjoyed the
+commendation of the Kaiser.  Dietrich Schill thought of challenging him;
+but the Club had graver business: and this was to pass sentence on
+Berthold Schmidt for the crime of betraying the White Rose into the hands
+of Werner.  They had found Berthold at the Eck, and there consented to
+let him remain until ransom was paid for his traitorous body.  Berthold
+in his mad passion was tricked by Werner, and on his release, by payment
+of the ransom, submitted to the judgement of the Club, which condemned
+him to fight them all in turn, and then endure banishment from Rhineland;
+the Goshawk, for his sister's sake, interceding before a harsher
+tribunal.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENTRY INTO COLOGNE
+
+Seven days Kaiser Heinrich remained camped outside Cologne.  Six times in
+six successive days the Kaiser attempted to enter the city, and was
+foiled.
+
+'Beard of Barbarossa!' said the Kaiser, 'this is the first stronghold
+that ever resisted me.'
+
+The warrior bishops, electors, pfalzgrafs, and knights of the Empire, all
+swore it was no shame not to be a match for the Demon.
+
+'If,' said the reflective Kaiser, 'we are to suffer below what poor
+Cologne is doomed to undergo now, let us, by all that is savoury, reform
+and do penance.'
+
+The wind just then setting on them dead from Cologne made the courtiers
+serious.  Many thought of their souls for the first time.
+
+This is recorded to the honour of Monk Gregory.
+
+On the seventh morning, the Kaiser announced his determination to make a
+last trial.
+
+It was dawn, and a youth stood before the Kaiser's tent, praying an
+audience.
+
+Conducted into the presence of the Kaiser, the youth, they say, succeeded
+in arousing him from his depression, for, brave as he was, Kaiser
+Heinrich dreaded the issue.  Forthwith order was given for the cavalcade
+to set out according to the rescript, Kaiser Heinrich retaining the youth
+at his right hand.  But the youth had found occasion to visit Gottlieb
+and Margarita, each of whom he furnished with a flash,[flask ?] curiously
+shaped, and charged with a distillation.
+
+As the head of the procession reached the gates of Cologne, symptoms of
+wavering were manifest.
+
+Kaiser Heinrich commanded an advance, at all cost.
+
+Pfalzgraf Nase, as the old chronicles call him in their humour, but
+assuredly a great noble, led the van, and pushed across the draw-bridge.
+
+Hesitation and signs of horror were manifest in the assemblage round the
+Kaiser's person.  The Kaiser and the youth at his right hand were cheery.
+Not a whit drooped they!  Several of the heroic knights begged the
+Kaiser's permission to fall back.
+
+'Follow Pfalzgraf Nase!' the Kaiser is reported to have said.
+
+Great was the wonderment of the people of Cologne to behold Kaiser
+Heinrich riding in perfect stateliness up the main street toward the
+Cathedral, while right and left of him bishops and electors were dropping
+incapable.
+
+The Kaiser advanced till by his side the youth rode sole.
+
+'Thy name?' said the Kaiser.
+
+He answered: 'A poor youth, unconquerable Kaiser!  Farina I am called.'
+
+'Thy recompense?' said the Kaiser.
+
+He answered: 'The hand of a maiden of Cologne, most gracious Kaiser and
+master!'
+
+'She is thine!' said the Kaiser.
+
+Kaiser Heinrich looked behind him, and among a host grasping the pommels
+of their saddles, and reeling vanquished, were but two erect, a maiden
+and an old man.
+
+'That is she, unconquerable Kaiser!' Farina continued, bowing low.
+
+'It shall be arranged on the spot,' said the Kaiser.
+
+A word from Kaiser Heinrich sealed Gottlieb's compliance.
+
+Said he: 'Gracious Kaiser and master! though such a youth could of
+himself never have aspired to the possession of a Groschen, yet when the
+Kaiser pleads for him, objection is as the rock of Moses, and streams
+consent.  Truly he has done Cologne good service, and if Margarita, my
+daughter, can be persuaded--'
+
+The Kaiser addressed her with his blazing brows.
+
+Margarita blushed a ready autumn of rosy-ripe acquiescence.
+
+'A marriage registered yonder!' said the Kaiser, pointing upward.
+
+'I am thine, murmured Margarita, as Farina drew near her.
+
+'Seal it!  seal it!' quoth the Kaiser, in hearty good humour; 'take no
+consent from man or maid without a seal.'
+
+Farina tossed the contents of a flask in air, and saluted his beloved on
+the lips.
+
+This scene took place near the charred round of earth where the Foulest
+descended to his kingdom below.
+
+Men now pervaded Cologne with flasks, purifying the atmosphere.  It
+became possible to breathe freely.
+
+'We Germans,' said Kaiser Heinrich, when he was again surrounded by his
+courtiers, 'may go wrong if we always follow Pfalzgraf Nase; but this
+time we have been well led.'  Whereat there was obsequious laughter.
+
+The Pfalzgraf pleaded a susceptible nostril.
+
+'Thou art, I fear, but a timid mortal,' said the Kaiser.
+
+'Never have I been found so on the German Field, Imperial Majesty!'
+returned the Pfalzgraf.  'I take glory to myself that this Nether reek
+overcomes me.'
+
+'Even that we must combat, you see!' exclaimed Kaiser Heinrich; 'but come
+all to a marriage this night, and take brides as soon as you will, all of
+you.  Increase, and give us loyal subjects in plenty.  I count prosperity
+by the number of marriages in my empire!'
+
+The White Rose Club were invited by Gottlieb to the wedding, and took it
+in vast wrath until they saw the, Kaiser, and such excellent stout German
+fare present, when immediately a battle raged as to who should do the
+event most honour, and was in dispute till dawn: Dietrich Schill being
+the man, he having consumed wurst the length of his arm, and wine
+sufficient to have floated a St. Goar salmon; which was long proudly
+chronicled in his family, and is now unearthed from among the ancient
+honourable records of Cologne.
+
+The Goshawk was Farina's bridesman, and a very spiriting bridesman was
+he! Aunt Lisbeth sat in a corner, faintly smiling.
+
+'Child!' said the little lady to Margarita when they kissed at parting,
+'your courage amazes me.  Do you think?  Do you know?  Poor, sweet bird,
+delivered over hand and foot!'
+
+'I love him!  I love him, aunty! that's all I know,' said Margarita:
+'love, love, love him!'
+
+'Heaven help you!' ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth.
+
+'Pray with me,' said Margarita.
+
+The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different
+prayers, but to the same end.  That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the
+White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle,
+and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita's heart, and shrieked.
+
+'Child! it gallops!' she cried.
+
+''Tis happiness,' said Margarita, standing in her hair.
+
+'May it last only!' exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.
+
+'It will, aunty!  I am humble: I am true'; and the fair girl gathered the
+frill of her nightgown.
+
+'Look not in the glass,' said Lisbeth; 'not to-night!  Look, if you can,
+to-morrow.'
+
+She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her,
+leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne.  He entered the
+Calendar, and ranks next St. Anthony.  For three successive centuries the
+towns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror of
+Darkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.
+
+The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina.  The youth
+awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own,
+displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and left
+of him.  In a week, they were doubled.  A month quadrupled them.  They
+increased.
+
+'Fame and Fortune,' mused Farina, 'come from man and the world: Love is
+from heaven.  We may be worthy, and lose the first.  We lose not love
+unless unworthy.  Would ye know the true Farina?  Look for him who walks
+under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet bride,
+leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial freshness.
+There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect.  Least of all, the creatures
+of the Damned!  By this I may be known.'
+
+Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old friends,
+and drink some of Gottlieb's oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid by false
+Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance, in the
+music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one hand
+Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both bent
+lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer
+light.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side
+All are friends who sit at table
+Be what you seem, my little one
+Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence
+Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine
+Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass
+Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach
+Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon
+Gratitude never was a woman's gift
+It was harder to be near and not close
+Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off
+Never reckon on womankind for a wise act
+Self-incense
+Sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes
+So are great deeds judged when the danger's past (as easy)
+Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth
+Suspicion was her best witness
+Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping
+We like well whatso we have done good work for
+Weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome
+Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one
+Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Farina by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER
+
+By George Meredith
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long
+before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since his
+retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous common,
+with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along the borders
+of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and so gradually
+within a stone's-throw or so of the river-side, where he determined not
+solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life.  It may be seen
+that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had thought fit to
+loosen his sword-belt.  The pony-carriage, however, had been hired for
+the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review the lines of
+what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for building, not
+too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes forth intending to
+pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing home a wife, the
+circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an airy situation, at a
+certain distance in hail of the metropolis he worshipped, was enough to
+kindle the General's enthusiasm.  He would have taken the first he saw,
+had it not been for his daughter, who accompanied him, and at the age of
+eighteen was about to undertake the management of his house.  Fortune,
+under Elizabeth Ople's guiding restraint, directed him to an epitome of
+the comforts.  The place he fell upon is only to be described in the
+tongue of auctioneers, and for the first week after taking it he modestly
+followed them by terming it bijou.  In time, when his own imagination,
+instigated by a state of something more than mere contentment, had been
+at work on it, he chose the happy phrase, 'a gentlemanly residence.'  For
+it was, he declared, a small estate.  There was a lodge to it, resembling
+two sentry-boxes forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat
+bent, in the other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to
+discoverable stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a
+meadow if magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a
+strip of wood round the flower-garden.  The prying of the outside world
+was impossible.  Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanliness made the
+place, as the General said, an ideal English home.
+
+The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two,
+just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving.
+He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members
+were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would have
+wanted pasture.  With the old man, while the old woman attended to the
+bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he
+undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he
+could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he
+was not overlooked.  He was perfectly concealed from the road.  Only one
+house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further to
+show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic,
+overlooked him.  And the house was empty.
+
+The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house,
+with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of
+wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady, of
+whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left,
+reported that she was eccentric.  The word is uninstructive: it does not
+frighten.  In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of
+aristocracy in retirement.  And at least it implies wealth.
+
+General Ople was very anxious to see her.  He had the sentiment of humble
+respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which
+aroused his admiration.  London, for instance, he was not afraid to say
+he thought the wonder of the world.  He remarked, in addition, that the
+sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the
+foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his
+natural days.  But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with
+an abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for Booty
+is the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate in the
+abstract.  His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs when he
+had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.
+
+The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood,
+and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them, excepting
+the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once.  By express
+arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest neighbour,
+followed the card of the rector, the social head of the district; and the
+rector was granted an interview, but Lady Camper was not at home to
+General Ople.  She is of superior station to me, and may not wish to
+associate with me, the General modestly said.  Nevertheless he was
+wounded: for in spite of himself, and without the slightest wish to
+obtrude his own person, as he explained the meaning that he had in him,
+his rank in the British army forced him to be the representative of it,
+in the absence of any one of a superior rank.  So that he was
+professionally hurt, and his heart being in his profession, it may be
+honestly stated that he was wounded in his feelings, though he said no,
+and insisted on the distinction.  Once a day his walk for constitutional
+exercise compelled him to pass before Lady Camper's windows, which were
+not bashfully withdrawn, as he said humorously of Douro Lodge, in the
+seclusion of half-pay, but bowed out imperiously, militarily, like a
+generalissimo on horseback, and had full command of the road and levels
+up to the swelling park-foliage.  He went by at a smart stride, with a
+delicate depression of his upright bearing, as though hastening to greet
+a friend in view, whose hand was getting ready for the shake.  This much
+would have been observed by a housemaid; and considering his fine figure
+and the peculiar shining silveriness of his hair, the acceleration of his
+gait was noticeable.  When he drove by, the pony's right ear was flicked,
+to the extreme indignation of a mettlesome little animal.  It ensued in
+consequence that the General was borne flying under the eyes of Lady
+Camper, and such pace displeasing him, he reduced it invariably at a step
+or two beyond the corner of her grounds.
+
+But neither he nor his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so
+trivial a circumstance.  The General punctiliously avoided glancing at
+the windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career or
+on foot.  Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree.
+Their speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of commonplaces over
+her loneliness: and this condition of hers was the more perplexing to
+General Ople on his hearing from his daughter that the lady was very
+fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied eccentric ladies
+must be.  The rector's account of her, too, excited the mind.  She had
+informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save
+appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support
+the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions
+for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none but
+the poor.  She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East.  Sketches in
+watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and a pair
+of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the writing-
+desk in her drawing-room.  General Ople gathered from the rector that she
+had a great contempt for men: yet it was curiously varied with
+lamentations over the weakness of women.  'Really she cannot possibly be
+an example of that,' said the General, thinking of the pistols.
+
+Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board, and
+know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping, that
+men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and
+certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves.  But the whole
+fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to build on this
+originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear, that it is
+exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the amount of work
+they have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in the case
+of women much talked about.  So it was with General Ople, and nothing is
+left for me to say except, that there is broader ground than the
+chessboard.  I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the singular
+couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in peril of the
+accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply was he a
+gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, he was also (and it
+is an extraordinary thing that a genuine humility did not prevent it, and
+did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex.  He had done his pretty
+bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course, but hearts had
+knocked.  And now, with his bright white hair, his close-brushed white
+whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut features, and a winning
+droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him still, if not shot.
+
+There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies' charms.  On the other
+hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept him from
+active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as indications
+of encouragement were wanting.  He had killed the soft ones, who came to
+him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but clever women
+alarmed and paralyzed him.  Their aptness to question and require
+immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of a kind that
+is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads with a
+hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their power of
+ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.
+
+Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply
+thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper's pistols were
+needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her
+extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms, and
+would not be expected to be witty.  She would, perhaps, after the
+excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old
+fashion, by fainting in his arms.  Such was the reverie he passingly
+indulged, and only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with
+the formidable lady who was his next neighbour.  But the proud society of
+the burglarious denied him opportunity.
+
+Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young
+gentleman was in a cavalry regiment.  General Ople met him outside his
+gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and
+manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she had
+seen him.  She replied that she believed she had, and praised his
+horsemanship.  The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler.
+His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman shot
+by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating
+alongside presumed to enter into conversation, during which he managed to
+express regrets at his aunt's turn for solitariness.  As they belonged to
+sister branches of the same Service, the General and Mr. Reginald Roller
+had a theme in common, and a passion.  Elizabeth told her father that
+nothing afforded her so much pleasure as to hear him talk with Mr. Roller
+on military matters.  General Ople assured her that it pleased him
+likewise.  He began to spy about for Mr. Roller, and it sometimes
+occurred that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be avoided.
+A hint or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General to
+understand that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage.  He was
+pained to think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty, the
+disaster was, perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she could be
+taught to extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her solitude.  'If,'
+he said to his daughter, 'Lady Camper should by any chance be induced to
+contract a second alliance, she would, one might expect, be humanized,
+and we should have highly agreeable neighbours.'  Elizabeth artlessly
+hoped for such an event to take place.
+
+She rarely differed with her father, up to whom, taking example from the
+world around him, she looked as the pattern of a man of wise conduct.
+
+And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself,
+approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he was
+a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+This is the pathetic matter of my story, and it requires pointing out,
+because he never could explain what it was that seemed to him so cruel in
+it, for he was no brilliant son of fortune, he was no great pretender,
+none of those who are logically displaced from the heights they have been
+raised to, manifestly created to show the moral in Providence.  He was
+modest, retiring, humbly contented; a gentlemanly residence appeased his
+ambition.  Popular, he could own that he was, but not meteorically;
+rather by reason of his willingness to receive light than his desire to
+shed it.  Why, then, was the terrible test brought to bear upon him, of
+all men?  He was one of us; no worse, and not strikingly or perilously
+better; and he could not but feel, in the bitterness of his reflections
+upon an inexplicable destiny, that the punishment befalling him,
+unmerited as it was, looked like absence of Design in the scheme of
+things, Above.  It looked as if the blow had been dealt him by reckless
+chance.  And to believe that, was for the mind of General Ople the having
+to return to his alphabet and recommence the ascent of the laborious
+mountain of understanding.
+
+To proceed, the General's introduction to Lady Camper was owing to a
+message she sent him by her gardener, with a request that he would cut
+down a branch of a wychelm, obscuring her view across his grounds toward
+the river.  The General consulted with his daughter, and came to the
+conclusion, that as he could hardly despatch a written reply to a verbal
+message, yet greatly wished to subscribe to the wishes of Lady Camper,
+the best thing for him to do was to apply for an interview.  He sent word
+that he would wait on Lady Camper immediately, and betook himself
+forthwith to his toilette.  She was the niece of an earl.
+
+Elizabeth commended his appearance, 'passed him,' as he would have said;
+and well she might, for his hat, surtout, trousers and boots, were worthy
+of an introduction to Royalty.  A touch of scarlet silk round the neck
+gave him bloom, and better than that, the blooming consciousness of it.
+
+'You are not to be nervous, papa,' Elizabeth said.
+
+'Not at all,' replied the General.  'I say, not at all, my dear,'
+he repeated, and so betrayed that he had fallen into the nervous mood.
+'I was saying, I have known worse mornings than this.' He turned to her
+and smiled brightly, nodded, and set his face to meet the future.
+
+He was absent an hour and a half.
+
+He came back with his radiance a little subdued, by no means eclipsed;
+as, when experience has afforded us matter for thought, we cease to shine
+dazzlingly, yet are not clouded; the rays have merely grown serener.  The
+sum of his impressions was conveyed in the reflective utterance--'It only
+shows, my dear, how different the reality is from our anticipation
+of it!'
+
+Lady Camper had been charming; full of condescension, neighbourly,
+friendly, willing to be satisfied with the sacrifice of the smallest
+branch of the wych-elm, and only requiring that much for complimentary
+reasons.
+
+Elizabeth wished to hear what they were, and she thought the request
+rather singular; but the General begged her to bear in mind, that they
+were dealing with a very extraordinary woman; 'highly accomplished,
+really exceedingly handsome,' he said to himself, aloud.
+
+The reasons were, her liking for air and view, and desire to see into her
+neighbour's grounds without having to mount to the attic.
+
+Elizabeth gave a slight exclamation, and blushed.
+
+'So, my dear, we are objects of interest to her ladyship,' said the
+General.
+
+He assured her that Lady Camper's manners were delightful.  Strange to
+tell, she knew a great deal of his antecedent history, things he had not
+supposed were known; 'little matters,' he remarked, by which his daughter
+faintly conceived a reference to the conquests of his dashing days.  Lady
+Camper had deigned to impart some of her own, incidentally; that she was
+of Welsh blood, and born among the mountains.  'She has a romantic look,'
+was the General's comment; and that her husband had been an insatiable
+traveller before he became an invalid, and had never cared for Art.
+'Quite an extraordinary circumstance, with such a wife!' the General
+said.
+
+He fell upon the wych-elm with his own hands, under cover of the leafage,
+and the next day he paid his respects to Lady Camper, to inquire if her
+ladyship saw any further obstruction to the view.
+
+'None,' she replied.  'And now we shall see what the two birds will do.'
+
+Apparently, then, she entertained an animosity to a pair of birds in the
+tree.
+
+'Yes, yes; I say they chirp early in the morning,' said General Ople.
+
+'At all hours.'
+
+'The song of birds .  .  . ?' he pleaded softly for nature.
+
+'If the nest is provided for them; but I don't like vagabond chirping.'
+
+The General perfectly acquiesced.  This, in an engagement with a clever
+woman, is what you should do, or else you are likely to find yourself
+planted unawares in a high wind, your hat blown off, and your coat-tails
+anywhere; in other words, you will stand ridiculous in your bewilderment;
+and General Ople ever footed with the utmost caution to avoid that
+quagmire of the ridiculous.  The extremer quags he had hitherto escaped;
+the smaller, into which he fell in his agile evasions of the big, he had
+hitherto been blest in finding none to notice.
+
+He requested her ladyship's permission to present his daughter.  Lady
+Camper sent in her card.
+
+Elizabeth Ople beheld a tall, handsomely-mannered lady, with good
+features and penetrating dark eyes, an easy carriage of her person and
+an agreeable voice, but (the vision of her age flashed out under the
+compelling eyes of youth) fifty if a day.  The rich colouring confessed
+to it.  But she was very pleasing, and Elizabeth's perception dwelt on it
+only because her father's manly chivalry had defended the lady against
+one year more than forty.
+
+The richness of the colouring, Elizabeth feared, was artificial, and it
+caused her ingenuous young blood a shudder.  For we are so devoted to
+nature when the dame is flattering us with her gifts, that we loathe the
+substitute omitting to think how much less it is an imposition than a
+form of practical adoration of the genuine.
+
+Our young detective, however, concealed her emotion of childish horror.
+
+Lady Camper remarked of her, 'She seems honest, and that is the most we
+can hope of girls.'
+
+'She is a jewel for an honest man,' the General sighed, 'some day!'
+
+'Let us hope it will be a distant day.'
+
+'Yet,' said the General, 'girls expect to marry.'
+
+Lady Camper fixed her black eyes on him, but did not speak.
+
+He told Elizabeth that her ladyship's eyes were exceedingly searching:
+'Only,' said he, 'as I have nothing to hide, I am able to submit to
+inspection'; and he laughed slightly up to an arresting cough, and made
+the mantelpiece ornaments pass muster.
+
+General Ople was the hero to champion a lady whose airs of haughtiness
+caused her to be somewhat backbitten.  He assured everybody, that Lady
+Camper was much misunderstood; she was a most remarkable woman; she was a
+most affable and highly intelligent lady.  Building up her attributes on
+a splendid climax, he declared she was pious, charitable, witty, and
+really an extraordinary artist.  He laid particular stress on her
+artistic qualities, describing her power with the brush, her water-colour
+sketches, and also some immensely clever caricatures.  As he talked of no
+one else, his friends heard enough of Lady Camper, who was anything but a
+favourite.  The Pollingtons, the Wilders, the Wardens, the Baerens, the
+Goslings, and others of his acquaintance, talked of Lady Camper and
+General Ople rather maliciously.  They were all City people, and they
+admired the General, but mourned that he should so abjectly have fallen
+at the feet of a lady as red with rouge as a railway bill.  His not
+seeing it showed the state he was in.  The sister of Mrs. Pollington, an
+amiable widow, relict of a large City warehouse, named Barcop, was
+chilled by a falling off in his attentions.  His apology for not
+appearing at garden parties was, that he was engaged to wait on Lady
+Camper.
+
+And at one time, her not condescending to exchange visits with the
+obsequious General was a topic fertile in irony.  But she did condescend.
+Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let in
+like an ordinary visitor.  It happened that the General was gardening--
+not the pretty occupation of pruning--he was digging--and of necessity
+his coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable.  From adoring
+earth as the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady's presence without
+purification; you cannot (or so the General thought) when you are caught
+in the act of adoring the mother of cabbages.  And though he himself
+loved the cabbage equally with the rose, in his heart respected the
+vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower, for he gloried in his
+kitchen garden, this was not a secret for the world to know, and he
+almost heeled over on his beam ends when word was brought of the extreme
+honour Lady Camper had done him.  He worked his arms hurriedly into his
+fatigue jacket, trusting to get away to the house and spend a couple of
+minutes on his adornment; and with any other visitor it might have been
+accomplished, but Lady Camper disliked sitting alone in a room.  She was
+on the square of lawn as the General stole along the walk.  Had she kept
+her back to him, he might have rounded her like the shadow of a dial,
+undetected.  She was frightfully acute of hearing.  She turned while he
+was in the agony of hesitation, in a queer attitude, one leg on the
+march, projected by a frenzied tip-toe of the hinder leg, the very
+fatallest moment she could possibly have selected for unveiling him.
+
+Of course there was no choice but to surrender on the spot.
+
+He began to squander his dizzy wits in profuse apologies.  Lady Camper
+simply spoke of the nice little nest of a garden, smelt the flowers,
+accepted a Niel rose and a Rohan, a Cline, a Falcot, and La France.
+
+'A beautiful rose indeed,' she said of the latter, 'only it smells of
+macassar oil.'
+
+'Really, it never struck me, I say it never struck me before,' rejoined
+the General, smelling it as at a pinch of snuff.  'I was saying, I always
+.  .  .' And he tacitly, with the absurdest of smiles, begged permission
+to leave unterminated a sentence not in itself particularly difficult
+
+'I have a nose,' observed Lady Camper.
+
+Like the nobly-bred person she was, according to General Ople's version
+of the interview on his estate, when he stood before her in his gardening
+costume, she put him at his ease, or she exerted herself to do so; and if
+he underwent considerable anguish, it was the fault of his excessive
+scrupulousness regarding dress, propriety, appearance.
+
+He conducted her at her request to the kitchen garden and the handful of
+paddock, the stables and coach-house, then back to the lawn.
+
+'It is the home for a young couple,' she said.
+
+'I am no longer young,' the General bowed, with the sigh peculiar to this
+confession.  'I say, I am no longer young, but I call the place a
+gentlemanly residence.  I was saying, I .  .  .'
+
+'Yes, yes!' Lady Camper tossed her head, half closing her eyes, with a
+contraction of the brows, as if in pain.
+
+He perceived a similar expression whenever he spoke of his residence.
+
+Perhaps it recalled happier days to enter such a nest.  Perhaps it had
+been such a home for a young couple that she had entered on her marriage
+with Sir Scrope Camper, before he inherited his title and estates.
+
+The General was at a loss to conceive what it was.
+
+It recurred at another mention of his idea of the nature of the
+residence.  It was almost a paroxysm.  He determined not to vex her
+reminiscences again; and as this resolution directed his mind to his
+residence, thinking it pre-eminently gentlemanly, his tongue committed
+the error of repeating it, with 'gentleman-like' for a variation.
+
+Elizabeth was out--he knew not where.  The housemaid informed him, that
+Miss Elizabeth was out rowing on the water.
+
+'Is she alone?' Lady Camper inquired of him.
+
+'I fancy so,' the General replied.
+
+'The poor child has no mother.'
+
+'It has been a sad loss to us both, Lady Camper.'
+
+'No doubt.  She is too pretty to go out alone.'
+
+'I can trust her.'
+
+'Girls!'
+
+'She has the spirit of a man.'
+
+'That is well.  She has a spirit; it will be tried.'
+
+The General modestly furnished an instance or two of her spiritedness.
+
+Lady Camper seemed to like this theme; she looked graciously interested.
+
+'Still, you should not suffer her to go out alone,' she said.
+
+'I place implicit confidence in her,' said the General; and Lady Camper
+gave it up.
+
+She proposed to walk down the lanes to the river-side, to meet Elizabeth
+returning.
+
+The General manifested alacrity checked by reluctance.  Lady Camper had
+told him she objected to sit in a strange room by herself; after that,
+he could hardly leave her to dash upstairs to change his clothes; yet
+how, attired as he was, in a fatigue jacket, that warned him not to
+imagine his back view, and held him constantly a little to the rear of
+Lady Camper, lest she should be troubled by it;--and he knew the habit of
+the second rank to criticise the front--how consent to face the outer
+world in such style side by side with the lady he admired?
+
+'Come,' said she; and he shot forward a step, looking as if he had missed
+fire.
+
+'Are you not coming, General?'
+
+He advanced mechanically.
+
+Not a soul met them down the lanes, except a little one, to whom Lady
+Camper gave a small silver-piece, because she was a picture.
+
+The act of charity sank into the General's heart, as any pretty
+performance will do upon a warm waxen bed.
+
+Lady Camper surprised him by answering his thoughts.  'No; it's for my
+own pleasure.'
+
+Presently she said, 'Here they are.'
+
+General Ople beheld his daughter by the river-side at the end of the
+lane, under escort of Mr. Reginald Rolles.
+
+It was another picture, and a pleasing one.  The young lady and the young
+gentleman wore boating hats, and were both dressed in white, and standing
+by or just turning from the outrigger and light skiff they were about to
+leave in charge of a waterman.  Elizabeth stretched a finger at arm's-
+length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and worded further
+to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than Elizabeth, was
+guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were approaching.
+
+'My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,' said
+Lady Camper; 'I like that sort of soldier best.'
+
+General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.
+
+She resumed.  'His pay is a matter of importance to him.  You are aware
+of the smallness of a subaltern's pay.
+
+'I,' said the General, 'I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always been
+a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very important to
+me!'
+
+'Why did you retire?'
+
+Her interest in him seemed promising.  He replied conscientiously,
+'Beyond the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could not,
+dare to aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from
+responsibility!'
+
+'It is a pity,' said she, 'that you were not, like my nephew Reginald,
+entirely dependent on your profession.'
+
+She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just
+expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to reject
+the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune.  He
+coughed, and said, 'Very little.'  The thought came to him that he might
+have to make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, 'Very little
+indeed.  Sufficient,' he assured her, 'for a gentlemanly appearance.'
+
+'I have given you your warning,' was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered
+within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth, she
+was gracious.  The damsel's boating uniform was praised, and her sunny
+flush of exercise and exposure.
+
+Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: 'I freckle
+so easily.'
+
+The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at
+the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.
+
+'I freckle so easily,' she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her
+face from the calculating scrutiny.
+
+'I burn brown,' said Elizabeth.
+
+Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl's cheek,
+but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary comparison
+of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the rose in its
+deepening inward to soft brown.
+
+Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower, and she let him
+take it; then she looked at the General; but the General was looking,
+with his usual air of satisfaction, nowhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+'Lady Camper is no common enigma,' General Ople observed to his daughter.
+
+Elizabeth inclined to be pleased with her, for at her suggestion the
+General had bought a couple of horses, that she might ride in the park,
+accompanied by her father or the little groom.  Still, the great lady was
+hard to read.  She tested the resources of his income by all sorts of
+instigation to expenditure, which his gallantry could not withstand; she
+encouraged him to talk of his deeds in arms; she was friendly, almost
+affectionate, and most bountiful in the presents of fruit, peaches,
+nectarines, grapes, and hot-house wonders, that she showered on his
+table; but she was an enigma in her evident dissatisfaction with him
+for something he seemed to have left unsaid.  And what could that be?
+
+At their last interview she had asked him, 'Are you sure, General, you
+have nothing more to tell me?'
+
+And as he remarked, when relating it to Elizabeth, 'One might really be
+tempted to misapprehend her ladyship's .  .  .  I say one might commit
+oneself beyond recovery.  Now, my dear, what do you think she intended?'
+
+Elizabeth was 'burning brown,' or darkly blushing, as her manner was.
+
+She answered, 'I am certain you know of nothing that would interest her;
+nothing, unless .  .  .'
+
+'Well?' the General urged her.
+
+'How can I speak it, papa?'
+
+'You really can't mean .  .  .'
+
+'Papa, what could I mean?'
+
+'If I were fool enough!' he murmured.  'No, no, I am an old man.  I was
+saying, I am past the age of folly.'
+
+One day Elizabeth came home from her ride in a thoughtful mood.  She had
+not, further than has been mentioned, incited her father to think of the
+age of folly; but voluntarily or not, Lady Camper had, by an excess of
+graciousness amounting to downright invitation; as thus, 'Will you
+persist in withholding your confidence from me, General?' She added, 'I
+am not so difficult a person.'  These prompting speeches occurred on the
+morning of the day when Elizabeth sat at his table, after a long ride
+into the country, profoundly meditative.
+
+A note was handed to General Ople, with the request that he would step in
+to speak with Lady Camper in the course of the evening, or next morning.
+Elizabeth waited till his hat was on, then said, 'Papa, on my ride to-
+day, I met Mr. Rolles.'
+
+'I am glad you had an agreeable escort, my dear.'
+
+'I could not refuse his company.'
+
+'Certainly not.  And where did you ride?'
+
+'To a beautiful valley; and there we met .  .  '
+
+'Her ladyship?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'She always admires you on horseback.'
+
+'So you know it, papa, if she should speak of it.'
+
+'And I am bound to tell you, my child,' said the General, 'that this
+morning Lady Camper's manner to me was .  .  .  if I were a fool .  .  .
+I say, this morning I beat a retreat, but apparently she .  .  .  I see
+no way out of it, supposing she .  .  .'
+
+'I am sure she esteems you, dear papa,' said Elizabeth.  'You take to
+her, my dear?' the General inquired anxiously; 'a little?--a little
+afraid of her?'
+
+'A little,' Elizabeth replied, 'only a little.'
+
+'Don't be agitated about me.'
+
+'No, papa; you are sure to do right.'
+
+'But you are trembling.'
+
+'Oh! no.  I wish you success.'
+
+General Ople was overjoyed to be reinforced by his daughter's good
+wishes.  He kissed her to thank her.  He turned back to her to kiss her
+again.  She had greatly lightened the difficulty at least of a delicate
+position.
+
+It was just like the imperious nature of Lady Camper to summon him in the
+evening to terminate the conversation of the morning, from the visible
+pitfall of which he had beaten a rather precipitate retreat.  But if his
+daughter cordially wished him success, and Lady Camper offered him the
+crown of it, why then he had only to pluck up spirit, like a good
+commander who has to pass a fordable river in the enemy's presence; a
+dash, a splash, a rattling volley or two, and you are over, established
+on the opposite bank.  But you must be positive of victory, otherwise,
+with the river behind you, your new position is likely to be ticklish.
+So the General entered Lady Camper's drawing-room warily, watching the
+fair enemy.  He knew he was captivating, his old conquests whispered in
+his ears, and her reception of him all but pointed to a footstool at her
+feet.  He might have fallen there at once, had he not remembered a hint
+that Mr. Reginald Rolles had dropped concerning Lady Camper's amazing
+variability.
+
+Lady Camper began.
+
+'General, you ran away from me this morning.  Let me speak.  And, by the
+way, I must reproach you; you should not have left it to me.  Things have
+now gone so far that I cannot pretend to be blind.  I know your feelings
+as a father.  Your daughter's happiness .  .  .'
+
+'My lady,' the General interposed, 'I have her distinct assurance that it
+is, I say it is wrapt up in mine.'
+
+'Let me speak.  Young people will say anything.  Well, they have a
+certain excuse for selfishness; we have not.  I am in some degree bound
+to my nephew; he is my sister's son.'
+
+'Assuredly, my lady.  I would not stand in his light, be quite assured.
+If I am, I was saying if I am not mistaken, I .  .  .  and he is, or has
+the making of an excellent soldier in him, and is likely to be a
+distinguished cavalry officer.'
+
+'He has to carve his own way in the world, General.'
+
+'All good soldiers have, my lady.  And if my position is not, after a
+considerable term of service, I say if .  .  .'
+
+'To continue,' said Lady Camper: 'I never have liked early marriages.  I
+was married in my teens before I knew men.  Now I do know them, and now .
+.  .'
+
+The General plunged forward: 'The honour you do us now:--a mature
+experience is worth:--my dear Lady Camper, I have admired you:--and your
+objection to early marriages cannot apply to .  .  .  indeed, madam,
+vigour, they say .  .  .  though youth, of course .  .  .  yet young
+people, as you observe .  .  .  and I have, though perhaps my reputation
+is against it, I was saying I have a natural timidity with your sex, and
+I am grey-headed, white-headed, but happily without a single malady.'
+
+Lady Camper's brows showed a trifling bewilderment.  'I am speaking of
+these young people, General Ople.'
+
+'I consent to everything beforehand, my dear lady.  He should be, I say
+Mr. Rolles should be provided for.'
+
+'So should she, General, so should Elizabeth.'
+
+'She shall be, she will, dear madam.  What I have, with your permission,
+if--good heaven!  Lady Camper, I scarcely know where I am.  She would . .
+. .  I shall not like to lose her: you would not wish it.  In time she
+will . . .  she has every quality of a good wife.'
+
+'There, stay there, and be intelligible,' said Lady Camper.  'She has
+every quality.  Money should be one of them.  Has she money?'
+
+'Oh! my lady,' the General exclaimed, 'we shall not come upon your purse
+when her time comes.'
+
+'Has she ten thousand pounds?'
+
+'Elizabeth?  She will have, at her father's death .  .  .  but as for my
+income, it is moderate, and only sufficient to maintain a gentlemanly
+appearance in proper self-respect.  I make no show.  I say I make no
+show.  A wealthy marriage is the last thing on earth I should have aimed
+at.  I prefer quiet and retirement.  Personally, I mean.  That is my
+personal taste.  But if the lady . . . . I say if it should happen that
+the lady . . . . and indeed I am not one to press a suit: but if she who
+distinguishes and honours me should chance to be wealthy, all I can do is
+to leave her wealth at her disposal, and that I do: I do that
+unreservedly.  I feel I am very confused, alarmingly confused.  Your
+ladyship merits a superior .  .  .  I trust I have not .  .  .  I am
+entirely at your ladyship's mercy.'
+
+'Are you prepared, if your daughter is asked in marriage, to settle ten
+thousand pounds on her, General Ople?'
+
+The General collected himself.  In his heart he thoroughly appreciated
+the moral beauty of Lady Camper's extreme solicitude on behalf of his
+daughter's provision; but he would have desired a postponement of that
+and other material questions belonging to a distant future until his own
+fate was decided.
+
+So he said: 'Your ladyship's generosity is very marked.  I say it is very
+marked.'
+
+'How, my good General Ople! how is it marked in any degree?' cried Lady
+Camper.  'I am not generous.  I don't pretend to be; and certainly I
+don't want the young people to think me so.  I want to be just.  I have
+assumed that you intend to be the same.  Then will you do me the favour
+to reply to me?'
+
+The General smiled winningly and intently, to show her that he prized
+her, and would not let her escape his eulogies.
+
+'Marked, in this way, dear madam, that you think of my daughter's future
+more than I.  I say, more than her father himself does.  I know I ought
+to speak more warmly, I feel warmly.  I was never an eloquent man, and
+if you take me as a soldier, I am, as, I have ever been in the service,
+I was saying I am Wilson Ople, of the grade of General, to be relied on
+for executing orders; and, madam, you are Lady Camper, and you command
+me.  I cannot be more precise.  In fact, it is the feeling of the
+necessity for keeping close to the business that destroys what I would
+say.  I am in fact lamentably incompetent to conduct my own case.'
+
+Lady Camper left her chair.
+
+'Dear me, this is very strange, unless I am singularly in error,' she
+said.
+
+The General now faintly guessed that he might be in error, for his part.
+
+But he had burned his ships, blown up his bridges; retreat could not be
+thought of.
+
+He stood, his head bent and appealing to her sideface, like one
+pleadingly in pursuit, and very deferentially, with a courteous
+vehemence, he entreated first her ladyship's pardon for his presumption,
+and then the gift of her ladyship's hand.
+
+As for his language, it was the tongue of General Ople.  But his bearing
+was fine.  If his clipped white silken hair spoke of age, his figure
+breathed manliness.  He was a picture, and she loved pictures.
+
+For his own sake, she begged him to cease.  She dreaded to hear of
+something 'gentlemanly.'
+
+'This is a new idea to me, my dear General,' she said.  'You must give me
+time.  People at our age have to think of fitness.  Of course, in a
+sense, we are both free to do as we like.  Perhaps I may be of some aid
+to you.  My preference is for absolute independence.  And I wished to
+talk of a different affair.  Come to me tomorrow.  Do not be hurt if I
+decide that we had better remain as we are.'
+
+The General bowed.  His efforts, and the wavering of the fair enemy's
+flag, had inspired him with a positive re-awakening of masculine passion
+to gain this fortress.  He said well: 'I have, then, the happiness,
+madam, of being allowed to hope until to-morrrow?'
+
+She replied, 'I would not deprive you of a moment of happiness.  Bring
+good sense with you when you do come.'
+
+The General asked eagerly, 'I have your ladyship's permission to come
+early?'
+
+'Consult your happiness,' she answered; and if to his mind she seemed
+returning to the state of enigma, it was on the whole deliciously.  She
+restored him his youth.  He told Elizabeth that night; he really must
+begin to think of marrying her to some worthy young fellow.  'Though,'
+said he, with an air of frank intoxication, 'my opinion is, the young
+ones are not so lively as the old in these days, or I should have been
+besieged before now.'
+
+The exact substance of the interview he forbore to relate to his
+inquisitive daughter, with a very honourable discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Elizabeth came riding home to breakfast from a gallop round the park,
+and passing Lady Camper's gates, received the salutation of her parasol.
+Lady Camper talked with her through the bars.  There was not a sign to
+tell of a change or twist in her neighbourly affability.  She remarked
+simply enough, that it was her nephew's habit to take early gallops, and
+possibly Elizabeth might have seen him, for his quarters were proximate;
+but she did not demand an answer.  She had passed a rather restless
+night, she said.  'How is the General?'
+
+'Papa must have slept soundly, for he usually calls to me through his
+door when he hears I am up,' said Elizabeth.
+
+Lady Camper nodded kindly and walked on.
+
+Early in the morning General Ople was ready for battle.  His forces were,
+the anticipation of victory, a carefully arranged toilet, and an
+unaccustomed spirit of enterprise in the realms of speech; for he was no
+longer in such awe of Lady Camper.
+
+'You have slept well?' she inquired.
+
+'Excellently, my lady:
+
+'Yes, your daughter tells me she heard you, as she went by your door in
+the morning for a ride to meet my nephew.  You are, I shall assume,
+prepared for business.'
+
+'Elizabeth?  .  .  .  to meet .  .  .?'  General Ople's impression of
+anything extraneous to his emotion was feeble and passed instantly.
+'Prepared!  Oh, certainly'; and he struck in a compliment on her
+ladyship's fresh morning bloom.
+
+'It can hardly be visible,' she responded; 'I have not painted yet.'
+
+'Does your ladyship proceed to your painting in the very early morning?'
+
+'Rouge.  I rouge.'
+
+'Dear me!  I should not have supposed it.'
+
+'You have speculated on it very openly, General.  I remember your trying
+to see a freckle through the rouge; but the truth is, I am of a
+supernatural paleness if I do not rouge, so I do.  You understand,
+therefore, I have a false complexion.  Now to business.'
+
+'If your ladyship insists on calling it business.  I have little to
+offer--myself !'
+
+'You have a gentlemanly residence.'
+
+'It is, my lady, it is.  It is a bijou.'
+
+'Ah!' Lady Camper sighed dejectedly.
+
+'It is a perfect bijou!'
+
+'Oblige me, General, by not pronouncing the French word as if you were
+swearing by something in English, like a trooper.'
+
+General Ople started, admitted that the word was French, and apologized
+for his pronunciation.  Her variability was now visible over a corner of
+the battlefield like a thunder-cloud.
+
+'The business we have to discuss concerns the young people, General.'
+
+'Yes,' brightened by this, he assented: 'Yes, dear Lady Camper; it is a
+part of the business; it is a secondary part; it has to be discussed; I
+say I subscribe beforehand.  I may say, that honouring, esteeming you as
+I do, and hoping ardently for your consent . . . .
+
+'They must have a home and an income, General.'
+
+'I presume, dearest lady, that Elizabeth will be welcome in your home.
+I certainly shall never chase Reginald out of mine.'
+
+Lady Camper threw back her head.  'Then you are not yet awake, or you
+practice the art of sleeping with open eyes!  Now listen to me.  I rouge,
+I have told you.  I like colour, and I do not like to see wrinkles or
+have them seen.  Therefore I rouge.  I do not expect to deceive the world
+so flagrantly as to my age, and you I would not deceive for a moment.  I
+am seventy.'
+
+The effect of this noble frankness on the General, was to raise him from
+his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up.
+
+Her countenance was inexorably imperturbable under his alternate blinking
+and gazing that drew her close and shot her distant, like a mysterious
+toy.
+
+'But,' said she, 'I am an artist; I dislike the look of extreme age, so I
+conceal it as well as I can.  You are very kind to fall in with the
+deception: an innocent and, I think, a proper one, before the world,
+though not to the gentleman who does me the honour to propose to me for
+my hand.  You desire to settle our business first.  You esteem me; I
+suppose you mean as much as young people mean when they say they love.
+Do you?  Let us come to an understanding.'
+
+'I can,' the melancholy General gasped, 'I say I can--I cannot--I cannot
+credit your ladyship's .  .  .'
+
+'You are at liberty to call me Angela.'
+
+'Ange .  .  .' he tried it, and in shame relapsed.  'Madam, yes.
+Thanks.'
+
+'Ah,' cried Lady Camper, 'do not use these vulgar contractions of decent
+speech in my presence.  I abhor the word "thanks."  It is fit for
+fribbles.'
+
+'Dear me, I have used it all my life,' groaned the General.
+
+'Then, for the remainder, be it understood that you renounce it.  To
+continue, my age is .  .  .'
+
+'Oh, impossible, impossible,' the General almost wailed; there was really
+a crack in his voice.
+
+'Advancing to seventy.  But, like you, I am happy to say I have not a
+malady.  I bring no invalid frame to a union that necessitates the
+leaving of the front door open day and night to the doctor.  My belief
+is, I could follow my husband still on a campaign, if he were a warrior
+instead of a pensioner.'
+
+General Ople winced.
+
+He was about to say humbly, 'As General of Brigade .  .  .'
+
+'Yes, yes, you want a commanding officer, and that I have seen, and that
+has caused me to meditate on your proposal,' she interrupted him; while
+he, studying her countenance hard, with the painful aspect of a youth who
+lashes a donkey memory in an examination by word of mouth, attempted to
+marshal her signs of younger years against her awful confession of the
+extremely ancient, the witheringly ancient.  But for the manifest rouge,
+manifest in spite of her declaration that she had not yet that morning
+proceeded to her paintbrush, he would have thrown down his glove to
+challenge her on the subject of her age.  She had actually charms.  Her
+mouth had a charm; her eyes were lively; her figure, mature if you like,
+was at least full and good; she stood upright, she had a queenly seat.
+His mental ejaculation was, 'What a wonderful constitution!'
+
+By a lapse of politeness, he repeated it to himself half aloud; he was
+shockingly nervous.
+
+'Yes, I have finer health than many a younger woman,' she said.  'An
+ordinary calculation would give me twenty good years to come.  I am a
+widow, as you know.  And, by the way, you have a leaning for widows.
+Have you not?  I thought I had heard of a widow Barcop in this parish.
+Do not protest.  I assure you I am a stranger to jealousy.  My income
+.  .  .'
+
+The General raised his hands.
+
+'Well, then,' said the cool and self-contained lady, 'before I go
+farther, I may ask you, knowing what you have forced me to confess, are
+you still of the same mind as to marriage?  And one moment, General.  I
+promise you most sincerely that your withdrawing a step shall not, as far
+as it touches me, affect my neighbourly and friendly sentiments; not in
+any degree.  Shall we be as we were?'
+
+Lady Camper extended her delicate hand to him.
+
+He took it respectfully, inspected the aristocratic and unshrunken
+fingers, and kissing them, said, 'I never withdraw from a position,
+unless I am beaten back.  Lady Camper, I . . .'
+
+'My name is Angela.'
+
+The General tried again: he could not utter the name.
+
+To call a lady of seventy Angela is difficult in itself.  It is, it
+seems, thrice difficult in the way of courtship.
+
+'Angela!' said she.
+
+'Yes.  I say, there is not a more beautiful female name, dear Lady
+Camper.'
+
+'Spare me that word "female" as long as you live.  Address me by that
+name, if you please.'
+
+The General smiled.  The smile was meant for propitiation and sweetness.
+It became a brazen smile.
+
+'Unless you wish to step back,' said she.
+
+'Indeed, no.  I am happy, Lady Camper.  My life is yours.  I say, my life
+is devoted to you, dear madam.'
+
+'Angela!'
+
+General Ople was blushingly delivered of the name.
+
+'That will do,' said she.  'And as I think it possible one may be admired
+too much as an artist, I must request you to keep my number of years a
+secret.'
+
+'To the death, madam,' said the General.
+
+'And now we will take a turn in the garden, Wilson Ople.  And beware of
+one thing, for a commencement, for you are full of weeds, and I mean to
+pluck out a few: never call any place a gentlemanly residence in my
+hearing, nor let it come to my ears that you have been using the phrase
+elsewhere.  Don't express astonishment.  At present it is enough that I
+dislike it.  But this only,' Lady Camper added, 'this only if it is not
+your intention to withdraw from your position.'
+
+'Madam, my lady, I was saying--hem!--Angela, I could not wish to
+withdraw.'
+
+Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, 'You have a
+curious attachment to antiquities.'
+
+'My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying,
+I am in love with your mind,' the General endeavoured to assure her, and
+himself too.
+
+'Or is it my powers as an artist?'
+
+'Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.'
+
+'Well,' said Lady Camper, 'a veteran General of Brigade is as good a
+crutch as a childless old grannam can have.'
+
+And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman,
+found himself used and treated.
+
+The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned.  He was like a man
+stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing of
+his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she
+increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to make
+him realize her wrinkles.
+
+He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to
+object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.
+
+It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word.
+And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked,
+'I fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a fool.'
+He, perhaps, naturally objected to that.  He was, however, giddy, and
+barely knew.
+
+Yet once more the magical woman changed.  All semblance of harshness, and
+harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.
+
+The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified
+moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at the soft-beaming
+moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as eyebrow-pencillings, has a
+similar sharp alternation of prospect to that which mystified General
+Ople.
+
+But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and
+contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast
+the difference!
+
+And consider that this woman is about to be one's wife!  He could have
+believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he
+was in the hands of a witch.
+
+Lady Camper's 'adieu' was perfectly beautiful--a kind, cordial, intimate,
+above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like adieu--the
+adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left her anchorage
+by forty to sail into the fifties.
+
+Alas! he had her word for it, that she was not less than seventy.  And,
+worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness
+as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.
+
+'The road is open to you to retreat,' were her last words.
+
+'My road,' he answered gallantly, 'is forward.'
+
+He was drawing backward as he said it, and something provoked her to
+smile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+It is a noble thing to say that your road is forward, and it befits a man
+of battles.  General Ople was too loyal a gentleman to think of any other
+road.  Still, albeit not gifted with imagination, he could not avoid the
+feeling that he had set his face to Winter.  He found himself suddenly
+walking straight into the heart of Winter, and a nipping Winter.  For her
+ladyship had proved acutely nipping.  His little customary phrases, to
+which Lady Camper objected, he could see no harm in whatever.  Conversing
+with her in the privacy of domestic life would never be the flowing
+business that it is for other men.  It would demand perpetual vigilance,
+hop, skip, jump, flounderings, and apologies.
+
+This was not a pleasing prospect.
+
+On the other hand, she was the niece of an earl.  She was wealthy.  She
+might be an excellent friend to Elizabeth; and she could be, when she
+liked, both commandingly and bewitchingly ladylike.
+
+Good!  But he was a General Officer of not more than fifty-five, in his
+full vigour, and she a woman of seventy!
+
+The prospect was bleak.  It resembled an outlook on the steppes.  In
+point of the discipline he was to expect, he might be compared to a raw
+recruit, and in his own home!
+
+However, she was a woman of mind.  One would be proud of her.
+
+But did he know the worst of her?  A dreadful presentiment, that he did
+not know the worst of her, rolled an ocean of gloom upon General Ople,
+striking out one solitary thought in the obscurity, namely, that he was
+about to receive punishment for retiring from active service to a life of
+ease at a comparatively early age, when still in marching trim.  And the
+shadow of the thought was, that he deserved the punishment!
+
+He was in his garden with the dawn.  Hard exercise is the best of opiates
+for dismal reflections.  The General discomposed his daughter by offering
+to accompany her on her morning ride before breakfast.  She considered
+that it would fatigue him.  'I am not a man of eighty!' he cried.  He
+could have wished he had been.
+
+He led the way to the park, where they soon had sight of young Rolles,
+who checked his horse and spied them like a vedette, but, perceiving that
+he had been seen, came cantering, and hailing the General with hearty
+wonderment.
+
+'And what's this the world says, General?' said he.  'But we all applaud
+your taste.  My aunt Angela was the handsomest woman of her time.'
+
+The General murmured in confusion, 'Dear me!' and looked at the young
+man, thinking that he could not have known the time.
+
+'Is all arranged, my dear General?'
+
+'Nothing is arranged, and I beg--I say I beg .  .  .  I came out for
+fresh air and pace.'..
+
+The General rode frantically.
+
+In spite of the fresh air, he was unable to eat at breakfast.  He was
+bound, of course, to present himself to Lady Camper, in common civility,
+immediately after it.
+
+And first, what were the phrases he had to avoid uttering in her
+presence?  He could remember only the 'gentlemanly residence.'  And it
+was a gentlemanly residence, he thought as he took leave of it.  It was
+one, neatly named to fit the place.  Lady Camper is indeed a most
+eccentric person! he decided from his experience of her.
+
+He was rather astonished that young Rolles should have spoken so coolly
+of his aunt's leaning to matrimony; but perhaps her exact age was unknown
+to the younger members of her family.
+
+This idea refreshed him by suggesting the extremely honourable nature of
+Lady Camper's uncomfortable confession.
+
+He himself had an uncomfortable confession to make.  He would have to
+speak of his income.  He was living up to the edges of it.
+
+She is an upright woman, and I must be the same! he said, fortunately not
+in her hearing.
+
+The subject was disagreeable to a man sensitive on the topic of money,
+and feeling that his prudence had recently been misled to keep up
+appearances.
+
+Lady Camper was in her garden, reclining under her parasol.  A chair was
+beside her, to which, acknowledging the salutation of her suitor, she
+waved him.
+
+'You have met my nephew Reginald this morning, General?'
+
+'Curiously, in the park, this morning, before breakfast, I did, yes.
+Hem! I, I say I did meet him.  Has your ladyship seen him?'
+
+'No.  The park is very pretty in the early morning.'
+
+'Sweetly pretty.'
+
+Lady Camper raised her head, and with the mildness of assured
+dictatorship, pronounced: 'Never say that before me.'
+
+'I submit, my lady,' said the poor scourged man.
+
+'Why, naturally you do.  Vulgar phrases have to be endured, except when
+our intimates are guilty, and then we are not merely offended, we are
+compromised by them.  You are still of the mind in which you left me
+yesterday?  You are one day older.  But I warn you, so am I.'
+
+'Yes, my lady, we cannot, I say we cannot check time.  Decidedly of the
+same mind.  Quite so.'
+
+'Oblige me by never saying "Quite so."  My lawyer says it.  It reeks of
+the City of London.  And do not look so miserable.'
+
+'I, madam? my dear lady!' the General flashed out in a radiance that
+dulled instantly.
+
+'Well,' said she cheerfully, 'and you're for the old woman?'
+
+'For Lady Camper.'
+
+'You are seductive in your flatteries, General.  Well, then, we have to
+speak of business.'
+
+'My affairs----' General Ople was beginning, with perturbed forehead; but
+Lady Camper held up her finger.
+
+'We will touch on your affairs incidentally.  Now listen to me, and do
+not exclaim until I have finished.  You know that these two young ones
+have been whispering over the wall for some months.  They have been
+meeting on the river and in the park habitually, apparently with your
+consent.'
+
+'My lady!'
+
+'I did not say with your connivance.'
+
+'You mean my daughter Elizabeth?'
+
+'And my nephew Reginald.  We have named them, if that advances us.  Now,
+the end of such meetings is marriage, and the sooner the better, if they
+are to continue.  I would rather they should not; I do not hold it good
+for young soldiers to marry.  But if they do, it is very certain that
+their pay will not support a family; and in a marriage of two healthy
+young people, we have to assume the existence of the family.  You have
+allowed matters to go so far that the boy is hot in love; I suppose the
+girl is, too.  She is a nice girl.  I do not object to her personally.
+But I insist that a settlement be made on her before I give my nephew one
+penny.  Hear me out, for I am not fond of business, and shall be glad to
+have done with these explanations.  Reginald has nothing of his own.  He
+is my sister's son, and I loved her, and rather like the boy.  He has at
+present four hundred a year from me.  I will double it, on the condition
+that you at once make over ten thousand--not less; and let it be yes or
+no!--to be settled on your daughter and go to her children, independent
+of the husband--cela va sans dire.  Now you may speak, General.'
+
+The General spoke, with breath fetched from the deeps:
+
+'Ten thousand pounds!  Hem!  Ten!  Hem, frankly--ten, my lady!  One's
+income--I am quite taken by surprise.  I say Elizabeth's conduct--though,
+poor child!  it is natural to her to seek a mate, I mean, to accept a
+mate and an establishment, and Reginald is a very hopeful fellow--I was
+saying, they jump on me out of an ambush, and I wish them every
+happiness.  And she is an ardent soldier, and a soldier she must marry.
+But ten thousand!'
+
+'It is to secure the happiness of your daughter, General.'
+
+'Pounds!  my lady.  It would rather cripple me.'
+
+'You would have my house, General; you would have the moiety, as the
+lawyers say, of my purse; you would have horses, carriages, servants; I
+do not divine what more you would wish to have.'
+
+'But, madam--a pensioner on the Government!  I can look back on past
+services, I say old services, and I accept my position.  But, madam, a
+pensioner on my wife, bringing next to nothing to the common estate!  I
+fear my self-respect would, I say would .  .  .'
+
+'Well, and what would it do, General Ople?'
+
+'I was saying, my self-respect as my wife's pensioner, my lady.  I could
+not come to her empty-handed.'
+
+'Do you expect that I should be the person to settle money on your
+daughter, to save her from mischances?  A rakish husband, for example;
+for Reginald is young, and no one can guess what will be made of him.'
+
+'Undoubtedly your ladyship is correct.  We might try absence for the poor
+girl.  I have no female relation, but I could send her to the sea-side to
+a lady-friend.'
+
+'General Ople, I forbid you, as you value my esteem, ever--and I repeat,
+I forbid you ever--to afflict my ears with that phrase, "lady-friend!"'
+
+The General blinked in a state of insurgent humility.
+
+These incessant whippings could not but sting the humblest of men; and
+'lady-friend,' he was sure, was a very common term, used, he was sure,
+in the very best society.  He had never heard Her Majesty speak at levees
+of a lady-friend, but he was quite sure that she had one; and if so, what
+could be the objection to her subjects mentioning it as a term to suit
+their own circumstances?
+
+He was harassed and perplexed by old Lady Camper's treatment of him, and
+he resolved not to call her Angela even upon supplication--not that day,
+at least.
+
+She said, 'You will not need to bring property of any kind to the common
+estate; I neither look for it nor desire it.  The generous thing for you
+to do would be to give your daughter all you have, and come to me.'
+
+'But, Lady Camper, if I denude myself or curtail my income--a man at his
+wife's discretion, I was saying a man at his wife's mercy .  .  .  !'
+
+General Ople was really forced, by his manly dignity, to make this
+protest on its behalf.  He did not see how he could have escaped doing
+so; he was more an agent than a principal.  'My wife's mercy,' he said
+again, but simply as a herald proclaiming superior orders.
+
+Lady Camper's brows were wrathful.  A deep blood-crimson overcame the
+rouge, and gave her a terrible stormy look.
+
+'The congress now ceases to sit, and the treaty is not concluded,' was
+all she said.
+
+She rose, bowed to him, 'Good morning, General,' and turned her back.
+
+He sighed.  He was a free man.  But this could not be denied--whatever
+the lady's age, she was a grand woman in her carriage, and when looking
+angry, she had a queenlike aspect that raised her out of the reckoning of
+time.
+
+So now he knew there was a worse behind what he had previously known.
+He was precipitate in calling it the worst.  'Now,' said he to himself,
+'I know the worst !'
+
+No man should ever say it.  Least of all, one who has entered into
+relations with an eccentric lady.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Politeness required that General Ople should not appear to rejoice in his
+dismissal as a suitor, and should at least make some show of holding
+himself at the beck of a reconsidering mind.  He was guilty of running up
+to London early next day, and remaining absent until nightfall; and he
+did the same on the two following days.  When he presented himself at
+Lady Camper's lodge-gates, the astonishing intelligence, that her
+ladyship had departed for the Continent and Egypt gave him qualms of
+remorse, which assumed a more definite shape in something like awe of her
+triumphant constitution.  He forbore to mention her age, for he was the
+most honourable of men, but a habit of tea-table talkativeness impelled
+him to say and repeat an idea that had visited him, to the effect, that
+Lady Camper was one of those wonderful women who are comparable to
+brilliant generals, and defend themselves from the siege of Time by
+various aggressive movements.  Fearful of not being understood, owing to
+the rarity of the occasions when the squat plain squad of honest Saxon
+regulars at his command were called upon to explain an idea, he re-cast
+the sentence.  But, as it happened that the regulars of his vocabulary
+were not numerous, and not accustomed to work upon thoughts and images,
+his repetitions rather succeeded in exposing the piece of knowledge he
+had recently acquired than in making his meaning plainer.  So we need not
+marvel that his acquaintances should suppose him to be secretly aware of
+an extreme degree in which Lady Camper was a veteran.
+
+General Ople entered into the gaieties of the neighbourhood once more,
+and passed through the Winter cheerfully.  In justice to him, however,
+it should be said that to the intent dwelling of his mind upon Lady
+Camper, and not to the festive life he led, was due his entire ignorance
+of his daughter's unhappiness.  She lived with him, and yet it was in
+other houses he learnt that she was unhappy.  After his last interview
+with Lady Camper, he had informed Elizabeth of the ruinous and
+preposterous amount of money demanded of him for a settlement upon her
+and Elizabeth, like the girl of good sense that she was, had replied
+immediately, 'It could not be thought of, papa.'
+
+He had spoken to Reginald likewise.  The young man fell into a dramatic
+tearing-of-hair and long-stride fury, not ill becoming an enamoured
+dragoon.  But he maintained that his aunt, though an eccentric, was a
+cordially kind woman.  He seemed to feel, if he did not partly hint, that
+the General might have accepted Lady Camper's terms.  The young officer
+could no longer be welcome at Douro Lodge, so the General paid him a
+morning call at his quarters, and was distressed to find him breakfasting
+very late, tapping eggs that he forgot to open--one of the surest signs
+of a young man downright and deep in love, as the General knew from
+experience--and surrounded by uncut sporting journals of past weeks,
+which dated from the day when his blow had struck him, as accurately as
+the watch of the drowned man marks his minute.  Lady Camper had gone to
+Italy, and was in communication with her nephew: Reginald was not further
+explicit.  His legs were very prominent in his despair, and his fingers
+frequently performed the part of blunt combs; consequently the General
+was impressed by his passion for Elizabeth.  The girl who, if she was
+often meditative, always met his eyes with a smile, and quietly said
+'Yes, papa,' and 'No, papa,' gave him little concern as to the state of
+her feelings.  Yet everybody said now that she was unhappy.  Mrs. Barcop,
+the widow, raised her voice above the rest.  So attentive was she to
+Elizabeth that the General had it kindly suggested to him, that some one
+was courting him through his daughter.  He gazed at the widow.  Now she
+was not much past thirty; and it was really singular--he could have
+laughed--thinking of Mrs. Barcop set him persistently thinking of Lady
+Camper.  That is to say, his mad fancy reverted from the lady of perhaps
+thirty-five to the lady of seventy.
+
+Such, thought he, is genius in a woman!  Of his neighbours generally,
+Mrs. Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the
+pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper.
+She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess
+before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his
+devotion to the well-served City club, where, as he exclaimed (ever
+turning fondly to his wife as he vocalized the compliment), he had found
+every necessity, every luxury, in life, 'as you cannot have dem out of
+London--all save de female!'  Mrs. Baerens, a lady of Teutonic
+extraction, was distinguishable as of that sex; at least, she was not
+masculine.  She spoke with great respect of Lady Camper and her family,
+and seemed to agree in the General's eulogies of Lady Camper's
+constitution.  Still he thought she eyed him strangely.
+
+One April morning the General received a letter with the Italian
+postmark.  Opening it with his usual calm and happy curiosity, he
+perceived that it was composed of pen-and-ink drawings.  And suddenly
+his heart sank like a scuttled ship.  He saw himself the victim of a
+caricature.
+
+The first sketch had merely seemed picturesque, and he supposed it a
+clever play of fancy by some travelling friend, or perhaps an actual
+scene slightly exaggerated.  Even on reading, 'A distant view of the city
+of Wilsonople,' he was only slightly enlightened.  His heart beat still
+with befitting regularity.  But the second and the third sketches
+betrayed the terrible hand.  The distant view of the city of Wilsonople
+was fair with glittering domes, which, in the succeeding near view,
+proved to have been soap-bubbles, for a place of extreme flatness, begirt
+with crazy old-fashioned fortifications, was shown; and in the third
+view, representing the interior, stood for sole place of habitation, a
+sentry-box.
+
+Most minutely drawn, and, alas!  with fearful accuracy, a military
+gentleman in undress occupied the box.  Not a doubt could exist as to the
+person it was meant to be.
+
+The General tried hard to remain incredulous.  He remembered too well who
+had called him Wilsonople.
+
+But here was the extraordinary thing that sent him over the neighbourhood
+canvassing for exclamations: on the fourth page was the outline of a
+lovely feminine hand, holding a pen, as in the act of shading, and under
+it these words: 'What I say is, I say I think it exceedingly unladylike.'
+
+Now consider the General's feelings when, turning to this fourth page,
+having these very words in his mouth, as the accurate expression of his
+thoughts, he discovered them written!
+
+An enemy who anticipates the actions of our mind, has a quality of the
+malignant divine that may well inspire terror.  The senses of General
+Ople were struck by the aspect of a lurid Goddess, who penetrated him,
+read him through, and had both power and will to expose and make him
+ridiculous for ever.
+
+The loveliness of the hand, too, in a perplexing manner contested his
+denunciation of her conduct.  It was ladylike eminently, and it involved
+him in a confused mixture of the moral and material, as great as young
+people are known to feel when they make the attempt to separate them, in
+one of their frenzies.
+
+With a petty bitter laugh he folded the letter, put it in his breast-
+pocket, and sallied forth for a walk, chiefly to talk to himself about
+it.  But as it absorbed him entirely, he showed it to the rector, whom he
+met, and what the rector said is of no consequence, for General Ople
+listened to no remarks, calling in succession on the Pollingtons, the
+Goslings, the Baerens, and others, early though it was, and the lords of
+those houses absent amassing hoards; and to the ladies everywhere he
+displayed the sketches he had received, observing, that Wilsonople meant
+himself; and there he was, he said, pointing at the capped fellow in the
+sentry-box, done unmistakably.  The likeness indeed was remarkable.
+'She is a woman of genius,' he ejaculated, with utter melancholy.  Mrs.
+Baerens, by the aid of a magnifying glass, assisted him to read a line
+under the sentry-box, that he had taken for a mere trembling dash; it
+ran, A gentlemanly residence.
+
+'What eyes she has!' the General exclaimed; 'I say it is miraculous what
+eyes she has at her time of .  .  .  I was saying, I should never have
+known it was writing.'
+
+He sighed heavily.  His shuddering sensitiveness to caricature was
+increased by a certain evident dread of the hand which struck; the
+knowing that he was absolutely bare to this woman, defenceless, open to
+exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies, in what
+lay in his heart, and the words that would come to his tongue.  He felt
+like a man haunted.
+
+So deeply did he feel the blow, that people asked how it was that he
+could be so foolish as to dance about assisting Lady Camper in her
+efforts to make him ridiculous; he acted the parts of publisher and agent
+for the fearful caricaturist.  In truth, there was a strangely double
+reason for his conduct; he danced about for sympathy, he had the
+intensest craving for sympathy, but more than this, or quite as much, he
+desired to have the powers of his enemy widely appreciated; in the first
+place, that he might be excused to himself for wincing under them, and
+secondly, because an awful admiration of her, that should be deepened by
+a corresponding sentiment around him, helped him to enjoy luxurious
+recollections of an hour when he was near making her his own--his own,
+in the holy abstract contemplation of marriage, without realizing their
+probable relative conditions after the ceremony.
+
+'I say, that is the very image of her ladyship's hand,' he was especially
+fond of remarking, 'I say it is a beautiful hand.'
+
+He carried the letter in his pocket-book; and beginning to fancy that she
+had done her worst, for he could not imagine an inventive malignity
+capable of pursuing the theme, he spoke of her treatment of him with
+compassionate regret, not badly assumed from being partly sincere.
+
+Two letters dated in France, the one Dijon, the other Fontainebleau,
+arrived together; and as the General knew Lady Camper to be returning to
+England, he expected that she was anxious to excuse herself to him.  His
+fingers were not so confident, for he tore one of the letters to open it.
+
+The City of Wilsonople was recognizable immediately.  So likewise was the
+sole inhabitant.
+
+General Ople's petty bitter laugh recurred, like a weak-chested patient's
+cough in the shifting of our winds eastward.
+
+A faceless woman's shadow kneels on the ground near the sentry-box,
+weeping.  A faceless shadow of a young man on horseback is beheld
+galloping toward a gulf.  The sole inhabitant contemplates his largely
+substantial full fleshed face and figure in a glass.
+
+Next, we see the standard of Great Britain furled; next, unfurled and
+borne by a troop of shadows to the sentrybox.  The officer within says,
+'I say I should be very happy to carry it, but I cannot quit this
+gentlemanly residence.'
+
+Next, the standard is shown assailed by popguns.  Several of the shadows
+are prostrate.  'I was saying, I assure you that nothing but this
+gentlemanly residence prevents me from heading you,' says the gallant
+officer.
+
+General Ople trembled with protestant indignation when he saw himself
+reclining in a magnified sentry-box, while detachments of shadows hurry
+to him to show him the standard of his country trailing in the dust; and
+he is maliciously made to say, 'I dislike responsibility.  I say I am a
+fervent patriot, and very fond of my comforts, but I shun
+responsibility.'
+
+The second letter contained scenes between Wilsonople and the Moon.
+
+He addresses her as his neighbour, and tells her of his triumphs over the
+sex.
+
+He requests her to inform him whether she is a 'female,' that she may be
+triumphed over.
+
+He hastens past her window on foot, with his head bent, just as the
+General had been in the habit of walking.
+
+He drives a mouse-pony furiously by.
+
+He cuts down a tree, that she may peep through.
+
+Then, from the Moon's point of view, Wilsonople, a Silenus, is discerned
+in an arm-chair winking at a couple too plainly pouting their lips for a
+doubt of their intentions to be entertained.
+
+A fourth letter arrived, bearing date of Paris.  This one illustrated
+Wilsonople's courtship of the Moon, and ended with his 'saying,' in his
+peculiar manner, 'In spite of her paint I could not have conceived her
+age to be so enormous.'
+
+How break off his engagement with the Lady Moon?  Consent to none of her
+terms!
+
+Little used as he was to read behind a veil, acuteness of suffering
+sharpened the General's intelligence to a degree that sustained him in
+animated dialogue with each succeeding sketch, or poisoned arrow whirring
+at him from the moment his eyes rested on it; and here are a few samples:
+
+'Wilsonople informs the Moon that she is "sweetly pretty."
+
+'He thanks her with "thanks" for a handsome piece of lunar green cheese.
+
+'He points to her, apparently telling some one, "my lady-friend."
+
+'He sneezes "Bijou!  bijou!  bijou!"'
+
+They were trifles, but they attacked his habits of speech; and he began
+to grow more and more alarmingly absurd in each fresh caricature of his
+person.
+
+He looked at himself as the malicious woman's hand had shaped him.  It
+was unjust; it was no resemblance--and yet it was!  There was a corner of
+likeness left that leavened the lump; henceforth he must walk abroad with
+this distressing image of himself before his eyes, instead of the
+satisfactory reflex of the man who had, and was happy in thinking that he
+had, done mischief in his time.  Such an end for a conquering man was too
+pathetic.
+
+The General surprised himself talking to himself in something louder than
+a hum at neighbours' dinner-tables.  He looked about and noticed that
+people were silently watching him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Lady Camper's return was the subject of speculation in the neighbourhood,
+for most people thought she would cease to persecute the General with her
+preposterous and unwarrantable pen-and-ink sketches when living so
+closely proximate; and how he would behave was the question.  Those who
+made a hero of him were sure he would treat her with disdain.  Others
+were uncertain.  He had been so severely hit that it seemed possible he
+would not show much spirit.
+
+He, for his part, had come to entertain such dread of the post, that Lady
+Camper's return relieved him of his morning apprehensions; and he would
+have forgiven her, though he feared to see her, if only she had promised
+to leave him in peace for the future.  He feared to see her, because of
+the too probable furnishing of fresh matter for her ladyship's hand.  Of
+course he could not avoid being seen by her, and that was a particular
+misery.  A gentlemanly humility, or demureness of aspect, when seen,
+would, he hoped, disarm his enemy.  It should, he thought.  He had borne
+unheard-of things.  No one of his friends and acquaintances knew, they
+could not know, what he had endured.  It has caused him fits of
+stammering.  It had destroyed the composure of his gait.  Elizabeth had
+informed him that he talked to himself incessantly, and aloud.  She, poor
+child, looked pale too.  She was evidently anxious about him.
