Oddments

SELECTED SHORT STORIES

BY

Edith Nesbit

Contents

ODDMENTS

Titlepage

About This Ebook

The Stories:

A Strange Experience

Lady Desborough’s Literary Debut

The Blue Rose

The Linguist

The Poor Lovers

The Rose of Love

After Many Days

The Looking-Glass

The Girton Girl

Jacintha’s Heart

The Wishing-Tree

Miss Peckitt’s Pincushion

G. H. and I

The Parrot and the Melodrama

A Perfect Stranger

The Eye of X.J.X.

By a Mere Accident

The Kiss

Saccharissa and the Candlesticks

Three Women

The Unfought Duel

The Cheesewring

With a Difference

The Glastonbury Scandal

Cubist Camouflage

About this Ebook

Oddments

Selected short stories by

Edith Nesbit

(1858–1924)

Contents first published 1884 ~ 1918.

This ebook was created by E.C.M. for MobileRead.com, November 2015.

This ebook may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The text of this book is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA. Cover design by E.C.M. is released under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 License

Edith Nesbit Bland, English author and poet, published approximately 40 books for children under the name of E. Nesbit. Her innovative body of work influenced many subsequent fantasy writers. Nesbit’s reputation rests almost exclusively on her work for children, but she also wrote for adults. In addition to about a dozen novels for adults, she published many short stories (often under the name E. Bland).

* * * *

The word “oddments” can be defined as “remnants,” but also as “rarities.” The twenty-five stories presented here were found in various magazine archives. Some were published in Nesbit’s collections Something Wrong (1893), Thirteen Ways Home (1901), and To the Adventurous (1923); those collections are not currently available in digital form – indeed, they are exceedingly rare even on paper.

Here you will encounter fairy-tale wonder, melancholy tragedy, farcical comedy, sugar-sweet romance, tart social commentary. Some of these tales may not show the author at her very best, but even mediocre Nesbit is garnished with nuggets of gold.

This MobileRead edition was compiled from the following sources, using Notepad++ and Sigil:

Texts were obtained from magazine archives found at archive.org and hathitrust.org.

Punctuation, diacritics, and italics have been formatted; OCR errors corrected; some spelling and punctuation modernized and standardized. Chapter heads are cross-linked to in-line Table of Contents. Stories are arranged chronologically by publication date, and annotated with their source.

Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.

Oddments

A Strange Experience

I

THE COMPANION’S STORY

Mine has been a quiet, uneventful, unromantic life; but in my past, one weird experience stands out in very sharp relief against the dull background of my other recollections, which, to tell truth, are exceedingly prosaic; an experience so terrible that at the time it almost threw me off my mental balance, and even now often fills me with unrest and disquiet by its mere memory.

When I was in my twenty-fifth year, I was suddenly left to face life alone. I looked about for employment, and before many days my attention was attracted by the following advertisement:

Wanted immediately, a lady, as companion to a young lady who is slightly deranged. The patient is quite harmless and gentle. A comfortable home offered.

I was not by any means a weak-minded or nervous young woman, and it seemed to me that the slight prejudice which made me shrink from such companionship might easily be overcome. The salary named suited my requirements, and, as my credentials were satisfactory, my application was met by an acceptance, and all the preliminaries being arranged, it was agreed that I should journey down to E——— without further delay.

On the morning of the day on which I had arranged to begin my new life, it occurred to me that the train I had fixed on would not get me to E——— before seven o’clock, and that it would be far from pleasant to arrive in the damp darkness of an autumn evening at a station with which I was unfamiliar, and which might be miles from the ‘Manor House.’

I therefore decided to go by an earlier train, thinking that it could not possibly make much difference to my employers whether I reached my destination at eight or at four. I knew nothing of the people to whom I was going, beyond the facts that they were the elder sisters of ‘the patient,’ and that their references had been all that could be desired. On the way down I amused myself with guesses as to the kind of household I was about to join, and by the time I reached E——— I had formed a pretty little fancy picture of two cheerful, comfortable, middle-aged ladies, and had begun to think that the ‘deranged’ young lady might after all be only a little peculiar and eccentric, not enough so to make any serious drawback to a quiet and happy life.

I got a fly at the station, and with my smaller belongings was packed into it. After what seemed an interminable drive, the conveyance jolted and shook itself down into quietness in front of a closed door, which formed the only feature in a long red-brick wall, high enough to be in itself a very sufficient protection, and further secured by a formidable chevaux de frise. My fly-man rang the bell and I alighted. A long interval elapsed without any sign of life from the other side of the door, but when at last he some what impatiently rang again, there came a sound of footsteps on the flagged path within, and the door was opened about three inches, while a voice said:

‘Who’s there?’

‘My name is Graham,’ I answered. ‘I have come to be Miss Tharpe’s companion.’

‘Oh!’ said the voice suspiciously, ‘but Miss Graham was not to come till seven.’

‘Nevertheless I am Miss Graham, and you see I have come at four. I am coming in, so please open the door.’

‘Well, I suppose you may come in,’ was the ungracious reply, and the door opened. I passed through it, and up the flagged pathway, on either side of which stretched a garden, laid out in brown desolate flower-beds. Some large cedars grew near the house and cast a heavy shade over its long red facade. The whole scene was dreary in the extreme, and, to add to the weird appearance, though no lights were visible in the windows, all the blinds were drawn down, and over the front door the family hatchment was displayed. In reply to my hasty question whether there had been a recent death in the family, the woman who had let me in answered stolidly:

‘No, the place is always like this.’

The hall in which my boxes were set down was large and dark, furnished with oaken settles and seats black with age.

I paid the fly-man, and when he was gone, looked with anxiety for some sort of welcome, for the tone of the letters I had received led me to hope that this would be a home in fact no less than in name.

‘Are the ladies out?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said the old servant. ‘They will not be back till six. You had better take your things off, and sit in the library till they return.’

I did as she directed. In the library, which was at the back of the house, were a good fire and two wax candles in ponderous silver candlesticks. The walls were oak-panelled, and the curtains heavy, dark, and handsome. The whole atmosphere was one of decayed magnificence. I leaned back in my chair and put my feet on the fender with a feeling of contentment which not even the mystery shadowed forth by the outward signs of mourning on the house could dispel. The change from the chill damp world outside to this warmth and comfort, the absolute stillness of the place after the hurry and bustle of railway travelling – these were very soothing, and all conduced to a sense of drowsiness which gently stole over me. I yielded to it. I don’t know how long I dozed, but when a slight noise – a cinder dropping from the fire, I fancy – roused me again to consciousness, I found that I was no longer alone in the room. Seated on a low ottoman on the other side of the fire, her great grey eyes fixed on my face, was a girl; her hands were clasped round her knees, and her whole body bent forward in an attitude of profound attention. Over her plain white dress fell the splendid waves and ripples of her auburn hair; her complexion was of that clear shell-like tint by which that coloured hair is so often accompanied. She was exquisitely lovely – But her face? What was there in it that made me shrink involuntarily from her? The deep changeful eyes, the red perfect mouth, the wild-rose-coloured cheeks, the whole person of the girl, though of a more complete beauty than any I had ever seen, yet stirred in me a certain indefinable repulsion. Who was she? I had hardly realised where I was for the moment, but at that question I remembered. Of course she was the ‘patient,’ and the shadow that marred her beauty was the ‘derangement’ for which I had been prepared. I felt that it would not do to let this repulsion make any further headway, since I was to be the companion of the girl before me, so I crushed it down as well as I was able, and holding out my hand, said quietly:

‘How do you do?’

‘Hush!’ she whispered, taking my hand; ‘don’t speak too loud, or Jane will hear us, and she will want me to go away. She does not know I am with you. I told her I was going to my work, but I wanted to come and see you. You are to be my companion, are you not?’

‘Yes, Miss Tharpe.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ she said, quickly. ‘Call me Isabel.’

‘I shall be very pleased to do so, Isabel.’

‘That is nice,’ she said. ‘You have a very pleasant voice. What is your name?’

‘Frances Graham.’

‘I will call you Frances,’ she said, ‘if you will let me.’

‘Certainly,’ I answered, my heart warming a little towards her.

‘Now, Frances,’ she went on, coming close to me, and twining her arms round my waist; ‘I want you to be my friend, and let me love you. You will, won’t you?’

Of course I said ‘Yes.’ How could I do otherwise when her soft cheek was laid so caressingly against mine?

‘And you will try and love me? And you will be gentle with me, and not be impatient, and you won’t be annoyed if I talk too much of my work? You know it is the only thing I care for, and I must talk about it. No one else ever did any work at all like it.’

‘What is your work, dear?’ I asked, anxious to show interest in what was evidently her one topic.

‘Oh, you shall see it presently,’ she said. ‘There’s no hurry; it’s always there, you know.’

‘What is it like?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I won’t tell you what it is like,’ said Isabel gaily, ‘because that will spoil the surprise for you; but it’s very very beautiful.’

‘I shall like to see it very much,’ I said, feeling, it must be confessed, but a very lukewarm interest in the matter. I was tired and faint, and hoped that I should not be required to criticise or admire anything before I had been refreshed by tea. Of this, however, there seemed no sign, so I concluded that in this old-fashioned mansion afternoon tea was unknown, and that I should have to wait for the set meal at six, for which the Misses Tharpe were evidently coming home. I sighed.

‘Are you very tired?’ said the girl, who was now kneeling in front of me holding my hands in hers; ‘because, if you are not, I think perhaps we had better go and see my work now. I have been down here some time, and I don’t want Jane to come interfering before you have seen it.’

There was something strangely childlike about her suppliant way of looking up at me. A refusal would only vex her, I thought, so I gathered my tired limbs together and followed her.

She caught up one of the heavy silver candlesticks from the table and went before me through the dark passages, holding it high above her head. Its light fell on the red gold of her hair, whose lustre seemed to brighten the dim house as she passed through it. It seemed a long way. Upstairs, along passages hung with old portraits that seemed to frown on us as we went by; then down a few more stairs; another passage, a door, a short flight of steps, and we were in one of the daintiest little bowers I had ever beheld. Every pleasant device, every charming arrangement that modern decorative art could suggest, were here in perfection, and in strongest contrast to the massive antique grandeur of the rest of the house. I had hardly time, however, to take in more than the tout-ensemble of the room, for Isabel caught me by the arm and hurried me through the door on the other side of the bedroom, and into a little boudoir furnished with the same taste which characterised the room we had just left. Fresh flowers, cages of singing birds, plenty of books and needle work lying about. ‘Here,’ I thought, ‘she surely keeps her work.’ But no, she still hurried me on. The door of a third room stood open, and through it we passed into a chamber the facsimile of the one we had first entered. Only, whereas the other had been neat, this was disordered – rich laces, flowers, and a fan lying strewn on toilet table and floor; only, whereas the other seemed empty of human presence, this did not; only, whereas the other little white bed was vacant, smooth, and unpressed, this was occupied.

Isabel led me to the bedside. Before us lay what seemed so like herself that I glanced at her to assure myself that she was standing by my side and not lying before my eyes.

The figure on the bed was dressed in a ball-dress of white satin and rich lace, looped up with great wreaths of water-lilies and grasses. Her hair, which I now saw to be fairer than Isabel’s, fell over the pillow in heavy curls that almost touched the floor. The eyes had a vacant stare, but they were the grey eyes of Isabel; the cheeks had a deadly pallor, but they had also the rounded contour of Isabel’s. Over the neck and bust was thrown a thick white lace scarf.

A growing horror held me rooted to the spot. I could neither speak nor move, for, let me say it at once, the face before me had on it the plain signet of death. I stood waiting for what should come, and this is what did come.

The girl beside me whispered low in my ear:

‘There! Is it not lovely? Look, Frances Graham, this is my work.’ She drew the lace from the throat and bosom of the body on the bed, and a minute after threw the candlestick wildly from her, and, as darkness fell on the room, broke into peal after peal of ear-piercing, terrible laughter. But between the withdrawal of that lace and the coming of that darkness was a clear moment, and in that moment I saw most plainly, most unmistakably, all that the scarf had hidden. On that snowy bosom were dark crimson stains, and across that soft throat was a deep red gash.

Then material night deepened to mental darkness, and there came a merciful blank.

II

THE STEP-SISTER’S STORY

After the unutterable horror whose end was that blessed loss of consciousness, my first sensation was that of a painful struggle after lost memory; a desperate choking and a wild mad pulsation of my heart, which beat so thickly and so fast as almost to suffocate me. Then, as I began to breathe with greater ease, I abandoned the effort at recollection, and letting my feeble thoughts take their own channel, I began to notice where I was, and with whom.

I was undressed, and lying in a large four-post bedstead in a handsomely furnished old-fashioned room; windows and bed were draped with sombre sage-green moreen hangings. A bright fire burned on the hearth; beside me stood bottles, glasses, and basins. Over against the fire sat a woman’s spare angular figure, dressed in deep mourning. A woman with an ashen grey face, white hair, and a hopeless, desolate expression sad beyond description. She sat in a high-backed embroidered chair, and looked wearily into the fire. On her face were deep lines which seemed traced by grief quite as much as by age.

I lay and noticed all this, but the power of movement seemed withdrawn from me. I could not have moved a finger or uttered a sound if my life had depended on it.

The door opened softly and another woman entered, a little younger in appearance than the one who sat by the fire, but in care lines, in black gown, in white hair she was the same.

‘Has she moved, Mary?’ said the newcomer in a low voice that thrilled me by its suggestion of a resemblance to some other voice I had known (Isabel’s, as I know now).

‘No, sister Martha,’ said the other, raising her faded eyes from the fire; ‘she has been like this now for nearly three hours. Has Jane not returned yet?’

‘Yes, she has just come in. It is some distance to E———, you know, and Dr. Jaikes was out; but she has brought that new doctor from the High Street, who has the name of a clever young man. He had better come up now, I think.’

I closed my eyes; I felt I could not bear to be called upon to take even the part of a recognised listener in any conversation. Presently a hand took mine, felt my pulse, smoothed my hair back, and a man’s voice said:

‘Poor child, there has been a severe shock; have you any idea what could have caused it?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Martha’s voice; ‘she has had a very serious shock.’

‘We can do nothing more than you seem to have been already doing,’ he went on; ‘it is best to leave the nervous system to right itself naturally. Perhaps you will tell me what caused this.’

‘I will show you,’ she said, and the two left the room together.

The lady who had been called ‘Mary’ came to my side and bathed my temples with vinegar, and presently I heard the doctor and ‘Martha’ speaking in the next room. My nurse heard them too, and after a moment’s hesitation, slipped away to join them, leaving the door ajar.

My nerves were highly strung and my every sense was alert; though their voices were low, I heard distinctly every word that was uttered. I could not connect what I heard with what I had seen and undergone, for, in respect of any memory of what had passed in the earlier part of the evening, my mind was utterly blank, though I felt in every fibre of my body the vibration of the horror that had overwhelmed me.

‘A dreadful sight indeed,’ said the doctor, ‘and quite calculated to unhinge a mind more mature and self-governed than this poor girl’s. But you will pardon me for saying that it was culpably careless to allow her to visit that room unprepared.’

‘Of course we intended to prepare her,’ said Miss Martha distractedly; ‘but she came long before the appointed time, and Jane, who had charge of the house, believed Isabel to be upstairs all the time.’

‘Can nothing more be done?’ asked Miss Mary.

‘No,’ he answered, ‘but with your permission I will remain here for the present in case any change should take place. My impression is that she is conscious at this moment, and may before long recover speech and memory, and need instant attention. If it would not be too painful to you, ladies, perhaps you would not mind explaining to me the necessity for the existence of this horror, which must always be a danger to anyone entering your house without preparation.’

A slight pause; then Miss Mary said:

‘Sister Martha, tell Dr. Lloyd the story. If he had been longer in the town, he would not have needed to inquire. The chatter of servants makes the keeping secret of even a part of the tale impossible, and Dr. Lloyd may as well hear it told truly by you, as garbled by the town gossipmongers.’

And Miss Martha obediently began the story. I suppose she had had to tell it before, for her words seemed to come very readily:

‘My sister Mary and I were brought up by our father, a widower, who lived here, and when we were thirty and thirty-three years of age he married, to everyone’s great surprise, a young and pretty woman. About a year after his second marriage he was thrown from his horse and brought home dead. That night his twin daughters were born, and his wife died. In the midst of our grief at this double loss (for we had loved our father’s second wife) the dear little babies comforted us; we called them Edith and Isabel. We gave them all our thought, care, love, and devoted ourselves to bringing them up conscientiously. As they grew up they seemed to fill the whole house with sunshine. They were so sweet, so beautiful, so graceful, so fond of us and so devoted to each other. Perhaps Edith was a thought more beautiful, but then Isabel was so intellectual and brilliant. When the girls were about eighteen Isabel met at a ball in the next county a young man named William Lockwood, who, after a short acquaintance, asked us for her hand. He was of good family, and his people were quite favourable to the match, for no one could help loving our Isabel. She had had some money left her by her godmother, and as he was in receipt of a handsome salary, their position would be one of comfort. The engagement was quite satisfactory to everyone, and it was expected they would shortly marry and settle down near us. We were all, therefore, much astonished when Mr. Lockwood one day announced that he was going to accept a lucrative situation in India. Isabel could not endure the idea of living there, and begged him to give it up, but he would not. One night we took the girls to a ball at the E——— Assembly Rooms. At about two o’clock Isabel came up to me, and said she was tired and would like to go home. I asked if something else were not the matter, for she looked more than “tired.”

‘“Will prefers India to me,” she said, “that is all. I gave him his choice, and we have parted forever; he sails tomorrow from S———”

‘“Why does he go so suddenly?”

‘“A friend of his who had engaged a berth in this ship is unable to go, and Will is going to take his place,” she said. So fell the first blow on poor Isabel, without softening, without hope of reconciliation. I went home with her, promising to send back the carriage for Edith and my sister Mary. On the way home she seemed excited and half wandering, and talked in a broken, disconnected way. I am telling you all this to show what it was that first shook her mind, and how this quarrel with the man she passionately loved had partly unhinged her brain, even before the frightful event of which I am about to tell you. I should not have mentioned Mr. Lockwood but for this, and I shall not have occasion to mention him again. He went to India, and I dare say does not know of poor Isabel’s condition, for which his cruel conduct certainly laid the foundation. Of the calamity that put the finishing touches to the wreck of her mind, he must of course have read in the papers.

‘I did not then feel very anxious about Isabel. I thought she was merely feverish and excited, so I saw her safely in bed and bade her good night.

‘“Good night, dear sister,” she said, “I am quite comfortable now. I hope I shall go to sleep, and not be disturbed all night.”

‘Poor child! poor child! she was disturbed, but how, by whom, by what, we shall never know.

‘I went to my room, heard the carriage drive home, heard Mary bid Edith good night, heard the doors close and the house settle down into night’s quietness.

‘Next morning I would not have the girls called; I thought they must be tired. But at about ten o’clock I had a breakfast tray prepared and carried it up. Isabel slept in the outer room usually, but she was not in her bed. I passed into the sitting-room; she was not there. No doubt, I thought, she is with Edith. She was with Edith. O God, how often have I longed for death’s darkness to blot out my remembrance of the sight that met my eyes when I opened the door of Edith’s room! On the floor lay Edith, dressed in her white lace dress, just as you saw her upstairs; her long fair hair, wet with dark patches, lay spread over the nightdress of Isabel, who sat on the floor with her sister’s head in her lap. Edith was dead, her throat gashed across, and Isabel was mad.’

‘Mad!’ said Dr. Lloyd.

‘Quite mad: for when we asked her how she had found her sister; if she knew who had done it; how long ago; all she would answer was, “I did it of course; can’t you see I did it?” and not another word could we get from her on the subject either then or at any other time.

‘She did not do it, of course.’

‘Of course not. Why, the girls doted on each other. Besides, ample proofs were forthcoming that someone else had been in Edith’s room that night and had done this devil’s deed. The police came. Prints of a man’s feet were on the garden beds below the window, and the ivy which covers the house on that side was loosened and broken. Edith’s jewel-case, which had contained some valuable jewels, was broken open and its contents gone, and on the floor beside her dead body was found a large heavy knife, such as labouring men carry, and which was covered with her blood.’

‘The murderer was never found?’ asked Dr. Lloyd.

‘Never. No one could identify the knife. A tramp had been seen hanging about the house, but though detectives scoured the country far and wide, and though we offered a large reward, from that day to this no word has ever been heard to show in what way one of our darlings lost her life and the other her reason.’

‘This is very painful,’ said Dr. Lloyd’s voice; ‘but it does not explain what I saw upstairs.’

‘I was about to do that,’ replied Miss Martha.

‘We sent at once for Dr. Jaikes, who, as perhaps you know, was for years physician at ——— Asylum, U.S.A., for, to our horror, Isabel’s mania took the form of an absolute refusal to be parted, even for a moment, from the body of her sister. Dr. Jaikes came and examined her, and tried by gentleness and by severity to induce her to give up the corpse. No! she clung to it with frantic tenacity. To our dismay, Dr. Jaikes affirmed that it would be as much as her life was worth to insist. “If you force her to give way,” he said, “she is almost certain to go raving mad, and will most likely destroy herself.”

‘“What shall we do?” we asked.

‘He reflected some time, then made a journey to London, returning the same night with a stranger. The police inspector allowed the two to enter the room where the dead girl lay. They remained there some time, and returned the next day and the next. When for the inquest it was necessary to remove Isabel, Dr. Jaikes gave her a strong composing draught, which kept her unconscious for nearly forty-eight hours. We could not understand what Dr. Jaikes meant, until, while Isabel was still asleep, he took us to his house, and showed us – it.’

‘“That unfortunate girl,” he said, “will now be able to keep ever before her the form of her dead sister. This is a ghastly notion, but it is the only way to keep the girl alive.”

‘When Isabel awoke, Dr. Jaikes had an interview with her – the funeral had that day taken place – and promised that the corpse of Edith should be restored to her if she would promise never to touch it. He told her that if she did so, it would be immediately removed. She did promise, and has kept her word. By covering the face as much as possible, its beauty has been preserved.’

‘Upon my soul,’ said Dr. Lloyd, ‘this Dr. Jaikes is a sharp man, and so must his London friend have been.’

All this I heard as I lay in my bed. I must hear more. For at the last few sentences memory had awakened, and I was able to know that here was the explanation of the terror of that dim bedroom. The explanation! What had it explained? Nothing! How had this doctor preserved the body? Was it embalmed? How had it been recovered after receiving proper burial?

I slid from the bed and staggered across the room, pushed the door wide open, and tottered through it. As I did so, I caught a glimpse, in a mirror, of my own wild white face, framed in its black disordered hair. Dr. Lloyd sprang up and supported me. But for his timely aid, I should have fallen to the ground. I gathered my forces and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

‘I have heard the story. What is it? For Heaven’s sake tell me. How have you kept Edith’s corpse for four years?’

At the words my flesh quivered again, and my hair seemed to stand on end, while every nerve I had trembled expectantly as I awaited the answer.

‘Her corpse is buried,’ said Dr. Lloyd, tightening his grasp of me. ‘What you have seen was never alive. It is her perfectly fashioned, perfectly coloured image – in wax.’

III

THE THIRD STORY

Another blank. I believe I had something very like an attack of brain fever. I had recently had sorrows of my own in the loss of those dear to me, and perhaps these had weakened me and rendered me an easy prey to what now struck me down. At any rate, I was ill for some weeks, during which the kindest and most careful nursing was given me. As I got stronger I was able to think out all that had happened, and to form my resolution. So one day, when Miss Martha said:

‘I suppose, my dear, you will soon be well enough to leave this sad house,’ I was ready with my answer:

‘I have no wish to leave you, Miss Tharpe. If you think I can perform the duties you require, I shall be glad to stay here, and I can promise you that there shall be no return of the weakness which has given you all so much trouble. I believe I shall be able to fill the place of Isabel’s companion now better than anyone else could do. Your object in advertising was to get someone of about her own age, in the hope of distracting her thoughts, and that I will do all I can to effect.’

Dr. Lloyd was consulted, and he agreed with me that I was quite able to undertake the duties.

‘I should advise a daylight visit to Isabel’s suite of rooms,’ he said, ‘as a first test of your powers.’

So when I had grown quite strong, Dr. Lloyd took me up to the room. There, in the pale sunlight of the December noon, I looked upon the wax figure, and, rather to my own surprise, experienced no return of the nervous terror with which I had been prepared to do battle. I think the relief of knowing that this form had never had life, and was therefore not dead, was so great as to overpower any minor feelings.

I touched the waxen features, the chill hand – removed the scarf with a firm touch, and having accustomed myself thoroughly to the sight, I professed myself ready to begin my work, which I did forthwith, by persuading Isabel to take a walk in the garden, a thing she had never done since her sister’s death.

As the months passed on, the liking she had first shown for me seemed to deepen into a passionate attachment which I was glad to meet and encourage, and which I did not scruple to work upon by every means of which I was mistress, in order to draw her attention from that which she still called ‘her work.’ In a measure I was successful, but after awhile her interest in any new object of my planning would be sure to flag, and she would return with new-born ardour to the contemplation of that gruesome figure in the white lace dress. I managed to persuade her to allow the outward signs of mourning on the face of the house to be removed, and she consented, only stipulating that the blinds of Edith’s room should still remain lowered. Since that paroxysm of fearful laughter with which she had first shown me ‘her work’ (and which was, it seemed, the first she had experienced), her health had visibly declined, and as the days lengthened, and spring’s promise filled the air, she grew paler and thinner, and more languid.

Dr. Jaikes and Dr. Lloyd watched the case with interest, and they concurred in the opinion that she could not last many months. Dr. Jaikes was of opinion that her death might be preceded by a lucid interval, and his hope was strong that some clue to the murderer might then be gained. Dr. Lloyd differed from him in this, and declared his belief that only a shock similar to the one which had wrecked her reason would restore it to her, even temporarily.

‘Supposing that she did see the murder committed,’ he said to me once, ‘I believe she would recover sufficient reason to point the murderer out, if she ever saw him again; but that is among the things so unlikely as almost to be impossible.’

But it is not always the most likely things that happen.

Who, for instance, would have thought it likely that Mr. Will Lockwood should, on his return to England after four years’ absence, come straight from S——— to the Manor House and ask for Miss Tharpe? I suppose he had seen no newspapers on his outward voyage to India, and by the time he reached his destination the E——— murder had ceased to be common talk, and some other ‘atrocity’ had taken its place in the minds of men. Certain it is that he knew nothing of the tragedy.

Unlikely in the extreme! And yet the most natural thing in the world for one who had always had the name of a most impulsive man, not to wait to hear news in any roundabout way, but to come straight to his old love’s house, to see if she were still unwed.

At any rate, one May evening when the Misses Tharpe were out, and Dr. Lloyd, now a very frequent visitor at the Manor House, was sitting in the garden with me and poor Isabel, now wasted to a very shadow, we heard a ring at the garden door. There were never any callers there. It could only be Dr. Jaikes or the Misses Tharpe, so, as the servants were both out, I ran round and opened the door myself.

A handsome bronzed man of about thirty stood in the door way, and spoke, hat in hand:

‘Does Miss Tharpe still live here?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Can I see Miss Tharpe? I am William Lockwood, a very old friend.’

‘Come in,’ I said, and led him to the library. Then I went and whispered to Dr. Lloyd who the visitor was. I did not say a dozen words to him, but when I turned round Isabel was gone. Had she gone to the library? We hastened thither. The girl was standing just inside the door, looking at the man who had been her lover with a wild, passionate light in her eyes.

‘Isabel?’ he said, in a chilled, changed voice.

‘Well, Will,’ she said, ‘you have come back, then? Why don’t you ask after Edith?’

‘I – you – Good God! how ill you look!’ was all his answer.

‘Edith is not ill,’ said Isabel, quietly; ‘come and see her.’

I made a step forward, with some vague idea of interference, but Dr. Lloyd stayed me with a glance.

‘I – perhaps your sister may think it an intrusion,’ he stammered, apparently quite oblivious of our presence.

‘Oh, no,’ said Isabel, ‘she won’t think that. Come and see her. And you come too,’ she added, turning to us. I could not fathom Dr. Lloyd’s motive in allowing this gentleman to be subjected to such a shock as this must be; but I obeyed him, and we all went silently after her up the long, winding, endless-seeming passages, through the pretty boudoir, and into the dim chamber where death’s image was enshrined.

Isabel entered first, then Mr. Lockwood, and Dr. Lloyd and I stood in the doorway. I noticed that the young man’s eyes, strangely enough, turned first to the window and then to the dressing-table, as he followed Isabel to the bedside.

With a sudden movement of her hand she drew away the scarf from the throat of the body, and left exposed that awful ghastly wound.

Lockwood gazed spell-bound for quite two minutes. Then with a wild harsh cry that echoed through the quiet house, he flung himself on his knees beside the bed.

‘It isn’t true – it can’t be real! Oh, Edith! – my life, my darling—’

Dr. Lloyd stepped forward and dragged the man away before the hand he had stretched out had time to touch the wax hand to which he had reached it. He whispered in Lockwood’s ear. I suppose told him briefly what It was and how It came there, and led him to the door; but as they reached it –

‘Stop!’ cried Isabel, in a terrible voice; ‘you have seen – now you must hear. Though I have known it all along, I could not speak; but now the chain is loosed and I find words. I was mad then, and perhaps I have been so since. Why do you think I wanted her body? Why do you think I have dragged out my wretched life so long? Because I knew this hour would come. Because I knew that someday he would come back – to her, not to me – not to me, and that this sweet moment of revenge would repay me for all the sufferings of these years. Ask him if he remembers the last time he saw this room. Ask him— No, ask him nothing. Hold him there, and let him hear how his love, his darling, met her death— ’

Lockwood himself looked like death as he sank into a chair near the door and looked at Isabel. The girl’s whole body seemed transfigured, instinct with a new full life. Can you fancy the scene at all, reader? I suppose not, for my words are faint to convey any idea of the picture I saw then, and which haunted me day and night for years. The horror on the bed, changeless and unchangeable. The man, as far from it as possible, cowering beneath the glance of the woman, who stood erect and defiant beside the body, still clasping fast in her clenched hand the lace scarf she had withdrawn from it.

‘Listen!’ she cried, ‘listen, all of you – you shall hear my story. You have heard many guesses as to how this,’ with a wildly eloquent gesture, ‘happened, and he has heard none, it seems. Now you shall hear the truth, and he – liar, coward, traitor, villain as he is, will not dare to say it is other than the truth. Let me think; how was it?’

She paused a moment, and then went on more quietly.

‘The night of the Assembly ball I saw William Lockwood – he had been my lover for eighteen months, my ardent lover, if he was to be believed. That night he parted from me forever – my refusal to accompany him to India being his pretext. I went home very wretched, went to bed, heard the others return, and still could not sleep. Presently I thought I would go into Edith’s room and pass the rest of the night with her, my dear sister, my loving companion, who knew all my heart, and who had, in return, no secrets from me. I opened her door softly, lest I should disturb her innocent slumbers; and what do you think I saw? Edith was not in bed, she had not even removed her ball dress. She was standing by the window, her hands clasped round the neck of a man who held her in his arms. That man was my lover, William Lockwood. Let him deny it if he can!’

He could not, apparently. At any rate he did not, but only bent his head lower on his breast, after one sidelong glance at the door.

‘I heard him,’ she went on, ‘remind her of how he had only meant to marry me for my money, how she had always had his heart; and how, after all, his love for her would not let him marry anyone else. I heard him tell her how he was obliged to leave England for a time, of the difficulties he was in, and his urgent need of money; I beard him promise to return and marry her, if she would only wait for him. I saw her give him the jewels off her arms and neck. She banded him her jewel case, but she had mislaid the key; so he took a big knife from his great-coat pocket and forced the lock – it was only a slight affair – and crammed the contents of the case into his pockets. All this I watched through the crack of the door. Then they parted. He kissed her lips, her eyes, her hands, her hair, her throat; and then he left, as I suppose he had often done before, by the window; and when she had watched him out of sight she turned back into the room with a little sob – half of pleasure, half of regret. Then I came in. I suppose she saw in my face that I knew all, for she said half mockingly –

‘“I am not to blame, Bell; if you could not keep your lover when you had won him—”

‘If she had been gentle, remorseful – but she was not – and I was mad then, whatever I have been since—

‘“I shall keep him, though,” she went on.

‘“Will you?” I cried, and I caught up the knife which he had dropped, and – ah! – you see what I did with it. “He will not kiss your throat again,” I whispered to her; and then I knew what I had done, and life died out in me, and I knew nothing more till I found myself holding her head on my knee, and saying over and over again, “I did it – I did it – I did it;” and from then till now I never could tell the rest. It is the sight of you – you devil of treachery – that has given me power to speak out; and here, in God’s presence, I charge you with having killed her body and blasted her soul and mine. Ah, sister,’ she moaned, her voice sinking to a soft murmur, ‘forgive me as I forgive you, and let us both find peace,’ and her voice died away as she sank down beside the bed.

‘What have you to say to all this?’ asked Dr. Lloyd sternly.

Lockwood had been gathering himself together for a final effort, I fancy. He rose and drew himself to his full height.

‘Say to it?’ he said, haughtily; ‘why, that from beginning to end it is the baseless fabrication of a madwoman’s brain, and unworthy of a moment’s serious attention. I was never in this room in my life before;’ and he walked quietly out at the door.

We sprang to Isabel’s side, but when we raised her she was quite dead.

Was all her tale a wild imagining of her disordered reason?

‘Edith – my life, my darling!’ Those five words of Lockwood’s, spoken involuntarily in the first thrill of his agony and despair, bear witness that it was not.

At least, so think I, and so thinks my husband, Dr. Lloyd.

Does the reader think otherwise?

«•»

From: Longman’s Magazine Mar. 1884

Lady Desborough’s

Literary Debut

I

Lady Desborough was young, beautiful, and graceful. No drawing-room, no matter how exclusive, was closed to her. She sang charmingly and waltzed to perfection. She had a husband who adored her. She had an income large enough to make its actual figure a matter of indifference to her. She had diamonds that turned many a dowager green with envy, ‘and yet she was not happy.’ No; Lady Desborough had views. Society, as she knew it, seemed hollow, empty, and tasteless. The eternal receptions, dinners, dances, garden-parties, palled upon her – bored her unutterably. Lady Desborough had read a little of Carlyle and a little less of Mill. She had read through ‘First Principles,’ nobly disregarding the whirling of the brain induced by the ‘Unknowable’ and the ‘Infinite,’ and that maddening entity the ‘Ego.’ Poetry she really loved, and so read it without effort, but it had been with difficulty that she had blundered through an abridged Darwin, and she had absolutely gone to sleep over Professor Cairns.

And now Lady Desborough felt that in heartless society her mind was being blighted and her soul was decaying, and she longed with intense yearning for one thing: to write a book. Not a book of ‘mere absurd verses’ (which, by the way, she might have done fairly well), but a book that should live. ‘John Inglesant’ probably floated before her mind’s eye.

Sir Robert Desborough had no sympathy with these aspirations. This his reception of her first timid advance on the subject clearly showed his wife; though he admired her immensely in all the ordinary relations of life, he had no confidence whatever in her literary capabilities.

So Lady Desborough wrote her novel in secret. She must have had more than a little ability of some kind, though Herbert Spencer was too stiff for her – for her novel was a good one. As she went on with it she began to identify herself with her characters, and at last reached such a pitch of eager interest in her work that she could hardly sleep for thinking and planning what they should do next. The writing of a three-volume novel is no light task, and, not having genius, Lady Desborough was thrown back on recollection. Fortunately her observation was quick and her memory good, and whole scenes and conversations were reproduced with a fidelity which perhaps gave the book its greatest merit. But as the work went on, the fair authoress grew thinner and paler, and amiable acquaintances began to remark to each other over afternoon tea that Lady Desborough was certainly going off.

Another effect – and an unforeseen one – of her secret literary labours was produced on her husband. Strange to say, though they had been married at least two years, they still loved each other dearly, and he was not slow to perceive that something had come between them.

‘What is it, Laura?’ he said one day, leaning over her chair as she sat by the window in the abstraction that was becoming almost habitual to her. ‘What are you thinking of so deeply?’

‘I – I don’t know,’ with a half-start and a half-pout.

‘Is there nothing you want to tell me. You are not unhappy?’ There was an incredulous inflection in his voice.

‘No,’ she said, rousing herself to smile, ‘I was thinking about political economy.’

‘Rather a big thing to think of all at once, especially when I don’t believe you know the difference between normal value and Adam Smith.’

And, laughing, he went down to the House to drowse away an hour or two over the Improved Dwellings Act. Yet in his heart he did not feel satisfied. But he did not question her again; only noticed sadly that there seemed to be less and less of rapport between him and his beautiful wife. ‘I suppose it’s only what one might have looked for,’ he said. ‘I was a fool to expect that she would be different from other women. She is getting tired of me, that is all.’

She, too, felt that the shadow between them was deepening; but, trembling in the consciousness of her secret, she feared to seek explanations. ‘He has seen someone else he likes better, I suppose,’ she said to herself, while a bitter pain awoke in her heart. ‘Well, thank Heaven, my writing will give me some consolation.’

‘I wish we knew some interesting people,’ she said one morning at breakfast.

‘Your circle of acquaintance would be immensely flattered,’ remarked her husband.

She spoke again, and with a certain timidity. ‘Lady Gamgee has asked me to go with her to a Mrs. Somerset Smith.’

‘The Mrs. Somerset Smith who writes books?’

‘Yes. If you don’t mind I wish you would come with me?’

It was a long time since she had asked him to come with her anywhere. What made her do so now? His face brightened.

‘It’s very hot,’ he said, ‘and I suppose Mrs. Somerset Smith is not behind the rest of us in over-crowding and over-lighting her rooms. However, if you think the people likely to be interesting, we’ll go. Thank Heaven, we can get away to the moors in a week or two.’

Lady Desborough had another object in view besides that of forming ‘interesting’ acquaintances. She wished to prepare the way for a favourable reception of her book. She had not faith enough in her work to wish to let it stand or fall by its own merits, but longed to conciliate the offshoots of literature and journalism who frequented Mrs. Somerset Smith’s.

Mrs. Somerset Smith was by way of being very literary indeed. She wrote two novels a year, which were sometimes read by the idle Mudie-subscribers, but never by anyone else.

She was in the habit of saying that she had been a Socialist from her cradle, and was devoted heart and soul to the great cause of Democracy. She had founded several societies for propagating her ‘views,’ but they had always come to grief through the impossibility of eliciting any complete statement of them, and through the utter freedom from opinions of any kind on the part of the other members. One might have expected her to use her books as a means of spreading the light, but she did not take this course. In fact the bluest of Tories might have read any of them without a shudder. ‘One must study the public taste,’ she used to say to her intimate friends. She had many friends, and was intimate with all of them. She held broad views on all conceivable subjects, and belonged to societies for all sorts of things. ‘It’s only a guinea’ was the chief reason she gave for joining most of them. In spite of her strongly expressed disapproval of all existing forms of education, her own daughter was brought up ‘to pattern’ at a fashionable boarding-school, with a good many other young ladies whose parents did not disapprove of the ordinary process of ‘finishing.’

Mrs. Somerset Smith had always followed other people, and the one original act of her life was the establishment of her ‘literary evenings’ – and it was whispered that even that inspiration came from her daughter.

These evenings differentiated, as Mr. Richard Purvis used to say, from the ordinary ‘evening’ of doubtful on-dits and fatiguing small-talk. There were readings, recitations, and music at short intervals, and during the pauses one felt in duty bound to talk of the last thing read, sung, or recited, instead of putting one’s acquaintances’ shortcomings under the conversational microscope. If one or two found Mrs. Somerset Smith’s evenings a little dull, they did not care to say so, for the people who came to her house on Saturdays were immensely ‘cultured’ – and to sit through an hour or two of really literary conversation gave one a pleasing sense of taking life seriously, and of having reached a higher plane of social and moral excellence. The approval of one’s conscience compensates for a little dullness. A good many minor celebrities found their way to her rooms at one time or another, and at least one big poet or painter came every season, and might perhaps have come more often had Mrs. Somerset Smith not made quite so much of him.

That taste for publicity, that passion for posing, with which so many young men are eaten up, found ample scope here. People were encouraged to read their unpublished original compositions. What further attraction could a hostess offer? These, however, were generally read in the earlier part of the evening. A good many people came late. Though ill-natured people did compare her to Mrs. Leo Hunter, they came to her evenings, and, in one way or another, enjoyed them. Mrs. Somerset Smith’s husband, who had been ‘something in the City,’ had left her well provided for, and her house in Brompton was a model of luxury and aesthetic refinement. She spent every penny of her income and got the greatest possible amount of enjoyment out of it. But she did not move in what is known as ‘society’ – only clung about its fringe. Being at the same time a professed social leveller, it is almost superfluous to add that she was feverishly anxious to welcome Lady Desborough, a visitor from the Paradise at whose gates she perpetually knocked, and of whose glories she had caught but passing glimpses. As a student of human nature, it is possible that she wished to see as much as possible of a type which, if her democratic yearnings were realised, would soon become extinct.

Anyway, she welcomed Lady Desborough and Sir Robert with ardour.

‘I have heard so very much of you,’ she said, ‘from dear Lady Gamgee, and she has shown me some of your verses which seem to stir chords in my innermost soul.’

This came after a good deal of conversational small change about Browning, Leighton, and William Morris.

‘Why,’ continued the hostess, ‘do you not write a novel? Your fine insight and noble breadth of view would be invaluable in novel writing.’

If this paint seemed to Lady Desborough to be laid on a little too thickly, she did not betray the feeling. For this was the opening she had schemed for – the chance of which had brought her to Mrs. Somerset Smith’s.

‘You are too kind,’ she said, looking down and playing with her bracelet; ‘I have already written a novel, such as it is.’

Then she raised her eyes to her husband’s face. She had chosen to make the announcement to him in this way for some inscrutable feminine reason. Perhaps she wished him to have an hour or so to think over the matter before he had a chance of talking to her about it. But now she wished she had done otherwise, and her eyes fell before the reproach in his.

Mrs. Somerset Smith was all interest in the novel – its name; when it was to be published; its length; its incidents and characters. But on these last two points Lady Desborough was resolutely reserved. When the hostess could find nothing further to say about the novel,

‘Oh, Lady Desborough,’ she began, ‘will you think me too encroaching if I beg you to read something for us, or to tell us some of your own poems.’

To ‘tell poems,’ by the way, was Somerset Smith for reciting them.

‘Oh no,’ said Lady Desborough, hastily, ‘not for the world. I am really enjoying the other readings, and I could not say my own verses to anyone. It would be a most alarming ordeal. Besides, they are quite unworthy of such an audience.’

Mrs. Somerset Smith’s gush of protest and denial was cut short by a spirited recitation from a rising theatrical star. When the murmur of applause which followed it had died down, she resumed.

‘If you will not read your poetry, will you not read some of your novel? Do be sweet enough to come to us next Saturday and give us what I am sure will be a real intellectual treat.’

The practised novelist had enough skill in the reading of character to see plainly the weak place in the other’s armour, and she made for it at once. Not through her verses but through her novel might this languid leader of society be best attacked.

‘You are very kind,’ said Lady Desborough, for the fifth or sixth time. She was beginning to feel rather overwhelmed.

‘If you are nervous, no one need know that you are reading your own work,’ went on the tempter, at the same time mentally making a list of the fish most likely to be caught by such delicious bait as a chapter of an unpublished novel by the fashionable beauty, read by that beauty’s own fair lips.

More unwillingness – half real, half feigned – more flattery, more persuasion – but the upshot of it was that in less than half-an-hour Lady Desborough had promised to come again next week, and to bring ‘something to read with her.’ More than this she could not be induced verbally to promise, but it was understood perfectly between the two that the something to read was to be a chapter of ‘A Wasted Wish.’

Lady Desborough positively shivered with apprehension, as she thought of the drive home and of what Sir Robert would say when he knew she had made this promise.

Lady Desborough, unlike most women, hated ‘scenes,’ even if they were only small ones, and she knew perfectly well that a scene of some kind would have to be gone through on the question of her having given this promise without consulting her husband first. Sir Robert – and how many men one knows like him – was always praising independence of action, especially when his own choices were criticised. Yet somehow he had an ingenious knack of making things unpleasant whenever his wife took any step unadvised by him, and of which he did not approve.

On this occasion Sir Robert merely remarked, as soon as she had told him of her promise, that he had been terribly bored by the whole thing and should not go again. Not a word of inquiry about the novel; never a sign of interest in it.

‘Weren’t you astonished to hear I had written a novel?’ she said timidly, slipping her hand under his arm and pressing it.

‘Very,’ without any answering pressure.

‘Would you like to read it?’

‘I shall be delighted, of course, to do so when it is published.’

The sneer in his voice sent Lady Desborough down to Paternoster Row early on Monday morning. When she came back she had arranged that her novel should be published in the autumn.

II

In front of her looking-glass Lady Desborough stood looking at herself, and wishing that she had either never written a novel or had never promised to read a chapter of it aloud. She was violently nervous. It now seemed to her that what she had undertaken was simply mad. What demon had possessed her that she should have promised to stand under the burning-glass of these literary people’s criticism? She did not as a rule estimate her powers very lowly, but here new and strange factors confused her calculations. She did not realise the power that her youth, beauty, and rank would have over these people, and that far worse work than hers would have been pardoned, even accepted and admired, for the sake of her sea-weed brown eyes, her fair hair, and her wild-rose face.

She arrived at Mrs. Somerset Smith’s rather late. She had been far too proud to ask her husband to come with her, but at the last moment he had appeared and had taken his place beside her in the brougham without a word of explanation. During the past week the two had been as uncomfortable as married people can be who are studiously courteous to each other, and who are longing all the while to throw conventions to the winds and to fight out, in commonplace everyday earnest fashion, the question that has come between them. Pride is indeed a softener of life’s angles.

Lady Desborough did not pay much attention to the reading which was going on when she arrived, nor to the song which followed. Her neat MS. lay beside her. Every now and then she touched it to make sure that it was really there. And it seemed to burn her fingers.

Mrs. Somerset Smith waited till her rooms were as full as she could possibly expect them to be, and then came towards Lady Desborough.

‘May we claim the fulfilment of your kind promise?’ she said.

Sir Robert had taken up a position at some little distance from his wife. He could see, as Mrs. Somerset Smith approached her, that the delicate shell pink died out in her face, leaving it as white as the Indian muslin she wore. The pearls on her neck rose and fell quickly. He almost fancied he could count the heart-beats by the flutter of the soft lace at her bosom. He felt nearly sorry that he had not interfered. He had known perfectly well what an ordeal this would be to her, and had wished her to endure it as a punishment for her failure to consult him about her book. ‘I am glad I came, anyway,’ he thought to himself. ‘Poor Laura! she won’t be so rash another time. I wonder what her novel is like.’

There was a silence of expectation, and then Lady Desborough began to read. Her left hand, buried in the folds of her dress, clenched itself so that the nails dug into the palm, but no one but her husband could have detected by her voice that she was horribly frightened at what she was doing. Even he could only have guessed it from the unusual distinctness of her enunciation. She read steadily on, every now and then wondering at the sound of her own voice, and feeling as though she were somebody else. Her novel, and this its best chapter, had never seemed to her so weak and faulty as now, but she read bravely on, and stung by her new sense of the imperfections of her style, tried to atone for them by good reading.

Her husband listened with deepening interest and attention. The chapter she had chosen was one in which a railway accident, two married lovers and a fallen-in tunnel, played prominent parts. The scene between the two lovers – their consolation and support of each other in the face of impending death – the whole turmoil of darkness, confusion, and horror, was admirably conceived and executed. The speeches in the mouths of hero and heroine were thoroughly natural, though perhaps the feelings attributed to the pair were a little more beautiful and devoted than one generally meets with in this workaday world. Half of her audience seemed genuinely stirred by the pathos of the story, and filled with admiration of the skill with which it was treated. But the other half, as Sir Robert observed with growing surprise and disfavour, seemed to be developing a decided tendency to smile and exchange amused glances. They did not seek to disguise their amusement either, which seemed to him execrably bad form. He shrugged the shoulders of his mind. ‘What could you expect from this kind of people?’ he asked himself.

He had been prepared to witness his wife’s discomfiture, with a superb sense that the lesson would do her good, but the power of her story had revolutionised his ideas. He now felt that any disparagement of her achievement was quite a personal matter to himself, and he put in his eyeglass and looked severely at the smiling part of the audience.

One tall, handsome man, who stood leaning against the door post, was listening with an air of quiet amusement which struck Sir Robert as peculiarly objectionable.

The tragic situation being worked up to its highest point, the chapter ended. Lady Desborough sat silent. A buzz of applause and thanks went through the room.

‘Ten thousand thanks,’ said Mrs. Somerset Smith. ‘I can hardly quarrel with you for not having fulfilled your promise about the novel, when you have furnished us with such excellent fare. I never remember to have seen such delicate satire and play of wit.’

If Mrs. Somerset Smith had suddenly begun to congratulate her guest on a recent performance on the tight rope, that lady could not have looked more astonished. Intensity and fire were the strong points of her scene, she had thought, but satire and wit were a hundred miles from it.

‘As to its not being my novel,’ she was beginning, when she happened to raise her eyes, and met full in hers the gaze of the sleepy grey eyes of the tall man by the door.

She stopped abruptly, and into her face came a look of such absolute terror that her husband, who was still watching her, made a step towards her, but he stopped short, for the tall man also came forward.

‘Let me beg,’ he said to Mrs. Somerset Smith, ‘to be allowed to add my thanks to yours for the treat we have had.’

Mrs. Somerset Smith immediately presented him. ‘Mr. Langley Bourne – ’

‘And you must know,’ she added, ‘that Mr. Langley Bourne is “Evan Bryce,” the author of the book you have so deliciously parodied for us’ –

‘If I had known you would be here,’ said Lady Desborough – her face pale and set, and without a trace of the stereotyped smile with which one is expected to begin a conversation with a new acquaintance – ‘I would not have come—’

‘Do not say that,’ said the other. ‘I would not have missed it for the world. It was rather cruel of you to burlesque my poor novel in this way, but you have done it so admirably that I can almost forgive you.’

‘I have not read your book,’ she said, in a very low voice.

‘Not all of it. That would be too much honour for me.’

‘I never read a line of it,’ she said, in a still lower voice.

‘Will you not have an ice, Lady Desborough?’ came Mrs. Somerset Smith’s voice; ‘I am sure you must need something.’

‘Let me get you one, or come with me to get it. It is cooler outside.’

She took his arm and they walked through the rooms to the conservatory. A buffet was spread at one end, and soft coloured lamps were hung about among the green.

She sank into a seat, and kept her eyes on the ground, while he brought her champagne, which she took eagerly.

Then he sat down by her. ‘Did you really write all that from memory?’

‘Yes – as I suppose you wrote yours. Mine was no burlesque, as you know.’

He thought a moment, and then with a certain hesitation said:

‘The corresponding scene in my book is known to be drawn from life. If you say to the rest of the world what you have said to me, people may say—’

He stopped abruptly.

‘Go on,’ she said quietly.

‘People may say there was more in it than a coincidence. Your start of recognition when you saw me was unmistakable. They will say I was the hero and you the heroine.’

He looked in her face as he spoke.

‘I wish I had never come here,’ she said. ‘I wish I had never seen you.’

The easy grace with which Lady Desborough had been accustomed to carry all before her seemed to have deserted her now. She sat trembling and white, anxiety and fear in every line of her face.

‘Forgive my plain speaking,’ he went on presently; ‘it is entirely in your own interest. If I were you I would accept the burlesque theory. If you do not, people will know that you and I were there together.

‘How strange,’ he went on, ‘to meet you again. Who would have thought that the lady’s maid would develop into Lady Desborough, and write a novel. I have often wondered what would happen if two actors in some secret scene were each, after time had dulled their interest in the event, to use the experience as matter for a novel. It is strange that this should happen to us, and unfortunate for you, but as it is there is no harm done. Your book is not published, and the people here have no suspicions. You may rely upon me most absolutely to keep the secret.’

Her slender foot had been beating impatiently on the tiled floor during this speech.

‘I was a lady’s maid, as you say, when we last met,’ she said. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘Not know you?’ he interrupted, not at all discourteously but with decision. ‘Did not Mrs. Somerset Smith present me to you just now?’

‘And we have never met before.’

‘Of course not,’ he said, smiling.

She sighed a sigh of something like relief, caught her breath, and said, ‘I thought you were dead or the marriage should never have taken place. I am bewildered and stupid. I don’t know which way to turn. Where do you live?’

‘In the Albany – ’

‘May I come and see you?’

‘I shall be only too delighted,’ said Langley Bourne, trying not to look surprised. ‘When?’

‘On Monday afternoon.’

Lady Desborough rose, and with a desperate effort brought back the smile to her face. She turned for a last word.

‘I – I suppose,’ she said wistfully, ‘your old feelings have quite changed.’

‘To learn my feelings you should read my book,’ he said.

‘I should have thought you would have forgotten—’

‘Ah, no – we both seem to have excellent memories.’

Her husband was waiting at the conservatory entrance.

‘You look very tired,’ he said; ‘we had better go home.’

Lady Desborough got through her adieux – how, she never knew. The drive home was short to her because she wanted to think, and long because she found that thought was impossible. When they stood in her boudoir, Sir Robert said –

‘Where have you met that man, Langley Bourne?’

‘I never spoke to him until tonight,’ said Lady Desborough, beginning to pull off her gloves. She looked her husband straight in the eyes.

Sir Robert walked to the window and looked out into the gas-lit night. Then he turned and said –

‘Laura, you are not well. The excitement of writing this book has been too much for you. Let us go out of town tomorrow.’

‘No,’ she said – ‘oh, no. I am quite well, indeed. I could not leave town just now. I have so many engagements.’

‘Then write for Clarice and Bellarmine to come and stay with you. You are too much thrown on yourself.’

Lady Bellarmine was her favourite sister.

