Author: Mrs. Margaret Oliphant
Date: 1856-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost stories; Horror; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction
Description: In these collected tales, the writer takes us on chilling excursions to the borderland between the natural and the supernatural, with stories of the attempts of the dead to contact the living and moving accounts of what might lie ahead in the afterlife. * * * * The “grand master” M. R. James admired Oliphant's supernatural fiction, concluding that “the religious ghost story, as it may be called, was never done better than by Mrs. Oliphant in ‘The Open Door’ and ‘A Beleaguered City’”. * * * * The short story “The Library Window” is, quite simply, a little masterpiece.
Publisher: MobileRead
Rights: Text is the public domain worldwide, because the author died more than 100 years ago, and the works were published prior to 1923.

The Seen and the Unseen

STORIES OF THE SUPERNATURAL
BY
Mrs.  (Margaret)  Oliphant

CONTENTS:

—Hauntings:

The Wizard’s Son
[NOVEL]

A Beleaguered City
[NOVEL]

Witcherley Ways
The Secret Chamber
Earthbound
The Open Door
The Lady’s Walk
The Portrait
The Library Window
—Inspirations:
The Little Dirty Angel
New Year’s Day
A Visitor and His Opinions
—Afterlives:
Old Lady Mary
A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen
The Little Pilgrim Goes Up Higher
The Little Pilgrim in the Seen and Unseen
The Land of Darkness
On the Dark Mountains
Dies Irae
The Land of Suspense
… About This eBook

The Wizard’s Son

(1882)

CHAPTER I

The Methvens occupied a little house in the outskirts of a little town where there was not very much going on of any description, and still less which they could take any share in, being, as they were, poor and unable to make any effective response to the civilities shown to them. The family consisted of three persons—the mother, who was a widow with one son; the son himself, who was a young man of three or four and twenty; and a distant cousin of Mrs. Methven’s, who lived with her, having no other home. It was not a very happy household. The mother had a limited income and an anxious temper; the son a somewhat volatile and indolent disposition, and no ambition at all as to his future, nor anxiety as to what was going to happen to him in life. This, as may be supposed, was enough to introduce many uneasy elements into their joint existence; and the third of the party, Miss Merivale, was not of the class of the peacemakers to whom Scripture allots a special blessing. She had no amiable glamour in her eyes, but saw her friends’ imperfections with a clearness of sight which is little conducive to that happy progress of affairs which is called “getting on.” The Methvens were sufficiently proud to keep their difficulties out of the public eye, but on very many occasions, unfortunately, it had become very plain to themselves that they did not “get on.” It was not any want of love. Mrs. Methven was herself aware, and her friends were in the constant habit of saying, that she had sacrificed everything for Walter. Injudicious friends are fond of making such statements, by way, it is to be supposed, of increasing the devotion and gratitude of the child to the parent: but the result is, unfortunately, very often the exact contrary of what is desired—for no one likes to have his duty in this respect pointed out to him, and whatever good people may think, it is not in itself an agreeable thought that “sacrifices” have been made for one, and an obligation placed upon one’s shoulders from the beginning of time, independent of any wish or claim upon the part of the person served. The makers of sacrifices have seldom the reward which surrounding spectators, and in many cases themselves, think their due. Mrs. Methven herself would probably have been at a loss to name what were the special sacrifices she had made for Walter. She had remained a widow, but that she would have been eager to add was no sacrifice. She had pinched herself more or less to find the means for his education, which had been of what is supposed in England to be the best kind: and she had, while he was a boy, subordinated her own tastes and pleasures to his, and eagerly sought out everything that was likely to be agreeable to him. When they took their yearly money—as it is considered necessary for him—places that Walter liked, or where he could find amusement, or had friends, were eagerly sought for. “Women,” Mrs. Methven said, “can make themselves comfortable anywhere; but a boy, you know, is quite different.” “Quite,” Miss Merivale would say: “Oh, if you only knew them as well as we do; they are creatures entirely without resources. You must put their toys into their very hands.” “There is no question of toys with Walter—he has plenty of resources. It is not that,” Mrs. Methven would explain, growing red. “I hope I am not one of the silly mothers that thrust their children upon everybody: but, of course, a boy must be considered. Everybody who has had to do with men—or boys—knows that they must be considered.” A woman whose life has been mixed up with these troublesome beings feels the superiority of her experience to those who know nothing about them. And in this way, without spoiling him or treating him with ridiculous devotion, as the king of her fate, Walter had been “considered” all his life.

For the rest, Mrs. Methven had, it must be allowed, lived a much more agreeable life in the little society of Sloebury when her son was young than she did now that he had come to years, mis-named, of discretion. Then she had given her little tea-parties, or even a small occasional dinner, at which her handsome boy would make his appearance when it was holiday time, interesting everybody; or, when absent, would still furnish a very pleasant subject of talk to the neighbours, who thought his mother did a great deal too much for him, but still were pleased to discuss a boy who was having the best of educations, and at a public school. In those days she felt herself very comfortable in Sloebury, and was asked to all the best houses, and felt a modest pride in the certainty that she was able to offer something in return. But matters were very different when Walter was four-and-twenty instead of fourteen. By that time it was apparent that he was not going to take the world by storm, or set the Thames on fire; and, though she had been too sensible to brag, Mrs. Methven had thought both these things possible, and perhaps had allowed it to be perceived that she considered something great, something out of the way, to be Walter’s certain career. But twenty-four is, as she said herself, so different! He had been unsuccessful in some of his examinations, and for others he had not been “properly prepared.” His mother did not take refuge in the thought that the examiners were partial or the trials unfair; but there was naturally always a word as to the reason why he did not succeed—he had not been “properly prepared.” He knew of one only a few days before the eventful moment, and at this time of day, she asked indignantly, when everything is got by competition, how is a young man who has not “crammed” to get the better of one who has? The fact remained that at twenty-four, Walter, evidently a clever fellow, with a great many endowments, had got nothing to do; and, what was worse—a thing which his mother, indeed, pretended to be unconscious of, but which everybody else in the town remarked upon—he was not in the least concerned about this fact, but took his doing nothing quite calmly as the course of nature, and neither suffered from it, nor made any effort to place himself in a different position. He “went in for” an examination when it was put before him as a thing to do, and took his failure more than philosophically when he failed, as, as yet, he had always done: and, in the mean time, contentedly lived on, without disturbing himself, and tranquilly let the time go by—the golden time which should have shaped his life.

This is not a state of affairs which can bring happiness to any household. There is a kind of parent—or rather it should be said of a mother, for no parent of the other sex is supposed capable of so much folly—to whom everything is good that her child, the cherished object of her affections, does; and this is a most happy regulation of nature, and smooths away the greatest difficulties of life for many simple-hearted folk, without doing half so much harm as is attributed to it; for disapproval has little moral effect, and lessens the happiness of all parties, without materially lessening the sins of the erring. But, unfortunately, Mrs. Methven was not of this happy kind. She saw her son’s faults almost too clearly, and they gave her the most poignant pain. She was a proud woman, and that he should suffer in the opinion of the world was misery and grief to her. She was stung to the heart by disappointment in the failure of her many hopes and projects for him. She was stricken with shame to think of all the fine things that had been predicted of Walter in his boyish days, and that not one of them had come true. People had ceased now to speak of the great things that Walter would do. They asked “What was he going to do?” in an entirely altered tone, and this went to her heart. Her pride suffered the most terrible blow. She could not bear the thought; and though she maintained a calm face to the world, and represented herself as entirely satisfied, Walter knew otherwise, and had gradually replaced his old careless affection for his mother by an embittered opposition and resistance to her, which made both their lives wretched enough. How it was that he did not make an effort to escape from her continual remonstrances, her appeals and entreaties, her censure and criticism, it is very difficult to tell. To have gone away, and torn her heart with anxiety, but emancipated himself from a yoke which it was against the dignity of his manhood to bear, would have been much more natural. But he had no money, and he had not the energy to seize upon any way of providing for himself. Had such an opportunity fallen at his feet he would probably have accepted it with fervour; but Fortune did not put herself out of the way to provide for him, nor he to be provided for. Notwithstanding the many scenes which took place in the seclusion of that poor little house, when the mother, what with love, shame, mortification, and impatience, would all but rave in impotent passion, appealing to him, to the pride, the ambition, the principle which so far as could be seen the young man did not possess, Walter held upon his way with an obstinate pertinacity, and did nothing. How he managed to do this without losing all self-respect and every better feeling it is impossible to say; but he did so somehow, and was still “a nice enough fellow,” notwithstanding that everybody condemned him; and had not even lost the good opinion of the little society, though it was unanimous in blame. The only way in which he responded to his mother’s remonstrances and complaints was by seeking his pleasure and such occupation as contented him—which was a little cricket now and then, a little lawn-tennis, a little flirtation—as far away from her as possible; and by being as little at home as possible. His temper was a little spoilt by the scenes which awaited him when he went home; and these seemed to justify to himself his gradual separation from his mother’s house: but never induced him to sacrifice, or even modify, his own course. He appeared to think that he had a justification for his conduct in the opposition it met with; and that his pride was involved in the necessity for never giving in. If he had been let alone, he represented to himself, everything would have been different; but to yield to this perpetual bullying was against every instinct. And even the society which disapproved so much gave a certain encouragement to Walter in this point of view: for it was Mrs. Methven whom everybody blamed. It was her ridiculous pride, or her foolish indulgence, or her sinful backing-up of his natural indolence; even some people thought it was her want of comprehension of her son which had done it, and that Walter would have been entirely a different person in different hands. If she had not thought it a fine thing to have him appear as a useless fine gentleman above all necessity of working for his living, it was incredible that he could have allowed the years to steal by without making any exertion. This was what the town decided, not without a good deal of sympathy for Walter. What could be expected? Under the guidance of a foolish mother, a young man always went wrong; and in this case he did not go wrong, poor fellow! he only wasted his existence, nothing worse. Sloebury had much consideration for the young man.

Perhaps it added something to the exasperation with which Mrs. Methven saw all her efforts fail that she had some perception of this, and knew that it was supposed to be her fault. No doubt in her soul it added to the impatience and indignation and pain with which she contemplated the course of affairs, which she was without strength to combat, yet could not let alone. Now and then, indeed, she did control herself so far as to let them alone, and then there was nothing but tranquillity and peace in the house. But she was a conscientious woman, and, poor soul! she had a temper—the very complacency and calm with which her son went upon his way, the approval he showed of her better conduct when she left him to his own devices, struck her in some moments with such sudden indignation and pain, that she could no longer contain herself. He, who might have been anything he pleased, to be nothing! He, of whom everybody had predicted such great things! At such moments the sight of Walter smiling, strolling along with his hands in his pockets, excited her almost to frenzy. Poor lady! So many women would have been proud of him—a handsome young fellow in flannels, with his cricket bat or his racquet when occasion served. But love and injured pride were bitter in her heart, and she could not bear the sight. All this while, however, nobody knew anything about the scenes that arose in the little house, which preserved a show of happiness and tender union long after the reality was gone. Indeed, even Miss Merivale, who had unbounded opportunities of knowing, took a long time to make up her mind that Walter and his mother did not “get on.”

Such was the unfortunate state of affairs at the time when this history begins. The Methvens were distantly connected, it was known, with a great family in Scotland, which took no notice whatever of them, and, indeed, had very little reason so to do, Captain Methven being long since dead, and his widow and child entirely unknown to the noble house, from which it was so great an honour to derive a little, much-diluted, far-off drop of blood, more blue and more rich than the common. It is possible that had the connection been by Mrs. Methven’s side she would have known more about it, and taken more trouble to keep up her knowledge of the family. But it was not so, and she had even in her younger days been conscious of little slights and neglects which had made her rather hostile than otherwise to the great people from whom her husband came. “I know nothing about the Erradeens,” she would say; “they are much too grand to take any notice of us: and I am too proud to seek any notice from them.”

“I am afraid, my dear, there is a good deal in that,” said old Mrs. Wynn, the wife of the old rector, shaking her white head. This lady was a sort of benign embodiment of justice in Sloebury. She punished nobody, but she saw the right and wrong with a glance that was almost infallible, and shook her head though she never exacted any penalty.

Here Miss Merivale would seize the occasion to strike in—

“Prejudice is prejudice,” she said, “whatever form it takes. A lord has just as much chance of being nice as an—apothecary.” This was said because the young doctor, newly admitted into his father’s business, who thought no little of himself, was within reach, and just then caught Miss Merivale’s eye.

“That is a very safe speech, seeing there are neither lords nor apothecaries here,” he said with the blandest smile. He was not a man to be beaten at such a game.

“But a lord may have influence, you know. For Walter’s sake I would not lose sight of him,” said Mrs. Wynn.

“You cannot lose sight of what you have never seen: besides, influence is of no consequence nowadays. Nobody can do anything for you—save yourself,” said Mrs. Methven with a little sigh. Her eyes turned involuntarily to where Walter was. He was always in the middle of everything that was going on. Among the Sloebury young people he had a little air of distinction, or so at least his mother thought. She was painfully impartial, and generally, in her anxiety, perceived his bad points rather than his good ones; but as she glanced at the group, love for once allowed itself to speak, though always with an accent peculiar to the character of the thinker. She allowed to herself that he had an air of distinction, a something more than the others—alas, that nothing ever came of it! The others all, or almost all, were already launched in the world. They were doing or trying to do something—whereas Walter! But she took care that nobody should hear that irrepressible sigh.

“I am very sorry for it,” said Mrs. Wynn, “for there are many people who would never push for themselves, and yet do very well indeed when they are put in the way.”

“I am all for the pushing people,” said Miss Merivale. “I like the new state of affairs. When every one stands for himself, and you get just as much as you work for, there will be no grudges and sulkings with society. Though I’m a Tory, I like every man to make his own way.”

“A lady’s politics are never to be calculated upon,” said the Rector, who was standing up against the fire on his own hearth, rubbing his old white hands. “It is altogether against the principles of Toryism, my dear lady, that a man should make his own way. It is sheer democracy. As for that method of examinations, it is one of the most levelling principles of the time—it is one of Mr. Gladstone’s instruments for the destruction of society. When the son of a cobbler is just as likely to come to high command as your son or mine, what is to become of the country?” the old clergyman said, lifting those thin white hands.

Mr. Gladstone’s name was as a firebrand thrown into the midst of this peaceable little country community. The speakers all took fire. They thought that there was no doubt about what was going to come of the country. It was going to destruction as fast as fate could carry it. When society had dropped to pieces, and the rabble had come uppermost, and England had become a mere name, upon which all foreign nations should trample, and wild Irishmen dance war dances, and Americans expectorate, then Mr. Gladstone would be seen in his true colours. While this was going on, old Mrs. Wynn sat in her easy-chair and shook her head. She declared always that she was no politician. And young Walter Methven, attracted by the sudden quickening of the conversation which naturally attended the introduction of this subject, came forward, ready in the vein of opposition which was always his favourite attitude.

“Mr. Gladstone must be a very great man,” he said. “I hear it is a sign of being in society when you foam at the mouth at the sound of his name.”

“You young fellows think it fine to be on the popular side; but wait till you are my age,” cried one of the eager speakers. “It will not matter much to me. There will be peace in my days.” “But wait,” cried another, “and see how you will like it when everything topples down together, the crown and the state, and the aristocracy, and public credit, and national honour, and property, and the constitution, and—”

So many anxious and alarmed politicians here spoke together that the general voice became inarticulate, and Walter Methven, representing the opposition, was at liberty to laugh.

“Come one, come all!” he cried, backed up by the arm of the sofa, upon which Mrs. Wynn sat shaking her head. “It would be a fine thing for me and all the other proletarians. Something would surely fall our way.”

His mother watched him, standing up against the sofa, confronting them all, with her usual exasperated and angry affection. She thought, as she looked at him, that there was nothing he was not fit for. He was clever enough for Parliament; he might have been prime minister—but he was nothing! nothing, and likely to be nothing, doing nothing, desiring nothing. Her eye fell on young Wynn, the rector’s nephew, who had just got a fellowship at his college, and on the doctor’s son, who was just entering into a share of his father’s practice, and on Mr. Jeremy the young banker, whose attentions fluttered any maiden to whom he might address them. They were Walter’s contemporaries, and not one of them was worthy, she thought, to be seen by the side of her boy; but they had all got before him in the race of life. They were something and he was nothing. It was not much wonder if her heart was sore and angry. When she turned round to listen civilly to something that was said to her, her face was contracted and pale. It was more than she could bear. She made a move to go away before any of the party was ready, and disturbed Miss Merivale in the midst of a tête-à-tête, which was a thing not easily forgiven.

Walter walked home with them in great good humour, but his mother knew very well that he was not coming in. He was going to finish the evening elsewhere. If he had come in would she have been able to restrain herself? Would she not have fallen upon him, either in anger or in grief, holding up to him the examples of young Wynn and young Jeremy and the little doctor? She knew she would not have been able to refrain, and it was almost a relief to her, though it was another pang, when he turned away at the door.

“I want to speak to Underwood about to-morrow?” he said.

“What is there about to-morrow? Of all the people in Sloebury Captain Underwood is the one I like least,” she said. “Why must you always have something to say to him when every one else is going to bed?”

“I am not going to bed, nor is he,” said Walter lightly.

Mrs. Methven’s nerves were highly strung. Miss Merivale had passed in before them, and there was nobody to witness this little struggle, which she knew would end in nothing, but which was inevitable. She grasped him by the arm in her eagerness and pain.

“Oh, my boy!” she said, “come in, come in, and think of something more than the amusement of to-morrow. Life is not all play, though you seem to think so. For once listen to me, Walter—oh, listen to me! You cannot go on like this. Think of all the others; all at work, every one of them, and you doing nothing.”

“Do you want me to begin to do something now,” said Walter, “when you have just told me everybody was going to bed?”

“Oh! if I were you,” she cried in her excitement, “I would rest neither night nor day. I would not let it be said that I was the last, and every one of them before me.”

Walter shook himself free of her detaining hold. “Am I to be a dustman, or a scavenger, or—what?” he said, contemptuously. “I know no other trades that are followed at this hour.”

Mrs. Methven had reached the point at which a woman has much ado not to cry in the sense of impotence and exasperation which such an argument brings. “It is better to do anything than to do nothing,” she cried, turning away from him and hastening in at the open door.

He paused a moment, as if doubtful what to do; there was something in her hasty withdrawal which for an instant disposed him to follow, and she paused breathless, with a kind of hope, in the half-light of the little hall; but the next moment his footsteps sounded clear and quick on the pavement, going away. Mrs. Methven waited until they were almost out of hearing before she closed the door. Angry, baffled, helpless, what could she do? She wiped a hot tear from the corner of her eye before she went into the drawing-room, where her companion, always on the alert, had already turned up the light of the lamp, throwing an undesired illumination upon her face, flushed and troubled from this brief controversy.

“I thought you were never coming in,” said Miss Merivale, “and that open door sends a draught all through the house.”

“Walter detained me for a moment to explain some arrangements he has to make for to-morrow,” Mrs. Methven said with dignity. “He likes to keep me au courant of his proceedings.”

Miss Merivale was absolutely silenced by this sublime assumption, notwithstanding the flush of resentment, the glimmer of moisture in the mother’s eye.

CHAPTER II

Walter walked along the quiet, almost deserted street with a hasty step and a still hastier rush of disagreeable thoughts. There was, he felt, an advantage in being angry, in the sensation of indignant resistance to a petty tyranny. For a long time past he had taken refuge in this from every touch of conscience and sense of time lost and opportunities neglected. He was no genius, but he was not so dull as not to know that his life was an entirely unsatisfactory one, and himself in the wrong altogether; everything rotten in the state of his existence, and a great deal that must be set right one time or another in all his habits and ways. The misfortune was that it was so much easier to put off this process till to-morrow than to begin it to-day. He had never been roused out of the boyish condition of mind in which a certain resistance to authority was natural, and opposition to maternal rule and law a sort of proof of superiority and independence. Had this been put into words, and placed before him as the motive of much that he did, no one would have coloured more angrily or resented more hotly the suggestion; and yet in the bottom of his heart he would have known it to be true. All through his unoccupied days he carried with him the sense of folly, the consciousness that he could not justify to himself the course he was pursuing. The daily necessity of justifying it to another was almost the sole thing that silenced his conscience. His mother, who kept “nagging” day after day, who was never satisfied, whose appeals he sometimes thought theatrical, and her passion got up, was his sole defence against that self-dissatisfaction which is the severest of all criticisms. If she would but let him alone, leave him to his own initiative, and not perpetually endeavour to force a change which to be effectual, as all authorities agreed, must come of itself! He was quite conscious of the inadequacy of this argument, and in his heart felt that it was a poor thing to take advantage of it; but yet, on the surface of his mind, put it forward and made a bulwark of it against his own conscience. He did so now as he hurried along, in all the heat that follows a personal encounter. If she would but let him alone! But he could not move a step anywhere, could not make an engagement, could not step into a friend’s rooms, as he was going to do now, without her interference. The relations of a parent to an only child are not the same as those that exist between a father and mother and the different members of a large family. It has been usual to consider them in one particular light as implying the closest union and mutual devotion. But there is another point of view in which to consider the question. They are so near to each other, and the relationship so close, that there is a possibility of opposition and contrariety more trying, more absorbing, than any other except that between husband and wife. A young son does not always see the necessity of devotion to a mother who is not very old, who has still many sources of pleasure apart from himself, and who is not capable, perhaps, on her side, of the undiscriminating worship which is grandmotherly, and implies a certain weakness and dimness of perception in the fond eyes that see everything in a rosy, ideal light. This fond delusion is often in its way a moral agent, obliging the object of it to fulfil what is expected of him, and reward the full and perfect trust which is given so unhesitatingly. But in this case it was not possible. The young man thought, or persuaded himself, that his mother’s vexatious watch over him, and what he called her constant suspicion and doubt of him, had given him a reason for the disgust and impatience with which he turned from her control. He pictured to himself the difference which a father’s larger, more generous sway would have made in him; to that he would have answered, he thought, like a ship to its helm, like an army to its general. But this petty rule, this perpetual fault-finding, raised up every faculty in opposition. Even when he meant the best, her words of warning, her reminders of duty, were enough to set him all wrong again. He thought, as a bad husband often thinks when he is conscious of the world’s disapproval, that it was her complaints that were the cause. And when he was reminded by others, well-meaning but injudicious, of all he owed to his mother, his mind rose yet more strongly in opposition, his spirit refused the claim. This is a very different picture from that of the widow’s son whose earliest inspiration is his sense of duty to his mother, and adoring gratitude for her care and love—but it is perhaps as true a one. A young man may be placed in an unfair position by the excessive claim made upon his heart and conscience in this way, and so Walter felt it. He might have given all that, and more, if nothing had been asked of him; but when he was expected to feel so much, he felt himself half justified in feeling nothing. Thus the situation had become one of strained and continual opposition. It was a kind of duel, in which the younger combatant at least—the assailed person, whose free-will and independence were hampered by such perpetual requirements—never yielded a step. The other might do so, by turns throwing up her arms altogether, but not he.

It was with this feeling strong in his mind, and affecting his temper as nothing else does to such a degree, that he hastened along the street towards the rooms occupied by Captain Underwood, a personage whom the ladies of Sloebury were unanimous in disliking. Nobody knew exactly where it was that he got his military title. He did not belong to any regiment in her Majesty’s service. He had not even the humble claim of a militia officer; yet nobody dared say that there was anything fictitious about him, or stigmatise the captain as an impostor. Other captains and colonels and men-at-arms of undoubted character supported his claims; he belonged to one or two well-known clubs. An angry woman would sometimes fling an insult at him when her husband or son came home penniless after an evening in his company, wondering what they could see in an under-bred fellow who was no more a captain (she would say in her wrath) than she was; but of these assertions there was no proof, and the vehemence of them naturally made the captain’s partisans more and more eager in his favour. He had not been above six months in Sloebury, but everybody knew him. There was scarcely an evening in which half-a-dozen men did not congregate in his rooms, drawn together by that strange attraction which makes people meet who do not care in the least for each other’s company, nor have anything to say to each other, yet are possibly less vacant in society than when alone, or find the murmur of many voices, the smoke of many cigars, exhilarating and agreeable. It was not every evening that the cards were produced. The captain was wary; he frightened nobody; he did not wish to give occasion to the tremors of the ladies, whom he would have conciliated even, if he had been able; but there are men against whom the instinct of all women rises, as there are women from whom all men turn. It was only now and then that he permitted play. He spoke indeed strongly against it on many occasions. “What do you want with cards?” he would say. “A good cigar and a friend to talk to ought to be enough for any man.” But twice or thrice in a week his scruples would give way. He was a tall, well-formed man, of an uncertain age, with burning hazel eyes, and a scar on his forehead got in that mysterious service to which now and then he made allusion, and which his friends concluded must have been in some foreign legion, or with Garibaldi, or some other irregular warfare. There were some who thought him a man, old for his age, of thirty-five, and some who, concluding him young for his age, and well preserved, credited him with twenty years more; but thirty-five or fifty-five, whichever it was, he was erect and strong, and well set up, and possessed an amount of experience and apparent knowledge of the world, at which the striplings of Sloebury admired and wondered, and which even the older men respected, as men in the country respect the mention of great names and incidents that have become historical. He had a way of recommending himself even to the serious, and would now and then break forth, as if reluctantly, into an account of some instance of faith or patience on the battlefield or the hospital which made even the rector declare that to consider Underwood as an irreligious man was both unjust and unkind. So strong was the prejudice of the women, however, that Mrs. Wynn, always charitable, and whose silent protest was generally only made when the absent were blamed, shook her head at this testimony borne in favour of the Captain. She had no son to be led away, and her husband it need not be said, considering his position, was invulnerable; but with all her charity she could not believe in the religion of Captain Underwood. His rooms were very nice rooms in the best street in Sloebury, and if his society was what is called “mixed,” yet the best people were occasionally to be met there, as well as those who were not the best.

There was a little stir in the company when Walter entered. To tell the truth, notwithstanding the wild mirth and dissipation which the ladies believed to go on in Captain Underwood’s rooms, the society assembled there was at the moment dull and in want of a sensation. There had not been anything said for the course of two minutes at least. There was no play going on, and the solemn puff of smoke from one pair of lips after another would have been the height of monotony had it not been the wildest fun and gratification. The men in the room took pipes and cigars out of their mouths to welcome the new-comer. “Hallo, Walter!” they all said in different tones; for in Sloebury the use of Christian names was universal, everybody having known everybody else since the moment of their birth.

“Here comes Methven,” said the owner of the rooms (it was one of his charms, in the eyes of the younger men, that he was not addicted to this familiarity), “in the odour of sanctity. It will do us all good to have an account of the rector’s party. How did you leave the old ladies, my excellent boy?”

“Stole away like the fox, by Jove,” said the hunting man, who was the pride of Sloebury.

“More like the mouse with the old cats after it,” said another wit.

Now Walter had come in among them strong in his sense of right and in his sense of wrong, feeling himself at the same moment a sorry fool and an injured hero, a sufferer for the rights of man; and it would have been of great use to him in both these respects to have felt himself step into a superior atmosphere, into the heat of a political discussion, or even into noisy amusement, or the passion of play—anything which would rouse the spirits and energies, and show the action of a larger life. But to feel his own arrival a sort of godsend in the dulness, and to hear nothing but the heavy puff of all the smoke, and the very poor wit with which he was received, was sadly disconcerting, and made him more and more angry with himself and the circumstances which would give him no sort of support or comfort.

“The old ladies,” he said, “were rather more lively than you fellows. You look as if you had all been poisoned in your wine, like the men in the opera, and expected the wall to open and the monks and the coffins to come in.”

“I knew that Methven would bring us some excellent lesson,” said Captain Underwood. “Remember that we have all to die. Think, my friends, upon your latter end.”

“Jump up here and give us a sermon, Wat.”

“Don’t tease him, he’s dangerous.”

“The old ladies have been too much for him.”

This went on till Walter had settled down into his place, and lighted his pipe like the rest. He looked upon them with disenchanted eyes; not that he had ever entertained any very exalted opinion of his company; but to-night he was out of sympathy with all his surroundings, and he felt it almost a personal offence that there should be so little to attract and excite in this manly circle which thought so much more of itself than of any other, and was so scornful of the old ladies who after all were not old ladies: but the graver members of the community in general, with an ornamental adjunct of young womankind. On ordinary occasions no doubt Walter would have chimed in with the rest, but to-night he was dissatisfied and miserable, not sure of any sensation in particular, but one of scorn and distaste for his surroundings. He would have felt this in almost any conceivable case, but in the midst of this poor jesting and would-be wit, the effect was doubled. Was it worth while for this to waste his time, to offend the opinion of all his friends? Such thoughts must always come in similar circumstances. Even in the most brilliant revelry there will be a pause, a survey of the position, a sense, however unwilling that the game is not worth the candle. But here! They were all as dull as ditch water, he said to himself. Separately there was scarcely one whom he would have selected as an agreeable companion, and was it possible by joining many dulnesses together to produce a brilliant result? There was no doubt that Walter’s judgment was jaundiced that evening; for he was not by any means so contemptuous of his friends on ordinary occasions; but he had been eager to find an excuse for himself, to be able to say that here was real life and genial society in place of the affected solemnity of the proper people. When he found himself unable to do this, he was struck as by a personal grievance, and sat moody and abstracted, bringing a chill upon everybody, till one by one the boon companions strolled away.

“A pretty set of fellows to talk of dulness,” he cried, with a little burst, “as if they were not dull beyond all description themselves.”

“Come, Methven, you are out of temper,” said Captain Underwood. “They are good fellows enough when you are in the vein for them. Something has put you out of joint.”

“Nothing at all,” cried Walter, “except the sight of you all sitting as solemn as owls pretending to enjoy yourselves. At the rectory one yawned indeed, it was the genius of the place—but to hear all those dull dogs laughing at that, as if they were not a few degrees worse! Is there nothing but dulness in life? Is everything the same—one way or another—and nothing to show for it all, when it is over, but tediousness and discontent?”

Underwood looked at him keenly with his fiery eyes.

“So you’ve come to that already, have you?” he said. “I thought you were too young and foolish.”

“I am not so young as not to know that I am behaving like an idiot,” Walter said. Perhaps he had a little hope of being contradicted and brought back to his own esteem.

But instead of this, Captain Underwood only looked at him again and laughed.

“I know,” he said: “the conscience has its tremors, especially after an evening at the rectory. You see how well respectability looks, how comfortable it is.”

“I do nothing of the sort,” Walter cried indignantly. “I see how dull you are, you people who scoff at respectability, and I begin to wonder whether it is not better to be dull and thrive than to be dull and perish. They seem much the same thing so far as enjoyment goes.”

“You want excitement,” said the other carelessly. “I allow there is not much of that here.”

“I want something,” cried Walter. “Cards even are better than nothing. I want to feel that I have blood in my veins.”

“My dear boy, all that is easily explained. You want money. Money is the thing that mounts the blood in the veins. With money you can have as much excitement, as much movement as you like. Let people say what they please, there is nothing else that does it,” said the man of experience. He took a choice cigar leisurely from his case as he spoke. “A bit of a country town like this, what can you expect from it? There is no go in them. They risk a shilling, and go away frightened if they lose. If they don’t go to church on Sunday they feel all the remorse of a villain in a play. It’s all petty here—everything’s petty, both the vices and the virtues. I don’t wonder you find it slow. What I find it, I needn’t say.”

“Why do you stop here, then?” said Walter, not unnaturally, with a momentary stare of surprise. Then he resumed, being full of his own subject. “I know I’m an ass,” he said. “I loaf about here doing nothing when I ought to be at work. I don’t know why I do it; but neither do I know how to get out of it. You, that’s quite another thing. You have no call to stay. I wonder you do: why do you? If I were as free as you, I should be off—before another day.”

“Come along then,” said Underwood, good-humouredly. “I’ll go if you’ll go.”

At this Walter shook his head.

“I have no money you know. I ought to be in an office or doing something. I can’t go off to shoot here or fish there, like you.”

“By and by—by and by. You have time enough to wait.”

Walter gave him a look of surprise.

“There is nothing to wait for,” he said. “Is that why you have said so many things to me about seeing life? I have nothing. We’ve got no money in the family. I may wait till doomsday, but it will do nothing for me.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Underwood. “Oh, you needn’t devour me with your eyes. I know nothing of your family affairs. I suppose of course that by and by, in the course of nature—”

“You mean,” said Walter, turning pale, “when my mother dies. No, I’m not such a wretched cad as that: if I didn’t know I should get next to nothing then, I—” (His conscience nearly tripped this young man up, running into his way so hurriedly that he caught his foot unawares.) Then he stopped and grew red, staring at his companion. “Most of what she has dies with her, if that’s what you’re thinking of. There is nothing in that to build upon. And I’m glad of it,” the young man cried.

“I beg your pardon, Methven,” said the other. “But it needn’t be that; there are other ways of getting rich.”

“I don’t know any of them, unless by work: and how am I to work? It is so easy to speak. What can I work at? and where am I to get it?—there is the question. I hear enough on that subject—as if I were a tailor or a shoemaker that could find something to do at any corner. There is no reason in it,” the young man said, so hotly, and with such a flush of resentful obstinacy, that the fervour of his speech betrayed him. He was like a man who had outrun himself, and paused, out of breath.

“You’ll see; something will turn up,” said Underwood, with a laugh.

“What can turn up?—nothing. Suppose I go to New Zealand and come back at fifty with my fortune made—Fifty’s just the age, isn’t it, to begin to enjoy yourself,” cried Walter, scornfully; “when you have not a tooth left, nor a faculty perfect?” He was so young that the half-century appeared to him like the age of Methuselah, and men who lived to that period as having outlived all that is worth living for. His mentor laughed a little uneasily, as if he had been touched by this chance shot.

“It is not such a terrible age after all,” he said. “A man can still enjoy himself when he is fifty; but I grant you that at twenty-four it’s a long time to wait for your pleasure. However, let us hope something will turn up before then. Supposing, for the sake of argument, you were to come in to your fortune more speedily, I wonder what you would do with it—eh? you are such a terrible fellow for excitement. The turf?”

“All that is folly,” said Walter, getting up abruptly. “Nothing more, thanks. I am coming in to no fortune. And you don’t understand me a bit,” he said, turning at the door of the room, to look back upon the scene where he had himself spent so many hours, made piquant by a sense of that wrongdoing which supplies excitement when other motives fail. The chairs standing about as their occupants had thrust them away from the table, the empty glasses upon it, the disorder of the room, struck him with a certain sense of disgust. It was a room intended by nature to be orderly and sober, with heavy country-town furniture, and nothing about it that could throw any grace on disarray. The master of the place stood against the table swaying a somewhat heavy figure over it, and gazing at the young man with his fiery eyes. Walter’s rudeness did not please him, any more than his abrupt withdrawal.

“Don’t be too sure of that,” he said, with an effort to retain his good-humoured aspect. “If I don’t understand you, I should like to know who does? and when that fortune comes, you will remember what I say.”

“Pshaw!” Walter cried, impatiently turning away. A nod of his head was all the good-night he gave. He hurried down as he had hurried up, still as little contented, as full of dissatisfaction as when he came. This man who thought he understood him, who intended to influence him, revolted the young man’s uneasy sense of independence, as much as did the bond of more lawful authority. Did Underwood, too, think him a child not able to guide himself? It was very late by this time, and the streets very silent. He walked quickly home through the wintry darkness of November, with a mind as thoroughly out of tune as it is possible to imagine. He had gone to Underwood’s in the hot impulse of opposition, with the hope of getting rid temporarily, at least, of the struggle within him; but he had not got rid of it. The dull jokes of the assembled company had only made the raging of the inward storm more sensible, and the jaunty and presumptuous misconception with which his host received his involuntary confidences afterwards, had aggravated instead of soothing his mind. Indeed, Underwood’s pretence at knowing all about it, his guesses and attempts to sound his companion’s mind, and the blundering interpretation of it into which he stumbled, filled Walter with double indignation and disgust. This man too he had thought much of, and expected superior intelligence from—and all that he had to say was an idiotic anticipation of some miraculous coming into a fortune which Walter was aware was as likely to happen to the beggar on the streets as to himself. He had been angry with nature and his mother when he left her door; he was angry with everybody when he returned to it, though his chief anger of all, and the root of all the others, was that anger with himself, which burnt within his veins, and which is the hardest of all others to quench out.

CHAPTER III

Walter was very late next morning as he had been very late at night. The ladies had breakfasted long before, and there was a look of reproach in the very table-cloth left there so much after the usual time, and scrupulously cleared of everything that the others had used, and arranged at one end, with the dish kept hot for him, and the small teapot just big enough for one, which was a sermon in itself. His mother was seated by the fire with her weekly books, which she was adding up. She said scarcely anything to him, except the morning greeting, filling out his tea with a gravity which was all the more crushing that there was nothing in it to object to, nothing to resent. Adding up accounts of itself is not cheerful work; but naturally the young man resented this seriousness all the more because he had no right to do so. It was intolerable, he felt, to sit and eat in presence of that silent figure partly turned away from him, jotting down the different amounts on a bit of paper, and absorbed in that occupation as if unconscious of his presence. Even scolding was better than this; Walter was perfectly conscious of all it was in her power to say. He knew by heart her remonstrances and appeals. But he disliked the silence more than all. He longed to take her by the shoulders, and cry, “What is it? What have you got to say to me? What do you mean by sitting there like a stone figure, and meaning it all the same!” He did not do this, knowing it would be foolish, and gave his constant antagonist a certain advantage; but he longed to get rid of some of his own exasperation by such an act. It was with a kind of force over himself that he ate his breakfast, going through all the forms, prolonging it to the utmost of his power, helping himself with deliberate solemnity in defiance of the spectator, who seemed so absorbed in her own occupation, but was, he felt sure, watching his every movement. It was not, however, until he had come to an end of his prolonged meal and of his newspaper, that his mother spoke.

“Do you think,” she said, “that it would be possible for you to write that letter to Mr. Milnathort of which I have spoken so often, to-day?”

“Oh, quite possible,” said Walter, carelessly.

“Will you do it, then? It seems to me very important to your interests. Will you really do it, and do it to-day?”

“I’ll see about it,” Walter said.

“I don’t ask you to see about it. It is nothing very difficult. I ask you to do it at once—to-day.”

He gazed at her for a moment with an angry obstinacy.

“I see no particular occasion for all this haste. It has stood over a good many days. Why should you insist so upon it now?”

“Every day that it has been put off has been a mistake. It should have been done at once,” Mrs. Methven said.

“I’ll see about it,” he said carelessly; and he went out of the room with a sense of having exasperated her as usual, which was almost pleasant.

At the bottom of his heart he meant to do what his mother had asked of him: but he would not betray his good intentions. He preferred to look hostile even when he was in the mind to be obedient. He went away to the little sitting-room which was appropriated to him, where his pipes adorned the mantelpiece, and sat down to consider the situation. To write a letter was not a great thing to do, and he fully meant to do it; but after he had mused a little angrily upon the want of perception which made his mother adopt that cold and hectoring tone, when if she had asked him gently he would have done it in a minute, he put forth his hand and drew a book towards him. It was not either a new or an entertaining book, but it secured his idle attention until he suddenly remembered that it was time to go out. The letter was not written, but what did that matter? The post did not go out till the afternoon, and there was plenty of time between that time and this to write half-a-dozen letters. It would do very well, he thought, when he came in for lunch. So he threw down the book and got his hat and went out.

Mrs. Methven, who was on the watch, hearing his every movement, came into his room after he was gone, and looked round with eager eyes to see if the letter was written, if there was any trace of it. Perhaps he had taken it out with him to post it, she thought: and though it was injurious to her that she should not know something more about a piece of business in which he was not the sole person concerned, yet it gave her a sort of relief to think that so much at least he had done. She went back to her books with an easier mind. She was far from being a rich woman, but her son had known none of her little difficulties, her efforts to make ends meet. She had thought it wrong to trouble his childhood with such confidences, and he had grown up thinking nothing on the subject, without any particular knowledge of, or interest in, her affairs, taking everything for granted. It was her own fault, she said to herself, and so it was to some extent. She would sometimes think that if she had it to do over again she would change all that. How often do we think this, and with what bitter regret, in respect to the children whom people speak of as wax in our hands, till we suddenly wake up and find them iron! She had kept her difficulties out of Walter’s way, and instead of being grateful to her for so doing, he was simply indifferent, neither inquiring nor caring to know. Her own doing! It was easier to herself, yet bitter beyond telling, to acknowledge it to be so. Just at this time, when Christmas was approaching, the ends took a great deal of tugging and coaxing to bring them together. A few of Walter’s bills had come in unexpectedly, putting her poor balance altogether wrong. Miss Merivale contributed a little, but only a little, to the housekeeping; for Mrs. Methven was both proud and liberal, and understood giving better than receiving. She went back to the dining-room, where all her books lay upon the table, near the fire. Her reckoning had advanced much since she had begun it, with Walter sitting at breakfast. Her faculties had been all absorbed in him and what he was doing. Now she addressed herself to her accounts with a strenuous effort. It is hard work to balance a small sum of money against a large number of bills, to settle how to divide it so as that everybody shall have something, and the mouths of hungry creditors be stopped. Perhaps we might say that this was one of the fine arts—so many pounds here, so many there, keeping credit afloat, and the wolf of debt from the door. Mrs. Methven was skilled in it. She went to this work, feeling all its difficulty and burden: yet, with a little relief, not because she saw any way out of her difficulties, but because Walter had written that letter. It was always something done, she thought, in her simplicity, and something might come of it, some way in which he could get the means of exercising his faculties, perhaps of distinguishing himself even yet.

Walter for his part strolled away through the little town in his usual easy way. It was a fine, bright, winterly morning, not cold, yet cold enough to make brisk walking pleasant, and stir the blood in young veins. There was no football going on, nor any special amusement. He could not afford to hunt, and the only active winter exercise which he could attain was limited to this game—of which there was a good deal at Sloebury—and skating, when it pleased Providence to send ice, which was too seldom. He looked in upon one or two of his cronies, and played a game of billiards, and hung about the High Street to see what was going on. There was nothing particular going on, but the air was fresh, and the sun shining, and a little pleasant movement about, much more agreeable at least than sitting in a stuffy little room writing a troublesome letter which he felt sure would not do the least good. Finally, he met Captain Underwood, who regarded him with a look which Walter would have called anxious had he been able to imagine any possible reason why Underwood should entertain any anxiety on his account.

“Well! any news?” the captain cried.

“News! What news should there be in this dead-alive place?” Walter said.

The other looked at him keenly as if to see whether he was quite sincere, and then said, “Come and have some lunch.”

He was free of all the best resorts in Sloebury, this mysterious man. He belonged to the club, he was greatly at his ease in the hotel—everything was open to him. Walter, who had but little money of his own, and could not quite cut the figure he wished, was not displeased to be thus exhibited as the captain’s foremost ally.

“I thought you might have come into that fortune, you are looking so spruce,” the captain said, and laughed. But though he laughed he kept an eye on the young man as if the pleasantry meant more than appeared. Walter felt a momentary irritation with this, which seemed to him a very bad joke; but he went with the captain all the same, not without a recollection of the table at home, at which, after waiting three quarters of an hour or so, and watching at the window for his coming, the ladies would at last sit down. But he was not a child to be forced to attendance at every meal, he said to himself. The captain’s attentions to him were great, and it was a very nice little meal that they had together.

“I expect you to do great things for me when you come into your fortune. You had better engage me at once as your guide, philosopher, and friend,” he said, with a laugh. “Of course you will quit Sloebury, and make yourself free of all this bondage.”

“Oh, of course,” said Walter, humouring the joke, though it was so bad a one in every way.

He could not quarrel with his host at his own table, and perhaps after all it was more dignified to take it with good humour.

“You must not go in for mere expense,” the captain said; “you must make it pay. I can put you up to a thing or two. You must not go into the world like a pigeon to be plucked. It would effect my personal honour if a pupil of mine—for I consider you as a pupil of mine, Methven, I think I have imparted to you a thing or two. You are not quite the simpleton you used to be, do you think you are?”

Walter received this with great gravity, though he tried to look as if he were not offended.

“Was I a simpleton?” he said. “I suppose in one’s own case one never sees.”

“Were you a simpleton!” said the other, with a laugh, and then he stopped himself, always keenly watching the young man’s face, and perceiving that he was going too far. “But I flatter myself you could hold your own at whist with any man now,” the captain said.

This pleased the young man; his gravity unbended a little; there was a visible relaxation of the corners of his mouth. To be praised is always agreeable. Moral applause, indeed, may be taken with composure, but who could hear himself applauded for his whist-playing without an exhilaration of the heart? He said, with satisfaction, “I always was pretty good at games,” at which his instructor laughed again, almost too much for perfect good breeding.

“I like to have young fellows like you to deal with,” he said, “fellows with a little spirit, that are born for better things. Your country-town young man is as fretful and frightened when he loses a few shillings as if it were thousands. But that’s one of the reasons why I feel you’re born to luck, my boy. I know a man of liberal breeding whenever I see him, he is not frightened about a nothing. That’s one of the things I like in you, Methven. You deserve a fortune, and you deserve to have me for your guide, philosopher, and friend.”

All this was said by way of joke; but it was strange to see the steady watch which he kept on the young man’s face. One would have said a person of importance whom Underwood meant to try his strength with, but guardedly, without going too far, and even on whom he was somehow dependent, anxious to make a good impression. Walter, who knew his own favour to be absolutely without importance, and that Underwood above all, his host and frequent entertainer, could be under no possible delusion on the subject, was puzzled, yet flattered, feeling that only some excellence on his part, undiscovered by any of his other acquaintances, could account for this. So experienced a person could have “no motive” in thus paying court to a penniless and prospectless youth. Walter was perplexed, but he was gratified too. He had not seen many of the captain’s kind; nobody who knew so many people or who was so much at his ease with the world. Admiration of this vast acquaintance, and of the familiarity with which the captain treated things and people of which others spoke with bated breath, had varied in his mind with a fluctuating sense that Underwood was not exactly so elevated a person as he professed to be, and even that there were occasional vulgarities in this man of the world. Walter felt these, but in his ignorance represented to himself that perhaps they were right enough, and only seemed vulgar to him who knew no better. And to-day there is no doubt he was somewhat intoxicated by this flattery. It must be disinterested, for what could he do for anybody? He confided to the captain more than he had ever done before of his own position. He described how he was being urged to write to old Milnathort. “He is an old lawyer in Scotland—what they call a writer—and it is supposed he might be induced to take me into his office, for the sake of old associations. I don’t know what the associations are, but the position does not smile upon me,” Walter said.

“Your family then is a Scotch family?” said the captain with a nod of approval. “I thought as much.”

“I don’t know that I’ve got a family,” said Walter.

“On the contrary, Methven is a very good name. There are half-a-dozen baronets at least, and a peer—you must have heard of him, Lord Erradeen.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard of him,” Walter said with a conscious look.

If he had been more in the world he would have said “he is a cousin of mine,” but he was aware that the strain of kindred was very far off, and he was at once too shy and too proud to claim it. His companion waited apparently for the disclosure, then finding it did not come opened the way.

“If he’s a relation of yours, it’s to him you ought to write; very likely he would do something for you. They are a curious family. I’ve had occasion to know something about them.”

“I think you know everybody, Underwood.”

“Well, I have knocked about the world a great deal; in that way one comes across a great many people. I saw a good deal of the present lord at one time. He was a very queer man—they are all queer. If you are one of them you’ll have to bear your share in it. There is a mysterious house they have—You would think I was an idiot if I told you half the stories I have heard—”

“About the Erradeens?”

“About everybody,” said the captain evasively. “There is scarcely a family, that, if you go right into it, has not something curious about them. We all have; but those that last and continue keep it on record. I could tell you the wildest tales about So-and-so and So-and-so, very ordinary people to look at, but with stories that would make your hair stand on end.”

“We have nothing to do with things of that sort. My people have always been straightforward and above-board.”

“For as much as you know, perhaps; but go back three or four generations and how can you tell? We have all of us ancestors that perhaps were not much to brag of.”

Walter caught Underwood’s eye as he said this, and perhaps there was a twinkle in it, for he laughed.

“It is something,” he said, “to have ancestors at all.”

“If they were the greatest blackguards in the world,” the captain said with a responsive laugh, “that’s what I think. You don’t want any more of my revelations? Well, never mind, probably I shall have you coming to me some of these days quite humbly to beg for more information. You are not cut out for an attorney’s office. It is very virtuous, of course, to give yourself up to work and turn your back upon life.”

“Virtue be hanged,” said Walter, with some excitement, “it is not virtue, but necessity, which I take to be the very opposite. I know I’m wasting my time, but I mean to turn over a new leaf. And as the first evidence of that, as soon as I go home I shall write to old Milnathort.”

“Not to-day,” said Underwood, looking at his watch; “the post has gone; twenty-four hours more to think about it will do you no harm.”

Walter started to his feet, and it was with a real pang that he saw how the opportunity had escaped him, and his intention in spite of himself been balked; a flush of shame came over his face. He felt that, if never before, here was a genuine occasion for blame. To be sure, the same thing had happened often enough before, but he had never perhaps so fully intended to do what was required of him. He sat down again with a muttered curse at himself and his own folly. There was nothing to be said for him. He had meant to turn over a new leaf, and yet this day was just like the last. The thought made his heart sick for the moment. But what was the use of making a fuss and betraying himself to a stranger? He sat down again, with a self-disgust which made him glad to escape from his own company. Underwood’s talk might be shallow enough, perhaps his pretence at knowledge was not very well founded, but he was safer company than conscience, and that burning and miserable sense of moral impotence which is almost worse than the more tragic stings of conscience. To find out that your resolution is worth nothing, after you have put yourself to the trouble of making it, and that habit is more strong than any motive, is not a pleasant thing to think of. Better let the captain talk about Lord Erradeen, or any other lord in the peerage. Underwood, being encouraged with a few questions, talked very largely on this subject. He gave the young man many pieces of information, which indeed he could have got in Debrett if he had been anxious on the subject; and as the afternoon wore on they strolled out again for another promenade up and down the more populous parts of Sloebury, and there fell in with other idlers like themselves; and when the twilight yielded to the more cheerful light of the lamps, betook themselves to whist, which was sometimes played in the captain’s rooms at that immoral hour. Sloebury, even the most advanced portion of it, had been horrified at the thought of whist before dinner when the captain first suggested it, but that innocent alarm had long since melted away. There was nothing dangerous about it, no stakes which any one could be hurt by losing. When Walter, warned by the breaking up of the party that it was the hour for dinner, took his way home also, he was the winner of a sixpence or two, and no more: there had been nothing wrong in the play. But when he turned the corner of Underwood’s street and found himself with the wind in his face on his way home, the revulsion of feeling from something like gaiety to a rush of disagreeable anticipations, a crowd of uncomfortable thoughts, was pitiful. In spite of all our boastings of home and home influence, how many experience this change the moment they turn their face in the direction of that centre where it is conventional to suppose all comfort and shelter is! There is a chill, an abandonment of pleasant sensations, a preparation for those that are not pleasant. Walter foresaw what he would find there with an impatience and resentment which were almost intolerable. Behind the curtain, between the laths of the Venetian blind, his mother would be secretly on the outlook watching for his return; perhaps even she had stolen quietly to the door, and, sheltered in the darkness of the porch, was looking out; or, if not that, the maid who opened the door would look reproachfully at him, and ask if he was going to dress, or if she might serve the dinner at once: it must have been waiting already nearly half an hour. He went on very quickly, but his thoughts lingered and struggled with the strong disinclination that possessed him. How much he would have given not to go home at all! how little pleasure he expected when he got there! His mother most likely would be silent, pale with anger, saying little, while Cousin Sophia would get up a little conversation. She would talk lightly about anything that might have been happening, and Walter would perhaps exert himself to give Sophia back her own, and show his mother that he cared nothing about her displeasure. And then when dinner was over, he would hurry out again, glad to be released. Home: this was what it had come to be: and nothing could mend it so far as either mother or son could see. Oh, terrible incompatibility, unapproachableness of one soul to another! To think that they should be so near, yet so far away. Even in the case of husband and wife the severance is scarcely so terrible; for they have come towards each other out of different spheres, and if they do not amalgamate, there are many secondary causes that may be blamed, differences of nature and training and thought. But a mother with her child, whom she has brought up, whose first opinions she has implanted, who ought naturally to be influenced by her ways of thinking, and even by prejudices and superstitions in favour of her way! It was not, however, this view of the question which moved the young man. It was the fact of his own bondage, the compulsion he was under to return to dinner, to give some partial obedience to the rules of the house, and to confess that he had not written that letter to Mr. Milnathort.

When he came in sight of the house, however, he became aware insensibly, he could scarcely tell how, of some change in its aspect: what was it? It was lighted up in the most unusual way. The window of the spare room was shining not only with candlelight, but with firelight, his own room was lighted up; the door was standing open, throwing out a warm flood of light into the street, and in the centre of this light stood Mrs. Methven with her white shawl over her head, not at all concealing herself, gazing anxiously in the direction from which he was coming.

“I think I will send for him,” he heard her say; “he has, very likely, stepped into Captain Underwood’s, and he is apt to meet friends there who will not let him go.”

Her voice was soft—there was no blame in it, though she was anxious. She was speaking to some one behind her, a figure in a great coat. Walter was in the shadow and invisible. He paused in his surprise to listen.

“I must get away by the last train,” he heard the voice of the muffled figure say somewhat pettishly.

“Oh, there is plenty of time for that,” cried his mother; and then she gave a little cry of pleasure, and said, “And, at a good moment, here he is!”

He came in somewhat dazzled, and much astonished, into the strong light in the open doorway. Mrs. Methven’s countenance was all radiant and glowing with pleasure. She held out her hand to him eagerly.

“We have been looking for you,” she cried; “I have had a great surprise. Walter, this is Mr. Milnathort.”

Puzzled, startled, and yet somewhat disappointed, Walter paused in the hall, and looked at a tall old man with a face full of crotchets and intelligence, who stood with two great coats unbuttoned, and a comforter half unwound from his throat, under the lamp. His features were high and thin, his eyes invisible under their deep sockets.

“Now, you will surely take off your coat, and consent to go up-stairs, and make yourself comfortable,” said Mrs. Methven, with a thrill of excitement in her voice. “This is Walter. He has heard of you all his life. Without any reference to the nature of your communication, he must be glad, indeed, to make your acquaintance—”

She gave Walter a look of appeal as she spoke. He was so much surprised that it was with difficulty he found self-possession to murmur a few words of civility. A feeling that Mr. Milnathort must have come to look after that letter which had never been written came in with the most wonderfully confusing, half ludicrous effect into his mind, like one of the inadequate motives and ineffable conclusions of a dream. Mr. Milnathort made a stiff little bow in reply.

“I will remain till the last train. In the mean time the young gentleman had better be informed, Mrs. Methven.”

She put out her hands again. “A moment—give us a moment first.”

The old lawyer stood still and looked from the mother to the son. Perhaps to his keen eyes it was revealed that it would be well she should have the advantage of any pleasant revelation.

“I will,” he said, “madam, avail myself of your kind offer to go up-stairs and unroll myself out of these trappings of a long journey; and in the mean time you will, perhaps, like to tell him the news yourself: he will like it all the better if he hears it from his mother.”

Mrs. Methven bowed her head, having, apparently, no words at her command: and stood looking after him till he disappeared on the stairs, following the maid, who had been waiting with a candle lighted in her hand. When he was gone, she seized Walter hurriedly by the arm, and drew him towards the little room, the nearest, which was his ordinary sitting-room. Her hand grasped him with unnecessary force in her excitement. The room was dark—he could not see her face, the only light in it being the reflection of the lamp outside.

“Oh, Walter!” she cried; “oh, my boy! I don’t know how to tell you the news. This useless life is all over for you, and another—oh, how different—another—God grant it happy and great, oh, God grant it! blessed and noble!—”

Her voice choked with excitement and fast-coming tears. She drew him towards her into her arms.

“It will take you from me—but what of that, if it makes you happy and good? I have been no guide to you, but God will be your guide: His leadings were all dark to me, but now I see—”

“Mother,” he cried, with a strange impulse he could not understand, putting his arm round her, “I did not write that letter: I have done nothing I promised or meant to do. I am sick to the heart to think what a fool and a cad I am—for the love of God tell me what it is!”

CHAPTER IV

All Sloebury was aware next morning that something of the most extraordinary character had happened to young Walter Methven. The rumour even reached the club on the same evening. First the report was that he had got a valuable appointment, at which the gentlemen shook their heads; next that he had come into a fortune: they laughed with one accord at this. Then, as upon a sudden gale of wind, there blew into the smoking-room, then full of tobacco, newspapers, and men, a whisper which made everybody turn pale. This was one reason, if not the chief, why that evening was one of the shortest ever known at the club, which did not indeed generally keep very late hours, but still was occupied by its habitués till ten or eleven o’clock, when the serious members would go away, leaving only the boys, who never could have enough of it. But on that evening even the young men cleared off about ten or so. They wanted to know what it meant. Some of them went round to Captain Underwood’s where Walter was so often to be found, with a confidence that at least Underwood would know; the more respectable members of society went home to their families to spread the news, and half-a-dozen mothers at least went to bed that night with a disagreeable recollection that they had individually and deliberately “broken off” an incipient flirtation or more, in which Walter had been one of the parties concerned. But the hopeful ones said to themselves, “Lizzie has but to hold up her little finger to bring him back.” This was before the whole was known. The young men who had hurried to Captain Underwood’s were received by that gentleman with an air of importance and of knowing more than he would tell, which impressed their imaginations deeply. He allowed that he had always known that there was a great deal of property, and perhaps a title concerned, but declared that he was not at liberty to say any more. Thus the minds of all were prepared for a great revelation; and it is safe to say that from one end of Sloebury to the other Walter’s name was in everybody’s mouth. It had been always believed that the Methvens were people of good connections, and of later years it had been whispered by the benevolent as a reason for Walter’s inaction that he had grand relations, who at the proper moment would certainly interfere and set everything right for him. Others, however, were strenuous in their denial and ridicule of this, asking, was his mother a woman to conceal any advantages she had?—for they did not understand the kind of pride in which Mrs. Methven was so strong. And then it was clear that not only did the grand relations do nothing for Walter, but he did not even have an invitation from them, and went from home only when his mother went to the sea-side. Thus there was great doubt and wonder, and in some quarters an inclination to treat the rumour as a canard, and to postpone belief. At the same time everybody believed it, more or less, at the bottom of their hearts, feeling that a thing so impossible must be true.

But when it burst fully upon the world next morning along with the pale November daylight, but much more startling, that Walter Methven had succeeded as the next heir to his distant cousin, who was the head of the family, and was now Lord Erradeen, a great potentate, with castles in the Highlands and fat lands further south, and moors and deer forests and everything that the heart of man could think of, the town was swept not only by a thrill of wonder, but of emotion. Nobody was indifferent to this extraordinary romance. Some, when they had got over the first bewilderment, received it with delightful anticipations, as if the good fortune which had befallen Walter was in some respects good fortune also for themselves; whereas many others were almost angry at this sudden elevation over their heads of one who certainly did not deserve any better, if indeed half so well as they did. But nobody was indifferent. It was the greatest excitement that had visited Sloebury for years—even it might be said for generations. Lord Erradeen! it took away everybody’s breath.

Among the circle of Walter’s more intimate acquaintance, the impression made was still deeper, as may be supposed. The commotion in the mind of the rector, who indeed was old enough to have taken it with more placidity, was such that he hurried in from morning service without taking off his cassock. He was a good Churchman, but not so far gone as to walk about the world in that ecclesiastical garment.

“Can you imagine what has happened?” he said, bursting in upon Mrs. Wynn, who was delicate and did not go to church in the winter mornings. “Young Walter Methven, that you all made such a talk about—”

This was unfair, because she had never made any talk—being a woman who did not talk save most sparingly. She was tempted for a moment to forestall him by telling him she already knew, but her heart failed her, and she only shook her head a little in protest against this calumny, and waited smilingly for what he had to say. She could not take away from him the pleasure of telling this wonderful piece of news.

“Why it was only the night before last he was here—most of us rather disapproving of him, poor boy,” said the rector. “Well, Lydia, that young fellow that was a good-for-nothing, you know—doing nothing, never exerting himself: well, my dear! the most extraordinary thing has happened—the most wonderful piece of good fortune—”

“Don’t keep me on tenterhooks, Julius; I have heard some buzzing of talk already.”

“I should think you had! the town is full of it; they tell me that everybody you meet on the streets—Lydia!” said the rector with solemnity, drawing close to her to make his announcement more imposing, “that boy is no longer simple Mr. Walter Methven. He is Lord Erradeen—”

“Lord what?” cried the old lady. It was part of her character to be a little deaf, or rather hard of hearing, which is the prettier way of stating the fact. It was supposed by some that this was one of the reasons why, when any one was blamed, she always shook her head.

“Lord Er-ra-deen; but bless me, it is not the name that is so wonderful, it is the fact. Lord Erradeen—a great personage—a man of importance. You don’t show any surprise, Lydia! and yet it is the most astonishing incident without comparison that has happened in the parish these hundred years.”

“I wonder what his mother is thinking,” Mrs. Wynn said.

“If her head is turned nobody could be surprised. Of course, like every other mother, she thinks her son worthy of every exaltation.”

“I wish she was of that sort,” the old lady said.

“Every woman is of that sort,” said the rector with hasty dogmatism; “and, in one way, I am rather sorry, for it will make her feel she was perfectly right in encouraging him, and that would be such a terrible example for others. The young men will all take to idling—”

“But it is not the idling, but the fact that there is a peerage in the family—”

“You can’t expect,” cried the rector, who was not lucid, “that boys or women either will reason back so far as that. It will be a bad example: and, in the mean time, it is a most astonishing fact. But you don’t seem in the least excited. I thought you would have jumped out of your chair—out of the body almost.”

“I am too rheumatic for that,” said Mrs. Wynn with a smile: then, “I wonder if she will come and tell me,” the old lady said.

“I should think she does not know whether she is on her head or her heels,” cried the rector; “I don’t feel very sure myself. And Walter! What a change, to be sure, for that boy! I hope he will make a good use of it. I hope he will not dart off with Underwood and such fellows and make a fool of himself. Mind, I don’t mean that I think so badly of Underwood,” he added after a moment, for this was a subject on which, being mollified as previously mentioned, the rector took the male side of the question. Mrs. Wynn received the protest in perfect silence, not even shaking her head.

“But if he took a fancy for horses or that sort of thing,” Mr. Wynn added with a moment’s hesitation; then he brightened up again—“of course it is better that he should know somebody who has a little experience in any case; and you will perceive, my dear, there is a great difference between a penniless youth like Walter Methven getting such notions in his head which lead only to ruin, and young Lord Erradeen dabbling a little in amusements which, after all, have no harm in them if not carried too far, and are natural in his rank—but you women are always prejudiced on such a point.”

“I did not say anything, my dear,” the old lady said.

“Oh, no, you don’t say anything,” cried the rector fretfully, “but I see it in every line of your shawl and every frill of your cap. You are just stiff with prejudice so far as Underwood is concerned, who really is not at all a bad fellow when you come to know him, and is always respectful to religion, and shows a right feeling—but one might as well try to fly as to convince you when you have taken a prejudice.”

Mrs. Wynn made no protest against this. She said only, “It is a great ordeal for a boy to pass through. I wonder if his mother—” And here she paused, not having yet, perhaps, formulated into words the thoughts that arose in her heart.

“It is to be hoped that she will let him alone,” the rector said; “she has indulged him in everything hitherto; but just now, when he is far better left to himself, no doubt she will be wanting to interfere.”

“Do you think she has indulged him in everything?” said the old lady; but she did not think it necessary to accuse her husband of prejudice. Perhaps he understood Captain Underwood as much better as she understood Mrs. Methven; so she said nothing more. She was the only individual in Sloebury who had any notion of the struggle in which Walter’s mother had wrecked so much of her own peace.

“There cannot be any two opinions on that subject,” said the rector. “Poor lad! You will excuse me, my dear, but I am always sorry for a boy left to a woman’s training. He is either a mere milksop or a ne’er-do-well. Walter is not a milksop, and here has Providence stepped in, in the most wonderful way, to save him from being the other: but that is no virtue of hers. You will stand up, of course, for your own side.”

The old lady smiled and shook her head. “I think every child is the better for having both its parents, Julius, if that is what you mean.”

This was not exactly what he meant, but it took the wind out of the rector’s sails. “Yes, it is an ordeal for him,” he said, “but, I am sure, if my advice can do him any good, it is at his service; and, though I have been out of the way of many things for some time, yet I dare say the world is very much what it was, and I used to know it well enough.”

“He will ask for nobody’s advice,” said Mrs. Wynn.

“Which makes it all the more desirable he should have it,” cried the rector; and then he said, “Bless me! I have got my cassock on still. Tell John to take it down to the vestry—though, by the way, there is a button off, and you might as well have it put on for me, as it is here.”

Mrs. Wynn executed the necessary repair of the cassock with her own hands. Though she was rheumatic, and did not care to leave her chair oftener than was necessary, she had still the use of her hands, and she had a respect for all the accessories of the clerical profession. She was sitting examining the garment to see if any other feeblenesses were apparent, in which a stitch in time might save after labours, when, with a little eager tap at the door, another visitor came in. This was a young lady of three or four and twenty, with a good deal of the beauty which consists in fresh complexion and pleasant colour. Her hair was light brown, warm in tone; her eyes were brown and sparkling; her cheeks and lips bloomed with health. She had a pretty figure, full of life and energy—everything, in short, that is necessary to make up a pretty girl, without any real loveliness or deeper grace. She came in quickly, brimming over, as was evident, with something which burst forth as soon as she had given the old lady the hasty conventional kiss of greeting, and which, as a matter of course, turned out to be the news of which Sloebury was full.

“Did you ever hear anything so wonderful?” she said. “Walter Methven, that nobody thought anything of—and now he is turned into a live lord! a real peer of parliament! they say. I thought mamma would have fainted when she heard it.”

“Why should your mamma faint when she heard of it, July? It is very pleasant news.”

“Oh, Aunt Lydia! don’t you know why? I am so angry: I feel as if I should never speak to her again. Don’t you remember? And I always thought you had some hand in it. Oh, you sit there and look so innocent, but that is because you are so deep.”

“Am I deep?” the old lady asked with a smile.

“You are the deepest person I ever knew: you see through us all, and you just throw in a word; and then, when people act upon it, you look so surprised. I heard you myself remark to mamma how often Walter Methven was at our house.”

“Yes, I think I did remark it,” Mrs. Wynn said.

“And what was the harm? He liked to come, and he liked me; and I hope you don’t think I am the sort of person to forget myself and think too much about a man.”

“I thought you were letting him be seen with you too often, July, that is true.”

“You thought it might keep others off that were more eligible? Well, that is what I supposed you meant, for I never like to take a bad view. But, you see, there was somebody that was eligible; and here has he turned, all at once, into the very best match within a hundred miles. If mamma had only let things alone, what prospects might be opening upon me now!”

“Half-a-dozen girls, I am afraid, may say just the same,” said Mrs. Wynn.

“Well, what does that matter? He had nothing else to do. When a young man has nothing to do he must be making up to somebody. I don’t blame him a bit; that is what makes us girls always ready for a flirtation. Time hangs so heavy on our hands. And only think, Aunt Lydia, if things had been allowed to go on (and I could always have thrown him off if anything better turned up), only think what might have happened to me now. I might be working a coronet in all my new handkerchiefs,” cried the girl: “only imagine! oh, oh, oh!”

And she pretended to cry; but there was a sparkle of nervous energy all the same in her eyes, as if she were eager for the chase, and scarcely able to restrain her impatience. Mrs. Wynn shook her head at her visitor with a smile.

“You are not so worldly as you give yourself out to be,” she said.

“Oh, that just shows how little you know. I am as worldly as ever woman was. I think of nothing but how to establish myself, and have plenty of money. We want it so! Oh, I know you are very good to us—both my uncle and you; but mamma is extravagant, and I am extravagant, and naturally all that anybody thinks of is to have what is necessary and decent for us. We have to put up with it, but I hate what is necessary and decent. I should like to go in satin and lace to-day even if I knew I should be in rags to-morrow; and to think if you had not interfered that I might have blazed in diamonds, and gone to court, and done everything I want to do! I could strangle you, Aunt Lydia, and mamma too!” Upon which Miss July (or Julée, which was how her name was pronounced) gave Mrs. Wynn a sudden kiss and took the cassock out of her hands. “If it wants any mending I will do it,” she said; “it will just give me a little consolation for the moment. And you will have time to think and answer this question: Is it too late now?”

“July, dear, it hurts me to hear you talk so—you are not so wild as you take credit for being.”

“I am not wild at all, Aunt Lydia,” said the girl, appropriating Mrs. Wynn’s implements, putting on her thimble, threading her needle, and discovering at one glance the little rent in the cassock which the old lady had been searching for in vain, “except with indignation to think what I have lost—if I have lost it. It is all very well to speak, but what is a poor girl to do? Yes, I know, to make just enough to live on by teaching, or something of that sort; but that is not what I want. I want to be well off. I am so extravagant, and so is mamma. We keep ourselves down, we don’t spend money; but we hate it so! I would go through a great many disagreeables if I could only have enough to spend.”

“And is Walter one of the disagreeables you would go through?”

“Well, no; I could put up with him very well. He is not at all unpleasant. I don’t want him, but I could do with him. Do you really think it is too late? Don’t you think mamma might call upon Mrs. Methven and say how delighted we are; and just say to him, you know, in a playful way (mamma could manage that very well), ‘We cannot hope to see you now in our little house, Lord Erradeen!’ and then of course he would be piqued (for he’s very generous), and say, ‘Why?’ And mamma would say, ‘Oh, we are such poor little people, and you are now a great man.’ Upon which, as sure as fate, he would be at the Cottage the same evening. And then!” July threw back her head, and expanded her brown eyes with a conscious power and sense of capability, as who should say—Then it would be in my own hands.—“Don’t you think that’s very good for a plan?” she added, subsiding quickly to the work, which she executed as one to the manner born.

“I don’t think anything of it as a plan—and neither do you; and your mother would not do it, July,” the old lady said.

“Ah,” said July, throwing back her head, “there you have hit the blot, Aunt Lydia. Mamma wouldn’t do it! She could, you know. When she likes she is the completest humbug!—but not always. And she has so many notions about propriety, and what is womanly, and so forth—just like you. Poor women have no business with such luxuries. I tell her we must be of our time, and all that sort of thing; but she won’t see it. No, I am afraid that is just the difficulty. It all depends on mamma—and mamma won’t. Well, it is a little satisfaction to have had it all out with you. If you had not interfered, you two, and stopped the poor boy coming—”

At this juncture John threw open the door, and with a voice which he reserved for the great county ladies, announced “Mrs. Methven.” John had heard the great news too.

“—Stopped the poor boy coming,” July said. The words were but half out of her mouth when John opened the door, and it was next to impossible that the new visitor had not heard them. A burning blush covered the girl’s face. She sprang to her feet with the cassock in her arms, and gazed at the new comer. Mrs. Methven for the first moment did not notice this third person. She came in with the content and self-absorption of one who has a great wonder to tell. The little world of Sloebury and all its incidents were as nothing to her. She went up to old Mrs. Wynn with a noiseless swiftness.

“I have come to tell you great news,” she said.

“Let me look at you,” said the old lady. “I have heard, and I scarcely could believe it. Then it is all true?”

“I am sorry I was not the first to tell you. I think such a thing must get into the air. Nobody went out from my house last night, and yet everybody knows. I saw even the people in the street looking at me as I came along. Mrs. Wynn, you always stood up for him; I never said anything, but I know you did. I came first to you. Yes, it is all true.”

The old lady had known it now for several hours, and had been gently excited, no more. Now her eyes filled with tears, she could not have told why.

“Dear boy! I hope God will bless him, and make him worthy and great,” she said, clasping her old hands together. “He has always been a favourite with me.”

“He is a favourite with everybody,” said July. No one had noticed her presence, and she was not one that could remain unseen. “Everybody is glad; there is not one that doesn’t wish him well.”

Did she intend to strike that coup for herself which her mother was not to be trusted to make? Mrs. Wynn thought so with a great tremor, and interrupted her in a tone that for her was hurried and anxious.

“July speaks nothing but the truth, Mrs. Methven; there is nobody that does not like Walter; but I suppose I ought now to drop these familiarities and call him Lord Erradeen?”

“He will never wish his old friends to do that,” said Mrs. Methven. She already smiled with a gracious glance and gesture: and the feeling that these old friends were almost too much privileged in being so near to him, and admitted to such signs of friendship, came into her mind; but she did not care to have July share her expansion. “Miss Herbert,” she said, with a little bow, “is very good to speak so kindly. But everybody is kind. I did not know my boy was so popular. Sunshine,” she added, with a smile, “brings out all the flowers.”

She had not sat down, and she evidently did not mean to do so while July remained. There was something grand in her upright carriage, in her air of superiority, which had never been apparent before. She had always been a woman, as Sloebury people said, who thought a great deal of herself; but no one had ever acknowledged her right to do so till now. On the other hand, July Herbert was well used to the cold shade. Her mother was Mrs. Wynn’s niece, but she was none the less poor for that, and as July was not a girl to be easily put down, she was acquainted with every manner of polite snubbing known in the society of the place. This of standing till she should go was one with which she was perfectly familiar, and in many cases it afforded her pleasure to subject the operator to great personal inconvenience; but on the present occasion she was not disposed to exercise this power. She would have conciliated Walter’s mother if she could have done so, and on a rapid survey of the situation she decided that the best plan was to yield.

“I must go and tell mamma the great news,” she said. “I am sure she will never rest till she rushes to you with her congratulations; but I will tell her you are tired of congratulations already—for of course it is not a thing upon which there can be two opinions.” July laid down the cassock as she spoke. “I have mended all there is to mend, Aunt Lydia; you need not take any more trouble about it. Good-bye for the moment. You may be sure you will see one or other of us before night.”

They watched her silently as she went out of the room. Mrs. Methven saying nothing till the door had closed, Mrs. Wynn with a deprecatory smile upon her face. She did not altogether approve of her grandniece. But neither was she willing to hand her over to blame. The old lady felt the snub July had received more than the girl herself did. She looked a little wistfully after her. She was half angry when as soon as July disappeared Mrs. Methven sank down upon a chair near her, huge billows of black silk rising about her, for she had put on her best gown. Mrs. Wynn thought that the mother, whose child, disapproved by the world, had been thus miraculously lifted above its censures, should have been all the more tolerant of the other who had met no such glorious fate. But she reflected that they never see it, which was her favourite expression of wonderment, yet explanation of everything. There were so many things that they ought to learn by; but they never saw it. It was thus she accounted with that shake of her head for all the errors of mankind.

Mrs. Methven for her part waited till even the very step of that objectionable Julia Herbert had died away. She had known by instinct that if that girl should appear she would be on the watch to make herself agreeable to Walter’s mother. “As if he could ever have thought of her,” she said to herself. Twenty-four hours before Mrs. Methven would have been glad to think that Walter “thought of” any girl who was at all in his own position. She would have hailed it as a means of steadying him, and making him turn seriously to his life. But everything was now changed, and this interruption had been very disagreeable. She could scarcely turn to her old friend now with the effusion and emotion which had filled her when she came in. She held out her hand and grasped that of the old lady.

“I don’t need to tell you what I am feeling,” she said. “It is all like a tumultuous sea of wonder and thankfulness. I wanted it, for I was at my wits’ end.”

Mrs. Wynn was a little chilled too, but she took the younger woman’s hand.

“You did not know what was coming,” she said. “You wanted one thing, and Providence was preparing another.”

“I don’t know if that is how to state it; but at all events I was getting to feel that I could not bear it any longer, and trying for any way of setting things right: when the good came in this superlative way. I feel frightened when I think of it. After we knew last night I could do nothing but cry. It took all the strength from me. You would have thought it was bad news.”

“I can understand that.” The old lady relinquished the hand which she had been holding. “To be delivered from any anxieties you may have had in such a superlative way, as you say, is not the common lot—most of us have just to fight them out.”

Mrs. Methven already felt herself far floated away from those that had to fight it out. The very words filled her heart with an elation beyond speech.

“And this morning,” she said, “to wake and to feel it must be folly, and then to realise that it was true! One knows so well the other sort of waking when the shock and the pang come all over again. But to wake up to this extraordinary incredible well-being—one might say happiness!”

The tears of joy were in her eyes, and in those tears there is something so strange, so rare, that the soul experienced in life looks upon them almost with more awe than upon the familiar ones of grief which we see every day. The old lady melted, and her chill of feeling yielded to a tender warmth. Yet what a pity that They never see it! How much more perfect it would have been if the woman in her happiness had been softened and kind to all those whom nothing had happened to! Imperceptibly the old lady in her tolerant experience shook her gentle old head. Then she gave herself in full sympathy to hear all the wonderful details.

CHAPTER V

The sentiments of the spectators in such a grand alteration of fortune may be interesting enough, and it is in general more easy to get at them than at those which fill the mind of the principal actor. In the present case it is better to say of the principal subject of the change, for Walter could not be said to be an actor at all. The emotions of the first evening it would indeed be impossible to describe. To come in from his small country-town society, to whom even he was so far inferior that every one of them had facilities of getting and spending money which he did not possess, and to sit down, all tremulous and guilty, feeling himself the poorest creature, opposite to the serious and important personage who came to tell him, with documents as solemn as himself, that this silly youth who had been throwing away his life for nothing, without even the swell of excitement to carry him on, had suddenly become, without deserving it, without doing anything to bring it about, an individual of the first importance—a peer, a proprietor, a great man. Walter could have sobbed as his mother did, had not pride kept him back. When they sat down at table in the little dining-room there were two at least of the party who ate nothing, who sat and gazed at each other across the others with white faces and blazing eyes. Mr. Milnathort made a good dinner, and sat very watchful, making also his observations, full of curiosity and a certain half-professional interest. But Cousin Sophy was the only one who really got the good of this prodigious event. She asked if they might not have some champagne to celebrate the day. She was in high excitement but quite self-controlled, and enjoyed it thoroughly. She immediately began in her thoughts to talk of my young cousin Lord Erradeen. It was a delightful advancement which would bring her no advantage, and yet almost pleased her more than so much added on to her income; for Miss Merivale was not of any distinction in her parentage, and suddenly to find herself cousin to a lord went to her heart: it was a great benefit to the solitary lady fond of society, and very eager for a helping hand to aid her up the ascent. And it was she who kept the conversation going. She even flirted a little, quite becomingly, with the old lawyer, who felt her, it was evident, a relief from the high tension of the others, and was amused by the vivacious middle-aged lady, who for the moment had everything her own way. After dinner there was a great deal of explanation given, and a great many facts made clear, but it is to be doubted whether Walter knew very well what was being said. He listened with an air of attention, but it was as if he were listening to some fairy tale. Something out of the Arabian Nights was being repeated before him. He was informed how the different branches of his family had died out one after another. “Captain Methven was aware that he was in the succession,” the lawyer said; and Mrs. Methven cast a thought back, half-reproachful, half-approving upon her husband, who had been dead so long that his words and ways were like shadows to her, which she could but faintly recall. Would it have been better if he had told her? After pursuing this thought a long time she decided that it would not, that he had done wisely—yet felt a little visionary grudge and disappointment to think that he had been able to keep such a secret from her. No doubt it was all for the best. She might have distracted herself with hopes, and worn out her mind with waiting. It was doubtful if the support of knowing what was going to happen would really have done her any good; but yet it seemed a want of trust in her, it seemed even to put her in a partially ridiculous position now, as knowing nothing, not having even an idea of what was coming. But Walter did not share any of these goings back upon the past. He had scarcely known his father, nor was he old enough to have had such a secret confided to him for long after Captain Methven died. He thought nothing of that. He sat with an appearance of the deepest attention, but unaware of what was being said, with a vague elation in his mind, something that seemed to buoy him up above the material earth. He could not bring himself down again. It was what he remembered to have felt when he was a child when some long-promised pleasure was coming—to-morrow. Even in that case hindrances might come in. It might rain to-morrow, or some similar calamity might occur. But rain could not affect this. He sat and listened and did not hear a word.

Next morning Walter awoke very early, before the wintry day had fully dawned. He opened his eyes upon a sort of paling and whitening of everything—a grey perception of the walls about him, and the lines of the window marked upon the paleness outside. What was it that made even these depressing facts exhilarate him and rouse an incipient delight in his mind, which for the moment he did not understand? Then he sat up suddenly in his bed. It was cold, it was dark. There was no assiduous servant to bring hot water or light his fire—everything was chilling and wretched; and he was not given to early rising. Ordinarily it was an affair of some trouble to get him roused, to see that he was in time for a train or for any early occupation. But this morning he found it impossible to lie still; an elasticity in him, an elation and buoyancy, which he almost felt, with a laugh, might float him up to the ceiling, like the mediums, made him jump up, as it were in self-defence. It buoyed him, it carried him as on floating pinions into a limitless heaven. What was it? Who was he? The chill of the morning brought him a little to himself, and then he sat down in his shirt-sleeves and delivered himself up to the incredible, and laughed low and long, with a sense of the impossibility of it that brought tears to his eyes. He Lord Erradeen, Lord Anything! He a peer, a great man! he with lands and money and wealth of every sort, who last night had been pleased to win two sixpences! After the buoyancy and sensation of rising beyond the world altogether, which was a kind of physical consciousness of something great that had happened before he was awake, came this sense of the ludicrous, this incredulity and confused amusement. He dressed himself in this mood, laughing low from time to time, to himself, as if it were some game which was being played upon him, but of which he was in the secret, and not to be deceived, however artfully it might be managed. But when he was dressed and ready to go down-stairs—by which time daylight had fully struggled forth upon a wet and clammy world—he stopped himself short with a sudden reminder that to-day this curious practical joke was to extend its career and become known to the world. He laughed again, but then he grew grave, standing staring at the closed door of his bedroom, out of which he was about to issue—no longer a nobody—in a new character, to meet the remarks, the congratulations of his friends. He knew that the news would fly through the little town like lightning; that people would stop each other in the streets and ask, “Have you heard it?—is it true?” and that throughout the whole place there would be a sort of revolution, a general change of positions, which would confuse the very world. He knew vaguely that whatever else might happen he would be uppermost. The people who had disapproved of him, and treated him de haut en bas, would find this to be impossible any longer. He would be in a position which is to be seen on the stage and in books more frequently than in common life—possessed of the power of making retribution, of punishing the wicked, and distributing to the good tokens of his favour. It is a thing we would all like to do, to avenge ourselves (within due Christian and social limits) on the persons who have despised us, and to reward those who have believed in us, showing the one how right they were, and the other how wrong they were, with a logic that should be undeniable. There is nobody who has ever endured a snub—and who has not?—who would not delight in doing this; but the most of us never get such a supreme gratification, and Walter was to have it. He was going to see everybody abashed and confounded who had ever treated him with contumely. Once more he felt that sensation of buoyancy and elation as if he were spurning earth with his foot and ready to soar into some sort of celestial sphere. And then once more he laughed to himself. Was it possible? could it be? would anybody believe it? He thought there would be an explosion of incredulous laughter through all the streets; but then, when that was over, both friends and foes would be forced to believe it—as he himself was forced to believe.

With that he opened his door, and went down-stairs into the new world. He stumbled over the housemaid’s pail, of course, but did not call forth any frown upon that functionary’s freckled forehead as he would have done yesterday. On the contrary, she took away the pail, and begged his pardon with awe—being of course entirely blameless. He paused for a moment on the steps as he faced the raw morning air going out, and lo! the early baker, who was having a word with cook at the area over the rolls, turned towards him with a reverential look, and pulled off his cap. These were the first visible signs of Walter’s greatness; they gave him a curious sort of conviction that after all the thing was true.

There was scarcely anybody about the Sloebury streets except bakers and milkmen at this hour. It was a leisurely little town, in which nothing particular was doing, no manufactures or business to demand early hours; and the good people did not get up early. Why should they? the day was long enough without that: so that Walter met no one in his early promenade. But before he got back there were symptoms that the particular baker who had taken off his cap had whispered the news to others of his fraternity, who, having no tie of human connection, such as supplying the family with rolls, to justify a salutation, only stared at him with awe-stricken looks as he went past. He felt he was an object of interest even to the policeman going off duty, who being an old soldier, saluted with a certain grandeur as he tramped by. The young man took an aimless stroll through the half-awakened district. The roads were wet, the air raw: it was not a cheerful morning; damp and discouragement breathed in the air; the little streets looked squalid and featureless in shabby British poverty; lines of low, two-storied brick, all commonplace and monotonous. It was the sort of morning to make you think of the tediousness to which most people get up every day, supposing it to be life, and accepting it as such with the dull content which knows no better; a life made up of scrubbing out of kitchens and sweeping out of parlours, of taking down shutters and putting them up again; all sordid, petty, unbroken by an exhilarating event. But this was not what struck Walter as he floated along in his own wonderful atmosphere, seeing nothing, noting everything with the strange vision of excitement. Afterwards he recollected with extraordinary vividness a man who stood stretching his arms in shirt sleeves above his head for a long, soul-satisfying yawn, and remembered to have looked up at the shop-window within which he was standing, and read the name of Robinson in gilt letters. Robinson, yawning in his shirt-sleeves, against a background of groceries, pallid in the early light, remained with him like a picture for many a day.

When he got back the breakfast table was spread, and his mother taking her place at it. Mr. Milnathort had not gone away as he intended by the night train. He had remained in Mrs. Methven’s spare room, surrounded by all the attentions and civilities that a household of women, regarding him with a sort of awe as a miraculous messenger or even creator of good fortune, could show to a bachelor gentleman, somewhat prim and old-fashioned in his habits and ways. It was his intention to leave Sloebury by the eleven o’clock train, and he had arranged that Walter should meet him in Edinburgh within a week, to be made acquainted with several family matters, in which, as the head of the house, it was necessary that he should be fully instructed. Neither Walter nor his mother paid very much attention to these arrangements, nor even remarked that the old lawyer spoke of them with great gravity. Mrs. Methven was busy making tea, and full of anxiety that Mr. Milnathort should breakfast well and largely, after what she had always understood to be the fashion of his country; and as for Walter, he was not in a state of mind to observe particularly any such indications of manner. Cousin Sophia was the only one who remarked the solemnity of his tone and aspect.

“One would suppose there was some ordeal to go through,” she said in her vivacious way.

“A young gentleman who is taking up a large fortune and a great responsibility will have many ordeals to go through, madam,” Mr. Milnathort said in his deliberate tones: but he did not smile or take any other notice of her archness. It was settled accordingly, that after a few days for preparation and leave-taking, young Lord Erradeen should leave Sloebury. “And if I might advise, alone,” Mr. Milnathort said, “the place is perhaps not just in a condition to receive ladies. I would think it wiser on the whole, madam, if you deferred your coming till his lordship there has settled everything for your reception.”

“My coming?” said Mrs. Methven. The last twelve hours had made an extraordinary difference in her feelings and faith; but still she had not forgotten what had gone before, nor the controversies and struggles of the past. “We must leave all that for after consideration,” she said.

Walter was about to speak impulsively, but old Milnathort stopped him with a skilful interruption—

“It will perhaps be the wisest way,” he said; “there will be many things to arrange. When Lord Erradeen has visited the property, and understands everything about it, then he will be able to—”

Walter heard the name at first with easy unconsciousness: then it suddenly blazed forth upon him as his own name. His mother at the other end of the table felt the thrill of the same sensation. Their eyes met; and all the wonder of this strange new life suddenly gleamed upon them with double force. It is true that the whole condition of their minds was affected by this revelation, that there was nothing about them that was not full of it, and that they were actually at this moment discussing the business connected with it. Still it all came to life now as at the first moment at the sound of this name, Lord Erradeen! Walter could not help laughing to himself over his coffee.

“I can’t tell who you mean,” he said. “You must wait a little until I realise what Walter Methven has got to do with it.”

Mrs. Methven thought that this was making too much of the change. She already wished to believe, or at least to persuade Mr. Milnathort to believe, that she was not so very much surprised after all.

“Lord Erradeen,” she said, “is too much amused at present with having got a new name to take the change very seriously.”

“He will soon learn the difference, madam,” said Mr. Milnathort. “Property is a thing that has always to be taken seriously: and of all property the Erradeen lands. There are many things connected with them that he will have to set his face to in a way that will be far from amusing.”

The old lawyer had a very grave countenance—perhaps it was because he was a Scotchman. He worked through his breakfast with a steady routine that filled the ladies with respect. First fish, then kidneys, then a leg of the partridge that had been left from dinner last night; finally he looked about the table with an evident sense of something wanting, and though he declared that it was of no consequence, avowed at last, with some shyness, that it was the marmalade for which he was looking: and there was none in the house! Mr. Milnathort was full of excuses for having made such a suggestion. It was just a Scotch fashion he declared; it was of no consequence. Mrs. Methven, who held an unconscious conviction that it was somehow owing to him that Walter had become Lord Erradeen, was made quite unhappy by the omission.

“I shall know better another time,” she said regretfully. They were all still under the impression more or less that it was his doing. He was not a mere agent to them, but the god, out of the machinery, who had turned darkness into light. He justified this opinion still more fully before he went away, putting into Walter’s hand a cheque-book from a London bank, into which a sum of money which seemed to the inexperienced young man inexhaustible, had been paid to his credit. The old gentleman on his side seemed half-embarrassed, half-impatient after a while by the attention shown him. He resisted when Walter declared his intention of going to the railway to see him off.

“That is just a reversal of our positions,” he said.

At this Mrs. Methven became a little anxious, fearing that perhaps Walter’s simplicity might be going too far. She gave him a word of warning when the cab drove up for Mr. Milnathort’s bag. It was not a very large one, and Walter was quite equal to the condescension of carrying it to the station if his mother had not taken that precaution. She could not make up her mind that he was able to manage for himself.

“You must remember that after all he is only your man of business,” she said, notwithstanding all the worship she had herself been paying to this emissary of fortune. It was a relief to shake hands with him, to see him drive away from the door, leaving behind him such an amazing, such an incalculable change. Somehow it was more easy to realise it when he was no longer there. And this was what Walter felt when he walked away from the railway, having seen with great satisfaction the grizzled head of the old Scotsman nod at him from a window of the departing train. The messenger was gone; the thing which he had brought with him, did that remain? Was it conceivable that it was now fixed and certain not to be affected by anything that could be done or said? Walter walked steadily enough along the pavement, but he did not think he was doing so. The world around him swam in his eyes once more. He could not make sure that he was walking on solid ground, or mounting up into the air. How different it was from the way in which he had come forth yesterday, idle, half-guilty, angry with himself and everybody, yet knowing very well what to do, turning with habitual feet into the way where all the other idlers congregated, knowing who he should meet and what would happen. He was separated from all that as if by an ocean. He had no longer anything to do with these foolish loungers. His mother had told him a thousand times in often varied tones that they were not companions for him; to-day he recognised the fact with a certain disgust. He felt it more strongly still when he suddenly came across Captain Underwood coming up eagerly with outstretched hands.

“I hope I am the first to congratulate you, Lord Erradeen,” he said. “Now you will know why I asked you yesterday, Was there any news—”

“Now I shall know? I don’t a bit; what do you mean? Do you mean me to believe that you had any hand in it?” Walter cried, with a tone of mingled incredulity and disdain.

“No hand in it, unless I had helped to put the last poor dear lord out of the way. I could scarcely have had that; but if you mean did I know about it, I certainly did, as you must if you had been a little more in the world.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” said Walter. He added somewhat hotly, with something of the sublime assumption of youth: “Waiting for a man to die would never have suited me. I much prefer to have been, as you say, out of the world—”

“Oh, Lord! I didn’t mean to offend you,” said the captain. “Don’t get on a high horse. Of course, if you’d known your Debrett as I do, you would have seen the thing plain enough. However, we needn’t quarrel about it. I have always said you were my pupil, and I hope I have put you up to a few things that will be of use on your entry into society.”

“Have you?” said Walter. He could not think how he had ever for a moment put up with this under-bred person. Underwood stood before him with a sort of jaunty rendering of the appeal with which grooms and people about the stable remind a young man of what in his boyish days they have done for him—an appeal which has its natural issue in a sovereign. But he could not give Underwood a sovereign, and it was perhaps just a little ungenerous to turn in the first moment of his prosperity from a man who, from whatever purpose, had been serviceable to him in his poverty. He said, with an attempt to be more friendly: “I know, Underwood, you have been very kind.”

“Oh, by Jove! kind isn’t the word. I knew you’d want a bit of training; the best thoroughbred that ever stepped wants that; and if I can be of any use to you in the future, I will. I knew old Erradeen; I’ve known all about the family for generations. There are a great many curious things about it, but I think I can help you through them,” said the captain with a mixture of anxiety and swagger. There had always been something of this same mixture about him, but Walter had never been fully conscious what it was till now.

“Thank you,” he said; “perhaps it will be better to let that develop itself in a natural way. I am going to Scotland in a week, and then I shall have it at first hand.”

“Then I can tell you beforehand you will find a great many things you won’t like,” said Underwood, abruptly. “It is not for nothing that a family gets up such a reputation. I know two or three of your places. Mulmorrel, and the shooting-box on Loch Etive, and that mysterious old place at Kinloch-houran. I have been at every one of them. It was not everybody, I can tell you, that old Erradeen would have taken to that place. Why, there is a mystery at every corner. There is—”

Walter held up his hand to stay this torrent. He coloured high with a curious sentiment of proprietorship and the shrinking of pride from hearing that which was his discussed by strangers. He scarcely knew the names of them, and their histories not at all. He put up his hand: “I would rather find out the mysteries for myself,” he said.

“Oh,” cried Underwood, “if you are standing on your dignity, my lord, as you like, for that matter. I am not one to thrust my company upon any man if he doesn’t like it. I have stood your friend, and I would again; but as for forcing myself upon you now that you’ve come to your kingdom—”

“Underwood,” cried the other, touched in the tenderest point, “if you dare to insinuate that this has changed me, I desire never to speak to you again. But it is only, I suppose, one of the figures of speech that people use when they are angry. I am not such a cad as you make me out. Whether my name is Methven or Erradeen—I don’t seem to know very well which it is—”

“It is both,” the other cried with a great laugh, and they shook hands, engaging to dine together at the hotel that evening. Underwood, who was knowing in such matters, was to order the dinner, and two or three of “the old set,” were to be invited. It would be a farewell to his former comrades, as Walter intended; and with a curious recurrence of his first elation he charged his representative to spare no expense. There was something intoxicating and strange in the very phrase.

As he left Underwood and proceeded along the High Street, where, if he had not waved his hand to them in passing with an air of haste and pre-occupation, at least every second person he met would have stopped him to wish him joy, he suddenly encountered July Herbert. She was going home from the vicarage, out of which his mother had politely driven her; and it seemed the most wonderful luck to July to get him to herself, thus wholly unprotected, and with nobody even to see what she was after. She went up to him, not with Underwood’s eagerness, but with a pretty frank pleasure in her face.

“I have heard a fairy tale,” she said, “and it is true—”

“I suppose you mean about me,” said Walter. “Yes, I am afraid it is true. I don’t exactly know who I am at present.”

“Afraid!” cried July. “Ah, you know you don’t mean that. At all events, you are no longer just the old Walter whom we have known all our lives.”

There was another girl with her whom Walter knew but slightly, but who justified the plural pronoun.

“On the contrary, I was going to say, when you interrupted me—”

“I am so sorry I interrupted you.”

“That though I did not know who I was in the face of the world, I was always the old Walter, &c. A man, I believe, can never lose his Christian name.”

“Nor a woman either,” said July. “That is the only thing that cannot be taken from us. We are supposed, you know, rather to like the loss of the other one.”

“I have heard so,” said Walter, who was not unaccustomed to this sort of fencing. “But I suppose it is not true.”

“Oh,” said July, “if it were for the same reason that makes you change your name, I should not mind. But there is no peerage in our family that I know of, and I should not have any chance if there were, alas! Good-bye, Lord Erradeen. It is a lovely name! And may I always speak to you when I meet you, though you are such a grand personage? We do not hope to see you at the Cottage now, but mamma will like to know that you still recognise an old friend.”

“I shall come and ask Mrs. Herbert what she thinks of it all,” Walter said.

July’s brown eyes flashed out with triumph as she laughed and waved her hand to him. She said—

“It will be too great an honour,” and curtseyed; then laughed again as she went on, casting a glance at him over her shoulder.

He laughed too; he was young, and he was gratified even by this undisguised provocation, though he could not help saying to himself, with a slight beat of his heart, how near he was to falling in love with that girl! What a good thing it was that he did not—now!

As for July, she looked at him with a certain ferocity, as if she would have devoured him. To think of all that boy had it in his power to give if he pleased, and to think how little a poor girl could do!

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Methven was conscious of a new revival of the old displeasure when Walter informed her of the engagement he had formed for the evening. She was utterly disappointed. She had thought that the great and beneficial shock of this new life would turn his character altogether, and convert him into that domestic sovereign, that object of constant reference, criticism, and devotion which every woman would have every man be. It was a wonderful mortification and enlightenment to find that without even the interval of a single evening devoted to the consideration of his new and marvellous prospects, and that talking over which is one of the sweetest parts of a great and happy event, he should return—to what?—to wallowing in the mire, as the Scripture says, to his old billiard-room acquaintances, the idlers and undesirable persons with whom he had formed associations. Could there be anything more unsuitable than Lord Erradeen in the midst of such a party, with Underwood, and perhaps worse than Underwood. It wounded her pride and roused her temper, and, in spite of all her efforts, it was with a lowering brow that she saw him go away. Afterwards, indeed, when she thought of it, as she did for hours together, while cousin Sophia talked, and she languidly replied, maintaining a conversation from the lips outward, so poor a substitute for the evening’s talking over and happy consultation she had dreamed of—Mrs. Methven was more just to her son. She tried always to be just, poor lady. She placed before herself all the reasons for his conduct. That he should entertain the men who, much against her wish and his own good, yet in their way had been kind to and entertained him, was natural. But to do it this first evening was hard, and she could not easily accept her disappointment. Afterwards she reminded herself with a certain stern philosophy that because Walter had owned a touch of natural emotion, and had drawn near to her and confessed himself in the wrong, that was no reason why his character should be changed in a moment. There were numbers of men who on occasion felt and lamented their misdoing, yet went on again in the same way. He had been no doubt startled, as some are by calamity, by the more extraordinary shock of this good fortune; but why should he for that abandon all the tastes and occupations of his former life? It was she, she said to herself, with some bitterness, who was a fool. The fact was that Walter meant no harm at all, and that it was merely the first impulse of a half-scornful liberality, impatience of the old associations, which he had tacitly acknowledged were not fit for him, that led him back to his former companions. He felt afterwards that it would have been in better taste had he postponed this for a night. But he was very impatient and eager to shake himself free of them, and enter upon his new career.

Something of the same disappointed and disapproving sentiment filled Mrs. Methven’s mind when she heard of his visit to the Cottage. She knew no reason why he should take a special leave of July Herbert; if he knew himself a reason, which he did not disclose, that was another matter. Thoughts like this embittered the preparations for his departure, which otherwise would have been so agreeable. She had to see after many things which a young man of more wealth, or more independent habits, would have done for himself—his linen, his portmanteau, most of the things he wanted, except the tailor part of the business; but it was not until the last evening that there was any of the confidential consultation, for which her heart had longed. Even on that last day Walter had been very little indoors. He had been busy with a hundred trifles, and she had begun to make up her mind to his going away without a word said as to their future relations, as to whether he meant his mother to share any of the advantages of his new position, or to drop her at Sloebury as something done with, which he did not care to burden himself with, any more than the other circumstances of his past career. She did so little justice to the real generosity of her son’s temper in the closeness of her contest with him, and the heat of personal feeling, that she had begun to make up her mind to this, with what pain and bitterness it is unnecessary to say.

She had even began to make excuses for her own desertion in the tumult of endless thought upon this one subject which possessed her. She would be just; after all, was it not better perhaps that she should be left in the little house which was her independent home, for which she owed nothing to any one? If any unnecessary sense of gratitude made him offer her reluctantly a share in his new life, that would be humiliation indeed. If, as was apparent, her society, her advice, her love were nothing to him, was it not far better that both should recognise the situation, and view things in their true light? This the proud woman had made up her mind to, with what depth of wounded tenderness and embittered affection who could say? She had packed for him with her own hands, for all his permanent arrangements were to be made after he had left Sloebury, and to change her household in consequence of an alteration of fortune which, according to all appearances, would not concern her, was, she had proudly decided, quite out of the question. She packed for him as in the days when he was going to school, when he was a boy, and liked everything better that had been done by his mother. A woman may be pardoned for feeling such a difference with a passionate soreness and sense of downfall. In those days how she had thought of the time when he would be grown up, when he would understand all her difficulties and share all her cares, and in his own advancement make her triumphant and happy! God forgive me, she said to herself, now he has got advancement far above my hopes, and I am making myself wretched thinking of myself. She stopped and cried a little over his new linen. No, he was right; if it must be allowed that they did not “get on,” it was indeed far better in the long run that there should be no false sentiment, no keeping up of an untenable position. Thank God she required nothing; she had enough; she wanted neither luxury nor grandeur, and her home, her natural place was here, where she had lived so many years, where she could disarm all comment upon Walter’s neglect of her, by saying that she preferred the place where she had lived so long, and where she had so many friends. Why, indeed, should she change her home at her time of life? No doubt he would come back some time and see her; but after all why should her life be unsettled because his was changed? It was he who showed true sense in his way of judging the matter, she said to herself with a smile, through the hastily dried and momentary tears.

Walter came in when the packing was just about concluded. He came half way up the stairs and called “Mother, where are you?” as he had often done when he was a boy and wanted her at every turn, but as he never did now. This touched and weakened her again in her steady resolution to let him see no repining in her. “Are you packing for me?” he called out again; “what a shame while I have been idling! But come down, mother, please, and leave that. You forget we have everything to settle yet.”

“What is there to settle?” she said, with a certain sharpness of tone which she could not quite suppress, coming out upon the landing. The maids who were going to bed, and who heard all this, thought it was beautiful to hear his lordship speaking like that, quite natural to his mother; but that missus was that hard it was no wonder if they didn’t get on; and Cousin Sophia from her virgin retirement, where she sat in her dressing-gown reading a French novel, and very much alive to every sound, commented in her own mind, closing her book, in the same sense. “Now she will just go and hold him at arm’s length while the boy’s heart is melting, and then break her own,” Miss Merivale said to herself. Thus everybody was against her and in favour of the fortunate young fellow who had been supping on homage and flattery, and now came in easy and careless to make everything straight at the last moment. Mrs. Methven on her side was very tired, and tremulous with the exertion of packing. It would have been impossible for her to banish that tone out of her voice. She stood in the subdued light upon the stairs looking down upon him, leaning on the banister to support herself; while he, with all the light from below upon his face, ruddy with the night air, and the applauses, and his own high well-being, looked up gaily at her. He had shaken off all his old irritability in the confidence of happiness and good fortune that had taken possession of him. After a moment he came springing up the stairs three at a time.

“You look tired, mother, while I have been wasting my time. Come down, and let us have our talk. I’ll do all the rest to-morrow,” he said, throwing his arm round her and leading her down-stairs. He brought her some wine first of all and a footstool, and threw himself into the easy task of making her comfortable. “Now,” he said, “let’s talk it all over,” drawing a chair to her side.

All this was quite new upon Walter’s part—or rather quite old, belonging to an age which had long ago gone.

“Isn’t it rather late for that?” she said, with a faint smile.

“Yes, and I am ashamed of myself; but, unfortunately, you are so used to that. We must settle, however, mother. I am to go first of all to Kinloch-houran, which Milnathort says is not a place for you. Indeed, I hear—” here he paused a little as if he would have named his authority, and continued, “that it is a ruinous sort of place; and why I should go there, I don’t know.”

“Where did you hear?” she said, with quick suspicion.

“Well, mother, I would rather not have mentioned his name; but if you wish to know, from Underwood. I know you are prejudiced against him. Yes, it is prejudice, though I don’t wonder at it. I care nothing for the fellow; but still it comes out, which is rather strange, that he knows these places, and a good deal about the Erradeens.”

“Is that, then,” cried the mother quickly, “the reason of his being here?”

“He never said so, nor have I asked him,” answered Walter, with something of his old sullenness; but then he added—“The same thought has crossed my own mind, mother, and I shouldn’t wonder if it were so.”

“Walter,” she said, “a man like that can have but one motive—the desire to aggrandise himself. For heaven’s sake, don’t have anything to do with him; don’t let him get an influence over you.”

“You must have a very poor opinion of me, mother,” he said, in an aggrieved tone.

She looked at him with a curious gaze, silenced, as it seemed. She loved him more than anything in the world, and thought of him above everything; and yet perhaps in that wrath with those we love which works like madness in the brain, it was true what he said—that she had a poor opinion of him. Extremes meet, as the proverb says. However, this was a mystery too deep for Walter to enter into.

“Don’t let us waste words about Underwood,” he said. “I care nothing for the fellow; he is vulgar and presuming—as you always said.”

Partly, no doubt, this avowal was made with the intention of pleasing his mother; at the same time it proved the great moral effect of promotion in rank. Lord Erradeen saw with the utmost distinctness what Walter Methven had only glimpsed by intervals. And it is impossible to describe how this speech pleased Mrs. Methven. Her tired eyes began to shine, her heart to return to its brighter hopes.

“The thing is, what arrangements you wish me to make,” said Walter. “What are you going to do? I hear Mulmorrel is a handsome house, but it’s November, and naturally it is colder in the north. Do you think you would care to go there now, or wait till the weather is better? It may want furnishing, for anything I know; and it appears we’ve got a little house in town.”

“Walter,” she said, in a voice which was husky and tremulous, “before you enter upon all this—you must first think, my dear. Are you sure it will be for your comfort to have me with you at all? Wouldn’t you rather be free, and make your own arrangements, and leave me—as I am?”

“Mother?” the young man cried. He got up suddenly from where he was sitting beside her, and pushed away his chair, and stood facing her, with a sudden paleness and fiery eyes that seemed to dazzle her. He had almost kicked her footstool out of his way in his excitement and wounded feeling. “Do you mean to say you want to have nothing to do with me?” he said.

“Oh! my boy, you could not think so. I thought that was what—you meant. I wish only what is for your good.”

“Would it be for my good to be an unnatural cad?” said the young man, with rising indignation—“a heartless, ill-conditioned whelp, with no sense and no feeling? Oh, mother! mother! what a poor opinion you must have of me!” he cried; and so stung was he with this blow that sudden tears sprang to his eyes. “All because I’m a fool and put everything off to the last moment,” he added, in a sort of undertone, as if explaining it to himself. “But I’m not a beast for all that,” he said, fiercely.

