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diff --git a/old/63682-0.txt b/old/63682-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 51a8501..0000000 --- a/old/63682-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3731 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Yellow Aster, Volume 1 (of 3), by -Kathleen Mannington Caffyn - -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: A Yellow Aster, Volume 1 (of 3) - -Author: Kathleen Mannington Caffyn - -Release Date: November 8, 2020 [EBook #63682] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A YELLOW ASTER, VOLUME 1 (OF 3) *** - - - - -Produced by Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders’ 20th - Anniversary. - - - - - Transcriber’s Note - - -When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has -been surrounded by _underscores_. Bold text is surrounded by =equal -signs=. - -Some corrections have been made to the printed text. These are listed in -a second transcriber’s note at the end of the text. - - - - - A YELLOW ASTER - - - - -BY - -IOTA - - “And if this fought-for climax _is_ ever reached - and science, creeping along the path of experiment, - so invades the realm of Nature that a blue chrysanthemum - or A Yellow Aster can be produced at - will, the question still remains, has Nature been - made more beautiful thereby?” - - - _IN THREE VOLUMES_ - - VOL I - -London 1894 - - HUTCHINSON & CO. - - 34 PATERNOSTER ROW - - - - - PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) - BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) - AND - TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET - LONDON, W.C. - - - - - CONTENTS - - PAGE - CHAPTER I. 1 - CHAPTER II. 19 - CHAPTER III. 27 - CHAPTER IV. 37 - CHAPTER V. 44 - CHAPTER VI. 59 - CHAPTER VII. 65 - CHAPTER VIII. 87 - CHAPTER IX. 100 - CHAPTER X. 109 - CHAPTER XI. 130 - CHAPTER XII. 151 - CHAPTER XIII. 159 - CHAPTER XIV. 172 - CHAPTER XV. 182 - CHAPTER XVI. 193 - CHAPTER XVII. 203 - - - - - A YELLOW ASTER. - - - - - CHAPTER I. - - -THE stable-yard of Waring Park seemed to be slightly off its head on a -certain fine afternoon in June. Such an afternoon as it was, so sweet -and so soft, so full of fragrant sleepy haze, that any sound louder than -the sing-song of a cricket must have distracted any ordinary -nerve-possessing mortal. - -On this particular afternoon however, the sole occupants of the yard -were the stable-boys, the groom’s urchin, and the under-gardener’s lad, -and as none of these had yet reached the level of nerves, whilst the -blood of all of them throbbed with the greed for illegal sport in every -shape, their state of lazy content was in no way upset by a medley of -blood-curdling shrieks, squeals, and gobbles that issued from the -throats of a little boy and a big turkey which the boy was swinging -round and round by the tail, from the vantage ground of a large smooth -round stone, with an amount of strength that was preternatural, if one -had judged by the mere length of him and had not taken into -consideration the enormous development of the imp’s legs and arms. - -The stable-boys grinned, and smoked like furnaces as the show proceeded, -and the other two cheered like Trojans, in the cruelty of the natural -boy, and it might have gone badly for the turkey, if there had not -swooped down upon him and his tormentor, just in the nick of time, a -little lean wiry woman, armed with an authority, which even the imp, -after one spasmodic struggle, saw best not to gainsay. - -“Master Dacre, whatever do you do it for? Do you think the bird has no -feelings? There is no sense in such goings-on.” - -“There is sense,” spluttered the boy at full speed, “I like bein’ swung -and I like swingin’ the turkey, and I’ll learn him to like it too, and -if he don’t learn that anyway he’ll learn something else, which is -life’s discerpline, which father says I’m learnin’ when you whip me. If -I want it, so does the turkey and wuss. I b’longs to higher orders nor -beasts and birds.” - -Here the grins of the stable-boys broke into hoarse guffaws, and Mary’s -ire culminated in a sharp rebuke all round. - -“Go to your work, you idle fellows. I told your father long ago, Jim, -what ’ud be the latter end of you. As for you, Robert, I could cry when -I think of your blessed mother! - -“And what business have you in the yard,” she cried, turning on the two -younger sinners. “Be off with you this instant. ’Tis easy to see none of -the men are about. You two, Jim and Robert, you’d be surprised -yourselves if you could see what soft idiots you look with them stumps -of pipes between your jaws. - -“Look, Master Dacre, look at the bird’s tail. Haven’t you any heart at -all? The creature might have been through the furze covert—” - -“There’s not a feather broke,” said the boy, after a critical survey, -“not one; I believe that tail were made for swingin’ as much as my arms -was.” - -For an instant words failed Mary and she employed herself hushing the -bird into his pen. When she came back, Dacre had disappeared, and the -yard seemed to be quite clear of human life, not to be traced even by -the smell of shag tobacco. - -Pursuit was useless, as Mary very well knew, so she returned to her -nursery a good deal down at heart, muttering and murmuring as she went. - -“Oh Lord, whatever is to be the end of it all? Learning is the ruin of -the whole place, and yet them children is as ignorant as bears, -excepting for their queer words and ways. Set them to read a Royal -Reader or to tot up a sum, bless you, they couldn’t for the life of -them. And the tempers of the two,” she went on, putting the cross -stitches on a darn, “their parents had no hand in them anyway. Where -they got ’em from the Lord only knows. Tempers, indeed! And from them -two blessed babies as bore ’em.” She lifted her head and glanced out of -the window. - -“Look at ’em,” she whispered, “hand in hand up and down the drive, -talking mathymatics, I’ll be bound,” and Mary’s eyes returned to her -basket a trifle moist. She had nursed Mrs. Waring and Mrs. Waring’s -children, and she was a good soul with a deal of sentiment about her. - -As it happened, Mr. and Mrs. Waring were not discussing mathematics. -They were just then deeply and solemnly exercised in their minds as to -the exact date of a skeleton recently unearthed from some red sandstone -in the neighbourhood. They had dismissed the carriage at the hall gates, -and were now hot in argument concerning the bones, each holding -diametrically opposed views on the subject, and struggling hard to prove -his or her side. - -Now and again the husband’s voice rose to a pretty high pitch, and his -fine mouth was touched with a sneer, and the wife’s eyes flashed and -flamed and shot out indignant wrath. Her hat had fallen off far down the -drive, and her rings of yellow fluffy hair fell wildly over her -forehead, one small hand was clenched in eager protest, but the other -was clasped tight in her husband’s. - -They always went like this, these two; they had got into the foolish way -very early in their acquaintance and had never been able to get out of -it. - -Suddenly some common hypothesis struck them both at once, and Mrs. -Waring cried out with a gasp, - -“If we can prove it, I am right.” - -“Yes, if you can prove it, darling, that’s the point, and I hope that -you never will. Have you any idea, dear love, what the proving of this -will undo, what it must upset?” - -“I think I have,” she said slowly, her blue eyes gleaming eagerly, “but -it seems to me whenever a great hubbub is made about the upsetting of -some theory, that it generally ends in being much ado about nothing, and -that the new thing that springs from the ashes of the old dead, is -infinitely more beautiful than ever its predecessor was, for it is one -step nearer the truth.” - -“Dearest, we must end our talk,” groaned Mr. Waring, peering with -terrified looks through his eyeglasses. “Here is Gwen, most slightly -clad and of a bright blue tint, pursued by Mary. I fear very much that -story of Boadicea you told her has instigated her to this action. I -think, dearest, I will go to the study and work out this question of -date.” - -Mr. Waring turned nervously and made a gentle effort to disengage his -hand from his wife’s, but she clutched him firmly. “Henry,” she cried, -“you would not desert me?” - -“Oh, my dear,” he gasped, “what can I do? The child must be cleansed -and, I presume, punished. I can be of no use,” and he still showed signs -of flight, but the horror-stricken eyes of his wife, fixed pleadingly on -him, made him waver and wait. - -By a superhuman effort Mary got up first. - -“Oh, ma’am,” she shrieked in tones that went through Mrs. Waring’s head, -“Oh, ma’am, look at her! I found her with nothing on but this rag and -some leaves, painted blue, and varnished—varnished, sir, eating acorns -outside of the orchard fence. It’s common indecency, ma’am, and if it’s -to continue I can’t”— - -By this time Gwen had arrived, desperately blown, but overflowing with -words; rather an advantage under the circumstances, for her parents had -not one between them. - -“Mother, I were a woaded Briton and blue all over. Mag Dow did me behind -and I done the front, and it aren’t common naked if queens done it like -you said. She did, Mary, say it Thursday when she begun the history -course. Dacre was to be a woaded king too, but he were a beast and -wouldn’t do nothing but swing turkeys for discerpline.” - -“Mary, I think perhaps you should give Miss Gwen a bath, and then we -will consider what further course to take.” - -Mrs. Waring caught her skirts nervously and drew a step nearer to her -husband. - -“A bath, ma’am! Don’t you see she’s painted and varnished, no water’ll -touch that, ma’am, turpentine it must be and cart grease, not to say -paraffin,—and, ma’am, the indecency!” - -“Please, Mary,” implored the tortured woman, “oh, please take her away -and put the cart grease on—and—the other things, and we can then talk -over the rest.” - -Here the light of a sudden inspiration leapt into her face, and she -turned to her husband. “Henry,” she said solemnly, “do you not think -that Gwen should go to bed? She seems to me,” she continued, taking a -critical survey of the blue-daubed figure, “she seems to me a little old -for such very peculiar adaptations of history.” - -“To bed,” remarked the husband infinitely relieved. It seemed quite a -happy solution to the whole question, and must fulfil every purpose,—be -Gwen’s Nemesis, a salve to Mary’s hurt morality, and a merciful -deliverance to all others concerned. “Yes, a very sensible suggestion of -yours, dearest. I consider that it would be a most salutary measure to -send Gwen to bed.” - -“Indeed, sir,” remarked Mary, without a particle of the satisfaction -that might have been expected from her, “Miss Gwen will be fit for no -other place by the time I’ve done with her, what with the paraffin and -the scrubbing and her skin that tender. Oh come, Miss, come away,” she -cried grimly, laying hold of Gwen. - -“Grace, my darling,” said Mr. Waring, passing his free hand wearily over -his brow, “such scenes as these are indeed upsetting. I am quite unable -to take up the thread of our discourse.” - -“I feel as you do, Henry,” said his wife sadly, “we seem to have so very -little time to ourselves.” - -“Do you think, Grace, we should procure a tutor for those children? Let -me see, how old are they?” - -“I have their ages down somewhere in my tablets,” said Mrs. Waring -rummaging in her pocket, and producing a little book of ivory tablets. -She consulted it anxiously. - -“Just fancy!” she exclaimed with astonished eyes, “Dacre will be seven -in April—I had no idea he was so old—and I see Gwen is just twelve -months younger.” - -“I think their physical powers are now fairly developed—indeed, I am of -opinion that the boy’s development will continue to be mainly physical; -he will, I fear, run much to cricket and other brutal sports. But no -doubt he has some small amount of brain power that should be made the -most of. We must now get someone who will undertake this business for -us, dear love.” - -“Ah,” said his wife plaintively, “the feeding and physical care of -children seems a terrible responsibility; it weighs upon my life. But -the development of their intellectual powers!—I wish the time for it had -kept off just a little longer, until we were farther on in our last, our -best work. And if,” she said wearily, “you think the brain power of -Dacre, at least, is so insignificant, the task becomes Herculean.” - -“We must consult the rector, dear.” - -“I feel in some way we must have failed in our duty. The grammar that -child spoke was appalling, as was also the intonation of her words. I -wonder how this has come to pass? I should have thought her mere -heredity would have saved us this.” - -Mrs. Waring sighed heavily, fate seemed against her, even heredity was -playing her false. - -“It is shocking, dear, but accountable,” said her husband soothingly, -“you are disturbed, and forget how widely modified heredity becomes by -conditions. If I recollect aright Gwen mentioned one—Mag—h’m, Dow. -Children are imitative creatures. And now, with regard to another -matter. I think, dear love, it were wiser if you discontinued that -proposed course of history. The imagination of our daughter Gwen must -not be fostered until it has a sounder intellectual basis to work up -from.” - -“Very well, dear,” and Mrs. Waring sighed a sigh of relief. No one but -herself knew the horrible embarrassment of having those two children -sitting opposite to her and glaring all over her, while she discoursed -to them on the customs of the early Britons, and it was only a consuming -sense of duty that had seized on her, and forced her to the task. - - - - - CHAPTER II. - - -NOT only the entire county of ——shire but even the whole University of -Cambridge had been thrown into quite a whirl of emotion by the marriage -of Henry Waring and Grace Selwyn, the most unexpected ever concocted in -heaven or on earth. - -A Senior Wrangler and a Fellow of his college, who at twenty-six, eats, -drinks, and sleeps mathematics, besides being possessed of other -devouring passions for certain of the minor sciences, does not seem a -very fit subject for matrimony with its petty follies and cares. - -If one is, besides, the son of a cynic and a bookworm, who loathed and -eschewed the sex with bitter reason, and whose own practical knowledge -had been gained chiefly through the classics and the bedmakers, the one -of which appeals but little to one’s sense of propriety, the other still -less to one’s fleshly sense, the prospect of a domestic and patriarchal -career must seem as remote as it is undesirable. - -And yet Henry Waring found himself, to his constant and increasing -bewilderment, embarked on one almost before he altogether knew where he -was. - -The year previous to his marriage he had suffered a good deal from -ennui. A favourite theory in geology over which he had peered himself -half blind, was suddenly exploded without hope of reconstruction. He -felt rather lost and _distrait_, and cast about for some tangible solid -brainwork. - -But to pass the time until the fresh inspiration came on, he took to -propounding stray problems, and—through the press—launching them -broadcast over the land. Strange to say, he got answers, and by the -score. A good many more “mute inglorious Solons” infest our villages -than we have any notion of. - -Mr. Waring groaned in spirit and mourned over the depravity of the race -as he read their epistles, and drew farther back than ever into his -shell. If the average man and woman without the academical walls -resembled these productions, the less one had to do with them the -better, he very reasonably reflected. - -After this had been going on for the space of three months, he came, one -morning, down to breakfast. He felt very sick at heart; his pupils -seemed so amazingly full of enthusiasm for minor concerns, and so -absolutely lacking in it for the one thing needful, that he was cut to -the quick and moved to much gentle wrath. And then these letters! They -were fast becoming his Nemesis. - -He ate his breakfast and watched with unwonted pleasure some dust motes -dancing in a sunbeam, and raising his eyes to follow them, they -unconsciously strayed farther out into the college quad, where the dew -was still sparkling on every grass blade, and shimmering on every -flower. - -Mr. Waring felt quite cheerful and revived as he pushed away his plate -and cup and began to open his letters. Letter after letter was laid -down, a spasm of pain passing each time across his face, and more than -once an audible groan escaped him. - -At last he picked up a letter gingerly, as he handled all this variety -of correspondence—the village mathematician being an unclean beast—but -this letter seemed somehow different, he turned it over with growing -interest, and even took the pains to examine the postmark, then he -opened it and found a quite different production from any he had yet -received. - -First on opening it a curious indefinite scent struck on his nostrils. -He sniffed it up perplexedly; some queer old memories began to stir in -him, and he paused a moment to try and classify them, but he could not, -so he set himself to examine the contents of the missive. - -The answer given to his problem was accurate and the accompanying -remarks clear, strong, and to the point, written in a woman’s hand and -signed with a woman’s name, “Grace Selwyn”. - -That letter was answered before the breakfast things were cleared away, -and certain fresh problems enclosed which were not sent in any other -direction. - -Many letters went and came after that, containing problems and their -answers, the answers always full of that strange, vague, delicious -scent, which seemed to waft itself through the study and to remain -there, caught with the dust motes in the sunbeam. - -A longing and a yearning for those little notes began to take possession -of Henry Waring and to disturb his mind. Old memories of the time when -he wore frocks and toddled, began to haunt him, and his work was no -longer done by reflex action. - -He consulted a doctor, but as he only confided half his symptoms to that -scientific person, quite suppressing the letters, the doctor felt rather -out of it and prescribed quinine, which had no effect whatsoever. - -One morning the yearning for a letter grew suddenly quite overmastering; -and none came. This was the climax. By a sudden impulse which he never -succeeded in explaining to himself on any satisfactory grounds, Mr. -Waring went to his bedroom, knelt down by his big chest of drawers, and -proceeded to pack a little valise with every article he did not want, -leaving out all those he did. Then he stepped into a cab and made for -the station. - -Towards the close of the day he presented himself at the door of a queer -old red-brick manor house in Kent owned by a Colonel Selwyn and his -wife, and asked simply for “Miss Grace Selwyn”. - -In three months from that day the two came down the path hand in hand -and stepped out together on life’s journey, and six months later through -the death of a cousin, Waring