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diff --git a/old/63308-h/63308-h.htm b/old/63308-h/63308-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 7a7ae09..0000000 --- a/old/63308-h/63308-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4121 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> -<head> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> -<title>Ronald and I, by Alfred Pretor</title> - <style type="text/css"> -/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ -<!-- - P { margin-top: .75em; - margin-bottom: .75em; - } - P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} - P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } - .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } - H1, H2 { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - } - H3, H4, H5 { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - } - BODY{margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - } - table { border-collapse: collapse; } -table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} - td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} - td p { margin: 0.2em; } - .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ - - .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - - .pagenum {position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: small; - text-align: right; - font-weight: normal; - color: gray; - } - img { border: none; } - img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } - p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } - p.gutlist { margin-top: 0.1em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -1em} - div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } - div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} - div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; - border-top: 1px solid; } - div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; - border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} - div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; - margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; - border-bottom: 1px solid; } - div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; - margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; - border-bottom: 1px solid;} - div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; - border-top: 1px solid; } - .citation {vertical-align: super; - font-size: .5em; - text-decoration: none;} - span.red { color: red; } - body {background-color: #ffffc0; } - img.floatleft { float: left; - margin-right: 1em; - margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } - img.floatright { float: right; - margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; } - img.clearcenter {display: block; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 0.5em} - --> - /* XML end ]]>*/ - </style> -<link rel='coverpage' href='images/cover.jpg' /> -</head> -<body> -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ronald and I, by Alfred Pretor - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Ronald and I - or Studies from Life - - -Author: Alfred Pretor - - - -Release Date: September 26, 2020 [eBook #63308] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RONALD AND I*** -</pre> -<p>Transcribed from the 1899 Deighton Bell & Co. edition by -David Price.</p> -<h1>RONALD AND I</h1> -<p style="text-align: center"><span -class="GutSmall">OR</span></p> -<p style="text-align: center"><b>Studies from Life</b></p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><span -class="GutSmall">BY</span></p> -<p style="text-align: center">ALFRED PRETOR</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center">CAMBRIDGE</p> -<p style="text-align: center">DEIGHTON BELL & CO.</p> -<p style="text-align: center">LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS</p> -<p style="text-align: center">1899</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageii"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. ii</span><span -class="GutSmall">CAMBRIDGE</span><br /> -<span class="GutSmall">PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER</span><br /> -<span class="GutSmall">ALEXANDRA STREET</span></p> -<h2><a name="pageiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -iii</span>PREFACE</h2> -<p>Several of the following sketches have appeared already in the -<i>Cambridge Review</i> and the <i>Cantab</i>. Perhaps the -friends who welcomed them then may welcome them now, on their -reappearance in another and more permanent form.</p> -<p>The story of “Our Rector” has been received in -episcopal quarters with polite incredulity. It may be that -episcopal supervision was less far-reaching in those days than -now. At any rate, the things I have narrated, and things -stranger still, <i>did</i> occur in our village, and in all -essential details, including the postprandial cigar, the story of -“Our Rector” is a literal “study from -life.”</p> -<p>I would forget, if I could, that the “Cruel, Crawling -Foam” is also a record of fact.</p> -<p style="text-align: right">A. P.</p> -<p><span class="smcap">Cambridge</span>,</p> -<p><i>May</i>, 1899.</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagev"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. v</span><i>To Mrs. Thomas Hardy</i><br /> -<i>who suggested and</i><br /> -<i>encouraged the writing</i><br /> -<i>of these tales</i></p> -<h2><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -vii</span>CONTENTS</h2> -<p> </p> -<table> -<tr> -<td colspan='2'></td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span -class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan='3'><p><span class="smcap">Ronald and I</span>:</p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Broadwater: a Shadow from the Past</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page1">1</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>On the Race Course at Bayview</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page25">25</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>On the Sands</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page31">31</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Our Rector</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page41">41</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Echoes from an Organ Loft</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page55">55</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Fighting the Cholera</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page67">67</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Ronald’s Courtship</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page79">79</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Judy, or Retrieved</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page99">99</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>The Professor</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page117">117</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>The Cruel, Crawling Foam</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page133">133</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td><p>Our Queen</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page143">143</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan='2'><p><span class="smcap">Bindo</span>: a Sketch</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page155">155</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan='2'><p>‘<span class="smcap">Declined with -Thanks</span>’: a Postscript</p> -</td> -<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a -href="#page181">181</a></span></p> -</td> -</tr> -</table> -<h2><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. ix</span>Ronald -and I</h2> -<h3><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -1</span>Broadwater<br /> -<span class="GutSmall">A SHADOW FROM THE PAST</span></h3> -<h4>I</h4> -<p><span class="smcap">Turn</span> your steps westward, and about -four miles beyond Bayview you will come to a rising ground where -three ways meet.</p> -<p>One—the road to the right—trends northward, -following with occasional deviations the coast line of Dead -Man’s Bay, a replica in miniature of the Bay of Biscay, and -one which claims, almost as regularly, its tithe of life and -wreckage.</p> -<p>The path on the left hand enters a lodge gate, and begins to -fall gently but without intermission towards the sea. A -curious impression that you are reaching the end of all things is -followed by the feeling that your next step will be planted in -the sea—and then you come to Broadwater.</p> -<p><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>The huge -square-set building stands on a level plateau, guarded by a -semicircle of hills from every wind that blows, excepting the -south-west. The architecture is neither impressive in -itself nor characteristic of any particular period. Yet, -looking down upon it from the hills above, the eye will find -ample satisfaction in the colouring of the roof, for lichens have -painted the crumbling tiles with every conceivable hue of -vermilion and gold.</p> -<p>A stranger, journeying for the first time along the road, -would complain of the lack of trees. And trees in the open -there are none. Nothing less cringing than gorse and -heather can show front against the brine-laden winds of the -Atlantic. The south-west wind is jealous of its -prerogatives, and denudes a neighbourhood of isolated growth -almost as surely as does the poison-steeped atmosphere of the -midlands.</p> -<p>Yet, if you trouble to make nearer acquaintance with -Broadwater, you will find that every ravine and gully is crowded -with trees—“groves” the villagers call -them—whose tops lie level with the ground on either side, -so that a slight divergence from <a name="page3"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 3</span>the recognised track might land the -unwary traveller among their foliage, almost without a change in -his plane of elevation.</p> -<p>The grand old house stands, as I have said, on a plateau, -protected from the north and east by the hills, down which the -road winds in and out like a white ribbon. On the west it -faces the Atlantic, and the lawn, merging in the park, falls -rapidly seawards till it meets the natural barrier of the -beach. As a rule the barrier stands well; yet times there -are when the sea will no longer “harrow the valleys, or be -bound with a band in the furrow,” but, laughing at the puny -obstruction, lays its tribute of drift and wreckage and human -life almost on the very door-step of the house.</p> -<p>Whether you love the scene or not, will depend on your age and -temperament, and something, too, on the circumstances under which -you view it. Steeped in the quiet twilight of an autumn -evening, its perfect stillness and repose appeal irresistibly to -a heart that yearns for rest, and many such have coveted -it. But let a Londoner come upon it when a furious -south-wester is raging, and the double windows are veiled with an -<a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>impermeable -film of brine, and you can feel the chimneys rocking -overhead—and the chances are he will hurry from it as from -the abomination of desolation.</p> -<p>After our uncle’s death, Ronald, it was well known, was -to reign in his stead—supplanting myself, albeit the son of -an elder brother and the natural heir. But my father had -been unlucky enough to marry the woman of old Heyward’s -choice, and the sin of the father was to be visited upon the -son. Our uncle (to do him justice) never made a pretence of -equity in the matter. “I should turn in my -grave,” he said, “if I thought that son of his was to -follow in my room.” And there the matter ended. -Short of this, he was fond of me in his own undemonstrative -way. Only lately he had settled me at Bayview with a -handsome allowance, where I was to make acquaintance with the -rudiments of the law till it was time for me to enter at -Cambridge.</p> -<p>Honestly I can say that I never grudged Ronald his -inheritance. He and I were brothers rather than cousins, -and I cannot remember the time when the sturdy little Viking was -not dear to my heart. Perhaps <a name="page5"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 5</span>it was I who gave the most, and he who -took it. But that is only as it should be, provided he who -gives and he who takes are equally nothing loth.</p> -<p>The house was an ideal home for us, so long as we shared it in -common. When we were separated, it became unutterably dull -for the one who was left companionless. Ghosts it must have -had in plenty. There certainly was an -“impluvium,” which in these days is rarer than a -ghost. I mean that the whole centre of the house was open -to the winds of heaven, for the purpose of collecting the rain -water which fell into a huge reservoir at the basement.</p> -<p>The ghosts, if any, never showed themselves—frightened -in all probability by the antagonism of Ronald’s -temperament. But we discovered what was next best to the -real article—the equipments and paraphernalia of one. -In a disused coach-house we came one day on an old travelling -carriage of the fashion in use sixty years ago, when -paterfamilias took himself and his family for a progress round -the country. Rumble it had, and imperial, and a chest of -most unearthly pattern, accommodated to the space under the back -seat.</p> -<p><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>But the -glass was broken in the frames, and the hangings were -mouldy. The very woodwork was so worm-eaten that at a touch -you would expect it to crumble into dust, like one of the -Pharaohs when he is disencumbered of his trappings. It was -painted—or rather had been painted—a sable black, but -the colour had deteriorated with time to the hue of rusty -crêpe.</p> -<p>Our first impression suggested that it was some time-honoured -memorial of the past—the carriage, it might be, in which a -bride and bridegroom had made their home-coming under auspices of -exceptional promise. But a second glance through the broken -semicircular skylight told rather of intentional neglect or -indifference. The plaster of the coach-house, where it -still clung to the lath, had broken out into patches of -mouldiness, defiant of the first principles of cleanliness, while -an army of spiders, who must have worked unmolested for years, -had tied the carriage to the walls and floor with a net-work of -dirt-begrimed strands.</p> -<p>“What on earth is it? and why is it kept here?” -asked Ronald of the groom. “I shall get the uncle to -have it broken up and burned: <a name="page7"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 7</span>it’s only filling the place with -moths and insects.”</p> -<p>“Don’t you do nought of the kind, Master -Ronald,” said the coachman, lowering his voice to a -whisper. “That carriage has been driven up to these -very doors by old Nick himself, or one or other of his -coachmen. Aye, you may laugh. But it’s true -enough, and not so long ago neither. They’d -forgotten—had your aunt and uncle—that it was here in -the stable at all: it must have been here years before they -bought the place—till <i>he</i> came and drove it round to -the front door one night, all mouldy and ramshackled just as you -see it now.”</p> -<p>“Do tell us, Frampton, about it. I’ll -promise not to laugh.”</p> -<p>“Well, ’twas the night before we were starting for -the South of France, and I was going with them to look after the -horses they were to hire in Paris. The house had been full -of visitors for Christmas, but most of them had gone the day -before, and the rest of them were to leave along with us.</p> -<p>“It was in the middle of the night, though they never -noticed the true time, when they <a name="page8"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 8</span>heard, both of them, a carriage drive -up to the front door.</p> -<p>“They were fairly puzzled what it could mean, as they -expected no visitors, least of all at that time of night. -Your aunt got up first and then called your uncle. And -there, full in the moonlight, stood that identical carriage, and -the coachman was a skellington—dressed in black and -weepers, for all the world like an undertaker at a funeral. -He turned his eyes—or what should have been his -eyes—full upon them both. And then your aunt went -faint, and I believe your uncle did no better. Anyhow, when -they came back to their senses, carriage and coachman were -gone.”</p> -<p>“And what did it mean, Frampton?”</p> -<p>“Well, that’s more than I can tell you, Master -Ronald. It’s fairly puzzled all of us. -I’m sure I’ve bothered my head times over to try and -piece it together, seeing it meant no harm to them, but only to a -lot of folk they’d never seen or heard of.”</p> -<p>“How did that come about?”</p> -<p>“When we got to Paris, we put up at one of them big -hotels—I forget the name of it. And one day he and -she were going up <a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -9</span>to their rooms in the lift. Just as they were -stepping aboard of it, they looked chanceways at the man who -managed it, and I’m blessed if it wasn’t the same -coachman as had driven that there carriage up to the door at -Broadwater. They were that frightened that they stepped -back, and the lift went up without them. And well it was -they did so, for something or other went wrong with the hauling -gear, and every soul on board of it was killed.</p> -<p>“And now you know, Master Ronald, why your uncle -won’t have that carriage never touched. He’s -got it into his head, and you won’t get it out again, that -it was sent to save his life. All I can say is that, if -that’s what it did mean, old Nick carries on his business -in a queer, roundabout kind of way.”</p> -<h4>II</h4> -<p>Not many days after Frampton had imparted to us his -sensational story, we were told to expect a visit from the family -lawyer. Ronald and I always hailed his visits with -delight. He was one of those cheery individuals <a -name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>whom boys can -chum with. In age he must have been nearly seventy-five, -but hale and hearty still: entering into our amusements, never -minding our noise, and tipping us when he left with a liberality -that appalled our uncle. Ronald and I would have put him -down for fifty. But boys do not recognise the gradations of -age. To them a man seems definitely old at fifty, and live -as long as he may after that, years will add nothing to the -mystery of his age, if only he keeps young in heart and -interests. At sixty, seventy, or even eighty, he will in -their eyes be fifty still.</p> -<p>As a matter of course Ronald and I were told to put in an -appearance on the day of his arrival. The unvarying order -of the programme was that, after he had had a few words with our -uncle, we two should form his escort in a progress round the park -and outlying farms.</p> -<p>“So your uncle still cherishes the old Crofton -coach,” he said, as we passed the outhouse tenanted by the -family ghost. “I wonder he cares to keep -it,”—almost Ronald’s own words to Frampton, the -coachman—from which it was clear he had never heard <a -name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>of our -uncle’s visitant, nor did we venture to enlighten him.</p> -<p>“Do you know anything about it, Sir?” asked -Ronald, in the eager tone of one who had by no means lost hope of -solving the mystery.</p> -<p>“My boy, I’ve <i>ridden in it</i>.”</p> -<p>Ronald’s face was a study. “Ridden in it? -actually <i>ridden</i> in that coach? And did you, Sir, -<i>did</i> you see the devil?” he continued -anxiously. “Frampton says he always drives -it.”</p> -<p>“Not exactly, Ronald. And, by the way, my lad, I -wouldn’t, if I were you, introduce his name quite so -familiarly into your conversation. Frampton must be -cautioned, Fred, as to what he tells the boy.”</p> -<p>“Well, he didn’t exactly say that, Sir,” -continued Ronald, willing to justify his friend. “He -called him old Nick.”</p> -<p>“That’s a trifle better. Anyhow, I -didn’t see him, though I can’t say honestly that my -ride was a pleasant one. I’d been staying here with -old Crofton, just before he sold the place to your uncle, and I -had business too to transact with Thorpe of Thorpe Hill. As -luck would have it, all the carriages here <a -name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>were in use -but this one. It wasn’t in the state it is now, but -it was out of date and uncomfortable even then. However, it -took me there all right. It was on the way back that I had -my adventure.</p> -<p>“I had barely composed myself to sleep with the -consciousness of having dined too well—Thorpe never stinted -his guests—when I was roused by an uneasy feeling that I -was not the sole occupant of the carriage. The interior was -lit up by a weird, fantastic light that came and went, rose and -fell, like the glow that throbs over a brick-kiln or a blast -furnace. After all, it may have been only the reflection of -my own cigar which I had instinctively kept alight during my -short nap. From out the border-land which separates sleep -from waking, I saw two figures on the opposite seat. For a -time I studied them with hardly more interest than I should the -figures in a pantomime, till it was forced upon me by their wild -gesticulation that this was no pantomime enacting for my benefit, -but a veritable tragedy of life and death. The one figure -shrank cowering in a corner of the carriage; the other stood over -it with uplifted hand. But no voice or sound proceeded <a -name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>from -them. Only on the hand of one, the figure that crouched and -trembled, I recognised the famous Thorpe emerald—as the -family lawyer I knew it well—while the other that stormed -and threatened might have passed for old Crofton himself, in so -far as youth of twenty can anticipate the form and lineaments of -seventy-five.</p> -<p>“The details had hardly had time to shape themselves -within my brain, when the light died out. I heard—or -fancied I heard—a short, sharp gasp, an inarticulate cry -for mercy, and the carriage drew up before the gate of -Broadwater.”</p> -<p>That night after dinner we were subjected to a close -cross-examination by our uncle.</p> -<p>“The boys have told me your surprising story, Mr. -Roberts. May I ask how it is I never heard it from you -before?”</p> -<p>“Why, to tell you the truth, Mr. Heyward, you -wouldn’t have heard it now if my little friend Ronald -hadn’t rushed me into telling it by his burst of -eagerness. You might have said I’d been dining too -well—as indeed I had—and that isn’t exactly the -thing to recommend a family lawyer. So you’ve got my -reputation at your mercy, young gentlemen. <a -name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>For, of -course, it <i>was</i> the dinner—a nightmare of some kind, -no doubt. Though I’m bound to say I never had a -nightmare, either before or afterwards, that was half so vivid -and real. It was quite the worst quarter of an hour I ever -passed in my life.”</p> -<p>“Perhaps not so much of a nightmare as you -suppose,” rejoined the uncle, and then proceeded to narrate -his own experiences. I remember thinking how much better -Frampton told the story than he did, in spite of his rather -unorthodox language.</p> -<p>“Phew! that alters the whole question. -Corroborative evidence with a vengeance—evidence that one -might almost take into court. For even if <i>you</i> had -been dining not wisely, your sister hadn’t, I know. -Anyhow, we three staid gentlefolk could create a pretty sensation -with our three independent testimonies. To think that a -belief in ghosts should be forced upon me at my age! Why I -shall be dragged next into believing the village -legend.”</p> -<p>“What is it? I never even heard of it.”</p> -<p>“That Ronald’s old carriage is somehow mixed up -with the quarrel between Thorpe and Broadwater—that it -stands in the way <a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -15</span>of their family union. So you see, young -gentlemen, where you’ve got to look for a wife as soon as -the carriage is gone. But it doesn’t look like it -yet. Old Thorpe’s dead, and the house shut up, and -the only survivor of the family is on the point, they tell me, of -marrying her cousin. Above all, you guard the old carriage, -Heyward, as if it were a priceless heirloom. But perhaps -you are right; it isn’t your business to get rid of -it.”