She made him no reply, but sat and gazed at him with a remorse and compunction, which, painful sentiments as they are, were to her sweet as the dews from heaven. Yes, it appeared that through all her passionate and absorbing tenderness she had had a poor opinion of him. She had done him injustice. The conviction was like a new birth. That he should be Lord Erradeen was nothing in comparison of being, as he thus proved himself, good and true, open to the influences of affection and nature. She could not speak, but her eyes were full of a thousand things; they asked him mutely to forgive her. They repented, and were abashed and rejoiced all in one glance. The young man who had not been nearly so heartless as she feared, was now not nearly so noble as she thought: but he was greatly touched by the crisis, and by the suggestion of many a miserable hour which was in her involuntary sin against him and in her penitence. He came back again and sat close by her, and kissed her tremulously.

“I have been a cad,” he said. “I don’t wonder you lost all faith in me, mother.”

“Not that, not that,” she said faintly; and then there was a moment of exquisite silence, in which, without a word, everything was atoned for, and pardon asked and given.

And then began perhaps the happiest hour of Mrs. Methven’s life, in which they talked over everything and decided what was to be done. Not to give up the house in Sloebury at present, nor indeed to do anything at present, save wait till he had made his expedition into Scotland and seen his new property, and brought her full particulars. After he had investigated everything and knew exactly the capabilities of the house, and the condition in which it was, and all the necessities and expediencies, they would then decide as to the best thing to be done; whether to go there, though at the worst time of the year, or to go to London, which was an idea that pleased Walter but alarmed his mother. Mrs. Methven did her best to remember what were the duties of a great landed proprietor and to bring them home to her son.

“You ought to spend Christmas at your own place,” she said. “There will be charities and hospitalities and the poor people to look after.”

She did not know Scotland, nor did she know very well what it was to be a great country magnate. She had been but a poor officer’s daughter herself, and had married another officer, and been beaten about from place to place before she settled down on her small income at Sloebury. She had not much more experience than Walter himself had in this respect; indeed, if the truth must be told, both of them drew their chief information from novels, those much-abused sources of information, in which the life of rural potentates is a favourite subject, and not always described with much knowledge. Walter gravely consented to all this, with a conscientious desire to do what was right: but he thought the place would most likely be gloomy for his mother in winter, and that hospitalities would naturally be uncalled for so soon after the death of the old lord.

“What I would advise would be Park Lane,” he said, with a judicial tone. “Milnathort said that it was quite a small house.”

“What is a small house in Park Lane would look a palace at Sloebury,” Mrs. Methven said: “and you must not begin on an extravagant footing, my dear.”

“You will let us begin comfortably, I hope,” he said; “and I must look for a nice carriage for you, mother.”

Walter felt disposed to laugh as he said the words, but carried them off with an air of easy indifference as if it were the most natural thing in the world: while his mother on her side could have cried for pleasure and tenderness.

“You must not mind me, Walter; we must think what is best for yourself,” she said, as proud and pleased as if she had twenty carriages.

“Nothing of the sort,” he said. “We are going to be comfortable, and you must have everything that is right first of all.”

What an hour it was! now and then there will be given to one individual out of a class a full measure of recompense heaped and overflowing, out of which the rest may get a sympathetic pleasure though they do not enjoy it in their own persons. Mrs. Methven had never imagined that this would come to her, but lo! in a moment it was pouring upon her in floods of consolation. So absorbing was this happy consultation that it was only when her eyes suddenly caught the clock on the mantelpiece, and saw that the hands were marking a quarter to two! that Mrs. Methven startled awoke out of her bliss.

“My poor boy! that I should keep you up to this hour talking, and a long journey before you to-morrow!” she cried.

She hustled him up to his room after this, talking and resisting gaily to the very door. He was happy too with that sense of happiness conferred, which is always sweet, and especially to youth in the delightful, easy sense of power and beneficence. When he thought of it he was a little remorseful, to think that he had possessed the power so long and never exercised it, for Walter was generous enough to be aware that the house in Park Lane and the carriage were not the occasions of his mother’s blessedness. “Poor mother,” he said to himself softly. He might have made her a great deal more happy if he had chosen before these fine things were dreamt of. But Mrs. Methven remembered that no more. She begged pardon of God on her knees for misjudging her boy, and for once in her life was profoundly, undoubtingly happy, with a perfection and fulness of content which perhaps could only come after long experience of the reverse. After such a moment a human creature, if possible, should die, so as to taste nothing less sweet: for the less sweet, to be sure, must come back if life goes on, and at that moment there was not a cloud or a suggestion of darkness upon the firmament. She grudged falling asleep, though she was very tired, and so losing this beautiful hour; but nature is wilful and will seldom abdicate the night for joy, whatever she may do for grief.

Next morning she went to the station with him to see him away. Impossible to describe the devotion of all the officials to Lord Erradeen’s comfort on his journey. The station-master kindly came to superintend this august departure, and the porters ran about contending for his luggage with an excitement which made, at least, one old gentleman threaten to write to the Times. There was nothing but “my lord” and “his lordship” to be heard all over the station; and so many persons came to bid him good-bye and see the last of him, as they said, that the platform was quite inconveniently crowded. Among these, of course, was Captain Underwood, whose fervent—“God bless you, my boy”—drowned all other greetings. He had, however, a disappointed look—as if he had failed in some object. Mrs. Methven, whose faculties were all sharpened by her position, and who felt herself able to exercise a toleration which, in former circumstances, would have been impossible to her, permitted him to overtake her as she left the place, and acknowledged his greeting with more cordiality, or, at least, with a less forbidding civility than usual. And then a wonderful sight was seen in Sloebury. This béte noir of the feminine world, this man whom every lady frowned upon, was seen walking along the High Street, side by side, in earnest conversation with one of the women who had been most unfavourable to him. Was she listening to an explanation, a justification, an account of himself, such as he had not yet given, to satisfy the requirements of the respectability of Sloebury? To tell the truth, Mrs. Methven now cared very little for any such explanation. She did not remember, as she ought to have done, that other women’s sons might be in danger from this suspicious person, though her own was now delivered out of his power. But she was very curious to know what anybody could tell her of Walter’s new possessions, and of the family which it was rather humiliating to know so little about. It was she, indeed, who had begun the conversation after his first remark upon Walter’s departure and the loss which would result to Sloebury.

“You know something about the Erradeens, my son tells me,” she said almost graciously.

“Something! I know about as much as most people. I knew he was the heir, which few, except yourselves, did,” the captain said. He cast a keen glance at her when he said, “except yourselves.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Methven, “that is scarcely correct, for Walter did not know, and I had forgotten. I had, indeed, lost sight of my husband’s family and the succession seemed so far off.”

It was thus that she veiled her ignorance and endeavoured to make it appear that indifference on her part, and a wise desire to keep Walter’s mind unaffected by such a dazzling possibility, had been her guiding influence. She spoke with such modest gravity that Captain Underwood, not used to delusion under that form, was tempted into a sort of belief. He looked at her curiously, but her veil was down, and her artifice, if it was an artifice, was of a kind more delicate than any to which he was accustomed.

“Well!” he said, “then it was not such a surprise to you as people thought? Sloebury has talked of nothing else, I need not tell you, for several days; and everybody was of opinion that it burst upon you like a thunderbolt.”

“Upon my son, yes,” Mrs. Methven said with a smile.

He looked at her again, and she had the satisfaction of perceiving that this experienced man of the world was taken in.

“Well, then,” he said, “you will join with me in wishing him well out of it: you know all the stories that are about.”

“I have never been at Mulmorrel—my husband’s chances in his own lifetime were very small, you know.”

“It isn’t Mulmorrel, it is that little ruined place where something uncanny is always said to go on—oh, I don’t know what it is; nobody does but the reigning sovereign himself, and some hangers-on, I suppose. I have been there. I’ve seen the mysterious light, you know. Nobody can ever tell what window it shows at, or if it is any window at all. I was once with the late man—the late lord, he who died the other day—when it came out suddenly. We were shooting wildfowl, and his gun fell out of his hands. I never saw a man in such a funk. We were a bit late, and twilight had come on before we knew.”

“So then you actually saw something of it yourself?” Mrs. Methven said. She had not the remotest idea what this was, but if she could find out something by any means she was eager enough to take advantage of it.

“No more than that; but I can tell you this: Erradeen was not seen again for twenty-four hours. Whether it was a call to him or what it was I can’t undertake to say. He never would stand any questioning about it. He was a good fellow enough, but he never would put up with anything on that point. So I can only wish Walter well through it, Mrs. Methven. In my opinion he should have had some one with him; for he is young, and, I dare say, he is fanciful.”

“My son, Lord Erradeen,” said Mrs. Methven with dignity, “is man enough, I hope, to meet an emergency. Perhaps you think him younger than he is.” She propounded this delicately as, perhaps, a sort of excuse for the presumption of the Christian name.

Underwood grew very red: he was disappointed and irritable. “Oh, of course you know best,” he said. “As for my Lord Erradeen (I am sure I beg your pardon for forgetting his dignity), I dare say he is quite old enough to take care of himself—at least, we’ll hope so; but a business of that kind will upset the steadiest brain, you know. Old Erradeen had not a bad spirit of his own, and he funked it. I confess I feel a little anxious for your boy; he’s a nice fellow, but he’s nervous. I was in a dozen minds to go up with him to stand by him; but, perhaps, it is better not, for the best motives get misconstrued in this world. I can only wish him well out of it,” Captain Underwood said, taking off his hat, and making her a fine bow as he stalked away.

It is needless to say that this mysterious intimation of danger planted daggers in Mrs. Methven’s heart. She stopped aghast: and for the moment the idea of running back to the station, and signalling that the train was to be stopped came into her mind. Ridiculous folly! Wish him well out of it? What, out of his great fortune, his peerage, his elevation in the world? Mrs. Methven smiled indignantly, and thought of the strange manifestations under which envy shows itself. But she went home somewhat pale, and could not dismiss it from her mind as she wished to do. Well out of it! And there were moments when, she remembered, she had surprised a very serious look on the countenance of Mr. Milnathort. Was Walter going unwarned, in the elation and happy confidence of his heart, into some danger unknown and unforeseen? This took her confidence away from her, and made her nervous and anxious. But after all, what folly it must be: something uncanny and a mysterious light! These were stories for Christmas, to bring a laugh or a shiver from idle circles round the fire. To imagine that they could effect anything in real life was a kind of madness; an old-fashioned, exploded superstition. It was too ridiculous to be worthy a thought.

CHAPTER VII

Walter arrived in Edinburgh on a wintry morning white and chill. A sort of woolly shroud wrapped all the fine features of the landscape. He thought the dingy turrets of the Calton Jail were the Castle, and was much disappointed, as was natural. Arthur’s Seat and the Crags were as entirely invisible as if they had been a hundred miles away, and the cold crept into his very bones after his night’s journey, although it had been made luxuriously, in a way very different from his former journeyings. Also it struck him as strange and uncomfortable that nobody was aware of the change in his position, and that even the railway porter, to whom he gave a shilling (as a commoner he would have been contented with sixpence), only called him “Sir,” and could not perceive that it would have been appropriate to say my lord. He went to an hotel, as it was so early, and found only a dingy little room to repose himself in, the more important part of the house being still in the hands of the housemaids. And when he gave his name as Lord Erradeen, the attendants stared at him with a sort of suspicion. They looked at his baggage curiously, and evidently asked each other if it was possible he could be what he claimed to be. Walter had a half-consciousness of being an impostor, and trying to take these surprised people in. He thawed, however, as he ate his breakfast, and the mist began to rise, revealing the outline of the Old Town. He had never been in Edinburgh before; he had rarely been anywhere before. It was all new to him, even the sense of living in an inn. There was a curious freedom about it, and independence of all restraint, which pleased him. But it was very strange to be absolutely unknown, to meet the gaze of faces he had never seen before, and to be obliged always to explain who he was. It was clear that a servant was a thing quite necessary to a man who called himself by a title, a servant not so much to attend upon him as to answer for him, and be a sort of guarantee to the world. Now that he was here in Edinburgh, he was not quite sure what to do with himself. It was too early to do anything. He could not disturb old Milnathort at such an hour. He must let the old man get to his office and read his letters before he could descend upon him. So that on the whole Walter, though sustained by the excitement of his new position, was altogether chilled and not at all comfortable, feeling those early hours of grim daylight hang very heavily on his hands. He went out after he had refreshed and dressed—and strolled about the fine but foreign street. It looked quite foreign to his inexperienced eyes. The Castle soared vaguely through the grey mist; the irregular line of roofs and spires crowning the ridge threw itself up vaguely against a darker grey behind. There was a river of mist between him and that ridge, running deep in the hollow, underneath the nearer bank, which was tufted with spectral bushes and trees, and with still more spectral white statues glimmering through. On the other side of the street, more cheerful and apparent, were the jewellers’ shops full of glistening pebbles and national ornaments. Everybody knows that it is not these shops alone, but others of every luxurious kind, that form the glory of Prince’s Street. But Walter was a stranger and foreigner; and in the morning mists the shining store of cairngorms was the most cheerful sight that met his eye.

Mr. Milnathort’s office was in a handsome square, with a garden in the centre of it, and another statue holding possession of the garden. For the first time since he left home, Walter felt a little thrill of his new importance when he beheld the respectful curiosity produced among the clerks by the statement of his name. They asked his lordship to step in with an evident sensation. And for Walter himself to look into that office where his mother had so strongly desired that he should find a place, had the most curious effect. He felt for the moment as if he were one of the serious young men peeping from beyond the wooden railing that inclosed the office, at the fortunate youth whose circumstances were no different from their own. He did not realise at that moment the unfailing human complacency which would have come to his aid in such circumstances, and persuaded him that the gifts of fortune had nothing to do with real superiority. He thought of the possible reflections upon himself of the other young fellows in their lowly estate as if he had himself been making them. He was sorry for them all, for the contrast they must draw, and the strange sense of human inequality that they must feel. He was no better than they were—who could tell? perhaps not half as good. He felt that to feel this was a due tribute from Lord Erradeen in his good fortune to those who might have been Walter Methven’s fellow-clerks, but who had never had any chance of being Lord Erradeen. And then he thought what a good thing it was that he had never written that letter to Mr. Milnathort, offering himself for a desk in the office. He had felt really guilty on the subject at the time. He had felt that it was miserable of him to neglect the occasion thus put before him of gaining a livelihood. Self-reproach, real and unmistakable, had been in his mind; and yet what a good thing he had not done it: and how little one knows what is going to happen! These were very ordinary reflections, not showing much depth; but it must be recollected that Walter was still in a sort of primary state of feeling, and had not had time to reach a profounder level.

Mr. Milnathort made haste to receive him, coming out of his own room on purpose, and giving him the warmest welcome.

“I might have thought you would come by the night train. You are not old enough to dislike night travelling as I do; but I will take it ill, and so will my sister, if you stay in an hotel, and your room ready for you in our little place. I think you will be more comfortable with us, though we have no grandeur to surround you with. My sister has a great wish to make your acquaintance, my Lord Erradeen. She has just a wonderful acquaintance with the family, and it was more through her than any one that I knew just where to put my hand upon you, when the time came.”

“I did not like to disturb you so early,” Walter said.

“Well, perhaps there is something in that. We are not very early birds: and as a matter of fact, Alison did not expect you till about seven o’clock at night. And here am I in the midst of my day’s work. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. We’ll go round to the club, and there your young lordship will make acquaintance with somebody that can show you something of Edinburgh. You have never been here before? It is a great pity that there is an easterly haar, which is bad both for you and the objects you are wanting to see. However, it is lifting, and we’ll get some luncheon, and then I will put you in the way. That is the best thing I can do for you. Malcolm, you will send down all the documents relative to his lordship’s affairs to Moray Place, this afternoon; and you can tell old Symington to be in attendance in case Lord Erradeen should wish to see him. That is your cousin the late lord’s body servant. He is a man of great experience, and you might wish—; but all that can be settled later on. If Drysdales should send over about that case of theirs, ye will say, Malcolm, that I shall be here not later than three in the afternoon; and if old Blairallan comes fyking, ye can say I am giving the case my best attention; and if it’s that big north-country fellow about his manse and his augmentation—”

“I fear that I am unpardonable,” said Walter, “in interfering with your valuable time.”

“Nothing of the sort. It is not every day that a Lord Erradeen comes into his inheritance; and as there are, may be, things not over-cheerful to tell you at night, we may as well make the best of it in the morning,” said the old lawyer. He got himself into his coat as he spoke, slowly, not without an effort. The sun was struggling through the mist as they went out again into the streets, and the mid-day gun from the Castle helped for a moment to disperse the haar, and show the noble cliff on which it rears its head aloft. Mr. Milnathort paused to look with tender pride along the line—the houses and spires lifting out of the clouds, the sunshine breaking through, the crown of St. Giles’s hovering like a visible sign of rank over the head of the throned city, awakened in him that keen pleasure and elation in the beauty of his native place which is nowhere more warmly felt than in Edinburgh. He waved his hand towards the Old Town in triumph. “You may have seen a great deal, but ye will never have seen anything finer than that,” he said.

“I have seen very little,” said Walter; “but everybody has heard of Edinburgh, so that it does not take one by surprise.”

“Ay, that is very wisely said. If it took you by surprise, and you had never heard of it before, the world would just go daft over it. However, it is a drawback of a great reputation that ye never come near it with your mind clear.” Having said this the old gentleman dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand, and said, in a different tone, “You will be very curious about the family secrets you are coming into, Lord Erradeen.”

Walter laughed.

“I am coming to them with my mind clear,” he said. “I know nothing about them. But I don’t believe much in family secrets. They belong to the middle ages. Nowadays we have nothing to conceal.”

Mr. Milnathort listened to this blasphemy with a countenance in which displeasure struggled with that supreme sense that the rash young man would soon know better, which disarms reproof. He shook his head.

“You may say we can conceal but little,” he said, “which is true enough, but not altogether true either. Courage is a fine thing, Lord Erradeen, and I am always glad to see it; and if you have your imagination under control, that will do ye still better service. In most cases it is not only what we see, but what we think we are going to see, that daunts us. Keep you your head cool, that is your best defence in all emergencies. It is better to be too bold than not to be bold enough, notwithstanding the poet’s warning to yon warrior-maid of his.”

These last words made Walter stare, for he was not very learned in poetry at the best, and was totally unprepared to hear Spenser from the lips of the old Scottish lawyer. He was silent for a little in mere perplexity, and then he said, with a laugh—

“You speak of danger as if we were on the eve of a battle. Are there giants to encounter or magicians? One would think we were living in the dark ages,” Walter cried with a little impatience.

Mr. Milnathort said nothing more. He led the young man into one of the great stone palaces which form the line of Prince’s Street, and which was then the seat of the old original club of Edinburgh society. Here Walter found himself in the midst of a collection of men with marked and individual faces, each one of whom ought to be somebody, he thought. Many of them were bound about the throat with white ties, like clergymen, but they did not belong to that profession. It gave the young man a sense of his own importance, which generally deserted him in Mr. Milnathort’s presence, and of which he felt himself to stand in need, to perceive that he excited a great deal of interest among these grave and potent signors. There was a certain desire visible to make his acquaintance and to ascertain his political opinions, of which Walter was scarcely aware as yet whether he had any. It was suggested at once that he should be put up for the club, and invitations to dinner began to be showered upon him. He was stopped short in his replies to those cordial beginnings of acquaintance by Mr. Milnathort, who calmly assumed the guidance of his movements. “Lord Erradeen,” he said, “is on his way West. Business will not permit him to tarry at this moment. We hope he will be back ere long, and perhaps stay a while in Edinburgh, and see what is to be seen in the way of society.” This summary way of taking all control of his own movements from him astounded Walter so much that he merely stared at his old tyrant or vizier, and in his confusion of surprise and anger did not feel capable of saying anything, which, after all, was the most dignified way; for, he said to himself, it was not necessary to yield implicit obedience even if he refrained from open protest upon these encroachments on his liberty. In the mean time it was evident that the old lawyer did not intend him to have any liberty at all. He produced out of the recesses of the club library a beaming little man in spectacles, to whom he committed the charge of the young stranger.

“Mr. Bannatyne,” he said, “knows Edinburgh as well as I know my chambers, and he will just take you round what is most worth seeing.”

When Walter attempted to escape with a civil regret to give his new acquaintance trouble he was put down by both with eagerness.

“The Old Town is just the breath of my nostrils,” said the little antiquary.

“It cannot be said that it’s a fragrant breath,” said old Milnathort; “but since that is so, Lord Erradeen, you would not deprive our friend of such a pleasure: and we’ll look for you by five or six at Moray Place, or earlier if you weary, for it’s soon dark at this time of the year.”

To find himself thus arrested in the first day of his emancipation and put into the hands of a conductor was so annoying yet so comic that Walter’s resentment evaporated in the ludicrous nature of the situation and his consciousness that otherwise he would not know what to do with himself. But sight-seeing requires a warmer inspiration than this, and even the amusement of beholding his companion’s enthusiasm over all the dark entries and worn-out inscriptions was not enough to keep Walter’s interest alive. His own life at this moment was so much more interesting than anything else, so much more important than those relics of a past which had gone away altogether out of mortal ken. When the blood is at high pressure in our veins, and the future lying all before us, it is very difficult to turn back, and force our eager eyes into contemplation of scenes with which we ourselves have little or no connection. The antiquary, however, was not to be baulked. He looked at his young companion with his head on one side like a critical bird. “You are paying no attention to me,” he said half pathetically; “but ‘cod, man (I beg your pardon, my lord!), ye shall be interested before I’m done.” With this threat he hurried Walter along to the noisiest and most squalid part of that noble but miserable street which is the pride of Edinburgh, and stopped short before a small but deep doorway, entering from a short flight of outside stairs. The door was black with age and neglect, and showed a sort of black cave within, out of which all kind of dingy figures were fluttering. The aspect of the muddy stairs and ragged wayfarers was miserable enough, but the mouldings of the lintel, and the spiral staircase half visible at one side, were of a grim antiquity, and so was the lofty tenement above, with its many rows of windows and high-stepped gable.

“Now just look here,” said Mr. Bannatyne, “these arms will tell their own story.”

There was a projecting boss of rude, half-obliterated carving on the door.

“I cannot make head nor tail of it,” said the young man; his patience was beginning to give way.

“Lord Erradeen,” cried the other with enthusiasm, “this is worth your fattest farm; it is of more interest than half your inheritance; it is as historical as Holyrood. You are just awfully insensible, you young men, and think as little of the relics that gave you your consequences in the world—!” He paused a little in the fervour of his indignation, then added—“But there are allowances to be made for you as you were bred in England, and perhaps are little acquainted—My lord, this is Me’even’s Close, bearing the name even now in its decay. It was my Lord Methven’s lodging in the old time. Bless me! can your young eyes not read the motto that many people have found so significant? Look here,” cried Walter’s cicerone, tracing with his stick the half-effaced letters, “Baithe Sune and Syne.”

Young Lord Erradeen began, as was natural, to feel ashamed of himself. He felt a pang of discomfort too, for this certainly bore no resemblance to the trim piece of modern Latin about the conquering power of virtue which was on his father’s seal. The old possibility that he might turn out an impostor after all gleamed across his mind. “Does this belong to me?” he added with some eagerness, to veil these other and less easy sentiments.

“I know nothing about that,” said Mr. Bannatyne with a slight tone of contempt. “But it was the Lord of Methven’s lodging in the days when Scots lords lived in the Canongate of Edinburgh.” Then he added, “There is a fine mantelpiece up-stairs which you had better see. Oh nobody will have any objection, a silver key opens every door hereabout. If it should happen to be yours, my lord, and I were you,” said the eager little man, “I would clear out the whole clanjamfry and have it thoroughly cleaned, and make a museum of the place. You would pick up many a curious bit as the auld houses go down. This way, to the right, and mind the hole in the wall. The doors are all carved, if you can see them for the dirt, and you’ll not often see a handsomer room.”

It was confusing at first to emerge out of the gloom of the stairs into the light of the great room, with its row of windows guiltless of either blind or curtain, which was in possession of a group of ragged children, squatting about in front of the deep, old-fashioned chimney, over which a series of elaborate carvings rose to the roof. The room had once been panelled, but half of the woodwork had been dragged down, and the rest was in a deplorable state. The contrast of the squalor and wretchedness about him, with the framework of the ancient, half-ruined grandeur, at once excited and distressed Walter. There was a bed, or rather a heap of something covered with the bright patches of an old quilt, in one corner, in another an old corner cupboard fixed into the wall, a rickety table and two chairs in the middle of the room. The solemn, unsheltered windows, like so many hollow, staring eyes, gazed out through the cold veil of the mist upon the many windows of an equally tall house on the other side of the street, the view being broken by a projecting pole thrust forth from the middle one, upon which some dingy clothes were hanging to dry. The children hung together, getting behind the biggest of them, a ragged, handsome girl, with wild, elf locks, who confronted the visitors with an air of defiance. The flooring was broken in many places, and dirty beyond description. Walter felt it intolerable to be here, to breathe the stifling atmosphere, to contemplate this hideous form of decay. He thought some one was looking at him from behind the torn panels. “This is horrible,” he said. “I hope I have nothing to do with it.” Disgust and a shivering, visionary dread was in his voice.

“Your race has had plenty to do with it,” said the antiquary. “It was here, they say, that the warlock-lord played most of his pliskies. It was his ‘warm study of deals’ like that they made for John Knox on the other side of the street. These walls have seen strange sights: and if you believe in witchcraft, as one of your name ought—”

“Why should one of my name believe in witchcraft? It appears,” he said, with petulance, “that I know very little about my name.”

“So I should have said,” said the antiquary, dryly. “But no doubt you have heard of your great ancestor, the warlock-lord? I am not saying that I admire the character in the abstract; but an ancestor like that is fine for a family. He was mixed up in all the doings of the time, and he made his own out of every one of them. And then he’s a grand historical problem to the present day, which is no small distinction. You never heard of that? Oh, my lord, that’s just not possible! He was the one whose death was never proved nor nothing about him, where he was buried, or the nature of his end, or if he ever came to an end at all; his son would never take the title, and forbade his son to do it: but by the time you have got to the second generation you are not minding so much. I noticed that the late lord would never enter into conversation on the subject. The family has always been touchy about it. It was the most complete disappearance I can recollect hearing of. Most historical puzzles clear themselves up in time: but this never was cleared up. Of course it has given rise to legends. You will perhaps be more interested in the family legends, Lord Erradeen?”

“Not at all,” said Walter, abruptly. “I have told you I know very little about the family. What is it we came to see?—not this wretched place which makes me sick. The past should carry off its shell with it, and not leave these old clothes to rot here.”

“Oh!” cried little Mr. Bannatyne, with a shudder. “I never suspected I was bringing in an iconoclast. That mantelpiece is a grand work of art, Lord Erradeen. Look at that serpent twisted about among the drapery—you’ll not see such work now; and the ermine on that mantle just stands out in every hair, for all the grime and the smoke. It is the legend beneath the shield that is most interesting in the point of view of the family. It’s a sort of rhyming slogan, or rather it’s an addition to the old slogan, ‘Live, Me’even,’ which everybody knows.”

Walter felt a mingled attraction and repulsion which held him there undecided in front of the great old fireplace, like Hercules or any other hero between the symbolical good and evil. He had a great curiosity to know what all this meant, mingled with an angry disinclination impossible to put into words. Mr. Bannatyne, who of course knew nothing of what was going on in his mind, took upon himself the congenial task of tracing the inscription out. It was doggerel, bad enough to satisfy every aspiration of an antiquary. It was as follows:—

Né fleyt atte Helle, né fond for Heeven,

Live, Me’even.

“You will see how it fits in with the other motto,” cried the enthusiast. “‘Baithe Sune and Syne,’ which has a grand kind of indifference to time and all its changes that just delights me. And the other has the same sentiment, ‘Neither frightened for hell nor keen about heaven.’ It is the height of impiety,” he said, with a subdued chuckle; “but that’s not inappropriate—it’s far from inappropriate; it is just, in fact, what might have been expected. The warlock lord—”

“I hope you won’t think me ungrateful,” cried Walter, “but I don’t think I want to know any more about that old ruffian. There is something in the place that oppresses me.” He took out from his pocket a handful of coins. (It was with the pleasure of novelty that he shook them together, gold and silver in one shining heap, and threw half a dozen of them to the little group before the fire.) “For heaven’s sake let us get out of this!” he said, nervously. He could not have explained the sentiment of horror, almost of fear, that was in his mind. “If it is mine,” he said, as they went down the spiral stair, groping against the black humid wall, “I shall pull it down and let in some air and clear the filth away.”

“God bless me!” cried the antiquary in horror and distress, “you will never do that. The finest street in Christendom, and one of the best houses! No, no, Lord Erradeen, you will never do that!”

When Mr. Bannatyne got back to the club, he expressed an opinion of Lord Erradeen, which we are glad to believe further experience induced him to modify. He declared that old Bob Milnathort had given him such a handful as he had not undertaken for years. “Just a young Cockney!” he said, “a stupid Englishman! with no more understanding of history, or even of the share his own race has had in it, than that collie dog—indeed, Yarrow is far more intelligent, and a brute that is conscious of a fine descent. I am not saying that there are not fine lads among some of those English-bred young men, and some that have the sense to like old-fashioned things. But this young fellow is just a Cockney, he is just a young cynic. Pull down the house, said he? Spoil the first street in Europe! We’ll see what the Town Council—not to say the Woods and Forests—will say to that, my young man! And I hope I have Bailie Brown under my thumb!” the enraged antiquary cried.

Meantime Walter made his way through the dark streets in a tremor of excitement and dislike of which he could give no explanation to himself. Why should the old house have affected him so strongly! There was no reason for it that he knew. Perhaps there was something in the suddenness of the transition from the comfortable English prose of Sloebury to all these old world scenes and suggestions which had a disenchanting effect upon him. He had not been aware that he was more matter of fact than another, less likely to be affected by romance and historical associations. But so it had turned out. The grimy squalor of the place, the bad atmosphere, the odious associations, had either destroyed for him all the more attractive prejudices of long family descent, and a name which had descended through many generations—or else, something more subtle still, some internal influence, had communicated that loathing and sickness of the heart. Which was it? He could not tell. He said to himself, with a sort of scorn at himself, that probably the bourgeois atmosphere of Sloebury had made him incapable of those imaginative flights for which the highest and the lowest classes have a mutual aptitude. The atmosphere of comfort and respectability was against it. This idea rather exasperated him, and he dwelt upon it with a natural perversity because he hated to identify himself as one of that stolid middle class which is above or beneath fanciful impulses. Then he began to wonder whether all this might not be part of a deep-laid scheme on the part of old Milnathort to get him, Walter, under his power. No doubt it was arranged that he should be brought to that intolerable place, and all the spells of the past called forth to subdue him by his imagination if never through his intellect. What did they take him for? He was no credulous Celt, but a sober-minded Englishman, not likely to let his imagination run away with him, or to be led by the nose by any diablerie, however skilful. They might make up their minds to it, that their wiles of this kind would meet with no success. Walter was by no means sure who he meant by they, or why they should endeavour to get him into their power; but he wanted something to find fault with—some way of shaking off the burden of a mental weight which he did not understand, which filled him with discomfort and new sensations which he could not explain. He could almost have supposed (had he believed in mesmerism, according to the description given of it in fiction—) that he was under some mesmeric influence, and that some expert, some adept, was trying to decoy him within some fatal circle of impression. But he set his teeth and all his power of resistance against it. They should not find him an easy prey.

CHAPTER VIII

The drawing-room in Moray Place seemed in the partial gloom very large and lofty. It must be remembered that Walter was accustomed only to the comparatively small rooms of an English country town where there was nobody who was very rich—and the solid, tall Edinburgh houses were imposing to him. There was no light but that which came from a blazing fire, and which threw an irregular ruddy illumination upon everything, but no distinct vision. He saw the tall windows indefinitely draped, and looking not unlike three colossal women in abundant vague robes standing against the wall. In a smaller room behind, which opened from this, the firelight was still brighter, but still only partially lit up the darkness. It showed, however, a table placed near the fire, and glowing with bright reflections from its silver and china; and just beyond that, out of the depths of what looked like an elongated easy-chair, a piece of whiteness, which was a female countenance. Walter, confused at his entrance, made out after a moment that it was a lady, half reclining on a sort of invalid chaise longue, who raised herself slightly to receive him, with a flicker of a pair of white, attenuated hands. “You are very welcome, Lord Erradeen,” she said, in a sweet, feeble voice. “Will you excuse my rising—for I’m a great invalid—and come and sit down here beside me? I have been looking for you this half-hour past.” The hand which she held out to him was so thin that he scarcely felt its light pressure. “If you have no objection,” said Miss Milnathort, “we will do with the firelight for a little longer. It is my favourite light. My brother sent me word I was to expect you, and after your cold walk you will be glad of a cup of tea.” She did not pause for any reply, but went on, drawing the table towards her, and arranging everything with the skill of an accustomed hand. “I am just a cripple creature,” she said. “I have had to learn to serve myself in this way, and Robert is extraordinarily thoughtful. There is not a mechanical convenience invented but I have it before it is well out of the brain that devised it; and that is how I get on so well with no backbone to speak of. All this is quite new to you,” she said, quickly shaking off one subject and taking up another, with a little swift movement of her head.

“Do you mean—Edinburgh, or—”

“I mean everything,” said the lady. “Edinburgh will be just a bit of scenery in the drama that is opening upon you, and here am I just another tableau. I can see it all myself with your young eyes. You can scarcely tell if it is real.”

“That is true enough,” said Walter, “and the scenery all turns upon the plot so far: which is what it does not always do upon the stage.”

“Ay!” said Miss Milnathort, with a tone of surprise, “and how may that be? I don’t see any particular significance in Holyrood. It is where all you English strangers go, as if Edinburgh had no meaning but Queen Mary.”

“We did not go to Holyrood. We went to Lord Methven’s Lodging, as I hear it is called: which was highly appropriate.”

“Dear me,” said the lady, “do you mean to tell me that John Bannatyne had that sense in him? I will remember that the next time Robert calls him an auld foozle. And so you saw the lodging of Methven? I have never seen it myself. Did it not make your heart sick to see all the poverty and misery in that awful street? Oh yes, I’m told it’s a grand street: but I never have the heart to go into it. I think the place should die with the age that gave it birth.”

This was a sentiment so entirely unlike what Walter had expected to hear, that for the moment it took from him all power of reply. “That would be hard upon antiquity,” he said at length, “and I don’t know what the artists would say, or our friend Mr. Bannatyne.”

“He would have me burnt for a witch,” the invalid said with a sweet little laugh; and then she added, “Ah, it is very well to talk about art; but there was great sense in that saying of the old Reformers, ‘Ding down the nest, and the crows will flee away.’”

“I expected,” said Walter, “to find you full of reverence for the past, and faith in mysteries and family secrets, and—how can I tell?—ghosts perhaps.” He laughed, but the invalid did not echo his laugh. And this brought a little chill and check to his satisfaction. The sense that one has suddenly struck a jarring note is highly uncomfortable when one is young. Walter put back his chair a little, not reflecting that the firelight revealed very little of his sudden blush.

“I have had no experience in what you call ghosts,” she said, gravely. “I cannot, to tell the truth, see any argument against them, except just that we don’t see them; and I think that’s a pity, for my part.”

To this, as it was a view of the subject equally new to him, Walter made no reply.

“Take you care, Lord Erradeen,” she resumed hastily, “not to let yourself be persuaded to adopt that sort of nomenclature.” There was a touch of Scotch in her accent that naturalised the long word, and made it quite in keeping. “Conclude nothing to be a ghost till you cannot account for it in any other way. There are many things that are far more surprising,” she said; then, shaking off the subject once more with that little movement of her head, “You are not taking your tea. You must have had a tiring day after travelling all night. That is one of the modern fashions I cannot make up my mind to. They tell me the railway is not so wearying as the long coach journeys we used to make in the old time.”

“But you—can scarcely remember the old coach journeys? Why, my mother—”

“Very likely I am older than your mother; and I rarely budge out of this corner. I have never seen your mother, but I remember Captain Methven long long ago, who was not unlike the general outline of you, so far as I can make out. When the light comes you will see I am an old woman. It is just possible that this is why I am so fond of the firelight,” she said with a laugh; “for I’m really very young though I was born long ago. Robert and me, we remember all our games and plays in a way that people that have had children of their own never do. We are just boy and girl still, and I’ve known us, after a long talk, forget ourselves altogether, and talk of papa and mamma!” She clapped her hands together at this, and went into a peal of genuine laughter, such as is always infectious. Walter laughed too, but in a half-embarrassed, half-unreal way. All was so strange to him, and this curious introduction into a half-seen, uncomprehended world the most curious of all.

“I would like to know a little about yourself,” she resumed after a moment. “You were not in the secret that it was you who were the kin? It was strange your father should have left you in the dark.”

“I can’t remember my father,” said Walter, hastily.

“That makes little difference; but you were always a strange family. Now you, Robert tells me, you’re not so very much of an Erradeen—you take after your mother’s side. And I’m very very glad to hear it. It will perhaps be you, if you have the courage, that will put a stop to—many things. There are old rhymes upon that subject, but you will put little faith in old rhymes; I none at all. I believe they are just made up long after the occasion, just for the sake of the fun, or perhaps because some one is pleased with himself to have found a rhyme. Now that one that they tell me is in the Canongate—that about ‘Live, Me’even—’”

“I thought you said you didn’t know it?”

“I have never seen it; but you don’t suppose I am ignorant of the subject, Lord Erradeen? Do you know I have been here stretched out in my chair these thirty years? and what else could I give my attention to, considering all things? Well, I do not believe in that. Oh, it’s far too pat! When a thing is true it is not just so terribly in keeping. I believe it was made up by somebody that knew the story just as we do; probably a hundred years or more after the event.”

Walter did not say that he was quite unacquainted with the event. His interest perhaps, though he was not aware of it, was a little less warm since he knew that Miss Milnathort was his mother’s contemporary rather than his own; but he had come to the conclusion that it was better not to ask any direct questions. The light had faded much, and was now nothing more than a steady red glow in place of the leaping and blazing of the flames. He scarcely saw his entertainer at all. There were two spots of brightness which moved occasionally, and which represented her face and the hands which she had clasped together (when they were not flickering about in incessant gesture) in her lap. But there was something altogether quaint and strange in the situation. It did not irritate him as the men had done. And then she had the good sense to agree with him in some respects, though the mélange of opinions in her was remarkable, and he did not understand what she would be at. There was an interval of quiet in which neither of them said anything, and then a large step was audible coming slowly up-stairs, and through the other drawing room.

“Here is Robert,” the invalid said with a smile in her voice. It was nothing but a tall shadow that appeared, looming huge in the ruddy light.

“Have you got Lord Erradeen with you, Alison? and how are you and he getting on together?” said old Milnathort’s voice.

Walter rose hastily to his feet with a feeling that other elements less agreeable were at once introduced, and that his pride was affronted by being discussed in this easy manner over his head.

“We are getting on fine, Robert. He is just as agreeable as you say, and I have great hopes will be the man. But you are late, and it will soon be time for dinner. I would advise you to show our young gentleman to his room, and see that he’s comfortable. And after dinner, when you have had your good meal, we’ll have it all out with him.”

“I am thinking, Alison, that there is a good deal we must go over that will be best between him and me.”

“That must be as you please, Robert, my man,” said the lady, and Walter felt like a small child who is being discussed over his head by grown-up persons, whom he feels to be his natural enemies. He rose willingly, yet with unconscious offence, and followed his host to his room, inwardly indignant with himself for having thus impaired his own liberty by forsaking his inn. The room however was luxuriously comfortable, shining with firelight, and a grave and respectable servant in mourning, was arranging his evening clothes upon the bed.

“This is Symington,” said Mr. Milnathort, “he was your late cousin’s body-servant. The late Lord Erradeen gave him a very warm recommendation. There might be things perhaps in which he would be of use.”

“Thanks,” said Walter, impulsively. “I have a man coming. I am afraid the recommendation is a little too late.”

This unfortunately was not true; but the young man felt that to allow himself to be saddled with a sort of governor in the shape of the late lord’s servant was more than could be required of him; and that he must assert himself before it was too late.

“You will settle that at your pleasure, my lord,” said old Milnathort, and he went away shutting the door carefully, his steady, slow step echoing along the passage. The man was not apparently in the least daunted by Walter’s irritation. He went on mechanically, lightly brushing out a crease, and unfolding the coat with that affectionate care which a good servant bestows upon good clothes. Walter longed to have brought his old coat with him that everything should not have been so distressingly new.

“That will do,” he said, “that will do. It is a pity to give you so much trouble when, as I tell you, I have another man engaged.”

“It is no trouble, my lord; it is a pleasure. I came out of attachment to the family. I’ve been many years about my late lord. And however ye may remind yourself that you are but a servant, and service is no heritage, yet it’s not easy to keep yourself from becoming attached.”

“My good man,” said Walter, half impatient, half touched, “you never saw me in your life before. I can’t see how you can have any attachment to me.”

Symington had a long face, with a somewhat lugubrious expression, contradicted by the twinkle of a pair of humorous, deep-set eyes. He gave a glance up at Walter from where he stood fondling the lappels of the new coat.

“There are many kinds of attachments, my lord,” he said oracularly; “some to the person and some to the race. For a number of years past I have, so to speak, just identified myself with the Erradeens. It’s not common in England, so far as I can hear, but it’s just our old Scots way. I will take no other service. So, being free, if your lordship pleases, I will just look after your lordship’s things till the other man comes.”

Walter perceived in a moment by the way Symington said these words that he had no faith whatever in the other man. He submitted accordingly to the ministrations of the family retainer, with a great deal of his old impatience, tempered by a sense of the humour of the situation. It seemed that he was never to have any control over himself. He had barely escaped from the tutelage of home when he fell into this other which was much more rigid. “Poor mother!” he said to himself, with an affectionate recollection of her many cares, her anxious watchfulness; and laughed to himself at the thought that she was being avenged.

Mr. Milnathort’s table was handsome and liberal; the meal even too abundant for the solitary pair who sat alone at a corner of the large table, amid a blaze of light. Miss Milnathort did not appear.

“She never comes down. She has never sat down at table since she had her accident, and that is thirty years since.”

There was something in Mr. Milnathort’s tone as he said this that made Walter believe that her accident too had something to do with the family. Everything tended towards that, or sprang from it. Had he been to the manner born, this would no doubt have seemed to him natural enough; but as it was he could not keep himself from the idea either that he was being laughed at, or that some design was hidden beneath this constant reference. The dinner, however, went off quietly. It was impossible to discuss anything of a private character in the presence of Milnathort’s serious butler, and of the doubly grave apparition of Symington, who helped the other to wait.

Walter had never dined so solemnly before. It must be added, however, that he had seldom dined so well. It was a pity that he was so little knowing in this particular. Mr. Milnathort encouraged him through the repast by judicious words of advice and recommendation. He was very genial and expansive at this most generous moment of the day. Fond of good fare himself he liked to communicate and recommend it, and Walter’s appetite was excellent, if perhaps his taste was uncultivated. The two noiseless attendants circulating about the table served them with a gravity in perfect keeping with the importance of the event, which was to the old lawyer the most interesting of the day.

When they were left alone finally, the aspect of affairs changed a little. Mr. Milnathort cleared his throat, and laid aside his napkin. He said—

“We must not forget, Lord Erradeen, that we have a great deal of business to get through. But you have had a fatiguing day, and probably very little sleep last night”—

“I slept very well, I assure you,” Walter replied cheerfully.

“Ay, ay, you are young,” said Mr. Milnathort, with a half-sigh. “Still all the financial statements, and to give you a just view of all that’s coming to you, will take time. With your permission we’ll keep that till to-morrow. But there’s just a thing or two—. Lord save us!” he cried suddenly, “you’re not the kind of person for this. There is many a one I know that would have liked it all the better—till they knew—for what’s attached to it. I thought as much when I first set eyes upon you. This will be one that will not take it all for gospel, I said to myself—one that will set up his own judgment, and demand the reason why.”

Walter, a little uncertain at first how to take this, ended by being gratified with such an estimate of himself. It showed, he felt, more perception than he had looked for, and he answered, with a little complacency, “I hope you think that is the right way of approaching a new subject.”

“I am not unbiased myself,” said the lawyer, “and I have had to do with it all my life. There are conditions connected with your inheritance, Lord Erradeen, that may seem out of the way to a stranger. If you had succeeded in the way of nature, as your father’s son, they would not have been new to you, and you would have been prepared. In that way it is hard upon you. There was one of your ancestors that laid certain conditions, as I was saying, upon every heir. He was one that had, as you may say, a good right to do that, or whatever else he pleased, seeing he was the making of the family. In old days it was no more than a bit small highland lairdship. It was he that gave it consequence; but he has held a heavy hand upon his successors ever since.”

“Would it be he by any chance of whom Mr. Bannatyne was discoursing to me,” said Walter, “under the title of the warlock-lord?”

“Ah! John Bannatyne took that upon him?” cried Mr. Milnathort with vivacity. His eyes gleamed from under his deep-set brows. “The less a man knows the more ready he is to instruct the world: but I never thought he would take that upon him. So you see, as I was saying, there are certain formalities to go through. It is understood that once a year, wherever he may be, Lord Erradeen should pass, say a week, say two or three days, in the old castle of Kinloch Houran, which is the old seat of the family, the original of the Methven race.”

Walter had been listening with some anxiety. He drew a long breath as Mr. Milnathort came to a pause. “Is that all?” he cried, with a voice of relief. Then he laughed. “I was winding myself up to something heroic, but if it is only a periodical retirement to an old castle—to think, I suppose, upon one’s sins and examine one’s conscience—”

“Something very like that,” said the old man, somewhat grimly.

“Well! It might be a great inconvenience; but there is nothing very appalling in the prospect, if that is all.”

“It is all, Lord Erradeen—if ye except what passes there, a thing that is your own concern, and that I have never pried into for my part. And just this beside, that you are expected there at once and without delay.”

“Expected—at once and without delay.” Walter grew red with anger at these peremptory words. “This sounds a little arbitrary,” he said. “Expected? by whom? and to what purpose? I don’t understand—”

“Nor do I, my young lord. But it’s so in the documents, and so has it been with every Lord of Erradeen up to this period. It is the first thing to be done. Before you come into enjoyment of anything, or take your place in the country, there is this visit—if you like to call it a visit: this—sojourn: not a long one, at least, you may be thankful—to be made—”

“To what purpose?” Walter repeated, almost mechanically. He could not, himself, understand the sudden tempest of resistance, of anger, of alarm that got up within him. “There is reason in everything,” he said, growing pale. “What is it for? What am I to do?”

“Lord Erradeen, a minute since you said, was that all? And now you change colour: you ask why, and wherefore—”

Walter made a great effort to regain command of himself. “It is inconsistent, I allow,” he said. “Somehow, the order to go now is irritating and unpleasant. I suppose it’s simple enough, a piece of tyranny such as people seem to think they may indulge in after they’re dead. But it is abominably arbitrary and tyrannical. What good does the old beggar think—”

“Hold your peace,” cried Mr. Milnathort, with a little trepidation. “We have no right to call names, and I would not like it to be thought—” Here he paused with a sort of uneasy smile, and added, “I am speaking nonsense,” with a vague glance about him. “I think we might join my sister up-stairs; and, as she knows just as much as I do, or, maybe, more, you can speak as freely as you please before her—oh, quite freely. But, my dear young lord, call no names!” cried Mr. Milnathort. He got up hurriedly, leaving his wine which he had just filled out, a demonstration of sincerity which made a great impression upon Walter: and threw open the door. “Putting off the business details till to-morrow, I know nothing else that we cannot discuss before Alison,” he said.

Walter was much startled when he went back to the inner drawing-room and found it lighted. Miss Milnathort did not employ any of those devices by which light is softened to suit the exigencies of beauty which has passed its prime. The light (alas for the prejudices of the aesthetic reader) was gas; and, though it was slightly disguised by means of opal glass, it still poured down in a brilliant flood, and the little room was almost as light as day. She lay in her chaise longue placed under this illumination. Her face was preternaturally young, almost childish, small, and full of colour, her hair snow-white. She seemed to have been exempted from the weight of years, in compensation, perhaps, for other sufferings; her skin was smooth and unwrinkled, her eyes full of dewy brightness like those of a girl. Her dress, so far as it was visible, was white, made of cashmere or some other woollen material, solid and warm, but with lace at the neck, and pretty ribbons breaking the monotony of the tint. She looked like a girl dressed for some simple party, who had lain there waiting for the little festivity to begin, for no one could imagine how many years. Her hands were soft and round and young like her face. The wind had not been allowed to visit her cheek too roughly for a lifetime. What had happened before the event which she and her brother had both referred to as her “accident” belonged to a period which had evidently nothing to do with the present. Walter saw at a glance that every possible convenience which could be invented for an invalid surrounded her. She had a set of bookshelves at one side with vacant spaces where she could place the book she was reading. Tables that wheeled towards her at a touch, with needlework, with knitting, with drawing materials, were arranged within reach. One of these made into a desk and put itself across her couch by another adaptation. It was evident that the tenderest affection and care had made this prison of hers into a sort of museum of every ingenuity that had ever been called to the help of the suffering. She lay, or rather sat, for that was her general position, with an air of pleasant expectation on her face, and received them with smiles and hands held out. “Come away, come away,” she said in her soft Scotch. “I have been wearying for you.” Walter thought there was something of age in her voice, but that might have been only the Scotch, and the unusual form of her salutation. She pointed out a chair to him carefully placed for her convenience in seeing and hearing. “Come and tell me what you think about it all,” she said.

“I have not heard much,” said Walter, “to think about: except that I am to go away directly, which does not please me at all, Miss Milnathort.”

“Oh, you will come back, you will come back,” she said.

“I hope so: but the reason why I should go doesn’t seem very plain. What would happen, I wonder, if I didn’t?” Walter said, lightly. He was surprised to see how much effect was produced upon his companions by this very simple utterance. Miss Milnathort put her hands together, as if to clasp them in triumph. Her brother stood looking down upon the others, with his back to the light, and an air of alarmed displeasure.

“One result would be that certain of the lands would pass to the next heir,” he said; “besides, perhaps—other penalties: that I would not incur, Lord Erradeen, if I were you.”

“What penalties? But do you think at this time of day,” said Walter, “that ridiculous conditions of this kind that can mean nothing could really be upheld by the law—now that bequests of all kinds are being interfered with, and even charities?”

“Robert, that is true. There was the Melville mortification that you had so much trouble about, and that was a charity. How much more, as young Lord Erradeen is saying, when it is just entirely out of reason.”

“You should hold your peace on legal subjects, Alison. What can you know about them? I disapprove of all interference with the will of a testator, Lord Erradeen. I hold it to be against the law, and against that honour and honesty that we owe to the dead as well as the living. But there has always been a license allowed in respect to charities. So far as they are intended to be for the good of the poor, we have a right to see that the testator’s meaning is carried out, even if it be contrary to his stipulations. But in a private case there is no such latitude. And you must always respect the testator’s meaning, which is very clear in this case, as even you will allow, Alison.”

“Ay, clear enough,” cried the young-old lady, shaking her white head. “But I’m on your side, Lord Erradeen. I would just let them try their worst, and see what would come of it, if, instead of a lame woman, I was a young man, lively and strong like you.”

“The question is,” said Walter, “for I have become prudent since I have had property—whether for such an insignificant affair it is worth while losing a substantial advantage, as Mr. Milnathort says? And then, perhaps, a new man like myself, coming into an antiquated routine, there would be a sort of discourtesy, a want of politeness—” He laughed. “One ought, I suppose, to be on one’s best behaviour in such circumstances,” he said.

Miss Milnathort’s countenance fell a little. She did not make any reply; but she had been listening with an air so eager and full of vivacity, anxious to speak, that the young man at once perceived the disappointment in her expressive little face. He said quickly—

“That does not please you? What would you have me to do?” with an involuntary sense that she had a right to an opinion.

Mr. Milnathort at this moment sat heavily down on the other side, giving great emphasis to his interruption by the sound of his chair drawn forward, a sound which she protested against with a sudden contraction of her forehead, putting up a delicate hand.

“I beg your pardon, my dear, for making a noise. You must not consult Alison, Lord Erradeen; she is prejudiced on one side—and I—perhaps I am, if not prejudiced, yet biased, on the other. You must act on your own instinct, which, as far as I can judge, is a just one. It would be a great incivility, as you say, for a far-away collateral, that is really no more than a stranger, to set himself against the traditions of a house.”

Walter did not much like to hear himself described as a far-away collateral. It sounded like a term of reproach, and as he did not choose to say anything more on this matter, he made the best change of subject he could.

“I wonder,” he said, “what would happen with any of the fantastic old feudal tenures if a new heir, a new man like myself, should simply refuse to fulfil them.”

“Mostly they take a pride and a pleasure in fulfilling them,” said the old lawyer.

“But suppose,” cried Walter, “for the sake of argument, that a new Duke of Marlborough should say, ‘What rubbish! Why should I send that obsolete old flag to Windsor?’ That is a modern instance; or suppose—”

“Just that,” cried Miss Milnathort, striking in with a flicker of her pretty hands. “Suppose young Glenearn should refuse when he comes of age to hear a word about that secret cha’mer—”

“What would happen?” said Walter, with a laugh of profane and irreverent youth.

Mr. Milnathort rose to his full height; he pushed back his chair with an indignant movement.

“You may as well ask me,” he said, “what would happen if the pillars of the earth should give way. It is a thing that cannot be, at least till the end of all things is at hand. I will ring for prayers, Alison. My Lord Erradeen is young; he knows little; but this kind of profane talk is not to be justified from you and me.”

Then the bell was rung; the servants came trooping up-stairs, and Symington gave Walter a sidelong look as he took his seat behind their backs. It seemed to assert a demure claim of proprietorship, along with a total want of faith in the “other man.” Young Lord Erradeen found that it was all he could do to restrain an irreverent laugh. The position was so comic, that his original sense of angry resistance disappeared before it. He was going off against his will to pass through a mysterious ordeal in an old ruined house, under charge of a servant whom he did not want, and in obedience to a stipulation which he disowned. He was not half so free an agent as he had been when he was poor Walter Methven, knocking about the streets of Sloebury and doing much what he liked, though he thought himself in bondage. Bondage! he did not know in the old days what the word would mean.

CHAPTER IX

The day on which Walter set out for Kinloch Houran was fine and bright, the sky very clear, the sun shining, the hills standing out against the blue, and every line of the tall trees clearly marked upon the transparent atmosphere. It was not till two days after the conversation above recorded—for there had been much to explain, and Walter was so little acquainted with business that instructions of various kinds were necessary. Miss Milnathort was visible much earlier than usual on the morning of his departure, and he was admitted to see her. She was paler than before, and her little soft face was full of agitation; the corners of her mouth turned down, and her upper lip, which was a trifle too long, quivering. This added rather than took away from her appearance of youth. She was like a child who had exhausted itself with crying, and still trembled with an occasional sob. She stretched up her arms to him as if she would have put them round his neck, and bade God bless him with a tremulous voice.

“You must have plenty of courage,” she said; “and you must never, never give up your own way.”

Walter was touched to the heart by this look of trouble on the innocent, young-old face.

“I thought it was always right to give up one’s own way,” he said, in the light tone which he had come to employ with her.

She made an effort to smile in response.

“Oh yes, oh yes, it’s the fashion to say so. You are a self-denying race, to believe yourselves; but this time you must not yield.”

“To whom am I supposed to be about to yield?” he asked. “You may be sure I shan’t unless I can’t help myself.”

The tears overflowed her bright old eyes; her hands shook as they held his.

“God bless you! God bless you!” she said. “I will do nothing but pray for you, and you will tell me when you come back.”

He left her lying back upon her cushions sobbing under her breath. All this half-perplexed, half-amused the young man. She was a very strange little creature, he felt, neither old nor young; there was no telling the reason of her emotion. She was so much indulged in all her whims, like a spoiled child, that perhaps these tears were only her regrets for a lost playmate. At the same time Walter knew that this was not so, and was angry with himself for the thought. But how find his way out of the perplexity? He shook it off, which is always the easiest way; and soon the landscape began to attract his attention, and he forgot by degrees that there was anything very unusual in the circumstances of his journey. It was not till the first long stage of this journey was over that he was suddenly roused to a recollection of everything involved, by the appearance of Symington at the carriage window, respectfully requesting to know whether he had wanted anything. Walter had not remembered, or if he had remembered had thought no more of it, that this quietly officious retainer had taken all trouble from him at the beginning of his journey, as he had done during his stay in Mr. Milnathort’s house.

“What! are you here?” he said, with surprise, and a mixture of amusement and offence.

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” said Symington, with profound and serious respect, yet always a twinkle in his eye, “but as the other man did not turn up—and your lordship could scarcely travel without some attendance—”

He had to rush behind to get his place in the train in the midst of his sentence, and Walter was left to think it over alone. In the balance between anger and amusement the latter fortunately won the day. The comic side of the matter came uppermost. It seemed to him very droll that he should be taken possession of, against his will, by the valet who professed an attachment to the race, not to the individual members of it, whose head was garlanded with crape in the quaint Scotch way for Walter’s predecessor, and who had “identified himself with the Erradeens.” He reminded himself that he was in the country of Caleb Balderstone and Ritchie Moniplies, and he resigned himself to necessity. Symington’s comic yet so respectful consciousness that “the other man” was a mere imagination, was joke enough to secure his pardon, and Walter felt that though the need of attendance was quite new in his life, that it might be well on his arrival in a strange country and a lonely ruined house, to have some one with him who was not ignorant either of the locality or the household.

The country increased in interest as he went on, and by and by he forgot himself in gazing at the mountains which appeared in glimpses upon the horizon, then seemed to draw nearer, closing in upon the road, which led along by the head of one loch after another, each encompassed by its circle of hills. Walter knew very little about Scotland. He thought it a barren and wild country, all bleak and gloomy, and the lavish vegetation of the west filled him with surprise and admiration. The sun was near its setting when the railway journey came to an end, and he found himself at a village station, from which a coach ran to Kinloch Houran. It appeared that there was no other vehicle to be had, and though it was cold there was nothing else for it but to clamber up on the top of the rude coach, which was a sort of char-à-banc without any interior. Walter felt that it would become him ill, notwithstanding his new rank, to grumble at the conveyance, upon which there mounted nimbly a girl whom he had remarked when leaving Edinburgh, and whom he had watched for at all the pauses of the journey. He thought her the very impersonation of all he had ever heard of Scotch beauty, and so would most observers to whom Scotland is a new country. The native Scot is aware that there are as many brown locks as golden, and as many dark maidens as fair ones in his own country; but notwithstanding, to the stranger it is the fair who is the type. This young lady was warmly clothed in dark tweed, of the ruddy heathery hue which is now so general, not long enough to conceal her well-shod feet, closely fitting, and adapted for constant walking and movement. She seemed to be met by friends all along the route. From the carriage window Walter saw her look out with little cries of pleasure. “Oh, is that you, Jack?” “Oh, Nelly, where are you going?” “Oh, come in here, there is room in this carriage,” and such like. She was always leaning out to say a word to somebody, either of farewell or welcome. “You will remember me to your mother,” old gentlemen would call to her, as the train went on. Walter was greatly in want of amusement, and he was at the age when a girl is always interesting. She became to him the heroine of the journey. He felt that he was collecting a great deal of information about her as they travelled on, and had begun to wonder whether he should ever find out who she was, or see any more of her, when he perceived her, to his delight, getting out, as he himself did, at Baldally. She was met by a respectable woman servant, who took possession of her baggage, while the young lady herself ran across the road to the coach, and with a hearty greeting to John the coachman darted up to the seat immediately behind him, where her maid presently joined her. Walter, and a personage of the commercial traveller class, shared the coachman’s seat in front, and Symington and some other humbler passengers sat behind. The coach was adapted for summer traffic, so that there were several lines of empty seats between the two sets of travellers. It gave Walter a great deal of pleasure to hear the soft voice of his fellow-traveller pouring forth, low yet quite audible, an account of her journey to her maid, who was evidently on the most confidential terms with her young mistress.

“Has mamma missed me—much?” she asked after the little Odyssey was over.

“Oh, Miss Oona, to ask that,” cried the woman; “how should we no miss you?” and then there ensued a number of details on the home side. The girl had been on a visit in Edinburgh, and had gone to balls, and “seen everything.” On the other hand many small matters, faithfully reported, had filled up the time of separation. Walter listened to all this innocent interchange with great amusement and interest as the coach made its way slowly up the ascents of the hilly road. It was not in itself an agreeable mode of progression: the wind was icy cold, and swept through and through the unfortunates who faced it in front, sharpening into almost absolute needle points of ice when the pace quickened, and the noisy, jolting vehicle lumbered down the further side of a hill, threatening every moment to pitch the passengers into the heathery bog on one side or the other. He tried to diminish his own discomfort by the thought that he took off the icy edge of the gale and sheltered the little slim creature in her close ulster behind, about whose shoulders the maid had wound the snowy mass of a great white knitted shawl. The low sun was in their faces as they toiled and rattled along, and the clear wintry blue of the sky was already strewn with radiant rosy masses of cloud. When they reached the highest point of the road the dazzling gleam of the great loch lying at their feet and made into a mirror of steel by the last blaze of the sun before it disappeared, dazzled the young man, who could see nothing except the cold intolerable brightness; but in a moment more the scene disclosed itself. Hills all purple in the sunset, clothed with that ineffable velvet down which softens every outline, opened out on either side, showing long lines of indistinct green valleys and narrower ravines that ran between, all converging towards the broad and noble inland sea fringed with dark woods and broken with feathery islands, which was the centre of the landscape. The wonderful colour of the sky reflected in the loch, where everything found a reflection, and every knoll and island floated double, changed the character of the scene and neutralised the dazzling coldness of the great water-mirror. Walter’s involuntary exclamation at this sight stopped for a moment all the conversation going on. “By Jove,” he said, “how glorious!” They all stopped talking, the coachman, the traveller, the woman behind, and looked at him. Big John the driver, who knew everybody, eyed him with a slightly supercilious air, as one who felt that the new-comer could not be otherwise than contemptible, more or less, even though his sentiments were irreproachable. “Ay, sir—so that’s your opinion? most folk have been beforehand with ye,” said John.

The commercial traveller added, condescendingly, “It is cold weather for touring, sir; but it’s a grand country, as ye say.” And then they resumed their conversation.

The young lady behind was far more sympathetic. She made a distinct pause, and when she spoke again it was with a flattering adoption of Walter’s tone to point out to her companion how beautiful the scene was.

“The isle is floating too, Mysie—look! If we could get there soon enough we might land upon one of those rosy clouds.”

Walter gave a grateful glance behind him, and felt that he was understood.

“That is just your poetry, Miss Oona,” said the maid; “but, bless me, I have never told ye: there has been the light lighted in the castle these two nights past. We have just thought upon you all the time, and how much taken up you would be about it, your mamma and me.”

“The light on the castle!” cried the young lady; and at this the coachman, turning slightly round, entered into the conversation.

“That has it,” he said; “I can back her up in that; just as clear and as steady as a star. There are many that say they never can see it; but they would be clever that had not seen it these two past nights.”

“Who says they cannot see it?” said the girl, indignantly.

John gave a little flick to his leader, which made the whole machine vibrate and roll.

“Persons of the newfangled kind that believe in nothing,” he said. “They will tell ye it cannot be—so how can you see it? though it is glinting in their faces all the time.”

“You are meaning me, John,” said the traveller on the box-seat; “and there’s truth in what you say. I’ve seen what you call the light, and no doubt it has the appearance of a light; but if ye tell me it’s something supernatural, there can be no doubt I will answer ye that there’s nothing supernatural. If you were to tell me ye had seen a ghost, I would just reply in the same way. No, my man, I’m not impeachin’ your veracity. You saw something, I’ll allow; but no’ a ghost, for there are no ghosts to see.”

“That’s just an awfu’ easy way of settlin’ the question,” said the maid from behind—and then she went on in a lower tone: “This will be the third night since it began, and we’ve a’ seen it on the Isle. Hamish, he says the new lord maun be of a dour kind to need so many warnings. And he’s feared ill will come of it; but I say the new lord, no’ bein’ here away nor of this country at all, how is he to ken?”

The girl’s voice was now quite low, almost a whisper: but Walter being immediately in front of her could still hear. “Has anything been heard,” she said, “of the new lord?”

“Very little, Miss Oona, only that he’s a young lad from the south with no experience, and didna even know that he was the heir; so how could he ken? as I say to Hamish. But Hamish he insists that it’s in the blood, and that he would ken by instinck; and that it shows an ill-will, and ill will come of it.”

“If I were he,” cried the girl, “I would do the same. I would not be called like that from the end of the world wherever I was.”

“Oh, whisht, Miss Oona. It is such an auld, auld story; how can the like of you say what should be done?”

“I would like myself,” said the traveller, “to come to the bottom of this business. What is it for, and who has the doing of it? The moment you speak of a light ye pre-suppose a person that lights it and mainy adjuncks and accessories. Now there’s nobody, or next to nobody, living in that auld ruin. It’s some rendeyvouss, I can easily understand that. The days of conspiracies are gone by, or I would say it was something against the state; but whatever it is, it must have a purpose, and mortal hands must do it, seeing there are no other. I have heard since ever I began to travel this country of the Kinloch Houran light, but I never heard a reason assigned.”

“It’s the living lord,” cried the maid, “as everybody knows! that is called to meet with—”

Here the young lady interfered audibly—

“Mysie, not a word!” The woman’s voice continued, stifled as if a hand had been laid on her mouth.

“With them that are—with ane that is—I’m saying nothing, Miss Oona, but what all the loch is well aware—”

“It’s just a ferlie of this part of the world,” said John the driver; “nae need of entering into it with them that believe naething. I’m no what ye call credulous mysel’; but when it comes to the evidence of a man’s ain senses—”

“And what have your senses said to ye, my fine fellow? that there’s a queer kind of a glimmer up upon the auld tower? So are there corpse-candles, if I’m not mistaken, seen by the initiated upon your burial isle—what do you call it?”

“And wha has a word to say gainst that?” cried the driver angrily; whilst Mysie behind murmured—“It’s well seen ye have naething to do with any grave there.”

Now Walter was as entirely free from superstition as any young man need be; but when he heard the laugh with which the sceptic greeted these protests, he had the greatest mind in the world to seize him by the collar and pitch him into the bog below. Why? but the impulse was quite unreasonable and defied explanation. He had as little faith in corpse-candles as any bagman ever had, and the embarrassed and uneasy consciousness he had that the end of his journey was inexplicable, and its purpose ridiculous, led him much more to the conclusion that he was being placed in a ludicrous position, than that there was anything solemnly or awfully mysterious in it. Nevertheless, so far from ranging himself upon the side of the enlightened modern who took the common-sense view of these Highland traditions, his scorn and impatience of him was beyond words. For his own part he had not been sufficiently self-possessed to join in the discussion; but at this moment he ventured a question—

“Is this old castle you speak of—” here he paused not knowing how to shape his inquiry; then added, “uninhabited?” for want of anything better to say.

“Not altogether,” said John; “there is auld Macalister and his wife that live half in the water, half out of the water. And it’s the story in the parish that there are good rooms; aye ready for my lord. But I can tell ye naething about that, for I’m always on the road, and I see nothing but a wheen tourists in the summer, that are seeking information, and have none to give, puir creatures. There’s a new lord just come to the title; ye will maybe have met with him if ye’re from the south, for he’s just an English lad.”

“England, my man John, is a wide road,” said the traveller; “there are too many for us all to know each other as ye do in a parish; this gentleman will tell ye that.”

John’s satirical explanation that he had not suspected Mr. Smith, whose northern accent was undoubted, of being an Englishman, saved Walter from any necessity of making a reply; and by this time the coach was rattling down upon a little homely inn, red-roofed and white-walled, which stood upon a knoll, overlooking the loch, and was reflected in all its brightness of colour in that mirror. The ground shelved rapidly down to the water-side, and there were several boats lying ready to put out into the loch—one a ponderous ferry boat, another a smaller, but still substantial and heavy, cobble, in which a man with a red shirt and shaggy locks was standing up relieved against the light. Walter jumped down hurriedly with the hope of being in time to give his hand to the young lady, who perhaps had divined his purpose, for she managed to alight on the other side and so balk him. The landlady of the little inn had come out to the door, and there was a great sound of salutations and exclamations of welcome. “But I mustna keep you, Miss Oona, and your mamma countin’ the moments; and there’s two or three parcels,” the woman said. The air had begun to grow a little brown, as the Italians say, that faint veil of gathering shade which is still not darkness, was putting out by degrees the radiance of the sky, and as Walter stood listening all the mingled sounds of the arrival rose together in a similar mist of sound, through which he sought for the soft little accents of the young lady’s voice amid the noises of the unharnessing, the horses’ hoofs and ostler’s pails, and louder tones. Presently he saw her emerge from the group with her maid, laden with baskets and small parcels, and embarking under the conduct of the man in the red shirt, whom she greeted affectionately as Hamish, assume her place in the stern, and the ropes of the rudder, with evident use and wont. To watch her steer out into the darkening loch, into the dimness and cold, gave the young man a vague sensation of pain. It seemed to him as if the last possible link with the human and sympathetic was detaching itself from him. He did not know her indeed, but it does not take a long time or much personal knowledge to weave this mystic thread between one young creature and another. Most likely, he thought, she had not so much as noticed him: but she had come into the half-real dream of his existence, and touched his hand, as it were, in the vague atmosphere which separates one being from another. Now he was left with nothing around him but the darkening landscape and the noisy little crowd about the coach; no one who could give him any fellowship or encouragement in the further contact which lay before him with the mysterious and unknown.

After a few moments the landlady came towards him, smoothing down her white apron, which made a great point in the landscape, so broad was it and so white. She smiled upon him with ingratiating looks.

“Will you be going north, sir?” she said; “or will you be biding for the night? Before we dish up the dinner and put the sheets on the bed we like to know.”

“Who is that young lady that has just gone away?” said Walter, not paying much attention; “and where is she going? It is late and cold for the water. Do you ever get frozen here?”

“That is Miss Oona of the Isle,” said the landlady; “but as I was saying, sir, about the beds—”

“Are the islands inhabited then?” said Walter; “and where is Kinloch Houran? Does one go there by water too?”

“No, Mistress Macgregor,” said Symington’s voice on the other side; “my lord will not bide here to-night. I’ve been down to the beach, and there is a boat there, but not your lordship’s own, any more than there was a carriage waiting at Baldally. We must just put our pride in our pockets, my lord, and put up with what we can get. When your lordship’s ready we’re all ready.”

By this time Big John and all the others were standing in a group staring at Lord Erradeen with all their eyes. John explained himself in a loud voice, but with an evident secret sense of shame.

“Hoo was I to ken? A lord has nae business to scour the country like that, like ony gangrel body—sitting on the seat just like the rest of us—Mr. Smith and him and me. Lord! hoo was I to ken? If you hear nae good of yourself, it is just your ain blame. I was thinking of no lord or any such cattle. I was just thinking upon my beasts. As for a lord that gangs about like yon, deceiving honest folk, I wouldna give that for him,” John said, snapping his finger and thumb. His voice sank at the end, and the conclusion of the speech was but half audible. Mrs. Macgregor interposing her round, soft intonation between the speaker and the stranger.

“Eh, my lord, I just beg your pardon! I had no notion—and I hope your lordship found them a’ civil. Big John is certainly a little quick with his tongue—”

“I hope you’re not supposing, Mistress Macgregor, that his lordship would fash himself about Big John,” said Symington, who had now taken the direction of affairs. Walter, to tell the truth, did not feel much inclination to enter into the discussion. The gathering chill of the night had got into his inner man. He went down towards the beach slowly pondering, taking every step with a certain hesitation. It seemed to him that he stood on the boundary between the even ground of reality and some wild world of fiction which he did not comprehend, but had a mingled terror and hatred of. Behind him everything was homely and poor enough; the light streamed out of the open doors and uncovered windows, the red roof had a subdued glow of cheerfulness in the brown air, the sounds about were cheerful, full of human bustle and movement, and mutual good offices. The men led the horses away with a certain kindness; the landlady, with her white apron, stopped to say a friendly word to Big John, and interchanged civilities with the other humble passengers who were bringing her no custom, but merely passing her door to the ferry-boat that waited to take them across the loch. Everywhere there was a friendly interchange, a gleam of human warmth and mutual consolation. But before him lay the dark water, with a dark shadow of mingled towers and trees lying upon it at some distance. He understood vaguely that this was Kinloch Houran, and the sight of it was not inviting. He did not know what it might be that should meet him there, but whatever it was it repelled and revolted him. He seemed to be about to overpass some invisible boundary of truth and to venture into the false, into regions in which folly and trickery reigned. There was in Walter’s mind all the sentiment of his century towards the supernatural. He had an angry disbelief in his mind, not the tranquil contempt of the indifferent. His annoyed and irritated scorn perhaps was nearer faith than he supposed; but he was impatient of being called upon to give any of his attention to those fables of the past which imposture only could keep up in the present. He felt that he was going to be made the victim of some trick or other. The country people evidently believed, indeed, as was natural enough to their simplicity; but Walter felt too certain that he would see the mechanism behind the most artful veil to believe it possible that he himself could be taken in, even for a moment. And he had no desire to find out the contemptible imposture. He felt the whole business contemptible; the secluded spot, the falling night, the uninhabited place, were all part of the jugglery. Should he voluntarily make himself a party to it, and walk into the snare with his eyes open? He felt sure, indeed, that he would remain with his eyes open all the time, and was not in the least likely to submit to any black art that might be exercised upon him. But he paused, and asked himself was it consistent with the dignity of a reasonable creature, a full-grown man, to allow himself to be drawn into any degrading contact with this jugglery at all?

The boat lay on the beach with his baggage already in it, and Symington standing respectful awaiting his master’s pleasure. Symington, no doubt, was the god out of the machinery who had the fin mot of everything and all the strings in his hand. What if he broke the spell peremptorily and retired to the ruddy fireside of the inn and defied family tradition? He asked himself again what would come of it? and replied to himself scornfully that nothing could come of it. What law could force him to observe an antiquated superstition? It was folly to threaten him with impossible penalties. And even if a thing so absurd could happen as that he should be punished in purse or property for acting like a man of sense instead of a fool, what then? The mere possibility of the risk made Walter more disposed to incur it. It was monstrous and insufferable that he should be made to carry out a tyrannical, antiquated stipulation by any penalty of the law. It would be better to fight it out once for all. All the sense of the kingdom would be with him, and he did not believe that any judge could pronounce against him. Here Symington called, with a slight tone of anxiety, “We are all ready, my lord, and waiting.” This almost decided Walter. He turned from the beach, and made a few hasty steps up the slope.

But then he paused again, and turning round faced once more the darkening water, the boat lying like a shadow upon the beach, the vague figures of the men about it. The ferry-boat had pushed off and was lumbering over the water with great oars going like bats’ wings, and a noisy human load. The other little vessel with that girl had almost disappeared. He thought he could see in the darkness a white speck like a bird, which was the white shawl that wrapped her throat and shoulders. Her home lay somewhere in the centre of these dark waters, a curious nest for such a creature. And his? He turned again towards the dark, half-seen towers and gables. Some of them were so irregular in outline that they could be nothing but ruins. He began to think of the past, mute, out of date, harmless to affect the life that had replaced it, which had taken refuge there. And he remembered his own argument about the courtesy that the living owed to the dead. Well! if it was so, if it was as a politeness, a courtesy to the past, it might be unworthy a gentleman to refuse it. And perhaps when all was said it was just a little cowardly to turn one’s back upon a possible danger, upon what at least the vulgar thought a danger. This decided him. He turned once more, and with a few rapid steps reached the boat. Next moment they were afloat upon the dark loch. There had been no wind to speak of on shore, but the boat was soon struggling against a strong running current, and a breeze which was like ice. The boatmen showed dark against the gleaming loch, the rude little vessel rolled, the wind blew. In front of them rose the dark towers and woods all black without a sign of human habitation. Walter felt his heart rise at last with the sense of adventure. It was the strangest way of entering upon a fine inheritance.

CHAPTER X

Kinloch Houran Castle stands out of the very waters of Loch Houran, with its ruined gables and towers clothed with ivy. From the water it looked like nothing but a roofless and deserted ruin. One tower in the centre stood up above the jagged lines of the walls, with something that looked like a ruined balcony or terrace commanding the landscape. The outline was indistinct, for the trees that had got footing in the ruined chambers below grew high and wild, veiling the means by which it was sustained at that altitude: but the little platform itself was very visible, surrounding the solid block of the tower, which showed no window or opening, but looked as if it might yet outlive centuries. As the boat approached, Walter saw the rowers whisper, and give significant looks at Symington, who sat respectfully on one of the cross seats, not to put himself in the way of his master, who occupied the other alone. Hoarse whispers breathed about the other end of the boat, and Symington was progged in the shoulders with an occasional oar. “Will ye no’ be letting him see’t?” the rowers said. Walter’s faculties were eagerly acute in the strangeness of everything around him; the sense that he was going to an impossible house—to a ruin—on an impossible errand, seemed to keep him on the alert in every particular of his being. He could see through the dusk, he could hear through the whistle of the wind and the lashing of the water upon the boat’s side, which was like the roar of a mimic storm; and he was not even insensible to the comic element in Symington’s face, who waved away the oar with which he was poked, and replied with words and frowns and looks full of such superiority of information, that a burst of sudden nervous laughter at the sight relieved Walter’s excitement. He felt that a thrill of disapproval at this went through the boat, and the men in the bow shook their bonnets as they rowed.

“It’s nothing to laugh at, my lord,” said old Symington, “though I’m not one—and I make no question but your lordship is not one—to lose my presence o’ mind. Yon’s the phenomenon that they wanted me to call your lordship’s attention to,” he added, jerking his arm, but without turning his head, in the direction of the tower.

“The light?” Walter said. He had been about to ask what the meaning of it might be. It had not been visible at all when they started, but for the last moment or two had been growing steadily. The daylight was waning every minute, and no doubt (he thought) it was this that made the light more evident. It shone from the balcony or high roof-terrace which surrounded the old tower. It was difficult to distinguish what it was, or identify any lamp or beacon as the origin of it. It seemed to come from the terrace generally, a soft, extended light, with nothing fiery in it, no appearance of any blaze or burning, but a motionless, clear shining, which threw a strange glimmer upwards upon the solid mass of the tower, and downwards upon the foliage, which was black and glistening, and upon the surface of the water. “Yon’s the phenomenon,” said Symington, pointing with a jerk of his elbow. The light brought out the whole mass of rugged masonry and trees from the rest of the landscape, and softly defined it against the darker background.

“How is it done?” said the young man, simply. He perceived the moment after that his tone was like that of the bagman on the coach, and shivered at the thought. So soft and steady was the light that it had not seemed to him extraordinary at all.

“What do you mean by a phenomenon?” he asked, hastily. He remembered suddenly that the young lady on the coach had spoken of this light, and taken it, so to speak, under her protection.

“If your lordship has ainy desire to inquire into my opinion,” said old Symington, “though I doubt that’s little likely, I would say it was just intended to work on the imagination. Now and then, indeed, it’s useful in the way of a sign—like a person waving to you to come and speak; but to work on the imagination, that’s what I would say.”

Walter looked up at the light which threw a faint glimmer across the dark water, showing the blackness of the roughened ripple, over which they were making their way, and bringing into curious prominence the dark mass of the building rising out of it. It was not like the moon, it was more distinct than starlight, it was paler than a torch: nor was there any apparent central point from which it came. There was no electric light in those days, nor was Loch Houran a probable spot for its introduction: but the clear colourless light was of that description. It filled the visitor with a vague curiosity, but nothing more.

“To work on—whose imagination? and with what object?” he said.

But as he asked the question the boat shot forward into the narrow part of the loch, and rounded the corner of the ruin. Anything more hopeless as a place to which living passengers, with the usual encumbrances of luggage, were going, could not well be conceived; but after a few minutes’ rowing, the boat ran in to some rude steps on the other side of the castle, where there were traces of a path leading up across the rough grass to a partially visible door. All was so dark by this time that it was with difficulty that Walter found the landing; when he had got ashore, and his portmanteau had been put out on the bank, the men in the boat pushed off with an energy and readiness which proved their satisfaction in getting clear of the castle and its traditions. To find himself left there, with an apparently ruined house behind him, his property at his feet, his old servant by his side, night closing in around, and the dark glistening water lapping up on the stones at his feet, was about as forlorn a situation as could be imagined.

“Are we to pass the night here?” he said, in a voice which could not help being somewhat querulous.

The sound of a door opening behind interrupted his words, and turning round he saw an old man standing in the doorway, with a small lamp in his hand. He held it up high over his head to see who the new-comers were; and Walter, looking round, saw a bowed and aged figure—a pale old face, which might have been made out of ivory, so bloodless was it, the forehead polished and shining, some grey locks escaping at the side of a black skull-cap, and eyes looking out keenly into the darkness.

“It is just his lordship, Macalister,” said old Symington.

The young man, who was so strange to it all, stood with a sort of helplessness between the two old men who were familiar with each other and the place and all its customs.

“Come away, then, come away,” cried the guardian of the house, with a shrill voice that penetrated the stillness sharply. “What are ye biding there for in the dark?”

“And who’s to carry up my lord’s portmanteau?” said Symington.

“His portmanteau!” cried the other, with a sort of eldritch laugh. “Has he come to bide?”

This colloquy held over him exasperated Walter, and he seized the portmanteau hastily, forgetting his dignity.

“Lend a hand, Symington, and let us have no more talk,” he said.

There is a moment when the most forlorn sensations and the most dismal circumstances become either ludicrous or irritating. The young man shook off his sense of oppression and repugnance as he hastened up the slope to the door, while the lantern, flashing fitfully about, showed now the broken path, now the rough red masonry of the ruin, which was scarcely less unlike a ruin on this side than on the other. The door gave admittance into a narrow passage only, out of which a spiral staircase ascended close to the entrance, the passage itself apparently leading away into the darkness to a considerable distance. At the end of it stood a woman with a lighted candle peering out at the stranger as the man had done. He seemed to realise the stones which every one has read of a belated traveller unwillingly received into some desolate inn, which turns out to be the headquarters of a robber-band, and where the intruder must be murdered ere the morning.

“This is your way, my lord,” said the shrill old man, leading the way up the spiral stair. The whole scene was like a picture. The woman holding up her light at the end of the long passage, the old man with his lamp, the dark corners full of silence and mystery, the cold wind blowing as through an icy ravine. And the sensations of the young man, who had not even had those experiences of adventure which most young men have in these travelling days, whom poverty and idleness had kept at home in tame domestic comfort, were very strange and novel. He seemed to himself to be walking into a romance, not into any real place, but into some old storybook, a mystery of Udolpho, an antiquated and conventional region of gloom and artificial alarms.

“Come this way, my lord; come this way,” said the old man; “the steps are a bit worn, for they’re auld, auld—as auld as the house. But we hope you’ll find everything as comfortable as the circumstances will permit. We have had just twa three days to prepare, my mistress and me; but we’ve done our best, as far,” he added, “as the circumstances will permit. This way, this way, my lord.”

At the head of the stair everything was black as night. The old man’s lamp threw his own somewhat fantastic shadow upon the wall of a narrow corridor as he held it up to guide the new-comer. Close to the top of the staircase, however, there opened a door, through which a warm light was showing, and Walter, to his surprise, found himself in a comfortably-furnished room with a cheerful fire, and a table covered for dinner, a welcome end to the discomfort and gloom of the arrival. The room was low, but large, and there were candles on the mantelpiece and table which made a sort of twinkling illumination in the midst of the dark panelled walls and dark furniture. The room was lined with books at one end. It was furnished with comfortable sofas and chairs of modern manufacture. There was a curious dim mirror over the mantelshelf in a heavy gilt frame of old carving, one or two dim old portraits hung opposite, the curtains were drawn, the fire was bright, the white tablecloth with an old-fashioned silver vase in the middle, and the candles burning, made a cheerful centre of light. At the further end was another door, open, which admitted to a bedroom, dim, but comfortable in the firelight. All this was encouraging. Walter threw himself into a chair with a sense that the situation altogether was improving. Things cannot be so very bad when there is a fire and lights, and a prospect of dinner. He began to laugh at himself, when he had taken off his coat, and felt the warmth of the glowing fire. Everything around him was adapted for comfort. There was a little want of light which left all the corners mysterious, and showed the portraits dimly, like half-seen spectators, looking down from the wall; but the comfortable was much more present than the weird and uncanny which had so much predominated on his arrival. And when a dinner, which was very good and carefully cooked, and a bottle of wine, which, though he had not very much skill in that subject, Walter knew to be costly and fine, had been served with noiseless care by Symington, the young man began to recover his spirits, and to think of the tradition which required his presence here, as silly indeed, but without harm. After dinner he seated himself by the fire to think over the whole matter. It was not yet a fortnight since this momentous change had happened in his life. Before that he had been without importance, without use in the world, with little hope, with nothing he cared for sufficiently to induce him to exert himself one way or another. Now after he had passed this curious probation, whatever it was, what a life opened before him! He did not even know how important it was, how much worth living. It shone before him indistinctly as a sort of vague, general realisation of all dreams. Wealth—that was the least of it; power to do whatever he pleased; to affect other people’s lives, to choose for himself almost whatever pleased him. He thought of Parliament, even of government, in his ignorance: he thought of travel, he thought of great houses full of gaiety and life. It was not as yet sufficiently realised to make him decide on one thing or another. He preferred it as it was, vague—an indefinite mass of good things and glories to come. Only this ordeal, or whatever it was—those few days more or less that he was bound to remain at Kinloch Houran, stood between him and his magnificent career. And after all, Kinloch Houran was nothing very terrible. It might be like the mysteries of Udolpho outside; but all the mysteries of Udolpho turned out, he remembered, quite explainable, and not so very alarming after all; and these rooms, which bore the traces of having been lived in very lately, and which were quite adapted to be lived in, did not seem to afford much scope for the mysterious. There were certain points, indeed, in which they were defective, a want of air, something which occasionally caught at his respiration, and gave him a sort of choked and stifled sensation; but that was natural enough, so carefully closed as everything was, curtains drawn, every draught warded off. Sometimes he had an uneasy feeling as if somebody had come in behind him and was hanging about the back of his chair. On one occasion he even went so far as to ask sharply, “Is it you, Symington?” but, looking back, was ashamed of himself, for of course there was nobody there. He changed his seat, however, so as to face the door, and even went the length of opening it, and looking out to see if there was any one about. The little corridor seemed to ramble away into a darkness so great that the light of his candle did no more than touch its surface—the spiral staircase looked like a well of gloom. This made him shiver slightly, and a half-wish to lock his door came over him, of which he felt ashamed as he turned back into the cheerful light.

After all, it was nothing but the sensation of loneliness which made this impression. He went back to his chair and once more resumed his thoughts—or rather was it not his thoughts—nay, his fancies—that resumed him, and fluttered about and around, presenting to him a hundred swiftly changing scenes? He saw visions of his old life, detached scenes which came suddenly up through the darkness and presented themselves before him—a bit of Sloebury High Street, with a group of his former acquaintances now so entirely separated from him; the little drawing-room at the cottage, with Julia Herbert singing him a song; Underwood’s rooms on that particular night when he had gone in, in search of something like excitement, and had found everything so dull and flat. None of these scenes had any connection with his new beginning in life. They all belonged to the past, which was so entirely past and over. But these were the scenes which came with a sort of perversity, all broken, changing like badly managed views in a magic lantern, produced before him without any will of his. There was a sort of bewildering effect in the way in which they swept along, one effacing another, all of them so alien to the scene in which he found himself. He had to get up at last, shaking himself as free of the curious whirl of unwonted imagination as he could. No doubt his imagination was excited; but happily not, he said to himself, by anything connected with the present scene in which he found himself. Had it been roused by these strange surroundings, by the darkness and silence that were about him, by the loneliness to which he was so unused, he felt that there was no telling what he might see or think he saw; but fortunately it was not in this way that his imagination worked. His pulse was quick, however, his heart beating, a quite involuntary excitement in all his bodily faculties. He got up hastily and went to the bookshelves, where he found, to his surprise, a large collection of novels and light literature. It seemed to Walter that his predecessor, whom he had never seen—the former Lord Erradeen, who inhabited these rooms not very long ago—had been probably, like himself, anxious to quench the rising of his fancy in the less exciting course of a fictitious drama, the conventional excitements of a story. He looked over the shelves with a curious sympathy for this unknown person, whom indeed he had never thought much upon before. Did that unknown know who was to succeed him? Did he ever speculate upon Walter as Walter was now doing upon him? He turned over the books with a strange sense of examining the secrets of his predecessor’s mind. They were almost all books of adventure and excitement. He took down, after a moment, a volume of Dumas, and returned to his easy-chair by the fire, to lose himself in the breathless ride of d’Artagnan and the luckless fortunes of the three companions. It answered the purpose admirably. A sudden lull came over his restless fancy. He was in great comfort externally, warmed and fed and reposing after a somewhat weary day, and the spell of the great story-teller got hold of him. He was startled out of this equable calm when Symington came in to light the candles in his bedroom and bring hot water, and offer his services generally. Symington regarded him with an approval which he did not think it worth his while to dissemble.

“That’s right, my lord, that’s right,” he said. “Reading’s a very fine thing when you have too much to occupy your thoughts.”

Walter was amused by this deliverance, and happily not impatient of it. “That is a new reason for reading,” he said.

“But it is a real just one, if your lordship will permit me to say so. Keep you to your book, my lord; it’s just fine for putting other things out of your head. It’s Dumas’s you’re reading? I’ve tried that French fellow myself, but I cannot say that I made head or tail of him. He would have it that all that has happened in history was just at the mercy of a wheen adventurers, two or three vagrants of Frenchmen. No, no. I may believe a great deal, but I’m not likely to believe that.”

“I see you are a critic, Symington; and do you read for the same reason that you have been suggesting to me?—because you have too much to occupy your thoughts?”

“Well, pairtly, my lord, and pairtly just in my idle hours to pass the time. I have made up your fire and lighted the candles, and everything is in order. Will I wait upon your lordship till you’re inclined for your bed? or will I—” Symington made a significant pause, which it was not very difficult to interpret.

“You need not wait,” Walter said; and then, with an instinct which he was half ashamed of, he asked hurriedly, “Whereabouts do you sleep?”

“That is just about the difficulty,” said old Symington. “I’m rather out of call if your lordship should want anything. The only way will just be to come down the stairs, if your lordship will take the trouble, and ring the big bell. It would waken a’ the seven sleepers if it was rung at their lug: and I’m not so ill to waken when there is noise enough. But ye have everything to your hand, my lord. If you’ll just give a glance into the other room, I can let you see where everything is. There is the spirit-lamp, not to say a small kettle by the fire, and there’s—”

“That will do,” said Walter. “I shall not want anything more to-night.”

The old servant went away with a glance round the room, in which Walter thought there was some anxiety, and stopped again at the door to say “Good night, my lord. It’s not that I am keen for my bed—if your lordship would like me to bide, or even to take a doze upon a chair—”

“Go to bed, old Sym.,” said the young man with a laugh. The idea of finding a protector in Symington was somewhat ludicrous. But these interruptions disturbed him once more, and brought back his excitement: he felt a sort of pang as he heard the old servant’s heavy step going down the winding stair, and echoing far away, as it seemed, into the bowels of the earth. Then that extreme and blighting silence which is like a sort of conscious death came upon the place. The thick curtains shut out every sound of wind and water outside as they shut out every glimpse of light. Walter heard his pulse in his ears, his heart thumping like the hammer of a machine. The whole universe seemed concentrated in that only living breathing thing, which was himself. He tried to resume his book, but the spell of the story was broken. He could no longer follow the fortunes of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Walter Methven thrust himself in front of these personages, and, though he was not half so amusing, claimed a superior importance by right of those pulses that clanged in his head like drums beating. He said to himself that he was very comfortable, that he had never expected to be so well off. But he could not regain his composure or sense of well-being. It was a little better when he went into his bedroom, the mere movement and passage from one room to another being of use to him. The sense of oppression and stagnation, however, soon became almost greater here than in the sitting-room. One side of the room was entirely draped in close-drawn curtains, so that it was impossible to make out even where the windows were. He drew them aside with some trouble, for the draperies were very heavy, but not to much advantage. At first it seemed to him that there were no windows at all; then he caught sight of something like a recess high in the wall; and climbing up, found the hasp of a rough shutter, which covered a small square window built into a cave of the deep masonry. That this should be the only means of lighting an almost luxurious sleeping chamber, bewildered him more and more; but it would not open, and let in no air, and the atmosphere felt more stifling than ever in this revelation of the impossibility of renewing it. Finally, he went to bed with a sort of rueful sense that there was the last citadel and refuge of a stranger beset by imaginations in so weird and mysterious a place. He did not expect to sleep, but he determined that he would not, at least, be the sport of his own fancies.

It astonished Walter beyond measure to find himself waking in broad daylight, with Symington moving softly about the room, and a long window, the existence of which he had never suspected, facing him as he looked up from his pillows, after a comfortable night’s sleep. Mingled shame and amusement made him burst into an uneasy laugh, as he realised this exceedingly easy end of his tribulations.

“Mrs. Macalister,” said Symington, “would like well to know when your lordship is likely to be ready, to put down the trout at the right moment: for it’s an awful pity to spoil a Loch Houran trout.”

CHAPTER XI

To insist upon the difference between an impression made when we arrive, tired and excited at night, in a strange place, and that which the same scene produces in the early freshness and new life of the morning, would be to deliver ourselves over to the reign of the truism. It would, however, have been impossible to feel this with more force than Walter felt it. His sensations of alarm and excitement struck him not only as unjustifiable but ludicrous. He laughed once more when he came out of his chamber into the warm and genial room, which had seemed to him so mysterious and dark on the previous night. There were windows upon either side of the fire-place, each in a deep recess like a small room, so great was the thickness of the wall. They looked out upon the mountains, upon the narrow end of the loch, all bubbling and sparkling in the sunshine, and down upon the little grassy slope rough and uncared for, yet green, which was the only practicable entrance to the castle. The windows were not large, and the room still not very light, though the sunshine which poured in at one side made a most picturesque effect of light and shade. The portraits on the wall were better than they had seemed, and had lost the inquisitive air of dissatisfied inspection which Walter’s imagination had given them. The book-shelves at the end gave relief to the room, with their cheerful gilding and the subdued tone of their bindings. Walter thought of the chamber in the Pilgrim’s Progress turned towards the sunrising, the name of which was Peace. But peace was not the thing most suggested at Kinloch Houran by any of the accessories about, and a vision of the chilliness of the gray light in the afternoon, and the force of the east wind when it came, crossed his mind in true nineteenth century criticism of the more poetical view. But in the mean time, the policy of enjoying the present was undeniable, especially when that present took the form of a Loch Houran trout, fresh from the water, and cooked as fish only are under such conditions. He looked back upon the agitations of the evening, and the reluctant angry sentiment with which he had come to this old house of his family, with amused incredulity and shame. To think that he could be such an impressionable fool! He dismissed it all lightly from his mind as he hurried over his breakfast, with the intention of getting out at once and exploring everything about. He had even newspapers upon his table along with the fresh scones, the new-made butter, all the fresh provisions of the meal. To be sure, it was Glasgow and not London from which they came—but the world’s history was no less instant in them, flashing from all parts of the world into this home of the ancient ages.

His first inspection was of the castle itself, which he undertook under the auspices of old Symington and old Macalister, both eager to explain and describe what it had been, as well as what it was. What it was did not consist of very much. “My lord’s rooms,” those in which he had spent the night, were the only habitable portion of the great pile. He was led through the roofless hall, with its musicians’ gallery still perched high up and overshadowed with canopies of ashen boughs, vigorous though leafless; the guard-room, the supposed kitchen with its large chimney, the oblong space from east to west which was supposed to have been the chapel. All was a little incoherent in the completeness of ruin. There was little of the stimulation of family pride to be got out of those desolate places. The destruction was too complete to leave room even for the facile web of imagination. The Crusader, about whom there was a legend a little too picturesque and romantic to be true, or the lady who was only saved by his sudden appearance from unfaithfulness, were not more easy to conjure up within the inclosure of those shapeless walls than on any unremarkable spot where the story might have been told. Walter grew a little weary as Symington and the old guardian of the house argued as to which was this division of the castle, and which that. He left them discussing the question, and climbed up by a rude stair which had been half improvised from the ruined projections of the masonry, to the crumbling battlements above. From thence he looked down upon a scene which was older than the oldest ruin, yet ever fresh in perennial youth: the loch stretched out like a great mirror under the wintry blue of the sky and the dazzling blaze of the sunshine, reflecting everything, every speck of cloud above and every feathery twig and minute island below. There was no need to make believe, to simulate unfelt enthusiasm, or endeavour to connect with unreal associations this wonderful and glorious scene. Perhaps there was in his mind something more in harmony with the radiance of nature than with the broken fragments of a history which he had no skill to piece up into life again. He stood gazing upon the scene in a rapture of silent delight. The hills in their robes of velvet softness, ethereal air-garments more lovely than any tissue ever woven in mortal loom, drew aside on either hand in the blue space and dazzling atmosphere to open out this liquid vale of light, with its dark specks of islets, its feathery banks, all rustling with leafless trees. Every outline and detail within its reach was turned into a line, a touch, more sweet by the flattering glory of the still water in which everything was double. The morning freshness and sheen were still unbroken. It was like a new creation lying contemplating itself in the first ecstasy of consciousness. Walter was gazing upon this wonderful scene when the sharp voice of old Macalister made him start, and take a step aside which almost had serious consequences: for he stepped back unwarily upon the crumbling wall, and might have fallen but for the violent grip of the old man, who clutched him like a shaky Hercules, with a grasp which was vigorous yet trembling.

“Lord’s sake take care,” he cried. His face flushed, then paled again with genuine emotion. “Do you think we have a store of young lads like you, that you will risk your life like yon? and just in the place where the lady fell. You have given me such a start I canna breathe,” he cried.

To tell the truth, looking back upon it, Walter himself did not like the look of the precipice which he had escaped.

“Where the lady fell?” he asked with a little eagerness, as he came to the battlement.

“Oh ay. I seldom bother my head about what’s happened, so to speak, two or three days since. It was just there she fell. She has been bedridden ever since, from a’ I hear, which just shows the folly of venturing about an auld place without somebody that knows how to take care of ye. What would have come of you yoursel’, that is the maister of a’, if auld Sandy Macalister had not been there?”

“Thank you, Macalister, you shall find me grateful,” said Walter; “but who was this lady? two or three days ago, did you say?”

“Years—years; did I no say years? Oh ay, it may be longer, twenty or thirty. I’m meaning just naething in a life like mine. She had some silly story of being frightened with a gentleman that she thought she saw. They are keen about making up a story—women folk. She was just the sister to the man of business, ye’ll have heard of her—a pretty bit thing, if that was of any consequence; but, Lord’s sake, what’s that atween you and me, and you ignorant of everything?” the old man said. “Do you see the chimneys yonder, and the gable end with the crow steps, as they call it, just pushing out among the trees? That’s just your ain shooting-box—they call it Auchnasheen. I’ll tell you the meanings of the names another time. Out beyond yonder, the big house away at the point, it’s a new place built for his diversion by one of your new men. Yon island far away that’s bare and green is the island of Rest, where all the loch was once buried: and atween us and that there’s another isle with a gable end among the trees which is just the last place that’s left to an auld race to plant their feet upon. It’s a bonnie piece of water; you that’s come from the south you’ll never have seen the like. I’ll tell you all the stories of the divers places, and how they’re connected with the Me’vens that are chiefs of Loch Houran; for I wouldna give a button for that new-fangled title of the Lords Erradeen.”

“It has lasted however for some centuries,” said Walter, with a sudden sense of displeasure which he felt to be absurd enough.

“And what is that in a family?” said old Macalister, “I think nothing of it. A hundred years or two that never counts one way nor another; it’s nae antiquity. If that nonsense were true about the Warlock lord, he would be but twa hundred and fifty at the present speaking, or thereabouts, and a’ that have ever thought they saw him represent him as a fine personable man. I have never had that pleasure myself,” the old man said with his shrill laugh. “Where are you going, my young gentleman? Ye’ll just go down like a stane and end in a rattle of dust and mortar, if you’ll no be guided by me.”

“Let you his lordship alone, Sandy,” cried the voice of Symington, intermingled with pants and sobs as he climbed up to the parapet. “Ye must not occupy my lord’s time with your old craiks. You would perhaps like, my lord, to visit Auchnasheen, where the keeper will be on the outlook: or may be it would be better to organise your day’s shooting for to-morrow, when you have lookit a little about you: or ye would perhaps like to take a look at the environs, or see the factor, who is very anxious as soon as your lordship has a moment—”

“Oh! and there is the minister that can tell ye a’ about the antiquities, my lord: and traces out the auld outline of the castle grandly, till ye seem to see it in all its glory—”

“Or—” Symington had begun, when Walter turned at bay. He faced the old men with a half-laughing defiance. “I see plenty of boats about,” he said. “I am going out to explore the loch. I want no attendance, or any help, but that you will be good enough to leave me to myself.”

“We’ll do that, my lord. I will just run and cry upon Duncan that is waiting about—”

The end of all this zeal and activity was that when Walter found himself at last free and on the shining bosom of the loch, he was in a boat too heavy for his own sole management, sharing the care of it with Duncan, who was of a taciturn disposition and answered only when spoken to. This made the arrangement almost as satisfactory as if he had been alone, for Duncan was quite willing to obey and yield a hearty service without disturbing his young master with either questions or remarks. He was a large young man, strong and well knit though somewhat heavy, with a broad smiling face, red and freckled, with honest blue eyes under sandy eyelashes, and a profusion of strong and curly reddish hair. He beamed upon Lord Erradeen with a sort of friendly admiration and awe, answering, “Ay, my lord,” and “No, my lord,” always with the same smile of general benevolence and readiness to comply with every desire. When they had got beyond hail of the castle, from which Symington and Macalister watched them anxiously, Duncan mutely suggested the elevation of a mast and setting of the sail which the vessel was furnished with, to which Walter assented with eagerness: and soon they were skimming along before a light wind as if they had wings. And now began perhaps the most pleasurable expedition that Walter had ever made in his life. Escaped from the ruinous old pile, within which he had feared he knew not what, escaped too from the observation and inspection of the two old men so much better acquainted with the history of his family than himself, whom he felt to be something between keepers and schoolmasters—fairly launched forth upon the world, with nothing to consult but his own pleasure, Walter felt his spirits rise to any height of adventure. There was not indeed any very wild adventure probable, but he was not much used to anything of the kind, and the sense of freedom and freshness in everything was intoxicating to the young man. The small boat, the rag of a sail, the lively wind that drove them along, the rushing ripple under their keel, all delighted him. He held the helm with a sense of pleasure almost beyond anything he had ever known, feeling all the exhilaration of a discoverer in a new country, and for the first time the master of himself and his fate. Duncan said nothing, but grinned from ear to ear, when the young master in his inattention to, or to tell the truth ignorance of, the capabilities of the boat, turned the helm sharply, bringing her up to the wind in such a way as to threaten the most summary end for the voyage. He kept his eye upon the rash steersman, and Walter was not aware of the risks he ran. He directed his little vessel now here, now there, with absolute enjoyment, running in close ashore to examine the village, turning about again in a wild elation to visit an island, running the very nose of the boat into the rocky banks or feathery bushwood. How it was that no harm came as they thus darted from point to point Duncan never knew. He stood up roused to watchfulness, with his eyes intent on the movements of his master ready to remedy any indiscretion. It was in the nature of such undeserved vigilance that the object of it was never aware of it, but to be sure Duncan had his own life to think of too.

They had thus swept triumphantly down the loch, the wind favouring, and apparently watching over the rash voyager as carefully, as and still more disinterestedly than Duncan. The motion, the air, the restless career, the novelty, and the freedom enchanted Walter. He felt like a boy in his first escapade, with an intoxicating sense of independence and scorn of danger which gave zest to the independence. At every new zigzag he made, Duncan but grinned the more. He uttered the Gaelic name of every point and isle, briefly, with guttural depth, out of his chest, as they went careering along before the wind. The boat was like an inquisitive visitor, too open for a spy, poking in to every corner. At length they came to an island standing high out of the water, with a rocky beach, upon which a boat lay carefully hauled up, and a feathery crest of trees, fine clumps of fir, fringed and surrounded by a luxuriant growth of lighter wood. In the midst of this fine network of branches, such as we call bare, being leafless, but which in reality are all astir with life restrained, brown purple buddings eager to start and held in like hounds in a leash—rose the solid outline of a house, built upon the ridge of rock, and appearing like a shadow in the midst of all the anatomy of the trees.

“That will be joost the leddy’s,” cried Duncan; at which Walter’s heart, so light in his bosom, gave an additional leap of pleasure. He steered it so close that Duncan’s vigilance was doubly taxed, for the least neglect would have sent the little vessel ashore. Walter examined the little landing, the rocky path that led up the bank, winding among the trees, and as much as could be made out of the house, with keen interest. The man with the red shirt, who had been the young lady’s boatman on the previous day, appeared at the further point as they went on. He was fishing from a rock that projected into the water, and turning to gaze upon the unwary boat, with astonished eyes, shouted something in Gaelic to Duncan, who nodded good-humouredly a great many times, and replied with a laugh in the same tongue—

“Yon will joost be Hamish,” said Duncan.

“What is he saying?” cried Walter.

“He will just be telling us to mind where we are going,” said Duncan, imperturbable.

“Tell him to mind his own business,” cried Walter, with a laugh. “And who is Hamish, and who is the leddy? Come, tell me all about it.” His interest in the voyage flagged a little at this point.

Duncan thus interrogated was more put to it than by the dangerous course they had hitherto been running.

“It will joost be the leddy,” he said; “and Hamish that’s her man: and they will joost be living up there like ither persons, and fearing God: fery decent folk—oh, joost fery decent folk.”

“I never doubted that. But who are they, and what are they? And do you mean to say they live there, on that rock, in winter, so far north?”