Park fell to them and made up for the loss -of the Fellowship. - - - - - CHAPTER III. - - -THE very day after Gwen’s flight into history Mr. and Mrs. Waring walked -up to the Rectory and got through their talk with the master of it. - -They might not have been altogether so prompt, being still absorbed body -and soul in the skeleton, but that, not only was Gwen suffering tortures -from the state of her skin through the combined action of paint, -paraffin, and other ungents, but into the bargain she had caught a bad -and a quite abnormally noisy cold, which kept her presence _en evidence_ -by fits and starts whenever she broke loose from the nursery, and which -was a weapon judiciously wielded by Mary to keep her parents well up to -the mark. - -They had delivered themselves to Mr. Fellowes, and were now walking down -the Rectory drive, both looking a little pained. Mr. Waring’s disengaged -hand was pressed to his forehead and his brows were knit, and Mrs. -Waring looked as if she were engaged in a silent struggle against -disturbing thoughts. - -The air was still and soft, and some stray stars had already taken -possession of the evening sky, where the little streaks of rose, left by -the sun, looked quite out of place, and felt it too, seemingly, for they -were creeping behind the hills with a soft little shiver of dismay, like -a timid guest who suddenly discovers that every soul but himself has -left. - -The silence and the calm helped Mr. and Mrs. Waring, who were both -trying to throw off the consideration of minor matters and to return to -that of vital affairs. Generally so easy, like the slipping back of a -pair of seals into the water after a rugged land journey, to-night this -seemed a strangely hard task to tackle. - -They often seemed to receive the same impression at the same moment, and -something or other in the bright glow of the Rectory study and in the -perfectly at-home and at-ease air of a pair of twins that the Rector’s -wife had temporary charge of, and had brought in to say good-night, had -given them a little jar which would keep on quivering. - -These were not sufficiently tangible sensations for discussion, there -seemed nothing in them that these two persons could seize upon and argue -from to any purpose, so they were struggling to put them behind them. -Mr. Waring succeeded, his wife was not so fortunate. - -The vague feeling was quite like a Jack-in-the-box for sudden -appearances during the next few days, and whenever it sprang up, a -little ache followed hot on the heels of it. - -At last she made a supreme effort to regain her reason, and remarked -with rather deceptive cheerfulness, - -“I think, dearest, we may now dismiss this matter from our minds. I am -quite willing to trust it in Mr. Fellowes’ hands, as I presume you are. -You do feel perfect confidence in him?” she questioned a little -anxiously, as Mr. Waring did not speak for a moment. - -“Darling, yes!” he said with a start, “in this matter certainly yes, -this is quite within his _rôle_, I do not think we could find a wiser -helper or counsellor. And he is so thoroughly a gentleman, he so kindly -waived his theological objections when he found that on this part of the -question we had both arrived at a fixed conclusion. Yes, in the choice -of a tutor we could desire no better adviser. At the moment you spoke I -was speculating upon Fellowes from another point of view; I am really -quite astonished that a man so advanced in some phases of thought should -be so limited so—almost retrograde—in others, and above all, so -strangely content with his life, with hardly a moment in it for -undisturbed reflection, and no moment at all for any attempt at valuable -work. I cannot imagine either where he finds companionship.” - -He paused to sigh. “We have so little time, love, to give to him, time -is so very much to us. Our other neighbours seem to hunt when they do -not fish and fish when they do not hunt, they can have neither time nor -strength left for intellectual culture. Then Mr. and Mrs. Fellows have, -I believe, duties; they sit on Boards and Councils and no doubt follow -other pursuits of like order, but as companions, naturally they must be -impossible. Then as to his wife, she is a comely person—she is, is she -not, dearest? I am so very poor a judge—but I do not perceive any -glimmerings of thought in her. You can better judge of her, dear, have -you ever discovered any?” - -Mrs. Waring considered for a moment then she shook her head. - -“I do not think I have expected any,” she said, “so indeed I have hardly -looked. I have only thought of her kindness, and of her knowledge of -children and their feeding. I am very fond of her and so very grateful, -but I have never once really talked to her.” - -“I thought so—it is strange—strange. However, I am most thankful this -business is done, we may now be able to begin those papers to-night—I -look forward with much pleasure to them. Curious what very opposed views -we take on this subject—h’m, I fancy I am right, dear.” - -Mrs. Waring thought not, and signified the fact by a very decided shake -of her sweet golden locks, that looked more like spun silver in the -moon’s rays. - -They had now reached the great flight of steps that flanked either side -of the entrance door. - -When they got to the top, by one accord they paused, and leant over the -castellated ivy-clad wall that protected the platform of granite slabs -connecting the two flights of steps, and gazed out into the evening, but -a sudden horrible sound made Mrs. Waring jump nervously, then quiver -from head to foot, and caused her husband’s brows to contract as sharply -as if there had been a spring in them. - -It turned out to be Gwen scraping an old violin and coughing frightfully -all down the corridor. - -“Dearest, do you think we should summon Dr. Guy?” said Mr. Waring when -they had somewhat recovered. - -“Oh no, love, Mary assures me there is no danger whatever, she calls -that dreadful noise ‘a simple stomach cough’.” - -“In that case we must request Mary to keep her in the nursery, such -noises are most upsetting. Pray be as quick as you can, my darling, we -might get to work at once. But surely it is not the gong I hear?” - -“Love, I fear it is only too true,” cried Mrs. Waring in trembling -distress. “I had no idea of the lateness of the hour, and oh, Henry, we -were late again yesterday and the servants were quite upset. Oh, you -will be quick with your dressing, will you not?” - -Then with one last little hand-squeeze she fled to her room with a -terrified glance into the solemn face of a hurt-looking footman. - - - - - CHAPTER IV. - - -WHEN he had bidden farewell to the Warings in his porch and watched them -curiously till a clump of firs hid them from him, Mr. Fellowes went back -to his study with a very curious assortment of expressions on his face; -there was a good deal of amusement there, a decided touch of sadness, -much doubt, and some dismay. - -He had, however, little time to reduce this confusion to order; an -impatient tap at the door was followed by the entrance of a bright eager -little woman, in a long trailing garment of a curious combination of -heliotrope and pale yellow. - -“John, are you ready for me? May I hear all of it?” she demanded, -putting her little hand on his big ones. - -“I feel in rather a yeasty condition at this minute, but I’ll subside -shortly, no doubt. Will you be able to hold out a little longer?” - -“Haven’t I borne it for two mortal hours and twenty minutes? Were they -talking all the time? I was in an awful fright it was something I -mustn’t hear. Two scientists in trouble about their souls, perhaps?” - -“Fortunately I can divulge all I know, but you needn’t be flippant. It’s -all very funny, but it’s just as woefully sad. What on earth are you -at?” - -“Pinning up my skirts, the fire would ruin this colour in a night. Do -you like my gown?” - -“I do, but whether the parish will, is another question.” - -“Oh, never mind the parish, I’ll teach it; you have no idea how easy it -is to get round people if you know the track. Is that yeast risen high -enough or has it gone sad? Remember I have held out a frightful time.” - -“Hold out another five minutes while I write a note, I must catch this -post.” - -When Mr. Fellowes brought his little seventeen-years old wife home to -the respectable parish of Waring, just four years before this time, it -was the generally received opinion of most competent judges that he had -a good deal to answer for. - -To begin with, she was American, that fact in itself was quite without -precedent. The entire clerical annals of the diocese did not furnish a -like example. This, to any right-minded judgment, was as much as an -insult to the parishioners, who were in consequence put to much trouble -and inconvenience in rubbing up their imaginations to tackle the case, -having no previous experience to go upon. - -A deceased Colonel, of whom they knew a great deal too much, and a -living peer, of whom on the contrary, they knew a great deal too little, -both inhabitants of the county, had indeed married Americans, the -results in the one case being disastrous; of the other they possessed no -proven data, but they were at least at liberty to draw their own -conclusions. - -But for a parson to do this thing! It was unheard-of, and partook of the -nature of a scandal. - -Then Mrs. Fellowes was pretty and gay, and it must be confessed _chic_. - -They could have put up with the prettiness and even the brightness,—they -were used to certain varieties of both these things in their own -girls,—but the _chicness_!—that was the quality their souls struck -against, it seemed expressly to have been sent by Satan himself “to -buffet them withal”. And the girl’s dress for a clergyman’s wife, was -simply audacious! And yet when a large and representative female -conclave had met and dissected her “things” over half a dozen teas, they -were forced to the conclusion that she had not a complex or expensive -article in her whole wardrobe. - -“So much the worse,” Lady Mary, the leader of the parish _ton_, -remarked, and with some reason too, “it shows that it is not the clothes -that stamp the girl, it is the girl who stamps the clothes. There is -something fundamentally wrong there.” - -This being put in the form of an axiom spread widely, and carried much -weight. - -This was four years ago, however, and things had changed a good deal. -Mrs. Fellowes’ husband was no fool, he knew what he was about when he -brought home, as the finish to the one long holiday of his life, the -little New England girl to be his helpmate. - - - - - CHAPTER V. - - -“NOW, Ruth,” said Mr. Fellowes when he had finished and despatched his -note, and, lighting a cigarette, settled himself in his armchair -opposite to her, “I’ll yield you up all I know. It was the queerest -interview I ever had with that queer pair.—You needn’t wriggle with -anticipation, my dear, no human creature could reproduce the scene with -any justice to himself or to his subject.—Waring had most palpably put -on for the occasion a brisk man-of-the-world air that was superb, but -his wife seemed dreamier than ever, and limper, and her hat looked -rather askew.” - -“It always does, but do go on.” - -“Directly you give me a chance, dear. Waring opened the campaign with a -little small talk as he always does, but it was quite off-hand and -reckless to-day. He had hardly set his gentle tap fairly flowing -however, when his wife suddenly woke up and chipped in with quite -phenomenal clearness and precision, - -“‘Dear Henry, suppose we state the object of our call, we can converse -afterwards.’ - -“Then it all came out. First one stated a fact or a theory then the -other had his innings. It was hard enough to follow the two and to watch -them at the same time; one never likes to miss the moment when they -clasp hands again and the little looks they cast on each other in the -process. It appears the pair meditate a definite experiment on those -wretched children, and want my help in securing a bear-leader for the -task.” - -“Good gracious!” gasped Mrs. Fellowes. “Go on,” she commanded grimly, -“what is it?” - -“On no account whatever is either to be sent to school or allowed to -hold intercourse with other children; no woman is to have any hand in -their tuition; naturally, cricket, football, and every other boyish -sport is to be carefully excluded from the curriculum, and all Christian -teaching is to be utterly tabooed.” - -“Mercy on us!” - -“The facts of the Old Testament are to be imparted to them with other -ancient history, and they are to be well instructed in the natural -sciences. By these means they will learn to know God in His Works—with a -capital ‘W’—Mrs. Waring observed this solemnly to her husband for my -benefit. ‘Exactly, my darling,’ he replied, with a most surprising -alacrity—they had rehearsed this point, those two babies.—When the -children are launched into their teens and have presumably arrived at an -age of more or less discretion, the Bible and any other existing -evidences of Christianity obtainable, are to be formally presented to -them. The imps may then receive these or reject them according to their -particular turn of mind, but in no case are they to be biased. - -“The parents have seemingly occupied themselves a good deal with this -part of the experiment and regard this presentation of a choice of -beliefs as a sort of function on which they mean to take exhaustive -observation.” - -The rector paused to roll another cigarette; when he had finished and -lighted it, he went on. - -“Ruth, you are an intelligent woman and won’t misjudge me when I say, -that this experiment in itself seems to be a reasonable one. - -“This Bible-reading question is an awful one,” he went on, musing aloud, -“we all have had, every decent English man, woman, and child of us has -had the Bible religiously drilled into him from the time of -consciousness till whatever time he can manage to read it for himself, -then he is exhorted to carry on the exercise independently, and a good -percentage of people do; you’d be astonished at the number of people who -never miss reading their Bible every day of their lives, and perhaps -more astonished still if you were to know the amazingly small effect it -has on the lives of these people. Even from an intellectual point of -view, it is incredible to me how little the average human being has -grasped the heritage he possesses in this book. - -“I was speaking to a girl the other day—by far the most intelligent one -I know in these regions—she was talking to me with perfect unrestraint -and frankness about all sorts of things. She told me she could see no -beauty whatsoever in the Bible, and that she had never been able to -derive an atom of encouragement or assurance from anything in it. If it -did not bore, it upset her, and made belief harder. It had become a mere -patter to her by vile reading and intonation, and the remarkable turns -of thought given to it by many minds insulted her reason. Even the -poetry of the diction had been spoilt for her and seemed, she said, to -reek of half-fledged curates.—Under some conditions this experiment of -the Warings might prove a success.” - -“Oh, but with that mother!” - -“Ah, yes, that alters the whole aspect of affairs! If you could only -have heard the passionless, analytical style in which Waring and his -wife discussed the matter and speculated on the issue, which they think -will be more typical in Gwen than in Dacre, his brute strength being, in -their opinion, his strong point, and his theological side hardly worth -considering. They throw it in, however, ‘careless like’ as, if the -experiment is to be tried, it is just as easy to try it on two as on -one.” - -“Mercy on us,” again said Mrs. Fellowes, clattering the fire-irons -viciously. - -“By the way, Waring amused me intensely by one revelation he made, he -could hardly get it out, and I saw him fling a pathetically-deprecating -glance at his wife and give her hand a squeeze before he began. He felt -he had to account for the luckless Dacre’s strength of legs, of which he -seems to have as poor an opinion as the Psalmist, he feared I might fall -into the error of casting the blame on him or his wife, so he determined -I should know the real cause. ‘You will hardly believe me,’ he observed, -‘when I tell you that my wife with her refined intellectuality is the -outcome of long generations of soldiers and of—ahem,—famous duellists, -and I fear our son, Dacre, is a very clearly-defined specimen of -throwing-back.’ Poor Mrs. Waring! she felt her ancestry keenly and got -as red as a rose during the confession.” - -“Goodness gracious me! What a woman! what a pair! What in the name of -goodness brought the two together and made them marry each other and -produce children. If I were Providence and had that on my mind, I’d -never look up again.” - -“My dear child!” - -“John, in the present state of my feelings, brought on by you yourself -recollect, you must forget your sacerdotal character and only remember -my state of original sin. Why should two beautiful children’s lives be -spoilt for the vagaries of a pair who never had any right to bear -children? Think of Gwen’s sad old face full of the trouble of all ages, -think of her naughtiness with that horrible unique sort of infernal -touch about it; that painting herself blue is the most childish escapade -I remember. - -“I was at Mrs. Doyle’s yesterday and she was telling me a lot about Mrs. -Waring before we came. After Dacre’s birth, she said it was absolutely -ghastly to see her with the child, she was terrified to hold it, and -trembled like a leaf whenever she absolutely had to. Poor Mrs. Doyle, -she got quite irritated and excited about one thing; it seems she could -not nurse her own children at all, and that Mrs. Waring was a capital -mother from that point of view, and Mrs. Doyle seemingly could not see -at all why an unnatural little bundle of scientific data should score -off her, a good wholesome creature made for a mother, in this manner.” - -“It was certainly too bad, and one would never have expected it of Mrs. -Waring,” said the rector laughing. - -“Oh, and whenever Mary brought either of the babies to her or she met -them in the corridors or about the grounds, Mrs. Doyle says her one -request was that Mary should take the creature away and give it food, it -looked faint! They were both huge, flourishing, healthy babies, I hear.” - -“Ruth,” said Mr. Fellowes suddenly, “I wish those people would keep away -from church.” - -“You are shedding your sacerdotal character with a vengeance! What do -you mean?” - -“You have no idea how they distract me, sitting there together with -their eyes far away and their ears sealed, except at the odd times they -give those spasmodic simultaneous starts, and twist their thoughts back -for the minute to what’s going on.” - -“But, John, for the sake of the parish—” - -“If the parish can’t keep up to its ordinary pretty low water-mark -without this prick to its piety it must be in a poor state, and even -more of a discredit to me than I imagine. They are far too good to be -asked to play this weekly farce for the parish’s sake. It was Hopkins, -not I, who insisted upon this church-going and of course they gave in in -their gracious simple way; and now, not even a water spout would stop -them from coming, they are so concerned for my feelings. What a pair of -unconscious Christians they are to be sure! One sees it cropping up in -all directions.” - -“I wish it would appear anyway in the management of their children, I -don’t see many traces of it there. When is this wretched experiment to -be set going?” asked Mrs. Fellowes. - -“As soon as I can procure a suitable person to conduct it. I think I -know a fellow who might do.” - -“What business have they with children, those two?” cried Mrs. Fellowes -with a little spasm of pain twisting about her mouth. “I don’t believe -those children ever got properly hugged in all their lives by that -inhuman little mother of theirs. And oh, Gwen’s dress! That is awful!” - -“Ah, yes, that makes the whole affair very much sadder! Don’t you think -dinner is ready? Yes, those children have a great deal to fight against, -it isn’t their ancestors alone that will handicap them, poor little -beggars.” - -“Cartloads of saints for ancestors wouldn’t be worth a rap to them with -an eerie little creature like that for a mother,” said Mrs. Fellowes -hotly, in the pretty lazy drawl into which her touch of twang had -developed itself. “I pity that wretched coming tutor.” - -She let her skirts drop and gave them a dexterous kick as she went out, -to give them the correct “hang”. - - - - - CHAPTER VI. - - -THERE was no time lost in setting the experiment going, and it was soon -in full swing. Its birth pangs were awful, and embraced in their throes -a great number of persons. The parents’ sufferings were so complex and -so quite peculiar to themselves that it is impossible to expound them to -an unsympathizing public. - -The tortures that couple endured during the first few months after the -initial stage of intellectual development had been instituted and was -being dealt with, were severe, but they were in no wise connected with -their children’s anguish at the sudden and unexpected onslaught on their -higher parts. - -_Their_ misery arose chiefly from the jarring and inconveniently close -contact with tutors, whom, in their unconscious Christian way, they -found it their duty to admit for some part of every day into the edge of -their lives. This was a terrible discipline, more especially as during -these times the unhappy instructors also thought it their duty to ease -off their slough of learning and to expand their social parts, and thus -the manufacture of small talk became a daily necessity in the lives of -the distracted pair. - -They had both taken infinite pains to provide silent entertainment for -their guests—or rather succession of guests—in the tutoring line. The -standard scientists were first tried, and these seeming to have but -little effect, a whole cartload of mixed literature, including all the -rag-tag and bobtail of fiction the bookseller wanted to get off his -hands, was imported and spread about enticingly; theology and ethics -were also given a show, till at last all the tables at one side of the -room were spotted with slate, yellow, and dull blues and browns, and -every form of journal from the _Times_ to the _Police News_ was -scattered broadcast over the place, all with a view to lay hold on the -tutorial mind and keep it independent of its entertainers. - -Directly the tutor for the time being, entered at his appointed hour, -they rose simultaneously from their work, as if the same spring moved -them, hurried towards him with outstretched hands, sat down side by side -facing him, and broke into conversation, which if gaspy, and at times -inconsequent, from the sudden upheaval of waves of thought in one or -other of them, was kept up with gallant relentlessness till the period -of detention was at an end. - -As soon as the clock announced this event, they broke off suddenly with -a click, and the tutor was, so to speak, shot out, and the rent he had -made in the lives of his entertainers was patched up as well as might be -for that day. - -But during the entire first course of those tutors, Mr. and Mrs. Waring -felt always as if they were suffering from ragged edges. - -As for Gwen and Dacre, their first taste of reclamation from the savage -state, was bitter, sudden, and condign. Civilization seems the last -thing in the world capable of soothing the savage breast, especially if -the savage who owns it is young and in rude health. - -Then Mary suffered. It was a hard blow to find her fledglings torn from -her in one fell stroke, and only allowed to return at odd moments for -repairs to skin and clothes. - -Poor Mrs. Fellowes fretted herself into a regular feverish attack. - -As for the tutors themselves, the less said of their sufferings the -better. Three succumbed to them in four months. - -The one that followed, a most excellent person and cut out for a family -man, broke off his engagement for fear of consequences, his slight -substratum of scientific knowledge having got so much stirred up while -at Waring Park, that he grew bewildered. - -If such results as he had to deal with, he reflected, were to be seen in -the green tree what might not come to pass in the dry? And he was well -aware of the cloudy ancestry of his lady-love, and on his own side had -not very much to boast of. It was unfortunate. But it certainly did seem -sacrilegious impertinence in him to attempt what his betters had so -egregiously failed in. - - - - - CHAPTER VII. - - -MANY tutors had come and gone, and much had been endured both from the -children’s point of view and from that of the instructors. - -But time went on unheeding, and Gwen and Dacre were lying under an old -cherry-tree in the orchard one day late in August. - -The sun shone aslant through the crimson-tinted leaves above them, and -threw flickering rosy shadows across the faces of the two as they lay -there in the cool grass, with wisps of fern under their heads for -pillows. - -Dacre, however, seemed to benefit but little from this arrangement; his -head was oftener off its support than on; he twisted and turned and -wriggled and plunged, even his toes moved visibly through his thick -boots. - -He was supposed to be reading, and kept up the pretence from time to -time, but the words conveyed no sense to his restless eyes, that moved -as if they were on wires. Now and again he got irritated and threw the -book down with a snort. - -The sister and brother spent much of their time together nowadays; fate -had perhaps quite as much to do with this close companionship as -inclination, the groom’s boy and his like, except at stolen moments, -being for Dacre things of the past. - -This and various other reforms had been brought about by Mr. Fellowes -and one tutor of an exceptionally strong mind. - -While Dacre wriggled, his sister lay quite still on her back with her -legs stretched out, and with a considerable reach of stocking visible -between the edge of her frock and her shoes. She had one arm curled -round her neck with the sharp elbow stuck out uncompromisingly in -Dacre’s direction. It was useful as a buffer and saved her many a lunge. -The other hand held a book, a queer old edition of Elia, which she was -deeply sunk in until she fell to watching Dacre with a look of curious -mockery on her red curled lips. - -“I’d give my eyes to go to school!” burst out the boy after an interval -of comparative silence. Mutterings never counted in Dacre. - -“So you have said six times this afternoon, not to mention the mutters,” -said the girl, “what do you want to go to school for?” - -“You know without any telling.” - -“I want to hear again.” - -“To jeer at a fellow, I suppose?” - -“I won’t jeer, and I might help you,” she said with a laugh. - -He looked at her face dubiously, it was inscrutable enough, but the -mockery had left her lips. - -“I want to go, I hate to be here, Greggs is a big enough fool but not -quite so much as the others, he ain’t all bad, I’ll say that. But what’s -he to other boys and cricket and football and larks—oh, you know!” - -“I wonder why on earth they let you read _Tom Brown_ when such heaps of -books are forbidden,” said Gwen reflectively. “They have brought all -this on themselves,” she added, knitting her brows in the exact manner -of her mother. “We have to bear what we earn, we hear that often enough, -I don’t see why they shouldn’t apply it to themselves. Dacre, you’re an -awful ass, if I wanted all those things I should have had them long -ago.” - -“All very well to say that,” grunted the boy, “I’d like to know how.” - -“I’ll tell you,—I’d worry till I got them.” - -“I worry pretty well as it is,” he said with a self-satisfied grin. - -“Yes, in a stupid squally way—you get into a rage and make a row and an -ass of yourself generally, then you get punished and repent, or pretend -to,—anyway nothing is heard of you till the next bout. You might be a -dead cat for all the importance you are—of course you’re forgotten, and -they go on working in peace. - -“Now if I wanted a thing and wanted it badly I should take good care -never to be forgotten; I should let them see there was to be no peace as -long as I was in the house; I should make myself felt from the garrets -to the kitchen; I should gain my end,” she concluded with calm finality. - -By this time the sun had forsaken their tree and had flickered on to one -nearer the west, and in the evening light her face gleamed out almost -ghastly in its pallor. - -“Gwen, you’re queerer and queerer! Why don’t you do all this for -yourself? You are quiet enough now, nothing only sulky, why don’t you do -what you say I ought to, yourself?” - -“For what?” was the sharp retort. “I don’t want boys and cricket and -football and larks.” - -“What do you want then?” - -She jumped up from her pillow and looked out after the westering sun, -her eyes dark and dilated, her red lips parted. - -“What do I want?” she slowly repeated, “I want—oh, you would not -understand what I want, but worrying won’t get it.” - -She caught up her book again and threw herself face downwards on the -sward. - -“That’s the way! You’ll never tell me anything,” said Dacre angrily. - -“I’ll tell you one thing, and that’s I’ll help you to go to school, and -you’ll go if you aren’t a common ass, and if you’ll do all I tell you.” - -“Golly! I’ll do anything in the world for you if you’ll only get me out -of this hole,” he blurted out in a spluttering fit of gratitude. -“Perhaps, even, I might help you to get what you want, if you didn’t -make such a deadly secret of it,” he added looking at her as if he might -somehow extract it from her unawares. - -But her lips were tightly shut and her eyes looked dead and cold. - -“One might as well expect to get blood from a turnip,” muttered Dacre in -the choice vernacular of the groom’s boy. “Oh Lord! that brutal bell, -lessons again! But you like ’em,” he said raising himself slowly and -turning on her vindictively. - -“There’s nothing else to like; pick up your book and come. I hate to -look at Gregg’s eyes when we are late, I think he had cats for his -ancestors, and not very long ago either, when he talks quick he always -spits. Oh, that vile bell, we may as well run, he can’t see us from the -school-room window or I wouldn’t give him that much satisfaction.” - -“When will you begin the help,” panted Dacre, as they pulled up at the -nearest point out of sight of the school-room. - -“I’ll think to-night and tell you—Ugh! Dacre, wipe your face you get so -perspirationy after the shortest run; I never do.” - -“No thanks to you, when one can see through you for thinness.” - -The next evening when lessons were put away, and the school-room tea -over, Gwen, instead of absorbing herself in a book until bedtime, as she -generally did, took a restless fit. She moved about in a noiseless -sweeping way she had; she threw the window open breathlessly, and craned -her head far into the breezy night. - -A sudden gust that was carrying on a wild dance with some maple leaves, -caught sight of her hair and seized on it as a new plaything, or perhaps -mistook it for some of the orange-gold leaves, and swept great lengths -of it out among them till her white face seemed caught in a whirling net -of brilliant gold. When she drew back at last panting, she shut the -window and went over to Dacre. - -“You’re pretty tidy,” she said, “for you, but you might just take that -black smudge off your nose. Do I look right?” - -“You look as mad as a hatter, but you generally do that, only I think -your hair makes you look madder than ever.” - -She caught her hair bodily, gave it a violent shake, then took out her -handkerchief and rubbed her cheeks until they glowed scarlet. - -“What are you at, making yourself like a turkey-cock?” demanded Dacre. - -“We’ll both go into the library,” said she in a sort of studied calm, “I -heard them go in after dinner and they think I’m sick and don’t eat -enough if I’m white. Come on quick, now, while I’m red.” - -Dacre came near and looked into her face with some curiosity. - -“You’re madder to-night than I ever saw you,” he observed. “You can go, -you will if you want to, of course,—I’ll not, not if I knows it.” - -“If you don’t I’ll do all I possibly can to keep you at home.” - -That and her look were decisive. He followed her with an angry snort, -and they went swiftly down the low, broad oak stairs with their winding -curved balustrade, down through the softly-carpeted corridors. When they -reached the library door they stood with one accord, stock-still. - -“You’re whiter than ever,” said he. - -“Wipe your nose, you’ve rubbed the black all over it instead of off it. -Am I red now?” - -“You’re magenta.” - -“Come on then.” - -When the door opened slowly and showed both their children standing in -the soft glow of the lamps, Mr. and Mrs. Waring started up in some -dismay. - -“Is anything wrong, my dears? Are you ill?” cried Mr. Waring, while his -wife came forward nervously and peered anxiously from head to foot of -the two. - -By this time even Gwen’s courage had waned and the old feeling of having -come to judgment was fast gaining on her. Dacre was already a flaccid -lump. - -“You appear well, dears,” said Mrs. Waring relieved, raising herself -from her inspection, “and Gwen’s colour seems to me to be healthier than -usual.” - -Gwen felt smothered and speechless but she made a vehement effort and -got out in an appealing hushed kind of way, - -“We are quite well, mother, but we came to see you, we thought you might -have time to talk to us and let us stay a little, we have been good at -our lessons so long.” - -The child lifted her eyes as she spoke, and turned them hungrily from -father to mother in a way that sensibly embarrassed them. - -Mr. Waring took his finger from between the pages of a book, came -forward, and looked searchingly into his child’s face and then at his -wife, who seemed too astonished to take any active part in the -proceedings. - -“Will you not sit down?” he said politely, pulling a couple of chairs -towards the pair, “pray sit down.—You have no objection, dearest, have -you?” - -“No, oh no, I am very pleased indeed, and it is also very pleasant to -hear you are advancing in your studies,” said Mrs. Waring rather -supinely. There seemed so very little one could say to one’s children. -Mrs. Waring passed her small hand across her brow, and tried to look -unpreoccupied, but it was hard not to show feeling when a valuable train -of thought was broken, and hours of good work rendered null and void by -this unfortunate intrusion. - -Her husband felt keenly for the gentle little woman, and naturally a -slight feeling of irritation smote him as he turned his gaze on his -inconvenient offspring who bore it in stolid silence. - -Dacre cast one rapid murderous look on his sister then he sullenly -accommodated himself to his surroundings and sat on like a log. - -As for Gwen, her tears were so near the surface that she had to swallow -them with a gulp, her eyes grew dull and lifeless, the brilliant colour -had all faded, and her cheeks had a ghastly, streaky, livid look, from -the scrubbing. - -“Would you like something to eat, my dears?” said Mrs. Waring eagerly. -She would not sit down but hovered above her children, she could not -fathom Gwen’s horrid look of temper, and by this time the streaky cheeks -had quite a revolting look. Her mother started at sight of it, and -whispered in quite an audible voice, - -“Her skin seems unclean and mottled. Dearest, I will speak to Mary, a -Gregory’s powder I should recommend.” - -Gwen’s flush deepened the streaks to lines of blood, and she could -hardly keep from shrieking out her wrath and indignation, but she -controlled herself and said in a harsh level voice, - -“We would like nothing to eat, thank you, we’ve had our tea, we came to -see you, you don’t want us. Dacre, I think we might go.” - -Then to the absolute staggering of the boy, she turned, caught his hand, -and dragging him along by it went up and stood before her parents, her -eyes gleaming strangely. - -“Good-night, mother, good-night, father—oh, good-night!” - -“Good-night, my dears,” said Mr. Waring blandly, and seeing that they -still waited he stooped down stiffly and kissed the foreheads of both of -them, then, with the air of a man who has done his duty, he remarked, - -“Dacre’s health seems to be more robust than his sister’s, I think you -are wise in recommending something of an anti-febrile nature.” - -The children were half out of the room by this time, and Mrs. Waring’s -eyes followed them with a puzzled stare. Something had evidently been -forgotten. - -“Ah, of course,” she cried, her face lighting, and running forward she -put a soft detaining hand on a shoulder of each of her children and laid -a small kiss on the middle of Gwen’s cheek. Then she stooped to Dacre -and did the same by him. - -She wondered a little as she went up to Mary’s room why Gwen shuddered -when she touched her. - -“I wonder if she’s feverish,” she thought.