</p> -<h4>III</h4> -<p>So the old carriage mouldered on in the coach-house, and its -net-work of cobwebs grew grimier each day.</p> -<p>How the spiders maintained themselves was a mystery, for no -fly could have run the blockade of the window, even if the -inducement had been greater. At last Ronald and I wove a -legend around them in our turn, which terrified us more than did -the carriage itself. We decided that, after long years of -mutual slaughter, the victory had rested in the end with two or -three hoary monsters, who had ensconced themselves within the <a -name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>framework of -the ruined carriage, from which they looked out upon the solitude -they were creating. Little by little the uncanny idea grew -upon us till, regardless of all probability, we fancied we could -see their eyes peering out of the darkness.</p> -<p>More than once we made illicit expeditions at midnight in the -hope that we might find the ghostly coachman cleaning and -repairing his equipage for another sortie. But we could see -nothing. If either of us had gone alone, the result might -have been different; we should have seen, or pretended to see, -many matters of interest.</p> -<p>November was, as a rule, our month of storms at Broadwater, -though February often ran it close; and, in the year that -followed upon Frampton’s story, a gale broke upon us on the -third of the month that beat the record of our times for -violence. We had not been without warning of its -coming. The sea had been “crying out” at -intervals—sure token that the storm had paused to gather -breath, bidding the sea take forward its message to the -shore.</p> -<p>Not when the gale is at its height—at any rate along our -coast—can you best realise <a name="page17"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 17</span>the grandeur of the sea. Study -it rather on one of these quiet days of warning, when you can -trace a wave almost from its inception, till it curls over at -your feet with a dull roar, regular as the boom of a minute gun, -and audible for miles inland.</p> -<p>Lashed into foam, and its voice drowned by the wind, it parts -with much of its majesty, and becomes merely a symbol of turmoil -and unrest. What it gains in wildness, it loses in -self-control, like the seething rapids of Niagara before they -compose themselves into dignity prior to the final plunge.</p> -<p>Then came another and a final warning. It was one of -those rare sunsets which leave an imprint on the memory for -life. Not a sunset in which conflicting colours are fused -into each other by soft and subtle gradations—these we see -often and soon forget—but one of war and discord; when -colours, the most antagonistic, meet without blending, and -produce effects that would be called crude and coarse upon a -painter’s canvas.</p> -<p>On a background of unvarying crimson, black and purple clouds -were projected, clean cut in outline, and solid, to all -appearance, as the hull of an Atlantic liner that was cleaving <a -name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>her way -across the sea beneath them. The sea itself borrowed its -colours from the sky, but jealously guarded them from encroaching -on the beach beyond, which shone white as silver in the unnatural -glow. Beyond it still, the valleys and hills that rose -behind Broadwater were painted a dark and luminous green, on -which a few scattered homesteads stood out in clear and startling -relief. For the moment distance was annihilated, and a step -or two, or so it seemed, might have compassed the mile of space -that separated us from our own house door.</p> -<p>A sunset like this, following upon a “crying” sea, -can never be misread by the dwellers on our coast. It warns -every fisherman that he must haul his lerret to the very summit -of the ridge, and every Coastguard station along the dreaded Bay -that it behoves them to be awake and watching. But it was -not till midnight that the storm broke upon us.</p> -<p>Our faith in the old house was strong. It had outlived -so many storms, and the gale of ’24 must have been worse -than this, or so we kept saying for mutual encouragement. -But it was hard to believe it, and the comfort was quickly -followed by a disquieting thought <a name="page19"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 19</span>that each year, as it passed, left -the chimneys older and less capable of resisting the -pressure. We were disquieted, too, for others; we knew well -by experience what a night like this might bring us from the -sea. Times upon times, in similar gales, we had been -hurried to the beach by signals of distress, and had helped the -Coastguard, sometimes in saving life, oftener in furthering that -painful recall to life which is more agonizing to witness than -death itself.</p> -<p>Happily there came to-night no appealing cry. Even if it -had pierced its way through wind and rain, those whom it summoned -could only have watched and waited for one of those strange -freaks by which the sea now and again elects to spare a human -life. At the height of the gale, when gust upon gust -followed each other with ever increasing fury, we were still -seated in the drawing-room under various pretences. Ronald -and I said openly that we were afraid of venturing our lives in -the upper rooms, just under the chimneys. Our uncle jeered -at our cowardice, but stayed where he was. “The noise -would prevent my sleeping,” he said, “but, as for -danger, I’d as lief sleep in the garrets as <a -name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>anywhere; -only the servants’ beds ain’t as comfortable as my -own. The old house’ll last our time yet.”</p> -<p>As if in answer to his boast, the gale made another defiant -howl. It was answered by a dull crash, followed by a -continuous roar of falling materials—followed again by a -dead silence that was audible above the rush of wind and -rain. It took us only a few minutes to satisfy ourselves -that the fabric of the house was safe. It was a chimney -stablewards that had gone, crashing through a hay loft and lumber -room right down on the top of our ghostly carriage, and clearing -Broadwater of spiders for the period of our lives. Even the -uncle himself could find no plea for extending his protection to -a mass of shivered fragments. If the powers of darkness had -destroyed their own handiwork, or failed in ability to protect -it, there was no reason to suppose that the hand of man would be -more successful. So the fiat went forth—not, I -believe, without great searching of heart on the part of our -uncle—and carriage and cobwebs, and even the stable itself -were swept away, and, as Bunyan says, I saw them no more.</p> -<p><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -21</span>“Well, I’m glad that it’s gone,” -said a quiet, sweet voice at my elbow, as Ronald and I were -watching the departure of the last load of materials. And, -turning, I saw before me the woman who was to be the guiding star -of Ronald’s life, yes, and my own life too. She was -little more than a girl then—only a few years older than -Ronald himself—with a great calm truthfulness in her eyes, -and the air of one who had already known sorrow, and been -refined, not hardened, by the experience.</p> -<p>“Yes,” she repeated, “I am glad it’s -gone. And now we can be friends. It has been so -lonely for me at Thorpe ever since my father died, and I have so -wanted to make friends with you; only that old carriage stood in -the way. It was silly, no doubt, to be so much afraid, but -then I am Scotch—and the Scotch you know are very -superstitious,” she added with a smile. -“Besides, ever since I can remember anything, I’ve -been told that the old carriage meant mischief and trouble -between Thorpe and Broadwater. It is true, no doubt, that -an ancestor of mine did die in it, and that all sorts of ghastly -rumours were current as to how he met his death. <a -name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>But nothing -ever came of them, and it was commonly assumed that he died of -heart disease; he had certainly been ailing for years -before. Thank heaven! the very scene of the crime—if -such it were—has been swept away at last. And it is -pleasant, isn’t it? to recommence our life’s -friendship here where it was wrecked. Though I fear we -shan’t meet often as yet, for my husband that is to be -lives abroad, till I can persuade him to give up his post and -settle down with me for good in the dear old home. But you -<i>will</i> be my friends, won’t you, for -always?”</p> -<p>She held out her hand in pledge of her friendship. And -we shall be friends, I think, “for always.” I -like the old-fashioned phrase.</p> -<p>Besides, it was her own.</p> -<h3><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>On the -Racecourse at Bayview</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was Ronald’s birthday, and -the day fixed for the Races at Bayview—an unlucky -coincidence, for he always showed a keen spirit of enterprise on -that particular morning. He was now fourteen, and looked a -trifle older owing to his splendid physique. Even in the -nursery visitors had christened him the “Infant -Hercules.” A Viking he was in miniature, with clear -blue eyes and short, crisp hair, carrying with him an atmosphere -of suppressed fun that, dangerous as it might prove, was a -certain guarantee against dulness or want of spirit. He had -behaved himself beautifully for an entire month. But I -distrusted him to-day. He had never seen the races, and had -constantly signified his intention of doing so. So when his -uncle said to him at breakfast, “You are not to go to the -races; they are destructive of morality, especially to a boy of -your age,” and Ronald <a name="page26"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 26</span>winked at me across the table, I felt -sure he intended to go.</p> -<p>“No sir,” he said respectfully—“and I -suppose you won’t go either. Of course they -can’t do you any harm at your age; but they can’t do -you any good.”</p> -<p>“As it happens, Ronald, I shall go—just to make -sure that you don’t. Besides, I think it a good -principle that elderly people should be seen doing things which -they forbid to their youngsters. Unquestioning obedience is -a fine thing. It doesn’t follow that because I allow -myself a cigar to quiet my nerves, therefore you should smoke who -don’t know what a nerve means.”</p> -<p>“No sir: of course it doesn’t”—and he -winked again.</p> -<p>For myself, I distinctly intended to go to the races, seeing -that I was past the age at which my uncle feared their contagion; -though neither was I old enough to plead the principle which he -had so astutely paraded on his own account. And so I -went.</p> -<p>Ronald had left the house soon after breakfast—for a -ride (he said)—and, as I saw nothing of him on the -racecourse, I was comfortable in the belief that for once he had -<a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>obeyed -orders. When the races were nearly over, a little stable -boy came up to me and touched his cap:</p> -<p>“Hold your horse, sir?”</p> -<p>By Jove, it was Ronald. He had borrowed Dick the -groom’s livery, and had had a fine time of it, he told me, -in that unconventional attire.</p> -<p>Just then our uncle rode up. “Now stand away, -Fred, and don’t be seen talking to me, and I’ll show -you some rare sport.”</p> -<p>“Hold your horse, sir?”—this to our -uncle.</p> -<p>“Well, I don’t mind if you do, and I’ll have -a stroll with Fred here till it’s time to go -home.”</p> -<p>After a lounge along the course, chatting with friends and -criticising the horses, we came back to where we left -Ronald. “Thanks,” said the uncle, as he -re-mounted, “here’s a shilling for you. A lucky -dog you are, too, for it’s got a hole in it, I see. -Good-day.”</p> -<p>When dinner was over that evening, the uncle waxed genial over -a bottle of ’75 Margaux. “We’d a capital -day’s racing, Ronald. I’m almost sorry you -weren’t with us. Next year, all well, my boy, -I’ll take you myself.”</p> -<p><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -28</span>“Thanks, sir”—and he winked the third -time. “By the way, you haven’t lost a shilling, -sir, have you? I picked up this one while you were at the -races. You’re a lucky dog, sir, if it does belong to -you, for it’s got a hole in it?”</p> -<p>Verdict: <i>Acquitted</i>, <i>but don’t do it -again</i>.</p> -<h3><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>On the -Sands</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">Broadwater</span> was fearfully dull on a -Sunday, so I came over from Bayview where I was staying, that -Ronald and I might help each other in getting through the -day.</p> -<p>It was a blazing afternoon in August, and the park, shut in by -hills, shimmered in a haze of heat. “I can’t -stand this,” said Ronald. “Air I must get -somehow, and, as it’s not to be got nearer than the sea, -we’ll walk to the shore in search of it. It’s -rather hard on you, to be sure, who’ve done the walk once -already. But it’s better than lounging about here, -where it’s too hot to speak or think; and, at any rate, we -shall see the trippers.”</p> -<p>It happened, most unluckily, that just as we reached the pier, -an open air service had begun. Of course they had chosen -the hottest corner possible for it; a nook sheltered by the -masonry of the pier, which carefully excluded every breath of -wind that might be <a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -32</span>travelling to us from the sea. But, despite the -heat, it was a temptation to mild excitement that Ronald found it -impossible to resist.</p> -<p>“Not so good as the nigger minstrels, but better than -nothing,” he said. So we joined the throng of -listeners. It was the usual audience, the devotees (mainly -women) forming the inner circle, in close proximity to the -preacher and the harmonium. Next came the half-hearted, -weaker vessels, who separated the former as by a wall from the -irreverent throng of idlers who laughed and talked and smoked on -the outside fringe. The preacher was a man of the ordinary -type, only a little stouter, a little more flaccid and even more -illiterate than usual. Where do they come from, these -preachers? Are they men who think they have a call or a -gift? and are they accepted for the office on their own -valuation? Certainly they are not chosen for any capability -that can approve itself to the impartial hearer.</p> -<p>The present representative of the school was enlarging, when -we came up, upon the demerits of the publican. Ronald, -after a few minutes, began to fume and fret. But he behaved -for a while excellently well, though <a name="page33"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 33</span>I could hear him muttering words in -an undertone distinctly uncomplimentary to the preacher.</p> -<p>“And it is publicans like these—the scum and -refuse of Jerusalem—that are represented in this town -to-day by the inn-keepers, barmen, and pot-boys, who an hour or -two hence will be serving many of their fellow -creatures—many, I fear, of this audience—with drink, -to the ruin of their lives here and of their hopes of salvation -hereafter.”</p> -<p>“Nothing of the sort,” shouted Ronald, “he -wasn’t an innkeeper at all; he was a tax-gatherer. -Every schoolboy knows that.”</p> -<p>The silence that followed was awful; every eye was turned upon -the boy, and it was a strain upon my loyalty to remain at his -side, and not then and there renounce his acquaintance.</p> -<p>“Oh, he wasn’t, wasn’t he, young man?” -said the preacher. “Well, as you seems to know more -about the Bible than I do, perhaps you’ll step up here and -take my place. Kindly tell us, if <i>you</i> please, out of -<i>your</i> superior knowledge, what he was, and why he was -called a publican if he was a tax-collector; and why a poor -collector of rates, <a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -34</span>who only did his duty, is held up to our scorn and -reprobation; yes, our <i>reprobation</i>.” (This word -he regarded as a crushing climax.)</p> -<p>To my complete and indescribable confusion, Ronald, nothing -loth, accepted the challenge with delight, and the next moment -was standing on the platform addressing an appreciative -audience. What a sermon he gave them!—lasting without -a pause or break for exactly half-an-hour; every thought reasoned -out, and closing with a peroration of consummate eloquence. -By a clever feint he had diverted the text of the preacher to one -on the Pharisee and the Publican, making a scathing attack on the -Pharisaism of the day, which went to church, and gave its alms -openly and never in secret; which paid its way and kept the -conventional commandments, and neglected (as of little count) the -weightier things of unselfishness and love. “A day is -coming when it will matter nothing where we lived, nor in what -occupations, nor amidst what circumstances, but only how we -wrought, and in what spirit we suffered. Be the thing you -say; be unselfish, in your own poor way, to your friends and to -your home, and to the world about you; that is worth <a -name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>ten thousand -sermons and a hundred thousand Articles of Religion.” -A dead silence followed as he stepped down from the platform; he -had left a charm upon us that it seemed sacrilege to break. -Then came a word or two. “What a wonderful -boy!—a second Spurgeon; with all his eloquence and none of -his irreverence.”</p> -<p>“Summat worth hearin’, I calls it; how he did -pitch into they bloomin’ aristocrats. I’ll come -and hear ye, young master, whensomdever you holds forth -agin.”</p> -<p>“Well—I never!” It was with this -ungrammatical aposiopesis that I started, so soon as I could find -breath to start at all. “Where on earth, Ronald, did -you get it all from?” The boy had come back to me -looking as cool as a cucumber, and highly delighted with the -sensation he had created.</p> -<p>“Don’t tell, Fred,” he answered, “but -it was a sermon of Vaughan’s. We are made to analyse -his sermons at school, and say them afterwards for repetition -lessons. So when that old donkey fell foul of the publican, -I had one handy you see, on that very subject, and I thought it a -pity not to fire it off.”</p> -<p><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>Surely, -I thought, he’ll be satisfied now, and I tried to draw him -away from the crowd, who were becoming a trifle too much -interested in our name and identity. But no; not a bit of -it. The excitement was full upon him still. So up he -went to the harmonium (they had now started a hymn), and looking -over the shoulder of the performer (she was a pretty girl of -eighteen) he began to sing as lustily as the best of them. -By degrees his arm, I saw, began to steal about her waist, and, -fuss and fidget as she might, she was powerless to help -herself. Her hands were occupied with the keyboard, and her -feet with the blower, and with her voice she had to lead the -singing. So he had her at his mercy, and hugged her -disgracefully, while she, poor girl, was powerless to -resist. The audience all thought she was his sister, and -highly commended him, it was clear, for the countenance and -support he was giving her.</p> -<p>While the last line of the last verse was being sung, the -temptation became too strong for resistance, and Ronald stooped -down and kissed her—an action which touched still further -the sympathetic heart of the audience.</p> -<p><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -37</span>“A dear, good young feller that, as ever I -see’d”—said an old lady in my immediate -neighbourhood. “I only wish as how he were a son of -mine; a preachin’ that fine, for all the world like the -Bishop, and a’ lookin’ arter his sister so -prettily—and a nice young girl she is too.”</p> -<p>After this exploit he slipped across the circle and joined me, -and a minute later—with hot and blazing cheeks—I was -thankful to find myself round the corner, and well on the way -home before the throng of listeners had begun to disperse. -I felt, indeed, as must that Bishop, who, to oblige a small girl -younger in years than in experience, condescended to ring at a -street door, and was rewarded with the advice, “Run! -<i>run</i> for yer life! they’ll knock the ’ead off -yer shoulders if they catches ye.” I wonder what he -elected to do? pocket his dignity and run? or rely upon his -clerical attire to see him through? In any case our anxiety -would be more protracted. What if the escapade should reach -our uncle’s ears? However I was spared this -climax. The story of it got wind in the servants’ -hall, as all stories do; but the servants were far too loyal to -Master <a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -38</span>Ronald to betray him, and so it never made its way up -stairs to the drawing room.</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p>But the career of that preacher was ended—in -Bayview.</p> -<h3><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>Our -Rector</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">We</span> had two, if not three, -celebrities in our village. The Rector is dead; the Clerk -is dead; the Professor still lives. But, independently of -this claim to our respect, let us give precedence to the -Church.</p> -<p>Less than fifty years ago the services in a parish not ten -miles from one of our well-known watering places were -done—or left undone—by surely the queerest cleric of -his time.</p> -<p>A grand old man he was in person—tall, and venerable as -Bede himself, with the most benevolent of faces and the most -silver of silver hair. Fit to be an archbishop, so far as -appearances went, but most unfit to have the charge of the -hundred souls—there were no more of them—committed to -his trust.</p> -<p>To these he ministered, or (as I have said) failed to -minister, on Sunday mornings; for often as not the services, -stipulated for at the price of £75 per annum, were left -unperformed on the shallowest of pretexts. It might be <a -name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>the weather; -it might be that he was indisposed; often, I fear, it was from -sheer disinclination.</p> -<p>To the hamlet that clustered close round the church it was a -matter of comparative indifference. They never believed by -anticipation in the service till the bell was actually sounding; -and his henchman (clerk, sexton, choirmaster and gravedigger in -one) had strict orders to withhold this summons till the Rector -himself was actually in view. But to our party, who lived -two miles away, the question of service or no service was a -serious one. It meant hesitation in starting, and -reluctance to risk the chance—provocation, too, even to my -long-suffering father, when he found the church door barred, and -a south-wester brewing, in the teeth of which we had to struggle -home over a barren down, unsupported by the nutriment, mental and -moral, on which we had calculated. But the service, when it -did take place, was a queerer experience by far than the service -foregone. The orchestra would have been the despair of -Nebuchadnezzar. It consisted of a single flageolet, blown -by the wheezy old sexton—one Joseph Edwards by name. -We did not <a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -43</span>even boast of a serpent—instrument immortalised by -Mr. Hardy for its volume of tone in supplementing -deficiencies. Now the flageolet is a pet aversion of mine, -and I can forgive Nebuchadnezzar many of his iniquities for -having (so far as we know) excluded it from his band. -Indeed, musicians themselves would seem to be ashamed of it, for -they have re-christened it, I am told, by a humbler name. -But I was careful not to betray my feelings to my friend Joseph, -and listened patiently while he enlarged on the capabilities and -melodiousness of his pet instrument. “Not but what -I’m getting a bit wheezy (he’d often say to me), and -can’t make the flourishes as onst I could. But -’tis may be better as it is. They quieter tunes are -belike more godly. Anyhow the choir—poor -souls—got right puzzled among my turns and quavers, coming -in here, there and no how at the finish.”