Walter looked up at the dazzling sky, and repented his insinuation: but he was, alas, no better than an Englishman, when all was said, and he could not help a slight shiver as he looked back. Hamish, who had made a fine point of colour on his projecting rock, had gone from that point, and was visible in his red shirt mounting the high crest of the island with hurried appearances and disappearances as the broken nature of the ground made necessary. He had gone, there seemed little doubt, to intimate to the inhabitants the appearance of the stranger. This gave Walter a new thrill of pleasure, but it took away his eagerness about the scenery. He lay back languidly, neglecting the helm, and as he distracted Duncan’s attention too, they had nearly run aground on the low beach of the next island. When this difficulty was got over, Walter suddenly discovered that they had gone far enough, and might as well be making their way homeward, which was more easily said than done; for the wind, which had hitherto served their purpose nobly, was no longer their friend. They made a tack or two, and crept along a little, but afterwards resigned themselves to ship the sail and take to the oars, which was not so exhilarating nor so well adapted to show the beauty of the landscape. It took them some time to make their way once more past the rocky point, and along the edge of the island which attracted Walter’s deepest interest, but to which he could not persuade Duncan to give any name.

“It will joost be the leddy’s,” the boatman insisted on saying, with a beaming face; but either his English or his knowledge was at fault, and he went no further.

Walter’s heart beat with a kind of happy anxiety, a keen but pleasant suspense, as he swept his oar out of the water, and glanced behind him to measure how near they were to the landing, at which he had a presentiment something more interesting than Hamish might be seen. And as it turned out, he had not deceived himself. But what he saw was not what he expected to see.

The lady on the bank was not his fellow-traveller of yesterday. She was what Walter to himself, with much disappointment, called an old lady, wrapped in a large furred mantle and white fleecy wrap about her head and shoulders. She stood and waved her hand as Walter’s boat came slowly within range.

“You will be joost the leddy,” said Duncan of the few words; and with one great sweep of his oar he turned the boat towards the landing. It was the man’s doing, not the master’s; but the master was not sorry to take advantage of this sudden guidance. It was all done in a moment, without intention. Hamish stood ready to secure the boat, and before he had time to think, Walter found himself on the little clearing above the stony bit of beach, hat in hand, glowing with surprise and pleasure, and receiving the warmest of welcomes.

“You will forgive me for just stopping you on your way,” the lady said; “but I was fain to see you, Lord Erradeen, for your father and I were children together. I was Violet Montrose. You must have heard him speak of me.”

“I hope,” said Walter, with his best bow, and most ingratiating tone, “that you will not consider it any fault of mine; but I don’t remember my father; he died when I was a child.”

“Dear me,” cried the lady; “how could I be so foolish! Looking at you again, I see you would not be old enough for that: and, now I remember, he married late, and died soon after. Well, there is no harm done. We are just country neighbours, and as I was great friends with Walter Methven some five-and-forty years ago—”

“I hope,” said the young man with a bow and smile, “that you will be so good as to be friends with Walter Methven now: for that is the name under which I know myself.”

“Oh, Lord Erradeen,” the lady said with a little flutter of pleasure. Such a speech would be pretty from any young man; but made by a young lord, in all the flush of his novel honours, and by far the greatest potentate of the district, there was no one up the loch or down the loch who would not have been gratified. “It is just possible,” she said, after a momentary pause, “that having been brought up in England, and deprived of your father so early, you may not know much about your neighbours, nor even who we are, in this bit island of ours. We are the Forresters of Eaglescairn, whom no doubt ye have heard of; and I am one of the last of the Montroses—alas! that I should say so. I have but one of a large family left with me; and Oona and me, we have just taken advantage of an old family relic that came from my side of the house, and have taken up our habitation here. I hear she must have travelled with you yesterday on the coach, not thinking who it was. Oh, yes; news travels fast at this distance from the world. I think the wind blows it, or the water carries it. All the loch by this time is aware of Lord Erradeen’s arrival. Indeed,” she added, with a little laugh, “you know, my lord, we all saw the light.”

She was a woman over fifty, but fair and slight, with a willowy figure, and a complexion of which many a younger woman might have been proud; and there was a little airiness of gesture and tread about her, which probably thirty years before had been the pretty affectations, half-natural, half-artificial, of a beauty, and which still kept up the tradition of fascinating powers. The little toss of her head, the gesture of her hands, as she said the last words, the half-apologetic laugh as if excusing herself for a semi-absurdity, were all characteristic and amusing.

“You know,” she added, “in the Highlands we are allowed to be superstitious,” and repeated the little laugh at herself with which she deprecated offence.

“What is it supposed to mean?” Walter asked somewhat eagerly. “Of course there is some natural explanation which will be simple enough. But I prefer to take the old explanation, if I knew what it was.”

“And so do we,” she said quickly. “We are just ready to swear to it, man and woman of us on the loch. Some say it is a sign the head of the house is coming—some that it is a call to him to come and meet—Dear me, there is Oona calling. And where is Hamish? I will not have the child kept waiting,” said the lady, looking round her with a little nervous impatience.

She had begun to lead the way upward by a winding path among the rocks and trees, and now paused, a little breathless, to look down towards the landing-place, and clap her hands impatiently.

“Hamish is away, mem,” said the woman whom Walter had seen on the coach, and who now met them coming down the winding path. She looked at him with a cordial smile, and air of kindly welcome. It was evident that it did not occur to Mysie that her salutations might be inappropriate. “You’re very welcome, sir, to your ain country,” she said with a courtesy, which was polite rather than humble. Walter felt that she would have offered him her hand, on the smallest encouragement, with a kindly familiarity which conveyed no disrespect.

“You should say my lord, Mysie,” her mistress remarked.

“Deed, mem, and so I should; but when you’re no much in the way o’t, ye get confused. I said, as soon as I heard the news, that it would be the young gentleman on the coach, and I had just a feeling a’ the time that it was nae tourist, but a kent face. Hamish is away, mem. I tell him he hears Miss Oona’s foot on the bank, before ever she cries upon him; and yonder he is just touching the shore, and her ready to jump in.”

The party had reached a little platform on the slope. The path was skilfully engineered between two banks, clothed with ferns and grasses, and still luxuriant with a vivid green, though the overhanging trees were all bare. Here and there a little opening gave a point of repose and extended view. Mrs. Forrester paused and turned round to point out to her visitor the prospect that now lay before them. She was a little breathless and glad of the pause, but it did not suit her character to say so. She pointed round her with a little triumph. They were high enough to see the loch on either side, looking down upon it through the fringe of branches. Opposite to this was the mainland which at that spot formed a little bay, thickly wooded with the dark green of the fir woods, amid which appeared the gables of a sort of ornamental cottage. Nearer the eye was the road, and underneath the road on the beach stood a little slight figure in the closely-fitting garb which Walter recognised. She had evidently been set down from a waggonette full of a lively party which waited on the high road to see her embark. It was impossible to hear what they were saying, but the air was full of a pleasant murmur of voices.

“It is the young Campbells of Ellermore,” said Mrs. Forrester, waving her handkerchief towards the group. “Oona has been spending last night with them, and they have brought her back. They will all be astonished, Mysie, to see me standing here with a gentleman. Dear me, they will all be saying who has Mrs. Forrester got with her?”

“They will think,” said Mysie, “just that it’s Mr. James or Mr. Ronald come home.”

“Ah, Mysie, if that could be!” said the lady of the isle: and she put her hands together, which were thin and white, and ornamented by a number of rings, with a pretty conventional gesture of maternal regret. Walter stood looking on with mingled amazement and pleasure: pleased as if he were at a play with all the new indications of domestic history which were opening to him, and with a sense of enjoyment through all his being. When the girl sprang into the boat, and Hamish, conspicuous in his red shirt, pushed off into the loch, the tumult of good-byes became almost articulate. He laughed to himself under his breath, remembering all the greetings he had heard along the line of railway, the recognitions at every station.

“Your daughter seems to know everybody,” he said.

“And how could she help knowing every person,” cried Mysie, taking the words, as it were, out of her mistress’s mouth, “when she was born and brought up on the loch, and never one to turn her back upon a neebor, gentle or simple, but just adored wherever she goes?”

“Oh, whisht, Mysie, whisht! we are partial,” said Mrs. Forrester with her little antiquated graces; and then she invited Lord Erradeen to continue his walk.

It was the full blaze of day, and the view extended as they went higher up to the crest of rock upon which the house was set. It was built of irregular reddish stone, all cropped with lichens where it was visible, but so covered with clinging plants that very little of the walls could be seen. The rustic porch was built something like a bee-hive, with young, slim-growing saplings for its pillars, and chairs placed within its shelter. There were some flower-beds laid out around, in which a few autumn crocuses had struggled into pale bloom—and a number of china roses hung half opened against the sides of the house. The roofs were partly blue slates, that most prosaic of comfortable coverings, and partly the rough red tiles of the country, which shone warm through the naked boughs.

Every hardy plant could bear

Loch Katrine’s keen and searching air,

was garlanded about the house, the little lawn was as green as velvet, the china roses were pale but sweet. Behind the house were the mossed apple-trees of a primitive orchard among the rocky shelves. It lay smiling in the sun, with the silver mirror of the lake all round, and every tint and outline doubled in the water. From the door the dark old castle of Kinloch Houran stood out against the silent darkness of the hill. Little rocky islets, like a sport of nature, too small to be inhabited by anything bigger than rabbits, lay all reflected in broken lines of rock and brushwood, between Walter’s old castle and this romantic house. They were so visible, one to the other, that the mere position seemed to form a link of connection between the inhabitants.

“We cannot but take an interest in you, you see, Lord Erradeen, for we can never get out of sight of you,” said Mrs. Forrester.

“And I think the old place looks better from here than any other view I have seen,” Walter added almost in the same breath.

They laughed as they spoke together. It was not possible to be more entirely “country neighbours.” The young man had a fantastic feeling that it was a sort of flattery to himself that his house should be so entirely the centre of the landscape. He followed the lady into the house with a little reluctance, the scene was so enchanting. Inside, the roofs were low, but the rooms well-sized and comfortable. They were full of curiosities of every kind: weapons from distant countries, trophies of what is called “the chase,” hung upon the wall of the outer hall. The drawing-room was full of articles from India and China, carved ivories, monsters in porcelain, all the wonders that people used to send home before we got Japanese shops at every corner. An air of gentle refinement was everywhere, with something, too, in the many ornaments, little luxuries, and daintinesses which suggested the little minauderies of the old beauty, the old-fashioned airs and graces that had been irresistible to a previous generation.

“You will just stay and eat your luncheon with us, Lord Erradeen. I might have been but poor company, an old woman as I’m getting; but, now that Oona is coming, I need not be too modest; for, though there will not be a grand luncheon, there will be company, which is always something. And sit down and tell me something about your father and the lady he married, and where you have been living all this time.”

Walter laughed. “Is it all my humble history you want me to tell you?” he said. “It is not very much. I don’t remember my father, and the lady he married is—my mother, you know. The best mother—But I have not been the best of sons. I was an idle fellow, good-for-nothing a little while ago. Nobody knew what was going to come of me. I did nothing but loaf, if you know what that means.”

“Ah, that I do,” said Mrs. Forrester; “that was just like my Jamie. But now they tell me he is the finest officer—”

Walter paused, but the lady was once more entirely attention, listening with her hands clasped, and her head raised to his with an ingratiating sidelong look. He laughed. “They all made up their minds I was to be good-for-nothing—”

“Yes,” murmured Mrs. Forrester, softly, half closing her eyes and shaking her head, “that was just like my Bob—till he took a thought: and now he is planting coffee in Ceylon and doing well. Yes? and then?”

“An old man arrived one evening,” said Walter, half laughing, “and told me—that I was Lord Erradeen. And do you know, from that moment nobody, not even I myself, would believe that I had ever loafed or idled or been good-for-nothing.”

There was a pause, in which Walter thought he heard some one move behind him. But no sound reached Mrs. Forrester, who responded eagerly—

“My son, the present Eaglescairn, was just of the same kind,” she said, reflectively. She had a comparison ready for every case that could be suggested—“till he came of age. It was in the will that they were to come of age only at twenty-five, and till then I had a sore time. Oh, Oona, my dear, is that you? And had you a pleasant evening. Here is young Lord Erradeen that has come in, most kindly, I’m sure, to tell me about his father, that I knew so well. And it appears you met upon the coach yesterday. Come away, my dear, come away! And that was just most curious that, knowing nothing of one another, you should meet upon the coach.”

Oona came in lightly, in her out-door dress. She gave Walter a look which was very friendly. She had paused for a moment at the door, and she had heard his confession. It seemed to Oona that what he said was generous and manly. She was used to forming quick impressions. She had been annoyed when she had heard from Hamish of the visitor, but her mind changed when she heard what he said. She came up to him and held out her hand. The fresh air was in her face, which Walter thought was like the morning, all bright and fresh and full of life. She made him a little curtsey with much gravity, and said in the pretty voice which was so fresh and sweet, and with that novelty of accent which had amused and delighted the young man, “You are welcome to your own country Lord Erradeen.”

“Now that is very pretty of you, Oona,” cried her mother. “I never thought you would remember to pay your little compliment, as a well-bred person should; for, to tell the truth, she is just too brusque—it is her fault.”

“Hamish told me what to say,” said Oona, with a glance of provocation. “He is a very well-bred person. He told me I was to bid my lord welcome to his own.”

“Oh, my dear, you need not take away the merit of it, as if you had not thought of it yourself,” said the mother, aggrieved; “but run away and take off your hat, and let us have our lunch, for Lord Erradeen has been all the morning on the water and he will be hungry, and you are all blown about with the wind.”

The young people exchanged looks, while Mrs. Forrester made her little protest. There was a sort of laughing interchange between them, in which she was mocking and he apologetic. Why, neither could have said. They understood each other, though they by no means clearly understood each what he and she meant. There was to be a little war between them, all in good-humour and good-fellowship, not insipid agreement and politeness. The next hour was, Walter thought, the most pleasant he had ever spent in his life. He had not been ignorant of such enjoyments before. When we said that various mothers in Sloebury had with the first news of his elevation suffered a sudden pang of self-reproach, to think how they had put a stop to certain passages, the end of which might now have been to raise a daughter to the peerage, it must have been understood that Walter was not altogether a novice in the society of women; but this had a new flavour which was delightful to him. It had been pleasant enough in the cottage, when Julia Herbert sang, and on other occasions not necessary to enter into. But on this romantic isle, where the sound of the loch upon the rocks made a soft accompaniment to everything, in a retirement which no vulgar interruption could reach, with the faded beauty on one side, scarcely able to forget the old pretty mannerisms of conquest even in her real maternal kindness and frank Highland hospitality, and the girl, with her laughing defiance on the other, he felt himself to have entered a new chapter of history. The whole new world into which he had come became visible to him in their conversation. He heard how he himself had been looked for, and how “the whole loch” had known something about him for years before he had ever heard of Loch Houran. “We used to know you as the ‘English lad,’” Oona said, with her glance of mischief. All this amused Walter more than words can say. The sun was dropping towards the west before—escorted to the landing-place by both the ladies, and taken leave of as an old friend—he joined the slow-spoken Duncan, and addressed himself to the homeward voyage. Duncan had not been slow of speech in the congenial company of Hamish. They had discussed the new-comer at length, with many a shaft of humour and criticism, during the visit which Duncan had paid to the kitchen. He blushed not now, secure in the stronghold of his unknown tongue, to break off in a witty remark at Walter’s expense as he turned to his master his beaming smile of devotion. They set off together, master and man, happy yet regretful, upon their homeward way. And it was a tough row back to Kinloch Houran against the fresh and not too quiet Highland wind.

CHAPTER XII

The castle looked more grim and ruined than ever as Walter set foot once more upon the rough grass of the mound behind. He dismissed the smiling Duncan with regret. As he went up to the door, which now stood open, he thought to himself with relief that another day would finish his probation here, and that already it was more than half over; but next moment remembered that the end of his stay at Kinloch Houran would mean also an end of intercourse with his new friends, which gave a different aspect to the matter altogether. At the door of the castle old Macalister was waiting with a look of anxiety.

“Ye’ll have had no luncheon,” he said, “and here’s Mr. Shaw the factor waiting to see ye.”

Macalister had not the manners of Symington, and Walter already felt that it was a curious eccentricity on the part of the old man to leave out his title. The factor was seated waiting in the room up-stairs; he was a middle-aged man, with grizzled, reddish locks, the prototype in a higher class of Duncan in the boat. He got up with a cordial friendliness which Walter began to feel characteristic, but which was also perhaps less respectful than might have been supposed appropriate, to meet him. He had a great deal to say of business which to Walter was still scarcely intelligible. There were leases to renew, and there was some question about a number of crofter families, which seemed to have been debated with the former lord, and to have formed the subject of much discussion.

“There is that question about the crofters at the Truach-Glas,” Mr. Shaw said.

“What crofters? or rather what are crofters? and what is the question and where is the Truach-Glas?” Lord Erradeen said.

He pronounced it, alas! Truack, as he still called loch, lock—which made the sensitive natives shudder. Mr. Shaw looked at him with a little disapproval. He felt that the English lad should have been more impressed by his new inheritance, and more anxious to acquire a mastery of all the facts connected with it. If, instead of wandering about the loch all the morning, he had been looking up the details of the business and the boundaries of the estate, and studying the map! But that not being the case, of course there was nothing to be done but to explain.

“I had thought that Mr. Milnathort would have put the needs of the estate more clearly before you. There are several questions to be settled. I don’t know what may be your views as to a landlord’s duties, Lord Erradeen—”

“I have no views,” said Walter; “I am quite impartial. You must recollect that I have only been a landlord for a fortnight.”

“But I suppose,” said the factor somewhat severely, “that the heir to such a fine property has had some kind of a little training?”

“I have had no training—not the slightest. I had no information even that I was the heir to any property. You must consider me as entirely ignorant, but ready to learn.”

Shaw looked at him with some surprise, but severely still. “It is very curious,” he said, as if that too had been Walter’s fault, “that you did not know you were the heir. We knew very well here; but the late lord was like most people, not very keen about his successor; and then he was a comparatively young man when he died.”

“I know nothing of my predecessor,” said Walter. “What was the cause of his death? I should like to hear something about him. Several of them must have died young, I suppose, or I, so far off, could never have become the heir.”

The factor looked at him keenly, but with doubtful eyes. “There are secrets in all families, my Lord Erradeen,” he said.

“Are there? I thought that was rather an old-fashioned sentiment. I don’t think, except that I was not always virtuously occupied, that there was any secret in mine.”

“And I am sure there is no secret in mine,” said Mr. Shaw, energetically; “but then you see I am not, and you were not till a very recent date, Lord Erradeen. There is a kind of something in the race that I will not characterise. It is a kind of a melancholy turn; the vulgar rumours ye will have heard, to which I attach no credence. It is little worth while living in the nineteenth century,” the factor said with emphasis, “if ye are to be subject to delusions like that.”

“I tell you I am quite ignorant; and, except by hints which I could not understand, Mr. Milnathort did not give me any information. Speak plainly, I want to know what the mystery is; why am I here in this tumble-down old place?” Walter cried with an accent of impatience.

Shaw kept a watchful eye upon him, with the air of a man whom another is trying to deceive.

“It is something in the blood, I’m thinking,” the factor said. “They all seem to find out there’s a kind of contrariety in life, which is a thing we all must do to be sure, but generally without any fatal effects. After a certain age they all seem to give way to it. I hope that you, my lord, being out of the direct line, will escape: the populace—if ye can accept their nonsense—say it’s a—well, something supernatural—a kind of an influence from him they call the Warlock Lord.” Shaw laughed, but somewhat uneasily, apologetically. “I think shame to dwell upon such absurdity,” he said.

“It does sound very absurd.”

“That is just it—nonsense! not worth the consideration of sensible men. And I may say to you, that are, I hope, of a more wholesome mind, that they are terribly given up to caprice in this family. The Truach-Glas crofters have been up and down twenty times. The late lord made up his mind he would let them stay, and then that they must go, and again that he would just leave them their bits of places, and then that he would help them to emigrate; and after all, I had the order that they were to be turned out, bag and baggage. I could not find it in my heart to do it. I just put off, and put off, and here he is dead; and another,” said Shaw, with a suppressed tone of satisfaction, “come to the throne. And you’re a new man and a young man, and belong to your own century, not to the middle ages,” the factor cried with a little vehemence. Then he stopped himself, with a “I beg your pardon, my lord; I am perhaps saying more than I ought to say.”

Walter made no reply. He was not sure that he did not think the factor was going too far, for though he knew so little of his family, he already felt that it was something not to be subjected to discussion by common men. These animadversions touched his pride a little; but he was silent, too proud to make any remark. He said, after a pause—

“I don’t know that I can give my opinion without a further acquaintance with the facts. If I were to do so on so slight a knowledge, I fear you might think that a caprice too.”

The factor looked at him with a still closer scrutiny, and took the hint. There is nothing upon which it is so necessary to understand the permitted limit of observation as in the discussion of family peculiarities. Though he was so little responsible for this, and even so little acquainted with them, it was impossible that Lord Erradeen should not associate himself with his race. Mr. Shaw got out his papers, and entered upon the questions in which the opinion of the new proprietor was important, without a word further about the late lord and the family characteristics. He explained to Walter at length the position of the crofters, with their small holdings, who in bad seasons got into arrears with their rents, and sometimes became a burden upon the landlord, in whom, so far north, there was some admixture of a Highland chief. The scheme of the estate altogether was of a mixed kind. There were some large sheep farms and extensive moors still intermingled with glens more populated than is usual in these regions. Some of them were on lands but recently acquired, and the crofters in particular were a burden transmitted by purchase, which the father of the last lord had made. It was believed that there had been some covenant in the sale by which the rights of the poor people were secured, but this had fallen into forgetfulness, and there was no reason in law why Lord Erradeen should not exercise all the rights of a proprietor and clear the glen, as so many glens had been cleared. This was the first question that the new lord would have to decide. The humble tenants were all under notice to leave, and indeed were subject to eviction as soon as their landlord pleased. It was with a kind of horror that Walter listened to this account of his new possibilities.

“Eviction!” he said; “do you mean the sort of thing that happens in Ireland?” He held his breath in unfeigned dismay and repugnance. “I thought there was nothing of the sort here.”

“Ireland is one thing, and Scotland another,” said the factor. “We are a law-abiding people. No man will ever be shot down behind a hedge by a Highlander: so if you should resolve to turn them out to-morrow, my lord, ye need stand in no personal fear.”

Walter put aside this somewhat contemptuous assurance with a wave of his hand.

“I have been told of a great many things I could do,” he said, “in this last fortnight; but I never knew before that I could turn out a whole village full of people if I chose, and make their houses desolate.”

It was a new view altogether of his new powers. He could not help returning in thought to all the prepossessions of his former middle-class existence, where arbitrary power was unknown, and where a mild, general beneficence towards “the poor” was the rule. He said, half to himself, “What would my mother say?” and in the novelty of the idea, half laughed. What a thrill it would send through the district visitors, the managers of the soup kitchen, all the charitable people! There suddenly came up before him a recollection of many a conversation he had heard, and taken no note of—of consultations how to pay the rent of a poor family here and there, how to stop a cruel landlord’s mouth. And that he should appear in the character of a cruel landlord! No doubt it would have been easy to show that the circumstances were quite different. But in the mean time the son of Mrs. Methven could not throw off the traditions in which he had been brought up. He contemplated the whole matter from a point of view altogether different even from that of Mr. Shaw, the factor. Shaw was prepared to prove that on the whole the poor crofters were not such bad tenants, and that sheep farms and deer forests, though more easily dealt with, had some disadvantages too; for there was Paterson of Inverchory that had been nearly ruined by a bad lambing season, and had lost the half of his flock; and as for the shootings, was there not the dreadful example before them of the moors at Finlarig, where everything had been shot down, and the game fairly exterminated by a set of fellows that either did not know what they were doing, or else were making money of it, and not pleasure. The very veins in Shaw’s forehead swelled when he spoke of this.

“I would like to have had the ducking of him,” he cried; “a man with a grand name and the soul of a henwife, that swept out the place as if he had done it with a broom, and all for the London market; grant me patience! You will say,” added Shaw, “that the thing to do at Inverchory is to get a man with more capital now that John Paterson’s tack is done; and that there’s few sportsmen like Sir John. That’s all very true; but it just shows there are risks to be run in all ways, and the poor folk at Truach-Glas would never lead you into losses like that.”

Walter, however, did not pay much attention even to this view. His mind had not room at the moment for Paterson of Inverchory, who was behind with the rent, or Sir John, who had devastated the moors. He did not get beyond the primitive natural horror of what seemed to him an outrage of all natural laws and kindness. He had not been a landowner long enough to feel the sacred right of property. He turn the cottagers out of their poor little homes for the sake of a few pounds more or less of which he stood in no need? The very arguments against taking this step made him angry. Could anybody suppose he could do it? he, Walter Methven! As for the Erradeen business, and all this new affair altogether—good heavens, if anybody thought he would purchase it by that! In short, the young man, who was not born a grand seigneur, boiled up in righteous wrath, and felt it high scorn and shame that it could be supposed of him that he was capable, being rich, of oppressing the poor—which was the way in which he put it, in his limited middle-class conditions of thought.

Mr. Shaw was half-gratified, half-annoyed by the interview. He said to the minister with whom he stopped to dine, and who was naturally much interested about the new young man, that assuredly the young fellow had a great deal of good in him, but he was a trifle narrow in his way of looking at a question, “which is probably just his English breeding,” the factor said. “I would have put the Crofter question before him in all its bearings; but he was just out of himself at the idea of eviction—like what happened in Ireland, he said. I could not get him to go into the philosophy of it. He just would not hear a word. Nothing of the kind had ever come his way before, one could see, and he was just horrified at the thought.”

“I don’t call that leemited, I call it Christian,” the minister said, “and I am not surprised he should have a horror of it. I will go and see him in the morning, if you think it will be well taken, for I’m with him in that, heart and soul.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all in your way,” said Mr. Shaw; “but I am surprised at it in a young man. There is a kind of innocence about it. But I would not wonder after a little if he should change his mind, as others have done.”

“Do you form any theory in your own thoughts, Shaw,” said the minister, “as to what it is that makes them so apt to change?”

“Not I,” cried the factor, with a shrug of his shoulders; and then he added hurriedly, “you’ve given me a capital dinner, and that whisky is just excellent: but I think I must be going my ways, for already it’s later than I thought.”

Mr. Cameron, who was minister of the parish, was, like Walter, a stranger to the district and its ways. He was a great antiquary and full of curiosity about all the relics of the past, and he had an enlightened interest in its superstitions too. But Shaw was a Loch Houran man. He had a reverence for the traditions which of course he vowed he did not believe, and though he was very ready to make this statement in his own person he did not like to hear outsiders, as he called the rest of the world, discussing them disrespectfully? So he desired his dog-cart to be “brought round,” and drove home in the clear, cold night, warm at his heart, good man, because of the good news for the Crofters, but a little dissatisfied in his mind that the new lord should be doing this simply as a matter of sentiment, and not from a reasonable view of the situation. “Provided even that he keeps of that mind,” the factor said to himself.

Walter subsided out of his just indignation when the business part of the interview ended, and he came out to the open air to see Mr. Shaw away.

“This must all be put in order,” he said, as he accompanied his visitor to the boat.

Shaw looked at him with a little curiosity mingled with a slight air of alarm.

“Auchnasheen being so near,” he said, “which is a very comfortable place, there has never been much notice taken of the old castle.”

“But I mean to take a great deal of notice of it,” the young man said with a laugh. “I shall have some of the antiquaries down and clear out all the old places.”

His laugh seemed to himself to rouse the echoes, but it called forth no responsive sound from his companion, and he caught a glimpse of old Macalister in the distance shaking his old head. This amused yet slightly irritated Walter, in the sense of power which alternated with a sense of novelty and unreality in his mind.

“So you object to that?” he said to the old man. “You don’t like your privileges invaded?”

“It’s no that,” said Macalister; “but ye’ll never do it. I’ve a lang, lang acquaintance with the place, and I’ve witnessed many a revolution, if I may say sae. One was to pull down the auld wa’s altogether; another was to clean it a’ out like you. But it’s never been done. And it’ll never be done. I’m just as sure o’ that as your young lordship is that you have a’ the power in your hands.”

Walter turned away with a little disdain in his laugh. It was not worth while arguing out the matter with Macalister. Who should prevent him from doing what he liked with his old house? He could not but reflect upon the curious contradictions with which he was beset. He was supposed to be quite capable of turning out a whole village out of their homes, and making them homeless and destitute; but he was not supposed capable of clearing out the blocked-up passage and rooms of an old ruin! He smiled with a kind of scornful indignation as he went up to his sitting-room. By this time the afternoon had lost all light and colour. It was not dark, but neither was it day. A greyness had come into the atmosphere; the shadows were black, and had lost all transparency. The two windows made two bars of a more distinct greyness in the room, with a deep line of shade in the centre between, which was coloured, but scarcely lighted up, by the fire. He could not but think with a sense of relief that the three days which were all he believed that were necessary for his stay at Kinloch Houran were half over at least. Another night and then he would be free to go. He did not mean to go any further than to Auchnasheen, which was exactly opposite to the island; and then, with a smile creeping about the corners of his mouth, he said to himself, that he could very well amuse himself for a few days, what with the shooting and what with—

And it would be comfortable to get out of this place, where the air, he could not tell why, seemed always insufficient. The wainscot, the dark hangings, the heavy old walls, seemed to absorb the atmosphere. He threw up the window to get a little air, but somehow the projecting masonry of the old walls outside seemed to intercept it. He felt an oppression in his breast, a desire to draw long breaths, to get more air into his lungs. It was the same sensation which he had felt last night, and he did not contemplate with any pleasure the idea of another long evening alone in so strange an atmosphere. However, he must make the best of it. He went to the bookshelf and got down again his Trois Mousquetaires. When the candles were lighted, he would write a dutiful long letter to his mother, and tell her all that had been going on about him, especially that barbarous suggestion about the cottagers.

“Fancy me in the character of a rapacious landlord, turning a whole community out of doors!” he said to himself, concocting the imaginary letter, and laughed aloud with a thrill of indignation.

Next moment he started violently, and turned round with a wild rush of blood to his head, and that sort of rallying and huddling together of all the forces of his mind which one feels in a sudden catastrophe. It was, however, no loud alarm that had sounded. It was the clear and distinct vibration of a voice close to him, replying calmly to his thought.

“Is there anything special in you to disqualify you for doing a disagreeable duty?” some one said.

Walter had started back at the first sound, his heart giving a bound in him of surprise—perhaps of terror. He had meant to take that great chair by the fire as soon as he had taken his book from the shelf, so that it must (he said to himself in instantaneous self-argument) have been vacant then. It was not vacant now. A gentleman sat there, with his face half turned towards the light looking towards the young man; his attitude was perfectly easy, his voice a well-bred and cultivated voice. There seemed neither hurry nor excitement about him. He had not the air of a person newly entered, but rather of one who had been seated there for some time at his leisure, observing what was going on. He lifted his hand with a sort of deprecating yet commanding gesture.

“There is no occasion,” he said, in his measured voice, “for alarm. I have no intention of harming you, or any one. Indeed I am not aware that I have any power of harm.”

Never in his life before had Walter’s soul been swept by such violent sensations. He had an impulse of flight and of deadly overwhelming terror, and then of sickening shame at his own panic. Why should he be afraid? He felt dimly that this moment was the crisis of his life, and that if he fled or retreated he was lost. He stood his ground, grasping the back of a chair to support himself.

“Who are you?” he said.

“That is a searching question,” said the stranger, with a smile. “We will come to it by and by. I should like to know in the first place what there is in you which makes it impossible to act with justice in certain circumstances?”

The air of absolute and calm superiority with which he put this question was beyond description.

Walter felt like a criminal at the bar.

“Who are you?” he repeated hoarsely. He stood with a curious sense of being supported only by the grasp which he had taken of the back of the chair, feeling himself a mere bundle of impulses and sensations, hardly able to keep himself from flight, hardly able to keep from falling down at the feet of this intruder, but holding to a sort of self-restraint by his grasp upon the chair. Naturally, however, his nerves steadied as the moments passed. The first extreme shock of surprise wore away. There was nothing to alarm the most timid in the countenance upon which he gazed. It was that of a handsome man who had scarcely turned middle age, with grey but not white hair very thin on the forehead and temples, a high delicate aquiline nose, and colourless complexion. His mouth closed somewhat sternly, but had a faint melting of a smile about it, by movements which were ingratiating and almost sweet. The chief thing remarkable about the stranger, however, besides the extraordinary suddenness of his appearance, was the perfect composure with which he sat, like a man who not only was the most important person wherever he went, but also complete master of the present scene. It was the young man who was the intruder, not he.

“I will tell you presently who I am,” he said. “In the mean time explain to me why you should be horrified at a step which better men than yourself take every day. Sit down.” The stranger allowed himself to smile with distinct intention, and then said in a tone of which it is impossible to describe the refined mockery, “You are afraid?”

Walter came to himself with another sensible shock: his pride, his natural spirit, a certain impulse of self-defence which never forsakes a man, came to his aid. He was inclined to say “No,” with natural denial of a contemptuous accusation; but rallying more and more every moment, answered with something like defiance, “Yes—or rather I am not afraid. I am startled. I want to know how you come here, and who you are who question me—in my own house.”

“You are very sure that it is your own house? You mean to have it restored and made into a piece of sham antiquity—if nothing prevents?”

“What can prevent? if I say it is to be done,” cried the young man. His blood seemed to curdle in his veins when he heard the low laugh with which alone the stranger replied. “May I ask you—to withdraw or to tell me who you are?” he said. His voice trembled in spite of himself. The words left his lips quite sturdily, but quivered when they got into the air, or so in the fantastic hurry of his mind he thought.

“If I refuse, what then?” the stranger said.

These two individuals confronted each other, defying each other, one angry and nervous, the other perfectly calm. In such circumstances only one result is sure: that he who retains his self-possession will have the mastery. Walter felt himself completely baffled. He could not turn out with violence a dignified and serious visitor, who assumed indeed an intolerable superiority, and had come in without asking leave, but yet was evidently a person of importance—if nothing more. He stared at him for a moment, gradually becoming familiarized with the circumstances. “You are master of the situation,” he said, with a hard-drawn breath. “I suppose I can do nothing but submit. But if politeness on my part requires this of me, it requires on yours some information. Your name, your object?”

They looked at each other once more for a moment.

“When you put it in that way, I have nothing to say,” said the stranger, with great courtesy; “but to acknowledge your right to require—”

At that moment the door opened hurriedly, and Symington came in.

“Your lordship will be wanting something?” he said. “I heard your voice. Was it to light the lights? or would it be for tea, or—”

He gave a sort of scared glance round the room, and clung to the handle of the door, but his eyes did not seem to distinguish the new-comer in the failing twilight.

“I did not call; but you may light the candles,” Walter said, feeling his own excitement, which had been subsiding, spring up again, in his curiosity to see what Symington’s sensations would be.

The old man came in reluctantly. He muttered something uneasily in his throat. “I would have brought a light if I had known. You might have cried down the stairs. It’s just out of all order to light the lights this gate,” he muttered. But he did not disobey. He went round the room lighting one after another of the twinkling candles in the sconces. Now and then he gave a scared and tremulous look about him; but he took no further notice. The stranger sat quite composedly, looking on with a smile while this process was gone through. Then Symington came up to the table in front of which Walter still stood.

“Take a seat, my lord, take a seat,” he said. “It’s no canny to see you standing just glowering frae ye, as we say in the country. You look just as if you were seeing something. And take you your French fallow that you were reading last night. It’s better when you’re by yourself in an auld house like this, that has an ill-name, always to do something to occupy your thoughts.”

Walter looked at the stranger, who made a little gesture of intelligence with a nod and smile; and old Symington followed the look, still with that scared expression on his face.

“Your lordship looks for all the world as if you were staring at something in that big chair; you must be careful to take no fancies in your head,” the old servant said. He gave a little nervous laugh, and retreated somewhat quickly towards the door. “And talk no more to yourself; it’s an ill habit,” he added, with one more troubled glance round him as he closed the door.

CHAPTER XIII

“And so you have made acquaintance with the young lord—tell us what kind of person he is, Mrs. Forrester—tell us what you think of him, Oona.”

This was the unanimous voice which rose from the party assembled on the second day after Walter’s visit in the drawing-room in the Isle.

It was by no means out of the world, though to all appearances so far removed from its commotions. A low cottage-mansion on the crest of a rock, in the middle of Loch Houran, six miles from the railway at the nearest spot on which you could land, and with a mile or so of water, often rough, between you and the post-office, is it possible to imagine a more complete seclusion? and yet it was not a seclusion at all. Oona cared very little for the roughness of the water between the Isle and the post-office, and Hamish nothing at all, and news came as constantly and as regularly to the two ladies on their island as to any newspaper—news from all quarters of the world. The mail days were almost as important to them—in one way far more important than to any merchant in his office. Budgets came and went every week, and both Oona and her mother would be busy till late at night, the little gleam of their lighted windows shining over the dark loch, that no one might miss his or her weekly letter. These letters went up into the hill countries in India, far away to the borders of Cashmere, round the world to Australia, dropt midway into the coffee groves of Ceylon. When one of the boys was quartered in Canada, to which there is a mail three times a week, that looked like next parish, and they thought nothing of it. Neither need it be supposed that this was the only enlivenment of their lives. The loch, though to the tourist it looks silent enough, was in fact fringed by a number of houses in which the liveliest existence was going on. The big new house at the point, which had been built by a wealthy man of Glasgow, with every possible splendour, threw the homelier houses of the native gentry a little into the shade; but nobody bore him any malice, his neighbours being all so well aware that their own “position” was known and unassailable, that his finery and his costliness gave them no pang. They were all a little particular about their “position:” but then nobody on the loch could make any mistake about that, or for a moment imagine that Mr. Williamson from Glasgow could rival the Scotts of Inverhouran, the Campbells of Ellermore, of Glentruan, and half a dozen names beside, or the Forresters of Eaglescairn, or the old Montroses, who, in fact, were a branch of the Macnabs, and held their house on the Isle from that important but extinct clan. This was so clearly understood that there was not an exception made to the Williamsons, who knew their place, and were very nice, and made a joke of their money, which was their social standing ground. They had called their house, which was as big as a castle, in the most unobtrusive manner, Birkenbraes, thus proving at once that they were new people and Lowlanders: so much better taste, everybody said, than any pretence at Highland importance or name. And this being once acknowledged, the gentry of the loch adopted the Williamsons cordially, and there was not a word to be said. But all the Campbells about, and those excellent Williamsons, and a few families who were not Campbells, yet belonged to Loch Houran, kept a good deal of life “on the loch,” which was a phrase that meant in the district generally. And the Isle was not a dull habitation, whatever a stranger might think. There was seldom a day when a boat or two was not to be seen, sometimes for hours together, drawn up upon the rocky beach. And the number of persons entertained by Mrs. Forrester at the early dinner which was politely called luncheon would have appeared quite out of proportion with her means by any one unacquainted with Highland ways. There was trout from the loch, which cost nothing except Hamish’s time, a commodity not too valuable, and there was grouse during the season, which cost still less, seeing it came from all the sportsmen about. And the scones, of every variety known in Scotland, which is a wide word, were home-made. So that hospitality reigned, and yet Mrs. Forrester, who was a skilled housekeeper, and Mysie, to whom the family resources were as her own, and its credit still more precious than her own, managed somehow to make ends meet.

On this particular afternoon the drawing-room with all its slim sofas and old-fashioned curiosities was full of Campbells, for young Colin of Ellermore was at home for his holiday, and it was a matter of course that his sisters and Tom, the youngest, who was at home reading (very little) for his coming examination, should bring him to the Isle. Colin was rather a finer gentleman than flourished by nature upon the loch. He had little company ways which made his people laugh; but when he had been long enough at home to forget these he was very nice they all said. He was in London, and though in trade, in “tea,” which is rather aristocratic, he was in society too.

“What kind of person is he, Mrs. Forrester? Tell us what you think of him, Oona,” was what this youthful band said.

“Well, my dears,” said Mrs. Forrester, “he is just a very nice young man. I don’t know how I can describe him better, for young men now-a-days are very like one another. They all wear the same clothes—not but what,” she added graciously, “I would know Colin anywhere for a London gentleman with his things all so well made: but Lord Erradeen was just in a kind of tweed suit, and nothing remarkable. And his hands in his pockets, like all of ye. But he answered very nicely when I spoke to him, and said he was more used to Walter Methven than to any other name, and that to be neighbourlike would just be his pleasure. It is not possible to be more pleasant and well-spoken than the young man was.”

“Oh, but I want a little more,” cried Marjorie Campbell; “that tells nothing; is he fair, or is he dark? is he tall or is he little—is he—”

“He couldn’t be little,” cried Janet, indignantly, “or he would not be a hero: and I’ve made up my mind he’s to be a hero. He’ll have to do something grand, but I don’t know what: and to spoil it all with making him small—”

“Heroes are all short,” said Tom, “and all the great generals. You don’t want weedy, long-legged fellows like Colin and the rest of them. But you know they all run to legs in our family, all but me.”

“All this is irrelevant,” said Colin with a smile which was somewhat superior, “and you prevent Mrs. Forrester from giving us the masterly characterisation which I know is on her lips.”

“You are just a flatterer,” said that simple lady, shaking her finger at him; “there was no character coming from my lips. He is just a fine simple-hearted young man. It appears he never knew what he was heir to, and has no understanding even now, so far as I could learn, about the Erradeens. He told me he had been a thoughtless lad, and, as well as I could judge just a handful to his poor mother; but that all that was over and gone.”

“You are going too far, mamma,” said Oona. “He said he had ‘loafed.’ Loafing means no harm, does it, Colin? It means mere idleness, and no more.”

“Why should you think I am an authority on the subject?” said Colin. “I never loaf: I go to the City every day. When I come back I have to keep up society, so far as I can, and hunt about for invitations, otherwise I should never be asked out. That is not loafing, it is hard work.”

“Ask me, Oona,” said young Tom; “I can tell you. It is the nicest thing in the world. It means just doing nothing you are wanted to do, taking your own way, watching nature, don’t you know, and studying men, and that sort of thing, which all the literary people say is better than cramming. But only it does not pay in an exam.”

“Oh, hold your tongue, Tommy,” cried his sister. “You will fail again, you know you will, and papa will be in despair. For you are not like Colin, who is clever; you are good for nothing but soldiering, and next year you will be too old.”

“It’s a shame,” cried Tom hotly, “to make a fellow’s commission depend upon his spelling. What has spelling to do with it? But I’m going into the militia, and then I shall be all right.”

“And did Erradeen,” said Colin to Mrs. Forrester, “let out any of the secrets of his prison-house?”

“Bless me, he looked just as cheerful as yourself or even as Tom. There was nothing miserable about him,” Mrs. Forrester replied. “He had been all the morning enjoying himself on the loch, and he came up and ate his lunch just very hearty, and as happy as possible, with Oona and me. He was just very like my own Ronald or Rob: indeed I think there’s something in his complexion and his way of holding himself that is very like Rob; and took my opinion about the old castle, and what was the meaning of the light on the tower. Indeed,” added Mrs. Forrester with a laugh, “I don’t know if it is anything in me that draws people to tell me their stories, but it is a very general thing, especially for young persons, to ask for my advice.”

“Because you’re so kind,” said Janet Campbell, who was romantic and admired the old beauty.

“Because you’re so clever,” said Marjorie, who had a turn for satire.

Oona, whose ear was very quick for any supposed or possible ridicule, such as her mother’s little foibles occasionally laid her open to, turned quickly round from Tom, leaving him speaking, and with a little heightened colour interposed.

“We are opposite to the castle night and day,” she said. “We cannot go out to the door or gather a flower without seeing it; and at night there it is in the moonlight. So naturally we are better acquainted with what happens than anybody else can be.”

“And do you really, really believe in the light?” said Marjorie.

Ellermore lay quite at the other end of the great loch, among another range of hills, and was shut out from personal acquaintance with the phenomena of Kinloch Houran. Colin gave a slight laugh, the faintest possible indication of incredulity, to repeat with an increase of force the doubt in his sister’s tone. Oona was not without a healthful little temper, which showed in the flash of her eye and the reddening of her cheek. But she answered very steadily, with much suppressed feeling in her tone—

“What do you call believing?” she said. “You believe in things you cannot see? then I don’t believe in the Kinloch Houran light. Because I see it, and have seen it a hundred times as clear as day.”

At this there was a little pause among the party of visitors, that pause of half-amused superiority and scepticism, with which all believers in the mysterious are acquainted. And then Marjorie, who was the boldest, replied—

“Papa says it is a sort of phosphorescence, which is quite explainable: and that where there is so much decaying matter, and so much damp, and so much—”

“Faith, perhaps,” said Colin, with that slight laugh; “but we are outsiders, and we have no right to interfere with the doctrines of the loch. Oona, give us that credit that we are outside the circle, and you must not send us to the stake.”

“Oh, my dears,” said Mrs. Forrester, “and that is quite true. I have heard very clever men say that there was nothing made so much difference in what you believed as just the place you were born in, and that people would go the stake, as you say, on one side of the border for a thing they just laughed at on the other.”

This, which was a very profound deliverance for Mrs. Forrester, she carried off at the end with a pretty profession of her own disabilities.

“I never trust to my own judgment,” she said. “But Oona is just very decided on the subject, and so are all our people on the isle, and I never put myself forward one way or another. Are you sure you will not take a cup of tea before you go? a cup of tea is never out of place. It is true that the day is very short, and Colin, after his town life, will be out of the way of rowing. You are just going across by the ferry, and then driving? Well, that is perhaps the best way. And in that case there is plenty of time for a cup of tea. Just ring the bell, or perhaps it will be safer, Oona, if you will cry upon Mysie and tell her to lose no time. Just the tea, and a few of the cream scones, and a little cake. She need not spread the table as there is so little time.”

The interlude of the tea and the cream scones made it late before the visitors got away. Their waggonette was visible waiting for them on the road below Auchnasheen, and five minutes were enough to get them across, so that they dallied over this refreshment with little thought of the waning afternoon. Then there was a little bustle to escort them down to the beach, to see them carefully wrapped up, to persuade Marjorie that another “hap” would be desirable, and Janet that her “cloud” should be twisted once more about her throat. The sunset was waning when at last they were fairly off, and the loch lay in a still, yellow radiance, against which every tree and twig, every rock and stone, stood out dark in full significance of outline. It was cold, and Mrs. Forrester shivered in her furred cloak.

“The shore looks so near that you could touch it,” she said; “there will be rain to-morrow, Oona.”

“What does it matter about to-morrow?” cried the girl; “it’s beautiful to-night. Go in, mamma, to the fireside; but I will stay here and see them drive away.”

The mother consented to this arrangement, which was so natural; but a moment afterwards came back and called from the porch, where she stood sheltered from the keen and eager air.

“Oona! Come in, my dear. That Colin one, with his London ways, will think you are watching him.”

There was something sublime in the fling of Oona’s head, and the erection of her slim figure, as she rejected the possibility.

“Watching him!” She was too proud even to permit herself to resent it.

“Ah! but you never can tell what a silly lad may take into his head,” said Mrs. Forrester; and, having thus cleared her conscience, she went in and took off her cloak, and shut the drawing-room door, and made herself very comfortable in her own cosy chair in the ruddy firelight. She laid her head back upon the soft cushions and looked round her with a quiet sense of content. Everything was so comfortable, so pretty and homelike; and by-and-by she permitted herself, for ten minutes or so, to fall into a soft oblivion. “I just closed my eyes,” was Mrs. Forrester’s little euphemism to herself.

Meanwhile Oona stood and looked at sky and sea and shore. The soft plash of the oars came through the great stillness, and, by-and-by, there was the sound of the boat run up upon the shingle, and the noise of the disembarkation, the voices swelling out in louder tones and laughter. As they waved their hands in a final good-night to the watcher on the isle before they drove away, the young people, as Mrs. Forrester had said, laughed and assured Colin that it was not for them Oona stood out in the evening chill. But, as a matter of fact, there was nothing so little in Oona’s mind. She was looking round her with that sort of exaltation which great loneliness and stillness and natural beauty so naturally give: the water gleaming all round, the sky losing its orange glow and melting into soft primrose tints the colour of the daffodil.

The holy time is quiet as a nun

Breathless with adoration.

All the sensations that belong to such a moment are exquisite; a visionary elevation above the earth and all things earthly, a soft pensiveness, an elation, yet wistful longing of the soul. Before her the old castle of Kinloch Houran lay gloomy and dark on the edge of the water. If she thought of anything it was of the young neighbour, to whom she felt so strangely near in wonder and sympathy. Who might be with him at that moment in the ghostly quiet? What thoughts, what suggestions, were being placed before him? Oona put her hands together, and breathed into the still air a wish of wondering and wistful pity which was almost a prayer. And then, rousing herself with a slight shiver and shake, she turned and went in, shutting out behind her the lingering glory of the water and sky.

Mysie was lighting the candles when she went in, and Mrs. Forrester had opened her eyes. Two candles on the mantelpiece and two on the table were all the ladies allowed themselves, except on great occasions, when the argand lamp, which was the pride of the household, was lighted in honour of a visitor. The warmth of this genial interior was very welcome after the cold of the twilight, and Oona brought her work to the table, and the book from which her mother was in the habit of reading aloud. Mrs. Forrester thought she improved her daughter’s mind by these readings; but, to tell the truth, Oona’s young soul, with all the world and life yet before it, often fled far enough away while her mother’s soft voice, with the pretty tricks of elocution, which were part of her old-fashioned training, went on. Never was there a prettier indoor scene. In the midst of that great solitude of woods and water, the genial comfort of this feminine room, so warm, so softly lighted, so peaceful and serene, struck the imagination like a miracle. Such a tranquil retirement would have been natural enough safely planted amid the safeguards and peaceful surroundings of a village: but in being here there was a touching incongruity. The little play of the mother’s voice as she read with innocent artifice and the simple vanity which belonged to her, the pretty work, of no great use, with which the girl was busy, both heightened the sense of absolute trust with which they lived in the bosom of nature. A sudden storm, one could not but think, might have swept them away into the dark gleaming water that hemmed them round. They were not afraid: they were as safe as in a citadel. They were like the birds in their nests; warm and soft, though in the heart of Loch Houran. Mrs. Forrester was reading a historical novel, one of the kind which she thought so good for improving Oona’s mind; amusing, yet instructing her. But Oona’s mind, refusing to be improved, was giving only a mechanical attention. It was away making a little pilgrimage of wonder about the mystic house which was so near them, longing to know, and trying to divine, what was going on there.

But when the afternoon closes in at four o’clock, and the candles are lighted shortly after, the night is long. It seemed endless on this occasion, because of the too early tea, which Mrs. Forrester had thought it would be “just a farce” to produce again at six o’clock, their usual hour; and from half-past four till nine, when the small and light repast known in the house under the pleasantly indefinite name of “the tray” made its appearance, is a long time. There had been two or three interruptions of a little talk, and the book had been laid down and resumed again, and Oona’s work had dropped two or three times upon her knee, when Mysie, coming in, announced that it was just an uncommon fine night, though all the signs (including the glass, which, however, does not always count in the west of Scotland) pointed to rain, and that Hamish was going to take advantage of the moonlight to do an errand at the village above Auchnasheen. Would Miss Oona like to go? It was just awfu’ bonny, and with plenty of haps she could take no harm, Mysie said. To see how the girl sprang from her seat was a proof of the gentle tedium that had stolen upon her soul.

“But, my dear, it will be cold, cold. I am afraid of you catching cold, Oona,” Mrs. Forrester cried.

“Oh, mother, no. I never catch cold; and besides, if I did, what would it matter? Tell him I’m coming, Mysie; tell him to wait for me. I’ll put on my thick ulster, or the fur cloak, if you like.”

“Certainly, the fur cloak, Oona. I will not hear of it without that. But, my dear, just think, Hamish will have to leave you in the boat while he goes to the village; and what would you do, Oona, if there is any one on the road?”

“Do, mamma? Look at them, to see if I knew them. And, if it was a stranger, just sit still and say nothing.”

“But, my dear! It might be somebody that would speak to you, and—annoy you, Oona.”

“There is no person up the loch or down the loch that would dare to do that, mem,” said Mysie, composedly.

“How can we tell? It might be some tourist or gangrel body.”

“Annoy me!” said Oona, as if indeed this suggestion was too far-fetched for possibility. “If anything so ridiculous happened I would just push out into the loch. Don’t you trouble, mother, about me.”

Mrs. Forrester got up to envelop her child’s throat in fold after fold of the fleecy white “cloud.” She shook her head a little, but she was resigned, for such little controversies occurred almost daily. The evening had changed when Oona ran lightly down the bank to the boat in which Hamish was waiting. Everything about was flooded with the keen, clear white moonlight, which in its penetrating chilly fashion was almost more light than day. The loch was shining like silver, but with a blackness behind the shining, and all the shadows were like midnight profound in inky gloom. The boat seemed to hang suspended in the keen atmosphere rather than to float, and the silence was shrill, and seemed to cut into the soul. It was but a few minutes across the cold white glittering strait that lay between the isle and the mainland. Hamish jumped out with an exaggerated noise upon the slippery shingle, and fastened the boat with a rattle of the ring to which it was attached, which woke echoes all around both from land and water, everything under the mingled influence of winter and night being so still. A chance spectator would have thought that the mother had very good cause for her alarm, and that to sit there in the rough boat absolutely alone, like the one living atom in a world all voiceless and asleep, was not a cheerful amusement for a girl. But Oona had neither fear nor sense of strangeness in an experience which she had gone through so often. She called out lightly to Hamish to make haste, and looked after him as he set out on the white road, the peculiarities of his thick-set figure coming out drolly in the curious dab of foreshortened shadow flung upon the road by his side. She laughed at this to herself, and the laugh ran all about with a wonderful cheerful thrill of the silence. How still it was! When her laugh ceased, there was nothing but the steps of Hamish in all the world—and by and by even the steps ceased, and that stillness which could be felt settled down. There was not a breath astir, not enough to cause the faintest ripple on the beach. Now and then a pebble which had been pushed out of its place by the man’s foot toppled over, and made a sound as if something great had fallen. Otherwise not a breath was stirring; the shadows of the fir-trees looked as if they were gummed upon the road. And Oona held her breath; it seemed almost profane to disturb the intense and perfect quiet. She knew every hue of every rock, and the profile of every tree. And presently, which no doubt was partly because of this perfect acquaintance, and partly because of some mesmeric consciousness in the air, such as almost invariably betrays the presence of a human being, her eyes fixed upon one spot where the rock seemed higher than she had been used to. Was it possible that somebody was there? She changed her place to look more closely; and so fearless was the girl that she had nearly jumped out of the boat to satisfy herself whether it was a man or a rock. But just when she was about making up her mind to do so, the figure moved, and came down towards the beach. Oona’s heart gave a jump; several well-authenticated stories which she had heard from her childhood came into her mind with a rush. She took the end of the rope softly in her hand so as to be able to detach it in a moment. To row back to the isle was easy enough.

“Is it you, Miss Forrester?” a voice said.

Oona let go the rope, and her heart beat more calmly. “I might with more reason cry out, Is it you, Lord Erradeen? for if you are at the old castle you are a long way from home, and I am quite near.”

“I am at Auchnasheen,” he said. A great change had come over his tone; it was very grave; no longer the airy voice of youth which had jested and laughed on the Isle. He came down and stood with his hand on the bow of the boat. He looked very pale, very serious, but that might be only the blackness of the shadows and the whiteness of the light.

“Did you ever see so spiritual a night?” said Oona. “There might be anything abroad; not fairies, who belong to summer, but serious things.”

“Do you believe then in—ghosts?” he said.

“Ghosts is an injurious phrase. Why should we call the poor people so who are only—dead?” said Oona. “But that is a false way of speaking too, isn’t it? for it is not because they are dead, but living, that they come back.”

“I am no judge,” he said, with a little shiver. “I never have thought on the subject. I suppose superstition lingers longer up among the mountains.”

“Superstition!” said Oona, with a laugh. “What ugly words you use!”

Once more the laugh seemed to ripple about, and break the solemnity of the night. But young Lord Erradeen was as solemn as the night, and his countenance was not touched even by a responsive smile. His gravity produced upon the girl’s mind that feeling of visionary panic and distrust which had not been roused by the external circumstances. She felt herself grow solemn too, but struggled against it.

“Hamish has gone up with some mysterious communication to the game-keeper,” she said; “and in these long nights one is glad of a little change. I came out with him to keep myself from going to sleep.”

Which was not perhaps exactly true: but there had arisen a little embarrassment in her mind, and she wanted something to say.

“And I came out—” he said; then paused. “The night is not so ghostly as the day,” he added, hurriedly; “nor dead people so alarming as the living.”

“You mean that you disapprove of our superstitions, as you call them,” said Oona. “Most people laugh and believe a little; but I know some are angry and think it wrong.”

“I—angry! That was not what I meant. I meant—It is a strange question which is living and which is—To be sure, you are right, Miss Forrester. What is dead cannot come in contact with us, only what is living. It is a mystery altogether.”

“You are not a sceptic then?” said Oona. “I am glad of that.”

“I am not—anything. I don’t know how to form an opinion. How lovely it is, to be sure,” he burst out all at once; “especially to have some one to talk to. That is the great charm.”

“If that is all,” said Oona, trying to speak cheerfully, “you will soon have dozens of people to talk to, for everybody in the county—and that is a wide word—is coming to call. They will arrive in shoals as soon as they know.”

“I think I shall go—in a day or two,” he said.

At this moment the step of Hamish, heard far off through the great stillness, interrupted the conversation. It had been as if they two were alone in this silent world; and the far-off step brought in a third and disturbed them. They were silent, listening as it came nearer and nearer, the sound growing with every repetition. When Hamish appeared in the broad white band of road coming from between the shadows of the trees the young man dropped his hand from the bow of the boat. He had not spoken again, nor did Oona feel herself disposed to speak. Hamish quickened his pace when he saw another figure on the beach.

“Ye’ll no’ have been crying upon me, Miss Oona,” he said, with a suspicious look at the stranger.

“Oh no, Hamish!” cried Oona, cheerfully. “I have not been wearying at all, for this is Lord Erradeen that has been so kind as to come and keep me company.”

“Oh, it’ll be my Lord Erradeen?” said Hamish, with a curious look into Walter’s face.

Then there was a repetition of the noises with which the still loch rang, the rattle of the iron ring, the grating of the bow on the shingle as she was pushed off. Hamish left no time for leave-taking. There were a few yards of clear water between the boat and the beach when Oona waved her hand to the still figure left behind. “My mother will like to see you to-morrow,” she cried, with an impulse of sympathy. “Good night.”

He took his hat off, and waved his hand in reply, but said nothing, and stood motionless till they lost sight of him round the corner of the isle. Then Hamish, who had been exerting himself more than usual, paused a little.

“Miss Oona,” he said, “yon will maybe be the young lord, but maybe no. I would not be speaking to the first that comes upon the loch side—”

“Oh, if you are beginning to preach propriety—” the girl cried.

“It’ll not be propriety, it will just be that they’re a family that is not canny. Who will tell you if it’s one or if it’s the other? Did ye never hear the tale of the leddy that fell off the castle wall?”

“But this is not the castle,” cried Oona, “and I know him very well—and I’m sorry for him, Hamish. He looks so changed.”

“Oh, what would you do being sorry for him? He has nothing ado with us—nothing ado with us,” Hamish said.

And how strange it was to come in again from that brilliant whiteness and silence—the ghostly loch, the visionary night—into the ruddy room full of firelight and warmth, all shut in, sheltered, full of companionship.

“Come away, come away to the fire; you must be nearly frozen, Oona, and I fear ye have caught your death of cold,” her mother said.

Oona remembered with a pang the solitary figure on the water’s edge, and wondered if he were still standing there forlorn. A whole chapter of life seemed to have interposed between her going and coming, though she had been but half an hour away.

CHAPTER XIV

Two days after this night scene there was a gathering such as was of weekly occurrence in the Manse of Loch Houran parish. The houses were far apart, and those of the gentry who were old-fashioned enough to remain for the second service, were in the habit of spending the short interval between in the minister’s house, where an abundant meal, called by his housekeeper a cold collation, was spread in the dining-room for whosoever chose to partake. As it was the fashion in the country to dine early on Sunday, this repast was but sparingly partaken of, and most of the company, after the glass of wine or milk, the sandwich or biscuit, which was all they cared to take, would sit round the fire in the minister’s library, or examine his books, or, what was still more prized, talk to him of their own or their neighbours’ affairs. The minister of Loch Houran was one of those celibates who are always powerful ecclesiastically, though the modern mind is so strongly opposed to any artificial manufacture of them such as that which the Church of Rome in her wisdom has thought expedient. We all know the arguments in favour of a married clergy, but those on the other side of the question it is the fashion to ignore. He who has kept this natural distinction by fair means, and without compulsion, has however an unforced advantage of his own which the most Protestant and the most matrimonial of polemics will scarcely deny. He is more safe to confide in, being one, not two. He is more detached and individual; it is more natural that all the world about him should have a closer claim upon the man who has no nearer claims to rival those of his spiritual children. Mr. Cameron was one of this natural priesthood. If he had come to his present calm by reason of passion and disappointment in his past, such as we obstinately and romantically hope to have founded the tranquillity of subdued, sunny, and sober age, nobody could tell. An old minister may perhaps be let off more easily in this respect than an old monk; but he was the friend and consoler of everybody; the depositary of all the secrets of the parish; the one adviser of whose disinterestedness and secrecy every perplexed individual was sure. He did all that man could do to be absolutely impartial and divide himself, as he divided his provisions, among his guests as their needs required. But flesh is weak, and Mr. Cameron could not disown one soft place in his heart for Oona Forrester, of which that young person was quite aware. Oona was his pupil and his favourite, and he was, if not her spiritual director, which is a position officially unknown to his Church, at least her confidant in all her little difficulties, which comes to much the same thing: and this notwithstanding the fact that Mrs. Forrester attended the parish church under protest, and prided herself on belonging to the Scottish Episcopal community, the Church of the gentry, though debarred by providence from her privileges. Mrs. Forrester at this moment, with her feet on the fender, was employed in bewailing this sad circumstance with another landed lady in the same position; but Oona was standing by the old ministers side, with her hand laid lightly within his arm, which was a pretty way she had when she was with her oldest friend. It did not interfere with this attitude, that he was exchanging various remarks with other people, and scarcely talking to Oona at all. He looked down upon her from time to time with a sort of proud tenderness, as her grandfather might have done. It pleased the old man to feel the girl’s slim small fingers upon his arm. And as there were no secrets discussed in this weekly assembly her presence interrupted nothing. She added her word from time to time, or the still readier comment of smiles and varying looks that changed like the Highland sky outside, and were never for two minutes the same. It was not, however, till Mr. Shaw, the factor, came in, that the easy superficial interest of all the parish talk quickened into something more eager and warm in her sympathetic countenance. Shaw’s ruddy face was full of care; this was indeed its usual expression, an expression all the more marked from the blunt and open simplicity of its natural mood to which care seemed alien. The puckers about his hazel grey eyes, the lines on his forehead which exposure to the air had reddened rather than browned, were more than usually evident. Those honest eyes seemed to be remonstrating with the world and fate. They had an appearance half-comic to the spectator, but by no means comic to their own consciousness of grieved interrogation as if asking every one on whom they turned, “Why did you do it?” “Why did you let it be done?” It was this look which he fixed upon the minister, who indeed was most innocent of all share in the cause of his trouble.

“I told you,” he said, “the other day, about the good intentions of our young lord. I left various things with him to be settled that would bide no delay—things that had been waiting for the late Lord Erradeen from day to day. And all this putting off has been bad, bad. There’s those poor crofters that will have to be put out of their bits of places to-morrow. I can hold off no longer without his lordship’s warrant. And not a word from him—not a word!” cried the good man, with that appealing look, to which the natural reply was, It is not my fault. But the minister knew better, and returned a look of sympathy, shaking his white head.

“What has become of the young man? they tell me he has left the castle.”

“He is not far off—he is at Auchnasheen; but he is just like all the rest, full of goodwill one day, and just inaccessible the next—just inaccessible!” repeated the factor. “And what am I to do? I am just wild to have advice from somebody. What am I to do?”

“Can you not get at him to speak to him?” the minister asked.

“I have written to know if he will see me. I have said I was waiting an answer, but there’s no answer comes. They say he’s on the hill all day, though the keepers know nothing about his movements, and he does not even carry a gun. What am I to do? He sees nobody; two or three have called, but cannot get at him. He’s always out—he’s never there. That old Symington goes about wringing his hands. What says he? he says, ‘This is the worst of a’; this is the worst of a’. He’s just got it on him—’”

“What does that mean?”

“Can I tell what that means? According to the old wives it is the weird of the Methvens; but you don’t believe such rubbish, nor do I. It has, maybe, something to do with the drainage, or the water, or the sanitary arrangements, one way or the other!” cried the factor with a harsh and angry laugh.

Then there was a momentary pause, and the hum of the other people’s talk came in, filling up with easier tones of conversation the somewhat strained feeling of this: “He’s a good shot and a fine oar, and just a deevil for spunk and courage: and yet because he’s a little vague in his speaking!” “But, I say, we must put up with what we can get, and though it’s a trial the surplice is not just salvation.” “And it turned out to be measles, and not fever at all, and nothing to speak of; so we just cheated the doctors.” These were the broken scraps that came in to fill up the pause.

“I saw Lord Erradeen the other night,” said Oona, whose light grasp on the old minister’s arm had been tightening and slackening all through this dialogue, in the interest she felt. Both of the gentlemen turned to look at her inquiringly, and the girl blushed—not for any reason, as she explained to herself indignantly afterwards, but because it was a foolish way she had; but somehow the idea suggested to all their minds was not without an effect upon the events of her after-life.

“And what did he say to you? and what is he intending? and why does he shut himself up and let all the business hang suspended like yon fellow Machomet’s coffin?” cried the factor, with a guttural in the prophet’s name which was due to the energy of his feelings. He turned upon Oona those remonstrating eyes of his, as if he had at last come to the final cause of all the confusion, and meant to demand of her, without any quibbling, an answer to the question, Why did you do it? on the spot.

“Indeed, he said very little to me, Mr. Shaw. He looked like a ghost, and he said—he was going away in a day or two.”

Sudden reflection in the midst of what she was saying made it apparent to Oona that it was unnecessary to give all the details of the interview. Mr. Cameron, for his part, laid his large, soft old hand tenderly upon hers which was on his arm, and said, in the voice which always softened when he addressed her—

“And where would that be, my bonnie Oona, that you met with Lord Erradeen?”

“It was on the beach below Auchnasheen,” said Oona, with an almost indignant frankness, holding her head high, but feeling, to her anger and distress, the blush burn upon her cheek. “Hamish had some errand on shore, and I went with him in the boat. I was waiting for him, when some one came down from the road and spoke to me. I was half-frightened, for I did not know any one was there. It was Lord Erradeen.”

“And what?—and why?—and—”

The factor was too much disturbed to form his questions reasonably, even putting aside the evident fact that Oona had no answer to give him. But at this moment the little cracked bell began to sound, which was the warning that the hour of afternoon service approached. The ladies rose from their seats round the fire, the little knots of men broke up. “Oona, my dear, will ye come and tie my bonnet? I never was clever at making a bow,” said Mrs. Forrester; and the minister left his guests to make his preparations for church. Mr. Shaw felt himself left in the lurch. He kept hovering about Oona with a quick decision in his own mind, which was totally unjustified by any foundation; he went summarily through a whole romance, and came to its conclusion in the most matter-of-fact and expeditious way. “If that comes to pass now!” he said to himself. “She’s no Me’ven; there’s no weird on her; he can give her the management of the estates, and all will go well. She has a head upon her shoulders, though she is nothing but a bit girlie—and there will be me to make everything plain!” Such was the brief epitome of the situation that passed in the factor’s mind. He was very anxious to get speech of Oona on the way to church, and it is to be feared that Mr. Cameron’s excellent afternoon discourse (which many people said was always his best, though as it was listened to but drowsily the fact may be doubted) made little impression upon Shaw, though he was a serious man, who could say his say upon religious subjects, and was an elder, and had sat in the Assembly in his day. He had his opportunity when the service was over, when the boats were being pushed off from the beach, and the carriages got under way, for those who had far to go. Mrs. Forrester had a great many last words to say before she put on her furred mantle and her white cloud, and took her place in the boat; and Mysie, who stood ready with the mantle to place it on her mistress’s shoulders, had also her own little talks to carry on at that genial moment when all the parish—or all the loch, if you like the expression better—stood about exchanging friendly greetings and news from outlying places. While all the world was thus engaged, Oona fell at last into the hands of the factor, and became his prey.

“Miss Oona,” he said, “if ye will accord me a moment, I would like well, well, to know what’s your opinion about Lord Erradeen.”

“But I have no opinion!” cried Oona, who had been prepared for the attack. She could not keep herself from blushing (so ridiculous! but I will do it, she said to herself, as if that “I” was an independent person over whom she had no control), but otherwise she was on her guard. “How could I have any opinion when I have only seen Lord Erradeen twice—thrice?” she added, with a heightening of the blush, as she remembered the adventure of the coach.

“Twice—thrice; but that gives you facilities—and ladies are so quick-witted. I’ve seen him but once,” said the factor. “I was much taken with him, that is the truth, and was so rash as to think our troubles were over; but here has everything fallen to confusion in the old way. Miss Oona, do you use your influence if you should see his lordship again.”

“But, Mr. Shaw, there is no likelihood that I shall see him again—and I have no influence.”

“Oh no, you’ll not tell me that,” said the factor, shaking his head, with a troubled smile. “Them that are like you, young and bonnie, have always influence, if they like to use it. And as for seeing him again, he will never leave the place, Miss Oona, without going at least to bid you good-bye.”

“Lord Erradeen may come to take leave of my mother,” said Oona, with dignity. “It is possible, though he did not say so; but even if he does, what can I do? I know nothing about his affairs, and I have no right to say anything to him—no right, more than any one else who has met him three times.”

“Which is just no person—except yourself, so far as I can learn,” the factor said.

“After all, when you come to think of it, it is only once I have seen him,” said Oona, “for the night on the loch was by chance, and the day on the coach I did not know him; so that after all I have only, so to speak, seen him once, and how could I venture to speak to him about business? Oh no, that is out of the question. Yes, mamma, I am quite ready. Mr. Shaw wishes, if Lord Erradeen comes to bid us good-bye that we should tell him—”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Forrester, briskly, coming forward, while Mysie arranged around her her heavy cloak. “I am sure I shall be very glad to give Lord Erradeen any message. He is a very nice young man, so far as I can judge; people think him very like my Ronald, Mr. Shaw. Perhaps it has not struck you? for likenesses are just one of the things that no two people see. But we are very good friends, him and me: he is just a nice simple gentlemanly young man—oh, very gentlemanly. He would never go away without saying good-bye. And I am sure I shall be delighted to give him any message. That will do, Mysie, that will do; do not suffocate me with that cloak. Dear me, you have scarcely left me a corner to breathe out of. But, Mr. Shaw, certainly—any message—”

“I am much obliged to you; but I will no doubt see Lord Erradeen myself, and I’ll not trouble a lady about business,” said the factor. He cast a look at Oona, in which with more reason than usual his eyes said, How could you do it? And the girl was a little compunctious. She laughed, but she felt guilty, as she took her mother’s arm to lead her to the boat. Mrs. Forrester had still a dozen things to say, and waved her hands to the departing groups on every side, while Shaw, half-angry, stood grimly watching the embarkation.

“There are the Kilhouran Campbells driving away, and I have not had a word with them: and there is old Jess, who always expects to be taken notice of: and the Ellermore folk, that I had no time to ask about Tom’s examination: and Mr. Cameron himself, that I never got a chance of telling how well I liked the sermon. Dear me, Oona, you are always in such a hurry! And take care now, take care; one would think you took me for your own age. But I am not wanting to be hoisted up either, as if I were too old to know how to step into a boat. Good-bye, Mr. Shaw, good-bye,” Mrs. Forrester added cheerfully, waving her hand as she got herself safely established in the bow, and Hamish, not half so picturesque as usual in his Sunday clothes, pushed off the boat. “Good-bye, and I’ll not forget your message.” She even kissed her hand, if not to him, to the parish in general, in the friendliness of her heart.

Mr. Shaw had very nearly shaken his clenched fist in reply. Old fool he called her in his heart, and even launched an expletive (silently) at Oona, “the heartless monkey,” who had betrayed him to her mother. He went back to the manse with Mr. Cameron, when all the little talks and consultations were over and everybody gone, and once more poured out the story of his perplexities.

“If I do not hear from him, I’ll have to proceed to extremities to-morrow, and it is like to break my heart,” he said. “For the poor folk have got into their heads that I will stand their friend whatever happens, and they are just keeping their minds easy.”

“But, man, they should pay their rents,” said Mr. Cameron, who, when all was said that could be said in his favour, was not a Loch Houran man.

“Rents! where would you have them get the siller? Their bit harvest has failed, and the cows are dry for want of fodder. If they have a penny laid by they must take it to live upon. They have enough ado to live, without thinking of rents.”

“But in that case, Shaw,” said the minister, gravely—“you must not blame me for saying so, it’s what all the wise men say—would they not do better to emigrate, and make a new start in a new country, where there’s plenty of room?”

“Oh, I know that argument very well,” said Shaw, with a snort of indignation. “I have it all at my fingers’ ends. I’ve preached it many a day. But what does it mean, when all’s done? It means just sheep or it means deer, and a pickle roofless houses standing here and there, and not a soul in the glen. There was a time even when I had just an enthusiasm for it—and I’ve sent away as many as most. But after all, they’re harmless, God-fearing folk; the land is the better of them, and none the worse. There’s John Paterson has had great losses with his sheep, and there’s yon English loon that had the shooting, and shot every feather on the place; both the one and the other will be far more out of his lordship’s pocket than my poor bit crofters. I laid all that before him; and he showed a manful spirit, that I will always say. No, minister, it was not to argue the case from its foundations that I came to you. I know very well what the economists say. I think they’re not more than half right, though they’re so cocksure. But if you’ll tell me what I should do—”

This, however, was what Mr. Cameron was not capable of. He said, after an interval, “I will go to-morrow and try if I can see him, if you think it would not be ill taken.”

“To-morrow is the last day,” said the factor gloomily: and after a little while he followed the example of all the others, and sent for his dog-cart and drove himself away. But a more anxious man did not traverse any road in Great Britain on that wintry afternoon: and bitter thoughts were in his heart of the capricious family, whose interests were in his hands, and to whom he was almost too faithful a servant. “Oh, the weird of the Me’vens!” said Mr. Shaw to himself, “if they were not so taken up with themselves and took more thought for other folk we would hear little of any weirds. I have no time for weirds. I have just my work to do and I do it. The Lord preserve us from idleness, and luxury, and occupation with ourselves!” Here the good man in his righteous wrath and trouble and disappointment was unjust, as many a good man has been before.

When Hamish had pushed off from the beach, and the little party were afloat, Oona repented her of that movement of mingled offence and espièglerie which had made her transfer the factor’s appeal from herself to her mother: and it was only then that Mrs. Forrester recollected how imperfect the communication was. “Bless me,” Mrs. Forrester said, “I forgot to ask after all what it was he wanted me to say. That was a daft like thing, to charge me with a message and never to tell me what it was. And how can I tell my Lord Erradeen! I suppose you could not put back, Hamish, to inquire?—but there’s nobody left yonder at the landing that I can see, so it would be little use. How could you let me do such a silly thing, Oona, my dear?”

“Most likely, mamma, we shall not see Lord Erradeen and so no harm will be done.”

“Not see Lord Erradeen! Do ye think then, Oona, that he has no manners, or that he’s ignorant how to behave? I wonder what has made ye take an ill-will at such a nice young man. There was nothing in him to justify it, that I could see. And to think I should have a message for him and not know what it is! How am I to give him the message when it was never given to me? I just never heard of such a dilemma. Something perhaps of importance, and me charged to give it, and not to know what it was!”

“Maybe, mem,” said Mysie from the other end of the boat, with that serene certainty that her mistress’s affairs were her own, which distinguishes an old Scotch family retainer, “maybe Miss Oona will ken.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose I know,” said Oona, reluctantly. “It is something about the cotters at the Truach-Glas, who will be turned out to-morrow unless Lord Erradeen interferes; but why should we be charged with that? We are very unlikely to see Lord Erradeen, and to-morrow is the day.”

This piece of information caused a great excitement in the little party. The cotters to be turned out!

“But no, no, that was just to frighten you. He will never do it,” said Mrs. Forrester, putting on a smile to reassure herself after a great flutter and outcry. “No, no; it must just have been to give us all a fright. John Shaw is a very decent man. I knew his father perfectly well, who was the minister at Rannoch, and a very good preacher. No, no, Oona, my dear—he could never do it; and yon fine lad that is so like my Ronald (though you will not see it) would never do it. You need not look so pale. It is just his way of joking with you. Many a man thinks it pleasant to tell a story like that to a lady just to hear what she says.”

“Eh, but it’s ill joking with poor folks’ lives,” cried Mysie, craning over Hamish’s shoulder to hear every word.

“It’s none joking,” said Hamish, gruffly, between the sweep of his oars.

“It’s none joking, say ye? Na, it’s grim earnest, or I’m sair mistaken,” said the woman. “Eh, Miss Oona, but I would gang round the loch on my bare feet, Sabbath though it be, rather than no give a message like yon.”

“How can we do it?” cried Oona; “how are we to see Lord Erradeen? I am sure he will not come to call; and even if he did come to-morrow in the afternoon it would be too late.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Forrester, “we will keep a look out in the morning. Hamish will just be fishing at the point, and hail him as soon as he sees him. For it was in the morning he came before.”

“Oh, mem!” cried Mysie, “but would you wait for that? It’s ill to lippen to a young man’s fancy. He might be late of getting up (they’re mostly lazy in the morning), or he might be writing his letters, or he might be seeing to his guns, or there’s just a hundred things he might be doing. What would ye say if, may-be, Miss Oona was to write one of her bonnie little notties on that awfu’ bonnie paper, with her name upon’t, and tell him ye wanted to see him at ten o’clock or eleven o’clock, or whatever time you please?”

“Or we might go over to-night in the boat,” said Hamish, laconically.

Mrs. Forrester was used to take much counsel. She turned from one to the other with uncertain looks. “But, Oona,” she said, “you are saying nothing! and you are generally the foremost. If it is not just nonsense and a joke of John Shaw’s—”

“I think,” said Oona, “that Mr. Shaw will surely find some other way; but it was no joke, mother. Who would joke on such a subject? He said if Lord Erradeen called we were to use our influence.”

“That would I,” said Mrs. Forrester, “use my influence. I would just tell him, You must not do it. Bless me, a young man new in the country to take a step like that and put every person against him! No, no, it is not possible: but a lady,” she added, bridling a little with her smile of innocent vanity, “a lady may say anything—she may say things that another person cannot. I would just tell him, You must not do it! and that would be all that would be needed. But bless me, Oona, how are we to use our influence unless we can see him?—and I cannot see how we are to get at him.”

“Oh, mem!” cried Mysie, impeding Hamish’s oars as she stretched over his shoulder, “just one of Miss Oona’s little notties!”

But this was a step that required much reflection, and at which the anxious mother shook her head.

CHAPTER XV

It had rained all night, and the morning was wet and cold; the water dull like lead, the sky a mass of clouds; all the bare branches of the trees dropping limp in the humid air. Mrs. Forrester, on further thought, had not permitted Oona to write even the smallest of her “bit notties” to Lord Erradeen; for, though she lived on an isle in Loch Houran, this lady flattered herself that she knew the world. She indited a little epistle of her own, in which she begged him to come and see her upon what she might call a matter of business—a thing that concerned his own affairs. This was carried by Hamish, but it received no reply. Lord Erradeen was out. Where could he be out on a Sabbath day at night, in a place where there were no dinner parties, nor any club, nor the temptations of a town, but just a lonely country place? Nor was there any answer in the morning, which was more wonderful still. It was ill-bred, Mrs. Forrester thought, and she was more than ever glad that her daughter had not been involved in the matter. But Hamish had information which was not communicated to the drawing-room, and over which Mysie and he laid their heads together in the kitchen. The poor young gentleman was off his head altogether, the servants said. The door was just left open, and he came in, nobody knew when. He could not bear that anybody should say a word to him. There had been thoughts among them of sending for his mother, and old Symington showed to Hamish a telegram prepared for Mr. Milnathort, acquainting him with the state of affairs, which he had not yet ventured to send—“For he will come to himself soon or syne,” the old man said; “it’s just the weird of the Me’vens that is upon him.” Symington was indifferent to the fate of the poor crofters. He said “the factor will ken what to do.” He was not a Loch Houran man.

On the Monday, however, the feeling of all the little population on the isle ran very high. The wet morning, the leaden loch, the low-lying clouds oppressed the mental atmosphere, and the thought of the poor people turned out of their houses in the rain, increased the misery of the situation in a way scarcely to be expected in the west, where it is supposed to rain for ever. At eleven o’clock Oona appeared in her thickest ulster and her strongest boots.

“I am going up to see old Jenny,” she said, with a little air of determination.

“My dear, you will be just wet through; and are you sure your boots are thick enough? You will come back to me with a heavy cold, and then what shall we all do? But take some tea and sugar in your basket, Oona,” said her mother. She went with the girl to the door in spite of these half-objections, which did not mean anything. “And a bottle of my ginger cordial might not be amiss—they all like it, poor bodies! And, Oona, see, my dear, here are two pound notes. It’s all I have of change, and it’s more than I can afford; but if it comes to the worst—But surely, surely John Shaw, that is a very decent man, and comes of a good family, will have found the means to do something!”

The kind lady stood at the door indifferent to the wet which every breath of air shook from the glistening branches. It had ceased to rain, and in the west there was a pale clearness, which made the leaden loch more chilly still, yet was a sign of amelioration. Mrs. Forrester wrung her hands, and cast one look at the glistening woods of Auchnasheen, and another at the dark mass, on the edge of the water, of Kinloch Houran. She did not know whether to be angry with Lord Erradeen for being so ill-bred, or to compassionate him for the eclipse which he had sustained. But, after all, he was a very secondary object in her mind in comparison with Oona, whose course she watched in the boat, drawing a long line across the leaden surface of the water. She was just like the dove out of the ark, Mrs. Forrester thought.

The little hamlet of Truach-Glas was at some distance from the loch. Oona walked briskly along the coach road for two miles or thereabouts, then turned up to the left on a road which narrowed as it ascended till it became little more than a cart track, with a footway at the side. In the broader valley below a substantial farmhouse, with a few outlying cottages, was the only point of habitation, and on either side of the road a few cultivated fields, chiefly of turnips and potatoes, were all that broke the stretches of pasture, extending to the left as high as grass would grow, up the dark slopes of the hills. But the smaller glen on the right had a more varied and lively appearance, and was broken into small fields bearing signs of cultivation tolerably high up, some of them still yellow with the stubble of the late harvest, the poor little crop of oats or barley which never hoped to ripen before October, if then. A mountain stream, which was scarcely a thread of water in the summer, now leaped fiercely enough, turbid and swollen, from rock to rock in its rapid descent. The houses clustered on a little tableland at some height above the road, where a few gnarled hawthorns, rowans, and birches were growing. They were poor enough to have disgusted any social reformer, or political economist; grey growths of rough stones, which might have come together by chance, so little shape was there in the bulging walls. Only a few of them had even the rough chimney at one end wattled with ropes of straw, which showed an advanced civilisation. The others had nothing but the hole in the roof, which is the first and homeliest expedient of primitive ventilation. It might have been reasonably asked what charm these hovels could have to any one to make them worth struggling for. But reason is not lord of all.

There was no appearance of excitement about the place when Oona, walking quickly, and a little out of breath, reached the foremost houses. The men and boys were out about their work, up the hill, or down the water, in the occupations of the day; and indeed there were but few men, at any time, about the place. Three out of the half-dozen houses were tenanted by “widow women,” one with boys who cultivated her little holding, one who kept going with the assistance of a hired lad, while the third lived upon her cow, which the neighbours helped her to take care of. The chief house of the community, and the only one which bore something of a comfortable aspect, was that of Duncan Fraser, who had the largest allotment of land, and who, though he had fallen back so far with his rent as to put himself in the power of the law, was one of the class which as peasant proprietors are thought to be the strength of France. If the land had been his own he would have found existence very possible under the hard and stern conditions which were natural to him, and probably would have brought up for the Church, Robbie his eldest boy, who had got all the parish school could give him, and was still dreaming, as he cut the peats or hoed the potatoes, of Glasgow College and the world. Of the other two houses, one was occupied by an old pair whose children were out in the world, and who managed, by the contributions of distant sons and daughters, to pay their rent. The last was in the possession of a “weirdless” wight, who loved whisky better than home or holding, and whose wife and children toiled through as best they could the labour of their few fields.

There were about twenty children in the six houses, all ruddy, weatherbeaten, flaxen-haired, the girls tied up about their shoulders in little tartan shawls, and very bare about their legs; the boys in every kind of quaint garments, little bags of trousers, cobbled out of bigger garments by workwomen more frugal than artistic. The rent had failed, for how was money to be had on these levels? but the porridge had never altogether failed. A few little ones were playing “about the doors” in a happy superiority to all prejudices on the subject of mud and puddles. One woman was washing her clothes at her open door. Old Jenny, whom Oona had come to see, was out upon her doorstep, gazing down the glen to watch the footsteps of her precious “coo,” which a lass of ten with streaming hair was leading out to get a mouthful of wet grass. Jenny’s mind was always in a flutter lest something should happen to the cow.

“Ye would pass her by upon the road, Miss Oona,” the old woman said, “and how would ye think she was looking? To get meat to her, it’s just a’ my thought; but I canna think she will be none the worse for a bit mouthfu’ on the hill.”

“But, Jenny, have you nothing to think of but the cow? It will not be true then, that the time of grace is over, and that the sheriff’s officers are coming to turn you all out?”

“The sheriff’s officers!” cried Jenny. She took the edge of her apron in her hand and drew the hem slowly through her fingers, which was a sign of perplexity: but yet she was quite composed. “Na, na, Miss Oona, they’ll never turn us out. What wad I be thinking about but the coo? She’s my breadwinner and a’ my family. Hoots no, they’ll never turn us out.”

“But Mr. Shaw was in great trouble yesterday. He said this was the last day—”

“I never fash’d my thoom about it,” said Jenny. “The last day! It’s maybe the last, or the first, I would never be taking no notice. For the factor, he’s our great friend, and he would not be letting them do it. No, no; it would but be his jokes,” the old woman said.

Was it his jokes? This was the second time the idea had been presented to her; but Oona remembered the factor’s serious face.

“You all seem very quiet here,” she said; “not as if any trouble was coming. But has there not been trouble, Jenny, about your rent or something?”

“Muckle trouble,” said Jenny; “they were to have taken the coo. What would have become of me if they had ta’en the coo? Duncan, they have ta’en his, puir lad. To see it go down the brae was enough to break your heart. But John Shaw he’s a kind man; he would not be letting them meddle with us. He just said ‘It’s a lone woman; my lord can do without it better than the old wife can do without it,’ he said. He’s a kind man, and so my bonnie beast was saved. I was wae for Duncan; but still, Miss Oona, things is no desperate so lang as you keep safe your ain coo.”

“That is true,” said Oona with a little laugh. There must, she thought, be some mistake, or else Mr. Shaw had found Lord Erradeen, and without the help of any influence had moved him to pity the cotters. Under this consolation she got out her tea and sugar, and other trifles which had been put into the basket. It was a basket that was well known in the neighbourhood, and had conveyed many a little dainty in time of need. Jenny was grateful for the little packets of tea and sugar which she took more or less as a right, but looked with a curious eye at the “ginger cordial” for which Mrs. Forrester was famous. It was not a wicked thing like whisky, no, no: but it warmed ye on a cold day. Jenny would not have objected to a drop. While she eyed it there became audible far off voices down the glen, and sounds as of several people approaching, sounds very unusual in this remote corner of the world. Jenny forgot the ginger cordial and Oona ran to the door to see what it was, and the woman who had been washing paused in her work, and old Nancy Robertson, she whose rent was paid, and who had no need to fear any sheriff’s officers, came out to her door. Even the children stopped in their game.

The voices were still far off, down upon the road, upon which there was a group of men, scarcely distinguishable at this distance. Simon Fraser’s wife, she who had been washing, called out that it was Duncan talking to the factor; but who were those other men? A sense of approaching trouble came upon the women. Nelly Fraser wiped the soapsuds from her arms, and wrung her hands still fresh from her tub. She was always prepared for evil, as is natural to a woman with a “weirdless” husband. Old Jenny, for her part, thought at once of the coo. She flew, as well as her old legs would carry her, to the nearest knoll, and shrieked to the fair-haired little lass who was slowly following that cherished animal to bring Brockie back. “Bring her back, ye silly thing. Will ye no be seeing—but I mauna say that,” she added in an undertone. “Bring back the coo! Bring her back! Jessie, my lamb, bring back the coo.” What with old Jenny shrieking, and the voices in the distance, and something magnetic and charged with disorder in the air, people began to appear from all the houses. One of the widow’s sons, a red and hairy lad, came running in, in his heavy boots, from the field where he was working. Duncan Fraser’s daughter set down a basket of peat which she was carrying in, and called her mother to the door. “There’s my father with the factor and twa-three strange men,” said the girl, “and oh, what will they be wanting here?” Thus the women and children looked on with growing terror, helpless before the approach of fate, as they might have done two centuries before, when the invaders were rapine and murder, instead of calm authority and law.

When Oona made her appearance half an hour before, everything had been unquestioning tranquillity and peace. Now, without a word said, all was alarm. The poor people did not know what was going to happen, but they felt that something was going to happen. They had been living on a volcano, easily, quietly, without thinking much of it. But now the fire was about to blaze forth. Through the minds of those that were mothers there ran a calculation as swift as light. “What will we do with the bairns? what will we do with Granny? and the bits of plenishing?” they said to each other. The younger ones were half pleased with the excitement, not knowing what it was. Meantime Duncan and Mr. Shaw came together up the road, the poor man arguing with great animation and earnestness, the factor listening with a troubled countenance and sometimes shaking his head. Behind them followed the servants of the law, those uncomfortable officials to whom the odium of their occupation clings, though it is no fault of theirs.

“No, Mr. Shaw, we canna pay. You know that as well as I do; but oh, sir, give us a little time. Would you turn the weans out on the hill and the auld folk? What would I care if it was just to me? But think upon the wake creatures—my auld mother that is eighty, and the bairns. If my lord will not let us off there’s some of the other gentry that are kind and will lend us a helping hand. Oh, give us time! My lord that is young and so well off, he canna surely understand. What is it to him? and to us it’s life and death.”

“Duncan, my man,” said the factor, “you are just breaking my heart. I know all that as well as you; but what can I do? It is the last day, and we have to act or we just make fools of ourselves. My lord might have stopped it, but he has not seen fit. For God’s sake say no more for I cannot do it. Ye just break my heart!”

By this time the women were within hearing, and stood listening with wistful faces, turning from one to another. When he paused they struck in together, moving towards him eagerly.

“Oh, Mr. Shaw, you’ve always been our friend,” cried Duncan’s wife; “you canna mean that you’ve come to turn us out to the hill, with all the little ones and granny?”

“Oh, sir!” cried the other, “have pity upon me that has nae prop nor help but just a weirdless man.”

“Me, I have nae man ava, but just thae hands to travail for my bairns,” said a third.

And then there came a shriller tone of indignation. “The young lord, he’ll just get a curse—he’ll get no blessing.”

The factor made a deprecating gesture with his hands “I can do nothing, I can do nothing,” he said. “Take your bairns down the glen to my housekeeper Marg’ret; take them down to the town, the rest of ye—they shall not want. Whatever I can do, I’ll do. But for God’s sake do not stop us with your wailin’, for it has to be done; it is no fault of mine.”

This appeal touched one of the sufferers at least with a movement of fierce irony. Duncan uttered a short, sharp laugh, which rung strangely into the air, so full of passion. “Haud your tongues, women,” he cried, “and no vex Mr. Shaw; you’re hurting his feelings,” with a tone impossible to describe, in which wrath and misery and keen indignation and ridicule contended for the mastery. He was the only man in the desolate group. He drew a few steps apart and folded his arms upon his breast, retiring in that pride of despair which a cotter ruined may experience no less than a king vanquished, from further struggle or complaint. The women neither understood nor noted the finer meaning in his words. They had but one thought, the misery before them. They crowded round the factor, all speaking in one breath, grasping his arm to call his attention—almost mobbing him with distracted appeals, with the wild natural eloquence of their waving hands and straining eyes.

Meanwhile there were other elements, some comic enough, in the curious circle round. Old Nancy Robertson had not left the doorstep where she stood keenly watching in the composure and superiority of one whom nobody could touch, who had paid her rent, and was above the world. It was scarcely possible not to be a little complacent in the superiority of her circumstances, or to refrain from criticising the unseemly excitement of the others. She had her spectacles on her nose, and her head projected, and she thought they were all like play-actors with their gesticulations and cries. “I wouldna be skreighin’ like that—no me,” she said. Round about the fringe of children gaped and gazed, some stolid with amaze, some pale in a vague sympathetic misery, none of them quite without a certain enjoyment of this extraordinary episode and stimulation of excitement. And old Jenny, awakened to no alarm about her cottage, still stood upon her knoll, with her whole soul intent upon the fortunes of Brockie, who had met the sheriff’s officers in full career. The attempts of her little guardian to turn the cow back from her whiff of pasture had only succeeded in calling the special attention of these invaders. They stopped short, and one of them taking a piece of rope from his pocket secured it round the neck of the frightened animal, who stood something like a woman in a similar case, looking to left and to right, not knowing in her confusion which way to bolt, though the intention was evident in her terrified eyes. At this Jenny gave a shriek of mingled rage and terror, which in its superior force and concentrated passion rang through all the other sounds, silencing for the moment even the wailing of the women—and flung herself into the midst of the struggle. She was a dry, little, withered old woman, nimble and light, and ran like a hare or rabbit down the rough road without a pause or stumble.

“My coo!” cried Jenny, “ye sallna tak’ her; ye sall tak’ my heart’s blood first. My coo! Miss Oona, Miss Oona, will you just be standing by, like nothing at all, and letting them tak’ my coo? G’way, ye robbers,” Jenny shrieked, flinging one arm about the neck of the alarmed brute, while she pushed away its captor with the other. Her arm was still vigorous, though she was old. The man stumbled and lost his hold of the rope; the cow, liberated, tossed head and tail into the air and flung off to the hill-side like a deer. The shock threw Jenny down and stunned her. This made a little diversion in the dismal scene above.

And now it became evident that whatever was to be done must be done, expression being exhausted on the part of the victims, who stood about in a blank of overwrought feeling awaiting the next move. The factor made a sign with his hand, and sat down upon a ledge of rock opposite the cottages, his shaggy eyebrows curved over his eyes, his hat drawn down upon his brows. A sort of silent shock ran through the beholders when the men entered the first cottage: and when they came out again carrying a piece of furniture, there was a cry, half savage in its wild impotence. Unfortunately the first thing that came to their hands was a large wooden cradle, in which lay a baby tucked up under the big patchwork quilt, which bulged out on every side. As it was set down upon its large rockers on the uneven ground the little sleeper gave a startled wail; and then it was that that cry, sharp and keen, dividing the silence like a knife, burst from the breasts of the watching people. It was Nelly Fraser’s baby, who had the “weirdless” man. She stood with her bare arms wrapped in her apron beside her abandoned washing-tub, and gazed as if incapable of movement, with a face like ashes, at the destruction of her home. But while the mother stood stupefied, a little thing of three or four, which had been clinging to her skirts in keen baby wonder and attention, when she saw the cradle carried forth into the open air immediately took the place of guardian. Such an incident had never happened in all little Jeanie’s experience before. She trotted forth, abandoning all alarm, to the road in which it was set down, and, turning a little smiling face of perfect content to the world, began to rock it softly with little coos of soothing and rills of infant laughter. The sombre background round, with all its human misery, made a dismal foil to this image of innocent satisfaction. The factor jumped up and turned his back upon the scene altogether, biting his nails and lowering his brows in a fury of wretchedness. And at last the poor women began to stir and take whispered counsel with each other. There was no longer room for either hope or entreaty; the only thing to be thought of now was what to do.

The next cottage was that of Nancy Robertson, who still held her position on her doorstep, watching the proceedings with a keen but somewhat complacent curiosity. They gave her an intense sense of self-importance and superiority, though she was not without feeling. When, however, the men, who had warmed to their work, and knew no distinction between one and another, approached her, a sudden panic and fury seized the old woman. She defied them shrilly, flying at the throat of the foremost with her old hands. The wretchedness of the poor women whose children were being thrust out shelterless did not reach the wild height of passion of her whose lawful property was threatened.

“Villains!” she shrieked, “will ye break into my hoose? What right have ye in my hoose? I’ll brack your banes afore you put a fit into my hoose.”

“Whist, whist, wife,” said one of the men; “let go now, or I’ll have to hurt ye. You canna stop us. You’ll just do harm to yourself.”

“John Shaw, John Shaw,” shrieked Nancy, “do ye see what they’re doing? and me that has paid my rent, no like those weirdless fuils. Do ye hear me speak? I’ve paid my rent to the last farden. I’ve discharged a’ my debts, as I wuss ithers would discharge their debts to me.” Her voice calmed down as the factor turned and made an impatient sign to the men. “Ye see,” said Nancy, making a little address to her community, “what it is to have right on your side. They canna meddle with me. My man’s auld, and I have everything to do for mysel’, but they canna lay a hand on me.”

“Oh, hold your tongue, woman,” cried Duncan Fraser. “If ye canna help us, ye can let us be.”

“And wha says that I canna help ye? I am just saying—I pay my debts as I wuss that ithers should pay their debts to me: and that’s Scripter,” said Nancy; but she added, “I never said I would shut my door to a neebor: ye can bring in Granny here; I’m no just a heart of stane like that young lord.”

The women had not waited to witness Nancy’s difficulties. Most of them had gone into their houses, to take a shawl from a cupboard, a book from the “drawers-head.” One or two appeared with the family Bible under their arm. “The Lord kens where we are to go, but we must go somewhere,” they said. There was a little group about Oona and her two pound notes. The moment of excitement was over, and they had now nothing to do but to meet their fate. The factor paced back and forward on the path, going out of his way to avoid here and there a pile of poor furniture. And the work of devastation went on rapidly: it is so easy, alas, to dismantle a cottage with its but and ben. Duncan Fraser did not move till two or three had been emptied. When he went in to bring out his mother, there was a renewed sensation among the worn-out people who were scarcely capable of any further excitement. Granny was Granny to all the glen. She was the only survivor of her generation. They had all known her from their earliest days. They stood worn and sorrow-stricken, huddled together in a little crowd, waiting before they took any further steps, till Granny should come.

But it was not Granny who came first. Some one, a stranger even to the children, whose attention was so easily attracted by any novelty, appeared suddenly round a corner of the hill. He paused at the unexpected sight of the little cluster of habitations; for the country was unknown to him; and for a moment appeared as if he would have turned back. But the human excitement about this scene caught him in spite of himself. He gazed at it for a moment trying to divine what was happening, then came on slowly with hesitating steps. He had been out all the morning, as he had been for some days before. His being had sustained a great moral shock, and for the moment all his holds on life seemed gone. This was the first thing that had moved him even to the faintest curiosity. He came forward slowly, observed by no one. The factor was still standing with his back to the woeful scene, gloomily contemplating the distant country, while Oona moved about in the midst of the women, joining in their consultations, and doing her best to rouse poor Nelly, who sat by her baby’s cradle like a creature dazed and capable of no further thought. There was, therefore, no one to recognise Lord Erradeen as he came slowly into the midst of this tragedy, not knowing what it was. The officials had recovered their spirits as they got on with their work. Natural pity and sympathetic feeling had yielded to the carelessness of habit and common occupation. They had begun to make rough jokes with each other, to fling the cotters’ possessions carelessly out of the windows, to give each other catches with a “Hi! tak’ this,” flinging the things about. Lord Erradeen had crossed the little bridge, and was in the midst of the action of the painful drama, when they brought out from Duncan’s house his old mother’s chair. It was cushioned with pillows, one of which tumbled out into the mud and was roughly caught up by the rough fellow who carried it, and flung at his companion’s head, with a laugh and jest. It was he who first caught sight of the stranger, a new figure among the disconsolate crowd. He gave a whistle to his comrade to announce a novelty, and rattled down hastily out of his hands the heavy chair. Walter was wholly roused by the strangeness of this pantomime. It brought back something to his mind, though he could scarcely tell what. He stepped in front of the man and asked, “What does this mean?” in a hasty and somewhat imperious tone; but his eyes answered his question almost before he had asked it. Nelly Fraser with her pile of furniture, her helpless group of children, her stupefied air of misery, was full in the foreground, and the ground was strewed with other piles. Half of the houses in the hamlet were already gutted. One poor woman was lifting her bedding out of the wet, putting it up upon chairs; another stood regarding hers helplessly, as if without energy to attempt even so small a salvage.

“What is the meaning of all this?” the young man cried imperiously again.

His voice woke something in the deep air of despondency and misery which had not been there before. It caught the ear of Oona, who pushed the women aside in sudden excitement. It roused—was it a faint thrill of hope in the general despair? Last of all it reached the factor, who, standing gloomily apart, had closed himself up in angry wretchedness against any appeal. He did not hear this, but somehow felt it in the air, and turned round, not knowing what the new thing was. When he saw Lord Erradeen, Shaw was seized as with a sudden frenzy. He turned round upon him sharply, with an air which was almost threatening.

“What does it mean?” he said. “It means your will and pleasure, Lord Erradeen, not mine. God is my witness, no will of mine. You brute!” cried the factor, suddenly, “what are you doing? Stand out of the way, and let the honest woman pass. Get out of her way, I tell you, or I’ll send ye head foremost down the glen!”

This sudden outcry, which was a relief to the factor’s feelings, was addressed not to Walter, but to the man who, coming out again with a new armful, came rudely in the way of the old Granny, to whom all the glen looked up, and who was coming out with a look of bewilderment on her aged face, holding by her son’s arm. Granny comprehended vaguely, if at all, what was going on. She gave a momentary glance of suspicion at the fellow who pushed against her, then looked out with a faint smile at the two gentlemen standing in front of the door. Her startled mind recurred to its old instincts with but a faint perception of anything new.

“Sirs,” she said, in her feeble old voice, “I am distressed I canna ask ye in; but I’m feckless mysel, being a great age, and there’s some flitting going on, and my good-daughter she is out of the way.”

“Do you hear that, my lord?” cried Shaw; “the old wife is making her excuses for not asking you into a house you are turning her out of at the age of eighty-three. Oh, I am not minding if I give ye offence! I have had enough of it. Find another factor, Lord Erradeen. I would rather gather stones upon the fields than do again what I have done this day.”

Walter looked about like a man awakened from a dream. He said, almost with awe—

“Is this supposed to be done by me? I know nothing of it, nor the reason. What is the reason? I disown it altogether as any act of mine.”

“Oh, my lord,” cried Shaw, who was in a state of wild excitement, “there is the best of reasons. Rent—your lordship understands that—a little more money lest your coffers should not be full enough. And as for these poor bodies, they have so much to put up with, a little more does not matter. They have not a roof to their heads, but that’s nothing to your lordship. You can cover the hills with sheep, and they can—die—if they like,” cried the factor, avenging himself for all he had suffered. He turned away with a gesture of despair and fury. “I have done enough; I wash my hands of it,” he cried.

Walter cast around him a bewildered look. To his own consciousness he was a miserable and helpless man; but all the poor people about gazed at him, wistful, deprecating, as at a sort of unknown, unfriendly god, who had their lives in his hands. The officers perhaps thought it a good moment to show their zeal in the eyes of the young lord. They made a plunge into the house once more, and appeared again, one carrying Duncan’s bed, a great, slippery, unwieldy sack of chaff, another charged with the old, tall, eight-day clock, which he jerked along as if it had been a man hopping from one foot to another.

“We’ll soon be done, my lord,” the first said in an encouraging tone, “and then a’ the commotion will just die away.”

Lord Erradeen had been lost in a miserable dream. He woke up now at this keen touch of reality, and found himself in a position so abhorrent and antagonistic to all his former instincts and traditions, that his very being seemed to stand still in the horror of the moment. Then a sudden passionate energy filled all his veins. The voice in which he ordered the men back rang through the glen. He had flung himself upon one of them in half-frantic rage, before he was aware what he was doing, knocking down the astounded official, who got up rubbing his elbow, and declaring it was no fault of his; while Walter glared at him, not knowing what he did. But after this encounter with flesh and blood Lord Erradeen recovered his reason. He turned round quickly, and with his own hands carried back Granny’s chair. The very weight of it, the touch of something to do, brought life into his veins. He took the old woman from her son’s arm, and led her in reverently, supporting her upon his own: then going out again without a word, addressed himself to the manual work of restoration. From the moment of his first movement, the whole scene changed in the twinkling of an eye. The despairing apathy of the people gave way to a tumult of haste and activity. Duncan Fraser was the first to move.

“My lord!” he cried; “if you are my lord,” his stern composure yielding to tremulous excitement, “if it’s your good will and pleasure to let us bide, that’s all we want. Take no trouble for us; take no thought for that.” Walter gave him a look, almost without intelligence. He had not a word to say. He was not sufficiently master of himself to express the sorrow and anger and humiliation in his awakened soul; but he could carry back the poor people’s things, which was a language of nature not to be misunderstood. He went on taking no heed of the eager assistance offered on all sides. “I’ll do it, my lord. Oh, dinna you trouble. It’s ower much kindness. Ye’ll fyle your fingers; ye’ll wear out your strength. We’ll do it; we’ll do it,” the people cried.

The cottagers’ doors flew open as by magic; they worked all together, the women, the children, and Duncan Fraser, and Lord Erradeen. Even Oona joined, carrying the little children back to their homes, picking up here a bird in a cage, there a little stunted geranium or musk in a pot. In half an hour it seemed, or less, the whole was done, and when the clouds that had been lowering on the hills and darkening the atmosphere broke and began to pour down torrents of rain upon the glen, the little community was housed and comfortable once more.

While this excitement lasted Walter was once more the healthful and vigorous young man who had travelled with Oona on the coach, and laughed with her on the Isle. But when the storm was over, and they walked together towards the loch, she became aware of the difference in him. He was very serious, pale, almost haggard now that the excitement was over. His smiling lips smiled no longer, there was in his eyes, once so light-hearted and careless, a sort of hunted, anxious look.

“No,” he said, in answer to her questions, “I have not been ill; I have had—family matters to occupy me: and of this I knew nothing. Letters? I had none, I received nothing. I have been occupied, too much perhaps, with—family affairs.”