+
+Young Rolles, whom he had met now and then, persisted in praising his
+aunt's good heart.  So, perhaps, having satiated her revenge, she might
+now be inclined for peace, on the terms of distant civility.
+
+'Yes! poor Elizabeth!' sighed the General, in pity of the poor girl's
+disappointment; 'poor Elizabeth!  she little guesses what her father has
+gone through.  Poor child!  I say, she hasn't an idea of my sufferings.'
+
+General Ople delivered his card at Lady Camper's lodgegates and escaped
+to his residence in a state of prickly heat that required the brushing
+of his hair with hard brushes for several minutes to comfort and
+re-establish him.
+
+He had fallen to working in his garden, when Lady Camper's card was
+brought to him an hour after the delivery of his own; a pleasing
+promptitude, showing signs of repentance, and suggesting to the General
+instantly some sharp sarcasms upon women, which he had come upon in
+quotations in the papers and the pulpit, his two main sources of
+information.
+
+Instead of handing back the card to the maid, he stuck it in his hat and
+went on digging.
+
+The first of a series of letters containing shameless realistic
+caricatures was handed to him the afternoon following.  They came fast
+and thick.  Not a day's interval of grace was allowed.  Niobe under the
+shafts of Diana was hardly less violently and mortally assailed.  The
+deadliness of the attack lay in the ridicule of the daily habits of one
+of the most sensitive of men, as to his personal appearance, and the
+opinion of the world.  He might have concealed the sketches, but he could
+not have concealed the bruises, and people were perpetually asking the
+unhappy General what he was saying, for he spoke to himself as if he were
+repeating something to them for the tenth time.
+
+'I say,' said he, 'I say that for a lady, really an educated lady, to
+sit, as she must--I was saying, she must have sat in an attic to have the
+right view of me.  And there you see--this is what she has done.  This is
+the last, this is the afternoon's delivery.  Her ladyship has me
+correctly as to costume, but I could not exhibit such a sketch to
+ladies.'
+
+A back view of the General was displayed in his act of digging.
+
+'I say I could not allow ladies to see it,' he informed the gentlemen,
+who were suffered to inspect it freely.
+
+'But you see, I have no means of escape; I am at her mercy from morning
+to night,' the General said, with a quivering tongue, 'unless I stay at
+home inside the house; and that is death to me, or unless I abandon the
+place, and my lease; and I shall--I say, I shall find nowhere in England
+for anything like the money or conveniences such a gent--a residence you
+would call fit for a gentleman.  I call it a bi . . . it is, in short,
+a gem.  But I shall have to go.'
+
+Young Rolles offered to expostulate with his aunt Angela.
+
+The General said, 'Tha . . . I thank you very much.  I would not have her
+ladyship suppose I am so susceptible.  I hardly know,' he confessed
+pitiably, 'what it is right to say, and what not--what not.  I-I-I never
+know when I am not looking a fool.  I hurry from tree to tree to shun the
+light.  I am seriously affected in my appetite.  I say, I shall have to
+go.'
+
+Reginald gave him to understand that if he flew, the shafts would follow
+him, for Lady Camper would never forgive his running away, and was quite
+equal to publishing a book of the adventures of Wilsonople.
+
+Sunday afternoon, walking in the park with his daughter on his arm,
+General Ople met Mr. Rolles.  He saw that the young man and Elizabeth
+were mortally pale, and as the very idea of wretchedness directed his
+attention to himself, he addressed them conjointly on the subject of his
+persecution, giving neither of them a chance of speaking until they were
+constrained to part.
+
+A sketch was the consequence, in which a withered Cupid and a fading
+Psyche were seen divided by Wilsonople, who keeps them forcibly asunder
+with policeman's fists, while courteously and elegantly entreating them
+to hear him.  'Meet,' he tells them, 'as often as you like, in my
+company, so long as you listen to me'; and the pathos of his aspect makes
+hungry demand for a sympathetic audience.
+
+Now, this, and not the series representing the martyrdom of the old
+couple at Douro Lodge Gates, whose rigid frames bore witness to the close
+packing of a gentlemanly residence, this was the sketch General Ople, in
+his madness from the pursuing bite of the gadfly, handed about at Mrs.
+Pollington's lawn-party.  Some have said, that he should not have
+betrayed his daughter; but it is reasonable to suppose he had no idea of
+his daughter's being the Psyche.  Or if he had, it was indistinct, owing
+to the violence of his personal emotion.  Assuming this to have been the
+very sketch; he handed it to two or three ladies in turn, and was heard
+to deliver himself at intervals in the following snatches: 'As you like,
+my lady, as you like; strike, I say strike; I bear it; I say I bear it
+.  .  .  .  If her ladyship is unforgiving, I say I am enduring .  .  .
+I may go, I was saying I may go mad, but while I have my reason I walk
+upright, I walk upright.'
+
+Mr. Pollington and certain City gentlemen hearing the poor General's
+renewed soliloquies, were seized with disgust of Lady Camper's conduct,
+and stoutly advised an application to the Law Courts.
+
+He gave ear to them abstractedly, but after pulling out the whole chapter
+of the caricatures (which it seemed that he kept in a case of morocco
+leather in his breast-pocket), showing them, with comments on them, and
+observing, 'There will be more, there must be more, I say I am sure there
+are things I do that her ladyship will discover and expose,' he declined
+to seek redress or simple protection; and the miserable spectacle was
+exhibited soon after of this courtly man listening to Mrs. Barcop on the
+weather, and replying in acquiescence: 'It is hot.--If your ladyship will
+only abstain from colours.  Very hot as you say, madam,--I do not
+complain of pen and ink, but I would rather escape colours.  And I dare
+say you find it hot too?'
+
+Mrs. Barcop shut her eyes and sighed over the wreck of a handsome
+military officer.
+
+She asked him: 'What is your objection to colours?'
+
+His hand was at his breast-pocket immediately, as he said: 'Have you not
+seen?'--though but a few minutes back he had shown her the contents of
+the packet, including a hurried glance of the famous digging scene.
+
+By this time the entire district was in fervid sympathy with General
+Ople.  The ladies did not, as their lords did, proclaim astonishment
+that a man should suffer a woman to goad him to a state of semi-lunacy;
+but one or two confessed to their husbands, that it required a great
+admiration of General Ople not to despise him, both for his
+susceptibility and his patience.  As for the men, they knew him to have
+faced the balls in bellowing battle-strife; they knew him to have endured
+privation, not only cold but downright want of food and drink--an almost
+unimaginable horror to these brave daily feasters; so they could not
+quite look on him in contempt; but his want of sense was offensive, and
+still more so his submission to a scourging by a woman.  Not one of them
+would have deigned to feel it.  Would they have allowed her to see that
+she could sting them?  They would have laughed at her.  Or they would
+have dragged her before a magistrate.
+
+It was a Sunday in early Summer when General Ople walked to morning
+service, unaccompanied by Elizabeth, who was unwell.  The church was of
+the considerate old-fashioned order, with deaf square pews, permitting
+the mind to abstract itself from the sermon, or wrestle at leisure with
+the difficulties presented by the preacher, as General Ople often did,
+feeling not a little in love with his sincere attentiveness for grappling
+with the knotty point and partially allowing the struggle to be seen.
+
+The Church was, besides, a sanctuary for him.  Hither his enemy did not
+come.  He had this one place of refuge, and he almost looked a happy man
+again.
+
+He had passed into his hat and out of it, which he habitually did
+standing, when who should walk up to within a couple of yards of him
+but Lady Camper.  Her pew was full of poor people, who made signs of
+retiring.  She signified to them that they were to sit, then quietly
+took her seat among them, fronting the General across the aisle.
+
+During the sermon a low voice, sharp in contradistinction to the monotone
+of the preacher's, was heard to repeat these words: 'I say I am not sure
+I shall survive it.'  Considerable muttering in the same quarter was
+heard besides.
+
+After the customary ceremonious game, when all were free to move, of
+nobody liking to move first, Lady Camper and a charity boy were the
+persons who took the lead.  But Lady Camper could not quit her pew, owing
+to the sticking of the door.  She smiled as with her pretty hand she
+twice or thrice essayed to shake it open.  General Ople strode to her
+aid.  He pulled the door, gave the shadow of a respectful bow, and no
+doubt he would have withdrawn, had not Lady Camper, while acknowledging
+the civility, placed her prayer-book in his hands to carry at her heels.
+There was no choice for him.  He made a sort of slipping dance back for
+his hat, and followed her ladyship.  All present being eager to witness
+the spectacle, the passage of Lady Camper dragging the victim General
+behind her was observed without a stir of the well-dressed members of the
+congregation, until a desire overcame them to see how Lady Camper would
+behave to her fish when she had him outside the sacred edifice.
+
+None could have imagined such a scene.  Lady Camper was in her carriage;
+General Ople was holding her prayer-book, hat in hand, at the carriage
+step, and he looked as if he were toasting before the bars of a furnace;
+for while he stood there, Lady Camper was rapidly pencilling outlines in
+a small pocket sketchbook.  There are dogs whose shyness is put to it to
+endure human observation and a direct address to them, even on the part
+of their masters; and these dear simple dogs wag tail and turn their
+heads aside waveringly, as though to entreat you not to eye them and talk
+to them so.  General Ople, in the presence of the sketchbook, was much
+like the nervous animal.  He would fain have run away.  He glanced at it,
+and round about, and again at it, and at the heavens.  Her ladyship's
+cruelty, and his inexplicable submission to it, were witnessed of the
+multitude.
+
+The General's friends walked very slowly.  Lady Camper's carriage whirled
+by, and the General came up with them, accosting them and himself
+alternately.  They asked him where Elizabeth was, and he replied,
+'Poor child, yes!  I am told she is pale, but I cannot, believe I am so
+perfectly, I say so perfectly ridiculous, when I join the responses.' He
+drew forth half a dozen sheets, and showed them sketches that Lady Camper
+had taken in church, caricaturing him in the sitting down and the
+standing up.  She had torn them out of the book, and presented them to
+him when driving off.  'I was saying, worship in the ordinary sense will
+be interdicted to me if her ladyship .  .  .,' said the General, woefully
+shuffling the sketch-paper sheets in which he figured.
+
+He made the following odd confession to Mr. and Mrs. Gosling on the
+road:--that he had gone to his chest, and taken out his sword-belt to
+measure his girth, and found himself thinner than when he left the
+service, which had not been the case before his attendance at the last
+levee of the foregoing season.  So the deduction was obvious, that Lady
+Camper had reduced him.  She had reduced him as effectually as a
+harassing siege.
+
+'But why do you pay attention to her?  Why .  .  .  !' exclaimed Mr.
+Gosling, a gentleman of the City, whose roundness would have turned a
+rifle-shot.
+
+'To allow her to wound you so seriously!' exclaimed Mrs. Gosling.
+
+'Madam, if she were my wife,' the General explained, 'I should feel it.
+I say it is the fact of it; I feel it, if I appear so extremely
+ridiculous to a human eye, to any one eye.'
+
+'To Lady Camper's eye.'
+
+He admitted it might be that.  He had not thought of ascribing the
+acuteness of his pain to the miserable image he presented in this
+particular lady's eye.  No; it really was true, curiously true: another
+lady's eye might have transformed him to a pumpkin shape, exaggerated all
+his foibles fifty-fold, and he, though not liking it, of course not,
+would yet have preserved a certain manly equanimity.  How was it Lady
+Camper had such power over him?--a lady concealing seventy years with a
+rouge-box or paint-pot!  It was witchcraft in its worst character.  He
+had for six months at her bidding been actually living the life of a
+beast, degraded in his own esteem; scorched by every laugh he heard;
+running, pursued, overtaken, and as it were scored or branded, and then
+let go for the process to be repeated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Our young barbarians have it all their own way with us when they fall
+into love-liking; they lead us whither they please, and interest us in
+their wishings, their weepings, and that fine performance, their
+kissings.  But when we see our veterans tottering to their fall, we
+scarcely consent to their having a wish; as for a kiss, we halloo at them
+if we discover them on a byway to the sacred grove where such things are
+supposed to be done by the venerable.  And this piece of rank injustice,
+not to say impoliteness, is entirely because of an unsound opinion that
+Nature is not in it, as though it were our esteem for Nature which caused
+us to disrespect them.  They, in truth, show her to us discreet,
+civilized, in a decent moral aspect: vistas of real life, views of the
+mind's eye, are opened by their touching little emotions; whereas those
+bully youngsters who come bellowing at us and catch us by the senses
+plainly prove either that we are no better than they, or that we give our
+attention to Nature only when she makes us afraid of her.  If we cared
+for her, we should be up and after her reverentially in her sedater
+steps, deeply studying her in her slower paces.  She teaches them nothing
+when they are whirling.  Our closest instructors, the true philosophers--
+the story-tellers, in short-will learn in time that Nature is not of
+necessity always roaring, and as soon as they do, the world may be said
+to be enlightened.  Meantime, in the contemplation of a pair of white
+whiskers fluttering round a pair of manifestly painted cheeks, be assured
+that Nature is in it: not that hectoring wanton--but let the young have
+their fun.  Let the superior interest of the passions of the aged be
+conceded, and not a word shall be said against the young.
+
+If, then, Nature is in it, how has she been made active?  The reason of
+her launch upon this last adventure is, that she has perceived the person
+who can supply the virtue known to her by experience to be wanting.
+Thus, in the broader instance, many who have journeyed far down the road,
+turn back to the worship of youth, which they have lost.  Some are for
+the graceful worldliness of wit, of which they have just share enough to
+admire it.  Some are captivated by hands that can wield the rod, which in
+earlier days they escaped to their cost.  In the case of General Ople, it
+was partly her whippings of him, partly her penetration; her ability,
+that sat so finely on a wealthy woman, her indifference to conventional
+manners, that so well beseemed a nobly-born one, and more than all, her
+correction of his little weaknesses and incompetencies, in spite of his
+dislike of it, won him.  He began to feel a sort of nibbling pleasure in
+her grotesque sketches of his person; a tendency to recur to the old ones
+while dreading the arrival of new.  You hear old gentlemen speak fondly
+of the swish; and they are not attached to pain, but the instrument
+revives their feeling of youth; and General Ople half enjoyed, while
+shrinking, Lady Camper's foregone outlines of him.  For in the distance,
+the whip's-end may look like a clinging caress instead of a stinging
+flick.  But this craven melting in his heart was rebuked by a very worthy
+pride, that flew for support to the injury she had done to his devotions,
+and the offence to the sacred edifice.  After thinking over it, he
+decided that he must quit his residence; and as it appeared to him in the
+light of duty, he, with an unspoken anguish, commissioned the house-agent
+of his town to sell his lease or let the house furnished, without further
+parley.
+
+From the house-agent's shop he turned into the chemist's, for a tonic--
+a foolish proceeding, for he had received bracing enough in the blow he
+had just dealt himself, but he had been cogitating on tonics recently,
+imagining certain valiant effects of them, with visions of a former
+careless happiness that they were likely to restore.  So he requested to
+have the tonic strong, and he took one glass of it over the counter.
+
+Fifteen minutes after the draught, he came in sight of his house, and
+beholding it, he could have called it a gentlemanly residence aloud under
+Lady Camper's windows, his insurgency was of such violence.  He talked of
+it incessantly, but forbore to tell Elizabeth, as she was looking pale,
+the reason why its modest merits touched him so.  He longed for the hour
+of his next dose, and for a caricature to follow, that he might drink and
+defy it.  A caricature was really due to him, he thought; otherwise why
+had he abandoned his bijou dwelling?  Lady Camper, however, sent none.
+He had to wait a fortnight before one came, and that was rather a
+likeness, and a handsome likeness, except as regarded a certain
+disorderliness in his dress, which he knew to be very unlike him.  Still
+it despatched him to the looking-glass, to bring that verifier of facts
+in evidence against the sketch.  While sitting there he heard the
+housemaid's knock at the door, and the strange intelligence that his
+daughter was with Lady Camper, and had left word that she hoped he would
+not forget his engagement to go to Mrs. Baerens' lawn-party.
+
+The General jumped away from the glass, shouting at the absent Elizabeth
+in a fit of wrath so foreign to him, that he returned hurriedly to have
+another look at himself, and exclaimed at the pitch of his voice, 'I say
+I attribute it to an indigestion of that tonic.  Do you hear?'  The
+housemaid faintly answered outside the door that she did, alarming him,
+for there seemed to be confusion somewhere.  His hope was that no one
+would mention Lady Camper's name, for the mere thought of her caused a
+rush to his head.  'I believe I am in for a touch of apoplexy,' he said
+to the rector, who greeted him, in advance of the ladies, on Mr. Baerens'
+lawn.  He said it smilingly, but wanting some show of sympathy, instead
+of the whisper and meaningless hand at his clerical band, with which the
+rector responded, he cried, 'Apoplexy,' and his friend seemed then to
+understand, and disappeared among the ladies.
+
+Several of them surrounded the General, and one inquired whether the
+series was being continued.  He drew forth his pocket-book, handed her
+the latest, and remarked on the gross injustice of it; for, as he
+requested them to take note, her ladyship now sketched him as a person
+inattentive to his dress, and he begged them to observe that she had
+drawn him with his necktie hanging loose.  'And that, I say that has
+never been known of me since I first entered society.'
+
+The ladies exchanged looks of profound concern; for the fact was, the
+General had come without any necktie and any collar, and he appeared to
+be unaware of the circumstance.  The rector had told them, that in answer
+to a hint he had dropped on the subject of neckties, General Ople
+expressed a slight apprehension of apoplexy; but his careless or merely
+partial observance of the laws of buttonment could have nothing to do
+with such fears.  They signified rather a disorder of the intelligence.
+Elizabeth was condemned for leaving him to go about alone.  The situation
+was really most painful, for a word to so sensitive a man would drive him
+away in shame and for good; and still, to let him parade the ground in
+the state, compared with his natural self, of scarecrow, and with the
+dreadful habit of talking to himself quite rageing, was a horrible
+alternative.  Mrs. Baerens at last directed her husband upon the General,
+trembling as though she watched for the operations of a fish torpedo; and
+other ladies shared her excessive anxiousness, for Mr. Baerens had the
+manner and the look of artillery, and on this occasion carried a
+surcharge of powder.
+
+The General bent his ear to Mr. Baerens, whose German-English and
+repeated remark, 'I am to do it wid delicassy,' did not assist his
+comprehension; and when he might have been enlightened, he was petrified
+by seeing Lady Camper walk on the lawn with Elizabeth.  The great lady
+stood a moment beside Mrs. Baerens; she came straight over to him,
+contemplating him in silence.
+
+Then she said, 'Your arm, General Ople,' and she made one circuit of the
+lawn with him, barely speaking.
+
+At her request, he conducted her to her carriage.  He took a seat beside
+her, obediently.  He felt that he was being sketched, and comported
+himself like a child's flat man, that jumps at the pulling of a string.
+
+'Where have you left your girl, General?'
+
+Before he could rally his wits to answer the question, he was asked:
+
+'And what have you done with your necktie and collar?'
+
+He touched his throat.
+
+'I am rather nervous to-day, I forgot Elizabeth,' he said, sending his
+fingers in a dotting run of wonderment round his neck.
+
+Lady Camper smiled with a triumphing humour on her close-drawn lips.
+
+The verified absence of necktie and collar seemed to be choking him.
+
+'Never mind, you have been abroad without them,' said Lady Camper, 'and
+that is a victory for me.  And you thought of Elizabeth first when I drew
+your attention to it, and that is a victory for you.  It is a very great
+victory.  Pray, do not be dismayed, General.  You have a handsome
+campaigning air.  And no apologies, if you please; I like you well enough
+as you are.  There is my hand.'
+
+General Ople understood her last remark.  He pressed the lady's hand in
+silence, very nervously.
+
+'But do not shrug your head into your shoulders as if there were any
+possibility of concealing the thunderingly evident,' said Lady Camper,
+electrifying him, what with her cordial squeeze, her kind eyes, and her
+singular language.  'You have omitted the collar.  Well?  The collar is
+the fatal finishing touch in men's dress; it would make Apollo look
+bourgeois.'
+
+Her hand was in his: and watching the play of her features, a spark
+entered General Ople's brain, causing him, in forgetfulness of collar and
+caricatures, to ejaculate, 'Seventy?  Did your ladyship say seventy?
+Utterly impossible!  You trifle with me.'
+
+'We will talk when we are free of this accompaniment of carriage-wheels,
+General,' said Lady Camper.
+
+'I will beg permission to go and fetch Elizabeth, madam.'
+
+'Rightly thought of.  Fetch her in my carriage.  And, by the way, Mrs.
+Baerens was my old music-mistress, and is, I think, one year older than
+I.  She can tell you on which side of seventy I am.'
+
+'I shall not require to ask, my lady,' he said, sighing.
+
+'Then we will send the carriage for Elizabeth, and have it out together
+at once.  I am impatient; yes, General, impatient: for what?--
+forgiveness.'
+
+'Of me, my lady?'  The General breathed profoundly.
+
+'Of whom else?  Do you know what it is?-I don't think you do.  You
+English have the smallest experience of humanity.  I mean this: to strike
+so hard that, in the end, you soften your heart to the victim.  Well,
+that is my weakness.  And we of our blood put no restraint on the blows
+we strike when we think them wanted, so we are always overdoing it.'
+
+General Ople assisted Lady Camper to alight from the carriage, which was
+forthwith despatched for Elizabeth.
+
+He prepared to listen to her with a disconnected smile of acute
+attentiveness.
+
+She had changed.  She spoke of money.  Ten thousand pounds must be
+settled on his daughter.  'And now,' said she, 'you will remember that
+you are wanting a collar.'
+
+He acquiesced.  He craved permission to retire for ten minutes.
+
+'Simplest of men! what will cover you?' she exclaimed, and peremptorily
+bidding him sit down in the drawing-room, she took one of the famous pair
+of pistols in her hand, and said, 'If I put myself in a similar position,
+and make myself decodletee too, will that satisfy you?  You see these
+murderous weapons.  Well, I am a coward.  I dread fire-arms.  They are
+laid there to impose on the world, and I believe they do.  They have
+imposed on you.  Now, you would never think of pretending to a moral
+quality you do not possess.  But, silly, simple man that you are!  You
+can give yourself the airs of wealth, buy horses to conceal your
+nakedness, and when you are taken upon the standard of your apparent
+income, you would rather seem to be beating a miserly retreat than behave
+frankly and honestly.  I have a little overstated it, but I am near the
+mark.'
+
+'Your ladyship wanting courage!' cried the General.
+
+'Refresh yourself by meditating on it,' said she.  'And to prove it to
+you, I was glad to take this house when I knew I was to have a gallant
+gentleman for a neighbour.  No visitors will be admitted, General Ople,
+so you are bare-throated only to me: sit quietly.  One day you speculated
+on the paint in my cheeks for the space of a minute and a half:--I had
+said that I freckled easily.  Your look signified that you really could
+not detect a single freckle for the paint.  I forgave you, or I did not.
+But when I found you, on closer acquaintance, as indifferent to your
+daughter's happiness as you had been to her reputation .  .  .'
+
+'My daughter!  her reputation!  her happiness !'
+
+General Ople raised his eyes under a wave, half uttering the outcries.
+
+'So indifferent to her reputation, that you allowed a young man to talk
+with her over the wall, and meet her by appointment: so reckless of the
+girl's happiness, that when I tried to bring you to a treaty, on her
+behalf, you could not be dragged from thinking of yourself and your own
+affair.  When I found that, perhaps I was predisposed to give you some of
+what my sisters used to call my spice.  You would not honestly state the
+proportions of your income, and you affected to be faithful to the woman
+of seventy.  Most preposterous!  Could any caricature of mine exceed in
+grotesqueness your sketch of yourself?  You are a brave and a generous
+man all the same: and I suspect it is more hoodwinking than egotism--or
+extreme egotism--that blinds you.  A certain amount you must have to be a
+man.  You did not like my paint, still less did you like my sincerity;
+you were annoyed by my corrections of your habits of speech; you were
+horrified by the age of seventy, and you were credulous--General Ople,
+listen to me, and remember that you have no collar on--you were credulous
+of my statement of my great age, or you chose to be so, or chose to seem
+so, because I had brushed your cat's coat against the fur.  And then,
+full of yourself, not thinking of Elizabeth, but to withdraw in the
+chivalrous attitude of the man true to his word to the old woman, only
+stickling to bring a certain independence to the common stock, because--
+I quote you!  and you have no collar on, mind--"you could not be at your
+wife's mercy," you broke from your proposal on the money question.  Where
+was your consideration for Elizabeth then?
+
+'Well, General, you were fond of thinking of yourself, and I thought I
+would assist you.  I gave you plenty of subject matter.  I will not say
+I meant to work a homoeopathic cure.  But if I drive you to forget your
+collar, is it or is it not a triumph?
+
+'No,' added Lady Camper, 'it is no triumph for me, but it is one for you,
+if you like to make the most of it.  Your fault has been to quit active
+service, General, and love your ease too well.  It is the fault of your
+countrymen.  You must get a militia regiment, or inspectorship of
+militia.  You are ten times the man in exercise.  Why, do you mean to
+tell me that you would have cared for those drawings of mine when
+marching?'
+
+'I think so, I say I think so,' remarked the General seriously.
+
+'I doubt it,' said she.  'But to the point; here comes Elizabeth.  If you
+have not much money to spare for her, according to your prudent
+calculation, reflect how this money has enfeebled you and reduced you to
+the level of the people round about us here--who are, what?  Inhabitants
+of gentlemanly residences, yes!  But what kind of creature?  They have no
+mental standard, no moral aim, no native chivalry.  You were rapidly
+becoming one of them, only, fortunately for you, you were sensitive to
+ridicule.'
+
+'Elizabeth shall have half my money settled on her,' said the General;
+'though I fear it is not much.  And if I can find occupation, my lady...'
+
+'Something worthier than that,' said Lady Camper, pencilling outlines
+rapidly on the margin of a book, and he saw himself lashing a pony; 'or
+that,' and he was plucking at a cabbage; 'or that,' and he was bowing to
+three petticoated posts.
+
+'The likeness is exact,' General Ople groaned.
+
+'So you may suppose I have studied you,' said she.  'But there is no real
+likeness.  Slight exaggerations do more harm to truth than reckless
+violations of it.
+
+You would not have cared one bit for a caricature, if you had not nursed
+the absurd idea of being one of our conquerors.  It is the very tragedy
+of modesty for a man like you to have such notions, my poor dear good
+friend.  The modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at
+vanity.  And reflect whether you have not been intoxicated, for these
+young people have been wretched, and you have not observed it, though one
+of them was living with you, and is the child you love.  There, I have
+done.  Pray show a good face to Elizabeth.'
+
+The General obeyed as well as he could.  He felt very like a sheep that
+has come from a shearing, and when released he wished to run away.  But
+hardly had he escaped before he had a desire for the renewal of the
+operation.  'She sees me through, she sees me through,' he was heard
+saying to himself, and in the end he taught himself, to say it with a
+secret exultation, for as it was on her part an extraordinary piece of
+insight to see him through, it struck him that in acknowledging the truth
+of it, he made a discovery of new powers in human nature.
+
+General Ople studied Lady Camper diligently for fresh proofs of her
+penetration of the mysteries in his bosom; by which means, as it happened
+that she was diligently observing the two betrothed young ones, he began
+to watch them likewise, and took a pleasure in the sight.  Their
+meetings, their partings, their rides out and home furnished him themes
+of converse.  He soon had enough to talk of, and previously, as he
+remembered, he had never sustained a conversation of any length with
+composure and the beneficent sense of fulness.  Five thousand pounds, to
+which sum Lady Camper reduced her stipulation for Elizabeth's dowry, he
+signed over to his dear girl gladly, and came out with the confession to
+her ladyship that a well-invested twelve thousand comprised his fortune.
+She shrugged she had left off pulling him this way and that, so his
+chains were enjoyable, and he said to himself: 'If ever she should in the
+dead of night want a man to defend her!'  He mentioned it to Reginald,
+who had been the repository of Elizabeth's lamentations about her father
+being left alone, forsaken, and the young man conceived a scheme for
+causing his aunt's great bell to be rung at midnight, which would
+certainly have led to a dramatic issue and the happy re-establishment of
+our masculine ascendancy at the close of this history.  But he forgot it
+in his bridegroom's delight, until he was making his miserable official
+speech at the wedding-breakfast, and set Elizabeth winking over a tear.
+As she stood in the hall ready to depart, a great van was observed in the
+road at the gates of Douro Lodge; and this, the men in custody declared
+to contain the goods and knick-knacks of the people who had taken the
+house furnished for a year, and were coming in that very afternoon.
+
+'I remember, I say now I remember, I had a notice,' the General said
+cheerily to his troubled daughter.
+
+'But where are you to go, papa?' the poor girl cried, close on sobbing.
+
+'I shall get employment of some sort,' said he.  'I was saying I want it,
+I need it, I require it.'
+
+'You are saying three times what once would have sufficed for,' said Lady
+Camper, and she asked him a few questions, frowned with a smile, and
+offered him a lodgement in his neighbour's house.
+
+'Really, dearest Aunt Angela?' said Elizabeth.
+
+'What else can I do, child?  I have, it seems, driven him out of a
+gentlemanly residence, and I must give him a ladylike one.  True, I would
+rather have had him at call, but as I have always wished for a policeman
+in the house, I may as well be satisfied with a soldier.'
+
+'But if you lose your character, my lady?' said Reginald.
+
+'Then I must look to the General to restore it.'
+
+General Ople immediately bowed his head over Lady Camper's fingers.
+
+'An odd thing to happen to a woman of forty-one!' she said to her great
+people, and they submitted with the best grace in the world, while the
+General's ears tingled till he felt younger than Reginald.  This, his
+reflections ran, or it would be more correct to say waltzed, this is the
+result of painting!--that you can believe a woman to be any age when her
+cheeks are tinted!
+
+As for Lady Camper, she had been floated accidentally over the ridicule
+of the bruit of a marriage at a time of life as terrible to her as her
+fiction of seventy had been to General Ople; she resigned herself to let
+things go with the tide.  She had not been blissful in her first
+marriage, she had abandoned the chase of an ideal man, and she had found
+one who was tunable so as not to offend her ears, likely ever to be a
+fund of amusement for her humour, good, impressible, and above all, very
+picturesque.  There is the secret of her, and of how it came to pass that
+a simple man and a complex woman fell to union after the strangest
+division.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted
+Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity
+Nature is not of necessity always roaring
+Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers
+Respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower
+She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls
+Spare me that word "female" as long as you live
+The mildness of assured dictatorship
+When we see our veterans tottering to their fall
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Case of General Opel
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF CHLOE
+AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF BEAU BEAMISH
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+              'Fair Chloe, we toasted of old,
+                  As the Queen of our festival meeting;
+               Now Chloe is lifeless and cold;
+                  You must go to the grave for her greeting.
+               Her beauty and talents were framed
+                  To enkindle the proudest to win her;
+               Then let not the mem'ry be blamed
+                  Of the purest that e'er was a sinner!'
+
+                                        Captain Chanter's Collection.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A proper tenderness for the Peerage will continue to pass current the
+illustrious gentleman who was inflamed by Cupid's darts to espouse the
+milkmaid, or dairymaid, under his ballad title of Duke of Dewlap: nor was
+it the smallest of the services rendered him by Beau Beamish, that he
+clapped the name upon her rustic Grace, the young duchess, the very first
+day of her arrival at the Wells.  This happy inspiration of a wit never
+failing at a pinch has rescued one of our princeliest houses from the
+assaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter and
+disfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms; insomuch that the ballad, to which we
+are indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the ducal
+pair, speaks of Dewlap in good faith
+
+               O the ninth Duke of Dewlap I am, Susie dear!
+
+without a hint of a domino title.  So likewise the pictorial historian is
+merry over 'Dewlap alliances' in his description of the society of that
+period.  He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau.
+Writers of pretension would seem to have an animus against individuals of
+the character of Mr. Beamish.  They will treat of the habits and manners
+of highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the people to
+colour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing remark upon
+our domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we may suppose.
+The ballad of 'The Duke and the Dairymaid,' ascribed with questionable
+authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, was
+once popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon an
+order of composition that 'tempted every bouncing country lass to sidle
+an eye in a blowsy cheek' in expectation of a coronet for her pains--and
+a wet ditch as the result!  We may doubt it to have been such an occasion
+of mischief.  But that mischief may have been done by it to a nobility-
+loving people, even to the love of our nobility among the people, must be
+granted; and for the particular reason, that the hero of the ballad
+behaved so handsomely.  We perceive a susceptibility to adulteration in
+their worship at the sight of one of their number, a young maid, suddenly
+snatched up to the gaping heights of Luxury and Fashion through sheer
+good looks.  Remembering that they are accustomed to a totally reverse
+effect from that possession, it is very perceptible how a breach in their
+reverence may come of the change.
+
+Otherwise the ballad is innocent; certainly it is innocent in design.
+A fresher national song of a beautiful incident of our country life has
+never been written.  The sentiments are natural, the imagery is apt and
+redolent of the soil, the music of the verse appeals to the dullest ear.
+It has no smell of the lamp, nothing foreign and far-fetched about it,
+but is just what it pretends to be, the carol of the native bird.  A
+sample will show, for the ballad is much too long to be given entire:
+
+          Sweet Susie she tripped on a shiny May morn,
+          As blithe as the lark from the green-springing corn,
+          When, hard by a stile, 'twas her luck to behold
+          A wonderful gentleman covered with gold!
+
+          There was gold on his breeches and gold on his coat,
+          His shirt-frill was grand as a fifty-pound note;
+          The diamonds glittered all up him so bright,
+          She thought him the Milky Way clothing a Sprite!
+
+          'Fear not, pretty maiden,' he said with a smile;
+          'And, pray, let me help you in crossing the stile.
+          She bobbed him a curtsey so lovely and smart,
+          It shot like an arrow and fixed in his heart.
+
+          As light as a robin she hopped to the stone,
+          But fast was her hand in the gentleman's own;
+          And guess how she stared, nor her senses could trust,
+          When this creamy gentleman knelt in the dust!
+
+With a rhapsody upon her beauty, he informs her of his rank, for
+a flourish to the proposal of honourable and immediate marriage.
+He cannot wait.  This is the fatal condition of his love: apparently
+a characteristic of amorous dukes.  We read them in the signs extended
+to us.  The minds of these august and solitary men have not yet been
+sounded; they are too distant.  Standing upon their lofty pinnacles,
+they are as legible to the rabble below as a line of cuneiform writing
+in a page of old copybook roundhand.  By their deeds we know them, as
+heathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the
+moment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger be
+circled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain.
+Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that
+she is but a poor dairymaid.  He has been a student of women at Courts,
+in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her
+the catalogue of material advantages he has to offer.  Finally, after his
+assurances that she is to be married by the parson, really by the parson,
+and a real parson--
+
+          Sweet Susie is off for her parents' consent,
+          And long must the old folk debate what it meant.
+          She left them the eve of that happy May morn,
+          To shine like the blossom that hangs from the thorn!
+
+Apart from its historical value, the ballad is an example to poets of our
+day, who fly to mythological Greece, or a fanciful and morbid
+mediaevalism, or--save the mark!--abstract ideas, for themes of song, of
+what may be done to make our English life poetically interesting, if they
+would but pluck the treasures presented them by the wayside; and Nature
+being now as then the passport to popularity, they have themselves to
+thank for their little hold on the heart of the people.  A living native
+duke is worth fifty Phoebus Apollos to Englishmen, and a buxom young lass
+of the fields mounting from a pair of pails to the estate of duchess,
+a more romantic object than troops of your visionary Yseults and
+Guineveres.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells,
+and did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish.  Addressing that
+gentleman, to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of his
+visit.
+
+'Sir, and my very good friend,' he said, 'first let me beg you to abate
+the severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of your
+prohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it.  I could
+indeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectually
+cured me.  I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of no
+interval for a man to make his vow to recover!'
+
+'The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend,' Mr. Beamish remarked.
+
+'Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter.
+It is now'--the duke fetched a tender groan--'three years ago that I had
+a caprice to marry a grandchild!'
+
+'Of Adam's,' Mr. Beamish said cheerfully.  'There was no legitimate bar
+to the union.'
+
+'Unhappily none.  Yet you are not to suppose I regret it.  A most
+admirable creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity!  And the better known,
+the more adored.  There is the misfortune.  At my season of life, when
+the greater and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I am
+mortal, the passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though one
+would not be free of it for the renewal of youth.  You are to understand,
+that with a little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the most
+innocent of angels.  Hitherto we have lived .  .  .  To her it has been a
+new world.  But she is beginning to find it a narrow one.  No, no, she is
+not tired of my society.  Very far from that.  But in her present station
+an inclination for such gatherings as you have here, for example, is like
+a desire to take the air: and the healthy habits of my duchess have not
+accustomed her to be immured.  And in fine, devote ourselves as we will,
+a term approaches when the enthusiasm for serving as your wife's
+playfellow all day, running round tables and flying along corridors
+before a knotted handkerchief, is mightily relaxed.  Yet the dread of
+a separation from her has kept me at these pastimes for a considerable
+period beyond my relish of them.  Not that I acknowledge fatigue.  I
+have, it seems, a taste for reflection; I am now much disposed to read
+and meditate, which cannot be done without repose.  I settle myself, and
+I receive a worsted ball in my face, and I am expected to return it.  I
+comply; and then you would say a nursery in arms.  It would else be the
+deplorable spectacle of a beautiful young woman yawning.'
+
+'Earthquake and saltpetre threaten us less terribly,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+'In fine, she has extracted a promise that 'this summer she shall visit
+the Wells for a month, and I fear I cannot break my pledge of my word; I
+fear I cannot.'
+
+'Very certainly I would not,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+The duke heaved a sigh.  'There are reasons, family reasons, why my
+company and protection must be denied to her here.  I have no wish . . .
+indeed my name, for the present, until such time as she shall have found
+her feet .  .  .  and there is ever a penalty to pay for that.  Ah, Mr.
+Beamish, pictures are ours, when we have bought them and hung them up;
+but who insures us possession of a beautiful work of Nature?  I have
+latterly betaken me to reflect much and seriously.  I am tempted to side
+with the Divines in the sermons I have read; the flesh is the habitation
+of a rebellious devil.'
+
+'To whom we object in proportion as we ourselves become quit of him,' Mr.
+Beamish acquiesced.
+
+'But this mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure, is one of
+the wonders.  It does not pall on them; they are insatiate.'
+
+'There is the cataract, and there is the cliff.  Potentate to potentate,
+duke--so long as you are on my territory, be it understood.  Upon my way
+to a place of worship once, I passed a Puritan, who was complaining of a
+butterfly that fluttered prettily abroad in desecration of the Day of
+Rest.  "Friend," said I to him, "conclusively you prove to me that you
+are not a butterfly."  Surly did no more than favour me with the anathema
+of his countenance.'
+
+'Cousin Beamish, my complaint of these young people is, that they miss
+their pleasure in pursuing it.  I have lectured my duchess--'
+
+'Ha!'
+
+'Foolish, I own,' said the duke.  'But suppose, now, you had caught your
+butterfly, and you could neither let it go nor consent to follow its
+vagaries.  That poses you.'
+
+'Young people,' said Mr. Beamish, 'come under my observation in this poor
+realm of mine--young and old.  I find them prodigiously alike in their
+love of pleasure, differing mainly in their capacity to satisfy it.
+That is no uncommon observation.  The young, have an edge which they are
+desirous of blunting; the old contrariwise.  The cry of the young for
+pleasure is actually--I have studied their language--a cry for burdens.
+Curious!  And the old ones cry for having too many on their shoulders:
+which is not astonishing.  Between them they make an agreeable concert
+both to charm the ears and guide the steps of the philosopher, whose
+wisdom it is to avoid their tracks.'
+
+'Good.  But I have asked you for practical advice, and you give me an
+essay.'
+
+'For the reason, duke, that you propose a case that suggests hanging.
+You mention two things impossible to be done.  The alternative is, a
+garter and the bedpost.  When we have come upon crossways, and we can
+decide neither to take the right hand nor the left, neither forward nor
+back, the index of the board which would direct us points to itself, and
+emphatically says, Gallows.'
+
+'Beamish, I am distracted.  If I refuse her the visit, I foresee
+dissensions, tears, games at ball, romps, not one day of rest remaining
+to me.  I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively.  If I allow
+it, so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this must
+suffer some corruption.  You should know that the station I took her from
+was .  .  .  it was modest.  She was absolutely a buttercup of the
+fields.  She has had various masters.  She dances .  .  .  she dances
+prettily, I could say bewitchingly.  And so she is now for airing her
+accomplishments: such are women!'
+
+'Have you heard of Chloe?' said Mr. Beamish.  'There you have an example
+of a young lady uncorrupted by this place--of which I would only remark
+that it is best unvisited, but better tasted than longed for.'
+
+'Chloe?  A lady who squandered her fortune to redeem some ill-requiting
+rascal: I remember to have heard of her.  She is here still?  And ruined,
+of course?'
+
+'In purse.'
+
+'That cannot be without the loss of reputation.'
+
+'Chloe's champion will grant that she is exposed to the evils of
+improvidence.  The more brightly shine her native purity, her goodness
+of heart, her trustfulness.  She is a lady whose exaltation glows in her
+abasement.'
+
+'She has, I see, preserved her comeliness,' observed the duke, with a
+smile.
+
+'Despite the flying of the roses, which had not her heart's patience.
+'Tis now the lily that reigns.  So, then, Chloe shall be attached to the
+duchess during her stay, and unless the devil himself should interfere,
+I guarantee her Grace against any worse harm than experience; and that,'
+Mr. Beamish added, as the duke raised his arms at the fearful word, 'that
+shall be mild.  Play she will; she is sure to play.  Put it down at a
+thousand.  We map her out a course of permissible follies, and she plays
+to lose the thousand by degrees, with as telling an effect upon a
+connubial conscience as we can produce.'
+
+'A thousand,' said the duke, 'will be cheap indeed.  I think now I have
+had a description of this fair Chloe, and from an enthusiast; a brune?
+elegantly mannered and of a good landed family; though she has thought
+proper to conceal her name.  And that will be our difficulty, cousin
+Beamish.'
+
+'She was, under my dominion, Miss Martinsward,' Mr. Beamish pursued.
+'She came here very young, and at once her suitors were legion.  In the
+way of women, she chose the worst among them; and for the fellow Caseldy
+she sacrificed the fortune she had inherited of a maternal uncle.  To
+release him from prison, she paid all his debts; a mountain of bills,
+with the lawyers piled above--Pelion upon Ossa, to quote our poets.  In
+fact, obeying the dictates of a soul steeped in generosity, she committed
+the indiscretion to strip herself, scandalizing propriety.  This was
+immediately on her coming of age; and it was the death-blow to her
+relations with her family.  Since then, honoured even by rakes, she has
+lived impoverished at the Wells.  I dubbed her Chloe, and man or woman
+disrespectful to Chloe packs.  From being the victim of her generous
+disposition, I could not save her; I can protect her from the shafts of
+malice.'
+
+'She has no passion for play?' inquired the duke.
+
+'She nourishes a passion for the man for whom she bled, to the exclusion
+of the other passions.  She lives, and I believe I may say that it is the
+motive of her rising and dressing daily, in expectation of his advent.'
+
+'He may be dead.'
+
+'The dog is alive.  And he has not ceased to be Handsome Caseldy, they
+say.  Between ourselves, duke, there is matter to break her heart.  He
+has been the Count Caseldy of Continental gaming tables, and he is
+recently Sir Martin Caseldy, settled on the estate she made him free to
+take up intact on his father's decease.'
+
+'Pah! a villain!'
+
+'With a blacker brand upon him every morning that he looks forth across
+his property, and leaves her to languish!  She still--I say it to the
+redemption of our sex--has offers.  Her incomparable attractions of mind
+and person exercise the natural empire of beauty.  But she will none of
+them.  I call her the Fair Suicide.  She has died for love; and she is a
+ghost, a good ghost, and a pleasing ghost, but an apparition, a taper.
+
+The duke fidgeted, and expressed a hope to hear that she was not of
+melancholy conversation; and again, that the subject of her discourse
+was not confined to love and lovers, happy or unhappy.  He wished his
+duchess, he said, to be entertained upon gayer topics: love being a theme
+he desired to reserve to himself.  'This month!' he said, prognostically
+shaking and moaning.  'I would this month were over, and that we were
+well purged of it.'
+
+Mr. Beamish reassured him.  The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so
+famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for
+her company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and
+harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like the
+silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool.  He concluded by saying that
+she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous yet not
+a Tartar; the best of companions for her Grace the young duchess.
+Moreover, he boldly engaged to carry the duchess through the term of her
+visit under a name that should be as good as a masquerade for concealing
+his Grace's, while giving her all the honours due to her rank.
+
+'You strictly interpret my wishes,' said the duke; 'all honours, the
+foremost place, and my wrath upon man or woman gainsaying them!'
+
+'Mine! if you please, duke,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+'A thousand pardons!  I leave it to you, cousin.  I could not be in safer
+hands.  I am heartily bounders to you.  Chloe, then.  By the way, she has
+a decent respect for age?'
+
+'She is reverentially inclined.'
+
+'Not that.  She is, I would ask, no wanton prattler of the charms and
+advantages of youth?'
+
+'She has a young adorer that I have dubbed Alonzo, whom she scarce
+notices.'
+
+'Nothing could be better.  Alonzo: h'm!  A faithful swain?'
+
+'Life is his tree, upon which unceasingly he carves his mistress's
+initials.'
+
+'She should not be too cruel.  I recollect myself formerly: I was .  .  .
+Young men will, when long slighted, transfer their affections, and be
+warmer to the second flame than to the first.  I put you on your guard.
+He follows her much?  These lovers' paintings and puffings in the
+neighbourhood of the most innocent of women are contagious.'
+
+'Her Grace will be running home all the sooner.'
+
+'Or off!--may she forgive me!  I am like a King John's Jew, forced to
+lend his treasure without security.  What a world is ours!  Nothing,
+Beamish, nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted!  Catch a
+prize, and you will find you are at war with your species.  You have to
+be on the defensive from that moment.  There is no such thing as
+peaceable procession on earth.  Let it be a beautiful young woman!--Ah!'
+
+Mr. Beamish replied bracingly, 'The champion wrestler challenges all
+comers while he wears the belt.'
+
+The duke dejectedly assented.  'True; or he is challenged, say.  Is there
+any tale we could tell her of this Alonzo?  You could deport him for the
+month, my dear Beamish.'
+
+'I commit no injustice unless with sufficient reason.  It is an estimable
+youth, as shown by his devotion to a peerless woman.  To endow her with
+his name and fortune is his only thought.'
+
+'I perceive; an excellent young fellow!  I have an incipient liking for
+this young Alonzo.  You must not permit my duchess to laugh at him.
+Encourage her rather to advance his suit.  The silliness of a young man
+will be no bad spectacle.  Chloe, then.  You have set my mind at rest,
+Beamish, and it is but another obligation added to the heap; so, if I do
+not speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have me
+bankrupt.'
+
+The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referred
+to the date of her Grace's coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was to
+receive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and comfort;
+the duke perpetually observing, 'But I leave it all to you, Beamish,'
+when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects, even to the
+specification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the apothecary,
+who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite nature of their
+supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with whom she was to make
+her purchases.  For the duke had a recollection of giddy shops, and of
+giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for a day that a certain
+great nobleman came to victory with a jealously guarded dame beautiful as
+Venus.  'I would have challenged the goddess!' he cried, and subsided
+from his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind instrument.  'So there
+you see the prudence of a choice of shops.  But I leave it to you,
+Beamish.'  Similarly the great military commander, having done whatsoever
+a careful prevision may suggest to insure him victory, casts himself upon
+Providence, with the hope of propitiating the unanticipated and darkly
+possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and
+green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to
+meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct her
+in state to the Wells.  Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel with
+regard to her prospective duties.  He was this day the consummate beau,
+suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his external
+grandeur.  'Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere you
+distinguish a chariot,' he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hill
+of long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges,
+and crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on a
+companion height directly facing them, at a remove of about three-
+quarters of a mile.  Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly raised
+his hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry track:
+'It sweats the eye to see!'
+
+Presently Chloe said, 'Now a dust blows.  Something approaches.  Now I
+discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!'
+
+Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded.
+
+Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderly
+notes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead of
+sweetness.
+
+'You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!' said the wincing beau.
+'Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised.  I have had them
+out in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of their
+native cacophony.  But they love it, as they love bacon and beans.  The
+musical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite for
+noise, and for that they are gluttons.'
+
+'It will be pleasant to hear in the distance,' Chloe replied.
+
+'Ay, the extremer the distance, the pleasanter to hear.  Are they
+advancing?'
+
+'They stop.  There is a cavalier at the window.  Now he doffs his hat.'
+
+'Sweepingly?'
+
+Chloe described a semicircle in the grand manner.
+
+The beau's eyebrows rose.  'Powers divine !' he muttered.  'She is let
+loose from hand to hand, and midway comes a cavalier.  We did not count
+on the hawks.  So I have to deal with a cavalier!  It signifies, my dear
+Chloe, that I must incontinently affect the passion if I am to be his
+match: nothing less.'
+
+'He has flown,' said Chloe.
+
+'Whom she encounters after meeting me, I care not,' quoth the beau,
+snapping a finger.  'But there has been an interval for damage with a
+lady innocent as Eve.  Is she advancing?'
+
+'The chariot is trotting down the hill.  He has ridden back.  She has no
+attendant horseman.'
+
+'They were dismissed at my injunction ten miles off particularly to the
+benefit of the cavaliering horde, it would appear.  In the case of a
+woman, Chloe, one blink of the eyelids is an omission of watchfulness.'
+
+'That is an axiom fit for the harem of the Grand Signior.'
+
+'The Grand Signior might give us profitable lessons for dealing with the
+sex.'
+
+'Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war!'
+
+'Trust you, and the stopper is out of the smelling-bottle.'
+
+'Mr. Beamish, we are women, but we have souls.'
+
+'The pip in the apple whose ruddy cheek allures little Tommy to rob the
+orchard is as good a preservative.'
+
+'You admit that men are our enemies?'
+
+'I maintain that they carry the banner of virtue.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Beamish, I shall expire.'
+
+'I forbid it in my lifetime, Chloe, for I wish to die believing in one
+woman.'
+
+'No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters!'
+
+'Then fly to a hermitage; for all flattery is at somebody's expense,
+child.  'Tis an essence-extract of humanity!  To live on it, in the
+fashion of some people, is bad--it is downright cannibal.  But we may
+sprinkle our handkerchiefs with it, and we should, if we would caress our
+noses with an air.  Society, my Chloe, is a recommencement upon an upper
+level of the savage system; we must have our sacrifices.  As, for
+instance, what say you of myself beside our booted bumpkin squires?'
+
+'Hundreds of them, Mr. Beamish !'
+
+'That is a holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though
+you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier
+ribs.  Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues.  Grant us ours
+too.  I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I
+expect my task to be severe.  I carry the banner aforesaid; verily and
+penitentially I do.  It is an error of the vulgar to suppose that all is
+dragon in the dragon's jaws.'
+
+'Men are his fangs and claws.'
+
+'Ay, but the passion for his fiery breath is in woman.  She will take her
+leap and have her jump, will and will!  And at the point where she will
+and she won't, the dragon gulps and down she goes!  However, the business
+is to keep our buttercup duchess from that same point.  Is she near?'
+
+'I can see her,' said Chloe.
+
+Beau Beamish requested a sketch of her, and Chloe began: 'She is
+ravishing.'
+
+Upon which he commented, 'Every woman is ravishing at forty paces, and
+still more so in imagination.'
+
+'Beautiful auburn hair, and a dazzling red and white complexion, set in a
+blue coif.'
+
+'Her eyes?'
+
+'Melting blue.'
+
+''Tis an English witch!' exclaimed the beau, and he compassionately
+invoked her absent lord.
+
+Chloe's optics were no longer tasked to discern the fair lady's
+lineaments, for the chariot windows came flush with those of the beau on
+the broad plateau of the hill.  His coach door was opened.  He sat
+upright, levelling his privileged stare at Duchess Susan until she
+blushed.
+
+'Ay, madam,' quoth he, 'I am not the first.'
+
+'La, sir!' said she; 'who are you?'
+
+The beau deliberately raised his hat and bowed.  'He, madam, of whose
+approach the gentleman who took his leave of you on yonder elevation
+informed you.'
+
+She looked artlessly over her shoulder, and at the beau alighting from
+his carriage.  'A gentleman?'
+
+'On horseback.'
+
+The duchess popped her head through the window on an impulse to measure
+the distance between the two hills.
+
+'Never!' she cried.
+
+'Why, madam, did he deliver no message to announce me?' said the beau,
+ruffling.
+
+'Goodness gracious!  You must be Mr. Beamish,' she replied.
+
+He laid his hat on his bosom, and invited her to quit her carriage for a
+seat beside him.  She stipulated, 'If you are really Mr. Beamish?' He
+frowned, and raised his head to convince her; but she would not be
+impressed, and he applied to Chloe to establish his identity.  Hearing
+Chloe's name, the duchess called out, 'Oh! there, now, that's enough, for
+Chloe's my maid here, and I know she's a lady born, and we're going to be
+friends.  Hand me to Chloe.  And you are Chloe?' she said, after a frank
+stride from step to step of the carriages.  'And don't mind being my
+maid?  You do look a nice, kind creature.  And I see you're a lady born;
+I know in a minute.  You're dark, I'm fair; we shall suit.  And tell me--
+hush!--what dreadful long eyes he has!  I shall ask you presently what
+you think of me.  I was never at the Wells before.  Dear me! the coach
+has turned.  How far off shall we hear the bells to say I'm coming?  I
+know I'm to have bells.  Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish!  I must have a chatter
+with a woman, and I'm in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and men I
+see to talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke's
+palace--though they're old ones, that's true--but a woman who's a lady,
+and kind enough to be my maid, I haven't met yet since I had the right to
+wear a coronet.  There, I'll hold Chloe's hand, and that'll do.  You
+would tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now,
+wouldn't you?  As for talkative, that's a sign with me of my liking
+people.  I really don't know what to say to my duke sometimes.  I sit and
+think it so funny to be having a duke instead of a husband.  You're off!'
+
+The duchess laughed at Chloe's laughter.  Chloe excused herself, but was
+informed by her mistress that it was what she liked.
+
+'For the first two years,' she resumed, 'I could hardly speak a syllable.
+I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing and
+curling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody.  Now I'm quite at
+home, for I've plenty of courage--except about death, and I'm worse about
+death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk's "lawks!" in her
+round eyes and mouth for an egg.  I wonder why that is?  But isn't death
+horrible?  And skeletons!' The duchess shuddered.
+
+'It depends upon the skeleton,' said Beau Beamish, who had joined the
+conversation.  'Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she would
+precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh.  I
+have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the
+interview.'
+
+'Your own skeleton, sir!' said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.
+
+'Unmistakably mine.  I will call you to witness by an account of him.'
+
+Duchess Susan gaped, and, 'Oh, don't!' she cried out; but added, 'It 's
+broad day, and I've got some one to sleep anigh me after dark'; with
+which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for
+alarm.
+
+'I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,'
+said the beau, 'along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that one
+of us should yield the 'pas;' and, I must confess it, we are all so
+amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of
+him.  For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first
+glance repulsive.  I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign,
+with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinary
+splay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which man
+is built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments he is haunted.  I
+had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with certain of our choicest
+Wits and Beauties.  It is a recipe for conjuring apparitions.  Now, then,
+thinks I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and without a salutation I
+pressed forward.  Madam, I give you my word, he behaved to the full pitch
+as I myself should have done under similar circumstances.  Retiring upon
+an inclination of his structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of the
+exact middle nick between dignity and service.  I advance, he withdraws,
+and again the bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending.
+These, thinks I, be royal manners.  I could have taken him for the Sable
+King in person, stripped of his mantle.  On my soul, he put me to the
+blush.'
+
+'And is that all?' asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh.
+
+'Why, madam,' quoth the beau, 'do you not see that he could have been
+none other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand air
+and gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative?  Upon his opening
+my door for me, and accepting the 'pas,' which I now right heartily
+accorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he had
+designedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps I should
+say' and I protest that by such a display of supreme good breeding he
+managed to convey the highest compliment ever received by man, namely the
+assurance, that after the withering away of this mortal garb, I shall
+still be noted for urbanity and elegancy.  Nay, and more, immortally,
+without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the bag of wine.'
+
+Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote.
+
+'Well, it's not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr.
+Beamish;' she said.
+
+He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on the
+hill.
+
+'What can he mean about a gentleman?' she turned to Chloe.  'My duke told
+me you would meet me, sir.  And you are to protect me.  And if anything
+happens, it is to be your fault.'
+
+'Entirely,' said the beau.  'I shall therefore maintain a vigilant
+guard.'
+
+'Except leaving me free.  Oof!  I've been boxed up so long.  I declare,
+Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid of
+spoiling.  I'm a real child, more than I was when my duke married me.
+I seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune.  And
+nobody to tell of it!  Fancy that!  For you can't talk to old gentlemen
+about what's going on in your heart.'
+
+'How of young gentlemen?' she was asked by the beau.
+
+And she replied, 'They find it out.'
+
+'Not if you do not assist them,' said he.
+
+Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked
+at him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head at
+peep on the pastures of the world.  The melting blue eyes and the cherry
+lip made an exceedingly quickening picture.  'Now, I wonder if that is
+true?' she transferred her slyness to speech.
+
+'Beware the middle-aged!' he exclaimed.
+
+She appealed to Chloe.  'And I'm sure they're the nicest.'
+
+Chloe agreed that they were.
+
+The duchess measured Chloe and the beau together, with a mind swift in
+apprehending all that it hungered for.
+
+She would have pursued the pleasing theme had she not been directed to
+gaze below upon the towers and roofs of the Wells, shining sleepily in a
+siesta of afternoon Summer sunlight.
+
+With a spread of her silken robe, she touched the edifice of her hair,
+murmuring to Chloe, 'I can't abide that powder.  You shall see me walk in
+a hoop.  I can.  I've done it to slow music till my duke clapped hands.
+I'm nothing sitting to what I am on my feet.  That's because I haven't
+got fine language yet.  I shall.  It seems to come last.  So, there 's
+the place.  And whereabouts do all the great people meet and prommy--?'
+
+'They promenade where you see the trees, madam,' said Chloe.
+
+'And where is it where the ladies sit and eat jam tarts with whipped
+cream on 'em, while the gentlemen stand and pay compliments?'
+
+Chloe said it was at a shop near the pump room.
+
+Duchess Susan looked out over the house-tops, beyond the dusty hedges.
+
+'Oh, and that powder!' she cried.  'I hate to be out of the fashion and a
+spectacle.  But I do love my own hair, and I have such a lot, and I like
+the colour, and so does my duke.  Only, don't let me be fingered at.  If
+once I begin to blush before people, my courage is gone; my singing
+inside me is choked; and I've a real lark going on in me all day long,
+rain or sunshine--hush, all about love and amusement.'
+
+Chloe smiled, and Duchess Susan said, 'Just like a bird, for I don't know
+what it is.'
+
+She looked for Chloe to say that she did.
+
+At the moment a pair of mounted squires rode up, and the coach stopped,
+while Beau Beamish gave orders for the church bells to be set ringing,
+and the band to meet and precede his equipage at the head of the bath
+avenue: 'in honour of the arrival of her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.'
+
+He delivered these words loudly to his men, and turned an effulgent gaze
+upon the duchess, so that for a minute she was fascinated and did not
+consult her hearing; but presently she fell into an uneasiness; the signs
+increased, she bit her lip, and after breathing short once or twice, 'Was
+it meaning me, Mr. Beamish?' she said.
+
+'You, madam, are the person whom we 'delight to honour,' he replied.
+
+'Duchess of what?' she screwed uneasy features to hear.
+
+'Duchess of Dewlap,' said he.
+
+'It's not my title, sir.'
+
+'It is your title on my territory, madam.'
+
+She made her pretty nose and upper lip ugly with a sneer of 'Dew--!  And
+enter that town before all those people as Duchess of .  .  .  Oh, no, I
+won't; I just won't!  Call back those men now, please; now, if you
+please.  Pray, Mr. Beamish!  You'll offend me, sir.  I'm not going to be
+a mock.  You'll offend my duke, sir.  He'd die rather than have my
+feelings hurt.  Here's all my pleasure spoilt.  I won't and I sha'n't
+enter the town as duchess of that stupid name, so call 'em back, call 'em
+back this instant.  I know who I am and what I am, and I know what's due
+to me, I do.'
+
+Beau Beamish rejoined, 'I too.  Chloe will tell you I am lord here.'
+
+'Then I'll go home, I will.  I won't be laughed at for a great lady
+ninny.  I'm a real lady of high rank, and such I'll appear.  What 's a
+Duchess of Dewlap?  One might as well be Duchess of Cowstail, Duchess of
+Mopsend.  And those people!  But I won't be that.  I won't be played
+with.  I see them staring!  No, I can make up my mind, and I beg you to
+call back your men, or I'll go back home.'  She muttered, 'Be made fun of
+--made a fool of!'
+
+'Your Grace's chariot is behind,' said the beau.
+
+His despotic coolness provoked her to an outcry and weeping: she
+repeated, 'Dewlap!  Dewlap!' in sobs; she shook her shoulders and hid her
+face.
+
+'You are proud of your title, are you, madam?' said he.
+
+'I am.' She came out of her hands to answer him proudly.  'That I am!'
+she meant for a stronger affirmation.
+
+'Then mark me,' he said impressively; 'I am your duke's friend, and you
+are under my charge here.  I am your guardian and you are my ward, and
+you can enter the town only on the condition of obedience to me.  Now,
+mark me, madam; no one can rob you of your real name and title saving
+yourself.  But you are entering a place where you will encounter a
+thousand temptations to tarnish, and haply forfeit it.  Be warned do
+nothing that will.'
+
+'Then I'm to have my own title?' said she, clearing up.
+
+'For the month of your visit you are Duchess of Dewlap.'
+
+'I say I sha'n't!'
+
+'You shall.'
+
+'Never, sir!'
+
+'I command it.'
+
+She flung herself forward, with a wail, upon Chloe's bosom.  'Can't you
+do something for me?' she whimpered.
+
+'It is impossible to move Mr. Beamish,' Chloe said.
+
+Out of a pause, composed of sobs and sighs, the duchess let loose in a
+broken voice: 'Then I 'm sure I think--I think I'd rather have met--have
+met his skeleton!'
+
+Her sincerity was equal to wit.
+
+Beau Beamish shouted.  He cordially applauded her, and in the genuine
+kindness of an admiration that surprised him, he permitted himself the
+liberty of taking and saluting her fingers.  She fancied there was
+another chance for her, but he frowned at the mention of it.
+
+Upon these proceedings the exhilarating sound of the band was heard;
+simultaneously a festival peal of bells burst forth; and an admonishment
+of the necessity for concealing her chagrin and exhibiting both station
+and a countenance to the people, combined with the excitement of the
+new scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense of
+disappointment from Duchess Susan's mind; so she very soon held herself
+erect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the blue
+lake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a level
+sun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was an axiom with Mr. Beamish, our first, if not our only
+philosophical beau and a gentleman of some thoughtfulness, that the
+social English require tyrannical government as much as the political are
+able to dispense with it: and this he explained by an exposition of the
+character of a race possessed of the eminent virtue of individual self-
+assertion, which causes them to insist on good elbowroom wherever they
+gather together.  Society, however, not being tolerable where the
+smoothness of intercourse is disturbed by a perpetual punching of sides,
+the merits of the free citizen in them become their demerits when a
+fraternal circle is established, and they who have shown an example of
+civilization too notable in one sphere to call for eulogy, are often to
+be seen elbowing on the ragged edge of barbarism in the other.  They must
+therefore be reduced to accept laws not of their own making, and of an
+extreme rigidity.
+
+Here too is a further peril; for the gallant spirits distinguishing them
+in the state of independence may (he foresaw the melancholy experience of
+a later age) abandon them utterly in subjection, and the glorious
+boisterousness befitting the village green forsake them even in their
+haunts of liberal association, should they once be thoroughly tamed by
+authority.  Our 'merrie England' will then be long-faced England, an
+England of fallen chaps, like a boar's head, bearing for speech a lemon
+in the mouth: good to feast on, mayhap; not with!
+
+Mr. Beamish would actually seem to have foreseen the danger of a
+transition that he could watch over only in his time; and, as he said,
+'I go, as I came, on a flash'; he had neither ancestry nor descendants:
+he was a genius, he knew himself a solitary, therefore, in spite of his
+efforts to create his like.  Within his district he did effect something,
+enough to give him fame as one of the princely fathers of our domestic
+civilization, though we now appear to have lost by it more than formerly
+we gained.  The chasing of the natural is ever fraught with dubious
+hazards.  If it gallops back, according to the proverb, it will do so at
+the charge: commonly it gallops off, quite off; and then for any kind of
+animation our precarious dependence is upon brains: we have to live on
+our wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land, and cannot be
+remitted in entail.
+
+Rightly or wrongly (there are differences of opinion about it) Mr.
+Beamish repressed the chthonic natural with a rod of iron beneath his
+rule.  The hoyden and the bumpkin had no peace until they had given
+public imitations of the lady and the gentleman; nor were the lady and
+the gentleman privileged to be what he called 'free flags.'  He could be
+charitable to the passion, but he bellowed the very word itself (hauled
+up smoking from the brimstone lake) against them that pretended to be
+shamelessly guilty of the peccadilloes of gallantry.  His famous accost
+of a lady threatening to sink, and already performing like a vessel in
+that situation: 'So, madam, I hear you are preparing to enrol yourself in
+the very ancient order?' .  .  .  (he named it) was a piece of insolence
+that involved him in some discord with the lady's husband and 'the rascal
+steward,' as he chose to term the third party in these affairs: yet it is
+reputed to have saved the lady.
+
+Furthermore, he attacked the vulgarity of persons of quality, and he has
+told a fashionable dame who was indulging herself in a marked sneer of
+disdain, not improving to her features, 'that he would be pleased to have
+her assurance it was her face she presented to mankind': a thing--thanks
+perhaps to him chiefly--no longer possible of utterance.  One of the sex
+asking him why he addressed his persecutions particularly to women:
+'Because I fight your battles,' says he, 'and I find you in the ranks of
+the enemy.' He treated them as traitors.
+
+He was nevertheless well supported by a sex that compensates for dislike
+of its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him when
+it has touched the period.  A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors
+of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the
+insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and
+bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles,
+and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was
+beneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire and his
+brood, but at the cost of their animal spirits and their gift of speech;
+viz.  by making petrifactions of them.  In the surgical operation of
+tracheotomy, a successful treatment of the patient hangs, we believe, on
+the promptness and skill of the introduction of the artificial windpipe;
+and it may be that our unhappy countrymen when cut off from the source of
+their breath were not neatly handled; or else that there is a physical
+opposition in them to anything artificial, and it must be nature or
+nothing.  The dispute shall be left where it stands.
+
+Now, to venture upon parading a beautiful young Duchess of Dewlap, with
+an odour of the shepherdess about her notwithstanding her acquired art of
+stepping conformably in a hoop, and to demand full homage of respect for
+a lady bearing such a title, who had the intoxicating attractions of the
+ruddy orchard apple on the tree next the roadside wall, when the owner is
+absent, was bold in Mr. Beamish, passing temerity; nor would even he have
+attempted it had he not been assured of the support of his phalanx of
+great ladies.  They indeed, after being taken into the secret, had
+stipulated that first they must have an inspection of the transformed
+dairymaid; and the review was not unfavourable.  Duchess Susan came out
+of it more scatheless than her duke.  She was tongue-tied, and her
+tutored walking and really admirable stature helped her to appease, the
+critics of her sex; by whom her too readily blushful innocence was
+praised, with a reserve, expressed in the remark, that she was a
+monstrous fine toy for a duke's second childhood, and should never have
+been let fly from his nursery.  Her milliner was approved.  The duke was
+a notorious connoisseur of female charms, and would see, of course, to
+the decorous adornment of her person by the best of modistes.  Her
+smiling was pretty, her eyes were soft; she might turn out good, if well
+guarded for a time; but these merits of the woman are not those of the
+great lady, and her title was too strong a beam on her character to give
+it a fair chance with her critics.  They one and all recommended powder
+for her hair and cheeks.  That odour of the shepherdess could be
+exorcised by no other means, they declared.  Her blushing was indecent.
+
+Truly the critics of the foeman sex behaved in a way to cause the blushes
+to swarm rosy as the troops of young Loves round Cytherea in her sea-
+birth, when, some soaring, and sinking some, they flutter like her
+loosened zone, and breast the air thick as flower petals on the summer's
+breath, weaving her net for the world.  Duchess Susan might protest her
+inability to keep her blushes down; that the wrong was done by the
+insolent eyes, and not by her artless cheeks.  Ay, but nature, if we are
+to tame these men, must be swathed and concealed, partly stifled,
+absolutely stifled upon occasion.  The natural woman does not move a foot
+without striking earth to conjure up the horrid apparition of the natural
+man, who is not as she, but a cannibal savage.  To be the light which
+leads, it is her business to don the misty vesture of an idea, that she
+may dwell as an idea in men's minds, very dim, very powerful, but
+abstruse, unseizable.  Much wisdom was imparted to her on the subject,
+and she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the remainder, willing
+to show entire docility as far as her intelligence consented to be awake.
+She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly tinged innocence of the
+amorousness of themselves when beautiful young women who have not been
+caught for schooling in infancy deem it a defilement to be made to
+appear other than the blessed nature has made them, which has made them
+beautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be worshipped.  The lectures
+of the great ladies and Chloe's counsels failed to persuade her to use
+the powder puff-ball.  Perhaps too, as timidity quitted her, she enjoyed
+her distinctiveness in their midst.
+
+But the distinctiveness of a Duchess of Dewlap with the hair and cheeks
+of our native fields, was fraught with troubles outrunning Mr. Beamish's
+calculations.  He had perceived that she would be attractive; he had not
+reckoned on the homogeneousness of her particular English charms.  A
+beauty in red, white, and blue is our goddess Venus with the apple of
+Paris in her hand; and after two visits to the Pump Room, and one
+promenade in the walks about the Assembly House, she had as completely
+divided the ordinary guests of the Wells into male and female in opinion
+as her mother Nature had done in it sex.  And the men would not be
+silenced; they had gazed on their divinest, and it was for the women
+to succumb to that unwholesome state, so full of thunder.  Knights and
+squires, military and rural, threw up their allegiance right and left
+to devote themselves to this robust new vision, and in their peculiar
+manner, with a general View-halloo, and Yoicks, Tally-ho, and away we go,
+pelt ahead!  Unexampled as it is in England for Beauty to kindle the
+ardours of the scent of the fox, Duchess Susan did more--she turned all
+her followers into hounds; they were madmen: within a very few days of
+her entrance bets raged about her, and there were brawls, jolly flings at
+her character in the form of lusty encomium, givings of the lie, and upon
+one occasion a knock-down blow in public, as though the place had never
+known the polishing touch of Mr. Beamish.
+
+He was thrown into great perplexity by that blow.  Discountenancing the
+duel as much as he could, an affair of the sword was nevertheless more
+tolerable than the brutal fist: and of all men to be guilty of it, who
+would have anticipated the young Alonzo, Chloe's quiet, modest lover!
+He it was.  The case came before Mr. Beamish for his decision; he had
+to pronounce an impartial judgement, and for some time, during the
+examination of evidence, he suffered, as he assures us in his Memoirs, a
+royal agony.  To have to strike with the glaive of Justice them whom they
+most esteem, is the greatest affliction known to kings.  He would have
+done it: he deserved to reign.  Happily the evidence against the
+gentleman who was tumbled, Mr. Ralph Shepster, excused Mr. Augustus
+Camwell, otherwise Alonzo, for dealing with him promptly to shut his
+mouth.
