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+Project Gutenberg's Crowded Out! and Other Sketches, by Susie F. Harrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Crowded Out! and Other Sketches
+
+Author: Susie F. Harrison
+
+
+Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8652]
+This file was first posted on July 29, 2003
+Last Updated: May 19, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDED OUT! AND OTHER SKETCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Robert Prince and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CROWDED OUT!
+
+And Other Sketches,
+
+By Seranus
+
+
+
+The Story of Monsieur, Madame, and the Pea-Green Parrot. The Bishop of
+Saskabasquia. "As it was in the Beginning." A Christmas Sketch. The
+Idyl of the Island. The Story of Delle Josephine Boulanger. The Story of
+Etienne Chezy d'Alencourt. "Descendez a l'ombre, ma jolie blonde." The
+Prisoner Dubois. How the Mr. Foxleys Came, Stayed, and Never Went Away.
+The Gilded Hammock.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I present these "Sketches" in all proper fear and humility, to my
+Canadian public, hoping that the phases of colonial life they endeavor
+to portray will be recognized as not altogether unfamiliar. Some of them
+are true, others have been written through the medium of Fancy, which
+can find and inhabit as large a field in Canada as elsewhere; for, to my
+mind, there is no country, no town, no village, as there is no nation,
+no class of society, nor individual existence, that has not its own deep
+and peculiar significance, its own unique and personal characteristics
+that distinguish it from the rest of the world.
+
+SERANUS.
+
+
+
+
+Crowded Out.
+
+
+I am nobody. I am living in a London lodging-house. My room is up three
+pair of stairs. I have come to London to sell or to part with in some
+manner an opera, a comedy, a volume of verse, songs, sketches, stories.
+I compose as well as write. I am ambitious. For the sake of another,
+one other, I am ambitious. For myself it does not matter. If nobody will
+discover me I must discover myself. I must demand recognition, I must
+wrest attention, they are my due. I look from my window over the smoky
+roofs of London. What will it do for me, this great cold city? It shall
+hear me, it shall pause for a moment, for a day, for a year. I will make
+it to listen to me, to look at me. I have left a continent behind,
+I have crossed a great water; I have incurred dangers, trials of all
+kinds; I have grown pale and thin with labor and the midnight oil; I
+have starved, and watched the dawn break starving; I have prayed on
+my stubborn knees for death and I have prayed on my stubborn knees for
+life--all that I might reach London, London that has killed so many of
+my brothers, London the cold, London the blind, London the cruel! I am
+here at last. I am here to be tested, to be proved, to be worn proudly,
+as a favorite and costly jewel is worn, or to be flung aside scornfully
+or dropped stealthily to--the devil! And I love it so this great London!
+I am ready to swear no one ever loved it so before! The smokier it is,
+the dirtier, the dingier, the better. The oftener it rains the better.
+The more whimsical it is, the more fickle, the more credulous, the more
+self-sufficient, the more self-existent, the better. Nothing that it
+can do, nothing that it can be, can change my love for it, great cruel
+London!
+
+But to be cruel to _me_, to be fickle to _me_, to be deaf to _me_, to be
+blind to _me_! Would I change then? I might. As yet it does not know
+me. I pass through its streets, touching here a bit of old black wall,
+picking there an ivy leaf, and it knows me not. It is holy ground to me.
+It is the mistress whose hand alone I as yet dare to kiss. Some day
+I shall possess the whole, and I shall walk with the firm and buoyant
+tread of the accepted, delighted lover. Only to-day I am nobody. I
+am crowded out. Yet there are moments when the mere joy of being in
+England, of being in London, satisfies me. I have seen the sunbeam
+strike the glory along the green. I know it is an English sky above
+me, all change, all mutability. No steady cloudless sphere of blue but
+ever-varying glories of white piled cloud against the gray. Listen to
+this. I saw a primrose--the first I had ever seen--in the hedge. They
+said "Pick it." But I did not. I, who had written there years ago,--
+
+
+  I never pulled a primrose, I,
+  But could I know that there may lie
+  E'en now some small or hidden seed,
+  Within, below, an English mead,
+  Waiting for sun and rain to make
+  A flower of it for my poor sake,
+  I then could wait till winds should tell,
+  For me there swayed or swung a bell,
+  Or reared a banner, peered a star,
+  Or curved a cup in woods afar.
+
+
+I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could
+not pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The
+shimmering mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy
+green, the singing birds and the shallow streams--all the country; the
+blackened churches, the grass-grown churchyards, the hum of streets the
+crowded omnibus, the gorgeous shops,--all the town. God! do I not love
+it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she proclaim it herself,
+I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will write as no man has ever
+written about her, for very love of her. I look out to-night from
+my narrow window and think how the moonlight falls on Tintern, on
+Glastonbury, on Furness. How it falls on the primrose I would not pluck.
+How it would like to fall on the tall blue-bells in the wood. I see the
+lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses rattle by, the people are going to
+see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen Terry. What line, of mine, what bar,
+what thought or phrase will turn the silence into song, the copper into
+gold?--I come back from the window and sit at the square centre table.
+It is rickety and uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would
+kick anything that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a
+French piano is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking
+if you will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place
+is filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches.
+One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp
+glass is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor
+the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it though
+I can't feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about. The soot
+of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a pot of musk
+or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I?
+
+I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is
+refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into
+some bottomless pit or gulf.
+
+Here is my opera. This is my _magnum opus_, very dear, very clear,
+very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly
+altogether, by _her_ side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird! You
+could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you were
+not for me, you were not for me!--My head droops down, I could go to
+sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will write another
+story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London! To love you
+so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored, forgotten.
+But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to the theatres,
+I will see the managers, I will even tell them about myself and about
+Hortense--but it will be hard. They do not know me, they do not know
+Hortense. They will laugh, they will say "You fool." And I shall be
+helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never listen to me, though
+I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am nobody. And Hortense, the
+child with the royal air, Hortense, with her imperial brow and her hair
+rolled over its cushion, Hortense, the _Châtelaine_ of _Beau Séjour_,
+the delicate, haughty, pale and impassioned daughter of a noble house,
+that Hortense, my Hortense, is nobody!
+
+Who in this great London will believe in me, who will care to know
+about Hortense or about _Beau Séjour_? If they ask me, I shall say--oh!
+proudly--not in Normandy nor in Alsace, but far away across a great
+water dwells such a maiden in such a _château_. There by the side of
+a northern river, ever rippling, ever sparkling in Summer, hard, hard
+frozen in winter, stretches a vast estate. I remember its impenetrable
+pinewood, its deep ravine; I see the _château_, long and white and
+straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall French windows; I
+see the terrace where the hound must still sleep; I see the square side
+tower with the black iron shutters; I see the very window where Hortense
+has set her light; I see the floating cribs on the river, I hear the
+boatmen singing--
+
+
+  Descendez â l'ombre,
+  Ma Jolie blonde.
+
+
+And now I am dreaming surely! This is London, not _Beau Séjour_, and
+Hortense is far away, and it is that cursed fellow in the street I hear!
+The morrow comes on quickly. If I were to draw up that crooked blind
+now I should see the first streaks of daylight. Who pinned those other
+curtains together? That was well done, for I don't want to see the
+daylight; and it comes in, you know, Hortense, when you think it is
+shut out. Somebody calls it _fingers_, and that is just what it is, long
+fingers of dawn, always pale, always gray and white, stealing in and
+around my pillow for me. Never pink, never rosy, mind that; always faint
+and shadowy and gray.
+
+It was all caste. Caste in London, caste in _Le Bos Canada_, all
+the same. Because she was a _St. Hilaire_. Her full name--_Hortense
+Angelique De Repentigny de St. Hilaire_--how it grates on me afresh with
+its aristocratic plentitude. She is well-born, certainly; better born
+than most of these girls I have seen here in London, driving, walking,
+riding in the Parks. They wear their hair over cushions too. Freckled
+skins, high cheek-bones, square foreheads, spreading eyebrows--they
+shouldn't wear it so. It suits Hortense--with her pale patrician outline
+and her dark pencilled eyebrows, and her little black ribbon and amulet
+around her neck. _O, Marie, priey pour nous qui avous recours a vous_!
+Once I walked out to _Beau Séjour_. She did not expect me and I crept
+through the leafy ravine to the pinewood, then on to the steps, and so
+up to the terrace. Through the French window I could see her seated at
+the long table opposite Father Couture. She lives alone with the good
+Père. She is the last one of the noble line, and he guards her well and
+guards her money too.
+
+"I do remember that it vill be all for ze Church," she has said to me.
+And the priest has taught her all she knows, how to sew and embroider,
+and cook and read, though he never lets her read anything but works on
+religion. Religion, always religion! He has brought her up like a nun,
+crushed the life out of her. Until I found her out, found my jewel
+out. It is Tennyson who says that. But his "Maud" was freer to woo than
+Hortense, freer to love and kiss and hold--my God! that night while I
+watched them studying and bending over those cursed works on the
+Martyrs and the Saints and the Mission houses--I saw him--him--that old
+priest--take her in his arms and caress her, drink her breath, feast
+on her eyes, her hair, her delicate skin, and I burst in like a young
+madman and told Father Conture what I thought. Oh! I was mad! I should
+have won her first. I should have worked quietly, cautiously, waiting,
+waiting, biding my time. But I could never bide my time. And now she
+hates me, Hortense hates me, though she so nearly learned to love me.
+There where we used to listen to the magical river songs, we nearly
+loved, did we not Hortense? But she was a _St. Hilaire_, and I--I was
+nobody, and I had insulted _le bon Pere_. Yet if I can go back to her
+rich, prosperous, independent--What if that happen? But I begin to fancy
+it will never happen. My resolutions, where are they, what comes of
+them? Nothing. I have tried everything except the opera. Everything else
+has been rejected. For a week I have not gone to bed at all. I wait and
+see those ghastly gray fingers smoothing my pillow. I am not wanted. I
+am crowded out. My hands tremble and I cannot write. My eyes fail and I
+cannot see. To the window!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lights of Oxford St. once more; the glare and the rattle without,
+the fever and the ruin, the nerves and the heart within. Poor nerves,
+poor heart; it is food you want and wine and rest, and I cannot give
+them to you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sing, Hortense, will you? Sit by my side, by our dear river St. Maurice,
+the clear, the sparkling. See how the floating cribs sail by, each with
+its gleaming lights! It is like Venice I suppose. Shall we see Venice
+ever, Hortense, you and I? Sing now for me,
+
+
+   Descendez à l'ombre,
+   Ma Jolie blonde.
+
+
+Only you are _petite brune_, there is nothing _blonde_ about you,
+_mignonne_, my dear mademoiselle, I should say if I were with you of
+course as I used to do. But surely I _am_ with you and those lights are
+the floating cribs I see, and your voice it is that sings, and presently
+the boatmen hear and they turn and move their hands and join in--Now all
+together,
+
+
+   Descendez à l'ombre,
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was like you, Hortense, to come all this way. How did you manage it,
+manage to cross that great water all alone? My poor girl did you grow
+tired of _Le bon Père_ at last and of the Martyrs and the Saints and the
+Jesuit Fathers? But you have got your amulet on still I hope. That is
+right, for there is a chance--there is a chance of these things proving
+blessings after all to good girls, and you were a good girl Hortense.
+You will not mind my calling you Hortense, will you? When we are in _Le
+Bas Canada_ again, in your own seignieury, it will be "Madamoiselle," I
+promise you. You say it is a strange pillow, Hortense? Books, my girl,
+and manuscripts; hard but not so hard as London stones and London
+hearts. Do you know I think I am dying, or else going mad? And no one
+will listen even if I cry out. There is too much to listen to already in
+England. Think of all the growing green, Hortense, if you can, where you
+are, so far away from it all. Where you are it is cold and the snow is
+still on the ground and only the little bloodroot is up in the woods.
+Here where I am Hortense, where I am going to die, it is warm and green
+full of color--oh! Such color! Before I came here, to London you know
+London that is going to do so much for me, for us both, I had one
+day--one day in the country. There I saw--No! They will not let me
+tell you, I knew they would try to prevent me, those long gray fingers
+stealing in, stealing in! But I _will_ tell you. Listen, Hortense,
+please. I saw the hawthorne, pink and white, the laburnum--yellow--not
+fire-color, I shall correct the Laureate there, Hortense, when I am
+better, when I--publish!--It is dreadful to be alone in London. Don't
+come, Hortense. Stay where you are, even if it is cold and gray and
+there is no color. Keep your amulet round your neck, dear!--I count my
+pulse beats. It is a bad thing to do. It is broad daylight now and the
+fingers have gone. I can write again perhaps.--The pen--The
+paper--The ink--God. Hortense! There is no ink left! And my heart--My
+heart--Hortense!!!
+
+
+    Descendez à l'ombre,
+    Ma Jolie blonde.
+
+
+
+
+
+Monsieur, Madame and the Pea-Green Parrot
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I am an Englishman by birth. Having however lived for fourteen years out
+in America or rather in Canada, I am only half an Englishman. All the
+love for the dear old land which I am now revisiting is still there,
+deep in my heart, but from so long a residence in another country
+certain differences arise of character, habit and thought, not to be
+easily shaken off. I was in the Civil Service in Canada and did very
+well until I meddled with literature. Discovering that I had a faculty
+for verse and story-telling, I was ambitious and at the same time
+foolish enough to work so hard at my new pursuit that I was compelled to
+"cut" the service, in other words to resign. Some other Englishman got
+my post and I found myself, rather unexpectedly, it is true, free to
+write to my heart's content.
+
+I got off a number of things, poems, sketches, etc., but my great work
+turned out to be a comedy. I slaved at this all day and amused myself
+by rehearsing it in my lodgings all night. I incurred the odium of the
+landlady by coaxing the maid of all work to learn a part and act it with
+me. Finally I resolved to take a great step. I would go down to New York
+and get my comedy produced. That was exactly five years ago and though
+the comedy was _not_ produced, I am still sanguine that it yet may be,
+and perhaps not in New York after all, but in a much more important
+creative centre.
+
+I was at the time of my visit to New York perfectly unacquainted with
+the ways of a metropolis, and it was fortunate for me that I possessed
+one friend there who if not exactly a friend _at court_ as we say, was
+in truth a much more useful person to me, as, having once been young
+and inexperienced himself, he knew the ropes well and handled them
+thoroughly to his own satisfaction and with an eye to my comfort and
+safety.
+
+In the matter of cheap dives, for instance, he was invaluable. Left to
+myself I either drifted to the most expensive place, for a
+meal short perhaps of Delmonicos, or else to a shabby and
+altogether-to-be-repudiated den, where the meat would be rags as well
+as the pudding. But under his guidance we invariably turned up in some
+clean, bright, cheap and wholesome "oysterbar" or coffee room round the
+corner or up a lane, and were as happy as kings over our _lager beer_.
+
+One day De Kock came to me (he is a grand-nephew or something, I
+believe, of the great Frenchman) and said, with his knowing air,
+
+"You will please put on your best coat, your tall hat and a pair of
+gloves, for we are going to _dine_ to-night."
+
+"Have we not dined once to-day!"
+
+"Pish! Pshaw! You have had a soup, a mutton-chop, a triangle of pie, a
+lager beer, but you have not dined. You are not starving, and yet you
+have, from my present point of view, eaten nothing the whole of this
+day. _Mon cher_, it is necessary that you should dine for once in your
+life. _Allons_! We go to Giuseppe, Giuseppe Martinetti with the pale
+wife and the pea-green parrot--_allons, allons_!" To Martinetti's
+accordingly we went. I don't know what the dinner cost. It was dearer,
+certainly, than it would have been in London, but it was quite as good.
+We sat at a table formed for holding four at an open window, which,
+filled with exotics, overlooked Union Square, lighted by hundreds of
+incandescent lamps. The room contained about twenty of these small
+tables, and was, I suppose, very much like other rooms of its kind to
+_habitués_ of such places, but it was all new to me, and I stared and
+wondered accordingly. The waiters seemed to be all foreigners, De Kock
+addressing them in a mythical but magical language of his own. The
+tables were all full, and the people at them were mostly foreigners as
+well.
+
+"The Leicester Square of New York," remarked De Kock, as he helped me to
+the delicious Chiante wine out of a basket-covered bottle into a dainty
+glass. The soup was excellent, I remember. So was the macaroni, served
+in the best Italian method. I wondered to see De Kock manipulate it in
+finished style, winding yards of it around his fork, and swallowing it
+duly without any apparent effort. I cut mine at that time, although
+I have learned better now. I recollect the asparagus, too: served by
+itself on a great flat dish, and shining pale and green through the
+clear golden sauce that was poured over it. I was just finishing my
+first luscious, liquid stalk, and indulging in anticipations of my
+second, when the highest, the shrillest, the most piercing, and most
+unearthly voice I ever heard, shouted out--
+
+"_And for goodness sake don't say I told you_!"
+
+It was electrifying, at least to me. I dropped my half eaten asparagus
+stalk and fork at the same time, and looked up to see my companion
+quietly going on as before. One or two others had stopped eating too,
+but the majority appeared quite unruffled. I concluded that it was the
+parrot to which my friend had referred.
+
+"The last comic song," said the imperturbable De Kock.
+
+"But where is the beast!" I inquired. "It seemed to be over my head."
+
+"Oh! Not so near as that. But take my advice and don't call it a beast,
+although it is a nuisance undoubtedly. Besides, its master is not very
+far away from your elbow."
+
+"What of that?" said I, still injured, though in a lower tone.
+
+"What of that? Ah! You shall see. Look now! This short, stout person
+with the diamond pin and the expansive shirt front is Giuseppe. Ah, he
+sees me! Good evening, Giuseppe!"
+
+"Good evening, Monsieur, good evening, good evening! De friend not like
+de _parrot_, eh?"
+
+The man was smiling at me with his hands crossed behind him. An Italian
+Jew I dubbed him immediately.
+
+"On the contrary, he admires it very much," said De Kock.
+
+Following their eyes presently I saw the cage hanging from the centre
+of the room, and in it a parrot as nearly pea-green in hue as it is
+possible for a parrot to be.
+
+"Tell my friend her name, Giuseppe," said De Kock, beginning on some
+more asparagus.
+
+Giuseppe stood in his patronizing way--quite the _grand seigneur_--with
+the light falling on his solitaire, making it so brilliant that it
+fascinated and at the same time fatigued my eyes.
+
+"The name of my parrot? Monsieur De Kock, he know that well. It is
+Félicité--you catch--Fé-li-ci-té. It was the name of my wife."
+
+Then his wife was dead. De Kock must have made a mistake.
+
+"It is an unusual name for a bird, is not it?" said I.
+
+"Monsieur is right. Not often--not often--you meet with a bird that
+name. My first wife--my _first_ wife, gentlemen, she was English. _You_
+are English--ah. Yes. So was she. The English are like this." Giuseppe
+took a bottle out of the cruet-stand and set it on the table in front
+of him. He went on, "When an Englishman an Englishwoman argue, they
+say"--here he took the bottle up very slowly and gingerly and altered
+his voice to a mincing and conventional tone--"Is it oil or is it
+vinegare? Did you not say that it was vinegare? I thought that it was
+oil Oh! Now I see that it is vinegare."
+
+"Bravo!" exclaimed De Kock. "And so you did not get on with the
+Englishwoman then I suppose, Giuseppe, and took Madame the next time?"
+We were both laughing heartily at the man's mimicry when once again the
+parrot shrieked. "But for goodness sake don't say I told you!" Giuseppe
+walked off to speak to it and my friend and I were left alone.
+
+"Was Félcité the name of his first or second wife!" I asked.
+
+"Of his second, of course. Didn't you hear him say the first was
+an Englishwoman? The second is a tall, rather good-looking pale
+Frenchwoman. You may see her to-night, and on the other hand you may
+not, she doesn't often appear in here. I wish she did, I am rather fond
+of her myself, which is more than her husband is. It's pretty well known
+that Mr. and Mrs. Joseph do _not_ get on comfortably. In fact, he hates
+her, or rather ignores her, while she doats upon him and is tremendously
+jealous of the parrot."
+
+"What, that green thing?"
+
+"Well, its a lovely parrot, you must know, and the moment it came into
+his possession--he has had it about three years--he seemed to transfer
+whatever affection he had for his wife to that creature, with a great
+deal beside. Why, he hugs it, and kisses it, and mows over it--look at
+him now!"
+
+Sure, enough, there was Martinetti with the bird on his finger, kissing
+it, and otherwise making a fool of himself. He finished by actually
+putting it away inside his coat in a kind of breast pocket, I should
+imagine.
+
+"All this is good for business, perhaps," I said.
+
+"What, the parrot and so on? Oh, yes I daresay, that has something to do
+with it. Still they are a queer couple. I come here mostly on account of
+this Chiante wine; you can't get it so good in many places in New York,
+and besides I confess Monsieur and his wife interest me somewhat.
+And the people one see here are immensely funny. That is your English
+expression, isn't it? There are three actresses over there at that table
+with _amis intimes_; they are 'restin' now, and can cut about and dine
+out as much as they please. There is a French dressmaker who lives on
+the floor above and is to be found here every day. She is superbly built
+and is hopelessly ugly, isn't she? There is young Lord Gurgoyle, an
+Englishman like yourself, you see--what the devil is he staring at like
+that?"
+
+From behind a _portière_ which fell across the end of the room came a
+woman, tall, pale, and with a peculiar air of distinction about her.
+Perhaps it was her very unusual pallor which so distinguished her for
+there was nothing absolutely fine or handsome about the countenance. It
+was a weak face I thought, with an ugly red mark over the upper lip, and
+had she not been so very pale and so exceptionally well-dressed I should
+not have looked at her twice. She wore a gown of black silk, dead-black,
+lustrous, and fitting her slender figure to perfection. It was cut
+square and low in the front and fell away in long folds upon the floor
+at the back. What an apparition she made in the midst of this noisy
+crowd, smoking, chatting, swearing, laughing! Especially so when I
+noticed that as she walked very slowly down between the tables, her lips
+were moving nervously and her hands clutching at her beautiful dress. As
+for her eyes, they were everywhere in an instant.
+
+"'Tis Félicité. You are fortunate," murmured De Kock. "And she is a
+little worse than usual."
+
+"What is it?" I demanded. "Drink?" "Hush-sh-sh! _Mon cher_, you are
+stupid. It is jealousy, jealousy, my friend, with perhaps an occasional
+over-dose of chloral. Chloral is the favorite prescription now-a-days,
+you must remember that. But jealousy will do, jealousy will do. It will
+accomplish a great deal, will jealousy; will destroy more, mark that! I
+hope she will be quiet to-night for your sake."
+
+"Is she violent?" I asked.
+
+"Poor thing, yes. When she finds him now with that creature inside his
+coat; she will wring her hands and denounce him and threaten to kill
+it--I wonder she doesn't--then her husband will march her off behind
+the curtain and he will make love to the parrot again." Precisely what
+happened. The lady soon found her husband, raised her hands tragically
+and broke out into excited French that was liberally sprinkled with
+oaths both English and French. The mania was asserting itself, the
+propensity overcoming her. It was a sad and at the same time an amusing
+scene, for one could not help smiling at Giuseppe's fat unconcern as he
+kept his wife off at arms' length, while all the time the parrot inside
+his coat was shrieking in muffled tones "And for goodness sake don't say
+I told you!"
+
+Finally Madame succumbed and was taken behind the curtain in a
+dishevelled and hysterical condition which increased De Kock's pity for
+her. We paid the waiter--or rather De Kock did--and left, not seeing
+Giuseppe again to speak to, though he came in and removed the parrot,
+cage and all.
+
+It was a lovely night outside, and I suggested sitting for a time in
+Union Square. Finding an unoccupied bench, we each made ourselves happy
+with a good cigar and watched the exquisite shadows of the trees above
+as thrown by the electric light on the pavement.
+
+"Wonderful effect!" remarked my friends. "How did you enjoy your dinner?
+That was a dinner, eh, and no mistake; rather have had it without the
+'episode'? Oh! I don't know; you literary fellows must come in for that
+sort of thing as well as the rest of the world; I should think it would
+just suit you. Put them--the three of them--Monsieur, Madame and the
+Pea-Green Parrot--into a book, or better still, on the stage. There's
+your title ready for you too."
+
+I was just thinking of the same thing.
+
+"They are undoubtedly originals, both of them--all three," said I, "but
+as far as I have seen them, there is hardly enough to go upon."
+
+"What do you mean by 'enough'?"
+
+"I mean, for one thing, we do not understand the woman's mental and
+moral condition sufficiently to make a study of her. You say it is
+jealousy, and at the same time the use of chloral. That would have to be
+understood more clearly. Then, one would like something to--"
+
+"Go on," said my friend. "To--"
+
+"Happen," said I, lighting a second cigar.
+
+Just then a couple of boys ran across the square. One of them stumbled
+over my feet, picked himself up quickly and ran on again. Two or three
+people now came, all running. De Kock jumped up.
+
+"Something is happening," he said, "and with a vengeance too I fancy.
+Hark!"
+
+The people now came fast and furious through the square, increasing in
+numbers every moment, but through the bustle and hurry and clatter of
+tongues, we could hear a woman's voice screaming in evident distress.
+Mingled with it was another sound which may have mystified the general
+crowd, but which De Kock and I could easily place.
+
+"It is the parrot!" I exclaimed, as we started to run.
+
+"You have your wish, _mon cher_, is it not so? But take it not so fast;
+we will be there in time. _Ciel_! What a row!"
+
+The steps leading up to the restaurant were thronged with people,
+including two or three policemen. The dining-room was ablaze with light,
+and still full of visitors, most of whom, however, were moving about in
+a state of agitation. The upper windows were also lighted and wide open.
+The screaming suddenly ceased, but not the parrot.
+
+"For goodness sake don't say I told you!" It went on, louder than ever,
+over and over again.
+
+"Damn the bird!" exclaimed De Kock. "Policeman excuse me, but I am
+rather at home here. Let me go up, will you?"
+
+"It looks bad, sir. I'd better keep behind."
+
+"Oh. It isn't murder or anything of that sort. I know them, pretty
+couple, they are!"
+
+The next moment we were in a kind of sitting room over the restaurant
+proper. Madame Martinetti lay as if exhausted on a sofa while the highly
+excited parrot sang and screamed and tore at its cage as if for life.
+Giuseppe was nowhere visible. "Now then where's the other?" demanded the
+policeman who had just entered behind us, "There's always two at
+this business. Show him up, now." But Madame at first would deign no
+explanation. Presently on the entry of policeman No. 2 she admitted
+there had been a quarrel. Yes, she had quarrelled with her dear
+Giuseppe, (the officers grinned) and had driven him away. Yes, he had
+gone--gone forever, he had said so, never to come back, never, never!
+
+"And leave this fine business to you, eh? No fear of that. I guess Mr.
+Martinetti'll turn up all right in the morning, however, let us make
+a search, Joe." But Giuseppe was not found; there were no traces of
+a struggle, and the policemen having done all they could retired. My
+friend and I, by what right I know not were the last to leave the room.
+De Kock stood for some moments looking out of the window. I approached
+the parrot who was still screaming.
+
+"If throwing a cloth over your head would stop you, I'd do it, my
+dear," said I. To my surprise, it ceased its noise directly, and became
+perfectly quiet. Madame Martinetti looked around with a contemptuous
+smile.
+
+"You have the secret as well," said she. The bird turned to her and then
+returned to me. I became quite interested in it. "Pretty Poll, pretty
+bird; would you like a cracker?"
+
+De Kock laughed softly at the window. "A cracker to such a bird as that!
+Ask it another." I actually, though with a timid air, opened the door of
+the cage and invited Polly to perch on my finger. She came, looking
+at me intensely all the while. I petted her little, which she took
+resignedly and with a faint show of wonder, then in answer to De Kock's
+summons put her back in the cage.
+
+"I have the honour to wish madame a _bonsoir_," said he, but the lady
+was still sulky and vouchsafed no answer.
+
+We were soon out in the street.
+
+"Do you know," said De Kock slowly, lighting a cigar and looking up at
+the house, "Do you know, I thought something had happened."
+
+"And don't you now."
+
+"I am not sure," answered my friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+We were pardonably curious to see the papers next morning. The affair
+was dismissed in three lines, and although as De Kock swore, the case
+was one for Gaboriau, it certainly was not our business to look into it
+and in fact in a week's time I was back in Canada, and he up to his eyes
+in commercial pursuits. The main point remained clear, however, that
+Martinetti did _not_ come back, nor was he found, or traced or ever
+heard of again. Somebody took the business out of hand, as they say,
+and De Kock would occasionally write a P. S. to his letters like
+this--"Dined at poor Martinetti's, Chiante as usual. Ever yours." Or
+it would be--"Drank to the production of your last new comedy at
+Martinetti's." Once he stated that shortly after that memorable night
+Madame disappeared also, taking the parrot along. "I begin to think they
+are a pair of deep ones and up to some big game" he wrote. For myself, I
+never entirely forgot the circumstance, although it was but once vividly
+recalled to my mind and that was in a theatre in Montreal. An American
+company from one of the New York theatres was performing some farcical
+comedy or other in which occurred the comic song, admirably sung and
+acted by Miss Kate Castleton, "For goodness sake don't say I told you!"
+The reminiscences forced upon me quite spoiled my enjoyment; I could
+see that pale, nervous woman, hear her screams, and hear too the fearful
+voice of the poor parrot. Where is it now, thought I? That same winter
+I was much occupied in making studies of the different classes of people
+among the French-Canadians. The latter turn up everywhere in Montreal,
+and have a distinct "local color" about them which I was curious to
+get and hope to preserve for use some future day. I went everywhere and
+talked to everybody who might be of use to me; cabmen, porters, fruit
+dealers and tobacconists. I found much to interest me in the various
+Catholic institutions, and I was above all very fond of visiting the
+large, ugly gray building with the air of a penitentiary about it called
+the Grey Nunnery. Going through its corridors one day I took a wrong
+turning and found I was among some at least quasi-private rooms. The
+doors being open I saw that there were flowers, books, a warm rug on the
+floor of one and a mirror on the wall of another. The third I ventured
+to step inside of, for a really beautiful Madonna and child confronted
+me at the door. The next moment I saw what I had not expected to see--a
+parrot in a cage suspended from the window! I made quite sure that it
+was not _the_ parrot before I went up to it. It was asleep and appeared
+to be all over of a dull grey color, to match the Nuns, one might
+have said. I stood for quite a little while regarding it. Suddenly it
+stirred, shook itself, awoke and seeing me, immediately broke out into
+frantic shrieks to the old refrain "And for goodness sake don't say I
+told you."
+
+So it was the parrot after all! Of that I felt sure, despite the changed
+color, not only because of the same words being repeated--two birds
+might easily learn the same song, but because of the bird's manner. For
+I felt certain that the thing knew me, recognized me, as we say of human
+beings or of dogs and horses. I felt an extraordinary sensation coming
+over me and sat down for a moment. I seemed literally to be in the
+presence of something incomprehensible as I watched the poor excited
+bird beating about and singing in that way. The words of the song became
+painfully and awfully significant--"for goodness sake don't say I told
+you!" They were an appeal to my pity, to my sense of honor, to my power
+of secrecy, for I felt convinced that the bird had seen something--in
+fact that, to use De Kock's convenient if ambiguous phrase, _something
+had happened_! Then to think of its recognizing me too, after so long an
+interval! What an extraordinary thing to do! But I remembered, and hope
+I shall never forget, how exceeding small do the mills of the gods
+grind for poor humanity. I would have examined the creature at once
+more closely had not two of the nuns appeared with pious hands lifted in
+horror at the noise. They knew me slightly but affected displeasure at
+the present moment.
+
+"Who owns this bird?" said I. It was still screaming.
+
+"The good Sister Félicité. It is her room."
+
+"Can I see her?"
+
+"Ah! _non_. She is ill, so very ill. She will not live long, _cette
+pauvre soeur_!"
+
+I reflected. "Will you give her this paper without fail when I have
+written upon it what I wish?"
+
+"_Mais oui, Monsieur_!"
+
+In the presence of the two holy women standing with their hands devoutly
+crossed, and of the parrot whom I silenced as well as I could, and in
+truth I appeared to have some influence over the creature, I wrote
+the following upon a leaf torn out of my scratch-book: "To the Soeur
+Félicité. A gentleman who, if he has not made a great mistake, saw you
+once when you were Mdme. Martinetti, asks you now if in what may be your
+last moments, you have anything to tell, anything to declare, or anybody
+to pardon. He would also ask--what _was done to the parrot_? He, with
+his friend M. De Kock, were at your house in New York the night your
+husband disappeared."
+
+"Give her that," said I to the waiting sister, "and I will come to see
+how she is to-morrow."
+
+That night, however, she died, and when I reached the nunnery next
+day it was only to be told that she had read my note and with infinite
+difficulty written an answer to it.
+
+"I am sorry I should have perhaps hastened her end," said I. "Before you
+give it to me, will you permit me to see her?"
+
+"_Mais oui, Monsieur_, if monsieur will come this way."
+
+Until I gazed upon the dead I did not feel quite sure of the identity
+of this pious Sister of Charity. But I only needed to look once upon the
+ghastly pallor, the ugly lip mark and the long slender figure on the bed
+before me to recognize her who had once been Mdme. Martinetti.
+
+"And now for the paper," I said.
+
+"It will be in the room that was hers, if monsieur will accompany." We
+walked along several corridors till we reached the room in which hung
+the parrot, I quite expected it to fly at me again and try to get rid
+of its miserable secret But no! It sat on its stick, perfectly quiet and
+rational.
+
+"I cannot find dat paper, it is very strange!" muttered the good sister,
+turning everything over and over. A light wind playing about the room
+had perhaps blown it into some corner. I assisted her in the search.
+
+"It surely was in an envelope?" I said to the innocent woman.
+
+"Yes monsieur, yes, and with a seal, for I got the _cire_--you call it
+_wax_--myself and held it for her, _la bonne soeur_."
+
+"It is not always wise to leave such letters about," I put in as meekly
+as I could "Where was it you saw it last?"
+
+"On dees little table, monsieur."
+
+Now, "dees little table" was between the two windows, and not far,
+consequently from the parrot's cage. My eye travelled from the table to
+the cage as a matter of necessity, and I saw that the bottom of it was
+strewn with something white--like very, very tiny scraps of paper. "I
+think you need not look any further," said I. "Polly, you either are
+very clever, or else you are a lunatic and a fool. Which is it?"
+
+But I never found out The parrot had got the letter by some means or
+other and so effectually torn, bitten and made away with it that nothing
+remained of it for identification except the wax, which it did not touch
+and left absolutely whole. The secret which had been the parrot's all
+along belonged to the parrot still, and after having devoured it in
+that fashion it became satisfied, and never--at least, as far as I
+am aware--reverted morbidly to the comic refrain which has but one
+significance for me.
+
+I took the bird and kept it. I have it now with me. It has been examined
+hundreds of times; for a long time I was anxious to know the secret of
+its changed color, but I have never deciphered it. It is healthy, in
+good condition, sweet-tempered and very fond of me. It does not talk
+much, but its talk is innocent and rational. No morbid symptoms have
+ever appeared in it since I took it from the nunnery in Montreal.
+Its plumage is soft and thick, and perfectly, entirely gray. My own
+impression is that it was naturally a gray parrot and had at that time
+of my sojourn in New York, either been dyed or painted that peculiar
+pea-green which so distinguished it then. I wrote to De Kock before
+leaving for England and told him something of the story. I have seen the
+last of Madame; in all probability I shall see the last of the Pea-Green
+Parrot, and I cannot help wondering when I enter a café or ride on
+an omnibus whether I shall ever run across Giuseppe Martinetti in the
+flesh, or whether the last of him was seen in truth, five years ago.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Bishop of Saskabasquia.
+
+
+I have not a story, properly speaking, to tell about him. He, my Bishop,
+is quite unconscious that I am writing about him, and would, I daresay,
+be quite astonished if he knew that I could find anything that relates
+to him to write about. But I will tell you just how I came to do so. I
+went to see the "Private Secretary" some months ago. I had never been a
+great admirer of clergymen as a sex (vide Frenchman's classification),
+and I thoroughly enjoyed the capital performance of so clever a play.
+Here, thought I, is a genuine and perfectly fair, though doubtless
+exaggerated, portrait of the young and helpless curate. I quite lived on
+that play. I used to go about, like many another delighted playgoer,
+I expect, quoting the better bits in it, and they are many, and often
+laughing to himself at its admirable caricature. However, to go on
+with what I am going to tell you, about two months after I had seen the
+"Private Secretary," I had occasion to undertake a sea voyage. I had
+to go out on business to Canada, and embarked one fine Thursday at
+Liverpool. One of the first things you do on board an ocean steamer
+is to find your allotted place at table, and the names, etc, of your
+companions. I soon found mine, and discovered with a pang that I was six
+seats from the Captain at the side, between a lady and her daughter
+I had already met at the North-Western Hotel and did not like, and
+opposite to the Bishop of Saskabasquia, his wife and sister and three
+children. There was no help for it, I must endure the placid small talk,
+the clerical platitudes, the intolerable intolerance born of a deathless
+bigotry that would emanate from my _vis-a-vis_. What a fuss they made
+over him, too! Only a Colonial Bishop after all, but when we were all
+at the wharf, ready to get into the tender, we were kept waiting--we the
+more insignificant portion of the passengers, mercantile and so on--till
+"my lord" and his family, nine in number, were safely handed up, with
+boys and bundles and baggage of every description.
+
+The Bishop himself was a tall thin man, rather priestly in aspect and
+careworn. Mrs. Saskabasquia as I called her all through the voyage and
+the seven children--seven little Saskabasquians--and Miss Saskabasquia,
+the aunt, were all merry enough it seemed though dressed in the most
+unearthly costumes I had ever seen. Where they had been procured I could
+not imagine, but they appeared to be made of different kinds of canvas,
+flannel shirting, corduroy, knitted wool and blankets. Of course we all
+mustered at the lunch table that first day, people always do, and affect
+great brightness and hysterical intellectuality and large appetites. I
+took my seat with a resigned air. There was not a single pretty girl on
+board. There were plenty of children, but I did not care much for the
+society of children. The lady and her daughter between whom I sat,
+presumably to hand them the dishes, did not like me any better than
+I liked them. They were Canadians, that was easy to discover by their
+peculiarly flat pronunciation, a detestable accent I hold, the American
+is preferable. They were connected with the Civil Service in some way
+through "papa" who figured much in their conversation and I fancy the
+mother rather disliked the idea of such close contact with a member of
+the commercial world. So much for colonial snobbery. The lunch was good
+however, excellent, and we did justice to it. The Bishop did not appear
+nor any of his family until we had almost finished. Then he entered
+with his wife and the two eldest boys. The only vacant seats were those
+opposite me which they took. I wondered they had not placed him next
+the Capt., but divined that the handsome brunette and the horsey
+broker, Wyatt and his wife of Montreal, fabulously rich and popular, had
+arranged some time before to sit next the Capt. My Bishop was perhaps
+annoyed. But if so, he did not show it. He and his wife ate abundantly,
+it was good to see them. I involuntarily smiled once when the Bishop
+sent his plate back the second time for soup, and he caught me. To my
+surprise, he laughed very heartily and said to me:
+
+"I hope you do not think I am forgetting all the other good things to
+come! I assure you we are very hungry, are we not, Mary?"
+
+Mrs. Saskabasquia laughed in her turn, and I began to perceive what a
+very pretty girl she must have been once, and her accent was the purest,
+most beautiful English. We seemed to warm up generally around the table
+as we watched the Bishop eat. The boys behaved beautifully and enjoyed
+their meal as well. Presently we heard a baby crying. It was evidently
+the youngest of the seven young Saskabasquians. The Bishop stopped
+directly.
+
+"Go on, go on with your dinner, my dear; I'll see to him, its only
+James. Dropped his rattle and put his finger in his eye, I expect."
+
+He jumped up and went, I suppose, to the stateroom. Mrs. Saskabasquia
+laughed softly, and when she spoke she rather addressed herself to me.