Upon this no comment could be made, but his changed looks made so great a claim upon her sympathy that Oona looked at him with eyes that were almost tender in their pity. He turned round suddenly and met her glance.

“You know,” he said, with a slight tremble in his voice, “that there are some things—they say in every family—a little hard to bear. But I have been too much absorbed—I was taken by surprise. It shall happen no more.” He held his head high, and looked round him as if to let some one else see the assurance he was giving her. “I promise you,” he added, in a tone that rang like a defiance, “it shall happen no more!” Then he added hurriedly with a slight swerve aside, and trembling in his voice, “Do you think I might come with you? Would Mrs. Forrester have me at the Isle?”

• END OF VOL. I •

CHAPTER XVI

When Walter seated himself beside Oona in the boat, and Hamish pushed off from the beach, there fell upon both these young people a sensation of quiet and relief for which one of them at least found it very difficult to account. It had turned out a very still afternoon. The heavy rains were over, the clouds broken up and dispersing, with a sort of sullen stillness, like a defeated army making off in dull haste, yet not without a stand here and there, behind the mountains. The loch was dark and still, all hushed after the sweeping blasts of rain, but black with the reflections of gloom from the sky. There was a sense of safety, of sudden quiet, of escape, in that sensation of pushing off, away from all passion and agitation upon this still sea of calm. Why Oona, who feared no one, who had no painful thoughts or associations to flee from, should have felt this she could not tell. The sense of interest in, and anxiety for, the young man by her side was altogether different. That was sympathetic and definable; but the sensation of relief was something more. She looked at him with a smile and sigh of ease as she gathered the strings of the rudder into her hands.

“I feel,” she said, “as if I were running away, and had got safe out of reach; though there is nobody pursuing me that I know of,” she added, with a faint laugh of satisfaction.

The wind blew the end of the white wrapper round her throat towards her companion, and he caught it as she had caught the rudder ropes.

“It is I that am pursued,” he said, “and have escaped. I have a feeling that I am safe here. The kind water, and the daylight, and you—but how should you feel it? It must have gone from my mind to yours.”

“The water does not look so very kind,” said Oona, “except that it separates us from the annoyances that are on land—when there are annoyances.”

She had never known any that were more than the troubles of a child before.

“There is this that makes it kind. If you were driven beyond bearing, a plunge down there and all would be over—”

“Lord Erradeen!”

“Oh, I don’t mean to try. I have no thought of trying; but look how peaceful, how deep, all liquid blackness! It might go down to the mystic centre of the earth for anything one knows.”

He leant over a little, looking down into those depths profound which were so still that the boat seemed to cut through a surface which had solidity; and in doing this put the boat out of trim, and elicited a growl from Hamish.

It seemed to Oona, too, as if there was something seductive in that profound liquid depth, concealing all that sought refuge there. She put out her hand and grasped his arm in the thrill of this thought.

“Oh, don’t look down,” she said. “I have heard of people being caught, in spite of themselves, by some charm in it.” The movement was quite involuntary and simple; but, on second thoughts, Oona drew away her hand, and blushed a little. “Besides, you put the boat out of trim,” she said.

“If I should ever be in deadly danger,” said Walter, with the seriousness which had been in his face all along, “will you put out your hand like that, without reflection, and save me?”

Oona tried to laugh again; but it was not easy; his seriousness gained upon her, in spite of herself.

“I think we are talking nonsense, and feeling nonsense; for it seems to me as if we had escaped from something. Now Hamish is pleased; the boat is trimmed. Don’t you think,” she said, with an effort to turn off graver subjects, “that it is a pity those scientific people who can do everything should not tunnel down through that centre of the earth you were speaking of, straight through to the other side of the world? Then we might be dropped through to Australia without any trouble. I have a brother there; indeed I have a brother in most places. Mamma and I might go and see Rob now and then, or he might come home for a dance, poor fellow; he was always very fond of dancing.”

Thus she managed to fill up the time till they reached the isle. It lay upon the surface of that great mirror, all fringed and feathered with its bare trees; the occasional colour in the roofs gleaming back again out of the water; a little natural fastness, safe and sure. As Oona was later in returning than had been expected, the little garrison of women in the isle was all astir and watching for her coming. Out of one of the upper windows there was the head of a young maid visible, gazing down the loch; and Mrs. Forrester, in her furred cloak, was standing in the porch, and Mysie half way down to the beach, moving from point to point of vision.

“They are all about but old Cookie,” said Oona. “It is a terrible business when I am late. They think everything that is dreadful must have happened, and that makes a delightful sensation when I get home safe and well. I am every day rescued from a watery grave, or saved from some dreadful accident on shore, in my mother’s imagination. She gives herself the misery of it, and then she has the pleasure of it,” cried the girl, with the amused cynicism of youth.

“But to-day you bring a real fugitive with you—an escaped—what shall I call myself?—escaped not from harm, but from doing harm—which is the most dangerous of the two.”

“You will never do harm to the poor folk,” said Oona, looking at him with kind eyes.

“Never, while I am in my senses, and know. I want you to promise me something before we land.”

“You must make haste, then, and ask; for there is Mysie ready with the boat-hook,” said Oona, a little alarmed.

“Promise me—if it ever occurs that harm is being done in my name, to make me know it. Oh, not a mere note sent to my house; I might never receive it like the last; but to make me know. See me, speak to me, think even:—and you will save me.”

“Oh, Lord Erradeen, you must not put such a responsibility on me. How can I, a girl that is only a country neighbour—”

“Promise me!” he said.

“Oh, Lord Erradeen, this is almost tyrannical. Yes, if I can—if I think anything is concealed from you. Here I am, Mysie, quite safe; and of course mamma has been making herself miserable. I have brought Lord Erradeen to luncheon,” Oona said.

“Eh, my lord, but we’re glad to see you,” said Mysie, with the gracious ease of hospitality. “They said you were going without saying good-bye, but I would never believe it. It is just his lordship, mem, as I said it was,” she called to Mrs. Forrester, who was hastening down the slope.

The mistress of the island came down tripping, with her elderly graces, waving her white delicate hands.

“Oh, Oona, my dear, but I’m thankful to see you, and nothing happened,” she cried; “and ye are very welcome, Lord Erradeen. I thought you would never go away without saying good-bye. Come away up to the house. It is late, late, for luncheon; but there will be some reason; and I never have any heart to take a meal by myself. Everything is ready: if it’s not all spoiled?” Mrs. Forrester added, turning round to Mysie, as she shook hands with the unexpected guest.

“Oh, no fear of that, mem,” said the factotum, “we’re well enough used to waiting in this house: an hour, half an hour, is just nothing. The trout is never put down to the fire till we see the boat; but I maun away and tell cook.”

“And you will get out some of the good claret,” Mrs. Forrester cried. “Come away—come away, Lord Erradeen. We have just been wondering what had become of you. It is quite unfriendly to be at Auchnasheen and not come over to see us. Oona, run, my dear, and take off your things. Lord Erradeen will take charge of me. I am fain of an arm when I can get one, up the brae. When the boys were at home I always got a good pull up. And where did you foregather, you two? I am glad Oona had the sense to bring you with her. And I hope the trout will not be spoiled,” she said with some anxiety. “Mysie is just too confident—far too confident. She is one that thinks nothing can go wrong on the isle.”

“That is my creed too,” said Walter with an awakening of his natural inclination to make himself agreeable, and yet a more serious meaning in the words.

“Oh fie!” said Mrs. Forrester, shaking her head, “to flatter a simple person like me! We have but little, very little to offer; the only thing in our favour is that it’s offered with real goodwill. And how do you like Auchnasheen? and are you just keeping it up as it was in the old lord’s time? and how is Mary Fleming, the housekeeper, that was always an ailing body?” These questions, with others of the same kind, answered the purpose of conversation as they ascended to the house—with little intervals between, for Mrs. Forrester was a little breathless though she did not care to say so and preferred to make pauses now and then to point out the variations of the landscape. “Though I know it so well, I never find it two days the same,” she said. None of these transparent little fictions, so innocent, so natural, were unknown to her friends, and the sight of them had a curiously strengthening and soothing effect upon Walter, to whom the gentle perseverance of those amiable foibles, so simple and evident, gave a sense of reality and nature which had begun to be wanting in his world. His heart grew lighter as he watched the “ways” of this simple woman, about whose guiles and pretences even there was no mystery at all, and whose little affectations somehow seemed to make her only more real. It gave him a momentary shock, however, when she turned round at her own door, and directed his attention to his old castle lying in lines of black and grey upon the glistening water. He drew her hastily within the porch.

“It gets colder and colder,” he said; “the wind goes through and through one. Don’t let me keep you out in the chilly air.”

“I think you must have caught a little cold,” said Mrs. Forrester, concerned, “for I do not find it so chilly for my part. To be sure, Loch Houran is never like your quiet landward places in England: we are used up here to all the changes. Oona will be waiting for us by this time; and I hope you are ready for your dinner, Lord Erradeen, for I am sure I am. I should say for your lunch: but when it comes to be so far on in the day as this, these short winter days, Oona and me, we just make it our dinner. Oh, there you are, my dear! Lord Erradeen will like to step into Ronald’s room and wash his hands, and then there will be nothing to wait for but the trout.”

When they were seated at the table, with the trout cooked to perfection as fish only is where it is caught, Mrs. Forrester pressing him to eat with old-fashioned anxiety, and even Mysie, who waited at table, adding affectionate importunities, Walter’s heart was touched with a sense of the innocence, the kindness, the gentle nature about him. He felt himself cared for like a child, regarded indeed as a sort of larger child to be indulged with every dainty they could think of, and yet in some ineffable way protected and guided too by the simple creatures round him. The mistress and the maid had little friendly controversies as to what was best for him.

“I thought some good sherry wine, mem, and him coming off the water, would be better than yon cauld clairet.”

“Well, perhaps you are right, Mysie; but the young men nowadays are all for claret,” Mrs. Forrester said.

“Just a wee bittie more of the fish, my lord,” said Mysie, in his ear.

“No, no, Mysie,” cried her mistress. “You know there are birds coming. Just take away the trout, it is a little cold, and there’s far more nourishment in the grouse.”

“To my mind, mem,” said Mysie, “there is nothing better than a Loch Houran trout.”

All this had the strangest effect upon Walter. To come into this simple house was like coming back to nature, and that life of childhood in which there are no skeletons or shadows. Even his mother had never been so sheltering, so safe, so real. Mrs. Methven had far more intellect and passion than Mrs. Forrester. It had been impossible to her to bear the failure of her ideal in her boy. Her very love had been full of pain and trouble to both. But this other mother was of a different fashion. Whatever her children did was good in her eyes; but she protected, fed, took care of, extended her soft wings over them as if they still were in the maternal nest. The innocence of it all moved Walter out of himself.

“Do you know,” he said at last, “what I have come from to your kind, sheltering house, Mrs. Forrester? Do you know what everybody, even your daughter, thought of me two hours ago?”

“I never thought any harm of you, Lord Erradeen,” said Oona, looking up hastily.

“Harm of him! Dear me, Oona, you are far, very far, from polite. And what was it they thought of you?” asked Mrs. Forrester. “Oona is so brusque, she just says what she thinks; but sure am I it was nothing but good.”

“They thought,” said Walter, with an excitement which grew upon him as he went on, “that I, who have been poor myself all my life, that never had any money or lands till a few weeks ago, that I was going to turn poor women and children out of their houses, out upon the world, out to the wet, cold mountain-side, without a shelter in sight. They thought I was capable of that. An old woman more than eighty, and a lot of little children! They thought I would turn them out! Oh, not the poor creatures themselves, but others; even Miss Oona. Is thy servant a dog—” cried the young man in a blaze of fiery agitation, the hot light of pain shining through the involuntary moisture in his eyes. “Somebody says that in the Bible, I know. Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?”

“Oh, my dear!” cried Mrs. Forrester, in her sympathy, forgetting all distinctions, and only remembering that he was very like her Ronald, and was in trouble, “nobody, nobody thought you would do that. Oh no, no, fie no! nobody had such a thought. If I could believe it of Oona I would not speak to her—I would—no, no, it was never believed. I, for one, I knew you would never do it. I saw it,” cried the kind lady, “in your eyes!”

Though Walter had no real confidence in the independent judgment which she asserted so unhesitatingly, yet he was consoled by the softness of the words, the assurance of the tone.

“I did not think such things ever happened in Scotland,” he said. “It is Ireland one thinks of: and that it should be supposed I would do it, has hurt me more than I can say—a stranger who had no one to stand up for me.”

“That was just the way of it,” said Mrs. Forrester, soothingly. “We think here that there is something strange in English ways. We never know how a thing will appear to them—that is how it was. But I said all through that it was impossible, and I just wrote to you last night (you would get my letter?) that you must not do it—for fear you might not have understood how it was.”

“But there is another side to it,” said Oona, “we must not forget, mother. Sometimes it is said, you know, that the poor folk can do no good where they are. We can all understand the shock of seeing them turned out of their houses: but then people say they cannot live there—that it would be better for themselves to be forced to go away.”

“That is true, Oona,” said her mother, facing round: “it is just a kind of starvation. When old Jenny went there first (she was in my nursery when I had one) there was just a perpetual craik about her rent. Her man was one of the Frasers, and a well-doing, decent man, till he died, poor fellow, as we must all do: and since that I have heard little about it, for I think it was just out of her power to pay anything. Duncan Fraser, he is a very decent man, but I remember the minister was saying if he was in Glasgow or Paisley, or some of those places, it would be better for his family. I recollect that the minister did say that.”

“So, Lord Erradeen,” said Oona, “without being cruel you might: but I—we all like you ten times better that you couldn’t,” said the girl impulsively.

“Ay, that we do,” said her mother, ready to back up every side, “that we do. But I am not surprised. I knew that there was nothing unkind either in your heart or your face.”

“There was no time,” said Walter, “to think what was wise, or take into consideration, like a benevolent tyrant, what could be done for their good, without consulting their inclinations: which is what you mean, Miss Forrester—”

Oona smiled, with a little heightened colour. It was the commencement of one of those pretty duels which mean mutual attraction rather than opposition. She said, with a little nod of her head, “Go on.”

“But one thing is certain,” he said, with the almost solemn air which returned to his face at intervals, “that I will rather want shelter myself than turn another man out of his house, on any argument—far less helpless women and children. Did you laugh? I see no laughing in it,” the young man cried.

“Me—laugh!” cried Mrs. Forrester, though it was at Oona he had looked. “If I laughed it was for pleasure. Between ourselves, Lord Erradeen (though they might perhaps be better away), turning out a poor family out of their house is a thing I could never away with. Oona may say what she likes—but it is not Christian. Oh, it’s not Christian! I would have taken them in, as many as Mysie could have made room for: but I never could say that it was according to Christianity. Oh no, Lord Erradeen! I would have to be poor indeed—poor, poor indeed—before I would turn these poor folk away.”

“There would be no blessing upon the rest,” said Mysie, behind her mistress’s chair.

“That is settled then,” said Walter, whose heart grew lighter and lighter. “But that is not all. Tell me, if I were a benevolent despot, Miss Forrester—you who know everything—what should I do now?—for it cannot stop there.”

“We’ll go into the drawing-room before you settle that,” said Mrs. Forrester. “Dear me, it is quite dark; we will want the candles, Mysie. There is so little light in the afternoon at this time of the year. I am sorry there is no gentleman to keep you in countenance with your glass of wine, Lord Erradeen. If you had been here when my Ronald or Jamie, or even Rob, was at home! But they are all away, one to every airt, and the house is very lonely without any boys in it. Are you coming with us? Well, perhaps it will be more cheerful. Dear me, Mysie, you have left that door open, and we will just be perished with the cold.”

“Let me shut it,” Walter said.

He turned to the open door with a pleasant sense of taking the place of one of those absent boys whom the mother regretted so cheerfully, and with a lighter heart than he could have thought possible a few hours ago. But at the first glance he stood arrested with a sudden chill that seemed to paralyse him. It was almost dark upon the loch; the water gleamed with that polished blackness through which the boat had cut as through something solid; but blacker now, shining like jet against the less responsive gloom of the land and hills. The framework of the doorway made a picture of this night scene, with the more definite darkness of the old castle in the centre, rising opaque against the softer distance. Seeing that Lord Erradeen made a sudden pause, Oona went towards him, and looked out too at the familiar scene. She had seen it often before, but it had never made the same impression upon her. “Oh, the light—the light again!” she said, with a cry of surprise. It came up in a pale glow as she was looking, faint, but throwing up in distinct revelation the mass of the old tower against the background. Walter, who seemed to have forgotten what he had come to do, was roused by her voice, and with nervous haste and almost violence shut the door. There was not much light in the little hall, and they could see each other’s faces but imperfectly, but his had already lost the soothed and relieved expression which had replaced its agitated aspect. He scarcely seemed to see her as he turned round, took up his hat from the table, and went on confusedly before her, forgetting ordinary decorums, to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Forrester had already made herself comfortable in her usual chair, with the intention of for a few moments “just closing her eyes.” Mysie had not brought the lights, and he stood before the surprised lady like a dark shadow, with his hat in his hand.

“I have come to take my leave,” he said; “to thank you, and say good-bye.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Forrester, rousing herself, “you are in a great hurry, Lord Erradeen. Why should you be so anxious to go? You have nobody at Auchnasheen to be kept waiting. Toots! you must just wait now you are here for a cup of tea at least, and it will take Hamish a certain time to get out the boat.”

“I must go,” he said, with a voice that trembled: then suddenly threw down his hat on the floor and himself upon a low chair close to her, “unless,” he said, “unless—you will complete your charity by taking me in for the night. Will you keep me for the night? Put me in any corner. I don’t mind—only let me stay.”

“Let you stay!” cried the lady of the isle. She sprang up as lightly as a girl at this appeal, with no further idea of “closing her eyes.” “Will I keep you for the night? But that I will, and with all my heart! There is Ronald’s room, where you washed your hands, just all ready, nothing to do but put on the sheets, and plenty of his things in it in case you should want anything. Let you stay!” she cried, with delighted excitement, “it is what I would have asked and pressed you to do. And then we can do something for your cold, for I am sure you have a cold; and Oona and you can settle all that business about the benevolent tyrant, which is more than my poor head is equal to. Oona, my dear, will you tell Mysie?—where is Mysie? I will just speak to her myself. We must get him better of his cold, or what will his mother think? He must have some more blankets, or an eiderdown, which will be lighter, and a good fire.”

If her worst enemy had asked hospitality from Mrs. Forrester, she would have forgotten all her wrongs and opened her doors wide; how much more when it was a friend and neighbour! The demand itself was a kindness. She tripped away without a thought of her disturbed nap, and was soon heard in colloquy with Mysie, who shared all her sentiments in this respect. Oona, who stood silent by the fire, with a sense that she was somehow in the secret, though she did not know what it was, had a less easy part. The pang of sympathy she felt was almost intolerable, but she did not know how to express it. The quiet room seemed all at once to have become the scene of a struggle, violent though invisible, which she followed dumbly with an instinct beyond her power to understand. After an interval of silence which seemed endless, he spoke.

“It must be intended that we should have something to do with each other,” he said, suddenly. “When you are there I feel stronger. If your mother had refused me, I should have been lost.”

“It was impossible that she should have refused you, Lord Erradeen.”

“I wish you would not call me by that ill-omened name. It is a horror to me; and then if all that is true—How is it possible that one man should lord it over an entire race for so long? Did you ever hear of a similar case? Oh! don’t go away. If you knew what an ease it is to speak to you! No one else understands. It makes one feel as if one were restored to natural life to be able to speak of it, to ask advice. Nothing,” he cried suddenly, getting up, picking up his hat as if about to leave the house, “nothing—shall induce me to go—”

“Oh, no, no!” she cried, “you must not go;” though she could not have told why.

He put down the hat again on the table with a strange laugh. “I was going then,” he said, “but I will not. I will do exactly as you say.” He came up to her where she stood full of trouble watching him. “I dare say you think I am going wrong in my head, but it is not that. I am being dragged—with ropes. Give me your hand to hold by. There! that is safety, that is peace. You hand is as soft—as snow,” cried the young man. His own were burning, and the cool fresh touch of the girl’s hand seemed to diffuse itself through all his being. Oona was as brave in her purity as the other Una, the spotless lady of romance, and would have shrunk from no act of succour. But it agitated her to have this strange appeal for help made to her. She did not withdraw her hand, but yet drew away a little, alarmed, not knowing what to do.

“You must not think,” she said, faltering, “that any one—has more power over another than—he permits them to have.”

She spoke like one of the oracles, not knowing what she said; and he listened with a slight shake of his head, not making any reply. After a moment he yielded to the reluctance which made itself felt in her, and let her hand go.

“Will you come with me outside?” he said; “not there, where that place is. I think the cold and the night do one good. Can we go out the other way?”

Oona accepted this alternative gladly. “We can go to the walk, where it is always dry,” she said, with an assumption of cheerfulness. “It looks to the south, and that is where the flowers grow best.” As she led the way through the hall, Walter took up Mrs. Forrester’s furred cloak which hung there, and put it round her with a great deal of tenderness and care. The girl’s heart beat as he took this office upon him, as one of her brothers might have done. It was the strangest conjunction. He was not thinking of her at all, she felt, save as affording some mysterious help in those mysterious miseries: and yet there was a sweetness in the thought he took, even at this extraordinary moment, for her comfort. There could have been no such dangerous combination of circumstances for Oona, whose heart was full of the early thrill of romance, and that inextinguishable pity and attraction towards the suffering which tells for so much in the life of women. A softness and melting of the heart indescribable came over her as she felt his light touch on her shoulders, and found herself enveloped as it were, in his shadow and the sentiment of his presence. He was not thinking of her, but only of his need of her, fantastic though that might be. But her heart went out towards him with that wonderful feminine impulse which is at once inferior and superior, full of dependence, yet full of help. To follow all his movements and thoughts as well as she could with wistful secondariness; yet to be ready to guide, to save, when need was—to dare anything for that office. There had never been aught in Oona’s life to make her aware of this strange, sweet, agitating position—the one unchangeable form of conjunction for the two mortal companions who have to walk the ways of earth together. But his mind was pre-occupied with other thoughts than her, while hers were wholly bent upon him and his succour. It was dangerous for her, stealing her heart out of her breast in the interest, the sympathy, the close contact involved; but of none of these things was he aware in the pre-occupation of his thoughts.

They walked up and down for a time together, behind the house, along the broad walk, almost a terrace, of the kitchen garden, where there was a deep border filled in summer with every kind of old-fashioned flowers. It was bare now, with naked fruit-trees against the wall, but the moon was hid in clouds, and it was impossible to see anything, except from the end of the terrace the little landing-place below, and the first curves of the walk leading up to the house, and all round the glimmer of the loch. The stillness had been broken by the sound of a boat, but it was on the Auchnasheen side, and though Oona strained her eyes she had not been able to see it, and concluded that, if coming to the isle at all, it must have touched the opposite point, where there was a less easy, but possible, landing-place. As they reached the end of the terrace, however, she was startled to see a figure detach itself from the gloom and walk slowly towards the house.

“The boat must have run in under the bushes, though I cannot see it,” she said; “there is some one coming up the walk.”

Walter turned to look with momentary alarm, but presently calmed down. “It is most likely old Symington, who takes a paternal charge of me,” he said.

Soon after they heard the steps, not heavy, but distinctly audible, crushing the gravel, and to Oona’s great surprise, though Walter, a stranger to the place, took no notice of the fact, these footsteps, instead of going to the door, as would have been natural, came round the side of the house and approached the young pair in their walk. The person of the new-comer was quite unknown to Oona. He took off his hat with an air of well-bred courtesy—like a gentleman, not like a servant—and said—

“I am reluctant to interrupt such a meeting, but there is a boat below for Lord Erradeen.”

Walter started violently at the sound of the voice, which was, notwithstanding, agreeable and soft, though with a tone of command in it. He came to a sudden stop, and turned round quickly as if he could not believe his ears.

“There is a boat below,” the stranger repeated, “and it is extremely cold; the men are freezing at their oars. They have not the same delightful inspiration as their master—who forgets that he has business to settle this final night—”

Walter gave a strange cry, like the cry of a hunted creature. “In God’s name,” he exclaimed, “what have you to do here?”

“My good fellow,” said the other, “you need not try your hand at exorcising; others have made that attempt before you. Is Circe’s island shut to all footsteps save yours? But, even then, you could not shut out me. I must not say Armida’s garden in this state of the temperature—” he said.

“Who is it?” asked Oona in great alarm under her breath.

“Let me answer you,” the intruder said. “It is a sort of a guardian who has the first right to Lord Erradeen’s consideration. Love, as even the copybooks will tell, ought to be subordinate to duty.”

“Love!” cried Oona, starting from the young man’s side. The indignant blood rushed to her face. She turned towards the house in sudden anger and shame and excitement. Circe! Armida! Was it she to whom he dared to apply these insulting names.

Walter caught her cloak with both hands.

“Do you not see,” he said, “that he wants to take you from me, to drive you away, to have me at his mercy? Oona! you would not see a man drown and refuse to hold out your hand?”

“This is chivalrous,” said the stranger, “to put a woman between you and that—which you are afraid to meet.”

To describe the state of excited feeling and emotion in which Oona listened to this dialogue, would be impossible. She was surprised beyond measure, yet, in the strange excitement of the encounter, could not take time to wonder or seek an explanation. She had to act in the mean time, whatever the explanation might be. Her heart clanged in her ears. Tenderness, pity, indignation, shame, thrilled through her. She had been insulted, she had been appealed to by the most sacred voice on earth—the voice of suffering. She stood for a moment looking at the two shadows before her, for they were little more.

“And if he is afraid why should not he turn to a woman?” she said with an impulse she could scarcely understand. “If he is afraid, I am not afraid. This isle belongs to a woman. Come and tell her, if you will, what you want. Let my mother judge, who is the mistress of this place. Lord Erradeen has no right to break his word to her for any man: but if my mother decides that you have a better claim, he will go.”

“I will abide by every word she says,” Walter cried.

The stranger burst into a laugh.

“I am likely to put forth my claim before such a tribunal!” he said. “Come, you have fought stoutly for your lover. Make a virtue of necessity now, and let him go.”

“He is not my lover,” cried Oona; “but I will not let him go.” She added after a moment, with a sudden change of tone, coming to herself, and feeling the extraordinary character of the discussion. “This is a very strange conversation to occur here. I think we are all out of our senses. It is like the theatre. I don’t know your name, sir, but if you are Lord Erradeen’s guardian, or a friend of his, I invite you to come and see my mother. Most likely,” she added, with a slight faltering, “she will know you as she knows all the family.” Then, with an attempt at playfulness, “If it is to be a struggle between this gentleman and the ladies of the isle, Lord Erradeen, tell him he must give way.”

The stranger took off his hat and made her a profound bow.

“I do so on the instant,” he said.

The two young people stood close together, their shadows confounded in one, and there did not seem time to draw a breath before they were alone, with no sound or trace remaining to prove that the discussion in which a moment before their hearts had been beating so loudly had ever existed at all. Oona looked after the stranger with a gasp. She clung to Walter, holding his arm tight.

“Where has he gone?” she cried in a piercing whisper. She trembled so after her boldness that she would have fallen but for his sustaining arm. “Who is he? Where has he gone? That is not the way to the beach. Call after him, call after him, and tell him the way.”

Walter did not make any reply. He drew her arm closer threw his, and turned with her towards the house. As for Oona, she seemed incapable of any thought but that this strange intruder might be left on the isle.

“He will get into the orchard and then among the rocks. He will lose himself,” she cried; “he may fall into the water. Call to him, Lord Erradeen—or stop, we will send Hamish. Here is Hamish. Oh, Hamish! the gentleman has taken the wrong way—”

“It will just be a boat that has come for my lord,” said Hamish. “I tellt them my lord was biding all night, but nothing would satisfee them, but I had to come up and get his lordship’s last word.”

“Oh, he is not going, Hamish! but there is a gentleman—”

Walter interrupted her with an abruptness that startled Oona.

“Let them see that every one is on board—and return at once,” he said.

“Oh there will just be everybody on board that ever was, for none has come ashore,” said Hamish. “What was you saying about a gentleman, Miss Oona? There will be no gentleman. It is joost Duncan and another man with him, and they cried upon me, Hamish! and I answered them. But there will be no gentleman at all,” Hamish said.

CHAPTER XVII

It was very dark upon Loch Houran that night. Whether nature was aware of a dark spirit, more subtle and more powerful than common man, roaming about in the darkness, temporarily baffled by agencies so simple that their potency almost amused while it confounded him—and shrank from the sight of him, who could tell? but it was dark, as a night in which there was a moon somewhere ought never to have been. The moon was on the wane, it was true, which is never like her earlier career, but all trace and influence of her were lost in the low-lying cloud, which descended from the sky like a hood, and wrapped everything in gloom. The water only seemed to throw a black glimmer into the invisible world where all things brooded in silence and cold, unseen, unmoving. The only thing that lived and shone in all this mysterious still universe was one warm window, full of light, that shone from the isle. It was a superstition of the simple mistress of the house that there should be no shutter or curtain there, so that any late “traveller by land or water” might be cheered by this token of life and possible help. Had that traveller, needing human succour, been led to claim shelter there, it would have been accorded fearlessly. “Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold.” The little innocent household of defenceless women had not a fear. Hamish only, who perhaps felt a responsibility as their sole possible defender, might have received with suspicion such an unexpected guest.

The mysterious person already referred to—whose comings and goings were not as those of other men, and whose momentary discomfiture by such simple means perplexed yet partially amused him, as has been said, passed by that window at a later hour and stood for a moment outside. The thoughts with which, out of the external cold and darkness, which affected him not at all, he regarded the warm interior where simple human souls, sheltering themselves against the elements, gathered about their fire, were strange enough. The cold, which did not touch him, would have made them shiver; the dark, which to his eyes was as the day, would have confused their imaginations and discouraged their minds; and yet together by their fire they were beyond his power. He looked in upon their simplicity and calm and safety with that sense of the superiority of the innocent which at the most supreme moment will come in to dash all the triumphs of guile, and all the arts of the schemer. What he saw was the simplest cheerful scene, the fire blazing, the lamp burning steadily, a young man and a girl seated together, not in any tender or impassioned conjunction, but soberly discussing, calculating, arguing, thought to thought and face to face; the mother, on the other side, somewhat faded, smiling, not over wise, with her book, to which she paid little attention, looking up from time to time, and saying something far from clever. He might have gone in among them, and she would have received him with that same smile and offered him her best, thinking no evil. He had a thousand experiences of mankind, and knew how their minds could be worked upon and their imaginations inflamed, and their ambitions roused. Was he altogether baffled by this simplicity, or was there some lingering of human ruth in him, which kept him from carrying disturbance into so harmless a scene? or was it only to estimate those forces that he stood and watched them, with something to learn, even in his vast knowledge, from this unexpected escape of the fugitive, and the simple means by which he had been baffled for the moment, and his prey taken from him? For the moment!—that was all.

“Come, come now,” Mrs. Forrester said. “You cannot argue away like that, and fight all night. You must make up your bits of differences, and settle what is to be done; for it is time we had the Books, and let the women and Hamish get to their beds. They are about all day, and up early in the morning, not like us that sit with our hands before us. Oona, you must just cry upon Mysie, and let them all come ben. And if you will hand me the big Bible that is upon yon table—since you are so kind, Lord Erradeen.”

At this simple ceremonial—the kindly servant-people streaming in, the hush upon their little concerns, the unison of voices, from Oona’s, soft with youth and gentle breeding, to the rough bass of Hamish, in words that spectator knew as well as any—the same eyes looked on, with feelings we cannot attempt to fathom. Contempt, envy, the wonder of the wise over the everlasting, inexplicable superiority of the innocent, were these the sentiments with which he gazed? But in the night and silence there was no interpreter of these thoughts. How he came or went was his own secret. The window was closed soon after, the lights extinguished, and the darkness received this little community of the living and breathing, to keep them warm and unseen and unconscious till they should be claimed again by the cheerful day.

The household, however, though it presented an aspect of such gentle calm, was not in reality so undisturbed as it appeared. In Oona’s chamber, for one, there was a tumult of new emotions which to the girl were incomprehensible, strange, and terrible, and sweet. Lord Erradeen was but a new acquaintance, she said to herself, as she sat over her fire, with everything hushed and silent about her; nevertheless the tumult of feeling in her heart was all connected with him. Curiously enough, the strange encounter in the garden—of which she had received no explanation—had disappeared from her thoughts altogether. The rise and sudden dawn of a new life in her own being was more near and momentous than any mysterious circumstances, however unlike the common. By-and-by she might come to that—in the mean time a sentiment “nova, sola, infinita,” occupied all her consciousness. She had known him during the last week only: three times in all, on three several days, had they met; but what a change these three days had made in the life that had been so free and so sweet, full of a hundred interests, without any that was exclusive and absorbing. In a moment, without knowing what was coming, she had been launched into this new world of existence. She was humbled to think of it, yet proud. She felt herself to have become a sort of shadow of him, watching his movements with an anxiety which was without any parallel in her experience, yet at the same time able to interpose for him, when he could not act for himself, to save him. It seemed to Oona suddenly, that everything else had slipped away from her, receding into the distance. The things that had occupied her before were now in the background. All the stage of life was filled with him, and the events of their brief intercourse had become the only occupation of her thoughts. She wondered and blushed as she wandered in that maze of recollections, at her own boldness in assuming the guidance of him; yet felt it to be inevitable—the only thing to be done. And the strange new thrill which ran through her veins when he had appealed to her, when he had implored her to stand by him, came back with an acute sweet mixture of pleasure and pain. She declared to herself, Yes!—with a swelling of her heart—she would stand by him, let it cost her what it might. There had been no love spoken or thought of between them. It was not love: what was it? Friendship, fraternity, the instinctive discovery of one by another, that divination which brings those together who can help each other. It was he, not she, who wanted help—what did it matter which it was? in giving or in receiving it was a new world. But whether it was a demon or an angel that had thus got entrance into that little home of peace and security—who could tell? Whatever it was, it was an inmate hitherto unknown, one that must work changes both in earth and Heaven.

Everything that could trouble or disturb had vanished from the dark world outside before Oona abandoned her musings—or rather before she felt the chill of the deep night round her, and twisted up her long hair, and drew aside the curtains from her window as was her custom that she might see the sky from her bed. There had been a change in the midnight hours. The clouds at last had opened, and in the chasm made by their withdrawal was the lamp of the waning moon “lying on her back” with a sort of mystic disturbance and ominous clearness, as if she were lighting the steps of some evil enterprise, guiding a traitor or a murderer to the refuge of some one betrayed. Oona shivered as she took refuge in the snow-white nest which had never hitherto brought her anything but profound youthful repose, and the airy flitting dreams of a soul at rest. But though this momentary chill was impressed upon her senses, neither fear nor discouragement were in her soul. She closed her eyes only to see more clearly the face of this new influence in her life, to feel her pulses tingle as she remembered all the events of the three days’ Odyssey, the strange magical history that had sprung into being in a moment, yet was alive with such endless interest, and full of such a chain of incidents. What was to be the next chapter in it? Or was it to have another chapter? She felt already with a deep drawing of her breath, and warned herself that all would probably end here, and everything relapse into vacancy—a conclusion inconceivable, yet almost certain, she said to herself. But this consciousness only excited her the more. There was something in it of that whirl of desperation which gives a wild quickening to enjoyment in the sensation of momentariness and possible ending—the snatching of a fearful joy.

This sudden end came, however, sooner than she thought; they had scarcely met at the breakfast table when Lord Erradeen begged Mrs. Forrester to allow him to send for his servant, and make his arrangements for his departure from the isle, instead of returning to Auchnasheen. “I have not felt safe or at ease, save here, since I came to the loch,” he said, looking round him with a grateful sense of the cheerful quiet and security. His eyes met those of Oona, who was somewhat pale after her long vigil and broken rest. She had recognised at once with a pang the conclusion she had foreseen, the interruption of her new history which was implied in the remorseless unintentional abruptness of this announcement. He was going away; and neither felt any inducement to stay, nor any hesitation in announcing his resolution. She had known it would be so, and yet there was a curious pang of surprise in it which seemed to arrest her heart. Notwithstanding, as in duty bound, she met his look with a smile in her eyes.

“Hoots,” said Mrs. Forrester, “you flatter the isle, Lord Erradeen. We know that is just nonsense; but for all that, we take it kind that you should like our little house. It will always be found here, just faithful and friendly, whenever you come back. And certainly ye shall send for your man or make what arrangements suits you. There’s the library quite free and at your service for any writing you may have to do, and Hamish will take any message to Auchnasheen, or wherever you please. The only thing that grieves me is that you should be so set on going to-day.”

“That must be—that must be!” cried Walter: and then he began to make excuses and apologies. There were circumstances which made it indispensable—there were many things that made him anxious to leave Auchnasheen. No, it was not damp—which was the instant suggestion of Mrs. Forrester. There were other things. He was going back to Sloebury to his mother (Mrs. Forrester said to England), and it was so recently that he had entered upon his property, that there was still a great deal to do. After he had made this uncompromising statement of the necessities that he had to be guided by, he looked across the table at Oona once more.

“And Miss Forrester is so kind as to take in hand for me the settlement of the cotters. It will be her doing. I hope they will not blame me for that alarm yesterday, which was no fault of mine; but the new arrangement will be your doing altogether.”

“I shall not take the credit,” said Oona. “I had not even the boldness to suggest it. It was your own thought, and they will bless you so, that wherever you are, at Sloebury or the end of the world, you must feel your heart warm—”

She said this with great self-command; but she was pale, and there was a curious giddiness stealing over her. She seemed to feel the solid ground slip away from under her feet.

“My heart,” he said, looking at her with a grateful look, “will always be warm when I think of the Isle, and all that has been done for me here.”

“Now, Lord Erradeen,” said Mrs. Forrester, “you will just make Oona and me vain with all these bonnie speeches. We are always glad to be friendly and neighbourlike, but what have we been able to do?—just nothing. When you come back again and let your friends see a little more of you, we will all do what we can to make the loch agreeable. But I hope it will be warmer weather, and more pleasure in moving about. You will be back no doubt, if not sooner, in time for the grouse?”

He grew pale in spite of himself, and Oona, looking at him, felt the steady earth slip more and more away.

“I don’t know,” he said, hurriedly, “when I may come back—not before I—not sooner than I can—I mean there are a great many things to look after; and my mother—”

His eyes seemed to seek hers again as if asking her sympathy, and appealing to her knowledge. “Not before I must—not sooner than I can help,” that was what he meant to say. Oona gave him a faint smile of response. It was so wonderful that when she understood him so completely, he should understand her so little, and never suspect that there was anything cruel in those words. But she made the response he required, and strengthened him by that instinctive comprehension of him in which he put so strange a trust. There was an eagerness in all his preparations for going away which he almost forced upon her notice, so strong was his confidence in her sympathy. He lost no time about any of these arrangements, but sent Hamish with his boat to Auchnasheen for Symington, and wrote down his instructions for Shaw, and talked of what he was going to do when he got “home,” with the most absolute insensibility to any feeling in the matter save his own. And it seemed to Oona that the moments flew, and the quick morning melted away, and before she could collect her thoughts the time came when her mother and she walked down to the beach with him, smiling, to see him off. There had never been a word said between them of that conversation in the garden on the previous night. Only when he was just about to leave, he cast a glance towards the walk where that encounter had taken place, and turned to her with a look such as cannot pass between any but those that have some secret link of mutual knowledge. Her mother was talking cheerfully of the view and the fine morning after the rain, walking before them, when he gave Oona that look of mutual understanding. “I owe you everything,” he said, in a low tone of almost passionate fervour. Presently she found herself shaking hands with him as if he had been nothing more than the acquaintance of three days which he was, and wishing him a good journey. And so the Odyssey came to an end, and the history stopped in the course of making. She stood still for a little, watching the boat and the widening lines it drew along the surface of the water. “Sometimes to watch a boat moving off will give you a giddiness,” Mrs. Forrester said.

CHAPTER XVIII

There could be no greater contrast than that which existed between Walter Methven, Lord Erradeen, hurrying away with the sense of a man escaped with his life from the shores of Loch Houran, and Oona Forrester left behind upon the isle.

It was not only that he had all at once become the first object in her life, and she counted for little or nothing in his. That was not the question. She had been for sufficient space of time, and with sufficient stress of circumstances to make the impression one which would not die easily, of the first importance in his thoughts: and no doubt that impression would revive when he had leisure from the overwhelming pre-occupation which was in his mind. But it was that he was himself full of an anxiety and excitement strong enough to dwarf every other feeling, which made the blood course through his veins, and inspired every thought; while she was left in a state more like vacancy than anything else, emptied out of everything that had interested her. The vigorous bend of the rowers to the oars as they carried him away was not more unlike the regretful languor of the women as they stood on the beach, Mrs. Forrester waving her handkerchief, but Oona without even impulse enough in her to do that.

As for Walter, he was all energy and impulse. He arranged the portmanteaux which Symington had brought with his own hands, to leave room for the sweep of the oars, and quicken the crossing. His farewells were but half said. It seemed as if he could scarcely breathe till he got away. Every stroke of the oars lightened his heart, and when he was clear of that tragic water altogether, and sprang up upon the rude country waggonette which had been engaged at the inn to carry him to the station, his brow relaxed, and the muscles of his mouth gave way as they had not done since his first day on Loch Houran. He gave a look almost of hatred at the old castle, and then averted his face. When he reached the railway, the means of communication with the world he had known before, he was a different man. The horses had gone too slowly for him, so did the leisurely friendly trains on the Highland railway, with their broad large windows for the sake of the views. Travellers, as a rule, did not wish to go too fast while they skirted those gleaming lochs, and ran along under shadow of the mountains: they liked to have somebody to point out which was Loch Ool and which St. Monan’s. It was too slow for Lord Erradeen, but still it was going away. He began to think of all the commonplace accessories of life with a sort of enthusiasm—the great railway stations, the Edinburgh Hotel, with its ordinary guests. He was so sick of everything connected with his Highland property and with its history, that he resolved he would make no pause in Edinburgh, and would not go near Mr. Milnathort. The questions they would no doubt put to him made him impatient even in thought. He would not subject himself to these; he would put away altogether out of his mind, if he could, everything connected with it, and all that he had been seeing and hearing, or, at least, had fancied he heard and saw.

But when Oona turned away from looking after the boat—which she was indeed the first to do, Mrs. Forrester waiting almost as long as it was within sight to wave her handkerchief if the departing guest should look back—she felt herself and her life emptied out all at once. When she began to think of it in the cold light of this sudden conclusion, a sense of humiliation came over her. She blushed with hot shame at this altogether unasked, unreasonable, unnecessary resignation of herself and her interests to a stranger. He was nothing but a stranger, she said to herself; there was no remarkable charm in him one way or another. She had not been at all affected by his first appearance. He was not handsome enough or clever enough, nor had he any special attraction to gain him so high a place. Somehow she had not thought of Walter in her first realisation of the new interest which had pushed away all the other occupations out of her existence: and she had not blushed in the high sense of expanded life and power to help. But now it moved her with a certain shame to think that the sudden departure of a man whom she scarcely knew, and to whom she was nothing, should thus have emptied out her existence and left a bewildering blank in her heart. She went slowly up the walk, and went to her room, and there sat down with a curious self-abandonment. It was all over, all ended and done. When he came into her life it was accidentally, without any purpose in it on either side; and now that he had gone out of it again, there was no anger, no sense of wrong, only a curious consciousness that everything had gone away—that the soil had slipped from her, and nothing was left. No, there was no reason at all to be angry—nobody was to blame. Then she laughed a little at herself at this curious, wanton sort of trouble intended by nobody—which neither he had meant to draw her into, nor she to bring upon herself.

There was one thing however between her and this vacancy. He had left her a commission which any kind-hearted girl would have thought a delightful one—to arrange with the factor how the cotters were to be most effectually helped and provided for. It had been their thought at first—the young man being little better instructed than the girl on such matters—that to make Duncan Fraser and the rest the proprietors of their little holdings would be the most effectual way of helping them, and would do the property of Lord Erradeen very little harm—a thing that Walter, unaccustomed to property, and still holding it lightly, contemplated with all the ease of the landless, never thinking of the thorn in the flesh of a piece of alienated land in the midst of an estate, until it suddenly flashed upon him that his estates being all entailed, this step would be impossible. How was it to be done then? They had decided that Shaw would know best, and that some way of remitting the rents at least during the lifetime of the present Lord Erradeen must be settled upon, and secured to them at once. Oona had this commission left in her hands. She could have thought of none more delightful a few days ago, but now it seemed to make the future vacancy of life all the more evident by the fact that here was one thing, and only one, before her to do. When that was done, what would happen?—a return upon the pleasant occupations, the amusements, the hundred little incidents which had filled the past? After all, the past was only a week back. Can it ever return, and things be again as they were before?—Oona had never reasoned or speculated on these matters till this moment. She had never known by experiment that the past cannot return, or that which has been be once more; but she became aware of it in a moment now.

Then she got up and stood at her window and looked out on the unchanging landscape, and laughed aloud at herself. How ridiculous it was! By this time it made no difference to Lord Erradeen that she had ever existed. Why should it make any difference to her that he had come and gone? The new generation takes a view of such matters which is different from the old-fashioned sentimental view. After yielding to the new influence rashly, unawares, like a romantic girl of any benighted century, Oona began to examine it like an enlightened young intelligence of her own. Her spirit rose against it, and that vigorous quality which we call a sense of humour. There was something almost ludicrous in the thought that one intelligent creature should be thus subject to another, and that life itself should be altered by an accidental meeting. And if this was absurd to think of in any case, how much more in her own? Nobody had ever had a more pleasant, happy life. In her perfect womanliness and submission to all the laws of nature, she was yet as independent as the most free-born soul could desire. There was no path in all the district, whether it led to the loneliest cottage or the millionaire’s palace, that was not free to Oona Forrester. The loch and the hills were open to her as her mother’s garden, to the perfectly dauntless, modest creature, who had never in her life heard a tone or caught a look of disrespect. She went her mother’s errands, which were so often errands of charity, far and near, with companions when she cared for them, without companions when she did not. What did it matter? The old cotter people about had a pretty Gaelic name for her; and to all the young ones Miss Oona of the Isle was as who should say Princess Oona, a young lady whom every one was bound to forward upon her way. Her mother was not so clever as Oona, which was, perhaps, a drawback; but she could not have been more kind, more tender, more loving if she had possessed, as our Laureate says, “the soul of Shakespeare.” All was well about and around this favourite of nature. How was it possible then that she could have come to any permanent harm in two or three days?

Notwithstanding this philosophical view, however, Oona did nothing all that day, and to tell the truth felt little except the sense of vacancy; but next day she announced to her mother that she was going to the Manse to consult with Mr. Cameron about the Truach-Glas cotters, and that probably she would see Mr. Shaw there, and be able to do the business Lord Erradeen had confided to her. Mrs. Forrester fully approved.

“A thing that is to make poor folk more comfortable should never be put off a moment,” that kind woman said, “for, poor bodies, they have little enough comfort at the best,” and she stood at the porch and waved her hand to her child, as the boat sped out of the shade of the isle into the cold sunshine which had triumphed for an hour or two over the clouds and rain. Oona found Mr. Shaw, as she had anticipated, in the village, and there was a very brisk and not altogether peaceable discussion in the minister’s study, over this new idea. The factor, though he was so strongly set against all severe measures, and in reality so much on the side of the cotters, was yet taken aback, as was natural, by the new idea presented to him. He laughed at the notion of making them the owners of their little holdings.

“Why not give Tom Patterson his farm too? He finds it just as hard to pay the rent,” he cried in minded ridicule and wrath. “There is no difference in the principle though there may be in the circumstances. And what if Lord Erradeen had a few hundred crofters instead of half-a-dozen? I’m speaking of the principle. Of course he cannot do it. It’s all entailed, every inch of the land, and he cannot do it; but supposing he could, and that he were treating them all equally? It’s just not to be done. It is just shifting the difficulty. It is putting other people at a disadvantage. A man cannot give away his land and his living. It is just a thing that is not to be done.”

“He knows it is not to be done; he knows it is entailed, therefore—”

“Oh yes, Miss Oona; therefore—” cried the factor. “Little of it, very little, would have come his way if it had not been entailed. Whether or not it is good for the country, there can be no doubt it’s the stronghold of a family. Very likely there would have been no Methvens (and small damage, begging his pardon that is a kind of a new stock), and certainly there would have been no property to keep up a title, but for the entail. It is a strange story, the story of them altogether.” Shaw continued, “it has been a wonderfully managed property. I must say that for it; no praise to me, so I am free to speak. There was the late lord—the only one I knew. There was very little in him, and yet the way he managed was wonderful; they have just added land to land, and farm to farm. I do not understand it. And now I suppose we’ve arrived at the prodigal that always appears some time in a family to make the hoards go.”

“No, no,” said the minister, “you must not call the man a prodigal whose wish is to give to the poor.”

“That is all very well,” said Shaw; “the poor, where there are half-a-dozen of them, are easily enough managed. Give them their land if you like (if it was not criminal to cut a slice out of an estate), it does not matter much; but if there were a hundred? It is the principle I am thinking of. They cannot buy it themselves, and the State will not buy it for them, seeing they are only decent Scots lads, not blazing Irishmen. I cannot see where the principle will lead to: I am not against the kindness, Miss Oona, far from that: and these half-a-dozen Frasers, what would it matter? but if there were a hundred? The land is just my profession, as the Church is Mr. Cameron’s, and I must think of it, all the ways of it; and this is a thing that would not work so far as I can see.”

“But Lord Erradeen acknowledges that,” said Oona. “What he wants to do is only for his time. To set them free of the rent they cannot pay, and to let them feel that nobody can touch them, so long as he lives—”

“And the Lord grant him wealth of days,” said the minister; “a long life and a happy one!”

“You will not look at it,” cried the factor, “from a common-sense point of view. All that is very pretty, and pleasing to the young man’s—what shall I call it?—his kindness and his vanity, for both are involved, no doubt. But it will just debauch the minds of the people. They will learn to think they have a right to it; and when the next heir comes into possession, there will be a burning question raised up, and a bitter sense of wrong if he asks for his own again. Oh yes, Miss Oona, so long as the present condition of affairs lasts it will be their own. A man with a rent of two or three pounds is just as liable as if it were two or three hundred. The principle is the same; and as I am saying, if there were a number of them, you just could not do it: for I suppose you are not a communist, Miss Oona, that would do away with property altogether?”

A sudden smile from among the clouds lit up Shaw’s ruddy, remonstrative countenance, as he put this question, and Oona smiled too.

“I don’t make any theories,” she said; “I don’t understand it. I feel as Lord Erradeen does, that whatever the law may be, I would rather be without a roof to shelter myself than turn one poor creature out of her home. Oh, I don’t wonder when I remember the horror in his face! Think! could you sleep, could you rest—you, young and strong, and well off, when you had turned out the poor folk to the hill?—all for a little miserable money?” cried Oona, starting to her feet, “or for the principle, as you call it? I, for one,” cried the girl, with flashing eyes, “would never have let him speak to me again.”

“There you have it, Oona; there’s a principle, if you like; there is something that will work,” cried the old minister, with a tremulous burst of laughter. “Just you keep by that, my bonnie dear, and all your kind; and we’ll hear of few evictions within the Highland line.”

“That would be all very well,” said the factor, “if every landlord was a young lad, like Lord Erradeen; but even then it might be a hard case, and Miss Oona would not find it as easy as she thinks; for supposing there were hundreds, as I’m always saying: and supposing there were some among them that could just pay well enough, but took advantage; and supposing a landlord that was poor too, and was losing everything? No, no, Miss Oona, in this world things are not so simple. My counsel is to let them be—just to let them be. I would bid them pay when they can, and that my lord would not be hard upon them. That is what I would do. I would tell them he was willing to wait, and may be to forgive them what was past, or something like that. After what happened the other day, they will be very sure he will not be hard upon them. And that is what I would advise him to do.”

“You are not going to wash your hands of it, after all?” the minister said.

Shaw laughed. “Not just this time, Mr. Cameron. I always thought he was a fine lad. And now that he has good advisers, and amenable—” he added, with a glance at Oona, which fortunately she did not see.

And after this interview she went home, very silent, depressed as she had no right to be, feeling as if life was over, and all things come to an end.

CHAPTER XIX

It would be difficult to describe the sensations with which Lord Erradeen found himself set at liberty, and on his way back, as he thought at first, to the easy mind, the quiet life, the undisturbed and undisturbing circumstances of his previous existence. He scarcely seemed to breathe till he had crossed the Border, and was outside of Scotland, feeling during that time like a fugitive in full flight, incapable of thinking of anything except that he had eluded his pursuers and had escaped all possible risks and apprehensions. His trial had lasted nights and days, he could not tell how many. Now for the first time he had the calm, the leisure, the sense of safety, which were necessary for a review of all that he had gone through: he had seen the moon light up the pale line of the sea at Berwick, where Tweed falls into the waste of water, and the lights of Newcastle, turning into a shining highway the dark crescent of the Tyne, and then as the train pounded along through the darkness, with the throb and swing of life and speed, through the silence and night, his faculties seemed to come back to him, and his judgment to be restored. Through what a strange episode of existence had he passed since he saw the lights curve round the sides of that river, and the great bridge striding over above the roofs of the sleeping town! And now he had escaped—had he escaped? He had time at least and quiet to think it all out and see where he stood.

He had been for nearly three weeks altogether on Loch Houran, during which time he had gone through the severest mental struggle he had ever known. It seemed years to him now since the moment when he had been suddenly confronted by the strange and mysterious personage who had assumed a tone towards him and claimed a submission which Walter had refused to yield. That this man’s appearance had awakened in him a sensation of overwhelming excitement mingled with fear, that he had come in an unaccountable way, that he had been seen apparently by no one in the old castle but himself, that nobody had betrayed any consciousness of knowing who he was or how he was there, and yet that he had come and gone with a perfect acquaintance and familiarity with the place, the family, the estates, the story of the race; these were details which, with a tremulous sensation in his mind, as of a panic nearly over, he gathered together to examine and find out, if possible, what they meant. He had been unable during the time that followed, when he had taken refuge in Auchnasheen, to exercise any discriminating faculty, or use his own judgment upon these facts. At the moment of seeing and hearing occurrences which disturb the mind, reason is hampered in its action. Afterwards you may ask yourself, have you really heard and seen? but not when a definite appearance is before your eyes, or likely to re-appear at any moment, and a distinct voice in your ears. The actual then overmasters the soul; the meaning of it must be got at later. He had seen this man whose faculties and pretensions were alike so extraordinary, he had listened to the claim he made, he had been bidden to yield up his individual will and to obey under threatening of evil if he refused, and promises of pleasure and comfort if he consented. And Walter had said “No.” He would have said No had an angel out of heaven appeared before him, making the same demand. He had been subjected to this strange trial at the very height of independence and conscious power, when he had newly begun to feel his own importance, and to enjoy its advantages. It had seemed to him absurd, incredible, that such a claim should be made, even while the personality of the strange claimant had filled him with a sensation of terror, which he summoned all his forces to struggle against, without any success. He had been like two men during that struggle. One a craven, eager to fly, willing to promise anything might he but escape; the other struggling passionately against the stranger and refusing—refusing, night and day. When he went to Auchnasheen the character of the conflict within him had become more remarkable still. The man who claimed his obedience was no longer visible, but he had been rent asunder between the power of his own resisting spirit and some strange influence which never slackened, which seemed to draw him towards one point with a force which his unwillingness to yield made into absolute agony. Still he had resisted, always resisted, though without strength to escape, until the moment had come when by sudden inspiration of natural justice and pity he had broken loose—by that, and by the second soul struggling in him and with him, by Oona’s hand holding him and her heart sustaining him. This was the history of these two tremendous weeks, the most eventful in his life. And now he had escaped out of the neighbourhood in which he could feel no safety, out of the influence which had moved him so strangely, and was able to think and ask himself what it was.

The night was dark, and, as has been said, the moon was on the wane. She shed a pale mist of light over the dark country, where now and then there broke out the red glow of pit or furnace fires. The train swung onwards with a rock of movement, a ploughing and plunging, the dim light in the roof swaying, the two respectable fellow-passengers each in his corner amidst his wraps, slumbering uneasily. Walter had no inclination to sleep. He was indeed feverishly awake; all his faculties in wild activity; his mind intensely conscious and living. What did it all mean? The events which had affected him to a passionate height of feeling with which his previous life had been entirely unacquainted—was it possible that there was any other way of accounting for them? To look himself in the face as it were, and confess now at a distance from these influences that the man to whom he had spoken in the language of to-day was one of the fabulous men in whom the ignorant believe, his own early ancestor—the still existing, undying founder of the house, was, he said to himself, impossible. It could not be; anything else—any hypothesis was more credible than this. There was no place for the supernatural in the logic of life as he had learned it. Now that he had recovered control of himself, it was time for him to endeavour to make out a reason for the hallucination in which he had almost lost himself and his sober senses. And accordingly he began to do it; and this is what he said to himself. His imagination had been excited by all that had happened to him; the extraordinary change in his circumstances which seemed almost miraculous, and then the succession of incidents, the strange half-communications that had been made to him, the old, ruinous house in which he had been compelled to shut himself up, the wonderful solitude, full of superstitious suggestions, into which he had been plunged. All these details had prepared his mind for something—he knew not what. He felt a hot flush of shame and mortification come over him as he remembered how easily, notwithstanding all his better knowledge, he, a man of his century, acquainted with all the philosophies of the day, had been overcome by those influences. He had expected something out of nature, something terrible and wonderful. And when such a state of mind is reached, it is certain (he thought) that something will arise to take advantage of it.

Probably all these effects had been calculated upon by the individual, whoever he was, who haunted Kinloch Houran to excite and exploit these terrors. Who was he? Even now, so far out of his reach, so emancipated from his influence that he could question and examine it, Walter felt a certain giddiness come over his spirit at this thought, and was glad that one of his fellow-passengers stirred and woke, and made a shivering remark, How cold it was, before he again composed himself to sleep. It was very cold. There was an icy chill in the air which penetrated through the closed windows. But nothing else could come in—nothing else! and it could be but a sudden reflection from his past excitement that made Walter feel for a moment as if another figure sat opposite to him, gazing at him with calm sarcasm, and eyes that had a smile in them. When the giddiness passed off, and he looked again, there was (of course) no one opposite to him, only the dark blue cushions of the unoccupied place. Who was this man then who held a sort of court in Kinloch Houran, and demanded obedience from its proprietor? He was no creature of the imagination. Excited nerves and shaken health might indeed have prepared the mind of the visitor for the effect intended to be produced upon him; but they could not have created the central figure—the powerful personality from whom such influence flowed. Who was he? The circumstances were all favourable for a successful imposture, or even a mystification. Suppose it to be some member of the family aggrieved by the promotion of a far-off branch, some dependent with so much knowledge of the secrets of the race as to be able to play upon the imagination of a novice, with mysterious threats and promises; perhaps, who could tell, a monomaniac, the leading idea of whose delusion was to take this character upon him? Walter’s breast lightened a little as he made out one by one these links of explanation. It was characteristic of his time, and the liberality of mind with which modern thought abjures the idea of absolute imposture, that the sudden suggestion of a monomaniac gave him great relief and comfort. That might explain all—a man of superior powers crazed in this one point, who might have convinced himself that he was the person he claimed to be, and that it was the interest of the family he had at heart. Such a being, acquainted with all the mysterious passages and hiding-places that exist in such old houses, able to appear suddenly from a secret door or sliding panel, to choose moments when nature herself added to the sense of mystery, hours of twilight and darkness when the half-seen is more alarming than anything fully revealed—this would explain so much, that the young man for the moment drew a long breath of relief, and felt half-consciously that he could afford to ignore the rest.

And in the sense of this relief he fell asleep, and dreamed that he stood again at Mrs. Forrester’s door in the Isle, and saw the light on the old tower of Kinloch Houran, and felt the attraction, the drawing and dragging as of some force he could not resist; and woke up with the blow he gave himself against the rail that supported the netting on the opposite side of the carriage, against which he struck his head in his rush towards the place to which he had felt himself called. He staggered back into his seat, giddy and faint, yet thankful to feel that it was only a dream; and then had to begin his self-arguments over again, and trace once more every link of the chain.

A monomaniac—yes, that might be the explanation; but whence then that power which drew him, which he had fought against with all the powers of his being at Auchnasheen, which he had never given in to, but which, even in the reflection of it given in his dream, was vivid enough to awaken him to a new branch of the question? Magnetism, mesmerism, he had heard of, and scorned as other names for charlatanism; but when you are searching anxiously for the means of accounting for mysterious phenomena you are glad to seize upon explanations that at another moment would be little satisfactory. Walter said to himself that the madman of Kinloch Houran—the monomaniac, must possess these strange powers. He might know many secrets, though his wits were gone astray. He might be sane enough to have a purpose, and to cultivate every possible means of affecting the mind he wished to work upon. Such curious combinations of madness and wisdom were not beyond human experience. Perhaps at the end of all his arguments, having fully convinced himself, the thread of the reasoning escaped him, for he suddenly shuddered and grew pale, and shrank into his corner, drawing his wraps close round him and raising the collar of his coat to his very eyes, as if to shut out some bewildering, overwhelming sight. But by this time the wintry day was breaking, and the stir of awakened life reached the other travellers, who woke and stretched themselves, shivering in the chill of the dawn, and began to prepare for their arrival. One of them spoke to Walter, expressing a fear that he was ill, he looked so pale, and offering his services to “see him home.” The young man indeed felt as if he had come through a long illness when he stepped forth upon the platform at King’s Cross, and felt that he had escaped from his fever and his trouble, and had new ways and new thoughts—or rather the repose of old thoughts and old ways—before him for some time to come.

He remained in London all day, and after his bath and his breakfast, felt the rising of a new life, and began to remember all the good things which he had partially forgotten, but which surely were more than enough to counterbalance the evil things, of which, when you set your mind to it, after all, so feasible an explanation could be found. London was at its darkest, and nothing invited him in the foggy and murky streets; nevertheless he lingered with that mixture of old habit and mental indolence which wastes so much time and disperses so many admirable resolutions. He went in the morning to see the house which belonged to him in Park Lane, and which was at present empty. It was one of those which look out from pleasant, large bow-windows upon the brightness of the Park and the cheerful thoroughfare. Even at such a moment it had a kind of brightness—as much light as could be got in London. It gave Walter a real pleasure to think of furnishing it for his mother, of seeing her take her place there and enter upon a larger life, a mode of existence for which he felt—with a glow of pride in her—she was more qualified than for the smaller village routine at Sloebury. His energy even went so far as to direct that the house should be put in order and prepared for occupation. And if he had gone home at once after this feat, not all the threatenings of his mysterious enemy would have prevented a pleasant re-beginning of his old life.

But he did not; he lingered about the streets, about the hotel to which he had gone in the morning, for no particular reason, and it was late when he started for Sloebury—late and dark and cold, and his sleepless night and all the excitements from which he had fled, began to tell upon him. When he reached the familiar station his cheerfulness and good-humour had fled. And all the pleasant anticipations of the home-coming and the comfort with which he had remembered that existence, free of all mystery, in which he had seldom done anything but what seemed good in his own eyes, abandoned him as he stepped into the drizzle of a dark and rainy December night, into the poor and badly-lighted streets that surround a railway everywhere, and turn the worst side of every town to the eyes of strangers. He sent Symington and his baggage off before him, and himself set out to walk, with that incomprehensible pleasure in a little further delay which is so general. Stepping out into the mean streets had all the effect upon Walter’s tired frame and capricious and impatient mind, of sudden disenchantment. His imagination perhaps had been affected by the larger atmosphere from which he had come, and he had forgotten the dinginess and poverty, which never before had struck him with the same force. The damp drizzle which was all there was for air, seemed to suffocate him; the pavement was wet and muddy, dirt and wretchedness pervaded everything. Then he began to realise, as he walked, the scene he was going to, which he could call up before him with such perfect distinctness of memory. Home! It used to be the centre, in books, of all pleasant thoughts—the tired wanderer coming to rest and shelter, the prodigal out of hunger and misery to forgiveness and the fatted calf, the “war-beaten soldier” from his cold sentry’s march, the sailor from the wet shrouds and gloomy seas—to good fires and welcomes, kisses and a hot supper. But that primitive symbol of imagination, like so many others, has got perhaps somewhat soiled with ignoble use; and it never was, perhaps, from this point of view that young men of Walter Methven’s type regarded the centre of family life, to which they returned when there was nothing better to do, with a sort of penitential sense of the duties that were considered binding there, and the preposterous things that would be expected of them.

Lord Erradeen, who had been longing for that safe and sensible refuge where no exaggeration or superstition prevailed, suddenly felt it rise before him like a picture of still life as he walked towards it. His mother seated knitting at one side of the fire, with a preoccupied look, listening for his step outside, the evening newspaper and a novel from Mudie’s on the table. Miss Merivale opposite working crewel work, and putting a question now and then as to when he was expected: the two lamps burning steadily, the tick of the clock in the foreground, so to speak, the soul of the silent scene. The other accessories of the piece were all conventional ones: fire blazing brightly, now and then breaking into the monologue of the clock with a sudden rush and jet of flame, or dropping of ashes; curtains drawn, sofas and chairs within the glow of the warmth, ready for the new-comer’s choice. There would be a sudden springing up, a disturbance of the perfect order of all these arrangements, on his entrance. He would be made to sit down in far too warm a corner; his personal appearance would be commented upon; that he was looking well, or ill, or tired, or as fresh as possible. And then the cross-examination would begin. Walter reminded himself that this cross-examination was maddening, and that even as a boy at school he had never been able to bear it. When he had said that he was well, and consented, yes, that he had come home sooner than he expected, but no, that nothing was wrong, what was there more to say? To be sure he had intended to say a great deal more, to pour forth all his troubles into his mother’s sympathetic bosom; but that in any case could only have been when the two were alone. And would she understand him if he did so? Cousin Sophy—he could hear her in imagination—would give a sharp shriek of laughter at the idea of anything mysterious, at any suggestion of the supernatural (in which, of course, by this time Walter did not believe himself, but that was another matter). She would shriek even derisively at the idea that mesmerism could have affected any man in his senses. And his mother—what would she do? not shriek with laughter, that was not her way; but smile perhaps with a doubtful look to see whether it was possible that he could be in earnest in this incredible story of his. No, she would not believe him, she would think he was under the influence of some hallucination. She would look at him with a shock of something like contempt, an annoyed dismay that her son should be so credulous, or so weak. Walter’s imagination leaped back to the other warm and softly-lighted room on the Isle, the innocent mother talking, who would have believed everything, the girl standing by who did understand, and that almost without a word. Ah, if that indeed were home! Thus with a sudden revulsion in his mind, shutting himself up, and double-locking the door of his heart, even before he had come to the door of the house, to which his mother, he knew, would rush to meet him, hearing and distinguishing his step—he went home.

Mrs. Methven, who had been on the watch all day, opened the door to him as he foresaw. She was trembling with anxiety and pleasure, yet self-restrained and anxious not to betray the excitement which probably he would think uncalled for; she took his wraps from him, and helped to take off his great-coat, giving an aid which was quite unnecessary, but which he, on his side commanding himself also, did his best to accept with an appearance of pleasure. “You have not dined,” she said, “there is something just ready. We waited half an hour, but I thought you would prefer to come by this train. Come in and get thawed, and let me look at you, while they bring up your dinner.” She took him by the arm as she spoke, and led him into the drawing-room where everything was exactly as he had imagined. And she drew him, as he had imagined, too close to the fire, and drawing the softest chair, said “Sit down, dear, and get warm.”

“I am not a bit cold. I have walked, you know, from the station. How do you do, Cousin Sophy? Your room is too warm, mother, I always tell you so. However it looks very cheerful after the wet and mud outside,” he said, with an attempt to be gracious.

“The rain makes everything dismal out of doors. Has it been raining all the way? You have had a dreadful journey, my poor boy.”

“Of course it is warmer here than in Scotland,” said Miss Merivale.

And then there was a pause, and his mother looked at him more closely by the light of the lamp. She was just going to say “You are not looking very well”—when Walter broke in.

“I hear a tray coming, and I am very hungry. I shall go into the dining-room, mother, and join you by-and-by.”

“I will go too and wait upon you, Walter. I mean to wait upon you myself to-night. I hope your lordship has not grown too fine for that,” she said with an attempt at playful ease. It was a relief to leave Miss Merivale, and have her son all to herself. She put his chair to the table for him, and brought the claret which had been warming, and handed him his plate with a smile of content. “It is pleasant to serve one’s boy,” she said, “and we don’t want any third person. I have so much to hear, and to ask—”

An impatient prayer that she would not begin the moment he sat down to worry a fellow with questions was on Walter’s lips; but he forbore, doing his very best to command himself. To sit in his old place, to feel his old impulse, to find the claret too warm, and the potatoes cold, was almost too much for him; but still like a hero he forbore. And she took advantage of his magnanimity. She never relaxed her watch upon him. That is the penalty one pays for having one’s mother to serve one: a servant is silent at least. She asked him if he would not have a little more, just this little piece which was very nicely done? Some of the vegetables which were better cooked than usual? A little salad? Some stewed fruit with that Devonshire cream which he used to like? A little of his favourite cheese? She was not in general a fussy woman, but she was so anxious, after the rapprochement that had taken place on the eve of his going away, to please him, to preserve that tenderer strain of feeling—if it could be done this way! And yet all the time she was restraining herself not to say too much, not to worry him. A woman has to exercise such wiles often enough for her husband’s benefit; but it is hard to go through the process again for her son.

He bore it all with a devouring impatience, yet self-restraint too—not entreating her in words to let him alone for heaven’s sake! as he would so fain have done. Perhaps there was something to be said on his side also; his mind was laden with care and anxiety, and wanted repose above all; and this wistful over-anxiety and desire to propitiate by details was irritating beyond description. He did not know how to put up with it. Love itself is sometimes very hard to put up with—embarrassing, officious, not capable of perceiving that to let its object alone is the best. Mrs. Methven did not know how to propitiate him—whether to show her interest or to put on a form of indifference. All her urgency about his dinner, was it not to spare him the questions which she knew he did not love? But that succeeded badly, and her curiosity, or rather her anxiety, was great.

“How did you like Kinloch Houran?” she ventured to say at last. What a question! It seemed to Walter that a glance at his face would have shown her how inappropriate it was.

“Like Kinloch Houran!” he said. “If you want a categorical answer, mother—and I know you are never satisfied with anything else—not at all!”

“I am sorry for that, Walter, since it seems a place you must have a great deal to do with. Auchnasheen, then, was that better? You must teach me to pronounce the name.”

“Auchnasheen, if possible, was worse,” he said. “I shall never be able to endure either the one or the other, or forget the associations—don’t make me think of them, please. When I got home I thought I should be able to escape all that.”

“My dear, I beg your pardon: I did not know. Was the weather then so bad? They say it always rains—and the place very dull, of course, so far in the wilds? But you said in your letter that the lake was lovely, and that there were some pleasant people—”

He put up his hand, begging her to go no further. “It was lovely enough if you like, but I hate the place; isn’t that enough? I shall never go back with my free will.”

Mrs. Methven looked at him in astonishment. “I thought—” she said, “you remember how fantastic you thought it, and mediaeval—that you had to make a periodical visit to the old home of the race?”

His very lips trembled with irritation. He had written about all that in the first days of his absence, and even after his arrival at Loch Houran, making fun of the old world stipulation. She might have divined, he thought, that it was a very different matter now. “I am sorry to keep you so long here, out of your own comfortable corner,” he said. “You never like sitting in the dining-room. It is brutal of me to keep you here.”

“No, Walter, it is my pleasure,” she cried; then, poor soul, with that most uncalled-for, unprofitable desire for information, “And there are so many things I want to know—”

He commanded himself with a great effort. “Mother,” he said, “I have not enjoyed my visit to Scotland. There are a great many things that perhaps I may be able to talk of hereafter if you will give me time, but that I don’t want even to think of now. And I’m tired with my journey; and everything is not couleur de rose, as you seem to think. Let me alone, if you can, for to-night.”

“Let you alone—if I can!” She was so startled, so bitterly disappointed, that for a moment or two she could not speak. And this aggravated Walter still more.

“Mother,” he cried, getting up from his unsatisfactory meal, “I hope you are not going to make a scene the first night.”

Thus, without any intention, with indeed the strongest desire to adopt a better way, this was how young Lord Erradeen resumed his intercourse with his mother. And yet Oona’s mother, with all her little gentle affectations, with her kind effusiveness which there was no withstanding, had given him the sincerest sense of home and a refuge from trouble. Was it Oona’s presence that explained all, or was there something more subtle underneath? There followed on this occasion no scene; but when Mrs. Methven returned to the drawing-room alone, leaving Walter, as she said, in peace to smoke his cigar after his dinner, Miss Merivale’s keen eyes perceived at once that the traveller’s meal had not been a happy ceremonial.

“I dare say he is tired,” she said.

“Yes, he is tired—almost too tired to eat. Smoke is the grand panacea,” said Mrs. Methven, with a smile.

“The worst of smoke is that it is so unsociable,” said Miss Merivale, cheerfully, picking up her book. “I think I’ll go to bed and leave you free for your talk with Walter when the cigar’s done. Oh yes, you will get on better by yourselves. You will get more out of him if you are alone. But I dare say you won’t get very much out of him. It will come by scraps—a little at a time; and he will be quite astonished that you don’t know—by instinct, I suppose. Men are all like that.”

It was very kind of Cousin Sophy. Mrs. Methven gave her a kiss of gratitude as she took her candle and went away. But the expedient after all did little good. Walter lingered over his cigar, growing less and less inclined for any confidences, while his mother lingered in the drawing-room, hoping he would come to her; and Cousin Sophy, by far the most comfortable of the three, established herself cosily in her easy-chair by her bedroom fire, with a yellow novel. Miss Merivale had aspirations beyond Mudie. She thought the French writers far more subtle and searching in their analysis of character than her compatriots ever were, and she liked their boldness, and the distinctness with which they cut away all pretences and showed humanity as it was. She had no opinion of humanity—but yet she was in her way very good-natured, and would even go out of her way to show kindness to one of her fellow-creatures, as she had done to-night. Though her own room looked comfortable, and was so indeed up to a certain point, Miss Merivale, if nobody else, was aware that there was a draught which there was no eluding,—a draught which, whatever you might do, caught you infallibly in the back of the neck. She had taken down the curtains and put them up again. She had changed the position of her seat. She had bought a folding screen. She had even changed her chair and procured a high-backed old-fashioned thing, something like that cushioned sentry-box in which porters delight; but in no way could she escape this draught, except in bed, and it was much too early to go to bed. Therefore she had made a distinct sacrifice of personal comfort in coming so soon up-stairs. She sat there and mused, asking herself what boys were born for, or at least by what strange mistake Providence ever committed them to the charge of women; and why it was that they could not be happy or natural with the people they belonged to. “I feel almost sure now,” she said to herself, “that I shall have a stiff neck to-morrow, to no purpose, and that those two down-stairs are sitting in separate rooms, and will not say a word to each other.”

It was a curious, very curious reading of an English home, could any spectator have looked through the secure covering of that respectable roof, or through the curtains that veiled the windows, and seen the two rooms in which these two persons sat each alone. How was it? Why was it? The mother had no thought but for her son. The son was not unkind or heartless, but full of good qualities. And yet at a moment when he had much to tell, and she was eager to hear, they sat in two separate rooms, as if they were fellow-lodgers and no more. Cousin Sophy, who was a sensible woman, with much kind feeling towards both, though she was not perhaps the kind of person from whom any high degree of unselfish devotion was to be looked for, sat and shook her head, and “wondered at it,” as the ladies at Camelot did over Elaine. But it was a greater wonder than Elaine.

Was it, perhaps, the beginning of the fulfilment of that threat that everything would go ill with him, which had been made at Kinloch Houran? But if so it was no new ill, but only the further following out of an evil that had been growing for years.

CHAPTER XX

Something of the same perversity which had turned all his good resolutions to nothing on the night of his arrival, affected Walter when he went out next morning into Sloebury. The place had narrowed and grown small in every way. There was no horizon, only lines of brick houses; no space, only the breadth of a street; no air to breathe for a man who had come from the wide solitude of the hills, and the keen freshness of the Highland breezes. Everything here was paltry, and monotonous, and small; the people who met him—and he met everybody, and there was not a man who could claim the slightest acquaintance with him, or a woman who had seen him once in her neighbour’s drawing-room who did not now claim acquaintance with Lord Erradeen—seemed to have dwindled along with the scene. They had never been distinguished by intelligence or originality, but he had not been aware how paltry they were before. Had he seen Jeremy’s new turn-out? all the men inquired of him. He had already heard of it from Miss Merivale, who had given him a sketch of the history of the town, and what had happened during his absence, at breakfast. It was a high phaeton, “which I suppose must be the fashion,” Miss Merivale said. “You should really see it,” cried all the young men, with details about the harness and the high-stepping mare which were endless. What did Lord Erradeen care for young Jeremy’s phaeton or the high-stepping mare? but it was the only topic at Sloebury—that, and a report which Miss Merivale had also furnished him with about Julia Herbert. “Your old flame: no doubt it was to console herself in your absence,” said Cousin Sophy. This was disagreeable too. Walter did not care to hear that the girl who had distinguished himself and been distinguished by him should make herself remarkable in a flirtation with another man. He did not want her indeed, but he objected to the transfer of her affections. And everything around looked so barren, stale, flat, and unprofitable. Perhaps it was the quickening of life which his recent experiences, painful though they had been, had brought him, which made him feel how dead-alive everything was. At Loch Houran his mind had gone back to the safe and peaceable commonplace of his native town with something like an enthusiasm of preference for its calm common sense, and superiority to the fever and excitements of that life upon the edge of the supernatural. Now it seemed to him that superstition itself, not to speak of the heats and chills of human passion, were higher things than this cynic-steadiness, this limit of matter-of-fact. What would Sloebury think of those things that had been so real to him, that had rent his very being asunder? He could imagine the inextinguishable laughter with which his story would be greeted, and blushed at the possibility of betraying himself. A seer of ghosts and visions, a victim of mesmerism! He would become in a moment the scorn, as he was at present, the envy, of the town. Not a soul of them would understand. His experiences must be buried in his own bosom, and no one here must ever know that he had got beyond that surface of life to which all their knowledge was confined. When he met Underwood indeed this determination wavered a little: but then Underwood looked at him with an eagerness of inspection which was still more offensive. What did the fellow mean? Did he think it likely that he, a stranger, a person whom the better people disapproved, should be chosen as the confidant of Lord Erradeen?

“You have come back very soon,” the captain said; as indeed did everybody whom he met.

“No—not sooner than I intended,” said Walter, coldly. “It was business merely that took me there at all.”

Underwood examined his face with a curiosity that had knowledge in it. “I know that country so well,” he said. “I should like to know what you think of it. Of course you were at Auchnasheen? I have been weeks there, with the late lord—and at the old castle too,” he added, with a keen look.

“You were interested in the architecture, I suppose.”

Underwood said nothing for a moment. Then suddenly—“I wish you’d come and talk to me about it!” he cried. “Any time that you will come I’ll shut out everybody else. I’ll keep myself free—”

“My dear fellow,” Walter said in a supercilious tone, “why should I make Sloebury pay the penalty, and banish your friends from you for my selfish advantage?” To remember the time when this man had taken notice of him and been his superior, gave him a sense of impatient indignation. “Besides, I don’t know that there is anything to say.”

“Oh, as you please,” said Underwood; but when they passed each other, he turned back and laid a hand on Walter’s sleeve. “I keep early hours now,” he said. “After ten I am always free.”

Lord Erradeen walked away, half-angry, half-amused, by the man’s presumption, who, after all, was a nobody; but yet, he made a secret note in his mind, almost outside of his consciousness. After ten—It might, in the dreadful blank of those hours after ten at Sloebury (or even before ten for that matter), be a resource.

He had not gone very much further when he fell into another lion’s mouth. But how wrong, how cruel, to apply such a phrase to the red and smiling mouth, fresh as the cherries in the song, of Miss Julia Herbert, on her way from the rectory where she paid her old aunt a daily visit, to the cottage in which she was her mother’s stay and solace! She had been flirting a great deal in Walter’s absence, no one could deny. A young Wynn, a relation on the other side of the house, had been staying there, on leave from his regiment, and on such an occasion what else was there to do? But young Wynn was gone, and his circumstances were not such as to have stood in competition for one moment with Lord Erradeen. As soon as she saw him, Julia began to smile and wave her hand. If there was a little sense of guilt in her, so much the more reason for even an excess of friendliness now. And perhaps there was in Walter a certain desire to let the little world about, which had insisted upon her little infidelities, perceive that she was as much under his influence as ever, as soon as he chose to appear. This was not the way in which the world regarded the matter, if Walter had known. Instead of looking at him as the conquering hero, who had but to show himself, the spectators said pityingly that Julia Herbert had got hold of poor Lord Erradeen again.

“Oh, Walter!” she cried; then changed her tone with a very pretty blush, and said, “I ought to have said Lord Erradeen; but it was the surprise. And so you have come home?”

“I have come back,” he said, with a little emphasis.

“I see it all. Forgive me that I should be so silly—back, of course; that means a few days, that means you have come for your boxes, or to see your mother, or to know her wishes respecting the new furniture of the banqueting hall. Shall it be mediaeval or renaissance? If you ask my advice—”

“I do; of course, I do. It is for that chiefly I am here.”

“That is what I thought. Renaissance, then. There, you have my opinion—with plenty of cupids and good, fat garlands—”

She laughed, and Walter laughed too, though he was not very much amused. But, of course, he could not speak to a lady as he had spoken to Underwood.

“Come now, tell me about it,” the young lady said. “You cannot refuse such a little bit of novelty to one who never sees anything new except a novel: and there is so little novelty in them! About what? Oh, about Scotland, and the scenery, and the old castle: and who you met, and what you did. Mayn’t I show a little curiosity—in one whom,” she added with that exaggeration of sentiment which leaves room for a laugh, “I have known all my life?”

“That, I hope, is not all the claim I have on your interest,” said Walter in the same tone.

“Oh, no, not half. There have been moments!—And then the romance of you, Lord Erradeen! It is delightful to touch upon the borders of romance. And your rank! I feel a great many inches higher, and ever so much elevated in my own estimation, by being privileged to walk by your lordship’s side. When are you going to take your seat and help to rule your country? They say the House of Commons is to be preferred for that. But there is nothing so delightful as a peer.”

“How lucky for me that you should think so. I may walk with you, then, to the—”

“Corner,” said Julia, “not too far; oh, certainly, not too far: or we shall have all the old ladies, male and female, making comments.”

“I don’t care for the old ladies—or their comments,” said Walter: the fun was languid, perhaps, but yet it afforded a little occupation when one had nothing else to do.

“You? Oh, of course not, as you will escape presently, and know all my wiles by heart already, it cannot make much difference to you. It is I who have to be considered, if you please, my lord. They will say there is that Julia Herbert at her old tricks, trying to take in poor Lord Erradeen—a poor, innocent young man in the snares of that designing baggage! They will probably add that the police should put a stop to it,” Miss Herbert said.

“The deluded old ladies! Without knowing that it is exactly the other way—”

“Now that is the prettiest speech you ever made,” said Julia. “I never heard you say anything so nice before. You must have been in very good society since you went away. Tell me, who was it?” she asked with her most insinuating look.

They were old practitioners both. They understood each other: they had flirted since they had been in long clothes, and no harm had ever come of it. This is, no doubt, what Miss Herbert would have said had any feminine critic interposed; but there was something more serious, as the feminine critic would have divined, at once, in Julia’s eye. She meant more, not less, than she said; and she was anxious to know, having her eyes upon all contingencies like a wise general, what rivals might have come in the way.

“I have met scarcely any one,” said Walter. “You cannot conceive what a lonely place it is. Oh, of course there are people about. I was promised a great many visitors had I stayed. On the other hand, even in winter, it is wonderfully beautiful. Coming back to this perfectly flat country, one discovers for the first time how beautiful it is.”

“Yes,” said Julia, indifferently; the beauty of the country did not excite her. “I have seen a photograph of your old castle. You can only get to it by water, Captain Underwood says. Oh, he has been a great authority on the subject since you went away. One of your castles is on Loch Houran; but the others—”

“If you like to call them castles,” said Walter, gently flattered by these queries, “there are two of them on Loch Houran. One I call a ruin, and the other a shooting-box—”

“Oh, you lucky, lucky person; and a house in town, and another grand place in Scotland! Aren’t you frightened to trust yourself among poor people who have nothing! Don’t you feel alarmed lest we should rush at you and tear you to pieces, and divide your spoils? I am very romantic. I should have the old castle,” she said with a side glance of provocation and invitation.

Her watchful eyes perceived a change in his countenance as she spoke. There were limits, it was evident, to the topics her flying hand might touch. She went on cleverly without a pause—

“You wonder what I should do with it? Restore it, Lord Erradeen. Build the walls up again, and make everything as it used to be. I should enjoy that—and then the furnishing, how delightful! Don’t you know that the aim and object of every rational being now is to make a little Victorian house look like a big Queen Anne one? or if not that, an Eastern harem with quantities of draperies, and mats and cushions. How much more delightful to have the real thing to work upon!”

“But my house is not a Queen Anne house, or an Oriental—”

“You don’t like to say the word, you good, delicate-minded young man! Of course not; but a castle like the Mysteries of Udolpho. At all events you must ask mamma and me to pay you a visit, and I shall take my lute like Emily in that beautiful story, and a small but well-chosen collection of books; and then whatever happens—suppose even that you shut my lover up in one of your dungeons—”

“Which I should certainly do; nay, hang him on the gallows-hill.”

“No, no,” she said, “not hang him; let him have the death of a gentleman. Here we are at the corner. Oh, you are going my way? Well, perhaps that makes a difference. You meant to pay your respects to mamma? I don’t think that I can in that case, Lord Erradeen, interfere with the liberty of the subject; for you have certainly a right, if you wish it, to call on mamma.”

“Certainly I have a right. I am prepared to obey you in every other respect; but Mrs. Herbert has always been very kind to me, and it is one of my objects—”

“How much improved you are!” cried Julia. “How nice you are! How grateful and condescending! Tell me whom you have been consorting with while you have been away. The Scotch have good manners, I have always heard. Who is your nearest neighbour in your old castle, Lord Erradeen?”

Walter cast about in his mind for a moment before he replied. He had no mind to profane the sanctity of the Isle by betraying its gentle inmates to any stranger’s curiosity. He said—“I think my nearest neighbour is a Mr. Williamson—not a distinguished name or person—who has a gorgeous great house and everything that money can buy. That means a great deal. It has all been made by sugar, or some equally laudable production.”

“And Mr. Williamson—no, it is not distinguished as names go—has a daughter, Lord Erradeen?”

“I believe so, Miss Herbert.”

“How solemn we are! It used to be Julia—and Walter. But never mind, when one gets into the peerage one changes all that. ‘One fair daughter, and no more, whom he loved passing well!’”

“There is but one, I think; sons in an indefinite number, however, which lessens, I suppose, in a commercial point of view, the value of the lady.”

“Lord Erradeen, you fill me with amazement and horror. If that is how you have been taught by your Scotch neighbours—”

“Miss Herbert, I am following the lead you have given me—trying humbly to carry out your wishes.”

And then they looked at each other, and laughed. The wit was not of a high order, but perhaps that is scarcely necessary to make a duel of this kind between a young man and a young woman amusing. It was more than amusing to Julia. She was excited, her bosom panted, her eyes shone—all the more that Walter’s calm was unbroken. It was provoking beyond measure to see him so tranquil, so ready to respond and follow her lead, so entirely unlikely to go any further. He was quite willing to amuse himself, she said to herself, but of feeling in the matter he had none, though there had been moments.

And it did not once occur to her that her antagonist was clever enough to have eluded her investigations, or that the smile upon his face was one of secret pleasure in the secret sanctuary whose existence he had revealed to no one—the little isle in the midst of Loch Houran and the ladies there. He went back to them while all this lively babble went on, seeing them stand and wave their hands to him, as he was carried away over the wintry water. He had come away with relief and eagerness to be gone; but how fair it all looked as he turned back out of this scenery so different from his loch, and from the side of a girl who wanted to “catch” him, Walter knew. Odious words! which it is a shame to think, much less speak, and yet which are spoken constantly, and, alas! in some cases, are true.

Notwithstanding this lively consciousness of the young lady’s meaning (which in itself is always flattering and propitiates as much as it alarms), Walter accompanied Julia very willingly to the cottage. He had not thought of going there so soon. It was a kind of evidence of interest and special attraction which he had not meant to give, but that did not occur to him at the moment. The mother and daughter exerted themselves to the utmost to make his visit agreeable. They insisted that he should stay to luncheon, they sang to him and made him sing, and talked and made him talk, and burned delicate incense before him, with jibes and flouts and pretences at mockery. They had the air of laughing at him, yet flattered him all the time. He was such a prize, so well worth taking a little trouble about. The incense tickled his nostrils, though he laughed too, and believed that he saw through them all the time. There was no deception, indeed, on either side; but the man was beguiled and the woman excited. He went away with certain fumes in his brain, and she came down from the little domestic stage upon which she had been performing with a sense of exhaustion, yet success. Miss Williamson, a country beauty, or perhaps not even a beauty, with red hair and a Scotch accent, and nothing but money to recommend her! Money was much to ordinary mortals, but surely not enough to sweep away all other considerations from the mind of a young favourite of fortune. No! Julia believed in a certain generosity of mind though she was not herself sufficiently well off to indulge in it, and she could not think that money, important as it was, would carry the day.

In the mean time, it was apparent to all the world that Lord Erradeen had spent the greater part of his first day at Sloebury, at the Cottage; he had stayed to luncheon, he had promised to come back to practise those duets. A young man who has just come into his kingdom, and is therefore in circumstances to marry, and likely in all human probability to be turning his thoughts that way, cannot do such things as this with impunity. If he had not meant something why should he thus have affiché‘d his interest in her daughter, Mrs. Herbert asked herself in polyglot jargon. There was no reason why he should have done so, had he not meant it. Thus Walter walked into the snare though it was so evident, though he saw it very well, and though the sportswoman herself trailed it on the ground before him and laughed and avowed her deep design. In such cases fun and frankness are more potent than deceit.

Walter continued in Sloebury for two or three weeks. He found the stagnation of every interest intolerable. He had nothing to do, and though this was a condition which he had endured with much composure for years before, it pressed upon him now with a force beyond bearing. And yet he did not go away. He betook himself to the Cottage to practise those duets almost every day; and presently he fell into the practice of visiting Captain Underwood almost every night; but not to confide in him as that personage had hoped. Underwood soon learned that a reference to Loch Houran made his companion silent at once, and that whatever had happened there the young lord meant to keep it to himself. But though Walter did not open his heart, he took advantage of the means of amusement opened to him. He suffered Captain Underwood to discourse to him about the turf; about horses, of which the young man knew nothing; about the way in which both pleasure and profit might be secured, instead of the ruin to which it is generally supposed that pursuit must lead. Underwood would have been very willing to “put” his young friend “up” to many things, and indeed did so in learned disquisitions which perhaps made less impression than he supposed upon a brain which was preoccupied by many thoughts. And they played a great deal, that deadly sort of play between two, which is for sheer excitement’s sake, and is one of the most dangerous ways of gambling. Walter did not lose so much as might have been expected, partly because his interest was apt to flag, and partly that his companion had designs more serious than those of the moment, and was in no hurry to pluck his pigeon—if pigeon it was, of which he was not yet sure.

Thus the young man held himself up to the disapproval of the town, which, indeed, was ready to forgive a great deal to a peer, but “did not like,” as all authorities said, “the way he was going on.” He was behaving shamefully to Julia Herbert, unless he meant to marry her, which she and her mother evidently believed to the derision of all spectators; and to mix himself up so completely with Underwood, and abandon the society of his own contemporaries, were things which it was very difficult to forgive. He did not hunt as he had intended, which would have been an amusement suited to his position, partly because there was a good deal of frost, and partly because it was not an exercise familiar to Walter, who had never had the means of keeping horses. And the football club belonged to the previous ages, with which he now felt so little connection. Therefore, it happened after a time, notwithstanding the charm of his rank, that Sloebury felt itself in the painful position of disapproving of Lord Erradeen. Strange to say, he was very little different from Walter Methven, who was a young fellow who had wasted his time and chances—a kind of good-for-nothing. It was something of an insult to the community in which he lived, that he should be “caught” by the most undisguised flirt, and should have fallen under the influence of the person most like a common adventurer of any in Sloebury. He owed it at least to those who had contemplated his elevation with such a rush of friendly feeling that he should be more difficult to inveigle. Had he still been plain Walter Methven, he could not have been more easily led away.

The house in which Walter was the first interest, and which had risen to such high hopes in his elevation, was held in the strangest state of suspense by this relapse into his old ways. The only element of agreeable novelty in it was the presence of Symington, who had taken possession of the house at once, with the most perfect composure and satisfaction to himself. He was the most irreproachable and orderly retainer ever brought into a house by a young man returning home. He gave no trouble, the maids said; he was not proud, but quite willing to take his meals in the kitchen, and did not stand upon his dignity. Presently, however, it appeared that he had got everything in his hands. He took the control of the dinner table, made suggestions to the cook, and even to Mrs. Methven herself when she ordered dinner, and became by imperceptible degrees the chief authority in the house. In this capacity he looked with puzzled and disapproving eyes at his young lord. His first inquiries as to where the horses were kept, and where he was to find his master’s hunting things, being answered impatiently, with an intimation that Walter possessed neither the one nor the other, Symington took a high tone.

“You will, no doubt, take steps, my lord, to supply yourself. I hear it’s a fine hunting country: and for a young gentleman like you with nothing to do—”

“Don’t you think I can manage my own affairs best?” the young man said.

“It’s very likely ye think so, my lord,” with great gravity, Symington said. He was laying the table for luncheon, and spoke sometimes with his back to Walter as he went and came.

“I suppose you are of a different opinion?” Walter said, with a laugh.

“Not always—not always, my lord. I’ve seen things in you that were very creditable—and sense too—and sense too!” said Symington, waving his hand. “I’m just thinking if I were a young gentleman in your lordship’s place, I would get more enjoyment out of my life. But we never know,” he added piously, “what we might be capable of, if we were exposed to another’s temptations and put in another’s place.”

“Let me hear,” said Walter, with some amusement, “what you would do if you were in my place.”

“It’s what I have often asked mysel’,” said Symington, turning round, and polishing with the napkin in his hand an old-fashioned silver salt cellar. “Supposing ye were rich and great that are at present nobody in particular, what would ye do? It’s an awful difficult question. It’s far more easy to find fault. We can all do that. Your lordship might say to me, ‘That silver is no what it ought to be.’ And I would probably answer, ‘It’s been in a woman’s hands up till now,’ which he had never taken into consideration. And I may misjudge your lordship in the same way.”

“Do you mean to say that I too have been in a woman’s hands? But that is uncivil, Symington, to my mother.”

“I would on no hand be unceevil to my lady; and it was not that I was meaning. To my thinking, my lord, you just dinna get enough out of your life. There is a heap of satisfaction to be got out of the life of a lord, when he has plenty of money, and five-and-twenty years of age like you. It is true your lordship is courting, which accounts for many things.”

“What do you mean by courting? Come, we have had enough of this,” Lord Erradeen said.

“I did not expect, my lord, that you would bide it long, though you were very good-natured to begin with. Courting is just a very well kent amusement, and no ill in it. But I will not intrude my remarks on your lordship. There is one thing though, just one thing,” Symington said, re-arranging the table with formal care. “You’ll no be going north again, my lord, as well as I can reckon, for nigh upon another year?”

“What have you to do with my going north?” Walter cried impatiently.

“Your lordship forgets that I will have to go with ye, which gives me a hantle to do with it,” said Symington imperturbably; “but that will no be at least till it’s time for the grouse? It will always be my duty:—and my pleasure, and my pleasure!” he added with a wave of his hand, “to follow your lordship to the place ye ken of, and do my best for you: but in the mean time I’m thinking this place suits me real well, and I will just bide here.”

“Bide here, you old Solomon!” Walter cried, between laughter and wrath; “how do you know that you are to bide anywhere, or that I mean you to stay with me at all?”

Symington waved his hand dismissing this question with the contempt it merited. “I am just a person much attached to the family,” he said, “and ye would not find it comfortable, my lord, up yonder, without me. But in the mean time ye will get a younger lad with my advice. And I’ll just bide where I am with my lady, your mother, who is a lady of great judgment. I am getting an auld man; and your lordship is a young one; and if you are over-quiet at present, which is my opinion, it is no to be expected or desired that the like of that can last. Ye will aye find me here, my lord, when you want me. It will suit me far better at my years than running to and fro upon the earth at the tail of a young lad. But as long as I can draw one foot after another, I will go with your lordship up yonder, and never fail ye,” Symington said.

CHAPTER XXI

The manner of life of which Symington disapproved went on till Christmas was over, and the new year had begun. It was not a new kind of life, but only the old, heightened in some of its features; less tragical in its folly because the young man was now no longer dependent upon his own exertions, yet more tragical in so far that life had now great opportunities for him, and means of nobler living, had he chosen. He received business letters now and then from Mr. Milnathort and from Shaw at Loch Houran which he read with impatience or not at all. Business disgusted him. He had no desire to take the trouble of making up his mind on this or that question. He let his letters collect in a pile and left them there, while he went and practised his duets, or lighted his cigar with the pink paper of the telegram which called his attention to letters unanswered, and went out to play ecarte with Underwood. He did not care for the ecarte. He did not care for the duets. Poor Julia’s devices to secure him became day by day more transparent to him, and Underwood’s attempts to gain an influence. He saw through them both, yet went on day by day. The Herberts, mother and daughter, spoke of him with a secure proprietorship, and Julia, though never without that doubt which adventurers know, had almost a certainty of the coronet upon her handkerchief which she worked upon a cigar-case for him by way of making quite sure what a viscount’s coronet was. It is a pretty ornament. She was rather ashamed of her old-fashioned name, but that above it made everything right. Underwood for his part shook off the doubt which had been in his mind as to whether Lord Erradeen was a pigeon to be plucked. He thought of a campaign in town carried on triumphantly by means of his noble victim. It was worth waiting for after all.

And thus Christmas passed. Christmas, that season of mirth! There was the usual number of parties, at all of which Lord Erradeen was a favoured guest, and allowed himself to be exhibited as Miss Herbert’s thrall. In these assemblies she used to talk to him about Miss Williamson. “Oh yes, a lady in Scotland, whose wealth is untold; hasn’t Lord Erradeen told you? It is to be a match, I understand,” Julia would say with a radiant countenance. “Sugar—or cotton, I don’t remember which. When one has estates in the West Highlands, that is part of the programme. One always marries—sugar. That is a much prettier way of putting it than to say one marries money.” This tantalised Sloebury a little, and painfully mystified Mrs. Methven, who had never heard Miss Williamson’s name; but it did not change the evident fact that Lord Erradeen must either be engaged, or on the point of being engaged—or else that he was using Julia Herbert very ill. When the new year began, and it was suddenly announced that he was going away, there was a flutter and thrill of excitement over all the town. The rector, who met Walter on his way to the railway, and who was aware of all the expectations connected with him, stared aghast at the intimation. “Going away!” he said, then put forth a tremulous smile. “Ah, I see! going on some visits, to pot a few pheasants before the season is over.”

“I don’t think that would tempt me,” Walter said. “I am going to town, and my mother will follow shortly. It is a removal, I fear—”

“You are going from Sloebury! But then—but then—” The old clergyman gasped for breath.

“My friends think I have wasted a great deal too much time in Sloebury,” Lord Erradeen said, and he waved his hand to the rector, who went home with his lower lip dropped, and his cheeks fallen in, in a consternation beyond words. His excitement was as great, though of a different kind, as on that day when he ran in from church with his surplice still on, and the most extraordinary disregard of decorum to carry the news of Walter’s elevation in rank to his wife. “That fellow is going off without a word,” cried Mr. Wynn. “He has been amusing himself, that’s all; but you never will listen to me. The girl has been going too far, a great deal too far, her mother ought not to have allowed it. And now I shall hear nothing else wherever I go,” the rector said. He was almost ready to cry, being old and a nervous man by nature. “I thought it was settled this time, and that we should have no further trouble with her,” which was a contradiction of himself after the words he had begun with. Mrs. Wynn soothed him as best she could, though indeed she had been the one who had all along doubted Lord Erradeen’s “intentions,” and bade the rash Julia beware.

“Perhaps,” she said, “they have come to an understanding, my dear. For it was quite true what he told you: he has wasted too much time in Sloebury. A young man in his position should not hang about in a place like this.”

“A young man in his position—should not raise expectations that are never to come to anything,” the rector said; which was a truth so undeniable that even his peace-making wife could find nothing to reply.

The change of sentiment which led Walter away from Sloebury was accomplished almost in a moment. In a capricious and wayward mind, a touch is sometimes enough to change the entire direction of a life. He had been kept indoors by a cold, and for want of something else to do had read his letters, and even answered one or two of them. There were several from Shaw relating the course of events at Loch Houran; but these might not perhaps have moved him, had he not found inclosed in one of them a note, now somewhat out of date, from Oona. It was very short and very simple. “I found I was not authorised to do anything with the poor Frasers except to tell them you would not be hard upon them: and I took it upon me to assure old Jenny that whatever happened you would never take the coo, and Granny that she should die in peace in her own house even—which she would like, I think, for the credit of the glen—if she should live to be a hundred. I think you will not disown my agency by doing anything contrary to this. My mother sends her best regards.” There was nothing more: but the words acted upon Walter’s dissatisfied mind like the sudden prick of a lance. It seemed to him that he saw her again standing, with a somewhat wistful look in her eyes, watching him as his boat shot along the gleaming water—her mother with her waving handkerchief, her nodding head, her easy smile, standing by. Oona had said nothing, made no movement, had only stood and looked at him. How little she said now! and yet she was the only living creature (he said to himself in the exaggeration of a distracted mind) who had ever given him real help. She had ever given him her hand without hesitation or coquetry or thought of herself, to deliver him from his enemy—a hand that had purity, strength in its touch, that was as soft—as snow, he had said: cool, and pure, and strong. The thought of it gave him a pang which was indescribable. He rose up from where he sat among a litter of paper and books, the accumulations of an idle man, and went hurriedly to the drawing-room, where his mother sat alone by her fire—so much the more alone because he was in the next room, a world apart from her. He came in with a nervous excitement about him.

“Mother,” he said, “I am going to town to-morrow.”

She put down her book and looked at him. “Well, Walter?” she said.

“You think that is not of much importance; but it is, as it happens. I am going away from Sloebury. I shall never do any good here. I can’t think why I have stayed—why we have stayed indeed; for it cannot have much attraction for you.”

She put down the book altogether now. She was afraid to say too much or too little in this sudden, new resolution, and change of front.

“I can understand your feeling, Walter. You have stayed over Christmas out of consideration for—” She would have said “me” if she could, but that was impossible. “For the traditions of the season,” she added, with a faint smile.

“That is a very charitable and kind way of putting it, mother. I have stayed because I am a fool—because I can’t take the trouble to do anything but what suggests itself at the moment. Perhaps you think I don’t know? Oh, I know very well, if that did any good. I am going to get the house ready, and you will join me when it is fit for you to live in.”

“I, Walter?” she said, with a startled tone. Her face flushed and then grew pale. She looked at him with a curious mixture of pleasure and pain. It seemed like opening up a question which had been long settled. Death is better than the reviving flutters of life when these are but to lead to a little more suffering and a dying over again. She added, somewhat tremulously, “I think perhaps it would be better not to consider the question of removal as affecting me.”

“Mother,” he said, almost wildly, his eyes blazing upon her, “your reproaches are more than I can bear.”

“I mean no reproach,” she said, quietly. “It is simple enough. Your life should not be fettered by cares which are unnecessary. I am very well here.”

“We can’t go all over it again,” he said. “We discussed that before. But you will say I have been as selfish, as careless as ever I was: and it is true—worse. Ah, I wonder if this was part of the penalty? Worse, in the old way. That would be a sort of a devilish punishment, just like him—if one were so silly as to believe that he had the power.”

“Of whom are you speaking, Walter?” asked his mother, startled. “Punishment—who can punish you? You have done nothing to put yourself in any one’s power.”

He gazed at her for a moment as she looked at him with anxious eyes, investigating his face to discover, if she could, what he meant. Then he burst into an excited laugh.

“I am getting melodramatic,” he said, “by dint of being wretched, I suppose.”

“Walter, what is this? If there is indeed anything hanging over you, for God’s sake tell me.”

She got up hurriedly and went to him in sudden trouble and alarm, but the sensation of the moment did not carry him any further. He put away her hand almost impatiently. “Oh, there is nothing to tell,” he said, with irritation. “You take everything au pied de la lettre. But I am going to town to-morrow, all the same.”

And this he did, after a night in which he slept little and thought much. It may be thought that Oona Forrester’s letter was a small instrument to effect so much, but it is not thus that influences can be reckoned. His mother had done a great deal more for him than Oona, but nothing she could have done or said could have moved him like the recollection of that small, soft hand by which he had held as if it were the anchor of salvation. It kept him from a sort of despair as he remembered it, through this turbulent night, as he lay awake in the darkness, asking himself could this be what his adversary meant? Not misfortune or downfall, which was what he had thought of, feeling himself able to defy such threats: but this self-abandonment to his natural defects, this more and more unsatisfactoriness of which he was conscious to the bottom of his heart. It did not occur to him that in the dread that came over him, and panic-stricken sense of the irresistible, he was giving the attributes of something far more than man to his maniac, or monomaniac, of Kinloch Houran. It was not the moment now to question what that being was, or how he had it in his power to affect the life and soul of another. The anguish of feeling that he was being affected, that the better part was being paralysed in him and the worse made stronger, was what occupied him now. When he got a little sleep in the midst of his tossings and troublings of mind and body, it was by the soothing recollection of Oona’s refreshing, strengthening touch, the hand that had been put into his own and had given him the strength of two souls.

And so it was that next morning, when he ought to have been practising those duets at Julia Herbert’s side, he was hurrying up to London as fast as steam and an express train could carry him. It was not perhaps the best place to go to for spiritual reformation, but at least it was a beginning of something new. And in the force of this impulse he went on for some time, proceeding at once to Park Lane, to push forward the preparations of the house, securing for himself a servant in the place of Symington, and establishing himself, for the interval that must elapse before the house was ready for him, in chambers. In this way he found occupation for a week or two. He made an effort to answer his letters. He suffered himself to go through certain forms of business with the London lawyers who were the correspondents of Mr. Milnathort; and so for a short time found himself in the position of having something to do, and, still more strange, of doing it with a lightness of mind and enlivenment of life which was extraordinary, and without a reflection in respect to the duets and the ecarte. They were over, these délaissements, and that was all about it.