—“Oh, what agonies of -responsibility parents have to endure,” she sighed, with yearning -self-pity, as soon as she reached the head of the stairs. - -When the children got to the nursery, Dacre faced his sister with -glaring eyes. - -“Beast!” was his sole observation. - -“Let me alone, oh, let me alone!” she cried, “and, Dacre, open the -windows, I feel smothered.” - -“You should live on the top of a windmill,” he grumbled, but he did as -she bade him, and watched her with some puzzled concern. - -She soon recovered from her smothering and drew in her head and leant -against the window in silence for a few minutes, then she said with calm -decision, - -“Oh yes, you can go to school, there is neither reason nor justice in -your staying here. They might have prevented it to-night if they’d -liked.” - -“How?” - -“Oh, you wouldn’t understand.” - -“Well, of all the beasts! Girls’ secrets are such fools of things, too! -Don’t look like that, it’s awful with your scratchy face.” - -“Oh, go to bed, do!” - -“I wish you would, I think you are going to be sick, I’ll call Mary.” - -“Dacre, don’t dare to, I’m as well as anything. I wish I was a witch and -could fly over those trees on a broomstick.” - -She peered eagerly out of the window, out over the tree tops and the -whirling leaves, up into the dark heavens. - -“You look witchy enough now with your awful yellow hair that looks as if -it were alive with fire-flies.” - -“Dacre, go to bed, do, I want to think of the plan.” - -“Oh, if you want that, I’ll clear, I’d have gone before only I thought -you were going to be sick.” - -Gwen turned a half-mocking half-wistful look upon him. - -“You’re a good old thing and it isn’t your fault if you are an ass, only -I wish you weren’t,” she said to herself when he had gone, “it wouldn’t -all be so beastly then.” - -She went off slowly to her little blue-and-white bedroom and let Mary -put her to bed in a cold silence which she positively refused to break. - - - - - CHAPTER VIII. - - -THE ins and outs and general details of Gwen’s plan of campaign would in -no wise interest, much less edify the moral reader. It is enough that -the plan was a brilliant success, and its organization and execution -would have done credit to the Prince of Darkness himself. Her tactics -were by no means volcanic, they were resolute, gradual, and in a way -scriptural, line upon line, precept upon precept, first the seed, then -the blade, then the full corn in the ear. When the initial steps were -passed, just leaving the air well charged with vague apprehension and -the minds of men ripe for some new development, active measures set in, -in a careless unconscious sort of way, as if the divine order of things -had just received a passing jar, no more, but then this jar continued -and increased and grew in dimensions till the very bones of the jarred -shook in their skins, and it was as much as their souls could do to hold -themselves in their bodies. - -Three months after the plan’s inception, the amazing goings-on of Dacre, -the wild originality of his pranks, the consistent sustained _diablerie_ -of his outbursts, the terrible all-pervadingness of his personality, had -succeeded in completely upheaving the souls of his parents and filling -the entire household with a fearful sense of insecurity, as of a -community conscious of the presence amongst them of an invisible -infernal machine, that moves by some hidden power all over everywhere -and can neither be caught nor compassed. - -Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes, who kept a close eye on the affairs of the Hall -children, had felt now for some time that there was too much subtlety in -this departure of Dacre’s to be all his own. - -“The days of devil-possession are gone; I could swear it’s Gwen,” said -Mrs. Fellowes one day, smiting her small hands together and dropping a -child’s petticoat on which she was sewing a button. - -“I’ve been thinking so for some time,” said her husband, “all the same, -I hardly see where the ‘swear’ mends matters.” - -“Oh, never mind! When a woman’s perturbed, she often relapses into -original sin, it’s a full year since I ‘reckoned’—‘swear’ at least is -cosmopolitan. I’ll go up this minute and get to the truth of this, Gwen -hasn’t been near me for a fortnight, and I’ve been so busy, you see, I -couldn’t go near them.” - -“I shall go too, I must get a subscription for those miserable Gows from -Waring, but, little woman, hadn’t you better lie down? After five nights -up with Jim Brown, even you must want rest!” - -“Lie down! No, no; with this on my mind, why, I couldn’t rest a minute.” - -After a rather ineffectual attempt to bring Mrs. Waring to a decent -flesh-and-blood consistency, Mrs. Fellowes retreated to the school-room. - -“She grows worse and worse,” she muttered, as she let out some of her -feelings in a sharp rap on the door. - -Mr. Gedge, the present instructor, was not her husband’s choice, he was -launched on the children by a well-meaning uncle of Mrs. Waring’s, who -from time to time swooped down on the family in a protective, if rather -hawk-like fashion, and invariably set some reform afloat among man or -beast. - -In this last visit he had let Gedge loose in the school-room. The man -was as little fitted to deal with the plan’s ramifications as a babe -unborn. - -When Mrs. Fellowes went in she got a howl of welcome from Dacre, Gwen -gave her only a quiet handshake, but the warm light that flashed into -her cold eyes told more than any howl. Mr. Gedge stood up wearily and -looked pleased. - -“Do sit down,” said he casting a furtive, fearful glance on Dacre. - -He was in constant horrid dread of a new sensation, they were so -diverse, so swift in succession, one never knew when one might not come -on, and it might be embarrassing if set going in the presence of a lady. - -Dacre, however, his familiar being otherwise engaged, was quiescent, and -Gedge breathed freer. - -“May I have Gwen for the afternoon?” asked Mrs. Fellowes. - -She was amazed to see the hesitation on Gwen’s face and the actual look -of dismay on Dacre’s, but she speedily fathomed the reason. - -“I knew it,” she said to herself, “Gwen is the mover in the whole -business.” Then aloud, “Gwen, you will come, dear, Mr. Gedge’s eyes have -said ‘yes’ already.” - -Mr. Gedge had a lively though bashful admiration for the little -American, he beamed his assent in quite a sprightly way. “It will be one -less to cope with,” he reflected, “and I can perhaps get my poor Amy’s -letter finished.” - -The devil, in a specially evil moment, had revealed to Mr. Gedge’s -pupils the existence of this sweet young woman, and had thereby added -another hundredweight to the millstone already encircling the neck of -her affianced. - -Mrs. Fellowes looked with sudden sympathy at the young man, then with -twinkling eyes at his charges, he seemed so ludicrously out of -proportion to his task. - -“Poor thing!” She thought it with such amused vehemence it almost got -spoken aloud. “Poor thing, you shall have a peaceful afternoon for -once!” - -“Mr. Gedge, do give me Dacre too, do, just for one day! He shall go for -a ride with Mr. Fellowes.” - -“Oh golly!” muttered Dacre, dancing in his glee. - -Gwen’s face grew brilliant with joy, she could now go with an easy -conscience, she couldn’t by any possibility have left Dacre alone, he -was too utterly “an ass”. She could now have a whole long afternoon to -be happy in; she needn’t think once all the time, only just laugh and -play and let herself be kissed—she never by any chance ventured a kiss -on her own account—and she would feel Mrs. Fellowes’ soft hands on her -head—she always brushed her hair for tea—and hear her soft voice, and it -would stay in her ears making little tunes; and the Rector, he would be -good too, and remain in the drawing-room after tea—he always did when -they came—he was always kind and he told such funny stories. - -Gwen’s contained joy broke out in a prolonged “Oh!” - -Mrs. Fellowes looked rapidly round the handsome room and out into the -Park, the finest in the county, and back to the child’s face. - -“It is abominable, abominable,” she thought angrily, “just to be away -from the place for a few hours transforms the child, she is simply -beautiful this minute with that look—oh, it is brutal! Gwen, love, run -at once and put on your things, and, Dacre, run down in the porch, I’ll -tell Mr. Fellowes you are going with him.” - -As soon as the children were gone she said kindly, - -“Mr. Gedge, you’ll have a respite anyway.” - -“Mrs. Fellowes,” he burst out, “I am coming to see the Rector, I have -endeavoured, and I truly hope conscientiously, to do my duty, but I find -my present position altogether untenable. I am not a very strong man, -Mrs. Fellowes, and I find this life is fast undermining my -constitution.” - -He paused for a moment; then he went on hurriedly, in a sudden impulse -of confidence, - -“Mrs. Fellowes, forgive my troubling you with my affairs but you are so -very kind,—I have hopes, very dear hopes, and from various strange -sensations in the region of my heart when my struggles with Dacre have -been specially trying and prolonged, I have reason to fear some -fundamental lesion of the organ.” - -Mr. Gedge had just been reading up the heart in some medical journal, he -had also lately ascertained that his maternal aunt had died of -_Angina-pectoris_, so he was naturally upset in his mind. - -“If one has hopes, Mrs. Fellowes,” he went on sadly, “one’s duty seems -to be to guard against anything that must interfere with such hopes, -always supposing them to be lawful and right.” - -“Indeed, I quite agree with you,” said Mrs. Fellowes with much -heartiness, and with an unholy tendency to laughter, “I agree with you, -and no doubt, as is the way of such things, your hopes are bound up in -the hopes and happiness of another. For her sake alone you must consider -your position seriously.” - -“Yes, I will turn my thoughts to some other sphere of action, but before -I leave here,” he added with solemn resolve, “I deem it my duty to my -employers to represent to them the urgent advisability of sending my -elder pupil to a public school—I know you agree with me in this, Mrs. -Fellowes?” - -“Agree with you! why, we have been fighting for it for years.” - -“Then I may rely on your and your husband’s help in this matter?” he -asked, looking rather askew admiration at her through his eyeglasses. - -He had received a slight injury to one eye in his youth, and according -to Dacre it was now “a game one”. - -By these suggestions of Mr. Gedge it will be seen that Gwen’s leaven was -working. - - - - - CHAPTER IX. - - -THE decree had gone forth, and Dacre was to go to Eton. Ancestral taint -and sisterly guile had won the day, though not without a tough struggle. -The idea of home culture, vague and ill-defined as it was, died hard, -and Mr. and Mrs. Waring still bemoaned their fate daily in the intervals -of work. - -They were now much disturbed in their minds concerning the plan of -religion which they had conceived in the tender youth of their -offspring, and which had been worked up to with rather more consistency -than usually characterized those plans of theirs that dealt with outside -and minor matters. - -That it should have occurred to Henry and Grace Waring was the most -remarkable part of this plan. They both looked upon religion as they did -upon art, as a thing apart and on a somewhat low level, to be considered -in leisure hours. In some phases of mind they might indeed almost have -been said to glory in it, and to rejoice that the ages should own such a -heritage, just as one might rejoice in the work of a great master. - -They were, of course, both too appreciative of good literature to have -neglected the Bible, they knew every twist and turn in it as they did of -the Koran and the Brahminic Vedas. - -As for doubts and things of that sort, they never, so to speak, went in -for them, their minds were not of that order. In the same way the truths -or the untruths of Christianity seemed to them an interesting enough -study between working hours. In Mrs. Waring’s case, perhaps, they -appealed fitfully to some part of herself she never quite understood, -that same sentimental part that often suffered a keen stab,—for instance -in the case of the Rectory babies, and sometimes from a strange look in -Gwen’s face. But she had almost ceased to speculate upon these odd -sensations, and was inclined to put them down to a strain of puritan -blood that had somehow trickled into the more vigorous fluid of her -fighting forbears, which perhaps might almost account for her preference -for Christianity over other creeds. - -It will be seen then that the reception or rejection of Christianity by -their children, was a matter of no vital importance to these parents. -They were, however, intensely interested in the result itself, that was -quite another thing; the phases of mind the function must unfold seemed -certainly a subject worth research, and filled them with the keenest -interest. - -“You are quite sure, dearest,” said Mr. Waring, a few days before -Dacre’s departure was to take place, “that Mary has not tampered with -the minds of our children.” - -“I am certain, quite certain. She has certainly seemed to resent my -orders in this matter, but she has not disobeyed them.” - -Mrs. Waring sat down and tried to take up the thread of her thoughts, -but it was broken again in a minute by Mr. Waring pushing back his chair -suddenly and looking at her in a disturbed restless way. She went over, -laid her hand on his shoulder, and looked anxiously into his face. - -“Are you troubled, love, can I not help you?” - -“I should be glad, my Grace, if I felt more convinced that the minds of -our children are really a blank as far as any knowledge of religion -goes.” - -“I am sure Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes——” - -“Dearest, the idea is revolting! Fellowes, a gentleman! And his wife! -She is your friend, that is sufficient.” He bowed as his grandfather, -the courtliest man in a courtly court might have done. “But I fear that -when very young the children may have received foreign impressions, the -class that people the stable-yard are often quite versed in what they -term ‘the truths of the Gospel’.” - -“But so long ago?” - -“Not so very long after all, and impressions are most tenacious things, -more especially erroneous ones. Does the fact not hamper us daily, -dearest? Even this moment,” he went on musingly, “after all these years, -I can recollect praying at my mother’s knee with a quite astonishing -fervour, which now seems next to reasonless, and yet I doubt if the -impression of that fervour will ever leave me.” - -“We can only hope, dearest,” she said. - -Her husband’s fear depressed her, she was feeling just then, and rather -to her cost, how very remarkably clinging old impressions were. They -were hovering round her at that very moment and entwining her in a maze -of the old dead visions of dead days, when she was a child herself and -wore long lawn nightgowns with frilled sashes, and said prayers. She -went over to the fire to make it up and ended by putting it out. - -“Oh, Henry,” she said at last, from the hearthrug, shivering a little, -“what if, after all, we might just as well have allowed our children to -run along the common groove like those very fat children of Mrs. -Manners’,—they seem wholesome and not devoid of intelligence. And then -they are handsome and well grown, yet the boy is ten and not even in -Latin; Mrs. Manners considers that in ten years the fact will make no -difference in his career. On the contrary, look at Dacre, think of the -load of anxiety and thought we have expended upon him and yet——” She -broke off sadly. - -Her husband regarded her for a minute with sympathizing eyes. - -“Dearest,” he said at last softly, “you are apt to forget the fact that -our poor Dacre is—I hate to hurt you, dear, but you know it—he is most -unfortunately a throwing-back, and must follow the fate of his kind. He -must enter the army,—it is deplorable, but so it must be.” - -“The army!” murmured the small woman wringing her hands softly, “it is -sad, it is hard on us. I do think, dearest, we might have been more -successful in our children.” - -“Our child,” interrupted her husband. - -Her eyes clouded and she repeated hesitatingly, “Yes, our child—Gwen’s -abilities are considerable.” - -“Yes,” said her father with unmixed satisfaction, “my hopes rest on -Gwen, her abilities are indeed most gratifying.” - -For one fleeting moment, which she blotted from her memory with shame, -her mother almost wished they weren’t; she might then be easier to get -some knowledge of, and not be quite so alarming. - - - - - CHAPTER X. - - -THE function was arranged for a certain Wednesday in February, the day -before Dacre was to leave for school, and the children had been given -formal notice to appear in the drawing-room at three o’clock. They were -now waiting in the school-room speculating on the event. They knew it -must be something very unusual from the fact of the drawing-room, of all -places in the world, being appointed as the scene of action. - -It was at the end of a dismal six weeks of holidays, mostly spent, by -reason of colds, between the nursery and the school-room. Indeed, it had -been the very flattest bout of holidays the two had ever yet endured. - -Dacre’s object being attained, there was no further use for organized -“cussedness” so he had relapsed into his ordinary state of gusty -wickedness, which being natural was nothing very especial in the way of -a pastime, and quite unlike the six months’ excitement of his raid on -society. There was nothing to supply the place of this now, -nothing—neither cricket, football, nor even riding—so small wonder that -life was pretty much of a blank to the boy. - -It was even worse for Gwen, the mover and the mainspring of the -enterprise. When she found herself landed victoriously on the threshold -of her goal, with her conscious triumph there got mixed other sensations -of a most unpleasant nature. The horrible feeling of flat inaction after -the whirl of action, that plays havoc with all great conquerors, seized -on her, and did the same by this little one, and then she had none of -the fêtes and the follies that follow hot on the heels of other -conquerors for their consolation. She felt the most miserable victor -breathing, her soul was brimming with bitterness, and the overflow -vented itself largely on Dacre’s luckless pate. - -The children having nothing to go upon could arrive at no very -satisfactory solution to their mysterious summons. Mary’s look as she -smoothed Gwen’s hair, put Dacre’s collar straight, and kept on fussing -round when she had no more to do, made things look more mysterious -still, then she sighed like a steam-engine the whole time, which added a -presage-of-ill character to the mystery that irritated Gwen horribly. - -“For goodness sake, Mary, do go!” she cried at last in despair, “go! You -are like the old turkey when her ducklings ran out into the lake the -other day.” - -Mary straightened her glasses and looked at the child. “’Tis brains is -the matter with you, my dear,” she said; “however could you guess at the -very thoughts as were running in my head? I was thinking of the creature -flapping there helpless and I was lik’ning myself to her that very -minute. Master Dacre would never have guessed it, bless him!” - -Gwen felt she had scored a point and continued, - -“What is going to happen to us, Mary?” - -Mary regarded her in silence. - -“If you know you might tell us,” said the girl impatiently, “or,” she -added scornfully, “are you still more like the turkey, and are only -frightened because you know so little?