+
+"My husband is very good, you know. And James is such a little monkey,
+and so much better with him than with anyone else, so I just let him go,
+but it does certainly look very selfish, doesn't it?"
+
+"Not at all," I responded gallantly. "I am sure you need the rest quite
+as much as he does, particularly if the ba--if the little boy is very
+young and you--that is--" I was not very clear as to what I was going to
+say, but she took it up for me.
+
+"Oh, James is the baby. He is just six months' old, you know."
+
+"That is very young to travel," said I. I began to enjoy the charming
+confidences of Mrs. Saskabasquia, in spite of myself.
+
+"Oh, he was only _three_ months old when we left for England, quite a
+young traveller as you say. But he is very good, and I have so many to
+help me."
+
+Here the Bishop returned and sat down once more to his lunch. We had
+some further conversation, in which I learned that he and his wife had
+gone out to the North-West just twelve years ago for the first time.
+All their children had been born there, and they were returning to work
+again after a brief summer holiday in England. They told me all this
+with the most delightful frankness, and I began to be grateful for my
+place at table, as without free and congenial society at meal-time,
+life on board an ocean steamer narrows down to something vastly
+uncomfortable. It was a bright and beautiful afternoon on deck, and I
+soon found myself walking energetically up and down with the Bishop.
+I commenced by asking him some questions as to his work, place of
+residence and so on, and once started he talked for a long time about
+his northern home in the wilds of Canada.
+
+"My wife and I had been only married two months when we went out," said
+he, with a smile at the remembrance. "We did not know what we were going
+to."
+
+"Would you have gone had you known?" I enquired as we paused in our walk
+to take in a view of the Mersey we were leaving behind.
+
+"Yes, I think so. Yes, I am quite sure we would. I was an Oxford man,
+country-bred; my father is still alive, and has a small living in Essex.
+I was imbued with the idea of doing something in the colonies long after
+I was comfortably settled in an English living myself, but I had always
+fancied it would be Africa. However, just at the time of our marriage I
+was offered this bishopric in Canada, and my wife was so anxious to go
+that I easily fell in with the plan."
+
+"Anxious to go out there?" I said in much surprise.
+
+"Ah! You don't know what a missionary in herself my wife is! Then, of
+course, young people never think of the coming events--children and all
+that you know. We found ourselves one morning at three o'clock, having
+gone as far as there was any train to take us, waiting in a barn that
+served as a station for the buckboard to take us on further to our
+destination. Have you been in Canada yourself? No? Then you have
+not seen a buckboard. It consists of two planks laid side by side,
+lengthwise, over four antiquated wheels--usually the remains of a once
+useful wagon. Upon this you sit as well as you can, and get driven and
+jolted and bumped about to the appointed goal. I remember that morning
+so well," continued the Bishop. "It was very cold, being late in
+November, and at that hour one feels it so much more--3 a.m., you
+know. There was one man in charge of the barn; we called him the
+station-master, though the title sat awkwardly enough upon him. He was a
+surly fellow. I never met such another. Usually the people out there are
+agreeable, if slow and stupid."
+
+"Slow, are they?" said I in surprise.
+
+"Oh, frightfully slow. A Canadian laborer is the slowest person in
+existence, I really believe. However, this man would not give us any
+information, except to barely tell us that this buckboard was coming for
+us shortly. It was pitch dark of course and the barn was lighted by one
+oil lamp and warmed by a coal stove. The lamp would not burn well, so my
+wife unstrapped her travelling bag and with a pair of tiny curved
+nail scissors did her best, with the wick, the man remaining perfectly
+unmoveable and taciturn all the while. At four o'clock our conveyance
+arrived, and would you believe it--both the driver and the station
+master allowed me to lift my own luggage into it as well as I could?
+What it would not take I told the man in charge I would send for as soon
+as possible. There was no sleighing yet, and that drive was the most
+excruciating thing I ever endured over corduroy roads through wild and
+dark forests, along interminable country roads of yellow clay mixed with
+mud till finally we reached the house of the chief member of society in
+my district where we were to stay until our own house was ready."
+
+"How long did that take you?" I was quite interested. This was unlike
+the other clergymen's conversation I remembered.
+
+"O, a matter of eight hours or so. We had the eggs and bacon--the _piece
+de resistance_ in every Canadian farmhouse--at about half-past 12, for
+which we were thankful and--hungry. But now you must excuse me for here
+come two of the boys. Now, then, Alick, where's your mother? Isn't she
+coming on deck with James? Run and fetch her and you, George, get one
+of the chairs ready for her. And get the rugs at the same time Alick, do
+you hear?"
+
+I excused myself in turn and watched the family preparations with much
+amusement. Mrs. Saskabasquia came up from her state room with a baby in
+her arms, and a big fellow he was, followed by the other six and their
+aunt. The Bishop placed chairs for the two ladies and walked up and down
+the deck I should think the entire afternoon, first with two children
+and then with two more and finally with the baby in his arms. This was a
+funny sight but still not one to be ridiculed, far from it. Well, every
+day showed my new friend in an improved light. Who was it took all the
+children, not only his own but actually the entire troop on board up to
+the bow and down to the stern in a laughing crowd to see this or that or
+the other? Now a shoal of porpoises, now a distant sail or an iceberg,
+now the beautiful phosphorescence or the red light of a passing
+ship--the Bishop. Who divined the innate cliquism of life on board ship
+and cunningly got together in intercourse the very people who wanted
+to know each other, and even brought into good temper those unfortunate
+souls who thought only of their own dignity and station in life? The
+Bishop. Who organized the Grand Concert and Readings in the saloon,
+writing the programmes himself, pinning them on the doors, discovering
+the clever and encouraging the timid and reading from the "Cricket on
+the Hearth," and the "Wreck of the Grosvenor," as I had never imagined
+a divine could read? The Bishop again. Who might be seen in the mid-day
+hours when the cabin passengers were asleep, quietly and without
+ostentation reading or talking to the steerage, ay, and Mrs.
+Saskabosquia too with her baby on her arm, going about amongst those
+poor tired folk, many of them with their own babies, not too well
+fed and not too well washed nor clothed? Still the Bishop, always the
+Bishop. They appeared as if they could not rest without helping on
+somebody or something, and yet there was in Mrs. Saskabasquia at least,
+a delightful sense of calm which affected all who came near her. I used
+often to sit down by her, she with the inevitable baby on her lap and
+two or three of the others at her feet on rugs, and she would talk most
+frankly and unaffectedly of their strange life in Canada. I learnt that
+she was the daughter of a clergyman in Essex, and had, of course,
+been brought up in a refined and charming country home like an English
+gentlewoman. What she had had to do in the new world seemed like a
+dream.
+
+"What servants do I keep?" she said one day in answer to a question of
+mine "Why, sometimes I am without any. Then Kathleen and I do the best
+we can and the children they do the same and my husband takes what we
+give him! Indeed, my house is a sort of dispensary you know. The most
+extraordinary people come to me for the most extraordinary things.
+Now for a bottle of medicine, now for some cast off clothing, now for
+writing paper and old newspapers or a few tacks. So we have many wants
+to relieve besides our own and really, that is good for us you know. One
+Xmas dinner was an amusing one. Roast beef was out of the question, we
+couldn't get any, and the old woman who usually brought us a turkey came
+eight miles in the snow to bitterly lament the failure of her turkey
+crop. The one she had intended for me had been killed and trussed and
+then the rats which abound out there, got at it in the night and left
+not a bone of it! So I got the poor old thing a warm cup of tea and
+gave her some thick socks and sent her away relieved, resolved to spread
+myself on the pudding. Do you remember Kathleen!"
+
+And Miss Saskabasquia did and smiled at the remembrance.
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"The pudding? Oh! It was the funniest pudding! George--no--Ethel, was
+the baby then and very troublesome. Yes, you were my dear and cutting
+teeth. I was far from strong and in the act of stirring the pudding was
+taken quite ill and had to give it up. Kathleen was naturally forced to
+attend to me and the three children, and only for Henry, we should have
+had no Xmas dinner at all! He went to work with a will, stirred it well,
+put it into the cloth and was just I believe dropping it into the water
+when the string broke and the poor pudding tumbled into the water! Of
+course it was useless, and my husband scarcely knew what to do with
+himself. Fancy what he did do, though! He went to work and made another
+out of what he could find without telling us. He'll tell you about it if
+you ask him, how puzzled he was at first. There was some suet over,
+only not minced, you know. So he took that just as it was in a lump and
+buried it in bread-crumbs, luckily we had plenty of bread. Then he broke
+in the eggs, but when he came to look for the fruit, that was all in
+the pot of hot water, not a raisin left. He just ladled them out and put
+them in the second time. I think that was delicious of him don't you?
+But he forgot the flour and there was so little sugar seemingly in the
+bag (he didn't know where my Xmas stores were kept) that he took fright
+and wouldn't use it but broke up some maple sugar instead, then tied
+it up and got it safely launched the second time. And it was not at all
+bad, though _very_ shapeless and unlike a trim plum pudding, with the
+holly at the top."
+
+And many another tale did she tell me of "Henry's" ceaseless activity,
+and courage and patience. He had learnt three Indian dialects, the
+_patois_ of the _habitant_, and the Gaelic of two Scotch settlements,
+in order to converse freely with his people and understand their wants
+properly. He could doctor the body as well as the soul, set a fractured
+limb, bind a wound, apply ice for sunstroke and snow for chilblains. He
+could harness a horse and milk a cow; paddle a canoe and shoot and fish
+like an Indian, cook and garden and hew and build--indeed there seemed
+nothing he could not do and had not done, and all this along with the
+care of his office, as much a missionary one as any could be. Peril of
+shipwreck and peril of fire, peril of frost and peril of heat, peril
+of sickness, pain and death, peril of men, ignorant and wicked, of wild
+beasts and wilder storms--all these he had braved with his wife and
+little ones for the sake of his convictions added to a genuine love of
+his fellow-man. I began to consider, and rightly I think, the unknown,
+obscure Bishop of Saskabasquia one of the most interesting men of the
+day.
+
+Our journey, however, could not always last. Our pleasant chats, our
+lively table-talk, Mrs. Saskabasquia's pretty womanly confidences and
+her husband's deep-voiced readings from Dickens which he told me were
+of the utmost moral value to his people, all came to an end. We all felt
+sorry to part, yet greatly relieved at seeing the mighty cliff of Quebec
+draw nearer and nearer with each succeeding hour. I had been quite ill
+for the last two days like nearly all the other passengers. Coming
+up the Gulf of St. Lawrence that is sometimes the case, and we were
+a miserable party that Friday, hardly anyone on deck except the
+irrepressible Bishop and his family and myself. I was wretched, sick and
+cold and trembling in every limb, undoubted _mal de mer_ had fastened
+upon me. We were standing close by the railing of the promenade deck
+when a something swept by on the water. "Child overboard!" I sang out
+as loudly as I could. Instantly the steerage was in a state of
+commotion--the child was missed. There didn't appear to be a sailor
+on the spot. The Bishop looked at me, and I looked at the Bishop. Like
+lightning he tore off his coat. I put my hand on his arm.
+
+"Dear sir, you will not do such a thing!"
+
+"What is it, Henry?" cried his wife. "Somebody must."
+
+"I wish to God I could, sir!" In another moment he was over.
+
+How he ever recovered from that awful plunge I don't know, but a
+boat was immediately lowered for him and the child--he had it safe,
+miraculously enough. How I cursed my weakness which prevented my going
+in his place. But when I saw the two lives saved I was glad I had not
+gone, for in my weak state I could not even have saved the child.
+
+I am invited to a Christmas dinner, _whenever I like_, with the Bishop
+of Saskabasquia, whom I count as perhaps the finest specimen of healthy
+Christian manhood I have ever met, and although I can still laugh at
+the fun of "The Private Secretary" I can say that even among her
+clergy England can boast of heroes in these latter days as noble and
+disinterested as in years gone by.
+
+
+
+
+
+"As it was in the Beginning."
+
+A CHRISTMAS SKETCH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+It is Christmas day in the morning. There is no doubt about it. The
+shine of the sun, the frost on the trees, the voice of the birds, and
+the unusual crow, and cackle and clatter and confusion outside the house
+can leave no doubts upon the subject, to say nothing of the inside of
+the house. Here it is Christmas day and no mistake. On what other day
+is the larder so full?--Full is not expressive enough; crammed, rammed,
+jammed full is more like the actual condition of things, so tightly
+wedged are pheasants and partridges, grouse and quail, great roasts of
+beef and haunches of venison, pork and pasty, mutton and fowl. On what
+other day is the still-room so alluring, where cordials are at their
+liveliest of brown and amber, and the white fingers of the lady of
+the house gleam in and out of the piling of herbs and the stirring
+of compounds--both innocent and inebriating? On what other day is the
+kitchen so important? Why, the cook is actually thinner than she was the
+yesterday! Christmas day in the morning is taking it out of her. "No
+men cooks about me", growls Sir Humphrey Desart, "we'll keep Sarah."
+So Sarah is kept, and though she be fat, aye, and getting on to three
+score, yet her strength faileth not, as you may observe. Somewhat of a
+martinet, yet kindly withal and leading the hubbub in the kitchen with
+all the gusto of twenty years ago. My lady will descend presently to see
+if all goes on properly, and Sarah must lose no time. Heavens, how
+many eggs is she going to break? What are they all for? Will not the
+resources of the farmyard fail her? This, then, explains all the crow
+and cackle outside. Now what is she at? Lemons this time, and anon
+giving a fine stimulus with her master-hand to the lumpy yellow contents
+of a smooth yellow bowl. Ah! No lumps now; one turn and all resolved
+into a perfect cadence. Anyone is an artist and a great one who can so
+resolve a discordant measure. And now she is busy with the brandy!
+Ah! Sarah, will no temptation accrue from the pouring of the warming
+draught? "Out upon thee!" says Sarah. "Am I not already as warm over my
+work as I want to be, and shall I not have my good glass of beer at my
+dinner? Leave the quality upstairs their brandy," says Sarah, "and let
+me get to my work."
+
+Well, and the upshot of all this is, that, despite all one may affirm to
+the contrary, the one grand essential, the peculiar and individualizing
+attribute of Christmas is--the dinner. The parson may think of his
+preaching (and if he ever does so, surely most of all on this day) and
+the virtuous may think of the poor; the old may remember the young, and
+the young be pardoned for only remembering each other, but the chief
+thought, the most blissful remembrance is still--The Dinner.
+
+If the parson preach a little better sermon than usual, it is because
+his nine children have not been forgotten by Lady Bountiful, and are
+actually going to have--A Dinner.
+
+My Lady Bountiful in her turn may go to church, and appear devoutly
+removed from the _mundus edibilis_, yet if you could look into her
+reflections, you would perceive that she has but one thought--The
+Dinner. Do you suppose, much as the youths from Oxford and their friend
+the captain, from London, are devoted to mamma and her daughters, they
+are not at the same time being eaten up, as it were, devoured, by the
+intense wish for the hour to come when they may partake of--That Dinner!
+
+Sir Humphrey has asked a particularly large party down this Christmas,
+and seems to have forgotten nobody he ever knew. Not a poor relation but
+has been remembered, and things are on a grander scale than usual. The
+candles build famously, set in the chimney candelabra; the logs are
+all of the biggest, and as for the Yule himself, he is a veritable
+Brobdignag; the staircases drop flowers, and holly and mistletoe hang
+all about. Everything shines, and gleams, and glows. There is to be
+a boar's head, with, no lack of mustard and minstrelsy, and nothing
+eatable or drinkable that pertains to Christmas will be wanting. Carols,
+and waits, and contended tenants; merry chimes and clinking glasses;
+twanging fiddles and the rush down the middle--nothing is spared and
+nobody is forgotten. So the hour draws on, the guests pull through the
+dreary day (for as I have said before, everything on Christmas day gives
+place to the dinner), and at last the dinner becomes an absolute fact,
+something to be apprehended, sat down to, and finally eaten. It _is_
+eaten, and everyone has come into the long hall, at one end of which the
+Yule burns. There is merry talk, and it is easier now for the captain
+to devote himself to the girls, having left the dinner behind; there is
+talk, too, of a little wonder at the gorgeousness of the dinner, for Sir
+Humphrey has not been so gay for years, yes, just twenty years, when it
+is evident that Sir Humphrey is going to make a speech. He stands alone
+in front of the fire, and this is what he says. If you want to know
+what he looks like, you may think of an old man who is a gentleman,
+white-haired, noble and resolute, but with a sense of broken fortunes
+and deferred hopes upon him.
+
+"I have been young and now am old," says Sir Humphrey, "and I have never
+yet seen the house, known the family, or penetrated the life where
+there did not exist some trouble or some secret. Therefore, if I refer
+to-night to the skeleton in my own house," he continues, with a slight
+shudder, "I only do what perhaps each individual before me might also
+do were there the like necessity. The necessity of such reference, in my
+own case, does not make it less hard for me." Here, Sir Humphrey pauses.
+When he speaks again he is something straighter and firmer than before.
+"But as at this season the Church and our good friend the parson would
+teach us all to remember each other and to help those we can help, I am
+about to speak. You have heard, all of you, how twenty years ago I sent
+my two eldest sons out of the house. You have heard, all of you, that
+they were foolish, and that I was hard, something about a girl and cut
+off with a shilling, I suppose. Well, to-night you shall hear the true
+story. I do not think even Lady Desart knows it. She was not their
+mother, but, as you know, my adored and adoring second wife. I do not
+know if many of you remember my boys. I can see Humphrey now--a man does
+not easily forget his first-born, and Hugh was no less dear. My dear
+friends, if I drove the lads from my house twenty years ago to-night, I
+did it in obedience to the rules of my own conscience and with regard to
+the laws of nature, which I should have put before my conscience, as
+I have far greater respect for them. I did it, as we so often futilely
+say, for the best. But how often, oh, my dear friends, how often since I
+have thought that I may have made a terrible mistake."
+
+"They were, Hugh and Humphrey, both madly in love with the same girl.
+She was no pauper, as you may have been led to believe, but the Lady
+Barbara Hastings. Her name is familiar to you. She was beautiful and
+talented, never married, and you may remember that about a month ago
+she died at the house of friends in London. I knew her, fortunately or
+unfortunately, however, moving in society as the adopted daughter of a
+refined gentlewoman, to be the child of a lunatic mother and a father
+who drank his life away in a Continental retreat. Knowing this I would
+not for a moment consent even to the thought of either of my sons
+marrying her, although I knew her to be all that was gracious in
+womankind. I could not tell them the reason: the secret was hers, poor
+girl, and I did not betray it. I said 'No,' and each knew what that
+meant. So we separated, but the worst of it was, my friends, that each
+lad thought I had refused my consent to save the other the pain of
+seeing his brother happy; so that greater than their anger with me was
+their jealousy of one another. With murder in their hearts they fled
+to America, I believe, pursuing in self-torture that phantom of revenge
+which we have all seen sometime or another, and whose hot breath we must
+have felt."
+
+Sir Humphrey pauses oftener now.
+
+"I tell you all this because I want you to see how possible it may be
+for a man to think he is doing the very best, the only right thing, and
+then for perhaps an infinitely worse one to crop up. I read not long ago
+in a wild Western paper a story of two Englishmen who fought a lonely
+duel on some slope of those great mountains out there, and I think I
+have not slept since I read it. To have exiled my boys only that they
+might kill one another in foreign lands and sleep so far away from our
+English ground!"
+
+Sir Humphrey's voice is failing now and his eyes grow moist A man, you
+see, does not easily forget his first-born.
+
+"I tell you all this," he continues, "that it may help you to be kind
+and to think twice. I only thought once, and perhaps the worst may have
+come of it. Then I tell it to you, too, because I am an old man now, and
+my voice is not as strong as it was, and I can't get out to church as
+regularly as I used to do, and I want you all to help me to remember
+these absent ones and with them any of your own. There is virtue in the
+holding up of many hands and the lifting up of many hearts. Whether I
+see them again or not, that does not matter; but for the assurance that
+they have not harmed each other, let us pray Almighty God this night."
+
+Ah! Sir Humphrey, there are those who would give their life for yours,
+but they cannot bring you that assurance to-night. Can you wait?
+
+"I can wait," says Sir Humphrey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It is Christmas day in the morning. At least, so Almanack says, and
+Almanack ought to know, though he is given in those days to such ornate
+and emblazoned titivation of himself outwardly, putting himself in
+the hands of fair Mistress Kate Greenaway at the head of a mischievous
+throng, that he causes one to seriously consider whether his old head
+be turned or no. A scholar and statistician buried in heaps of flowers,
+with a rope of daisies round his neck, and a belt of primroses round
+his waist; a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a singing bird upon his
+shoulder; and, worst of all, the picture of a pink-frocked, pink-faced
+girl next his heart--can he be relied upon? But he persists in his
+claim to be listened to, and we must take his word for it that this is
+Christmas day in the morning, although it just looks like any other day.
+On any other day the sun is just as bright, and the air just as keen. On
+other days the snow is just as white, just as deep--two feet where the
+constant tramping has levelled its crystalline beauty, ten, twelve,
+fifteen there where a great soft cloud of drift reaches halfway up the
+side of a small wooden house. On other days there is just as much blue
+in the sky, in the smoke, in the shadows of the pines, and the shadows
+of the icicles. On other days the house looks just as neat, just as
+silent, just as poor. The clearing is small, the house is small, a
+small terrier suns himself on a pile of wood, and the only large object
+apparently in existence is the tall, broad-shouldered, well-proportioned
+man who presently emerges from the wooden house. His ear has just caught
+the sound of a bell. It is not a bad bell for Muskoka, and it has a
+most curious effect on this white, cold silent world of snow and blue
+shadows. The owner of the house, who is also the builder of it, stands
+a few moments listening. There is only the twitter of the snowbirds to
+listen to, then the bell; more snowbirds, and then the bell again.
+
+"It has quite a churchy sound," he remarks; "I never noticed how churchy
+before, but it reminds me of some other bell. Ten years I have read
+for them here, and I never noticed it before." More twitter from the
+snowbirds and the bell again. Time for church, although the functions
+of the lay-reader will be this day laid aside, giving place to the more
+exacting ones of the _rector chori_. This being Christmas day in the
+morning, it devolves upon one clergyman to preach in four different
+places, if not literally at once, at least on the same day.
+
+"It isn't possible," thinks the tall man swinging along at a tremendous
+pace, "that this bell--there it is again, confound it; yet no, not
+confound it--can resemble that other bell I used to know. No, quite
+impossible. Is it likely that anything here," and the thinker spreads
+both long arms out to take in the entire landscape, "can resemble or
+remotely suggest the Old Country, or, as people call it, home? Home?
+Why this is home. That four-roomed and convenient, if not commodious,
+mansion I have just quitted is my home. Talking of commodiousness, it's
+quite large enough, too. I have no wife, no children, no partner, not
+even a sleeping one, no one ever comes to see me. So I do not need a
+drawing-room, a nursery, a guest chamber, or a smoking-room. I have no
+books, therefore I need no library; I indulge in no chemical pursuits,
+therefore I need no laboratory; my music-room is the forest in summer
+and the chimney in winter, while my studio, according to the latest
+aesthetic fad--I think that is the word--opens off the music-room.
+
+"Now, if you take away art, science, literature, and society from
+the daily life of a man, what do you leave? Simply the three radical
+necessities of sleeping, eating, working. My work I do mostly in the
+open air, so that, practically, I need but two rooms, one to cook in and
+the other to sleep in. I have always felt convinced that to be happy I
+only require two rooms, except on extra cold nights, when I find that
+one suffices. That is when Tim and I lie near the kitchen fire to keep
+warm. Home! Why of course it is home. Didn't I build the house myself?
+What association is dearer than that? To come into a pile of half-ruined
+towers, all gables and gargoyles, built somewhere about the fourteenth
+century, and added to by every fool who liked, without the slightest
+pretence to knowledge of architecture and civilization may be very
+gratifying, but, strange as it may seem, I prefer the work of my
+own hands. I am quite a Canadian, of course, though I once was an
+Englishman. I array myself in strange raiment, thick and woollen, of
+many colours; my linen is coarse and sometimes superseded by flannel;
+I wear a cast-off fur cap on my head and moccasins on my feet. I have
+grown a beard and a fierce moustache. I have made no money and won no
+friends except the simple settlers around me here. And I shall grow old
+and grey in your service, my Muskoka. I shall be forty-one on my next
+birthday. Then will come fifty-one, another ten years and sixty-one.
+All to be lived here? Yes, I have sworn it. Not Arcady, not Utopia,
+only Muskoka, but very dear to me. There is the forest primeval! I
+know everything in it from the Indian pipe--clammy white thing, but how
+pretty!--to that great birch there with the bark peeling off in pieces a
+yard wide. There is the lovely Shadow river. Masses of cardinal flowers
+grow there in the summer, and when I take my boat up its dark waters I
+feel that no human being has felt its beauty so before. I think, for a
+small river it is the loveliest in the world. And as to my larder now,
+why I am going to make my Christmas dinner off a piece or pork and ask
+for nothing better! I shall have a glorious appetite, which is the main
+point. The bell again!"
+
+Yes, and the snow birds, too, flying round the porch of the little
+church. It is a very small and plain edifice and not over warm, and
+the officiating clergyman, who has just driven eighteen miles with
+the prospect of eighteen back after service, hurries the proceedings
+somewhat. There is a harmonium played by the tall man, and there is
+a choir consisting of himself and a small boy. In place of the usual
+Anglican hymns two carols are sung by the choir, which have the
+quaintest effect in such a place, and which appear to interest and even
+excite one of the congregation. This is a man of middle age, most richly
+dressed with a certain foreign air about him and evidently in a very
+delicate state of health. He is accompanied by a lady whose dress is
+also a marvel of beauty and costliness though hardly of fitness. The
+broad bands of gold which adorn her wrists and neck would alone procure
+for her the entire attention of the congregation were she seated in
+a more conspicuous place. As it is they are seated near the stove for
+increased comfort. "Good King Wenceslas" sings the choir, the small boy
+finding the long word very trying, and coming utterly to grief in the
+last two verses, for his companion appears to have lost his place.
+With the last verse of the carol comes the close of the service, the
+straggling congregation disperse and the jolly clergyman drives off
+again. Then an important thing happens, and happens very quietly.
+So quietly that the richly dressed lady who is a bright, shallow and
+unsentimental Californian does not mind it at all. "Humphrey!" says the
+tall man, "Hugh!" says the other, and all is said. There is not much
+sentiment in the meeting, how can there be? Their ways have gone too far
+apart. The years--nearly twenty, since they parted in Los Angeles--have
+brought gold and kith and kin to the one, with an enfeebled constitution
+and an uncertain temper. To the other, they have brought the glory of
+health for his manhood's crown, content and peace unutterable. To
+learn to subdue the ground is to learn one great lesson. So the strange
+meeting is soon over. The Christmas spell may not always last and the
+brothers separate once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+
+The bright little lady who is taking her husband for a winter's Canadian
+tour gets restive in this silent snowy world. But before they part a
+letter is written to a white-haired old gentleman' in England, who has
+only a month to wait.
+
+"Whether I see them again or not does not matter," says Sir Humphrey,
+"but for the assurance that they have not harmed each other, I thank
+Almighty God this night!"
+
+
+
+
+
+THE IDYL OF THE ISLAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here lies mid-way between parallels 48 and 49 of latitude, and degrees
+89 and 90 of longitude, in the northern hemisphere of the New
+World, serenely anchored on an ever-rippling and excited surface, an
+exquisitely lovely island. No tropical wonder of palm-treed stateliness,
+or hot tangle of gaudy bird and glowing creeper, can compare with it;
+no other northern isle, cool and green and refreshing to the eye
+like itself, can surpass it. It is not a large island. It is about
+half-a-mile long and quarter of a mile broad It is an irregular oval in
+shape, and has two distinct and different sides. On the west side its
+grey limestone rises to the height of twenty feet straight out of
+the water. On the east side there occurs a gradual shelving of a
+sumac-fringed shore, that mingles finally with the ever-rippling water.
+For the waters in this northern country are never still. They are
+perpetually bubbling up and boiling over; seething and fuming and
+frothing and foaming and yet remaining so cool and clear that a quick
+fancy would discover thousands of banished fountains under that agitated
+and impatient surface. Both ends of the island are as much alike as its
+sides are dissimilar. They taper off almost to a distinct bladepoint of
+rock, in which a mere doll's flagstaff of a pine-tree grows; then
+comes a small detached rock, with a small evergreen on it, then a still
+smaller rock, with a tuft of grass, then a line of partially submerged
+stones, and so out to the deep yet ever-bubbling water. This island
+might seem, just the size for two, and there were two on it on a certain
+July morning at five o'clock. One of these was a lady who lay at full
+length and fast asleep upon a most unique couch. These northern islands
+are in many places completely covered with a variety of yellowish-green
+moss, varying from a couple of inches to a foot and a half in thickness;
+and yielding to the pressure of the foot or the body as comfortably as a
+feather bed, if not more so, being elastic in nature. A large square of
+this had been cut up from some other part of the island and placed on
+the already moss-grown and cushioned ground, serving as a mattress,
+while two smaller pieces served as pillows. A sumac tree at the head
+of the improvised couch gave the necessary shade to the face of the
+sleeper, while a wild grapevine, after having run over and encircled
+with its moist green every stone and stem on the island, fulfilled its
+longing at length in a tumultuous possession of the sumac, making a
+massive yet aerial patched green curtain or canopy to the fantastic bed,
+and ending seemingly in two tiny transparent spirals curling up to the
+sky.
+
+If there were a fault in the structure it was that it was too clever,
+too well thought out, too rectangular, too much in fact like a bed. But
+it told certainly of a skillful pair of hands and of a beautiful
+mind and the union of art with nature perfectly suited the
+charms--contradictory yet consistent--of the occupant. For being
+anything but a beautiful woman she was still far from a plain one, which
+though no original mode of putting it does convey the actual impression
+she made upon a gentleman in a small boat who rowing past this island
+at the hour of five o'clock in the morning was so much struck with this
+curious sight, quite visible from the water below, that he was rude
+enough to stand up that he might see better. The lady was dressed in
+some dark blue stuff that evidently covered her all over and fitted
+tightly where it could be seen. A small linen collar, worn all night and
+therefore shorn of its usual freshness was round her neck, and she was
+tucked up from the waist under a Scotch woollen rug. Her hair, of a
+peculiar red-brown, was allowed to hang about her and was lovely; her
+mouth sad; her nose, rather too prominent; her complexion natural
+and healthy, but marred by freckles and moles, not many of either but
+undeniably scattered over the countenance. All told but her eyes which,
+if they proved to match with her hair, would atone for these other
+shortcomings. The gentleman sat down again and reflected.
+
+"How still it is!" he said under his breath. "Absolutely not a thing
+stirring. This is the time when the fish bite. I ought to be fishing I
+suppose. Going to be warm by-and-bye."
+
+It was indeed almost absolutely silent. The sun climbed higher but the
+lady slept on, and the gentleman gazed as if fascinated. The only sound
+that broke the beautiful early morning silence was the occasional weird
+laugh of the loon. It came twice and then a third time. The sleeper
+stirred.
+
+"If that thing out there cries again she will wake," said the gentleman
+to himself. "I must be off before that happens. But I _should_ like to
+see her eyes. What a pretty picture it is!" Once more the loon gave its
+maniacal laugh and the lady started, sat bolt upright and wide awake.
+Her admirer had not time to retreat but he took his oars up and
+confronted her manfully. It was an awkward moment. He apologized. The
+lady listened very politely. Then she smiled.
+
+"Most of the islands in this lake are owned by private people," she
+said, "who use them during the summer months for the purpose of camping
+out upon them. I should advise you, if you row about much here, to
+keep to the open water, unless you wish to be seriously handled by the
+fathers and mothers of families."
+
+"Thank you very much," returned the gentleman, standing up in his boat,
+"I assure you I intended no rudeness, but I have never seen so charming
+a summer couch before, and I was really fascinated by the--ah,--the
+picture you made. May I ask what you mean by 'camping out'? Is it always
+done in this fashion?"
+
+The lady stared "Have _you_ never camped out?"
+
+"Never in my life," said the gentleman. "I am an Englishman, staying at
+the hotel near the point for a day or two. I came out to see something
+of the country."
+
+"Then you should at least have camped out for a week or so. That is
+a genuine Canadian experience," said the lady with a frankness which
+completely restored the equanimity of the Englishman.
+
+"But how do you live?" he went on in a puzzled manner that caused
+the lady with the red-brown hair, still all hanging about her, much
+amusement.
+
+"O, capitally! Upon fish and eggs, and gooseberry tarts, and home-made
+bread and French coffee. Just what you would get in town, and much
+better than you get at the hotel."
+
+"O, that would be easy!" the gentleman groaned. "I eat my meals in a
+pitch-dark room, in deadly fear and horror of the regiments of flies
+that swarm in and settle on everything the minute one raises the green
+paper blinds."
+
+The lady nodded. "I know. We tried it for two or three seasons, but we
+could not endure it; the whole thing, whitewash and all, is so trying,
+isn't it? So we bought this lovely island and bring our tent here and
+live _so_ comfortably." The gentleman did not reply at once. He was
+thinking that it was his place to say "Good morning," and go, although
+he would much have liked to remain a little longer. He hazarded the
+remark:
+
+"Now, for instance, what are you going to breakfast on presently?"
+
+The lady laughed lightly and shook her red brown hair.
+
+"First of all I have to make a fire."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"But that is not so very difficult"
+
+"How do you do it?"
+
+"Would you like to know?"
+
+"Very much indeed. I should like to see, if I may."
+
+The lady reflected a moment. "I suppose you may, but if you do, you
+ought to help me, don't you think?" The gentleman much amused and
+greatly interested.
+
+"Ah but you see, it is you I want to see make it. I am very useless you
+know at that sort of thing, still, if you will allow me, I will try my
+best. Am I to come ashore?"
+
+"Certainly, if you are to be of any use."
+
+The lady jumped lightly off the pretty couch of moss and wound her
+plentiful hair round her head with one turn of her arm. Her dress was
+creased but well-fitting, her figure not plump enough for beauty but
+decidedly youthful. She watched her new friend moor his boat and ascend
+with one or two strides of his long legs up the side of the cliff that
+was not so steep. He took off his hat.
+
+"I am at your service," he said with a profound bow. The lady made him
+another, during which all her long hair fell about her again, at which
+they both laughed.
+
+"What do we do first?" said he.
+
+"O we find a lot of sticks and pieces of bark, mostly birch bark, and
+anything else that will burn--you may have to fell a tree while you are
+about it--and I'll show you how to place them properly between two walls
+of stones, put a match to them and there is our fire. Will you come with
+me?"
+
+He assented of course, and they were soon busy in the interior of
+the little wood that grew up towards the centre of the island. I must
+digress here to say that the gentleman's name was Amherst. He was known
+to the world in latter life as Admiral Amherst, and he was a great
+friend of mine. When he related this story to me, he was very particular
+in describing the island as I have done--indeed he carried a little
+chart about with him of it which he had made from memory, and he told
+me besides that he never forgot the peculiar beauty of that same little
+tract of wood. The early hour, the delicious morning air, the great
+moss-grown and brown decaying tree trunks, the white, clammy, ghostly,
+flower or fungus of the Indian Pipe at his feet, the masses of ferns,
+the elastic ground he trod upon, and the singular circumstance that he
+was alone in this exquisite spot with a woman he had never seen until
+five minutes previously, all combined to make an ineffaceable impression
+upon his mind. The lady showed herself proficient in the art of building
+a fire and attended by Amherst soon had a fine flame rising up from
+between the fortifications evidently piled by stronger hands than her
+own.
+
+"What do we do now?" asked Amherst "I should suggest--a kettle."
+
+"Of course, that is the next step. If I give it to you, you might run
+and fill it, eh?'
+
+"Delighted!" and away went Amherst. When he returned the lady was not to
+be seen. The place was shorn of its beauty, but he waited discreetly and
+patiently, putting the kettle on to boil in the meanwhile.
+
+"It's very singular," said he, "how I come to be here. I wonder who
+are with her in her party; no one else appears to be up or about. That
+striped red and white thing is the tent, I see, over there. Ah! That's
+where she has gone, and now she beckons me! Oh! I'll go, but I don't
+want to meet the rest of them!"
+
+But when he reached the tent, it was quite empty, save for rugs and
+wraps, boxes, etc., and the lady was laughingly holding out a loaf of
+bread in one hand and a paper package in the other.
+
+"You will stay and breakfast with me?"
+
+"What will you give me?" said Amherst, smiling.
+
+"I can only give you eggs, boiled in the kettle, coffee and bread and
+butter. The fish haven't come in yet."
+
+"What can be nicer than eggs--especially when boiled in the kettle, that
+is, if you make the coffee first."
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"And it is really French coffee?"
+
+"Really. Café des Gourmets, you know; we--I always use it--do not like
+any other."
+
+Amherst was fast falling in love. He told me that at this point his
+mind was quite made up that if it were possible he would remain in the
+neighborhood a few days at least, in order to see more of this charming
+girl. She seemed to him to be about twenty-six or seven, and so frank,
+simple and graceful, one could not have resisted liking her. Her
+hair and eyes were identical in colour and both were beautiful; her
+expression was arch and some of her gestures almost childish, but a
+certain dignity appeared at times and sat well upon her. Her hands were
+destitute of any rings as Amherst soon discovered, and were fine and
+small though brown. While she made the coffee, Amherst threw himself
+down on the wonderful moss, the like of which he had never seen before
+and looked out over the water. An unmistakeable constraint had taken the
+place of the unaffected hilarity of the first ten minutes. A reaction
+had set in. Amherst could of course only answer to me in telling this
+for himself, but he divined at the time a change in his companion's
+manner as well.
+
+"I hope you like your eggs," she said presently.
+
+"They are very nice, indeed, thank you," rejoined Amherst.
+
+"And I have made your coffee as you like it?"
+
+"Perfectly, thank you. But you--you are not eating anything! Why is
+that?"
+
+As he asked the question he turned quickly around, in order to rise that
+he might help her with the ponderous kettle that she was about lifting
+off the camp-fire, when a long strand of her hair again escaping from
+its coil blew directly across his face. Amherst uttered a radiant "Oh!",
+and taking it to his lips forgot himself so far as to press kiss after
+kiss upon it. The lady stood as if transfixed and did not move, even
+when Amherst actually swept all her hair down over one arm and turning
+her face to his, pressed one long long kiss on her forehead.
+
+The moment he had done this his senses returned and he stepped back
+in indignation with himself. But his companion was still apparently
+transfixed. Amherst looked at her in dismay. She did not seem to see him
+and had grown very pale. He touched her gently on the arm but she did
+not show that she felt the touch. He retreated a few paces and stood
+by himself, overcome with shame and contrition. What had he done? How
+should he ever atone for such an unwarrantable action? Had it been the
+outcome of any ordinary flirtation, he would have felt no such scruples,
+but the encounter, though short, had been one of singular idyllic charm
+until he had by his own rash act spoilt it. A few minutes passed thus in
+self contemplation appeared like an eternity. He must speak.
+
+"If you would allow me--"
+
+But the lady put out her left hand in deprecation as it were and he
+got no further. The silence was unendurable. Amherst took a step or two
+forward and perceived great tears rolling down her cheeks.
+
+"Oh!" he began desperately, "won't you allow me to say a word to tell
+you how very, very sorry I am, how grieved I am and always shall be?
+I never--I give you my word of honor--I never do those sort of things,
+have never done such a thing before! But I can't tell what it was, the
+place is so beautiful, and when all that lovely hair came sweeping past
+my face, I could not help doing as I did, it was so electrical! Any man
+would have done the same. I know that sounds like a miserable, cowardly
+excuse, but it is true, perfectly true." The lady seemed to struggle to
+appear calm and with a great effort she turned her face towards Amherst.
+
+"I know one man," she said, in a voice choked with sobs, "who would not
+have done it?"
+
+Amherst started. "I am sorrier than ever, believe me. I might have known
+you were engaged, or had a lover--one so Charming"--
+
+"It is not that," said the lady. "I am married." She was still
+struggling with her emotion.