</p> -<p>But, praise it as he might, the flageolet is the worst -instrument possible to constitute an orchestra; especially when -played as Joseph played it. It gave out a series of squeaks -and counter-squeaks—punctuated and accentuated by his -wheezes rather than <a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -44</span>by the requirements of the tune. Indeed, a boy -learning the bugle, or a Punch and Judy panpipe, would have -discoursed more decorous music. To me the panpipe and the -flageolet seem nearly akin; only the flageolet is the more -powerful instrument of the two, and Punch is more exacting than -we were in the choice of an executant.</p> -<p>Once, as a special favour, I was invited by Joseph to attend a -choir practice. It was before his hand or, I should say, -his breath had lost its cunning; and it took place on this -wise. An hour before service (which on this occasion was -actually realised) Joseph took his stand in the reading desk, -flageolet in hand, while a group of apple-cheeked -cottagers—fishermen mainly, and plough-boys—grouped -themselves in my father’s pew below. In one point at -any rate Joseph had anticipated the ritual of later days; he -repudiated all women from his choir. “’Taint no -place for ’em,” he’d say; “I wonder what -’postle Paul ’d think, if he could ha’ heard -they two women at S. Matthew’s screechin’ out -‘O ’twas a joyful sound to hear’—and none -of us, let alone the choir, privileged to put in a joyful sound -along wi ’em. If women <a name="page45"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 45</span>baint allowed to preach in Church, -stands to reason that they baint allowed to sing.”</p> -<p>“Now boys, turn to ‘Aurelia,’ and go for to -remember that we sing the whole on’t right through this -time. Last time as ever we did it some on you took to -skipping and one sang one verse and t’other the next, -whereby I had to blow myself nigh faint to hide your -discordance. And mind ye too, sing ’en slow, not as -if you wanted to get shot on’t.”</p> -<p>All went well at the first rehearsal, for Joseph played the -air distinctly and without disturbing flourishes—only with -an intolerable drawl, mindful in all probability of -“passon’s” injunctions; of which more anon.</p> -<p>“Well sung,” says he; “you be a good choir -when you be so minded; and well instructed, too, though I says it -as didn’t ought to. Now then, we’ll see what ye -can do when I puts in the flourishes.”</p> -<p>This was a change for the worse, and what had been a -melancholy dirge became a haphazard scramble for notes, each boy -seizing on the one that he could detect among the enveloping -flourishes, regardless whether it was the same note that had -found favour <a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -46</span>with his neighbour. In the end the hymn became a -sacrilegious fugue, devoid of time, harmony or sequence. -Yet Joseph was never disquieted at the result. On the -contrary, he regarded it as a tribute to his skill, addressing -his choir at the finish as a general might address his -discomfited troops: “You’ve done your best, and none -of us can’t do no more. Better luck at church-time, -and this I do say, that ’tis few players can overlay a -melody as I can wi’ flourishes and expect them as sings it -to pick out the tune.”</p> -<p>But to return to our Rector. The fun began (I write, -remember, as a boy of ten) with the First Lesson. When the -time for it approached, great preparations were seen to be in -progress. Our benevolent Archbishop retired into the -recesses of the reading desk (a high, square pew, scarcely to be -differentiated from our own) and disposed his lunch in orderly -array upon the sill overhanging my father’s head. -And, to give time for its consumption, a boy was summoned from -the congregation—usually it was his own son, a curly-pated -lad of thirteen—to discourse the Lesson. Manfully he -grappled with the difficulties and hard names of the Old -Testament—<a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -47</span>sticking and halting at nothing, and making a record of -false quantities and mispronunciations that I have never heard -beaten during a twenty years’ experience of the average -undergraduate. Meanwhile his father lunched peacefully, -careless what havoc he made with the Kings of Israel and -Judah. But woe betide the boy if ever he tried to skip a -name. A guttural rebuke issued from the depths of the -reading desk: “None of that, Jack; go back, my lad, and try -it again.”</p> -<p>But his greatest delight of all was to hear Jack struggling -with the genealogy in St. Luke. A series of chuckles issued -from the corner where the old man lay ensconced, that gathered in -volume with every fresh fall; and when the boy, hot and -discomfited, retired from the fray, there was a pause in the -proceedings till the old man had recovered himself sufficiently -to resume his functions. His luncheon meanwhile had been -progressing steadily, not without the gurgling sound of something -comforting to facilitate digestion. It puzzled me for years -to discover the <i>raison d’ être</i> of this -extraordinary meal, knowing as I did that an hour later he would -be dining with one of his cottagers, after careful preliminary <a -name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>enquiry as to -which house could offer the most attractive fare. Only -quite lately, long after the idea of luncheon had been -stereotyped upon my brain, I found out that the so-called -luncheon was, after all, no luncheon at all, but only a retarded -breakfast. Our Rector being a late riser, and having a -five-mile walk before him, could find no opportunity of taking it -in comfort till he had reached the haven of the parish reading -desk.</p> -<p>A cigar was the indispensable accompaniment of the second -Lesson, during which period its fumes could be seen ascending -like “curling incense” to the blackened rafters of -the roof. Indeed, the only thing that ever really shattered -my father’s equanimity was the sight of its reeking end, -projected over his head from the sill of the reading desk, where -the Rector had reluctantly placed it while he applied himself to -the requirements of the “Benedictus.”</p> -<p>When the flageolet sounded the key note of the first hymn, the -Rector regarded it as the signal of a temporary relaxation. -He was for a time off duty, and the cigar was again in -requisition. But in fine and balmy <a -name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>weather, he -found the atmosphere of the church too close for its -enjoyment. It “gathered sweetness from the open -air.” So, attired in surplice, stole and bands, our -Rector strolled out into the churchyard—giving us pleasant -little vista-views of his enjoyment as he passed and re-passed -the windows of the aisles. That it might be enjoyed in -perfection and unto the end, the hymns selected were inordinately -long. But, if fate was against him, and the wind light, and -the cigar drew slowly, he had no false shame in appearing on the -chancel steps to announce with all the dignity of a formal notice -that the last two verses of the hymn would be repeated. -After which he disappeared into the churchyard again.</p> -<p>The sermon was to me, as a boy, full of the most delightful -interest. It had an infinity of anticipation. No one -knew what was coming—least of all the Rector himself. -We felt stimulated by the chance of any and every -possibility. A clergyman of the strictest sect of the -Evangelicals, he always preached in a surplice. (It was in -the days, remember, when the Geneva gown was the badge of that -school, and the sign of a high church cleric was barely appearing -above the horizon).</p> -<p><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>But I -sadly fear that our Rector was influenced by no question of -principle or non-principle; I cannot, I think, be wronging him if -I infer that his preference for the surplice was due to sheer -indifference or indolence.</p> -<p>Then came the always exciting task of moving the immense Bible -from the reading desk to the pulpit. He regarded it, I -think, almost in the light of a fetish, and certainly, so long as -I knew him, would never have attempted a sermon with any smaller -and less trustworthy guide. He balanced the enormous volume -in his right hand, and, with his left hand on the rails, steadied -himself as he made the painful and perilous ascent. The -hope, I fear, of us boys was that the book would one day slip -from his hand and imperil the head of the clerk beneath, who was -now no longer choirmaster, but, like a Roman flute player, had -crossed over to his proper seat and resumed his duties beneath -the pulpit. But the hope was never realised, and I have -felt ever since that my life has lacked something in -consequence.</p> -<p>The choice of his text was the longest part of his -sermon. The Bible was opened haphazard, as though he -intended to execute <a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -51</span>a sort of <i>sors Vergiliana</i>. But so casual a -method was quite unsuited to the dignity of our Rector. The -pages were turned and re-turned; whole chapters were read and -carefully studied, and, after a quarter of an hour of this -preliminary investigation, a text was given out, that for glaring -irrelevance and disconnection with everything else could never -have been surpassed if he had taken it at sight. A name out -of a genealogy—the Christian name -Mary—Tophet—the daubed wall—pillows for all -armholes—are among the subjects that I distinctly remember -were selected for our edification. But of the treatment -alas! I remember nothing—nothing then, and certainly -nothing now, when I would give £50 to trace the exact -process of his reasoning.</p> -<p>The last sermon I ever heard him deliver was on the text, -“And there shall be no more sea”—an unwise and -disquieting subject for a congregation, most of whom came of a -race of fishermen, and gained their living from the element which -he so confidently annihilated.</p> -<p>“If there baint no sea, then ’tis no place for -I,” I heard a man say to his neighbour as <a -name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>he passed out -of church; “and sakes alive, where be ’en going to -get their fish from?”</p> -<p>Such was our Rector. Not reverent or discreet, you will -say, in his capacity of priest. No, but a kindly, genial -old man; devoted to his parishioners, if not to his duties; -clever too, and companionable in society, and inexhaustible to -the boys of the parish in the matter of marbles and -gingerbread.</p> -<p>It is with affection that I recall him, for, in spite of his -eccentricities, and perhaps because of them, I loved him -well.—<i>R.I.P.</i></p> -<h3><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>Echoes -from an Organ Loft</h3> -<blockquote><p>“Pale fingers moved upon the keys,<br /> -The ghost hands of past centuries.”</p> -</blockquote> -<p>From Joseph’s flageolet to one of the finest organs in -England—from the scene of “our Rector’s” -ministrations to a building that could have swallowed up his -church and his school room and all the house property in his -parish—was a startling transition for a boy of -fourteen.</p> -<p>I wonder how often, during my first experience of a cathedral -service, my thoughts travelled back to the tiny hamlet in the -west, with its ruined chancel on which the Atlantic had spent its -rage, and its few cottages straggling on and up behind an avenue -of elms, to where the new church, safe in a sheltered paradise of -its own, looks down compassionately upon the wreckage of the -past.</p> -<p>In times to come I got to know every nook and corner of the -great organ loft at K. <a name="page56"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 56</span>It was built in those large minded -days before architects had conceived the fatal idea of -economising space. Ascending by a broad staircase that rose -with the dignity of an inclined plane, you came out upon a -plateau, roomier and more comfortable than many a London -flat. The sanctum of the organist—indeed, the huge -instrument itself—were little more than incidents of the -loft. There was a chamber for the wife of the dean, and -another chamber for the wife of the organist, together with a -library for the Church music; and still there was room in it for -blind man’s buff—when the choristers could get the -chance.</p> -<p>The organ itself might have been a mile away—so little -did you hear of it. In this respect the loft resembled the -deck of a battleship, where the men who work the guns hear least -of the explosion. Only a few muttered growls from the big -pipes that lined the walls on either side, or burrowed in the -caverns underneath, suggested the proximity of sound. The -crash of the full organ was delivered at a point far above your -head, somewhere among the shadowy outlines of the roof.</p> -<p>The space allotted to the dean’s wife on <a -name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>the other -side of the organ was less comfortable than ours, but far more -interesting. The floor outside her enclosure was broken by -yawning chasms to give the great pipes breathing room; and though -they were of wood, and spoke, as wooden pipes should speak, in -hollow muffled tones, they must, I fancy, have confused her -devotions and raised a small hurricane about the nape of her -neck.</p> -<p>Linking the present to the past were the names of by-gone -choristers, carved in schoolboy fashion upon the old oak panels, -who had sung their last note a hundred years ago—it might -be in this very gallery. It was easy to picture them -passing and re-passing still through the trap door which opened -at our feet—a white robed procession of the voiceless -dead.</p> -<p>An organ loft is a delightfully irresponsible place from which -to take part in a service, especially when the instrument is a -large one, well removed from the congregation on the top of a -screen—above all, when you do not happen to be the -organist.</p> -<p>I would not for an instant be understood to imply that the -sense of aloofness necessarily engenders irreverence. On -the contrary, many <a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -58</span>of the most solemn hours of my life were passed within -the recesses of the great organ at K., and my friend the organist -might have been a pattern to the congregation in true devotional -spirit. But the necessities imposed by a choral service -afforded him little opportunity for a devotional attitude, while -he would have been more, or less, than human if he had not -utilised our isolation to impart to me pleasant little details -regarding the progress of the service. These would be -interrupted at intervals by parenthetical instructions whenever -he wanted help in the management of his stops.</p> -<p>A reminiscence of an organ-loft monologue would read something -as follows: “<i>Draw the Gamba</i>, <i>please</i>. -How flat that boy Robinson’s singing; and oh! those -<i>h</i>’s of his! <i>Principal</i>, <i>please</i>, -<i>and now the mixtures</i>. Green’s getting shaky in -his top notes; he only looked at that upper G. <i>Take -care</i>; <i>you put in that coupler before I had finished the -bar</i>. What a nuisance it is! I shall never get a -boy like him . . . The finest hymn written, don’t you -think? (They were singing Stainer’s ‘Saints of -God’) . . . and ‘Aurelia’ is the second -best. (Well done! Joseph, I thought; <a -name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>you’re -in it after all.) Get me Wely’s Offertoire in G, will -you? It’s poor stuff, but the people will have -it. <i>The Oboe</i>, <i>please</i>, <i>for the air</i> . . -. And now for the scramble . . . <i>Turn over in good -time</i>; <i>I can see ahead of me</i>, <i>but I can’t see -through the page</i>.” And he dashed into the finale -at the hurricane pace that alone makes the thing endurable. -Even he couldn’t talk till it was done.</p> -<p>Sometimes we were interested in events that were proceeding in -the world beneath us. “What on earth’s the man -reading the fifteenth for? it’s the sixteenth that’s -the lesson for the day.” “Oh, it’s -Henderson,” would be my reply. “He always -chooses a fine chapter to show off his voice and elocution. -If he’s hauled up for it, he’ll say he did it by -mistake.”</p> -<p>On one occasion we were favoured by a reader, fresh from the -study of Aristophanes, with the startling announcement that the -First Lesson for the day was taken from the Book of -<i>Ecclesiazusae</i>.</p> -<p>One day I heard voices in the choir beneath. I knew, -before I saw the speakers reflected from the mirror in front of -me, that they were two limp figures in blue serge and <a -name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>coal-scuttle -bonnets. The strident tones were unmistakeable, the -product, in so far as the human throat can compass it, of a long -and careful assimilation of the clash of the cymbals.</p> -<p>“A rare fine buildin’, this,” said one, -“and what a hinstrument! I only wish we ’ad it -in our place; draw a sight better than drums and cymbals, -wouldn’t it? And a deal noisier.”</p> -<p>“You’re right,” answered the other, -“but, for all that, I wouldn’t exchange with that lot -to get it. They deans and chapters and canons, and heaven -knows what they calls theirselves, aye, and the bisshup hisself, -is that sunk in ignorance and self-conceit that they can’t -see the right way; no, nor never will.”</p> -<p>Occasionally, but very rarely, matters went wrong in our own -department. The water that fed the hydraulic gear failed, -or was cut off at the main, and the organ “went out” -in the middle of an anthem. One afternoon in November it -clouded over so suddenly that we could hardly see our faces in -the organ loft. Worse luck still, the matches were damp, -and till I could be back with some more, Dr. H. had to guess at -the anthem as best he could. I am <a -name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>not musician -enough to know how he surmounted the difficulty, but I suspect -that the choir that day must have been treated to an amount of -improvisation to which they were wholly unaccustomed from an -organist who, as a rule, played what he had to play, and rarely -indulged in vagaries.</p> -<p>But our worst disaster was of earlier date. Bildad the -Shuhite blew the organ. He had received that name because -he cleaned shoes in a corner of the Close. It was in -prehistoric days before hydraulic gear was dreamed of in -connexion with the organ. As luck would have it, Bildad -fell sick, and had to supply a deputy at the last moment. -Dr. H. studied the man carefully, mistrusting, I think, his -intelligence. But his answers were satisfactory, though I -thought with the Doctor that he protested too much. Anyhow, -the service was due, and we had no time to waste on our -fears. The singing began, but the organ was irresponsive, -and, hurrying to the back of the loft, I found our deputy-blower -contemplating with blank stolidity the mechanism at his command, -and pleading with an injured air, “Sir, I am a’ -waitin’ for you to begin!”</p> -<p><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>One day -I was laboriously extracting discords from the great instrument -with Dr. H. at my elbow, when a gentle voice at our side asked -for permission to try the instrument. What a delight it -was, after the horrors I had been perpetrating, to see the long -fingers charm out the melody, till they drifted at last into the -chords of Chopin’s great march. Surely, I thought, -the composer must hear and welcome such a perfect realisation of -his wondrous dream.</p> -<p>“Charrlie, me boy, thry the pey-dals,” came a -voice from below, with the raciest and most captivating of -brogues. It was my first introduction to Ireland’s -great musician—Sir Robert Stewart—and his still -greater pupil, composer in prospective of the <i>Requiem</i> and -<i>Revenge</i>.</p> -<p>At our next interview the Professor of the future gave me a -friendly lecture on Wagner, emphasising his teaching the while by -illustrative passages, which he played, I remember, in thick -woollen gloves, of which he hadn’t troubled to divest -himself, being pressed for time and the organ loft none too -warm. The mechanism of the organ, I am bound to add, was -old and antiquated—not <a name="page63"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 63</span>as it is in these days, when the -notes speak if a fly sits upon them, or you venture to sneeze in -their neighbourhood.</p> -<p>I have made acquaintance with strange scenes in an organ -loft—an organist of surpassing ability playing through a -service when he was drunk, but certainly not incapable. Yet -a deputy sat by him, ready to take his place in case he should -prove unequal to retaining his seat at the instrument. I -have seen a fight between two choristers who had been sent to -fetch music for the choir. It began on this wise. -“I can lick you ’ead over ’eels in ’oly -’oly ’oly,” said one. The taunt was not -to be endured by a chorister of spirit, so “Come on!” -said the other; and they had fought it out to the bitter end at -the back of the organ before ever Dr. H. was aware that the -battle was in progress. I have seen courtship -too—ending, as all courtship should do, in -matrimony—while the organist played unsuspiciously a soft -and dreamy accompaniment. And I have seen heroism -too—grand as any displayed upon a field of -battle—when my friend came from his sick bed and played -through a service magnificently while the death dew gathered <a -name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>on his -face. And I coveted, as I never coveted before or since, -the divine gift of music, which would have enabled me to spare -him his long and patient hour of martyrdom.</p> -<p>And, at the end, he played the Dead March, never knowing that -it was for himself he played it, while a furious thunder-storm -raged over head, and the roll of the thirty-two-foot pipes was -drowned by reverberating peals. As the final chords came -crashing from his hands, he said to me, “Handel must have -written it, I think, to an accompaniment like this. And yet -the modern school of organists would have us leave out the -drums! I shall never care to play it again.”</p> -<p>And three weeks afterwards he was dead.</p> -<h3><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -67</span>Fighting the Cholera</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">Was</span> it an escapade, I wonder? or -was it something greater and grander? There are, I suppose, -escapades good and bad; heroic and unheroic.</p> -<p>One evening I was tidying up Ronald’s room at -Cambridge. We were both of us in residence now: I as an -M.A., while he had just entered as an undergraduate. He was -as studiously untidy as I was the reverse, and, but for me, his -room, artistic as it was, would always have looked like a boudoir -that had been used over-night for a tap-room. Pipes, -tobacco, and matches met the eye everywhere, scattered among -vases of flowers and ferns; no two sheets of the <i>Times</i> -were together in one place; “Esmond” lay cheek by -jowl with “Tom Jones” (the former, I was glad to see, -the better worn), while there was more than a suspicion that his -surplice was in use as a bed for a litter of kittens.</p> -<p>Ronald himself lay at his ease upon the sofa, watching—I -cannot say with interest, <a name="page68"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 68</span>but at any rate without -prejudice—my improvements for the worse. But I roused -him at last. In replacing a small box of Italian olive wood -I knocked off the lid, and an aggregation of articles -unimaginable were scattered on the floor.</p> -<p>“Hullo! stop that, old man,” he said. -“You’ll be losing or breaking some of my most -cherished possessions.”</p> -<p>“What on earth are they, Ronald? Here’s a -small crucifix and a missal (you haven’t turned Roman -Catholic, have you?) and any amount of rings—most of them -brass—and, by Jove, a lock of hair! Is the last a -love token? It looks uncommonly like the relic of another -escapade. Did it belong to the girl who played the -harmonium on the beach at Bayview? I didn’t know -you’d got so far as that. Besides, her hair was -light, if I remember. Out with it, old man, and clear your -conscience by confession.”