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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75174 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SONS OF FIRE
+
+                                A Novel
+
+                       By Mary Elizabeth Braddon
+
+                             THE AUTHOR OF
+
+                   "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"
+                            "ISHMAEL," ETC.
+
+                          _IN THREE VOLUMES_
+
+                               VOL. II.
+
+                                LONDON
+
+                SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.
+                                LIMITED
+                        STATIONERS' HALL COURT
+
+                        [_All rights reserved_]
+
+                                LONDON:
+             PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+                         CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
+
+
+                I. FATE INTERVENES
+
+               II. "BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY"
+
+              III. WHILE LEAVES WERE FALLING
+
+               IV. "LET NO MAN LIVE AS I HAVE LIVED"
+
+                V. "CHANCE CANNOT CHANGE MY LOVE, NOR TIME IMPAIR"
+
+               VI. AT EVENSONG
+
+              VII. "THE DEAD MAN TOUCH'D ME FROM THE PAST"
+
+             VIII. "WHAT WAS A SPECK EXPANDS INTO A STAR"
+
+              IX. "A WHITE STAR MADE OF MEMORY LONG AGO"
+
+               X. "AND THAT UNREST WHICH MEN MISCALL DELIGHT"
+
+              XI. "WHO KNOWS WHY LOVE BEGINS?"
+
+             XII. "THAT WAY MADNESS LIES"
+
+
+
+
+                             SONS OF FIRE.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                           FATE INTERVENES.
+
+
+The return of Geoffrey Wornock made no essential difference in the
+lives of the lovers. Suzette continued her organ practice; Allan
+continued his visits to the Manor House; and Suzette and Allan were
+much oftener Mrs. Wornock's companions than her son, whose restless
+temper did not allow of his remaining long in any one place, and for
+whom monotony of any kind was intolerable.
+
+He stayed in London for a week buying horses, and having brought home
+a string of four, every one supposed to be matchless, he began hunting
+with the vigour of a man whose appetite for that British sport had
+only been sharpened by paper-chases and polo in the tropics. Not
+content with the South Sarum, he travelled up and down the line, hunted
+with the Vine from Basingstoke, and with the H. H. from Winchester. He
+was up and away in the grey November mornings after a seven-o'clock
+breakfast, and seldom home in time for an eight-o'clock dinner.
+
+On the days when there was no hunting to be had, he flung himself
+into the delights of the music-room with all the ardour of a musical
+fanatic, and Allan and Suzette were content to listen in meek
+astonishment to performances which were far above the drawing-room
+amateur, although marked by certain imperfections and carelessnesses
+which seemed inevitable in a player whose ardour was too fitful for the
+drudgery of daily practice.
+
+These musical days were the bright spots in Mrs. Wornock's existence,
+the chief bond of union between mother and son; as if music were the
+only spell which could hold this volatile spirit within the circle of
+domestic love.
+
+"I like my mother to accompany me," said Geoffrey. "I have played with
+some prodigious swells, but not one of them has had her sympathetic
+touch, her instantaneous comprehension of my spontaneities. They
+expected me to be faultily faultless, instead of which I play de Beriot
+as Chopin used to play Chopin, indulging every caprice as to time."
+
+Geoffrey was occasionally present when one of the organ lessons was
+in progress. He was interested, but not so much so as to sit still
+and listen. He carried Allan off to the billiard-room, or the stable,
+before the lesson was half over.
+
+"What a happy little family we are," he said laughingly one day, as he
+and Allan were strolling stablewards. "My mother is almost as fond of
+your _fiancée_ as if she were her daughter."
+
+"Your mother is a very amiable woman, as well as a gifted woman."
+
+"Gifted? yes, that's the word. She is all enthusiasm. There have been
+no spiritualists or supernatural people here lately, I suppose?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm glad of that. My poor mother loses her head when that kind of
+people are in the way. She is ready to believe in their nonsense. She
+wants to believe. She wants to see visions and dream dreams. She has
+secluded herself from the world of the living, and she would give
+half her fortune if she could bring the dead into her drawing-room.
+Poor dear mother! How many weary hours she has spent waiting for
+materializations that have never materialized! I have never been able
+to convince her that all her spiritualistic friends are pretenders and
+comedians. She tells me she knows that some are charlatans; but she
+believes that their theories are based upon eternal truths. She rebukes
+my scepticism with an appeal to the Witch of Endor. I dare not shock
+her by confessing that I have my doubts even about the Witch of Endor."
+
+He had a way of making light of his mother's fancies and eccentricities
+which had in its gaiety no touch of disrespect. Gaiety was the chief
+characteristic of his temperament, as it was with Suzette. He brought a
+new element of mirthfulness into the life at Discombe Manor; but with
+this happy temperament there was the drawback of an eager desire for
+change and movement which disturbed the atmosphere of a house whose
+chief charm to Allan's mind had been its sober quiet, its atmosphere of
+old-world peace.
+
+Allan studied this young man's character closely, studied him and
+thought of him much more than he wanted to think of him, and vainly
+struggled against an uneasy feeling that in every superiority of this
+new acquaintance there lurked a danger to his own happiness.
+
+"He is handsomer than I am," mused Allan, in one of his despondent
+moods. "He has a gayer temper--Suzette's own temper--which sees all
+things in the happiest light. I sit and watch them, listen to them,
+and feel myself worlds away from them both; and yet if she were free
+to-morrow he could never love her as I love her. There, at least, I am
+the superior. He has no such power of concentration as I have. To his
+frivolous nature no woman could ever be all in all."
+
+These despondent moods were luckily not of long duration. On Suzette's
+part there had not been the faintest sign of wavering; and Allan felt
+ashamed of the jealous fears which fell ever and anon like a black
+cloud across the sunny prospect of his life. However valiantly he might
+struggle against that lurking jealousy, there were occasions upon which
+he could not master it, and his darkest hours were those during which
+he sat in the music-room at Discombe, and heard Suzette and Geoffrey
+playing concertante duets for violin and piano. It seemed to him as the
+violinist bent over the pretty dark head, to turn a leaf, or to explain
+a passage in the piano score, that for these two there was a language
+which he knew not, a language in which mind spoke to mind, and perhaps
+heart to heart. Who could keep the heart altogether out of the question
+when that most eloquent of all languages was making its impassioned
+appeal? Every long-drawn legato chord upon the Strad, every delicate
+diminuendo of the sighing strings, the tremulous bow so lightly held in
+the long lissom fingers, sounded like an avowal.
+
+"I love you, I love you, I love you," sobbed the violin; "how can
+you care for that dumb brute yonder, while I am telling my love in
+heavenliest sounds, in strains that thrill along every nerve, and
+tremble at the door of your heart? How can you care for that dumb dog,
+or care how you hurt him by your inconstancy?"
+
+Possessed by these evil fancies, Allan started up from his seat in
+a remote window, and began to pace the room in the midst of a de
+Beriot sonata, to which Suzette had been promoted after a good deal of
+practice in less brilliant music.
+
+"What's the matter, old fellow?" asked Geoffrey, noting that impatient
+promenade; "was I out of tune?"
+
+"No, you were only too much in tune."
+
+"How do you mean? I don't understand----"
+
+"Is it likely you can understand me--or I you?" cried Allan,
+impetuously. "You have a language which I have not, a sense which
+is lacking in me. You and Suzette are in a paradise whose gate I
+can't open. Don't think me an envious, churlish kind of fellow, if I
+sometimes grudge you your happiness."
+
+"But, my dear Allan, you are fond of music--you like listening----"
+
+"No, I don't. I have had too much listening, too much of being out of
+it. Put on your hat, Suzette, and come for a walk. I am tired to death
+of your de Beriot."
+
+Mrs. Wornock was sitting a little way from the piano, reading. She
+looked up wonderingly at this outburst. Never before had Allan been
+guilty of such rough speech in her presence. Never before had he spoken
+with such rude authority to Suzette.
+
+"If our music has not the good fortune to please you, I would suggest
+that there are several rooms in this house where you would not hear
+it," said Geoffrey, laying down his fiddle.
+
+All the brightness had faded from his countenance, leaving it very
+pale. Suzette looked from one to the other with an expression of
+piteous distress. The two young men stood looking at each other,
+Allan flushed and fiery, Geoffrey's pallid face fixed and stern, with
+an anger which was stronger than the occasion warranted. They were
+sufficiently alike to make any ill-will between them seem like a
+brother's quarrel.
+
+"You are very good, but I would rather be out-of-doors. Are you coming,
+Suzette?"
+
+"Not till I have finished the sonata," she answered quietly, with a
+look which reproved his rudeness, and then began to play.
+
+Geoffrey took up his fiddle, and the performance was resumed as if
+nothing had happened.
+
+Mrs. Wornock rose and went to Allan.
+
+"Will you come for a stroll with me, Allan?" she asked, taking up the
+warm Indian shawl which lay on a chair near the window. "It is not too
+cold for the garden."
+
+He could not refuse such an invitation as this, though it tortured him
+to leave those two alone at the piano. He opened the window, wrapped
+Mrs. Wornock in her shawl, and followed her to the lawn.
+
+"Allan, why were you angry just now?" she asked.
+
+"Why? Perhaps I had better tell you the truth. I am miserable when I
+see the woman I love interested and enthralled by an art in which your
+son is a master--and of which I know hardly the A, B, C. I ask myself
+if she can care for a creature so inferior as I am--if she can fail to
+perceive his superiority."
+
+"Jealous, Allan! Oh, I am so sorry. It was I who proposed that they
+should play duets. It was not Geoffrey's idea. I thought it would
+encourage Suzette to go on practising. You don't know the delight a
+pianist feels in accompanying a violin----"
+
+"I think I can imagine it. Suzette takes very kindly to the concertante
+practice."
+
+"She has improved so much since I first knew her. She has such a talent
+for music. It never occurred to me that you could object."
+
+"It never occurred to you that I could be a jealous fool. You might
+just as well say that, for no doubt you think it."
+
+"Yes, I think you are foolish to be jealous. Suzette is as true as
+steel; and I don't believe Geoffrey has the slightest inclination to
+fall in love with her."
+
+"Not at this moment, perhaps; but who knows what tender feelings
+those dulcet strains may bring? However, Suzette will be leaving the
+neighbourhood, I hope, in a few days."
+
+"Leaving us, you hope!"
+
+"Yes. My mother has written to invite her to Fendyke. She is to see the
+White Farm, and get acquainted with all our Suffolk neighbours, who
+declare themselves dying to see her, while I am shooting my father's
+pheasants."
+
+"You are both going away then? I shall miss you sadly."
+
+"You will have Geoffrey."
+
+"One day out of six, perhaps. He will be hunting or shooting all the
+rest of the week."
+
+"We shall not be away very long. I don't suppose General Vincent will
+spare us his daughter for more than a fortnight or three weeks."
+
+"Suzette told me nothing about the invitation."
+
+"She has not received the letter yet. The post had not come in when she
+left home. I met the postman on my way here, and read my letters as I
+came along. De Beriot has been too absorbing to allow of my telling
+Suzette about my mother's letter to me. Shall we go back? Unless that
+sonata is interminable, it must have come to an end before now."
+
+Mrs. Wornock turned immediately. She saw Allan's uneasiness, and
+sympathized with him. They went back to the music-room, where there
+was only silence. Suzette had left the piano, and had put on her hat
+and jacket. Geoffrey was still standing in front of the music-stand,
+turning the leaves of the offending sonata.
+
+"Good-bye, dear Mrs. Wornock," said Suzette, kissing her friend. "Now,
+Allan, I am quite ready."
+
+Allan and Geoffrey shook hands at parting, but not with the usual
+smiling friendliness.
+
+"How could you be so dreadfully rude, Allan?" Suzette said with a
+pained voice, as they walked away from the house. "You were quite
+hateful."
+
+"I know that. I am astounded at my own capacity for hatefulness."
+
+"I shall play no more concertante duets, though I have enjoyed them
+more than anything in the way of music. It was only the most advanced
+pupils at the Sacré Cœur who ever had accompanying lessons--and such
+happiness never fell to my share."
+
+"I should be very sorry to interfere with your--happiness; but I think,
+Suzette, if you cared for me half as much as I care for you, you would
+understand how it hurts me to see you so completely in sympathy with
+another man, and happy with a happiness which I cannot share."
+
+"Why should you not share our happiness, Allan? You are fond of music,
+I know."
+
+"Fond of music--yes; but I am not a musician. I cannot make music as
+that young man can. I cannot speak to you as he speaks to you, in that
+language which is his and yours, and not mine. I am standing outside
+your world. I feel myself thrust far off from you, while he is so near."
+
+"Allan!" cried Suzette, with a smile that was a pale shadow of her old
+sportiveness, "can you actually be jealous?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can."
+
+"Jealous about a man who is nothing to me except my dear friend's son.
+You know how fond I am of Mrs. Wornock--the only real friend I have
+made since I left the convent--and you ought to understand that I like
+her son for her sake. And I have been pleased to take my part in the
+music they both love. But that is all over now. I will not allow myself
+to be misconstrued by you, Allan. There shall be no more duets."
+
+They were still in Mrs. Wornock's domain, in a wooded drive where the
+leafless branches overarched the way; and the scene was lonely enough
+and sheltered enough to allow of Allan taking his sweetheart to his
+breast and kissing her in a rapture of penitent love.
+
+"My darling, forgive me! If I did not know the pricelessness of my
+treasure, I should not be so full of unworthy fears. We won't stop the
+duets for ever, Susie. I must get accustomed to the idea of a gifted
+wife, who has many talents which I have not. But I hope your musical
+studies at Discombe may be suspended for a month or so. When you go
+home, you will find a letter from my mother inviting you to Fendyke.
+She loves you already, and she wants to know more of you, so that you
+may really be to her the daughter she has been wishing for ever since
+I was born. You will go, won't you, Suzette, if the good General will
+spare you; and I think he will?"
+
+"Are you to be there too?"
+
+"Yes, I am to be there; but you shall not see too much of me. Ours
+is a shooting county, and I shall be expected to be tramping with my
+gun nearly every day. I think you will like Fendyke. The house is a
+fine old house, and the neighbourhood is pretty after a fashion, just
+as some parts of Holland and Belgium are pretty--sleepy, contented,
+prosperous, useful."
+
+He walked home with her and stayed to luncheon, so as to secure
+General Vincent's consent upon the spot. This was obtained without
+difficulty. The General, having had to dispense with his daughter for
+at least three-fourths of her existence, was not dependent upon her for
+society, though he liked to see the bright young face smiling at him
+across the table at his luncheon and his dinner, and he liked to be
+played to sleep after dinner, or to have Suzette as a listener when he
+was in the mood for talking. The greater part of his life was spent
+out-of-doors--hunting, shooting, fishing, golfing--so that he could
+afford to be amiable upon this occasion.
+
+"Yes, yes, Suzette, accept the invitation, by all means. The change
+will do you good. Lady Emily is a most estimable person, and it is only
+right that you should become better acquainted with her."
+
+"I am very fond of her already," said Suzette. "Then I am really to go,
+Allan? Lady Emily suggests Saturday--three days from now."
+
+"Well, you are ready, I suppose," said her father. "You have the frocks
+and things that are necessary."
+
+"Yes, father, I think I have frocks enough; unless you are dreadfully
+fashionable in Suffolk, Allan."
+
+"The less said about our fashion the better. If you have a stout
+cloth skirt short enough to keep clear of our mud, that is all you
+need trouble about. I suppose I shall be allowed to escort Suzette,
+General?"
+
+"Well, yes, I don't see any objection to your taking care of her on
+the journey; but I have very lax notions of etiquette. I must ask my
+sister. Suzie will take her maid, of course; and Suzie's maid is a
+regular dragon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan walked homeward with a light step and a light heart. The idea of
+having Suzette as a visitor in his own home, growing every day nearer
+and dearer to his parents, was rapture. No more concertante duets, no
+more long-drawn sobbings and sighings on the Stradivarius! He would
+have his sweetheart all to himself, to pace the level meadow paths, and
+saunter by the modest river, and loiter by rustic mills and bridges,
+which Constable may have painted. And in that atmosphere of homely
+peacefulness he might draw his sweetheart closer to his heart, win her
+more completely than he had won her yet, and persuade her to consent to
+a nearer date for their marriage than that far-off summer of the coming
+year. He counted much on home influences, on his mother's warmhearted
+affection for the newly adopted daughter.
+
+"A telegram, sir," said the servant who opened the door, startling him
+from a happy day-dream. "It came nearly an hour ago."
+
+Allan tore open the envelope and glanced carelessly at the message,
+expecting some trivial communication.
+
+    "Your father is dangerously ill. Come at once. I am writing to
+    postpone Miss Vincent's visit.--Emily Carew."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+             "BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY."
+
+
+A sudden end to a happy day-dream. A hurried preparation and a swift
+departure. Allan had just time to write to Suzette while his servant
+was packing a portmanteau and the dog-cart horse was being harnessed
+for the drive to the station.
+
+He loved his father too well to have room for any selfish thoughts
+about his own disappointment; but he tried to be hopeful and to think
+that his mother's alarm had exaggerated the evil, and that the word
+"dangerously" was rather the expression of her own panic than of the
+doctor's opinion. It was only natural that she should summon him, the
+only son, to his father's sick-bed. The illness must be appalling in
+its suddenness; for in her letter, written on the previous day, she had
+described him as in his usual health. The suddenness of the attack was
+in itself enough to scare a woman of Lady Emily's temperament.
+
+Allan telegraphed from Liverpool Street, and was met at the quiet
+little terminus, where the tiny branch line came to an end on the edge
+of a meadow, and a hundred yards from a rustic road. The journey to
+Cambridge had been one of the swiftest, the twenty miles on the branch
+line of the slowest; a heart-breaking journey for a man whose mind was
+racked with fears.
+
+It was dark when he arrived; but out of the darkness which surrounded
+the terminus there came the friendly voice of a groom and the glare of
+carriage-lamps.
+
+"Ah, is that you, Moyle? Is my father any better?"
+
+His heart sank as he asked the question, with agonizing dread of the
+reply.
+
+"No, sir; I'm afraid he ain't no better. The doctor from Abbeytown is
+coming again to-night. Will you drive, sir?"
+
+"No. Get me home as fast as you can, for God's sake!"
+
+"Yes, sir. I brought your old bay mare. She's the fastest we've got."
+
+"Poor old Kitty! Good to the last, is she? Get on."
+
+They were bowling along the level road behind bay Kitty, the first
+hunter Allan had bought on his own account in his old college days,
+when his liberal allowance enabled him to indulge his taste in
+horseflesh. Kitty had distinguished herself in a small way as a
+steeplechaser before Allan picked her up at Tattersall's, and she was
+an elderly person when he came into his fortune; so he had left her in
+the home stables as a general utility horse.
+
+Kitty carried him along the road at a splendid pace, and hardly
+justified impatience even in the most anxious heart.
+
+His mother was waiting in the porch when he alighted.
+
+"Dear mother," he said, as he kissed and soothed her and led her into
+the house, "why do you stand out in the cold? You are shivering."
+
+"Not with cold, Allan."
+
+"Poor mother! Is he very ill? Is it really so serious?"
+
+"It could not be more serious, Allan. They thought this morning that he
+was dying. They told me--to be prepared--for the worst."
+
+The sentence was broken by sobs. She hid her face on her son's breast
+and sobbed out her grief unchecked by him, only soothed by the gentle
+pressure of his arm surrounding and, as it were, protecting her from
+the invincible enemy.
+
+"Doctors are such alarmists, mother; they often take fright too soon."
+
+"Not in this case, Allan; I was with him all through his sufferings.
+I saw him struggling with death. I knew how near death was in those
+dreadful hours. It is his heart, Allan. You remember Dr. Arnold's
+death--how we have cried over the story in Stanley's book. It was
+like that--sudden, intense suffering. Yesterday he was sitting in his
+library, placid and at ease among his books. We dined together last
+night. He was cheerful and full of interesting talk. And this morning
+at daybreak he was fighting for his life. It was terrible."
+
+"But the danger is past, mother. The struggle is over, please God, and
+he will be well again."
+
+"Never, never again, Allan. The doctors hold out little hope of that.
+The awful agony may return at any hour. The mischief is deep seated. We
+have been living in a fool's paradise. Oh, my dear son, I never knew
+how fondly I have loved your father till to-day. I thought we should
+grow old together, go down to the grave hand-in-hand."
+
+"Dear mother, hope for the best. I cannot think--remembering how young
+a man he seemed the other day at Beechhurst--I cannot think that we
+are to lose him."
+
+Tears were streaming down Allan's cheeks, tears of which he was
+unconscious. He dearly loved the father whose mild affection had
+made his childhood and youth so smooth and easy, the father who had
+understood every youthful desire, every unexpressed feeling, who in his
+tenderness and forethought had been as sympathetic as a loving woman.
+
+"Oh, Allan, you will find him aged by ten years since those happy
+days at Beechhurst. One day of suffering has altered him. It seems as
+if some invisible writing--the lines of disease and death--had come
+suddenly out upon his face--lines I never saw till this day."
+
+"Mother, we won't despair. We are passing through the valley of the
+shadow of death, perhaps--but only passing through. The fight may be
+hard and bitter; but we shall conquer the enemy; we shall carry our
+dearest safely over the dark valley. May I see him? I will be very
+calm and quiet. I am so longing to see him, to hold his dear hand."
+
+"We ought to wait for the doctors, Allan. They both warned me that he
+must be kept as quiet as possible. He is terribly exhausted. They will
+be here at eleven o'clock. It might be safer to wait till then."
+
+"Yes, I will wait. Who is with him now?"
+
+"A nurse from the Abbeytown hospital."
+
+"And he is out of pain, and at rest?"
+
+"He was sleeping when I left him--sleeping heavily, worn out with pain,
+and under the influence of opium."
+
+"Well, we must wait. There is nothing to be done."
+
+Mother and son waited patiently, almost silently, through the slow
+hours between eight and eleven. They sat together in Lady Emily's
+morning-room, which was next to the sick man's bedroom. There was a
+door of communication, and though this was shut, they could hear if
+there were much movement in the adjoining room.
+
+Lady Emily mooted the question of dinner for the traveller. She urged
+him to go down to the dining-room and take some kind of meal after his
+journey; but he shook his head with the first touch of impatience he
+had shown since his arrival.
+
+"You will wear yourself out, Allan?" she remonstrated.
+
+"No, mother--there is plenty of wear in me. I almost hate myself for
+being so strong and so full of life while he is lying there----"
+
+Tears ended the sentence.
+
+At last the hands of the clock, which mother and son had both been
+watching, pointed to eleven, and the hour struck with slow and silvery
+sound. Then came ten minutes of expectancy, and then the cautious tread
+of the family practitioner and the consulting physician coming upstairs
+together.
+
+Allan and his mother went out to the corridor to see them. A few
+murmured words only, and the two dark figures vanished through the door
+of the sick-room, and mother and son were alone once more, waiting,
+waiting with aching hearts and strained ears, that listened for every
+sound on the other side of the closed door.
+
+The doctors were some time with the patient, and then they went
+downstairs, and were closeted together in the library for a time
+that seemed very long to those who waited for the result of their
+consultation. Those anxious watchers had followed them downstairs, and
+were standing beside the expiring fire in the hall, waiting as for
+the voice of fate. The dining-room door was open. A table laid for
+supper, with glass and silver shining under the lamplight, and the glow
+of a blazing fire, suggested comfort and good cheer--and seemed to
+accentuate the gloom in the hearts of the watchers.
+
+What were they talking about, those two in the closed room yonder,
+Allan wondered. Was their talk all of the sufferer upstairs, and the
+means of alleviating pain and staving off the inevitable end? or did
+they wander from that question of life and death to the futilities of
+everyday conversation--and so lengthen out the agony of those who were
+waiting for their verdict? At last the door opened, and the two doctors
+came out into the hall, very grave still, but less gloomy than they had
+looked in the morning, Lady Emily thought.
+
+"He is better--decidedly better than he was twelve hours ago," said the
+physician. "We have tided over the immediate peril."
+
+"And he is out of danger?" questioned Allan, eagerly.
+
+"He is out of danger for the moment. He may go on for some time without
+a recurrence of this morning's attack; but I am bound to tell you that
+the danger may recur at any time. What has happened must be regarded--I
+am sorry to be obliged to say it--as the beginning of the end."
+
+There was a silence, broken only by the wife's stifled sobs.
+
+"My God, how sudden it is! and you say it is hopeless?" said Allan,
+stunned by the sentence of doom.
+
+"To you the thing is sudden; but the mischief is a work of many years.
+The evil has been there, suspected by your father, but never fully
+realized. He consulted me ten years ago, and I gave him the best advice
+the case allowed--prescribed a regimen which I believe he carefully
+followed--a regimen which consisted chiefly in quietness and careful
+living. I told him as much as it was absolutely necessary to tell,
+taking care not to frighten him."
+
+"You did not tell me that he was a doomed man," Lady Emily said
+reproachfully.
+
+"My dear lady, to have done that would have been to lessen his chance
+of cheerful surroundings, to run the risk of sad looks where it was
+most needful he should find hopefulness. Besides, at that stage of
+the disease, one might hope for the best--even for a long life, under
+favourable conditions."
+
+"And now--what is the limit of your hope?" asked Allan.
+
+"I cannot measure the sands in the glass. Another attack like that of
+to-day would, I fear, be fatal. It is a wonder to me that he survived
+the agony of this morning."
+
+"And you have told us--that agony may return at any hour. Nothing you
+can do can prevent its recurrence?"
+
+"I fear not; but we shall do the uttermost."
+
+"May I see him?"
+
+"Not till to-morrow. He is still under the influence of an opiate.
+Let him rest for to-night undisturbed by one agitating thought. His
+frame is exhausted by suffering. Mr. Travers will be here again early
+to-morrow; and if he find his patient as I hope he will find him, then
+you and Lady Emily can see him for a few minutes. But I must beg that
+there may be no emotional talk, and that he may be kept very quiet all
+to-morrow. I will come again early on Saturday."
+
+Mother and son hung upon the physician's words. He was a man whom both
+trusted, and even in this great strait the idea of other help hardly
+occurred to either. Yet in the desire to do the uttermost, Allan
+ventured to say--
+
+"If you would like another opinion, I would telegraph for any one you
+might suggest--among London specialists."
+
+"A specialist could do nothing more than we have done. The battle is
+fought and won so far--and when the fight begins again the same weapons
+will have to be used. The whole college of physicians could do nothing
+to help us."
+
+And then the doctors went into the dining-room, the physician to
+fortify himself for a ten-mile drive, the family practitioner to
+prepare himself for the possibilities of the night. Allan went in with
+them, at his mother's urgent request, and tried to eat some supper; but
+his heart was heavy as lead.
+
+He thought of Mrs. Wornock--remembering that pale face looking out
+of the autumn night, so intense in its searching gaze, the dark grey
+eyes seeming to devour the face they looked upon--his father sitting
+unconscious all the while--knowing not how near love was--the romantic
+love of his younger years, the love which still held all the elements
+of poetry, the love which had never been vulgarized or out-worn by the
+fret and jar of daily life.
+
+He would die, perhaps, without ever having seen the face of his early
+love, without ever having heard the end of her history--die, perhaps,
+believing that she had given him up easily because she had never
+really cared for him. The son had felt it in somewise his duty to keep
+those two apart for his mother's sake; but now at the idea that his
+father might die without having seen his early love or heard her story
+from her own lips, it seemed to him that he had acted cruelly and
+treacherously towards the parent he loved.
+
+There was a further improvement in the patient next morning, and Allan
+spent the greater part of the day beside his father's bed. There was to
+be very little conversation; but Allan was told he might read aloud,
+provided the literature was of an unemotional character. So at his
+father's request Allan read Chaucer, and the quaint old English verse,
+with every line of which the patient was familiar, had a soothing and
+a cheering influence on the tired nerves and brain. There was progress
+again the day after, and the physician and local watch-dog expressed
+themselves more than satisfied. The patient might come downstairs on
+Sunday--might have an airing on the sunniest side of the garden, should
+there be any sunshine on Monday; but everything was to be done with
+precautions that too plainly indicated his precarious condition.
+
+"Do you take a more hopeful view than you did the other night?" Allan
+asked the physician, after the consultation.
+
+"Alas! no. The improvement is greater than I expected; but the
+substantial facts remain the same. There is deep-seated mischief, which
+may culminate fatally at any time. I should do wrong to conceal the
+nature of the case--or its worst possibilities--from you. It is best
+you should be prepared for the end--for Lady Emily's sake especially,
+in order that you may lighten the blow for her."
+
+"And the end is likely to come suddenly?"
+
+"Most likely--better perhaps that it should so come. Your father is
+prepared for death. He is quite conscious of his danger. Better that
+the end should be sudden--if it spare him pain?"
+
+"Yes, better so. But it is a hard thing. My father is not forty-eight
+years of age--in the prime of life, with a fine intellect. It is a hard
+thing."
+
+"Yes, it is hard, very hard. It seems hard even to me, who have seen so
+many partings. I think you ought to spare your mother as much as you
+can. Spare her the agony of apprehension; let her have her husband's
+last days of sunshine and peace. But it is best that you should know.
+You are a man, and you can suffer and be strong."
+
+"Yes, I can suffer. He seemed so much better this morning. Might he not
+go on for years, with the care which we shall take of him?"
+
+"He might--but it is scarcely probable."
+
+"We were to have had a young lady visitor here to-day," said Allan,
+with some hesitation, "the lady who is to be my wife. Her visit has
+been postponed on account of my father's illness; but I am very anxious
+that she should know more of my father and mother, and I have been
+wondering if next week we might venture to have her here. She is very
+gentle and sympathetic, and I know her society would be pleasant to my
+father."
+
+"I would not risk it, Mr. Carew, if I were you."
+
+"You think it might be bad for my father?"
+
+"I think it might be hazardous for the young lady. Were a fatal end to
+come suddenly, you would not like the girl you love to be subjected to
+the horror of the scene, to be haunted perhaps for years by the memory
+of that one tragic hour. There is no necessity for her presence here.
+You can go and see her."
+
+"Yes, and risk being absent in my father's dying hours."
+
+"Better that risk than the risk of her unhappiness, should the end
+come while she were in the house."
+
+"Yes, I suppose that is so; but I can't help hoping that the end may be
+far off."
+
+The doctor pressed his hand in silence, and nodded good-bye as he
+stepped into his carriage. It was not for him to forbid hope, even if
+he knew that it was a delusive hope.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                      WHILE LEAVES WERE FALLING.
+
+
+Fondly as he loved his betrothed wife, Allan felt that affection and
+duty alike forbade him to leave his father while the shadow of doom
+hung over the threshold, while there could be no assurance from day
+to day that the end would not come before sundown. There had been
+enough in the physician's manner to crush hopefulness even in the most
+sanguine breast; and it was in vain that Allan tried to argue within
+himself against the verdict of learning and experience. He knew in
+his inmost heart that the physician was right. The ordeal through
+which George Carew had passed had changed him with the change that too
+palpably foreshadows the last change of all. In the hollow eyes, the
+blue-veined forehead and pale lips, in the inert and semi-transparent
+hands, in the far-off look of the man whose race is run and who has
+nothing more to do with active life, Allan saw the sign manual of the
+destroyer. He had need to cherish and garner these quiet days in his
+father's company, to hang fondly on every word from those pale lips,
+to treasure each thought as a memory to be hereafter dear and sacred.
+Whatever other love there might be for him upon this earth--even the
+love of her whom he had made his second self, upon whom he depended for
+all future gladness--no claim could prevail against the duty that held
+him here, by the side of the father whose days were numbered.
+
+"I am so glad to have you with me, Allan," Mr. Carew said, in the grave
+voice which had lost none of its music, though it had lost much of
+its power. "It seems selfish on my part to keep you here, away from
+that nice girl, your sweetheart; but though you are making a sacrifice
+now----"
+
+"No, no, no," interrupted Allan, "it is no sacrifice. I had rather be
+here than anywhere in the world. Thank God that I am here, that no
+accident of distance has kept me from you."
+
+"Dear boy, you are so good and true--but it is a sacrifice all the
+same. This is the spring-time of your life, and you ought to be with
+the girl who makes your sunshine. It is hard for you two to be parted;
+and I should like her to be here; only this is a house of gloom. God
+knows what might happen to chill that young heart. It is better that
+you and I should be alone together, prepared for the worst: and in the
+days to come, in the far-off days, you will be glad to remember how
+your love lightened every burden for your dying father."
+
+"Father, my dear father!"
+
+The son uttered words of hope, declared his belief that Heaven would
+grant the dear patient renewed strength; but the voice in which he
+spoke the words of cheerfulness was broken by sobs.
+
+"My dear Allan, don't be down-hearted. I am resigned to the worst that
+can happen. I won't say I am glad that the end is near. That would be
+base ingratitude to the best of wives, to the dearest of sons, and
+to Providence which has given me so many good things. This world and
+this life have been pleasant to me, Allan; and it does seem hard to be
+called away from such peaceful surroundings, from the home where love
+is, even though through all that life there has run a dark thread. I
+think you have known that, Allan. I think that sensitive nature of
+yours has been conscious of the shadow on my days."
+
+"Yes, I have known that there was a shadow."
+
+"A stronger character would have risen superior to the sorrow that has
+clouded my life, Allan. I have no doubt that some of the greatest and
+many of the most useful men the world has known have suffered just such
+a disappointment as I suffered in my early manhood, and have risen
+superior to their sorrow. You remember how Austin Caxton counsels his
+son to live down a disappointed love--how he appeals to the lives of
+men who have conquered sorrow? 'You thought the wing was broken. Tut,
+tut, 'twas but a bruised feather.' But in my own case, Allan, the
+wing _was_ broken. I had not the mental stamina, I had not the power
+of rebound which enables a man to rise superior to the sorrow of his
+youth. I could not forget my first love. I gave up a year of my life
+to the search for the girl I loved--who had forsaken me in a foolish
+spirit of self-sacrifice because she had been told that my marriage
+with her would be social ruin. She was little more than a child in
+years--quite a child in ignorance of the world, and of the weight
+and measure of worldly things. We were both cruelly used, Allan. My
+mother was a good woman, and a woman who would do nothing which she
+could not reconcile to her conscience and her own ideas of piety. She
+acted conscientiously, after her own narrow notions, in bringing about
+the parting which blighted my youth, and she thought me a wicked son
+because for two years of my life I held myself aloof from her."
+
+"And in all that time could you find no trace of your lost love?"
+
+"None. I advertised in English and Continental newspapers, veiling my
+appeal in language which would mean little to the outside world though
+it would speak plainly to her. I wandered about the Continent--Italy,
+Switzerland--all along the Rhine, and the Danube, to every place
+that seemed to offer a chance of success. I had reason to believe
+that she had been sent abroad, and I thought that her exile would be
+fixed in some remote district, out of the beaten track. It may be
+that my research was conducted feebly. I was out of health for the
+greater part of my wanderings, and I had no one to help me. Another
+man in my position might have employed a private detective, and might
+have succeeded where I failed. I was summoned home by the news of my
+mother's dangerous illness, and I returned remorseful and unhappy.
+At the thought that she might die unforgiving and unforgiven, my
+resentment vanished. I recalled all that my mother had been to my
+childhood and boyhood, and I felt myself an ungrateful son. Thank God,
+I was home in time to cheer her sick-bed, and to help towards her
+recovery by the assurance of my unaltered affection. I found that she
+too had suffered, and I discovered the strength of maternal love under
+that outward hardness, and allied with those narrow views which had
+wrecked my happiness. In my gladness at her recovery from a long and
+dangerous illness, I began to think that the old heart-wound was cured;
+and when she suggested my marriage with Emily Darnleigh, my amiable
+playfellow of old, I cheerfully fell in with her views. The union was
+in every respect suitable, and for me in every respect advantageous.
+Your mother has been a good and dear wife to me, and never had man
+less reason to complain against Fate. But there has been the lingering
+shadow of that old memory, Allan, and you have seen and understood; so
+it is well you should know all."
+
+Allan tearfully acknowledged the trust confided in him.
+
+"When I am gone, if you care to know the story of my first love, you
+will find it fully recorded in a manuscript which was written some
+years ago. Heaven knows what inspired me to go over that old ground,
+to write of myself almost as I might have written of another man.
+It was the whim of an idle brain. I felt a strange sad pleasure in
+recalling every detail of my brief love-story--in conjuring up looks
+and tones, the very atmosphere of the commonplace surroundings through
+which my sweet girl and I moved. No touch of romance, no splendour of
+scenery, no gaiety of racecourse or public garden made the background
+of our love. A dull London street, a dull London parlour were all we
+had for a paradise, and God knows we needed no more. You will smile at
+a middle-aged man's folly in lingering fondly over the record of his
+own love-story, instead of projecting himself into the ideal world
+and weaving a romance of shadows. If I had been a woman, I might have
+found a diversion for my empty days in writing novels, in every one of
+which my sweetheart and I would have lived again, and loved and parted
+again, under various disguises. But I had not the feminine capacity
+for fiction. It pleased me to write of myself and my love in sober
+truthfulness. You will read with a mind in touch with mine, Allan;
+and though you may smile at your father's folly, there will be no
+scornfulness in your smile."
+
+"My dear, dear father, God knows there will be no smile on these lips
+of mine if I am to read the story--after our parting. God grant the day
+for that reading may be far off."
+
+"I will do nothing to hasten it, Allan. Your companionship has renewed
+my pleasure in life. You can never know how I missed you when this
+house ceased to be your home. It was different when you were at
+the University--the short terms, the short distance between here
+and Cambridge, made parting seem less than parting. But when you
+transferred yourself to a home of your own, and half a dozen counties
+divided us, I began to feel that I had lost my only son."
+
+"You had but to summon me."
+
+"I know, I know. But I could not be so selfish as to bring you away
+from your pleasant surroundings, the prettier country, the more
+genial climate, your hunting, your falconry, your golf, and your new
+neighbours. A sick man is a privileged egotist; but even now I feel I
+am wrong in letting you stay here and lose the best part of the hunting
+season--to say nothing of that other loss, which, no doubt, you feel
+more keenly, the loss of your sweetheart's society."
+
+"You need not think about it, father, for I mean to stay. Please regard
+me as a fixture. If you keep as well next week as you are to-day, I
+may take a run to Wilts, just to see how Suzette and her father are
+getting on, and to look round my stable; but I shall be away at most
+one night."
+
+"Go to-morrow, Allan. I know you are dying to see her."
+
+"Then, perhaps, to-morrow. You really are wonderfully well, are you
+not?"
+
+"So well that I feel myself an impostor when I am treated as an
+invalid."
+
+"I may go then; but it will only be to hurry back," said Allan.
+
+His heart beat faster at the thought of an hour with Suzette--an hour
+in which to look into the frank bright face, to see the truthful eyes
+looking up at him in all confidence and love, to be assured that three
+weeks' absence had made no difference, that not the faintest cloud had
+come between them in their first parting. Yes, he longed to see her,
+with a lover's heart-sickness. Deeply, tenderly as he treasured every
+hour of his father's society, he felt that he must steal just as much
+time from his home duty as would give him one hour with Suzette.
+
+He pored over time-tables, and so planned his journey as to leave
+Fendyke in the afternoon of one day, and to return in time for luncheon
+the day after. This was only to be effected by leaving Matcham at
+daybreak; but a young man who was in the habit of leaving home in the
+half-light of a September dawn to ride ten miles to a six-o'clock meet
+was not afraid of an early train.
+
+He caught a fast evening train for Salisbury, and was at Matcham
+soon after eight. He had written to General Vincent to announce his
+intention of looking in after dinner, apologizing in advance for so
+late a visit. His intention was to take a hasty meal, dress, and drive
+to Marsh House; but at Beechhurst he found a note from the General
+inviting him to dinner, postponed till nine o'clock on his account; so
+he made his toilet in the happiest mood, and arrived at Marsh House ten
+minutes before the hour.
+
+He found Suzette alone in the drawing-room, and had her all to himself
+for just those ten minutes which he had gained by extra swiftness
+at his toilet. For half those minutes he had the gentle fluttering
+creature in his arms, the dark eyes full of tears, the innocent heart
+all tenderness and sympathy.
+
+"Why would not you let me go to you, Allan?" she remonstrated. "I
+wanted to be with you and Lady Emily in your trouble. I hope you
+don't think I am afraid of sickness or sorrow, where those I love are
+concerned."
+
+"Indeed, dearest, I give you credit for all unselfishness. But I was
+advised against your visit. The hazard was too awful."
+
+"What hazard, Allan?"
+
+"The possibility of my father's sudden death."
+
+"Oh, Allan, my poor, poor boy! Is it really as bad as that? How sad for
+you! And you love him so dearly, I know."
+
+"I hardly knew how dearly till this great terror fell upon me. Nothing
+less than my love for a father whom I must lose too soon--whom I may
+lose very soon--would have kept me from you so long, Suzette. And now
+I am only here for a few hours, to see you, to hear you, to hold you
+in my arms, and to assure myself that there is such a person; to make
+quite sure that the Suzette who is in my thoughts by day and in all my
+dreams by night is not a brilliant hallucination--the creature of my
+mind and fancy."
+
+"I am very real, I assure you--full of human faults."
+
+"I hope you have a stray failing or two lurking somewhere amongst your
+perfections; but I have not discovered one yet."
+
+"Ah, Allan, Love would not be Love if he could see."
+
+"Tell me all your news, Suzie. What have you been doing with yourself?
+Your letters have told me a good deal--dear bright letters, coming
+like a burst of sunshine into my sad life--but they could not tell me
+enough. I suppose you have been often at Discombe?"
+
+"Yes, I have been there nearly every day. Mrs. Wornock has been ill and
+depressed. She will not own to being ill, and I could not persuade
+her to send for the doctor. But I don't think she could be in such low
+spirits if she were not ill."
+
+"Poor soul!"
+
+"She is so sympathetic, Allan. She has been as keenly interested in
+your poor father's illness as if he were her dearest friend. She has
+been so eager to hear about his progress, and has begged me to read the
+passages in your letters which refer to him. She is so tender-hearted,
+and enters so fully into other people's sorrows."
+
+"And you have been much with her, and have done all in your power to
+cheer her, no doubt."
+
+"I have done what I could. We have made music together; but she has not
+taken her old delight in playing, or in listening to me. She has become
+dreamy and self-absorbed. I am sure she is out of health."
+
+"And her son, for whose company she was pining all the summer? Has not
+he been able to cheer her spirits?"
+
+"I hardly know about that. Mr. Wornock is out hunting all day and every
+day. He has increased his stud since you left, and hunts with three
+packs of hounds. He comes home after dark, sometimes late for dinner.
+He and his mother spend the evening together, and no doubt that is her
+golden hour."
+
+"And has Wornock given up his violin practice?"
+
+"He plays for an hour after dinner sometimes, when he is not too tired?"
+
+"And your musical mornings? Have there been no more of those--no more
+concertante duets?"
+
+"Allan, I told you that there should be no more such duets for me."
+
+"You might have changed your mind."
+
+"Not after having promised. I considered that a promise."
+
+"Conscientious soul! And you think me a jealous brute, no doubt?"
+
+"I don't think you a brute."
+
+"But a jealous idiot. My dearest, I don't think I am altogether wrong.
+A wife--or a betrothed wife--should have no absorbing interest outside
+her husband's or her sweetheart's life; and music is an absorbing
+interest, a chain of potent strength between two minds. When I heard
+those impassioned strains on the fiddle, and your tender imitations on
+the piano, question and answer, question and answer, for ever repeating
+themselves, and breathing only love----"
+
+"Oh, Allan, what an ignoramus you are! Do you suppose musical people
+ever think of anything but the music they are playing?"
+
+"They may not think, but they must feel. They can't help being borne
+along on that strong current."
+
+"No, no; they have no time to be vapourish or sentimental. They have to
+be cool and business-like; every iota of one's brain-power is wanted
+for the notes one is playing, the transitions from key to key--so
+subtle as to take one by surprise--the changes of time, the syncopated
+passages which almost take one's breath away----Hark! there is my
+aunt. Father asked her in to support me. Uncle Mornington is in London,
+and she is alone at the Grove."
+
+"I think we could have done without her, Suzie."
+
+Mrs. Mornington's resonant voice was heard in the hall while she was
+taking off her fur cloak, and the lady appeared a minute later, in a
+serviceable black-velvet gown, with diamonds twinkling and trembling in
+her honiton cap, jovial and hearty as usual.
+
+"You poor fellow! I'm very glad to see you," she said, shaking hands
+with Allan. "I hope your father is better. Of course he is, though, or
+you wouldn't be here. It's five minutes past nine, Suzie, and as I am
+accustomed to get my dinner at half-past seven, I hope your cook means
+to be punctual. Oh, here's my brother, and dinner is announced. Thank
+goodness!"
+
+General Vincent welcomed his future son-in-law, and the little party
+went into the cosy dining-room, where Suzette looked her prettiest in
+the glow of crimson shaded lamps, which flecked her soft white gown and
+her pretty white neck with rosy lights. Conversation was so bright and
+cheerful among these four that Allan's thoughts reverted apprehensively
+now and again to the quiet home in Suffolk and the dark shadow hanging
+over it. He felt as if there were a kind of treason against family
+affection in this interlude of happiness, and yet he could not help
+being happy with Suzette. To-morrow, in the early grey of a winter
+morning, he would be on his way back to his father.
+
+After dinner Mrs. Mornington established herself in an armchair close
+to the drawing-room fire, and had so much to say to her brother about
+Matcham sociology that Allan and his sweetheart, seated by the piano
+at the other end of the room, were as much alone as if they had been
+in one of the Discombe copses. No better friend than a piano to lovers
+who want to be quiet and confidential. Suzette sat before the keyboard
+and played a few bars now and then, like a running commentary on the
+conversation.
+
+"You will say all that is kind and nice to Mrs. Wornock for me?" Allan
+said, after a good deal of other and tenderer talk.
+
+"Yes, I will tell her how kindly you spoke of her; but the best thing I
+can tell her is that your father is better. She has been so intensely
+interested about him. I have felt very sorry for her since you went
+away, Allan."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I cannot help seeing that her son's return has not brought her
+the happiness she expected. She has been thinking of him and hoping for
+his coming for years--empty, desolate years, for until she attached
+herself to you and me she had really no one she cared for. Strange, was
+it not, that she should take such a fancy to you, and then extend her
+friendly feeling to me?"
+
+"Yes, it was strange, undoubtedly. But I believe I owe her kindly
+feeling entirely to my very shadowy likeness to her son."
+
+"No doubt that was the beginning; but I am sure she likes you for your
+own sake. You are only second to her son in her affection; and I know
+she is disappointed in her son."
+
+"I hope he is not unkind to her."
+
+"Unkind! No, no, he is kindness itself. His manner to his mother is
+all that it should be; affectionate, caressing, deferential. But he is
+such a restless creature, so eager for change and movement. Clever and
+amiable as he is, there is something wanting in his character; the want
+of repose, I believe. He hardly ever rests; and there is no rest where
+he is. He excites his mother, and he doesn't make her happy. Perhaps
+it is better for her that he is so seldom at home. She is too highly
+strung to endure his unquiet spirit."
+
+"You like him though, don't you, Suzette, in spite of his faults?"
+
+"Oh, one cannot help liking him. He is so bright and clever; and he
+has all his mother's amiability; only, like her, he has just a touch
+of eccentricity--but I hardly like to call it that. A German word
+expresses it better; he is _überspannt_."
+
+"He is what our American friends call a crank," said Allan, relieved to
+find his sweetheart could speak so lightly of the man who had caused
+him his first acquaintance with jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                  "LET NO MAN LIVE AS I HAVE LIVED."
+
+
+Allan went back to Suffolk, and Suzette's life resumed its placid
+course; a life in which she had for the most part to find her own
+amusements and occupations. General Vincent was fond and proud of his
+daughter; but he was not a man to make a companion of a daughter,
+except at the social board. If Suzette were at home at twelve o'clock
+to superintend the meal which he called tiffin, and in her place in
+the drawing-room a quarter of an hour before the eight-o'clock dinner;
+if she played him to sleep after dinner, or allowed herself to be
+beaten at chess whenever he fancied an evening game, she fulfilled the
+whole duty of a daughter as understood by General Vincent. For the
+rest he had a supreme belief in her high principles and discretion.
+Her name on the tableau in the parlour at the Sacré Cœur had stood
+forth conspicuously for all the virtues--order, obedience, propriety,
+truthfulness. The nuns, who expect perfection in the young human
+vessel, had discovered no crack or flaw in Suzette.
+
+"She has not only amiability and kindness of heart," said the Reverend
+Mother, at the parting interview with the pupil's father, "she has
+plenty of common sense, and she will never give you any trouble."
+
+When the General took his daughter to India, there had been some talk
+of a companion-governess, or governess-companion, for Suzette; but
+against this infliction the girl herself protested strongly.
+
+"If I am not old enough or wise enough to take care of myself, I will
+go back to the convent," she declared. "I would rather take the veil
+than submit to be governed by a 'Mrs. General.' I had learnt everything
+the nuns could teach me before I left the Sacré Cœur. I am not going
+to be taught by an inferior teacher--some smatterer, perhaps. Nobody
+can teach like the sisters of the Sacré Cœur."
+
+General Vincent had been preached at by his female relatives on this
+subject of the governess-companion. "Suzette is too young and too
+pretty to be alone," said one. "Suzette will get into idle habits if
+there is no one to direct her mind," said another. "A girl's education
+has only begun when she leaves school," said a third, as gloomy in
+their foreshadowing of evil as if they had been the three fatal
+sisters. But the General loved his daughter, and when withdrawing her
+from the convent had promised her that her life should be happy; so he
+abandoned an idea that had never been his own.
+
+"A Mrs. General would have been a doosid expensive importation," he
+told his friends afterwards, "and I knew there would be plenty of nice
+women to look after Suzie."
+
+Suzette had proved quite capable of looking after herself, unaided by
+the nice women; indeed, her conduct had been--or should have been--a
+liberal education to more than one of those nice women, who might have
+found their matronly exuberances of conversation and behaviour in a
+manner rebuked by the girl's discretion and self-respect. Suzette
+passed unsmirched through the furnace of a season at Simla, and a
+season at Naini Tal, and came to rustic Wiltshire with all the frank
+gaiety of happy girlhood, and all the _savoir faire_ which comes of
+two years' society experience. She had been courted and wooed, and had
+blighted the hopes of more than one eligible admirer.
+
+When she came to Matcham, there was again a question of chaperon or
+companion. The odious word governess was abandoned. But it was said
+that Indian society was less conventional than English society, and
+that what might be permitted at Simla could hardly be endured at
+Wiltshire; and again Suzette threatened to go back to her convent if
+she were not to be trusted with the conduct of her own life.
+
+"If I cannot take care of myself I am only fit for a cloister," she
+said. "I would rather be a lay sister, and scrub floors, than be led
+about by some prim personage, paid to keep watch and ward over me, a
+hired guardian of my manners and my complexion."
+
+Mrs. Mornington, who was less conventional than the rest of the
+General's womankind, put in her word for her niece.
+
+"Suzette wants no chaperon while I am living within five minutes'
+walk," she said. "She can come to me in all her little domestic
+difficulties; and as for parties, she is not likely to be asked to any
+ceremonious affair to which I shall not be asked too."
+
+Mrs. Mornington had been as kind and helpful as she had promised to
+be; and in all domestic cruxes, in all details of home life, in the
+arrangement of a dinner or the purchase of household goods Suzette had
+taken counsel with her aunt. The meadows appertaining to the Grove
+and to Marsh House were conterminous, and a gate had been made in the
+fence, so that Suzette could run to her aunt at any hour, without hat
+or gloves, and without showing herself on the high-road.
+
+"If ever we quarrel, that gate will have to be nailed up," said
+Mrs. Mornington. "It makes a quarrel much more awful when there is
+a communication of that kind. The walling up of a gate is a public
+manifesto. If ever we bar each other out, Suzette, all Matcham will
+know it within twenty-four hours."
+
+Suzette was not afraid that the gate would have to be nailed up. She
+was fond of her aunt, and fully appreciated that lady's hard-headed
+qualities; but although she went to her aunt Mornington for advice
+about the gardener and the cook, the etiquette of invitations and
+the law of selection with reference to a dinner-party, it was to
+Mrs. Wornock she went for sympathy in the higher needs of life; it
+was to Mrs. Wornock she revealed the mysteries of her heart and her
+imagination.
+
+"I seem to have known you all my life," she told that lady; "and I am
+never afraid of being troublesome."
+
+"You never can be troublesome," Mrs. Wornock answered, looking at
+her with admiring affection. "I don't know what I should do without
+you, Suzette. You and Allan have given my poor worn-out life a new
+brightness."
+
+"Allan! How fond you are of Allan," Suzette said, musingly. "It
+seems so strange that you should have taken him to your heart so
+quickly--only because he is like your son."
+
+"Not only on that account, Suzette. That was the beginning. I am fond
+of Allan for his own sake. His fine character has endeared him to me."
+
+"You think he has a fine character?"
+
+"Think! I know he has. Surely you know him too, Suzie. You ought to
+have learnt his value by this time."
+
+"Yes, I know he is good, generous, honest, and true. His love for his
+father is very beautiful--and yet he found time to come all this way to
+spend an hour or two with unworthy frivolous me."
+
+"He did not think that a sacrifice, Suzie, for he adores you."
+
+"You really think so--that he cares as much as that?"
+
+"I am very sure that he loves with his whole heart and mind, as his
+father--may have done before him."
+
+"Oh, his father would have been in earnest, I have no doubt, in any
+affection; but I doubt if he was ever tremendously in love with Lady
+Emily. She is all that is sweet and dear in her frank homely way, but
+not a person to inspire a _grande passion_. Allan's father must have
+loved and lost in his early youth. There is a shade of melancholy in
+his voice and manner--nothing gloomy or dismal--but just that touch of
+seriousness which tells of deep thoughts. He is a most interesting man.
+I wish you could have seen him while he was at Beechhurst. I fear he
+will never leave Fendyke again."
+
+Mrs. Wornock sighed and sat silent, while Suzette went to the piano and
+played a short fugue by their favourite Sebastian Bach--played with
+tender touch, lengthening out every slow passage in her pensive reverie.
+
+There had been no more concertante duets. Geoffrey had entreated her
+to go on with their mutual study of De Beriot and the older composers,
+Corelli, Tartini, and the rest; but she had obstinately refused.
+
+"The music is difficult and tiring," she said.
+
+This was her first excuse.
+
+"We will play simpler music--the lightest we can find. There are plenty
+of easy duets."
+
+"Please don't think me capricious if I confess that I don't care
+about playing with the violin. It takes too much out of one. I am too
+anxious."
+
+"Why should you be anxious? I am not going to be angry or disagreeable
+at your _brioches_--should you make any."
+
+She still refused, lightly but persistently; and he saw that she had
+made up her mind.
+
+"I begin to understand," he said, with an offended air; and there was
+never any further talk of Suzette as an accompanist.
+
+Geoffrey was seldom at home in the daytime after this refusal, and
+life at the Manor dropped back into the old groove. Mrs. Wornock and
+Suzette spent some hours of every day together; and, now that the
+weather often made the garden impossible, the organ and piano afforded
+their chief occupation and amusement. Suzette was enthusiastic, and
+pleased with her own improvement under her friend's guidance. It was
+not so much tuition as sympathy which the elder woman gave to the
+younger. Suzette's musical talent, since she left her convent, had been
+withering in an atmosphere of chilling indifference. Her father liked
+to be played to sleep after dinner; but he hardly knew one air from
+another, and he called everything his daughter played Rubinstein.
+
+"Wonderful fellow that Rubinstein!" he used to say. "There seems no end
+to his compositions; and, to my notion, they've only one fault--they're
+all alike."
+
+Suzette heard of Geoffrey, though she rarely saw him. His mother talked
+of him daily; but there was a regretful tone in all her talk. Nothing
+at Discombe seemed quite satisfactory to the son and heir. His horses
+were failures. The hunting was bad--"rotten," Geoffrey called it, but
+could give no justification for this charge of rottenness. The sport
+might be good enough for the neighbours in general; but it was not good
+enough for a man who had run the whole gamut of sport in Bengal, under
+the best possible conditions. Geoffrey doubted if there was any hunting
+worth talking about, except in the shires or in Ireland. He thought of
+going to Ireland directly after Christmas.
+
+"He is bored and unhappy here, Suzette," Mrs. Wornock said one morning,
+when Suzette found her particularly low-spirited. "The life that suits
+Allan, and other young men in the neighbourhood, is not good enough
+for Geoffrey. He has been spoilt by Fortune, perhaps--or it is his sad
+inheritance. I was an unhappy woman when he was born, and a portion of
+my sorrow has descended upon my son."
+
+This was the first time she had ever spoken to Suzette of her past life
+or its sorrows.
+
+"You must not think that, dear Mrs. Wornock. Your son is tired of this
+humdrum country life, and he'll be all the better and brighter for a
+change. Let him go to Ireland and hunt. He will be so much the fonder
+of you when he comes back."