+
+Amherst recoiled. He was torn with conflicting thoughts. What if he had
+been seen giving that involuntary salute? He might have ruined her peace
+for ever. Who would believe in the truth of any possible explanation?
+
+"I will leave you at once;" he said stiffly, "there is nothing more to
+be said."
+
+"Oh! You will reproach me now!" said his companion, wiping her eyes as
+the tears came afresh.
+
+"I will try not to;" said Amherst, "but you could so easily have told
+me; I do not think it was--quite--fair." Yet he could not be altogether
+angry with the partner of his thoughtlessness, nor could he be entirely
+cold. Her beautiful eyes, her despairing attitude would haunt him he
+knew for many a day. She had ceased weeping and stood quietly awaiting
+his departure. Amherst felt all the force of a strong and novel passion
+sweep along his frame as he looked at her. Was she happy, was she a
+loved and loving wife? Somehow the conviction forced itself upon him
+that she was not. Yet he could not ask her, it must remain her secret.
+
+Amherst looked at his watch. It aroused her.
+
+"What is the time?" she said lifting her head for the first time since
+he had kissed her.
+
+"Ten minutes past six," Amherst replied.
+
+"You must go," she said, with an effort at self-control. "I shall have
+much to do presently."
+
+He cast one look about and approached her.
+
+"Will you forgive me"--he began in a tone of repression, then with
+another mighty and involuntary movement he caught her hands and pressed
+them to his breast. "My God," he exclaimed, "how I should have loved
+you!"
+
+A moment after he flung her hands away and strode down the cliff,
+unfastened his boat and rowed away in the direction of the hotel as
+fast as he could. Rounding a sharp rock that hid what lay beyond it, he
+nearly succeeded in overturning another boat like his own, in which sat
+a gentleman of middle age, stout and pleasant and mild of countenance.
+The bottom of the boat was full of fish. Amherst made an incoherent
+apology, to which the gentleman answered with a good-natured laugh,
+insisting that the fault was his own. He would have liked to enter into
+conversation with Amherst, but my friend was only anxious to escape from
+the place altogether and forget his recent adventure in the hurry of
+departure from the hotel. Three days after he embarked at Quebec for
+England, and never revisited Canada. But he never married and never
+forgot the woman whom he always asserted he might have truly and
+passionately loved. He was about twenty-eight when that happened and
+perfectly heart-whole. Why--I used to say to him, why did you not learn
+her name and that of her husband? Perhaps she is a widow now, perhaps
+you made as great an impression upon her mind and affections as she did
+upon yours.
+
+But my friend Admiral Amherst, as the world knew him, was a strange,
+irrational creature in many ways, and none of these ideas would he ever
+entertain. That the comfortable gentleman in the boat was her husband he
+never doubted; more it was impossible to divine. But the cool northern
+isle, with its dark fringe of pines; its wonderful moss, its
+fragrant and dewy ferns, its graceful sumacs, just putting on their
+scarlet-lipped leaves, the morning stillness broken only by the
+faint unearthly cry of the melancholy loon, the spar-dyked cliffs of
+limestone, and the fantastic couch, with its too lovely occupant, never
+faded from his memory and remained to the last as realities which indeed
+they have become likewise to me, through the intensity with which they
+were described to me.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Story of Delle Josephine Boulanger
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Delle Josephine Boulanger, Miss Josephine Baker, Miss Josephine Baker,
+Delle Josephine Boulanger. What a difference it makes, the language!
+What a transformation! I thought this to myself as I stood on the
+opposite side of the street looking at the sign. To be sure, it, was
+only printed in French and sad little letters they were that composed
+the name, but my mind quickly translated them into the more prosaic
+English as I stood and gazed. Delle Josephine was a milliner and I had
+been recommended to try and get a little room "_sous les toits_" that
+she sometimes had to let, during my stay in the dismal Canadian village
+with the grand and inappropriate name of _Bonheur du Roi_. Bonneroi, or
+Bonneroy, it was usually called. Such a dismal place it seemed to be;
+one long street of whitewashed or dirty wooden houses, two raw red brick
+"stores," and the inevitable Roman Catholic Church, Convent and offices,
+still and orderly and gray, with the quiet priests walking about and
+the occasional sound of the unmistakeable convent bell. I arrived on a
+sleety winter's day early in December. Everything was gray, or colorless
+or white; the people's faces were pinched and pale, the sky was a leaden
+gray in hue, and I thought as I stood opposite to my future abode under
+Delle Josephine's roof that the only bit of "local color" so far was to
+be found in her window. I could distinctly see from where I stood the
+most extraordinary _hat_ I had ever seen. I immediately crossed the road
+to examine it. It was a triumph in lobster-color. In shape like a very
+large Gainsborough, it was made of shirred scarlet satin with large bows
+of satin ribbon of the same intense color and adorned with a bird of
+paradise. I can see it now and can recall the images it suggested to my
+mind at the time. These were of cardinals and kings, of sealing-wax and
+wafers, of tropic noons and tangled marshes, of hell and judgment and
+the conventional Zamiel. It looked fit to be worn by a Mrs. Zamiel, if
+there be such a person. I looked so long and earnestly that I evidently
+attracted the notice of the mistress of the shop, for I saw a hand push
+back the faded red curtain that veiled the interior and a queer little
+visage appeared regarding me with something I thought of distrust. Did
+I look as if I might break the glass and run off with the hat? Perhaps I
+did, so I entered the shop immediately and said in a reasoning tone,
+
+"I am looking for rooms in the village, Mademoiselle, and hear you have
+one to let. Can I see it now, if not too much trouble?"
+
+"You come from Morréall?"
+
+This I learnt was meant for Montreal.
+
+"Yes," I returned.
+
+"You are by yourself, Monsieur, you are sure? No ladees, eh?"
+
+"O dear! No" said I laughing. "I am making some studies--sketches--in
+this locality and am entirely alone. Do you find ladies a trouble?"
+
+"Oh, perhaps not always. But there was one Mees I had. I did not like
+her, and so I said--we will have no more Mees, but again and always
+Messieurs." She was frank enough but not unpleasant in her manner. A
+little bit of a woman, thin and shrivelled, with one shoulder slightly
+higher than the other, black beads for eyes, and the ugliest mouthful
+of teeth that I had ever seen on any one. Had it not been that her
+expression was honest and good natured and her manner bright and
+intelligent, I should have recoiled before the yellow tusks of
+eye-teeth, and the blackened stumps and shrunken gums revealed to me
+every time she spoke. She wore a print dress made neatly enough which
+was very clean, and a black crape ruff round her sallow neck. The shop
+was small but clean and at the back I saw, a kind of little sitting
+room. Into this I went while she ran up-stairs to prepare the room for
+my inspection. The carpet was the usual horribly ingenious affair of red
+squares inside green octagons, and green squares inside red octagons,
+varied by lengthwise stripes of bright purple. The walls were plain
+white, covered with many prints in vivid colors of the Crucifixion, the
+Annunciation and the Holy Family; also three pictures of three wonderful
+white kittens which adorn so many nurseries and kitchens. There were
+no ornaments, but there was a large looking glass framed in walnut, and
+over it a dismal wreath of roses and their leaves done in human
+gray hair. The glass was opposite the door and I saw Delle Josephine
+descending to meet me just as I was turning away from this suggestive
+"in memoriam." A crooked little stairway brought me to a small landing,
+and three more steps to my room. I may call it that, for I took it on
+the spot It was large enough for my wants and seemed clean and when
+the paper blinds, yellow, with a black landscape on them, were raised,
+rather cheerful. We were opposite the chief "_epicerie_," the only
+_"marchandise sèches_" and a blacksmith, whose jolly red fire I could
+sometimes catch a glimpse of.
+
+Now, this is a really a true story of French Canadian life, or rather
+let me say, a true story of one of my own French Canadian experiences,
+and so I must confess that once installed in my little room _chez_ Delle
+Josephine Boulanger, nothing whatever of any interest took place until
+I had been there quite a week. I lived most regularly and monotonously;
+rising at eight I partook of coffee made by my landlady, accompanied by
+tinned fruit for which I formed a great taste. Then I went out, getting
+my mid-day meal where I could, eggs and bacon at a farmhouse, or tough
+steak at the hotel, and sometimes not getting anything at all until I
+returned ravenously hungry to my lodging. On these occasions the little
+Frenchwoman showed herself equal to the extent of cooking a chicken or
+liver and bacon very creditably and then I would write and read in my
+own room till eleven. I must not forget to say that I never failed to
+look at the wonderful scarlet hat in the window every time I went out
+or came in. Purchasers for it would be rare I thought; I half formed the
+idea of buying it myself when I went away as a "Souvenir."
+
+One day I came home very tired. After walking about, vainly waiting for
+a terrific snowstorm to pass over that I might go on with my work--the
+frozen fall of Montmorenci, framed in the dark pines and somber rocks
+that made such a back ground for its glittering thread of ice, I gave
+it up, chilled in every limb, and began to consider whether I was not
+a fool for pains. Although I started quite early in the afternoon on
+my homeward walk, the snow, piled in great masses everywhere along the
+route, impeded my progress to such an extent that it was nearly seven
+o'clock and pitch-dark when I got into the village. Bonneroy was very
+quiet. Shutters were up to every shop, nobody was out except a dog or
+two and the snow kept falling, falling, still in as persistent a fashion
+as if it had not been doing the same thing for six hours already. I
+found the shop shut up and the door locked. I looked everywhere for a
+bell or knocker of some description. There was neither, so I began to
+thump as hard as I could with my feet against the door. In a minute or
+two I heard Delle Josephine coming. Perhaps I had alarmed the poor soul.
+She did look troubled on opening the door and admitted me hurriedly,
+even suspiciously, I thought. The door of the little sitting-room was
+closed, so fancying that perhaps she had a visitor I refrained from much
+talking and asking her to cook me some eggs presently and bring them up,
+I went to my room.
+
+These cold days I had to keep a fire in the small open "Franklin" stove
+going almost constantly. She had not forgotten to supply it with
+coals during my absence, and lighting my two lamps I was soon fairly
+comfortable. How it did snow! Lifting the blind I could actually look
+down on an ever-increasing drift below my window and dimly wonder if
+I should get out at all on the morrow. If not, I proposed to return to
+Montreal at once. I should gain nothing by being confined in the house
+at Bonneroy. Delle Josephine appeared with eggs and tea--green tea, alas
+for that village shortcoming--there was no black tea to be found in it,
+and I looked narrowly at her as she set it down, wondering if anything
+was amiss with her. But she seemed all right again and I conjectured
+that I had simply interrupted a _tête-a-tête_ with some visitor in the
+sitting-room at the time of my return. When I had finished my tea I sat
+back and watched my fire. Those little open "Franklin" stoves are almost
+equal to a fireplace; they show a great deal of fire and you can
+fancy your flame on an English hearth very easily--if you have any
+imagination. As I sat there, it suddenly came home to me what a curious
+life this was for me; living quite alone over a tiny village shop in _Le
+Bos Canada_, with a queer little spinster like Delle Josephine. Snowed
+up, with her too! To-morrow I would certainly have to go and shovel that
+snow away from the front door and take down the shutters and discover
+again to the world the contents of the one window, particularly that
+frightful hat! I would--here I started it must be confessed almost out
+of my seat, as turning my head suddenly I saw on a chair behind the door
+the identical hat I was thinking about! I sat up and looked at it. It
+must have been there all the time I was eating my tea. I still sat and
+looked. I felt vaguely uncomfortable for a moment, then my common sense
+asserted itself and told me that Delle Josephine must have been altering
+it or something of that kind and had forgotten to take it away. I
+wondered if she sat in my room when I was away. I had rather she did
+not. Just as I was about to rise and look at it more closely, a tap came
+at my door. I rose and admitted Delle Josephine. She took the tea-things
+away in her usual placid manner, but came back the next moment as if
+she had forgotten something, clearly the hat. With a slight deprecatory
+laugh she removed it and went hurriedly down the stair. Whatever had she
+been doing with it, I thought, and settled with a sigh of satisfaction
+once more to my work, now that the nightmare in red, a kind of mute
+scarlet "Raven," was gone from my room. How very quiet it was. Not a
+single sleigh passed, no sounds came from the houses opposite or from
+next door, the whole world seemed smothered in the soft thick pillows
+of snow quietly gathering upon it. After a while, however, I could
+distinctly hear the sound of voices downstairs. Delle Josephine had a
+visitor, undoubtedly. Was it a man or a woman? Not a large company I
+gathered; it seemed like one person besides herself. I opened my door,
+it sounded so comfortably in my lonely bachelor ear to catch in that
+strange little house anything so cheerful as the murmur of voices. My
+curiosity once aroused, did not stop here. I went outside the door, not
+exactly to listen, but as one does sometimes in a lazy yet inquisitive
+mood, when anything is going on at all unusual. This was an unusual
+occurrence. If Delle Josephine had visitors often, I was not aware of
+it. Never before had I noticed the slightest sound proceed from her
+sitting-room after dusk. So I waited a bit listening. Yes there was
+talking going on, but in French. As I did not understand her _patois_
+very clearly, I thought there would be no harm in overhearing, and
+further I thought I should like to have a peep at her and her companion.
+I could see that the door was partly open. Taking off my slippers, I
+ran softly down and found it wide enough open to admit of my seeing the
+entire room and occupants in the looking-glass, that being opposite.
+It was quite dark in the little hall and I should be unobserved. So I
+crept--most rudely I am willing to say--into the furthest shadow of this
+hall and looked straight before me.
+
+I saw none but Delle Josephine herself. But she was a sight for
+the gods. Seated on a kind of ottoman, directly in front of the
+looking-glass, she was holding an animated conversation with _herself_,
+wearing a large white antimacassar--one of those crocheted things all in
+wheels--pinned under her chin and falling away at the back like a cloak,
+and upon her head--the wonderful scarlet hat! I was amazed, startled,
+dismayed. To see that shrivelled little old woman so travestying her
+hideous charms, smiling at and bowing to herself, her yellow skin
+forming a frightful contrast to the intense red of her immense hat
+and her bright black eyes, was a pitiful and unique spectacle. I had
+intended but to take a peep at the supposed visitor and then go back to
+my room, but the present sight was one which fascinated me to such an
+extent that I could only look and wonder. She spoke softly to herself in
+French, appearing to be carrying on a conversation with her image in the
+glass. The feathers of the bird of paradise swept her shoulder--the one
+that was higher than the other--and mingled with the wheels of the white
+antimacassar. I looked as long as I dared and then, fearing from her
+movements that the strange scene would soon be over I went softly up
+again to my room. But I thought about it all evening, all night in fact.
+The natural inquiry was--was the poor girl a maniac? Even if only a
+harmless one, it would be well to know. As I sat down again by my fire
+I considered the matter in every light. It was a queer prospect. Outside
+the snow still fell. Inside, the fire languished and the time wore on
+till at half-past ten I really was compelled to call on my landlady for
+more coal. I could hear the muttered French still going on, but I did
+not know where the coal was and could not fetch it myself. I must break
+in upon her rhapsodizing.
+
+"Delle Boulanger!" I called from my open door. "Delle Boulanger!"
+
+The talking stopped. In a few moments Delle Josephine appeared, calm and
+smiling, _minus_ the hat and the antimacassar. "Coming, _monsieur_"
+
+"I shall want some more coal," said I, "It is getting colder, I think,
+every minute!"
+
+"_Mais oui, monsieur; il fait fret, il fait bien fret ce soir_, and
+de snow--oh! It is _comme_--de old winter years ago, dat I remember,
+_monsieur_, but not you. _Eh! bien_, the coal!"
+
+I discovered nothing morbid about her manner; she was amiable and
+respectful as usual, if a little more garrulous. The French will talk at
+all times about anything, but our conversation always came to a sudden
+stop the moment one of us relapsed into the mother tongue. As long as
+a sort of common maccaronic was kept to we managed to understand one
+another. After I made up my fire I sat up till long past twelve. I heard
+no more talking downstairs but I could fancy her still arrayed in those
+festive yet ghastly things, seated opposite her own reflection, intent
+as a mummy and not unlike one restored in modern costume. Pulling
+the blind aside before going to bed, I could see with awe the arching
+snowdrifts outside my window. If it went on snowing, I should not be
+able to open it on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+My prediction was verified in the morning. The snow had ceased falling,
+but lay piled up against the lower half of my window. On the level there
+appeared to be about three feet, while the drifts showed from six to
+twenty feet I had never seen anything like it, and was for sometime lost
+in admiration. Across the road the children of the _epider_ and the good
+man himself were already busy trying to shovel some of it away from the
+door. It seemed at first sight a hopeless task and I, looking down at
+Delle Josephine's door, wondered how on earth we were ever to get out of
+it when not a particle of it was to be seen. Not all that day did I get
+out of the house, and but for the absorbing interest I suddenly found
+centred in Delle Josephine I would have chafed terribly at being so shut
+up. Trains, were blockaded of course, it was the great fall of '81, and
+interrupted travel for half of a week. All that day I waited so to speak
+for the evening. Snow-boys there were many; customers none. The
+little Frenchwoman brought me some dinner at one o'clock, pork, tinned
+tomatoes, and a cup of coffee. About five o'clock I strolled down into
+the shop, it was lighted very meagrely with three oil lamps. Delle
+Josephine was seated on a high chair behind the one counter at work on
+some ribbon--white ribbon. She was quilling it, and looked up with some
+astonishment as I walked up to her.
+
+"Do you object to a visitor Miss Josephine?" said I with the most
+amiable manner I could muster. Poor soul! I should have thought she
+would have welcomed one.
+
+"_Mais non Monsieur_ but I speak so little English."
+
+"And I so little French. But we can manage to understand each other a
+little, I think. What do you say to the weather? When shall I be able to
+go out?"
+
+Delle Josephine laughed. She went on quilling the ribbon that looked so
+white against her yellow hands.
+
+"O _Monsieur_ could go out dis day if he like, but de snow ver bad, very
+thick."
+
+"Do you ever go out, Miss Josephine?"
+
+"_Non Monsieur_. I have not been out for what you call a valk--it will
+be five years that I have not been."
+
+"But you go to church, I suppose?"
+
+"_Mais oui Monsieur_, but that is so near. And the good _Père Le
+Jeune_--he come to see me. He is all the frien Delle Josephine has, ah!
+_oui Monsieur_."
+
+"Ah! Bonneroi isn't much of a place, is it? Have you ever been to Quebec
+or Montreal?"
+
+"Ah! _Quebec--oui_, I live there once, many years ago. I was taken when
+I was ver young by _Madame de la Corne de la Colombière pour une bonne;
+vous comprenez_?"
+
+"Oh! _bonne_, yes, we use that word too. It means a nursemaid, eh! Were
+there children in the family?"
+
+Delle Josephine dropped her ribbon and threw up her hands.
+
+"_Mon Dieu! les enfants! Mais oui, Monsieur_, they were nine children!
+There was _Maamselle Louise_ and _Maamselle Angelique_ with the tempaire
+of the _diable_ himself _oui Monsieur_, and François and Réné and
+_l'petite Catherine_, and the rest I forget _Monsieur_. And dey live in
+a fine _château_, with horse and carridge and everything as it would be
+if they were in their own France. _Monsieur_ has been in France?"
+
+Only in Paris, I told her; a spasmodic run across the Channel--Paris in
+eight hours. Two days there then return--
+
+"That does not give one much idea of France."
+
+"_Nou, non, Monsieur_. But there is no countree like France dey say dat
+familee--and that is true, eh, _Monsieur_?"
+
+"I am afraid I cannot agree with you, Delle Josephine," said I. "To
+me there is no country like England, but that may be because I am an
+Englishman. Tell me how long did you live in Quebec with this family?"
+
+"I was there ten year _Monsieur_. Then one day, I had a great
+accidence--oh! a ver sad ting, ver sad!" The Frenchwoman laid down
+the ribbon and went on. "A ver sad ting happen to me and the _bébé
+Catherine_. We were out _l'ptite_ and me, for a valk, and we come to a
+part of the town ver slant, ver hilly. _L'ptite Catherine_ was in her
+carridge and I let go, and she go all down, _Monsieur_, and I too
+over the hill--the cleef, you call it--but the _bébé_ was killed and I
+_Monsieur_, I was alive, but like this!" showing her shoulder. "And what
+did they do?"
+
+"At the _château_? Ah, _figure-toi, monsieur_, the agony of dat _pauvre
+dame_! I was sent away, she would not see me, and I left _Quêbec_ at
+once. I was no more _bonne_, monsieur; Delle Josephine was enough dat.
+I could make de hats and de bonnets for de ladees, so I come away out
+to Bonneroi, and I haf made de hats and de bonnets for the ladees of
+Bonneroi for twenty year."
+
+"Is it possible?" I said, much touched by the little story. "And the
+ladies of Bonneroi, are they hard to please?"
+
+Delle Josephine, who had spoken with the customary vim and gesture of
+the French while--telling her tale, resumed her quilling and said, with
+a shrug of one shoulder,
+
+"They do not know much, and dat is true." I laughed at the ironical
+tone.
+
+"And you--you provide the _modes_?"
+
+"I haf been to Quêbec" she said quietly.
+
+"Twenty years ago," I thought, but had too much respect for the queer
+little soul to say it aloud.
+
+"I see amongst other things," I went on, "a most--remarkable--a very
+pretty, I should say--hat in your window. The red one, you know, with
+the bird of paradise."
+
+Delle Josephine looked up quickly. "Dat is not for sale, _monsieur_."
+
+"No? Why, I had some idea of perhaps purchasing it for a friend of mine.
+Did you make that hat yourself?"
+
+She nodded with a sort of conscious pride. Yet it was not for sale! I
+wondered why. The strange scene of the foregoing evening came into my
+mind, and I began to understand this singular--case of monomania. It
+must be that having lived so many years in almost solitary confinement,
+one might say, her mind had slightly given away, and she found her
+only excitement and relaxation in posing before the glass in that
+extraordinary manner. I hardly knew whether it would be an act of
+kindness to remove the hat; she talked quite rationally and cheerfully,
+and remembering the innate vanity of the French as a nation, I
+concluded to let the matter rest That night I heard no talking in the
+sitting-room. I slept profoundly, and woke up later than usual We were
+not dug out yet, though two snow-boys with their shovels were doing
+their best to unearth us. I waited some time for Delle Josephine to
+appear with the tray; but she too was late, evidently, for at ten
+o'clock she had not come. I dressed and went down stairs. As I passed
+the sitting-room I saw her tricked out as before in the hat and the
+antimacassar seated on the ottoman in front of the looking-glass.
+Heavens, she looked more frightful than ever! I made up my mind to speak
+to her at, once, and see if I could not stop such hideous mummery. But
+when I advanced I perceived that indeed I had come too late. The figure
+on the ottoman was rigid in death. How it ever held itself up at all
+I could never think, for I gave a loud cry, and rushing from the room
+knocked against the open door and fell down senseless.
+
+Outside, I suppose, the snow-boys shovelled away as hard as ever. When I
+came to myself I did not need to look around; I knew in a flash where
+I was, and remembered what had happened. I ran to the shop door and
+hammered with all my might.
+
+"Let me out!" I cried. "Open the door! open the door! for Heaven's
+sake!" Then I ran upstairs, and did the same at my window. It seemed
+years upon years of time till they were enabled to open the door and let
+me out. I rushed out bareheaded, forgetful of the intense cold, thinking
+first of all of the priest _Père Le Jeune_, so strong is habit, so
+potent are traditions. I knew where he lived, up the first turning in a
+small red brick house next the church of St. Jean Baptiste. I told him
+the facts of the case as well as I could and he came back at once with
+me. There was nothing to be done. Visitation of God or whatever the
+cause of death Delle Josephine Boulanger was dead. The priest lifted his
+hands in horror when he saw the ghostly hat. I asked him what he knew
+about her, but he seemed ignorant of everything concerning the poor
+thing, except the _aves_ she repeated and the number of times she came
+to confession. But when we came to look over her personal effects in the
+drawers and boxes of the shop, there could be no doubt but that she had
+been thoroughly though harmlessly insane. We found I should think about
+one hundred and fifty boxes: from tiny little ones of pasteboard to
+large square ones of deal, full of rows and rows of white quilled
+ribbon, similar to the piece I had seen her working at on that last
+night of her life on earth. Some of the ribbon was yellow with age,
+others fresher looking, but in each box was a folded bit of paper with
+these words written inside,
+
+  _Pour l'ptite Catherine_.
+
+"What money there was, _Père Le Jeune_ must have appropriated for I saw
+nothing of any. After the dismal funeral, to which I went, I gathered my
+effects together and went to the hotel. The first day I could proceed, I
+returned to Montreal and have not visited Bonneroi since. The family
+of _de la Corne de La Colombière_ still reside somewhere near Quebec, I
+believe. The _château_ is called by the charming name of Port Joli, and
+perhaps some day I may feel called upon to tell them of the strange fate
+which befell their poor Josephine. Whether the melancholy accident which
+partly bereft her of her reason was the result of carelessness I cannot
+say but I shall be able, I think, to prove to them that she never forgot
+the circumstance, and was to the day of her death occupied in making
+ready for the little coffin and shroud of her '_p'tite Catherine_.' My
+sketch of the frost bound Montmorenci was never finished, and indeed
+my winter sketching fell through altogether after that unhappy visit
+to Bonneroy. I was for weeks haunted by that terrible sight, half
+ludicrous, half awful, and I have, now that I am married, a strong
+dislike to scarlet in the gowns or head-gear of my wife and daughter."
+
+
+
+
+
+The Story of Etienne Chezy D'Alencourt
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+As my friends know, I was born an Englishman, spending the first
+twenty-four years of my life in England. On my twenty-fifth birthday I
+set foot on the shore of the great North American Continent, destined
+for a time to be my home. Two days afterwards I entered the office set
+apart for me in the handsome Government Buildings at Ottawa, and began
+my duties. A transfer had recently been effected between the Home
+and Canadian Civil Service, and I had been chosen to fill the vacant
+colonial post. Having no ties or obligations of any kind I had nothing
+to lose by the transaction except the pleasure and advantage of living
+in England, which, however, had ceased for one or two reasons to be dear
+to me.
+
+I did not, however, remain very long in the Service. I found it pleasant
+work but monotonous, and receiving shortly after I went out a legacy
+bequeathed by a widowed aunt I had almost forgotten, determined to leave
+it and devote myself to study and travel. Like many Englishmen, I had
+taken no trouble to ascertain the real points of interest about me. I
+had been content with mastering and getting through my work, and with
+mingling out of hours with the small but thoroughly charming set I had
+found ready to welcome me on my arrival as the "new Englishman." On the
+whole, I was popular, though one great flaw--_i.e._--lack of high birth
+and desirable home connections, weighed to an alarming extent with the
+dowagers of the Capital.
+
+I had, on leaving the Service, made up my mind to study the people of
+the Dominion. The English Canadians were easily disposed of in this
+way; most of them were Scotch, and the rest appeared to be Irish. I
+then began on the Indian population. But this was not so easy. It seemed
+impossible to find even a single Indian without going some distance.
+
+At last I unearthed one descendant of the Red man who kept a small
+tavern in the lower part of the town; a dirty frame tenement almost
+entirely hidden by an immense sign hanging outside, having the figure,
+heroic size of an Iroquois in full evening dress, feathers, bare legs
+and tomahawk.
+
+This place was known as "Tommy's." But Tommy himself was only half
+an Indian, and swore such bad swears in excellent English, that I was
+forced to leave after a minute's inspection.
+
+Then I began on the French-Canadians. There were plenty of them. In the
+Buildings, on the streets, in the markets, in shops, they were all
+over. Some of the most charming people I know were French-Canadians.
+My landlady and her husband, quiet, sober devout people, were
+French-Canadians.
+
+What I wanted to find, though, was a genuine unadulterated
+French-Canadian of the class known as the _habitans_. I could recollect
+many dark-eyed, fierce-mustached men whom I had seen since my residence
+in Canada, and whom I conjectured must have been _habitans_. Up the
+Gatineau and down the St. Lawrence, it would be easy to find whom I
+wanted, but I preferred to wait on in town. I had many a disappointment.
+One day it would be a cabman, another day a clerk. Though they all
+_looked_ French, they invariably turned out to be English or Scotch. My
+notions of hair and skin and eyes were being all turned upside down;
+my favorite predispositions annulled, my convictions changed to
+fallacies--in short I was thoroughly bewildered. I could not find my
+_habitant_. At the same time, when I did find him, he would have to know
+how to speak some English, for I could only speak very little French.
+I read it well of course, wrote it quite easily, but on essaying
+conversation was always seized with that instinctive horror of making a
+fool of myself, which besets most Englishmen when they would attempt a
+foreign language. Besides, the _patois_ these people spoke was vastly
+different from ordinary French, as taught in schools and colleges, and
+what it might be like I had not in those days the faintest idea, not
+having read Rabelais.
+
+The worst _désillusionnement_ I suffered I will recount. One day I
+noticed an elderly man clad in corduroy trousers, shabby brown velveteen
+coat, conical straw hat and dirty blue shirt, lounging about a wharf I
+sometimes frequented where, at one time, would lay from thirty to fifty
+barges laden with lumber. Bargetown it might have been called; it was
+a veritable floating colony of French and Swede, Irish and Scotch,
+jabbering and smoking by day and lying quietly at night under the stars,
+save for the occasional jig and scrape of the fiddle of some active
+Milesian. Here, had I fully known it, was my chance for observation,
+but I was ignorant at that time of the ways of these people and did not
+venture among them. But the man in the velvet coat interested me. He
+gesticulated the whole time most violently, waved his arms about and
+made great use of his pipe, which he used to point with. I could not
+hear what he was saying for his back was turned to me and the wind
+carried all he said to the bargemen, as he wished it to do I suppose.
+
+How splendidly that coat becomes him, thought I. The descendant of some
+fine old French settler, how superbly he carries himself!
+
+The conical becomes on him a cocked hat and in place of ragged fringe
+and buttons hanging by a single string, I see the buckles and bows, the
+sword and cane of a by-gone age!
+
+I made up my mind to address him, when to my disgust he got into one of
+the barges, which moved off slowly, transporting him, as I supposed, to
+his northern home.
+
+The next morning the bell of my front door attracted my attention by
+ringing three or four times. Evidently my landlady was out. I sauntered
+to the door and found my _habitant_ of the velveteen coat and duty blue
+shirt!
+
+Gracious heaven! I was overcome! By what occult power had he been driven
+here to deliver himself into my hands? Before I could speak, he said:
+
+"Av ye plaze, sorr, will yez be having any carrpets to bate? I'm taking
+orders against the sphring claning, sorr."
+
+"Oh! are you?" said I. I began to feel very sorry for myself, very
+sorry, indeed, at this supreme instant. "Do you live near here?" I
+further inquired.
+
+"Shure and I do, sorr. Jist beyant yez. I pass yez every day in the
+week. Me number's 415"--He was about handing me a greasy bit of paper,
+when I slammed the door in his face and retired to my own room to
+meditate on the strange accent and peculiar calling of this descendant
+of the "fine old French settler."
+
+My next choice, however, proved a fortunate one. I got into a street-car
+one evening late in the month of March. It was the winter street-car, a
+great dark caravan, with a long narrow bench down either side and a mass
+of hay all along the middle, with a melancholy lamp at the conductor's
+end. Although fairly light outside, it was quite dark inside the
+caravan, so the conductor set about lighting the lamp. This is the way
+he did it. Opening the door he put his head in, looked all around, shut
+the door and stopped his horses. Then he opened the door again and put
+his head in again, keeping the door open this time that we might inhale
+the fresh March night air. I say we, because when I grew accustomed to
+the dark, I saw there was another occupant of the car, a man seated on
+the opposite seat a little way down. The conductor felt under the seat
+for something which I suppose was the can which, taken presently by him
+to the corner grocery before which we had stopped, came back replenished
+with coal oil. After he had filled the lamp, he lit in succession three
+matches, persistently holding them up so that they all went out one
+after the other. He felt in his pockets but he had no more. Then he
+asked me. I had none. Then he asked the other man. The other man laughed
+and replied in French. I did not understand what he said but saw him
+supply the conductor with a couple of matches. When the lamp was finally
+lighted I looked more closely at him. He was a working man from his
+attire: colored shirt, coat of a curious bronze colour much affected by
+the Canadian labourer, old fur cap with ears, and moccasins. At his feet
+stood a small tin pail with a cover. His face was pale and singularly
+well-cut. His hair was black and very smooth and shiny; a very slight
+moustache gave character to an otherwise effeminate countenance and his
+eyes were blue, very light blue indeed and mild in their expression. We
+smiled involuntarily as the conductor departed. The man was the first to
+speak:
+
+"De conductor not smoke, surely," he said, showing me his pipe in one
+hand. "I always have the matches."
+
+"So do I, as a general thing,". I rejoined. "One never knows when a
+match may be wanted in this country." I spoke rather surlily, for I
+had been getting dreadfully chilled while the conductor was opening and
+shutting the door. The man bent forward eagerly, though without a trace
+of rudeness in his manner.
+
+"You do not live here, eh?"
+
+"Oh! yes, I do now, but I was thinking of England when I spoke."
+
+"That is far away from here, surely."
+
+"Ah! yes," I sighed. So did the man opposite me. We were silent then for
+a few moments when he spoke again.
+
+"There is a countree I should like to see and dat is France. I hear,
+sir, I hear my mother talk of dat countree, and I tink--I should like to
+go there. But that is far away from here, too far away, sure."
+
+My heart leapt up. Here, if ever, must be the man I was in search of.
+
+"You are a French-Canadian, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, Sir, I am dat."
+
+"And where do you live?" said I.
+
+"I work in de mill; de largess mill in the Chaudière. You know dat great
+water, the fall under the bridge, dat we call the Chaudière."
+
+"I know it well," said I, "but I have never gone properly over any of
+the mills. I should like to go some day very much. Should I see you
+anywhere if I went down?"
+
+He stared, but gave me the name of his mill. It belonged to one of the
+wealthiest lumber kings of the district. I resolved to go down the next
+day.
+
+"What is your name," I asked. The man hesitated a minute before he
+replied,
+
+"Netty."
+
+"Netty!" I repeated "What a curious name! You have another name, I
+expect. That must only be a nickname."
+
+"_Mais oui Monsieur_. My name is much longaire than dat. My whole name
+is Etienne Guy Chèzy D'Alencourt, but no man call me dat, specially in
+de mill. 'Netty'--dey all know 'Netty.'"
+
+It was a long name, truly, and a high-sounding one,--but I preferred
+thinking of him by it than by the meaningless soubriquet of "Netty." At
+the next corner he got out, touching his cap to me quite politely as he
+passed.
+
+I was in high spirits that evening, for I believed I had found my
+_habitant_. I went down to the Chaudière the following day, and got
+permission to go over Mr. ----'s mill I found it very interesting, but
+my mind was not sufficiently centered on planks and logs and booms
+to adequately appreciate them. I wanted "Netty." After I had made the
+complete round of the mill I came upon him hard at work in his place
+turning off planks in unfailing order as they whizzed along. The noise
+was deafening, of bolts and bars, and saws and chains, with the roar of
+the great cascade outside. He saw me and recognized me on my approach,
+but he could not speak for some time. It was most monotonous work,
+I thought. No conversation allowed, not even possible; the truly
+demoniacal noise, yet just outside on the other side of a small window,
+the open country, the mighty waters of the ever-boiling "Kettle," or
+Chauldron, and the steep spray-washed cliff. Standing on my toes I
+could, looking out of Netty's small window, discover all this. The
+ice was still in the river, half the fall itself was frozen stiff, and
+reared in gabled arches to the sky. I watched the two scenes alternately
+until at 6 o'clock the wheels ran down, the belts slackened and the men
+knocked off.
+
+Netty walked out with me at my request, and learning that he had to
+return in an hour I proposed we should have a meal together somewhere
+and a talk at the same time. He must have been greatly astonished at
+a complete stranger in another walk of life fastening upon him in this
+manner, but he gave no hint of either surprise or fear, and maintained
+the same mild demeanour I had noticed in him the day before.
+
+It was darkening rapidly and I did not know where to go for a meal.
+Netty told me he ought to go to St. Patrick St. I knew the locality and
+did not think it necessary to go all that way, "unless anybody will be
+waiting for you, expecting you."
+
+"Oh! not dat I live in a boarding house, my mother--she in the countree,
+far from here."
+
+"Then, 'I said,' you can go where you like. Do you know any place near
+here where we can get a cup of tea and some eggs? What will do for you,
+I daresay, and I hardly want as much."
+
+But he knew of no reliable place and after walking about for a quarter
+of an hour we finally went to the refreshment room at the station and
+ordered beer and tea and sandwiches.
+
+"I daresay you wonder at my bringing you out here with me. You'd get a
+better meal perhaps at your boarding-house. But do you know I've taken
+a fancy to you and, I want to see a little more of you and learn how you
+live, if you will kindly tell me. I am interested in your people, the
+French-Canadians."
+
+This sounds very clumsily put and so it did then, but I was obliged to
+explain my actions in some way and what is better than the truth? Lies,
+I have no doubt to some people, but I was compelled to be truthful
+to this man who carried a gentle and open countenance with him. No
+gentleman could have answered me more politely than he did now.
+
+"Sir I am astonish--_oui un peu_, but if there is anyting I can tell
+you, anyting I can show you I shall be ver glad. The mill--how do you
+find dat, Sir?
+
+"I like to watch you work very much, but the noise"--
+
+Netty laughed, showing his radiant white teeth.
+
+"_Mais oui_, de noise is bad, but one soon custom to dat. I am in
+de mill for four year. I come from up in de north--from the Grand
+Calumet--do you know there, Sir?"
+
+"That is an island is it not? Yes, I know where it is, near Allumette,
+but I have never been so far up on the Ottawa. And the Gatineau, that is
+a river, is it not? What pretty names these French ones are! Gatineau!"
+I repeated thinking. "That comes, I fancy having heard somewhere, from
+Demoiselle Marie Josephe Gatineau Duplessis, wife of one of the first
+French settlers. By the way your name is a curious one. Say it again."
+
+Netty very gravely repeated, "Etienne Guy Chézy D'Alencourt."
+
+"Was your father a native Canadian?"
+
+"_Oui Monsieur_."
+
+"The name seems familiar to me," I remarked. "I daresay if you cared
+to look the matter up, you might find that your great grandfather was
+something or other under the Intendant Bigot or Vaudreuil, or earlier
+still under Maisonneuve the gallant founder of Montreal. Ah! how
+everybody seems to have forgotten those old days. Even in Canada, you
+see, there is something to look back upon."
+
+My companion seemed rather puzzled as I talked in this strain. Very
+probably it was over his head. I found he could neither read nor write,
+had been reared in the pine-clad and icy fastnesses of Grand Calumet
+Island all alone by his mother--an old dame now about seventy. He
+himself was about thirty he judged, though he was far from sure. He was
+a good Catholic in intention, though very ignorant of all ritual. From
+his youth he had been employed on the rafts and lumber-slides of the
+Ottawa river until his four years' session at the mill, where he had
+picked up the English he knew. He had made no friends he told me. The
+more I conversed with him the more I was impressed with his simple and
+polite manners, his innate good breeding, and his faith and confidence
+in the importance of daily toil and all honest labour. He smoked a
+little, drank a little, but never lost his head became obtrusively
+familiar, noisy or inquisitive. I felt ashamed to think how deliberately
+I had sought him out, to pry into the secrets and facts of his daily
+life, but solaced myself into the assurance that it could not at least
+bode him harm and it might possibly do him some service.
+
+When we returned to the mill, I was astonished at the weirdness of the
+scene. The entire premises were flooded with the electric light and the
+men were working away, and the saws, belts and bars all in motion as if
+it were the middle of the day. What a pandemonium of sound and colour
+and motion it was! The strong resinous odor of the pine-wood mingled
+with the fresh air blown in from the river, and I inhaled both eagerly.