—you look like that.” - -“Oh Lord!” muttered the woman under her breath, feeling very hard hit, -but she replied with dignity, “My dear, it certainly ain’t my place to -tell you what your parents have thought fit not to acquaint you with.” - -“They see fit to acquaint us with nothing as far as I can see. Well, as -you can’t tell us or don’t know anything to tell us, do go away, please. -You move about so and look so queer, you make one think that a horrible -new thing is coming on us, so do go, please. I’m not cross or nasty, -only I feel queer myself and frightened, I could scream and yell and -howl this minute—oh, I wish Mrs. Fellowes was here.” - -“She is coming, my dear,” said Mary, looking anxiously at the girl. - -“Oh, she often looks like that,” said Dacre consolingly, “I believe she -is mad—she is dying to squeal and screech and yet she is as quiet as an -old rat, I believe myself one good roar would do her good.” - -Mary was a sensible body and knew when a thing was beyond her powers, -she said nothing but went down and intercepted Mrs. Fellowes on her way -to the drawing-room and carried her off. - -“Is Gwen well, Mary?” she asked, as they went upstairs. - -“Eats and sleeps well, ma’am, but she has an over-active brain, ma’am, I -should say, and if ’tis, ’tis only God can help her,” whispered Mary -solemnly. - -Gwen had recovered by this time and she and Dacre were engaged in a -wrangle, stormy on Dacre’s side, sarcastic and calm on Gwen’s. At sight -of Mrs. Fellowes they left off. - -“Oh you dear, you dear!” cried Gwen sweeping up to her, and taking her -kiss with a sort of gasp, “we feel awful, as if some new horror was -coming on.” - -“You’ll stand by us, Mrs. Fellowes? Do you think they might repent of -Eton? Gwen gets mad when I say that, but, you know, no fellow knows what -they’ll do next,” he added plaintively. - -“Dacre, I wonder if you know how horribly impertinent you are? If you -belonged to me and spoke of me like that, I’d cut you for a week!” - -“Oh, but you’re quite different, of course no one would speak of you -like that—Oh, come in!” - -A new footman, a tall awkward creature, who found his brains softening -in this astonishing family, had been giving a succession of small knocks -for the last five minutes, at last he supplemented them by a choking -cough. - -“There is that giraffe,” said Gwen impatiently, “I suppose we are -wanted! Mrs. Fellowes, look at him,” she whispered, “everybody who comes -to this house looks like that in a week, and as for Mary, she is awful, -going about in a muttering way and glaring at me as if I was a penny -show. The tutors are the same, even that great leggy gawk—oh dear, -what’s the matter with us all? - -“And another thing—oh, wait just a moment, they’ll never know if we’re -one minute late or twenty, they don’t want us a bit, oh no, they never -do, I tell you, they are quite happy and oh, so busy, so appallingly -busy—I want to tell you another horrible habit the people here have. I -must tell you all this,” she added seeing Dacre’s rather astonished -face, “it has all just come up to the surface of me. The people in this -place always whisper in the most diabolical way, there is never a single -sound in these corridors, never, and that’s why I often nearly—burst to -howl and screech. Dacre is an idiot as everyone knows, and he says I’m -mad.” - -“Hush, child!” - -“Oh well, come on then, but there’s not an atom of hurry, they don’t -want us.” - -“Mrs. Fellowes isn’t such an ass as not to know that,” said Dacre -scornfully, “but I want to know what’s on in there, so does she, so come -on.” - -“It’s nothing nice, you may be quite sure, it’s probably got something -to do with lessons. Perhaps they want to examine you before you go to -school,” she added with a fiendish laugh. - -Her mouth was terrible in its hardness. Mrs. Fellowes stooped down -quickly and kissed her on it. - -“Gwen, love, you don’t know, something very nice may be going to happen -to you, the very nicest thing that has ever yet happened.” - -Gwen looked up at her astonished, some tone in her soft voice touched -her. - -“I wonder—” she said slowly, “I wish——” - -“What dear?” - -“Oh, I don’t think I know,” said she, with a short laugh. “Come on! Gru! -Look at the table covered with books and things! I knew it was an exam! -Look, Dacre!” - -When her greetings to her host and hostess were over, Mrs. Fellowes went -over to her husband, who was standing by the table of books. - -“One of the evidences of Christianity to be placed before the infant -mind,” he said softly, pointing to _Lord Amberley_. “Another!” and he -put his finger on Renan’s _Life of Jesus_. - -“Good gracious! you’ll stop that?” - -“If I can—what’s wrong with Gwen?” - -“I don’t know, I put my foot in it just now by pressing for an -explanation.” - -Dacre, meanwhile, was feeling less than a worm under the concentrated -gaze of his parents. After the first remarks concerning health addressed -to both children, with a casual allusion to his projected departure for -school for Dacre’s benefit, and an earnest request from his mother to -consider his teeth and his stomach and to eschew sweet-stuff, “the great -temptation of public schools,” she observed sadly, and when some supine -observations with regard to things in general had been turned on Gwen, -Mr. and Mrs. Waring looked appealingly at each other and subsided into a -silent and curious inspection of their son. - -The dumb endurance of the boy showed a good deal of pluck; he merely -wriggled spasmodically from time to time. But he had come to the -extremest end of his tether and was on the point of some outbreak, when -deliverance reached him in a low swift sigh from his mother, and a queer -sudden movement on his father’s part, who pushed back his chair, loosed -his wife’s hand with a deprecating “Pray, my love!” and began to speak -in a general inoffensive way, fixing his gaze on no one in particular, -to Dacre’s infinite relief. - -“There are subjects that are usually comprised in the education of young -children,” said he, “which we, after deep and anxious thought, have seen -fit to omit from the curriculum of our son and daughter. We have taken -special pains to impress upon their various instructors, as also upon -the persons appointed to their personal service, that a certain part of -their minds should be kept free, entirely clear and free from certain -impressions, that they should remain, so to speak, a blank as far as -regards this form of knowledge. The form of knowledge I allude to—” he -continued, his eye falling once more on the luckless Dacre who was -drinking in his words with open-eyed wonder, and, finding the boy useful -as a target, he fixed him inexorably until the end of the discourse. -“The form of knowledge I allude to is that known as the knowledge of -religion. It is sometimes called a sense, and has in a manner become so -by heredity, but I doubt much whether it was innate in the race in the -beginning. This point of view has of course powerful advocates, as we -all know, at least—” he added coughing nervously, “as Mr. Fellowes and -his wife know. However, this question though most interesting is not -necessary to my explanation.” - -Here his eye which had swerved for a moment, again caught Dacre’s. “The -reasons why we have insisted upon the denial of this knowledge to our -children are many. Firstly, my wife and I consider that it is hardly -fair to any human creature, with normal brain power in its young -receptive condition, to give this brain power a distinct bias with -regard to the fundamental points of any science. I speak of it not in -the common but in the original application of the word, which is merely -empiric and can certainly not be looked upon as proven in any -part,—however great its ethical value as a factor of culture may be,” he -added with an apologetic glance at the rector. “For the same reason we -have withheld geology and the advanced parts of several of the natural -sciences, wherein is evolved the doctrine of evolution. But of these -later. - -“We have been more stringent in our regulations with regard to religion -and its most advanced and refined development—that known as -Christianity—because it enters so largely into all current questions, -and entrenches, or at least the arguments of its exponents do, on so -many of our more exact sciences. Another reason for withholding this -knowledge was the strange methods so many of its disciples have of -apprehending and applying it—even of considering its literature. The -process of exclusion by which we have striven to our goal has, I fear, -seemed to our dear friends here to-day an unwise one, but we have taken -deep thought concerning this matter and have taken no step lightly. We -have awaited a state of consciousness in our children capable of -receiving and judging the evidences of religion—more especially of that -form of it known as Christianity—in an unprejudiced and reasonable -manner, without bias, and with no early half-true half-false impressions -to confuse and mislead. - -“Mr. Fellowes,” he concluded with solemnity, “we have done, as we -consider, our duty, and in the best way we know of. Heredity and other -inner influences will no doubt in some measure nullify our efforts, as -will also the possible impressions—no doubt of a low order—which our -children, in that period of mere physical development before the culture -of their higher parts began, may have received from outside; but with -these exceptions, I feel confident that, as regards all knowledge of -religion, the minds of our children are a blank.” - -He was silent for a moment and regarded the blanks with supreme -satisfaction. - -“Mr. Fellowes,” he began again, “my wife and I are most anxious that our -children should receive all the facts and arguments in favour of -Christianity before the counter arguments are put before them, and in -the most reasonable and enlightened manner. We have therefore invited -you to be present to-day and would feel ourselves under still one more -obligation to you—” here he looked from Mr. Fellowes to his wife and so -made one of them, “you who are so eminently fitted for the task—if you -would make our children acquainted with the leading points in the -history of religion. Would you also be so good as to direct them in -their course of reading—our daughter at least, for Dacre, I believe, -goes to Eton to-morrow? My wife and I have, as you know, been -reluctantly obliged to relinquish our plans in this instance, owing to -the pressure of strong ancestral bias which will, I fear, also compel us -to allow the boy to devote himself to brutal pursuits, and finally to -enter the army. His ordinary culture then in religious matters must be -entrusted to the tutors of his school, who, no doubt, will fill his mind -with strange vagaries. However,” he went on with a fixed melancholy look -at the boy, “Dacre’s intellect is not of a high order, it matters -little; but with Gwen very specially we desire your aid. We have -discovered in her an unusual power of applying knowledge, and we would -be glad if you would examine her from time to time, that she may have a -sound and reasonable knowledge of the arguments on the one side of this -very interesting question, before she considers those on the other; we -may be accused,” he continued with a sigh, “and perhaps justly, of an -unfair attempt to bias the girl’s mind by not arranging that the study -of the opposed facts and arguments should run side by side with these. -But in this matter, I fancy,” he said, with a little smile at his wife, -“I fancy both my wife’s and my hereditary tendencies have rather -handicapped our intelligence, I do trust with no ill-results to our -children,” he added, embracing them both in one perturbed glance and -sitting down rather wearily. - - - - - CHAPTER XI. - - -DURING the latter part of this discourse Mr. Fellowes had been sorting -the books on the small table, and had them now arranged in two separate -heaps. - -Gwen had been gradually edging her chair near Mrs. Fellowes and her face -was alight and eager. - -Any new thing is always full of possibilities to a young creature moving -out in all directions after experience. Besides, there was an -undercurrent of quiet anxious affection running all through her father’s -half-incomprehensible speech, that struck her and kept down for the -moment her usual defiant attitude of mind when had up before her -parents. - -Dacre’s reflections, whenever the paternal eye was off him, partook of -the most primitive simplicity. - -“Thank goodness, I’m out of it. After all, it’s a good thing to be an -ass; and the army, oh golly! I never expected anything so sensible as -that from ’em.” - -With that he winked lugubriously in Gwen’s direction and was rather -upset by catching Mr. Fellowes’ eye instead. - -“I am quite certain that whatever you and Mrs. Waring have done in this -matter has been done most conscientiously,” said Mr. Fellowes -discreetly. “I am glad you think me capable of teaching your children, -what to my way of thinking is the head and front of all knowledge—the -knowledge of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ—” - -Gwen looked at Mr. Fellowes with an astonished eager gaze. - -“This all sounds quite good,” she reflected, “but then, is it? Things -are so very different from sounds,—every tutor before he comes, sounds -lovely.” - -“But, Mr. Waring,” continued the rector mildly, “if you entrust this -matter to me you must also entrust me with the choosing of the books -bearing on the subject; for instance, I should decidedly reserve this -book, _Lord Amberley_, also this, Renan’s _Life of Jesus_, for that -future period when you intend to give your children the evidences -against Christianity. These, to my mode of thinking, would certainly be -valueless for our purpose.” - -“Indeed, Mr. Fellowes, you surprise me!” - -He went over and glanced in rather a hurt way at the books, “I consider -that work of Lord Amberley’s a most unimpassioned, useful, and an -eminently trustworthy history of religions. Lord Amberley seems quite of -our way of thinking—my wife’s and mine—for though he theorizes so -little, confining himself chiefly to the recording of facts, yet in the -whole tone of the work, one notices his predilection for that religion -instituted by Christ over other faiths. I must say I should have -considered _that_ book a valuable one in your cult; however, you are a -specialist,” he remarked magnanimously, “we but dabblers in these -matters, therefore we are bound to yield our judgment. - -“As for Renan’s _Life_, it appears to me to be a charming composition, -simple, and in style delightful. I should have thought it would have -appealed pleasantly to the childish comprehension; however, as you -object, with, no doubt, full and sufficient ground for your objections, -we will leave the matter entirely in your hands and in those of your -dear wife,” he added with a stiff bow in her direction, “a most -excellent helpmeet in this as in all other things.” - -“Oh, Mr. Waring, please don’t imagine that I meddle in all my husband’s -business!” cried Mrs. Fellowes, half-amused and half-angry; it was too -abominable to be made a sort of co, or under-curate to her husband, even -by this pair of curiosities. “I should never dream of interfering in the -religious instruction of anyone, either young or old; and if I had any -mind to, I assure you my husband would soon strangle that tendency in -me.” - -“Oh dear me!” murmured Mr. Waring, “we always act so much together that -I never thought of interference in such a connection; pray excuse me, -dear Mrs. Fellowes,” he entreated nervously. - -Mrs. Fellowes could have slain him and herself. She kept her eyes -carefully turned from her husband but she felt his silent malicious -laughter to the very tips of her fingers. - -“Mr. Waring, there is nothing whatever to excuse, it is only a little -silly clerical point of etiquette. You have no idea how the clerical -mind runs to trifles, I am only beginning to get any correct notions and -I have been studying it now over eight years. It is much more -interesting than geology,” she continued, turning to Mrs. Waring and -awakening her out of her reverie, “and requires quite as much hammering -to get anything worth having out of it. John quite agrees with me.” - -“Ah, Mrs. Fellowes, it is so easy for you to see fun in things,” said -Mrs. Waring in a pretty wistful way; “it is quite a gift, I fear it has -not been bestowed upon me.” - -“Good gracious, I should think it hadn’t!” said Mrs. Fellowes to -herself, “if you had a spark of it you’d keep him in his right mind as -well as yourself.” - -“Don’t you think Dacre looks rather idiotic?” whispered Gwen suddenly. - -He certainly did, with his mouth ajar and the bright red tip of his -tongue visible through his teeth. - -“They always have that effect upon him,” continued Gwen, “a frequent -course of it would very soon land him in an idiot asylum.” - -“Hush, dear!” - -Mr. Waring seemed now ill at ease and not at all satisfied at the way -things were shaping. The affair was missing fire both for him and for -his wife; they wanted, so to speak, a thorough microscopic examination -of their children; they wanted them then and there put out on the table -and carefully gone over as a preliminary proceeding, even if as yet no -final and systematic classification of their contents could be -attempted. - -Where was the result of research to come in if the one was to be shipped -off to school the very next day, and the other to be turned over to Mr. -Fellowes? Mrs. Waring’s mind also ran in this groove. - -“Will there not be an examination now at once?” she asked in pained -surprise. “I quite understood this was our arrangement.” - -“I too, dear love; we must discuss the matter. Mr. Fellowes,—ahem, my -wife and I thought it might be as well to examine the state of our -children’s minds now at once; it seems important to ascertain clearly -how far our plans have been successful, and in this we might be of some -help to you.” - -Mr. Fellowes looked gravely annoyed. Dacre started violently and nearly -took the tip off his tongue, and Gwen’s face fell; she straightened -herself and a transfiguration fell upon her, her mouth hardened, her -colour faded to a dull gray, and her eyes took on the masked look that -Mrs. Fellowes so detested to see. - -“Always the same!” she muttered, “always the same! I was beginning to -think that with Dacre going to school and everything we might be let off -and have tea instead. Look, there it is getting stone cold, they’ve -clean forgotten it! I never can answer a word when they question me, -it’s beastly unfair to force one into looking like a fool when one -isn’t. Dacre, of course, might be a cabbage this minute—look at him! -They treat one’s brains like puppets to dance when they whistle!” - -“Gwen, dear Gwen, you let your tongue go mad!” - -Gwen winced, she prided herself a good deal on her strength and -reticence. - -“As for the examination, it is quite natural your father and mother -should arrive at some idea of your state of mind, and as they start on -the premise that you know nothing they won’t expect you to shine.” - -“You don’t know,” said the girl surlily, “one can’t argue from -experience with regard to them ever, they are as reasonless and as -unjust in their expectations as they are in everything.” - -“Gwen, I am ashamed of you, you are unjust and no one else, and rather -rude seeing that any questions you have to answer will be asked by Mr. -Fellowes. Now listen, either your father or my husband is going to -speak.” - -“Your father and mother,” said Mr. Fellowes coming over and standing so -that he could watch both of the children, “have asked me to put a few -simple questions to you.” - -The countenances of Mr. and