+
+This Shepster, a raw young squire, 'reeking,' Beau Beamish writes of him,
+'one half of the soil, and t' other half of the town,' had involved Chloe
+in his familiar remarks upon the Duchess of Dewlap; and the personal
+respect entertained by Mr. Beamish for Chloe so strongly approved
+Alonzo's championship of her, that in giving judgement he laid stress on
+young Alonzo's passion for Chloe, to prove at once the disinterestedness
+of the assailant, and the judicial nature of the sentence: which was,
+that Mr. Ralph Shepster should undergo banishment, and had the right to
+demand reparation.  The latter part of this decree assisted in effecting
+the execution of the former.  Shepster declined cold steel, calling it
+murder, and was effusive of nature's logic on the subject
+
+'Because a man comes and knocks me down, I'm to go up to him and ask him
+to run me through!'
+
+His shake of the head signified that he was not such a noodle.  Voluble
+and prolific of illustration, as is no one so much as a son of nature
+inspired to speak her words of wisdom, he defied the mandate, and refused
+himself satisfaction, until in the strangest manner possible flights of
+white feathers beset him, and he became a mark for persecution too trying
+for the friendship of his friends.  He fled, repeating his tale, that he
+had seen 'Beamish's Duchess,' and Chloe attending her, at an assignation
+in the South Grove, where a gentleman, unknown to the Wells, presented
+himself to the adventurous ladies, and they walked together--a tale
+ending with nods.
+
+Shepster's banishment was one of those victories of justice upon which
+mankind might be congratulated if they left no commotion behind.  But,
+as when a boy has been horsed before his comrades, dread may visit them,
+yet is there likewise devilry in the school; and everywhere over earth
+a summary punishment that does not sweep the place clear is likely to
+infect whom it leaves remaining.  The great law-givers, Lycurgus, Draco,
+Solon, Beamish, sorrowfully acknowledge that they have had recourse to
+infernal agents, after they have thus purified their circle of an
+offender.  Doctors confess to the same of their physic.  The expelling
+agency has next to be expelled, and it is a subtle poison, affecting our
+spirits.  Duchess Susan had now the incense of a victim to heighten her
+charms; like the treasure-laden Spanish galleon for whom, on her voyage
+home from South American waters, our enterprising light-craft privateers
+lay in wait, she had the double attraction of being desirable and an
+enemy.  To watch above her conscientiously was a harassing business.
+
+Mr. Beamish sent for Chloe, and she came to him at once.  Her look was
+curious; he studied it while they conversed.  So looks one who is
+watching the sure flight of an arrow, or the happy combinations of an
+intrigue.  Saying, 'I am no inquisitor, child,' he ventured upon two or
+three modest inquisitions with regard to her mistress.  The title he had
+disguised Duchess Susan in, he confessed to rueing as the principal cause
+of the agitation of his principality.  'She is courted,' he said, 'less
+like a citadel waving a flag than a hostelry where the demand is for
+sitting room and a tankard!  These be our manners.  Yet, I must own, a
+Duchess of Dewlap is a provocation, and my exclusive desire to protect
+the name of my lord stands corrected by the perils environing his lady.
+She is other than I supposed her; she is, we will hope, an excellent good
+creature, but too attractive for most and drawbridge and the customary
+defences to be neglected.
+
+Chloe met his interrogatory with a ready report of the young duchess's
+innocence and good nature that pacified Mr. Beamish.
+
+'And you?' said he.
+
+She smiled for answer.
+
+That smile was not the common smile; it was one of an eager exultingness,
+producing as he gazed the twitch of an inquisitive reflection of it on
+his lips.  Such a smile bids us guess and quickens us to guess, warns us
+we burn and speeds our burning, and so, like an angel wafting us to some
+heaven-feasting promontory, lifts us out of ourselves to see in the
+universe of colour what the mouth has but pallid speech to tell.  That is
+the very heart's language; the years are in a look, as mount and vale of
+the dark land spring up in lightning.
+
+He checked himself: he scarce dared to say it.
+
+She nodded.
+
+'You have seen the man, Chloe?'
+
+Her smiling broke up in the hard lines of an ecstasy neighbouring pain.
+'He has come; he is here; he is faithful; he has not forgotten me.  I was
+right.  I knew!  I knew!'
+
+'Caseldy has come?'
+
+'He has come.  Do not ask.  To have him!  to see him!  Mr. Beamish, he is
+here.'
+
+'At last!'
+
+'Cruel!'
+
+'Well, Caseldy has come, then!  But now, friend Chloe, you should be made
+aware that the man--'
+
+She stopped her ears.  As she did so, Mr. Beamish observed a thick silken
+skein dangling from one hand.  Part of it was plaited, and at the upper
+end there was a knot.  It resembled the commencement of her manufactory
+of a whip: she swayed it to and fro, allowing him to catch and lift the
+threads on his fingers for the purpose of examining her work.  There was
+no special compliment to pay, so he dropped it without remark.
+
+Their faces had expressed her wish to hear nothing from him of Caseldy
+and his submission to say nothing.  Her happiness was too big; she
+appeared to beg to lie down with it on her bosom, in the manner of an
+outworn, young mother who has now first received her infant in her arms
+from the nurse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Humouring Chloe with his usual considerateness, Mr. Beamish forbore to
+cast a shadow on her new-born joy, and even within himself to doubt the
+security of its foundation.  Caseldy's return to the Wells was at least
+some assurance of his constancy, seeing that here they appointed to meet
+when he and Chloe last parted.  All might be well, though it was
+unexplained why he had not presented himself earlier.  To the lightest
+inquiry Chloe's reply was a shiver of happiness.
+
+Moreover, Mr. Beamish calculated that Caseldy would be a serviceable ally
+in commanding a proper respect for her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.  So
+he betook himself cheerfully to Caseldy's lodgings to deliver a message
+of welcome, meeting, on his way thither, Mr. Augustus Camwell, with whom
+he had a short conversation, greatly to his admiration of the enamoured
+young gentleman's goodness and self-compression in speaking of Caseldy
+and Chloe's better fortune.  Mr. Camwell seemed hurried.
+
+Caseldy was not at home, and Mr. Beamish proceeded to the lodgings of the
+duchess.  Chloe had found her absent.  The two consulted.  Mr. Beamish
+put on a serious air, until Chloe mentioned the pastrycook's shop, for
+Duchess Susan had a sweet tooth; she loved a visit to the pastrycook's,
+whose jam tarts were dearer to her than his more famous hot mutton pies.
+The pastry cook informed Mr. Beamish that her Grace had been in his shop,
+earlier than usual, as it happened, and accompanied by a foreign-looking
+gentleman wearing moustachois.  Her Grace, the pastrycook said, had
+partaken of several tarts, in common with the gentleman, who complimented
+him upon his excelling the Continental confectioner.  Mr. Beamish glanced
+at Chloe.  He pursued his researches down at the Pump Room, while she
+looked round the ladies' coffee house.  Encountering again, they walked
+back to the duchess's lodgings, where a band stood playing in the road,
+by order of her Grace; but the duchess was away, and had not been seen
+since her morning's departure.
+
+'What sort of character would you give mistress Susan of Dewlap, from
+your personal acquaintance with it?' said Mr. Beamish to Chloe, as they
+stepped from the door.
+
+Chloe mused and said, 'I would add "good" to the unkindest comparison you
+could find for her.'
+
+'But accepting the comparison!' Mr. Beamish nodded, and revolved upon the
+circumstance of their being very much in nature's hands with Duchess
+Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all the
+more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season.  He allied
+Chloe's adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to nature
+and to women, according to current ideas, concluding: 'Count, they call
+your Caseldy at his lodgings.  "The Count he is out for an airing."  He
+is counted out.  Ah! you will make him drop that "Count" when he takes
+you from here.'
+
+'Do not speak of the time beyond the month,' said Chloe, so urgently on a
+rapid breath as to cause Mr. Beamish to cast an inquiring look at her.
+
+She answered it, 'Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask
+for?'
+
+The beau clapped his elbows complacently to his sides in philosophical
+concord with her sentiment.
+
+In the afternoon, on the parade, they were joined by Mr. Camwell, among
+groups of fashionable ladies and their escorts, pacing serenely, by
+medical prescription, for an appetite.  As he did not comment on the
+absence of the duchess, Mr. Beamish alluded to it; whereupon he was
+informed that she was about the meadows, and had been there for some
+hours.
+
+'Not unguarded,' he replied to Mr. Beamish.
+
+'Aha!' quoth the latter; 'we have an Argus!' and as the duchess was not
+on the heights, and the sun's rays were mild in cloud, he agreed to his
+young friend's proposal that they should advance to meet her.  Chloe
+walked with them, but her face was disdainful; at the stiles she gave her
+hand to Mr. Beamish; she did not address a word to Mr. Camwell, and he
+knew the reason.  Nevertheless he maintained his air of soldierly
+resignation to the performance of duty, and held his head like a
+gentleman unable to conceive the ignominy of having played spy.
+Chloe shrank from him.
+
+Duchess Susan was distinguished coming across a broad uncut meadow,
+tirra-lirraing beneath a lark, Caseldy in attendance on her.  She stopped
+short and spoke to him; then came forward, crying ingenuously.  'Oh, Mr.
+Beamish, isn't this just what you wanted me to do?'
+
+'No, madam,' said he, 'you had my injunctions to the contrary.'
+
+'La!' she exclaimed, 'I thought I was to run about in the fields now and
+then to preserve my simplicity.  I know I was told so, and who told me!'
+
+Mr. Beamish bowed effusively to the introduction of Caseldy, whose
+fingers he touched in sign of the renewal of acquaintance, and with a
+laugh addressed the duchess:
+
+'Madam, you remind me of a tale of my infancy.  I had a juvenile comrade
+of the tenderest age, by name Tommy Plumston, and he enjoyed the
+privilege of intimacy with a component urchin yclept Jimmy Clungeon, with
+which adventurous roamer, in defiance of his mother's interdict against
+his leaving the house for a minute during her absence from home, he
+departed on a tour of the district, resulting, perhaps as a consequence
+of its completeness, in this, that at a distance computed at four miles
+from the maternal mansion, he perceived his beloved mama with sufficient
+clearness to feel sure that she likewise had seen him.  Tommy consulted
+with Jimmy, and then he sprang forward on a run to his frowning mama, and
+delivered himself in these artless words, which I repeat as they were
+uttered, to give you the flavour of the innocent babe: he said, "I frink
+I frought I hear you call me, ma! and Jimmy Clungeon, he frought he frink
+so too!"  So, you see, the pair of them were under the impression that
+they were doing right.  There is a delicate distinction in the tenses of
+each frinking where the other frought, enough in itself to stamp
+sincerity upon the statement.'
+
+Caseldy said, 'The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeon
+is beyond contest.'
+
+Duchess Susan opened her eyes.  'Four miles from home!  And what did his
+mother do to him?'
+
+'Tommy's mama,' said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of the
+period which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under the
+compromise of decorous 'Oh-fie!' flatly declared the thing she did.
+
+'I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonder
+about an hour or so earlier,' said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell.
+
+'If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, your
+surmise is correct,' said the young gentleman.
+
+'You are long-sighted, sir!'
+
+'I am, sir.'
+
+'And so am I.'
+
+'And I,' said Chloe.
+
+'Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it,'
+observed Mr. Beamish.
+
+'One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it passes, and if
+one is right it is a miracle,' she said, and raised her voice on a song
+to quit the subject.
+
+'Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we had
+the pleasure of meeting the duchess, had you?' Mr. Beamish persisted.
+
+Duchess Susan interposed.  'Such a pretty song! and you to stop her,
+sir!'
+
+Caseldy took up the air.
+
+'Oh, you two together!' she cried.  'I do love hearing music in the
+fields; it is heavenly.  Bands in the town and voices in the green
+fields, I say!  Couldn't you join Chloe, Mr ....  Count, sir, before we
+come among the people, here where it 's all so nice and still.  Music!
+and my heart does begin so to pit-a-pat.  Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?'
+
+'Poorly,' the young gentleman replied.
+
+'But the Count can sing, and Chloe's a real angel when she sings; and
+won't you, dear?' she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a prelude
+with a bow and a flourish of the hand.
+
+Chloe's voice flew forth.  Caseldy's rich masculine matched it.  The song
+was gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singing
+big-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickest
+susceptibility to his fair companion's cunning modulations, and an eye
+for Duchess Susan's rapture.
+
+Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them.
+
+'I never can tell what to say when I'm brimming'; the duchess let fall a
+sigh.  'And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish.  He promised me he would
+go into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening
+delicious concerts, and that will be nice--Oh!'
+
+'He promised you, madam, did he so?' said the beau.  'Was it on your way
+to the Wells that he promised you?'
+
+'On my way to the Wells!' she exclaimed softly.  'Why, how could anybody
+promise me a thing before ever he saw me?  I call that a strange thing to
+ask a person.  No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hear
+him sing, he said.  He does admire his Chloe so.  Why, no wonder, is it,
+now?  She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk!  She's
+never uneasy for a word.  She makes whole scenes of things go round you,
+like a picture peep-show, I tell her.  And always cheerful.  She hasn't a
+minute of grumps; and I'm sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for
+pigs.
+
+With your late hours here, I'm sure I want tickling in the morning, and
+Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, "There's my bird!"'
+
+Mr. Beamish added, 'And you will remember she has a heart.'
+
+'I should think so!' said the duchess.
+
+'A heart, madam!'
+
+'Why, what else?'
+
+Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.
+
+He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on
+her remarking, 'You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.'
+
+He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to
+Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone.  However, he did not expect
+a woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with the
+circumstances.  Speaking tentatively of Caseldy's handsome face and
+figure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, 'So I tell Chloe.'
+
+'Well,' said he, 'we must consider them united; they are one.'
+
+Duchess Susan replied, 'That's what I tell him; she will do anything you
+wish.'
+
+He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mind
+that they were merely silly.  She was a real shepherdess by birth and
+nature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of her
+simplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it at
+the first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence of
+her artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute, and
+that cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at Duchess Susan's coach
+window perturbed him at whiles.  Habitually to be anticipating the
+simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes the
+dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstract
+wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, if
+we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessed
+fancy of their artlessness.
+
+'You talk of Chloe to him?' he said.
+
+She answered.  'Yes, that I do.  And he does love her!  I like to hear
+him.  He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them.'
+
+She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving the
+sex from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not feel
+timid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, he
+relinquished his place to Mr. Camwell, and proceeded to administer the
+probe to Caseldy.
+
+That gentleman was communicatively candid.  Chloe had left him, and he
+related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute
+threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting the
+Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of play--
+he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he deemed
+it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished first
+to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him.  For some
+similar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her surprise.
+'And I had my reward,' he said, as if he had been the person principally
+to suffer through that abstinence.  'I found--I may say it to you, Mr.
+Beamish love in her eyes.  Divine by nature, she is one of the immortals,
+both in appearance and in steadfastness.'
+
+They referred to Duchess Susan.  Caseldy reluctantly owned that it would
+be an unkindness to remove Chloe from attendance on her during the short
+remaining term of her stay at the Wells; and so he had not proposed it,
+he said, for the duchess was a child, an innocent, not stupid by any
+means; but, of course, her transplanting from an inferior to an exalted
+position put her under disadvantages.
+
+Mr. Beamish spoke of the difficulties of his post as guardian, and also
+of the strange cavalier seen at her carriage window by Chloe.
+
+Caseldy smiled and said, 'If there was one--and Chloe is rather long--
+sighted--we can hardly expect her to confess it.'
+
+'Why not, sir, if she be this piece of innocence?' Mr. Beamish was led to
+inquire.
+
+'She fears you, sir,' Caseldy answered.  'You have inspired her with an
+extraordinary fear of you.'
+
+'I have?' said the beau: it had been his endeavour to inspire it, and he
+swelled somewhat, rather with relief at the thought of his possessing a
+power to control his delicate charge, than with our vanity; yet would it
+be audacious to say that there was not a dose of the latter.  He was a
+very human man; and he had, as we have seen, his ideas of the effect of
+the impression of fear upon the hearts of women.  Something, in any case,
+caused him to forget the cavalier.
+
+They were drawn to the three preceding them, by a lively dissension
+between Chloe and Mr. Camwell.
+
+Duchess Susan explained it in her blunt style: 'She wants him to go away
+home, and he says he will, if she'll give him that double skein of silk
+she swings about, and she says she won't, let him ask as long as he
+pleases; so he says he sha'n't go, and I'm sure I don't see why he
+should; and she says he may stay, but he sha'n't have her necklace, she
+calls it.  So Mr. Camwell snatches, and Chloe fires up.  Gracious, can't
+she frown!--at him.  She never frowns at anybody but him.'
+
+Caseldy attempted persuasion on Mr. Camwell's behalf.  With his mouth at
+Chloe's ear, he said, 'Give it; let the poor fellow have his memento;
+despatch him with it.'
+
+'I can hear! and that is really kind,' exclaimed Duchess Susan.
+
+'Rather a missy-missy schoolgirl sort of necklace,' Mr. Beamish observed;
+'but he might have it, without the dismissal, for I cannot consent to
+lose Alonzo.  No, madam,' he nodded at the duchess.
+
+Caseldy continued his whisper: 'You can't think of wearing a thing like
+that about your neck?'
+
+'Indeed,' said Chloe, 'I think of it.'
+
+'Why, what fashion have you over here?'
+
+'It is not yet a fashion,' she said.
+
+'A silken circlet will not well become any precious pendant that I know
+of.'
+
+'A bag of dust is not a very precious pendant,' she said.
+
+'Oh, a memento mori!' cried he.
+
+And she answered, 'Yes.'
+
+He rallied her for her superstition, pursuing, 'Surely, my love, 'tis a
+cheap riddance of a pestilent, intrusive jaloux.  Whip it into his hands
+for a mittimus.'
+
+'Does his presence distress you?' she asked.
+
+'I will own that to be always having the fellow dogging us, with his
+dejected leer, is not agreeable.  He watches us now, because my lips are
+close by your cheek.  He should be absent; he is one too many.  Speed him
+on his voyage with the souvenir he asks for.'
+
+'I keep it for a journey of my own, which I may have to take,' said
+Chloe.
+
+'With me?'
+
+'You will follow; you cannot help following me, Caseldy.'
+
+He speculated on her front.  She was tenderly smiling.  'You are happy,
+Chloe?'
+
+'I have never known such happiness,' she said.  The brilliancy of her
+eyes confirmed it.
+
+He glanced over at Duchess Susan, who was like a sunflower in the sun.
+His glance lingered a moment.  Her abundant and glowing young charms were
+the richest fascination an eye like his could dwell on.  'That is right,'
+said he.  'We will be perfectly happy till the month ends.  And after it?
+But get us rid of Monsieur le Jeune; toss him that trifle; I spare him
+that.  'Twill be bliss to him, at the cost of a bit of silk thread to us.
+Besides, if we keep him to cure him of his passion here, might it not be
+--these boys veer suddenly, like the winds of Albion, from one fair
+object to t' other--at the cost of the precious and simple lady you are
+guarding?  I merely hint.  These two affect one another, as though it
+could be.  She speaks of him.  It shall be as you please, but a trifle
+like that, my Chloe, to be rid of a green eye!'
+
+'You much wish him gone?' she said.
+
+He shrugged.  'The fellow is in our way.'
+
+'You think him a little perilous for my innocent lady?'
+
+'Candidly, I do.'
+
+She stretched the half-plaited silken rope in her two hands to try the
+strength of it, made a second knot, and consigned it to her pocket.
+
+At once she wore her liveliest playfellow air, in which character no one
+was so enchanting as Chloe could be, for she became the comrade of men
+without forfeit of her station among sage sweet ladies, and was like a
+well-mannered sparkling boy, to whom his admiring seniors have given the
+lead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft
+hues of her sex toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her sex's deputy, to
+tell the coarser where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrent
+separating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired and
+untempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn to
+animate their hearts.
+
+'Lucky the man who wins for himself that life-long cordial!' Mr. Beamish
+said to Duchess Susan.
+
+She had small comprehension of metaphorical phrases, but she was quick at
+reading faces; and comparing the enthusiasm on the face of the beau with
+Caseldy's look of troubled wonderment and regret, she pitied the lover
+conscious of not having the larger share of his mistress's affections.
+When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman could have
+cried for very compassion, so sensible did he show himself of Chloe's
+preference of the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+That evening Duchess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eight
+hundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty.  After
+encouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her.  He
+was conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires of
+the Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present
+their condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures,
+intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the
+Continent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of her
+Christian name, not forgetting her singular title, 'my lovely, lovely
+Dewlap!'
+
+She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transfer
+of money, and she said, 'I 'm sure I don't know what you want.'
+
+'Yes!' cried they, striking their bosoms as guitars, and attempting the
+posture of the thrummer on the instrument; 'she knows.  She does know.
+Handsome Susie knows what we want.' And one ejaculated, mellifluously,
+'Oh!' and the other 'Ah!' in flagrant derision of the foreign ways they
+produced in boorish burlesque--a self-consolatory and a common trick of
+the boor.
+
+Caseldy was behind.  He pushed forward and bowed to them.  'Sirs, will
+you mention to me what you want?'
+
+He said it with a look that meant steel.  It cooled them sufficiently to
+let him place the duchess under the protectorship of Mr. Beamish, then
+entering from another room with Chloe; whereupon the pair of rustic bucks
+retired to reinvigorate their valiant blood.
+
+Mr. Beamish had seen that there was cause for gratitude to Caseldy, to
+whom he said, 'She has lost?' and he seemed satisfied on hearing the
+amount of the loss, and commissioned Caseldy to escort the ladies to
+their lodgings at once, observing, 'Adieu, Count!'
+
+'You will find my foreign title of use to you here, after a bout or two,'
+was the reply.
+
+'No bouts, if possibly to be avoided; though I perceive how the flavour
+of your countship may spread a wholesome alarm among our rurals, who will
+readily have at you with fists, but relish not the tricky cold weapon.'
+
+Mr. Beamish haughtily bowed the duchess away.
+
+Caseldy seized the opportunity while handing her into her sedan to say,
+'We will try the fortune-teller for a lucky day to have our revenge.'
+
+She answered: 'Oh, don't talk to me about playing again ever; I'm nigh on
+a clean pocket, and never knew such a sinful place as this.  I feel I've
+tumbled into a ditch.  And there's Mr. Beamish, all top when he bows to
+me.  You're keeping Chloe waiting, sir.'
+
+'Where was she while we were at the table?'
+
+'Sure she was with Mr. Beamish.'
+
+'Ah!' he groaned.
+
+'The poor soul is in despair over her losses to-night,' he turned from
+the boxed-up duchess to remark to Chloe.  'Give her a comfortable cry and
+a few moral maxims.'
+
+'I will,' she said.  'You love me, Caseldy?'
+
+'Love you?  I?  Your own?  What assurance would you have?'
+
+'None, dear friend.'
+
+Here was a woman easily deceived.
+
+In the hearts of certain men, owing to an intellectual contempt of easy
+dupes, compunction in deceiving is diminished by the lightness of their
+task; and that soft confidence which will often, if but passingly, bid
+betrayers reconsider the charms of the fair soul they are abandoning,
+commends these armoured knights to pursue with redoubled earnest the
+fruitful ways of treachery.  Their feelings are warm for their prey,
+moreover; and choosing to judge their victim by the present warmth of
+their feelings, they can at will be hurt, even to being scandalized, by a
+coldness that does not waken one suspicion of them.  Jealousy would have
+a chance of arresting, for it is not impossible to tease them back to
+avowed allegiance; but sheer indifference also has a stronger hold on
+them than a, dull, blind trustfulness.  They hate the burden it imposes;
+the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden,
+and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the belief
+that they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile.  She walks about
+with her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does, am I to
+blame?  The injured man asks it in the course of his reasoning.
+
+He recurs to his victim's merits, but only compassionately, and the
+compassion is chilled by the thought that she may in the end start across
+his path to thwart him.  Thereat he is drawn to think of the prize she
+may rob him of; and when one woman is an obstacle, the other shines
+desirable as life beyond death; he must have her; he sees her in the hue
+of his desire for her, and the obstacle in that of his repulsion.
+Cruelty is no more than the man's effort to win the wished object.
+
+She should not leave it to his imagination to conceive that in the end
+the blind may awaken to thwart him.  Better for her to cast him hence,
+or let him know that she will do battle to keep him.  But the pride of a
+love that has hardened in the faithfulness of love cannot always be wise
+on trial.
+
+Caseldy walked considerably in the rear of the couple of chairs.  He saw
+on his way what was coming.  His two young squires were posted at Duchess
+Susan's door when she arrived, and he received a blow from one of them in
+clearing a way for her.  She plucked at his hand.  'Have they hurt you?'
+she asked.
+
+'Think of me to-night thanking them and heaven for this, my darling,' he
+replied, with a pressure that lit the flying moment to kindle the after
+hours.
+
+Chloe had taken help of one of her bearers to jump out.  She stretched a
+finger at the unruly intruders, crying sternly, 'There is blood on you--
+come not nigh me!'  The loftiest harangue would not have been so cunning
+to touch their wits.  They stared at one another in the clear moonlight.
+Which of them had blood on him?  As they had not been for blood, but for
+rough fun, and something to boast of next day, they gesticulated
+according to the first instructions of the dancing master, by way of
+gallantry, and were out of Caseldy's path when he placed himself at his
+liege lady's service.  'Take no notice of them, dear,' she said.
+
+'No, no,' said he; and 'What is it?' and his hoarse accent and shaking
+clasp of her arm sickened her to the sensation of approaching death.
+
+Upstairs Duchess Susan made a show of embracing her.  Both were
+trembling.  The duchess ascribed her condition to those dreadful men.
+'What makes them be at me so?' she said.
+
+And Chloe said, 'Because you are beautiful.'
+
+'Am I?'
+
+'You are.'
+
+'I am?'
+
+'Very beautiful; young and beautiful; beautiful in the bud.  You will
+learn to excuse them, madam.'
+
+'But, Chloe--' The duchess shut her mouth.  Out of a languid reverie, she
+sighed: 'I suppose I must be!  My duke--oh, don't talk of him.  Dear man!
+he's in bed and fast asleep long before this.  I wonder how he came to
+let me come here.
+
+I did bother him, I know.  Am I very, very beautiful, Chloe, so that men
+can't help themselves?'
+
+'Very, madam.'
+
+'There, good-night.  I want to be in bed, and I can't kiss you because
+you keep calling me madam, and freeze me to icicles; but I do love you,
+Chloe.'
+
+'I am sure you do.'
+
+'I'm quite certain I do. I know I never mean harm. But how are we women
+expected to behave, then?  Oh, I'm unhappy, I am.'
+
+'You must abstain from playing.'
+
+'It's that!  I've lost my money--I forgot.  And I shall have to confess
+it to my duke, though he warned me.  Old men hold their fingers up--so!
+One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never.  It's a round
+finger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're
+lecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders--or,
+Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to
+the face of a corpse.  I declare, it's just like!  I feel as if I didn't
+a bit mind talking of corpses tonight.  And my money's gone, and I don't
+much mind.  I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that----he is a
+dear, kind, good old nobleman, with his funny old finger: "Susan!
+Susan!"  I'm no worse than others.  Everybody plays here; everybody
+superior.  Why, you have played, Chloe.'
+
+'Never!'
+
+'I've heard you say you played once, and a bigger stake it was, you said,
+than anybody ever did play.'
+
+'Not money.'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'My life.'
+
+'Goodness--yes!  I understand.  I understand everything to-night-men too.
+So you did!--They're not so shamefully wicked, Chloe.  Because I can't
+see the wrong of human nature--if we're discreet, I mean.  Now and then a
+country dance and a game, and home to bed and dreams.  There's no harm in
+that, I vow.  And that's why you stayed at this place.  You like it,
+Chloe?'
+
+'I am used to it.'
+
+'But when you're married to Count Caseldy you'll go?'
+
+'Yes, then.'
+
+She uttered it so joylessly that Duchess Susan added, with intense
+affectionateness, 'You're not obliged to marry him, dear Chloe.'
+
+'Nor he me, madam.'
+
+The duchess caught at her impulsively to kiss her, and said she would
+undress herself, as she wished to be alone.
+
+From that night she was a creature inflamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The total disappearance of the pair of heroes who had been the latest in
+the conspiracy to vex his delicate charge, gave Mr. Beamish a high
+opinion of Caseldy as an assistant in such an office as he held.  They
+had gone, and nothing more was heard of them.  Caseldy confined his
+observations on the subject to the remark that he had employed the best
+means to be rid of that kind of worthies; and whether their souls had
+fled, or only their bodies, was unknown.  But the duchess had quiet
+promenades with Caseldy to guard her, while Mr. Beamish counted the
+remaining days of her visit with the impatience of a man having cause to
+cast eye on a clock.  For Duchess Susan was not very manageable now; she
+had fits of insurgency, and plainly said that her time was short, and she
+meant to do as she liked, go where she liked, play when she liked, and be
+an independent woman--if she was so soon to be taken away and boxed in a
+castle that was only a bigger sedan.
+
+Caseldy protested he was as helpless as the beau.  He described the
+annoyance of his incessant running about at her heels in all directions
+amusingly, and suggested that she must be beating the district to recover
+her 'strange cavalier,' of whom, or of one that had ridden beside her
+carriage half a day on her journey to the Wells, he said she had dropped
+a sort of hint.  He complained of the impossibility of his getting an
+hour in privacy with his Chloe.
+
+'And I, accustomed to consult with her, see too little of her,' said Mr.
+Beamish.  'I shall presently be seeing nothing, and already I am sensible
+of my loss.'
+
+He represented his case to Duchess Susan:--that she was for ever driving
+out long distances and taking Chloe from him, when his occupation
+precluded his accompanying them; and as Chloe soon was to be lost
+to him for good, he deeply felt her absence.
+
+The duchess flung him enigmatical rejoinders: 'You can change all that,
+Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can.  Oh, yes, you can.  But
+you like being a butterfly, and when you've made ladies pale you're
+happy: and there they're to stick and wither for you.  Never!--I've that
+pride.  I may be worried, but I'll never sink to green and melancholy for
+a man.'
+
+She bridled at herself in a mirror, wherein not a sign of paleness was
+reflected.
+
+Mr. Beamish meditated, and he thought it prudent to speak to Caseldy
+manfully of her childish suspicions, lest she should perchance in like
+manner perturb the lover's mind.
+
+'Oh, make your mind easy, my dear sir, as far as I am concerned,' said
+Caseldy.  'But, to tell you the truth, I think I can interpret her creamy
+ladyship's innuendos a little differently and quite as clearly.  For my
+part, I prefer the pale to the blowsy, and I stake my right hand on
+Chloe's fidelity.  Whatever harm I may have the senseless cruelty--
+misfortune, I may rather call it--to do that heavenly-minded woman in our
+days to come, none shall say of me that I was ever for an instant guilty
+of the baseness of doubting her purity and constancy.  And, sir, I will
+add that I could perfectly rely also on your honour.'
+
+Mr. Beamish bowed.  'You do but do me justice.  But, say, what
+interpretation?'
+
+'She began by fearing you,' said Caseldy, creating a stare that was
+followed by a frown.  'She fancies you neglect her.  Perhaps she has a
+woman's suspicion that you do it to try her.'
+
+Mr. Beamish frenetically cited his many occupations.  'How can I be ever
+dancing attendance on her?'  Then he said, 'Pooh,' and tenderly fingered
+the ruffles of his wrist.  'Tush, tush,' said he, 'no, no: though if it
+came to a struggle between us, I might in the interests of my old friend,
+her lord, whom I have reasons for esteeming, interpose an influence that
+would make the exercise of my authority agreeable.  Hitherto I have seen
+no actual need of it, and I watch keenly.  Her eye has been on Colonel
+Poltermore once or twice his on her.  The woman is a rose in June, sir,
+and I forgive the whole world for looking--and for longing too.  But I
+have observed nothing serious.'
+
+'He is of our party to the beacon-head to-morrow,' said Caseldy.  'She
+insisted that she would have him; and at least it will grant me furlough
+for an hour.'
+
+'Do me the service to report to me,' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+In this fashion he engaged Caseldy to supply him with inventions, and
+prepared himself to swallow them.  It was Poltermore and Poltermore, the
+Colonel here, the Colonel there until the chase grew so hot that Mr.
+Beamish could no longer listen to young Mr. Camwell's fatiguing drone
+upon his one theme of the double-dealing of Chloe's betrothed.  He became
+of her way of thinking, and treated the young gentleman almost as coldly
+as she.  In time he was ready to guess of his own acuteness that the
+'strange cavalier' could have been no other than Colonel Poltermore.
+When Caseldy hinted it, Mr. Beamish said, 'I have marked him.' He added,
+in highly self-satisfied style, 'With all your foreign training, my
+friend, you will learn that we English are not so far behind you in the
+art of unravelling an intrigue in the dark.' To which Caseldy replied,
+that the Continental world had little to teach Mr. Beamish.
+
+Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim of
+the sudden affability of Duchess Susan.  The transformation of a stiff
+military officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightly
+attendant, could not pass without notice.  The first effect of her
+discriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to make
+him the champion of her claims to breeding.  She had it by nature, she
+was Nature's great lady, he would protest to the noble dames of the
+circle he moved in; and they admitted that she was different in every way
+from a bourgeoise elevated by marriage to lofty rank: she was not vulgar.
+But they remained doubtful of the perfect simplicity of a young woman who
+worked such changes in men as to render one of the famous conquerors of
+the day her agitated humble servant.  By rapid degrees the Colonel had
+fallen to that.  When not by her side, he was ever marching with sharp
+strides, hurrying through rooms and down alleys and groves until he had
+discovered and attached himself to her skirts.  And, curiously, the
+object of his jealousy was the devoted Alonzo!  Mr. Beamish laughed when
+he heard of it.  The lady's excitement and giddy mien, however, accused
+Poltermore of a stage of success requiring to be combated immediately.
+There was mention of Duchess Susan's mighty wish to pay a visit to the
+popular fortune-teller of the hut on the heath, and Mr. Beamish put his
+veto on the expedition.  She had obeyed him by abstaining from play of
+late, so he fully expected, that his interdict would be obeyed; and
+besides the fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham astrologer known to have
+foretold to certain tender ladies things they were only too desirous to
+imagine predestined by an extraordinary indication of the course of
+planets through the zodiac, thus causing them to sin by the example of
+celestial conjunctions--a piece of wanton impiety.  The beau took high
+ground in his objections to the adventure.  Nevertheless, Duchess Susan
+did go.  She drove to the heath at an early hour of the morning, attended
+by Chloe, Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy.  They subsequently breakfasted
+at an inn where gipsy repasts were occasionally served to the fashion,
+and they were back at the wells as soon as the world was abroad.  Their
+surprise then was prodigious when Mr. Beamish, accosting them full in
+assembly, inquired whether they were satisfied with the report of their
+fortunes, and yet more when he positively proved himself acquainted with
+the fortunes which had been recounted to each of them in privacy.
+
+'You, Colonel Poltermore, are to be in luck's way up to the tenth
+milestone,--where your chariot will overset and you will be lamed for
+life.'
+
+'Not quite so bad,' said the Colonel cheerfully, he having been informed
+of much better.
+
+'And you, Count Caseldy, are to have it all your own way with good luck,
+after committing a deed of slaughter, with the solitary penalty of
+undergoing a visit every night from the corpse.'
+
+'Ghost,' Caseldy smilingly corrected him.
+
+'And Chloe would not have her fortune told, because she knew it!'
+Mr. Beamish cast a paternal glance at her.  'And you, madam,' he bent
+his brows on the duchess, 'received the communication that "All for Love"
+will sink you as it raised you, put you down as it took you up, furnish
+the feast to the raven gentleman which belongs of right to the golden
+eagle?'
+
+'Nothing of the sort!  And I don't believe in any of their stories,'
+cried the duchess, with a burning face.
+
+'You deny it, madam?'
+
+'I do.  There was never a word of a raven or an eagle, that I'll swear,
+now.'
+
+'You deny that there was ever a word of "All for Love"?  Speak, madam.'
+
+'Their conjuror's rigmarole!' she murmured, huffing.  'As if I listened
+to their nonsense!'
+
+'Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me the lie?' said Mr. Beamish.
+
+'That's not my title, and you know it,' she retorted.
+
+'What's this?' the angry beau sang out.  'What stuff is this you wear?'
+He towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her morning dress, tore
+it furiously and swung a length of it round him: and while the duchess
+panted and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy of every
+lady present as well as the championship of the gentlemen, he tossed the
+lace to the floor and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligible
+over the uproar: 'Hear what she does! 'Tis a felony!  She wears the stuff
+with Betty Worcester's yellow starch on it for mock antique!  And let who
+else wears it strip it off before the town shall say we are disgraced--
+when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at Tyburn yesterday
+morning for murder!'
+
+There were shrieks.
+
+Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly began to melt; he
+stood in the centre like a pole unwinding streamers, amid a confusion of
+hurrying dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was as that of
+the autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising in November.  The troops of
+ladies were off to bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation old
+lace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors and associates
+of the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs. Elizabeth Worcester, their
+benefactress of the previous day, now hanged and dangling on the
+gallows-tree.
+
+Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace in the morning, were
+scarcely displeased with the beau for his exposure of them that did.  The
+gentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious power.  The two
+gentlemen nighest upon violently resenting his brutality to Duchess
+Susan, led her from the room in company with Chloe.
+
+'The woman shall fear me to good purpose,' Mr. Beamish said to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Mr. Camwell was in the ante-room as Chloe passed out behind the two
+incensed supporters of Duchess Susan.
+
+'I shall be by the fir-trees on the Mount at eight this evening,' she
+said.
+
+'I will be there,' he replied.
+
+'Drive Mr. Beamish into the country, that these gentlemen may have time
+to cool.'
+
+He promised her it should be done.
+
+Close on the hour of her appointment, he stood under the fir-trees,
+admiring the sunset along the western line of hills, and when Chloe
+joined him he spoke of the beauty of the scene.
+
+'Though nothing seems more eloquently to say farewell,' he added, with a
+sinking voice.
+
+'We could say it now, and be friends,' she answered.
+
+'Later than now, you think it unlikely that you could forgive me, Chloe.'
+
+'In truth, sir, you are making it hard for me.'
+
+'I have stayed here to keep watch; for no pleasure of my own,' said he.
+
+'Mr. Beamish is an excellent protector of the duchess.'
+
+'Excellent; and he is cleverly taught to suppose she fears him greatly;
+and when she offends him, he makes a display of his Jupiter's awfulness,
+with the effect on woman of natural spirit which you have seen, and
+others had foreseen, that she is exasperated and grows reckless.  Tie
+another knot in your string, Chloe.'
+
+She looked away, saying, 'Were you not the cause?  You were in collusion
+with that charlatan of the heath, who told them their fortunes this
+morning.  I see far, both in the dark and in the light.'
+
+'But not through a curtain.  I was present.'
+
+'Hateful, hateful business of the spy!  You have worked a great mischief
+Mr. Camwell.  And how can you reconcile it to, your conscience that you
+should play so base a part?'
+
+'I have but performed my duty, dear madam.'
+
+'You pretend that it is your devotion to me!  I might be flattered if I
+saw not so abject a figure in my service.  Now have I but four days of my
+month of happiness remaining, and my request to you is, leave me to enjoy
+them.  I beseech you to go.  Very humbly, most earnestly, I beg your
+departure.  Grant it to me, and do not stay to poison my last days here.
+Leave us to-morrow.  I will admit your good intentions.  I give you my
+hand in gratitude.  Adieu, Mr. Camwell.'
+
+He took her hand.  'Adieu.  I foresee an early separation, and this dear
+hand is mine while I have it in mine.  Adieu.  It is a word to be
+repeated at a parting like ours.  We do not blow out our light with one
+breath: we let it fade gradually, like yonder sunset.'
+
+'Speak so,' said she.
+
+'Ah, Chloe, to give one's life!  And it is your happiness I have sought
+more than your favor.'
+
+'I believe it; but I have not liked the means.  You leave us to-morrow?'
+
+'It seems to me that to-morrow is the term.'
+
+Her face clouded.  'That tells me a very uncertain promise.'
+
+'You looked forth to a month of happiness--meaning a month of delusion.
+The delusion expires to-night.  You will awaken to see your end of it in
+the morning.  You have never looked beyond the month since the day of his
+arrival.'
+
+'Let him not be named, I supplicate you.'
+
+'Then you consent that another shall be sacrificed for you to enjoy your
+state of deception an hour longer?'
+
+'I am not deceived, sir.  I wish for peace, and crave it, and that is all
+I would have.'
+
+'And you make her your peace-offering, whom you have engaged to serve!
+Too surely your eyes have been open as well as mine.  Knot by knot--
+I have watched you--where is it?--you have marked the points in that
+silken string where the confirmation of a just suspicion was too strong
+for you.'
+
+'I did it, and still I continued merry?'  She subsided from her
+scornfulness on an involuntary 'Ah!' that was a shudder.
+
+'You acted Light Heart, madam, and too well to hoodwink me.  Meanwhile
+you allowed that mischief to proceed, rather than have your crazy lullaby
+disturbed.'
+
+'Indeed, Mr. Camwell, you presume.'
+
+'The time, and my knowledge of what it is fraught with, demand it and
+excuse it.  You and I, my dear and one only love on earth, stand outside
+of ordinary rules.  We are between life and death.'
+
+'We are so always.'
+
+'Listen further to the preacher: We have them close on us, with the
+question, Which it shall be to-morrow.  You are for sleeping on, but I
+say no; nor shall that iniquity of double treachery be committed because
+of your desire to be rocked in a cradle.  Hear me out.  The drug you have
+swallowed to cheat yourself will not bear the shock awaiting you tomorrow
+with the first light.  Hear these birds!  When next they sing, you will
+be broad awake, and of me, and the worship and service I would have
+dedicated to you, I do not .  .  .  it is a spectral sunset of a day that
+was never to be!--awake, and looking on what?  Back from a monstrous
+villainy to the forlorn wretch who winked at it with knots in a string.
+Count them then, and where will be your answer to heaven?  I begged it of
+you, to save you from those blows of remorse; yes, terrible!'
+
+'Oh, no!'
+
+'Terrible, I say!'
+
+'You are mistaken, Mr. Camwell.  It is my soother.  I tell my beads on
+it.'
+
+'See how a persistent residence in this place has made a Pagan of the
+purest soul among us!  Had you .  .  .  but that day was not to lighten
+me!  More adorable in your errors that you are than others by their
+virtues, you have sinned through excess of the qualities men prize.  Oh,
+you have a boundless generosity, unhappily enwound with a pride as great.
+There is your fault, that is the cause of your misery.  Too generous!
+too proud!  You have trusted, and you will not cease to trust; you have
+vowed yourself to love, never to remonstrate, never to seem to doubt;
+it is too much your religion, rare verily.  But bethink you of that
+inexperienced and most silly good creature who is on the rapids to her
+destruction.  Is she not--you will cry it aloud to-morrow--your victim?
+You hear it within you now.'
+
+'Friend, my dear, true friend,' Chloe said in her deeper voice of melody,
+'set your mind at ease about to-morrow and her.  Her safety is assured.
+I stake my life on it.  She shall not be a victim.  At the worst she will
+but have learnt a lesson.  So, then, adieu!  The West hangs like a
+garland of unwatered flowers, neglected by the mistress they adorned.
+Remember the scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe wished you
+the happiness it was out of her power to bestow, because she was of
+another world, with her history written out to the last red streak before
+ever you knew her.  Adieu; this time adieu for good!
+
+Mr. Camwell stood in her path.  'Blind eyes, if you like,' he said, 'but
+you shall not hear blind language.  I forfeit the poor consideration for
+me that I have treasured; hate me; better hated by you than shun my duty!
+Your duchess is away at the first dawn this next morning; it has come to
+that.  I speak with full knowledge.  Question her.'
+
+Chloe threw a faltering scorn of him into her voice, as much as her
+heart's sharp throbs would allow.  'I question you, sir, how you came to
+this full knowledge you boast of?'
+
+'I have it; let that suffice.  Nay, I will be particular; his coach is
+ordered for the time I name to you; her maid is already at a station on
+the road of the flight.'
+
+'You have their servants in your pay?'
+
+'For the mine--the countermine.  We must grub dirt to match deceivers.
+You, madam, have chosen to be delicate to excess, and have thrown it upon
+me to be gross, and if you please, abominable, in my means of defending
+you.  It is not too late for you to save the lady, nor too late to bring
+him to the sense of honour.'
+
+'I cannot think Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable.'
+
+'Poor Colonel Poltermore!  The office he is made to fill is an old one.
+Are you not ashamed, Chloe?'
+
+'I have listened too long,' she replied.
+
+'Then, if it is your pleasure, depart.'
+
+He made way for her.  She passed him.  Taking two hurried steps in the
+gloom of the twilight, she stopped, held at her heart, and painfully
+turning to him, threw her arms out, and let herself be seized and kissed.
+
+On his asking pardon of her, which his long habit of respect forced him
+to do in the thick of rapture and repetitions, she said, 'You rob no
+one.'
+
+'Oh,' he cried, 'there is a reward, then, for faithful love.  But am I
+the man I was a minute back?  I have you; I embrace you; and I doubt that
+I am I.  Or is it Chloe's ghost?'
+
+'She has died and visits you.'
+
+'And will again?'
+
+Chloe could not speak for languor.
+
+The intensity of the happiness she gave by resting mutely where she was,
+charmed her senses.  But so long had the frost been on them that their
+awakening to warmth was haunted by speculations on the sweet taste of
+this reward of faithfulness to him, and the strange taste of her own
+unfaithfulness to her.  And reflecting on the cold act of speculation
+while strong arm and glowing mouth were pressing her, she thought her
+senses might really be dead, and she a ghost visiting the good youth for
+his comfort.  So feel ghosts, she thought, and what we call happiness in
+love is a match between ecstasy and compliance.  Another thought flew
+through her like a mortal shot: 'Not so with those two! with them it will
+be ecstasy meeting ecstasy; they will take and give happiness in equal
+portions.'  A pang of jealousy traversed her frame.  She made the
+shrewdness of it help to nerve her fervour in a last strain of him to her
+bosom, and gently releasing herself, she said, 'No one is robbed.  And
+now, dear friend, promise me that you will not disturb Mr. Beamish.'
+
+'Chloe,' said he, 'have you bribed me?'
+
+'I do not wish him to be troubled.'
+
+'The duchess, I have told you--'
+
+'I know.  But you have Chloe's word that she will watch over the
+duchess and die to save her.  It is an oath.  You have heard of some
+arrangements.  I say they shall lead to nothing: it shall not take place.
+Indeed, my friend, I am awake; I see as much as you see.  And those. . .
+after being where I have been, can you suppose I have a regret?  But she
+is my dear and peculiar charge, and if she runs a risk, trust to me that
+there shall be no catastrophe; I swear it; so, now, adieu.  We sup in
+company to-night.  They will be expecting some of Chloe's verses, and she
+must sing to herself for a few minutes to stir the bed her songs take
+wing from; therefore, we will part, and for her sake avoid her; do not be
+present at our table, or in the room, or anywhere there.  Yes, you rob no
+one,' she said, in a voice that curled through him deliciously by
+wavering; but I think I may blush at recollections, and I would rather
+have you absent.  Adieu!  I will not ask for obedience from you beyond
+to-night.  Your word?'
+
+He gave it in a stupor of felicity, and she fled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Chloe drew the silken string from her bosom, as she descended the dim
+pathway through the furies, and set her fingers travelling along it for
+the number of the knots.  'I have no right to be living,' she said.
+Seven was the number; seven years she had awaited her lover's return; she
+counted her age and completed it in sevens.  Fatalism had sustained her
+during her lover's absence; it had fast hold of her now.  Thereby had she
+been enabled to say, 'He will come'; and saying, 'He has come,' her touch
+rested on the first knot in the string.  She had no power to displace her
+fingers, and the cause of the tying of the knot stood across her brain
+marked in dull red characters, legible neither to her eye nor to her
+understanding, but a reviving of the hour that brought it on her spirit
+with human distinctness, except of the light of day: she had a sense of
+having forfeited light, and seeing perhaps more clearly.  Everything
+assured her that she saw more clearly than others; she saw too when it
+was good to cease to live.
+
+Hers was the unhappy lot of one gifted with poet-imagination to throb
+with the woman supplanting her and share the fascination of the man who
+deceived.  At their first meeting, in her presence, she had seen that
+they were not strangers; she pitied them for speaking falsely, and when
+she vowed to thwart this course of evil it to save a younger creature of
+her sex, not in rivalry.  She treated them both with a proud generosity
+surpassing gentleness.  All that there was of selfishness in her bosom
+resolved to the enjoyment of her one month of strongly willed delusion.
+
+The kiss she had sunk to robbed no one, not even her body's purity, for
+when this knot was tied she consigned herself to her end, and had become
+a bag of dust.  The other knots in the string pointed to verifications;
+this first one was a suspicion, and it was the more precious, she felt it
+to be more a certainty; it had come from the dark world beyond us, where
+all is known.  Her belief that it had come thence was nourished by
+testimony, the space of blackness wherein she had lived since, exhausting
+her last vitality in a simulation of infantile happiness, which was
+nothing other than the carrying on of her emotion of the moment of sharp
+sour sweet--such as it may be, the doomed below attain for their
+knowledge of joy--when, at the first meeting with her lover, the
+perception of his treachery to the soul confiding in him, told her she
+had lived, and opened out the cherishable kingdom of insensibility to her
+for her heritage.
+
+She made her tragic humility speak thankfully to the wound that slew her.
+'Had it not been so, I should not have seen him,' she said:--Her lover
+would not have come to her but for his pursuit of another woman.
+
+She pardoned him for being attracted by that beautiful transplant of the
+fields: pardoned her likewise.  'He when I saw him first was as beautiful
+to me.  For him I might have done as much.'
+
+Far away in a lighted hall of the West, her family raised hands of
+reproach.  They were minute objects, keenly discerned as diminished
+figures cut in steel.  Feeling could not be very warm for them, they were
+so small, and a sea that had drowned her ran between; and looking that
+way she had scarce any warmth of feeling save for a white rhaiadr leaping
+out of broken cloud through branched rocks, where she had climbed and
+dreamed when a child.  The dream was then of the coloured days to come;
+now she was more infant in her mind, and she watched the scattered water
+broaden, and tasted the spray, sat there drinking the scene, untroubled
+by hopes as a lamb, different only from an infant in knowing that she had
+thrown off life to travel back to her home and be refreshed.  She heard
+her people talk; they were unending babblers in the waterfall.  Truth was
+with them, and wisdom.  How, then, could she pretend to any right to
+live?  Already she had no name; she was less living than a tombstone.
+For who was Chloe?  Her family might pass the grave of Chloe without
+weeping, without moralizing.  They had foreseen her ruin, they had
+foretold it, they noised it in the waters, and on they sped to the
+plains, telling the world of their prophecy, and making what was untold
+as yet a lighter thing to do.
+
+The lamps in an irregularly dotted line underneath the hill beckoned her
+to her task of appearing as the gayest of them that draw their breath for
+the day and have pulses for the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+At midnight the great supper party to celebrate the reconciliation of
+Mr. Beamish and Duchess Susan broke up, and beneath a soft fair sky the
+ladies, with their silvery chatter of gratitude for amusement, caught
+Chloe in their arms to kiss her, rendering it natural for their cavaliers
+to exclaim that Chloe was blest above mortals.  The duchess preferred to
+walk.  Her spirits were excited, and her language smelt of her origin,
+but the superb fleshly beauty of the woman was aglow, and crying, 'I
+declare I should burst in one of those boxes--just as if you'd stalled
+me!' she fanned a wind on her face, and sumptuously spread her spherical
+skirts, attended by the vanquished and captive Colonel Poltermore, a
+gentleman manifestly bent on insinuating sly slips of speech to serve for
+here a pinch of powder, there a match.  'Am I?' she was heard to say.
+She blew prodigious deep-chested sighs of a coquette that has taken to
+roaring.
+
+Presently her voice tossed out: 'As if I would!'  These vivid
+illuminations of the Colonel's proceedings were a pasture to the rearward
+groups, composed of two very grand ladies, Caseldy, Mr. Beamish, a lord,
+and Chloe.
+
+'You man!  Oh!' sprang from the duchess.  'What do I hear?  I won't
+listen; I can't, I mustn't, I oughtn't.'
+
+So she said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear,
+with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord
+let fly a peal of laughter.  It had been a supper of copious wine, and
+the songs which rise from wine.  Nature was excused by our midnight
+naturalists.
+
+The two great dames, admonished by the violence of the nobleman's
+laughter, laid claim on Mr. Beamish to accompany them at their parting
+with Chloe and Duchess Susan.
+
+In the momentary shuffling of couples incident to adieux among a company,
+the duchess murmured to Caseldy:
+
+'Have I done it well.'
+
+He praised her for perfection in her acting.  'I am at your door at
+three, remember.'
+
+'My heart's in my mouth,' said she.
+
+Colonel Poltermore still had the privilege of conducting her the few
+farther steps to her lodgings.
+
+Caseldy walked beside Chloe, and silently, until he said, 'If I have not
+yet mentioned the subject--'
+
+'If it is an allusion to money let me not hear it to-night,' she replied.
+
+'I can only say that my lawyers have instructions.  But my lawyers cannot
+pay you in gratitude.  Do not think me in your hardest review of my
+misconduct ungrateful.  I have ever esteemed you above all women; I do,
+and I shall; you are too much above me.  I am afraid I am a composition
+of bad stuff; I did not win a very particularly good name on the
+Continent; I begin to know myself, and in comparison with you, dear
+Catherine----'
+
+'You speak to Chloe,' she said.  'Catherine is a buried person.  She died
+without pain.  She is by this time dust.'
+
+The man heaved his breast.  'Women have not an idea of our temptations.'
+
+'You are excused by me for all your errors, Caseldy.  Always remember
+that.'
+
+He sighed profoundly.  'Ay, you have a Christian's heart.'
+
+She answered, 'I have come to the conclusion that it is a Pagan's.'
+
+'As for me,' he rejoined, 'I am a fatalist.  Through life I have seen my
+destiny.  What is to be, will be; we can do nothing.'
+
+'I have heard of one who expired of a surfeit that he anticipated, nay
+proclaimed, when indulging in the last desired morsel,' said Chloe.
+
+'He was driven to it.'
+
+'From within.'
+
+Caseldy acquiesced; his wits were clouded, and an illustration even
+coarser and more grotesque would have won a serious nod and a sigh from
+him.  'Yes, we are moved by other hands!'
+
+'It is pleasant to think so: and think it of me tomorrow.  Will you!'
+said Chloe.
+
+He promised it heartily, to induce her to think the same of him.
+
+Their separation was in no way remarkable.  The pretty formalities were
+executed at the door, and the pair of gentlemen departed.
+
+'It's quite dark still,' Duchess Susan said, looking up at the sky, and
+she ran upstairs, and sank, complaining of the weakness of her legs, in a
+chair of the ante-chamber of her bedroom, where Chloe slept.  Then she
+asked the time of the night.  She could not suppress her hushed 'Oh!'
+of heavy throbbing from minute to minute.  Suddenly she started off at
+a quick stride to her own room, saying that it must be sleepiness which
+affected her so.
+
+Her bedroom had a door to the sitting-room, and thence, as also from
+Chloe's room, the landing on the stairs was reached, for the room ran
+parallel with both bed-chambers.  She walked in it and threw the window
+open, but closed it immediately; opened and shut the door, and returned
+and called for Chloe.  She wanted to be read to.  Chloe named certain
+composing books.  The duchess chose a book of sermons.  'But we're all
+such dreadful sinners, it's better not to bother ourselves late at
+night.'  She dismissed that suggestion.  Chloe proposed books of poetry.
+'Only I don't understand them except about larks, and buttercups, and
+hayfields, and that's no comfort to a woman burning,' was the answer.
+
+'Are you feverish, madam?' said Chloe.  And the duchess was sharp on her:
+'Yes, madam, I am.'
+
+She reproved herself in a change of tone: 'No, Chloe, not feverish, only
+this air of yours here is such an exciting air, as the doctor says; and
+they made me drink wine, and I played before supper--Oh! my money; I used
+to say I could get more, but now!' she sighed--'but there's better in the
+world than money.  You know that, don't you, you dear?  Tell me.  And
+I want you to be happy; that you'll find.  I do wish we could all be!'
+She wept, and spoke of requiring a little music to compose her.
+
+Chloe stretched a hand for her guitar.  Duchess Susan listened to some
+notes, and cried that it went to her heart and hurt her.  'Everything we
+like a lot has a fence and a board against trespassers, because of such a
+lot of people in the world,' she moaned.  'Don't play, put down that
+thing, please, dear.  You're the cleverest creature anybody has ever met;
+they all say so.  I wish I----Lovely women catch men, and clever women
+keep them: I've heard that said in this wretched place, and it 's a nice
+prospect for me, next door to a fool!  I know I am.'
+
+'The duke adores you, madam.'
+
+'Poor duke!  Do let him be--sleeping so woebegone with his mouth so, and
+that chin of a baby, like as if he dreamed of a penny whistle.  He
+shouldn't have let me come here.  Talk of Mr. Beamish.  How he will miss
+you, Chloe!'
+
+'He will,' Chloe said sadly.
+
+'If you go, dear.'
+
+'I am going.'
+
+'Why should you leave him, Chloe?'
+
+'I must.'
+
+'And there, the thought of it makes you miserable!'
+
+'It does.'
+
+'You needn't, I'm sure.'
+
+Chloe looked at her.
+
+The duchess turned her head.  'Why can't you be gay, as you were at the
+supper-table, Chloe?  You're out to him like a flower when the sun jumps
+over the hill; you're up like a lark in the dews; as I used to be when I
+thought of nothing.  Oh, the early morning; and I'm sleepy.  What a beast
+I feel, with my grandeur, and the time in an hour or two for the birds to
+sing, and me ready to drop.  I must go and undress.'
+
+She rushed on Chloe, kissed her hastily, declaring that she was quite
+dead of fatigue, and dismissed her.  'I don't want help, I can undress
+myself.  As if Susan Barley couldn't do that for herself! and you may
+shut your door, I sha'n't have any frights to-night, I'm so tired out.'
+
+'Another kiss,' Chloe said tenderly.
+
+'Yes, take it'--the duchess leaned her cheek--'but I'm so tired I don't
+know what I'm doing.'
+
+'It will not be on your conscience,' Chloe answered, kissing her warmly.
+
+Will those words she withdrew, and the duchess closed the door.  She ran
+a bolt in it immediately.
+
+'I'm too tired to know anything I'm doing,' she said to herself, and
+stood with shut eyes to hug certain thoughts which set her bosom heaving.
+
+There was the bed, there was the clock.  She had the option of lying down
+and floating quietly into the day, all peril past.  It seemed sweet for a
+minute.  But it soon seemed an old, a worn, an end-of-autumn life, chill,
+without aim, like a something that was hungry and toothless.  The bed
+proposing innocent sleep repelled her and drove her to the clock.  The
+clock was awful: the hand at the hour, the finger following the minute,
+commanded her to stir actively, and drove her to gentle meditations on
+the bed.  She lay down dressed, after setting her light beside the clock,
+that she might see it at will, and considering it necessary for the bed
+to appear to have been lain on.  Considering also that she ought to be
+heard moving about in the process of undressing, she rose from the bed
+to make sure of her reading of the guilty clock.  An hour and twenty
+minutes! she had no more time than that: and it was not enough for her
+various preparations, though it was true that her maid had packed and
+taken a box of the things chiefly needful; but the duchess had to change
+her shoes and her dress, and run at bo-peep with the changes of her mind,
+a sedative preface to any fatal step among women of her complexion, for
+so they invite indecision to exhaust their scruples, and they let the
+blood have its way.  Having so short a space of time, she thought the
+matter decided, and with some relief she flung despairing on the bed, and
+lay down for good with her duke.  In a little while her head was at work
+reviewing him sternly, estimating him not less accurately than the male
+moralist charitable to her sex would do.  She quitted the bed, with a
+spring to escape her imagined lord; and as if she had felt him to be
+there, she lay down no more.  A quiet life like that was flatter to her
+idea than a handsomely bound big book without any print on the pages, and
+without a picture.  Her contemplation of it, contrasted with the life
+waved to her view by the timepiece, set her whole system rageing; she
+burned to fly.  Providently, nevertheless, she thumped a pillow, and
+threw the bedclothes into proper disorder, to inform the world that her
+limbs had warmed them, and that all had been impulse with her.  She then
+proceeded to disrobe, murmuring to herself that she could stop now, and
+could stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh dressing of her
+person, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the mouth of an observer.
+'She was shot up suddenly over everybody's head, and suddenly down she
+went.'  Susan whispered to herself: 'But it was for love!'  Possessed by
+the rosiness of love, she finished her business, with an attention to
+everything needed that was equal to perfect serenity of mind.  After
+which there was nothing to do, save to sit humped in a chair, cover her
+face and count the clock-tickings, that said, Yes--no; do--don't; fly--
+stay; fly--fly!  It seemed to her she heard a moving.  Well she might
+with that dreadful heart of hers!
+
+Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she envied
+Chloe!  She might be as happy, if she pleased.  Why not?  But what kind
+of happiness was it?  She likened it to that of the corpse underground,
+and shrank distastefully.
+
+Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom there
+was all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid,
+not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensation
+of her lover's arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while she
+was defenceless.  For surely they would.  She took a jewelled ring, his
+gift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her finger,
+leaving it on.  Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries and
+virtuous eyebrows.  O heavenly now--if only it were an hour hence; and
+going behind galloping horses!
+
+The clock was at the terrible moment.  She hesitated internally and
+hastened; once her feet stuck fast, and firmly she said, 'No'; but the
+clock was her lord.  The clock was her lover and her lord; and obeying
+it, she managed to get into the sitting-room, on the pretext that she
+merely wished to see through the front window whether daylight was
+coming.
+
+How well she knew that half-light of the ebb of the wave of darkness.
+
+Strange enough it was to see it showing houses regaining their solidity
+of the foregone day, instead of still fields, black hedges, familiar
+shapes of trees.  The houses had no wakefulness, they were but seen to
+stand, and the light was a revelation of emptiness.  Susan's heart was
+cunning to reproach her duke for the difference of the scene she beheld
+from that of the innocent open-breasted land.  Yes, it was dawn in a
+wicked place that she never should have been allowed to visit.  But where
+was he whom she looked for?  There!  The cloaked figure of a man was at
+the corner of the street.  It was he.  Her heart froze; but her limbs
+were strung to throw off the house, and reach air, breathe, and (as her
+thoughts ran) swoon, well-protected.  To her senses the house was a house
+on fire, and crying to her to escape.
+
+Yet she stepped deliberately, to be sure-footed in a dusky room; she
+touched along the wall and came to the door, where a foot-stool nearly
+tripped her.  Here her touch was at fault, for though she knew she must
+be close by the door, she was met by an obstruction unlike wood, and the
+door seemed neither shut nor open.  She could not find the handle;
+something hung over it.  Thinking coolly, she fancied the thing must be a
+gown or dressing-gown; it hung heavily.  Her fingers were sensible of the
+touch of silk; she distinguished a depending bulk, and she felt at it
+very carefully and mechanically, saying within herself, in her anxiety
+to pass it without noise, 'If I should awake poor Chloe, of all people!'
+Her alarm was that the door might creak.  Before any other alarm had
+struck her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth gaped,
+her throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the effort to
+swallow it down and get breath kept her from acute speculation while she
+felt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh, ready to
+shriek.  Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round white
+top.  Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across?  An arm too!
+this was an arm!  She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her.  She
+pulled it to release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a lump
+descended, and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her that a
+dead human body was upon her.
+
+At a quarter to four o'clock of a midsummer morning, as Mr. Beamish
+relates of his last share in the Tale of Chloe, a woman's voice, in
+piercing notes of anguish, rang out three shrieks consecutively, which
+were heard by him at the instant of his quitting his front doorstep,
+in obedience to the summons of young Mr. Camwell, delivered ten minutes
+previously, with great urgency, by that gentleman's lacquey.  On his
+reaching the street of the house inhabited by Duchess Susan, he perceived
+many night-capped heads at windows, and one window of the house in
+question lifted but vacant.  His first impression accused the pair of
+gentlemen, whom he saw bearing drawn swords in no friendly attitude of an
+ugly brawl that had probably affrighted her Grace, or her personal
+attendant, a woman capable of screaming, for he was well assured that it
+could not have been Chloe, the least likely of her sex to abandon herself
+to the use of their weapons either in terror or in jeopardy.  The
+antagonists were Mr. Camwell and Count Caseldy.  On his approaching them,
+Mr. Camwell sheathed his sword, saying that his work was done.  Caseldy
+was convulsed with wrath, to such a degree as to make the part of an
+intermediary perilous.  There had been passes between them, and Caseldy
+cried aloud that he would have his enemy's blood.  The night-watch was
+nowhere.  Soon, however, certain shopmen and their apprentices assisted
+Mr. Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the fury of Caseldy and the
+provocations--'not easy to withstand,' says the chronicler--offered by
+him to young Camwell.  The latter said to Mr. Beamish: 'I knew I should
+be no match, so I sent for you,' causing his friend astonishment,
+inasmuch as he was assured of the youth's natural valour.
+
+Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in
+equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the
+alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have
+inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung
+wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped
+hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh,
+she's dead; she's dead, dead!'
+
+Caseldy rushed past her.
+
+'How, dead! good woman?' Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously,
+half-smiling.
+
+She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!'
+
+Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name.  As
+they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.
+
+'Which?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face.
+
+'She !' said the other.
+
+'The duchess?' Mr. Beamish exclaimed.
+
+But Camwell walked into the room.  He had nothing to ask after that
+reply.
+
+The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet.  The young
+man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.
+
+
+Mr. Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of fifteen
+years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold the
+shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by a
+faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker than
+herself on the descent to perdition.  Therein it was beneficently granted
+her to be of the service she prayed to be through her death.  She died to
+save.  In a last letter, found upon her pincushion, addressed to me under
+seal of secrecy toward the parties principally concerned, she anticipates
+the whole confession of the unhappy duchess.  Nay, she prophesies: "The
+duchess will tell you truly she has had enough of love!"  Those actual
+words were reiterated to me by the poor lady daily until her lord arrived
+to head the funeral procession, and assist in nursing back the shattered
+health of his wife to a state that should fit her for travelling.  To me,
+at least, she was constant in repeating, "No more of love!"  By her
+behaviour to her duke, I can judge her to have been sincere.  She spoke
+of feeling Chloe's eyes go through her with every word of hers that she
+recollected.  Nor was the end of Chloe less effective upon the traitor.
+He was in the procession to her grave.  He spoke to none.  There is a
+line of the verse bearing the superscription, "My Reasons for Dying,"
+that shows her to have been apprehensive to secure the safety of Mr.
+Camwell:
+
+                    I die because my heart is dead
+                    To warn a soul from sin I die:
+                    I die that blood may not be shed, etc.
+
+She feared he would be somewhere on the road to mar the fugitives, and
+she knew him, as indeed he knew himself, no match for one trained in the
+foreign tricks of steel, ready though he was to dispute the traitor's
+way.  She remembers Mr. Camwell's petition for the knotted silken string
+in her request that it shall be cut from her throat and given to him.'
+
+Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe.  They are of a
+character to cool emotion.  But when we find a man, who is commonly of
+the quickest susceptibility to ridicule as well as to what is befitting,
+careless of exposure, we may reflect on the truthfulness of feeling by
+which he is drawn to pass his own guard and come forth in his nakedness;
+something of the poet's tongue may breathe to us through his mortal
+stammering, even if we have to acknowledge that a quotation would scatter
+pathos.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+All flattery is at somebody's expense
+Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues
+But I leave it to you
+Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war
+Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance
+If I do not speak of payment
+Intellectual contempt of easy dupes
+Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples
+Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?
+No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters
+Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted
+Primitive appetite for noise
+She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time
+The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost
+They miss their pleasure in pursuing it
+This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure
+Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Tale of Chloe
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+A REALISTIC TALE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The experience of great officials who have laid down their dignities
+before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves while
+still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the exercise of
+authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has most exposed
+them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize their
+popularity.  It is their Achilles' heel; the place where their mother
+Nature holds them as she dips them in our waters.  The eccentricity of
+common persons is the entertainment of the multitude, and the maternal
+hand is perceived for a cherishing and endearing sign upon them; but
+rarely can this be found suitable for the august in station; only,
+indeed, when their sceptre is no more fearful than a grandmother's birch;
+and these must learn from it sooner or later that they are uncomfortably
+mortal.
+
+When herrings are at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief
+distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to
+take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he may
+protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such a
+dignitary as the bailiff of a Cinque Port carry home the spoil of
+victorious bargaining on his arm in a basket.  It is not that his conduct
+is in itself objectionable, so much as that it causes him to be popularly
+weighed; and during life, until the best of all advocates can plead
+before our fellow Englishmen that we are out of their way, it is prudent
+to avoid the process.
+
+Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to
+have come of a marketing mother.  She had started him from a small shop
+to a big one.  He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to
+start himself as a gentleman.  He was a man of this ambition, and prouder
+behind it.  But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among
+independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the
+perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the
+source of fifty per cent.  So, if noble imagery were allowable in our
+time in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate the
+splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers.  Deprived of that prodigious
+nourishment of the shop in the fashionable seaport of Helmstone, he
+retired upon his native town, the Cinque Port of Crikswich, where he
+rented the cheapest residence he could discover for his habitation, the
+House on the Beach, and lived imposingly, though not in total disaccord
+with his old mother's principles.  His income, as he observed to his
+widowed sister and solitary companion almost daily in their privacy, was
+respectable.  The descent from an altitude of fifty to five per cent.
+cannot but be felt.  Nevertheless it was a comforting midnight bolster
+reflection for a man, turning over to the other side between a dream and
+a wink, that he was making no bad debts, and one must pay to be addressed
+as esquire.  Once an esquire, you are off the ground in England and on
+the ladder.  An esquire can offer his hand in marriage to a lady in her
+own right; plain esquires have married duchesses; they marry baronets'
+daughters every day of the week.
+
+Thoughts of this kind were as the rise and fall of waves in the bosom of
+the new esquire.  How often in his Helmstone shop had he not heard titled
+ladies disdaining to talk a whit more prettily than ordinary women; and
+he had been a match for the subtlety of their pride--he understood it.
+He knew well that at the hint of a proposal from him they would have
+spoken out in a manner very different to that of ordinary women.  The
+lightning, only to be warded by an esquire, was in them.  He quitted
+business at the age of forty, that he might pretend to espousals with a
+born lady; or at least it was one of the ideas in his mind.
+
+And here, I think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over
+him, and the exclamation, alas!  I would not be premature, but it is
+necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner
+could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do
+like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them to shake them class
+by class as the dust from his heels.  Alas! then an--undertaker's pathos
+is better than none at all--he was not a single-minded aspirant to our
+social honours.  The old marketing mother; to whom he owed his fortunes,
+was in his blood to confound his ambition; and so contradictory was the
+man's nature, that in revenge for disappointments, there were times when
+he turned against the saving spirit of parsimony.  Readers deep in Greek
+dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man
+who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in
+his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that
+he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay.  A sip of his wine
+fetched the breath, as when men are in the presence of the tremendous
+elements of nature.  It sounded the constitution more darkly-awful, and
+with a profounder testimony to stubborn health, than the physician's
+instruments.  Most of the guests at Mr. Tinman's table were so
+constructed that they admired him for its powerful quality the more at
+his announcement of the price of it; the combined strength and cheapness
+probably flattering them, as by another mystic instance of the national
+energy.  It must have been so, since his townsmen rejoiced to hail him as
+head of their town.  Here and there a solitary esquire, fished out of the
+bathing season to dine at the house on the beach, was guilty of raising
+one of those clamours concerning subsequent headaches, which spread an
+evil reputation as a pall.  A resident esquire or two, in whom a
+reminiscence of Tinman's table may be likened to the hook which some old
+trout has borne away from the angler as the most vivid of warnings to him
+to beware for the future, caught up the black report and propagated it.
+
+The Lieutenant of the Coastguard, hearing the latest conscious victim, or
+hearing of him, would nod his head and say he had never dined at Tinman's
+table without a headache ensuing and a visit to the chemist's shop;
+which, he was assured, was good for trade, and he acquiesced, as it was
+right to do in a man devoted to his country.  He dined with Tinman again.