+
+It was almost powerful enough to affect the head, and I fancied I caught
+myself reeling a little as I walked out on to the bridge, swaying just
+the least bit as the torrent of angry water swept under it I had said
+"_Bonsoir_" to my friend the Frenchman and was free to go home. But I
+lingered long on the heaving bridge, though it was cold and starless,
+and I got quite wet with the dashed-up spray.
+
+Up the river gleamed the icy masses of the frozen fall, beyond that the
+northern country of the northern waters stretched away up to the North
+Pole with little, if any, human interruption.
+
+Down the river on the three superb cliffs, rising high out of the water,
+sparkled the many lights in the Gothic windows of the buildings. On
+either side were the illuminated mills with their rushing logs and
+their myriad busy hands piling, smoothing and sawing the monsters of the
+forest helpless under the fetters of leather and steel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+For the events which followed, I hold myself alone and altogether
+responsible. Nearly every evening I spent at the Chaudière, either
+watching my new friend at his work or lounging on the bridge, and always
+finishing the day by walking home with him to his boarding house. Thus
+I got to know him very well, and I soon discovered one thing that he
+was far from strong. Even a life-long residence among the purifying and
+strengthening airs of the keen fresh North had not protected him from
+the insidious ravages of that dread complaint--consumption. I fancied
+the hereditary taint must be on his father's side, for he always alluded
+to his mother as being exceptionally healthy. On Sundays I accompanied
+him to Church in the morning at the Basilica; in the afternoons we used
+to walk all over the town in various directions. Of course, on all
+these excursions, I did most of the talking. He was a good listener, and
+readily improved in understanding and appreciation. Noticing that he
+was particularly fond of any story connected with the life of the early
+French in Canada, I read up all the works I could find on the subject,
+going often to the Parliamentary Library for that purpose, and retailing
+the more interesting and intelligible facts to him afterwards. Crusoe
+did not watch over and educate Friday any more carefully than I my mild
+and gentlemanly "Shantyman" in his blue shirt and canvas trowsers.
+
+I grew at last, after three months' intimacy with him, quite to love
+him, and I am sure my affection was reciprocated for he ever welcomed
+me with a strong, clinging pressure of my hand and a smile which was a
+brighter one than that which his face had worn when I met him first. A
+strange friendship, but one which I felt to be so absorbing that I could
+not have endured other friends. April passed, and May, and with the hot
+weather Etienne, whose health gave way all at once, would have to return
+for a short visit to the old mother all by herself on the island of
+Grand Calumet.
+
+I feared to let him go, he looked more delicate in my eyes every day,
+but I knew it would be good for him in many ways. So a day came that saw
+my friend D'Alencourt go back to his northern home. He would not ask me
+to go and visit him, he had too much natural pride for that, but I made
+up my mind to find him out, for all that. As may be supposed I was like
+the traditional fish out of the traditional water for some time after
+his departure.
+
+I read and amused myself in any way that offered, but cared not to
+experiment on any more French-Canadians.
+
+In my reading I read for two, and made notes of anything I thought would
+interest Etienne. One day I came across the same name as his own, borne
+by a certain young soldier, a sprig of the French _noblesse_ who had
+followed in the train of Bigot, the dissolute and rapacious Governor
+of New France. I meditated long over this. The name was identical--Guy
+Chézy D'Alencourt. In the case of my friend the mill-hand there was
+simply the addition of Etienne, the first Christian name. Could he
+possibly be the descendant of this daring and gallant officer, of whose
+marriage and subsequent settling in Canada I could find no mention?
+The thing seemed unlikely, yet perfectly possible. I had predicted it
+myself. As if to fasten my thoughts even more securely on the absent
+Etienne that very day arrived a letter from Grand Calumet. It was
+addressed to me in a laboured but most distinct hand. I thought that
+Etienne had commissioned the priest doubtless to write for him or some
+other friend, but when I opened it I found to my great surprise that it
+was from Etienne himself and in his own handwriting, the result he told
+me of work at home in his Lower Town boarding-house.
+
+I dropped the letter. He had taught himself to, write! This was the
+first fruit of my intimacy with him, and I hardly knew whether I was
+pleased or not. But I clearly saw that this night-work added to the
+arduous toil and late hours imposed upon him by his place in the mill
+had probably been the cause of undermining his bodily strength. The
+letter itself ran:
+
+  "Dear Sir,--The frend of Etienne D'Alenconrt, he can write you--he
+  can send you a _lettre_ from the Grand Calumet, his island that
+  is  green, Monsieur, and full of sweet berries. If you would come,
+  Mossier, you would find Etienne and his mother reddy to do all they
+  can. Still, Monsieur shall in this please alway himself, the friend
+  and benefactor of Etienne Chézy D'Alencourt."
+
+
+  GRAND CALUMET ISLAND.
+
+  "It was at night, when Monsieur had gone home, that I learnt myself
+  to write and thank him for all teaching from the books beside."
+
+    "E."
+
+Of course, I would accept the invitation. I decided to go in a week's
+time and wrote to that effect. I wished to reprimand him for having
+overtaxed his strength as I was sure he had done in sitting up teaching
+himself how to write, but respect for the dear fellow's perseverance and
+ability restrained me.
+
+Only when I got him again, I said to myself, I would stop that. I took
+with me a gun, fishing rods and tackle, a mosquito net, plenty of cigars
+and a hamper of tinned meats, tea, coffee and biscuits.
+
+My journey was nearly altogether by water and I enjoyed every inch of
+the beautiful river. After I reached the landing stage, a place called
+Lichfield, I had to wait an hour before proceeding in the direction
+which I had found out it would be necessary to follow in order to find
+Etienne and his mother.
+
+I shall never forget the delight of that one hour passed in rambling
+through the lonely green wood that covered the island down to the shore.
+The ferns were young and freshly unfurled, the moss was everywhere,
+green and close and soft like velvet and star-clustering, gray and
+yellow. The surviving flowers were the large white blossoms of the
+woodland lily, and the incoming _Linnæa_ began to show the faint pink of
+its twin bells, afterwards to be so sweet and fragrant.
+
+I thought of that passage in the letter which told of "the island that
+was green and full of sweet berries." Not a bad description for a person
+whom the world must perforce term an illiterate man.
+
+When my conveyance arrived, it proved to be a stage of antiquated type
+and I suffered horribly during the journey of three hours. At the end
+of that time, I was set down with my luggage at the gate of a small log
+hut, with a little garden in front, bordered with beautiful pink and
+green stones, the like of which I had never seen before. A snake fence
+ran in front of this and on two sides, at the back was a thick wood.
+
+Etienne was ready for me at which I rejoiced, fearing to make myself
+known to the dame his mother.
+
+Once more I felt that honest and affectionate hand grasp, once more I
+met those clear and steady blue eyes, and I noted the flush of pride
+which overspread his face when I told him that I had received his letter
+and marvelled at it.
+
+"Mossieu know so much and Etienne so ver little." But when the flush had
+died away, I was pained exceedingly to see the pallor of his cheeks and
+the prominence of his high cheekbones. His walk was unsteady too, he
+put his feet down, I noticed, as if they were light instead of solid
+supports for his body, a sure sign of great physical weakness. My worst
+fears were realized when I saw on the deal table in the front room,
+furnished with home-made rugs drawn from woolen rags dyed all colors and
+some plain deal furniture stained brown, a little pile of books. There
+were two copy-books, two dictionaries, a small "Histoire de Canada" and
+some illustrated magazines. I saw that he could read, too, pretty well,
+for he presently drew my attention to a very old book indeed, that lay
+on a shelf, a little Roman Catholic missal with tarnished gold clasps
+and scarlet edges.
+
+"Dat was belong to my fader," he said, "for many a year; and it was from
+his fader he get it."
+
+I looked at it eagerly all over. The fly-leaf bore no inscription, but
+up in one corner, in faded red ink, was something that looked like a
+monogram with a device underneath. I would have examined it at once but
+that Etienne was anxious to read me a little of the Latin which he had
+picked out with infinite patience, I should think. I promised to help
+him a little occasionally, but told him that he was not looking well and
+had better be content with ignorance in this lovely summer weather.
+
+"When the winter comes and you are back at the mill, you can study as
+much as you like."
+
+The old dame was sallow and sunken from a life of incessant hard work.
+The climate itself, so changeable as well as inclement in these northern
+wilds, is enough to pinch the face and freeze the blood, although at the
+time of my visit it was hot, intensely hot for so early in the
+summer. Moreover, the old dame was not given to talking. So taciturn a
+Frenchwoman I never met elsewhere. They are usually characterized by a
+vivacious loquacity which is the seal of their nationality. But this one
+was silent in the extreme and had, as her son told me, never once held
+a conversation with him on any subject whatever. Of his father he knew
+literally only this fact--that he had been a "shantyman" in his time
+too, and was killed by a strained rope striking him across the middle.
+Etienne did not remember him. The time sped on. They made me as
+comfortable as they could in the front or "best" room, but, when I
+thought it would not offend them, I slept outside--"_couchant à la belle
+etoile_" as Rousseau has it--and beautiful nights those were I spent
+in this manner. We had plenty of fruit--wild strawberries and
+raspberries--pork and beans and potatoes forming the staple articles of
+diet. There was no cow, no horse, no dog belonging to the house. Fish
+we could get ourselves in plenty, and eggs made their appearance in
+a farmer's wagon about twice a week. Etienne and I spent entire days
+out-of-doors, shooting, fishing, walking, reading. I tried to take his
+mind off his books, but it was of no use. He had got so attached to
+his studies and new pursuits in life that one day he startled me by
+asserting that he did not intend to go back to the mill in future. I
+remonstrated gently with him, reminding him that as yet his education
+was very incomplete, that few situations of the kind he probably aspired
+to would be open to him for some time to come, and that in the meantime
+he must suffer from want of money, and thus be the cause of seeing his
+mother suffer as well. But he startled me further in reply by stating
+that he knew himself to be slowly dying of consumption and that he
+would shortly be of little use to anyone. His wish was to leave Canada
+altogether and die in--France! France, the country of his dreams, the
+goal of his dying ambition, the land of the golden _fleur de lis_,
+of the chivalrous soldiers, the holy women and the pious fathers who
+colonized the land of his birth!
+
+I remonstrated with him as I have said. I expostulated in every key; I
+took his mother into my confidence as well as I could since she knew not
+a word of English; I laughed at him, I wept over him, I endeavoured by
+every argument in my power to make him change my mind, but--
+
+I failed. Then when I understood how firmly his mind was set upon this
+extraordinary idea, I made up my mind to accompany him, in fact, not to
+leave him at all until he either grew wiser and stronger, or else died
+the death he predicted for himself. I found that the old dame had quite
+a store of money saved by her little by little every year from Etienne's
+earnings, and from what she made by selling the rugs I mentioned. These
+sold for a dollar and upwards according to the size. Putting some of my
+own to this fund of hers, I calculated she had enough to go upon for at
+least a year. Wants are few in that district. Then I turned my attention
+to Etienne. He was growing worse; he would lie for hours reading or
+attempting to read with great beads of perspiration mounting on his
+brow. The heat was excessive and proved very bad for him. I judged he
+would be better in town and after I had been on the island for about two
+months, I begged him to return with me. I promised him that once there,
+I would not leave him for a day, and would even consider the possibility
+of taking him across the ocean. He still maintained his calm and perfect
+manners and insisted upon paying his fare down the river which I let him
+do, knowing that soon his stock of money would be exhausted and he would
+then be at my mercy. No sign of cupidity was apparent in his demeanor,
+yet I wondered how he ever thought to reach France unless I paid his
+way. Like all consumptives, he had a trick of rallying now and then and
+appearing better than he really was. This occurred on our arrival in
+town. He took long walks with me again daily and seemed so much stronger
+that I again dared to suggest the propriety of his returning to the
+mill, but to no purpose. He drooped at the very thought, and I perceived
+that his apparent recovery was but a delusion, I soon saw he was weaker
+than ever. But whenever he was at all able, he persisted in reading what
+he could understand and really his progress was a marvel to me. So it
+came about that one evening, towards the close of September where we had
+sometimes to light the lamp as early as half-past six, I returned to my
+rooms about that hour of the day (we shared rooms together, so fond
+had I grown of him, and I trust, he of me) to find him poring over the
+little Catholic Missal.
+
+"In this light? This will never do. And you could not light the lamp
+yourself, my poor Etienne!"
+
+When it was lighted, I saw indeed from his weak and excited appearance
+that he was unable to do anything for himself. Lying on my sofa, he had
+in one hand the scarlet-edged missal, and in the other the book I have
+referred to, which contained a short sketch of Guy Chézy D'Alencourt the
+handsome and reckless lieutenant of _La Nouvelle France_.
+
+He could hardly speak but through his gasping I could gather that he
+wished me to examine the words in the corner of fly-leaf I had once
+noticed before and believed to be a monogram. I quieted him a little,
+then bringing the lamp-light to bear upon the faded ink, I was able
+to decipher the device, which comprised a crown, three _fleurs-de-lis_
+under, and a lamb bearing a banner, with the letters I.H.S. upon it.
+
+"The arms of Rouen!" I exclaimed "and above them, some initials, yes, a
+monogram!"
+
+My companion sat up in his excitement.
+
+"Ah! dat is what I cannot make quite out! Tree letter--_oui, vite, cher
+mosdieu, vite_!"
+
+I had to look very closely indeed to decipher these, but with the aid of
+a small lens I found them to be "G. C. D'A."
+
+There could be little doubt but that Etienne was the lineal descendant
+of Guy Chézy D'Alencourt, native of Rouen, who came to Canada in the
+same year as Bigot. I told him so and wondered what his thoughts could
+be, for clasping my hands with as much force as he possessed--and that
+is at times a wonderful force in the clasp of the dying--he said with a
+great effort:
+
+"If dat is so, _mossieu_, if dat is so, I have _O le bon Dieu_--I
+have--_mossieu_, I have--O if dat is true"--
+
+He fell back and I caught no more. The excitement proved too much for my
+poor friend. When I spoke to him, he was unconscious and he never fully
+recovered his senses. Alas! he lay in a few weeks, beneath the sod of
+Grand Calumet Island, and France is ignorant of the fact that a true
+aristocrat and simple-hearted gentleman existed in the humble person
+of my friend the _habitant_, Etienne Guy Chézy D'Alencourt, _alias_
+"Netty."
+
+
+
+
+
+Descendez a L'Ombre, ma Jolie Blonde.
+
+
+The Honourable Bovyne Vaxine Vyrus refused to be vaccinated. Stoutly,
+firmly and persistently refused to be vaccinated. Not even the
+temptation of exposing to the admiring gaze of a medical man the superb
+muscles and colossal proportions of an arm which had beaten Grace and
+thrashed (literally) Villiers of the Guards, weighed with him.
+
+"It's deuced cool!" he said, to his cousin Clarges, of Clarges St.
+Mayfair, a fair, slight fellow, with a tiny yellow moustache. "Haven't
+I been six times to India, and twice to Africa; that filthy Algiers, you
+remember, and Turkey, and New Orleans, and Lisbon, and Naples? and
+now, when I was done only eight years ago at home, here I am to be done
+again, where, I am sure, it all looks clean enough and healthy! It makes
+me ill, and I _won't_ be done; laid up for a week and lose all the fun I
+came for!"
+
+"Bovey, though you _are_ the strongest fellow in England, you're no less
+a coward!"
+
+Young Clarges looked up as he spoke, seriously: "_I_ shall be done!"
+
+"You? Well, so I should expect from a baby like you, Arthur! You will
+never grow up, never learn to think for yourself! Now let me alone on
+the subject, and let us look up this country place we were told about!"
+But Clarges was not easily silenced.
+
+"Think of Lady Violet, Bovey! If anything were to happen to you out
+here, and the children, Bovey,--Rex and Florence, you know!"
+
+"Oh! cut it, now, Arthur; I tell you it's of no use!"
+
+Young Clarges looked out across the river, and bit the tiny yellow
+moustache. "Then I won't be done, either!" said he to himself. "It's
+borne in upon me that one of us has got to get this accursed thing, and
+if I can prevent it, it shan't be Bovey!" What a strange scene it was
+beneath, around, above and opposite them! Beneath flowed the river,
+solid with sawdust, the yellow accumulation of which sent up a strong
+resinous smell that almost made them giddy; to the left the tumultuous
+foam of the Chaudière cast a delicate veil of spray over the sharp
+outlines of the bridge traced against a yellow sky; to the right, the
+water stretched away in a dull gray expanse, bordered by grim pines and
+flat sterile country. Around them the three mighty cliffs on which
+the Capital is built, above them the cold gray of an autumnal sky, and
+opposite them the long undulations of purplish brown hills that break
+the monotony of the view, and beyond which stretch away to an untrodden
+north the wastes and forests of an uncleared continent.
+
+"Are we looking due north, now, Arthur, do you know?"
+
+"I suppose so," returned Clarges. He was astride a cannon and still
+biting the tiny moustache. "Yes, by the direction of the sunset we must
+be, I suppose. I say, if we are, you know, I should like to be able to
+tell between what two trees--it would have to be between two of those
+trees there--we should have to walk to get to the North Pole."
+
+The Hon. Bovyne looked around suddenly and laughed. He was fishing
+apparently in his pockets for a paper or something of the kind, as he
+had a number of letters in his hand, looking them over.
+
+"What two trees? Where? Arthur, you _are_ a donkey. What are you talking
+about?"
+
+"I say," returned Clarges, "that it is perfectly true that as we sit
+here, facing due north, all we have to do is to walk straight over this
+river--"
+
+"On the sawdust?"
+
+"Certainly, over those hills and between two of those trees in order
+to get to the North Pole. Curious, isn't it? If you look awfully close,
+real hard, you know, you can almost count their branches as they stand
+up against the sky. Like little feathers--huff-f-f-f--one could almost
+blow them away!"
+
+The Honorable Bovyne laughed again. Clarges was a mystery to him, as
+to many others. Half-witted he sometimes called him, though on other
+occasions he stood in awe of his bright, candid, fearless nature, and
+his truthful and reckless tongue.
+
+"I say," went on Clarges excitedly, shading his eyes with his hand.
+"There are two trees out there in a straight line from this very cannon
+that--that I should know again, Bovey! Do look where I point now like a
+good fellow. Don't you see there, following the chimney of that big red
+place, factory or other, right in a line with that at the very top of
+the hill at its highest point, two trees that stand a little apart from
+the others and have such funny branches--Oh! you must be able to see
+them by those queer branches! One crooks out on one side just as the
+other does on the other tree. That isn't very lucid, but you see what I
+mean can't you? They make a sort of--of--lyre shape."
+
+The Hon. Bovyne shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out over the
+river and distant hills. "I see a line of trees, feathery trees, you
+aptly call them my dear Arthur, but I can't make out your particular
+two. How is it possible, at such a distance, to see anything like a
+_lyre_ of all things? Come along, I've found the address I wanted. It
+reads most peculiarly. It seems there are still a great number of French
+people around here, in fact, all over this Province which they sometimes
+call Lower Canada. Do you remember much of your French?" I spoke a lot
+in Algiers of course but I fancy it isn't much like this jargon. Our
+destination is or appears to be, _c/o Veuve Peter Ross, Les Chats_,
+pronounced _Lachatte_, so Simpson told me.
+
+"Who told you about the place?" enquired young Clarges getting off the
+cannon? "Simpson? What sort of a fellow is he?"
+
+"Who? Simpson?" said his cousin in turn. "Um--not bad. Been out here too
+long, though. Awfully quiet, goes in for steady work and takes hardly
+any exercise. I wonder why it is the fellows here don't walk more! New
+country and all that; I should have thought they would all go in for
+country walks and shooting and sports of all kinds. They don't, you
+know, from some reason or other. It can't be the fault of the country."
+
+"You forget the roads, Bovey, and the fences, and the interminable
+distances and the immense rivers, and the long winter. I say, it looks
+like snow to-night, doesn't it?"
+
+"What do you know about snow!" rejoined the Hon. Bovyne. "Let us get
+on, there's a good fellow--confound you! don't stare at those imaginary
+trees any longer, but come along."
+
+Certainly young Clarges was possessed with the queerest fancy about
+those trees. "I say, Bovey, they were funny, though, to strike me like
+that, out of all the others! I am sure I should know them again. Perhaps
+some day we'll take a fly and go out there--I wonder if there's an inn?
+Does what's her name, your old Scotch lady, keep an inn, or is it a farm
+we're going to?"
+
+"Scotch? Why do you say Scotch? She's French, I tell you. Simpson says
+she can't speak a word of English."
+
+"But 'Peter Ross' is Scotch, isn't it? At least you can't make it
+French, however you twist it."
+
+"I'm not anxious to twist it. Don't you see, Arthur, she is evidently
+a Frenchwoman who married a man called Peter Ross; she is the _veuve_,
+widow, you know! of the lamented Scotchman. Now do you understand? But
+it _is_ peculiar."
+
+"Very," said Clarges. "When do we start?"
+
+"There's a train to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but I thought we
+had better hire a trap, and a man to bring the trap back, and put all
+our things, tents and so on, into it, and go out comfortably so as to
+see the country."
+
+"All right!" said Clarges. "By Jove, what a splendid night it's going
+to be, stars out already, Bovey! Don't you hope it'll be like this
+tomorrow? Shall we camp out the first night and think of--of--Lady
+Violet by our camp fire, and Rex and Florence--how they'd like to see
+us, wouldn't they? And they can't, you know, they're three thousand
+miles away, trying to make out each other's faces in the November fog,
+eh! Bovey? I say, what shall we get to eat out there, at Lachatte, you
+know, the country always makes me desperately hungry."
+
+"Oh! we shall do well enough. Simpson says she is a capital old woman,
+lives entirely alone; will cook for us, wait on us, make us pancakes,
+I expect, and give us plenty of that stuff we had this morning at the
+hotel."
+
+"Sweet stuff?" asked Clarges. "_I_ know. Syrup, maple syrup, that'll
+do."
+
+Simpson, the authority, thrice quoted by the elder of the two
+Englishmen, appeared at dinner with them that evening. He was a
+hard-working, stodgy son of person who had come out to the Canadian
+Civil Service fifteen years, ago, lived much by himself until he took a
+wife out of a Canadian village, a phlegmatic, stolid, unimaginative
+sort of a girl, who was nevertheless a good wife and an excellent
+housekeeper. Simpson sniffed at the dinner. It wasn't as good as his
+own. He felt ill at ease in the presence of the two men, whose airy
+talk and loud laughter struck him with a keen sense of its novelty. They
+joked about everything. Clarges particularly was in high feather. The
+wine, which came partly from the hotel and partly from the Hon. Bovyne's
+hamper, flowed often and freely, and Simpson, who was a very moderate
+fellow, wondered at the quantity his friends seemed to be able to
+imbibe. "Without showing any traces of it, either," he said to himself.
+"All this vivacity is natural; I remember the type; in fact, I was
+something like it myself ten or twelve years ago."
+
+After dinner, Clarges rushed up stairs and down again with a small
+silk plush packet of photographs tied with ribbons. The men were in the
+smoking room.
+
+"I say, I want Simpson to see Lady Violet, Bovey."
+
+"All right, and the children too? You sentimental ass, Arthur!" Clarges
+laughed. It was a funny laugh, a kind of inane ripple that nevertheless
+tickled everybody who heard it. "But it's too smoky here. Come up stairs
+to the drawing room. There's a jolly big drawing room with a piano, and
+we can say what we want to, everyone stares here so!"
+
+"I should think they would," said Simpson quietly. "Why do you get
+yourself up like that, simply because you're in Canada? A knitted
+waistcoat, three sizes too large for you--"
+
+"That's to admit of heavy underclothing," said Clarges, not in the least
+perturbed. "Knickerbockers," continued Simpson, "that are certainly one
+size too small; a cap that looks like a hangman's, and a coat that must
+have come off Praed St."
+
+The Hon. Bovyne laughed long and loud. "Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" he said.
+But young Clarges did not mind in the least. Indeed, had he but known
+it, and be it remembered to his merit that he did not know it, he made
+a fair and manly picture as he stood under the light of the chandelier.
+His slim, well-knit figure was more prepossessing than the herculean
+proportions of his cousin, "the strongest man in England;" his crisp
+fair hair brushed boyishly up on one side and his well-trimmed moustache
+of silky yellow, his keen gray eyes and delicate features, all went far
+in point of attractiveness, especially when added to these mere physical
+details, rang the infectious laugh, clear, hearty and youthful, and
+spoke the natural, honest, unrestrained tongue.
+
+In the drawing room Clarges established himself on a sofa between the
+other two. "Now, Simpson," he said, "you must excuse me calling you
+Simpson so freely, by the way, but you know, Bovey always calls you
+Simpson--you don't mind, do you? You bang away at my clothing all you
+like, and in return I'll call you Simpson. Now I'm going to show
+you Lady Violet. You know who she is, she is Bovey's wife, _and_ the
+loveliest woman in England. Loveliest woman in England, look at that!"
+Clarges held up very carefully, out at arm's length, a very fine
+photograph of an undeniably beautiful woman. "Bovey's wife." he
+ejaculated again. "You never saw her, so you don't know what beauty
+is, do you? But here's the next best thing, her photograph, and such a
+photograph! Now, you be good, as we say to the children, and I'll show
+you that again after all the others." Next he showed him in a sort of
+ecstasy, Bovey's children.
+
+"Rex and Florence," he said, in an awe-struck tone. Bovey laughed, so
+did Simpson. So would anybody have done.
+
+"What are you laughing at," said young Clarges, solemnly. "Oh, at me!
+that's all right, everybody laughs at me. I knew it couldn't be the
+children. Now here's another lovely girl," and then there was another
+and still another, and then a group in hunting attire just after
+the breakfast; then pretty interiors with dainty rooms and women
+and children and dogs, a capital likeness of Fred Burnaby, Vyrus'
+fellow-officer, autographs of Gordon and Wolseley, a garden party at
+Clarges Mount, a water-party at Richmond, photograph's and sketches
+taken in Algiers, Cairo, Damascus, Bombay and Edinburgh. Simpson sat
+through all this slightly bored and confused. What had he to do with
+this kind of life? Once he had had some gleams of it, it is true,
+but that was years ago, before his modest little establishment was in
+existence, presided over by the plain, but virtuous Matilda of his later
+days.
+
+"Well, now," said he, preparing to take his leave, "is there anything
+further you want to know about your plans, for I suppose I shall
+scarcely see you again before you leave if you get off tomorrow morning
+as you intend. One thing--of course you've been vaccinated?"
+
+The Hon. Bovyne muttered, "bah!" Clarges began putting the photographs
+away, all but Lady Violet.
+
+"Then you haven't been done, eh?" said Simpson, interrogatively. "I
+would if I were you. You can't tell where you're going or whom you'll
+meet. Why, you can 'do' yourself if you object to a medical man fussing
+around."
+
+"Can you?" said Clarges.
+
+"I don't object," said Bovey, loftily; "but I must say I think it is
+making a ridiculous and most unnecessary fuss about the matter. Why,
+there are half a dozen diseases as virulent as the small-pox stalking
+about in every large town, and we don't take those! Why should we take
+the small-pox when we don't take the cholera, or the--the--"
+
+"Yes," observed Simpson, in his quiet manner, "I thought you would stick
+for want of details. The fact is, that you can inoculate for small-pox,
+and you can't as yet, for cholera or leprosy, and so wise people accept
+the fact, the revelation if you will, and get vaccinated. However, as
+far as your immediate surroundings go, you're safe enough. Old Mrs. Ross
+will do all she can for you, and it isn't far, only twenty two miles
+from town after all. You'll be walking in in a day or two for another
+tent or a barrel of whiskey. Nothing like whiskey, Canadian whiskey, out
+in camp on cold nights." Simpson got up.
+
+"I wonder," said he, suddenly, "how you escaped being done on the train.
+You came up from Quebec _via_ St. Martin's Junction, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh! your importunate Inspector did make an effort on my behalf, but I
+was firm. Nearly had a lodging in the Police Station though, but I told
+him who we were and swore to having marks the size of flat-irons on both
+arms, so he let me go."
+
+"And you," said Simpson, turning to Clarges. "Me! oh! I shall be done.
+I say, couldn't I walk out with you now and see a doctor about it? I
+believe I will, Bovey, if you can spare me. For look you, Simpson, I am
+the plaything of his leisure hours, a kind of Yorick, you know, and he
+might be dull."
+
+The Hon. Bovyne looked grave for a second, "I believe I _should_ be dull
+without you, dear boy, though you are a crank. Let me see, how old are
+you, Arthur?"
+
+"Twenty-two," answered Clarges. "Good heaven!" exclaimed the Hon.
+Bovine, "and I am getting perilously near to forty. We'll change the
+subject. I'm very sleepy. Don't expect to find me up when you come
+in, Arthur; to-morrow night, remember, we may be sleeping on the cold
+ground, I shall get all the rest I can to-night." Clarges and the other
+man took their leave.
+
+"Once more, Bovey," said the former, "won't you be done? Simpson, make
+him! See here, look once more at Lady Violet, speak with _her_ lips,
+look with _her_ eyes--the loveliest woman in England!"
+
+"Go and get 'done,' as you call it, for heaven's sake, and let me
+alone!" was all he got in reply.
+
+But Clarges did not get done. He had an idea and this was his idea: To
+walk to some doctor recommended by Simpson and procure an instrument
+suitable for the purpose, and the necessary material, and to vaccinate
+his cousin himself. The first part was easy enough. Simpson vaguely
+wondering at his light-hearted talk, left him at a doctor's surgery
+door, and Clarges, who could always get what he wanted from anybody in
+any part of the world, soon persuaded the doctor to give him a "point"
+and all necessary instructions.
+
+"A small lancet is really a better thing," said that gentleman, "but you
+will manage all right, I daresay. We must really take every precaution
+we can. Good evening."
+
+All this was easy; now arose the difficulty, how best to tackle Bovey.
+
+"He's such a giant of a fellow," thought Clarges. "But if he is only
+asleep as he hinted he would be, there'll not be much difficulty.
+What will he do when he finds it out in the morning, supposing I am
+successful in operating upon him to-night? What a suggestive word! I am
+quite the surgeon. But I'll do it--Arthur Clarges, see that you _do_ do
+it, by all you hold dear and sacred in old England!"
+
+On his return, however, to the hotel, he found that his cousin was
+clearly wide-awake again.
+
+"Hang it all!" he said to himself, "why isn't he asleep?" But the Hon.
+Bovyne was not in the least sleepy. He rallied Arthur on his poor
+arm but fortunately did not ask to look at it. He ordered up a sherry
+cobbler apiece and brought out some of his rarest weeds. "I say, what do
+you think of Simpson, Bovey?" said Clarges, suddenly.
+
+"Think? why, that there's nothing in him to think about."
+
+"Did you know he was married?"
+
+"No; is he?" Bovey was always laconic.
+
+"Yes, and he has four children. Just think, four! Two boys and two
+girls."
+
+"How interesting!" The two men smoked silently for a few minutes, then
+Clarges said, "It must be a beautiful thing to be married, you know."
+
+"Well, I _ought_ to know," returned his cousin.
+
+Clarges put his cigar down and went on. "To have somebody that belongs
+to you, and to know that you belong to somebody; that's marriage, and I
+think it must be very beautiful. Of course, you belong to other people
+too, just the same, and they belong to you, but not so much, not in the
+same way. You don't go to church all in a tremble with your father and
+your mother, or your sister or your brother. You don't wear a ring--a
+beautiful, great broad band of gold, you know, always shining there
+on your finger--or you don't put one on for anybody else save just the
+person that belongs to you in that way, in the way of marriage, you
+know. And to be able to think wherever you are, 'Well, there is that
+person, anyway, thinking of me, waiting for me; the whole world doesn't
+matter if that person is really there, anywhere, thinking of me, waiting
+for me.' Now, you know, _I'll_ never feel that, never, in this world.
+What good is there in me? I may be Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, of
+course, but without money, that means nothing. I say, Bovey, it's rather
+ghastly, but it's perfectly true. I haven't a single soul in the world
+but you and Lady Violet to think of me at all, or for me to think of."
+
+"I don't suppose you have," said the Hon. Bovyne, thoughtfully. "You are
+a lone beggar, Arthur, but a cheery one nevertheless."
+
+"So you see," Clarges went on, "If in accompanying you around the world
+in search of new pleasures and exciting experiences, anything happens to
+me, you know, Arthur Clarges, of Clarges, nobody need mind. There isn't
+anybody to mind."
+
+"All this because Simpson has got four children! Well, I hope you'll
+get married yet, Arthur, you queer fish, and have six, two more than
+Simpson. I know what you are driving at, however. You think me a selfish
+brute. You can't understand how I can leave Lady Vi., and the two kids,
+and go off annually on tours of exploration and so forth. I tell you,
+I am the better for it, and she is the better for it, and nobody is any
+the worst for it, unless it be yourself. Men who have knocked about as
+I have done, will continue to knock about as long as they live. In the
+army, out of the army, all the same. Lady Vi. understands me, and I her,
+and you forget, Arthur, that you are very--young."
+
+"Then may I never get any older," said Charles, almost rudely.
+
+Not long afterwards his cousin, slightly heavy with wine, went to bed.
+Clarges, abnormally wakeful, tried to read _Bell's Life_ which lay
+before him and waited until Bovey was fast asleep. They occupied the
+same room, a large double-bedded one, which opened into a bathroom and
+parlour _en suite_. When he was perfectly certain that his cousin was
+sound asleep, so sound that "a good yelp from the county pack, and a
+stirring chorus of 'John Peel' by forty in pink could not wake him,"
+thought Clarges, the latter undertook his delicate task and accomplished
+it. He did it quickly and skilfully with a tiny lancet he found in his
+cousin's well-appointed travelling bag. Bovey never stirred. Clarges
+next undertook to "do" himself. Then a strange thing happened. He
+had gone to the glass and bared his left arm when a sudden faintness
+overcame him. He tried to shake it off and sat down. Presently it left
+him and he felt quite as usual. Then he made a second attempt. The same
+thing occurred again. This time it was worse, and sight and strength
+failing, he sank on his own bed, fainting. By a tremendous effort he
+prevented entire unconsciousness from taking place and lay there half
+dressed and tremulous.
+
+"Well, I _am a fool_! I can't help it. I can't try any more to-night,
+for I am as weak and sleepy--if I can get up and undress it's as much
+as I am capable of. But Bovey's all right. There's Lady Violet"--turning
+his eyes to the photograph he had stuck in the looking glass
+frame--"she'd thank me if she knew." Sweet Lady Vi--so good to all
+around her--so good to me--dear Lady Vi, the loveliest woman in England!
+
+When Clarges awoke he was chilled and dazed, couldn't remember where
+he was and what he had done. When he did recollect, he rose quietly,
+extinguished the gas and made the room as dark as possible, in hopes
+that Bovey might outsleep himself in the morning. Then he went to bed
+properly, putting as a final precaution, his watch an hour in advance.
+It thus happened that by Clarges' watch it was a quarter past ten when
+he awoke. He rose first and bullied his cousin to that extent that the
+latter tumbled out of bed and flung on his clothes without indulging in
+his usual bath. At eleven the trap was due and Bovey was all on fire,
+bundled his things around recklessly and swore a little at Clarges for
+keeping him up the night before. Clarges was nervous, but up to the
+present time was master of the situation. At breakfast, Bovey discovered
+the mistake, but attributed it to Clarges' carelessness in such matters
+aggravated by a probable bad arm.
+
+"Why I took your watch for an authority instead of my own, I don't
+know," said he. "But last night I thought you were the clearer of the
+two, in fact, I don't recollect winding mine at all, and it seems now
+that _you_ were the delinquent."
+
+"Yes, I must have been," said Clarges, self-reproachfully.
+
+At eleven the trap came, and by noon they were half-way to their
+destination. The road winding higher and higher as it followed the
+magnificent curves of the Gatineau was very beautiful, and revealed at
+each turn a superb panorama of water, and wood and sky. For a long time
+the Buildings were visible, towering over trees and valleys. Once the
+sun came out and lit up the cold, gray scene.
+
+"Pull up, Johnny," said the Hon. Bovyne, "I want to see this. Why, its
+immense, this is! Arthur, how's your arm?"
+
+But Clarges was evidently struck with something. "I say, over there,
+is where we were yesterday, Bovey, I can imagine I see the very spot,
+cannon and all."
+
+"Just as then you imagined you saw a couple of trees here, eh? Now go
+along, Johnny, and sit down, Arthur. It doesn't agree with you to be
+vaccinated. I'm afraid you're too imaginative already my boy. By the
+way, how _is_ your arm?"
+
+"Its a novel situation," thought Clarges. "_He's_ the one, not me. Its
+_his_ arm, not mine. But my turn will come to-night; pretty soon he'll
+find it out for himself."
+
+Arrived at the house of _Veuve_ Peter Ross, they found it clean and
+inviting; warmed by a wood stove and carpeted with home-made rugs. The
+old woman took a great interest in their arrival and belongings and
+jabbered away incessantly, in French. Did they but request her to
+"cherchez un autre blankette!" or fry an additional egg, up went her
+hands, her eyes and her shoulders, and such a tirade of excited French
+was visited upon them that they soon forebore asking her for anything
+but went about helping themselves. At first they thought she was
+angry when these outbreaks took place, but Bovey, who could partially
+understand her, gathered that she was far from offended, but given over
+to the national habit of delivering eloquent and theatrical monologues
+on the slightest provocation. She had no lodgers at the present moment;
+a Frenchman had left the day before, and the prospect was in every way
+favorable, to the comfort of the two friends.
+
+When the dusk fell, Bovey made a camp-fire.
+
+"It's what we came for," he said, "and we can't begin too early or have
+enough of it, and I feel chilly, queer, quite unlike myself to-night.
+It's a depressing country just about here."
+
+"It is," said Clarges, anxious to keep his friend a little longer in the
+dark. "We'll be all right when it's really night, you know, and the fire
+blazes up. What a jolly tent and what glorious blankets? We ought to
+go to bed early, for it was awfully late the last night There! now its
+getting better. Hoop-la! more sticks Bovey! Throw them on, make it blaze
+up. Here we are in the primeval forest at last, Bovey, pines and moss,
+and shadows and sounds--What's that now? Is that on the river?"
+
+For suddenly they heard the most wonderful strain coming from that
+direction. The river was about three or four hundred yards away across
+the road, in front of them, and upon a raft slowly passing by were a
+couple of _habitans_ singing. What strain was this, so weird, so solemn,
+so earnest, yet so pathetic, so sweet, so melodious!
+
+
+  "Descendez à l'ombre
+  Ma jolie blonde."
+
+
+Those were the words they caught, no more, but the tune eluded them.
+
+"It's the queerest tune I ever heard!" ejaculated Clarges. He had a
+smattering of music, and not a bad ear.
+
+"Can't get it for the life of me. It's like--I tell you what it's
+like Bovey, its got the same--you know--the same intervals--that's the
+word--that the priests chant in! And then, just when you're thinking it
+has, off it goes into something like opera bouffe or those French rounds
+our nurse used to sing. But isn't it pretty? I say--where's Lady Violet
+now, Bovey, eh? Don't you wish she could see us, see you there, quite
+the pioneer, looking like Queen Elizabeth's giant porter in this queer
+light? and how she would catch up that tune and bring it out on the
+piano, and make ever so much more of it with her clever fingers, first
+like a battle-cry, men marching and marching you know, and then put in a
+wonderful chord that would make us all creep and sigh as she would glide
+into the loveliest nocturne, you know--I say, what a nocturne we're
+having, eh! Do you think it's any livelier now?"
+
+"My boy," said the Hon. Bovyne, solemnly, "You are right, it is a
+nocturne and a wonderful one. I'm not given to expressing myself
+poetically as you know, so I shall content myself with saying that
+its immense, and now will you pass the whiskey? I certainly feel shaky
+to-night, but I shall sleep out here all the same. What are you going to
+do?"
+
+"I prefer to try the house, I think," answered Clarges, and so he did.