+
+Mrs. Wornock sighed, and began to walk about the room in a restless way.
+
+"Oh, Suzette, Suzette," she said, "I am very unhappy about him! I don't
+know what will become of us, my son and me. We have all the elements of
+happiness, and yet we are not happy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a month after the little dinner at Marsh House, and Suzette
+and her sweetheart had not met since that evening. There had been no
+change for the better in Mr. Carew's condition; and Allan had felt it
+impossible to leave the father over whose dwindling hours the shadow of
+the end was stealing--gently, gradually, inevitably. There were days
+when all was hushed and still as at the approach of doom--when the
+head of the household lay silent and exhausted within closed doors, and
+all Allan could do was to comfort his mother in her aching anxiety.
+This he did with tenderest thoughtfulness, cheering her, sustaining
+her, tempting her out into the gardens and meadows, beguiling her to
+temporary forgetfulness of the sorrow that was so near. There were
+happier--or seemingly happier--days when the invalid was well enough to
+sit in his library, among the books which had been his life-companions.
+In these waning hours he could only handle his books--fondle them, as
+it were--slowly turning the leaves, reading a paragraph here and there,
+or pausing to contemplate the outside of a volume, in love with a
+tasteful binding, the creamy vellum, or gold-diapered back, the painted
+edges, the devices to which he had given such careful thought in the
+uneventful years, when collecting and rebinding these books had been
+the most serious business of his life. He laid down one volume and took
+up another, capriciously--sometimes with an impatient, sometimes with
+a regretful, sigh. He could not read more than a page without fatigue.
+His eyes clouded and his head ached at any sustained exertion. His
+son kept him company through the grey winter day, in the warm glow of
+the luxurious room, sheltered by tapestry portières and tall Indian
+screens. His son fetched and carried for him, between the book-table by
+the hearth and the shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling,
+and filled an ante-room beyond, and overflowed into the corridor.
+
+"My day is done," George Carew said with a sigh. "These books have been
+my life, Allan, and now I have outlived them. The zest is gone out of
+them all; and now in these last days I know what a mistake my life has
+been. Let no man live as I have done, and think that he is wise. A life
+without variety or action is something less than life. Never envy the
+student his peaceful meditative days. Be sure that when the end is near
+he will look back, as I do, and feel that he has wasted his life--yes,
+even though he leave some monumental work which the world will treasure
+when he is in the dust--monument more enduring than brass or marble.
+The man himself, when the shadows darken round him, will know how much
+he has lost. Life means action, Allan, and variety, and the knowledge
+of this glorious world into which we are born. The student is a worm
+and no man. Let no sorrow blight your life as mine has been blighted."
+
+"Dear father, I have always known there was a cloud upon your life--but
+at least you have made others happy--as husband, father, master----"
+
+"I have not been a domestic tyrant. That is about the best I can say
+for myself. I have been tolerably indulgent to the kindest of wives.
+I have loved my only son. Small merits these in a man whose home-life
+has been cloudless. But I might have done better, Allan. I might have
+risen superior to that youthful sorrow. I might have taken my dear
+Emily closer to my heart, travelled over this varied world with her,
+shown her all that is strangest and fairest under far-off skies instead
+of letting her vegetate here. I might have gone into Parliament, put
+my shoulder to the wheel of progress--helped as other men help, with
+unselfish toil, struggling on hopefully through the great dismal
+swamp of mistake and muddle-headedness. Better, far better, any life
+of laborious endeavour, even if futile in result, than the cultured
+idlers' paradise--better far for me, since in such a life I should
+have forgotten the past, and might have been a cheerful companion in
+the present. I chose to feed my morbid fancies; to live the life of
+retrospection and regret; and now that the end has come, I begin to
+understand what a contemptible creature I have been."
+
+"Contemptible! My dear father, if every student were so to upbraid
+himself after a life of plain living and high thinking, such as you
+have led----"
+
+"Plain living and high thinking are of very little good, Allan, if they
+result in no useful work. Plain living and high thinking may be only a
+polite synonym for selfish sloth."
+
+"Father, I will not hear you depreciate yourself."
+
+"My dear son! It is something to have won your love."
+
+"And my mother. Is it not something to have made her happy?"
+
+"For that I must thank her own sweet disposition. My reproach is that I
+might have made her happier. I have wronged her by brooding over an old
+sorrow."
+
+"She has not been jealous of the love that came before you belonged to
+her. She loves and honours you."
+
+"Far beyond my merits. Providence has been very good to me, Allan."
+
+There was a silence. More books were asked for and brought, languidly
+opened, languidly closed, and laid aside. Yes, the zest had gone out
+of them. The languor of excessive weakness can find no beauty even in
+things most beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+           "CHANCE CANNOT CHANGE MY LOVE, NOR TIME IMPAIR."
+
+
+Suzette endured her lover's absence with a philosophical cheerfulness
+which somewhat surprised her aunt.
+
+"Upon my word, Suzie, I am half inclined to think that you don't care
+a straw for Allan," Mrs. Mornington exclaimed one day, when her niece
+came singing across the wintry lawn, crisp under her footsteps after
+the morning frost.
+
+Suzette looked angrier than her aunt had ever seen her look till this
+moment.
+
+"Auntie, how can you say anything so horrid? Not care for Allan!
+When he is in sad trouble, too! This morning's letter gives a most
+melancholy account of his father. I fear the end must be near. It was
+horrid of me to come running and singing over the grass; but these
+frosty mornings are so delicious. Look at that glorious blue sky!"
+
+"And when all is over, Allan will come back to you, I suppose? I must
+say you have endured the separation in the calmest way."
+
+"Why should I make myself unhappy? I know that it is Allan's duty to be
+at Fendyke. The only thing I regret is that I can't be there too, to
+help him to bear his sorrow."
+
+"And you do not mind being parted from him. You can live without him?"
+
+Suzette smiled at the sentimental question from the lips of her
+practical aunt, whose ideas seemed rarely to soar above the daily cares
+of housekeeping and the considerations of twopence as against twopence
+halfpenny.
+
+"I have had to live without him over twenty years, auntie."
+
+"Yes, but I thought that the moment a girl was engaged she found life
+impossible in the absence of her sweetheart."
+
+"I think that kind of girl must be very empty-headed."
+
+"And your little brains are well furnished--and then you have Mrs.
+Wornock and her son to fill up your days," said Mrs. Mornington, with a
+searching look.
+
+"I have Mrs. Wornock, and I like her society. I see very little of Mrs.
+Wornock's son."
+
+"Where is he, then? I thought he was at the Manor."
+
+"He is seldom at home in the daytime, and I am never there in the
+evening."
+
+"And so you never meet. You are like Box and Cox. So much the more
+satisfactory for Allan, I should say."
+
+"Really, aunt, you are in a most provoking mood this morning. I'm
+afraid the butcher's book must be heavier than you like."
+
+It was Tuesday--Mrs. Mornington's terrible day--the day on which
+the tradesmen's books came up for judgment; a day on which the
+cook trembled, and even the housemaids felt the electricity in the
+atmosphere.
+
+"I never like the butcher's book," said the lady; "but that isn't what
+set me thinking about you and Allan. I have been thinking about you for
+ever so long. I'm afraid you are not so fond of him as you ought to be."
+
+"Auntie, you have no right to say that."
+
+"Why not, pray, miss?"
+
+"Because, perhaps, if you had not urged me to accept him, I might not
+have said 'Yes' when he asked me the second time. Oh, pray don't look
+so frightened. I am very fond of him--very fond of him. I know that he
+is good and true and kind, and that he loves me better than I deserve
+to be loved, and thinks me better than I am--cleverer, prettier,
+altogether superior to my work-a-day self. And it is very sweet to
+have a lover who thinks of one in that exalted way. But I am not
+romantically in love, auntie. I don't believe that it is in my nature
+to be romantic. I see the bright and happy side of life. I see things
+to laugh at. I am not sentimental."
+
+"Well, I dare say Allan can get on without sentiment, so long as he
+knows you like him better than anybody else in the world; and now, as
+there is no reason whatever for delay, the sooner you marry him the
+better."
+
+"I am afraid he will lose his father before long, auntie; and then he
+can't marry for at least a year."
+
+"Nonsense, child. He won't be a widow. I dare say Lady Emily will be
+marrying when the year is out. Three months will be quite long enough
+for Allan to wait. You can make the wedding as quiet as you like."
+
+Suzette did not prolong the argument. The subject was too remote to
+need discussion. Mrs. Mornington went back to her tradesmen's books,
+and Suzette left her absorbed in the calculation of legs and sirloins,
+and the deeper mysteries of soup meat and gravy beef.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Christmas had come and gone, a very tranquil season at Matcham, marked
+only by the decoration of the church and the new bonnets in the
+tradespeople's pews. It was a dull, grey day at the end of the year,
+the last day but one, and Suzette was walking home in the early dusk
+after what she called a long morning with Mrs. Wornock, a long morning
+which generally lasted till late in the afternoon. But these mid-winter
+days were too short to allow of Suzette walking home alone after tea;
+so unless her own or her aunt's pony-carriage were coming for her, she
+left the Manor before dusk.
+
+To-day Mrs. Wornock had been sadder even than her wont, as if saddened
+by the last news from Fendyke, and sorrowing for Allan's loss; so
+Suzette had stayed longer than usual, and as she walked homeward the
+shadows of evening began to fall darkly, and the leafless woods looked
+black against the faint saffron of the western sky. The sun had shown
+himself, as if reluctantly, an hour before his setting.
+
+Presently in the stillness she heard horses' hoofs walking slowly on
+the moist road, and the next turn in the path showed her Geoffrey
+Wornock, in his red coat, leading his horse.
+
+It was the first time they had met since her refusal to play any
+more duets with him, and, without knowing why, she felt considerable
+embarrassment at the meeting, and was sorry when he stopped to shake
+hands with her, stopped as if he meant to enter into conversation.
+
+"Going home alone in the dark, Miss Vincent?"
+
+"Yes; the darkness comes upon one unawares in these short winter days.
+I stayed with Mrs. Wornock because she seemed out of spirits. I am glad
+you are home early to cheer her."
+
+"That is tantamount to saying you are glad I have lamed my horse. I
+should be on the other side of Andover, in one of the best runs of the
+season, if it were not for that fact. When one is thrown out, the run
+is always quite the best--or so one's friends tell one afterwards."
+
+"I am sorry for your horse. I hope he isn't much hurt?"
+
+"I don't know. Lameness in a horse is generally an impenetrable
+mystery. One only knows that he is lame. The stable will find half a
+dozen theories to account for it, and the vet will find a seventh, and
+very likely they may all be wrong. I'll walk with you to the high-road
+at least."
+
+"And give the poor horse extra work. Not for the world!"
+
+"Then I'll take him on till I am within halloo of the stables, and then
+come back to you, if you'll walk on very slowly."
+
+"Pray don't! I am not at all afraid of the dusk."
+
+"Please walk slowly," he answered, looking back at her and hurrying on
+with his horse.
+
+Suzette was vexed at his persistence; but she did not want to be rude
+to him, were it only for his mother's sake. How much better it would
+have been had he gone straight home to cheer that fond mother by his
+company, instead of wasting his time by walking to Matcham, as he would
+perhaps insist upon doing.
+
+He looked white and haggard, Suzette thought; but that might only
+be the effect of the evening light, or it might be that he was tired
+after a laborious day. She had not much time to think about him. His
+footsteps sounded on the road behind her. He was running to overtake
+her. It occurred to her that she might turn this persistence of his
+to good account. She might talk to him about his mother, and urge him
+to spend a little more of his time at home, and do a little more to
+brighten that lonely life.
+
+"I met one of the lads," he said, "and got rid of that poor brute."
+
+"I am so sorry you should think it necessary to come with me."
+
+"You mean you are sorry that I should snatch a brief and perilous
+joy--half an hour in your company--after having abstained from pleasure
+and peril so long."
+
+"If you are going to talk nonsense, I shall go back to the house and
+ask your mother to send me home in her brougham."
+
+"Then I won't talk nonsense. I don't want to offend you; and you are
+so easily offended. Something offended you in our duets. What was
+it, I wonder? Some ignorant sin of mine? some passage played _troppo
+appassionato_? some _cantabile_ phrase that sounded like a sigh from an
+over-laden heart! Did the music speak too plainly, Suzette?"
+
+"This is too bad of you!" exclaimed Suzette, pale with anger. "You take
+a mean advantage of finding me alone here. I won't walk another step
+with you!"
+
+She turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction as she spoke;
+but she was some distance from the house, at least ten minutes' walk,
+and her heart sank at the thought of how much Geoffrey Wornock could
+say to her in ten minutes. Her heart was beating violently, louder
+and faster than she had ever felt it beat. Did it matter so much what
+nonsense he might talk to her--idle breath from idle lips? Yes, it
+seemed to her to matter very much. She would be guilty of unpardonable
+treason to Allan if she let this man talk. It seemed to her as if
+these wild words of his--mere rodomontade--made an epoch in her life.
+
+He seized her by the arm with passionate vehemence, but not roughly.
+
+"Suzette! Suzette! you must--you shall hear me!" he said. "Go
+which way you will, I go with you. I did not mean to speak. I have
+tried--honestly--to avoid you. Short of leaving this place altogether,
+I have done my uttermost. But Fate meant us to meet, you see. Fate
+lamed my horse--the soundest hunter of them all. Fate sent you by
+this lonely path at the nick of time. You shall hear me! Say what you
+like to me when you have heard. Be as hard, as cruel, as constant to
+your affianced lover as you please; but you shall know that you have
+another lover--a lover who has been silent till to-night, but who
+loves you with a love which is his doom. Who says that about love and
+doom? Shakespeare or Tennyson, I suppose. Those two fellows have said
+everything."
+
+"Mr. Wornock, you are very cruel," she faltered. "You know how
+sincerely I am attached to your mother, and that I wouldn't for
+the world do anything to wound her feelings, but you are making it
+impossible for me ever to enter her house again."
+
+"Why impossible? You are trembling, Suzette. Oh, my love! my dear, dear
+girl, you tremble at my touch. My words go home to your heart. Suzette,
+that other man has not all your heart. If he had, you would not have
+been afraid to go on with our music. If your heart was his, Orpheus
+himself could not have moved you."
+
+"I was not afraid. You are talking nonsense. I left off playing because
+Allan did not like to see me absorbed in an occupation which he could
+not share. It was my duty to defer to his opinion."
+
+"Yes, he heard, he understood. He knew that my heart was going out to
+you--my longing, passionate heart. He could read my mystery, though you
+could not. Suzette, is it hopeless for me? Is he verily and indeed the
+chosen? Or do you care for him only because he came to you first--when
+you knew not what love means? You gave yourself lightly, because he
+is what people call a good fellow. He cannot love you as I love you,
+Suzette. Love is something less than all the world for him. No duty
+beside a father's sick-bed would keep me from my dearest, if she were
+mine. I would be your slave. I could live upon one kind word a month,
+if only I might be near you, to behold and adore."
+
+He had released her arm, but he was walking close by her side, still in
+the direction of the Manor House, she hurrying impetuously, trying to
+conquer her agitation, trying to make light of his foolishness, and yet
+deeply moved.
+
+"You are very unkind," she said at last, with a piteousness that was
+like the complaint of a child.
+
+"Unkind! I am a miserable wretch pleading for life, and you call
+me unkind. Suzette, have pity on me! I have not succumbed without
+a struggle. I loved you from the hour we met--from that first hour
+when my heart leapt into a new life at the sound of your voice. On
+looking back, it seems to me now that I must have so loved you from
+the beginning. I can recall no hour in which I did not love you. But I
+have fought the good fight, Suzette. Self-banished from the presence
+I adore, I have lived between earth and sky, until, though I have
+something of the sportsman's instinct, I have come almost to hate the
+music of the hounds and the call of the huntsman's horn, because in
+every mile my horse galloped he was carrying me further from you, and
+every hour I spent far afield was an hour I might have spent with you."
+
+"It is cruel of you to persecute me like this."
+
+"No, no, Suzette; you must not talk of persecution. If I am rough and
+vehement to-night, it is because I am resolute to ask the question that
+has been burning on my lips ever since I knew you. I will not be put
+off from that. But once the question asked and answered I have done,
+and, if it must be so, you have done with me. There shall be no such
+thing as persecution. I am here at your side, your devoted lover--no
+better man than Allan Carew, but I think as good a man, with as fair
+a record, of as old and honourable a race, richer in this world's
+gear; but that's not much to such a woman as Suzette. It is for you to
+choose between us; and it is not because you said yes to him before you
+had ever seen my face that you are to say no to me, if there is the
+faintest whisper in your heart that pleads for me against him."
+
+She stood silent, her eyelids drooping over eyes that were not
+tearless. His words thrilled her, as his violin had thrilled her
+sometimes in some lingering, plaintive passage of old-world music. His
+face was near hers, and his hand was on her shoulder, detaining her.
+
+The intellectuality, the refinement of the delicately chiselled
+features, the pallor of the clear complexion were intensified by the
+dim light. She could not but feel the charm of his manner.
+
+He was like Allan--yet how unlike! There was a fascination in this
+face, a music in this voice, which were wanting in Allan, frank, and
+bright, and honest, and true though he was. There was in this man just
+the element of poetry and unreasoning impulse which influences a woman
+in her first youth more than all the manly virtues that ever went to
+the making of the Christian Hero.
+
+Suzette had time to feel the power of that personal charm before she
+collected herself sufficiently to answer him with becoming firmness.
+For some moments she was silent, under the influence of a spell which
+she knew must be fatal to her peace and Allan's happiness, should she
+weakly yield. No, she would not be so poor, so fickle a creature. She
+would be staunch and true, worthy of Allan's love and of her father's
+confidence.
+
+"Why, if I were to palter with the situation," she thought--"if I were
+to play fast and loose with Allan, my father might think he had been
+mistaken in trusting me without a chaperon. He would never respect me
+or believe in me again. And Allan? What could Allan think of me were I
+capable of jilting him?"
+
+Her heart turned cold at the idea of his indignation, his grief, his
+disgust at a woman's perfidy.
+
+She conquered her agitation with an effort, and answered her daring
+lover as lightly as she could. She did not want Geoffrey to know how he
+had shaken her nerves by his vehement appeal.
+
+She knew now, standing by his side, with that eloquent face so near her
+own, that musical voice pleading to her--she knew how often his image
+had been present to her thoughts at Discombe Manor, while he himself
+was away.
+
+"It is very foolish of you to waste such big words upon another man's
+sweetheart," she said. "Pray believe that when I accepted Allan Carew
+as my future husband, I accepted him once and for ever. There was no
+question of seeing some one else a little later, and liking some one
+else a little better. There may be girls who do that sort of thing;
+but I should be sorry that anybody could think me capable of such
+inconstancy. Allan Carew and I belong to each other for the rest of our
+lives."
+
+"Is that a final answer, Miss Vincent?"
+
+"Absolutely final."
+
+"Then I can say no more, except to ask your forgiveness for having said
+too much already. If you will go on to the house, and talk to my mother
+for a few minutes, I'll go to the stables and order the brougham to
+take you home. It is too dark for you to walk home alone."
+
+There was no occasion for the brougham. A pair of lamps in the drive
+announced the arrival of Miss Vincent's pony-cart, which had been sent
+to fetch her.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                             AT EVENSONG.
+
+
+The windows were darkened at Fendyke. The passing bell had tolled
+the years of the life that was done, sounding solemnly and slowly
+across the level fields, the deep narrow river, the mill-streams and
+pine-woods, the scattered hamlets lying far apart on the great flat,
+where the sunsets linger late and long. All was over, and Allan had
+to put aside his own sorrow in order to comfort his mother, who was
+heart-broken at the loss of a husband she had idolized, with a love so
+quiet and unobtrusive, so little given to sentimental utterances, that
+it might have been mistaken for indifference.
+
+She wandered about the darkened house like some lost soul in the dim
+under-world, unable to think of anything, or to speak of anything but
+her loss. She looked to Allan for everything, asserted her authority in
+no detail.
+
+"Let all be as he wished," she said to her son. "Let us think only of
+pleasing him. You know what he would like, Allan. You were with him so
+much towards the last. He talked to you so freely. Think only of him,
+and of his wishes."
+
+She could not divest herself of the idea that her husband was looking
+on at all that happened, that this or that arrangement might be
+displeasing to him. She was sure that he would wish the sternest
+simplicity as to the funeral. His own farm-labourers were to carry
+him to his grave, and the burial was to be at dusk. He had himself
+prescribed those two conditions. He wished to be laid in his grave at
+set of sun, when the hireling's daily toil was over, and the humblest
+of his neighbours could have leisure to follow him to his last bed. And
+then he had quoted Parson Hawker's touching lines:--
+
+    "Sunset should be the time, they said,
+    To close their brother's narrow bed.
+    'Tis at that pleasant hour of day
+    The labourer treads his homeward way;
+    His work is o'er, his toil is done,
+    And therefore at the set of sun,
+    To wait the wages of the dead,
+    We lay our hireling in his bed."
+
+Those lines were written for the tillers of the earth; but George
+Carew's thoughts of himself were as humble as if he had been the
+lowest of day labourers. Indeed, in those closing hours of life,
+when the record of a man's existence is suddenly spread out before
+him like the scroll which the prophet laid before the king, there is
+much in that comprehensive survey to humiliate the proudest of God's
+servants, much which makes him who has laboured strenuously despair
+at the insufficiency of the result, the unprofitableness of his
+labour. How, then, could such a man as George Carew fail to perceive
+his unworthiness?--a man who had let life go by him, who had done
+nothing, save by a careless automatic beneficence, to help or better
+his fellow-men, to whom duty had been an empty word, and the Christian
+religion a lifeless formula.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Squire of Fendyke was laid to rest in the pale twilight of early
+March, the winter birds sounding their melancholy evensong as the
+coffin was lowered into the grave. The widow and her son stood side by
+side, with those humbler neighbours and dependents clustering round
+them. No one had been bidden to the funeral, no hour had been named,
+and the gentry of the district, whose houses lay somewhat wide apart,
+knew nothing of the arrangements till afterwards. There were no empty
+carriages to testify to the decent grief which stays at home, while
+liveried servants offer the tribute of solemn faces and black gloves.
+Side by side, Lady Emily and her son walked through the grounds of
+Fendyke to the churchyard adjoining. The wintry darkness had fallen
+gently on those humble graves when the last "Amen" had been spoken, and
+mother and son turned slowly and sadly towards the desolate home.
+
+Allan stayed in his mother's sitting-room till after midnight, talking
+of their dead. Lady Emily found a sad pleasure in talking of the
+husband she had lost, in dwelling fondly upon his virtues, his calm and
+studious life, his non-interference with her household arrangements,
+his perfect contentment with the things that satisfied her.
+
+"There never was a better husband, Allan," she said, with a tearful
+sigh, "and yet I know I was not his first love."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Not his first love. Alas! no, poor soul," mused Allan, when he had
+bidden his mother good night, and was seated alone in front of his
+father's bureau, alone in the dead middle of the night, steeped in the
+concentrated light of the large shaded lamp, while all the rest of the
+room was in semi-darkness.
+
+"Not his first love! Poor mother. It is happy for you that you know not
+how near that first love was to being the last and only love of your
+husband's life. Thank God, you did not know."
+
+Often in those quiet days while his father was gradually fading out of
+life, Allan had argued with himself as to whether it was or was not his
+duty to reveal Mrs. Wornock's identity with the woman to whom George
+Carew had dedicated a lifetime of regret, and so to give his father
+the option of summoning that sad ghost out of the past, of clasping
+once again the vanished hand, and hearing the voice that had so long
+been unheard. There would have been rapture, perhaps, to the dying
+man in one brief hour of re-union; but that hour could not give back
+youth, or youthful dreams. There would have been the irony of fate in
+a meeting on the brink of the grave; and whatever touch of feverish
+gladness there might have been for the dying in that brief hour, its
+after consequences would have been full of evil for the mourning wife.
+Better, infinitely better, that she should never know the romance of
+her husband's youth, never be able to identify the woman he loved, or
+to inflict upon her own tender heart the self-torture of comparison
+with such a woman as Mrs. Wornock.
+
+For Lady Emily, in her happy ignorance of all details, that early love
+was but a vague memory of a remote past, a memory too shadowy to be the
+cause of retrospective jealousy. She knew that her husband had loved
+and sorrowed; and she knew no more. It must needs be painful to her
+to identify his lost love in the person of a lady whom her son valued
+as a friend, and to whom her son's future wife was warmly attached.
+Allan had felt therefore that he was fully justified in leaving Mrs.
+Wornock's story unrevealed, even though by that silence he deprived the
+man who had loved her of the last tearful farewell, the final touch of
+hands that had long been parted.
+
+He was full of sadness to-night as he turned the key in the lock, and
+lifted the heavy lid of the bureau at which he had so often seen his
+father seated, arranging letters and papers with neat, leisurely hands,
+and the pensive placidity which characterized all the details of his
+life. That bureau was the one repository for all papers of a private
+nature, the one spot peculiarly associated with him whom they had laid
+in the grave at evensong. No one else had ever written on that desk, or
+possessed the keys of those quaintly inlaid drawers.
+
+And now the secrets of the dead were at the mercy of the survivors,
+so far as he had left any trace of them among those neatly docketted
+papers, those packets of letters folded and tied with red tape, or
+packed in large envelopes, sealed, and labelled.
+
+Allan touched those packets with reverent hands, glanced at their
+endorsement, and replaced them in the drawers or pigeon-holes as he had
+found them. He was looking for the manuscript of which his father had
+told him; the story of "a love which never found its earthly close."
+
+Yes, it was here, under his hand; a thin octavo, bound in limp morocco,
+a manuscript of something less than a hundred pages, in the hand he
+knew so well, the small, neat hand that, to Allan's fancy, told of the
+leisurely life, the mind free from fever and fret, the heart that
+beat in slow time, and had long outlived the quick alternations of
+passionate feeling. Allan drew his chair nearer the lamp, and began to
+read.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+               "THE DEAD MAN TOUCH'D ME FROM THE PAST."
+
+
+"I wonder how many lives there are like mine in this prosperous England
+of ours, eminently respectable, comfortable, and altogether protected
+from the worst hazards of fate, happy even, according to the standard
+measure of happiness among the squirearchy of England--and yet cold and
+colourless. I wonder how many men there are in every generation who
+drift along the slow current of a sluggish river, and who call that
+monotonous progress living. Up the river with the rising tide; down
+the river with the ebbing tide; up and down, to and fro, between level
+banks that are always the same, with never a hill and never a crag to
+break the monotony of the outlook.
+
+"We have a river within a stone's throw of my gates which always seems
+to me the outward and visible sign of my inward and spiritual life,
+a river that flows past farms and villages, and for any variety of
+curve or accident of beauty might just as well be a canal--a useful
+river bearing the laden barges down to the sea, a river on which a
+pleasure-boat is as rare as a kingfisher on its banks. And so much
+might be said of my life; a useful life within the everyday limits
+of English morality; but a life that nobody will remember or regret,
+outside my own household, when I am gone.
+
+"This is no complaint that I am writing, to be read when I am in my
+grave by the son I hope to leave behind me. Far be such a thought
+from me the writer, and from him the reader. It is only a statement,
+a history of a youthful experience which has influenced my mature
+years, chiefly because on that boyish romance I spent all the stock
+of passionate feeling with which nature had endowed me. It was not
+much, perhaps, in the beginning. I was no Byronic hero. I was only an
+impulsive and somewhat sentimental youth, ready to fall in love with
+the first interesting girl I met, but not to find my Egeria among the
+audience at a music-hall, or in a dancing garden.
+
+"Do not mistake me, Allan. I have loved your mother truly and even
+warmly, but never romantically. All that constitutes the poetry, the
+romance of love, the fond enthusiasm of the lover, vanished out of my
+life before I was three and twenty. All that came afterwards was plain
+prose.
+
+"It was in the second year of my university life, and towards the
+end of the long vacation, that I allowed myself to be persuaded to
+attend a _séance_ to be given by some so-called spiritualists in the
+neighbourhood of Russell Square. Mr. Home, the spiritualist, had
+been frightening and astonishing people by certain unexplainable
+manifestations, and he had been lucky enough to number among his
+patrons and disciples such men as Bulwer Lytton, William and Robert
+Chambers, and others of almost equal distinction. To the common herd
+it seemed that, there must be some value in manifestations which could
+interest and even convince these superior intellects; so, with the
+prestige of Home's performances, and with an article in the _Cornhill
+Magazine_ to assist them, the people near Russell Square were doing
+very good business.
+
+"Twice, and sometimes three times a week, they gave a _séance_, and
+though they did not take money at the doors, or advertise their
+entertainment in the daily papers, they had their regular subscribers
+among the faithful, and these subscribers could dispose of tickets of
+admission among the common herd. As two of the common herd, Gerald
+Standish and I got our tickets from Mrs. Ravenshaw, a literary lady
+of Gerald's acquaintance, who had written a spiritualistic novel, and
+was a profound believer in all the spiritualistic phenomena. Her vivid
+description of the dark _séance_ and its wonders had aroused Gerald's
+curiosity, and he insisted that I, who was known among the men of my
+year as a favourite pupil of the then famous mathematical coach,
+should go with him and bring the severe laws of pure science to bear
+upon the spirit world.
+
+"I was incurious and indifferent, but Gerald Standish was a genius, and
+my particular chum. I could not, therefore, be so churlish as to refuse
+so slight a concession. We dined together at the Horseshoe Restaurant,
+then in the bloom of novelty; and, after a very temperate dinner, we
+walked through the autumn dusk to the quiet street on the eastward side
+of Russell Square, where the priest and priestess of the spirit-world
+had set up their temple.
+
+"The approach of the mysteries was sadly commonplace, a shabby hall
+door, an airless passage that smelt of dinner, and for the temple
+itself a front parlour sparsely furnished with the most Philistine of
+furniture. When we entered, the room was empty of humanity. An oil-lamp
+on a cheffonier by the fireplace dimly lighted the all-pervading
+shabbiness. The scanty moreen curtains--lodging-house curtains of
+the poorest type--were drawn. The furniture consisted of a dozen or
+so of heavily made mahogany chairs with horse-hair cushions, a large
+round table on a massive pedestal, supported on three clumsily carved
+claws, and a bookcase against the wall facing the windows, or I should
+say rather a piece of furniture which might be supposed to contain
+books, as the contents were hidden by a brass lattice-work lined with
+faded green silk. The gloom of the scene was inexpressible, and seemed
+accentuated by a dismal street cry which rose and fell ever and anon
+from the distance of Hunter or Coram Street.
+
+"'We are the first,' Gerald whispered, a fact of which I did not
+require to be informed, and for which he ought to have apologized,
+seeing that he had deprived me of my after-dinner coffee, and dragged
+me off yawning, full of alarm lest we should be late.
+
+"Gradually, and in dismal silence, diversified only by occasional
+whisperings, about a dozen people assembled in the dimness of
+the dreary room. Among them came Mrs. Ravenshaw and her jovial,
+business-like husband, who seated themselves next Gerald and me, and
+confided their experiences of past _séances_. The lady was full of
+faith and enthusiasm. The gentleman was beginning to have doubts.
+He had heard things from unbelievers which had somewhat unsettled
+him. He had invested a good many half-guineas in this dismal form of
+entertainment, and had wasted a good deal of time in bringing his
+gifted wife all the way from Shooter's Hill, and, so far, they had
+got no forwarder than on the first _séance_. They had seen strange
+things. They had felt the ghastly touch of hands that seemed like
+dead hands, and which ordinary people would run a mile to avoid. That
+heavy mahogany table had shuddered and thrilled under the touch of
+meeting hands; had lifted itself like a rearing horse; had throbbed
+out messages purporting to come from the dead. Strange sounds had been
+in the air; angelic singing, as of souls in Elysium; and some among
+the audience had gone away after each _séance_ touched and satisfied,
+believing themselves upon the threshold of other worlds, feeling their
+commonplace lives shone upon by supernal light, content henceforward to
+dwell upon this dull cold earth, since they were now assured of a link
+between earth and heaven.
+
+"Mrs. Ravenshaw, as became an imaginative writer, was of this
+idealistic temperament, receptive, confiding; but her husband was a
+man of business, and wanted to see value for his money. He explained
+his views to me in a confidential voice while we waited. 'Yes,
+they had undoubtedly seen and heard strange things. They had seen
+bodies--living human bodies--floating in the air--yes, floating in the
+frowsy atmosphere of this shabby parlour, atmosphere which it were base
+flattery to call "air." They had enjoyed this abnormal experience; but,
+after all, how is the cause of humanity, or the march of enlightenment
+to be advantaged by the flotation of an exceptional subject here and
+there? If everybody could float, well and good. The gain would be
+immense, except for boot-makers and chiropodists, who must suffer for
+the general weal. But for mediumistic persons, at the rate of one per
+million of the population, to be carried by viewless powers on the
+empty air was of the smallest practical use. An improvement in the
+construction of balloons would be infinitely more valuable.'
+
+"We waited nearly an hour in all--we had arrived half an hour before
+the stated opening of the _séance_, and we waited five and twenty
+minutes more, and were yawning and fidgeting hopelessly before the door
+opened, and a dismal-looking man with a pallid face and long hair, came
+into the room, followed by a slovenly woman in black, with bare arms,
+and a towzled, highly artistic flaxen head. He bowed solemnly to the
+assembled company, looked from the company to the woman, and murmured
+in a sepulchral voice, 'My wife,' by way of general introduction.
+
+"The flaxen-headed lady seated herself at the large round table, and
+the dark-haired vampire-like man crept about the room inviting his
+audience to take their places at the same mystic table. We formed a
+circle, hand touching hand, the long-haired professor on one side of
+the table, the flaxen wife on the other. Gerald and I were separated by
+the width of the table, and the enthusiastic novelist and her practical
+husband were also as far apart as circumstances would permit.
+
+"My next neighbour on the right was a tall, burly man with a strong
+North of Ireland accent, a captain in the mercantile marine, Mrs.
+Ravenshaw informed me. The people who met in this dreary room had come
+by some knowledge of one another's social status and opinions, although
+conversation was sternly discouraged as offensive to the impalpable
+company we were there to cultivate. A gloomy silence, and a vaguely
+uncomfortable expectancy of something ghastly were the prevailing
+characteristics of the assembly.
+
+"Mrs. Ravenshaw had informed me that the seaman on my right was an
+unbeliever, and that he courted the spirits only with the malicious
+desire of doing them a bad turn. There had been the premonitory
+symptoms of a row on more than one occasion, and he had been the source
+and centre of the adverse feeling which had shown itself at those times.
+
+"My left-hand neighbour was an elderly woman in black, who looked like
+a spinster, and who, instead of the bonnet of everyday life, wore a
+rusty Spanish mantilla, and a black velvet band across her high narrow
+forehead, confining braids of chestnut hair whose artificial origin was
+patent to every eye. As the _séance_ progressed she frequently shed
+tears. Mrs. Ravenshaw, who was in her confidence, whispered to me that
+this lady came there to hold mystic converse with an officer in the
+East-India Company's Service, to whom she had been betrothed thirty
+years before, and who had died in Bengal, after marrying the daughter
+of a native money-lender and an English governess. It comforted his
+devoted sweetheart to hear from his own lips, as it were, that he had
+led a wretched existence with his half-caste wife, and had never ceased
+to repent his inconstancy to his dearest Amanda. Amanda was the name
+of the lady in the mantilla, Amanda Jones. It amuses me to recall these
+details, to dwell upon the opening of a scene which I entered upon so
+casually, and which was to exercise so lasting an influence upon my
+life.
+
+"The _séance_ proceeded after the vulgar routine of such mysteries
+in England and in America. We sat in the frowzy darkness, and heard
+each other's breathing as we listened to the mysterious rappings, now
+here, now there, now high, now low, as of some sportive dressmaker
+rapping her thimbled finger on table, or shutter, or ceiling, or
+wall. We heard strange messages thumped out, or throbbed out by the
+excitable mahogany, which became more and more vehement, as if the
+beating of our hearts, the swift current of blood in all our arteries
+were being gradually absorbed by that vitalised wood. The German
+woman translated the rappings into strange scraps of speech, which
+for some of the audience were full of meaning--private communications
+from friends long dead, allusions to the past, which were sometimes
+received in blank wonder, sometimes welcomed as proof irresistible of
+thought-transference between the dead and the living. The mighty dead,
+with names familiar to us all, condescended to hold communion with us.
+Spinosa, Bacon, Shelley, Sir John Franklin, Mesmer--a strange mixture
+of personalities--but, alas! the feebleness of their communications
+gave a crushing blow to the theory of a progressive existence beyond
+the grave.
+
+"'I should like to know how it's done,' said the sea-captain, suddenly,
+in an aggressive voice, which irreverent interruption the professor and
+some of the audience rebuked by an indignant hush.
+
+"The whole business wearied me. I was moved to melancholy rather than
+to laughter as I realized the depth of human credulity which was
+indicated by the hushed expectancy of the dozen or so of people sitting
+round a table in the dark in a shabby Bloomsbury lodging-house, and
+expecting communications from the world after death--the inexplicable
+shadow-land of which to think is to enter into the regions of all that
+is most serious and solemn in human thought--through the interposition
+of a shabby charlatan who took money for the exhibition of his power.
+
+"I sat in the darkness, bored and disgusted, utterly incurious,
+desiring nothing but the close of the manifestations and escape into
+the open air, when suddenly, in a faint light, which came I knew not
+whence, I saw a face on the opposite side of the circle of faces, a
+face which assuredly had not been among the audience before the lamp
+was darkened at the beginning of the _séance_. Yet so far as my sense
+of hearing, which was particularly acute, could inform me, no door had
+opened, no footstep had crossed the floor since we had seated ourselves
+at the table, and had formed the circle, hand touching hand.
+
+"This hitherto unseen face had a wan and mournful beauty which at once
+changed my feelings from apathy to interest. The eyes were of a lovely
+blue, and were remarkable for that translucent brilliancy which is
+rarely seen after childhood; the features were delicate to attenuation,
+and, in the faint light, the cheeks looked hollow and colourless, and
+even the lips were of a sickly pallor. The loveliness of those large
+ethereal eyes counterbalanced all want of life and colour in the rest
+of the face, which, had those eyes been hidden under lowered lids,
+might have seemed the face of the dead. I looked at it, awe-stricken.
+Its presence had in one instant transformed the scene of vulgar
+imposture to a temple and a shrine. I watched and waited, spell-bound.
+
+"There were subdued whisperings round the table, and a general
+excitement and expectancy which indicated the beginning of a more
+enthralling performance than the vagabond rappings on table and
+wainscot, or even the furtive and flying touch of smooth cold hands.
+
+"For some minutes, for an interval that seemed much longer than it
+really was, nothing happened.
+
+"The face looked at us--or, rather, looked beyond us; the pale lips
+were parted as in prayer or invocation; the long yellow hair streaming
+over the shoulders gleamed faintly in the dim, uncertain light, which
+came and went from some mysterious source. The door opening on the
+entrance hall was behind my side of the table, and I have little doubt
+that the curiously soft and searching light, which fluttered every
+now and then across the circle and lingered on the face opposite, was
+manipulated by some one outside the door.
+
+"Presently there came a shower of raps--here, there, everywhere, on
+ceiling, wainscot, doors, above our heads, under our feet--while a
+strain of organ music, so softly played as to seem remote, crept into
+the room, and increased the confusion of our senses, distracted past
+endurance by those meaningless rappings.
+
+"Suddenly a young woman at the end of the table gave a hysterical cry.
+
+"'She is rising, she is rising!' she said. 'Oh, to think of it, to
+think of it! To think how He rose--He whom they had slain--and
+vanished from the loving eyes of His disciples! She is like the angels
+who gather round His throne. Who can doubt now?'
+
+"'It's humbug, and we all know it's humbug,' grumbled the sea-dog on
+my right. 'But it's clever humbug; and it isn't easy to catch them
+napping.'
+
+"'Hush!' said the professor's wife indignantly. 'Watch her, and be
+silent.'
+
+"We watched. I had not once taken my eyes from that pale, spiritual
+face, with the eyes that had a look of seeing things in an immeasurable
+distance--the things that are not of this earth. Suddenly the dreamy
+tranquillity of the countenance changed to violent emotion, an ecstatic
+smile parted the pale lips, and, for the first time since I had been
+conscious of her presence, those exquisite lips spoke.
+
+"'It is coming, it is coming!' she cried. 'Take me, take me, take me!'
+And then from speech to song seemed a natural transition, as she sang
+in a silver-sweet soprano--
+
+    "'Angels ever bright and fair,
+    Take, oh take me to your care.'
+
+"As that lovely melody floated through the room, the slender, girlish
+form was wafted slowly upward with steady, gradual motion, until it
+hovered halfway between the ceiling and the floor, the long white robe
+flowing far below the feet, the golden hair falling below the waist.
+Nothing more like the conventional idea of an angelic presence could
+have offered itself to the excited imagination. The figure remained
+suspended, the arms lifted, and the semi-transparent hands scattering
+flowers, while we gazed, enthralled by the beauty and gracefulness of
+that strange vision, and for the moment the hardest of us, even the
+sea-dog at my side, was a believer.
+
+"Nothing so beautiful could be false, dishonest, ignoble. No; whatever
+the rest of the _séance_ might be, this at least was no vulgar
+cheat. We were in the presence of a mysterious being, exceptionally
+gifted--human, perhaps; but not as the common herd are human.
+
+"I was weak enough to think thus. I had abandoned myself wholly to the
+glamour of the scene, when the sea-dog started to his feet, as the
+girl gave a shrill cry of fear. She hung for a moment or two over the
+table, head downward, and fell in a heap between two of the seated
+spectators, her head striking against the edge of the table, her long
+hair streaming wide, and faint moanings as of acute pain issuing from
+her pallid lips.
+
+"In an instant all was noise and confusion. The sea-captain struck
+a match, Mr. Ravenshaw produced an end of wax candle, and everybody
+crowded round the girl, talking and exclaiming unrestrainedly.
+
+"'There, now; didn't I tell you so? All a cheat from beginning to end.'
+
+"'He ought to be prosecuted.'
+
+"'Nobody but fools would have ever believed in such stuff.'
+
+"'Look here!' cried the sea-captain, 'she was held up by a straight
+iron rod which passes through the floor, and a cross-bar, like a
+pantomime fairy. She was strapped to the cross-bar, and the strap broke
+and let her go. She's the artfullest hussy I ever had anything to do
+with; for I'll be hanged if she hadn't almost taken me in with that
+face and voice of hers. 'Waft me, angels,' and looking just like an
+angel, and all the time this swindler was strapping her on to the iron
+bar.'
+
+"The swindler defended himself angrily, in a jumble of German and
+English, getting more German as he grew more desperate. They were
+all clamouring round him. The flaxen-headed Frau had slipped away in
+the beginning of the skirmish. The golden-haired girl had fainted--a
+genuine faint, apparently, whatever else might be false--and her head
+was lying on Mrs. Ravenshaw's shoulder; that lady's womanly compassion
+for helpless girlhood being stronger even than her indignation at
+having been hoaxed.
+
+"'Give us back our money!' cried three or four voices out of the
+dimness. 'Give us back our money for the whole series of _séances_!'
+
+"'Half-guinea tickets! Dear enough if the thing had been genuine!'
+
+"'An impudent swindle!'
+
+"'Will somebody run for the police?' said the sea-captain. 'I'll stay
+and take care they don't give us the slip. Who'll go?'
+
+"There were half a dozen volunteers, who began to grope their way to
+the door.
+
+"'One's enough,' said the sea-captain. 'Take care that fellow doesn't
+make a bolt of it.'
+
+"The warning came too late. As he spoke, spirit-lips blew out the
+candle which Mr. Ravenshaw was patiently holding above the group of
+fainting girl and kindly woman, like one of the living candlesticks in
+the 'Legend of Montrose,' and the room was dark. There was a sound of
+scuffling, a rush, the door opened and shut again, and a key turned in
+the lock with decisive emphasis.
+
+"'Done!' cried the sea-captain, making his way to the curtained window.
+
+"It was curtained and shuttered, and the opening of the shutters
+occupied some minutes, even for the seaman's practised hands. There
+were bolts--old-fashioned bolts--with mechanism designed to defy
+burglary, in the days when wealth and fashion inhabited Bloomsbury. Wax
+matches sputtered and emitted faint gleams and flashes of light here
+and there in the room. Two or three people had found their way to the
+locked door, and were shaking and kicking it savagely, without effect.
+
+"At last the bolts gave way, the deft hands having found the trick
+of them. The seaman flung open the shutters, and the light of the
+street-lamp streamed into the room.
+
+"The girl was still unconscious, lying across two chairs, her head on
+the novelist's shoulder.
+
+"'Shamming, no doubt,' said the seaman.
+
+"'No, no; there is no acting here,' said the lady. 'Her face and hands
+are deadly cold. Ah, she is beginning to recover. How she shudders,
+poor child!'
+
+"A long-drawn, shivering sob broke from the white lips, which I could
+see faintly in uncertain light from the street-lamp. The seaman was
+talking to some one outside, asking him to send the first policeman he
+met, or to go to the nearest police-office and send some one from there.
+
+"'What's the matter?' asked the voice outside. 'Anybody hurt?'
+
+"'No; but I want to give some one in charge.'
+
+"'All right,' said the voice; and then we heard footsteps hurrying off.
+
+"'Whom are you going to give in charge?' asked Mr. Ravenshaw, in his
+calm, practical way. 'Not this shivering girl, surely. The other birds
+are flown.'
+
+"'She may shiver,' retorted the seaman angrily. 'I shall be glad to see
+her shiver before the beak, to-morrow. He'll talk to her. Shivering
+won't get over _him_. He's used to it. Of course she's fainted. A woman
+can always faint when she finds herself in a difficulty. We'll have her
+up for obtaining money upon false pretences, all the same.'
+
+"The united efforts of three or four of the party had burst open the
+door of the room, and everybody except the little group about the
+girl--myself among them--made for the street door, which was not locked.
+
+"A couple of policemen arrived a few minutes afterwards, and thereupon
+began a severe inspection of the house from cellar to garret. They
+found an old woman in a back kitchen, who explained that the dining
+and drawing-room floors, and the front kitchen were let to the
+table-turning gentleman and his wife, and the young lady who lived with
+them. They had occupied the rooms nearly three months, had paid some
+rent, but were considerably in arrear. The landlord, who occupied the
+second floor, had gone into the country to see a sick daughter. Two
+young men lodged in the attics--printer's readers--but they were seldom
+in before eleven.
+
+"In a word, the old woman, who was general drudge and caretaker, was
+alone in the basement with a plethoric spaniel, too old and obese to
+bark, and a tabby cat. All the rest of the house was empty of human
+life.
+
+"The policemen and the late believers in Herr Kaltardern's occult
+powers explored every corner of the rooms which the Germans and their
+accomplice had inhabited. The personal belongings of the three were
+of the slightest, the Kaltarderns' sole possession being a large
+carpet bag of ancient and obsolete fashion, and a brush and comb.
+The room occupied by the girl was clean and tidy, and contained a
+respectable-looking wooden trunk.
+
+"The machinery of the imposture stood confessed in this investigation.
+The bookcase was a dummy piece of furniture which concealed a door
+of communication between the front and back rooms. Door of room, and
+door of bookcase, the front of which opened in one piece, were both so
+artfully padded with baize as to open and shut noiselessly; and it was
+by this means that the tricksters had been able to bring their innocent
+accomplice into the room unobserved, or to go in and out themselves
+while the sceptical among their audience might be watching the only
+obvious entrance to the room. In the kitchen below the iron rod and
+the hole through the ceiling plainly indicated the means by which the
+girl had been lifted off her feet. The transverse bar was attached to
+the rod in the room above, by the noiseless hands of the professor.
+
+"All this I heard afterwards from Gerald, who took an active part in
+the investigation. For myself, while the inquisitive explorers were
+tramping in and out of the rooms above and below, I remained beside the
+two good people who were caring for the helpless sharer in the foolish
+show--accomplice or victim, as the case might be.
+
+"I had found and relighted the lamp, and by its light Mrs. Ravenshaw
+and I examined the girl's forehead, which had been severely cut in her
+fall. While we were gently drying the blood which stained her eyelids
+and cheeks, she opened her eyes and looked at us with a bewildered
+expression.
+
+"'Oh, how my head aches!' she moaned. 'What was it hurt me like that?'
+
+"'You were hurt in your fall,' I answered. 'Your head struck the edge
+of the table.'
+
+"'But how could I fall? How could they let me fall?'
+
+"'The strap round your waist broke, and you fell from the iron bar.'
+
+"She looked at me in amazement--simulated, as I thought--and it
+distressed me to think that fair young face should be capable of such a
+lying look.
+
+"'What strap? The spirits were holding me up--wafting me towards the
+sky.'
+
+"'Very likely,' I answered, picking up the broken strap and showing it
+to her; 'but the spirits couldn't manage it without a little mechanical
+aid. And the mechanical aid was not as sound as it ought to have been.'
+
+"The girl took the strap in her hands, and looked at it and felt it
+with an expression of countenance so full of hopeless bewilderment that
+I began to doubt my previous conviction, to doubt even the evidence
+of my senses. Could any youthful face be so trained to depict unreal
+emotion? Could so childlike a creature be such a consummate actress?
+
+"'Was this round my waist?' she asked, looking from me to the
+kind-hearted woman whose arms were still supporting her slender,
+undeveloped figure.
+
+"'Yes, this was round your waist, and by this you were strapped to this
+iron bar here. You see, the rod passes through the floor. The cross-bar
+must have been fastened to it while you were singing. My poor child,
+pray do not try to sustain a falsehood. You are so young that you are
+hardly responsible for what you have done. You were in these people's
+power, and they could make you do what they liked. Pray be candid with
+us. We want to befriend you if we can, do we not, Mrs. Ravenshaw?'
+
+"'Yes, indeed we do, poor thing!' answered the lady heartily. 'Only be
+truthful with us.'
+
+"'Indeed, I am telling the truth,' the girl protested tearfully. 'I
+did not know of that strap, or of the iron rod. They told me I was
+gifted--that I was in communion with my dear dead father, when I felt
+my soul uplifted--as I have felt it often and often, sitting singing to
+myself, alone in my room. I have felt as if my spirit were soaring away
+and away, upward to that world beyond the skies where my father and my
+mother are. I have felt as if, while my body remained below, my spirit
+were floating upward and upward, away from earth and sorrow. I told the
+Frau how I used to feel, because I believed in her. She brought me into
+communion with my father. He used to rap out messages of love; and she
+taught me how to understand the spirit language. That was how I came to
+know her. That was how I was willing to go with them and join in their
+_séances_.'
+
+"'I begin to understand,' said I. 'They told you that you were gifted,
+and that you had a power of floating upward from the floor to the
+ceiling?'
+
+"'Yes. It came upon me unawares. They asked me to sing, and to let my
+spirit float towards heaven as I sang. I always used to feel like
+that of an evening in our church in the country. I used to feel my
+soul lifted upward when I sang the _Magnificat_. And one night at a
+_séance_, soon after we came to London, I was singing, and I felt
+myself floating upward. It seemed as if some powerful hands were
+holding me up; and I felt round me in the half-darkness, and there was
+no one near. I was moving alone, without any visible help; and I felt
+that it was the passionate longing of my spirit to approach the spirit
+of my dead father which was lifting me up. And, oh, was it only that
+horrid strap and that iron rod?' she exclaimed, bursting into tears.
+'How cruel--how cruel to cheat me like that!'
+
+"She had evidently no thought of the public who were cheated, or of
+her own position as a detected impostor, or the tool and accomplice of
+impostors. Her tears were for the dream so rudely broken.
+
+"The tramping in and out of rooms was over by this time. The majority
+of the audience were leaving the house, the sea-dog loud in his
+disgust and indignation till the last moment.
+
+"'I should have liked to give that young hussey in charge,' he said in
+a loud voice as he passed the half-open door, evidently arguing with
+some milder-tempered victim; 'but, as you say, she's little more than a
+child, and no magistrate would punish her.'
+
+"I breathed more freely when I heard the street door bang behind this
+gentleman and the policemen.
+
+"'They're all gone except ourselves,' said Gerald. 'The gifted German
+and his wife have shown us a clean pair of heels, and there's only an
+old charwoman in the basement. She tells me your young friend there
+came from the country--somewhere in Sussex--and always behaved herself
+very nicely. The old woman seems fond of her.'
+
+"'Yes, she was always kind to me,' said the girl.
+
+"'Was she? Well, I hope she'll be kind to you now you're left high and
+dry,' said Gerald. 'These people won't come back any more, I take it.
+They travel in light marching order--a grubby old carpet bag, and a
+brush and comb which would account for the lady's tangled head. They
+won't come back to fetch _those_, at the risk of being had up for
+obtaining money upon false pretences. And what's to become of you, I
+wonder?'--to the girl. 'Have you any money?'
+
+"'No, sir.'
+
+"'Any friends in London?'
+
+"'No.'
+
+"'Any friends in the country--in the place you left?'
+
+"'Not now. No one would be kind to me now. There was a kind lady who
+wanted to apprentice me to her dressmaker when my father died, and I
+was left quite alone; but I hated the idea of dressmaking; and one
+night there was a spiritualistic _séance_ at the school-house, and I
+went, because I had heard of messages from the dead, and I thought if
+it were possible for the dead to speak to the living, my father would
+not leave me without one word of consolation. We loved each other so
+dearly; we were all the world to each other; and people said the dead
+had spoken--had sent messages of love and comfort. So I went to the
+dark _séance_, and I asked them to call my father's spirit; and there
+was a message rapped out, and I believed that it was from him; and
+next day I met Madame Kaltardern in the street, and I asked her if
+the messages were really true; and she said they were true, and she
+spoke very kindly to me, and asked me if I would like to be a medium,
+and said she was sure I was gifted--I could be a clairvoyant if I
+liked--she could see from the shape of my eyes that I had the power,
+and it would be a great pity for me not to use it. She said it was a
+glorious life to be in constant communion with great spirits.'
+
+"'And you thought you would like it better than dressmaking?' said Mrs.
+Ravenshaw, sympathetically.
+
+"'It was of my father I thought. He had been dead such a short time.
+Sometimes I could hardly believe that he was dead. When I sat alone in
+the firelight, I used to fancy he was in the room with me; I used to
+speak to him, and beg him to answer me.'
+
+"'And were there any raps then?' asked the practical Ravenshaw.
+
+"'No, never when I was alone. The Kaltarderns came back after
+Christmas, and there was another _séance_, for the benefit of the
+Infirmary, and I went again; and Madame told me my father was speaking
+to me. He rapped out a strange message about the organ. I was to bid
+good-bye to the organ of which I was so fond; for I had a gift that was
+greater than music; and I was to go with those who could cultivate that
+gift. So the next day, when Madame Kaltardern asked me to go away with
+them, and promised to develop my mediumistic power, I consented to go.
+I was to be like their adopted daughter. They were to clothe me and
+feed me, but they were to give me no money. A gift like mine could not
+be paid for with money. If I tried to make money by my power, I should
+lose it. I did not want money from them. I wanted to be brought into
+communion with the spirit world, with my father whom I loved so dearly,
+and with my mother, who died when I was eight years old, and with my
+little sister Lucy, who died soon after mother--the little sister I
+used to nurse. My only world was the world of the dead. And, oh, was it
+all trickery--all? Those messages from father and mother--those baby
+kisses, so soft, so quick, so light; the hand upon my forehead--the
+hand of the dead--touching me and blessing me! Was it all false, all
+trickery?'
+
+"She rocked herself to and fro sobbing, unconsolable at the thought of
+her vanished dream-world.
+
+"'I'm afraid so, my dear,' said Ravenshaw, kindly. 'I'm afraid it was
+all humbug. You have been duped yourself, while you have helped to
+dupe others. It was uncommonly clever of them to get an unconscious
+accomplice. And now what is to be done with this poor thing? That is
+the question,' he concluded, appealing to his wife and me.
+
+"'Yes, that's the question with a vengeance,' said Gerald. 'We can't
+leave her in this house in the care of a deaf old woman, to bear the
+brunt of the landlord's anger when he comes home and finds the birds
+flown and his arrears of rent the baddest of bad debts. Poor child! we
+must get her away somehow. Have you no friends in the country who would
+give you a home?' he asked the girl.
+
+"'No,' she answered, fighting with her sobs. 'People were very kind to
+me just at first after my father's death; and then I think they got
+tired of me. They said I was helpless; I ought to have been able to put
+my hand to something useful. The only thing I cared for was music. I
+used to sing in the choir; but it was only a village church, and the
+choir were only paid a pound a quarter. I couldn't live upon that; and
+I couldn't play the organ well enough to take my father's place. And
+then Miss Grimshawe, a rich old lady, offered to apprentice me to a
+dressmaker; but I hated the idea of that. Dressmakers' girls are so
+common; and my father was a gentleman, though he was poor. When I told
+Miss Grimshawe I was going away with the Kaltarderns, she was very
+angry. She said I should end badly. Everybody was angry. I can never go
+back to them; they would all turn from me.'