+We try our best to be social.  For eight months in our year he had little
+choice but to dine with Tinman or be a hermit attached to a telescope.
+
+"Where are you going, Lieutenant?"  His frank reply to the question was,
+"I am going to be killed;" and it grew notorious that this meant Tinman's
+table.  We get on together as well as we can.  Perhaps if we were an
+acutely calculating people we should find it preferable both for trade
+and our physical prosperity to turn and kill Tinman, in contempt of
+consequences.  But we are not, and so he does the business gradually for
+us.  A generous people we must be, for Tinman was not detested.  The
+recollection of "next morning" caused him to be dimly feared.
+
+Tinman, meanwhile, was awake only to the Circumstance that he made no
+progress as an esquire, except on the envelopes of letters, and in his
+own esteem.  That broad region he began to occupy to the exclusion of
+other inhabitants; and the result of such a state of princely isolation
+was a plunge of his whole being into deep thoughts.  From the hour of his
+investiture as the town's chief man, thoughts which were long shots took
+possession of him.  He had his wits about him; he was alive to ridicule;
+he knew he was not popular below, or on easy terms with people above him,
+and he meditated a surpassing stroke as one of the Band of Esq., that had
+nothing original about it to perplex and annoy the native mind, yet was
+dazzling.  Few members of the privileged Band dare even imagine the
+thing.
+
+It will hardly be believed, but it is historical fact, that in the act of
+carrying fresh herrings home on his arm, he entertained the idea of a
+visit to the First Person and Head of the realm, and was indulging in
+pleasing visions of the charms of a personal acquaintance.  Nay, he had
+already consulted with brother jurats.  For you must know that one of the
+princesses had recently suffered betrothal in the newspapers, and
+supposing her to deign to ratify the engagement, what so reasonable on
+the part of a Cinque Port chieftain as to congratulate his liege
+mistress, her illustrious mother?  These are thoughts and these are deeds
+>which give emotional warmth and colour to the ejecter members of a
+population wretchedly befogged.  They are our sunlight, and our brighter
+theme of conversation.  They are necessary to the climate and the Saxon
+mind; and it would be foolish to put them away, as it is foolish not to
+do our utmost to be intimate with terrestrial splendours while we have
+them--as it may be said of wardens, mayors, and bailiffs-at command.
+Tinman was quite of this opinion.  They are there to relieve our dulness.
+We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we
+have a right to bother them too.  He had a notion, up in the clouds, of a
+Sailors' Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with, hand
+him the trowel, make him "lay the stone," and then poor prince! refresh
+him at table.  But that was a matter for by and by.
+
+His purchase of herrings completed, Mr. Tinman walked across the mound
+of shingle to the house on the beach.  He was rather a fresh-faced man,
+of the Saxon colouring, and at a distance looking good-humoured.  That he
+should have been able to make such an appearance while doing daily battle
+with his wine, was a proof of great physical vigour.  His pace was
+leisurely, as it must needs be over pebbles, where half a step is
+subtracted from each whole one in passing; and, besides, he was aware of
+a general breath at his departure that betokened a censorious assembly.
+Why should he not market for himself?  He threw dignity into his
+retreating figure in response to the internal interrogation.  The moment
+>was one when conscious rectitude =pliers man should have a tail for its
+just display.  Philosophers have drawn attention to the power of the
+human face to express pure virtue, but no sooner has it passed on than
+the spirit erect within would seem helpless.  The breadth of our
+shoulders is apparently presented for our critics to write on.  Poor duty
+is done by the simple sense of moral worth, to supplant that absence of
+feature in the plain flat back.  We are below the animals in this.  How
+charged with language behind him is a dog!  Everybody has noticed it.
+Let a dog turn away from a hostile circle, and his crisp and wary tail
+not merely defends him, it menaces; it is a weapon.  Man has no choice
+but to surge and boil, or stiffen preposterously.  Knowing the popular
+sentiment about his marketing--for men can see behind their backs, though
+they may have nothing to speak with--Tinman resembled those persons of
+principle who decline to pay for a "Bless your honour!" from a voluble
+beggar-woman, and obtain the reverse of it after they have gone by.  He
+was sufficiently sensitive to feel that his back was chalked as on a
+slate.  The only remark following him was, "There he goes!"
+
+He went to the seaward gate of the house on the beach, made practicable
+in a low flint wall, where he was met by his sister Martha, to whom he
+handed the basket.  Apparently he named the cost of his purchase per
+dozen.  She touched the fish and pressed the bellies of the topmost, it
+might be to question them tenderly concerning their roes.  Then the
+couple passed out of sight.  Herrings were soon after this despatching
+their odours through the chimneys of all Crikswich, and there was that
+much of concord and festive union among the inhabitants.
+
+The house on the beach had been posted where it stood, one supposes, for
+the sake of the sea-view, from which it turned right about to face the
+town across a patch of grass and salt scurf, looking like a square and
+scornful corporal engaged in the perpetual review of an awkward squad of
+recruits.  Sea delighted it not, nor land either.  Marine Parade fronting
+it to the left, shaded sickly eyes, under a worn green verandah, from a
+sun that rarely appeared, as the traducers of spinsters pretend those
+virgins are ever keenly on their guard against him that cometh not.
+Belle Vue Terrace stared out of lank glass panes without reserve,
+unashamed of its yellow complexion.  A gaping public-house, calling
+itself newly Hotel, fell backward a step.  Villas with the titles of
+royalty and bloody battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled in
+bowwindows beside other villas which drew up firmly, commending to the
+attention a decent straightness and unintrusive decorum in preference.
+On an elevated meadow to the right was the Crouch.  The Hall of Elba
+nestled among weather-beaten dwarf woods further toward the cliff.
+Shavenness, featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess scurfiness, formed the
+outward expression of a town to which people were reasonably glad to come
+from London in summer-time, for there was nothing in Crikswich to
+distract the naked pursuit of health.  The sea tossed its renovating
+brine to the determinedly sniffing animal, who went to his meals with an
+appetite that rendered him cordially eulogistic of the place, in spite of
+certain frank whiffs of sewerage coming off an open deposit on the common
+to mingle with the brine.  Tradition told of a French lady and gentleman
+entering the town to take lodgings for a month, and that on the morrow
+they took a boat from the shore, saying in their faint English to a
+sailor veteran of the coastguard, whom they had consulted about the
+weather, "It is better zis zan zat," as they shrugged between rough sea
+and corpselike land.  And they were not seen again.  Their meaning none
+knew.  Having paid their bill at the lodging-house, their conduct was
+ascribed to systematic madness.  English people came to Crikswich for the
+pure salt sea air, and they did not expect it to be cooked and dressed
+and decorated for them.  If these things are done to nature, it is nature
+no longer that you have, but something Frenchified.  Those French are for
+trimming Neptune's beard!  Only wait, and you are sure to find variety in
+nature, more than you may like.  You will find it in Neptune.  What say
+you to a breach of the sea-wall, and an inundation of the aromatic grass-
+flat extending from the house on the beach to the tottering terraces,
+villas, cottages: and public-house transformed by its ensign to Hotel,
+along the frontage of the town?  Such an event had occurred of old, and
+had given the house on the beach the serious shaking great Neptune in his
+wrath alone can give.  But many years had intervened.  Groynes had been
+run down to intercept him and divert him.  He generally did his winter
+mischief on a mill and salt marshes lower westward.  Mr. Tinman had
+always been extremely zealous in promoting the expenditure of what moneys
+the town had to spare upon the protection of the shore, as it were for
+the propitiation or defiance of the sea-god.  There was a kindly joke
+against him an that subject among brother jurats.  He retorted with the
+joke, that the first thing for Englishmen to look to were England's
+defences.
+
+But it will not do to be dwelling too fondly on our eras of peace, for
+which we make such splendid sacrifices.  Peace, saving for the advent of
+a German band, which troubled the repose of the town at intervals, had
+imparted to the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the
+likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with
+a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the
+terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the
+vernal equinox, something happened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A carriage Stopped short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and
+feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of
+Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach.  Mr. Tinnnan's house
+was inquired for.  Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the
+board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it."
+He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not
+unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout.  Who's that for Tinman, I
+wonder?"  The speculations of Crickledon's friends were lost in the
+scream of the plane.
+
+One cast an eye through the door and observed that the carriage was there
+still.  "Gentleman's got out and walked," said Crickledon.  He was
+informed that somebody was visible inside.  "Gentleman's wife, mayhap,"
+he said.  His friends indulged in their privilege of thinking what they
+liked, and there was the usual silence of tongues in the shop.  He
+furnished them sound and motion for their amusement, and now and then a
+scrap of conversation; and the sedater spirits dwelling in his immediate
+neighbourhood were accustomed to step in and see him work up to supper-
+time, instead of resorting to the more turbid and costly excitement of
+the public-house.
+
+Crickledon looked up from the measurement of a thumb-line.  In the
+doorway stood a bearded gentleman, who announced himself with the
+startling exclamation, "Here's a pretty pickle!"  and bustled to make way
+for a man well known to them as Ned Crummins, the upholsterer's man, on
+whose back hung an article of furniture, the condition of which, with a
+condensed brevity of humour worthy of literary admiration, he displayed
+by mutely turning himself about as he entered.
+
+"Smashed!" was the general outcry.
+
+"I ran slap into him," said the gentleman.  "Who the deuce!--no bones
+broken, that's one thing.  The fellow--there, look at him: he's like a
+glass tortoise."
+
+"It's a chiwal glass," Crickledon remarked, and laid finger on the star
+in the centre.
+
+"Gentleman ran slap into me," said Crummins, depositing the frame on the
+floor of the shop.
+
+"Never had such a shock in my life," continued the gentleman.  "Upon my
+soul, I took him for a door: I did indeed.  A kind of light flashed from
+one of your houses here, and in the pitch dark I thought I was at the
+door of old Mart Tinman's house, and dash me if I did n't go in--crash!
+But what the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-glass at
+night, man?  And, look here tell me; how was it you happened to be going
+glass foremost when you'd got the glass on your back?"
+
+"Well, 't ain't my fault, I knows that," rejoined Crummins.  "I came
+along as careful as a man could.  I was just going to bawl out to Master
+Tinman, 'I knows the way, never fear me'; for I thinks I hears him call
+from his house, 'Do ye see the way?' and into me this gentleman runs all
+his might, and smash goes the glass.  I was just ten steps from Master
+Tinman's gate, and that careful, I reckoned every foot I put down, that I
+was; I knows I did, though."
+
+"Why, it was me calling, 'I'm sure I can't see the way.'
+
+"You heard me, you donkey!" retorted the bearded gentleman.  "What was
+the good of your turning that glass against me in the very nick when I
+dashed on you?"
+
+"Well, 't ain't my fault, I swear," said Crummins.  "The wind catches
+voices so on a pitch dark night, you never can tell whether they be on
+one shoulder or the other.  And if I'm to go and lose my place through no
+fault of mine----"
+
+"Have n't I told you, sir, I'm going to pay the damage?  Here," said the
+gentleman, fumbling at his waistcoat, "here, take this card.  Read it."
+
+For the first time during the scene in the carpenter's shop, a certain
+pomposity swelled the gentleman's tone.  His delivery of the card
+appeared to act on him like the flourish of a trumpet before great men.
+
+"Van Diemen Smith," he proclaimed himself for the assistance of Ned
+Crummins in his task; the latter's look of sad concern on receiving the
+card seeming to declare an unscholarly conscience.
+
+An anxious feminine voice was heard close beside Mr. Van Diemen Smith.
+
+"Oh, papa, has there been an accident?  Are you hurt?"
+
+"Not a bit, Netty; not a bit.  Walked into a big looking-glass in the
+dark, that's all.  A matter of eight or ten pound, and that won't stump
+us.  But these are what I call queer doings in Old England, when you
+can't take a step in the dark, on the seashore without plunging bang into
+a glass.  And it looks like bad luck to my visit to old Mart Tinman."
+
+"Can you," he addressed the company, "tell me of a clean, wholesome
+lodging-house?  I was thinking of flinging myself, body and baggage, on
+your mayor, or whatever he is--my old schoolmate; but I don't so much
+like this beginning.  A couple of bed-rooms and sitting-room; clean
+sheets, well aired; good food, well cooked; payment per week in advance."
+
+The pebble dropped into deep water speaks of its depth by the tardy
+arrival of bubbles on the surface, and, in like manner, the very simple
+question put by Mr. Van Diemen Smith pursued its course of penetration in
+the assembled mind in the carpenter's shop for a considerable period,
+with no sign to show that it had reached the bottom.
+
+"Surely, papa, we can go to an inn?  There must be some hotel," said his
+daughter.
+
+"There's good accommodation at the Cliff Hotel hard by," said Crickledon.
+
+"But," said one of his friends, "if you don't want to go so far, sir,
+there's Master Crickledon's own house next door, and his wife lets
+lodgings, and there's not a better cook along this coast."
+
+"Then why did n't the man mention it?  Is he afraid of having me?"  asked
+Mr. Smith, a little thunderingly.  "I may n't be known much yet in
+England; but I'll tell you, you inquire the route to Mr. Van Diemen Smith
+over there in Australia."
+
+"Yes, papa," interrupted his daughter, "only you must consider that it
+may not be convenient to take us in at this hour--so late."
+
+"It's not that, miss, begging your pardon," said Crickledon.  "I make a
+point of never recommending my own house.  That's where it is.  Otherwise
+you're welcome to try us."
+
+"I was thinking of falling bounce on my old schoolmate, and putting Old
+English hospitality to the proof," Mr. Smith meditated.  "But it's late.
+Yes, and that confounded glass!  No, we'll bide with you, Mr. Carpenter.
+I'll send my card across to Mart Tinman to-morrow, and set him agog at
+his breakfast."
+
+Mr. Van Diemen Smith waved his hand for Crickledon to lead the way.
+
+Hereupon Ned Crummins looked up from the card he had been turning over
+and over, more and more like one arriving at a condemnatory judgment of a
+fish.
+
+"I can't go and give my master a card instead of his glass," he remarked.
+
+"Yes, that reminds me; and I should like to know what you meant by
+bringing that glass away from Mr. Tinman's house at night," said Mr.
+Smith.  "If I'm to pay for it, I've a right to know.  What's the meaning
+of moving it at night?  Eh, let's hear.  Night's not the time for moving
+big glasses like that.  I'm not so sure I haven't got a case."
+
+"If you'll step round to my master along o' me, sir," said Crummins,
+"perhaps he'll explain."
+
+Crummins was requested to state who his master was, and he replied,
+"Phippun and Company;" but Mr. Smith positively refused to go with him.
+
+"But here," said he, "is a crown for you, for you're a civil fellow.
+You'll know where to find me in the morning; and mind, I shall expect
+Phippun and Company to give me a very good account of their reason for
+moving a big looking-glass on a night like this.  There, be off."
+
+The crown-piece in his hand effected a genial change in Crummins'
+disposition to communicate.  Crickledon spoke to him about the glass; two
+or three of the others present jogged him.  "What did Mr. Tinman want by
+having the glass moved so late in the day, Ned?  Your master wasn't
+nervous about his property, was he?"
+
+"Not he," said Crummins, and began to suck down his upper lip and agitate
+his eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the setting in of the
+tide of narration.
+
+He caught the eye of Mr. Smith, then looked abashed at Miss.
+
+Crickledon saw his dilemma.  "Say what's uppermost, Ned; never mind how
+you says it.  English is English.  Mr. Tinman sent for you to take the
+glass away, now, did n't he?"
+
+"He did," said Crummins.
+
+"And you went to him."
+
+"Ay, that I did."
+
+"And he fastened the chiwal glass upon your back"
+
+"He did that."
+
+"That's all plain sailing.  Had he bought the glass?"
+
+"No, he had n't bought it.  He'd hired it."
+
+As when upon an enforced visit to the dentist, people have had one tooth
+out, the remaining offenders are more willingly submitted to the
+operation, insomuch that a poetical licence might hazard the statement
+that they shed them like leaves of the tree, so Crummins, who had shrunk
+from speech, now volunteered whole sentences in succession, and how
+important they were deemed by his fellow-townsman, Mr. Smith, and
+especially Miss Annette Smith, could perceive in their ejaculations,
+before they themselves were drawn into the strong current of interest.
+
+And this was the matter: Tinman had hired the glass for three days.
+Latish, on the very first day of the hiring, close upon dark, he had
+despatched imperative orders to Phippun and Company to take the glass out
+of his house on the spot.  And why?  Because, as he maintained, there was
+a fault in the glass causing an incongruous and absurd reflection; and he
+was at that moment awaiting the arrival of another chiwal-glass.
+
+"Cut along, Ned," said Crickledon.
+
+"What the deuce does he want with a chiwal-glass at all?"  cried Mr.
+Smith, endangering the flow of the story by suggesting to the narrator
+that he must "hark back," which to him was equivalent to the jumping of a
+chasm hindward.  Happily his brain had seized a picture:
+
+"Mr. Tinman, he's a-standin' in his best Court suit."
+
+Mr. Tinmau's old schoolmate gave a jump; and no wonder.
+
+"Standing?" he cried; and as the act of standing was really not
+extraordinary, he fixed upon the suit: "Court?"
+
+"So Mrs. Cavely told me, it was what he was standin' in, and as I found
+'m I left 'm," said Crummins.
+
+"He's standing in it now?" said Mr. Van Diemen Smith, with a great gape.
+
+Crummins doggedly repeated the statement.  Many would have ornamented it
+in the repetition, but he was for bare flat truth.
+
+"He must be precious proud of having a Court suit," said Mr. Smith, and
+gazed at his daughter so glassily that she smiled, though she was
+impatient to proceed to Mrs. Crickledon's lodgings.
+
+"Oh! there's where it is?" interjected the carpenter, with a funny frown
+at a low word from Ned Crummins.  "Practicing, is he?  Mr. Tinman's
+practicing before the glass preparatory to his going to the palace in
+London."
+
+"He gave me a shillin'," said Crummins.
+
+Crickledon comprehended him immediately.  "We sha'n't speak about it,
+Ned."
+
+What did you see?  was thus cautiously suggested.
+
+The shilling was on Crummins' tongue to check his betrayal of the secret
+scene.  But remembering that he had only witnessed it by accident, and
+that Mr. Tinman had not completely taken him into his confidence, he
+thrust his hand down his pocket to finger the crown-piece lying in
+fellowship with the coin it multiplied five times, and was inspired to
+think himself at liberty to say: "All I saw was when the door opened.
+Not the house-door.  It was the parlour-door.  I saw him walk up to the
+glass, and walk back from the glass.  And when he'd got up to the glass
+he bowed, he did, and he went back'ards just so."
+
+Doubtless the presence of a lady was the active agent that prevented
+Crummins from doubling his body entirely, and giving more than a rapid
+indication of the posture of Mr. Tinman in his retreat before the glass.
+But it was a glimpse of broad burlesque, and though it was received with
+becoming sobriety by the men in the carpenter's shop, Annette plucked at
+her father's arm.
+
+She could not get him to depart.  That picture of his old schoolmate
+Martin Tinman practicing before a chiwal glass to present himself at the
+palace in his Court suit, seemed to stupefy his Australian intelligence.
+
+"What right has he got to go to Court?"  Mr. Van Diemen Smith inquired,
+like the foreigner he had become through exile.
+
+"Mr. Tinman's bailiff of the town," said Crickledon.
+
+"And what was his objection to that glass I smashed?"
+
+"He's rather an irritable gentleman," Crickledon murmured, and turned to
+Crummins.
+
+Crummins growled: "He said it was misty, and gave him a twist."
+
+"What a big fool he must be! eh?"  Mr. Smith glanced at Crickledon and
+the other faces for the verdict of Tinman's townsmen upon his character.
+
+They had grounds for thinking differently of Tinman.
+
+"He's no fool," said Crickledon.
+
+Another shook his head.  "Sharp at a bargain."
+
+"That he be," said the chorus.
+
+Mr. Smith was informed that Mr. Tinman would probably end by buying up
+half the town.
+
+"Then," said Mr. Smith, "he can afford to pay half the money for that
+glass, and pay he shall."
+
+A serious view of the recent catastrophe was presented by his
+declaration.
+
+In the midst of a colloquy regarding the cost of the glass, during which
+it began to be seen by Mr. Tinman's townsmen that there was laughing-
+stuff for a year or so in the scene witnessed by Crummins, if they
+postponed a bit their right to the laugh and took it in doses, Annette
+induced her father to signal to Crickledon his readiness to go and see
+the lodgings.  No sooner had he done it than he said, "What on earth made
+us wait all this time here?  I'm hungry, my dear; I want supper."
+
+"That is because you have had a disappointment.  I know you, papa," said
+Annette.
+
+"Yes, it's rather a damper about old Mart Tinman," her father assented.
+"Or else I have n't recovered the shock of smashing that glass, and visit
+it on him.  But, upon my honour, he's my only friend in England, I have
+n't a single relative that I know of, and to come and find your only
+friend making a donkey of himself, is enough to make a man think of
+eating and drinking."
+
+Annette murmured reproachfully: "We can hardly say he is our only friend
+in England, papa, can we?"
+
+"Do you mean that young fellow?  You'll take my appetite away if you talk
+of him.  He's a stranger.  I don't believe he's worth a penny.  He owns
+he's what he calls a journalist."
+
+These latter remarks were hurriedly exchanged at the threshold of
+Crickledon's house.
+
+"It don't look promising," said Mr. Smith.
+
+"I didn't recommend it," said Crickledon.
+
+"Why the deuce do you let your lodgings, then?"
+
+"People who have come once come again."
+
+"Oh! I am in England," Annette sighed joyfully, feeling at home in some
+trait she had detected in Crickledon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The story of the shattered chiwal-glass and the visit of Tinman's old
+schoolmate fresh from Australia, was at many a breakfast-table before.
+Tinman heard a word of it, and when he did he had no time to spare for
+such incidents, for he was reading to his widowed sister Martha, in an
+impressive tone, at a tolerably high pitch of the voice, and with a
+suppressed excitement that shook away all things external from his mind
+as violently as it agitated his body.  Not the waves without but the
+engine within it is which gives the shock and tremor to the crazy
+steamer, forcing it to cut through the waves and scatter them to spray;
+and so did Martin Tinman make light of the external attack of the card of
+VAN DIEMEN SMITH, and its pencilled line: "An old chum of yours, eh,
+matey?  "Even the communication of Phippun & Co.  concerning the chiwal-
+glass, failed to divert him from his particular task.  It was indeed a
+public duty; and the chiwal-glass, though pertaining to it, was a private
+business.  He that has broken the glass, let that man pay for it, he
+pronounced--no doubt in simpler fashion, being at his ease in his home,
+but with the serenity of one uplifted.  As to the name VAN DIEMEN SMITH,
+he knew it not, and so he said to himself while accurately recollecting
+the identity of the old chum who alone of men would have thought of
+writing eh, matey?
+
+Mr. Van Diemen Smith did not present the card in person.
+"At Crickledon's," he wrote, apparently expecting the bailiff of the
+town to rush over to him before knowing who he was.
+
+Tinman was far too busy.  Anybody can read plain penmanship or print, but
+ask anybody not a Cabinet Minister or a Lord-in-Waiting to read out loud
+and clear in a Palace, before a Throne.  Oh! the nature of reading is
+distorted in a trice, and as Tinman said to his worthy sister: "I can do
+it, but I must lose no time in preparing myself."  Again, at a reperusal,
+he informed her: "I must habituate myself."  For this purpose he had put
+on the suit overnight.
+
+The articulation of faultless English was his object.  His sister Martha
+sat vice-regally to receive his loyal congratulations on the illustrious
+marriage, and she was pensive, less nervous than her brother from not
+having to speak continuously, yet somewhat perturbed.  She also had her
+task, and it was to avoid thinking herself the Person addressed by her
+suppliant brother, while at the same time she took possession of the
+scholarly training and perfect knowledge of diction and rules of
+pronunciation which would infallibly be brought to bear on him in the
+terrible hour of the delivery of the Address.  It was no small task
+moreover to be compelled to listen right through to the end of the
+Address, before the very gentlest word of criticism was allowed.  She did
+not exactly complain of the renewal of the rehearsal: a fatigue can be
+endured when it is a joy.  What vexed her was her failing memory for the
+points of objection, as in her imagined High Seat she conceived them;
+for, in painful truth, the instant her brother had finished she entirely
+lost her acuteness of ear, and with that her recollection: so there was
+nothing to do but to say: "Excellent!  Quite unobjectionable, dear
+Martin, quite:" so she said, and emphatically; but the addition of the
+word "only" was printed on her contracted brow, and every faculty of
+Tinman's mind and nature being at strain just then, he asked her testily:
+"What now?  what's the fault now?"  She assured him with languor that
+there was not a fault.  "It's not your way of talking," said he, and what
+he said was true.  His discernment was extraordinary; generally he
+noticed nothing.
+
+Not only were his perceptions quickened by the preparations for the day
+of great splendour: day of a great furnace to be passed through likewise!
+--he, was learning English at an astonishing rate into the bargain.  A
+pronouncing Dictionary lay open on his table.  To this he flew at a hint
+of a contrary method, and disputes, verifications and triumphs on one
+side and the other ensued between brother and sister.  In his heart the
+agitated man believed his sister to be a misleading guide.  He dared not
+say it, he thought it, and previous to his African travel through the
+Dictionary he had thought his sister infallible on these points.  He
+dared not say it, because he knew no one else before whom he could
+practice, and as it was confidence that he chiefly wanted--above all
+things, confidence and confidence comes of practice, he preferred the
+going on with his practice to an absolute certainty as to correctness.
+
+At midday came another card from Mr. Van Diemen Smith bearing the
+superscription: alias Phil R.
+
+"Can it be possible," Tinman asked his sister, "that Philip Ribstone has
+had the audacity to return to this country?  I think," he added,
+"I am right in treating whoever sends me this card as a counterfeit."
+
+Martha's advice was, that he should take no notice of the card.
+
+"I am seriously engaged," said Tinman.  With a "Now then, dear," he
+resumed his labours.
+
+Messages had passed between Tinman and Phippun; and in the afternoon
+Phippun appeared to broach the question of payment for the chiwal-glass.
+He had seen Mr. Van Diemen Smith, had found him very strange, rather
+impracticable.  He was obliged to tell Tinman that he must hold him
+responsible for the glass; nor could he send a second until payment was
+made for the first.  It really seemed as if Tinman would be compelled, by
+the force of circumstances, to go and shake his old friend by the hand.
+Otherwise one could clearly see the man might be off: he might be off at
+any minute, leaving a legal contention behind him.  On the other hand,
+supposing he had come to Crikswich for assistance in money?  Friendship
+is a good thing, and so is hospitality, which is an essentially English
+thing, and consequently one that it behoves an Englishman to think it his
+duty to perform, but we do not extend it to paupers.  But should a pauper
+get so close to us as to lay hold of us, vowing he was once our friend,
+how shake him loose?  Tinman foresaw that it might be a matter of five
+pounds thrown to the dogs, perhaps ten, counting the glass.  He put on
+his hat, full of melancholy presentiments; and it was exactly half-past
+five o'clock of the spring afternoon when he knocked at Crickledon's
+door.
+
+Had he looked into Crickledon's shop as he went by, he would have
+perceived Van Diemen Smith astride a piece of timber, smoking a pipe.
+Van Diemen saw Tinman.  His eyes cocked and watered.  It is a disgraceful
+fact to record of him without periphrasis.  In truth, the bearded fellow
+was almost a woman at heart, and had come from the Antipodes throbbing to
+slap Martin Tinman on the back, squeeze his hand, run over England with
+him, treat him, and talk of old times in the presence of a trotting
+regiment of champagne.  That affair of the chiwal-glass had temporarily
+damped his enthusiasm.  The absence of a reply to his double transmission
+of cards had wounded him; and something in the look of Tinman disgusted
+his rough taste.  But the well-known features recalled the days of youth.
+Tinman was his one living link to the country he admired as the conqueror
+of the world, and imaginatively delighted in as the seat of pleasures,
+and he could not discard the feeling of some love for Tinman without
+losing his grasp of the reason why, he had longed so fervently and
+travelled so breathlessly to return hither.  In the days of their youth,
+Van Diemen had been Tinman's cordial spirit, at whom he sipped for
+cheerful visions of life, and a good honest glow of emotion now and then.
+Whether it was odd or not that the sipper should be oblivious, and the
+cordial spirit heartily reminiscent of those times, we will not stay to
+inquire.
+
+Their meeting took place in Crickledon's shop.  Tinman was led in by Mrs.
+Crickledon.  His voice made a sound of metal in his throat, and his air
+was that of a man buttoned up to the palate, as he read from the card,
+glancing over his eyelids, "Mr. Van Diemen Smith, I believe."
+
+"Phil Ribstone, if you like," said the other, without rising.
+
+"Oh, ah, indeed!" Tinman temperately coughed.
+
+"Yes, dear me.  So it is.  It strikes you as odd?"
+
+"The change of name," said Tinman.
+
+"Not nature, though!"
+
+"Ah!  Have you been long in England?"
+
+"Time to run to Helmstone, and on here.  You've been lucky in business,
+I hear."
+
+"Thank you; as things go.  Do you think of remaining in England?"
+
+"I've got to settle about a glass I broke last night."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of it.  Yes, I fear there will have to be a
+settlement."
+
+"I shall pay half of the damage.  You'll have to stump up your part."
+
+Van Diemen smiled roguishly.
+
+"We must discuss that," said Tinman, smiling too, as a patient in bed may
+smile at a doctor's joke; for he was, as Crickledon had said of him, no
+fool on practical points, and Van Diemen's mention of the half-payment
+reassured him as to his old friend's position in the world, and softly
+thawed him.  "Will you dine with me to-day?"
+
+"I don't mind if I do.  I've a girl.  You remember little Netty?  She's
+walking out on the beach with a young fellow named Fellingham, whose
+acquaintance we made on the voyage, and has n't left us long to
+ourselves.  Will you have her as well?  And I suppose you must ask him.
+He's a newspaper man; been round the world; seen a lot."
+
+Tinman hesitated.  An electrical idea of putting sherry at fifteen
+shillings per dozen on his table instead of the ceremonial wine at
+twenty-five shillings, assisted him to say hospitably, "Oh! ah! yes; any
+friend of yours."
+
+"And now perhaps you'll shake my fist," said Van Diemen.
+
+"With pleasure," said Tinman.  "It was your change of name, you know, Philip."
+
+Look here, Martin.  Van Diemen Smith was a convict, and my benefactor.
+Why the deuce he was so fond of that name, I can't tell you; but his
+dying wish was for me to take it and carry it on.  He left me his
+fortune, for Van Diemen Smith to enjoy life, as he never did, poor
+fellow, when he was alive.  The money was got honestly, by hard labour at
+a store.  He did evil once, and repented after.  But, by Heaven!"--Van
+Diemen jumped up and thundered out of a broad chest--"the man was one of
+the finest hearts that ever beat.  He was! and I'm proud of him.  When he
+died, I turned my thoughts home to Old England and you, Martin."
+
+"Oh!"  said Tinman; and reminded by Van Diemen's way of speaking, that
+cordiality was expected of him, he shook his limbs to some briskness, and
+continued, "Well, yes, we must all die in our native land if we can.
+I hope you're comfortable in your lodgings?"
+
+"I'll give you one of Mrs. Crickledon's dinners to try.  You're as good
+as mayor of this town, I hear?"
+
+"I am the bailiff of the town," said Mr. Tinman.
+
+"You're going to Court, I'm told."
+
+"The appointment," replied Mr. Tinman, "will soon be made.  I have not
+yet an appointed day."
+
+On the great highroad of life there is Expectation, and there is
+Attainment, and also there is Envy.  Mr. Tinman's posture stood for
+Attainment shadowing Expectation, and sunning itself in the glass of
+Envy, as he spoke of the appointed day.  It was involuntary, and
+naturally evanescent, a momentary view of the spirit.
+
+He unbent, and begged to be excused for the present, that he might go and
+apprise his sister of guests coming.
+
+"All right.  I daresay we shall see, enough of one another," said Van
+Diemen.  And almost before the creak of Tinman's heels was deadened on
+the road outside the shop, he put the funny question to Crickledon, "Do
+you box?"
+
+"I make 'em," Crickledon replied.
+
+"Because I should like to have a go in at something, my friend."
+
+Van Diemen stretched and yawned.
+
+Crickledon recommended the taking of a walk.
+
+"I think I will," said the other, and turned back abruptly.  "How long do
+you work in the day?"
+
+"Generally, all the hours of light," Crickledon replied; "and always up
+to supper-time."
+
+"You're healthy and happy?"
+
+"Nothing to complain of."
+
+"Good appetite?"
+
+"Pretty regular."
+
+"You never take a holiday?"
+
+"Except Sundays."
+
+"You'd like to be working then?"
+
+"I won't say that."
+
+"But you're glad to be up Monday morning?"
+
+"It feels cheerfuller in the shop."
+
+"And carpentering's your joy?"
+
+"I think I may say so."
+
+Van Diemen slapped his thigh.  "There's life in Old England yet!"
+
+Crickledon eyed him as he walked away to the beach to look for his
+daughter, and conceived that there was a touch of the soldier in him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Annette Smith's delight in her native England made her see beauty and
+kindness everywhere around her; it put a halo about the house on the
+beach, and thrilled her at Tinman's table when she heard the thunder of
+the waves hard by.  She fancied it had been a most agreeable dinner to
+her father and Mr. Herbert Fellingham--especially to the latter, who had
+laughed very much; and she was astonished to hear them at breakfast both
+complaining of their evening.  In answer to which, she exclaimed, "Oh, I
+think the situation of the house is so romantic!"
+
+"The situation of the host is exceedingly so," said Mr. Fellingham; "but
+I think his wine the most unromantic liquid I have ever tasted."
+
+"It must be that!"  cried Van Diemen, puzzled by novel pains in the head.
+"Old Martin woke up a little like his old self after dinner."
+
+"He drank sparingly," said Mr. Fellingham.
+
+"I am sure you were satirical last night," Annette said reproachfully.
+
+"On the contrary, I told him I thought he was in a romantic situation."
+
+"But I have had a French mademoiselle for my governess and an Oxford
+gentleman for my tutor; and I know you accepted French and English from
+Mr. Tinman and his sister that I should not have approved."
+
+"Netty," said Van Diemen, "has had the best instruction money could
+procure; and if she says you were satirical, you may depend on it you
+were."
+
+"Oh, in that case, of course!"  Mr. Fellingham rejoined.  "Who could help
+it?"
+
+He thought himself warranted in giving the rein to his wicked satirical
+spirit, and talked lightly of the accidental character of the letter H in
+Tinman's pronunciation; of how, like somebody else's hat in a high wind,
+it descended on somebody else's head, and of how his words walked about
+asking one another who they were and what they were doing, danced
+together madly, snapping their fingers at signification; and so forth.
+He was flippant.
+
+Annette glanced at her father, and dropped her eyelids.
+
+Mr. Fellingham perceived that he was enjoined to be on his guard.
+
+He went one step farther in his fun; upon which Van Diemen said, with a
+frown, "If you please!"
+
+Nothing could withstand that.
+
+"Hang old Mart Tinman's wine!" Van Diemen burst out in the dead pause.
+"My head's a bullet.  I'm in a shocking bad temper.  I can hardly see.
+I'm bilious."
+
+Mr. Fellingham counselled his lying down for an hour, and he went
+grumbling, complaining of Mart Tinman's incredulity about the towering
+beauty of a place in Australia called Gippsland.
+
+Annette confided to Mr. Fellingham, as soon as they were alone, the
+chivalrous nature of her father in his friendships, and his indisposition
+to hear a satirical remark upon his old schoolmate, the moment he
+understood it to be satire.
+
+Fellingham pleaded: "The man's a perfect burlesque.  He's as distinctly
+made to be laughed at as a mask in a pantomime."
+
+"Papa will not think so," said Annette; "and papa has been told that he
+is not to be laughed at as a man of business."
+
+"Do you prize him for that?"
+
+"I am no judge.  I am too happy to be in England to be a judge of
+anything."
+
+"You did not touch his wine!"
+
+"You men attach so much importance to wine!"
+
+"They do say that powders is a good thing after Mr. Tinman's wine,"
+observed Mrs. Crickledon, who had come into the sitting-room to take away
+the breakfast things.
+
+Mr. Fellingham gave a peal of laughter; but Mrs Crickledon bade him be
+hushed, for Mr. Van Diemen Smith had gone to lay down his poor aching
+head on his pillow.  Annette ran upstairs to speak to her father about
+a doctor.
+
+During her absence, Mr. Fellingham received the popular portrait of Mr.
+Tinman from the lips of Mrs. Crickledon.  He subsequently strolled to the
+carpenter's shop, and endeavoured to get a confirmation of it.
+
+"My wife talks too much," said Crickledon.
+
+When questioned by a gentleman, however, he was naturally bound to answer
+to the extent of his knowledge.
+
+"What a funny old country it is!"  Mr. Fellingham said to Annette, on
+their walk to the beach.
+
+She implored him not to laugh at anything English.
+
+"I don't, I assure you," said he.  "I love the country, too.  But when
+one comes back from abroad, and plunges into their daily life, it's
+difficult to retain the real figure of the old country seen from outside,
+and one has to remember half a dozen great names to right oneself.  And
+Englishmen are so funny!  Your father comes here to see his old friend,
+and begins boasting of the Gippsland he has left behind.  Tinman
+immediately brags of Helvellyn, and they fling mountains at one another
+till, on their first evening together, there's earthquake and rupture--
+they were nearly at fisticuffs at one time."
+
+"Oh!  surely no," said Annette.  "I did not hear them.  They were good
+friends when you came to the drawingroom.  Perhaps the wine did affect
+poor papa, if it was bad wine.  I wish men would never drink any.  How
+much happier they would be."
+
+"But then there would cease to be social meetings in England.  What
+should we do?"
+
+"I know that is a sneer; and you were nearly as enthusiastic as I was on
+board the vessel," Annette said, sadly.
+
+"Quite true.  I was.  But see what quaint creatures we have about us!
+Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass!  And that
+good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea
+fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses
+he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!"
+
+"I wish I could see one--of a real English oak," said Annette.
+
+"And after being in England a few months you will be sighing for the
+Continent."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"You think you will be quite contented here?"
+
+"I am sure I shall be.  May papa and I never be exiles again!  I did not
+feel it when I was three years old, going out to Australia; but it would
+be like death to me now.  Oh!" Annette shivered, as with the exile's
+chill.
+
+"On my honour," said Mr. Fellingham, as softly as he could with the wind
+in his teeth, "I love the old country ten times more from your love of
+it."
+
+"That is not how I want England to be loved," returned Annette.
+
+"The love is in your hands."
+
+She seemed indifferent on hearing it.
+
+He should have seen that the way to woo her was to humour her
+prepossession by another passion.  He could feel that it ennobled her in
+the abstract, but a latent spite at Tinman on account of his wine, to
+which he continued angrily to attribute as unwonted dizziness of the head
+and slight irascibility, made him urgent in his desire that she should
+separate herself from Tinman and his sister by the sharp division of
+derision.
+
+Annette declined to laugh at the most risible caricatures of Tinman.
+In her antagonism she forced her simplicity so far as to say that she did
+not think him absurd.  And supposing Mr. Tinman to have proposed to the
+titled widow, Lady Ray, as she had heard, and to other ladies young and
+middle-aged in the neighbourhood, why should he not, if he wished to
+marry?  If he was economical, surely he had a right to manage his own
+affairs.  Her dread was lest Mr. Tinman and her father should quarrel
+over the payment for the broken chiwal-glass: that she honestly admitted,
+and Fellingham was so indiscreet as to roar aloud, not so very cordially.
+
+Annette thought him unkindly satirical; and his thoughts of her reduced
+her to the condition of a commonplace girl with expressive eyes.
+
+She had to return to her father.  Mr. Fellingham took a walk on the
+springy turf along the cliffs; and "certainly she is a commonplace girl,"
+he began by reflecting; with a side eye at the fact that his meditations
+were excited by Tinman's poisoning of his bile.  "A girl who can't see
+the absurdity of Tinman must be destitute of common intelligence."
+After a while he sniffed the fine sharp air of mingled earth and sea
+delightedly, and he strode back to the town late in the afternoon,
+laughing at himself in scorn of his wretched susceptibility to bilious
+impressions, and really all but hating Tinman as the cause of his
+weakness--in the manner of the criminal hating the detective, perhaps.
+He cast it altogether on Tinman that Annette's complexion of character
+had become discoloured to his mind; for, in spite of the physical
+freshness with which he returned to her society, he was incapable of
+throwing off the idea of her being commonplace; and it was with regret
+that he acknowledged he had gained from his walk only a higher opinion of
+himself.
+
+Her father was the victim of a sick headache, [Migraine--D.W.]and lay, a
+groaning man, on his bed, ministered to by Mrs. Crickledon chiefly.
+Annette had to conduct the business with Mr. Phippun and Mr. Tinman as to
+payment for the chiwal-glass.  She was commissioned to offer half the
+price for the glass on her father's part; more he would not pay.  Tinman
+and Phippun sat with her in Crickledon's cottage, and Mrs. Crickledon
+brought down two messages from her invalid, each positive, to the effect
+that he would fight with all the arms of English law rather than yield
+his point.
+
+Tinman declared it to be quite out of the question that he should pay a
+penny.  Phippun vowed that from one or the other of them he would have
+the money.
+
+Annette naturally was in deep distress, and Fellingham postponed the
+discussion to the morrow.
+
+Even after such a taste of Tinman as that, Annette could not be induced
+to join in deriding him privately.  She looked pained by Mr. Fellingham's
+cruel jests.  It was monstrous, Fellingham considered, that he should
+draw on himself a second reprimand from Van Diemen Smith, while they were
+consulting in entire agreement upon the case of the chiwal-glass.
+
+"I must tell you this, mister sir," said Van Diemen, "I like you, but
+I'll be straightforward and truthful, or I'm not worthy the name of
+Englishman; and I do like you, or I should n't have given you leave to
+come down here after us two.  You must respect my friend if you care for
+my respect.  That's it.  There it is.  Now you know my conditions."
+
+"I 'm afraid I can't sign the treaty," said Fellingham.
+
+"Here's more," said Van Diemen.  "I'm a chilly man myself if I hear a
+laugh and think I know the aim of it.  I'll meet what you like except
+scorn.  I can't stand contempt.  So I feel for another.  And now you
+know."
+
+"It puts a stopper on the play of fancy, and checks the throwing off of
+steam," Fellingham remonstrated.  "I promise to do my best, but of all
+the men I've ever met in my life--Tinman!--the ridiculous!  Pray pardon
+me; but the donkey and his looking-glass!  The glass was misty!  He--as
+particular about his reflection in the glass as a poet with his verses!
+Advance, retire, bow; and such murder of the Queen's English in the very
+presence!  If I thought he was going to take his wine with him, I'd have
+him arrested for high treason."
+
+"You've chosen, and you know what you best like," said Van Diemen,
+pointing his accents--by which is produced the awkward pause, the pitfall
+of conversation, and sometimes of amity.
+
+Thus it happened that Mr. Herbert Fellingham journeyed back to London a
+day earlier than he had intended, and without saying what he meant to
+say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A month later, after a night of sharp frost on the verge of the warmer
+days of spring, Mr. Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect
+blue that was in brilliant harmony with the green downs, the white cliffs
+and sparkling sea, and no doubt it was the beauty before his eyes which
+persuaded him of his delusion in having taken Annette for a commonplace
+girl.  He had come in a merely curious mood to discover whether she was
+one or not.  Who but a commonplace girl would care to reside in
+Crikswich, he had asked himself; and now he was full sure that no
+commonplace girl would ever have had the idea.  Exquisitely simple, she
+certainly was; but that may well be a distinction in a young lady whose
+eyes are expressive.
+
+The sound of sawing attracted him to Crickledon's shop, and the
+industrious carpenter soon put him on the tide of affairs.
+
+Crickledon pointed to the house on the beach as the place where Mr. Van
+Diemen Smith and his daughter were staying.
+
+"Dear me! and how does he look?"  said Fellingham.
+
+"Our town seems to agree with him, sir."
+
+"Well, I must not say any more, I suppose."  Fellingham checked his
+tongue.  "How have they settled that dispute about the chiwal-glass?"
+
+"Mr. Tinman had to give way."
+
+"Really."
+
+"But," Crickledon stopped work, "Mr. Tinman sold him a meadow."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Mr. Smith has been buying a goodish bit of ground here.  They tell me
+he's about purchasing Elba.  He has bought the Crouch.  He and Mr. Tinman
+are always out together.  They're over at Helmstone now.  They've been to
+London."
+
+"Are they likely to be back to-day?"
+
+"Certain, I should think.  Mr. Tinman has to be in London to-morrow."
+
+Crickledon looked.  He was not the man to look artful, but there was a
+lighted corner in his look that revived Fellingham's recollections, and
+the latter burst out:
+
+"The Address?  I 'd half forgotten it.  That's not over yet?  Has he been
+practicing much?"
+
+"No more glasses ha' been broken."
+
+"And how is your wife, Crickledon?"
+
+"She's at home, sir, ready for a talk, if you've a mind to try her."
+
+Mrs. Crickledon proved to be very ready.  "That Tinman," was her theme.
+He had taken away her lodgers, and she knew his objects.  Mr. Smith
+repented of leaving her, she knew, though he dared not say it in plain
+words.  She knew Miss Smith was tired to death of constant companionship
+with Mrs. Cavely, Tinman's sister.  She generally came once in the day
+just to escape from Mrs. Cavely, who would not, bless you! step into a
+cottager's house where she was not allowed to patronize.  Fortunately
+Miss Smith had induced her father to get his own wine from the merchants.
+
+"A happy resolution," said Fellingham; "and a saving one."
+
+He heard further that Mr. Smith would take possession of the Crouch next
+month, and that Mrs. Cavely hung over Miss Smith like a kite.
+
+"And that old Tinman, old enough to be her father!" said Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas.  Fellingham, though a man,
+and an Englishman, was nervously wakeful enough to see the connection.
+
+"They'll have to consult the young lady first, ma'am."
+
+"If it's her father's nod she'll bow to it; now mark me," Mrs. Crickledon
+said, with emphasis.  "She's a young lady who thinks for herself, but she
+takes her start from her father where it's feeling.  And he's gone stone-
+blind over that Tinman."
+
+While they were speaking, Annette appeared.
+
+"I saw you," she said to Fellingham; gladly and openly, in the most
+commonplace manner.
+
+"Are you going to give me a walk along the beach?"  said he.
+
+She proposed the country behind the town, and that was quite as much to
+his taste.  But it was not a happy walk.  He had decided that he admired
+her, and the notion of having Tinman for a rival annoyed him.  He
+overflowed with ridicule of Tinman, and this was distressing to Annette,
+because not only did she see that he would not control himself before her
+father, but he kindled her own satirical spirit in opposition to her
+father's friendly sentiments toward his old schoolmate.
+
+"Mr. Tinman has been extremely hospitable to us," she said, a little
+coldly.
+
+"May I ask you, has he consented to receive instruction in deportment and
+pronunciation?"
+
+Annette did not answer.
+
+"If practice makes perfect, he must be near the mark by this time."
+
+She continued silent.
+
+"I dare say, in domestic life, he's as amiable as he is hospitable, and
+it must be a daily gratification to see him in his Court suit."
+
+"I have not seen him in his Court suit."
+
+"That is his coyness."
+
+"People talk of those things."
+
+"The common people scandalize the great, about whom they know nothing,
+you mean!  I am sure that is true, and living in Courts one must be
+keenly aware of it.  But what a splendid sky and-sea!"
+
+"Is it not?"
+
+Annette echoed his false rapture with a candour that melted him.
+
+He was preparing to make up for lost time, when the wild waving of a
+parasol down a road to the right, coming from the town, caused Annette to
+stop and say, "I think that must be Mrs. Cavely.  We ought to meet her."
+
+Fellingham asked why.
+
+"She is so fond of walks," Anisette replied, with a tooth on her lip
+
+Fellingham thought she seemed fond of runs.
+
+Mrs. Cavely joined them, breathless.  "My dear! the pace you go at!"
+she shouted.  "I saw you starting.  I followed, I ran, I tore along.
+I feared I never should catch you.  And to lose such a morning of
+English scenery!
+
+"Is it not heavenly?"
+
+"One can't say more," Fellingham observed, bowing.
+
+"I am sure I am very glad to see you again, sir.  You enjoy Crikswich?"
+
+"Once visited, always desired, like Venice, ma'am.  May I venture to
+inquire whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?"
+
+"The day after to-morrow.  The appointment is made with him," said Mrs.
+Cavely, more officially in manner, "for the day after to-morrow.  He is
+excited, as you may well believe.  But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to
+him--the very distraction he wanted.  We have become one family, you
+know."
+
+"Indeed, ma'am, I did not know it," said Fellingham.
+
+The communication imparted such satiric venom to his further remarks,
+that Annette resolved to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.
+
+He called at the house on the beach after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van
+Diemen Smith, when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman; for
+Van Diemen's contribution to the table was champagne, and that had been
+drunk, but Tinman's sherry remained.  Tinman would insist on Fellingham's
+taking a glass.  Fellingham parried him with a sedate gravity of irony
+that was painfully perceptible to Anisette.  Van Diemen at last backed
+Tinman's hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham's astonishment, he found
+that he had been supposed by these two men to be bashfully retreating
+from a seductive offer all the time that his tricks of fence and
+transpiercings of one of them had been marvels of skill.
+
+Tinman pushed the glass into his hand.
+
+"You have spilt some," said Fellingham.
+
+"It won't hurt the carpet," said Tinman.
+
+"Won't it?" Fellingham gazed at the carpet, as if expecting a flame to
+arise.
+
+He then related the tale of the magnanimous Alexander drinking off the
+potion, in scorn of the slanderer, to show faith in his friend.
+
+"Alexander--Who was that?"  said Tinman, foiled in his historical
+recollections by the absence of the surname.
+
+"General Alexander," said Fellingham.  "Alexander Philipson, or he
+declared it was Joveson; and very fond of wine.  But his sherry did for
+him at last."
+
+"Ah! he drank too much, then," said Tinman.
+
+"Of his own!"
+
+Anisette admonished the vindictive young gentleman by saying, "How long
+do you stay in Crikswich, Mr. Fellingham?"
+
+He had grossly misconducted himself.  But an adversary at once offensive
+and helpless provokes brutality.  Anisette prudently avoided letting her
+father understand that satire was in the air; and neither he nor Tinman
+was conscious of it exactly: yet both shrank within themselves under the
+sensation of a devilish blast blowing.  Fellingham accompanied them and
+certain jurats to London next day.
+
+Yes, if you like: when a mayor visits Majesty, it is an important
+circumstance, and you are at liberty to argue at length that it means
+more than a desire on his part to show his writing power and his reading
+power: it is full of comfort the people, as an exhibition of their
+majesty likewise; and it is an encouragement to men to strive to become
+mayors, bailiffs, or prime men of any sort; but a stress in the reporting
+of it--the making it appear too important a circumstance--will surely
+breathe the intimation to a politically-minded people that satire is in
+the air, and however dearly they cherish the privilege of knocking at the
+first door of the kingdom, and walking ceremoniously in to read their
+writings, they will, if they are not in one of their moods for
+prostration, laugh.  They will laugh at the report.
+
+All the greater reason is it that we should not indulge them at such
+periods; and I say woe's me for any brother of the pen, and one in some
+esteem, who dressed the report of that presentation of the Address of
+congratulation by Mr. Bailiff Tinman, of Crikswich!  Herbert Fellingham
+wreaked his personal spite on Tinman.  He should have bethought him that
+it involved another than Tinman that is to say, an office--which the
+fitful beast rejoices to paw and play with contemptuously now and then,
+one may think, as a solace to his pride, and an indemnification for those
+caprices of abject worship so strongly recalling the days we see through
+Mr. Darwin's glasses.
+
+He should not have written the report.  It sent a titter over England.
+He was so unwise as to despatch a copy of the newspaper containing it to
+Van Diemen Smith.  Van Diemen perused it with satisfaction.  So did
+Tinman.  Both of these praised the able young writer.  But they handed
+the paper to the Coastguard Lieutenant, who asked Tinman how he liked it;
+and visitors were beginning to drop in to Crikswich, who made a point of
+asking for a sight of the chief man; and then came a comic publication,
+all in the Republican tone of the time, with Man's Dignity for the
+standpoint, and the wheezy laughter residing in old puns to back it, in
+eulogy of the satiric report of the famous Address of congratulation of
+the Bailiff of Crikswich.
+
+"Annette," Van Diemen said to his daughter, "you'll not encourage that
+newspaper fellow to come down here any more.  He had his warning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+One of the most difficult lessons for spirited young men to learn is,
+that good jokes are not always good policy.  They have to be paid for,
+like good dinners, though dinner and joke shall seem to have been at
+somebody else's expense.  Young Fellingham was treated rudely by Van
+Diemen Smith, and with some cold reserve by Annette: in consequence of
+which he thought her more than ever commonplace.  He wrote her a letter
+of playful remonstrance, followed by one that appealed to her sentiments.
+
+But she replied to neither of them.  So his visits to Crikswich came to
+an end.
+
+Shall a girl who has no appreciation of fun affect us?  Her expressive
+eyes, and her quaint simplicity, and her enthusiasm for England, haunted
+Mr. Fellingham; being conjured up by contrast with what he met about him.
+But shall a girl who would impose upon us the task of holding in our
+laughter at Tinman be much regretted?  There could be no companionship
+between us, Fellingham thought.
+
+On an excursion to the English Lakes he saw the name of Van Diemen
+Smith in a visitors' book, and changed his ideas on the subject of
+companionship.  Among mountains, or on the sea, or reading history,
+Annette was one in a thousand.  He happened to be at a public ball at
+Helmstone in the Winter season, and who but Annette herself came whirling
+before him on the arm of an officer!  Fellingham did not miss his chance
+of talking to her.  She greeted him gaily, and speaking with the
+excitement of the dance upon her, appeared a stranger to the serious
+emotions he was willing to cherish.  She had been to the Lakes and to
+Scotland.  Next summer she was going to Wales.  All her experiences were
+delicious.  She was insatiable, but satisfied.
+
+"I wish I had been with you," said Fellingham.
+
+"I wish you had," said she.
+
+Mrs. Cavely was her chaperon at the ball, and he was not permitted to
+enjoy a lengthened conversation sitting with Annette.  What was he to
+think of a girl who could be submissive to Mrs. Cavely, and danced with
+any number of officers, and had no idea save of running incessantly over
+England in the pursuit of pleasure?  Her tone of saying, "I wish you
+had," was that of the most ordinary of wishes, distinctly, if not
+designedly different from his own melodious depth.
+
+She granted him one waltz, and he talked of her father and his whimsical
+vagrancies and feeling he had a positive liking for Van Diemen, and he
+sagaciously said so.
+
+Annette's eyes brightened.  "Then why do you never go to see him?  He has
+bought Elba.  We move into the Hall after Christmas.  We are at the
+Crouch at present.  Papa will be sure to make you welcome.  Do you not
+know that he never forgets a friend or breaks a friendship?"
+
+"I do, and I love him for it," said Fellingham.
+
+If he was not greatly mistaken a gentle pressure on the fingers of his
+left hand rewarded him.
+
+This determined him.  It should here be observed that he was by birth the
+superior of Annette's parentage, and such is the sentiment of a better
+blood that the flattery of her warm touch was needed for him to overlook
+the distinction.
+
+Two of his visits to Crikswich resulted simply in interviews and
+conversations with Mrs. Crickledon.  Van Diemen and his daughter were in
+London with Tinman and Mrs. Cavely, purchasing furniture for Elba Hall.
+Mrs. Crickledon had no scruple in saying, that Mrs. Cavely meant her
+brother to inhabit the Hall, though Mr. Smith had outbid him in the
+purchase.  According to her, Tinman and Mr. Smith had their differences;
+for Mr. Smith was a very outspoken gentleman, and had been known to call
+Tinman names that no man of spirit would bear if he was not scheming.
+
+Fellingham returned to London, where he roamed the streets famous for
+furniture warehouses, in the vain hope of encountering the new owner of
+Elba.
+
+Failing in this endeavour, he wrote a love-letter to Annette.
+
+It was her first.  She had liked him.  Her manner of thinking she might
+love him was through the reflection that no one stood in the way.  The
+letter opened a world to her, broader than Great Britain.
+
+Fellingham begged her, if she thought favourably of him, to prepare her
+father for the purport of his visit.  If otherwise, she was to interdict
+the visit with as little delay as possible and cut him adrift.
+
+A decided line of conduct was imperative.  Yet you have seen that she was
+not in love.  She was only not unwilling to be in love.  And Fellingham
+was just a trifle warmed.  Now mark what events will do to light the
+fires.
+
+Van Diemen and Tinman, old chums re-united, and both successful in life,
+had nevertheless, as Mrs. Crickledon said, their differences.  They
+commenced with an opposition to Tinman's views regarding the expenditure
+of town moneys.  Tinman was ever for devoting them to the patriotic
+defence of "our shores;" whereas Van Diemen, pointing in detestation of
+the town sewerage reeking across the common under the beach, loudly
+called on him to preserve our lives, by way of commencement.  Then Van
+Diemen precipitately purchased Elba at a high valuation, and Tinman had
+expected by waiting to buy it at his own valuation, and sell it out of
+friendly consideration to his friend afterwards, for a friendly
+consideration.  Van Diemen had joined the hunt.  Tinman could not mount
+a horse.  They had not quarrelled, but they had snapped about these and
+other affairs.  Van Diemen fancied Tinman was jealous of his wealth.
+Tinman shrewdly suspected Van Diemen to be contemptuous of his dignity.
+He suffered a loss in a loan of money; and instead of pitying him, Van
+Diemen had laughed him to scorn for expecting security for investments at
+ten per cent.  The bitterness of the pinch to Tinman made him frightfully
+sensitive to strictures on his discretion.  In his anguish he told his
+sister he was ruined, and she advised him to marry before the crash.  She
+was aware that he exaggerated, but she repeated her advice.  She went so
+far as to name the person.  This is known, because she was overheard by
+her housemaid, a gossip of Mrs. Crickledon's, the subsequently famous
+"Little Jane."
+
+Now, Annette had shyly intimated to her father the nature of Herbert
+Fellingham's letter, at the same time professing a perfect readiness to
+submit to his directions; and her father's perplexity was very great, for
+Annette had rather fervently dramatized the young man's words at the ball
+at Helmstone, which had pleasantly tickled him, and, besides, he liked
+the young man.  On the other hand, he did not at all like the prospect of
+losing his daughter; and he would have desired her to be a lady of title.
+He hinted at her right to claim a high position.  Annette shrank from the
+prospect, saying, "Never let me marry one who might be ashamed of my
+father!"
+
+"I shouldn't stomach that," said Van Diemen, more disposed in favour of
+the present suitor.
+
+Annette was now in a tremor.  She had a lover; he was coming.  And if he
+did not come, did it matter?  Not so very much, except to her pride.  And
+if he did, what was she to say to him?  She felt like an actress who may
+in a few minutes be called on the stage, without knowing her part.  This
+was painfully unlike love, and the poor girl feared it would be her
+conscientious duty to dismiss him--most gently, of course; and perhaps,
+should he be impetuous and picturesque, relent enough to let him hope,
+and so bring about a happy postponement of the question.  Her father had
+been to a neighbouring town on business with Mr. Tinman.  He knocked at
+her door at midnight; and she, in dread of she knew not what--chiefly
+that the Hour of the Scene had somehow struck--stepped out to him
+trembling.  He was alone.  She thought herself the most childish of
+mortals in supposing that she could have been summoned at midnight to
+declare her sentiments, and hardly noticed his gloomy depression.  He
+asked her to give him five minutes; then asked her for a kiss, and told
+her to go to bed and sleep.  But Annette had seen that a great present
+affliction was on him, and she would not be sent to sleep.  She promised
+to listen patiently, to bear anything, to be brave.  "Is it bad news from
+home?" she said, speaking of the old home where she had not left her
+heart, and where his money was invested.
+
+"It's this, my dear Netty," said Van Diemen, suffering her to lead him
+into her sitting-room; "we shall have to leave the shores of England."
+
+"Then we are ruined."
+
+"We're not; the rascal can't do that.  We might be off to the Continent,
+or we might go to America; we've money.  But we can't stay here.  I'll
+not live at any man's mercy."
+
+"The Continent! America!"  exclaimed the enthusiast for England.
+"Oh, papa, you love living in England so!"
+
+"Not so much as all that, my dear.  You do, that I know.  But I don't see
+how it's to be managed.  Mart Tinman and I have been at tooth and claw
+to-day and half the night; and he has thrown off the mask, or he's dashed
+something from my sight, I don't know which.  I knocked him down."
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"I picked him up."
+
+"Oh," cried Annette, "has Mr. Tinman been hurt?"
+
+"He called me a Deserter!"
+
+Anisette shuddered.
+
+She did not know what this thing was, but the name of it opened a cabinet
+of horrors, and she touched her father timidly, to assure him of her
+constant love, and a little to reassure herself of his substantial
+identity.
+
+"And I am one," Van Diemen made the confession at the pitch of his voice.
+"I am a Deserter; I'm liable to be branded on the back.  And it's in Mart
+Tinman's power to have me marched away to-morrow morning in the sight of
+Crikswich, and all I can say for myself, as a man and a Briton, is, I did
+not desert before the enemy.  That I swear I never would have done.
+Death, if death's in front; but your poor mother was a handsome woman, my
+child, and there--I could not go on living in barracks and leaving her
+unprotected.  I can't tell a young woman the tale.  A hundred pounds came
+on me for a legacy, as plump in my hands out of open heaven, and your
+poor mother and I saw our chance; we consulted, and we determined to risk
+it, and I got on board with her and you, and over the seas we went, first
+to shipwreck, ultimately to fortune."
+
+Van Diemen laughed miserably.  "They noticed in the hunting-field here I
+had a soldier-like seat.  A soldier-like seat it'll be, with a brand on
+it.  I sha'n't be asked to take a soldier-like seat at any of their
+tables again.  I may at Mart Tinman's, out of pity, after I've undergone
+my punishment.  There's a year still to run out of the twenty of my term
+of service due.  He knows it; he's been reckoning; he has me.  But the
+worst cat-o'-nine-tails for me is the disgrace.  To have myself pointed
+at, 'There goes the Deserter'  He was a private in the Carbineers, and he
+deserted.'  No one'll say, 'Ay, but he clung to the idea of his old
+schoolmate when abroad, and came back loving him, and trusted him, and
+was deceived."
+
+Van Diemen produced a spasmodic cough with a blow on his chest.  Anisette
+was weeping.
+
+"There, now go to bed," said he.  "I wish you might have known no more
+than you did of our flight when I got you on board the ship with your
+poor mother; but you're a young woman now, and you must help me to think
+of another cut and run, and what baggage we can scrape together in a
+jiffy, for I won't live here at Mart Tinman's mercy."
+
+Drying her eyes to weep again, Annette said, when she could speak: "Will
+nothing quiet him?  I was going to bother you with all sorts of silly
+questions, poor dear papa; but I see I can understand if I try.  Will
+nothing--Is he so very angry?  Can we not do something to pacify him?  He
+is fond of money.  He--oh, the thought of leaving England!  Papa, it will
+kill you; you set your whole heart on England.  We could--I could--could
+I not, do you not think?--step between you as a peacemaker.  Mr. Tinman
+is always very courteous to me."
+
+At these words of Annette's, Van Diemen burst into a short snap of savage
+laughter.  "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart Tinman!" he
+said.  "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find me flown,
+though I leave a name to stink like your common behind me.  And," he
+added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my benefactor.  Poor
+old Van Diemen!  He thought it a safe bequest to make."
+
+"It was; it is!  We will stay; we will not be exiled," said Annette.  "I
+will do anything.  What was the quarrel about, papa?"
+
+"The fact is, my dear, I just wanted to show him--and take down his
+pride--I'm by my Australian education a shrewder hand than his old
+country.  I bought the house on the beach while he was chaffering, and
+then I sold it him at a rise when the town was looking up--only to make
+him see.  Then he burst up about something I said of Australia.  I will
+have the common clean.  Let him live at the Crouch as my tenant if he
+finds the house on the beach in danger."
+
+"Papa, I am sure," Annette repeated--"sure I have influence with Mr.
+Tinman."
+
+"There are those lips of yours shutting tight," said her father.  "Just
+listen, and they make a big O.  The donkey!  He owns you've got
+influence, and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to
+marry him.  I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year.  I told him to
+look sharp not to be knocked down again.  Mart Tinman for my son-in-law!
+That's an upside down of my expectations, as good as being at the
+antipodes without a second voyage back!  I let him know you were
+engaged."
+
+Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with
+a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
+breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there.  She could not get
+his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
+understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
+into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
+us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo!  she
+stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
+believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
+arms, bearing pistols, to follow.  Sick, she palpitates; she compresses
+her trepidation; she coughs, perchance she sings a bar or two of an aria.
+Glancing down again, thrice horrible to her is it to discover that there
+is no foot!  For had it remained, it might have been imagined a harmless,
+empty boot.  But the withdrawal has a deadly significance of animal life
+.  .  .  .
+
+In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she
+gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman's bride, and
+she could not think it credible.  She half scented, she devised her plan
+of escape from another single mention of it.  But on her father's
+remarking, with a shuffle, frightened by her countenance, "Don't listen
+to what I said, Netty.  I won't paint him blacker than he is"--then
+Annette was sure she had been proposed for by Mr. Tinman, and she fancied
+her father might have revolved it in his mind that there was this means
+of keeping Tinman silent, silent for ever, in his own interests.
+
+"It was not true, when you told Mr. Tinman I was engaged, papa," she
+said.
+
+"No, I know that.  Mart Tinman only half-kind of hinted.  Come, I say!
+Where's the unmarried man wouldn't like to have a girl like you, Netty!
+They say he's been rejected all round a circuit of fifteen miles; and
+he's not bad-looking, neither--he looks fresh and fair.  But I thought it
+as well to let him know he might get me at a disadvantage, but he
+couldn't you.  Now, don't think about it, my love."
+
+"Not if it is not necessary, papa," said Annette; and employed her
+familiar sweetness in persuading him to go to bed, as though he were the
+afflicted one requiring to be petted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Round under the cliffs by the sea, facing South, are warm seats in
+winter.  The sun that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in a
+mantle.  Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham found Annette, a chalk-
+block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from the
+keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth blue
+water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.
+
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?  Those
+who write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length
+are unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures
+of fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them
+if they were only some bit more lightly touched.  Those troubled
+sentiments of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy
+of mention.  Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible
+upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in
+our history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not
+that so large a space is claimed for the exposure.  As it is, one has
+almost to fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright
+thoughts and feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in
+presenting her that she may be credible.  Even then--so much being
+accomplished the thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in
+the situation of Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as
+of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the
+offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones.  Annette was in
+the grand crucial position of English imaginative prose.  I recognize it,
+and that to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood.  But what
+was the plain truth?  She had brought herself to think she ought to
+sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in
+tricks of coldness alternating with tones of regret, ended, as they had
+commenced, in a mysterious half-sullenness.  She had hardly a word to
+say.  Let me step in again to observe that she had at the moment no
+pointed intention of marrying Tinman.  To her mind the circumstances
+compelled her to embark on the idea of doing so, and she saw the
+extremity in an extreme distance, as those who are taking voyages may see
+death by drowning.  Still she had embarked.
+
+"At all events, I have your word for it that you don't dislike me?" said
+Herbert.
+
+"Oh! no," she sighed.  She liked him as emigrants the land they are
+leaving.
+
+"And you have not promised your hand?"
+
+"No," she said, but sighed in thinking that if she could be induced to
+promise it, there would not be a word of leaving England.
+
+"Then, as you are not engaged, and don't hate me, I have a chance?" he
+said, in the semi-wailful interrogative of an organ making a mere windy
+conclusion.
+
+Ocean sent up a tiny wave at their feet.
+
+"A day like this in winter is rarer than a summer day," Herbert resumed
+encouragingly.
+
+Annette was replying, "People abuse our climate--"
+
+But the thought of having to go out away from this climate in the
+darkness of exile, with her father to suffer under it worse than herself,
+overwhelmed her, and fetched the reality of her sorrow in the form of
+Tinman swimming before her soul with the velocity of a telegraph-pole to
+the window of the flying train.  It was past as soon as seen, but it gave
+her a desperate sensation of speed.
+
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest.
+
+And Herbert should have been more resolute, fierier.  She needed a strong
+will.
+
+But he was not on the rapids of the masterful passion.  For though going
+at a certain pace, it was by his own impulsion; and I am afraid I must,
+with many apologies, compare him to the skater--to the skater on easy,
+slippery ice, be it understood; but he could perform gyrations as he
+went, and he rather sailed along than dashed; he was careful of his
+figuring.  Some lovers, right honest lovers, never get beyond this quaint
+skating-stage; and some ladies, a right goodly number in a foggy climate,
+deceived by their occasional runs ahead, take them for vessels on the
+very torrent of love.  Let them take them, and let the race continue.
+Only we perceive that they are skating; they are careering over a smooth
+icy floor, and they can stop at a signal, with just half-a-yard of
+grating on the heel at the outside.  Ice, and not fire nor falling water,
+has been their medium of progression.
+
+Whether a man should unveil his own sex is quite another question.
+If we are detected, not solely are we done for, but our love-tales too.
+However, there is not much ground for anxiety on that head.  Each member
+of the other party is blind on her own account.
+
+To Annette the figuring of Herbert was graceful, but it did not catch her
+up and carry her; it hardly touched her: He spoke well enough to make her
+sorry for him, and not warmly enough to make her forget her sorrow for
+herself.
+
+Herbert could obtain no explanation of the singularity of her conduct
+from Annette, and he went straight to her father, who was nearly as
+inexplicable for a time.  At last he said:
+
+"If you are ready to quit the country with us, you may have my consent."
+
+"Why quit the country?"  Herbert asked, in natural amazement.
+
+Van Diemen declined to tell him.
+
+But seeing the young man look stupefied and wretched he took a turn about
+the room, and said: "I have n't robbed," and after more turns, "I have
+n't murdered."  He growled in his menagerie trot within the four walls.
+"But I'm, in a man's power.  Will that satisfy you?  You'll tell me,
+because I'm rich, to snap my fingers.  I can't.  I've got feelings.  I'm
+in his power to hurt me and disgrace me.  It's the disgrace--to my
+disgrace I say it--I dread most.  You'd be up to my reason if you had
+ever served in a regiment.  I mean, discipline--if ever you'd known
+discipline--in the police if you like--anything--anywhere where there's
+what we used to call spiny de cor.  I mean, at school.  And I'm," said
+Van Diemen, "a rank idiot double D. dolt, and flat as a pancake, and
+transparent as a pane of glass.  You see through me.  Anybody could.
+I can't talk of my botheration without betraying myself.  What good am
+I among you sharp fellows in England?"
+
+Language of this kind, by virtue of its unintelligibility, set Mr.
+Herbert Fellingham's acute speculations at work.  He was obliged to lean
+on Van Diemen's assertion, that he had not robbed and had not murdered,
+to be comforted by the belief that he was not once a notorious
+bushranger, or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing
+that is naughtily Australian and kangarooly.
+
+He sat at the dinner-table at Elba, eating like the rest of mankind, and
+looking like a starved beggarman all the while.
+
+Annette, in pity of his bewilderment, would have had her father take him
+into their confidence.  She suggested it covertly, and next she spoke of
+it to him as a prudent measure, seeing that Mr. Fellingham might find out
+his exact degree of liability.  Van Diemen shouted; he betrayed himself
+in his weakness as she could not have imagined him.  He was ready to go,
+he said--go on the spot, give up Elba, fly from Old England: what he
+could not do was to let his countrymen know what he was, and live among
+them afterwards.  He declared that the fact had eternally been present to
+his mind, devouring him; and Annette remembered his kindness to the
+artillerymen posted along the shore westward of Crikswich, though she
+could recall no sign of remorse.  Van Diemen said: "We have to do with
+Martin Tinman; that's one who has a hold on me, and one's enough.  Leak
+out my secret to a second fellow, you double my risks."  He would not be
+taught to see how the second might counteract the first.  The singularity
+of the action of his character on her position was, that though she knew
+not a soul to whom she could unburden her wretchedness, and stood far
+more isolated than in her Australian home, fever and chill struck her
+blood in contemplation of the necessity of quitting England.