</p> -<p>“Have done with your jokes, Fred; you’re the last -fellow to chaff like that if you knew the rights of it. -And, if I must tell you, I must. But I didn’t want -you to know of the matter; it looks too much like boasting. -However, you find out everything I do; so <a -name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>I may as well -tell you all about this, before you hunt it up for yourself in -some underhand way, or make a tale out of it that isn’t the -true one. You know Richards, Fred; the man my uncle made me -travel with last autumn—to see the world, as he called -it. I never liked the fellow, and always thought him a cad; -but I didn’t know till then that he was a coward as well as -a cad.”</p> -<p>“I always thought him both,” was my reply.</p> -<p>“Taormina in Sicily was one of the places we stopped at: -the loveliest spot that you could dream of, if you dreamed your -hardest. You’ve never been there, have you? -Well: the town itself is a fair day’s walk up hill from the -sea, and Mola’s another day’s walk above that; by -which time you’ve nearly reached the clouds—only, as -it happens, Sicily doesn’t boast of any. But you -needn’t go higher than Taormina for the loveliest view on -earth. They may talk of seeing Madrid, Seville, Naples, and -a hundred other places, and then dying contented—why, -there’s none of them that’s a patch on -Taormina. Sit down in the proscenium of the old theatre, -facing Etna, with the Straits of Messina and the foot of <a -name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>Italy laid -out like a map on your left: and you can do without another view -for the rest of your natural life. The only objection we -found to it was that in September of last year it was most -awfully hot, and Taormina is pestiferous enough to be a Turkish -settlement. It is worse, I think, than the old town of -Granada, which is perhaps the filthiest place that I know in -Europe. The cholera, too, was about last year, especially -in Italy; and, if it <i>did</i> cross the Straits, Taormina was -ripe and handy for it.</p> -<p>“After we’d been there for a week or so it -<i>did</i> come with a vengeance. First a suspicious case -or two, then a case that was not suspicious at all, and then it -fell like a thunderbolt on the town. Richards was off -directly, and with him everyone in the place who could afford to -go; so the poorer people, with their old priest, who stuck to his -work like a man, had it all to themselves.</p> -<p>“Now it looks like boasting, but I didn’t like to -run. Besides, I had come there for a fortnight, and I was -fond of the place and the view and the old theatre—so why -go? Anyhow I didn’t budge, and did what I could to -help the old man in his difficulty—it was little <a -name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>enough. -However, I had heaps of money, and they wanted that more than -anything. And he taught me something about -medicine—what little he knew of it; though, after all, -nothing but stimulants at one stage and opium at another seemed -to do them the slightest good.</p> -<p>“What a time it was! I pray that I may never stand -face to face with cholera again. Overhead, a sky like -brass, and, veiling the town, a dusky, steel-blue haze, almost as -palpable as gauze: the distinctive colour (I’ve been told) -of a cholera atmosphere. They died like flies, crowded in -their close, evil-smelling dwellings, though we lighted fires in -the streets to clear the air; an idea I borrowed, I believe, from -‘Old St. Paul’s.’</p> -<p>“Late one evening I hurried from a sick room to get a -breath of air in the theatre below. My friend, the old -priest, was there before me. This was an unusual -coincidence, as he scarcely ever gave himself a moment’s -rest. Yet he might have done so now, for in ten days’ -time the disease abated as rapidly as it had begun. And -besides, he had organised a band of fairly efficient helpers.</p> -<p>“‘Good evening, signor,’ he said. -‘You see <a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -72</span>me in my church; for I find in it the same relief that -my brethren in the cities find within the walls of a -cathedral. To me it would seem a poor exchange—for -what cathedral built by man could match this view?’ -As he spoke he pointed through the ruined arches to where Etna -towered in the distance. Surely the noblest drop-scene ever -fashioned by the hand of nature, and not unworthily framed by the -artist who had designed the theatre. Between the ruined -columns on the left a steamer, environed by a little group of -feluccas, made a series of dissolving views as it overtook and -passed them on the sea below. But I saw he had some trouble -on his mind over and above his care for his patients.</p> -<p>“‘Take courage, padre mio. The worst is -over. That shroud of steel-blue mist is lifting day by -day. I should like to know what causes it. I believe -if we had had the power of gauging it, its changes would have -made no bad register of the death-rate in the town.’</p> -<p>“‘You are right, my son; the worst <i>is</i> past; -and, thanks mainly to you, I have been enabled to do my duty -while it lasted. Without you I could have done -little. Take <a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -73</span>an old man’s thanks, signor, on behalf of those -who are left and those who are gone. Neither the one nor -the other will ever forget you, here or in the world that holds -them now. Yet I could almost wish that you had never -come.’</p> -<p>“‘Why so?’ I asked.</p> -<p>“‘I wish, at any rate’ (speaking with more -vehemence than his wont), ‘that you had not brought with -you that false-hearted friend of yours.’</p> -<p>“‘You mean Richards. Yes, he is a coward to -run away like that.’</p> -<p>“‘Worse, far worse. You know little Ninetta -well, who lives at your lodgings up the hill—the prettiest -girl in Taormina they call her, and I fancy they are right. -She is down with the cholera—didn’t you know -it? Taken this morning, and, unless I am wrong in my -judgment, it is one of the worst cases we have -had—hopeless, I should say, from the very first.’</p> -<p>“‘Poor little Ninetta! It does seem hard; -taken, too, just when the disease was dying out. But what -has Richards to do with it?’</p> -<p>“‘The confessional is sacred, my friend. But -it may be that, in this one case, the <a name="page74"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 74</span>cholera has struck in -kindliness. Though I am sorry he should be away when he -might have made her end more peaceful. Even when I left her -to come and find you, she was perpetually calling for him. -Put her off with excuses; it won’t be for long. -Don’t let her think him a coward as well as a -villain. If you weren’t a heretic, I would absolve -you beforehand for any necessary evasion.’</p> -<p>“‘You may be sure I’ll do my best. The -evasions won’t lie heavy upon my conscience. -Goodnight.’</p> -<p>“There was no hope for her, as he had said. During -the early stage of her illness she was always asking for -him—wondering why he stayed away—for I obeyed the -priest’s injunctions, and never told her he’d been -coward enough to run. As she got worse, she began to -wander, and, from having seen us so often together, she would -confuse him with me; and, at the last, was perfectly happy so -long as I was with her; calling me by his name, and thanking him, -as she imagined, for all his care and kindness to her. The -lock of hair that puzzled you is hers. She gave it to me -just before she died (she had nothing else to give, poor girl) in -the belief she was giving it <a name="page75"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 75</span>to Richards. And then, quite -quietly, still in the belief that he was with her, and that it -was his hand and not mine that she was holding, she died.</p> -<p>“There you have the story, Fred, such as it is. -All the other things were given me by the villagers—the few -of them, that is, who lived—all except the missal, which -came from my old friend the priest. It was his most -cherished possession; given, I believe, in the hope of converting -me. Well, if conversion would make me another such as he -was, I wouldn’t say no to it.</p> -<p>“Shall I ever see him again, I wonder? Some day, -Fred, you and I will go and hunt him up.”</p> -<h3><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -79</span>Ronald’s Courtship</h3> -<h4>I</h4> -<p>I <span class="GutSmall">HAVE</span> been looking through all -my old letters to-night. It is a strange sensation in these -days, when the shuttle spins so fast, to re-read the letters -between childhood and manhood. All details seem softened, -viewed through the haze of time. Human nature was (or so it -seems to one) so much kindlier then than now. What pleasant -ghosts are raised by these old letters; what touches that one -missed in them in the hurried, feverish days when they were -written! In so very many cases, too, the hands that penned -them are still. I have come upon one from Ronald, written -when he was just twenty-five. It is singularly devoid of -romance, compared with many of the others, and has “brisked -me up” considerably, when I was verging on melancholia.</p> -<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Fred</span> (it -runs),</p> -<p>“I shall want you for a wedding a month hence. -Guess the name of the happy lady. No more escapades -from—Yours respectably,</p> -<p style="text-align: right">“<span -class="smcap">Ronald</span>.”</p> -</blockquote> -<p><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>Who was -she? and how had he managed it? were the questions I asked myself -at the time. Somehow or other, I couldn’t imagine -Ronald proposing to his lady-love in a conventional, -Christianlike way. True, time had sobered him -considerably. He was now a handsome young fellow, living -quietly and sedately with his uncle at Broadwater; not easy to -recognise as the lad who had discomfited an itinerant preacher, -and played the stable-boy on the race-course at Bayview. -But the spirit of Bohemianism dies hard, and I was possessed with -the idea that, even in the act of “placing himself” -for life, Ronald would make opportunity for a final fling. -He was having a really bad time of it with his uncle, and, in -spite of occasional outbursts, when the Viking blood got the -better of him, had been fairly amenable to discipline. The -old man, I know, must have been a constant thorn in his flesh; -very selfish, and very dogmatic on all points, especially -politics. If he could have reasoned logically himself, or -have listened to reason in others, he would have been less -objectionable. But he formed his opinions on grounds as -strictly illogical as does the average woman, and, to <a -name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>do him -justice, never abandoned them. For example:</p> -<p>“What a grand speech that was of Gladstone’s -yesterday, Ronald!”</p> -<p>“Do you think so, sir? It seemed a trifle -commonplace to me in comparison with Dizzy’s -reply.”</p> -<p>“Pshaw! Dizzy’s no speaker at all compared -with him.”</p> -<p>“Did you ever hear him, sir?”</p> -<p>“Never—and don’t want to.”</p> -<p>“Then you have read his speeches, sir?”</p> -<p>“Never—and I hope I never may.”</p> -<p>This was his recognised line of argument (Heaven save the -mark!) on all topics. Yet to differ from any of his -conclusions was a most serious offence, which Ronald in time -learned how to avoid. His own part in a conversation became -limited to a series of characterless phrases—“Yes, -sir,” “No, sir,” “Of course, -sir”—which passed muster as entirely -satisfactory. Occasionally, it is true, they were flavoured -with a salt of sarcasm, but as this only rebounded harmlessly, -without piercing his uncle’s pachydermatous hide, the peace -was seldom broken between them. Outsiders were less -merciful.</p> -<p><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -82</span>“Growing a trifle dogmatical is Heyward, -isn’t he?”—one club member would say to -another—when a theory, accepted obediently by my -uncle’s household, had been thrust a little prematurely -down a stranger’s throat. “But there: -he’s getting on in years—sixty, I should say, if -he’s a day—and we shall all of us like our own way -then. Indeed, youngsters like it too, as a Master of -Trinity found with his junior Fellows. ‘Not one of us -is infallible,’ he said to them, ‘not even the -youngest.’”</p> -<p>It was a gentlemanly face, was old Heyward’s, though, if -you happened to be a judge of faces, you would probably have -added “a weak one.” Yes, and—No. -Not strong, certainly, in intellect or knowledge, though the -features are scored with deep-cut lines, that might be mistaken -by the casual observer for traces of reflective thought. -But lines traced by the hand of intellect ennoble and brighten -the face, even in the act of carving it; these had only soured -and embittered it. Such strength as they show is the -strength of a dogged persistency, which clings to an opinion, -right or wrong, because it admits no counter argument, and always -carries its point by a process of blank obstructiveness. -But <a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>each -victory thus gained is of the nature of a defeat, narrowing and -confining the soul still more within its self-imposed limits, -deafening it to the interests of an outer world, and to the joys -and sorrows of humanity at large.</p> -<p>His sister was a tall, angular woman, with thin, compressed -lips and a cold, grey eye, betokening a far more active and -aggressive will. But probably no two people were ever more -entirely in harmony, till Ronald sowed dissension between -them. Even dissimilarities, in their case, became points of -agreement. For instance, the uncle read much and forgot all -that he read, while she read nothing and had consequently nothing -to forget. Then again, they were united in their devotion -to comfort, for which each required the other. Wider forms -of attachment they ignored and dispensed with, as unprofitable -for the furtherance of the main issue. Friends, servants, -animals, who were found detrimental, simply disappeared without -comment, as unobtrusively as did the obnoxious teachers in Madame -Beck’s famous <i>pensionnat</i> in the Rue Fossette.</p> -<p>In the art of “nagging” our uncle was supreme, -bearing out Sarah Grand’s theory that women are nowhere in -this province, <a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -84</span>which has been reckoned peculiarly their own. -Curling himself up gracefully in his favourite armchair, and -lighting a cigar, he would prepare himself to enjoy it. -Sometimes the attack would be sudden and wanting in delicacy.</p> -<p>“Ronald, I wish you could manage to be down in time for -dinner.” Ronald, be it observed, had been five -minutes late, but yet five minutes prior to its announcement by -the butler.</p> -<p>“My tie was so infern—intolerably hard to fasten, -sir. I must get a <i>Jemima</i>.”</p> -<p>“A <i>Jemima</i>!” shouted the -uncle—scandalised at the idea of Ronald contemplating the -introduction of some rustic handmaid—“What on earth -do you mean?”</p> -<p>“A hand-made tie, sir.” (The pun is yours, -old man, not mine. Besides, the uncle wouldn’t have -seen it, even if he’d given me the chance.—R.)</p> -<p>A mollified pause of ten minutes. The next time he would -preface his thrust with a feint, to throw Ronald off his -guard.</p> -<p>“What a wonderfully nice young fellow Carter is. -Gets himself up as if he were living in town. I <i>do</i> -like to see a fellow wear <a name="page85"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 85</span>a tall hat on Sunday; it’s far -and away more respectable than a round one.”</p> -<p>Ronald was incorrigible in this respect, and became as the -deaf adder.</p> -<p>Five minutes’ grace.</p> -<p>“How that fellow Stanton did talk at dinner; one -couldn’t get a word in edgeways. By-the-by, I think -<i>you</i> talk a little too freely, Ronald, to men older and -wiser than yourself.”</p> -<p>“<i>Semper ego auditor tantum</i>?” muttered -Ronald.</p> -<p>“What is it you are saying, Ronald? I do wish you -would speak up.”</p> -<p>“I said I would only listen in future, sir. -<i>Nunquamne reponam</i>?” (the latter <i>sotto -voce</i>).</p> -<p>“There you are—muttering again.”</p> -<p>“I was only saying I wished I could write a book, -sir.”</p> -<p>Miss Heyward couldn’t hold a candle to her brother in -this particular department. She lacked altogether the -delicacy of “finesse” which is essential to its -development, and, strange to say, possessed in a high degree by -people of feeble intelligence. But she seconded him bravely -in cases where temper and determination would serve its -purpose. <a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -86</span>Here it was to advocate stronger measures, and hers was -the master mind. She was not without a suspicion that time -and reiteration had blunted the edge of her brother’s -innuendo. When therefore she was called in for -consultation, Ronald knew that it betokened a definite and -concerted campaign. He would be sent to Coventry, or fed on -roast pork, and specialities that his soul abhorred, or (but for -his age) have been whipped. Finally, and in the last -resort, his pocket money would be docked—a punishment that -was known to be effective. Spending little upon himself, he -had always a band of pensioners who were dependent on him for -assistance. So it was through them that he could most -surely be reached. “Seething the kid in the -mother’s milk,” as we are told in -‘Kenilworth,’ is an occupation that offers a wide -field to the ingenuity of the inventive.</p> -<p>“Two’s company and three’s none,” -muttered Ronald, when, on entering a room suddenly, he found an -animated conversation drop suddenly into silence, while an echo -of his own escapades and iniquities lingered in the air.</p> -<h4><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -87</span>II</h4> -<p>A strange and melancholy life it was for a lad of -Ronald’s temperament; a strange and incongruous -fellowship:</p> -<blockquote><p>“For East is East, and West is West, and -never the twain shall meet”</p> -</blockquote> -<p>Yet it had in it one redeeming feature. Only a mile from -Broadwater, in the white house that nestles in the heart of the -valley, just visible to us over a depression in the lulls, lived -a young widow of twenty-eight—Ronald’s dearest -friend, and his comforter and consoler whenever the monotony of -existence seemed almost intolerable to the lad just entering on -manhood.</p> -<p>The coalition between Ronald and Mrs. Thorpe was regarded with -extreme disfavour by the uncle. “Making a milksop of -the lad,” he called it sneeringly. But the villagers, -one and all of them, were emphatic in their praise. -“A nice couple they’d make,” said old widow -Denvers. “I only hope it may come off, and that I may -be alive to see it. And love each other they do already, -unless my old eyes deceive me. See how he follers her about -and well nigh wusshups the ground <a name="page88"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 88</span>she treads on. Why he’d -be at Thorpe Hill all day, if only that old aunt of his -didn’t watch him like a cat. Drat her!”</p> -<p>A feeling of companionship had steadily grown up between -them. The almost daily meetings and constant interchange of -ideas had produced their natural result, and the companionship -that had at first been a pleasure had long become a -necessity. Yet, strange to say, neither had recognised the -fact. Ronald himself would have scouted the idea. -Possessed of not a penny in his own rights, and dependent only on -what his uncle allowed him, he would have ridiculed the notion of -asking the richest woman in the county to become his wife. -Indeed it was the deterrent influence of their relative positions -that had excluded the possibility from finding a place among the -contingencies of his life. Yet she it was, however -unwittingly, who was the cause of Ronald’s last -escapade.</p> -<p>The idea had frequently occurred to him that she had inspired -his uncle with the nearest approximation to love of which his -nature was capable. Not according to the accepted -traditions of lovemaking, nor exhibited in a manner that would be -patent to the world at large. But <a -name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>he showed her -attentions that he withheld from all other women. He would -enquire solicitously after her health, and the health of her -dogs, in huge Grandisonian phrases; above all, he would vacate -for her his favourite armchair, and waive her into it with a bow -of old-world politeness. (To his sister, who ruled his -household, the chair in question was rigorously debarred). -Then again, she was a Liberal in politics. Not that this -counted for much, because he maintained that women should be -allowed no politics at all, beyond presenting a feeble reflex of -the man who was nearest or dearest to them. Much as he -hated Conservatism, he would sooner have seen the wife of his -friend Jacobs pose as the rankest of Tories, than at variance -with her husband in a way so subversive of the relation of the -sexes.</p> -<p>“What a blessing it is to get across here for a change -of air,” said Ronald, flinging himself down on a chair in -Mrs. Thorpe’s drawing-room, where she was arranging her -flowers for the day.</p> -<p>“Well, what’s the matter now? Is it the aunt -or the uncle who has ruffled you this morning?”</p> -<p><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -90</span>“Not so much the people as the atmosphere. -The air seems laden with small trivialities. I feel like -the man in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ who lived in a -cloud of dust that he was constantly raising. Whereas life -ought to be lived on a breezy upland, with your face to the -sea.”</p> -<p>“I think I understand what you mean, though your -reminiscences of Bunyan are a trifle mixed. And perhaps the -dust is better for you.”</p> -<p>“Not a bit of it, when it’s of one’s own -making. Now <i>you</i> haven’t a scrap of dust in -your house.”</p> -<p>“I’m not so sure. Look at that piano. -Anyhow, you didn’t come all this way so early in the -morning to treat me to a revised version of Bunyan’s -allegory. What’s the matter, Ronald?”</p> -<p>“I believe the old man’s jealous of me. He -says I’m over here too often—that people are -beginning to talk, and all manner of rot. I’m almost -sure he wants to marry you himself.”</p> -<p>“My dear boy, you’re dreaming. Do you think -that I would abandon my independence, and all my advanced -theories on women, to adopt your uncle’s musty, -antediluvian ideas? <a name="page91"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 91</span>Not a bit of it. Why I’d -sooner marry <i>you</i>, if the worst came to the worst, though -even that wouldn’t suit me either.”</p> -<p>“It would suit <i>me</i>,” muttered Ronald, -“just down to the ground.”</p> -<p>The uncle’s sight had of late been failing him, owing to -some weakness or lesion of the nerve that no spectacles could -remedy. Under these circumstances, his favourite amanuensis -was Ronald; for, though I regret to say it, his sister’s -spelling was occasionally defective, and his uncle was particular -above all things that his correspondence should be strictly -orthographic. Not that this characteristic could be imputed -to Miss Heyward as a fault, especially in these days, when even -Peeresses (I am told) have adopted phonetic spelling, and -orthography has been relegated to our village schools as the -symbol of a lower and less intellectual class. But the -uncle was conservative in everything but politics, and regarded -the innovation as a forecast of the nation’s decadence.</p> -<p>One morning he called Ronald into his study, with a -thoughtful, pre-occupied air that betokened business of more than -average importance.</p> -<p><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -92</span>“Ronald, I’m thinking of marrying—and -who do you suppose is my choice? A great friend of yours by -the way, Mrs. Thorpe. I like her amazingly; a most -well-bred woman, who will look famously at the head of my -table. Then again, she’s got money, though it’s -true I don’t want it. And her property marches with -mine; and we’ll enclose it all in a ring fence, and have -the finest estate in the county. She’s got a few -crotchets, I know, but they’ll soon be ousted when -she’s found a sensible man to advise her. I grant -I’m a trifle old for her, but people think nothing of that -in these days when the fault is on the right side. What do -you say to it? a good idea, isn’t it?”