Mrs. Waring fell visibly, this informal, -good-humoured, casual way of carrying on, was not the sort of thing they -had expected. - -“One should make a speciality of every form of knowledge, however -trivial,” said Mr. Waring in a low voice, “we should have put ourselves -in a position to be competent personally to conduct this affair.” - -His wife looked comprehension, and clasped his hand a trifle harder. - -No one but themselves and possibly their Creator had any idea of the -amount this unfortunate couple had to endure. - -“If I ask you anything,” went on the rector, “and you can’t answer it, -you mustn’t mind, for as you just now heard from your father you are not -expected to know anything definitely.” - -Gwen looked up with a quick sarcastic question in her face. - -Mr. Fellowes laughed. “You think in that case I had better hold my -tongue; well, perhaps I had, but even if one gains no absolute knowledge -of the question asked, from the answers to it, one sometimes finds out -other things just as useful. In your classical readings you came across -many allusions to the gods of Greece and Rome, didn’t you?” - -“Yes,” they assented. “That wasn’t much of a poser,” reflected Dacre -glibly. - -“On the whole what did you think of them?” - -“They were pretty mean,” said Dacre with conviction. - -“They were just like other people, only stronger, and better looking, -and bigger,” said Gwen. - -“Would you be inclined to think any one of them capable of any great or -stupendous work?” - -“Goodness no!” said Gwen, “they had a great deal too much to do with -their little things; punishing mortals too, that took up half their -time.” - -“Well, then, who do you imagine made the world—have you ever thought on -the subject?” - -“This is most distressing,” whispered Mr. Waring, “he seems about to -give all these rank hypotheses as facts—this is childish, unworthy of -Gwen’s intellect!” - -“Dear love, you are unfair, there is absolutely nothing proven on either -side.” - -“But the counter arguments will not be presented as facts.” - -“The religious school has firm convictions and admits no hypotheses, I -have heard. I confess this primitive mode rather interests me; I wonder -what Gwen’s reply will be—hush, here it comes!” - -“I never could think of any one person undertaking such a work,” said -she, looking rather interested. “I have always thought it was done by -some ceaseless force, that keeps things wound up.” - -“Do you think this force a beneficent one or the contrary?” - -“Just as the humour takes it. It seems sometimes quite human in its -tempers and its injustice; rather capricious and old-womanish too,—I -often think that.” - -“Why?” - -“Why! From the stupid times and places that earthquakes and waterspouts -and things come, they hardly ever burst up or beat down desert islands -or places like that; they always flock to populated places where people -have been working for years to make themselves comfortable, and then all -in a minute their work is undone and they may think themselves lucky if -they aren’t undone altogether. That sort of thing seems reasonless and -like an old woman.” - -“Poor little foolish Gwen!” said Mrs. Fellowes, with such a funny look -that Gwen had to laugh. - -“When you are older,” said Mr. Fellowes, “and know more, you won’t be so -final in your judgments. I’m going to tell you a fact now, will you -believe it?” - -Gwen got scarlet, the question seemed to her a reproach. “Mr. Fellowes, -of course I will!” - -“Then, Gwen, incredible as it sounds, a great, a glorious, and an -Almighty God, a Spirit, Who has had neither beginning nor end, made this -world and keeps it going, and He is neither unjust nor unreasonable, -capricious nor an old woman, though,” he continued to the open-eyed -wonder of two in that room, “that you should accredit Him with all of -these rather despicable qualities, does not astonish me in the least. -Can you take my word for this fact I have told you? If you can’t, say -so; I need not ask you, however, you will be honest,” he added with a -little amused laugh. - -“It sounds rather queer and mixed up, considering things as things are,” -said Gwen quaintly, “but I’d take your word for anything, Mr. Fellowes.” - -Just then some unlucky impulse guided her eyes in her mother’s -direction, a little softening towards her had seized on the girl for the -instant and her eyes had followed her thoughts, but they dropped like a -shot, she stiffened, and loosed hold of the piece of Mrs. Fellowes’ -dress she had furtively been clinging to. Her mother’s eyes were fixed -on her in a puzzled, uncomprehending, rather disappointed way, horribly -trying to her pride. - -“I’ll not say another word, not if they tear me with wild horses!” she -said to herself tragically. “How dare she look at me like that! Now, -Dacre, upon my word, I would not blame her if she did it to him! Dacre, -you look awful!” she whispered viciously, “more beastly than human! Shut -your mouth!” - -And not another word could Mr. Fellowes, to his infinite relief, extract -from the girl. - -As for the boy he was, on the face of it, hopeless; so in defiance of -and despite the protesting attitude of the harassed parents, the rector -calmly put his foot down and brought this ceremony to a conclusion. - -“Mr. Waring,” he said, “I think you must be satisfied that at least we -have fairly virgin soil to work in.” - -Mr. Waring mumbled a gentle, “H’m!” He was thoroughly dissatisfied with -the whole business. - -“Will you allow Gwen to come to our house,” went on Mr. Fellowes -imperturbably, “every Tuesday and, let me see, every Friday afternoon?” - -Gwen flashed a glance of delight on Mrs. Fellowes and across her she -flung a grin of defiance on Dacre. - -“And to Dacre, if you will allow me, I will give one or two books to -read when he happens to get time. Story books, Dacre, don’t squirm.” - -Mr. and Mrs. Waring again looked with melancholy regret at each other, -then extended the glance to their offspring. When it reached Mr. -Fellowes a slight touch of gentle wrath had flittered into it, but it -was in vain to kick against the pricks, the proceedings were at an end, -and another failure had died and was buried out of their sight. - -And then they all drank some cold tea, and little atoms of cake were -presented to the children, with a timid request from their mother to -pick the currants out of them, this bugbear of their infancy still -clinging to the little woman, and the drawing-room twilight was left at -last free to the pair who looked haggard, tired, and frustrated. - - - - - CHAPTER XII. - - -DACRE had been shot through Eton into Sandhurst, and Gwen was fast -growing up and imbibing religious instruction in precisely the fashion -one might have expected from her surroundings and her turn of mind. - -She received the facts as facts, and got very keen and eager over those -that had any dramatic interest in them. She dug into their depths and -revelled in them as any other boy or girl of sound intellectual capacity -would do, when they were put as Mr. Fellowes put them. The -unsatisfactory part of the business was when the horrible critical -faculty of the girl began to ransack the facts and the theories hung on -them, and to turn them inside out, and to compare and classify them with -an honest downright unscrupulousness that no girl suckled on the Bible -could ever, no matter what her opinions might be, or rather her own -opinion of her opinions, find it in her heart to use, and the summing up -of Gwen’s searchings and comparings was monotonous and commonplace -enough. - -“The whole scheme is very fine,” she said one day, “it is a perfect -idyll in its way, and divine from the mere exaltation and grandeur of -it, but where any proof of a personal God comes in I can’t see, any more -than in any of the other creeds. They all seem to be chips off the same -block. The ideal God seems universally human—this Jewish one with the -rest. He is feeble and tyrannical and He, in the Old Testament, is so -inconsistent; and in the New—well, after all, that is only rather a more -modern reflection of the Old. As for Christ, we know so little of -Him,—and then when all’s said His loveliest and best thoughts were also -thought in the Vedas by the Brahmins. It is wonderful beyond -comprehension to me how so many have lived and died for such myths. The -greatest and divinest quality of God seems to me to be His -inexorableness, and even that failed Him more than once at a pinch.” - -“It is a sense wanting in me,” she often told Mr. Fellowes; “the sense -of religion, as in Dacre the sense of poetry, you can’t supply it, no -one can. I lose an infinite deal, I know, your face literally shining -over these things tells me so, plainer than a thousand words. I would -give anything to experience such rapture, which is itself divine, but I -couldn’t to save my life—it’s curious!” - -“Dacre tells me,” she began suddenly another day, “that he quite -believes in Christianity. Now, if his shallow feeble acceptance of the -thing—and he says it is just like all the other fellows’ beliefs,—is -accepted, average Christianity must be poor stuff. I will wait until I -get a better hold on it than that, before I say anything definite about -believing or disbelieving. I say merely, the scheme does not appeal to -me, the fault is in myself no doubt, your judgment is sound in all other -things, I quite believe it is just as sound in this.” - -On her seventeenth birthday, Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes gave her an edition -of Browning. - -“The parts she understands will be a revelation to her,” Mr. Fellowes -said, “and those she doesn’t will serve as a brain tonic, for she will -be sure to thresh them out with blood-curdling thoroughness.” - -They were all this and more, as Mr. Fellowes felt to his cost when a few -days later she brought him _Caliban on Cetebos_. - -“Now here,” she said, “is my exact impression of the Christian God. I -wonder if I shall ever change it, and by what process? I must be in a -horribly unfinished initial state if I can think side by side with a -brutal creature like that. It’s queer,—I am not altogether like him in -other respects,” she added with a laugh. - -Mr. Fellowes answered her, as he always did, with perfect good humour -and sound good sense. - -It was hard, uphill, melancholy work for him, but he did it like a man, -and as well as he knew how—he tried to hope, and left the rest with God. - -Mrs. Fellowes did her little part as soon as the solemnities were at an -end. She seized on the girl and petted and made much of her, and opened -out her mother’s heart to her. - -“She must learn what love is, then perhaps she will stop prying about -after justice and other matters. Besides, it is absolutely necessary she -should before she has children of her own. She must be bathed in it, so -that she actually has to absorb it like children do nourishment in their -bath of veal broth. I shall keep driving it into her at every possible -opportunity. It would be an awful satisfaction if just once in a while -she would let one get a real good glimpse into her, to see how it works. -I hate doing things in the dark!” - -“But you do get a sight of the result sometimes. I remember myself -having had several. I believe the girl has an immense power of -affection.” - -“Mercy on us! As if I did not know that! When it does break out an -earthquake is a fool to it, but then the eruptions are always so sudden -and the calming down so preternaturally swift that when they happen one -is far too overwhelmed to have any time or faculty left for observation, -and one never dares to go back on those outbursts, as you very well -know. Oh, my Gwen, my poor, poor little Gwen, God will have to help your -husband very considerably!” - -And so Gwen grew up and her story began. - - - - - CHAPTER XIII. - - -THE very air of Gwen’s two rooms, the bedroom and the dressing-room off -it, shimmered with excitement. It glowed in the soft light of the -innumerable wax candles with which Mary had studded the tables, it hung -in the rose-pink curtains, it shone in the leaping blue flame of the -fire, it was everywhere and most inconveniently so in the fingers of the -new lady’s maid, a creature of sentiment, who was putting the finishing -touches to her young mistress’s bodice, while Mary was trotting round -restlessly, disturbed in every individual hair of her head, casting rapt -glances at Gwen and furtive ones at the door. - -At the sound of a footstep on the stairs she gave a sudden start and her -face lighted, but it shaded as suddenly. - -“Only Mrs. Fellowes!” she murmured, and she showed her in with some -grimness. - -Mrs. Fellowes stopped on the threshold and took in Gwen leisurely with a -half-choked gasp of wonder, then she went over and kissed her. - -“Gwen, love, you _are_ beautiful, I never knew it before!” - -Gwen looked up at her then turned to the glass and laughed. “I am,” she -said, “I am beautiful and _I_ never knew it before!” - -Then she stood up and shook down the soft gleaming folds of her -tulle-shrouded silk and straightened herself. - -It was her first long dress, and added two inches to her height. - -“Look, I am changed, I am a new creature, I am afraid of nothing! I feel -like a knight-errant setting forth on his quest, his was glory, mine—” -she paused. - -“What’s yours?” said Mrs. Fellowes smiling on her. - -“Mine? Mine’s glory too.” - -She paused again, and a sudden trouble leaped into her face. - -“But it’s due to me, see. Why not?” And her great eyes flashed -triumphantly into the glass. “‘_I will attain_’ like Paracelsus.” - -She laughed again but her mirth had a jar in it. - -“He went the wrong way about it,” remarked Mrs. Fellowes placidly, “take -care you don’t do the same!” - -“He was a fraud to begin with, I’m not, neither in brain nor body.” - -Mrs. Fellowes looked at her critically, “the outside of you is flawless -enough, and, goodness knows! you are all there as far as brain goes. But -I’m not so sure as to the inside of you; there, an inch or so to the -left of that diamond star, I believe you are perfectly empty!” - -“Ugh! That’s empty of course, except for the bits of you and the rector -it holds, there’s been nothing to fill it.” - -“A thing must have a capacity for holding before it can hold, my good -child, and original capacity dwindles from disuse, as your father’s -daughter must know. Atrophy is the word in your jargon, isn’t it?” - -“Oh, all glory doesn’t come through that mawkish muscle! I have lived -for nineteen years without anything to try the holding capacity of mine, -and I can go on for a while yet and get my glory through other -channels.” - -“No, you can’t, a woman’s crown of glory comes through her heart or it -isn’t worth the wearing, her heart leads her reason, and is often the -surer guide into the bargain.” - -“Why do you speak like this,” said the girl, flushing, and flashing out -a white arm towards her, “on my coming-out night? It isn’t fair of you!” - -“You brought it on yourself, my Gwen, you’re setting out on a wrong -tack. Let yourself go, child, be natural and strive after—nothing. All -good will come to you by Divine right.” - -A sudden chill ran down Mrs. Fellowes’ back, and a horrid little song -began to croon in her ears, “Through much tribulation” were the words of -it, and it kept on by fits all that evening. - -“Turn round again and let me look at you, dear. Ah, I feel as if it were -the coming-out night of my own child!” - -There was a quick short catch in her voice. “Kiss me, Gwen, and, -darling, don’t think of victory, there’s blood in the very thought! The -head and front of a woman’s life is love, God’s, and mother’s, and -man’s!” - -“You’ve forgotten your audience,” said Gwen sarcastically, “I know -nothing of the two first, the third will come, I suppose, in time—by all -accounts, it comes always to the beautiful—but I shall not know what on -earth to do with it when it arrives, and oh! I don’t want it! I want to -‘live at full pitch’, I couldn’t manage that with my feet clogged with -honey!” - -“You want to be loved, my dear, to be loved, loved, loved, and when you -are, you’ll find out what an arrant little goose you are making of -yourself.” - -The girl turned suddenly upon her and gave her one of her most volcanic -hugs. When Mrs. Fellowes got out of it, panting, she set to putting -Gwen’s dress in order with sundry soft touches to neck and arms. - -“I do love nice soft girlish flesh,” she said, with a little laugh. “Oh, -how I do wish to goodness that John wasn’t a parson this night of all -others! I want dreadfully to see you there, but he can’t come, it’s -impossible, you know Sam Tidd is dying and even for you I couldn’t go -without him!” - -“Mrs. Fellowes!” she cried sweeping round, “are you not coming? This is, -oh, this is awful! I never looked at your dress, I was so taken up with -my own. Oh, to go alone with Lady Mary, and to my first ball!” - -Her face was furious, and Mrs. Fellowes could have cried. “I did not -tell you at first, I was so astonished at your brilliant completeness, I -_am_ sorry.” - -Gwen stamped. - -“It is atrocious, abominable! To go alone with no one in the room to -care a rap how I look! You can’t help it, I know, but oh, you must see -the beastliness of the whole thing.” - -“The carriage is coming, darling, come down to your mother.” - -“I? Certainly not! Mary and Simpson!” she called. - -“There, isn’t it lovely?” said Gwen as Simpson wrapped her in her cloak, -“I do love the sheeny changes in white plush! Mrs. Fellowes, you will -come down with me, won’t you? I hardly know Lady Mary.” - -When they came to the foot of the stairs Mary came forward and said in a -quick frightened tone, - -“Miss Gwen, God bless you, dear! They will be proud of you! The room is -well lighted, shall I open the door, Miss?” - -“Did they ask for me?” demanded Gwen. She had let her cloak drop and was -turning slowly round, that the old woman might have a good view of her. - -“Ask, Miss!”