+
+Deep, then, was her gratitude to dear good Mrs. Cavely for stepping in to
+mediate between her father and Mr. Tinman.  And well might she be amazed
+to hear the origin of their recent dispute.
+
+"It was," Mrs. Cavely said, "that Gippsland."
+
+Annette cried: "What?"
+
+"That Gippsland of yours, my dear.  Your father will praise Gippsland
+whenever my Martin asks him to admire the beauties of our neighbourhood.
+Many a time has Martin come home to me complaining of it.  We have no
+doubt on earth that Gippsland is a very fine place; but my brother has
+his idea's of dignity, you must know, and I only wish he had been more
+used to contradiction, you may believe me.  He is a lamb by nature.  And,
+as he says, 'Why underrate one's own country?' He cannot bear to hear
+boasting.  Well! I put it to you, dear Annette, is he so unimportant a
+person?  He asks to be respected, and especially by his dearest friend.
+From that to blows!  It's the way with men.  They begin about trifles,
+they drink, they quarrel, and one does what he is sorry for, and one says
+more than he means.  All my Martin desires is to shake your dear father's
+hand, forgive and forget.  To win your esteem, darling Annette, he would
+humble himself in the dust.  Will you not help me to bring these two dear
+old friends together once more?  It is unreasonable of your dear papa to
+go on boasting of Gippsland if he is so fond of England, now is it not?
+My brother is the offended party in the eye of the law.  That is quite
+certain.  Do you suppose he dreams of taking advantage of it?  He is
+waiting at home to be told he may call on your father.  Rank, dignity,
+wounded feelings, is nothing to him in comparison with friendship."
+
+Annette thought of the blow which had felled him, and spoke the truth of
+her heart in saying, "He is very generous."
+
+"You understand him."  Mrs. Cavely pressed her hand.  "We will both go to
+your dear father.  He may," she added, not without a gleam of feminine
+archness, "praise Gippsland above the Himalayas to me.  What my Martin so
+much objected to was, the speaking of Gippsland at all when there was
+mention of our Lake scenery.  As for me, I know how men love to boast of
+things nobody else has seen."
+
+The two ladies went in company to Van Diemen, who allowed himself to be
+melted.  He was reserved nevertheless.  His reception of Mr. Tinman
+displeased his daughter.  Annette attached the blackest importance to a
+blow of the fist.  In her mind it blazed fiendlike, and the man who
+forgave it rose a step or two on the sublime.  Especially did he do so
+considering that he had it in his power to dismiss her father and herself
+from bright beaming England before she had looked on all the cathedrals
+and churches, the sea-shores and spots named in printed poetry, to say
+nothing of the nobility.
+
+"Papa, you were not so kind to Mr. Tinman as I could have hoped," said
+Annette.
+
+"Mart Tinman has me at his mercy, and he'll make me know it," her father
+returned gloomily.  "He may let me off with the Commander-in-chief.
+He'll blast my reputation some day, though.  I shall be hanging my head
+in society, through him."
+
+Van Diemen imitated the disconsolate appearance of a gallows body, in one
+of those rapid flashes of spontaneous veri-similitude which spring of an
+inborn horror painting itself on the outside.
+
+"A Deserter!" he moaned.
+
+He succeeded in impressing the terrible nature of the stigma upon
+Annette's imagination.
+
+The guest at Elba was busy in adding up the sum of his own impressions,
+and dividing it by this and that new circumstance; for he was totally in
+the dark.  He was attracted by the mysterious interview of Mrs. Cavely
+and Annette.  Tinman's calling and departing set him upon new
+calculations.  Annette grew cold and visibly distressed by her
+consciousness of it.
+
+She endeavoured to account for this variation of mood.  "We have been
+invited to dine at the house on the beach to-morrow.  I would not have
+accepted, but papa .  .  .  we seemed to think it a duty.  Of course the
+invitation extends to you.  We fancy you do not greatly enjoy dining
+there.  The table will be laid for you here, if you prefer."
+
+Herbert preferred to try the skill of Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+Now, for positive penetration the head prepossessed by a suspicion is
+unmatched; for where there is no daylight; this one at least goes about
+with a lantern.  Herbert begged Mrs. Crickledon to cook a dinner for him,
+and then to give the right colour to his absence from the table of Mr.
+Tinman, he started for a winter day's walk over the downs as sharpening a
+business as any young fellow, blunt or keen, may undertake; excellent for
+men of the pen, whether they be creative, and produce, or slaughtering,
+and review; good, then, for the silly sheep of letters and the butchers.
+He sat down to Mrs. Crickledon's table at half-past six.  She was, as she
+had previously informed him, a forty-pound-a-year cook at the period of
+her courting by Crickledon.  That zealous and devoted husband had made
+his first excursion inland to drop over the downs to the great house, and
+fetch her away as his bride, on the death of her master, Sir Alfred
+Pooney, who never would have parted with her in life; and every day of
+that man's life he dirtied thirteen plates at dinner, nor more, nor less,
+but exactly that number, as if he believed there was luck in it.  And as
+Crickledon said, it was odd.  But it was always a pleasure to cook for
+him.  Mrs. Crickledon could not abide cooking for a mean eater.  And when
+Crickledon said he had never seen an acorn, he might have seen one had he
+looked about him in the great park, under the oaks, on the day when he
+came to be married.
+
+"Then it's a standing compliment to you, Mrs. Crickledon, that he did
+not," said Herbert.
+
+He remarked with the sententiousness of enforced philosophy, that no wine
+was better than bad wine.
+
+Mrs. Crickledon spoke of a bottle left by her summer lodgers, who had
+indeed left two, calling the wine invalid's wine; and she and her husband
+had opened one on the anniversary of their marriage day in October.  It
+had the taste of doctor's shop, they both agreed; and as no friend of
+theirs could be tempted beyond a sip, they were advised, because it was
+called a tonic, to mix it with the pig-wash, so that it should not be
+entirely lost, but benefit the constitution of the pig.  Herbert sipped
+at the remaining bottle, and finding himself in the superior society of
+an old Manzanilla, refilled his glass.
+
+"Nothing I knows of proves the difference between gentlefolks and poor
+persons as tastes in wine," said Mrs. Crickledon, admiring him as she
+brought in a dish of cutlets,--with Sir Alfred Pooney's favourite sauce
+Soubise, wherein rightly onion should be delicate as the idea of love in
+maidens' thoughts, albeit constituting the element of flavour.  Something
+of such a dictum Sir Alfred Pooney had imparted to his cook, and she
+repeated it with the fresh elegance of, such sweet sayings when
+transfused through the native mind:
+
+"He said, I like as it was what you would call a young gal's blush at a
+kiss round a corner."
+
+The epicurean baronet had the habit of talking in that way.
+
+Herbert drank to his memory.  He was well-filled; he had no work to do,
+and he was exuberant in spirits, as Mrs. Crickledon knew her countrymen
+should and would be under those conditions.  And suddenly he drew his
+hand across a forehead so wrinkled and dark, that Mrs. Crickledon
+exclaimed, "Heart or stomach?"
+
+"Oh, no," said he.  "I'm sound enough in both, I hope."
+
+That old Tinman's up to one of his games," she observed.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"He's circumventing Miss Annette Smith."
+
+"Pooh!  Crickledon.  A man of his age can't be seriously thinking of
+proposing for a young lady."
+
+He's a well-kept man.  He's never racketed.  He had n't the rackets in
+him.  And she may n't care for him.  But we hear things drop."
+
+"What things have you heard drop, Crickledon?  In a profound silence you
+may hear pins; in a hubbub you may hear cannon-balls.  But I never
+believe in eavesdropping gossip."
+
+"He was heard to say to Mr. Smith," Crickledon pursued, and she lowered
+her voice, "he was heard to say, it was when they were quarreling over
+that chiwal, and they went at one another pretty hard before Mr. Smith
+beat him and he sold Mr. Smith that meadow; he was heard to say, there
+was worse than transportation for Mr. Smith if he but lifted his finger.
+They Tinmans have awful tempers.  His old mother died malignant, though
+she was a saving woman, and never owed a penny to a Christian a hour
+longer than it took to pay the money.  And old Tinman's just such
+another."
+
+"Transportation!" Herbert ejaculated, "that's sheer nonsense, Crickledon.
+I'm sure your husband would tell you so."
+
+"It was my husband brought me the words," Mrs. Crickledon rejoined with
+some triumph.  "He did tell me, I own, to keep it shut: but my speaking
+to you, a friend of Mr. Smith's, won't do no harm.  He heard them under
+the battery, over that chiwal glass: 'And you shall pay,' says Mr. Smith,
+and 'I sha'n't,' says old Tinman.  Mr. Smith said he would have it if he
+had to squeeze a deathbed confession from a sinner.  Then old Tinman
+fires out, 'You!' he says, 'you' and he stammered.  'Mr. Smith,' my
+husband said and you never saw a man so shocked as my husband at being
+obliged to hear them at one another Mr. Smith used the word damn. 'You
+may laugh, sir.'"
+
+"You say it so capitally, Crickledon."
+
+"And then old Tinman said, 'And a D. to you; and if I lift my finger,
+it's Big D. on your back."
+
+"And what did Mr. Smith say, then?"
+
+"He said, like a man shot, my husband says he said, 'My God!'"
+
+Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.
+
+"You tell me, Crickledon, your husband actually heard that--just those
+words?--the tones?"
+
+"My husband says he heard him say, 'My God!' just like a poor man shot or
+stabbed.  You may speak to Crickledon, if you speaks to him alone, sir.
+I say you ought to know.  For I've noticed Mr. Smith since that day has
+never looked to me the same easy-minded happy gentleman he was when we
+first knew him.  He would have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but
+Crickledon thought I'd better be independent, and Mr. Smith said to me,
+'Perhaps you're right, Crickledon, for who knows how long I may be among
+you?'"
+
+Herbert took the solace of tobacco in Crickledon's shop.  Thence, with
+the story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house on the beach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The moon was over sea.  Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for
+shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on
+the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was
+neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp at the pebbles.
+
+Mrs. Crickledon's dinner and the state of his heart made young Fellingham
+indifferent to a wintry atmosphere.  It sufficed him that the night was
+fair.  He stretched himself on the shingle, thinking of the Manzanilla,
+and Annette, and the fine flavour given to tobacco by a dry still air in
+moonlight--thinking of his work, too, in the background, as far as mental
+lassitude would allow of it.  The idea of taking Annette to see his first
+play at the theatre when it should be performed--was very soothing.  The
+beach rather looked like a stage, and the sea like a ghostly audience,
+with, if you will, the broadside bulks of black sailing craft at anchor
+for representatives of the newspaper piers.  Annette was a nice girl; if
+a little commonplace and low-born, yet sweet.  What a subject he could
+make of her father!  "The Deserter" offered a new complication.
+Fellingham rapidly sketched it in fancy--Van Diemen, as a Member of the
+Parliament of Great Britain, led away from the House of Commons to be
+branded on the bank!  What a magnificent fall!  We have so few intensely
+dramatic positions in English real life that the meditative author grew
+enamoured of this one, and laughed out a royal "Ha!" like a monarch
+reviewing his well-appointed soldiery.
+
+"There you are," said Van Diemen's voice; "I smelt your pipe.  You're a
+rum fellow, to belying out on the beach on a cold night.  Lord!  I don't
+like you the worse for it.  Twas for the romance of the moon in my young
+days."
+
+"Where is Annette?"  said Fellingham, jumping to his feet.
+
+"My daughter?  She 's taking leave of her intended."
+
+"What's that?"  Fellingham gasped.  "Good heavens, Mr. Smith, what do you
+mean?"
+
+"Pick up your pipe, my lad.  Girls choose as they please, I suppose"
+
+"Her intended, did you say, sir?  What can that mean?"
+
+"My dear good young fellow, don't make a fuss.  We're all going to stay
+here, and very glad to see you from time to time.  The fact is, I
+oughtn't to have quarrelled with Mart Tinman as I've done; I'm too
+peppery by nature.  The fact is, I struck him, and he forgave it.
+I could n't have done that myself.  And I believe I'm in for a headache
+to-morrow; upon my soul, I do.  Mart Tinman would champagne us; but,
+poor old boy, I struck him, and I couldn't make amends--didn't see my
+way; and we joined hands over the glass--to the deuce with the glass!--
+and the end of it is, Netty--she did n't propose it, but as I'm in his
+--I say, as I had struck him, she--it was rather solemn, if you had seen
+us--she burst into tears, and there was Mrs. Cavely, and old Mart, and me
+as big a fool--if I'm not a villain!"
+
+Fellingham perceived a more than common effect of Tin man's wine.  He
+touched Van Diemen on the shoulder. "May I beg to hear exactly what has
+happened?"
+
+"Upon my soul, we're all going to live comfortably in Old England, and no
+more quarreling and decamping," was the stupid rejoinder.  "Except that I
+did n't exactly--I think you said I exactly'?--I did n't bargain for old
+Mart as my--but he's a sound man; Mart's my junior; he's rich.  He's eco
+.  .  .  he's eco .  .  .  you know--my Lord!  where's my brains?--but
+he's upright--'nomical!"
+
+"An economical man," said Fellingham, with sedate impatience.
+
+"My dear sir, I'm heartily obliged to you for your assistance," returned
+Van Diemen.  "Here she is."
+
+Annette had come out of the gate in the flint wall.  She started slightly
+on seeing Herbert, whom she had taken for a coastguard, she said.  He
+bowed.  He kept his head bent, peering at her intrusively.
+
+"It's the air on champagne," Van Diemen said, calling on his lungs to
+clear themselves and right him.  "I was n't a bit queer in the house."
+
+"The air on Tinman's champagne!"  said Fellingham.
+
+"It must be like the contact of two hostile chemical elements."
+
+Annette walked faster.
+
+They descended from the shingle to the scant-bladed grass-sweep running
+round the salted town-refuse on toward Elba.  Van Diemen sniffed,
+ejaculating, "I'll be best man with Mart Tinman about this business!
+You'll stop with us, Mr.----what's your Christian name?  Stop with us as
+long as you like.  Old friends for me!  The joke of it is that Nelson was
+my man, and yet I went and enlisted in the cavalry.  If you talk of
+chemical substances, old Mart Tinman was a sneak who never cared a dump
+for his country; and I'm not to speak a single sybbarel about that.....
+over there .  .  .  Australia .  .  .  Gippsland!  So down he went, clean
+over.  Very sorry for what we have done.  Contrite.  Penitent."
+
+"Now we feel the wind a little," said Annette.
+
+Fellingham murmured, "Allow me; your shawl is flying loose."
+
+He laid his hands on her arms, and, pressing her in a tremble, said,
+"One sign!  It's not true?  A word!  Do you hate me?"
+
+"Thank you very much, but I am not cold," she replied and linked herself
+to her father.
+
+Van Diemen immediately shouted, "For we are jolly boys! for we are jolly
+boys!  It's the air on the champagne.  And hang me," said he, as they
+entered the grounds of Elba, "if I don't walk over my property."
+
+Annette interposed; she stood like a reed in his way.
+
+"No! my Lord!  I'll see what I sold you for!"  he cried.  "I'm an owner
+of the soil of Old England, and care no more for the title of squire than
+Napoleon Bonaparty.  But I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard: your mother was
+never so astonished at her dog as old Van Diemen would be to hear himself
+called squire in Old England.  And a convict he was, for he did wrong
+once, but he worked his redemption.  And the smell of my own property
+makes me feel my legs again.  And I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard, as
+Netty calls you when she speaks of you in private: Mart Tinman's ideas of
+wine are pretty much like his ideas of healthy smells, and when I'm
+bailiff of Crikswich, mind, he'll find two to one against him in our town
+council.  I love my country, but hang me if I don't purify it--"
+
+Saying this, with the excitement of a high resolve a upon him, Van Diemen
+bored through a shrubbery-brake, and Fellingham said to Annette:
+
+"Have I lost you?"
+
+"I belong to my father," said she, contracting and disengaging her
+feminine garments to step after him in the cold silver-spotted dusk of
+the winter woods.
+
+Van Diemen came out on a fish-pond.
+
+"Here you are, young ones!" he said to the pair.  "This way, Fellowman.
+I'm clearer now, and it's my belief I've been talking nonsense.  I'm
+puffed up with money, and have n't the heart I once had.  I say,
+Fellowman, Fellowbird, Hubbard--what's your right name?--fancy an old
+carp fished out of that pond and flung into the sea.  That's exile!
+And if the girl don't mind, what does it matter?"
+
+"Mr. Herbert Fellingham, I think, would like to go to bed, papa," said
+Annette.
+
+"Miss Smith must be getting cold," Fellingham hinted.
+
+"Bounce away indoors," replied Van Diemen, and he led them like a bull.
+
+Annette was disinclined to leave them together in the smoking-room, and
+under the pretext of wishing to see her father to bed she remained with
+them, though there was a novel directness and heat of tone in Herbert
+that alarmed her, and with reason.  He divined in hideous outlines what
+had happened.  He was no longer figuring on easy ice, but desperate at
+the prospect of a loss to himself, and a fate for Annette, that tossed
+him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back.
+
+Van Diemen begged him to light his pipe.
+
+"I'm off to London to-morrow," said Fellingham.  "I don't want to go, for
+very particular reasons; I may be of more use there.  I have a cousin
+who's a General officer in the army, and if I have your permission--you
+see, anything's better, as it seems to me, than that you should depend
+for peace and comfort on one man's tongue not wagging, especially when he
+is not the best of tempers if I have your permission--without mentioning
+names, of course--I'll consult him."
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+"You know you may trust me, sir.  I love your daughter with all my heart.
+Your honour and your interests are mine."
+
+Van Diemen struggled for composure.
+
+"Netty, what have you been at?" he said.
+
+"It is untrue, papa!"  she answered the unworded accusation.
+
+"Annette has told me nothing, sir.  I have heard it.  You must brace your
+mind to the fact that it is known.  What is known to Mr. Tinman is pretty
+sure to be known generally at the next disagreement."
+
+"That scoundrel Mart!" Van Diemen muttered.
+
+"I am positive Mr. Tinman did not speak of you, papa," said Annette, and
+turned her eyes from the half-paralyzed figure of her father on Herbert
+to put him to proof.
+
+"No, but he made himself heard when it was being discussed.  At any rate,
+it's known; and the thing to do is to meet it."
+
+"I'm off.  I'll not stop a day.  I'd rather live on the Continent," said
+Van Diemen, shaking himself, as to prepare for the step into that desert.
+
+"Mr. Tinman has been most generous!"  Annette protested tearfully.
+
+"I won't say no: I think you are deceived and lend him your own
+generosity," said Herbert.  "Can you suppose it generous, that even in
+the extremest case, he should speak of the matter to your father, and
+talk of denouncing him?  He did it."
+
+"He was provoked."
+
+"A gentleman is distinguished by his not allowing himself to be
+provoked."
+
+"I am engaged to him, and I cannot hear it said that he is not a
+gentleman."
+
+The first part of her sentence Annette uttered bravely; at the conclusion
+she broke down.  She wished Herbert to be aware of the truth, that he
+might stay his attacks on Mr. Tinman; and she believed he had only been
+guessing the circumstances in which her father was placed; but the
+comparison between her two suitors forced itself on her now, when the
+younger one spoke in a manner so self-contained, brief, and full of
+feeling.
+
+She had to leave the room weeping.
+
+"Has your daughter engaged herself, sir?" said Herbert,
+
+"Talk to me to-morrow; don't give us up if she has we were trapped, it's
+my opinion," said Van Diemen.  "There's the devil in that wine of--Mart
+Tinman's.  I feel it still, and in the morning it'll be worse.  What can
+she see in him?  I must quit the country; carry her off.  How he did it,
+I don't know.  It was that woman, the widow, the fellow's sister.  She
+talked till she piped her eye--talked about our lasting union.  On my
+soul, I believe I egged Netty on!  I was in a mollified way with that
+wine; all of a sudden the woman joins their hands!  And I--a man of
+spirit will despise me!--what I thought of was, "now my secret's safe!
+You've sobered me, young sir.  I see myself, if that's being sober.
+I don't ask your opinion of me; I am a deserter, false to my colours,
+a breaker of his oath.  Only mark this: I was married, and a common
+trooper, married to a handsome young woman, true as steel; but she was
+handsome, and we were starvation poor, and she had to endure persecution
+from an officer day by day.  Bear that situation in your mind. . . .
+Providence dropped me a hundred pounds out of the sky.  Properly
+speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I reaped it, you may say,
+from a relative's grave.  Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and
+you're poor; and you may be happy though you're poor; but where there are
+many poor young women, lots of rich men are a terrible temptation to
+them.  That's my dear good wife speaking, and had she been spared to me
+I never should have come back to Old England, and heart's delight and
+heartache I should not have known.  She was my backbone, she was my
+breast-comforter too.  Why did she stick to me?  Because I had faith in
+her when appearances were against her.  But she never forgave this
+country the hurt to her woman's pride.  You'll have noticed a squarish
+jaw in Netty.  That's her mother.  And I shall have to encounter it,
+supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false.  I'm blown on
+somehow.  I'll think of what course I'll take 'twixt now and morning.
+Good night, young gentleman."
+
+"Good night; sir," said Herbert, adding, "I will get information from the
+Horse Guards; as for the people knowing it about here, you're not living
+much in society--"
+
+"It's not other people's feelings, it's my own," Van Diemen silenced him.
+"I feel it, if it's in the wind; ever since Mart Tinman spoke the thing
+out, I've felt on my skin cold and hot."
+
+He flourished his lighted candle and went to bed, manifestly solaced by
+the idea that he was the victim of his own feelings.
+
+Herbert could not sleep.  Annette's monstrous choice of Tinman in
+preference to himself constantly assailed and shook his understanding.
+There was the "squarish jaw" mentioned by her father to think of.  It
+filled him with a vague apprehension, but he was unable to imagine that
+a young girl, and an English girl, and an enthusiastic young English
+girl, could be devoid of sentiment; and presuming her to have it, as one
+must, there was no fear, that she would persist in her loathsome choice
+when she knew her father was against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Annette did not shun him next morning.  She did not shun the subject,
+either.  But she had been exact in arranging that she should not be more
+than a few minutes downstairs before her father.  Herbert found, that
+compared with her, girls of sentiment are commonplace indeed.  She had
+conceived an insane idea of nobility in Tinman that blinded her to his
+face, figure, and character--his manners, likewise.  He had forgiven a
+blow!
+
+Silly as the delusion might be, it clothed her in whimsical
+attractiveness.
+
+It was a beauty in her to dwell so firmly upon moral quality.  Overthrown
+and stunned as he was, and reduced to helplessness by her brief and
+positive replies, Herbert was obliged to admire the singular young lady,
+who spoke, without much shyness, of her incongruous, destined mate though
+his admiration had an edge cutting like irony.  While in the turn for
+candour, she ought to have told him, that previous to her decision she
+had weighed the case of the diverse claims of himself and Tinman, and
+resolved them according to her predilection for the peaceful residence
+of her father and herself in England.  This she had done a little
+regretfully, because of the natural sympathy of the young girl for the
+younger man.  But the younger man had seemed to her seriously-
+straightforward mind too light and airy in his wooing, like one of her
+waltzing officers--very well so long as she stepped the measure with him,
+and not forcible enough to take her off her feet.  He had changed, and
+now that he had become persuasive, she feared he would disturb the
+serenity with which she desired and strove to contemplate her decision.
+Tinman's magnanimity was present in her imagination to sustain her,
+though she was aware that Mrs. Cavely had surprised her will, and caused
+it to surrender unconsulted by her wiser intelligence.
+
+"I cannot listen to you," she said to Herbert, after listening longer
+than was prudent.  "If what you say of papa is true, I do not think he
+will remain in Crikswich, or even in England.  But I am sure the old
+friend we used, to speak of so much in Australia has not wilfully
+betrayed him."
+
+Herbert would have had to say, "Look on us two!" to proceed in his
+baffled wooing; and the very ludicrousness of the contrast led him to see
+the folly and shame of proposing it.
+
+Van Diemen came down to breakfast looking haggard and restless.  "I have
+'nt had my morning's walk--I can't go out to be hooted," he said, calling
+to his daughter for tea, and strong tea; and explaining to Herbert that
+he knew it to be bad for the nerves, but it was an antidote to bad
+champagne.
+
+Mr. Herbert Fellingham had previously received an invitation on behalf of
+a sister of his to Crikswich.  A dull sense of genuine sagacity inspired
+him to remind Annette of it.  She wrote prettily to Miss Mary Fellingham,
+and Herbert had some faint joy in carrying away the letter of her
+handwriting.
+
+"Fetch her soon, for we sha'n't be here long," Van Diemen said to him at
+parting.  He expressed a certain dread of his next meeting with Mart
+Tinman.
+
+Herbert speedily brought Mary Fellingham to Elba, and left her there.
+The situation was apparently unaltered.  Van Diemen looked worn, like a
+man who has been feeding mainly on his reflections, which was manifest in
+his few melancholy bits of speech.  He said to Herbert: "How you feel a
+thing when you are found out!"  and, "It doesn't do for a man with a
+heart to do wrong!"  He designated the two principal roads by which poor
+sinners come to a conscience.  His own would have slumbered but for
+discovery; and, as he remarked, if it had not been for his heart leading
+him to Tinman, he would not have fallen into that man's power.
+
+The arrival of a young lady of fashionable appearance at Elba was matter
+of cogitation to Mrs. Cavely.  She was disposed to suspect that it meant
+something, and Van Diemen's behaviour to her brother would of itself have
+fortified any suspicion.  He did not call at the house on the beach, he
+did not invite Martin to dinner, he was rarely seen, and when he appeared
+at the Town Council he once or twice violently opposed his friend Martin,
+who came home ruffled, deeply offended in his interests and his dignity.
+
+"Have you noticed any difference in Annette's treatment of you, dear?"
+Mrs. Cavely inquired.
+
+"No," said Tinman; "none.  She shakes hands.  She asks after my health.
+She offers me my cup of tea."
+
+"I have seen all that.  But does she avoid privacy with you?"
+
+"Dear me, no!  Why should she?  I hope, Martha, I am a man who may be
+confided in by any young lady in England."
+
+"I am sure you may, dear Martin."
+
+"She has an objection to name the .  .  .  the day," said Martin.
+"I have informed her that I have an objection to long engagements.
+I don't like her new companion: She says she has been presented at Court.
+I greatly doubt it."
+
+"It's to give herself a style, you may depend.  I don't believe her!"
+exclaimed Mrs. Cavely, with sharp personal asperity.
+
+Brother and sister examined together the Court Guide they had purchased
+on the occasion at once of their largest outlay and most thrilling
+gratification; in it they certainly found the name of General Fellingham.
+"But he can't be related to a newspaper-writer," said Mrs. Cavely.
+
+To which her brother rejoined, "Unless the young man turned scamp.  I
+hate unproductive professions."
+
+"I hate him, Martin."  Mrs. Cavely laughed in scorn, "I should say, I
+pity him.  It's as clear to me as the sun at noonday, he wanted Annette.
+That's why I was in a hurry.  How I dreaded he would come that evening
+to our dinner!  When I saw him absent, I could have cried out it was
+Providence!  And so be careful--we have had everything done for us from
+on High as yet--but be careful of your temper, dear Martin.  I will
+hasten on the union; for it's a shame of a girl to drag a man behind her
+till he 's old at the altar.  Temper, dear, if you will only think of it,
+is the weak point."
+
+"Now he has begun boasting to me of his Australian wines!" Tinman
+ejaculated.
+
+"Bear it.  Bear it as you do Gippsland.  My dear, you have the retort in
+your heart:--Yes! but have you a Court in Australia?"
+
+"Ha! and his Australian wines cost twice the amount I pay for mine!"
+
+"Quite true.  We are not obliged to buy them, I should hope.  I would,
+though--a dozen--if I thought it necessary, to keep him quiet."
+
+Tinman continued muttering angrily over the Australian wines, with a word
+of irritation at Gippsland, while promising to be watchful of his temper.
+
+"What good is Australia to us," he asked, "if it does n't bring us
+money?"
+
+"It's going to, my dear," said Mrs. Cavely.  "Think of that when he
+begins boasting his Australia.  And though it's convict's money, as he
+confesses--"
+
+"With his convict's money!"  Tinman interjected tremblingly.  "How long
+am I expected to wait?"
+
+"Rely on me to hurry on the day," said Mrs. Cavely.  "There is no other
+annoyance?"
+
+"Wherever I am going to buy, that man outbids me and then says it's the
+old country's want of pluck and dash, and doing things large-handed!
+A man who'd go on his knees to stop in England!"  Tinman vociferated in
+a breath; and fairly reddened by the effort: "He may have to do it yet.
+I can't stand insult."
+
+"You are less able to stand insult after Honours," his sister said, in
+obedience to what she had observed of him since his famous visit to
+London.  "It must be so, in nature.  But temper is everything just now.
+Remember, it was by command of temper, and letting her father put himself
+in the wrong, you got hold of Annette.  And I would abstain even from
+wine.  For sometimes after it, you have owned it disagreed.  And I have
+noticed these eruptions between you and Mr. Smith--as he calls himself
+--generally after wine."
+
+"Always the poor! the poor! money for the poor!" Tinman harped on further
+grievances against Van Diemen.  "I say doctors have said the drain on the
+common is healthy; it's a healthy smell, nourishing.  We've always had it
+and been a healthy town.  But the sea encroaches, and I say my house and
+my property is in danger.  He buys my house over my head, and offers me
+the Crouch to live in at an advanced rent.  And then he sells me my house
+at an advanced price, and I buy, and then he votes against a penny for
+the protection of the shore!  And we're in Winter again!  As if he was
+not in my power!"
+
+"My dear Martin, to Elba we go, and soon, if you will govern your
+temper," said Mrs. Cavely.  "You're an angel to let me speak of it so,
+and it's only that man that irritates you.  I call him sinfully
+ostentatious."
+
+"I could blow him from a gun if I spoke out, and he knows it!  He's
+wanting in common gratitude, let alone respect," Tinman snorted.
+
+"But he has a daughter, my dear."
+
+Tinman slowly and crackingly subsided.
+
+His main grievance against Van Diemen was the non-recognition of his
+importance by that uncultured Australian, who did not seem to be
+conscious of the dignities and distinctions we come to in our country.
+The moneyed daughter, the prospective marriage, for an economical
+man rejected by every lady surrounding him, advised him to lock up his
+temper in submission to Martha.
+
+"Bring Annette to dine with us," he said, on Martha's proposing a visit
+to the dear young creature.
+
+Martha drank a glass of her brother's wine at lunch, and departed on the
+mission.
+
+Annette declined to be brought.  Her excuse was her guest, Miss
+Fellingham.
+
+"Bring her too, by all means--if you'll condescend, I am sure," Mrs.
+Cavely said to Mary.
+
+"I am much obliged to you; I do not dine out at present," said the London
+lady.
+
+"Dear me! are you ill?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing in the family, I hope?"
+
+"My family?"
+
+"I am sure, I beg pardon," said Mrs. Cavely, bridling with a spite
+pardonable by the severest moralist.
+
+"Can I speak to you alone?"  she addressed Annette.
+
+Miss Fellingham rose.
+
+Mrs. Cavely confronted her.  "I can't allow it; I can't think of it.
+I'm only taking a little liberty with one I may call my future sister-in-
+law."
+
+"Shall I come out with you?"  said Annette, in sheer lassitude assisting
+Mary Fellingham in her scheme to show the distastefulness of this lady
+and her brother.
+
+"Not if you don't wish to."
+
+"I have no objection."
+
+"Another time will do."
+
+"Will you write?"
+
+"By post indeed!"
+
+Mrs. Cavely delivered a laugh supposed to, be peculiar to the English
+stage.
+
+"It would be a penny thrown away," said Annette.  "I thought you could
+send a messenger."
+
+Intercommunication with Miss Fellingham had done mischief to her high
+moral conception of the pair inhabiting the house on the beach. Mrs.
+Cavely saw it, and could not conceal that she smarted.
+
+Her counsel to her brother, after recounting the offensive scene to him
+in animated dialogue, was, to give Van Diemen a fright.
+
+"I wish I had not drunk that glass of sherry before starting," she
+exclaimed, both savagely and sagely.  "It's best after business.  And
+these gentlemen's habits of yours of taking to dining late upset me.
+I'm afraid I showed temper; but you, Martin, would not have borne one-
+tenth of what I did."
+
+"How dare you say so!" her brother rebuked her indignantly; and the house
+on the beach enclosed with difficulty a storm between brother and sister,
+happily not heard outside, because of loud winds raging.
+
+Nevertheless Tinman pondered on Martha's idea of the wisdom of giving Van
+Diemen a fright.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The English have been called a bad-tempered people, but this is to judge
+of them by their manifestations; whereas an examination into causes might
+prove them to be no worse tempered than that man is a bad sleeper who
+lies in a biting bed.  If a sagacious instinct directs them to
+discountenance realistic tales, the realistic tale should justify its
+appearance by the discovery of an apology for the tormented souls.  Once
+they sang madrigals, once they danced on the green, they revelled in
+their lusty humours, without having recourse to the pun for fun, an
+exhibition of hundreds of bare legs for jollity, a sentimental wailing
+all in the throat for music.  Evidence is procurable that they have been
+an artificially-reared people, feeding on the genius of inventors,
+transposers, adulterators, instead of the products of nature, for the
+last half century; and it is unfair to affirm of them that they are
+positively this or that.  They are experiments.  They are the sons and
+victims of a desperate Energy, alluring by cheapness, satiating with
+quantity, that it may mount in the social scale, at the expense of their
+tissues.  The land is in a state of fermentation to mount, and the shop,
+which has shot half their stars to their social zenith, is what verily
+they would scald themselves to wash themselves free of.  Nor is it in any
+degree a reprehensible sign that they should fly as from hue and cry the
+title of tradesman.  It is on the contrary the spot of sanity, which bids
+us right cordially hope.  Energy, transferred to the moral sense, may
+clear them yet.
+
+Meanwhile this beer, this wine, both are of a character to have killed
+more than the tempers of a less gifted people.  Martin Tinman invited Van
+Diemen Smith to try the flavour of a wine that, as he said, he thought of
+"laying down."
+
+It has been hinted before of a strange effect upon the minds of men who
+knew what they were going to, when they received an invitation to dine
+with Tinman.  For the sake of a little social meeting at any cost, they
+accepted it; accepted it with a sigh, midway as by engineering
+measurement between prospective and retrospective; as nearly mechanical
+as things human may be, like the Mussulman's accustomed cry of Kismet.
+Has it not been related of the little Jew babe sucking at its mother's
+breast in Jerusalem, that this innocent, long after the Captivity, would
+start convulsively, relinquishing its feast, and indulging in the purest.
+Hebrew lamentation of the most tenacious of races, at the passing sound
+of a Babylonian or a Ninevite voice?  In some such manner did men, unable
+to refuse, deep in what remained to them of nature, listen to Tinman; and
+so did Van Diemen, sighing heavily under the operation of simple animal
+instinct.
+
+"You seem miserable," said Tinman, not oblivious of his design to give
+his friend a fright.
+
+"Do I?  No, I'm all right," Van Diemen replied.  "I'm thinking of
+alterations at the Hall before Summer, to accommodate guests--if I stay
+here."
+
+"I suppose you would not like to be separated from Annette."
+
+"Separated?  No, I should think I shouldn't.  Who'd do it?"
+
+"Because I should not like to leave my good sister Martha all to herself
+in a house so near the sea--"
+
+"Why not go to the Crouch, man?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"No thanks needed if you don't take advantage of the offer."
+
+They were at the entrance to Elba, whither Mr. Tinman was betaking
+himself to see his intended.  He asked if Annette was at home, and to his
+great stupefaction heard that she had gone to London for a week.
+
+Dissembling the spite aroused within him, he postponed his very strongly
+fortified design, and said, "You must be lonely."
+
+Van Diemen informed him that it would be for a night only, as young
+Fellingham was coming down to keep him company.
+
+"At six o'clock this evening, then," said Tinman.  "We're not fashionable
+in Winter."
+
+"Hang me,  if I know when ever we were!" Van Diemen rejoined.
+
+"Come, though, you'd like to be.  You've got your ambition, Philip, like
+other men."
+
+"Respectable and respected--that 's my ambition, Mr. Mart."
+
+Tinman simpered: "With your wealth!"
+
+"Ay, I 'm rich--for a contented mind."
+
+"I 'm pretty sure you 'll approve my new vintage," said Tinman.  "It's
+direct from Oporto, my wine-merchant tells me, on his word."
+
+"What's the price?"
+
+"No, no, no.  Try it first.  It's rather a stiff price."
+
+Van Diemen was partially reassured by the announcement.  "What do you
+call a stiff price?"
+
+"Well!--over thirty."
+
+"Double that, and you may have a chance."
+
+"Now," cried Tinman, exasperated, "how can a man from Australia know
+anything about prices for port?  You can't divest your ideas of diggers'
+prices.  You're like an intoxicating drink yourself on the tradesmen of
+our town.  You think it fine--ha!  ha!  I daresay, Philip, I should be
+doing the same if I were up to your mark at my banker's.  We can't all
+of us be lords, nor baronets."
+
+Catching up his temper thus cleverly, he curbed that habitual runaway,
+and retired from his old friend's presence to explode in the society of
+the solitary Martha.
+
+Annette's behaviour was as bitterly criticized by the sister as by the
+brother.
+
+"She has gone to those Fellingham people; and she may be thinking of
+jilting us," Mrs. Cavely said.
+
+"In that case, I have no mercy," cried her brother.  "I have borne"--he
+bowed with a professional spiritual humility--"as I should, but it may
+get past endurance.  I say I have borne enough; and if the worst comes to
+the worst, and I hand him over to the authorities--I say I mean him no
+harm, but he has struck me.  He beat me as a boy and he has struck me as
+a man, and I say I have no thought of revenge, but I cannot have him
+here; and I say if I drive him out of the country back to his Gippsland!"
+
+Martin Tinman quivered for speech, probably for that which feedeth
+speech, as is the way with angry men.
+
+"And what?--what then?" said Martha, with the tender mellifluousness of
+sisterly reproach.  "What good can you expect of letting temper get the
+better of you, dear?"
+
+Tinman did not enjoy her recent turn for usurping the lead in their
+consultations, and he said, tartly, "This good, Martha.  We shall get the
+Hall at my price, and be Head People here.  Which," he raised his note,
+"which he, a Deserter, has no right to pretend to give himself out to be.
+What your feelings may be as an old inhabitant, I don't know, but I have
+always looked up to the people at Elba Hall, and I say I don't like to
+have a Deserter squandering convict's money there--with his forty-pound-
+a-year cook, and his champagne at seventy a dozen.  It's the luxury of
+Sodom and Gomorrah."
+
+"That does not prevent its being very nice to dine there," said Mrs.
+Cavely; "and it shall be our table for good if I have any management."
+
+"You mean me, ma'am," bellowed Tinman.
+
+"Not at all," she breathed, in dulcet contrast.  "You are good-looking,
+Martin, but you have not half such pretty eyes as the person I mean.  I
+never ventured to dream of managing you, Martin.  I am thinking of the
+people at Elba."
+
+"But why this extraordinary treatment of me, Martha?"
+
+"She's a child, having her head turned by those Fellinghams.  But she's
+honourable; she has sworn to me she would be honourable."
+
+"You do think I may as well give him a fright?"  Tinman inquired
+hungrily.
+
+"A sort of hint; but very gentle, Martin.  Do be gentle--casual like--as
+if you did n't want to say it.  Get him on his Gippsland.  Then if he
+brings you to words, you can always laugh back, and say you will go to
+Kew and see the Fernery, and fancy all that, so high, on Helvellyn or the
+Downs.  Why"--Mrs. Cavely, at the end of her astute advices and
+cautionings, as usual, gave loose to her natural character--"Why that man
+came back to England at all, with his boastings of Gippsland, I can't for
+the life of me find out.  It 's a perfect mystery."
+
+"It is," Tinman sounded his voice at a great depth, reflectively.  Glad
+of taking the part she was perpetually assuming of late, he put out his
+hand and said: "But it may have been ordained for our good, Martha."
+
+"True, dear," said she, with an earnest sentiment of thankfulness to the
+Power which had led him round to her way of thinking and feeling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Annette had gone to the big metropolis, which burns in colonial
+imaginations as the sun of cities, and was about to see something of
+London, under the excellent auspices of her new friend, Mary Fellingham,
+and a dense fog.  She was alarmed by the darkness, a little in fear, too,
+of Herbert; and these feelings caused her to chide herself for leaving
+her father.
+
+Hearing her speak of her father sadly, Herbert kindly proposed to go down
+to Crikswich on the very day of her coming.  She thanked him, and gave
+him a taste of bitterness by smiling favourably on his offer; but as he
+wished her to discern and take to heart the difference between one man
+and another, in the light of a suitor, he let her perceive that it cost
+him heavy pangs to depart immediately, and left her to brood on his
+example.  Mary Fellingham liked Annette.  She thought her a sensible girl
+of uncultivated sensibilities, the reverse of thousands; not commonplace,
+therefore; and that the sensibilities were expanding was to be seen in
+her gradual unreadiness to talk of her engagement to Mr. Tinman, though
+her intimacy with Mary warmed daily.  She considered she was bound to
+marry the man at some distant date, and did not feel unhappiness yet.
+She had only felt uneasy when she had to greet and converse with her
+intended; especially when the London young lady had been present.
+Herbert's departure relieved her of the pressing sense of contrast.  She
+praised him to Mary for his extreme kindness to her father, and down in
+her unsounded heart desired that her father might appreciate it even more
+than she did.
+
+Herbert drove into Crikswich at night, and stopped at Crickledon's, where
+he heard that Van Diemen was dining with Tinman.
+
+Crickledon the carpenter permitted certain dry curves to play round his
+lips like miniature shavings at the name of Tinman; but Herbert asked,
+"What is it now?" in vain, and he went to Crickledon the cook.
+
+This union of the two Crickledons, male and female; was an ideal one,
+such as poor women dream of; and men would do the same, if they knew how
+poor they are.  Each had a profession, each was independent of the other,
+each supported the fabric.  Consequently there was mutual respect, as
+between two pillars of a house.  Each saw the other's faults with a sly
+wink to the world, and an occasional interchange of sarcasm that was
+tonic, very strengthening to the wits without endangering the habit of
+affection.  Crickledon the cook stood for her own opinions, and directed
+the public conduct of Crickledon the carpenter; and if he went astray
+from the line she marked out, she put it down to human nature, to which
+she was tolerant.  He, when she had not followed his advice, ascribed it
+to the nature of women.  She never said she was the equal of her husband;
+but the carpenter proudly acknowledged that she was as good as a man, and
+he bore with foibles derogatory to such high stature, by teaching himself
+to observe a neatness of domestic and general management that told him he
+certainly was not as good as a woman.  Herbert delighted in them.  The
+cook regaled the carpenter with skilful, tasty, and economic dishes; and
+the carpenter, obedient to her supplications, had promised, in the event
+of his outliving her, that no hands but his should have the making of her
+coffin.  "It is so nice," she said, "to think one's own husband will put
+together the box you are to lie in, of his own make!"  Had they been even
+a doubtfully united pair, the cook's anticipation of a comfortable
+coffin, the work of the best carpenter in England, would have kept them
+together; and that which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+needs not to be recounted to those who have read a chapter or two of the
+natural history of the male sex.
+
+"Crickledon, my dear soul, your husband is labouring with a bit of fun,"
+Herbert said to her.
+
+"He would n't laugh loud at Punch, for fear of an action," she replied.
+"He never laughs out till he gets to bed, and has locked the door; and
+when he does he says 'Hush!' to me.  Tinman is n't bailiff again just
+yet, and where he has his bailiff's best Court suit from, you may ask.
+He exercises in it off and on all the week, at night, and sometimes in
+the middle of the day."
+
+Herbert rallied her for her gossip's credulity.
+
+"It's truth," she declared.  "I have it from the maid of the house,
+little Jane, whom he pays four pound a year for all the work of the
+house: a clever little thing with her hands and her head she is; and can
+read and write beautiful; and she's a mind to leave 'em if they don't
+advance her.  She knocked and went in while he was full blaze, and bowing
+his poll to his glass.  And now he turns the key, and a child might know
+he was at it."
+
+"He can't be such a donkey!"
+
+"And he's been seen at the window on the seaside.  'Who's your Admiral
+staying at the house on the beach?' men have inquired as they come
+ashore.  My husband has heard it.  Tinman's got it on his brain.  He
+might be cured by marriage to a sound-headed woman, but he 'll soon be
+wanting to walk about in silk legs if he stops a bachelor.  They tell me
+his old mother here had a dress value twenty pound; and pomp's inherited.
+Save as he may, there's his leak."
+
+Herbert's contempt for Tinman was intense; it was that of the young and
+ignorant who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware of the
+importance of them as the food of life, and of how necessary it is to
+seize upon the solider one among them for perpetual sustenance when the
+unsubstantial are vanishing.  The great event of his bailiff's term of
+office had become the sun of Tinman's system.  He basked in its rays.
+He meant to be again the proud official, royally distinguished; meantime,
+though he knew not that his days were dull, he groaned under the dulness;
+and, as cart or cab horses, uncomplaining as a rule, show their view of
+the nature of harness when they have release to frisk in a field, it is
+possible that existence was made tolerable to the jogging man by some
+minutes of excitement in his bailiff's Court suit.  Really to pasture on
+our recollections we ought to dramatize them.  There is, however, only
+the testimony of a maid and a mariner to show that Tinman did it, and
+those are witnesses coming of particularly long-bow classes, given to
+magnify small items of fact.
+
+On reaching the hall Herbert found the fire alight in the smoking-room,
+and soon after settling himself there he heard Van Diemen's voice at the
+hall-door saying good night to Tinman.
+
+"Thank the Lord! there you are," said Van Diemen, entering the room.
+"I couldn't have hoped so much.  That rascal!"  he turned round to the
+door.  "He has been threatening me, and then smoothing me.  Hang his oil!
+It's combustible.  And hang the port he's for laying down, as he calls
+it.  'Leave it to posterity,' says I.  'Why?' says he.  'Because the
+young ones 'll be better able to take care of themselves,' says I, and he
+insists on an explanation.  I gave it to him.  Out he bursts like a
+wasp's nest.  He may have said what he did say in temper.  He seemed
+sorry afterwards--poor old Mart!  The scoundrel talked of Horse Guards
+and telegraph wires."
+
+"Scoundrel, but more ninny," said Herbert, full of his contempt.  "Dare
+him to do his worst.  The General tells me they 'd be glad to overlook it
+at the Guards, even if they had all the facts.  Branding 's out of the
+question."
+
+"I swear it was done in my time," cried Van Diemen, all on fire.
+
+"It's out of the question.  You might be advised to leave England for a
+few months.  As for the society here--"
+
+"If I leave, I leave for good.  My heart's broken.  I'm disappointed.
+I'm deceived in my friend.  He and I in the old days!  What's come to
+him?  What on earth is it changes men who stop in England so?  It can't
+be the climate.  And did you mention my name to General Fellingham?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Herbert.  "But listen to me, sir, a moment.  Why
+not get together half-a-dozen friends of the neighbourhood, and make a
+clean breast of it.  Englishmen like that kind of manliness, and they are
+sure to ring sound to it."
+
+"I couldn't!"  Van Diemen sighed.  "It's not a natural feeling I have
+about it--I 've brooded on the word.  If I have a nightmare, I see
+Deserter written in sulphur on the black wall."
+
+"You can't remain at his mercy, and be bullied as you are.  He makes you
+ill, sir.  He won't do anything, but he'll go on worrying you.  I'd stop
+him at once.  I'd take the train to-morrow and get an introduction to the
+Commander-in-Chief.  He's the very man to be kind to you in a situation
+like this.  The General would get you the introduction."
+
+"That's more to my taste; but no, I couldn't," Van Diemen moaned in his
+weakness.  "Money has unmanned me.  I was n't this kind of man formerly;
+nor more was Mart Tinman, the traitor!  All the world seems changeing for
+the worse, and England is n't what she used to be."
+
+"You let that man spoil it for you, sir."  Herbert related Mrs.
+Crickledon's tale of Mr. Tinman, adding, "He's an utter donkey.  I should
+defy him.  What I should do would be to let him know to-morrow morning
+that you don't intend to see him again.  Blow for, blow, is the thing he
+requires.  He'll be cringing to you in a week."
+
+"And you'd like to marry Annette," said Van Diemen, relishing,
+nevertheless, the advice, whose origin and object he perceived so
+plainly.
+
+"Of course I should," said Herbert, franker still in his colour than his
+speech.
+
+"I don't see him my girl's husband."  Van Diemen eyed the red hollow in
+the falling coals.  "When I came first, and found him a healthy man,
+good-looking enough for a trifle over forty, I 'd have given her gladly,
+she nodding Yes.  Now all my fear is she's in earnest.  Upon my soul, I
+had the notion old Mart was a sort of a boy still; playing man, you know.
+But how can you understand?  I fancied his airs and stiffness were put
+on; thought I saw him burning true behind it.  Who can tell?  He seems to
+be jealous of my buying property in his native town.  Something frets
+him.  I ought never to have struck him!  There's my error, and I repent
+it.  Strike a friend!  I wonder he didn't go off to the Horse Guards at
+once.  I might have done it in his place, if I found I couldn't lick him.
+I should have tried kicking first."
+
+"Yes, shinning before peaching," said Herbert, astonished almost as much
+as he was disgusted by the inveterate sentimental attachment of Van
+Diemen to his old friend.
+
+Martin Tinman anticipated good things of the fright he had given the man
+after dinner.  He had, undoubtedly, yielded to temper, forgetting pure
+policy, which it is so exceeding difficult to practice.  But he had
+soothed the startled beast; they had shaken hands at parting, and Tinman
+hoped that the week of Annette's absence would enable him to mould her
+father.  Young Fellingham's appointment to come to Elba had slipped Mr.
+Tinman's memory.  It was annoying to see this intruder.  "At all events,
+he's not with Annette," said Mrs. Cavely.  "How long has her father to
+run on?"
+
+"Five months," Tinman replied.  "He would have completed his term of
+service in five months."
+
+"And to think of his being a rich man because he deserted," Mrs. Cavely
+interjected.  "Oh! I do call it immoral.  He ought to be apprehended and
+punished, to be an example for the good of society.  If you lose time,
+my dear Martin, your chance is gone.  He's wriggling now.  And if I could
+believe he talked us over to that young impudent, who has n't a penny
+that he does n't get from his pen, I'd say, denounce him to-morrow.
+I long for Elba.  I hate this house.  It will be swallowed up some day;
+I know it; I have dreamt it.  Elba at any cost.  Depend upon it, Martin,
+you have been foiled in your suits on account of the mean house you
+inhabit.  Enter Elba as that girl's husband, or go there to own it, and
+girls will crawl to you."
+
+"You are a ridiculous woman, Martha," said Tinman, not dissenting.
+
+The mixture of an idea of public duty with a feeling of personal rancour
+is a strong incentive to the pursuit of a stern line of conduct; and the
+glimmer of self-interest superadded does not check the steps of the
+moralist.  Nevertheless, Tinman held himself in.  He loved peace.  He
+preached it, he disseminated it.  At a meeting in the town he strove to
+win Van Diemen's voice in favour of a vote for further moneys to protect
+'our shores.'"  Van Diemen laughed at him, telling him he wanted a
+battery.  "No," said Tinman, "I've had enough to do with soldiers."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"They might be more cautious.  I say, they might learn to know their
+friends from their enemies."
+
+"That's it, that's it," said Van Diemen.  "If you say much more, my
+hearty, you'll find me bidding against you next week for Marine Parade
+and Belle Vue Terrace.  I've a cute eye for property, and this town's
+looking up."
+
+"You look about you before you speculate in land and house property
+here," retorted Tinman.
+
+Van Diemen bore so much from him that he asked himself whether he could
+be an Englishman.  The title of Deserter was his raw wound.  He attempted
+to form the habit of stigmatizing himself with it in the privacy of his
+chamber, and he succeeded in establishing the habit of talking to
+himself, so that he was heard by the household, and Annette, on her
+return, was obliged to warn him of his indiscretion.  This development of
+a new weakness exasperated him.  Rather to prove his courage by defiance
+than to baffle Tinman's ambition to become the principal owner of houses
+in Crikswich, by outbidding him at the auction for the sale of Marine
+Parade and Belle Vue Terrace, Van Diemen ran the houses up at the
+auction, and ultimately had Belle Vue knocked down to him.  So fierce was
+the quarrel that Annette, in conjunction with Mrs. Cavely; was called on
+to interpose with her sweetest grace.  "My native place," Tinman said to
+her; "it is my native place.  I have a pride in it; I desire to own
+property in it, and your father opposes me.  He opposes me.  Then says I
+may have it back at auction price, after he has gone far to double the
+price!  I have borne--I repeat I have borne too much."
+
+"Are n't your properties to be equal to one?"  said Mrs. Cavely, smiling
+mother--like from Tinman to Annette.
+
+He sought to produce a fondling eye in a wry face, and said, "Yes, I will
+remember that."
+
+"Annette will bless you with her dear hand in a month or two at the
+outside," Mrs. Cavely murmured, cherishingly.
+
+"She will?"  Tinman cracked his body to bend to her.
+
+"Oh, I cannot say; do not distress me.  Be friendly with papa," the girl
+resumed, moving to escape.
+
+"That is the essential," said Mrs. Cavely; and continued, when Annette
+had gone, "The essential is to get over the next few months, miss, and
+then to snap your fingers at us.  Martin, I would force that man to sell
+you Belle Vue under the price he paid for it, just to try your power."
+
+Tinman was not quite so forcible.  He obtained Belle Vue at auction
+price, and his passion for revenge was tipped with fire by having it
+accorded as a friend's favour.
+
+The poisoned state of his mind was increased by a December high wind that
+rattled his casements, and warned him of his accession of property
+exposed to the elements.  Both he and his sister attributed their
+nervousness to the sinister behaviour of Van Diemen.  For the house on
+the beach had only, in most distant times, been threatened by the sea,
+and no house on earth was better protected from man,--Neptune, in the
+shape of a coastguard, being paid by Government to patrol about it during
+the hours of darkness.  They had never had any fears before Van Diemen
+arrived, and caused them to give thrice their ordinary number of dinners
+to guests per annum.  In fact, before Van Diemen came, the house on the
+beach looked on Crikswich without a rival to challenge its anticipated
+lordship over the place, and for some inexplicable reason it seemed to
+its inhabitants to have been a safer as well as a happier residence.
+
+They were consoled by Tinman's performance of a clever stroke in
+privately purchasing the cottages west of the town, and including
+Crickledon's shop, abutting on Marine Parade.  Then from the house
+on the beach they looked at an entire frontage of their property.
+
+They entered the month of February.  No further time was to be lost,
+"or we shall wake up to find that man has fooled us," Mrs. Cavely said.
+Tinman appeared at Elba to demand a private interview with Annette.  His
+hat was blown into the hall as the door opened to him, and he himself was
+glad to be sheltered by the door, so violent was the gale.  Annette and
+her father were sitting together.  They kept the betrothed gentleman
+waiting a very long time.  At last Van Diemen went to him, and said,
+"Netty 'll see you, if you must.  I suppose you have no business with
+me?"
+
+"Not to-day," Tinman replied.
+
+Van Diemen strode round the drawing-room with his hands in his pockets.
+"There's a disparity of ages," he said, abruptly, as if desirous to pour
+out his lesson while he remembered it.  "A man upwards of forty marries a
+girl under twenty, he's over sixty before she's forty; he's decaying when
+she's only mellow.  I ought never to have struck you, I know.  And you're
+such an infernal bad temper at times, and age does n't improve that, they
+say; and she's been educated tip-top.  She's sharp on grammar, and a man
+may n't like that much when he's a husband.  See her, if you must.  But
+she does n't take to the idea; there's the truth.  Disparity of ages and
+unsuitableness of dispositions--what was it Fellingham said?--like two
+barrel-organs grinding different tunes all day in a house."
+
+"I don't want to hear Mr. Fellingham's comparisons," Tinman snapped.
+
+"Oh! he's nothing to the girl," said Van Diemen.  "She doesn't stomach
+leaving me."
+
+"My dear Philip! why should she leave you?  When we have interests in
+common as one household--"
+
+"She says you're such a damned bad temper."
+
+Tinman was pursuing amicably, "When we are united--" But the frightful
+charge brought against his temper drew him up.  "Fiery I may be.  Annette
+has seen I am forgiving.  I am a Christian.  You have provoked me; you
+have struck me."
+
+"I 'll give you a couple of thousand pounds in hard money to be off the
+bargain, and not bother the girl," said Van Diemen.
+
+"Now," rejoined Tinman, "I am offended.  I like money, like most men who
+have made it.  You do, Philip.  But I don't come courting like a pauper.
+Not for ten thousand; not for twenty.  Money cannot be a compensation to
+me for the loss of Annette.  I say I love Annette."
+
+"Because," Van Diemen continued his speech, "you trapped us into that
+engagement, Mart.  You dosed me with the stuff you buy for wine, while
+your sister sat sugaring and mollifying my girl; and she did the trick in
+a minute, taking Netty by surprise when I was all heart and no head; and
+since that you may have seen the girl turn her head from marriage like my
+woods from the wind."
+
+"Mr. Van Diemen Smith!"  Tinman panted; he mastered himself.  "You shall
+not provoke me.  My introductions of you in this neighbourhood, my
+patronage, prove my friendship."
+
+"You'll be a good old fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being
+knighted."
+
+"Mr. Fellingham may set you against my wine, Philip.  Let me tell you--I
+know you--you would not object to have your daughter called Lady."
+
+"With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes
+to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one
+day bygone!  You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty
+years old."
+
+"You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!"
+
+"Jealous, am I?  Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends
+we'll be.  I'll back your buyings, I'll advertise your sellings.  I'll
+pay a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you
+in my diningroom."
+
+"Annette is here," said Tinman, who had been showing Etna's tokens of
+insurgency.
+
+He admired Annette.  Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so
+true an admirer of Annette as Tinman was.  She looked sincere and she
+dressed inexpensively.  For these reasons she was the best example of
+womankind that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the
+sympathetic effect on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and
+thrilling him with the reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood
+and his birthplace--points which her father, with his boastings of
+Gippsland, and other people talking of scenes on the Continent,
+sometimes disturbed in his mind.
+
+"Annette," said he, "I come requesting to converse with you in private."
+
+"If you wish it--I would rather not," she answered.
+
+Tinman raised his head, as often at Helmstone when some offending
+shopwoman was to hear her doom.
+
+He bent to her.  "I see.  Before your father, then!"
+
+"It isn't an agreeable bit of business, to me," Van Diemen grumbled,
+frowning and shrugging.
+
+"I have come, Annette, to ask you, to beg you, entreat--before a third
+person--laughing, Philip?"
+
+"The wrong side of my mouth, my friend.  And I'll tell you what: we're in
+for heavy seas, and I 'm not sorry you've taken the house on the beach
+off my hands."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Tinman, speak at once, if you please, and I will do my best.
+Papa vexes you."
+
+"No, no," replied Tinman.
+
+He renewed his commencement.  Van Diemen interrupted him again.
+
+"Hang your power over me, as you call it.  Eh, old Mart?  I'm a Deserter.
+I'll pay a thousand pounds to the British army, whether they punish me or
+not.  March me off tomorrow!"
+
+"Papa, you are unjust, unkind."  Annette turned to him in tears.
+
+"No, no," said Tinman, "I do not feel it.  Your father has misunderstood
+me, Annette."
+
+"I am sure he has," she said fervently.  "And, Mr. Tinman, I will
+faithfully promise that so long as you are good to my dear father, I will
+not be untrue to my engagement, only do not wish me to name any day.  We
+shall be such very good dear friends if you consent to this.  Will you?"
+
+Pausing for a space, the enamoured man unrolled his voice in lamentation:
+"Oh!  Annette, how long will you keep me?"
+
+"There; you'll set her crying!"  said Van Diemen.  "Now you can run
+upstairs, Netty.  By jingo!  Mart Tinman, you've got a bass voice for
+love affairs."
+
+"Annette," Tinman called to her, and made her turn round as she was
+retiring.  "I must know the day before the end of winter.  Please.
+In kind consideration.  My arrangements demand it."
+
+"Do let the girl go," said Van Diemen.  "Dine with me tonight and I'll
+give you a wine to brisk your spirits, old boy"
+
+"Thank you.  When I have ordered dinner at home, I----and my wine agrees
+with ME," Tinman replied.
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"You shall not provoke me, Philip."
+
+They parted stiffly.
+
+Mrs. Cavely had unpleasant domestic news to communicate to her brother,
+in return for his tale of affliction and wrath.  It concerned the
+ungrateful conduct of their little housemaid Jane, who, as Mrs. Cavely
+said, "egged on by that woman Crickledon," had been hinting at an advance
+of wages.
+
+"She didn't dare speak, but I saw what was in her when she broke a plate,
+and wouldn't say she was sorry.  I know she goes to Crickledon and talks
+us over.  She's a willing worker, but she has no heart."
+
+Tinman had been accustomed in his shop at Helmstone--where heaven had
+blessed him with the patronage of the rich, as visibly as rays of
+supernal light are seen selecting from above the heads of prophets in the
+illustrations to cheap holy books--to deal with willing workers that have
+no hearts.  Before the application for an advance of wages--and he knew
+the signs of it coming--his method was to calculate how much he might be
+asked for, and divide the estimated sum by the figure 4; which, as it
+seemed to come from a generous impulse, and had been unsolicited, was
+often humbly accepted, and the willing worker pursued her lean and hungry
+course in his service.  The treatment did not always agree with his
+males.  Women it suited; because they do not like to lift up their voices
+unless they are in a passion; and if you take from them the grounds of
+temper, you take their words away--you make chickens of them.  And as
+Tinman said, "Gratitude I never expect!"  Why not?  For the reason that
+he knew human nature.  He could record shocking instances of the
+ingratitude of human nature, as revealed to him in the term of his tenure
+of the shop at Helmstone.  Blest from above, human nature's wickedness
+had from below too frequently besulphured and suffumigated him for his
+memory to be dim; and though he was ever ready to own himself an example
+that heaven prevaileth, he could cite instances of scandalmongering shop-
+women dismissed and working him mischief in the town, which pointed to
+him in person for a proof that the Powers of Good and Evil were still
+engaged in unhappy contention.  Witness Strikes! witness Revolutions!
+
+"Tell her, when she lays the cloth, that I advance her, on account of
+general good conduct, five shillings per annum.  Add," said Tinman, "that
+I wish no thanks.  It is for her merits--to reward her; you understand
+me, Martha?"
+
+"Quite; if you think it prudent, Martin."
+
+"I do.  She is not to breathe a syllable to cook."
+
+"She will."
+
+"Then keep your eye on cook."
+
+Mrs. Cavely promised she would do so.  She felt sure she was paying five
+shillings for ingratitude; and, therefore, it was with humility that she
+owned her error when, while her brother sipped his sugared acrid liquor
+after dinner (in devotion to the doctor's decree, that he should take a
+couple of glasses, rigorously as body-lashing friar), she imparted to him
+the singular effect of the advance of wages upon little Jane--"Oh, ma'am!
+and me never asked you for it!"  She informed her brother how little Jane
+had confided to her that they were called "close," and how little Jane
+had vowed she would--the willing little thing!--go about letting
+everybody know their kindness.
+
+"Yes! Ah!"  Tinman inhaled the praise.  "No, no; I don't want to be
+puffed," he said.  "Remember cook.  I have," he continued, meditatively,
+"rarely found my plan fail.  But mind, I give the Crickledons notice to
+quit to-morrow.  They are a pest.  Besides, I shall probably think of
+erecting villas."
+
+"How dreadful the wind is!" Mrs. Cavely exclaimed.  "I would give that
+girl Annette one chance more.  Try her by letter."
+
+Tinman despatched a business letter to Annette, which brought back a
+vague, unbusiness-like reply.  Two days afterward Mrs. Cavely reported to
+her brother the presence of Mr. Fellingham and Miss Mary Fellingham in
+Crikswich.  At her dictation he wrote a second letter.  This time the
+reply came from Van Diemen:
+
+     "My DEAR MARTIN,--Please do not go on bothering my girl.  She does
+     not like the idea of leaving me, and my experience tells me I could
+     not live in the house with you. So there it is.  Take it friendly.
+     I have always wanted to be, and am,
+                                        "Your friend,
+                                                       "PHIL."
+
+Tinman proceeded straight to Elba; that is, as nearly straight as the
+wind would allow his legs to walk.  Van Diemen was announced to be out;
+Miss Annette begged to be excused, under the pretext that she was unwell;
+and Tinman heard of a dinner-party at Elba that night.
+
+He met Mr. Fellingham on the carriage drive.  The young Londoner presumed
+to touch upon Tinman's private affairs by pleading on behalf of the
+Crikledons, who were, he said, much dejected by the notice they had
+received to quit house and shop.
+
+"Another time," bawled Tinman.  "I can't hear you in this wind."
+
+"Come in," said Fellingham.
+
+"The master of the house is absent," was the smart retort roared at him;
+and Tinman staggered away, enjoying it as he did his wine.
+
+His house rocked.  He was backed by his sister in the assurance that he
+had been duped.
+
+The process he supposed to be thinking, which was the castigation of his
+brains with every sting wherewith a native touchiness could ply immediate
+recollection, led him to conclude that he must bring Van Diemen to his
+senses, and Annette running to him for mercy.
+
+He sat down that night amid the howling of the storm, wind whistling,
+water crashing, casements rattling, beach desperately dragging, as by the
+wide-stretched star-fish fingers of the half-engulphed.
+
+He hardly knew what he wrote.  The man was in a state of personal terror,
+burning with indignation at Van Diemen as the main cause of his jeopardy.
+For, in order to prosecute his pursuit of Annette, he had abstained from
+going to Helmstone to pay moneys into his bank there, and what was
+precious to life as well as life itself, was imperilled by those two--
+Annette and her father--who, had they been true, had they been honest,
+to say nothing of honourable, would by this time have opened Elba to him
+as a fast and safe abode.
+
+His letter was addressed, on a large envelope,
+
+     "To the Adjutant-General,
+
+     "HORSE GUARDS."
+
+But if ever consigned to the Post, that post-office must be in London;
+and Tinman left the letter on his desk till the morning should bring
+counsel to him as to the London friend to whom he might despatch it under
+cover for posting, if he pushed it so far.
+
+Sleep was impossible.  Black night favoured the tearing fiends of
+shipwreck, and looking through a back window over sea, Tinman saw with
+dismay huge towering ghostwhite wreaths, that travelled up swiftly on his
+level, and lit the dark as they flung themselves in ruin, with a gasp,
+across the mound of shingle at his feet.
+
+He undressed: His sister called to him to know if they were in danger.
+Clothed in his dressing-gown, he slipped along to her door, to vociferate
+to her hoarsely that she must not frighten the servants; and one fine
+quality in the training of the couple, which had helped them to prosper,
+a form of self-command, kept her quiet in her shivering fears.
+
+For a distraction Tinman pulled open the drawers of his wardrobe.  His
+glittering suit lay in one.  And he thought, "What wonderful changes
+there are in the world!" meaning, between a man exposed to the wrath of
+the elements, and the same individual reading from vellum, in that suit,
+in a palace, to the Head of all of us!
+
+The presumption is; that he must have often done it before.  The fact is
+established, that he did it that night.  The conclusion drawn from it is,
+that it must have given him a sense of stability and safety.
+
+At any rate that he put on the suit is quite certain.
+
+Probably it was a work of ingratiation and degrees; a feeling of the
+silk, a trying on to one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it.
+O you Revolutionists!  who would have no state, no ceremonial, and but
+one order of galligaskins!  This man must have been wooed away in spirit
+to forgetfulness of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a
+bigger and a farther leap; he must have obtained from the contemplation
+of himself in his suit that which would be the saving of all men, in
+especial of his countrymen--imagination, namely.
+
+Certain it is, as I have said, that he attired himself in the suit.  He
+covered it with his dressing-gown, and he lay down on his bed so garbed,
+to await the morrow's light, being probably surprised by sleep acting
+upon fatigue and nerves appeased and soothed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Elba lay more sheltered from South-east winds under the slopes of down
+than any other house in Crikswich.  The South-caster struck off the cliff
+to a martello tower and the house on the beach, leaving Elba to repose,
+so that the worst wind for that coast was one of the most comfortable for
+the owner of the hall, and he looked from his upper window on a sea of
+crumbling grey chalk, lashed unremittingly by the featureless piping
+gale, without fear that his elevated grounds and walls would be open at
+high tide to the ravage of water.  Van Diemen had no idea of calamity
+being at work on land when he sat down to breakfast.  He told Herbert
+that he had prayed for poor fellows at sea last night.  Mary Fellingham
+and Annette were anxious to finish breakfast and mount the down to gaze
+on the sea, and receiving a caution from Van Diemen not to go too near
+the cliff, they were inclined to think he was needlessly timorous on
+their account.
+
+Before they were half way through the meal, word was brought in of great
+breaches in the shingle, and water covering the common.  Van Diemen sent
+for his head gardener, whose report of the state of things outside took
+the comprehensive form of prophecy; he predicted the fall of the town.
+
+"Nonsense; what do you mean, John Scott?"  said Van Diemen, eyeing his
+orderly breakfast table and the man in turns.  "It does n't seem like
+that, yet, does it?"
+
+"The house on the beach won't stand an hour longer, sir."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"It's cut off from land now, and waves mast-high all about it."
+
+"Mart Tinman?"  cried Van Diemen.
+
+All started; all jumped up; and there was a scampering for hats and
+cloaks.  Maids and men of the house ran in and out confirming the news of
+inundation.  Some in terror for the fate of relatives, others pleasantly
+excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony, for at any rate
+it was a change of demons.
+
+The view from the outer bank of Elba was of water covering the space of
+the common up to the stones of Marine Parade and Belle Vue.  But at a
+distance it had not the appearance of angry water; the ladies thought it
+picturesque, and the house on the beach was seen standing firm.  A second
+look showed the house completely isolated; and as the party led by Van
+Diemen circled hurriedly toward the town, they discerned heavy cataracts
+of foam pouring down the wrecked mound of shingle on either side of the
+house.
+
+"Why, the outer wall's washed away," said Van Diemen."  Are they in real
+danger?" asked Annette, her teeth chattering, and the cold and other
+matters at her heart precluding for the moment such warmth of sympathy as
+she hoped soon to feel for them.  She was glad to hear her father say:
+
+"Oh!  they're high and dry by this time.  We shall find them in the town
+And we'll take them in and comfort them.  Ten to one they have n't
+breakfasted.  They sha'n't go to an inn while I'm handy."
+
+He dashed ahead, followed closely by Herbert.  The ladies beheld them
+talking to townsfolk as they passed along the upper streets, and did not
+augur well of their increase of speed.  At the head of the town water was
+visible, part of the way up the main street, and crossing it, the ladies
+went swiftly under the old church, on the tower of which were spectators,
+through the churchyard to a high meadow that dropped to a stone wall
+fixed between the meadow and a grass bank above the level of the road,
+where now salt water beat and cast some spray.  Not less than a hundred
+people were in this field, among them Crickledon and his wife.  All were
+in silent watch of the house on the beach, which was to east of the
+field, at a distance of perhaps three stonethrows.  The scene was wild.
+Continuously the torrents poured through the shingleclefts, and momently
+a thunder sounded, and high leapt a billow that topped the house and
+folded it weltering.
+
+"They tell me Mart Tinman's in the house," Van Diemen roared to Herbert.
+He listened to further information, and bellowed: "There's no boat!"
+
+Herbert answered: "It must be a mistake, I think; here's Crickledon says
+he had a warning before dawn and managed to move most of his things, and
+the people over there must have been awakened by the row in time to get
+off"
+
+"I can't hear a word you say;" Van Diemen tried to pitch his voice higher
+than the wind.  "Did you say a boat?  But where?"
+
+Crickledon the carpenter made signal to Herbert.  They stepped rapidly up
+the field.
+
+"Women feels their weakness in times like these, my dear," Mrs.