</p> -<p>“Very good indeed, sir,” said -Ronald—demurely, but doubtingly.</p> -<p>“You ain’t very hearty about it, Ronald. I -expected you to jump at the suggestion. Indeed, I thought -you were a little gone on her yourself, and would have welcomed -her warmly for your aunt. You’re across at her house -pretty well every day.”</p> -<p>“Yes, sir, I am; and I do like her very much. -Indeed, I wouldn’t have minded marrying her -myself.”</p> -<p><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -93</span>“Good Lord! if that doesn’t beat -everything! A mere boy like you, without a penny in the -world except what you get from me—and I’m not dead -yet by a long way, Ronald—<i>you</i> to be in love with the -richest woman in the county! God bless me! What are -the boys coming to? But there—it’s -nonsense. Put it out of your head, my lad, and sit down and -write what I tell you.”</p> -<p>The letter, when it was forwarded, ran thus:</p> -<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. -Thorpe</span>,</p> -<p>“I write on a subject that touches very nearly the -happiness of my future life (‘it touches mine, -R.’) You must have seen, I imagine, how much I have -admired and loved you (‘my sentiments exactly R.’); -nor can you be blind to the fact that no other woman occupies the -place in my esteem which has been wholly given to you -(‘couldn’t have expressed myself better, -R.’) I now offer you my hand and heart -(‘savours of the complete letter writer, but true -notwithstanding, R.’), together with all my worldly -possessions (‘£50, all included, R.’) You -know, I fancy, my ways and habits as no other woman can know them -(‘too well by half, R.’) My temper is equable, -and I am, I think, companionable (‘query? R.’) -My nephew Ronald will continue to live with us; you know him well -(‘I should just think so, R.’) He is a really -good-hearted, well-meaning lad (‘thanks, <a -name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>old man, -R.’), but a little uppish at times, and thinks he knows -everything, like all the boys of the present day (‘I -retract my thanks, R.’) But I fancy that you and he -will get on together (‘admirably, R.’)</p> -<p>“I shall await your answer with impatience, and -anxiously hope it may be favourable (‘to me, R.’)</p> -<p>“I remain,</p> -<p style="text-align: center">“Your sincere admirer,</p> -<p style="text-align: right">“A. <span -class="smcap">Heyward</span>.”<br /> -(‘Your loving friend, R.’)</p> -</blockquote> -<p>The answer came next day, and was a crushing blow to my -uncle’s hopes. She thanked him gratefully for the -offer, and regretted the disappointment her answer would cause -him. But her affections, she said, had long been bestowed -on his nephew, and she had lately had <i>reason to believe</i> -(italics at Ronald’s request) that the feeling was -reciprocated. She was in a position, she added, to -disregard monetary considerations in the choice of a husband.</p> -<p style="text-align: center">* * * *</p> -<p>There was strife within the gates of Broadwater on the -announcement of Ronald’s engagement. The uncle was -furious at being supplanted this second time, and, to make -matters worse, the offender in this case was <a -name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>the nephew of -his choice. So wroth was he that he nearly made me his heir -out of spite, and, for two or three days, my price rose -considerably on the matrimonial market. But, on giving -tongue to his wrath, he found himself without a supporter. -“A servile war had broken out” (to quote from -‘Cometh up,’—sweetest of all love stories, but, -Great <i>Dionysius</i>! what Greek!) and his sister was in a -state of open rebellion. It was she who headed the rising, -and with her went all the servants, which left our uncle in a -minority of one. She was, naturally enough, well pleased at -the progress of events, and anticipated with satisfaction the -continuance of her reign.</p> -<p>Ronald, so soon as his month’s probation was ended, was -thankful to be received out of the fray into the sanctuary of -Thorpe. Not that he was at peace, even there. His -conscience gave him twinges, and I had a word to say to him on -the subject, and his wife had a word or two more. But it -was all for his good, and he had brought it upon himself by -treating matrimony (of all estates in the world) in a spirit of -graceless levity.</p> -<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> -<p><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>And -what of myself? Well, reader, I had lost my chance, or, -perhaps, willingly foregone it. All Ronald’s pet -schemes had been safe in my hands, and I was little likely to -oppose the present one, when, almost from the first, I had -pictured its realisation, and seen how necessary it was to the -happiness and stability of his life. My -unselfishness—call it passivity if you will—carried -with it its own reward, for neither of the two was happy without -me, and Thorpe Hill practically became my home.</p> -<h3><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>Judy, -or Retrieved</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">Ronald</span> became her ‘fidus -Achates’ and Lord High Almoner in all her acts of -charity. Occasionally, it is true, he misunderstood or -exceeded his instructions, as, for instance, when he went round -with a parcel of physic to a sick cottager.</p> -<p>“How be I to take ’m? did she tell -’e?”</p> -<p>“No: she didn’t, but she meant all, I suppose, -unless it’s written inside.”</p> -<p>This was a large order, as the parcel contained castor oil, a -black draught, and six blue pills.</p> -<p>“And which be I to take fust? She must ha’ -told ’e that.”</p> -<p>Again Ronald was at fault.</p> -<p>“Much, I allow, as the gentry do their -vittles—solids fust, and drinks atterwards.”</p> -<p>The prescriptions, whatever the order observed in their -administration, answered to perfection, and Ronald’s fame -was greatly magnified by the result. His drugs were in <a -name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>high -request everywhere, and were reported to be “powerfully -fine.”</p> -<p>One day his wife said to him, “Ronald, would you like to -hear a project I have in hand for reclaiming a pet -drunkard?”</p> -<p>“Very much: what is it?”</p> -<p>“I shall give him a dog.”</p> -<p>“Good Lord! how will that help him? It reminds one -of a story in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ where somebody -with a crack-jaw name gives to somebody else—a porter, I -think it was—a lump of lead, promising it will make his -fortune. But he wisely declined to specify by what -particular method the charm would work. I think the man -weighted a fish-line with it, and caught a salmon with a diamond -in its mouth. But you can hardly expect your scheme to work -like that.”</p> -<p>“Wait and see, Ronald. I read in a German story -book the other day how a dog had turned a man into an early riser -(I shall give you one, Ronald), and made him charitable, and -religious, and all the rest of it. Surely I can trust my -dog to reclaim a man from one single failing.”</p> -<p>“I should like to see how he’s going to do -it,” said Ronald incredulously. “The chances <a -name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>are your -<i>protégé</i> will take his dog the first day to -the nearest public-house. And, if he gets biscuits there, -as a nice dog is sure to do, he’ll want no coaxing to take -his master there every day. And the last state of that man -will be worse than the first.”</p> -<p>“I am afraid there is no worse possible in this -case. At any rate I have faith in my dog.”</p> -<p>The next day a ragged little hound, called “Judy,” -was selected from the kennels at Thorpe Hill, and despatched to -the <i>protégé</i> in question. Pure white -she was, and so small, that, at a shift, you could hold her in -the hollow of your hand. A veritable little mongrel, of -course, if ever there was one. Indeed, nothing but a -mongrel would have had the capacity for so delicate a -mission. For, as we all know, it is to the mongrel that we -look for intelligence and originality. The consciousness of -inherited merit is fatal to intellectual progress in an animal of -pedigree. Partiality—but only the most -prejudiced—might have called Judy a rough Irish -terrier. Only her ears didn’t lop, but were carried -erect like a donkey’s, and her legs were too long, and her -tail had an ugly “kinck” in it.</p> -<p><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -102</span>Having abused her sufficiently for her personal -appearance, let me add that she had the sweetest and most winning -of faces—chiefly composed of eyes, which were so large in -comparison with the rest of her features that they seemed to -swallow them up, giving to the face, as a whole, the thin, -troubled look of premature age, which is so pathetic in any sick -animal. But Judy was far from being delicate, and enjoyed -to the full the zest and sparkle of life. With her head on -one side, and her ears pricked up, and attention bestowed on the -curl of her tail, a matter in which she was often negligent, she -would have matched the best of them as a study of arrested -life.</p> -<p>The two—the dog and the young reprobate she was expected -to reform—took to each other with all their hearts, and -soon became inseparable. But at first Ronald’s -pessimistic prophecy seemed likely to be realised. True to -his natural instinct, her master took Judy at once to the nearest -public-house, and, as the biscuits due to an intelligent dog were -always forthcoming, Judy fell in entirely with her master’s -view as to the direction their daily walk should take. -Ronald triumphed <a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -103</span>maliciously but prematurely. For Judy was to be -recalled to her duty by a stern dispensation.</p> -<p>It happened one day, that, as she and her master were -starting, a troop of bicyclists came scorching down the hill, and -Judy, caught off her guard and losing her head, was run over, and -taken up for dead. After long days of anxious nursing she -was called slowly back to life, at least to a measure of -life. But the little dog’s nerve was gone. From -that day forward no persuasion could tempt her to follow her -master along the public road. Warned by experience, she -dreaded bicyclists at every turning. Just so far as the -garden gate, and no further, she would follow him, and, with a -thin little feeble whine, plead almost in words for a change of -route. But the master’s heart was steeled. It -was to be a conflict of will between them. And which was to -conquer? the dog or the man? For days and weeks the result -trembled in the scale. But the walk grew dreary apart from -his companion, and, going and returning, he was haunted by the -piteous whine. Then at last he succumbed. The -day’s walk along the high road was exchanged for a run in -the nearest field or common, and Judy’s heart rejoiced, and -her <a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -104</span>spirit came again to her, and she became—almost, -but never quite—her natural self again.</p> -<p>Thenceforth the sympathy between these two was complete. -When Judy was ill again, almost to death, she was restful nowhere -but in her master’s presence. When he left the room, -her eyes would languidly follow him; when he came back, they -kindled to life again, breathed into by a new spirit; and when he -took her in his arms, all pain and disquiet ceased, and she lay -neither shivering nor moaning—lost to all feeling but the -satisfied assurance of his love.</p> -<p>“Well, Ronald, and how about my experiment?”</p> -<p>“You’ve beaten me,” was the reply. -“What a wonderful woman you are!”</p> -<h4>II</h4> -<blockquote><p>“In quo tam similem videbis Issam<br /> -Ut sit tam similis sibi nec ipsa.”</p> -<p style="text-align: right"><span -class="smcap">Martial</span>.</p> -</blockquote> -<p>She was a very little dog with a very large soul, and all her -soul looked out of her eyes. No one whom she loved could -doubt <a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -105</span>her love, when once her eyes had assumed their final -expression. “I am your friend for life,” they -said, “and for death—and perhaps beyond -it.”</p> -<p>In the frivolous days of her youth she had snapped at the -knickerbockers of a chubby errand boy, and been promptly handed -over for punishment. But she broke from the executioner -under the indignity of the first stroke, and fled for refuge to -her master’s bedroom, from which no efforts could dislodge -her. So, making the best of a bad business, he took to his -bed too for company’s sake. Judy was deeply touched -by this practical sympathy, and it formed, I believe, the -historic ground-work of their life-long friendship.</p> -<p>Her pedigree was mixed. Her father was a white English -terrier of unimpeachable breed, who lived a sober, self-contained -existence, with no friend but the postman, whom he followed -conscientiously on all his rounds of delivery. Her mother -was the daughter of a “King Charles,” who had been -woo’d and won by a fox. Fair and frail, she was -careless of the duties of life, and passed her time in eating and -sleeping, sleeping and eating—she is sleeping and eating -still, the latter with an <a name="page106"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 106</span>ever increasing appetite as the time -at her disposal grows less.</p> -<p>Judy repudiated <i>in toto</i> her maternal parentage, and -reproduced all the best characteristics of her father, combined -with a brilliant intelligence, and a far wider appreciation of -the sympathies of life. Her minor peculiarities were -borrowed from those of a cat. She sat like a cat, pounced -like a cat, and washed her face like a cat, using either or both -of her paws with a truly feline indifference. She could -climb bushes, too, hanging on by her teeth, to the detriment of -any unwary fledgling who presumed over confidently upon the -limitation of natural gifts.</p> -<p>Judy often came on a visit to Thorpe Hill, where she regularly -spent an hour after dinner in digging at the root of a favourite -beech tree, with the energy of a dog that is close on a -prize. From which I inferred that she was a truffle-terrier -in disguise, who would make all our fortunes, and set Matthew to -dig in her place till he blasphemed against Judy and the truffles -and me. But Matthew didn’t put his heart into his -work, or realise the fact that Judy’s credit was at -stake. And I always believed in her more than I did in -him. Later <a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -107</span>on she justified my confidence—not, I admit, by a -discovery of truffles, but (better still) of a full-grown Roman -or Anglo-Saxon, crouching among his household divinities. -Judy was complacently proud of him as a very superior find, in -spite of Matthew’s sneer, “Tweren’t triffles, -<i>I</i> knowed,” and forthwith transferred her attentions -to a neighbouring tree, under which, for all I know, others of -his family may still be reposing.</p> -<p>It is humbling to admit that she was wholly devoid of tricks, -properly so called: partly because no one had troubled to teach -her any, and partly, I think, because she accounted it a waste of -time to try and acquire them. No one who studied her -thoughtful little face could doubt that she held higher and more -recondite theories of the responsibilities of life.</p> -<p>It was probably the same reason that led her to pass her days -in silence. Few objects she thought were worth the trouble -involved of setting in motion the harsh and cumbrous method by -which alone a dog converses—certainly not meat and drink, -and therefore she declined to ask for them. The prospect of -a walk, or the sight of a blackbird deriding <a -name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>her from a -twig, formed the only exceptions and proved the rule. -Otherwise Judy would have been a canine Trappist. And her -reticence was the more remarkable, seeing that her mother passed -her time in futile and vociferous talking. Probable Judy -regarded her as an object lesson and a warning. She was -certainly disdainful of her noise.</p> -<p>But she had two natural gifts: you may call them tricks if you -will. She took her meals like a Christian, seated, or -rather kneeling, at table beside her master, with her paws -doubled under her knees. From this post of vantage she -would watch the whole proceedings of dinner with the curiosity of -an epicure. But dining on her own account offered little -attraction. The position of her paws, it is true, suggested -an attitude of devotion and gained for her the reputation of -saying grace before meat. But her own diet was strictly -limited to morsels of bread and biscuit, which she received with -indifference, and apparently without gratitude. It may be -that she dined in the night-time, as Amina did with the -ghoul. If so, I hope she selected more desirable -company.</p> -<p>She had one other peculiarity. I cannot <a -name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>call it an -accomplishment, though it found her a number of admirers. -After studying you intently with eyes that looked you through and -through, as though she were appraising carefully your capacity -for friendship, she would raise a delicate fur-capped paw, and -lay it gently upon your nose—never anywhere else. It -was a favour accorded to no stranger, never indeed till she had -known you for months. For it was an oath of allegiance, -emblematic as the solemn transfusion of blood, and renewable on -occasion, if you cared to elicit it by staring her well out of -countenance. Yet it was trying to be reminded of the fact -when you were kneeling at prayers in full view of the servants, -simply because Judy regarded your attitude and surroundings as a -ceremonial specially designed for the re-enactment of her -vow.</p> -<p>Being a good friend, Judy was, by consequence, an equally good -nurse. The attributes of the two are indeed strangely akin, -if the latter be not a natural development of the former. -For in sickness, as in sorrow, there are times when a sympathetic -silence is a better restorative than more obtrusive -remedies. Her master found it so when Judy <a -name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>nursed him -for four months at a stretch, sacrificing without a whine the -most brilliant summer on record. Cleverer than many a nurse -or doctor, she inferred his condition from certain changes of -face and expression, unappreciable by their less intuitive -faculties. Satisfied by a careful inspection that he was -for the moment improving, she would fall back on the pillow with -a sigh of satisfaction, till he was restless again, or till the -time came—she knew it as well as did the nurse—when -he had to be roused for his medicine.</p> -<p>Judy was sorry, I fancy, on her own account when the days of -her nursing were ended by her master’s recovery. For -she never disguised her real sentiments, whether creditable or -the reverse, differing therein from the race of men, at whose -feelings and motives one can only hazard a bewildered guess.</p> -<p>Judy taught her master many things: among them how to win the -love of her community. Jealousy, it seems, is the family -failing. It is idle, she told him, to imagine that a few -scraps of half-hearted affection can claim the devotion of a -life. Careless, casual attentions may gratify an unexacting -dog; <a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -111</span>they can never win his heart’s love. It is -not for pity’s sake, as some will tell you, that the -mongrel of the streets is attracted by preference to the vagabond -and outcast, who is as lonely as himself; rather, because he -feels that here at any rate is a field unoccupied, a mine of -sympathy that will royally repay for working.</p> -<p>But let the master of his affection form other and more -engrossing ties, and the love that he has given he will -infallibly withdraw—not hastily, capriciously, or for the -moment, but slowly, deliberately, and for ever—at what cost -to himself is happily not ours to fathom.</p> -<h4>III</h4> -<blockquote><p>“They sin who tell as love can -die.”</p> -<p style="text-align: right"><span -class="smcap">Southey</span>.</p> -</blockquote> -<p>Retrieved by Judy from a life of shame, her master had become -a respectable character, and the year afterwards found work as a -carpenter in an adjoining town, which compelled him to migrate -from our village.</p> -<p>How to dispose of his dog was the question. His lodgings -were situated in a crowded street, <a name="page112"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 112</span>through which a continuous stream of -the vehicles most dreaded by Judy, bicycles included, was passing -literally by night and day. Garden he had none—only a -small paved court-yard, tenanted in the main by children and -cats, Judy’s natural enemies, while the nearest field was -two miles off. It was clearly impossible to transfer her to -such surroundings. Her future was settled thus. She -was left in his old rooms under special charge of the landlady, -and every evening when his day’s work was done, wet or -fine, winter or summer, her master walked out to console her for -the long hours of his absence.</p> -<p>Such affection might have satisfied a reasonable dog. -But Judy was distinctly unreasonable. She -remembered—none better—how in former times she was -with him all the day, and sometimes, when she willed to have it -so, all the night as well. <i>Now</i> she was left to her -own devices, and only caught a hurried glimpse of him in the -evening when she was too sleepy to enjoy it. Besides, when -he left her at the garden gate, she was strictly enjoined not to -follow him—a prohibition which, while it whetted her -curiosity, was also regarded as a direct insult, viewed in the <a -name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>light of -former days, and the unrestricted licence that had been accorded -to her then.</p> -<p>So Judy put on her considering cap. “He -can’t go far,” she said, “else he could never -leave me so late and get home in time for bed. And -I’m sure he doesn’t drive or travel by train, else -his boots would never be so muddy when he comes here at -seven. So it’s clear that he walks. And, in -that case, a dog of the feeblest intelligence can follow in his -track.”</p> -<p>Accordingly, on a wet and windy evening, when bicyclists were -not likely to be abroad, a little wistful-eyed face peered out -into the road, growing bolder and bolder as her master receded -from view, but ever and again hurriedly withdrawn whenever he -turned upon her with a threatening hand. Then he vanished -behind a hill, and Judy felt that her opportunity was come. -But a mob of children ran by with sticks in their hands, and Judy -slunk back in alarm. As soon as these had passed, she made -another attempt. But horror of horrors! a bicyclist -scorched by, and back she shrank again into the friendly -shade. At last the road was empty and silent. The -most careful inspection to the <a name="page114"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 114</span>right hand and to the left could -find no sign of life, and the keenest ears with which ever dog -was gifted failed to detect a sound.</p> -<p>“Now or never,” said Judy, and with tail erect, -and her tiny snub nose well to ground on the scent, she rushed -out into the night.</p> -<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> -<p>An hour later a man was sitting down to his supper in the -adjoining town, cursing the noise of the street in which he -lived, with its wrangling women and screaming children, and cabs -and drays coming home for the night, when a little dog whined and -scraped at his door, and Judy rushed in, mud-stained and panting -and panic-stricken with fear.</p> -<p>It was probably the fright that killed her; it may have been -some injury. Her master never knew.</p> -<p>Only a brief friendship, measured by the standard of -time. But perhaps what Southey says is true, and -“love is indestructible”—even the love that -bound these two.