‘No, no,’ she answered hastily; ‘not Clarice just now. I could not bear it.’ The words seemed wrung from her. She had taken her long gloves off, and was stretching them into a white rope in her nervous grasp.

He came towards her and put out his hands.

‘Come to me,’ he said; ‘I love you, and I can and I will forgive everything. Only be frank.’

She flung her arms round his neck, and broke into wild, low weeping.

‘Tell me,’ he said, holding her fast; ‘tell me everything.’

‘There is nothing I can tell you,’ she said. ‘Oh, I wish to God I had never tried to write or gone to that woman’s.’

‘I daresay you do,’ he said drily, taking his arms away. ‘Is that all you have to say?’

She did not answer. ‘Was that chapter a burlesque?’

She hesitated. After a moment, ‘Yes,’ she said.

He turned away towards the door. ‘That is not true,’ he said, and went away without another word.

Then all the horror and misery of her position came over Lady Desborough. She gathered her strength together sufficiently to get to her own room, to dismiss her maid, and to lock the door. Then she flung herself on her knees by her bed, buried her face in her pillows, relaxed the effort of will that had kept her features calm, and gave way to the wild, uncontrolled weeping that distorts the face, loosens the lips, and seems to bathe the eyes in fire. Mental calmness came with physical exhaustion. Then she began to think. It was bright morning before she lay down and slept. As she fell asleep she kept saying to herself over and over again, ‘I must face the truth. It is bigamy. Oh, how will Robert bear the shame of it all?’

III

There was no sleep for Sir Robert Desborough that night. Like most of us, he had been brought up to believe that the one unpardonable sin was eaves-dropping, and, like many of us, he had nevertheless a strong idea that there were circumstances which sometimes justified it. He had deliberately listened to his wife’s conversation with Langley Bourne. He had since done his best to save her, had tried to take her away from temptation, but she had refused his help. Now he must let her go her own way. She had chosen her part, and he must leave her.

This discovery was a bolt out of the blue. He had never had the faintest reason to believe that his wife’s assurance that he was ‘the only man she had ever loved’ was the conventional lie. He had believed in her implicitly, and now all their happiness and love – for he knew she had loved him and had been happy – were shattered in an instant.

‘My lady is not well; will not be down to breakfast,’ he was told the next morning. He went to his study with something like a curse. Had he meant to try once more to win her confidence?

Lady Desborough sent out her maid to buy her a copy of ‘Indivisibility,’ by Langley Bourne. And when it came she glanced eagerly through it for the tunnel scene. She saw at once that it was far more powerfully written than her own, but from quite another point of view, and where she had been sentimental, this was bitterly cynical. The conversation indeed was the same, but her hero and heroine had pursued trains of high and noble thought in the intervals of talking. Langley Bourne’s heroine only congratulated herself on having so completely befooled the hero, and the hero only wondered how long this farce, which bored him excessively, need be kept up. Both were exceedingly glad to say good-bye when they reached the outer air, and neither thought the other was worth much except to amuse a dull hour at a reception. But each, Mr. Bourne was careful to show, believed most fully in the devotion of the other.

‘I can see well enough,’ said Lady Desborough, sadly, as she laid down the book, ‘why they thought my chapter was a skit on this. I had far too much sentiment; and as he has none, they may have thought I wished to show how different the same thing would be, written from another standpoint.’

Then she began to consider what was best to be done. She could not be confident that Langley Bourne would keep his word, and she felt that she must see him again. These ‘musts’ drag one down hill at an alarming rate.

Lady Desborough, dressed in her usual faultless fashion, ordered her carriage and was driven to the Burlington. Here she alighted and walked to the Albany.

She found Langley Bourne’s rooms without any difficulty. Indeed it seemed to her that the whole thing was managed too easily, and she found herself too soon face to face with this man, who was bowing over her hand, and murmuring commonplaces about his delight at her visit. He wheeled a chair forward for her, and she sat down, silent.

Langley Bourne wondered what she was going to say. She said nothing, but sat looking straight before her.

‘It is a funny world,’ said Bourne, conversationally, finding that she did not speak.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I should never have believed when we took that night journey from Manchester that you, as Lady Desborough, would ever have beautified these poor rooms by your presence.’

She silenced him by a wave of the hand. Then she said, ‘You may be sure I came here for a purpose, Mr. Langley Bourne. I came to implore you not to claim your rights – to keep yourself away from—’

She stopped short. The portiere was thrown back by an impatient hand, and Sir Robert Desborough looked in. He came forward and the curtain fell behind him.

For a moment there was silence. Then Langley Bourne said:

‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’

‘It is my husband,’ said Lady Desborough, white to the lips, but not moving.

Langley Bourne stifled a whistle. The situation was certainly more than awkward. Sir Robert turned to his wife.

‘Of course I shall not expect you to return with me. I leave you to your lover.’

‘You utterly misunderstand,’ began Bourne eagerly.

‘Doubtless.’ Sir Robert smiled bitterly, and turned to the door. ‘Lady Desborough’s presence here is of course so easily misunderstood.’

Lady Desborough sprang to her husband’s side and caught his arm just above the elbow.

‘You are mad, Robert. I never spoke to Mr. Bourne till last night.’

Clear and honest-looking enough, those eyes of hers, and her voice ha,d the ring of truth about it.

‘You are an admirable actress,’ he said, ‘but I have a business appointment, and must beg you to excuse me.’

Langley Bourne made a stride to the door and set his back against it.

‘You must listen,’ he said, savagely. ‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t let’s have any more nonsense.’

Then to Lady Desborough: ‘Shall I tell him, or will you?’

‘I,’ said Lady Desborough, letting go her husband’s arm and leaning against a carved bookcase. ‘I will tell him, but I must have time.’

There was another silence. Then she said:

‘Mr. Langley Bourne was Clarice’s lover.’

Sir Robert’s expression of angry bitterness did not change.

‘That hardly explains your presence here.’

‘They were not engaged, for papa and mamma thought he was too poor; but she loved him. He wrote no successful novels then. One day she and I were visiting at Mrs. Dufoy’s, and she came hurrying into my room with a newspaper. “He is dying – it’s in the paper,” she said, “and I must go to him.” I did all I could to dissuade her. She insisted that she must go, and that I must accompany her. But I did not think it right, and at last, before I would consent, she had to confess the truth, that he and she were secretly married, and I swore to keep the secret.’

Now indeed there was a change in the faces of both men. Langley Bourne made a movement as though he would have spoken.

‘Wait till I have told my story,’ she said. ‘Of course that altered my mind at once. We easily got away from Mrs. Dufoy, who supposed we were going home. To attract less notice, I got myself up as her maid in some charade clothes, and we went to Manchester. Mr. Langley Bourne was safe and sound. It had been some other Mr. Bourne who had been hurt, not he. We came back to town by the midnight train. I travelled in another carriage, so as not to be a bore to the married couple. Then came the accident. Mr. Bourne did not take any notice of the maid, and I heard all that passed between husband and wife. When Clarice was engaged to Lord Bellarmine she told me Mr. Bourne had been dead for some time, and she had long ceased to care for him. Even she did not know he was Evan Bryce, the author. And I came here today to implore him to spare her. She is really happy now, and if he claims her it will break her husband’s heart. It is not much to do. I see from his book that he no longer loves her, even if he ever did. If he will only keep out of her way. He must have deceived her about his supposed death. Robert, help me to persuade him.’

She held out her hand to her husband, and he took it.

‘I am not sure that that would be right,’ he began.

Langley Bourne interrupted him.

‘This is a most extraordinary thing,’ he said. ‘Lady Desborough, let me set your mind at rest once and for all by assuring you that I was never married to your sister or anyone else.’

‘But why should she have told me so?’

Langley Bourne actually blushed.

‘I can only conjecture,’ he said, ‘that she very much wished to come to see after me, and that, finding she could not come without you, and that you could be got on no other terms, she – in short – told a fib about it.’

‘Then you are not married?’ said Lady Desborough slowly.

‘Not in the least, I assure you.’

‘Did you try to make her believe you were dead?’

‘No; but I have been travelling in South America for some years, and only recently returned. One last word to justify my novel. Your sister gave me my congé three weeks after that midnight journey. Is there anything else you would like to know?’

‘I must apologise,’ said Sir Robert, ‘to you, Mr. Langley Bourne. And now, Laura, I think we need not take up Mr. Bourne’s time any longer.’

So they left. As Langley Bourne watched them going away together, he could not help wishing that Lady Desborough had been her own sister and that he had married her. But with a laugh he put aside that fancy, and laid up the little experience – Lady Desborough’s beauty and her evident fondness for her husband – as so much literary capital for his next novel.

The Desboroughs went out of town next week, and ‘A Wasted Wish’ was published in the autumn, the tunnel scene having been withdrawn. It made a great success, and since then Lady Desborough has done a good deal of mediocre writing. Sir Robert admires her books as much as he admires herself, and now there is no cloud between them, for they both act on the safest rule for married people, and ‘tell each other everything,’ even other people’s secrets.

But between Lady Desborough and Lady Bellarmine there is a cloud.

«•»

From: Longman’s Magazine Feb. 1886

The Blue Rose

Yes, your grandfather, he was one o’ the old sort – honest as the day, as the sayin’ is, an’ well brought up, if he wasn’t allus easy to live with – an’ that set on the truth, an’ that pertickler – well, if it ’adn’t a bin for ’im bein’ that pertickler, you gells would a ’ad a red-’aired woman to your granny instead o’ me.’

A smile went round the tea-table; Mrs. Minver’s grand children nodded, and looked at me – you know the look when there’s a story in the air and you’re expected to ask for it. But I was too shy. It was my first visit to Myrtle Cottage. Lottie Minver and I were both serving our time with Miss Ellends (Modes et Robes), and I was only sixteen then.

‘A red-’aired woman,’ Mrs. Minver went on, ‘an’ that would a’ been a pity on all accounts, for ’e was a fine man as ever I see, an’ me bein’ no slip of a chit – ’is sons all measured over their six foot – an’ all bin measured too – ’

She sighed, and looked out through the open door at the narrow strip of back garden where scarlet runners and stocks and reluctant sunflowers had been coaxed to grow. We were having tea in the kitchen. The table was covered with brown oilcloth. The cups were white with mauve spots. We had cresses for tea, and winkles, because it was Sunday.

‘A fine man ’e was to be sure,’ she went on. ‘That’s ’is portrait as ’angs to the right o’ the parlour chimley piece, just over the crockery lamb yer Aunt Eliza give me the very last fair day afore the Lord took ’er. A fine figure of a man he was, my dears, an’ much sought after, but mighty pertickler. An’ so ’e married me.’

Mrs. Minver smoothed her black alpaca apron complacently.

‘What was it about the red-haired young lady?’ I asked.

‘Ah! that’s a tale, an’ it just shows ’ow careful a gell should be when she’s courtin’.’

This sounded interesting.

‘Do tell us the tale,’ I urged.

‘Oh! it’s nothin’ much to tell,’ said Mrs. Minver, but she settled herself against the cushions of her Windsor chair and stroked her left mitten with her right hand, in a way that promised.

‘Come, granny, tell Lily about the blue roses.’

‘’Old yer tongue then, till I can get a word in hedgeways! Blue roses indeed! Spoilin’ a story afore it’s begun! Well, you must know, young lady, as I was brought up in the country – a reg’lar Kentish apple I was, my man useter say. Our home was in Kent, down among the cherry orchards. We ’ad a nice little orchard oursel’s, an’ our house it was a wooden ’ouse, all built o’ boards-like, not bricks like you see ’em ’ere. An’ there was a big pear-tree, as went all up one side of the house – one branch right and one left – even-like, for all the world like a ladder. We useter pick the pears outer our bedroom winder, me and my cousin Hetty did. Jargonels they was, an’ a sight sweeter than any as goes to market now-a-days.

‘Our garden it wasn’t much of a one for size, but for flowers – there! it was a perfect moral – cram full it was – all sorts – pinks an’ pansies an’ lilies, roses, jassermine, an’ sweet willies, an’ wallflowers an’ daffies and spring flowers, which is my favourites outer all the flowers.’

‘What are spring flowers?’

‘They’re a reg’lar old-fashioned flower – gells used allus to have ’em in their gardens long afore you was thought of, nor me neither. Like wallflowers they be, summat, only pink an’ yeller, an’ only one on a stalk, an’ soft like velvet, an’ smelling like honey they did. I haven’t seen none o’ them since I come to live in Bermondsey.

‘Well, our little wooden ’ouse it stood on the hill, an’ as you come up, whether ’twas by the road, as was white an’ windin’, or whether ’twas by the shorter way through the medders an’ the hop-garden, the first you see of our ’ouse was the white rose-tree. It clomb all over the side of the ’ouse – not the side where the pear-tree was, but the other – there was no windows that side the house – and the rose clomb all along – and blow! it did blow that rose did. Pearl-white the roses was, or what you might call blush-pink, and hundreds of ’em. It was quite a picter. Well, one fine summer every rose as come on that tree wasn’t white nor blush-pink any more, but blue – a darkish blue at the edges and paler to the middles. Not pretty? Well, p’raps not; but I tell you there never was such a fuss made over any rose as you’d call pretty as there was over that blue rose. Parson, he was always comin’ down to see it, an’ bringin’ his friends, from London sometimes; an’ the gentry they drove in their carriages to see our blue rose; an’ the tradesmen an’ grocers they come in their carts from far an’ near, an’ they said, “Well, it was a novelty.”

‘An’ they said it would surely take the prize at the flower-show. But it was Hetty’s rose-bush. Father’d give it her when first she come to live with us. She come quite little, and she cried at the strange place, an’ all she took to was the white roses. So father he give her the bush – an’ next year father ’e died – about cherry time it was.

‘So when they said that about the prize, Hetty said she didn’t care about prizes an’ flower-shows an’ things. It was quite enough to ’ave such a rose-tree for ’er very own.

‘The next year the roses come blue again, an’ everyone come more ’n ever to look, an’ the grocers an’ people with carts they come from far an’ near, for they said it was a novelty.

‘But mother, she was rather quiet-like, an’ she didn’t say much about the roses; an’ one day when she an’ me was makin’ up the bread – just our two selves, in the back kitchen – she says to me –

‘“Addie,” she says (my name’s Adelaide), “about them blue roses now. If it wasn’t that I don’t like to think o’ a child o’ mine bein’ up to such tricks, I should say as you or Hetty had been a’ borrowed o’ my blue-bag.”

‘“Your blue-bag, mother!” says I. Hard work I had to keep my face, for Hetty she was a makin’ faces at me through the winder.

‘“Yes, my blue-bag,” mother says, lookin’ at me very straight.

‘“Why, aunt,” says Hetty through the window, “if it was the blue-bag, how would all the roses be the same? An’ wouldn’t it all wash off in the rain? An’ you know it’s always brighter after a shower,” she says. “Besides, would we do such a silly thing if we could, an’ keep it up so, an’ all? We might do it onst or twice,” says she.

‘“There’s summat in all that,” says my mother, going on with the bread. “I misdoubt me it’s age turns the roses blue, like it turns folks’ hair white. The rose was allus a pearly white or what you might call a blush-pink afore.”

‘An’ the grocers an’ people with carts, they come from far an’ near to see the rose-tree, for it was a novelty, ye see.

‘Says I to Hetty that night after I’d said my prayers an’ read my chapter – for I was allus properly brought up – “Hetty,” I says, “fancy mother saying that about the blue-bag!”

‘“Yes, fancy!” says Hetty, laughin’ – an’ she snuffs out the candle with ’er fingers an’ jumps into bed. “I ain’t agoin’ to ’ave my blue roses run down neither. Why, I’m a-goin’ to take the prize at the flower-show – I am, with my wonderful blue roses!”

‘An’ sure enough she told Parson the very next day as she would try for the prize at the flower-show.

‘It was just about that time she took up with George Winstead. Yes, ’im as come to be your gran’father instead, an’ is lyin’ in his grave at Long Malling this twenty good years. Well, they kep’ company together, an’ everyone was willin’, for he was a godly young man an’ taught in Sunday-school, an’ had good hopes of his uncle’s business, which it was a corn-chandler’s in Medstone, an’ she was a well-lookin’ girl enough for all her red hair, which was made fun of then, though I hear it’s all the rage now-a-days. I never see a girl so took up with a chap as she was with him. She give up curlin’ ’er ’air acause he liked it plain, and she took to readin’ the Bible and sayin’ her prayers (like I’d allus done, and she’d allus laughed at me afore for it). Why, I’ve seen her kneel there over ’alf an hour, and then get outer bed again when she thought I was asleep and kneel down on the bare boards by the winder an’ cry an’ pray an’ say, “George, George,” an’ pray again, not out loud, but so as I could ’ear ’er. Not proper prayers she didn’t say like people gets taught, but things outer ’er own ’ead, an’ the same things over an’ over, till I useter say –

‘“Come along ter bed, Hetty, do, for gracious sakes. You’ll catch your death o’ cold on them boards, an’ I’m a-droppin’ with sleep.”

‘Well, as flower-show day come nearer an’ nearer, she grew stupider an’ stupider, an’ more an’ more given to prayin’, an’ used to be all for goin’ off by herself and leavin’ everything to me – even to makin’ our dresses for the flower-show an’ lookin’ after them roses what was to take the prize. I did it all, a’ course – I was allus called a good-natured girl – an’ the dresses they looked lovely, an’ the roses was bluer than ever, instead o’ being a pearly white or a blush-pink, like they should ha’ been by rights. An’ Hetty she prayed an’ cried o’ nights till I wonder I ever got a wink o’ sleep, an’ of a day she’d laugh till she nearly cried again. Well, flower-show day come, an’ we ’ad our new sprigged prints – gowns was wore short in the waist then – an’ Hetty she looked like a ghost in hers, but they did say mine became me wonderful.

‘It was a beautiful day I remember, very sunny an’ bright, an’ you was glad to walk the shady side o’ the way that day, I can tell you. Very hot it was in the big barn where the flower-show was. ’Twas all done up fine with flags an’ wreaths an’ all sorts, an’ it was that hot the flowers was most wilted afore it come time for the prizes. An’ everyone was wipin’ their faces with their ’andkerchers, an’ saying there hadn’t been such a day this twenty year.

‘When it come time for the prizes we was all settin’ on forms packed close like herr’n’s. Mother was there of course, an’ George an’ his friends, an’ Hetty sat nexter me, an’ George – that’s your gran’father – was settin’ the other side of her. An’ she kep’ edgin’ away from him an’ getten’ close to me, an’ crushin’ my new print, not to mention ’er own, an’ she kep’ on ’oldin’ my ’and that tight I didn’t know ’ow to bear myself, an’ I never see a bonnet with pink ribbons look worse on any young woman than it did on her. Mine always suited me. I ’ad it done up with blue the year I was married.

‘Presently it come to roses. The barn was full – all the gentry an’ the parson an’ his friends an’ the grocers an’ people with carts ’ad come from far an’ near.

‘Well, the gentleman what was giving out who had got prizes, he takes up the bunch o’ blue roses (I’d done ’em up nicely with a white ribbon, for Hetty was in one of her queer fits an’ wouldn’t touch ’em), an’ he says –

‘“Hetty Martin—”

‘Hetty jumped on her feet. I felt what she was a-goin’ to do, an’ I tried to hold her down, but no. She shook her arm clear o’ me, an’ she called out in a kind o’ sharp shrieky voice as you could a’ heard a mile off –

‘“Don’t you go for to give me no prizes,” she says. “It’s all a lie – them roses is made up blue. Aunt she just hit it – it was the blue-bag. I never meant to tell, but I can’t a-bear it. I made ’em up blue – an’ I done it myself, an’ I don’t care who knows it. There!”

‘Yes, my dears – well may you look! She spoke up like that – she did indeed. – afore all that barnful! I never see such a gell, Why, I wouldn’t never even a’ thought o’ such a thing, let ’lone doin’ it. Disgraceful, I call it – a gell puttin’ ’erself forward afore folks like that!

‘You could a’ heard a pin drop, as the sayin’ is, the place was that quiet, for full ’arf a minute. My ’eart was in my mouth, and for that ’arf minute I didn’t know what she’d say next.

‘The silly gell! Why, two whole summers we’d blued them roses, an’ no one never know’d, an’ no one wouldn’t never a’ known. We useter do it of a mornin’ early afore mother come down. Hetty an’ me, we useter creep down in our stocking feet, so’s not to make a clutter, an’ afore we raked out the fire or opened the house we’d run round to the rose-tree an’ look if there was any more buds out; an’ Hetty ’ud say, “Here’s another, Addie,” an’ I’d say, “All right, Hetty, we’ll ’ave ’im,” an’ I’d rub the blue-bag round it once or twice, an’ when it rained the blue soaked in more, an’ the wet would seem to take it right into the roses’ hearts. An’ as the rose opened it would be all blue – from us having blued the edges. An’ to think we might a’ gone on an’ on, an’ took all the prizes at the flower-shows! I hate a fool.

‘Well, that day- in the barn it lasted – that kinder quiet like as if we was in church – it lasted for full ’arf a minute, an’ it seemed like twenty – an’ then there come a buzz, buzz, like a whole bench o’ bees when a boy throws an apple at ’em – an’ Hetty she says, “Oh!” quite soft and frightened-like – as well she might be – an’ then, afore anyone could say a word to ’er, she was off, through the big barn door, like a rabbit with the dogs arter it.

‘The ole gentleman what give the prizes, he said he’d know’d it all along – but ’e ’adn’t, for he’d drove over in his own carriage to see our blue roses, and called them “curious nateral pheno—” suthin’ or other.’

‘And Hetty didn’t tell of you, Mrs. Minver?’

‘Oh! no, my dear. With all her faults, Hetty was never that sort o’ girl.’

‘And Mr. George?’

‘Oh! he come up that arternoon – I see him from our window by the pear-tree – and Hetty she says –

‘“I’m agoin’ inter the orchard,” she says; “if ’e wants me – but I don’t think ’e will want me,” says she.

‘He did want her though, an’ he says to me –

‘“You come along, Addie, an’ hear what I’ve got to say.”

‘We went out inter the cherry-orchard – all the cherries was gathered though – an’ Hetty was there, walkin’ up and down like a ferret as wants to get out of its hutch an’ can’t. An’ George he says –

‘“Lookee here, Hetty,” he says, “I don’t wish no ill-feelin’, but you’ll see it’s best for us to part . I’m sure, if you set any store by me, you wouldn’t wish me to keep company with a gell as could act a livin’ lie, as Parson says. An’ I’m sure the Lord wouldn’t grant a blessin’, an’ I wish you well an’ good-bye.”

‘I never see a gell look so plain – for a rather good-looking gell – as Hetty did then, for her eyes was all red an’ swelled up with cryin’, an’ she twisted her nose and mouth up, like as if she was a-goin’ to begin again.

‘“Good-bye, George,” says she. “No, I wouldn’t wish it, George,” she says, “not if you don’t, dear George.”

‘An’ with that she walked away very quiet, an’ George, he stood quite still, not looking at anythin’ for a minute or two, an’ then he give a sorter shrug an’ a sorter sigh, an’ he went off by the lower gate without as much as a “Good-day to you.”

‘When tea-time come, mother she says –

‘“Enough said about a bit o’ gell’s nonsense;” an’ she ups the stairs to Hetty, and she says at the door –

‘“Come down to tea, my gell.”

‘An’ Hetty she says –

‘“Don’t want no tea, aunt.”

‘An’ mother she goes in, an’ there’s Hetty lyin’ face down on the bed, an’ mother she says –

‘“Come, child, it’s no use a-grislin’ over spilt milk; an’ arter all –

‘A fault ’at’s owned

Is ’arf atoned.’

Come along down, an’ let’s say no more about it.”

‘But Hetty she says (I was atop o’ the stairs an’ I heard her) –

‘“It ain’t no use, aunt,” she says, “an’ you’ve been’s good’s a mother to me, an’ I thank you an’ I loves you – that I do. But nothin’s no good now. You let me be, there’s a dear auntie.”

‘An’ mother she left her, just a sayin’ –

‘“Don’t you take on ’bout George, now. He’ll come round.”

‘An’ next mornin’ when I woke up Hetty was gone, and we never seed her again.’

‘Gone? Where to?’ I asked.

‘To Medstone first, an’ then to London; an’ mother couldn’t never ’ear what come of ’er – but I did ’ear she come to no good.’

‘And George?’

‘Well, George he took on for a bit, an’ didn’t take to his victuals as a young man should; but I allus spoke him civil, an’ when we was alone I said, “Pore George!” an’ “Wasn’t it hard when you was fond of a person to have ’em own up a liar quite shameless afore parson an’ all!” An’ he said, “Yes, ’twas cruel hard.” An’ next year we was married, George an’ me.’

‘And I suppose you never told him you had helped to blue the roses?’

‘My dear! Now how could I? an’ him that pertickler!’

«•»

From: Longman’s Magazine Jul. 1891

The Linguist

Here he is!’ I said, as I heard the cab-wheels at the door. ‘Poor devil, I wonder how he will like Collingwood College!’

Our French master shrugged his shoulders. ‘As the rest of us. It is not there the question. How will we like him?’

We were sitting in the dog-hutch – or masters’ study – our only refuge from our flock – a dark, unwholesome, underground room that smelt ever of tea-leaves and black-beetles. The French master had his thumb in a yellow-covered novel as usual. As usual, too, the German master was busy with grammar and dictionary. The candles in their bent japanned candlesticks lighted the room ill, but one hardly desired a light that should show more of it.

‘The new master, sir,’ said the overgrown boy in buttons who opened the door and looked after the master’s wife’s pony. Then he came in. He was tall, very tall; he had a fair, round face, and chubby hands, and a pair of very round innocent-looking blue eyes. Altogether, he was so like a large-sized child that his perfect self-possession came as a shock to one.

‘First-rate, thank you,’ he said in answer to the “how-d’ye-do” with which I greeted him. ‘What a rummy little den you’ve got here! D’ye know, it is just a chance that I’m here as English master: I was nearly taking a berth as French master at Blackheath.’

Our French master looked up from his novel and said something courteous in his own tongue. The new man answered him. I don’t pretend to know anything about French, so I will only say that they didn’t seem to be talking the same language. Then our German master roused himself: ‘You speak also German?’ he asked.

‘Sir,’ answered the junior master, ‘I speak all modern languages except Russian, which is not a civilised tongue. I am a linguist; that is my strong point.’ He laughed, and gaily dashed into a German phrase.

Our German master followed him, and our French master found him more amusing than Paul Bourget. He sat there beaming in the dim candlelight, and speaking first in French and then in German. His plunges into these tongues had a boldness about them that was almost convincing. Yet when he had gone to the Dutch cheese and small-beer provided as a restorative after his journey, and we others were left alone, our French master spoke. ‘I have never heard,’ he said, ‘since I teach the French, an accent so infame nor a construction so detestable.’ ‘He thinks,’ said our German master, rubbing his head with his hands, ‘that he speaks German. O thou dear God! German!’

I found out next day what his Latin was like, and when the lambs had been loosed from class, and were shrieking and shouting and fighting under the thin trees in the sodden playground, I thought it my duty to point out to him the false quantities he had made in my hearing.

‘Did I?’ he said cheerfully. ‘I dare say. No doubt my Latin is a little rusty. You see, it’s modern languages that I’m keen on. I, wish we had a Spaniard here, or an Italian, now. There’s nothing like keeping it up colloquially, eh?’

There was something about the boy – he could not have been more than twenty – which attracted me. It was partly his frankness; a tolerably rare and much misprized quality. Before he had been at Collingwood College a week he had told us all about himself. The college is in one of London’s dreariest northern suburbs. It stands, stately in its stucco, in a waste of yellow brick and iron railings, and shelters under its roof the young of the grocer, the tailor, and the licensed victualler. The Principal is vulgar and greedy; the pupils, poor lads, are what their birth and breeding make them. The masters are generally decent fellows, often University men who are glad enough to get anything to do, even at Collingwood College, rather than starve or be longer a burden on the slender purse that has been strained to give them their education. The Linguist was not one of these.

‘I’ve taken up teaching,’ he said, ‘just to show them at home what I’m made of. My uncle – he’s my guardian, you know – he’s an awfully good fellow, but narrow – wants me to go in for farming, and because I wouldn’t do that he cut off my allowance. How can I go in for farming? I want to travel, to translate, and to prepare for a great work, the work of my life – “An Exposition of Philology.” I’ll tell you about it as we go down to Ludovici’s,’ and he took my arm and walked me off in the direction of a certain Café where we masters were accustomed to supplement the Dutch cheese of Collingwood College. He talked about his book all the way there, and when we had ordered our supper-dish he talked Italian to the Management. The Management, being Italian, was quick-witted and good-natured, and Monsieur and Madame helped out the Linguist by smile and gesture.

‘A most delightful chat,’ he said, plunging the spoon into the macaroni. ‘What a gift it is though, isn’t it? I wish you could talk Italian, old fellow. Eh?’

It was impossible to laugh at him, and to pity him was obviously unreasonable, for he was very happy. I never knew so inveterately hopeful a man. He had a thousand schemes for making a fortune, and in each of them he believed fully. He never abandoned a scheme from any doubt of success; only, when a new way to fame and fortune occurred to him, he embraced it with an enthusiasm so large as to overwhelm the old idea.

As an English master he was worse than useless, but I didn’t see that it was my business to tell old Collingwood so; and as long as a master was popular old Collingwood was satisfied. He had no means, poor creature, of knowing whether a teacher was efficient or not. And the Linguist was popular. Our German master liked him because he was patient, and played chess. Our French master liked him because he was simple, and made an excellent and totally unconscious butt. The boys liked him because he was a thoroughly good fellow, and had, further, some distinction in athletics which gave him a prestige he could never have attained by proficiency in any scholastic branch. And the Amber Witch liked him because he was handsome and well-grown, a gentleman, and, from her point of view, a catch. The Amber Witch was the daughter of the Management at Ludovici’s. She was dark and pretty, with immense black eyes as hard and shiny as beads, and a mouth like a scarlet flower. Her rejection of ineligible suitors always surprised them very much indeed. All her lovers believed in her pathetically, and she generally wore yellow. So we called her the Amber Witch.

Our Linguist fell in love with her the moment he caught sight of her through the tomatoes, salads, and sauce bottles of the window at Ludovici’s. He fell in love with all the enthusiasm and hopefulness that characterised him. Whenever he could get away from the boys he was at the Café – he lunched and dined and supped there, and he strolled in there for coffee and ices. And the Management smiled upon him. He used to talk Italian at first to the Amber Witch, but after a while he told me that she preferred to talk French to him.

‘She says she wants to improve her accent,’ he explained. My own belief is, she felt that he had not command of enough Italian to come to the point in that tongue; and she knew, as well as I did, that he would rather never have told his love than have lowered himself by a declaration in his own language, of which she was entire mistress. Any way, I believe he proposed in French, and the Amber Witch accepted him. They were formally engaged. I confess that I did not expect the engagement to last – that I thought it would go the way of the many brilliant money-making schemes which the last few months had brought to bud, to blossom, and to decay. But here no new enthusiasm supervened, and I felt what a fool I had been not to try interference before things had gone so far, for he loved the girl with all the faith and passion of a very pure and candid soul. The girl, ordinary little Italian milliner that she was, accepted his love as a matter of course, and his proposal as a matter of business. I had to look on and see it. And it was hard, for I had grown to love the boy. He was generous, unselfish, always at the command of anyone who needed help; his schemes for money-making had always in postscripts a kindly application of his wealth when he should have made it.

‘You know,’ said he to me, as we sat in the dog-hutch one evening, when our French master was at the theatre and our German master was at the Birkbeck – ‘you know, I must think of something at once to make a position for her. She couldn’t stand farming, so of course that question is settled. I think, as Principal of an International College, I should make my mark – eh?’

‘I should think so,’ I answered gravely. For the life of me, I could not keep answering him as though he were a child building air-castles.

‘You see, I come of age next month,’ he said, ‘and then I can do as I like. Of course my proficiency in languages would be a great thing in my favour, and I think the boys like me a little, don’t they – eh?’

‘Of course they do,’ I said.

‘God knows why they should,’ he went on. In all but the one point he was the humblest man I ever knew. ‘Nor why she should. But she does, thank God; and they do. I ought to succeed. Oh, yes; I shall succeed.’ There was the usual fire of enthusiasm in his eyes.

‘I hope so, old fellow,’ said I, putting my hand on his shoulder. ‘Let us have a game of chess,’ I went on. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had let him talk, but I was tired of my work, and very sad about my own affairs, which don’t concern this story, and I felt I could not bear any more talk of his projects just then. So we played chess, and – I wish we hadn’t.

He didn’t say any more about the international college. We were all very busy with the holidays coming on – the Easter holidays.

When I came back after Easter I saw at the end of our Crescent a very large and new brass plate on the gate of a big house that had been empty some time. I crossed the road to look at it.

‘International College.’

And below was the Linguist’s name as Principal.

As I stood there, gaping, he came running down the broad steps to me.

‘Ah! I knew you’d be pleased,’ he said. ‘You see, I’m doing it in style. I only got fifty down when I came of age, and I’m doing most of it on tick. We’re to be married in June. The thing will be fairly going by then.’

‘What does your uncle say?’

‘Oh, he’s furious! Poor dear old boy! His class prejudices are monstrous. But, you see, it’s my money, and he’ll have to come round sooner or later. Come and see over the house.’

It was very large and bare, and had very little furniture in it; but that, he explained, would be all right when he had had time to look about him. And pupils – how many promises had he?

Well, in point of fact, none at present; but a great many of the boys at old Collingwood’s had often told him they would like to come to his school, and he had some first-rate prospectuses.

He took me into a large bleak room whose emptiness was only emphasised by the desks and forms that ran down its gaunt length. Here was a deal table strewn with a lot of very expensive-looking stationery. I turned over some of it and noticed a line which ran, ‘Special attention will, of course, be given to Foreign Languages.’ I had it on my tongue’s tip to tell him what a fool he was, and I laid down the prospectus and cleared my throat. Then I saw his face, and I simply could not do it. The boy was radiant; all the delight of a child with a new toy shone in his big blue eyes.

‘Something like a prospectus that, eh!’ he said, rubbing his hands.

I said it was indeed.

‘I flatter myself that will fetch them if the plate doesn’t,’ he went on. I said if that didn’t nothing would. Then he took me off to show me the kitchen and offices. As we went down the steep stairs I tried again to tell him he was an absolute idiot, and I had actually opened my mouth for the purpose, when as we reached the bottom step he turned and threw his arm over my shoulder, in a boyish affectionate way he had, and said:

‘No dog-hutches here, old fellow! You shall have the best room in the house for your study, and any screw you like to name. Eh? You’ll come to me after midsummer – when the wedding’s over and we’re settled – eh?’

And then, I give you my word, I could not do it. I could not tell him that he hadn’t a ghost of a chance of doing any good with his school or with the Amber Witch either; that his foreign languages would be the contempt of a child in Ahn’s Second Course; that, in short, all his hopes and dreams were vain and fruitless, A better man would have told him all this at once. I wish I were a better man.

I only clapped him on the back and wished him luck and thanked him for his offer; and then went back to Collingwood’s, feeling as mean as a man who has promised a silver new nothing to a trusting three-year-old.

Old Collingwood was furious at the brass plate. Of course he didn’t know how little there was behind it – in every sense – and I wasn’t going to enlighten him.

I helped the Linguist to address and send out his circulars, our French master smoking and looking on just to encourage us; and our German master helped me to carry them to the post in the waste-paper basket – a vehicle bitterly appropriate. Then the Linguist sat down and awaited applications from the Parent. But the post only brought disappointment, secured in halfpenny wrappers, mostly taking the form of advertisements from trades men desiring his custom. And his fifty pounds was nearly spent. He had bought an engagement ring and a locket for the Amber Witch, and had taken her up the river and to the theatre. I imagine that time of waiting for pupils was the happiest of his life.

The continued silence of the Parent had no effect on him. He was, I repeat, incurably hopeful. He was not saddened even by the curiously unanimous pressure brought to bear on him about the middle of May by the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker.

‘This is terrible,’ I said to him, turning over a heap of blue and white bills. ‘What are you going to do – ?’

‘Wolf at the door, eh?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the wolf is indeed at the door, calling for absolutely the last time before the matter leaves his hands.’ And indeed an angry milkman had just left a message in those terms.

‘Oh, well, I must write to my uncle, I suppose; though I did want him to see that I could do without him. However, for the poor wolf’s sake—’

So he wrote, enclosing a prospectus. I was with him when the answer came.

‘Now we’ll send a bone to your friend the wolf,’ he said, tearing open the envelope. Then he grew suddenly silent – a breathless silence. He read the letter through twice, and his face was like death. The paper dropped from his fingers. He got up abruptly, and, walking to the window, looked out.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Read that,’ he said in a choked voice. I read:

My dear Nephew, – Your conduct in running counter to all my advice compels me to tell you that you are mistaken in your estimate of your fortune. You have nothing. All that your father left you he desired me to use at my discretion. I have put it all into the farm, which is, besides, heavily mortgaged. Your only chance of pulling anything out of the fire is to return to the farm, to your duty, and to me. As for your engagement, I presume that will now be at an end. Your aunt sends her love, and

I remain,

Your affectionate

Uncle.

I laid the letter on the table.

‘What shall I do? Oh, my God, what shall I do? Think of her, old fellow. How can I tell her?’

‘It won’t make any difference to her,’ I said. ‘If she’s any sort of girl she’ll only love you the more.’

There again I was wrong. I knew the Amber Witch better than to suppose that in that sense she was ‘any sort of a girl,’ but I wanted to console him, and that seemed the easiest way. So I said again:

‘Of course she’ll never give you up because you’re poor.’

I wish I hadn’t said that. He looked at me very earnestly.

‘You think that angel would share my poverty?’

‘Of course,’ I said. I knew it wasn’t true, but his eyes frightened me. It was the first time I had seen them without the light of hope.

‘Then,’ he said very slowly, ‘I must give her up.’

‘That’s well said,’ I answered, feeling that good was coming out of evil. ‘That would be the honourable and right course. Don’t see her again,’ I said, trying to spare him pain which the Amber Witch would not have spared him.

‘No,’ he answered, in a dazed sort of way; ‘no, I’ll never see her again – never, never, never.’

‘Dear old man,’ I said, ‘don’t take it so to heart. If I were you I should just write her a letter and then go home.’

‘Yes,’ he spoke in the same dazed voice, ‘I’ll just write her a letter, and then go home. You think she would never give me up?’ He suddenly raised his forlorn blue eyes to put the question.

‘No.’ I felt that I had got on the right tack. ‘She’s as true as steel. You mustn’t drag her into poverty. She could never stand a farm life.’

‘No, I mustn’t drag her into poverty. I – I will be brave. Don’t think me a fool.’

He laid his arms on one of the long desks and his head on his arms, and I saw his shoulders heave. There was a lump in my own throat and a pricking in my own eyes as I stood with my hand on his arm.

‘I must go,’ I said; ‘I have to take those wretched boys for preparation. I’ll run round afterwards.’

He stood up. It was characteristic of him that he did not try to hide from me, any more than a child would have done, his tear-stained face. His voice was thin and tired.

‘Don’t come back, I’d rather say good-bye now. I – I shall take your advice – you know. Just write her a letter and go home – now – tonight. We’ve been awful jolly together, haven’t we – eh? I – perhaps we may meet again someday – somehow – somewhere. I won’t say good-bye, old man. Only au revoir. Eh?’

‘Au revoir,’ I repeated. ‘Cheer up – it’ll all come right in the end.’ I don’t in the least know what I meant .

The Linguist shook hands with me, and came with me to the front door. There he shook hands again, and suddenly took both my hands.

‘You won’t let them say I was a coward or afraid of work – or afraid of poverty with her – will you? You’ll explain that I couldn’t drag her down? That I knew she would be true as steel – so the only way was for me to give her up. You’ll tell them it was the only possible way out of it?’

‘Of course,’ I said. Then the boy kissed me, French fashion, on both cheeks.

I looked back over the big brass plate of the International College, and the Linguist waved me a farewell from the top step. ‘Au revoir,’ he cried. And I answered, ‘Au revoir.’

My mind was full of him; and when the boys were quiet at last I thought it could do no harm to run round and see if he had gone home.

On the steps of the International College I found a stout stranger with the air and scent of the country about him. Beside him was one of the waiters from the Café Ludovici.

‘I can’t make anyone hear,’ said the stranger.

‘Ni moi non plus,’ said the waiter; ‘here, sir – letter from Mademoiselle; no reponse.’ He handed me a note addressed to the Linguist, and hurried back to his round of service.

The stranger spoke.

‘You seem a friend of his?’

I named my name.

‘Yes, I’ve heard him speak of you. Now, I’ll tell you what it is. He’s headstrong and silly, and my wife, she put me up to writing him a letter, just to bring him to himself; but I felt no good would come of it, and the more I thought of it the less I liked it. And at last I couldn’t bear it any longer, and so I’ve just run up to town to put things right. And now he’s so angry he won’t let me in.’

‘I think he’s gone home; but we’ll try again.’

We tried again.

We heard the bell clang loudly in the unfurnished house – but no footstep.

‘You are his uncle, I suppose?’ I said. ‘I saw your letter to him.’

‘Was he much put out?’

‘Naturally.’

The man nodded.

‘I wrote the same letter to the girl’s father,’ he said. ‘It was a lie, young man, and a cruel lie. I see that now, but you know what women are at persuading and persuading, and scheming and scheming. His money’s as right as right in Consols, and—’

‘All right,’ I interrupted; ‘he’s broken off with her and gone home.’

‘You don’t think’ – the uncle’s rosy, wholesome face blanched in the street-lamp’s light – ‘that he’s been taken ill or anything?’

‘No.’ Then I remembered how, in a moment of enthusiasm, he had forced a latchkey on me in readiness for the time when I should be his English master with ‘the best room in the house, and any screw I liked to name.’

‘I forgot – I have a key,’ I said, and opened the door. It was very dark inside. I stood in the hall and called his name to an answering echo.

We struck a match, and, going into the schoolroom, lighted the gas there. The Linguist was sitting at the deal table where the prospectuses were kept, his arms lying on the table and his head on his arms. There were some letters lying by him.

His uncle sprang towards him, calling him by name. He never moved. The old man laid his hand on the bowed head.

‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘it’s not true. It was – it was – a sort of joke. Forgive your old uncle.’

I came close and raised his head.

‘He is dead,’ I said, and stood beside him, sick at heart, with her letter of insolent dismissal in my hand.

‘It was laudanum,’ I said presently, pointing to a blue, red-labelled bottle on the table.

‘It was my doing,’ said the old man, trembling, and hanging to my arm.

‘It was mine,’ I said to my soul. The heart knoweth its own bitterness.

•  •  •

I have her letter to him, and his to her. His letter told her very simply how he, knowing that only death could shake such constancy as hers, now by his death released her. The letter is written in French. It is stained in places, and the Amber Witch sold it to me for a sovereign.

I have his letter, I say, but I am not going to print it here, because of what happened when I showed it to our French master. It was in the dog-hutch. He looked over my shoulder as I re-read it by the dim light of the candle in the battered tin candlestick. I read the honest outpouring of the boy’s generous simple heart, and presently the words grew indistinct, and I felt my face flush and my eyes prick.

Then the French master said, shrugging his shoulders:

‘Je vous demande un peu! What construction!’

And that was the Linguist’s epitaph.

«•»

From: Longman’s Magazine Nov. 1891

The Poor Lovers

There were once two poor lovers who loved each other very dearly. They wanted to give each other a keepsake, but they were poor – poor – poor, – so poor that they had nothing to give. One evening, walking through the meadows when the grass was down and the hedges were pink with wild roses, they talked of this and each wept to think that neither could give a gift to the other; but as they were kissing away each others tears, a little fairy saw them. The fairy was riding by on a sunbeam, and he was rather in a hurry, because of course the sunbeam had to be home before dusk. However the fairy stopped a moment to see what was the matter. Then he whispered in their ears, and the lovers looked into each others eyes and smiled through their tears, and said, ‘Yes; we will!’

So they were married. Having nothing else to give, they gave themselves to each other and each one thought the gift the most precious in the world.

And they went to London to seek their fortunes.

Their friends gave them a little money to start with, and when they got to London they were so fortunate as to get work – the work for which the public thought their talents fitted them.

He was a poet – but poetry is not marketable unless you are a lord, or have a friend who is critic of the Daily News. So he had to write notices of other people’s poetry, and to ‘interview’ people who had made money by oil and nitrates and money-lending and other unpoetic methods. She painted beautifully, but pictures are not marketable unless you take a room in Bond Street, and hang the walls with sage-green satin, and give afternoon tea to possible purchasers. So she had to paint birthday cards, and fans, and handkerchief boxes, which is tiring work and badly paid. Thus they were still poor, but they were foolishly happy, and thought the world a very beautiful place indeed.

But when they had been in London about two years, troubles began, worse than they had ever dreamed of. First they had a little dear baby, with a round, soft, dark head and bright eyes, and little pink hands and feet. This, of course, was not a trouble, but the greatest joy in the world, greater than any joy they had ever dreamed of. Their little shabby sitting-room was quite beautiful now the cradle was in it. He used to look up from his writing and see her sitting by the little window trying to make the baby notice the dusty London sparrows, and his eyes used to prick and smart with tears of joy that never fell.

But a day came, a cruel sunshiny day, when he and she had to kiss the little round head for the last time, to close the dear eyes, to cover up the little pink fingers and feet, to leave the baby alone in a strange garden, and go home to the empty cradle and the silent rooms.

He and she never spoke of the baby, and she never cried when he could see her because she loved him so. But when he was out ‘interviewing,’ or at night when he was asleep, she used to cry, and cry, and cry.

And it grew more and more difficult for her to paint, and at last she went to a doctor, who under stood about people’s eyes. And he told her very kindly and gently that she had painted too much and cried too much and that she would soon be quite blind, but she did not tell him.

That night he came home very tired and sad and sat down at her feet and put his head in her lap and said:

‘Wife, you’ll have to keep us both, for I’ve lost my place as reporter, and they say my interviews are badly done, and so they are.’

And she put her arms round his neck and leaned over him and said sweet foolish things to him till he forgot all his troubles and laughed and was glad. And she did not tell him her secret because she loved him so.

The next day came some money, two pounds, which she had earned.

‘Dear sweetheart,’ she said to him, ‘I am ill, I can work no more. Let us with this two pounds go home again.’

‘But—’ he began,

‘I want to go home,’ she sobbed, leaning on his shoulder and rubbing her cheek against his, so that he felt her tears for the first time since he and she covered up the little .brown head and the little pink hands and feet. ‘I want to go home, the noise tires me. I am ill. You are ill. Everything is a mistake; let us go home. At least, we can die there—’

‘My love, my dear,’ he answered, ‘we will go home for a day. One whole, long, happy day Not to see any of the people – they have forgotten us. But the church, where we were married, and the wood where I used to kiss you.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘that is what I wish.’

So next day they went very early, for it was a long journey, and they walked together through the meadows, grey with hay, and by hedges where the wild roses were pink and sweet.

There never was such a day. They forgot all their sorrows, and only remembered each other, and the summer and the sunlight, and their love. They wandered through the woods, and heard the thrushes and nightingales, and they saw a squirrel and two rabbits.

By and by they strayed down to the sea, and saw the great jewel blazing in the sun, and they sat down on the sand and held each others hands. They were so happy that they fell fast asleep.

While they lay there on the sand asleep, they both dreamed a beautiful dream. That he was writing songs that made men’s hearts beat high, and their souls thrill to noble aims; that she was painting pictures which mothers brought their children to see, and stood before with tears and smiles, saying, ‘It is more beautiful than life.’

The sun sank red behind the sea, and still they dreamed this dream, and they dreamed further that they were always together, each always lover and beloved, and that their little lost baby had come back to them.

Now, as they lay there asleep, the Queen of the Sea-fairies came by. She is the most potent enchantress in the world and can do almost anything. But she can’t make roses grow on a bramble, and she can’t put pretty dreams in the place of ugly ones. But where she finds pretty dreams she can fix them. She came up out of the blue water with her little babies laughing and leaping round her. It’s the greatest mistake to suppose that the water-fairies have tails. Mermaids have, of course; but that has nothing to do with the story.

Well, when the sea-fairy came to where the poor lovers lay sleeping, she stopped and looked at them. Her merry white babies stopped too.

‘Who are these?’ they asked.

The Queen of the Sea-fairies (who knows everything) sighed and said:

‘They are two poor lovers and when they wake they will be very sad, because this is their last pretty day. The rest is all sadness.’

The smallest, whitest sea-baby stooped to look closely at them.

‘Why are they sad?’

‘They have lost their little dear baby; they are ill, and they are poor.’

‘What is poor?’

‘A kind of illness these land-creatures have.’

‘Can’t you help them?’ asked the children.

‘Only in one way,’ the great queen answered.

‘Oh, mother, darling, help them,’ cried all the little sea-babies, clinging round her.

‘Do, do, do help them, because they have no nice babies as you have.’

The Sea Queen sighed and smiled and the two poor lovers also smiled and sighed, for their dream was growing more and more beautiful. Yet through it all, some thread of their thoughts still clung to the bitter truth of life, and so they sighed.

‘Help them, dear mother, do!’

‘Hush!’ the Sea Queen answered, and she raised her hand and beckoned.

The sea answered her. A great blue wave, rising like a wall of sapphire, swept up the beach and bore her and her children back into the depths of the sea. In its breast the great blue wave bore also the two poor lovers and their dream.

«•»

From: Atalanta magazine Jan. 1892

The Rose of Love

Very far away – in the land where there is no east wind – there is a beautiful garden, where the flowers bloom all the year round. No one from our earth has ever been there, though many folk have tried to find it. Sometimes two people fall asleep hand in hand, under beech-trees in autumn, or by the great sea, and they dream that they have found the enchanted garden. The dream is very pretty while it lasts, but it is not pleasant when you wake up, because after that dream even the waving beech-trees and the blue sea seem stupid and ugly, and one never afterwards can see anything beautiful without saying: ‘Ah, yes, but how much more beautiful the enchanted garden was.’

In the very middle of this garden there grows a beautiful red rose-tree, and now and then one of the roses from it finds its way to this earth of ours. The garden is the garden of Perfect Happiness, and the roses are the roses of Immortal Love.

In that garden there lives a fairy whose name I cannot tell you, because it is such a beautiful name that if you once heard it you would never care to listen to any other music, and that would be a pity. She herself is more beautiful than anything else in the world. No one has ever really seen her, but sometimes people see her shadow, and her shadow is like a ray of gold sunshine. And some say they have heard her voice, and those who have heard it can never again hear anything base or mean; for her voice is a melody that kills all discord.

Now one day this fairy, passing through her garden, noticed that the red rose-tree had twenty-eight roses on it.

‘Twenty-seven is a better number,’ she said, ‘three times three times three – I think I can spare the twenty-eighth.’ So she plucked it.

It was a large red velvety rose, with a stiff thorny stalk and red-green shiny leaves – the kind of rose people sometimes long for at Christmas, and can not get for love or money – the kind of rose that grows in old-fashioned garden-borders; it has never grown in a hot-house yet, and it never will.

But of course the rose of Immortal Love, besides being enchanted, is far more beautiful than even the roses that grew in the old border at home, when we were young.

The fairy picked the twenty-eighth rose and kissed it, and it became a hundred times more lovely than before. Then she spread out her wide, gauzy, rainbow-coloured wings, and flew all the way to earth to find someone to give it to. She carried the rose in her hand, and wherever she passed people smiled and stood up straight, and said –

‘Ah, how good the sun is today.’

She went first to a king’s palace, into a cool courtyard by a marble basin where a fountain played. The king’s daughter sat by the edge of the marble basin, and her long white fingers splashed in the cool water and made another little fountain. The chancellor’s son lay at her feet and looked up at her, and it seemed to him that there was nothing in the world more good to do – because he loved her.

‘How good the sunshine is,’ said the king’s daughter.

‘It turns those brown eyes of yours to gold,’ answered the chancellor’s son.

‘It shines more brightly this summer than ever before.’

‘We know why, do we not, my lady dear?’

And they looked in each other’s eyes and smiled. And the fairy, poised on her bright light wings, looked in the eyes of the king’s daughter, and smiled for very joy at what she saw there.

‘The rose,’ she said to herself, ‘is for these.’

But as she spoke she turned to the chancellor’s son, and in his blue eyes she read, in and through and under the real love that burnt there, a pale fire of ambition.

‘She is the king’s daughter,’ said the fairy to herself, ‘and you love her – oh yes, you love her. But would your love ever have been allowed to grow if she had been a miller’s daughter? No – oh no! the rose of immortal love is not for you.’

And as the fairy flew away the king’s daughter sighed, and said wearily—

‘What ails the day? there is no colour left in the sky, and your eyes are grey, not blue!’

With the red rose in her hand the fairy flew south till she came to a shady olive-garden, where red anemones grew among lush green grass. The splendid sapphire of the sea gleamed in the gold sun, and on the terrace on the cliffs grew white-flowered myrtles, and orange-trees hung with gold fruit, and the pale drifted rose-leaves lay in heaps along the marble of the terrace.

‘Shall I leave my rose here among all the other roses?’ The fairy paused to listen to the talk of the two who leaned on the marble balustrade, and looked out over the bay to the rosy snow of the distant mountains.

‘It is not for long now,’ the woman was saying, ‘they say I cannot live till the olive-gathering. Do you regret nothing?’

‘Nothing, nothing – oh my heart’s heart,’ the man answered, drawing her closely to him.

And as he spoke he remembered how he had given up ambition and hope, and the old gay life among his fellows in his far northern land, and had come with this woman to tend her, and smooth her last steps on this rough earth, because of the love he bore her. He had been a great man in his own country, one who had the world at his feet, and he knew that if he should ever go back his place in that world would be filled, and there would be no room for him. He knew too that the woman beside him, frail, white, and fading like a white rose whose day is over, had now grown so dear to him, that when she had left him he would have no heart to go back to his own world. He would only care to stay near her grave till his time came to be laid beside her.