—She broke off. - -“I know they did not, and they don’t want me either, and Mrs. Fellowes -isn’t coming—did you know that? I am glad you like me, Mary!” - -She stooped suddenly seeing a tear on Mary’s cheek, and kissed it into a -wet smudge on the bed of wrinkles, then she turned and kissed Mrs. -Fellowes lightly, and walked down the great hall like a young queen -setting out on a triumphal progress. - -When Gwen dropped her cloak and displayed herself for Mary’s admiration, -she had two spectators she certainly never bargained for. - -A wave of the universal excitement had somehow reached Mr. and Mrs. -Waring in their learned retirement, probably carried there by Mary’s -frequent appearances for trivial causes,—she dared not make any definite -suggestion, for fear of Gwen’s most inexorable wrath. - -“My love,” said Mr. Waring at last, “something unusual seems to be the -matter!” - -Mrs. Waring’s brows knitted as usual, then gradually cleared. - -“Yes, I really believe this is the occasion of Gwen’s first ball. I -remember now Lady Mary mentioning something about it, and—ah, yes, don’t -you remember you gave Mrs. Fellowes a cheque for some dresses and other -things to do with balls? Ah, nine o’clock, is it really? And I fancy I -hear a carriage—didn’t Lady Mary say she would come for her? I think, -dear,” she said, “I think, dear, I should like to see Gwen.” - -“And I too,” said Mr. Waring, standing up with quiet eagerness, “shall -we go to her room? I suppose we might do so,” he added, half fearfully. - -It certainly did seem rather a liberty on their part. - -“Oh yes, I think that perhaps she might like it.” - -So they opened the door and were just about to set forth when the sight -of her in shimmering soft waves of silk and tulle, her round column of a -neck poised like that of an empress, and her arms thrown out gracefully -that Mary might see the whole of her, arrested the two and held them in -a silent spell, standing hand in hand on the threshold. Then, hand in -hand still, they went back into the library as if in a dream, and over -to the deep embrasured window that opened on the carriage drive, and -listened to the very last sound of Lady Mary’s wheels. When they came -back to the fire there was a tear in Mrs. Waring’s eye, and her husband -felt horrid—just as if he had lost a good thought. - - - - - CHAPTER XIV. - - -IF ever a girl’s coming-out was a triumphal progress, Gwen’s was. There -was just the same suggestion of stifled groans, and hidden wounds, and -silent blood streams in it, as there is in the processions of all -conquerors, and just the same cool indifference to this part of the show -distinguished the girl’s face and added curiously to its charm. - -As she swept calmly on her way her victims fell to right and to left of -her without a groan or a murmur, noisy appeal seemed quite out of the -question in the presence of this magnificent inscrutable creature. - -In her grand scornful way she revelled in the glory of her march, and -wore her laurels as if she had been used to them since her long-clothes’ -days—this sort of thing just suited her, it was so thoroughly just, so -fair, her mere due, and no more, and she felt neither elation nor any -special gratitude in accepting it all. - -For a whole year—first in the country, then in London—this went on, and -Gwen never felt so unconsciously Christian-like in her life; she had no -cause to rail against anything; she had no time to feel empty about the -heart. Besides, her heart was filled in a way with the steam from the -victims sacrificed in her honour, and the intangibility of the stuffing -didn’t trouble her, it was warm and smelt like spikenard. - -As for the feelings of the victims, these did not enter into her -calculations, the whole show was so absolutely impersonal to her. For -any pangs she might feel for the aloofness of the two she called father -and mother, she had decided some time ago to smother these and to cast -them out, harbouring and encouraging them never having altered or -influenced the state of affairs by one finger’s breadth. - -She saw little of Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes in these days. The Scripture -lessons had come to an end and she had turned the whole subject into her -mind’s rubbish hole; what she had learned was sufficiently interesting -at the time, but it had never come any farther than to the outer edge of -her life, even when it was warmed and lighted by Mr. Fellowes’ love for -his subject and when the hours spent at the Rectory were the only bright -flecks in the week’s dinginess. - -Now all these surroundings were withdrawn, the slight mist of glamour -that used to hang round the subject had floated off, and Gwen was quite -ready to shoot her stored-up accumulation of facts and deductions -anywhere, to make room for more serviceable stuff. Only, what we have -learned, good or bad, we must keep somewhere, God help us! - -She was a clever girl, however, and well-bred, and had read a good deal -one way and the other, so she had the sense to hold her tongue and to -keep her embryo opinions to herself. This made her equally magnanimous -as regarded the opinions of her neighbours. - -“Gwen’s attitude of mind makes me quite sick,” said Mrs. Fellowes one -day, “that is, when she shows a glimpse of it, which isn’t often -nowadays. She hasn’t had a volcanic outbreak for a century, they are -ruinous to one’s clothes, but I’d bear the spoiling of my new front for -one this minute.” - -Mr. Fellowes laughed. - -“There is a twist in her somehow and we have come to a nasty -obstruction. When she is properly straightened she’ll be a fine -creature, but the untwisting will be too gradual for you, my poor Ruth, -you’ll be worn out before it’s finished.” - -“One would think she was a boa constrictor, I believe she has a touch of -its nature too; she crushes hearts enough anyway, and with just as -little compunction. I am sorry for young Patrick Hamilton, I love that -boy.” - -“Which is no reason at all why Gwen should. The girl doesn’t flirt, and -he sought his crushing with open eyes. I believe it’s the girl’s brains -as much as her beauty that dominates and reduces men’s hearts.” - -“Very likely—the bigger fool a man is, the more he is vanquished by -brain, especially if it keeps itself in the background and doesn’t -frighten him. He likes the agreeable sensation of importance the -possible possession of such a power gives him, and in his state of -nervous tension, the creature is apt to get mixed and to imagine that -the power he worships radiates somehow from him to his idol instead of -contrariwise.” - -“A very comprehensive summary of our modes of thought, my dear, racy but -untrustworthy. I don’t, however, imagine that in Gwen’s case any man is -quite ass enough to imagine himself the source of her intellectual -strength.” - -“Oh, perhaps not, Gwen’s getting beyond me. If she goes on like this, -between brains and beauty, she’ll be no better than a charnel house for -crushed hearts. Pah!” - -“For the shadow of the things, not the substance—do you imagine the -victims haven’t as firm a hold on their organs as ever they had? It’s -only an idea they lose half the times.” - -“Well, they make as much moan over it as if it were a very tangible -flesh-and-blood article all bristling with nerves. I hate to look at -Patrick’s face, I wish he would go and shoot buffaloes, or take a tonic, -or do anything but drink tea in that chair and draw sympathy out of me -with those soft cowey eyes of his! He had only just left when you came.” - -“I should be glad for your digestion’s sake if he would recover himself, -you’ve swallowed three cups of tea in ten minutes.” - -“Yes, to wash out the memory of that boy!” - -“Rather a roundabout way to go to work; if you don’t look out Pat’s -heart will be sound long before your digestive organs are.” - -“Never mind, they haven’t a tinge of Americanism about them, they -haven’t so much as caught the accent. But how can you keep on being so -hopeful of Gwen? I am downright miserable about her.” - -“I have the greatest trust in the girl, my feeling about her is like -faith, it is inexplicable, but it’s so natural, so instinctive and -ingrained one feels its truth.” - -“I suppose in the end she will marry,” said Mrs. Fellowes, “it’s the -natural end or beginning of her.” - -“Then—well, it’s not a very original observation to make, but it’s the -only one that comes to my mind—God help her!” - -“_God help him more!_ Poor wretch, he’ll want it all!” - - - - - CHAPTER XV. - - -HUMPHREY Strange gave a sort of snort, made for the window, and threw it -open. - -“Gru! This room is beastly, I’ll swear that window hasn’t been open for -a month, the whole place is fusty with mildew. The beggar is drunk or -the wire was delayed—I’ll have a fire anyway.” - -By the way he went about making it, it was easy to see the man knew his -work. First he shoved his stick up the chimney to see if that was free, -then he looked round. - -“Plenty of kindling!” he muttered, pouncing on a band-box in the corner -with a battered old hat in it. “Tolly’s, I’ll be bound, reeking with -grease,—a direct interposition of Providence, this!” - -He crushed it up, crammed it into the grate, and arranged broken pieces -of band-box above it with mathematical precision, then he rummaged a -broken chair out of an inner room, smashed the rotten legs across his -knees, and added them to the heap, which at the first touch of the match -shot into flame. - -“It will clean the brutal air,” he remarked, “and it is quite cold -enough for a fire. I wish I had stayed where I was till June. Tolly’s -bout might have been over by that time. Not so much as the smell of an -oil rag here,” he continued reflecting, “I must go out and forage.” - -Putting another chunk of chair on the fire and forcing a side window -open with an ease that spoke well for his condition, he went out and -returned shortly with a big knobbly parcel in one hand, and a smooth -brown-paper one in the other. - -From the first he produced a huge wedge of steak, some cut slices of -ham, and a loaf of bread, the brown held a bottle of beer. - -When the fire had burnt down to a hot bed of cinders, Strange put the -tongs across it, the poker and a piece of thick wire he had poked out of -a cupboard across these, then balanced the steak on the top of this -gridiron, and watched it fizzling and sputtering with a gratified air of -expectancy. - -“I left a gridiron, a saucepan, and a kettle in the bottom of that -cupboard,” he mused, keeping a keen eye on the grill, “all in decent -condition. Tolly again! I’ll put the fear of God in the fellow’s heart -before to-morrow’s out, ‘That must be to-morrow, not to-night.’ A sell -for me, my boy, if not for you, I feel just up to it now, by to-morrow -the desire may have lost its savour. I must find something to put this -steak on and to hold the beer. Not a sign of my pewter! Phew, one -cracked glass! Lord! there were dozens! and one hot-water plate with -half the delft off it, I could swear I left that shelf full of crockery! -and after this a Christian man is expected to do no murder!” - -When he had got half through the slab of steak a strong thirst came on -Strange. - -“There is a cork-screw in one of my inner pockets,” he reflected, -looking lazily round, “never mind, this is shorter!” - -He stretched out his arm for the poker, and with it, knocked the top of -the bottle clean off and drank his beer with wholesome satisfaction. - -When he had eaten and drunk enough, he pushed back his plate and glass, -and took a bundle of quills and some MS. paper out of a small cabinet. - -“Seemingly Tolly has found no use for these,” he thought, as he -sharpened a quill. - -He then produced a bundle of smudgy notes from an inner pocket and laid -them by the paper. - -“I’ll have a thorough good smoke,” he said, stretching his legs “and -then I’ll be game for six hours’ work. I swear,” he continued, rubbing -his hideous, inch-long, bristly, reddish beard, “I’ll not touch an -individual bristle of this mat till Lynton has got his first consignment -of ‘copy’, then I shall clean up and resume civilization.” - -Strange was a good many things but he was above all others a traveller, -he had neither nerves nor stomach, which is proof sufficient that he had -been preordained to the _rôle_, and he had discovered his election very -early in life. - -At the opening of one of his Eton vacations, when to look at he was a -mere chit of a child with a pair of gray eyes that were staggering from -the sheer artlessness of them, he had dodged the parental eye at -Waterloo, and instead of going down into Plowshire, he had taken ship at -Rotherhithe, and had reached Amsterdam by the skin of his teeth, the tub -being untrustworthy and nearly foundering in mid-channel. - -When he came back, more artless than ever to look at, he knew as much of -the life of the Hollanders of all classes and of every side of the life, -moreover, as if he had dwelt among them for a round five years. - -On his return to school he proceeded to record his experiences in the -school organ, and on their appearance in that chaste journal, he was had -up before his house master. - -“Where did you hear all this, Strange?” demanded the scandalized -gentleman. - -“I saw it, sir, and it’s quite true,” was the artless reply. - -“The deuce it is!” muttered Dr. Bromby. “That hardly betters matters. I -have ordered every copy of this paper to be burnt, Strange,” said the -doctor severely, “and in future, I wish to look through your manuscript -myself before it goes to the press. Unalloyed truth is sometimes out of -place. Stick to your classics, Strange, you will write well some day, -that is, if you become a little surer in your Latin, otherwise your -English will always be slovenly. If I were you I should reserve some of -my experiences, if you are in the habit of entertaining your fags with -them in off-times,” concluded the doctor. - -“Yes, sir,” said Humphrey, and departed cheerily. - -Strange had just now come back unexpectedly from a long tour in Algeria. -According to his own way of thinking he had had a glorious time if ever -man had. He had lived in the tents of the Arabs, in the camps of the -coast Zouaves, and in the hills and the deserts with the Bedouins, like -David. - -He had known - - “Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear, - And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. - And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine, - And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine.” - -He had braved heat, cold, hunger, thirst, filth and squalor, fleas and -worse than fleas, snakes and beasts of prey, but he had learned a new -variety of man and of the conditions that mould men’s lives. - -He had lived the life himself and could think as such men think, feel as -they feel, speak and act as they do. He had gained a new power and felt -a new growth of manhood quickening in his veins, and now he was -recording what he knew. - -Many travellers only _see_ he _knew_. He had touched the core of the -heart of things, and every word he wrote carried conviction to those who -read and marvelled at the wonderful knack the fellow had of telling -primitive truths cleanly. - -Strange kept his word and worked without break for six hours on end, -then he tumbled off his seat with sudden sleep, having just sense enough -to first roll himself in his Ulster. When Tolly arrived next morning at -eleven o’clock, the delayed wire in his hand and his hair erect with -terror, he found his master snoring in a strong breeze, with the full -sun on him, and at least a pound of dried grease all over the fender. -Tolly groaned. - - - - - CHAPTER XVI. - - -TOLLY proceeded in a vague sort of scurry to clear up. But in general -confusion of conscience and in his gin-begotten shakiness, he presently -dropped the poker with a clatter, and Strange awoke and sat bolt upright -in his Ulster. - -“Well, Tolly, how do you feel?” he demanded blandly, regarding the -forlorn, dirty figure with a persistent and contemplative stare that -caused it to wriggle and writhe like a worm. - -Tolly was a very long, thin, crooked person, whether young or old it was -impossible to decide, unless you happened to have seen his baptismal -register. - -His mother herself was rather at sea on the question. “He has always -looked like that from a baby,” she remarked to the school inspector, -when he called one day to round up the urchin, who from his lanky length -certainly looked quite meet for Primers. “I don’t believe myself he’s -that old but he may be, there ain’t no tellin’, he’s that queer one -can’t never say nothin’ certain regardin’ him.” - -Tolly’s freckles were his great point, they were so many, so -parti-coloured and so varied in form; they congregated most on his long -thin nose, and tumbled over one another in a way that gave the appendage -a scaly look like the tail of a fish. Tolly’s teeth suffered from early -decay; he may have had a few back-grinders but all he could boast of in -front was one abnormally long fang at the right side, that wobbled -frightfully at every word, and when he was nervous from gin wobbled even -when he was silent. - -“If I remember aright,” continued Strange, “you took the pledge the -night before I left, you cried too—let alone roared—with remorse.” - -“Yes, sir, I don’t deny nothin’.” - -“I’d like to catch you at it! Well, how long did you keep the pledge?” - -“I believe it were a matter of three weeks, sir, then I cotched cold.” - -“Oh, indeed! And the gin cotched you? Now, clear up that place. I shall -cook breakfast myself. When you have put things ship-shape from my point -of view, not yours, recollect, I shall give you sixpence, then you can -go to the baths round the corner and scrub yourself from head to foot. -Your things—except the hat, I burnt that, you appear to have stored -dripping in it—are in the box I gave you, put them on and then wait here -for me. That gridiron, those tumblers, those cups and other things you -have smashed or pawned, you will buy out of your next three weeks’ -wages—Farris’s gin-hole has all your savings, no doubt. And to-night I -shall give you a dose of castor oil mixed with senna.” - -“Oh, Lord help me!” groaned Tolly, and he shuffled nearer to his master, -with his slits of lips drawn tight across his fang—he had experienced -Strange’s treatment before this. - -“Now stop groaning, and do your work, neither I nor the Lord would touch -you with a pair of tongs in your present beastly condition! You have -earned your punishment and of course you shall get it. If you lived -decently you would have a first-rate place and you know it, and, look -here, I have come to the end of my patience, if I find you in this state -again, I shall sack you.” - -Tolly gave an anguished squeal. - -“Oh, I’ll try, sir, I does try, I swear to God I does. I tries, I does, -till I sweats like a bullock and doesn’t know if I’m on my head or my -heels, but summow it ain’t no go. Don’t sack me, for the love of God, -don’t, sir.” - -“Finish your sweeping, and go over that place under the table again. I -shall see how you get on after the bath and the castor oil. - -“Poor beggar!” said Strange to himself, as he ate his ham and drank his -well-sweetened tea. “Poor beggar! I wonder if I shall ever make anything -out of him! Only that the creature is so weakly—look at the miserable -hold of his claws on that dustpan!