+When he was going to bed, heartily grateful that his cousin was as yet
+ignorant of his interference, he looked long and earnestly from his one
+window in the roof at the scene outside before he attempted again the
+process of self-vaccination. He could see the mighty flames of Bovey's
+camp-fire, a first-class fire, well planned and well plied. He could see
+the pale outline of the tent and the dark figure of his cousin wrapped
+in rugs and blankets by the side of the fire. He could see the tall
+pines and the little firs, the glistening line of river and the circles
+of gleaming white stones that marked the garden beds in front. The
+first snow of the year was just beginning to fall in tiny flakelets that
+melted as soon as they touched the ground.
+
+"When they're all covered with snow, it must be pretty," thought
+Clarges. "Like all the Christmas trees in the world put together! The
+winter is beginning, the long cold, constant Canadian winter we have
+heard so much about. Good-bye, dear Lady Violet, good-bye, dear old
+England!" Clarges sat on the side of the bed with his arm ready. But
+the faintness came again, this time with a sickening thrill of frightful
+pain and apprehension, and he rolled over in a deathly swoon with his
+own words ringing in his ears.
+
+When the morning broke, it broke in bright sunshine and with an inch or
+so of snow on the ground. The Hon. Bovyne, though feeling unaccountably
+ill and irritable, was delighted.
+
+"Still I fear we are too late in the season for much camping," he said,
+"I must see Arthur about it."
+
+He waited till ten, eleven, half-past eleven. No Arthur, not even the
+old woman about. He wondered very much. He approached the house,
+and finding nobody coming at his knock, opened the door and went in.
+Something wrong. He knew that at once. The air was stifling, horrible,
+with an unknown quantity in it, it seemed to him. He threw open
+the front room door. _Veuve_ Peter Ross was in her bed, ill, and of
+small-pox. He could tell her that, for certain. He rushed up-stairs and
+found Clarges on his bed, raving, delirious.
+
+What was it he heard?
+
+"Bovey's all right! Bovey's all right?" This was all, repeated over and
+over.
+
+The Hon. Bovyne was neither a fool nor a coward. He tore off his coat
+and looked at his arm, then he dragged his cousin out of the room, down
+the stairs and out of the fatal house. Propping him up against a sturdy
+pine and covering him with all available warm clothing, he sped like
+wind to the nearest house. But neither the swift, keen self-reproaches
+of Bovey, nor the skill of the best physician to be found in the town,
+nor the pure, fresh pine-scented air, nor the yearning perchance of
+a dead yet present mother could prevail. The young life went out in
+delirium and in agony, but "thank God," thought Bovey, "in complete
+unconsciousness."
+
+When he set about removing his tent and other camping apparatus some
+time later, he was suddenly struck with the appearance of the tree
+against which poor Clarges had been propped. He looked again and
+again. "I must be dreaming," said the Hon. Bovyne. "That tree--oh!
+its impossible--nevertheless, that tree has its counterpart in the one
+opposite it, and both have extraordinary branches! They bend upward,
+making a kind of--of--what was it Arthur saw in those imaginary trees of
+his only--_yesterday_--my God--it is true--a kind of lyre shape! There
+it is, and the more I look at it the clearer it grows, and to think he
+has _died_ there--!! And beneath there he is buried, and the raftsmen
+will pass within a few hundred yards of him where he lies, and will sing
+the same strain that so fascinated him, but he will not hear it, and
+learn it and bring it back for Lady Violet, the loveliest woman in
+England! For he has gone down into the eternal shadow that no man ever
+penetrates."
+
+
+
+
+
+The Prisoner Dubois.
+
+
+Miss Cecilia Maxwell was the only child of Sir Robert Maxwell, K. C.
+M. G., member of the Cabinet, chief orator of the Liberal party, and
+understudy for the part of Premier, who, although a Scotchman by birth,
+was a typical Canadian--free, unaffected, honest and sincere. His bushy
+iron-gray hair, his keen gray eyes, his healthy florid color, and the
+well-trimmed black moustache, which gave his face an unusually youthful
+appearance for a man of his age, went with a fine stalwart physique and
+a general bodily conformation apparently in keeping with the ideas of
+early rising, cold ablutions and breakfasts of oatmeal porridge that the
+ingenuous mind is apt to associate with Scotch descent and bringing-up.
+His daughter was a very beautiful girl. Born in the shadow of the pines,
+she had been educated successively in Edinburgh, Brussels and Munich,
+had been presented at Court, been through two London seasons, spent half
+of one winter in South America, another in Bermuda, had been ogled by
+lords, worshipped by artists, and loved by everybody.
+
+Once more in Canada, she took her place in the limited yet exacting
+political circles of the Capital, of Toronto, and of distant Winnipeg.
+Life was full of duties, and she shirked none, though on days when they
+were put away earlier than usual she would fall to musing of the country
+place down the river she had not seen for years, with the beautiful
+woods, and the simple, contented French, and the evenings on the water.
+
+"That great, lonely river," she thought on one occasion, looking idly
+out of her window. "What other river in the world is like it?--and the
+tiny French villages with the red roofs and doors, and the sparkling
+spires and the queer people. Delle Lisbeth, and _veuve_ Macleod, and
+Pierre--poor Pierre. I have never forgotten Pierre, with his solemn eyes
+and beautiful brown hair. And how he knew the flowers in the wood, and
+what were those songs he used to sing?" And Cecilia sang a couple of
+verses of:
+
+  "Un Canadian errant,
+  Banni de ses foyers."
+
+When Sir Robert entered later he found her listless and preoccupied.
+"You mustn't look like that to-night," he said. "Don't forget that this
+is your first important dinner-party: three French members and their
+wives, and La Colombière, the new Minister of Finance, to whom you must
+be as charming as possible. This North-West business is quickening as
+fast as it can. The Métis are really up, there's no doubt about it."
+
+"In rebellion?" asked Cecilia breathlessly. There was an added interest
+in life directly to the imaginative girl.
+
+"Ay," said her father, "there's a rascal at the bottom of it we've been
+after for a long time; but now, run away and look bright at dinner, like
+a good girl."
+
+The small clique of Frenchmen and their wives could not but have been
+charmed with their reception that evening. The dinner was good, and not
+too heavy nor long, the wines excellent (for Sir Robert did not as yet
+favor the "Scott" Act), and the suavity of his manner combined with the
+appearance and grace of his daughter, in a delicate dress of primrose
+and brown, with amber in her beautiful golden plaits and round her
+whitest neck, left nothing to be desired. And yet on that very first
+night in her capacity as hostess, Cecilia found she had to learn to play
+a part, the part of woman, which all women who have just left off being
+girls find so hard to play at first. For naturally the report of the
+Métis revolt had spread. Sir Robert did a brave thing. He referred to it
+directly they were seated, and then everybody felt at ease. Now it could
+be talked about if anybody chose--and Cecilia did so choose.
+
+"Who is this young Frenchman," she asked of La Colombière, "that is
+identified with this new rising? I have been away, and am ignorant of it
+all."
+
+"His name is Dubois--Pierre Dubois," returned La Colombière with
+a gleaming smile. "He calls himself the representative of the
+French-Canadian party. Bah! such men!" But Cecilia's heart had given a
+mighty leap and then stopped, she almost thought, for ever.
+
+"Pierre--Pierre Dubois?" she reiterated in her surprise. Her fan of
+yellow feathers dropped from her lap, and her face showed extraordinary
+interest for a moment.
+
+"You know him M'lle.?" said La Colombière, returning her the fan. For
+an instant she was the centre of attention. Then with a flutter of
+the yellow feathers that subjugated the four impressionable Frenchmen
+completely, she resumed her usual manner.
+
+"I know the name, certainly. There was somebody of that name living at
+Port Joli where we go in the Summer you know."
+
+"Oh!" said Laflamme carelessly, a little man with a bald head and a
+diplomatist's white moustache, "Dubois is not a new offender. He has
+been recognized as an agitator for three or four years. He has the
+eyes of the ox and the wavy hair of the sculptor. He is to be
+admired--_vraiment_--and has the gift of speech."
+
+When the dinner was over Cecilia played for them in the drawing-room.
+Somehow or other, she wandered into the tender yet buoyant melody of the
+_chanson_ she had hummed earlier in the day.
+
+  "Un Canadien errant,
+  Banni de ses foyers."
+
+"Hum-hum," trolled little Laflamme. "So you know our songs? _Ca va
+bien_!"
+
+"That was taught me" said Cecilia, "once down the river at Port Joli."
+But she did not say who had taught her. Later on when the guests were
+gone and Sir Robert was preparing to go back to the office, his daughter
+said very quietly.
+
+"Papa do you remember that young man at Port Joli who was staying with
+the curé for his health, the one who was so kind and showed me so
+many things, the woods, you know and the water, and who talked so
+beautifully?"
+
+"I remember the one you mean, I think, but not his name. Why, dear
+child?"
+
+"His name was Dubois," returned Cecilia. "Pierre Dubois!"
+
+"Dubois? Are you sure? That is very singular" said her father. "And he
+talked beautifully you say? It must be _this_ one."
+
+"That is what I think" said Cecilia, seeing her father to the door.
+
+Then ensued a period of hard work for Cecilia. She read the papers
+assiduously, going up every day to the Parliamentary reading-rooms for
+that purpose that she might lose no aspect of the affair. She followed
+every detail of the rebellion, even possessing herself of many of her
+father's papers bearing on the matter. Those details are well known; how
+the whisper ran through our peaceful land, breathing of war and battle
+and blood-shed; how our gallant men marched to the front in as superb a
+faith and as perfect a manhood as ever troops have shown in this country
+or the Old; how some fell by the way, and how others were reserved to be
+clasped again to the bosoms of wife and mother and how some met with
+the finest fate of all, or at least the most fitting fate for a true
+soldier--death on the battle-field. For a month the country was in
+a delirium. Then joy-bells rang, and bonfires blazed, and hands were
+struck in other hands for very delight that the cause of all the
+mischief, the rebel chief, the traitor Dubois was taken. Cecilia alone
+sat in her room in horror.
+
+"What will they do with the prisoner Dubois?" she said with a vehemence
+that dismayed Sir Robert.
+
+"The prisoner Dubois? Why, they will hang him of course. He has caused
+too much blood to be shed not to have to give some of his own." Cecilia
+writhed as if in extreme pain. Her beauty, her grace, her youth all
+seemed to leave her in a moment, and she stood faded and old before her
+father.
+
+"Oh, they will not do that! Imprison him or send him away--anything,
+anything save that! See, they do not know him--poor Pierre, so kind, so
+good--they do not know him as I knew him. Father, he could not hurt a
+thing--he would step aside from the smallest living thing in the path
+when we walked together that summer, and he helped everybody that wanted
+help, there was nothing he could not do. And he loves his country--at
+least he did so then. There is that song, _'O mon cher Canada_,' he used
+to sing, and he told me of the future of his country, and how he had
+prayed to be allowed to aid it and push it forward. And he does not hate
+the English, only how can he help loving the French more when he is one
+of them, and has good French blood in his veins--better than many of the
+so-called English! And he was born to be a leader and to bring men away
+from their home into battle and make war for them, and where in that
+does he differ from other heroes we are taught to love and admire? If
+you had ever heard him talk, and had seen the people all gathered round
+him when he spoke of all these things--as for his church and the Virgin,
+and the priests, it would be well if you and all of us thought as much
+about our religion, and loved and revered it as he did his!"
+
+Cecilia broke down into incoherent sobs. Sir Robert sat aghast at this
+startling confession. No need to tell him that it was prompted by love.
+
+"But what if he be insane, my dear?" he asked very quietly.
+
+"Then it is still bad--it is worse," said Cecilia. "Will hanging an
+insane man bring back the others that are slain? Will it make foul fair
+and clean still cleaner? Will it bring peace and friendliness, and right
+feeling, or will it bring a fiercer fire and a sharper sword than our
+country has yet seen--a hand-to-hand fight between rival races, a civil
+war based on national distinction!"
+
+"What would you do?" said her father, walking up and down the room.
+"What can I or anybody do? It is common law and common justice; if he be
+found guilty he must swing for it. Personal intercession--"
+
+"Might save him!" said the girl.
+
+"Must not be thought of!" said her father.
+
+"You mean, _you_ may not think of it. But others may--_I_ may. I am a
+woman, free and untrammelled by either party or personal considerations
+of any kind. Father, let _me_ try!"
+
+"Cecilia, it is madness to take such a thing upon yourself. How is it
+possible? What are your plans?"
+
+"I do not know. I have not thought. All is in a haze through which I see
+that vision of the hangman and the rope Father, let me try!"
+
+Sir Robert thought for a moment, then he said: "Very well, my dear, you
+shall try, on one condition; that first of all you have an interview
+with Dubois himself. In fact, for your purpose it is absolutely
+necessary that you should see him, in order to identify him with the
+other Dubois you used to know. After that interview, if you still
+persist in your course, I promise--rash as it certainly seems--to help
+you. Now hold yourself in readiness to start for the North-West at a
+moment's notice. I have private information that tells me Dubois will be
+hung and any intervention on your part or that of anybody else must be
+set on foot immediately, do you see?"
+
+A few days afterwards Cecilia, unveiled, and dressed in an
+irreproachable walking costume of gray, was taken to the gloomy prison
+outside the little northern town of ----, where the prisoner Dubois was
+confined. There was a bit of tricolor in her hat and her cheeks were
+very pale--As the beautiful daughter of Sir Robert Maxwell her way was
+sufficiently paved with politeness as she presented her private order
+to see the prisoner. Her heart was beating tumultuously and the
+blood surged round her temples. The turnkey showed her into a small
+whitewashed room, opposite the cell in which Dubois spent his time and
+informed her that in compliance with strict orders he would have to be
+present during the interview, to which Cecilia bent her head in assent;
+she could not have spoken just then. "It is a strange thing that I am
+doing," she thought, "but I shall see Pierre--poor Pierre." Approaching
+footsteps were soon heard and the prisoner Dubois entered, escorted by
+two warders. He started when he saw his visitor, and--stared.
+
+"Mademoiselle,--" he said, evidently trying to recall her name and
+failing.
+
+"Cecile," she said, eagerly, "Ma'amselle Cecile you always called
+me, and I liked it so much better than Cecilia. I think I like it
+still--Pierre--I--."
+
+The prisoner Dubois frowned.
+
+"If Mdme. Dubois had ears through these walls, you had not called me
+'Pierre.' But--" laying his hand on his heart and bowing low, "Pierre
+himself is flattered--_oui, mademoiselle_--by your attention--_oui,
+vraiment_--and he is rejoiced to know that his image is still cherished
+in that heart so fair, so _Anglaise_, so pure, so good. _Belle-enfant,
+Je n'ai pas oublié nos amours_!"
+
+The three men in the room suppressed a smile. Dubois stood with his head
+thrown back, his arms folded and his soft dark eyes fixed on Cecilia.
+She was still standing, indeed there was no chair in the room, and her
+eyes were fixed on him as his upon herself. It was Pierre, and yet not
+her Pierre. Rather an exaggerated growth--of the man she had once known.
+The same soft brown hair, only thicker and rougher, one drooping wave
+looking tangled and unkempt--the dreamy eyes with the latent sneer
+in them dreamier than ever and yet the sneer more visible, the
+thin sensitive nose thinner, the satisfied mouth more satisfied and
+conscious, the weak chin fatally weaker. And he was married, too! Mdme.
+Dubois--that must be his wife! How strange it was! Cecilia's brain was
+in a frightful state of doubt and fever and hesitation. It was necessary
+for her to explain her presence there, however, for she could not but
+resent the opening speech of the prisoner Dubois. She was growing very
+tired of standing, moreover, but she would have died rather than have
+demanded a chair. At length the turnkey observed her fatigue and sent
+one of the warders for a chair.
+
+"Fetch two," interposed Dubois, with a flourish of his hand. "I myself
+shall sit down." When the man returned, bringing only one chair on the
+plea that he could not find another, Cecilia, whose nerve was returning,
+offered it to Dubois. He accepted it calmly and sat down upon it,
+waiting to hear what she had to say. At this signal instance of arch
+selfishness Cecilia felt her heart tighten and her temples grow cold as
+if fillets of fire had been exchanged for ribbons of snow.
+
+"Sir," she began, "I am sorry to find you here." Dubois smiled the smile
+of a great man who listens with condescension to what an inferior has
+to say. "I am glad you have not forgotten me, because all the time I
+was away, and it has been a long time, I never--it is quite true--forgot
+you--I mean (for Dubois smiled again) I never forgot that summer you
+spent near us at Port Joli, and the things you talked about, about your
+future. When I came home I found you had gone so much further than I
+know you ever intended to, and have been the cause of so much trouble,
+and the death of brave men, and I was very sorry." Cecilia leant on the
+bare table before her, and felt that every moment as it passed brought
+with it a cooling of the once passionate feeling she had entertained for
+the Dubois of her childhood. But if the lover were gone, there remained
+the man, husband and father, maybe the leader, the orator, the martyr,
+the dear human being.
+
+"So I thought that if it were possible at all, some step should be
+taken to--to prevent the law from taking its course--its final course
+perhaps." Cecilia felt her throat tighten as she spoke. "You have plenty
+of friends--you must have--all the French will help and many, many
+English, for it is no cause to die for, it is no cause at all! There
+should never have been bloodshed on either side!"
+
+Dubois uncrossed his long legs at last and said in his loftiest tone:
+
+"_Chère enfant_, the French will not let me die. I--I myself--Pierre
+Dubois--allowed to hang by the neck until I am dead! That will never
+happen. _Voyez-vous donc chérie_, I am their King, their prophet, their
+anointed, their fat priests acknowledge me, their women adore me!"
+
+Cecilia shrunk together as she listened. She had sought and she had not
+found, she had expected and it had been denied her. At this moment, the
+turnkey signified that time was up. She felt her heart burning in an
+agony of undefined grief and disappointment in which was also mingled
+the relief of resignation. The prisoner Dubois bowed low with his hand
+on his heart and then pressing her own hand lingeringly, gave her a
+tenderly insinuating glance. As she turned away she heard him exchange
+a laugh and a jest with one of the wardens, and her cheeks flamed with
+indignant anger. "Were he a good or suffering man as I dreamed he was, I
+would have bent low and kissed his hand; as it was, I am sorry I let him
+take mine."
+
+She was calm when she reached her carriage in which sat her father
+waiting. He divined at once that his plan had been successful. "You look
+tired, my dear," was all he said.
+
+"Yes, I have been standing for some time," Cecilia returned in a
+peculiar voice.
+
+"Could they not find you a chair in the establishment?"
+
+"They found one," she said grimly, "and that was appropriated by the
+prisoner Dubois."
+
+"The prisoner Dubois!" thought Sir Robert. "It is well. We shall hear no
+more of Pierre."
+
+Two days before Christmas the prisoner Dubois underwent the extreme
+penalty of the law. Cecilia sat in her room all that day. She never
+quite made up her mind as to whether Pierre had been a lunatic or
+a fanatic, a martyr or a fiend, an inspired criminal or a perverted
+enthusiast. Perhaps he was a mixture of all.
+
+
+
+
+
+How the Mr. Foxleys Came, Stayed and Never Went Away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+There flows in Western Canada, by which I mean a region east of the
+Saskatchewan and west of the Thousand Islands, a singular and beautiful
+stream. It is beautiful because it is narrow, undulating and shallow,
+because it has graceful curves and rounded bends, because its banks are
+willow-clad and its bed boulder-strewn, because it flows along between
+happy farms and neat white villages, because at one spot, it boasts
+a picturesque and ruined mill and a moss-covered bridge and
+because--chiefly because--it is above all things--placid. The mind
+familiar with our Canadian streams will easily understand then, that
+if these be its attributes of beauty, they also attest to its claim
+of singularity. For the Canadian river is seldom placid, but oftener
+seething and steaming and foaming; or else deep and dark and dangerous
+with many a mighty gorge and tumbling cascade, wide and lonely and
+monotonous for the most part; pine hung down to the very edge, black
+and lowering, or displaying waving wisps of dry gray foliage that only
+resembles human hair. What a contrast, then, does this cherished river
+I speak of, afford! No local Laureate has as yet written it up, though
+picnic parties used to gather themselves together on its banks and in
+its well-wooded shades, defiling everything they touched from bark to
+beach, leaving bits of bread here, dead pie there, buttering the leaves,
+peppering the grass, salting the stones, and scattering greasy crumpled
+paper--PAPER--PAPER--everywhere. That is what picnic parties do all over
+the world, and with such gusto all of them, even the Sunday-schools,
+Dorcases, W. C. T. U's. and all the rest of them, that I really think it
+must be intended as a serious part of the Picnicker's Ritual and forms
+very likely a peace-offering or sacrifice of propitiation towards some
+unknown God. I don't think the Druids left paper about underneath their
+oaks. But presumably they left worse. Well, if as yet, this river I love
+so well has not been immortalized in fiction, travels or verse, it has
+however attracted the attention of several gifted members of the Royal
+Academy--Royal Canadian of course, who have from time to time
+invaded its peaceful shores and stuffing themselves into adjacent
+if inconvenient farmhouses, sketched it in water and oil, in the
+common-place pencil, and the more ambitious charcoal. The results are
+charming and you may see them any day in the studios of our foremost
+artists or in the picture dealers' windows or haply on the terra-cotta
+tinted walls of our esteemed collectors, the retired grocers of
+Montreal, or the aesthetic lawyers of a more western and more ambitious
+city. Still though the sketches are charming both in conception and
+execution, I, were I a Canadian artist, eager to secure Canadian
+subjects for my pencil, would hardly choose this particular river as one
+likely to give the most correct idea of Canadian scenery. No, I would
+chose the St. Maurice or the Richelieu, the Lièvre or the Saguenay, the
+Ottawa or portions of the St. Lawrence, with the grim Azoic rocks, the
+turbulent rapids and the somber pines. What a superb river system it is!
+Tell them off on your fingers and you'll have to go on borrowing from
+them afterwards and then all over again. Think of all those rivers that
+cluster in the French Canada and feed the mighty Gulf of St. Lawrence.
+There are the Ottawa, the Gatineau, the Rideau, the Richelieu, the
+Lièvre, the Matanne, the Metapedia, the Métis, the Saguenay. Those are
+the ones we know. Then look at the Peribonka, the Maniconagan, all the
+Ste. Anne's, all the Rouge or Red rivers, the Du Moine, the Coalonge,
+the Vermilion, the St. Francis. Then, look at that cluster of great
+Saxon named streams, the Churchill, the Nelson, the Severn, the English,
+the Albany! Lastly, glance at the magnificent Saskatchewan with the
+historic streams of Battle and Qu'Appelle Rivers! And now I have omitted
+the Athabasca, the Peace, the Moose and the Assiniboine! There is no end
+to them; they defy enumeration while they invite it.
+
+Now, most of these Canadian rivers are Azoic in character; hence their
+grim and formidable beauty. But my river has nothing the least Azoic
+about it. It belongs to a more recent, a more comfortable, more placid,
+more satisfying a formation. It is as idyllic a stream as any English
+one that Tennyson noted in a contemplative ramble to work up later into
+the "Brook."
+
+Crossing the moss-grown bridge I have alluded to, a gradual ascent
+presents itself on the opposite side, of firm white road well
+macadamized and leading through small neat low houses, each with a
+little garden in front, to a church with a needle-like spire on the
+top of the hill, and the parson's house adjoining. On a June day,
+for example, it made a pleasant picture. Pastoral and prosperous the
+landscape, contented the people on foot, in the fields, at the windows,
+and most delightful of all--a certain Old World haze hanging over it.
+
+This is what struck the Mr. Foxleys, driving out slowly from the town
+one Saturday afternoon. George, the elder, pale with dark hair, lay back
+in the phaeton with folded arms. Joseph, the younger, fair-haired
+and freckled, sat up, driving. They had hardly exchanged a word since
+entering the phaeton. For eight miles they had proceeded in almost
+perfect silence. This did not mean that they were out of sorts, or not
+on pleasant terms with one another. On the contrary, it proved that they
+were the very best of friends, and never bored each other. I may as well
+say at once that they were Englishmen, which was easy to gather from
+their picturesque and unusual attire of neat gray small-clothes meeting
+gray stockings at the knee, low white shoes, a striped blue and white
+flannel shirt and canoe-shaped hats of gray, each bearing a snow-white
+"puggree" with blue and gold fringed ends. Such was the outward adorning
+of the Mr. Foxleys. Behind the phaeton ran a pretty brown retriever
+answering to the name of "Bess," and laid across the floor of the little
+carriage were a couple of walking canes, a couple of fishing rods and
+a gun case strapped together, while under the seat was a medium-sized
+portmanteau, and a peculiar long box with a leather handle. The eight
+miles having been traversed by them in silence, George, the elder, broke
+it by remarking, as they slackened their pace, before advancing over the
+bridge, "This is better."
+
+"Very much so. Rather. I should think so," answered Joseph, the younger,
+who had a slightly more lively manner than his brother, and very
+laughing eyes. "It looks a little more like the--the Old Country."
+
+The elder brother made no reply. A kind of weary smile flitted across
+his face instead.
+
+"It's a little bit after--Devonshire, don't you think?" went on Joseph,
+surveying the green meadows, the neat painted fences, the sleeping cows,
+the rising uplands in the distance leaning lovingly next the sky,
+the bridge, the distant church, and the placid narrow river with the
+overhanging willows and the stony amber floor.
+
+"A long way after," said George, without unfolding his arms or looking
+around him at all. He was gazing straight before him.
+
+"But you don't half see the beauty of it," said the younger brother,
+stopping the horse and standing up in the phaeton, "especially after
+that horrid eight miles of half-cleared ugly-stumpy stubble! This is
+really beautiful, such soft lines you know and little corners--oh!
+quite English!" Some of his enthusiasm reached the quieter brother, who
+apparently roused himself and looked around as directed. A faint pink
+came into his pale cheeks, a new gleam into the weary eyes, "Well, it is
+_better_, as I said before--you'll remember, I noticed it first--but not
+English."
+
+"Well, not English altogether of course, I know," said Joseph gathering
+up his reins, "but its a jolly spot enough whatever it is, and--I say,
+look at that now, that oak, on the other side of the road, in front of
+that little cottage, we'll be up with it now in a minute."
+
+"By Jove, what a splendid tree!" Now I do not in the least wonder at the
+Mr. Foxleys stopping opposite this mighty oak to admire it, because I
+myself am quite familiar with it and have seen it scores of times, and
+must agree with them in pronouncing it one of the finest trees I have
+ever seen anywhere. Of course it has no story attached to it that the
+world knows, at least it never talked that I am aware of, never hid or
+screened anybody of importance--or anything of that sort--so naturally
+it has little or no interest about it. And yet, for that very reason,
+it is so much easier to think of it as a tree, to consider it and admire
+it, and learn to love and understand it just as a tree. So the Mr.
+Foxleys thought, as they gazed at its monstrous trunk, its glorious
+branches of deep, dark glossy green with here and there an upstart arm
+of glowing bronze or a smaller shoot of younger yellow.
+
+"It might have grown in the _Manor Park_!" said the younger brother
+airily with a keen sense of pleasure in the suggestion.
+
+"It might have grown in the _Manor Park_, as you say", rejoined the
+elder brother gravely.
+
+Then they went on again, slowly up the hill, that they might the better
+examine the church, the parsonage and the road beyond. What they wanted
+now was an Inn. Presently they espied one, just on the other side of a
+tiny bridge spanning a tinier brook. It was no upstart brick building of
+flaring red with blind white windows and a door flush with the street,
+a dirty stable at one side and a ragged kitchen garden at the other. But
+low and white and irregular with a verandah running along in front, it
+had red curtains that would draw over the lower halves of the windows
+and hints of chintz at the upper portions; the door was open and
+revealed a tall clock in the hall, a stand of flowers, and a cat asleep
+in a large round chair; at one side a flight of steps led down to the
+kitchen door at which a buxom maid in bare arms stood in a pink gown and
+a pinker face, and at the other side was the boarded square that held
+the pump--the village pump--around which were gathered five or six
+bare-footed children, the hostler of the Inn, the village butcher,
+tailor, and cobbler. A sign swung out from the verandah.
+
+"The Ipswich Inn, by M. Cox," said the younger Mr. Foxley. Then he
+looked at his brother. His brother looked at him. They understood one
+another at once, and Joseph pulled up in good style at the door. The
+hostler, dressed in old corduroy and with a fiddle under his arm, sprang
+forward to assist them. He dropped his H's. "Delightful," cried Mr.
+Joseph. So did the landlady, a cheery person of about fifty in a silk
+apron. The brothers were so content that they remained all night, "to
+look at the place."
+
+Next morning, endless surprises awaited and greeted them. They found
+that the large room in front was a kind of drawing-room, in which
+rose-leaves, china-bowls, old engravings, a shining mahogany book-case,
+and a yellow-keyed piano atoned for the shortcomings of funeral
+horsehair and home-made carpets. They thought it on the whole a charming
+room, only to be eclipsed by the kitchen. For the kitchen, which was
+underneath the ground floor and nearly the entire size of the house, was
+therefore very spacious and comfortable, possessing three large
+pantries and an out-house or summer kitchen; besides, moreover, it was
+dark-raftered, ham-hung, with willow-pattern slates in a neat dresser,
+and peacock feathers over the high mantel; with, in one corner--the
+darkest--a covered well, into which I used to see myself the beautiful
+golden pats of butter lowered twice a week in summer time. One window,
+a small one, curtained with chintz and muslin drawn on a string, looked
+out on a small terraced garden at the back leading to an orchard; the
+other window, large and long, with twelve small panes and no curtains at
+all, adjoined the door opening on the court or yard at the side of the
+house. This yard was paved irregularly with grey stone slabs, between
+which the grass had wedged itself, with an occasional root of the
+persistent and omnipresent dandelion; it contained a cistern, a table
+with flower-pots, a parrot in one cage, a monkey in another, garden
+implements, rods, buckets, tins and tubs! A pleasant untidiness
+prevailed in the midst of irreproachably clean and correct surroundings,
+and the Mr. Foxleys having finished their breakfast up-stairs in the
+public dining-room--a bare, almost ugly apartment, devoid of anything
+in furniture or appointments to make it homelike, except a box of
+mignonette set in the side-window, looked longingly out at the little
+paved court-yard beneath. They had had the most delicious rasher of
+ham, eggs _sans peur et sans reproche_, some new and mysterious kind of
+breakfast cake, split and buttered while hot, and light and white inside
+as it was golden and glazed outside, and three glasses of fresh milk
+each! They had been waited on by the buxom girl in a blue gown this
+time, against which her arms looked pinker than ever, and during the
+meal the landlady of the inn had looked in, with her hands too floury
+and her mind too full of coming loaves to do more than inquire generally
+as to their comfort. Looking over the mignonette, Mr. Joseph Foxley
+espied her presently talking to the parrot and tending the monkey. This
+was more than the frivolous Mr. Joseph could stand. He took his brother
+and made a tour of the house accordingly, discovering in turn as I
+have said the drawing-room, the kitchen, the court-yard, the garden and
+orchard and lastly the bar! _That_ proved the most comfortable, most
+enticing room of all. More red curtains, at the windows and over one
+door, an old-fashioned hearth paved with red brick and bearing even
+in June a couple of enormous logs against the possible cold of a
+rainy evening, two cases of stuffed birds, a buffalo's head over the
+fireplace, colored prints of Love Lies Bleeding, Stocks and Bachelor's
+Buttons, and over all, that odour of hot lemons and water, with
+something spirituous beyond, that completely won the refractory heart
+of the elder Mr. Foxley and caused him to drop down in a chair by the
+hearth with an incoherent expression of wonder and relief that did not
+escape his brother.
+
+"How long shall we say, George," he asked. "She will want to know,
+because there are other men who come out here from town occasionally it
+seems, and of course it's only fair to let her know about the room.
+
+"What shall I say?" Mr. George Foxley crossed his long legs in evident
+comfort and took in the entire room in a smiling gaze before he
+answered. Outside it was beautifully quiet, in front of the house. From
+the back there came the faintest sounds of crow and cackle and farm-yard
+stir just audible, from the kitchen rose cheerful laughter, and merry
+voices, the smell of baking, and a fainter odor of herbs. Milly, the
+girl, in the blue gown, passed with a milk pail in either hand. She
+looked in shyly. Mr. Joseph waved his hand gallantly then laughed. Then
+Mr. George said, very slowly.
+
+"Say? Oh, say that we will take the room--the one we have now, you
+know--for the rest of the Summer."
+
+"That is, you will take it, and remain here, while I knock about in town
+and come out on Saturdays or whenever I can," said Joseph.
+
+"Exactly," said his brother.
+
+That afternoon Mr. Joseph returned to town in the neat hired phaeton
+leaving his brother in full possession of the charming and comfortable
+Inn. In a couple of days he came back, this time in the stage that
+passed through Ipswich three times a week, and bringing with him a
+couple of English trunks and a stout portmanteau. Thus the Mr. Foxleys
+entered upon life in earnest in this dear placid little village, not far
+from the river described in the beginning of my story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The Mr. Foxleys, after a week's sojourn or so at the Ipswich Inn, made a
+mutual discovery. This was, that not only were the landlady of the Inn,
+her son and the ostler all of English origin and descent, but that the
+entire village appeared to be populated by people of English extraction.
+The butcher was a Englishman, the blacksmith was a Cockney answering to
+the name of 'Enry Ide, the cobbler was from South Devon somewhere,
+and the parson was an undergraduate of Oxford. The farmers were mostly
+Scotch, and the village store-keeper was David Macpherson. The driver
+of the stage was an Irishman, and the sexton of the pretty church on
+the hill was an odd product of that odd corner of the world known as
+the Isle of Man. Certainly the two brothers found and made themselves at
+home. Milly perhaps was the only native Canadian that came in their way.
+It was a thoroughly British settlement, and it is a noteworthy fact
+that the only well-to-do man in the place was an American. It was he
+who lived in the square, red brick house with white blinds always pulled
+down, even in soft welcome spring days, and with plaster casts of lions
+and deer couchant on futile little wooden pedestals in the garden. It
+was he who owned the new and prosperous mill which had superseded the
+worn-out one lower down the stream, the old mill that the artists loved,
+and that reminded the Mr. Foxley's of home. It was he who owned the only
+family carriage in the neighborhood, other people had "buggies." It was
+his daughter who had been sent to New York for her education--who now
+appeared in church on Sundays, in muslin costumes garnished with a
+greater number of yards of ribbons in myriads of bows and ends than the
+village store had ever possessed at one time in its life. It was he who
+once or twice a year walked as far as the Inn and sitting down stiffly
+in the stiff dining room would hold a short conversation with the
+landlady on village matters and subjects in general. On these occasions
+the good woman was secretly amused and not a little bored. She knew
+gentlemen when she saw them and he was not one--that is, he was not one
+according to her knowledge of types. The aristocracy of money was as
+yet a phase unknown to her simple English mind accustomed to move in
+traditional and accepted groves. So not much interchange of civilities
+took place between the mill and the Inn. Not for Mr. Simon P. Rattray
+did the oleanders blossom in the big green tubs and the wall-flowers and
+mignonette in the windows. Not for him did the Jessamine climb and the
+one hawthorn tree at the back gate leading to the orchard yield its
+sweet white May, not for him did the tall clock strike and the parrot
+talk. Talk!! Why, the only time the creature was ever known to be quiet
+was when Mr. Simon P. Rattray made his portentous visits twice or three
+times a year. And as for the hidden sweetness of the drawing-room or
+the comforts of the kitchen or the fascinations of the bar, Mr. Simon P.
+Rattray knew nothing whatever about them. He was a total abstainer you
+see, and the blue ribbon appeared in his buttonhole on certain important
+ceremonial days and even on Sundays, and he was known to be interested
+in the fortunes of a cold, dismal little place built of plaster and
+presided over by a male Methodist just outside the village limits, known
+as a "Temperance Hotel." It will be easily gathered that the advent
+of the Mr. Foxleys did not affect the fortunes of such a person as
+Mr. Simon P. Rattray, nor was their subsequent career as residents
+in Ipswich affected in any way by his existence, prejudices or
+peculiarities. But to the remaining portions of the village, their
+arrival proved full of interest The landlady took them to her heart at
+once. They were _gentlemen_, she said, and that was enough for her. Her
+son, a heavy lout, unlike his mother, accepted them as he did everything
+and everybody by remaining outwardly profoundly unconscious of their
+existence; the hostler adored them, especially Mr. Joseph; when the
+latter was there, which he was every Saturday till Monday, he would
+stroll over the stable with Squires--that was the hostler's name--joking
+incessantly, and treating the latter to an occasional cigar. Urbane
+Mr. Joseph would joke with anybody, Mr. George was more severe and had
+according to the landlady, the most perfect and distinguished manners.
+
+"What they call _hawtoor_ in the Family Herald," she told Milly, "only
+I never see it gone too far with." Milly of course was in love with them
+both.
+
+In time, the entire village succumbed to the charms of the Mr. Foxleys.
+The parson called, accompanied by his eldest daughter who was the
+organist of the choir and chief promoter of the Sunday-school. They
+found the objects of their social consideration seated outside the
+kitchen in the little paved yard that had rapidly grown dear. When the
+brothers appeared upstairs in the drawing-room into which rose-scented
+and chintz-hung apartment the reverend Mr. and Miss had been shown in
+appreciation of their station, Mr. Joseph had tuned his laughing eye to
+a decorum as new as it was unnatural. It was a hot day in August and Mr.
+George was so excessively languid and long and speechless that but for
+his brother conversation would have been an impossibility. But he and
+the parson soon discovered mutual friends at home, a cousin in the
+Engineers, and a friendly coach at the University.
+
+"Charles James Foxley? Oh! I knew him well, very well" said the Rev. Mr.
+Higgs, referring to the latter. "It is a somewhat--ah--unusual name.
+The only other time I remember meeting with the name was once--let me
+see--it was a meet, I think, at Foxley Manor, in Derbyshire it was, and
+a very beautiful place."
+
+"In Nottinghamshire," said Mr. Joseph smiling. "Yes, that is--or
+was--our home. My father still resides there."
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. ----. "Is it possible! And you have come out here?
+Really, it is most interesting, most fortunate that you should
+have chosen our little village, should have pitched your tent so to
+speak--ah! quite so."
+
+"My brother likes the country," said Mr. Joseph.
+
+"Ah! yes, quite so. And there is much to see in this new country, in
+Canada, much to see. You will remain some time?"
+
+"We will remain as long as it suits my brother," said Mr. Joseph. "At
+present, we can hardly tell."
+
+"Quite so, quite so. I hope--I am sure my daughter concurs in the hope,
+that we shall see you in church as often as you can come and also--ah!
+at the Rectory. Such society as we can give you here you may be assured
+we will endeavor to give with all our--ah! heart to the best of our
+ability."
+
+"Thanks very much" returned Mr. Joseph. "I am sure my brother and I will
+be exceedingly glad to go and see you at the Rectory. About church I
+will say that we never go very regularly anywhere, but when it isn't too
+hot, too hot, you know, or too cold, or anything of that sort, I am sure
+we'll try to turn up there as well."
+
+The rector, smiled indulgently. No call to be hard on the Mr. Foxleys,
+of Foxley Manor. Miss Maria left the Inn smitten for the fiftieth time.
+
+"I knew I should marry an Englishman," she exclaimed ecstatically up the
+road with her father.
+
+"The dark one, oh! the dark one!"
+
+"They are somewhat peculiar young men I fancy, Maria. Of course Mrs.
+Cox is a very careful and a very good woman and--ah! her place is a very
+respectable and comfortable one, and the order of travellers one meets,
+that is, one would meet if one went there, is quite proper indeed,
+but still, I thought, mind I do not say anything, I do not express any
+opinion Maria, I simply say, I _thought_, that they would have smoked
+for instance in the dinning-room or the bar, or on the verandah
+instead of in that very conspicuous manner just outside the kitchen
+door." But this was the first and last stricture that the rector made
+as to the conduct of the Mr. Foxleys, for by appearing in church two
+Sundays after his call and spending an evening on the vine-covered
+verandah of the pretty Rectory, they were speedily entered in the very
+best books kept by that worthy if slightly common-place gentleman and
+his gushing daughter.