</p> -<h3><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>Our -Professor</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">No</span>: he was no Professor in the -recognised sense of the term; not a bit of it. Neither can -I tell you how he acquired the title, unless it were in -recognition of his original wit. He was simply my factotum -or Man Friday, ready for shooting, fishing, game-keeping, or -gardening, as the emergency of the moment required. He -could neither read nor write. But what are trifling details -like these in comparison with ’cuteness. Institute a -Tripos for originality and native wit, and Matthew would even -now, at the age of seventy, pass with high honours. But the -examination must be strictly <i>viva voce</i>, and not allowed to -wander into the region of conventional knowledge.</p> -<p>“Matthew,” I said, “this isn’t -work,” as I bestowed a kick upon an object that lay prone -upon the lawn, when it ought to have been digging at our garden -border.</p> -<p>“No, sir; but it’s <i>preparin</i>’ for -it,” was the prompt reply. For myself, I was knocked -<a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>out of -time, though I felt I was clearly within my rights. Fancy a -man, roused from a peaceful siesta, being ready with a retort of -such preternatural smartness!</p> -<p>Unhappily Matthew had two failings, by which his career was -handicapped. He was always lazy, and sometimes -inebriate. Of the former he never repented so long as I -knew him; the latter he was always repenting of and always -repeating. And the stage of repentance was the more acute -and the more grievous, at any rate to his neighbours. After -a bout of drinking he would wander through the house with his -hands on the pit of his stomach—as if the seat of his -iniquity lay there—moaning in a dreary, exasperating way, -“The Lord forgie I; I’ll never be drunk -agin.” “How can you <i>expect</i> him -to?” said his wife, in a tone of the bitterest sarcasm.</p> -<p>Every time he repented he took the pledge anew. The -consequence was, his bosom was garnished with blue -ribbons—his “decorations” he called -them—for he never cast off one when he assumed another, but -regarded them as an old soldier does his medals, traces of many a -scar and many a conflict, in which, unhappily, he always -fell.</p> -<p><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -119</span>“Decorations!” said his wife, “fine -decorations! Call ’em rather sign-posts along the -road to perdition. If you stick to ’em all when -you’re buried, they’ll have no trouble in fixing -<i>your</i> whereabouts.”</p> -<p>Sometimes, when he was particularly exasperating, she would -take the law in her own hands. “My head’s -swimmin’ like a tee-total,” Matthew would say -pathetically. “The very last thing it ought to swim -like,” retorted his wife, a woman with a ready wit, -“but I’ll soon make it do so.” And with -that she would take him in her strong arms and give him a twist, -as boys do when they give its first impetus to a top, after which -she would wait patiently for the result. The result was, of -course, collapse as soon as the primary impulse had run down; -whereupon she would catch him up when he was on the point of -falling, and bear him off to repentance and bed.</p> -<p>Matthew’s dialect was unique. I question whether a -specialist could have reproduced it in its integrity, if only -because it never reached finality, but was always in process of -development. For myself, I had studied it for years, and -could never get any nearer towards the discovery of its -principles. Every day he was <a name="page120"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 120</span>startling you with some new -combination, as a rule strictly ungrammatical, but often a -reversion to some lost or more accurate phraseology. For -example: “Let I go,” “Would you like I to do -it”?—the latter a reproduction, as near as may be, of -the Latin formula <i>visne ego faciam</i>? A still more -perplexing characteristic in his speech was that he used many of -his words in a variety of senses.</p> -<p>“Cuss they nigglin’ weeds,” he’d say, -and “Cuss my nigglin’ toothache”—phrases -in which the adjective (or participle) carried an appreciable -meaning, even when he didn’t add the word -“darn’d” as an explanatory gloss. But -when he transferred the phrase a minute afterwards to a splendid -crop of potatoes, in which my inexperienced eye could detect no -possible fault, I was all at sea again, and had to ask him to -explain himself.</p> -<p>“I means they’m small,” he answered, with a -contemptuous sniff at my ignorance.</p> -<p>“But, Matthew, you told me just now that -‘nigglin’’ meant -‘darn’d.’”</p> -<p>“And so it do—darn’d small;” looking -at me as if he thought the epithet suited me as much as the -potatoes.</p> -<p><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>When -Matthew had pneumonia and lay <i>in extremis</i>, his friends -came round to console him with the assurance that he would die at -the turn of the tide.</p> -<p>“What time, Matthew, do ’en begin to turn?” -they said.</p> -<p>“At seven o’clock, ezzactly,” whispered the -inveterate old humorist. And it was not till the next -morning they discovered that he had defrauded them of one whole -hour of pleasant anticipation.</p> -<p>In his sober moments Matthew was a brilliant story-teller (in -both senses, I fear); though his brilliancy now is limited to -occasional flashes of wit. The following is one of his best -reminiscences. I have selected it out of many because I -have since discovered that it was founded on fact. Not only -was it authenticated by a clergyman in whose neighbourhood it was -enacted, but it was told and re-told by one of the actors in the -tragedy, though he had passed to a land from which no testimony -is available long before I heard the story at second-hand from -Matthew.</p> -<p>“’Twas in December, 1824, that it happened. -So Joseph told I.” (This, at any rate, was -Matthew’s recognised formula.) “’Tis true -<a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>he were -a great liar, and I didn’t take no count o’ the main -o’ his tales; for he’d tell you most anything, he -would; ’specially if he see’d the price of a glass of -fourpenny for tellin’ it. But, in proof ’tis -true, they’d tell it to the childer at night time, when -they was obstrepulous and wouldn’t go to bed—just for -a joke like, to fright ’em to sleep.</p> -<p>“’Twas in December, 1824; and not likely he were -to forget it. For ’twas the year of the great gale -(the ‘Outrage’ they calls it hereabouts), when the -sea broke clean over Rudge and washed away th’ old church, -all but the chancel. Joseph never took kindly-like to the -new church they built for ’en higher up i’ the -valley, out o’ reach o’ the sea. ’Twas -too spick and span, he said, to suit he—all white and -glitterin’ like chalk—though ’twere built of -the best Portland stone, and a sight prettier to my -thinkin’ than the tumble down old barn that’s all -that’s left o’ th’ old un. But the -visitors and gentry, they takes after Joseph, and for one what -goes to see the new church there’s hundreds ’ll bring -their vittles and sit and peant th’ old -’un—studyin’ all the tombstones, and -what’s writ on ’em—mostly shipwrecks it be, for -I doubt if there’s half-a-dozen <a name="page123"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 123</span>stones in th’ old grave-yard -but what tells of someone or t’other who was drownded at -sea. In that one gale of ’24 ’twas thousands -that perished, and all that was found on ’em Joseph buried -there, when the sea gived back her dead, and he could get at his -grave-yard. Though, to be sure, nought was left but the -chancel, so you could scarce say as how, poor souls, they got a -decent buryin’.</p> -<p>“Anyhow ’twas in that very month, just arter the -‘Outrage,’ that one Price—a farmer he called -hisself—was livin’ high up yonder among they hills -that you can see faint-like in the distance, nigh agin they -ricks. A bleak and dreary place it were at the best -o’ times, and a job to get at it at all when a strong -so’wester were blowin’. And most every November -it <i>do</i> blow cruel strong along they high downs, wi’ -no cover to speak on’t ’cept scraps of fuz and -heather, and a small thorn tree, may be, now and agin, wi’ -’is branches all leanin’ to the nor’-east, as -though ’twas an old man a holdin’ out his arms for -shelter. And the road to Price’s farm were no better -nor a sheep run. A godless man Price were, as you’d -expect wi’ a man who lived so far from all we decent -folks. And he never com’d <a name="page124"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 124</span>nigh no church. Passon, he -said, didn’t suit he, and he weren’t a goin’ to -trapeze over hill and dale—not he—when chance -’twas he’d find no passon and no service at -t’other end. And if passon went to he—as he did -now and agin—he’d find the door shut in his -face. And for vittles—not a bite nor a sup of -anything did he offer ’en, though passon was a rare -’un at that kind of work. Sunday after Sunday -he’d look in reg’lar nigh about dinner time, and -savour by his nose, he would, where there was a chance for -’en of summat enticin’. Not but what -’twere bad for the childer where he <i>did</i> settle -hisself, for ’twas little of the pudden was left for they -when he’d a’ had his turn on’t.</p> -<p>“Howsomever, ’twas there Price lived, wi’ -hisself for his company. So no wonder strange tales got -abroad about ’m. ’Twas said, though Joseph -never gived no heed to ’t, that three wives had entered his -doors, and never one of ’em had come out agin—no, not -for buryin’. And Joseph must have known on’t if -so be they had, seein’ he were clerk and sexton and -grave-digger, let alone the head o’ the choir. -’Twas thought that he’d buried ’em in another -parish, more nigher to the house <a name="page125"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 125</span>he lived in, and wi’ a better -road ’long which to carry ’em. But, Lord save -us! tweren’t nothin’ of the kind.</p> -<p>“One morning, early in December, ’twas nine -o’ the clock, may be, or thereabouts—for Joseph had -just been out to pen the sheep in the church-yard—a tall -fine old genelman called at the door, and he knowed by his dress -’twere the Bishop. Not that he’d cast eyes on -’en before, for our youngsters are confirmed a way off; -there baint enough of them to claim a Bishop for -theirselves. But he knowed ’twere the Bishop, what -wi’ his gaiters, fittin’ as though they’d -grow’d to his legs, and his broad hat as shiny as if -you’d smoothed it wi’ a flat iron.</p> -<p>“‘Good morning to you,’ says he, as pleasant -as anyone could say it. ‘You be clerk of the parish, -baint you?’ ‘True, your wusshup,’ he -replied. ‘And sexton too’ says he. -‘Right you be; and grave-digger and choir leader as -well,’ for he thought it no sin to make the most to -’m of his preferments. ‘Well,’ says he, -‘I want you for a buryin’—this night at eight -o’clock.’ ‘A buryin’, your -wusshup,’ says he, ‘and at night?’ -‘Yes, and three on ’em,’ says he, ‘all in -one grave.’ ‘Well, it <i>do</i> sound <a -name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>mortial -strange, your wusshup, but ’tis you that says it, and not -I.’ ‘You’d better go at once,’ he -says, ‘and begin the grave, for you won’t have none -too much time to spare on’t, ’specially as I want it -done on the quiet, so to speak, and you mustn’t take no -hand to help you, and meet me punctually as ever is at eight -o’clock at Farmer Price’s, up along the hill, and -bring a lantern and the parish hand-bier ’long wi’ -’e.’</p> -<p>“He hadn’t much time to ponder on it, as you may -suppose, with that grave to dig, and no one to gi’ ’m -a helpin’ hand. And mortial hard work he found it, -too, for the frost set in early that year, and the ground that -hard that, young and lusty as he were, he found it a job to get -the pick-axe into ’en.</p> -<p>“Howsomever he did get ’en done, and at eight -o’clock he was at Farmer Price’s door, and -’twas opened to ’en by the Bishop hisself. And -so, hand in hand as you may say, he and the Bishop, they went -into the kitchen. And there right facin’ -’em—packed up agin the wall like so many old -grandfeyther clocks—stood three coffins, with a piece of -glass let in ’em to show the face, and a dead woman in -each!</p> -<p><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -127</span>“Close handy they were to ’m when he took -his meals, or smoked his pipe; and when he felt a bit lonesome -(so he told Joseph) he’d go up to ’em and ask -’em how they did, and if they felt comferable. And -fresh as peant they were, too: only a bit shrivelled, like as -’twere an apple in April. Perhaps ’twas the -heat of the kitchen, or may be some stuff he’d put in along -wi’ ’em; anyhow you could see their faces right -enough and tell they was women.</p> -<p>“‘Take ’em down,’ says the Bishop; -‘Farmer Price’ll lend ’e a helpin’ hand: -and we’ve none too much time to get ’em back to the -churchyard and bury ’em.’ Joseph hisself could -scarce do nought but stare at ’em. To think that that -godless man had kep’ ’em there—one on ’em -for nigh on ten years—never thinkin’, not he, that he -was keepin’ ’em tied hand and foot to this world, -with never no chance of a resurrection till he took it into his -wicked head to let ’em go. And there they’d -a’ been for ten years longer—for just so long he -lived—if Bishop hisself hadn’t got wind on’t -and come down right away to bury ’em.</p> -<p>“Anyhow they <i>did</i> get decent burial—the <a -name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>three on -’em—at last. For they had Bishop, and Joseph -and Farmer Price; though I don’t take no count o’ he, -’cept that he helped to lower ’em and fill in the -grave.</p> -<p>“But Joseph were right glad, he were—and so he -told I—to see the rare tug he had in draggin’ they -three dead women up hill and down hill ’cross to the -church-yard. For Joseph never gived ’en no -helpin’ hand—you may take your oath -on’t—though he did make a show of pushin’ at -the bier whensomever the Bishop looked his way.</p> -<p>“Didn’t no one never hear on’t? Yes, -they did. But they didn’t take no count -on’t. Our people baint over wise about religion, and -things were done in those days that’d make a rare -potheration now. Besides, you see, Bishop were there, and -he made a sight o’ difference. ’Twas a rare -fine buryin’, people thought, wi’ a Bishop to put you -unnerground; though ’tis true he hadn’t his fine -gran’ toggery on, and his girt white sleeves.”</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p>The actors in our humble drama are dead and gone. The -Bishop and Price and Joseph have, each in his turn, been followed -to the grave, only with less eccentric rites. But the <a -name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>story of -the farmer’s “Happy Family” still lingers in -the village, and is told and re-told round many a cottage hearth -under the quaint but significant title of “Price’s -Menagerie.”</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p>P.S. The “Professor” himself came round -to-day—“for a pipe of baccy, Sir, if you have such a -thing about you”—so I have utilised him to correct -his own proof sheets. “There baint nothin’ -wrong in ’em, <i>Master</i> Fred (this to a man of sixty!), -so fur as I sees. Only you says ‘gived’ where I -says ‘gi’ed.’ But taint no odds. -Like enough they’ll guess what you means whatsomever you -writes down.” Thanks, Matthew, for your tribute to my -clearness of expression.</p> -<h3><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>The -Cruel Crawling Foam</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was a touch of the old -wilfulness in Ronald, which cost him dear, and saddened all his -future life.</p> -<p>A windy storm-swept sky, though the wind was only playing with -the sea as yet. Still, it met us, as we went down to the -shore, with a drift of sand that stung the face like -pin-pricks—trying, one might easily fancy, to warn us back -from our foolhardy enterprise.</p> -<p>A painter would have needed only his blends of grey to paint -the scene, till we came upon it, and added, I suppose, a patch of -colour. Wiser people than ourselves kept quietly indoors; -and the sand, the sea, the gulls, and the hurrying scud could all -have been rendered in varying shades of grey. It is, to me, -the most fascinating hue that the changeful sea can wear. -One great artist, whose sketches are the glory of Girton College, -knew it well. <a name="page134"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 134</span>With an unerring eye for this sad -unity of tone, she admits no faintest touch of colour into her -cold grey wastes of sea and sky.</p> -<p>It was a risky and foolhardy attempt on the part of Ronald, -and one that he has bitterly repented of, to launch a boat that -afternoon. I can never quite forgive him for the sorrow it -was to bring on us. But his wife would have it so. It -was her greatest enjoyment to put out to sea on such a day. -A calm aimless drift, in life or on the sea, was out of harmony -with her bright and nerve-wrought soul.</p> -<p>Where Ronald was still more at fault was in the choice of our -third hand. True, we had a fair amount of experience -between us. But, with a strong south-wester to fight -against, weight and strength are the two things needed, and will -often win through a gale when experience is powerless. -Ronald, however, was in one of his obstinate moods. He -would take Oswald or no one, and his wife said ditto. Now -Oswald was a lad of eighteen: a good seaman, I grant, but quite -unequal to the work we had in view. However, he was the son -of Ronald’s favourite gardener, and had been his -wife’s pet scholar at her Sunday school, since which time -he had been her <a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -135</span>devoted slave, making himself useful about the house, -and looking after her specialities in the garden and -conservatory.</p> -<p>“Isn’t that boat too big for us, Oswald? -Remember, there are only two of us to handle it, for -Ronald’s ill, and can’t be reckoned on for -much. Unless I’m mistaken, it intends to blow harder -than this before it’s done.”</p> -<p>“Yes, sir. You’re right in a way. But -we’ve got the winch to lower and haul her up with. -And once at sea she’ll be a deal safer and stauncher than -that one,” pointing to a lean, wall-sided thing that was -our only alternative. “Besides, we’ll set very -little canvas; indeed, to all appearance we shan’t want -much.”</p> -<p>What a sail we had that afternoon! I think that I, who -had countenanced it least, enjoyed it most. For Ronald was -only just recovering from influenza, and certainly not up to a -rough and tumble experience of this sort. And Oswald, too, -for a lad of his spirits, was strangely depressed. -“Never felt like it before,” he said, “and I -shall be thankful when we’re safe on shore again. Our -old people at home would say that I was walking over my grave, or -some folly of the kind. <a name="page136"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 136</span>But that can’t be out -here,” he added, with a poor attempt to laugh it off.</p> -<p>First of all we took her along under the lee of the shore, -where we were able to carry a fair amount of sail, and when we -had worked her well round the bay we put her head straight for -the south-east, and, with the wind on our beam, raced out into -the open sea.</p> -<p>It was a longer and heavier business to work her back again, -with the wind right in our teeth, and freshening steadily as the -evening wore on. Fortunately for us it had only blown -fitfully, and without much weight in it till now. It was -still “making up its mind,” as sailors say, whether -it would blow or not. But as we were beaching her in a deep -sandy cove it had finished apparently with indecision, and began -to blow in earnest.</p> -<p>Just as we had landed, and Oswald was preparing to follow us, -a terrific squall burst full upon the boat, which lay beam on to -it. Relieved of her last weight, as Oswald stepped on -shore, she yielded to the pressure, and, heeling over on her -side, pinned him to the ground. In a moment the horror of -it broke upon us. What could we do, the two of us, even if -Ronald hadn’t been shorn of half his <a -name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -137</span>strength? It would have taken ten men to pull her -over in the face of the gale that was blowing. And the tide -was rising rapidly. It was idle to look for help. We -had beached her in a quiet sequestered cove, used only by -ourselves. But it was closer to Thorpe Hill than the -regular landing stage, and, after a hard day’s work, saved -us a tedious beat along the coast when the wind was blowing from -its present quarter. The high land above us was private -property, with no right of way, and on a day like this, for it -was beginning to rain, would be lonely as a desert.</p> -<p>Our first thought was of the winch. We had had one -fitted up under the cliff in order to save labour in launching -and beaching the boat. But, even if it were possible, we -had no time nor knowledge how to alter the gear so as to utilise -the leverage for righting her. No doubt the incoming tide -would help us later on, but its help, when it did come, would -come too late. Yet to do anything was better than to do -nothing. So we took the balers out of the boat, and, -kneeling down beside Oswald, attempted the hopeless task of -freeing him by scooping out the sand on <a -name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>either -side, till he begged us to desist, as the boat only fell over -more heavily, and imprisoned him still deeper in the yielding -sand.</p> -<p>And all the time that we were working, Kingsley’s -“cruel, crawling foam” beat persistently upon my -brain, maddening me with its ghastly congruity. And yet -“cruel and crawling” it was not. Quicker it -could scarcely have been, and its quickest was (I saw) its -kindliest. Already it was playing with the lad’s -hair, though his mistress, careless of the risk she ran, knelt -down beside him and supported his head in her arms.</p> -<p>“Pray for me,” he said.</p> -<p>She whispered the words in his ear, though if she had shouted -them with all her strength they would not have reached us on the -other side of the boat, where, with a hope that was hopeless now, -we were straining ourselves to no purpose in the attempt to right -her.</p> -<p>But Oswald was satisfied. A look of repose and even -comfort settled upon his face before the last words came.</p> -<p>“Thank you,” he said, “you have made death -easy for me. And you have done so <a -name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>at the risk -of your own life. Tell them at home I was not -afraid.”</p> -<p>She bent down and kissed his forehead.</p> -<p>“And now—cover my face.”</p> -<h3><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>Our -Queen</h3> -<blockquote><p>“And the stars—they shall fall, and -the Angels go weeping,<br /> -Ere I cease to love her, my Queen, my Queen.”</p> -</blockquote> -<h4>I</h4> -<p>“<span class="smcap">Our</span> Queen” she was to -me and Ronald, ever since we first met her at Broadwater, and -Ronald had dared to love her. And now that she is gone from -us there is little fear that her title will ever be -questioned. Neither he nor I need any coarser picture of -her than that engraved by memory. But for others—for -those who knew her little, or less well—let me try to call -her back in clearer and less shadowy outline.</p> -<p>A woman this, to whom you gave your confidence with your first -greeting, and never afterwards withdrew it.</p> -<p>Not the face to tempt an artist by its regularity of feature -or beauty of colouring. Madonna-like some would call it, -and so it was in sweet and loving trustfulness, but far too -mobile and human, too full of interest <a -name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>and human -sympathy to suggest the reposeful placidity of conventional -art. Instinct, rather, with the life and animation that -inspires the best work of Gainsborough and Reynolds, and frank -with a simplicity that is careless of its surroundings, and -therefore conquers them. The centre of her interest was -home; thence it radiated outwards. From her family to her -friends, from friends to neighbours, her influence passed in ever -widening circles like a ripple that, stirred in the centre of -some pool, travels to the extremest edge.