—I should take him about with me, the -Arabs would teach him sobriety anyway and he might pose as an apostle of -Christianity among them.” - -At this thought Strange chuckled aloud, and helped himself to another -slice of ham. - -Tolly’s face brightened as he heard the sound, he turned furtively to -watch his earthly Providence, and went on with his dusting with -redoubled fury. - -“Now,” said Strange, when he had finished, “carry all these things into -the next room and have a good feed. When did you happen to have your -last meal?” - -On the point of truth Strange was inexorable; the fellow dared not lie, -but he had a sort of bastard pride about him and felt the question -keenly. Turning a sickly puce, he stammered, - -“I haven’t had nothing yesterday, sir, summow I didn’t feel like it.” - -“No? Well, if I were you I’d cultivate the feeling now. Send in the -barber on your way to the bath, and hand down that ink bottle from the -shelf before you go. Pah! you can’t even fill an ink bottle, your hand -shakes so! Upon my word, if I have to sack you I don’t know what you’ll -do, you aren’t worth fourpence a week in this condition.” - -Tolly gave a dumb shudder and his fang kept time to it. - -Five years before, Strange had picked him up out of a sewer, where he -went to learn the trade of ratting. Strange liked to learn the ins and -outs of anything that had any suggestion of human interest in it. - -He had brought the half-dead, mouldy creature to his rooms, and after -saving his life, it struck him to keep it, and see what could be done -with it. This was the result. - -As long as Strange was at home Tolly kept straight, but directly he was -out of reach, the miserable absorbing craving took hold of the wretch, -and pinched, and pulled, and nipped, as with raging hot irons, at the -very soul of him, till at last he swallowed his humanity at a gulp, gave -way to the beast, and fled to the gin-shop. - -For three weeks he had endured the torture this last time, Strange -thought with grim pity, as he watched him, through the heavy Eastern -curtains, devouring his food to the dropping of tears. - -“Poor beggar! I shall never be able to get rid of him as long as life -holds whatever morsel of soul he may have in him. Meanwhile, I cannot -stand that solitary fang; when he has got over his brew I shall get him -a set of teeth.” - -He lay back and laughed. “They’ll be the ruin of his immortal soul, -those teeth; fancy the grin of the fellow when his lips have a resisting -surface to stretch across! Brown will charge frightfully for filling -such a cavern.” - -He laughed again and turned to his work, and in two hours he had the -first batch of “copy” ready for the printer. Then he yawned and -stretched, and apologized to the barber, whom he had kept waiting an -hour and ten minutes. - -When he was shaved, he dressed, and set forth to resume civilization. - - - - - CHAPTER XVII. - - -WHEN he got outside his rooms, which were in a turning off Piccadilly, -Strange looked up and down the street and at his watch. - -“I shall not bother with luncheon, that ham will last till eight,” he -said, “I shall go to the Club and I suppose I must see Aunt Moll. I’ll -go there to tea, she’ll be up probably, and perhaps awake by that time.” - -He struck out for his Club and made a rapid tour of the premises but he -found there was no good to be got there, the billiard-rooms were empty -and the reading-rooms were given over to half a dozen old fellows -suffering from gout and senile decay. - -“It’s too early and too late for anything,” he muttered, as he lighted a -fresh cigar on the steps, “it will be a full week, besides, before I get -into the swing again. I shall try Brydon.” - -With that he swung off down the street, past some big thoroughfares, -then he cut across a mesh of alleys and courts, out into some dingy -squares, landing at last in Bloomsbury Square. He walked round till he -got to a tall narrow house in a corner, where he pulled up, pushed open -the door, which was ajar, and went upstairs to the fifth story where he -found a door with “Mr. Brydon” painted on it in big letters. He opened -it, and walked in. - -A big fair boy with a cigarette in his mouth was sitting before an -easel, touching up a background; he spoke in a soft tired voice without -turning an inch of himself. - -“Excuse me, Carry, I can’t possibly stand up, I am wrestling with a -curtain. Kindly sit down and begin your apologies. Was Ma’s ‘neuralgy’ -bad, or the baby? Was it ‘it’? I am not quite certain as to the sex of -the last.—By the way, don’t they come with undue speed, those babies, or -do you spread all the diseases out on one?—Or did Pa go for you and -render your nose unfit for immortality? Two hours behind time to-day, -that’s nothing to you in the day’s work, no doubt, but I may remark that -it’s slightly inconvenient to me, as I prefer daylight to dark to catch -the super-excellent tones of your skin.” - -“I should have thought on the whole that the glow——” - -“Strange!” he cried with a soft slow gurgle of intense delight, and -lifting himself clumsily up from his seat, he caught Strange’s hand in a -close clasp and pushed him back into an old frilled arm-chair. - -“I thought you were in Algeria. It was a dangerous experiment, old -fellow; the betting was ten to one that I was painting off a model, and -I am continually overlooking that lock. You’re only just back, I see. -What a glorious dusty smooth red you’ve got on your cheeks! For goodness -sake, let me have it before gas and sich play the deuce with it.” - -“Take it, my child, take it. What a pity you didn’t have the beard too! -that was a far more glorious red, and a sight dustier, but I parted with -it this morning.” - -“Thank you, I’ve seen your bristles once; I never wish to behold them -again. Now smoke, and I’ll just have a shy at catching that tint, it’s -precisely what I want for this beggar’s cheek. My model had it to -perfection, but they clapped him into quad for prigging saveloys, and -when he comes out he will be useless, the colour of bad paste.” - -“Your room’s hardly serious enough; it’s pretty, in a doll’s-house -style.” - -“Serious! I can’t afford that. One can’t extract seriousness from rags, -but the colours are good and the cost small. Look at the drapery hiding -the crack in the wall in that corner, fourpence-halfpenny the yard and a -reduction by the piece!” - -“And you probably went dinnerless for that!” thought Strange, watching -the tall heavy-looking fellow, with his straight, limp brown hair -hanging over his forehead in a way that gave him a queer, foolish look, -an effect that his big alive eyes were constantly contradicting. - -The soft, sleepy tones of his voice which, only that they happened to be -peculiarly clear, would never have been heard at all, added rather to -this effect. Strange, however, was quite aware that the eyes of the -fellow spoke the truth, and that the hair and the soft speech lied. - -His father had been curate in the parish where Strange’s father was the -Squire, and even then the big boy had been good to the little one, and -the unequal friendship was still kept up between the two. It was a -pleasant little corner in the life of the older man, it was the best -part of life to the boy, and no one had a notion of the intense love and -gratitude he bore to the big notable man who took the trouble to know -him. - -Strange had stood by him in the bad crisis of his life, when things had -come to a head and his father, the curate, had put down his foot and -damned art permanently, and the boy, for his part, had comprehensively -damned the church, and had then stepped out of the parental porch with a -five-pound note in his pocket, and in his eyes the yearning greed for -colour. - -“How are you getting on?” said Strange. - -“Oh, I live, and I hardly owe a thing, which is a consolation, in case I -happened to die off in a hurry, and had to be beholden to the governor -to fork up. I have no feelings at all about the funeral expenses or the -shroud, I shall make no provision for these, they seem in his line, -somehow. But it would cut the old man up frightfully if he had to pay -the models or the beer, or anything smacking of the devil, you -know—Would you mind turning your face an inch to the right?” - -“What are you at? Haven’t you got the brick-dust yet?” - -“Yes, in a way, but I want to sketch you,” said Brydon, measuring him -with his pencil, “I won’t be long; you look so cool, and big, and -‘kinder’ dogged, you’ve given me a notion. You’ve grown frightfully -since you went away, especially about the eyes, they’ve got so beastly -deep and intricate, why don’t you have eyes like decent God-fearing -mortals?” - -“Ask my parents; if they refuse you the information, I can only refer -you to my godfather and godmother—By the way, what’s wrong with you, -Charlie?” - -“Me!—Nothing!—I had another bout of rheumatic fever a month ago, and I -have felt a trifle stodgy since at times, especially after a grind up -these stairs.” - -“Heart!” thought Strange. “Poor beggar! it’ll be hard on him if he’s -carried off before he learns to draw. Will you dine with me to-day?” - -Brydon’s face lit, he had ecstatic memories of dinners with Strange, and -as a matter of fact his dinners for two days past, had consisted of -bread—and mustard to give it a relish. - -“Thank you, old man, I can’t—I can’t go anywhere till Friday.” - -“Why, in Heaven’s name?” - -“I have some black and white to do,” he said mixing some paint -hurriedly. - -Strange took a glance at his back view and shrugged his shoulders. - -“The beggar’s sure to let it out, he always does,” he reflected. - -After a few minutes’ silent painting Brydon turned round. - -“I generally tell you most things,” he said, “if you wait long enough, -and you know by this time what an abject ass I am, so you may as well -hear the climax. - -“I was down sketching in Surrey last month. I went after the fever—I -didn’t feel as if I could stand the stairs just then—and I found a girl -in a cottage there who was willing to sit for me whenever I wanted her. -She was—divine! Look!” he got up slowly and took a little canvas from -behind the door. “Look! Did Greuse ever have such a head to paint from? -I fell in love with her. Of course, it was that colour that did it; -that, and her poses, and all her little ways and movements, and her soft -little voice—oh—oh—you know the sort of fool I am! I lodged at her -mother’s house, and the pair nursed me as if I were a sick -cat—well—Look!—I had to leave that place at a moment’s notice or I don’t -know what might have happened—you know. I paid up and cleared. - -“Would you believe it, I hadn’t been home a week, when who should appear -one night past ten o’clock but that girl? Upon my word, I broke out in a -cold sweat all over. I’m as weak as water, and—she was divine. I tell -you—I had an awful job altogether. I quieted her down first, then I had -to bathe her feet, such pretty pink little ones, but all torn and -bruised. If you believe me, she had walked from ten miles this side of -Godalming. I got her some food and gave her up my bed, and somehow or -other I got her back next day; she’d have stayed on any terms, poor -little soul! Girls are queer fish,” he said modestly, “one never can -tell what’ll fetch them. It was all pretty hot on the mother, however, -so I gave her the few shillings I had, and then she wrote to say that -the girl got fever from the walk, so of course I’ve had to help them, -and I regret to say my boots have gone for a change to mine uncle’s. I -shall be paid on Friday, and then I’ll bloom back into my pristine glory -and accept invitations. - -“I wonder,” he went on reflectively, “if there’s any way of keeping a -fellow from making a fool of himself. If you have happened to hear of -any in your travels, an anti-love philtre now, for Heaven’s sake divulge -it, it ruins one’s work getting in love in a promiscuous way, it’s a -brutal nuisance too, and devilish expensive. I know I always have to pay -compound interest for my pleasures in this line, and they’re absolutely -mawkish too, in their innocence,” he added, with a little injured sigh. - -Strange watched the boy curiously, wondering what possible motive, or -train of motives, combined to keep his life so clean, with its every -condition on the side of uncleanness. - -“He has neither convictions nor religion to hold him, he is as -passionate and sensual a fellow as any going, he is steeped to the lips -in Zola and others of that ilk; theoretically, innocence and he are as -far apart as the poles. He is a fool, no doubt, but I wish to God the -folly would last.” - -Brydon guessed the elder man’s thoughts, or perhaps his own were running -on the same lines, as he sketched in the strong steady cool face with a -breadth of technique that was marvellous in a boy of his age and -opportunities. - -“I wonder myself,” he said, “I don’t make more of my pleasures. A fellow -has opportunities somehow,” he added with pleasing diffidence, “no -matter how poor he is but I have a sort of notion I might lose in Art -what I should gain in pleasure. It would be idiotic to run that risk, -wouldn’t it? I have a sort of theory, it’s probably rot though it has a -sound of truth about it, that the cleaner one keeps one’s body and soul, -the clearer one’s eyes keep and the better able to tackle the truth in -Nature.” - -He paused, a little embarrassed; any expression, even of the most -primitive morality, brings a blush of shame to the cheek of youth. - -“That sounds like a workable theory,” assented Strange, “and upon my -word, I believe you will find it so. The opposite is playing the deuce -with the modern Italian school, and it strikes one like a blow in a lot -of the work of the youngsters there. I would thresh out that theory, if -I were you, nothing half and half will do.” - -“No,” said Brydon ruefully, “no, that is where the grind comes in.” - -Strange laughed, the fellow’s face and accent fitted his speech so -comically. - -“I suppose I must let him get over the boot business himself, he’s so -beastly cocky, but I’m convinced he’s hungry. I wonder how much the jade -got out of him! Charlie,” he then said aloud, “I must be off, I shall -expect you on Friday at my Club. If I were you, old chap, I should stop -that young person’s supplies, the fever must be off her by this time.” - -“I have a sort of awful conviction that it’s going to be intermittent, -and that nothing but a change of address will have any effect upon -it—but, oh, old man, if you could have seen that girl,” he concluded -regarding her head mournfully, with his own on one side, and with an -overwhelming longing for the Egyptian flesh-pots surging up within him. - -Strange slapped him on the shoulder, “Just as well not, fevers come -expensive, whether they take you, or the victim to your charms. -Good-bye.” - - - END OF VOL. I. - - - - - SELECTIONS FROM - MESSRS. HUTCHINSON’S LIST. - - --------------------- - - - _BY W. L. REES._ - -=The Life and Times of Sir George Grey.= K.C.B. By W. L. REES. With - Photogravure Portraits. In demy 8vo. buckram gilt, 2 vols. 32/-. and - in one vol. 12/-. - -The _Daily Telegraph_ (Leader) says:—“A work of extraordinary interest.” - - _BY DOUGLAS SLADEN._ - -=The Japs at Home.= With over 50 Full-Page and other Illustrations. - Third edition. In demy 8vo. cloth, 6/-. - -The _Times_ says:—“His notes and impressions make capital reading, and -we feel on closing the volume that it is not a bad substitute for a -visit to Japan.” - - _BY GILBERT PARKER._ - -=Round the Compass in Australia.= Demy 8vo. cloth gilt, fully - illustrated, 3/6. - -The _Pall Mall Gazette_ says:—“Mr. PARKER may fairly claim to have -produced one of the most readable of recent works on Australia.” - - _BY MRS. OLIPHANT._ - -=The Cuckoo in the Nest.= A Fifth Edition. With Illustrations by G. H. - EDWARDS. In crown 8vo. cloth gilt, 6_s._ - -The _Athenæum_ says:—“Mrs. OLIPHANT’S most successful novel.” - - _BY F. FRANKFORT MOORE._ - -=“I Forbid the Banns.”= The Story of a Comedy which was played - seriously. Sixth Edition. Cr. 8vo. cloth gilt, 6/-. - -The _Athenæum_ says:—“So racy and brilliant a novel.” - - _By the author of “I FORBID THE BANNS.”_ - -=Daireen.= A Novel. Second Edition. In crown 8vo. cloth gilt, 6/-. - - _BY CLARK RUSSELL._ - -=The Tragedy of Ida Noble.= With over Forty full-page and smaller - Illustrations by EVERARD HOPKINS. In crown 8vo. buckram gilt, gilt - top, 6/-. - -The _Times_ says:—“Mr. CLARK RUSSELL has never written a better story -than ‘The Tragedy of Ida Noble.’” - - _BY AMELIA E. BARR._ - -=A Singer from the Sea.= In crown 8vo. cloth gilt, 5/-. - - _BY ANNIE S. SWAN._ - -=A Bitter Debt.= A Tale of the Black Country. With Illustrations by D. - MURRAY SMITH. In cr. 8vo., cloth gilt, 5/-. - - _BY B. L. FARJEON._ - -=The Last Tenant.= A Novel. In crown 8vo. cloth gilt, 5/-. - -The _Globe_ says:—“In ‘The Last Tenant’ Mr. B. L. FARJEON shows all his -old skill as a plot-weaver, and all his usual ingenuity in the choice -and arrangement of incidents.... ‘The Last Tenant’ is a capital tale.” - - _BY MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD._ - -=A Wild Proxy.= By the Author of “Aunt Anne.” In crown 8vo., cloth gilt, - 3_s._ 6_d._ - -The _Athenæum_ says:—“Strikingly original, clever, fresh, cynical, -epigrammatic, stimulating, picturesque.” - - _BY DICK DONOVAN._ - -=From Clue to Capture.= A Series of Thrilling Detective Stories. With - numerous Illustrations by PAUL HARDY. In crown 8vo., cloth gilt, 3_s._ - 6_d._ - - _BY TWENTY-FOUR DISTINGUISHED NOVELISTS_ - -=The Fate of Fenella.= Fourth Edition. In crown 8vo., cloth gilt, with - over 70 Original Illustrations, 3_s._ 6_d._ - - THE AUTHORS ARE:—HELEN MATHERS, JUSTIN H. M’CARTHY, MRS. TROLLOPE, A. - CONAN DOYLE, MAY CROMMELIN, F. C. PHILLIPS, “RITA,” JOSEPH HATTON, - MRS. LOVETT CAMERON, BRAM STOKER, FLORENCE MARRYAT, FRANK DANBY, MRS. - EDWARD KENNARD, RICHARD DOWLING, MRS. HUNGERFORD, ARTHUR A’BECKETT, G. - MANVILLE FENN, JEAN MIDDLEMASS, H. W. LUCY, CLO. GRAVES, F. ANSTEY, - “TASMA,” CLEMENT SCOTT, AND ADELINE SERGEANT. - -The _Academy_ says;—“An ingenious success.” - - _By the author of “BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.”_ - -=Under the Great Seal.= By JOSEPH HATTON, Third Edition. In crown 8vo. - cloth, 3/6. - -The _Daily Telegraph_ says:—“This thrilling story, every salient -incident is more or less tragical.” - - _BY SEVEN POPULAR AUTHORS._ - -=Seven Christmas Eves.= Being the Romance of a Social Evolution. By CLO. - GRAVES, B. L. FARJEON, FLORENCE MARRYAT, G. MANVILLE FENN, MRS. - CAMPBELL PRAED, JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, and CLEMENT SCOTT. With 28 - Original Illustrations by DUDLEY HARDY. In cr. 8vo, cloth gilt, 3_s._ - 6_d._ - - _BY H. B. MARRIOT-WATSON._ - -=The Web of the Spider.= A Story of New Zealand Adventure. With - Frontispiece by STANLEY S. WOOD. Cr. 8vo. cloth gilt, 3_s._ 6_d._ - -The _Times_ says:—“We are quite unable to give any idea of the thrilling -events.... It is magnificent.” - - ---------------------------------------------------------------- - - LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., 34 PATERNOSTER ROW. - - - - - Transcriber’s Note - - -This book uses inconsistent spelling and hyphenation, which were -retained in the ebook version. Ditto marks used to represent repeated -text have been replaced with the text that they represent. Some -corrections have been made to the text, including normalizing -punctuation. Further corrections are noted below: - - p. 133: his prediliction for that religion -> his predilection for that - religion - p. 151: and get very keen and eager -> and got very keen and eager - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Yellow Aster, Volume 1 (of 3), by -Kathleen Mannington Caffyn - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A YELLOW ASTER, VOLUME 1 (OF 3) *** - -***** This file should be named 63682-0.txt or 63682-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/6/8/63682/ - -Produced by Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -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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