It was not such plain sailing however after the beginning. Established in chambers which were pleasant enough, with plenty of money, with youth and health, and what was still more, as he thought, with rank and a title which had the effect of making everybody civil and more than civil to him, Lord Erradeen suddenly awoke to the fact that he was less than nobody in the midst of that busy world of London in which there are so many people who love a lord. Yes; but before you can love a lord, invite him, caress him, make his time pass agreeably, you must know him. And Walter knew nobody. The most curious, the most rueful-comic, insignificant-important of all preliminaries! The doors were open, and the entertainment ready, and the guest willing; but there was no master of the ceremonies to bring him within the portals. It had not occurred to him until he was there, nor had he thought, even had his pride permitted him to ask for them, of the need of introductions, and some helping hand to bring him within the reach of society. Society, indeed, had as yet scarcely come back to town, but yet there was a sprinkling at the club windows, men were to be seen in Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and even a few carriages with ladies in them frequented the Park. But what did that matter to him who knew nobody? He had no club. He was a stranger from the country. No house was open to him; he went about the streets without meeting a face he knew. To be sure, this must not be taken as an absolute fact, for there were people he knew, even relations, one very respectable clan of them, living at Norwood, in the highest credit and comfort, who would have received him with open arms. And he knew Mr. Wynn, the rector’s nephew, a moderately successful barrister, who called upon and asked him to dinner with extreme cordiality, as did one or two other people connected with Sloebury. But in respect to the society to which he felt himself to belong, Walter was like the Peri at the gate of Paradise. He knew nobody. Had ever any young peer with means to keep up his rank, been in such a position before? It gave him a certain pleasure to think upon one other, born to far higher fortunes than himself, who had entered London like this in inconceivable solitude. Byron! a magnificent example that went far to reconcile him to his fate. Walter thought a great deal of the noble poet in these days, and studied him deeply, and took pleasure in the comparison, and consolation in the feeling that he could enter thoroughly into all those high, scornful-wistful, heroic utterances about mankind. The Byronic mood has gone out of fashion; but if you can imagine a youth richly endowed by fortune, feeling that his new honours should open every door to him, and also a little that he was fit to hold his own place with the best, yet perceiving no door move on its hinges, and forced to acknowledge with a pang of surprise and disappointment, and that sense of neglected merit which is one of the most exquisite pangs of youth, that nobody cared to make his acquaintance, or even to inquire who was Lord Erradeen! It is all very well to smile at these sentiments where there has been no temptation to entertain them. But the young peer, who knew nobody, entered completely into Byron’s feelings. He pondered upon the extraordinary spectacle of that other young peer strolling haughtily, with his look like a fallen angel, up between the lordly ranks to take his hereditary seat: all the representatives of the old world staring coldly at him, and not one to be his sponsor and introduce him there. The same thing Walter felt would have to happen in his own case, if he had courage enough to follow the example of Byron; and he felt how hollow were all his honours, how mean the indifferent spectators round him, how little appreciated himself, with all the keenness of youthful passion and would-be cynicism. Unfortunately, he was not a Byron, and had no way of revenging himself upon that world.

This curious and irritating discovery, after all his good resolutions, had, it need scarcely be said, the reverse of an elevating influence upon him. He sought the amusement from which his equals shut him out in other regions. Strolling about town in an aimless way, he picked up certain old acquaintances whose renewed friendship was of little advantage. There will always be black sheep everywhere, and it is no unprecedented case for a boy from a public school, or youth from the university, to come across, six or seven years after he has left these haunts of learning, stray wanderers, who in that little time have fallen to the very depth of social degradation. When such a thing happens to a young man, the result may be a noble pity and profound impression of life’s unspeakable dangers, and the misery of vice; or it may be after the first shock a sense that his own peccadilloes are not worth thinking of, seeing how infinitely lower down others have fallen. Walter stood between these two. He was sincerely sorry, and anxious to succour the fallen; but at the same time he could not but feel that in his position, who never could come to that, the precautions which poor men had to take were scarcely necessary. And what could he do? A young man must have something to amuse himself and occupy his time.

It was while he was sliding into the inconceivable muddle of an indolent mind and a vacant life that Underwood came to town. The captain’s motives and intentions in respect to him were of a very mixed character, and require further elucidation: but the effect of his appearance in the mean time was a rapid acceleration of the downward progress. Underwood was “up to” many things which Lord Erradeen was not “up to” as yet, and the young man did not any longer, except by intervals, despise the society of the elder one, who brought, it could not be denied, a great many fresh excitements and occupations into his life. Under Captain Underwood’s instructions he became acquainted with the turf, which, as everybody knows, is enough to give a young man quite enough to do, and a good many things to think of. And now indeed the time had come when the captain began to feel his self-banishment to Sloebury, and his patience, and all his exertions, so far as Walter was concerned, fully repaid. There was no repetition of that Byronic scene in the House of Lords. Instead of proudly taking his seat alone, and showing the assembled world how little he cared for its notice, Walter discovered that he was indifferent to the world altogether, and asked himself, What is the good of it? with the philosophy of a cynic. What was the good of it, indeed? What was it but a solemn farce when you came to look into it? The House of Commons might be something, but the House of Lords was nothing; and why should a man trouble himself to become a member of it? Then as to the clubs. What was the use of struggling to get admission to White’s, or Boodle’s, or any other of those exalted institutions which Walter only knew by name—when at Underwood’s club, where he was received with acclamation, you had the best dinner and the best wine in London, and no petty exclusiveness? Walter was not by any means the only titled person in that society. There were quantities indeed of what the captain called “bosses” on its books. Why then should Lord Erradeen take the trouble to sue and wait for admittance elsewhere with these doors so open to him? In the midst of this new influx of life, it is scarcely necessary to say that the house in Park Lane came to a standstill. It stood through all the season profitless, of use to nobody; and Walter’s life went on, alas, not to be described by negations, a life without beauty or pleasure; though pleasure was all its aim.

At Sloebury the commotion made by his departure had been great. At the Cottage there had been a moment of blank consternation and silence, even from ill words. Then Mrs. Herbert’s energies awoke, and her vivacity of speech. Fire blazed from this lady’s eyes, and bitterness flowed from her tongue. She fell upon Julia (who, indeed, might have been supposed the greatest sufferer) with violent reproaches, bidding her (as was natural) remember that she had always been against it: a reproach in which there was really some truth. Julia, too, had a moment of prostration in which she could hold no head at all against the sudden disappointment and overthrow, and still more overwhelming realisation of what everybody would say. She retired to her room for a day, and drew down the blinds and had a headache in all the forms. During that period, no doubt, the girl went through sundry anguishes, both of shame and failure, such as the innocent who make no scheming are free from; while her mother carried fire and flame to the Rectory, and even betrayed to various friends her burning sense of wrong, and that Julia had been shamefully used. But when Julia emerged out of the shelter of that headache she put down all such demonstrations. She showed to Sloebury, all on the watch to see “how she took it,” a front as dauntless and eyes as bright as ever. In a campaign the true soldier is prepared for anything that can happen, and knows how to take the evil with the good. Had she weakly allowed herself to love Walter the result might have been less satisfactory; but she had been far too wise to run such a risk. Afterwards, when rumours of the sort of life he was leading reached Sloebury, she confided to her mother, in the depths of their domestic privacy, that it was just as well he was going a little wrong.

“Oh, a little wrong!” cried Mrs. Herbert vindictively. “If all we hear is true it is much more than a little. He is just going to the bad as fast as his legs can carry him—with that Captain Underwood to help him on; and he richly deserves it, considering how he has behaved to you.”

“Oh, wait a little, mamma,” Julia said. “I know him better than any one. He will come round again, and then he will be ready to hang himself. And the prodigal will come home, and then—Or, perhaps Tom Herbert will ask me up to town for the end of the season, after all the best is over, as he is sometimes kind enough to do. And I shall carry a little roast veal, just a sort of specimen of the fatted calf, with me to town.” Thus the young lady kept up her heart and bided her time.

Mrs. Methven bore the remarks of Sloebury and answered all its questions with a heavier heart. She could not take any consolation in Walter’s wrong-doing, neither could she have the relief of allowing that he was to blame. She accounted for the rearrangement of everything, which she had to consent to after taking many measures for removal, by saying that she had changed her mind. “We found the house could not be ready before the end of the season,” she said heroically, “and what should I do in London in the height of the summer with nobody there?” She bore a fine front to the world but in reality the poor lady’s heart had sunk within her. Oddly enough, Julia, the wronged, who at heart was full of good nature, was almost her only comforter. Julia treated Lord Erradeen’s absence as the most natural thing in the world.

“I know what took him away in such a hurry,” she said. “It was Miss Williamson. Oh, don’t you know about Miss Williamson? his next neighbour at that Lock—something or other, a girl made of money—no, sugar. The next thing we shall hear is that you have a daughter-in-law with red hair. What a good thing that red hair is so fashionable! She is so rich, he was quite ashamed to mention it; that is why he never told you; but Walter,” she cried, with a laugh, “had no secrets from me.”

Mrs. Methven, in dire lack of anything to cling to, caught at Miss Williamson as at a rock of salvation. If he had fallen in love, did not that account for everything? She could only pray God that it might be true.

Symington had been bringing in the tea while Miss Herbert discoursed. When he came back to remove the tea things after she was gone, he “took it upon him,” as he said, “to put in his word.” “If you will excuse me, my lady,” he said (a title which in a sort of poetical justice and amendment of fate Symington considered due to my lord’s mother), “my lord could not do better than give his attention to Miss Williamson, who is just the greatest fortune in all the country-side. But, even if it’s not that, there is nothing to be out of heart about. If he’s taking a bite out of the apples of Gomorrah, he’ll very soon find the cinders cranshing in his mouth. But whatever he is after, when it comes to be the time to go up yonder there will be an end to all that.”

“My good Symington,” said Mrs. Methven, “do you think it is necessary to excuse my son to me? It would be strange if I did not understand him better than any one.” But notwithstanding this noble stand for Walter, she got a little consolation both from the thought of Miss Williamson, and of that mysterious going up yonder, which must be a crisis in his life.

Thus winter ran into summer, and the busy months of the season went over the head of young Lord Erradeen. It was a very different season from that which he had anticipated. It contained no Byronic episode at all. The House of Lords never saw its new member, neither did any of those gay haunts of the fashionable world of which he had once dreamed. He went to no balls, or crowded dazzling receptions, or heavy dinners. He did not even present himself at a levée. He had indeed fallen out of his rank altogether, that rank which had startled him so, with a kind of awe in the unexpected possession. His only club was that one of indifferent reputation to which Underwood had introduced him, and his society, the indifferent company which collected there. He began to be tolerably acquainted with race-courses, great and small, and improved his play both at billiards and whist, so that his guide, philosopher, and friend declared himself ready on all occasions to take odds on Erradeen. He spent a great deal of his time in these occupations, and lost a great deal of his money. They were almost the only things that gave him a semblance of an occupation in life. He was due at the club at certain hours to pursue this trade, which, like any other trade, was a support to his mind, and helped to make the time pass. At five-and-twenty one has so much time on hand, that to spend it is a pleasure, like spending money, flinging it to the right hand and the left, getting rid of it: though there is so much to be got out of it that has grown impossible to the old fogeys, no old fogey is ever so glad to throw it away.

And thus the days went on. They were full of noise and commotion, and yet, as a matter of fact, they were dullish as they dropped one after another. And sometimes as he came back to his rooms in the blue of the morning, and found as the early sun got up, that sleep was impossible, or on such a moment as a Sunday morning, when there was little or nothing “to do,” Walter’s thoughts were not of an agreeable kind. Sometimes he would wake from a doze with the beautiful light streaming in at his windows, and the brown London sparrows beginning to twitter, and would jump up in such a restlessness and fierce impatience with himself and everything about him as he could neither repress nor endure. At such moments his life seemed to him intolerable, an insult to reason, a shame to the nature that was made for better things. What was the good of going on with it day after day? The laughter and the noise, who was it that called them the crackling of thorns—a hasty momentary blaze that neither warmed nor lighted? And sometimes, even in the midst of his gaiety, there would suddenly come into his mind a question—Was this what was to happen to him if he resisted the will of the dweller on Loch Houran? Psha! he would say to himself, what was happening to him? Nothing but his own will and pleasure, the life that most young fellows of his age who were well enough off to indulge in it possessed—the life he would have liked before he became Lord Erradeen: which was true; and yet it did not always suffice him for an answer. At such times curious gleams of instinct, sudden perceptions as by some light fitfully entering, which made an instantaneous revelation too rapid almost for any profit, and then disappeared again—would glance across Walter’s soul.

On a fine evening in June he was walking with Underwood to the club to dine. The streets were cool with the approach of night, the sky all flushed with rose red and every possible modification of heavenly blue, the trees in the squares fluttering out their leaves in the coolness of the evening, and shaking off the dust of day, a sense of possible dew going to fall even in London streets, a softening of sounds in the air. He was going to nothing better than cards, or perhaps, for a caprice, to the theatre, where he had seen the same insane burlesque a dozen times before, no very lively prospect: and was cogitating in his mind whether he should not run off to the Continent, as several men were talking of doing, and so escape from Underwood and the club, and all the rest of the hackneyed round: which he would have done a dozen times over but for the trouble of it, and his sense of the bore it would be to find something to amuse him under such novel circumstances. As they went along, Underwood talking of those experiences which were very fine to the boys in Sloebury, but quite flat to Walter now—there suddenly appeared to him, standing on the steps of a private hotel, in a light overcoat like a man going to dinner, a middle-aged, rustic-looking individual, with a ruddy, good-humoured countenance, and that air of prosperity and well-being which belongs to the man of money. “I think I have seen that man somewhere before,” said Walter. Underwood looked up, and the eyes of all three met for a moment in mutual recognition. “Hallo, Captain Underwood!” the stranger said. Underwood was startled by the salutation; but he stopped, willingly or unwillingly, stopping Walter also, whose arm was in his. “Mr. Williamson! You are an unexpected sight in London,” he said.

“No, no, not at all,” said the good-humoured man, “I am very often in London. I am just going in to my dinner. I wonder if I might make bold, being a countryman and straight from Loch Houran, to say, though we have never met before, that I am sure this is Lord Erradeen?”

Walter replied with a curious sense of amusement and almost pleasure. Mr. Williamson, the father of the fabulous heiress who had been invented between Julia Herbert and himself!

“I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Lord Erradeen; you know our lands march, as they say in Scotland. Are you engaged out to your dinner, gentlemen, may I ask, or are ye free to take pot luck? My daughter Katie is with me, and we were thinking—or at least she was thinking—for I am little learned in such matters—of looking in at the theatre to see a small piece of Mr. Tennyson’s that they call the Falcon, and which they tell me, or rather she tells me, is just most beautiful. Come now, be sociable; it was no fault of mine, my lord, that I did not pay my respects to ye when ye were up at Loch Houran. And Katie is very wishful to make your acquaintance. Captain Underwood knows of old that I am fond of a good dinner. You will come? Now that’s very friendly. Katie, I’ve brought you an old acquaintance and a new one,” he said, ushering them into a large room cloudy with the fading light.

The sudden change of destination, the novelty, the amusing associations with this name, suddenly restored Walter to a freshness of interest of which the blasé youth on his way to the noisy monotony of the club half an hour before could not have thought himself capable. A young lady rose up from a sofa at the end of the room and came forward, bending her soft brows a little to see who it was.

“Is it any one I know? for I cannot see them,” in simplest tones, with the accent of Loch Houran, Miss Williamson said.

CHAPTER XXII

The room was large with that air of bare and respectable shabbiness which is the right thing in a long-established private hotel—with large pieces of mahogany furniture, and an old-fashioned carpet worn, not bare exactly, but dim, the pattern half-obliterated here and there, which is far more correct and comme il faut than the glaring newness and luxury of modern caravanseries. As Mr. Williamson, like a true Englishman (a Scotsman in this particular merely exaggerates the peculiarity), loved the costly all the better for making no show of being costly, it was naturally at one of these grimly expensive places that he was in the habit of staying in London. A large window, occupying almost one entire side of the room, filled it with dim evening light, and a view of roofs and chimneys, against which Katie’s little figure showed as she came forward asking, “Is it any one I know?” It was not a commanding, or even very graceful figure, though round and plump, with the softened curves of youth. When the new-comers advanced to meet her, and she saw behind her father’s middle-aged form, the slimmer outlines of a young man, Katie made another step forward with an increase of interest. She had expected some contemporaries of papa’s, such as he was in the habit of bringing home with him to dinner, and not a personage on her own level. Mr. Williamson, in his good-humoured cordiality, stepped forward something like a showman, with a new object which he feels will make a sensation.

“You will never guess who this is,” he said, “so I will not keep ye in suspense, Katie. This is our new neighbour at Loch Houran, Lord Erradeen. Think of me meeting him just by chance on the pavey, as ye may say, of a London street, and us next door to each other, to use a vulgar expression, at home!”

“Which is the vulgar expression?” said Katie. She was very fond of her father, but yet liked people to see that she knew better. She held out her hand frankly to Walter, and though she was only a round-about, bread-and-butter little girl with nothing but money, she was far more at her ease than he was. “I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Lord Erradeen,” she said. “We were just wondering whether we should meet you anywhere. We have only been a week in town.”

“I don’t think we should have been likely to meet,” said Walter with that tone of resentment which had become natural to him, “if I had not been so fortunate as to encounter Mr. Williamson as he says, on the pavé.”

Katie was not pleased by this speech. She thought that Walter was rude, and implied that the society which he frequented was too fine for the Williamsons, and she also thought that he meant a laugh at her father’s phraseology, neither of which offences were at all in the young man’s intention.

“Oh,” Katie cried, resentful too, “papa and I go to a great many places—unless you mean Marlborough House and that sort of thing. Oh, Captain Underwood!” she added next moment in a tone of surprise. The appearance of Captain Underwood evidently suggested to her ideas not at all in accordance with that of Marlborough House.

“Yes,” he said, “Miss Williamson: you scarcely expected to see me. It is not often that a man is equally intimate with two distinct branches of a family, is it? But I always was a fortunate fellow, and here I am back in your circle again.”

Walter’s mind was considerably preoccupied by his own circumstances, and by the novelty of this new meeting; but yet he was quick-witted enough to remark with some amusement the recurrence of the old situation with which he was quite acquainted—the instinctive repugnance of the feminine side everywhere to this companion of his, and the tolerance and even friendliness of the men. Katie did all but turn her back upon Underwood before his little speech was ended. She said, “Will you ring for dinner, papa?” without making the slightest reply to it: and indeed, after another glance from one to the other, retired to the sofa from which she had risen, with a little air of having exhausted this new incident, and indifference to anything that could follow, which piqued Walter. Had she been a noble person either in fact or in appearance, of an imposing figure and proportions even, it might have seemed less insupportable; but that a little dumpy girl should thus lose all interest in him, classifying him in a moment with his companion, was beyond Lord Erradeen’s patience. He felt bitterly ashamed of Underwood, and eager even, in his anger at this presumptuous young woman’s hasty judgment, to explain how it was that he was in Underwood’s company. But as he stood biting his lip in the half-lighted room, he could not but remember how very difficult it would be to explain it. Why was he in Underwood’s company? Because he could get admittance to none better. Marlborough House! He felt himself grow red all over, with a burning shame, and anger against fate. And when he found himself seated by Katie’s side at the lighted table, and subject to the questions with which it was natural to begin conversation, his embarrassment was still greater. She asked him had he been here and there. That great ball at the French Embassy that everybody was talking about—of course he had been one of the guests? And at the Duke’s—Katie did not consider it necessary to particularise what duke, confident that no Christian, connected ever so distantly with Loch Houran, could have any doubt on the subject. Was the decoration of the new dining-room so magnificent as people said? Walter’s blank countenance, his brief replies, the suppressed reluctance with which he said anything at all, had the strangest effect upon Katie. After a while she glanced at Captain Underwood, who was talking with much volubility to her father, and with a very small, almost imperceptible shrug of her little shoulders, turned away and addressed herself to her dinner. This from a little girl who was nobody, who was not even very pretty, who betrayed her plebeian origin in every line of her plump form and fresh little commonplace face, was more than Walter could bear.

“You must think me dreadfully ignorant of the events of society,” he said, “but the fact is I have not been going out at all. It is not very long, you are aware, since I came into the property, and—there have been a great many things to do.”

“I have always heard,” said Katie, daintily consuming a delicate entrée, with her eyes upon her plate as if that was her sole interest, “that the Erradeen estates were all in such order that there was never anything for the heir to do.”

“You speak,” said Walter, “as if they changed hands every year.”

“Oh, not that exactly; but I remember two; and I might have remembered others, for we have only been at Loch Houran since papa got so rich.”

“What a pleasant way of remembering dates!”

“Do you think so, Lord Erradeen? Now I should think that to have been rich always, and your father before you, and never to have known any difference, would be so much more pleasant.”

“There may perhaps be something to be said on both sides,” said Walter; “but I am no judge—for the news of my elevation, such as it is, came to me very suddenly, too suddenly to be agreeable, without any warning.”

Katie reconsidered her decision in the matter of Lord Erradeen; perhaps though he knew nobody, he might not be quite unworthy cultivation, and besides, she had finished her entrée. She said, “Didn’t you know?” turning to him again her once-averted eyes.

“I had not the faintest idea; it came upon me like a thunderbolt,” he said. “You perceive that you must treat me with a little indulgence in respect to dukes, &c.—even if I had any taste for society, which I haven’t,” he added, with a touch of bitterness in his tone.

“Oh,” said Katie, looking at him much more kindly; then she bent towards him with quite unexpected familiarity, and said, lowering her voice, but in the most distinct whisper, “And where then did you pick up that odious man?”

Walter could not but laugh as he looked across the table at the unconscious object of this attack.

“I observe that ladies never like him,” he said; “at home it is the same.”

“Oh, I should think so,” cried Katie, “everybody thought it was such a pity that Lord Erradeen took him up—and then to see him with you! Oona Forrester would be very sorry,” Katie added after a pause.

“Miss Forrester!” Walter felt himself colour high with pleasure at the sound of this name, then feeling this a sort of self-betrayal, coloured yet more. “You know her?”

Katie turned round upon him with a mixture of amusement and disdain. “Know her! is there any one on the loch, or near it, that doesn’t know her?” she said.

“I beg your pardon,” cried Walter. “I forgot for the moment.” Then he too retired within himself for so long a time that it was Katie’s turn to be affronted. He devoted himself to his dinner too, but he did not eat. At last “Why should she be sorry?” he asked curtly as if there had been no pause.

“How can I tell you now while he sits there?” said Katie, lowering her voice; “some other time perhaps—most likely you will call in the day-time, in the morning, now that we have made your acquaintance.”

“If you will permit me,” Walter said.

“Oh yes, we will permit you. Papa has always wanted to know you, and so have I since—If you are allowed to come: but perhaps you will not be allowed to come, Lord Erradeen.”

“Will not be allowed? What does that mean? and since when, may I ask, have you been so kind as to want to know me? I wish I had been aware.”

“Since—well, of course, since you were Lord Erradeen,” said the girl, “we did not know of you before: and people like us who have nothing but money are always very fond of knowing a lord—everybody says so at least. And it is true, in a way. Papa likes it very much indeed. He likes to say my friend, the Earl of ———, or my friend, the Duke of ———. He knows a great many lords, though perhaps you would not think it. He is very popular with fine people. They say he is not at all vulgar considering, and never takes anything upon him. Oh, yes, I know it all very well. I am a new person in the other way—I believe it is far more what you call snobbish—but I can’t bear the fine people. Of course they are very nice to me; but I always remember that they think I am not vulgar considering, and that I never pretend to be better than I am.”

There was something in this address spoken with a little heat, which touched Walter’s sense of humour, a faculty which in his better moods made his own position, with all its incongruities, ruefully amusing to him. “I wonder,” he said, “if I pretend to be better than I am? But then I should require in the first place to know what I am more distinctly than I do. Now you, on that important point, have, I presume, no doubt or difficulty?—”

“Not the least,” she said, interrupting him. “The daughter of a rich Glasgow man who is nobody—that is what I am—everybody knows; but you, my lord, you are a noble person of one of the oldest families, with the best blood in your veins, with—” She had been eyeing him somewhat antagonistically, but here she broke off, and fell a laughing. “I don’t believe you care a bit about it,” she said. “Are you going with us to the theatre to see the Falcon, Lord Erradeen?”

“What is the Falcon?” he said.

“You have not seen it nor heard of it? It is Mr. Tennyson’s,” said Katie with a little awe. “How is it possible you have not heard? Don’t you know that lovely story? It is a poor gentleman who has nothing but a falcon, and the lady he loves comes to see him. She is a widow (that takes away the interest a little, but it is beautiful all the same) with a sick child. When he sees her coming he has to prepare an entertainment for her, and there is nothing but his falcon, so he sacrifices it, though it breaks his heart. And oh, to see the terrible stage bird that is brought in, as if that could be his grand hawk! You feel so angry, you are forced to laugh till you cry again. That kind of story should never be brought to the literal, do you think it should?”

“And what happens?” said Walter, young enough to be interested, though not sufficiently well-read to know.

“Oh, you might guess. She had come to ask him for his falcon to save her child. What could it be else? It is just the contrariety of things.”

“You cannot know very much, Miss Williamson, of the contrariety of things.”

“Oh, do you think so? Why shouldn’t I? I think I am precisely the person to do so. It seems to me in my experience,” she added, fixing a look upon him which seemed to Walter’s conscience to mean a great deal more than it was possible Katie could mean, “that almost everything goes wrong.”

“That is a most melancholy view to take.”

“But so is everything melancholy,” said the girl. Her little simple physiognomy, her rosy cheeks and blue eyes, the somewhat blunted profile (for Katie had no features, as she was aware) and altogether commonplace air of the little person who produced these wonderful sentiments amused Walter beyond measure. He laughed perhaps more than was strictly decorous, and drew the attention of Mr. Williamson, who, absorbed in his talk with Underwood, had almost forgotten his more important guest.

“What is the joke?” he said. “I am glad to see you are keeping his lordship amused, Katie, for the captain and me we have got upon other subjects concerning the poor gentleman, your predecessor, Lord Erradeen. Poor fellow! that was a very sad business: not that I would say there was much to be regretted before the present bearer of the title,” the rich man added with a laugh; “but at your age you could well have waited a little, and the late lord was a very nice fellow till he fell into that melancholy way.”

“I told you everything was melancholy,” said Katie in an undertone.

“And I,” said the young man in the same suppressed voice, “shall I too fall into a melancholy way?” He laughed as he said so, but it was not a laugh of pleasure. Could he do nothing without having this family mystery—family absurdity—thrust into his face?

“If you want your cigar, papa—” said Katie getting up, “and you can’t live without that, any of you gentlemen—I had better go. Let laws and learning, wit and wisdom die, so long as you have your cigars. But the carriage is ordered at a quarter to ten, and Lord Erradeen is coming, he says. In any case you must come, papa, you know. I can’t go without you,” she said, with a little imperative air. It was enough to make any one laugh to see the grand air of superiority which this little person took upon her, and her father greeted her exit with a loud laugh of enjoyment and admiration.

“She is mistress and more, as we say in Scotland,” he said, “and there must be no trifling where my Katie is concerned. We will have to keep to the minute. So you are coming with us, Lord Erradeen? What will you do, Underwood? I’m doubting if what they call the poetical dramaw will be much in your way.”

To which Underwood replied with some embarrassment that it certainly was not at all in his way. He liked Nelly Somebody in a burlesque, and he was always fond of a good ballet, but as for Shakespeare and that sort of thing, he owned it was above him. Good Mr. Williamson disapproved of ballets, utterly, and administered a rebuke on the spot.

“I hope you are not leading Lord Erradeen into the like of that. It is very bad for a young man to lose respect for women, and how you can keep any after those exhibitions is beyond me. Well, I will not say I take a great interest, like Katie, in poetry and all that. I like a good laugh. So long as it is funny I am like a bairn, I delight in a play: but I am not so sure that I can give my mind to it when it’s serious. Lord! we’ve enough of seriousness in real life. And as for your bare-faced love-making before thousands of people, I just can’t endure it. You will think me a prejudiced old fogey, Lord Erradeen. It makes me blush,” said the elderly critic, going off into a laugh; but blush he did, through all the honest red upon his natural cheeks, notwithstanding his laugh, and his claret, and his cigar. Was he a world behind his younger companion who glanced at him with a sensation of mingled shame, contempt, and respect, or was he a world above him? Walter was so confused in the new atmosphere he had suddenly begun to breathe, that he could not tell. But it was altogether new at all events, and novelty is something in the monotony of life.

“I’ll see you at the club after,” said Underwood, as they loitered waiting for Miss Williamson at the hotel door. But Walter made no reply.

Now Lord Erradeen, though he had been perverse all his life, and had chosen the evil and rejected the good in many incomprehensible ways, was not—or this history would never have been written—without that finer fibre in him which responds to everything that is true and noble. How strange this jumble is in that confusion of good and evil which we call the mind of man! How often may we see the record of a generous action bring tears to the eyes of one whose acts are all selfish, and whose heart is callous to sufferings of which he is the cause: and hear him with noble fervour applaud the self-sacrifice of the man, who in that language by which it is the pleasure of the nineteenth century to make heroism just half-ridiculous, and to save itself from the highflown, “never funked and never lied; I guess he didn’t know how:” and how he will be touched to the heart by the purity of a romantic love, he who for himself feeds on the garbage—and all this without any conscious insincerity, the best part of him more true and real all the time than the worst! Walter, to whom his own domestic surroundings had been so irksome, felt a certain wholesome novelty of pleasure when he set out between the father and daughter to see what Mr. Williamson called the “poetical dramaw,” a thing hitherto much out of the young man’s way. He had been of late in all kinds of unsavoury places, and had done his best to debase his imagination with the burlesques; but yet he had not been able to obliterate his own capacity for better things. And when he stood looking over the head of Katie Williamson, and saw the lady of the poet’s tale come into the poor house of her chivalrous lover, the shock with which the better nature in him came uppermost, gave him a pang in the pleasure and the wonder of it. This was not the sort of heroine to whom he had accustomed himself: but the old Italian romancer, the noble English poet, and the fine passion and high perception of the actors, who could understand and interpret both, were not in vain for our prodigal. When that lady paused in the humble doorway clothed in high reverence and poetry, not to speak of the modest splendour of her mature beauty and noble Venetian dress, he felt himself blush, like good Mr. Williamson, to remember all the less lovely images he had seen. He could not applaud; it would have been a profanation. He was still pure enough in the midst of uncleanness, and high enough though familiar with baseness, to be transported for the moment out of himself.

The other two formed a somewhat comical counterbalance to Walter’s emotion; not that they were by any means unfeeling spectators. Mr. Williamson’s interest in the story was unfeigned. As Mrs. Kendal poured forth that heartrending plea of a mother for her child, the good man accompanied her words by strange muffled sounds which were quite beyond his control; and which called forth looks of alarm from Katie, who was his natural guardian, and who herself maintained a dignified propriety as having witnessed this moving scene before. But the running commentary sotto voce, which he kept up throughout, might have furnished an amusing secondary comedy to any impartial bystander. “Bless us all!” said Mr. Williamson, “two useless servants doing nothing, and not a morsel in the house! How do ye make that out!” “Lordsake! has he killed the hawk? but that’s just manslaughter: and a tough morsel I would say, for the lady, when all’s done.” “What is it she’s wanting—just the falcon he’s killed for her. Tchick! Tchick! Now I call that an awful pity, Katie. Poor lady! and poor fellow! and he has to refuse her! Well, he should not have been so hasty. After all she did not eat a morsel of it; and what ailed that silly old woman there to toss up a bit omelette or something, to save the bird—and they’re so clever at omelettes abroad,” the good man said, with true regret. “Oh, papa, how material you are! Don’t you know it’s always like that in life?” cried Katie. “I know nothing of the kind,” said her father, indignantly. “What is the use of being a poet, as you call it, if ye cannot find some other way and not break their hearts? Poor lad! Now that’s a thing I can’t understand—a woman like that come pleading to you, and you have to refuse her!” Katie looked round upon her father with her little air of oracle. “Don’t you see, papa, that’s the story! It’s to wring our hearts he wrote it.” Mr. Williamson paid no attention to this. He went on softly with his “Tchick! tchick!” and when all was over dried his eyes furtively and got up with haste, almost impatience, drawing a long breath. “It’s just all nonsense,” he said. “I’ll not be brought here again to be made unhappy. So she’s to get him instead of the bird—but, bless me! what good will that do her? that will never save her bairn.”

“It will satisfy the public, more or less,” said a voice behind.

Walter had been aware that some one else had come into the box, who stood smiling, listening to the conversation, and now bent forward to applaud as if aware that his applause meant something. Katie turned half round, with a little nod and smile.

“Did you hear papa?” she said. “Oh, tell Mr. Tennyson! he is quite unhappy about it. Are you unhappy too, Lord Erradeen? for you don’t applaud, or say a word.”

“Applaud!” Walter said. “I feel that it would be taking a liberty. Applaud what? That beautiful lady who is so much above me, or the great poet who is above all? I should like to go away and draw breath, and let myself down—”

“Toots!” said Mr. Williamson, “it is just all nonsense. He should not have been so hasty. And now I would just like to know,” he added, with an air of defiance, “what happened to that bairn: to want a falcon and get a stepfather! that was an ill way to cure him. Hoots! it’s all nonsense. Put on your cloak, Katie, and let us get away.”

“But I like you, Lord Erradeen, for what you say,” cried Katie. “It was too beautiful to applaud. Oh, tell Mrs. Kendal! She looked like a picture. I should like to make her a curtsey, not clap my hands as you do.”

“You will bid me tell Boccaccio next?” said the new-comer. “These are fine sentiments; but the actors would find it somewhat chilly if they had no applause. They would think nobody cared.”

“Lord Innishouran,” said Katie, “papa has forgotten his manners. He ought to have introduced to you Lord Erradeen.”

Walter was as much startled as if he had been the veriest cockney whose bosom has ever been fluttered by introduction to a lord. He looked at the first man of his rank (barring those damaged ones at Underwoods club) whom he had met, with the strangest sensation. Lord Innishouran was the son of the Duke—the great potentate of those northern regions. He was a man who might make Walter’s career very easy to him, or, alas! rather might have made it, had he known him on his first coming to London. The sense of all that might be involved in knowing him, made the young man giddy as he stood opposite to his new acquaintance. Lord Innishouran was not of Walter’s age. The duke was the patriarch of the Highlands, and lived like a man who never meant to die. This gentleman, who at forty-five was still only his father’s heir, had taken to the arts by way of making an independent position for himself. He was a dilettante in the best sense of the word, delighting in everything that was beautiful. Walter’s enthusiasm had been the best possible introduction for him; and what a change there seemed in the young man’s world and all his prospects as he walked home after taking leave of the Williamsons with Innishouran’s, not Underwood’s, arm within his own!

“I cannot understand how it is that we have not met before. It would have been my part to seek you out if I had known you were in town,” his new friend said. “I hope now you will let me introduce you to my wife. The duke has left town—he never stays a moment longer than he can help. And everything is coming to an end. Still I am most happy to have made your acquaintance. You knew the Williamsons, I suppose, before? They are excellent people—not the least vulgarity about them, because there’s no pretension. And Katie is a clever girl, not without ambition. She is quite an heiress, I suppose you know—”

“I don’t know—any one, or anything,” Walter said.

“Come, that is going too far,” said the other, with a laugh. “I presume you don’t care for society. That is a young man’s notion; but society is not so bad a thing. It never answers to withdraw from it altogether. Yes, Katie is an heiress. She is to have all the Loch Houran property, I believe, besides a good deal of money.”

“I thought,” said Walter, “there were several sons.”

“One—one only; and he has the business, with the addition also of a good deal of money. Money is a wonderful quality—it stands instead of a great many other things to our friends there. I am fond of intellect myself, but it must be allowed that the most cultivated mind would not do for any man what his money does at once for that good neighbour of ours—who is a most excellent fellow all the same.”

“I have met him for the first time to-day,” said Walter, “in the most accidental way.”

“Ah! I thought you had known them; but it is true what I say. I look upon money with a certain awe. It is inscrutable. The most perfect of artists—you and I when we most look up to them, do also just a little look down upon them! No, perhaps that is too strong. At all events, they are there on sufferance. They are not of us, and they know it. Whether they care for us too much, or whether they don’t care at all, there is still that uneasy consciousness. But with this good-natured millionaire, nothing of the sort. He has no such feeling.”

“Perhaps because his feelings are not so keen. Miss Williamson has just been telling me what you say—that her family are considered not vulgar because they never pretend to be better than they are.”

“Ah!” cried Lord Innishouran, startled, “did Katie divine that? She is cleverer than I thought—and a very fine fortune, and an ambitious little person. I hope her money will go to consolidate some property at home, and not fall into a stranger’s hands. I am all for the Highlands, you see, Erradeen.”

“And I know so little about them,” said Walter.

But nevertheless he knew very well what was meant, and there was a curious sensation in his mind which he could not describe to himself, as if some perturbation, whether outside or in he could not tell which, was calmed. He had a great deal of talk with his new friend as they threaded the noisy little circles of the streets, among the shouting link-boys and crowds of carriages, then reached the calm and darkness of the thoroughfares beyond. Lord Innishouran talked well, and his talk was of a kind so different from that of Underwood’s noisy coterie, that the charm of the unusual, added to so many other novel sensations, made a great impression upon Walter’s mind, always sensitive and open to a new influence. He felt a hot flush of shame come over him when walking thus through the purity of the night, and in the society of a man who talked about great names and things, he remembered the noise of the club, the heated air full of smoke and inanities, the jargon of the race-course and the stables. These things filled him with disgust, for the moment at least, just as the duets had given him a sense of disgust and impatience at Sloebury. His new friend only left him at the door of his rooms, which happened to lie in Lord Innishouran’s way, and bade him good night, promising to call on him in the morning. Walter had not been in his rooms so early for many a day. He hesitated whether or not to go out again, for he had not any pleasure in his own society; but pride came to the rescue, and he blushed at the thought of darting out like a truant schoolboy, as soon as the better influence was withdrawn. Pride prevented him from thus running away from himself. He took a book out of the shelves, which he had not done for so long. But soon the book dropped aside, and he began to review the strange circumstances of the evening. In a moment, as it seemed, his horizon had changed. Hitherto, except in so far as money was concerned, he had derived no advantage from his new rank. Now everything seemed opening before him. He could not be unmoved in this moment of transition. Perhaps the life which was called fast had never contained any real temptation to Walter. It had come in and invaded the indolence of his mind and filled the vacant house of his soul, swept and garnished but unoccupied, according to the powerful simile of Scripture; but there was no tug at his senses now urging him to go back to it. And then he thought, with a certain elation, of Lord Innishouran, and pleasurably of the Williamsons. Katie, was that her name? He could not but laugh to himself at the sudden realisation of the visionary Miss Williamson after all that had been said. What would Julia Herbert say? But Julia Herbert had become dim to Lord Erradeen as if she had been a dozen years away.

CHAPTER XXIII

Next morning Lord Innishouran fulfilled his promise of calling, and made his appearance almost before Walter, following the disorderly usages of the society into which he had fallen, was ready to receive him. The middle-aged eldest son was a man of exact virtue, rising early, keeping punctual hours, and in every way conducting himself as became one whose position made him an example to the rest of the world. And he was one who had a deep sense of the duties of his position. It seemed to him that this young man was in a bad way. “He is at a crisis, evidently at a crisis,” he had said to his wife, “and a good influence may be everything for him.” “He should marry Katie Williamson,” said Lady Innishouran. “The Erradeens may be odd, as you say, but they always manage to do well for themselves.” “Not always, not always, my dear; the property seems to grow, but the men come to little,” Innishouran said, shaking his head; and he left his house with the full intention of becoming a “good influence” to Walter. He proposed at once to put him up at the most irreproachable and distinguished of clubs, and asked him to dinner on the spot. “I am afraid there is nobody of consequence left whom I can ask to meet you,” he said; “but in any case Lady Innishouran is anxious to make your acquaintance.”

The Innishourans belonged to the ranks of those very great people for whom the season ends much earlier than for others. The duke had gone home early in June, and his son held that in the end of that month there was nobody of consequence left, except, he said to himself, cabinet ministers, who were perhaps something too much for a young Highland lord.

“And you must take your seat,” he said, “that is a matter of duty. If we had met earlier the duke would of course have been one of your supporters. I am sure my father will regret it very much. But, however, it can’t be helped, and I, you know, don’t occupy the necessary position; but there will be no difficulty in that respect.”

This was very different from Walter’s fine misanthropic Byronic idea of solitary grandeur, and defiance of the staring ranks of superannuated peers. “I am no politician,” he said awkwardly. “I had scarcely thought it was worth the while.” “It is always worth while to assume the privileges of your position,” Lord Innishouran said. Walter was taken possession of altogether by this good influence. And forthwith his path lay in a course of golden days. It was characteristic of Walter that it gave him no trouble to break his old ties, perhaps because of the fact that he had not, so to speak, made them by any exercise of his will, but simply drifted into them by the exertions of those who meant to benefit by his weakness. He did not, perhaps, put this into words, but yet felt it with a sort of interior conviction which was deeper than all those superficial shades of sentiment which bind some men to the companions of the day, even when they care little for them. Perhaps it was selfishness, perhaps strength—it is difficult sometimes to discriminate.

Thus Captain Underwood, after his interrupted, but latterly almost unbroken, sway over the young man’s time and habits, found himself suddenly left in the lurch, and quite powerless over his pupil. The captain tried in the first place the easy tone of use and wont.

“Come, Erradeen,” he said, “we shall be late. You forget the engagement you made with So-and-so, and So-and-so—”

“I think it was you who made the engagement,” Walter said. “I am not going to keep it anyhow. I am going with Innishouran to—”

“With Lord Innishouran!” the other cried, overawed. “So then,” he said, with such a sneer as is often effectual with the young and generous, “now that you have got in with the big-wigs you mean to throw your old friends over.”

“I don’t know much about old friends,” Walter said. “I don’t call the fellows at your club old friends.”

And then Captain Underwood made one of those mistakes which persons of inferior breeding are so apt to make. “You were glad enough to have them when you had nobody else to take any notice of you,” he said. This was after two or three attempts to recover his old standing, and when he began to feel a certain exasperation. Walter, though he was irritable by nature, had so much the best of the argument at this moment that he kept his temper.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that I ever was very glad. I allowed myself to be drawn into it faute de mieux.”

“And now I suppose you think you can throw me off too, like an old glove, in your infernal Scotch, cold-blooded way!” cried the captain.

“Am I Scotch?” said Lord Erradeen.

It was not much wonder, perhaps, if Underwood lost his temper. But another time he took matters more wisely. He would not give up in a fit of temper the hold he thought he had obtained upon the young man. He was very unwilling, as may be supposed, to resign his protégé and victim, and made spasmodic attempts to regain his “influence.” At all times this “influence” had been held precariously, and had it been a virtuous one like that of Lord Innishouran, Walter’s mentor and guide might have called forth the sympathy of the spectator; for he had many things to bear from the young man’s quick temper, and the constantly recurring dissatisfaction with himself and all things around which made him so difficult to deal with. Underwood, however, after his first disappointment, did not despair. The changeable young fellow, upon whom no one could calculate, whose mind was so uncertain, who would shoot off at a tangent in the most unexpected way, might as suddenly, as he had abandoned, turn to him again.

Miss Williamson received her new acquaintance very graciously when he went to see her next day. She met him with all the ease of an old acquaintance.

“Papa has been so busy,” she said, “putting John into the business, that we have only got here at the very end of the season. Yes, it is a nuisance; but think how many people there are much better than I, that never come at all. Oona Forrester for instance. You think perhaps she is too good even to wish to come? Not at all; there never was a girl so good as that. Besides, I don’t think it would be good. A girl ought to see the world as much as a boy. When you don’t know the world, it makes you uninteresting—afterwards; you don’t know how to talk to people. Not Oona, you know. I don’t think there is any want of interest about her; but most people. Well, did you like Lord Innishouran? He is very kind, and fond of exerting a good influence. I felt that he was the very person for you.”

“You think then that I stand in need of a good influence?” Walter said.

“Yes, after Captain Underwood,” said Katie calmly. “I think it was very lucky that you met papa, and that Lord Innishouran was at the theatre and came into our box. Perhaps you will look back to it and think—if you had not happened to come here, what people call accidentally, as you passed—”

“I might go a step further,” said Walter, “and say if I had not happened to be with Captain Underwood, who knew your father, I should never have known what good fortune was standing upon these steps, and never have made the acquaintance of Miss Williamson.”

“You are making fun of me,” said Katie. “I do not mind in the very least. But still it is just as well, perhaps, that you made the acquaintance of Miss Williamson. What were you going to do with yourself? Nothing so good I am sure as seeing the Falcon, and making friends with Lord Innishouran, who can be of a great deal of use to you. We cannot do much for you, of course. All sorts of people ask us, but still you know we are not of your class. We are only not vulgar, because—I told you last night.”

Walter laughed with guilty amusement, remembering how Lord Innishouran had justified Katie’s estimate of the world’s opinion.

“I do not understand,” he said, “how any one can think of you and vulgarity in the same day.”

“Well,” said Katie, calmly, “that is my own opinion. But still between me and Oona Forrester there is a great difference. I don’t deceive myself about that. And why is it? I am—oh, some hundred times more rich. I can do almost whatever I like; that is to say, I can turn papa, as people say, round my little finger (that is rather vulgar, by the way). I come up here, I go abroad, I meet all kinds of interesting people: and yet I am not like Oona when all is said. Now how is that? It does not seem quite fair.”

She looked at him with an honest pair of blue eyes out of a prepossessing, sensible little face, as she asked this question with all the gravity of a philosophical investigator. Notwithstanding a little figure which threatened in after life to be dumpy, and a profile of which the lines were by no means distinctly drawn, Katie Williamson at twenty had enough of the beauté du diable to make her rather an attractive little person. But as Walter looked at her, he too seemed to see a vision of the other with whom she compared herself. He always thought of Oona as she had stood watching his boat pushed off; his mind at the time had been too hurried and eager to remark her look; but that deeper faculty which garners up a face, a look, an act, which we do not seem to notice at the moment, and makes them afterwards more real and present to us than things that are under our eyes, had taken a picture of Oona as she stood in that profoundest deep of emotion, the most poignant moment of her life, with something of the wondering pang in her eyes which was in her heart. How many times since then had he seen her, though he had not seen her at the time! Looking at her in his mind’s eye, he forgot altogether the question Katie was putting to him, and the necessity of protesting politely that she did herself wrong. Indeed he was not roused to this till Katie herself, after pausing for reply, said with a little sharpness, “You don’t make me any answer, Lord Erradeen: you ought to tell me I have no reason to be so humble-minded, but that I am as good as Oona. That is what any polite person would say.”

Thus challenged, Walter started with a certain sheepishness, and hastened to inform her, stammering, that comparisons were odious, but that there was nobody who might not be flattered, who ought not to be pleased, who, in short, would not be happy to think themselves on the same level—

Katie broke through his embarrassed explanations with a laugh. “You quite agree with me,” she said, “and that is what I like you for. I am not a girl who wants compliments. I am an inquirer. And things are so funny in this world: everything about ourselves is so droll—”

“What is that you are saying about being droll, Katie?” said Mr. Williamson, coming in. “You do say very daft-like things, my dear, if that is what you mean. And how are you this morning, my Lord Erradeen? none the worse of that Falcon? Bless me, that falcon—that just set your teeth on edge the very sight of it. I am glad it was not served up to me. But you will stay to your lunch? We are just going to lunch, Katie and I; and we are both very fond of company. Now just stay. I will take it very kind if you have nothing better to do; and afterwards we’ll stroll together to the Caledonian Club, which you ought to be a member of, Lord Erradeen, for auld Scotland’s sake. I will put you up if that is agreeable to you. Come, Katie, show Lord Erradeen the way. I have been knocking about all the morning, and I am bound to say I’m very ready for my lunch.”

And in this way affairs went on. Unaccustomed as he was to consider what any change of direction might lead to, it suited Walter very well to have a place where he was always welcome within his reach, and to be urged to stay to lunch, to go to the opera and the theatre, to be the audience for Katie’s philosophies, which amused him. The atmosphere was new, and if not, perhaps, exciting, was fresh and full of variety. He had never in his life encountered anything like the easy wealthiness and homeliness, the power to do whatever they pleased, yet extreme simplicity in doing it, which characterised both father and daughter. And there was so much movement and energy about them that he was kept amused. Katie’s perfectly just impression of the opinion of the world had no embittering effect upon that little philosopher, whose consciousness of well-being, and of the many ways in which she was better off than her neighbours, gave her a composure and good humour which were delightful. By-and-by, though Walter himself was not aware of this, he began to receive invitations to entertainments at which the Williamsons were to be present, with that understanding on the part of society which is so instinctive, and which, though sometimes without foundation, rarely fails to realise its purpose. He was not indeed at all dependent upon them for his society. Lord Innishouran had opened the way, which once open, is so very easy for a young peer, whose antecedents, even if doubtful, have never compelled general disapproval. He who had known nobody, became in a month’s time capable of understanding all the allusions, and entering into that curious society-talk which the most brilliant intellects out of it are confused by, and the most shallow within gain a certain appearance of intelligence from. After a little awkwardness at the beginning, easily explained by the benevolent theory that he had only just come to town, and knew nobody, he had speedily picked up the threads of the new existence, and got himself into its routine. To a new mind there is so much that is attractive in it—a specious air of knowing, of living, of greater experience, and more universal interests is diffused over it. And how indeed should it be possible not to know more in the midst of that constant multiplicity of events, and in sight and hearing of those that pull the strings and move the puppets everywhere? There is something in brushing shoulders with a minister of state that widens the apprehension; and even the lightest little attaché gives a feeling that it is cosmopolitan to the circle in which he laughs and denies any knowledge of European secrets. Probably the denial is quite true, but nobody believes it, and the young lady with whom he has flirted knows a little more of the world in consequence—that is, of the world as it is understood in those regions which claim that name for themselves. This tone Walter acquired so easily that it surprised himself. He did it better than many to the manner born, for to be sure there was to him a novelty in it, which made it feel real, and kept him amused and pleased with himself. He took his seat in the House of Lords, not in the Byronic way, and thought a great deal more of the House of Lords ever after. It seemed to him an important factor in European affairs, and the most august assembly in the world. No—that term perhaps is sacred to the House of Commons, or rather was sacred to the House of Commons, at the time when there were no other popular chambers of legislators to contest the dignity. But a hereditary legislator may still be allowed to think with awe of that bulwark of the constitution in which he has a share.

Lord Erradeen became one of the immediate circle of the Innishourans, where all “the best people” were to be met. He became acquainted with great dignitaries both of Church and State. He talked to ambassadors—flirted—but no, he did not flirt very much. It was understood that he was to be asked with the Williamsons by all the people who knew them; and even among those who were a little above Miss Katie’s range, it was known that there was an heiress of fabulous wealth, whose possessions would sensibly enlarge those of Lord Erradeen, and with whom it was an understood thing—so that flirtation with him was gently discouraged by the authorities. And he himself did not perhaps find that amusement necessary; for everything was new to him—his own importance, which had never up to this time been properly acknowledged, and still more the importance of others with whom it was a wonder to the young man to feel himself associating. The Underwood crew had always secretly angered him, as undeniably inferior to the society from which he felt himself to be shut out. He had been disgusted by their flattery, yet offended by their familiarity, even when in appearance bon camarade. And the sense of internal satisfaction now in having attained unmistakably to “the best people” was very delightful to him, and the air of good society a continual pleasure. Probably that satisfaction, too, might fail by and by, and the perennial sameness of humanity make itself apparent. But this did not occur within the first season, which indeed had begun to wane of its early glories as a season, the duke being gone, and other princes, high and mighty, before Walter appeared in it at all. There was, however, a great deal to be done still in the remnant of June and the early part of July: the heat, the culmination of all things, the sense that these joys will presently be over, and another season, which, in its way, is like another lifetime, departed into the past—producing a kind of whirl and intoxicating impulse. People met three or four times a day in the quickening of all the social wheels before they stopped altogether—in the Park in the morning, at luncheon parties, afternoon receptions, dinners—two or three times in the evening—town growing more and more like the “village,” which it is sometimes jocularly called.

Through all this Walter spent a great deal of his time with Katie Williamson. Society flattered the probable match. He had to give her his arm to dinner, to dance with her, to talk to her, to get her shawl and call her carriage; her father, in his large good-humoured way, accepting with much placidity a sort of superior footman in Lord Erradeen. “You are younger than I am,” he would say occasionally, with a laugh. He, too, began to take it for granted. It could not be said that it was Lord Erradeen’s fault. He indeed gave in to it with a readiness which was unnecessary, by those continual visits at the hotel, luncheons, dinners, attendances at theatre and opera, which certainly originated in his own will and pleasure. But all that was so simple and natural. He had a sincere liking for Katie. She was a refuge to him from the other society which he had thrown over. Why should he refrain from visiting his country neighbours? There seemed nothing in the world against it, but everything in its favour. They asked him, to be sure, or he would not have gone. Mr. Williamson said—“We’ll see you some time to-morrow,” when they parted; and even Katie began to add—“We are going to the So-and-so’s; are you to be there?” Nothing could be more natural, more easy. And yet a girl who had been properly on her guard, and a young man particular not to have it said that he had “behaved ill” to a lady, would have taken more care. Had Katie had a mother, perhaps it would not have been; but even in that case, why not? Walter was perfectly eligible. Supposing even that there had been a sowing of wild oats, that had not been done with any defiance of the world, and it was now over; and the Erradeens were already a great family, standing in no need of Katie’s fortune to bolster them up. The mother, had she been living, would have had little reason to interfere. It was all perfectly natural, suitable in every way, such a marriage indeed as might have justified the proverb, and been “made in heaven.”

It would be scarcely correct to say, as is sometimes said, that the last to know of this foregone conclusion, were the parties chiefly concerned. It might indeed be true in respect to Walter, but not to the other principal actor, who indeed was perfectly justified in her impression that he was a conscious agent throughout, and intended everything he was supposed to intend. Katie, for her part, was not unaware of the progress of events upon which all the world had made up its mind. She expected nothing less than to be called upon to decide, and that without any great delay—perhaps before she left town, perhaps shortly after her return home—whether or not she would be Lady Erradeen. She did not think of the coronet upon her handkerchief, as Julia Herbert had done, but of many things which were of more importance. She frankly avowed to herself that she liked Lord Erradeen; as to being in love with him, that was perhaps a different matter. She was much experienced in the world (or thought herself so) though she was so young; having had no mother, and feeling herself the natural guide of her other less enlightened parent. And she was very fond of her father. She could “turn him round her little finger.” Wherever she wished to go he went; whatever she wished to do, he was ready to carry out her wishes. She was not at all sure that with a husband she would have half so much of her own way. And Katie liked her own way. She could not fancy herself blindly, foolishly in love as people were in books; but she liked Lord Erradeen. So far as that went it was all simple enough; but on the other hand, there were mysteries about the family, and Katie scorned and hated mysteries. Suppose he should ask her to believe in the Warlock lord? Katie knew what would follow; she would laugh in his face, however serious he might be. To her it would be impossible to believe in any such supernatural and antiquated nonsense. She felt that she would scorn even the man who was her husband did he give faith to such fables. She would not listen to any evidence on the subject. Sometimes words had dropped from him which sounded like a belief in the possibility of such influences. To think that she, Katie, should have to defer to superstition, to be respectful, perhaps, of absurdity such as this! That she would never do. But otherwise she allowed in her sensible, much-reasoning, composed little mind, that there was very little to object to in Lord Erradeen.

Walter himself was not half so ready to realise the position. He liked Katie, and had not been much accustomed to deny himself what he liked even in his days of poverty. He did not see now why he should not take the good with which the gods provided him in the shape of a girl’s society, any more than in any other way. He was a little startled when he perceived by some casual look or word that he was understood by the world in general to be Katie’s lover. It amused him at first: but he had so just an opinion of Katie that he was very sure she had no disposition to “catch” him, such as he had not doubted Julia Herbert to have. He might be vain, but not beyond reason. Indeed it was not any stimulus to vanity to be an object of pursuit to Julia Herbert. It was apparent enough what it would be to her to marry Lord Erradeen, whereas it was equally apparent that to marry anybody would be no object, unless she loved him, to Katie. And Katie, Walter was sure, betrayed no tokens of love. But there were many things involved that did not meet the common eye. Since he had floated into this new form of “influence,” since he had known the girl whom it would be so excellent for the Erradeen property that he should marry, a halcyon period had begun for Walter. The angry sea of his own being, so often before lashed into angry waves and convulsions, had calmed down. Things had gone well with him: he had come into the society of his peers; he had assumed the privileges of the rank which up to this time had been nothing but a burden and contrariety. The change was ineffable, not to be described; nothing disturbed him from outside, but, far more wonderful, nothing irritated him within. He felt tranquil, he felt good: he had no inclination to be angry; he was not swayed with movements of irritation and disgust. The superiority of his society was perhaps not sufficient to account for this, for he began to see the little ridicules of society after a month’s experience of it. No, it was himself that was changed; his disturbances were calmed; he and his fate were no longer on contrary sides.

It seemed to the young man that the change all about and around him was something miraculous. He seemed to stand on a calm eminence and look back upon the angry waters which he had escaped with a shiver at the dangers past, and a sense of relief which was indescribable. If he could get Katie to marry him that calm perhaps might become permanent. There would be no guilt in doing this, there would be no wrong to any one. And then he thought of Oona on the beach, looking after his boat. What was she thinking then, he wondered? Did she ever think of him now? Did she remember him at all? Had she not rather dismissed that little episode from her mind like a dream? He sighed as he thought of her, and wondered, with wistful half-inquiries; but, after all, there was no ground for inquiries, and no doubt she had forgotten him long ago. Other questions altogether came into his mind with the thought of Katie Williamson. If he married her would not all the elements of evil which he had felt to be so strong, which had risen into such force, and against which he had been unable to contend—would they not all be lulled for ever? It would be no yielding to the power that had somehow, he no longer reasoned how, got him in its clutches: but it would be a compromise. He had not been bidden to seek this wealthy bride, but in his heart he felt that this way peace lay. It would be a compromise. It would be promoting the interests of the family. Her wealth would add greatly to the importance of the house of Erradeen. And if he made up his mind to a step which had so many advantages, would it not in some sort be the signing of a treaty, the establishment of peace? He thought with a shudder, out of this quiet in which his spirit lay, of those conflicts from which he had escaped. He was like a man on firm land contemplating the horrors of the stormy sea from which he had escaped, but amid which he might be plunged again. It was possible that the disposition in which that sea itself should be braved, rather than accept its alternative, might return to him again. But at the present moment, in full enjoyment of so many more pleasures, and with the struggles of the former period in his mind, he shuddered at the prospect. Katie, it seemed to him, would be a compromise with fate.

The other person most deeply concerned—to wit, Mr. Williamson—was in a state of rapture, and chuckled all day long over the prospect. He would have had Lord Erradeen with them wherever they went. Not a doubt on the subject, not a possibility that all was not plain sailing, crossed his mind. There was no courtship indeed between them, such as was usual in his own more animated class and age. It was not the fashion, he said to himself, with a laugh; but what did the young fellow come for so constantly if it were not Katie? “It’s not for my agreeable conversation,” he said to himself, with another guffaw. When a young man was for ever haunting the place where a girl was, there could not be two opinions about his motives. And it would be very suitable. He said this to himself with an elation which made his countenance glow. To think of losing Katie had been terrible to him, but this would not be losing Katie. Auchnasheen was next door to Birkenbraes, and they should have Birkenbraes if they liked—they should have anything they liked. John was splendidly provided for by the business and all the immense capital invested in it; but Katie was his darling, and from her he could not be separated. A pretty title for her, and a very good fellow for a husband, and no separation! He thought, with a sort of delighted horror as of some danger past, that she was just the girl that might have fallen in love with a lad going out to India or to the ends of the earth, and gone with him, whatever any one could say; and to think by the good guiding of Providence she had lighted on one so ideally suitable as Lord Erradeen! The good man went about the world rubbing his hands with satisfaction. It was all he could do, in his great contentment, not to precipitate matters. He had to put force upon himself when he was alone with Walter not to bid him take courage, and settle the matter without delay.

CHAPTER XXIV

Things went on in this way till nearly the end of July, when the parks were brown like heather, and a great many people already had gone out of town. Those who remained kept up their gaieties with a sort of desperation of energy, intent upon getting as much as possible out of the limited time. And what with the drawing closer of the bonds of society, and the additional fervour of the pace at which everything went on, Walter spent almost his entire time in Katie’s society, meeting her everywhere, and being, by universal consent, constituted her partner and escort wherever they did meet. She had half begun to wonder herself that nothing further came of it, and that he did not speak the words which would settle every question, so far at least as he was concerned. Miss Williamson, for her own part, reserved her personal freedom. She would not say even to herself that she had finally made up her mind. She would see what he had to say for himself, and then—But Katie was very prudent, and would not be premature. Walter, too, rather wondered at himself that he did nothing conclusive. He perceived for the first time in his life that the position was not one which could be glided over, which he could terminate simply by going away. He had come to that, that Katie must cut the knot, not he: or else, which was most likely, bind it closer. She was a girl of whom nobody could think lightly—not a good girl only, but a little personage of distinct importance. No doubt she would make such a wife as a man might be very well satisfied with, and even proud of in his way. She was even pretty—enough: she was clever, and very well able to hold her own. At the head of a table, at the head of a great house, Katie, though with in every way a pronounced yet not unrefined Scotch accent (as indeed in the wife of a Scotch lord was very appropriate), would be quite equal to the position. And peace would come with her: no young man could do more for his family than bring such an accession of fortune into it. It would probably save him from further vexation about small matters of the estate, and those persecutions about leases and investments to which he was now subject. This had been the one drawback of his life since he had known Katie. He had been asked to decide on one side and another: he had concluded against Peter Thomson the sheep farmer, in sheer vexation with Shaw’s importunity. He had thought more than once that he saw old Milnathort shake his head, and was subject to the factor’s outspoken blame. But if he brought Katie into the family, what would it matter about these small things? One or two unsatisfactory tenants would be little in comparison with that large addition of fortune. And he liked Katie. In herself she was very agreeable to him—a companion whom he by no means wished to lose. There was something in her independence, her almost boyishness, her philosophies and questionings, which made her unlike any other girl with whom he had ever been brought into contact. The thing was not that they were in love with each other, but that they could get on quite well together. Notwithstanding, Walter, being quite content with the circumstances as they were, took no new step, but let the course of events run on day by day.

They had gone together to one of the last celebrations of the waning season—the evening reception at the Royal Academy. Everybody who was in town was there; and Walter, who had now an abundance of acquaintances, went from one group to another, paying his respects to the ladies, but always keeping somewhere within reach of the Williamsons, with whom he had come. Katie expected him to be within reach. It had come to be a habit with her to look round for Lord Erradeen, to beg him to get her what she wanted, to take her to this or that. Her father, though always most dutiful in attendance, yet naturally found persons of his own age to talk with; and he was apt to say foolish things about the pictures, and say them at the top of his voice, which made Katie cautious not to direct his attention to them more than was necessary; but Walter, who on the whole considered her something of an authority on art, and was not unwilling to accept her guidance to some extent, was here a very agreeable companion. She had just intimated to him her desire to look at something of which the artist had been speaking to her—for Katie considered it her duty even in presence of society to show a certain regard for the pictures, as the supposed object of the meeting—and taking his arm, was going on to the corner indicated, when somebody all at once made a little movement towards them with a quick exclamation of pleasure, and saying, “Walter!” suddenly laid a finger upon Lord Erradeen’s unoccupied arm.

This sudden incident produced a curious dramatic effect amid the many groups of this elegant company. Some of the bystanders even were attracted, and one enterprising young painter took in his mind’s eye an instantaneous sketch of the three figures enacting a scene in the genteel comedy of life. Walter in the midst, startled, looking a little guilty, yet not losing his composure, replied readily enough, “Julia!” holding out his hand to the somewhat eager stranger, who leaned forward towards him with sparkling eyes, and the most arch and smiling expression of pleasure and interest. Katie, on the other hand, held back a little, and looked very gravely at the meeting, with a manifest absence in her countenance of that pleasure which the others expressed, whether they felt it or not. She did not withdraw from Walter’s arm, or separate herself in any way, but gazed at the new-comer who addressed him so familiarly with a look of grave inspection. Katie meant to look dignified, and as a girl should look who was the lawful possessor of the attention to which an illegitimate claimant had thus appeared; but her figure was not adapted for expressing dignity. She was shorter than Julia, and less imposing, and her beauté du diable could not bear comparison with Miss Herbert’s really fine features and charming figure. Julia was as much, or indeed more, a country girl than the other; but she was much handsomer, and had all the instincts of society. Her face was radiant with smiles as she gave her hand to Walter, and half-permitted, half-compelled him to hold it a moment longer than was necessary in his.

“I thought we could not be long of meeting,” she said, “and that you were sure to be here. I am with my cousins the Tom Herberts. I suppose you know them? They have asked me up for the fag-end of the season. I always told you my season was the very end—and the result is, I am quite fresh when you jaded revellers have had too much of it, and are eager to hurry away.”

And indeed she looked fresh, glowing, and eager, and full of life and pleasure; her vivid looks seemed to take the colour out of Katie, who still stood with her hand upon Walter’s arm. For his part he did not know what to do.

“You would not think, to look round these rooms, that it was the fag-end of the season,” he said.

“Ah! that’s your usual benevolence to make me think less of my disadvantages,” said Julia. “You know I don’t encourage illusions on that subject. You must come and see me. You must be made acquainted with my cousins, if you don’t know them.”

“In the mean time, Lord Erradeen, will you take me to my father, please,” said Katie, on his arm.

“Oh,” cried Julia, “don’t let me detain you now. We have just come. You’ll find me presently, Walter, when you are at liberty. No, go, go, we shall have plenty of time afterwards for our talks. I insist upon your going now.”

And she dismissed him with a beaming smile, with a little pat on his arm as if it had been she who was his lawful proprietor, not Katie. Miss Williamson said nothing for the moment, but she resisted Walter’s attempt to direct her towards the picture she had meant to visit. “I think I will go to papa,” she said. “I must not detain you, Lord Erradeen, from your—friend.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Walter; “I shall see her again. Let us do what we intended to do. What is the etiquette on such an occasion, Miss Williamson? Would it be correct for me, a mere man, to introduce two ladies to each other? You know I am a novice in society. I look for instruction to you.”

“I can’t tell, I am sure,” said Katie. “I don’t think the case has occurred to me before. You seem to know the lady very well, Lord Erradeen?”

“I have known her almost all my life,” Walter replied, not quite at his ease. “We have played together, I suppose. She comes from Sloebury where my mother is living. They have all sorts of fine connections, but they are poor, as you would divine from what she said.”

“I did not listen to what she said. Conversation not addressed to one’s self,” said Katie with some severity, “one has nothing to do with. I could see of course that you were on the most friendly terms.”

“Oh, on quite friendly terms,” said Walter; he could not for his life have prevented a little laugh from escaping him, a laugh of consciousness and amusement and embarrassment. And Katie, who was full of suspicion, pricked up her little ears.

“I should have said on terms that were more than friendly,” she said in a voice that was not without a certain sharp tone.

Walter laughed again with that imbecility to which all men are subject when pressed upon such a question.

“Can anything be better than friendly?” he said. “Poor Julia! she has a very kind heart. Was not this the picture you wanted to see?”

“Oh,” cried Katie, “I have forgotten all about the picture! This little incident has put it out of my head. Human interest is superior to art. Perhaps if you had not left Sloebury, if your circumstances had not changed, your friendship might have changed into—something warmer, as people say.”

“Who can tell?” cried Walter in his vanity; “but in that case we should have been two poverties together, and that you know would never do.”

“I am no judge,” cried Katie; “but at all events you are not a poverty now, and there is no reason—Oh, there is papa; he is talking to that ambassador—but never mind. Patience for another minute, Lord Erradeen, till we can make our way to him, and then you shall go.”

“But I don’t want to go,” Walter said.

“Oh, that is impossible; when Miss—Julia—I am sure I beg your pardon, for I don’t know her other name—was so kind as to tell you where to find her. You must want to get rid of me. Papa, give me your arm; I want to show you something.”

“Eh! what do you want to show me, Katie? I’m no judge, you know. You will find it very much better, I’m confident, to show it to young Erradeen.”

“Thank you, Lord Erradeen,” said Katie, making him a curtsey. She took her father’s almost reluctant arm, and turned him suddenly away at once from his ambassador, and from Walter, who stood astonished to find himself thus thrown off. “Look here, papa, it is in this direction,” the young lady said.

Mr. Williamson’s voice was rather louder than good manners allowed. “What! is it a tiff?” he said, with a laugh. “That’s according to all the rules, Katie. I’m astonished you have not had one before.”

Walter heard this speech as well as Katie, and it threw the last gleam of reality on the position in which he stood. That he was looked upon by her father as her lover, and no doubt by herself too, or what would the encounter with Julia have mattered to her, was plain enough. He had known it vaguely before, but only from his own side of the question, and had debated it as a matter of expediency to himself. But when he saw it from the other side, recognising with a shock that they too had something to say in the matter, and coming right up against that barrier of a must, which was so obnoxious to his character, everything took a very different aspect. And Julia, too, had assumed an air of property—had made a certain claim of right in respect to him. What! was he to be made a slave, and deprived of free action in respect to the most important act of his life, because he had freely accepted invitations that were pressed upon him? The thing was ridiculous, he said to himself, with some heat. It might be well for him to offer himself to Katie, but to have a virtual demand made upon him, and acknowledge a necessity, that was not to be borne. Still less was he likely to acknowledge any right on the part of Julia Herbert. In her case he was altogether without responsibility, he said to himself; and even in the other, was it a natural consequence of Mr. Williamson’s perpetual invitations and hospitality that he should put himself at the disposal of Mr. Williamson’s daughter? He seemed to hear that worthy’s laugh pealing after him as he took his way hastily in the opposite direction to that in which he had met Julia, with a determination to yield to neither. “A tiff!” and, “according to all the rules?” A lovers’ quarrel, that was what the man meant; and who was he that he should venture to assume that Lord Erradeen was his daughter’s lover?

Walter hurried through the rooms in the opposite direction, till he got near the great staircase, with its carpeted avenue, between the hedges of flowers, and the group of smiling, bowing, picturesque Academicians in every variety of beard, still receiving the late, and speeding the parting guests. But fate was too much here for the angry young man. Before he had reached the point of exit, he felt once more that tap on his arm. “Walter! I believe he is running away,” said a voice, close to him; and there was Julia, radiant, with her natural protectors beside her, making notes of all that passed.

This time he could not escape. He was introduced to Lady Herbert and Sir Thomas before he could move a step from amid that brilliant crowd. Then Julia, like Katie, declared that she had something she wished to show him, and led him—half-reluctant, half, in the revulsion of feeling, pleased, to have some one else to turn to—triumphantly away.

Sir Thomas, who was tired, protested audibly against being detained; but his wife, more wise, caught him by the arm, and imposed patience.

“Can’t you see!” she cried in his ear, “what a chance it is for Julia—Lord Erradeen, a most eligible young man. And think the anxiety she is, and that one never can be sure what she may do.” “She is a horrid little coquette; and you may be sure the man means nothing serious, unless he is a fool!” growled Sir Thomas. But his wife replied calmly, “Most men are fools; and she is not a bad-hearted creature, though she must have some one dangling after her. Don’t let us interfere with her chance, poor thing. I shall ask him to dinner,” Lady Herbert said. And Sir Thomas, though he was rather a tyrant at home, and hated late hours, was kept kicking his heels in the vestibule, snarling at everybody who attempted to approach, for nearly an hour by the clock. So far, even in the most worldly bosoms, do conscientious benevolence and family affection go.

“Come, quick!” said Julia, “out of hearing of Maria. She wants to hear everything; and I have so many things to ask you. Is it all settled? That was She, of course. How we used to laugh about Miss Williamson! But I knew all the time it would come true. Of course that was she,” Julia said, leaning closely upon his arm and looking up into his face.

“I don’t know what you mean by she. It is Miss Williamson, certainly,” he said.

“I was sure of it! She is not so pretty as I should have expected from your good taste. But why should she be pretty? She has so many other charms. Indeed, now that I think of it, it would have been mean of her to be pretty—and is it all settled?” Julia said.

She looked at him with eyes half laughing, half reproachful, full of provocation. She was as a matter of fact slightly alarmed, but not half so much as she said.

“I am not aware what there is to settle. We are country neighbours, and I meet them frequently—they go everywhere.”

“Ah! so are we country neighbours, amis d’enfance: but I don’t go everywhere, Lord Erradeen. Yes, I called you Walter; that was for a purpose, to pique her curiosity, to make her ask who was that forward horrid girl. Did she? I hope she was piqued.”

“I heard nothing about any forward, horrid girl. She is not that sort of person. But I prefer to hear about yourself rather than to discuss Miss Williamson. When did you come? and where are you? What a pity,” Walter said hypocritically, “that you come so late.”

“Ah, isn’t it? but what then? We are too poor to think of the season. This is what one’s fine friends always do. They ask us for the last week, when everything is stifled in dust—when all you revellers are dead tired and want nothing so much as to go away—then is the moment for poor relations. But mind that you come to Bruton Street,” Julia said. “It gives me consequence. They are not very much in society, and a title always tells.”

“You do not leave any ground for my vanity. I am not to suppose that I am asked for any other reason.”

Julia pressed his arm a little with her fingers. She sighed and gave him a look full of meaning.

“The Tom Herberts will think a great deal of you,” she said; “they will instantly ask you to dinner. As for me—what am I that I should express any feeling? We are country neighbours, as you were saying. But enough of me. Let us return to our—lamb,” cried Julia. “Tell me, have you seen a great deal of her? How little I thought when we used to laugh about Miss Williamson that it would come true.”

“It has come true, as it began, in your imagination,” said Walter, provoked, and thinking the reiteration vulgar. He was aware that a great many people who knew him were remarking the air with which this new young lady hung upon his arm. They were not equal in this respect. She had few acquaintances, and did not care, nay, would have been pleased that she should be remarked; whereas he began to throb with impatience and eager desire to get away from the comment he foresaw, and from the situation altogether. Julia was very pretty, more pretty and sparkling in the pleasure of having met and secured him thus at the very outset of her too-short and too-late campaign in town, than he had ever known her, and there was nothing that was objectionable in her dress. The Tom Herberts were people against whom nothing could be said. And yet Lord Erradeen, himself not much more than a novice, felt that to everybody whom they met, Julia would be truly a country neighbour, a girl whom no one knew, and whose object, to secure a recreant lover, would be jumped at by many fine observant eyes. There was no return of tenderness in his sentiments towards her. Indeed there had been no tenderness in his sentiments at any time he said to himself with some indignation, which made it all the more hard that he should thus be exhibited as her captive before the eyes of assembled London now. But notwithstanding his impatience he could not extricate himself from Julia’s toils. When after various little pretences of going to see certain pictures, which she never looked at, she suffered him to take her back to her friends, Lady Herbert showed herself most gracious to the young man. She begged that as Julia and he were, as she heard, very old friends, he would come to Bruton Street whenever it suited him. Would he dine there to-morrow, next day? It would give Sir Thomas and herself the greatest pleasure. Dear Julia, unfortunately, had come to town so late: there was scarcely anything going on to make it worth her while: and it would be so great a pleasure to her to see something of her old friend. Julia gave him little looks of satirical comment aside while her cousin made these little speeches, and whispers still more emphatic as he accompanied her down-stairs in the train of the Herberts, who were too happy to get away after waiting an hour for the young lady. “Don’t you think it is beautiful to see how concerned she is for my pleasure; and so sorry that I have come so late! The truth is that she is delighted to make your acquaintance. But come, do come, all the same,” she said, her cheek almost touching Walter’s shoulder as she looked up in his face.

Need it be doubted that, with the usual malign disposition of affairs at such a crisis, the Williamsons’ carriage drew up behind that of the Herberts, and that Walter had to encounter the astonished gaze of good Mr. Williamson, and the amused but not very friendly look of Katie, as he appeared in this very intimate conjunction? Julia’s face so full of delighted and affectionate dependence raised towards him, and his own head stooped towards her to hear what she was saying. He scarcely could turn aside now to give them one deprecating glance, praying for a suspension of judgment. When he had put Julia into her cousin’s carriage, and responded as best he could to the “Now remember to-morrow!” which she called to him from the window, he was just in time to see Mr. Williamson’s honest countenance, with a most puzzled aspect, directed to him from the window of the next carriage as the footman closed the door. The good man waved his hand by way of good-night, but his look was perplexed and uncomfortable. Walter stood behind on the steps of Burlington House amid all the shouts of the servants and clang of the hoofs and carriages, himself too much bewildered to know what he was doing. After a while he returned to get his coat, and walked home with the sense of having woke out of a most unpleasant dream, which somehow was true.

As for Katie, she drove home without a remark, while her father talked and wondered, and feared lest they had been “ill bred” to Lord Erradeen. “He came with us, and he would naturally calculate on coming home with us,” the good man said. But Katie took no notice. She was “a wilful monkey” as he had often said, and sometimes it would happen to her like this, to take her own way. When they reached the hotel, Captain Underwood, of all people in the world, was standing in the hall with the sleepy waiter who had waited up for them. “I thought perhaps Erradeen might be with you,” the captain said apologetically. Katie, who on ordinary occasions could not endure him, made some gracious reply, and asked him to come in with the most unusual condescension though it was so late. “Lord Erradeen is not with us,” she said. “He found some friends, people just newly come to town, so far as I could judge, a Miss Julia—I did not catch her name—somebody from Sloebury.”

“Oh!” said Underwood, excited by his good fortune, “Julia Herbert. Poor Erradeen! just when he wanted to be with you! Well that’s hard; but perhaps he deserved it.”

“What did he deserve? I supposed,” said Katie, “from the way they talked, that they were old friends.”

Underwood did not in his heart wish to injure Walter—rather the other way; he wanted him to marry Katie, whose wealth was dazzling even to think of. But Walter had not behaved well to him, and he could not resist the temptation of revenging himself, especially as he was aware, like all the rest, that a lovers’ quarrel is a necessary incident in a courtship. He smiled accordingly and said, “I know: they are such old friends that the lady perhaps has some reason to think that Erradeen had used her rather badly. He is that kind of a fellow you know: he must always have some one to amuse himself with. He used to be dangling after her to no end, singing duets, and that sort of thing. Sloebury is the dullest place in creation—there was nothing else to do.”

Katie made very little demonstration. She pressed her lips tightly together for a moment and then she said, “You see, papa, it was not ill-bred, but the most polite thing you could have done to leave Lord Erradeen. Good-night, Captain Underwood.” And she swept out of the room with her candle, her silken train rustling after her, as though it was too full of indignation with the world. Her father stood somewhat blankly gazing after her. He turned to the other with a plaintive look when she was gone.

“Man,” said Mr. Williamson, “I would not have said that. Don’t you see there is a tiff, a kind of a coolness, and it is just making matters worse? Will you take anything? No? Well, it is late, as you say, and I will bid you good-night.”

It was thus that the effect produced by Julia’s appearance was made decisive. Walter for his part, walking slowly along in the depth of the night towards his rooms, was in the most curiously complicated state of feeling. He was angry and indignant both at Miss Herbert’s encounter, and the assumption on the part of the Williamsons that it was to them that his attention belonged; and he was disturbed and uneasy at the interruption of that very smooth stream which was not indeed true love, but yet was gliding on to a similar consummation. These were his sentiments on the surface; but underneath other feelings found play. The sense that one neutralised the other, and that he was in the position of having suddenly recovered his freedom, filled his mind with secret elation. After he had expended a good deal of irritated feeling upon the girl whom he felt to be pursuing him, and her whom he pursued, there suddenly came before his eyes a vision, soft, and fresh, and cool, which came like the sweet Highland air in his face, as he went along the hot London street—Oona standing on the beach, looking out from her isle upon the departing guest. What right had he to think of Oona? What was there in that dilemma to suggest to him a being so much above it, a creature so frank yet proud, who never could have entered into any such competition? But he was made up of contradictions, and this was how it befell. The streets were still hot and breathless after the beating of the sun all day upon the unshaded pavements and close lines of houses. It was sweet to feel in imagination the ripple of the mountain air, the coolness of the woods and water. But it was only in imagination. Oona with her wistful sweet eyes was as far off from him, as far off as heaven itself. And in the mean time he had a sufficiently difficult imbroglio of affairs on hand.

Next morning Lord Erradeen had made up his mind. He had passed a disturbed and uneasy night. There was no longer any possibility of delay. Oona, after all, was but a vision. Two or three days—what was that to fix the colour of a life? He would always remember, always be grateful to her. She had come to his succour in the most terrible moment. But when he rose from his uneasy sleep, there was in him a hurrying impulsion which he seemed unable to resist. Something that was not his own will urged and hastened him. Since he had known Katie all had gone well. He would put it, he thought, beyond his own power to change, he would go to her that very morning and make his peace and decide his life. That she might refuse him did not occur to Walter. He had a kind of desire to hurry to the hotel before breakfast, which would have been indecorous and ridiculous, to get it over. Indeed, so strong was the impulse in him to do this, that he had actually got his hat and found himself in the street, breakfastless, before it occurred to him how absurd it was. He returned after this and went through the usual morning routine, though always with a certain breathless sense of something that hurried him on. As soon as he thought it becoming, he set out with a half-solemn feeling of self-renunciation, almost of sacrifice. If ’twere done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. This was not a very lover-like frame of mind. He felt that he was giving up everything that was visionary, the poetry of vague ideals, and even more, the inspiration of that face, the touch of that hand which had been as soft as snow. Katie’s hand was a very firm and true one. It would give him an honest help in the world; and with her by his side the other kind of aid, he said to himself, would be unnecessary. No conflict with the powers of darkness would be forced upon him. His heated imagination adopted these words in haste, and did not pause to reflect how exaggerated and ridiculous they would sound to any reasonable ear.

He found Mr. Williamson alone in the room where Katie was usually ready to receive him in her fresh morning toilette and smile of welcome. The good man wore a puzzled look, and was looking over his bill with his cheque-book beside him on the table. He looked up when Lord Erradeen came in, with a countenance full of summings up.

“Yes,” he said, “I am just settling everything, which is never very pleasant. You need to be made of money when you come to London. Katie is away this morning by skreigh of day. Oh, yes, it was a very sudden resolution. She just took it into her little head. And here am I left to pay everything, and follow as soon as I can. It is breaking up our pleasant party. But what am I to do? I tell her she rules me with a rod of iron. I hope we’ll see a great deal of you in autumn, when you come to Auchnasheen.”

Walter went back to his rooms with a fire of resentment in his veins, but yet a sense of exhilaration quite boyish and ridiculous. Whatever might happen, he was free. And now what was to be his next step? To play with fire and Julia, or to take himself out of harm’s way? He almost ran against Underwood as he debated this question, hurrying towards his own door.

CHAPTER XXV

It was late in October, when summer was gone even from the smooth English lanes about Sloebury, and autumn, with that brave flourish of flags and trumpets by which she conceals decay, was in full sway over the Scotch hills and moors when Lord Erradeen was next heard of by those interested in him. He had gone abroad at the end of the season, without even returning to Sloebury to see his mother, and very little had been known of him during this disappearance. Mrs. Methven, it is to be supposed, knew something of his movements, but the replies she gave to questions addressed to her were short and vague. She generally answered that he was in Switzerland; but that is rather a wide word, as everybody said, and if she was acquainted more particularly with his whereabouts she chose to keep the information to herself. And in Scotland there was nothing at all known about him. All kinds of business waited till he should be there, or should answer to the appeals made him. Letters elicited no reply, and indeed it was by no means certain that he got the letters that were sent to him. Mrs. Methven writing to Mr. Milnathort, avowed, though with reserve, that she was by no means sure of her son’s address, as he was travelling about; and at his club they had no information. So that all the details of the management of the estates, about which their proprietor required to be consulted, had accumulated, and lay hopelessly in the Edinburgh office, sometimes arranging themselves by mere progress of time, though this the angry lawyer, provoked beyond measure, would not allow. The Williamsons had returned to Loch Houran, to their magnificent modern castle of Birkenbraes, in August, for the grouse: it being the habit of the hospitable millionaire to fill his vast house for those rites of autumnal observance; but neither did they know anything of the wandering peer. “We saw a great deal of young Erradeen in London,” Mr. Williamson said; “but at the end he just slipped through our fingers like a knotless thread.” “That seems to be his most prominent characteristic,” said Lord Innishouran, who for a time flattered himself that he had “acquired an influence” over this unsatisfactory young man; and the other potentates of the county shook their heads, and remarked that the Erradeens were always strange, and that this new man must be just like the rest.

There was another too who began to be of the same opinion. Notwithstanding the indignant manner in which Katie had darted away after discovering the previous relations of Walter with Julia Herbert, and hearing Underwood’s malicious statement that “he must always have some one to amuse himself with,” there was yet in her mind a conviction that something more must be heard of Lord Erradeen. He would write, she thought, when he found that she had not waited for any explanation from him. It was not possible that after the close intercourse that had existed he would disappear and make no sign. And when months passed by and nothing was heard of him, Katie was more surprised than she would confess. He had “slipped away like a knotless thread.” Nothing could be more true than this description. From the moment when she turned away from him in the great room at Burlington House, she had heard or seen nothing more of Walter. Her heart was quite whole, and there was not any personal wistfulness in her questionings; but she was piqued, and curious, and perhaps more interested in Lord Erradeen than she had ever been before.

In these circumstances it was very natural, almost inevitable, that she should take Oona into her confidence. For Oona was known, on his first appearance, to have “seen a great deal” of Lord Erradeen. This she herself explained with some eagerness to mean that she had met him three times—one of these times being the memorable moment of the eviction which he had put a stop to, an incident which had naturally made a great commotion in the country-side. But Mrs. Forrester had never felt the slightest reluctance to talk of their intercourse with the young lord. She had declared that she took a great interest in him, and that she was his first friend on Loch Houran: and anticipated with cheerful confidence the certainty of his coming back, “more like one of my own boys than anything else,” she said. The fact that the Forresters were the first to know, and indeed the only people who had known him, did indeed at the time of his first appearance identify them with Lord Erradeen in a marked way. The minister and the factor, though not match-makers, had allowed, as has been said, to steal into their minds, that possibility which is more or less in the air when youth and maiden meet. And there were others who had said—some, that Oona Forrester would make a capital wife for Lord Erradeen, a young man who was a stranger in the country; some, that it would be a good thing for Oona to secure, before any one else knew him, the best match on the loch; and some even, that though Mrs. Forrester looked such a simple person, she had her wits all about her, and never neglected the interests of her family. In the course of time, as Lord Erradeen disappeared and was not heard of any more, this gossip drooped and died away. But it left a general impression on the mind of the district that there was a tie of friendship between Lord Erradeen and the ladies of the Isle. They had something to do with him—not love, since he had never come again; but some link of personal knowledge, interest, which nobody else had: any information about him would naturally be carried there first; and Katie, having elucidations to ask as well as confidences to make, lost no time in carrying her budget to the Isle.

The true position of affairs there was unsuspected by any one. The blank which Oona anticipated had closed down upon her with a force even stronger than that which she had feared. The void, altogether unknown to any one but herself, had made her sick with shame and distress. It was inconceivable to her that the breaking off of an intercourse so slight (as she said to herself), the absence of an individual of whom she knew so little, not enough even for the most idiotical love at first sight, should have thus emptied out the interests of life, and made such a vacancy about her. It was a thing not to be submitted to, not to be acknowledged even, which she would have died sooner than let any one know, which she despised herself for being capable of. But notwithstanding all this self-indignation, repression, and shame, it was there. Life seemed emptied out of all its interest to the struggling, indignant, unhappy girl. Why should such a thing be? A chance encounter, no fault of hers, or his, or any one’s. A few meetings, to her consciousness quite accidental, which she had neither wished for nor done anything to bring about. And then some strange difficulty, danger, she could not tell what, in which he had appealed to her for her help. She would have refused that help to no one. It was as natural for her to give aid and service as to breathe. But why, why should a thing so simple have brought upon her all this that followed? She was not aware even that she loved the man; no! she said to herself with a countenance ablaze with shame, how could she love him? she knew nothing of him; and yet when he had gone away the light had been drawn out of her horizon, the heart out of her life. It was intolerable, it was cruel; and yet so it was. Nobody knew with what a miserable monotony the old routine of existence went on for some time after. She was so indignant, so angry, so full of resistance, that it disturbed her temper a little: and perhaps the irritation did her good. She went on (of course, having no choice in the matter) with all her old occupations just as usual, feeling herself in a sort of iron framework within which she moved without any volition of her own. The winter months passed like one long blank unfeatured day. But when the spring came, Oona’s elastic nature had at last got the upper hand. There began again to be a little sweetness to her in her existence. All this long struggle, and the slowly acquired victory, had been absolutely unsuspected by those about her. Mysie, perhaps, spectator as servants are of the life from which they are a little more apart than the members of a family, divined a disturbance in the being of her young mistress who was at the same time her child; but even she had no light as to what it was; and thus unobserved, unknown, though with many a desperate episode and conflict more than bloody, the little war began to be over. It left the girl with a throbbing experience of pain such as it is extraordinary to think could be acquired in the midst of so much peace, and at the same time with a sort of sickening apprehension now and then of the possibility of a renewal of the conflict. But no, she said to herself, that was not possible. Another time she would at least be forewarned. She would put on her armour and look to all her defences. Such a cheap and easy conquest should never be made of her again.

She had thus regained the command of herself without in the least forgetting what had been, when Katie came with her story to claim her advice and sympathy. Katie came from her father’s castle with what was in reality a more splendid equipage than that which conveyed her with swift prancing horses along the side of the loch. She came attended by a crew of gentlemen, the best in these parts. Young Tom Campbell, of the Ellermore family, was her bow oar. He was furthest off, as being hopelessly ineligible, and not having, even in his own opinion, the least right to come to speech of the heiress, for whom he had a hot boyish passion. Scott of Inverhouran, a Campbell too by the mother’s side, and not far off the head of his clan, was stroke; and between these two sat the son of a Glasgow trader, who could have bought them both up, and an English baronet who had come to Birkenbraes nominally for the grouse, really for Katie. Tom of Ellermore was the only one of the crew who might not, as people say, have married anybody, from the Duke’s daughter downwards. Katie was accompanied by a mild, grey-haired lady who had once been her governess, and a pretty little girl of fifteen, not indisposed to accept a passing tribute from the least engaged of the gentlemen. Katie deposited her companions and her crew with Mrs. Forrester, and calling Oona aside, rushed up-stairs to that young lady’s bed-chamber, where it was evident nobody could pursue them.

“Oh, Oona, never mind them,” she cried. “Your mother will give them their tea and scones; but I want you—I want your advice—or at least I want you to tell me what you think. They will do very well with Mrs. Forrester.” Then she drew her friend into the little elbow-chair in the window, Oona’s favourite seat, and threw herself down on the footstool at her feet. “I want you to tell me—” she said, with a certain solemnity, “what you think of Lord Erradeen.”

“Of Lord Erradeen?” said Oona, faintly. She was taken so completely by surprise that the shock almost betrayed her. Katie fixed upon her a pair of open, penetrating brown eyes. They were both fair, but Oona was of a golden tint, and Katie of a less distinguished light brownness. Katie, with her little profile somewhat blurred and indistinct in the outlines, had an air of common sense and reason, while Oona’s was the higher type of poetry and romance.

“Yes; you know him better than any one about here. But first, I will tell you the circumstances. We saw a great deal of him in London. He went everywhere with us, and met us everywhere—”

“Then, Katie,” cried Oona, with a little burst of natural impatience; “you must know him a great deal better than I.”

Said Kate calmly—“I am a quite different person from you, and I saw him only in society. Just hear me out, and you will know what I mean. People thought he was coming after me. I thought so myself more or less: but he never said a word. And the last night we met another girl, who took hold of him as some girls do—you know? Oh, not taking his arm with her hand, as you or I should do, or looking at him with her eyes; but just with a fling, with the whole of her, as those girls do. I was disgusted, and I sent him away. I don’t think yet that he wished it, or cared. But of course he was obliged to go. And then Captain—I mean one that knew him—told me—oh, yes, that he was like that; he must always have some one to amuse himself with. I would not see him after: I just came away. Now what does it mean? Is he a thing of that sort, that is not worth thinking about; or is he—?—oh, no, I am not asking for your advice: I ask you what you think.”

Oona was not able to quench the agitation that rose up in her heart. It was like a sea suddenly roused by an unforeseen storm.

“I wish,” she said, “you would not ask me such questions. I think nothing at all. I—never saw him—in that light.”

“What do you think?” said Katie, without changing her tone. She did not look in her friend’s face to make any discovery, but trifled with the bangles upon her arm, and left Oona free. As a matter of fact, she was quite unsuspicious of her companion’s agitation; for the question, though very important, was not agitating to herself. She was desirous of having an unbiased opinion, but even if that were unfavourable, it would not, she was aware, be at all likely to break her heart.

Oona on her side was used to having her advice asked. In the interval she schooled herself to a consideration of the question.

“I will tell you, Katie, how I have seen him,” she said, “here with my mother, and among the poor cotters in the Truach Glas. How could I tell from that how he would behave to a girl? He was very pretty, with my mother. I liked him for it. He listened to her and did what she told him, and never put on an air, or looked wearied, as gentlemen will sometimes do. Then he was very kind to the cotters, as I have told you. To see them turned out made him wild with indignation. You may judge by that the kind of man he was. It was not like doing them a favour; it was mending a miserable wrong.”

“I have heard all this before,” said Katie, with a slight impatience, “but what has that to do with it? You are telling me facts, when I want your opinion. The one has nothing to do with the other. I can put this and that together myself. But what I want is an opinion. What do you think? Don’t put me off any longer, but tell me that,” Katie cried.

“What do you want my opinion about?” asked the other, with also, in her turn, some impatience in her voice.

Then Katie ceased playing with her bangles, and looked up. She had never before met with such an unsatisfactory response from Oona. She said with a directness which denoted a natural and hereditary turn for the practical—“Whether he will come; and if he comes, what it will be for?”

“He will certainly come,” said Oona, “because he must. You that have lived on the loch so long—you know what the lords of Erradeen have to do.”

“And do you mean to say,” cried Katie, with indignation, “that an old silly story will bring him—and not me? If that is your opinion, Oona! Do you know that he is a man like ourselves? Lord Innishouran thinks very well of him. He thinks there is something in him. For my part, I have never seen that he was clever; but I should think he had some sense. And how could a man who has any sense allow himself to be led into that?” She jumped up from her seat at Oona’s feet in her indignation. “Perhaps you believe in the Warlock lord?” she said, with fine scorn. “Perhaps he believes in him? If Lord Erradeen should speak of that to me, I would laugh in his face. With some people it might be excusable, but with a man who is of his century!—The last one was a fool—everybody says so: and had his head full of rubbish, when he was not going wrong. By the by!” Katie cried—then stopped, as if struck by a new thought which had not occurred to her before.

“What is it?” said Oona, who had been listening with mingled resignation and impatience.

“When we took Lord Erradeen up he was with that Captain Underwood, who used to be with the old lord. I told him you would be sorry to see it. Now that I remember, he never asked me the reason why; but Captain Underwood disappeared. That looks as if he had given great importance to what I said to him. Perhaps after all, Oona, it is you of whom he was thinking. That, however, would not justify him in coming after me. I am very fond of you, but I should not care to be talked about all over London because a gentleman was in love with you!”

Oona had coloured high, and then grown pale. “You will see, if you think of it, that you must not use such words about me,” she said, with an effort to be perfectly calm. “There is no gentleman in love—as you say—with me. I have never put it in any one’s power to speak so.” As she spoke it was not only once but a dozen times that her countenance changed. With a complexion as clear as the early roses, and blood that ebbs and flows in her veins at every touch of feeling, how can a girl preserve such secrets from the keen perceptions of another? Katie kept an eye upon her, watching from under her downcast eyelids. She had the keenest powers of vision, and even could understand, when thus excited, characters of a higher tone than her own. She did not all at once say anything, but paused to take in this new idea and reconcile it with the other ideas that had been in her mind before.

“This is very funny,” said Katie, after an interval. “I never thought anything dramatical was going to happen to me: but I suppose, as they say in books, that your life is always a great deal more near that sort of thing than you suppose.”

“What sort of thing?” said Oona, who felt that she had betrayed herself, yet was more determined than ever not to betray herself or to yield a single step to the curiosity of the world as embodied in this inquiring spirit. She added, with a little flush of courage, “When you, a great heiress, come in the way of a young lord, there is a sort of royal character about it. You will—marry for the sake of the world as well as for your own sake; and all the preliminaries, the doubts, and the difficulties, and the obstacles that come in the way, of course they are all like a romance. This interruption will be the most delightful episode. The course of true love never did run—”

“Oh stop!” cried Katie, “that’s all so commonplace. It is far more exciting and original, Oona, that we should be rivals, you and I.”

“You are making a great mistake,” said Oona, rising with the most stately gravity. “I am no one’s rival. I would not be even if—. But in this case it is absurd. I scarcely know Lord Erradeen, as I have told you. Let us dismiss him from the conversation,” she added, with a movement of her hands as if putting something away. It had been impossible, however, even to say so much without the sudden flush which said more to the eyes of Katie, not herself addicted to blushing, than any words could do to her ears.

“It is very interesting,” she said. “We may dismiss him from the conversation, but we can’t dismiss him from life, you know. And if he is sure to come to Kinloch Houran, as you say, not for me, nor for you, but for that old nonsense, why then he will be—And we shall be forced to consider the question. For my part, I find it far more interesting than I ever thought it would be. You are proud, and take it in King Cambyses’ vein. But I’m not proud,” said Katie, “I am a student of human nature. It will take a great deal of thinking over, and it’s very interesting. I am fond of you, Oona, and you are prettier and better than I am; but I don’t quite think at this moment that I will give in even to you, till—”

“If you insist on making a joke, I cannot help it,” said Oona, still stately, “but I warn you, Katie, that you will offend me.”

“Oh, offend you! Why should I offend you?” cried Katie, putting her arm within that of the princess. “It is no joke, it is a problem. When I came to ask for your opinion I never thought it would be half so interesting. If he has good taste, of course I know whom he will choose.”

“Katie!” cried Oona, with a violent blush, “if you think that I would submit to be a candidate—a competitor—for any man to choose—”

“How can you help it?” said Katie, calmly. “It appears it’s nature. We have a great deal to put up with, being women, but we can’t help ourselves. Of course the process will go on in his own mind. He will not be so brutal as to let us see that he is weighing and considering. And we can have our revenge after, if we like: we can always refuse. Come, Oona, I am quite satisfied. You and me, that are very fond of each other, we are rivals. We will not say a word about it, but we’ll just go on and see what will happen. And I promise you I shall be as fond of you as ever, whatever happens. Men would say that was impossible—just as they say, the idiots, that women are never true friends. That is mere folly; but this is a problem, and it will be very interesting to work it out. I wonder if those boys have eaten all the scones,” Katie said, with the greatest simplicity, as she led Oona down-stairs. She was so perfectly at her ease, taking the command of her more agitated companion, and so much pleased with her problem, that Oona’s proud excitement of self-defence melted away in the humour of the situation. She threw herself into the gaiety of the merry young party down-stairs, among whom Mrs. Forrester was in her element, dispensing tea and the most liberal supply of scones, which Mysie, with equal satisfaction, kept bringing in in ever fresh supplies, folded in the whitest of napkins. Katie immediately claimed her share of these dainties, intimating at once, with the decision of a connoisseur, the kind she preferred: but when supplied remained a little serious, paying no attention to “the boys,” as she, somewhat contemptuously, entitled her attendants, and thinking over her problem. But Oona, in her excitement and self-consciousness, ran over with mirth and spirits. She talked and laughed with nervous gaiety, so that Hamish heard the sound of the fun down upon the beach where he watched over the boats, lest a passing shower should come up and wet the cushions of the magnificent vessel from Birkenbraes, which he admired and despised. “Those Glasgow persons,” said Hamish, “not to be disrespectful, they will just be made of money; but Miss Oona she’ll be as well content with no cushions at all. And if they’ll be making her laugh that’s a good thing,” Hamish said.

CHAPTER XXVI

The first to see the subject of so many thoughts was not any one of those to whom his return was of so much importance. Neither was it at Kinloch Houran that Walter first appeared. On a cold October evening, in one of the early frosts from which everybody augurs a severe winter, and in the early twilight which makes people exclaim how short the days are getting, he knocked suddenly at the door of Mr. Milnathort’s house in Edinburgh. Being dark everywhere else, it was darker still in the severe and classic coldness of Moray Place. The great houses gathered round, drawing, one might have thought, a closer and closer circle; the shrubs in the enclosure shivered before the breeze. Up the hill from the Firth came the north-east wind, cutting like a scythe. It was a night when even a lighted window gives a certain comfort to the wayfarer; but the Edinburgh magnates had scarcely yet returned from the country, and most of the houses were dark, swathed in brown paper and cobwebs. But winter or summer made but little difference to the house of Mr. Milnathort, and there a certain light of human welcome was almost always to be found. Lord Erradeen came quickly along the Edinburgh streets, which are grim in the teeth of a north-easter. His frame was unstrung and his spirit unsatisfied as of old. He had been “abroad”—that is to say, he had been hurrying from one place to another in search of the unattainable one which should not be dull. Most places were dull; there was nothing to do in them. He took in at a draught the capabilities of folly that were there, then passed on in the vain quest. Had he been wholly ignoble he would have been more easily satisfied. But he was not satisfied. In the worst he seemed to want something worse, as in the best he wanted something better. He was all astray upon the world, desiring he did not know what, only aware that nothing was sufficient for his desires. Underwood, who was his companion, had catered vulgarly for the unhappy young man, who used with scorn the means of distraction provided him, and was not distracted, and upon whom disgust so soon followed novelty that his companion was at his wits’ end. And now he had come back, obeying an impulse which he neither understood nor wished to obey. A necessity seemed laid upon him; all in a moment it had risen up in his mind, a sense that he must get back. It was so involuntary, so spontaneous, that it did not even occur to him at first to resist it, or to think of it as anything but a natural impulse.

He had not been able to rest after this strange inclination came upon him, and it seemed to him in the heat of it that he had always had the same desire, that all the time this was what he had wanted, to get back. He hurried along over land and water, sometimes in the stream of summer tourists coming home, sometimes crossing the other tide of the sick and feeble going away—and when he touched English soil again, that he should have hurried to Edinburgh of all places in the world, was beyond Walter’s power of explanation even to himself. He had felt a barrier between himself and the home of his youth. His mother was separated altogether from his new existence. She could not comprehend it, he thought, and his heart turned from the explanations that would be necessary. He could not go to her; and to whom could he go? The suggestion that came into his mind was as fantastical as the whole strange story of his recent life. He was nothing indeed but a bundle of caprices, moved and played upon as if by the winds. And it had seemed a sort of relief to his uncertain mind and consuming thoughts when it occurred to him to come to Moray Place to see the invalid who had known so much about him, while he knew nothing of her. It relieved him, as any resolution relieves an uncertain mind. It was something between him and that future which always failed to his expectations. When he had made up his mind he reflected no more, but went on, and even had an uneasy nap in the railway-carriage as he came north; nor ever asked himself why he was coming till he went up the steps at Mr. Milnathort’s door, and then it was too late for any such question. He mounted the long stone staircase with all the throbbings of fatigue in his brain, the sweep and movement of a long journey. Only once before had he been in this house, yet it seemed familiar to him as if it had been his home, and the unchanged aspect of everything affected him as it affects men who have been away for half a life-time—so many things happening to him, and nothing here. This gave him a certain giddiness as he followed the same servant up the same stairs. He was not the same. He had been unconscious of all the peculiarities of his fate when he crossed that threshold before. He had known the good, but not the evil; and now the very carpets, the sound of the door rumbling into the echoes of the tall, silent house, were the same—but he so far from being the same! Then in a moment out of the dim night, the half-lighted stair, he came upon the soft blaze of light in which Miss Milnathort delighted. She lay on her sofa as if she had never stirred, her old-young face in all its soft brightness, her small delicate hands in continual motion. She gave a little cry at the sight of Walter, and held out those hands to him.

“You have come!” she cried. “I was looking for you;” raising herself on her couch as much as was possible to her, as if she would have thrown herself into his arms. When she felt the pressure of his hands, tears sprang to her eyes. “I knew,” she cried, “that you would come. I have been looking for you, and praying for you, Lord Erradeen.”

“Perhaps,” said Walter, moved too, he could scarcely tell why, “that is how I have come.”

“Oh, but I am glad, glad to see you,” the poor lady said. “You never came back last year; but I will not reproach you—I am too glad to have you here. And where have you been, and what have you been doing? To see you is like a child coming home.”

“I have been in many different places, and uneasy in all,” said Walter; “and as for what I have been doing, it has not been much good: wandering about the face of the earth, seeking I don’t know what; not knowing, I think, even what I want.”

She held out her hand to him again: her eyes were full of pity and tenderness.

“Oh how I wanted you to come back that I might have spoken freely to you. I will tell you what you want, Lord Erradeen.”

“Stop a little,” he said, “I don’t wish to plunge into that. Let us wait a little. I think I am pleased to come back, though I hate it. I am pleased always more or less to do what I did not do yesterday.”

“That is because your mind is out of order, which is very natural,” she said. “How should it be in order with so much to think of? You will have been travelling night and day?”

“Rather quickly; but that matters nothing; it is easy enough travelling. I am not so effeminate as to mind being tired; though as a matter of fact I am not tired,” he said. “So far as that goes, I could go on night and day.”

She looked at him with that mingling of pleasure and pain with which a mother listens to the confidences of her child.

“Have you been home to see your mother?” she asked.

Walter shook his head.

“I have had no thought but how to get to Scotland the quickest way. I have felt as if something were dragging me. What is it? All this year I have been struggling with something. I have sometimes thought if I had come back here you could have helped me.”

“I would—I would! if I could,” she cried.

“It is not a thing that can be endured,” said Walter; “it must come to an end. I don’t know how or by what means; but one thing is certain, I will not go on bearing it. I will rather make an end of myself.”

She put a hand quickly upon his arm.

“Oh do not say that; there is much, much that must be done before you can despair: and that is the thought of despair. Some have done it, but you must not. No—not you—not you.”