+
+"Mr. Ravenshaw looked suspicious; Mrs. Ravenshaw looked serious;
+and even I asked myself whether the girl's story, so plausible, so
+convincing to my awakened interest, might not, after all, be a tissue
+of romance, which sounded natural, because it had been recited so often.
+
+"Gerald was the most business-like among us.
+
+"'What is your name?' he asked.
+
+"'Esperanza Campbell.'
+
+"'Esperanza? Why, that's a Spanish name!'
+
+"'My mother was a Spaniard.'
+
+"'So! And what is the name of the village where your father played the
+organ?'
+
+"'Besbery, near Petworth.'
+
+"'Besbery!' repeated Gerald, pencilling memoranda on his linen cuff.
+'Do you remember the name of the vicar, or rector?'
+
+"'There was only a curate-in-charge--Mr. Harrison.'
+
+"'Very good,' said Gerald.' Now, what we have to do is to get this poor
+young lady into a decent lodging, where the landlady will take care
+of her till we can help her to find some employment, or respectable
+situation, not mediumistic. I suppose it would hardly be convenient
+to you to take her home with you, and keep her for a week or so, Mrs.
+Ravenshaw?' Gerald inquired, as an afterthought.
+
+"Mrs. Ravenshaw hastened to explain that, with children,
+nursery-governess, and spinster aunt, every bed in her house at
+Shooter's Hill was occupied.
+
+"'We have not known what it is to have a spare bedroom for the last
+three years,' she said.
+
+"'Babies have accumulated rather rapidly,' said Ravenshaw. Poor
+creature, how my careless, independent bachelorhood pitied him! 'And
+every second baby means another servant. If one could only bring them
+up in a frame, like geranium cuttings!'
+
+"'I think I know of a lodging-house where Miss Campbell could find a
+temporary home, not far from here,' I said.
+
+"'Think you know?' cried Gerald, impatiently. 'You can't think about
+knowing; you know or don't know. Where is it?'
+
+"'In Great Ormond Street.'
+
+"'Capital--close by. I'll go and get a cab. Miss Campbell, just put
+your traps together, and--and do up your hair, and get on a gown,'
+looking at her flowing robe and dishevelled hair with evident distaste,
+'while I'm gone.'
+
+"He was out of the room in a moment.
+
+"'Are you sure the house is perfectly respectable, Mr. Beresford?'
+inquired Mrs. Ravenshaw, who, as a fiction-weaver, no doubt let her
+imagination run upon the horrors of the great city and the secret
+iniquities of lodging-house keepers, from Hogarth's time downwards.
+
+"I told her that I could trust my own sister to the house in Great
+Ormond Street, which was kept by my old nurse and my father's old
+butler, who had retired from service about five years before, and had
+invested their savings in the furnishing of a spacious old-fashioned
+house in a district where rents were then low, for the accommodation
+of all that is most respectable in the way of families and single
+gentlemen.
+
+"'I can vouch for my old nurse Martha as one of the best and kindest of
+women, as well as one of the shrewdest,' I said.
+
+"The girl heard this discussion unmoved and uninterested by the trouble
+we were taking on her behalf. Her sobs had subsided, but she was crying
+silently, weeping over the cruel end of a dream which had been more to
+her than all the waking world. She told me afterwards how much and how
+real that dream had been to her.
+
+"Mrs. Ravenshaw went to her room with her, and helped her to exchange
+the long white alb-like garment for a tidy black gown, on which the
+crape trimming had grown rusty with much wear. I can see her now as she
+came back into the lamplight in that plain black gown, and with her
+yellow hair rolled into a massive coil at the back of her head, the
+graceful figure, so girlish, so willowy in its tall slenderness, the
+fair pale face, and dark-blue eyes heavy with tears.
+
+"She had a poor little black-straw hat in her hand, which she put on
+presently, before we went downstairs to the cab. Gerald and I carried
+her box. There was no one to object to its removal. The old woman in
+the basement made no sign. One of the printers let himself in with a
+latch-key while we were in the hall, looked at us curiously, and went
+upstairs without a word.
+
+"Mrs. Ravenshaw kissed Esperanza, and wished her a friendly good night,
+promising to do what she could to help her in the future; and then she
+and her husband hurried away to catch the last train to Shooter's Hill."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                "WHAT WAS A SPECK EXPANDS INTO A STAR."
+
+
+"Had the landlady of the house in Great Ormond Street been anybody in
+the world except my old nurse, I doubt if any philanthropic purpose
+would have inspired me with the boldness to carry through the work
+I had undertaken. To appear before the average lodging-house keeper
+within half an hour of midnight, and with such a _protégée_ as
+Esperanza Campbell upon my hands, would have required the courage
+of a lion; and I was at that time a particularly shy and sensitive
+young man, brought up in the retirement of a country house and in the
+society of a mother whom I loved very dearly, but, as we are told to
+love God, with fear and trembling. My constitutional shyness, the
+natural outcome of narrow surroundings, had kept me from making friends
+at the University, and I believe it was sheer pity that had prompted
+Gerald Standish to take me under his wing. His kindness was rewarded by
+finding me a likable companion, whose character supplied some of the
+qualities which were wanting in his bright and buoyant disposition. We
+were real friends; and remained friends until the end of his too-brief
+life.
+
+"So much to explain that it was only my confidence in my old nurse's
+indulgence which enabled me to cut the knot of the difficulty in
+disposing of Esperanza Campbell.
+
+"My faithful Martha and her excellent husband were sleeping the sleep
+of the just in a ground-floor room at the back of the house, while
+their maid-servant slumbered still more soundly in a back attic.
+Happily Martha was a light sleeper, had trained herself to wake at
+the lightest cry in seasons of measles or whooping-cough, teething or
+infantile bronchitis; so my second application to the bell and knocker
+brought a prompt response. Bolts were drawn, a key was turned, a chain
+was unfastened, the door was opened a couple of inches, and a timid
+voice asked what was wanted.
+
+"'It is I, Martha, George Beresford. I've brought you a lodger.'
+
+"'Oh, come now, Mr. George, that's one of your jokes. You've been to
+the theatre, and you're playing a trick upon me. Go home now, do, like
+a dear young gentleman, and come and have a cup of tea with me some
+afternoon when you've got half an hour to spare.'
+
+"'Martha, you are keeping a very sweet young lady out in the cold. For
+goodness' sake, open the door, and let me explain matters.'
+
+"'Can't she take her in?' asked Gerald, impatiently, from the cab.
+
+"Martha opened the door, and exhibited herself reluctantly in her
+casual costume of flannel dressing-gown and tartan shawl.
+
+"'What _do_ you mean, Mr. George? What can you mean by wanting
+lodgings for a young lady at this time of night?'
+
+"'Sounds queer, don't it?' said Gerald, who had bounded up the steps
+and burst into the wainscoted hall, lighted only by the candle Martha
+was carrying. 'The fact is, we're in a difficulty, and Mr. Beresford
+assures me you can get us out of it.'
+
+"And then in fewest words and with most persuasive manner he explained
+what we wanted, a home and a protector for a blameless young girl
+whom the force of circumstances had flung upon our hands at half-past
+eleven o'clock in the evening. Somehow we must get rid of her. She was
+a gentleman's daughter, and we could not take her to the workhouse.
+Reputation, hers and ours, forbade that we should take her to an hotel.
+
+"Not a word did Gerald say about table-turning or spirit-rapping. He
+was shrewd enough to guess that any hint at the _séance_ would have
+prejudiced honest Martha against our charge.
+
+"'I'm sure I don't know what to do,' said Martha; and I could see that
+she was suspicious of Gerald's airy manner, and doubtful even of me.
+'My husband's fast asleep. He isn't such a light sleeper as I am. I
+don't know what he would say----'
+
+"'Never mind what he would say,' interrupted Gerald. 'What you have
+to say is that you'll take Miss Campbell in and give her a tidy room
+somewhere--she ain't particular, poor thing!--and make her comfortable
+for a week or two while she looks out for a situation.'
+
+"'Oh, she's on the look-out for a situation, is she?' said Martha,
+evidently mollified by the idea of a bread-winning young person. 'You
+see, Mr. George,' she went on, appealing to me, 'in London one can't
+be too particular. This house is what Benjamin and I have to look to
+in our old age; we've put our little all into it; and if the young
+lady happened to be rather dressy; or sang comic songs; or went to the
+theatre in cabs; or had gentlemen leave letters for her; why, it would
+just be our ruin. Our first floor is let to one of the most particular
+of widow ladies. I don't believe there's a more particular lady in
+London.'
+
+"'My dear Martha, do you think I'm a fool or a knave? This girl is a
+village organist's daughter----'
+
+"'Ah, Mr. George, they must all begin,' said Martha, shaking her head
+philosophically.
+
+"'She is in mourning for her father--an orphan--friendless and
+unhappy----'
+
+"'As for conduct, propriety, and all that kind of thing, I'll answer
+for her as if she were my own sister,' put in Gerald, in his splendidly
+reckless way; 'and that being the case, I hope you are not going to
+keep the poor young lady sitting out there in a cold cab till to-morrow
+morning.'
+
+"Martha listened to Gerald, and looked at me.
+
+"'If you're sure it's all right, Mr. George,' she murmured, 'I'd do
+anything in the world to oblige you; but this house is our all----'
+
+"'Yes, yes,' Gerald exclaimed impatiently. 'You told us that before.
+Bring her in, George. It's all settled.'
+
+"This was a happy stroke, for old Martha would have stood in the hall
+with her guttering candle and in her deshabille of flannel and tartan
+debating the matter for another quarter of an hour; but when I brought
+the pale girl in her black frock up the steps, and handed her into the
+old woman's care, the motherly heart melted in a moment, and hesitancy
+was at an end.
+
+"'Poor young thing; why, she's little more than a child! How pale and
+cold you look, poor dear. I'll go down and light a bit of fire and warm
+a cup of broth for you. My second floor left the day before yesterday.
+I'll soon get the bedroom ready for you.'
+
+"'That's as it should be,' said I. 'You'll find yourself safe and
+comfortable here, Miss Campbell, with the kindest woman I know. I'll
+call in a few days, and see how you are getting on.'
+
+"I slipped a couple of sovereigns into my old nurse's palm as I wished
+her good night. The cabman brought in the poor little wooden trunk,
+received a liberal fare, and went his way in peace, while Gerald and
+I walked to the Tavistock, glad to cool down after the evening's
+excitement.
+
+"'What an adventure!' said he. 'Of course I always knew it was humbug,
+but I never thought it was quite such transparent humbug.'
+
+"'That girl would have taken any one in,' said I.
+
+"'What, because she's young and pretty, after a rather sickly fashion?'
+
+"'No, because she was so thoroughly in earnest, and believed in the
+thing herself.'
+
+"'You really think she was a dupe and not an accomplice?'
+
+"'I am sure of it. Her distress was unmistakable. And at her age, and
+with her imaginative nature----'
+
+"'What did you know of her nature?' he asked sharply.
+
+"The question and his manner of asking it pulled me up suddenly, as a
+dreamer of morning dreams is awakened by the matter-of-fact voice of
+the servant who comes to call him.
+
+"What did I know of her? What assurance had I that her sobs and
+lamentation, her pathetic story of the father so loved and mourned,
+were not as spurious as the rest of the show, as much a cheat as the
+iron rod and the leather strap? How did I know? Well, I could hardly
+have explained the basis of my conviction, but I did know; and I would
+have staked my life upon her honesty and her innocence.
+
+"I woke next morning to a new sense of responsibility. I had taken this
+helpless girl's fate into my hands, and to me she must look for aid in
+chalking out a path for herself. I had to find her the means of earning
+her daily bread, reputably, and not as a drudge. The problem was
+difficult of solution. I had heard appalling descriptions of the lot of
+the average half-educated governess--the life harder, the pay less,
+than a servant's. Yet what better than a nursery governess could this
+girl be? at her age, and with her attainments, which I concluded were
+not above the ordinary schoolgirl's. The look-out was gloomy, and I
+was glad to shut my eyes to the difficulties of the situation, telling
+myself that my good Martha would give the poor child a comfortable home
+upon very moderate terms--such terms as I could afford to pay out of my
+very moderate allowance, and that in a month or two something--in the
+language of the immortal Micawber--would turn up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There was but another week of the Long, a week which under ordinary
+conditions I should have spent with my widowed mother at her house in
+the country, but which I decided to spend in London, accepting Gerald's
+invitation to share his rooms in Arundel Street, and do a final round
+of the theatres; an invitation I had previously declined. During that
+week I was often in Great Ormond Street, and contrived to learn a
+great deal more about Esperanza's character and history. Of her history
+all she had to tell; of her character, which to me seemed transparent
+as a forest streamlet, all I could divine. I called in Ormond Street on
+the second day of her residence there, and found good Nurse Martha in
+the best possible humour. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and she
+insisted that I should stop for a cup of tea, and as tea-making--that
+is to say, the art of producing a better cup of tea than anybody else
+could produce from the same cannister, kettle, and teapot--had always
+been a special talent of Martha's, I was glad to accept her hospitality.
+
+"Miss Campbell had gone for a little walk round the squares, she
+informed me.
+
+"'She doesn't care about going out,' explained Martha; 'she'd rather
+sit over a book or play the harmonium. But I told her she must take an
+airing for her health's sake.'
+
+"I was disappointed at not finding Esperanza in the tidy back parlour
+to which Nurse Martha ushered me--a room of exemplary neatness and
+snugness, enlivened by those living presences which always make for
+cheerfulness--vulgar as we may deem them--a glass tank of gold fish,
+a canary bird, and a magnificent tabby cat, sleek, clean, luxuriously
+idle, in purring contemplation of the bright little fire in the
+old-fashioned grate, that grate with hobs which reminded me of my
+nursery deep in the heart of the country.
+
+"'Now you sit down in Blake's armchair, Mr. George, and let's have
+a talk over missy. I shouldn't have taken those two sovereigns from
+you the night before last if I hadn't been all of a muddle with the
+suddenness of the thing. I don't want to be paid in advance for doing a
+kindness to a helpless girl.'
+
+"'No, Martha; but since the helpless girl was on my hands, it's only
+right I should pay you somehow, and we may as well settle that question
+at once, as it may be several weeks before Miss Campbell is able to
+find a suitable situation.'
+
+"'Several months, more likely. Do you know how young she is, Mr.
+George?'
+
+"'Eighteen.'
+
+"'Eighteen last birthday--only just turned eighteen, and she's much
+younger than most girls of eighteen in all her ways and thoughts. She's
+clever enough with her hands, poor child. Nothing lazy or lolloping
+about her--made her own bed and swept and tidied her own room without
+a word from me; but there's a helplessness somewhere. I believe the
+weakness is in her thoughts. I don't know how she'll ever set about
+getting a situation--I don't know what kind of situation she's fit for.
+She's much too young and too pretty for a governess.'
+
+"'Not too young for a nursery-governess, surely.'
+
+"'A nursery-governess means a nursery-maid without a cap, Mr. George. I
+shouldn't like to see her brought to that. I've taken to her already.
+Benjamin says, with her sweet voice and pretty face, she ought to go on
+the stage.'
+
+"I was horrified at the idea.
+
+"'Martha, how can you speak of such a thing? Have you any idea of what
+the life of a theatre means for an inexperienced girl--for a beautiful
+girl, most of all?'
+
+"'Oh, I've heard there are temptations; but a prudent young woman can
+take care of herself anywhere, Mr. George; and an imprudent young woman
+will go wrong in a country parsonage, or in a nunnery. If Miss Campbell
+is to earn her own living, she'll have to face dangers and temptations,
+go where she may. She'll have to take care of herself, poor child.
+There'll be nobody else to take care of her. I've heard that young
+women are well looked after in the better class of theatres--at Mr.
+Charles Kean's, for instance. I knew a young person that used to walk
+on in _Louis the Eleventh_--dressed as a page, in blue and gold--and
+she told me that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean was _that_ particular----'
+
+"'The Keans are making a farewell tour in Australia, and will never go
+into management again, Martha. You are talking nonsense.'
+
+"Poor Martha looked crestfallen at this reproof.
+
+"'I dare say I am, Mr. George; but, for all that, I don't think Miss
+Campbell will ever do much as a governess. It isn't in her. There's a
+helplessness, and a bendingness, and droopingness, if I may say so,
+about her character that won't do for a governess. The only mistress
+that would keep her is the kind of mistress that would make a slave of
+her.'
+
+"'Hard lines,' I said, getting up and walking about the little back
+parlour.
+
+"It was a third room quite at the back of the substantial Georgian
+house; and there was scant space for my restlessness between the old
+square piano, which served as a sideboard, and the fireplace by which
+my dear old Martha sat looking at me with a perturbed countenance.
+
+"I began to think I had let myself in for a bad thing. What was I to do
+with this girl, whose fate I had in some measure taken into my hands?
+It had seemed easy enough to bring her to this quiet shelter, which she
+might leave in a week or so, braced up and ready to fight her battle
+of life--the battle we all have to fight somehow--a self-supporting
+young woman. Self-supporting, that was the point. I now remembered with
+terror that there is a large class of persons upon this earth whom not
+even the scourge of poverty can make self-supporting; a vast multitude
+of feeble souls who resign themselves from the beginning of things to
+drift upon the stream of life, and are never known to strike out and
+swim for any shore, and so drift down to the ocean of death. Of these
+are the poor relations for whom something is for ever being done, and
+who never do anything for themselves; of these the feeble scions of
+patrician family trees, who are always waiting for sinecures under
+Government.
+
+"God help her, poor soul, if she was one of these invertebrates; and
+God help me in my responsibility towards her.
+
+"I was an only son; the heir to a small estate in Suffolk, and an
+income of something under three thousand a year. I was not quite
+twenty years of age, and I had to maintain myself at the most
+expensive college in Cambridge on an allowance that many of the rich
+young men with whom I associated would have considered abject penury. I
+was not in a fast set. I did not hunt--indeed, with my modest income,
+hunting would have been impossible; but I was not without tastes which
+absorbed money; the love of choice books and fine engravings, the fancy
+for curios picked up here or there, the presence of which gave interest
+to my rooms, and, perhaps, helped to reconcile me to many long hours
+within closed doors. I had hitherto been most careful to live within
+my income, for I knew that it was as much as my mother could afford to
+give me, taking into consideration her devotion to the estate which
+was to be mine by-and-by, and the maintenance and improvement of which
+had been to her as a religion. Her model cottages, her home-farm,
+the village church, to whose every improvement her purse had largely
+contributed, these were the sources of expenditure which kept her
+comparatively poor, and which forbade any kind of extravagance on my
+part.
+
+"All these facts were in my mind that afternoon as I paced the narrow
+bounds of old Martha's sitting-room.
+
+"'She will have to get her living,' I said severely, as the result of
+these meditations, which showed me no surplus income for philanthropy.
+
+"Had my mother been as some men's mothers, I might naturally have
+contemplated shifting the burden upon her shoulders. I might have told
+her Esperanza's story, and handed Esperanza over to her care as freely
+as if I had picked up a stray cat or dog. But my mother was not one of
+those soft, impressionable women who are always ready to give the reins
+to sentiment. She was a good woman, and devoted much of her life and
+means to doing good, but her benevolence was restricted to the limits
+of her parish. She would hardly listen to a tale of sorrow outside her
+own village.
+
+"'We have so much to do for our own people, George,' she used to tell
+me; 'it is folly to be distracted by outside claims. Here we know our
+return for every shilling we give. We know the best and the worst about
+those we help.'
+
+"Were I to tell her Esperanza's story, her suggestions for helping me
+out of my difficulty would be crueller than old Martha's. She would be
+for sending the girl into service as a housemaid, or for getting her an
+assisted passage to the Antipodes on an emigrant ship.
+
+"Martha came to my rescue in my trouble now as she had done many a
+time when I wore a kilt, and when my naked knees had come into abrupt
+collision with a gravel path or a stony beach.
+
+"'She'll have to be older and wiser before she gets her own living, Mr.
+George,' said Martha; 'but don't you trouble about her. As long as I've
+a bed or a sofa to spare, she can stop with me and Benjamin. Her bite
+and sup won't hurt us, poor thing, and I don't want sixpence from you.
+She shall stop here free gratis, Mr. George, till she finds a better
+home.'
+
+"I gave my old nurse a hug, as if I had been still the boy in the
+Macdougal kilt.
+
+"'No, no, Martha; I'm not going to impose on your generosity. I shall
+be able to pay you _something_. Only I thought you might want two or
+three pounds a week for her board, and I could not manage that for an
+indefinite period."
+
+"'Two or three pounds! Lor, Mr. George, if that's your notion of
+prices, Cambridge land-ladies must be 'arpies. Why, I only get two
+guineas for my drawing-room floor, as a permanency, and lady-tenants
+even begrudge half a crown extra for kitchen fire. Let her stop here as
+long as she likes, Mr. George, and never you think about money. It's
+only her future I'm thinking of, for there's a helplessness about her
+that----Ah, there she is,' as the hall door slowly opened. 'I gave her
+my key. She's quite one of us already.'
+
+"She came quietly into the room, and took my offered hand without
+shyness or embarrassment. She was pale still, but the fresh air had
+brought a faint tint of rose into the wan cheeks. She looked even
+younger and more childlike to-day in her shabby mourning frock and poor
+little black straw hat than she had looked the night before last. Her
+strong emotion then had given more of womanliness to the small oval
+face. To-day there was a simplicity in her aspect, as of a trusting
+child who took no thought of the future, secure in the kindness of
+those about her.
+
+"I thought of a sentence in the gospel. 'Consider the lilies how they
+grow.' This child had grown up like a lily in the mild atmosphere of
+domestic love, and had been the easy dupe of a delusion which appealed
+to her affection for the dead.
+
+"'I called to see if you were quite comfortable and at home with Mrs.
+Blake,' I said, far more embarrassed by the situation than Esperanza
+was.
+
+"'Yes, indeed I am,' she answered in her sad sweet voice. 'It is so
+nice to be with some one so kind and clean and comfortable. The Frau
+was not _very_ unkind; but she was so dirty. She gave us such horrid
+things to eat--the smell of them made me ill--and then she said I was
+affected and silly, and the Herr used to say I might starve if I could
+not eat their food. It made me think of my happy home with father,
+and our cosy little tea-table beside the fire. We did not always have
+dinner,' she added naively; 'neither of us cared much for that.'
+
+"She hung over old Martha's shoulder with affectionate familiarity, and
+the horny old hand which had led my infant steps was held up to clasp
+hers, and the withered old face smiled.
+
+"'See how she gets round us,' said Martha, nodding at me. 'Benjamin is
+just as bad. And you should hear her play the 'armonian of an evening,
+and sing 'Abide with me.' You'd hardly hear her without shedding tears.'
+
+"'Do you think you can be happy here for a few weeks?' I asked.
+
+"'Yes, as happy as I can be anywhere without father. I dreamt of him
+last night--such a vivid dream. I know he was near me. It was something
+more than a dream. I heard his voice close beside my pillow calling
+my name. I know his spirit was in the room. It isn't because the Herr
+and his wife were cheats that there is _no_ link between the living
+and the dead. I know there is a link,' she insisted passionately, her
+eyes brimming with sudden tears. 'They are not dead--those we dearly
+love--only removed from us. The clay is gone; the soul is hovering
+near, blessing, comforting us.'
+
+"She sobbed out her grief, hiding her face upon Martha's substantial
+shoulder. I could speak no word of consolation; nor would I for worlds
+have argued against this fond hallucination, the dream of sorrowing
+love.
+
+    "'I shall not see thee. Dare I say
+      No spirit ever brake the band
+      That stays him from the native land,
+    Where first he walk'd when clasp't in clay?
+
+    No visual shade of some one lost,
+      But he, the Spirit himself, may come
+      Where all the nerve of sense is numb;
+    Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.'
+
+"I quoted those lovely lines in a low voice as I walked softly up and
+down the darkening room; and then there was silence save for soothing
+wordless murmurs from Martha, such murmurs as had served to hush my own
+baby sorrows.
+
+"'There's the kettle just on the boil,' cried the great soul, cheerily,
+when Esperanza's sobs had ceased; 'and I know Mr. George must be
+wanting his cup of tea.'
+
+"She rose and bustled about in her dear old active way. She lit a
+lamp--an inartistic cheap paraffin-lamp, but the light was cheerful.
+The tea-table arranged by Martha was the picture of neatness. She set
+Esperanza the feminine task of making toast. The poor child had the
+prettiest air of penitence as she kissed Martha's hand, and then knelt
+meekly down, with the fireglow crimsoning the alabaster face and neck,
+and shining on the pale gold hair and rusty black frock.
+
+"'I'm afraid I'm very troublesome,' she said apologetically; 'but,
+indeed, I'm very grateful to you, sir, for taking care of me that
+dreadful night, and to dear Mrs. Blake for all her kindness to me.'
+
+"'Mrs. Blake is the quintessence of kindness. I am very glad to think
+you can live happily here until she or I can find some nice situation
+for you.'
+
+"She had been smiling softly over her task, but her face clouded in an
+instant.
+
+"'A situation. That's what everybody said at Besbery! We must find her
+a situation. And then Miss Grimshaw wanted me to be a dressmaker.'
+
+"'You shall not be a dressmaker. I promise that.'
+
+"'But, oh, what am I to be? I don't know half enough for a governess.
+I couldn't teach big girls German and French and drawing. I couldn't
+teach little boys Latin. And that's what everybody wants of a
+governess. I've read the advertisements in the newspapers.'
+
+"'And as to being a nursery-governess, why, it's negro slavery!' said
+Martha.
+
+"'I wouldn't mind the drudgery, only I hate children!" said Esperanza.
+
+"This avowal shocked me. I looked at the soft, childlike countenance,
+and the speech seemed incongruous.
+
+"'I have never had anything to do with children since my sister Lucy
+died,' she explained. 'I shouldn't understand them, and they would
+laugh at me and my fancies. After Lucy's death, I lived alone with
+father, always alone, he and I. The harmonium and the organ in the
+church close by were our only friends. Our clergyman was just civil to
+father, but I don't think he ever liked him. I heard him once tell the
+Bishop that his organist was an eccentricity. An eccentricity! That was
+all he could say about my father, who was ever so much cleverer than
+he.'
+
+"She said this with pride, almost with defiance, looking me in the
+face as if she were challenging me to dispute the fact.
+
+"'Was your father very clever?' I asked her, keenly interested in any
+glimpses of her history.
+
+"'Yes, I am sure he was clever, much cleverer than the common run of
+people. He loved music, and he played beautifully. His touch upon the
+old organ made the church music sound angelic. Now and then there was
+some one in the church--some stranger--who seemed to understand his
+playing, and who was astonished to find such an organist in a village
+church--an out-of-the-way village like ours. But for the most part
+people took no notice. It didn't seem to matter to them whether the
+choir sang well or badly; but when they sang false it hurt father just
+like bodily pain.'
+
+"'Did he teach you to play?'
+
+"'A little. But he wasn't fond of teaching. What I know of music I
+found out chiefly for myself--just sitting alone at the organ, when I
+could get one of the choir boys to blow for me, touching the keys, and
+trying the stops, till I learnt something about them. But I play very
+badly.'
+
+"'Beautifully! beautifully!' ejaculated Martha. 'You draw tears.'
+
+"'You sang in the choir, I think?' I said.
+
+"'Yes; there were four young ladies, and a lady's-maid with a contralto
+voice, and I was the sixth. There were about a dozen men and boys, who
+sat on the other side of the chancel. People said it was a good choir
+for a village church. Father was so unhappy when we sang badly that we
+could not help trying hard to sing well.'
+
+"I remembered those seraphic soprano notes in Handel's thrilling
+melody, and I could understand that at least one voice in the choir had
+the heavenly ring.
+
+"'Well,' I said at last, 'we must hope for the best. Something may turn
+up that will suit you better than governessing. And in the mean time
+you can make yourself happy with my old nurse. I can answer for it
+she'll never be unkind to you.'
+
+"'I'm sure of that. I would rather stay here and be her servant than go
+among strangers.'
+
+"'What, wear an apron and cap and wait upon the lodgers?' I said,
+laughing at the absurdity of the idea. She seemed a creature so far
+removed from the useful race of neat-handed Phyllises.
+
+"'I should not mind.'
+
+"The clock in the hall struck six, and I had promised Gerald to
+be ready for dinner at half-past, as we were to go to a theatre
+afterwards--the Adelphi, where Jefferson was acting in _Rip Van
+Winkle_. I had to take a hurried leave.
+
+"'Don't you worry yourself about _her_, Mr. George,' said Martha, as
+she let me out at the street door; ' I'll keep her as long as ever you
+like.'
+
+"I told Martha that I should send her a little money from time to time,
+and that I should consider myself in her debt for a pound a week as
+long as Miss Campbell stayed with her.
+
+"'She'll want a new frock, won't she?' I asked. 'The one she wears
+looks very shabby.'
+
+"'It looks what it is, Mr. George. It's all but threadbare, and it's
+the only frock she has in the world, poor child! But don't you trouble
+about that either. You gave me two sovereigns. One of those will buy
+the stuff, and she and I can make the frock. I've cut out plenty of
+frocks in my day. I used to make all your mother's frocks once upon a
+time.'
+
+"In the bloom of her youth she had nursed my mother; she had nursed
+me in her sturdy middle life; and now in her old age she was ready
+and willing to care for this girl for whose fate I had made myself
+responsible.
+
+"Gerald received me with his customary cheeriness, though I was ten
+minutes after the half-hour, and the fried sole had frizzled itself to
+dryness by that delay.
+
+"'I've some good news for you!' he exclaimed, in his exuberant way.
+'It's all right.'
+
+"'What's all right?'
+
+"'Your _protégée_. I've written to the parson at Besbery. The story she
+told us was gospel truth.'
+
+"'I never thought it was anything else.'
+
+"'Ah, that's because you're over head and ears in love with her,' said
+Gerald.
+
+"I felt myself blushing furiously, blushing like a girl whose secret
+penchant for the hero of her dreams stands revealed. Of course I
+protested that nothing was farther from my thoughts than love; that
+I was only sorry for the girl's loneliness and helplessness. Gerald
+obviously doubted me; and I had to listen to his sage counsel on the
+subject. He was my senior by two years, and claimed to be a man of the
+world, while I had been brought up at my mother's apron-string. He
+foresaw dangers of which I had no apprehension.
+
+"'There is nothing easier to drop into than an entanglement of that
+sort,' he said. 'You had much better fall in love with a ballet-girl.
+It may be more expensive for the moment, and there may be a bigger
+rumpus about it, but it won't compromise your future.'
+
+"This friendly remonstrance had no effect upon my conduct during the
+few remaining days of the long vacation. I went to Ormond Street
+a second and a third time in the course of those few days. I took
+Esperanza to an afternoon concert at the St. James's Hall, and enjoyed
+her ecstasy as she listened to Sainton and Bottesini. For her, music
+was a passion, and I believe she sat beside me utterly unconscious of
+my existence, with a soul lifted above earth and all earthly feelings.
+
+"'You were happy while the music lasted,' I said, as we walked back to
+Ormond Street, by a longish round, for I chose the quietest streets
+rather than the nearest way.
+
+"'More than happy,' she answered softly. 'I was talking with my
+father's spirit.'
+
+"'You still believe in the communion of the dead and the living,' I
+said, 'in spite of the tricks your German friends played upon you?'
+
+"'Yes,' she answered steadfastly, 'I still believe. I shall always
+believe there is a bridge between earth and heaven--between the world
+we can see and touch and the world we can only feel with our hearts and
+minds. When I hear music like that we heard just now--those long-drawn
+singing notes on the violin, those deep organ tones of the 'cello--I
+feel myself carried away to a shadowy world where I know my father and
+mother are waiting for me. We shall all be together again some day, and
+I shall know and understand, and I shall feel her light touch upon my
+forehead and my hair as I have felt it so often in my dreams.'
+
+"She broke down, crying softly as she walked by my side. I soothed her
+as well as I could, soothed her most when I talked of those she had
+lost, questioning her about them. She remembered her mother dimly--a
+long, last illness, a pale and wasted face, and gentle hands and loving
+arms that used to be folded round her neck as she nestled against
+the sick-bed. That sick-room, and the dim light of wintry afternoons,
+and the sound of the harmonium as her father played soft music in an
+adjoining parlour, were things that seemed to have lasted for years.
+She could not look behind them. Her memory of mother and of home
+stopped on the threshold of that dimly lighted room.
+
+"Her father was a memory of yesterday. He had been her second self, the
+other half of her mind.
+
+"'He believed in ghosts,' she said, 'and in second sight. He has often
+told me how he saw my mother coming downstairs to meet him, with a
+shroud showing faintly above her white summer gown, the night before
+she broke a blood-vessel and took to her bed in her last illness.'
+
+"'An optical delusion, no doubt; but it comes natural to a Scotchman to
+believe such things. He should not have told you.'
+
+"'Why not? I like to know that the world we cannot see is near us.
+I should have died of loneliness if I had not believed my father's
+spirit was still within reach. I don't mind about those people being
+impostors. I begin to think that the friends we have lost would hardly
+talk to us through the moving up and down of wooden tables. It seems
+such a foolish way, does it not?'
+
+"'Worse than foolish; undignified. The ghosts in Virgil move and talk
+with a stately grandeur; Shakespeare's ghosts are kingly and awful.
+They strike terror. It has remained for the nineteenth century to
+imagine ghosts that flit about a shabby parlour and skip from side
+to side of the room and flutter round a table, and touch, and rap,
+and tap, and pat with viscous hands, like the touch of a toad. Samuel
+Johnson would not have sat up a whole night to see a table heaved up
+and down, or to be touched on the forehead by a chilly, unknown hand.'
+
+"'I don't care what you say about those things,' she answered
+resolutely. 'There is a link between life and death. I don't know what
+the link is; but though my father may be dead to all the world besides
+he is not dead to me.'
+
+"I did not oppose stubborn common sense to this fond delusion. It might
+be good for her to believe in the things that are not. The tender fancy
+might bridge over the dark gulf of sorrow. I tried to divert her mind
+to lighter subjects--talked to her of this monstrous London of which
+she knew nothing, and of which I knew very little.
+
+"On the following evening I took Esperanza and my old nurse to a
+theatre, a form of entertainment in which Martha especially delighted.
+I was not very happy in my choice of a play. Had I taken my _protégée_
+to see Jefferson, she would have been touched and delighted. Unluckily
+I chose another theatre where a burlesque was being played which was
+just a shade more vulgar than the average burlesque of those days.
+Esperanza was puzzled and disgusted. I discovered that her love of
+music was an exclusive passion. She cared for nothing else in the way
+of art. I tried her with a picture-gallery, only to find her ignorant
+and indifferent. Two things only impressed her in the whole of the
+National Gallery--a landscape of Turner's, and a portrait by Reynolds,
+in which she fancied a resemblance to her father.
+
+"My last Sunday before term began was spent almost entirely with
+Esperanza. I accepted Martha's invitation to partake of her Sunday
+dinner, and sat at meat with dear old Benjamin for the first time in my
+life, though I had eaten many a meal with his worthy wife in the days
+when my legs reached a very little way below the table and my manners
+were in sore need of the good soul's supervision--happy childish days,
+before governess and lesson-books had appeared upon the scene of my
+life; days in which life was one long game of play, interrupted only by
+childish illnesses that were like bad dreams, troubled and indistinct
+patches on the fair foreground of the childish memory. The good
+Benjamin ate his roast beef in a deprecating and apologetic attitude,
+sitting, I fear, uncomfortably, on the edge of his chair. Esperanza ate
+about as much solid food as a singing bird might have done; but she
+looked stronger and in better health than on the night of the _séance_,
+and she looked almost happy. After the roast beef and apple-tart, I
+took her to an afternoon service at St. Paul's, where the organ-music
+filled her with rapture.
+
+"'I shall come here every Sunday,' she said, as we left the cathedral.
+
+"I entreated her not to go so far alone, and warned her that the
+streets of London were full of danger for youth and inexperience; but
+she laughed at my fears, assuring me that she had walked about the
+meadows and coppices round Besbery ever since she could remember, and
+no harm had ever befallen her, though there were hardly any people
+about. I told her that in London the people were the danger, and
+exacted her promise that she would never go beyond the immediate
+neighbourhood of Great Ormond Street by herself. I gave her permission
+to walk about Queen's Square, Guilford Street, and Mecklenburgh Square.
+The neighbourhood was quiet and respectable.
+
+"'I am bound to obey you,' she answered meekly. 'I owe you so much
+gratitude for your goodness to me.'
+
+"I protested against gratitude to _me_. The only friend to whom she
+owed anything was my dear old nurse.
+
+"I had a great terror of the perils of the London streets for a girl
+of her appearance. It was not so much that she was beautiful, but
+because of a certain strangeness and exceptional character in her
+beauty which would be likely to attract attention and arouse curiosity.
+The dreamy look in the large violet eyes, the semi-transparent pallor
+which suggested an extreme fragility, the unworldliness of her whole
+aspect were calculated to appeal to the worst instincts of the
+prowling profligate. She had an air of helplessness which would invite
+persecution from the cowardly wretches who make the streets of a great
+city perilous for unprotected innocence.
+
+"She was ready to promise anything that would please me.
+
+"'I do not care if I never go out,' she said simply. 'The lady who
+lives in the drawing-room has a harmonium, and she has told me I may
+play upon it every day--all day long, when she is out; and she has a
+great many friends, and visits a good deal.'
+
+"'Oh, but you must go out-of-doors for your health's sake!' I
+protested. 'Martha or Benjamin must go with you.'
+
+"'They have no time to go out-of-doors till after dark, poor things!
+they are so busy; but they will take me for a walk sometimes of an
+evening. I shall make them go out, for their own sakes. You need not
+feel anxious about me; you are too kind to think of me at all.'
+
+"I could not help feeling anxious about her. I felt as if I were
+responsible for everything that could assail or hurt her; that every
+hair of her head was a charge upon my conscience. Her health, her
+happiness, her talents and tastes and fancies--it was mine to care
+for all these. My _protégée_, Standish called her. In this farewell
+walk through the dull Sunday streets, in the dull October twilight, it
+seemed as if she were much more than my _protégée_--my dearest, most
+sacred care, the purpose and the promise of my life.
+
+"To-night we were to say good-bye. We were to have parted at the door
+in Great Ormond Street; but, standing on the doorstep, waiting for the
+opening of that inexorable door, which would swallow her up presently,
+like a tomb, I felt all at once that I could not sacrifice this last
+evening. Standish was dining out. There would only be loneliness and
+a roast chicken awaiting me at half-past seven. The chicken might
+languish, uneaten; the ghosts might have the dull, commonplace room;
+I would finish the evening with Martha's tea and toast, and hear
+Esperanza sing her favourite numbers of Handel and Mendelssohn, to the
+accompaniment of an ancient Stoddart piano, a relic of the schoolroom
+in my Suffolk home, the piano on which my mother took her first
+music-lesson.
+
+"It was an evening in Elysium. A back parlour is sometimes large enough
+to contain paradise. I did not question my own heart, or analyze my
+beatific sensations. I ascribed at least half my happiness to Handel
+and Mendelssohn, and that feeling of exaltation which only sacred
+music can produce. There were no anxious questionings in my mind till
+after I had said good-bye to Esperanza--good-bye, till the third week
+in December--and had left the house. Those uneasy questionings were
+inspired by my dear old Martha, who opened the hall door for me, and
+said gravely, as I shook hands with her--
+
+"'It would never do, Mr. George. I know what kind of lady your mother
+is, as well as anybody. It would never do.'
+
+"I did not ask her what it was that would never do; but I carried a new
+sense of trouble and difficulty out into the autumn wind.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                "A WHITE STAR MADE OF MEMORY LONG AGO."
+
+
+"'It would never do.' Those words of Martha's--so earnestly spoken by
+the kind soul who cared for me almost as tenderly as a mother cares
+for her own--haunted me all through the rapid run to Cambridge, walked
+the quadrangles of Trinity with me, tramped the Trumpington Road upon
+my shoulders, like that black care which sits behind the traveller.
+'It would never do.' No need to ask my good Martha for the meaning of
+that emphatic assertion. I knew what shape her thoughts had taken as
+she watched me sitting by the little square piano--the old, old piano,
+with such a thin, tinkling sound--listening to that seraphic voice, and
+looking at that delicate profile and exquisite colouring of faintly
+flushed cheek, lifted eye, and shadowy hair. My old nurse had surprised
+my secret almost before I knew it myself; but, by the time I was back
+in my shabby ground-floor sitting-room at Trinity, I knew as well as
+Martha knew that I had let myself fall deep in love with a girl whom I
+could never marry with my mother's approbation. I might take my own way
+in life and marry the girl I loved; but to do so would be to forfeit my
+mother's affection, to make myself an outcast from her house.
+
+"'I know what kind of a lady your mother is,' said Martha, in her
+valedictory address.
+
+"Was I, her son, likely to be ignorant of the mother's character, or
+unable to gauge the strength of her prejudices--prejudices that seemed
+so much a part of her nature as to form a strong argument against
+Locke's assertion that there are no innate ideas? Indeed, in reading
+that philosopher's famous chapter, it always seemed to me, that if the
+average infant had to begin the A B C of life at the first letter,
+my mother must be a 'sport' or exception to the general rule, and
+must have been born with her brain richly stocked with family pride
+and social distinctions. In all the years I had lived with her I had
+never seen her unbend to a servant, or converse on equal terms with
+a tradesman. She had a full appreciation of the value of wealth when
+it was allied with good birth; but the millionaire manufacturer or
+the lucky speculator belonged to that outer circle of which she knew
+nothing, and of which she would believe no good.
+
+"I was her only son; and she was a widow. I owed her more than most
+sons owe their mothers. I did not stand as number four or five in
+a family circle, taking my share in the rough and tumble of family
+life. My mother had been all in all to me; and I had been all in all
+to her. I had been her friend and companion from the time I was able
+to understand the English language, the recipient of all her ideas,
+her likes and dislikes--from the early stage when the childish mind
+unconsciously takes shape and bent from the mind of the parent the
+child loves best. From my seventh year I was fatherless, and all that
+is sacred and sweet in home life began and ended for me with the word
+mother.
+
+"My mother was what Gerald Standish called 'a masterful woman,' a
+woman to whom it was natural to direct and initiate the whole business
+of life. My father was her opposite in temperament,--irresolute,
+lymphatic; and I think he must have handed her the reins of home
+government before their honeymoon was over. I remember him just well
+enough to remember that he left the direction of his life wholly to
+her; that he deferred to her judgment, and studied her feelings in
+every detail of his existence; and that he obviously adored her.
+I don't think he cared very much for me, his only child. I can
+recall no indication of warmth of feeling on his part, only a placid
+indifference, as of one whose affection was concentrated upon a single
+object, and whose heart had no room for any other image. He spoke of
+me as 'the boy,' and looked at me occasionally with an air of mild
+wonder, as if I were somebody else's son, whose growth took him by
+surprise. I never remember his expressing any opinion about me, except
+that I had grown since he looked at me last.
+
+"His feeling about me being thus tepid, it was hardly surprising that
+he should make what many people have called an unjust will. I have
+never disputed its justice, for I loved my mother too much to complain
+of the advantages of power and status which that will gave her.
+
+"She was an heiress, and her money had cleared my father's estate from
+heavy encumbrances, and no doubt he remembered this when providing for
+her future. He was her senior by five and twenty years, and foresaw a
+long widowhood for her.
+
+"The entail ended in his own person, so he was free to dispose of his
+property as he liked. He left my mother tenant for life; and he left me
+five hundred a year, chargeable upon the estate, which income was only
+to begin when I came of age. Till my one-and-twentieth birthday I was
+dependent upon my mother for everything.
+
+"I told myself that I had to cut my own path in life, and that I must
+be the architect of my own fortune.
+
+"My mother's income, under her marriage settlement, was considerable,
+and this, in addition to a rent-roll of between two and three thousand
+a year, made her a rich woman.
+
+"Assuredly I was not in a position to make an imprudent marriage,
+since my power to maintain a wife and family in accord with my own
+ideas of a gentleman's surroundings must depend for a considerable
+time upon my mother's liberality. I had made up my mind to go to the
+Bar, and I knew how slow and arduous is the road to success in that
+branch of the legal profession; but far nearer than mere questions of
+interest was the obligation which filial love laid upon me. My mother
+had given me the devotion of years, had made me the chief object of
+her thoughts and her hopes, and I should be an ungrateful wretch if I
+were to disappoint her. I knew, alas! that upon this very question of
+marriage she cherished a project that it would distress her to forego,
+and that there was a certain Lady Emily whom I was intended to marry,
+the daughter of a nobleman who had been my father's most intimate
+friend, and for whom my mother had a greater regard than for any of our
+neighbours.
+
+"Knowing this, and wishing with all my heart to do my duty as a son to
+the best of mothers, I could but echo Martha's solemn words--
+
+"'It would never do.'
+
+"No, 'it would never do.' The seraphic voice, the spiritual
+countenance, the appealing helplessness, which had so moved my pity,
+must be to me as a dream from which I had awakened. Esperanza's fate
+must rest henceforward with herself, aided by honest Martha Blake, and
+helped, through Martha, from my purse. I must never see her again. No
+word had been spoken, no hint had been given of the love which it
+was my bounden duty to conquer and forget. I could contemplate the
+inevitable renunciation with a clear conscience.
+
+"I worked harder in that term than I had worked yet, and shut my door
+against all the allurements of undergraduate friends and all the
+pleasures of university life. I was voted churlish and a muff; but I
+found my books the best cure for an unhappy love; and though the image
+of Miss Campbell was oftener with me than the learned shade of Newton
+or the later ghost of Whewell, I contrived to do some really good work.
+
+"My mother and I wrote to each other once a week. She expected me to
+send her a budget of gossip and opinion, and it was only in this term
+that I began to feel a difficulty in filling two sheets of note-paper
+with my niggling penmanship. For the first time in my life, I found
+myself sitting, pen in hand, with nothing to say to my mother. I
+could not write about Esperanza, or the passionate yearning which I
+was trying to outlive. I could hardly expatiate upon my mathematical
+studies to a woman who, although highly cultivated, knew nothing of
+mathematics. I eked out my letter as best I could, with a laboured
+criticism upon a feeble novel which I had idly skimmed in an hour of
+mental exhaustion.
+
+"I looked forward apprehensively to my home-going in December, fearing
+that some change in my outward aspect might betray the mystery of my
+heart. The holiday, once so pleasant, would be long and dull. The
+shooting would afford some relief perhaps, and I made up my mind to
+tramp the plantations all day long. At Cambridge I had shirked physical
+exercise; in Suffolk I would walk down my sorrow.
+
+"A letter from my mother, which reached me early in December, put an
+end to these resolves. She had been somewhat out of health all through
+November; and her local medical man, who was old and _passé_, had only
+tormented her with medicines which made her worse. She had therefore
+decided, at Miss Marjorum's earnest desire, upon spending my vacation
+in London; and Jebson, her trusty _major domo_, had been up to town,
+and had found her delightful lodgings on the north side of Hyde Park.
+She would await me, not at Fendyke, but in Connaught Place.
+
+"Connaught Place--within less than an hour's walk of Great Ormond
+Street! My heart beat fast and furiously at the mere thought of that
+propinquity. Martha's latest letter had told me that all attempts at
+finding a situation for my _protégée_ had so far been without result.
+Martha and her charge had visited all the agencies for the placing
+of governesses and companions, and no agent had succeeded in placing
+Esperanza. Her education was far below the requirements of the least
+exacting employer. She knew very little French, and no German; she
+played exquisitely, but she played by ear; of the theory of music she
+knew hardly anything. Her father, an enthusiast and a dreamer, had
+filled her with ideas, but had taught her nothing that would help her
+to earn a living.
+
+"'Don't you fret about her, Mr. George,' wrote Martha. 'As long as
+I have a roof over my head, she can make her home with me. Her bite
+and sup makes hardly any difference in the week's expenses. I'm only
+sorry, for her sake, that she isn't clever enough to get into a nice
+family in some pretty country house, like Fendyke. It's a dull life for
+her here--a back parlour to live in, and two old people for her only
+companions.'
+
+"I thought of the small dark parlour in the Bloomsbury lodging-house,
+the tinkling old piano, the dull grey street; a weary life for a girl
+of poetic temperament reared in the country. That letter of Martha's,
+and the fact of being within an easy walk of Great Ormond Street, broke
+down my resolution of the last two months. I called upon Martha and
+her charge on the morning after I left Cambridge. I thought Esperanza
+looked wan and out of health, and could but mark how the pale, sad
+face flushed and brightened at sight of me. We were alone for a
+few minutes, while Martha interviewed a butcher, and I seized the
+opportunity. I said I feared she was not altogether happy. Only unhappy
+in being a burden to my friends, she told me. She was depressed by
+finding her own uselessness. Hundreds of young women were earning their
+living as governesses, but no one would employ her.
+
+"'No lady will even give me a trial,' she said. 'I'm afraid I must look
+very stupid.'
+
+"'You look very lovely,' I answered hotly. 'They want a commoner clay.'
+
+"I implored her to believe that she was no burden to Martha or to me.
+If she could be content to live that dull and joyless life, she was at
+least secure of a safe and respectable home; and if she cared to carry
+on her education, something might be done in the way of masters; or she
+might attend some classes in Harley Street, or elsewhere.
+
+"She turned red and then pale, and I saw tears trembling on her long
+auburn lashes.
+
+"'I am afraid I am unteachable,' she faltered, with downcast eyes.
+'Kind ladies at Besbery tried to teach me; but it was no use. My
+mind always wandered. I could not keep my thoughts upon the book I
+was reading, or on what they told me. Miss Grimshawe, who wanted to
+help me, said I was incorrigibly idle and atrociously obstinate. But,
+indeed, it was not idleness or obstinacy that kept me from learning. I
+could not force myself to think or to remember. My thoughts would only
+go their own way; and I cared for nothing but music, or for the poetry
+my father used to read to me sometimes of an evening. I am afraid Miss
+Grimshawe was right, and that I ought to be a dressmaker.'
+
+"I glanced at the hands which lay loosely clasped upon the arm of the
+chair in which she was sitting. Such delicately tapering fingers were
+never meant for the dressmaker's workroom. The problem of Esperanza's
+life was not to be solved that way.
+
+"I did not remain long on this first morning; but I went again two days
+afterwards, and again, until it came to be every day. Martha grumbled
+and warned me of my danger, and of the wrong done to Esperanza, if I
+were to make her care for me.
+
+"'I don't think there's much fear of that,' added Martha. 'She's too
+much in the clouds. It's you I'm afraid of. You and me knows who mamma
+wants you to marry, don't us, Mr. George?'
+
+"I could not gainsay Martha upon this point. Lady Emily and I had
+ridden the same rocking-horse; she riding pillion with her arms clasped
+round my waist, while I urged the beast to his wildest pace. We had
+taken tea out of the same toy tea-things--her tea-things--and before I
+was fifteen years of age my mother told me that she was pleased to see
+I was so fond of Emily, and hoped that she and I would be husband and
+wife some day, in the serious future, just as we were little lovers now
+in the childish present.
+
+"I remember laughing at my mother's speech, and thinking within myself
+that Emily and I hardly realized my juvenile idea of lovers. The
+romantic element was entirely wanting in our association. When I talked
+of Lady Emily, later, to Gerald Standish, I remember I described her as
+'a good sort,' and discussed her excellent qualities of mind and temper
+with an unembarrassed freedom which testified to a heart that was at
+peace.
+
+"I felt more mortified than I would have cared to confess at Martha's
+blunt assurance that Esperanza was too much in the clouds to care
+about me; and it may be that this remark of my old nurse's gave just
+the touch of pique that acted as a spur to passion. I know that after
+two or three afternoons in Great Ormond Street, I felt that I loved
+this girl as I could never love again, and that henceforward it would
+be impossible for me to contemplate the idea of life without her.
+The more fondly I loved her, the less demonstrative I became, and my
+growing reserve threw dust in the elderly eyes that watched us. Martha
+believed that her warning had taken effect, and she so far confided in
+my discretion as to allow me to take Esperanza for lamp-lit walks in
+the Bloomsbury squares, after our cosy tea-drinking in the little back
+parlour. The tea-drinking and the walk became an institution. Martha's
+rheumatics had made walking exercise impossible for her during the last
+month. Benjamin was fat and lazy.
+
+"'If I didn't let the poor child go out with you, she'd hardly get a
+breath of fresh air all the winter. And I know that I can trust you,
+Mr. George,' said Martha.
+
+"'Yes, you can trust me,' answered I.
+
+"She might trust me to breathe no word of evil into the ear of her I
+loved. She could trust me to revere the childlike innocence which was
+my darling's highest charm. She could trust me to be loyal and true
+to Esperanza. But she could not trust me to be worldly-wise, or to
+sacrifice my own happiness to filial affection. The time came when I
+had to set my love for Esperanza against my duty to my mother and my
+own interests. Duty and interest kicked the beam.
+
+"Oh, those squares! those grave old Bloomsbury squares, with their
+formal rows of windows, and monotonous iron railings, and stately
+doorways, and clean doorsteps, and enclosures of trees, whose blackened
+branches showed leafless against the steely sky of a frosty evening!
+What groves or streams of paradise could be fairer to us two than
+the dull pavements which we paced arm-in-arm in the wintry greyness,
+telling each other those thoughts and fancies which seemed in their
+intuitive sympathy to mark us for predestined life-companions. Her
+thoughts were childishly expressed sometimes; but it seemed to me
+always as if they were only my thoughts in a feminine guise. Nothing
+that she said ever jarred upon me; and her ignorance of the world and
+all its ways suggested some nymph or fairy reared in the seclusion of
+woodland or ocean cave. I thought of Endymion, and I fancied that his
+goddess could have been scarcely less of the earth than this fair girl
+who walked beside me, confiding in me with a childlike faith.
+
+"One night I told her that I loved her. We had stayed out later than
+usual. The clock of St. George's Church was striking nine, and in
+the shadowy quiet of Queen's Square my lips met hers in love's first
+kiss. How shyly and how falteringly she confessed her own secret, so
+carefully guarded till that moment.
+
+"'I never thought you could care for a poor girl like me,' she said;
+'but I loved you from the first. Yes, almost from the very first. My
+heart seemed frozen after my father's death, and your voice was the
+first that thawed it. The dull, benumbed feeling passed away, and I
+knew that I had some one living to love and care for and think about as
+I sat alone. I had a world of new thoughts to interweave with the music
+I love.'
+
+"'Ah, that music, Esperanza! I am almost jealous of music when I see
+you so moved and influenced by it.'
+
+"'Music would have been my only consolation if you had not cared for
+me,' she answered simply.
+
+"'But I do care for you, and I want you to be my wife, now at once--as
+soon as we can be married.'
+
+"I talked about an immediate marriage before the registrar. But,
+willing as she was to be guided by me in most things, she would not
+consent to this.
+
+"'It would not seem like marriage to me,' she said, "if we did not
+stand before the altar.'
+
+"'Well, it shall be in a church, then; only we shall have to wait
+longer. And I must go back to Cambridge at the end of this week. I must
+get an exeat, and come up to London on our wedding-day, and take you
+home in the evening. I shall have a quiet home ready for my darling,
+far from the ken of dons and undergraduates, but within an easy
+distance of the 'Varsity.'
+
+"I explained to her that our marriage must be a secret till I came
+of age next year, or till I could find a favourable opportunity of
+breaking the fact to my mother.'
+
+"'Will she mind? Will she be angry?' asked Esperanza.
+
+"'Not when she comes to know you, dear love.'
+
+"Although I knew my mother's strong character, I was infatuated enough
+to believe what I said. Where was the heart so stony that would not
+warm to that fair and gentle creature? Where the pride so stubborn
+which that tender influence could not bend?
+
+"I had the banns put up at the church of St. George the Martyr, assured
+that Martha's rheumatism and Benjamin's lethargic temper would prevent
+either of them attending the morning service on any of the three
+fateful Sundays. If Martha went to church at all, she crept there in
+the evening, after tea. She liked the gaslights and the evening warmth,
+the short prayers, and the long sermon, and she met her own class among
+the congregation. I felt tolerably safe about the banns.
+
+"Had my mother been in good health, it would have been difficult for
+me to spend so many of my evenings away from home; but the neuralgic
+affection which had troubled her in Suffolk had not been subjugated by
+the great Dr. Gull's treatment, and she passed a good deal of her life
+in her own rooms and in semi-darkness, ministered to by a lady who had
+been a member of our household ever since my father's death, and whose
+presence had been the only drawback to my home happiness.