+
+The next persons of distinction in the village were the Miss Dexters,
+who lived with their father, at one time a prominent medical man, in
+the little cottage graced by the presence of the mighty oak which had so
+charmed the strangers when they first beheld it. Their father was
+old, very old indeed, and slightly shaken in his mind. He was also an
+Englishman and the daughters, not daring to enter upon life in town
+with their small income and a helpless old man on their hands into the
+bargain had retired to the country some ten years before the advent
+of the Mr. Foxleys. Charlotte the elder was now forty and Ellen over
+thirty-five. Neither of them had ever been beautiful and now they
+were, more or less pinched and worn in their aspect, but they were
+gentlewomen, neat and sweet spoken, and capable of offering small
+evening entertainments of cribbage and hot weak tea with bread and
+butter with a gracious and well bred air that marked them off as people
+who had seen "better times." God help such all over the world and thank
+Him too for the colonies, where such people can retreat without being
+said to hide, and live down their misfortunes or their follies or their
+weaknesses, and be of some use to others after a while! It would be hard
+to say why the Mr. Foxleys went as often as they did, especially Mr.
+Joseph--to the Miss Dexters for tea. Perhaps the oak had much to do with
+it.
+
+It had something I am sure, for indeed, it was the most beautiful tree
+for miles around and it was worth a good deal to sit under its cool
+shade in the Summer afternoons or to look up into its dark vault in the
+slowly dusking twilights. I can't defend Mr. Joseph further than this.
+For between cribbage and choir practice, Sunday rambles in the woods and
+rows on the river, the lending of books and the singing of songs, the
+handing of bread and butter and the drinking of tea, Mr. Joseph had
+caused both the Miss Dexters to fall hopelessly and indeed fatally in
+love with him. When the Xmas holidays came, Joseph, who had a clerkship
+in town, spent his vacation naturally at the Inn with his brother, and
+then ensued a period of very mixed delight for the Miss Dexters.
+
+For the callous Joseph made as violent love to the unresisting Miss
+Higgs over the Xmas tree and carols as she herself would have chosen to
+make to Mr. George had she been given the chance.
+
+As for Mr. George, he was just as languid and silent as ever. He hardly
+ever went into the town at all, but preferred to remain on quietly at
+the inn, fishing, shooting and taking long walks in the summer days when
+it was fine, and when it rained, lounging in Mrs. Cox's kitchen. Here he
+always had his meals, for the kind friend he had found in his landlady
+gratified every whim, and any fancy he chose to profess, and cooked
+for him, washed for him and waited on him with unceasing and in fact
+ever-increasing devotion. Mr. Foxley's shirts and Mr. Foxley's socks,
+Mr. Foxley's white coats and Mr. Foxley's jane boots, his dog, his gun,
+and his effects generally were all sacred, all in irreproachable order,
+all objects of the greatest value and interest to Mrs. Cox and her
+niece. You see there were no children in this comfortable _ménage_
+and really, when the baking and the washing and the preserving and
+the churning were all done with early in the day or in the week there
+remained a good deal of time on Mrs. Cox's hands, which in her earnest
+womanly heart she felt she must fill up in some way. So it came that
+all this time and energy and devotion were after a while centred on Mr.
+George Foxley, late of Foxley Manor, Notts. As for Mr. Joseph, the good
+woman oftener told him to "go along!" than anything else, for though
+she liked him, his love of mischief and several practical jokes he had
+played her which she termed "his ways," had rendered her cautious and a
+little distrustful of him. Such an existence proved very charming to
+all parties concerned, excepting perhaps the Miss Dexters, and their
+companion in misery, at the rectory. For the worst of it was, Xmas
+passed and Easter came, and another spring dawned for the pretty little
+village of Ipswich and found the Mr. Foxleys still there. They never
+spoke of going away and nobody hinted it to them. The impression,
+natural in the extreme, that they were a couple of wealthy young
+Englishmen going about for pleasure, who just happening to come to
+Ipswich and being taken with it had stayed a little longer than they
+intended, was fast giving way to another. For it was a well-known fact
+that the Mr. Foxleys did not spend too much money either on themselves
+or on other people. They paid their way and that was all one could say
+about them. Squires was not included in this arrangement, however, but
+was forced to remain content with cigars, cast-off studs and a present
+at Christmas-time of a collie pup. I grieve to think of those poor Miss
+Dexters--foolish souls--going without butter on their bread and sugar
+in their tea that they might have both to offer Mr. Joseph when he might
+come in airily for a cup, and making their already too thin gowns last
+another winter, that they might spend a little money on a smoking cap
+for the same gentleman and a pair of knitted wristlets for his brother.
+All these tokens of friendship and attachment the brothers accepted
+in the most charming and unconcerned way and never troubled themselves
+about returning the compliment as we say. It was quite true that they
+had not much money, but a little management of what they did possess
+would have left a small sum over each year, which might have been
+expended on say a pair of fur-lined gloves for Charlotte or a canary
+for Ellen, who was fond of pets and used to keep Bess with her for days,
+feeding the unconscious animal for its master's sake better than she
+was fed herself. And all this time Mr. Joseph never proposed and never
+hinted at his prospects or affairs in any way whatever!
+
+The second summer of his stay saw old Mr. Dexter die. After his death
+Ellen drooped visibly. General disgust at life, insufficient food and
+sleep, and a hopeless passion for Mr. Joseph sapped a naturally weak
+constitution, and her sister soon realized another bitter shock when she
+helped Ellen to her bed one sultry September night from which she never
+rose again. The windows of the little cottage were open, and the unhappy
+girl could see the giant oak outside their door. How often she had sat
+there with her cruel friend, her hand on his shoulder, and her eyes
+fixed on his sharp, clear-cut features and laughing eyes! He had seemed
+so gentle, so earnest, so winning--had talked so cleverly, so hopefully,
+so gleefully. He had been the sunshine of her life, and alas!--of
+Charlotte's too! Each knew the other's secret, but by intuitive sympathy
+they had never alluded to it. They referred to him only as "Mr. Joseph,"
+and on her death-bed Ellen sent her "kindest wishes to Mr. Joseph." She
+lingered till near the Christmas season, and then one day a small packet
+per English mail arrived. They occasionally heard from friends in
+the Old Country, and this special parcel contained a couple of silk
+handkerchiefs and a sprig of holly. Charlotte took them up to her in the
+evening, spreading them out on the bed. Ellen sat up, eagerly pressing
+the holly to her lips. Alas! what were the recollections it brought that
+the poor, weak frame and the poor, tired spirit could not brook them?
+Perhaps--not perhaps--O most certainly, most truly of home and of
+England; of the mother so long vanished, dimly remembered, almost
+forgotten; of winding green lanes and of ivied walls, of little solemn
+churchyards--in none of which she would never lie; of peeps of blue sea
+from the middle of a wood; of a primrose at the foot of a tree; of the
+crowded coach and the sounding horn; and lastly of the recreant one whom
+she could not even call her lover, but who had made her love him so that
+her very life was eaten away by sickness of fear, of apprehension, of
+despair!
+
+With the holly pressed to her lips, Ellen Dexter passed out of this
+world into another.
+
+Did Mr. Joseph Foxley care? Who knows? I should know if anybody ever
+did, but I do not hold Mr. Joseph so very much to blame after all. For
+a man is often innocent of love-making at the very moment a woman is
+fancying herself violently in love with him, and fancying, moreover,
+that he is in love with her. Can anything be more fatal, more
+pernicious, more terrible? And yet I believe there is nothing more
+common. There are some men who press more tenderly than the requirements
+of ordinary social intercourse call for or allow, the hand of every
+woman they meet They are not necessarily flirts. Perhaps they never go
+farther than that clinging hand-pressure. It is a relic of the customs
+of the days of chivalry--a little more and this man will kiss the
+hand. Let the lady be beautiful, gracious, the hour dusk, or close on
+midnight, the room a pretty one, and the environment pleasing, he will
+bend over the hand, and if he does not kiss it he will retain it just
+long enough to make her wish he had kissed it. If she is a woman of the
+world she will laugh as she returns the pressure, making it purposely as
+thrilling as she can--then she will forget it completely the next moment
+as she dispenses five o'clock tea or late coffee and cake to her husband
+or brother. But if she be not a woman of the world, then God help her
+on her tear-wet pillow, or before her slowly-dying fire as she thinks
+of that hand-pressure. It is enough to last her all her life, she
+thinks--and yet, should it not come again? But--_should_ it come again!
+And the pillow is wet with fresh tears, or the brow is prematurely
+wrinkled watching the decaying embers, while the man--let us do him
+justice--is as blindly unconscious--unconscious! Why, at that very
+moment he is making love--what _he_ calls making love--to the woman of
+his choice, his wife, his mistress, or his _fiancée_! These are the
+men who do the most mischief in the world. Your brute, your beast, your
+groveller in ditches, is not nearly so dangerous. Women recoil from him.
+They understand him. But the man who presses their hand awakes them,
+rouses their susceptibility, causes the tender trouble to steal over
+them that so often ends in grief, or despair, or death! And this is
+because neither sex is as yet properly trained in the vital duty of
+responsibility, by which I mean that faculty of self-repression which
+will cause a woman to try and understand what a man means when he
+presses her hand, and cause the man to try and understand what a woman
+feels when he does so. As for poor Ellen Dexter, it is dear that she was
+not a woman of the world; but her sister Charlotte and Miss Maria at
+the Rectory, if not precisely women of the world, were yet made of
+much sterner stuff than she had been, and consequently, after much
+reflection, decided that they were not going to be made fools of, in
+village parlance. Miss Maria had, of course, long ago given up Mr.
+George Foxley altogether.
+
+"He is not human," she said to her father, "and I don't believe he _is_
+one of the Foxleys of Foxley Manor at all."
+
+"There can be no doubt about that, my dear," answered the actor.
+"Difficulties I should say--ah--difficulties have brought these young
+men out here, but we must do our duty by them, we must do our duty.
+Their father is a fine old gentleman, and well off, and a stanch Tory,
+my dear. Patience, my dear Maria. The photographs are quite correct and
+the seals bear quite the proper crest--ah--quite so."
+
+So Miss Maria transferred her affections to Mr. Joseph. The second
+Christmas passed away, and a third spring dawned for Ipswich. The Inn
+was just as comfortable as ever and so were apparently the two Mr.
+Foxleys but for one fact and that was, Mr. George's health was not as
+good as it had been. Always delicate, he had gradually failed, growing
+more and more languid, more and more whimsical in spite of his
+comfortable abode and the diligent care of his landlady. Poor Milly! How
+she worked for him too, between hours, after hours, before hours! When
+the attacks of pleurisy, painful in the extreme, from which he suffered,
+came on either in the night or during the day, Milly was always near
+with her strong young arms, not quite so pink as they used to be, and
+her quick young eyes, a shade more subtle than they used to be, ready to
+apprehend and quiet the pain before it came. How Miss Maria at the
+Rectory and Charlotte Dexter in her lonely cottage would have envied her
+had they known, but though there were gossips in plenty in the village,
+nothing that occurred in the rose-scented drawing-room ever went out
+into that tattling little Ipswichian world.
+
+"Are your young gentlemen with you yet, Mrs. Cox? And one of 'em not
+over strong? Deary me! that makes it hard for you and the young gal But
+you be standing it remarkable well. And gentlemen born you say! They
+do say that the other one wi' the specked skin be making fools of Miss
+Maria up at the Rectory and old Miss Dexter at the cottage. Well! well!
+Poor Miss Ellen was gone afore we knew it like, poor soul, that was so
+kind!"
+
+Much of this cunning volubility sprung upon Mrs. Cox in pumping fashion
+failed to extort from her anything but good-humoured smiles and laughs.
+If I have not taken the trouble to describe this beloved Mrs. Cox to you
+before this, it is because I fear you will say the picture is Unreal, no
+such landlady, no such woman could exist out of England But why not? My
+story, remember, deals with people and things as they were twenty years
+ago. Twenty years ago there were such Inns, though few at number, to be
+found in Western Canada--ay--and as English as any that a certain Mrs.
+Lupin presided over in fascinating fiction, and much more English than
+many Inns of the present day in England. Twenty years ago there was
+such a landlady, rosy and plump and cheerful, wearing a flowered gown,
+a black silk apron and a cap with a purple pansy in it and broad and
+comfortable lappets, who, when her work was done, would sit in her
+small private room opposite the bar also hung with red curtains,
+making patchwork quilts or playing a demure rubber with the Scotch
+store-keeper, or Irish stage driver, or an occasional gentleman from
+town. Such was Mrs. Cox, widow of Captain Cox, able seaman, but bad lot,
+who died when they had been five years in Canada, leaving her with her
+one child. The public business had attracted her after her loss and she
+accordingly went into it on the advice of her numerous friends. People
+who despise her calling need not listen to me if I allude to--for I have
+not time to recount--all her kindness, her cheerfulness, her powers of
+dispensing comfort, and warmth, and happiness, and promoting the direct
+and indirect welfare of everyone who came in her path. By what strange
+coincidence the brothers Foxley had been led to her glowing fireside
+and her motherly arms brimming over with zeal and kindness for the whole
+human race, does not matter. It is sufficient that they found her
+and found with her a sense of comparative peace and security which
+compensated for the one big slice of trouble Fortune had treated them to
+before their departure from England. For them did the wall flowers bloom
+and the mignonette at the window, for them did the oleander blossom
+and the old clock strike, for them did the jessamine climb and the one
+hawthorn tree yield its annual soft white drift of snow, and yet who
+shall say that they were altogether unworthy, even, if with that picture
+of poor Ellen Dexter in my mind, I have to say that they did not deserve
+it?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+If Mr. Joseph Foxley had but known the sentiments animating the couple
+of maiden breasts that awaited his Saturday visits in Ipswich, he would
+have been genuinely surprised. The truth is Mr. Joseph was rather
+what is termed a general lover. He liked the sex in its entirety.
+Collectively he loved all women and belonged to that hand-pressing
+section of humanity which I have alluded to as mischievous. Were there
+not at least five young ladies in town, at whose houses he visited, and
+who were more or less interested in the young Englishman as he in them?
+Did Miss Charlotte dream of them or Miss Maria at the rectory? If so,
+they never dared to ask Mr. Joseph to give any account of his doings
+in town, although they managed to glean what he did with himself in the
+village. He respected Charlotte Dexter enough to intend at some future
+day to tell her a little more about himself and his brother than he had
+yet done; as for Miss Maria, she only bored him and fed his contempt.
+
+"When a rather elderly old girl giggles after everything she says,
+conversation is difficult and sympathy out of the question," he had said
+to his brother! When Mr. Joseph had known these young ladies for four
+years, Miss Maria took her revenge in _her_ way, that was by marrying
+the younger brother of Mr. Simon P. Rattray, partner in the mill and the
+red brick house by the river. The vision of becoming the cherished wife
+of an English aristocrat and going home to reside in a manor house built
+in the sixteenth century, with occasional visits to London and glimpses
+of the Royal Family had gradually faded, and she accepted the less
+rose-coloured lot that Mr. Lyman B. Rattray offered her, sitting in her
+father's study, with his hair very much brushed up on one side and very
+much flattened down on the other, a white tie and light-yellow duster
+adorning his spare person.
+
+Such was the American of those days--twenty years ago--there are none
+such now I allow.
+
+Miss Maria, who was considered "very English," shuddered as she regarded
+him. It so fell out that it being Saturday, Mr. Joseph was just then
+passing--"kind of happening along" Mr. Rattray would have said--_en
+route_ to the Inn and his brother, on foot in spite of the dusty road
+and the hot August sun, clad in trim tight knickerbockers and carrying
+an immense bunch of red field lilies, a gun, and a leather satchel over
+his shoulder. Slight and straight and cool, he looked the picture of a
+contented cheerful energetic young English man. Along the road he came
+whistling an old country tune. Miss Maria who had sighted him afar off,
+begged her visitor's pardon and went to the window to arrange the blind.
+How her heart warmed to that cruel Mr. Joseph, how she loved him
+then just for that last moment! Her heart--that foolish old maid's
+heart--beat quickly, beat thickly, she remembered to have read something
+somewhere about people who could will other people to look at them, to
+speak to them, to even think of them, to move across a room at their
+pleasure. If she could but do that! She did try, with her fingers
+clenched on the blind, and her eyes fixed on Mr. Joseph, she did wish
+with all her might that he would turn his head and see her at the
+window and wave his hand gallantly as he had done on one or two previous
+occasions. Then she would beckon and he would run across and entering
+the room disconcert this odious Mr. Lyman B. Rattray and put an end to
+his stony wooing. But alas! for Miss Maria and her mesmeric powers! The
+harder she tried, the less she succeeded. On came Mr. Joseph, supremely
+unconscious of the injured heart beating behind the windowpane. At one
+moment it seemed as if he were about to turn and look in her direction.
+A very brilliant wild yellow canary crossed over his head and lit on a
+small shrub just inside the garden paling. Had it remained there, would
+Miss Maria have ever become the wife of Mr. Lyman B. Rattray? No one
+knows, for the canary flew away again to the other side of the road and
+Mr. Joseph's eyes followed it In a moment he was past, and the chance
+was gone for ever. Miss Maria left her window and sat down opposite her
+visitor. There was nothing to keep her now, nothing to give her courage
+and hope for the future, new fire for her faded eyes, new strength for
+her jaded limbs. Yet she was only thirty-four. How strange it is that
+some unmarried women are old at that age, even while living in luxury
+and surrounded by every care and all affection, while many a married
+woman, though beset with trials and weaknesses and perhaps a brood of
+restless little ones to pull her gown and get in the way of her busy
+feet, retains her figure and her step, her smile and her complexion, her
+temper and her nerves!
+
+It but remained for Charlotte Dexter to take her revenge in her way.
+Going very seldom out of her house, and never visiting at the Inn she
+was really very ignorant of the doings of either Mr. George or Mr.
+Joseph Foxley. Towards the one she had never been greatly drawn, for the
+other she felt all the passion that only a supremely lonely woman can
+feel in middle age for a man younger than herself who charms her as
+a child, while he captivates her as a lover. Of Mrs. Cox and Milly
+moreover, she hardly ever thought, and in fact had not seen the latter
+for a long time. If she had it is not likely she would even have
+recognized in the tall pale shapely young woman with braids of dark hair
+and white linen cuffs fastened--must I tell it? with a pair of antique
+monogram studs, the plump little handmaiden of four years back. As it
+was, she only waited on day after day, to hear Mr. Joseph speak. Instead
+of Mr. Joseph however appeared another and less welcome confidante. This
+was the most malignant gossip in the village, Mrs. Woods, the wife of
+the butcher, a tall red faced woman with high cheek-bones on which the
+color seemed to have been badly smirched, watery eyes and a couple of
+protruding yellow teeth. She looked more like a butcher than the butcher
+himself who was a mild little man with soft silky fair hair and small
+nervous fluttering hands. Yet he managed to summon sufficient character
+to go on a tremendous burst--I know of no other word, every third or
+fourth month and disappear for a week When these periodical eclipses
+took place, his wife would come flying into the Inn with her bonnet
+hanging round her neck and a large green and red plaid shawl streaming
+out behind her.
+
+"Where's Woods?" She would say. "Where's Woods? Give me Woods! Give 'im
+up, I tell you; give 'im up now!"
+
+But Woods was never found inside Mrs. Cox's neat dwelling, nor indeed
+anywhere, although it had been whispered on, one occasion that he had
+been seen in the back room of the little "Temperance Hotel" with the
+male Methodist in attendance. This, of course, was clearly impossible.
+
+It was this Mrs. Woods then that stopped at Dexter's Oak one Friday
+morning with her donkey-cart and a small piece of the neck of mutton
+in it. She was not an entirely bad woman, though a downright cunning
+virago, and perhaps some inkling of the nature of the blow that was
+about to fall on Miss Dexter's head caused her to come prepared by an
+acceptable present to somewhat mitigate its appalling approach.
+
+"I be at the Inn bright and early this morning Miss," she began, "and
+brought 'em their bit of fresh meat. And I'm bringin' you a bit as was
+over, and it is'nt a bad piece for a stew, if you like a stew, Miss,
+with an onion or two."
+
+"Thank you very much, Mrs. Woods," said Charlotte, who had come out to
+the front door and now stood on the lower step, looking over the cart.
+"I'm afraid I can't settle with you just at present," she said further,
+with some effort, "you can call some other time when you are passing.
+Will that do? and is it weighed?"
+
+"It is, miss, and I'll not say a word about the payin'! Six pound and a
+'alf, and Woods gone agen--I weighed it myself."
+
+"Oh! I am sorry to hear that," said Charlotte. "Your husband gives you a
+great deal of trouble. I am very sorry, and he is not at the inn?"
+
+If Charlotte was guilty at that moment of purposely leading the
+conversation up to this always for her most enthralling, most engrossing
+subject, she soon enough received her punishment. On she went to her own
+destruction.
+
+"At the inn!" repeated the butcher's wife, with ineffable scorn on her
+cruel mouth. She wiped her watery eyes and settled the refractory bonnet
+before going on.
+
+"No miss, he's not at the inn, and if he was sober, he wouldn't be at
+the inn, and you'll never see him, nor me, nor 'Ide yonder, nor anyone
+on us at all no more at the inn. For the inn's changed 'ands, miss.
+There's an end of Mrs. Cox, who was a mother to many, if not to Woods.
+There's an end to good old times and dancin' and singin', and honest
+Robert, though he was a cross 'un--there's an end to it all now, miss,
+for the inn's changed 'ands, and I'm the first in the village as knows
+it."
+
+"Good gracious. Is it possible?" said Charlotte, genuinely surprised.
+"Who can have succeeded Mrs. Cox and why? I thought she was so popular
+and making so much money, and what--what will become of the Mr.
+Foxleys?"
+
+Mrs. Woods gave a triumphant grin. "It's them, theirselves, miss; it's
+them that 'as it now. And the younger one will be marrying Milly in a
+little while and settling down comfortable in the inn. It's gentlefolks
+and aristocrats we'll have now at the inn, miss, and 'ard workin' people
+like me and Woods may trudge all day and freeze all night, and never a
+pot of beer or a warm at the kitchen fire and meat paid regular for year
+in, year out!"
+
+Charlotte stood aghast. The woman's injured volubility rushed past her
+as a scene outside a railway car rushes past us, leaving only one idea,
+one word caught at, as from the window through which we apprehend the
+landscape, one scene or portion of a scene enchains the eye and lingers
+in the mind though other scenes fly past in varied succession.
+
+"Marry?" she repeated. "Marry! Milly, did you say? That is the girl,
+isn't it, Mrs. Cox's niece? Which--"
+
+"Ay," said the woman, "that's Milly, the 'ired girl; she's no I more
+than that, if she be her aunt's niece. And 'ard work for one's niece.
+Me and Woods, if we'd 'ad one, would have done better for her nor that,
+makin' her work like a slave or a dummy. Cows, and pigs, and poultry,
+and dish-washing, and scrubbing, and lamps, and starched fronts, and
+fine gentlemen--but she's well paid, she's well paid. She's to marry one
+of the fine gentlemen, Mr. Joseph it is, and they're to live on at the
+Inn with Milly as mistress, and her fine husband behind the bar, very
+like. Well, good-mornin', Miss Dexter; I wish you joy of the mutton. Me
+and Woods often says--we'll take this or that little Dexter's Oak, but
+it's most times forgot, for Woods is 'alf crazed, Miss Dexter, and I've
+got to do the whole. Good-mornin'."
+
+Having adjusted her bonnet and the donkey-cart to her satisfaction, Mrs.
+Woods drove off rather disappointed on the whole at Miss Dexter's calm
+demeanour. Astonishment, perplexity, doubt, contempt and disgust she had
+undoubtedly shown, but not a single sigh of weakness. Charlotte Dexter
+was not the woman to swoon or lament or even turn pale as her sister
+Ellen would have done. But when she came into her house and sat down in
+her lonely parlour, she enacted a scene which would have petrified with
+astonishment any inhabitant of the prosy little village in which she had
+dwelt so long and indeed many other people as well, for when you and I,
+dear reader, go to see one of these emotional plays in which the
+French actress writhes on the sofa; grovels on the floor, rolls up her
+handkerchief into a ball or tears it into strips, prays, weeps, curses,
+censures, implores, looks at herself in the glass until she is on the
+point of going mad, and strides about the stage as no woman in real
+life has ever been seen to stride, ending by throwing herself across an
+arm-chair as rigid as marble thereby assuring the audience that she
+is in a "dead faint"--I say, that when we see all this performed by a
+travelling "star," and her truly eclectic Company, comprising a Diva, a
+Duenna, a Diner-out and a Devil, we are apt to look around at the placid
+Canadian or the matter-of-fact American audience and wonder if they
+understand the drift of the thing at all, the situations, the allusions,
+even in the slightest degree, forgetting that perhaps the most placid,
+most commonplace person in the theatre has gone through some crisis,
+some tragedy as thrilling, as subtle and as terrible as the scene
+we have just witnessed. "Not out of Paris," we say, "can such things
+happen?" Do we know what we are saying? Is it only in Paris that hearts
+are won and tossed aside this night--as in the play? Is it only in Paris
+that honor is forgotten and promises are broken this night--as in the
+play? Is it only in Paris that money allures and rank dazzles, and a
+dark eye or a light step entrances, this night--as in the play? Is it
+only in Paris that nature is human and that humanity is vile, or weak,
+or pure, or firm, as this night in the play? Oh! in that obscure little
+Canadian village, a lonely old maid locked her door that morning and
+pulled down her blind that the daylight might not come in and see
+her misery, might not mock even more malignantly than the ignorant,
+impertinent and hard-hearted woman who had dealt her this blow. Like
+most women in such a crisis, she lost the habit of thought. Reason
+entirely deserted her, and she never dreamed but that it was true. For
+when a women has to own to herself that she holds no dominion over a
+man, that it is only too perfectly clear that the impulse of loving is
+all on her side and that she has neither anything to expect nor anything
+to fear from him, since indifference is the keynote of his attitude
+to her, she will all the more readily believe that he loves elsewhere,
+worthily or unworthily the same to her. A woman is not a noble object in
+such a situation. All trusting feminine instincts, all sweet emotions of
+hope, all sentiment, all passion even, retreat and fall away from her,
+leaving either a cold, bitter, heartless petrifaction, in a woman's
+clinging robe, or the Fury that is the twin sister of every little
+red-lipped, clear-eyed girl born into the world. She never dreamed
+but that this story was true. In fact so entirely had her woman's wit
+deserted her, she said to herself of _course_ it was true. Her brain
+could work sufficiently to conjure up hints, phrases, words, looks,
+events, accidents that all bore testimony to the truth of the
+extraordinary tale. For it was extraordinary. Miss Dexter herself was
+the great grand-daughter of an Admiral, and the grand-daughter of a
+judge, and as such, respected all these accidents of birth which we
+are supposed to ignore or at least not expected to recognize in a new
+country. That such men as the Mr. Foxleys could make themselves as
+completely at home in the Inn as rumor had frequently asserted, and with
+truth, seemed at all times monstrous to her. She had lived so long out
+of England, over thirty years now, that she had forgotten the sweet
+relations that prevailed there between the aristocracy or landed gentry
+and their inferiors. The Mr. Foxleys were simply doing in Canada what
+they would have done had they been still in England, only they were
+assisted in so doing by the unusually English surroundings in which they
+found themselves. Miss Dexter looked around her in the yellow inclosed
+light. There was a sampler in a frame, worked by herself when a little
+child, another exactly similar, worked by Ellen, a couple of fine old
+family portraits in heavy gilt frames, half a dozen ivory miniatures
+scattered about on the walls, some good carvings in ivory, a rare old
+Indian shawl festooned over the wooden mantle-board, a couple of skins
+on the floor, a corner piece of furniture known as a "whatnot" crowded
+with bits of egg-shell china, birds' eggs and nests, a few good
+specimens of spar and coral and a profusion of plants everywhere. It was
+all neat, respectable, even dignified, superior. There was no such other
+room in the village. In the village? There were not many at that time
+even in the town. Sooner than part with the eggshell china or the Indian
+shawl the Miss Dexters had suffered the pains of poverty and hunger;
+these cherished reminders of an absent father and an artistic youth
+could never be lost or borne away by the hands of a stranger. And how
+glad those foolish Miss Dexters had been to possess such beautiful and
+interesting objects when it pleased Mr. George Foxley to drink tea out
+of the cups on summer afternoons on the verandah of the little cottage
+looking up into the splendid vault of the mighty oak, or when Mr. Joseph
+would wind the Indian shawl round his silly head in the winter evenings
+when the draughts of cold air would rush in through the thin walls.
+These and other memories crowded into Charlotte Dexter's brain as
+she looked around her room, crowded thick and fast, crowded fast and
+furious, surged, broke, leaving an empty moment of perfect blankness,
+then crowded again thicker, faster, surged and seethed and then broke
+again, leaving in the void of perfect blankness this time a fixed idea,
+a resolve, a determination, seen in the dark like a luminous point of
+phosphorus.
+
+That afternoon as Farmer Wise was driving slowly along the road, the
+main road leading through Ipswich to the town, he was accosted by Miss
+Dexter from her verandah. She had her jacket on and held her bonnet in
+her hand.
+
+"Can you give me a seat as far as the Albion?" said she. "I would have
+sent a message to you yesterday if I had known I was going. But if it
+will not trouble you--"
+
+"Oh! no trouble no trouble at all, Miss Dexter," replied Farmer Wise.
+"I'm sorry I've only the waggon to offer ye. But I'm takin' in apples as
+you see, nine barrel of 'em, and only a waggon will do for them."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Miss Dexter, hurriedly trying on her
+bonnet. "Can you wait a moment? I won't be longer, Mr. Wise, it is just
+to lock the back door."
+
+The farmer nodded and drew up under the shade of Dexter's oak. It was
+a beautiful afternoon late in November, characterized by the clear
+cold air, the blue and gold of the sky, and the russet coloring of the
+foliage that mark the close of the Autumnal season. He looked in at
+Miss Dexter's little garden, admirably neat and well-trimmed; dahlias,
+hollyhocks, sweet William and asters, though done with blossoms, still
+bore their green leaves unsmitten by the frost. The windows appeared
+full of flowers too, but the blinds were skimp and faded and drawn down
+behind them. He started when he noticed this, for he knew the outer
+aspect of the house well, and had never seen such a thing before, except
+in case of sickness or death. The honest farmer thought and thought
+until Miss Dexter reappeared and assisted by him, got up in her place
+beside him. Even after that he went on thinking, and I must here tell
+you that it was not the first time Farmer Wise's thoughts had dwelt so
+persistently upon his companion and her house and personal history.
+For twelve years he had nursed a kind of mild distant passion for Miss
+Dexter at the Oak, unguessed at by her and his family, and only half
+understood by himself. He could not have said he was in love with her.
+He had been in love once when he married his first wife, who bore him
+a triad of splendid sons, one "keeping store" in the Western States and
+the other two at home on the farm, all three great giants of fellows,
+handsome in the fields or at barn-doors or in market-waggons, but plain
+on Sundays in black coats or at evening dances in the big ball-room
+at the Inn, when they would shuffle noisily through cotillons or labor
+clumsily through a Highland Schottische.
+
+For himself, Farmer Wise was an honest, sincere, good-hearted man, a
+maker of money and a spender thereof--witness the fine red ploughs,
+the painted barns, the handsome team, Kentucky bred, and the inner
+decorations of his house, situated about five miles out of Ipswich, on
+the main-road. After Mr. Simon P. Rattray, he was the representative man
+of the district, although he did not come so closely into contact with
+the villagers. This _penchant_ for the elder Miss Dexter had been a
+gradual, a slow but very sure and steady thing. Her father's death had
+increased it, so had that of Ellen her sister, and the farmer lived too
+far away to know as much as other people knew about the advent of the
+Mr. Foxleys. Had there been a sister or a daughter, or a wife or a
+mother, or an aunt or a cousin about the farm, he would have known very
+quickly. As it was, the girl who did the housework on the farm was as
+ignorant of gossip, its existence and the laws which govern its nature,
+as any male farm hand could be. When Farmer Wise put up his horses
+at the Inn three or four times a year, and sat down in the cheerful
+bar-room to drink a glass of whisky with his feet to the fire if it were
+winter, or a taller glass of Belfast ginger ale if it were summer, did
+he never notice Mrs. Cox? Mrs. Cox, well-to-do and popular herself,
+fresh, blooming and hearty, a young woman yet, and just the woman one
+would say, for him, and above all, the woman who thought most of him
+and ran to change her cap--the black one with the knot of rusty widow's
+crape--for the smart new one that held the velvet pansy when she saw the
+team coming. There's where he should have chosen the second time, there
+was the woman he should have noticed instead of poor, proud, foolish
+Charlotte Dexter, whom he half feared as a "lady born," and who held
+in her heart, had he only knew it, the image of Mr. Joseph Foxley. The
+farmer got on with the English gentlemen at the Inn whenever he saw them
+"first-rate," and it was of them he began most unsuspiciously to talk
+when he and Miss Dexter had crossed the bridge, ascended the hill on
+the other side of the river, and the team were settling to their work
+as they entered upon the dreary eight miles called the Plains which lay
+between them and the city. The farmer was consciously happy as he moved
+his ponderous body slightly nearer to his companion and tucked her in
+with his great hands, a single touch of one of them hurting her thin
+frame as if they were made of iron or stiff rope. He thought he was
+gentle too--poor man--but long years of manual labor had changed the
+natural soft flesh to the consistency of leather, in which immense
+muscles and joints seemingly of marble had been imbedded.
+
+Besides, there was the delicate touch of another hand, as fine, as soft
+as a woman's and yet almost as strong as the farmer's, in her mind,
+a hand whiter than her own, though somewhat freckled, a hand that had
+taper fingers and well-kept nails, a hand that bore an antique seal ring
+and a fine pearl, a hand alas that had often retained her own in its
+warm clinging pressure, and once--only once, and that was three years
+ago--clasped her unresisting waist for a moment in the dark under the
+Oak while her sister fumbled at the gate. And just as she cherished
+these memories of Mr. Joseph, so did the widowed farmer retain the few
+occasions in his mind on which he had met Miss Dexter, spoken with her,
+given her a "lift" into town or up the road to the village store, for
+this was not the first use she had made of his gallant good nature and
+the Kentucky team.
+
+He looked down at her now as they drove along in silence and noticed her
+thin black gown, her short jacket, her bit of black veil drawn over her
+bonnet, and her dingy travelling-bag with its tarnished clasp, and he
+heaved a sigh.
+
+Charlotte was a "sizeable woman" thought Farmer Wise "and wants a good
+live garment sometimes, to bring her figure out and make more of it and
+do justice to it. A shawl now! How much would a good shawl be? I miss
+a woman round the place; I wouldn't know what to ask for. I might ha'
+stopped nigh the Inn and asked Mrs. Cox." Ay, you might Farmer Wise, and
+have done another mischievous thing, upsetting Mrs. Cox for a week as
+she waited for a parcel from town and breaking her heart altogether as
+day after day followed and no parcel arrived.
+
+"I ha' never seen the ekil of those Mr. Foxleys yonder," began the
+honest farmer as something to start a conversation with. "I ha' never
+seen their ekil."
+
+"Oh!" said Miss Dexter. "Yes? In what way?"
+
+"So gentle and so funny as they be. Gentlemen both of them with delicate
+hands and fine clothes--"
+
+"Yes, yes," murmured Miss Dexter under her breath, clutching at her bag
+and closing her eyes.
+
+"And not above anybody or anything going. I see the pale one this day,
+and pale he is and weak they say, enough to be walked about on the
+girl's shoulder--I see him to-day as I passed the Inn, he was on a long
+chair out in the bit of paved yard, you know Miss Dexter, and when he
+saw me he raises his head and says 'Farmer Wise, is that you?'" May be
+you don't remember just how he speaks. He speaks better now nor when he
+came, and his brother too. At first It was all in a jumble like one word
+run into the other and hard to understand at least for us country folks.
+But now 'tis a bit clearer, more as you speak, begging your pardon,
+Miss Dexter, for noticing that or anything else that concerns you, Miss
+Dexter. And I says, stopping these fellows a bit. "Yes it's me. I'm on
+my way to town with nine barrels of apples."
+
+"How many?" he calls out again.
+
+"Nine," I replies.
+
+"Let's taste one," he says.
+
+"A barrel?" I says, and Milly, the girl, she come oat by the door, with
+another quilt to put over him, laughing, and showing her teeth, rare
+ones too, they be and says she. "Throw us down one, Farmer Wise," and I
+did, for I had a couple in my pocket, and here's the tother, "now Miss
+Dexter, if you see your way to eatin' it now in the waggon alongside of
+me, or will you wait till we get to the Albion?" Charlotte Dexter put
+her hand out mechanically and took the apple, a large red one, from
+the farmer who again managed to hurt her as his great wrist touched her
+fingers for an instant. He blushed perceptibly and moved a little nearer
+still. And how unconscious Charlotte Dexter was of his mere presence,
+let alone tender thoughts, except when he hurt her!
+
+"I have heard this morning, that is I believe everyone has known for
+some time, though it is only spoken about generally today, for the
+first time, that Mrs. Cox is giving up the Inn. Her niece, the girl
+you mention, is going to be married--indeed, it is one of those
+gentlemen--the Mr. Foxleys--whom she is to marry, and they will take the
+Inn out of Mrs. Cox's hands."
+
+The farmer was as surprised as she had been.
+
+"Well," he ejaculated "didn't I say I'd never seen their ekil? Milly's
+going to marry one of the Mr. Foxleys? Which--"
+
+"It is Mr. Joseph," returned Miss Dexter, staring down at the apple in
+her lap. "The youngest one, you know. He is a very merry young gentleman
+and always has something to say. I daresay it will be a very comfortable
+arrangement."
+
+"But it's a great thing for Milly," said her companion, "it'll be a
+great thing for her. She'll live in the tone, no doubt and may be cross
+the ocean to see his home and his parents--it'll be a great thing for
+Milly. A gentleman born! Ay, ay; ay, ay!"
+
+"No, no," said Miss Dexter, irritably. "Don't I tell you, Farmer Wise,
+that they will live on at the Inn? These young gentlemen like comfort,
+like being waited upon. They do this in order to insure--in order
+to--oh! it is difficult to explain my meaning, but you must see, Farmer
+Wise, that it is not a proper marriage at all, it is a very sad thing
+for the girl, I should consider, and some one--some friend should tell
+her so. She can never be a lady, and what kind of life will it be for
+him, a gentleman born, as you say, when he could have chosen too,
+where he liked. My great grandfather, Mr. Wise, was an Admiral, and
+my grandfather was a Judge. My father was a member of a respected
+profession, although not brought up to it in early life, and _none_
+of my relations, or ancestors _ever_ married out of their own proper
+circle, except my poor father. He made a most perverse and foolish
+marriage, Farmer Wise, which though only lasting a few years, brought
+sorrow and trouble and poverty and oppression to his family."
+
+"Ay, ay," said the farmer, softly. He was thinking still about those
+down-drawn blinds.
+
+"Ay, ay. You're right in the main, Miss Dexter--yes, you're right in the
+main. Now, I thought I'd ask ye--I said to myself this morning, when I
+see Miss Dexter the next time, her as is a lady, and no mistake, I'll
+ask her--what would you say, or what your sister have said if someone
+here right in this village, that is, there in Ipswich, I mean of course,
+someone who wanted to just be kind and lend an 'elpin 'and, had asked
+ye--or her--say her--had asked her anytime to marry him, startin'
+fair, startin' fair, with a year to think on it. And a comfortable 'ome
+awaitin' 'er with two 'ired girls to do the work and plenty of hands
+on the farm and the best of cheese and butter and the Harmonium in the
+parlor and drives to and fro' the Church and behind it all a--solid
+man--a solid man--what do ye think she'd 'uv said?"