“What must I do then?”

She caressed his arm with her thin, little, half-transparent hand, and looked at him wistfully with her small face, half child, half old woman, suffused and tremulous.

“Oh!” she said, “my bonnie lad! you must be good—you must be good first of all.”

Walter laughed; he drew himself back a little out of her reach.

“I am not good,” he said. “I have never been good. Often enough I have been disgusted with myself, and miserable by moments. But if that is the first thing, I do not know how to attain to it, for I am not good.”

She looked at him without any change in her face while he made this confession. It did not seem to make much impression upon her.

“I can tell you,” she said, “how to overcome the devil and all his ways; but it costs trouble, Lord Erradeen. Without that you will always be as you are, full of troubles and struggles: but you should thank your God that you cannot be content with ill-doing like those that are the children of perdition. To be content with it—that is the worst of all.”

“Well, then I am in a hopeful way, it appears,” said Walter with a sort of laugh, “for I am certainly far enough from being content.” After a minute’s pause he added—“I said we should not plunge into this subject at once; tell me about yourself. Are you well? Are you better?”

“I am well enough,” she said, “but never will I be better. I have known that for many years—almost from the moment when, to get away from him, I fell off yon old walls, and became what you see.”

“To get away from—whom?” He glanced round him as she spoke with a look which was half alarmed and half defiant. “I know,” he said, in a low voice, “what delusions are about.”

“From Him. What he is, or who he is, I know no more than you. I have thought like you that it was my own delusion. I have wondered from year to year if maybe I had deceived myself. But the upshot of all is what I tell you. I am lying here these thirty years and more, because, being very young, I had no command of myself, but was frightened and flew from Him.”

“It is against all possibility, all good sense, against everything one believes. I will not believe it,” cried Walter; “you were young as you say, and frightened. And I was—a fool—unprepared, not knowing what to think.”

Miss Milnathort shook her head. She made no further reply; and there was a little interval of silence which Walter made no attempt to break. What could he say? It was impossible: and yet he had no real scepticism to oppose to this strange story. In words, in mind, he could not allow that either he or she were more than deceived; but in himself he had no doubt on the subject. His intelligence was easily convinced, indeed, that to attribute the events that happened to him to supernatural influence was in contradiction to everything he had ever been taught, and that it was superstition alone which could invest the mysterious inhabitant of Kinloch Houran with power to act upon his mind across great seas and continents, or to set any occult forces to work for that purpose. Superstition beyond all excuse; and yet he was as thoroughly convinced of it in the depths of his being as he was defiant on the surface. There was perfect silence in the room where these two sat together with a sense of fellowship and sympathy. As for Lord Erradeen, he had no inclination to say anything more. It was impossible, incredible, contrary to everything he believed: and yet it was true: and he did not feel the contradiction to be anything extraordinary, anything to be protested against, in this curious calm of exhaustion in which he was. While he sat thus quite silent Miss Milnathort began to speak.

“Thirty years ago,” she said, “there was a young Lord Erradeen that was something like yourself. He was a distant cousin once, that never thought to come to the title. He was betrothed when he was poor to a young girl of his own condition in life. When he became Lord Erradeen he was bidden to give her up and he refused. Oh, if he had lived he would have broken the spell! He would not give up his love. I will not say that he was not terribly beaten down and broken with what he heard and saw, and what he had to bear; but he never said a word to me of what was the chief cause. When the summons came he got us all to go to see the old castle, and perhaps, with a little bravado, to prove that he would never, never yield. How it was that I was left alone I can never remember, for my head was battered and stupid, and it was long, long, before I got the command of my senses again. It was most likely when Walter (he was Walter too; it is the great Methven name) was attending to the others, my brother and my mother, who was living then. I was a romantic bit girlie, and fond of beautiful views and all such things. When I was standing upon the old wall, there suddenly came forward to speak to me a grand gentleman. I thought I had never seen such a one before. You have seen him and you know; often and often have I thought I have seen him since. And it may be that I have,” she said, pausing suddenly. It was perhaps the interruption in the soft flowing of her voice that startled Walter. He made a sudden movement in his chair, and looked round him as if he too felt another spectator standing by.

“I am not frightened now,” said the invalid with her calm little voice, “lying here so long putting things together I am frightened no more. Sometimes I am sorry for him, and think that it is not all ill that is in that burdened spirit. I have taken it upon me even,” she said, folding her little, worn hands, “to say a word about him now and then when I say my prayers. I never thought at that time that he was anything more than the grandest gentleman I ever saw. He began to speak to me about my engagement, and if I thought of the harm I was doing Walter, and that it was his duty to think of the family above all. It was like death to hear it, but I had a great deal of spirit in those days, and I argued with him. I said it was better for the family that he should marry me, than marry nobody—and that I had no right to take my troth from him. Then he began to argue too. He said that to sacrifice was always best, that I could not love him, if I would not give up everything for him. It might have been Scripture. What could I answer to that? I was just dazed by it, and stood and looked in his face: he looked like a prophet of God, and he said I should give up my love, if I knew what true love was. I have little doubt I would have done it, after that; but just then my Walter’s voice sounded up from where he was calling out to me. ‘Where are you, where are you? nothing can be done without you,’ he cried. Oh, how well I remember the sound of his voice filling all the air! I turned round and I said, ‘No, no, how can I break his heart’:—when there came an awful change upon the face you know. His eyes flared like a great light, he made a step forward as if he would have seized me with his hands. And then terror took hold upon me, a kind of horrible panic. They say I must have started back. I mind nothing more for months and months,” the soft little voice said.

The young man listened to this strange tragedy with an absorbed and wondering interest; and the sufferer lay smiling at him in a kind of half childlike, half angelic calm. One would have said she had grown no older since that day; and yet had lived for long ages with her little crushed frame and heart. He was overawed by the simplicity of the tale. He said after a pause, “And Walter—? how did it end?”

For a moment she did not say anything, but lay smiling, not looking at him. At last she answered softly with a great gravity coming over her face—“Lord Erradeen, after some years and many struggles, married the heiress of the Glen Oriel family, and brought a great deal of property to the house. He was to me like an angel from heaven. And his heart was broken. But how could I help him, lying crushed and broken here? What he did was well. It was not the best he could have done; because you see he could not give his heart’s love again, and that is essential: but he did no harm. There was just an ending of it for one generation when I fell over yon wall. And his son died young, without ever coming to the age to bear the brunt, and the late lord, poor man, was just confused from the commencement, and never came to any good.”

“What is the best he could have done?”

She turned to him with a little eagerness. “I have no instruction,” she said, “I have only the sense that comes with much thinking and putting things together, if it is sense. I have lain here and thought it over for years and years, both in the night when everybody was sleeping, and in the day when they were all thinking of their own concerns. I think one man alone will never overcome that man we know. He is too much for you. If I have gleaned a little in my weakness, think what he must have found out in all these years. But I think if there were two, that were but one—two that had their hearts set upon what was good only, and would not listen to the evil part—I think before them he would lose his strength: he could do no more. But oh, how hard to be like that and to find the other? I am afraid you are far, far from it, Lord Erradeen.”

“Call me Walter—like my predecessor,” he said.

“You are not like him. He was never soiled with the world. His mind was turned to everything that was good. And me, though I was but a small thing, I had it in me to stand by him. Two souls that are one! I am thinking—and I have had a long, long time to think in—that this is what is wanted to free the race from that bondage.”

“Do you mean—that there has never been such a pair to do what you say?”

“Perhaps it is that there never has been a cripple creature like me,” she said with a smile, “to find it out. And at the best it is just a guess of mine. I have thought of everything else, but I can find nothing that will do. If you will think, however,” said Miss Milnathort, “you will find it no such a light thing. Two of one mind—and that one mind set intent upon good, not evil. They will have to know. They will have to understand. The woman might miss it for want of knowing. She would have to be instructed in the whole mystery, and set her mind to it as well as the man. Do you think that is too easy? No, oh, no, it is not so very easy, Lord Erradeen.”

“It would be impossible to me,” said Walter with keen emotion, “my mind is not intent upon good. What I am intent on is—I don’t know that there is anything I am intent on: except to pass the time and have my own way.”

Miss Milnathort looked at him with the seriousness which changed the character of her face. “He that says that,” she said, “is near mending it, Lord Erradeen.”

“Do you think so?” he cried with a harsh little laugh, “then I have something to teach you still, ignorant as I am. To know you are wrong, alas! is not the same as being on the way to mend it. I have known that of myself for years, but I have never changed. If I have to decide a hundred times I will do just the same, take what I like best.”

She looked at him wonderingly, folding her hands.

“I think you must be doing yourself injustice,” she said.

“It is you that do human nature more than justice,” said Walter; “you judge by what you know, by yourself; you prefer what is good; but I—don’t do so. It is true: to know what is good does not make one like it, as you think. It is not a mistake of judgment, it is a mistake of the heart.”

“Oh, my dear,” said the poor lady, “you must be wronging yourself; your heart is tender and good, your eyes filled when I was telling you my story. I have seen that when there was any talk of fine and generous things your eyes have filled and your countenance changed. You have forgotten by times, and turned away from the right way; but you will not tell me that, looking it in the face, you prefer what is wrong. Oh no, Lord Erradeen, no, no.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “I never look anything in the face; that may be the reason or part of the reason; but the fact is that I do not prefer good because it is good. Oh no, I cannot deceive you. To be fully convinced that one is wrong is very little argument against one’s habits, and the life that one likes. It does not seem worth while to test small matters by such a big standard, and, indeed one does not test them at all, but does—what happens to come in one’s way at the moment.”

A shade of trouble came over the soft little face. She looked up wondering and disturbed at the young man who sat smiling upon her, with a smile that was half scorn, half sympathy. The scorn, perhaps, was for himself; he made no pretence to himself of meaning better, or wishing to do better than his performance. And Miss Milnathort’s distress was great.

“I thought,” she said, faltering, “that the truth had but to be seen, how good it is, and every heart would own it. Oh, my young lord, you have no call to be like one of the careless that never think at all. You are forced to think: and when you see that your weirdless way leads to nothing but subjection and bondage, and that the good is your salvation, as well for this world as the world to come—”

“Does not every man know that?” cried Walter. “Is it not instinctive in us to know that if we behave badly, the consequences will be bad one way or another? There is scarcely a fool in the world that does not know that—but what difference does it make? You must find some stronger argument. That is your innocence,” he said, smiling at her.

At that moment the young man, with his experiences which were of a nature so different from hers, felt himself far more mature and learned in human nature than she; and she, who knew at once so much and so little, was abashed by this strange lesson. She looked at him with a deprecating anxious look, not knowing what to say.

“If the victory is to be by means of two whose heart is set on good, it will never be,” said Walter with a sigh, “in my time. I will struggle and yield, and yield and struggle again, like those that have gone before me, and then, like them, pass away, and leave it to somebody else who will be hunted out from the corners of the earth as I was. And so, for all I can tell, it will go on for ever.”

Here he made a pause, and another tide of feeling stole over him. “If I were a better man,” he said with a changed look, “I think I know where—the other—might be found.”

Miss Milnathort’s soft, aged, childish countenance cleared, the wistful look vanished from her eyes, her smile came back. She raised herself up among her pillows as if she would have sat upright.

“Oh, my young lord! and does she love you like that?” she cried.

Walter felt the blood rush to his face; he put up his hands as if to stop the injurious thought. “Love me!” he said.

To do him justice, the idea was altogether new to him. He had thought of Oona often, and wondered what was the meaning of that softness in her eyes as she looked after him; but his thoughts had never ventured so far as this. He grew red, and then he grew pale.

“It is a profanity,” he said. “How could she think of me at all? I was a stranger, and she was sorry for me. She gave me her hand, and strength came out of it. But if such a woman as that—stood by a true man—Pah! I am not a true man; I am a wretched duffer, and good for nothing. And Oona thinks as much of me, as little of me as—as little as—she thinks of any pitiful, unworthy thing.”

He got up from his chair as he spoke, and began to pace about the room in an agitation which made his blood swell in his veins. He was already in so excitable a state that this new touch seemed to spread a sort of conflagration everywhere; his imagination, his heart, all the wishes and hopes—that “indistinguishable throng” that lie dormant so often, waiting a chance touch to bring them to life—all blazed into consciousness in a moment. He who had flirted to desperation with Julia Herbert, who had been on the point of asking Katie Williamson to marry him, was it possible all the time that Oona, and she only, had been the one woman in the world for him? He remembered how she had come before his thoughts at those moments when he had almost abandoned himself to the current which was carrying his heedless steps away. When he had thought of her standing upon the bank on her isle, looking after him with indefinable mystery and wistful softness in her eyes, all the other objects of his various pursuits had filled him with disgust. He said to himself, in the excitement of the moment, that it was this which had again and again stopped him and made his pleasures, his follies, revolting to him. This was the origin of his restlessness, his sometimes savage temper, his fierce impatience with himself and everybody around him. In fact, this was far from the reality of the case; but in a flood of new sensation that poured over him, it bore a flattering resemblance to truth, which dignified the caprice of his existence, and made him feel himself better than he had thought. If love had, indeed, done all this for him, struggling against every vulgar influence, must it not, then, be capable of much more—indeed, of all?

Meanwhile Miss Milnathort lay back upon her pillows, excited, yet pleased and soothed, and believing too that here was all she had wished for, the true love and the helping woman who might yet save Erradeen.

“Oona!” she said to herself, “it’s a well-omened name.”

This strange scene of sentiment, rising into passion, was changed by the sudden entry of Mr. Milnathort, whose brow was by no means so cloudless or his heart so soft as his sister’s. He came in, severe in the consciousness of business neglected, and all the affairs of life arrested by the boyish folly, idleness, and perhaps vice of this young man, with endless arrears of censure to bestow upon him, and of demands to place before him.

“I am glad to see you, my Lord Erradeen,” he said briefly. “I have bidden them put forward the dinner, that we may have a long evening; and your things are in your room, and your man waiting. Alison, you forget when you keep Lord Erradeen talking, that he has come off a journey and must be tired.”

Walter had not intended to spend the night in Moray Place, and indeed had given orders to his servant to take rooms in one of the hotels, and convey his luggage thither; but he forgot all this now, and took his way instinctively up another flight of those tall stairs to the room which he had occupied before. It brought him to himself, however, with the most curious shock of surprise and consternation, when he recognised not the servant whom he had brought with him, but old Symington, as precise and serious as ever, and looking as if there had been no break in his punctilious service. He was arranging his master’s clothes just as he had done on the winter evening when Lord Erradeen had first been taken possession of by this zealous retainer of the family. Walter was so startled, bewildered, and almost overawed by this sudden apparition, that he said with a gasp—

“You here, Symington!” and made no further objection to his presence.

“It is just me, my lord,” Symington said. “I was waiting at the station, though your lordship might not observe me. I just went with your lad to the hotel, and put him in good hands.”

“And may I ask why you did that without consulting me; and what you are doing here?” Walter cried, with a gleam of rising spirit.

Symington looked at him with a sort of respectful contempt.

“And does your lordship think,” he said, “that it would be befitting to take a young lad, ignorant of the family, up yonder?” With a slight pause of indignant yet gentle reproach, after these words, he added—“Will your lordship wear a white tie or a black?” with all the gravity that became the question.

CHAPTER XXVII

There is in the winter season, when the stream of tourists is cut off, a sort of family and friendly character about the Highland railways. The travellers in most cases know each other by sight, if no more; and consult over a new-comer with the curiosity of a homely community, amid which a new figure passing in the street excites sentiments of wonder and interest as a novelty. “Who do you suppose that will be at this time of the year?” they say; and the little country stations are full of greetings, and everybody is welcomed who comes, and attended by kindly farewells who goes away. There was no doubt this time as to who Lord Erradeen was as he approached the termination of his journey; and when he had reached the neighbourhood of the loch, a bustle of guards and porters—that is to say, of the one guard belonging to the train, and the one porter belonging to the station, familiarly known by name to all the passengers—ushered up to the carriage in which he was seated the beaming presence of Mr. Williamson.

“So here ye are,” said the millionaire. “Lord Erradeen! I told Tammas he must be making a mistake.”

“Na, na, I was making no mistake,” said Tammas, in a parenthesis.

“And what have ye been making of yourself all this time?” Mr. Williamson went on. “We have often talked of ye, and wondered if we would see ye again. That was a very sudden parting that we took in London; but Katie is just a wilful monkey, and does what she pleases; but she will be well pleased, and so will I, to see you at Birkenbraes.” And the good man took his place beside the new-comer, and talked to him with the greatest cordiality during the rest of the journey.

Thus Walter was received on his second arrival with the friendly familiarity natural to the country-side. There seemed to him something significant even in the change of association with which his visit began. He had to promise to present himself at once at Birkenbraes, and the very promise seemed to revive the feelings and purposes which had been growing in his mind during that interval of social success in London which, on the whole, had been the most comfortable period of his life since he came to his fortune. His mind was occupied by this as he was rowed once more round the half-ruined pile of Kinloch Houran to his renewed trial. The afternoon was bright and clear, one of those brilliant October days that add a glory of colour to the departing summer; the water reflected every tint of the ruddy woods, thrown up and intensified everywhere by the dark background of the firs. He thought of the encounter before him with a fierce repugnance and indignation, rebellious but impotent; but there were no longer in it those elements of apprehension and mystery which had occupied all his being when he came here for the first time. It had acquired all the reality of an event not to be escaped from, not to be eluded; in itself something almost worse than death, and involving consequences more terrible than death—from which some way of escape must be found if heaven or earth contained any way of salvation. He had banished it from his mind as long as it was possible, and had wasted in endeavouring to forget it the time which he might have occupied in searching for the means of overcoming his enemy: and now the crisis was again near, and he knew scarcely more than at first what he was to do.

Walter had listened to Miss Milnathort’s suggestion with a momentary elevation of mind and hope; but what was he, a “miserable duffer” as he had truly called himself, to make such an effort? A heart set on good and not evil: he laughed to himself with contemptuous bitterness, when he thought how far this description was from anything he knew of himself. Thus it was from the outset impossible that the redemption of his race could be carried out by him. The only alternative then was to yield. Was it the only alternative? To conduct his own affairs only as the tool and instrument of another, to sacrifice affection, justice, pity, every generous feeling, to the aggrandisement of his family—Walter’s heart rose up within him in violent refusal and defiance. And then he thought of Katie Williamson. The storms in his bosom had been quieted from the moment when he had come into contact with her. The evil circumstances around him had changed; even now a lull came over his mind at the thought of her. It was not the highest or the best course of action. At the utmost it would only be to leave once more to those who should come after him the solution of the problem; but what had he to do with those that came after him, he asked himself bitterly? In all probability it would be a stranger, a distant cousin, some one unknown to him as he had been to his predecessor; and in the mean time he would have peace. As he thought of it, it seemed to him that there was something significant even in that meeting with Mr. Williamson. When he came to the loch for the first time, with high hopes and purposes in his mind, meaning to leave all the frivolities of life behind him and address himself nobly to the duties of his new and noble position, it was Oona Forrester whom he had encountered on the threshold of fate. All the circumstances of his intercourse with her flashed through his mind; the strange scene on the isle in which her touch, her presence, her moral support, had saved him from he knew not what, from a final encounter in which, alone, he must have been overthrown. Had he not been a coward then and fled, had he remained and, with that soft strong hand in his, defied all that the powers of darkness could do, how different might have been his position now! But he had not chosen that better part. He had escaped and postponed the struggle. He had allowed all better thoughts and purposes to slip from him into the chaos of a disordered life. And now that he was forced back again to encounter once more this tyranny from which he had fled, it was no longer Oona that met him. Who was he, to expect that Oona would meet him, that the angels would come again to his succour? He could not now make that sudden unhesitating appeal to her which he had made in his first need, and to which she had so bravely replied. Everything was different; he had forfeited the position on which he could confront his tyrant. But a compromise was very possible, and it seemed to him that peace, and a staving off of trouble, were in Katie Williamson’s hand.

It is needless to enter into all the sensations and thoughts with which the young man took possession again of the rooms in which he had spent the most extraordinary crisis of his life. It was still daylight when he reached Kinloch Houran, and the first thing he did was to make a stealthy and cautious examination of his sitting-room, looking into every crevice in an accidental sort of way, concealing even from himself the scrutiny in which he was engaged. Could he have found any trace of the sliding panel or secret entrance so dear to romance, it would have consoled him; but one side of the room was the outer wall, another was the modern partition which separated it from his bedroom, and of the others one was filled up with the bookshelves which he had been examining when his visitor entered on the previous occasion, while the fourth was the wall of the corridor which led into the ruinous part of the castle, and had not a possibility of any opening in it.

He made these researches by intervals, pretending other motives to himself, but with the strangest sense that he was making himself ridiculous, and exposing himself to contemptuous laughter, though so far as his senses were cognisant there was nobody there either to see or to laugh. The night, however, passed with perfect tranquillity, and in the morning he set out early on his way to Birkenbraes. If it was there that the question was to be solved, it was better that it should be done without delay.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The party at Birkenbraes was always large. There were, in the first place, many people staying in the house, for Mr. Williamson was hospitable in the largest sense of the word, and opened his liberal doors to everybody that pleased him, and was ready to provide everything that might be wanted for the pleasure of his guests—carriages, horses, boats, even special trains on the railway, not to speak of the steam-yacht that lay opposite the house, and made constant trips up and down the loch. His liberality had sometimes an air of ostentation, or rather of that pleasure which very rich persons often take in the careless exhibition of a lavish expenditure, which dazzles and astonishes those to whom close reckonings are necessary. He had a laugh, which, though perfectly good-natured, seemed to have a certain derision in it of the precautions which others took, as he gave his orders. “Lord, man, take a special!—what need to hurry? I will send and order it to be in waiting. I have my private carriage, ye see, on the railway—always at the use of my friends.” And then he would laugh, as much as to say, What a simple thing this is—the easiest in the world! If ye were not all a poor, little, cautious set of people, you would do the same. Not afford it? Pooh! a bagatelle like that! All this was in the laugh, which was even more eloquent than la langue Turque. There were sure to be some sensitive people who did not like it; but they were very hard to please. And the rich man was in fact so truly kind and willing to make everybody comfortable, that the most sensible even of the sensitive people forgave him. And as the majority in society is not sensitive when its own advantage and pleasure is concerned, his house was always full of visitors, among whom he moved briskly, always pleased, always endeavouring to elicit the expression of a wish which he could satisfy. Katie took less trouble. She was less conscious of being rich. She was willing to share all her own advantages, but it did not appear to her, as to her father, ridiculous that other people should not be rich too. The house was always full of visitors staying there, and there was not a day that there were not neighbours dropping in to lunch or invited to dinner, keeping up a commotion which delighted Mr. Williamson and amused Katie, who was to the manner born, and understood life only in this way. It happened thus that it was into a large party that Walter, coming with a sense that he was under the dominion of fate, and was about to settle the whole tenor of his life, plunged unaware. He heard the sound of many voices before he had got near the great drawing-room, the door of which stood open, giving vent to the murmur of talk from about twenty people within. He had scarcely ever gone up so magnificent a staircase, broad, and light, and bright as became a new palace, with footmen moving noiselessly upon the thick pile of the carpets.

“There is a party, I suppose?” he said, hesitating.

“No more than usual, my lord,” said the elegant functionary in black, who was about to announce him, with a bland and soft smile of superiority and a little pity like his master’s for the man who knew no better, “Two or three gentlemen have dropped in to lunch.”

The drawing-room was a large room, with a huge round bow-window giving upon the loch. It was furnished and decorated in the most approved manner, with quantities of pretty things of every costly description: for Katie, like her father, betrayed the constitution and temperament of wealth, by loving cost almost more than beauty. She was, however, too well instructed to be led into the mistake of making that luxurious modern room into the semblance of anything ancient or faded, while Mr. Williamson was too fond of everything bright and fresh to be persuaded even by fashion into such an anachronism. There was a faint suspicion in the mirrors and gilding and all the conveniences and luxuries, of the style of grandeur peculiar to the saloon of a splendid steamer, to which the steam-yacht, which was the chief object in the immediate prospect as seen from the plate-glass window, gave additional likelihood. Walter for his part was strangely startled, when, out of the seriousness of his own lonely thoughts, and the sense of having arrived at a great crisis, he suddenly stepped into the flutter and talk of this large assembly, which was composed of some half-dozen neighbours on the loch, most of them young men in more or less attendance upon Katie, mingled with strangers of all classes whom Mr. Williamson had picked up here and there. There was a little pause in the hum of voices at his own name, and a slight stir of interest, various of the guests turning round to look as he came in. The master of the house advanced with a large hand held out, and an effusive welcome; but the little lady of Birkenbraes paid Walter the much greater compliment of pursuing her conversation undisturbed, without betraying by a movement that she knew he was there. Katie was not rude. It was not her habit to pay so little attention to a new-comer: she was profoundly conscious of his entrance, and of every step he made among the groups distributed about; but as the matter was a little serious, and his appearance of some importance, she showed a slight stir of mind and thoughts, which could scarcely be called agitation, in this way. It was only when her father called loudly, “Katie, Katie, do you not see Lord Erradeen?” that she turned, not moving from her place, and suddenly held out her hand with a smile.

“How do you do? I heard you had come,” said Katie; and then returned to her talk. “As for the influence of scenery upon the mind of the common people, I think it has more influence in the Highlands than anywhere, but very little when all is said. You don’t think much of what you see every day, unless, indeed, you think everything of it. You must be totally indifferent, or an enthusiast,” said the philosophical young lady.

Walter meanwhile stood before her, almost awkwardly, feeling the rigidity upon his countenance of a somewhat unmeaning smile.

“And to which class does Miss Williamson belong?” said her companion, who was a virtuous young member of parliament, anxious to study national peculiarities wherever he might happen to be.

“To neither,” said Katie, with a slight coldness, just enough to mark that she did not consider herself as one of the “common people.” And she turned to Walter with equally marked meaning, “Have you seen the Forresters since you came, Lord Erradeen?”

“I have seen no one,” said Walter, slightly startled by the question. “I came only last night, and am here to-day by your father’s invitation—”

“I know,” said Katie, with greater cordiality. “You speak as if I wanted you to account for yourself. Oh, no! only one must begin the conversation somehow—unless I plunged you at once into my discussion with Mr. Braithwaite (Mr. Braithwaite, Lord Erradeen) about the characteristics of the inhabitants of a mountain country. Do you feel up to it?” she added, with a laugh.

“But you avoid the question,” said the member of parliament. “You say, ‘neither.’ Now, if it is interesting to know what effect these natural phenomena have upon the common mind, it is still more interesting when it is a highly cultivated intelligence which is in question.”

“Help me out!” cried Katie, with a glance at Walter. “I have never been educated—no woman is, you know. How are we to know what the highly cultured feel! Papa is not cultured at all—he does not pretend to it, which is why people approve of him; and as for me!” she spread out her hands like a sort of exclamation. “And Lord Erradeen cannot give you any information either,” she added, demurely, “for he has not known the loch very long—and I think he does not like it. No, but you shall see one who can really be of some use this afternoon. Don’t you think she is the very person, Lord Erradeen? Oona—for she has lived on the loch, or rather in the loch, all her life.”

“And when shall I see this—nymph is she, or water goddess?” said the genial member. “That will indeed be to gather knowledge at the fountain-head.”

“Do you think we may say she is a nymph, Lord Erradeen? Oh yes—what do you call those classical ladies that take care of the water—Naiads? Oona is something of that sort. But better than the classics, for she has water above and water below for a great part of the year. You don’t know how many superstitions we have remaining in this wild part of the country. We have ghosts, and wandering Jews, and mysterious lights: Lord Erradeen will tell you—”

Katie paused with the malice bright in her eyes. She did not mean to affront the recovered attendant who might turn out a suitor, and upon whom it was possible she might be induced to smile; so she paused with a little laugh, and allowed Braithwaite to break in.

“Do you call this a wild part of the country, Miss Williamson? Then what must the cultivated portions look like? I see nothing but beautiful villas and palaces, and all the luxuries of art.”

“The comforts of the Saut Market,” said Katie with a shrug of her shoulders. “It is more easy to carry them about with you than in Bailie Nicol Jarvie’s time. But there is luncheon! Papa is always formal about our going in, though I tell him that is out of date nowadays. So you must wait, if you please, Lord Erradeen, and take me.” There was then a pause, until, as they brought up the rear of the procession down-stairs, Katie said, with the slightest pressure on his arm to call his attention, “That is a Member of Parliament in search of information and statistics. If you hear me talk more nonsense than usual you will know why.”

“Do you expect Miss Forrester this afternoon?” asked Walter quite irrelevant.

Katie’s heart gave a little jump. She did not like to be beat. It was the healthful instinct of emulation, not any tremor of the affections. She gave him a keen glance half of anger, half of enjoyment, for she loved a fray.

“Better than that,” she cried gaily, “we are going down the loch to see her. Don’t you remember Mrs. Forrester’s scones, Lord Erradeen! You are ungrateful, for I know you have eaten them. But you shall come, too.”

If this had been said on the stairs, Walter, probably, would have given a dignified answer to the effect that his engagements would scarcely permit—but they were by this time in the dining-room in the little flutter of taking places which always attends the sitting down of a party, an operation which Katie, with little rapid indications of her pleasure, simplified at once; and Walter found himself seated by her side and engaged in conversation by the enterprising Braithwaite at his other hand before he could utter any remonstrance. Mr. Braithwaite set it down in his journal that Lord Erradeen was a dull young fellow, petted by the women because he was a lord, no other reason being apparent—and wondered a little at the bad taste of Miss Williamson who ought to have known better. As for Katie, she exerted herself to smooth down Walter’s slightly ruffled plumes. There was no use, she thought, in handing him over at once to Oona by thus wounding his amour propre. She inquired into his travels. She asked where he had disappeared when they all left town.

“I expected we should find you at Auchnasheen for the 12th,” she said. “You are the only man I know who is philosopher enough not to care for the grouse. One is driven to believe about that time of the year that men can think of nothing else.”

“Perhaps, Katie,” said young Tom of Ellermore, “if you were to speak to Lord Erradeen, whom we don’t know as yet, as we have never had the chance of calling” (here the young men exchanged bows, accompanied by a murmur from Katie, “Mr. Tom Campbell, Ellermore,” while the colour rose in young Tom’s cheek), “perhaps he would be charitable to us others that are not philosophers.”

“Have ye not enough grouse of your own, Tom Campbell?” cried Mr. Williamson, who, in a pause of the conversation, had heard this address. “Man! if I were you I would think shame to look a bird in the face.”

“And why?” cried the young fellow; “that was what they were made for. Do you think otherwise that they would be allowed to breed like that, and eat up everything that grows?”

“Heather,” said the head of the house, “and bracken. Profitable crops, my word!”

Here Walter interrupted the discussion by a polite speech to young Tom, whose eyes blazed with pleasure and excitement at the offer made him.

“But I hope,” he said, “you will join us yourself. It will be like stealing a pleasure to have such an enjoyment, and the master of it not there.”

“I have other work in hand,” Walter said; at which young Tom stared and coloured still more, and a slight movement showed itself along the table, which Mr. Braithwaite, the knowledge-seeker, being newly arrived, did not understand. Tom cried hastily, “I beg your pardon,” and many eyes were turned with sudden interest upon Lord Erradeen. But this was what Walter had anticipated as little as the parliamentary inquirer. He grew so red that Tom Campbell’s healthy blush was thrown into the shade. “I ought rather to say,” he added hastily, “that my time here is too short for amusement.”

There was an uneasy little pause, and then everybody burst into talk. Both the silence and the conversation were significant. Lord Erradeen turned to Katie with an instinctive desire for sympathy, but Katie was occupied, or pretended to be so, with her luncheon. It was not here that sympathy on that point was to be found.

“I wonder,” said Katie, somewhat coldly, “that you do not remain longer when you are here. Auchnasheen is very nice, and you ought to know your neighbours, don’t you think, Lord Erradeen? If it is merely business, or duty, that brings you—”

“I wish I knew which it was,” he said in a low tone.

Katie turned and looked at him with those eyes of common-sense in which there is always a certain cynicism.

“I did not think in this century,” she said, “that it was possible for any man not to know why he was doing a thing; but you perhaps like to think that an old family has rules of its own, and ought to keep up the past.”

“I should think,” said Mr. Braithwaite, not discouraged by the lower tone of this conversation, “that the past must have a very strong hold upon any one who can suppose himself a Highland chieftain.”

“A Highland chief!” cried Katie, opening her brown eyes wide: and then she laughed, which was a thing strangely offensive to Walter, though he could scarcely have told why.

“I fear,” he said coldly, “that though I am to some extent a Highland laird, I have no pretension to be a chief. There is no clan Methven that I ever heard of: though indeed I am myself almost a stranger and of no authority.”

“Mrs. Forrester will tell you, Mr. Braithwaite,” said Katie. “She is a sort of queen of the loch. She is one of the old Macnabs who once were sovereign here. These people,” she said, waving her hand towards the various scions of the great clan Campbell, “are mushrooms in comparison: which is a comfort to our feelings, seeing that we sink into insignificance as creatures of to-day before them. The very original people for highly consolatory to the upstarts, for we are just much the same as the middling-old people to them. They are worlds above us all.”

Here Tom of Ellermore leant over his immediate neighbours and reminded Katie that the days were short in October, and that it was a stiff row to the isle: and the conversation terminated in the hurried retirement of the ladies, and selection of rugs and wrappers to make them comfortable. Mr. Williamson had, as he said, “more sense,” than to set out upon any such ridiculous expedition. He stood and watched the preparations, with his thumbs stuck into the arm-holes of his waistcoat.

“Ye had much better take the yacht,” he said. “She could get up steam in half an hour, and take you there in ten minutes, and there is plenty of room for ye all, and the cabin in case of rain. But as ye like! A wilful man will have his way. If ye would rather work yourselves than have the work done for ye—and a shower in prospect! But it’s your own affair.”

The party, however, preferred the boats, and Katie put her father’s remonstrance aside with a wave of her hand.

“It is all these boys are ever good for,” she said, “and why would you stop them? Besides, it is far nicer than your mechanical steam, and tea on board, and all the rest of it. Lord Erradeen, you are to steer. If you don’t know the currents I can tell you. Here is your place beside me: and you can tell me what you have been doing all this time, for there were so many interruptions at lunch I got no good of you,” the young lady said.

Thus Walter was swept along in Katie’s train. As he was quite unaware of any understanding between the girls he was of course ignorant that any special significance could attach to his arrival in this manner at the isle. And for his own part he was pleased by the thought of seeing Oona for the first time in an accidental way, without any responsibility, so to speak, of his own. It was a little chilly for a water-party, but on the lochs people are prepared for that and it interferes with no one’s pleasure. The afternoon was full of sunshine, and every bit of broken bank, and every island and feathery crest of fir-trees, was reflected and beautified in the still water, that broke with a ripple the fantastic doubling of every substance, but lent a glory to the colour and brilliancy to every outline. The gay party swept along over reflected woods, themselves all brilliant in reflection, and making the loch as gay as a Venetian canal. On the little landing-place at the isle the whole small population was collected to meet them: Mrs. Forrester in her white cap, shivering slightly, and glad to draw round her the fur cloak which Mysie was putting on her shoulders from behind, “for the sun has not the strength it once had,” she explained, “now that we are just getting round the corner of the year:” Hamish always in his red shirt, kneeling on the little wooden landing which he had wheeled out to receive the party, in order to catch the prow of the first boat; and Oona, a little apart, standing looking out, with a faint thrill of excitement about her, consequent on having just heard the news of Walter’s arrival, but no expectation to make this excitement tangible. They made a pretty show upon the little beach, reflected, too, in the clear depths below—the bit of ribbon on the mother’s cap, the knot of pale roses on Oona’s breast, culminating in Mysie’s stronger tints on one side, and the red of Hamish’s garment on the other.

“What a pretty picture it would make,” Katie said. “‘Hospitality,’ you ought to call it, or ‘Welcome to the isle.’ But there ought to be a gentleman to make it perfect; either an old gentleman to represent Oona’s father, or a young one for her husband. Don’t you think so, Lord Erradeen?”

It was perhaps at this moment when he was listening with a somewhat distracted look, smiling against the grain, and standing up in the boat to steer, that Oona saw him first. It cannot be denied that the shock was great. In her surprise she had almost made a false step on the slippery shingle, and Mrs. Forrester grasped her dress with an “Oona! you’ll be in the water if you don’t take more care.” Oona recovered herself with a blush, which she would have given anything in the world to banish from her countenance. It was so then! This man, who had, all unawares, produced so much effect upon her life and thoughts, was coming back within her little circle of existence in Katie Williamson’s train! She smiled to herself a moment after, holding her head high, and with a sense of ridicule pervading the being which had been momentarily transfixed by that keen arrow of surprise and pain. She said to herself that the humour of it was more than any one could have believed, but that all was well. Oh, more than well!—for was not this the thing of all others that was good for her, that would put the matter on the easiest footing?

All this flew through her mind like lightning while the boat came close, amid the friendly shouts and greetings of the crew, all of them “neighbours’ sons.” Mr. Braithwaite, the English observer, sat by admiring while these brotherly salutations were gone through. Perhaps he did not note in his diary that the young aborigines called each other by their Christian names, but he did make a remark to that effect in his mind. And then there ensued the little tumult of disembarking, in the midst of which Oona, holding out her hand, frankly greeted Lord Erradeen. “We heard you had come back,” she said, giving him a look of full and confident composure which puzzled Walter. She meant him, and not him only, to perceive the frankness of a reception in which there was not a shade of embarrassment, no recollection of the strange moment they had spent together, or of the encounter that had taken place upon the isle. When one pair of eyes look into another with that momentary demonstration it is a proof of some meaning more than meets the eye. And Walter, whose own eyes were full too of a something, subdued and concealed so far as possible—a deprecating wistful look in which there was pardon sought (though he had consciously done her no wrong; but in doing wrong at all had he not offended Oona as Dante offended Beatrice, although she might never know of what sins he had been guilty?) and homage offered—was still more perplexed by that open gaze in which there was nothing of the softness of the look with which Oona had watched him going away, and which had so often recurred to his mind since. What did it mean? It gave him welcome, but a welcome that felt like the closing of a door. He was far too much occupied with investigating this problem to remark the corresponding look, the slight, almost imperceptible smile, that passed between Oona and Katie as they met. In the midst of all the cheerful din, the merry voices on the air, the boats run up upon the beach, the cheerful movement towards the house, such fine shades of feeling and dramatic purpose can make themselves apparent to those who are in the secret, but to no other. A merrier party never ascended the slope, and that is saying much. Mrs. Forrester led the way in the highest satisfaction.

“Mysie, ye will stand on no ceremony about following,” she said, “but run on before and see that the tea is masked: but not too much, to get that boiled taste. It is perhaps extravagant, but I like to have just what you may call the first flavour of the tea. And let the scones be just ready to bring ben, for Miss Williamson must not be kept too late on the water at this time of the year. To tell the truth,” she said, turning with her smiles to the member of parliament, a functionary for whom she had a great respect, counting him more important than a young lord, who after all was in the position of a “neighbour’s son”; “to tell the truth, I have just to be inhospitable at this season and push them away with my own hands: for it is always fresh upon the loch, and a score of young creatures with colds, all because I let them stay half an hour too late, would be a dreadful reflection. This will be your first visit to the loch? Oh, I am sure we are delighted to see you, both Oona and me. We are always pleased to meet with strangers that have an appreciation. Some people would think it was a very lonely life upon the isle; but I assure you if I could give you a list of all the people that come here! It would be rather a good thing to keep a list now that I think of it, you would see some names that would be a pleasure to any one to see. Yes, I think I must just set up a visiting-book, as if we were living in some grand place in London, say Grosvenor Square. What are you saying, Katie, my dear? Oh yes, I have shaken hands with Lord Erradeen. I am very glad to see him back, and I hope he will stay longer and let us see more of him than last year. This is one of our finest views. I always stop here to point it out to strangers,” she added, pausing, for indeed it was her favourite spot to take breath.

And then the group gathered at the turning, and looked out upon Kinloch Houran, lying in shadow, in the dimness of one of those quick-flying clouds which give so much charm to a Highland landscape. The old grey ruin lying upon the dulled surface, steel blue and cold, of the water, which round the island was dancing in sunshine, gave a curious effectiveness to the landscape.

“It is the ghost-castle.” “It is the haunted house,” said one of the visitors, in a whisper, who would have spoken loud enough but for the presence of Walter, who stood and looked, with great gravity, upon his place of trial. When Katie’s voice became audible at his side, advising him in very distinct tones to restore the old place, Walter felt himself shrink and grow red, as if some villany had been suggested to him. He made no reply. He had thought himself of something of the same description in his first acquaintance with Kinloch Houran; but how different his feelings were now!

The reader already knows what were Mrs. Forrester’s teas. The party filled the pleasant drawing-room in which a fire was burning brightly, notwithstanding the sunshine without, and the scones arrived in bountiful quantity, one supply after another; Mysie’s countenance beaming as “a few more” were demanded; while her mistress did nothing but fill out cups of tea and press her young guests to eat.

“Another cup will not hurt you,” she said. “That is just nonsense about nerves. If it was green tea, indeed, and you were indulging in it at night to keep you off your sleep—but in a fine afternoon like this, and after your row. Now just try one of these scones; you have not tasted this kind. It is hot from the griddle, and we all think my cook has a gift. Mysie, tell Margaret that we will have a few more. And, Oona, it is the cream scones that Katie likes: but you must tell Lord Erradeen to try this kind, just to please me.”

Thus the kind lady ran on. It gave her the profoundest pleasure to see her house filled, and to serve her young guests with these simple delicacies. “Dear me, it is just nothing. I wish it was better worth taking,” she answered to Mr. Braithwaite’s compliments, who made the usual pretty speeches of the English tourist as to Scotch hospitality. Mrs. Forrester felt as if these compliments were a half-reproach to her for so simple an entertainment. “You see,” she said, “it is all we can do; for, besides that there is no gentleman in the house, which is against dinner-giving, we are not well situated in the isle for evening visits. The nights are cold at this time of the year, and it is not always easy to strike our bit little landing in the dark; so we have to content ourselves with a poor offering to our friends. And I am sure you are very kind to take it so politely. If my boys were at home, I would have it more in my power to show attention; but if you are going further north, I hope you will make your way to Eaglescairn and see my son, who will be delighted to show you the country about him,” Mrs. Forrester said. The English M.P. could not but think that it was his reputation which had travelled before him, and gained him so delightful a reception.

As for the rest of the party, they were fully entertained by Oona, who was more than usually lively and bright. She said very little to Lord Erradeen, who was by far the most silent of the assembly, but exerted herself for her other guests, with a little flush upon her which was very becoming, and an excitement completely concealed and kept under, which yet acted upon her like a sort of ethereal stimulant quickening all her powers. They were so gay that Mrs. Forrester’s anxiety about their return, which indeed she forgot as soon as they were under her roof, was baffled, and it was not till the glow of the sunset was beginning to die out in the west that the visitors began to move. Then there was a hurrying and trooping out, one group following another, to get to the boats. The landscape had changed since they came, and now the upper end of the loch was all cold and chill in the greyness of early twilight, though the sky behind in the southward was still glowing with colour. Benlui lay in a soft mist having put off his purple and gold, and drawn about him the ethereal violet tones of his evening mantle; but on the slopes beneath, as they fell towards the margin of the water, all colour had died out. Lord Erradeen was one of the last to leave the house, and he was at first but vaguely aware of the little movement and sudden pause of the party upon the first turn of the winding path. He did not even understand for a moment the eager whisper which came almost more distinctly than a shout through the clear still evening air. It was the voice of young Tom of Ellermore.

“Look there! the light—the light! Who says they do not believe in it?” the young fellow said; and then there was a flutter of exclamations and subdued cries of wonder and interest, not without dissentient voices.

“I see some sort of a glimmer,” said one.

“It is as clear as day,” cried another.

“It must be reflection,” a third said.

Walter raised his eyes; he had no sort of doubt to what they referred. His old house lay dark upon the edge of the dark gleaming loch, silent, deserted, not a sign of life about the ruined walls; but upon the tower shone the phantasm of the light, now waning, now rising, as if some unfelt wind blew about the soft light of an unseen lamp. It brought him to himself in a moment, and woke him up from the maze of vague thoughts which had abstracted him even in the midst of the gay movement and bustle. He listened with strange spectatorship, half-stern, half-amused, to all the murmurs of the little crowd.

“If you call that light!” said the voice of Katie; “it is some phosphorescence that nobody has examined into, I suppose. Who knows what decayed things are there? That sort of glimmer always comes of decay. Oh, yes, I once went to chemistry lectures, and I know. Besides, it stands to reason. What could it be else?”

“You know very well, Katie, what they say—that it is the summons of the warlock lord.”

“I would like to answer the summons,” cried Katie, with a laugh. “I would send for the health inspector, from Glasgow, and clear it all out, every old crevice, and all the perilous stuff. That would be the thing to do. As for the warlock lord, papa shall invite him to dinner if you will find out where he is to be met with, Tom.”

“Like the commandant in Don Giovanni,” somebody said; and there was an echoing laugh, but of a feeble kind.

Walter heard this conversation with a sort of forlorn amusement. He was not excited; his blood was rather congealed than quickened in his veins. But he lingered behind, taking no notice of his late companions as they streamed away to the boats. He seemed in a moment to have been parted miles—nay, worlds away from them. When he thought of the interview that was before him, and of the light-hearted strangers making comments upon the legend of the place with laugh and jest, it seemed to him that he and they could scarcely belong to the same race. He lingered, with no heart for the farewells and explanations that would be necessary if he left them formally: and turning round gazed steadfastly towards Kinloch Houran from behind the shade of the shrubbery. Here Oona found him, as she rushed back to warn him that the boats were pushing off. She began breathlessly—

“Lord Erradeen, you are called—” then stopped, looked at him, and said no more.

He did not answer her for a moment, but stood still, and listened to the sounds below, the impatient call, the plash of the oars in the water, the grating of the keel of the last boat as it was pushed off. Then he looked at Oona, with a smile.

“I am called—?” he said, “but not that way. Now I must go home.”

Her heart beat so that she could scarcely speak. Was this spell to take possession of her again, against her will, without any wish of his, like some enchantment? She fought against it with all her might.

“If that is so,” she said, “Hamish will put you across, when you please.”

He took no notice of these indifferent words.

“This time,” he said, “it is altogether different. I know what is going to happen, and I am not afraid. But it must come to an end.”

What was it to her if it came to an end or not? She tried to check the quick-rising sympathy, to offer no response.

“They will be late on the water, but I hope they will get home before dark,” she replied.

Then he looked at her wistfully, with a look that melted her very heart.

“Don’t you know that it will never come to an end unless you stand by me?” he cried.

CHAPTER XXIX

Mrs. Forrester was most willing to put Hamish and the boat, or anything else she possessed, at Lord Erradeen’s service. “It is just the most sensible thing you could do,” she said. “They will be very late, and half of them will have colds. Oona, you will just let Hamish know. But Lord Erradeen, since you are here, will you not stay a little longer, and get your dinner before you go? No? Well, I will not say another word if it is not convenient. Just tell Hamish, Oona, my dear.”

Walter followed her so closely when she went upon that mission that she could not escape him. They stood together in the grey of the evening light, upon the beach, while Hamish prepared the boat, Oona’s mind in a tumult of apprehension and resistance, with an insidious softness behind, which she felt with despair was betraying her over again into the folly she had surmounted. He had not the same commotion in his mind; his thoughts were altogether bent on what was coming. She was his confidant, his support in it, though he had not said a word to her. He took her into account in the matter as a man takes his wife. She was a part of it all, though it was not of her he was thinking. He spoke after a moment in a tone full of this curious claim, which seemed to him at the moment incontestable.

“It will never come to an end unless you stand by me,” he said. “Everything can be done if you will stand by me.”

Oona, in her strange agitation, felt as if she had surprised him thinking aloud; as if he did not address her, but merely repeated to himself a fact which was beyond dispute. He said no more, neither did she make any reply. And once more, as if in repetition of the former scene, he turned round as he stepped into the heavy boat, and looked back upon her as Hamish began to ply the oars. She stood and watched him from the beach; there was no wave of the hand, no word of farewell. They were both too much moved for expression of any kind; and everything was different though the same. On the former occasion he had been escaping, and was eager to get free, to get out of reach of an oppression he could not bear; but now was going to his trial, to meet the tyrant, with a certainty that escape was impossible. And for Oona there had been the sensation of a loss unspeakable—a loss which she could neither confess nor explain, which took the heart out of her life; whereas now there was a re-awakening, a mysterious beginning which she could not account for or understand. She stood on the beach till the boat had disappeared, and even till the sound of the oars died out in the distance, in an agitation indescribable. The first despairing sense that the influence against which she had struggled was regaining possession of her, was for the moment lost in an overwhelming tide of sympathy and response to the claim he had made. He had no right to make that claim, and it was intolerable that she should have so little power over herself as to yield to it, and allow herself to become thus the subject of another. Her pride, her reason, had been in arms against any such thraldom; but for this moment Oona was again overcome. She had no power of resistance—her very being seemed to go with him, to add itself to his, as he disappeared across the darkling loch. Stand by him! The words went breathing about her in the air, and in her mind, and everything in her echoed and responded—Stand by him! Yes, to the death. This excitement failed in a sudden chill and shiver, and sense of shame which covered her face with blushes which no one saw, as startled by the gathering dark, and the sound of Mysie’s step hastening down to the landing-place with a shawl for her, Oona turned again and ran swiftly up the winding way.

The loch was like lead, with a ripple of mysterious changing lights in the darkness, as the boat shot round under the shadow of Kinloch Houran. All was as still as in a world of dreams, the sound of Hamish’s oars in their regular sweep alone breaking the intense stillness. Here and there among the trees a light glimmered on the shore—a window of the Manse—the door of the little inn standing open and betraying the ruddy warmth within: but no sound near enough to interrupt the stillness. Walter felt as though he parted with a certain protection when he stepped upon the bit of mossed causeway which served as a landing pier to the old castle, and, bidding Hamish good-night, stood alone in that solitude and watched the boatman’s red shirt, which had forced its colour even upon the twilight, grow black as it disappeared. The sensation in Walter’s mind had little akin with that panic and horror which had once overwhelmed him. No doubt it was excitement that filled up his whole being, and made the pulses throb in his ears, but it was excitement subdued; and all he was conscious of was a sort of saddened expectation—a sense of a great event about to take place which he could not elude or stave off—a struggle in which he might be worsted. “Let not him that putteth on his armour boast himself like him that putteth it off.” He did not know what might happen to him. But the tremors of his nervous system, or of his agitated soul, or of his physical frame—he could not tell which it was—were stilled. He was intensely serious and sad, but he was not afraid.

Symington, who had been in waiting, listening for his master’s return, opened the door and lighted him up the spiral stairs. The room was already lighted and cheerful, the curtains drawn, the fire blazing brightly.

“The days are creeping in,” he said, “and there’s a nip in the air aneath thae hills—so I thought a fire would be acceptable.” In fact the room looked very comfortable and bright, not a place for mysteries. Walter sat down between the cheerful fire and the table with its lights.

There is often at the very crisis of fate a relaxation of the strain upon the mind—a sudden sense as of peril over, and relief. Thus the dying will often have a glimmer in the socket, a sense of betterness and hope before the last moment. In the same way a sensation of relief came on Walter at the height of his expectation. His mind was stilled. A feeling without any justification, yet grateful and consoling, came over him, as if the trial were over, or at least postponed—as if something had intervened for his deliverance. He sat and warmed himself in this genial glow, feeling his pulses calmed and his mind soothed—he could not tell how. How long or how short the interval of consolation was, if a few minutes only, or an hour, or half a life-time, he could not tell. He was roused from it by the sound of steps in the corridor outside. It was a passage which ended in nothing—in the gloom of the ruinous portion of the house—and consequently it was not usual to hear any sound in it, the servants invariably approaching Lord Erradeen’s rooms by the stair. On this occasion, however, Walter, suddenly roused, heard some one coming from a distance, with steps which echoed into the vacancy as of an empty place, but gradually drawing nearer, sounding, in ordinary measure, a man’s footstep, firm and strong, but not heavy, upon the corridor outside. Then the door was opened with the usual click of the lock and heavy creak with which it swung upon its hinges. He rose up, scarcely knowing what he did.

“You examined everything last night to find a secret passage,” said the new-comer with a humorous look, “which indeed might very well have existed in a house of this date. There was actually such a passage once existing, and connected with a secret room which I have found useful in its time. But that was in another part of the house, and the age of concealments and mysteries—of that kind—is past. Won’t you sit down?” he added, pleasantly. “You see I put myself at my ease at once.”

Walter’s heart had given such a bound that the sensation made him giddy and faint. He stood gazing at the stranger, only half comprehending what was happening. All that happened was natural and simple in the extreme. The visitor walked round the table to the other side of the fire, and moving the large chair which stood there into a position corresponding to Walter’s, seated himself in the most leisurely and easy way. “Sit down,” he repeated after a moment, more peremptorily, and with almost a tone of impatience. “We have much to talk over. Let us do it comfortably, at least.”

“I can have nothing to talk over,” said Walter, feeling that he spoke with difficulty, yet getting calm by dint of speaking, “with an undesired and unknown visitor.”

The other smiled. “If you will think of it you will find that I am far from unknown,” he said. “No one can have a larger body of evidence in favour of his reality. What did that poor little woman in Edinburgh say to you?”

“I wonder,” cried Walter, unconscious of the inconsistency, “that you can permit yourself to mention her name.”

“Poor little thing,” he replied, “I am sincerely sorry for her. Had I foreseen what was going to happen I should have guarded against it. You may tell her so. Everything that is subject to human conditions is inconsistent and irregular. But on the whole, taking life altogether, there is not so much to be regretted. Probably she is happier there than had she embarked, as she was about to do, in a struggle with me. Those who contend with me have not an easy career before them.”

“Yet one day it will have to be done,” Walter said.

“Yes. You consent then that I am not unknown, however undesired,” the stranger said, with a smile. He was so entirely at his ease, at his leisure, as if he had hours before him, that Walter, gazing in an impatience beyond words, felt the hopelessness of any effort to hurry through the interview, and dropped into his seat with a sigh of reluctance and despair.

“Who are you?” he cried; “and why, in the name of God, do you thus torment and afflict a whole race?”

“The statement is scarcely correct. I was a Highland youth of no pretension once, and you are supposed to be Lord Erradeen, not only a Scotch lord, but an English peer. That is what my tormenting and afflicting have come to, with many solid acres and precious things besides. Very few families of our antiquity have even survived these centuries. Not one has grown and increased to the point at which we stand. I see a great addition within our reach now.”

“And what good has it all done?” Walter said. “They say that my predecessor was a miserable man, and I know that I—since this elevation, as you think it—have been—”

“Good for nothing. I allow it fully. What were you before? Equally good for nothing; consuming your mother’s means, opposing her wishes, faithful to no one. My friend, a man who sets himself against me must be something different from that.”

To this Walter made no reply. He could not be called penitent for the folly of his life; but he was aware of it. And he did not attempt to defend himself. He was entirely silenced for the moment: and the other resumed.

“I have always felt it to be probable that some one capable of resistance might arise in time. In the mean time all that has happened has been gain, and my work has been fully successful. It would rather please me to meet one in the course of the ages who was fit to be my conqueror, being my son. It is a contingency which I have always taken into consideration. But it is not likely to be you,” he said, with a slight laugh. “I shall know my victor when he comes.”

“Why should it not be I? If it be enough to hate this tyrannical influence, this cruel despotism—”

“As you have hated every influence and every rule all your life,” said the other with a smile. “That is not the sort of man that does anything. Do you think it is agreeable to me to be the progenitor of a race of nobodies? I compensate myself by making them great against their will—the puppets! I allow you to wear my honours out of consideration to the prejudices of society: but they are all mine.”

“It was not you, however, who got them,” said Walter. “Can a grandfather inherit what was given to his descendants?”

“Come,” said the stranger, “you are showing a little spirit—I like that better. Let us talk now of the immediate business in hand. You have something in your power which I did not foresee when I talked to you last. Then there were few opportunities of doing anything—nothing in your range that I had observed, but to clear off incumbrances, which, by the way, you refused to do. Now a trifling exertion on your part—”

“You mean the sacrifice of my life.”

The stranger laughed—this time with a sense of the ludicrous which made his laugh ring through the room with the fullest enjoyment. “The sacrifice of a life, which has been made happy by-and-by and by—. How many names would you like me to produce? You have perhaps a less opinion of women than I have. Which of them, if they knew all about it, as I do, would pick up that life and unite their own to it? But happily they don’t know. She thinks perhaps—that girl on the isle—that I mean her harm. I mean her no harm—why should I harm her? I harm no one who does not step into my way.”

“Man!” cried Walter—“if you are a man—would you hurt her for succouring me? Would you treat her as you treated—”

“That was an accident,” he said quickly. “I have told you already I would have guarded against it had I divined—But your limited life is the very empire of accident; and those who come across my path must take the consequences. It is their own fault if they put themselves in the way of danger. Let us return to the subject in hand. The woman whom you must marry—”

The words suddenly seemed to close on the air, leaving no sort of echo or thrill in it; and Walter, looking round, saw Symington come in with the scared look he remembered to have seen in the old man’s countenance before, though without any sign in him of seeing the stranger. He asked in a hesitating manner, “Did ye ring, my lord? You’ll be wanting your dinner. It is just ready to come up.”

Walter was about to send the old servant hastily away; but a slight sign from his visitor restrained him. He said nothing, but watched, with feelings indescribable, the proceedings of the old man, who began to lay the table, moving to and fro, smoothing the damask cloth, folding the napkin, arranging the silver. Symington did everything as usual: but there was a tremor in him, unlike his ordinary composure. Sometimes he threw an alarmed and tremulous look round the room, as if something terrifying might lurk in any corner; but while doing so brushed past the very person of that strange visitor in the chair without a sign that he knew any one to be there. This mixture of suppressed panic and inconceivable unconsciousness gave Walter a suffocating sensation which he could not master. He cried out suddenly, in a loud and sharp tone which was beyond his own control, “Symington! Is it possible you don’t see—”

Symington let the forks and spoons he was holding drop out of his hands. He cried out, quavering, “Lord, have a care of us!” Then he stopped trembling to gather up the things he had dropped, which was a great trouble, so nervous and tremulous was he. He collected them all at the very foot of the man who sat smiling in the great chair.

“You gave me a terrible fright, my lord,” the old man said, raising himself with a broken laugh: “that was what you meant, no doubt. All this water about and damp makes a man nervish. See! what should I see? I am no one of those,” Symington added, with a great attempt at precision and a watery smile, “that see visions and that dream dreams.”

“Why should you disturb the man’s mind for nothing,” said the visitor in that penetrating voice which Walter felt to go through him, penetrating every sense. He had grown reckless in the strange horror of the circumstances.

“Don’t you hear that?” he cried sharply, catching Symington by the arm.

The old man gave a cry, his eyes flickered and moved as if they would have leapt from their sockets. He shook so that Walter’s grasp alone seemed to keep him from falling. But he remained quite unconscious of any special object of alarm.

“Me! I hear naething,” he cried. “There is nothing to hear. You have listened to all those old stories till ye are just out of yourself. But no me,” Symington said with a quavering voice, but a forced smile. “No me! I am not superstitious. You will no succeed, my lord, in making a fool of me. Let me go. The trout is done by this time, and I must bring up my dinner,” he cried with feverish impatience, shaking himself free.

Walter turned round half-dazed to say he knew not what to the occupant of that chair. But when he looked towards it there was no one there: nor in the room, nor anywhere near was the slightest trace of his visitor to be found.

CHAPTER XXX

It may be supposed that the dinner which was served to Lord Erradeen after this episode was done but little justice to. The trout was delicious, the bird cooked to perfection; but the young man, seated in sight of the apparently vacant chair, where so lately his visitor had been seated, could scarcely swallow a morsel. Was he there still, though no one could see him? or had he departed only to return again when Symington and the meal had been cleared away, and the evening was free? There was a sickening sensation at Walter’s heart as he asked himself these questions, and indeed, throughout this portion of his life, his experience was that the actual presence of this extraordinary person was very much less exciting and confusing than the effect produced during his apparent absence, when the idea that he might still be there unseen, or might appear at any moment, seemed to disturb the mental balance in a far more painful way. In the present case the effect was overpowering. Walter had been talking to him almost with freedom: it was impossible, indeed, thus to converse—even though the conversation was something of a struggle, with a man possessed of all the ordinary faculties, and in appearance, though more dignified and stately than most, yet in no way unlike other men—without a gradual cessation of those mysterious tremors with which the soul is convulsed in presence of anything that appears supernatural. The personage who inhabited, or (for it was impossible to think of him as inhabiting a ruin) periodically visited Kinloch Houran had nothing in him save his stateliness of aspect which need have separated him from ordinary men. He would have attracted attention anywhere, but except as a person of unusual distinction, would have startled no one; and even when the young man so cruelly subject to his influence talked with him, it was impossible to keep up the superstitious terror which nature feels for the inexplainable. But as soon as he withdrew, all this instinctive feeling returned. Walter’s nerves and imagination sprang up into full play again, and got command of his reason. By moments it seemed to him that he caught a glimpse still of an outline in the chair, of eyes looking at him, of the smile and the voice which expressed so full a knowledge of all his own past history and everything that was in him. This consciousness gave to his eyes the same scared yet searching look which he had seen in those of Symington, took his breath from him, made his head whirl, and his heart fail. Symington waiting behind his chair, but eagerly on the watch for any sign, saw that his young lord was ghastly pale, and perceived the half stealthy look which he cast around him, and especially the entire failure of his appetite. This is a thing which no Scotch domestic can bear.

“You are no eating, my lord,” he said in a tone of gentle reproach, as he withdrew the plate with the untasted trout. (“That many a poor gentleman would have been glad of!” he said to himself.)

“No, I am not particularly hungry,” Walter said, with a pretence at carelessness.

“I can recommend the bird,” said Symington, “if it’s no just a cheeper, for the season is advanced, it’s been young and strong on the wing; and good game is rich, fortifying both to the body and spirit. Those that have delicate stomachs, it is just salvation to them—and for those that are, as ye may say, in the condition of invalids in the mind—”

Symington had entirely recovered from his own nervousness. He moved about the room with a free step, and felt himself fully restored to the position of counsellor and adviser, with so much additional freedom as his young master was less in a position to restrain him, and permitted him to speak almost without interruption. Indeed Walter as he ineffectually tried to eat was half insensible to the monologue going on over his head.

“Ye must not neglect the body,” Symington said, “especially in a place like this where even the maist reasonable man may be whiles put to it to keep his right senses. If ye’ll observe, my lord, them that see what ye may call visions are mostly half starvit creatures, fasting or ill-nourished. Superstition, in my opinion, has a great deal to do with want of meat. But your lordship is paying no attention. Just two three mouthfuls, my lord! just as a duty to yourself and all your friends, and to please a faithful auld servant,” Symington said, with more and more insinuating tones. There was something almost pathetic in the insistence with which he pressed “a breast of pairtridge that would tempt a saint” upon his young master. The humour of it struck Walter dully through the confusion of his senses. It was all like a dream to him made up of the laughable and the miserable; until Symington at last consented to see that his importunities were unavailing, and after a tedious interval of clearing away, took himself and all his paraphernalia out of the room, and left Walter alone. It seemed to Lord Erradeen that he had not been alone for a long time, nor had any leisure in which to collect his faculties; and for the first few minutes after the door had closed upon his too officious servant a sense of relief was in his mind. He drew a long breath of ease and consolation, and throwing himself back in his chair gave himself up to momentary peace.

But this mood did not last long. He had not been alone five minutes before there sprang up within him something which could be called nothing less than a personal struggle with—he could not tell what. There is a quickening of excitement in a mental encounter, in the course of a momentous discussion, which almost reaches the height of that passion which is roused by bodily conflict, when the subject is important enough, or the antagonists in deadly earnest. But to describe how this is intensified when the discussion takes place not between two, but in the spiritual consciousness of one, is almost too much for words to accomplish. Lord Erradeen in the complete solitude of this room, closed and curtained and shut out from all access of the world, suddenly felt himself in the height of such a controversy. He saw no one, nor did it occur to him again to look for any one. There was no need. Had his former visitor appeared, as before, seated opposite to him in the chair which stood so suggestively between the fire and the table, his pulses would have calmed, and his mind become composed at once. But there was nobody to address him in human speech, to oppose to him the changes of a human countenance. The question was discussed within himself with such rapidity of argument and reply, such clash of intellectual weapons, as never occurs to the external hearing. There passed thus under review the entire history of the struggle which had been going on from the time of Lord Erradeen’s first arrival at the home of his race. It ran after this fashion, though with the quickness of thought far swifter than words.

“You thought you had conquered me. You thought you had escaped me.”

“I did; you had no power in the glen, or on the isle.”

“Fool! I have power everywhere, wherever you have been.”

“To betray me into wickedness?”

“To let you go your own way. Did I tempt you to evil before ever you heard of me?”

“Can I tell? perhaps to prepare me for bondage.”

“At school, at home, abroad, in all relations? Self-lover! My object at least is better than yours.”

“I am no self-lover; rather self-hater, self-despiser.”

“It is the same thing. Self before all. I offer you something better, the good of your race.”

“I have no race. I refuse!”

“You shall not refuse. You are mine, you must obey me.”

“Never! I am no slave. I am my own master.”

“The slave of every petty vice; the master of no impulse. Yield! I can crush you if I please.”

“Never! I am—Oona’s then, who will stand by me.”

“Oona’s! a girl! who when she knows what you are will turn and loathe you.”

“Fiend! You fled when she gave me her hand.”

“Will she touch your hand when she knows what it has clasped before?”

Then Walter felt his heart go out in a great cry. If any one had seen him thus, he would have borne the aspect of a madman. His forehead was knotted as with great cords, his eyes, drawn and puckered together in their sockets, shone with a gleam of almost delirious hatred and passion. He held back, his figure all drawn into angles, in a horrible tension of resistance as if some one with the force of a giant was seizing him. He thought that he shrieked out with all the force of mortal agony. “No! If Oona turns from me and all angels—I am God’s then at the last!”

Then there seemed to him to come a pause of perfect stillness in the heart of the battle; but not the cessation of conflict. Far worse than the active struggle, it was with a low laugh that his antagonist seemed to reply.

“God’s! whom you neither love nor obey, nor have ever sought before.”

The room in which Lord Erradeen sat was quite still all through the evening, more silent than the night air that ruffled the water and sighed in the trees permitted outside. The servants did not hear a sound. Peace itself could not have inhabited a more noiseless and restful place.

CHAPTER XXXI

In the early morning there is an hour more like paradise than anything else vouchsafed to our mortal senses as a symbol of the better world to come. The evening is infinitely sweet, but it implies labour and rest and consolation, which are ideas not entirely dissevered from pain; but in the first glory of the morning there is an unearthly sweetness, a lustre as of the pristine world, unsoiled, untried, unalloyed, a heavenly life and calm. The sunshine comes upon us with a surprise, with something of that exultant novelty which it must have had to Adam; the drops of dew shine like little separate worlds; the birds, most innocent of all the inhabitants of earth, have the soft-breathing universe to themselves: all their sweet domestic intercourses, the prattle of the little families, their trills of commentary touching everything that is going on in earth and heaven get accomplished, as the level line of sunshine penetrates from one glade to another, higher and higher, touching as it passes every bough into life. Awakening and vitality are in the very atmosphere which brings a new hope, a new day, a new world of possibility and life. New heavens and a new earth thus present themselves to mortal cognisance, for the most part quite unconscious of them, every day.

If only we brought nothing with us from the old world that ended in the night! But, alas, we bring everything—ourselves, that “heritage of woe,” our thoughts, our desires, baffled or eager, for other objects than those which are in harmony with that new life and blessedness. When the sun rose visibly into the blue, skimming the surface of Loch Houran, and waking all the woods, there stood one spectator upon the old battlements of the ruined castle who was altogether out of harmony with the scene. Walter had not slept all night. He had not even gone through the form of going to bed. He had come out as soon as there was a glimmer of daylight, which, in October, is long of coming, to get what refreshment was possible from the breath of the morning air, and thus had assisted at the re-awakening of earth, and all the development of the new-born day. From where he stood there lay before him a paradise of sky and water, with everything repeated, embellished, made into an ideal of twofold sweetness, brightness, and purity, in the broad mirror of the lake. The autumn woods, the tracts of green field, or late yellow of the unreaped corn, all showed like another fairy-land underneath, a country still purer, more dazzling, and brilliant, more still and fresh, than the morning land above. “The light that never was on sea or shore” shone in those glorified and softly rippling woods, trending away into the infinite to the point beyond which mortal vision cannot go. What haunts and refuges of happy life might be there! what dreams of poetry beyond the human! That lovely inversion of all things, that more than mortal freshness and sweetness and liquid glow of light, confused the mind with a kind of involuntary bliss, a vision of a place of escape, the never attained country to which the soul, had it wings, might flee away and be at rest.

But that soul had no wings which looked out from Walter’s haggard countenance, as he leant on the half-ruined wall. He gazed at the scene before him like one who had no lot or part in it. Its peace and brightness brought but into greater relief the restlessness of his own soul, the gloom and blackness in his heart. He had been struggling all night in a fierce internal controversy which, to his own consciousness, was with another intelligence more powerful than his own, and yet might have been with himself, with the better part that kept up within him a protest for better things, with such representatives of conscience and the higher affections as still existed within him. However it was, he was exhausted with the struggle, his strength was worn out. That lull of pain which does not mean any cure, or even any beginning of healing, but is merely a sign that the power of the sufferer to endure has come to its limit, gave him a kind of rest. But the rest itself was restless and incapable of composure. He moved about like an uneasy spirit along the broken line of the old battlements, pausing here and there to plunge his eyes into the landscape, to take in the morning air with a long inspiration. And so unlike was the mood of his mind to his usual character and habits, that as he moved, Walter gave vent to a low moaning, such as gives a kind of fictitious relief to the old and suffering—an involuntary utterance which it was terrible to hear coming with his breathing from a young man’s lips, and in the midst of such a scene. Was he talking to himself? Was he only moaning as a dumb creature moans? By and by he half flung himself, in his weariness, into one of the ruinous embrasures, and remained there, leaning his back against one side of it. And then he said to himself, repeating the words over and over again—“Neither God’s nor Oona’s. Neither Oona’s nor God’s.”

Lord Erradeen had arrived at that lowest depth of self-estimation, which means despair. His own life had been forced upon him, represented before his eyes he could not tell how. He had seen its motives disentangled, its course traced, all its wastes laid bare, with a distinctness against which he could offer no appeal. He could deny nothing; it was true; this was what he had done, with a repetition of folly, of selfishness, of baseness, for which he could offer no sort of excuse, which confounded and abased him. He had known it all, it is true, before; time after time he had pulled himself up and looked at the last scrap of his life, and pronounced it indefensible; then had pushed it from him and gone on again, escaping with all the haste he could from contemplation of the phenomena which were inexplicable, and which he did not desire to attempt to explain even to himself. He had said truly to Miss Milnathort that to know you are wrong is not always equivalent to being on the way to mend it. He had always known he was wrong; he had never been deficient in moral disapproval of others like himself, or even of himself, when in one of the pauses of his career he was brought face to face with that individual. But he had been able to put a sort of accidental gloss upon his own worst actions. He had not intended them; there had been no motive whatever in what he did; he had done so and so by chance—by indolence, because it happened to be put before him to do it; but he had meant nothing by it. Out of this subterfuge he had been driven during the mental conflict of the night. And there was this peculiarity in his state, that he was not thus enlightened and convinced by the exertions of any reformatory influence, by any prophet bidding him repent. Conviction came from entirely the other side, and with a motive altogether different. “Who are you,” his antagonist said, or seemed to say, “to take refuge with a pure woman, you who have never been pure? Who are you to lay claim to be God’s, after ignoring God’s existence altogether; or to be your own master, who have never ruled or guided yourself, but have been the slave of every folly, a feather blown on the wind, a straw carried away by the stream?”

All these accusations had been made as plain to him as the daylight. He had not been allowed to escape; the course of his life had been traced so clearly, that he could not protest, or object, or contradict; he was convinced—the most terrible position in which a man can be. Whether any man, thoroughly persuaded of his own moral wretchedness and debasement ever does escape despair, is a question full of difficulty. The prodigal’s sense that in his father’s house every servant has enough and to spare while he perishes of hunger is a different matter. “Father, I have sinned, I am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.” There are still possibilities to a soul in such a position. But one who is driven from stronghold to stronghold, until at length he is forced to allow that there is no inducement which has not been tried and failed with him, that he has no claim to the succour of God or man, or woman, that he has turned his back upon all, neglected all, wronged every power in heaven and earth that could help, what is he to do? He may be forgiven; but forgiveness, in the entire abasement of that discovery, is not what he wants. He wants a renovation for which there seems no means left; he wants, in the old language—that language which we are said to have outgrown—to be born again: and that is impossible—impossible! What is there in heaven or earth that will prevent him from doing all over again what he has done before, the moment his circumstances permit it? So long as he is what he is—nothing: and how shall he be made other than what he is?

“Ye must be born again.” Ah, what preacher can know that as he does? But how—but how? Neither God’s nor Oona’s—and who, then, was to help him? He had caught at the woman in his despair; he had not even so much as thought of God till the last moment, and then had flown like a coward to a fetish, meaning nothing but to escape. Why should God bend down from those spotless heavens to acknowledge the wretched runaway’s clutch at his divine garments in the extremity of mortal terror? Would Oona have given him that hand of hers, had she known how his was stained? And would God attend to that coward’s appeal made only when everything else failed?

The young man sat in the corner of the embrasure pressing himself against the rough stone-work for support. Despair had possession of his soul. What had he to do with the best and highest things, with freedom and love? After all, why should he be his own master, why claim the right to judge for himself? If he had this freedom fully, what would he do with it? Throw it away next day in exchange for some nothing, some pleasure that palled in the tasting. Pleasure! There was no pleasure, but only make-beliefs and deceptions. The old fellow was right, he began to say to himself, with a certain bitter humour. Had he exercised no coercion over the race, had the Methvens been left to their own devices, how much of them would have remained now? Instead of a peerage and great estates they would have died out in a ditch or in a sponging-house generations ago. Their lands would have gone bit by bit: their name would have disappeared—all as he said. And supposing now that Walter was left entirely free to do as he pleased, what reason had he to believe that he would not squander everything he could squander, and bring down the posterity of the race into the dust? That is what he would have done if left to himself. He would have resisted all claims of prudence or duty. He would have followed, he knew it, the caprice of the moment, just as he had done now. If no former Methvens had ruined the family it was in himself to do it. All these thoughts were in favour of the submission which seemed to him now almost the only thing before him. He thought of Miss Milnathort and her anxiety for him, and laughed to himself bitterly at her childish hope. Two that should be one, and that should be set on everything that was good. What a simpleton she was! He set on everything that was good! he was incapable of anything that was good. And Oona—could there be a greater folly than to think that Oona, when she knew, would pick him up out of this ruin, and give him a new starting-ground? He laughed at the thought aloud. Oona! Was not her very name the token of purity, the sign of maidenhood and innocence. And to believe that she would mingle herself in his being which was unclean and false from its very beginning! He laughed at his own folly to think so. In ignorance she had been more kind than ever woman was. She had asked no questions, she had given him her hand, she had stood by him. In ignorance: but when she knew! He said to himself that he was not cad enough to let her go on in this ignorance. He would have to tell her what he had been, what he would be again if left to circumstances and his own guidance. He would not deceive her; he was not cad enough for that. And when he had told her, and had given up for ever all hope of really making a stand against the tyrant of his race, or carrying out his theories of happiness, what would remain? What would remain? Subjection—misery—

“No,” said a voice close by him, “something else—something very good in its way, and with which the greater majority of mankind are quite content, and may be very happy. The second best.”

Walter had started at the sound of this voice. He left his seat with nervous haste; and yet he had no longer any sense of panic. He had a certain doleful curiosity to see the man, whom he had only seen in twilight rooms or by artificial light, in the open air and sunshine. Perhaps this strange personage divined his thoughts, for he came forward with a slight smile. There was nothing in his appearance to alarm the most timid. He was, as Miss Milnathort had called him, a grand gentleman. He had the air of one accustomed to command, with that ease of bearing which only comes to those largely experienced in the world. The path along the ruinous battlements was one that craved wary walking, but he traversed it with the boldest step without a moment’s hesitation or doubt. He made a little salutation with his hand as he approached. “You were laughing,” he said. “You are taking, I hope, a less highflown view of the circumstances altogether. The absolute does not exist in this world. We must all be content with advantages which are comparative. I always regret,” he continued, “resorting to heroic measures. To have to do with some one who will hear and see reason, is a great relief. I follow the course of your thoughts with interest. They are all perfectly just; and the conclusion is one which most wise men have arrived at. Men in general are fools. As a rule you are incapable of guiding yourselves; but only the wise among you know it.”

“I have no pretension to be wise.”

“You are modest—all at once. So long as you are reasonable that will do. Adapt your life now to a new plan. The ideal is beyond your reach. By no fault of circumstances, but by your own, you have forfeited a great deal that is very captivating to the mind of youth, but very empty if you had it all to-morrow. You must now rearrange your conceptions and find yourself very well off with the second best.”

There was something in his very tone which sent the blood coursing through Walter’s veins, and seemed to swell to bursting the great currents of life. He cried out—

“You have driven me to despair. You have cut off from me every hope. And now you exhort me to find myself very well off, to adapt my life to a new plan. Is that all you know?”

His companion smiled. “You would like me better to repeat to you again that you have no ground to stand upon, and are as unworthy as one can be at your age. All that is very true. But one aspect of the matter is not all. In the mean time you will have to live and get on somehow. Suicide of course is always open to you, but you are not the sort of man for that; besides, it is begging the question, and solves no problem. No, you must live—on the second level. Your ideal has always been impossible, for you have never had heart or will to keep up to it. Why you should have had this fit of fantastic wilfulness now, and really believed that by means of vague aspirations you were to get the better of me and all your antecedents, I cannot tell. You must now find out practically how you are to live.”

Walter had reached the lowest depths of despair a little while ago. He had consented that it was all true, that there was no further escape for him; but now again a passionate contradiction surged up within him. “I will not,” he said, vehemently, “I will not—take your way.”

“I think you will—for why? there is no other half so good. You will be very comfortable, and you will have done a great thing for your house. By-and-by you will settle into a conviction that what you have done is the best thing you could have done. It is one of the privileges of mankind. And I promise you that I will not molest you. Your coming here will be little more than a formula. You will agree with me: why then should there be any controversy between us? Maturity and wealth and well-being will bring you to think with me that a settled advantage like that of one’s race is far beyond all evanescent good of the fancy. You will become respectable and happy—yes, quite happy enough—as happy as men have any right to be.”

There was a half-tone of mockery, as if the speaker scorned the picture he drew; and at every word the resistance which had been almost stilled in Walter’s mind rose up more warmly. “Are you happy yourself,” he said, suddenly, “that you recommend this to me?”

The stranger paused a little. “The word is a trivial one. I have many gratifications,” he said.

“I don’t know what your gratifications can be. Is it worth your while to live through the ages as you say—you, so powerful as you are, with so many great faculties—in a miserable old ruin, to exercise this terrorism upon unoffending men?”

Then Walter’s companion laughed aloud. “To live for ages in a miserable old ruin!” he said. “That does not seem a very attractive lot indeed. But set your mind at rest, my kind descendant; I live in a miserable ruin no more than you do. My affairs are everywhere. I have the weakness of a man for my own—perhaps in other regions as well—but that is nothing to you.”

“It is everything to me. Give me some explanation of you. If, as you say, you have lived for centuries impossibly, how have you done it? Have you ever come to a blank wall like me—have you ever been abandoned by every hope? or,” cried the young man, “am I your superior in this horrible experience? No man could stand as I do—given up to despair: and yet go on living like you.”

“It depends upon your point of view. When you have taken my advice (as you will do presently) and have come down from your pinnacle and accepted what is the ordinary lot of mankind, you will find no longer any difficulty in living—as long as is possible; you will not wish to shorten your life by a day.”

“And what is the ordinary lot of mankind?” cried Walter, feeling himself once more beaten down, humiliated, irritated by an ascendancy which he could not resist.

“I have told you—the second best. In your case a wife with a great deal of wealth, and many other qualities, who will jar upon your imagination (an imagination which has hitherto entertained itself so nobly!) and exasperate your temper perhaps, and leave your being what you call incomplete: but who will give you a great acquisition of importance and set you at peace with me. That alone will tell for much in your comfort; and gradually your mind will be brought into conformity. You will consider subjects in general as I do, from a point of view which will not be individual. You will not balance the interests of the few miserable people who choose to think their comfort impaired, but will act largely for the continued benefit of your heirs and your property. You will avail yourself of my perceptions, which are more extended than your own, and gradually become the greatest landowner, the greatest personage of your district; able to acquire the highest honours if you please, to wield the greatest influence. Come, you have found the other position untenable according to your own confession. Accept the practicable. I do not hurry you. Examine for yourself into the issues of your ideal—now that we have become friends and understand each other so thoroughly—”

“I am no friend of yours. I understand no one, not even myself.”

“You are my son,” said the other with a laugh. “You are of my nature; as you grow older you will resemble me more and more. You will speak to your sons as I speak to you. You will point out these duties to them, as I do to you.”

“In everything you say,” cried Walter, “I perceive that you acknowledge a better way. Your plans are the second best—you say so. Is it worth living so long only to know that you are embracing mediocrity after all, that you have nothing to rise to? and yet you acknowledge it,” he said.

The stranger looked at him with a curious gaze. He who had never shown the smallest emotion before grew slightly paler at this question: but he laughed before he replied.

“You are acute,” he said. “You can hit the blot. But the question in hand is not my character, but your practical career.”

The sound of an oar here broke the extreme silence. The morning had fully come, the night coach from “the south” had arrived at the inn, and Duncan with the postbag was coming along the still water, which cut like a transparent curd before him, and joined again in eddying reflections behind. Duncan bent his back to his oars unconscious of any mystery; his postbag, bringing news of all the world, lay in front of him. He and his boat in every detail of outline and colour swam suspended in the light, in reflection, and swept double over the shining surface. How extraordinary was the contrast between his open-air placidity, his fresh morning countenance, the air of the hills about him, and the haggard countenance of his master, looking upon this country fellow with an envy which was as foolish as it was genuine. Duncan did not know anything about the ideal. And yet in his way he followed his conscience, sometimes with pain and trouble, and at the cost of many a struggle—or else neglected its warnings, and took his own way as his master had done. Walter did not take this into consideration, but looked down upon his boatsman’s ruddy, honest countenance and square frame, stretching contentedly to his oars and thinking of nothing, with envy. Would it have been better to be born like that to daily labour and an unawakened intelligence? He turned round to say something, but his visitor had gone. There was not a shadow upon the walls, not the sound of a step. Lord Erradeen had no longer the faintest movement of fear, but in its place a certain impatience and irritability as if this practical joke might be played upon him too often. And presently into the clear air rang the voice of Symington.

“For God’s sake, my lord, take care! that is just where the poor lady was killed thirty years ago.”

CHAPTER XXXII

The commonplace world has a strange look to a man who has himself come out of any great personal struggle, out of an excitement which no one knows anything about but himself. When he descends, with still the heave of strong emotion in his breast, there is a mixture of contempt and relief in the manner in which he regards the extraordinary stolidity and unimpressionableness of his fellows. He is glad that they are unaware of what has happened to himself, yet cannot help scorning them a little for their want of penetration; and it is a comfort to him to feel himself surrounded with the calm and indifference of strangers, yet he cannot help feeling that had they been of a higher nature, they must have divined the suppressed agitation with which he moves among them, his nerves all trembling with the strain through which they have passed. Thus Walter, when he landed at the village, met the looks of the country folk with a certain expectation of seeing some traces of the wondering curiosity with which they must be asking themselves what ailed Lord Erradeen? and felt himself at once baffled and disappointed and relieved to find them full of their usual friendliness and hospitality, but nothing more.

“We are real glad to see your lordship back,” Mrs. Macfarlane said at the inn, “and I hope you mean to bide, and no just run away when you are getting acquaint with the country-side.” Big John, who was looking on while his horses were being cared for, gave a tug to his hat in honour of Lord Erradeen, but scarcely withdrew his eyes from the other more interesting spectacle. And finally the minister, who was setting out upon one of his visitations, met his noble parishioner with the most cheerful good morning, without any indication of deeper insight.

“You are welcome home, Lord Erradeen,” he said as the landlady had said, “and this time I hope we’ll see more of you. Are you stepping my way? It is just a most beautiful morning for this time of the year, and I am going to one of my outlying corners; but you young gentlemen, what with your shooting, and stalking, and ploys in general, are not generally much addicted to a simple walk.”

“I am going your way; I am no great sportsman; I want to see Shaw who lives somewhere in this direction, I think.”

“I will show the way with pleasure, Lord Erradeen; but I doubt you will not find him in. He is out upon his rounds before now. He will be tackling you about Peter Thomson, and his farm. And I would be glad to say a word, too, if I might. They had been there all their lives; they never believed it possible that they would be sent away. It is very natural you should want to make the best of your property, but it was a blow; and though he was a little behind in his worldly affairs, he was always good to the poor, and an elder, and well-living person. Such a one is a loss to the country-side; but it is every man’s duty, no doubt, to himself and his posterity, to make the best he can of his estate.” This the minister said with an air of polite disapproval, yet acquiescence in a doctrine not to be gainsaid. “Political economy,” he added, with a laugh, “did not come into my curriculum, although I was at college in Adam Smith’s palmy days.”

“If you think my actions have anything to do with Adam Smith!” cried Walter. It was a peculiarity of this young man, and perhaps of others beside, to resent above all things the imputation of a prudential motive. “I know nothing about Thomson,” he added. “I was absent, and I suppose did—whatever I am supposed to have done—on the impulse of the moment, as I am too apt to do.”

“That is a pity,” said the minister, “especially when the well-being of others is concerned. You will pardon me, my lord, who am an old-fashioned person. The good of your property (if ye think this is for the good of your property) is always a motive, and some will think a sound one: but to decide what is of great consequence to other folk without thought, because you happen to be tired, or worried, or in an ill way—”

A natural flush of anger came to Walter’s face: but notwithstanding all his faults there was something generous in him. He bit his lip to restrain a hasty word which was ready to burst forth, and said, after a moment, “The reproof is just. I had no right to be so inconsiderate. Still, as you say, the advantage of the property is a motive: there are some,” he added bitterly, with a sense that he was speaking at some third person, “who think it the best in the world.”

“And so it is in the right view,” said Mr. Cameron; “that is what I always think when I read what those misguided creatures are wanting in Ireland, to do away with landlords altogether—and some even among ourselves,” he added with that sense of the superiority of “ourselves” which dwells so calmly in the Scottish bosom. The last was said regretfully, with a shake of the head.

“I dare say,” said Walter, “they have some reason in what they say.”

“Some, but not the best. They have the kind of reason that lies on the surface—in so much as to have a thing of your own is better than hiring it from another. But in that way Peter Thomson, honest man, would have been doomed without remedy before your time, Lord Erradeen. He has been getting into troubled waters for some years: he would have had to sell the farm and begone if it had been his: but with a good landlord like what I live in hopes to see—a good man in trouble would be helped over the dangerous moment. He would be backed up when he was feeble. Perhaps it was just at all times an ideal: but that was what the old relationship might be.”

“And the ideal is always problematical,” said Walter. He was carrying on the same controversy still, taking the other side. “Most men I think would prefer to deal with their own even if it meant selling and losing, than to be subject to another man’s will—as it appears Thomson has been to mine. That seems ridiculous indeed,” he cried, with a sudden outburst of feeling, “that a good man, as you say, should depend on the fantastic will of—such a fool as I have been.”

“My Lord Erradeen!” cried the minister in consternation. He thought the young man was going out of his wits, and began to be nervous. There was something, now he looked at him, wild in his air. “I have no doubt,” he said soothingly, “that your decision—must have seemed very reasonable. I would not, though my feelings are enlisted and though I regret, go so far as to blame it myself.”

“Why?” said Walter, turning upon him. “Because?—surely every man ought to have the courage of his opinions.”

“Not for that reason,” said the old minister, with a slight flush. “I have never been one,” he went on with a smile, “that have been much moved by the fear of man. No. It is because now they have been forced to make the move it may be better for themselves; they would have struggled on, and perhaps at the end got through, but in Canada they will soon flourish and do well.”

“Not without a struggle there either, I suppose,” said Walter, with a fanciful disposition to resent the idea that Canada was an infallible cure.

“Not without a struggle—there you are right, my lord. There was first the sore, sore tug to pull up the roots of life that were so deeply implanted here; and the long voyage, which was terrible to the father and mother. It is very likely,” he added, “that the old folk will never get over it. Transplanting does not do at their age. But then the young ones, they are sure to thrive: and the old will die all the sooner, which perhaps is not to be regretted when we get to the evening of life.”

“That is surely an inhuman doctrine,” Walter cried.

“Do ye think so, my young lord? Well! It becomes the young to think so; but for myself I have always seen a foundation of reason in the savage way of making an end of the old and helpless. It is better, far better for the survivors that they should have a horror of it, but for the aged themselves it is not so clear to me. They would be better away. An old man that has outlived all natural love and succour, and that just lives on against his will because he cannot help it, that is a sad sight.”

“But not revolting, as it is to think of the other.”

“The other does not revolt me. If my heritors, yourself the first, were to look in some fine day and bid me out to the banks of the loch and give me a heave into it—in deep clear water mind, none of your muddy, weedy bits—I stipulate for clean water,” the old minister said with a laugh at his own joke.

“If that is all that is to happen to your emigrants,” said Walter, “they surely would have been as well here.”

“If that had been possible; but you see, Lord Erradeen, though there are few things that ye cannot manage to get your way in, on your level of life, on the lower level when we cannot get what we want, we have to put up with what we can get.”

“Why should you think I can get my way? I have to put up with what I can get, as you say, like everybody else.”

“Well, yes,” said the minister, “it is a kind of universal rule; and it is just a sign of the disposition that conquers the world, that it will accept what it can get without making a moaning and a fretting over it.”

“The second best,” said Walter with a half-smile of irony: it was strange to come from a teacher so dissimilar to this experienced old man and hear the same doctrine once more repeated. Mr. Cameron nodded his head several times in sign of assent.

“What seems to our blindness often the second best; though you may be sure it is the best for us, and chosen for us by a better judge than we are. This is my way, to the right, up Glen-Dochart, and yonder is Shaw’s house, the white one among the trees. I am extremely glad to have had this conversation with you, my lord. And if I can be of use to you at any time in any question that may puzzle ye—oh, I do not stand upon my superior enlightenment, or even on my office, with the like of you that probably belong to another Church; but I am an old man and have some experience. Good day to you, Lord Erradeen.” The old minister looked back after he had left him, and waved his hand with a benevolent smile.

Lord Erradeen walked on. He waved back a kindly salutation; the meeting, the talk with a man who was his equal, his superior, his inferior, all in one, in wholesome human inconsistency, was a kind of event for him, separating him by a distinct interval, from the agitation of the night and morning, the terrible mental struggle, the philosophy that had fallen on his despair, not as healing dew, but like a baptism of fire, scorching his heart. Strange that the same reasoning should have come before him in this strange way, so accidental and without premeditation! Mr. Cameron took everything from a different point of view. The second best to him meant manly resignation, devout religious faith. To accept it “because it was chosen for us by a better guide than we,” that was a difference almost incalculable. According to the minister’s belief, “what we wanted” was a thing to be given up nobly when it was proved to be God’s will so. But this point of view was so unlike the other that it brought a smile to Walter’s lips as he went on. God’s will, what had that to do with petty schemes to enrich a family? If it should so happen that he, driven by persecution, by temptations too strong to be resisted, by the feebleness of a spirit not capable of contending with fate, yielded once more to this influence which had operated so strangely upon his race, would that be God’s will?—would it be ever possible to look upon it as “chosen by a better judge”? Walter was not used to the discussion of such problems; and he was weak with mental struggles and want of rest. He lingered for a moment before Shaw’s house as he passed it, then rejected, with the sudden capricious impatience of his nature, the intention, only half formed, of seeing Shaw, and walked on with a fantastic sense of relief in having got rid of this disagreeable duty. “Another time will do just as well,” he said to himself, and hurried on as if his walk had now a more definite, as well as a more agreeable, aim. But, as a matter of fact, he had no aim at all, and did not know where he was going or what he intended. Indeed he intended nothing. Perhaps he would have said “to think,” had he been closely questioned; but it was a stretch of meaning to apply the term to that confusion of his thoughts in which everything seemed to be turning round and round. It was not like the sharp and keen dialogue of last night, in which, though all went on within his own spirit, there were two minds engaged, himself and another. Now he was left to himself; no one contending with him—no one helping, even by contention, to keep him to an actual point, and give energy and definiteness to the mental process going on within him. That process was still going on; but it was as if the wheels of a complicated and delicate machine had lost their guiding principle, and were all circling and whirring in space without an object, with the same show of motion as when fully employed, the same creak, and jar, and grind. Now and then there would come uppermost a phrase made clear out of the confusion—“the second best”:—“something very good in its way; with which the majority of mankind is quite content and may be very happy;” “what we call in our blindness the second best”: as his two oracles had said to him. Whether it was the practical level which every man must content himself with after the failure of the ideal, or whether it was the real best, chosen for us by “a better judge,” this was what both had put before him. The two descriptions, so different, yet both perhaps true, came up before him at intervals with something of strange regularity, as if the words had been printed upon the constantly turning wheels. He walked very quickly along the moorland road, not caring where he went, nor seeing what was round him. The fresh air blew in his face, with the force and keenness which an autumn wind has in a deeply-scooped and somewhat narrow glen among the hills, but seemed only to quicken the pace of the turning wheels, and all that machinery circling giddily, grinding out nothing, making his very soul sick and dizzy as it went on and on.

Suddenly the whirr and movement in his head calmed and stopped. A homely figure, in colour and aspect like an embodiment of those wild, sheep-feeding, rugged, but not majestic slopes that hemmed in the valley on either side, became visible coming down a path that led to the main road on which Walter was. It was that of a man, tall and largely developed, but without any superfluous bulk, roughly clad, roughly shod, lifting his feet high, like one accustomed to bog and heather, with the meditative slow pace of a rustic whose work demanded no hurry, and who had time for thought in all he did. Walter, with the quick senses of his youth, quickened still more by the excitement of the circumstances amid which, once and only once, he had seen Duncan Fraser, recognised him at once, and something like the liveliness of a new impulse moved him. Who could tell but that this man of the hills might be an oracle too, and out of the silence of his lowly life might have brought something to help a soul in peril? Walter waited till the cotter came up to him, who was not on his part so quick to recognise his landlord, of whom he had seen so little, and thought it might be some “tourist,” or some other Southland person, ignorant of these parts, and wanting information about the way, which was not inducement enough to make Duncan quicken his steps. When they met, he perceived that he had “seen the face before,” but went no further, and awaited with a certain air of stolid gravity what the stranger might have to say.

“You are—Fraser—of that glen up there? I almost forget how you call it—Truach-Glas.”

“Ay, I am just sae; Duncan Fraser, at your service,” replied the man, not without the slight hauteur of a Highlander interrogated imperatively by a personage in whom he acknowledges no right to do so.

“You don’t remember me, apparently,” Walter said.

“No, I cannot just say that I do; and yet I’ve seen your face before,” said Duncan, with a curious look.

“Never mind that. I want you to tell me if you are contented now, and happy in your glen—now that you are free of all your trouble about rent?”

Duncan’s first impulse was to say, What is that to you, I would like to ken? But the words had already set the slower mechanism of his brain to work; and, after a moment, he took his blue bonnet from his head, and with a bow in which there was a certain rustic dignity, said—

“You’ll be the laird, my Lord Erradeen? I have good cause to ken your face that was once to us all just like the face of an angel out o’ heaven.”

“You make too much of it,” said Walter, with a smile; for the expression pleased him in spite of himself. “No one could have done otherwise in my place.”

“The auld wives,” said Duncan, with a little huskiness in his throat, “do not think sae, sir. They mind you at their Books, morning and night.”

Walter did not know very well what “minding him at the Books” meant; but he guessed that somehow or other it must refer to prayers; and he said somewhat lightly—

“Do you think that will do me much good?”

Duncan’s honest face turned upon him a look of displeasure. The hill-side patriarch put on his bonnet gravely.

“It should, if there’s truth in Scripture,” he said, somewhat sternly; “but nae doubt it is just one of the most awfu’ mysteries how a wilful soul will baffle baith God’s goodwill and gude folk’s prayers.”

This was so curiously unlike anything he had expected, that Lord Erradeen gave his humble monitor one startled glance, and for the moment was silenced. He resumed, however, a minute after, feeling a certain invigoration come to him from his contact with simple nature.

“I acknowledge,” he said, “though you are a little hard upon me, Fraser, that I have brought this on myself. But I want to know about you, how things are going. Are you satisfied with your position now? And is everything made smooth for you by the remittal of the rent?”

At this Duncan became in his turn confused.

“Nae doubt,” he said, “it has been a great help, sir—my lord. Ye’ll excuse me, but I’m little used to lordships, and I canna get my mouth about it.”

“Never mind my lordship. I want to know the real truth. Your minister has been talking to me about Thomson—the man at the farm.” Walter pointed vaguely to the hill-side, having no idea where Peter Thomson’s farm was, about which so much had been said. “He has been sent away while you have stayed. Let me know which has been the best.”

Duncan looked more embarrassed than ever, and shuffled from one foot to the other, looking down upon the wet and brilliant green of the grass on which he stood.

“We were all muckle obliged to you, my lord; and no one of us has grudged to say sae,” he said.

“But that is not the question,” Walter cried, with a little impatience.

“To flit the old folk would have been impossible,” said Duncan, as if speaking to himself. “It was just a deliverance, and the Lord’s doing, and wonderful in our eyes. But, sir, there is nothing in this world that is pure good. The soil is cauld: there is little will come out of it: and though we’re far out o’ the way o’ the world in our bit glen, I reckon that what ye ca’ progress and a’ that, has an effeck whether or no. We want mair than our forbears wanted. No, no just education and advancement: my uncle Willie was brought up a minister, and got a’ the education my Robbie is ettling at, though my grandfather had, maybe, less to spare than me. But just there is a difference in the ways o’t. And maybe if it had come to the worse, and ye had driven us out, instead of being sae generous—”

“It would have been better for you,” said Walter, as his companion paused.

“I’m not saying that. It was just deliverance. I will tell ye mair, my lord. If I had been driven out, me and my auld mother, and my little bairns, I could have found it in my heart to curse ye, sae young, sae rich, sae well off, and sae inhuman. And the auld wife’s death would have lain at your door, and the bairns would never have forgotten it, however well they had prospered, no even when they came to be reasonable men, and could see baith sides of the question like me; they would have carried it with them to yon New World, as they call it; it would have grown to be a tradition and a meesery for ever. Now,” said Duncan, with a hoarse half-laugh of emotion, “the sting is out of it whatever happens.”

“I am glad of that, anyhow,” said Walter.

“And so am I—and so am I! When ye have a sense of being wranged in your heart, it’s like a burnin’ wound, like thae puir Irish, the Lord help them! And what was our pickle siller to the like of you? But—” Duncan said, and paused, not knowing how to proceed with due respect and gratitude for what his landlord had done.

“But—what you expected has not been realised? the rent, after all, made but a small difference—the relief was not what you hoped?”

“I am just incapable, sir, of making ye a right answer,” said Duncan, with vehemence. “It’s just the effeck of the times, and nae fault o’ yours or ours—at least that is all I can make of it. We want mair than our forbears wanted. We are no so easy content. The lads at the college canna live as simple as they once lived. That makes it harder for everybody. The callants! I would not bind them to a life like mine; they would have done better for themselves, though it would have killed granny, and been a sore burden upon Jeannie and me.”

“The fact is, Duncan, that to have your own way is not much better than to have some one else’s way, and that there is nothing worth making a fight about,” Walter said, with a bitterness which his humble companion did not understand, and still less approved.

“No that, my lord,” said Duncan, “but just that nothing that is mortal is perfect blessedness, except what is said in the psalm, ‘that man—that walketh not astray.’ Life is a struggle for the like of us, and maybe for most other folk. We have just to put the evil and the good against one another, and rejoice when the good is a wee predominant over the evil.”

He used longer words perhaps than an Englishman of his rank would have used; and there was a something of Celtic fine manners and natural dignity about him which gave importance to his speech.

“That means—a compromise: no ideal in this world, no absolute good, but only a practicable something that we can get along with.”

Walter said this with a scorn of it, yet growing belief in it, which gave strange vehemence to his tone. He did not expect his rustic companion to understand him, nor did he think of any response.

“It is just this, sir,” said Duncan, “that here we have nae continuing ceety, but look for one to come.”

• END OF VOL. II •

CHAPTER XXXIII

Was this then the conclusion of all things—that there was nothing so perfect that it was worth a man’s while to struggle for it; that any officious interference with the recognised and existing was a mistake; that nothing was either the best or the worst, but all things mere degrees in a round of the comparative, in which a little more or a little less was of no importance, and the most strenuous efforts tended to failure as much as indifference? Walter, returning to the old house which was his field of battle, questioned himself thus, with a sense of despair not lessened by the deeper self-ridicule within him, which asked, was he then so anxious for the best, so ready to sacrifice his comfort for an ideal excellence? That he, of all men, should have this to do, and yet that, being done, it should be altogether ineffectual, was a sort of climax of clumsy mortal failure and hopelessness. The only good thing he had done was the restoration of those half-evicted cotters, and that was but a mingled and uncertain good, it appeared. What was the use of any struggle? If it was his own personal freedom alone that he really wanted, why here it was within his power to purchase it—or at least a moderate amount of it—a comparative freedom, as everything was comparative. His mind by this time had ceased to be able to think, or even to perceive with any distinctness the phrase or motif inscribed upon one of those confused and idly-turning wheels of mental machinery which had stood in the place of thought to him. It was the afternoon when he got back, and everything within him had fallen into an afternoon dreariness. He lingered when he landed on the waste bit of grass that lay between the little landing-place and the door of the old castle. He had no heart to go in and sit down unoccupied in that room which had witnessed so many strange meetings. He was no longer indeed afraid of his visitor there, but rather looked forward with a kind of relief to the tangible presence which delivered him from meetings of the mind more subtle and painful. But he had no expectation of any visitor; nor was there anything for him to do except to sit down and perhaps attempt to read, which meant solely a delivering over of himself to his spiritual antagonists—for how was it possible to give his mind to any fable of literature in the midst of a parable so urgent and all-occupying, of his own?

He stood therefore idly upon the neglected turf, watching the ripple of the water as it lapped against the rough stones on the edge. The breadth of the loch was entirely hidden from him by the projection of the old tower, which descended into the water at the right, and almost shut off this highest corner of Loch Houran into a little lakelet of its own. Walter heard the sound of oars and voices from the loch without seeing any one: but that was usual enough, and few people invaded his privacy: so that he was taken by surprise when, suddenly raising his eyes, he was aware of the polished and gilded galley from Birkenbraes, in which already Mr. Williamson, seated in the stern, had perceived and was hailing him. “Hallo, my Lord Erradeen! Here we’ve all come to see ye this fine afternoon. I told them we should find ye under your own vine and your own fig-tree.” This speech was accompanied by a general laugh. The arrival of such a party, heralded by such laughter in a desolate house, with few servants and no readiness for any such emergency, to a young man in Walter’s confused and distracted condition would not, it may be supposed, have been very welcome in any case, and at present in his exhaustion and dismay he stood and gazed at them with a sort of horror. There was not even a ready servitor like Hamish to assist in the disembarkation. Duncan had rowed cheerfully off upon some other errand after landing his master, and old Symington and old Macalister were singularly ill-adapted for the service. Lord Erradeen did his best, with a somewhat bad grace, to receive the boat at the landing-place. The gravity of his countenance was a little chill upon the merry party, but the Williamsons were not of a kind that is easily discouraged.

“Oh, yes, here we all are,” said the millionaire. “I would not let our English visitor, Mr. Braithwaite here, leave without showing him the finest thing on the loch. So I just told him I knew I might take the liberty. Hoot! we know ye have not your household here, and that it is just an old family ruin, and not bound to produce tea and scones like the Forresters’ isle. Bless me! I hope we have a soul above tea and scones,” Mr. Williamson cried with his hearty laugh.

By this time the young, hardy, half-clad rowers had scrambled out, and grouped themselves in various attitudes, such as would suit a new and light-hearted Michael Angelo—one kneeling on the stones holding the bow of the boat, another with one foot on sea and one on shore helping the ladies out. Walter in his dark dress, and still darker preoccupied countenance, among all those bronzed and cheerful youths looked like a being from another sphere: but the contrast was not much to his advantage either in bodily or mental atmosphere. He looked so grave and so unlike the joyous hospitality of a young housekeeper surprised by a sudden arrival, that Katie, always more on her guard than her father, looked at him with a countenance as grave as his own.

“I am not the leader of this expedition, Lord Erradeen,” she said; “you must not blame me for the invasion. My father took it into his head, and when that happens there is nothing to be done. I don’t mean I was not glad to be brought here against my will,” she added, as his face, by a strain of politeness which was far from easy to him, began to brighten a little. Katie was not apt to follow the leading of another face and adopt the woman’s rôle of submission, but she felt herself so completely in the wrong, an intruder where she was very sure she and her party, exuberant in spirits and gaiety, were not wanted, that she was compelled to watch his expression and make her apologies with a deference quite unusual to her. “I hope it will not be a very great—interruption to you,” she said after a momentary pause.

“That could never matter,” Walter said, with some stateliness. “I could have wished to have notice and to have received my friends at Auchnasheen rather than here. But being here—you must excuse the primitive conditions of the place.”

“Hoot! there is nothing to excuse—a fine old castle, older than the flood—just the very thing that is wanted for the picturesque, ye see, Braithwaite; for as ye were remarking, we are in general too modern for a Highland loch. But you’ll not call this modern,” said Mr. Williamson. “Will that old body not open the door to ye when he sees ye have friends? Lord! that just beats all! That is a step beyond Caleb Balderstone.”

“Papa!” cried Katie in keen reproof, “we have been quite importunate enough already. I vote we all go over to Auchnasheen—the view there is much finer, and we could send over for Oona—”

“Is it common in this country,” said the member of Parliament, “to have two residences so very near? It must be like going next door for change of air when you leave one for the other, Lord Erradeen.”