He clasped her frail hands in his and repeated passionately—

‘No, I regret nothing – how can I, when my life is here?’

But deep in his eyes, even as he kissed his poor love, the fairy read his secret thought—

‘No, I regret nothing, but there are not many men who would have done it.’

The fairy sighed and flew away, and the dying woman shivered in the disenchanted noontide and said – ‘It grows cold – let us go in.’

Then, travelling northward, the fairy passed by many lovers, but in none of their hearts had love made a home meet for the red, red rose. Vanity, and selfishness, and greed, and evil temper, and like weeds grew in so many, many hearts, and where these are the deathless rose cannot be.

At last, in an English lane, the bright light wings paused, and the beautiful fairy hovered over two lovers who lay on the dusty grass by the wayside. The search had been long, and it was hot August now. The road was very white and very dry, and the hawthorn bushes and virgin’s bower in the hedge were powdered with white dust. The hot sun shone down on the dry leaves, and there was no sound but the hum of grasshoppers, and now and then a rustle from the hedge as some field-mouse peeped through the grass to see how soon it would be cool enough to come out a little.

Lying asleep in the shadow of the hedge lay the lovers. They were only two tramps; their clothes were ragged and worn, and their bare feet were dusty with travel, and bleeding here and there with the roughness of the road. But as they lay sleeping his arm was thrown protectingly across her shoulders, and his head lay close against her arm. His face could not be seen, but on her face was such a look of content that the great rose-fairy herself smiled to behold it. The woman was tired and poor. They had wandered far; they had no work, often they had no food, yet as they slept the woman smiled, because the sun was bright, and he she loved was near her.

The fairy drew the red rose across the sleeping face, and the woman smiled still more peacefully. A dewdrop from the rose slipped on to her lips, and she dreamed that her lover kissed her.

‘Their love has not been tried by the fire of absence,’ said the fairy; ‘it is so easy to love truly when you are together. They have been together ever since they began to love each other, and yet—’

She lingered, for of all she had met these two were the most worthy to wear the rose. She stooped to lay it on the sleeping breast. At that moment hurried footsteps came down the lane, and a girl turned the corner.

She had a smart hat with feathers and a muslin gown, but the hat was pushed far back from her forehead, and her gown was dusty and crumpled; her face was hot and red with running. She did not look at all pretty; indeed most people would have called her plain even at the best of times. She lived in the great smoky city, and worked in a big factory on most days, but today she had a holiday. She came down the lane looking to left and right, and holding her hand to her side because she had been running, and the basket she carried was heavy, and her heart hurt her.

As she came near the tramp’s wife wakened and sat up, and the girl stopped.

‘You haven’t seen a young man go by?’ she asked anxiously; ‘a fair young man in a light suit, and a violet tie, most likely?’

‘No, dearie,’ said the tramp-woman; ‘but I’ve bin asleep. He might ’a passed an’ me not known it.’

‘I was to meet him by the wood near the station at ten this morning,’ the girl went on, ‘and it’s two now, and it do seem a bit hard on us. It ain’t as though we had so many holidays.’

‘It is hard,’ said the other – ‘very. But there’s a wood t’other side of the station; perhaps your sweetheart’s waiting there, dear. I hope you’ll find him.’

‘Thank you,’ the girl said, and ran on.

The man rubbed his eyes and leaned upon his elbow.

‘I expect he’ll catch it when she does find him.’

‘Yes, poor chap,’ said his wife.

‘It’s a good thing there’s no fear of us missing each other.’

‘Yes.’

Then they laughed, not unkindly; but the fairy knew, as she watched them take the road again, hand in hand, that the red, red rose is not for those lovers who can even think of being angry with each other.

A bee who had been listening to the talk flew away to the other wood, and on to the shoulder of a young man in a light-checked suit, with a violet tie, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. He too was very hot and dusty, and he came from the great city. He was a clerk in a warehouse, and this was one of the four holidays in the year when such folk can get away from the grime and smoke of cities, and see how beautiful God’s green world is. The bee whispered to him,

‘Why not try the other wood?’

‘Of course,’ he said; ‘now why didn’t I think of that before?’

The reason he. hadn’t thought of it before was because the bee had only just suggested the idea to him; but he did not know it was the bee’s voice he heard, he actually thought it was the voice of common sense! So he turned and went towards the other wood, and just by the railway-station, on the very hottest and dustiest bit of the road, he saw his sweetheart coming.

The rose-fairy was hovering near, not to be seen of mortal eyes. After what she had heard the tramps say she felt a little anxious about the meeting of these two poor sweethearts, who on this one of their rare holidays had spent four hours apart that might have been spent together. What would they say? How would they look? Would they be angry with each other for the mistake? As soon as they caught sight of each other they began to run, and when they met they just kissed each other on both cheeks, and walked off into the woods hand in hand! Not a reproach – not a word of blame from either!

‘It’s all right now, but what a four hours we’ve had. Oh, my dear, my dear.’

‘Yes, haven’t we? But it’s over now, my darling.’

They were sitting side by side on a heap of bracken with the picnic-basket beside them. They had had their lunch, and had explained to each other with many kisses and much mutual pity how they had managed to miss each other. Then they grew silent, and sat hand in hand looking at the deep green of the underwood.

Just then it was that the fairy bent down over them and laid the invisible rose on the bosom of the muslin frock. A thorn pierced the gown, for the rose of immortal love is not a thornless one; but before she could cry out,

‘Oh, my dear,’ said the young man suddenly, ‘how beautiful you are! There is no one in the world so beautiful as you!’

The rose glowed on her bosom and that made her beautiful, though it was invisible. It makes her beautiful even now, when her hair is white with many years and many sorrows, and her husband still sees her as she is – beautiful with immortal beauty, because of the red, red rose she wears upon her heart.

«•»

From: Atalanta magazine Apr. 1893

After Many Days

I

Margaret Marchant was thirty-seven. There were lines of grey in her soft, pale brown hair, and on her earnest face the mark of sorrow suffered and duty done, the trace of days of unselfish toil and nights of sorrow uncomforted. But it was a very sweet face, and had gained, not lost, by the change from youthful freshness to the sweet gravity that now lived in the firm mouth and tender eyes. She was brushing out her long hair before the glass in the handsome bedroom which she shared with her cousin. The two, nearly of the same age, had lived together now these fifteen years in the old house by Greenwich Park – a strictly ordered, even life, given mostly to good works.

Mary, wrapped in a warm dressing-gown, sat by the fire, on which a bronchitis kettle steamed gaily. On the dressing-table by which Margaret stood was a china toilet set, which her sense of duty kept for ornament only; the bottles held no scent, the jars no unguents, in the little pot in the middle there was no powder-puff, and no rings hung from the ring-stand. The only ring Margaret’s Christian asceticism permitted her to wear was the handsome diamond rose which flashed from her left hand as it held out her long tresses to the sweep of the brush. The play of the firelight on the jewels caught Mary’s eye as she recovered from a paroxysm of coughing, and the weakness of illness sapping the studied reserve of years, she said suddenly:

‘Margaret, why do you wear that ring? It is impossible that you can still care for James.’

Margaret laid down the brush, and her bright hair flashed through her fingers, and so went into a coil behind her head before she answered:

‘My promise was not lightly given. I promised to wait for James and to be true to him. He gave me that ring, as you know, the night he went away. I shall always wear it, unless he should come back to replace it with another.’

‘I have often wished,’ said Mary, gathering courage from the other’s calmness, ‘to talk to you about this; but, somehow, I have not liked to. Don’t you think, dear, that it would be better and wiser to dismiss altogether these vain remembrances and dreams, which must, I should think (of course I don’t know, but I should think, be a serious hindrance in the Christian life?’

Margaret drew a chintz-covered wicker chair to the fire and sat down. The light of the fire struck rosy points from the illuminated texts on the wall and from the gilt edges of the little devotional books on the dressing-table. It touched the sombre hangings of the old-fashioned bedroom, and softened pleasantly its Early Victorian ugliness.

‘I don’t mind your speaking to me about it,’ she said; ‘say anything that is in your mind, dear. But my own mind is long ago made up.’

‘Well, then,’ ventured Mary, ‘don’t be angry with me for saying so, but aren’t you turning a part of your thoughts away from the things which belong to your peace, to waste them on a lost and profligate reprobate?’

Margaret shrank as if a whip’s lash had cut her. ‘James was careless,’ she said, ‘and – and unfortunate; but I know he tried to do right, and if he has been guilty of anything worse than folly, I am certain he has bitterly repented; and I can’t help thinking, I can’t help hoping, that someday he will come home.’

‘And if he did?’ Mary asked.

‘If he did,’ said Margaret brokenly, ‘I should lay it all at his feet – the money that came too late to make our youth happy, all that is left of my life, and myself, Mary. And someday he will come.’

There was a pause. Then, with a sudden change of voice, Margaret spoke again:

‘Come, my dear, it’s time you were in bed. And don’t worry, for I will take your district tomorrow. If you take care of your cold you will be all right in a day or two.’

And Mary was soon asleep, but Margaret’s pillow was still wet with tears when she woke in the morning.

II

It was a bitter January day. The snow still lay white on the roofs, but it was pounded into greasy mud in the narrow streets and courts where Mary’s ‘district’ lay. Margaret’s own district, which she had ‘worked’ for the last fifteen years, lay among brighter streets and neater houses, in Greenwich, with a bit of garden in front of each. Mary’s was in the worst part of Deptford. Margaret stepped through the slush with a heavy basket of port wine, beef tea, and many little dainties, each with its billet plainly marked in Mary’s pencilled writing; and she trod the pavement and carried the burden, as usual, with an exalted heart. In a little violet silk bag that lay in her bosom, with her heart beating against it to keep it warm, was an old letter – the last she had had from her lover fifteen years before.

I have done my best, it ran, but it is hopeless. I have lost my place, I have lost my character, as they call it, and I can see it is down hill and not up that I am going. Dear Margaret! best Margaret! you must give up all hopes of me and marry some fellow who is worthy of you, which I never was.

Here the writer weakened, and set the seal of his weakness on the strong life of the woman who loved him.

But I shall never love anyone but you; and if at any time things should go straight, and I should make my fortune and come back, I shall try to bear it if I see you happy with someone else. Don’t quite forget your poor old

Jim.

In the first wild whirl of horror at the blow that this letter had dealt her, Margaret’s soul had been caught and soothed and held by the strong faith of her Puritan cousin. She had taken hold of religion with both hands, and had devoted herself to good works, in the frenzied hope that these might teach her to forget her own agony. This in some measure they had done, but, underlying the cheerful performance of every duty that she saw marked out for her, was an unconscious reassurance of herself that ‘He who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,’ and a pitiful sense that if the Lord were indeed tender and all-merciful, He would repay the debt in this world, and repay it in that one way which her heart did not dare to tell itself it longed for.

So she passed in and out of the broken-down Deptford houses, and her basket grew lighter while her heart grew heavier, as it always did at the sight of the black blank which makes the whole sum of many a poor man’s past and present and future.

The last gifts in her basket were two medicine bottles of port wine and beef tea; and to leave these, she entered a shabby tenement house. A substantial, well-built old house, where once well-to-do Deptford merchants had walked in the fear of the Lord, and seen their trade prosper, and reared up their sons and daughters to call them blessed. But the heavy door swung loose on its hinges now; the stone-flagged passage was littered with shavings, and straw, and cabbage leaves, and the carved wooden balustrades had been long ago broken up and carried away for firewood. After the third child had fallen over the stair-head and been taken to the hospital, the landlord had put up a cheap iron railing; and Margaret leaned heavily on this as she climbed flight after flight, for it had been a long morning’s work, and she was very tired. Mary’s written instructions were perfectly definite, and Margaret picked her way without hesitation among the groups of dirty-faced children who played on the stairs and on the landings, and at last found herself knocking at the make shift door of the front attic. The original panels had long ago disappeared, and their place was taken by a few rough planks nailed across. A hole in the door had a loop of rope through it, fastened to a nail in the door-post, and this served as lock, latch, and bolt; and when no answer came to her tap at the door, Margaret had no difficulty in putting her hand through the crack of the door and lifting the rope loop from its fastening. Then she walked in.

Most of the panes were broken in the dormer window, and these ravages were repaired, as far as possible, with a piece of broken slate, with handfuls of straw and a man’s old hat. The room was the worst she had ever been in. It had no furniture, no food, no sign of food or furniture. But there was a heap of something in the corner, and when her eyes got used to the dull, yellow dusk – all of God’s sweet light that could filter through the straw and the dirty panes – she saw that this something was a heap of sacks and shavings, on which a man was lying. He was wrapped in an old rug, and his face and hands, unlike those of most that she had visited, were clean. She could see that he was asleep. A candle stood in a broken bottle on the mantelpiece. It was the sole furniture and sole ornament. Margaret lighted it. As its light touched the sick man’s eyes, he opened them, and when his glance fell on the gracious lady busying herself with the basket, and pouring out the kindly little dole of beef tea into the cup which Mary’s forethought had provided, he held out both his hands to her and said:

‘Margaret!’

Fifteen years of self-repression bore their fruit in the steady touch with which Margaret set down the bottle and cup on the mantelpiece.

She took the candle and walked towards him. She knelt beside him; stood the candle on the floor and looked at him long and earnestly.

His hands had dropped again on the rug that covered him. Time had thinned his face, and his hair had fallen away at the temples. A tangled, grizzly stubble hid his mouth – that mouth that used to be so tender and so gay – and there was a web of care-lines about his eyelids. But the fifteen years of self-repression went for nothing when Margaret saw his eyes. She caught both his hands and held them against her breast, where her heart so long had kept his letter warm. And she held them as if she would never let them go.

‘And how did it all happen?’ she said, after many foolish words that need not here be written down.

‘My dear,’ he said, with a happy smile in his blue eyes, ‘I can’t tell you how it happened; but what does it matter now? It all began, I suppose, in my leaving the Bank and going to America to look for a fortune.’

She reddened a little, since it was for her that that fortune had been sought.

‘And I got a good berth in New York. Then it seemed better to leave it and to go West; and when once you have thrown a thing away, you can never get it back.’

‘Oh yes, sometimes you can,’ she said, and looked down at him with shining eyes.

‘I have taken a many steps,’ he went on, ‘and each one has been downwards, not up. Why, Margaret, I’ve carted dust in the road and hung about the dock gates for the chance o’ tuppence. It was an ugly dream, but it’s over now. Don’t let’s think of it no more.’

Margaret winced. She got up from her knees and gave him some beef tea and port. Then she sat down beside him and gently questioned him about his wanderings and all the sufferings of these long years. But now she sat upright with her back against the wall, and it was only one of his hands she held, and that not against her heart. Through all the poor, sordid little story of a wasted life and lost chances Margaret could see the golden thread of his unchanged love for her, and every word he spoke was coloured by the radiant confidence that now they had found each other, sorrow and sighing must flee away, and all be better than well. In the tumult of warring present and past, Margaret was not conscious that this confidence of his irritated her. She herself had felt, in the first moment of glad reunion, that henceforth their lives must run side by side to the end. And the end, to the eyes of Margaret, had at first seemed so near – so much too near.

But as she sat by him, holding his hand and listening to his story, a sudden clear vision came to her of her daily life. The neat old house, where nothing was ever an inch out of its place, the dainty, delicate breakfast table, with its austere luxury of bright silver and old china, the even routine in which her days went by, the family prayers, the daily Bible-readings, the prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings, even her bunch of keys in its little brown basket on the mat on the sideboard, every inch of polished mahogany, every neat chintz fold rose up and pleaded against the man beside her, this man who, she now began to realise, had no place in her life which could be filled by his living presence. For his memory there was a place – a place for his portrait, a place for his letter; but, for himself – none. This man here on the sacks was not her lover; this man with the worn nails and rough, trembling hands, this man whose speech was defaced with words she had never heard from the mouth of a social equal. That this man should call her Margaret, should hold her hand! This man who had trailed out life for years in the gutter, and to whom the mud and refuse of the gutter seemed to cling! And yet he was her lover, for whom she had watched and waited, for whom she had worn out her youth, for whom she had prayed passionately by day, and by night wept hopelessly; and at the thought, the tears came to her eyes again, and she stooped and kissed him on the forehead. Not a Judas kiss, only the last expression of a remorseful regret for the dead love. The kiss stopped his weak flow of talk, and into his eyes, too, the tears came.

‘Ah! thank God He did not let me die till now! Margaret, when will you take me away?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said.

And to her conscience she hastened to explain, ‘I will send the poor man to a convalescent home; he shall have every care, he shall want for nothing. Thank Heaven! I can afford it. And I will go to see him sometimes – perhaps.’

The unwonted exertion of talk had wearied the sick man desperately. His eyes closed; he turned his face towards her and pillowed his hollow cheek on her hand.

‘I will wait till he is asleep,’ she thought, ‘and then I will go home and tell Mary, and we will decide what is best to be done for the poor fellow.’

She did not say ‘Him’ now in her thoughts, because she no longer loved him. Sitting there with her hand against his face, she felt with her other hand in the little bag which hung from her waist and took out a sealskin purse. She slipped this under the corner of the sacks on the filthy floor. She hated herself because she could not take him home to her heart; she hated her house because not to that either could she take him home; but, all the same, she pushed the little sealskin purse under the sacking; and when the grasp of his cold fingers loosed hers, she went softly away and did not kiss him again.

She closed the door gently after her and went down the rotten stairs, the tears in her throat almost choking her as she went. She found out a nurse she knew in her own district and sent her to tend him. She told her that she had put the money under the sack and bade the nurse hasten to light a fire, ‘for he is all alone, and it is very cold,’ she said.

It was very cold, and he was all alone.

The January wind, creeping in at the broken window, drove the candle-flame to one side, and the tallow guttered down and ran over the broken bottle, to harden in a cake on the rotting mantelpiece.

The man on the sacks lay very still. He had not moved after his fingers had loosed their clasp of the hand he trusted and clung to.

He had fallen asleep, not feeling cold at all, because he was wrapped round with the warm shelter of his own love and faith.

When the nurse came hurrying in with food and firewood she threw these down on the hearthstone, where they fell clattering. Then she felt under the sacking and drew out the little soft sealskin purse; and with it in one hand, she held the candle with the other to the sick man’s face. Then she stood up and opened the purse.

‘Seven pound fifteen,’ she said. ‘I must tell Miss Margaret that it won’t cost so much as that. You can be buried handsome for four pound fifteen nowadays.’

And she blew the candle out and went away.

«•»

From: Longman’s Magazine Nov. 1893

The Looking-Glass

She was a puny, yellow-skinned, big-eyed, big-mouthed child, with thin arms and legs, and brown untidy hair. The eyes were red, and the mouth tremulous with tears, when she stood alone in the world in the drawing-room of her aunt’s house in Highgate, quite alone now that the friendly doctor, who had taken charge of her on her homeward voyage, had brought her to the house of her dead father’s only sister; and, being a busy man, home on a short furlough after long Indian service, had kissed her, bidden her be a good girl, given her half a sovereign and a box of sweets, and left her.

The old servant who had opened the door had said that her mistress was attending a clothing-club tea-meeting – had said it with no appearance of surprise that her mistress should be absent at the hour which she herself had fixed for the arrival of her only brother’s only child.

Una walked round the room, looking at the pictures in their heavy, dull maple frames: ‘The Woman of Sameria,’  ‘Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time,’  ‘The Maid of Saragossa.’ She looked at the marble top of the chiffonier, where the case of stuffed birds was, at the heavy stiff damask curtains, the sombre respectability of the Brussels carpet, the severe uninviting orderliness of the rep-covered chairs.

She looked out of the window at the garden, in intention as formal as the room itself, but where the lavish hand of autumn had scattered golden leaves, to the despair of the gardener and the littering of the lawn. It was a chill, damp outlook. Una shivered, and walked back into the room.

The chiffonier attracted her most. The stuffed birds were pretty: besides, there was at the back of them a looking-glass, in which she could see her face, her poor little pale, frightened face. There was glass in the doors of the chiffonier, too, reflecting her black stockings and the little skirts that were trimmed with crape, because it was not yet four months since jungle fever had killed lather and mother. She was tired. The chairs looked at her forbiddingly, yet with a sort of challenge, as though they dared her to sit on their neat cushions. She was too tired to accept the challenge, and too tired for the little feet to support her longer without protest.

So she sat down on the Brussels carpet in front of the looking-glass door of the chiffonier, and peered into its depths. It was a comfort to her to see her own face. That, at least, was not strange as everything else was. It was almost like having a friend there, and she sat looking at herself in the glass, and pitied herself very much indeed, as children do, and grown folks likewise.

She was lost in a sad dream of the time when the face had had a soft shoulder to rest on, kind hands to stroke it, dear lips to kiss it whenever it would; and she did not hear the door open, and her aunt come in. She had just reached out a little clammy hand, with an impulse of affection, towards the image which seemed all that was left of the old life, when her arm was caught from behind, and she sprang to her feet, literally speechless with the sudden shock.

‘So you are my niece,’ a hard voice said; and Una, looking up, saw an elderly woman, with pale banded hair and black shawl, and a very ugly bonnet.

Una opened her lips, but the ‘Yes, aunt,’ would not pass them.

‘And what are you doing sitting down there on the floor as if you were a dog?’ The voice was not unkind, so Una managed to answer –

‘I was looking at myself in the glass.’

‘Why?’ asked her aunt.

‘Because I like to,’ was Una’s summary of the many reasons that had brought her to that contemplation.

‘Indeed,’ her aunt answered. ‘And what is your name?’

‘Una,’ said the child.

‘Anything else?’

‘Una Mary Vincent.’

‘Well, Mary,’ said her aunt, instantly adopting the name unfamiliar to her niece, ‘I shall not call you Una, because I think it is high-flown and romantic, and not at all suitable for a little girl.’

‘Mother and father called me Una,’ the child found courage to reply, clinging to that in the midst of the waves of terror, and loneliness, and lovelessness that were closing round her.

‘Indeed,’ replied her aunt, as if that made no difference. ‘But I shall call you Mary. Now, Mary, you will have governesses and teachers, and every advantage I can give you; and I hope you will be a good girl, and not tiresome. Give me a kiss, and I will ring for Fraser to take you upstairs.’

Una lifted her lips obediently, but it was a hard unresponsive cheek that they touched. There was no lingering pressure, no touch of a hand on her hair, no arm put round her for a moment, no love. She followed the old servant patiently up the steep carpeted stairs into a large dreary room, furnished with mahogany and seriousness. Left alone, she took off hat and jacket, washed her hands and face, and did her hair as well as she could at the big looking-glass between the two deep windows.

It was growing dusk; she did not like the big room; she hastened down to her aunt. There was tea – a silent meal. Then Aunt Mary gave her a bound volume of the ‘Monthly Packet,’ and turned herself to wrestle with a number of little account books in mottled paper covers. Bedtime came all too soon, a bedtime that meant loneliness in the big dark, quiet chamber. Una’s heart beat with terror when she found herself alone there, with the one candle. She undressed very quickly, trying to encourage herself by saying over as quickly as she could all the texts and hymns she could remember, in a vague hope that they might act as a charm against what might be lurking invisible around her, ready to spring into active, horrible, material existence as soon as the light was blown out.

Once in bed, kind Nature remembered the child for whom no one else in all the busy living world had any thought in that hour, and rocked her sweetly and swiftly into dreamless sleep.

Next day a prim but kindly governess appeared. For the first time Una found in sums and geography a refuge from her bitter longing for love, and from the bleak waste of misery that life had become to her. When she went up to wash her hands for tea, she found that the big dressing-table, with its large swinging glass, was gone. When she came down, she said timidly to the aunt who sat waiting behind the tea-tray –

‘There is no looking-glass in my room, aunt. How am I to do my hair?’

‘You must learn to do without a glass,’ her aunt replied, beginning to pour out the tea with grim rigidity. ‘I didn’t say anything to you about it yesterday, because you were tired, and I didn’t wish to be too severe with you; but I must tell you I was very much shocked to find you indulging in foolish vanity before the looking-glass. You will have no glass for the future.’

‘Yes, aunt,’ said the child meekly, climbing on to the large horsehair chair and smoothing her pinafore down over her black frock.

‘Will you please pass me the bread and butter?’ the aunt went on. ‘You must learn to be very obliging and agreeable, Mary, and think no more about looking glasses and such vanities. Remember that you are an extremely plain child. You will grow up to be a very plain woman. From what I have seen of you, I am quite sure that you will never be a clever one. So you must be good and obedient, or no one will ever love you. You will certainly not be loved for your looks or your cleverness.’

‘No, aunt,’ Una answered, choking down bitter tears with the bread and butter.

‘It will be no fault of mine,’ said Miss Vincent complacently to herself as she sat alone that night over the clothing club accounts, ‘It will not be my fault if she grows up vain and frivolous. I wilt do my duty by her whatever it costs me.’

And she did. She was a woman in whom duty took the place of faith and hope and charity. She saw that Una was well clothed, and sufficiently fed. She saw that Una was well taught and had regular daily exercise in the open air. She took her to Church. She taught her her catechism and at the proper age she had her taken to the bishop to be confirmed. All this care Miss Vincent gave ungrudgingly. More than this she had not in her to give.

So Una grew up a silent, awkward girl, more and more finding her pleasure in learning and reading. There were no books of a frivolous character at Miss Vincent’s It was a sympathetic housemaid who gave Una a copy of Longfellow, furtively, on her fifteenth birthday, and the same housemaid at her request bought her Mrs. Hemans and Scott, and a vilely printed edition of Shakespeare, with the ten shillings the doctor had given her at parting five years before. She had not spent the ten shillings; she had nothing to spend it on. All her material wants were supplied, and Miss Vincent would not have approved of any catering for spiritual needs beyond the official banquet of prayerbook, hymnbook, and sermon.

So Una hid her poetry books on the top of the big wardrobe and read and re-read them.

After that first day she had never looked in the glass. At first from the blind instinct of obedience, which ten years of loving care had made strong within her, afterwards because the memory of her aunt’s words to her rankled in a wound that never healed.

‘No one will ever love me. I am not good. I shall never be clever. I must always, be ugly. I don’t want to see an ugly stupid person’s face.’

And not to look in any glass in any room at any time became a habit, stronger than any resolution could have been, and she grew up, learned for her years and thoughtful, taking her part in Miss Vincent’s mothers’ meetings and the acts of duty, misnamed charities, till it seemed to her as if the world must always, always goon just like this, with nothing in it beautiful except the flowers in their seasons in the dull garden, the memory of those ten years in India, and the contraband poetry books on the top of the mahogany wardrobe.

She still read with her governess, though she had long out-stripped that worthy woman’s little round of learning and accomplishments. She kissed her aunt morning and evening, but after Betty, the housemaid, left, there were none in whom she could confide even to the point of stretching her arms in their presence when she was weary, or sighing in their presence when she was sad. And she was sad so often, yet not with the bitterness of those first days, because one can get used to any pain, even the pain of loneliness and of a loveless life.

It was when the housemaid left that Una first began to write poetry, furtively, with one of her drawing pencils in the blank spaces of an old exercise book filled up with vulgar fractions. And her poems were echoes of the poetry she had read, and rough and bad and poor, yet with an individual note, and the very first line of the very first poem began: ‘I know that I am ugly.’ Una has that poem still, but it is under seal, and even now she never has the heart to look at it; and gradually out of the world whose one great fact was that she was ugly and therefore no one would ever love her, she passed into the other world where all things were beautiful, and therefore she loved them; so with the poetry she wrote and the poetry she read, she built herself a dream palace in which as the days passed by, their dull duties and routines became the dream, and her beautiful bright dreams the only reality.

No visitors came to the house except the prim ladies who brought their scissors and thimbles and sat seriously sewing through the Wednesday afternoons, while an improving book was read aloud. Una was as much alone as though she never touched a human hand or saw a human face.

Then quite without warning the change came.

Miss Vincent died, died suddenly, sitting up right at her table, working at the accounts in the little marble-covered account books, died with her pen in her hand and with anxious eyes tracking through the long columns a missing fourpence half penny. They found her there in the morning when they came in to unbar the shutters and remove the slight traces of yesterday’s dull life from carpet and chair and fender.

They went up and told Una without preface or hesitation.

‘Get up, Miss Mary!’ the housemaid said, ‘your poor aunt is dead.’

And Una got up. She did not run down to see the worst for herself, in dressing gown and slippers; but she dressed quickly with all the customary routine of the toilet, and as on other mornings brushed out her long hair and twisted it up, looking all the while out of the window. It was a bright May morning. There were two blackbirds on the wet lawn. Then she said her prayers, because she had always been used to say them, and went down stairs.

The doctor was there. They had laid Miss Vincent on the table and covered her with a sheet. The doctor was arranging its folds over the dead face when Una came in.

‘The poor lady’s niece,’ said the cook, introducing them. ‘The doctor, Miss Mary, he says it’s all over.’

Una turned away and went into the drawing-room. She stood there, gazing out of the window, the tears slowly rolling down her face, with an ache of heart, just as though she had loved the hard woman who lay cold under a sheet across the hall. Perhaps she had, without knowing it, for love is a plant which grows in strange places and with little to feed it. The doctor’s voice roused her.

‘Come, my dear,’ he said, ‘you must cheer up. Is there no one you can send for?’

‘No one,’ said Una.

He meditated a moment.

‘I don’t like leaving you all alone in this big, sad house,’ he said.

He was a white-bearded old man, with a shining bald head and friendly eyes.

‘I must send my wife to keep you company.’

And Una, who could not understand her own tears, let him go without a word. It seemed to her that no time had passed, or else a very, very long time indeed, so long that one might well lose count of it, when the door opened, and a stout, rosy-cheeked old lady, with little white curls on each side of her smooth forehead, came into the room. She made two steps forward, hesitated, then came right up to the forlorn little figure by the window, and, quite simply, as if it were the most common thing in the world, took Una in her arms and kissed her again and again. ‘You poor little thing,’ she said, ‘you must come home with me.’

And Una, still stunned, obeyed. They gave her the best room at the doctor’s, and the doctor’s wife waited on her and fed her, and petted her as though she had been indeed one of the children that had lain, in the old times on that motherly breast, and Una’s soul drank in the love as a thirsty flower drinks dew.

Miss Vincent was buried, and the will read, and Una knew that her aunt’s money was hers, and that she was her own mistress; yet the weeks went by, and still she stayed in her new home with the new happiness that not even her books or her dreams had pictured for her. She was not clever – oh, no; she was not pretty either; she was not – she knew too well – even good. Yet here was someone who loved her.

It was when she had been there a month that the doctor’s wife looked up from her pile of letters at breakfast with a new joy in her face.

‘My son is coming home,’ she said. ‘He will be here, he says, almost as soon as his letter. He has got a year’s leave. Oh! my dear, what a happy old woman I am! the happiest in the world!’

And the doctor at the other end of the table took his spectacles off and wiped them – to have a good look, as he said, at the happiest woman in the world.

All this time Una had never looked in the glass. ‘They love me here,’ she said to herself, ‘so what does it matter how I look?’

That night, as they sat round the fire – for the evenings were still chilly, though it was early June – the rumble of wheels came up the road. The doctor’s wife, throwing her sixty years behind her, rushed to the door. There was a sound of hurried inquiries, of kisses, of luggage being set down in the hall, a chink of money as the cab was paid, and then the doctor’s wife, with pink roses in her own pretty old face and stars of joy in her faded eyes, came into the room, leading a handsome, bronzed, soldierly man.

‘This is my boy, Una,’ she said. ‘Francis, this is my dear girl!’

And as he came across the room, holding out a brown hand, and looking at Una with frank, blue eyes, her own dropped before them, and she wished with a little pang, and for the first time for years, that it had pleased Fate to make her a little better, not quite so stupid, not quite so ugly.

A month later the great happiness of life came to her, when those blue eyes looked closely into hers, and those strong hands held her own.

‘But is it possible,’ she cried, ‘that you really can care, that you really want me? I am so – so—’ she could not say it. Why should she tell him that she was ugly and stupid and not very good, if he did not see these things? Or perhaps he saw them and did not mind. So she said ‘Yes’ to his questions, because she had given him her heart, four weeks ago, in exchange for the first look from those blue eyes of his.

They had been married three weeks and the honeymoon was in its last quarter, and in the little lodgings at Hythe, Una was twisting up the long dark hair, still damp and salt with the sea.

Her husband watched her with loving pride.

‘Una, my heart,’ he said, ‘have you made a vow of humility, that you never look in the glass? You always look out of the window when you are twisting up that dear hair of yours. Why is it?’

Una did not answer. She twisted up her hair, and, when the last hairpin was in its place, she came and knelt beside her husband, and laid her soft cheek against his shoulder.

Then she told him the whole tale, as I have told it to you, and she showed him her poems which I cannot show you, but you can get them from Mudie’s for yourselves, and when he had looked through them and heard all her tale, he clasped her in his arms and kissed her a hundred times.

‘You not good? you not clever? you not pretty? my beauty, my pride, my heart’s delight! Come with me and let me show you how beautiful my wife is!’

He led her to the little gold-framed looking-glass above the sitting-room mantelpiece.

‘There,’ he said.

He looked and she looked. The looking-glass reflected his fair hair and strong face, and on his shoulder the rough brown head of his wife. But she did not look at her low broad forehead, her arched brows and beautiful dreamy passionate eyes. She did not see the sensitive soft-lipped mouth, the round softness of the firm chin, and the faint shell-pink tint of the smooth cheeks. Her eyes met his in the glass, and she answered the word she read in them.

‘Am I?’ she said. ‘Really? And you are pleased?’

He turned and kissed her again. ‘Look at yourself, Una,’ he said.

She flung her arms round his neck. ‘No, why should I look there? Why should I wish to see myself, when I can see you, my Dear?’

«•»

From: Atalanta magazine Dec. 1893

The Girton Girl

Miss Wentworth was handsome and learned. She was the show-flower of a singularly good-looking family, and she had achieved what her friends called ‘something wonderful’ at Girton. She had strong views on the subject of Women’s Rights, but her programme of rights did not concern itself much with political privilege and the vote.

‘The right not to marry is what we want,’ she used to say; ‘the right to live our own lives, and do our own work, and go in for our own subjects, without setting everybody chattering and pitying. It is revolting to hear them! A girl who doesn’t succeed in getting a situation as domestic slave is spoken of as a failure. I shall never marry. And if a few more girls with decent brains and passable faces would be sensible too, we should soon show the world that it is possible for a woman to prefer some other profession to marriage. Now, they think if a girl isn’t married, that it is because she has not had the chance!’

So Miss Wentworth expressed her views – and alienated the sympathy of her relations by her refusal of one eligible match after another. The refusals cost her nothing, and she gave them gracefully. Practise makes perfect – in this as in other arts – and she had plenty of practise. For she was no mere book-worm, but a healthy young girl, with all a natural girl’s tastes – or all but one. She rode, she sang, she swam, she danced, she played tennis, she could pull an oar or a trigger with strength and accuracy – she could construe one of the hardest bits of Aeschylus, and could prune a fruit-tree with equal grace and readiness. But one thing she never did – she never flirted. And yet, in spite – or perhaps, because – of this omission, desirable lovers continued to fall at her feet.

Miss Wentworth was, as old novelists would have said, no longer in the bloom of her first youth – that is to say she was nearly twenty-three, when she and Lavinia Selwyn decided to spend a summer month at Elmering – a month of reading and bathing and sunny quiet. Elmering is the only quiet seaside place on the south coast. That is why I call it Elmering: its real name is something quite different. There is one old-timbered farmhouse where the folks take in summer boarders, and an inn where sometimes a stray visitor puts up for a day or two. Beyond that, only fishermen’s cottages and the trim, white-washed coast guard station.

‘How lovely it is,’ Lavinia said, on the first morning, putting her curly head out of the window, among the honeysuckle and jasmine that covered one side of this ideal house. ‘Isn’t it delicious, Laura?’

‘I suppose it is,’ Laura answered, from the shady depths of the chintz-covered arm-chair, ‘but I can’t feel it yet. Don’t you know someone says, “As people are not quite gone when they go, so they are not quite come when they arrive” – and the country is the same. One feels that it is a stranger when one comes back to it, after months of town.’

‘Oh, Laura, how funny you are!’

This was Lavinia’s most frequent comment on her friend’s utterances. Their friendship was based on the secure foundation of a few common tastes and a complete dissimilarity of character.

‘How peaceful it is – look at the red light on the old church, and the soft, browny-green of the elms. The quiet seems to wrap you round like loving arms.’ So spoke Miss Wentworth on the third morning.

‘How funny you are!’ rejoined Miss Selwyn. ‘It is lovely, certainly, but it’s the least bit dull – isn’t it? Oh, not for you, because you have your books and things—’

‘If you’re dull here, Vynie,’ said her friend sternly, ‘I give you up.’

‘Oh not really – only I do wish I were as clever as you.’

‘I’m very glad you’re not,’ was the superb reply; but the insolence was not resented – for how can you resent an insult that comes to you with a kiss and a pat on your shoulder?

‘If you were’ – she broke off, for Mrs. Haynes came in with a card held between finger and thumb. Laura read: ‘Mr. Peke.’

‘A gentleman to see you, Miss,’ she said; and I regret to say that Miss Wentworth said: ‘Oh bother!’

Perhaps the words had travelled through the open door, for the man who came in a moment after wore on his handsome face a look of politely-veiled amusement.

‘I am a Vandal to invade your country quiet like this; but when your brother heard that I was coming here to do some reading, nothing would serve but I must promise to call on you. My conscience troubled me, I own, but i: had no chance, of course, and here I am. I hope you will forgive me.’

Laura Wentworth, conscious of the amusement in his face, flushed crimson, and murmured something banal about ‘any friend of Harold’s.’ But Lavinia’s face had changed – she looked three times as pretty as she had done three minutes before. Such miracles can a strange young man accomplish.

Laura recovered her self-possession almost at once, and the call was a long one, ending with tea in the arbour. Mrs. Haynes, on whom Laura had cast her spell, brought out the best tea-things, and the party were merry.

‘Harold himself means to run down for a day or two soon,’ said Harold’s friend; and again, but this time to herself alone, Harold’s sister murmured, ‘Oh bother.’

‘What a fool I was,’ she said to herself afterwards, when the guest had gone, and Mrs. Haynes, with breathless care, was washing up the best china. ‘What a fool I was to bring Vynie. I might have known that Harold would not keep away. And I to be chaperone! Or rather, I suppose I am to pair off with this Peke person. Oh Harold, I’ll be even with you yet for this! Oh, my poor pretty little holiday! All spoiled. “Ah, now forever fare well the tranquil mind, farewell content!” The Peke bore will fall in love with me probably – that’s Harold’s idea – of course.’ And for the third time the Lady from Girton ejaculated, ‘Oh bother!’ for all the world as though she had been an ordinary, uneducated girl.

But as the days went on Miss Wentworth was forced to confess that the new-comer showed none of the signs she knew so well; and if you have an acquaintance with a person in a place like Elmering, you are bound to see a good deal of that person. On the beach, in the village street, in the lanes behind the village, you are always meeting that person. So it came about that the three visitors spent a good part of each day together. Mr. Charles Peke was always what Harold called ‘the hoighth of company.’ He was a good talker, and was ready with all those little attentions despised by no woman, however emancipated. But his attentions were almost impartially bestowed – and, indeed, if either lady received the larger share of his petits soins, it was not the beautiful Miss Wentworth, but pretty Lavinia Selwyn.

The three went for walks together, sat on the beach together, had tea and dinner together on half the days of the week, and they discussed all things in heaven and earth – that is to say, Laura and Mr. Peke discussed them – and Lavinia from time to time broke in on their arguments with fascinating irrelevance. She could bear even metaphysics – if a handsome young man were one of the disputants.

It was on a hot, breathless blue day, when the three were sitting on the pebble ridge looking out to sea, that for the first time was raised between them the question of marriage – marriage in the abstract, of course, not the concrete.

It rose out of the account of a smart wedding where Miss Selwyn’s cousin had been a bridesmaid. There were stiffly illustrated accounts in all the ladies’ papers, and a sheaf of these lay on Miss Selwyn’s lap – and upon the sun-warmed pebbles at her side.

‘I have no patience with that kind of folly,’ said Miss Wentworth, suddenly. She had half-a-dozen round pebbles in her hand, and as she spoke she aimed them, one after the other, at an oyster-shell that reared its white boss above the wet shingle edge below. ‘As if it were not bad enough for a girl to sell herself into degrading slavery, without her relations making as much fuss as though she had won the Victoria Cross.’

‘Or taken a first-class,’ said Peke, gravely.

‘Nellie hasn’t sold herself into slavery, really, Mr. Peke,’ said Lavinia. ‘That’s only Laura’s way of talking.’

‘Oh – I don’t mean, of course, that Nellie’s making a mercenary marriage. Lord Farleigh happens to be rich, and to be Lord Farleigh But she wished to marry him last year, when he was only a penniless younger son.’

‘I told you she didn’t mean it,’ Lavinia put in.

‘That only makes it worse in my opinion,’ Miss Wentworth went on, throwing up her pretty chin; ‘if she had married in order to carry out her theories with his money – she’s a rabid humanitarian – one could have excused her. She marries for pure sentiment; gives up her individuality, her own career, just because she happens to—’

‘Because she happens to be in love with him, I suppose.’

‘In love!’ Contempt, or some more occult emotion, sharpened her tone. ‘Oh, I am so tired of hearing that poor word put to all sorts of uses it can’t fulfil. I don’t believe in love, in that sense – the love that makes people blind and idiotic. I believe in friendship and affection, of course, but—’

‘But somebody must marry,’ hazarded Lavinia.

‘Well, let the stupid people do it . there are plenty of them, goodness knows!’

‘That’s a poor lookout for the future of the race,’ said Peke, slowly.

‘She is dreadful,’ said Lavinia, ‘but I always tell her her turn will come, and then she’ll see.’

Miss Wentworth frowned, and to Lavinia’s amazement, blushed crimson. Peke hastened to turn the talk to the impersonal.

‘For my part,’ he said, ‘I am old-fashioned enough to believe in love, and to believe, too, that true love is the only justification for marriage.’

‘You admit that; it needs justification?’

‘Nothing can justify it – but love,’ he answered. ‘Love is the power that moves the world.’

‘Nothing can justify it but folly,’ said Laura, jumping up, and speaking in a tone quite removed from her usual calm reasonableness. ‘I’m going in to do an hour’s reading. Don’t be late for lunch, Vynie.’

And she walked away across the rattling pebbles.

‘Is Miss Wentworth really serious?’ asked the young man, nonchalantly – tilting his straw hat over his eyes.

‘Indeed she is.’

‘But you don’t agree with her?’

‘Of course I don’t!’ cried Lavinia, ‘she’s the dearest girl, but she’s as mad as a March hare on that particular point.’

Charles Peke moved a foot or two nearer to her.

‘Miss Selwyn,’ he said, ‘I am disposed to tell you a secret.’ Lavinia’s heart gave a little flutter – was it possible that – but the next moment it sank to the sound of his words.

‘I love Miss Wentworth – and till this moment I thought I had a chance – just the chance any decent fellow might have – of winning her.’

‘Well, you haven’t,’ Lavinia answered briskly – her wounded vanity demanded vengeance for that heart-leap and that instant of foolish expectancy – ‘no one has a chance – and you least of all – she can’t bear you! – Do you know what she said when Mrs. Haynes brought your card in?’

She said, “Oh, bother”!’

‘Well, she meant it, and she means it still. She only wishes you’d go away and leave her in peace to work.’

‘Did she say so?’

‘Yes.’ (So she did, but that was two weeks ago, Lavinia.)

‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ he said, and, turning, left her without another word. Then Lavinia was sorry – a little.

The bathing at Elmering is dependent on the tides. The tide was high that afternoon, and the girls bathed at four o’clock.

From the shelter of their tent they could see, far down the beach, the white tent belonging to the inn – whence Mr. Peke took his swim. As they went down into the blue clearness of the water, they saw his dark head, a little speck making out to sea a couple of hundred yards down the beach. Laura was a magnificent swimmer, but this afternoon she did not go out far; she busied herself in trying to teach Lavinia that it is impossible to swim with one foot furtively seeking the support of the sand. Lavinia grew cold, and went back to the tent, while Laura lay in the shallow water, letting the waves break over her.

‘What a long way out Mr. Peke has gone,’ called Lavinia from the tent.

And before Laura could answer, a faint cry came across the sea. Laura sat up and listened. Again it came. Faint but unmistakable. A cry for help.

‘It’s Mr. Peke,’ Lavinia cried. ‘Oh, Laura!’

She came out of the tent – dressed save for her shoes – her hair loose on her shoulders. ‘Run home – bring Haynes and his wife and some blankets,’ said Laura very quickly and very quietly. ‘He is hurt. I shall swim out to him.’

‘Oh, Laura, you’ll be drowned, don’t—’

But Laura had turned and was running along the sand in her blue bathing dress, with her long bright hair streaming behind her.

Lavinia followed.

‘Oh, Laura, you’ll both be drowned!’ she cried, catching her up and running beside her. ‘Oh, Laura, perhaps he’s trying to drown himself, and he’ll drown you if you go out!’

‘Don’t be so idiotic,’ said Laura, still running towards the point of the beach opposite which, far out to sea, she could see the dark head drifting, drifting.

‘Laura, he’s in love with you,’ panted Lavinia; ‘he told me so – and – I – told him – you didn’t like him. Perhaps it’s despair.’

Laura never stopped, but she threw over her shoulder a look at her friend, a look whose like that friend prays never to see again.

‘You said that – you dared?’

‘Forgive me, I didn’t know,’ gasped the other – for she knew now.

‘If I save him, I’ll forgive you: if not, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live – or after.’

So saying, Miss Wentworth made three steps through the shallow water, plunged forward, and swam out to sea. She swam swiftly and steadily, changing her stroke frequently, and saving her strength as much as might be. As she rose on the crest of the wide waves, she saw the dark head – so far, so very far, away. She seemed to get no nearer. Swimming with a strong side stroke she glanced back towards the beach, and saw Lavinia still standing there.

‘Go!’ she cried, and waved her arm. Then Lavinia seemed to remember her errand and went.

‘Another wave – another. The breast-stroke now. I must not lose my head. Thank God, the tide is bringing him this way! And he may be dead when I reach him. Yet he doesn’t sink. What is it? Oh, what has happened! The side-stroke now.’

She cut through the deep water like a blue water-snake – nearer – nearer. She could see now that he was floating. ‘Keep up!’ she shouted, ‘I’m coming!’

He raised a hand to show that he heard.

Three more strokes – now two – one – the last. She was close beside him. His face was ghastly white – his eyes half shut – his body in its black bathing-suit lay inert upon the heaving bosom of the sea; a cry broke from her as she saw that the water about him was tinged with blood. One foot was crossed over the other – on the knee thus supported was a gaping wound.

‘Oh, God help me!’ she cried, and at her voice he opened his eyes.

‘Are we far from shore’ – his voice was faint.

‘A good way.’

‘Can you take me in?’

‘I don’t know. I’m here to try.’

‘It was a rock. I ought to have remembered. I think my leg’s broken.’

‘All right, lie still. I’ll manage.’

She took off the sash of her bathing-dress, and made it fast round him below his arms.

‘You’ll be drowned. Oh, leave me. Go!’ he said.

‘Lie still,’ she answered.

She took the end of the sash in one hand and with the other made a stroke. It would not do. Then she tied the other end of the sash round her own waist, and this time found that she moved more easily. But oh, it was hard work, and the shore so far away. Still husbanding her strength, she swam slowly towards the shore. Every now and then she stopped and floated for a moment to rest.

‘Leave me, save yourself – oh, my darling, you must.’ His voice ceased suddenly. And now she saw that his eyes had closed, and that the water, after each stroke of hers, washed over his face. He had fainted. The burden was heavier, and the shore seemed as far off as ever.

‘Oh, God help us!’ she breathed, and still she swam on. Her arms and back ached cruelly, the knotted sash cut her side, but still she swam on. She could see the beach; a crowd had gathered; they were launching a boat. ‘They’ll never reach us,’ she said. ‘Never mind, we’ll die together – my darling.’ And still she swam on.

•  •  •

A year had passed; Elmering lay once more in the drowsy hush of a July afternoon. Outside the farmhouse was a crowd of fisher-folk – not a man or woman or child in all the village but had come up to Haynes’ that day, and they stood there cheering. Inside the parlour was Laura, and with her a man, a dark, pale, handsome, man.

‘Come, Laura,’ he said. ‘We must thank them.’ He limped a very little as he walked towards the door.

Outside the crowd cheered hoarsely, again and again, and when the two stood in the porch the shouts rose deafeningly, hats were waved and handkerchiefs, and twenty hands were thrust forward to touch Laura’s.

‘Touch there, my lad,’ said a bearded father to his little one; ‘that’s the hand of the bravest woman I ever see. We’re proud, ma’am – I tell you – that you’ve come to us as knows what you’re worth, to spend your honeymoon.’

Laura caught the child in her arms and kissed him.

‘It was nothing,’ she said, turning brave eyes on the fisher-folk through blinding tears. ‘It was not brave; it was selfish – because I loved him – and Love is the power that moves the world.’ And as her husband drew her back into the house the cheering broke out again, presently to die away into the golden stillness that wrapped the world on their wedding-day.

«•»

From: Atalanta magazine Sep. 1895

Jacintha’s Heart

There was once a beautiful milkmaid named Jacintha. All the farm-hands told her how beautiful she was, and Jacintha used to answer very politely, ‘I am very glad to hear it,’ but when Jocelyn, the plough-boy, told her of her beauty Jacintha answered, ‘I am very glad you think so.’

Now one day, Jocelyn went to the fair in the town and he came back bringing two things with him, a piece of news and a fairing for Jacintha.

The piece of news was that the king’s son was coming home from the wars, and that now the king’s counsellors wished to marry him to the richest princess they could find. But the prince had a will of his own, and besides, he knew what was expected of a prince in a fairy tale, so he was determined not to marry for money, but to marry the most beautiful woman in the world, whether she were princess or milkmaid.

‘Oh!’ said Jacintha, when she heard this, ‘Whether she be princess or milkmaid! That’s something like a prince!’

Then Jocelyn brought out his fairing, and spoke, holding it hidden in his hand, ‘I’ve brought you the most beautiful thing in the world.’

He held it out. It was a little round looking-glass with a shell frame – such as are sold in country fairs to this day.

‘The most beautiful thing in the world?’ repeated Jacintha, looking at it but not into it – for she had never seen a mirror. ‘It is very pretty, but—’

‘Look in it,’ cried Jocelyn, ‘then you will see yourself – you, who are more beautiful than everything else in the world.’

So she looked and looked and could not look away.

‘How very beautiful!’ she sighed at last.

‘Oh Jocelyn, how nice for you always to be able to see such a beautiful face as mine!’

‘It is nice,’ he said, looking at her hard, ‘very nice! But you mustn’t grow vain, Jacintha.’

‘Vain!’ she cried, tossing her golden head, ‘pray what did you see when you looked in it?’

‘I saw myself, of course.’

‘And yet you said it was the most beautiful thing in the world? Oh, for shame Jocelyn, you mustn’t grow vain!’ and she went off laughing, not listening to his explanations.

And now she cared for nothing but looking at her beautiful face in the glass, and she often forgot to milk the cows, and she let the cats get the cream, and the milk went sour because she forgot to scour the milk pans. So then the farmer’s wife said,

‘This Jacintha has lost her head, I shall send her away before worse comes of it.’

And Jacintha had to go.

The night before she left the farm she stole out into the apple orchard to say good-bye to Jocelyn. He had always been her friend, and, besides, it was he who had given her the looking glass.

The wind shook the white apple blossom down on her hair, and the petals shone like silver in the moonlight.

‘How beautiful you are!’ said Jocelyn. He was never tired of saying it, for all he had said it so often. ‘You look like a bride.’

‘Perhaps I shall be one before long,’ said Jacintha, stooping to pick up more fallen blossoms, and showering them on her hair as she spoke.

‘Whose bride?’ he cried eagerly, ‘mine?’

‘Yours?’ she laughed. ‘What nonsense you talk! As if anyone as beautiful as I am could ever marry a plough-boy! You haven’t read your fairy tales to much purpose if you don’t know better than that.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jocelyn; but his heart sank within him, for in his heart he knew what she meant.

‘Why, of course,’ she answered, ‘there’s only one person I can possibly marry if my story is to have a happy ending. I must marry the prince, and now I am going to be kitchenmaid at the palace, so that the prince may see me and lose his heart to me.’

Jocelyn thought a little, and then he said, ‘Yes, of course, you’re right. The beautiful girl in the stories goes as kitchenmaid to the palace as often as not – but you had better be careful. Suppose you lose your heart to someone else? Everyone is so smart at the palace that you might easily lose your heart to a lord-in-waiting, or even a groom, and not know that it wasn’t the prince, until too late.’

‘That would be a very awkward, certainly,’ said Jacintha, ‘because, of course, I could never marry the prince if I had lost my heart to someone else, and then my story would never end happily! What can I do to prevent such a dreadful thing happening?’

‘I know what I should do,’ said Jocelyn, ‘I should try to be on the safe side. I would never take my heart into such a dangerous place as a palace. Why don’t you leave it here? and then when the prince has lost his heart to you, you can come back and fetch yours and give it to him, and live happy ever after.’

‘What a good idea,’ she cried, clapping her hands. ‘I will leave my heart here in the orchard, and you will take care of it for me till I really want it.’

So she took out her heart very carefully, so as not to hurt it. It was a dear little heart, made of living gold. Jocelyn dug a little hole in the ground, and Jacintha wrapped her heart in green leaves. So they buried it, and she plucked a twig from an apple tree and stuck it in the ground to mark the spot. Then she gave Jocelyn three kisses as a reward to him for having found her a way out of her difficulty, and the next morning at cock-crow she started off in the carrier’s cart, and went to the king’s palace to be the king’s kitchenmaid.

As soon as she was gone Jocelyn ran into the orchard. The ground was snow-white with fallen blossom, and over all the dew lay thick. He found the little twig, and he dug with both hands till he came to the little heart of living gold. He held it to his lips, and he could feel the throb of it against them. Then, when he had kissed it many times, he laid it against his own heart, to keep it warm.