+
+"This lady was my mother's governess--Miss Marjorum--a woman of
+considerable brain power, wide knowledge of English and German
+literature, and a style of pianoforte playing which always had the
+effect of cold water down my back. And yet Miss Marjorum played
+correctly. She introduced no discords into that hard, dry music,
+which seemed to me to have been written expressly for her hard and
+precise finger-tips, bony knuckles, and broad, strong hand, with a
+thumb which she boasted of as resembling Thalberg's. In a difficult
+and complicated movement Miss Marjorum's thumb worked wonders. It was
+ubiquitous; it turned under and over, and rapped out sharp staccato
+notes in the midst of presto runs, or held rigid semibreves while the
+active fingers fired volleys of chords, shrilled out a six-bar shake,
+or raced the bass with lightning triplets. In whatever entanglement
+of florid ornament Liszt or Thalberg had disguised a melody, Miss
+Marjorum's thumb could search it out and drum it into her auditors.
+
+"Miss Marjorum was on the wrong side of fifty. She had a squat figure
+and a masculine countenance, and her voice was deep and strong, like
+the voice of a man. She dressed with a studious sobriety in dark cloth
+or in grey alpaca, according to the seasons, and in the evening she
+generally wore plaid poplin, which ruled her square, squat figure into
+smaller squares. I have observed an affinity between plain people and
+plaid poplin.
+
+"Miss Marjorum was devoted to my mother; and antagonistic as her nature
+was to me in all things, and blighting as was her influence upon the
+fond dream of my youth, I am bound to record that she was conscientious
+in carrying out her own idea of duty. Her idea of duty unhappily
+included no indulgence for youthful impulses, and she disapproved of
+every independent act of mine.
+
+"My evening absences puzzled her.
+
+"'I wonder you can like to be out nearly every evening when your mother
+is so ill,' she remarked severely, on my return to Connaught Place
+after that glimpse of paradise in Queen Square.
+
+"'If I could be of any use to my mother by staying at home, you may be
+sure I should not be out, Miss Marjorum,' I replied, rather stiffly.
+
+"'It would be a satisfaction to your mother to know you were under her
+roof, even when she is obliged to be resting quietly in her own room.'
+
+"'Unfortunately my mathematical coach lives under another roof, and I
+have to accommodate myself to his hours.'
+
+"This was sophistication; but it was true that I read mathematics with
+an ex-senior wrangler in South Kensington every other day.
+
+"'Do you spend _every_ evening with your coach?' asked Miss Marjorum,
+looking up suddenly from her needlework, and fixing me with her cold
+grey eye.
+
+"'Certainly not. You know the old saw--"All work and no play----"'
+
+"'And how do you amuse yourself when you are not at South Kensington? I
+did not think you knew many people in London.'
+
+"'That is because I know very few people whom you know. My chief
+friends are the friends of my college life--not the worthy bucolics of
+Suffolk.'
+
+Miss Marjorum sighed, and went on with her sewing. She delighted
+in the plainest of plain work--severest undergarments of calico or
+flannel. She had taken upon herself to supply my mother's poorer
+cottage-tenants with under-clothing--a very worthy purpose; but I could
+not help wishing she had deferred a little more to the universal sense
+of beauty in her contributions to the cottagers' wardrobes. Surely
+those prison-like garments must have appalled their recipients. My
+inexperienced eye noted only their ugliness in shape and coarseness of
+texture. I longed for a little trimming, a softer quality of flannel.
+
+"'I am afraid they must hurt the people who get them,' I said one day,
+when Miss Marjorum exhibited her bale of flannel underwear.
+
+"'They are delightfully warm, and friction promotes circulation and
+maintains the health of the skin,' she replied severely. 'I don't know
+what _more_ you would have.'
+
+"It irked me not a little to note Miss Marjorum's suspicious air when
+she discussed my evening occupations, for I knew she had more influence
+over my mother than any one living, and I fancied that she would not
+scruple to use that influence against me. I had lost her friendship
+long ago by childish rudenesses, which I looked back upon with regret,
+but which I could not obliterate from her memory by the studious
+civilities of later years.
+
+"I went back to Cambridge, and my mother and her devoted companion left
+Connaught Place for Brighton, Dr. Gull having strongly recommended
+sea-air, after exhausting his scientific means in the weary battle with
+nerve pain. It was a relief to me, when I thought of Esperanza, to know
+that Miss Marjorum was fifty miles away from Great Ormond Street. Those
+suspicious glances and prying questions of hers had frightened me.
+
+"_When_ I thought of Esperanza!--when was she not the centre and
+circumference of my thoughts? I worked hard; missed no lecture;
+neglected no opportunity; for I had made up my mind to win the game of
+life off my own bat; but Esperanza's image was with me whatever I was
+doing. I think I mixed up her personality in an extraordinary fashion
+with the higher mathematics. She perched like a fairy upon every curve,
+or slid sylph-like along every line. I weighed her, and measured her,
+and calculated the doctrine of chances about her. She became in my
+mind the ruling, and to common eyes, invisible spirit of the science of
+quantity and number.
+
+"Could this interval between the asking in church and my wedding-day
+be any other than a period of foolish dreaming, of fond confusion and
+wandering thoughts? I was not twenty-one, and I was about to take a
+step which would inevitably offend my only parent, the only being to
+whom I stood indebted for care and affection. In the rash hopefulness
+of a youthful passion, I made sure of being ultimately forgiven; but,
+hopeful as I was, I knew it might be some time before I could obtain
+pardon. In the meanwhile, I had an income which would suffice for a
+youthful _ménage_. I would find a quiet home for Esperanza at one of
+the villas on the Grandchester Road till I had taken my degree, and
+then I should have to begin work in London. Indeed, I had fixed in my
+own mind upon a second-floor in Martha's roomy old house, which would
+be conveniently near the Temple, where I might share a modest set
+of chambers with a Cambridge friend. In the deep intoxication of my
+love-dream, Great Ormond Street seemed just the most delightful spot in
+which to establish the cosy home I figured to myself. It would be an
+infinite advantage to live under my dear old nurse's roof, and to know
+that she would watch over my girl-wife while I sat waiting for briefs
+in my dingy chambers, or reading law with an eminent junior.
+
+"I had asked Esperanza on the night of our betrothal whether she
+thought we could live upon five hundred a year. A ripple of laughter
+preluded her reply.
+
+"'Dear George, do you know what my father's income was?' she asked.
+'Sixty-five pounds a year. He paid fifteen pounds a year for our
+cottage and garden--such a dear old garden--and we had to live and
+clothe ourselves upon the other fifty pounds. He was very shabby
+sometimes, poor darling; but we were always happy. Though I seem so
+helpless in getting my own living, I think I could keep house for you,
+and not waste your money. Five hundred a year! Why, you are immensely
+rich!'
+
+"I told her that I should be able to add to our income by the time we
+had been married a few years, and then we would have a house in the
+country, and a garden, and a pair of ponies for her to drive, and cows
+and poultry, and all the things that women love. What a happy dream
+it was, and how the sweet face brightened under the lamplight as she
+listened to me.
+
+"'I want nothing but your love,' she said; 'nothing. I am not afraid of
+poverty.'
+
+"The three weeks were gone. I got an exeat, and went up to London by an
+early train. I had directed Esperanza to meet me at the church, whose
+doors we had so often passed together in our evening walks, and where
+we had knelt side by side one Sunday evening. She was to take Martha to
+church with her; but not till the last moment, not till they were at
+the church door, was she to tell my old nurse what was going to happen,
+lest an idea of duty to the mother should induce her to betray the son.
+
+"The air was crisp and bright, and the wintry landscape basked in the
+wintry sun between Cambridge and Stratford; but the dull greyness
+of our metropolitan winter wrapped me round when I left Bishopsgate
+Street, and there was a thin curtain of fog hanging over my beloved
+Bloomsbury when my hansom rattled along the sober old-world streets
+to the solid Georgian church. I sprang from the cab as if I had worn
+Mercury's sandals, told the man to wait, ran lightly up the steps,
+pushed back the heavy door and entered the dark temple, hushed and
+breathless. How solemn and cold and ghostly the church looked, how grey
+and pale the great cold windows. The fog seemed thicker here than in
+the streets outside; and the dreary fane was empty.
+
+"I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to eleven. I had entreated her
+to be at the church at least ten minutes before the hour; and I felt
+bitterly disappointed that she had not anticipated the appointment.
+
+"Her last letter was three days old. Could she be ill? could any evil
+thing have happened? I hurried back to the church door, intending to
+get into my cab and drive to Ormond Street. I changed my mind before
+I had crossed the threshold. I might miss her on the way--drive by
+one street while she and Martha were walking in another. Again, there
+was something undignified in a bridegroom rushing off in search of
+his bride. My place was to wait in the church. I had seen a good many
+weddings in our parish church in Suffolk, and I knew that the bride was
+almost always late. Yet, in spite of this experience, I had expected
+my bride in advance of the appointed time. She had no wreath of
+orange-blossoms, no bridal veil to adjust, no doting mother, or sister
+bridesmaids to flurry and hinder her under the pretence of helping.
+She had no carriage to wait for. Her impatience to see me after nearly
+three weeks should have brought her to the church earlier than this.
+
+"Then I remembered Martha. No doubt she was waiting for Martha. That
+good soul was interviewing the butcher, or adjusting her Paisley shawl,
+while I was fretting and fuming in the church. I had no best man to
+reason with my impatience and keep up my spirits. My best man was to be
+the parish clerk, and he had not yet appeared upon the scene. I saw a
+pew-opener creeping about, a pew-opener in the accustomed close black
+bonnet and sober apparel. Esperanza's bridesmaid! Martha would have to
+give her away.
+
+"I took a turn round the church, looked at the monuments, and even
+stood still to read a tablet here and there, and knew no more of the
+inscription after I had read it than if it had been in choice Assyrian.
+
+"I opened the heavy door and went out on the steps, and stood watching
+a stray cab or a stray pedestrian, dimly visible through the thickening
+fog. I looked at my watch every other minute, between anger and
+despair. It was five minutes to eleven. The curate who was to marry us
+passed me on the steps and went into the church, unsuspecting that I
+was to be the chief actor in the ceremony. I stood looking along the
+street, in the only direction in which my bride was to be expected, and
+my heart sickened as the slow minutes wore themselves out, till it was
+nearly a quarter-past eleven.
+
+"I could endure this no longer. My hansom was waiting on the opposite
+side of the street. I lifted my finger, and signed to the driver to
+come over to me. There was nothing for it but to go to Great Ormond
+Street, and discover the cause of delay.
+
+"Before the man could climb into his seat and cross the road, a
+brougham drove sharply up to the church steps--a brougham of dingy
+aspect, driven by a man whose livery branded him as a flyman.
+
+"I was astonished at the fly, but never doubted that it brought me my
+dear love, and my heart was light again, and I ran to greet her with a
+welcoming smile.
+
+"The carriage door was sharply opened from within, and my mother
+stepped out and stood before me, tall and grave, in her neat dark
+travelling dress, her fine features sharp and clear in the wintry gloom.
+
+"'Mother!' I exclaimed aghast.
+
+"'I know I am not the person you expected, George,' she said quietly.
+'Badly as you have behaved to me, I am sorry for your disappointment.'
+
+"'Where is Esperanza?' I cried, unheeding my mother's address.
+
+"It was only afterwards that her words came back to me--in that long
+dull afterwards when I had leisure to brood over every detail in this
+agonizing scene.
+
+"'She is safe, and in good hands, and she is where you will never see
+her again.'
+
+"'That's a lie!' I cried. 'If she is among the living, I will find her.
+If she is dead, I will follow her.'
+
+"'You are violent and unreasonable; but I suppose your romantic
+infatuation must excuse you. When you have read this letter, you will
+be calmer, I hope.'
+
+"She gave me a letter in Esperanza's writing. We had moved a few paces
+from the church steps while we talked. I read the letter, walking
+slowly along the street, my mother at my side.
+
+    "'DEAREST,
+
+    "'I am going away. I am not to be your wife. It was a happy dream,
+    but a foolish one. I should have ruined your life. That has been
+    made clear to me; I love you far too dearly to be your enemy. You
+    will never see me again. Don't be unhappy about me. I shall be well
+    cared for. I am going very far away; but if it were to the farthest
+    end of the earth, and if I were to live a hundred years, I should
+    never cease to love you, or learn to love you less.
+
+                                                   "'Good-bye for ever,
+                                                          "'ESPERANZA.'
+
+"'I know whose hand is in this,' I said,--'Miss Marjorum.'
+
+"'Miss Marjorum is my true and loyal friend, and yours too, though you
+may not believe it.'
+
+"'Whoever it may be who has stolen my love away from me, that person
+is my dire and deadly foe. Whether the act is yours or hers, it is the
+act of my bitterest enemy, and I shall ever so remember it. Look here,
+mother, let there be no misunderstanding between you and me. I love
+this girl better than my life. Whatever trick you have played upon her,
+whatever cajoleries you and Miss Marjorum have brought to bear upon
+her, whatever false representations you may have made, appealing to her
+unselfishness against her love, you have done that which will wreck
+your son's life unless you can undo it.'
+
+"'I have saved my son from the shipwreck his own folly would have
+made of his life,' my mother answered calmly. 'I have seen what these
+unequal marriages come to--before the wife is thirty.'
+
+"'It would be no unequal marriage. The girl I love is a lady.'
+
+"'A village organist's daughter, by her own confession totally without
+education. A pretty, delicate young creature with a certain surface
+refinement, I grant you; but do you think that would stand the wear
+and tear of life, or counterbalance your humiliation when people asked
+questions about your wife's antecedents and belongings? People, even
+the politest people, _will_ ask those questions, George. My dear, dear
+boy, the thing you were to have done to-day would have been utter ruin
+to your social existence for the next fifty years. You will never be
+rich enough or great enough to live down such a marriage.'
+
+"'Don't preach to me,' I cried savagely. 'You have broken my heart.
+Surely that is enough for you.'
+
+"I broke away from her as she laid her hand upon my arm--such a shapely
+hand in a dark grey glove. I remembered even in that moment of anguish
+and of anger how my dear love had often walked by my side, gloveless,
+shabbier than a milliner's apprentice. No, she was not of my mother's
+world; no more was Titania. She belonged to the realm of romance and
+_féerie_; not to Belgravia or Mayfair.
+
+"I ran back to the spot where the hansom still waited for me, jumped
+in, and told the man to drive to Great Ormond Street. I left my mother
+standing on the pavement, to find her way back to her carriage as she
+could, to go where she would.
+
+"I knocked at the lodging-house door loud enough to wake the Seven
+Sleepers. I pushed past the scared maid-servant, and dashed into
+Martha's parlour. She was sitting with her spectacles on her nose
+poring over a tradesman's book, and with other books of the same kind
+on the table before her.
+
+"'Martha, this is your doing,' I said. 'You betrayed me to my mother!'
+
+"'Oh, Mr. George, forgive your old nurse that loves you as if you were
+her own flesh and blood. I only did my duty by you and my mistress. It
+would never have done.'
+
+"She called me 'dear,' as in the old nursery days. Tears were streaming
+down her withered cheeks.
+
+"'It was you, then?'
+
+"'Yes, it was me, Mr. George, leastways me and Benjamin. We talked it
+over a long time before he wrote the letter to my mistress at Brighton.
+Sarah came home from church on Sunday dinner-time. The drawing-rooms
+were dining out, and the second floor is empty, so there was nothing to
+hinder Sarah's going to church. She came home at dinner-time, and told
+me you and Esperanza Campbell had been asked in church--for the third
+time. You might have knocked me down with a feather. I never thought
+she could be so artful. I talked it over with Benjamin, and he posted a
+letter that night.'
+
+"'And Miss Marjorum came up from Brighton next morning, and came to see
+Esperanza?'
+
+"'How did you know that, Mr. George?'
+
+"'I know Miss Marjorum.'
+
+"'Yes, it was Miss Marjorum that came. She asked to see Esperanza
+alone, and they were shut up together for over an hour, and then
+the bell was rung, and Miss Marjorum told the girl to pack up Miss
+Campbell's things, bring her box down to the hall, and when she had
+done that, to fetch a four-wheeler. Sarah was nearly as upset as I was,
+but she and I packed the things between us--such a few things, poor
+child--and carried the box downstairs, and I waited in the hall while
+Sarah ran for the cab. And presently Esperanza came out of the parlour
+with Miss Marjorum, and put on her hat and jacket, and then came to bid
+me good-bye.
+
+"'She put her arms round my neck and kissed me; and though I had done
+my duty by you and your ma, Mr. George, I felt like Judash. "It was
+right of you to tell," she said; "it was only right--for his sake," and
+Miss Marjorum hurried her down the steps and into the cab before she
+could say another word. I do believe the poor dear child gave you up
+without a murmur, Mr. George, because she knew that it would have been
+your ruin to marry her.'
+
+"'Bosh! That had been drummed into her by Miss Marjorum. You have done
+me the worst turn you ever did any one in your life, Martha; and yet
+I thought if there was anybody in the world I could trust it was you.
+Where did the cab go--do you know that?'
+
+"'Charing Cross Station. I heard Miss Marjorum give the order.'"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+             "AND THAT UNREST WHICH MEN MISCALL DELIGHT."
+
+
+Allan went back to Matcham sobered by grief, and longing for the
+comfort his betrothed could give him, the comfort of sympathy and
+gentle words, the deeper comfort in the assurance of her love.
+
+Suzette looked very pale in her black frock when Allan appeared at
+Marsh House after his bereavement. They stood side by side in the
+grey light of a hopelessly dull day, finding but little speech in the
+sadness of this first meeting.
+
+"My darling, you have been grieving for my grief," he said tenderly,
+looking into the dark eyes, noting the tired look as of many tears, the
+sharper line of the cheek, the settled pallor, where a lovely carmine
+had been wont to come and go like warm light.
+
+"My dearest, you have lost all your roses--and for my sake. For me
+those dear eyes have known sleepless nights, those lovely cheeks have
+grown pinched and pale."
+
+"Do you think that I could help being sorry for you, Allan?" she
+murmured, with downcast eyelids.
+
+"You had no other cause for sorrow, I hope?"
+
+"No, no; only in every life there are saddening intervals. I was sorry
+for your sake--sorry that I was never to see your father again. I liked
+him so much, Allan. And then somehow I got into a low-spirited way, and
+old Dr. Podmore gave me a tonic which made my head ache. I don't know
+that it had any other effect."
+
+"Suzette, it was cruel of you not to tell me that you were ill."
+
+"Oh, I was not to say ill. Why should I worry you about such nonsense?
+I was only below par. That is what Dr. Podmore called it. But please
+don't talk about me, Allan. Talk to me of yourself and of your poor
+mother. She is coming to stay with you, I hope?"
+
+"Yes, she is coming to me next week. How is Mrs. Wornock? Do you go to
+her as much as ever?"
+
+"Almost as much. She seems so dependent upon me for companionship, poor
+soul. I am the only girl she has taken to--as people say."
+
+"What a wise woman to choose the most charming girl in the world."
+
+"If you said in the Matcham world, it would not be a stupendous
+compliment."
+
+"Nay, I mean the world. I challenge the universe to produce me a second
+Suzette. And Geoffrey, your violin player, has he been much at home?"
+
+"Not very much. Please don't call him my violin player. I have not
+played a single accompaniment for him since you objected. I have been
+very dutiful."
+
+"Don't talk of duty. It is love that I want, love without alloy; love
+which, being full of foolishness itself, can forgive a lover's baseless
+jealousy."
+
+"Allan, have I ever been unforgiving?"
+
+"No, you have borne with my tempers. You have been all that is kind
+and sweet--but I sometimes wish you would be angry with me. Would that
+there were a girl in Matcham handsome enough to admit of your jealousy!
+How desperately I would flirt with that girl!"
+
+Her wan smile was not encouraging.
+
+"Is he still as devoted to his fiddle? Does he talk of Tartini,
+Spontini, de Beriot, as other men talk of Salisbury or Gladstone?"
+
+"I have seen very little of him; but he is a fanatic about music. He
+inherits his mother's passion."
+
+"His poor mother," sighed Allan.
+
+"She is so fond of you--almost as fond as she is of her own son."
+
+"That's not possible, Suzie."
+
+"Well, the son must be first, of course; but, indeed, she is very fond
+of you, Allan."
+
+"Dear soul, it is for old sake's sake. I'll tell you her poor little
+innocent secret, Suzie. You, who are the other half of my soul, have a
+right to know all things which gravely interest me. Only you must be
+discretion itself; and you must never breathe a word of Mrs. Wornock's
+story to my mother."
+
+And then he sat down by her side in the comfortable corner by the
+old-fashioned fireplace, fenced off from all the outer world by a
+Japanese screen, on which Choti and an army of smaller devils grinned
+and capered against a black satin background, and he told her tenderly,
+but only in outline, the story of his father's first love, and
+Esperanza's all-too-willing sacrifice.
+
+"It was generous--but a mistake," he said in conclusion. "She gave up
+her own happiness, dashed away the cup of joy when it was at her lips.
+She was nobly unselfish, and she spoilt two lives. Such sacrifices
+never answer."
+
+"Do you really believe that, Allan?" asked Suzette, looking at him with
+a startling intensity.
+
+"I really do. I have never known a case in which self-surrender of that
+kind has ended well. A man and woman who love each other should be true
+to each other and their mutual love. All worldly considerations should
+be as naught. If a man truly loves a beggar-girl, let him marry her;
+and don't let the beggar-girl jilt him because she thinks he would do
+better by marrying a duchess."
+
+"But if two people love each other--who are otherwise bound and
+fettered, who cannot be happy without breaking older ties----"
+
+"Ah, that is a different thing. Honour comes into the question,
+and there must be sacrifices. This world would be a pandemonium if
+inclination went before honour. I am talking of love weighed against
+worldly wisdom, against poverty, against rank, race, wealth. You
+can understand now why Mrs. Wornock's heart went out to me from the
+beginning of our acquaintance--why she has accepted me almost as a
+second son."
+
+Allan's Matcham friends were enthusiastic in their welcome, and cordial
+in their expressions of sympathy. It may be that the increase of means
+and importance which had come to him by his father's death was no small
+factor in the opinion of the village and its environs. A man who had
+an estate in Suffolk, and who lived at Matcham for his own pleasure,
+was a personage; and Matcham gossip did not fail to exaggerate the
+unseen Suffolk estate, and to talk of the Beechhurst property as a
+mere bagatelle, a windfall from a maternal uncle, hardly worth talking
+about, as compared with Fendyke and its vast acreage.
+
+"Lady Emily has the house and home-farm for her life," Mrs. Mornington
+explained, with the privileged air of Allan's intimate friend; "but the
+bulk of the estate passes at once to Mr. Carew. My niece has done very
+well for herself, after all."
+
+The last words, carelessly spoken, implied that in the first instance
+Mr. Carew had been rather a poor match for Miss Vincent.
+
+"I suppose this sad event will delay the marriage?"
+
+"For two or three months, perhaps. They were to have been married
+at midsummer, when Suzette will come of age; but she tells me she
+would not think of marrying Allan till at least half a year after his
+father's death. She talked of a year, but that would be simply absurd.
+The wedding can be as quiet as they like."
+
+"Yes, of course," murmured assenting friends, sipping Mrs. Mornington's
+Ceylon tea, and despondently foreseeing the stern necessity of wedding
+presents, without even the poor compensation of champagne, ices,
+wedding-cake, and a crowd of fine gowns and new bonnets. They were to
+have positively no equivalent for their money.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suzette had pleaded hard for a year's delay.
+
+"It would be more respectful to him whom you have lost; and it would be
+more pleasing to your mother," she said.
+
+"No, Suzette, my mother would rather see me happy than sacrifice my
+happiness to conventionality. Half a year is a long time for a man
+whose life seems a thing of shreds and patches, waiting the better
+fuller life that he longs for. I shall remember my dear father with no
+less affection; I shall no less regret his loss; when you and I are
+one. We can be married quietly at nine o'clock in the morning, before
+Matcham people have finished breakfast, with only your father and aunt,
+and my mother, for witnesses; and we can slip away from the station
+in the fresh September morning on the first stage of our journey to
+Como. Such a lovely journey at that season, Suzie! It will still be
+summer in Italy, and we can stay late in October, till the grapes are
+all gathered and the berceaus are getting bare, and then we can come
+back to Matcham to our own cosy fireside, and amuse ourselves with the
+arrangement of our house. It will be as new to me as it will be to you,
+Suzie, for only when you are its mistress will it be home."
+
+Suzette could hardly withhold her consent, her lover being so earnest.
+It was settled that the marriage should take place early in September;
+and this being decided, the current of life flowed smoothly on, Allan
+spending more of his days at Marsh House, The Grove, and Discombe, than
+in his own house, except when Lady Emily was with him.
+
+Discombe was by far the most delightful of these three houses in
+out-of-door weather, pleasant as were Mrs. Mornington's carefully
+tended grounds and shrubberies, her verandah and spacious conservatory.
+
+The gardens at Discombe had that delicious flavour of the old world,
+and that absolute seclusion which can never be enjoyed in grounds that
+are within ear-shot of a high-road. At Discombe the long grass walks,
+the walls of ilex and of yew, the cypress avenues, and marble temples
+were isolated amidst surrounding woods, nearly a mile away from the
+traffic of everyday life. There was a sense of quiet and privacy here,
+compared with which Marsh House and the Grove were scarcely superior
+to the average villa in a newly developed suburb.
+
+The seasons waxed and waned; the month of May, when the woodland walks
+round Discombe were white with the feathery bloom of the mountain ash,
+and golden with the scented blossoms of the yellow azalea; and June,
+which filled the woodland avenues with a flush of purple rhododendrons,
+masses of bloom, in an ascending scale of colour from the deep bass of
+darkest purple to the treble of palest lilac; and July, with her lap
+full of roses that made the gardens as brilliant as a picture by Alma
+Tadèma.
+
+"I always tell the gardeners that if they give me roses I will forgive
+them all the rest," said Mrs. Wornock, when Allan complimented her upon
+her banquet of bloom; arches of roses, festoons of roses, temples built
+of roses, roses in beds and borders, everywhere.
+
+"But your men are model gardeners; they neglect nothing."
+
+In this paradise of flowers Allan and Suzette dawdled away two or
+three afternoons in every week. Discombe seemed to Allan always
+something of an enchanted palace--a place upon which there lay a
+glamour and a spell, a garden of sleep, a grove for woven paces and
+weaving hands, a spot haunted by sad sweet memories, ruled over by the
+genius of love, faithful in disappointment. Mrs. Wornock's personality
+gave an atmosphere of sadness to the house in which she lived, to the
+gardens in which she paced to and fro with slow, meditative steps; but
+it was not an unpleasing sadness, and it suited Allan's mood in this
+quiet summer of waiting, while grief for the loss of his father was
+still fresh in his mind.
+
+Lady Emily came to Discombe on several occasions, and now that Mrs.
+Wornock's shyness had worn off--with all those agitations which were
+inevitable at a first meeting--the two women were very good friends. It
+was difficult for any one not to take kindly to Lady Emily Carew, and
+she on her side was fascinated by a nature so different from her own,
+and by that reserve force of genius which gave fire and pathos to Mrs.
+Wornock's playing.
+
+Lady Emily listened with moistened eyes to the Sonata Pathetica, and
+Mrs. Wornock showed a cordial interest in the Blickling Park and
+Woodbastwick cows--which gave distinction to the Fendyke dairy farm.
+
+"Pure white, with lovely black muzzles--and splendid milkers!"
+protested Lady Emily. "I was taught that thing you play, dear Mrs.
+Wornock; but my playing was never good for much, even when I was having
+two lessons a week from poor Sir Julius. He was only Mr. Benedict when
+he taught me, and he was almost young."
+
+Geoffrey made meteoric appearances at Discombe during those quiet
+summer months, and his presence seemed to make everybody uncomfortable.
+There was a restlessness--a suppressed fever about him which made
+sensitive people nervous. Dearly though his mother loved him, and
+gladly as she welcomed his reappearance upon the scene of her life,
+she was always fluttered and anxious while he was under her roof.
+
+His leave expired early in July, but instead of joining his regiment,
+which had returned to England, and was now quartered at York, he sent
+in his papers, without telling his mother or anybody else what he was
+doing, and he would not reconsider his decision when asked to do so by
+his colonel. He told his mother one morning at breakfast, in quite a
+casual way, that he had left the army.
+
+"Oh, Geoffrey!" she exclaimed, with a shocked look.
+
+"I hope you are not sorry. I thought it would please you for me to be
+my own master, able to spend more of my life with you."
+
+"Dear Geoffrey, I am very glad on that account; but I'm afraid it is a
+selfish gladness. It was better for you to have a profession. Everybody
+told me so years ago, when I was so grieved at your going into the
+army."
+
+"That is a way everybody has of saying smooth things. Well, mother, I
+am no longer a soldier. India was pleasant enough--there was a smack
+of adventure, a possibility of fighting--but I could not have endured
+garrison life in an English town. I would rather mope at home."
+
+"Why should you mope, Geoff?"
+
+"Yes, why? I am free to go east, west, north, and south. I suppose
+there need be no moping now?"
+
+"But you will be often at home, won't you, dear? Or else I shall be no
+gainer by your leaving the army."
+
+"Yes, I will be here as often, and as much as--as I can bear it."
+
+He had risen from the breakfast-table, and was walking up and down the
+room, with that light careless step of his which seemed in perfect
+harmony with his tall slim figure. He was very pale, and his eyes were
+brighter than usual, and there was a quick restlessness in the smile
+that flashed across his face now and then.
+
+"Do I bore you so much, Geoffrey?" his mother asked, with a wounded
+look.
+
+"You bore me? No, no, no! Oh, surely you know how the land lies. Surely
+this fever cannot have been eating up my heart and my strength all this
+time without your eyes seeing, and your heart sympathizing. You _must_
+know that I love her."
+
+"I feared as much, my poor Geoffrey."
+
+No name had been spoken; yet mother and son understood each other.
+
+"You feared! Great God, why should it be a reason for fear? Here am
+I, young, rich, my own master--and here is she as free as she is
+fair--free to be my wife to-morrow, except for this tie which is no
+tie--a foolish engagement to a man she never loved."
+
+"Has she told you that?"
+
+"Not she. Her lips are locked by an over-strained sense of honour.
+She will marry a man for whom she doesn't care a straw. She will be
+miserable all her life, or at best she will have missed happiness, and
+on her deathbed she will boast to her parish priest, 'I kept my word.'
+Poor pretty Puritan! She thinks it virtue to break my heart and grieve
+her own."
+
+"You have told her of your love, Geoffrey?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That was dishonourable."
+
+"No more than it was to love her. I am a lump of dishonour; I am made
+up of lies; but if she had an ounce of pluck, there need be no more
+falsehood. She has only to tell him the truth, the sad simple truth. 'I
+never loved you. I have let myself be persuaded into an engagement, but
+I never loved you.'"
+
+"That would break Allan's heart."
+
+"It would be bad to bear, no doubt, but not so bad as the gradual
+revelation that must come upon him in the years after marriage. She may
+be able to deceive him now--to delude him with the idea that she loves
+him; but how about the long winter evenings by their own fireside, and
+the dull nights when the rain is on the roof? A woman may hide her want
+of love before marriage; but, by Heaven, she can't hide it after! God
+help him when he finds that he has a victim, and not a wife!"
+
+"Poor Allan! But how do you know she does not care for him--or that she
+cares for you?"
+
+"How do I know that I live and breathe, that this is I?" touching
+himself, with an impatient tap of those light restless fingers. "I
+know it. I have known it more or less from the time we played those
+duets--the dawn of knowledge and of love. To know each other was to
+love. We were born for each other. Allan, with his shadowy resemblance
+to me, was only my forerunner, like the man one sees in the street, the
+man who reminds one of a dear friend, half an hour or so before we meet
+that very friend. Allan taught her to like the type. She never loved
+him. In me she recognizes the individual, fated to love her and to be
+loved by her."
+
+"Dear Geoffrey, this is mere guess-work."
+
+"No! It is instinct, intuition, dead certainty. I tell you--once,
+twice, a thousand times, if you like--she loves me, and she doesn't
+love him. Tax her with it, pluck out the heart of her mystery. This
+hollow sham--this simulacrum of love must not go on to marriage. Talk
+to her, as woman to woman, as mother to daughter. I tell you it must
+not go on. It is driving me mad."
+
+"I will do what I can. Poor Allan! So good, so true-hearted!"
+
+"Am I false-hearted or vile, mother? Why should Allan be all in all to
+you?"
+
+"He is not all in all. You know you are the first, always the first in
+my heart; but I am deeply grieved for Allan. If what you tell me is
+true, he is doomed to be most unhappy. He is so fond of her. He has
+placed all his hopes of happiness upon his marriage--and they are to be
+married in little more than a month. It will be heartless to break it
+off."
+
+"If it isn't broken off, there will be a tragedy. I will thrust myself
+between them at the altar. The lying words shall not be spoken. I would
+rather shoot him--or her--than that she should perjure herself, swear
+to love another while she loves only me!"
+
+"Geoffrey, how do you know? How can you be sure----"
+
+"Our hands have touched; our eyes have met. That is enough."
+
+He walked out of the window to the garden, and from the garden to the
+stables, where he ordered his dog-cart. His servant kept a portmanteau
+always ready packed. He left Discombe within an hour of that
+conversation with his mother, and he was on his way to London before
+noon. The first intimation of his departure which Mrs. Wornock received
+was a note which she found on the luncheon-table.
+
+    "I am off to the Hartz for a fortnight's tramp. Remember, something
+    must be done to prevent this marriage. I shall return before the
+    middle of August, and shall expect to find all settled.
+
+    "Address Poste Restante, Hartzburg."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+                     "WHO KNOWS WHY LOVE BEGINS?"
+
+
+The time was drawing near. The corn was cut and carried on many a broad
+sweep of hot chalky soil, and "summer's branding sun" had burnt up the
+thin grass on the wide bare down, where never shadow of tree or bush
+made a cool spot in the expanse of light and heat and dryness. The
+mysterious immemorial stones yonder on Salisbury Plain stood up against
+a background of cloudless blue; and the windows of the cathedral in the
+valley glittered and flashed in the sunshine. Only in the sober old
+close, and the venerable gardens of a bygone generation, within hedges
+that dead hands had planted, trees whose growth dead eyes had watched,
+was there coolness or shelter, or the gentle slumberous feeling of
+summer afternoon in its restful perfection.
+
+Here, in an antique drawing-room, Mrs. Mornington and her niece were
+taking tea, after a morning with tailor and dressmaker.
+
+"There never was such a girl for not-caringness as this girl of mine,"
+said Mrs. Mornington, with a vexed air. "If it had not been for me, I
+don't think she would have had a new frock in her trousseau, and as she
+is a very prim personage about _lingerie_, and has a large stock of
+Parisian prettiness in that line, there would really have been nothing
+to buy."
+
+"Rather a relief, I should think," laughed Mrs. Canon, who was giving
+them tea.
+
+"A most delightful state of things," asserted Mrs. Sub-Dean, proud
+mother of half a dozen daughters, in which opinion agreed a county
+lady, also rich in daughters.
+
+"Ah, you are all against me!" said Mrs. Mornington; "but there is
+a great pleasure in buying things, especially when one is spending
+somebody else's money."
+
+"Poor papa!" sighed Suzette. "My aunt forgets that he is not Crœsus."
+
+"Look at that girl's wretched pale face!" cried Mrs. Mornington. "Would
+any one think that she was going to be married to a most estimable
+young man, and the best match in the neighbourhood--except one?"
+
+At those two last words, Suzette's cheeks flamed crimson, and the
+feminine conclave looking at her felt she was being cruelly used by
+this strong-minded aunt of hers.
+
+"I don't think the nicest girls are ever very keen about their
+trousseau," said the county lady, with a furtive glance at a buxom
+freckled daughter, who had lately become engaged, and who had already
+begun to discuss house-linen and frocks, with a largeness of ideas that
+alarmed her parents.
+
+"Yes; but there is a difference between caring too much and not caring
+at all. Suzette would be married in that white gingham she is wearing
+to-day, if I would let her."
+
+"Pray don't teaze people about my frocks, auntie. If you can't find
+something more interesting to talk about, we had better go away," said
+Suzette, with a pettishness which was quite unlike her; but it must
+be owned that to be made the object of a public attack in feminine
+convocation was somewhat exasperating.
+
+Mrs. Mornington was not to be put down. She went on talking of frocks,
+though one of the daughters of the house carried Suzette off to the
+garden--an act of real Christian charity, if she had not spoilt her
+good work by beginning to talk of Suzette's lover.
+
+"I can quite fancy your aunt must be rather boring sometimes," she
+said. "But _do_ tell me about Mr. Carew. I thought him so nice the
+other day at the flower-show, when you introduced him to me."
+
+"What can I tell you about him? You have seen him--and I am glad you
+thought him nice."
+
+"Yes; but one wants to know more. One wants to know what he is
+like--from your point of view."
+
+"But how could you see him from my point of view? That's impossible."
+
+"True! A casual acquaintance could never see him as he appears to
+you--to whom he is all the world," said the Canon's daughter, who
+was young and romantic, having lived upon church music and Coventry
+Patmore's poetry.
+
+"There's my aunt showing them patterns of my frocks!" exclaimed
+Suzette, irritably, glancing in at the drawing-room, where Mrs.
+Mornington sat, the centre of a little group, handing scraps of stuff
+out of her reticule.
+
+The scraps were being passed round and peered at and pulled about by
+everybody, with a meditative and admiring air. An African savage,
+seeing the group, would have supposed that some act of sortilege was
+being performed.
+
+"It is rather an ordeal being married," said the Canon's daughter,
+thinking sadly of a certain undergraduate who was down-hearted about
+his divinity exam., and upon whose achieving deacon's orders within a
+reasonable time depended the young lady's matrimonial prospects.
+
+She sighed as she thought of the difference in worldly wealth between
+that well-meaning youth and Allan Carew; and yet here was the future
+Mrs. Carew pale and worried, and obviously dissatisfied with her lot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When those gowns had been ordered, Suzette felt as if it were another
+link forged in the iron chain which seemed to weigh heavier upon her
+every day of her life.
+
+She had promised, and she must keep her promise. That was what she was
+continually saying to herself. Those words were woven into all her
+thoughts. Allan was so good, so true-hearted! Could she disappoint and
+grieve him? Could she be heartless, unkind, selfish--think of herself
+first and of him after--snatch at the happiness Fate offered her,
+and leave him out in the cold? No, better that she should bear her
+lot--become his wife, live out her slow, melancholy days, his faithful
+servant and friend, honouring him and obeying him, doing all that woman
+can do for man, except loving him.
+
+Those meteoric appearances of Geoffrey's had made life much harder
+for Suzette. She might have fought against her love for him more
+successfully perhaps had he been always near; had she seen him almost
+daily, and become accustomed to his presence as a common incident in
+the daily routine; but to be told that he was in the far north of
+Scotland, yachting with a friend; and then to be startled by his voice
+at her shoulder, murmuring her name in Discombe Wood; and to turn round
+with nervous quickness to see him looking at her with his pale smile,
+like a ghost--or to be assured that he was salmon-fishing in Connemara,
+and to see him suddenly sauntering across the lawn in the July dusk,
+more ghostlike even than in the woods, as if face and form were a
+materialization which her own sad thoughts had conjured out of the
+twilight.
+
+He would take very little trouble to explain his unlooked-for
+return. Scotland was too hot; the North Sea suggested a vast sheet of
+red-hot iron, blown over by a south wind that was like the breath of
+a blast-furnace. Ireland was a place of bad inns and inexorable rain;
+and there were no fish, or none that he could catch. He had come home
+because life was weariness away from home. He feared that life meant
+weariness everywhere.
+
+The days were hurrying by, and now Mrs. Mornington talked everlastingly
+of the wedding, or so it seemed to Suzette, who in these latter days
+tried to avoid her aunt as much as was consistent with civility, and
+fled from the Grove to Discombe as to a haven of peace. Mrs. Mornington
+loved to expatiate upon the coming event, to bewail her niece's
+indifferentism, to regret that there was to be no festivity worth
+speaking of, and to enlarge upon the advantages of Allan's position and
+surroundings, and Suzette's good fortune in having come to Matcham.
+
+"Your father might have spent a thousand pounds on a London season,
+and not have done half so well for you," she said conclusively.
+
+The General nodded assent.
+
+Certainly, between them they had done wonderfully well for Suzette.
+
+From this worldly wisdom the harassed girl fled to the quiet of
+Discombe, where the peaceful silence was only broken by the deep broad
+stream of sound from the organ, touched with ever-growing power by Mrs.
+Wornock. Suzette would steal softly into the music-room unannounced,
+and take her accustomed seat in the recess by the organ, and sit
+silently listening as long as Mrs. Wornock cared to play. Only when the
+last chord had died away did the two women touch hands and look at each
+other.
+
+It was about a week after that wearying day in Salisbury when Suzette
+seated herself by the player in this silent way, and sat listening to
+a funeral march by Beethoven, with her head leaning on her hand, and
+not so much as a murmur of praise for music or performer stirring the
+thoughtful quiet of her lips. When the last pianissimo notes, dropping
+to deepest bass, had melted into silence, Mrs. Wornock looked up and
+saw Suzette's face bathed in tears--tears that streamed over the pallid
+cheeks unchecked.
+
+Geoffrey's mother started up from the organ, and clasped the weeping
+girl to her breast.
+
+"Poor child! poor child! He was right, then? You are not happy."
+
+"Happy! I am miserable! I don't know what to do. I don't know what
+would be worst or wickedest. To disappoint him, or to marry him, not
+loving him!"
+
+"No, no, no! you must not marry, not if you cannot love him. But you
+are sure of that, Susie? Are you sure you don't love him? He is so
+good, so worthy to be loved, as his father was--years ago. Why should
+you not love him?"
+
+"Ah, who can tell?" sighed Suzette. "Who knows why love begins, or
+how love gets the mastery? I let myself be talked into thinking I
+loved him. I always liked him--liked his company--was grateful for
+his attentions, respected him for his fine nature, and then I let him
+persuade me that this was love; but it wasn't--it never was love.
+Friendship and liking are not love; and now that the fatal day draws
+near I know how wide a difference there is between love and liking."
+
+"You must not marry him, Suzette. You know I would not willingly
+say one word that would tell against Allan Carew's happiness. I
+love him almost as dearly as I love my own son; but when I see you
+miserable--when I see Geoffrey utterly wretched, I can no longer keep
+silence. This marriage must be broken off."
+
+"Allan will hate me; he will despise me. What can he think me?--false,
+fickle, unworthy of a good man's love."
+
+"You must tell him the truth. It will be cruel, but not so cruel as to
+let him go on believing in you, thinking himself happy, living in a
+fool's paradise. Will you let me speak for you, Suzette?--let me do
+what your mother might have done had she been here to help you in your
+need?"
+
+Suzette was speechless with tears, her face hidden on Mrs. Wornock's
+shoulder. The door was opened at this moment, and the butler announced
+Mr. Carew.
+
+Allan had approached the group by the organ before either Mrs. Wornock
+or Suzette could hide her agitation. Their tears, the way in which they
+clung to each other, told of some over-mastering grief.
+
+"Good God! what is the matter? What has happened?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Nothing has happened, Allan; yet there is sorrow for all of us--sorrow
+that has been coming upon us, though some of us did not know it.
+Suzette, may I tell him--now, this moment?"
+
+"May you tell me? Tell me what?" questioned Allan. "Suzette, speak to
+me--you--you--no one else!"
+
+Fear, indignation, despair were in his tone. He caught hold of
+Suzette's arm, and drew her towards him, looking searchingly at the
+pale, tear-stained face; but she shrank from his grasp, and sank on her
+knees at his feet.
+
+"It is my miserable secret--that must be told at last. I have tried--I
+have hoped--I honour--I respect you--Allan. But our hearts are not our
+own; we cannot guide or govern their impulses. My heart is weighed down
+with shame and misery, but it is empty of love. I cannot love you as
+your wife should. If I keep my word, I shall be a miserable woman."
+
+"You shall not be that," he said sternly--"not to make me the happiest
+man in creation. But don't you think," with chilling deliberation,
+"this tragedy might have been acted a little earlier? It seems to me
+that you have kept your secret over carefully."
+
+"I have been weak, Allan, hopelessly, miserably weak-minded. I tried to
+do what was best. I did not want to disappoint you----"
+
+"Disappoint me? Why, you have fooled me from the first! Disappoint
+me? Why, I have built the whole fabric of my future life upon this
+rotten foundation! I was to be happy because of your love; my days and
+years were to flow sweetly by in a paradise of domestic peace, blest
+by your love. And all the time there was no such thing. You did not
+love me; you had never loved me; you were only trying to love me; and
+the hopelessness of the endeavour is brought home to you now--at this
+eleventh hour--three weeks before our wedding-day. Suzette, Suzette,
+never was woman's cruelty crueller than this of yours!"
+
+She was in floods of tears at his feet, her head drooping till her brow
+almost touched the ground. He left her kneeling there, and rushed away
+to the garden to hide his own tears--the tears of which his manhood was
+ashamed, the passionate sobs, the wild hysterical weeping of the sex
+that seldom weeps. He found a shelter and a hiding-place in an angle
+of the garden, where there was a side walk shut in by close-cropped
+cypress walls, and here Mrs. Wornock found him presently, sitting on
+a marble bench, with his elbows on his knees, his face hidden in his
+hands.
+
+She seated herself at his side, and laid her hand gently on his.
+
+"Allan, dear Allan, I am so sorry for you," she said softly.
+
+"I am very sorry for myself. I don't seem to need anybody's pity. I
+think I can do all the grieving."
+
+"Ah, that is the worst of it. Nobody's sympathy can help you."
+
+"Not yours," he answered almost savagely; "for, at heart, you must
+be glad. My dismissal makes room for some one else--some one whose
+interests are dearer to you than mine could ever be."
+
+"There is no one nearer or dearer to me than you, Allan--no one--not
+even my own son. You have been to me as a son--the son of the man I
+fondly loved, whose face I was to look upon only once--once after those
+long years in which we were parted. I have loved you as a part of my
+youth, the living memory of my lost love. Ah, my dear, I had to learn
+the lesson of self-surrender when I was younger than you. I loved him
+with all my heart and mind, and I gave him up."
+
+"You did wrong to give him up. He himself said so. But there is no
+parallel between the two cases. This girl has let me believe in her.
+I have lived for a year in this sweet delusion--a bliss no more real
+than the happiness of a dream. She would have loved me; she would have
+married me; all would have been well for us but for your son. When he
+came, my chance was blighted. He has charms of mind and manner which
+I have not--like me, they say, but ten times handsomer. He can speak
+to her with a language that I have not. Oh, those singing notes on the
+violin; that long-drawn lingering sweep of the bow, like the cry of a
+spirit in paradise--an angelic voice telling of love ethereal--love
+released from clay; those tears which seemed to tremble on the strings;
+that loud, sudden sob of passionate pain, which came like a short,
+sharp amen to the prayer of love! I could understand that language
+better than he thought. He stole her love from me--set himself
+deliberately to rob me of my life's happiness."
+
+"It is cruel to say that, Allan. He is incapable of treachery, of
+deliberate wrong-doing. He is a creature of impulse."
+
+"Meaning a creature with whom self is the only god. And in one of
+his impulses he told Suzette of his love, even in plainer words than
+his Stradivarius could tell the story; and from that hour her heart
+was false to me. I saw the change in her when I came back--after my
+father's death."
+
+"You are unjust to him, Allan, in your grief and anger. Whatever his
+feelings may have been, he has fought against them. He has made himself
+almost an exile from this house."
+
+"He has been biding his time, no doubt; and now that I have had the
+_coup de grace_ he will come back."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                       "THAT WAY MADNESS LIES."
+
+
+It would have taken a very respectable earthquake to have made as
+much sensation in a rural neighbourhood as was made in the village
+and neighbourhood of Matcham by the cancelment of Allan Carew's
+engagement to General Vincent's daughter. The fact that no visitors had
+been bidden to the wedding seemed to make no difference in the rapid
+dissemination of the news. People from twenty miles round had been
+interested; people from twenty miles round had come up to be taxed, and
+had sent pepper-pots and hair-brushes, paper-knives and scent-bottles,
+fans and candlesticks--all of which were now returned to the givers in
+the very tissue paper and cardboard boxes in which they had been sent
+from shops or stores, accompanied by a formal little note of apology.
+The marriage had been deferred indefinitely; and, at his daughter's
+request, General Vincent begged to return the gifts, with best thanks
+for the kindly feeling which had prompted, etc.
+
+"It will do for some one else!"
+
+That was the almost inevitable exclamation when the tissue paper was
+unfolded and the gift appeared, untarnished and undamaged by the double
+transit. Then followed speculations as to the meaning of those words,
+"deferred indefinitely."
+
+"Indefinitely means never," pronounced Mrs. Roebuck; "there's no doubt
+upon that point. He has jilted her. I thought he would begin to look
+about him after his father's death. I dare say he will have a house in
+town next season--a _pied à terre_ near Park Lane--and go into society,
+instead of vegetating among those Bœotians. He must feel himself thrown
+away in such a hole."
+
+"I thought he was devoted to Miss Vincent."
+
+"Nonsense! How could any man be devoted to an insignificant Frenchified
+chit without style or _savoir farie_?"
+
+"She has a pretty, piquant little face," murmured Mr. Roebuck meekly,
+not liking to be enthusiastic about beauty which was the very opposite
+of his wife's Roman-nosed and flaxen-haired style.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon Mrs. Mornington the blow fell far more heavily than on Suzette's
+father, who was very glad to keep his daughter at home, albeit
+regretful that she should have treated a faithful lover so scurvily.
+
+"If the poor child did not know her own mind at the beginning, it's
+a blessed thing she found out her mistake before it was too late,"
+pleaded the General to his irate sister.
+
+"It _is_ too late--too late for respectability--too late for common
+humanity. To lead a young man on for over a year, almost to the foot of
+the altar, and then to throw him off. It is simply shameful! To make a
+fool of him and herself before the whole neighbourhood--to belittle
+herself as much as she has belittled him. No doubt all the women will
+say that _he_ has jilted _her_."
+
+"Let them. That cannot hurt her."
+
+"But it can hurt me, her aunt. I feel inclined to slap my most intimate
+friends when they ask me leading questions, evidently longing to hear
+that Allan has acted badly. And when I assure them that my niece is
+alone to blame, I can see in their faces that they don't, or won't,
+believe me. And why should they believe me? Could any girl, not an
+idiot, throw over such a match as Allan has become since his father's
+death?"
+
+"I hope you don't mean to say that my girl is an idiot?"
+
+"I say that she has acted like an idiot in this affair."
+
+"And I say that she has acted like an honest woman."
+
+"I shall never be able to look Lady Emily Carew in the face again."
+
+"Don't be alarmed about Lady Emily. She will be no more sorry to keep
+her son to herself than I am to keep my daughter."
+
+"She won't have him long. He'll be going off and marrying some horrid
+end-of-the-century girl in a fit of pique."
+
+"I don't believe he is such a fool."
+
+Matcham might talk its loudest, and dispute almost to blows, as to
+which was the jilter and which the jilted. The principal performers
+in the tragedy were well out of ear-shot--Allan at Fendyke with Lady
+Emily, Suzette at Bournemouth with an old convent friend and her
+invalid mother, people who had no connection with Matcham, and in whose
+society the girl could not be reminded of her own wrong-doing. The
+invitation to the villa at Branksome had been repeated very often; and
+on a renewal of it arriving just after that painful scene at Discombe,
+Suzette had written promptly to accept.
+
+"If you don't mind my coming to you out of spirits and altogether
+troubled in mind, _chérie_," she wrote; and the girl, who was a
+very quiet piece of amiability, and who had worshipped her livelier
+school-fellow, replied delightedly, "Your low spirits must be brighter
+than other people's gaiety. Come, and let the sea and the downs console
+you. Bournemouth is lovely in September. Mother has given me the
+charmingest pony, and I have been carefully taught by our old coachman,
+who is a whip in a thousand, so you need not be afraid to trust
+yourself beside me."
+
+"Except for father's sake, it might be a good thing if she were to
+throw me out of her cart and kill me on the spot," mused Suzette, as
+she sat listlessly watching her maid packing her trunk.
+
+Among the frocks, there was one of the Salisbury tailor's confections,
+a frock which was to have been worn by Mrs. Allan Carew, and Suzette
+felt that she would sink with shame when she put it on.
+
+"I ought to be prosecuted for obtaining goods under false pretences,"
+she thought.
+
+Geoffrey Wornock found a telegram waiting for him at the little
+post-office at Hartzburg, and the mere outward casing of that message
+set his heart beating furiously. There must be news of his love in it,
+news good or bad.
+
+"I will not live through her wedding-day, if she marries him," he told
+himself.
+
+The telegram was from his mother.
+
+"The marriage is broken off with much sorrow on both sides."
+
+"That's nonsense. On her part there can be no sorrow--only relief
+of mind, only joy, the prospect of a blissful union, a life without
+a cloud. Thank God, thank God, thank God! I never felt there was a
+God till now. Now I believe in Him--now I will lift up my heart to
+Him, in nightly and daily prayer, as Adam did by the side of Eve. Oh,
+thank God, the barrier is removed, and she can be mine! My own dear
+love--heart of my heart--life of my life!"
+
+He carried a fiddle among his scanty luggage, not the treasured
+inimitable Stradivarius, but a much-cherished little Amati; and
+by-and-by, having eaten some hurried scraps by way of dinner, he took
+the violin out of its case and went out to a little garden at the back
+of the inn, and in a vine-clad berceau gave himself up to impassioned
+utterance of the love that overflowed his heart. Music, and music only,
+could speak for him--music was the interpreter of all his highest
+thoughts. The stolid beer-drinkers came out of their smoke-darkened
+parlour to hear him, and sat silent and unseen behind an intervening
+screen of greenery, and listened and approved.
+
+"Ach, what for a fiddler! How he can play! Whole heaven-like. Not true,
+my friend?"
+
+He played and played, walking about under the vine-curtain--played till
+the pale grey evening shadows darkened to purple night, and the stars
+looked through the leafy roof of that rustic tunnel. He was playing to
+her; to her, his far-away love; to Suzette in England. He was pouring
+out his soul's desire to her, a hymn of sweet content; and he almost
+fancied that she could hear him. There must be some mystical medium by
+which such sounds can travel from being to being, where love attunes
+two souls in unison--some process now hidden from the dull mind of
+average man, as the electric telegraph was half a century ago.
+
+This is how a lover dreams in the summer gloaming, in a garden on the
+slope of a pine-clad hill, with loftier heights beyond, shadowy and
+dark against the deep blue of that infinite sky where the stars are
+shining aloof and incomprehensible, in remoteness that fills mortality
+with despair.
+
+She was free! That was Geoffrey's one thought in every hour and almost
+every minute of his breathless journey from Hartzburg to Discombe.
+She was free; and for her to be free meant that she was to be his. He
+imagined no opposition upon her side when once her engagement to Allan
+had been broken. She had been bound by that tie, and that only. His
+impetuous, passionate nature, self-loving and concentrative as the
+temper of a child, could conceive no restraining influence, nothing
+that could prevent her heart answering his, her hand yielding to his,
+and a marriage as speedy as law and Church would allow.
+
+They could be married ever so quietly--in London--where no curious
+eyes could watch, no gossiping tongues criticise--married--made for
+ever one; and then away to mountain and lake, to Pallanza, Lugano,
+Bellaggio, to flowery shores betwixt hill and water, to a life lovelier
+than his fairest dreams.
+
+No man journeying with a passionate heart ever found rail or boat
+quick enough, and Geoffrey, always impatient, chafed at every stage of
+the journey, and complained as bitterly as if he had been travelling
+at the expensive crawl in which a Horace Walpole or a Beckford was
+content to accomplish that restricted round which our ancestors called
+the "grand tour." Nothing slower than a balloon driving before a gale
+would have satisfied Geoffrey's eager soul. And he would rather have
+accepted balloon transit, with all its hazards, and run the risk of
+being landed in a Carinthian valley or a Norwegian fjord, than endure
+the harassing delay at dusty railway stations, or the slowness of the
+channel boat.
+
+He telegraphed to his mother from Brussels, and again from Dover; so
+there was a cart waiting for him at the station with one of the fastest
+horses in the stable, but, unfortunately, one of the stupidest grooms,
+who could furnish him with no information upon any subject.
+
+Was all well at home? His mistress well?
+
+The groom believed so.
+
+"Was Miss Vincent well?"
+
+The groom had heard nothing to the contrary; but he had not seen Miss
+Vincent lately.
+
+No particular inference was to be drawn from this statement of the
+groom's, since Suzette's visits were not made to the stableyard.
+
+There was no one at Discombe to do stable-parade and to insist upon
+horses being stripped and trotted up and down for the edification of a
+visitor whose utmost knowledge of a horse might be that it is a beast
+with four legs--mane and tail understood, though not always existent.
+
+Geoffrey rattled his old hunter along at a pace that made the cart sway
+like an outrigger in the wake of a steamer, and he alighted at the
+Manor House at least a quarter of an hour before a reasonable being
+would have got himself there.
+
+It was late in the evening, and his mother was sitting alone in the
+dimly lighted music-room. The piano was shut--a bad sign; for when
+Suzette was there the piano was hardly ever idle.