+Crickledon said to Annette.  "What with our clothes and our cowardice
+it do seem we're not the equals of men when winds is high."
+
+Annette expressed the hope to her that she had not lost much property.
+Mrs. Crickledon said she was glad to let her know she was insured in an
+Accident Company.  "But," said she, "I do grieve for that poor man
+Tinman, if alive he be, and comes ashore to find his property wrecked by
+water.  Bless ye! he wouldn't insure against anything less common than
+fire; and my house and Crickledon's shop are floating timbers by this
+time; and Marine Parade and Belle Vue are safe to go.  And it'll be a
+pretty welcome for him, poor man, from his investments."
+
+A cry at a tremendous blow of a wave on the doomed house rose from the
+field.  Back and front door were broken down, and the force of water
+drove a round volume through the channel, shaking the walls.
+
+"I can't stand this," Van Diemen cried.
+
+Annette was too late to hold him back.  He ran up the field.  She was
+preparing to run after when Mrs. Crickledon touched her arm and implored
+her: "Interfere not with men, but let them follow their judgements when
+it's seasons of mighty peril, my dear.  If any one's guilty it's me, for
+minding my husband of a boat that was launched for a life-boat here, and
+wouldn't answer, and is at the shed by the Crouch--left lying there, I've
+often said, as if it was a-sulking.  My goodness!"
+
+A linen sheet bad been flung out from one of the windows of the house on
+the beach, and flew loose and flapping in sign of distress.
+
+"It looks as if they had gone mad in that house, to have waited so long
+for to declare theirselves, poor souls," Mrs. Crickledon said, sighing.
+
+She was assured right and left that signals had been seen before, and
+some one stated that the cook of Mr. Tinman, and also Mrs. Cavely, were
+on shore.
+
+"It's his furniture, poor man, he sticks to: and nothing gets round the
+heart so!"  resumed Mrs. Crickledon.  "There goes his bed-linen!"
+
+The sheet was whirled and snapped away by the wind; distended doubled,
+like a flock of winter geese changeing alphabetical letters on the
+clouds, darted this way and that, and finally outspread on the waters
+breaking against Marine Parade.
+
+"They cannot have thought there was positive danger in remaining," said
+Annette.
+
+"Mr. Tinman was waiting for the cheapest Insurance office," a man
+remarked to Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+"The least to pay is to the undertaker," she replied, standing on tiptoe.
+"And it's to be hoped he 'll pay more to-day.  If only those walls don't
+fall and stop the chance of the boat to save him for more outlay, poor
+man!  What boats was on the beach last night, high up and over the ridge
+as they was, are planks by this time and only good for carpenters."
+
+"Half our town's done for," one old man said; and another followed him in.
+a pious tone: "From water we came and to water we go."
+
+They talked of ancient inroads of the sea, none so serious as this
+threatened to be for them.  The gallant solidity, of the house on the
+beach had withstood heavy gales: it was a brave house.  Heaven be
+thanked, no fishing boats were out.  Chiefly well-to-do people would be
+the sufferers--an exceptional case.  For it is the mysterious and
+unexplained dispensation that: "Mostly heaven chastises we."
+
+A knot of excited gazers drew the rest of the field to them.  Mrs.
+Crickledon, on the edge of the crowd, reported what was doing to Annette
+and Miss Fellingham.  A boat had been launched from the town.  "Praise
+the Lord, there's none but coastguard in it!"  she exclaimed, and excused
+herself for having her heart on her husband.
+
+Annette was as deeply thankful that her father was not in the boat.
+
+They looked round and saw Herbert beside them.  Van Diemen was in the
+rear, panting, and straining his neck to catch sight of the boat now
+pulling fast across a tumbled sea to where Tinman himself was perceived,
+beckoning them wildly, half out of one of the windows.
+
+"A pound apiece to those fellows, and two if they land Mart Tinman dry;
+I've promised it, and they'll earn it.  Look at that!  Quick, you
+rascals!"
+
+To the east a portion of the house had fallen, melted away.  Where it
+stood, just below the line of shingle, it was now like a structure
+wasting on a tormented submerged reef.  The whole line was given over to
+the waves.
+
+"Where is his sister?"  Annette shrieked to her father.
+
+"Safe ashore; and one of the women with her.  But Mart Tinman would stop,
+the fool!  to-poor old boy!  save his papers and things; and has n't a
+head to do it, Martha Cavely tells me.  They're at him now!  They've got
+him in!  There's another?  Oh! it's a girl, who would n't go and leave
+him.  They'll pull to the field here.  Brave lads!--By jingo, why ain't
+Englishmen always in danger!--eh?  if you want to see them shine!"
+
+"It's little Jane," said Mrs. Crickledon, who had been joined by her
+husband, and now that she knew him to be no longer in peril, kept her
+hand on him to restrain him, just for comfort's sake.
+
+The boat held under the lee of the house-wreck a minute; then, as if
+shooting a small rapid, came down on a wave crowned with foam, to hurrahs
+from the townsmen.
+
+"They're all right," said Van Diemen, puffing as at a mist before his
+eyes.  "They'll pull westward, with the wind, and land him among us.  I
+remember when old Mart and I were bathing once, he was younger than me,
+and could n't swim much, and I saw him going down.  It'd have been hard
+to see him washed off before one's eyes thirty years afterwards.  Here
+they come.  He's all right.  He's in his dressing-gown!"
+
+The crowd made way for Mr. Van Diemen Smith to welcome his friend.  Two
+of the coastguard jumped out, and handed him to the dry bank, while
+Herbert, Van Diemen, and Crickledon took him by hand and arm, and hoisted
+him on to the flint wall, preparatory to his descent into the field.  In
+this exposed situation the wind, whose pranks are endless when it is once
+up, seized and blew Martin Tinman's dressing-gown wide as two violently
+flapping wings on each side of him, and finally over his head.
+
+Van Diemen turned a pair of stupefied flat eyes on Herbert, who cast a
+sly look at the ladies.  Tinman had sprung down.  But not before the.
+world, in one tempestuous glimpse, had caught sight of the Court suit.
+
+Perfect gravity greeted him from the crowd.
+
+"Safe, old Mart! and glad to be able to say it," said Van Diemen.
+
+"We are so happy," said Annette.
+
+"House, furniture, property, everything I possess!"  ejaculated Tinman,
+shivering.
+
+"Fiddle, man; you want some hot breakfast in you.  Your sister has gone
+on--to Elba.  Come you too, old Man; and where's that plucky little girl
+who stood by--"
+
+"Was there a girl?"  said Tinman.
+
+"Yes, and there was a boy wanted to help."  Van Diemen pointed at
+Herbert.
+
+Tinman looked, and piteously asked, "Have you examined Marine Parade and
+Belle Vue?  It depends on the tide!"
+
+"Here is little Jane, sir," said Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+"Fall in," Van Diemen said to little Jane.
+
+The girl was bobbing curtseys to Annette, on her introduction by Mrs.
+Crickledon.
+
+"Martin, you stay at my house; you stay at Elba till you get things
+comfortable about you, and then you shall have the Crouch for a year,
+rent free.  Eh, Netty?"
+
+Annette chimed in: "Anything we can do, anything.  Nothing can be too
+much."
+
+Van Diemen was praising little Jane for her devotion to her master.
+
+"Master have been so kind to me," said little Jane.
+
+"Now, march; it is cold," Van Diemen gave the word, and Herbert stood by
+Mary rather dejectedly, foreseeing that his prospects at Elba were
+darkened.
+
+"Now then, Mart, left leg forward," Van Diemen linked his arm in his
+friend's.
+
+"I must have a look," Tinman broke from him, and cast a forlorn look of
+farewell on the last of the house on the beach.
+
+"You've got me left to you, old Mart; don't forget that," said Van
+Diemen.
+
+Tinman's chest fell.  "Yes, yes," he responded.  He was touched.
+
+"And I told those fellows if they landed you dry they should have--I'd
+give them double pay; and I do believe they've earned their money."
+
+"I don't think I'm very wet, I'm cold," said Tinman.
+
+"You can't help being cold, so come along."
+
+"But, Philip!" Tinman lifted his voice; "I've lost everything.  I tried
+to save a little. I worked hard, I exposed my life, and all in vain."
+
+The voice of little Jane was heard.
+
+"What's the matter with the child?" said Van Diemen.
+
+Annette went up to her quietly.
+
+But little Jane was addressing her master.
+
+"Oh! if you please, I did manage to save something the last thing when
+the boat was at the window, and if you please, sir, all the bundles is
+lost, but I saved you a papercutter, and a letter Horse Guards, and here
+they are, sir."
+
+The grateful little creature drew the square letter and paper-cutter from
+her bosom, and held them out to Mr. Tinman.
+
+It was a letter of the imposing size, with THE HORSE GUARDS very
+distinctly inscribed on it in Tinman's best round hand, to strike his
+vindictive spirit as positively intended for transmission, and give him
+sight of his power to wound if it pleased him; as it might.
+
+"What!" cried he, not clearly comprehending how much her devotion had
+accomplished for him.
+
+"A letter to the Horse Guards!" cried Van Diemen.
+
+"Here, give it me," said little Jane's master, and grasped it nervously.
+
+"What's in that letter?" Van Diemen asked.  "Let me look at that letter.
+Don't tell me it's private correspondence."
+
+"My dear Philip, dear friend, kind thanks; it's not a letter," said
+Tinman.
+
+"Not a letter! why, I read the address, 'Horse Guards.' I read it as it
+passed into your hands.  Now, my man, one look at that letter, or take
+the consequences."
+
+"Kind thanks for your assistance, dear Philip, indeed!  Oh! this?  Oh!
+it's nothing."  He tore it in halves.
+
+His face was of the winter sea-colour, with the chalk wash on it.
+
+"Tear again, and I shall know what to think of the contents," Van Diemen
+frowned.  "Let me see what you've said.  You've sworn you would do it,
+and there it is at last, by miracle; but let me see it and I'll overlook
+it, and you shall be my house-mate still.  If not!----"
+
+Tinman tore away.
+
+"You mistake, you mistake, you're entirely wrong," he said, as he pursued
+with desperation his task of rendering every word unreadable.
+
+Van Diemen stood fronting him; the accumulation of stores of petty
+injuries and meannesses which he had endured from this man, swelled under
+the whip of the conclusive exhibition of treachery.  He looked so black
+that Annette called, "Papa!"
+
+"Philip," said Tinman.  "Philip! my best friend!"
+
+"Pooh, you're a poor creature.  Come along and breakfast at Elba, and you
+can sleep at the Crouch, and goodnight to you.  Crickledon," he called to
+the houseless couple, "you stop at Elba till I build you a shop."
+
+With these words, Van Diemen led the way, walking alone.  Herbert was
+compelled to walk with Tinman.
+
+Mary and Annette came behind, and Mary pinched Annette's arm so sharply
+that she must have cried out aloud had it been possible for her to feel
+pain at that moment, instead of a personal exultation, flying wildly over
+the clash of astonishment and horror, like a sea-bird over the foam.
+
+In the first silent place they came to, Mary murmured the words: "Little
+Jane."
+
+Annette looked round at Mrs. Crickledon, who wound up the procession,
+taking little Jane by the hand.  Little Jane was walking demurely, with a
+placid face.  Annette glanced at Tinman.  Her excited feelings nearly
+rose to a scream of laughter.  For hours after, Mary had only to say to
+her: "Little Jane," to produce the same convulsion.  It rolled her heart
+and senses in a headlong surge, shook her to burning tears, and seemed to
+her ideas the most wonderful running together of opposite things ever
+known on this earth.  The young lady was ashamed of her laughter; but she
+was deeply indebted to it, for never was mind made so clear by that
+beneficent exercise.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
+Causes him to be popularly weighed
+Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
+Eccentric behaviour in trifles
+Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
+Generally he noticed nothing
+Good jokes are not always good policy
+I make a point of never recommending my own house
+Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
+Lend him your own generosity
+Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
+Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
+Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
+Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
+She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
+Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
+That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
+Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
+Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The House on the Beach
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLEMAN OF FIFTY AND THE DAMSEL OF NINETEEN
+
+(An early uncompleted and hitherto unpublished fragment.)
+
+By GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HE
+
+Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river
+of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain
+bright space immediately underneath the vicar's terrace-garden steps.  My
+astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar
+himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his
+waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth.  I knew my
+friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to
+explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might
+have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not
+yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I
+beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing
+immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.
+As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to
+hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible
+to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great
+heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek
+for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to
+propriety.  I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the
+'my dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony
+existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor
+shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides
+that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of
+this strange exhibition.  I therefore, as I could not be accused of an
+outrage to modesty, permitted myself to maintain what might be
+invidiously termed a satyr-like watch from behind a forward flinging
+willow, whose business in life was to look at its image in a brown depth,
+branches, trunk, and roots.  The sole indication of discomfort displayed
+by the pair was that the lady's hand worked somewhat fretfully to keep
+her dress from ballooning and puffing out of all proportion round about
+her person, while the vicar, who stood without his hat, employed a spongy
+handkerchief from time to time in tempering the ardours of a vertical
+sun.  If you will consent to imagine a bald blackbird, his neck being
+shrunk in apprehensively, as you may see him in the first rolling of the
+thunder, you will gather an image of my friend's appearance.
+
+He performed his capital ablutions with many loud 'poofs,' and a casting
+up of dazzled eyes, an action that gave point to his recital of the
+invocation of Chryses to Smintheus which brought upon the Greeks disaster
+and much woe.  Between the lines he replied to his wife, whose remarks
+increased in quantity, and also, as I thought, in emphasis, under the
+river of verse which he poured forth unbaffled, broadening his chest to
+the sonorous Greek music in a singular rapture of obliviousness.
+
+A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it, but will
+keep the agitation of it down as long as he may.  The simmering of humour
+sends a lively spirit into the mind, whereas the boiling over is but a
+prodigal expenditure and the disturbance of a clear current: for the
+comic element is visible to you in all things, if you do but keep your
+mind charged with the perception of it, as I have heard a great expounder
+deliver himself on another subject; and he spoke very truly.  So, I
+continued to look on with the gravity of Nature herself, and I could not
+but fancy, and with less than our usual wilfulness when we fancy things
+about Nature's moods, that the Mother of men beheld this scene with half
+a smile, differently from the simple observation of those cows whisking
+the flies from their flanks at the edge of the shorn meadow and its
+aspens, seen beneath the curved roof of a broad oak-branch.  Save for
+this happy upward curve of the branch, we are encompassed by breathless
+foliage; even the gloom was hot; the little insects that are food for
+fish tried a flight and fell on the water's surface, as if panting.  Here
+and there, a sullen fish consented to take them, and a circle spread,
+telling of past excitement.
+
+I had listened to the vicar's Homeric lowing for the space of a minute or
+so--what some one has called, the great beast-like, bellow-like, roar and
+roll of the Iliad hexameter: it stopped like a cut cord.  One of the
+numerous daughters of his house appeared in the arch of white cluster-
+roses on the lower garden-terrace, and with an exclamation, stood
+petrified at the extraordinary spectacle, and then she laughed outright.
+I had hitherto resisted, but the young lady's frank and boisterous
+laughter carried me along, and I too let loose a peal, and discovered
+myself.  The vicar, seeing me, acknowledged a consciousness of his absurd
+position with a laugh as loud.  As for the scapegrace girl, she went off
+into a run of high-pitched shriekings like twenty woodpeckers, crying: I
+Mama, mama, you look as if you were in Jordan!'
+
+The vicar cleared his throat admonishingly, for it was apparent that Miss
+Alice was giving offence to her mother, and I presume he thought it was
+enough for one of the family to have done so.
+
+'Wilt thou come out of Jordan?' I cried.
+
+'I am sufficiently baptized with the water,' said the helpless man. . .
+
+'Indeed, Mr. Amble,' observed his spouse, 'you can lecture a woman for
+not making the best of circumstances; I hope you'll bear in mind that
+it's you who are irreverent.  I can endure this no longer.  You deserve
+Mr. Pollingray's ridicule.'
+
+Upon this, I interposed: 'Pray, ma'am, don't imagine that you have
+anything but sympathy from me.'--but as I was protesting, having my mouth
+open, the terrible Miss Alice dragged the laughter remorselessly out of
+me.
+
+They have been trying Frank's new boat, Mr. Pollingray, and they've upset
+it.  Oh! oh' and again there was the woodpeckers' chorus.
+
+'Alice, I desire you instantly to go and fetch John the gardener,' said
+the angry mother.
+
+'Mama, I can't move; wait a minute, only a minute.  John's gone about the
+geraniums.  Oh!  don't look so resigned, papa; you'll kill me!  Mama,
+come and take my hand.  Oh! oh!'
+
+The young lady put her hands in against her waist and rolled her body
+like a possessed one.
+
+'Why don't you come in through the boat-house?' she asked when she had
+mastered her fit.
+
+'Ah!' said the vicar.  I beheld him struck by this new thought.
+
+'How utterly absurd you are, Mr. Amble!' exclaimed his wife, 'when you
+know that the boat-house is locked, and that the boat was lying under the
+camshot when you persuaded me to step into it.'
+
+Hearing this explanation of the accident, Alice gave way to an
+ungovernable emotion.
+
+'You see, my dear,' the vicar addressed his wife, she can do nothing;
+it's useless.  If ever patience is counselled to us, it is when accidents
+befall us, for then, as we are not responsible, we know we are in other
+hands, and it is our duty to be comparatively passive.  Perhaps I may say
+that in every difficulty, patience is a life-belt.  I beg of you to be
+patient still.'
+
+'Mr. Amble, I shall think you foolish,' said the spouse, with a nod of
+more than emphasis.
+
+My dear, you have only to decide,' was the meek reply.
+
+By this time, Miss Alice had so far conquered the fiend of laughter that
+she could venture to summon her mother close up to the bank and extend a
+rescuing hand.  Mrs. Amble waded to within reach, her husband following.
+Arrangements were made for Alice to pull, and the vicar to push; both in
+accordance with Mrs. Amble's stipulations, for even in her extremity of
+helplessness she affected rule and sovereignty.  Unhappily, at the
+decisive moment, I chanced (and I admit it was more than an inadvertence
+on my part, it was a most ill-considered thing to do) I chanced, I say,
+to call out--and that I refrained from quoting Voltaire is something in
+my favour:
+
+'How on earth did you manage to tumble in?'
+
+There can be no contest of opinion that I might have kept my curiosity
+waiting, and possibly it may be said with some justification that I was
+the direct cause of my friend's unparalleled behaviour; but could a
+mortal man guess that in the very act of assisting his wife's return to
+dry land, and while she was--if I may put it so--modestly in his hands,
+he would turn about with a quotation that compared him to old Palinurus,
+all the while allowing his worthy and admirable burden to sink lower and
+dispread in excess upon the surface of the water, until the vantage of
+her daughter's help was lost to her; I beheld the consequences of my
+indiscretion, dismayed.  I would have checked the preposterous Virgilian,
+but in contempt of my uplifted hand and averted head, and regardless of
+the fact that his wife was then literally dependent upon him, the vicar
+declaimed (and the drenching effect produced by Latin upon a lady at such
+a season, may be thought on):
+
+               Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
+               Et super incumbens, cum puppis parte revulsa
+               Cumque gubernaclo liquidas projecit in undas.'
+
+It is not easy when you are unacquainted with the language, to retort
+upon Latin, even when the attempt to do so is made in English.  Very few
+even of the uneducated ears can tolerate such anti-climax vituperative as
+English after sounding Latin.  Mrs. Amble kept down those sentiments
+which her vernacular might have expressed.  I heard but one groan that
+came from her as she lay huddled indistinguishably in the, arms of her
+husband.
+
+'Not--praecipitem!  I am happy to say,' my senseless friend remarked
+further, and laughed cheerfully as he fortified his statement with a run
+of negatives.  'No, no'; in a way peculiar to him.  'No, no.  If I plant
+my grey hairs anywhere, it will be on dry land: no.  But, now, my dear;
+he returned to his duty; why, you're down again.  Come: one, two, and
+up.'
+
+He was raising a dead weight.  The passion for sarcastic speech was
+manifestly at war with common prudence in the bosom of Mrs. Amble;
+prudence, however, overcame it.  She cast on him a look of a kind that
+makes matrimony terrific in the dreams of bachelors, and then wedding her
+energy to the assistance given she made one of those senseless springs of
+the upper half of the body, which strike the philosophic eye with the
+futility of an effort that does not arise from a solid basis.  Owing to
+the want of concert between them, the vicar's impulsive strength was
+expended when his wife's came into play.  Alice clutched her mother
+bravely.  The vicar had force enough to stay his wife's descent; but
+Alice (she boasts of her muscle) had not the force in the other
+direction--and no wonder.  There are few young ladies who could pull
+fourteen stone sheer up a camshot.
+
+Mrs. Amble remained in suspense between the two.
+
+Oh, Mr. Pollingray, if you were only on this side to help us,' Miss Alice
+exclaimed very piteously, though I could see that she was half mad with
+the internal struggle of laughter at the parents and concern for them.
+
+'Now, pull, Alice,' shouted the vicar.
+
+'No, not yet,' screamed Mrs. Amble; I'm sinking.'
+
+'Pull, Alice.'
+
+'Now, Mama.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Push, Papa.'
+
+'I'm down.'
+
+'Up, Ma'am; Jane; woman, up.'
+
+'Gently, Papa: Abraham, I will not.'
+
+'My dear, but you must.'
+
+'And that man opposite.'
+
+'What, Pollingray?  He's fifty.'
+
+I found myself walking indignantly down the path.  Even now I protest my
+friend was guilty of bad manners, though I make every allowance for him;
+I excuse, I pass the order; but why--what justifies one man's bawling out
+another man's age?  What purpose does it serve?  I suppose the vicar
+wished to reassure his wife, on the principle (I have heard him enunciate
+it) that the sexes are merged at fifty--by which he means, I must
+presume, that something which may be good or bad, and is generally silly
+--of course, I admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any man--
+something has gone: a recognition of the bounds of division.  There is,
+if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks at
+fifty. We have ceased to blush readily: and let me ask you to define a
+blush.  Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie?  I know that this
+will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his
+youthful compeers.  I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to
+consider whether a healthy man in his prime, who has enough, and is not
+cursed by ambition, need be jealous of any living soul.
+
+A shriek from Miss Alice checked my retreating steps.  The vicar was
+staggering to support the breathing half of his partner while she
+regained her footing in the bed of the river.  Their effort to scale the
+camshot had failed.  Happily at this moment I caught sight of Master
+Frank's boat, which had floated, bottom upwards, against a projecting
+mud-bank of forget-me-nots.  I contrived to reach it and right it, and
+having secured one of the sculls, I pulled up to the rescue; though not
+before I had plucked a flower, actuated by a motive that I cannot account
+for.  The vicar held the boat firmly against the camshot, while I, at the
+imminent risk of joining them (I shall not forget the combined expression
+of Miss Alice's retreating eyes and the malicious corners of her mouth)
+hoisted the lady in, and the river with her.  From the seat of the boat
+she stood sufficiently high to project the step towards land without
+peril.  When she had set her foot there, we all assumed an attitude of
+respectful attention, and the vicar, who could soar over calamity like a
+fairweather swallow, acknowledged the return of his wife to the element
+with a series of apologetic yesses and short coughings.
+
+'That would furnish a good concert for the poets,' he remarked.
+'A parting, a separation of lovers; "even as a body from the watertorn,"
+or "from the water plucked"; eh?  do you think--"so I weep round her,
+tearful in her track," an excellent--'
+
+But the outraged woman, dripping in grievous discomfort above him, made a
+peremptory gesture.
+
+'Mr. Amble, will you come on shore instantly, I have borne with your
+stupidity long enough.  I insist upon your remembering, sir, that you
+have a family dependent upon you.  Other men may commit these follies.'
+
+This was a blow at myself, a bachelor whom the lady had never persuaded
+to dream of relinquishing his freedom.
+
+'My dear, I am coming,' said the vicar.
+
+'Then, come at once, or I shall think you idiotic,' the wife retorted.
+
+'I have been endeavouring,' the vicar now addressed me, 'to prove by a
+practical demonstration that women are capable of as much philosophy as
+men, under any sudden and afflicting revolution of circumstances.'
+
+'And if you get a sunstroke, you will be rightly punished, and I shall
+not be sorry, Mr. Amble.'
+
+'I am coming, my dear Jane.  Pray run into the house and change your
+things.'
+
+'Not till I see you out of the water, sir.'
+
+'You are losing your temper, my love.'
+
+'You would make a saint lose his temper, Mr. Amble.'
+
+'There were female saints, my dear,' the vicar mildly responded; and
+addressed me further: 'Up to this point, I assure you, Pollingray, no
+conduct could have been more exemplary than Mrs. Amble's.  I had got her
+into the boat--a good boat, a capital boat--but getting in myself, we
+overturned.  The first impulse of an ordinary woman would have been to
+reproach and scold; but Mrs. Amble succumbed only to the first impulse.
+Discovering that all effort unaided to climb the bank was fruitless, she
+agreed to wait patiently and make the best of circumstances; and she did;
+and she learnt to enjoy it.  There is marrow in every bone.  My dear.
+Jane, I have never admired you so much.  I tried her, Pollingray, in
+metaphysics.  I talked to her of the opera we last heard, I think fifty
+years ago.  And as it is less endurable for a woman to be patient in
+tribulation--the honour is greater, when she overcomes the fleshy trial.
+Insomuch,' the vicar put on a bland air of abnegation of honour, 'that I
+am disposed to consider any male philosopher our superior; when you've
+found one, ha, ha--when you've found one.  O sol pulcher!  I am ready to
+sing that the day has been glorious, so far.  Pulcher ille dies.'
+
+Mrs. Amble appealed to me.  'Would anybody not swear that he is mad to
+see him standing waist-deep in the water and the sun on his bald head,
+I am reduced to entreat you not to--though you have no family of your
+own--not to encourage him.  It is amusing to you.  Pray, reflect that
+such folly is too often fatal.  Compel him to come on shore.'
+
+The logic of the appeal was no doubt distinctly visible in the lady's
+mind, though it was not accurately worded.  I saw that I stood marked to
+be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well,
+notwithstanding.  By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative,
+and a constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat,
+and thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps
+deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his
+divergent mind by any remark during the passage, and remained silent.
+No sooner was he established on his feet, than she plucked him away.
+
+'Your papa's hat,' she called, flashing to her daughter, and streamed up
+the lawn into the rose-trellised pathways leading on aloft to the
+vicarage house.  Behind roses the weeping couple disappeared.  The last I
+saw of my friend was a smiting of his hand upon his head in a vain effort
+to catch at one of the fleeting ideas sowed in him by the quick passage
+of objects before his vision, and shaken out of him by abnormal hurry.
+The Rev. Abraham Amble had been lord of his wife in the water, but his
+innings was over.  He had evidently enjoyed it vastly, and I now
+understood why he had chosen to prolong it as much as possible.  Your
+eccentric characters are not uncommonly amateurs of petty artifice.
+There are hours of vengeance even for henpecked men.
+
+I found myself sighing over the enslaved condition of every Benedict of
+my acquaintance, when the thought came like a surprise that I was alone
+with Alice.  The fair and pleasant damsel made a clever descent into the
+boat, and having seated herself, she began to twirl the scull in the
+rowlock, and said: 'Do you feel disposed to join me in looking after the
+other scull and papa's hat, Mr. Pollingray?' I suggested 'Will you not
+get your feet wet?  I couldn't manage to empty all the water in the
+boat.'
+
+'Oh' cried she, with a toss of her head; I wet feet never hurt young
+people.'
+
+There was matter for an admonitory lecture in this.  Let me confess I was
+about to give it, when she added: But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid
+that your feet are wet!  You had to step into the water when you righted
+the boat:
+
+My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could
+combine with a proper discretion.  The amateur craft rocked
+threateningly, and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty
+damsel, until by great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the
+same misfortune which had befallen her parents.  She laughed and blushed,
+and we tottered asunder.
+
+'Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?'
+
+Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches
+smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best
+days.
+
+I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single
+scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation: 'I should perhaps
+have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being
+metaphysics.'
+
+She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause.  It had not been coquetry:
+merely the woman unconsciously at play.  A man is bound to remember the
+seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a
+worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not
+shun the society of the sex.  My long robust health and perfect self-
+reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to
+fitful impressions.  Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart
+of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived,
+supposing that it should ever for one instant get complete mastery of my
+head.  This is the peril of a man who has lived soberly.  Do we never
+know when we are safe?  I am, in reflecting thereupon, positively
+prepared to say that if there is no fool like what they call an old fool
+(and a man in his prime, who can be laughed at, is the world's old fool)
+there is wisdom in the wild oats theory, and I shall come round to my
+nephew's way of thinking: that is, as far as Master Charles by his acting
+represents his thinking.  I shall at all events be more lenient in my
+judgement of him, and less stern in my allocutions, for I shall have no
+text to preach from.
+
+We picked up the hat and the scull in one of the little muddy bays of our
+brown river, forming an amphitheatre for water-rats and draped with great
+dockleaves, nettle-flowers, ragged robins, and other weeds for which the
+learned young lady gave the botanical names.  It was pleasant to hear her
+speak with the full authority of absolute knowledge of her subject.  She
+has intelligence.  She is decidedly too good for Charles, unless he
+changes his method of living.
+
+'Shall we row on?' she asked, settling her arms to work the pair of
+sculls.
+
+'You have me in your power,' said I, and she struck out.  Her shape is
+exceedingly graceful; I was charmed by the occasional tightening in of
+her lips as she exerted her muscle, while at intervals telling me of her
+race with one of her boastful younger brothers, whom she had beaten.
+I believe it is only when they are using physical exertion that the eyes
+of young girls have entire simplicity--the simplicity of nature as
+opposed to that other artificial simplicity which they learn from their
+governesses, their mothers, and the admiration of witlings.  Attractive
+purity, or the nice glaze of no comprehension of anything which is
+considered to be improper in a wicked world, and is no doubt very useful,
+is not to my taste.  French girls, as a rule, cannot compete with our
+English in the purer graces.  They are only incomparable when as women
+they have resort to art.
+
+Alice could look at me as she rowed, without thinking it necessary to
+force a smile, or to speak, or to snigger and be foolish.  I felt towards
+the girl like a comrade.
+
+We went no further than Hatchard's mile, where the water plumps the poor
+sleepy river from a sidestream, and, as it turned the boat's head quite
+round, I let the boat go.  These studies of young women are very well as
+a pastime; but they soon cease to be a recreation.  She forms an
+agreeable picture when she is rowing, and possesses a musical laugh.  Now
+and then she gives way to the bad trick of laughing without caring or
+daring to explain the cause for it.  She is moderately well-bred.  I hope
+that she has principle.  Certain things a man of my time of life learns
+by associating with very young people which are serviceable to him.  What
+a different matter this earth must be to that girl from what it is to me!
+I knew it before.  And--mark the difference--I feel it now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHE
+
+Papa never will cease to meet with accidents and adventures.  If he only
+walks out to sit for half an hour with one of his old dames, as he calls
+them, something is sure to happen to him, and it is almost as sure that
+Mr. Pollingray will be passing at the time and mixed up in it.
+
+Since Mr. Pollingray's return from his last residence on the Continent,
+I have learnt to know him and like him.  Charles is unjust to his uncle.
+He is not at all the grave kind of man I expected from Charles's
+description.  He is extremely entertaining, and then he understands the
+world, and I like to hear him talk, he is so unpretentious and uses just
+the right words.  No one would imagine his age, from his appearance, and
+he has more fun than any young man I have listened to.
+
+But, I am convinced I have discovered his weakness.  It is my fatal.
+peculiarity that I cannot be with people ten minutes without seeing some
+point about them where they are tenderest.  Mr. Pollingray wants to be
+thought quite youthful.  He can bear any amount of fatigue; he is always
+fresh and a delightful companion; but you cannot get him to show even a
+shadow of exhaustion or to admit that he ever knew what it was to lie
+down beaten.  This is really to pretend that he is superhuman.  I like
+him so much that I could wish him superior to such--it is nothing other
+than--vanity.  Which is worse?  A young man giving himself the air of a
+sage, or--but no one can call Mr. Pollingray an old man.  He is a
+confirmed bachelor.  That puts the case.  Charles, when he says of him
+that he is a 'gentleman in a good state of preservation,' means to be
+ironical.  I doubt whether Charles at fifty would object to have the same
+said of Mr. Charles Everett.  Mr. Pollingray has always looked to his
+health.  He has not been disappointed.  I am sure he was always very
+good.  But, whatever he was, he is now very pleasant, and he does not
+talk to women as if he thought them singular, and feel timid, I mean,
+confused, as some men show that they feel--the good ones.  Perhaps he
+felt so once, and that is why he is still free.  Charles's dread that his
+uncle will marry is most unworthy.  He never will, but why should he not?
+Mama declares that he is waiting for a woman of intellect, I can hear
+her: 'Depend upon it, a woman of intellect will marry Dayton Manor.'
+Should that mighty event not come to pass, poor Charles will have to sink
+the name of Everett in that of Pollingray.  Mr. Pollingray's name is the
+worst thing about him.  When I think of his name I see him ten times
+older than he is.  My feelings are in harmony with his pedigree
+concerning the age of the name.  One would have to be a woman of
+profound intellect to see the advantage of sharing it.
+
+'Mrs. Pollingray!' She must be a lady with a wig.
+
+It was when we were rowing up by Hatchard's mill that I first perceived
+his weakness, he was looking at me so kindly, and speaking of his
+friendship for papa, and how glad he was to be fixed at last, near to us
+at Dayton.  I wished to use some term of endearment in reply, and said,
+I remember, 'Yes, and we are also glad, Godpapa.'  I was astonished that
+he should look so disconcerted, and went on: 'Have you forgotten that you
+are my godpapa?'
+
+He answered: 'Am I?  Oh!  yes--the name of Alice.'
+
+Still he looked uncertain, uncomfortable, and I said, 'Do you want to
+cancel the past, and cast me off?'
+
+'No, certainly not'; he, I suppose, thought he was assuring me.
+
+I saw his lips move at the words I cancel the past,' though he did not
+speak them out.  He positively blushed.  I know the sort of young man he
+must have been.  Exactly the sort of young man mama would like for a son-
+in-law, and her daughters would accept in pure obedience when reduced to
+be capable of the virtue by rigorous diet, or consumption.
+
+He let the boat go round instantly.  This was enough for me.  It struck
+me then that when papa had said to mama (as he did in that absurd
+situation) 'He is fifty,' Mr. Pollingray must have heard it across the
+river, for he walked away hurriedly.  He came back, it is true, with the
+boat, but I have my own ideas.  He is always ready to do a service, but
+on this occasion I think it was an afterthought.  I shall not venture to
+call him 'Godpapa' again.
+
+Indeed, if I have a desire, it is that I may be blind to people's
+weakness.  My insight is inveterate.  Papa says he has heard Mr.
+Pollingray boast of his age.  If so, there has come a change over him.
+I cannot be deceived.  I see it constantly.  After my unfortunate speech,
+Mr. Pollingray shunned our house for two whole weeks, and scarcely bowed
+to us when coming out of church.  Miss Pollingray idolises him--spoils
+him.  She says that he is worth twenty of Charles.  Nous savons ce que
+nous savons, nous autres.  Charles is wild, but Charles would be above
+these littlenesses.  How could Miss Pollingray comprehend the romance of
+Charles's nature?
+
+My sister Evelina is now Mr. Pollingray's favourite.  She could not say
+Godpapa to him, if she would.  Persons who are very much petted at home,
+are always establishing favourites abroad.  For my part, let them praise
+me or not, I know that I can do any thing I set my mind upon.  At present
+I choose to be frivolous.  I know I am frivolous.  What then?  If there
+is fun in the world am I not to laugh at it?  I shall astonish them by
+and by.  But, I will laugh while I can.  I am sure, there is so much
+misery in the world, it is a mercy to be able to laugh.  Mr. Pollingray
+may think what he likes of me.  When Charles tells me that I must do my
+utmost to propitiate his uncle, he cannot mean that I am to refrain from
+laughing, because that is being a hypocrite, which I may become when I
+have gone through all the potential moods and not before.
+
+It is preposterous to suppose that I am to be tied down to the views of
+life of elderly people.
+
+I dare say I did laugh a little too much the other night, but could I
+help it?  We had a dinner party.  Present were Mr. Pollingray, Mrs.
+Kershaw, the Wilbury people (three), Charles, my brother Duncan, Evelina,
+mama, papa, myself, and Mr. and Mrs. (put them last for emphasis) Romer
+Pattlecombe, Mrs. Pattlecombe (the same number of syllables as
+Pollingray, and a 'P' to begin with) is thirty-one years her husband's
+junior, and she is twenty-six; full of fun, and always making fun of him,
+the mildest, kindest, goody old thing, who has never distressed himself
+for anything and never will.  Mrs. Romer not only makes fun, but is fun.
+When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her.  She is the
+salt of society in these parts.  Some one, as we were sitting on the lawn
+after dinner, alluded to the mishap to papa and mama, and mama, who has
+never forgiven Mr. Pollingray for having seen her in her ridiculous
+plight, said that men were in her opinion greater gossips than women.
+'That is indisputable, ma'am,' said Mr. Pollingray, he loves to bewilder
+her; 'only, we never mention it.'
+
+'There is an excuse for us,' said Mrs. Romer; 'our trials are so great,
+we require a diversion, and so we talk of others.'
+
+'Now really,' said Charles, 'I don't think your trials are equal to
+ours.'
+
+For which remark papa bantered him, and his uncle was sharp on him; and
+Charles, I know, spoke half seriously, though he was seeking to draw Mrs.
+Romer out: he has troubles.
+
+From this, we fell upon a comparison of sufferings, and Mrs. Romer took
+up the word.  She is a fair, smallish, nervous woman, with delicate hands
+and outlines, exceedingly sympathetic; so much so that while you are
+telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation, and is ready
+to shriek with laughter or shake her head with uttermost grief; and
+sometimes, if you let her go too far in one direction, she does both.
+All her narrations are with ups and downs of her hands, her eyes, her
+chin, and her voice.  Taking poor, good old Mr. Romer by the roll of his
+coat, she made as if posing him, and said: 'There!  Now, it's all very
+well for you to say that there is anything equal to a woman's sufferings
+in this world.  I do declare you know nothing of what we unhappy women
+have to endure.  It's dreadful!  No male creature can possibly know what
+tortures I have to undergo.'
+
+Mama neatly contrived, after interrupting her, to divert the subject.
+I think that all the ladies imagined they were in jeopardy, but I knew
+Mrs. Romer was perfectly to be trusted.  She has wit which pleases,
+jusqu'aux ongles, and her sense of humour never overrides her discretion
+with more than a glance--never with preparation.
+
+'Now,' she pursued, 'let me tell you what excruciating trials I have to
+go through.  This man,' she rocked the patient old gentleman to and fro,
+'this man will be the death of me.  He is utterly devoid of a sense of
+propriety.  Again and again I say to him--cannot the tailor cut down
+these trowsers of yours?  Yes, Mr. Amble, you preach patience to women,
+but this is too much for any woman's endurance.  Now, do attempt to
+picture to yourself what an agony it must be to me:--he will shave, and
+he will wear those enormously high trowsers that, when they are braced,
+reach up behind to the nape of his neck!  Only yesterday morning, as I
+was lying in bed, I could see him in his dressing-room.  I tell you: he
+will shave, and he will choose the time for shaving early after he has
+braced these immensely high trowsers that make such a placard of him.
+Oh, my goodness!  My dear Romer, I have said to him fifty times if I have
+said it once, my goodness me! why can you not get decent trowsers such as
+other men wear?  He has but one answer--he has been accustomed to wear
+those trowsers, and he would not feel at home in another pair.  And what
+does he say if I continue to complain? and I cannot but continue to
+complain, for it is not only moral, it is physical torment to see the
+sight he makes of himself; he says: "My dear, you should not have married
+an old man."  What!  I say to him, must an old man wear antiquated
+trowsers?  No! nothing will turn him; those are his habits.  But, you
+have not heard the worst.  The sight of those hideous trowsers totally
+destroying all shape in the man, is horrible enough; but it is absolutely
+more than a woman can bear to see him--for he will shave--first cover his
+face with white soap with that ridiculous centre-piece to his trowsers
+reaching quite up to his poll, and then, you can fancy a woman's rage and
+anguish!  the figure lifts its nose by the extremist tip.  Oh! it's
+degradation!  What respect can a woman have for her husband after that
+sight?  Imagine it!  And I have implored him to spare me.  It's useless.
+You sneer at our hbops and say that you are inconvenienced by them but
+you gentlemen are not degraded,--Oh! unutterably!--as I am every morning
+of my life by that cruel spectacle of a husband.'
+
+I have but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish
+and thinks her vulgar, refused to laugh, but it came upon me, as the
+picture of 'your own old husband,' with so irresistibly comic an effect
+that I was overcome by convulsions of laughter.  I do not defend myself.
+It was as much a fit as any other attack.  I did all I could to arrest
+it.  At last, I ran indoors and upstairs to my bedroom and tried hard to
+become dispossessed.  I am sure I was an example of the sufferings of my
+sex.  It could hardly have been worse for Mrs. Romer than it was for me.
+I was drowned in internal laughter long after I had got a grave face.
+Early in the evening Mr. Pollingray left us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HE
+
+I am carried by the fascination of a musical laugh.  Apparently I am
+doomed to hear it at my own expense.  We are secure from nothing in this
+life.
+
+I have determined to stand for the county.  An unoccupied man is a prey
+to every hook of folly.  Be dilettante all your days, and you might as
+fairly hope to reap a moral harvest as if you had chased butterflies.
+The activities created by a profession or determined pursuit are
+necessary to the growth of the mind.
+
+Heavens!  I find myself writing like an illegitimate son of La
+Rochefoucauld, or of Vauvenargues.  But, it is true that I am fifty years
+old, and I am not mature.  I am undeveloped somewhere.
+
+The question for me to consider is, whether this development is to be
+accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.
+
+Dans la cinquantaine!  The reflection should produce a gravity in men.
+Such a number of years will not ring like bridal bells in a man's ears.
+I have my books about me, my horses, my dogs, a contented household.
+I move in the centre of a perfect machine, and I am dissatisfied.  I rise
+early.  I do not digest badly.  What is wrong?
+
+The calamity of my case is that I am in danger of betraying what is wrong
+with me to others, without knowing it myself.  Some woman will be
+suspecting and tattling, because she has nothing else to do.  Girls have
+wonderfully shrewd eyes for a weakness in the sex which they are
+instructed to look upon as superior.  But I am on my guard.
+
+The fact is manifest: I feel I have been living more or less uselessly.
+It is a fat time.  There are a certain set of men in every prosperous
+country who, having wherewithal, and not being compelled to toil, become
+subjected to the moral ideal.  Most of them in the end sit down with our
+sixth Henry or second Richard and philosophise on shepherds.  To be no
+better than a simple hind!  Am I better?  Prime bacon and an occasional
+draft of shrewd beer content him, and they do not me.  Yet I am sound,
+and can sit through the night and be ready, and on the morrow I shall
+stand for the county.
+
+I made the announcement that I had thoughts of entering Parliament,
+before I had half formed the determination, at my sister's lawn party
+yesterday.
+
+'Gilbert!' she cried, and raised her hands.  A woman is hurt if you do
+not confide to her your plans as soon as you can conceive them.  She must
+be present to assist at the birth, or your plans are unblessed plans.
+
+I had been speaking aside in a casual manner to my friend Amble, whose
+idea is that the Church is not represented with sufficient strength in
+the Commons, and who at once, as I perceived, grasped the notion of
+getting me to promote sundry measures connected with schools and clerical
+stipends, for his eyes dilated; he said: 'Well, if you do, I can put you
+up to several things,' and imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his
+own mind, he continued absently: 'Pollingray might be made strong on
+church rates.  There is much to do.  He has lived abroad and requires
+schooling in these things.  We want a man.  Yes, yes, yes.  It's a good
+idea; a notion.'
+
+My sister, however, was of another opinion.  She did me the honour to
+take me aside.
+
+'Gilbert, were you serious just now?'
+
+'Quite serious.  Is it not my characteristic?'
+
+'Not on these occasions.  I saw the idea come suddenly upon you.  You
+were looking at Charles.'
+
+'Continue: and at what was he looking?'
+
+'He was looking at Alice Amble.'
+
+'And the young lady?'
+
+'She looked at you.'
+
+I was here attacked by a singularly pertinacious fly, and came out of the
+contest with a laugh.
+
+'Did she have that condescension towards me?  And from the glance,
+my resolution to enter Parliament was born?  It is the French
+vaudevilliste's doctrine of great events from little causes.  The slipper
+of a soubrette trips the heart of a king and changes the destiny of a
+nation-the history of mankind.  It may be true.  If I were but shot into
+the House from a little girl's eye!'
+
+With this I took her arm gaily, walked with her, and had nearly
+overreached myself with excess of cunning.  I suppose we are reduced to
+see more plainly that which we systematically endeavour to veil from
+others.  It is best to flutter a handkerchief, instead of nailing up a
+curtain.  The principal advantage is that you may thereby go on deceiving
+yourself, for this reason: few sentiments are wholly matter of fact; but
+when they are half so, you make them concrete by deliberately seeking
+either to crush or conceal them, and you are doubly betrayed--betrayed
+to the besieging eye and to yourself.  When a sentiment has grown to be
+a passion (mercifully may I be spared!) different tactics are required.
+By that time, you will have already betrayed yourself too deeply to dare
+to be flippant: the investigating eye is aware that it has been purposely
+diverted: knowing some things, it makes sure of the rest from which you
+turn it away.  If you want to hide a very grave case, you must speak
+gravely about it.--At which season, be but sure of your voice, and
+simulate a certain depth of sentimental philosophy, and you may once
+more, and for a long period, bewilder the investigator of the secrets of
+your bosom.  To sum up: in the preliminary stages of a weakness, be
+careful that you do not show your own alarm, or all will be suspected.
+Should the weakness turn to fever, let a little of it be seen, like a
+careless man, and nothing will really be thought.
+
+I can say this, I can do this; and is it still possible that a pin's
+point has got through the joints of the armour of a man like me?
+
+Elizabeth quitted my side with the conviction that I am as considerate an
+uncle as I am an affectionate brother.
+
+I said to her, apropos, 'I have been observing those two.  It seems to me
+they are deciding things for themselves.'
+
+'I have been going to speak to you about them Gilbert,' said she.
+
+And I: 'The girl must be studied.  The family is good.  While Charles is
+in Wales, you must have her at Dayton.  She laughs rather vacantly, don't
+you think?  but the sound of it has the proper wholesome ring.  I will
+give her what attention I can while she is here, but in the meantime I
+must have a bride of my own and commence courting.'
+
+'Parliament, you mean,' said Elizabeth with a frank and tender smile.
+The hostess was summoned to welcome a new guest, and she left me, pleased
+with her successful effort to reach my meaning, and absorbed by it.
+
+I would not have challenged Machiavelli; but I should not have
+encountered the Florentine ruefully.  I feel the same keen delight in
+intellectual dexterity.  On some points my sister is not a bad match for
+me.  She can beat me seven games out of twelve at chess; but the five I
+win sequently, for then I am awake.  There is natural art and artificial
+art, and the last beats the first.  Fortunately for us, women are
+strangers to the last.  They have had to throw off a mask before they
+have, got the schooling; so, when they are thus armed we know what we
+meet, and what are the weapons to be used.
+
+Alice, if she is a fine fencer at all, will expect to meet the ordinary
+English squire in me.  I have seen her at the baptismal font!  It is
+inconceivable.  She will fancy that at least she is ten times more subtle
+than I.  When I get the mastery--it is unlikely to make me the master.
+What may happen is, that the nature of the girl will declare itself,
+under the hard light of intimacy, vulgar.  Charles I cause to be absent
+for six weeks; so there will be time enough for the probation.  I do not
+see him till he returns.  If by chance I had come earlier to see him and
+he to allude to her, he would have had my conscience on his side, and
+that is what a scrupulous man takes care to prevent.
+
+I wonder whether my friends imagine me to be the same man whom they knew
+as Gilbert Pollingray a month back?  I see the change, I feel the change;
+but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking forward, no feeling:
+none for others, very little, for myself.  I am told that I am losing
+fluency as a dinner-table talker.  There is now more savour to me in a
+silvery laugh than in a spiced wit.  And this is the man who knows women,
+and is far too modest to give a decided opinion upon any of their merits.
+Search myself through as I may, I cannot tell when the change began, or
+what the change consists of, or what is the matter with me, or what charm
+there is in the person who does the mischief.  She is the counterpart of
+dozens of girls; lively, brown-eyed, brown-haired, underbred--it is not
+too harsh to say so--underbred slightly; half-educated, whether
+quickwitted I dare not opine.  She is undoubtedly the last whom I or
+another person would have fixed upon as one to work me this unmitigated
+evil.  I do not know her, and I believe I do not care to know her, and I
+am thirsting for the hour to come when I shall study her.  Is not this to
+have the poison of a bite in one's blood?  The wrath of Venus is not a
+fable.  I was a hard reader and I despised the sex in my youth, before
+the family estates fell to me; since when I have playfully admired the
+sex; I have dallied with a passion, and not read at all, save for
+diversion: her anger is not a fable.  You may interpret many a mythic
+tale by the facts which lie in your own blood.  My emotions have lain
+altogether dormant in sentimental attachment.  I have, I suppose, boasted
+of, Python slain, and Cupid has touched me up with an arrow.  I trust to
+my own skill rather than to his mercy for avoiding a second from his
+quiver.  I will understand this girl if I have to submit to a close
+intimacy with her for six months.  There is no doubt of the elegance of
+her movements.  Charles might as well take his tour, and let us see him
+again next year.  Yes, her movements are (or will be) gracious.  In a
+year's time she will have acquired the fuller tones and poetry of
+womanliness.  Perhaps then, too, her smile will linger instead of
+flashing.  I have known infinitely lovelier women than she.  One I have
+known! but let her be.  Louise and I have long since said adieu.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SHE
+
+Behold me installed in Dayton Manor House, and brought here for the
+express purpose (so Charles has written me word) of my being studied,
+that it may be seen whether I am worthy to be, on some august future
+occasion--possibly--a member (Oh, so much to mumble!) of this great
+family.  Had I known it when I was leaving home, I should have
+countermanded the cording of my boxes.  If you please, I do the packing,
+and not the cording.  I must practise being polite, or I shall be
+horrifying these good people.
+
+I am mortally offended.  I am very very angry.  I shall show temper.
+Indeed, I have shown it.  Mr. Pollingray must and does think me a goose.
+Dear sir, and I think you are justified.  If any one pretends to guess
+how, I have names to suit that person.  I am a ninny, an ape, and mind
+I call myself these bad things because I deserve worse.  I am flighty,
+I believe I am heartless.  Charles is away, and I suffer no pangs.
+The truth is, I fancied myself so exceedingly penetrating, and it was my
+vanity looking in a glass.  I saw something that answered to my nods and
+howd'ye-do's and--but I am ashamed, and so penitent I might begin making
+a collection of beetles.  I cannot lift up my head.
+
+Mr. Pollingray is such a different man from the one I had imagined!
+What that one was, I have now quite forgotten.  I remember too clearly
+what the wretched guesser was.  I have been three weeks at Dayton, and if
+my sisters know me when I return to the vicarage, they are not foolish
+virgins.  For my part, I know that I shall always hate Mrs. Romer
+Pattlecombe, and that I am unjust to the good woman, but I do hate her,
+and I think the stories shocking, and wonder intensely what it was that I
+could have found in them to laugh at.  I shall never laugh again for many
+years.  Perhaps, when I am an old woman, I may.  I wish the time had
+come.  All young people seem to me so helplessly silly.  I am one of them
+for the present, and have no hope that I can appear to be anything else.
+The young are a crowd--a shoal of small fry.  Their elders are the select
+of the world.
+
+On the morning of the day when I was to leave home for Dayton, a distance
+of eight miles, I looked out of my window while dressing--as early as
+halfpast seven--and I saw Mr. Pollingray's groom on horseback, leading up
+and down the walk a darling little, round, plump, black cob that made my
+heart leap with an immense bound of longing to be on it and away across
+the downs.  And then the maid came to my door with a letter:
+
+'Mr. Pollingray, in return for her considerate good behaviour and saving
+of trouble to him officially, begs his goddaughter to accept the
+accompanying little animal: height 14 h., age 31 years; hunts, is sure-
+footed, and likely to be the best jumper in the county.'
+
+I flew downstairs.  I rushed out of the house and up to my treasure, and
+kissed his nose and stroked his mane.  I could not get my fingers away
+from him.  Horses are so like the very best and beautifullest of women
+when you caress them.  They show their pleasure so at being petted.  They
+curve their necks, and paw, and look proud.  They take your flattery like
+sunshine and are lovely in it.  I kissed my beauty, peering at his black-
+mottled skin, which is like Allingborough Heath in the twilight.  The
+smell of his new saddle and bridle-leather was sweeter than a garden to
+me.  The man handed me a large riding-whip mounted with silver.  I longed
+to jump up and ride till midnight.
+
+Then mama and papa came out and read the note and looked, at my darling
+little cob, and my sisters saw him and kissed me, for they are not
+envious girls.  The most distressing thing was that we had not a riding-
+habit in the family.  I was ready to wear any sort.  I would have ridden
+as a guy rather than not ride at all.  But mama gave me a promise that in
+two days a riding-habit should be sent on to Dayton, and I had to let my
+pet be led back from where he came.  I had no life till I was following
+him.  I could have believed him to be a fairy prince who had charmed me.
+I called him Prince Leboo, because he was black and good.  I forgive
+anybody who talks about first love after what my experience has been with
+Prince Leboo.
+
+What papa thought of the present I do not know, but I know very well what
+mama thought: and for my part I thought everything, not distinctly
+including that, for I could not suppose such selfishness in one so
+generous as Mr. Pollingray.  But I came to Dayton in a state of arrogant
+pride, that gave assurance if not ease to my manners.  I thanked Mr.
+Pollingray warmly, but in a way to let him see it was the matter of a
+horse between us.  'You give, I register thanks, and there's an end.'
+
+'He thinks me a fool! a fool!
+
+'My habit,' I said, 'comes after me.  I hope we shall have some rides
+together.'
+
+'Many,' replied Mr. Pollingray, and his bow inflated me with ideas of my
+condescension.
+
+And because Miss Pollingray (Queen Elizabeth he calls her) looked half
+sad, I read it--!  I do not write what I read it to be.
+
+Behold the uttermost fool of all female creation led over the house by
+Mr. Pollingray.  He showed me the family pictures.
+
+'I am no judge of pictures, Mr. Pollingray.'
+
+'You will learn to see the merits of these.'
+
+'I'm afraid not, though I were to study them for years.'
+
+'You may have that opportunity.'
+
+'Oh!  that is more than I can expect.'
+
+'You will develop intelligence on such subjects by and by.'
+
+A dull sort of distant blow struck me in this remark; but I paid no heed
+to it.
+
+He led me over the gardens and the grounds.  The Great John Methlyn
+Pollingray planted those trees, and designed the house, and the flower-
+garden still speaks of his task; but he is not my master, and
+consequently I could not share his three great-grandsons' veneration for
+him.  There are high fir-woods and beech woods, and a long ascending
+narrow meadow between them, through which a brook falls in continual
+cascades.  It is the sort of scene I love, for it has a woodland grandeur
+and seclusion that leads, me to think, and makes a better girl of me.
+But what I said was: 'Yes, it is the place of all others to come and
+settle in for the evening of one's days.'
+
+'You could not take to it now?' said Mr. Pollingray.
+
+'Now?' my expression of face must have been a picture.
+
+'You feel called upon to decline such a residence in the morning of your
+days?'
+
+He persisted in looking at me as he spoke, and I felt like something
+withering scarlet.
+
+I am convinced he saw through me, while his face was polished brass.  My
+self-possession returned, for my pride was not to be dispersed
+immediately.
+
+'Please, take me to the stables,' I entreated; and there I was at home.
+There I saw my Prince Leboo, and gave him a thousand caresses.'
+
+'He knows me already,' I said.
+
+Then he is some degrees in advance of me,' said Mr. Pollingray.
+
+Is not cold dissection of one's character a cruel proceeding?  And I
+think, too, that a form of hospitality like this by which I am invited to
+be analysed at leisure, is both mean and base.  I have been kindly
+treated and I am grateful, but I do still say (even though I may have
+improved under it) it is unfair.
+
+To proceed: the dinner hour arrived.  The atmosphere of his own house
+seems to favour Mr. Pollingray as certain soils and sites favour others.
+He walked into the dining-room between us with his hands behind him,
+talking to us both so easily and smoothly cheerfully--naturally and
+pleasantly--inimitable by any young man!  You hardly feel the change of
+room.  We were but three at table, but there was no lack of
+entertainment.  Mr. Pollingray is an admirable host; he talks just enough
+himself and helps you to talk.  What does comfort me is that it gives him
+real pleasure to see a hearty appetite.  Young men, I know it for a
+certainty, never quite like us to be so human.  Ah! which is right?
+I would not miss the faith in our nobler essence which Charles has.
+But, if it nobler?  One who has lived longer in the world ought to know
+better, and Mr. Pollingray approves of naturalness in everything.  I have
+now seen through Charles's eyes for several months; so implicitly that I
+am timid when I dream of trusting to another's judgement.  It is,
+however, a fact that I am not quite natural with Charles.
+
+Every day Mr. Pollingray puts on evening dress out of deference to his
+sister.  If young men had these good habits they would gain our respect,
+and lose their own self-esteem less early.
+
+After dinner I sang.  Then Mr. Pollingray read an amusing essay to us,
+and retired to his library.  Miss Pollingray sat and talked to me of
+her brother, and of her nephew--for whom it is that Mr. Pollingray is
+beginning to receive company, and is going into society.  Charles's
+subsequently received letter explained the 'receive company.' I could
+not comprehend it at the time.
+
+'The house has been shut up for years, or rarely inhabited by us for more
+than a month in the year.  Mr. Pollingray prefers France.  All his
+asociations, I may say his sympathies, are in France.  Latterly he seems
+to have changed a little; but from Normandy to Touraine and Dauphiny--we
+had a triangular home over there.  Indeed, we have it still.  I am never
+certain of my brother.'
+
+While Miss Pollingray was speaking, my eyes were fixed on a Vidal crayon
+drawing, faintly coloured with chalks, of a foreign lady--I could have
+sworn to her being French--young, quite girlish, I doubt if her age was
+more than mine.
+
+She is pretty, is she not?' said Miss Pollingray.
+
+She is almost beautiful,' I exclaimed, and Miss Pollingray, seeing my
+curiosity, was kind enough not to keep me in suspense.
+
+'That is the Marquise de Mazardouin--nee Louise de Riverolles.  You will
+see other portraits of her in the house.  This is the most youthful of
+them, if I except one representing a baby, and bearing her initials.'
+
+I remembered having noticed a similarity of feature in some of the
+portraits in the different rooms.  My longing to look at them again was
+like a sudden jet of flame within me.  There was no chance of seeing them
+till morning; so, promising myself to dream of the face before me,
+I dozed through a conversation with my hostess, until I had got the
+French lady's eyes and hair and general outline stamped accurately, as I
+hoped, on my mind.  I was no sooner on my way to bed than all had faded.
+The torment of trying to conjure up that face was inconceivable.  I lay,
+and tossed, and turned to right and to left, and scattered my sleep;
+but by and by my thoughts reverted to Mr. Pollingray, and then like
+sympathetic ink held to the heat, I beheld her again; but vividly,
+as she must have been when she was sitting to the artist.  The hair was
+naturally crisped, waving thrice over the forehead and brushed clean from
+the temples, showing the small ears, and tied in a knot loosely behind.
+Her eyebrows were thick and dark, but soft; flowing eyebrows; far
+lovelier, to my thinking, than any pencilled arch.  Dark eyes, and full,
+not prominent.  I find little expression of inward sentiment in very
+prominent eyes.  On the contrary they seem to have a fish-like dependency
+of gaze on what is without, and show fishy depths, if any.  For instance,
+my eyes are rather prominent, and I am just the little fool--but the
+French lady is my theme.  Madame la Marquise, your eyes are sweeter to me
+than celestial.  I never saw such candour and unaffected innocence in
+eyes before.  Accept the compliment of the pauvre Anglaise.  Did you do
+mischief with them?  Did Vidal's delicate sketch do justice to you?  Your
+lips and chin and your throat all repose in such girlish grace, that if
+ever it is my good fortune to see you, you will not be aged to me!
+
+I slept and dreamed of her.
+
+In the morning, I felt certain that she had often said: 'Mon cher
+Gilbert,' to Mr. Pollingray.  Had he ever said: 'Ma chere Louise?' He
+might have said: 'Ma bien aimee!' for it was a face to be loved.
+
+My change of feeling towards him dates from that morning.  He had
+previously seemed to me a man so much older.  I perceived in him now a
+youthfulness beyond mere vigour of frame.  I could not detach him from my
+dreams of the night.  He insists upon addressing me by the terms of our
+'official' relationship, as if he made it a principle of our intercourse.
+
+'Well, and is your godpapa to congratulate you on your having had a quiet
+rest?' was his greeting.
+
+I answered stupidly: 'Oh, yes, thank you,' and would have given worlds
+for the courage to reply in French, but I distrusted my accent.  At
+breakfast, the opportunity or rather the excuse for an attempt, was
+offered.  His French valet, Francois, waits on him at breakfast.  Mr.
+Pollingray and his sister asked for things in the French tongue, and,
+as if fearing some breach of civility, Mr. Pollingray asked me if I knew
+French.
+
+Yes, I know it; that is, I understand it,' I stuttered.  Allons, nous
+parlerons francais,' said he.  But I shook my head, and remained like a
+silly mute.
+
+I was induced towards the close of the meal to come out with a few French
+words.  I was utterly shamefaced.  Mr. Pollingray has got the French
+manner of protesting that one is all but perfect in one's speaking.  I
+know how absurd it must have sounded.  But I felt his kindness, and in my
+heart I thanked him humbly.  I believe now that a residence in France
+does not deteriorate an Englishman.  Mr. Pollingray, when in his own
+house, has the best qualities of the two countries.  He is gay, and, yes,
+while he makes a study of me, I am making a study of him.  Which of us
+two will know the other first?  He was papa's college friend--papa's
+junior, of course, and infinitely more papa's junior now.  I observe that
+weakness in him, I mean, his clinging to youthfulness, less and less; but
+I do see it, I cannot be quite in error.  The truth is, I begin to feel
+that I cannot venture to mistrust my infallible judgement, or I shall
+have no confidence in myself at all.
+
+After breakfast, I was handed over to Miss Pollingray, with the
+intimation that I should not see him till dinner.
+
+'Gilbert is anxious to cultivate the society of his English neighbours,
+now that he has, as he supposes, really settled among them,' she remarked
+to me.  'At his time of life, the desire to be useful is almost a malady.
+But, he cherishes the poor, and that is more than an occupation, it is a
+virtue.'
+
+Her speech has become occasionally French in the construction of the
+sentences.
+
+'Mais oui,' I said shyly, and being alone with her, I was not rebuffed by
+her smile, especially as she encouraged me on.
+
+I am, she told me, to see a monde of French people here in September.
+So, the story of me is to be completer, or continued in September.
+I could not get Miss Pollingray to tell me distinctly whether Madame la
+Marquise will be one of the guests.  But I know that she is not a widow.
+In that case, she has a husband.  In that case, what is the story of her
+relations towards Mr. Pollingray?  There must be some story.  He would
+not surely have so many portraits of her about the house (and they travel
+with him wherever he goes) if she were but a lovely face to him.
+I cannot understand it.  They were frequent, constant visitors to one
+another's estates in France; always together.  Perhaps a man of Mr.
+Pollingray's age, or perhaps M. le Marquis--and here I lose myself.
+French habits are so different from ours.  One thing I am certain of:
+no charge can be brought against my Englishman.  I read perfect rectitude
+in his face.  I would cast anchor by him.  He must have had a dreadful
+unhappiness.
+
+
+Mama kept her promise by sending my riding habit and hat punctually, but
+I had run far ahead of all the wishes I had formed when I left home, and
+I half feared my ride out with Mr. Pollingray.  That was before I had
+received Charles's letter, letting me know the object of my invitation
+here.  I require at times a morbid pride to keep me up to the work.  I
+suppose I rode befittingly, for Mr. Pollingray praised my seat on
+horseback.  I know I can ride, or feel the 'blast of a horse like my own'
+--as he calls it.  Yet he never could have had a duller companion.  My
+conversation was all yes and no, as if it went on a pair of crutches like
+a miserable cripple.  I was humiliated and vexed.  All the while I was
+trying to lead up to the French lady, and I could not commence with a
+single question.  He appears to, have really cancelled the past in every
+respect save his calling me his goddaughter.  His talk was of the English
+poor, and vegetation, and papa's goodness to his old dames in Ickleworth
+parish, and defects in my education acknowledged by me, but not likely to
+restore me in my depressed state.  The ride was beautiful.  We went the
+length of a twelve-mile ridge between Ickleworth and Hillford, over high
+commons, with immense views on both sides, and through beech-woods,
+oakwoods, and furzy dells and downs spotted with juniper and yewtrees--
+old picnic haunts of mine, but Mr. Pollingray's fresh delight in the
+landscape made them seem new and strange.  Home through the valley.
+
+The next day Miss Pollingray joined us, wearing a feutre gris and green
+plume, which looked exceedingly odd until you became accustomed to it.
+Her hair has decided gray streaks, and that, and the Queen Elizabeth
+nose, and the feutre gris!--but she is so kind, I could not even smile in
+my heart.  It is singular that Mr. Pollingray, who's but three years her
+junior, should look at least twenty years younger--at the very least.
+His moustache and beard are of the colour of a corn sheaf, and his blue
+eyes shining over them remind me of summer.  That describes him.  He is
+summer, and has not fallen into his autumn yet.  Miss Pollingray helped
+me to talk a little.  She tried to check her brother's enthusiasm for our
+scenery, and extolled the French paysage.  He laughed at her, for when
+they were in France it was she who used to say, 'There is nothing here
+like England!'  Miss Fool rode between them attentive to the jingling of
+the bells in her cap: 'Yes' and 'No' at anybody's command, in and out of
+season.
+
+Thank you, Charles, for your letter!  I was beginning to think my
+invitation to Dayton inexplicable, when that letter arrived.  I cannot
+but deem it an unworthy baseness to entrap a girl to study her without a
+warning to her.  I went up to my room after I had read it, and wrote in
+reply till the breakfast-bell rang.  I resumed my occupation an hour
+later, and wrote till one o'clock.  In all, fifteen pages of writing,
+which I carefully folded and addressed to Charles; sealed the envelope,
+stamped it, and destroyed it.  I went to bed.  'No, I won't ride out to-
+day, I have a headache!'  I repeated this about half-a-dozen times to
+nobody's knocking on the door, and when at last somebody knocked I tried
+to repeat it once, but having the message that Mr. Pollingray
+particularly wished to have my company in a ride, I rose submissively
+and cried.  This humiliation made my temper ferocious.  Mr. Pollingray
+observed my face, and put it down in his notebook.  'A savage
+disposition,' or, no, 'An untamed little rebel'; for he has hopes of me.
+He had the cruelty to say so.
+
+'What I am, I shall remain,' said I.
+
+He informed me that it was perfectly natural for me to think it; and on
+my replying that persons ought to know themselves best: 'At my age,
+perhaps,' he said, and added, 'I cannot speak very confidently of my
+knowledge of myself.'
+
+'Then you make us out to be nothing better than puppets, Mr. Pollingray.'
+
+'If we have missed an early apprenticeship to the habit of self-command,
+ma filleule.'
+
+'Merci, mon parrain.'
+
+He laughed.  My French, I suppose.
+
+I determined that, if he wanted to study me, I would help him.
+
+'I can command myself when I choose, but it is only when I choose.'
+
+This seemed to me quite a reasonable speech, until I found him looking
+for something to follow, in explanation, and on coming to sift my
+meaning, I saw that it was temper, and getting more angry, continued:
+
+'The sort of young people who have such wonderful command of themselves
+are not the pleasantest.'
+
+'No,' he said; 'they disappoint us.  We expect folly from the young.'
+
+I shut my lips.  Prince Leboo knew that he must go, and a good gallop
+reconciled me to circumstances.  Then I was put to jumping little furzes
+and ditches, which one cannot pretend to do without a fair appearance of
+gaiety; for, while you are running the risk of a tumble, you are
+compelled to look cheerful and gay, at least, I am.  To fall frowning
+will never do.  I had no fall.  My gallant Leboo made my heart leap with
+love of him, though mill-stones were tied to it.  I may be vexed when I
+begin, but I soon ride out a bad temper.  And he is mine!  I am certainly
+inconstant to Charles, for I think of Leboo fifty times more.  Besides,
+there is no engagement as yet between Charles and me.  I have first to be
+approved worthy by Mr. and Miss Pollingray: two pairs of eyes and ears,
+over which I see a solemnly downy owl sitting, conning their reports of
+me.  It is a very unkind ordeal to subject any inexperienced young woman
+to.  It was harshly conceived and it is being remorselessly executed.
+I would complain more loudly--in shrieks--if I could say I was unhappy;
+but every night I look out of my window before going to bed and see the
+long falls of the infant river through the meadow, and the dark woods
+seeming to enclose the house from harm: I dream of the old inhabitant,
+his ancestors, and the numbers and numbers of springs when the
+wildflowers have flourished in those woods and the nightingales have sung
+there.  And I feel there will never be a home to me like Dayton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HE
+
+For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest
+woman that ever drew breath. I have submitted to her whims, I have
+worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle.
+I have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith.  And I
+have, as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those
+twenty years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly
+useless, fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other
+follies.  But it was a folly in itself.  Can one's nature be too
+stedfast?  The question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a
+safeguard has often risen before me.  The truth, I must learn to think,
+is, that my mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental
+apprehension and native tenacity of attachment.  I have fallen into one
+of the pits of a well-meaning but idle man.  The world discredits the
+existence of pure platonism in love.  I myself can barely look back on
+those twenty years of amatory servility with a full comprehension of the
+part I have been playing in them.  And yet I would not willingly forfeit
+the exalted admiration of Louise for my constancy: as little willingly as
+I would have imperilled her purity.  I cling to the past as to something
+in which I have deserved well, though I am scarcely satisfied with it.
+According to our English notions I know my name.  English notions,
+however, are not to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat
+declaration of a fact will develop it in alt its bearings.  When our
+English society shall have advanced to a high civilization, it will be
+less expansive in denouncing the higher stupidities.  Among us, much of
+the social judgement of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the
+stereotyped opinion of the land.  There is the dictum here for a man who
+adores a woman who is possessed by a husband.  If he has long adored her,
+and known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has
+solved the problem of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to
+degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in
+our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering.  Politically we
+are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest
+animals.  The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable,
+for without it such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses.
+I judge rather by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair
+matrons give to astounded foreigners when abroad.
+
+Louise writes that her husband is paralysed.  The Marquis de Mazardouin
+is at last tasting of his mortality.  I bear in mind the day when he
+married her.  She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like
+a woman, she praises him for that.  It is the one thing which I have not
+done to please her.  She anticipates his decease.  Should she be free--
+what then?  My heart does not beat the faster for the thought.  There are
+twenty years upon it, and they make a great load.  But I have a desire
+that she should come over to us.  The old folly might rescue me from the
+new one.  Not that I am any further persecuted by the dread that I am in
+imminent danger here.  I have established a proper mastery over my young
+lady.  'Nous avons change de role'.  Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly,
+is becoming conscious--a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the
+creature's growth.  There is vast capacity in the girl.  She has plainly
+not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man's conscience might
+be at ease if--if he chose to disregard what is due to decency.  But,
+why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion concerning
+disparity of years between husband and wife?  I know innumerable cases of
+an old husband making a young wife happy.  My friend, Dr. Galliot,
+married his ward, and he had the best wife of any man of my acquaintance.
+She has been publishing his learned manuscripts ever since his death.
+That is an extreme case, for he was forty-five years her senior, and
+stood bald at the altar.  Old General Althorpe married Julia Dahoop, and,
+but for his preposterous jealousy of her, might be cited in proof that
+the ordinary reckonings are not to be a yoke on the neck of one who
+earnestly seeks to spouse a fitting mate, though late in life.  But,
+what are fifty years?  They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence.