‘For if I left it in the chill mould,’ he said, ‘it might grow cold and never, never be warm again. I had better take care of it for her.’ So the two hearts lay warm together in Jocelyn’s breast.

When three months were over Jocelyn went to the town. He went to the back door of the palace and asked for Jacintha. He looked very smart, for he had on a new smock-frock, and he wore a fresh rose behind his ear, because it was a holiday.

Jacintha came running to meet him, in her blue print gown and coarse white apron. ‘I’m kitchenmaid, you see,’ she said.

‘You are ten times more beautiful than ever,’ he cried.

‘Yes,’ said Jacintha, ‘so they tell me.’

‘Doesn’t your looking-glass tell you so?’

‘Oh, I have broken that,’ she said; ‘I don’t need it. I have only to look in people’s eyes.’

‘And have you seen the prince yet?’

‘No, not yet; and oh, Jocelyn! that was a good thought of yours about my heart. When I first came I saw the head-cook, and he was so fine I should certainly have lost my heart to him if I had had it about me. But now I know it is all safe, and it will be ready for the prince when he wants it.’

‘And has the head-cook lost his heart to you?’ asked the plough-boy.

‘Of course,’ said Jacintha.

Then Jocelyn went home and worked for three more long months, and he worked so well that his master gave him more wages, and a pretty cottage to live in. Jocelyn planted many flowers in its garden, and sighed, and thought of Jacintha. And all the while her heart and his lay together in his breast, keeping each other warm.

When three more months had gone by Jocelyn asked for another holiday, and again he fared to the town, and went to the back door of the palace and asked for Jacintha.

She came running to meet him, in a pink gown and white muslin apron.

‘I’m still-room maid now!’ she said.

‘You are twenty times more beautiful than ever!’ said he.

‘So they tell me,’ answered Jacintha.

‘And have you seen the prince?’

‘Not yet,’ she said; ‘and, oh, Jocelyn! take care of my heart, won’t you? I am so glad it is safe with you. I saw the groom of the chambers the other day, and he is so handsome that I wished I had my heart with me, so that I might lose it to him.’

‘And has the groom of the chambers lost his heart to you?’ asked Jocelyn.

‘Of course,’ said Jacintha.

So Jocelyn went home and worked harder than ever, and the flowers he had planted bloomed and faded, and still Jacintha’s heart lay against his, keeping it warm.

Then, another three months being gone, he asked for a holiday, and, as before, he went to the back door of the palace and asked for Jacintha.

‘Oh, you must go to the front door for her now,’ said the scullion, sadly; for he, too, had lost his heart.

So Jocelyn went up the front steps of the palace and Jacintha came running to meet him in a gown of silk trimmed with fur of price, for it was mid-winter. She said, ‘I am lady-in-waiting to the queen, now.’

‘You are a hundred -times more beautiful than ever,’ he said.

‘So they tell me,’ she answered.

‘And have you seen the prince yet?’

‘No, he has not yet come home from the the wars, but tomorrow he comes and I shall see him and then I shall come and fetch my heart. Oh, Jocelyn, it is a good thing you looked after it for me, otherwise the king’s brother would certainly have stolen it from me, he is so noble and good.’

‘And has the king’s brother lost his heart to you?’ asked Jocelyn.

‘Of course,’ said Jacintha. Then Jocelyn went home sadly to his little house. The snow was over everything, and the garden looked as though Spring and Summer were only a dream, and no flowers could ever grow there again, and in the orchard were no blossoms or fruit, but only snow.

‘I will go to the palace no more,’ he cried. And so sad was he that his heart would have turned to ice but for that other heart that lay against it, keeping it warm.

Then three more months spun the year round to the very place where it had been when Jacintha buried her heart in the apple orchard. And one evening, as the plough-boy was coming from his work, he saw a great gilded carriage drawn by eight white horses, and in it sat Jacintha, and on the seat opposite her were her old clothes in a bundle. And the carriage stopped at his cottage door and down stepped Jacintha all in cloth of gold, with many fine jewels.

‘I am the prince’s betrothed,’ she said, ‘and I have come for my heart.’

‘You are a thousand times more beautiful than ever,’ said the plough-boy.

‘So they tell me,’ answered the milkmaid.

‘And so you have seen the prince?’

‘Yes.’

‘And has the prince lost his heart to you?’

‘Of course,’ said Jacintha. ‘Let us go and get my heart from the orchard. I do hope nothing has happened to it. Oh, Jocelyn, suppose the birds have scratched it up and eaten it .’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Jocelyn with a sigh, ‘your heart is safe enough.’

Then he begged her to send away her fine carriage for awhile, and to meet him in the orchard in two hours’ time.

‘That will make it just a year since you laid your heart away and became heartless.’

She agreed, and directly she had left him he ran to the orchard and made a little hole in the ground and took Jacintha’s heart from his breast, and, wrapping it in green leaves he laid it there. And his own heart ached with cold and misery when hers was gone.

Now when the hour was come Jacintha came into the orchard and her gown of cloth of gold swept over the snowy shed petals of the apple trees. She came to Jocelyn.

‘Is it here?’ she asked.

‘It is here,’ he said, ‘and see, the little twig you set over it has taken root.’

And it was so. The little twig had grown to a little apple tree, and there was one spray of blossom on it. Then Jacintha kneeled down and began to dig up the earth.

‘The earth is very loose,’ she said, ‘Oh! if some wicked thief has stolen my heart!’

But the next minute she stood up, smiling, with her heart in her hand. One white blossom fell on her hair.

‘So now she will be the prince’s bride,’ said Jocelyn to himself. ‘However, it is I that have had her heart for a year.’

‘Now I will take my heart and give it to the prince,’ said Jacintha. And to keep it safe she slid it back into her breast.

The moment she felt it beat against her girdle she started back and looked at Jocelyn as one who awakes out of a sleep.

‘What is it? Why am I talking nonsense? Oh, Jocelyn, I don’t want to go back to the prince. I want to stay with you. You may have my heart if you want it, dear. But no one else ever shall.’

And indeed the little heart of gold had lived so long against Jocelyn’s, that it could no longer bear to live long anywhere else, and it beat gladly against his as he held her in his arms.

‘Let me go,’ she whispered, presently.

And he answered, ‘I will never let you go.’

But she said, ‘You want me – not all these gold things. Wait – my heart will bring me back to you.’

And she ran to the coach that was waiting outside the orchard. She took the bundle of her old clothes out and she went into the deep of the wood a court lady in gold and jewels with a shabby bundle in her hand. But she came out a simple milk maid, and in her arms were all the gold and the fine clothes of a court lady. She tumbled them into the coach, and with them she threw in all the hearts that had been lost to her when she was at court. And the coach took them back to town, where every man was so glad to get his own again that the beautiful Jacintha was soon forgotten. But she herself crept back, through a hole in the hedge, and ran in her milk-maid’s dress to where Jocelyn was still standing.

‘Now look in my eyes,’ said Jocelyn, coming towards her among the falling blossoms,. ‘since you have no other mirror.’

And she looked, and when she had looked she hid her face against his, and whispered. ‘Oh love, am I really as beautiful as that – and as dear?’

And before he could answer she had plucked the blossom from the little tree and set it in her hair. ‘Am I like a bride?’ she said. And Jocelyn answered ‘Yes.’

And all the while their hearts beat hard with gladness to be once more so near. And that is the end of the story of Jacintha’s Heart.

«•»

From: Atalanta magazine Nov. 1896

The Wishing-Tree

The dew was grey on grass and clover. The thrushes sang in the orchards, on the trim lawn the blackbirds hopped and pecked. Beyond the shadow the sun had already drunk the dew out of the buttercups and left them shining, new-washed gold. In the hedges the white may-bushes shone like silver. The flowered grasses of the meadow were like a grey sea waved and dappled by the wind. The shadows of the elms lay long across the pasture where the sheep browsed, and down by the pool in the angle of the hedges the cattle stood and grazed sleepily. Above the bean-field, beautiful with grey leaves and scented white blossoms, the skylarks rose singing. The whole world seemed born again into a new and wonderful beauty, or so it seemed to her, because now for the first time she saw the world in its morning gown of dew and delight, the memory of the moon's kisses still clinging to the hidden hollows where the dew lay grey on grass and clover.

As she went down the lane the wet grass made her smart shoes too shiny. Also the ground was cold to her feet as she walked.

‘I must be very fond of him,’ she said. And indeed, to leave one's sleepy-soft bed, to dress without one's maid, to steal down creaking stairs to unbar reluctant doors and walk two miles through wet grass for the sake of a young man does argue some fondness.

She wore a simple gown of white – simple, because her soul instinctively approved the congruous – Paris fashions and a May morning were a discord not to be borne – white, because he loved white. ‘Not that I shall see him,’ she said; but truly her way home would lead her by his window, as her way thither had already led her by it, white-curtained, white-blinded, decorously dormant.

‘He might be looking out when I go by again,’ she thought as she softly rustled by along the lane, keeping close to the hedge. If one gets up at five on a May morning it is not to show one's white gown to the curious gaze of an early-rising housemaid. She glanced anxiously at the windows. All the blinds were down.

His blind was down, but from behind it he, awake in the grayness of the curtained room, heard the tap tap of her little heels on the path, and springing up, peeped out. And as she left the shelter of the hedge he saw a glint of her gown. And now surely shoes and collar-studs and buttons had never been so mutinous, fingers never so awkward. Yet in five minutes he was down the stairs and after her along the lane, the sun acclaiming his white flannels as it had done her white gown. In fine, he followed her, as any man would have done – as I would have done – as I did indeed, since he was I.

And I had no right to follow her, because but a week ago we had parted in anger, asserting that we had mistaken our feelings, and protesting bitterly that we would always be friends. Her ingenious malice indeed had even threatened herself to me as a sister. We had met every day since – in our village it is hard not to meet – and as no one had known of our love so there was none to enlighten as to our parting.

There was no glint of her gown to guide me, but I knew how to follow, for I knew her goal. Only the other day she and a group of the girls, of whom she now drew a defensive cordon round her, had talked and laughed over the old spell.

If one desired anything above all else in the world, nothing was simpler than to gain one's heart's desire. One had but to rise with the sun on one's birthday morning, and fasting, and in unbroken silence, to fare to the Goblin Wood, there to pass into the wishing-tree, and standing within it to speak aloud, and thrice, one's secret wish. Then passing out on the tree's other side, one fared homeward to meet one's heart's desire.

‘I don't believe in it,’ she had said; ‘but I shall have a birthday one of these days.’

So I knew whither she was bound, for this was her birthday, as the little diamond circlet in my pocket testified to my hand. I knew her goal, and I knew more – I knew the shortest way to it. Not the road by which one travels in merry parties, but the way one treads when alone, with a gun or one's own thoughts. So I crashed through the brambles that clung to the arms and the stiff hazel that stung the face, and when I reached Goblin Wood I could see her white gown, still a great way off, crossing the big meadow where the mushrooms grow. So all being fair in war – had we not protested that we were friends? – I hid myself in the hollow oak near the wishing-tree to spy upon her and find out the dearest wish of her heart.

The Goblin Wood was very still. When I moved, the touchwood of the inner oak crumbled and fell dully about me. The damp, mossy, mouldy smell of my hiding place, the shifting lights and shadows on moss and leaves – I had time to learn the place by heart, and I have it all still.

Goblin Wood is a big plantation of pollarded oaks and willows. Thus far the fact, as my friend the wood-reeve gives it. Leaving the folly of fact, the sober truth is that it is a haunt of goblins, ‘as uncanny a spot as ever a nightmare galloped to.’ For the oaks and willows, their placid pastoral spirit warped by the pollarding knife, have changed their nature, and, as it were, by some infusion of manhood from the hand that lopped them, they have become half human, grotesque, horrible; great goblin heads leering wickedly, with long green hair standing up in horror; strange, twisted, robed woman shapes, wringing gnarled hands high in air; unimagined deformities, twisted backs and writhen arms; owls' heads, cats' heads, deaths' heads. In spite of the pollarding the trees are very big; they seem to have grown big as they have grown human, in defiance of the hand that lopped their fair sylvan proportions.

Heaped round the knees of the goblins lie the drifted leaves of more than one autumn, and among the leaves and moss and young uncurling bracken lay here and there a fallen monster, his green hair streaming yards out round his head, and his distorted limbs crushing the moss and tender undergrowth. And over these prone bodies the wood waved its lean arms and wrung its gaunt fingers in the young May breeze.

And now I saw her coming towards me across the brown carpet of the wood. And as she came near, I held my breath, and dared hardly draw it lest the touchwood should crumble and betray me to her. Yet I longed to crouch closer lest she should see me.

But she looked neither to the right nor the left. She went straight to the wishing tree. And now I saw that I had never seen her. This was not the face I knew, radiant, perverse, alluring, with the consciousness of power, the confidence of mastery. This was the sad little face, earnest, too, in its sadness, of one who has not that which is more desired than all things in the world.

She stood in the tree now and I could not see her, but after a moment I heard her voice, and then I perceived that that too I now knew for the first time. It had no longer its bright half-mocking half-tender tone; it was steady and quiet and it had in it a note as of tears.

‘I wish he would love me again!’ she said. My heart leaped up. Oh, all unworthy as I was, I would go to her that evening and tell her all.

‘I wish he would love me again!’

The voice shook a little, and my heart sank, sick with shame that I had spied on her. This afternoon I would tell her, and implore her pardon.

‘I wish he would love me again.’ And this time the words were almost whispered. I think she had not known how hard it would be to speak out her heart's desire even to the echoes of the Goblin Wood.

There was a little silence, and she stepped out from the other side of her tree. But her last whisper had compelled me from mine. This evening? this afternoon? – when there was no hour in all the years but this? So that when she passed out of her tree and turned homeward to meet her heart's desire, God was good to me and laid my heart's desire in my arms!

The dew was all dried and the blinds were all drawn up as we went back along the village street and up through the scented wallflowers and the browning lilacs of her garden. The face she wore in the woods and the voice she spoke with there had hidden themselves behind the dear face and voice I knew so well.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I ought to be very angry with you. What right had you to go to Goblin Wood at all? It is not your birthday.’

‘Not my birthday,’ I echoed. ‘My years may date from a winter day, but my real birthday is in May – the birthday of my heart's desire.’

‘I see,’ she said as we parted. And she turned at the door to say over her shoulder, ‘So my birthday must be in December!’

«•»

From: The Windsor Magazine Jun. 1897

Miss Peckitt’s

Pincushion

Miss Peckitt was our dressmaker. She wore a brown dress and a white lace collar, and was as neat and dainty as a little bird. She lived in a small square house at the end of the village – a house with green shutters and a green fence, a white face that always looked as though it had been washed that very morning, and shining little eyes of windows. There was a bit of garden round the house, in which Miss Peckitt grew the most wonderful flowers; pansies, forget-me-nots, and woodruffe, wallflowers and daffodils, roses and lilies, sunflowers and nasturtiums, all in their due season made a blaze of colour in that garden, till the late dark days came, lighted by the last chrysanthemums, and the garden settled down under its brown coat to wait the news of spring that should come with the first yellow aconite.

Our house was larger than Miss Peckitt’s, and our garden would have made a good score of hers, but somehow our gardeners never grew such flowers as those. Miss Peckitt used to come to our house to sew. She sewed my frocks and she sewed my pinafores; and sat among her tapes and pins and yard measures telling me old stories that no one else cared about, for Miss Peckitt had no relations, and had always, as she said, kept herself to herself. And of all her stories the one I liked best was the one about the pincushion. It was a large, heavy cushion, and I wondered why Miss Peckitt always brought it with her when she came for the day.

‘I will make you a pincushion to keep here,’ I said, ‘and then you need not carry that heavy thing about. What makes it so heavy?’

‘It has a brick inside to keep it steady when I pin my work to it,’ she said; ‘and I carry it with me because it was the last thing my young man made for me.’

Miss Peckitt smiled and sighed, and I said:

‘Oh, did you ever have a young man? Do tell me about him!’

At ten years old one is not very discreet. I suppose Miss Peckitt was not inclined to be hard on youthful indiscretion, though she would have been the first to resent it in those of riper years. She threaded her needle and began:

‘It was when I was a young girl.’

She could not have been more than thirty at this time, but to me she seemed immeasurably old, so I said:

‘It’s a long time ago, then,’ as sympathetically as I could.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘a very long time. He was the son of a farmer, and we was courting ever since we was quite little things and went to Sunday school. And Willie looked to be taken on to have a share in the farm, and we was to have been married in the spring. But it was not to be.’

‘What happened?’

‘Why, his father died, my dear, and when it came to looking into things it was found he’d borrowed money on the land, and the interest hadn’t been paid. Willie told me it was because his father would grow wheat, and that seems to be always a snare to farmers. So then my Willie said he’d pay the interest and all, if they’d only wait. But they wouldn’t – and the old place was sold up – house and buildings and the beasts and the land with the standing crops. They may say it’s law, but it ain’t justice.’

She bit off her thread sharply, and I said it was a shame.

‘So it was – a black shame. My Willie would a’ paid them every penny if they’d only a’ waited. But no; they sold the old place, and it fetched, more than they looked for, and there was near two hundred pounds over, and that they gave to Willie, as was only fair. And after the sale was over I saw nothing of him for two days, and then he came to me looking like a dog that the boys are after with stones.

‘“It’s all up, Blossom,” he said; he always called me that on account of my fresh colour.’ Miss Peckitt touched her faded cheek with her thimble and sighed.

‘“I’m off,” says he; “with this bit of money I’ll make a fortune over in America, which is a free country, and I’ll come home for you, my girl, or I’ll write and you’ll come to me.”

‘“If it was to the world’s end,” says I.

‘Then he gave me this pincushion; it seemed a funny present, being quite plain, as you see, and it had big stitches, but sewn very strong, and I almost laughed as I took it. I was glad after that I hadn’t laughed, for Willie he says –

‘“Blossom, my dear, do you know what makes it so heavy?”

‘So I said, no, I didn’t.

‘“It’s a brick out of the old south wall at home,” says he, “where the yellow rose is, and where the apricots fruit so free, and it’s covered with a bit of the silk gown my mother was married in – it’s faded, but you can see the rosy sprigs on it yet. You’ll keep it for my sake—”

‘So I said I would, and he said, “When the cover wears out rip it off and put on another. I’ve got the rest of the dress laid by with the things my cousin’s keeping for me at Maidstone against I come back.”

‘Then he kissed me, a great many times, God bless him! and off he went.’

‘Well?’ I asked, for Miss Peckitt had stopped abruptly.

‘Well, that’s all,’ she said shortly; ‘he never come back; but I know he was true – and he would ha’ come back if he’d been living; and the Lord’s will be done,’ she added resentfully.

‘Did you keep the piece of the old dress,’ I asked, ‘when it wore out, and you ripped it off? I should like to see it.’

‘I never ripped it off,’ she said: ‘I covered it over with a bit of damask, meaning to show it him fresh and bright when he come home; but I dare say it’s worn out now, underneath, with all the needles and pins I’ve stuck in it – worn out – and nothing to show for it, like me.’

‘How do you mean – nothing to show for it, like you?’

‘Why, child,’ said Miss Peckitt, with her mouth full of pins, ‘if it had been the Lord’s will as Will and me should marry, I dare say I’d a’ looked no younger than I do, not so young perhaps, but that wouldn’t ha’ mattered if I’d had something to show for it – a tidy home, and a happy husband, and – and, children, maybe.’

Here Miss Peckitt got up and looked out of the window. She came back in a moment, and remarked that she had caught a cold somehow, and I must have my frock unhooked and be tried on. I submitted silently to be unhooked, but I knew as well as she did that she had been crying.

•  •  •

Time did not stand still in our village. A bicycle factory reared its gaunt ugliness by the church, and the moss-grown well was replaced by a galvanised iron pump. The old families moved away, and new people came; smarter people, in their gimcrack way, who got their dresses made in the county town, and despised Miss Peckitt’s old-fashioned patterns. And, indeed, she was not enterprising. Nothing would induce her to make a bicycling suit, however conventional. The changes in our village took mighty strides while I was finishing my education in France and Germany. When I came home I hardly knew it. Almost my first visit was paid to the little white house with the green railings.

‘It will do the poor thing good to see you,’ said my mother. ‘I fear she is horribly poor. She gets hardly any work now. And she won’t accept anything she does not earn. The last time I sent for her she would not come, and when I went to see why, she told me plainly that she knew I didn’t really want her, and was only making up work for her sake – which was quite true.’

Miss Peckitt had aged little since our last parting, but she had grown very thin. The house, as usual, was scrupulously neat, but though we were close on Christmas there was no fire.

She did not know me at first, and was dusting a chair that was already of a spotlessness to shame our chairs at home, when suddenly she recognised me – the shock shattered for a moment the reserve of years – she threw her thin little arms round my neck and kissed me – faltered an apology for the ‘liberty,’ and then sat down on the doubly dusted chair and cried piteously. I comforted her as well as I could, but before she grew calm again I had listened to – such a tale of poverty and self-denial as my young ears had never heard before. Work scarce and growing scarcer, hardly enough to live on, and to crown all the urgent necessity for saving, for hoarding every possible penny.

‘But why?’

‘For my funeral, my dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve kept myself respectable all these years, and if the parish was to touch me I should turn in my coffin – I know I should.’

‘Dear Miss Peckitt,’ I said, ‘you know we’d never let the parish—’

‘It would be just the same,’ she said, ‘though I know you mean it kindly and I thank you the same. Now, you’ll excuse me getting on with what bits of sewing I have.’

And the needle began to flash in and out, through the white stuff.

‘What is it?’ I asked idly.

‘It’s for my burying,’ she said. ‘I know I’m not long for this world, for last night I see my Willie’s ghost as plain as plain, walking in the churchyard, looking much the same, only older – as was to be expected – and I know that’s a sign.’

‘Your needle’s crooked,’ I said, fighting with a choking feeling in my throat. ‘Let me thread you another.’

‘Dear Miss,’ she said, ‘this is the only needle I’ve got. It’s not so very crooked – and a penny’s a penny – and needles in penny packets isn’t what they used to be. No, and I won’t let you buy me even needles, Miss. It’s the principle I think of; I won’t be beholden.’

‘You’ve got the old pincushion there still,’ I said; ‘there must be lots of needles in that; let me empty out the sawdust and see. I’ll put it all back very carefully.’

I think Miss Peckitt’s will must have been weakened by long fasting and trouble, for she let me rip up one side of that sacred cushion and pour out the bran into that little black tea tray with the gold border. I found in that bran sixty-seven good needles, to say nothing of broken ones. Then I began to put the bran back, and as I pushed it in to make it hard and tight I felt a hollow in the brick. There was something in it. I pulled it out.

‘Oh, Miss Peckitt,’ I cried, ‘look what I’ve found in your pincushion!’

A little canvas bag – and in it ten sovereigns and two bank notes, and a little letter.

My Dear Blossom, – This is fifty pounds of my money, so as you will have something if I am not lucky with the rest. You will find this when you rip off the cover. If all goes well, as please God it will, it will pay for the things for our home.

Your true friend and affectionate lover,

William Beale.

She showed me the letter afterwards. Now she only kissed it and put it in her bosom – quite simply, undoing two buttons for the purpose, and said softly,

‘Pay for things for the house? It will pay for my funeral.’

•  •  •

Miss Peckitt was on my mind. I had seen that the money and the words from the dead had brought her more pain than joy – and after dinner, that evening, I slipped on a dark cloak and ran down the quiet street to the little white house. I opened the door softly and peeped in.

There was a fire in the grate, and before it in the armchair with the patch-work cushion sat a middle-aged man. Miss Peckitt sat on his knee and her arm was round his neck; in her cheeks was the ‘fresh colour’ I had never seen there, and in her eves the light of youth and hope. She sprang up at the click of the latch.

‘It’s my Willie,’ she cried; ‘he’s come back. Oh, Miss, dear, to think of it – he was coming home to me, with his fortune made, and the ship was wrecked, and him and the others has been living like Robinson Crusoe, and only fetched away by a ship the other day. And it was him I see last night, not his ghost. He was looking for me among the graves – because he couldn’t bear to come to the little house and find me dead and buried.’

‘So the fifty pounds will buy things for the house after all,’ I said. And the bronzed, clean shaven man, who stood there shy and awkward, answered in a voice such as had seldom filled that neat, prim little room –

‘Ay, so she says – the dear girl—’

So I came away, and left him with his dear girl – there was no inappropriateness in the phrase. Her forty years lay lightly on her now – and in her lover’s eyes she was still ‘Blossom – because of her fresh colour’ – and would be to the end.

I am sure they were both persons of sentiment, because they bought back the old farm, with its south wall where the apricots ‘fruited so free,’ and when they went to church Miss Peckitt wore a gown of faded silk with a rosy sprig. The cousin in Maidstone had been faithful to his trust, and there was enough of the silk that the bridegroom’s mother had worn at her marriage to clothe the little bride on her wedding day.

«•»

From: Longman’s Magazine Aug. 1898

G. H. and I

Dear Mr. I, –

I have read your book about G.H. and I, very much, and I like it very much, and I should like to see you very much, and your little girl, becos I think you unnerstand about little girls, and why do not come and see me at my home. I live the Mill Hous at Lynchurch. Will you come to tea. Charlotte would say yes if I ask her, but she has got the lnflewhensir. So I will say good-bye,

from your loving little friend,

Rosamund.

It took Rosamund nearly two hours to write the letter, and even then she was not quite sure about the spelling. Influenza in particular had a strange look, she thought. But at last she folded the three sheets covered with large unsteady writing, and put them in an envelope. She dropped much red sealing-wax on the letter, and a little on her hands; but she would not cry, because Charlotte was ill, and besides, little girls had to be brave. Then she felt in her pocket for her penny, and went down the dusty road to the post office, tying the strings of her sunbonnet as she went. The fisher people at their doors nodded to her as she passed, and watched her out of sight before they resumed their work of net mending or their occupation of gossip.

Rosamund and Charlotte were a godsend to Lynchurch. They gave the village people something to talk about – something beyond tides and takes, the look of the sky, and the hardness of times nowadays. For in Lynchurch is little happening, and the letting of the Mill House was an event. That it should be let to an unmarried lady with one little girl, who was no relation, and who called the lady simply Charlotte, was an event still more startling; and the tongues of Lynchurch gossips were busy. Not ill-naturedly, though, for they are a kindly folk; and when it was found that Miss Haddon ‘paid her way,’ and was not ‘stuck up’ in the matter of allowing Rosamund to play on the beach with the fisher children, Lynchurch made up its mind to the situation, and went on talking.

Now the two had lived in the Mill House for a year – through the changing seasons: had known all the varying glories of the autumn sunsets over the marsh behind the black ruined mill; the strenuous gales of winter, when one is glad to hold on to the palings to keep one’s footing as one goes down the street; the golden summer, when the wide yellow sands are steeped and dyed in the sunlight, and the sea is a living jewel – sapphire and diamond in one; and the chill spring days, when sea and sky are one pale opal, and the wind moans across the marshes and the beach, where the gulls fly low across the pools left by the tide.

They were happy days for Rosamund, alone with the one she loved best. What stories Charlotte knew, what store of songs, what enchanting games, and what new and fascinating pursuits, resembling lessons only remotely, yet bringing with them that sense of duty performed which hitherto had only come after the dreariest routine of ‘learning by heart’! As the year swung round, every day drew Rosamund nearer to her dear, dear Charlotte. And now suddenly it was all over: Charlotte was ill – a woman from the village came in for the little business of housework over which they two had been so merry – and Rosamund was not allowed even to climb the stairs which led to Charlotte’s room. A bed was made up for her in the little dining-room, and she was left to amuse herself as best she could, without songs or stories or games. She tried to draw; but when you are eight years old drawing is dull work unless some kindly critic be at hand to praise your efforts. The fisher children, with whom at other times she loved to play, ceased to charm her now: Charlotte was ill, and Rosamund’s mood was one of deep melancholy; the rough play of the other children jarred on her. So she read and re-read all her books, and most of all she read and loved a little volume by an unknown author, called ‘G.H. and I.’ She found it among Charlotte’s books, and hailed it as a treasure. It was a father’s record, simply given, of a little child’s ways and words – of the goodness and naughtiness of a little child, a little child like herself. She had many other books that told of the sayings and doings of children – their sins and their repentances – but none like this. Rosamund could not have analysed her sensations, could not have told you why this book was dearer to her than all the others. Perhaps it was not so much the fidelity of the picture of child-life, as the passionate love, the tender insight of the father, that held her. For the book was no story, was not really a child’s book at all: had only the tale of how G.H. planted seeds, how she gathered flowers, how she was lost in the snow, and above all – not told in words, but revealed in every detail, every phrase – the story of how G.H.’s father loved her. And as Rosamund read the book over and over, it seemed to her that since Charlotte was ill, and the world very empty and sad, it would be a happy thing to see this father and his little girl come down the road to Mill House. Unconsciously Rosamund had identified herself, as children will, with the child of whom she had read. She had come to believe that this father loved her, Rosamund, as he loved his own little girl with the funny name. It was nicer to be G.H., she thought, than to be Grace Howard, or whatever the little girl had been christened. She wondered whether, when he came, he would call her R.V. instead of Rosamund; for she never doubted that he would come. And he came.

It had been raining all day, and now the evening breeze had swept the clouds in purple heaps into the west, and built them into an arch across the door of the golden chamber where the sun was going to bed, and from under the lintel of the cloud doorway the level sunbeams fell across the marsh, turning dyke and hedgerow, field and lichened farm, to wondrous images wrought in fine gold.

Rosamund was sitting on the grey fence opposite the house. The fence is very crooked, because the wind has been trying for years to blow it down, and the fence yields a little every year. But that only makes it the more comfortable to sit on when you are on the right side of it – though it is very awkward to climb over from the wrong side.

As Rosamund sat there, looking at the red sunlight behind the black mill, she heard a footstep on the road, and turned to look. It was a man in brown knickerbockers and jacket, with a beard. The beard looked red in the evening sunlight, and the man looked kind, she thought; but he was a stranger. She was not afraid of strangers, but all the same she sought the moral support of her own home. She got off the fence, ran across to the garden gate, shut it after her, and from between its white bars stood to watch the stranger go by. She was interested in him because he was walking. Nearly all the brown-knickerbockered figures who passed 'the house were on bicycles; their passage was too swift to allow time for the development of interest.

But this stranger did not pass. He looked at the house, and he looked at the mill looming black from beyond the patch of green behind the house. Then he looked at her, and came close up to the gate.

‘You are Rosamund,’ he said. ‘I got your letter, and I have come to tea.’

‘Are you really “I”?’ said Rosamund. ‘Where is G.H.?’

‘I couldn’t bring her. Are you glad to see me?’

‘Yes, Mr. I, – very glad.’

‘May I come in?’

‘No, don’t. Only yesterday I asked Ethel to tea, – she’s Marsh’s little girl: he’s one of the coastguards, – and Mrs. Bates said I wasn’t to have anyone to tea till Charlotte was better.’

‘That's unlucky for me. However, let's go down to the sea wall. Hullo! it’s raining again. You must run in.’

‘Come to the mill,’ said Rosamund. ‘You must run. Come along.’

They ran hand in hand across the green to the old mill, Rosamund’s favourite play-place. For long enough the mill had been past work; the boards were rotting away, and the great stones lay silent and idle. It was used now as a storehouse for nets, tools, old harness, and lumber generally. The owner of the mill used it, but it was Rosamund who loved and enjoyed it.

‘Come up, Mr. I,’ she said hospitably, pausing at the foot of the broken stair. ‘We will prop open the west door, and then we shan’t feel the wind; and we can look at the pretty marshes, and see the king go to bed.’

‘What king?’

‘Why, the sun. Don’t you know the old French kings used to have lots of people to see them go to bed? But only one king does it now, and he is King Sun. And all the poor people may see him as well as the nasty rich ones.’

She had flung open the wooden shutter, and the marsh and the sunset were before them – a picture framed in the soft darkness of the old timbers.

Rosamund spread a sack on the floor. ‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘and tell me all about G.H. and I.’

‘Why, all that was told in the book. Have you written a book about Charlotte and Rosamund?’

‘Not yet,’ was the cautious answer.

‘Then don’t you see that you must tell me all about yourself at once I – or else we don’t start fair.’

‘Oh,’ she said vaguely, ‘there’s nothing to tell about us. We never got lost in the snowstorm or anything. Oh, dear Mr. I, it was good of you to come! Have you come all the way from London?’

‘No, only from Folkestone. They sent your letter on to me; but if I had been in Timbuctoo, I would have come just the same, dear.’ He pulled her envelope from his pocket and looked at it. It was much marked in blue pencil, through which one could still read in round and shaky characters:

To Mr. I

who wrote about G.H.

There is the name Longman Green and Co. in the book. I think that is the shop where he bought the paper. Perhaps they will know.

‘I didn’t know your address, but I thought it would be all right,’ she said triumphantly.

‘And so it was. You are a lucky little girl, Rosamund, to live in a house that has a windmill to it.’

‘That was why Charlotte took it.’

‘Ah, yes. By-the-bye, who is Charlotte? They told me in the village Miss Haddon lived in this house.’

‘That is Charlotte: she is my dearest dear. She lived in the same house as us in London.’ Rosamund shuddered and made a face. ‘London is a very nasty place,’ she added: ‘I hate it.’

‘And how did you come to leave it?’

‘My aunt died. I did not like her very much, but I am sorry she died. It is not nice to die: you go into a black box in the ground, and you never see anything again – never never never. Mrs. Langridge told me.’

‘That isn’t what really happens,’ he said; ‘that’s only a sort of pretending. But we’ll talk about that another time. Tell me about your aunt and your dearest dear.’

‘My aunt used to go out nearly always to speak at meetings about Women’s Rights, – I think that’s the name: I’ve seen it printed, – and then I was left. And I haven’t anyone else. I haven't got a father, like G.H., nor a mother. How is G.H.’s mother?’

‘She is well,’ he said quickly. ‘And so you were left alone? Poor little Mousie!’

‘So then I used to go and sit with Charlotte. She writes history books, and she let me sit with her. Her room was so pretty – not like ours – and we used to make tea.’

‘Yes?’

‘And then my aunt died. And Mrs. Langridge – she was the woman of the house – and she said I was going to the workhouse; and Charlotte was away! And then, just when they were going to send me. . . 0h!’

Again Rosamund shuddered, and he put his arm round her.

‘And then Charlotte came, and she said I should be her own little girl. She has no one belonging to her either, and it cost too much money to live in London, so we came to clear, precious, lovely Lynchurch; and I am Charlotte’s very own little girl for ever and ever.’

‘God bless her!’ said he.

‘He does,’ the child said softly: ‘I tell Him to every day, twice, when I say my prayers.’

Then Rosamund begged for more tales of G.H., and would not be denied, so the tales were told, but slowly and haltingly; and at last the light was almost gone, and there was silence in the old mill. Rosamund leant her head against her new friend’s shoulder.

‘I wish I had a father like you,’ she said at last. ‘I wish you would play at being my father, and let G.H. be my little sister. I would be very kind to her: really and truly I would.’

He kissed her rough brown hair.

‘My dear little bird, it’s time for you to go to roost. Have you told Charlotte about me?’

‘No: I mustn’t see her.’

‘Well, don’t tell her till I give you leave. And come down to the beach by the first martello tower tomorrow, if it’s fine, and I’ll tell you some more stories.’

And Rosamund went the next day and heard stories – stories more connected and coherent; and again the next day saw them meet, and the next, and the next, till Lynchurch, watching, made up its mind that this rich gentleman staying at the ‘Ship’ was either Rosamund’s long-lost father, or was an eccentric person looking for a little girl to adopt. ‘But Miss Charlotte will have a word to say about that,’ added Lynchurch.

So the days went on, and Charlotte came downstairs, and presently was able to go out for a little. Rosamund, true to her promise, had breathed no word of her new friend; and Mrs. Bates, the woman who came in to do the housework and attend to Charlotte, had perhaps been bribed to secrecy: at any rate she said nothing. But as Charlotte grew better Rosamund’s long absences began to worry her. She asked herself ‘What is it the child runs after all day? Is she, too, going to leave off loving me?’

And she sighed, and crept down to the beach to look for the child. Far along the beach she saw Rosamund’s red fisher-cap – a bright spot of colour. She crept under the sea wall and waited, for the red spot was moving slowly towards her. Someone was with Rosamund: Charlotte wondered who it could be. Then she shut her eyes and waited, for she was very tired.

The little red cap was moving so slowly across the sands because Rosamund was absorbed in a story which her new friend was telling her.

‘And so the two children grew up, and he loved her more than anything in the world, and they were going to be married. And then they quarrelled. Oh, Rosamund, never quarrel with the people you love. It is a dreadful thing.’

‘I won’t,’ said Rosamund promptly. ‘Go on.’

‘It was such a silly quarrel – all about nothing that really mattered at all; and he said he never wanted to see her again, and he went away. And when he came to his senses he went back, of course – and she was gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know. And he has been looking, looking, looking ever since.’

‘I do hope he will find her. Make a pretty end to the story, and let him find her – find her quite soon. It is a pretty story, especially about when they were little, and the snowstorm. It’s like G.H.’

‘Yes, that part of the story is pretty. Well, sweetheart, maybe we’ll find a happy ending to it yet, for do you know—’

‘Oh,’ cried Rosamund, as they crossed the last groin by the martello tower, ‘here’s Charlotte!’

He stopped short.

‘Darling,’ he said very earnestly, ‘go and tell her you have brought her an old friend – someone who. . . No – tell her you have brought G.H.’s father. No – tell her her oldest friend is here. Don’t startle her. Tell her quietly.’

He flung himself over the groin again, and lay in the sand under its shadow, waiting.

Rosamund, a little bewildered, yet went to carry out his bidding.

She sat down suddenly beside Charlotte, who opened her eyes and reached out a languid hand to meet the child’s warm red sandy fingers.

‘My dearest dear,’ said Rosamund abruptly, ‘there is somebody behind the groin.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, still languid.

‘He is a great friend of mine, and he told me to tell you.’

‘How long have you been such great friends?’ Charlotte’s interest was awakening.

‘Oh, a long time – two weeks quite.’

‘And you never told me? Oh, Rosamund!’ The voice was reproachful.

‘Oh, my dearest dear, don’t be angry,’ cried Rosamund, throwing her arms round Charlotte's neck. ‘He told me not to.’

‘And now he says—?’

‘And now he said I was to tell you G.H.’s father was here; and then he said not to tell you that, but. . . Oh, Charlotte, what is it?’

‘Is he here?’ said Charlotte in a strange voice. ‘I should like to see him again – just once.’

So Rosamund, now completely mystified, ran across the sand and fetched him, dragging him by the hand to where Charlotte sat in the sun under the sea wall.

‘Here he is!’ she cried triumphantly.

And the stranger dropped on one knee by Charlotte and said, ‘Oh, Charlotte!’ and he said no more for quite a long time: only he looked at Charlotte’s face and at nothing else.

Then he said to Rosamund, ‘Go down to the edge of the sea, and bring me the biggest queen-shell you can find.’ So Rosamund went.

Then he took Charlotte’s hand and said: ‘At last! Oh, my dear, how could you go away like that? How could you do it?’

‘It is five years ago,’ Charlotte was saying in a dull voice.

‘Can you forgive me? Is it too late? Oh, Charlotte, it isn’t too late, is it?’

‘Is she dead?’ Charlotte asked, and her face was turned away.

‘Is who dead?’

‘The other woman?’

‘What other woman?’

‘G.H.’s mother.’

Then he laughed out.

‘Oh, my dear, my dear, did you believe it of me? Did you think there was a wife in my heart, when all the time there was only you? There is no wife, there is no G.H. There is nothing but you – but you!’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I knew it was your book because of the snowstorm. Do you remember when you took your coat off to wrap me in? – do you remember?’

‘Do I remember! Charlotte, can’t you understand how I have thought of you and you and you – and what our life might have been together, and how at last it got itself written? I have no wife but you.’ He paused a moment, and then said, quietly, ‘Charlotte, G.H. was our dream child.’

Then she crept into his arms, careless of the sympathetic glance of a boatman smoking in the wall above.

‘Then it was not true,’ she said after awhile: ‘it was all imagination.’

‘Imagination and – and love, my dear.’

‘Why did you call her G.H.?’

‘I called her C.H., because they were your initials. The printers put G., and the publisher thought “G.H. and I” a good title, because the letters come together in the alphabet, you know.’

Here Rosamund returned with the queen-shell.

‘Rosamund,’ he said, catching her hands, ‘you know how well I make up stories? Well, all that about G.H. and I was just a make-up, because I had no wife and no little girl, and I wanted them both so badly.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Rosamund gloomily, ‘then I shall never have her to play with,’ and her lip drooped and trembled.

‘You will have me at any rate. I’ve told our dearest dear how much I want a wife, and she is going to be my wife, – and as for my little girl—’

‘Oh,’ cried Rosamund, jumping for joy, ‘then your little girl will be Me!’

‘Exactly. I must have been thinking of you when I wrote the book – of you and Charlotte.’

‘Then you knew Charlotte before?’

‘Haven’t I been telling you about our being children together?’

‘Then it was Charlotte in the snowstorm! Well, if it couldn’t be G.H., and it couldn’t be me, I’m glad it was Charlotte. My dearest dear, I hope you’ll be as nice to him as his wife was in the book.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Charlotte meekly.

‘And I’ll try to be as naughty as G.H. – -I will really and truly,’ said Rosamund. ‘Charlotte, you look as if you had just washed your face – it’s all pink and damp. But your eyes are very bright. Aren’t you glad he’s come?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte.

‘I told you God would bless her,’ said Rosamund, creeping in between them.

‘He has blessed me,’ said Charlotte softly.

‘He has blessed me,’ said the man reverently; and across the child’s head the eyes of the lovers met.

«•»

From: Pall Mall Magazine Dec. 1898

The Parrot and

the Melodrama

For all as respectable as you see me now, prosperous and portly, with my practise in London and my villa at Hazlemere, I once, when I was a barrister, and briefless, played a leading part in as thorough a melodrama as ever brought down the house in a Surrey-side theatre.

My aunt was my one surviving relative; it was she who had paid for my schooling, given me my rare tips, and made it possible for me to take up my scholarship at Exeter. It was she whose checks supported me, more or less adequately, in my dusty rooms in the Temple. It was she who appointed me to the office of caretaker at Willow Cottage, near Grindhurst, while she went for her summer holiday to Scotland.

Willow Cottage is a very comfortable place to stay at. It is much too big for its name, a long, low, white building, crowded with furniture – legacies from different branches of our family, who, passing from the need of chairs and tables, left these to Aunt Eliza for the crowding of her cottage. Uncle Algernon left her the Chinese jars and curios, Aunt Jane full half the heavy Victorian furniture, Uncle Robert the cases of stuffed fish and foxes, and Aunt Mary the grey parrot. To the grey parrot, and thus indirectly to Aunt Mary, I owe my melodrama.

After the dusty scramble of London life in July, the quiet of the ordered household, the dewy peace of the big green garden, the long leisure of complete solitude charmed and refreshed me. I read philosophy, walked and smoked, and went so far as to make a few notes for my great projected work on the ‘Essential Identity of Ethic and Esthetic.’

But though the grey parrot was destined to direct my fate, this was as yet unrevealed to me, and I confess that I hated the bird. She croaked, she whistled, she screamed, she sang lines of hymns in her evil, raucous voice, tremulous with suppressed chuckles. And when I implored the housemaid to remove her from her stand in the hall and take her into the kitchen, she told me it was as much as her place was worth. When I threw a coat over the cage, Polly swore till my hair stood on end, and I hastily tore off the coat, for the sake of the maid-servants. So in the long evenings before I started reading, after the servants had gone for the night to their own quarters, I used to lift Polly’s cage and carry it out on to the lawn at the other side of the house; then I could work in peace.

One night the inevitable happened, and I awoke in the grey of the morning with a shock of remembrance, the remembrance that I had forgotten something. What, I wondered sleepily. Another shock, more violent and sleep-dispelling, warned me that I had forgotten to bring in the parrot. The natural man said, ‘Do her good,’ and I turned on my pillow to compose myself for sleep; but Prudence discoursed at some length on tramps, and on chills, and on the necessity of keeping the parrot’s nightly airings a secret from the servants. ‘Suppose,’ said Prudence, ‘the confounded beast has taken cold and dies, the servants will say it was your fault.’ So I got into flannels and stumbled down the dim staircase and through the dark hall. All the shutters were up, and the alarm-bell on the door. I crept out through the French window in the parlour, and round through the toneless, dewy morning to the lawn. The cage was lying on its side. The parrot was gone. Never mind what I said. Directly the words were out of my mouth, my heart gave a leap, for they were answered by a flood of such swear-words as I had never heard from any but one mouth – or rather one beak. The anathema ended in a well-known hoarse chuckle.

On the laburnum-tree sat the parrot, cocking a wary eye at me.

‘Come, Polly! Come, pretty Polly!’ I said, advancing. ‘Polly put the ket!’ said the bird irrelevantly.

‘Come then, Polly!’ I resumed, holding out my hand. The parrot fluttered and squawked, and I stood still, shivering in the July dawn.

‘Sugar, Polly, sugar,’ said I, advancing again. ‘Stand still, can’t you?’

‘Could I but stand where Moses stood!’ sang the parrot, and flew off over the lawn. I followed.

Polly then rested, she took short flights from one tree to another, she sang lines of hymns at me, she chuckled and she screamed, but she swore no more. I am sure nothing but being covered up, or a sudden shock, such as my first remarks must have given her, would have betrayed her into such an indiscretion. She seemed to take a perverse joy in leading me slowly on; and lead me on she did, over woods and fields, and on to a by-road, where she took off from a chestnut-tree and disappeared over a high brick wall.

‘I’ll have you yet!’ I said.

My blood was up. I had quite forgotten how the loss of the bird might affect my relations with my aunt. It had become a personal matter between me and the parrot. I looked about for some foothold in the wall. It had been newly pointed. One of the boughs of the big chestnut-tree almost rested on the wall, but the bough was far above my reach. The trunk was too smooth for climbing, too big for swarming. But I was always a good climber. And, as I say, my blood was up. I measured with my eye the distance between tree and wall. Then I got my back against the wall and one foot against the tree, gave a heave with my back, and got one hand against the wall, and pressing outward with hands and feet, began to go up by jerks. It was hard work and very slow, but I did it, and when I got on to the top, I crouched on the wall breathless. Had the parrot disappeared? No, there she was, to all appearance waiting for me.

I dropped from the wall, and the old game began again. I had given up calling to the brute; my only chance was to get close to her and take her by surprise. This I did at last effect, but not till we were close to the house, which stood in the middle of the park in which I was trespassing. It was a large, ugly, red Georgian building with many windows, all shuttered fast. It had a large, walled garden at the back, and it was on the high, red wall of this garden, where a yellow rose climbed over it, that, approaching quietly over the soft turf, I grasped the parrot by the tail. Fatigued by her long flight, she hardly fluttered. She gave a surprised squawk, bit my fingers as I tied her up in my handkerchief and put her in my pocket, where she swore once, and then was silent.

‘And now to get out,’ I said; but as I said it I heard a window go up softly. It was a window in the first floor of a sort of wing that projected into the garden. My first thought, I confess it, was flight. But I thought of dogs, and of householders timid to the point of firearms, so I halted and looked up. A woman, with something blue on, put her head out of the window – the window, I saw, was barred – and looked cautiously to right and left. She saw me, and signed that I was to come near and to be silent. I don’t know how she conveyed this in a single gesture, but she did. The old garden wall presented no difficulties. I got over it, landed on a soft flower-bed, and the next moment I was below the window. She pointed at something among the shrubs. It was a short ladder used for fruit-gathering. I got the ladder and set it under her window. I hesitated a moment, for the natural thought had occurred to me, that this house was probably a lunatic asylum, and the lady might be dangerous. The next moment I was climbing the ladder, moved by four considerations: I am not altogether a coward, the adventure was piquant, the window was barred, and, most potent of all, the woman was beautiful as the day.

•  •  •

As I brought myself on a level with her, I felt acutely conscious that my hair was rumpled from the pillow and my chin rough with a two days’ beard; but when I raised my eyes to her face, she was still looking at the wall where I had found the parrot.

‘Where is the other man?’ she whispered, turning bright, anxious eyes on me.

‘There is no one else,’ I answered in the same low tone.

‘I heard two voices.’

‘I was after my parrot. Here it is in my pocket. When I caught it, it swore. I am sorry I trespassed. Is there any way of getting out except over the wall?’

Even as I spoke she thrust her arm through the bars, and her warm hand closed on mine. ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered; ‘for God’s sake, don’t leave me!’

I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable. To be suddenly clutched by a lunatic, however beautiful, must always be somewhat of a shock. And I have a horror of insanity.

‘I must go,’ I said firmly; ‘it’s absurd!’ and I tried gently to draw my hand away.

She loosed it at once.

‘Very well, go!’ she said. ‘I thought you would help me. I was wrong. Go!’

And with that her face took on a look of such despair as I have never seen on any face in all my days.

‘I would help you if I could,’ I said lamely; ‘but surely your friends—’

‘I have no friends,’ she said. ‘I thought you would have been my friend. You look good.’

She gazed wistfully at me, and for a moment there was silence. As I looked at her, I remembered my Charles Reade, and wondered whether, perhaps, after all, she was not mad, but only a sane woman imprisoned in a madhouse to serve the greed of others. So I asked what seemed to me a very tactful question.

‘Why do they say you are mad?’

Her answer took me by surprise.

‘Do they?’ she said mournfully. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Perhaps they don’t,’ I said soothingly. ‘How many mad people are there in this asylum?’

Her face changed, lightened, and a ripple of silent laughter passed over it. She spoke rapidly.

‘Now I understand! You thought I was mad, and well you might! And I thought you were a burglar, but I was going to ask you to help me all the same.’

I smiled too. A great weight seemed lifted from me, but almost on the instant a greater weight took its place. If she were not mad, this beautiful vision with the bright hair and the sad eyes, she must be in some deadly trouble or peril to stoop to ask help even from a burglar.

The east was brightening. The world was growing every moment more alive and alight. I could now see into the interior of her room. This was no lunatic’s cell, but a lady’s chamber, furnished with comfort, even with luxury.

‘I must not stay long,’ I said, ‘if you don’t want everyone to know I’ve been here. What is it that you want me to do for you?’

‘I never thought of your thinking me mad,’ she answered slowly. ‘I am so used to it all, but of course to you it seems – You will go back to thinking that, if I tell you what I want. And I have thought over it so much, and I thought any man would do it for me, if I could only get to speak with one. You are the first person except two that I have spoken to for eighteen months.’ She shivered, and looked away from me across the grass, where the long shadows now began to gather strength in the waxing light. She twisted her fingers together in an agony of indecision.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘I will do it if I can.’

Then she spoke suddenly, in a voice curiously hard and dead.

‘I want you to ask me to marry you.’

I own that I found no words.

‘It is horrible!’ she said, turning scarlet. ‘Of course I don’t mean that I want you to marry me, but I want to be engaged to you till – till after a certain day. Then I shall release you. It won’t cost you anything – only a few words, and to stand by them till I tell you it is all right. Will you?’

‘But why?’ I stammered. I can’t pretend that I showed to advantage in this interview. I felt by turns a man of sense and a despicable dastard, according to her silence or her speaking. And the fact that our talk was in whispers somehow added to my embarrassment.

‘It is getting lighter and lighter,’ she said. ‘The gardeners get up so early. You must go. I promised once to marry someone, if no one I liked better offered to marry me before I was twenty-one. That was eighteen months ago. I’ve seen no one since but that man and his sister. So how could I see anyone I liked better? Will you ask me? Oh, say yes, quickly. It doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s everything to me.’

‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘Emma Chisholm.’

‘Mine is Richard Dorrington. Miss Chisholm, will you marry me?’

‘I accept your kind offer with pleasure and gratitude,’ she answered glibly. It was evident that she had rehearsed many a time the scene we were now playing. Only in her rehearsals someone more chivalrous than I had, perhaps, been cast for my part.

‘Now go,’ she said. ‘There is nothing for you to do. Only remember you are engaged to me.’

‘Shall I announce the engagement?’

‘No, no: do nothing, only go.’

‘When am I to see you again?’

Our positions were suddenly reversed. As she grew eager to be rid of me, I longed increasingly to stay, to talk to her, to touch her hand again.

‘Oh, never, I hope!’

‘But I must,’ I said. ‘You must explain what all this means.’

‘Come tomorrow morning, then,’ she said, ‘but earlier, and don’t bring the parrot.’

She flashed a sudden smile at me, and drew back into the room.

‘Good-by,’ I said, reaching a hand up awkwardly from my ladder.

She stretched her hand through the bars, and, at the touch of it, I felt suddenly how utterly I had failed to rise to the opportunities of my adventure. I pressed the soft hand against my cheek, against my lips.

‘Oh!’ she cried, a soft, inarticulate cry, like that of a wild creature caught and hurt in the catching.

Then she closed the window quickly. I replaced the ladder and took my way across the dewy park, now fully dressed in its day light green, and touched to gold by the level beams of the rising sun.

I went home to think things over, and indeed food for thought had been supplied to me in no niggard measure.

‘This is your doing!’ I said angrily to the parrot as I replaced her and her cage in the still darkened hall.

‘This is your doing,’ I repeated as the memory came back to me of that hand against my face. And I fetched the parrot three lumps of sugar and some hempseed.

•  •  •

That day seemed long to me. I lounged about the garden, and tried to read, but philosophy had lost its charm. The interest of my extraordinary adventure was enough, in itself, to distract my thoughts. And then there was the recollection of her hand, of her eyes – her sad eyes and her weary mouth. The time passed slowly, slowly. I strolled down to the village in the afternoon, bought some tobacco – it was a loathsome shag, I remember – and asked questions. I learned a good deal that I did not want to know, and at last came to the thing I did want to know – who lived in the big red house in the high-walled park? Queer folks, it seemed – a middle-aged lady and gentleman and a young lady, not their daughter, my informant thought. Lodge gates always kept locked; no servants allowed out. Lady always present when tradesmen came. Most of the things from the stores in London – big cases. That was how the rich robbed the poor nowadays instead of being neighbourly. Family never even went to church, so, of course, nobody called on them except the vicar, and he was not let in. One or other of the old people drove out every day with the young lady. Poor thing!