</p> -<p>Nature creates not many such. Happy the man who has -known and honoured one.</p> -<p>Over and over again I have tried to unravel the secret of her -inexplicable charm. Seating myself in some sequestered -nook, where Ronald himself would find it hard to discover me, it -has been my pleasure, through a long evening’s -entertainment, to watch her in every graceful word and greeting -that she exchanged with her friends. It was a satisfaction -even to see her walk across the room—a lost art (they tell -us) in these hurried and inartistic days. I tried to learn -the mystery from her conversation. The words told nothing, -but the tone was less secretive; and, after all, how much more -the <a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>tone -always does tell of the spirit of the speaker than the -conventional coinage we have devised in words.</p> -<p>“And how’s that sweet little bairn of yours, Mrs. -Macpherson?” (She was half Scotch by birth, and now -and again her descent betrayed itself in a pretty mannerism of -word and accent.) “I lost my heart to her, I did, -when I met her yesterday on the Parade with her -nurse.” A greeting old as time can make it, but new, -entirely new, in the sympathy she threw into it right from the -depths of her heart. No one could hear her and not believe; -and Mrs. Macpherson was won. Sometimes, almost awestruck, I -asked myself, Is there, <i>can</i> there be a human nature so -nearly approximating to the divine as to possess the verity of -universal sympathy? And, knowing this woman so nearly and -so closely as I knew her, it was impossible, I found, to answer -the question with a negative.</p> -<p>“If you are in doubt, play trumps” used to be the -rule in whist, and “If you are in doubt, wear black” -would be my advice to a lady in difficulty about her dress. -And Ronald’s wife suggested it.</p> -<p>To-night she was looking her best—in <a -name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>black, and -silver and diamonds. She and Ronald were giving their -largest ball of the season, due regularly at this period of the -year, and every family of standing for miles round had sent its -representative. For a wonder I hadn’t been watching -her that evening, and was surprised to feel her gentle touch on -my arm.</p> -<p>“Come with me, Fred,” she said, “I want you -for a few minutes upstairs. Poor old nurse is dying. -We’ve been expecting it, you know, at any moment for some -weeks past. But I wish it hadn’t come to-night. -It looks so heartless to have all these people about us; and yet -I know she wouldn’t have had the ball put off. She -was the last person ever to think of self. Still it -<i>does</i> look unfeeling to go to her straight from all this -light and merriment. Yet I feel it less than most -would. Life and death seem to me so closely mixed, that -wherever one is there you may expect the other.”</p> -<p>“Of course I’ll come. But oughtn’t -Ronald to be there too?”</p> -<p>“Yes; but, you see, we cannot both be spared. He -must be here to make excuses for me if I am missed. I -don’t want to spoil <a name="page147"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 147</span>the pleasure of all these young -things during their one great evening of the year.”</p> -<p>“But you’ll change your dress?” I said -aghast.</p> -<p>“No, I think not. If death is always so very near -to us, it hardly seems worth while to change one’s dress to -meet him. Besides, I have a special reason in this -case. All her life long dear old nurse has liked to see me -in my ball-room dress, and I’m sure she will -to-night. She said it gave her an idea of what the angels -were like better than did her Bible. And if it could give -her one comforting thought to help her, I’d have dressed on -purpose as I am.”</p> -<p>There was little need for Ronald to make excuses for our -absence. The old woman was dying when they called us. -But her eyes opened and brightened as she saw her mistress.</p> -<p>“What! an angel?” she cried. “No, but -my own dear mistress, the best angel of them all, and dressed as -I would have her—not yet in her robe of white—not -yet.” And, with her mistress’ face pressed -close to hers, and the diamonds and silver rippling and -shimmering about her pillow, our old nurse died as she would have -chosen. Half-an-hour later “Our <a -name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -148</span>Queen” was back in the ball-room: bright, and, to -all appearance, cheerful as the rest. None that saw her -would have guessed the scene from which she had come back to -them. “Heartless” they would have said, and -will say so still. But Ronald and I knew better. Her -heart was in the nursery up stairs.</p> -<p>She wears her white robe now. But, in reverence be it -written, I would fain see her come to welcome me, clothed, as she -was clothed that night, in black and silver and diamonds.</p> -<h4>II</h4> -<p>When her own time came, as it did soon after, she met death -with the same fearless, friendly courage. Her thoughts were -wholly for those who were to stay, and she was even playful in -urging upon me never to leave Ronald and the children, but learn -to “take her place.” I own I was troubled at -times by what seemed almost levity in the face of death, till I -began by degrees to realise her point of view.</p> -<p>“I think it will be a very short distance,” she -said, “perhaps into another room, perhaps not even so far -as that; and the time (to me, at any rate) will certainly seem -short—no <a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -149</span>longer than the night of sleep which separates us from -our loved ones till the morning.” And of the future -she had no fear. “Nothing,” she said, -“could persuade me that the light which has been fanned and -quickened here will be extinguished for ever by the incident we -call death. The jest would be too horribly, inconceivably -malicious. Yet our choice lies between this and the -crowning impossibility of a self-created world.”</p> -<p>Not thoughtlessly, but in the hope of finding a standing -ground for myself, I would ask her sometimes if she had no -misgivings regarding the re-existence of the body, and mutual -recognition, and the endless difficulties that centre round the -subject.</p> -<p>“None,” she answered, “none. Why -should I? Look at the natural world. I know that -space must be either limited or limitless; but can I form a -conception of either alternative? Yet the problem may be -simplicity itself to some larger mind than ours. So why -trouble myself about difficulties which may be easier of solution -still to those who hold the key? And you think it hard, I -know—you have often said so—that many should die, as -we know they must, without a friend on earth to <a -name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 150</span>whom they -can look forward for a welcome when they reach the further -shore. To me, I confess, it seems quite the contrary. -Surely the burst of welcome will be greater in their ears than in -ours, who have lived surrounded by friends, and never known the -dearth of sympathy.”</p> -<p>And every difficulty, as I raised it, she met with the same -calm, unquestioning certainty.</p> -<p>She died, as she had lived, in ministering to others. -Oswald’s death was the first blow. From the exposure -and the physical effects she soon recovered—sooner than we -expected, considering her frail and uncertain hold on life. -But the horror of it was always with her, especially the feeling -that it was she who had suggested the fatal experiment. -Ever and again, as the subject was referred to, I could see her -shuddering at the reminiscence, blaming herself with what was -surely the only reproach that can have harassed her bright and -blameless conscience. And the remembrance was still upon -her when her two children sickened with the scarlet fever. -Considering her weak state, and consequent liability to -infection, the doctor had strictly forbidden her to enter their -room. “I can make no <a name="page151"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 151</span>promises,” she said; “if -they want me I must go. Till then I will obey your -orders. We are told to give up father and mother, and -perhaps oneself for one’s husband, but our children, I -think, have a prior claim to all.” And so she watched -and waited at their door, stealing along the corridor in her robe -of white at all hours of the night, listening and listening to -hear if a summons came.</p> -<p>One night, unhappily, it came—a summons she was -powerless to resist. The elder child was delirious, and she -heard it moaning piteously, “Mother, mother, why -don’t you come to me?” Without a moment’s -hesitation she had entered the room, signing her own -death-warrant in the act.</p> -<p>She did not linger long in dying; lingering was little in her -way. On a grey morning in October, just ten days after she -was taken ill, the gun which welcomes sunrise from the -signal-station on the pier echoed like a call. She opened -her eyes to greet us, and with the diamonds flickering again -about her head—only they were sunbeams now—she passed -to that “larger life” of which she, if anyone, held -the key.</p> -<p style="text-align: center">“<b>Lest we -forget</b>.”</p> - -<div class="gapshortline"> </div> -<h2><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -155</span>Bindo A Sketch</h2> -<h3>I</h3> -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> last notes of “Jerusalem, -Jerusalem!”—sung as no other boy on earth could sing -it—had just died away in a storm of applause. Now and -again the surge of voices reached the green-room in a muffled -roar, where Eric was protesting to the Manager that nothing would -induce him to sing another note that night. -“They’ve had four songs,” he said, “what -on earth do they want more? As it is, I shall break my -voice some day in that confounded hall. It was never meant -for a boy to sing in—all wood and iron and glass—with -nothing to help you or carry the voice. No! I -<i>won’t</i> sing, that’s flat; tell them I’m -ill, or my mother’s come for me, or anything you -like. Sing again, I <i>won’t</i>.” -“Yes, I’ll tell them your mother’s come for -you,” said the Manager with a laugh, “but, remember, -they’ll be clamouring for ‘A boy’s best friend -is his mother’ if I do.”</p> -<p><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>As if -to confirm Eric in his determination there came a knock at the -door, and a boyish face peeped <i>in</i>. “Sorry, -Hudson, if I’ve interrupted business, but they told me the -show was over, and I want Eric for supper. By the way, you -can come too, if you like. Andrews and Thorne are there -already, and have finished supper by this time, I expect. -But there’ll be some champagne and lobster-salad left for -us.”</p> -<p>“Thanks, Lord Eastonville, I’ll come with -pleasure, but I must first go and quiet these lunatics. -They’re roaring for Eric like a lioness robbed of her -cub.”</p> -<p>Ten minutes later the three were entering a room in Hope -Square, so rich in its decorations of china, tapestries, and -antique bronzes that it might have been transported by a slave of -the lamp direct from Aladdin’s palace, or have done duty -for a catalogue of Roman luxury: “The merchandise of gold -and silver and precious stones and of pearls and fine linen and -silk and scarlet and all manner of vessels of most precious wood -and of brass and iron and marble and frankincense, and souls of -men.”</p> -<p>By the fire (for it was early in May) stood an oval table, -covered with old glass and silver <a name="page157"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 157</span>in pleasant confusion. The -fruit—a distinctive feature—piled artistically in a -ribbed basket of the Queen Anne period, not disposed at the rate -of four apples here, flanked by four oranges there, after the -fashion dear to the soul of the British householder when he calls -his neighbours to a feast.</p> -<p>The three new comers were greeted with a round of applause as -hearty in spirit as the cheer which had followed them from the -hall.</p> -<p>“Why, Bindo, you’ve the very boy we’ve been -longing for. We’ve finished supper and used up our -talk, and it’s too late for a theatre and too early for -bed. Singing will just fill the interval before -cards.”</p> -<p>“Not a note from me, Thorne, till I’ve had some -supper. I must clear my throat from the dust of the hall -with champagne first. Why you’re as bad as the -audience, who think that songs can be pumped out of one as easily -as you can get squeaks out of a gutta-percha doll.”</p> -<p>While Eric is better employed we can introduce the party.</p> -<p>Lord Eastonville, who owns the rooms, is a thorough gentleman -of the well-bred English <a name="page158"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 158</span>type, with brains enough to carry -him safely through life—good-looking, generous, easy-going -to a fault, and twenty-five. Too fond, it may be, of taking -his ease, as all well-to-do Englishmen are now-a-days, but a man -who could fight for his country, as in the old Crimean times, -when war galvanised our lethargy into life. War is no -unmixed evil; it carries with it a blessing in disguise. It -is the scare and shadow of war that is the curse without the -blessing.</p> -<p>Thorne, as a minute in his company would prove to you, is a -hard-headed journalist; witty, and an excellent talker; facile, -of course, with his pen, and ready to turn out a new theology as -easily as he could write an article on the last discovered -butterfly or grub.</p> -<p>Andrews is a graduate of London University, spending with -Eastonville the remnant of a holiday. Fairly humorous and -incorrigibly deaf—never more so (his friends say) than when -a subject bores him—he is himself a trifle of a bore -to-night. In his latest translation of Vergil -“ploughed with a team” has become in the hands of the -printers “ploughed with steam,” an anachronism that -pleases him mightily.</p> -<p><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>He is -also sorely exercised over the term “Prolegomena,” -used in connexion with our classical editions. -“Either the word’s bad Greek,” he says, -“or else it’s rank nonsense. ‘Things that -are being said before’ means just nothing at all. -What they want is a Perfect, ‘things that have been said -beforehand,’ which is not only more grammatical, but also -(he adds with a chuckle) much more descriptive of prefaces in -general.”</p> -<p>“Well, I don’t understand Greek and Latin,” -said Thorne, “so suppose we talk English. I have been -studying you carefully, Bindo, and have come to the conclusion -that you look highly picturesque among all that fruit and -flowers. I wonder what made you so good looking; was your -father particularly lovely?”</p> -<p>“Neither my father nor my mother, Thorne, though she -<i>has</i> contrived to marry again; and the consequence is -I’m not so well looked after as I ought to have been, else -I shouldn’t be here to-night. Fate, I think, must -have made a judicious blend of the best points in his face with -the best features of hers. And the result is me.”</p> -<p>“First class grammar, Bindo. She must <a -name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>have sent -you to a good school at any rate.”</p> -<p>“Anything else to ask, old man? You seem to be in -an inquisitive mood to-night.”</p> -<p>“Yes; who taught you to sing?”</p> -<p>“Le bon Dieu, I suppose, as Patti said. I had only -the training of a country choir boy. By the by, my -master’s name was Thorne, a matter full of interest to -you. I believe I sang by intuition.”</p> -<p>“A Hamiltonian philosopher,” muttered Andrews, -“only he has developed theory into practice.”</p> -<p>“Anyhow, when your voice goes I shall put on -mourning,” said Eastonville, “not black, for I -don’t believe in it. Purple’s the farthest I -can go.”</p> -<p>“You may put on white or canary yellow, like a heathen -Chinee, for all I care.”</p> -<p>“Don’t lose your temper, Bindo.”</p> -<p>And Eric, <i>alias</i> Bindo, how shall I describe him? -A fair boy, delicate looking, but with lungs that can fill the -biggest concert room in London, with wavy golden hair flung back -on his forehead, and the long dreamy eyes so dear to the soul of -Raphael. In fact, it was Raphael’s picture of Bindo -Altoviti (long <a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -161</span>supposed to be a portrait of the painter) that had won -him his name. Framed in the cabin window of a Bournemouth -steamer (excursion boats in these days do not condescend to port -holes), his arms resting on the sill, the resemblance had struck -me irresistibly. From that day he became -“Bindo” to all of us, and would scarcely have -recognised an appeal to him as “Eric,” if we had -lighted on the name by accident. His hair perhaps was one -of his most telling points. It reflected under strong -lights brilliant flakes of gold, isolated like the motes that are -suspended in certain liqueurs.</p> -<p>But after all it was his manner that took so much with all his -friends. He had the timid deprecating caress of a -half-tamed animal, like Hawthorne’s Donatello before he had -won himself a soul. Alas! poor Bindo was hardly allowed -time to win it.</p> -<p>“And what was the show like to-night, Bindo?” -asked Eastonville.</p> -<p>“Oh, the same old game. Nothing would suit them -out of sixty songs but ‘Jerusalem,’ ‘Rags and -Tatters,’ and ‘Home, sweet Home.’ They -don’t mind ‘A boy’s best friend’ for an -encore when they are in a strictly domestic <a -name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>mood. -But anything really worth singing they won’t look -at.”</p> -<p>“Well, we’ll follow their better mood and have -‘Jerusalem.’ You’ve got back your voice -by now, old chap, and we’ve been waiting for you patiently -this last half-hour or more.”</p> -<p>Once again that night the glorious voice rang out into the -thin air, startling the silent square. Windows were hastily -flung up, and the word “Bindo” was passed from sill -to sill. Even a drowsy canary was stimulated to try a note -or two in emulation of a method more attractive than its -own. And through the open window came, for an -accompaniment, the voice of London, soft as the murmur of a -far-off sea.</p> -<p>With the end of the song a sharp rattle of applause ran round -the square, marked by distinctive intervals, like the volley at a -soldier’s funeral.</p> -<p>“Bravo, Bindo,” said Eastonville, “it would -pay you to send the hat round to-night. Here’s a -fiver, young ’un, to open the bank with, though why I -should give it you passes my comprehension. A boy who can -earn ten pounds a night at sixteen is a sight better off <a -name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>than I -am. If you lose it, you’ll have to try the -others. I’m pretty well cleared out. After all -you’re detestable, Bindo. Just when we want you most, -your voice will be gone, and you’ll have spoiled us for all -other singing, precisely as the great Sarah has spoiled us for -any acting but her own. If we could only forget and start -fresh with each week, how nice and pleasant everything would -be. I believe Nelly is right in ‘Cometh up,’ -when she says that memory is often a cruel gift. No one -would choose to remember a feeble show, or to spoil his enjoyment -of average singing by a recollection of the best. Why are -‘Jack Sheppard’ and ‘Geneviève de -Brabant’ practically withdrawn from the London stage? -Because elderly playgoers cannot forget the days when Mrs. Keeley -played ‘Jack,’ or when Emily Soldene and the Dolaro -drew all Mayfair to Islington by the witchery of a -serenade. But now for ‘A boy’s best -friend’—we’re all in a domestic mood -to-night—and then cards.”</p> -<h3>II</h3> -<p>Bindo was very docile as a rule, especially in the hands of -those who loved and cared for him. But on some points he -was obdurate as <a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -164</span>steel. For instance, I could never persuade him, -try what I would, to invest his salary, nor could anything induce -him to learn a profession against the day when his voice should -fail him. Singing, he said, had come naturally to him; a -good voice, a good ear, and a little training had done the trick; -and he thought, or pretended to think, that the evil day, when it -did come, would bring with it its own resource. -“Sufficient unto the day is the <i>good</i> thereof” -was Bindo’s motto throughout.</p> -<p>And it was impossible to teach him the value of money. -He spent it royally on others, lavishly on himself. -“Where have you been, Bindo?” I said to him one -Monday, when he hadn’t turned up as usual on the previous -afternoon. “Oh, I took Harry out of town. -He’s been seedy, you know, and wanted change. So we -went to Brighton.” “And you travelled -first-class, and put up at the Bedford, and lost money to him at -cards in the evening?” “You have hit it -<i>exactly</i>, old man,” was the reply.</p> -<p>I believe that most of his money went on Quixotic kindnesses -of this sort. One night when I was with him at the -Queen’s Hall (he <a name="page165"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 165</span>liked to run round to me between his -“turns” and criticise the show from the front) his -salary for two nights went before it was earned to the first -violin, a blind little snuff-powdered man, but Bindo’s very -particular friend, because he had stumbled in getting down from -the stage and damaged his instrument.</p> -<p>When the end did come, it came suddenly. His voice -cracked on an upper G—sudden and short like the string of a -violin—in the very hall he had so emphatically abused for -its acoustic deficiencies. Of course he came to me, if it -can be said that he came to me, when he had always been with me -for most of his time. But the life bored him. I had -my own work to do in the evenings, and couldn’t go with him -to restaurants, theatres, and concerts, the excitement of which -had become a second nature to Bindo. And so we drifted, -little by little, but still very surely, farther and farther -apart.</p> -<p>It was about this time that his friend Harry, the same whom he -had entertained so royally at Brighton, fell ill. Bindo had -been anxious about him for a long while, and never passed a day -without seeing him. But it was only quite lately that the -doctors had begun to <a name="page166"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 166</span>suspect a rapid form of -consumption. Bindo was full of trouble. I think he -liked Harry best of all his friends, perhaps excepting me.</p> -<p>One day he burst into my room, with something more akin to -tears in his eyes than I had ever seen in them before. -“What <i>is</i> to be done, Charlie? They’ve -given Harry the sack at his office because he’s too ill to -do his work properly. They won’t even keep it open -for him for a week or two on the chance. What brutes they -are! And, poor old chap, he’s got nothing. If -it were only this time last year, and I had my voice again, we -could do famously. I wish I’d taken your advice, old -man, and saved my pile while I had the chance. By the way: -happy thought! I have a heap of rings and pins and watches -at home that the swells gave me last year for singing at their -matinees and concerts—enough of them to stock a -pawnshop. By Jove! they <i>shall</i> help to stock -Attenborough’s; and we’ll live on the proceeds, at -any rate till things look more rosy.” He was off then -and there, and for the next six months, till Harry died, I -scarcely saw him. One excitement in his case had cast out -the others, and while Harry lived he hardly cared to be outside -his room. <a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -167</span>Brother and nurse in one he was to him—with him -night and day—and, whatever money or love could do, Bindo -did for him.</p> -<p>Afterwards he came back to me, looking a trifle older, a -trifle more depressed; but improved, or so it seemed to me, by -the experience he had undergone. I forgot that there are -natures receptive of vigorous and even intense impressions, but -absolutely incapable of retaining them. So soon as one -predominant idea has passed from the brain, its place must be -occupied by another, for good or else for evil. Which of -the two it may be, seems almost a matter of indifference; it is -the law, so to speak, of their being that it <i>should</i> be -indifferent.