+He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is
+virtually more eligible--to use the cant phrase of gossips--than a young
+man, even for a young girl.  And may not some fair and fresh reward be
+justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?
+
+I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot
+and jealous as General Althorpe.  For, with my thorough knowledge of
+myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself
+to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world.  Nor, as I am and know
+myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble.  When my
+filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas
+of her own.  Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed
+imaginations are desperate things to encounter.  There is nothing beyond
+their reach.  Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are always
+seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little help
+from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they have
+once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them: their
+supernatural vitality has vanished.  I fancy my pretty Alice to be in
+this state now.  She leaves us to-morrow.  In the autumn we shall have
+her with us again, and Louise will scan her compassionately.  I desire
+that they should meet.  It will be hardly fair to the English girl, but,
+if I stand in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity
+of dormant compatriotic feeling.  The contemplation of the contrast, too,
+may save me from both: like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on
+either side of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHE
+
+I am at home.  There was never anybody who felt so strange in her home.
+It is not a month since I left my sisters, and I hardly remember that I
+know them.  They all, and even papa, appear to be thinking about such
+petty things.  They complain that I tell them nothing.  What have I to
+tell?  My Prince!  my own Leboo, if I might lie in the stall with you,
+then I should feel thoroughly happy!  That is, if I could fall asleep.
+Evelina declares we are not eight miles from Dayton.  It seems to me I
+am eight millions of miles distant, and shall be all my life travelling
+along a weary road to get there again just for one long sunny day.  And
+it might rain when I got there after all!  My trouble nobody knows.
+Nobody knows a thing!
+
+The night before my departure, Miss Pollingray did me the honour to
+accompany me up to my bedroom.  She spoke to me searchingly about
+Charles; but she did not demand compromising answers.  She is not in
+favour of early marriages, so she merely wishes to know the footing upon
+which we stand: that of friends.  I assured her we were simply friends.
+'It is the firmest basis of an attachment,' she said; and I did not look
+hurried.
+
+But I gained my end.  I led her to talk of the beautiful Marquise.  This
+is the tale.  Mr. Pollingray, when a very young man, and comparatively
+poor, went over to France with good introductions, and there saw and fell
+in love with Louise de Riverolles.  She reciprocated his passion.  If he
+would have consented to abjure his religion and worship with her, Madame
+de Riverolles, her mother, would have listened to her entreaties.  But
+Gilbert was firm.  Mr. Pollingray, I mean, refused to abandon his faith.
+Her mother, consequently, did not interfere, and Monsieur de Riverolles,
+her father, gave her to the Marquis de Marzardouin, a roue young
+nobleman, immensely rich, and shockingly dissipated.  And she married
+him.  No, I cannot understand French girls.  Do as I will, it is quite
+incomprehensible to me how Louise, loving another, could suffer herself
+to be decked out in bridal finery and go to the altar and take the
+marriage oaths.  Not if perdition had threatened would I have submitted.
+I have a feeling that Mr. Pollingray should have shown at least one
+year's resentment at such conduct; and yet I admire him for his immediate
+generous forgiveness of her.  It was fatherly.  She was married at
+sixteen.  His forgiveness was the fruit of his few years' seniority,
+said Miss Pollingray, whose opinion of the Marquise I cannot arrive at.
+At any rate, they have been true and warm friends ever since, constantly
+together interchangeing visits.  That is why Mr. Pollingray has been more
+French than English for those long years.
+
+Miss Pollingray concluded by asking me what I thought of the story.  I
+said: 'It is very strange French habits are so different from ours.  I
+dare say .  .  .  I hope .  .  , perhaps .  .  .  indeed, Mr. Pollingray
+seems happy now.'  Her idea of my wits must be that they are of the
+schoolgirl order--a perfect receptacle for indefinite impressions.
+
+'Ah!' said she.  'Gilbert has burnt his heart to ashes by this time.'
+
+I slept with that sentence in my brain.  In the morning, I rose and
+dressed, dreaming.  As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to
+breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears.  It was so piteous
+to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow
+anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint.  I saw
+him, I still see him, like a martyr.
+
+'Some people,' Miss Pollingray said, I permitted themselves to think evil
+of my brother's assiduous devotion to a married woman.  There is not a
+spot on his character, or on that of the person whom Gilbert loved.'
+
+I would believe it in the teeth of calumny.  I would cling to my, belief
+in him if I were drowning.
+
+I consider that those twenty years are just nothing, if he chooses to
+have them so.  He has lived embalmed in a saintly affection.  No wonder
+he considers himself still youthful.  He is entitled to feel that his
+future is before him.
+
+No amount of sponging would get the stains away from my horrid red
+eyelids.  I slunk into my seat at the breakfast-table, not knowing that
+one of the maids had dropped a letter from Charles into my hand, and that
+I had opened it and was holding it open.  The letter, as I found
+afterwards, told me that Charles has received an order from his uncle to
+go over to Mr. Pollingray's estate in Dauphiny on business.  I am not
+sorry that they should have supposed I was silly enough to cry at the
+thought of Charles's crossing the Channel.  They did imagine it, I know;
+for by and by Miss Pollingray whispered: 'Les absents n'auront pas tort,
+cette fois, n'est-ce-pas?  'And Mr. Pollingray was cruelly gentle: an air
+of 'I would not intrude on such emotions'; and I heightened their
+delusions as much as I could: there was no other way of accounting for my
+pantomime face.  Why should he fancy I suffered so terribly?  He talked
+with an excited cheerfulness meant to relieve me, of course, but there
+was no justification for his deeming me a love-sick kind of woe-begone
+ballad girl.  It caused him likewise to adopt a manner--what to call it,
+I cannot think: tender respect, frigid regard, anything that accompanies
+and belongs to the pressure of your hand with the finger-tips.  He said
+goodbye so tenderly that I would have kissed his sleeve.  The effort to
+restrain myself made me like an icicle.  Oh! adieu, mon parrain!
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it
+A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans
+Gentleman in a good state of preservation
+Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind
+In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt
+Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men
+Rapture of obliviousness
+Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation
+When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gentleman of Fifty
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SENTIMENTALISTS
+
+AN UNFINISHED COMEDY
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+                            DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+HOMEWARE.
+
+PROFESSOR SPIRAL.
+
+ARDEN,............. In love with Astraea.
+
+SWITHIN,........... Sympathetics.
+OSIER,
+
+DAME DRESDEN,...... Sister to Homeware.
+
+ASTRAEA,........... Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware.
+
+LYRA,.............. A Wife.
+
+LADY OLDLACE.
+
+VIRGINIA.
+
+WINIFRED.
+
+
+
+                           THE SENTIMENTALISTS
+
+                           AN UNFINISHED COMEDY
+
+
+The scene is a Surrey garden in early summer.  The paths are shaded by
+tall box-wood hedges.  The--time is some sixty years ago.
+
+
+                                 SCENE I
+
+              PROFESSOR SPIRAL, DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE,
+                  VIRGINIA, WINIFRED, SWITHIN, and OSIER
+
+(As they slowly promenade the garden, the professor is delivering one of
+his exquisite orations on Woman.)
+
+SPIRAL:  One husband!  The woman consenting to marriage takes but one.
+For her there is no widowhood.  That punctuation of the sentence called
+death is not the end of the chapter for her.  It is the brilliant proof
+of her having a soul.  So she exalts her sex.  Above the wrangle and
+clamour of the passions she is a fixed star.  After once recording her
+obedience to the laws of our common nature--that is to say, by descending
+once to wedlock--she passes on in sovereign disengagement--a dedicated
+widow.
+
+     (By this time they have disappeared from view.  HOMEWARE appears;
+     he craftily avoids joining their party, like one who is unworthy of
+     such noble oratory.  He desires privacy and a book, but is disturbed
+     by the arrival of ARDEN, who is painfully anxious to be polite to
+     'her uncle Homeware.')
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE II
+
+                             HOMEWARE, ARDEN
+
+ARDEN:  A glorious morning, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  The sun is out, sir.
+
+ARDEN:  I am happy in meeting you, Mr. Homeware.
+
+HOMEWARE:  I can direct you to the ladies, Mr. Arden.  You will find them
+up yonder avenue.
+
+ARDEN:  They are listening, I believe, to an oration from the mouth of
+Professor Spiral.
+
+HOMEWARE:  On an Alpine flower which has descended to flourish on English
+soil.  Professor Spiral calls it Nature's 'dedicated widow.'
+
+ARDEN: 'Dedicated widow'?
+
+HOMEWARE:  The reference you will observe is to my niece Astraea.
+
+ARDEN:  She is dedicated to whom?
+
+HOMEWARE:  To her dead husband!  You see the reverse of Astraea, says the
+professor, in those world-infamous widows who marry again.
+
+ARDEN:  Bah!
+
+HOMEWARE:  Astraea, it is decided, must remain solitary, virgin cold,
+like the little Alpine flower.  Professor Spiral has his theme.
+
+ARDEN:  He will make much of it.  May I venture to say that I prefer my
+present company?
+
+HOMEWARE:  It is a singular choice.  I can supply you with no weapons for
+the sort of stride in which young men are usually engaged.  You belong to
+the camp you are avoiding.
+
+ARDEN:  Achilles was not the worse warrior, sir, for his probation in
+petticoats.
+
+HOMEWARE:  His deeds proclaim it.  But Alexander was the better chieftain
+until he drank with Lais.
+
+ARDEN:  No, I do not plead guilty to Bacchus.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You are confessing to the madder form of drunkenness.
+
+ARDEN:  How, sir, I beg?
+
+HOMEWARE:  How, when a young man sees the index to himself in everything
+spoken!
+
+ARDEN:  That might have the look.  I did rightly in coming to you, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE: 'Her uncle Homeware'?
+
+ARDEN:  You read through us all, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the
+gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady's uncle Homeware.
+
+ARDEN:  The third.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Yes, she is pursued.  It could hardly be otherwise.  Her
+attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent.  Yet, Mr.
+Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to
+be profane by the laws of this region.  Can you again forget that Astraea
+is a widow?
+
+ARDEN:  She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.
+
+HOMEWARE:  The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not
+to measure her widowhood by years.  His, from the altar to the tomb.  As
+it might be read, a one day's walk!
+
+ARDEN:  Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a
+whimsical feminine delicacy?
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have argued it with her?
+
+ARDEN:  I have presumed.
+
+HOMEWARE:  And still she refused her hand!
+
+ARDEN:  She commended me to you, sir.  She has a sound judgement of
+persons.
+
+HOMEWARE:  I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy,
+on the ground of her being a humorous damsel.  Your predecessors had also
+argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical
+feminine delicacy.  Where is the difference between you?  Evidently she
+cannot perceive it, and I have to seek: You will have had many
+conversations with Astraea?
+
+ARDEN:  I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in
+her twenty-second year; and you want more of her.
+
+ARDEN:  As much as I want more wisdom.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You would call her your Muse?
+
+ARDEN:  So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden.  She has
+prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware.
+
+ARDEN:  She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation.
+
+HOMEWARE:  No harder task could be set a young man in modern days.  Oh,
+the humorous damsel.  You sketch me the dimple at her mouth.
+
+ARDEN:  Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can
+bear inspection.  Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me
+a hearing.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock
+is unholy.  Further, it passes me to explain.  The young lady lands us
+where we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous
+intention.
+
+ARDEN:  What can I do?
+
+HOMEWARE:  Love and war have been compared.  Both require strategy and
+tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign.
+
+ARDEN:  I will take to heart what you say, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Take it to head.  There must be occasional descent of lovers'
+heads from the clouds.  And Professor Spiral,--But here we have a belated
+breeze of skirts.
+
+     (The reference is to the arrival of LYRA, breathless.)
+
+
+
+                                SCENE III
+
+                          HOMEWARE, ARDEN, LYRA
+
+
+LYRA:  My own dear uncle Homeware!
+
+HOMEWARE:  But where is Pluriel?
+
+LYRA:  Where is a woman's husband when she is away from him?
+
+HOMEWARE:  In Purgatory, by the proper reckoning.  But hurry up the
+avenue, or you will be late for Professor Spiral's address.
+
+LYRA:  I know it all without hearing.  Their Spiral!  Ah, Mr. Arden!  You
+have not chosen badly.  The greater my experience, the more do I value my
+uncle Homeware's company.
+
+     (She is affectionate to excess but has a roguish eye withal, as of
+     one who knows that uncle Homeware suspects all young men and most
+     young women.)
+
+HOMEWARE:  Agree with the lady promptly, my friend.
+
+ARDEN:  I would gladly boast of so lengthened an experience, Lady
+Pluriel.
+
+LYRA:  I must have a talk with Astraea, my dear uncle.  Her letters breed
+suspicions.  She writes feverishly.  The last one hints at service on the
+West Coast of Africa.
+
+HOMEWARE:  For the draining of a pestiferous land, or an enlightenment of
+the benighted black, we could not despatch a missionary more effective
+than the handsomest widow in Great Britain.
+
+LYRA:  Have you not seen signs of disturbance?
+
+HOMEWARE:  A great oration may be a sedative.
+
+
+LYRA:  I have my suspicions.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Mr. Arden, I could counsel you to throw yourself at Lady
+Pluriel's feet, and institute her as your confessional priest.
+
+ARDEN:  Madam, I am at your feet.  I am devoted to the lady.
+
+LYRA:  Devoted.  There cannot be an objection.  It signifies that a man
+asks for nothing in return!
+
+HOMEWARE:  Have a thought upon your words with this lady, Mr. Arden!
+
+ARDEN:  Devoted, I said.  I am.  I would give my life for her.
+
+LYRA:  Expecting it to be taken to-morrow or next day?  Accept my
+encomiums.  A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle.  Women had
+been looking for this model for ages, uncle.
+
+HOMEWARE:  You are the model, Mr Arden!
+
+LYRA:  Can you have intended to say that it is in view of marriage you
+are devoted to the widow of Professor Towers?
+
+ARDEN:  My one view.
+
+LYRA:  It is a star you are beseeching to descend.
+
+ARDEN: It is.
+
+LYRA:  You disappoint me hugely.  You are of the ordinary tribe after
+all; and your devotion craves an enormous exchange, infinitely surpassing
+the amount you bestow.
+
+ARDEN:  It does.  She is rich in gifts; I am poor.  But I give all I
+have.
+
+LYRA:  These lovers, uncle Homeware!
+
+HOMEWARE:  A honey-bag is hung up and we have them about us.  They would
+persuade us that the chief business of the world is a march to the altar.
+
+ARDEN:  With the right partner, if the business of the world is to be
+better done.
+
+LYRA:  Which right partner has been chosen on her part, by a veiled
+woman, who marches back from the altar to discover that she has chained
+herself to the skeleton of an idea, or is in charge of that devouring
+tyrant, an uxorious husband.  Is Mr. Arden in favour with the Dame,
+uncle?
+
+HOMEWARE:  My sister is an unsuspicious potentate, as you know.
+Pretenders to the hand of an inviolate widow bite like waves at a rock.
+
+LYRA:  Professor Spiral advances rapidly.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Not, it would appear, when he has his audience of ladies and
+their satellites.
+
+LYRA:  I am sure I hear a spring-tide of enthusiasm coming.
+
+ARDEN:  I will see.
+
+     (He goes up the path.)
+
+LYRA:  Now! my own dear uncle, save me from Pluriel.  I have given him
+the slip in sheer desperation; but the man is at his shrewdest when he is
+left to guess at my heels.  Tell him I am anywhere but here.  Tell him I
+ran away to get a sense of freshness in seeing him again.  Let me have
+one day of liberty, or, upon my word, I shall do deeds; I shall console
+young Arden: I shall fly to Paris and set my cap at presidents and
+foreign princes.  Anything rather than be eaten up every minute, as I am.
+May no woman of my acquaintance marry a man of twenty years her senior!
+She marries a gigantic limpet.  At that period of his life a man becomes
+too voraciously constant.
+
+HOMEWARE:  Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite.
+
+LYRA:  I am in dead earnest, uncle, and I will have a respite, or else
+let decorum beware!
+
+     (Arden returns.)
+
+ARDEN:  The ladies are on their way.
+
+LYRA:  I must get Astraea to myself.
+
+HOMEWARE:  My library is a virgin fortress, Mr. Arden.  Its gates are
+open to you on other topics than the coupling of inebriates.
+
+     (He enters the house--LYRA disappears in the garden--Spiral's
+     audience reappear without him.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE IV
+
+             DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE, VIRGINIA, WINIFRED,
+                          ARDEN, SWITHIN, OSIER
+
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  Such perfect rhythm!
+
+WINIFRED:  Such oratory!
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  A master hand.  I was in a trance from the first sentence
+to the impressive close.
+
+OSIER:  Such oratory is a whole orchestral symphony.
+
+VIRGINIA:  Such command of intonation and subject!
+
+SWITHIN:  That resonant voice!
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  Swithin, his flow of eloquence!  He launched forth!
+
+SWITHIN:  Like an eagle from a cliff.
+
+OSIER:  The measure of the words was like a beat of wings.
+
+SWITHIN:  He makes poets of us.
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  Spiral achieved his pinnacle to-day!
+
+VIRGINIA:  How treacherous is our memory when we have most the longing to
+recall great sayings!
+
+OSIER:  True, I conceive that my notes will be precious.
+
+WINIFRED:  You could take notes!
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  It seems a device for missing the quintessential.
+
+SWITHIN:  Scraps of the body to the loss of the soul of it.  We can allow
+that our friend performed good menial service.
+
+WINIFRED:  I could not have done the thing.
+
+SWITHIN:  In truth; it does remind one of the mess of pottage.
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  One hardly felt one breathed.
+
+VIRGINIA:  I confess it moved me to tears.
+
+SWITHIN:  There is a pathos for us in the display of perfection.  Such
+subtle contrast with our individual poverty affects us.
+
+WINIFRED:  Surely there were passages of a distinct and most exquisite
+pathos.
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  As in all great oratory!  The key of it is the pathos.
+
+VIRGINIA:  In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by
+the pathos.  All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos.  My
+tears were no feminine weakness, I could not be a discordant instrument.
+
+SWITHIN:  I must make confession.  He played on me too.
+
+OSIER:  We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of
+a master hand.
+
+ARDEN:  An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you a
+Stradivarius.
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden?  What could have
+detained you?
+
+ARDEN:  Ah, Dame.  It may have been a warning that I am a discordant
+instrument.  I do not readily vibrate.
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil
+society.  You have lost what cannot be recovered.
+
+ARDEN:  There are the notes.
+
+OSIER:  Yes, the notes.
+
+SWITHIN:  You can be satisfied with the dog's feast at the table, Mr.
+Arden!
+
+OSIER:  Ha!
+
+VIRGINIA:  Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than
+with her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every
+variation of his tones.
+
+ARDEN:  Astraea!
+
+LADY OLDLACE:  She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from
+her ideal to the gross reality of man.
+
+OSIER:  Yes, yes.  I have the words [reads]: 'Woman is to the front of
+man, holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization.  I see,' he says.
+'the little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough
+winds.'
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  And of Astraea herself, what were the words?  'Nature's
+dedicated widow.'
+
+SWITHIN:  Vestal widow, was it not?
+
+VIRGINIA:  Maiden widow, I think.
+
+DAME DRESDEN: We decide for 'dedicated.'
+
+WINIFRED:  Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late
+husband, the renowned Professor Towers.
+
+VIRGINIA:  But his look was at dear Astraea.
+
+ARDEN:  At Astraea?  Why?
+
+VIRGINIA:  For her sanction doubtless.
+
+ARDEN:  Ha!
+
+WINIFRED:  He said his pride would ever be in his being received as the
+successor of Professor Towers.
+
+ARDEN:  Successor!
+
+SWITHIN:  Guardian was it not?
+
+OSIER:  Tutor.  I think he said.
+
+     (The three gentlemen consult Osier's notes uneasily.)
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  Our professor must by this time have received in full
+Astraea's congratulations, and Lyra is hearing from her what it is to be
+too late.  You will join us at the luncheon table, if you do not feel
+yourself a discordant instrument there, Mr. Arden?
+
+ARDEN (going to her):  The allusion to knife and fork tunes my strings
+instantly, Dame.
+
+DAME DRESDEN:  You must help me to-day, for the professor will be tired,
+though we dare not hint at it in his presence.  No reference, ladies, to
+the great speech we have been privileged to hear; we have expressed our
+appreciation and he could hardly bear it.
+
+ARDEN:  Nothing is more distasteful to the orator!
+
+VIRGINIA:  As with every true genius, he is driven to feel humbly human
+by the exultation of him.
+
+SWITHIN:  He breathes in a rarified air.
+
+OSIER:  I was thrilled, I caught at passing beauties.  I see that here
+and there I have jotted down incoherencies, lines have seduced me, so
+that I missed the sequence--the precious part.  Ladies, permit me to rank
+him with Plato as to the equality of women and men.
+
+WINIFRED:  It is nobly said.
+
+OSIER:  And with the Stoics, in regard to celibacy.
+
+     (By this time all the ladies have gone into the house.)
+
+ARDEN:  Successor!  Was the word successor?
+
+     (ARDEN, SWITHIN, and OSIER are excitedly searching the notes when
+     SPIRAL passes and strolls into the house.  His air of self-
+     satisfaction increases their uneasiness they follow him.  ASTRAEA
+     and LYRA come down the path.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE V
+
+                              ASTRAEA, LYRA
+
+
+LYRA:  Oh!  Pluriel, ask me of him!  I wish I were less sure he would not
+be at the next corner I turn.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You speak of your husband strangely, Lyra.
+
+LYRA:  My head is out of a sack.  I managed my escape from him this
+morning by renouncing bath and breakfast; and what a relief, to be in the
+railway carriage alone! that is, when the engine snorted.  And if I set
+eyes on him within a week, he will hear some truths.  His idea of
+marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody.  My hat is on, and on
+goes Pluriel's.  My foot on the stairs; I hear his boot behind me.  In my
+boudoir I am alone one minute, and then the door opens to the inevitable.
+I pay a visit, he is passing the house as I leave it.  He will not even
+affect surprise.  I belong to him, I am cat's mouse.  And he will look
+doating on me in public.  And when I speak to anybody, he is that fearful
+picture of all smirks.  Fling off a kid glove after a round of calls;
+feel your hand--there you have me now that I am out of him for my half a
+day, if for as long.
+
+ASTRAEA:  This is one of the world's happy marriages!
+
+LYRA:  This is one of the world's choice dishes!  And I have it planted
+under my nostrils eternally.  Spare me the mention of Pluriel until he
+appears; that's too certain this very day.  Oh! good husband! good kind
+of man! whatever you please; only some peace, I do pray, for the husband-
+haunted wife.  I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe.
+Why, an English boy perpetually bowled by a Christmas pudding would come
+to loathe the mess.
+
+ASTRAEA:  His is surely the excess of a merit.
+
+LYRA:  Excess is a poison.  Excess of a merit is a capital offence in
+morality.  It disgusts, us with virtue.  And you are the cunningest of
+fencers, tongue, or foils.  You lead me to talk of myself, and I hate the
+subject.  By the way, you have practised with Mr. Arden.
+
+ASTRAEA:  A tiresome instructor, who lets you pass his guard to
+compliment you on a hit.
+
+LYRA:  He rather wins me.
+
+ASTRAEA:  He does at first.
+
+LYRA:  Begins Plurielizing, without the law to back him, does he?
+
+ASTRAEA:  The fencing lessons are at an end.
+
+LYRA:  The duetts with Mr. Swithin's violoncello continue?
+
+ASTRAEA:  He broke through the melody.
+
+LYRA:  There were readings in poetry with Mr. Osier, I recollect.
+
+ASTRAEA:  His own compositions became obtrusive.
+
+LYRA:  No fencing, no music, no poetry!  no West Coast of Africa either,
+I suppose.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Very well!  I am on my defence.  You at least shall not
+misunderstand me, Lyra.  One intense regret I have; that I did not live
+in the time of the Amazons.  They were free from this question of
+marriage; this babble of love.  Why am I so persecuted?  He will not take
+a refusal.  There are sacred reasons.  I am supported by every woman
+having the sense of her dignity.  I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury
+of wrath I feel at their incessant pursuit.  And I despise Mr. Osier and
+Mr. Swithin because they have an air of pious agreement with the Dame,
+and are conspirators behind their mask.
+
+LYRA:  False, false men!
+
+ASTRAEA:  They come to me.  I am complimented on being the vulnerable
+spot.
+
+LYRA:  The object desired is usually addressed by suitors, my poor
+Astraea!
+
+ASTRAEA:  With the assumption, that as I am feminine I must necessarily
+be in the folds of the horrible constrictor they call Love, and that I
+leap to the thoughts of their debasing marriage.
+
+LYRA:  One of them goes to Mr. Homeware.
+
+ASTRAEA:  All are sent to him in turn.  He can dispose of them.
+
+LYRA:  Now that is really masterly fun, my dear; most creditable to you!
+Love, marriage, a troop of suitors, and uncle Homeware.  No, it would not
+have occurred to me, and--I am considered to have some humour.  Of
+course, he disposes of them.  He seemed to have a fairly favourable
+opinion of Mr. Arden.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I do not share it.  He is the least respectful of the
+sentiments entertained by me.  Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you
+say of your husband.  He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them
+thinking that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the
+mere existence of their passion.  He is past argument.  Impossible for
+him to conceive a woman's having a mind above the conditions of her sex.
+A woman, according to him, can have no ideal of life, except as a ball to
+toss in the air and catch in a cup.  Put him aside.  .  .  . We creatures
+are doomed to marriage, and if we shun it, we are a kind of cripple.
+He is grossly earthy in his view of us.  We are unable to move a step
+in thought or act unless we submit to have a husband.  That is his
+reasoning.  Nature!  Nature!  I have to hear of Nature!  We must be above
+Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below.  He is ranked among
+our clever young men; and he can be amusing.  So far he passes muster;
+and he has a pleasant voice.  I dare say he is an uncle Homeware's good
+sort of boy.  Girls like him.  Why does he not fix his attention upon one
+of them; Why upon me?  We waste our time in talking of him .  .  .  .
+The secret of it is, that he has no reverence.  The marriage he vaunts is
+a mere convenient arrangement for two to live together under command of
+nature.  Reverence for the state of marriage is unknown to him.  How
+explain my feeling?  I am driven into silence.  Cease to speak of him
+. . . .  He is the dupe of his eloquence--his passion, he calls it.
+I have only to trust myself to him, and--I shall be one of the world's
+married women!  Words are useless.  How am I to make him see that it is
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing; not he by perpetually
+soliciting.  Once married, married for ever.  Widow is but a term.  When
+women hold their own against him, as I have done, they will be more
+esteemed.  I have resisted and conquered.  I am sorry I do not share in
+the opinion of your favourite.
+
+LYRA:  Mine?
+
+ASTRAEA:  You spoke warmly of him.
+
+LYRA:  Warmly, was it?
+
+ASTRAEA:  You are not blamed, my dear: he has a winning manner.
+
+LYRA:  I take him to be a manly young fellow, smart enough; handsome too.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Oh, he has good looks.
+
+LYRA:  And a head, by repute.
+
+ASTRAEA:  For the world's work, yes.
+
+LYRA:  Not romantic.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Romantic ideas are for dreamy simperers.
+
+LYRA:  Amazons repudiate them.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Laugh at me.  Half my time I am laughing at myself.  I should
+regain my pride if I could be resolved on a step.  I am strong to resist;
+I have not strength to move.
+
+LYRA:  I see the sphinx of Egypt!
+
+ASTRAEA:  And all the while I am a manufactory of gunpowder in this quiet
+old-world Sabbath circle of dear good souls, with their stereotyped
+interjections, and orchestra of enthusiasms; their tapering delicacies:
+the rejoicing they have in their common agreement on all created things.
+To them it is restful.  It spurs me to fly from rooms and chairs and beds
+and houses.  I sleep hardly a couple of hours.  Then into the early
+morning air, out with the birds; I know no other pleasure.
+
+LYRA:  Hospital work for a variation: civil or military.  The former
+involves the house-surgeon: the latter the grateful lieutenant.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Not if a woman can resist .  .  .  I go to it proof-armoured.
+
+LYRA:  What does the Dame say?
+
+ASTRAEA:  Sighs over me!  Just a little maddening to hear.
+
+LYRA:  When we feel we have the strength of giants, and are bidden to sit
+and smile!  You should rap out some of our old sweet-innocent garden
+oaths with her--'Carnation!  Dame!'  That used to make her dance on her
+seat.--'But, dearest Dame, it is as natural an impulse for women to have
+that relief as for men; and natural will out, begonia! it will!'  We ran
+through the book of Botany for devilish objurgations.  I do believe our
+misconduct caused us to be handed to the good man at the altar as the
+right corrective.  And you were the worst offender.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Was I?  I could be now, though I am so changed a creature.
+
+LYRA:  You enjoy the studies with your Spiral, come!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Professor Spiral is the one honest gentleman here.  He does
+homage to my principles.  I have never been troubled by him: no silly
+hints or side-looks--you know, the dog at the forbidden bone.
+
+LYRA:  A grand orator.
+
+ASTRAEA:  He is.  You fix on the smallest of his gifts.  He is
+intellectually and morally superior.
+
+LYRA:  Praise of that kind makes me rather incline to prefer his
+inferiors.  He fed gobble-gobble on your puffs of incense.  I coughed
+and scraped the gravel; quite in vain; he tapped for more and more.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Professor Spiral is a thinker; he is a sage.  He gives women
+their due.
+
+LYRA:  And he is a bachelor too--or consequently.
+
+ASTRAEA:  If you like you may be as playful with me as the Lyra of our
+maiden days used to be.  My dear, my dear, how glad I am to have you
+here!  You remind me that I once had a heart.  It will beat again with
+you beside me, and I shall look to you for protection.  A novel request
+from me.  From annoyance, I mean.  It has entirely altered my character.
+Sometimes I am afraid to think of what I was, lest I should suddenly
+romp, and perform pirouettes and cry 'Carnation!'  There is the bell.
+We must not be late when the professor condescends to sit for meals.
+
+LYRA:  That rings healthily in the professor.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Arm in arm, my Lyra.
+
+LYRA:  No Pluriel yet!
+
+     (They enter the house, and the time changes to evening of the same
+     day.  The scene is still the garden.)
+
+
+
+                                 SCENE VI
+
+                              ASTRAEA, ARDEN
+
+ASTRAEA:  Pardon me if I do not hear you well.
+
+ARDEN:  I will not even think you barbarous.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I am.  I am the object of the chase.
+
+ARDEN:  The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               At any instant I am forced to run,
+               Or turn in my defence: how can I be
+               Other than barbarous?  You are the cause.
+
+ARDEN:  No: heaven that made you beautiful's the cause.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Say, earth, that gave you instincts.  Bring me down
+               To instincts!  When by chance I speak awhile
+               With our professor, you appear in haste,
+               Full cry to sight again the missing hare.
+               Away ideas!  All that's divinest flies!
+               I have to bear in mind how young you are.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You have only to look up to me four years,
+               Instead of forty!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Sir?
+
+
+
+ARDEN
+                    There's my misfortune!
+               And worse that, young, I love as a young man.
+               Could I but quench the fire, I might conceal
+               The youthfulness offending you so much.
+
+ASTRAEA:  I wish you would.  I wish it earnestly.
+
+ARDEN:  Impossible.  I burn.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You should not burn.
+
+ARDEN
+               'Tis more than I.  'Tis fire.  It masters will.
+               You would not say I should not' if you knew fire.
+               It seizes.  It devours.
+
+ASTRAEA:  Dry wood.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Cold wit!
+               How cold you can be!  But be cold, for sweet
+               You must be.  And your eyes are mine: with them
+               I see myself: unworthy to usurp
+               The place I hold a moment.  While I look
+               I have my happiness.
+
+ASTRAEA:  You should look higher.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Through you to the highest.  Only through you!
+                    Through you
+               The mark I may attain is visible,
+               And I have strength to dream of winning it.
+               You are the bow that speeds the arrow: you
+               The glass that brings the distance nigh.  My world
+               Is luminous through you, pure heavenly,
+               But hangs upon the rose's outer leaf,
+               Not next her heart.  Astraea!  my own beloved!
+
+ASTRAEA:  We may be excellent friends.  And I have faults.
+
+ARDEN:  Name them: I am hungering for more to love.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               I waver very constantly:  I have
+               No fixity of feeling or of sight.
+               I have no courage: I can often dream
+               Of daring: when I wake I am in dread.
+               I am inconstant as a butterfly,
+               And shallow as a brook with little fish!
+               Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net,
+               But at a touch straight dive!  I am any one's,
+               And no one's!  I am vain.
+               Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears.
+               The lark reels up with it; the nightingale
+               Sobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believe
+               A poet, though he praised me to my face.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Never had poet so divine a fount
+               To drink of!
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Have I given you more to love
+
+ARDEN:
+               More!  You have given me your inner mind,
+               Where conscience in the robes of Justice shoots
+               Light so serenely keen that in such light
+               Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,'
+               As your friend Osier says, might show some blot.
+               Seraphs might!  More to love?  Oh!  these dear faults
+               Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls
+               With garlands.  All the fear is, that you trifle,
+               Feigning them.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               For what purpose?
+
+ARDEN:
+                         Can I guess?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+
+               I think 'tis you who have the trifler's note.
+               My hearing is acute, and when you speak,
+               Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly.
+               Your Osier quotation jars.  Beware!
+               Why were you absent from our meeting-place
+               This morning?
+
+
+.
+
+ARDEN:
+                    I was on the way, and met
+               Your uncle Homeware
+
+ASTRAEA:  Ah!
+
+ARDEN:  He loves you.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               He loves me: he has never understood.
+               He loves me as a creature of the flock;
+               A little whiter than some others.
+               Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;
+               Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.
+               For him I am a woman and a widow
+               One of the flock, unmarked save by a brand.
+               He said it!--You confess it!  You have learnt
+               To share his error, erring fatally.
+
+ARDEN:  By whose advice went I to him?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              By whose?
+               Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.
+               Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change;
+               It is too true I change.  I could esteem
+               You better did you change.  And had you heard
+               The noble words this morning from the mouth
+               Of our professor, changed were you, or raised
+               Above love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,
+               High as eternal snows.  What said he else,
+               My uncle Homeware?
+
+ARDEN:
+                         That you were not free:
+               And that he counselled us to use our wits.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               But I am free I free to be ever free!
+               My freedom keeps me free!  He counselled us?
+               I am not one in a conspiracy.
+               I scheme no discord with my present life.
+               Who does, I cannot look on as my friend.
+               Not free?  You know me little.  Were I chained,
+               For liberty I would sell liberty
+               To him who helped me to an hour's release.
+               But having perfect freedom .  .  .
+
+ARDEN: No.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Good sir,
+               You check me?
+
+ARDEN: Perfect freedom?
+
+ASTRAEA: Perfect!
+
+ARDEN: No!
+
+ASTRAEA:  Am I awake?  What blinds me?
+
+ARDEN:
+                                   Filaments
+               The slenderest ever woven about a brain
+               From the brain's mists, by the little sprite called
+                    Fancy.
+               A breath would scatter them; but that one breath
+               Must come of animation.  When the heart
+               Is as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               'Tis very singular!
+               I understand.
+               You translate cleverly.  I hear in verse
+               My uncle Homeware's prose.  He has these notions.
+               Old men presume to read us.
+
+ARDEN:
+               Young men may.
+               You gaze on an ideal reflecting you
+               Need I say beautiful?  Yet it reflects
+               Less beauty than the lady whom I love
+               Breathes, radiates.  Look on yourself in me.
+               What harm in gazing?  You are this flower
+               You are that spirit.  But the spirit fed
+               With substance of the flower takes all its bloom!
+               And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               'Tis very singular.  You have a tone
+               Quite changed.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You wished a change.  To show you, how
+               I read you . . .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Oh!  no, no.  It means dissection.
+               I never heard of reading character
+               That did not mean dissection.  Spare me that.
+               I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,
+               Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,
+               A star-gazer, a riband in the wind .  .  .
+
+ARDEN:
+               A banner in the wind!  and me you lead,
+               And shall!  At least, I follow till I win.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Forbear, I do beseech you.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              I have had
+               Your hand in mine.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Once.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              Once!
+               Once!  'twas; once, was the heart alive,
+               Leaping to break the ice.  Oh!  once, was aye
+               That laughed at frosty May like spring's return.
+               Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt.
+               You like me; you might love me; but to dare,
+               Tasks more than courage.  Veneration, friends,
+               Self-worship, which is often self-distrust,
+               Bar the good way to you, and make a dream
+               A fortress and a prison.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              Changed!  you have changed
+               Indeed.  When you so boldly seized my hand
+               It seemed a boyish freak, done boyishly.
+               I wondered at Professor Spiral's choice
+               Of you for an example, and our hope.
+               Now you grow dangerous.  You must have thought,
+               And some things true you speak-save 'terrorized.'
+               It may be flattering to sweet self-love
+               To deem me terrorized.--'Tis my own soul,
+               My heart, my mind, all that I hold most sacred,
+               Not fear of others, bids me walk aloof.
+               Who terrorizes me?  Who could?  Friends?  Never!
+               The world? as little.  Terrorized!
+
+ARDEN:
+                              Forgive me.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               I might reply, Respect me.  If I loved,
+               If I could be so faithless as to love,
+               Think you I would not rather noise abroad
+               My shame for penitence than let friends dwell
+               Deluded by an image of one vowed
+               To superhuman, who the common mock
+               Of things too human has at heart become.
+
+ARDEN:
+               You would declare your love?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              I said, my shame.
+               The woman that's the widow is ensnared,
+               Caught in the toils! away with widows!--Oh!
+               I hear men shouting it.
+
+ARDEN:
+               But shame there's none
+               For me in loving: therefore I may take
+               Your friends to witness?  tell them that my pride
+               Is in the love of you?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                              'Twill soon bring
+               The silence that should be between us two,
+               And sooner give me peace.
+
+ARDEN:
+               And you consent?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               For the sake of peace and silence I consent,
+               You should be warned that you will cruelly
+               Disturb them.  But 'tis best.  You should be warned
+               Your pleading will be hopeless.  But 'tis best.
+               You have my full consent.  Weigh well your acts,
+               You cannot rest where you have cast this bolt
+               Lay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized,
+               Among them: they are estimable ladies,
+               Warmest of friends; though you may think they soar
+               Too loftily for your measure of strict sense
+               (And as my uncle Homeware's pupil, sir,
+               In worldliness, you do), just minds they have:
+               Once know them, and your banishment will fret.
+               I would not run such risks.  You will offend,
+               Go near to outrage them; and perturbate
+               As they have not deserved of you.  But I,
+               Considering I am nothing in the scales
+               You balance, quite and of necessity
+               Consent.  When you have weighed it, let me hear.
+               My uncle Homeware steps this way in haste.
+               We have been talking long, and in full view !
+
+
+
+                                SCENE VII
+
+                         ASTRAEA, ARDEN, HOMEWARE
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Astraea, child!  You, Arden, stand aside.
+               Ay, if she were a maid you might speak first,
+               But being a widow she must find her tongue.
+               Astraea, they await you.  State the fact
+               As soon as you are questioned, fearlessly.
+               Open the battle with artillery.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               What is the matter, uncle Homeware?
+
+HOMEWARE (playing fox):
+                                   What?
+               Why, we have watched your nice preliminaries
+               From the windows half the evening.  Now run in.
+               Their patience has run out, and, as I said,
+               Unlimber and deliver fire at once.
+               Your aunts Virginia and Winifred,
+               With Lady Oldlace, are the senators,
+               The Dame for Dogs.  They wear terrific brows,
+               But be not you affrighted, my sweet chick,
+               And tell them uncle Homeware backs your choice,
+               By lawyer and by priests! by altar, fount,
+               And testament!
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               My choice!  what have I chosen?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               She asks?  You hear her, Arden?--what and whom!
+
+ARDEN:
+               Surely, sir!  .  .  . heavens!  have you . . .
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                                   Surely the old fox,
+               In all I have read, is wiser than the young:
+               And if there is a game for fox to play,
+               Old fox plays cunningest.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Why fox?  Oh!  uncle,
+               You make my heart beat with your mystery;
+               I never did love riddles.  Why sit they
+               Awaiting me, and looking terrible?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               It is reported of an ancient folk
+               Which worshipped idols, that upon a day
+               Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Was ever so ridiculous a tale!
+
+HOMEWARE
+               To call the attendant fires to account
+               Their elders forthwith sat .  .  .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                                   Is there no prayer
+               Will move you, uncle Homeware?
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                              God-daughter,
+               This gentleman for you I have proposed
+               As husband.
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Arden! we are lost.
+
+ARDEN:
+                                   Astraea!
+               Support him!  Though I knew not his design,
+               It plants me in mid-heaven.  Would it were
+               Not you, but I to bear the shock.  My love!
+               We lost, you cry; you join me with you lost!
+               The truth leaps from your heart: and let it shine
+               To light us on our brilliant battle day
+               And victory
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Who betrayed me!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                              Who betrayed?
+               Your voice, your eyes, your veil, your knife and fork;
+               Your tenfold worship of your widowhood;
+               As he who sees he must yield up the flag,
+               Hugs it oath-swearingly!  straw-drowningly.
+               To be reasonable: you sent this gentleman
+               Referring him to me .  .  .  .
+
+ASTRAEA:
+                                        And that is false.
+               All's false.  You have conspired.  I am disgraced.
+               But you will learn you have judged erroneously.
+               I am not the frail creature you conceive.
+               Between your vision of life's aim, and theirs
+               Who presently will question me, I cling
+               To theirs as light: and yours I deem a den
+               Where souls can have no growth.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               But when we touched
+               The point of hand-pressings, 'twas rightly time
+               To think of wedding ties?
+
+ASTRAEA:
+               Arden, adieu!
+
+                    (She rushes into house.)
+
+
+
+                                SCENE VIII
+
+                             ARDEN, HOMEWARE
+
+
+ARDEN:
+               Adieu!  she said.  With her that word is final.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Strange!  how young people blowing words like clouds
+               On winds, now fair, now foul, and as they please
+               Should still attach the Fates to them.
+
+ARDEN:
+                              She's wounded
+               Wounded to the quick!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         The quicker our success: for short
+               Of that, these dames, who feel for everything,
+               Feel nothing.
+
+ARDEN:
+                         Your intention has been kind,
+               Dear sir, but you have ruined me.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         Good-night. (Going.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Yet she said, we are lost, in her surprise.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Good morning.  (Returning.)
+
+ARDEN:
+                         I suppose that I am bound
+               (If I could see for what I should be glad!)
+               To thank you, sir.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+                         Look hard but give no thanks.
+               I found my girl descending on the road
+               Of breakneck coquetry, and barred her way.
+               Either she leaps the bar, or she must back.
+               That means she marries you, or says good-bye.
+                                        (Going again.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Now she's among them.  (Looking at window.)
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               Now she sees her mind.
+
+ARDEN:
+               It is my destiny she now decides!
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               There's now suspense on earth and round the spheres.
+
+ARDEN:
+               She's mine now: mine!  or I am doomed to go.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               The marriage ring, or the portmanteau now!
+
+ARDEN:
+               Laugh as you like, air!  I am not ashamed
+               To love and own it.
+
+HOMEWARE:
+               So the symptoms show.
+               Rightly, young man, and proving a good breed.
+               To further it's a duty to mankind
+               And I have lent my push, But recollect:
+               Old Ilion was not conquered in a day.
+                                   (He enters house.)
+
+ARDEN:
+               Ten years!  If I may win her at the end!
+
+
+                                 CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A great oration may be a sedative
+A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle
+Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below
+As in all great oratory!  The key of it is the pathos
+Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
+Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite
+Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality
+His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody
+I am a discordant instrument  I do not readily vibrate
+I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing
+Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy
+Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife
+Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant
+Pitiful conceit in men
+Rejoicing they have in their common agreement
+Self-worship, which is often self-distrust
+Suspects all young men and most young women
+Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+Were I chained,    For liberty I would sell liberty
+Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man
+Your devotion craves an enormous exchange
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sentimentalists (play)
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR GEORGES"
+     A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE.
+     CONCESSION TO THE CELT.
+     LESLIE STEPHEN.
+     LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE 'MORNING POST' FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR GEORGES"
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born at Calcutta, July 18, 1811, the only
+child of Richmond and Anne Thackeray.  He received the main part of his
+education at the Charterhouse, as we know to our profit.  Thence he
+passed to Cambridge, remaining there from February 1829 to sometime in
+1830.  To judge by quotations and allusions, his favourite of the
+classics was Horace, the chosen of the eighteenth century, and generally
+the voice of its philosophy in a prosperous country.  His voyage from
+India gave him sight of Napoleon on the rocky island.  In his young
+manhood he made his bow reverentially to Goethe of Weimar; which did not
+check his hand from setting its mark on the sickliness of Werther.
+
+He was built of an extremely impressionable nature and a commanding good
+sense.  He was in addition a calm observer, having 'the harvest of a
+quiet eye.'  Of this combination with the flood of subjects brought up to
+judgement in his mind, came the prevalent humour, the enforced
+disposition to satire, the singular critical drollery, notable in his
+works.  His parodies, even those pushed to burlesque, are an expression
+of criticism and are more effective than the serious method, while they
+rarely overstep the line of justness.  The Novels by Eminent Hands do not
+pervert the originals they exaggerate.  'Sieyes an abbe, now a ferocious
+lifeguardsman,' stretches the face of the rollicking Irish novelist
+without disfeaturing him; and the mysterious visitor to the palatial
+mansion in Holywell Street indicates possibilities in the Oriental
+imagination of the eminent statesman who stooped to conquer fact through
+fiction.  Thackeray's attitude in his great novels is that of the
+composedly urbane lecturer, on a level with a select audience, assured of
+interesting, above requirements to excite.  The slow movement of the
+narrative has a grace of style to charm like the dance of the Minuet de
+la Cour: it is the limpidity of Addison flavoured with salt of a racy
+vernacular; and such is the veri-similitude and the dialogue that they
+might seem to be heard from the mouths of living speakers.  When in this
+way the characters of Vanity Fair had come to growth, their author was
+rightly appreciated as one of the creators in our literature, he took at
+once the place he will retain.  With this great book and with Esmond and
+The Newcomes, he gave a name eminent, singular, and beloved to English
+fiction.
+
+Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists, Thackeray had to
+bear with them.  The social world he looked at did not show him heroes,
+only here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate in the
+unhysterical way of an English father patting a son on the head.  He
+described his world as an accurate observer saw it, he could not be
+dishonest.  Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer at
+humanity.  He was driven to the satirical task by the scenes about him.
+There must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike.  The
+stroke is weakened and art violated when he comes to the front.  But he
+will always be pressing forward, and Thackeray restrained him as much as
+could be done, in the manner of a good-humoured constable.  Thackeray may
+have appeared cynical to the devout by keeping him from a station in the
+pulpit among congregations of the many convicted sinners.  That the
+moralist would have occupied it and thundered had he presented us with
+the Fourth of the Georges we see when we read of his rejecting the
+solicitations of so seductive a personage for the satiric rod.
+
+Himself one of the manliest, the kindliest of human creatures, it was the
+love of his art that exposed him to misinterpretation.  He did stout
+service in his day.  If the bad manners he scourged are now lessened to
+some degree we pay a debt in remembering that we owe much to him, and if
+what appears incurable remains with us, a continued reading of his works
+will at least help to combat it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE--1886
+
+Our 'Eriniad,' or ballad epic of the enfranchisement of the sister island
+is closing its first fytte for the singer, and with such result as those
+Englishmen who have some knowledge of their fellows foresaw.  There are
+sufficient reasons why the Tories should always be able to keep together,
+but let them have the credit of cohesiveness and subordination to
+control.  Though working for their own ends, they won the esteem of their
+allies, which will count for them in the struggles to follow.  Their
+leaders appear to have seen what has not been distinctly perceptible to
+the opposite party--that the break up of the Liberals means the defection
+of the old Whigs in permanence, heralding the establishment of a powerful
+force against Radicalism, with a capital cry to the country.  They have
+tactical astuteness.  If they seem rather too proud of their victory, it
+is merely because, as becomes them, they do not look ahead.  To rejoice
+in the gaining of a day, without having clear views of the morrow, is
+puerile enough.  Any Tory victory, it may be said, is little more than a
+pause in the strife, unless when the Radical game is played 'to dish the
+Whigs,' and the Tories are now fast bound down by their incorporation of
+the latter to abstain from the violent springs and right-about-facings of
+the Derby-Disraeli period.  They are so heavily weighted by the new
+combination that their Jack-in-the-box, Lord Randolph, will have to stand
+like an ordinary sentinel on duty, and take the measurement of his
+natural size.  They must, on the supposition of their entry into office,
+even to satisfy their own constituents, produce a scheme.  Their majority
+in the House will command it.
+
+To this extent, then, Mr. Gladstone has not been defeated.  The question
+set on fire by him will never be extinguished until the combustible
+matter has gone to ashes.  But personally he meets a sharp rebuff.  The
+Tories may well raise hurrahs over that.  Radicals have to admit it, and
+point to the grounds of it.  Between a man's enemies and his friends
+there comes out a rough painting of his character, not without a
+resemblance to the final summary, albeit wanting in the justly delicate
+historical touch to particular features.  On the one side he is abused as
+'the one-man power'; lauded on the other for his marvellous intuition of
+the popular will.  One can believe that he scarcely wishes to march
+dictatorially, and full surely his Egyptian policy was from step to step
+a misreading of the will of the English people.  He went forth on this
+campaign, with the finger of Egypt not ineffectively levelled against him
+a second time.  Nevertheless he does read his English; he has, too, the
+fatal tendency to the bringing forth of Bills in the manner of Jove big
+with Minerva.  He perceived the necessity, and the issue of the
+necessity; clearly defined what must come, and, with a higher motive than
+the vanity with which his enemies charge him, though not with such high
+counsel as Wisdom at his ear, fell to work on it alone, produced the
+whole Bill alone, and then handed it to his Cabinet to digest, too much
+in love with the thing he had laid and incubated to permit of any serious
+dismemberment of its frame.  Hence the disruption.  He worked for the
+future, produced a Bill for the future, and is wrecked in the present.
+Probably he can work in no other way than from the impulse of his
+enthusiasm, solitarily.  It is a way of making men overweeningly in love
+with their creations.  The consequence is likely to be that Ireland will
+get her full measure of justice to appease her cravings earlier than she
+would have had as much from the United Liberal Cabinet, but at a cost
+both to her and to England.  Meanwhile we are to have a House of Commons
+incapable of conducting public business; the tradesmen to whom the Times
+addressed pathetic condolences on the loss of their season will lose more
+than one; and we shall be made sensible that we have an enemy in our
+midst, until a people, slow to think, have taken counsel of their native
+generosity to put trust in the most generous race on earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCESSION TO THE CELT--1886
+
+Things are quiet outside an ant-hill until the stick has been thrust into
+it.  Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government of Ireland
+has brought forth our busy citizens on the top-rubble in traversing
+counterswarms, and whatever may be said against a Bill that deals roughly
+with many sensitive interests, one asks whether anything less violently
+impressive would have roused industrious England to take this question at
+last into the mind, as a matter for settlement.  The Liberal leader has
+driven it home; and wantonly, in the way of a pedestrian demagogue, some
+think; certainly to the discomposure of the comfortable and the myopely
+busy, who prefer to live on with a disease in the frame rather than at
+all be stirred.  They can, we see, pronounce a positive electoral
+negative; yet even they, after the eighty and odd years of our domestic
+perplexity, in the presence of the eighty and odd members pledged for
+Home Rule, have been moved to excited inquiries regarding measures--short
+of the obnoxious Bill.  How much we suffer from sniffing the vain incense
+of that word practical, is contempt of prevision!  Many of the measures
+now being proposed responsively to the fretful cry for them, as a better
+alternative to correction by force of arms, are sound and just.  Ten
+years back, or at a more recent period before Mr. Parnell's triumph in
+the number of his followers, they would have formed a basis for the
+appeasement of the troubled land.  The institution of county boards,
+the abolition of the detested Castle, something like the establishment of
+a Royal residence in Dublin, would have begun the work well.  Materially
+and sentimentally, they were the right steps to take.  They are now
+proposed too late.  They are regarded as petty concessions, insufficient
+and vexatious.  The lower and the higher elements in the population are
+fused by the enthusiasm of men who find themselves marching in full body
+on a road, under a flag, at the heels of a trusted leader; and they will
+no longer be fed with sops.  Petty concessions are signs of weakness to
+the unsatisfied; they prick an appetite, they do not close breaches.  If
+our object is, as we hear it said, to appease the Irish, we shall have to
+give them the Parliament their leader demands.  It might once have been
+much less; it may be worried into a raving, perhaps a desperate
+wrestling, for still more.  Nations pay Sibylline prices for want of
+forethought.  Mr. Parnell's terms are embodied in Mr. Gladstone's Bill,
+to which he and his band have subscribed.  The one point for him is the
+statutory Parliament, so that Ireland may civilly govern herself; and
+standing before the world as representative of his country, he addresses
+an applausive audience when he cites the total failure of England to do
+that business of government, as at least a logical reason for the claim.
+England has confessedly failed; the world says it, the country admits it.
+We have failed, and not because the so-called Saxon is incapable of
+understanding the Celt, but owing to our system, suitable enough to us,
+of rule by Party, which puts perpetually a shifting hand upon the reins,
+and invites the clamour it has to allay.  The Irish--the English too in
+some degree--have been taught that roaring; in its various forms, is the
+trick to open the ears of Ministers.  We have encouraged by irritating
+them to practise it, until it has become a habit, an hereditary
+profession with them.  Ministers in turn have defensively adopted the
+arts of beguilement, varied by an exercise of the police.  We grew
+accustomed to periods of Irish fever.  The exhaustion ensuing we named
+tranquillity, and hoped that it would bear fruit.  But we did not plant.
+The Party in office directed its attention to what was uppermost and
+urgent--to that which kicked them.  Although we were living, by common
+consent; with a disease in the frame, eruptive at intervals, a national
+disfigurement always a danger, the Ministerial idea of arresting it for
+the purpose of healing was confined, before the passing of Mr.
+Gladstone's well-meant Land Bill, to the occasional despatch of
+commissions; and, in fine, we behold through History the Irish malady
+treated as a form of British constitutional gout.  Parliament touched on
+the Irish only when the Irish were active as a virus.  Our later
+alternations of cajolery and repression bear painful resemblance to the
+nervous fit of rickety riders compounding with their destinations that
+they may keep their seats.  The cajolery was foolish, if an end was in
+view; the repression inefficient.  To repress efficiently we have to
+stifle a conscience accusing us of old injustice, and forget that we are
+sworn to freedom.  The cries that we have been hearing for Cromwell or
+for Bismarck prove the existence of an impatient faction in our midst
+fitter to wear the collars of those masters whom they invoke than to drop
+a vote into the ballot-box.  As for the prominent politicians who have
+displaced their rivals partly on the strength of an implied approbation
+of those cries, we shall see how they illumine the councils of a
+governing people.  They are wiser than the barking dogs.  Cromwell and
+Bismarck are great names; but the harrying of Ireland did not settle it,
+and to Germanize a Posen and call it peace will find echo only in the
+German tongue.  Posen is the error of a master-mind too much given to
+hammer at obstacles.  He has, however, the hammer.  Can it be imagined in
+English hands?  The braver exemplar for grappling with monstrous
+political tasks is Cavour, and he would not have hinted at the iron
+method or the bayonet for a pacification.  Cavour challenged debate; he
+had faith in the active intellect, and that is the thing to be prayed for
+by statesmen who would register permanent successes.  The Irish, it is
+true, do not conduct an argument coolly.  Mr. Parnell and his eighty-five
+have not met the Conservative leader and his following in the Commons
+with the gravity of platonic disputants.  But they have a logical
+position, equivalent to the best of arguments.  They are representatives,
+they would say, of a country admittedly ill-governed by us; and they have
+accepted the Bill of the defeated Minister as final.  Its provisions are
+their terms of peace.  They offer in return for that boon to take the
+burden we have groaned under off our hands.  If we answer that we think
+them insincere, we accuse these thrice accredited representatives of the
+Irish people of being hypocrites and crafty conspirators; and numbers in
+England, affected by the weapons they have used to get to their present
+strength, do think it; forgetful that our obtuseness to their constant
+appeals forced them into the extremer shifts of agitation.  Yet it will
+hardly be denied that these men love Ireland; and they have not shown
+themselves by their acts to be insane.  To suppose them conspiring for
+separation indicates a suspicion that they have neither hearts nor heads.
+For Ireland, separation is immediate ruin.  It would prove a very short
+sail for these conspirators before the ship went down.  The vital
+necessity of the Union for both, countries, obviously for the weaker of
+the two, is known to them; and unless we resume our exasperation of the
+wild fellow the Celt can be made by such a process, we have not rational
+grounds for treating him, or treating with him, as a Bedlamite.  He has
+besides his passions shrewd sense; and his passions may be rightly
+directed by benevolent attraction.  This is language derided by the
+victorious enemy; it speaks nevertheless what the world, and even
+troubled America, thinks of the Irish Celt.  More of it now on our side
+of the Channel would be serviceable.  The notion that he hates the
+English comes of his fevered chafing against the harness of England, and
+when subject to his fevers, he is unrestrained in his cries and deeds.
+That pertains to the nature of him.  Of course, if we have no belief in
+the virtues of friendliness and confidence--none in regard to the
+Irishman--we show him his footing, and we challenge the issue.  For the
+sole alternative is distinct antagonism, a form of war.  Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill has brought us to that definite line.  Ireland having given her
+adhesion to it, swearing that she does so in good faith, and will not
+accept a smaller quantity, peace is only to be had by our placing trust
+in the Irish; we trust them or we crush them.  Intermediate ways are but
+the prosecution of our ugly flounderings in Bogland; and dubious as we
+see the choice on either side, a decisive step to right or left will not
+show us to the world so bemired, to ourselves so miserably inefficient,
+as we appear in this session of a new Parliament.  With his eighty-five,
+apart from external operations lawful or not, Mr. Parnell can act as a
+sort of lumbricus in the House.  Let journalists watch and chronicle
+events: if Mr. Gladstone has humour, they will yet note a peculiar smile
+on his closed mouth from time to time when the alien body within the
+House, from which, for the sake of its dignity and ability to conduct its
+affairs, he would have relieved it till the day of a warmer intelligence
+between Irish and English, paralyzes our machinery business.  An ably-
+handled coherent body in the midst of the liquid groups will make it felt
+that Ireland is a nation, naturally dependent though she must be.  We
+have to do with forces in politics, and the great majority of the Irish
+Nationalists in Ireland has made them a force.
+
+No doubt Mr. Matthew Arnold is correct in his apprehensions of the
+dangers we may fear from a Dublin House of Commons.  The declarations
+and novel or ultra theories might almost be written down beforehand.
+I should, for my part, anticipate a greater danger in the familiar
+attitude of the English metropolitan Press and public toward an
+experiment they dislike and incline to dread:--the cynical comments,
+the quotations between inverted commas, the commiserating shrug, cold
+irony, raw banter, growl of menace, sharp snap, rounds of laughter.
+Frenchmen of the Young Republic, not presently appreciated as offensive,
+have had some of these careless trifles translated for them, and have
+been stung.  We favoured Germany with them now and then, before Germany
+became the first power in Europe.  Before America had displayed herself
+as greatest among the giants that do not go to pieces, she had, as
+Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning, a series of flicks of
+the whip.  It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us.
+There are various ways for tripping the experiment.  Nevertheless, when
+the experiment is tried, considering that our welfare is involved in its
+not failing, as we have failed, we should prepare to start it cordially,
+cordially assist it.  Thoughtful political minds regard the measure as a
+backward step; yet conceiving but a prospect that a measure accepted by
+Home Rulers will possibly enable the Irish and English to step together,
+it seems better worth the venture than to pursue a course of prospectless
+discord!  Whatever we do or abstain from doing has now its evident
+dangers, and this being imminent may appear the larger of them; but if
+a weighing of the conditions dictates it, and conscience approves, the
+wiser proceeding is to make trial of the untried.  Our outlook was
+preternaturally black, with enormous increase of dangers when the
+originator of our species venturesomely arose from the posture of the
+'quatre pattes'.  We consider that we have not lost by his temerity.  In
+states of dubitation under impelling elements, the instinct pointing to
+courageous action is, besides the manlier, conjecturably the right one.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LESLIE STEPHEN--1904
+
+When that noble body of scholarly and cheerful pedestrians, the Sunday
+Tramps, were on the march, with Leslie Stephen to lead them, there was
+conversation which would have made the presence of a shorthand writer a
+benefaction to the country.  A pause to it came at the examination of the
+leader's watch and Ordnance map under the western sun, and void was given
+for the strike across country to catch the tail of a train offering
+dinner in London, at the cost of a run through hedges, over ditches and
+fellows, past proclamation against trespassers, under suspicion of being
+taken for more serious depredators in flight.  The chief of the Tramps
+had a wonderful calculating eye in the observation of distances and the
+nature of the land, as he proved by his discovery of untried passes in
+the higher Alps, and he had no mercy for pursy followers.  I have often
+said of this life-long student and philosophical head that he had in him
+the making of a great military captain.  He would not have been opposed
+to the profession of arms if he had been captured early for the service,
+notwithstanding his abomination of bloodshed.  He had a high, calm
+courage, was unperturbed in a dubious position, and would confidently
+take the way out of it which he conceived to be the better.  We have not
+to deplore that he was diverted from the ways of a soldier, though
+England, as the country has been learning of late, cannot boast of many
+in uniform who have capacity for leadership.  His work in literature will
+be reviewed by his lieutenant of Tramps, one of the ablest of writers!--
+[Frederic W. Maitland.]--The memory of it remains with us, as being the
+profoundest and the most sober criticism we have had in our time.  The
+only sting in it was an inoffensive humorous irony that now and then
+stole out for a roll over, like a furry cub, or the occasional ripple on
+a lake in grey weather.  We have nothing left that is like it.
+
+One might easily fall into the pit of panegyric by an enumeration of his
+qualities, personal and literary.  It would not be out of harmony with
+the temper and characteristics of a mind so equable.  He, the equable,
+whether in condemnation or eulogy.  Our loss of such a man is great, for
+work was in his brain, and the hand was active till close upon the time
+when his breathing ceased.  The loss to his friends can be replaced only
+by an imagination that conjures him up beside them.  That will be no task
+to those who have known him well enough to see his view of things as they
+are, and revive his expression of it.  With them he will live despite the
+word farewell.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+               CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY
+
+
+LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE MORNING POST FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY
+FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
+
+FERRARA, June 22, 1866.
+
+Before this letter reaches London the guns will have awakened both the
+echo of the old river Po and the classical Mincio.  The whole of the
+troops, about 110,000 men, with which Cialdini intends to force the
+passage of the first-named river are already massed along the right bank
+of the Po, anxiously waiting that the last hour of to-morrow should
+strike, and that the order for action should be given.  The telegraph
+will have already informed your readers that, according to the intimation
+sent by General Lamarmora on Tuesday evening to the Austrian
+headquarters, the three days fixed by the general's message before
+beginning hostilities will expire at twelve p.m. of the 23rd of June.
+
+Cialdini's headquarters have been established in this city since
+Wednesday morning, and the famous general, in whom the fourth corps he
+commands, and the whole of the nation, has so much confidence, has
+concentrated the whole of his forces within a comparatively narrow
+compass, and is ready for action.  I believe therefore that by to-morrow
+the right bank of the Po will be connected with the mainland of the
+Polesine by several pontoon bridges, which will enable Cialdini's corps
+d'armee to cross the river, and, as everybody here hopes, to cross it in
+spite of any defence the Austrians may make.
+
+On my way to this ancient city last evening I met General Cadogan and two
+superior Prussian officers, who by this time must have joined Victor
+Emmanuel's headquarters at Cremona; if not, they have been by this time
+transferred elsewhere, more on the front, towards the line of the Mincio,
+on which, according to appearance, the first, second, and third Italian
+corps d'armee seem destined to operate.  The English general and the two
+Prussian officers above mentioned are to follow the king's staff, the
+first as English commissioner, the superior in rank of the two others in
+the same capacity.
+
+I have been told here that, before leaving Bologna, Cialdini held a
+general council of the commanders of the seven divisions of which his
+powerful corps d'armee is formed, and that he told them that, in spite of
+the forces the enemy has massed on the left bank of the Po, between the
+point which faces Stellata and Rovigo, the river must be crossed by his
+troops, whatever might be the sacrifice this important operation
+requires.  Cialdini is a man who knows how to keep his word, and, for
+this reason, I have no doubt he will do what he has already made up his
+mind to accomplish.  I am therefore confident that before two or three
+days have elapsed, these 110,000 Italian troops, or a great part of them,
+will have trod, for the Italians, the sacred land of Venetia.
+
+Once the river Po crossed by Cialdini's corps d'armee, he will boldly
+enter the Polesine and make himself master of the road which leads by
+Rovigo towards Este and Padua.  A glance at the map will show your
+readers how, at about twenty or thirty miles from the first-mentioned
+town, a chain of hills, called the Colli Euganei, stretches itself from
+the last spur of the Julian Alps, in the vicinity of Vicenza, gently
+sloping down towards the sea.  As this line affords good positions for
+contesting the advance of an army crossing the Po at Lago Scuro, or at
+any other point not far from it, it is to be supposed that the Austrians
+will make a stand there, and I should not be surprised at all that
+Cialdini's first battle, if accepted by the enemy, should take place
+within that comparatively narrow ground which is within Montagnana, Este,
+Terradura, Abano, and Padua.  It is impossible to suppose that Cialdini's
+corps d'armee, being so large, is destined to cross the Po only at one
+point of the river below its course: it is extremely likely that part of
+it should cross it at some point above, between Revere and Stellata,
+where the river is in two or three instances only 450 metres wide.  Were
+the Italian general to be successful--protected as he will be by the
+tremendous fire of the powerful artillery he disposes of--in these
+twofold operations, the Austrians defending the line of the Colli Euganei
+could be easily outflanked by the Italian troops, who would have crossed
+the river below Lago Scuro.  Of course these are mere suppositions, for
+nobody, as you may imagine, except the king, Cialdini himself, Lamarmora,
+Pettiti, and Menabrea, is acquainted with the plan of the forthcoming
+campaign.  There was a rumour at Cialdini's headquarters to-day that the
+Austrians had gathered in great numbers in the Polesine, and especially
+at Rovigo, a small town which they have strongly fortified of late, with
+an apparent design to oppose the crossing of the Po, were Cialdini to
+attempt it at or near Lago Scuro.  There are about Rovigo large tracts of
+marshes and fields cut by ditches and brooks, which, though owing to the
+dryness of the season [they] cannot be, as it was generally believed two
+weeks ago, easily inundated, yet might well aid the operations the
+Austrians may undertake in order to check the advance of the Italian
+fourth corps d'armee.  The resistance to the undertaking of Cialdini may
+be, on the part of the Austrians, very stout, but I am almost certain
+that it will be overcome by the ardour of Italian troops, and by the
+skill of their illustrious leader.
+
+As I told you above, the declaration of war was handed over to an
+Austrian major for transmission to Count Stancowick, the Austrian
+governor of Mantua, on the evening of the 19th, by Colonel Bariola,
+sous-chef of the general staff, who was accompanied by the Duke Luigi
+of Sant' Arpino, the husband of the amiable widow of Lord Burghersh.
+The duke is the eldest son of Prince San Teodoro, one of the wealthiest
+noblemen of Naples.  In spite of his high position and of his family
+ties, the Duke of Sant' Arpino, who is well known in London fashionable
+society, entered as a volunteer in the Italian army, and was appointed
+orderly officer to General Lamarmora.  The choice of such a gentleman for
+the mission I am speaking of was apparently made with intention, in order
+to show the Austrians, that the Neapolitan nobility is as much interested
+in the national movement as the middle and lower classes of the Kingdom,
+once so fearfully misruled by the Bourbons.  The Duke of Sant' Arpino is
+not the only Neapolitan nobleman who has enlisted in the Italian army
+since the war with Austria broke out.  In order to show you the
+importance which must be given to this pronunciamiento of the Neapolitan
+noblemen, allow me to give you here a short list of the names of those of
+them who have enlisted as private soldiers in the cavalry regiments of
+the regular army: The Duke of Policastro; the Count of Savignano Guevara,
+the eldest son of the Duke of Bovino; the Duke d'Ozia d'Angri, who had
+emigrated in 1860, and returned to Naples six months ago; Marquis
+Rivadebro Serra; Marquis Pisicelli, whose family had left Naples in 1860
+out of devotion to Francis II.; two Carraciolos, of the historical family
+from which sprung the unfortunate Neapolitan admiral of this name, whose
+head Lord Nelson would have done better not to have sacrificed to the
+cruelty of Queen Caroline; Prince Carini, the representative of an
+illustrious family of Sicily, a nephew of the Marquis del Vasto; and
+Pescara, a descendant of that great general of Charles V., to whom the
+proud Francis I. of France was obliged to surrender and give up his sword
+at the battle of Pavia.  Besides these Neapolitan noblemen who have
+enlisted of late as privates, the Italian army now encamped on the banks
+of the Po and of the Mincio may boast of two Colonnas, a prince of Somma,
+two Barons Renzi, an Acquaviva, of the Duke of Atri, two Capece, two
+Princes Buttera, etc.  To return to the mission of Colonel Bariola and
+the Duke of Sant' Arpino, I will add some details which were told me this
+morning by a gentleman who left Cremona yesterday evening, and who had
+them from a reliable source.  The messenger of General Lamarmora had been
+directed to proceed from Cremona to the small village of Le Grazie,
+which, on the line of the Mincio, marks the Austrian and Italian
+frontier.
+
+On the right bank of the Lake of Mantua, in the year 1340, stood a small
+chapel containing a miraculous painting of the Madonna, called by the
+people of the locality 'Santa Maria delle Grazie.' The boatmen and
+fishermen of the Mincio, who had been, as they said, often saved from
+certain death by the Madonna--as famous in those days as the modern Lady
+of Rimini, celebrated for the startling feat of winking her eyes--
+determined to erect for her a more worthy abode.
+
+Hence arose the Santuario delle Grazie.  Here, as at Loretto and other
+holy localities of Italy, a fair is held, in which, amongst a great
+number of worldly things, rosaries, holy images, and other miraculous
+objects are sold, and astounding boons are said to be secured at the most
+trifling expense.  The Santuario della Madonna delle Grazie enjoying a
+far-spread reputation, the dumb, deaf, blind, and halt-in short, people
+afflicted with all sorts of infirmities--flock thither during the fair,
+and are not wanting even on the other days of the year.  The church of Le
+Grazie is one of the most curious of Italy.  Not that there is anything
+remarkable in its architecture, for it is an Italian Gothic structure of
+the simplest style.  But the ornamental part of the interior is most
+peculiar.  The walls of the building are covered with a double row of wax
+statues, of life size, representing a host of warriors, cardinals,
+bishops, kings, and popes, who--as the story runs--pretended to have
+received some wonderful grace during their earthly existence.  Amongst
+the grand array of illustrious personages, there are not a few humbler
+individuals whose history is faithfully told (if you choose to credit it)
+by the painted inscriptions below.  There is even a convict, who, at the
+moment of being hanged, implored succour of the all-powerful Madonna,
+whereupon the beam of the gibbet instantly broke, and the worthy
+individual was restored to society--a very doubtful benefit after all.