Then suddenly my informant came round the counter and looked out at the open door.

‘That’s them a-coming now,’ she said.

There was a sound of hoofs and wheels, and a big barouche, drawn by two fat horses, rolled by. In it sat my lady of the dew and the dawn, and beside her an amiable-looking, fresh-faced man of about forty-five. He was talking to her, pointing out some pigeons on a house-roof. She listened in white silence.

Her eyes lightened as she saw me, and mechanically my hand went to my cap. I dropped it again, but not quickly enough. Her companion turned, and said something to her. I saw her shake her head, and knew she had been forced to deny acquaintance with me. I had spoiled her plan. I went home cursing myself for the fool I was.

In the early morning I climbed the big wall again, but this time I took a rope to help my climb, and left it hidden among the chestnut branches.

Then I crossed the park. Her window was close shuttered. I found the ladder, and was about to raise it, when I saw the gleam of something white – a paper tied to the ladder. I cut the thread and unfolded the paper. I could see written words, but there was not yet light to read them. The shuttered window promised nothing. With the paper in my hand, I crouched among the shrubs close to the house, struck a match softly under my coat, and read:

Farewell forever. I no longer love you. I have buried your letters and presents at the spot where you caught what you were chasing. Be sure no one sees you dig. All is over between us.

–Emma.

I own that my adventure was taking a turn I had never anticipated. Or was it now justifying my first anticipation? Was she really, after all, mad? No other explanation seemed possible.

I stepped back, looked up at the house. All was shuttered darkness, and in the garden it was very dark. No one would see me dig. I found the spot where I had caught the parrot; a yellow rose lay on the mold. I dug in the soft earth with my fingers, and under the rose I found something hard – a little sandal-wood box. Another look at the house. Still silent and eyeless. Then I put the box in my pocket and made off home, extremely irritated at the whole affair, yet not without a certain curiosity as to the nature of the ‘presents and letters.’

When I got back to the cottage, I hastened to light a candle, for daylight was not yet full. I opened the box. It contained only one thing – an envelope, from which I drew a long letter.

You have spoiled everything. He saw that you knew me, and asked if I knew you. I said no, and now how can I ever say that we were engaged? If I had said yes, I believe he would have killed me. I don’t feel safe. You don’t know what it is – this terror by day and night. He has never been unkind, but I am afraid. If he thinks there is anything between us, perhaps he will not let me live to see my birthday. It is on Monday. I shall write a line and tie it to the ladder, and pray to God that you may find it, and not someone else. And I shall write it so that if he finds it he won’t understand. You won’t understand either, but you will when you get this. They let me walk in the garden. I don’t think they think anyone could get in. They think I knew you before. But I don’t know, they are so clever – perhaps they know all about it. I couldn’t tell you this morning all about it, but I will now. If you can think of any way to make them think you don’t know me; but of course you can’t. I am going mad now, I think. You thought I was mad. Perhaps I soon shall be. If he goes on thinking you are staying in the village because of me – you don’t know what it is, this terror. Now I will tell you my story. I know you did not like me, and you half think I am mad, but if you can help me you will. For the love of God, help me! But I know you can’t.

We used to live at Clapham Common. We hadn’t many friends. My father liked to live quietly. Then he died two years ago, and Dr. James – you saw him in the carriage with me – he and Mr. Anderson were my guardians, and Mr. Anderson went to America, and he is to be back in time for my birthday. And Dr. James and his sister came and lived at Elm Bank – that was our house at Clapham. They were very kind, indeed, and tried to comfort me. When my father died, his last words were: ‘Emma, be true and just in all your dealings,’ and I want to be, but it is very hard. And I had to say I did not know you, and it was a lie. Then after six months he said: ‘Will you marry me?’ and I said no, but he begged and begged, and then I said I was too young, and he said so I was, perhaps, but would I promise to marry him if – but I told you that before. So I said yes, and the very next day we came to this dreadful place, and I have seen no one, no one at all. And when I saw you this morning, I thought God had sent you, though I don’t know how I could have thought that when I thought you were a burglar. My other guardian is to come down on Monday. If you could see him – but perhaps it will be all right, and he will take me away with him.

Please pardon this hurried letter. I daren’t reread it, hardly stop to think as I write. I dare say really there’s nothing to be frightened of, but you don’t know what it is.

Emma Chisholm.

You may think I could just tell my other guardian and go away with him, but I don’t like really to break my promise, and, besides, I am afraid. I don’t know what to do. I wish he hadn’t seen that you knew me.

The very incoherence of this letter stamped it as trustworthy, and the repetition of one phrase in it went to my heart: ‘You don’t know what it is – this terror by night and day – you don’t know what it is.’

Somehow I must soothe that terror. I must undo my folly of that afternoon. I must convey to her the knowledge that I had done so. I sat with my head in my hands, and thought and thought. Then I dressed me in my best, and went to call at the Grange. The lodge gate was locked. The woman eyed me doubtfully.

‘Orders are to let no one in,’ she said; ‘but there, I see Dr. James a-walking in the drive now, sir. I’ll go and ask him. if you will bide a bit outside of the gate.’

I saw her meet him. I saw his eyes follow hers to the gate; then he came hurrying towards me.

‘Excuse me, my dear sir,’ he said; ‘we have to be very careful.’

So saying, he unlocked the door. ‘Come in,’ he said; ‘here is a pleasant seat, where we can watch the deer sporting among the trees. And now tell me what I can have the pleasure of doing for you.’

‘I am come to this neighbourhood,’ said I, ‘in the hope of meeting Miss Chisholm, and cultivating her acquaintance with a view to a proposal of marriage.’ He looked at me with masked anxiety. ‘But as I find she does not go into society, I venture to lay my proposal before her guardian.’

His face cleared. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You knew Miss Chisholm in bygone days, no doubt.’

I affected an exaggeration of the embarrassment I certainly felt.

‘I will be frank with you,’ I said, feeling meaner than I ever remember to have done in my life. ‘I inherit my property from an uncle. It seems that in his youth he was attached to Miss Chisholm’s mother. I was his favourite nephew, and the dearest wish of his heart was to find the daughter of his early love and manage a marriage between her and me. Of course the late Mr. Chisholm would have opposed it; but he died just before my uncle, and my uncle then added a codicil to his will, by which I was to lose half my legacy if within three years I did not marry Miss Chisholm. I have seen the young lady in her drives with you, and I now look on as a privilege that which—’

‘I see, I see,’ he said, interrupting my smooth lying; ‘and the lady your uncle loved, what was her name?’

Here was a facer. I hesitated, stammered, and he gloated over my discomfiture, but I was not cornered yet.

‘I don’t like to show his letter to a stranger,’ I said bashfully, ‘still you, sir, are so kind and sympathetic that – that—’

I drew out the letter I had prepared, signed my Uncle Algernon’s name, and written on paper stamped with Willow Cottage, where, indeed, that lamented uncle had breathed his last.

Dr. James read the forgery and folded it up. He was silent. I could see that I had convinced him. I had undone the effects of that folly about the cap. What would be his next move? He sighed, and returned the letter to me.

‘I quite understand,’ he said, ‘quite. In happier circumstances I should have been proud and delighted. As it is, Mr. Dorrington, it would be cruel to trifle with you. I owe you the truth. My ward is hopelessly insane.’

•  •  •

My plot had succeeded, and his had failed. This sang in my ears as I walked home. I got away from him with a bearing of dumb sadness and submission, but as I went along the lanes I rejoiced. For at the moment when he told me that she was mad, my doubts of her sanity vanished away at once and for ever, and I knew him for the villain he was. But I knew, too, that he was an actor, and a good one; good enough, no doubt, to convince the other trustee, the returning Anderson, and to destroy at once Emma’s chances of freedom. Yes, I had begun to call her Emma to myself, and to perceive that Emma is, after all, rather a pretty name.

I went up to London that day, and I called on my friend Tenterden. Tenterden is a man whom people call on when they are in a fix. He is an archaeologist and a good fellow. He has been in more than one adventure. He came down with me to Willow Cottage, and we brought with us a black-covered wicker basket. I walked the lanes. I met Emma driving with Mrs. James. I turned my eyes away, and walked moodily on. Next day I met her driving with the man, and I raised my hat respectfully – to him. He returned my salutation with a sad smile. This was all I could do to show her that I had tried to undo my folly.

On Monday morning, Tenterden and I went into the woods very early. We took the basket with us. When we came out again, Tenterden had changed clothes, complexion, and manner. I should never have known him. He looked the part for which he was dressed, gentleman’s gentleman. As for me, Tenterden had wrought upon me with cosmetics and a wig and crape hair and loud checks, till I had changed from the Dorrington I knew to a business-like bounder with red whiskers and a rather shiny black suit. Tenterden of his wisdom had devised our disguises and got them from Hugo’s.

Then we went to the station and waited, scanning the passengers dropped by the rare trains – the parson on his way back from an exchange Sunday, a girl coming home from service, a gardener with plants in shallow boxes.

It was nearly noon before our man arrived, a tall, thin, grey man with a black bag. Tenterden stepped up to him, ‘For the Grange, sir?’ he said.

‘Yes. Is there anything to meet me?’

‘No, sir,’ said Tenterden. ‘The horse is gone lame, sir, and nothing else was to be got. But it’s not far, sir, if you will step this way.’

I followed at a little distance. As soon as we were out of sight of the station Tenterden stopped short.

‘Mr. Anderson, I believe,’ he said, with a complete change of manner.

The other looked his surprise. Tenterden spoke rapidly.

‘You are now going to the Grange to settle up the affairs of the Chisholm estate. Let me tell you, sir, that you are not safe in going to that house.’

‘Lord bless my soul!’ said Mr. Anderson.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Tenterden, in his lordliest manner. ‘I am a private detective,’ and as he said it I seemed to smell, through the scent of the hay, the gas and orange-peel of the Surrey Theatre. ‘So is my friend here,’ he went on, indicating me with a theatrical wave of the hand. ‘We propose to accompany you. We have pistols.’ He showed them. ‘We have some knowledge of this matter.’ I wondered how he could show that. ‘And we will see you through.’

Mr. Anderson shuffling irresolutely on the white dust, muttered something about ‘communicating with Dr. James through his solicitor.’

‘There is no time,’ said Tenterden firmly. I could see how he was enjoying himself. ‘It is a matter of life and death. I shall go with you, Mr. Anderson, as your valet, and this gentleman as your clerk or your solicitor, whichever you prefer.’

‘He looks more like a clerk,’ said Mr. Anderson, eying me with disfavor.

‘Come,’ Tenterden went on, ‘let us be moving. We can talk as we go.’

On the way to the house we did talk. His first alarm over, Mr. Anderson did not appear incurably stupid, but he now pooh-poohed our tale.

We found the lodge gates hospitably thrown open. We entered, and as soon as we had passed out of sight, a clang behind us told us that they had been closed.

‘Hear that!’ said Tenterden significantly. Mr. Anderson looked uncomfortable.

The house-door was opened by a sour-looking man-servant, who glanced doubtfully at us. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, ‘but which is Mr. Anderson?’ Mr. Anderson admitted his identity .

‘Step this way, sir,’ he said, and slammed the door in our faces as Mr. Anderson crossed the door-mat; but Tenterden’s foot was in the door.

Mr. Anderson was equal to the occasion.

‘What the devil d’you mean?’ he said. ‘Let my man in at once. Come in, Rigby.’

Tenterden pushed, and we got the door back. Mr. Anderson’s face showed very white in the gloom.

‘’Pon my word, I think you were right!’ he cried . ‘Servants get more insolent every day. I shall report you to your master.’

The surly man said nothing, and I wondered whether Mr. Anderson had saved the situation with his quotation. It seemed hardly a likely thing for a man-servant to say to his master. We followed Mr. Ander son into a library, and there awaited Dr. James and his ward.

During our waiting we exchanged glances, but no words. I felt more than ever the melodramatic atmosphere. The room exactly reproduced a stage carpenter’s idea of a library. I also felt, however, a sense of real danger. Tenterden, I noticed, looked really delighted. He always enjoys playing a part.

Dr. James came in, softly, like a sandy cat. He and Mr. Anderson exchanged greetings. He took no notice of us, except to suggest that we should wait outside.

‘I shall want my clerk,’ said Mr. Anderson. ‘Rigby, you can wait outside.’ So Tenterden waited outside.

‘And where is our ward?’

‘She will be here in a moment.’ He almost seemed to purr the words. ‘I have an announcement to make to you,’ he said, ‘which may surprise you. Since Miss Chisholm has been in the care of my sister an attachment has, ahem, sprung up between us. She has promised to become my bride. We shall hope to see you at the ceremony, which will be performed very shortly.’

‘Do you know,’ said Mr. Anderson abruptly, ‘that people about here say Miss Chisholm is mad? That comes of your shutting her up here. What did you do it for?’

‘Her own wish, my dear sir. Her nerves were shattered by her father’s death. But care and kindness, my dear Mr. Anderson, care and kindness have done wonders. She is a picture of health.’

‘Will you have her sent for?’

Dr. James rang the bell.

‘Johnson, request Miss Chisholm to step this way.’

Johnson retired, and in an exceedingly short time returned.

‘Miss Chisholm has a headache, sir, and begs to be excused. She hopes to see Mr. Anderson on some future occasion.’

This was very pat, but unconvincing. I fumbled with the black bag.

‘Come, come,’ said Mr. Anderson, ‘this is mere trifling. I insist on seeing my ward. This is most disrespectful conduct, most disrespectful.’

‘I regret extremely,’ Dr. James was beginning, when the door opened and She came in.

‘I hope I have not kept you waiting,’ she said. ‘I have only this moment heard that you were here.’

She looked round anxiously as she shook hands with Mr. Anderson. Then he handed her to a chair.

‘I hear I am to congratulate Dr. James on his engagement to you,’ he said, with knitted brows.

Emma glanced at Dr. James, who no longer seemed as if purring were possible to him. Then she said, very distinctly:

‘I promised to marry Dr. James if no one I liked better made me an offer of marriage before my twenty-first birthday. But I have seen someone I like better, and—’

Dr. James started from his chair.

‘You’re dreaming, child,’ he said, and his voice was dangerously calm. ‘You can’t have seen anybody!’

‘I have seen someone,’ she went on steadily, ‘and I have accepted the proposal he made to me. I am engaged to Mr. Richard Dorrington. Oh, Mr. Anderson, I may be engaged to him, mayn’t I?’

‘This is idle talk, my dear child,’ said Dr. James. ‘Of course you are absolutely free, but why drag in the name of a gentleman who is a perfect stranger to you?’

‘He is not,’ she said; ‘he is engaged to me. Oh, Mr. Anderson, it is really true. Don’t leave me here. I am frightened. I wish Mr. Dorrington were here!’

I could bear it no longer. I tore off the wig and whiskers, and was swept into the full swirl of the melodrama.

‘He is here!’ I cried. With a sudden shriek she put out her hands and ran to me, and I caught her in my arms. Never was a more effective curtain devised. By all the rules of dramatic art Dr. James should have put a vial of poison to his lips, and died in agony at the feet of the reunited. Instead, a slow smile came to his lips, and he nodded once or twice. ‘Well, well!’ he said, ‘love laughs at locksmiths. You were one too many for me, Mr. Dorrington. The fact is, I took you for a fortune-hunter, and I had my duty to do and my’ – he sighed, with quite a decent show of emotion – ‘my treasure to guard. Well, well, we may cry quits, and be friends again. Your friend, too, who went and fetched the lady; he’s in it, eh? Well, well. But come,’ he added briskly, ‘luncheon is ready. Let me order two more covers to be laid, and let us talk it all over, over a glass of good sherry.’

And before we could protest, he was gone.

I heard his voice and Tenterden’s outside. Emma had withdrawn herself from my arms, and stood talking to Mr. Anderson in the window, explaining matters, I supposed. I wondered what was to happen next. The time passed, five minutes, ten minutes.

‘Our host delays,’ I said. As I spoke we heard the click of a latch. Emma and I both sprang at the door. It was locked, and the windows were barred.

‘Trapped!’ cried Mr. Anderson.

‘Yes,’ I said in a low voice, ‘and what would it have been if you had come alone?’ For though we were yet far from understanding the mystery, we felt that Dr. James was desperate.

How long was it before we got out? About eleven hours, my dear reader, during which we ran the whole gamut of emotions, and I got Mr. Anderson almost to forgive me that deception about the detective, which I do really believe saved his life. Eleven hours during which we three kept up each other’s spirits, and I got to know Emma better than I could have done in ten years’ polite acquaintance over tennis and dinner-parties. Eleven hours! The unanswered bells soon told us that no servants were left in the house, or none that would help us. We knew the lonely situation of the place. It had, in fact, once been an asylum. We might die there of starvation long before anyone came near us. Eleven hours, and it seemed like a year. It was quite dark. Emma was sitting on the floor, leaning against Mr. Anderson’s knee, holding my hand. We had exhausted ourselves in vain efforts to break down the barriers of that strong old room. Suddenly she moved, sat up, and then we heard it, too – a slow, heavy footstep on the flagged passage. The key turned in the lock. I pulled out my pistol. The door opened. A man stood in it with a candle in one hand and a pistol in the other. His mouth was torn and bleeding; there was blood on his cuffs and on his hands. I sprang to my feet, but I need not have stood on the defensive. The melodrama was working itself out: the man was Tenterden.

‘He got me away easily enough,’ he said, in answer to our questions. ‘Of course I’d listened at the keyhole, and I really did think it was all right. He got me into the dining-room, and he and that man of his tied my hands and feet with rope, and then tied me into a chair with a nice, tight rope round my neck. Then I suppose he went back and locked you all in, and off he went. He came back to have a last look at me, and said he thought I might come to wish I’d kept out of this. Oh, he told me plainly that we should all starve here.’

‘And how did you get loose?’

‘I bit the ropes,’ he said, ‘when I had got my neck out of the rope collar. That took six hours. I had a handsome black marble dining-room clock to go by. Then I bit the ropes through, but there were a great many knots. I’m afraid I don’t look very nice. The clock stopped at eight. I don’t know how long it took me. What time is it? I feel as if it were the week after next.’

‘Come,’ I said, ‘we must find some food for Her.’ So we ate and drank in that grim house, and it was nearly one o’clock before we left it.

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Tenterden cheerfully, ‘I don’t fancy you’ll find very much of Miss Chisholm’s property left. The rascal played a bold game, and I fancy he has won most of the stakes.’

He had. Every security that could be realised had been realised. A certain estate in which Emma has a life interest only was all that escaped him. Dr. James had been in very low water at the time of Mr. Chisholm’s death, and the trusteeship had been his financial salvation. Whether his scheme of marriage with Emma was merely conceived as an easy way of avoiding awkward investigations, or whether he desired her for herself, we shall never know. He and his sister disappeared utterly, and we have never seen or heard of them again. I asked Emma once whether he had been cruel to her while he had her at his mercy at the Grange, but she shuddered, and said: ‘Don’t let’s talk of it. I want to forget it all. He wasn’t cruel, but he frightened me. Oh, don’t make me remember it!’

But some of these days, when we have been married a great many years, some very bright spring day, out in the daisied fields, she will find courage to tell me of her life there. Till then the reader and I must possess our souls in patience.

I did marry her, then? Of course. From the moment when her hand lay against my face I knew that if she would marry me, I should have won from Fate life’s greatest good and grace. The loss of her fortune made it easier for me to woo her. Had she still been an heiress, though, I don’t know that it would have made much difference. For, after all, we were all playing in a melodrama, and do not melodramas always end in marriage?

«•»

From: McClure’s Jan. 1899

A Perfect Stranger

I

The dusty road lay white before her, the dusty hedges retreating swiftly on either side were rarely broken by tree or gate. Far away to each side lay the placid pastures of the marshes, where the quiet beasts grazed and the sheep cropped the short, sweet grass. The sedge whispered in the dykes, and now and then raised its soft voice as a wild duck or a moorhen rustled from the shelter of it. The scattered farms, red-walled, with yellow lichen on roof and fence, seemed asleep in the hush of the moon. The frank face of the country smiled compassionately at the girl who chose whirling wheels and a dusty road rather than the infinite peace that lies between green pasture and blue sky. And Alexa saw it all – the beauty, the smile, the compassion; and the world seemed very good to her. The roads were perfect, her bicycle was running like a willing live thing. Her dress was pretty, her hat shady, and the young blood in her rejoiced in the strength of her young limbs, the vision of her young eyes, Far ahead the red roofs of a village gathered close about a grey church, like children round their mother’s knees. Alexa glanced at the sketching-block strapped to her handle-bar.

‘I will stop at that village,’ she said, ‘whether it’s Ivychurch or not.’

And still the white road rushed back under her wheels, and the white hedges gave place to grey lichened fences guarding the winding road from the reed-filled dykes that now bordered it.

The village, like the farms, seemed asleep. The little gardens were full of flowers – sunflowers, asters, marigolds, with here and there the great white-and-gold lily, looking, amid the homely snapdragons and nasturtiums, like some beautiful Court lady astray in a peasants’ fair.

Alexa wheeled her bicycle in through the grey gate of the churchyard, propped it against the wall, and walked up the brick path to the church.

‘But this is magnificent,’ she said, and indeed it was. For the most part early English, with a Norman doorway and a turret hard to date, the great church, built long ago for the needs of many souls long since at rest, triumphantly outfaced the degradation of three or four late perpendicular windows, and stood in its grey stone, still stately and splendid. The lichen, that in the marsh softens caressingly all brick and stone-work, had painted the old stones a soft and pleasant colour, and on the tower and the strangely shaped turret hung great bulging masses of shining ivy.

Alexa walked round the church, noting every dripstone, every carved corbel, every moss-grown buttress.

‘What a church,’ she said, ‘to find on the very first day! “Ivy Church” looked good on the map, certainly; but, then, so often good names turn out to be only yellow brick and galvanised iron, and the church is church-warden-Gothic built in the wicked sixties.’

In the meadow beyond the church the girl found the right point of view for her sketch; she worked quickly, with firm, clean touches, and as she worked the wording of the descriptive article to accompany the sketch began to arrange itself in her mind. It was a glorious idea, this – a bicycle tour through Romney Marsh, by way of holiday – and the series of articles and sketches, ‘Churches of the Marshlands,’ would pay for the holiday over and over again. Alexa wondered why she had never thought of this before. Hitherto she had worked at her writing, and illustrating in her little London flat, and spent a quiet and straitened fortnight at some cheap seaside place. But now, since she had a bicycle, all things seemed possible. She finished the sketch and went to look at the church. The big iron ring that served as handle to the west door turned easily in her hand, and the heavy grey oak swung slowly inwards.

‘They don’t lock up the church, then,’ she said; ‘that looks as if the people cared for it a little, and liked to come in to rest and be quiet for a while sometimes, even on work-days.’

But when she stood within the church she perceived that the church door had not been left open because anybody cared. The structure of the church was as fine within as without; seven early English arches on either side of the nave divided the side aisles from the centre. The middle of the church was fitted with heavy, square, wooden pews, which, very long ago, had been painted a dull drab colour. The backs of these pews reached almost to the shoulders of the arches. Alexa trod softly on the broken stones and tiles of the central aisle, and near the chancel found a way to the south aisle. This was a mere lumber shed. There were broken chairs and dirty tin candlesticks, rotting chests crammed with mouldering papers and parchments – ‘Priceless parish records, I shouldn’t wonder!’ said Alexa angrily. There were piles of old books, and crumbling dry brown evergreens in heaps. ‘I suppose somebody decorated the church when it was built, and these things have been here ever since – oh!—’

From behind a heap of lumber in which a rusty fender and a wheelbarrow took leading parts someone rose up – a young man in flannels – with curling brown hair and a cavalier moustache.

‘I am afraid I frightened you,’ he said, when the gravedigger’s tools disturbed by his sudden rising had settled in rattling protest on the broken tiles of the aisle.

‘I saw that you didn’t see me, and as you were talking to yourself. . . .’

‘Was I talking aloud? I was only thinking what a burning shame it is to let this wonderful old place go to rack and ruin like this—’

‘It is a shame,’ he answered; ‘and there are most astonishingly lovely things here, too. There’s a dear little brass under that rubbish – I was trying to unearth it.’ He looked longingly at the rubbish heap.

Alexa’s eyes brightened. ‘Oh, do you think we might?’ she said. ‘I have some paper and heel-ball, and I should so like to take a rubbing of it!’

The young man looked at her more attentively. This sort of girl, without shyness, without affectation, was new in his experience. She was like a man, he reflected, in the frankness of her address, her simple acceptance of the bond of a common interest between them. That ‘we’ of hers was charming, he thought.

‘I think we might,’ he answered, and lifting the wheelbarrow, trundled it to a remote corner.

When he came back, she spoke, her arms full of the withered wreaths.

‘I’ll clear off these things if you’ll do the heavy ones. You see, I’m doing some articles on Kentish churches, and the brass would come in nicely—’

That was a feminine touch, he noted. Men do not begin to talk of their work at once to perfect strangers. But women are so pleased and surprised to find that they can earn their own living, that they speak of their work with the insistent, artless pride of clever children.

He found an old broom among the litter, and when at last the brass lay bare he swept the dust from it. Then she dropped on her knees and dusted the little figure with her handkerchief.

‘And that’s like a man,’ thought he. Then she looked helplessly about her for something on which to rub her begrimed fingers. He held out his own handkerchief quite simply.

‘That’s feminine of her,’ said he to himself.

Alexa secured the rubbing of the tonsured figure with the folded hands and strait cassock, and while she rubbed he held the paper for her and they talked. She was entirely at her ease; it was quite natural to her to talk to an intelligent human being with interests like her own. But the young man, whose upbringing had been among women of a narrower and more formal type, found the situation novel, with a touch of romance in it even.

Alexa spoke her mind freely as to the iniquity of parson and churchwardens, and he listened, smiling, a little awkwardly, but endorsing to the full her condemnations.

‘But you don’t know the worst yet,’ he said, when the brass rubbing was finished. ‘Come and see the north aisle.’

If the south aisle was a wilderness, this was a desert, and a desert swept and garnished. The old, flat tombs were boarded over, tables and forms outraged the beauty of arch and window above them, and, worse than all, an American stove squatted black and sordid in the lady-chapel, and stuck its black pipe straight up through the rafters of the wonderful old roof. On the wall were hung those oval, black boards, with white texts painted on them, in which the piety of the Georgian period did so greatly delight. He pointed to one of these, just by the American stove, and she read, ‘How dreadful is this place!’ They looked at each other and laughed. Then Alexa remembered that this, however disguised, was a church, and that in church you must not laugh, so she led the way to the porch. Pausing there she said –

‘I’m awfully glad I met you. You’ve told me lots about the church I didn’t know, and you found the brass. Thank you ever so much. Now I’m going to have my lunch here under the yew tree, and then I must go on. I want to get another church in today. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ he said mechanically. ‘I wish I could give you some lunch, but—’

‘Oh, I have my sandwiches on the machine. I shall be all right, thanks.’

She stood waiting. Why didn’t the man go?

‘Look here,’ he said desperately. ‘I’ve been here three days; it’s a dead-and-alive place, and you are the first person I’ve seen who could exchange a word with me on any but farming subjects. Would it be – would you mind – I wish you would let me stay and have lunch with you.’

‘He blushes generously,’ she thought, and aloud she said, her surprise showing only very slightly in her pretty eyebrows –

‘All right, there’s plenty for two.’

‘In one moment,’ he said, and disappeared round the corner of the church. Alexa sat down with her back against a convenient buttress under the shade of the yew.

‘Have I perchance stumbled on a lunatic?’ she asked herself, ‘or is it merely the boredom of Ivychurch? Anyway, bored or lunatic, he is very well informed, and – oh, yes, he’s all right.’ He returned very quickly – she wondered how near his house could be – with a basket, containing cold pie, cake, ripe pears, and a bottle of thin claret.

‘Here’s my contribution,’ he said gaily.

And this was how Alexa found herself picnicking in a church-yard with a perfect stranger. They fell to talking again over the pie and sandwiches, and the more he talked the better Alexa liked him. When at last she led her bicycle through the church-gates she said to herself, ‘I’m sorry I shall never see him any more!’

But he said to her, ‘Shall I never see you again?’

‘The world is small,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Good-bye. Thank you so much about the brass!’ And with whirling wheels and a flash of grey skirt she was gone. He stood looking after her till the bicycle faded round the corner of the last house, and then went back to the churchyard to think of her. He lay under the yew tree, thinking, till the shadows began to lengthen in earnest. He was young, and to him that day had revealed many things.

Alexa laid that night at a little inn ten miles from Ivychurch. Before she slept she borrowed pen and ink from the motherly landlady and wrote a letter.

‘I will write a curt, plain-spoken note,’ she said, ‘and tell the man what I think of him.’ But she wrote in a white heat of anger and indignation, and though the letter was plain-spoken enough it was certainly not short. It was addressed to the rector of Ivychurch. It reminded him of his income, of his duties to the parishioners and to the church. ‘You have held this living for thirty years,’ said the angry letter, ‘and you have suffered your church to become a rubbish heap and a disgrace. I write this so that you may know that someone is left who knows of your wickedness, and who will protest against it.’ She signed her name with at vehement flourish, and next day she posted the letter.

When the rector received that letter, he read it, and re-read it, and rumpled his hair helplessly with his hands.

But within a month of its arrival masons were at work in the old church.

II

Alexa was very dull indeed. It is a fine thing to earn your own living and be independent, but a little lonely flat in London is a poor place to spend Christmas in, and Alexa had no relations. She looked up from her book two days before the loneliest day of all, and saw that the sun was turning her green serge curtains a fine yellow.

‘How pretty Ivychurch must be looking!’ she said. ‘I will go and spend Christmas in the marshes.’

And she went.

She stayed at the same little inn where she had written that passionate letter to the rector of Ivychurch, and on the afternoon of Christmas Day she took out her bicycle and rode over to the village.

Still, as when last she rode down its street, it seemed asleep or dead. She leaned her bicycle against the wall at the old spot. The air struck cold, and she took her cloth cape from the handle-bar and went up to the church, through the litter of planks and stones, mortar, and dead ashes, that disfigured the grassy mounds of the churchyard. A ladder leaned against one of the tombstones, and round the tower was a network of scaffolding poles.

‘So my letter did wake him up!’ she thought, with a thrill of triumph.

To the inside of the church a greater change had come. The pews and the oval texts were cleared away. The stove no longer straggled in the lady-chapel, but stood in a corner, almost hidden by a new screen of carved wood, its chimney retiring decently through the wall behind. In the lady-chapel was an altar, and there were flowers. The rest of the church was given over to a cleanly desolation, but in the lady-chapel were fresh green wreaths and garlands, because it was Christmas time. And, fixing up a wreath of yew that had fallen from its nail, was a figure in black. The early dusk of the December day was closing in, but a chill, pink light shone through a window on the face. And Alexa recognised the stranger with whom she had picnicked in the golden afternoon of September.

He turned and came towards her, and she saw that his dress was that of an English clergyman.

‘You?’ he said softly.

‘They have begun to restore, then?’ she said, ‘and you have come down here at Christmas? How strange!’

Instinctively she had turned from the corner where, with flowers and carpets amid evergreens, faith seemed to have grown vital, material, and walked into the barren barrenness of the middle aisle.

‘I live here,’ he said. ‘We have found all sorts of wonderful things. I knew we should. I must show you everything; but it is too dark. Are you staying here long?’

‘I shall be about here for a few days. I didn’t know you were in orders.’

‘I know you didn’t. Do you remember that strange little turret? We couldn’t make it out, you recollect. Well, it leads to the crypt – pure Norman – the most perfect thing.’

‘I should like to see that.’

‘There are candlesticks down there. They’re underpinning the walls.’

He opened the door of the little turret, and a dark hole in the ground showed a hint of steps leading down.

‘It was all bricked up,’ he said. ‘Mind how you go. Let me light a match. The stairs are quite sound.’

He struck a vesta and she followed him down.

When they reached the crypt he lighted candle after candle and stuck them on the ledges of the walls.

‘There!’ he said; ‘isn’t it magnificent?’

‘I feel a little bewildered,’ she said. ‘I thought Ivychurch had no friends, and now I find it on its way to the high places of honour. I thought you were a tourist and—’

‘It’s being done most carefully,’ he went on irrelevantly; ‘nothing will be spoiled. It was the flannels, I suppose. I can’t get out of the way of wearing them in the summer. As soon as the walls are safe, and the roof, we shall go on to explore behind the lath and plaster. I think there’s original colouring on some of the walls. Look at the graining of this roof and the scalloped – ah—’

A sudden, sharp crack, followed by a thundering sound of falling masonry. The crypt seemed to shake, and all the candles went out. There followed a deep silence.

‘Where are you?’ he cried. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No.’ Her voice came through the darkness, tremulous, but only a very little.

The sharp, sudden spurt of flame from the match as he struck it showed him a white face and frightened eyes, but the mouth was set firmly.

He lighted one of the candles.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘The stair has fallen in, I think,’ lie answered quietly, and went to see. Through the low arch by which they had entered the base of a mound of masonry now protruded.

‘Hold the candle,’ he said, and crept over the heap and out of sight. Then a hand reached back for the candle.

‘Here, give me the light.’

She gave it, half kneeling on the broken. masonry to reach his outstretched fingers. The little glimmer of the candle through the archway seemed to draw the darkness towards it, and Alexa felt it pressing behind her like a tangible presence. After a while he called to her to take the candle, and then came scrambling back over the broken stone and rubble. His black coat was covered with white dust, and his hair was rumpled and had cobwebs in it, she noticed.

‘Well?’ she said impatiently.

‘Well,’ he answered, looking at her in a dazed way. He took the candle again and held it all on one side so that the melted grease ran down over his hand. ‘Suppose we were to sit down. You’ll be tired standing so long.’

‘What has happened?’

‘I hope you’re not afraid of the dark,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I shall be able to get you out alive, and you don’t even know my name, and I beg your pardon, I think I am dreaming.’ He set the candle on a ledge and began to walk up and down, holding his head in his hands. Alexa wondered if the candle-grease on his hand had hardened yet, or if it would come off on his hair. She wondered why she did not feel cold. It was frosty outside, she remembered. She longed to take the man by the shoulders and shake the truth out of him. Suddenly he stopped in his walk and spoke in his natural voice.

‘I don’t know what I’ve been saying. Forgive me if I talked nonsense. It was rather a shock to think that I had led you into this – you, of all people. Now I’m sane again. I’ll tell you exactly what has happened. As far as I call make out, the wall of the staircase has given way. I suppose the underpinning, of the other wall has shaken it. Or perhaps it was bricked up all those years ago because they knew it wasn’t safe. The workmen won’t come near the place till after tomorrow, and perhaps not then; you know they are never in a hurry to get to work after Bank Holiday. There’s nothing to be done.’

‘It is rather bad,’ she said, ‘but we must hold on and keep up our courage. The village is all round us – quite close; someone will hear if we shout.’

‘The village is quite close – yes,’ he said.

‘But the dead people lie thick between,’ she went on, ‘and no one can expect them to carry messages. Now I’m talking nonsense, too. But someone will come into the church, or they will miss you and come to look.’

He did not tell her that they would not miss him because he had come into the church on his way to Canterbury – where he had meant to spend a few quiet days among the old books. He only said, ‘If you left the church door open, there is a chance.’

‘Yes,’ she said quickly, ‘I did leave it open.’ But she lied. She could not bear to add to the torment which she saw consumed him at the thought of the doom he had brought on her.

‘You’re quite right,’ she said presently. ‘We ought to sit down and try not to think – if you are quite sure there is no other way out.’

‘There is none,’ he answered briefly. ‘I know every inch of the place.’

‘Well,’ she said, and her voice was steady, cheerful even, ‘I suppose if anyone came into the church we should hear them, and they’d hear us if we shouted.’

‘Possibly. Sound travels in strange ways. You are good. Most women would have been screaming and calling me names before this.’

She laughed. ‘You don’t know “most women,”’ she said. And he was more grateful to her for her laugh than for all the other manifestations of her courage. As, indeed, he had reason to be.

They sat down, and each made the strong effort needed to talk of other things than this burial, this death in life.

She told him of her childhood, and of her schooldays, of her struggles against poverty, and her early, timid, hardly hoped-for successes, and he questioned and listened. But after a while pauses dropped like stones into the pool of her speech, and presently fell so fast that the pool was dried up and silence was between them.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, after a long time.

‘Not a bit. I have some biscuits in my pocket, if you are.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh, no. I was only thinking. I must explore a bit.’

He left her sitting there, and examined the litter of tools and odd things left by the workmen. He found half a dozen empty sacks that had held cement or such things, and an old coat, probably the foreman’s working garment. He took off his own coat and put on this tweed jacket, with the rounded shoulders and that smell of putty which hangs about the clothes of all work-men, whatever be their trade. He arranged the sacks in one of the little side chapels. ‘They will do to cover her if she sleeps,’ he thought. ‘Pray God she may sleep.’

Then he went back to her.

‘You’re to have my coat,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another.’ She submitted. Then he talked to her awhile and told her many things. At ten o’clock he wound up his watch and asked her if she could sleep.

‘It’s very odd,’ she said, ‘but I believe I could.’

He led her to the little chapel and showed her the sacks. She insisted on dividing them with him. He took his share to the other chapel and lay down. To his surprise he found dreams taking hold of him almost before he had said to himself that he could never sleep. He fell asleep praying for her, and when he awoke it was six o’clock, and he heard her moving and saw the gleam of a lighted candle.

‘I have found a pail of water,’ she cried in answer to his greeting, ‘and it tastes all right. Come and have breakfast.’

They each had a biscuit and some of the water, and talked of the possibilities of rescue till they dared not to talk of them any more. Then she asked him if he could remember the morning prayers, and she listened to the beautiful words and schooled her heart to patience and courage. ‘If the worst comes,’ she said, ‘I shall not die alone. He is a man. Suppose I had been condemned to die in this den with a coward!’

III

This was the second day, and of the length of that day there are not words enough in all English to tell the tale. The two talked and were silent, they walked and sat and dozed a little, and the how’s were like weeks and the minutes like hours. There were eight biscuits, and that evening they ate two more. And he felt giddy and sick with fasting, and with fear and with sorrow, but his fears and his sorrow were for her. For himself, lie felt only how hard it was to have brought this horror on this woman – the ideal woman, the woman who could look death in the face and not flinch.

It was on the evening of the second day that she said—

‘If we have got to die, I should like to hold your hand. I am getting a little frightened, and I don’t like that chapel where the sacks are. I think someone walks there. That is a tomb at the side, and, besides, the dead people are all around us – close, quite close.’ So he held her hand and she slept against his shoulder. They had been buried for two days and two nights when, for the first time, to ears strained with silence, came a footfall overhead.

‘Shout!’ she whispered hoarsely, and he shouted. With trembling hands she lighted one of the candles – they had been sparing of them through these long hours – and brought him the pail. ‘Drink,’ she said; ‘you have no voice. Drink and shout;’ and while he drank she shrieked, ‘Help! Stop! Listen!’

‘Look up,’ she said. ‘I would not worry you by telling you – there’s a crack – no, go on shouting, you can hear all the same – there’s a crack – I have seen the light through it – in the roof over there.’

A voice answered their shouting. ‘Who’s there?’ it cried.

‘We’re buried! Fetch someone to dig us out. Go at once we’re starving – been here three days in the crypt. Stairs blocked. Go, for God’s sake!’ The footsteps above hurried heavily away.

Then he looked at her and she broke into wild sobbing. ‘Oh, we’re not going to die,’ she cried. ‘We’re going to live. I didn’t want to die. But I was good, wasn’t I? Oh, say I was good and brave,’ and with that she fainted quietly away.

•  •  •

‘See what comes of leaving church doors unlocked,’ he said, a few hours later, when, warmed and fed, they sat beside the rectory fire waiting for the carriage that was to take Alexa back to her lodging in the little inn. ‘If that tramp hadn’t crept in for warmth—’

‘Don’t,’ she said; ‘I’m afraid to think of it. I believe I shall be afraid now all my life.’

‘You won’t. Fear won’t live long with you, you brave woman. When am I to see you again?’

‘I don’t know. Someday, perhaps.’

‘The world is small, as you said once. Are you going to cast me off because I am the rector, and you know now who it was that you wrote that letter to? Your letter had nothing to do with the restoration. I always meant to do it from the first. That day I saw you was my first day here. Oh, forgive me for being a rector!’

Here his grim housekeeper announced that the fly from the ‘Dragon’ was waiting.

‘Let it wait!’ he said impatiently. The old woman retreated muttering, and he stood up, a little unsteadily.

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I find I can’t let you go, unless you promise to come back. I can’t do without you.’

She looked at him. ‘Do you mean—?’

‘I didn’t mean to speak now. I didn’t say a word, did I, when we were down there among the dead people? I meant to try and make you love me, if ever we got out. Oh, yes; I meant to wait years for your answer! But I can’t wait an hour. Tell me you’ll marry me. Dear, dear, dear one! I can’t let you go.’

‘You must be mad,’ she said, looking at him doubtfully. ‘How can I promise to marry you, a perfect stranger?’

He flushed and for a moment he was silent, tasting the bitterness of the conventional phrase. Then he laughed.

‘A perfect stranger!’ he said. ‘And we have sat hand in hand and looked Death in the eyes! Do you suppose we could know each other half so well if we’d been meeting each other for years at parties and dinners? You don’t know. Is it nothing to you? Am I nothing to you? Answer me! Has any other man shown you his heart and soul as I have done in these long hours and hours?’

‘No!’ she faltered; ‘but—’

‘And no other man,’ he said masterfully, ‘shall ever know your soul as I know it.’

‘Is it that you really care?’ she asked, reaching out a trembling hand to him, ‘or is it only that you think you ought?’

He caught her hand and laughed again.

‘You may go now,’ he said. ‘Let me wrap you up in shawls and things. In March – not a day later – you will come back to me. We shall be very happy. Oh, my dear, brave little woman, my own soul! And you will forgive me for being a rector, and we shall he together all our happy lives. We shall be happier than anyone else in the world.’

‘Oh, well!’ she said, ‘if you think so—’

«•»

From: The Windsor Magazine Jul. 1899

The Eye of X.J.X.

Who says that youth is the age of sentiment, and that folk, like trees, harden as they grow old? It is youth that is hard – harsh, narrow, intolerant. The sentiment of youth is crude, sloppy, backboneless. For real sentiment commend me to the man of forty; it is he, also, who is unconventional, and the true child of nature. For, alas, cast out of Eden as we are, it takes us forty years or so to learn to be ourselves.

Hence it is easy to perceive that the man who sat in the coffee-room of the ‘White Hart’ idly turning over the thin ill-printed local paper, and longing for an adventure, no matter what, must have been forty, if he was a day, and not a day less.

He held himself like a soldier, while in plain fact he was only a lawyer, and though a little silver shone among his hair just above the ears, his grey eyes were so young that all women loved to look at them. More than one woman had found her greatest happiness in looking into them, and more than one or two had found sorrow. But that was all over – one has outlived and outgrown a good many things at forty.

Death and division and the god of adverse circumstance can speak to some purpose in twenty years; they had spoken; and now, almost for the first time since he left college, Xavier John Xavier found himself without a love affair on his hands. He had often cursed love and the ways of women, and vowed to himself that, were he once free from all entanglements, were the old debts sued for in Love’s Court once paid up, he would never look at a pretty face again, but would live his own life gaily and orderly, and, above all, alone. Well, the debts were all paid now, the links all snapped, and Xavier John Xavier looked out of the coffee-room window on to a sunlit garden, and a world dull past belief.

He had come down to Sandingbourne on business, dull tiresome business that made its nest among reams of dusty old letters and papers in the office of a brother lawyer; he had been in the sleepy little market town for four days – and nothing whatever had happened to him. It seemed as though nothing ever would happen again.

‘It’s not possible,’ said Xavier John Xavier, ‘that at forty one has come to the end of everything.’

He filled his pipe, rose, and tossed the paper across the room to the sideboard. The moment he had done so he followed it, and, leaning over it, looked eagerly down the second column.

‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘but this is amusing – distinctly amusing.’

He picked the paper up and read again the advertisement, whose capital letters had jumped at him at the moment when the paper flew from his hand.

‘Should this meet the eye of X.J.X., he is begged to come to K——n Church at seven o’clock on Wednesday, when every thing will be explained.’

‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ said the man of forty. ‘Among other things, perhaps, one might learn what it is that wants explaining!’

If your initials be P.D.C., or S.E.R., or L.C.B., or the like, you may read a thousand advertisements in the agony columns of provincial papers, and never fit one of them to yourself, though your initials be repeated twenty times over. But if you should be the last and only descendant of an old Spanish family, and your name be Xavier John Xavier, and you find X.J.X. figuring in the Citizen of Sandingbourne, where, bored, you sojourn sadly, you will think once or twice, and perhaps more times than that, before you throw down the paper and resolve to think no more about it. Xavier had with him the section of the ordnance map which covers Sandingbourne and its district.

‘K——n. It ought not to be hard to find,’ said he. K——n was, indeed, easy to find – too easy – there were no less than four K——n’s within seven miles of the town. Kesterton, Kineton, Kingshorn and Kinardington. Kesterton Church, he knew, was in the middle of a village – not at all the place for an assignation. Kineton and Kingshorn he knew not at all—but he knew Kinardington, and in a flash a picture came to him of the little lonely church on its hill over against the marshes, where the bees hummed among the thyme in the churchyard, and the sun light lay like a warm, cloth-of-gold mantle over fields and pastures and little corners of woodland.

‘It’ll do me out of my dinner,’ he said to himself, ‘but Kinardington it is’ – for this was Wednesday.

It was not in Xavier’s nature to shrink from an anonymous appointment; on the contrary, the idea had always delighted him. Years before, when a note in a lady’s handwriting implored a meeting at a certain railway station, Xavier went; and never regretted it, though nothing more interesting had come of it than the knocking down of the young man who had planned the hoax and attended at the spot named to witness its fruition.

Possibly the unknown in this instance desired to make some communication concerning the case on which Xavier was engaged. But, if so, why not the office and a letter, rather than Kinardington Church and an advertisement in the Citizen? No, all things considered, Mr. Xavier John Xavier was inclined to class this assignation with the appointment at the station, and wondered idly whom he should have to thrash for it. One can thrash a man as easily at forty as at twenty – perhaps better, because more scientifically. The man of forty ordered dinner for nine o’clock, and rode off through the burning July afternoon towards Kinardington. The roads were white with dust, and the sun still shone fiercely.

‘I only wish, in view of the sacrifices which I make in the keeping of this appointment,’ said he, ‘that my advertiser might be a woman – not a man to be thrashed, or a ruffian with a secret to sell, but just a woman to be – to be met!’

Then the bicycle bounded forward through the dust at the urgence of his quickened pedalling, as he added: ‘Fool, fool! forty years old, and not cured yet!’

When he came in sight of the church he took the field path that led straight towards it. There were stiles, truly, over which the bicycle had to be lifted, but the meadow grass was soft to tread, and the shadows of the oaks in the hedgerows slanted often across his path. He climbed the hill to the church, lifted the machine over the low wall, leaned it against one of the wind-crooked yews, and lay down in the shade to await the coming of the other – the one who proposed to ‘explain everything.’

He waited long; cigarette-end after cigarette-end went to keep company with the nettles and docks under the churchyard wall, and still there was no stir of approaching life in any of the wide, placid fields over whose peace the church kept watch. The normal Xavier would have grown impatient, angry; but tonight the spirit of the place had entered into the man and transformed him; the gracious quiet of it, the dignity of its solitude, the growing reserve of the deepening dusk, soothed him like sleep or the near coming of death.

It was one of those moments when one looks back and feels regret without bitterness and, looking forward, sees, as in a glass, many unknown and beautiful things; but most one looks back. He lay resting on his elbow, so deep in vague remembrances that he never heard the click of the gate, nor the soft movement of footsteps and a rustling skirt drawing near among the graves. And he started as though he had been shot when a voice quite close to him said very tenderly, very tremulously:

‘I am so very, very sorry I am late. I got a puncture and I have had to walk – don’t be angry – indeed I couldn’t help it – you know I couldn’t. Oh!’

For by this time Xavier had scrambled to his feet and stood facing the newcomer – a girl, of course, and pretty, and very frightened.

‘Oh – I beg your pardon,’ she said, still more tremulously. ‘I—I was expecting to – to see – to see someone else. But I am so late – I expect they’ve gone.’

Xavier smiled inwardly, as he noted the plural pronoun, with which the most grammatical woman will, in moments of emotion, seek to cloak the fact that she speaks of her lover.

‘I have been here a long time,’ he said; ‘no one has passed since half-past six.’

‘I am so late,’ she said, ‘perhaps – But then – you see I said seven – and – But thank you very much.’ Xavier wondered what for. ‘Thank you—pray don’t let me disturb you – I’ll go and wait on the other side. I shouldn’t like to miss the – the person I was to meet.’

She turned away, and presently he found himself watching her dark silhouette against the sky. The girl leaned on the wall at the far end of the churchyard and never moved. At nine o’clock Xavier put his watch back in his pocket, and sauntered across the churchyard. When he was close to her, he raised his hat and said: ‘I fear he has been detained – he will not come now.’

The girl looked at him in a silence quick with resentment.

‘Don’t be angry,’ said Xavier, ‘there is really no occasion. I have had a very curious adventure, and I thought, if you would, perhaps you could help me to understand it. I, also, came here to meet someone, and someone has not come. At least I think not.’

‘I am sorry I cannot help you,’ said the girl stiffly.

Then Xavier leaned on the wall, and looking far out over the wide darkness of the marsh, spoke.

‘My dear young lady,’ he said, ‘you have doubtless been taught that it is not correct to converse with gentlemen who have not been formally presented to you.’

He noted with satisfaction that she made no movement towards departure, but remained in the same attitude of attentive watching; and he went on.

‘This rule is a very good one – for ordinary cases. Ours, I submit, is not an ordinary case. Here are two people who have come on the same day, at the same hour, to an extremely unfrequented spot; each expected to meet another person, each was disappointed. The coincidence is, to say the least, singular. Can we not discuss it like reasonable human beings, or must we exhaust ourselves in vain speculation at opposite ends of the churchyard, because, forsooth, we have not been introduced! Talk to me, we may yet discover a Robinson among our common acquaintances.’

‘Or a McConnell or an S. B. Walters,’ said she, smiling faintly. ‘Very well; but you see I didn’t know what sort of a person you were till – till you began to talk.’

‘And a quotation from Gilbert gives you confidence? See how wise I was to insist on talking to you! May I light a cigarette? Then I will tell you my tale, and you, if you will, shall tell me yours.’

He struck a match and lighted a cigarette, and at the same time looked at her. Yes, she was certainly pretty.

‘But I ought to go home,’ she said.

‘Wait a little, or is there anyone who will be anxious if you are late?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘no.’ And her voice was the saddest Xavier had ever heard. ‘I live quite alone. That is why—’

‘Do none of your relations live near here?’

‘I have no relations. I am alone in the world – quite alone now!’

‘I see,’ said Xavier placidly. ‘You have quarrelled with your sweetheart – and he was to have met you tonight, and he has not come – and thus the world seems a poor place and hardly worth living in. Were you in the wrong, or was he?’

The question was put in a fashion so simple and straightforward as to blind the girl to its impertinence. Xavier felt it, however; yet, as he said to himself, it was less impertinence than common sense. When that match had been struck the girl had also profited by its light. She had seen Xavier’s grey hair, and the answer, which would have been angry silence to a man of twenty, was plainly worded to the question of the man of forty.

‘It was my fault – at least I think so – because, really, little things don’t matter if people are truly fond of you – at least, I suppose they don’t.’

‘What sort of little things?’ he asked quietly.

‘Not taking your hat off when you meet people – and contradicting – and wearing ties with horseshoes on them. Oh! it’s too absurd. I see that now.’

‘I certainly don’t think those things matter when people care very much for each other – but if the caring is only on one side—’

‘I don’t know why you should say that,’ she said, and her voice was suddenly hard. ‘He cared quite as much for me as I for him – in fact—’

‘Of course he did – very much more. Well, my dear lady, if you care for him, you were quite wise to try and make up your quarrel; but if you don’t—now don’t be angry – I’m twice your age, and I know what I’m talking about. Supposing that you didn’t care for him so very much after all? Look here, I’m a stranger to you, but you are not altogether a stranger to me. No; I don’t mean that; I never heard of you, nor saw your face till tonight; but I think I know more of you than he does, all the same. Will you forgive my impertinence, and let me speak to you as if I were an uncle, or a priest, or something? If you will, I’ll tell you what I know of you, or what I think I know.’

‘Go on,’ she said, after a moment’s pause.

‘Well,’ said he slowly, ‘I have heard your voice, and you have told me what sort of ties he wears. Now ties are unimportant. But other things – does he always understand what you say? Do you have to talk down to him? Don’t you find that you have to think always before you speak, for fear he should not follow what you say? Haven’t you got into the habit of making excuses for him to yourself, every time you find out some new way in which he is not exactly what you wish your lover to be?’

‘Those are not fair questions,’ said the girl, bending her head lower.

‘Only some foolish instinct of courtesy gave the interrogative form,’ said he. ‘Don’t answer me; I don’t need an answer. Tell me, instead, how you came to be living all alone.’

‘My father is dead,’ said the girl. ‘He was very learned. He wrote a book called “Comparative Theology,” and when he died he left me all he had to leave – five hundred pounds a year and a cottage. I came to live in it, and I thought I should be so peaceful, and perhaps happy, by-and-by. But none of the people will know me, because of my father’s book. They call me an atheist.’