+
+Was ever man more in earnest, now that it had suddenly broken from him
+after all these years, than honest Farmer Wise? The team jogged on, but
+the reins were lying loosely in their owner's hands.
+
+"I thought I'd ask ye," he repeated looking away from his companion. "I
+thought I'd ask ye."
+
+Miss Dexter had hardly gathered the import of his speech. She looked up
+startled.
+
+"My sister?" she said with increased irritability. "Ask my sister?
+What do you mean? I never knew that anybody here, in the village, had
+proposed to her, or dared--dared to think of her at all as a possible
+mate--wife, whatever it is you mean. Surely you don't mean yourself,
+Farmer Wise! It would never enter your head, I am sure, to propose to my
+sister!"
+
+"No it never did," said the farmer quietly.
+
+"Then it is someone else? Really, you must tell me, if you know anything
+about it, Farmer Wise. But I think you are making some mistake, it is
+quite impossible that anyone in the village--any native of the village,
+or indeed any native of this country should so far forget himself as to
+propose to my sister."
+
+"Of course," said the farmer as quietly, "it is quite impossible. No one
+'ud 'av done it. No one did do it, that I know on. But I thought I'd ask
+ye. And about yourself, too? There'd be no gettin' ye to forget all--all
+that has been and to take up with things as they be, to be makin' a new
+start, startin' fair, as I said, startin' fair, both parties agreed to
+think a year on it, and one party to save up and buy nothin' till the
+year 'd be out and then the other party to give the word for both to
+take 'ands and make the start together! For what's past is past, and
+what's done is done, and ye can't make this out the old country any more
+nor ye can bring back those that are gone, which they wouldn't be, I
+'low to say, if they'd stayed behind in it. This" said the farmer, in
+a louder firmer voice, indicating with his whip the dreary pine forests
+that bordered the road on either side, "isn't the old country. I come
+from it myself, and I know it taint. Them rustlin' leaves ain't the old
+country, heaps of brown and yella up to your knees after a while, nor
+yet this road, nor that sky, nor this waggon, nor them apples, nor them
+horses. Nor me myself. I'm no longer old country. I'm fond of it--sho!
+I'm fonder of it now than I was forty years ago, when I come away from
+it, I'm fonder of it every year that goes by. But it's the New Country
+that's made me, that's give me all I have and more than all I want, and
+accordin' I'm grateful to it, and wouldn't turn my back on it. No Miss
+Dexter I wouldn't, and so I says, to all as come out to it, it's better
+to try and forget the past, or at least as much of it as 'll bear
+forgetting in order to let you live, and to take up with things as they
+be, and not lookin' always to things as they were, and to make the
+best of what the New World has to offer to ye And I don't think that in
+England--God bless her--to-day, you 'll find a finer team, nor redder
+apples, nor an easier going waggon, nor even a prettier sky, than that
+there yella light breakin' all over the landscup like!"
+
+There was perfect silence after that. It had suddenly dawned upon
+Charlotte Dexter with accession of disgust and embittered hostility that
+the farmer's words related to himself. What new and hateful complication
+was this to be reminded by such an ill-timed declaration of the ironical
+in her life which had always been near enough to her apprehensions!
+Anything and everything but what she wanted, she could have. It had
+always been so. A dark frown gathered on her forehead, she clutched her
+bag and drew herself away from the side of the honest farmer.
+
+"I do not know what you are talking about," she cried. "Such words can
+have nothing to do with me. I could not disgrace myself and my father's
+family by allying myself with anybody out here, least of all, one of the
+working classes, or a farmer. You are very inconsiderate, Farmer Wise,
+and I must ask you to distinctly understand that even conversation on
+such a subject is quite out of the question. I cannot even discuss
+it with you or with anyone in your position. I have told you what my
+connections are; what my family is, you have now, I hope, some correct
+idea, and you will see how utterly impossible it is that I should, even
+to better my circumstances which I admit are somewhat precarious, make
+such a _mésalliance_--such a mistake, I mean, as you refer to.
+
+"Well," said the farmer very quietly this time. "You're right in the
+main, Miss Dexter, you're right in the main. But I thought I'd ask ye, I
+thought I'd ask ye. Far from harm bein' done, there's only good, there's
+only good, for now you understand me and I understand _you_ and thank ye
+for your confidences and there's an end on it."
+
+So begun, so ended the honest man's wooing. Did he suffer disappointment
+as Miss Dexter's contemptuous eye and her irritated tone showed him--ah!
+how plainly--she was forever out of his reach? Was an idol broken, a
+dream dissolved, a blossom nipped, or hope murdered, just as much, in
+the case of this comfortable placid unimaginative elderly farmer as in
+the case of younger, warmer, more impetuous, more idealistic men? If
+so, Farmer Wise was as self-contained as the best actor among them and
+handed Miss Dexter out at the Albion with as gallant, though cautious
+politeness and sat as far away from her at the hotel tea table and met
+her in the hall afterwards with as severe an air, as if the situation
+were perfectly pleasant and completely ordinary. He asked her when she
+would be going back, and learnt that she would pass the night at the
+Albion, returning to the village by the Saturday's stage.
+
+"Then shall I take a seat for ye?" asked the willing farmer.
+
+"No" said Miss Dexter, who appeared to be in a great hurry, "I can
+arrange in the morning, thank you."
+
+"In any case, ye're sure ye won't want a 'lift' again, Miss Dexter,"
+said the farmer respectfully, though there might have been the least
+tinge of irony in the tone. "I'm not goin' back myself till to morrow."
+
+"No, thank you," returned Miss Dexter for the last time.
+
+The Albion was a small hotel or tavern situated just on the outskirts of
+the town, which did a flourishing business with the country people. Two
+roads, the Ipswich and the Richmond, formed a sort of junction before
+its door, one leading into the fine agricultural district or valley
+of Richmond, Guernsey and Trenton, and the other following, the dreary
+Plains through Ipswich to Orangetown, a thriving little community of
+mills and saws and booms and planks picturesquely situated on the Upper
+Orange River.
+
+There was always a knot of farmers round the Albion, all of them English
+or Scotch or native Canadians born of British parents. A French-Canadian
+would have been hoisted on a table and examined minutely all over, hair,
+eye, skin and costume, had one been present. But though the men were
+respectable and decent and hard-working and most of them earned a good
+income and few of them drank or gambled it away, they were noisy, smoky,
+staring fellows for companions and Miss Dexter, having walked some
+distance to a shop, made a purchase, and returned to the parlor of the
+hotel while it was yet light, uncertain what to do with herself or
+where to go to escape the bustle and clatter of tongues. Farmer Wise
+was smoking in the bar, she had seen him as she passed in, and the mere
+sight of him, with his head up against the counter, and his legs out
+on a chair made her shudder. She sat in the parlor listening to the
+intolerable noise, heavy delf and cutlery being momentarily banged down
+on tables and chairs, an occasional broken plate and whirling pewter mug
+or kitchen spoon reaching her ear with more than usual reverberation.
+Then would come a volley of laughter, oaths, and bets on next week's
+races from the bar, then more breaking of china from the scullery, the
+stamping of horses in the stable, then the bar door would be closed and
+comparative silence ensue. In one of these intervals, the girl who had
+waited at the tea-table appeared in the parlor and inquired of Miss
+Dexter if she would like a fire put in the wood stove that stood on a
+square of zinc in the middle of the room. It came as a relief from
+the nervous broodings that were settling down on her mind occupied in
+introspection neither healthy nor cheerful, and she eagerly assented.
+
+When the fire burned up, she opened the door that she might see the
+blaze and spread out her thin hands to it and put her cold feet to its
+warmth. Then for the first time she unclasped her bag and taking out her
+purchase, looked at it. The shop she had gone into was a druggist's, and
+her purchase had been a small bottle of a bluish fluid that she now held
+up to the light and looked at long and steadily but with no change in
+her countenance. The bar-door opened with a creak and closed with a
+bang. She started and replaced the bottle in the bag and put the bag
+over her arm as before. For a long time she sat before the fire warming
+first one foot, then the other and never looking away from the blaze.
+When half-past ten came, so did the girl with a lamp and two damp towels
+for Miss Dexter who took them without opening her mouth much to the
+astonishment of the girl, who though taciturn herself was well used to
+speech and "language" from all she came in contact with, and who was
+also struck with the fact that the strange lady had never removed her
+bonnet or jacket "since she come in the house."
+
+She would have had additional ground for surprise had she known that the
+strange lady did not remove them even upon reaching her own room, but
+lowering the lamp, lay down fully dressed upon the bed still clasping
+her small travelling bag in her hands, and slept until seven o'clock
+in the morning. She then rose and hastily straightening her attire,
+descended to the dining-room, partook of ham and eggs. Upon the close
+of this meal, she went up again to the parlor and sat slightly back from
+the window that overlooked the main road until twelve o'clock, when she
+partook of the dinner served to the travellers at the Albion, including
+Farmer Wise who had sold his apples and soon after dinner hitched up
+ready to go homewards. After dinner she went up as before to the parlor
+and sat there again. Two o'clock came, half past two, three o'clock, and
+Miss Dexter began to look along the road in the direction of the town.
+Half-past three found her, still looking along the road. Four o'clock
+came, half-past four, then five. She grew visibly uneasy, walked to and
+fro in the little parlor, sat down again. Half-past five, the clatter
+in the kitchen which had been silent for a little while renewed itself.
+Six!! The men stumped into their tea, and the girl ascending asked Miss
+Dexter if she was coming down to hers.
+
+"No," said Miss Dexter, "I expect to have a late tea at home, thank you.
+And I am just going in a moment or two."
+
+Ten minutes past six. The late November afternoon had almost entirely
+faded, it would soon be dark. A quarter past six and Miss Dexter,
+looking continuously out of her window perceived the figure she had
+waited for so long at length approaching. Gay, Mr. Joseph, you
+have thrown off the fetters of town and work and dull care and
+responsibility, and here you are free and untrammelled as the air,
+good humored, cheerful, humming your Old Country tunes as usual, brisk,
+_débonnair_, untouched by thought of present trouble or evil, unthinking
+and unsuspecting! Gay Mr. Joseph, urbane Mr. Joseph, what have you got
+in your hand this time? Last time it was a bunch of the red field lily.
+Now it is, or it looks like--yes, it is--a genuine florist's bouquet.
+Something to open the eyes of the Ipswich villagers. A gorgeous wired
+platoon of roses, and smilax tuberose and mignonette--Mr. Joseph, Mr.
+Joseph, what does this mean, who is this for? On he came, brisker, more
+_débonnair_, more smiling than Miss Dexter had ever seen him in her
+life. Her breath came fast as he neared the window. Exchanging a word
+with the hostler and a couple of laboring men who stood almost in the
+centre of the road Mr. Joseph passed on, looking down with a smile at
+the bouquet in his hand. Miss Dexter then arose and quietly settling her
+bonnet at a glass walked out of the hotel having paid her small bill at
+dinner-time.
+
+She walked steadily on in the direction of Ipswich in the wake of Mr.
+Joseph who did not appear to be walking as fast as usual himself. So by
+straining every nerve as we say--in reality, walking as she had never
+attempted to and dreamt of walking in her life--she slowly but surely
+gained upon the unconscious Mr. Joseph. They were about in the middle of
+the plains, that dreary bit of road bordered by pine forests on either
+side when Miss Dexter found she could distinguish the _clink, clink_ or
+jingle of his watch-chain, a thing of steel links which she knew well by
+sight as well as by sound as it struck against the buttons of his coat.
+Slowly Miss Dexter gained on him, until it was necessary either to
+accost him or pass him. Which did she mean to do? Dark as it was rapidly
+growing, Mr. Joseph, in half turning his head to observe something in
+the trees or sky, became conscious of a figure close behind him. The
+path was narrow, for he had left the middle of the road since passing
+the Albion, and he stepped aside with his usual ready politeness to
+allow the lady room to go on before him. But in a moment he recognized
+Miss Dexter. She waited for him to speak.
+
+"I--really, why--is it possible it is you, my dear Miss Dexter? I never
+knew you took such lonely walks so far from home. You don't mean to say
+you've walked out from town?"
+
+For an answer, Miss Dexter, who had previously unclasped her bag and
+taken out the bottle, lifted her right hand and threw the contents over
+Mr. Joseph.
+
+"In the name of God!" shrieked the unfortunate man, warding off as he
+imagined a second attack. But Miss Dexter had done her work and stood
+rigid, unmovable, stony as marble, the bag fallen at her feet, her hands
+fallen straight down at her sides. Mr. Joseph had sunk upon the ground
+moaning and writhing, but through all the torture of the terrible pain
+he was suffering, he thought of nothing but the inconceivable brutality
+of the act itself. Why had she done it?
+
+"I suppose it is vitriol," he gasped. "Was it an accident--or--did
+you--mean--to--do it? How have--I--injured--you? Oh--say--say--"
+
+He could get no further for a few moments in the appalling consciousness
+of that living fire which had burnt into his poor eyes and played round
+his poor temples. Otherwise he was not injured, for Miss Dexter's aim
+had been a faulty one and nearly all the contents of the bottle had in
+reality descended on the ground.
+
+"Say--say" he went on. "Which it is? My--dear--Miss Dexter--I
+am--sorrier for you--than--for--myself, and cannot imagine--oh! Good
+God, I shall be blind, blind--ah!!--"
+
+Charlotte Dexter still stood in the rapidly darkening air, a stem,
+rigid, immovable figure. It was too soon for remorse. That would come in
+good time. But a certain pity stole over her as she gazed at the huddled
+mass on the ground before her, which a short time ago, had been the gay,
+laughing, upright Mr. Joseph.
+
+"Are you suffering very much?" She said at length in her ordinary voice.
+
+"Good God! How--how--can you ask? Again--tell me--was it--an accident?"
+
+"No," she replied still in her most ordinary voice. "No. It was no
+accident. It _is_ vitriol, and I _did_ mean to throw it."
+
+"It is horrible," groaned Mr. Joseph, still in agony on the ground where
+he had sunk at first. "And you will not--fiend that you appear now
+to be--though Heaven knows--I thought you sweet and womanly enough
+once--you will not--tell me why! It is infamous!"
+
+"Yes, it _is_ infamous," returned Charlotte Dexter. "It _is_ horrible,
+and I am a fiend. I am not a woman any longer. I once was, as you say,
+sweet and womanly enough for--for what? Joseph Foxley. For you to come
+to any house and my sister's house, and blast _her_ life and strike
+_her_ down as you thought you would strike me, for this and that and for
+much more, but not enough for truth and honesty and an offer of marriage
+in fair form, not enough for common respect and decent friendship."
+
+"My dear lady," said Mr. Joseph with great difficulty, "there was no one
+I--"
+
+"And all that time, when I thought you at least free, at least your own
+master, at least unbiased and unbound, for unlike a gentleman you never
+hinted to me of these--other ties--you were engaged to this miserable
+girl, this common drudge, the scullery-maid of a country inn. You, you,
+you!"
+
+"My dear lady," said Mr. Joseph again with greater difficulty than
+before, "I--upon my word--I have--I--"
+
+Charlotte Dexter, suddenly regaining the use of her limbs, bent down
+quickly and peered into the poor sightless face. Mr. Joseph had fainted.
+She owned no fear yet however, though it was now quite dark, and five
+miles lay between them and her own door. Pity was just giving away to
+remorse. What if she had killed him? She bent down again but found
+that there was no fear of that and even consciousness appeared to be
+returning. At this moment the sound of wheels struck her ear. Nearer
+and nearer it came and she soon descried a waggon coming along the road
+sharply in which sat one man. The rest of the waggon was empty and as it
+was proceeding in the direction of the village, into that, she made up
+her mind, should Mr. Joseph be put. As it drew near, she stepped out of
+the dark shade of the pines and bade the man stop.
+
+"Whose there!" said he, "What's here? What's the matter? Why, if it
+ain't Miss Dexter!"
+
+"Yes," said she, stooping to assist her unfortunate companion. "How do
+you do, Farmer Wise! I--do you know Mr. Foxley--Mr. Joseph Foxley--is
+here--can you just see him--if you have a lantern, or, will you help me
+to get him into the waggon?"
+
+Farmer Wise forgot Miss Dexter and her family pride in an instant,
+though at first sight the feeling of injury had somewhat revived, and
+he made haste to come to her relief. He found Mr. Joseph just coming to
+himself.
+
+"Why, why, what's the matter?" said the Farmer. "It minds me of old
+times, this, when highway-men and tramps were a-infestin' the road and
+a-lyin' in wait for honest travellers--in the Old Country of course,
+Miss Dexter, not here, not here. Yet somethin's been at work here, eh!
+Mr. Joseph, or else I'm much mistaken. Here, lend an 'and, Miss Dexter;
+now, sir, can you see me?"
+
+"Not very well," gasped poor Mr. Joseph. "It's dark, I know," said the
+farmer, "and I hadn't begun carrying my lantern yet. Never mind Here,
+now, place your foot there--are ye hurt anywhere that I may touch
+ye--tell me where I hurt ye, if I do--now then, the other foot--
+
+"There, now it's done! Miss Dexter, ma'am there's an old blanket at the
+back there, lie him on that. Put his head down and let him look straight
+up at them stars and he'll soon get himself, I warrant. If I knew where
+ye were hurt, perhaps I could bind ye up. There's no wound," anxiously.
+
+"No," said Mr. Joseph. "Thank you, Farmer Wise. I am--much--better--really.
+I was unconscious!"
+
+"Ay," said the farmer, "A little, and can you stand the joltin' now, are
+ye sure? For if ye are, we'll drive on."
+
+"Stay a moment," said Mr. Joseph. "I had some flowers--a bouquet--in my
+hands when I--fell. I can't see--very well--in this light--look for me,
+will you!"
+
+"I do spy somethin' white on yonder ground where you was when I came up.
+Maybe it's a pocket-handkerchief, may be it's the flowers you dropped."
+
+The former sprang down and returned with two articles one of which--the
+bouquet he gave to Mr. Joseph, the other, a small bottle--he put in his
+own pocket The bouquet was as fresh and untumbled as when it emerged
+from the careful florist who had prepared it. Not a single drop of the
+fiery liquid had fallen upon it nor scorched its fragrant beauty and it
+presently lay upon the face of the suffering man, healing with its cool
+moist sweet leaves and petals his poor scarred skin.
+
+"I won't ask him," thought the farmer, "I won't ask him. But what are
+they doin' here together? Well, I won't ask that neither. And why did
+not she came out by the stage as she said? I won't ask that neither.
+There's three things I needn't go for to enquire into. But a little
+general conversation in a nice kind of way, neither spyin' nor lyin' may
+do him good and not be altogether despised by the--the other party." He
+looked back and could dimly see Mr. Joseph sitting up on the blanket. He
+had removed his hat, and his hands were pressed to his head. Charlotte
+Dexter was in the furthest corner of the waggon, a dark, stern, ominous
+figure.
+
+"Strange that you and me _are_ goin' home together, Miss Dexter, after
+all," said the farmer.
+
+"Miss Dexter drove in to the Albion alongside of me yesterday, sir,
+and I ask her if so be she need a second lift back to-day, and she said
+'no.'"
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Joseph. "Yesterday, did you say? I was--to have--come
+out--yesterday--in answer to my brother's note--but I could not
+manage--it. I wish," with a grim attempt at the old humor--"I had, 'pon
+my soul I do."
+
+"Your brother is well, I hope, sir?" said the farmer. "Don't talk too
+much, I beg of ye, Mr. Joseph. To see ye with yer hands like that!"
+
+"It is--better--easier--that way," returned Mr. Joseph. "My brother
+is well for him, thank you. You know, he is--not strong
+he--is--never--perfectly well."
+
+"D--" said the farmer to himself. "Of course, of course, I know. I see
+him yesterday morning, pale like and weak, but smiling and lookin' happy
+enough too, I tell ye."
+
+"Ah, yes" said Mr. Joseph, again lying down and pressing the flowers to
+his hot lips. "I--these flowers--are for him and--her."
+
+"Her!" said the farmer.
+
+"Milly, you know. Ah--perhaps you haven't heard. My brother is going
+to--marry Milly, Mrs. Cox's niece, you know."
+
+An absolutely death-like stillness prevailed in the waggon. The Kentucky
+team jogged on. The stars shone down on poor Mr. Joseph turning up his
+sightless orbs to their beauty and majesty, and on the passion of grief
+and remorse that now surged in Miss Dexter's suffering breast.
+
+"It may be vanity," thought Farmer Wise as the bridge and the river
+and Dexter's Oak came in sight one after the other, "it may be vanity,
+though I'm too old a man to be much given to that, but I can't help
+thinkin' I'm a wiser man than I was yesterday by a good lot. I don't
+half know what's happened, but somethin's goin' on, whether it's
+understandable or not to me and the likes of me, I don't know as yet,
+and I don't think I'll try to find out. If ifs bad it'll come out fast
+enough, and if it's good, leavin' it alone maybe will make it a little
+better. But here we are," he continued aloud, "at Dexter's Oak. What's
+to be done, Miss Dexter, now, and with you, Mr. Joseph? Of course, I'll
+take you straight to the Inn--as for Miss Dexter--"
+
+"I will get out at once," said the unhappy woman. "You are sure you can
+take him to the Inn all right and--and--lift--that is--without--"
+
+"Oh, I guess so," said the farmer, grimly relapsing into an Americanism
+that was just beginning to leaven the whole country. "I guess I'll
+take care on him, and as for gettin' him out at the Inn, there's plenty
+there. Good-night Miss Dexter, take care there!--now you're all right"
+
+Charlotte Dexter, with a long look at the prostrate form of Mr. Joseph,
+leapt from the waggon and sped through the gate up to her desolate
+dwelling.
+
+"Ah!" sighed the farmer to himself, one great long sigh that stirred his
+hardy frame to its centre. He never sighed like that again either for
+Charlotte Dexter or any other woman.
+
+The next mile they traversed in silence broken only by occasional moans
+from Mr. Joseph which moved the old farmer to wonder and dismay that
+almost unnerved him.
+
+Presently Mr. Joseph murmured some word the farmer did not catch all at
+once.
+
+"Is he out of his mind on top of it all!" he said to himself, and
+listened.
+
+"Farmer Wise," said the same low voice, "are we near the Inn?"
+
+"Just there, Mr. Joseph."
+
+"On the little bridge yet?"
+
+"Just come on it, Mr. Joseph."
+
+"Ah! Can you--stop your horses?"
+
+"Certainly. There! Now what is it?" Mr. Joseph sat up.
+
+"I am in your waggon--the market waggon, Farmer Wise, I think?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Joseph. You can't tell where we are, I see, being so much
+shook."
+
+"No. That's not it," said Mr. Joseph. "I--are you on the seat--the front
+seat, Farmer Wise?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Joseph. You can't make me out by this queer light, and I don't
+wonder. The stars is beautiful, but they don't make up for havin' no
+moon."
+
+"No. That's not it either, Farmer Wise. Did you say the stars were
+shining? Orion, I suppose, and the Bull and the rest of them! Can't
+you--try--like a dear old fellow--can't you--tell what's the matter with
+me? You say you are sitting on the front seat, and I--have no doubt but
+that you are, but your voice sounds so much further away--so very much
+further away than that--and when one--can't--see you, Farmer Wise,--"
+
+A frightful pause.
+
+"Can't see me, can't see me! Mr. Joseph, Mr. Joseph! Not blind--God
+forgive me for sayin' the word out to ye like that! But I thought it, I
+thought it, and so, out it come! But it is'nt that! Ye'll forgive me for
+sayin' the word out to ye like that! It isn't that!"
+
+"I'm afraid it is, Farmer Wise. It can be--nothing--else.'
+
+"If, as you say, the stars are shining and to be sure they generally are
+about--this time--of night, and if, as you say, you are sitting directly
+opposite me on the front seat of your waggon, and I have no reason
+to doubt it, if this is so, and I--can see neither--these stars
+shining--nor you--yourself--dear old fellow--on the seat before me--it
+can be, I fear--nothing else."
+
+"And how--"
+
+"Ah! I can't--quite remember. Some time, perhaps, I'll tell you
+how--shall I go to my brother or--how can I?"
+
+"Mr. Joseph," entreated the farmer, seizing one of those delicate hands
+and patting it as if it had been his own. "Will you come with me? I'll
+make you comfortable, and have ye seen to and we'll find out about it
+and what can be done, and that'll save your brother, look, and he not
+strong! Come, Mr. Joseph! Lie down there as you was, just as ye was--God
+forgive me for tellin' you to look up at them stars--and I'll speak a
+word for you at the Inn, as we're passing. Won't that do, nor be better
+than goin' in like that? Not knowin' either just what is the matter.
+Come, Mr. Joseph! I'll drive straight home after that and make ye
+comfortable for the night, and there'll be no--womankind, or, or anyone
+to disturb ye, just me and the two boys--come, Mr. Joseph!"
+
+"I am willing enough to go, old fellow," answered Mr. Joseph with a
+groan. "Willing enough to go anywhere, but where my brother--my poor
+brother--is. Yes, it will be best. Drive on."
+
+The warm cheery Inn soon appeared in view. The firelight from the
+bar and the lamp-light from the other rooms beamed out from the
+red-curtained windows. The scrape of a fiddle came from the kitchen.
+"Squires," murmured Mr. Joseph, feebly. "He's always at it." The farmer
+pulled up the team at the pump corner one instant and looking around
+descried not a soul in view. He got down and went to the side door
+leading to the bar and opening it put his head in. Mrs. Cox herself was
+dispensing early gin and water to three or four indolent but talkative
+gentlemen before the fire. But she was not so busy as not to perceive
+the farmer. Had she already had that cap on in which bloomed the violet
+velvet pansy, Mr. Joseph's whereabouts might have been discovered, for
+invariably on those occasions she accompanied the farmer not only to the
+door but even to the very feet of the horses as he straightened up one
+thing or loosened another and would often joke about the empty waggon or
+the purchases made in the town which might happen to fill it.
+
+But Farmer Wise left her no time even to adjust her head-dress, far from
+changing it.
+
+"Good evening, ma'am," said he, with his head in the door. "No. Don't
+trouble about Squires. He's hard at work, I can hear, and besides, I
+don't want him. I'm late, and the boys will wait for their supper. I
+just have to tell ye that I see Mr. Foxley in town, Mr. Joseph Foxley,
+and he says how he can't come out till--say--Monday. He was stuck full
+of work--he was indeed--and said positive--he couldn't come. But he
+give me this for his brother and for--her," producing the bouquet, which
+caused a thrill of amazement and awe to pervade the loungers in the bar.
+"For his brother and for--her," said the farmer, taking a long stride
+across the little room and giving it to Mrs. Cox. "I congratulate you,
+ma'am, I do indeed."
+
+Before she could well answer, he had shut the door and mounting the
+waggon drove away as quickly as he could. He was too full of thoughts
+and plans concerning Mr. Joseph to notice that quick as he was, Mrs.
+Cox, not waiting this time to change her cap, had come out to the door
+and with her hand shading her eyes, was looking wistfully after the
+departing team.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+It was as Mr. Joseph had said. His brother, George Albert Dacre Foxley,
+of Foxley Manor, Notts, was indeed contemplating marriage with Milly,
+niece of Mrs. Cox, landlady of the Ipswich Inn. If it seem strange,
+remember that he had passed the meridian of his years, health was gone,
+life rapidly passing away and it was impossible now for him to make any
+new departure in his life or habits. He had become firmly attached
+to Mrs. Cox's comfortable _ménage_ and wanted nothing more. Never in
+England, even while in the enjoyment of fairly good health and luxurious
+surroundings had he ever felt so completely at rest, satisfied with
+himself and his small immediate world, every want cared for, every wish
+guessed at, and the best of company to his idea--company that called
+for nothing but pure naturalness. He could smoke for hours in Mrs. Cox's
+kitchen, or in her neat yard or even in the chintz-hung drawing-room
+and no one would interrupt him with dissertations on politics, art or
+literature. Like all Englishmen of the quiet country-loving stamp, he
+cared little about politics except when some general crisis assented
+itself, and knew less about art or literature. He thought Wilkie and
+Landseer about the summit of the one and Byron the chief modern pillar
+of the other. Twenty years ago, Tennyson had not made a very deep
+impression on a mind of his calibre. Yet this handsome, quiet, delicate
+gentleman when he did choose to talk had such an audience as is not
+given to many men, for Mrs. Cox would leave her work (if she dared) and
+Milly would listen with her young eyes fastened in a kind of ecstasy
+on the dark ones turned to hers, and Squires would come along with his
+hands in his trousers pockets and his fiddle under his arm, and Bess
+would put her paws upon her master's knees and devour him with her own
+dark eyes--a quintette of friends unsurpassed in the world for loyal
+attachment and generous devotion. What if what he had to tell was but
+some simple story of hunting England, or some bald description of London
+life seen under the surveillance of a tutor fifteen or twenty years
+previous to the time of narration--he was their oracle, prophet, God,
+what you will, and they were his dearest, yes, his very dearest friends.
+When Mr. Joseph appeared as one of this happy circle, it became more
+boisterous of course though not necessarily any happier, for it
+was already as happy as it could be. But the news from town and the
+occasional English mail, flowers and a cheap new novel--these were some
+of the simple delights that Mr. Joseph used to bring with him. During
+the first couple of years, both the brothers would saunter out to the
+Miss Dexters' or to the Rectory, Mr. Joseph in particular, never failing
+to appear on Saturday nights at choir-practice and Sunday evening
+service--but Mr. George gradually discontinued his visits as I have
+hinted and towards the fourth year of his stay hardly ever went beyond
+the Inn. For at the back the small terraced garden met the orchard, and
+the orchard sloping down met a small pebbly brook, and the brook flowing
+along in sweet rippling fashion met the most charming of wheat covered
+golden meadows in which it was pleasant and good to stroll and which
+moreover all belonged to that matchless paragon among landladies, Mrs.
+Cox. In those days people grew their own kitchen stuff, and their own
+fruit and their own grain, fed their own live stock, made their own
+butter and cheese, cured their own hams, laid their own eggs, even
+brewed their own beer. Now, everything is different, and let no
+confiding Englishman, allured by my tempting picture come out to Canada
+today in search of such a Utopia for he will not find it. Moreover all
+this pleasant prospect of wood and stream and meadow and orchard lay
+well _behind_ the Inn, let it be understood, and it was perfectly
+possible for Mr. George Foxley to have all the air, walking and
+exploration he desired and even a little shooting and fishing if he
+wanted them without, as I have said, going beyond it. When he grew
+really weak, he was obliged to give up both the latter occupations of
+course, but he still walked or strolled a great deal, generally with
+Milly by his side. She would leave anything she was at when he called
+her and opening the little gate by the one hawthorn tree leading into
+the orchard, see him safe down the slope to the side of the little brook
+where she would give him her arm, and thus their walk would commence in
+earnest. Four years had brought a great change in Milly. New ideas, new
+habits, association with such thorough and high-bred gentleman and
+the natural desire to improve and grow worthy of such dearly esteemed
+company, had altered her completely. Where before she had been pink,
+now she was pale; thin, where she had been plump; her features actually
+aquiline from the girlish snub of the rounded contour four years back,
+her hair, three shades darker, her dress, almost that of a lady. The
+most perfect sympathy appeared to exist, and really did, between these
+two strangely met natures.
+
+One day, they had sat down at the side of the brook as a couple of
+children would have done to cast in sticks and leaves and watch them
+float by. Sometimes these would get caught in the numberless little
+eddies that such a stream possesses and be whirled round and round until
+it was necessary to dislodge them and send them on their way after the
+others. One fine yellow leaf on this November day attracted Mr. Foxley's
+attention particularly, for it was obstinate in returning again and
+again to a cosy little bay formed by a couple of large stones. Often
+as he poked it out, back it came into the bay and anchored itself
+contentedly on the calm water.
+
+Milly laughed.
+
+"He has found a haven," said Mr. George. "Yes, without doubt he has
+found his haven. What do you think, Milly?"
+
+"I think so, sir."
+
+"Don't call me sir, child. What makes you do so?"
+
+"There is nothing else I can call you, is there,--sir."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Foxley. He lay back at full length on the grass and put
+his hands over his eyes. The river rippled on and Milly watched him
+anxiously. "Is the leaf there still, Milly?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Now!" said Mr. Foxley in a warning tone. "I tell you I won't have it."
+
+"No, sir--I beg your pardon, Mr. George."
+
+"Nor that either," said Mr. Foxley, slowly rising into a sitting posture
+again. He had another poke at the yellow leaf. "Call me Dacre, my child,
+will you?" Milly no longer watched him with those loving, anxious, eyes.
+She was trembling from head to foot and had she spoken, she must have
+wept. Mr. Foxley's voice was of itself enough to make any woman weep, it
+was so soft, so tender, so subdued and indrawn. Once more he said, "Call
+me Dacre, my child!" That pleading voice, so low, so musical, and that
+it should plead to her? They were so close together that he could
+feel her tremble. Weak as he was, he was the stronger of the two for
+a moment, and turning slightly towards her met her rapturous eyes, and
+heard her call him the name he wanted to hear. The same instant they
+kissed, a long thrilling dark-enfolding kiss that was the first Milly
+had ever known from a man and might have been, for its purity and
+restraint, the first also that he had ever given to a woman.
+
+"Have I found my haven too, like the wise leaf of autumn? Have I! Tell
+me, my child, my darling!"
+
+"O sir, dearest sir--I mean, dear Dacre, it is I who have found mine. If
+indeed you care for me, sir!"
+
+Mr. Foxley laid his head just on her shoulder, then let it slide into
+her lap, taking her trembling hands and putting them over his eyes.
+
+"I do more than care for you, my child. I love you. Stoop and kiss me.
+There. Don't take your head away again like that. Leave it. Your face
+against mine. Your lips on mine. Is it a haven, child? Truly, yes or
+no?"
+
+"Dear Dacre!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"You know it is. And I have always wanted so much to--to--care for you,
+but I did not dare."
+
+"Dare! There is no dare about it my child. If you will give me your
+young life--how old are you now, love?"
+
+"Nineteen," whispered Milly into his ear.
+
+"Only nineteen, and such a tall girl, with such long hair--if you will
+give it to me and be happy in giving it, child, that must be thought of,
+there is no one else--"
+
+"You know there is not, sir."
+
+"Then I will do all I can to deserve it. And nobody must call you Milly
+any more. You are Mildred now. Miss Mildred if you like and soon, very
+soon, to bear another name, mine. It is a good one, child."
+
+"I am sure of it, dear Dacre, and too good--far too good--for me."
+
+"Do you know how old I am, my child?"
+
+"I heard your brother say."
+
+"And did he dare? What did he say it was, my age?"
+
+"He said--you were forty-one."
+
+"Then he was out. It is more than that I am exactly forty-three; I say
+exactly, for, Milly, this is my birthday, and--I cannot hope--neither of
+as must dare to hope, child--that I shall see many more. You will marry
+me whenever I say, my love?"
+
+The girl bent over him in a passion of weeping.
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for you, dear sir--"
+
+"Except call me by my dearly-beloved third name!"
+
+It began to turn cold as they sat by the stream and Milly or Mildred as
+she is henceforth to be called, drying her eyes, fell into a fever over
+her lover and besought him to return to the house.
+
+Standing face to face, he put her arms around his neck.
+
+"Before we go, dear child, you are sure you love me?"
+
+"O do not ask me again, dear Dacre!"
+
+"That is right. And you know how old I am?"
+
+Another assent.
+
+"And that you are to marry me whenever I say?"
+
+"If I can."
+
+"Of course you can. And that you are to give me all the love you
+possibly have to give and more and more. I shall be exacting!"
+
+"Dear Dacre!"
+
+"Very well. Remember all those clauses, and now take me back to the
+house. And some day, my child, I will tell you all my life and what it
+was--or rather who it was--that sent me out of England, dear England--"
+
+"Ah! you love it still," murmured Mildred, looking at the ground.
+
+"I shall always love it _now_, since I have found my happiness in
+Canada, but once I hated it, Milly, yes, I hated it!"
+
+So was accomplished the wooing of Mr. George Foxley. He was earnestly
+and sincerely in love. The girl had grown up under his eye as it
+were and was in fact almost a part of himself already. Marriage would
+complete the refining and gilding process. The tones of her voice,
+her accent, her pronunciation, her habits of sitting, of standing, of
+walking were all more or less unconsciously imitated from him, she had
+modelled herself upon him, she was indeed his "child" as he loved to
+call her. For a month these two people enjoyed as pure and perfect and
+isolated an happiness as can be experienced on earth. Then it became
+necessary to inform Mr. Joseph and worthy Mrs. Cox. As if Mr. Joseph and
+Mrs. Cox didn't know! There are two things that nothing can hide in
+this life. One is, the light in the eyes of a girl who has found herself
+loved by the man she adores, and the other is, the unutterable content
+in the mien of that man himself. And there is no phase of passion
+sweeter, nor purer, nor warmer, nor more satisfying, than that which is
+the result of a young girl's affection for a man many years older than
+herself.
+
+As for the telling, Mr. George, though he could talk fast enough and
+fluently enough to Mildred, hated much talk or fuss about anything and
+so made everything the easier by informing his brother, Mr. Joseph, by
+note. A few lines sufficed as preparation for the news and he ended
+by requesting him to purchase some small and inexpensive gift as from
+himself in appreciation of the occasion. Mr. Joseph with characteristic
+good taste and delicate feeling, concluded that flowers, though
+perishable, were the most appropriate purchase he could light upon, and
+consequently walked out from town a certain Saturday afternoon late in
+November with a monster affair in smilax and roses in his hand. When
+it was placed, though not by himself, in Mildred's hands she felt a
+disappointment she could not altogether conceal.
+
+"Never mind," said Mr. George at full length on a sofa with Milly beside
+him on a chair. He did indeed prove a most exacting lover. For a long
+time her share of daily work in the Inn and out of it, had been growing
+less and less, until now she hardly did anything at all besides wait on
+her master, lover and friend, prepare what he eat, read to him, and
+sit by him for hours, never leaving him in the evenings till long after
+twelve and then it was understood that in case of night attacks of the
+dreadful pleurisy and asthma combined that were slowing killing him, she
+would always be at hand to come at the sound of his bell--or indeed his
+voice, for Milly, sleeping in the room opposite his own, always left
+both doors open and would lie fully dressed on her bed night after
+night, listening in the dark, with wide open eyes and strained ears, for
+the slightest cough or sigh that came from that worshipped one across
+the narrow hall.
+
+"Never mind," said he on that Saturday night "My brother _is_ busy just
+now. Don't you remember, he found it difficult to come out last week.
+It's an awful grind for Joseph, poor Joseph! But he enjoys life, I
+think; at the present moment I expect he is flirting audaciously in town
+with some charming girl. Or some fearfully plain one. You never know who
+next, with my brother. He'll turn up on Monday."
+
+And Mr. Joseph did turn up on Monday. Farmer Wise had fetched some
+doctor from Orangetown on Sunday, who after examining his injury,
+pronounced it incurable. Mr. Joseph was as stoical as Englishmen are
+generally expected to be and saw that it was absolutely imperative to
+tell his brother.
+
+"I brought it on myself" he said to the farmer, "At least I try to
+believe I did. By Jove! to think--to think of some men! Well, I _must_
+tell my brother."
+
+When he did tell him late on Monday night, having been driven over by
+Farmer Wise himself, with his poor eyes bandaged and the sturdy farmer's
+hand to guide him into the little back parlor where Mr. George and
+Mildred sat alone, for Mrs. Cox had been ordered out by that exacting
+gentleman as early as eight o'clock. Nothing but the presence of Mildred
+herself and the love divine and human that filled Mr. George's breast to
+overflowing could have saved him from succumbing to the painful shock.
+
+"Well, I should think you are cured now, my poor Joseph!" said his
+brother presently.
+
+"Of what, in heaven's name?" said poor Mr. Joseph. "By Jove to think--to
+think of some men, George! What had I done, what had I done?"
+
+"I do think of them," said Mr. Foxley gravely. "I do think of them.
+And but for my happiness here," touching Mildred's dress reverently,
+"I could wish--" wistfully, "That we had never come here--'twas I who
+brought you my poor Joseph, 'twas I, 'twas I."