At this there was that slight stir among the party which takes place when an awkward suggestion is made; the young men and the girls began to talk hurriedly, raising up a sort of atmosphere of voices around the central group. This however was curiously and suddenly penetrated by the reply which—who?—was it Walter? made, almost as it seemed without a pause.

“Not common—but yet not unknown in a country which has known a great deal of fighting in its day. The old castle is our family resource in danger. We do our family business here, our quarrels: and afterwards retire to Auchnasheen, the house of peace (perhaps you don’t know that names have meanings hereabouts?) to rest.”

There was a pause as slight, as imperceptible to the ignorant, as evident to the instructed as had been the stir at the first sound of those clear tones. Walter himself to more than one observer had seemed as much startled as any of them. He turned quickly round towards the speaker with a sudden blanching of his face which had been pale enough before; but this was only momentary; afterwards all that was remarkable in him was a strange look of resolution and determined self-control. Perhaps the only one completely unmoved was the Englishman, who at once accepted the challenge, and stepped forward to the individual who it was evident to him was the only duly qualified cicerone in the party, with eager satisfaction.

“That is highly interesting. Of course the place must be full of traditions,” he said.

“With your permission, Walter, I will take the part of cicerone,” said the new voice. To some of the party it seemed only a voice. The ladies and the young men stumbled against each other in their eager curiosity about the stranger. “I will swear there was nobody near Erradeen when we landed,” said young Tom Campbell in the nearest ear that presented itself; but of course it was the number of people about which caused this, and it could be no shadow with whom the M.P. went forth delighted, asking a hundred questions. “You are a member of the family?” Mr. Braithwaite said. He was not tall, and his companion was of a splendid presence. The Englishman had to look up as he spoke and to quicken his somewhat short steps as he walked to keep up with the other’s large and dignified pace. Katie followed with Walter. There was a look of agitation and alarm in her face; her heart beat she could not tell why. She was breathless as if she had been running a race. She looked up into Lord Erradeen’s face tremulously, not like herself. “Is this gentleman—staying with you?” she said in a scarcely audible voice.

Walter was not agitated for his part, but he had little inclination to speak. He said “Yes” and no more.

“And we have been—sorry for you because you were alone? Is it a—relation? is it—? You have never,” said Katie, forcing the words out with a difficulty which astonished her, and for which she could not account, “brought him to Birkenbraes.”

Walter could not but smile. A sort of feeble amusement flew over his mind touching the surface into a kind of ripple. “Shall I ask him to come?” he said.

Katie was following in the very footsteps of this altogether new and unexpected figure. There was nothing like him, it seemed to her, in all the country-side. His voice dominated every other sound, not loud, but clear. It subdued her little being altogether. She would not lose a word, yet her breath was taken away by an inexplicable terror.

“He is—like somebody,” she said, panting, “out of a book,” and could say no more.

Old Macalister came towards them from the now open door, at which stood Symington in attendance. The servants had been disturbed by the unusual sounds of the arrival. Macalister’s old face was drawn and haggard.

“Where will ye be taking all thae folk?” he said, no doubt forgetting his manners in his bewilderment.

“Come back, ye’ll get into mischief that road,” he cried, putting out his hand to catch the arm of Braithwaite, who, guided by the stranger, was passing the ordinary entrance. He became quite nervous and angry when no heed was paid to him. “My lord, you’re no so well acquaint yourself. Will you let that lad just wander and break his neck?” he cried, with a kind of passion.

“Never mind,” said Walter, with a strange calm which was as unaccountable as all the rest. “Will you tell your wife to prepare for these ladies—when we come back.”

Here Symington too came forth to explain somewhat loudly, addressing his master and Braithwaite alternately, that the roads were not safe about the old castle, that the walls were crumbling, that a person not acquaint might get a deadly fall, with unspeakable anxiety in his eyes. The party all followed, notwithstanding, led by the stranger, whom even the least of them now thought she could distinguish over Katie’s head, but of whom the servants took no notice, addressing the others in front as if he had not been there.

“My lord, ye’ll repent if ye’ll no listen to us,” Symington said, laying his hand in sudden desperation on Walter’s arm.

“You fool!” cried the young man, “can’t you see we have got a safe guide?”

Symington gave a look round him wildly of the utmost terror. His scared eyes seemed to retreat into deep caverns of anguish and fear. He stood back out of the way of the somewhat excited party, who laughed, and yet scarcely could laugh with comfort, at him. The youngsters had begun to chatter: they were not afraid of anything—Still—: though it was certainly amusing to see that old man’s face.

Turning round to exchange a look with Macalister, Symington came in contact with Mr. Williamson’s solid and cheerful bulk, who brought up the rear. “I’m saying,” said the millionaire confidentially, “who’s this fine fellow your master’s got with him? A grand figure of a man! It’s not often you see it, but I always admire it. A relation, too; what relation? I would say it must be on the mother’s side, for I’ve never seen or heard tell of him. Eh? who’s staying with your master, I’m asking ye? Are ye deaf or doited that ye cannot answer a simple question?”

“Na, there is nothing the matter with me; but I think the rest of the world has just taken leave of their senses,” Symington said.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Julia Herbert had failed altogether in her object during that end of the season which her relations had afforded her. Walter had not even come to call. He had sent a hurried note excusing himself, and explaining that he was “obliged to leave town,” an excuse by which nobody was deceived. It is not by any easy process that a girl, who begins with all a girl’s natural pride and pretensions, is brought down to recognise the fact that a man is avoiding and fleeing from her, and yet to follow and seek him. Hard poverty, and the memories of a life spent in the tiny cottage with her mother, without any enlargement or wider atmosphere, and with but one way of escape in which there was hope or even possibility, had brought Julia to this pass. She had nothing in her life that was worth doing except to scheme how she could dress and present the best appearance, and how she could get hold of and secure that only stepping-stone by which she could mount out of it—a man who would marry her and open to her the doors of something better. In every other way it is worth the best exertions of either man or woman to get these doors opened, and to come to the possibility of better things; and a poor girl who has been trained to nothing more exalted, who sees no other way, notwithstanding that this poor way of hers revolts every finer spirit, is there not something pitiful and tragic in her struggles, her sad and degrading attempt after a new beginning? How much human force is wasted upon it, what heart-sickness, what self-contempt is undergone, what a debasement of all that is best and finest in her? She has no pity, no sympathy in her pursuit, but ridicule, contempt, the derision of one half of humanity, the indignation of the other. And yet her object after all may not be entirely despicable. She may feel with despair that there is no other way. She may intend to be all that is good and noble were but this one step made, this barrier crossed, the means of a larger life attained. It would be better for her no doubt to be a governess, or even a seamstress, or to put up with the chill meannesses of a poverty-stricken existence, and starve, modestly keeping up appearances with her last breath.

But all women are not born self-denying. When they are young, the blood runs as warmly in their veins as in that of men; they too want life, movement, sunshine and happiness. The mere daylight, the air, a new frock, however hardly obtained, a dance, a little admiration, suffice for them when they are very young; but when the next chapter comes, and the girl learns to calculate that, saving some great matrimonial chance, there is no prospect for her but the narrowest and most meagre and monotonous existence under heaven, the life of a poor, very poor single woman who cannot dig and to beg is ashamed—is it to be wondered at if she makes a desperate struggle anyhow (and alas! there is but one how) to escape. Perhaps she likes too, poor creature, the little excitement of flirtation, the only thing which replaces to her the manifold excitement which men of her kind indulge in—the tumultuous joys of the turf, the charms of play, the delights of the club, the moors, and sport in general, not to speak of all those developments of pleasure, so-called, which are impossible to a woman. She cannot dabble a little in vice as a man can do, and yet return again, and be no worse thought of than before. Both for amusement and profit she has this one way, which, to be sure, answers the purpose of all the others in being destructive of the best part in her, spoiling her character, and injuring her reputation—but for how much less a cause, and with how little recompense in the way of enjoyment! The husband-hunting girl is fair game to whosoever has a stone to throw, and very few are so charitable as to say, Poor soul! Julia Herbert had been as bright a creature at eighteen as one could wish to see. At twenty-four she was bright still, full of animation, full of good humour, clever in her way, very pretty, high-spirited, amusing—and still so young! But how profoundly had it been impressed upon her that she must not lose her time! and how well she knew all the opprobrious epithets that are directed against a young woman as she draws towards thirty—the very flower and prime of her life. Was she to blame if she was influenced by all that was said to this effect, and determined to fight with a sort of mad persistence, for the hope which seemed so well within her reach? Were she but once established as Lady Erradeen, there was not one of her youthful sins that would be remembered against her. A veil of light would fall over her and all her peccadilloes as soon as she had put on her bridal veil. Her friends, instead of feeling her a burden and perplexity, would be proud of Julia; they would put forth their cousinhood eagerly, and claim her—even those who were most anxious now to demonstrate the extreme distance of the connection—as near and dear. And she liked Walter, and thought she would have no difficulty in loving him, had she ever a right to do so. He was not too good for her; she would have something to forgive in him, if he too in her might have something to forgive. She would make him a good wife, a wife of whom he should have no occasion to be ashamed. All these considerations made it excusable—more than excusable, almost laudable—to strain a point for so great an end.

And in her cousin’s wife she had, so far as this went, a real friend. Lady Herbert not only felt that to get Julia settled was most desirable, and that, as Lady Erradeen, she would become a most creditable cousin, and one who might return the favours showed to her, but also, which is less general, felt within herself a strong inclination to help and further Julia’s object. She thought favourably of Lord Erradeen. She thought he would not be difficult to manage (which was a mistake as the reader knows). She thought he was not so strong as Julia, but once fully within the power of her fascinations, would fall an easy prey. She did not think less of him for running away. It was a sign of weakness, if also of wisdom; and if he could be met in a place from which he could not run away, it seemed to her that the victory would be easy. And Sir Thomas must have a moor somewhere to refresh him after the vast labours of a session in which he had recorded so many silent votes. By dint of having followed him to many a moor, Lady Herbert had a tolerable geographical knowledge of the Highlands, and it was not very difficult for her to find out that Mr. Campbell of Ellermore, with his large family, would be obliged this year to let his shootings. Everything was settled and prepared accordingly to further Julia’s views, without any warning on the point having reached Walter. She had arrived indeed at the Lodge, which was some miles down the loch, beyond Birkenbraes, a few days after Walter’s arrival, and thus once more, though he was so far from thinking of it, his old sins, or rather his old follies, were about to find him out.

Lady Herbert had already become known to various people on the loch-side. She had been at the Lodge since early in September, and had been called upon by friendly folk on all sides. There had been a thousand chances that Walter might have found her at luncheon with all the others on his first appearance at Birkenbraes, and Julia had already been introduced to that hospitable house. Katie did not recognise Lady Herbert either by name or countenance. But she recognised Julia as soon as she saw her.

“I think you know Lord Erradeen?” was almost her first greeting, for Katie was a young person of very straight-forward methods.

“Oh yes,” Julia had answered with animation, “I have known him all my life.”

“I suppose you know that he lives here?”

Upon this Julia turned to her chaperon, her relation in whose hands all these external questions were.

“Did you know, dear Lady Herbert, that Lord Erradeen lived here?”

“Oh yes, he has a place close by. Didn’t I tell you? A pretty house, with that old castle near it, which I pointed out to you on the lock,” Lady Herbert said.

“How small the world is!” cried Julia; “wherever you go you are always knocking up against somebody. Fancy Walter Methven living here!”

Katie was not taken in by this little play. She was not even irritated as she had been at Burlington House. If it might so happen that some youthful bond existed between Lord Erradeen and this girl, Katie was not the woman to use any unfair means against it.

“You will be sure to meet him,” she said calmly. “We hope he is not going to shut himself up as he did last year.”

“Oh tell me!” Julia cried, with overflowing interest, “is there not some wonderful ghost story? something about his house being haunted; and he has to go and present himself and have an interview with the ghost? Captain Underwood, I remember, told us—”

“Did you know Captain Underwood?” said Katie, in that tone which says so much.

And then she turned to her other guests: for naturally the house was full of people, and as was habitual in Birkenbraes a large party from outside had come to lunch. The Williamsons were discussed with much freedom among the visitors from the Lodge when they went away. Sir Thomas declared that the old man was a monstrous fine old fellow, and his claret worth coming from Devonshire to drink.

“No expense spared in that establishment,” he cried; “and there’s a little girl, I should say, that would be worth a young fellow’s while.”

He despised Julia to the bottom of his heart, but he thought of his young friends on the other side without any such elevated sentiment, and decided it might not be a bad thing to have Algy Newton down, to whom it was indispensable that he should marry money. Sir Thomas, however, had not the energy to carry his intention out.

Next day it so happened that Lady Herbert had to return the visit of Mrs. Forrester, who—though she always explained her regret at not being able to entertain her friends—was punctilious in making the proper calls. The English ladies were “charmed” with the isle. They said there had never been anything so original, so delightful, so unconventional; ignoring altogether, with a politeness which Mrs. Forrester thought was “pretty,” any idea that necessity might be the motive of the mother and daughter in settling there.

“I am sure it is very kind of you to say so; but it is not just a matter of choice, you know. It is just an old house that came to me from the Macnabs—my mother’s side. And it proved very convenient when all the boys were away and nothing left but Oona and me. Women want but little in comparison with gentlemen; and though it is a little out of the way and inconvenient in the winter season, it is wonderful how few days there are that we can’t get out. I am very well content with the Walk when there is a glint of sunshine; but Oona, she just never minds the weather. Oh, you will not be going just yet! Tell Mysie, Oona, to bring ben the tea. If it is a little early what matter? It always helps to keep you warm on the loch, and my old cook is rather noted for her scones. She just begins as soon as she hears there’s a boat, and she will be much disappointed if ye don’t taste them. Our friends are all very kind; we have somebody or other every day.”

“It is you who are kind, I think,” Lady Herbert said.

“No, no; two ladies—it is nothing we have it in our power to do: but a cup of tea, it is just a charity to accept it; and as you go down to your boat I will let you see the view.”

Julia, for her part, felt, or professed, a great interest in the girl living the life of a recluse on this little island.

“It must be delightful,” she said with enthusiasm; “but don’t you sometimes feel a little dull? It is the sweetest place I ever saw. But shouldn’t you like to walk on to the land without always requiring a boat?”

“I don’t think I have considered the subject,” Oona said; “it is our home, and we do not think whether or not we should like it to be different.”

“Oh what a delightful state of mind! I don’t think I could be so contented anywhere—so happy in myself. I think,” said Julia with an ingratiating look, “that you must be very happy in yourself.”

Oona laughed. “As much and as little as other people,” she said.

“Oh not as little! I should picture to myself a hundred things I wanted as soon as I found myself shut up here. I should want to be in town. I should want to go shopping. I should wish for—everything I had not got. Don’t you immediately think of dozens of things you want as soon as you know you can’t get them? But you are so good?”

“If that is being good! No, I think I rather refrain from wishing for what I should like when I see I am not likely to get it.”

“I call that goodness itself—but perhaps it is Scotch. I have the greatest respect for the Scotch,” said Julia. “They are so sensible.” Then she laughed, as at some private joke of her own, and said under her breath, “Not all, however,” and looked towards Kinloch Houran.

They were seated on the bench, upon the little platform, at the top of the ascent which looked down upon the castle. The sound of Mrs. Forrester’s voice was quite audible behind in the house, pouring forth a gentle stream. The sun was setting in a sky full of gorgeous purple and golden clouds; the keen air of the hills blowing about them. But Julia was warmly dressed, and only shivered a little out of a sense of what was becoming: and Oona was wrapped in the famous fur cloak.

“It is so strange to come upon a place one has heard so much of,” Julia resumed. “No doubt you know Lord Erradeen?”

The name startled Oona in spite of herself. She was not prepared for any allusion to him. She coloured involuntarily, and gave her companion a look of surprise.

“Do you know him?” she asked.

“Oh, so well! I have known him almost all my life. People said indeed—” said Julia, breaking off suddenly with a laugh. “But that was nonsense. You know how people talk. Oh, yes, we have been like brother and sister—or if not quite that—at least—Oh yes, I know Walter, and his mother, and everything about him. He has been a little strange since he came here; though indeed I have no reason to say so, for he is always very nice to me. When he came home last year I saw a great deal of him; but I don’t think he was very communicative about—what do you call it?—Kinloch—”

“He was not here long,” Oona said.

“No? He did not give himself time to find out how many nice people there are. He did not seem very happy about it when he came back. You see all his habits were formed—it was something so new for him. And though the people are extremely nice, and so hospitable and kind, they were different—from those he had been used to.”

Oona smiled a little. She did not see her new acquaintance from the best side, and there came into her mind a slightly bitter and astonished reflection that Walter, perhaps, preferred people like this to other—people. It was an altogether incoherent thought.

“Does he know that you are here?” she said.

“Oh, I don’t think he does—but he will soon find me out,” said Julia, with an answering smile. “He always tells me everything. We are such old friends, and perhaps something—more. To be sure that is not a thing to talk of; but there is something in your face which is so sweet, which invites confidence. With a little encouragement I believe I should tell you everything I ever did.”

She leant over Oona as if she would have kissed her: but compliments so broad and easy disconcerted the Highland girl. She withdrew a little from this close contact.

“The wind is getting cold,” she said. “Perhaps we ought to go in. My mother always blames me for keeping strangers, who are not used to it, in this chilly air.”

“Ah, you do not encourage me,” Julia said. And then after a pause added, with the look of one preoccupied by her subject—“Is he there now?”

“I think Lord Erradeen is still at Kinloch Houran, if that is what you mean. That is another house of his among the trees.”

“How curious! two houses so close together. If you see him,” said Julia, rising to join her cousin who had come out to the door of the cottage with Mrs. Forrester, “if you see him, don’t, please don’t, tell him you have met me. I prefer that he should find it out. He is quite sure, oh, sooner than I want him, to find me out.”

And then the ladies were attended to the boat in the usual hospitable way.

“You will get back before it is dark,” said Mrs. Forrester. “I am always glad of that, for the wind is cold from the hills, especially to strangers that are not used to our Highland climate. I take your visit very kind, Lady Herbert. In these days I can do so little for my friends: unless Sir Thomas would take his lunch with me some day—and that is no compliment to a gentleman that is out on the hills all his time—I have just no opportunity of showing attention. But if you are going further north, my son, the present Mr. Forrester of Eaglescairn, would be delighted to be of any service. He knows how little his mother can do for her friends, perched up here in the middle of the water and without a gentleman in the house. Hamish, have ye got the cushions in, and are ye all ready? You’ll be sure to take her ladyship to where the carriage is waiting, and see that she has not a long way to walk.”

Thus talking, the kind lady saw her visitors off, and stood on the beach waving her hand to them. The fur cloak had been transferred to her shoulders. It was the one wrap in which everybody believed. Oona, who moved so much more quickly, and had no need to pause to take breath, did not now require such careful wrapping. She too stood and waved her hand as the boat turned the corner of the isle. But her farewells were not so cordial as her mother’s. Julia’s talk had been very strange to Oona; it filled her with a vague fear. Something very different from the sensation with which she had heard Katie’s confessions on the subject of Lord Erradeen moved her now. An impression of unworthiness had stolen into her mind, she could not tell how. It was the first time she had been sensible of any thought of the kind. Walter had not been revealed to her in any of the circumstances of his past life. She had known him only during his visit at Kinloch Houran, and when he was in profound difficulty and agitation, in which her presence and succour had helped him she could not tell how, and when his appeal to her, his dependence on her, had seized hold of her mind and imagination with a force which it had taken her all this time to throw off, and which, alas! his first appearance and renewed appeal to her to stand by him had brought back again in spite of her resistance and against her will. She had been angry with herself and indignant at this involuntary subjugation—which he had not desired so far as she knew, nor she dreamt of, until she had fallen under it—and had recognised, with a sort of despair and angry sense of impotence, the renewal of the influence, which she seemed incapable of resisting.

But Julia’s words roused in her a different sentiment. Julia’s laugh, the light insinuations of her tone, her claim of intimacy and previous knowledge, brought a revulsion of feeling so strong and powerful that she felt for the moment as if she had been delivered from her bonds. Delivered—but not with any pleasure in being free: for the deliverance meant the lowering of the image of him in whom she had suddenly found that union of something above her with something below, which is the man’s chief charm to the woman, as probably it is the woman’s chief charm to the man. He had been below her, he had needed her help, she had brought to him some principle of completeness, some moral support which was indispensable, without which he could not have stood fast. But now another kind of inferiority was suggested to her, which was not that in which a visionary and absolute youthful mind could find any charm, which it was difficult even to tolerate, which was an offence to her and to the pure and overmastering sentiment which had drawn her to him. If he was so near to Miss Herbert, so entirely on her level, making her his confidant, he could be nothing to Oona. She seemed to herself to burst her bonds and stand free—but not happily. Her heart was not the lighter for it. She would have liked to escape, yet to be able to bear him the same stainless regard, the same sympathy as ever; to help him still, to honour him in his resistance to all that was evil.

All this happened on the afternoon of the day which Walter had begun with a despairing conviction that Oona’s help must fail him when she knew. She had begun to know without any agency of his: and if it moved her so to become aware of a frivolous and foolish connection in which there was levity and vanity, and a fictitious counterfeit of higher sentiments but no harm, what would her feelings be when all the truth was unfolded to her? But neither did she know of the darker depths that lay below, nor was he aware of the revelation which had begun. Oona returned to the house with her mother’s soft-voiced monologue in her ears, hearing vaguely a great many particulars of Lady Herbert’s family and connections and of her being “really an acquisition, and Sir Thomas just an honest English sort of man, and Miss Herbert very pretty, and a nice companion for you, Oona,” without reply, or with much consciousness of what it was. “It is time you were indoors, mamma, for the wind is very cold,” she said.

“Oh yes, Oona, it is very well for you to speak about me: but you must take your own advice and come in too. For you have nothing about your shoulders, and I have got the fur cloak.”

“I am coming, mother,” Oona said, and with these words turned from the door and going to the rocky parapet that bordered the little platform, cast an indignant glance towards the ruined walls so far beneath her on the water’s edge, dark and cold, out of the reach of all those autumn glories that were fading in the sky. There was no light or sign of life about Kinloch Houran. She had looked out angrily, as one defrauded of much honest feeling had, she felt, a right to do; but something softened her as she looked and gazed—the darkness of it, the pathos of the ruin, the incompleteness, and voiceless yet appealing need. Was it possible that there was no need at all or vacancy there but what Miss Herbert, with her smiles and dimples, her laughing insinuations, her claim upon him from the past, and the first preference of youth, could supply? Oona felt a great sadness take the place of her indignation as she turned away. If that was so, how poor and small it all was—how different from what she had thought!

CHAPTER XXXV

This was not the only danger that once more overshadowed the path of Lord Erradeen. Underwood had been left alone in one of those foreign centres of “pleasure,” so called, whither he had led his so often impatient and unruly pupil. He had been left, without notice, by a sudden impulse, such as he was now sufficiently acquainted with in Walter—who had always the air of obeying angrily and against his will the temptations with which he was surrounded: a sort of moral indignation against himself and all that aided in his degradation curiously mingling with the follies and vices into which he was led. You never knew when you had him, was Captain Underwood’s own description. He would dart aside at a tangent, go off at the most unlikely moment, dash down the cup when it was at the sweetest, and abandon with disgust the things that had seemed to please him most. And Underwood knew that the moment was coming when his patron and protégé must return home: but notwithstanding he was left, without warning, as by a sudden caprice; the young man, who scorned while he yielded to his influence, having neither respect nor regard enough for his companion to leave a word of explanation. Underwood was astonished and angry as a matter of course, but his anger soon subsided, and the sense of Lord Erradeen’s importance to him was too strong to leave room for lasting resentment, or at least for anything in the shape of relinquishment. He was not at all disposed to give the young victim up. Already he had tasted many of what to him were the sweets of life by Walter’s means, and there were endless capabilities in Lord Erradeen’s fortune and in his unsettled mind, which made a companion like Underwood too wise ever to take offence, necessary to him—which that worthy would not let slip. After the shock of finding himself deserted, he took two or three days to consider the matter, and then he made his plan. It was bold, yet he thought not too bold. He followed in the very track of his young patron, passing through Edinburgh and reaching Auchnasheen on the same momentous day which had witnessed Julia Herbert’s visit to the isle. Captain Underwood was very well known at Auchnasheen. He had filled in many ways the position of manager and steward to the last lord. He had not been loved, but yet he had not been actively disliked. If there was some surprise and a little resistance on the part of the household there was at least no open revolt. They received him coldly, and required considerable explanation of the many things which he required to be done. They were all aware, as well as he was, that Lord Erradeen was to be expected from day to day, and they had made such preparations for his arrival as suggested themselves: but these were not many, and did not at all please the zealous captain. His affairs, he felt, were at a critical point. It was very necessary that the young man should feel the pleasure of being expected, the surprise of finding everything arranged according to his tastes.

“You know very well that he will come here exhausted, that he will want to have everything comfortable,” he said to the housekeeper and the servants. “No one would like after a fatiguing journey to come into a bare sort of a miserable place like this.”

“My lord is no so hard to please,” said the housekeeper, standing her ground. “Last year he just took no notice. Whatever was done he was not heeding.”

“Because he was unused to everything: now it is different; and I mean to have things comfortable for him.”

“Well, captain! I am sure it’s none of my wish to keep the poor young gentleman from his bits of little comforts. Ye’ll have his authority?”

“Oh, yes, I have his authority. It will be for your advantage to mind what I tell you; even more than with the late lord. I’ve been abroad with him. He left me but a short time ago; I was to follow him, and look after everything.”

At this the housekeeper looked at the under-factor Mr. Shaw’s subordinate, who had come to intimate to her her master’s return. “Will that be all right, Mr. Adamson?” Adamson put his shaggy head on one side like an intelligent dog and looked at the stranger. But they all knew Captain Underwood well enough, and no one was courageous enough to contradict him.

“It will, maybe, be as ye say,” said the under-factor cautiously. “Anyway it will do us no harm to take his orders,” he added, in an undertone to the woman. “He was always very far ben with the old lord.”

“The worse for him,” said that important functionary under her breath. But she agreed with Adamson afterwards that as long as it was my lord’s comfort he was looking after and not his own, his orders should be obeyed. As with every such person, the household distrusted this confident and unpaid major domo. But Underwood had not been tyrannical in his previous reign, and young Lord Erradeen during his last residence at Auchnasheen had frightened them all. He had been like a man beside himself. If the captain could manage him better, they would be grateful to the captain; and thus Underwood, though by no means confident of a good reception, had no serious hindrances to encounter. He strolled forth when he had arranged everything to “look about him.” He saw the Birkenbraes boat pass in the evening light, returning from the castle, with a surprise which took away his breath. The boat was near enough to the shore as it passed to be recognised and its occupants; but not even Katie, whose eyesight was so keen, recognised the observer on the beach. He remarked that the party were in earnest conversation, consulting with each other over something, which seemed to secure everybody’s attention, so that the ordinary quick notice of a stranger, which is common to country people, was not called forth by his own appearance. It surprised him mightily to see that such visitors had ventured to Kinloch Houran. They never would have done so in the time of the last lord. Had Walter all at once become more friendly, more open-hearted, perhaps feeling in the company of his neighbours a certain safety? Underwood was confounded by this new suggestion. It did not please him. Nothing could be worse for himself than that Lord Erradeen should find amusement in the society of the neighbourhood. There would be no more riot if this was the case, no “pleasure,” no play; but perhaps a wife—most terrible of all anticipations. Underwood had been deeply alarmed before by Katie Williamson’s ascendancy; but when Lord Erradeen returned to his own influence, he had believed that risk to be over. If, however, it recurred again, and, in this moment while undefended by his, Underwood’s, protection, if the young fellow had rushed into the snare once more, the captain felt that the incident would acquire new significance.

There were women whom he might have tolerated if better could not be. Julia Herbert was one whom he could perhaps—it was possible—have “got on with,” though possibly she would have changed after her marriage; but with Katie, Underwood knew that he never would get on. If this were so he would have at once to disappear. All his hopes would be over—his prospect of gain or pleasure by means of Lord Erradeen. And he had “put up with” so much! nobody knew how much he had put up with. He had humoured the young fellow, and endured his fits of temper, his changes of purpose, his fantastic inconsistencies of every kind. What friendship it was on his part, after Erradeen had deserted him, left him planted there—as if he cared for the d— place where he had gone only to please the young’un! thus to put all his grievances in his pocket and hurry over land and sea to make sure that all was comfortable for the ungrateful young man! That was true friendship, by Jove; what a man would do for a man! not like a woman that always had to be waited upon. Captain Underwood felt that his vested rights were being assailed, and that if it came to this it would be a thing to be resisted with might and main. A wife! what did Erradeen want with a wife? Surely it would be possible to put before him the charms of liberty once more and prevent the sacrifice. He walked along the side of the loch almost keeping up with the boat, hot with righteous indignation, in spite of the cold wind which had driven Mrs. Forrester into the house. Presently he heard the sound of salutations on the water, of oars clanking upon rowlocks from a different quarter, and saw the boat from the isle—Hamish rowing in his red shirt—meet with the large four-oared boat from Birkenbraes and pause while the women’s voices exchanged a few sentences, chorused by Mr. Williamson’s bass. Then the smaller boat came on towards the shore, towards the point near which a carriage was waiting. Captain Underwood quickened his steps a little, and he it was who presented himself to Julia Herbert’s eyes as she approached the bit of rocky beach, and hurrying down, offered his hand to help her.

“What a strange meeting,” cried Julia; “what a small world, as everybody says! Who could have thought, Captain Underwood, of seeing you here?”

“I might reply, if the surprise were not so delightful, who could have thought, Miss Herbert, of seeing you here? for myself it is a second home to me, and has been for years.”

“My reason for being here is simple. Let me introduce you to my cousin, Lady Herbert. Sir Thomas has got the shootings lower down. I suppose you are with Lord Erradeen.”

Lady Herbert had given the captain a very distant bow. She did not like the looks of him, as indeed it has been stated no ladies did, whether in Sloebury or elsewhere; but at the name of Erradeen she paid a more polite attention, though the thought of her horses waiting so long in the cold was already grievous to her. “I hope,” she said, “that Lord Erradeen does not lodge his friends in that old ruin, as he does himself, people say.”

“We are at Auchnasheen, a house you may see among the trees,” said the captain. “Feudal remains are captivating, but not to live in. Does our friend Walter know, Miss Herbert, what happiness awaits him in your presence here?”

“What a pretty speech,” Julia cried; “far prettier than anything Walter could muster courage to say. No, Captain Underwood, he does not. It was all settled quite suddenly. I did not even know that he was here.”

“Julia, the horses have been waiting a long time,” said Lady Herbert. “I have no doubt Lord Erradeen is a very interesting subject—but I don’t know what Barber (who was the coachman) will say. I shall be glad to see your friends any day at luncheon. Tell Lord Erradeen, please. We are two women alone, Sir Thomas is on the hills all day; all the more we shall be glad to see him—I mean you both—if you will take pity on our loneliness. Now, Julia, we really must not wait any longer.”

“Tell Walter I shall look for him,” said Julia, kissing her hand as they drove away. Underwood stood and looked after the carriage with varied emotions. As against Katie Williamson, he was overjoyed to have such an auxiliary—a girl who would not stand upon any punctilio—who would pursue her object with any assistance she could pick up, and would not be above an alliance defensive or offensive, a girl who knew the advantage of an influential friend. So far as that went he was glad: but, heavens! what a neighbourhood, bristling with women; a girl at every corner ready to decoy his prey out of his hands. He was rueful, even though he was in a measure satisfied. If he could play his cards sufficiently well to detach Walter from both one and the other, to show the bondage which was veiled under Julia’s smiles and complacency, as well as under Katie’s uncompromising code, and to carry him off under their very eyes, that would indeed be a triumph; but failing that, it was better for him to make an ally of Julia, and push her cause, than to suffer himself to be ousted by the other, the little parvenue, with her cool impertinence, who had been the first, he thought, to set Walter against him.

He walked back to Auchnasheen, full of these thoughts, and of plans to recover his old ascendancy. He had expedients for doing this which would not bear recording, and a hundred hopes of awakening the passions, the jealousies, the vanity of the young man whom already he had been able to sway beyond his expectations. He believed that he had led Walter by the nose, as he said, and had a mastery over him which would be easily recovered if he but got him for a day or two to himself. It was a matter of fact that he had done him much, if not fatal harm; and if the captain had been clever enough to know that he had no mastery whatever over his victim, and that Walter was the slave of his own shifting and uneasy moods, of his indolences and sudden impulses, and immediate abandonment of himself to the moment, but not of Captain Underwood, that tempter might have done him still more harm. But he did not possess this finer perception, and thus lost a portion of his power.

He went back to Auchnasheen to find a comfortable dinner, a good fire, a cheerful room, full of light and comfort, which reminded him of “old days,” which he gave a regretful yet comfortable thought to in passing—the time when he had waited, not knowing what moment the old lord, his former patron, should return from Kinloch Houran. And now he was waiting for the other—who was so unlike the old lord—and yet had already been of more use to Underwood, and served him better in his own way, than the old lord had ever done. He was much softened, and even perhaps a little maudlin in his thoughts of Walter as he sat over that comfortable fire. What was he about, poor boy? Not so comfortable as this friend and retainer, who was drinking his wine and thinking of him. But he should find some one to welcome him when he returned. He should find a comfortable meal and good company, which was more than the foolish fellow would expect. It was foolish of him, in his temper, to dart away from those who really cared for him, who really could be of use to him; but by this time the young lord would be too glad, after his loneliness, to come back and find a faithful friend ready to make allowances for him, and so well acquainted with his circumstances here.

So well acquainted with his circumstances! Underwood, in his time, had no doubt wondered over these as much as any one; but that was long ago, and he had in the mean time become quite familiar with them, and did not any longer speculate on the subject. He had no supernatural curiosity for his part. He could understand that one would not like to see a ghost: and he believed in ghosts—in a fine, healthy, vulgar, natural apparition, with dragging chains and hollow groans. But as for anything else, he had never entered into the question, nor had he any thought of doing so now. However, as he sat by the fire with all these comfortable accessories round him, and listened now and then to hear if any one was coming, and sometimes was deceived by the wind in the chimneys, or the sound of the trees in the fresh breeze which had become keener and sharper since he came indoors, it happened, how he could not tell, that questions arose in the captain’s mind such as he had never known before.

The house was very still, the servants’ apartments were at a considerable distance from the sitting-rooms, and all was very quiet. Two or three times in the course of the evening, old Symington, who had also come to see that everything was in order for his master, walked all the way from these retired regions through a long passage running from one end of the house to the other, to the great door, which he opened cautiously, then shut again, finding nobody in sight, and retired the same way as he came, his shoes creaking all the way. This interruption occurring at intervals had a remarkable effect upon Underwood. He began to wait for its recurrence, to count the steps, to feel a thrill of alarm as they passed the door of the room in which he was sitting. Oh, yes, no doubt it was Symington, who always wore creaking shoes, confound him! But what if it were not Symington? What if it might be some one else, some mysterious being who might suddenly open the door, and freeze into stone the warm, palpitating, somewhat unsteady person of a man who had eaten a very good dinner and drunk a considerable quantity of wine? This thought so penetrated his mind, that gradually all his thoughts were concentrated on the old servant’s perambulation, watching for it before it came, thinking of it after it had passed. The steady and solemn march at intervals, which seemed calculated and regular, was enough to have impressed the imagination of any solitary person. And the captain was of a primitive simplicity of mind in some respects. His fears paralysed him; he was afraid to get up, to open the door, to make sure what it was. How could he tell that he might not be seized by the hair of the head by some ghastly apparition, and dragged into a chamber of horrors! He tried to fortify himself with more wine, but that only made his tremor worse. Finally the panic came to a crisis, when Symington, pausing, knocked at the library door. Underwood remembered to have heard that no spirit could enter without invitation, and he shut his mouth firmly that no habitual “come in” might lay him open to the assault of the enemy. He sat breathless through the ensuing moment of suspense, while Symington waited outside. The captain’s hair stood up on his head; his face was covered with a profuse dew; he held by the table in an agony of apprehension when he saw the door begin to turn slowly upon its hinges.

“My lord will not be home the night,” said Symington, slowly.

The sight of the old servant scarcely quieted the perturbation of Underwood. It had been a terrible day for Symington. He was ashy pale or grey, as old men become when the blood is driven from their faces. He had not been able to get rid of the scared and terror-stricken sensation with which he had watched the Birkenbraes party climbing the old stairs, and wandering as he thought at the peril of their lives upon the unsafe battlements. He had been almost violent in his calls to them to come down: but nobody had taken any notice, and they had talked about their guide and about the gentleman who was living with Lord Erradeen, till it seemed to Symington that he must go distracted. “Where there ever such fools—such idiots! since there is nobody staying with Lord Erradeen but me, his body servant,” the old man had said tremulously to himself. At Symington’s voice the captain gave a start and a cry. Even in the relief of discovering who it was, he could not quiet the excitement of his nerves.

“It’s you, old Truepenny,” he cried, yet looked at him across the table with a tremor, and a very forced and uncomfortable smile.

“That’s not my name,” said Symington, with, on his side, the irritation of a disturbed mind. “I’m saying that it’s getting late, and my lord will not be home to-night.”

“By Jove!” cried Captain Underwood, “when I heard you passing from one end of the house to the other, I thought it might be—the old fellow over there, coming himself—”

“I cannot tell, sir, what you are meaning by the old fellow over there. There’s no old fellow I know of but old Macalister; and it was not for him you took me.”

“If you could have heard how your steps sounded through the house! By Jove! I could fancy I hear them now.”

“Where?” Symington cried, coming in and shutting the door, which he held with his hand behind him, as if to bar all possible comers. And then the two men looked at each other, both breathless and pale.

“Sit down,” said Underwood. “The house feels chilly and dreary, nobody living in it for so long. Have a glass of wine. One wants company in a damp, dreary old hole like this.”

“You are very kind, captain,” said the old man; “but Auchnasheen, though only my lord’s shooting-box, is a modern mansion, and full of every convenience. It would ill become me to raise an ill name on it.”

“I wonder what Erradeen’s about?” said the captain. “I bet he’s worse off than we are. How he must wish he was off with me on the other side of the Channel.”

“Captain! you will, maybe, think little of me, being nothing but a servant; but it is little good you do my young lord on the ither side of the Channel.”

Underwood laughed, but not with his usual vigour.

“What can I do with your young lord,” he said. “He takes the bit in his teeth, and goes—to the devil his own way.”

“Captain, there are some that think the like of you sore to blame.”

Underwood said nothing for a moment. When he spoke there was a quiver in his voice.

“Let me see the way to my room, Symington. Oh yes, I suppose it is the old room; but I’ve forgotten. I was there before? well, so I suppose; but I have forgotten. Take the candle as I tell you, and show me the way.”

He had not the least idea what he feared, and he did not remember ever having feared anything before; but to-night he hung close to Symington, following at his very heels. The old man was anxious and alarmed, but not in this ignoble way. He deposited the captain in his room with composure, who would but for very shame have implored him to stay. And then his footsteps sounded through the vacant house, going further and further off till they died away in the distance. Captain Underwood locked his door, though he felt it was a vain precaution, and hastened to hide his head under the bed-clothes: but he was well aware that this was a vain precaution too.

CHAPTER XXXVI

It was on the evening of the day after Captain Underwood’s arrival that Lord Erradeen left Kinloch Houran for Auchnasheen. After labour, rest. He could not but compare as he walked along in the early falling autumnal twilight the difference between himself now, and the same self a year ago, when he had fled from the place of torture to the house of peace, a man nearly frantic with the consciousness of all the new bonds upon him, the uncomprehended powers against which he had to struggle, the sense of panic and impotence, yet of mad excitement and resistance, with which his brain was on flame. The recollection of the ensuing time spent at Auchnasheen, when he saw no one, heard no voice but his own, yet lived through day after day of bewildering mental conflict, without knowing who it was against whom he contended, was burned in upon his recollection. All through that time he had been conscious of such a desire to flee as hurried the pace of his thoughts, and made the intolerable still more intolerable. His heart had sickened of the unbearable fight into which he was compelled like an unwilling soldier with death behind him. To resist had always been Walter’s natural impulse; but the impulse of flight had so mingled with it that his soul had been in a fever, counting no passage of days, but feeling the whole period long or short, he did not know which, as one monstrous uninterrupted day or night, in which the processes of thought were never intermitted. His mind was in a very different condition now. He had got over the early panic of nature. The blinding mists of terror had melted away from his eyes, and the novelty and horror of his position, contending with unseen dominations and powers, had almost ceased for the moment to affect his mind, so profoundly exhausted was he by the renewed struggle in which he had been engaged.

The loch was veiled in mist, through which it glimmered faintly with broken reflections, the wooded banks presenting on every side a sort of ghostly outline, with the colour no more than indicated against the dreary confusion of air and vapour. At some points there was the glimpse of a blurred light, looking larger and more distant than it really was, the ruddy spot made by the open door of the little inn, the whiter and smaller twinkle of the manse window, the far-off point, looking no more than a taper light in the distance, that shone from the isle. There was in Walter’s mind a darkness and confusion not unlike the landscape. He was worn out: there was in him none of that vivid feeling which had separated between his human soul in its despair and the keen sweetness of the morning. Now all was night within him and around. His arms had fallen from his hands. He moved along, scarcely aware that he was moving, feeling everything blurred, confused, indistinct in the earth about him and in the secret places of his soul. Desire for flight he had none: he had come to see that it was impossible: and he had not energy enough to wish it. And fear had died out of him. He was not afraid. Had he been joined on the darkling way by the personage of whom he had of late seen so much, it would scarcely have quickened his pulses. All such superficial emotion had died out of him: the real question was so much superior, so infinitely important in comparison with any such transitory tremors as these. But at the present moment he was not thinking at all, scarcely living, any more than the world around him was living, hushed into a cessation of all energy and almost of consciousness, looking forward to night and darkness and repose.

It was somewhat surprising to him to see the lighted windows at Auchnasheen, and the air of inhabitation about the house with which he had no agreeable associations, but only those which are apt to hang about a place in which one his gone through a fever, full of miserable visions, and the burning restlessness of disease. But when he stepped into the hall, the door being opened to him by Symington as soon as his foot was heard on the gravel, and turning round to go into the library found himself suddenly in the presence of Captain Underwood, his astonishment and dismay were beyond expression. The dismay came even before the flush of anger, which was the first emotion that showed itself. Underwood stood holding open the library door, with a smile that was meant to be ingratiating and conciliatory. He held out his hand, as Walter, with a start and exclamation, recognised him.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m here, you see. Not so easy to get rid of when once I form a friendship. Welcome to your own house, Erradeen.”

Walter did not say anything till he had entered the room and shut the door. He walked to the fire, which was blazing brightly, and placed himself with his back to it, in that attitude in which the master of a house defies all comers.

“I did not expect to find you here,” he said. “You take me entirely by surprise.”

“I had hoped it would be an agreeable surprise,” said the captain, still with his most amiable smile. “I thought to have a friend’s face waiting for you when you came back from that confounded place would be a relief.”

“What do you call a confounded place?” said Walter, testily. “You know nothing about it, as far as I am aware. No, Underwood, it is as well to speak plainly. It is not an agreeable surprise. I am sorry you have taken the trouble to come so far for me.”

“It was no trouble. If you are a little out of sorts, never mind. I am not a man to be discouraged for a hasty word. You want a little cheerful society—”

“Is that what you call yourself?” Walter said with a harsh laugh. He was aware that there was a certain brutality in what he said; but the sudden sight of the man who had disgusted him even while he had most influenced him, and of whom he had never thought but with a movement of resentment and secret rage, affected him to a sort of delirium. He could have seized him with the force of passion and flung him into the loch at the door. It would have been no crime, he thought, to destroy such vermin off the face of the earth—to make an end of such a source of evil would be no crime. This was the thought in his mind while he stood upon his own hearth, looking at the man who was his guest and therefore sacred. As for Captain Underwood, he took no offence; it was not in his rôle to do so, whatever happened. What he had to do was to regain, if possible, his position with the young man upon whom he had lived and enriched himself for the greater part of the year, to render himself indispensable to him as he had done to his predecessor. For this object he was prepared to bear everything, and laugh at all that was too strong to be ignored. He laughed now, and did his best, not very gracefully, to carry out the joke. He exerted himself to talk and please throughout the dinner, which Walter went through in silence, drinking largely, though scarcely eating at all—for Kinloch Houran was not a place which encouraged an appetite. After dinner, in the midst of one of Underwood’s stories, Walter lighted a candle abruptly, and saying he was going to bed, left his companion without apology or reason given. It was impossible to be more rude. The captain felt the check, for he had a considerable development of vanity, and was in the habit of amusing the people to whom he chose to make himself agreeable. But this affront, too, he swallowed. “He will have come to himself by morning,” he said. In the morning, however, Walter was only more gloomy and unwilling to listen, and determined not to respond. It was only when in the middle of the breakfast he received a note brought by a mounted messenger who waited for an answer, that he spoke. He flung it open across the table to Underwood with a harsh laugh.

“Is this your doing, too?” he cried.

“My doing, Erradeen!”

Underwood knew very well what it was before he looked at it. It was from Lady Herbert, explaining that she had only just heard that Lord Erradeen was so near a neighbour, and begging him, if he was not, like all the other gentlemen, on the hills, that he would come (“and your friend Captain Underwood”) to luncheon that day to cheer two forlorn ladies left all by themselves in this wilderness. “And you will meet an old friend,” it concluded playfully. The composition was Julia’s, and had not been produced without careful study.

“My doing!” said Captain Underwood. “Can you suppose that I want you to marry, Erradeen?”

It was a case, he thought, in which truth was best.

Walter started up from his seat.

“Marry!” he cried, with a half-shout of rage and dismay.

“Well, my dear fellow, I don’t suppose you are such a fool; but, of course, that is what she means. The fair Julia—”

“Oblige me,” cried Lord Erradeen, taking up once more his position on the hearth, “by speaking civilly when you speak of ladies in my house.”

“Why, bless me, Erradeen, you gave me the note—”

“I was a fool—that is nothing new. I have been a fool since the first day when I met you and took you for something more than mortal. Oh, and before that!” cried Walter bitterly. “Do not flatter yourself that you did it. It is of older date than you.”

“The fair Julia—” Underwood began; but he stopped when his companion advanced upon him threatening, with so gloomy a look and so tightly strained an arm that the captain judged it wise to change his tone. “I should have said, since we are on punctilio, that Miss Herbert and you are older acquaintances than you and I, Erradeen.”

“Fortunately you have nothing to do with that,” Walter said, perceiving the absurdity of his rage.

Then he walked to the window and looked out so long and silently that the anxious watcher began to think the incident over. But it was not till Walter, after this period of reflection, had written a note and sent it to the messenger, that he ventured to speak.

“You have accepted, of course. In the circumstances it would be uncivil—”

Walter looked at him for a moment, breaking off his sentence as if he had spoken.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “My mother is coming to Auchnasheen.”

“Your mother!” Underwood’s voice ran into a quaver of dismay.

“You will see that in the circumstances, as you say, I am forced to be uncivil. When my mother is here she will, of course, be the mistress of the house; and she, as you know—”

“Will not ask me to prolong my visit,” said the captain, with an attempt at rueful humour. “I think we may say as much as that, Erradeen.”

“I fear it is not likely,” Walter said.

Captain Underwood gave vent to his feelings in a prolonged whistle.

“You will be bored to death. Mark my words, I know you well enough. You will never be able to put up with it. You will be ready to hang yourself in a week. You will come off to me. It is the best thing that could happen so far as I am concerned—wishing to preserve your friendship as I do—”

“Is it friendship, then, that has bound us together?” said Lord Erradeen.

“What else? Disinterested friendship on my part. I take your laugh rather ill, Erradeen. What have I gained by it, I should like to know? I’ve liked you, and I liked the last man before you. I have put up with a great deal from you—tempers like a silly woman, vagaries of all sorts, discontent and abuse. Why have I put up with all that?”

“Why indeed? I wish you had not,” said the young man scornfully. “Yes, you have put up with it, and made your pupil think the worse of you with every fresh exercise of patience. I should like to pay you for all that dirty work.”

“Pay me!” the captain said, faltering a little. He was not a very brave man, though he could hold his own; and there was a force of passion and youth in his “pupil”—with what bitterness that word was said!—that alarmed him a little. Besides, Walter had a household of servants behind him—grooms, keepers, all sorts of people—who held Captain Underwood in no favour. “Pay me! I don’t know how you could pay me,” he said.

“I should like to do it—in one way; and I shall do it—in another,” said Walter still somewhat fiercely. Then once more he laughed. He took out a pocket-book from his coat, and out of that a cheque. “You have been at some expense on my account,” he said; “your journey has been long and rapid. I consider myself your debtor for that, and for the—good intention. Will this be enough?”

In the bitter force of his ridicule and dislike, Walter held out the piece of paper as one holds a sweetmeat to a child. The other gave a succession of rapid glances at it to make out what it was. When he succeeded in doing so a flush of excitement and eagerness covered his face. He put out his hand nervously to clutch it with the excited look of the child before whom a prize is held out, and who catches at it before it is snatched away. But he would not acknowledge this feeling.

“My lord,” he said, with an appearance of dignity offended, “you are generous; but to pay me, as you say, and offer money in place of your friendship—”

“It is an excellent exchange, Underwood. This is worth something, if not very much—the other,” said Walter with a laugh, “nothing at all.”

Perhaps this was something like what Captain Underwood himself thought, as he found himself, a few hours later, driving along the country roads towards the railway station, retracing the path which he had travelled two days before with many hopes and yet a tremor. His hopes were now over, and the tremor too; but there was something in his breast pocket better, for the moment at least, than any hopes, which kept him warm, even though the wind was cold. He had failed in his attempt to fix himself once more permanently on Lord Erradeen’s shoulders—an attempt in which he had not been very sanguine. It was a desperate venture, he knew, and it had failed; but, at the same time, circumstances might arise which would justify another attempt, and that one might not fail: and, in the mean time, his heart rose with a certain elation when he thought of that signature in his breast pocket. That was worth an effort, and nothing could diminish its value. Friendship might fail, but a cheque is substantial. He had something of the dizzy feeling of one who has fallen from a great height, and has not yet got the giddiness of the movement out of his head. And yet he was not altogether discouraged. Who could tell what turn the wheel of fortune might take? and, in the mean time, there was that bit of paper. The horse was fresh, and flew along the road, up and down, at a pace very different from that of Big John’s steeds, which had brought Captain Underwood to Auchnasheen. About half-way along he came up to the waggonette from Birkenbraes, in which was Mr. Braithwaite and his luggage, along with two other guests, ladies, bound for the station, and escorted by Mr. Williamson and Katie, as was their way.

“Dear me, is that Underwood?” cried Mr. Williamson with the lively and simple curiosity of rural use and wont. “So you’re there, captain,” he said, as the dog-cart came up behind the heavier carriage.

“No, I’m not here—I’m going,” said Underwood, quickly, “hurrying to catch the train.”

“Oh, there is plenty of time; we are going too (Bless me,” he said aside, “how many visitors think you they can have had in yon old place?) I am thinking ye have been with our young neighbour, Lord Erradeen.”

“That is an easy guess. I am leaving him, you mean. Erradeen is a reformed character. He is turning over a new leaf—and full time too,” Captain Underwood cried, raising his voice that he might be heard over the rattle of the two carriages. Notwithstanding the cheque which kept him so warm, he had various grudges against Walter, and did not choose to lose the opportunity for a little mischief.

“It is always a good thing,” said Mr. Williamson, “to turn over a new leaf. We have all great occasion to do that.”

“Especially when there are so many of them,” the captain cried, as his light cart passed the other. He met the party again at the station, where they had to wait for the train. Katie stood by herself in a thoughtful mood while the departing guests consulted over their several boxes, and Captain Underwood seized the moment: “I am sorry to lose the fun,” he said, in a confidential tone, “but I must tell you, Miss Williamson, what is going to happen. Erradeen has been pursued up here into his stronghold by one of the many ladies—I expect to hear she has clutched hold of him before long, and then you’ll have a wedding.”

“Is that why you are going away, Captain Underwood?”

“He has gone a little too far, you know, that is the truth,” said the captain. “I am glad he is not going to take in any nice girl. I couldn’t have stood by and seen that. I should have had to warn her people. Even Miss Julia, by Jove! I’m sorry for Miss Julia, if she gets him. But she is an old campaigner; she will know how to take care of herself.”

“Is it because Lord Erradeen is so bad that you are leaving him, or because he is going to be good?” Katie asked. Captain Underwood on ordinary occasions was a little afraid of her; but his virtuous object fortified him now.

“Oh, by Jove! he goes too far,” said Underwood. “I am not squeamish, heaven knows, but he goes too far. I can speak now that it’s all over between him and me. I never could bear to see him with nice girls; but he’s got his match in Miss Julia. The fair Julia—that is another pair of shoes.”

“Who was he meaning with his fair Julias?” said Mr. Williamson as they drove away. “Yon’s a scoundrel, if there ever was one, and young Erradeen is well rid of him. But when thieves cast out, honest folk get their ain. Would yon be true?”

Katie was in what her father called “a brown study,” and did not care to talk. She only shook her head—a gesture which could be interpreted as any one pleased.

“I am not sure,” said Mr. Williamson, in reply. “He knows more about Lord Erradeen than any person on the loch. But who is the fair Julia, and is he really to be married to her? I would like fine to hear all about it. I will call at Auchnasheen in the afternoon and see what he has to say.”

But Katie remained in her brown study, letting her father talk. She knew very well who the fair Julia was. She remembered distinctly the scene at Burlington House. She saw with the clearest perception what the tactics were of the ladies at the Lodge. Katie had been somewhat excited by the prospect of being Oona’s rival, which was like something in a book. It was like the universal story of the young man’s choice, not between Venus and Minerva, or between good and evil, but perhaps, Katie thought, between poetry and prose, between the ideal and the practical. She was interested in that conflict and not unwilling in all kindness and honour to play her part in it. Oona would be the ideal bride for him, but she herself, Katie felt, would be better in a great many ways, and she did not feel that she would have any objection to marry Lord Erradeen. But here was another rival with whom she did not choose to enter the lists. It is to be feared that Katie in her heart classified Miss Herbert as Vice, as the sinner against whom every man is to be warned, and turned with some scorn from any comparison with her meretricious attractions. But she was fair and just, and her heart had nothing particular to do with the matter; so that she was able calmly to wait for information, which was not Oona’s case.

It had been entirely at random that Lord Erradeen had announced his mother’s approaching arrival to Underwood. The idea had come into his mind the moment before he made use of it, and he had felt a certain amusement in the complete success of this hastily-assumed weapon. It had been so effectual that he began to think it might be available in other conflicts as well as this: and in any case he felt himself pledged to make it a matter of fact. He walked to the village when Underwood had gone, to carry at once his intention into effect. Though it was only a cluster of some half-dozen houses, it had a telegraph-office—as is so general in the Highlands—and Walter sent a brief, emphatic message, which he felt would carry wild excitement into Sloebury. “You will do me a great favour if you will come at once, alone,” was Walter’s message. He was himself slightly excited by it. He began to think over all those primitive relationships of his youth as he walked along the quiet road. There was sweetness in them, but how much conflict, trouble, embarrassment!—claims on one side to which the other could not respond—a sort of authority, which was no authority—a duty which did nothing but establish grievances and mutual reproach. His mind was still in the state of exhaustion which Captain Underwood had only temporarily disturbed; and a certain softening was in the weakened faculties, which were worn out with too much conflict. Poor mother, after all! He could remember, looking back, when it was his greatest pleasure to go home to her, to talk to her, pouring every sort of revelation into her never-wearied ears; all his school successes and tribulations, all about the other fellows, the injustices that were done, the triumphs that were gained. Could women interest themselves in all that as she had seemed to interest herself? or had she sometimes found it a bore to have all these schoolboy experiences poured forth upon her? Miss Merivale had very plainly thought it a bore; his voice had given her a headache. But Mrs. Methven never had any headaches, or anything that could cloud her attention. He remembered now that his mother was not a mere nursery woman—that she read a great deal more than he himself did, knew many things he did not know, was not silly, or a fool, or narrow-minded, as so many women are. Was it not a little hard, after all, that she should have nothing of her son but the schoolboy prattle? She had been everything to him when he was a boy, and now she was nothing to him; perhaps all the time she might have been looking forward to the period when he should be a man, and have something more interesting to talk over with her than a cricket-match—for, to be sure, when one came to think of it, she could have no personal interest in a cricket-match. A momentary serrement of compunction came to Walter’s heart. Poor mother! he said to himself; perhaps it was a little hard upon her. And she must have the feeling, to make it worse, that she had a right to something better. He could not even now get his mind clear about that right.

As he returned from the telegraph-office he too met the waggonette from Birkenbraes, which was stopped at sight of him with much energy on the part of Mr. Williamson.

“We’ve just met your friend Captain Underwood. If you’ll not take it amiss, Lord Erradeen, I will say that I’m very glad you’re not keeping a man like that about you. But what is this about—a lady? I hear there’s a lady—the fair—What did he call her, Katie? I am not good at remembering names.”

“It is of no consequence,” said Katie, with a little rising colour, “what such a man said.”

“That’s true, that’s true,” said her father; “but still, Erradeen, you must mind we are old friends now, and let us know what’s coming. The fair—Toots, I thought of it a minute ago? It’s ridiculous to forget names.”

“You may be sure I shall let you know what’s coming. My mother is coming,” Walter said.

And this piece of news was so unexpected and startling that the Williamsons drove off with energy to spread it far and near. Mr. Williamson himself was as much excited as if it had been of personal importance to him.

“Now that will settle the young man,” he said; “that will put many things right. There has not been a lady at Auchnasheen since ever I have been here. A mother is the next best thing to a wife, and very likely the one is in preparation for the other, and ye will all have to put on your prettiest frocks for her approval.” He followed this with one of his big laughs, looking round upon a circle in which there were various young persons who were very marriageable. “But I put no faith in Underwood’s fair—what was it he called her?” Mr. Williamson said.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Two days after, Mrs. Methven arrived at Kinloch Houran by the afternoon coach, alone.

She had interpreted very literally the telegram which had brought such a tremor yet such a movement of joy to her heart. Her son wanted her. Perhaps he might be ill, certainly it must be for something serious and painful that she was called; yet he wanted her! She had been very quiet and patient, waiting if perhaps his heart might be touched and he might recall the tie of nature and his own promises, feeling with a sad pride that she wanted nothing of him but his love, and that without that the fine houses and the new wealth were nothing to her. She was pleased even to stand aloof, to be conscious of having in no way profited by Walter’s advancement. She had gained nothing by it, she wished to gain nothing by it. If Walter were well, then there was no need for more. She had enough for herself without troubling him. So long as all was well! But this is at the best a forlorn line of argument, and it cannot be doubted that Mrs. Methven’s bosom throbbed with a great pang of disappointment when she sat and smiled to conceal it, and answered questions about Walter, yet could not say that she had seen him or any of his “places in Scotland,” or knew much more than her questioners did. When his message arrived her heart leapt in her breast. There were no explanations, no reason given, but that imperative call, such as mothers love to have addressed to them: “Come;” all considerations of her own comfort set aside in the necessity for her which had arisen at last. Another might have resented so complete an indifference to what might happen to suit herself. But there are connections and relationships in which this is the highest compliment. He knew that it did not matter to her what her own convenience was, as long as he wanted her. She got up from her chair at once, and proceeded to put her things together to get ready for the journey. With a smiling countenance she prepared herself for the night train. She would not even take a maid. “He says, alone. He must have some reason for it, I suppose,” she said to Miss Merivale. “I am the reason,” said Cousin Sophy: “He doesn’t want me. You can tell him, with my love, that to travel all night is not at all in my way, and he need have had no fear on that subject.” But Mrs. Methven would not agree to this, and departed hurriedly without any maid. She was surprised a little, yet would not allow herself to be displeased, that no one came to meet her: but it was somewhat forlorn to be set down on the side of the loch in the wintry afternoon, with the cold, gleaming water before her, and no apparent way of getting to the end of her journey.

“Oh yes, mem, you might drive round the head of the loch: but it’s a long way,” the landlady of the little inn said, smoothing down her apron at the door, “and far simpler just crossing the water, as everybody does in these parts.”

Mrs. Methven was a little nervous about crossing the water. She was tired and disappointed, and a chill had crept to her heart. While she stood hesitating a young lady came up, whose boat waited for her on the beach, a man in a red shirt standing at the bow.

“It is a lady for Auchnasheen, Miss Oona,” said the landlady, “and no boat. Duncan is away, and for the moment I have not a person to send: and his lordship will maybe be out on the hill, or he will have forgotten, or maybe he wasna sure when to expect you, mem?”

“No, he did not know when to expect me. I hope there is no illness,” said Mrs. Methven, with a thrill of apprehension.

At this the young lady came forward with a shy yet frank grace.

“If you will let me take you across,” she said, “my boat is ready. I am Oona Forrester. Lord Erradeen is quite well I think, and I heard that he expected—his mother.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Methven. She gave the young stranger a penetrating look. Her own aspect was perhaps a little severe, for her heart had been starved and repressed, and she wore it very warm and low down in her bosom, never upon her sleeve. There rose over Oona’s countenance a soft and delicate flush under the eyes of Walter’s mother. She had nothing in the world to blush for, and probably that was why the colour rose. They were of infinite interest to each other, two souls meeting, as it were, in the dark, quite unknown to each other and yet—who could tell?—to be very near perhaps in times to come. The look they interchanged was a mutual question. Then Mrs. Methven felt herself bound to take up her invariable defence of her son.

“He did not, most likely, think that I could arrive so soon. I was wrong not to let him know. If I accept your kindness will it be an inconvenience to you?”

This question was drowned in Oona’s immediate response and in the louder protest of Mrs. Macfarlane. “Bless me, mem, you canna know the loch! for there is nobody but would put themselves about to help a traveller: and above all Miss Oona, that just has no other thought. Colin, put in the lady’s box intill the boat, and Hamish, he will give ye a hand.”

Thus it was settled without farther delay. It seemed to the elder lady like a dream when she found herself afloat upon this unknown water, the mountains standing round, with their heads all clear and pale in the wonderful atmosphere from which the last rays of the sunset had but lately faded, while down below in this twilight scene the colour had begun to go out of the autumn trees and red walls of the ruined castle, at which she looked with a curiosity full of excitement. “That is—?” she said pointing with a strange sensation of eagerness.

“That is Kinloch Houran,” said Oona, to whose sympathetic mind, she could not tell how, there came a tender, pitying comprehension of the feelings of the mother, thus thrust alone and without any guide into the other life of her son.

“It is very strange to me—to see the place where Walter—You know perhaps that neither my son nor I were ever here until he—”

“Oh yes,” Oona said hastily, interrupting the embarrassed speech; and she added, “My mother and I have been here always, and everybody on the loch knows everybody else. We were aware—”

And then she paused too; but her companion took no notice, her mind being fully occupied. “I feel,” she said, “like a woman in a dream.”

It was very still on the loch, scarcely a breath stirring (which was very fortunate, for Mrs. Methven, unaccustomed, had a little tremor for the dark water even though so smooth). The autumnal trees alone, not quite put out by the falling darkness, seemed to lend a little light as they hung, reflected, over the loch—a redder cluster here and there looking like a fairy lamp below the water. A thousand suggestions were in the air, and previsions of she knew not what, a hidden life surrounding her on every side. Her brain was giddy, her heart full. By-and-by she turned to her young companion, who was so sympathetically silent, and whose soft voice when she spoke, with the little cadence of an accent unfamiliar yet sweet, had a half-caressing sound which touched the solitary woman. “You say your mother and you,” she said. “Are you too an only child?”

“Oh no! there are eight of us: but I am the youngest, the only one left. All the boys are away. We live on the isle. I hope you will come and see us. My mother will be glad—”

“And she is not afraid to trust you—by yourself? It must be a happy thing for a woman to have a daughter,” Mrs. Methven said, with a sigh. “The boys, as you say, go away.”

“Nobody here is afraid of the loch,” said Oona. “Accidents happen—oh, very rarely. Mamma is a little nervous about yachting, for the winds come down from the hills in gusts; but Hamish is the steadiest oar, and there is no fear. Do you see now the lights at Auchnasheen? There is some one waiting, at the landing-place. It will be Lord Erradeen, or some one from the house. Hamish, mind the current. You know how it sweeps the boat up the loch?”

“It will just be the wash of that confounded steam-boat,” Hamish said.

The voices bounded in the air without conveying any sense to her mind. Was that Walter, the vague line of darker shadow upon the shade? Was it his house she was going to, his life that she was entering once more? All doubts were put to an end speedily by Walter’s voice.

“Is it Hamish?” he cried out.

“Oh, Lord Erradeen, it is me,” cried Oona, in her soft Scotch. “And I am bringing you your mother.”

The boat grated on the bank as she spoke, and this disguised the tremor in her voice, which Mrs. Methven, quite incapable of distinguishing anything else, was yet fully sensible of. She stepped out tremulously into her son’s arms.

“Mother,” he cried, “what must you think of me for not coming to meet you? I never thought you could be here so soon.”

“I should have come by telegraph if I could,” she said, with an agitated laugh: so tired, so tremulous, so happy, the strangest combination of feelings overwhelming her. But still she was aware of a something, a tremor, a tingle in Oona’s voice. The boat receded over the water almost without a pause, Hamish under impulsion of a whispered word, having pushed off again as soon as the traveller and her box were landed. Walter paused to call out his thanks over the water, and then he drew his mother’s arm within his, and led her up the bank.

“Where is Jane?” he said. “Have you no one with you? Have you travelled all night, and alone, mother, for me?”

“For whom should I do it, but for you? And did you think I would lose a minute after your message, Walter? But you are well, there is nothing wrong with your health?”

“Nothing wrong with my health,” he said, with a half-laugh. “No, that is safe enough. I have not deserved that you should come to me, mother—”

“There is no such word as deserving between mother and son,” she said tremulously, “so long as you want me, Walter.”

“Take care of those steps,” was all he said. “We are close now to the house. I hope you will find your rooms comfortable. I fear they have not been occupied for some time. But what shall you do without a maid? Perhaps the housekeeper—”

“You said to come alone, Walter.”

“Oh yes. I was afraid of Cousin Sophy; but you could not think I wanted to impair your comfort, mother? Here we are at the door, and here is Symington, very glad to receive his lady.”

“But you must not let him call me so.”

“Why not? You are our lady to all of us. You are the lady of the house, and I bid you welcome to it, mother,” he said, pausing to kiss her. She had a thousand things to forgive, but in that moment they were as though they had not been.

And there was not much more said until she had settled down into possession of the library, which answered instead of a drawing-room: had dined, and been brought back to the glowing peat fire which gave an aromatic breath of warmth and character to a Highland house. When all the business of the arrival had thus been gone through, there came a moment when it was apparent that subjects of more importance must be entered upon. There was a pause, and an interval of complete silence which seemed much longer than it really was. Walter stood before the fire for some time, while she sat close by, her hands clasped in her lap, ready to attend. Then he began to move about uneasily, feeling the compulsion of the moment, yet unprepared with anything to say. At length it was she who began.

“You sent for me, Walter?” she said.

“Yes, mother.”

Was there nothing more to tell her? He threw into disorder the books on the table, and then he came back again, and once more faced her, standing with his back to the fire.

“My dear,” she said hesitating, “it is with no reproach I speak, but only—There was some reason for sending for me?”

He gave once more a nervous laugh.

“You have good reason to be angry if you will; but I’ll tell you the truth, mother. I made use of you to get rid of Underwood. He followed me here, and I told him you were coming, and that he could not stay against the will of the mistress of the house. Then I was bound to ask you—”

The poor lady drew back a little, and instinctively put her hand to her heart, in which there was a hot thrill of sensation, as if an arrow had gone in. And then, in the pang of it, she laughed too, and cried—

“You were bound, to be sure, to fulfil your threat. And this is why—this is why, Walter—”

She could not say more without being hysterical, and departing from every rule she had made for herself.

Meanwhile, Walter stood before her, feeling in his own heart the twang of that arrow which had gone through hers, and the pity of it and wonder of it, with a poignant realisation of all; and yet found nothing to say.

After a while Mrs. Methven regained her composure, and spoke with a smile that was almost more pathetic than tears.

“After all, it was a very good reason. I am glad you used me to get rid of that man.”

“I always told you, mother,” he said, “that you had a most absurd prejudice against that man. There is no particular harm in the man. I had got tired of him. He is well enough in his own way, but he was out of place here.”

“Well, Walter, we need not discuss Captain Underwood. But don’t you see it is natural that I should exaggerate his importance by way of giving myself the better reason for having come?”

The touch of bitterness and sarcasm that was in her words made Walter start from his place again, and once more turn over the books on the table. She was not a perfect woman to dismiss all feeling from what she said, and her heart was wrung.

After a while he returned to her again.

“Mother, I acknowledge you have a good right to be displeased. But that is not all. I am glad, anyhow—heartily glad to have you here.”

She looked up at him with her eyes full, and quivering lips. Everything went by impulse in the young man’s mind, and this look—in which for once in his life he read the truth, the eagerness to forgive, the willingness to forget, the possibility, even in the moment of her deepest pain, of giving her happiness—went to his heart. After all it is a wonderful thing to have a human creature thus altogether dependent upon your words, your smile, ready to encounter all things for you, without hesitation, without a grudge. And why should she? What had he ever done for her? And she was no fool. These thoughts had already passed through his mind with a realisation of the wonder of it all, which seldom strikes the young at sight of the devotion of the old. All these things flashed back upon him at the sight of the dumb anguish yet forgiveness in her eyes.

“Mother,” he cried, “there’s enough of this between you and me. I want you not for Underwood, but for everything. Why should you care for a cad like me? but you do—”

“Care for you? Oh, my boy!”

“I know; there you sit that have travelled night and day because I held up my finger: and would give me your life if you could, and bear everything, and never change and never tire. Why, in the name of God, why?” he cried with an outburst. “What have I ever done that you should do this for me? You are worth a score of such as I am, and yet you make yourself a slave—”

“Oh, Walter, my dear! how vain are all these words. I am your mother,” she said.

Presently he drew a chair close to her and sat down beside her.

“All these things have been put before me,” he said, “to drive me to despair. I have tried to say that it was this vile lordship, and the burden of the family, that has made me bad, mother. But you know better than that,” he said, looking up at her with a stormy gleam in his face that could not be called a smile, “and so do I.”

“Walter, God forbid that I should ever have thought you bad. You have been led astray.”

“To do—what I wanted to do,” he said with another smile, “that is what is called leading astray between a man and those who stand between him and the devil; but I have talked with one who thinks of no such punctilios. Mother, vice deserves damnation; isn’t that your creed?”

“Walter!”

“Oh, I know; but listen to me. If that were so, would a woman like you stand by the wretch still?”

“My dearest boy! you are talking wildly. There are no circumstances, none! in which I should not stand by you.”

“That is what I thought,” he said, “you and—But they say that you don’t know, you women, how bad a man can be: and that if you knew—And then as for God—”

“God knows everything, Walter.”

“Ay: and knows that never in my life did I care for or appeal to Him, till in despair. If you think of it, these are not things a man can do, mother: take refuge with women who would loathe him if they knew; or with God, who does know that only in desperation, only when nothing else is left to him, he calls out that name like a spell. Yes, that is all; like an incantation, to get rid of the fiend.”

The veins were swollen on Walter’s forehead; great drops of moisture hung upon it; on the other hand his lips were parched and dry, his eyes gleaming with a hot treacherous lustre. Mrs. Methven, as she looked at him, grew sick with terror. She began to think that his brain was giving way.

“What am I to say to you?” she cried; “who has been speaking so? It cannot be a friend, Walter. That is not the way to bring back a soul.”

He laughed, and the sound alarmed her still more.

“There was no friendship intended,” he said, “nor reformation either. It was intended—to make me a slave.”

“To whom, oh! to whom?”

He had relieved his mind by talking thus; but it was by putting his burden upon her. She was agitated beyond measure by these partial confidences. She took his hands in hers, and pleaded with him—

“Oh, Walter, my darling, what has happened to you? Tell me what you mean.”

“I am not mad, mother, if that is what you think.”

“I don’t think so, Walter. I don’t know what to think. Tell me. Oh, my boy, have pity upon me; tell me.”

“You will do me more good, mother, if you will tell me—how I am to get this burden off, and be a free man.”

“The burden of—what? Sin? Oh, my son!” she cried, rising to her feet, with tears of joy streaming from her eyes. She put her hands upon his head and bade God bless him. God bless him! “There is no doubt about that; no difficulty about that,” she said; “for everything else in the world there may be uncertainty, but for this none. God is more ready to forgive than we are to ask. If you wish it sincerely with all your heart, it is done. He is never far from any of us. He is here, Walter—here, ready to pardon!”

He took her hands which she had put upon him, and looked at her, shaking his head.

“Mother, you are going too fast,” he said. “I want deliverance, it is true; but I don’t know if it is that I mean.”

“That is at the bottom of all, Walter.”

He put her softly into her chair, and calmed her agitation; then he began to walk up and down the room.

“That is religion,” he said. “I suppose it is at the bottom of all. What was it you used to teach me, mother, about a new heart? Can a man enter a second time—and be born? That seems all so visionary when one is living one’s life. You think of hundreds of expedients first. To thrust it away from you, and forget all about it; but that does not answer; to defy it and go the other way out of misery and spite. Then to try compromises; marriage, for instance, with a wife perhaps, one thinks—”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Methven, with a sad sinking of disappointment in her heart after her previous exultation, yet determined that her sympathy should not fail, “if you had a good wife no one would be so happy as I—a good girl who would help you to live a good life.”

Here he came up to her again, and, leaning against the table, burst into a laugh. But there was no mirth in it. A sense of the ludicrous is not always mirthful.

“A girl,” he said, “mother, who would bring another fortune to the family: who would deluge us with money, and fill out the lines of the estates, and make peace—peace between me and—And not a bad girl either,” he added with a softening tone, “far too good for me. An honest, upright little soul, only not—the best; only not the one who—would hate me if she knew—”

“Walter,” said Mrs. Methven, trembling, “I don’t understand you. Your words seem very wild to me. I am all confused with them, and my brain seems to be going. What is it you mean? Oh, if you would tell me all you mean and not only a part which I cannot understand!”

There never happens in any house a conversation of a vital kind, which is not interrupted at a critical moment by the entrance of the servants, those legitimate intruders who can never be staved off. It was Symington now who came in with tea, which, with a woman’s natural desire to prevent any suspicion of agitation in the family, she accepted. When he had gone the whole atmosphere was changed. Walter had seated himself by the fire with the newspapers which had just come in, and all the emotion and attendrissement were over. He said to her, looking up from his reading—

“By-the-bye, mother, Julia Herbert is here with some cousins; they will be sure to call on you. But I don’t want to have any more to do with them than we can help. You will manage that?”

“Julia Herbert,” she said. The countenance which had melted into so much softness, froze again and grew severe. “Here! why should she be here? Indeed, I hope I shall be able to manage that, as you say.”

But oh, what ignoble offices for a woman who would have given her life for him as he knew! To frighten away Underwood, to “manage” Julia. Patience! so long as it was for her boy.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

On the next morning after his mother’s arrival, Lord Erradeen set out early for Birkenbraes. Everything pushed him towards a decision; even her prompt arrival, which he had not anticipated, and the clearing away from his path of the simpler and more easy difficulties that beset him, by her means. But what was far more than this was the tug at his heart, the necessity that lay before him to satisfy, one way or the other, the demands of his tyrant. He could not send away that spiritual enemy, who held him in his grip, as he did the vulgar influence of Underwood. That had disgusted him almost from the first; he had never tolerated it, even when he yielded to it; and the effort he had made in throwing it over had been exhilarating to him, and gave a certain satisfaction to his mind. But now that was over, and he had returned again to the original question, and found himself once more confronted by that opponent who could not be shaken off—who, one way or other, must be satisfied or vanquished, if life were to be possible. Vanquished? How was he to be vanquished?—by a pure man and a strong—by a pure woman and her love—by the help of God against a spiritual tyranny. He smiled to himself as he hurried along the road, thinking of the hopelessness of all this—himself neither pure nor strong; and Oona, who, if she knew—and God, whom, as his tempter had said, he had never sought nor thought of till now. He hurried along to try if the second best was within his reach; perhaps even that might fail him for anything he knew. The thought of meeting the usual party in the house of the Williamsons was so abhorrent to him, and such a disgust had risen in his mind of all the cheerful circumstances of the big, shining house, that he set out early with the intention of formally seeking an interview with Katie, and thus committing himself from the beginning. The morning was bright and fair, with a little shrill wind about, which brought the yellow leaves fluttering to his feet, and carried them across him as he walked—now detached and solitary, now in little drifts and heaps. He hurried along, absorbed in his own thoughts, shutting his eyes to the vision of the isle, as it lay all golden, russet, and brown upon the surface of the water which gave its colours back; Walter would not look nor see the boat pushing round the corner, with the back of Hamish’s red shirt alone showing, as the prow came beyond the shade of the trees. He did not see the boat, and yet he knew it was there, and hurried, hurried on to escape all reminders. The great door at Birkenbraes stood open, as was its wont—the great stone steps lying vacant in the sunshine, and everything still about. It was the only hour at which the place was quiet. The men were out on the hill, the ladies following such rational occupations as they might have to resort to, and the house had an air of relief and repose. Walter felt that he pronounced his own fate when he asked to see Miss Williamson.

“Mr. Williamson is out, my lord,” the solemn functionary said, who was far more important and dignified than the master of the house. “I asked to see Miss Williamson,” Lord Erradeen repeated, with a little impatience; and he saw the man’s eyebrows raised.

So far as the servants were concerned, and through them the whole district, Walter’s “intentions” stood revealed.

Katie Williamson was alone. She was in her favourite room—the room especially given over to her amusements and occupations. It was not a small room, for such a thing scarcely existed in Birkenbraes. It was full of windows, great expanses of plate glass, through which the mountains and the loch appeared uninterrupted, save by a line of framework here and there, with a curious open-air effect. It was in one of the corners of the house, and the windows formed two sides of the brilliant place; on the others were mirrors reflecting the mountains back again. She sat between them, her little fair head the only solid thing which the light encountered. When she rose, with a somewhat astonished air, to receive her visitor, her trim figure, neat and alert, stood out against the background of the trees and rocks on the lower slopes of the hills. A curious transparency, distinctness, and absence of privacy and mystery were in the scene. The two seemed to stand together there in the sight of all the world.

“Lord Erradeen!” Katie said, with surprise, almost consternation. “But if I had been told, I should have come down-stairs to you. Nobody but my great friends, nobody but women, ever come here.”

“I should have thought that any one might come. There are no concealments here,” he said, expressing the sentiment of the place unconsciously. Then, seeing that Katie’s colour rose: “Your boudoir is not all curtained and shadowy, but open and candid—as you are.”

“That last has saved you,” said Katie, with a laugh. “I know what you mean—and that is that my room (for it is not a boudoir—I never boude) is far too light, too clear for the fashion. But this is my fashion, and people who come to me must put up with it.” She added, after a moment: “What did you say to Sanderson, Lord Erradeen, to induce him to bring you here?”

“I said I wanted to see Miss Williamson.”

“That was understood,” said Katie, once more with an increase of colour, and looking at him with a suppressed question in her eyes. Her heart gave a distinct knock against her breast, but did not jump up and flutter, as hearts less well regulated will do in such circumstances; for she too perceived what Sanderson had perceived, that the interview was not one to take place amid all the interruptions of the drawing-room. Sanderson was a very clever person, and his young mistress agreed with him; but, nevertheless, made a private memorandum that he should have notice, and that she would speak to papa.

“Yes, I think it must be easily understood. I have come to you with a great deal that is very serious to say.”

“You look very serious,” said Katie; and then she added, hurriedly, “And I want very much to speak to you, Lord Erradeen. I want you to tell me—who was that gentleman at Kinloch Houran? I have never been able to get him out of my mind. Is he paying you a visit? What is his name? Has he been in this country before? But oh, to be sure, he must have been, for he knew everything about the castle. I want to know, Lord Erradeen—”

“After you have heard what I have got to say—”

“No, not after—before. I tremble when I think of him. It is ridiculous, I know; but I never had any such sensation before. I should think he must be a mesmerist, or something of that sort,” Katie said, with a pale and nervous smile; “though I don’t believe in mesmerism,” she added, quickly.

“You believe in nothing of the kind—is it not so? You put no faith in the stories about my family, in the influence of the past on the present, in the despotism—But why say anything on that subject. You laugh.”

“I believe in superstition,” said Katie somewhat tremulously, “and that it impresses the imagination, and puts you in a condition to believe—things. And then there is a pride in having anything of the sort connected with one’s own family,” she said recovering herself. “If it was our ghost I should believe in it too.”

“Ghost—is not a word that means much?” Walter said. And then there was a pause. It seemed to him that his lips were sealed, and that he had no longer command of the ordinary words. He had known what he had meant to say when he came, but the power seemed to have gone from him. He stood and looked out upon the wide atmosphere, and the freedom of the hills, with a blank in his mind, and that sense that nothing is any longer of importance or meaning which comes to those who are baffled in their purpose at the outset. It was Katie who with a certain sarcasm in her tone recalled him to himself. “You came—because you had something serious to say to me, Lord Erradeen.” She was aware of what he intended to say; but his sudden pause at the very beginning had raised the mocking spirit in Katie. She was ready to defy and provoke, and silence with ridicule, the man whom she had no objection to accept as her husband—provided he found his voice.

“It is true—I had something very serious to say. I came to ask you whether you could—” All this time he was not so much as looking at her; his eyes were fixed dreamily and rather sadly upon the landscape, which somehow seemed so much more important than the speck of small humanity which he ought to have been addressing. But at this point Walter recollected himself, and came in as it were from the big, silent, observing world, to Katie, sitting expectant, divided between mockery and excitement, with a flush on her cheeks, but a contraction of her brows, and an angry yet smiling mischief in her eyes.

“To ask you,” he said, “whether you would—pass your life with me. I am not much worth the taking. There is a poor title, there is a family which we might restore and—emancipate perhaps. You are rich, it would be of no advantage to you. But at all events it would not be like asking you to banish yourself, to leave all you cared for. I have little to say for myself,” he went on after a pause with a little more energy, “you know me well enough. Whether I should ever be good for anything would—most likely—rest with you. I am at present under great depression—in trouble and fear—”

Here he came to another pause, and looked out upon the silent mountains and great breadths of vacant air in which there was nothing to help: then with a sigh turned again and held out his hand. “Will you have me—Katie?” he said.

Katie sat gazing at him with a wonder which had by degrees extinguished the sarcasm, the excitement, the expectation, that were in her face. She was almost awestricken by this strangest of all suits that could be addressed to a girl—a demand for herself which made no account of herself, and missed out love and every usual preliminary. It was serious indeed—as serious as death: more like that than the beginning of the most living of all links. She could not answer him with the indignation which in other circumstances she might have felt. It was too solemn for any ebullition of feeling. She felt overawed, little as this mood was congenial to her.

“Lord Erradeen,” she said, “you seem to be in great trouble.”

He made an affirmative movement of his head, but said no more.

“—Or you would not put such a strange question to me,” she went on. “Why should I have you? When a man offers himself to a girl he says it is because he loves her. You don’t love me—”

She made a momentary breathless pause with a half-hope of being interrupted; but save by a motion of his hand, Walter made no sign. “You don’t love me,” she went on with some vehemence, “nor do you ask me to love you. Such a proposal might be an insult. But I don’t think you mean it as an insult.”

“Not that. You know better. Anything but that!”

“No—I don’t think it is that. But what is it then, Lord Erradeen?”

Her tone had a certain peremptory sound which touched the capricious spring by which the young man’s movements were regulated. He came to himself. “Miss Williamson,” he said, “when you ran away from me in London it was imminent that I should ask you this question. It was expected on all sides. You went away, I have always believed, to avoid it.”

“Why should it have been imminent? I went away,” cried Katie, forgetting the contradiction, “because some one came in who seemed to have a prior right. She is here now with the same meaning.”

“She has no prior right. She has no right at all, nor does she claim any,” he said hurriedly. “It is accident. Katie! had you stayed, all would have been determined then, and one leaf of bitter folly left out of my life.”

“Supposing it to be so,” she said calmly, “I am not responsible for your life, Lord Erradeen. Why should I be asked to step in and save you from—bitter folly or anything else? And this life that you offer me, are you sure it is fit for an honest girl to take? The old idea that a woman should be sacrificed to reform a man has gone out of fashion. Is that the rôle you want me to take up?” Katie cried, rising to her feet in her excitement. “Captain Underwood (whose word I would never take) said you were bad, unworthy a good woman. Is that true?”

“Yes,” he said in a low tone, “it is true.”

Katie gazed at him for a moment, and then in her excitement sat down and cried, covering her face with her hands. She it was, though she was not emotional, who was overcome with feeling. Walter stood gazing at her with a sort of stupefaction, seeing the scene pass with a sense that he was a spectator rather than an actor in it, his dark figure swaying slightly against the clearness of the landscape which took so strange a part in all that was happening. It had passed now altogether out of his hands.

As for Katie, it would be impossible to tell what sudden softening, what pity, mingled with keen vexation and annoyance, forced these tears from her eyes. Her heart revolted against him and melted towards him all at once. Her pride would not let her accept such a proposal; and yet she would have liked to accept him, to take him in hand, to be his providence, and the moulder of his fate. A host of hurrying thoughts and sentiments rushed headlong through her mind. She had it in her to do it, better than any silly woman of the world, better than a creature of visionary soul like Oona. She was practical, she was strong, she could do it. But then all her pride rose up in arms. She wept a few hot impatient tears which were irrestrainable: then raised her head again.

“I am very sorry for you,” she said. “If you were my brother, Lord Erradeen, I would help you with all my might, or if I—cared for you more than you care for me. But I don’t,” she added after a pause.

He made an appealing, deprecating movement with his hands, but did not speak.

“I almost wish I did,” said Katie regretfully; “if I had been fond of you I should have said yes: for you are right in thinking I could do it. I should not have minded what went before. I should have taken you up and helped you on. I know that I could have done it; but then I am not—fond of you,” she said slowly. She did not look at him as she spoke; but had he renewed his claim upon her, even with his eyes, Katie would have seen it, and might have allowed herself to be persuaded still. But Walter said nothing. He stood vaguely in the light, without a movement, accepting whatever she might choose to say. She remained silent for a time, waiting. And then Katie sprang to her feet again, all the more indignant and impatient that she had been so near yielding, had he but known. “Well!” she said, “is it I that am to maintain the conversation? Have you anything more to say, Lord Erradeen?”

“I suppose not,” he answered slowly. “I came to you hoping perhaps for deliverance, at least partial—for deliverance—Now that you will not, there is nothing for it but a struggle to the death.”

She looked at him with a sort of vertigo of amazement. Not a word about her, no regret for losing her, not a touch of sentiment, of gratitude, not even any notice of what she had said! The sensation of awe came back to her as she stood before this insensibility which was half sublime. Was he mad? or a wretch, an egotist, wanting a woman to do something for him, but without a thought for the woman?

“I am glad,” she said, with irrepressible displeasure, “that it affects you so little. And now I suppose the incident is over and we may return to our occupations. I was busy—with my housekeeping,” she said with a laugh. “One might sometimes call a struggle with one’s bills a struggle to the death.”

He gave her a look which was half-anger, half-remonstrance; and then to Katie’s amazement resumed in a moment the tone of easy intercourse which had always existed between them.

“You will find your bills refreshing after this highflown talk,” he said. “Forgive me. You know I am not given to romantic sentiment any more than yourself.”

“I don’t know,” said Katie, offended, “that I am less open to the romantic than other people when the right touch is given.”

“But it is not my hand that can give the right touch?” he said. “I accept my answer as there is nothing else for me to do. But I cannot abandon the country,” he added after a moment, “and I hope we may still meet as good friends.”

“Nothing has happened,” said Katie with dignity, “to lessen my friendship for you, Lord Erradeen.” She could not help putting a faint emphasis on the pronouns. The man rejected may dislike to meet the woman who has rejected him, but the woman can have no feeling in the matter. She held out her hand with a certain stateliness of dismissal. “Papa need not know,” she said, “and so there will be nothing more about it. Good-bye.”

Walter took her hand in his, with a momentary perception that perhaps there had been more than lay on the surface in this interview, on her side as well as his. He stooped down and kissed it respectfully, and even with something like tenderness. “You do not refuse it to me, in friendship, even after all you have heard?”

“It shall always be yours in friendship,” Katie said, the colour rising high in her face.

She was glad he went away without looking at her again. She sat down and listened to his footsteps along the long corridor and down the stairs with a curious sensation as if he carried something with him that would not return to her again. And for long after she sat in the broad daylight without moving, leaving the books upon the table—which were not housekeeping books—untouched—going over this strange interview, turning over all the past that had any connection with Lord Erradeen. It seemed all to roll out before her like a story that had been full of interest: and now here was the end of it. Such a fit of wistful sadness had seldom come over the active and practical intelligence of Katie. It gave her for the moment a new opening in nature. But by degrees her proper moods came back. She closed this poetical chapter with a sigh, and her sound mind took up with a more natural regret the opportunity for congenial effort which she had been compelled to give up. She said to herself that she would not have minded that vague badness which he had owned, and Underwood had accused him of. She could have brought him back. She had it in her to take the charge even of a man’s life. So she thought in inexperience, yet with the powerful confidence which so often is the best means of fulfilling triumphantly what it aims at. She would not have shrunk from the endeavour. She would have put her vigorous young will into his feeble one, she thought, and made him, with her force poured into him, a man indeed, contemptuous of all miserable temptations, able to sail over and despise them. As she mused her eyes took an eager look, her very fingers twitched with the wish to be doing. Had he come back then it is very possible that Katie would have announced to him her change of mind, her determination “to pull him through.” For she could have done it! she repeated to herself. Whatever his burdens had been, when she had once set her shoulder to the wheel she would have done it. Gambling, wine, even the spells of such women as Katie blushed to think of—she would have shrunk before none of these. His deliverance would not have been partial, as he had said, but complete. She would have fought the very devils for him and brought him off. What a work it was that she had missed! not a mere commonplace marriage with nothing to do. But with a sigh Katie had to acknowledge that it was over. She could not have accepted him, she said, excusing herself to herself. It would have been impossible. A man who asks you like that, not even pretending to care for you—you could not do it! But, alas! what an opportunity lost! Saying this she gave herself a shake, and smoothed her hair for luncheon, and put the thought away from her resolutely. Katie thought of Dante’s nameless sinner who made “the great refusal.” She had lost perhaps the one great opportunity of her life.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Lord Erradeen retired very quietly, as became a man defeated. Though Katie heard his retiring steps, he hardly did so himself, as he came down the broad softly-carpeted stair-case. There was a sound of voices and of movement in the great dining-room, where a liveried army were preparing the table for one of the great luncheons, under the orders of the too discreet and understanding Sanderson—but nobody about to see the exit of the rejected suitor, who came out into the sunshine with a sort of dim recognition of the scenery of Katie’s boudoir; but the hills did not seem so near as they were in that large-windowed and shining place. Failure has always a subduing effect upon the mind even when success was scarcely desired; and Walter came out of the great house with the sense of being cut off from possibilities that seemed very near, almost certain, that morning. This subduing influence was the first that occupied his mind as he came out, feeling as if he were stealing away from the scene of what had been far from a triumph. Perhaps he was a little ashamed of his own certainty; but at all events he was subdued and silent, refraining almost from thought.

He had got securely out of the immediate neighbourhood, and was safe from the risk of meeting any one belonging to it, and being questioned where he had been, before he began to feel the softening of relief, and a grateful sense of freedom. Then his heart recurred with a bound to the former situation. Expedients or compromises of any kind were no more to be thought of; the battle must be fought out on its natural ground. He must yield to the ignominious yoke, or he must conquer. Last year he had fled, and forced himself to forget, and lived in a fever of impulses which he could not understand, and influences which drew him like—he could not tell like what—mesmerism, Katie had said, and perhaps she was right. It might be mesmerism; or it might be only the action of that uncontrolled and capricious mind which made him do that to-day which he loathed to-morrow. But however it was, the question had again become a primary one, without any compromise possible. He must yield, or he must win the battle. He put the losing first, it seemed so much the most likely, with a dreary sense of all the impossibilities that surrounded him. He had no standing ground upon which to meet his spiritual foe. Refusal, what was that? It filled his life with distraction and confusion, but made no foundation for anything better, and afforded no hope of peace. Peace! The very word seemed a mockery to Walter. He must never know what it was. His soul (if he had one) would not be his own; his impulses, hitherto followed so foolishly, would be impotent for everything but to follow the will of another. To abdicate his own judgment altogether, to give up that power of deciding for himself which is the inheritance of the poorest, never to be able to help a poor neighbour, to aid a friend: to be a mere puppet in the hands of another—was it possible that he, a man, was to give himself up, thus bound hand and foot, to a slavery harder than that of any negro ever born? It was this that was impossible he cried within himself.

And then there suddenly came before Walter, like a vision set before him by the angels, a gleam of the one way of escape. When a poor wretch has fallen into a pit, a disused quarry, perhaps, or an old coal-pit, or a still more eerie dungeon, there shines over him, far off, yet so authentic, a pure, clear intensity of light above, a concentrated glory of the day, a sort of opening of heaven in his sight. This is the spot of light, more beautiful than any star, which is all that the walls of his prison permit him to see of the common day, which above-ground is lavished around us in such a prodigal way that we make no account of it. There are times when the common virtues of life, the common calm and peacefulness, take an aspect like this to the fallen soul:—the simple goodness which, perhaps, he has scoffed at and found tame and unprofitable, appearing to the spirit in prison like heaven itself, so serene and so secure. To think he himself has fallen from that, might have possessed and dwelt in it, safe from all censure and dishonour, if he had not been a fool! To think that all the penalties to which he has exposed himself might never have existed at all—if he had not been a fool! To think that now if some miracle would but raise him up to it—And then there are moments in which even the most vicious, the most utterly fallen, can feel as if no great miracle would be required, as if a little help, only a little, would do it—when strength is subdued and low, when the sense of dissatisfaction is strong, and all the impulses of the flesh in abeyance, as happens at times. Walter’s mind came suddenly to this conviction as he walked and mused. A good life, a pure heart, these were the things which would overcome—better, far better than any gain, than any sop given to fate; and he felt that all his desires went up towards these, and that there was nothing in him but protested against the degradation of the past. He had, he said to himself, never been satisfied, never been but disgusted with the riot and so-called pleasure. While he indulged in them he had loathed them, sinning contemptuously with a bitter scorn of himself and of the indulgences which he professed to find sweet.

Strange paradox of a soul! which perceived the foulness of the ruin into which it had sunk, and hated it, yet sank deeper and deeper all the while. And now how willing he was to turn his back upon it all, and how easy it seemed to rise with a leap to the higher level and be done with everything that was past! The common goodness of the simple people about seemed suddenly to him like a paradise in which was all that was lovely. To live among your own, to do them good, to be loved and honoured, to have a history pure and of good report, nothing in it to give you a blush; to love a pure and good woman, and have her for your companion all your life—how easy, how simple, how safe it was! And what tyrant out of the unseen could rule a man like this, or disturb his quiet mastery of himself and all that belonged to him? Once upon that standing ground and who could assail you? And it seemed at that moment so easy and so near. Everything round was wholesome, invigorating, clear with the keen purity of nature, fresh winds blowing in his face, air the purest and clearest, inspiring body and soul, not a lurking shade of temptation anywhere, everything tending to goodness, nothing to evil.

“And you think these pettifogging little virtues will deliver you,” said some one quietly by his side.

There were two figures walking along in the wintry sunshine instead of one—that was all. The stone-cutter on the road who had seen Lord Erradeen pass and given him a good morning, rubbed his eyes when next he paused to rest and looked along the road. He saw two gentlemen where but one had been, though it was still so early and “no a drap” had crossed his lips. “And a pretty man!” he said to himself with mingled amazement and admiration. As for Walter, it was with an instinctive recoil that he heard the voice so near to him, but that not because of any supernatural sensation, though with an annoyance and impatience inexpressible that any one should be able to intrude on his privacy and thus fathom his thoughts.

“This is scarcely an honourable advantage you take of your powers.”

The other took no notice of this reproach. “A good man,” he said, “a good husband, a good member of society, surrounded by comfort on all sides and the approbation of the world. I admire the character as much as you do. Shall I tell you what this good man is? He is the best rewarded of all the sons of men. Everything smiles upon him: he has the best of life. Everything he does counts in his favour. And you think that such a man can stand against a purpose like mine? But for that he would want a stronger purpose than mine. Goodness,” he continued reflectively, “is the best policy in the world. It never fails. Craft may fail, and skill and even wisdom, and the finest calculations; but the good always get their reward. A prize falls occasionally to the other qualities, but theirs is the harvest of life. To be successful you have only to be good. It is far the safest form of self-seeking, and the best.” He had fallen into a reflective tone, and walked along with a slight smile upon his lips, delivering with a sort of abstract authority his monologue, while Walter, with an indescribable rage and mortification and confusion of all his thoughts, accompanied him like a schoolboy overpowered by an authority against which his very soul was rebel. Then the speaker turned upon his companion with a sort of benevolent cordiality. “Be good!” he said. “I advise it—it is the easiest course you can pursue: you will free yourself from by far the worst part of the evils common to humanity. Nothing is so bad as the self-contempt under which I have seen you labouring, the shame of vice for which you have no true instinct, only a sham appetite invented by the contradictoriness of your own mind. Be good! it pays better than anything else in life.”

Here Walter interrupted him with an exclamation of anger irrestrainable. “Stop!” he cried, “you have tortured me by my sins, and because I had nothing better to fall back upon. Will you make this more odious still?”

“By no means,” said the other, calmly. “You think I want you to be miserable? You are mistaken—I don’t. Seeking the advantage of my race as I do, there is nothing I more desire than that you should have the credit of a spotless life. I love reputation. Be good! it is the most profitable of all courses. I repeat that whatever may fail that never does. Your error is to think that it will free you from me. So far as concerns me it would probably do you more injury than good; for it may well be that I shall have to enforce measures which will revolt you and make you unhappy. But then you will have compensations. The world will believe that only bad advisers or mistaken views could move so good a man to appear on occasions a hard landlord, a tyrannical master. And then your virtue will come in with expedients to modify the secondary effect of my plans and soften suffering. I do not desire suffering. It will be in every way to our advantage that you should smooth down and soften and pour balm into the wounds which in the pursuit of a higher purpose it is necessary to make. Do not interrupt: it is the rôle I should have recommended to you, if, instead of flying out like a fool, you had left yourself from the first in my hands.”

“I think you must be the devil,” Walter said.

“No; nor even of his kind: that is another mistake. I have no pleasure in evil any more than in suffering, unless my object makes it necessary. I should like you to do well. It was I, was it not, that set before you the miserableness of the life you have been leading? which you had never faced before. Can you suppose that I should wish greatness to the race and misfortune to its individual members? Certainly not. I wish you to do well. You could have done so, and lived very creditably with the girl whom you have just left, whom you have driven into refusing you. Take my advice—return to her, and all will be well.”

“You have a right to despise me,” said Walter, quivering with passion and self-restraint. “I did take your advice, and outraged her and myself. But that is over, and I shall take your advice no more.”

“You are a fool for your pains,” he said. “Go back now and you will find her mind changed. She has thought it over. What! you will not? I said it in your interest, it was your best chance. You could have taken up that good life which I recommend to you with all the more success had there been a boundless purse to begin upon. Poor it is not so easy: but still you can try. Your predecessor was of that kind. There was nothing in him that was bad, poor fellow. He was an agglomeration of small virtues. Underwood was his one vice, a fellow who played cards with him and amused him. No one, you will find, has anything to say against him; he was thought weak, and so he was—against me. But that did not hinder him from being good.”

“In the name of Heaven what do you call yourself, that can speak of good and evil as if they were red and blue!” the young man cried. Passion cannot keep always at a climax. Walter’s mind ranged from high indignation, rage, dismay, to a wonder that was almost impersonal, which sometimes reached the intolerable point, and burst out into impatient words. It seemed impossible to endure the calm of him, the reason of him, as he walked along the hilly road like any other man.

“It is not amiss for a comparison,” he answered with a smile. His composure was not to be disturbed. He made no further explanations. While he played upon the young man beside him as on an instrument, he himself remained absolutely calm. “But these are abstractions,” he resumed, “very important to you in your individual life, not so important to me who have larger affairs in hand. There is something however which will have to be decided almost immediately about the island property. I told you that small business about the cotters in the glen was a bagatelle. On the whole, though I thought it folly at the time, your action in the matter was serviceable. A burst of generosity has a fine effect. It is an example of what I have been saying. It throws dust in the eyes of the world. Now we can proceed with vigour on a larger scale.”

“If you mean to injure the poor tenants, never! and whatever you mean, no,” cried Walter, “I will not obey you. Claim your rights, if you have any rights, publicly.”

“I will not take that trouble. I will enforce them through my descendant.”

“No! you can torture me, I am aware, but something I have learned since last year.”

“You have learned,” said his companion calmly, “that your theatrical benevolence was not an unmixed good, that your protégés whom you kept to that barren glen would have been better off had they been dislodged cruelly from their holes. The question in its larger forms is not to be settled from that primitive point of view. I allow,” he said with a smile, “that on the whole that was well done. It leaves us much more free for operations now. It gives a good impression—a man who in spite of his kind heart feels compelled to carry out—”

“You are a demon,” cried the young man, stung beyond endurance. “You make even justice a matter of calculation, even the natural horror of one’s mind. A kind heart! is that like a spade, an instrument in your hands?”

“The comparison is good again,” said his companion with a laugh; “your faculty that way is improving. But we must have no trifling about the matter in hand. The factor from the isles is not a fool like this fellow here, whom I tolerate because he has his uses too. The other will come to you presently, he will lay before you—”

“I will not hear him—once for all I refuse—”

“What, to receive your own servant?” said the other. “Come, this is carrying things too far. You must hear, and see, and consent. There is no alternative, except—”

“Except—if it comes to that, what can you do to me?” asked Walter, ghastly with that rending of the spirit which had once more begun within him, and with the host of fierce suggestions that surged into his mind. He felt as men feel when they are going mad, when the wild intolerance of all conditions which is the root of insanity mounts higher and higher in the brain—when there is nothing that can be endured, nothing supportable, and the impulse to destroy and ravage, to uproot trees and beat down mountains, to lay violent hands upon something, sweeps like a fiery blast across the soul. Even in madness there is always a certain self-restraint. He knew that it would be vain to seize the strong and tranquil man who stood before him, distorting everything in heaven and earth with his calm consistency: therefore in all the maddening rush of impulse that did not suggest itself. “What can you do to me?” How unnecessary was the question! What he could do was sensible in every point, in the torrent of excitement that almost blinded, almost deafened the miserable young man. He saw his enemy’s countenance as through a mist, a serene and almost beautiful face—looking at him with a sort of benevolent philosophical pity which quickened the flood of passion. His own voice was stifled in his throat, he could say no more. Nor could he hear for the ringing in his ears, what more his adversary was saying to him—something wildly incoherent he thought, about Prospero, Prospero! “Do you think I am Prospero to send you aches and stitches?” The words seemed to circle about him in the air, half mockery, half folly. What had that to do with it? He walked along mechanically, rapt in an atmosphere of his own, beating the air like a drowning man.

How long this horror lasted he could never tell. While still those incomprehensible syllables were wavering about him, another voice suddenly made itself heard, a touch came upon his arm. He gave a violent start, recoiling from the touch, not knowing what it was. By degrees, however, as the giddiness went off, he began to see again, to perceive slowly coming into sight those mountains that had formed the background in Katie’s room, and to hear the soft wash of the waters upon the beach. He found himself standing close to the loch, far below the road upon which he had been walking. Had he rushed down to throw himself into the water, and thus end the terrible conflict? He could never tell. Or whether it was some angel that had arrested the terrible impulse. When the mist dispersed from his eyes he saw this angel in a red shirt standing close to him, looking at him with eyes that peered out beneath the contraction of a pair of shaggy sandy eyebrows, from an honest freckled face. “My lord! you’ll maybe no have seen Miss Oona?” Hamish said. And Walter heard himself burst into a wild laugh that seemed to fill the whole silent world with echoes. He caught hold of the boatman’s arm with a grasp that made even Hamish shrink. “Who sent you here?” he cried; “who sent you here? Do you come from God?” He did not know what he said.

“My lord! you mustna take that name in vain. I’m thinking the Almighty has a hand in maist things, and maybe it was just straight from Him I’ve come, though I had no suspicion o’ that,” Hamish said. He thought for the first moment it was a madman with whom he had to do. Walter had appeared with a rush down the steep bank, falling like some one out of the skies, scattering the pebbles on the beach, and Hamish had employed Oona’s name in the stress of the moment as something to conjure with. He was deeply alarmed still as he felt the quiver in the young man’s frame, which communicated itself to Hamish’s sturdy arm. Madness frightens the most stout-hearted. Hamish was brave enough, as brave as a Highlander need be, but he was half alarmed for himself, and much more for Oona, who might appear at any moment. “I’ll just be waiting about and nothing particular to do,” he said in a soothing tone; “if ye’ll get into the boat, my lord, I’ll just put your lordship hame. Na, it’s nae trouble, nae trouble.” Hamish did not like the situation; but he would rather have rowed twenty maniacs than put Oona within reach of any risk. He took Lord Erradeen by the elbow and directed him towards the boat, repeating the kindly invitation of his country—“Come away, just come away; I’ve naething particular to do, and it will just be a pleasure.”

“Hamish,” said Walter, “you think I am out of my mind: but you are mistaken, my good fellow. I think you have saved my life, and I will not forget it. What was that you said about Miss Oona?”

Hamish looked earnestly into the young man’s face.

“My lord,” he began with hesitation, “you see—if a young gentleman is a thocht out of the way, and just maybe excited about something and no altogether his ain man—what’s that to the like of me? Never a hair o’ hairm would that do to Hamish. But when it’s a leddy, and young and real tender-hearted! We maun aye think o’ them, my lord, and spare them—the weemen. No, it’s what we dinna do—they have the warst in a general way to bear. But atween you and me, my lord, that though you’re far my shuperior, are just man and man—”

“It is you that are my superior, Hamish,” said Lord Erradeen; “but look at me now and say if you think I am mad. You have saved me. I am fit to speak to her now. Do you think I would harm her? Not for anything in the world.”

“No if you were—yoursel’—Lord Erradeen.”

“But I am—myself. And the moment has come when I must know. Take my hand, Hamish; look at me. Do you think I am not to be trusted with Oona?”