‘And that cuts you to the heart, because you know your father’s meaning, and these idiots don’t. You despise these people and their opinions, and yet you long to talk to them and be one of them. Truly, it is not good for man to live alone. And that was why you accepted your lover—’

‘You assume too much–’

‘I have your leave to assume what I will. I assume, then, that when at last you met a man who talked to you, who said he loved you, you wondered at his good sense and admired his good taste, and, at the same time, pitied him because he seemed so unhappy when, at first, you told him you did not love him. And you were grateful to him for loving you – and so at last you said “Yes.” And then you were a little bit fond of him because he was your own—or you thought so – and all the time the things he said and did jarred and grated, so that you were almost glad to part with him, and yet you always longed to see him again, because, poor child, you had no one else.’

‘Why do you talk to me like this?’ she said angrily. ‘How do you know that I can even understand what you are driving at?’

‘I have heard your voice.’ said he. ‘I know whether you understand or not. And I – don’t I understand? Shall I go on?’

She was silent, and her hands were busy breaking off bits of moss and lichen from the churchyard wall.

‘Then at last, after long doubt and hesitation, you broke off your engagement, and at once wished him back, because you were so lonely; and so you advertised in the Citizen, and—’

She turned on him in a sudden flame of anger.

‘How do you know? Did he tell you? – Oh! he has told you, and you have come here to mock me! It’s a joke – for him and his friends – and I was fool enough to think you really did understand, out of your own heart and soul. Let me go!’

He had caught her wrist and held it fast.

‘No,’ he said. She struck at his face with her free hand. He caught that too by the wrist and held it, and they stood face to face, their eyes meeting defiantly through the deepening dusk.

‘Let me go,’ she panted.

‘Not like this,’ he answered. ‘Listen, and don’t behave like a baby. I never heard your lover’s name – I never knew you had a lover; I came to the churchyard tonight in answer to that advertisement. I did not know what it meant, and I came to see.’

‘But who showed you the advertisement?’

‘No one. I saw it in the paper.’

‘Then it was printed!’

‘Of course it was printed! How else—?’

‘But why should you come? Oh – I thought you were a gentleman, and you stand there and calmly tell me that you saw an advertisement asking another man to meet his sweetheart, and you go – you go and spy – and take advantage of what you find out, and I let an absolute stranger talk to me as you have, and – and—and—’

‘Be quiet,’ he said sternly, ‘I came because I thought the advertisement was meant for me – though what it meant I couldn’t guess. That your lover should have my initials was a coincidence that never struck me as possible. Now let us clear this up. Tell me why you said “Then it was printed?” Didn’t you mean it to be printed?’

‘Let go my hands,’ she said. ‘I won’t go away.’

He released them at once, and she said: ‘I sent the advertisement be cause I didn’t know how else to write to him. He never would let me write to his home because – for family reasons.’

‘The cur,’ said Xavier to himself.

‘And, of course, I couldn’t write to the office – he is sub-editor there you know – without the editor seeing it.’

‘The liar,’ Xavier muttered.

‘So I wrote the advertisement, and sent it to him with the stamps, and I knew he’d see it – but I never, never thought he’d put it in. I suppose he did it to show it was all over.’

‘A gentle, kindly method, truly,’ said Xavier savagely. ‘Did you address it to him in his full name?’

‘Of course—’

‘And that name is?’

‘You know so much now,’ she said, half sadly, half angrily, ‘there is no reason why you should not know everything; his name is Edward James Evans —’

‘What!’ cried Xavier.

‘Edward James Evans,’ she repeated, ‘I fail to see why it should surprise you so much.’

‘Merely because my name is Xavier John Xavier,’ he said, ‘and the initials in the advertisement were X.J.X.’

‘No! impossible.’

He pulled out his watch, opened the case, and took out the advertisement, clipped from the Citizen.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll hold a match.’

She took the paper and read. The thick wax vesta burned long, but when it went out her eyes were still on the newspaper cutting.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said in a low voice.

‘But I do!’ he said. ‘I understand very thoroughly. It’s a hoax – a practical joke—someone who knew my initials, and wanted to hurt and humiliate you – and me. But I think he will not be glad – in the end, he will certainly not be glad – that he chose my name and your advertisement to help him in his joking.’

Xavier John Xavier thought of the thrashing at the railway station, and the memory was like a draught of wine.

‘No – he will probably be rather sorry before I’ve done with him,’ he said again.

‘You don’t mean – you won’t do anything violent?’

‘You think he did it? And you want me to spare him. What a womanly woman it is, after all. But a thrashing is due – and most for your sake, not mine.’

She only looked at him and held out her hand.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, ‘I am sure you have meant to be kind. Goodbye.’

He took her hand and held it.

‘I shall see you to your house,’ he said quietly, ‘and then I shall go back to Sandingbourne, and tomorrow I shall find out all about that advertisement; and in the evening you will, I hope, do me the honour of listening to whatever news I may have. . . . I shall be in the churchyard at seven. Let me take your machine. I can easily wheel them both.’

•  •  •

At a quarter past seven the next evening a white dress rustled against the gravestones in Kinardington Churchyard, and Xavier came forward to meet it.

‘I am so glad you have come,’ he said.

‘I wanted to know whether you had been horse-whipping anyone,’ she said smiling, ‘and if so, who it was—’

‘There was no one to horse-whip,’ he said, and it almost seemed to her that he spoke a little sadly. ‘Only a very youthful compositor. And I didn’t wish to go as far as murder. He was very small. Mr. ——, the sub-editor, is away on a holiday, so the advertisement was sent down in the usual way. The boy was short of capital E’s – it’s the letter that’s most used, you know – and, like the man in Edgar Poe’s story, he put in X’s instead. He meant to correct the mistake afterwards – and forgot it.’

‘Then he – the sub-editor is not to blame?’

It is much harder to talk true talk in bright sunlight, when your face can be seen, than in the dusk, when your face is hidden. But she did it. And so did he. Looking away from her to the old church, serene in the soft evening light, he said:

‘He was not to blame for that – but why bother about him? You didn’t love him. You never loved him—’

She also looked away, across the wide marshes. ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

‘If you had loved a man you would never have told another man about the manners and the neckties of your lover. Put it away – have done with it all. Forget it. Let me forget it; and let us sit here in the twilight and talk of other things. There are all the things in the world for us to talk about.’

So they sat and talked, and when they parted he said:

‘I shall be here tomorrow.’

And, after that, every evening left to July and many in August found them in the sunlight, ‘talking of all the things in the world.’ And at last came the inevitable evening when silence fell between them, and once more they turned their eyes from each other. But he looked back quickly and caught her eyes in his, and said:

‘Dear little lady, when will you marry me?’

‘You take too much for granted,’ she said.

‘Ah, no,’ he answered. ‘I am forty years old, my dear, and I know quite a number of things. Among others, I know that you love me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Oh—that’s not hard – even twenty-two can be as wise as that! How do you know that I love you – for you do know it – don’t you?’

And so the woman of two-and-twenty married the man of forty – and on the evening of their wedding-day he said: ‘When did you first begin to love me – my love, my dear?’

‘I began to love you,’ she said, ‘when you said you wanted to thrash someone! You see, I had never loved anyone before – only I didn’t know that then.’

‘But I knew at the very beginning of everything – the very moment I heard your voice,’ said the man of forty, and his arms tightened round his wife, ‘and of all the things your wise old husband knows, there is no better thing to know than that!’

«•»

From: Pearson’s Magazine May 1900

By a Mere Accident

Her fresh, fair face glowed like a pink rose between the dark lustre of her sables, and the frame of soft hair which repeated, with the softness of an echo, the sables’ colouring of mingled brown and black. The white, wintry sunshine struck through the window of the railway carriage and made jewels of her blue, Irish eyes. Railway rug and Gladstone, muff and handbag were grouped about her. On the blue cushion at her side lay a sheaf of papers and reviews freshly reaped from the bookstall. On her green cloth lap lay a great bunch of violets.

‘They will be companions,’ said the man who stood at the carriage door. ‘Don’t let them talk too much, or they will bore you.’

‘Could violets possibly bore one?’

‘These might, if they did their duty and spoke of me.’

She laughed, but she did not look at him.

‘Your boxes are all right, and your bicycle’s in the van at the back, and here is your ticket. You are sure you prefer solitude? Your aunt will regret having allowed me to see you off, and your mother will tell me that I ought to have secured for you the travelling companionship of at least one tabby.’

‘I prefer the violets.’

Here the guard locked the carriage door, the man stood leaning his arms on the window, and passengers passing along the crowded platform scowled at the possessive set of his shoulders.

A jar, a whistle, a flag waved, and the train began to shudder and to move. The man kissed the smoothly gloved hand that lay on the window and drew back. As he did so, another man came up the platform running with great strides, caught at the handle of the door, shook it, and as it resisted, leaped on the step of the carriage, amid the shouts of porters, and was borne out of the station clinging to the carriage door.

‘The door’s locked,’ she said from within.

The man on the step thrust a bag through the window on to the seat and felt in his pocket. Then he moved a couple of feet past the carriage door, unlocked it with a railway key, stepped into the carriage, and closed the door after him.

‘That was a near thing!’ he said. And now for the first time the fellow-travellers looked in each other’s face.

His mouth grew stern. The pink faded from her face, and a greenish pallor crept up to the blue eyes.

‘You!’ she said.

He looked at her critically – raised his hat without speaking, and busied himself with the straps of his bag. From this he took a book, and in it read sedulously, never raising his eyes.

She watched him by stolen glances, met always by the defence of his drooped lids. The lids were broad and white, and she knew well what manner of eyes they covered. Eyes mocking, disdainful, yet capable of a rare tenderness – beside which the consistent kindness, the open worship of other eyes seemed hardly worth the having. A handsome man for the rest – big and broad- shouldered, and with the masterful air beloved of dogs and servants and women.

Grown bolder, she watched him now no more by fleet, snatched instants, but steadily, as the train rattled and swung in its gathering speed. She looked at the firm hands that held the book. A year ago those hands had held hers; she trembled at the memory of their touch. She looked at his lips – firm, smooth, pale lips, set in a thin line. A year ago those lips—

It was at this moment that he raised his eyes and looked at her. A hot blush covered her face and ears and neck. He looked at her for one brief instant – a faint amusement in his half-closed eyes – and resumed his reading.

‘Oh, don’t read!’ she said desperately. ‘The train doesn’t stop for hours. Surely you won’t keep three hours’ silence with an old acquaintance just because—’

He laid down the book at once.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said courteously. ‘You were so well provided with travelling companions that I feared to force the conversation of another on you.’

His glance rested on her papers for an instant, and – for a longer instant – on the violets.

She laid the flowers on the cushion beside her.

‘I am going to be married on Monday,’ she said abruptly.

‘Christmas Day,’ he said smiling. ‘A thousand congratulations. A curious day, though, to have chosen.’

‘He chose it,’ she said, ‘and I could not—’

‘He chose it? He makes the most of his privileges. And so you are to be Mrs.—?’

‘I am to be Lady Leamington,’ she said.

‘You are going to marry him?’ The scorn in his voice stung her like a whip.

She raised her head proudly.

‘I consider myself extremely fortunate,’ she said, and took up the Nineteenth Century.

And now it was he who watched her, with a gaze so fixed that she felt it in every nerve. Suddenly he shrugged his shoulders and moved to the seat opposite hers. She drew back her skirt, as if from contamination. Then he spoke.

‘Of all the virtues, I have always supposed reticence to be the most admirable, as it is the rarest. I have striven to practise it. Therefore, when you broke off our engagement, I did not seek to justify myself. Pride may have been for something in my silence also – I scorn to deny it. I own that my pride suffered when I found that you could throw me away at the first word from a stranger.’

She made a movement to speak, but he went on: ‘It was foolish, I admit; but, you see, I thought you loved me. You must make allowance for the other delusions that followed on that. The point is that I was not going to defend myself, since you – who ought to have defended me – if you had loved me, I mean, of course – set yourself as my accuser. But that’s all over, thank God! I can now feel a sincere, if slight, interest in your welfare – as an old friend; and I think I ought to tell you the unpleasant truth about Lord Leamington, your fortunate bridegroom.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like a book,’ she said. ‘If you want to abuse my future husband, do it in plain English.’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘He told you that he found a girl in my rooms at midnight, and that her arms were round my neck. You asked me if this were true. I admitted it. You asked for no explanation, and I gave none.’

‘No explanation,’ she began angrily, ‘could have—’

‘No – I know: but now it is different. I can’t let an old friend marry that man in ignorance of the facts. He had arranged to call for me at twelve; I had an article to finish, and we were going on to the Somersets’ ball. At about a quarter to twelve, I opened the door to a knock. It was not Leamington, but this girl. I knew her very slightly. She had lost her last train to Putney, or Peckham, or somewhere – would I help her? It was like a scene in a play, don’t you know. I was Discretion absolute – left the door open – gave her wine and biscuits, and proposed to charter a homeward cab for her. Then came Leamington’s step on the stair, and at that, as at a signal, she flung her arms round my neck. I should feel like a hairdresser’s apprentice in telling you this, but I know now why it was done. It was Leamington’s last cast for you; and he threw the double six, confound him!’

She looked at him with shining eyes.

‘Is this true?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘You never asked me.’

‘It is only your word against his—’

‘After a few years of married life, you will be better able to judge of their relative values,’ he said, leaning back in his corner.

She lifted the violets to her face – the cool freshness of them was like a child’s kiss.

‘Charles,’ she said softly, and threw the violets out at the open window.

He smiled. ‘So he did give you the violets? And you believe my word, and not his.’

‘Charles,’ she said again, and reached out a timid hand towards him.

His face grew stiff and set.

‘You understand my motives?’ he said coldly. ‘I could not see any old friend married to a liar and a blackguard without a word of warning.’

‘I was only – I wanted to shake hands with my old friend – to show that he forgives me.’ She hardly knew what she was saying.

He touched her hand for a moment and let it drop.

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ he said. ‘I had almost forgotten the circumstance till your face reminded me of it.’

‘You are cruel,’ she said, ‘and not even polite. Why haven’t you punished him?’

‘I punched his head,’ he said coolly. ‘One does not go further on such slight quarrels.’

‘You are positively insulting,’ she said.

‘I think I meant to be. I beg your pardon. You should be flattered. Correctly analysed, my rudeness should show you that my vanity still suffers at the touch of a careless hand.’

She looked appealingly at him and presently spoke:

‘Charles, couldn’t you forgive me? Don’t you love me at all now?’

He smiled kindly at her. ‘My dear lady, all is forgiven – and forgotten!’

She turned her head to the window, so that he should not see her eyes. With a shriek and a rumble the train passed into a tunnel. The roar of it rang in her ears, and the tears ran down her face on to the sables. Two shrieks from the engine – the train quivered and shook with the sudden stress of the brakes. Then came another shriek, a crash – and – the biggest accident of the year, as the Northern express ran full into the rear lights of the slow local.

The first-class carriage where pride and love had fought lay battered and overturned on the up-line. The deafening noise of steam, the clamour of voices, the wailing of children, the cries of women, rang out in the arch of the tunnel. But in the first- class carriage there was silence, and darkness, for with the shock all the lights had gone out.

Presently in the darkness a match spurted. He raised himself on one elbow and tried to drag his other arm from under the wood that imprisoned it. The arm was tightly wedged, and he felt that it was broken. He lit another match, his teeth set in agony, and looked round for her. She was lying quite near him, yet not within reach, all twisted up, a heap of dark cloth and furs. Her eyes were closed, and there was blood on the ghastly white of her face.

‘My darling! my darling!’ he cried, and with that he tore at his imprisoned arm to free it – that he might get to her – fought and tore till from sheer pain he went out of life.

•  •  •

When the sufferers were one by one drawn out of the wreck, he and she were among the last to be released. He regained his consciousness in the anguish of that release.

They bound up his arm and her head, and, clinging to each other, they tottered out of the tunnel by the light of the torches and climbed into the relief train. It was crowded with pale, bandaged faces and limbs swathed in white.

‘I shall get out at the first station,’ he said, and his voice was coldly polite. ‘By the way, I didn’t quite understand. Does your wedding take place on Christmas morning?’

She leaned a little against his uninjured shoulder, and so closely was the carriage packed that he could not draw away.

‘If you wish it,’ she said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he questioned courteously.

‘Oh, hush!’ she whispered. ‘You cannot go on pretending any more now. When you thought I was dead, you called me your darling. Do you remember?’

‘You are mistaken,’ he said, but she answered with eyes that laughed at him from under the white bandage.

‘Don’t scowl at me. I am not a bit afraid of you. Nothing matters now I know that you love me. You will see – I shall have everything my own way. Dear, put the naughty black dog up the chimney; I have no pride now – I am going to be your darling—’

Under the sables, her hand, in its torn, grimy glove slipped into his. He clasped it and: ‘You have exorcised the devil,’ he said softly; and her fingers clung to his.

‘Say it again – now you know that I am not dead.’

So he whispered in her ear in that crowded carriage the most banal of love’s banalities: ‘My darling!’ and then for a time they spoke no more.

It was at the first stopping-place that he said: ‘I had better come home with you and explain to your people the immutable nature of our intentions.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And you must telegraph to Lord Leamington. Writing won’t do – a wire the moment the offices are open.’

‘Yes.’

‘And – my darling – Christmas Day is a very good clay to be married on—’

‘Yes—’

‘Yes, what?’

‘Yes, my darling!’

«•»

From: The Windsor Magazine Jan. 1904

The Kiss

Their first meeting was in the long gallery among the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum. Enthusiast though he was, he was tired, as human souls are tired, with the cold reserve of carved stone – the imperturbable mystery of these old kings and gods who had kept for thousands of years, amid the shifting sands of the desert, their immemorial secrets. His eyes ached with the close scrutiny of minute and delicate detail. Then suddenly his eyes rested on her, fair and laughing and full of the joy of life, and his soul rejoiced because there was still youth in the world, and secrets that no kings and gods had power to keep from the sons of men who walk the earth today.

She came along the gallery between two other girls, but he did not see these as living creatures – only as dark figures against the light of her presence. It was not till they three were close to him that he became aware of her, and looked up. Their eyes met and stayed together in a look that lasted a very long time – almost half a minute. She came up quite close to him, always with those others that did not count, and then abruptly, the three turned to the right and the swing doors of the refreshment room vibrated behind them.

Then he tried to analyse that look of hers – not bold or provocative, yet with no timidity, no bashfulness, no self-consciousness. It was the look of one who trusts the world and thinks well of it. Many girls nowadays have that frank, fearless look. The qualities which made the look a thing worth analysing were two: its length and a singular quality of recognition. Did she know him? Had he ever met her before?. No, he could not have forgotten her. He lingered in the gallery till she and her companions came back through the swing doors. This time she had no eyes for him. He sauntered slowly the way they went, noted all down the Roman gallery the grace of her free gait, saw her disappear into the reading-room, and went home.

His home was in Kent, and he was going to say good-bye to it for awhile – for next week he started for the East, to watch, under cloudless skies, paid and uninterested workers scraping at the earth to bring to light such cold witnesses to old faith and loyalty and love as lined the gallery where he had met her. The last days were full. His father who stayed at home and wrote the books for which Neville gathered the materials, had many last words to say. Also his typewriting girl had gone off ill, and there was a delay in getting another. So Neville spent a good many hours in the work secretaries are paid for. Also his aunt, who adored him, wanted his opinion on the new Dutch garden that was now a bit of meadow beyond the orchard, and was to be a blaze of formal beauty when he came home again.

‘You’ll think about that mass of yellow tulips and forget-me-nots when you are boiling your brains in Egypt,’ she said.

‘I’m not imaginative enough,’ he told her. ‘I shall see the old garden as I always do, and the rose arches all red and pink and yellow, and my nice aunt snipping off the dead flowers with a pair of rusty scissors.’

‘Aren’t there any flowers out there?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes, cactus flowers, but they’re not pleasant to pick. It’s difficult to believe that spring really will come again, isn’t it? when one sees the brown bare trees and the heaps of dead leaves.’

‘But all the flowers are there under the leaves,’ said the aunt; ‘and spring really will come again.’

The aunt was right. Spring did come again. And with its coming came Neville Underwood from the dry East. He sent his luggage up from the station in the dog cart that came to meet him, and he himself walked up through the woods in the splendour of one of those afternoons when May takes the rôle of July and plays the part perfectly.

The beeches were thick with bright light leaves, the elms were fully dressed; only the oaks stood almost bare. The undergrowth .of hazel and sweet chestnut was thick and fresh. Through its moving green the sun made a golden haze and the shadows of the leaves danced on a pathway that was all green grass and glad little thriving wild weeds.

‘Dear God; but it’s good to see green woods again,’ he said.

And it was here, among the woods, that he met her the second time. In the middle of that wood is a carrejour, an open space of bright fine grass, and from it four broad green rides run, straight as arrows, dip and dwindle and grow invisible with distance. The ground is green, the undergrowth is green and the new fronds of bracken and the trees overhead. And in all this green a note of deep blue is likely to take the eye of the gazer.

It took him through a tangle of woodbine and wild rose trails. He went about and skirting the thicket came to a little clearing. A tree had been cut down and its branches lopped. And here was the blue; it was a girl’s dress and the girl herself lay on the ground, her head on a cushion of green leaves, one hand clenched on her breast and the other by her side; her body thrown there, with all the abandonment of a tired kitten that sleeps in the sun at flat full length. So still she lay he could hardly believe that she slept. He stood and gazed at her. Not a movement. It was still there, in the warm wood; not a hair of her loosely bound locks stirred. Was she asleep? Could she have fainted? A keener question pierced him suddenly. There were crimes – even in England. One read about them in the newspapers. He came nearer – stooped beside her. His hand hesitated. Could one – dared one, lay one’s hand under the heart of a strange lady, no matter what mad fear suddenly caught one? And he did not know her. All he remembered of her was her eyes and these were shut. Perhaps he would never have known her if she had kept them shut. But, as he, kneeling, stooped more nearly to listen for her breathing, her eyes opened and he knew her. Her eyes opened, she smiled sleepily. Then—

•  •  •

It was impossible. There he stood in the wood, and there she lay, eyes closed, motionless as ever. Could one have these momentary dreams? Were woods sometimes enchanted, as old tales would have one to believe? For it had certainly seemed to him that she had opened her eyes, smiled and then – that she had put up an arm, soft and firm through the sun-warmed linen of its sleeve, had caught him round the neck, drawn his face down to hers till he had kissed her on the lips. Incredible, impossible. And further, it had seemed to him that his kiss had only been given as a rejoinder, an unavoidable rejoinder.

So he stood, looking at her, and now he saw that whether he had dreamed this or not, she was not dead, nor fainting, but equably asleep. At any rate the deep, soft breathing that stirred the blue linen over her bosom, the eyelids deep-drooped, and with never a flicker of awakening, the limp abandon of the hands told of nothing but sleep – deep sleep. Only now the pallor of her face was flushed with rose-colour.

He stepped back through the quiet green and walked home through the part of the wood which was not enchanted. The warm touch of her mouth was on his all the way. But it vanished when the aunt’s soft faded cheek lay against his lips, and the brilliant patchwork of the Dutch garden shut out the green woods of magic happenings. The glad dance of the leaves in the green wood paled before the father, full of glad questionings and comments, his trembling hands stirring deep drifts of rustling leaves – notes for the new book, on all sorts of odd scraps of paper – it was good to be at home where one was so loved, so desired. And he told himself that he must have fallen asleep in the wood. Certainly the girl from the Museum could never have fallen asleep there.

Tea was served under the copper-beech.

‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Neville asked, for the cups were four.

‘Only Phil – your father’s secretary, I mean,’ said the aunt. ‘Ah, here she comes – ’

And of course it was the girl from the Museum who came across the lawn in her blue dress, with a hat that hung from her arm by knotted strings.

Neville heard the aunt speak kindly to the girl, heard his name and another name, and found himself bowing to the girl whose lips— But he heard nothing distinctly, because of the horrible new certainty that sprang at him. It was true. It was no vision. This girl whose eyes had haunted him among the Egyptian tombs more than once and more than twice – this demure girl who was his father’s secretary, this girl had really of her own free will drawn down the head of a perfect stranger with that arm now reached out for her tea cup, had drawn it down till the stranger’s lips lay on hers. ‘It was beautiful in the woods,’ she was saying.

She was sitting there – talking to his aunt and his father – quietly, as if nothing had happened. She, who had kissed a stranger in a wood. She had never thought to meet him again. Just the passing kiss, the moment of pale stolen fire – and now she had met him, what would she do? Nothing, she would brazen the whole thing out. Horrible. But she had not been able to help blushing. It was that deep, slow-fading blush that had enlightened him – had shown him that it was no vision, that she also remembered. A burning crimson blush, over face and ears and neck; and the aunt had said:

‘I hope you haven’t hurried, dear, in this heat.’

And she had said: ‘I didn’t want to be late for tea.’

He handed bread and butter to her. She was not blushing now.

‘Oh, bother,’ said Neville to himself, ‘now all the peace and pleasure is gone. It won’t be like home with a wicked little cat like that about the place.’

She was pretty, he decided, much prettier than he had thought her at the Museum. Pretty, and in an open-eyed, candid-looking way that did not rhyme with the disgraceful conduct of that girl in the wood.

She went away, presently, with the father to garner into sheaves those loose leaves of notes. Then Neville heard how she was the daughter of Grantham, the great Egyptologist, dead these three years, how she was very clever at her work, very good company, and altogether a dear child. ‘But you mustn’t fall in love with her, Neville,’ the aunt said, ‘and thank Heaven you’re not given to that sort of thing.’

‘Thank Heaven I’m not! But why mustn’t I?’

‘Because she’s got a sweetheart already.’

‘She would have,’ he told himself, ‘a sweetheart – half-a-dozen most likely.’

‘How I know is that Mr. Maulevere asked her to share his heart and vicarage – yes – before she’d been here a month. I thought it would be a very good thing for her, for he’s really not bad, is he? And she is quite without means. Though she’s so well connected. But no. Then I got it out of her that there’s someone else.’

‘I congratulate her,’ said Neville lazily. ‘The jasmine’s late this year, isn’t it?’

‘The jasmine flowers in July,’ said the aunt severely, ‘and I congratulate him. For if ever there was a dear, good, kind, unselfish girl—’

‘Then I congratulate you,’ he said, ‘and no doubt it’s lucky for me that I’m not given to “that sort of thing.”’

It was ‘that sort of thing’ – an unworldly romance – that had in his teens caused Neville’s relations to send him, for change of scene, to Southern climes. In other words, he had gone with one of Cook’s tourist tickets to Egypt, and there his father’s hobby, hitherto a sealed and dull-seeming book to him, had suddenly grown to be the most important thing in the world. He had come back to England, cured of his passion for poor vulgar Amabel, with the red hair, flaxen at the roots, and the black eyelashes and brows that were white when the dye was off them. He came back cured, despising love and wearing round his neck a charm that a gipsy woman from the desert had given him when he had saved her life from the keen blade of one who had been her lover. ‘Wear it always,’ she had said; ‘it will keep you from unworthy loves.’ And it – or something else – had kept him. ‘It has a further power,’ the woman had added, ‘but that you will learn when the time comes.’

He was not a superstitious man, but he wore the amulet. It did not keep him from the remembrance of an arm round his neck – lips on his – the shameless effrontery of a worthless girl.

‘I hope,’ said the aunt anxiously when the father had gone to his study, and Philomela to her bed, ‘I do hope you’re not going to dislike that girl. You hardly spoke to her all the evening.’

‘Didn’t I?’ he said. ‘I’ll do better tomorrow.’

So next morning when he saw her gown – it was mauve today – among the little orange trees in tubs that had just been moved out of the greenhouse on to the end of the terrace, he went across the grey crooked flag-stones to her.

‘Good morning,’ he said, and he could hardly have said less.

‘What a beautiful old place it is,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I wonder whether you know how lucky you are to have been born here.’

‘It’s old certainly,’ he said, ‘and extremely shabby.’

‘That’s part of the charm,’ she said; ‘really rich people never have anything beautiful because they always pay someone to make it for them. But look at the new garden. Miss Underwood and I made that – oh, of course Sam did the dull digging – but he’s as proud of it as we are. We put in all the bulbs, made the plans and everything.’

She was talking without a trace of embarrassment.

‘That’s true,’ said he.

‘And having the drawing-room re-papered. That was an event. It took us a week to choose the paper. Now Really Rich People who can have their rooms papered whenever they like! And the orange trees – you don’t know how we’ve nursed them all winter. If Miss Underwood could buy new ones when these died – why, they’d be nothing.’

He liked her voice, he liked the turn of her head, he liked her eyes – he had always liked her eyes.

‘I do not like you at all,’ he said inwardly – ‘oh, not at all. You shall not make me like you.’

But he stayed talking with her in the little wood of orange-trees till the aunt had laid away the jingling housekeeping keys and joined them on the terrace.

Then she went to her work in the library. He strolled in presently, to talk over the book with his father.

‘You won’t mind Miss Grantham staying with us?’ said the father. ‘She can take down everything you say in shorthand – and as she’ll have the whole transcribing of the book to do—’

‘Of course – of course,’ said Neville.

In the course of that morning he found out that Miss Grantham was not only pretty but clever. That she knew more about his special subject than any woman he had ever met.

‘Curious,’ he said to himself as he strolled in to lunch. ‘Curious how I dislike that girl.’

Dislike her he might, but it was impossible not to talk to her, as it is not to answer an amiable and intelligent child. Not that she was childish or even childlike, but she seemed so unconscious of any reason why she should not talk to him. And there were so many things to talk about. The book, the garden, the old house: the growing glory of spring putting on the vestments of summer, the brasses in the old church, the new green of the aspens in the church yard.

It was one day when the haze of great heat turned the woods blue and the far hills violet that they stood by the broken balustrade of the terrace and looked out over the fields of flowered grass dimpled by the wind.

Her eyes were fixed on the wood: the wood.

‘I wonder,’ he said suddenly and quite without meaning to say it, ‘why you blushed so when my aunt introduced me to you.’

She blushed again now and turned her face away to gaze down the uneven line of the grey parapet.

‘Why was it?’ he urged.

‘I did hope you hadn’t noticed,’ she said.

‘Noticed? My dear Miss Grantham, it was like a regiment of soldiers in the sunlight. No one could have helped noticing it. Was it surprise at seeing someone else there having tea?’

He gave her that loop-hole because suddenly he found that he was sorry for her. After all, she had done him no harm. Save for that one shocking incident in the wood she had been to him all that a girl should be to a man in whose father’s house she is a well-paid servant and an honoured guest. She had been courteous, dignified, useful, amusing—

‘No,’ she said, avoiding the loop-hole, ‘it wasn’t surprise, because of course I knew you were coming. But I didn’t know it would be you.’

He wished then very earnestly that he had not begun to ask questions.

‘Oh, never mind,’ he said quickly, ‘it doesn’t matter.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘It was an impertinent question.’

‘No, no,’ she said eagerly. ‘I’ve often wanted to tell you. I knew you’d noticed me blushing in that insane way. It was because I met you once at the British Museum – of course you don’t remember it.’

‘But of course I do,’ he interrupted.

‘I hoped you wouldn’t,’ she said, ‘because I stared at you. I really honestly didn’t know I’d done it till afterwards. I stared at you for quite a long time – and then – when I saw you at tea on the lawn here – I remembered, and I hoped you wouldn’t.’

‘But why did you stare at me, as you call it – in the Museum, I mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said very earnestly. ‘I can’t think. It was as if I’d seen you before and been looking for you, and then suddenly there you were. I believe I expected you to shake hands. It was as if we were old friends. It does sound most frightfully silly. Do you think one ever has moments when one is quite mad?’

‘I do,’ he said earnestly. ‘I do indeed; I’ve had moments when I’ve fancied the most extraordinary things. But they’ve not been true,’ he added stoutly, ‘any more than it was true that we’d met before that day at the Museum.’

‘Are you sure we never met before – at a dance or anywhere? Oh, yes, I used to go to heaps of dances before father – when father was here. Are you sure that we never met before?’

‘Quite,’ he said. ‘I should never have forgotten it if we had.’ His tone was one she had never heard.

And now he was quite certain that the hollow in the wood and the sleeping blue figure and the round arm and all the rest of it had been only a vision – queer and unaccountable, but still a vision. The certitude made a new heaven and a new earth for him. How could he ever have thought that she, she who was all that a man’s ideal lady should be, could ever have put an arm around the neck of a stranger and – but why go over the silly tale again?

The silly tale, however, sang itself to him day and night like a song of the joy of all the world. He had felt her lips, though it had been but in a vision, and all his visions now, sleeping and waking, were of a time when he should touch those lips again.

He and she and the father worked hard at the book, often late into the night, but there were golden mornings and silver evenings when the garden was grey in star light, and the white moon fell into the river and lay there looking up at her reflection in the deep calm sky.

The aunt and the father looked on, and saw that more and more, in all the hours that the book did not claim, the two were together. And they were glad.

‘If only he can make her forget the other one,’ said the aunt, ‘he’ll never find such another – kind, gentle, sweet—’

‘And clever!’ said the father, ‘and patient. And pretty, too.’

‘That doesn’t matter so much,’ said the aunt, ‘but she’s so modest and sweet and – she has a perfect genius for gardening.’

‘And for our sort of work,’ the father said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s another girl alive with eyes like hers who knows shorthand, and the Egyptian and Assyrian script, and how to be always handy and never in the way.’

‘I must make her forget the other man, confound him,’ said Neville, and wondered savagely whether the other man had ever had wild, wonderful visions in woodland places.

Then came the wet day, the last of three, when the river was grey and lashed with rain and the garden lay drenched and the roses, bowed, mud-splashed, drooped and dripped. Philomela covered her head with the aunt’s waterproof and ran through the rain and the wild west wind to the stone summer house at the end of the terrace. Here was an unglazed window that looked eastward; from it one could look out, sheltered and safe, at the green seething wetness of meadow and wood.

Here he found her. He came behind her as she sat on the stone seat, and she did not turn her head.

‘Philomela,’ he said; his voice was low.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Standing at her shoulder he put his hand under her chin and turned her face up till he could see it.

‘Philomela,’ he said again, ‘is there anyone else?’

‘No,’ said she.

Then he touched her lips, and knew, at the touch, that it was not for the first time. That – in the wood – it had not been a vision. It had been real – real as this, real as his despair.

Yet he would be sure.

‘Philomela,’ he said her name for the third time, ‘have you ever fallen asleep in a wood?’

‘Yes,’ said she, and once more the crimson flush covered neck and brow and ears.

‘In that wood?’ It lay below them drenched in misty desolation.

‘Yes.’

‘The day I came home?’

‘Yes.’

‘God forgive you,’ he said; turned, and left her.

He went for a long walk in the rain.

That night at dinner the aunt and the father were surprised to learn that Neville was going to town by the early train in the morning; it was uncertain when he would return. He ate little and spoke of business too long neglected. He should go by the 6.15 before any of them were up.

He stayed up late that night, packing everything in a raging fury of energy. He had loved her – he did love her – and she was – that. There was no room in his brain for fatigue – there was only room for this furious anger against the woman who had made him love her – and she herself unworthy of the love of any man.

It must have been two in the morning when, the fire of resentment beginning to burn lower, he found suddenly that he was hungry. There would be less chance of sleep than ever if he were hungry. He was not young enough to spite his stomach to be revenged on his heart. He went down into the dining-room where the sideboard was, with the sherry and the biscuits and the cake. He lit the candles in the silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. Something moved close to him.

‘Who’s there?’ he said. The candles turned clear, and Philomela rose from the big chair that was his father’s. She wore the grey dress she had worn at dinner, and her face seemed grey, too.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he asked roughly.

‘I’m waiting to see you off,’ she said. ‘You know I’ve got to speak to you. It can’t end like this. People don’t do such things.’

‘What things?’

‘Leave women as you left me – after—— Oh, how I hate you! How dared you kiss me?’

‘I might ask the same question,’ he sneered.

‘You might?’

‘Yes,’ he said brutally. ‘And I will ask it. How dared you kiss me? Down there in the wood. How dared you put your arm round a stranger’s neck and draw his head down till he kissed you?’

‘I – you think I did that?’

‘I know it—’

‘But how – when?’

‘You know well enough – the day I came home.’

‘But,’ she said slowly, and her eyes did not flinch from his as the two stood in the darkened room with the candles’ steady light on their confronted faces, ‘if you know this you’ve always known it. Then why – all this time—?’

‘I couldn’t believe it. I thought afterwards it must have been a vision, a dream, an hallucination of the senses. How could I believe that you – you seemed so different – you – a stranger – shameless.’

‘Then if you couldn’t believe it then, why believe it now?’ Her voice was cold and toneless.

‘Because I kissed you again – fool that I was. When I felt your lips I knew it was not the first time – I knew, and you confirmed it; you owned that you’d been asleep in the wood that day, and you blushed – good God, girl, did you expect me to go on with it after that?’

She picked up one of the candlesticks, looked at it attentively, set it down very carefully in its place. Then she turned to him.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘First of all I’ll never see you, speak to you again as long as I live. If you could think that I – oh – how could anyone think it!’

The anger in her voice was fuel to the anger in his heart.

‘But – great God in heaven, you can’t mean to try to brazen it out! I didn’t think – you did it.’

‘I’m going to tell you the truth,’ she said, facing him. ‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not. I was asleep in the wood that day and I dreamed that you were there – and – and that it all happened as you say. And then I woke, and you were standing there. And I pretended to be asleep.’

‘But why – why did you pretend that?’

‘How could I look you in the face after dreaming that?’

‘And you never thought that perhaps it wasn’t a dream?’

‘How should I? Why! Oh, you shall have the whole truth. That day I saw you at the Museum, I knew you, though I’d never seen you and never dreamed of you. And ever since that I’ve dreamed of you almost always. That – in the wood was only a dream like another.’

‘Always of me? Never of anyone else?’

‘No,’ she retorted scornfully, ‘never of anyone else – good-bye.’

She turned to go; but he caught her arm roughly.

‘Let me go – you hurt,’ she said, but he said, ‘No; not yet. You shall tell me everything. Did you kiss me in your other dreams?’

‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, throwing back her head, ‘but in my other dreams I loved you – and you loved me. No – no – I will never forgive you, never. Let me go. It’s no good. I hate you. I wish I’d never seen you. No, no, no.’

He had not spoken but his eyes had implored.

‘No,’ she cried, ‘no, I will never for give you, never. Oh, how could you, how could you—’

‘Don’t cry – ah, don’t,’ he whispered with his arms around her.

•  •  •

‘Here,’ she said presently, lifting her head from his shoulder and feeling among the laces of her bodice, ‘my father told me to wear this always and to give it to the man I loved when I was certain he loved me. He said it would keep me from unworthy loves.’

He took it from her hand. It was an amulet. ‘Oh, but—’ he said, and showed her the one he wore – its counterpart.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I knew you had that. Your aunt told me. So then I knew that nothing could part us.’

‘But you said you’d never speak to me again – you’d never forgive me.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘yes – I said that.’

The pink flush of sunrise was over the drenched garden as they opened the French window and stepped out onto the terrace. She stopped and faced him.

‘Now I’m quite, quite sure,’ she said. ‘I want to tell you one thing. Then there won’t be even a shadow between us.’

‘There is none now,’ he said.

‘That day – in the wood – sometimes I have wondered – whether it was a dream. And yet I thought it couldn’t be true. But I did wonder if it could really be only another dream like the others.’

‘Why?’

‘Come, let’s go and walk in the rose garden,’ she said, pulling at his hand.

‘But why,’ he persisted, ‘shouldn’t it have been a dream like the others?’

‘I – you – the kisses in the dreams were quite different,’ she said.

«•»

From: The American Magazine Apr. 1907

Saccharissa

and the

Candlesticks

Saccharissa collects candlesticks. Most of us collect something or other – postage stamps, or butterflies, 0r botanical specimens, or hearts, or memories. Even in our village there are collectors. Captain Smooth collects old maps; Miss Eversleigh old music. Saccharissa collects candlesticks. I believe she has eighty-seven, and she makes it a point of honour never to spend more than five shillings on a pair. The number of candlesticks added to her collection is strictly regulated by her income, and that, in turn, is regulated by the number of the fortunes made in trade. Her own trade is literature, or, as she calls it, ‘writing’; her special branch, the department dealing with deportment, with what is and is not done, with the inner mysteries of that rigid rule of conduct prevailing in ducal circles. When trade is good, there is a brisk market for ‘dainty manuals’ of manners, from which the nouveaux riches can study the fluctuating status of fish-knives, the correct weapon with which to attack hors d’oeuvres; can learn that you must say London and not town, luncheon and not lunch, as well as how to address a letter to an archbishop and what not to do with your table-napkins – serviettes, the N.R. call them.

An influx of newly married actresses, anxious not to disgrace the peerage, was responsible for that increase in Saccharissa’s income which led her, timid and reluctant at first, but presently enthusiastic, from brass to Sheffield plate. The first lapse was my fault. On the anniversary of her wedding-day I gave her, not without malice, I admit, a pair of stately candlesticks. Sheffield plate – the best period. The poison worked.

She thanked me prettily – she does everything as prettily as anything can be done – but I could see that her mind was not at ease.

‘We have no candles big enough for them,’ she said presently. ‘Twelves are all right for the brass candlesticks, but these ought to wear eights. If you come with me, we could run up to Bates and get the candles, and be back in heaps of time for dinner.’

We were then at tea. I have formed the habit of dropping in at Saccharissa’s at or after tea-time about four days a week. I adore Saccharissa – so does everybody. I also adore Mabel, to whom I happen to be engaged. This gives me the right to adore Saccharissa as much as I like, which is a good deal.

So she put on her fur cloak and the little velvet hood that the wild winds of our village in winter require, and we went to get the candles. But on the way we had to pass Ilford’s. If you happen to like the kind of things that Saccharissa likes, it is safer to pass the den of a lion whose front door has been carelessly left open than to pass Ilford’s. Ilford has in his window the most seductive things in the world. Salt-cellars and snuffer trays, old china, old paintings on glass, enamelled snuff-boxes that have belonged to people’s grand-uncles, and tortoiseshell tea caddies that have belonged to people’s grandmothers. I had bought those candlesticks there. And there was another pair – branching out like forest trees, three lights to each.

With one accord we stopped outside Ilford’s and flattened our noses on his plate glass.

‘I'll just ask—’ she said, and we went in.

Ilford was there. He knows his business. As we came out, having bought nothing. Saccharissa turned and said over her shoulder, just as though it didn’t really much matter either way – ‘I’ll have those three-branched candle sticks. You might send them down.’

We went on up the street – I intentionally mute, she silent with the agony of remorse.

‘It's your fault,’ she said presently. ‘They go so perfectly with the others you gave me. But I don’t know what Henry will say.’

Henry said nothing. He is married to Saccharissa, and has the sense to know when he is well off. I dined there that night, and when she said timidly ‘You haven’t admired the new candlesticks, Henry; Edward gave me two of them,’ she said –

‘That was very charming of Edward, but I am sorry for the old ones. Their poor brass noses seem a little out of joint, don’t they?’

So then she set up candles in the fifteen brass candlesticks that stand on the high dark mantelpiece, and lighted them all.

‘Poor dears,’ she said, ‘I love them as much as ever, only I love the others more.’

‘That,’ said Henry, ‘is one of the tragedies of life to which the victims can never accustom themselves.’

Henry goes to sleep after dinner. When he leaves London, he leaves his brains behind him, and becomes for the time as like one of our landed gentry as an Egypltologist of modest means can hope to be. He is out all day tramping wet fields with dog and gun. So that after dinner Saccharissa and I are practically téte-á-téte over the coffee cups.

Her drawing-room is charming, white panelled from floor to ceiling; it holds all the things that I should buy if I were not quite certain that Mabel’s drawing-room will have a Morris paper and be furnished throughout by Liberty’s. There is a cabinet of buhl, a bulging marqueterie bureau, banner-screens and chair-seats in faded needlework, framed samplers and coloured prints, a work-table with faint pink silk flutings, a little piano, carved and silk fluted. It is the perfect drawing-room, and I am never otherwise than happy in it.

I could see that its mistress was not happy. There was a cloud.

‘What is it?’ I asked softly.

‘Did you see. . .’ she answered dreamily, ‘that other pair at Ilford’s? They must be fresh in today. I never saw them before. The weight of them! I don’t mind talking about them to you – I wouldn’t to everyone. But you’ve got too much sense to go and buy them and give them to me for a Christmas present. They‘re seven guineas. . . . Did you see them?’

‘I saw them right enough,’ I said – ‘clumsy, ugly things.’ And I wished she had not read my thought about Christmas.

•  •  •

It was the day before yesterday that I dropped in, late, for tea. Saccharissa greeted me brightly, but the brightness went out like a spent firework at the pouring of my second cup, and I knew she had something on her mind. So little happens in our village that anything in anybody’s mind is at once noted as a godsend. Besides. . .

‘Have you been to Ilford’s lately?’ I said, to make conversation. ‘He has a bureau that. . .’

‘Oh, I know,’ she said, and her tone touched the tragic, ‘he has a lot of new things – perfect, perfect! That man's coining money. Everyone said how silly to start a curio shop in a little village like this; but it’s on the high road from Dover to Hastings, and people in motors stop and buy everything that other people want. Henry’s furious,’ she added.

‘Nothing,’ said I, ‘will induce me to believe that your husband ever wanted anything from Ilford’s so much as to mind who else got it.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Saccharissa. ‘You know I don’t. It's about his pension.’

‘I didn’t know he had one.’

‘He hasn’t, of course. But his friends have been trying to get him one.’

‘Twenty years’ devotion to early Egyptian art does deserve something of its country,’ said I; ‘it’s a dull subject.’

‘It’s very interesting, if you only knew.’ Saccharissa doesn’t know, but she is so fond of her husband that it doesn’t matter. ‘He is furious, first because he didn’t get the pension, and then because anyone should have thought he wanted it.’

‘And is that what makes you sad?’

‘I’m not sad,’ said she. ‘And you’d be sad if your only son didn’t love you.’

I laughed. The idea of anyone’s not loving Saccharissa is in itself amusing, but Toto, who hangs worshipping to her adorable apron-strings!

‘But he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get rid of that Italian nurse. Today I said to him: “You love mother, don’t you, Toto?” and the wretch said “You love also the papa, Toto, non e ver?” and Toto looked like an owl, and – 0h, it was terrible! – he said—’

‘Well?’

‘He said: “I like best eating!”’

‘And that’s what makes you sad?’

‘I’m not sad,’ she insisted. ‘On the contrary, I’ve sold an article that’s been refused by every magazine and newspaper in Europe. “How Dukes Dine,” it’s called – you remember it. The new Socialist weekly has given me seven guineas for it.’

I could not for the moment understand why that should seem to be so faultlessly a just price.

Saccharissa enlightened me. ‘It is,’ she said almost in a whisper, ‘exactly what Ilford wants for those candlesticks. Oh, you can’t have forgotten – the ones I said you weren’t to give me for Christmas.’

‘It's a direct Providence,’ I said.

‘It's a wile of the devil,’ said she.

‘Come and buy them,’ said I gaily.

‘What will Henry say?’ she said, picked up her empty cup, put it down again, and smiled at me.

‘Oh, get your coat on,’ I said. ‘You know you mean to buy them.’

‘Indeed I don't,’ said she. ‘I can't afford them. I won’t buy them. I won’t—’

‘Someone in a motor,’ I said, contentedly stretching my feet to the fire, ‘will find them a bargain.’

‘I hate you!’ she said. ‘Oh, shall we? Do you think we’d better? Do you think it would be wrong? You see, I never thought anybody would buy “How Dukes Dine”; and it does seem almost as if—’

‘Why quarrel with your luck?’ said I. ‘But there – if you don't buy them, I shall.’

‘For Mabel?’ she wavered; and I think she would have been almost glad of the chance to be self-sacrificing.

‘No, for my sister Lucy.’

‘I will put on my hood,’ she said. She does not love my sister Lucy any more than I do.

So we went up the street, where the south west wind blew so that we could hardly keep our feet, and had to cling to each other like shipwrecked mariners. Ilford was just shutting up his shop, but he was quite pleased to see us. We came home, each carrying a candlestick and ‘wishing,’ like Charles Lamb with the brown folios, ‘that they had been twice as heavy.’

We spent a joyous hour polishing them, and I was asked to dinner. The candlesticks shone and gleamed.

‘Aren’t they heavenly?’ she said. ‘I never saw such candlesticks! Ought we to call them candlesticks at all? Isn’t it disrespectful? Aren’t they candelabra when they’re as big as that?’

‘Candelabra!’ I murmured reverently.

‘I believe,’ she said, putting away the plate-brush and wash-leather, ‘that Henry will kill me.’

But Henry was very sleepy. He only remarked that the new candlesticks were very large – and didn't Saccharissa think they rather overweighted everything else?

•  •  •

And tonight I could not resist the temptation of seeing her once more in her radiant happiness, basking in life’s sunshine – or, to be more accurate, enjoying life’s summer warmth under the shade of six silver branches; twelve, if you count the first ones she bought, and fourteen counting the ones I gave her for the wedding-day, which, of course, having no branches, really don't count at all. The street was cold and bleak. I saw Captain Smeeth through his uncurtained window bending over his old maps, and the sound of Miss Eversleigh’s harp came to me through closed panes. Almost all the leaves were off the trees, and the wind was sweeping them into corners, trying to persuade itself and me that, after all, summer was only rubbish and had better be cleared up as soon as possible, swept away into corners and forgotten.

The little short red curtains of Saccharissa’s house glowed welcomingly. I saw already the dull pleasant pink of her Lowestoft tea cups, the gleam of her silver tea-service, the magic of her smile, and the splendour of her candlesticks. There would be a fire, too – a wood fire – in the old, high, square grate of the panelled parlour. Muffins, perhaps. It is the baker's day for them.

The panelled parlour was there all right, but the tea was cold, there were no muffins, and the fire was out.

The candlesticks were there, it is true, and so was Saccharissa, but she was not smiling.

‘Tut, tut!’ I said a little petulantly, perhaps, for muffins are muffins, and I was disappointed. ‘You ought to radiate joy as the sun does heat. The candlesticks!’

‘That’s just it,’ she said.

‘Did Henry kill you?’ I asked as sympathetically as I could, for I like my tea warm, and, as I said before, muffins are muffins.

‘On the contrary,’ she affirmed, ‘he said they were worth double the money.’

‘Toto?’ I hazarded.

‘The darling!’ she said, with a brief flicker of enthusiasm. ‘He told me he didn’t want to be an angel, because nurse said Protestants didn't go to Heaven. I must get rid of that woman. “And you are a Protestant, mammy, aren't you?” he said. And he hugged me. He is sweet!’

‘And the candlesticks?’ said I. ‘You’ve let the fire out. Can’t I get some wood, or a candle-end, or something? The candle sticks! They cheer you, don't they? So beautiful, and your very own?’

‘That’s just it,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ she was good enough to say, ‘because you always understand everything.’

‘Why, aren't they?’

‘Oh, yes, they’re Sheffield all right,’ she said. ‘I found the copper line at the bottom, and I’ve filed a bit of the silver edging, and all that. They‘re all right.’

‘Well, then?’ said I, doing useless things with cinders and the poker and a wax match.

‘Well – don’t you see?’ she said slowly. ‘It's all over. They’re mine. I can never go and buy them again. Never again any more as long as I live.’

‘There are others,’ said I. ‘Not like those. Besides, I mustn’t let Sheffield plate become a habit. Habits are so difficult to break, aren’t they?’

‘I could break those candlesticks,’ I said. ‘the twisty part – easily.’

‘Ah, don’t!’ she said; ‘it's all very beautiful. They’re mine, and I’m frightfully happy, really. But I can’t ever again. It's the getting them that’s so beautiful – and now that’s over.’

‘It’s like,’ said I, ‘it’s like – it’s like love and marriage.’

‘Oh, Henry,’ she said to her husband, who at that moment came in, very muddy, with four partridges, a hare, and a pheasant dead and dangling – ‘oh, Henry, he says our candlesticks are like love and marriage!’

‘Because they light the night of life?’ said Henry. ‘He is very polite.’

I let him think so.

«•»

From: Windsor Magazine May 1910

Three Women

She had a hard face rather like a hen’s, and that indescribable air of being a competent lodging-house keeper which marks the bust of the Empress Faustina. Her skirt, obviously ready-made, was a little too long behind, a little too short in front, and disclosed buttoned boots of an aggressive cut. These boots, one felt, could trample on anything, and would. She had a fur hat with a large, defiant feather, a jacket trimmed with dyed rabbit, black gloves, and a cotton umbrella with a gilt hooked handle.

She swung into the waiting room, walking with that strut which suggests that the walker is not merely bifurcate like ordinary human beings, but has its legs stuck on at the corners of the trunk, like a table or a wooden horse. Her violet dress, black-braided, contrasted unpleasingly with the yellow varnished seat as she sat down and arranged her belongings beside her. A strapped basket, two brown paper bags, a newspaper parcel, and Ellaline’s Weekly Haporth of Real Romance, a pestilent print, combining hints on dressmaking with the history of the New Pamela. The belongings spread themselves as she rearranged their contents till half the seat was littered with them.

The woman at the other end of the seat moved a little as she remolded her handkerchief in her thin, red hand, seeking for a dry part. Her eyelids were red as well as her hands. And her dress was of the cheapest black. There was time-honoured crape, brown and a little dusty, on her ugly bonnet. Her eyes were pale and grey. Her face was pale and her lips, too, that trembled. Only the eyelids and the hands were red. The rest was black and white.

When she moved, the other woman swept her property nearer to her with a gesture indescribably insulting. If you had seen her you would have wanted to say: ‘She wasn’t going to touch your wretched paper bags and things, Mrs. Faustina.’

You would not have said it, maybe, and you would have been right, for the pale woman did not notice, did not mind. She had something else to think about, perhaps. Outside, the rain was falling straight and steady; perhaps she was thinking of that. She looked once at the leaden-coloured square of sky that the window framed, and shivered.