+
+"Well, mother dear, so glad to be home again," said Geoffrey, with an
+affectionate hug, but with eyes that were looking over his mother's
+head into space for another presence, even while he gave her that
+filial embrace.
+
+"And I am so glad to have you, Geoffrey; and I hope now this restless
+spirit will be content to stay."
+
+"_C'est selon._ Where's Suzette?"
+
+"At Bournemouth, with an old school-fellow."
+
+"Why didn't you wire her address, and then I could have gone straight
+to her?"
+
+"My dear Geoffrey, what are you thinking of?"
+
+"Of Suzette--of my dear love--of my wife that is to be!"
+
+"My dear boy, you cannot go to her. You must not ask her to marry you
+while this cancelled engagement is a new thing. I should think her a
+horrid girl if she would listen to you--for ever so long."
+
+"Do you mean for a week--or a fortnight?"
+
+"For a long, long time, Geoffrey--long enough for Allan's wounded heart
+to recover."
+
+"Upon my soul, mother, that is too good a joke! Is my mother, the most
+romantic and unconventional of women, preaching the eighteenpenny
+gospel of middle-class etiquette?"
+
+"It is no question of conventionality. My affection for Allan is only
+second to my love for you, and I cannot bear to think of his being
+wounded and humiliated, as he must be if Suzette were to accept you
+directly after having jilted him."
+
+"And you would have Suzette sit beside the tomb of Allan's hopes for a
+year or so while I eat my heart out--banquet on joys deferred--sicken
+and die, perhaps, with that slow torture of waiting. Mother, you don't
+know what love is--love in the heart of a man. If she had married
+Allan, I should have shot myself on her wedding-day. That was written
+in my book of fate. If she won't marry me; if she play fast and loose,
+blow hot, blow cold; if she won't look in my eyes and say honestly,
+'I love you,' and 'I am yours,' I can't answer for myself--I fear
+there will be a tragedy. You know there is something here"--touching
+his forehead--"which loses itself in a whirl of fiery confusion when
+this"--touching his heart--"is too sorely tried."
+
+"Geoffrey, my dearest! oh, Geoffrey, you agonize me when you talk
+like that! I think--yes, I believe that Suzette loves you; but she is
+sensitive, tender-hearted--all that is womanly and good. You must give
+her time to recover from the shock of parting with Allan, whom she
+sincerely esteems, and whose sorrow is her sorrow."
+
+"I will see her to-morrow. I cannot live without seeing her. Why, every
+mile of pine-forest through which I came seemed three, every mile of
+dusty Belgian flatness seemed seven, to my hot impatience. I must see
+her, hear her, hold her hand in mine; and she shall do what she likes
+with the poor rag of life which will be left when I have lived an hour
+with her."
+
+
+                            END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+         LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+      [Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75174 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75174 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>SONS OF FIRE</h1>
+
+<p>A Novel</p>
+
+<p class="ph1">By Mary Elizabeth Braddon</p>
+
+<p>THE AUTHOR OF</p>
+
+<p>"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"<br>
+"ISHMAEL," ETC.</p>
+
+<p><i>IN THREE VOLUMES</i></p>
+
+<p>VOL. II.</p>
+
+<p>LONDON<br>
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO. LIMITED<br>
+STATIONERS' HALL COURT</p>
+
+<p>[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p>
+
+<p>LONDON:<br>
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. II.</h2>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">FATE INTERVENES</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">"BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">WHILE LEAVES WERE FALLING</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">"LET NO MAN LIVE AS I HAVE LIVED"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">"CHANCE CANNOT CHANGE MY LOVE, NOR TIME IMPAIR"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">AT EVENSONG</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">"THE DEAD MAN TOUCH'D ME FROM THE PAST"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">"WHAT WAS A SPECK EXPANDS INTO A STAR"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">"A WHITE STAR MADE OF MEMORY LONG AGO"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">"AND THAT UNREST WHICH MEN MISCALL DELIGHT"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">"WHO KNOWS WHY LOVE BEGINS?"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">"THAT WAY MADNESS LIES"</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>SONS OF FIRE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">FATE INTERVENES.</p>
+
+
+<p>The return of Geoffrey Wornock made no essential difference in the
+lives of the lovers. Suzette continued her organ practice; Allan
+continued his visits to the Manor House; and Suzette and Allan were
+much oftener Mrs. Wornock's companions than her son, whose restless
+temper did not allow of his remaining long in any one place, and for
+whom monotony of any kind was intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed in London for a week buying horses, and having brought home
+a string of four, every one supposed to be matchless, he began hunting
+with the vigour of a man whose appetite for that British sport had
+only been sharpened by paper-chases and polo in the tropics. Not
+content with the South Sarum, he travelled up and down the line, hunted
+with the Vine from Basingstoke, and with the H. H. from Winchester. He
+was up and away in the grey November mornings after a seven-o'clock
+breakfast, and seldom home in time for an eight-o'clock dinner.</p>
+
+<p>On the days when there was no hunting to be had, he flung himself
+into the delights of the music-room with all the ardour of a musical
+fanatic, and Allan and Suzette were content to listen in meek
+astonishment to performances which were far above the drawing-room
+amateur, although marked by certain imperfections and carelessnesses
+which seemed inevitable in a player whose ardour was too fitful for the
+drudgery of daily practice.</p>
+
+<p>These musical days were the bright spots in Mrs. Wornock's existence,
+the chief bond of union between mother and son; as if music were the
+only spell which could hold this volatile spirit within the circle of
+domestic love.</p>
+
+<p>"I like my mother to accompany me," said Geoffrey. "I have played with
+some prodigious swells, but not one of them has had her sympathetic
+touch, her instantaneous comprehension of my spontaneities. They
+expected me to be faultily faultless, instead of which I play de Beriot
+as Chopin used to play Chopin, indulging every caprice as to time."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey was occasionally present when one of the organ lessons was
+in progress. He was interested, but not so much so as to sit still
+and listen. He carried Allan off to the billiard-room, or the stable,
+before the lesson was half over.</p>
+
+<p>"What a happy little family we are," he said laughingly one day, as he
+and Allan were strolling stablewards. "My mother is almost as fond of
+your <i>fiancée</i> as if she were her daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother is a very amiable woman, as well as a gifted woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Gifted? yes, that's the word. She is all enthusiasm. There have been
+no spiritualists or supernatural people here lately, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that. My poor mother loses her head when that kind of
+people are in the way. She is ready to believe in their nonsense. She
+wants to believe. She wants to see visions and dream dreams. She has
+secluded herself from the world of the living, and she would give
+half her fortune if she could bring the dead into her drawing-room.
+Poor dear mother! How many weary hours she has spent waiting for
+materializations that have never materialized! I have never been able
+to convince her that all her spiritualistic friends are pretenders and
+comedians. She tells me she knows that some are charlatans; but she
+believes that their theories are based upon eternal truths. She rebukes
+my scepticism with an appeal to the Witch of Endor. I dare not shock
+her by confessing that I have my doubts even about the Witch of Endor."</p>
+
+<p>He had a way of making light of his mother's fancies and eccentricities
+which had in its gaiety no touch of disrespect. Gaiety was the chief
+characteristic of his temperament, as it was with Suzette. He brought a
+new element of mirthfulness into the life at Discombe Manor; but with
+this happy temperament there was the drawback of an eager desire for
+change and movement which disturbed the atmosphere of a house whose
+chief charm to Allan's mind had been its sober quiet, its atmosphere of
+old-world peace.</p>
+
+<p>Allan studied this young man's character closely, studied him and
+thought of him much more than he wanted to think of him, and vainly
+struggled against an uneasy feeling that in every superiority of this
+new acquaintance there lurked a danger to his own happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"He is handsomer than I am," mused Allan, in one of his despondent
+moods. "He has a gayer temper—Suzette's own temper—which sees all
+things in the happiest light. I sit and watch them, listen to them,
+and feel myself worlds away from them both; and yet if she were free
+to-morrow he could never love her as I love her. There, at least, I am
+the superior. He has no such power of concentration as I have. To his
+frivolous nature no woman could ever be all in all."</p>
+
+<p>These despondent moods were luckily not of long duration. On Suzette's
+part there had not been the faintest sign of wavering; and Allan felt
+ashamed of the jealous fears which fell ever and anon like a black
+cloud across the sunny prospect of his life. However valiantly he might
+struggle against that lurking jealousy, there were occasions upon which
+he could not master it, and his darkest hours were those during which
+he sat in the music-room at Discombe, and heard Suzette and Geoffrey
+playing concertante duets for violin and piano. It seemed to him as the
+violinist bent over the pretty dark head, to turn a leaf, or to explain
+a passage in the piano score, that for these two there was a language
+which he knew not, a language in which mind spoke to mind, and perhaps
+heart to heart. Who could keep the heart altogether out of the question
+when that most eloquent of all languages was making its impassioned
+appeal? Every long-drawn legato chord upon the Strad, every delicate
+diminuendo of the sighing strings, the tremulous bow so lightly held in
+the long lissom fingers, sounded like an avowal.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you, I love you, I love you," sobbed the violin; "how can
+you care for that dumb brute yonder, while I am telling my love in
+heavenliest sounds, in strains that thrill along every nerve, and
+tremble at the door of your heart? How can you care for that dumb dog,
+or care how you hurt him by your inconstancy?"</p>
+
+<p>Possessed by these evil fancies, Allan started up from his seat in
+a remote window, and began to pace the room in the midst of a de
+Beriot sonata, to which Suzette had been promoted after a good deal of
+practice in less brilliant music.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, old fellow?" asked Geoffrey, noting that impatient
+promenade; "was I out of tune?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you were only too much in tune."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean? I don't understand——"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it likely you can understand me—or I you?" cried Allan,
+impetuously. "You have a language which I have not, a sense which
+is lacking in me. You and Suzette are in a paradise whose gate I
+can't open. Don't think me an envious, churlish kind of fellow, if I
+sometimes grudge you your happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear Allan, you are fond of music—you like listening——"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. I have had too much listening, too much of being out of
+it. Put on your hat, Suzette, and come for a walk. I am tired to death
+of your de Beriot."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock was sitting a little way from the piano, reading. She
+looked up wonderingly at this outburst. Never before had Allan been
+guilty of such rough speech in her presence. Never before had he spoken
+with such rude authority to Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"If our music has not the good fortune to please you, I would suggest
+that there are several rooms in this house where you would not hear
+it," said Geoffrey, laying down his fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>All the brightness had faded from his countenance, leaving it very
+pale. Suzette looked from one to the other with an expression of
+piteous distress. The two young men stood looking at each other,
+Allan flushed and fiery, Geoffrey's pallid face fixed and stern, with
+an anger which was stronger than the occasion warranted. They were
+sufficiently alike to make any ill-will between them seem like a
+brother's quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good, but I would rather be out-of-doors. Are you coming,
+Suzette?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not till I have finished the sonata," she answered quietly, with a
+look which reproved his rudeness, and then began to play.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey took up his fiddle, and the performance was resumed as if
+nothing had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock rose and went to Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come for a stroll with me, Allan?" she asked, taking up the
+warm Indian shawl which lay on a chair near the window. "It is not too
+cold for the garden."</p>
+
+<p>He could not refuse such an invitation as this, though it tortured him
+to leave those two alone at the piano. He opened the window, wrapped
+Mrs. Wornock in her shawl, and followed her to the lawn.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, why were you angry just now?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Perhaps I had better tell you the truth. I am miserable when I
+see the woman I love interested and enthralled by an art in which your
+son is a master—and of which I know hardly the A, B, C. I ask myself
+if she can care for a creature so inferior as I am—if she can fail to
+perceive his superiority."</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous, Allan! Oh, I am so sorry. It was I who proposed that they
+should play duets. It was not Geoffrey's idea. I thought it would
+encourage Suzette to go on practising. You don't know the delight a
+pianist feels in accompanying a violin——"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can imagine it. Suzette takes very kindly to the concertante
+practice."</p>
+
+<p>"She has improved so much since I first knew her. She has such a talent
+for music. It never occurred to me that you could object."</p>
+
+<p>"It never occurred to you that I could be a jealous fool. You might
+just as well say that, for no doubt you think it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think you are foolish to be jealous. Suzette is as true as
+steel; and I don't believe Geoffrey has the slightest inclination to
+fall in love with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at this moment, perhaps; but who knows what tender feelings
+those dulcet strains may bring? However, Suzette will be leaving the
+neighbourhood, I hope, in a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaving us, you hope!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. My mother has written to invite her to Fendyke. She is to see the
+White Farm, and get acquainted with all our Suffolk neighbours, who
+declare themselves dying to see her, while I am shooting my father's
+pheasants."</p>
+
+<p>"You are both going away then? I shall miss you sadly."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have Geoffrey."</p>
+
+<p>"One day out of six, perhaps. He will be hunting or shooting all the
+rest of the week."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall not be away very long. I don't suppose General Vincent will
+spare us his daughter for more than a fortnight or three weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette told me nothing about the invitation."</p>
+
+<p>"She has not received the letter yet. The post had not come in when she
+left home. I met the postman on my way here, and read my letters as I
+came along. De Beriot has been too absorbing to allow of my telling
+Suzette about my mother's letter to me. Shall we go back? Unless that
+sonata is interminable, it must have come to an end before now."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock turned immediately. She saw Allan's uneasiness, and
+sympathized with him. They went back to the music-room, where there
+was only silence. Suzette had left the piano, and had put on her hat
+and jacket. Geoffrey was still standing in front of the music-stand,
+turning the leaves of the offending sonata.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, dear Mrs. Wornock," said Suzette, kissing her friend. "Now,
+Allan, I am quite ready."</p>
+
+<p>Allan and Geoffrey shook hands at parting, but not with the usual
+smiling friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you be so dreadfully rude, Allan?" Suzette said with a
+pained voice, as they walked away from the house. "You were quite
+hateful."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that. I am astounded at my own capacity for hatefulness."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall play no more concertante duets, though I have enjoyed them
+more than anything in the way of music. It was only the most advanced
+pupils at the Sacré Cœur who ever had accompanying lessons—and such
+happiness never fell to my share."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very sorry to interfere with your—happiness; but I think,
+Suzette, if you cared for me half as much as I care for you, you would
+understand how it hurts me to see you so completely in sympathy with
+another man, and happy with a happiness which I cannot share."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you not share our happiness, Allan? You are fond of music,
+I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Fond of music—yes; but I am not a musician. I cannot make music as
+that young man can. I cannot speak to you as he speaks to you, in that
+language which is his and yours, and not mine. I am standing outside
+your world. I feel myself thrust far off from you, while he is so near."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan!" cried Suzette, with a smile that was a pale shadow of her old
+sportiveness, "can you actually be jealous?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous about a man who is nothing to me except my dear friend's son.
+You know how fond I am of Mrs. Wornock—the only real friend I have
+made since I left the convent—and you ought to understand that I like
+her son for her sake. And I have been pleased to take my part in the
+music they both love. But that is all over now. I will not allow myself
+to be misconstrued by you, Allan. There shall be no more duets."</p>
+
+<p>They were still in Mrs. Wornock's domain, in a wooded drive where the
+leafless branches overarched the way; and the scene was lonely enough
+and sheltered enough to allow of Allan taking his sweetheart to his
+breast and kissing her in a rapture of penitent love.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, forgive me! If I did not know the pricelessness of my
+treasure, I should not be so full of unworthy fears. We won't stop the
+duets for ever, Susie. I must get accustomed to the idea of a gifted
+wife, who has many talents which I have not. But I hope your musical
+studies at Discombe may be suspended for a month or so. When you go
+home, you will find a letter from my mother inviting you to Fendyke.
+She loves you already, and she wants to know more of you, so that you
+may really be to her the daughter she has been wishing for ever since
+I was born. You will go, won't you, Suzette, if the good General will
+spare you; and I think he will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you to be there too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am to be there; but you shall not see too much of me. Ours
+is a shooting county, and I shall be expected to be tramping with my
+gun nearly every day. I think you will like Fendyke. The house is a
+fine old house, and the neighbourhood is pretty after a fashion, just
+as some parts of Holland and Belgium are pretty—sleepy, contented,
+prosperous, useful."</p>
+
+<p>He walked home with her and stayed to luncheon, so as to secure
+General Vincent's consent upon the spot. This was obtained without
+difficulty. The General, having had to dispense with his daughter for
+at least three-fourths of her existence, was not dependent upon her for
+society, though he liked to see the bright young face smiling at him
+across the table at his luncheon and his dinner, and he liked to be
+played to sleep after dinner, or to have Suzette as a listener when he
+was in the mood for talking. The greater part of his life was spent
+out-of-doors—hunting, shooting, fishing, golfing—so that he could
+afford to be amiable upon this occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, Suzette, accept the invitation, by all means. The change
+will do you good. Lady Emily is a most estimable person, and it is only
+right that you should become better acquainted with her."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very fond of her already," said Suzette. "Then I am really to go,
+Allan? Lady Emily suggests Saturday—three days from now."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you are ready, I suppose," said her father. "You have the frocks
+and things that are necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father, I think I have frocks enough; unless you are dreadfully
+fashionable in Suffolk, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"The less said about our fashion the better. If you have a stout
+cloth skirt short enough to keep clear of our mud, that is all you
+need trouble about. I suppose I shall be allowed to escort Suzette,
+General?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, I don't see any objection to your taking care of her on
+the journey; but I have very lax notions of etiquette. I must ask my
+sister. Suzie will take her maid, of course; and Suzie's maid is a
+regular dragon."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Allan walked homeward with a light step and a light heart. The idea of
+having Suzette as a visitor in his own home, growing every day nearer
+and dearer to his parents, was rapture. No more concertante duets, no
+more long-drawn sobbings and sighings on the Stradivarius! He would
+have his sweetheart all to himself, to pace the level meadow paths, and
+saunter by the modest river, and loiter by rustic mills and bridges,
+which Constable may have painted. And in that atmosphere of homely
+peacefulness he might draw his sweetheart closer to his heart, win her
+more completely than he had won her yet, and persuade her to consent to
+a nearer date for their marriage than that far-off summer of the coming
+year. He counted much on home influences, on his mother's warmhearted
+affection for the newly adopted daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"A telegram, sir," said the servant who opened the door, startling him
+from a happy day-dream. "It came nearly an hour ago."</p>
+
+<p>Allan tore open the envelope and glanced carelessly at the message,
+expecting some trivial communication.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"Your father is dangerously ill. Come at once. I am writing to
+postpone Miss Vincent's visit.—Emily Carew."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY."</p>
+
+
+<p>A sudden end to a happy day-dream. A hurried preparation and a swift
+departure. Allan had just time to write to Suzette while his servant
+was packing a portmanteau and the dog-cart horse was being harnessed
+for the drive to the station.</p>
+
+<p>He loved his father too well to have room for any selfish thoughts
+about his own disappointment; but he tried to be hopeful and to think
+that his mother's alarm had exaggerated the evil, and that the word
+"dangerously" was rather the expression of her own panic than of the
+doctor's opinion. It was only natural that she should summon him, the
+only son, to his father's sick-bed. The illness must be appalling in
+its suddenness; for in her letter, written on the previous day, she had
+described him as in his usual health. The suddenness of the attack was
+in itself enough to scare a woman of Lady Emily's temperament.</p>
+
+<p>Allan telegraphed from Liverpool Street, and was met at the quiet
+little terminus, where the tiny branch line came to an end on the edge
+of a meadow, and a hundred yards from a rustic road. The journey to
+Cambridge had been one of the swiftest, the twenty miles on the branch
+line of the slowest; a heart-breaking journey for a man whose mind was
+racked with fears.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark when he arrived; but out of the darkness which surrounded
+the terminus there came the friendly voice of a groom and the glare of
+carriage-lamps.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, is that you, Moyle? Is my father any better?"</p>
+
+<p>His heart sank as he asked the question, with agonizing dread of the
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; I'm afraid he ain't no better. The doctor from Abbeytown is
+coming again to-night. Will you drive, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Get me home as fast as you can, for God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. I brought your old bay mare. She's the fastest we've got."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Kitty! Good to the last, is she? Get on."</p>
+
+<p>They were bowling along the level road behind bay Kitty, the first
+hunter Allan had bought on his own account in his old college days,
+when his liberal allowance enabled him to indulge his taste in
+horseflesh. Kitty had distinguished herself in a small way as a
+steeplechaser before Allan picked her up at Tattersall's, and she was
+an elderly person when he came into his fortune; so he had left her in
+the home stables as a general utility horse.</p>
+
+<p>Kitty carried him along the road at a splendid pace, and hardly
+justified impatience even in the most anxious heart.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was waiting in the porch when he alighted.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mother," he said, as he kissed and soothed her and led her into
+the house, "why do you stand out in the cold? You are shivering."</p>
+
+<p>"Not with cold, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor mother! Is he very ill? Is it really so serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"It could not be more serious, Allan. They thought this morning that he
+was dying. They told me—to be prepared—for the worst."</p>
+
+<p>The sentence was broken by sobs. She hid her face on her son's breast
+and sobbed out her grief unchecked by him, only soothed by the gentle
+pressure of his arm surrounding and, as it were, protecting her from
+the invincible enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctors are such alarmists, mother; they often take fright too soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in this case, Allan; I was with him all through his sufferings.
+I saw him struggling with death. I knew how near death was in those
+dreadful hours. It is his heart, Allan. You remember Dr. Arnold's
+death—how we have cried over the story in Stanley's book. It was
+like that—sudden, intense suffering. Yesterday he was sitting in his
+library, placid and at ease among his books. We dined together last
+night. He was cheerful and full of interesting talk. And this morning
+at daybreak he was fighting for his life. It was terrible."</p>
+
+<p>"But the danger is past, mother. The struggle is over, please God, and
+he will be well again."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, never again, Allan. The doctors hold out little hope of that.
+The awful agony may return at any hour. The mischief is deep seated. We
+have been living in a fool's paradise. Oh, my dear son, I never knew
+how fondly I have loved your father till to-day. I thought we should
+grow old together, go down to the grave hand-in-hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mother, hope for the best. I cannot think—remembering how young
+a man he seemed the other day at Beechhurst—I cannot think that we
+are to lose him."</p>
+
+<p>Tears were streaming down Allan's cheeks, tears of which he was
+unconscious. He dearly loved the father whose mild affection had
+made his childhood and youth so smooth and easy, the father who had
+understood every youthful desire, every unexpressed feeling, who in his
+tenderness and forethought had been as sympathetic as a loving woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Allan, you will find him aged by ten years since those happy
+days at Beechhurst. One day of suffering has altered him. It seems as
+if some invisible writing—the lines of disease and death—had come
+suddenly out upon his face—lines I never saw till this day."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, we won't despair. We are passing through the valley of the
+shadow of death, perhaps—but only passing through. The fight may be
+hard and bitter; but we shall conquer the enemy; we shall carry our
+dearest safely over the dark valley. May I see him? I will be very
+calm and quiet. I am so longing to see him, to hold his dear hand."</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to wait for the doctors, Allan. They both warned me that he
+must be kept as quiet as possible. He is terribly exhausted. They will
+be here at eleven o'clock. It might be safer to wait till then."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will wait. Who is with him now?"</p>
+
+<p>"A nurse from the Abbeytown hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"And he is out of pain, and at rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was sleeping when I left him—sleeping heavily, worn out with pain,
+and under the influence of opium."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we must wait. There is nothing to be done."</p>
+
+<p>Mother and son waited patiently, almost silently, through the slow
+hours between eight and eleven. They sat together in Lady Emily's
+morning-room, which was next to the sick man's bedroom. There was a
+door of communication, and though this was shut, they could hear if
+there were much movement in the adjoining room.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily mooted the question of dinner for the traveller. She urged
+him to go down to the dining-room and take some kind of meal after his
+journey; but he shook his head with the first touch of impatience he
+had shown since his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"You will wear yourself out, Allan?" she remonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>"No, mother—there is plenty of wear in me. I almost hate myself for
+being so strong and so full of life while he is lying there——"</p>
+
+<p>Tears ended the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>At last the hands of the clock, which mother and son had both been
+watching, pointed to eleven, and the hour struck with slow and silvery
+sound. Then came ten minutes of expectancy, and then the cautious tread
+of the family practitioner and the consulting physician coming upstairs
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Allan and his mother went out to the corridor to see them. A few
+murmured words only, and the two dark figures vanished through the door
+of the sick-room, and mother and son were alone once more, waiting,
+waiting with aching hearts and strained ears, that listened for every
+sound on the other side of the closed door.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors were some time with the patient, and then they went
+downstairs, and were closeted together in the library for a time
+that seemed very long to those who waited for the result of their
+consultation. Those anxious watchers had followed them downstairs, and
+were standing beside the expiring fire in the hall, waiting as for
+the voice of fate. The dining-room door was open. A table laid for
+supper, with glass and silver shining under the lamplight, and the glow
+of a blazing fire, suggested comfort and good cheer—and seemed to
+accentuate the gloom in the hearts of the watchers.</p>
+
+<p>What were they talking about, those two in the closed room yonder,
+Allan wondered. Was their talk all of the sufferer upstairs, and the
+means of alleviating pain and staving off the inevitable end? or did
+they wander from that question of life and death to the futilities of
+everyday conversation—and so lengthen out the agony of those who were
+waiting for their verdict? At last the door opened, and the two doctors
+came out into the hall, very grave still, but less gloomy than they had
+looked in the morning, Lady Emily thought.</p>
+
+<p>"He is better—decidedly better than he was twelve hours ago," said the
+physician. "We have tided over the immediate peril."</p>
+
+<p>"And he is out of danger?" questioned Allan, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"He is out of danger for the moment. He may go on for some time without
+a recurrence of this morning's attack; but I am bound to tell you that
+the danger may recur at any time. What has happened must be regarded—I
+am sorry to be obliged to say it—as the beginning of the end."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence, broken only by the wife's stifled sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, how sudden it is! and you say it is hopeless?" said Allan,
+stunned by the sentence of doom.</p>
+
+<p>"To you the thing is sudden; but the mischief is a work of many years.
+The evil has been there, suspected by your father, but never fully
+realized. He consulted me ten years ago, and I gave him the best advice
+the case allowed—prescribed a regimen which I believe he carefully
+followed—a regimen which consisted chiefly in quietness and careful
+living. I told him as much as it was absolutely necessary to tell,
+taking care not to frighten him."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not tell me that he was a doomed man," Lady Emily said
+reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear lady, to have done that would have been to lessen his chance
+of cheerful surroundings, to run the risk of sad looks where it was
+most needful he should find hopefulness. Besides, at that stage of
+the disease, one might hope for the best—even for a long life, under
+favourable conditions."</p>
+
+<p>"And now—what is the limit of your hope?" asked Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot measure the sands in the glass. Another attack like that of
+to-day would, I fear, be fatal. It is a wonder to me that he survived
+the agony of this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have told us—that agony may return at any hour. Nothing you
+can do can prevent its recurrence?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear not; but we shall do the uttermost."</p>
+
+<p>"May I see him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not till to-morrow. He is still under the influence of an opiate.
+Let him rest for to-night undisturbed by one agitating thought. His
+frame is exhausted by suffering. Mr. Travers will be here again early
+to-morrow; and if he find his patient as I hope he will find him, then
+you and Lady Emily can see him for a few minutes. But I must beg that
+there may be no emotional talk, and that he may be kept very quiet all
+to-morrow. I will come again early on Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>Mother and son hung upon the physician's words. He was a man whom both
+trusted, and even in this great strait the idea of other help hardly
+occurred to either. Yet in the desire to do the uttermost, Allan
+ventured to say—</p>
+
+<p>"If you would like another opinion, I would telegraph for any one you
+might suggest—among London specialists."</p>
+
+<p>"A specialist could do nothing more than we have done. The battle is
+fought and won so far—and when the fight begins again the same weapons
+will have to be used. The whole college of physicians could do nothing
+to help us."</p>
+
+<p>And then the doctors went into the dining-room, the physician to
+fortify himself for a ten-mile drive, the family practitioner to
+prepare himself for the possibilities of the night. Allan went in with
+them, at his mother's urgent request, and tried to eat some supper; but
+his heart was heavy as lead.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of Mrs. Wornock—remembering that pale face looking out
+of the autumn night, so intense in its searching gaze, the dark grey
+eyes seeming to devour the face they looked upon—his father sitting
+unconscious all the while—knowing not how near love was—the romantic
+love of his younger years, the love which still held all the elements
+of poetry, the love which had never been vulgarized or out-worn by the
+fret and jar of daily life.</p>
+
+<p>He would die, perhaps, without ever having seen the face of his early
+love, without ever having heard the end of her history—die, perhaps,
+believing that she had given him up easily because she had never
+really cared for him. The son had felt it in somewise his duty to keep
+those two apart for his mother's sake; but now at the idea that his
+father might die without having seen his early love or heard her story
+from her own lips, it seemed to him that he had acted cruelly and
+treacherously towards the parent he loved.</p>
+
+<p>There was a further improvement in the patient next morning, and Allan
+spent the greater part of the day beside his father's bed. There was to
+be very little conversation; but Allan was told he might read aloud,
+provided the literature was of an unemotional character. So at his
+father's request Allan read Chaucer, and the quaint old English verse,
+with every line of which the patient was familiar, had a soothing and
+a cheering influence on the tired nerves and brain. There was progress
+again the day after, and the physician and local watch-dog expressed
+themselves more than satisfied. The patient might come downstairs on
+Sunday—might have an airing on the sunniest side of the garden, should
+there be any sunshine on Monday; but everything was to be done with
+precautions that too plainly indicated his precarious condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you take a more hopeful view than you did the other night?" Allan
+asked the physician, after the consultation.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! no. The improvement is greater than I expected; but the
+substantial facts remain the same. There is deep-seated mischief, which
+may culminate fatally at any time. I should do wrong to conceal the
+nature of the case—or its worst possibilities—from you. It is best
+you should be prepared for the end—for Lady Emily's sake especially,
+in order that you may lighten the blow for her."</p>
+
+<p>"And the end is likely to come suddenly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most likely—better perhaps that it should so come. Your father is
+prepared for death. He is quite conscious of his danger. Better that
+the end should be sudden—if it spare him pain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, better so. But it is a hard thing. My father is not forty-eight
+years of age—in the prime of life, with a fine intellect. It is a hard
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is hard, very hard. It seems hard even to me, who have seen so
+many partings. I think you ought to spare your mother as much as you
+can. Spare her the agony of apprehension; let her have her husband's
+last days of sunshine and peace. But it is best that you should know.
+You are a man, and you can suffer and be strong."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I can suffer. He seemed so much better this morning. Might he not
+go on for years, with the care which we shall take of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He might—but it is scarcely probable."</p>
+
+<p>"We were to have had a young lady visitor here to-day," said Allan,
+with some hesitation, "the lady who is to be my wife. Her visit has
+been postponed on account of my father's illness; but I am very anxious
+that she should know more of my father and mother, and I have been
+wondering if next week we might venture to have her here. She is very
+gentle and sympathetic, and I know her society would be pleasant to my
+father."</p>
+
+<p>"I would not risk it, Mr. Carew, if I were you."</p>
+
+<p>"You think it might be bad for my father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it might be hazardous for the young lady. Were a fatal end to
+come suddenly, you would not like the girl you love to be subjected to
+the horror of the scene, to be haunted perhaps for years by the memory
+of that one tragic hour. There is no necessity for her presence here.
+You can go and see her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and risk being absent in my father's dying hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Better that risk than the risk of her unhappiness, should the end
+come while she were in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose that is so; but I can't help hoping that the end may be
+far off."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor pressed his hand in silence, and nodded good-bye as he
+stepped into his carriage. It was not for him to forbid hope, even if
+he knew that it was a delusive hope.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">WHILE LEAVES WERE FALLING.</p>
+
+
+<p>Fondly as he loved his betrothed wife, Allan felt that affection and
+duty alike forbade him to leave his father while the shadow of doom
+hung over the threshold, while there could be no assurance from day
+to day that the end would not come before sundown. There had been
+enough in the physician's manner to crush hopefulness even in the most
+sanguine breast; and it was in vain that Allan tried to argue within
+himself against the verdict of learning and experience. He knew in
+his inmost heart that the physician was right. The ordeal through
+which George Carew had passed had changed him with the change that too
+palpably foreshadows the last change of all. In the hollow eyes, the
+blue-veined forehead and pale lips, in the inert and semi-transparent
+hands, in the far-off look of the man whose race is run and who has
+nothing more to do with active life, Allan saw the sign manual of the
+destroyer. He had need to cherish and garner these quiet days in his
+father's company, to hang fondly on every word from those pale lips,
+to treasure each thought as a memory to be hereafter dear and sacred.
+Whatever other love there might be for him upon this earth—even the
+love of her whom he had made his second self, upon whom he depended for
+all future gladness—no claim could prevail against the duty that held
+him here, by the side of the father whose days were numbered.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad to have you with me, Allan," Mr. Carew said, in the grave
+voice which had lost none of its music, though it had lost much of
+its power. "It seems selfish on my part to keep you here, away from
+that nice girl, your sweetheart; but though you are making a sacrifice
+now——"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no," interrupted Allan, "it is no sacrifice. I had rather be
+here than anywhere in the world. Thank God that I am here, that no
+accident of distance has kept me from you."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear boy, you are so good and true—but it is a sacrifice all the
+same. This is the spring-time of your life, and you ought to be with
+the girl who makes your sunshine. It is hard for you two to be parted;
+and I should like her to be here; only this is a house of gloom. God
+knows what might happen to chill that young heart. It is better that
+you and I should be alone together, prepared for the worst: and in the
+days to come, in the far-off days, you will be glad to remember how
+your love lightened every burden for your dying father."</p>
+
+<p>"Father, my dear father!"</p>
+
+<p>The son uttered words of hope, declared his belief that Heaven would
+grant the dear patient renewed strength; but the voice in which he
+spoke the words of cheerfulness was broken by sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Allan, don't be down-hearted. I am resigned to the worst that
+can happen. I won't say I am glad that the end is near. That would be
+base ingratitude to the best of wives, to the dearest of sons, and
+to Providence which has given me so many good things. This world and
+this life have been pleasant to me, Allan; and it does seem hard to be
+called away from such peaceful surroundings, from the home where love
+is, even though through all that life there has run a dark thread. I
+think you have known that, Allan. I think that sensitive nature of
+yours has been conscious of the shadow on my days."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have known that there was a shadow."</p>
+
+<p>"A stronger character would have risen superior to the sorrow that has
+clouded my life, Allan. I have no doubt that some of the greatest and
+many of the most useful men the world has known have suffered just such
+a disappointment as I suffered in my early manhood, and have risen
+superior to their sorrow. You remember how Austin Caxton counsels his
+son to live down a disappointed love—how he appeals to the lives of
+men who have conquered sorrow? 'You thought the wing was broken. Tut,
+tut, 'twas but a bruised feather.' But in my own case, Allan, the
+wing <i>was</i> broken. I had not the mental stamina, I had not the power
+of rebound which enables a man to rise superior to the sorrow of his
+youth. I could not forget my first love. I gave up a year of my life
+to the search for the girl I loved—who had forsaken me in a foolish
+spirit of self-sacrifice because she had been told that my marriage
+with her would be social ruin. She was little more than a child in
+years—quite a child in ignorance of the world, and of the weight
+and measure of worldly things. We were both cruelly used, Allan. My
+mother was a good woman, and a woman who would do nothing which she
+could not reconcile to her conscience and her own ideas of piety. She
+acted conscientiously, after her own narrow notions, in bringing about
+the parting which blighted my youth, and she thought me a wicked son
+because for two years of my life I held myself aloof from her."</p>
+
+<p>"And in all that time could you find no trace of your lost love?"</p>
+
+<p>"None. I advertised in English and Continental newspapers, veiling my
+appeal in language which would mean little to the outside world though
+it would speak plainly to her. I wandered about the Continent—Italy,
+Switzerland—all along the Rhine, and the Danube, to every place
+that seemed to offer a chance of success. I had reason to believe
+that she had been sent abroad, and I thought that her exile would be
+fixed in some remote district, out of the beaten track. It may be
+that my research was conducted feebly. I was out of health for the
+greater part of my wanderings, and I had no one to help me. Another
+man in my position might have employed a private detective, and might
+have succeeded where I failed. I was summoned home by the news of my
+mother's dangerous illness, and I returned remorseful and unhappy.
+At the thought that she might die unforgiving and unforgiven, my
+resentment vanished. I recalled all that my mother had been to my
+childhood and boyhood, and I felt myself an ungrateful son. Thank God,
+I was home in time to cheer her sick-bed, and to help towards her
+recovery by the assurance of my unaltered affection. I found that she
+too had suffered, and I discovered the strength of maternal love under
+that outward hardness, and allied with those narrow views which had
+wrecked my happiness. In my gladness at her recovery from a long and
+dangerous illness, I began to think that the old heart-wound was cured;
+and when she suggested my marriage with Emily Darnleigh, my amiable
+playfellow of old, I cheerfully fell in with her views. The union was
+in every respect suitable, and for me in every respect advantageous.
+Your mother has been a good and dear wife to me, and never had man
+less reason to complain against Fate. But there has been the lingering
+shadow of that old memory, Allan, and you have seen and understood; so
+it is well you should know all."</p>
+
+<p>Allan tearfully acknowledged the trust confided in him.</p>
+
+<p>"When I am gone, if you care to know the story of my first love, you
+will find it fully recorded in a manuscript which was written some
+years ago. Heaven knows what inspired me to go over that old ground,
+to write of myself almost as I might have written of another man.
+It was the whim of an idle brain. I felt a strange sad pleasure in
+recalling every detail of my brief love-story—in conjuring up looks
+and tones, the very atmosphere of the commonplace surroundings through
+which my sweet girl and I moved. No touch of romance, no splendour of
+scenery, no gaiety of racecourse or public garden made the background
+of our love. A dull London street, a dull London parlour were all we
+had for a paradise, and God knows we needed no more. You will smile at
+a middle-aged man's folly in lingering fondly over the record of his
+own love-story, instead of projecting himself into the ideal world
+and weaving a romance of shadows. If I had been a woman, I might have
+found a diversion for my empty days in writing novels, in every one of
+which my sweetheart and I would have lived again, and loved and parted
+again, under various disguises. But I had not the feminine capacity
+for fiction. It pleased me to write of myself and my love in sober
+truthfulness. You will read with a mind in touch with mine, Allan;
+and though you may smile at your father's folly, there will be no
+scornfulness in your smile."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, dear father, God knows there will be no smile on these lips
+of mine if I am to read the story—after our parting. God grant the day
+for that reading may be far off."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do nothing to hasten it, Allan. Your companionship has renewed
+my pleasure in life. You can never know how I missed you when this
+house ceased to be your home. It was different when you were at
+the University—the short terms, the short distance between here
+and Cambridge, made parting seem less than parting. But when you
+transferred yourself to a home of your own, and half a dozen counties
+divided us, I began to feel that I had lost my only son."</p>
+
+<p>"You had but to summon me."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know. But I could not be so selfish as to bring you away
+from your pleasant surroundings, the prettier country, the more
+genial climate, your hunting, your falconry, your golf, and your new
+neighbours. A sick man is a privileged egotist; but even now I feel I
+am wrong in letting you stay here and lose the best part of the hunting
+season—to say nothing of that other loss, which, no doubt, you feel
+more keenly, the loss of your sweetheart's society."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not think about it, father, for I mean to stay. Please regard
+me as a fixture. If you keep as well next week as you are to-day, I
+may take a run to Wilts, just to see how Suzette and her father are
+getting on, and to look round my stable; but I shall be away at most
+one night."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to-morrow, Allan. I know you are dying to see her."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, perhaps, to-morrow. You really are wonderfully well, are you
+not?"</p>
+
+<p>"So well that I feel myself an impostor when I am treated as an
+invalid."</p>
+
+<p>"I may go then; but it will only be to hurry back," said Allan.</p>
+
+<p>His heart beat faster at the thought of an hour with Suzette—an hour
+in which to look into the frank bright face, to see the truthful eyes
+looking up at him in all confidence and love, to be assured that three
+weeks' absence had made no difference, that not the faintest cloud had
+come between them in their first parting. Yes, he longed to see her,
+with a lover's heart-sickness. Deeply, tenderly as he treasured every
+hour of his father's society, he felt that he must steal just as much
+time from his home duty as would give him one hour with Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>He pored over time-tables, and so planned his journey as to leave
+Fendyke in the afternoon of one day, and to return in time for luncheon
+the day after. This was only to be effected by leaving Matcham at
+daybreak; but a young man who was in the habit of leaving home in the
+half-light of a September dawn to ride ten miles to a six-o'clock meet
+was not afraid of an early train.</p>
+
+<p>He caught a fast evening train for Salisbury, and was at Matcham
+soon after eight. He had written to General Vincent to announce his
+intention of looking in after dinner, apologizing in advance for so
+late a visit. His intention was to take a hasty meal, dress, and drive
+to Marsh House; but at Beechhurst he found a note from the General
+inviting him to dinner, postponed till nine o'clock on his account; so
+he made his toilet in the happiest mood, and arrived at Marsh House ten
+minutes before the hour.</p>
+
+<p>He found Suzette alone in the drawing-room, and had her all to himself
+for just those ten minutes which he had gained by extra swiftness
+at his toilet. For half those minutes he had the gentle fluttering
+creature in his arms, the dark eyes full of tears, the innocent heart
+all tenderness and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Why would not you let me go to you, Allan?" she remonstrated. "I
+wanted to be with you and Lady Emily in your trouble. I hope you
+don't think I am afraid of sickness or sorrow, where those I love are
+concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, dearest, I give you credit for all unselfishness. But I was
+advised against your visit. The hazard was too awful."</p>
+
+<p>"What hazard, Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"The possibility of my father's sudden death."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Allan, my poor, poor boy! Is it really as bad as that? How sad for
+you! And you love him so dearly, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly knew how dearly till this great terror fell upon me. Nothing
+less than my love for a father whom I must lose too soon—whom I may
+lose very soon—would have kept me from you so long, Suzette. And now
+I am only here for a few hours, to see you, to hear you, to hold you
+in my arms, and to assure myself that there is such a person; to make
+quite sure that the Suzette who is in my thoughts by day and in all my
+dreams by night is not a brilliant hallucination—the creature of my
+mind and fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very real, I assure you—full of human faults."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have a stray failing or two lurking somewhere amongst your
+perfections; but I have not discovered one yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Allan, Love would not be Love if he could see."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me all your news, Suzie. What have you been doing with yourself?
+Your letters have told me a good deal—dear bright letters, coming
+like a burst of sunshine into my sad life—but they could not tell me
+enough. I suppose you have been often at Discombe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have been there nearly every day. Mrs. Wornock has been ill and
+depressed. She will not own to being ill, and I could not persuade
+her to send for the doctor. But I don't think she could be in such low
+spirits if she were not ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor soul!"</p>
+
+<p>"She is so sympathetic, Allan. She has been as keenly interested in
+your poor father's illness as if he were her dearest friend. She has
+been so eager to hear about his progress, and has begged me to read the
+passages in your letters which refer to him. She is so tender-hearted,
+and enters so fully into other people's sorrows."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have been much with her, and have done all in your power to
+cheer her, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"I have done what I could. We have made music together; but she has not
+taken her old delight in playing, or in listening to me. She has become
+dreamy and self-absorbed. I am sure she is out of health."</p>
+
+<p>"And her son, for whose company she was pining all the summer? Has not
+he been able to cheer her spirits?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know about that. Mr. Wornock is out hunting all day and every
+day. He has increased his stud since you left, and hunts with three
+packs of hounds. He comes home after dark, sometimes late for dinner.
+He and his mother spend the evening together, and no doubt that is her
+golden hour."</p>
+
+<p>"And has Wornock given up his violin practice?"</p>
+
+<p>"He plays for an hour after dinner sometimes, when he is not too tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"And your musical mornings? Have there been no more of those—no more
+concertante duets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, I told you that there should be no more such duets for me."</p>
+
+<p>"You might have changed your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Not after having promised. I considered that a promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Conscientious soul! And you think me a jealous brute, no doubt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you a brute."</p>
+
+<p>"But a jealous idiot. My dearest, I don't think I am altogether wrong.
+A wife—or a betrothed wife—should have no absorbing interest outside
+her husband's or her sweetheart's life; and music is an absorbing
+interest, a chain of potent strength between two minds. When I heard
+those impassioned strains on the fiddle, and your tender imitations on
+the piano, question and answer, question and answer, for ever repeating
+themselves, and breathing only love——"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Allan, what an ignoramus you are! Do you suppose musical people
+ever think of anything but the music they are playing?"</p>
+
+<p>"They may not think, but they must feel. They can't help being borne
+along on that strong current."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; they have no time to be vapourish or sentimental. They have to
+be cool and business-like; every iota of one's brain-power is wanted
+for the notes one is playing, the transitions from key to key—so
+subtle as to take one by surprise—the changes of time, the syncopated
+passages which almost take one's breath away——Hark! there is my
+aunt. Father asked her in to support me. Uncle Mornington is in London,
+and she is alone at the Grove."</p>
+
+<p>"I think we could have done without her, Suzie."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington's resonant voice was heard in the hall while she was
+taking off her fur cloak, and the lady appeared a minute later, in a
+serviceable black-velvet gown, with diamonds twinkling and trembling in
+her honiton cap, jovial and hearty as usual.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor fellow! I'm very glad to see you," she said, shaking hands
+with Allan. "I hope your father is better. Of course he is, though, or
+you wouldn't be here. It's five minutes past nine, Suzie, and as I am
+accustomed to get my dinner at half-past seven, I hope your cook means
+to be punctual. Oh, here's my brother, and dinner is announced. Thank
+goodness!"</p>
+
+<p>General Vincent welcomed his future son-in-law, and the little party
+went into the cosy dining-room, where Suzette looked her prettiest in
+the glow of crimson shaded lamps, which flecked her soft white gown and
+her pretty white neck with rosy lights. Conversation was so bright and
+cheerful among these four that Allan's thoughts reverted apprehensively
+now and again to the quiet home in Suffolk and the dark shadow hanging
+over it. He felt as if there were a kind of treason against family
+affection in this interlude of happiness, and yet he could not help
+being happy with Suzette. To-morrow, in the early grey of a winter
+morning, he would be on his way back to his father.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner Mrs. Mornington established herself in an armchair close
+to the drawing-room fire, and had so much to say to her brother about
+Matcham sociology that Allan and his sweetheart, seated by the piano
+at the other end of the room, were as much alone as if they had been
+in one of the Discombe copses. No better friend than a piano to lovers
+who want to be quiet and confidential. Suzette sat before the keyboard
+and played a few bars now and then, like a running commentary on the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"You will say all that is kind and nice to Mrs. Wornock for me?" Allan
+said, after a good deal of other and tenderer talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will tell her how kindly you spoke of her; but the best thing I
+can tell her is that your father is better. She has been so intensely
+interested about him. I have felt very sorry for her since you went
+away, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I cannot help seeing that her son's return has not brought her
+the happiness she expected. She has been thinking of him and hoping for
+his coming for years—empty, desolate years, for until she attached
+herself to you and me she had really no one she cared for. Strange, was
+it not, that she should take such a fancy to you, and then extend her
+friendly feeling to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was strange, undoubtedly. But I believe I owe her kindly
+feeling entirely to my very shadowy likeness to her son."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt that was the beginning; but I am sure she likes you for your
+own sake. You are only second to her son in her affection; and I know
+she is disappointed in her son."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he is not unkind to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Unkind! No, no, he is kindness itself. His manner to his mother is
+all that it should be; affectionate, caressing, deferential. But he is
+such a restless creature, so eager for change and movement. Clever and
+amiable as he is, there is something wanting in his character; the want
+of repose, I believe. He hardly ever rests; and there is no rest where
+he is. He excites his mother, and he doesn't make her happy. Perhaps
+it is better for her that he is so seldom at home. She is too highly
+strung to endure his unquiet spirit."</p>
+
+<p>"You like him though, don't you, Suzette, in spite of his faults?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, one cannot help liking him. He is so bright and clever; and he
+has all his mother's amiability; only, like her, he has just a touch
+of eccentricity—but I hardly like to call it that. A German word
+expresses it better; he is <i>überspannt</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"He is what our American friends call a crank," said Allan, relieved to
+find his sweetheart could speak so lightly of the man who had caused
+him his first acquaintance with jealousy.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"LET NO MAN LIVE AS I HAVE LIVED."</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan went back to Suffolk, and Suzette's life resumed its placid
+course; a life in which she had for the most part to find her own
+amusements and occupations. General Vincent was fond and proud of his
+daughter; but he was not a man to make a companion of a daughter,
+except at the social board. If Suzette were at home at twelve o'clock
+to superintend the meal which he called tiffin, and in her place in
+the drawing-room a quarter of an hour before the eight-o'clock dinner;
+if she played him to sleep after dinner, or allowed herself to be
+beaten at chess whenever he fancied an evening game, she fulfilled the
+whole duty of a daughter as understood by General Vincent. For the
+rest he had a supreme belief in her high principles and discretion.
+Her name on the tableau in the parlour at the Sacré Cœur had stood
+forth conspicuously for all the virtues—order, obedience, propriety,
+truthfulness. The nuns, who expect perfection in the young human
+vessel, had discovered no crack or flaw in Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"She has not only amiability and kindness of heart," said the Reverend
+Mother, at the parting interview with the pupil's father, "she has
+plenty of common sense, and she will never give you any trouble."</p>
+
+<p>When the General took his daughter to India, there had been some talk
+of a companion-governess, or governess-companion, for Suzette; but
+against this infliction the girl herself protested strongly.</p>
+
+<p>"If I am not old enough or wise enough to take care of myself, I will
+go back to the convent," she declared. "I would rather take the veil
+than submit to be governed by a 'Mrs. General.' I had learnt everything
+the nuns could teach me before I left the Sacré Cœur. I am not going
+to be taught by an inferior teacher—some smatterer, perhaps. Nobody
+can teach like the sisters of the Sacré Cœur."</p>
+
+<p>General Vincent had been preached at by his female relatives on this
+subject of the governess-companion. "Suzette is too young and too
+pretty to be alone," said one. "Suzette will get into idle habits if
+there is no one to direct her mind," said another. "A girl's education
+has only begun when she leaves school," said a third, as gloomy in
+their foreshadowing of evil as if they had been the three fatal
+sisters. But the General loved his daughter, and when withdrawing her
+from the convent had promised her that her life should be happy; so he
+abandoned an idea that had never been his own.</p>
+
+<p>"A Mrs. General would have been a doosid expensive importation," he
+told his friends afterwards, "and I knew there would be plenty of nice
+women to look after Suzie."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette had proved quite capable of looking after herself, unaided by
+the nice women; indeed, her conduct had been—or should have been—a
+liberal education to more than one of those nice women, who might have
+found their matronly exuberances of conversation and behaviour in a
+manner rebuked by the girl's discretion and self-respect. Suzette
+passed unsmirched through the furnace of a season at Simla, and a
+season at Naini Tal, and came to rustic Wiltshire with all the frank
+gaiety of happy girlhood, and all the <i>savoir faire</i> which comes of
+two years' society experience. She had been courted and wooed, and had
+blighted the hopes of more than one eligible admirer.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to Matcham, there was again a question of chaperon or
+companion. The odious word governess was abandoned. But it was said
+that Indian society was less conventional than English society, and
+that what might be permitted at Simla could hardly be endured at
+Wiltshire; and again Suzette threatened to go back to her convent if
+she were not to be trusted with the conduct of her own life.</p>
+
+<p>"If I cannot take care of myself I am only fit for a cloister," she
+said. "I would rather be a lay sister, and scrub floors, than be led
+about by some prim personage, paid to keep watch and ward over me, a
+hired guardian of my manners and my complexion."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington, who was less conventional than the rest of the
+General's womankind, put in her word for her niece.</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette wants no chaperon while I am living within five minutes'
+walk," she said. "She can come to me in all her little domestic
+difficulties; and as for parties, she is not likely to be asked to any
+ceremonious affair to which I shall not be asked too."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington had been as kind and helpful as she had promised to
+be; and in all domestic cruxes, in all details of home life, in the
+arrangement of a dinner or the purchase of household goods Suzette had
+taken counsel with her aunt. The meadows appertaining to the Grove
+and to Marsh House were conterminous, and a gate had been made in the
+fence, so that Suzette could run to her aunt at any hour, without hat
+or gloves, and without showing herself on the high-road.</p>
+
+<p>"If ever we quarrel, that gate will have to be nailed up," said
+Mrs. Mornington. "It makes a quarrel much more awful when there is
+a communication of that kind. The walling up of a gate is a public
+manifesto. If ever we bar each other out, Suzette, all Matcham will
+know it within twenty-four hours."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was not afraid that the gate would have to be nailed up. She
+was fond of her aunt, and fully appreciated that lady's hard-headed
+qualities; but although she went to her aunt Mornington for advice
+about the gardener and the cook, the etiquette of invitations and
+the law of selection with reference to a dinner-party, it was to
+Mrs. Wornock she went for sympathy in the higher needs of life; it
+was to Mrs. Wornock she revealed the mysteries of her heart and her
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to have known you all my life," she told that lady; "and I am
+never afraid of being troublesome."</p>
+
+<p>"You never can be troublesome," Mrs. Wornock answered, looking at
+her with admiring affection. "I don't know what I should do without
+you, Suzette. You and Allan have given my poor worn-out life a new
+brightness."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan! How fond you are of Allan," Suzette said, musingly. "It
+seems so strange that you should have taken him to your heart so
+quickly—only because he is like your son."</p>
+
+<p>"Not only on that account, Suzette. That was the beginning. I am fond
+of Allan for his own sake. His fine character has endeared him to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You think he has a fine character?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think! I know he has. Surely you know him too, Suzie. You ought to
+have learnt his value by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know he is good, generous, honest, and true. His love for his
+father is very beautiful—and yet he found time to come all this way to
+spend an hour or two with unworthy frivolous me."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not think that a sacrifice, Suzie, for he adores you."</p>
+
+<p>"You really think so—that he cares as much as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sure that he loves with his whole heart and mind, as his
+father—may have done before him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, his father would have been in earnest, I have no doubt, in any
+affection; but I doubt if he was ever tremendously in love with Lady
+Emily. She is all that is sweet and dear in her frank homely way, but
+not a person to inspire a <i>grande passion</i>. Allan's father must have
+loved and lost in his early youth. There is a shade of melancholy in
+his voice and manner—nothing gloomy or dismal—but just that touch of
+seriousness which tells of deep thoughts. He is a most interesting man.
+I wish you could have seen him while he was at Beechhurst. I fear he
+will never leave Fendyke again."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock sighed and sat silent, while Suzette went to the piano and
+played a short fugue by their favourite Sebastian Bach—played with
+tender touch, lengthening out every slow passage in her pensive reverie.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no more concertante duets. Geoffrey had entreated her
+to go on with their mutual study of De Beriot and the older composers,
+Corelli, Tartini, and the rest; but she had obstinately refused.</p>
+
+<p>"The music is difficult and tiring," she said.</p>
+
+<p>This was her first excuse.</p>
+
+<p>"We will play simpler music—the lightest we can find. There are plenty
+of easy duets."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't think me capricious if I confess that I don't care
+about playing with the violin. It takes too much out of one. I am too
+anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you be anxious? I am not going to be angry or disagreeable
+at your <i>brioches</i>—should you make any."</p>
+
+<p>She still refused, lightly but persistently; and he saw that she had
+made up her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to understand," he said, with an offended air; and there was
+never any further talk of Suzette as an accompanist.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey was seldom at home in the daytime after this refusal, and
+life at the Manor dropped back into the old groove. Mrs. Wornock and
+Suzette spent some hours of every day together; and, now that the
+weather often made the garden impossible, the organ and piano afforded
+their chief occupation and amusement. Suzette was enthusiastic, and
+pleased with her own improvement under her friend's guidance. It was
+not so much tuition as sympathy which the elder woman gave to the
+younger. Suzette's musical talent, since she left her convent, had been
+withering in an atmosphere of chilling indifference. Her father liked
+to be played to sleep after dinner; but he hardly knew one air from
+another, and he called everything his daughter played Rubinstein.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful fellow that Rubinstein!" he used to say. "There seems no end
+to his compositions; and, to my notion, they've only one fault—they're
+all alike."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette heard of Geoffrey, though she rarely saw him. His mother talked
+of him daily; but there was a regretful tone in all her talk. Nothing
+at Discombe seemed quite satisfactory to the son and heir. His horses
+were failures. The hunting was bad—"rotten," Geoffrey called it, but
+could give no justification for this charge of rottenness. The sport
+might be good enough for the neighbours in general; but it was not good
+enough for a man who had run the whole gamut of sport in Bengal, under
+the best possible conditions. Geoffrey doubted if there was any hunting
+worth talking about, except in the shires or in Ireland. He thought of
+going to Ireland directly after Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>"He is bored and unhappy here, Suzette," Mrs. Wornock said one morning,
+when Suzette found her particularly low-spirited. "The life that suits
+Allan, and other young men in the neighbourhood, is not good enough
+for Geoffrey. He has been spoilt by Fortune, perhaps—or it is his sad
+inheritance. I was an unhappy woman when he was born, and a portion of
+my sorrow has descended upon my son."</p>
+
+<p>This was the first time she had ever spoken to Suzette of her past life
+or its sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not think that, dear Mrs. Wornock. Your son is tired of this
+humdrum country life, and he'll be all the better and brighter for a
+change. Let him go to Ireland and hunt. He will be so much the fonder
+of you when he comes back."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock sighed, and began to walk about the room in a restless way.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Suzette, Suzette," she said, "I am very unhappy about him! I don't
+know what will become of us, my son and me. We have all the elements of
+happiness, and yet we are not happy."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was a month after the little dinner at Marsh House, and Suzette
+and her sweetheart had not met since that evening. There had been no
+change for the better in Mr. Carew's condition; and Allan had felt it
+impossible to leave the father over whose dwindling hours the shadow of
+the end was stealing—gently, gradually, inevitably. There were days
+when all was hushed and still as at the approach of doom—when the
+head of the household lay silent and exhausted within closed doors, and
+all Allan could do was to comfort his mother in her aching anxiety.