+On Colonel Bariola and the Duke of Sant' Arpino arriving at this place,
+which is only five miles distant from Mantua, their carriage was
+naturally stopped by the commissaire of the Austrian police, whose duty
+was to watch the frontier.  Having told him that they had a despatch to
+deliver either to the military governor of Mantua or to some officer sent
+by him to receive it, the commissaire at once despatched a mounted
+gendarme to Mantua.  Two hours had scarcely elapsed when a carriage drove
+into the village of Le Grazie, from which an Austrian major of infantry
+alighted and hastened to a wooden hut where the two Italian officers were
+waiting.  Colonel Bariola, who was trained in the Austrian military
+school of Viller Nashstad, and regularly left the Austrian service in
+1848, acquainted the newly-arrived major with his mission, which was that
+of delivering the sealed despatch to the general in command of Mantua and
+receiving for it a regular receipt.  The despatch was addressed to the
+Archduke Albert, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army of the South,
+care of the governor of Mantua.  After the major had delivered the
+receipt, the three messengers entered into a courteous conversation,
+during which Colonel Bariola seized an opportunity of presenting the
+duke, purposely laying stress on the fact of his belonging to one of the
+most illustrious families of Naples.  It happened that the Austrian major
+had also been trained in the same school where Colonel Bariola was
+brought up--a circumstance of which he was reminded by the Austrian
+officer himself.  Three hours had scarcely elapsed from the arrival of
+the two Italian messengers of war at Le Grazie, on the Austrian frontier,
+when they were already on their way back to the headquarters of Cremona,
+where during the night the rumour was current that a telegram had been
+received by Lamarmora from Verona, in which Archduke Albert accepted the
+challenge.  Victor Emmanuel, whom I saw at Bologna yesterday, arrived at
+Cremona in the morning at two o'clock, but by this time his Majesty's
+headquarters must have removed more towards the front, in the direction
+of the Oglio.  I should not be at all surprised were the Italian
+headquarters to be established by to-morrow either at Piubega or
+Gazzoldo, if not actually at Goito, a village, as you know, which marks
+the Italian-Austrian frontier on the Mincio.  The whole of the first,
+second, and third Italian corps d'armee are by this time concentrated
+within that comparatively narrow space which lies between the position of
+Castiglione, Delle Stiviere, Lorrato, and Desenzano, on the Lake of
+Garda, and Solferino on one side; Piubega, Gazzoldo, Sacca, Goito, and
+Castellucchio on the other.  Are these three corps d'armee to attack when
+they hear the roar of Cialdini's artillery on the right bank of the Po?
+Are they destined to force the passage of the Mincio either at Goito or
+at Borghetto?  or are they destined to invest Verona, storm Peschiera,
+and lay siege to Mantua?  This is more than I can tell you, for, I repeat
+it, the intentions of the Italian leaders are enveloped in a veil which
+nobody--the Austrians included--has as yet been able to penetrate.  One
+thing, however, is certain, and it is this, that as the clock of Victor
+Emmanuel marks the last minute of the seventy-second hour fixed by the
+declaration delivered at Le Grazie on Wednesday by Colonel Bariola to the
+Austrian major, the fair land where Virgil was born and Tasso was
+imprisoned will be enveloped by a thick cloud of the smoke of hundreds
+and hundreds of cannon.  Let us hope that God will be in favour of right
+and justice, which, in this imminent and fierce struggle, is undoubtedly
+on the Italian side.
+
+
+
+CREMONA, June 30, 1866.
+
+The telegraph will have already informed you of the concentration of the
+Italian army, whose headquarters have since Tuesday been removed from
+Redondesco to Piadena, the king having chosen the adjacent villa of
+Cigognolo for his residence.  The concentrating movements of the royal
+army began on the morning of the 27th, i.e., three days after the bloody
+fait d'armes of the 24th, which, narrated and commented on in different
+manners according to the interests and passions of the narrators, still
+remains for many people a mystery.  At the end of this letter you will
+see that I quote a short phrase with which an Austrian major, now
+prisoner of war, portrayed the results of the fierce struggle fought
+beyond the Mincio.  This officer is one of the few survivors of a
+regiment of Austrian volunteers, uhlans, two squadrons of which he
+himself commanded.  The declaration made by this officer was thoroughly
+explicit, and conveys the exact idea of the valour displayed by the
+Italians in that terrible fight.  Those who incline to overrate the
+advantages obtained by the Austrians on Sunday last must not forget that
+if Lamarmora had thought proper to persist in holding the positions of
+Valeggio, Volta, and Goito, the Austrians could not have prevented him.
+It seems the Austrian general-in-chief shared this opinion, for, after
+his army had carried with terrible sacrifices the positions of Monte
+Vento and Custozza, it did not appear, nor indeed did the Austrians then
+give any signs, that they intended to adopt a more active system of
+warfare.  It is the business of a commander to see that after a victory
+the fruit of it should not be lost, and for this reason the enemy is
+pursued and molested, and time is not left him for reorganization.
+Nothing of this happened after the 24th--nothing has been done by the
+Austrians to secure such results.  The frontier which separates the two
+dominions is now the same as it was on the eve of the declaration of war.
+At Goito, at Monzambano, and in the other villages of the extreme
+frontier, the Italian authorities are still discharging their duties.
+Nothing is changed in those places, were we to except that now and then
+an Austrian cavalry party suddenly makes its appearance, with the only
+object of watching the movements of the Italian army.  One of these
+parties, formed by four squadrons of the Wurtemberg hussar regiment,
+having advanced at six o'clock this morning on the right bank of the
+Mincio, met the fourth squadron of the Italian lancers of Foggia and were
+beaten back, and compelled to retire in disorder towards Goito and
+Rivolta.  In this unequal encounter the Italian lancers distinguished
+themselves very much, made some Austrian hussars prisoners, and killed a
+few more, amongst whom was an officer.  The same state of thing, prevails
+at Rivottella, a small village on the shores of the Lake of Garda, about
+four miles distant from the most advanced fortifications of Peschiera.
+There, as elsewhere, some Austrian parties advanced with the object of
+watching the movements of the Garibaldians, who occupy the hilly ground,
+which from Castiglione, Eseuta, and Cartel Venzago stretches to Lonato,
+Salo, and Desenzano, and to the mountain passes of Caffaro.  In the last-
+named place the Garibaldians came to blows with the Austrians on the
+morning of the 28th, and the former got the best of the fray.  Had the
+fait d'armes of the 24th, or the battle of Custozza, as Archduke Albrecht
+calls it, been a great victory for the Austrians, why should the imperial
+army remain in such inaction?  The only conclusion we must come to is
+simply this, that the Austrian losses have been such as to induce the
+commander-in-chief of the army to act prudently on the defensive.  We are
+now informed that the charges of cavalry which the Austrian lancers and
+the Hungarian hussars had to sustain near Villafranca on the 24th with
+the Italian horsemen of the Aorta and Alessandria regiments have been so
+fatal to the former that a whole division of the Kaiser cavalry must be
+reorganised before it can be brought into the field main.
+
+The regiment of Haller hussars and two of volunteer uhlans were almost
+destroyed in that terrible charge.  To give you an idea of this cavalry
+encounter, it is sufficient to say that Colonel Vandoni, at the head of
+the Aorta regiment he commands, charged fourteen times during the short
+period of four hours.  The volunteer uhlans of the Kaiser regiment had
+already given up the idea of breaking through the square formed by the
+battalion, in the centre of which stood Prince Humbert of Savoy, when
+they were suddenly charged and literally cut to pieces by the Alessandria
+light cavalry, in spite of the long lances they carried.  This weapon and
+the loose uniform they wear makes them resemble the Cossacks of the Don.
+There is one circumstance, which, if I am not mistaken, has not as yet
+been published by the newspapers, and it is this.  There was a fight on
+the 25th on a place at the north of Roverbella, between the Italian
+regiment of Novara cavalry and a regiment of Hungarian hussars, whose
+name is not known.  This regiment was so thoroughly routed by the
+Italians that it was pursued as far as Villafranca, and had two squadrons
+put hors de combat, whilst the Novara regiment only lost twenty-four
+mounted men.  I think it right to mention this, for it proves that, the
+day after the bloody affair of the 24th, the Italian army had still a
+regiment of cavalry operating at Villafranca, a village which lay at a
+distance of fifteen kilometres from the Italian frontier. A report, which
+is much accredited here, explains how the Italian army did not derive the
+advantages it might have derived from the action of the 24th.  It appears
+that the orders issued from the Italian headquarters during the previous
+night, and especially the verbal instructions given by Lamarmora and
+Pettiti to the staff officers of the different army corps, were either
+forgotten or misunderstood by those officers.  Those sent to Durando,
+the commander of the first corps, seem to have been as follows: That he
+should have marched in the direction of Castelnuovo, without, however,
+taking part in the action.  Durando, it is generally stated, had strictly
+adhered to the orders sent from the headquarters, but it seems that
+General Cerale understood them too literally.  Having been ordered to
+march on Castelnuovo, and finding the village strongly held by the
+Austrians, who received his division with a tremendous fire, he at once
+engaged in the action instead of falling back on the reserve of the first
+corps and waiting new instructions.  If such was really the case, it is
+evident that Cerale thought that the order to march which he had received
+implied that he was to attack and get possession of Castelnuovo, had this
+village, as it really was, already been occupied by the enemy.  In
+mentioning this fact I feel bound to observe that I write it under the
+most complete reserve, for I should be sorry indeed to charge General
+Cerale with having misunderstood such an important order.
+
+I see that one of your leading contemporaries believes that it would be
+impossible for the king or Lamarmora to say what result they expected
+from their ill-conceived and worse-executed attempt.  The result they
+expected is, I think, clear enough; they wanted to break through the
+quadrilateral and make their junction with Cialdini, who was ready to
+cross the Po during the night of the 24th.  That the attempt was ill-
+conceived and worse-executed, neither your contemporary nor the public at
+large has, for the present, the right to conclude, for no one knows as
+yet but imperfectly the details of the terrible fight.  What is certain,
+however, is that General Durando, perceiving that the Cerale division was
+lost, did all that he could to help it.  Failing in this he turned to his
+two aides-de-camp and coolly said to them:
+
+'Now, gentlemen, it is time for you to retire, for I have a duty to
+perform which is a strictly personal one--the duty of dying.' On saying
+these words he galloped to the front and placed himself at about twenty
+paces from a battalion of Austrian sharp-shooters which were ascending
+the hill.  In less than five minutes his horse was killed under him, and
+he was wounded in the right hand.  I scarcely need add that his aides-de-
+camp did not flinch from sharing Durando's fate.  They bravely followed
+their general, and one, the Marquis Corbetta, was wounded in the leg; the
+other, Count Esengrini, had his horse shot under him.  I called on
+Durando, who is now at Milan, the day before yesterday.  Though a
+stranger to him, he received me at once, and, speaking of the action of
+the 24th, he only said: 'I have the satisfaction of having done my duty.
+I wait tranquilly the judgement of history.'
+
+Assuming, for argument's sake, that General Cerale misunderstood the
+orders he had received, and that, by precipitating his movement, he
+dragged into the same mistake the whole of Durando's corps--assuming,
+I say, this to be the right version, you can easily explain the fact that
+neither of the two contending parties are as yet in a position clearly to
+describe the action of the 24th.  Why did neither the one nor the other
+display and bring into action the whole forces they could have had at
+their disposal?  Why so many partial engagements at a great distance one
+from the other?  In a word, why that want of unity, which, in my opinion,
+constituted the paramount characteristic of that bloody struggle?  I may
+be greatly mistaken, but I am of opinion that neither the Italian
+general-in-chief nor the Austrian Archduke entertained on the night of
+the 23rd the idea of delivering a battle on the 24th.  There, and only
+there, lies the whole mystery of the affair.  The total want of unity of
+action on the part of the Italians assured to the Austrians, not the
+victory, but the chance of rendering impossible Lamarmora's attempt to
+break through the quadrilateral.  This no one can deny; but, on the other
+hand, if the Italian army failed in attaining its object, the failure-
+owing to the bravery displayed both by the soldiers and by the generals-
+was far from being a disastrous or irreparable one.  The Italians fought
+from three o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening like lions,
+showing to their enemies and to Europe that they know how to defend their
+country, and that they are worthy of the noble enterprise they have
+undertaken.
+
+But let me now register one of the striking episodes of that memorable
+day.  It was five o'clock p.m.  when General Bixio, whose division held
+an elevated position not far from Villafranca, was attacked by three
+strong Austrian brigades, which had debouched at the same time from three
+different roads, supported with numerous artillery.  An officer of the
+Austrian staff, waving a white handkerchief, was seen galloping towards
+the front of Bixio's position, and, once in the presence of this general,
+bade him surrender.  Those who are not personally acquainted with Bixio
+cannot form an idea of the impression this bold demand must have made on
+him.  I have been told that, on hearing the word 'surrender,' his face
+turned suddenly pale, then flushed like purple, and darting at the
+Austrian messenger, said, 'Major, if you dare to pronounce once more the
+word surrender in my presence, I tell you--and Bixio always keeps his
+word--that I will have you shot at once.' The Austrian officer had
+scarcely reached the general who had sent him, than Bixio, rapidly moving
+his division, fell with such impetuosity on the Austrian column, which
+were ascending the hill, that they were thrown pellmell in the valley,
+causing the greatest confusion amongst their reserve.  Bixio himself led
+his men, and with his aides-de-camp, Cavaliere Filippo Fermi, Count
+Martini, and Colonel Malenchini, all Tuscans, actually charged the enemy.
+I have been told that, on hearing this episode, Garibaldi said, 'I am not
+at all surprised, for Bixio is the best general I have made.' Once the
+enemy was repulsed, Bixio was ordered to manoeuvre so as to cover the
+backward movement of the army, which was orderly and slowly retiring on
+the Mincio.  Assisted by the co-operation of the heavy cavalry, commanded
+by General Count de Sonnaz, Bixio covered the retreat, and during the
+night occupied Goito, a position which he held till the evening of the
+27th.
+
+In consequence of the concentrating movement of the Italian army which I
+have mentioned at the beginning of this letter, the fourth army corps
+(Cialdini's) still holds the line of the Po.  If I am rightly informed,
+the decree for the formation of the fourth army corps was signed by the
+king yesterday.  This corps is that of Garibaldi, and is about 40,000
+strong.  An officer who has just returned from Milan told me this morning
+that he had had an opportunity of speaking with the Austrian prisoners
+sent from Milan to the fortress of Finestrelle in Piedmont.  Amongst them
+was an officer of a uhlan regiment, who had all the appearance of
+belonging to some aristocratic family of Austrian Poland.  Having been
+asked if he thought Austria had really gained the battle on the 24th, he
+answered: 'I do not know if the illusions of the Austrian army go so far
+as to induce it to believe it has obtained a victory--I do not believe
+it.  He who loves Austria cannot, however, wish she should obtain such
+victories, for they are the victories of Pyrrhus!
+
+There is at Verona some element in the Austrian councils of war which we
+don't understand, but which gives to their operations in this present
+phase of the campaign just as uncertain and as vacillating a character as
+it possessed during the campaign of 1859.  On Friday they are still
+beyond the Mincio, and on Saturday their small fleet on the Lake of Garda
+steams up to Desenzano, and opens fire against this defenceless city and
+her railway station, whilst two battalions of Tyrolese sharp-shooters
+occupy the building.  On Sunday they retire, but early yesterday they
+cross the Mincio, at Goito and Monzambano, and begin to throw two bridges
+over the same river, between the last-named place and the mills of Volta.
+At the same time they erect batteries at Goito, Torrione, and Valeggio,
+pushing their reconnoitring parties of hussars as far as Medole,
+Castiglione delle Stiviere, and Montechiara, this last-named place being
+only at a distance of twenty miles from Brescia.  Before this news
+reached me here this morning I was rather inclined to believe that they
+were playing at hide-and-seek, in the hope that the leaders of the
+Italian army should be tempted by the game and repeat, for the second
+time, the too hasty attack on the quadrilateral.  This news, which I have
+from a reliable source, has, however, changed my former opinion, and I
+begin to believe that the Austrian Archduke has really made up his mind
+to come out from the strongholds of the quadrilateral, and intends
+actually to begin war on the very battlefields where his imperial cousin
+was beaten on the 24th June 1859.  It may be that the partial disasters
+sustained by Benedek in Germany have determined the Austrian Government
+to order a more active system of war against Italy, or, as is generally
+believed here, that the organisation of the commissariat was not perfect
+enough with the army Archduke Albert commands to afford a more active and
+offensive action.  Be that as it may, the fact is that the news received
+here from several parts of Upper Lombardy seems to indicate, on the part
+of the Austrians, the intention of attacking their adversaries.
+
+Yesterday whilst the peaceable village of Gazzoldo--five Italian miles
+from Goito--was still buried in the silence of night it was occupied by
+400 hussars, to the great consternation of the people who were roused
+from their sleep by the galloping of their unexpected visitors.  The
+sindaco, or mayor of the village, who is the chemist of the place, was,
+I hear, forcibly taken from his house and compelled to escort the
+Austrians on the road leading to Piubega and Redondesco.  This worthy
+magistrate, who was not apparently endowed with sufficient courage to
+make at least half a hero, was so much frightened that he was taken ill,
+and still is in a very precarious condition.  These inroads are not
+always accomplished with impunity, for last night, not far from
+Guidizzuolo, two squadrons of Italian light cavalry--Cavalleggieri di
+Lucca, if I am rightly informed--at a sudden turn of the road leading
+from the last-named village to Cerlongo, found themselves almost face to
+face with four squadrons of uhlans.  The Italians, without numbering
+their foes, set spurs to their horses and fell like thunder on the
+Austrians, who, after a fight which lasted more than half an hour, were
+put to flight, leaving on the ground fifteen men hors de combat, besides
+twelve prisoners.
+
+Whilst skirmishing of this kind is going on in the flat ground of
+Lombardy which lies between the Mincio and the Chiese, a more decisive
+action has been adopted by the Austrian corps which is quartered in the
+Italian Tyrol and Valtellina.  A few days ago it was generally believed
+that the mission of this corps was only to oppose Garibaldi should he try
+to force those Alpine passes.  But now we suddenly hear that the
+Austrians are already masters of Caffaro, Bagolino, Riccomassino, and
+Turano, which points they are fortifying.  This fact explains the last
+movements made by Garibaldi towards that direction.  But whilst the
+Austrians are massing their troops on the Tyrolese Alps the revolution is
+spreading fast in the more southern mountains of the Friuli and Cadorre,
+thus threatening the flank and rear of their army in Venetia.  This
+revolutionary movement may not have as yet assumed great proportions,
+but as it is the effect of a plan proposed beforehand it might become
+really imposing, more so as the ranks of those Italian patriots are daily
+swollen by numerous deserters and refractory men of the Venetian
+regiments of the Austrian army.
+
+Although the main body of the Austrians seems to be still concentrated
+between Peschiera and Verona, I should not wonder if they crossed the
+Mincio either to-day or to-morrow, with the object of occupying the
+heights of Volta, Cavriana, and Solferino, which, both by their position
+and by the nature of the ground, are in themselves so many fortresses.
+Supposing that the Italian army should decide for action--and there is
+every reason to believe that such will be the case--it is not unlikely
+that, as we had already a second battle at Custozza, we may have a second
+one at Solferino.
+
+That at the Italian headquarters something has been decided upon which
+may hasten the forward movement of the army, I infer from the fact that
+the foreign military commissioners at the Italian headquarters, who,
+after the 24th June had gone to pass the leisure of their camp life at
+Cremona, have suddenly made their appearance at Torre Malamberti, a villa
+belonging to the Marquis Araldi, where Lamarmora's staff is quartered.
+A still more important event is the presence of Baron Ricasoli, whom I
+met yesterday evening on coming here.  The President of the Council was
+coming from Florence, and, after stopping a few hours at the villa of
+Cicognolo, where Victor Emmanuel and the royal household are staying,
+he drove to Torre Malamberti to confer with General Lamarmora and Count
+Pettiti.  The presence of the baron at headquarters is too important an
+incident to be overlooked by people whose business is that of watching
+the course of events in this country.  And it should be borne in mind
+that on his way to headquarters Baron Ricasoli stopped a few hours at
+Bologna, where he had a long interview with Cialdini.  Nor is this all;
+for the most important fact I have to report to-day is, that whilst I am
+writing (five o'clock a.m.) three corps of the Italian army are crossing
+the Oglio at different points--all three acting together and ready for
+any occurrence.  This reconnaissance en force may, as you see, be turned
+into a regular battle should the Austrians have crossed the Mincio with
+the main body of their army during the course of last night.  You see
+that the air around me smells enough of powder to justify the expectation
+of events which are likely to exercise a great influence over the cause
+of right and justice--the cause of Italy.
+
+
+
+MARCARIA, July 3, Evening.
+
+Murray's guide will save me the trouble of telling you what this little
+and dirty hole of Marcaria is like.  The river Oglio runs due south, not
+far from the village, and cuts the road which from Bozzolo leads to
+Mantua.  It is about seven miles from Castellucchio, a town which, since
+the peace of Villafranca, marked the Italian frontier in Lower Lombardy.
+Towards this last-named place marched this morning the eleventh division
+of the Italians under the command of General Angioletti, only a month ago
+Minister of the Marine in Lamarmora's Cabinet.  Angioletti's division of
+the second corps was, in the case of an attack, to be supported by the
+fourth and eighth, which had crossed the Oglio at Gazzuolo four hours
+before the eleventh had started from the place from which I am now
+writing.  Two other divisions also moved in an oblique line from the
+upper course of the above-mentioned river, crossed it on a pontoon
+bridge, and were directed to maintain their communications with
+Angioletti's on the left, whilst the eighth and fourth would have formed
+its right.  These five divisions were the avant garde of the main body of
+the Italian army.  I am not in a position to tell you the exact line the
+army thus advancing from the Oglio has followed, but I have been told
+that, in order to avoid the possibility of repeating the errors which
+occurred in the action of the 24th, the three corps d'armee have been
+directed to march in such a manner as to enable them to present a compact
+mass should they meet the enemy.  Contrary to all expectations,
+Angioletti's division was allowed to enter and occupy Castellucchio
+without firing a shot.  As its vanguard reached the hamlet of Ospedaletto
+it was informed that the Austrians had left Castellucchio during the
+night, leaving a few hussars, who, in their turn, retired on Mantua as
+soon as they saw the cavalry Angioletti had sent to reconnoitre both the
+country and the borough of Castellucchio.
+
+News has just arrived here that General Angioletti has been able to push
+his outposts as far as Rivolta on his left, and still farther forward on
+his front towards Curtalone.  Although the distance from Rivolta to Goito
+is only five miles, Angioletti, I have been told, could not ascertain
+whether the Austrians had crossed the Mincio in force.
+
+What part both Cialdini and Garibaldi will play in the great struggle
+nobody can tell.  It is certain, however, that these two popular leaders
+will not be idle, and that a battle, if fought, will assume the
+proportions of an almost unheard of slaughter.
+
+
+
+GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE ITALIAN ARMY,
+TORRE MALIMBERTI, July 7, 1866.
+
+Whilst the Austrian emperor throws himself at the feet of the ruler of
+France--I was almost going to write the arbiter of Europe--Italy and its
+brave army seem to reject disdainfully the idea of getting Venetia as a
+gift of a neutral power.  There cannot be any doubt as to the feeling in
+existence since the announcement of the Austrian proposal by the Moniteur
+being one of astonishment, and even indignation so far as Italy herself
+is concerned.  One hears nothing but expressions of this kind in whatever
+Italian town he may be, and the Italian army is naturally anxious that
+she should not be said to relinquish her task when Austrians speak of
+having beaten her, without proving that she can beat them too.  There are
+high considerations of honour which no soldier or general would ever
+think of putting aside for humanitarian or political reasons, and with
+these considerations.  the Italian army is fully in accord since the 24th
+June.  The way, too, in which the Kaiser chose to give up the long-
+contested point, by ignoring Italy and recognising France as a party to
+the Venetian question, created great indignation amongst the Italians,
+whose papers declare, one and all, that a fresh insult has been offered
+to the country.  This is the state of public opinion here, and unless the
+greatest advantages are obtained by a premature armistice and a hurried
+treaty of peace, it is likely to continue the same, not to the entire
+security of public order in Italy.  As a matter of course, all eyes are
+turned towards Villa Pallavicini, two miles from here, where the king is
+to decide upon either accepting or rejecting the French emperor's advice,
+both of which decisions are fraught with considerable difficulties and no
+little danger.  The king will have sought the advice of his ministers,
+besides which that of Prussia will have been asked and probably given.
+The matter may be decided one way or the other in a very short time, or
+may linger on for days to give time for public anxiety and fears to be
+allayed and to calm down.  In the meantime, it looks as if the king and
+his generals had made up their mind not to accept the gift.  An attack on
+the Borgoforte tete-de-pont on the right side of the Po, began on 5th at
+half-past three in the morning, under the immediate direction of General
+Cialdini.  The attacking corps was the Duke of Mignano's.  All the day
+yesterday the gun was heard at Torre Malamberti, as it was also this
+morning between ten and eleven o'clock.  Borgoforte is a fortress on the
+left side of the Po, throwing a bridge across this river, the right end
+of which is headed by a strong tete-de-pont, the object of the present
+attack.  This work may be said to belong to the quadrilateral, as it is
+only an advanced part of the fortress of Mantua, which, resting upon its
+rear, is connected to Borgoforte by a military road supported on the
+Mantua side by the Pietolo fortress.  The distance between Mantua and
+Borgoforte is only eleven kilometres.  The fete-de-poet is thrown upon
+the Po; its structure is of recent date, and it consists of a central
+part and of two wings, called Rocchetta and Bocca di Ganda respectively.
+The lock here existing is enclosed in the Rocchetta work.
+
+Since I wrote you my last letter Garibaldi has been obliged to desist
+from the idea of getting possession of Bagolino, Sant' Antonio, and Monte
+Suello, after a fight which lasted four hours, seeing that he had to deal
+with an entire Austrian brigade, supported by uhlans, sharp-shooters
+(almost a battalion) and twelve pieces of artillery.  These positions
+were subsequently abandoned by the enemy, and occupied by Garibaldi's
+volunteers.  In this affair the general received a slight wound in his
+left leg, the nature of which, however, is so very trifling, that a few
+days will be enough to enable him to resume active duties.  It seems that
+the arms of the Austrians proved to be much superior to those of the
+Garibaldians, whose guns did very bad service.  The loss of the latter
+amounted to about 100 killed and 200 wounded, figures in which the
+officers appear in great proportion, owing to their having been always at
+the head of their men, fighting, charging, and encouraging their comrades
+throughout.  Captain Adjutant-Major Battino, formerly of the regular
+army, died, struck by three bullets, while rushing on the Austrians with
+the first regiment.  On abandoning the Caffaro line, which they had
+reoccupied after the Lodrone encounter--in consequence of which the
+Garibaldians had to fall back because of the concentration following the
+battle of Custozza--the Austrians have retired to the Lardara fortress,
+between the Stabolfes and Tenara mountains, covering the route to Tione
+and Trento, in the Italian Tyrol.  The third regiment of volunteers
+suffered most, as two of their companies had to bear the brunt of the
+terrible Austrian fire kept up from formidable positions.  Another fight
+was taking place almost at the same time in the Val Camonico, i.e., north
+of the Caffaro, and of Rocca d'Anfo, Garibaldi's point d'appui.  This
+encounter was sustained in the same proportions, the Italians losing one
+of their bravest and best officers in the person of Major Castellini,
+a Milanese, commander of the second battalion of Lombardian bersaglieri.
+Although these and Major Caldesi's battalion had to fall back from Vezza,
+a strong position was taken near Edalo, while in the rear a regiment kept
+Breno safe.
+
+Although still at headquarters only two days ago, Baron Ricasoli has been
+suddenly summoned by telegram from Florence, and, as I hear, has just
+arrived.  This is undoubtedly brought about by the new complications,
+especially as, at a council of ministers presided over by the baron, a
+vote, the nature of which is as yet unknown, was taken on the present
+state of affairs.  As you know very well in England, Italy has great
+confidence in Ricasoli, whose conduct, always far from obsequious to the
+French emperor, has pleased the nation.  He is thought to be at this
+moment the right man in the right place, and with the great acquaintance
+he possesses of Italy and the Italians, and with the co-operation of such
+an honest man as General Lamarmora, Italy may be pronounced safe, both
+against friends and enemies.
+
+From what I saw this morning, coming back from the front, I presume that
+something, and that something new perhaps, will be attempted to-morrow.
+So far, the proposed armistice has had no effect upon the dispositions at
+general headquarters, and did not stay the cannon's voice.  In the middle
+of rumours, of hopes and fears, Italy's wish to push on with the war has
+as yet been adhered to by her trusted leaders.
+
+
+
+
+HEADQUARTERS OF THE FIRST ARMY CORPS,
+PIADENA, July 8, 1866.
+
+As I begin writing you, no doubt can be entertained that some movement is
+not only in contemplation at headquarters, but is actually provided to
+take place to-day, and that it will probably prove to be against the
+Austrian positions at Borgoforte, on the left bank of the Po.  Up to this
+time the tete-de-pout on the right side of the river had only been
+attacked by General the Duke of Mignano's guns.  It would now, on the
+contrary, be a matter of cutting the communications between Borgoforte
+and Mantua, by occupying the lower part of the country around the latter
+fortress, advancing upon the Valli Veronesi, and getting round the
+quadrilateral into Venetia.  While, then, waiting for further news to
+tell us whether this plan has been carried into execution, and whether it
+will be pursued, mindless of the existence of Mantua and Borgoforte on
+its flanks, one great fact is already ascertained, that the armistice
+proposed by the Emperor Napoleon has not been accepted, and that the war
+is to be continued.  The Austrians may shut themselves up in their
+strongholds, or may even be so obliging as to leave the king the
+uncontested possession of them by retreating in the same line as their
+opponents advance; the pursuit, if not the struggle, the war, if not the
+battle, will be carried on by the Italians.  At Torre Malamberti, where
+the general headquarters are, no end of general officers were to be seen
+yesterday hurrying in all directions.  I met the king, Generals Brignone,
+Gavone, Valfre, and Menabrea within a few minutes of one another, and
+Prince Amadeus, who has entirely recovered from his wound, had been
+telegraphed for, and will arrive in Cremona to-day.  No precise
+information is to be obtained respecting the intentions of the Austrians,
+but it is to be hoped for the Italian army, and for the credit of its
+generals, that more will be known about them now than was known on the
+eve of the famous 24th of June, and on its very morning.  The heroism of
+the Italians on that memorable day surpasses any possible idea that can
+be formed, as it did also surpass all expectations of the country.  Let
+me relate you a few out of many heroic facts which only come to light
+when an occasion is had of speaking with those who have been eyewitnesses
+of them, as they are no object of magnified regimental--orders or, as
+yet, of well-deserved honours.  Italian soldiers seem to think that the
+army only did its duty, and that, wherever Italians may fight, they will
+always show equal valour and firmness.  Captain Biraghi, of Milan,
+belonging to the general staff, having in the midst of the battle
+received an order from General Lamarmora for General Durando, was
+proceeding with all possible speed towards the first army corps, which
+was slowly retreating before the superior forces of the enemy and before
+the greatly superior number of his guns, when, while under a perfect
+shower of grape and canister, he was all of a sudden confronted by, an
+Austrian officer of cavalry who had been lying in wait for the Italian
+orderly.  The Austrian fires his revolver at Biraghi; and wounds him in
+the arm.  Nothing daunted, Biraghi assails him and makes him turn tail;
+then, following in pursuit, unsaddles him, but has his own horse shot
+down under him.  Biraghi disentangles himself, kills his antagonist, and
+jumps upon the latter's horse.  This, however, is thrown down also in a
+moment by a cannon ball, so that the gallant captain has to go back on
+foot, bleeding, and almost unable to walk.  Talking of heroism, of
+inimitable endurance, and strength of soul, what do you think of a man
+who has his arm entirely carried away by a grenade, and yet keeps on his
+horse, firm as a rock, and still directs his battery until hemorrhage--
+and hemorrhage alone--strikes him down at last, dead!  Such was the case
+with a Neapolitan--Major Abate, of the artillery--and his name is worth
+the glory of a whole army, of a whole war; and may only find a fit
+companion in that of an officer of the eighteenth battalion of
+bersaglieri, who, dashing at an Austrian flag-bearer, wrenches the
+standard out of his hands with his left one, has it clean cut away by an
+Austrian officer standing near, and immediately grapples it with his
+right, until his own soldiers carry him away with his trophy!  Does not
+this sound like Greek history repeated--does it not look as if the brave
+men of old had been born again, and the old facts renewed to tell of
+Italian heroism?  Another bersagliere--a Tuscan, by name Orlandi Matteo,
+belonging to that heroic fifth battalion which fought against entire
+brigades, regiments, and battalions, losing 11 out of its 16 officers,
+and about 300 out of its 600 men--Orlandi, was wounded already, when,
+perceiving an Austrian flag, he makes a great effort, dashes at the
+officer, kills him, takes the flag, and, almost dying, gives it over to
+his lieutenant.  He is now in a ward of the San Domenico Hospital in
+Brescia, and all who have learnt of his bravery will earnestly hope that
+he may survive to be pointed out as one of the many who covered
+themselves with fame on that day.  If it is sad to read of death
+encountered in the field by so many a patriotic and brave soldiers, it is
+sadder still to learn that not a few of them were barbarously killed by
+the enemy, and killed, too, when they were harmless, for they lay wounded
+on the ground.  The Sicilian colonel, Stalella, a son-in-law of Senator
+Castagnetto, and a courageous man amongst the most courageous of men;
+was struck in the leg by a bullet, and thrown down from his horse while
+exciting his men to repulse the Austrians, which in great masses were
+pressing on his thinned column.  Although retreating, the regiment sent
+some of his men to take him away, but as soon as he had been put on a
+stretcher [he] had to be put down, as ten or twelve uhlans were galloping
+down, obliging the men to hide themselves in a bush.  When the uhlans got
+near the colonel, and when they had seen him lying down in agony, they
+all planted their lances in his body.
+
+Is not this wanton cruelty--cruelty even unheard of cruelty that no
+savage possesses?  Still these are facts, and no one will ever dare to
+deny them from Verona and Vienna, for they are known as much as it was
+known and seen that the uhlans and many of the Austrian soldiers were
+drunk when they began fighting, and that alighting from the trains they
+were provided with their rations and with rum, and that they fought
+without their haversacks.  This is the truth, and nothing beyond it has
+to the honour of the Italians been asserted, whether to the disgrace or
+credit of their enemies; so that while denying that they ill-treat
+Austrian prisoners, they are ready to state that theirs are well treated
+in Verona, without thinking of slandering and calumniating as the Vienna
+papers have done.
+
+This morning Prince Amadeus arrived in Cremona, where a most spontaneous
+and hearty reception was given him by the population and the National
+Guard.  He proceeded at once by the shortest way to the headquarters, so
+that his wish to be again at the front when something should be done has
+been accomplished.  This brave young man, and his worthy brother, Prince
+Humbert, have won the applause of all Italy, which is justly proud of
+counting her king and her princes amongst the foremost in the field.
+
+I have just learned from a most reliable source that the Austrians have
+mined the bridge of Borghetto on the Mincio, so that, should it be blown
+up, the only two, those of Goito and Borghetto, would be destroyed, and
+the Italians obliged to make provisional ones instead.  I also hear that
+the Venetian towns are without any garrison, and that most probably all
+the forces are massed on two lines, one from Peschiera to Custozza and
+the other behind the Adige.
+
+You will probably know by this time that the garrison of Vienna had on
+the 3rd been directed to Prague.  The news we receive from Prussia is on
+the whole encouraging, inasmuch as the greatly feared armistice has been
+repulsed by King William.  Some people here think that France will not be
+too hard upon Italy for keeping her word with her ally, and that the
+brunt of French anger or disapproval will have to be borne by Prussia.
+This is the least she can expect, as you know!
+
+It is probable that by to-morrow I shall be able to write you more about
+the Italo-Austrian war of 1866.
+
+
+
+GONZAGA, July 9, 1866.
+
+I write you from a villa, only a mile distant from Gonzaga, belonging to
+the family of the Counts Arrivabene of Mantua.  The owners have never
+reentered it since 1848, and it is only the fortune of war which has
+brought them to see their beautiful seat of the Aldegatta, never, it is
+to be hoped for them, to be abandoned again.  It is, as you see, 'Mutatum
+ab illo.' Onward have gone, then, the exiled patriots!  onward will go
+the nation that owns them!  The wish of every one who is compelled to
+remain behind is that the army, that the volunteers, that the fleet,
+should all cooperate, and that they should, one and all, land on Venetian
+ground, to seek for a great battle, to give the army back the fame it
+deserves, and to the country the honour it possesses.  The king is called
+upon to maintain the word nobly given to avenge Novara, and with it the
+new Austrian insulting proposal.  All, it is said, is ready.  The army
+has been said to be numerous; if to be numerous and brave, means to
+deserve victory, let the Italian generals prove what Italian soldiers are
+worthy of.  If they will fight, the country will support them with the
+boldest of resolutions--the country will accept a discussion whenever the
+Government, having dispersed all fears, will proclaim that the war is to
+be continued till victory is inscribed on Italy's shield.
+
+As I am not far from Borgoforte, I am able to learn more than the mere
+cannon's voice can tell me, and so will give you some details of the
+action against the tete-de-pont, which began, as I told you in one of my
+former letters, on the 4th.  In Gorgoforte there were about 1500
+Austrians, and, on the night from the 5th to the 6th, they kept up from
+their four fortified works a sufficiently well-sustained fire, the object
+of which was to prevent the enemy from posting his guns.  This fire,
+however, did not cause any damage, and the Italians were able to plant
+their batteries.  Early on the 6th, the firing began all along the line,
+the Italian 16-pounders having been the first to open fire.  The Italian
+right was commanded by Colonel Mattei, the left by Colonel Bangoni, who
+did excellent work, while the other wing was not so successful.  The
+heaviest guns had not yet arrived owing to one of those incidents always
+sure to happen when least expected, so that the 40-pounders could not be
+brought to bear against the forts until later in the day.  The damage
+done to the works was not great for the moment, but still the advantage
+had been gained of feeling the strength of the enemy's positions and
+finding the right way to attack them.  The artillerymen worked with great
+vigour, and were only obliged to desist by an unexpected order which
+arrived about two p.m.  from General Cialdini.  The attack was, however,
+resumed on the following day, and the condition of the Monteggiana and
+Rochetta forts may be pronounced precarious.  As a sign of the times,
+and more especially of the just impatience which prevails in Italy about
+the general direction of the army movements, it may not be without
+importance to notice that the Italian press has begun to cry out against
+the darkness in which everything is enveloped, while the time already
+passed since the 24th June tells plainly of inaction.  It is remarked
+that the bitter gift made by Austria of the Venetian provinces, and the
+suspicious offer of mediation by France, ought to have found Italy in
+greatly different condition, both as regards her political and military
+position.  Italy is, on the contrary, in exactly the same state as when
+the Archduke Albert telegraphed to Vienna that a great success had been
+obtained over the Italian army.  These are facts, and, however strong and
+worthy of respect may be the reasons, there is no doubt that an
+extraordinary delay in the resumption of hostilities has occurred, and
+that at the present moment operations projected are perfectly mysterious.
+Something is let out from time to time which only serves to make the
+subsequent absence of news more and more puzzling.  For the present the
+first official relation of the unhappy fight of the 24th June is
+published, and is accordingly anxiously scanned and closely studied.
+It is a matter of general remark that no great military knowledge is
+required to perceive that too great a reliance was placed upon supposed
+facts, and that the indulgence of speculations and ideas caused the waste
+of so much precious blood.  The prudence characterising the subsequent
+moves of the Austrians may have been caused by the effects of their
+opponents' arrangements, but the Italian commanders ought to have avoided
+the responsibility of giving the enemy the option to move.
+
+It is clear that to mend things the utterance of generous and patriotic
+cries is not sufficient, and that it must be shown that the vigour of the
+body is not at all surpassed by the vigour of the mind.  It is also clear
+that many lives might have been spared if there had been greater proofs
+of intelligence on the part of those who directed the movement.
+
+The situation is still very serious.  Such an armistice as General von
+Gablenz could humiliate himself enough to ask from the Prussians has been
+refused, but another which the Emperor of the French has advised them to
+accept might ultimately become a fact.  For Italy, the purely Venetian
+question could then also be settled, while the Italian, the national
+question, the question of right and honour which the army prizes so much,
+would still remain to be solved.
+
+
+
+GONZAGA, July 12, 1866.
+
+Travelling is generally said to be troublesome, but travelling with and
+through brigades, divisions, and army corps, I can certify to be more so
+than is usually agreeable.  It is not that Italian officers or Italian
+soldiers are in any way disposed to throw obstacles in your way; but
+they, unhappily for you, have with them the inevitable cars with the
+inevitable carmen, both of which are enough to make your blood freeze,
+though the barometer stands very high.  What with their indolence, what
+with their number and the dust they made, I really thought they would
+drive me mad before I should reach Casalmaggiore on my way from Torre
+Malamberti.  I started from the former place at three a.m., with
+beautiful weather, which, true to tradition, accompanied me all through
+my journey.  Passing through San Giovanni in Croce, to which the
+headquarters of General Pianell had been transferred, I turned to the
+right in the direction of the Po, and began to have an idea of the
+wearisome sort of journey which I would have to make up to Casalmaggiore.
+On both sides of the way some regiments belonging to the rear division
+were still camped, and as I passed it was most interesting to see how
+busy they were cooking their 'rancio,' polishing their arms, and making
+the best of their time.  The officers stood leisurely about gazing and
+staring at me, supposing, as I thought, that I was travelling with some
+part in the destiny of their country.  Here and there some soldiers who
+had just left the hospitals of Brescia and Milan made their way to their
+corps and shook hands with their comrades, from whom only illness or the
+fortune of war had made them part.  They seemed glad to see their old
+tent, their old drum, their old colour-sergeant, and also the flag they
+had carried to the battle and had not at any price allowed to be taken.
+I may state here, en passant, that as many as six flags were taken from
+the enemy in the first part of the day of Custozza, and were subsequently
+abandoned in the retreat, while of the Italians only one was lost to a
+regiment for a few minutes, when it was quickly retaken.  This fact ought
+to be sufficient by itself to establish the bravery with which the
+soldiers fought on the 24th, and the bravery with which they will fight
+if, as they ardently wish; a new occasion is given to them.
+
+As long as I had only met troops, either marching or camping on the road,
+all went well, but I soon found myself mixed with an interminable line of
+cars and the like, forming the military and the civil train of the moving
+army.  Then it was that it needed as much patience to keep from jumping
+out of one's carriage and from chastising the carrettieri, as they would
+persist in not making room for one, and being as dumb to one's entreaties
+as a stone.  When you had finished with one you had to deal with another,
+and you find them all as obstinate and as egotistical as they are from
+one end of the world to the other, whether it be on the Casalmaggiore
+road or in High Holborn.  From time to time things seemed to proceed all
+right, and you thought yourself free from further trouble, but you soon
+found out your mistake, as an enormous ammunition car went smack into
+your path, as one wheel got entangled with another, and as imperturbable
+Signor Carrettiere evidently took delight at a fresh opportunity for
+stoppage, inaction, indolence, and sleep.  I soon came to the conclusion
+that Italy would not be free when the Austrians had been driven away, for
+that another and a more formidable foe--an enemy to society and comfort,
+to men and horses, to mankind in general would have still to be beaten,
+expelled, annihilated, in the shape of the carrettiere.  If you employ
+him, he robs you fifty times over; if you want him to drive quickly, he
+is sure to keep the animal from going at all; if, worse than all, you
+never think of him, or have just been plundered by him, he will not move
+an inch to oblige you.  Surely the cholera is not the only pestilence a
+country may be visited with; and, should Cialdini ever go to Vienna, he
+might revenge Novara and the Spielberg by taking with him the carrettieri
+of the whole army.
+
+At last Casalmaggiore hove in sight, and, when good fortune and the
+carmen permitted, I reached it.  It was time!  No iron-plated Jacob could
+ever have resisted another two miles' journey in such company.  At
+Casalmaggiore I branched off.  There were, happily, two roads, and not
+the slightest reason or smallest argument were needed to make me choose
+that which my cauchemar had not chosen.  They were passing the river at
+Casalmaggiore.  I went, of course, for the same purpose, somewhere else.
+Any place was good enough--so I thought, at least, then.  New adventures,
+new miseries awaited me--some carrettiere, or other, guessing that I was
+no friend of his, nor of the whole set of them, had thrown the jattatura
+on me.
+
+I alighted at the Colombina, after four hours' ride, to give the horses
+time to rest a little.  The Albergo della Colombina was a great
+disappointment, for there was nothing there that could be eaten.
+I decided upon waiting most patiently, but most unlike a few cavalry
+officers, who, all covered with dust, and evidently as hungry and as
+thirsty as they could be, began to swear to their hearts' content.  In an
+hour some eggs and some salame, a kind of sausage, were brought up, and
+quickly disposed of.  A young lieutenant of the thirtieth infantry
+regiment of the Pisa brigade took his place opposite, and we were soon
+engaged in conversation.  He had been in the midst and worst part of the
+battle of Custozza, and had escaped being taken prisoner by what seemed a
+miracle.  He told me how, when his regiment advanced on the Monte Croce
+position, which he practically described to me as having the form of an
+English pudding, they were fired upon by batteries both on their flanks
+and front.  The lieutenant added, however, rather contemptuously, that
+they did not even bow before them, as the custom appears to be--that is,
+to lie down, as the Austrians were firing very badly.  The cross-fire
+got, however, so tremendous that an order had to be given to keep down by
+the road to avoid being annihilated.  The assault was given, the whole
+range of positions was taken, and kept too for hours, until the
+infallible rule of three to one, backed by batteries, grape, and
+canister, compelled them to retreat, which they did slowly and in order.
+It was then that their brigade commander, Major General Rey de Villarey,
+who, though a native of Mentone, had preferred remaining with his king
+from going over to the French after the cession, turning to his son, who
+was also his aide-de-camp, said in his dialect, 'Now, my son, we must die
+both of us,' and with a touch of the spurs was soon in front of the line
+and on the hill, where three bullets struck him almost at once dead.
+The horse of his son falling while following, his life was spared.
+My lieutenant at this moment was so overcome with hunger and fatigue that
+he fell down, and was thought to be dead.  He was not so, however, and
+had enough life to hear, after the fight was over, the Austrian Jagers
+pass by, and again retire to their original positions, where their
+infantry was lying down, not dreaming for one moment of pursuing the
+Italians.  Four of his soldiers--all Neapolitans he heard coming in
+search of him, while the bullets still hissed all round; and, as soon as
+he made a sign to them, they approached, and took him on their shoulders
+back to where was what remained of the regiment.  It is highly creditable
+to Italian unity to hear an old Piedmontese officer praise the levies of
+the new provinces, and the lieutenant took delight in relating that
+another Neapolitan was in the fight standing by him, and firing as fast
+as he could, when a shell having burst near him, he disdainfully gave it
+a look, and did not even seek to save himself from the jattatura.
+
+The gallant lieutenant had unfortunately to leave at last, and I was
+deprived of many an interesting tale and of a brave man's company.  I
+started, therefore, for Viadana, where I purposed passing the Po, the
+left bank of which the road was now following parallel with the stream.
+At Viadana, however, I found no bridge, as the military had demolished
+what existed only the day before, and so had to look out for in
+formation.  As I was going about under the porticoes which one meets in
+almost all the villages in this neighbourhood, I was struck by the sight
+of an ancient and beautiful piece of art--for so it was--a Venetian
+mirror of Murano.  It hung on the wall inside the village draper's shop,
+and was readily shown me by the owner, who did not conceal the pride he
+had in possessing it.  It was one of those mirrors one rarely meets with
+now, which were once so abundant in the old princes' castles and palaces.
+It looked so deep and true, and the gilt frame was so light, and of such
+a purity and elegance, that it needed all my resolution to keep from
+buying it, though a bargain would not have been effected very easily.
+The mirror, however, had to be abandoned, as Dosalo, the nearest point
+for crossing the Po, was still seven miles distant.  By this time the sun
+was out in all its force, and the heat was by no means agreeable.  Then
+there was dust, too, as if the carrettieri had been passing in hundreds,
+so that the heat was almost unbearable.  At last the Dosalo ferry was
+reached, the road leading to it was entered, and the carriage was, I
+thought, to be at once embarked, when a drove of oxen were discovered to
+have the precedence; and so I had to wait.  This under such a sun, on a
+shadeless beach, and with the prospect of having to stay there for two
+hours at least, was by no means pleasant.  It took three-quarters of an
+hour to put the oxen in the boat, it took half an hour to get them on the
+other shore, and another hour to have the ferry boat back.  The panorama
+from the beach was splendid, the Po appeared in all the mighty power of
+his waters, and as you looked with the glass at oxen and trees on the
+other shore, they appeared to be clothed in all the colours of the
+rainbow, and as if belonging to another world.  Several peasants were
+waiting for the boat near me, talking about the war and the Austrians,
+and swearing they would, if possible, annihilate some of the latter.  I
+gave them the glass to look with, and I imagined that they had never seen
+one before, for they thought it highly wonderful to make out what the
+time was at the Luzzara Tower, three miles in a straight line on the
+other side.  The revolver, too, was a subject of great admiration, and
+they kept turning, feeling, and staring at it, as if they could not make
+out which way the cartridges were put in.  One of these peasants,
+however, was doing the grand with the others, and once on the subject of
+history related to all who would hear how he had been to St. Helena,
+which was right in the middle of Moscow, where it was so very cold that
+his nose had got to be as large as his head.  The poor man was evidently
+mixing one night's tale with that of the next one, a tale probably heard
+from the old Sindaco, who is at the same time the schoolmaster, the
+notary, and the highest municipal authority in the place.
+
+I started in the ferry boat with them at last.  While crossing they got
+to speak of the priests, and were all agreed, to put it in the mildest
+way, in thinking extremely little of them, and only differed as to what
+punishment they should like them to suffer.
+
+On the side where we landed lay heaps of ammunition casks for the corps
+besieging Borgoforte.  Others were conveyed upon cars by my friends the
+carrettieri, of whom it was decreed I should not be quit for some time to
+come.  Entering Guastalla I found only a few artillery officers,
+evidently in charge of what we had seen carried along the route.
+Guastalla is a neat little town very proud of its statue of Duke Ferrante
+Gonzaga, and the Croce Rossa is a neat little inn, which may be proud of
+a smart young waiter, who actually discovered that, as I wanted to
+proceed to Luzzara, a few miles on, I had better stop till next morning,
+I did not take his advice, and was soon under the gate of Luzzara, a very
+neat little place, once one of the many possessions where the Gonzagas
+had a court, a palace, and a castle.  The arms over the archway may still
+be seen, and would not be worth any notice but for a remarkable work of
+terracotta representing a crown of pines and pine leaves in a wonderful
+state of preservation.  The whole is so artistically arranged and so
+natural, that one might believe it to be one of Luca della Robbia's
+works.  Luzzara has also a great tower, which I had seen in the distance
+from Dosalo, and the only albergo in the place gives you an excellent
+Italian dinner.  The wine might please one of the greatest admirers of
+sherry, and if you are not given feather beds, the beds are at least
+clean like the rooms themselves.  Here, as it was getting too dark, I
+decided upon stopping, a decision which gave me occasion to see one of
+the finest sunsets I ever saw.  As I looked from the albergo I could see
+a gradation of colours, from the purple red to the deepest of sea blue,
+rising like an immense tent from the dark green of the trees and the
+fields, here and there dotted with little white houses, with their red
+roofs, while in front the Luzzara Tower rose majestically in the
+twilight.  As the hour got later the colours deepened, and the lower end
+of the immense curtain gradually disappeared, while the stars and the
+planets began shining high above.  A peasant was singing in a field near
+by, and the bells of a church were chiming in the distance.  Both seemed
+to harmonise wonderfully.  It was a scene of great loveliness.
+
+At four a.m.  I was up, and soon after on the road to Reggiolo, and then
+to Gonzaga.  Here the vegetation gets to be more luxuriant, and every
+inch of ground contributes to the immense vastness of the whole.  Nature
+is here in full perfection, and as even the telegraphic wire hangs
+leisurely down from tree to tree, instead of being stuck upon poles, you
+feel that the romantic aspect of the place is too beautiful to be
+encroached upon.  All is peace, beauty, and happiness, all reveals to you
+that you are in Italy.
+
+In Gonzaga, which only a few days ago belonged to the Austrians, the
+Italian tricolour is out of every window.  As the former masters retired
+the new advanced; and when a detachment of Monferrato lancers entered the
+old castle town the joy of the inhabitants seemed to be almost bordering
+on delirium.  The lancers soon left, however.  The flag only remains.
+
+
+
+July 11.
+
+Cialdini began passing the Po on the 8th, and crossed at three points,
+i.e., Carbonara, Carbonarola, and Follonica.  Beginning at three o'clock
+in the morning, he had finished crossing upon the two first pontoon
+bridges towards midnight on the 9th.  The bridge thrown up at Follonica
+was still intact up to seven in the morning on the 10th, but the troops
+and the military and the civil train that remained followed the Po
+without crossing to Stellata, in the supposed direction of Ponte
+Lagoscura.
+
+Yesterday guns were heard here at seven o'clock in the morning, and up to
+eleven o'clock, in the direction of Legnano, towards, I think, the Adige.
+The firing was lively, and of such a nature as to make one surmise that
+battle had been given.  Perhaps the Austrians have awaited Cialdini under
+Legnano, or they have disputed the crossing of the Adige.  Rovigo was
+abandoned by the Austrians in the night of the 9th and 10th.  They have
+blown up the Rovigo and Boara fortresses, have destroyed the tete-de-pont
+on the Adige, and burnt all bridges.  They may now seek to keep by the
+left side of this river up to Legnano, so as to get under the protection
+of the quadrilateral, in which case, if Cialdini can cross the river in
+time, the shock would be almost inevitable, and would be a reason for
+yesterday's firing.  They may also go by rail to Padua, when they would
+have Cialdini between them and the quadrilateral.  In any case, if this
+general is quick, or if they are not too quick for him, according to
+possible instructions, a collision is difficult to be avoided.
+
+Baron Ricasoli has left Florence for the camp, and all sorts of rumours
+are afloat as to the present state of negotiations as they appear
+unmistakably to exist.  The opinions are, I think, divided in the high
+councils of the Crown, and the country is still anxious to know the
+result of this state of affairs.  A splendid victory by Cialdini might at
+this moment solve many a difficulty.  As it is, the war is prosecuted
+everywhere except by sea, for Garibaldi's forces are slowly advancing in
+the Italian Tyrol, while the Austrians wait for them behind the walls of
+Landaro and Ampola.  The Garibaldians' advanced posts were, by the latest
+news, near Darso.
+
+The news from Prussia is still contradictory; while the Italian press is
+unanimous in asking with the country that Cialdini should advance, meet
+the enemy, fight him, and rout him if possible.  Italy's wishes are
+entirely with him.
+
+
+
+NOALE, NEAR TREVISO, July 17, 1866.
+
+From Lusia I followed General Medici's division to Motta, where I left
+it, not without regret, however, as better companions could not easily
+be found, so kind were the officers and jovial the men.  They are now
+encamped around Padua, and will to-morrow march on Treviso, where the
+Italian Light Horse have already arrived, if I judge so from their having
+left Noale on the 15th.  From the right I hear that the advanced posts
+have proceeded as far as Mira on the Brenta, twenty kilometres from
+Venice itself, and that the first army corps is to concentrate opposite
+Chioggia.  This corps has marched from Ferrara straight on to Rovigo,
+which the forward movement of the fourth, or Cialdini's corps d'armee,
+had left empty of soldiers.  General Pianell has still charge of it, and
+Major-General Cadalini, formerly at the head of the Siena brigade,
+replaces him in the command of his former division.  General Pianell has
+under him the gallant Prince Amadeus, who has entirely recovered from his
+chest wound, and of whom the brigade of Lombardian grenadiers is as proud
+as ever.  They could not wish for a more skilled commander, a better
+superior officer, and a more valiant soldier.  Thus the troops who fought
+on the 24th June are kept in the second line, while the still fresh
+divisions under Cialdini march first, as fast as they can.  This,
+however, is of no avail.  The Italian outposts on the Piave have not yet
+crossed it, for the reason that they must keep distances with their
+regiments, but will do so as soon as these get nearer to the river.  If
+it was not that this is always done in regular warfare, they could beat
+the country beyond the Piave for a good many miles without even seeing
+the shadow of an Austrian.  To the simple private, who does not know of
+diplomatic imbroglios and of political considerations, this sudden
+retreat means an almost as sudden retracing of steps, because he
+remembers that this manoeuvre preceded both the attacks on Solferino and
+on Custozza by the Austrians.  To the officer, however, it means nothing
+else than a fixed desire not to face the Italian army any more, and so it
+is to him a source of disappointment and despondency.  He cannot bear to
+think that another battle is improbable, and may be excused if he is not
+in the best of humour when on this subject.  This is the case not only
+with the officers but with the volunteers, who have left their homes and
+the comfort of their domestic life, not to be paraded at reviews, but to
+be sent against the enemy.  There are hundreds of these in the regular
+army-in the cavalry especially, and the Aosta Lancers and the regiment of
+Guides are half composed of them.  If you listen to them, there ought not
+to be the slightest doubt or hesitation as to crossing the Isongo and
+marching upon Vienna.  May Heaven see their wishes accomplished, for,
+unless crushed by sheer force, Italy is quite decided to carry war into
+the enemy's country.
+
+The decisions of the French government are looked for here with great
+anxiety, and not a few men are found who predict them to be unfavourable
+to Italy.  Still, it is hard for every one to believe that the French
+emperor will carry things to extremities, and increase the many
+difficulties Europe has already to contend with.
+
+To-day there was a rumour at the mess table that the Austrians had
+abandoned Legnano, one of the four fortresses of the quadrilateral.  I do
+not put much faith in it at present, but it is not improbable, as we may
+expect many strange things from the Vienna government.  It would have
+been much better for them, since Archduke Albert spoke in eulogistic
+terms of the king, of his sons, and of his soldiers, while relating the
+action of the 24th, to have treated with Italy direct, thus securing
+peace, and perhaps friendship, from her.  But the men who have ruled so
+despotically for years over Italian subjects cannot reconcile themselves
+to the idea that Italy has at last risen to be a nation, and they even
+take slyly an opportunity to throw new insult into her face.  You can
+easily see that the old spirit is still struggling for empire; that the
+old contempt is still trying to make light of Italians; and that the old
+Metternich ideas are still fondly clung to.  Does not this deserve
+another lesson?  Does not this need another Sadowa to quiet down for
+ever?  Yes; and it devolves upon Italy to do it.  If so, let only
+Cialdini's army alone, and the day may be nigh at hand when the king may
+tell the country that the task has been accomplished.
+
+A talk on the present state of political affairs, and on the peculiar
+position of Italy, is the only subject worth notice in a letter from the
+camp.  Everything else is at a standstill, and the movements of the fine
+army Cialdini now disposes of, about 150,000 men, are no longer full of
+interest.  They may, perhaps, have some as regards an attack on Venice,
+because Austrian soldiers are still garrisoning it, and will be obliged
+to fight if they are assailed.  It is hoped, if such is the case, that
+the beautiful queen of the Adriatic will be spared a scene of
+devastation, and that no new Haynau will be found to renew the deeds of
+Brescia and Vicenza.
+
+The king has not yet arrived, and it seems probable he will not come for
+some time, until indeed the day comes for Italian troops to make their
+triumphal entry into the city of the Doges.
+
+The heat continues intense, and this explains the slowness in advancing.
+As yet no sickness has appeared, and it must be hoped that the troops
+will be healthy, as sickness tries the morale much more than half-a-dozen
+Custozzas.
+
+P.S.--I had finished writing when an officer came rushing into the inn
+where I am staying and told me that he had just heard that an Italian
+patrol had met an Austrian one on the road out of the village, and routed
+it.  This may or may not be true, but it was must curious to see how
+delighted every one was at the idea that they had found 'them' at last.
+They did not care much about the result of the engagement, which, as I
+said, was reported to have been favourable.  All that they cared about
+was that they were close to the enemy.  One cannot despair of an army
+which is animated with such spirits.  You would think, from the joy which
+brightens the face of the soldiers you meet now about, that a victory had
+been announced for the Italian arms.
+
+
+
+DOLO, NEAR VENICE, July 20, 1866.
+
+I returned from Noale to Padua last evening, and late in the night I
+received the intimation at my quarters that cannon was heard in the
+direction of Venice.  It was then black as in Dante's hell, and raining
+and blowing with violence--one of those Italian storms which seem to
+awake all the earthly and heavenly elements of creation.  There was no
+choice for it but to take to the saddle, and try to make for the front.
+No one who has not tried it can fancy what work it is to find one's way
+along a road on which a whole corps d'amee is marching with an enormous
+materiel of war in a pitch dark night.  This, however, is what your
+special correspondent was obliged to do.  Fortunately enough, I had
+scarcely proceeded as far as Ponte di Brenta when I fell in with an
+officer of Cialdini's staff, who was bound to the same destination,
+namely, Dolo.  As we proceeded along the road under a continuous shower
+of rain, our eyes now and then dazzled by the bright serpent-like flashes
+of the lightning, we fell in with some battalion or squadron, which
+advanced carefully, as it was impossible for them as well as for us to
+discriminate between the road and the ditches which flank it, for all the
+landmarks, so familiar to our guides in the daytime, were in one dead
+level of blackness.  So it was that my companion and myself, after
+stumbling into ditches and out of them, after knocking our horses' heads
+against an ammunition car, or a party of soldiers sheltered under some
+big tree, found ourselves, after three hours' ride, in this village of
+Dolo.  By this time the storm had greatly abated in its violence, and the
+thunder was but faintly heard now and then at such a distance as to
+enable us distinctly to hear the roar of the guns.  Our horses could
+scarcely get through the sticky black mud, into which the white
+suffocating dust of the previous days had been turned by one night's
+rain.  We, however, made our way to the parsonage of the village, for we
+had already made up our minds to ascend the steeple of the church to get
+a view of the surrounding country and a better hearing of the guns if
+possible.  After a few words exchanged with the sexton--a staunch
+Italian, as he told us he was--we went up the ladder of the church spire.
+Once on the wooden platform, we could hear more distinctly the boom of
+the guns, which sounded like the broadsides of a big vessel.  Were they
+the guns of Persano's long inactive fleet attacking some of Brondolo's or
+Chioggia's advanced forts?  Were the guns those of some Austrian man-of-
+war which had engaged an Italian ironclad; or were they the
+'Affondatore,' which left the Thames only a month ago, pitching into
+Trieste?  To tell the truth, although we patiently waited two long hours
+on Dolo church spire, when both I and my companion descended we were not
+in a position to solve either of these problems.  We, however, thought
+then, and still think, they were the guns of the Italian fleet which had
+attacked an Austrian fort.
+
+
+
+CIVITA VECCHIA, July 22, 1866.
+
+Since the departure from this port of the old hospital ship 'Gregeois'
+about a year ago, no French ship of war had been stationed at Civita
+Vecchia; but on Wednesday morning the steam-sloop 'Catinat,' 180 men,
+cast anchor in the harbour, and the commandant immediately on
+disembarking took the train for Rome and placed himself in communication
+with the French ambassador.  I am not aware whether the Pontifical
+government had applied for this vessel, or whether the sending it was a
+spontaneous attention on the part of the French emperor, but, at any
+rate, its arrival has proved a source of pleasure to His Holiness, as
+there is no knowing what may happen In troublous times like the present,
+and it is always good to have a retreat insured.
+
+Yesterday it was notified in this port, as well as at Naples, that
+arrivals from Marseilles would be, until further notice, subjected to a
+quarantine of fifteen days in consequence of cholera having made its
+appearance at the latter place.  A sailing vessel which arrived from
+Marseilles in the course of the day had to disembark the merchandise it
+brought for Civita Vecchia into barges off the lazaretto, where the
+yellow flag was hoisted over them.  This vessel left Marseilles five days
+before the announcement of the quarantine, while the 'Prince Napoleon' of
+Valery's Company, passenger and merchandise steamer, which left
+Marseilles only one day before its announcement, was admitted this
+morning to free pratique.  Few travellers will come here by sea now.
+
+
+
+MARSEILLES, July 24.
+
+Accustomed as we have been of late in Italy to almost hourly bulletins of
+the progress of hostilities, it is a trying condition to be suddenly
+debarred of all intelligence by finding oneself on board a steamer for
+thirty-six hours without touching at any port, as was my case in coming
+here from Civita Vecchia on board the 'Prince Napoleon.' But, although
+telegrams were wanting, discussions on the course of events were rife on
+board among the passengers who had embarked at Naples and Civita Vecchia,
+comprising a strong batch of French and Belgian priests returning from a
+pilgrimage to Rome, well supplied with rosaries and chaplets blessed by
+the Pope and facsimiles of the chains of St. Peter.  Not much sympathy
+for the Italian cause was shown by these gentlemen or the few French and
+German travellers who, with three or four Neapolitans, formed the
+quarterdeck society; and our Corsican captain took no pains to hide his
+contempt at the dilatory proceedings of the Italian fleet at Ancona.  We
+know that the Prussian minister, M. d'Usedom, has been recently making
+strenuous remonstrances at Ferrara against the slowness with which the
+Italian naval and military forces were proceeding, while their allies,
+the Prussians, were already near the gates of Vienna; and the
+conversation of a Prussian gentleman on board our steamer, who was
+connected with that embassy, plainly indicated the disappointment felt
+at Berlin at the rather inefficacious nature of the diversion made in
+Venetia, and on the coast of Istria by the army and navy of Victor
+Emmanuel.  He even attributed to his minister an expression not very
+flattering either to the future prospects of Italy as resulting from her
+alliance with Prussia, or to the fidelity of the latter in carrying out
+the terms of it.  I do not know whether this gentleman intended his
+anecdote to be taken cum grano salis, but I certainly understood him to
+say that he had deplored to the minister the want of vigour and the
+absence of success accompanying the operations of the Italian allies of
+Prussia, when His Excellency replied: 'C'est bien vrai.  Ils nous ont
+tromps; mais que voulez-vous y faire maintenant?  Nous aurons le temps de
+les faire egorger apres.'
+
+It is difficult to suppose that there should exist a preconceived
+intention on the part of Prussia to repay the sacrifices hitherto made,
+although without a very brilliant accompaniment of success, by the
+Italian government in support of the alliance, by making her own separate
+terms with Austria and leaving Italy subsequently exposed to the
+vengeance of the latter, but such would certainly be the inference to be
+drawn from the conversation just quoted.
+
+It was only on arriving in the port of Marseilles, however, that the full
+enmity of most of my travelling companions towards Italy and the Italians
+was manifested.  A sailor, the first man who came on board before we
+disembarked, was immediately pounced upon for news, and he gave it as
+indeed nothing less than the destruction, more or less complete, of the
+Italian fleet by that of the Austrians.  At this astounding intelligence
+the Prussian burst into a yell of indignation.  'Fools!  blockheads!
+miserables!  Beaten at sea by an inferior force!  Is that the way they
+mean to reconquer Venice by dint of arms?  If ever they do regain Venetia
+it will be through the blood of our Brandenburghers and Pomeranians, and
+not their own.'  During this tirade a little old Belgian in black, with
+the chain of St. Peter at his buttonhole by way of watchguard, capered
+off to communicate the grateful news to a group of his ecclesiastical
+fellow-travellers, shrieking out in ecstasy:
+
+'Rosses, Messieurs!  Ces blagueurs d'Italiens ont ete rosses par mer,
+comme ils avaient ete rosses par terre.'  Whereupon the reverend
+gentlemen congratulated each other with nods, and winks, and smiles,
+and sundry fervent squeezes of the hand.  The same demonstrations would
+doubtless have been made by the Neapolitan passengers had they belonged
+to the Bourbonic faction, but they happened to be honest traders with
+cases of coral and lava for the Paris market, and therefore they merely
+stood silent and aghast at the fatal news, with their eyes and mouths as
+wide open as possible.  I had no sooner got to my hotel than I inquired
+for the latest Paris journal, when the France was handed me, and I
+obtained confirmation in a certain degree of the disaster to the Italian
+fleet narrated by the sailor, although not quite in the same formidable
+proportions.
+
+Before quitting the subject of my fellow-passengers on board the 'Prince
+Napoleon' I must mention an anecdote related to me, respecting the state
+of brigandage, by a Russian or German gentleman, who told me he was
+established at Naples.  He was complaining of the dangers he had
+occasionally encountered in crossing in a diligence from Naples to Foggia
+on business; and then, speaking of the audacity of brigands in general,
+he told me that last year he saw with his own eyes; in broad daylight,
+two brigands walking about the streets of Naples with messages from
+captured individuals to their relations, mentioning the sums which had
+been demanded for their ransoms.  They were unarmed, and in the common
+peasants' dresses, and whenever they arrived at one of the houses to
+which they were addressed for this purpose, they stopped and opened a
+handkerchief which one of them carried in his hand, and took out an ear,
+examining whether the ticket on it corresponded with the address of the
+house or the name of the resident.  There were six ears, all ticketed
+with the names of the original owners in the handkerchief, which were
+gradually dispensed to their families in Naples to stimulate: prompt
+payment of the required ransoms.  On my inquiring how it was that the
+police took no notice of such barefaced operations, my informant told me
+that, previous to the arrival of these brigand emissaries in town, the
+chief always wrote to the police authorities warning them against
+interfering with them, as the messengers were always followed by spies
+in plain clothes belonging to the band who would immediately report any
+molestation they might encounter in the discharge of their delicate
+mission, and the infallible result of such molestation would be first
+the putting to death of all the hostages held for ransom; and next,
+the summary execution of several members of gendarmery and police force
+captured in various skirmishes by the brigands, and held as prisoners of
+war.
+
+Such audacity would seem incredible if we had not heard and read of so
+many similar instances of late.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A very doubtful benefit
+Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning
+As becomes them, they do not look ahead
+Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists
+Fourth of the Georges
+Here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate
+Holy images, and other miraculous objects are sold
+It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us
+Men overweeningly in love with their creations
+Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike
+Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer
+Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied
+Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction
+The social world he looked at did not show him heroes
+The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity
+Utterance of generous and patriotic cries is not sufficient
+We trust them or we crush them
+We grew accustomed to periods of Irish fever
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Miscellaneous Prose
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE PG SHORT WORKS OF MEREDITH:
+
+A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it
+A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans
+A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side
+A very doubtful benefit
+A great oration may be a sedative
+A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle
+Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below
+Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
+All are friends who sit at table
+All flattery is at somebody's expense
+Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning
+As becomes them, they do not look ahead
+As in all great oratory!  The key of it is the pathos
+Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
+Be what you seem, my little one
+Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues
+Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence
+But I leave it to you
+Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted
+Causes him to be popularly weighed
+Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists
+Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine
+Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite
+Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass
+Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
+Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war
+Eccentric behaviour in trifles
+Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach
+Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality
+Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
+Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon
+Fourth of the Georges
+Generally he noticed nothing
+Gentleman in a good state of preservation
+Good jokes are not always good policy
+Gratitude never was a woman's gift
+Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance
+Here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate
+His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody
+Holy images, and other miraculous objects are sold
+I who respect the state of marriage by refusing
+I make a point of never recommending my own house
+I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe
+I am a discordant instrument  I do not readily vibrate
+If I do not speak of payment
+Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind
+In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt
+Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
+Intellectual contempt of easy dupes
+Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples
+Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?
+It was harder to be near and not close
+It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us
+Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men
+Lend him your own generosity
+Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy
+Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off
+Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
+Men overweeningly in love with their creations
+Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity
+Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike
+Nature is not of necessity always roaring
+Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
+Never reckon on womankind for a wise act
+No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters
+Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer
+Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
+Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted
+Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers
+Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife
+Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant
+Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied
+Pitiful conceit in men
+Primitive appetite for noise
+Rapture of obliviousness
+Rejoicing they have in their common agreement
+Respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower
+Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
+Self-incense
+Self-worship, which is often self-distrust
+She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls
+She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
+She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
+Sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes
+So are great deeds judged when the danger's past (as easy)
+Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth
+Spare me that word "female" as long as you live
+Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction
+Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
+Suspects all young men and most young women
+Suspicion was her best witness
+Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping
+Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation
+That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
+The social world he looked at did not show him heroes
+The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost
+The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity
+The mildness of assured dictatorship
+Their idol pitched before them on the floor
+They miss their pleasure in pursuing it
+This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure
+Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
+Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience
+Utterance of generous and patriotic cries is not sufficient
+We grew accustomed to periods of Irish fever
+We like well whatso we have done good work for
+We trust them or we crush them
+Weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome
+Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one
+Were I chained, For liberty I would sell liberty
+When we see our veterans tottering to their fall
+When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her
+Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness
+Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land
+Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man
+Your devotion craves an enormous exchange
+
+
+[The End]
+
+
+
+
+*********************************************************************
+The Project Gutenberg Etext The Entire Short Works of George Meredith
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