If she had stood up she could have seen the white stones of the cemetery through a curtain of grey rain. There the two sat, each alone.

The third woman who entered was not alone. She held in her arms a little baby. The third woman was very young, thickset, short, with the eyes of a frightened deer and the face of a florid rabbit. She was dressed as servant girls dress on their days out, in a hot brown costume and the most unbecoming blue hat in Europe. She sat down opposite the other two, and frankly suckled the child.

Faustina turned her full eyes from the indelicate spectacle. The pale woman watched as though she did not want to watch. It is not manners to stare, but there are things stronger than manners.

The three women sat in silence till the child, satisfied, sighed and slept. Then the mother adjusted its cloak. Her coarse, foolish face, bent over the baby, took on for an instant that beauty which comes to women’s faces thus inclined. She raised the child from her knee, kissed it, stood up with it.

Then for the first time she looked directly at each of the other women, looked from one to the other, as if appraising, comparing values. Her decision was soon made. Perhaps she saw only that Faustina’s clothes had cost more money than the other woman’s, that Faustina was at least well nourished, in her sphere obviously prosperous. At any rate it was toward Faustina that she advanced.

‘You might hold him a minute,’ she said, ‘while I get me ticket.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Faustina, too surprised to refuse.

The sleeping child changed hands, and the mother walked away on large boots that creaked. She looked in through the window a moment later; the baby was lying in Faustina’s lap. And that was the last that either of the other women saw of her. For the minutes went by, and she did not return.

Faustina rose as the whistle of the down train sounded.

‘She’s a long time over that ticket,’ she said aloud, yet not to the other woman, and went to the window, the baby in her arms.

The down train was in, on the other side of the station.

Suddenly Faustina turned with a fierce cry.

‘She’s bolted,’ she cried. ‘I see her blue hat get into that train. It’s a fair do. Here, take the child.’

She thrust the baby into the hands of the woman in black, and rushed from the waiting room, tore along the platform, and over the bridge, just as the up train steamed in to the platform she had left, and the down train steamed out from the platform at which she had arrived too late. The down train bore with it the blue-hatted mother, successful in flight.

‘Wait till the up train’s gone,’ said the station master, whom Faustina furiously importuned. ‘Can’t attend to you till that’s gone.’

When it had gone, Faustina, voluble and fierce, led the station master to the waiting room, where the baby had been given her to hold.

‘As fair a plant as I could wish to see,’ she said. ‘A nice set out, I don’t think. Well, you can send the child to the union, I suppose, and set the police onto the mother – nasty, low hussy – pawning off her brat on a respectable married woman. It’s in here, sir; you just see.’

But there was nothing to see save the empty waiting room and Faustina’s littered luggage.

And in a corner of a third-class carriage of that opportune up train, a woman in black, with red eyes and thin hands, clasped closely, delicately, passionately, a little, stolen baby. It is quite easy to become a. thief, all in a moment, without meaning to, if only you want a thing badly enough. And this that she had stolen, no one else had wanted it, not even the mother who had borne it, in fear and shame and wretched secrecy.

The rain was still falling. The woman looked out of the carriage window, and now she saw the bleak acres of gravestones and graves, newly filled, not marked with any stone. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t feel it,’ she told herself; ‘perhaps it’s not really cold in the grave when once you’re covered up with earth.’ But she shivered all the same.

Then she pressed the little, warm, sleeping shape up under her chin and thrilled to the soft touch of it.

‘Oh, you dear! You dear! I’m glad I didn’t let Emma have the cot blankets,’ she said.

«•»

From: Ainslee’s Magazine Nov. 1910

The Unfought Duel

I

All three of them were young, and none of them was very wise. Also they lived in mid-Victorian times, when all well-brought-up young women were expected to be really romantic, and the young men were not ashamed to be romantic too. The influence of Heine and Haynes Bayly was still strong in our midst. The thing could only have happened in the age of crinoline and white stockings, of ringlets and harp-playing, when young ladies drew landscapes carefully in pencil, and made cut-paper lamp-shades; when archery was popular because with discreet revelation it displayed the figure; when it was as shocking in a man to smoke ‘before ladies’ as it would have been to swear before them, and when girls were chaperoned by chaperons, and not by married persons having dyed hair and painted faces, with the manners of men, the minds of mice, and the morals of monkeys.

Sybilla’s hair was brown and soft – soft as her heart, which, by the way, was much too soft. She had every charm you can think of, and her only fault was the iron egoism of the soft-hearted. She knew that she was enjoying herself, though in her intimate correspondence she called it being ‘racked by conflicting emotions.’ The fact that the other two were wretched was a great pity, of course, but it could not be helped. A really womanly girl could not be expected to know her own mind all in a moment. As for her heart – the heart of woman was a mystery, so she was assured by all the poetry and most of the prose which she had read. She revelled in the conflicting emotions, and almost spoiled a hand-screen in embossed cardboard on which she was painting fuchsias and auriculas with a pencil background, by dropping a hard-wrung tear on to the smooth red surface of the leading fuchsia.

Sybilla’s heart had not been a mystery to her in the spring when Harry Combermere was teaching her all about archery. The way he strung the bow for her; the way he looked. . .

Oh, my dear, she wrote to a friend at Tunbridge Wells, you should have seen his eyes! What marvels of respectful admiration in their depths! And I do like fair whiskers, do not you? with the hair slightly long, and a velvet collar to the surtout. His eyes are blue as the heavens, and I am sure it is Heaven’s truth that beams from them. I am indeed a fortunate girl. He hasn’t exactly said anything, but one always knows, does one not?

The friend replied that indeed one always did know, giving details of a chestnut-coloured whisker and hazel eyes, also true as Heaven.

‘Sybilla, my dear,’ said her mother, looking up from her tatting, ‘I hope you are not encouraging Mr. Combermere, unless you feel a sincere attachment for him. I should not like to think that my daughter could stoop to encourage hopes which she did not mean to fulfil.’

‘Oh, no, indeed, mamma,’ murmured Sybilla, inevitably vague but consciously ingenuous. ‘Mr. Combermere is a very agreeable acquaintance. No more, I assure you, dear mamma.’

So the mother, soothed, tatted placidly on, to the music of a pleasant refrain, ‘Three thousand a year, three thousand a year,’ which happened to be Mr. Combermere’s income, and quite a little fortune in those frugal days.

Sybilla, after a decent interval of conversation with the canary in his green cage, went out to meet Mr. Combermere by accident in the shrubbery.

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Combermere, just as you and I might have done yesterday in similar circumstances.

And Sybilla answered: ‘I didn’t see who it was, at first’ – just as she might have yesterday answered to you or me.

And then there was a pause; and then she walked on, and he walked beside her, thrilled. The otto of rose from her handkerchief was wafted intoxicatingly across his face, and the steels of her enormous crinoline veiled by blue barège brushed the side of his knee as they walked. It was a divine moment. He had never felt so near to her.

They walked through the shrubbery and down towards the lodge, the blue barège swaying and intoxicating.

‘Which way are you going?’ he had to ask at last.

‘I am going into the village to distribute some tracts for mamma,’ she said; and her voice was the voice of an angel.

‘How good you are!’ he said, breathless.

‘Oh, no,’ she said; ‘it is only my duty.’

‘Only!’ he said; and his voice had almost the value of a declaration.

That was the conversation’s climax. For by this time they had reached the road, and the vicar overtook them, went with them on the tract delivery, and came back with them to take tea with mamma. But the talk is recorded just to show where the two were – in the country of the emotions – when Piercy Raymond came upon the scene.

He was the vicar’s nephew, and he had been abroad. Also he was a poet – a much rarer bird then than now. He had fine, flashing black eyes that melted when they rested on you.

Oh, my dear, wrote Sybilla to the Tunbridge Wells friend, his eyes go through you like silky, soft, delicious daggers. He has no whiskers, and that gives him such a distinguished air, and he is tall with a slight stoop. He reminds me of Manfred. When he shakes hands he does not do it hard, like people who have never been abroad, but softly – softly – and yet you feel he is never going to let you go again. Of course, he does let you go in the end, but it feels like that. The iron hand in the velvet glove, you know. And he has brought a new game called croquet, in a box, and we are going to play it tomorrow afternoon at the vicarage, and all to wear the same colours as our balls. Isn’t it a sweetly pretty idea? Blue, pink, black, yellow, brown, orange, green, red. He said I must be blue – true blue, you know – and he looked at my eyes. And when he asked what colour he should have I said black, and I am afraid I looked at his. It was very forward and unmaidenly of me, was it not? Oh, dearest, do write by return of post and tell me you do not wholly despise your own distracted

Sybilla.

The friend replied suitably, mentioning two agreeable and aspiring lieutenants from Maidstone. Sybilla went to the croquet party, and Mr. Piercy Raymond taught her how to hold her mallet. Harry was taught by the vicar’s aunt. Towards the end of the game he contrived to murmur:

‘You are not angry with me about anything, Miss Seymour?’ on a plaintive, interrogative note.

And Sybilla replied:

‘Oh, no, Mr. Combermere Why should I be? Excuse me, but I think it is my turn.’

He drew back bowing frigidly, so frigidly that she was frightened and sorry – she had a soft heart, as I told you – And when, after supper, there was dancing on the lawn, she danced three times with Harry, and when he said that strangers could never be quite the same as old friends, she answered:

‘Oh, no,’ most convincingly.

She only danced twice with Piercy Raymond. But then she sat out one dance with him – no dark corners or seats in shrubberies, but a hard, red rout-seat, full in the public eye. It was then that she agreed with Mr. Raymond that sometimes one feels as though one had met people before in some other life, and that those one had known longest might sometimes be the greatest strangers. He quoted ‘Strangers Yet,’ and she gave him a piece of lemon verbena from the window-box. Be sure that he found an opportunity to let her surprise him, later on, in the very act of kissing it, tenderly, reverently.

It was Harry who saw her and her mother and the aunt home. But she perceived dark eyes and a pale face gleaming from between two laurel bushes as she passed in at the lodge gate, and knew that Mr. Piercy Raymond had raced across three fields and climbed a sunk fence to get one more last least sight of her.

So she went to bed duly flattered and fluttered. She dreamed of Harry, but when she woke up in the night she thought of Mr. Piercy Raymond, and her hand still thrilled to that odd way he had of shaking hands.

You see the situation? Time and the innocent intimacy of well-to-do families living in the same village developed it. The players were keen, and two at least believed the game to be the game of life.

Mr. Piercy Raymond was smiled upon by mamma. His income was rather larger than Harry’s, and he had a second cousin who was a baronet. Harry also was smiled on; he was an old acquaintance, and, after all, you never knew, did you?

Then came the fancy fair. Even in those days there were bazaars, only they were called fancy fairs – at least, this one was. There were marquees, and tents, and stalls set out under trees, and a band; and Lady Blank patronised the fair, and Lord Dash was interested in it, and all the girls wore their prettiest frocks and sold rosebuds for half a crown apiece, just as they do now.

Now, fortune-telling was not then the weary commonplace that it now is at all bazaars. And when Mr. Piercy Raymond set up a tent under the weeping ash in the middle of the front lawn at the Vicarage, and hired a real gipsy from the real caravan that happened to be encamped on the common, he was considered to have done something very daring and original, so much so that no one dared to go near the fortune-telling tent till Lady Dash had said openly that she should have her fortune told.

Mr. Piercy Raymond was very anxious that Sybilla should have her fortune told. So was Harry Combermere, though he pretended to think it was all nonsense. Each gentleman had already consulted the witch. And each thought he had made her his instrument. But the witch appears to have been, like Lord Bacon, bribable, but incorruptible.

You see the pretty scene – the ballooning muslin dresses, the fluttering scarves and ribbons, the dappled shadows of the trees on the trim green lawn. There is Sybilla in the white muslin with cherry-coloured ribbons. She wears a mushroom hat – most of the other girls of her age wear spoon bonnets – and under it her blue eyes sparkle and languish. Her small pink mouth smiles guardedly. Her hands, ungloved because she has been selling flowers, play with a rose she wears; the tradition survives in our stage ingénues. The two young men, in their tightly-strapped peg-top trousers and high cravats, stand one on each side of her. For once they are of one mind. Miss Seymour must, simply must, consult the fortune-teller. Each adviser, you see, is confident of having squared the priestess of the mysteries.

‘Very well,’ said Sybilla, looking down her pretty nose, in the way that must, I think, have been taught in schools, along with deportment, le graces, and the use of the gloves, ‘I will go in. But I feel dreadfully timid. And suppose she said anything really – really interesting, and someone was to be passing outside the tent and heard it?’

‘Impossible,’ said Piercy.

‘Mr. Combermere and I will stand on each side of the tent at ten paces distant and warn off all intruders.’

‘Besides,’ said Harry, ‘she whispers it all in your ear.’

The two young men took their places. Sybilla gave a last glance to Harry, a last glance to Piercy, waved her hand, smiled dazzlingly, lifted the flap of the tent, and entered.

The inside of the tent was quite dark, and she stood still, uncertain. Presently she saw a swarthy woman with a handkerchief knotted under her chin, an orange handkerchief with a border of red roses. The woman was sitting with her elbows on a little table, the papier-mâché chess-table from the vicarage drawing-room; Sybilla recognised it. And the woman’s eyes met Sybilla’s.

‘Give me your hand,’ said the woman, and Sybilla gave it, the pretty little hand that had just waved a farewell to two enamoured young gentlemen.

‘Kneel down,’ said the woman, and Sybilla knelt. The woman bent her head over the soft, pink palm.

Then she began to speak.

II

The comedy is now played out, and the curtain is up for the tragedy.

Sybilla went into the tent under the sentimental weeping ash; she looked back, arch with the archness of the ringleted ideal, brilliant, triumphant, alluring. Without, her two lovers watched, each confident that he had bought the witch within.

There came no word of whisper from the tent. The shadows of the trees had shifted. The interview in the tent was long. Suddenly the flap lifted and Sybilla came out. The two men moved towards the white and cherry-coloured apparition, and they drew near each felt a quick thrill of something that hurt. Sybilla’s cheeks were pale, her lips were pale, her eyes were afraid, and the whole sweet shape of her drooped like a lily in the sun.

‘Could you find mamma?’ she said. ‘I am tired. I want to go home.’ She sank into a rustic chair – gracefully, of course.

There was a moment’s hesitation. Each hoped the other would go first. Neither did. So the two men went together. They found and brought mamma, and Sybilla said how her head ached and how silly it was of her, and did mamma mind? – but she thought if she went straight home now she would be all right by dinner-time. Mamma took her home, made her lie down, and put eau-de-Cologne on her head, kissed her lingeringly, and went away.

As soon as mamma’s footstep had died along the corridor Sybilla sprang up; the eau-de-Cologned handkerchief fell with a flop on the carpet. The cold air crawled on her forehead. She went straight to the looking-glass and gazed long at herself. Her head was aching now in good earnest, so she let her hair down, and even at that awful moment she thought how pretty it looked. She was quite right. It was pretty.

Then she went to her little purple-covered writing table in the window and wrote a letter to the girl at Tunbridge Wells. It was a long letter and rather incoherent. Here is some of it:

And they are both dining here and staying the night, and I don’t know how to face them. That hateful gipsy! The first thing she said when she, looked at my hand was, ‘This is a murderer’s hand!' I should have thought I should have screamed, would not you? But I did not. And then she went on. She told me all about both of them – everything almost they’d ever said to me – things I’d quite forgotten. And then she said it was girls like me that destroyed people out of wicked vanity. And it’s not true – you know it isn’t true. And she said, ‘You’ll be the death of both your lovers, and then perhaps then perhaps you will be satisfied.’ Isn’t it terrible? Of course, I don’t believe a word of it; but, all the same, I am trembling so I can hardly write.

She watched the trembling of her hand a moment, and then went on:

Suppose it were true! Oh, dearest, I wish you were here. If only I could tell someone.

With much more to the same effect.

When she had finished the letter she read it through, and then tore it up and burned the pieces with the utmost care.

And presently it was time to dress. You, fair reader, if you were scared out of your little wits by a gipsy’s warning that your charms would be the death of your lovers, would, of course, seek to modify those charms – do your hair in some new and ugly way, and put on your most unbecoming frock. Sybilla was not like that. She put on her white tarlatan ball-dress trimmed with looped garlands of pink roses, arranged the accustomed enhancement of ringlets, set the pink rose-wreath on her head, and took her spangled pink fan and the short white gloves with the little silk tassels. There was to be a dance to end the evening. Thus she had intended to dress for the dance. She saw no reason to revise the intention.

•  •  •

When she and her mother had driven away, the two young men turned each on the other to the music of the band of the fancy fair. The time had come when nothing would satisfy either but what the Americans prettily call a heart-to-heart talk with the other.

Heaven knows what foolishness was trembling on the lips of each as they walked through the crowd of gay buyers and sellers towards the rustic chair where Sybilla sat. But before either could speak they saw that the gipsy was standing in the tent door, beckoning to them.

So they went to her. She looked at Harry and said:

‘You gave me a pound to tell the young lady to marry you.’

Raymond ground his teeth.

‘And you,’ she said to him, ‘gave me five pounds for the same thing. I shall keep your money, both of you. And I’ll give you a bit of advice in return for it. Make friends with each other and drop the girl. You’re worth fifty of her, either of you.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Harry asked, white with anger. ‘The truth,’ said the woman, mildly, ‘and you saw how she liked it. But it needn’t be the truth unless you like. Shake hands betwixt yourselves, dear gentlemen, and don’t you go a-nigh her any more, and you’ll have got your six pounds’ worth over and over again.’

Before the men could answer, a bright, silly lady pushed between them. ‘Oh, is that the gipsy?’ she said. ‘I must have my fortune told.’

‘I’ve told all I mean to tell,’ the gipsy answered, frowning, and strode off across the lawn.

The silly lady had to be consoled.

Thus it happened that the two did not get their heart-to-heart talk till very late that night, when the dance was over, and they had driven their host, Sybilla’s brother, to bed and outstayed all the other guests in the billiard-room.

Sybilla had danced with both; she had been pale and sad-eyed, and thus, of course, had had for her lovers a new irresistible appeal. Each had told his love – both in the conservatory. And to each Sybilla had said that she did not know her own heart. If she had sought for a year and a day to find the most fatal reply to make, this, of course, would have been the result of her search. When she had said it to Piercy he kissed her hands. When she said it to Harry he caught her in his arms and kissed her cold cheek.

And now the two men were alone. Harry spoke.

‘We must have it out,’ he said. ‘I love her, and you know it. Until you came, she cared for me.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Piercy, ‘but she does not care for you now.’

‘You think perhaps she cares for you?’

‘If she did I should hardly choose you for my confidant.’

There was a silence full of hate.

‘It was all right till you came, I swear it was,’ said poor Harry, trying to fight down the hate in his heart and give the other man a chance to behave, as he phrased it to himself, ‘like a gentleman.’

‘I think you flatter yourself, Mr. Combermere,’ said Piercy. ‘Then you come with your cursed dish-wash about poetry and the moon, and make eyes at her and—’

‘Pray complete the complimentary indictment,’ said Piercy, with a sneer that almost showed his teeth.

‘Curse you!’ said Harry. ‘I tell you Sybilla—’

‘Stop!’ said Piercy, very sharp and sudden. ‘If you dare to take her name on your lips, I shall kill you – with my hands!’

‘You’d better try,’ said Harry, like some badgered schoolboy.

Then they stood looking at each other, in a second silence, full of something deeper and less simple than mere hatred.

‘Will you give her up?’ Harry said, at last.

‘I will not give up my chance of her,’ said Piercy, carefully. ‘Will you?’

‘I have kissed her,’ said Harry, who now no longer knew what he was saying, ‘and she shall never be another’s.’

‘I believe you lie,’ said Piercy, ‘but if that is true, there is not room for us both on the same earth. We will fight it out.’

‘There are pistols in the gun-room,’ said Harry, eagerly.

‘Pistols are noisy and – uncertain,’ said Piercy, coldly. ‘And a duel without seconds is awkward for the survivor. Yet, perhaps – Look here. There’s a way I learned in Italy. It makes no fuss – no one knows. It looks like an accident.’

‘Any way you like,’ said Harry, savagely, ‘so that I get a chance to wipe you out.’

Piercy leaned against the billiard table and spoke slowly.

‘We take two bits of paper – one is blank. We mark the other with a cross. We put them in two envelopes. I shuffle them – you shuffle them, as many times as you like. Then I take one and you the other; we say good night and go to bed. When we get to our own rooms we open the envelopes. The one who finds the paper marked with the cross must die. He can choose his own way out. And the other – still has his chance.’

Harry stood thinking.

‘You shall have first choice,’ said Piercy, impatiently, answering the other’s thought. It is not easy to believe, I know; but Harry got two envelopes and Piercy two bits of paper, and they sealed them up and shuttled them each in turn. Then at last Piercy threw them on the table.

‘Now, choose,’ he said.

But Harry could not choose.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I – Do you mind if we go to the gun-room and get those pistols first. If I were to draw the cross – I might not be able to stick to it if I had too long to think about it. Do you mind?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Piercy, courteously. ‘I think you are right. I will take a pistol myself. But I think, if I may say so, that it ought not to be done in the house.’

‘Of course not,’ said Harry. He wanted to say: ‘Look here, are we both mad? Let’s chuck it now and talk it over in the morning.’ And again the other man read his thoughts and said: ‘Afraid?’

And of course that settled it. They went quietly through dark corridors to the gun room. Raymond carried a candle in its heavy silver candle stick. The gun-room is at the other end of the house, and the house is a big one.

The moment they had left the billiard room something moved in it – something behind the screen that masked its second door, the door leading to the servants’ quarters. And someone came out into the room Of course, it was Sybilla. She flew to the table, caught up the envelopes with cold hands that trembled, pulled two new ones out of the paper rack, tore a scrap of blank paper for each envelope, pushed them in, closed and wafered the envelopes, laid them down and fled, holding the two other envelopes clenched in her hand. A flush of delight in her own cleverness warmed her like fire or wine.

She had come down because she knew in her newly-awakened heart that these men would quarrel about her. And she feared the upshot of that quarrel for the man she loved. For those kisses in the conservatory, on hand and cheek, had taught her to know her own heart. She had been very angry with both her lovers, but she knew now whose lover she was. And this knowledge had brought with it a certain wisdom and discernment new to her. The Sybilla of yesterday would have rushed between the two at the beginning of the quarrel, imploring her two lovers to be friends for her sake The new Sybilla perceived that thus most surely could she precipitate a tragedy. The only thing to do, she now felt, was to know what was happening. Then she could, somehow, save the man she loved, but not by melodramatic appeals.

Now, arrived at her own room, she stood in the darkness clutching the envelopes, listening, listening, listening. There was the sound of the billiard-room door closing, steps on the stairs, two doors that shut softly away on the upper corridor.

That was well; each would find in his envelope the blank paper that spelt Life, and would be safe for that night. And tomorrow when they found out – oh, things would look different in the morning; they always did. All the same she could not sleep, and when in the early morning the sound of a distant shot broke the grey stillness her heart only checked for a moment. Then she remembered that her brother and cousin meant to go out early after wood-pigeons. And so when the sun shone in at her window she fell asleep, almost confident that, given this respite, given time, she could ‘manage’ the two men who loved her. She was clever; she knew she was.

•  •  •

But there was no need of management, because when those two came back from the gun room, each carrying a blue-barrelled pistol – Piercy said, with half a laugh:

‘It ought to have been a black spot, not a cross. The cross is the symbol of life, not death.’

‘Let’s call it that,’ Harry said, impatiently. He was trying to keep a steady mouth. ‘Let’s have it that the blank paper spells death.’

And they had it so.

And each took one of the envelopes.

Thus when each, alone in his room, opened the envelope each found the blank paper which the clever Sybilla had put there. And each read on it the sentence of death. The brother and cousin had been t00 tired to go out after wood-pigeons, and the shot Sybilla heard was the shot that killed Harry Combermere.

Piercy, always thoughtful for others, was discreet even in his dying. He waited till his man came at eight with his shaving water, gave directions as to the suit he wished to have put out, and went down to the river to bathe. He never came back. His clothes were found on the river bank, and his body later below the weir.

•  •  •

You don’t really care, of course, what happened to Sybilla? You do? You think she was only silly, not really wicked – not responsible, when all’s said and done, for the ending of her two love stories? Well, perhaps you are right. Sybilla, at any rate, grew in time to believe she had been the innocent, helpless sufferer from an unpreventable tragedy. Within a year she was certain that she was not to blame. Within two she became the blushing bride of an opulent sugar-broker – an ending which might have been achieved, one cannot help seeing, at a much lighter cost than the lives of two men, each of whom was worth, as the gipsy pointed out, at least fifty Sybillas.

«•»

From: The Strand Magazine Dec. 1910

The Cheesewring

When you have been taken to Cornwall by a kind uncle and aunt and have been promised a round of interesting excursions, it is idle to pretend that you are not racked by something beyond sympathy when your uncle slips on a banana-skin and dislocates his ankle. Of course, it is very sad about the ankle, but youth is youth, and Valeria found the hotel at Liskeard intolerable. Her regrets for her uncle’s sufferings, sincere as they must have been, did not, somehow, fill all her waking hours.

‘I almost wish,’ she said, ‘that I had stayed at home.’

The aunt was, quite properly, devoted to the uncle, and Valeria was left to her own company.

She opened the window and leaned out. The air was soft, yet sharp; the sun shone, and the January sky had the tint of June’s. The Cornish Riviera was doing what it could to compensate, by agreeable weather, for the flung banana-skin.

‘Oh, bother!’ said Valeria; ‘I must go out. I’ll go and buy postcards.’

When she came back the aunt was reading the Western Morning News by the sitting-room fire, and announced that the uncle was a little easier and was trying to sleep, adding, ‘This is dreadfully dull for you, dear Valley. And I’m afraid your uncle won’t be able to get about for weeks. Would you like to go home again – tomorrow, say?’

‘And leave you alone? Of course I shouldn’t.’

‘I thought you wouldn’t, love,’ said the aunt, patting her hand, ‘so I was thinking – how would you like to look up anything in the guide-book that seems as if it would repay a visit, and go by yourself; in the motor, of course?’

‘But won’t you be lonely?’

‘No,’ said the aunt. ‘I shall be busy with your uncle, and we can have our little game of bezique in the evenings. You won’t be dull going alone?’

‘Oh, no!’ The disclaimer was perhaps a shade too enthusiastic. ‘I shall love it. You are a dear, kind auntie, and I’ll go to Restormal Castle today. I’ve looked it all up.’

She went where she would; there were no restrictions, except that luncheon had to be taken in the car, because young ladies must not go alone to hotels and eat.

To Valeria, the fourth daughter of a not too prosperous tea-taster, the mere luxury of it all made a strong appeal. To drive all over the country in one’s own carriage, wrapped soft in furs of price, warm and all alive, to see new things and new faces, to be entirely one’s own mistress for long hours – this was happiness indeed. And she had the nature that can keep company with dreams and not be lonely. Even the loneliness had its charm.

And on the day when she went to the Cheesewring she quite definitely wanted something to happen. Something – anything. Her dreams were not very exalted ones, and I am afraid they generally included a young man. The Fairy Princess always did dream of the Fairy Prince, and always will, whatever the really nice-minded may pretend to believe. There was to be a prince and a princess, and he was to like her awfully. That was about all.

But these hopeful opportunities for the meeting of princes and princesses are rare, and none had come to Valeria. She wished that she could drive the car herself. She wanted to get Edwardes wholly out of the picture, and on the Cheesewring day, Fate achieved this for her. For the road ends more than a mile from that wild cairn, and the motor was not quite well, and Edwardes had to own that it might take him a couple of hours to get her right again.

‘Sorry, miss,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind a bit,’ she said, brightly. ‘I’ll take my lunch up to the Cheesewring and have a picnic.’

She tramped off bravely down the grey village street, turned the corner she had been told to turn, and in two minutes her feet were on one of the little pony-tracks that intersect the Cornish moors – tracks older than any building within sight; tracks that date from ancient days of pack-horses and roads not made. The way wound up and up and up.

In front of her towered the tall rock encumbered with loose stones set in grass, with a quarry bitten out of one side of it, and on the quarry’s edge, the topmost point of that high and lonely place, the Cheesewring itself, the pile of giant stones against whose mystery such waves of conjecture have dashed themselves in vain.

Valeria, breathless with her climb – the last two hundred yards were a sort of toy mountaineering, and the basket had grown much heavier since she started – threw herself down on a flat rock and looked out over the vast landscape now unrolled before her like a map.

‘It was worth the climb,’ she said. ‘How quiet! How glorious! How lonely! I suppose no one ever comes here in the winter. I’ve never been so alone in my life.’

And even as she said it she heard a footstep on the rock behind her. A tremor ran through her. Be as brave as you will, a tramp is a tramp, and the spot, as she had a moment before joyously noted, was lonely.

She could see nothing; but she could hear the footsteps approaching. Then came silence. She listened, her ears straining, but there was nothing more. And suddenly, quite close, only just round the end. of the big stone, there was the sound of a sigh, a deep, heart-broken sigh – a groan almost.

‘What shall I do?’ someone was saying on the other side of the stone. ‘What shall I do?’

It was the sort of outbreak that comes after long, silent thought on some grave dilemma. The tramp was in trouble – bad trouble, that was plain. Only was it a tramp? The words were low-spoken; it was almost a whisper, but it was not Valeria’s idea of a tramp’s voice.

‘Ah!’ Another sigh came from behind the stone.

‘I think I’d better go,’ said Valeria to herself, and stood up. Then, quite without meaning to do it, she made a step, and another step.

‘I will give him some sandwiches,’ she told herself, ‘and see what he is like. It would be hateful to go away and just eat your own lunch when there’s someone starving here, perhaps.’

She went round the stone to give sandwiches to the tramp, and walked straight into the presence of the hero of her dreams. That is to say, she found herself confronting a young man who sat on a stone, just like the stone she herself had been sitting on. His attitude was one of deep dejection, and he was looking out over the bleak, wild land scape with eyes that seemed to see nothing but sorrow. This, in one instant, she saw. The next, he had sprung to his feet and taken off his hat.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said, not behaving at all as she behaved in dreams. ‘Can you tell me the time?’

He told her. keeping his eyes carefully from the leather-framed watch on her wrist.

‘Oh, thank you!’ she said, and turned away.

What else could she do? There had been no accident to introduce them, and Valeria had been far too well brought up to talk with persons to whom she had not been introduced. So there was the Prince, and there was the Princess, with nobody to introduce them. And the Princess turned and went down the hill, stumbling a little over the loose stones. And there was an end of the adventure. It really was a pity, because the Prince was tall and rather good-looking, suitably dressed in Harris tweed of agreeable pale stone colour. He had nice eyes, very bright and clear and grey. And altogether—

It really was a pity. Valeria thought so. And when she became aware that he was following her she did wonder, just for a moment, whether it had not to him also seemed a pity.

She stopped. He came towards her. It was a thrilling moment. What would he say? What could he say to which she would not have to reply by a cold word and prompt retreat?

He said, ‘Forgive me, but would you mind not telling anyone that you have seen me here?’

‘Why should I?’ she answered.

‘I don’t know. You probably wouldn’t. Only one does mention unimportant odds and ends. Only to me it isn’t unimportant. It’s—’ he paused a moment for the right word, and then gave it, weightily. ‘It’s vital – a matter of life and death, you know.’

‘For people not to know I’ve seen you?’ She was stupid with astonishment.

‘No, I’m not mad,’ he answered her thoughts. ‘I – I don’t know how to explain, and you don’t want to be explained to. Only you won’t give me away, will you?’

‘Of course I won’t,’ she answered, with youth’s generous warmth, adding, with youth’s tardy caution, ‘You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?’

‘I wish—’ he said, and cast a keen glance towards the village. ‘If we stand here we may be seen. I may be seen – and if you were seen with me – I know it’s too much to ask. Would you come back to that stone where I was when you asked me the time? Will you?’

It surprised Valeria very much to hear herself say ‘Yes.’

He turned and went up among the great stones, and she followed him. half frightened and half glad. Here, at any rate, was an adventure.

‘Well?’ she said, when the two of them were back in that little space, walled in on three sides by great stones, where he had sat and sighed and asked himself what he should do.

He was looking at her with the truthful grey eyes whose direct, fearless glance gave her the confidence to say again:

‘You haven’t done anything wrong, have you? It’s not the police you’re afraid of?’

‘No,’ he said, roundly; ‘it’s not the police.’ He hesitated, and then, suddenly, as one making up his mind once and for all, he said, quietly, ‘I am a Russian revolutionary.’

She clasped her hands. The situation was better, really, than anything she had imagined.

‘But you speak English so well. Couldn’t you disguise yourself? No one would know you were a Russian.’

‘I was at school in England; near here, too. But disguise would be of no use. Yes, I will tell you. I will trust you. I joined a secret society and made a vow of obedience. At last an order came that I could not obey. I was ordered to kill a Russian general. I could not do it.’

‘So you left them; you disjoined – resigned, I mean?’

‘You can’t resign from such things,’ he laughed, grimly, and added, ‘It’s a life membership. It’s like this.’ he went on; and again he seemed to hesitate and then to decide; ‘the penalty for refusing an order is death. So I am hiding here.’

‘But you can’t hide here forever.’ she said, with sudden common sense.

‘True,’ he replied; ‘and I needn’t. The president of the society can remit the penalty. Only he’s not in England at present.’

‘So you’ve got to hide till he comes home?’

‘Yes. He’ll be back in ten days. Till then I must hide.’

‘But’ – the whole situation was seeming more and more impossible to her – ‘what do you have – how do you get food?’

‘You think of everything.’ he said. ‘I have some in my den. There’s a hiding-hole here, a sort of square cave hollowed out. We found it when we were children, and, I don’t know why, we all swore to keep it a secret. I little thought then—’ He stopped, as one who finds himself going too far. ‘The entrance is covered over by a slab of stone like that.’

He pointed to the large flat grey slab on which her hand lay, pink and ungloved.

‘And suppose,’ she almost whispered, ‘someday when you opened it you found them outside waiting for you – the people who want to kill you, I mean?’

‘You have imagination,’ he said; ‘yes, and courage. Suppose they came now, and found you here with me?’

She rose hastily. ‘If there’s any chance of their being here today,’ she said, ‘go back to your cave now, at once.’

‘And leave you?’

‘They won’t hurt me. And I’ll tell them I’ve been here for hours, and there isn’t anyone here.’

‘Didn’t I say you had courage?’ he said.

‘But it isn’t like that. They—’ He paused, and seemed to consider. ‘You see, it’s like this. They won’t find out that I haven’t obeyed the order till tomorrow. So today’s safe. As long as no one knows I’m here.’

‘And if anyone does come,’ she urged, eagerly – ‘any chance person, I mean – I’ll say you’re my brother. I mean, I’ll ask them the time and say my brother’s watch has stopped.’

‘Like yours,’ he said, smiling, and she flushed a deep pink like a hollyhock.

‘Mine hasn’t,’ she said, bravely. ‘I heard you sigh, and I thought you were a tramp, and hungry perhaps, or something. And I thought I had far too many sandwiches – and – well, when I saw it was you, of course I had to say something.’

‘Your promise to let me be your brother removes my last anxiety,’ he said, with a gaiety that seemed to her the height of gentle courage. ‘And were there really too many sandwiches? There is nothing in my cave but biscuits.’

‘How horrible!’ was her heartfelt comment. And with hasty, hospitable hands she unpacked her basket. ‘See, look – sandwiches, heaps and heaps of them, and bananas and grapes and cake and port, because I’m supposed to need sustaining.’

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you don’t know what a feast this is for me. Not only the sandwiches, but you. You see.’ he hastened to add, before she could begin to wonder what she ought to think of the sudden personal note. ‘I haven’t spoken a word, except to myself, for three days. Will you indulge me? Help me to forget all the horrors. Let’s pretend they’re not true. Let’s pretend we’re just two human beings with nothing to he afraid of, who’ve come up here to eat their sandwiches and enjoy the view. Shall we? Will you do that for me?’

She would have done much more than that for him. But it was not necessary to tell him so. They sat there in the pale bright winter sunshine and talked. Valeria’s adventure had come to her in such a guise that she found herself forgetting that it was an adventure. The utter trust of this agreeable fugitive had broken down a thousand barriers.

So they sat, looking out over the coloured country, and giving thought for thought, confidence for confidence, as she. at least, had never done before, till his keen eyes, scanning the stone-strewn approach to the Cheesewring mound, perceived a little figure in it, advancing, but still a long way off.

‘Someone is coming.’ he said. ‘I must hide. Go down and meet them. Ask the time, and delay their coming up, will you? You see, I trust you altogether.’

Her hands were busy among the sandwich papers, replacing all in the basket. Even at such a moment Valeria would not leave greasy papers and banana-skins lying about to vulgarise a noble and lonely place.

‘Good-bye,’ she paid, when all was in the basket again, and held out her hand. Next moment she knew that he had kissed her, and no one had ever kissed her before.

There was silence.

‘Forgive me,’ he said; ‘and now I can ask nothing more of you.’

‘It was very wrong,’ said Valeria, like a book; ‘but – is there anything I could do to make things safer for you?’

‘You angel!’ he said. ‘Indeed I didn’t mean to. Only – I can’t explain. Perhaps you’ll understand some day. Has anyone ever before?’

‘No,’ said Valeria, coldly. ‘What can I do to help you?’

‘A letter. Would you post a letter?’

‘Yes.’ she said, still cold as ice, but ice that threads of fire shot through. ‘Is it written?’

‘No,’ he said: ‘that’s just it. But would you – oh! – after that I oughtn’t to ask you – would you come again tomorrow – at the same time?’ He looked away from her and said, slowly: ‘You said you would pretend I was your brother. Think it was that, and because you are so brave. And then you will forgive me and trust me and come again. Will you – will you? At the same time?’

Valeria looked at him. He looked very pale and penitent.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if I can help you.’

‘You are the bravest, the best—’ He stopped. ‘Good-bye, good-bye.’

She gave him her hand, but it was both he took, kissed them reverently, and dropped them and turned away.

‘Go,’ he said, gently and quicklv. ‘Go now.’

Valeria went, her head spinning and her lips still trembling to the touch of his, so soft and strong. At the foot of the mound she met the advancing figure which the Russian revolutionist had descried. It was Edwardes.

‘I thought you’d turned your ankle or something, miss, so I came along to see.’

‘Thank you,’ said Valeria, polite and cold, with her burning checks and healing heart. ‘It was thoughtful of you. Edwardes, but you need not have troubled.’

And Edwardes, noting the flush and divining the heart-beats, said to himself, ‘No, not much I needn’t.’

You now see Valeria, huddled in the warm luxury of the car, speeding towards the aunt and uncle, far too agitated to think, and contented just to be thrilled by the emotional vibrations of the adventure. The rest of the day was like acting in a charade. She was very attentive, very unselfish, played bezique with the aunt, read the Times to the uncle, and all the while her heart kept up a little monotonous tune, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow!’

Of course it is not right to make assignations with young men, however bright-eyed, without telling your aunt; but, on the other hand –

‘I’m going to the Cheesewring again,’ she told Edwardes next day. ‘I’m going to do a sketch of the view.’ She brandished a brown packet bought at the stationer’s that morning. ‘It will take two or three hours, so you need not be anxious.’

‘No, miss.’ said the chauffeur, and to himself he said, ‘Not much I sha’n’t.’ But he had been the family coachman before motors ‘came in,’ and he had enough of the old feudal feeling left to wonder whether he ought not to follow her and ‘make sure.’

Valeria, to whom he was part of the machinery of the motor-car, climbed the stony mound with only one thought – to see the stranger again, to help him, to learn more about him so that she could help him more. She wouldn’t look at a little fear that crawled in the hack of her mind. ‘Suppose he shouldn’t be there?’

She was right, for he was there. And again she spread sandwiches and cake and fruit before him, and again they sat side by side on the low stone in the sun and talked and talked and talked. But today he talked less of himself and more of her. He wanted to know everything; where she lived, how she lived, who were her friends, what were her dreams, hopes, ambitions, everything. And today he did not kiss her. Nor did he ask her to come again. She told herself that she was glad, very glad; but she found it difficult to leave him.

‘Look here,’ she said, suddenly. ‘I wonder – perhaps you think it’s a bother for me to come again. But it isn’t. It must be so dreadful for you, being here all alone. I’d do anything in the world to help you. Shall I come again tomorrow?’

He did not answer at once. When he spoke it was with an air of definitely and finally making up his mind.

‘Yes,’ he said – ‘will you? I didn’t think it was fair to ask you to come again. But if you will – And I shall have something else to tell you tomorrow. Look here,’ he said, abruptly, ‘I won’t wait till to morrow. I’ll tell you now.’

‘Oh, no!’ she cried. ‘Because – look there!’ she pointed. ‘There’s that wretched Edwardes. Oh. good-bye, good-bye!’

She gave him both hands, caught up her parcel of sketch-book and colours, and hurried down the slope to meet the conscientious chauffeur.

‘I made sure it was an accident this time, miss,’ he said; ‘it’s getting on for dusk. Let me carry the view, miss.’

She gave the parcel to him. And he forgot to give it back to her. When he had taken her to the hotel he opened the parcel, and found therein a virgin sketch-block, dry brushes, and tubes of untouched colour. ‘Thought as much,’ said Edwardes, tying up the parcel again.

•  •  •

That was how it happened that Valeria was sent home by the morning train and had no chance to keep her appointment at the Cheesewring. The aunt avoided harassing explanations and Edwardes was not mentioned. It was dull for Valeria, that was all, and the doctor’s wife was going to London that day. It was a special opportunity.

Valeria, furious and silent, packed. She would not go to London. She would get out at the first station and take the first train back. She would not bear it; to be torn like this from the adventure, from the only person who trusted her and leaned upon her. Never to see him again; never to know what had happened to him. It was not to be endured. But the aunt saw her as far as Plymouth, and the train did not stop again till Bristol, and the doctor’s wife was kind, and one can’t make a scene at a railway station with a kind stranger-chaperon. So she sat silent in her corner, and the train swept her farther and farther from that desolate rocky place where he was waiting for her – waiting, waiting in vain. She cried a little, furtively, in her corner. But she went home.

The home atmosphere seemed foreign. Home did not seem to be at all the place for a girl with such a secret as hers. She furtively bought a Russian grammar and dictionary, but she had no heart to embark on the difficult study.

Her food seemed tasteless and her sleep was broken and slight.

‘Cornwall hasn’t done you much good,’ said her sister Violet on the fifth morning when Valeria pushed away her full porridge-plate. And after Valeria had replied her mother remarked, quite justly, that dear Valley seemed very irritable, adding that she was probably out of sorts and wanted a tonic. Valeria burst into tears, which was humiliating, and left the room, slamming the door, which was temper.

The long day languished away somehow. Valeria had decided that she could never be happy again. But that was no reason why she should be disagreeable. Because, of course, though you may be wretched for life, to be disagreeable for life would be both silly and inconvenient.

So she found Violet just before tea-time and said she was sorry she had been a pig, and Violet said ‘All right, girl!’ and they kissed each other, and Valeria felt that, all interest in life being over, she must be the light of others’ lives, so she listened for half an hour to the confidences of Violet, and felt what a good sister she was being.

And after tea, when the others had gone to their various amusements – she would never be amused again, she felt, so it was no use trying – she sat down in the drawing-room alone with the Russian dictionary and grammar.

The curtains were drawn and the soft warmth enwrapped her. She was quite alone. She shivered as she thought of him, alone also, but alone in that little stone cave, cold, wretched, in deadly peril. He was there and she was here, and she could do nothing – nothing.

She threw the books on the floor, and the back came off the grammar.

‘It’s no good,’ she said, and stamped her foot. ‘What’s the good? What’s the good of anything?’

And then the front-door bell rang. She dried her eyes quickly. Bother these stupid people who came ringing bells! And there was no escape. The maid opened the drawing-room door and said, sympathetically: ‘A gentleman to see you, miss.’ Of course, you knew who it would be. So did I. But Valeria didn’t. Yet when she saw the man from the Cheesewring she did not cry out or exclaim. She just held out her hand and said, ‘How do you do?’ just as though it had been anybody. Not till the door was closed did she behave otherwise than as a young lady should behave to a caller. But then she took him by the arms above the elbow and shook him. ‘Oh! how could you?’ she said. ‘How am I to hide you? The ten days aren’t up till Monday. Oh! why did you come?’

‘Why didn’t you come that next day?’ he asked, gravely.

‘I couldn’t. I was sent home. But never mind about that. Oh, do go! Do, please, go and hide somewhere safe!’ She stood with clasped hands, appealing.

‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’ he asked. And Valeria was too agitated by anxiety for him to remember not to speak the truth.

‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I’m frightfully glad. But you ought to be disguised. Why have you come?’

‘To see you,’ he answered, standing very tall and straight beside her on the hearthrug; ‘and I am quite safe. Believe that.’

‘It’s all over? The president’s come back? Oh, thank God! Thank God!’

She was fumbling for her handkerchief. When she had found it she sat down in the armchair and cried.

He stood quite silent for more than a minute, more than two. Then she heard him say again the first words that she had ever heard him say: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’

‘You’re sure everything’s quite safe?’ she said at last, sniffing and dabbing her eyes. ‘I’m sorry to be so childish; but I have been so anxious.’

‘I see you have,’ he answered, coming nearer to her.

She looked up at him. Their eyes met, and the next moment she was crying again and he was holding her in his arms, stroking her hair and soothing her with ‘There, there!’ and ‘Don’t, dear, don’t!’ as though, indeed, she had been a child.

‘I’ve been walking up and down on the other side of the road for hours,’ he said, ‘because I knew this was the night they all went out.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I blush to say that I asked your house maid. And they did go. And here we are. I never believed in love at first sight before. Did you?’

‘No; yes; no – I don’t know,’ said Valeria. ‘I can hardly believe it. It’s not true, I think – I don’t know. But you won’t – I mean, you’ve done with secret societies and things like that, haven’t you, forever?’

‘Forever,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a lesson. And I’m not out of danger yet. No, it’s not what you think.’ Somehow he gave her the sense that he was suddenly and definitely making up his mind. ‘Look here,’ he went on; ‘when I talked to you that first day, and you wore so sweet and brave and kind, I thought I’d been a fool. And afterwards – after you’d gone away, you know – I knew it. And then when you came the next day and talked about how I’d trusted you, I felt such a hound. And I meant to tell you the next day. Only you never came. So I came to you, dear. Say you forgive me.’

He was kneeling by her, holding her wrists in his hands.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. But I think she was beginning to.

‘I am a civil engineer,’ he said, quietly. ‘My income is good and my prospects better. I have just come back from three years in South America. And it was so good to see England again! I went up to the highest point I could get to, to see as much of England as I could. And I saw you. And it was love at first sight – at least – no, I will speak the truth now. It wasn’t exactly. I only wanted to talk to you. And I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted to talk to any girl. And I knew you’d never let me make acquaintance by chatter about the view or anything. So I – I made up all that tale.’

‘You made it up?’ She tried to free her hands vainly. ‘You’re not a revolutionary? Not even a Russian? You made it all up?’

‘Every word of it,’ he reassured her. ‘I didn’t feel at all sure you’d believe me. But when you did – oh, my dear, you don’t know what a brute I felt. And I did mean to tell you that next day. You do forgive me, don’t you?’

‘Forgive you?’ cried Valeria. ‘I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.’

She had torn her hands from his grasp, and stood facing him with flaming cheeks and eyes that blazed. ‘You make up a long tale of lies, lies, lies, to make me sorry for you and frightened about you. I’ve been wretched, wretched. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. And you did it just for a joke.’

‘You know I didn’t,’ he answered. ‘I did it first because I liked you, and then because I loved you.’

‘It isn’t like what you call love to try to make me anxious and wretched and—’

‘How was I to know you’d care?’ he demanded, hotly.

‘You knew the second day,’ she answered, unreservedly.

‘Yes; and wasn’t I going to tell you the second day, only that ass of a chauffeur – Oh, forgive me! After all – we are here together. We should never have been together if I hadn’t. I should have just seen you pass by, and never dared to speak to you and never seen you again, and been sorry all my life.’

‘And now it’s I that have got to be sorry all my life that you ever did see me.’

‘Ah! you don’t really mean it,’ he said, with an air at once so humble and so confident that it brought her suddenly to the brink of relenting. So she answered still more hardly:

‘Yes – I do mean it. You’ve just amused yourself by making a fool of me. Telling me lies to see how much you could get me to believe, And I believed it all – all! I suppose it was very amusing for you. And I hate you. Now will you go, please? Good-bye! Yes, you’d better go. Good-bye!’

There was a moment’s silence. Then:

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I will go. If anyone’s been made a fool of it’s me. But you’ve taught me a lesson. This is the last time I ever speak the truth to a woman.’

Without another look he turned towards the door. And at the same moment the front gate squeaked loudly. Valeria made one bound across the room and caught his arm.

‘No, don’t go,’ she said. ‘Don’t!’

‘You didn’t mean me to go?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘And I didn’t mean to go, either,’ he assured her. ‘We’ve been mutually deceived.’ A latch-key clicked, and the front door was heard to open and close again.

‘Don’t!’ whispered Valeria. ‘Oh, let me go! That’s mother just come in.’

‘Your mother,’ said he, ‘has just rubbed her shoes on the mat and gone upstairs to take off her bonnet. Before she comes back to receive the news of our engagement, please let me forgive you.’

‘You – forgive me! What for?’

‘For making up this tale of lies about not forgiving me, just to make me sorry and frightened about you. I’ve never been so miserable in my life.’

‘Ah!’ she said, not recognising at all her own words. ‘I’m glad you were a little miserable too. You deserved it, didn’t you?’

‘But then, you see, I knew you didn’t mean it.’

‘You didn’t – you couldn’t – not truly. You were going.’

‘Was I?’

‘You said so.’

‘Ah! but it’s no use speaking the truth to a woman; she never believes you.’

‘If you speak the truth now I will.’ She leaned back against his arm to look in his face.

‘I love you,’ were the words that any other man would have spoken. Not so Valeria’s lover.

‘The truth?’ he said. ‘The truth is that you love me, and I score every point in the game.’

‘If I didn’t like you, I should hate you,’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ said he. ‘That’s what love means.’

And then the door opened.

«•»

From: The Strand Magazine Jun. 1911

With a Difference

Adventures are to the adventurous. Which, I suppose, means, if it means anything, that you get what you expect; that if you keep your eyes open, you will probably see what you are looking out for; and that, in a general way, Life will give you what you ask of her, if only you ask long enough and plainly enough. At the same time the prayer to life must be the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed – the motion of that hidden fire, and so on. Though to all prayers, the answer usually comes ‘with a difference.’

It is usual to suppose that the fires of chivalry which are the beacons of adventure burn best on the altar of a soul enshrined in a fine temple. That, in fact, your born adventurer is a handsome dashing blade, the sort that men stand by and women turn to look after in the street. This, though a good general rule, has exceptions. The young man whom you are now to see topping the steep hill cut in the chalk of the downs, lacked almost all the physical attributes which we are accustomed to ascribe to the heroes of adventure. He was neither conspicuously tall nor noticeably handsome. His hair was a little too long, and the shabby knapsack that bent his narrow shoulders bulged with more things than a hero, the favourite of fortune, would ever have found need for. To the hero for whom agreeable and exciting adventures lurk in every hedge and by every wayside, a rough blanket, a kettle, and half a dozen pet books would merely be in the way; but to this young man, a clerk taking his holiday in the cheapest possible fashion by a long tramp across the sunny Southern counties, they were necessities. His mouth and his hands were the mouth and the hands of a dreamer, but nothing else in him betrayed his kinship to the brotherhood of the Romantics, save the eyes that questioned the face of the world as a dog’s eyes question the face of his master. And these contradicted all the rest of him. From these, if you ever noticed anything and had any sort of skill in that most useful arithmetical act called putting two and two together, you might have deduced all those characteristics so resolutely denied by his general appearance.

As his feet felt the relief of the downward slope, he drew himself up, shifted a little the straps of the bloated knapsack and stepped forward more briskly. Behind him lay the long curved miles of dusty road that had held for him nothing but dust and dreams, before him the straight white ribbon of road that might hold so many things. The mighty rounded shoulders of the downs lay close against a very blue sky; white clouds sailed across that sky, and their shadows sailed across the valley where a light wind stirred the infrequent trees and dappled the face of the yellow standing corn. The young man drew a long breath of pleasure. A little farm house, grey and yellowed with lichen, nestled in the hollow of the hill; the blue smoke curled lightly from its chimneys; in its garden one saw little hints of red and yellow and the blinding, dazzling gleam of something unexplained near the back door. The road swerved and brought him nearer. The red and yellow turned to hollyhocks and sunflowers, and the diamond dazzlement was just a tin bucket hanging on the palings by the back door. He smelt the wood-smoke as other people smell roses.

‘Isn’t it good?’ he asked himself; ‘isn’t it the real right thing?’ And a pang of pleasure came to him at the thought of the man who should own that house, should come home to it from his good clean field-work, through the glad little garden, to find in its sombre orderly kitchen someone waiting to whom he was the light of the eyes. In his thought, he, of course, was the man who should come home. The one who should be waiting was the one he had never met, never would meet. The thought of London rushed at him, London with the dusty ledgers and the gritty pavements, with submissive miserable people caught in its horrible machinery, whirled round and round, day by day, in a dreadful rush where nothing was, nor ever could be, worth while; and almost instantly he forbade himself the thought, and said slowly to himself again, ‘the one I shall never meet.’

‘But I will meet her,’ he said suddenly and aloud, and set his teeth. After that the talk was just a dream of the ways he would travel till he should meet the one who would make everything worth while.

Life must have been listening when he spoke aloud, for within the hour he met her. She was riding a bicycle, steadily but slowly, for she came up the hill as he came down, and as they passed they looked at each other, and though he almost stopped, the moment was over almost before it had begun. She had a white dress, and a red rose at her breast.

‘Why isn’t it mediaeval times?’ he asked himself, ‘when a knight would have to ask a fair lady what service he could render?’