+This he did with tenderest thoughtfulness, cheering her, sustaining
+her, tempting her out into the gardens and meadows, beguiling her to
+temporary forgetfulness of the sorrow that was so near. There were
+happier—or seemingly happier—days when the invalid was well enough to
+sit in his library, among the books which had been his life-companions.
+In these waning hours he could only handle his books—fondle them, as
+it were—slowly turning the leaves, reading a paragraph here and there,
+or pausing to contemplate the outside of a volume, in love with a
+tasteful binding, the creamy vellum, or gold-diapered back, the painted
+edges, the devices to which he had given such careful thought in the
+uneventful years, when collecting and rebinding these books had been
+the most serious business of his life. He laid down one volume and took
+up another, capriciously—sometimes with an impatient, sometimes with
+a regretful, sigh. He could not read more than a page without fatigue.
+His eyes clouded and his head ached at any sustained exertion. His
+son kept him company through the grey winter day, in the warm glow of
+the luxurious room, sheltered by tapestry portières and tall Indian
+screens. His son fetched and carried for him, between the book-table by
+the hearth and the shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling,
+and filled an ante-room beyond, and overflowed into the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"My day is done," George Carew said with a sigh. "These books have been
+my life, Allan, and now I have outlived them. The zest is gone out of
+them all; and now in these last days I know what a mistake my life has
+been. Let no man live as I have done, and think that he is wise. A life
+without variety or action is something less than life. Never envy the
+student his peaceful meditative days. Be sure that when the end is near
+he will look back, as I do, and feel that he has wasted his life—yes,
+even though he leave some monumental work which the world will treasure
+when he is in the dust—monument more enduring than brass or marble.
+The man himself, when the shadows darken round him, will know how much
+he has lost. Life means action, Allan, and variety, and the knowledge
+of this glorious world into which we are born. The student is a worm
+and no man. Let no sorrow blight your life as mine has been blighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear father, I have always known there was a cloud upon your life—but
+at least you have made others happy—as husband, father, master——"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been a domestic tyrant. That is about the best I can say
+for myself. I have been tolerably indulgent to the kindest of wives.
+I have loved my only son. Small merits these in a man whose home-life
+has been cloudless. But I might have done better, Allan. I might have
+risen superior to that youthful sorrow. I might have taken my dear
+Emily closer to my heart, travelled over this varied world with her,
+shown her all that is strangest and fairest under far-off skies instead
+of letting her vegetate here. I might have gone into Parliament, put
+my shoulder to the wheel of progress—helped as other men help, with
+unselfish toil, struggling on hopefully through the great dismal
+swamp of mistake and muddle-headedness. Better, far better, any life
+of laborious endeavour, even if futile in result, than the cultured
+idlers' paradise—better far for me, since in such a life I should
+have forgotten the past, and might have been a cheerful companion in
+the present. I chose to feed my morbid fancies; to live the life of
+retrospection and regret; and now that the end has come, I begin to
+understand what a contemptible creature I have been."</p>
+
+<p>"Contemptible! My dear father, if every student were so to upbraid
+himself after a life of plain living and high thinking, such as you
+have led——"</p>
+
+<p>"Plain living and high thinking are of very little good, Allan, if they
+result in no useful work. Plain living and high thinking may be only a
+polite synonym for selfish sloth."</p>
+
+<p>"Father, I will not hear you depreciate yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear son! It is something to have won your love."</p>
+
+<p>"And my mother. Is it not something to have made her happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"For that I must thank her own sweet disposition. My reproach is that I
+might have made her happier. I have wronged her by brooding over an old
+sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"She has not been jealous of the love that came before you belonged to
+her. She loves and honours you."</p>
+
+<p>"Far beyond my merits. Providence has been very good to me, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. More books were asked for and brought, languidly
+opened, languidly closed, and laid aside. Yes, the zest had gone out
+of them. The languor of excessive weakness can find no beauty even in
+things most beautiful.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"CHANCE CANNOT CHANGE MY LOVE, NOR TIME IMPAIR."</p>
+
+
+<p>Suzette endured her lover's absence with a philosophical cheerfulness
+which somewhat surprised her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Suzie, I am half inclined to think that you don't care
+a straw for Allan," Mrs. Mornington exclaimed one day, when her niece
+came singing across the wintry lawn, crisp under her footsteps after
+the morning frost.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette looked angrier than her aunt had ever seen her look till this
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie, how can you say anything so horrid? Not care for Allan!
+When he is in sad trouble, too! This morning's letter gives a most
+melancholy account of his father. I fear the end must be near. It was
+horrid of me to come running and singing over the grass; but these
+frosty mornings are so delicious. Look at that glorious blue sky!"</p>
+
+<p>"And when all is over, Allan will come back to you, I suppose? I must
+say you have endured the separation in the calmest way."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I make myself unhappy? I know that it is Allan's duty to be
+at Fendyke. The only thing I regret is that I can't be there too, to
+help him to bear his sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"And you do not mind being parted from him. You can live without him?"</p>
+
+<p>Suzette smiled at the sentimental question from the lips of her
+practical aunt, whose ideas seemed rarely to soar above the daily cares
+of housekeeping and the considerations of twopence as against twopence
+halfpenny.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had to live without him over twenty years, auntie."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I thought that the moment a girl was engaged she found life
+impossible in the absence of her sweetheart."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that kind of girl must be very empty-headed."</p>
+
+<p>"And your little brains are well furnished—and then you have Mrs.
+Wornock and her son to fill up your days," said Mrs. Mornington, with a
+searching look.</p>
+
+<p>"I have Mrs. Wornock, and I like her society. I see very little of Mrs.
+Wornock's son."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he, then? I thought he was at the Manor."</p>
+
+<p>"He is seldom at home in the daytime, and I am never there in the
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>"And so you never meet. You are like Box and Cox. So much the more
+satisfactory for Allan, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, aunt, you are in a most provoking mood this morning. I'm
+afraid the butcher's book must be heavier than you like."</p>
+
+<p>It was Tuesday—Mrs. Mornington's terrible day—the day on which
+the tradesmen's books came up for judgment; a day on which the
+cook trembled, and even the housemaids felt the electricity in the
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>"I never like the butcher's book," said the lady; "but that isn't what
+set me thinking about you and Allan. I have been thinking about you for
+ever so long. I'm afraid you are not so fond of him as you ought to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie, you have no right to say that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, pray, miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because, perhaps, if you had not urged me to accept him, I might not
+have said 'Yes' when he asked me the second time. Oh, pray don't look
+so frightened. I am very fond of him—very fond of him. I know that he
+is good and true and kind, and that he loves me better than I deserve
+to be loved, and thinks me better than I am—cleverer, prettier,
+altogether superior to my work-a-day self. And it is very sweet to
+have a lover who thinks of one in that exalted way. But I am not
+romantically in love, auntie. I don't believe that it is in my nature
+to be romantic. I see the bright and happy side of life. I see things
+to laugh at. I am not sentimental."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I dare say Allan can get on without sentiment, so long as he
+knows you like him better than anybody else in the world; and now, as
+there is no reason whatever for delay, the sooner you marry him the
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid he will lose his father before long, auntie; and then he
+can't marry for at least a year."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, child. He won't be a widow. I dare say Lady Emily will be
+marrying when the year is out. Three months will be quite long enough
+for Allan to wait. You can make the wedding as quiet as you like."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette did not prolong the argument. The subject was too remote to
+need discussion. Mrs. Mornington went back to her tradesmen's books,
+and Suzette left her absorbed in the calculation of legs and sirloins,
+and the deeper mysteries of soup meat and gravy beef.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Christmas had come and gone, a very tranquil season at Matcham, marked
+only by the decoration of the church and the new bonnets in the
+tradespeople's pews. It was a dull, grey day at the end of the year,
+the last day but one, and Suzette was walking home in the early dusk
+after what she called a long morning with Mrs. Wornock, a long morning
+which generally lasted till late in the afternoon. But these mid-winter
+days were too short to allow of Suzette walking home alone after tea;
+so unless her own or her aunt's pony-carriage were coming for her, she
+left the Manor before dusk.</p>
+
+<p>To-day Mrs. Wornock had been sadder even than her wont, as if saddened
+by the last news from Fendyke, and sorrowing for Allan's loss; so
+Suzette had stayed longer than usual, and as she walked homeward the
+shadows of evening began to fall darkly, and the leafless woods looked
+black against the faint saffron of the western sky. The sun had shown
+himself, as if reluctantly, an hour before his setting.</p>
+
+<p>Presently in the stillness she heard horses' hoofs walking slowly on
+the moist road, and the next turn in the path showed her Geoffrey
+Wornock, in his red coat, leading his horse.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time they had met since her refusal to play any
+more duets with him, and, without knowing why, she felt considerable
+embarrassment at the meeting, and was sorry when he stopped to shake
+hands with her, stopped as if he meant to enter into conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Going home alone in the dark, Miss Vincent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; the darkness comes upon one unawares in these short winter days.
+I stayed with Mrs. Wornock because she seemed out of spirits. I am glad
+you are home early to cheer her."</p>
+
+<p>"That is tantamount to saying you are glad I have lamed my horse. I
+should be on the other side of Andover, in one of the best runs of the
+season, if it were not for that fact. When one is thrown out, the run
+is always quite the best—or so one's friends tell one afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry for your horse. I hope he isn't much hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Lameness in a horse is generally an impenetrable
+mystery. One only knows that he is lame. The stable will find half a
+dozen theories to account for it, and the vet will find a seventh, and
+very likely they may all be wrong. I'll walk with you to the high-road
+at least."</p>
+
+<p>"And give the poor horse extra work. Not for the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll take him on till I am within halloo of the stables, and then
+come back to you, if you'll walk on very slowly."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray don't! I am not at all afraid of the dusk."</p>
+
+<p>"Please walk slowly," he answered, looking back at her and hurrying on
+with his horse.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was vexed at his persistence; but she did not want to be rude
+to him, were it only for his mother's sake. How much better it would
+have been had he gone straight home to cheer that fond mother by his
+company, instead of wasting his time by walking to Matcham, as he would
+perhaps insist upon doing.</p>
+
+<p>He looked white and haggard, Suzette thought; but that might only
+be the effect of the evening light, or it might be that he was tired
+after a laborious day. She had not much time to think about him. His
+footsteps sounded on the road behind her. He was running to overtake
+her. It occurred to her that she might turn this persistence of his
+to good account. She might talk to him about his mother, and urge him
+to spend a little more of his time at home, and do a little more to
+brighten that lonely life.</p>
+
+<p>"I met one of the lads," he said, "and got rid of that poor brute."</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry you should think it necessary to come with me."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you are sorry that I should snatch a brief and perilous
+joy—half an hour in your company—after having abstained from pleasure
+and peril so long."</p>
+
+<p>"If you are going to talk nonsense, I shall go back to the house and
+ask your mother to send me home in her brougham."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I won't talk nonsense. I don't want to offend you; and you are
+so easily offended. Something offended you in our duets. What was
+it, I wonder? Some ignorant sin of mine? some passage played <i>troppo
+appassionato</i>? some <i>cantabile</i> phrase that sounded like a sigh from an
+over-laden heart! Did the music speak too plainly, Suzette?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is too bad of you!" exclaimed Suzette, pale with anger. "You take
+a mean advantage of finding me alone here. I won't walk another step
+with you!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction as she spoke;
+but she was some distance from the house, at least ten minutes' walk,
+and her heart sank at the thought of how much Geoffrey Wornock could
+say to her in ten minutes. Her heart was beating violently, louder
+and faster than she had ever felt it beat. Did it matter so much what
+nonsense he might talk to her—idle breath from idle lips? Yes, it
+seemed to her to matter very much. She would be guilty of unpardonable
+treason to Allan if she let this man talk. It seemed to her as if
+these wild words of his—mere rodomontade—made an epoch in her life.</p>
+
+<p>He seized her by the arm with passionate vehemence, but not roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette! Suzette! you must—you shall hear me!" he said. "Go
+which way you will, I go with you. I did not mean to speak. I have
+tried—honestly—to avoid you. Short of leaving this place altogether,
+I have done my uttermost. But Fate meant us to meet, you see. Fate
+lamed my horse—the soundest hunter of them all. Fate sent you by
+this lonely path at the nick of time. You shall hear me! Say what you
+like to me when you have heard. Be as hard, as cruel, as constant to
+your affianced lover as you please; but you shall know that you have
+another lover—a lover who has been silent till to-night, but who
+loves you with a love which is his doom. Who says that about love and
+doom? Shakespeare or Tennyson, I suppose. Those two fellows have said
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock, you are very cruel," she faltered. "You know how
+sincerely I am attached to your mother, and that I wouldn't for
+the world do anything to wound her feelings, but you are making it
+impossible for me ever to enter her house again."</p>
+
+<p>"Why impossible? You are trembling, Suzette. Oh, my love! my dear, dear
+girl, you tremble at my touch. My words go home to your heart. Suzette,
+that other man has not all your heart. If he had, you would not have
+been afraid to go on with our music. If your heart was his, Orpheus
+himself could not have moved you."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not afraid. You are talking nonsense. I left off playing because
+Allan did not like to see me absorbed in an occupation which he could
+not share. It was my duty to defer to his opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he heard, he understood. He knew that my heart was going out to
+you—my longing, passionate heart. He could read my mystery, though you
+could not. Suzette, is it hopeless for me? Is he verily and indeed the
+chosen? Or do you care for him only because he came to you first—when
+you knew not what love means? You gave yourself lightly, because he
+is what people call a good fellow. He cannot love you as I love you,
+Suzette. Love is something less than all the world for him. No duty
+beside a father's sick-bed would keep me from my dearest, if she were
+mine. I would be your slave. I could live upon one kind word a month,
+if only I might be near you, to behold and adore."</p>
+
+<p>He had released her arm, but he was walking close by her side, still in
+the direction of the Manor House, she hurrying impetuously, trying to
+conquer her agitation, trying to make light of his foolishness, and yet
+deeply moved.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very unkind," she said at last, with a piteousness that was
+like the complaint of a child.</p>
+
+<p>"Unkind! I am a miserable wretch pleading for life, and you call
+me unkind. Suzette, have pity on me! I have not succumbed without
+a struggle. I loved you from the hour we met—from that first hour
+when my heart leapt into a new life at the sound of your voice. On
+looking back, it seems to me now that I must have so loved you from
+the beginning. I can recall no hour in which I did not love you. But I
+have fought the good fight, Suzette. Self-banished from the presence
+I adore, I have lived between earth and sky, until, though I have
+something of the sportsman's instinct, I have come almost to hate the
+music of the hounds and the call of the huntsman's horn, because in
+every mile my horse galloped he was carrying me further from you, and
+every hour I spent far afield was an hour I might have spent with you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is cruel of you to persecute me like this."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Suzette; you must not talk of persecution. If I am rough and
+vehement to-night, it is because I am resolute to ask the question that
+has been burning on my lips ever since I knew you. I will not be put
+off from that. But once the question asked and answered I have done,
+and, if it must be so, you have done with me. There shall be no such
+thing as persecution. I am here at your side, your devoted lover—no
+better man than Allan Carew, but I think as good a man, with as fair
+a record, of as old and honourable a race, richer in this world's
+gear; but that's not much to such a woman as Suzette. It is for you to
+choose between us; and it is not because you said yes to him before you
+had ever seen my face that you are to say no to me, if there is the
+faintest whisper in your heart that pleads for me against him."</p>
+
+<p>She stood silent, her eyelids drooping over eyes that were not
+tearless. His words thrilled her, as his violin had thrilled her
+sometimes in some lingering, plaintive passage of old-world music. His
+face was near hers, and his hand was on her shoulder, detaining her.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectuality, the refinement of the delicately chiselled
+features, the pallor of the clear complexion were intensified by the
+dim light. She could not but feel the charm of his manner.</p>
+
+<p>He was like Allan—yet how unlike! There was a fascination in this
+face, a music in this voice, which were wanting in Allan, frank, and
+bright, and honest, and true though he was. There was in this man just
+the element of poetry and unreasoning impulse which influences a woman
+in her first youth more than all the manly virtues that ever went to
+the making of the Christian Hero.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette had time to feel the power of that personal charm before she
+collected herself sufficiently to answer him with becoming firmness.
+For some moments she was silent, under the influence of a spell which
+she knew must be fatal to her peace and Allan's happiness, should she
+weakly yield. No, she would not be so poor, so fickle a creature. She
+would be staunch and true, worthy of Allan's love and of her father's
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, if I were to palter with the situation," she thought—"if I were
+to play fast and loose with Allan, my father might think he had been
+mistaken in trusting me without a chaperon. He would never respect me
+or believe in me again. And Allan? What could Allan think of me were I
+capable of jilting him?"</p>
+
+<p>Her heart turned cold at the idea of his indignation, his grief, his
+disgust at a woman's perfidy.</p>
+
+<p>She conquered her agitation with an effort, and answered her daring
+lover as lightly as she could. She did not want Geoffrey to know how he
+had shaken her nerves by his vehement appeal.</p>
+
+<p>She knew now, standing by his side, with that eloquent face so near her
+own, that musical voice pleading to her—she knew how often his image
+had been present to her thoughts at Discombe Manor, while he himself
+was away.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very foolish of you to waste such big words upon another man's
+sweetheart," she said. "Pray believe that when I accepted Allan Carew
+as my future husband, I accepted him once and for ever. There was no
+question of seeing some one else a little later, and liking some one
+else a little better. There may be girls who do that sort of thing;
+but I should be sorry that anybody could think me capable of such
+inconstancy. Allan Carew and I belong to each other for the rest of our
+lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a final answer, Miss Vincent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely final."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I can say no more, except to ask your forgiveness for having said
+too much already. If you will go on to the house, and talk to my mother
+for a few minutes, I'll go to the stables and order the brougham to
+take you home. It is too dark for you to walk home alone."</p>
+
+<p>There was no occasion for the brougham. A pair of lamps in the drive
+announced the arrival of Miss Vincent's pony-cart, which had been sent
+to fetch her.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">AT EVENSONG.</p>
+
+
+<p>The windows were darkened at Fendyke. The passing bell had tolled
+the years of the life that was done, sounding solemnly and slowly
+across the level fields, the deep narrow river, the mill-streams and
+pine-woods, the scattered hamlets lying far apart on the great flat,
+where the sunsets linger late and long. All was over, and Allan had
+to put aside his own sorrow in order to comfort his mother, who was
+heart-broken at the loss of a husband she had idolized, with a love so
+quiet and unobtrusive, so little given to sentimental utterances, that
+it might have been mistaken for indifference.</p>
+
+<p>She wandered about the darkened house like some lost soul in the dim
+under-world, unable to think of anything, or to speak of anything but
+her loss. She looked to Allan for everything, asserted her authority in
+no detail.</p>
+
+<p>"Let all be as he wished," she said to her son. "Let us think only of
+pleasing him. You know what he would like, Allan. You were with him so
+much towards the last. He talked to you so freely. Think only of him,
+and of his wishes."</p>
+
+<p>She could not divest herself of the idea that her husband was looking
+on at all that happened, that this or that arrangement might be
+displeasing to him. She was sure that he would wish the sternest
+simplicity as to the funeral. His own farm-labourers were to carry
+him to his grave, and the burial was to be at dusk. He had himself
+prescribed those two conditions. He wished to be laid in his grave at
+set of sun, when the hireling's daily toil was over, and the humblest
+of his neighbours could have leisure to follow him to his last bed. And
+then he had quoted Parson Hawker's touching lines:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"Sunset should be the time, they said,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To close their brother's narrow bed.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">'Tis at that pleasant hour of day</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The labourer treads his homeward way;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">His work is o'er, his toil is done,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And therefore at the set of sun,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To wait the wages of the dead,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">We lay our hireling in his bed."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Those lines were written for the tillers of the earth; but George
+Carew's thoughts of himself were as humble as if he had been the
+lowest of day labourers. Indeed, in those closing hours of life,
+when the record of a man's existence is suddenly spread out before
+him like the scroll which the prophet laid before the king, there is
+much in that comprehensive survey to humiliate the proudest of God's
+servants, much which makes him who has laboured strenuously despair
+at the insufficiency of the result, the unprofitableness of his
+labour. How, then, could such a man as George Carew fail to perceive
+his unworthiness?—a man who had let life go by him, who had done
+nothing, save by a careless automatic beneficence, to help or better
+his fellow-men, to whom duty had been an empty word, and the Christian
+religion a lifeless formula.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The Squire of Fendyke was laid to rest in the pale twilight of early
+March, the winter birds sounding their melancholy evensong as the
+coffin was lowered into the grave. The widow and her son stood side by
+side, with those humbler neighbours and dependents clustering round
+them. No one had been bidden to the funeral, no hour had been named,
+and the gentry of the district, whose houses lay somewhat wide apart,
+knew nothing of the arrangements till afterwards. There were no empty
+carriages to testify to the decent grief which stays at home, while
+liveried servants offer the tribute of solemn faces and black gloves.
+Side by side, Lady Emily and her son walked through the grounds of
+Fendyke to the churchyard adjoining. The wintry darkness had fallen
+gently on those humble graves when the last "Amen" had been spoken, and
+mother and son turned slowly and sadly towards the desolate home.</p>
+
+<p>Allan stayed in his mother's sitting-room till after midnight, talking
+of their dead. Lady Emily found a sad pleasure in talking of the
+husband she had lost, in dwelling fondly upon his virtues, his calm and
+studious life, his non-interference with her household arrangements,
+his perfect contentment with the things that satisfied her.</p>
+
+<p>"There never was a better husband, Allan," she said, with a tearful
+sigh, "and yet I know I was not his first love."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"Not his first love. Alas! no, poor soul," mused Allan, when he had
+bidden his mother good night, and was seated alone in front of his
+father's bureau, alone in the dead middle of the night, steeped in the
+concentrated light of the large shaded lamp, while all the rest of the
+room was in semi-darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Not his first love! Poor mother. It is happy for you that you know not
+how near that first love was to being the last and only love of your
+husband's life. Thank God, you did not know."</p>
+
+<p>Often in those quiet days while his father was gradually fading out of
+life, Allan had argued with himself as to whether it was or was not his
+duty to reveal Mrs. Wornock's identity with the woman to whom George
+Carew had dedicated a lifetime of regret, and so to give his father
+the option of summoning that sad ghost out of the past, of clasping
+once again the vanished hand, and hearing the voice that had so long
+been unheard. There would have been rapture, perhaps, to the dying
+man in one brief hour of re-union; but that hour could not give back
+youth, or youthful dreams. There would have been the irony of fate in
+a meeting on the brink of the grave; and whatever touch of feverish
+gladness there might have been for the dying in that brief hour, its
+after consequences would have been full of evil for the mourning wife.
+Better, infinitely better, that she should never know the romance of
+her husband's youth, never be able to identify the woman he loved, or
+to inflict upon her own tender heart the self-torture of comparison
+with such a woman as Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>For Lady Emily, in her happy ignorance of all details, that early love
+was but a vague memory of a remote past, a memory too shadowy to be the
+cause of retrospective jealousy. She knew that her husband had loved
+and sorrowed; and she knew no more. It must needs be painful to her
+to identify his lost love in the person of a lady whom her son valued
+as a friend, and to whom her son's future wife was warmly attached.
+Allan had felt therefore that he was fully justified in leaving Mrs.
+Wornock's story unrevealed, even though by that silence he deprived the
+man who had loved her of the last tearful farewell, the final touch of
+hands that had long been parted.</p>
+
+<p>He was full of sadness to-night as he turned the key in the lock, and
+lifted the heavy lid of the bureau at which he had so often seen his
+father seated, arranging letters and papers with neat, leisurely hands,
+and the pensive placidity which characterized all the details of his
+life. That bureau was the one repository for all papers of a private
+nature, the one spot peculiarly associated with him whom they had laid
+in the grave at evensong. No one else had ever written on that desk, or
+possessed the keys of those quaintly inlaid drawers.</p>
+
+<p>And now the secrets of the dead were at the mercy of the survivors,
+so far as he had left any trace of them among those neatly docketted
+papers, those packets of letters folded and tied with red tape, or
+packed in large envelopes, sealed, and labelled.</p>
+
+<p>Allan touched those packets with reverent hands, glanced at their
+endorsement, and replaced them in the drawers or pigeon-holes as he had
+found them. He was looking for the manuscript of which his father had
+told him; the story of "a love which never found its earthly close."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was here, under his hand; a thin octavo, bound in limp morocco,
+a manuscript of something less than a hundred pages, in the hand he
+knew so well, the small, neat hand that, to Allan's fancy, told of the
+leisurely life, the mind free from fever and fret, the heart that
+beat in slow time, and had long outlived the quick alternations of
+passionate feeling. Allan drew his chair nearer the lamp, and began to
+read.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"THE DEAD MAN TOUCH'D ME FROM THE PAST."</p>
+
+
+<p>"I wonder how many lives there are like mine in this prosperous England
+of ours, eminently respectable, comfortable, and altogether protected
+from the worst hazards of fate, happy even, according to the standard
+measure of happiness among the squirearchy of England—and yet cold and
+colourless. I wonder how many men there are in every generation who
+drift along the slow current of a sluggish river, and who call that
+monotonous progress living. Up the river with the rising tide; down
+the river with the ebbing tide; up and down, to and fro, between level
+banks that are always the same, with never a hill and never a crag to
+break the monotony of the outlook.</p>
+
+<p>"We have a river within a stone's throw of my gates which always seems
+to me the outward and visible sign of my inward and spiritual life,
+a river that flows past farms and villages, and for any variety of
+curve or accident of beauty might just as well be a canal—a useful
+river bearing the laden barges down to the sea, a river on which a
+pleasure-boat is as rare as a kingfisher on its banks. And so much
+might be said of my life; a useful life within the everyday limits
+of English morality; but a life that nobody will remember or regret,
+outside my own household, when I am gone.</p>
+
+<p>"This is no complaint that I am writing, to be read when I am in my
+grave by the son I hope to leave behind me. Far be such a thought
+from me the writer, and from him the reader. It is only a statement,
+a history of a youthful experience which has influenced my mature
+years, chiefly because on that boyish romance I spent all the stock
+of passionate feeling with which nature had endowed me. It was not
+much, perhaps, in the beginning. I was no Byronic hero. I was only an
+impulsive and somewhat sentimental youth, ready to fall in love with
+the first interesting girl I met, but not to find my Egeria among the
+audience at a music-hall, or in a dancing garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not mistake me, Allan. I have loved your mother truly and even
+warmly, but never romantically. All that constitutes the poetry, the
+romance of love, the fond enthusiasm of the lover, vanished out of my
+life before I was three and twenty. All that came afterwards was plain
+prose.</p>
+
+<p>"It was in the second year of my university life, and towards the
+end of the long vacation, that I allowed myself to be persuaded to
+attend a <i>séance</i> to be given by some so-called spiritualists in the
+neighbourhood of Russell Square. Mr. Home, the spiritualist, had
+been frightening and astonishing people by certain unexplainable
+manifestations, and he had been lucky enough to number among his
+patrons and disciples such men as Bulwer Lytton, William and Robert
+Chambers, and others of almost equal distinction. To the common herd
+it seemed that, there must be some value in manifestations which could
+interest and even convince these superior intellects; so, with the
+prestige of Home's performances, and with an article in the <i>Cornhill
+Magazine</i> to assist them, the people near Russell Square were doing
+very good business.</p>
+
+<p>"Twice, and sometimes three times a week, they gave a <i>séance</i>, and
+though they did not take money at the doors, or advertise their
+entertainment in the daily papers, they had their regular subscribers
+among the faithful, and these subscribers could dispose of tickets of
+admission among the common herd. As two of the common herd, Gerald
+Standish and I got our tickets from Mrs. Ravenshaw, a literary lady
+of Gerald's acquaintance, who had written a spiritualistic novel, and
+was a profound believer in all the spiritualistic phenomena. Her vivid
+description of the dark <i>séance</i> and its wonders had aroused Gerald's
+curiosity, and he insisted that I, who was known among the men of my
+year as a favourite pupil of the then famous mathematical coach,
+should go with him and bring the severe laws of pure science to bear
+upon the spirit world.</p>
+
+<p>"I was incurious and indifferent, but Gerald Standish was a genius, and
+my particular chum. I could not, therefore, be so churlish as to refuse
+so slight a concession. We dined together at the Horseshoe Restaurant,
+then in the bloom of novelty; and, after a very temperate dinner, we
+walked through the autumn dusk to the quiet street on the eastward side
+of Russell Square, where the priest and priestess of the spirit-world
+had set up their temple.</p>
+
+<p>"The approach of the mysteries was sadly commonplace, a shabby hall
+door, an airless passage that smelt of dinner, and for the temple
+itself a front parlour sparsely furnished with the most Philistine of
+furniture. When we entered, the room was empty of humanity. An oil-lamp
+on a cheffonier by the fireplace dimly lighted the all-pervading
+shabbiness. The scanty moreen curtains—lodging-house curtains of
+the poorest type—were drawn. The furniture consisted of a dozen or
+so of heavily made mahogany chairs with horse-hair cushions, a large
+round table on a massive pedestal, supported on three clumsily carved
+claws, and a bookcase against the wall facing the windows, or I should
+say rather a piece of furniture which might be supposed to contain
+books, as the contents were hidden by a brass lattice-work lined with
+faded green silk. The gloom of the scene was inexpressible, and seemed
+accentuated by a dismal street cry which rose and fell ever and anon
+from the distance of Hunter or Coram Street.</p>
+
+<p>"'We are the first,' Gerald whispered, a fact of which I did not
+require to be informed, and for which he ought to have apologized,
+seeing that he had deprived me of my after-dinner coffee, and dragged
+me off yawning, full of alarm lest we should be late.</p>
+
+<p>"Gradually, and in dismal silence, diversified only by occasional
+whisperings, about a dozen people assembled in the dimness of
+the dreary room. Among them came Mrs. Ravenshaw and her jovial,
+business-like husband, who seated themselves next Gerald and me, and
+confided their experiences of past <i>séances</i>. The lady was full of
+faith and enthusiasm. The gentleman was beginning to have doubts.
+He had heard things from unbelievers which had somewhat unsettled
+him. He had invested a good many half-guineas in this dismal form of
+entertainment, and had wasted a good deal of time in bringing his
+gifted wife all the way from Shooter's Hill, and, so far, they had
+got no forwarder than on the first <i>séance</i>. They had seen strange
+things. They had felt the ghastly touch of hands that seemed like
+dead hands, and which ordinary people would run a mile to avoid. That
+heavy mahogany table had shuddered and thrilled under the touch of
+meeting hands; had lifted itself like a rearing horse; had throbbed
+out messages purporting to come from the dead. Strange sounds had been
+in the air; angelic singing, as of souls in Elysium; and some among
+the audience had gone away after each <i>séance</i> touched and satisfied,
+believing themselves upon the threshold of other worlds, feeling their
+commonplace lives shone upon by supernal light, content henceforward to
+dwell upon this dull cold earth, since they were now assured of a link
+between earth and heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ravenshaw, as became an imaginative writer, was of this
+idealistic temperament, receptive, confiding; but her husband was a
+man of business, and wanted to see value for his money. He explained
+his views to me in a confidential voice while we waited. 'Yes,
+they had undoubtedly seen and heard strange things. They had seen
+bodies—living human bodies—floating in the air—yes, floating in the
+frowsy atmosphere of this shabby parlour, atmosphere which it were base
+flattery to call "air." They had enjoyed this abnormal experience; but,
+after all, how is the cause of humanity, or the march of enlightenment
+to be advantaged by the flotation of an exceptional subject here and
+there? If everybody could float, well and good. The gain would be
+immense, except for boot-makers and chiropodists, who must suffer for
+the general weal. But for mediumistic persons, at the rate of one per
+million of the population, to be carried by viewless powers on the
+empty air was of the smallest practical use. An improvement in the
+construction of balloons would be infinitely more valuable.'</p>
+
+<p>"We waited nearly an hour in all—we had arrived half an hour before
+the stated opening of the <i>séance</i>, and we waited five and twenty
+minutes more, and were yawning and fidgeting hopelessly before the door
+opened, and a dismal-looking man with a pallid face and long hair, came
+into the room, followed by a slovenly woman in black, with bare arms,
+and a towzled, highly artistic flaxen head. He bowed solemnly to the
+assembled company, looked from the company to the woman, and murmured
+in a sepulchral voice, 'My wife,' by way of general introduction.</p>
+
+<p>"The flaxen-headed lady seated herself at the large round table, and
+the dark-haired vampire-like man crept about the room inviting his
+audience to take their places at the same mystic table. We formed a
+circle, hand touching hand, the long-haired professor on one side of
+the table, the flaxen wife on the other. Gerald and I were separated by
+the width of the table, and the enthusiastic novelist and her practical
+husband were also as far apart as circumstances would permit.</p>
+
+<p>"My next neighbour on the right was a tall, burly man with a strong
+North of Ireland accent, a captain in the mercantile marine, Mrs.
+Ravenshaw informed me. The people who met in this dreary room had come
+by some knowledge of one another's social status and opinions, although
+conversation was sternly discouraged as offensive to the impalpable
+company we were there to cultivate. A gloomy silence, and a vaguely
+uncomfortable expectancy of something ghastly were the prevailing
+characteristics of the assembly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ravenshaw had informed me that the seaman on my right was an
+unbeliever, and that he courted the spirits only with the malicious
+desire of doing them a bad turn. There had been the premonitory
+symptoms of a row on more than one occasion, and he had been the source
+and centre of the adverse feeling which had shown itself at those times.</p>
+
+<p>"My left-hand neighbour was an elderly woman in black, who looked like
+a spinster, and who, instead of the bonnet of everyday life, wore a
+rusty Spanish mantilla, and a black velvet band across her high narrow
+forehead, confining braids of chestnut hair whose artificial origin was
+patent to every eye. As the <i>séance</i> progressed she frequently shed
+tears. Mrs. Ravenshaw, who was in her confidence, whispered to me that
+this lady came there to hold mystic converse with an officer in the
+East-India Company's Service, to whom she had been betrothed thirty
+years before, and who had died in Bengal, after marrying the daughter
+of a native money-lender and an English governess. It comforted his
+devoted sweetheart to hear from his own lips, as it were, that he had
+led a wretched existence with his half-caste wife, and had never ceased
+to repent his inconstancy to his dearest Amanda. Amanda was the name
+of the lady in the mantilla, Amanda Jones. It amuses me to recall these
+details, to dwell upon the opening of a scene which I entered upon so
+casually, and which was to exercise so lasting an influence upon my
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>séance</i> proceeded after the vulgar routine of such mysteries
+in England and in America. We sat in the frowzy darkness, and heard
+each other's breathing as we listened to the mysterious rappings, now
+here, now there, now high, now low, as of some sportive dressmaker
+rapping her thimbled finger on table, or shutter, or ceiling, or
+wall. We heard strange messages thumped out, or throbbed out by the
+excitable mahogany, which became more and more vehement, as if the
+beating of our hearts, the swift current of blood in all our arteries
+were being gradually absorbed by that vitalised wood. The German
+woman translated the rappings into strange scraps of speech, which
+for some of the audience were full of meaning—private communications
+from friends long dead, allusions to the past, which were sometimes
+received in blank wonder, sometimes welcomed as proof irresistible of
+thought-transference between the dead and the living. The mighty dead,
+with names familiar to us all, condescended to hold communion with us.
+Spinosa, Bacon, Shelley, Sir John Franklin, Mesmer—a strange mixture
+of personalities—but, alas! the feebleness of their communications
+gave a crushing blow to the theory of a progressive existence beyond
+the grave.</p>
+
+<p>"'I should like to know how it's done,' said the sea-captain, suddenly,
+in an aggressive voice, which irreverent interruption the professor and
+some of the audience rebuked by an indignant hush.</p>
+
+<p>"The whole business wearied me. I was moved to melancholy rather than
+to laughter as I realized the depth of human credulity which was
+indicated by the hushed expectancy of the dozen or so of people sitting
+round a table in the dark in a shabby Bloomsbury lodging-house, and
+expecting communications from the world after death—the inexplicable
+shadow-land of which to think is to enter into the regions of all that
+is most serious and solemn in human thought—through the interposition
+of a shabby charlatan who took money for the exhibition of his power.</p>
+
+<p>"I sat in the darkness, bored and disgusted, utterly incurious,
+desiring nothing but the close of the manifestations and escape into
+the open air, when suddenly, in a faint light, which came I knew not
+whence, I saw a face on the opposite side of the circle of faces, a
+face which assuredly had not been among the audience before the lamp
+was darkened at the beginning of the <i>séance</i>. Yet so far as my sense
+of hearing, which was particularly acute, could inform me, no door had
+opened, no footstep had crossed the floor since we had seated ourselves
+at the table, and had formed the circle, hand touching hand.</p>
+
+<p>"This hitherto unseen face had a wan and mournful beauty which at once
+changed my feelings from apathy to interest. The eyes were of a lovely
+blue, and were remarkable for that translucent brilliancy which is
+rarely seen after childhood; the features were delicate to attenuation,
+and, in the faint light, the cheeks looked hollow and colourless, and
+even the lips were of a sickly pallor. The loveliness of those large
+ethereal eyes counterbalanced all want of life and colour in the rest
+of the face, which, had those eyes been hidden under lowered lids,
+might have seemed the face of the dead. I looked at it, awe-stricken.
+Its presence had in one instant transformed the scene of vulgar
+imposture to a temple and a shrine. I watched and waited, spell-bound.</p>
+
+<p>"There were subdued whisperings round the table, and a general
+excitement and expectancy which indicated the beginning of a more
+enthralling performance than the vagabond rappings on table and
+wainscot, or even the furtive and flying touch of smooth cold hands.</p>
+
+<p>"For some minutes, for an interval that seemed much longer than it
+really was, nothing happened.</p>
+
+<p>"The face looked at us—or, rather, looked beyond us; the pale lips
+were parted as in prayer or invocation; the long yellow hair streaming
+over the shoulders gleamed faintly in the dim, uncertain light, which
+came and went from some mysterious source. The door opening on the
+entrance hall was behind my side of the table, and I have little doubt
+that the curiously soft and searching light, which fluttered every
+now and then across the circle and lingered on the face opposite, was
+manipulated by some one outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Presently there came a shower of raps—here, there, everywhere, on
+ceiling, wainscot, doors, above our heads, under our feet—while a
+strain of organ music, so softly played as to seem remote, crept into
+the room, and increased the confusion of our senses, distracted past
+endurance by those meaningless rappings.</p>
+
+<p>"Suddenly a young woman at the end of the table gave a hysterical cry.</p>
+
+<p>"'She is rising, she is rising!' she said. 'Oh, to think of it, to
+think of it! To think how He rose—He whom they had slain—and
+vanished from the loving eyes of His disciples! She is like the angels
+who gather round His throne. Who can doubt now?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's humbug, and we all know it's humbug,' grumbled the sea-dog on
+my right. 'But it's clever humbug; and it isn't easy to catch them
+napping.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Hush!' said the professor's wife indignantly. 'Watch her, and be
+silent.'</p>
+
+<p>"We watched. I had not once taken my eyes from that pale, spiritual
+face, with the eyes that had a look of seeing things in an immeasurable
+distance—the things that are not of this earth. Suddenly the dreamy
+tranquillity of the countenance changed to violent emotion, an ecstatic
+smile parted the pale lips, and, for the first time since I had been
+conscious of her presence, those exquisite lips spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is coming, it is coming!' she cried. 'Take me, take me, take me!'
+And then from speech to song seemed a natural transition, as she sang
+in a silver-sweet soprano—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"'Angels ever bright and fair,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Take, oh take me to your care.'</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"As that lovely melody floated through the room, the slender, girlish
+form was wafted slowly upward with steady, gradual motion, until it
+hovered halfway between the ceiling and the floor, the long white robe
+flowing far below the feet, the golden hair falling below the waist.
+Nothing more like the conventional idea of an angelic presence could
+have offered itself to the excited imagination. The figure remained
+suspended, the arms lifted, and the semi-transparent hands scattering
+flowers, while we gazed, enthralled by the beauty and gracefulness of
+that strange vision, and for the moment the hardest of us, even the
+sea-dog at my side, was a believer.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing so beautiful could be false, dishonest, ignoble. No; whatever
+the rest of the <i>séance</i> might be, this at least was no vulgar
+cheat. We were in the presence of a mysterious being, exceptionally
+gifted—human, perhaps; but not as the common herd are human.</p>
+
+<p>"I was weak enough to think thus. I had abandoned myself wholly to the
+glamour of the scene, when the sea-dog started to his feet, as the
+girl gave a shrill cry of fear. She hung for a moment or two over the
+table, head downward, and fell in a heap between two of the seated
+spectators, her head striking against the edge of the table, her long
+hair streaming wide, and faint moanings as of acute pain issuing from
+her pallid lips.</p>
+
+<p>"In an instant all was noise and confusion. The sea-captain struck
+a match, Mr. Ravenshaw produced an end of wax candle, and everybody
+crowded round the girl, talking and exclaiming unrestrainedly.</p>
+
+<p>"'There, now; didn't I tell you so? All a cheat from beginning to end.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He ought to be prosecuted.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody but fools would have ever believed in such stuff.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Look here!' cried the sea-captain, 'she was held up by a straight
+iron rod which passes through the floor, and a cross-bar, like a
+pantomime fairy. She was strapped to the cross-bar, and the strap broke
+and let her go. She's the artfullest hussy I ever had anything to do
+with; for I'll be hanged if she hadn't almost taken me in with that
+face and voice of hers. 'Waft me, angels,' and looking just like an
+angel, and all the time this swindler was strapping her on to the iron
+bar.'</p>
+
+<p>"The swindler defended himself angrily, in a jumble of German and
+English, getting more German as he grew more desperate. They were
+all clamouring round him. The flaxen-headed Frau had slipped away in
+the beginning of the skirmish. The golden-haired girl had fainted—a
+genuine faint, apparently, whatever else might be false—and her head
+was lying on Mrs. Ravenshaw's shoulder; that lady's womanly compassion
+for helpless girlhood being stronger even than her indignation at
+having been hoaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Give us back our money!' cried three or four voices out of the
+dimness. 'Give us back our money for the whole series of <i>séances</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Half-guinea tickets! Dear enough if the thing had been genuine!'</p>
+
+<p>"'An impudent swindle!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Will somebody run for the police?' said the sea-captain. 'I'll stay
+and take care they don't give us the slip. Who'll go?'</p>
+
+<p>"There were half a dozen volunteers, who began to grope their way to
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"'One's enough,' said the sea-captain. 'Take care that fellow doesn't
+make a bolt of it.'</p>
+
+<p>"The warning came too late. As he spoke, spirit-lips blew out the
+candle which Mr. Ravenshaw was patiently holding above the group of
+fainting girl and kindly woman, like one of the living candlesticks in
+the 'Legend of Montrose,' and the room was dark. There was a sound of
+scuffling, a rush, the door opened and shut again, and a key turned in
+the lock with decisive emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"'Done!' cried the sea-captain, making his way to the curtained window.</p>
+
+<p>"It was curtained and shuttered, and the opening of the shutters
+occupied some minutes, even for the seaman's practised hands. There
+were bolts—old-fashioned bolts—with mechanism designed to defy
+burglary, in the days when wealth and fashion inhabited Bloomsbury. Wax
+matches sputtered and emitted faint gleams and flashes of light here
+and there in the room. Two or three people had found their way to the
+locked door, and were shaking and kicking it savagely, without effect.</p>
+
+<p>"At last the bolts gave way, the deft hands having found the trick
+of them. The seaman flung open the shutters, and the light of the
+street-lamp streamed into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"The girl was still unconscious, lying across two chairs, her head on
+the novelist's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"'Shamming, no doubt,' said the seaman.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no; there is no acting here,' said the lady. 'Her face and hands
+are deadly cold. Ah, she is beginning to recover. How she shudders,
+poor child!'</p>
+
+<p>"A long-drawn, shivering sob broke from the white lips, which I could
+see faintly in uncertain light from the street-lamp. The seaman was
+talking to some one outside, asking him to send the first policeman he
+met, or to go to the nearest police-office and send some one from there.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter?' asked the voice outside. 'Anybody hurt?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No; but I want to give some one in charge.'</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' said the voice; and then we heard footsteps hurrying off.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whom are you going to give in charge?' asked Mr. Ravenshaw, in his
+calm, practical way. 'Not this shivering girl, surely. The other birds
+are flown.'</p>
+
+<p>"'She may shiver,' retorted the seaman angrily. 'I shall be glad to see
+her shiver before the beak, to-morrow. He'll talk to her. Shivering
+won't get over <i>him</i>. He's used to it. Of course she's fainted. A woman
+can always faint when she finds herself in a difficulty. We'll have her
+up for obtaining money upon false pretences, all the same.'</p>
+
+<p>"The united efforts of three or four of the party had burst open the
+door of the room, and everybody except the little group about the
+girl—myself among them—made for the street door, which was not locked.</p>
+
+<p>"A couple of policemen arrived a few minutes afterwards, and thereupon
+began a severe inspection of the house from cellar to garret. They
+found an old woman in a back kitchen, who explained that the dining
+and drawing-room floors, and the front kitchen were let to the
+table-turning gentleman and his wife, and the young lady who lived with
+them. They had occupied the rooms nearly three months, had paid some
+rent, but were considerably in arrear. The landlord, who occupied the
+second floor, had gone into the country to see a sick daughter. Two
+young men lodged in the attics—printer's readers—but they were seldom
+in before eleven.</p>
+
+<p>"In a word, the old woman, who was general drudge and caretaker, was
+alone in the basement with a plethoric spaniel, too old and obese to
+bark, and a tabby cat. All the rest of the house was empty of human
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"The policemen and the late believers in Herr Kaltardern's occult
+powers explored every corner of the rooms which the Germans and their
+accomplice had inhabited. The personal belongings of the three were
+of the slightest, the Kaltarderns' sole possession being a large
+carpet bag of ancient and obsolete fashion, and a brush and comb.
+The room occupied by the girl was clean and tidy, and contained a
+respectable-looking wooden trunk.</p>
+
+<p>"The machinery of the imposture stood confessed in this investigation.
+The bookcase was a dummy piece of furniture which concealed a door
+of communication between the front and back rooms. Door of room, and
+door of bookcase, the front of which opened in one piece, were both so
+artfully padded with baize as to open and shut noiselessly; and it was
+by this means that the tricksters had been able to bring their innocent
+accomplice into the room unobserved, or to go in and out themselves
+while the sceptical among their audience might be watching the only
+obvious entrance to the room. In the kitchen below the iron rod and
+the hole through the ceiling plainly indicated the means by which the
+girl had been lifted off her feet. The transverse bar was attached to
+the rod in the room above, by the noiseless hands of the professor.</p>
+
+<p>"All this I heard afterwards from Gerald, who took an active part in
+the investigation. For myself, while the inquisitive explorers were
+tramping in and out of the rooms above and below, I remained beside the
+two good people who were caring for the helpless sharer in the foolish
+show—accomplice or victim, as the case might be.</p>
+
+<p>"I had found and relighted the lamp, and by its light Mrs. Ravenshaw
+and I examined the girl's forehead, which had been severely cut in her
+fall. While we were gently drying the blood which stained her eyelids
+and cheeks, she opened her eyes and looked at us with a bewildered
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, how my head aches!' she moaned. 'What was it hurt me like that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'You were hurt in your fall,' I answered. 'Your head struck the edge
+of the table.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But how could I fall? How could they let me fall?'</p>
+
+<p>"'The strap round your waist broke, and you fell from the iron bar.'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked at me in amazement—simulated, as I thought—and it
+distressed me to think that fair young face should be capable of such a
+lying look.</p>
+
+<p>"'What strap? The spirits were holding me up—wafting me towards the
+sky.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Very likely,' I answered, picking up the broken strap and showing it
+to her; 'but the spirits couldn't manage it without a little mechanical
+aid. And the mechanical aid was not as sound as it ought to have been.'</p>
+
+<p>"The girl took the strap in her hands, and looked at it and felt it
+with an expression of countenance so full of hopeless bewilderment that
+I began to doubt my previous conviction, to doubt even the evidence
+of my senses. Could any youthful face be so trained to depict unreal
+emotion? Could so childlike a creature be such a consummate actress?</p>
+
+<p>"'Was this round my waist?' she asked, looking from me to the
+kind-hearted woman whose arms were still supporting her slender,
+undeveloped figure.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, this was round your waist, and by this you were strapped to this
+iron bar here. You see, the rod passes through the floor. The cross-bar
+must have been fastened to it while you were singing. My poor child,
+pray do not try to sustain a falsehood. You are so young that you are
+hardly responsible for what you have done. You were in these people's
+power, and they could make you do what they liked. Pray be candid with
+us. We want to befriend you if we can, do we not, Mrs. Ravenshaw?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, indeed we do, poor thing!' answered the lady heartily. 'Only be
+truthful with us.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Indeed, I am telling the truth,' the girl protested tearfully. 'I
+did not know of that strap, or of the iron rod. They told me I was
+gifted—that I was in communion with my dear dead father, when I felt
+my soul uplifted—as I have felt it often and often, sitting singing to
+myself, alone in my room. I have felt as if my spirit were soaring away
+and away, upward to that world beyond the skies where my father and my
+mother are. I have felt as if, while my body remained below, my spirit
+were floating upward and upward, away from earth and sorrow. I told the
+Frau how I used to feel, because I believed in her. She brought me into
+communion with my father. He used to rap out messages of love; and she
+taught me how to understand the spirit language. That was how I came to
+know her. That was how I was willing to go with them and join in their
+<i>séances</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I begin to understand,' said I. 'They told you that you were gifted,
+and that you had a power of floating upward from the floor to the
+ceiling?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes. It came upon me unawares. They asked me to sing, and to let my
+spirit float towards heaven as I sang. I always used to feel like
+that of an evening in our church in the country. I used to feel my
+soul lifted upward when I sang the <i>Magnificat</i>. And one night at a
+<i>séance</i>, soon after we came to London, I was singing, and I felt
+myself floating upward. It seemed as if some powerful hands were
+holding me up; and I felt round me in the half-darkness, and there was
+no one near. I was moving alone, without any visible help; and I felt
+that it was the passionate longing of my spirit to approach the spirit
+of my dead father which was lifting me up. And, oh, was it only that
+horrid strap and that iron rod?' she exclaimed, bursting into tears.
+'How cruel—how cruel to cheat me like that!'</p>
+
+<p>"She had evidently no thought of the public who were cheated, or of
+her own position as a detected impostor, or the tool and accomplice of
+impostors. Her tears were for the dream so rudely broken.</p>
+
+<p>"The tramping in and out of rooms was over by this time. The majority
+of the audience were leaving the house, the sea-dog loud in his
+disgust and indignation till the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>"'I should have liked to give that young hussey in charge,' he said in
+a loud voice as he passed the half-open door, evidently arguing with
+some milder-tempered victim; 'but, as you say, she's little more than a
+child, and no magistrate would punish her.'</p>
+
+<p>"I breathed more freely when I heard the street door bang behind this
+gentleman and the policemen.</p>
+
+<p>"'They're all gone except ourselves,' said Gerald. 'The gifted German
+and his wife have shown us a clean pair of heels, and there's only an
+old charwoman in the basement. She tells me your young friend there
+came from the country—somewhere in Sussex—and always behaved herself
+very nicely. The old woman seems fond of her.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, she was always kind to me,' said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"'Was she? Well, I hope she'll be kind to you now you're left high and
+dry,' said Gerald. 'These people won't come back any more, I take it.
+They travel in light marching order—a grubby old carpet bag, and a
+brush and comb which would account for the lady's tangled head. They
+won't come back to fetch <i>those</i>, at the risk of being had up for
+obtaining money upon false pretences. And what's to become of you, I
+wonder?'—to the girl. 'Have you any money?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Any friends in London?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Any friends in the country—in the place you left?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not now. No one would be kind to me now. There was a kind lady who
+wanted to apprentice me to her dressmaker when my father died, and I
+was left quite alone; but I hated the idea of dressmaking; and one
+night there was a spiritualistic <i>séance</i> at the school-house, and I
+went, because I had heard of messages from the dead, and I thought if
+it were possible for the dead to speak to the living, my father would
+not leave me without one word of consolation. We loved each other so
+dearly; we were all the world to each other; and people said the dead
+had spoken—had sent messages of love and comfort. So I went to the
+dark <i>séance</i>, and I asked them to call my father's spirit; and there
+was a message rapped out, and I believed that it was from him; and
+next day I met Madame Kaltardern in the street, and I asked her if
+the messages were really true; and she said they were true, and she
+spoke very kindly to me, and asked me if I would like to be a medium,
+and said she was sure I was gifted—I could be a clairvoyant if I
+liked—she could see from the shape of my eyes that I had the power,
+and it would be a great pity for me not to use it. She said it was a
+glorious life to be in constant communion with great spirits.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And you thought you would like it better than dressmaking?' said Mrs.
+Ravenshaw, sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"'It was of my father I thought. He had been dead such a short time.
+Sometimes I could hardly believe that he was dead. When I sat alone in
+the firelight, I used to fancy he was in the room with me; I used to
+speak to him, and beg him to answer me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And were there any raps then?' asked the practical Ravenshaw.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, never when I was alone. The Kaltarderns came back after
+Christmas, and there was another <i>séance</i>, for the benefit of the
+Infirmary, and I went again; and Madame told me my father was speaking
+to me. He rapped out a strange message about the organ. I was to bid
+good-bye to the organ of which I was so fond; for I had a gift that was
+greater than music; and I was to go with those who could cultivate that
+gift. So the next day, when Madame Kaltardern asked me to go away with
+them, and promised to develop my mediumistic power, I consented to go.
+I was to be like their adopted daughter. They were to clothe me and
+feed me, but they were to give me no money. A gift like mine could not
+be paid for with money. If I tried to make money by my power, I should
+lose it. I did not want money from them. I wanted to be brought into
+communion with the spirit world, with my father whom I loved so dearly,
+and with my mother, who died when I was eight years old, and with my
+little sister Lucy, who died soon after mother—the little sister I
+used to nurse. My only world was the world of the dead. And, oh, was it
+all trickery—all? Those messages from father and mother—those baby
+kisses, so soft, so quick, so light; the hand upon my forehead—the
+hand of the dead—touching me and blessing me! Was it all false, all
+trickery?'</p>
+
+<p>"She rocked herself to and fro sobbing, unconsolable at the thought of
+her vanished dream-world.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm afraid so, my dear,' said Ravenshaw, kindly. 'I'm afraid it was
+all humbug. You have been duped yourself, while you have helped to
+dupe others. It was uncommonly clever of them to get an unconscious
+accomplice. And now what is to be done with this poor thing? That is
+the question,' he concluded, appealing to his wife and me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, that's the question with a vengeance,' said Gerald. 'We can't
+leave her in this house in the care of a deaf old woman, to bear the
+brunt of the landlord's anger when he comes home and finds the birds
+flown and his arrears of rent the baddest of bad debts. Poor child! we
+must get her away somehow. Have you no friends in the country who would
+give you a home?' he asked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' she answered, fighting with her sobs. 'People were very kind to
+me just at first after my father's death; and then I think they got
+tired of me. They said I was helpless; I ought to have been able to put
+my hand to something useful. The only thing I cared for was music. I
+used to sing in the choir; but it was only a village church, and the
+choir were only paid a pound a quarter. I couldn't live upon that; and
+I couldn't play the organ well enough to take my father's place. And
+then Miss Grimshawe, a rich old lady, offered to apprentice me to a
+dressmaker; but I hated the idea of that. Dressmakers' girls are so
+common; and my father was a gentleman, though he was poor. When I told
+Miss Grimshawe I was going away with the Kaltarderns, she was very
+angry. She said I should end badly. Everybody was angry. I can never go
+back to them; they would all turn from me.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Ravenshaw looked suspicious; Mrs. Ravenshaw looked serious;
+and even I asked myself whether the girl's story, so plausible, so
+convincing to my awakened interest, might not, after all, be a tissue
+of romance, which sounded natural, because it had been recited so often.</p>
+
+<p>"Gerald was the most business-like among us.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is your name?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Esperanza Campbell.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Esperanza? Why, that's a Spanish name!'</p>
+
+<p>"'My mother was a Spaniard.'</p>
+
+<p>"'So! And what is the name of the village where your father played the
+organ?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Besbery, near Petworth.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Besbery!' repeated Gerald, pencilling memoranda on his linen cuff.