+
+"Oh! that's rubbish!" pronounced Mr. Joseph energetically. "The main
+point is now, how am I to get my living. God! I am perfectly useless!
+They won't take me back in town there."
+
+"Dear Mr. Joseph," said Mildred, with her eyes shining on the brother of
+her lover. "You will live with us of course, with--Dacre, Dacre and me,
+and my aunt. We all love you--see," and Milly rose, first pressing Mr.
+George's fingers as they touched her dress in passing and giving him a
+look which was meant to keep him in order for a few moments, "no one can
+nurse you as well as I can--ask Dacre--let me take off that bandage and
+put it on again more comfortably for you! Will you, dear Mr. Joseph?"
+Mr. Joseph groaned and hid his face against Milly's heaving breast.
+
+"She is to be your angel as well as mine, perhaps," murmured his
+brother.
+
+"I have always been so active," groaned poor Mr. Joseph, "What is to
+become of me? To live here with you would have been beautiful, but
+now--the simple thought of existence at all anywhere is unbearable! And
+the money--good God, George, how can I Help giving way!"
+
+Some few other such scenes had naturally to be gone through before any
+course could be suggested to Mr. Joseph. Mrs. Cox had been taken into
+confidence, and Farmer Wise made to understand that nothing must be said
+about the unhappy affair. Mr. Joseph wrote into town explaining in some
+way his resignation of the rather important clerkship he had but just
+begun to fill creditably, and sending for all his belongings took to
+Mrs. Cox's remaining little room under the roof in the character of an
+invalid. The secret was admirably kept, even by the doctor who had been
+written to and who had seen a similar case some years ago.
+
+"A jealous devil, I suppose," said he, when he read Mr. George Foxley's
+note.
+
+"Well, he might have come off worse. But I should like to know who the
+country lass was that he'd been sparkin', and who revenged herself like
+that."
+
+A few weeks afterwards Mildred was married to George Albert Dacre
+Foxley, of Foxley Manor, Notts, by the Rev. Mr. Higgs in the village
+church. Her lover looked wonderfully well and strong on the occasion
+and was so happy that he was actually mischievously inclined during the
+ceremony, nearly causing his bride to laugh out audibly. Handsome and
+distinguished and aristocratic a gentleman as he looked, Mildred was not
+unworthy of him, as a straighter, firmer, more composed and more smiling
+a bride never entered a church. The girl was too happy to know what
+nervousness meant nor self-consciousness. She sat with her lover after
+he was dressed and had lain down a few moments to rest, until it
+was time to start in the carriage which Mr. Rattray had in the most
+unexpected manner offered them and which Mr. George accepted with the
+easy languid grace that characterized his acceptance of most things in
+this world excepting Milly. He had plenty of force and passion and to
+spare concerning _that_ gift. Stipulating that "Squires" must sit on
+the box seat, he and Milly and Mrs. Cox, an ideal little wedding party,
+drove off in actually high glee, laughing and chatting and joking
+immoderately to the amazement of the villagers, prominent among whom
+were Mrs. Woods and "Woods" himself, rescued in a dazed condition from
+the back premises of the "Temperance Hotel" according to popular local
+tradition, and Mrs. Lyman, B. Rattray, _née_ Maria Higgs. Mr. Joseph
+alas! could not be present.
+
+In the year that followed this remarkable marriage, the relative
+positions of the Mr. Foxleys underwent a great change. So much love and
+so much care lightened the elder brother's existence so materially,
+that his health actually improved, and by the end of the sixth month
+of marriage he was able to shoot and fish once more, and walk with his
+adoring wife without the help of her strong arm and shoulder. Indeed it
+was she who about this time began to need his assistance during those
+long strolls by the side of the brook or through the tall grain
+grown meadows--a matter which astonished them both to the extent of
+stupefaction. Mr. George took his trouble to Mrs. Cox.
+
+"I don't know what you expected, Mr. George, I don't indeed," said she,
+secretly amused at his simplicity. "You went and got married, as was
+only natural, and now you are frightened at the results, as is only
+natural."
+
+"But, my dear lady," expostulated the perplexed gentleman, "it involves
+so many things, all manner of complications. For instance, money. I
+shall have--I really believe, my dear good Mrs. Cox--I shall have to
+make some money."
+
+"You!" ejaculated Mrs. Cox.
+
+"I know. It appears hopeless. I never turned a penny, honest or
+otherwise in my life. Joseph you see--ah! poor Joseph!"
+
+Poor Joseph indeed, darkness for light, solitude for society, enforced
+idleness for long-continued habits of activity, who could enjoy life
+under these circumstances--and careful of him as Mildred was, and
+sympathetic as his brother was, these two were too intensely absorbed
+in each other to give him all the amusement and attention he craved.
+He grew thin and weak and slightly perverse and seemed to care more for
+Mrs. Cox's company than for his brother's. And yet there was nothing
+wrong with him except his terrible affliction. Mrs. Cox was sure he
+had something on his mind, and one day she ventured to tell him so. He
+flushed all over his pale freckled skin, and feeling for her motherly
+hands took them in his own.
+
+"There is," he said. "I wonder no one has ever guessed it. Miss Dexter,
+where is she? Does anyone ever see her?"
+
+"My poor boy, my dear Mr. Joseph," cried Mrs. Cox. "You did not really
+care for her, did you? Surely! You did not care for her!"
+
+"No," said he decidedly. "No, I did not care for her--I didn't, never
+could have cared for her as George cares for Mildred, say--but she was
+a lady and kind to me, and I liked to go there, and the fact is--I miss
+her--and I am so sorry for her! and yet, you know, I am half frightened
+of her too and afraid to go out, thinking she may meet me and I wouldn't
+see her coming, you know! Yet she wouldn't do it again, I think!"
+
+"Heaven save us, no, Mr. Joseph! And you so forgiving! Mercy me, and
+people say men make all the trouble!"
+
+"It's half-and-half, Mrs. Cox, dear old soul," muttered Mr. Joseph,
+leaning back on his cushions. "I suppose we were both to blame. I can't,
+for the life of me, fall to talking of it as a judgment, for before
+heaven, I had done nothing. Yet I forgot how lonely she was and how
+proud, and I forgot too, that Ellen--that Ellen--"
+
+"Ay, Mr. Joseph. It was Ellen too. Poor Ellen, that passed away out of
+it all!"
+
+"And she--Miss Dexter--is still here, still living by herself in the
+cottage by the oak! I remember so well, Mrs. Cox, the first time my
+brother and I ever saw that oak!"
+
+"I daresay, Mr. Joseph, I daresay. Yes, she is still there, living in
+her cottage unloved and unheeded, Mr. Joseph. And may she ever continue
+so!"
+
+"Oh! don't say that, dear old soul! Don't say that! Do you know, I
+should like to see her--I mean--meet her once again!"
+
+Mrs. Cox was certain he was not in "his right head" as she said to
+herself.
+
+"See her again! Meet her, talk to her! The woman who served ye like
+this! what can you be thinking of? Let me call your brother. There he is
+coming along the road, brown and bonny, with his wife on his arm, bless
+them both?"
+
+"Did you say he was brown, Mrs. Cox? My brother brown! What a change! He
+looks so well then, dear old soul!"
+
+"If you could but see him, Mr. Joseph, you would see how well."
+
+"Well and brown! And Mildred, she is pale, I suppose, and with her
+eyes turned up to his and her lips brushing his shoulder every now and
+then--O I can see them--I suppose they go on a worse than ever."
+
+"Indeed and they do, Mr. Joseph. After, breakfast this morning I sent
+them up into the drawing-room to be out of the way of the drover's
+meeting to be held in the bar, and when I went up to ask them about the
+lunch they would take with them on the river this afternoon I heard no
+sound like and just whispered at the door a bit if I might come in. When
+I went in, there was your brother standing behind her in a chair, with
+all her hair down, and a brush in his hand and his wife fast asleep!
+He looked frightened for a minute when he saw me and I besought him to
+bring her to, thinking he'd mesmerized her. He'd been brushing it and
+playing with it and the morning over warm--she had fallen asleep. And
+I left them, Mr. Joseph, I left them, for they love each other so. And
+when I think of the honor he has done my girl, and how particular he is
+that she shall be called Mrs. Foxley--it--"
+
+"Well, well, Mrs. Cox, ours is a good name, and I do not think my
+brother would have ever allowed any but a good girl to bear it. And if
+a girl is lovely and gentle and pure-minded, and innocent, and neat, and
+clean, and refined as your niece was, it matters not about her birth.
+Birth! O my dear old soul, I am sick of the word! Miss Dexter now, is a
+lady, you know."
+
+"Ay."
+
+"And I must see her again," enforced Mr. Joseph, brought back to his one
+idea. "I must see her again."
+
+Mrs. Cox communicated this intelligence to her niece, Mrs. Foxley.
+
+"I think I can understand why," said she, lying back in her husband's
+arms one hot summer night under the trees at the back of the blouse. "It
+seems a hard wish to understand and a harder one to comply with, but it
+may have to be done. Dacre--"
+
+"What my darling!"
+
+"When are you going to tell me about your life in England
+and--and--about the woman who sent you out of it?"
+
+"The woman! I never told you about a woman, child!"
+
+"No. But I guessed. It is sure to have been a woman, Dacre."
+
+"Well, I don't mind when I tell you. Nothing of all that time is
+anything to me now. Shall I tell you now?"
+
+"If you please, dearest Dacre. For I must be close to you when I listen
+to that, and must not have you see me, for I know I shall cry."
+
+"Dearest child! Well then, it shall be now, for you could scarcely be
+closer to me than you are now? And if you cry, as you must try not to
+do, you shall be allowed to cry here upon my breast and I will not look.
+I can hardly see you as it is, it is so dark. Let me think, how I shall
+begin. You know Joseph--our poor Joseph--is my only brother and I never
+had any sisters. My father--you know this too--is an English country
+gentleman living in one of the most beautiful seats in England. If I
+were to describe the old place to you, you would want to go, and I
+could not spare you, so I will only say--well, you have seen those
+photographs?"
+
+"Yes, dearest Dacre."
+
+"They only give you a faint idea of what it is. It is Tudor you know--do
+you know what Tudor is, Mrs. Foxley--and all red brick, weathered all
+colors, and terraced, with lots of little windows and some big ones with
+stained glass in them, and urns on the terrace, and a rookery, and an
+old avenue of poplars, haunted too, and so on, and so on--there's no end
+to it, Mildred! Yes, it's a fine old place, without doubt Well, that
+is where I was born. I don't remember my mother. I wish I did. She died
+when Joseph was born, he is just four years younger than I am. Our youth
+was passed there--at the Manor, of course, and we had the usual small
+college education not extending to a university career that gentleman's
+sons have in England, you know. I didn't make many friends at school,
+and where we lived, there was no one to visit, and we had very few
+relations. It is quite unusual I believe for two boys to grow up as we
+did, in comparative isolation. My father was a kind of Dombey--you know
+Dombey, Mildred--wrapped up in his old place and the associations of
+his youth and in his family pride. The Foxleys are better born I believe
+than half of the aristocracy; we go back to the Conquest on my father's
+side--a thing which he never permits himself to forget for an instant.
+Well, Milly, it was a dull life for two lively, affectionate lads like
+Joseph and me, wasn't it, and had it not been for all this, child,
+nature, you know, and the trees and the streams and the out-door sports
+I love so well, I could never have got on at all. Then when I was
+nineteen--just your age, love--came a change. I, being the elder and
+heir to the estate was sent off to town--I mean, London, my dear--and
+the Continent, with a tutor. Joseph--well, I believe I have never fully
+understood what became of Joseph during the four years I was away, but
+I suppose he amused himself. He has a knack of doing that I never had,
+except when I am in the country. Well, this tutor wasn't a bad sort of
+a fellow and at first we got on splendidly, living in town in chambers,
+going to the plays and the opera, and dining all over, just wherever
+I liked or he knew, and excursions oat of London, you know--oh! jolly
+enough for a little while! Then we went across to Paris--"
+
+"Yes, dearest Dacre?"
+
+Mr. Foxley stopped a moment to lift his wife's face closer to his own.
+He kissed it--a long long kiss that entranced them both to the degree of
+forgetting the story.
+
+"If you would rather not go on--" said Mildred.
+
+"Oh! I must now. Well, we did Paris, and then the other capitals and
+Nice--Nice was just then coming into vogue, and ran down into Italy--I
+remember I liked Genoa so much--and then we came back to Paris, for
+Harfleur--that was the tutor's name, and it doesn't sound like a real
+one, does it--preferred Paris to any other European town and of course
+so did I. About this time, his true character began to show itself. He
+went out frequently without me, smoked quite freely, would order in
+wine and get me to drink with him, and was very much given to calling
+me fresh, green, and all that you know. I began to think he was right. I
+was past twenty-one, and I had never even had a glimpse into the
+inside of life. Women, now and all that kind of thing--I was positively
+ignorant of--but to be sure, one quickly learns in Paris."
+
+For one night, Harfleur asked me in his usual sneering tone how I was
+going to spend my evening.
+
+"I am going out to a charming _soirée_ at the house of Madame de
+L'Estarre, the most charming woman in Paris," said he.
+
+"'Then I shall accompany you,' I said, fired by his insulting tone. And
+I went, Mildred. I suppose I was good-looking, eh, my child--and had
+sufficient air of distinction about me to impress Madame de L'Estarre,
+for she left the crowd of waxed and perfumed Frenchmen and devoted
+herself entirely to me. Although she was--beautiful--she was not tall,
+and I, standing at her side all that evening, never took my eyes off her
+dazzling face and her white uncovered bosom. In a week, my child, I had
+learnt to know and love every feature in that dazzling face and began
+to dream of the day when I should be allowed to kiss that bosom. Yes, I
+certainly loved her."
+
+"I am sure you loved her, Dacre my darling. And how could she help
+loving you, dear, in return?"
+
+"Oh that is another thing entirely, quite another thing. After that
+night, Harfleur showed me more respect than he had done for some time
+previously and we began to hit it off again better. I went to her
+_hotel_--her house you know, every day. At first she would always
+receive me alone, sending anybody away who happened to be there and
+refusing to admit anybody who came while we were together.--It is
+difficult, even to my wife, to explain what kind of a woman she was. All
+that first time, when we would be alone, she would--make love, I suppose
+it must be called--with her eyes and her hands, and her very skirts
+and her fan, and the cushion, and the footstool. The room was always
+beautiful and always dim, and she would greet me with outstretched hands
+and a shy smile, making room for me beside her on the sofa--she always
+sat on a sofa. We would talk of nothing at all perhaps but look into
+each other's eyes, until the force of her look would draw me close,
+close to her till we were almost in one another's arms, and I could feel
+her breath coming faster every moment when just as I imagined she would
+sink upon my shoulder--she would draw herself up with a laugh and push
+me away, declaring somebody was coming. Then, if nobody came, she would
+go through the same farce again. This would happen perhaps two or three
+times a day. In the evening, I was again at her side, night after night
+regarding her with a devotion that amazed even my friend Harfleur.
+
+"She treats you like a dog. It will kill you yet, George. Come away."
+But of course I would not go. I accompanied her to the theatre, to the
+Bois, to the shops, to church--yes, even to church, Mildred, think of
+that--and she was very careful and circumspect and all that. I even
+believe as far as direct actions go, she may have been a virtuous woman,
+for she certainly, had no other lover when I knew her. She was a widow,
+enormously rich and nothing to do. Therefore, I suppose she went in for
+the torturing business as a profession. Her Frenchmen did not mind; that
+was the secret of her charm with them--so clever, they called her, but
+it nearly killed me, her cleverness. I grew pale and worn--sleep--I
+never slept. All my life I had lived without natural affection, and
+now I was pouring forth upon this woman the love I might have rendered
+friends, sister, brother, mother, as well as the passion of a young man.
+I say to you now, Mildred, my wife, that the woman who tramples on the
+passion of a young man is as bad as the man who slays the innocence of a
+young girl. And that's what she did. Finally, when this had lasted for a
+year and a half, and Harfleur had gone back to England, one day, when I
+was perfectly desperate and could have killed her, Milly, as she lay at
+full length on her damned sofa--pardon, my dear, no, don't kiss my hand,
+child, don't--dressed in some rose-colored stuff all trailing about
+her and her hands clasped under her head, I fell by her on my knees and
+besought her to tell me what she meant and if she ever could care for
+me. I give you my word, my dear, and with my hand over your innocent
+heart, you know I dare not lie--in all that year and a half I had not
+even touched her lips. You cannot, happily imagine the torture of such a
+position.
+
+Well, that day, she bent over to me on her side and said "What do you
+want, is it to kiss me? Chut! wait for that till we are married."
+
+"Do you mean to marry me?" I gasped out. "She said 'yes,' Mildred, and
+brushed my cheek with her lips. What do you think I did then, Mildred?"
+
+"How can I tell, dearest Dacre!"
+
+"I fainted, dearest. Think of it. But I believed her, you see, and the
+revulsion was too great. In a moment or two I came to myself with
+the sounds of laughter in my ears. I was on her sofa--that damned
+sofa--pardon again, my dear--and she was standing with three of her
+cursed Frenchmen around her all laughing fit to kill themselves. I
+saw through it all in a moment. They had been on the other side of the
+curtains. I went straight up to her and said 'Did you say that you were
+ready to become my wife?' She only laughed and the men too with her.
+Then I struck her--on her white breast, Milly--and struck the three
+Frenchmen on the face one after the other. They were so astonished that
+not one of them moved, and I parted the curtains, and left the house."
+
+"Did you never see her again?"
+
+"Never. I left Paris considerably wiser than I had entered it and
+avoided society generally. I had one year's life in London, and was
+considered no end of a catch by the mammas, I believe, but you can
+imagine I did not easily fall a victim. No. That is all my story, my
+dear, all at least that has been unguessed at by you. My health was very
+bad at home and beyond my love of sport I cared for nothing. I grew to
+hate my life in England, even England, though she had done me no harm.
+Finally, I quarrelled with my father who married again, a woman we both
+disliked, Joseph and I, and so we turned our backs on the Old World and
+came out to Canada and to--you."
+
+Mildred still lay, crying softly, in her husband's arms. "I had
+sometimes dreamt," continued Mr. Foxley, "of meeting some young girl who
+could love me and on whose innocence and sweetness I could rest and whom
+besides I should really love. It did not dawn upon me when I first saw
+you, that _you_ were the one I wanted, for we must confess, dear, that
+you were very plump and rather pink and spoke--"
+
+"Why, Dacre, how can you? I was only fifteen! Cruel!"
+
+"Yes, I know. And how you changed! Now, you are so different that it is
+not the same Mildred at all. Such is the power of a true love, my child,
+and we must always be happy,--ours is one of those marriages."
+
+Theirs was indeed one of those marriages. Mr. Foxley took to farming and
+enriched his purse as well as his health. Mr. Joseph had an interview
+with Miss Dexter the nature of which I am not going to reveal, but which
+resulted in a placid intimacy between the two to the surprise of all
+save Milly who always said that "she thought she knew why." Miss Dexter
+frequently accompanied blind Mr. Joseph on his lonely walks or would
+sit with him when the others were out, as none but he cared to meet her.
+Towards his death which occurred in about four years time, she was with
+him constantly, and died herself in a fortnight after, having left in
+her will, all her maiden belongings to her "good friend, Farmer
+Wise." The farmer was not much moved when informed of this fact, so
+incomprehensible to the rest of the village. He had always kept the
+little bottle with its cruel label, and had always feared and avoided
+poor, proud, foolish, wicked Charlotte Dexter since that Saturday night.
+
+As for Mr. George and his wife, I see a vision of a successful and happy
+husband and father in the prime of early old age (which means, that at
+fifty-three one is not old with a young wife and three sweet children)
+and of Mildred, who is always a little pale, has her eyes constantly
+turned up to her husband's with her lips brushing her shoulder every now
+and then.
+
+Still?
+
+Ay, still and forever. And so ends my sketch of how the Mr. Foxleys
+came, stayed and never went away.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Gilded Hammock.
+
+
+Who does not know the beautiful Miss De Grammont? Isabel De Grammont,
+who lives by herself and is sole mistress of the brown-stone mansion in
+Fifth Avenue, the old family estate on the Hudson, the villa at Cannes,
+the first floor of a magnificently decayed palace at Naples, who has
+been everywhere, seen everything and--cared for nobody?
+
+She reclines now in her latest craze--a hammock made of pure gold wire,
+fine and strong and dazzling as the late October sun shines upon it
+stretched from corner to corner of her regally-furnished drawing-room.
+Two gilded tripods securely fastened to the floor hold the ends of the
+hammock in which she lies. The rage for yellow holds her as it holds
+everyone who loves beauty and light and sunshine. Cushions of yellow
+damask support her head, and a yellow tiger-skin is under her feet.
+The windows are entirely hidden with thick amber draperies, and her own
+attire is a clinging gown of some soft silk of a deep creamy tint that
+as she sways to and fro in the hammock is slightly lifted, displaying
+a petticoat of darker tint, and Russian slippers of bronzed kid. Amber,
+large clear and priceless, gleams in its soft waxy glow in her hair, on
+her neck, round her waist, where it clasps a belt of thick gold cloth
+and makes a chain for a fan of yellow feathers.
+
+Because you see, although it is autumn, it is very warm all through Miss
+De Grammont's mansion, as she insists on fires, huge bonfires, you may
+call them, of wood and peat in every room and on every hearth. Out of
+the fires grew the desire for the hammock.
+
+"Why," says Miss De Grammont, with a faint yawn, "why must I only lie in
+a hammock in the Summer, and then, where nobody can see me? I will have
+a hammock made for the winter, to lie in and watch my fires by."
+
+And so she did, for money is law and beauty creates duty, and one day,
+when the fashionable stream, the professional cliques and the artistic
+hangers-on called upon her "from three to six," they were confronted
+by the vision of an exquisitely beautiful woman dressed in faint yellow
+with great bunches of primroses in brass bowls from Morocco on a table
+by her side, who received them in a "gilded hammock," with her feet on
+a tiger-skin, and her chestnut hair catching a brighter tinge from the
+flames of her roaring fire, and the sunlight as it came in through the
+amber medium of the silken-draped windows.
+
+The tea was Russian, like the slippers, and the butler who presented
+it was a mysterious foreigner who spoke five languages. The guests all
+wondered, as people always did, at De Grammont. Nobody knew quite what
+she had done with herself since she had been left an orphan at the age
+of nineteen. She suddenly shot up into a woman, beautiful, with that
+patrician and clear-cut loveliness with yet a touch of the _bohémienne_
+about it which only _les belles Américaines_ know. Then she took unto
+herself a maid, two dogs, and three Saratoga trunks and went over to
+Europe wandering about everywhere. At Cannes, she met and subjugated
+the heir to the crown; of this friendship the tiger-skin remained as a
+_souvenir_. The heir to the crown was not generous. Next came various
+members of embassies, all proud, all poor, and all frantically in love.
+She laid all manner of traps for her lovers and discovered in nearly
+every case that these men were after her money. A certain Russian Grand
+Duke, from whom had come some superb amber ornaments--he being a man of
+more wealth than the others--never forgave her the insult she offered
+him. He sent her these ornaments from the same shop in Paris that
+he ordered--at the same time--a diamond star for a well-known ballet
+dancer, and the two purchases were charged to his account. Through some
+stupidity, the star came to her. She ordered her horses and drove the
+same day to the jewelers, who was most humble and anxious to retrieve
+his error. He showed her the amber. She examined it carefully. "It is
+genuine, and very fine," she said gravely. "I have lived in Russia and I
+know. I am very fond of amber. I will buy this myself from you, and you
+may inform His Highness of the fact."
+
+The delighted shop-keeper did not ask her very much more than its
+genuine value and next day all Paris knew of the transaction and flocked
+to the Opera to see her in the ornaments which had cost the Russian
+Duke his friendship for the bearer. But though eccentric, impulsive and
+domineering, no whisper had ever attached itself to her name. On her
+return to her native New York, was she not welcomed, fêted, honored,
+besieged with invitations everywhere? People felt she was different from
+the girl who went away. _She_ had been undecided, emotional, a trifle
+vain, self-conscious, guilty of moods--no small offence in society; this
+glorious creature was a queen, a goddess, always calm, always serene,
+always a trifle bored, always superbly the same. Her house she
+re-furnished altogether. The three Saratoga trunks were now represented
+by nine or ten English ones, dress baskets, large packing cases, and one
+mysterious long box which when opened contained several panels of old
+Florentine carved wood-work which interested all New York immensely.
+Pictures and tapestries, armor and screens, and a gate of mediæval
+wrought iron were all among her art treasures. The foreign butler was
+her _chargé d'affaires_, and managed everything most wisely and
+even economically. He engaged a few servants in New York, her maid,
+housekeeper and the two housemaids she had brought out with her. Her
+house was the perfect abode of the most faultless æstheticism. It was
+perfection in every detail and in the _ensemble_ which greeted the eye,
+the ear, every sense, and all mental endowments, from the vestibule in
+marble and rugs to the inner boudoir and sanctum of the mistress of the
+house, hung with pale rose and straw-color in mingled folds of stamped
+Indian silks, priceless in color and quality. Two Persian cats adorned
+the lounge and one of her great dogs--a superb mastiff--occupied the rug
+before the door night and day, almost without rest.
+
+Such were the general surroundings of Isabel de Grammont. Art and
+letters, music and general culture were inseparable from the daily life
+of such a woman as well as immediate beautiful presences, so that into
+this faultless house came everything new that the world offered in
+books, magazines, songs and new editions. Thanks to European travel,
+there was no language she could not read, no modern work she had not
+studied. Also came to her receptions the literary lions of New York.
+Aspiring journalists, retiring editors, playrights and composers, a
+few actors and crowds of would-be poets flocked to the exquisite
+drawing-rooms hung with yellow, wherein the owner of so much
+magnificence lounged in her golden hammock. Sonnets were written of
+her descriptive of orioles flying in the golden west, and newspaper
+paragraphs indited weekly in her praise referred to her as the
+"Semiramus of a new and adoring society world." Baskets of flowers, tubs
+of flowers, barrels of flowers were sent weekly to her address, and
+she was solicited--on charitable, fashionable, religious, communistic,
+orthodox and socialistic grounds as lady patroness of this or member of
+that and subscriber to the other. In short, she was a success, and as
+nothing succeeds like success, we may take it that as the months rolled
+on, and the great house still maintained its superb hospitality and Miss
+De Grammont still appeared in her sumptuous carriage either smothered
+in furs or laces according to the seasons, she still maintained in
+like manner her position in society and her right to the homage and
+admiration of all classes.
+
+But this was not the case. Even a worm will turn and public opinion is
+very often a little vernacular, let us say. And it happened, that public
+opinion in the case of Miss De Grammont, began to turn, to raise itself
+up in fact and look a little about it and beyond it as we have all seen
+worms do--both in cheeses and out of them--when the fact that she lay
+most of the time in a gilded hammock swung in front of her drawing-room
+fire was announced from the pulpits of society journals. It may have
+been that her friends were devoid of imagination, that they were cold,
+prudish, satirical, unpoetical, unaesthetic, anything we like to call
+them, that will explain their action in the matter, for they clearly,
+one and all, disliked the notion of the hammock. One spoke of it
+disparagingly to another, who took it up and abused it to a third,
+who described it to a friend who "wrote for the papers." This gifted
+gentleman who lodged with a lady of the same temper and edited a fashion
+journal, concocted with her help a description of the thing which soon
+found its way into his paper and was then copied into hers. The public
+grew uneasy. It would swallow any story it was told about the Heir
+Apparent, for instance and a Russian Grand Duke--is it not the sublime
+prerogative of American women to dally with such small game as those
+gentlemen--but it kicked against the probability of such an actual fact
+as the hammock already described which seemed too ridiculous a whim
+to possess any real existence. However, the tongues of the fashionable
+callers, the professional cliques and the artistic hangers-on coincided
+in the affair to that extent that soon the existence of the gilded
+hammock was established and from that time Miss De Grammonts' popularity
+was on the wane. Dowagers looked askance and matrons posed in a
+patronizing manner, the flippant correspondents of society journals and
+the compilers of sonnets in which that very hammock had been eulogized
+and metaphored to distraction now waited upon her, if at all in an
+entirely different manner. Strange how all classes began to recall the
+many peculiar or unaccountable things she had done, the extraordinary
+costumes she had worn, the fact that she lived alone, and the other fact
+that she made so few friends. From aspersions cast on her house, her
+equipage, her dresses, there came to be made strictures on her private
+character, her love affairs, her friends and career in Europe, her
+_ménage_ at present in New York and the members thereof. Finally public
+opinion finding that all this made very little impression outwardly,
+upon the regal disdain of Miss De Grammont in her carriage or in her
+Opera-stall, however she might writhe and chafe when safely ensconced
+within that rose and straw-colored boudoir, made up its mind that the
+secret of the whole three volume novel, the key to the entire mystery
+lay with the--butler.
+
+That black-moustached functionary, they whispered, had his mistress in
+his power. He had been a courier, and she had fallen in love with him
+abroad. Or he had been a well-known conjurer and coerced her through
+means little less than infernal to run away with him. He was a
+mesmerist, so they said, and could send her into trances at will. Then
+he had been the famous Man Milliner of Vienna, whose disappearance one
+fine day with the entire trousseau of an Austrian Grand Duchess had been
+a nine days' wonder. These dresses she wore, strange mixtures never seen
+on earth before of violet and blue, pink and pea-green, rose and lemon,
+were the identical ones prepared for the Grand Duchess. Finally, he was
+an Italian Prince rescued from a novel of "Ouida's," whom she had found
+living in exile, having to suffer punishment for some fiendish crime
+perpetrated in the days of his youth.
+
+When the stories had reached this point, Miss De Grammont, to whom they
+were conveyed through papers, notes from "confidential friends," her
+maid and others, wrote a letter one day directed to the:
+
+  REV. LUKE FIELDING,
+  Pastor, Congregational Church,
+  Phippsville, Vermont.
+
+A week or ten days after, Miss De Grammont, seated--not, in the gilded
+hammock though it still swung gracefully before the glowing fire--but in
+the cushions which graced her window looking on the front of the house,
+saw a gentleman arrive in a cab. She rose hastily and opened the door
+of the room herself for her visitor. This was the Rev. Luke Fielding,
+a gentleman of the severest Puritanical cut and a true New Englander
+to boot. With his hat in his hand he advanced with an expression on his
+face of the deepest amazement and dismay which increased momentarily as
+he saw not only the gorgeous coloring and appointments of the room
+but the fair figure of its occupant. To be sure, she had with infinite
+difficulty selected the plainest dress she could find in her wardrobe to
+receive him in, a gown of dark green velvet made very simply, and high
+to the throat. But alas! there was no disguising the priceless lace at
+her wrists, or the gems that glittered on her firm white hands.
+
+"My dear cousin!" said the lady, giving him both her hands.
+
+"My dear cousin Isabel," returned the minister, laying his hat down on
+a plush-covered chair on which it looked curiously out of place, and
+taking her hands in his.
+
+"My dear cousin Isabel, after so many years!"
+
+"It is only eight years, cousin," returned the lady.
+
+"True," replied the minister gravely. "Yet to one like myself that seems
+a long time. You sent for me, cousin." His gaze wandered round the room
+and then fastened once more upon Miss De Grammont.
+
+"Yes," she said faintly. "I could not tell you all in my letter. I
+wanted--I want still--somebody's help."
+
+"And it is very natural you should apply for mine, cousin, I will do
+anything I can. I have"--the minister grew sensibly more severe, more
+grave--"I have this day, on the train, seen a paper--a new kind of paper
+to me, I confess,--a _Society Journal_ it calls itself, in which a name
+is mentioned. Is your--trouble--connected with that?"
+
+Miss De Grammont blushed deeply. "Yes. That is my name. I would not have
+troubled you--but I must ask your advice, for you are the only one of
+the family, of my mother's family--" Her voice broke.
+
+"Yes, cousin, you are right."
+
+The minister rose and stood up before her, a stern though not
+unsympathetic figure in his stiff black coat and iron gray hair. "I know
+what you are going to ask me to do. You will ask me to see these people,
+these editors, reviewers, whatever they are, to talk to them, to impress
+upon them what you are and who you are, and who your mother was, and
+what is the end of the base man who imagines lies and the end of all the
+workers of iniquity. You will ask me to tell them that it is all false,
+all abominable intrigue and treachery and I shall demand in your name
+and in my own as your only near relative and a minister of the Gospel,
+an apology. It is but jealousy, cousin. Forgive me, but you are too
+beautiful and too young to live alone in such a house, in such a manner.
+You must marry. Or else you must give up such a life. It maketh enemies
+within your gates and behold! there shall be no man to say a good thing
+of thee!"
+
+The minister had lifted up his voice as if he had been in the pulpit and
+for one instant laid his hand on his cousin's hair. Then he went back to
+his seat.
+
+Miss De Grammont was profoundly moved. Great tears coursed down her
+cheeks and until they had stopped she could not trust herself to speak.
+
+"The paper!" she said dismally. "You have seen a paper, you say,
+with--my--my name in it! There is nothing new in that. I have been in
+the papers for months past. I am never out of them. And this one says--"
+
+The minister drew it out of his pocket.
+
+"That with you, in this house lives, in the character of a butler,
+an exiled Italian Prince who committed grave personal and political
+offences many years ago and was sent to prison. That you are married to
+him. My dear cousin, it is monstrous!"
+
+Miss De Grammont took out her handkerchief already wet through with her
+tears and pressed it to her eyes.
+
+"It is not monstrous," she said, "but it is most extraordinary. He _is_
+an Italian Prince, and I _am_ married to him."
+
+To use a hackneyed phrase, the room swam around Mr. Fielding for an
+instant When he recovered he could only sit and gaze at the beautiful
+woman before him. The details of village life, in Vermont had not
+educated him up to exigencies of this sort. A fearful chasm seemed to
+have opened under his feet, and he began to comprehend dimly that there
+were other lives than his own and that of his estimable but commonplace
+wife being daily lived out in this world.
+
+"Yes," said Miss De Grammont, a little more bravely now that the worst
+shock was over. "That is quite true. And the extraordinary part of it is
+that they can only have guessed at it; evolved it, as it were from the
+depths of their inner consciousness, they can't possible have discovered
+it. It isn't known anywhere, save perhaps to one or two in Italy."
+
+"In Italy," murmured the Rev. Mr. Fielding. "You met him in Italy? And
+why keep it secret? My dear cousin, you have made a great mistake. And
+all this sad and singular story is true?"
+
+"Very nearly true. All but the offences. They never happened."
+
+"Your husband is not a political character then?"
+
+"Oh! not in the least. He knows nothing of politics. My José! he
+couldn't hurt anything, moreover!"
+
+"José is a Spanish name, surely," said Mr. Fielding.
+
+"His mother was a Castilian, fair and proud as only a Castilian can
+be. She named him José--But he has other names, three, all
+Italian--Antonio--"
+
+"I see," said the minister dryly. "I am sorry that I cannot give you all
+the sympathy in this matter that you may desire, but you have entered on
+a course of action which is perplexing at least, to say no more. I feel,
+my dear cousin, that as a--married woman--your confidences are--ill
+placed and I must ask you to withdraw them. You must settle this matter
+with your--ahem--husband." Mr. Fielding took up his hat and in another
+moment would have been gone forever, but that turning at the door he saw
+such intense supplication in his cousin's eyes that his orthodox heart
+melted.
+
+"Forgive me cousin," he said coming back. "There may be still a way
+out of it. Will you tell me all?" Miss De Grammont then related her
+different heart episodes abroad, entanglements, half-engagements,
+desperate flirtations and all the rest of it to this sober, black-coated
+gentleman. Such a revelation poured forth in truly feminine style
+nearly drove him away the second time, but true to his word, he remained
+nevertheless, sitting bolt upright in a padded chair only meant for
+lounging. Finally, she told him of her snares to catch lovers and how
+one day she was caught herself by the dark-browed, eloquent Prince
+Corunna.
+
+She fell in love herself for the first time in her life, and he with
+her, so he declared. But he was miserably poor and with the pride of a
+Castilian would not woo her because of her money. She hated it, yet she
+could not live without it.
+
+The minister smiled pityingly.
+
+However she made him marry her, and then proposed as a test, in which
+he joyfully acquiesced, that he should make himself of use to her, be
+in fact, her major-domo, steward, butler, amanuensis, anything and
+everything.
+
+"It is most unprecedented," sighed the minister. "That a man with
+Castilian blood in his veins--"
+
+Miss De Grammont interrupted him. "He was happier so, dear cousin. But
+I--I grew most unhappy. And since I have been here, I have been very
+unhappy still. We are both in a false position and now--thanks to that
+unlucky hammock--our secret has become common property."
+
+"The hammock!" said Mr. Fielding. "What has that got to do with it? It
+is a pretty idea."
+
+"So I think," said Miss De Grammont, delighted beyond measure. Then
+she told him about the paragraphs, large and small, the confidential
+friends, the small beginnings that had lead insensibly up to the
+culminating point--that of scandal.
+
+"I am being dropped gradually," she said.
+
+"Of course you are," said the minister. "Of course you are. Soon you
+will be--forgive me--a dead letter. There is only one thing to be done
+and that I can do at once. A letter must be written to this paper,
+stating calmly in as few words as possible that this paragraph is true,
+that you _are_ married to Prince--ah--Corunna, that he _is_ a political
+offender and for that reason the marriage _was_ kept secret, but that
+now of course as informers must already have given the secret away, you
+are obliged to endorse it yourself."
+
+"But José is not a political offender! Never did anything wrong in his
+life!"
+
+"Of course not," said the minister. "Some of us others, even clergymen,
+are not so fortunate. Now that must be included, else there is no good
+reason for having kept your marriage secret. Other explanations will not
+be taken. Besides this will entitle you to sympathy at once. Will you
+write the letter and I can leave it at the office for you? There is time
+for me to do that before my train starts."
+
+Miss De Grammont wrote her letter as dictated by her cousin. He put it
+in his pocket and rose to go.
+
+"Will you not stay and see my husband?" she said timidly.
+
+"Thank you, no." returned Mr. Fielding. "I haven't met many foreigners.
+I don't think, perhaps, we should get on. Down in Phippsville--well, my
+circle is so different from yours, Isabel. It is the fashion I hear to
+live abroad now, and desert America--at least to depreciate it, and
+not to care about its opinion--but that hasn't spread yet to our little
+village. It seems as if it might have been better for instance, had you
+stayed in Europe. You see, having married an Italian, all this trouble
+would have been avoided--I mean--it could have gone on over there--but
+now--well, riches are a snare, my dear cousin, as you have by this time
+found. Good-bye, dear cousin, and God be with you."
+
+When a letter addressed to the editor of the Society Journal appeared
+the next day signed Isabel Corunna (née De Grammont) with its paralysing
+statement in a few concise words, New York was startled to its
+foundation. Public opinion which for a week had been at the culminating
+point of distrust, malevolence and resentment, turned the corner in a
+moment and for the moment believed implicitly in the faith of the lady
+it had abandoned. The greatest sympathy was shown Madame La Princesse
+Corunna, or Princess Corunna, or Miss De Grammont that was, or whatever
+her friends chose to call her. The butler disappeared for ever and the
+Prince came in. It was a transformation scene equal to Beauty and the
+Beast. Dark-browed and eloquent as ever, the Prince was a social success
+whenever he chose to be, but as time went on, he and his wife became
+more and more absorbed in each other and the world saw little of either
+of them. For a time he posed as a political offender which gave his wife
+no end of amusement. They were so far reinstated into public favor that
+the hammock--source of mingled joy and woe--was again considered as
+a thing of beauty and a thing to be imitated. There are a dozen such
+hammocks now in New York City.
+
+But there are still a few ill-natured people, dowagers, matrons, an old
+love or two, and a handful of shrivelled spinsters who declare that the
+Prince is no Prince at all, but a Pastrycook.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crowded Out! and Other Sketches, by
+Susie F. Harrison
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