</p> -<p>I almost wished in those days that I could fall ill -myself. Five or six months of nursing under Bindo’s -hand would have been a lazy delight to me, and (selfish as it may -seem) better far for him than the life he was leading. -Unhappily I never felt fitter, much too fit and too self-occupied -to be interesting to Bindo, and so he left me for others, more at -liberty and likely to be more amusing.</p> -<p>All this time he was (to quote his own words) “looking -about for something”—the <a name="page168"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 168</span>Micawber-like expression that does -duty for an idle life. Whatever Bindo’s -interpretation may have been, I know it made him very late in -coming home of an evening. Yet he never asked me for -money. His resources seemed boundless, and the stock of -rings and watches inexhaustible. But, portable and useful -property as they are, you must have a good supply of them in hand -to live upon it for a year in the style Bindo was doing. -Besides, it occurred to me as strange that I had never had a -sight of them; in old days I had always had the first view of any -present that was made him. On another point, too, he was -inflexible as ever. Advice and help towards securing -permanent employment he absolutely and positively refused. -“Better that, old boy,” he said, “than do what -most people do—bother their friends all round for an -opinion when they’ve decided all along to follow their -own.”</p> -<p>Your practical and steady-going individual—the one, for -example, who can “see nothing” in <i>Alice in -Wonderland</i>—never admits into his reckoning the -influence of excitement. It disturbs and disarranges his -equilibrium of life. Yet, disparage it as you may, it is -one <a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>of -the most important factors in shaping life and character, and -perhaps the very strongest lever that operates for the -development of vice. Fortunately, a fair number of mankind -can do with a small and weak modicum of this dangerous -stimulant. Individuals like Bindo, who ask for more, are -classed among the eccentricities of nature, for whom it is -impossible to prescribe. Yet, think what it means for a boy -of sixteen, without discipline or experience to steady him, to -drop, literally in a moment, from notoriety to neglect, activity -to stagnation; almost from life to death.</p> -<p>No wonder Bindo pined and drooped. I knew the -alternative that lay before him: life and death—not in -metaphor this time, but in sober earnest. Yet I let him go, -for he had taught me himself, if I had wanted the knowledge, that -no man can cage a human will. So from the very moment I had -become more hopeful about him, the gulf widened between us. -But only in companionship; never in spirit—</p> -<blockquote><p>“For, till the thunder in the trumpet be,<br -/> -Soul may divide from body, but not we,<br /> -One from the other.”</p> -</blockquote> -<p>Meanwhile he had retained all his old friends—no one who -had known Bindo was <a name="page170"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 170</span>in a hurry to part company with -him—but he had made other and less reputable ones. -The strange and (to me) disquieting element in the situation was -that he never, even now, seemed to be in want of money. Yet -Harry’s illness alone must have cost him a fortune. -All his old luxuries were resumed. Dinners to his friends, -at which Bindo was always paymaster, with periodical trips to -Brighton and Bournemouth for change, succeeded one another with -the same regularity as when the boy was earning £10 a -night. “Where <i>does</i> the money come from?” -I asked myself again and again. Alas! the knowledge was to -come soon.</p> -<p>Late one evening, as I was finishing an article for the editor -who employed me, Thorne and Eastonville called at my rooms. -That they had come on no pleasant errand was written on their -faces. “Charlie,” said Thorne, “we are -here on a disagreeable business. I hope it may prove less -disagreeable than it looks. The fact is we’ve been -losing a lot of things for some time past; at least we’ve -tried our level best to <i>think</i> we’ve lost them. -But it won’t do. The thing is far too systematic to -be accidental. Sometimes it has <a name="page171"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 171</span>been money—a sovereign or two -at a time; then it was a diamond ring of Eastonville’s that -went, and then some valuable scarf-pins of mine. So the -thing must be stopped. But who has done it? I may as -well out with it at once, though it burns my throat to tell -it. We can’t help fancying it’s Bindo. No -one but he has had access to our rooms at all hours, and you know -how suspicious he has made us all by the pile of money he’s -been spending.”</p> -<p>“Yes: it <i>is</i> Bindo, Thorne.”</p> -<p>What was the good of attempting to deny it, when it flashed -across me in a moment where all his jewellery had come -from? No, not all perhaps. Probably—for I never -asked him—he had started with articles that were -legitimately his own, and then, when these had failed him, had -been tempted to supplement them less creditably in the time of -Harry’s need.</p> -<p>Of course we found the things, as I anticipated, at -Attenborough’s; all of them, that is, but one. Bindo -was not the boy to try and hide his work, as an expert would have -done, by distributing the articles at different shops, or even by -signing under an assumed <a name="page172"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 172</span>name. On the contrary, there -was a contemptuous candour in his method of dealing that actually -surprised and puzzled us for a moment at starting.</p> -<p>I would allow no one but myself to liquidate on behalf of -Bindo. But I as steadily refused to be the bearer to him of -the discovery we had made. None of the others volunteered -for the office, or showed the faintest ambition to be the one -selected for the murder of a friendship. So we cast lots -for the office, whose it should be, in true melodramatic style, -and the lot fell upon me.</p> -<p>“Cheer up, old fellow,” said Eastonville. -“Bindo’s a deal fonder of you than he is of the rest -of us, and won’t take it so hardly if it comes through -you. The fact is we’ve spoiled him; all of us, that -is, but you. And he knew it too, and I believe he liked the -preaching you gave him better than all my five-pound notes; not -that he showed any objection to the notes, I’m bound to -say. Now, don’t look so savage, old man. -I’m bound to try and laugh over it, because, if I -didn’t, I feel sure I should do the other thing. And -after all this business may be the making of Bindo.”</p> -<p><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>But -he didn’t know Bindo as I did. The boy came to me -with outstretched hand, and with the old frank look in his -eyes. But I could not trust myself to return it. What -I did, must, I felt, be done quickly. If I waited for words -in which to break the news to him; above all, if I gave him the -chance of speaking first, I knew it was all up with me. So -I just put the things on the table in front of him—how I -hated the sight of them!—and said, “These things have -come into my hands, no matter by what means.” He -looked at them, and the faintest flush imaginable crept over his -face. “Before you leave me to-night we will do them -up for the post, and you will address them to the respective -owners and leave them in my hands.” I did not dare to -look at him, but turned away to another table, making up the -parcels one by one and handing them to him where he stood behind -my back. He addressed each parcel as he received it, never -betraying by a word or sign what I knew the effort must have cost -him.</p> -<p>“And now, Eric, you and I part company.” I -saw him wince at the name; almost as if he had received a -blow. No doubt it implied to him, far more plainly than I -had intended, <a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -174</span>that the Bindo of the past was lost beyond -recall. It was not said in heedlessness, still less in -heartlessness; it was simply loss of self-control. The old -familiar name <i>could</i> not be forced past my lips. In a -moment I saw what I had done, and would have given worlds to -repair it. “Bindo,” I cried impulsively, -“come back.” But it was too late; the mischief -was done. I had lost my last chance by that one word.</p> -<p>“Good-bye,” he answered, and was gone.</p> -<h3>III</h3> -<p>The characters we meet with in this world are composite, all -of them—not saint or sinner; not this or else that, but -something betwixt and between; the good in them not permanent, -the bad in them not hopeless; and Bindo’s short life had -exemplified the fact with startling clearness.</p> -<p>From that day forward my influence over him was gone. He -must have kept studiously out of my path—an easy thing for -him to do, as he knew all my habits and places of resort. I -used to try and persuade myself that I was guiltless of the -result, whatever it might be; <a name="page175"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 175</span>that “unstable as water” -his character was past all guidance, and would in any case have -drifted to the end that seemed to be in view. Yet it was -hard to feel all the while that a strong, kind word from me that -night might have nerved him to fresh energy.</p> -<p>“And what about Bindo?” I asked of Eastonville one -day.</p> -<p>“Going to the dogs, and pretty rapidly, too, I’m -afraid. The last time I saw him, he was with Hutchinson and -all that crew. You know what comes of mixing with loafers -like that. He wouldn’t look at me, though I tried -hard to get a talk with him. He’d had more to drink, -too, than a boy of seventeen can carry. The pity of it -all. What a voice he had, and what a good fellow, too, at -heart! How he nursed poor Harry! Few Samaritans of -the present day would have given up six months of their time to -spend them in a sick room. But I’m afraid it’s -all up with him.”</p> -<p>“Can’t Thorne do anything?”</p> -<p>“No; Bindo fights shy of us all, and no wonder -either. I am sure I should do the same in his place. -If <i>you</i> could only have got hold of him, and made him feel -that we were rather glad than otherwise that our useless <a -name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>belongings -had gone towards nursing Harry, he’d have got back his -self-respect and been less shy of us. But our last hope -went when <i>you</i> failed. What the plague made you call -him Eric instead of Bindo?”</p> -<p>“Heaven only knows,” I answered, “or its -Antipodes.”</p> -<p>I told Thorne one day of Eastonville’s report, and asked -him what he thought of it.</p> -<p>“Just nothing at all,” he said. “He -knows no more of what Bindo’s doing than all the rest of -us. For myself, I believe he’s got work of some -kind. I grant he’s seen sometimes at shady music -halls with shady companions; and that’s what Eastonville -means. But, after all, a fellow must have some one to speak -to in the evening, especially if he’s at work all day; and -if he’s lost his old friends he must fill up their places -with the best he can. Besides, it’s quite possible -that Bindo has grown wise enough by this time to make sure they -do him no harm.”</p> -<p>A few months later Thorne dropped in again. “Now -you’ll be happy, I suppose; at least I am. Bindo -starts to-morrow for Brazil in the <i>Magdalena</i>. We -came across him to-day. He’s had work on hand all the -year, <a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -177</span>though he kept it quietly to himself; and now -he’ll be quit of all his old associations and be able to -make another, and, I hope, a better start.”</p> -<p>I made up my mind, of course, that I must see him before he -sailed. But how to do it? Fortunately I knew the name -of the boat he was to travel by, unless he had wilfully put -Thorne off the scent. But it was too late to get a train -that night, and, as the boat I knew sailed at two o’clock, -it gave me none too much time to hunt him up at Southampton.</p> -<p>When a letter came to me next morning by the early post, -requiring an article at once for the afternoon papers, it was -only what I expected. Fate had come between me and Bindo -every time I had wished to help him, and she was at her old games -again. So I sat down and wrote off my -article—doggedly rather than savagely—in the spirit -of one who gives up the game against chance, yet knowing, all the -time I was writing, that I was losing my train, and that it was -doubtful whether the next one would catch the <i>Magdalena</i> at -all. The official at the Dock entrance told me that she was -already throwing off from the quay wall, and it would be quite <a -name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>impossible -to get on board. “Far and away your best -chance,” he added, “is to run round this way to the -Dock gates. You’ll be there before she is, for it -takes a lot of time to back and turn her. Then if you want -to say good-bye to anyone <i>very</i> particularly (and he -smiled), you’ll get a word with her perhaps. For the -vessel’s loaded deep, and her portholes won’t stand -very high above the quay wall. Besides, she’ll only -creep through the gates, but you’ve no time to -lose.”</p> -<p>I hardly stopped to thank him <i>then</i>. On my way -back he got, not only thanks, but, to his great astonishment, a -five-shilling piece. “Well; he must have wanted to -see her badly,” I heard him whisper to his mate.</p> -<p>The preliminaries of throwing off, backing, warping, were all -over by the time I reached the gates, and the big vessel was -beginning to make a move under her own steam. I looked -eagerly for Bindo among the passengers. Fate had been kind -to me, and given me yet another chance. What if I missed it -like the last? But she favoured me this time. He was -leaning over the deck-rail, watching the leave-takings as the -great vessel swept slowly past the wall. His cap was thrown -back and <a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -179</span>his hair blown off his forehead. What a boy he -looked to be starting a new life in a new world, without a friend -and with worse than failure for the past!</p> -<p>Just then he caught sight of me. For a moment he -hesitated—I could <i>see</i> him hesitate; then he left the -deck and re-appeared at a port-hole in the aft part of the ship, -framed once more (and it was my last picture of him) as the very -Bindo of old. “Good-bye,” he said, “old -man; it was good of you to come, after the way I’ve treated -you. Thanks again, most faithful of friends, and -good-bye. Forgive and forget. This time, believe me, -I’ll go straight. By the way,” he added, -“just give this parcel for me to Fred—naming one of -his chums—I had intended it for the pilot, but it will be -safer in your hands.”</p> -<p>A wave of the hand, as the ship headed for the open water, was -the last I saw of Bindo. But a load was off my mind as I -walked back to the station. I could look forward hopefully -now and patiently to our next meeting.</p> -<p>Glancing at the parcel he had given me, I found it was -addressed to myself. It contained a small diamond ring -without word or <a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -180</span>comment. At the time when we found the jewellery -at Attenborough’s, this ring had been missing, and, as it -belonged to me, I had said nothing to the others about it. -I might easily have lost it, and at any rate I gladly gave Bindo -the benefit of the doubt. He had pledged it apparently at a -different shop; perhaps because it was mine, and he did not wish -it to be discovered with the rest; perhaps to remind him more -vividly of the task he had set himself during the year to -come. Till this ring could be redeemed, he must wait and -work in London, and though all his hopes were centred in life -abroad, it must not be thought of till this one act of reparation -had been done. I never saw or heard from him directly -again.</p> -<p>Two years later he died of yellow fever in hospital at Rio; -and his last act, while he still had strength to hold a pen, was -to write me a loving letter of farewell, enclosing a cheque that -covered the sums I had expended on his account. The letter -was forwarded to me by the nurse who attended him.</p> -<p style="text-align: center">“<b>Is it well with the -lad</b>? <b>It is well</b>.”</p> - -<div class="gapshortline"> </div> -<h2><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -181</span>‘Declined with Thanks’<br /> -A Postscript</h2> -<p><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -183</span>“<span class="smcap">Read</span> and -rejected” would be a more satisfying formula. But the -Oracle is discreetly vague, and condescends not to -particulars. Editorial reticence is surely a queer anomaly -in these days when a reason is required for everything. -When my own effusions have come back to me with the trite -ascription, I could have welcomed enthusiastically the scantiest -information, the liveliest abuse, in exchange for that -exasperating commonplace.</p> -<p>Sometimes even this amount of formal recognition was -deferred. At first I augured hopefully from the delay, till -experience taught me otherwise. Once, when an editor had -kept my MS kicking about in this way, I actually wrote him my -mind in free and unorthodox language. “Unwise, most -unwise,” you will say. “Yes, but oh! <i>so</i> -satisfactory.” <a name="page184"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 184</span>Add to which, my letter effected its -purpose. He made up his mind then and there on the merits -of my article and “declined it <i>with -thanks</i>.” (The italics are his own.)</p> -<p>But the mystery remains a mystery. He did not reveal it -to me, in spite of his gratitude for my contribution, and I still -hold to my opinion that such delay is discourteous to a male -contributor, and ungallant to a lady. Besides, what is the -reason? Is it that the editor waits to see what space he -has got left at the finish, and then accepts an article, not for -its merits, but for its length, on much the same principle as a -lady will ask you at breakfast for <i>just</i> the amount of -bread that will suit a remnant of butter, or <i>vice -versa</i>? If so, Aristophanes had anticipated the process, -or one very nearly resembling it—“Man, man,” he -says, “they are weighing my tragedy as if it were a pound -of beef!”</p> -<p>By the way, why shouldn’t the editorial chair be thrown -open to competition? It is thus we elect our Professors, or -some of them, at Cambridge. Let a candidate for the office -be required to compose an “Exercise”—say a -complete story for the magazine he aspires to conduct. So -should we respect an editor <a name="page185"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 185</span>more, or (possibly) fear him -less. At any rate, no order of men, least of all one which -examines others, should be debarred now-a-days from the privilege -of being examined in its turn.</p> -<p>The fear is that, if my suggestion were acted upon, it would -empty the Universities of their Professors. Who could -resist the attraction of a post which limits the bulk of its -correspondence to one conventional formula? Besides, to a -tired Tripos examiner, the duty of looking over a few hundred -magazine articles per month would be a frolic—a light and -airy holiday task. But he’d think the rules of the -competition a trifle rough on the candidates, and might be -tempted to violate decorum by an occasional word of encouragement -and help.</p> -<p>Apart from the suspense they inflicted upon me, due no doubt -to the care they bestowed on the investigation, I think the -editors were not far out in their judgment of my work. It -always looked so heavy, even to a partial critic like myself, on -the morning after I had written it. Once, in despair, I -showed an article to a great novelist, who is happily also a -great friend. “What <i>is</i> the <a -name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -186</span>reason,” I asked him, “that it always looks -so lumpy and devoid of wit and smartness?”</p> -<p>I wonder he had patience to read it through. Perhaps it -was my presence that inspired him. Then he said, “Not -so bad in sense, but, as you say, terribly cumbrous in -form. Let’s see what’s the matter with -it. Why, it’s description, description, description, -instead of action, action, action, as Demosthenes recommended in -a kindred art. It’s an essay—good enough so far -as the matter goes—but wearisome and heavy almost beyond -<i>my</i> endurance.”</p> -<p>“Well, what’s to be done with it?”</p> -<p>“Break it up,” was the reply, “and make them -talk. See, here’s a man called Fred. Make him -talk to the first woman he meets—Susan, I see, you’ve -called her—let him ask her how she is, and where -she’s going, and whether it’s a fine day. Do -this with every proper name you can find, and you’ll soon -see the mass disintegrate and look promising for the -printer’s hands.”</p> -<p>I followed his advice, and (triumph of triumphs) the article -was accepted. But I felt unhappy and disquieted even in my -hour of success. The fact is, the plot of my story <a -name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>was a -dream. Yes; it came straight to me at midnight from the god -Oneiros himself, complete to the very smallest detail, and where -was I to look for another? I very seldom dream at all, and -never, before or afterwards, a complete story; and, as I can -never originate a plot, my chances for the future are the reverse -of promising. Yet I labour on with a persistency beyond all -praise, and always during the night—a detrimental practice, -involving great expenditure of candles and tissue. By -daylight my ideas entirely evaporate, and I have abandoned the -attempt as hopeless. The sight, too, of a fair blank sheet -of paper makes my thoughts take wing on the instant. They -can only be arrested on scraps of waste paper or (best of all) on -the pages of a novel.</p> -<p>It is said that the criticisms on Corelli are literally -“given to the dogs.” But my revenge upon a dull -novel is, I flatter myself, more recondite still. I punish -a poor story by using it as the palimpsest for a poorer -one. Hence the highest tribute I can pay to my heroes in -literature is an unspoken (I mean an unwritten) one. I -leave their pages immaculate. My mind might be teeming at -<a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>midnight -with the noblest of thoughts, yet I could not bring myself to -record them, even in thought, upon the pages of “Quentin -Durward,” “Esmond,” “Silas Marner,” -the “Return of the Native,” or “Wuthering -Heights.”</p> -<p>Judging it for power alone—power that never flags from -the first page to the last—I know of nothing that -approaches “Wuthering Heights,” except the preface -Charlotte Bronte wrote for it. Yet I never read the book -without compassionating the authoress. The creation of a -character like Heathcliff must have been one long struggle -against herself, to be faced without flinching, as one of the -penalties of genius. What her own choice would have been is -shown by the relief with which she flings behind her the -nightmare of the past to picture the hope and happiness of -Earnshaw’s love. Her second book, if she had lived to -write it, would certainly have been more genial; it could -scarcely have been so great.</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page189"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 189</span><span -class="GutSmall">CAMBRIDGE</span><br /> -<span class="GutSmall">PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER</span><br /> -<span class="GutSmall">ALEXANDRA STREET</span></p> -<pre> - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RONALD AND I*** - - -***** This file should be named 63308-h.htm or 63308-h.zip****** - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/3/0/63308 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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