+'Do you remember the name of the vicar, or rector?'</p>
+
+<p>"'There was only a curate-in-charge—Mr. Harrison.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Very good,' said Gerald.' Now, what we have to do is to get this poor
+young lady into a decent lodging, where the landlady will take care
+of her till we can help her to find some employment, or respectable
+situation, not mediumistic. I suppose it would hardly be convenient
+to you to take her home with you, and keep her for a week or so, Mrs.
+Ravenshaw?' Gerald inquired, as an afterthought.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ravenshaw hastened to explain that, with children,
+nursery-governess, and spinster aunt, every bed in her house at
+Shooter's Hill was occupied.</p>
+
+<p>"'We have not known what it is to have a spare bedroom for the last
+three years,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Babies have accumulated rather rapidly,' said Ravenshaw. Poor
+creature, how my careless, independent bachelorhood pitied him! 'And
+every second baby means another servant. If one could only bring them
+up in a frame, like geranium cuttings!'</p>
+
+<p>"'I think I know of a lodging-house where Miss Campbell could find a
+temporary home, not far from here,' I said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Think you know?' cried Gerald, impatiently. 'You can't think about
+knowing; you know or don't know. Where is it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'In Great Ormond Street.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Capital—close by. I'll go and get a cab. Miss Campbell, just put
+your traps together, and—and do up your hair, and get on a gown,'
+looking at her flowing robe and dishevelled hair with evident distaste,
+'while I'm gone.'</p>
+
+<p>"He was out of the room in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you sure the house is perfectly respectable, Mr. Beresford?'
+inquired Mrs. Ravenshaw, who, as a fiction-weaver, no doubt let her
+imagination run upon the horrors of the great city and the secret
+iniquities of lodging-house keepers, from Hogarth's time downwards.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her that I could trust my own sister to the house in Great
+Ormond Street, which was kept by my old nurse and my father's old
+butler, who had retired from service about five years before, and had
+invested their savings in the furnishing of a spacious old-fashioned
+house in a district where rents were then low, for the accommodation
+of all that is most respectable in the way of families and single
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can vouch for my old nurse Martha as one of the best and kindest of
+women, as well as one of the shrewdest,' I said.</p>
+
+<p>"The girl heard this discussion unmoved and uninterested by the trouble
+we were taking on her behalf. Her sobs had subsided, but she was crying
+silently, weeping over the cruel end of a dream which had been more to
+her than all the waking world. She told me afterwards how much and how
+real that dream had been to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ravenshaw went to her room with her, and helped her to exchange
+the long white alb-like garment for a tidy black gown, on which the
+crape trimming had grown rusty with much wear. I can see her now as she
+came back into the lamplight in that plain black gown, and with her
+yellow hair rolled into a massive coil at the back of her head, the
+graceful figure, so girlish, so willowy in its tall slenderness, the
+fair pale face, and dark-blue eyes heavy with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"She had a poor little black-straw hat in her hand, which she put on
+presently, before we went downstairs to the cab. Gerald and I carried
+her box. There was no one to object to its removal. The old woman in
+the basement made no sign. One of the printers let himself in with a
+latch-key while we were in the hall, looked at us curiously, and went
+upstairs without a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ravenshaw kissed Esperanza, and wished her a friendly good night,
+promising to do what she could to help her in the future; and then she
+and her husband hurried away to catch the last train to Shooter's Hill."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"WHAT WAS A SPECK EXPANDS INTO A STAR."</p>
+
+
+<p>"Had the landlady of the house in Great Ormond Street been anybody in
+the world except my old nurse, I doubt if any philanthropic purpose
+would have inspired me with the boldness to carry through the work
+I had undertaken. To appear before the average lodging-house keeper
+within half an hour of midnight, and with such a <i>protégée</i> as
+Esperanza Campbell upon my hands, would have required the courage
+of a lion; and I was at that time a particularly shy and sensitive
+young man, brought up in the retirement of a country house and in the
+society of a mother whom I loved very dearly, but, as we are told to
+love God, with fear and trembling. My constitutional shyness, the
+natural outcome of narrow surroundings, had kept me from making friends
+at the University, and I believe it was sheer pity that had prompted
+Gerald Standish to take me under his wing. His kindness was rewarded by
+finding me a likable companion, whose character supplied some of the
+qualities which were wanting in his bright and buoyant disposition. We
+were real friends; and remained friends until the end of his too-brief
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"So much to explain that it was only my confidence in my old nurse's
+indulgence which enabled me to cut the knot of the difficulty in
+disposing of Esperanza Campbell.</p>
+
+<p>"My faithful Martha and her excellent husband were sleeping the sleep
+of the just in a ground-floor room at the back of the house, while
+their maid-servant slumbered still more soundly in a back attic.
+Happily Martha was a light sleeper, had trained herself to wake at
+the lightest cry in seasons of measles or whooping-cough, teething or
+infantile bronchitis; so my second application to the bell and knocker
+brought a prompt response. Bolts were drawn, a key was turned, a chain
+was unfastened, the door was opened a couple of inches, and a timid
+voice asked what was wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is I, Martha, George Beresford. I've brought you a lodger.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, come now, Mr. George, that's one of your jokes. You've been to
+the theatre, and you're playing a trick upon me. Go home now, do, like
+a dear young gentleman, and come and have a cup of tea with me some
+afternoon when you've got half an hour to spare.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Martha, you are keeping a very sweet young lady out in the cold. For
+goodness' sake, open the door, and let me explain matters.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Can't she take her in?' asked Gerald, impatiently, from the cab.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha opened the door, and exhibited herself reluctantly in her
+casual costume of flannel dressing-gown and tartan shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"'What <i>do</i> you mean, Mr. George? What can you mean by wanting
+lodgings for a young lady at this time of night?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Sounds queer, don't it?' said Gerald, who had bounded up the steps
+and burst into the wainscoted hall, lighted only by the candle Martha
+was carrying. 'The fact is, we're in a difficulty, and Mr. Beresford
+assures me you can get us out of it.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then in fewest words and with most persuasive manner he explained
+what we wanted, a home and a protector for a blameless young girl
+whom the force of circumstances had flung upon our hands at half-past
+eleven o'clock in the evening. Somehow we must get rid of her. She was
+a gentleman's daughter, and we could not take her to the workhouse.
+Reputation, hers and ours, forbade that we should take her to an hotel.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word did Gerald say about table-turning or spirit-rapping. He
+was shrewd enough to guess that any hint at the <i>séance</i> would have
+prejudiced honest Martha against our charge.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm sure I don't know what to do,' said Martha; and I could see that
+she was suspicious of Gerald's airy manner, and doubtful even of me.
+'My husband's fast asleep. He isn't such a light sleeper as I am. I
+don't know what he would say——'</p>
+
+<p>"'Never mind what he would say,' interrupted Gerald. 'What you have
+to say is that you'll take Miss Campbell in and give her a tidy room
+somewhere—she ain't particular, poor thing!—and make her comfortable
+for a week or two while she looks out for a situation.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, she's on the look-out for a situation, is she?' said Martha,
+evidently mollified by the idea of a bread-winning young person. 'You
+see, Mr. George,' she went on, appealing to me, 'in London one can't
+be too particular. This house is what Benjamin and I have to look to
+in our old age; we've put our little all into it; and if the young
+lady happened to be rather dressy; or sang comic songs; or went to the
+theatre in cabs; or had gentlemen leave letters for her; why, it would
+just be our ruin. Our first floor is let to one of the most particular
+of widow ladies. I don't believe there's a more particular lady in
+London.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear Martha, do you think I'm a fool or a knave? This girl is a
+village organist's daughter——'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, Mr. George, they must all begin,' said Martha, shaking her head
+philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>"'She is in mourning for her father—an orphan—friendless and
+unhappy——'</p>
+
+<p>"'As for conduct, propriety, and all that kind of thing, I'll answer
+for her as if she were my own sister,' put in Gerald, in his splendidly
+reckless way; 'and that being the case, I hope you are not going to
+keep the poor young lady sitting out there in a cold cab till to-morrow
+morning.'</p>
+
+<p>"Martha listened to Gerald, and looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you're sure it's all right, Mr. George,' she murmured, 'I'd do
+anything in the world to oblige you; but this house is our all——'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, yes,' Gerald exclaimed impatiently. 'You told us that before.
+Bring her in, George. It's all settled.'</p>
+
+<p>"This was a happy stroke, for old Martha would have stood in the hall
+with her guttering candle and in her deshabille of flannel and tartan
+debating the matter for another quarter of an hour; but when I brought
+the pale girl in her black frock up the steps, and handed her into the
+old woman's care, the motherly heart melted in a moment, and hesitancy
+was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor young thing; why, she's little more than a child! How pale and
+cold you look, poor dear. I'll go down and light a bit of fire and warm
+a cup of broth for you. My second floor left the day before yesterday.
+I'll soon get the bedroom ready for you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's as it should be,' said I. 'You'll find yourself safe and
+comfortable here, Miss Campbell, with the kindest woman I know. I'll
+call in a few days, and see how you are getting on.'</p>
+
+<p>"I slipped a couple of sovereigns into my old nurse's palm as I wished
+her good night. The cabman brought in the poor little wooden trunk,
+received a liberal fare, and went his way in peace, while Gerald and
+I walked to the Tavistock, glad to cool down after the evening's
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"'What an adventure!' said he. 'Of course I always knew it was humbug,
+but I never thought it was quite such transparent humbug.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That girl would have taken any one in,' said I.</p>
+
+<p>"'What, because she's young and pretty, after a rather sickly fashion?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, because she was so thoroughly in earnest, and believed in the
+thing herself.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You really think she was a dupe and not an accomplice?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am sure of it. Her distress was unmistakable. And at her age, and
+with her imaginative nature——'</p>
+
+<p>"'What did you know of her nature?' he asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"The question and his manner of asking it pulled me up suddenly, as a
+dreamer of morning dreams is awakened by the matter-of-fact voice of
+the servant who comes to call him.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I know of her? What assurance had I that her sobs and
+lamentation, her pathetic story of the father so loved and mourned,
+were not as spurious as the rest of the show, as much a cheat as the
+iron rod and the leather strap? How did I know? Well, I could hardly
+have explained the basis of my conviction, but I did know; and I would
+have staked my life upon her honesty and her innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"I woke next morning to a new sense of responsibility. I had taken this
+helpless girl's fate into my hands, and to me she must look for aid in
+chalking out a path for herself. I had to find her the means of earning
+her daily bread, reputably, and not as a drudge. The problem was
+difficult of solution. I had heard appalling descriptions of the lot of
+the average half-educated governess—the life harder, the pay less,
+than a servant's. Yet what better than a nursery governess could this
+girl be? at her age, and with her attainments, which I concluded were
+not above the ordinary schoolgirl's. The look-out was gloomy, and I
+was glad to shut my eyes to the difficulties of the situation, telling
+myself that my good Martha would give the poor child a comfortable home
+upon very moderate terms—such terms as I could afford to pay out of my
+very moderate allowance, and that in a month or two something—in the
+language of the immortal Micawber—would turn up.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"There was but another week of the Long, a week which under ordinary
+conditions I should have spent with my widowed mother at her house in
+the country, but which I decided to spend in London, accepting Gerald's
+invitation to share his rooms in Arundel Street, and do a final round
+of the theatres; an invitation I had previously declined. During that
+week I was often in Great Ormond Street, and contrived to learn a
+great deal more about Esperanza's character and history. Of her history
+all she had to tell; of her character, which to me seemed transparent
+as a forest streamlet, all I could divine. I called in Ormond Street on
+the second day of her residence there, and found good Nurse Martha in
+the best possible humour. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and she
+insisted that I should stop for a cup of tea, and as tea-making—that
+is to say, the art of producing a better cup of tea than anybody else
+could produce from the same cannister, kettle, and teapot—had always
+been a special talent of Martha's, I was glad to accept her hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Campbell had gone for a little walk round the squares, she
+informed me.</p>
+
+<p>"'She doesn't care about going out,' explained Martha; 'she'd rather
+sit over a book or play the harmonium. But I told her she must take an
+airing for her health's sake.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was disappointed at not finding Esperanza in the tidy back parlour
+to which Nurse Martha ushered me—a room of exemplary neatness and
+snugness, enlivened by those living presences which always make for
+cheerfulness—vulgar as we may deem them—a glass tank of gold fish,
+a canary bird, and a magnificent tabby cat, sleek, clean, luxuriously
+idle, in purring contemplation of the bright little fire in the
+old-fashioned grate, that grate with hobs which reminded me of my
+nursery deep in the heart of the country.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now you sit down in Blake's armchair, Mr. George, and let's have
+a talk over missy. I shouldn't have taken those two sovereigns from
+you the night before last if I hadn't been all of a muddle with the
+suddenness of the thing. I don't want to be paid in advance for doing a
+kindness to a helpless girl.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Martha; but since the helpless girl was on my hands, it's only
+right I should pay you somehow, and we may as well settle that question
+at once, as it may be several weeks before Miss Campbell is able to
+find a suitable situation.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Several months, more likely. Do you know how young she is, Mr.
+George?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Eighteen.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Eighteen last birthday—only just turned eighteen, and she's much
+younger than most girls of eighteen in all her ways and thoughts. She's
+clever enough with her hands, poor child. Nothing lazy or lolloping
+about her—made her own bed and swept and tidied her own room without
+a word from me; but there's a helplessness somewhere. I believe the
+weakness is in her thoughts. I don't know how she'll ever set about
+getting a situation—I don't know what kind of situation she's fit for.
+She's much too young and too pretty for a governess.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not too young for a nursery-governess, surely.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A nursery-governess means a nursery-maid without a cap, Mr. George. I
+shouldn't like to see her brought to that. I've taken to her already.
+Benjamin says, with her sweet voice and pretty face, she ought to go on
+the stage.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was horrified at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"'Martha, how can you speak of such a thing? Have you any idea of what
+the life of a theatre means for an inexperienced girl—for a beautiful
+girl, most of all?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I've heard there are temptations; but a prudent young woman can
+take care of herself anywhere, Mr. George; and an imprudent young woman
+will go wrong in a country parsonage, or in a nunnery. If Miss Campbell
+is to earn her own living, she'll have to face dangers and temptations,
+go where she may. She'll have to take care of herself, poor child.
+There'll be nobody else to take care of her. I've heard that young
+women are well looked after in the better class of theatres—at Mr.
+Charles Kean's, for instance. I knew a young person that used to walk
+on in <i>Louis the Eleventh</i>—dressed as a page, in blue and gold—and
+she told me that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean was <i>that</i> particular——'</p>
+
+<p>"'The Keans are making a farewell tour in Australia, and will never go
+into management again, Martha. You are talking nonsense.'</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Martha looked crestfallen at this reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"'I dare say I am, Mr. George; but, for all that, I don't think Miss
+Campbell will ever do much as a governess. It isn't in her. There's a
+helplessness, and a bendingness, and droopingness, if I may say so,
+about her character that won't do for a governess. The only mistress
+that would keep her is the kind of mistress that would make a slave of
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Hard lines,' I said, getting up and walking about the little back
+parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a third room quite at the back of the substantial Georgian
+house; and there was scant space for my restlessness between the old
+square piano, which served as a sideboard, and the fireplace by which
+my dear old Martha sat looking at me with a perturbed countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"I began to think I had let myself in for a bad thing. What was I to do
+with this girl, whose fate I had in some measure taken into my hands?
+It had seemed easy enough to bring her to this quiet shelter, which she
+might leave in a week or so, braced up and ready to fight her battle
+of life—the battle we all have to fight somehow—a self-supporting
+young woman. Self-supporting, that was the point. I now remembered with
+terror that there is a large class of persons upon this earth whom not
+even the scourge of poverty can make self-supporting; a vast multitude
+of feeble souls who resign themselves from the beginning of things to
+drift upon the stream of life, and are never known to strike out and
+swim for any shore, and so drift down to the ocean of death. Of these
+are the poor relations for whom something is for ever being done, and
+who never do anything for themselves; of these the feeble scions of
+patrician family trees, who are always waiting for sinecures under
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>"God help her, poor soul, if she was one of these invertebrates; and
+God help me in my responsibility towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"I was an only son; the heir to a small estate in Suffolk, and an
+income of something under three thousand a year. I was not quite
+twenty years of age, and I had to maintain myself at the most
+expensive college in Cambridge on an allowance that many of the rich
+young men with whom I associated would have considered abject penury. I
+was not in a fast set. I did not hunt—indeed, with my modest income,
+hunting would have been impossible; but I was not without tastes which
+absorbed money; the love of choice books and fine engravings, the fancy
+for curios picked up here or there, the presence of which gave interest
+to my rooms, and, perhaps, helped to reconcile me to many long hours
+within closed doors. I had hitherto been most careful to live within
+my income, for I knew that it was as much as my mother could afford to
+give me, taking into consideration her devotion to the estate which
+was to be mine by-and-by, and the maintenance and improvement of which
+had been to her as a religion. Her model cottages, her home-farm,
+the village church, to whose every improvement her purse had largely
+contributed, these were the sources of expenditure which kept her
+comparatively poor, and which forbade any kind of extravagance on my
+part.</p>
+
+<p>"All these facts were in my mind that afternoon as I paced the narrow
+bounds of old Martha's sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"'She will have to get her living,' I said severely, as the result of
+these meditations, which showed me no surplus income for philanthropy.</p>
+
+<p>"Had my mother been as some men's mothers, I might naturally have
+contemplated shifting the burden upon her shoulders. I might have told
+her Esperanza's story, and handed Esperanza over to her care as freely
+as if I had picked up a stray cat or dog. But my mother was not one of
+those soft, impressionable women who are always ready to give the reins
+to sentiment. She was a good woman, and devoted much of her life and
+means to doing good, but her benevolence was restricted to the limits
+of her parish. She would hardly listen to a tale of sorrow outside her
+own village.</p>
+
+<p>"'We have so much to do for our own people, George,' she used to tell
+me; 'it is folly to be distracted by outside claims. Here we know our
+return for every shilling we give. We know the best and the worst about
+those we help.'</p>
+
+<p>"Were I to tell her Esperanza's story, her suggestions for helping me
+out of my difficulty would be crueller than old Martha's. She would be
+for sending the girl into service as a housemaid, or for getting her an
+assisted passage to the Antipodes on an emigrant ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha came to my rescue in my trouble now as she had done many a
+time when I wore a kilt, and when my naked knees had come into abrupt
+collision with a gravel path or a stony beach.</p>
+
+<p>"'She'll have to be older and wiser before she gets her own living, Mr.
+George,' said Martha; 'but don't you trouble about her. As long as I've
+a bed or a sofa to spare, she can stop with me and Benjamin. Her bite
+and sup won't hurt us, poor thing, and I don't want sixpence from you.
+She shall stop here free gratis, Mr. George, till she finds a better
+home.'</p>
+
+<p>"I gave my old nurse a hug, as if I had been still the boy in the
+Macdougal kilt.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no, Martha; I'm not going to impose on your generosity. I shall
+be able to pay you <i>something</i>. Only I thought you might want two or
+three pounds a week for her board, and I could not manage that for an
+indefinite period."</p>
+
+<p>"'Two or three pounds! Lor, Mr. George, if that's your notion of
+prices, Cambridge land-ladies must be 'arpies. Why, I only get two
+guineas for my drawing-room floor, as a permanency, and lady-tenants
+even begrudge half a crown extra for kitchen fire. Let her stop here as
+long as she likes, Mr. George, and never you think about money. It's
+only her future I'm thinking of, for there's a helplessness about her
+that——Ah, there she is,' as the hall door slowly opened. 'I gave her
+my key. She's quite one of us already.'</p>
+
+<p>"She came quietly into the room, and took my offered hand without
+shyness or embarrassment. She was pale still, but the fresh air had
+brought a faint tint of rose into the wan cheeks. She looked even
+younger and more childlike to-day in her shabby mourning frock and poor
+little black straw hat than she had looked the night before last. Her
+strong emotion then had given more of womanliness to the small oval
+face. To-day there was a simplicity in her aspect, as of a trusting
+child who took no thought of the future, secure in the kindness of
+those about her.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of a sentence in the gospel. 'Consider the lilies how they
+grow.' This child had grown up like a lily in the mild atmosphere of
+domestic love, and had been the easy dupe of a delusion which appealed
+to her affection for the dead.</p>
+
+<p>"'I called to see if you were quite comfortable and at home with Mrs.
+Blake,' I said, far more embarrassed by the situation than Esperanza
+was.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, indeed I am,' she answered in her sad sweet voice. 'It is so
+nice to be with some one so kind and clean and comfortable. The Frau
+was not <i>very</i> unkind; but she was so dirty. She gave us such horrid
+things to eat—the smell of them made me ill—and then she said I was
+affected and silly, and the Herr used to say I might starve if I could
+not eat their food. It made me think of my happy home with father,
+and our cosy little tea-table beside the fire. We did not always have
+dinner,' she added naively; 'neither of us cared much for that.'</p>
+
+<p>"She hung over old Martha's shoulder with affectionate familiarity, and
+the horny old hand which had led my infant steps was held up to clasp
+hers, and the withered old face smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"'See how she gets round us,' said Martha, nodding at me. 'Benjamin is
+just as bad. And you should hear her play the 'armonian of an evening,
+and sing 'Abide with me.' You'd hardly hear her without shedding tears.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you think you can be happy here for a few weeks?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, as happy as I can be anywhere without father. I dreamt of him
+last night—such a vivid dream. I know he was near me. It was something
+more than a dream. I heard his voice close beside my pillow calling
+my name. I know his spirit was in the room. It isn't because the Herr
+and his wife were cheats that there is <i>no</i> link between the living
+and the dead. I know there is a link,' she insisted passionately, her
+eyes brimming with sudden tears. 'They are not dead—those we dearly
+love—only removed from us. The clay is gone; the soul is hovering
+near, blessing, comforting us.'</p>
+
+<p>"She sobbed out her grief, hiding her face upon Martha's substantial
+shoulder. I could speak no word of consolation; nor would I for worlds
+have argued against this fond hallucination, the dream of sorrowing
+love.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"'I shall not see thee. Dare I say</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">No spirit ever brake the band</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">That stays him from the native land,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Where first he walk'd when clasp't in clay?</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">No visual shade of some one lost,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">But he, the Spirit himself, may come</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Where all the nerve of sense is numb;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.'</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I quoted those lovely lines in a low voice as I walked softly up and
+down the darkening room; and then there was silence save for soothing
+wordless murmurs from Martha, such murmurs as had served to hush my own
+baby sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>"'There's the kettle just on the boil,' cried the great soul, cheerily,
+when Esperanza's sobs had ceased; 'and I know Mr. George must be
+wanting his cup of tea.'</p>
+
+<p>"She rose and bustled about in her dear old active way. She lit a
+lamp—an inartistic cheap paraffin-lamp, but the light was cheerful.
+The tea-table arranged by Martha was the picture of neatness. She set
+Esperanza the feminine task of making toast. The poor child had the
+prettiest air of penitence as she kissed Martha's hand, and then knelt
+meekly down, with the fireglow crimsoning the alabaster face and neck,
+and shining on the pale gold hair and rusty black frock.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm afraid I'm very troublesome,' she said apologetically; 'but,
+indeed, I'm very grateful to you, sir, for taking care of me that
+dreadful night, and to dear Mrs. Blake for all her kindness to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Blake is the quintessence of kindness. I am very glad to think
+you can live happily here until she or I can find some nice situation
+for you.'</p>
+
+<p>"She had been smiling softly over her task, but her face clouded in an
+instant.</p>
+
+<p>"'A situation. That's what everybody said at Besbery! We must find her
+a situation. And then Miss Grimshaw wanted me to be a dressmaker.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You shall not be a dressmaker. I promise that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But, oh, what am I to be? I don't know half enough for a governess.
+I couldn't teach big girls German and French and drawing. I couldn't
+teach little boys Latin. And that's what everybody wants of a
+governess. I've read the advertisements in the newspapers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And as to being a nursery-governess, why, it's negro slavery!' said
+Martha.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wouldn't mind the drudgery, only I hate children!" said Esperanza.</p>
+
+<p>"This avowal shocked me. I looked at the soft, childlike countenance,
+and the speech seemed incongruous.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have never had anything to do with children since my sister Lucy
+died,' she explained. 'I shouldn't understand them, and they would
+laugh at me and my fancies. After Lucy's death, I lived alone with
+father, always alone, he and I. The harmonium and the organ in the
+church close by were our only friends. Our clergyman was just civil to
+father, but I don't think he ever liked him. I heard him once tell the
+Bishop that his organist was an eccentricity. An eccentricity! That was
+all he could say about my father, who was ever so much cleverer than
+he.'</p>
+
+<p>"She said this with pride, almost with defiance, looking me in the
+face as if she were challenging me to dispute the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"'Was your father very clever?' I asked her, keenly interested in any
+glimpses of her history.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I am sure he was clever, much cleverer than the common run of
+people. He loved music, and he played beautifully. His touch upon the
+old organ made the church music sound angelic. Now and then there was
+some one in the church—some stranger—who seemed to understand his
+playing, and who was astonished to find such an organist in a village
+church—an out-of-the-way village like ours. But for the most part
+people took no notice. It didn't seem to matter to them whether the
+choir sang well or badly; but when they sang false it hurt father just
+like bodily pain.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Did he teach you to play?'</p>
+
+<p>"'A little. But he wasn't fond of teaching. What I know of music I
+found out chiefly for myself—just sitting alone at the organ, when I
+could get one of the choir boys to blow for me, touching the keys, and
+trying the stops, till I learnt something about them. But I play very
+badly.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Beautifully! beautifully!' ejaculated Martha. 'You draw tears.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You sang in the choir, I think?' I said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes; there were four young ladies, and a lady's-maid with a contralto
+voice, and I was the sixth. There were about a dozen men and boys, who
+sat on the other side of the chancel. People said it was a good choir
+for a village church. Father was so unhappy when we sang badly that we
+could not help trying hard to sing well.'</p>
+
+<p>"I remembered those seraphic soprano notes in Handel's thrilling
+melody, and I could understand that at least one voice in the choir had
+the heavenly ring.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I said at last, 'we must hope for the best. Something may turn
+up that will suit you better than governessing. And in the mean time
+you can make yourself happy with my old nurse. I can answer for it
+she'll never be unkind to you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm sure of that. I would rather stay here and be her servant than go
+among strangers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What, wear an apron and cap and wait upon the lodgers?' I said,
+laughing at the absurdity of the idea. She seemed a creature so far
+removed from the useful race of neat-handed Phyllises.</p>
+
+<p>"'I should not mind.'</p>
+
+<p>"The clock in the hall struck six, and I had promised Gerald to
+be ready for dinner at half-past, as we were to go to a theatre
+afterwards—the Adelphi, where Jefferson was acting in <i>Rip Van
+Winkle</i>. I had to take a hurried leave.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you worry yourself about <i>her</i>, Mr. George,' said Martha, as
+she let me out at the street door; ' I'll keep her as long as ever you
+like.'</p>
+
+<p>"I told Martha that I should send her a little money from time to time,
+and that I should consider myself in her debt for a pound a week as
+long as Miss Campbell stayed with her.</p>
+
+<p>"'She'll want a new frock, won't she?' I asked. 'The one she wears
+looks very shabby.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It looks what it is, Mr. George. It's all but threadbare, and it's
+the only frock she has in the world, poor child! But don't you trouble
+about that either. You gave me two sovereigns. One of those will buy
+the stuff, and she and I can make the frock. I've cut out plenty of
+frocks in my day. I used to make all your mother's frocks once upon a
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>"In the bloom of her youth she had nursed my mother; she had nursed
+me in her sturdy middle life; and now in her old age she was ready
+and willing to care for this girl for whose fate I had made myself
+responsible.</p>
+
+<p>"Gerald received me with his customary cheeriness, though I was ten
+minutes after the half-hour, and the fried sole had frizzled itself to
+dryness by that delay.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've some good news for you!' he exclaimed, in his exuberant way.
+'It's all right.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What's all right?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Your <i>protégée</i>. I've written to the parson at Besbery. The story she
+told us was gospel truth.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I never thought it was anything else.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, that's because you're over head and ears in love with her,' said
+Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt myself blushing furiously, blushing like a girl whose secret
+penchant for the hero of her dreams stands revealed. Of course I
+protested that nothing was farther from my thoughts than love; that
+I was only sorry for the girl's loneliness and helplessness. Gerald
+obviously doubted me; and I had to listen to his sage counsel on the
+subject. He was my senior by two years, and claimed to be a man of the
+world, while I had been brought up at my mother's apron-string. He
+foresaw dangers of which I had no apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is nothing easier to drop into than an entanglement of that
+sort,' he said. 'You had much better fall in love with a ballet-girl.
+It may be more expensive for the moment, and there may be a bigger
+rumpus about it, but it won't compromise your future.'</p>
+
+<p>"This friendly remonstrance had no effect upon my conduct during the
+few remaining days of the long vacation. I went to Ormond Street
+a second and a third time in the course of those few days. I took
+Esperanza to an afternoon concert at the St. James's Hall, and enjoyed
+her ecstasy as she listened to Sainton and Bottesini. For her, music
+was a passion, and I believe she sat beside me utterly unconscious of
+my existence, with a soul lifted above earth and all earthly feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"'You were happy while the music lasted,' I said, as we walked back to
+Ormond Street, by a longish round, for I chose the quietest streets
+rather than the nearest way.</p>
+
+<p>"'More than happy,' she answered softly. 'I was talking with my
+father's spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You still believe in the communion of the dead and the living,' I
+said, 'in spite of the tricks your German friends played upon you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' she answered steadfastly, 'I still believe. I shall always
+believe there is a bridge between earth and heaven—between the world
+we can see and touch and the world we can only feel with our hearts and
+minds. When I hear music like that we heard just now—those long-drawn
+singing notes on the violin, those deep organ tones of the 'cello—I
+feel myself carried away to a shadowy world where I know my father and
+mother are waiting for me. We shall all be together again some day, and
+I shall know and understand, and I shall feel her light touch upon my
+forehead and my hair as I have felt it so often in my dreams.'</p>
+
+<p>"She broke down, crying softly as she walked by my side. I soothed her
+as well as I could, soothed her most when I talked of those she had
+lost, questioning her about them. She remembered her mother dimly—a
+long, last illness, a pale and wasted face, and gentle hands and loving
+arms that used to be folded round her neck as she nestled against
+the sick-bed. That sick-room, and the dim light of wintry afternoons,
+and the sound of the harmonium as her father played soft music in an
+adjoining parlour, were things that seemed to have lasted for years.
+She could not look behind them. Her memory of mother and of home
+stopped on the threshold of that dimly lighted room.</p>
+
+<p>"Her father was a memory of yesterday. He had been her second self, the
+other half of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"'He believed in ghosts,' she said, 'and in second sight. He has often
+told me how he saw my mother coming downstairs to meet him, with a
+shroud showing faintly above her white summer gown, the night before
+she broke a blood-vessel and took to her bed in her last illness.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An optical delusion, no doubt; but it comes natural to a Scotchman to
+believe such things. He should not have told you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why not? I like to know that the world we cannot see is near us.
+I should have died of loneliness if I had not believed my father's
+spirit was still within reach. I don't mind about those people being
+impostors. I begin to think that the friends we have lost would hardly
+talk to us through the moving up and down of wooden tables. It seems
+such a foolish way, does it not?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Worse than foolish; undignified. The ghosts in Virgil move and talk
+with a stately grandeur; Shakespeare's ghosts are kingly and awful.
+They strike terror. It has remained for the nineteenth century to
+imagine ghosts that flit about a shabby parlour and skip from side
+to side of the room and flutter round a table, and touch, and rap,
+and tap, and pat with viscous hands, like the touch of a toad. Samuel
+Johnson would not have sat up a whole night to see a table heaved up
+and down, or to be touched on the forehead by a chilly, unknown hand.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't care what you say about those things,' she answered
+resolutely. 'There is a link between life and death. I don't know what
+the link is; but though my father may be dead to all the world besides
+he is not dead to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"I did not oppose stubborn common sense to this fond delusion. It might
+be good for her to believe in the things that are not. The tender fancy
+might bridge over the dark gulf of sorrow. I tried to divert her mind
+to lighter subjects—talked to her of this monstrous London of which
+she knew nothing, and of which I knew very little.</p>
+
+<p>"On the following evening I took Esperanza and my old nurse to a
+theatre, a form of entertainment in which Martha especially delighted.
+I was not very happy in my choice of a play. Had I taken my <i>protégée</i>
+to see Jefferson, she would have been touched and delighted. Unluckily
+I chose another theatre where a burlesque was being played which was
+just a shade more vulgar than the average burlesque of those days.
+Esperanza was puzzled and disgusted. I discovered that her love of
+music was an exclusive passion. She cared for nothing else in the way
+of art. I tried her with a picture-gallery, only to find her ignorant
+and indifferent. Two things only impressed her in the whole of the
+National Gallery—a landscape of Turner's, and a portrait by Reynolds,
+in which she fancied a resemblance to her father.</p>
+
+<p>"My last Sunday before term began was spent almost entirely with
+Esperanza. I accepted Martha's invitation to partake of her Sunday
+dinner, and sat at meat with dear old Benjamin for the first time in my
+life, though I had eaten many a meal with his worthy wife in the days
+when my legs reached a very little way below the table and my manners
+were in sore need of the good soul's supervision—happy childish days,
+before governess and lesson-books had appeared upon the scene of my
+life; days in which life was one long game of play, interrupted only by
+childish illnesses that were like bad dreams, troubled and indistinct
+patches on the fair foreground of the childish memory. The good
+Benjamin ate his roast beef in a deprecating and apologetic attitude,
+sitting, I fear, uncomfortably, on the edge of his chair. Esperanza ate
+about as much solid food as a singing bird might have done; but she
+looked stronger and in better health than on the night of the <i>séance</i>,
+and she looked almost happy. After the roast beef and apple-tart, I
+took her to an afternoon service at St. Paul's, where the organ-music
+filled her with rapture.</p>
+
+<p>"'I shall come here every Sunday,' she said, as we left the cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>"I entreated her not to go so far alone, and warned her that the
+streets of London were full of danger for youth and inexperience; but
+she laughed at my fears, assuring me that she had walked about the
+meadows and coppices round Besbery ever since she could remember, and
+no harm had ever befallen her, though there were hardly any people
+about. I told her that in London the people were the danger, and
+exacted her promise that she would never go beyond the immediate
+neighbourhood of Great Ormond Street by herself. I gave her permission
+to walk about Queen's Square, Guilford Street, and Mecklenburgh Square.
+The neighbourhood was quiet and respectable.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am bound to obey you,' she answered meekly. 'I owe you so much
+gratitude for your goodness to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"I protested against gratitude to <i>me</i>. The only friend to whom she
+owed anything was my dear old nurse.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a great terror of the perils of the London streets for a girl
+of her appearance. It was not so much that she was beautiful, but
+because of a certain strangeness and exceptional character in her
+beauty which would be likely to attract attention and arouse curiosity.
+The dreamy look in the large violet eyes, the semi-transparent pallor
+which suggested an extreme fragility, the unworldliness of her whole
+aspect were calculated to appeal to the worst instincts of the
+prowling profligate. She had an air of helplessness which would invite
+persecution from the cowardly wretches who make the streets of a great
+city perilous for unprotected innocence.</p>
+
+<p>"She was ready to promise anything that would please me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not care if I never go out,' she said simply. 'The lady who
+lives in the drawing-room has a harmonium, and she has told me I may
+play upon it every day—all day long, when she is out; and she has a
+great many friends, and visits a good deal.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, but you must go out-of-doors for your health's sake!' I
+protested. 'Martha or Benjamin must go with you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'They have no time to go out-of-doors till after dark, poor things!
+they are so busy; but they will take me for a walk sometimes of an
+evening. I shall make them go out, for their own sakes. You need not
+feel anxious about me; you are too kind to think of me at all.'</p>
+
+<p>"I could not help feeling anxious about her. I felt as if I were
+responsible for everything that could assail or hurt her; that every
+hair of her head was a charge upon my conscience. Her health, her
+happiness, her talents and tastes and fancies—it was mine to care
+for all these. My <i>protégée</i>, Standish called her. In this farewell
+walk through the dull Sunday streets, in the dull October twilight, it
+seemed as if she were much more than my <i>protégée</i>—my dearest, most
+sacred care, the purpose and the promise of my life.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night we were to say good-bye. We were to have parted at the door
+in Great Ormond Street; but, standing on the doorstep, waiting for the
+opening of that inexorable door, which would swallow her up presently,
+like a tomb, I felt all at once that I could not sacrifice this last
+evening. Standish was dining out. There would only be loneliness and
+a roast chicken awaiting me at half-past seven. The chicken might
+languish, uneaten; the ghosts might have the dull, commonplace room;
+I would finish the evening with Martha's tea and toast, and hear
+Esperanza sing her favourite numbers of Handel and Mendelssohn, to the
+accompaniment of an ancient Stoddart piano, a relic of the schoolroom
+in my Suffolk home, the piano on which my mother took her first
+music-lesson.</p>
+
+<p>"It was an evening in Elysium. A back parlour is sometimes large enough
+to contain paradise. I did not question my own heart, or analyze my
+beatific sensations. I ascribed at least half my happiness to Handel
+and Mendelssohn, and that feeling of exaltation which only sacred
+music can produce. There were no anxious questionings in my mind till
+after I had said good-bye to Esperanza—good-bye, till the third week
+in December—and had left the house. Those uneasy questionings were
+inspired by my dear old Martha, who opened the hall door for me, and
+said gravely, as I shook hands with her—</p>
+
+<p>"'It would never do, Mr. George. I know what kind of lady your mother
+is, as well as anybody. It would never do.'</p>
+
+<p>"I did not ask her what it was that would never do; but I carried a new
+sense of trouble and difficulty out into the autumn wind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"A WHITE STAR MADE OF MEMORY LONG AGO."</p>
+
+
+<p>"'It would never do.' Those words of Martha's—so earnestly spoken by
+the kind soul who cared for me almost as tenderly as a mother cares
+for her own—haunted me all through the rapid run to Cambridge, walked
+the quadrangles of Trinity with me, tramped the Trumpington Road upon
+my shoulders, like that black care which sits behind the traveller.
+'It would never do.' No need to ask my good Martha for the meaning of
+that emphatic assertion. I knew what shape her thoughts had taken as
+she watched me sitting by the little square piano—the old, old piano,
+with such a thin, tinkling sound—listening to that seraphic voice, and
+looking at that delicate profile and exquisite colouring of faintly
+flushed cheek, lifted eye, and shadowy hair. My old nurse had surprised
+my secret almost before I knew it myself; but, by the time I was back
+in my shabby ground-floor sitting-room at Trinity, I knew as well as
+Martha knew that I had let myself fall deep in love with a girl whom I
+could never marry with my mother's approbation. I might take my own way
+in life and marry the girl I loved; but to do so would be to forfeit my
+mother's affection, to make myself an outcast from her house.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know what kind of a lady your mother is,' said Martha, in her
+valedictory address.</p>
+
+<p>"Was I, her son, likely to be ignorant of the mother's character, or
+unable to gauge the strength of her prejudices—prejudices that seemed
+so much a part of her nature as to form a strong argument against
+Locke's assertion that there are no innate ideas? Indeed, in reading
+that philosopher's famous chapter, it always seemed to me, that if the
+average infant had to begin the A B C of life at the first letter,
+my mother must be a 'sport' or exception to the general rule, and
+must have been born with her brain richly stocked with family pride
+and social distinctions. In all the years I had lived with her I had
+never seen her unbend to a servant, or converse on equal terms with
+a tradesman. She had a full appreciation of the value of wealth when
+it was allied with good birth; but the millionaire manufacturer or
+the lucky speculator belonged to that outer circle of which she knew
+nothing, and of which she would believe no good.</p>
+
+<p>"I was her only son; and she was a widow. I owed her more than most
+sons owe their mothers. I did not stand as number four or five in
+a family circle, taking my share in the rough and tumble of family
+life. My mother had been all in all to me; and I had been all in all
+to her. I had been her friend and companion from the time I was able
+to understand the English language, the recipient of all her ideas,
+her likes and dislikes—from the early stage when the childish mind
+unconsciously takes shape and bent from the mind of the parent the
+child loves best. From my seventh year I was fatherless, and all that
+is sacred and sweet in home life began and ended for me with the word
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother was what Gerald Standish called 'a masterful woman,' a
+woman to whom it was natural to direct and initiate the whole business
+of life. My father was her opposite in temperament,—irresolute,
+lymphatic; and I think he must have handed her the reins of home
+government before their honeymoon was over. I remember him just well
+enough to remember that he left the direction of his life wholly to
+her; that he deferred to her judgment, and studied her feelings in
+every detail of his existence; and that he obviously adored her.
+I don't think he cared very much for me, his only child. I can
+recall no indication of warmth of feeling on his part, only a placid
+indifference, as of one whose affection was concentrated upon a single
+object, and whose heart had no room for any other image. He spoke of
+me as 'the boy,' and looked at me occasionally with an air of mild
+wonder, as if I were somebody else's son, whose growth took him by
+surprise. I never remember his expressing any opinion about me, except
+that I had grown since he looked at me last.</p>
+
+<p>"His feeling about me being thus tepid, it was hardly surprising that
+he should make what many people have called an unjust will. I have
+never disputed its justice, for I loved my mother too much to complain
+of the advantages of power and status which that will gave her.</p>
+
+<p>"She was an heiress, and her money had cleared my father's estate from
+heavy encumbrances, and no doubt he remembered this when providing for
+her future. He was her senior by five and twenty years, and foresaw a
+long widowhood for her.</p>
+
+<p>"The entail ended in his own person, so he was free to dispose of his
+property as he liked. He left my mother tenant for life; and he left me
+five hundred a year, chargeable upon the estate, which income was only
+to begin when I came of age. Till my one-and-twentieth birthday I was
+dependent upon my mother for everything.</p>
+
+<p>"I told myself that I had to cut my own path in life, and that I must
+be the architect of my own fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother's income, under her marriage settlement, was considerable,
+and this, in addition to a rent-roll of between two and three thousand
+a year, made her a rich woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly I was not in a position to make an imprudent marriage,
+since my power to maintain a wife and family in accord with my own
+ideas of a gentleman's surroundings must depend for a considerable
+time upon my mother's liberality. I had made up my mind to go to the
+Bar, and I knew how slow and arduous is the road to success in that
+branch of the legal profession; but far nearer than mere questions of
+interest was the obligation which filial love laid upon me. My mother
+had given me the devotion of years, had made me the chief object of
+her thoughts and her hopes, and I should be an ungrateful wretch if I
+were to disappoint her. I knew, alas! that upon this very question of
+marriage she cherished a project that it would distress her to forego,
+and that there was a certain Lady Emily whom I was intended to marry,
+the daughter of a nobleman who had been my father's most intimate
+friend, and for whom my mother had a greater regard than for any of our
+neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>"Knowing this, and wishing with all my heart to do my duty as a son to
+the best of mothers, I could but echo Martha's solemn words—</p>
+
+<p>"'It would never do.'</p>
+
+<p>"No, 'it would never do.' The seraphic voice, the spiritual
+countenance, the appealing helplessness, which had so moved my pity,
+must be to me as a dream from which I had awakened. Esperanza's fate
+must rest henceforward with herself, aided by honest Martha Blake, and
+helped, through Martha, from my purse. I must never see her again. No
+word had been spoken, no hint had been given of the love which it
+was my bounden duty to conquer and forget. I could contemplate the
+inevitable renunciation with a clear conscience.</p>
+
+<p>"I worked harder in that term than I had worked yet, and shut my door
+against all the allurements of undergraduate friends and all the
+pleasures of university life. I was voted churlish and a muff; but I
+found my books the best cure for an unhappy love; and though the image
+of Miss Campbell was oftener with me than the learned shade of Newton
+or the later ghost of Whewell, I contrived to do some really good work.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother and I wrote to each other once a week. She expected me to
+send her a budget of gossip and opinion, and it was only in this term
+that I began to feel a difficulty in filling two sheets of note-paper
+with my niggling penmanship. For the first time in my life, I found
+myself sitting, pen in hand, with nothing to say to my mother. I
+could not write about Esperanza, or the passionate yearning which I
+was trying to outlive. I could hardly expatiate upon my mathematical
+studies to a woman who, although highly cultivated, knew nothing of
+mathematics. I eked out my letter as best I could, with a laboured
+criticism upon a feeble novel which I had idly skimmed in an hour of
+mental exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked forward apprehensively to my home-going in December, fearing
+that some change in my outward aspect might betray the mystery of my
+heart. The holiday, once so pleasant, would be long and dull. The
+shooting would afford some relief perhaps, and I made up my mind to
+tramp the plantations all day long. At Cambridge I had shirked physical
+exercise; in Suffolk I would walk down my sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>"A letter from my mother, which reached me early in December, put an
+end to these resolves. She had been somewhat out of health all through
+November; and her local medical man, who was old and <i>passé</i>, had only
+tormented her with medicines which made her worse. She had therefore
+decided, at Miss Marjorum's earnest desire, upon spending my vacation
+in London; and Jebson, her trusty <i>major domo</i>, had been up to town,
+and had found her delightful lodgings on the north side of Hyde Park.
+She would await me, not at Fendyke, but in Connaught Place.</p>
+
+<p>"Connaught Place—within less than an hour's walk of Great Ormond
+Street! My heart beat fast and furiously at the mere thought of that
+propinquity. Martha's latest letter had told me that all attempts at
+finding a situation for my <i>protégée</i> had so far been without result.
+Martha and her charge had visited all the agencies for the placing
+of governesses and companions, and no agent had succeeded in placing
+Esperanza. Her education was far below the requirements of the least
+exacting employer. She knew very little French, and no German; she
+played exquisitely, but she played by ear; of the theory of music she
+knew hardly anything. Her father, an enthusiast and a dreamer, had
+filled her with ideas, but had taught her nothing that would help her
+to earn a living.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you fret about her, Mr. George,' wrote Martha. 'As long as
+I have a roof over my head, she can make her home with me. Her bite
+and sup makes hardly any difference in the week's expenses. I'm only
+sorry, for her sake, that she isn't clever enough to get into a nice
+family in some pretty country house, like Fendyke. It's a dull life for
+her here—a back parlour to live in, and two old people for her only
+companions.'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of the small dark parlour in the Bloomsbury lodging-house,
+the tinkling old piano, the dull grey street; a weary life for a girl
+of poetic temperament reared in the country. That letter of Martha's,
+and the fact of being within an easy walk of Great Ormond Street, broke
+down my resolution of the last two months. I called upon Martha and
+her charge on the morning after I left Cambridge. I thought Esperanza
+looked wan and out of health, and could but mark how the pale, sad
+face flushed and brightened at sight of me. We were alone for a
+few minutes, while Martha interviewed a butcher, and I seized the
+opportunity. I said I feared she was not altogether happy. Only unhappy
+in being a burden to my friends, she told me. She was depressed by
+finding her own uselessness. Hundreds of young women were earning their
+living as governesses, but no one would employ her.</p>
+
+<p>"'No lady will even give me a trial,' she said. 'I'm afraid I must look
+very stupid.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You look very lovely,' I answered hotly. 'They want a commoner clay.'</p>
+
+<p>"I implored her to believe that she was no burden to Martha or to me.
+If she could be content to live that dull and joyless life, she was at
+least secure of a safe and respectable home; and if she cared to carry
+on her education, something might be done in the way of masters; or she
+might attend some classes in Harley Street, or elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"She turned red and then pale, and I saw tears trembling on her long
+auburn lashes.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am afraid I am unteachable,' she faltered, with downcast eyes.
+'Kind ladies at Besbery tried to teach me; but it was no use. My
+mind always wandered. I could not keep my thoughts upon the book I
+was reading, or on what they told me. Miss Grimshawe, who wanted to
+help me, said I was incorrigibly idle and atrociously obstinate. But,
+indeed, it was not idleness or obstinacy that kept me from learning. I
+could not force myself to think or to remember. My thoughts would only
+go their own way; and I cared for nothing but music, or for the poetry
+my father used to read to me sometimes of an evening. I am afraid Miss
+Grimshawe was right, and that I ought to be a dressmaker.'</p>
+
+<p>"I glanced at the hands which lay loosely clasped upon the arm of the
+chair in which she was sitting. Such delicately tapering fingers were
+never meant for the dressmaker's workroom. The problem of Esperanza's
+life was not to be solved that way.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not remain long on this first morning; but I went again two days
+afterwards, and again, until it came to be every day. Martha grumbled
+and warned me of my danger, and of the wrong done to Esperanza, if I
+were to make her care for me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't think there's much fear of that,' added Martha. 'She's too
+much in the clouds. It's you I'm afraid of. You and me knows who mamma
+wants you to marry, don't us, Mr. George?'</p>
+
+<p>"I could not gainsay Martha upon this point. Lady Emily and I had
+ridden the same rocking-horse; she riding pillion with her arms clasped
+round my waist, while I urged the beast to his wildest pace. We had
+taken tea out of the same toy tea-things—her tea-things—and before I
+was fifteen years of age my mother told me that she was pleased to see
+I was so fond of Emily, and hoped that she and I would be husband and
+wife some day, in the serious future, just as we were little lovers now
+in the childish present.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember laughing at my mother's speech, and thinking within myself
+that Emily and I hardly realized my juvenile idea of lovers. The
+romantic element was entirely wanting in our association. When I talked
+of Lady Emily, later, to Gerald Standish, I remember I described her as
+'a good sort,' and discussed her excellent qualities of mind and temper
+with an unembarrassed freedom which testified to a heart that was at
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt more mortified than I would have cared to confess at Martha's
+blunt assurance that Esperanza was too much in the clouds to care
+about me; and it may be that this remark of my old nurse's gave just
+the touch of pique that acted as a spur to passion. I know that after
+two or three afternoons in Great Ormond Street, I felt that I loved
+this girl as I could never love again, and that henceforward it would
+be impossible for me to contemplate the idea of life without her.
+The more fondly I loved her, the less demonstrative I became, and my
+growing reserve threw dust in the elderly eyes that watched us. Martha
+believed that her warning had taken effect, and she so far confided in
+my discretion as to allow me to take Esperanza for lamp-lit walks in
+the Bloomsbury squares, after our cosy tea-drinking in the little back
+parlour. The tea-drinking and the walk became an institution. Martha's
+rheumatics had made walking exercise impossible for her during the last
+month. Benjamin was fat and lazy.</p>
+
+<p>"'If I didn't let the poor child go out with you, she'd hardly get a
+breath of fresh air all the winter. And I know that I can trust you,
+Mr. George,' said Martha.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, you can trust me,' answered I.</p>
+
+<p>"She might trust me to breathe no word of evil into the ear of her I
+loved. She could trust me to revere the childlike innocence which was
+my darling's highest charm. She could trust me to be loyal and true
+to Esperanza. But she could not trust me to be worldly-wise, or to
+sacrifice my own happiness to filial affection. The time came when I
+had to set my love for Esperanza against my duty to my mother and my
+own interests. Duty and interest kicked the beam.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, those squares! those grave old Bloomsbury squares, with their
+formal rows of windows, and monotonous iron railings, and stately
+doorways, and clean doorsteps, and enclosures of trees, whose blackened
+branches showed leafless against the steely sky of a frosty evening!
+What groves or streams of paradise could be fairer to us two than
+the dull pavements which we paced arm-in-arm in the wintry greyness,
+telling each other those thoughts and fancies which seemed in their
+intuitive sympathy to mark us for predestined life-companions. Her
+thoughts were childishly expressed sometimes; but it seemed to me
+always as if they were only my thoughts in a feminine guise. Nothing
+that she said ever jarred upon me; and her ignorance of the world and
+all its ways suggested some nymph or fairy reared in the seclusion of
+woodland or ocean cave. I thought of Endymion, and I fancied that his
+goddess could have been scarcely less of the earth than this fair girl
+who walked beside me, confiding in me with a childlike faith.</p>
+
+<p>"One night I told her that I loved her. We had stayed out later than
+usual. The clock of St. George's Church was striking nine, and in
+the shadowy quiet of Queen's Square my lips met hers in love's first
+kiss. How shyly and how falteringly she confessed her own secret, so
+carefully guarded till that moment.</p>
+
+<p>"'I never thought you could care for a poor girl like me,' she said;
+'but I loved you from the first. Yes, almost from the very first. My
+heart seemed frozen after my father's death, and your voice was the
+first that thawed it. The dull, benumbed feeling passed away, and I
+knew that I had some one living to love and care for and think about as
+I sat alone. I had a world of new thoughts to interweave with the music
+I love.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, that music, Esperanza! I am almost jealous of music when I see
+you so moved and influenced by it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Music would have been my only consolation if you had not cared for
+me,' she answered simply.</p>
+
+<p>"'But I do care for you, and I want you to be my wife, now at once—as
+soon as we can be married.'</p>
+
+<p>"I talked about an immediate marriage before the registrar. But,
+willing as she was to be guided by me in most things, she would not
+consent to this.</p>
+
+<p>"'It would not seem like marriage to me,' she said, "if we did not
+stand before the altar.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, it shall be in a church, then; only we shall have to wait
+longer. And I must go back to Cambridge at the end of this week. I must
+get an exeat, and come up to London on our wedding-day, and take you
+home in the evening. I shall have a quiet home ready for my darling,
+far from the ken of dons and undergraduates, but within an easy
+distance of the 'Varsity.'</p>
+
+<p>"I explained to her that our marriage must be a secret till I came
+of age next year, or till I could find a favourable opportunity of
+breaking the fact to my mother.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Will she mind? Will she be angry?' asked Esperanza.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not when she comes to know you, dear love.'</p>
+
+<p>"Although I knew my mother's strong character, I was infatuated enough
+to believe what I said. Where was the heart so stony that would not
+warm to that fair and gentle creature? Where the pride so stubborn
+which that tender influence could not bend?</p>
+
+<p>"I had the banns put up at the church of St. George the Martyr, assured
+that Martha's rheumatism and Benjamin's lethargic temper would prevent
+either of them attending the morning service on any of the three
+fateful Sundays. If Martha went to church at all, she crept there in
+the evening, after tea. She liked the gaslights and the evening warmth,
+the short prayers, and the long sermon, and she met her own class among
+the congregation. I felt tolerably safe about the banns.</p>
+
+<p>"Had my mother been in good health, it would have been difficult for
+me to spend so many of my evenings away from home; but the neuralgic
+affection which had troubled her in Suffolk had not been subjugated by
+the great Dr. Gull's treatment, and she passed a good deal of her life
+in her own rooms and in semi-darkness, ministered to by a lady who had
+been a member of our household ever since my father's death, and whose
+presence had been the only drawback to my home happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"This lady was my mother's governess—Miss Marjorum—a woman of
+considerable brain power, wide knowledge of English and German
+literature, and a style of pianoforte playing which always had the
+effect of cold water down my back. And yet Miss Marjorum played
+correctly. She introduced no discords into that hard, dry music,
+which seemed to me to have been written expressly for her hard and
+precise finger-tips, bony knuckles, and broad, strong hand, with a
+thumb which she boasted of as resembling Thalberg's. In a difficult
+and complicated movement Miss Marjorum's thumb worked wonders. It was
+ubiquitous; it turned under and over, and rapped out sharp staccato
+notes in the midst of presto runs, or held rigid semibreves while the
+active fingers fired volleys of chords, shrilled out a six-bar shake,
+or raced the bass with lightning triplets. In whatever entanglement
+of florid ornament Liszt or Thalberg had disguised a melody, Miss
+Marjorum's thumb could search it out and drum it into her auditors.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Marjorum was on the wrong side of fifty. She had a squat figure
+and a masculine countenance, and her voice was deep and strong, like
+the voice of a man. She dressed with a studious sobriety in dark cloth
+or in grey alpaca, according to the seasons, and in the evening she
+generally wore plaid poplin, which ruled her square, squat figure into
+smaller squares. I have observed an affinity between plain people and
+plaid poplin.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Marjorum was devoted to my mother; and antagonistic as her nature
+was to me in all things, and blighting as was her influence upon the
+fond dream of my youth, I am bound to record that she was conscientious
+in carrying out her own idea of duty. Her idea of duty unhappily
+included no indulgence for youthful impulses, and she disapproved of
+every independent act of mine.</p>
+
+<p>"My evening absences puzzled her.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wonder you can like to be out nearly every evening when your mother
+is so ill,' she remarked severely, on my return to Connaught Place
+after that glimpse of paradise in Queen Square.</p>
+
+<p>"'If I could be of any use to my mother by staying at home, you may be
+sure I should not be out, Miss Marjorum,' I replied, rather stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"'It would be a satisfaction to your mother to know you were under her
+roof, even when she is obliged to be resting quietly in her own room.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Unfortunately my mathematical coach lives under another roof, and I
+have to accommodate myself to his hours.'</p>
+
+<p>"This was sophistication; but it was true that I read mathematics with
+an ex-senior wrangler in South Kensington every other day.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you spend <i>every</i> evening with your coach?' asked Miss Marjorum,
+looking up suddenly from her needlework, and fixing me with her cold
+grey eye.</p>
+
+<p>"'Certainly not. You know the old saw—"All work and no play——"'</p>
+
+<p>"'And how do you amuse yourself when you are not at South Kensington? I
+did not think you knew many people in London.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That is because I know very few people whom you know. My chief
+friends are the friends of my college life—not the worthy bucolics of
+Suffolk.'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marjorum sighed, and went on with her sewing. She delighted
+in the plainest of plain work—severest undergarments of calico or
+flannel. She had taken upon herself to supply my mother's poorer
+cottage-tenants with under-clothing—a very worthy purpose; but I could
+not help wishing she had deferred a little more to the universal sense
+of beauty in her contributions to the cottagers' wardrobes. Surely
+those prison-like garments must have appalled their recipients. My
+inexperienced eye noted only their ugliness in shape and coarseness of
+texture. I longed for a little trimming, a softer quality of flannel.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am afraid they must hurt the people who get them,' I said one day,
+when Miss Marjorum exhibited her bale of flannel underwear.</p>
+
+<p>"'They are delightfully warm, and friction promotes circulation and
+maintains the health of the skin,' she replied severely. 'I don't know
+what <i>more</i> you would have.'</p>
+
+<p>"It irked me not a little to note Miss Marjorum's suspicious air when
+she discussed my evening occupations, for I knew she had more influence
+over my mother than any one living, and I fancied that she would not
+scruple to use that influence against me. I had lost her friendship
+long ago by childish rudenesses, which I looked back upon with regret,
+but which I could not obliterate from her memory by the studious
+civilities of later years.</p>
+
+<p>"I went back to Cambridge, and my mother and her devoted companion left
+Connaught Place for Brighton, Dr. Gull having strongly recommended
+sea-air, after exhausting his scientific means in the weary battle with
+nerve pain. It was a relief to me, when I thought of Esperanza, to know
+that Miss Marjorum was fifty miles away from Great Ormond Street. Those
+suspicious glances and prying questions of hers had frightened me.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>When</i> I thought of Esperanza!—when was she not the centre and
+circumference of my thoughts? I worked hard; missed no lecture;
+neglected no opportunity; for I had made up my mind to win the game of
+life off my own bat; but Esperanza's image was with me whatever I was
+doing. I think I mixed up her personality in an extraordinary fashion
+with the higher mathematics. She perched like a fairy upon every curve,
+or slid sylph-like along every line. I weighed her, and measured her,
+and calculated the doctrine of chances about her. She became in my
+mind the ruling, and to common eyes, invisible spirit of the science of
+quantity and number.</p>
+
+<p>"Could this interval between the asking in church and my wedding-day
+be any other than a period of foolish dreaming, of fond confusion and
+wandering thoughts? I was not twenty-one, and I was about to take a
+step which would inevitably offend my only parent, the only being to
+whom I stood indebted for care and affection. In the rash hopefulness
+of a youthful passion, I made sure of being ultimately forgiven; but,
+hopeful as I was, I knew it might be some time before I could obtain
+pardon. In the meanwhile, I had an income which would suffice for a
+youthful <i>ménage</i>. I would find a quiet home for Esperanza at one of
+the villas on the Grandchester Road till I had taken my degree, and
+then I should have to begin work in London. Indeed, I had fixed in my
+own mind upon a second-floor in Martha's roomy old house, which would
+be conveniently near the Temple, where I might share a modest set
+of chambers with a Cambridge friend. In the deep intoxication of my
+love-dream, Great Ormond Street seemed just the most delightful spot in
+which to establish the cosy home I figured to myself. It would be an
+infinite advantage to live under my dear old nurse's roof, and to know
+that she would watch over my girl-wife while I sat waiting for briefs
+in my dingy chambers, or reading law with an eminent junior.</p>
+
+<p>"I had asked Esperanza on the night of our betrothal whether she
+thought we could live upon five hundred a year. A ripple of laughter
+preluded her reply.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear George, do you know what my father's income was?' she asked.