And he was sorry, because the girl on the bicycle had just such eyes as she might have who should make ever thing worth while.

Then suddenly he turned and shouted after her.

‘Hi!’ he called unromantically, and turned and ran up the hill with a sudden sense that something not himself had taken the bit in its teeth.

‘I can at least ask her the way,’ he told himself, ‘then I shall hear her voice.’

But she had not heard his. She had turned into a side road that led, grassy and untrodden, toward the white cliff of an old quarry. And here she dismounted, for the road was rough and stony. The thing that had taken the bit between its teeth dragged him after her. He would not shout again, he would catch her up. But the bicycle had shot ahead before she dismounted, and the distance between them lessened very slowly. Rounding the corner to a smoother surface, she remounted, and he felt that she was leaving him so that he should never see her again, and again he shouted; and this time she heard, started, swerved, and then before his eyes, with a hundred yards of track still between them, the bicycle staggered, recovered itself, tripped it self up in a cart-rut, and fell clattering to the ground, where it and its rider lay still in the sunshine.

‘My God!’ he said, ‘that’s my doing!’ and he ran. You know the thought that clung to him as he ran, making his feet feel heavy as one’s feet feel in nightmares.

As he drew near he saw that she and the bicycle lay in a heap, the glitter of metal and the white of her dress dazzling together. And when he was quite close he perceived that the bicycle had fallen on her, that her dress was caught in the pedal, that her eyes were shut, and that there was blood on her forehead.

‘My God!’ he said again, and set his hand to the bicycle. He could not get it away from her except by cutting the hem of her skirt. So he cut it and lifted the clattering thing away and laid it on its side.

‘Are you hurt?’ he said, and ‘Oh, do speak!’

But she did not speak.

He looked round for water. There is no water on the south downs except the dew-ponds, and there was no dew-pond here. So he tumbled everything out of his knapsack, the tin kettle and the blanket and Lavengro and The Shropshire Lad and The Open Road and the things to eat in their sordid paper wrappings. Among the litter he found the soldier’s water-bottle of cold tea, soaked a handkerchief – his last clean one – in that, and bathed her fore head. The cut was only a very little one, but still her eyes were closed and her lips very pale, like faded pink rose-leaves.

The sun shone down in careless splendour. There was no least shadow anywhere to which he could move her, even if he could have moved her, and even if he had not felt that he dared not move her. So he propped the bicycle up in a cart-rut close to her head and spread his blanket over it and so made a patch of shadow about her. Then he put more cold tea on her forehead, and took her hands which were very cold and rubbed them between his own, and wished that his hands had not been dirty with the dust of the road. And he looked at her, learning every line of her face by heart. ‘For even if she is dead,’ he said, ‘she is so like the one who would have made everything worth while.’

Her hair was loosened by the fall, and he had taken away the hat that her fall had twisted awry, so that her pale face lay in her hair as in a dark nest, her brows were curved beautifully and he knew that the hidden eyes were grey.

He thought of going back to the farm for help, but it was two or three miles back. How could he leave her alone, insensible? Suppose tramps passed that way? He knelt in the dust, holding her hands. And with all his strength of will, all the force of his soul, he called to her to come back – not to be dead – to be alive and unhurt and happy as she had been so little a time before, when in passing on the road, with a red rose at her breast, their eyes had met. And at last it came to him that she was dead, and that all that could make his life worth while had come to him only to brush him with the cold wings of an inexorable retreat. She had never moved since her fall, and that seemed now a very long time ago. He laid her hands down, and they lay like hands of old carved ivory.

He put his hand very gently and reverently under her breast, and he could feel no least lightest heart-beat. Then he put his hand under her head and raised it a little. It fell heavily side ways, and the brown-stained handkerchief dropped off. Then he did what he will always repent but never regret. He bent his face nearer and nearer till at last his lips touched her forehead, her cold cheek, and, in the end, those pale soft lips of hers.

And, at that touch, her own lips stirred against his, which drew back guiltily. He saw the grey of those eyes that had been hidden. They looked straight into his, appealing, afraid, yet with what he took to be recognition.

‘Dearest?’ she said, and then the grey eyes closed again.

Be sure that now he did not kneel idly. Trembling, incredulous, yet thrilled in every fibre by the magic of the dream come true, he fetched his tin cup and poured a little of the tea into it and held it to her lips. She drank. Then he bathed her face again, and did for her all such office as common sense could dictate or love invent. For it was love. Do not doubt it. He never doubted that here was the one woman, his woman, and the touch of her lips on his had told him that for her he was the world’s one man.

And presently, under his clumsy ministrations, she sat up, put back her hair and laughed rather weakly.

‘I think I could walk now,’ she said. ‘How stupid of me to fall off, and to faint like that!’

He helped her to stand up.

‘I live close here,’ she said, no more; words were plainly difficult to her.

‘If you’ll take my arm,’ he said softly, and she took it. But she walked very unsteadily and he had to put his arm round her as they went, and now and again her face brushed his shoulder.

Round the curve of the hill they came to a little house, just such an other as the farm where the sunflowers and the holly-hocks were. They went up through the garden where the bees hummed and the mignonette smelt sweet, his arm still round her, and the joy of life in his blood singing the magic splendid song of love and youth, and heaven that stoops to earth, and impossible dreams come true. The song rang in his ears so that when, at the porch, she spoke, he heard only her voice and not her words.

She sank from his arm to the seat on the porch-side and spoke again.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘I’m all right now.’

Through the open door he saw the hall with a tall clock and a stuffed owl in a glass case and a fox’s brush and a rack of whips and sticks. He looked at these till she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the honeysuckle. And then his eyes took her again, loving every curve of chin and hands and shoulders and tired head.

‘I will go back and fetch your bicycle,’ he said at last; not meaning at all to say that, and yet glad of the least little service still left to do for her.

‘Oh, but one of the men shall go,’ she said, ‘I want you to come in. I shall be quite all right in a minute. I can’t let you go like this.’

So he stood waiting, still worshipping her with his eyes, till she looked up into his and said ever so frankly and kindly, –

‘You must come in. I know my husband will want to thank you.’

So then he knew for whom had been her word and her lips in that moment on the borderland between the conscious and the unconscious, and how, though Life gives what we demand of her, she gives it ever with a difference. He got away. And he fetched her bicycle and stood it up against the gate of the garden where the mignonette and the honeysuckle smelt so sweet. The sun was still shining in careless splendour, and the rose she had worn lay withered on the threshold. And she had gone into her house now. And the door was shut.

«•»

From: The Atlantic Monthly Jan. 1912

The Glastonbury Scandal

There were, strictly speaking, two scandals besides the other one. One of them, of course, was the marriage; but marriage is a scandal which, with patience and courage, can be lived down. Not but what it was a biggish scandal, complicated, too, by the breaking, on the part of the bridegroom, of the most, or almost the most, sacred ties Everyone knows that a marriage had been arranged between Miss Gertrude Vandewinckes, daughter of Mr. P. Q. Vandewinckes, of Paris and Chicago, and Lord Glastonbury. One wonders by whom such marriages are arranged. Sometimes doubtless, by the bride. Occasionally, perhaps, by the bridegroom. Usually, one infers, by some third person. The third person in the case we are considering was old Lady Glastonbury; everyone knew that. (You have probably had her pointed out to you at the opera. Her diamonds are enough to take your breath away as they retreat and reappear among the wrinkles of her thin neck. The complexion with which the bony structure of her face is overlaid is a marvel of art. And her chestnut curls have almost the sheen of live hair. She looks like Lord Glastonbury's grandmother, but really he is her son. She married rather late in life.)

The marriage scandal occurred when Lord Glastonbury was on his way home from Chicago – his first visit to the home of his betrothed Some perverse impulse prompted him to leave the ship at Plymouth. And he came to London by easy stages through the green and gold and silver of an English spring. The New Forest beckoned alluringly to eyes sated with dust and pork and the spectacle of American millionaires. He got out at Winchester and went back into the Forest's green heart. The Spring, Destiny, Coincidence, suddenly took hands. At the Brockenhurst Hotel he ran across a man who had been his fag at Eton. The man took him home. The home was a park and a mansion embowered in the free forest. The mansion had a garden, and the garden had, two days after Lord Glastonbury's arrival, a garden-party. ‘The annual thing, you know,’ the friend explained. ‘Everybody asked. Beautiful feeling. No class distinctions. Even the grub. Cream ices – real cream. One quality for everybody.’

It was early June. The sky was blue and white, the close green turf dotted with agreeable people, English people. Lord Glastonbury looked at the crowd, loving it. And then out of the crowd one face came to him as one face comes sometimes from among the crowded faces that move about just as you are going to sleep; one face, so real that the surprise of its reality wakes you up, and you lose the vision. It was a girl's face, framed in soft bright hair under a shady hat. Her gloves were neat but mended, her shoes were small, but not garden party shoes. She had a white dress, shabby but fresh, with new blue ribbons, like the heroine of a romance. And to Lord Glastonbury she was just simply and inevitably that. To her it must have seemed that he descended from the Olympus of the unmistakably Upper Classes, a condescending Jove, enveloping a confiding Semele in a cloud of flattering condescension. At first, that is. Afterwards –

The park was large, its glades well wooded. One does not quite see how he managed it. But it is certain that he was never introduced to her; that they spent the whole afternoon together; that he met her the next day, kissed her the day after that, and, a week later, married her. As for the marriage which had ‘been arranged,’ the details of its disarrangement do not present themselves. There must, however, have been ‘scenes.’

Lord Glastonbury and his wife went abroad at once and stayed there. The unkindest things were said. At the end of a year they came home. The young Lady Glastonbury was presented to her Sovereign and to Society. The Sovereign admired her and Society received her very cordially.

It had leaked out, as these secret horrors will, that her father was a farmer; not just a rich man who keeps a farm to spend money on, as other men keep less respectable objects, but a working farmer.

‘It's quite true,’ old Lady Glastonbury had to own to a sympathising friend who was also a cousin and ‘companion.’  ‘The only comfort I have is that those sort of people never have any morals. So it may be possible to get rid of her. If only it could be done while dear Gertrude's still heart-broken.’

‘You think she would?’ the friend asked.

‘Like a shot,’ said the mother-in-law; ‘if he could get free soon enough.’

‘Well,’ said the friend, ‘I’m sure I hope it will all turn out for the best. I’m sure if anyone could manage it—’

‘What's that?’ said Lady Glastonbury, sharply.

‘I only said if ever anyone deserved anything less, it's you,’ the friend stumbled in her haste.

‘Well,’ said Lady Glastonbury, ‘we shall see. They come home tonight.’

They came. ‘Foxy,’ was the dowager's verdict on the pale, pointed little face, the hazel eyes, the full-gold hair. ‘And a lanky may-pole,’ she added, smiling amiably at her five foot eight of graceful daughter-in law.

‘Of course,’ she was saying, ‘dear Claude's choice is welcome to me. He ought to have known that. So long as he is happy.’

‘Thank you,’ said the new daughter-in law. ‘I think he is.’

The elder lady kissed the younger again. In such few and simple words are wars declared.

‘You are happy, Claude, aren't you?’ the bride of a year asked her husband that night when they were alone. And he answered in a lover's cliché which was also a statement of fact, ‘I never knew what happiness meant before – hadn’t the slightest idea.’

‘No more had I,’ said Lavender, and the two melted into a group that would have charmed a sculptor.

Next day there was a little talk about the family jewels. It ended in old Lady Glastonbury's sending them to Lavender with a sugared note.

Lavender herself was feeling a little breathless. The honeymoon was over, and she was plunged suddenly into a restless, resistless tide of social obligations, with no experience to guide her, and no ambitions to inspire; her only guide and incentive, a passionate wish to please him. Her husband helped; her mother-in-law helped. Old Susie might not have grieved to see her daughter-in-law divorced, but she had no desire to see her ridiculous. Lavender was a quick learner. Before she had been married two years she could have passed an examination in ‘the way the rich live.’ She had learned to control her housekeeper, and no longer felt those earlier tremors of the soul in her butler's presence. She learned to do everything that is ‘done.’ and to eschew all such things as are ‘not done.’ She played her part perfectly.

‘Really,’ said old Susie to Amelia, the cousin, ‘to look at her, no one would guess. And most providentially her father died – neck broken, you remember – fancy a person in that position hunting! – and there are no other relations. If it wasn't for Gertrude—’

‘Gertrude's married by now, I suppose ?’

‘The odd thing is that she isn't. She was over last spring. They met. It was like a play. So sweet to each other – the women, I mean – Lavender a little too sticky, perhaps. Oh! very pretty. It made me sick And Gertrude with her four million dollars. And she's not so very plain, is she? – now she does her hair the new way.’

‘Some people think your daughter-in-law a beauty, don’t they?’

‘Oh, you mean all those men who hang about her. I don't know. She's a little bit different from our sort of girls. I expect they think— Anyway, they do hang about. But so they do with barmaids. Claude doesn't seem to mind. I spoke to him about it the other day. “She's too cordial,” I said; “there'll be a scandal presently.” Well, he can't say I haven't warned him.’

‘But if she's cordial to everyone?’

‘That's just her craftiness,’ said old Susie. ‘You mark my words, Amelia, I shall find her out before long. She's growing paler and thinner. She's got something on her mind. Oh, I don't despair of seeing him free yet.’

‘But surely,’ even Amelia had to say it, ‘you don't want the girl to do anything wrong?’

‘Heaven forbid!’ said the Dowager Countess of Glastonbury; ‘but if she does do anything not quite. . . I don't want it to be for nothing.’

That same evening Lord Glastonbury, in his turn, remarked the pallor of his wife's little, pointed face.

‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ he said. ‘You look like a little white rose. Tired?’

‘Not very,’ said she.

‘Take a day off,’ he said,

‘A day – would you come? Into the country? Tomorrow?’ She spoke eagerly.

‘Can't be done, my child,’ he said. ‘I’ve more engagements than I can get through, as it is. But you might take a day's rest-cure. Lie in bed all day, you know. You'd be as fresh as paint for the Widcroft-Lawson's dinner, and there's a dance somewhere afterwards, isn't there? I do like you in that dress,’ and he touched her soft, shining gown.

‘Sure to be. Do you? I'm glad. Claude,’ she went on, fingering the pink pearls nervously, ‘I suppose we can't leave London till July? I – the country must be lovely now.’

‘Of course we can’t,’ he told her. ‘You'll have all August and September at Glastonbury. We can't possibly run away in the middle of the season. People would think we were mad.’

‘I suppose they would,’ she said, with a sigh, and he kissed her and told her not to be a dear little duffer.

It was after this that the change came into their lives. Hitherto, her every moment had been at his service, and at the service of that new life which was to him the only natural life for intelligent human beings. Now, very quietly and very persistently, Lavender began to withdraw, to evade invitations, to stay at home ‘with headaches,’ to make her calls very short and her visits to her dressmaker very long. More than once she was away for a whole day, without either carriage or motor, ‘very plainly dressed, milady,’ her maid reported to old Susie, who flushed with triumph under her carmine, and gave the maid a five-pound note for good news.

Be sure that after this old Susie missed nothing. She watched and she paid others to watch, and she found out quite a number of things. And when she thought she had collected enough material for a really irresistible bombshell she wrote to her son.

Dear Claude, she said, please come at three tomorrow, without your wife. I have something very important to say to you.

—Your affectionate mother,

Suzanne Glastonbury.

Of course he went. He found his mother in that confusion of silks and stuffs and woods and metals, carpets and cabinets, statuettes and flowers which she called her drawing-room. He kissed her with careful lightness, sat down on a chintz-covered Chesterfield between a rose the size of a soup-plate and a peony the size of a tea-tray, and said: ‘Well, mother?’

‘It's a very delicate matter,’ she said, looking at the sparkle of her rings.

‘If it's money,’ he said, with a generous pause that left nothing to be desired.

‘It's not money,’ she answered, ‘far from it. It's dear Lavender.’

Then she told him, in the kindest and most delicate way, all about the short calls and the long dressmaking interviews and the days away, so plainly dressed. He interrupted with a stern:

‘What are you driving at?’

‘Nothing,’ said old Susie, sweetly; ‘you didn't suppose I meant for a moment anything – anything of that sort? But dear Lavender's very young. She's certainly looking much brighter. Haven’t you noticed it?’

He had. There was a new rose in his wife’s cheeks, a new light in her hazel eyes.

‘She's so young,’ his mother repeated; ‘perhaps she's formed some undesirable acquaintances. Or someone out of her old life. Don't pull those carnations to pieces, Claude. I only thought you ought to know.’

‘Thank you,’ said Claude. ‘I suppose you haven't said anything of this sort to anyone else?’

‘My dearest boy! said Lady Glastonbury. ‘Now should I?’

•  •  •

‘I gave him something to think about, anyhow,’ she told Amelia when she had described to her cousin the interview in its every detail; ‘but I'm afraid it's not much good yet. She's told him some story. He sent me a telegram last night. Like to see it?’

The telegram was short.

HAVE SPOKEN TO LAVENDER ON THE SUBJECT OF OUR CONVERSATION TODAY. EVERYTHING IS QUITE ALL RIGHT. —C.

‘So that's all right,’ said Amelia.

‘Let us hope so,’ said old Susie, darkly. ‘But mark my words, we've not heard the last of this business yet.’

It was a fortnight later that old Lady Glastonbury made her great discovery. She and Amelia were on their way to a matinée. There was a block in the traffic in one of those low streets where Italians live – Soho, you know. Amelia was secretly furious. She had the middle-aged spinster's passion for the stage, and she knew that they were late already. This delay would make them late beyond the rising of the curtain. Suddenly Lady Glastonbury's thin hand gripped hers.

‘Look!’ she hissed, rather than whispered. ‘Did you see that?’

‘No. Where? What?’

‘That girl,’ said Lady Glastonbury. ‘At last I've run her to earth. I’ll get out. I'll join you at the theatre. No, don't stop me. I saw her go into a house. Yes, Lavender, of course. Not a word, Amelia. My mind’s made up.’

She got out of the carriage then and there and picked her way between the motors and horses to the dusty pavement. Amelia saw her enter a tall open door, then the block broke and the carriage moved on.

‘Well!’ said Amelia. ‘I never should have believed it. Never in this world.’

•  •  •

‘I was perfectly right, my dear,’ said old Susie, rustling disturbingly into her stall in the middle of the second act. ‘I’ve made exhaustive inquiries. That wicked girl has a flat there, calls herself Mrs. Lovell – her maiden name, you know, and what's more there's a Mr. Lovell. They only go there occasionally. I got it all out of the housekeeper. That house is flats.’

‘Shish!’ said the people in the stalls behind, in front, and on both sides.

‘I can’t sit this out,’ said Lady Glastonbury, the moment the curtain went down. ‘I must go straight to Cadogan Square and see Hortense.’

‘Won't you – think it over?’ even Amelia was moved to urge. ‘You can't undo that sort of thing once you’ve done it.’

‘Who wants to undo anything?’ asked old Susie. ‘Not another word.’ And told her story at length. She rustled out just as the third act began.

At Cadogan Square she learned that her son and his wife were both out. Would not dine at home. She made her way to Lavender's boudoir, and found in the little vellum-covered book no engagement noted for that evening.

Her heart beat high with triumph. Now – at last.

‘What did your mistress wear?’ she asked Hortense.

‘A little sprigged delaine, my lady – straw hat, with roses – very simple – but more chic than my lady usually wears on these occasions.’

‘These occasions?’

‘I mean when my lady goes out without the carriage and without milord.’

‘That will do,’ said old Lady Glastonbury, very dignified all of a sudden. ‘Tell them to call a taxi.’

Her taxi set her down in Siena Street a little way from those flats. She went in and up the stairs. There was no hall-porter in the dingy cemented passage. And no lift-boy and no lift. Old Susie had to climb the stairs, for Mrs. Lovell's flat was on the top floor. Many, many stairs. She reached the top landing breathless. The door of Mrs. Lovell's flat was open, and as Lady Glastonbury stood panting on the top stair she saw through the crack of that door a kitchen, very bright and neat, with dressers piled with gay, cheap crockery, a white scrubbed table, and the back of someone in a ‘little sprigged delaine,’ someone who was quite plainly, ‘washing up.’ In that part of the kitchen which was hidden from old Susie's gaze, certain movements indicated the presence of another person, even before the person who was washing up called out with what struck old Lady Glastonbury as incredible levity: ‘Look out, darling; the kettle's boiling over.’

It was then that old Susie pushed the door open and walked in. It was a man, that other person; old Susie saw it – a man without a coat; his blue shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbow. At the sound of the newcomer's entrance, the girl who was washing up turned. It was Lavender, of course, and the man, who was bending over a gas-stove, made one leap with a waved teacloth and disappeared through a farther door.

Lavender crossed the room and shut the inner door. She turned off the gas, whose expiring plop broke the silence like a sardonic exclamation. Then she passed behind her visitor and closed the outer door. Then she turned to her mother-in-law and stood, silent, grave, awaiting the attack.

Lady Glastonbury for once found herself at a loss for words.

‘I’ve found you out, you see,’ was the best she could do after half a minute of a silence which she felt as intolerable.

‘I see you have,’ said Lavender, politely. ‘It must have given you a great deal of trouble. I hope you find the result worth it?’

‘How dare you?’ said old Susie. ‘You ought to go down on your knees and beg me to spare you.’

‘Ought I?’ said Lavender. ‘And would you?’

‘I feel that I am being contaminated by being in this place at all.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Lavender; ‘of course, you're not used to kitchens. Shall we go into the sitting-room? Shall I show you the way?’

She opened the door through which that degrading, crouching figure in shirt-sleeves had passed, and the other woman followed her. There was nothing else to do. The sitting-room, like the kitchen, was of a shining neatness. All the furniture was old and beeswaxed to a mirror surface.

‘Won't you sit down,’ said Lavender, wheeling forward a low arm-chair, ‘since you are here?’

‘Why don’t you say you are glad to see me?’ Lady Glastonbury asked, savagely. ‘You might as well, while you are about it. Why don't you?’

‘Because of course I’m not. I never meant you to find out.’

‘Really! You surprise me. No, you shameless girl, I will not sit down in this abode of – misconduct. I came here to expose you, and I mean to do it. I am going, at once – at once But before I go—’

‘You look,’ said Lavender, interrupting defiantly, ‘as though you were very glad you had found me out. Why?’

‘Such conduct as yours,’ said the other, rather at a loss, ‘deserves to be found out.’

‘I don't want to be disrespectful,’ said Lavender, ‘but I don't think you deserve anything at all. Not anything nice, that is. You certainly don't deserve to be told anything. But I will tell you, if you like. I couldn't have gone on with it all, if I hadn't had – this.’

‘Gone on with what?’

‘With all that empty scurry and worry that you call life,’ said Lavender. ‘I had to have a place to breathe in, so I took this – and this is some of the furniture from home.’

‘That I’ll swear it isn’t,’ was old Susie's rejoinder.

‘My home, not his. And I come here and do my own marketing, and cook a little and wash up and keep things clean myself, and pretend I’ve got a real home, not just a houseful of servants. And I know some of the French women, the ones who keep the shops, and they come in and have coffee with me sometimes. And it's a real little life of my own. And I love it,’ she said, defiantly. ‘I don't suppose you'll understand, but I’ve told you because I thought I ought. And now will you please go?’

‘Upon my word,’ said old Lady Glastonbury, and she leaned on the table for support; ‘you expect me to believe this – this silly tale?’

Lavender shrugged her shoulders delicately.

‘No, no, my girl’ – old Susie's face was purple under its casing – ‘young women don't set up secret flats just to do their own housework in and entertain French shopkeepers' wives!’

‘I did,’ said Lavender.

‘It takes two birds to build a nest.’ The flowers in old Susie's hat trembled sympathetically as her hand trembled on the table.

‘I made this, alone,’ said Lavender, very pale and very scornful.

‘You wicked little viper,’ the other woman almost screamed; ‘but you're lying for nothing, young woman. I’ve seen the man. Through the crack of the door. And I’m going to see him face to face before I leave this room.’

‘You saw—’ Lavender hesitated, incredulous.

‘I saw the other dicky-bird that you made this nest for the sake of; the man you've betrayed my poor boy for.’

Lavender made a quick movement.

‘Oh, it's no use your denying it. He's in there now. And I don't stir till he comes out. Now, my lady!’

Lavender stood irresolute, and old Susie thought in her wicked old heart, ‘Now I've got you in a corner, my beauty,’ and she pictured the guilty creature in shirt-sleeves skulking in the room whose door lay behind her between the oak settle and the tall mahogany clock.

Once more Lavender shrugged her shoulders.

‘There is someone in there,’ she owned, and old Susie crowed with pleasure; ‘but I have promised not to tell anyone that anyone but me comes here.’

‘I dare say you have,’ said Lady Glastonbury. ‘Well, whoever he is, out he comes. Call him out.’

‘No,’ said Lavender; just that.

‘Then I shall.’ The old woman’s voice rose to a shriek, and she turned quickly and beat with her fists on the door. ‘Here, come out!’ she said. ‘Come out!’

She drew back as the door opened, and, still in shirt-sleeves because his coat was hanging on the door in the kitchen, the man came out. It was Lord Glastonbury, her son and Lavender's husband!

‘Well, mother,’ he said, and his face was set like a flint.

‘I – I just looked in,’ she said. ‘I saw dear Lavender come in here this afternoon, and I thought I'd surprise you.’

‘You have,’ said Lord Glastonbury.

‘I think I must be moving on,’ said old Susie, groping for her bag and purse on the table.

Lavender stood trembling from head to foot.

‘I didn't tell, Claude,’ she said.

‘I know you didn't. Mother, I asked my wife to keep the little secret. We didn't want paragraphs in the paper: “Peer Pursues Plainness – Society Lady Loves the Simple Life,” and all that rot. Lavender invented the game, and when I found it out she let me play, too. I adore washing-up; and I can cook a chop better than your cook can. You'll keep our secret, won't you?’ His tone was light, but eyes and mouth were hard.

‘I think I’ll have a taxi,’ said old Susie, weakly.

‘Do you mind if I fetch one?’ Lord Glastonbury asked his wife.

‘Go, of course,’ she said; and he went.

‘Now,’ said Lavender, with resolution. ‘I’m going to forgive you. You can't help my doing that. And – you always hated me, and I always hated you. Can't we stop it? I only hate you because you hate me. If you can stop, I can.’

‘I can’t,’ said old Lady Glastonbury. ‘You’ve got Claude and you've got the family jewels, and you didn't bring him a penny, and—’

‘You shall have the jewels back, for as long as you like,’ said Lavender. ‘I've never worn them, though what you want with them – Oh! don't let's be hateful. Claude doesn't know all you said – they're double doors. I’ll never tell him. No one shall ever know. Let's be friends. Quick, before Claude comes back.’

She almost pushed the old lady into a chair. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘I suppose you couldn't help thinking things like that, if that's how you're made. I'll make Claude send away the cab, and you'll have dinner with us. No one will ever know.’

•  •  •

But everybody had to know about the nest, to counteract what everybody thought they knew from the incoherent confidences of cousin Amelia, adrift at the matinées end, to the acquaintances she met coming out Fortunately, the thing didn't get into the papers, but everybody who was anybody knew and chattered till Lord Glastonbury and his young wife went to live at one of his country houses, where they raise cattle and have a model dairy. There are the strangest stories about the domesticity of their life there, but nothing that is positively scandalous. When people told each other the story, they always added: ‘So that's the third Glastonbury scandal in the last forty years.

‘What were the others?’ Someone would be sure to ask; and the answer would be:

‘Oh, have you forgotten about old Susie? She was a barmaid, you know, and thirty-five if she was a day when Lord Glastonbury's father married her.’

«•»

From: The Strand Magazine Dec. 1915

Cubist Camouflage

I

Yes.’ said Lady Mills, ‘my poor sister Emma certainly married beneath her.’

‘She was only Sir James’s stepsister,’ put in the friend, consolingly.

‘Beneath her,’ Lady Mills went on; ‘but the ways of Providence are past finding out, and many a thing that you wouldn’t think it of is sometimes a blessing in disguise.’

‘Whom did she marry?’ asked the friend, who knew perfectly well, but knew, too, that Lady Mills was happiest when she was talking, and that when Lady Mills was not happy, other people had but little chance of being happy either.

‘A soap-boiler, my dear!’ Lady Mills almost whispered the words, though she and the friend were alone in the pleasant morning-room – alone, unless you count the canary in his bright but battered cage, and the two spaniels on the worn fur hearth-rug. The room was furnished with solid magnificence, but the handsome carpet showed grey lines through its roses, and the brocade curtains were faded and threadbare. The damask of the rosewood chairs, worn to a papery thinness, had cracked here and there, and beads were missing from the round foot stools and the tall banner screen. Everything spoke, discreetly but plainly – of a day – many, many days ago – when there had been more money to spend than there was now. ‘A soap boiler,’ Lady Mills repeated, ‘in quite a small way, though I assure you the works couldn’t have smelt more if he’d been a millionaire. They didn’t when he was,’ she added, impressively.

‘Were they happy?’ the friend asked. She was still sentimental, and liked to wear pale blue in the evening, though it no longer mattered to anyone what she wore.

‘I don’t know how she could have been, but I believe she was – worshipped the ground he trod on. And he was the same. To the last he treated her more as if she was his sweetheart than his wife. I always think that’s not quite nice between married people – don’t you? When she came to be fifty and stout – she was always short – it was quite comical to see them together.’

The friend corrected a sigh by a smile.

‘The only rose-leaf in the ointment,’ said Lady Mills, ‘was there being no son to inherit. There’s only the one girl.’

‘And she has everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘And the estates adjoin?’

‘Yes – the estates adjoin. The soap-boiler bought the place because it was near poor Emma’s old home.’

‘So this girl is the one who inherits the estates that adjoin?’

‘Of course she’s the one who inherits the estates. My good Lucretia, who else could it be?’

‘And she comes home tomorrow?’ Lucretia asked, fingering her knitting.

‘She comes home tomorrow,’ said Lady Mills.

‘So if Henry—’ said the friend. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Henry,’ said Henry’s mother, severely. ‘will never marry except for love. But if he should fall in love with his cousin—’

‘Stepcousin,’ said the friend, incautiously.

‘You have a mind,’ said Lady Mills, bitterly, ‘that delights in trifles.’

‘You were saying?’

‘I was saying, if he should fall in love with dear Elizabeth—’ She glanced round the room, and the friend fervently said:

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘My sister Emma’s husband,’ Lady Mills went on, ‘had no sense of family honour. He left his daughter to the guardianship of a comparative stranger, one of his low City friends. I would have been a mother to her, which Sir Moses naturally could never be.’

I am sorry to say that the friend said ‘Eh?’

‘Sir Moses,’ said Lady Mills, impatiently. ‘Sir Moses Bulrushes – the great financier. He’s her guardian. She was at the same school as Peggy – my other niece – and in the holidays she travelled about the Continent with Sir Moses and his sister, Miss Miriam Bulrushes. And we had to let this place, as you know. So I’ve seen very little of the girl. But now they’ve come home. And I’ve sent Henry to call – with a basket of orchids and a Pekingese puppy. And I shall call myself on Tuesday. But I dare say it won’t be any good. He’s the best of boys, but he doesn’t really care for anything except Cubist drawing and the Epstein Venus.’

‘Is the girl anything like the Epstein Venus?’ asked the friend, madly swimming far out of her depth.

‘My good Lucretia, the Epstein Venus isn’t like anything human. The girl is human – at least. Too human, if all I’ve heard is true. But Henry will master her. He’s his own father’s son.’

Lucretia repressed an impulse to ask whether Henry’s father had succeeded in mastering Henry’s mother, and asked instead:

‘How too human? Can anyone be too human?’

‘Much,’ said Lady Mills, ‘when it comes to beating blacksmiths with riding-whips.’

‘She never did!’

‘You know best, Lucretia, of course,’ said Lady Mills, with heavy irony, ‘but I have it on good authority.’

‘But why?’ Lucretia bleated.

‘Oh, I dare say the blacksmith deserved it. Unladylike, of course. But Henry will keep her in her proper place. You don’t know Henry.’

‘I know him well enough to know that he could never tolerate unladylike conduct,’ said her friend, plucking up a spirit.

‘Things like that,’ Lady Mills laid down the law – ‘things like that you don’t tolerate. You crush.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Lucretia.

II

The wheel of Time revolves. Nine months later. The scene: the home of the child of Emma – of her who beats blacksmiths with riding-whips. Persons of the drama: Sir Moses Bulrushes, guardian of the girl who beats blacksmiths, and his sister, Miss Miriam Bulrushes.

Miss Bulrushes has been for these nine months the sole guardian of the soap-boiler’s heiress. Sir Moses has been away. He had been in Cairo, in Bombay, in Shanghai, in San Francisco, doing wonderful things with stocks and shares and markets. Now he has come back, in an expensive motor and a very furry coat, to demand of his sister an account of her stewardship.

You see the two in a perfectly-appointed library, where all the books are bound in red roan and not a book is out of place. You note the timid, placatory attitude of Miss Bulrushes; the cold, overbearing pose of her brother. Miss Bulrushes has done her best. Sir Moses is prepared, if he should not be satisfied with her best, to do his worst.

The month was August, and the room was sweet with late roses and blatant with dahlias, the favourite flower of Sir Moses.

Miss Bulrushes rose to meet her brother, vacating the most comfortable chair; he slipped into it, with the ease of long habit.

‘Well, Mirry,’ he said, ‘what’s the news?’

She could find no news, and said so.

‘I want an account of all that has occurred,’ said Sir Moses, carefully, ‘during the nine months of my absence. I have left you in charge of my ward. What has happened?’

‘Nothing, dear Mo,’ said the lady, timid, shadowy, pale, and delicate; ‘nothing at all. Except—’

‘Let us have the exceptions,’ said the financier, ‘and give me a light, will you?’

She brought him the embossed silver match box from the mantelpiece, and he lighted a cigar of incredible length.

‘The exception,’ she fluttered; ‘well, dear Mo, the worst exception is a long time ago, so perhaps—’

‘Speak, woman.’ said the Cosmopolitan financier, and his tone drew from her a fluttered –

‘Oh, don’t! It’s nothing.’

‘Nothing is easily said,’ he rejoined, patiently curbing an obviously excusable impatience.

‘It was only,’ she told him, ‘only a rather dreadful thing, when we first came here. Betty is rather fond of horses.’

‘Betty?’

‘Elizabeth. She likes to be called Betty. I didn’t see any harm in that.’

‘Well?’

‘Her horse – -she calls him Saladin – I don’t know why,’ she hastened to add, anticipating his opposing question, ‘her horse: it was taken to the blacksmith’s to have shoes put on – and the man did it wrong.’

‘How did it wrong?’

‘I don’t know, dear Mo – I really don’t. I think the man put on brown shoes and she wanted black – something went wrong. She said he’d ruined the horse’s feet. And she hit the man, over the face, with her riding-whip. And she swore. At least, I believe she said a bad word. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know any bad words, brother. You know I don’t.’

‘Well?’ Sir Moses’s patience was phenomenal.

‘Well, it was a scandal. But it’s died down. I do believe it’s died right down. And that’s all, brother. She’s a nice affectionate child. Not like children were when we were young, but a dear good child.’

‘That’s not so bad.’ said the financier, puffing at his big cigar and stretching his boots out comfortably. ‘We were well advised to bring her to the ancestral halls of her soap-boiling sire. No other house for miles, except Ferndean, and that’s empty.’

‘Not now, brother,’ Miss Bulrushes hastened to correct him. ‘Lady Mills has been in residence for nine months.’

‘Only Lady Mills, I suppose? The foolish boy’s not at home, I presume, to cultivate the natural foolishness of a foolish girl?’

‘There is a boy,’ said Miss Bulrushes; ‘at least, he’s a young man.’

‘Shades of my fathers!’ exclaimed the financier. ‘And has he met Elizabeth?’

‘Oh, yes, brother,’ Miss Bulrushes answered, brightly. ‘Of course, he has met her. He’s her stepcousin – had you forgotten? And I must say that since he has known her she has been much easier to manage.’

The financier sat up, rigid, and the cigar, unheeded between his fingers, paled and went out.

‘Has she seen much of this boy – or rather, young man?’

‘I think they’ve seen each other every day – several times a day,’ she answered, simply.

‘But I told you she was to see no one.’

‘But this young man is her own cousin – stepcousin, I mean – and such a good match. The estates adjoin, and his mother has been so very polite.’

‘Her politeness perish with her! Every day! And what have you been about?’

‘I though you would be so pleased. A ward is a burden – at least, you always said so. And to get her well married, that is the duty of a parent – or a guardian, and—’

‘Heaven help you, woman! Be quiet a moment and let me think.’

He thought. And the result of his thinking came in these words:

‘I thought you understood that a woman’s first duty is obedience – to her father, or her husband. If her father is no more, and she has failed to get a husband’ – he paused a moment to let the bitterness of this sink in – ‘then to her brother.’

‘I have done my best,’ said the sister.

‘You have done your best! I told you that the girl was to see no one. And you allow her to see, every day, a young man. Now try to clear your brain and understand. By the last will and testament of this girl’s father she may marry any man of good position. But the father feared that she might marry in haste and repent at leisure, as the saying is. Therefore, he ordains that if she marry she must first have seen the man of her choice for five days out of seven for one year before her marriage. Otherwise she cannot marry. If she does not marry before she is twenty-one I remain her guardian till she is twenty-five. That means that I control her money. Do you understand? Now, my speculations have not been successful lately. My Little Flower-Pot Syndicate – I explained that to you – well, it didn’t answer. And the Big Flower-Pot Syndicate that I got up to cover the Little Flower-Pots, that went wrong, too. We’re very near Queer Street, you and I, Miriam. In plain English, I’ve had to use some of the trust money to pay the dividends on my companies. Her money is indispensable to me. It is necessary that I continue to control it. Do you understand? I must continue to control her money. Therefore, she must not marry. Therefore, she must not see any young man every day. Now do you understand?’

‘Yes. I understand,’ Miss Bulrushes admitted; ‘but it seems hard on the girl.’

‘Hard on the girl? What is it at her age. to wait a few years? But for me – and for you, too, Miriam – it is life or death. Where is the girl now?’

‘I believe,’ said Miss Bulrushes, ‘that she is rehearsing Juliet with him as Romeo, for the private theatricals Lady Mills Is giving on the twenty-fourth.’

‘Theatricals? Romeo? Juliet?’ Sir Moses flung the cold cigar from him with considerable violence. ‘Where is the girl?’

‘In the breakfast-room, I believe, brother,’ twittered Miss Bulrushes.

‘Who is with her?’ thundered the guardian.

‘Er – nobody, brother, except Henry – the young man. Who should there be?’ faltered Miss Bulrushes.

‘I suppose God did make women?’ Sir Moses threw up his hands.

III

In the breakfast-room, that home of luxury, a pretty enough scene was set. Through the open French window the velvet lawn, with shrubs and lime-trees beyond it, showed like some lovely painted backcloth. Against the window-frame leaned a girl in white, and a white-flannelled arm was round her waist.

‘I have forgotten why I did call thee back,’ she said.

‘Let me stay here till thou remember it,’ said the owner of the white-flannelled arm.

‘But you ought to be under the balcony, not here,’ said Betty, who was Juliet.

‘We can say the words just as well here.’ said Romeo, who was Henry. ‘And it’s far more comfortable. Remember, we only got engaged yesterday. There ought to be some poetic licence on a day like this.’

He took it. And she did not resist with any violence.

Later, she said, ‘Look here! How often do you think we’ve seen each other since I came home?’

‘Every possible minute, as far as I am concerned.’

‘Yes – but – really. We’ve seen each, other at least five days out of seven. And it’s a very good thing we have,’ she said, impressively. ‘Do you know what I did on Wednesday, when you were at the Cubist Exhibition and Miss Bulrushes was at her dressmaker’s?’

‘Something wonderful, I’ve no doubt.’

‘I went to our solicitors, and I told him to send me a copy of dear daddy’s will. And it came this morning.’ She proceeded to expound the provisions of the will. ‘So you see,’ she went on, ‘it’s just as well that we have seen each other as often as we have, because otherwise we couldn’t have got married.’

‘What a woman of business it is!’ he said, admiringly. ‘But what do wills matter? I’d have carried you off against your will if you hadn’t happened to love me. But you do, don’t you?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, after the appropriate interval. ‘You might have carried me off, but you couldn’t carry off my money; that depends on my guardian and on my father’s will. And my money will be useful. You know your place is all to pieces.’

‘Yes, it is,’ he admitted, ruefully.

‘Well, then,’ said she.

‘Oh, bother the money! It’s you I want,’ said he.

‘I know it is,’ said she. And his fair head bending over her dark one melted into a charming group against the background of green lawn and waving trees.

But Sir Moses Bulrushes, entering quietly, was insensible to the charm of the exquisite grouping.

‘What’s all this?’ he asked, in tones to shatter emotion and wither the most beautiful sentiments.

Henry, chivalrous and manly, told him what it was.

And Sir Moses behaved as though Henry had been one naughty child and Betty another. He waved it all aside. Refused to consider the arguments so ably assigned by Henry, the sentiments Betty so touchingly indicated. His mind appeared to be obsessed by the incident of the beaten blacksmith. Vainly Betty explained that the blacksmith had lamed her favourite horse by shoeing it when he was drunk and unable to gauge the relative depth of nail and hoof, and that whatever she had done had been done under the influence of a just resentment, and, anyway, had been done nearly a year ago, when she was quite young.

‘You are quite young still,’ said Sir Moses, ‘and it is plain that your education is incomplete. A woman’s education is designed to make her a lady. Ladies do not smite with riding-whips blacksmiths, however faulty. My duty to your good father’s memory demands that I should insist on the completion of your education. You will go back to school for another year.’

Romeo’s arguments were vain as Juliet’s protests.

‘I shall return you to Miss Morbydde’s tomorrow,’ said Sir Moses.

‘You can’t,’ said Betty-Juliet. ‘School doesn’t begin till September nineteenth or thereabouts.’

‘Thereabouts will see your return to scholastic discipline – needed, too sorely needed,’ said Sir Moses. ‘Bid good morning to this young gentleman. You will not see him again for some time.’

‘You will,’ said Henry, impetuously.

‘I think not,’ said Sir Moses, and selected a fresh cigar from his case.

Henry was silent.

Sir Moses looked round for a match. Henry appeared to awaken from a trance.

‘Allow me,’ he said, producing the silver match-box which Betty had that very morning given him.

Sir Moses grunted, but took the match. Henry assumed – he had had considerable success in amateur theatricals – the air of a man of the world – an air which, while placating the guardian, overwhelmed the ward. ‘Of course I see, Sir Moses,’ he said, ‘that you have the right to dictate to Miss Stott the course of life which you wish her to pursue. And, of course, I can but bow to your decision.’

‘Oh!’ said Betty.

‘Bow to your decision,’ Henry repealed, firmly, ‘which is, of course, final. My respectful admiration for Miss Stott docs not blind me to certain – shall I say lacunae? – in her education.’

‘Oh?’ said Sir Moses, interested.

‘Oh!’ said Betty, passionately.

‘For instance,’ Henry went on, with intense suavity, ‘Miss Stott’s ignorance of the first principles of Cubist art has been, I may own, real grief to me.’

‘OH!’ said Betty, for the last time.

‘And if,’ Henry went on, ‘if I could be assured that this deficiency in an otherwise faultless education were about to be remedied, I should view the proposed separation from Miss Stott with a calmness which otherwise. . .’ His voice trailed off into unintelligible murmurs.

‘Meaning?’ said Sir Moses.

‘If Miss Stott’s return to school should involve the completion of Miss Stott’s artistic education I should, though with the deepest regret, bow to your decision.’

‘If you’ll kindly express yourself in plain English,’ said Sir Moses.

‘I will,’ said Henry, firmly. ‘If Miss Stott refuses to return to school and I back her up, we can make it very unpleasant for you.’

‘We can,’ said Betty, brightening.

‘But if you will undertake that Miss Stott shall take lessons in Cubist art, I shall resign myself to the separation, consoling myself with the thought that after the year of parting – you did say a year, didn’t you? – she will be restored to my arms, perfect in every respect .’

‘Your arms!’ snorted Sir Moses, but not irreconcilably.

‘My arms,’ said Henry, and folded them.

‘You mean,’ said Sir Moses, who had anticipated a much more difficult duel. ‘that if the girl learns this new silly art-stuff you won’t try to stop my sending her back to school to learn not to beat blacksmiths?’

‘That is exactly what I mean,’ said Henry.

‘Very well, then,’ said Sir Moses, rubbing his hands, and proceeding to not unfriendly particulars.

But Betty was furious – furious and dumb.

IV

Miss Morbydde was thoroughly up to date Her school was a school for the daughters of the aristocracy, with wide margins for the offspring of princes of industry and kings of finance. Miss Morbydde was abreast of her times; she had heard of the Epstein Venus, all right, and knew that there was an eccentricity called Cubism. That a pupil should desire instruction in this eccentric art seemed to be only one more of the surprises which modern life inexhaustibly supplied to Miss Morbydde. By the greatest good fortune a Cubist Artist was found not too far from the school, an elderly foreigner of obscure nationality and doubtful cleanliness, warranted, to Miss Morbydde’s experience, as wholly safe.

‘Of course. I understand Cubic art.’ she assured Sir Moses. ‘Another pupil is to have lessons this term. It happens that a Cubic Artist is available. An elderly foreigner. He occupies a lodge on my estate. He cuts wood: he admires the shape of the logs. All angles, you know. No, he is not mad. But he is wholly unattractive.’

Sir Moses welcomed the intelligent tact of the schoolmistress.

‘He’d have to be that,’ he said. ‘I can’t have any falling in love.’

‘You’ve only to see him,’ said Miss Morbydde, and permitted herself the ghost of a titter – attractive, she hoped – reassuring, she knew.

‘Could I see him?’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Morbydde, and rang for her maid, instructing her to ask the mad gentleman to step this way for one moment.

‘Is he really mad?’ asked Sir Moses.

‘Not at all. But art looks like madness to the lower classes. You understand?’

Sir Moses, conscious of a rapprochement with the lower classes, merely bowed and caressed his sleek black hat.

‘She’s really very – ecstatic,’ he said. ‘You’re sure she won’t fall in love with him?’

‘Wait till you see him,’ said Miss Morbydde, impressively.

And when Sir Moses saw him he felt that he had not waited in vain. The Cubic Artist – as Miss Morbydde persisted in calling him – was named Count Verzo Sczchensky. He had a black beard, black hair, and beady, bright eyes. He bowed with impressive politeness, and took the easiest chair while Sir Moses wasn’t looking. Miss Morbydde spoke his curious Central European dialect slightly, it seemed – understood it better than she spoke it.

Her first question met with an answer which she translated to Sir Moses with black, raised, apologetic eyebrows.

‘He can teach, of course,’ she said; ‘but he has religious scruples.’

‘Lord!’ said Sir Moses, frankly; ‘whatever about?’

‘He will not teach unless his pupil has a cubic appearance. Now tell me, Sir Moses, candidly, do you consider your ward cuby?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Moses, who would have said anything.

Miss Morbydde stumbled among Central European consonants. The undesirable alien replied.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss Morbydde, ‘but he simply makes difficulties. He says suppose she falls in love with him.’ The alien confirmed the translator with a swarthy hand on a green-velvet-covered heart.

‘Look at the thing!’ said Sir Moses.

‘Al catra non so liete zobieski,’ said the Central European, and Miss Morbydde had to translate that, unfortunately, this had happened before. ‘I’m not afraid of its happening again,’ said Sir Moses, gazing at the front elevation of the Central European.

‘You won’t blame him if – ?’

‘Good gracious, no,’ said Sir Moses; ‘and money is no object. Tell him that.’

Miss Morbydde told him, slapping her new black skirt to eke out her meagre vocabulary.

The Central European melted – he bowed to Sir Moses, he kissed the hand of Miss Morbydde. He laid himself at her feet, at Sir Moses’s feet, at everybody’s feet.

‘Then that’s settled,’ said Sir Moses Bulrushes. ‘It’s just a fad of the girl’s. But if it keeps her quiet! You understand, Miss Morbydde, money is no object. If you and this – this natural curiosity – can keep her contented for a term or two – well! I don’t mind telling you there’s an entanglement with an undesirable young man, and it must be stopped. I shouldn’t mind going to double the ordinary terms if she doesn’t see any man at all while she’s here; no other masters even – except this unique object.’

‘Generosity itself,’ said Miss Morbydde. ‘Shall we say three hundred? It’s my usual fee in these exceptional cases.’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Sir Moses.

‘Gwate gemini volux imperium schenchilirzki volumi,’ said the Central European. And the three parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

V

‘Volhofsky unidem clilorodisi edax!’ said the teacher of Cubist art.

And Miss Elizabeth Stott said: ‘Don’t be silly.’

From which you will infer that the pupil must have made some progress in the matter of Cubist art.

Only two pupils were taking this course – Miss Betty Stott and Miss Peggy Mills. The instructor had greeted the idea of a chaperoning governess with such an artless flow of Central European eloquence that the suggestion had been hastily withdrawn. After all, there was safety in numbers – even if the numbers were only two. And Count Yerzo Sczchensky really was – well, you had only to look at him!

‘Volhofsky semper eadem surpriseky,’ said the drawing-master – and the two pupils giggled in unison.

‘Show us those new steps again,’ said Miss Peggy Mills. And the Cubist drawing-master – who must have learned a little English – complied. Elizabeth imitated the steps gently, tentatively, almost furtively. He turned and caught her round the waist, and together they executed a sort of Cubist tango, very angular, but most magnetic.

‘Bravo!’ cried Peggy Mills. ‘Encore! Do it again.’

The encore was warmly given. These Central European dances are most engrossing. The performers did not hear Miss Mills’s hasty cry of ‘Cave!’ and Miss Morbydde and Sir Moses had the unexpected pleasure of an unrehearsed performance of an extraordinarily intimate Central European dance.

‘Betty!’ cried Miss Morbydde.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Betty.

‘I did cry “Cave”,’ said little Miss Mills.

‘Oo goggery bag-wag – sonsk svor skerske supra lofty,’ said the Cubist drawing-master, with, it must be owned, considerable presence of mind.

Miss Morbydde, in halting Central European phrases, asked an explanation. Count Verzo Sczchensky offered one. Cubes, squares, and angles, it seemed, could only vitally be expressed by the evolutions of the human body.

Miss Morbydde translated.

Sir Moses stood like a rock. ‘I know not these languages,’ he said, ‘but I know the language of the completely silly, not-by-any-means-to-be-made-sensible girl. The foreigner’s fears are realised. My ward has fallen in love with him.’

Miss Morbydde’s whole person expressed the extreme of negation.

‘Oh, but it’s not impossible!’ said Sir Moses. ‘She’d fall in love with anything.’

Miss Morbydde went as near to a giggle as a well-trained schoolmistress can go.

‘She is changeable,’ she owned; ‘but there’s safety in numbers. Who knows? It might be your turn next, Sir Moses.’

‘Woman,’ said Sir Moses, shedding all at once the whole of his gentle Gentile veneer, ‘all women are fools! I take her home now – at once.’

Miss Betty replied by linking her arm in that of the Central European artist and turning on her guardian a face full of the most four-square defiance.

‘You will come home with me,’ repeated Sir Moses.

Pause.

Miss Morbydde, gently approaching the linked couple, proffered suggestion.

‘Betty, dear, you cannot remain permanently attached to the arm of a Cubist wood-cutter.’

‘Can’t I?’ said Betty.

‘Cannot I,’ murmured Miss Morbydde. ‘Come, go home with your guardian.’

‘I sha’n’t!’ said Betty.

‘Shall not,’ said Miss Morbydde. ‘But I think you will. dear. Be reasonable.’

‘I won’t!’ said Betty.

‘Will not,’ said Miss Morbydde. ‘But, after all—’

‘I’m going to marry him,’ said Betty.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Sir Moses. ‘The girl is non compos mentis. A little while ago it was Sir Henry Mills. Now it is this object. She ought to be certified.’

‘Brek kek kek kex koax koax,’ said the Central European artist.

Sir Moses carefully regained his temper.

‘My dear Betty,’ he said, ‘by the terms of your father’s will you cannot marry any man unless you have seen him five days out of seven for a year.’

‘I have,’ said Betty.

Sir Moses’s outspread hands appealed to the universe.

‘More than five days out of seven,’ said Betty. And Peggy Mills sniggered in the background.

‘I shall get a doctor – two doctors, three doctors, and have her certified,’ said Sir Moses.

‘How’s that, old sport?’ said the Central European artist, tearing off his wig and beard and throwing them in the face of Sir Moses Bulrushes.

You, of course, knew what to expect. You knew that beneath that foreign exterior lurked the familiar English features of Henry Mills. But Sir Moses was less well-informed. To him it was, not to mince matters, a blow. And he received it like a blow. But for the presence of mind of Miss Morbydde. who threw herself between the financier and the wigless one, there is no knowing what violence Sir Moses might have perpetrated. As it was, he afforded himself a merely verbal relief, and just went away swearing.

Those who were left looked at each other and laughed.

‘Thank you. Miss Morbydde,’ said the Central European artist. ‘You were splendid.’

‘Ask me to the wedding,’ said Miss Morbydde, pluming herself.

‘You’ve got Sir Moses’s cheque?’ asked the Central European artist.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Morbydde, with the eloquence of a whole encyclopaedia in that one short word.

‘Then here’s my note of hand for the other five hundred,’ said he.

The lovers melted into each other’s arms. Miss Peggy Mills applauded with loud-clapping little hands. Miss Morbydde wiped away a tear.

‘It’s not the money,’ she murmured, ‘but sentiment – heart to heart – true love! I was always sentimental, from a child.’

‘I’m sure you were,’ said Betty.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, rather!’ said Miss Peggy Mills.

And the whole tale would hardly have been worth the telling but for one simple outstanding fact. This story offers the sole example, in life or in fiction, so far as I am aware, of a venal governess.

«•»

From: The Strand Magazine May 1918