+'Sixty-five pounds a year. He paid fifteen pounds a year for our
+cottage and garden—such a dear old garden—and we had to live and
+clothe ourselves upon the other fifty pounds. He was very shabby
+sometimes, poor darling; but we were always happy. Though I seem so
+helpless in getting my own living, I think I could keep house for you,
+and not waste your money. Five hundred a year! Why, you are immensely
+rich!'</p>
+
+<p>"I told her that I should be able to add to our income by the time we
+had been married a few years, and then we would have a house in the
+country, and a garden, and a pair of ponies for her to drive, and cows
+and poultry, and all the things that women love. What a happy dream
+it was, and how the sweet face brightened under the lamplight as she
+listened to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I want nothing but your love,' she said; 'nothing. I am not afraid of
+poverty.'</p>
+
+<p>"The three weeks were gone. I got an exeat, and went up to London by an
+early train. I had directed Esperanza to meet me at the church, whose
+doors we had so often passed together in our evening walks, and where
+we had knelt side by side one Sunday evening. She was to take Martha to
+church with her; but not till the last moment, not till they were at
+the church door, was she to tell my old nurse what was going to happen,
+lest an idea of duty to the mother should induce her to betray the son.</p>
+
+<p>"The air was crisp and bright, and the wintry landscape basked in the
+wintry sun between Cambridge and Stratford; but the dull greyness
+of our metropolitan winter wrapped me round when I left Bishopsgate
+Street, and there was a thin curtain of fog hanging over my beloved
+Bloomsbury when my hansom rattled along the sober old-world streets
+to the solid Georgian church. I sprang from the cab as if I had worn
+Mercury's sandals, told the man to wait, ran lightly up the steps,
+pushed back the heavy door and entered the dark temple, hushed and
+breathless. How solemn and cold and ghostly the church looked, how grey
+and pale the great cold windows. The fog seemed thicker here than in
+the streets outside; and the dreary fane was empty.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to eleven. I had entreated her
+to be at the church at least ten minutes before the hour; and I felt
+bitterly disappointed that she had not anticipated the appointment.</p>
+
+<p>"Her last letter was three days old. Could she be ill? could any evil
+thing have happened? I hurried back to the church door, intending to
+get into my cab and drive to Ormond Street. I changed my mind before
+I had crossed the threshold. I might miss her on the way—drive by
+one street while she and Martha were walking in another. Again, there
+was something undignified in a bridegroom rushing off in search of
+his bride. My place was to wait in the church. I had seen a good many
+weddings in our parish church in Suffolk, and I knew that the bride was
+almost always late. Yet, in spite of this experience, I had expected
+my bride in advance of the appointed time. She had no wreath of
+orange-blossoms, no bridal veil to adjust, no doting mother, or sister
+bridesmaids to flurry and hinder her under the pretence of helping.
+She had no carriage to wait for. Her impatience to see me after nearly
+three weeks should have brought her to the church earlier than this.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I remembered Martha. No doubt she was waiting for Martha. That
+good soul was interviewing the butcher, or adjusting her Paisley shawl,
+while I was fretting and fuming in the church. I had no best man to
+reason with my impatience and keep up my spirits. My best man was to be
+the parish clerk, and he had not yet appeared upon the scene. I saw a
+pew-opener creeping about, a pew-opener in the accustomed close black
+bonnet and sober apparel. Esperanza's bridesmaid! Martha would have to
+give her away.</p>
+
+<p>"I took a turn round the church, looked at the monuments, and even
+stood still to read a tablet here and there, and knew no more of the
+inscription after I had read it than if it had been in choice Assyrian.</p>
+
+<p>"I opened the heavy door and went out on the steps, and stood watching
+a stray cab or a stray pedestrian, dimly visible through the thickening
+fog. I looked at my watch every other minute, between anger and
+despair. It was five minutes to eleven. The curate who was to marry us
+passed me on the steps and went into the church, unsuspecting that I
+was to be the chief actor in the ceremony. I stood looking along the
+street, in the only direction in which my bride was to be expected, and
+my heart sickened as the slow minutes wore themselves out, till it was
+nearly a quarter-past eleven.</p>
+
+<p>"I could endure this no longer. My hansom was waiting on the opposite
+side of the street. I lifted my finger, and signed to the driver to
+come over to me. There was nothing for it but to go to Great Ormond
+Street, and discover the cause of delay.</p>
+
+<p>"Before the man could climb into his seat and cross the road, a
+brougham drove sharply up to the church steps—a brougham of dingy
+aspect, driven by a man whose livery branded him as a flyman.</p>
+
+<p>"I was astonished at the fly, but never doubted that it brought me my
+dear love, and my heart was light again, and I ran to greet her with a
+welcoming smile.</p>
+
+<p>"The carriage door was sharply opened from within, and my mother
+stepped out and stood before me, tall and grave, in her neat dark
+travelling dress, her fine features sharp and clear in the wintry gloom.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mother!' I exclaimed aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know I am not the person you expected, George,' she said quietly.
+'Badly as you have behaved to me, I am sorry for your disappointment.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Where is Esperanza?' I cried, unheeding my mother's address.</p>
+
+<p>"It was only afterwards that her words came back to me—in that long
+dull afterwards when I had leisure to brood over every detail in this
+agonizing scene.</p>
+
+<p>"'She is safe, and in good hands, and she is where you will never see
+her again.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's a lie!' I cried. 'If she is among the living, I will find her.
+If she is dead, I will follow her.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You are violent and unreasonable; but I suppose your romantic
+infatuation must excuse you. When you have read this letter, you will
+be calmer, I hope.'</p>
+
+<p>"She gave me a letter in Esperanza's writing. We had moved a few paces
+from the church steps while we talked. I read the letter, walking
+slowly along the street, my mother at my side.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"'DEAREST,</p>
+
+<p>"'I am going away. I am not to be your wife. It was a happy dream,
+but a foolish one. I should have ruined your life. That has been made
+clear to me; I love you far too dearly to be your enemy. You will
+never see me again. Don't be unhappy about me. I shall be well cared
+for. I am going very far away; but if it were to the farthest end of
+the earth, and if I were to live a hundred years, I should never cease
+to love you, or learn to love you less.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good-bye for ever,</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">"'ESPERANZA.'</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"'I know whose hand is in this,' I said,—'Miss Marjorum.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marjorum is my true and loyal friend, and yours too, though you
+may not believe it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Whoever it may be who has stolen my love away from me, that person
+is my dire and deadly foe. Whether the act is yours or hers, it is the
+act of my bitterest enemy, and I shall ever so remember it. Look here,
+mother, let there be no misunderstanding between you and me. I love
+this girl better than my life. Whatever trick you have played upon her,
+whatever cajoleries you and Miss Marjorum have brought to bear upon
+her, whatever false representations you may have made, appealing to her
+unselfishness against her love, you have done that which will wreck
+your son's life unless you can undo it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I have saved my son from the shipwreck his own folly would have
+made of his life,' my mother answered calmly. 'I have seen what these
+unequal marriages come to—before the wife is thirty.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It would be no unequal marriage. The girl I love is a lady.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A village organist's daughter, by her own confession totally without
+education. A pretty, delicate young creature with a certain surface
+refinement, I grant you; but do you think that would stand the wear
+and tear of life, or counterbalance your humiliation when people asked
+questions about your wife's antecedents and belongings? People, even
+the politest people, <i>will</i> ask those questions, George. My dear, dear
+boy, the thing you were to have done to-day would have been utter ruin
+to your social existence for the next fifty years. You will never be
+rich enough or great enough to live down such a marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't preach to me,' I cried savagely. 'You have broken my heart.
+Surely that is enough for you.'</p>
+
+<p>"I broke away from her as she laid her hand upon my arm—such a shapely
+hand in a dark grey glove. I remembered even in that moment of anguish
+and of anger how my dear love had often walked by my side, gloveless,
+shabbier than a milliner's apprentice. No, she was not of my mother's
+world; no more was Titania. She belonged to the realm of romance and
+<i>féerie</i>; not to Belgravia or Mayfair.</p>
+
+<p>"I ran back to the spot where the hansom still waited for me, jumped
+in, and told the man to drive to Great Ormond Street. I left my mother
+standing on the pavement, to find her way back to her carriage as she
+could, to go where she would.</p>
+
+<p>"I knocked at the lodging-house door loud enough to wake the Seven
+Sleepers. I pushed past the scared maid-servant, and dashed into
+Martha's parlour. She was sitting with her spectacles on her nose
+poring over a tradesman's book, and with other books of the same kind
+on the table before her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Martha, this is your doing,' I said. 'You betrayed me to my mother!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Mr. George, forgive your old nurse that loves you as if you were
+her own flesh and blood. I only did my duty by you and my mistress. It
+would never have done.'</p>
+
+<p>"She called me 'dear,' as in the old nursery days. Tears were streaming
+down her withered cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"'It was you, then?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, it was me, Mr. George, leastways me and Benjamin. We talked it
+over a long time before he wrote the letter to my mistress at Brighton.
+Sarah came home from church on Sunday dinner-time. The drawing-rooms
+were dining out, and the second floor is empty, so there was nothing to
+hinder Sarah's going to church. She came home at dinner-time, and told
+me you and Esperanza Campbell had been asked in church—for the third
+time. You might have knocked me down with a feather. I never thought
+she could be so artful. I talked it over with Benjamin, and he posted a
+letter that night.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And Miss Marjorum came up from Brighton next morning, and came to see
+Esperanza?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How did you know that, Mr. George?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know Miss Marjorum.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, it was Miss Marjorum that came. She asked to see Esperanza
+alone, and they were shut up together for over an hour, and then
+the bell was rung, and Miss Marjorum told the girl to pack up Miss
+Campbell's things, bring her box down to the hall, and when she had
+done that, to fetch a four-wheeler. Sarah was nearly as upset as I was,
+but she and I packed the things between us—such a few things, poor
+child—and carried the box downstairs, and I waited in the hall while
+Sarah ran for the cab. And presently Esperanza came out of the parlour
+with Miss Marjorum, and put on her hat and jacket, and then came to bid
+me good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>"'She put her arms round my neck and kissed me; and though I had done
+my duty by you and your ma, Mr. George, I felt like Judash. "It was
+right of you to tell," she said; "it was only right—for his sake," and
+Miss Marjorum hurried her down the steps and into the cab before she
+could say another word. I do believe the poor dear child gave you up
+without a murmur, Mr. George, because she knew that it would have been
+your ruin to marry her.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Bosh! That had been drummed into her by Miss Marjorum. You have done
+me the worst turn you ever did any one in your life, Martha; and yet
+I thought if there was anybody in the world I could trust it was you.
+Where did the cab go—do you know that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Charing Cross Station. I heard Miss Marjorum give the order.'"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"AND THAT UNREST WHICH MEN MISCALL DELIGHT."</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan went back to Matcham sobered by grief, and longing for the
+comfort his betrothed could give him, the comfort of sympathy and
+gentle words, the deeper comfort in the assurance of her love.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette looked very pale in her black frock when Allan appeared at
+Marsh House after his bereavement. They stood side by side in the
+grey light of a hopelessly dull day, finding but little speech in the
+sadness of this first meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, you have been grieving for my grief," he said tenderly,
+looking into the dark eyes, noting the tired look as of many tears, the
+sharper line of the cheek, the settled pallor, where a lovely carmine
+had been wont to come and go like warm light.</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest, you have lost all your roses—and for my sake. For me
+those dear eyes have known sleepless nights, those lovely cheeks have
+grown pinched and pale."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that I could help being sorry for you, Allan?" she
+murmured, with downcast eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"You had no other cause for sorrow, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; only in every life there are saddening intervals. I was sorry
+for your sake—sorry that I was never to see your father again. I liked
+him so much, Allan. And then somehow I got into a low-spirited way, and
+old Dr. Podmore gave me a tonic which made my head ache. I don't know
+that it had any other effect."</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette, it was cruel of you not to tell me that you were ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was not to say ill. Why should I worry you about such nonsense?
+I was only below par. That is what Dr. Podmore called it. But please
+don't talk about me, Allan. Talk to me of yourself and of your poor
+mother. She is coming to stay with you, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is coming to me next week. How is Mrs. Wornock? Do you go to
+her as much as ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"Almost as much. She seems so dependent upon me for companionship, poor
+soul. I am the only girl she has taken to—as people say."</p>
+
+<p>"What a wise woman to choose the most charming girl in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"If you said in the Matcham world, it would not be a stupendous
+compliment."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I mean the world. I challenge the universe to produce me a second
+Suzette. And Geoffrey, your violin player, has he been much at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very much. Please don't call him my violin player. I have not
+played a single accompaniment for him since you objected. I have been
+very dutiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk of duty. It is love that I want, love without alloy; love
+which, being full of foolishness itself, can forgive a lover's baseless
+jealousy."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, have I ever been unforgiving?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you have borne with my tempers. You have been all that is kind
+and sweet—but I sometimes wish you would be angry with me. Would that
+there were a girl in Matcham handsome enough to admit of your jealousy!
+How desperately I would flirt with that girl!"</p>
+
+<p>Her wan smile was not encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he still as devoted to his fiddle? Does he talk of Tartini,
+Spontini, de Beriot, as other men talk of Salisbury or Gladstone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen very little of him; but he is a fanatic about music. He
+inherits his mother's passion."</p>
+
+<p>"His poor mother," sighed Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"She is so fond of you—almost as fond as she is of her own son."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not possible, Suzie."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the son must be first, of course; but, indeed, she is very fond
+of you, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear soul, it is for old sake's sake. I'll tell you her poor little
+innocent secret, Suzie. You, who are the other half of my soul, have a
+right to know all things which gravely interest me. Only you must be
+discretion itself; and you must never breathe a word of Mrs. Wornock's
+story to my mother."</p>
+
+<p>And then he sat down by her side in the comfortable corner by the
+old-fashioned fireplace, fenced off from all the outer world by a
+Japanese screen, on which Choti and an army of smaller devils grinned
+and capered against a black satin background, and he told her tenderly,
+but only in outline, the story of his father's first love, and
+Esperanza's all-too-willing sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>"It was generous—but a mistake," he said in conclusion. "She gave up
+her own happiness, dashed away the cup of joy when it was at her lips.
+She was nobly unselfish, and she spoilt two lives. Such sacrifices
+never answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really believe that, Allan?" asked Suzette, looking at him with
+a startling intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"I really do. I have never known a case in which self-surrender of that
+kind has ended well. A man and woman who love each other should be true
+to each other and their mutual love. All worldly considerations should
+be as naught. If a man truly loves a beggar-girl, let him marry her;
+and don't let the beggar-girl jilt him because she thinks he would do
+better by marrying a duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"But if two people love each other—who are otherwise bound and
+fettered, who cannot be happy without breaking older ties——"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that is a different thing. Honour comes into the question,
+and there must be sacrifices. This world would be a pandemonium if
+inclination went before honour. I am talking of love weighed against
+worldly wisdom, against poverty, against rank, race, wealth. You
+can understand now why Mrs. Wornock's heart went out to me from the
+beginning of our acquaintance—why she has accepted me almost as a
+second son."</p>
+
+<p>Allan's Matcham friends were enthusiastic in their welcome, and cordial
+in their expressions of sympathy. It may be that the increase of means
+and importance which had come to him by his father's death was no small
+factor in the opinion of the village and its environs. A man who had
+an estate in Suffolk, and who lived at Matcham for his own pleasure,
+was a personage; and Matcham gossip did not fail to exaggerate the
+unseen Suffolk estate, and to talk of the Beechhurst property as a
+mere bagatelle, a windfall from a maternal uncle, hardly worth talking
+about, as compared with Fendyke and its vast acreage.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Emily has the house and home-farm for her life," Mrs. Mornington
+explained, with the privileged air of Allan's intimate friend; "but the
+bulk of the estate passes at once to Mr. Carew. My niece has done very
+well for herself, after all."</p>
+
+<p>The last words, carelessly spoken, implied that in the first instance
+Mr. Carew had been rather a poor match for Miss Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose this sad event will delay the marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"For two or three months, perhaps. They were to have been married
+at midsummer, when Suzette will come of age; but she tells me she
+would not think of marrying Allan till at least half a year after his
+father's death. She talked of a year, but that would be simply absurd.
+The wedding can be as quiet as they like."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course," murmured assenting friends, sipping Mrs. Mornington's
+Ceylon tea, and despondently foreseeing the stern necessity of wedding
+presents, without even the poor compensation of champagne, ices,
+wedding-cake, and a crowd of fine gowns and new bonnets. They were to
+have positively no equivalent for their money.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Suzette had pleaded hard for a year's delay.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be more respectful to him whom you have lost; and it would be
+more pleasing to your mother," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Suzette, my mother would rather see me happy than sacrifice my
+happiness to conventionality. Half a year is a long time for a man
+whose life seems a thing of shreds and patches, waiting the better
+fuller life that he longs for. I shall remember my dear father with no
+less affection; I shall no less regret his loss; when you and I are
+one. We can be married quietly at nine o'clock in the morning, before
+Matcham people have finished breakfast, with only your father and aunt,
+and my mother, for witnesses; and we can slip away from the station
+in the fresh September morning on the first stage of our journey to
+Como. Such a lovely journey at that season, Suzie! It will still be
+summer in Italy, and we can stay late in October, till the grapes are
+all gathered and the berceaus are getting bare, and then we can come
+back to Matcham to our own cosy fireside, and amuse ourselves with the
+arrangement of our house. It will be as new to me as it will be to you,
+Suzie, for only when you are its mistress will it be home."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette could hardly withhold her consent, her lover being so earnest.
+It was settled that the marriage should take place early in September;
+and this being decided, the current of life flowed smoothly on, Allan
+spending more of his days at Marsh House, The Grove, and Discombe, than
+in his own house, except when Lady Emily was with him.</p>
+
+<p>Discombe was by far the most delightful of these three houses in
+out-of-door weather, pleasant as were Mrs. Mornington's carefully
+tended grounds and shrubberies, her verandah and spacious conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>The gardens at Discombe had that delicious flavour of the old world,
+and that absolute seclusion which can never be enjoyed in grounds that
+are within ear-shot of a high-road. At Discombe the long grass walks,
+the walls of ilex and of yew, the cypress avenues, and marble temples
+were isolated amidst surrounding woods, nearly a mile away from the
+traffic of everyday life. There was a sense of quiet and privacy here,
+compared with which Marsh House and the Grove were scarcely superior
+to the average villa in a newly developed suburb.</p>
+
+<p>The seasons waxed and waned; the month of May, when the woodland walks
+round Discombe were white with the feathery bloom of the mountain ash,
+and golden with the scented blossoms of the yellow azalea; and June,
+which filled the woodland avenues with a flush of purple rhododendrons,
+masses of bloom, in an ascending scale of colour from the deep bass of
+darkest purple to the treble of palest lilac; and July, with her lap
+full of roses that made the gardens as brilliant as a picture by Alma
+Tadèma.</p>
+
+<p>"I always tell the gardeners that if they give me roses I will forgive
+them all the rest," said Mrs. Wornock, when Allan complimented her upon
+her banquet of bloom; arches of roses, festoons of roses, temples built
+of roses, roses in beds and borders, everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>"But your men are model gardeners; they neglect nothing."</p>
+
+<p>In this paradise of flowers Allan and Suzette dawdled away two or
+three afternoons in every week. Discombe seemed to Allan always
+something of an enchanted palace—a place upon which there lay a
+glamour and a spell, a garden of sleep, a grove for woven paces and
+weaving hands, a spot haunted by sad sweet memories, ruled over by the
+genius of love, faithful in disappointment. Mrs. Wornock's personality
+gave an atmosphere of sadness to the house in which she lived, to the
+gardens in which she paced to and fro with slow, meditative steps; but
+it was not an unpleasing sadness, and it suited Allan's mood in this
+quiet summer of waiting, while grief for the loss of his father was
+still fresh in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily came to Discombe on several occasions, and now that Mrs.
+Wornock's shyness had worn off—with all those agitations which were
+inevitable at a first meeting—the two women were very good friends. It
+was difficult for any one not to take kindly to Lady Emily Carew, and
+she on her side was fascinated by a nature so different from her own,
+and by that reserve force of genius which gave fire and pathos to Mrs.
+Wornock's playing.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily listened with moistened eyes to the Sonata Pathetica, and
+Mrs. Wornock showed a cordial interest in the Blickling Park and
+Woodbastwick cows—which gave distinction to the Fendyke dairy farm.</p>
+
+<p>"Pure white, with lovely black muzzles—and splendid milkers!"
+protested Lady Emily. "I was taught that thing you play, dear Mrs.
+Wornock; but my playing was never good for much, even when I was having
+two lessons a week from poor Sir Julius. He was only Mr. Benedict when
+he taught me, and he was almost young."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey made meteoric appearances at Discombe during those quiet
+summer months, and his presence seemed to make everybody uncomfortable.
+There was a restlessness—a suppressed fever about him which made
+sensitive people nervous. Dearly though his mother loved him, and
+gladly as she welcomed his reappearance upon the scene of her life,
+she was always fluttered and anxious while he was under her roof.</p>
+
+<p>His leave expired early in July, but instead of joining his regiment,
+which had returned to England, and was now quartered at York, he sent
+in his papers, without telling his mother or anybody else what he was
+doing, and he would not reconsider his decision when asked to do so by
+his colonel. He told his mother one morning at breakfast, in quite a
+casual way, that he had left the army.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Geoffrey!" she exclaimed, with a shocked look.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are not sorry. I thought it would please you for me to be
+my own master, able to spend more of my life with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Geoffrey, I am very glad on that account; but I'm afraid it is a
+selfish gladness. It was better for you to have a profession. Everybody
+told me so years ago, when I was so grieved at your going into the
+army."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a way everybody has of saying smooth things. Well, mother, I
+am no longer a soldier. India was pleasant enough—there was a smack
+of adventure, a possibility of fighting—but I could not have endured
+garrison life in an English town. I would rather mope at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you mope, Geoff?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, why? I am free to go east, west, north, and south. I suppose
+there need be no moping now?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you will be often at home, won't you, dear? Or else I shall be no
+gainer by your leaving the army."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will be here as often, and as much as—as I can bear it."</p>
+
+<p>He had risen from the breakfast-table, and was walking up and down the
+room, with that light careless step of his which seemed in perfect
+harmony with his tall slim figure. He was very pale, and his eyes were
+brighter than usual, and there was a quick restlessness in the smile
+that flashed across his face now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I bore you so much, Geoffrey?" his mother asked, with a wounded
+look.</p>
+
+<p>"You bore me? No, no, no! Oh, surely you know how the land lies. Surely
+this fever cannot have been eating up my heart and my strength all this
+time without your eyes seeing, and your heart sympathizing. You <i>must</i>
+know that I love her."</p>
+
+<p>"I feared as much, my poor Geoffrey."</p>
+
+<p>No name had been spoken; yet mother and son understood each other.</p>
+
+<p>"You feared! Great God, why should it be a reason for fear? Here am
+I, young, rich, my own master—and here is she as free as she is
+fair—free to be my wife to-morrow, except for this tie which is no
+tie—a foolish engagement to a man she never loved."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she told you that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not she. Her lips are locked by an over-strained sense of honour.
+She will marry a man for whom she doesn't care a straw. She will be
+miserable all her life, or at best she will have missed happiness, and
+on her deathbed she will boast to her parish priest, 'I kept my word.'
+Poor pretty Puritan! She thinks it virtue to break my heart and grieve
+her own."</p>
+
+<p>"You have told her of your love, Geoffrey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"That was dishonourable."</p>
+
+<p>"No more than it was to love her. I am a lump of dishonour; I am made
+up of lies; but if she had an ounce of pluck, there need be no more
+falsehood. She has only to tell him the truth, the sad simple truth. 'I
+never loved you. I have let myself be persuaded into an engagement, but
+I never loved you.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That would break Allan's heart."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be bad to bear, no doubt, but not so bad as the gradual
+revelation that must come upon him in the years after marriage. She may
+be able to deceive him now—to delude him with the idea that she loves
+him; but how about the long winter evenings by their own fireside, and
+the dull nights when the rain is on the roof? A woman may hide her want
+of love before marriage; but, by Heaven, she can't hide it after! God
+help him when he finds that he has a victim, and not a wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Allan! But how do you know she does not care for him—or that she
+cares for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know that I live and breathe, that this is I?" touching
+himself, with an impatient tap of those light restless fingers. "I
+know it. I have known it more or less from the time we played those
+duets—the dawn of knowledge and of love. To know each other was to
+love. We were born for each other. Allan, with his shadowy resemblance
+to me, was only my forerunner, like the man one sees in the street, the
+man who reminds one of a dear friend, half an hour or so before we meet
+that very friend. Allan taught her to like the type. She never loved
+him. In me she recognizes the individual, fated to love her and to be
+loved by her."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Geoffrey, this is mere guess-work."</p>
+
+<p>"No! It is instinct, intuition, dead certainty. I tell you—once,
+twice, a thousand times, if you like—she loves me, and she doesn't
+love him. Tax her with it, pluck out the heart of her mystery. This
+hollow sham—this simulacrum of love must not go on to marriage. Talk
+to her, as woman to woman, as mother to daughter. I tell you it must
+not go on. It is driving me mad."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do what I can. Poor Allan! So good, so true-hearted!"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I false-hearted or vile, mother? Why should Allan be all in all to
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is not all in all. You know you are the first, always the first in
+my heart; but I am deeply grieved for Allan. If what you tell me is
+true, he is doomed to be most unhappy. He is so fond of her. He has
+placed all his hopes of happiness upon his marriage—and they are to be
+married in little more than a month. It will be heartless to break it
+off."</p>
+
+<p>"If it isn't broken off, there will be a tragedy. I will thrust myself
+between them at the altar. The lying words shall not be spoken. I would
+rather shoot him—or her—than that she should perjure herself, swear
+to love another while she loves only me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, how do you know? How can you be sure——"</p>
+
+<p>"Our hands have touched; our eyes have met. That is enough."</p>
+
+<p>He walked out of the window to the garden, and from the garden to the
+stables, where he ordered his dog-cart. His servant kept a portmanteau
+always ready packed. He left Discombe within an hour of that
+conversation with his mother, and he was on his way to London before
+noon. The first intimation of his departure which Mrs. Wornock received
+was a note which she found on the luncheon-table.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"I am off to the Hartz for a fortnight's tramp. Remember, something
+must be done to prevent this marriage. I shall return before the
+middle of August, and shall expect to find all settled.</p>
+
+<p>"Address Poste Restante, Hartzburg."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"WHO KNOWS WHY LOVE BEGINS?"</p>
+
+
+<p>The time was drawing near. The corn was cut and carried on many a broad
+sweep of hot chalky soil, and "summer's branding sun" had burnt up the
+thin grass on the wide bare down, where never shadow of tree or bush
+made a cool spot in the expanse of light and heat and dryness. The
+mysterious immemorial stones yonder on Salisbury Plain stood up against
+a background of cloudless blue; and the windows of the cathedral in the
+valley glittered and flashed in the sunshine. Only in the sober old
+close, and the venerable gardens of a bygone generation, within hedges
+that dead hands had planted, trees whose growth dead eyes had watched,
+was there coolness or shelter, or the gentle slumberous feeling of
+summer afternoon in its restful perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in an antique drawing-room, Mrs. Mornington and her niece were
+taking tea, after a morning with tailor and dressmaker.</p>
+
+<p>"There never was such a girl for not-caringness as this girl of mine,"
+said Mrs. Mornington, with a vexed air. "If it had not been for me, I
+don't think she would have had a new frock in her trousseau, and as she
+is a very prim personage about <i>lingerie</i>, and has a large stock of
+Parisian prettiness in that line, there would really have been nothing
+to buy."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather a relief, I should think," laughed Mrs. Canon, who was giving
+them tea.</p>
+
+<p>"A most delightful state of things," asserted Mrs. Sub-Dean, proud
+mother of half a dozen daughters, in which opinion agreed a county
+lady, also rich in daughters.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you are all against me!" said Mrs. Mornington; "but there is
+a great pleasure in buying things, especially when one is spending
+somebody else's money."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor papa!" sighed Suzette. "My aunt forgets that he is not Crœsus."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that girl's wretched pale face!" cried Mrs. Mornington. "Would
+any one think that she was going to be married to a most estimable
+young man, and the best match in the neighbourhood—except one?"</p>
+
+<p>At those two last words, Suzette's cheeks flamed crimson, and the
+feminine conclave looking at her felt she was being cruelly used by
+this strong-minded aunt of hers.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think the nicest girls are ever very keen about their
+trousseau," said the county lady, with a furtive glance at a buxom
+freckled daughter, who had lately become engaged, and who had already
+begun to discuss house-linen and frocks, with a largeness of ideas that
+alarmed her parents.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but there is a difference between caring too much and not caring
+at all. Suzette would be married in that white gingham she is wearing
+to-day, if I would let her."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray don't teaze people about my frocks, auntie. If you can't find
+something more interesting to talk about, we had better go away," said
+Suzette, with a pettishness which was quite unlike her; but it must
+be owned that to be made the object of a public attack in feminine
+convocation was somewhat exasperating.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington was not to be put down. She went on talking of frocks,
+though one of the daughters of the house carried Suzette off to the
+garden—an act of real Christian charity, if she had not spoilt her
+good work by beginning to talk of Suzette's lover.</p>
+
+<p>"I can quite fancy your aunt must be rather boring sometimes," she
+said. "But <i>do</i> tell me about Mr. Carew. I thought him so nice the
+other day at the flower-show, when you introduced him to me."</p>
+
+<p>"What can I tell you about him? You have seen him—and I am glad you
+thought him nice."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but one wants to know more. One wants to know what he is
+like—from your point of view."</p>
+
+<p>"But how could you see him from my point of view? That's impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"True! A casual acquaintance could never see him as he appears to
+you—to whom he is all the world," said the Canon's daughter, who
+was young and romantic, having lived upon church music and Coventry
+Patmore's poetry.</p>
+
+<p>"There's my aunt showing them patterns of my frocks!" exclaimed
+Suzette, irritably, glancing in at the drawing-room, where Mrs.
+Mornington sat, the centre of a little group, handing scraps of stuff
+out of her reticule.</p>
+
+<p>The scraps were being passed round and peered at and pulled about by
+everybody, with a meditative and admiring air. An African savage,
+seeing the group, would have supposed that some act of sortilege was
+being performed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is rather an ordeal being married," said the Canon's daughter,
+thinking sadly of a certain undergraduate who was down-hearted about
+his divinity exam., and upon whose achieving deacon's orders within a
+reasonable time depended the young lady's matrimonial prospects.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed as she thought of the difference in worldly wealth between
+that well-meaning youth and Allan Carew; and yet here was the future
+Mrs. Carew pale and worried, and obviously dissatisfied with her lot.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>When those gowns had been ordered, Suzette felt as if it were another
+link forged in the iron chain which seemed to weigh heavier upon her
+every day of her life.</p>
+
+<p>She had promised, and she must keep her promise. That was what she was
+continually saying to herself. Those words were woven into all her
+thoughts. Allan was so good, so true-hearted! Could she disappoint and
+grieve him? Could she be heartless, unkind, selfish—think of herself
+first and of him after—snatch at the happiness Fate offered her,
+and leave him out in the cold? No, better that she should bear her
+lot—become his wife, live out her slow, melancholy days, his faithful
+servant and friend, honouring him and obeying him, doing all that woman
+can do for man, except loving him.</p>
+
+<p>Those meteoric appearances of Geoffrey's had made life much harder
+for Suzette. She might have fought against her love for him more
+successfully perhaps had he been always near; had she seen him almost
+daily, and become accustomed to his presence as a common incident in
+the daily routine; but to be told that he was in the far north of
+Scotland, yachting with a friend; and then to be startled by his voice
+at her shoulder, murmuring her name in Discombe Wood; and to turn round
+with nervous quickness to see him looking at her with his pale smile,
+like a ghost—or to be assured that he was salmon-fishing in Connemara,
+and to see him suddenly sauntering across the lawn in the July dusk,
+more ghostlike even than in the woods, as if face and form were a
+materialization which her own sad thoughts had conjured out of the
+twilight.</p>
+
+<p>He would take very little trouble to explain his unlooked-for
+return. Scotland was too hot; the North Sea suggested a vast sheet of
+red-hot iron, blown over by a south wind that was like the breath of
+a blast-furnace. Ireland was a place of bad inns and inexorable rain;
+and there were no fish, or none that he could catch. He had come home
+because life was weariness away from home. He feared that life meant
+weariness everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>The days were hurrying by, and now Mrs. Mornington talked everlastingly
+of the wedding, or so it seemed to Suzette, who in these latter days
+tried to avoid her aunt as much as was consistent with civility, and
+fled from the Grove to Discombe as to a haven of peace. Mrs. Mornington
+loved to expatiate upon the coming event, to bewail her niece's
+indifferentism, to regret that there was to be no festivity worth
+speaking of, and to enlarge upon the advantages of Allan's position and
+surroundings, and Suzette's good fortune in having come to Matcham.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father might have spent a thousand pounds on a London season,
+and not have done half so well for you," she said conclusively.</p>
+
+<p>The General nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, between them they had done wonderfully well for Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>From this worldly wisdom the harassed girl fled to the quiet of
+Discombe, where the peaceful silence was only broken by the deep broad
+stream of sound from the organ, touched with ever-growing power by Mrs.
+Wornock. Suzette would steal softly into the music-room unannounced,
+and take her accustomed seat in the recess by the organ, and sit
+silently listening as long as Mrs. Wornock cared to play. Only when the
+last chord had died away did the two women touch hands and look at each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>It was about a week after that wearying day in Salisbury when Suzette
+seated herself by the player in this silent way, and sat listening to
+a funeral march by Beethoven, with her head leaning on her hand, and
+not so much as a murmur of praise for music or performer stirring the
+thoughtful quiet of her lips. When the last pianissimo notes, dropping
+to deepest bass, had melted into silence, Mrs. Wornock looked up and
+saw Suzette's face bathed in tears—tears that streamed over the pallid
+cheeks unchecked.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey's mother started up from the organ, and clasped the weeping
+girl to her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child! poor child! He was right, then? You are not happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Happy! I am miserable! I don't know what to do. I don't know what
+would be worst or wickedest. To disappoint him, or to marry him, not
+loving him!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no! you must not marry, not if you cannot love him. But you
+are sure of that, Susie? Are you sure you don't love him? He is so
+good, so worthy to be loved, as his father was—years ago. Why should
+you not love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, who can tell?" sighed Suzette. "Who knows why love begins, or
+how love gets the mastery? I let myself be talked into thinking I
+loved him. I always liked him—liked his company—was grateful for
+his attentions, respected him for his fine nature, and then I let him
+persuade me that this was love; but it wasn't—it never was love.
+Friendship and liking are not love; and now that the fatal day draws
+near I know how wide a difference there is between love and liking."</p>
+
+<p>"You must not marry him, Suzette. You know I would not willingly
+say one word that would tell against Allan Carew's happiness. I
+love him almost as dearly as I love my own son; but when I see you
+miserable—when I see Geoffrey utterly wretched, I can no longer keep
+silence. This marriage must be broken off."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan will hate me; he will despise me. What can he think me?—false,
+fickle, unworthy of a good man's love."</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell him the truth. It will be cruel, but not so cruel as to
+let him go on believing in you, thinking himself happy, living in a
+fool's paradise. Will you let me speak for you, Suzette?—let me do
+what your mother might have done had she been here to help you in your
+need?"</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was speechless with tears, her face hidden on Mrs. Wornock's
+shoulder. The door was opened at this moment, and the butler announced
+Mr. Carew.</p>
+
+<p>Allan had approached the group by the organ before either Mrs. Wornock
+or Suzette could hide her agitation. Their tears, the way in which they
+clung to each other, told of some over-mastering grief.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God! what is the matter? What has happened?" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing has happened, Allan; yet there is sorrow for all of us—sorrow
+that has been coming upon us, though some of us did not know it.
+Suzette, may I tell him—now, this moment?"</p>
+
+<p>"May you tell me? Tell me what?" questioned Allan. "Suzette, speak to
+me—you—you—no one else!"</p>
+
+<p>Fear, indignation, despair were in his tone. He caught hold of
+Suzette's arm, and drew her towards him, looking searchingly at the
+pale, tear-stained face; but she shrank from his grasp, and sank on her
+knees at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my miserable secret—that must be told at last. I have tried—I
+have hoped—I honour—I respect you—Allan. But our hearts are not our
+own; we cannot guide or govern their impulses. My heart is weighed down
+with shame and misery, but it is empty of love. I cannot love you as
+your wife should. If I keep my word, I shall be a miserable woman."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not be that," he said sternly—"not to make me the happiest
+man in creation. But don't you think," with chilling deliberation,
+"this tragedy might have been acted a little earlier? It seems to me
+that you have kept your secret over carefully."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been weak, Allan, hopelessly, miserably weak-minded. I tried to
+do what was best. I did not want to disappoint you——"</p>
+
+<p>"Disappoint me? Why, you have fooled me from the first! Disappoint
+me? Why, I have built the whole fabric of my future life upon this
+rotten foundation! I was to be happy because of your love; my days and
+years were to flow sweetly by in a paradise of domestic peace, blest
+by your love. And all the time there was no such thing. You did not
+love me; you had never loved me; you were only trying to love me; and
+the hopelessness of the endeavour is brought home to you now—at this
+eleventh hour—three weeks before our wedding-day. Suzette, Suzette,
+never was woman's cruelty crueller than this of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>She was in floods of tears at his feet, her head drooping till her brow
+almost touched the ground. He left her kneeling there, and rushed away
+to the garden to hide his own tears—the tears of which his manhood was
+ashamed, the passionate sobs, the wild hysterical weeping of the sex
+that seldom weeps. He found a shelter and a hiding-place in an angle
+of the garden, where there was a side walk shut in by close-cropped
+cypress walls, and here Mrs. Wornock found him presently, sitting on
+a marble bench, with his elbows on his knees, his face hidden in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>She seated herself at his side, and laid her hand gently on his.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, dear Allan, I am so sorry for you," she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry for myself. I don't seem to need anybody's pity. I
+think I can do all the grieving."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that is the worst of it. Nobody's sympathy can help you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yours," he answered almost savagely; "for, at heart, you must
+be glad. My dismissal makes room for some one else—some one whose
+interests are dearer to you than mine could ever be."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one nearer or dearer to me than you, Allan—no one—not
+even my own son. You have been to me as a son—the son of the man I
+fondly loved, whose face I was to look upon only once—once after those
+long years in which we were parted. I have loved you as a part of my
+youth, the living memory of my lost love. Ah, my dear, I had to learn
+the lesson of self-surrender when I was younger than you. I loved him
+with all my heart and mind, and I gave him up."</p>
+
+<p>"You did wrong to give him up. He himself said so. But there is no
+parallel between the two cases. This girl has let me believe in her.
+I have lived for a year in this sweet delusion—a bliss no more real
+than the happiness of a dream. She would have loved me; she would have
+married me; all would have been well for us but for your son. When he
+came, my chance was blighted. He has charms of mind and manner which
+I have not—like me, they say, but ten times handsomer. He can speak
+to her with a language that I have not. Oh, those singing notes on the
+violin; that long-drawn lingering sweep of the bow, like the cry of a
+spirit in paradise—an angelic voice telling of love ethereal—love
+released from clay; those tears which seemed to tremble on the strings;
+that loud, sudden sob of passionate pain, which came like a short,
+sharp amen to the prayer of love! I could understand that language
+better than he thought. He stole her love from me—set himself
+deliberately to rob me of my life's happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"It is cruel to say that, Allan. He is incapable of treachery, of
+deliberate wrong-doing. He is a creature of impulse."</p>
+
+<p>"Meaning a creature with whom self is the only god. And in one of
+his impulses he told Suzette of his love, even in plainer words than
+his Stradivarius could tell the story; and from that hour her heart
+was false to me. I saw the change in her when I came back—after my
+father's death."</p>
+
+<p>"You are unjust to him, Allan, in your grief and anger. Whatever his
+feelings may have been, he has fought against them. He has made himself
+almost an exile from this house."</p>
+
+<p>"He has been biding his time, no doubt; and now that I have had the
+<i>coup de grace</i> he will come back."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"THAT WAY MADNESS LIES."</p>
+
+
+<p>It would have taken a very respectable earthquake to have made as
+much sensation in a rural neighbourhood as was made in the village
+and neighbourhood of Matcham by the cancelment of Allan Carew's
+engagement to General Vincent's daughter. The fact that no visitors had
+been bidden to the wedding seemed to make no difference in the rapid
+dissemination of the news. People from twenty miles round had been
+interested; people from twenty miles round had come up to be taxed, and
+had sent pepper-pots and hair-brushes, paper-knives and scent-bottles,
+fans and candlesticks—all of which were now returned to the givers in
+the very tissue paper and cardboard boxes in which they had been sent
+from shops or stores, accompanied by a formal little note of apology.
+The marriage had been deferred indefinitely; and, at his daughter's
+request, General Vincent begged to return the gifts, with best thanks
+for the kindly feeling which had prompted, etc.</p>
+
+<p>"It will do for some one else!"</p>
+
+<p>That was the almost inevitable exclamation when the tissue paper was
+unfolded and the gift appeared, untarnished and undamaged by the double
+transit. Then followed speculations as to the meaning of those words,
+"deferred indefinitely."</p>
+
+<p>"Indefinitely means never," pronounced Mrs. Roebuck; "there's no doubt
+upon that point. He has jilted her. I thought he would begin to look
+about him after his father's death. I dare say he will have a house in
+town next season—a <i>pied à terre</i> near Park Lane—and go into society,
+instead of vegetating among those Bœotians. He must feel himself thrown
+away in such a hole."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought he was devoted to Miss Vincent."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! How could any man be devoted to an insignificant Frenchified
+chit without style or <i>savoir farie</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has a pretty, piquant little face," murmured Mr. Roebuck meekly,
+not liking to be enthusiastic about beauty which was the very opposite
+of his wife's Roman-nosed and flaxen-haired style.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Upon Mrs. Mornington the blow fell far more heavily than on Suzette's
+father, who was very glad to keep his daughter at home, albeit
+regretful that she should have treated a faithful lover so scurvily.</p>
+
+<p>"If the poor child did not know her own mind at the beginning, it's
+a blessed thing she found out her mistake before it was too late,"
+pleaded the General to his irate sister.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> too late—too late for respectability—too late for common
+humanity. To lead a young man on for over a year, almost to the foot of
+the altar, and then to throw him off. It is simply shameful! To make a
+fool of him and herself before the whole neighbourhood—to belittle
+herself as much as she has belittled him. No doubt all the women will
+say that <i>he</i> has jilted <i>her</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them. That cannot hurt her."</p>
+
+<p>"But it can hurt me, her aunt. I feel inclined to slap my most intimate
+friends when they ask me leading questions, evidently longing to hear
+that Allan has acted badly. And when I assure them that my niece is
+alone to blame, I can see in their faces that they don't, or won't,
+believe me. And why should they believe me? Could any girl, not an
+idiot, throw over such a match as Allan has become since his father's
+death?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't mean to say that my girl is an idiot?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say that she has acted like an idiot in this affair."</p>
+
+<p>"And I say that she has acted like an honest woman."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be able to look Lady Emily Carew in the face again."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be alarmed about Lady Emily. She will be no more sorry to keep
+her son to herself than I am to keep my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"She won't have him long. He'll be going off and marrying some horrid
+end-of-the-century girl in a fit of pique."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe he is such a fool."</p>
+
+<p>Matcham might talk its loudest, and dispute almost to blows, as to
+which was the jilter and which the jilted. The principal performers
+in the tragedy were well out of ear-shot—Allan at Fendyke with Lady
+Emily, Suzette at Bournemouth with an old convent friend and her
+invalid mother, people who had no connection with Matcham, and in whose
+society the girl could not be reminded of her own wrong-doing. The
+invitation to the villa at Branksome had been repeated very often; and
+on a renewal of it arriving just after that painful scene at Discombe,
+Suzette had written promptly to accept.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't mind my coming to you out of spirits and altogether
+troubled in mind, <i>chérie</i>," she wrote; and the girl, who was a
+very quiet piece of amiability, and who had worshipped her livelier
+school-fellow, replied delightedly, "Your low spirits must be brighter
+than other people's gaiety. Come, and let the sea and the downs console
+you. Bournemouth is lovely in September. Mother has given me the
+charmingest pony, and I have been carefully taught by our old coachman,
+who is a whip in a thousand, so you need not be afraid to trust
+yourself beside me."</p>
+
+<p>"Except for father's sake, it might be a good thing if she were to
+throw me out of her cart and kill me on the spot," mused Suzette, as
+she sat listlessly watching her maid packing her trunk.</p>
+
+<p>Among the frocks, there was one of the Salisbury tailor's confections,
+a frock which was to have been worn by Mrs. Allan Carew, and Suzette
+felt that she would sink with shame when she put it on.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to be prosecuted for obtaining goods under false pretences,"
+she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey Wornock found a telegram waiting for him at the little
+post-office at Hartzburg, and the mere outward casing of that message
+set his heart beating furiously. There must be news of his love in it,
+news good or bad.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not live through her wedding-day, if she marries him," he told
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The telegram was from his mother.</p>
+
+<p>"The marriage is broken off with much sorrow on both sides."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nonsense. On her part there can be no sorrow—only relief
+of mind, only joy, the prospect of a blissful union, a life without
+a cloud. Thank God, thank God, thank God! I never felt there was a
+God till now. Now I believe in Him—now I will lift up my heart to
+Him, in nightly and daily prayer, as Adam did by the side of Eve. Oh,
+thank God, the barrier is removed, and she can be mine! My own dear
+love—heart of my heart—life of my life!"</p>
+
+<p>He carried a fiddle among his scanty luggage, not the treasured
+inimitable Stradivarius, but a much-cherished little Amati; and
+by-and-by, having eaten some hurried scraps by way of dinner, he took
+the violin out of its case and went out to a little garden at the back
+of the inn, and in a vine-clad berceau gave himself up to impassioned
+utterance of the love that overflowed his heart. Music, and music only,
+could speak for him—music was the interpreter of all his highest
+thoughts. The stolid beer-drinkers came out of their smoke-darkened
+parlour to hear him, and sat silent and unseen behind an intervening
+screen of greenery, and listened and approved.</p>
+
+<p>"Ach, what for a fiddler! How he can play! Whole heaven-like. Not true,
+my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>He played and played, walking about under the vine-curtain—played till
+the pale grey evening shadows darkened to purple night, and the stars
+looked through the leafy roof of that rustic tunnel. He was playing to
+her; to her, his far-away love; to Suzette in England. He was pouring
+out his soul's desire to her, a hymn of sweet content; and he almost
+fancied that she could hear him. There must be some mystical medium by
+which such sounds can travel from being to being, where love attunes
+two souls in unison—some process now hidden from the dull mind of
+average man, as the electric telegraph was half a century ago.</p>
+
+<p>This is how a lover dreams in the summer gloaming, in a garden on the
+slope of a pine-clad hill, with loftier heights beyond, shadowy and
+dark against the deep blue of that infinite sky where the stars are
+shining aloof and incomprehensible, in remoteness that fills mortality
+with despair.</p>
+
+<p>She was free! That was Geoffrey's one thought in every hour and almost
+every minute of his breathless journey from Hartzburg to Discombe.
+She was free; and for her to be free meant that she was to be his. He
+imagined no opposition upon her side when once her engagement to Allan
+had been broken. She had been bound by that tie, and that only. His
+impetuous, passionate nature, self-loving and concentrative as the
+temper of a child, could conceive no restraining influence, nothing
+that could prevent her heart answering his, her hand yielding to his,
+and a marriage as speedy as law and Church would allow.</p>
+
+<p>They could be married ever so quietly—in London—where no curious
+eyes could watch, no gossiping tongues criticise—married—made for
+ever one; and then away to mountain and lake, to Pallanza, Lugano,
+Bellaggio, to flowery shores betwixt hill and water, to a life lovelier
+than his fairest dreams.</p>
+
+<p>No man journeying with a passionate heart ever found rail or boat
+quick enough, and Geoffrey, always impatient, chafed at every stage of
+the journey, and complained as bitterly as if he had been travelling
+at the expensive crawl in which a Horace Walpole or a Beckford was
+content to accomplish that restricted round which our ancestors called
+the "grand tour." Nothing slower than a balloon driving before a gale
+would have satisfied Geoffrey's eager soul. And he would rather have
+accepted balloon transit, with all its hazards, and run the risk of
+being landed in a Carinthian valley or a Norwegian fjord, than endure
+the harassing delay at dusty railway stations, or the slowness of the
+channel boat.</p>
+
+<p>He telegraphed to his mother from Brussels, and again from Dover; so
+there was a cart waiting for him at the station with one of the fastest
+horses in the stable, but, unfortunately, one of the stupidest grooms,
+who could furnish him with no information upon any subject.</p>
+
+<p>Was all well at home? His mistress well?</p>
+
+<p>The groom believed so.</p>
+
+<p>"Was Miss Vincent well?"</p>
+
+<p>The groom had heard nothing to the contrary; but he had not seen Miss
+Vincent lately.</p>
+
+<p>No particular inference was to be drawn from this statement of the
+groom's, since Suzette's visits were not made to the stableyard.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one at Discombe to do stable-parade and to insist upon
+horses being stripped and trotted up and down for the edification of a
+visitor whose utmost knowledge of a horse might be that it is a beast
+with four legs—mane and tail understood, though not always existent.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey rattled his old hunter along at a pace that made the cart sway
+like an outrigger in the wake of a steamer, and he alighted at the
+Manor House at least a quarter of an hour before a reasonable being
+would have got himself there.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the evening, and his mother was sitting alone in the
+dimly lighted music-room. The piano was shut—a bad sign; for when
+Suzette was there the piano was hardly ever idle.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mother dear, so glad to be home again," said Geoffrey, with an
+affectionate hug, but with eyes that were looking over his mother's
+head into space for another presence, even while he gave her that
+filial embrace.</p>
+
+<p>"And I am so glad to have you, Geoffrey; and I hope now this restless
+spirit will be content to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est selon.</i> Where's Suzette?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Bournemouth, with an old school-fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you wire her address, and then I could have gone straight
+to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Geoffrey, what are you thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of Suzette—of my dear love—of my wife that is to be!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, you cannot go to her. You must not ask her to marry you
+while this cancelled engagement is a new thing. I should think her a
+horrid girl if she would listen to you—for ever so long."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean for a week—or a fortnight?"</p>
+
+<p>"For a long, long time, Geoffrey—long enough for Allan's wounded heart
+to recover."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my soul, mother, that is too good a joke! Is my mother, the most
+romantic and unconventional of women, preaching the eighteenpenny
+gospel of middle-class etiquette?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is no question of conventionality. My affection for Allan is only
+second to my love for you, and I cannot bear to think of his being
+wounded and humiliated, as he must be if Suzette were to accept you
+directly after having jilted him."</p>
+
+<p>"And you would have Suzette sit beside the tomb of Allan's hopes for a
+year or so while I eat my heart out—banquet on joys deferred—sicken
+and die, perhaps, with that slow torture of waiting. Mother, you don't
+know what love is—love in the heart of a man. If she had married
+Allan, I should have shot myself on her wedding-day. That was written
+in my book of fate. If she won't marry me; if she play fast and loose,
+blow hot, blow cold; if she won't look in my eyes and say honestly,
+'I love you,' and 'I am yours,' I can't answer for myself—I fear
+there will be a tragedy. You know there is something here"—touching
+his forehead—"which loses itself in a whirl of fiery confusion when
+this"—touching his heart—"is too sorely tried."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, my dearest! oh, Geoffrey, you agonize me when you talk
+like that! I think—yes, I believe that Suzette loves you; but she is
+sensitive, tender-hearted—all that is womanly and good. You must give
+her time to recover from the shock of parting with Allan, whom she
+sincerely esteems, and whose sorrow is her sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I will see her to-morrow. I cannot live without seeing her. Why, every
+mile of pine-forest through which I came seemed three, every mile of
+dusty Belgian flatness seemed seven, to my hot impatience. I must see
+her, hear her, hold her hand in mine; and she shall do what she likes
+with the poor rag of life which will be left when I have lived an hour
+with her."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">END OF VOL. II.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+<p class="ph4">[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75174 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75174 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75174)