“My lord, to make Hamish your judge, what’s that but daft too? And what right have ye to call my young leddy by her name? You’re no a drap’s blood to them, nor even a great friend.”

Oona’s faithful guardian stood lowering his brows upon the young lord with a mingled sense of the superiority of his office, and of disapproval, almost contemptuous, of the madman who had given it to him. That he should make Hamish the judge was mad indeed. And yet Hamish was the judge, standing on his right to defend his mistress. They stood looking at each other, the boatman holding his shaggy head high, reading the other’s face with the keenest scrutiny. But just then there came a soft sound into the air, a call from the bank, clear, with that tone, not loud but penetrating, which mountaineers use everywhere.

“Are you there, Hamish?” Oona cried.

CHAPTER XL

Oona’s mind had been much disturbed, yet in no painful way, by the meeting with Mrs. Methven. The service which she had done to Walter’s mother, the contact with her, although almost in the dark, the sense of approach to another woman whose mind was full of anxiety and thought for him, agitated her, yet seemed to heal and soften away the pain which other encounters had given her. It gave her pleasure to think of the half-seen face, made softer by the twilight, and of the tremor of expectation and anxiety that had been in it. There was somehow in this a kind of excuse to herself for her involuntary preoccupation with all that concerned him. She had felt that there was an unspoken sympathy between her and the stranger, and that it was something more than chance which brought them together. As the boat pushed off into the loch, and she felt she had left the mother to a certain happiness in her son, her heart beat with a subdued excitement. She felt with them both, divining the soul of the mother who came to him with trembling, not approving perhaps, not fully trusting, but loving; and of the son who was at fault, who had not shown her the tenderness which her love merited in return. The sense of that union so incomplete in fact, and so close in nature, filled Oona with emotion. As the boat glided along the glittering pathway of the lake between the reflected banks, her mind was full of the two who had gone away together arm and arm into the soft darkness. How mysterious was that twilight world, the eye incapable in the dimness of perceiving which was the substance and which the shadow of those floating woods and islands! Sometimes the boat would glide into the tangled reflections of the trees, sometimes strike through what seemed a headland, a wall of rock, a long projecting promontory in this little world of water, where nothing was as it seemed. But it was not half so mysterious as life. It was but lately that this aspect of existence had struck the healthful soul of the Highland girl. Till the last year all had been open and sweet as the day about her ways and thoughts. If she had any secrets at all they had been those which even the angels guard between themselves and God, those sacred enthusiasms for the one Love that is above all: those aspirations towards the infinite which are the higher breath of gentle souls; or perhaps a visionary opening into the romance of life in its present form, which was scarcely less visionary and pure. But nothing else, nothing more worldly, nothing that her namesake, “heavenly Una with her milkwhite lamb,” need have hesitated to avow.

But since then Oona had gone far and wandered wide in a shadowy world which she shared with no one, and in which there were mystic forces beyond her fathoming, influences which caught the wanderer all unwitting, and drew her hither or thither unawares, against her will. She was no longer the princess and sovereign of life as she had been in the earlier portion of it, but rather its subject or possible victim, moved by powers which she could not understand nor resist, and which overcame her before she was aware of their existence. She thought of all this as her boat made its way, propelled by the long, strong strokes of Hamish, amid the shadows; but not angrily, not miserably as she had sometimes done, with a sadness which (if it was sadness at all) was sweet, and a secret exhilaration for which she could not account. The mother seemed somehow to step into the visionary conflict which was going on, a half-seen, unknown, but powerful champion on the side of—Was it on the side of Oona? She shrank a little from that identification, and said to herself, on the side of good. For that there was a struggle going on between good and evil, which in some mysterious way centred in Lord Erradeen, she was mysteriously aware, she could not tell how.

“Yon young lord will be the better of his mother,” Hamish was saying, his voice coming to her vaguely, running on without any thought of reply, mingled with the larger sound of the oars upon the rowlocks, the long sweep of them through the loch, the gurgle and tinkle of the water as the boat cut through. Hamish was faintly visible and even retained till it grew quite dark some trace of colour in his favourite garment. “He’ll be the better of his mother,” he said; “there will aye be a want when there’s no a leddy in the house. Weeman servants are no to lippen to. A young man when he has not a wife, he will be muckle the better for his mother.”

Oona heard the words vaguely like a chant amid all those sounds of the loch which were the music and accompaniment of her own being. She ran up the slope when they landed, and burst into the little drawing-room which was so bright after the darkness of the evening world, with a pleasure in her little adventure, and in having something to tell which is only known in the deep recesses, the unbroken quiet of rural life. Mrs. Forrester was just beginning, as she herself said, to “weary” for Oona’s return. She had put down her knitting and taken a book. Again she had put aside her book and taken the knitting. Oona was late. Oona meant the world and life to the solitary lady on the crest of the isle. The house, the little retired nest amid the trees, was full and cheerful when she was there, and though Mysie and the cook, “ben the house,” gave now and then a sign of life, yet nothing was complete until the sound of the boat drawn up on the shingle, the unshipping oars, the light firm foot on the path, followed by the heavier tread, scattering the gravel, of Hamish, gave token that all the little population were gathered within the circle of their rocks and waters. Then Mrs. Forrester brightened and turned her face towards the door with cheerful expectation: for it became a little too cold now to go down to the beach to meet the boat, even with the fur cloak upon her shoulders, which had been her wont on summer nights, and even on wintry days.

“His mother, poor young man! Dear me, that is very interesting, Oona. I was not sure he had a mother. That’s good news: for I always took an interest in Lord Erradeen, like one of our own boys. Indeed, you know, Oona, I always thought him like Rob, though their complexions are different. Dear me! I am very glad you were on the spot, and able to show her a little civility. But he should have been there, oh! he should have been there, to meet her. If any of the boys were to do that to me, I would not know what to think—to leave me to the civility of any person that might be passing. Oh, fie! no, I would not know what to think.”

“I know what you would think,” said Oona, “that there must have been some mistake, that they did not know the hour of the train, or did not know which train, or that they had been too late of starting, or—something. You would be sure to find a good reason, mamma.”

“Well, that’s true, Oona; no doubt it would be something of that kind, for it is impossible that a nice lad (and Lord Erradeen was always that) would show himself neglectful of his mother. Poor lady! and she would be tired after her journey. I am very glad you were there to show her a little attention. She will perhaps think, as so many of those English do, that we’re cold and distant in the north. My dear, you can just ring for the tea: and we’ll go and call upon her to-morrow, Oona. Well, perhaps not to-morrow; but wait till she is well rested. We’ll go on Thursday, and you can just mention it about, wherever you are to-morrow, that everybody may know. It is such a fine thing: for a young man to have his mother with him (when he has not a wife), that we must give her a warm welcome, poor lady,” Mrs. Forrester said. She had no reason to call Mrs. Methven poor, but did it as a child does, with a meaning of kindness. She was in fact much pleased and excited by the news. It seemed to throw a gleam of possible comfort over the head of the loch. “The late lord had no woman about him,” she said to herself after Oona had left the room. She had quite forgotten that she was beginning to “weary.” “Did you hear, Mysie,” she went on when “the tea” appeared with all its wealth of scones, “that Lord Erradeen was expecting his mother? I am almost as glad to hear it as if one of our own boys had come home.”

“It is a real good thing for the young lord, mem,” said Mysie; “and no doubt you’ll be going to see her, being such near neighbours, and my lord such great friends with the isle.”

“I would not say very great friends, oh no,” said Mrs. Forrester, deprecatory, but with a smile of pleasure on her face. “There is little to tempt a young gentleman here. But no doubt we will call as soon as she is rested—Miss Oona and me.”

This formed the staple of their conversation all the evening, and made the little room cheerful with a sentiment of expectation.

“And what kind of a person did you find her, Oona? And do you think she will be a pleasant neighbour? And he was at the water-side to meet her, when he saw the boat? And was he kind? and did he show a right feeling?”

These questions Mrs. Forrester asked over and over again. She put herself in the place of the mother who had arrived so unexpectedly without any one to meet her.

“And you will be sure to mention it, whoever you see to-morrow,” she repeated several times, “that she may see we have all a regard for him. I know by myself that is the first thing you think of,” Mrs. Forrester added with a pleasant smile. “The boys” were everything they ought to be. There were no eccentricities, nothing out of the way, about them to make public opinion doubtful. Wherever they went, their mother, pleased, but not surprised, heard everything that was pleasant of them. She “knew by herself” that this was what Walter’s mother would want to hear.

And Oona “mentioned it” to the Ellermore Campbells, with whom she had some engagement next morning, and where she met Miss Herbert from the Lodge. Julia was already popular with her nearest neighbours, and had an attendant at her side in the shape of a friend invited by Sir Thomas as an ardent sportsman, but of whom Julia had taken the command from his first appearance. She was in high spirits, finding everything go well with her, and slightly off her balance with the opening up of new prosperity. She threw herself into the discussion with all the certainty of an old acquaintance.

“I don’t understand why you should be so pleased,” said Julia. “Are you pleased? or is it only a make-believe? Oh, no, dear Oona; I do not suppose you are so naughty as that. You never were naughty in your life—was she? Never tore her pinafore, or dirtied her frock? It is pretty of you, all you girls, to take an interest in Walter’s mother; but for my part I like young men best without their mothers,” Miss Herbert said, with a laugh, and a glance towards the attendant squire, who said to himself that here was a girl above all pretences, who knew better than to attempt to throw dust in the eyes of wise men like himself.

Some of the Ellermore girls laughed, for there is nothing that girls and boys are more afraid of than this reputation of never having dirtied their pinafores; while their mother, with the easy conviction of a woman so full of sons and daughters that she is glad, whenever she can, to shirk her responsibilities, said:

“Well, that is true enough: a young man should not be encumbered with an old woman; and if I were Mrs. Methven—”

“But thank Heaven, you are not at all like Mrs. Methven,” said Julia. “She is always after that unfortunate boy. It did not matter where he went, he was never free of her. Sitting up for him, fancy! making him give her an account of everything. He had to count up how many times he came to see me.”

“Which perhaps would be difficult,” some one said.

Julia laughed—that laugh of triumph which disturbs feminine nerves.

“He did come pretty often,” she said, “poor fellow. Oh, most innocently! to get me to play his accompaniments. Don’t you know he sings? Oh, yes, very tolerably: if he would but open his mouth, I used to tell him; but some people like to be scolded, I think.”

“By you,” said the attendant in an undertone.

Julia gave him a look which repaid him.

“I always had to take his part. Poor Walter!” she said with a sigh. “And then when I had him by myself I scolded him. Isn’t that the right way? I used to get into great trouble about that boy,” she added. “When one has known a person all one’s life one can’t help taking an interest—And he was so mismanaged in his youth.”

“Here is a Daniel come to judgment,” said Jeanie Campbell: “so much wiser than the rest of us. Lord Erradeen must be years older than you are. Let us call, mother, all the same, and see what sort of a dragon she is.”

“I shall call, of course,” the mother said; “and I don’t want to hear anything about dragons. I am one too, I suppose. Thank you, Oona, for telling me. I should not like to be wanting in politeness. Your mother will be going to-morrow, I shouldn’t wonder? Well, we shall go the next day, girls. Erradeen marches with Ellermore, and I know your father wishes to pay every respect.”

“I suppose when you’re a lord,” said Tom, who was very far down in the family, and of no account, “you can go upon a rule of your own; but it would be far greater fun for Erradeen if he would mix himself up more with other people. Did anybody ever find out who that fellow was that was staying with him? Braithwaite thought he must be something very fine indeed—a foreign prince, or that sort. He said such a fellow couldn’t be English without being well known. It seems he knew everybody, and everything you could think of. A tremendous swell, according to Braithwaite. Oona, who was he? you ought to know.”

At this all eyes turned to Oona, who grew red in spite of herself.

“I have no way of knowing,” she said. “I saw such a person once—but I never heard who he was.”

“I am not superstitious,” said Mrs. Campbell, “but there are people seen about that old castle that—make your blood run cold. No, I never saw anything myself; but your father says—”

“My father never met this fellow,” cried Tom. “He wasn’t a fellow to make any mistake about. Neither old nor young—oh, yes, oldish: between forty and fifty; as straight as a rod, with eyes that go through and through you; and a voice—I think Erradeen himself funks him. Yes, I do. He turned quite white when he heard his voice.”

“There are all kinds of strange stories about that old castle,” said one of the Campbell sisters in an explanatory tone, addressing Julia. “You must not be astonished if you hear of unearthly lights, and some dreadful ordeal the heir has to go through, and ghosts of every description.”

“I wish, Jeanie,” said Tom, “when a fellow asks a question, that you would not break in with your nonsense. Who is talking of ghosts? I am asking who a fellow was—a very fine gentleman, I can tell you; something you don’t see the like of often—” The young man was much offended by his sister’s profanity. He went to the door with Oona, fuming. “These girls never understand,” he said; “they make a joke of everything. This was one of the grandest fellows I ever saw—and then they come in with their rubbish about ghosts!”

“Never mind,” Oona said, giving him her hand. The conversation somehow had been more than she herself could bear, and she had come away with a sense of perplexity and indignation. Tom, who was hot and indignant too, was more in sympathy with her than the others who talked about ghosts, which made her angry she could scarcely tell why.

“Let me walk with you,” said Julia Herbert, following. “I have sent Major Antrobus to look after the carriage. He is a friend of my cousin Sir Thomas, and supposed to be a great sportsman, but not so devoted to slaughter as was hoped. Instead of slaughtering, he is slaughtered, Lady Herbert says. I am sure I don’t know by whom. Do let me walk with you a little way. It is so nice to be with you.” Julia looked into Oona’s face with something of the ingratiating air which she assumed to her victims of the other sex. “Dear Miss Forrester—” and then she stopped with a laugh. “I don’t dare to call you by your Christian name.”

“It must be I then that am the dragon, though I did not know it,” Oona said; but she did not ask to be called by her Christian name.

“I see—you are angry with me for what I said of Mrs. Methven. It is quite true, however; that is the kind of woman she is. But I don’t excuse Walter, for all that. He was very wicked to her. Ever since he was a boy at school he has been nasty to his mother. Everybody says it is her own fault, but still it was not nice of him, do you think? Oh, I think him very nice, in many ways. I have known him so long. He has always been most agreeable to me—sometimes too agreeable,” said Julia with a smile, pausing, dwelling upon the recollection. “But his mother and he never got on. Sometimes those that are the very nicest out of doors are rather disagreeable at home. Haven’t you seen that? Oh, I have, a hundred times. Of course the mother is sure to be to blame. She ought to have made a cheerful home for him, you know, and asked young people, and cheerful people, instead of a set of fogies. But she never would do that. She expected him to put up with her old-fashioned ways.”

Oona made no reply. She was disturbed in the ideal that had been rising within her—an ideal not all made up of sunshine and virtue, but where at least the darker shades were of a more elevated description than petty disobediences on one hand and exactions on the other. Life becomes mean and small when dragged down to this prosaic level, which was the natural level in Julia’s mind, not pitiful and debasing, as it appeared to Oona. As there was no response to what she had said, Julia resumed, putting her hand with a great show of affection within Oona’s arm.

“I want you to let me be your friend,” she said, “and I don’t want you to be deceived. I fear you think too well of people; and when you hear anything against them, then you feel displeased. Oh, yes, I know. You are not pleased with me for telling the truth about the Methvens.”

“I wonder rather,” said Oona, somewhat coldly, “that being so much a friend of Lord Erradeen you should—betray him; for we should never have known this without you.”

“Oh, betray him; what hard words!” cried Julia, making believe to shrink and hide her face. “I would not betray him for worlds, poor dear Walter, if I had a secret of his. But this is no secret at all,” she added, with a laugh; “everybody knows they never got on. And between ourselves, Walter has been a sad bad boy. Oh, yes, there is no doubt about it. I know more of the world than a gentle creature like you, and I know that no man is very good. Oh, don’t say a word, for you don’t understand. There are none of them very good. What goes on when they are knocking about the world—we don’t know what it is: but it is no good. Everybody that knows human nature knows that. But Walter has gone further, you know, than the ordinary. Oh, he has been a bad boy. He took up with Captain Underwood before he knew anything about Kinloch Houran, while he was not much more than a boy: and everybody knows what Captain Underwood is. He has gambled and betted, and done a great many still more dreadful things. And poor Mrs. Methven scolded and cried and nagged: and that has made everything worse.”

Oona’s countenance changed very much during this conversation. It flushed and paled, and grew stern with indignation, and quivered with pity. It seemed to her that all that was said must be true: it had not the air of an invention. She asked, with a trembling voice, “If this is so, how is it that you still care for him? still—” she would have said—pursue him; but Oona’s womanly instincts were too strong for this, and she faltered and paused, and said, feebly, “still—keep him in your thoughts?”

“Oh, we must not be too hard, you know,” said Julia, smiling; “a man must sow his wild oats. Oh, I should myself had I been a man. I should not have been content with your humdrum life. I should have stormed all over the place and had a taste of everything. Don’t you think it is better for them when they have been downright bad? I do; it makes them more humble. They know, if you came to inquire into them, there would not be a word to say for them. I think it is a good thing, for my part; I don’t mind. I am not afraid of it. But still it must be confessed that Walter has been, oh! very bad! and unkind to his mother; not what people call a good son. And what is the use of her coming here? She is coming only to spoil sport, to poke her nose into everything. I have no patience with that kind of woman. Now I can see in your face you are quite shocked with me. You think it is I who am bad. But you know I have taken a great fancy to you, and I want you to know.”

“I have no wish to know,” said Oona. She had grown very pale—with the feeling of having been out in a storm and exposed to the beating of remorseless rain, the fierce hail that sometimes sweeps the hills. She heard Julia’s laugh ringing through like something fiendish in the midst of her suffering. She was glad to escape, though beaten down and penetrated by the bitter storm. The silence was grateful to her, and to feel herself alone. She scarcely doubted that it was all true. There was something in Miss Herbert’s tone which brought conviction with it: the levity and indulgence were abhorrent to Oona, but they sounded true. Julia pressed her hand as she turned back, saying something about Major Antrobus and the carriage, with a laugh at Oona’s startled looks, “Don’t look so pale; you are too sensitive. It is nothing more than all of them do. Good-bye, dear,” Julia said. She bent forward with a half-offer of a kiss, from which Oona shrank: and then went away laughing, calling out, “People will think you have seen one of those ghosts.”

A ghost! Oona went upon her way, silent, aching in heart and spirit. What was a ghost, as they said, in comparison? No ghost but must know secrets that would at the least make levity and irreverence impossible. Nothing but a human voice could mock and jibe at that horror and mystery of evil before which Oona’s spirit trembled. She had walked some way alone upon the daylight road, with the wholesome wind blowing in her face, and the calm of nature restoring her to composure, but not relieving the ache in her heart, before she came to the edge of the bank, and called in her clear voice to Hamish in the boat.

CHAPTER XLI

“Lord Erradeen!” His appearance was so unexpected, so curiously appropriate and inappropriate, that Oona felt as if she must be under some hallucination, and was beholding an incarnation of her own thoughts instead of an actual man.

And Walter was himself at so high a strain of excitement that the agitation of her surprise seemed natural to him. It scarcely seemed possible that everybody around, and specially that she, did not know the crisis at which he stood. He took the hand which she instinctively put forward, into both his, and held fast by it as if it had been an anchor of salvation.

“I am a fugitive,” he said. “Will you receive me, will you take me with you? Have pity upon me, for you are my last hope.”

“Lord Erradeen—has anything—happened? What—have you done?”

She trembled, standing by him, gazing in his face, not withdrawing her hand, yet not giving it, lost in wonder; yet having come to feel that something he had done, some guilt of his, must be the cause.

“I have done—I will tell you everything. I wish to tell you everything: let me come with you, Oona.”

All this time Hamish, standing behind Walter, was making signs to his young mistress, which seemed to no purpose but to increase her perplexity. Hamish shook his shaggy head, and his eyebrows worked up and down. He gesticulated with his arm pointing along the loch. Finally he stepped forward with a sort of desperation.

“I’m saying, Miss Oona, that we’re in no hurry. There will always be somebody about that would be glad, real glad, of a visit from you. And as his lordship is a wee disturbed in his mind, and keen to get home, I could just put him up to Auchnasheen—it would take me very little time—and syne come back for you.”

Oona stood startled, undecided between the two—alarmed a little by Walter’s looks, and much by the significance of the gestures of Hamish, and his eagerness and anxiety.

“I will no be keeping you waiting long at all—oh, not at all. And my lord will be best at home, being a wee disturbed in his mind—and we’re in no hurry—no hurry,” Hamish insisted, doing his best to place himself between the two.

“Hamish thinks I am mad,” said Walter. “I do not wonder. But I am not mad. I want neither home nor anything else—but you. It is come to that—that nobody can help me but you. First one tries expedients,” he cried, “anything to tide over; but at last one comes—one comes to the only true—”

“You are speaking very wildly,” said Oona. “I don’t know what you mean, Lord Erradeen; and Hamish is afraid of you. What is it? We are only simple people—we do not understand.”

He dropped her hand which he had held all the time, half, yet only half against her will, for there was something in the way he held it which forbade all idea of levity. She looked at him very wistfully, anxious, not with any offence, endeavouring to put away all prepossession out of her mind—the prejudice in his favour which moved her heart in spite of herself—the prejudice against him, and indignant wonder whether all was true that she had heard, which had arisen from Julia’s words. Her eyelids had formed into anxious curves of uncertainty, out of which her soul looked wistfully, unable to refuse help, perplexed, not knowing what to do.

“If you refuse to hear me,” he said, “I have no other help to turn to. I know I have no right to use such an argument, and yet if you knew—I will urge no more. It is death or life—but it is in your hands.”

Oona’s eyes searched into his very soul.

“What can I do?” she said, wondering. “What power have I? How can I tell if it is—true—” she faltered, and begged his pardon hastily when she had said that word. “I mean—I do not mean—” she said confusedly. “But oh, what can I do? it is not possible that I—”

It is cruel to have the burden put upon you of another’s fate. Sometimes that is done to a woman lightly in the moment of disappointment by a mortified lover. Was this the sort of threat he meant, or was it perhaps—true? Oona, who had no guile, was shaken to the very soul by that doubt. Better to risk an affront in her own person than perhaps to fail of an occasion in which sincere help was wanted and could be given. She had not taken her eyes from him, but searched his face with a profound uncertainty and eagerness. At last, with the sigh of relief which accompanies a decision, she said to Hamish,

“Push off the boat. Lord Erradeen will help me in,” with something peremptory in her tone against which her faithful servant could make no further protest.

Hamish proceeded accordingly to push off the boat into the water, and presently they were afloat, steering out for the centre of the loch. They were at some distance from the isle on the other side of the low, green island with its little fringe of trees, so different from the rocky and crested isles about, which is known on Loch Houran as the Isle of Rest. The low wall round about the scattered tombs, the scanty ruins of its little chapel, were all that broke the soft greenness of those low slopes. There was nothing like it all around in its solemn vacancy and stillness, and nothing could be more unlike that chill and pathetic calm than the freight of life which approached it in Oona’s boat: she herself full of tremulous visionary excitement—the young man in his passion and desperation; even the watchful attendant, who never took his eyes from Lord Erradeen, and rowed on with all his senses on the alert, ready to throw himself upon the supposed maniac at a moment’s notice, or without it did the occasion require. There was a pause till they found themselves separated by a widening interval of water from the shore, where at any moment a chance passenger might have disturbed their interview. Here no one could disturb them. Walter placed himself in front of Hamish facing Oona: but perhaps the very attitude, the freedom and isolation in which he found himself with her, closed his lips. For a minute he sat gazing at her, and did not speak.

“You wished—to say something to me, Lord Erradeen?”

It was she again, as Katie had done before, who recalled to him his purpose—with a delicate flush colouring the paleness of her face, half in shame that after all she had to interfere to bring the confession forth.

“So much,” he said, “so much that I scarcely know where to begin.” And then he added, “I feel safe with you near me. Do you know what it means to feel safe? But you never were in deadly danger. How could you be?”

“Lord Erradeen, do not mystify me with these strange sayings,” she cried. “Do they mean anything? What has happened to you? or is it only—is it nothing but—”

“A pretence, do you think, to get myself a hearing—to beguile you into a little interest? That might have been. But it is more serious, far more serious. I told you it was life or death.” He paused for a moment and then resumed. “Do you remember last year when you saved me?”

“I remember—last year,” she said with an unsteady voice, feeling the flush grow hotter and hotter on her cheek, for she did not desire to be reminded of that self-surrender, that strange merging of her being in another’s which was her secret, of which she had been aware, but no one else. “I never understood it,” she added, with one meaning for herself and one for him. The hidden sense was to her more important than the other. “It has always been—a mystery—”

“It was the beginning of the struggle,” he said. “I came here, you know—don’t you know?—out of poverty to take possession of my kingdom—that was what I thought. I found myself instead at the beginning of a dreary battle. I was not fit for it, to begin with. Do you remember the old knights had to prepare themselves for their chivalry with fasting, and watching of arms, and all that—folly—” A gleam of self-derision went over his face, and yet it was deadly serious underneath.

“It was no folly,” she said.

“Oh, do you think I don’t know that? The devil laughs in me, now and then, but I don’t mean it. Oona—let me call you Oona, now, if never again—I had neither watched nor prayed—”

He made a pause, looking at her pitifully; and she, drawn, she knew not how, answered, with tears in her eyes, “I have heard that you—had strayed—”

“That means accidentally, innocently,” he said. “It was not so. I had thought only of myself: when I was caught in the grip of a will stronger than mine, unprepared. There was set before me—no, not good and evil as in the books, but subjection to one—who cared neither for good nor evil. I was bidden to give up my own will, I who had cared for nothing else: to give up even such good as was in me. I was not cruel. I cared nothing about worldly advantages; but these were henceforward to be the rule of my life—pleasant, was it not?” he said with a laugh, “to a man who expected to be the master—of everything round.”

At the sound of his laugh, which was harsh and wild, Hamish, raising himself so as to catch the eye of his mistress, gave her a questioning, anxious look. Oona was very pale, but she made an impatient gesture with her hand to her humble guardian. She was not herself at ease; an agonizing doubt lest Walter’s mind should have given way had taken possession of her. She answered him as calmly as she could, but with a tremor in her voice, “Who could ask that, Lord Erradeen? Oh no, no—you have been deceived.”

“You ask me who! you who gave me your hand—your hand that was like snow—that had never done but kindness all your life—and saved me—so that I defied him. And you ask me who?”

He put out his hand as he spoke and touched hers as it lay in her lap. His face was full of emotion, working and quivering. “Give it to me, Oona!—will you give it to me? I am not worthy that you should touch me. It has been said to me that you would turn from me—ah, with disgust!—if you knew. And I want you to know everything. For you gave it then without pausing to think. Oona! I am going to tell you everything. Give it to me,” he said, holding out his hands one over the other to receive and clasp hers, his eyes moist, his lips appealing with a quivering smile of entreaty. And how may it be told what was in Oona’s heart? Her whole being was moved through and through with tenderness, wonder, pity. Her hand seemed to move of itself towards him. The impulse was upon her almost too strong to be resisted, to throw her arms around him, like a mother with a child—to identify herself with him whatever might follow. The womanly instinct that held her back—that kept all these impulses in check and restrained the heart that seemed leaping out of her bosom towards this man whom she loved in spite of herself, and who had need of her, most sacred of all claims—was like a frame of iron round her, against which she struggled, but from which she could not get free. Tears filled her eyes—she clasped her hands together in an involuntary appeal. “What can I do? What can I do?” she cried.

“You shall hear all,” said he. “I have tried everything before coming back to that which I always knew was my only hope. I fled away after that night. Do you remember?” (She almost smiled at this, for she remembered far better than he, and the wonder and despair of it, and his boat going away over the silent loch, and his face eager to be gone, and she indignant, astonished, feeling that her life went with him; but of all this he knew nothing.) “I fled—thinking I could escape and forget. There seemed no better way. There was no one to help me, only to mar and waste—what was all wasted and spoilt already. I want to tell you everything,” he said faltering, drooping his head, withdrawing his eyes from her, “but I have not the courage—you would not understand me. Nothing that you could imagine could reach to a hundredth part of the evil I have known.” He covered his face with his hands. The bitterness of the confession he dared not make seemed to stifle his voice and every hope.

And Oona’s heart quivered and beat against the strong bondage that held it in, and her hands fluttered with longing to clasp him and console him. What woman can bear to hear out such a confession, not to interrupt it with pardon, with absolution, with cries to bring forth the fairest robe? She touched his head with her hands for a moment, a trembling touch upon his hair, and said, “God forgive you. God will forgive you,” with a voice almost choked with tears.

He raised his head and looked at her with an eager cry. “I want—not forgiveness. I want life,” he cried, “life, new life. I want to be born again. Is not that in the Bible? To be born again, to begin again from the beginning, everything new. Help me, Oona! I am not thinking of the past. It is now I am thinking of. I am not thinking of forgiveness—punishment if you please, anything!—but a new life. He knew man who said that,” Walter cried, raising his head. “What use is it to me to forgive me? I want to be born again.”

When he thus delivered himself of his exceeding bitter cry, this woman too, like his mother, answered him with a shining face, with eyes swimming in tears, and brilliant with celestial certainty. She put out her hands to him without a moment’s hesitation, and grasped his and smiled.

“Oh, that is all provided for!” she said. “Yes, He knew! It is all ready for you—waiting—waiting. Don’t you know our Lord stands at the door and knocks, till you are ready to let Him in? And now you are ready. There is nothing more.”

He received the soft hands within his with feelings indescribable, at such a height of emotion that all the lesser shades and degrees were lost. He twined her fingers among his own, clasping them with an entire appropriation.

“Oona,” he said, “the house is yours, and all in it. Open the door to your Lord, whom I am not worthy to come near—and to everything that is good. It is yours to do it. Open the door!”

They had forgotten Hamish who sat behind, pulling his long, even strokes, with his anxious shaggy countenance fixed like that of a faithful dog upon his mistress, whom he had to guard. He saw the two heads draw very close together, and the murmur of the voices.

“What will she be saying to him? She will be winning him out of yon transport. She will be puttin’ peace in his hairt. She has a voice that would wile the bird from the tree,” said Hamish to himself. “But oh hon!—my bonnie Miss Oona,” Hamish cried aloud.

This disturbed them and made them conscious of the spectator, who was there with them, separate from all the world. Oona, with a woman’s readiness to throw her veil over and hide from the eye of day all that is too sacred for the vulgar gaze, raised her face, still quivering with tender and holy passion.

“Why do you say ‘oh hon?’ There is nothing to say ‘oh hon’ for, Hamish. No, no; but the other way.”

Hamish looked across the young lord, whose head was bowed down still over Oona’s hands, which he held. The boatman gave him a glance in which there was doubt and trouble, and then raised his shaggy eyebrows, and addressed a look of entreaty and warning to the fair inspired face that hovered over Walter like a protecting angel. “Ye will not be doing the like of that,” he said, “without thought?”

And all the time the boat swept on over the reflections in the water, by the low shore of the Isle of Rest where death had easy landing, away among the feathery islets, all tufted brown and crimson to the water’s edge, where nothing but the wild life of the woods could find footing:—nothing near them but the one anxious, humble retainer, watching over Oona, for whom no one in heaven or earth, save himself, entertained any fear. He quickened those long strokes in the excitement of his soul, but neither did Walter take any account of where he was going, nor Oona awake out of the excitement of the moment to think of the descent into common life which was so near. Hamish only, having the entire conduct of them, hastened their progress back to ordinary existence—if perhaps there might be some aid of reason and common judgment (as he said to himself) there, to see that the man was in his right senses before Oona should be bound for life.

There was no excitement about the isle. It lay as calm in the sunshine as if nothing but peace had ever passed by that piece of solid earth, with its rocks and trees, that little human world amid the waters; every jagged edge of rock, every red-tinted tree against the background of tall firs, and the firs themselves in their dark motionless green, all shining inverted in the liquid clearness around. The two were still afloat, though their feet were on solid ground; and still apart from all the world, though the winding way led direct to the little centre of common life in which Oona was all in all. But they did not immediately ascend to that gentle height. They paused first on the little platform, from which Kinloch Houran was the chief object. One of those flying shadows that make the poetry of the hills was over it for a moment, arrested as by some consciousness of nature, while they stood and gazed. There Walter stood and told to Oona the story of Miss Milnathort, and how she had said that two, set upon all good things, would hold the secret in their hands. Two—and here were the two. It seemed to him that every cloud had fled from his soul from the moment when he felt her hands in his, and had bidden her “open the door.” Oh, fling wide the door to the Christ who waits outside, the Anointed, the Deliverer of men: to peace and truth, that wait upon Him, and mercy and kindness, and love supreme that saves the world! Fling wide the doors! Not a bolt or bar but that soft hand shall unloose them, throw them wide, that the Lord may come in. Not a crevice, or corner, or dark hiding-place of evil but shall open to the light. He said so standing there, holding her hand still, not only as a lover caressing, protecting, holds the soft hand he loves, but as a man drowning will hold by the hand held out to save him. It was both to Walter. He told her, and it was true, that from the day when she had put it into his a year ago, he had never lost the consciousness that in this hand was his hope.

Oona was penetrated by all these words to the depths of her heart. What girl could be told that in her hands was the saving of one she loved, without such a movement of the soul to the highest heroism and devotion as raises human nature above itself? Her soul seemed to soar, drawing his with it, into heights above. She felt capable of everything—of the highest effort and the humblest service. That union of the spiritual being above his, and the human longing beneath, came back to her in all the joy of a permitted and befitting mood. She was his to raise him above all those soils of life of which he was sick and weary; and his to sweep away the thorns and briars out of his path; to lead him and to serve him, to mingle her being in his life so that no one henceforward should think of Oona save as his second and helpmeet: yet so to guide his uncertain way as that it should henceforward follow the track of light by which the best of all ages has gone. Even to understand that office of glory and humility demands an enlightenment, such as those who do not love can never attain. To Oona it seemed that life itself became glorious in this service. It raised her above all earthly things. She looked at him with the pity of an angel, with something of the tenderness of a mother, with an identification and willingness to submit which was pure woman. All was justified to her—the love that she had given unsought, the service which she was willing and ready to give.

He stopped before they had reached the height upon which stood home and the sweet and simple existence which embraced these mysteries without comprehending them. A darker shadow, a premonition of evil, came over him.

“And yet,” he said, “I have not told you all. I have something more still to say.”

CHAPTER XLII

What did there remain to say?

He had made his confession, which, after all, was no confession, and she had stopped his mouth with pardon. His cry for new life had overcome every reluctance in her. Her delicate reserve, the instinct that restrained her, had no more power after that. She had stood no longer behind any barrier—at that touch she had thrown her heart wide open and taken him within.

“What more?” she said. “There can be no more.”

“Much more: and you were to hear all: not only the wretched folly into which I fled, to try if I could forget, but something meaner, nearer—something for which you will despise me. Oh, do not smile; it is past smiling for you and me—for you as well as me now, Oona. God forgive me that have tangled your life in mine!”

“What is it?” she said, giving him an open look of trust and confidence. “I am not afraid.”

He was. Far worse than the general avowal of sins which she did not understand was the avowal he had to make of something which she could understand. He perceived that it would wound her to the heart—He had no fear now that Oona would throw him off. She had put her hand into his, and was ready to pour the fresh and spotless stream of her life into his. It was no more possible for her to separate herself, to withdraw from him, whatever might happen. He perceived this with a keen pang of remorse, for the first time entering with all his heart into the soul of another, and understanding what it meant. She could not now turn her back upon him, go away from him; and he was about to give her a sharp, profound, intolerable wound.

“Oona,” he said, with great humility, “it occurred to-day. I cannot tell whether you will be able to see why I did it, or how I did it. This morning—” He paused here, feeling that the words hung in his throat and stifled him. “This morning—I went—and insulted Katie Williamson, and asked her—to marry me.”

She had been listening with her sweet look of pity and tenderness—sorry, sorry to the depths of her heart, for the evil he had done—sorry beyond tears; but yet ready with her pardon, and not afraid. At the name of Katie Williamson there came up over her clear face the shadow of a cloud—not more than the shadow. When such words as these are said they are not to be understood all at once. But they woke in her a startled curiosity—a strange surprise.

“This morning—it is still morning,” she said, bewildered; “and Katie—”

“Oona! you do not understand.”

“No. I do not quite—understand. What is it? This morning? And Katie—”

“I asked her this morning to join her land to my land and her money to my money: to be—my wife.”

She drew her hand slowly out of his, looking at him with eyes that grew larger as they gazed. For some time she could not say a word, but only got paler and paler, and looked at him.

“Then what place—have I?—what am—I?” she said, slowly. Afterwards a sudden flush lighted up her face. “She would not: and then you came—to me?” she said.

A faint smile of pain came to her mouth. Walter had seen that look very recently before—when he told his mother why it was that he had sent for her. Was he capable of giving nothing but pain to those he loved? If he had tried to explain or apologise, it is doubtful whether Oona’s faculties, so suddenly and strangely strained, could have borne it. But he said nothing. What was there to say?—the fact which he had thus avowed was beyond explanation. He met her eyes for a moment, then drooped his head. There was nothing—nothing to be said. It was true. He had gone to another woman first, and then, when that failed, as a last resource had come to her. The anguish was so sharp that it brought that smile. It was incredible in the midst of her happiness. Her heart seemed wrung and crushed in some gigantic grasp. She looked at him with wondering, incredulous misery.

“You thought then, I suppose,” she said, “that one—was as good as another?”

“I did not do that, Oona; it is, perhaps, impossible that you should understand. I told you—I had tried—every expedient: not daring to come to the one and only—the one, the only—”

She waved her hand as if putting this aside, and stood for a moment looking out vaguely upon the loch—upon the sheen of the water, the castle lying darkly in shadow, the banks stretching upward and downward in reflection. They had been glorified a moment since in the new union; now they were blurred over, and conveyed no meaning. Then she said drearily—

“My mother—will wonder why we do not come in—”

“May I speak to her—at once? Let me speak.”

“Oh no!” she cried. “Say nothing—nothing! I could not bear it.”

And then he seized upon her hand, the hand she had taken from him, and cried out—

“You are not going to forsake me, Oona! You will not cast me away?”

“I cannot,” she said very low, with her eyes upon the landscape, “I cannot!” Then, turning to him, “You have my word, and I have but one word: only everything is changed. Let us say no more of it just now. A little time—I must have a little time.”

And she turned and walked before him to the house. They went in silence, not a word passing between them. Mysie, startled, came out to the door to ascertain who it could be who were preceded by the sound of footsteps only, not of voices. It was “no canny,” she said. And to think this was Miss Oona, whose cheerful voice always came home before her to warn the house that its pride and joy was approaching! Mysie, confounded, went to open the door of the drawing-room that her mistress might be made to share her uneasiness.

“It will just be Miss Oona, mem, and my lord,” Mysie said, “but very down, as if something had happened and not saying a word.”

“Bless me!” cried Mrs. Forrester. Her heart naturally leapt to the only source of danger that could affect her deeply. “It is not a mail day, Mysie,” she said; “there can be no ill news.”

“The Lord be thanked for that!” Mysie said: and then stood aside to give admittance to those footsteps which came one after the other without any talking or cheerful note of sound. Mrs. Forrester rose to meet them with a certain anxiety, although her mind was at rest on the subject of the mails. It might be something wrong at Eaglescairn: it might be—

“Dear me! what is the matter, Oona? You are white, as if you had seen a ghost,” she said, with a more tangible reason for her alarm.

“I am quite well, mamma. Perhaps I may have seen a ghost—but nothing more,” she said with a half-laugh. “And here is Lord Erradeen whom we picked up, Hamish and I.”

“And Lord Erradeen, you are just very whitefaced too,” cried Mrs. Forrester. “Bless me, I hope you have not both taken a chill. That will sometimes happen when the winter is wearing on, and ye are tempted out on a fine morning with not enough of clothes. I have some cherry brandy in my private press, and I will just give you a little to bring back the blood to your cheeks: and come in to the fire. Dear me, Oona, do not shiver like that! and you not one that feels the cold. You have just taken a chill upon the water, though it is such a beautiful morning. And so you have got your mother with you, Lord Erradeen?”

“She came yesterday. She was so fortunate as to meet—Miss Forrester.”

It seemed to him a wrong against which he was ready to cry out to earth and heaven that he should have to call her by that formal name. He paused before he said it, and looked at her with passionate reproach in his eyes. And Oona saw the look, though her eyes were averted, and trembled, with what her mother took for cold.

“You may be sure Oona was very content to be of use: and I hope now you have got her you will keep her, Lord Erradeen. It will be fine for your house and the servants, and all, to have a lady at Auchnasheen. There has not been a lady since the last lord but one, who married the last of the Glen Oriel family, a person that brought a great deal of property with her. I remember her very well. They said she was not his first love, but she was a most creditable person, and well thought upon, and kind to the poor. We were saying to ourselves, Oona and me, that we would go up the loch to-morrow and call, if you are sure Mrs. Methven is rested from her journey, and will like to see such near neighbours.”

“But, mother—” Oona said.

“But what? There is no but, that I know of. You know that it was all settled between us. We thought to-day she would be tired, and want repose rather than company. But by to-morrow she would be rested, and willing to see what like persons we are in this place. That would be very natural. And I am proud Oona was in the way, to take her across the loch. People that come from flat countries where there is little water, they are sometimes a little timid of the loch, and in the dark too. But she will have got over all that by to-morrow, and to call will be a real pleasure. Did you mention, Oona, at Ellermore and other places that Mrs. Methven had arrived?—for everybody will be keen to see your mother, Lord Erradeen.”

“It is very kind. She will rather see you than any one.”

“Hoots,” said Mrs. Forrester with a smile and a shake of her head, “that is just flattery; for we have very little in our power except good-will and kindness: but it will give me great pleasure to make your mother’s acquaintance, and if she likes mine, that will be a double advantage. But you are not going away, Lord Erradeen? You have this moment come! and Mysie will be reckoning upon you for lunch, and I have no doubt a bird has been put to the fire. Well, I will not say a word, for Mrs. Methven’s sake, for no doubt she will be a little strange the first day or two. Oona, will you see that Hamish is ready? And we will have the pleasure of calling to-morrow,” Mrs. Forrester said, following to the door. Her easy smiles, the little movements of her hands, the fluttering of the pretty ribbons in her cap, added to the calm and tranquil stream of her talk so many additional details of the softest quietude of common life. She stood and looked after the young pair as they went down together to the beach, waving her hand to them when they turned towards her, as unconscious of any disturbing influence as were the trees that waved their branches too. Passion had never been in her little composed and cheerful world. By-and-by she felt the chill of the wind, and turned and went back to her fireside. “No doubt that winter is coming now,” she said to herself, “and no wonder if Oona, poor thing, was just frozen with the cold on the water. I wish she may not have taken a chill.” This was the greatest danger Mrs. Forrester anticipated, and she did not doubt that a hot drink when Oona went to bed would make all right.

It was very strange to both of the young wayfarers to find themselves alone again in the fresh air and stillness. Since the moment when they had landed in an ecstasy of union, until this moment when they went down again to the same spot, years might have passed for anything they knew. They did not seem to have a word to say to each other. Oona was a step or two in advance leading the way, while behind her came Walter, his head drooping, his courage gone, not even the despair in him which had given him a wild and fiery energy. Despair itself seemed hopeful in comparison with this. He had risen into another life, come to fresh hopes, received beyond all expectation the help which he had sought for elsewhere in vain, but which here alone he could ever find; but now the soul had gone out of it all, and he stood bewildered, deprived of any power to say or do. All through his other miseries there had been the thought of this, like a distant stronghold in which if he ever reached it there would be deliverance. If he ever reached it! and now he had reached it, but too late. Was it too late? He followed her helplessly, not able to think of anything he could say to her, though he had pleaded so eagerly, so earnestly, a little while ago. There comes a time after we have poured out our whole soul in entreaties, whether to God or man, when exhaustion overpowers the mind, and utterance is taken from us, and even desire seems to fail—not that what we long for is less to be desired, but that every effort is exhausted and a dreary discouragement has paralysed the soul. Walter felt not less, but more than ever, that in Oona was his every hope. But he was dumb and could say no more, following her with a weight upon his heart that allowed him no further possibility, no power to raise either voice or hand. They walked thus as in a mournful procession following the funeral of their brief joy, half way down the bank. Then Oona who was foremost paused for a moment, looking out wistfully upon that familiar prospect, upon which she had looked all her life. The scene had changed, the sky had clouded over, as if in harmony with their minds; only over Kinloch Houran a watery ray of sunshine, penetrating through the quickly gathering clouds, threw a weird light. The ruinous walls stood out red under this gleam askance of the retreating sun. It was like an indication—a pointing out, to the executioner of some deadly harm or punishment, of the victim. Oona paused, and he behind her, vaguely turning as she turned, gazing at this strange significant light, which seemed to point out, “This is the spot”—was that what was meant?—“the place to be destroyed.”

“It was in shadow a moment since,” Oona said, and her voice seemed to thrill the air that had been brooding over them in a heavy chill, as if under the same influence that made them voiceless. What did she mean? and why should she care—

“The shadow was better,” he said, but he did not know what he himself meant more than what she could mean.

“It has come here,” said Oona, “between you and me. You said you insulted Katie. I cannot think that it was your meaning to—insult me.”

“Insult—you!” his mind was so clear of that, and his own meaning in respect to the other so evident to him, that the dead quietude of his discouragement yielded to a momentary impatience. But how was he to make that clear?

“No, I cannot think it. Whatever you meant, whether it was in levity, whether it was—I do not believe that.”

“Oona,” he cried, waking to the desperation of the position, “will you give me up, after all we have said?”

She shook her head sadly.

“I will never now deny you what help I can give you, Lord Erradeen.”

He turned from her with a cry of bitterness.

“Help without love is no help. Alms and pity will do nothing for me. It must be two—who are one.”

She answered him with a faint laugh which was more bitter still; but restrained the jest of pain which rose to her lips, something about three who could not be one. It was the impulse of keen anguish, but it would not have become a discussion that was as serious as life and death.

“It is all a confusion,” she said; “what to say or do I know not. It is such a thing—as could not have been foreseen. Some would think it made me free, but I do not feel that I can ever be free.” She spoke without looking at him, gazing blankly out upon the landscape. “You said it was no smiling matter to you or me—to you and me. Perhaps,” she interrupted herself as if a new light had come upon her, “that is the true meaning of what you say—two that are one; but it is not the usual creed. Two for misery—”

“Oh not for misery, Oona! there is no misery for me where you are.”

“Or—any other,” she said with a smile of unimaginable suffering, and ridicule, and indignation.

He answered nothing. What could he say to defend himself? “If you could see into my heart,” he said after a time, “you would understand. One who is in despair will clutch at anything. Can you imagine a man trying like a coward to escape the conflict, rather than facing it, and bringing the woman he loved into it?”

“Yes,” she said, “I can imagine that; but not in the man who is me.” Then she moved away towards the beach, saying, “Hamish is waiting,” with a sigh of weariness.

“Oona,” said Walter, “you will give me your hand again before we part?”

“What does it matter if I give it or hold it back? It is yours whether I will or not. You should have told me before. I should have understood. Oh, I am ashamed, ashamed! to think of all I have said to you. How could you betray me first before you told me? In the same morning! It is more than a woman can bear!” she cried.

Perhaps this outburst of passion relieved her, for she turned and held out her hand to him with a smile of pain which was heartrending. “It did not seem like this when we landed,” she said.

“And it would not seem like this, oh, Oona! if you could see my heart.”

She shook her head, looking at him all the while with that strange smile, and then drew away her hand and repeated, “Hamish is waiting.” Hamish in the background, standing up against the shining of the water, with his oar in his hand, waited with his anxious eyes upon his young lady, not knowing how it was. He would have pitched Lord Erradeen into the loch, or laid him at his feet with Highland passion, had she given him a sign. He held the boat for him instead to step in, with an anxious countenance. Love or hate, or madness or good meaning, Hamish could not make out what it was.

“To-morrow!” Walter said, “if I can live till to-morrow in this suspense—”

She waved her hand to him, and Hamish pushed off. And Oona stood as in a dream, seeing over again the scene which had been in her mind for so long—but changed. She had watched him go away before, eager to be gone, carrying her life with him without knowing it, without desiring it: he unaware of what he was doing, she watching surprised, bereaved of herself, innocently and unaware. How poignant had that parting been! But now it was different. He gazed back at her now, as she stood on the beach, leaving his life with her, all that was in him straining towards her, gazing till they were each to the other but a speck in the distance. Two that were one! Oh, not perhaps for mutual joy, not for the happiness that love on the surface seems to mean—rather for the burden, the disappointment, the shame. She waved her hand once more over the cold water, and then turned away. Till to-morrow—“if I can live till to-morrow”—as he had said.

CHAPTER XLIII

The rest of this day passed over Walter like a dream in a fever. Through a kind of hot mist full of strange reflections, all painful, terrible, lurid, with confusion and suffering he saw the people and things about him—his mother questioning him with anxious words, with still more anxious eyes; his servants looking at him wondering, compassionate; and heard now and then a phrase which came to his consciousness and thereafter continued to rise before him from time to time, like a straw cast into a whirlpool and boiling up as the bubbles went and came—something about seeing a doctor, something about sending for Mr. Cameron, with now and then an imploring entreaty, “Oh, my boy! what ails you? what is wrong?” from Mrs. Methven. These were the words that came back to his ears in a kind of refrain. He answered, too, somehow, he was aware, that there was nothing the matter with him, that he wanted no doctor, no counsellor, in a voice which seemed to come from any point of the compass rather than from his own lips. It was not because of the breach which had so rapidly followed the transport of his complete union with Oona. That, too, had become secondary, a detail scarcely important in the presence of the vague tempest which was raging within him, and which he felt must come to some outburst more terrible than anything he had yet known when he was left to himself. He had come back to Auchnasheen under the guidance of Hamish, distracted, yet scarcely unhappy, feeling that at the end, whatever misunderstanding there might be, he was assured of Oona, her companionship, her help, and, what was greatest of all, her love. She had not hesitated to let him see that he had that; and with that must not all obstacles, however miserable, disappear at the last? But when he landed, the misery that fell upon him was different from the pain of the temporary misunderstanding. He became conscious at once that it was the beginning of the last struggle, a conflict which might end in—he knew not what: death, downfall, flight, even shame, for aught he knew. The impulse was strong upon him to speed away to the hillside and deliver himself over to the chances of this battle, which had a fierce attraction for him on one hand, while on the other it filled him with a mad terror which reason could not subdue.

So strong was this impulse that he hurried past the gate of Auchnasheen and took the path that led up to the moors, with a sense of flying from, yet flying to, his spiritual enemies. He was met there by the gamekeeper, who began to talk to him about the game, and the expediency of inviting “twa-three” gentlemen to shoot the coverts down by Corrieden, an interruption which seemed to his preoccupied soul too trivial, too miserable, to be borne with. He turned from the astonished speaker in the midst of his explanations, and rushed back with the impatience which was part of his character, exaggerated into a sort of mad intolerance of any interruption. Not there, not there—he began to remember the wild and mad contest which last year had gone on upon those hills, and with an instantaneous change of plan retraced his steps to the house, and burst into his mother’s presence, so pale, so wild, with eyes almost mad in their fire, looking out from the curves of his eyelids like those of a maniac. Her terror was great. She came up to him and laid her hands upon him, and cried out, What was it? what was it? After this the active frenzy that had possessed him seemed to sink into a maze of feverish confusion which was less violent, less terrible, more like the operations of nature. He was not aware that he looked at her piteously, and said, “I want to stay with you, mother”—childlike words, which penetrated with a misery that was almost sweet to Mrs. Methven’s very heart. She put her arms round him, drawing down his head upon her bosom, kissing his forehead with trembling lips, holding him fast, as when he was a child and came to her for consolation. He was scarcely aware of all this, and yet it soothed him. The excitement of his brain was calmed. That uneasy haze of fever which confuses everything, the half-delirium of the senses through which the mind looks as through a mist, uneasy, yet with visions that are not all miserable, was a sort of paradise in comparison with the frenzy of a conflict in which every expedient of torture was exercised upon him. He was grateful for the relief. That he did not know what he said or what she said, but heard the answering voices far off, like something musical, was nothing. There was a kind of safety in that society: the enemy could not show himself there. He had to stand off baffled and wait—ah, wait! that was certain. He had not gone away—not Oona, not the mother, could save the victim altogether. They protected him for the moment, they held the foe at arm’s length: but that could not be always. Sooner or later the last struggle must come.

Walter remained within-doors all day. It was contrary to all his habits, and this of itself added to the alarm of all about him; but it was not inconsistent with the capricious impatient constitution of his mind, always ready to turn upon itself at a moment’s notice, and do that which no one expected. During every moment of this long day he had to resist the strong impulse which was upon him—more than an impulse, a tearing and rending of his spirit, sometimes rising into sudden energy almost inconceivable—to go out and meet his enemy. But he held his ground so far with a dumb obstinacy which also was part of his character, and which was strengthened by the sensation of comparative exemption so long as he had the protection of others around him, and specially of his mother’s presence. It was with reluctance that he saw her go out of the room even for a moment; and his eager look of inquiry when she left him, his attempts to retain her, his strained gaze towards the door till she returned, gave Mrs. Methven a sort of anguish of pleasure, if those contradictory words can be put together. To feel that she was something, much to him, could not but warm her heart; but with that was the misery of knowing that something must indeed be very far wrong with Walter to make him thus, after so many years of independence, cling to his mother.

“It is like a fever coming on,” she said to Symington, with whom alone she could take any counsel. “He is ill, very ill, I am sure of it. The doctor must be sent for. Have you ever seen him like this before?”

“My lady,” said old Symington, “them that have the Methvens to deal with have need of much gumption. Have I seen him like that before? Oh, yes, I have seen him like that before. It is just their hour and the power o’ darkness. Let him be for two-three days—”

“But in two or three days the fever may have taken sure hold of him. It may be losing precious time: it may get—fatal force—”

“There is no fears of his life,” said old Symington; “there is enough fear of other things.”

“Of what? Oh, for God’s sake! tell me; don’t leave me in ignorance!” the mother cried.

“But that’s just what I cannot do,” Symington said. “By the same taken that I ken nothing mysel’.”

While this conversation was going on, Walter, through his fever, saw them conspiring, plotting, talking about him as he would have divined and resented in other moods, but knew vaguely now in his mist of being that they meant him no harm, but good.

And thus the day went on. He prolonged it as long as he could, keeping his mother with him till long after the hour when the household was usually at rest. But, however late, the moment came at last when he could detain her no longer. She, terrified, ignorant, fearing a dangerous illness, was still more reluctant to leave him, if possible, than he was to let her go, and would have sat up all night watching him had she ventured to make such a proposal. But at last Walter summoned up all his courage with a desperate effort, an effort of despair which restored him to himself and made a clear spot amid all the mist and confusion of the day.

“Mother,” he said, as he lighted her candle, “you have been very good to me to-day! Oh I know you have always been good—and I always ungrateful; but I am not ungrateful now.”

“Oh, Walter! what does that word mean between you and me? If I could but do anything. It breaks my heart to see you like this.”

“Yes, mother,” he said, “and it may break my heart. I don’t know what may come of it—if I can stand, or if I must fall. Go and pray for me, mother.”

“Yes, my dearest—yes, my own boy! as I have done every day, almost every hour, since ever you were born.”

“And so will Oona,” he said. He made no response of affection to this brief record of a life devoted to him, which Mrs. Methven uttered with eyes full of tears and every line of her countenance quivering with emotion. He was abstracted into a world beyond all such expressions and responses, on the verge of an ordeal too terrible for him, more terrible than any he had yet sustained—like a man about to face fearful odds, and counting up what aids he could depend upon. “And so will Oona,” he repeated to himself, aloud but unawares: and looked up at his mother with a sad glimmer of a smile and kissed her, and said, “That should help me.” Then, without waiting for her to go first, he walked out of the room, like a blind man, feeling with his hand before him, and not seeing where he went.

For already there had begun within him that clanging of the pulses, that mounting of every faculty of the nerves and blood to his head, the seat of thought, which throbbed as though it would burst, and to his heart, which thundered and laboured and filled his ears with billows of sound. All his fears, half quiescent in the feverish pause of the day, were suddenly roused to action, ranging themselves to meet the last, the decisive, the most terrible assault of all. He went into his room and closed the door upon all mortal succour. The room was large and heavily furnished in the clumsy fashion of the last generation—heavy curtains, huge articles of furniture looming dark in the partial light, a gloomy expanse of space, dim mirrors glimmering here and there, the windows closely shut up and shrouded, every communication of the fresh air without, or such succour of light as might linger in the heavens, excluded. The old castle, with its ruined battlements, seemed a more fit scene for spiritual conflict than the dull comfort of this gloomy chamber, shut in from all human communication. But Walter made no attempt to throw open the closed windows. No help from without could avail him, and he had no thought or time to spare for any exertion. He put his candle on the table and sat down to await what should befall.

The night passed like other nights to most men, even to the greater number of the inhabitants in this house. Mrs. Methven after a while, worn out, and capable of nothing that could help him, dozed and slept, half dressed, murmuring familiar prayers in her sleep, ready to start up at the faintest call. But there came no call. Two or three times in the night there was a faint stir, and once old Symington, who was also on the alert, and whose room was near that of his master, saw Lord Erradeen come out of his chamber with a candle in his hand, the light of which showed his countenance all ghastly and furrowed as with the action of years, and go down-stairs. The old man, watching from the gallery above, saw his master go to the door, which he opened, admitting a blast of night wind which seemed to bring in the darkness as well as cold. Symington waited trembling to hear it clang behind the unfortunate young man. Where was he going to in the middle of the night? But after a few minutes, the door, instead of clanging, closed softly, and Walter came back. It might be that this happened more than once while the slow hours crept on, for the watcher, hearing more than there was to hear, thought that there were steps about the house, and vague sounds of voices. But this was all vanity and superstition. No one came in—with none, save with his own thoughts, did Walter speak. Had his enemy entered bodily, and even with maddening words maintained a personal conflict, the sufferer would have been less harshly treated. Once, as Symington had seen, he was so broken down by the conflict that he was on the eve of a shameful flight which would have been ruin. When he came down-stairs with his candle in the dead of the night and opened the great hall door, he had all but thrown down his arms and consented that nothing remained for him but to escape while he could, as long as he could, to break all ties and abandon all succour, and only flee, flee from the intolerable moment. He had said to himself that he could bear it no longer, that he must escape anyhow, at any cost, leaving love and honour, and duty and every higher thought—for what could help him—nothing—nothing—in earth or heaven.

That which touched him to the quick was not any new menace, it was not the horror of the struggles through which he had already passed, it was the maddening derision with which his impulses were represented to him as the last expedients of the most refined selfishness. When his tormentor in the morning had bidden him, with a smile, “Be good!” as the height of policy, it had seemed to Walter that the point of the intolerable was reached, and that life itself under such an interpretation became insupportable, a miserable jest, a mockery hateful to God and man; but there was yet a lower depth, a more hateful derision still. Love! what was his love? a way of securing help, a means of obtaining, under pretences of the finest sentiment, some one who would supremely help him, stand by him always, protect him with the presence of a nature purer than his own. Nothing was said to the unhappy young man. It was in the course of his own thoughts that this suggestion arose like a light of hell illuminating all the dark corners of his being. Had he ever said to Oona that he loved her? Did he love her? Was it for any motive but his own safety that he sought her? Katie he had sought for her wealth, for the increase of importance she could bring, for the relief from torture she could secure to him. And Oona, Oona whom he loved! Was it for love he fled to her? Oh, no, but for safety! All was miserable, all was self, all was for his own interest, to save him, to emancipate him, to make life possible for him. He had started to his feet when this intolerable consciousness (for was it not true?) took possession of him. It was true. She was sweet and fair, and good and lovely, a creature like the angels; but he, miserable, had thought only that in her company was safety—that she could deliver him. He sent forth a cry which at the same time sounded like the laughter of despair, and seemed to shake the house; and took up his candle, and opened his door and hurried forth to escape, where he did not know, how he did not know nor care, to escape from the ridicule of this life, the horror of this travesty and parody of everything good and fair. Heaven and earth! to seek goodness because it was the most profitable of all things; to seek love because it was safety; to profane everything dear and sacred to his own advantage! Can a man know this, and recognise it with all the masks and pretences torn off, and yet consent to live, and better himself by that last desecration of all! He went down with hurried steps through the silence of his house, that silence through which was rising the prayers of the mother in whose love too he had taken refuge when in despair, whom he had bidden to go and pray, for his advantage, solely for him, that he might steal from God a help he did not deserve, by means of her cries and tears. “And so would Oona,” he had said. Oh, mockery of everything sacred!—all for him, for his self-interest, who deserved nothing, who made use of all.

He opened the door, and stood bare-headed, solitary, on the edge of the black and lonely night; behind him life and hope, and torture and misery—before the void, the blank into which the wretched may escape and lose—if not themselves, that inalienable heritage of woe, yet their power to harm those who love them. He loved nobody, it seemed, but for himself—prized nothing but for himself; held love, honour, goodness, purity, only as safeguards for his miserable life. Let it go then, that wretched contemner of all good—disappear into the blackness of darkness, where God nor man should be disturbed by its exactions more!

The night was wild with a raving wind that dashed the tree-tops against the sky, and swept the clouds before it in flying masses; no moon, no light, gloom impenetrable below, a pale glimpse of heaven above, swept by black billows of tumultuous clouds; somewhere in the great gloom, the loch, all invisible, waited for the steps that might stumble upon its margin; the profound world of darkness closed over every secret that might be cast into it. He stood on the threshold in a momentary pause, forlorn, alone, loosing his hold of all that he had clung to, to save him. Why should he be saved who was unworthy? Why trouble earth or heaven? The passion and the struggle died out of Walter’s soul: a profound sadness took possession of him; he felt his heart turn trembling within him, now that he had given up the instinct of self-preservation which had driven him to her feet—to Oona whom he loved. God bless her! not for him would be that sweet companionship, and yet of all things the world contained, was not that the best? Two that should be one. All that was external died away from him in his despair. He forgot for the first time since it had been revealed to him, that he had an enemy, a tyrant waiting for his submission. His heart turned to the love which he had thought he dishonoured, without even recollecting that cursed suggestion. It seemed to him now that he was giving it up for Oona’s sake, and that only now all the beauty of it, the sweetness of it, was clear to him. Oh, the pity! to see all this so lovely, so fair, and yet have to resign it! What was everything else in comparison with that? But for her sake, for her dear sake!

How dark it was, impenetrable, closing like a door upon the mortal eyes which had in themselves no power to penetrate that gloom! He stepped across the threshold of life, and stood outside, in the dark. He turned his eyes—for once more, for the last time, in the great calm of renunciation, his heart in a hush of supreme anguish, without conflict or struggle—to where she was, separated from him only by silent space and atmosphere, soon to be separated by more perfect barriers; only to turn his head that way, not even to see where she was hidden in the night—so small a satisfaction, so little consolation, yet something before the reign of nothingness began.

All dark; but no, half way between heaven and earth, what was that, shining steady through the gloom? Not a star; it was too warm, too large, too near; the light in Oona’s window shining in the middle of the night when all was asleep around. Then she was not asleep, though everything else was, but watching—and if watching, then for him. The little light, which was but a candle in a window, suddenly, brilliantly lighted up the whole heavens and earth to Walter. Watching, and for him; praying for him, not because of any appeal of his, but out of her own heart, and because she so willed it—out of the prodigality, the generous, unmeasured love which it was her choice to give him—not forced but freely, because she so pleased. He stood for a moment with awe in his heart, arrested, not able to make another step, pale with the revolution, the revelation, the change of all things. His own dark thoughts died away; he stood astonished, perceiving for the first time what it was. To have become part of him had brought no joy to Oona, but it was done, and never could be undone; and to be part of her, what was that to Walter? He had said it without knowing what it meant, without any real sense of the great thing he said. Now it fell upon him in a great wonder, full of awe. He was hers, he was her, not himself henceforward, but a portion of another, and that other portion of him standing for him at the gates of heaven. His whole being fell into silence, overawed. He stepped back out of the night and closed softly the great door, and returned to his room, in which everything was stilled by a spell before which all evil things fly—the apprehension of that love which is unmerited, unextorted, unalterable. When he reached his room, and had closed the door, Walter, with trembling hands undid the window, and flung it open to the night, which was no more night or darkness, but part of the everlasting day, so tempered that feeble eyes might perceive those lights which hide themselves in the sunshine. What was it he saw? Up in the heavens, where the clouds swept over them, stars shining, undisturbed, though hidden by moments as the masses of earthly vapour rolled across the sky; near him stealing out of his mother’s window a slender ray of light that never wavered; further off, held up as in the very hand of love, the little lamp of Oona. The young man was silent in a great awe; his heart stirring softly in him, hushed, like the heart of a child. For him! unworthy! for him who had never sought the love of God, who had disregarded the love of his mother, who had profaned the love of woman: down, down on his knees—down to the dust, hiding his face in gratitude unutterable. He ceased to think of what it was he had been struggling and contending for; he forgot his enemy, his danger, himself altogether, and, overawed, sank at the feet of love, which alone can save.

CHAPTER XLIV

Lord Erradeen was found next morning lying on his bed full dressed, sleeping like a child. A man in his evening dress in the clear air of morning is at all times a curious spectacle, and suggestive of many uncomfortable thoughts, but there was about Walter as he lay there fast asleep an extreme youthfulness not characteristic of his appearance on ordinary occasions, which made the curious and anxious spectator who bent over him, think instinctively of a child who had cried itself to sleep, and a convalescent recovering from a long illness. Symington did not know which his young master resembled the most. The old man stood and looked at him, with great and almost tender compassion. One of the windows stood wide open admitting the air and sunshine. But it had evidently been open all night, and must have chilled the sleeper through and through. Symington had come at his usual hour to wake Lord Erradeen. But as he looked at him the water came into his eyes. Instead of calling him he covered him carefully with a warm covering, softly closed the window, and left all his usual morning preparations untouched. This done, he went down-stairs to the breakfast-room where Mrs. Methven, too anxious to rest, was already waiting for her son. Symington closed the door behind him and came up to the table which was spread for breakfast.

“My lady,” he said, “my lord will no be veesible for some time. I found him sleeping like a bairn, and I had not the heart to disturb him. No doubt he’s had a bad night, but if I’m any judge of the human countenance he will wake another man.”

“Oh, my poor boy! You did well to let him rest, Symington. I will go up and sit by him.”

“If ye will take my advice, my lady, ye will just take a little breakfast; a good cup of tea, and one of our fine fresh eggs, or a bit of trout from the loch; or I would find ye a bonnie bit of the breast of a bird.”

“I can eat nothing,” she said, “when my son is in trouble.”

“Oh, canny, canny, my lady. I am but a servant, but I am one that takes a great interest. He’s in no trouble at this present moment; he’s just sleeping like a baby, maybe a wee bit worn out, but not a line o’ care in his face; just sleepin’—sleepin’ like a little bairn. It will do you mair harm than him if I may mak’ so bold as to speak. A cup of tea, my lady, just a cup of this fine tea, if nothing else—it will do ye good. And I’ll answer for him,” said Symington. “I’m well acquaint with all the ways of them,” the old servant added, “if I might venture, madam, to offer a word of advice, it would be this, just to let him bee.”

A year ago Mrs. Methven would have considered this an extraordinary liberty for a servant to take, and perhaps would have resented the advice; but at that time she did not know Symington, nor was she involved in the mysterious circumstances of this strange life. She received it with a meekness which was not characteristic, and took the cup of tea, which he poured out for her, with a lump of sugar too much, by way of consolation, and a liberal supply of cream, almost with humility. “If he is not better when he comes down-stairs, I think I must send for the doctor, Symington.”

“I would not, my lady, if I were you. I would just watch over him, but let him bee. I would wait for two or three days and just put up with everything. The Methvens are no just a race like other folk. Ye require great judgment to deal with the Methvens. Ye have not been brought up to it, my lady, like me.”

All this Mrs. Methven received very meekly, and only gratified herself with a cup of tea which was palatable to her, after Symington, having done everything he could for her comfort, had withdrawn. She was very much subdued by the new circumstances in which she found herself, and felt very lonely and cast away, as in a strange land where everything was unknown. She sat for a long time by herself, trying to calm her thoughts by what Symington had said. She consented that he knew a great deal more than she did, even of her son in his new position, and had come to put a sort of infinite faith in him as in an oracle. But how hard it was to sit still, or to content herself with looking out upon that unfamiliar prospect, when her heart was longing to be by her son’s bedside! Better to let him bee!—alas, she knew very well and had known for long that it was better to let him bee. But what was there so hard to do as that was? The shrubberies that surrounded the window allowed a glimpse at one side of the loch, cold, but gleaming in the morning sunshine. It made her shiver, yet it was beautiful: and as with the landscape, so it was with her position here. To be with Walter, ready to be of use to him, whatever happened, that was well; but all was cold, and solitary, and unknown. Poor mother! She had loved, and cherished, and cared for him all the days of his life, and a year since he had scarcely seen Oona; yet it was Oona’s love, and not his mother’s, which had made him understand what love was. Strange injustice, yet the injustice of nature, against which it is vain to rebel.

While Mrs. Methven, sad and anxious and perplexed, sat in the unfamiliar room, and looked on the strange landscape in which she found no point of sympathy, Oona in the solitude of the isle, was full of similar thoughts. The day which had passed so miserably to Walter had gone over her in that self-repression which is one of the chief endowments of women, in her mother’s cheerful society, and amid all the little occupations of her ordinary life. She had not ventured to indulge herself even in thought, unless she had been prepared, as she was not, to open everything to Mrs. Forrester—and thus went through the hours in that active putting aside of herself and her own concerns, which is sometimes called hypocrisy and sometimes self-renunciation. She smiled, and talked, and even ate against her will, that her mother might not take fright and search into the cause, so that it was not till she had retired into the refuge of her own room that she was at liberty to throw herself down in all the abandonment of solitude and weep out the tears which made her brow heavy, and think out the thoughts with which her mind was charged almost to bursting. Her candle burned almost all the night long, until long after the moment in which the sight of it held Walter back from the wild flight from her and everything to which his maddening thoughts had almost driven him.

The conflict in Oona’s mind was longer, if not so violent. With an effort she was able to dismiss herself from the consideration, and with that entire sympathy which may mistake the facts but never the intention, to enter into the mind of her lover. There was much that she could not understand, and did not attempt to fathom, and the process was not one of those that bring happiness, as when a woman, half-adoring, follows in her own exalted imagination the high career of the hero whom she loves. Walter was no hero, and Oona no simple worshipper to be beguiled into that deification. She had to account to herself for the wanderings, the contradictions, the downfalls of a man of whom she could not think, as had been the first impulse of pain, that any woman would satisfy him, that Katie or Oona, it did not matter which—but who it was yet true had offered himself to Katie first, had given himself to vice (as she remembered with a shudder) first of all, and had been roaming wildly through life without purpose or hope. In all the absolutism of youth to know this, and yet to recognise that the soul within may not be corrupt, and that there may be still an agony of longing for the true even in the midst of the false, is difficult indeed. She achieved it, but it was not a happy effort. Bit by bit it became clearer to her. Had she known the character of the interview with Katie, which gave her grievous pain even when she reasoned it out and said to herself that she understood it, the task would have been a little less hard: but it was hard and very bitter, by moments almost more than she could bear. As she sat by the dying fire, with her light shining so steadily, like a little Pharos of love and steadfastness, her mind went through many faintings and moments of darkness. To have to perceive and acknowledge that you have given your heart and joined your life to that of a man who is no hero, one in whom you cannot always trust that his impulses will be right, is a discovery which is often made in after life, but by degrees, and so gently, so imperceptibly, that love suffers but little shock. But to make this discovery at the very outset is far more terrible than any other obstacle that can stand in the way. Oona was compelled to face it from the first moment almost of a union which she felt in herself no possibility of breaking. She had given herself, and she could not withdraw the gift any more than she could separate from him the love which long before she had been betrayed, she knew not how, into bestowing upon him unasked, undesired, to her own pain and shame.

As she sat all through the night and felt the cold steal upon her, into her very heart, and the desolation of the darkness cover her while she pondered, she was aware that this love had never failed, and knew that to abandon him was no more possible to her than if she had been his wife for years. The girl had come suddenly, without warning, without any fault of hers, out of her innocence and lightheartedness, into the midst of the most terrible problem of life. To love yet not approve, to know that the being who is part of you is not like you, has tendencies which are hateful to you, and a hundred imperfections which the subtlest casuistry of love cannot justify—what terrible fate is this, that a woman should fall into it unawares and be unable to free herself? Oona did not think of freeing herself at all. It did not occur to her as a possibility. How she was to bear his burden which was hers, how she was to reconcile herself to his being as it was, or help the good in him to development, and struggle with him against the evil, that was her problem. Love is often tested in song and story by the ordeal of a horrible accusation brought against the innocent, whom those who love him, knowing his nature, stand by through all disgrace, knowing that he cannot be guilty, and maintaining his cause in the face of all seeming proof. How light, how easy, what an elementary lesson of affection! But to have no such confidence, to take up the defence of the sinner who offends no one so much as yourself, to know that the accusations are true—that is the ordeal by fire, which the foolish believe to be abolished in our mild and easy days. Oona saw it before her, realised it, and made up her mind to it solemnly during that night of awe and pain. This was her portion in the world: not simple life and happiness, chequered only with shadows from terrible death and misfortune, such as may befall the righteous, but miseries far other, far different, to which misfortune and death are but easy experiments in the way of suffering. This was to be her lot.

And yet love is so sweet! She slept towards morning, as Walter did, and when she woke, woke to a sense of happiness so exquisite and tender that her soul was astonished and asked why in an outburst of gratitude and praise to God. And it was not till afterwards that the burden and all the darkness came back to her. But that moment perhaps was worth the pain of the other—one of those compensations, invisible to men, with which God still comforts His martyrs. She rose from her bed and came back to life with a face full of new gravity and thoughtfulness, yet lit up with smiles. Even Mrs. Forrester, who had seen nothing and suspected nothing on the previous night except that Oona had perhaps taken a chill, felt, though she scarcely understood, a something in her face which was beyond the ordinary level of life. She remarked to Mysie, after breakfast, that she was much relieved to see that Miss Oona’s cold was to have no bad result. “For I think she is looking just bonnier than usual this morning—if it is not my partiality—like a spring morning,” Mrs. Forrester said.

“Ah mem, and mair than that,” said Mysie. “God bless her! She is looking as I have seen her look the Sabbath of the Sacrament; for she’s no like the like of us, just hardened baith to good and evil, but a’ in a tremble for sorrow and joy, when the occasion comes round.”

“I hope we are not hardened,” said Mrs. Forrester; “but I know what you mean, Mysie, though you cannot perhaps express it like an educated person; and I was afraid that she was taking one of her bad colds, and that we should be obliged to put off our visit to Mrs. Methven—which would have been a great pity, for I had promised to Lord Erradeen.”

“Do ye not think, mem,” said Mysie, “that yon young lord he is very much taken up with—the isle and those that are on it?”

“Hoots,” said Mrs. Forrester, with a smile, “with you and me, Mysie, do you think? But that might well be after all, for I would not wonder but he felt more at home with the like of us, that have had so much to do with boys and young men, and all the ways of them. And you know I have always said he was like Mr. Rob, which has warmed my heart to him from the very first day.”

Perhaps the mother was, no more than Mysie, inclined to think that she and her old maid won the young lord’s attention to the isle: but a woman who is a girl’s mother, however simple she may be, has certain innocent wiles in this particular. Lord Erradeen would be a great match for any other young lady on the loch, no doubt: but for Oona what prince was good enough? They both thought so, yet not without a little flutter of their hearts at the new idea which began to dawn.

It was once more a perfectly serene and beautiful day, a day that was like Oona’s face, adapted to that “Sabbath of the Sacrament” which is so great a festival in rural Scotland, and brings all the distant dwellers out of the glens and villages. About noon, when the sun was at its height, and the last leaves on the trees seemed to reflect in their red and yellow, and return, a dazzling response to his shining, Hamish, busy about his fishing tackle on the beach, perceived a boat with a solitary rower, slowly rounding the leafy corners, making a circuit of the isle. Hamish was in no doubt as to the rower; he knew everything as well as the two who were most closely concerned. His brow, which for the last twenty-four hours had been full of furrows, gradually began to melt out of those deep-drawn lines, his shaggy eyebrows smoothed out, his mouth began to soften at the corners. There was much that was mysterious in the whole matter, and Hamish had not been able to account to himself for the change in the young pair who had stepped out of his boat on to the isle in an ecstasy of happiness, and had returned sombre, under the shadow of some sudden estrangement which he could not understand. Neither could he understand why it was that the young lord hovered about without attempting to land at the isle. This was so unlike the usual custom of lovers, that not even the easy explanation, half-contemptuous, half-respectful, which the habits of the masters furnish to their servants, of every eccentricity, answered the occasion—and Hamish could not but feel that there was something “out of the ordinary” in the proceeding. But his perplexity on this subject did not diminish his satisfaction in perceiving that the young lord was perfectly capable of managing his boat, and that no trace of the excitement of the previous day was visible in its regular motion, impelled now and then by a single stroke, floating on the sunny surface of the water within sight of the red roofs and shining windows of the house, and kept in its course out of the way of all rocks and projecting corners by a skill which could not, Hamish felt sure, be possessed by a disordered brain. This solaced him beyond telling, for though he had not said a word to any one, not even to Mysie, it had lain heavily upon his heart that Miss Oona might be about to link her life to that of a daft man. She that was good enough for any king! and what were the Erradeens to make so muckle work about, but just a mad race that nobody could understand? And the late lord had been one that could not hold an oar to save his life, nor yet yon Underwood-man that was his chosen crony. But this lad was different! Oh! there was no doubt that there was a great difference; just one easy touch and he was clear of the stanes yonder, that made so little show under the water—and there was that shallow bit where he would get aground if he didna mind; but again a touch and that difficulty too was cleared. It was so well done that the heart of Hamish melted altogether into softness. And then he began to take pity upon this modest lover. He put his hands to his mouth and gave forth a mild roar which was not more than a whisper in kind intention.

“The leddies are at home, and will ye no land, my lord?” Hamish cried.

Lord Erradeen shook his head, and sent his boat soft gliding into a little bay under the overhanging trees.

“Hamish,” he said, “you can tell me. Are they coming to-day to Auchnasheen?”

“At half-past two, my lord,” breathed Hamish through his curved hands, “they’ll be taking the water: and it’s just Miss Oona herself that has given me my orders: and as I was saying, they could not have a bonnier day.”

It seemed to Hamish that the young lord said “Thank God!” which was perhaps too much for the occasion, and just a thocht profane in the circumstances; but a lord that is in love, no doubt there will be much forgiven to him so long as he has a true heart. The sunshine caught Hamish as he stood watching the boat which floated along the shining surface of the water like something beatified, an emblem of divine ease, and pleasure, and calm, and made his face shine too like the loch, and his red shirt glow. His good heart glowed too with humble and generous joy; they were going to be happy then, these Two; no that he was good enough for Miss Oona; but who was good enough for Miss Oona? The faithful fellow drew his rough hand across his eyes. He who had rowed her about the loch since she was a child, and attended every coming and going—he knew it would be “a sair loss,” a loss never to be made up. But then so long as she was pleased!

At half-past two they started, punctual as Mrs. Forrester always was. Every event of this day was so important that it was remembered after how exact they were to the minute, and in what a glory of sunshine Loch Houran lay as they pushed out, Mysie standing on the beach to watch them, and lending a hand herself to launch the boat. Mrs. Forrester was well wrapped in her fur cloak with a white “cloud” about her head and shoulders, which she declared was not at all necessary in the sunshine which was like summer.

“It is just a June day come astray,” she said, nodding and smiling to Mysie on the beach, who thought once more of the Sacrament-day with its subdued glory and awe, and all the pacifying influence that dwelt in it. And Oona turned back to make a little friendly sign with hand and head to Mysie, as the first stroke of the oars carried the boat away.

How sweet her face was; how tender her smile and bright! more sorrowful than mirthful, like one who has been thinking of life and death, but full of celestial and tender cheer, and a subdued happiness. Mysie stood long looking after them, and listening to their voices which came soft and musical over the water. She could not have told why the tears came to her eyes. Something was about to happen, which would be joyful yet would be sad. “None of us will stand in her way,” said Mysie to herself, unconscious of any possibility that she, the faithful servant of the house, might be supposed to have no say in the matter; “oh, not one of us! but what will the isle be with Miss Oona away!”

CHAPTER XLV

Mrs. Methven had time to recover from the agitation and trouble of the morning before her visitors’ arrival. Walter’s aspect had so much changed when he appeared that her fears were calmed, though not dispelled. He was very pale, and had an air of exhaustion, to which his softened manners and evident endeavour to please her gave an almost pathetic aspect. Her heart was touched, as it is easy to touch the heart of a mother. She had watched him go out in his boat with a faint awakening of that pleasure with which in ordinary circumstances a woman in the retirement of age sees her children go out to their pleasure. It gave her a satisfaction full of relief, and a sense of escape from evils which she had feared, without knowing what she feared, to watch the lessening speck of the boat, and to feel that her son was finding consolation in natural and uncontaminated pleasures, in the pure air and sky and sunshine of the morning. When he came back he was a little less pale, though still strangely subdued and softened. He told her that she was about to receive a visit from his nearest neighbours—“the young lady,” he added, after a pause, “who brought you across the loch.”

“Miss Forrester—and her mother, no doubt? I shall be glad to see them, Walter.”

“I hope so, mother—for there is no way in which you can do me so much good.”

“You mean—this is the lady of whom you spoke to me—” Her countenance fell a little, for what he had said to her was not reassuring; he had spoken of one who would bring money with her, but who was not the best.

“No, mother; I have never told you what I did yesterday. I asked that—lady of whom I spoke—to give me her money and her lands to add to mine, and she would not. She was very right. I approved of her with all my heart.”

“Walter! my dear, you have been so—well—and so—like yourself this morning. Do not fall into that wild way of speaking again.”

“No,” he said, “if all goes well—never again if all goes well;” and with this strange speech he left her not knowing what to think. She endeavoured to recall to her memory the half-seen face which had been by her side crossing the dark water: but all the circumstances had been so strange, and the loch itself had given such a sensation of alarm and trouble to the traveller, that everything was dim like the twilight in her recollection. A soft voice, with the unfamiliar accent of the north, a courteous and pleasant frankness of accost, a strange sense of thus encountering, half-unseen, some one who was no stranger, nor unimportant in her life—these were the impressions she had brought out of the meeting. In all things this poor lady was like a stranger suddenly introduced into a world unknown to her, where great matters, concerning her happiness and very existence, were hanging upon mysterious decisions of others, unknown, and but to be guessed at faintly through a strange language and amidst allusions which conveyed no meaning to her mind. Thus she sat wondering, waiting for the coming of—she could scarcely tell whom—of some one with whom she could do more good for Walter than by anything else, yet who was not the lady to whom he had offered himself only yesterday. Could there be any combination more confusing? And when, amid all this mystery, as she sat with her heart full of tremulous questions and fears, there came suddenly into this darkling, uncomprehended world of hers the soft and smiling certainty of Mrs. Forrester, kind and simple, and full of innocent affectations, with her little airs of an old beauty, and her amiable confidence in everybody’s knowledge and interest, Mrs. Methven had nearly laughed aloud with that keen sense of mingled disappointment and relief which throws a certain ridicule upon such a scene. The sweet gravity of Oona behind was but a second impression. The first was of this simple, easy flood of kind and courteous commonplace, which changed at once the atmosphere and meaning of the scene.

“We are all very glad upon the loch to hear that Lord Erradeen has got his mother with him,” said the guileless visitor, “for everything is the better of a lady in the house. Oh, yes, you will say, that is a woman’s opinion, making the most of her own side: but you just know very well it is true. We have not seen half so much of Lord Erradeen as we would have liked—for in my circumstances we have very little in our power. No gentleman in the house; and what can two ladies do to entertain a young man, unless he will be content with his tea in the afternoon? and that is little to ask a gentleman to. However, I must say all the neighbours are very good-natured, and just accept what we have got to give.”

“Your daughter was most kind to me when I arrived,” said Mrs. Methven. “I should have felt very lonely without her help.”

“That was nothing. It was just a great pleasure to Oona, who is on the loch from morning to night,” said Mrs. Forrester. “It was a great chance for her to be of use. We have little happening here, and the news was a little bit of excitement for us all. You see, though I have boys of my own, they are all of them away—what would they do here?—one in Canada, and one in Australia, and three, as I need not say, in India—that is where all our boys go—and doing very well, which is just all that heart can desire. It has been a pleasure from the beginning that Lord Erradeen reminds me so much of my Rob, who is now up with his regiment in the north-west provinces, and a very promising young officer, though perhaps it is not me that should say so. The complexion is different, but I have always seen a great likeness. And now, Lord Erradeen, I hope you will bring Mrs. Methven soon, as long as the fine weather lasts, to the isle?”

Mrs. Methven made a little civil speech about taking the first opportunity, but added, “I have seen nothing yet—not even this old castle of which I have heard so much.”

“It is looking beautiful this afternoon, and I have not been there myself, I may say, for years,” said Mrs. Forrester. “What would you say, as it is so fine, to trust yourself to Hamish, who is just the most careful man with a boat on all the loch, and take a turn as far as Kinloch Houran with Oona and me?”

The suggestion was thrown out very lightly, with that desire to do something for the pleasure of the stranger, which was always so strong in Mrs. Forrester’s breast. She would have liked to supplement it with a proposal to “come home by the isle” and take a cup of tea, but refrained for the moment with great self-denial. It was caught at eagerly by Walter, who had not known how to introduce his mother to the sight of the mystic place which had so much to do with his recent history: and in a very short time they were all afloat—Mrs. Methven, half-pleased, half-disappointed with the sudden changing of all graver thoughts and alarms into the simplicity of a party of pleasure, so natural, so easy. The loch was radiant with that glory of the afternoon which is not like the glory of the morning, a dazzling world of light, the sunbeams falling lower every moment, melting into the water, which showed all its ripples like molten gold. The old tower lay red in the light, the few green leaves that still fluttered on the ends of the branches, standing out against the darker background, and the glory of the western illumination besetting every dark corner of the broken walls as if to take them by joyful assault and triumph over every idea of gloom. Nothing could have been more peaceful than the appearance of this group. The two elder ladies sat in the stern of the boat, carrying on their tranquil conversation—Mrs. Forrester entering well pleased into details about “the boys,” which Mrs. Methven, surprised, amused, arrested somehow, she could not tell how, in the midst of the darker, more bewildering current, responded to now and then with some half-question, enough to carry on the innocent fulness of the narrative. Oona, who had scarcely spoken at all, and who was glad to be left to her own thoughts, sat by her mother’s side, with the eyes of the other mother often upon her, yet taking no part in the talk; while Walter, placed behind Hamish at the other end of the boat, felt this strange pause of all sensation to be something providential, something beyond all his power of arranging, the preface to he knew not what, but surely at least not to any cutting off or separation from Oona. She had not indeed met his anxious and questioning looks: but she had not refused to come, and that of itself was much; nor did there seem to be any anger, though some sadness, in the face which seemed to him, as to Mysie, full of sacred light.

“No, I have not been here for long,” said Mrs. Forrester; “not since the late lord’s time: but I see very little change. If you will come this way, Mrs. Methven, it is here you will get the best view. Yon is the tower upon which the light is seen, the light, ye will have heard, that calls every new lord: oh and that comes many a time when there is no new lord: You need not bid me whisht, Oona! No doubt there will be some explanation of it: but it is a thing that all the world knows.”

Mrs. Methven laughed, more at her ease than she had yet been, and said—

“Walter, what a terrible omission: you have never told me of this.”

Walter did not laugh. His face, on the contrary, assumed the look of gloom and displeasure which she knew so well.

“If you will come with me,” he said to Mrs. Forrester, “I will show you my rooms. Old Macalister is more gracious than usual. You see he has opened the door.”

“Oh I will go with great pleasure, Lord Erradeen: for it is long since I have been inside, and I would like to see your rooms. Oh how do you do, Macalister? I hope your wife and you are quite well, and not suffering with rheumatism. We’ve come to show Mrs. Methven, that is your master’s mother, round the place. Yes, I am sure ye will all be very glad to see her. This is Macalister, a very faithful old servant that has been with the Lords Erradeen as long as I can remember. How long is it—near five and forty years? Dear me, it is just wonderful how time runs on. I was then but lately married, and never thought I would ever live like a pelican in the wilderness in my mother’s little bit isle. But your mind just is made to your fortune, and I have had many a happy day there. Dear me, it will be very interesting to see the rooms, we that never thought there were any rooms. Where is Oona? Oh, never take the trouble, Lord Erradeen, your mother is waiting: and Oona, that knows every step of the castle, she will soon find her way.”

This was how it was that Oona found herself alone. Walter cast behind him an anxious look, but he could not desert the elder ladies, and Oona was glad to be left behind. Her mind had recovered its calm; but she had much to think of, and his presence disturbed her, with that influence of personal contact which interferes with thought. She knew the old castle, if not every step of it, as her mother said, yet enough to make it perfectly safe for her. Old Macalister had gone first to lead the way, to open doors and windows, that the ladies might see everything, and, save for Hamish in his boat on the beach, there was nobody within sight or call. The shadow of the old house shut out the sunshine from the little platform in front of the door; but at the further side, where the trees grew among the broken masses of the ruin, the sun from the west entered freely. She stood for a moment undecided, then turned towards that wild conjunction of the living and the dead, the relics of the past, and the fresh growth of nature, which give so much charm to every ruin. Oona went slowly, full of thought, up to the battlements, and looked out upon the familiar landscape, full of light and freshness, and all the natural sounds of the golden afternoon—the lapping of the water upon the rocks, the rustle of the wind in the trees, the far-off murmurs of life, voices cheerful, yet inarticulate, from the village, distant sounds of horses and wheels on the unseen roads, the bark of a dog, all the easy, honest utterance, unthought of, like simple breathing, of common life. For a moment the voice of her own thoughts was hushed within her, replaced by this soft combination of friendly noises. It pleased her better to stand here with the soft air about her, than amid all the agitation of human influences to accompany the others.

But human influence is more strong than the hold of nature; and by-and-by she turned unconsciously from the landscape to the house, the one dark solid mass of habitable walls, repelling the sunshine, while the tower, with its blunted outline above, and all the fantastic breaches and openings in the ruin, gave full play to every level ray. The loch, all golden with the sunset, the shadows of the trees, the breath and utterance of distant life, gave nothing but refreshment and soothing. But the walls that were the work of men, and that for hundreds of years had gathered sombre memories about them, had an attraction more absorbing. A little beyond where she was standing, was the spot from which Miss Milnathort had fallen. She had heard the story vaguely all her life, and she had heard from Walter the meaning of it, only the other day. Perhaps it was the sound of a little crumbling and precipitation of dust and fragments from the further wall that brought it so suddenly to her memory; but the circumstances in which she herself was, were enough to bring those of the other woman, who had been as herself, before her with all the vividness of reality. As young as herself, and more happy, the promised bride of another Walter, everything before her as before Oona, love and life, the best that Providence can give, more happy than she, nothing to disturb the gladness of her betrothal; and in a moment all over, all ended, and pain and helplessness, and the shadow of death, substituted for her happiness and hope. Oona paused, and thought of that tragedy with a great awe stealing over her, and pity which was so intense in her realisation of a story, in every point save the catastrophe, so like her own, penetrating her very soul. She asked herself which of the two it was who had suffered most—the faithful woman who lived to tell her own story, and to smile with celestial patience through her death in life, or the man who had struggled in vain, who had fallen under the hand of fate, and obeyed the power of outward circumstances, and been vanquished, and departed from the higher meaning of his youth? Oona thought with a swelling and generous throbbing of her heart, of the one—but with a deeper pang of the other; he who had not failed at all so far as any one knew, who had lived and been happy as people say. She leant against the wall, and asked herself if anything should befall her, such as befell Miss Milnathort, whether her Walter would do the same. Would he accept his defeat as the other had done, and throw down his arms and yield? She said no in her heart, but faltered, and remembered Katie. Yet no! That had been before, not after their hearts had met, and he had known what was in hers. No, he might be beaten down to the dust; he might rush out into the world, and plunge into the madness of life, or he might plunge more deeply, more darkly, into the madness of despairing, and die. But he would not yield; he would not throw down his arms and accept the will of the other. Faulty as he was, and stained and prone to evil, this was what he would never do.

And then her thoughts turned to the immediate matter before her—the deliverance of the man whose fate she had pledged herself to share notwithstanding all his imperfections; he who had found means already, since she had bound herself to him, to make her heart bleed; he whom she had loved against her will, against her judgment, before she was aware. He was to be made free from a bondage, a spiritual persecution, a tyrant who threatened him in every action of his life. Oona had known all her life that there was some mysterious oppression under which the house of Erradeen was bound, and there was no scepticism in her mind in respect to a wonder about which every inhabitant of the district had something to say; but from the moment when it became apparent that she too was to belong to this fated house, it had become insupportable and impossible. She felt, but with less agitation and a calmer certainty than that of Walter, that by whatsoever means it must be brought to an end. Had he been able to bear it, she could not have borne it. And he said that she alone could save him—that with her by his side he was safe; strange words, containing a flattery which was not intended, a claim which could not be resisted. He had said it when as yet he scarcely knew her, he had repeated it when he came to her hot from the presence of the other to whom he had appealed in vain. Strange mixture of the sweet and the bitter! She remembered, however, that he had asked her in the simplicity of desperation to give him her hand to help him, a year ago, and this thought banished all the other circumstances from her mind. She had helped him then, knowing nothing—how was she to help him now? Could she but do it by standing forth in his place and meeting his enemy for him! could she but take his burden on her shoulders and carry it for him! He who had suffered so much feared with a deadly terror his oppressor; but Oona did not fear him. On her he had no power. In Walter’s mind there was the weakness of previous defeat, the tradition of family subjection; but in her there was no such weakness, either personal or traditionary; and what was the use of her innocence, of her courage, if not to be used in his cause? Could she but stand for him, speak for him, take his place!

Up and spoke she, Alice Brand,

And made the holy sign;

And if there’s blood on Richard’s hand,

A stainless hand is mine.

Oona’s heart was full of this high thought. It drove away from her mind all shadows, all recollections of a less exalting kind. She moved on quietly, not caring nor thinking where she went, forming within herself visions of this substitution, which is in so many cases a woman’s warmest desire.

But then she paused, and there became visible to her a still higher eminence of generous love—a higher giddy eminence, more precarious, more dangerous, by which deliverance was less secure; not substitution—that was impossible. In her inward thoughts she blushed to feel that she had thought of a way of escape which for Walter would have been ignoble. It was for him to bear his own part, not to stand by while another did it for him. A noble shame took possession of her that she could for a moment have conceived another way. But with this came back all the anxious thoughts, the questions, the uncertainty. How was she to help him? how pour all the force of her life into him? how transfer to him every needed quality, and give him the strength of two in one?

In the full current of her thoughts Oona was suddenly brought to a pause. It was by the instinct of self-preservation which made her start back on the very edge of the ruin. The sickening sensation with which she felt the crumbling masonry move beneath her foot, drove everything out of her mind for the moment. With a sudden recoil upon herself, Oona set her back against the edge of the parapet that remained, and endeavoured to command and combat the sudden terror that seized hold upon her. She cast a keen wild look round her to find out if there was any way of safety, and called out for help, and upon Walter! Walter! though she felt it was vain. The wind was against her, and caught her voice, carrying it as if in mockery down the loch, from whence it returned only in a vague and distant echo; and she perceived that the hope of any one hearing and reaching her was futile indeed. Above her, on a range of ruin always considered inaccessible, there seemed to Oona a line of masonry solid enough to give her footing. Necessity cannot wait for precedents. She was young and active, and used to exercise, and her nerves were steadied by the strain of actual danger. She made a spring from her insecure standing, feeling the ruin give way under her foot with the impulse, and with the giddiness of a venture which was almost desperate, flung herself upon the higher level. When she had got there it seemed to her incredible that she could have done it: and what was to be her next step she knew not, for the ledge on which she stood was very narrow, and there was nothing to hold by in case her head or courage should fail. Everything below and around was shapeless ruin, not to be trusted, all honeycombed, with hollow places thinly covered over by remains of fallen roofs and drifted earth and treacherous vegetation. Only in one direction was there any appearance of solidity, and that was above her towards the tower which still stood firmly, the crown of the building, though no one had climbed up to its mysterious heights within the memory of man. Round it was a stone balcony or terrace, which was the spot upon which the mysterious light, so familiar to her, was periodically visible. Oona’s heart beat as she saw herself within reach of this spot. She had watched it so often from the safe and peaceful isle, with that thrill of awe, and wonder, and half-terror, which gave an additional pleasure to her own complete and perfect safety. She made a few steps forward, and, putting out her hand with a quiver of all her nerves, took hold upon the cold roughness of the lower ledge. The touch steadied her, yet woke an agitation in her frame, the stir of strong excitement; for death lay below her, and her only refuge was in the very home of mystery, a spot untrodden of men. For the next few minutes she made her way instinctively without thought, holding by every projection which presented itself; but when Oona found herself standing safe within the balustrade, close upon the wall of the tower, and had drawn breath and recovered a little from the exhaustion and strain—when her mind got again the upper hand and disentangled itself from the agitation of the body, the hurry and whirl of all her thoughts were beyond description. She paused as upon the threshold of a new world. What might be about to happen to her? not to perish like the other, which seemed so likely a few minutes ago, yet perhaps as tragic a fate; perhaps the doom of all connected with the Methvens was here awaiting her.

But there is something in every extreme which disposes the capricious human soul to revolt and recoil. Oona still spoke to herself, but spoke aloud, as it was some comfort to do in her utter isolation. She laughed to herself, nature forcing its way through awe and alarm. “Doom!” she said to herself, “there is no doom. That would mean that God was no longer over all. What He wills let that be done.” This calmed her nerves and imagination. She did not stop to say any prayer for her own safety. There arose even in her mind upon the very foundation of her momentary panic, a sudden new force and hope. She who had so desired to stand in Walter’s place, to be his substitute, might not this, without any plan or intention of hers, be now placed within her power?

In the mean time everything was solid and safe beneath her feet. The tower stood strong, the pavement of the narrow platform which surrounded it was worn by time and weather, but perfectly secure. Here and there a breach in the balustrade showed like fantastic flamboyant work, but a regiment might have marched round it without disturbing a stone. Oona’s excitement was extreme. Her heart beat in her ears like the roaring of a torrent. She went on, raised beyond herself, with a strange conviction that there was some object in her coming, and that this which seemed so accidental was no accident at all, but perhaps—how could she tell?—an ordeal, the first step in that career which she had accepted. She put her hand upon the wall, and guided herself by it, feeling a support in the rough and time-worn surface, the stones which had borne the assault of ages. Daylight was still bright around her, the last rays of the sun dazzling the loch below, which in its turn lent a glory of reflection to the sky above, and sent up a golden sheen through the air from the blaze upon the water. Round the corner of the tower the wind blew freshly in her face from the hills, reviving and encouraging her. Nature was on her side in all its frankness and reality whatever mystery might be elsewhere. When she had turned the corner of the tower, and saw beneath her the roofs of Auchnasheen visible among the trees, Oona suddenly stood still, her heart making, she thought, a pause as well as her feet; then with a bound beginning again in louder and louder pulsation. She had come to a doorway deep set in the wall, like the entrance of a cavern, with one broad, much-worn step, and a heavy old door bound and studded with iron. She stood for a moment uncertain, trembling, with a sense of the unforeseen and extraordinary which flew to her brain—a bewildering pang of sensation. For a moment she hesitated what to do: yet scarcely for a moment, since by this time she began to feel the force of an impulse which did not seem her own, and which she had no strength to resist. The door was slightly ajar, and pushing it open, Oona found herself, with another suffocating pause, then bound, of her heart, upon the threshold of a richly furnished room. She was aware of keeping her hold upon the door with a terrifying anticipation of hearing it close upon her, but otherwise seemed to herself to have passed beyond her own control and consciousness, and to be aware only of the wonderful scene before her. The room was lighted from an opening in the roof, which showed in the upper part the rough stone of the walls in great blocks, rudely hewn, contrasting strangely with the heavy curtains with which they were hung round below. The curtains seemed of velvet, with panels of tapestry in dim designs here and there: the floor was covered with thick and soft carpets. A great telescope occupied a place in the centre of the room, and various fine instruments, some looking like astronomical models, stood on tables about. The curtained walls were hung with portraits, one of which she recognised as that of the last Lord Erradeen. And in the centre of all supported on a table with a lamp burning in front of it, the light of which (she supposed), blown about by the sudden entrance of the air, so flickered upon the face that the features seemed to change and move, was the portrait of Walter. The cry which she would have uttered at this sight died in Oona’s throat. She stood speechless, without power to think, gazing, conscious that this discovery was not for nothing, that here was something she must do, but unable to form a thought. The light fell upon the subdued colours of the hangings and furniture with a mystic paleness, without warmth; but the atmosphere was luxurious and soft, with a faint fragrance in it. Oona held open the door, which seemed in the movement of the air which she had admitted, to struggle with her, but to which she held with a desperate grasp, and gazed spellbound. Was it the flickering of the lamp, or was it possible that the face of the portrait changed, that anguish came into the features, and that the eyes turned and looked at her appealing, full of misery, as Walter’s eyes had looked? It seemed to Oona that her senses began to fail her. There was a movement in the tapestry, and from the other side of the room, some one put it aside, and after looking at her for a moment came slowly out. She had seen him only in the night and darkness, but there was not another such that she should mistake who it was. A thrill ran through her of terror, desperation, and daring. Whatever might now be done or said, Oona had come to the crisis of her fate.

He came towards her with the air of courtesy and grace, which seemed his most characteristic aspect. “Come in,” he said; “to reach this place requires a stout heart; but you are safe here.”

Oona made him no reply. She felt her voice and almost her breathing arrested in her throat, and felt capable of nothing but to hold fast to the heavy door, which seemed to struggle with her like a living thing.

“You are afraid,” he said; “but there is no reason to fear. Why should you think I would injure you? You might have fallen, like others, from the ruin; but you are safe here.”

He advanced another step and held out his hand. It seemed to Oona that the door crushed her as she stood against it, but she would not let go her hold; and with all her power she struggled to regain possession of her voice, but could not, paralysed by some force which she did not understand.

He smiled with a slight ridicule in his lofty politeness. “I tell you not to fear,” he said. “Yours is not a spirit to fear; you who would have put yourself in his place and defied the demon. You find me no demon, and I offer no hostility, yet you are afraid.”

Oona was astonished by the sound of her own voice, which burst forth suddenly, by no apparent will of her own, and which was strange to her, an unfamiliar tone, “I am not afraid—I am in—the protection of God—”

He laughed softly. “You mean to exorcise me,” he said; “but that is not so easily done; and I warn you that resistance is not the best way. You have trusted yourself to me—”

“No—no—”

“Yes. You fled from the danger to which another in your place succumbed, and you have taken refuge with me. To those who do so I am bound. Come in; there is no danger here.”

It seemed to Oona that there were two beings in her—one which ridiculed her distrust, which would have accepted the hand held out; another—not her, surely, not her frank and unsuspicious self—who held back and clung in terror to the door. She stammered, hearing even in her voice the same conflict, some tones that were her own, some shrill that were not hers—“I want no protection—but God’s.”

“Why then,” he said with a smile, “did you not remain among the ruins? What brought you here?”

There was an answer—a good answer if she could have found it—but she could not find it, and made no reply.

“You refuse my friendship, then,” he said, “which is a pity, for it might have saved you much suffering. All the same, I congratulate you upon your prize.”

These last words stopped the current towards him of that natural sentiment of confidence and faith in her fellow-creatures, which was Oona’s very atmosphere. Her prize! What did he mean by her prize?

“There could not be anything more satisfactory to your friends,” he said. “A title—large estates—a position which leaves nothing to be desired. Your mother must be fully satisfied, and your brothers at the ends of the world will all feel the advantage. Other conquests might have been better for the Erradeens, but for you nothing could be more brilliant. It was a chance too, unlikely, almost past hoping for, thus to catch a heart in the rebound.”

She stood aghast, gazing with eyes that were pained by the strain, but which would not detach themselves from his face. Brilliant! advantages! Was she in a dream? or what was the meaning of the words?

“It is against my own policy,” he continued, “as perhaps you know; still I cannot help admiring your skill, unaided, against every drawback. You have a strong mind, young lady of the isle, and the antecedents which would have daunted most women have been allies and auxiliaries to you.” His laugh was quite soft and pleasant, sounding like gentle amusement, not ridicule. “I know your family,” he continued, “of old. They were all men of strong stomachs, able to swallow much so long as their own interest was concerned. With Highland caterans, that is comprehensible; but one so young as you—named like you—after—” he laughed again that low soft laugh of amusement as if at something which tickled him in spite of himself, “the emblem of purity and innocence—‘heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.’”

“You want,” said Oona, whose voice sounded hoarse in her throat, and sharp to her own ears, “to make me mad with your taunts; to make me give up—”

“Pardon me, I am only congratulating you,” he said, and smiled, looking at her with a penetrating look of amusement and that veiled ridicule which does not infringe the outward forms of politeness. She gazed back at him with eyes wide open, with such a pang of wondering anguish and shame in her heart as left her speechless; for what he said was true. She had thought of her union with Walter in many ways before, but never in this. Now it all flashed upon her as by a sudden light. What he said was true. She who had never given a thought to worldly advantage, had nevertheless secured it as much as if that had been her only thought. Her senses seemed to fail her in the whirl and heart-sickness of the revelation. It was true. She who had believed herself to be giving all, she was taking to herself rank, wealth, and honour, in marrying Walter. And giving to him what?—a woman’s empty hand; no more. Oona was very proud though she did not know it, and the blow fell upon her with crushing effect. Every word had truth in it; her mother would be satisfied; the family would profit by it wherever they were scattered; and she would be the first to reap the advantage.

Oona felt everything swim around her as in the whirl and giddiness of a great fall. Her fall was greater than that of Miss Milnathort, for it was the spirit not the body that was crushed and broken. She could not lift up her head. A horrible doubt even of herself came into her mind in her sudden and deep humiliation. Had this been in her thoughts though she did not know it? No stroke could have been aimed at her so intolerable as this.

He kept his eyes upon her, as if with a secret enjoyment of her overthrow. “You do not thank me for my congratulations,” he cried.

“Oh!” she cried in the wondering self-abandonment of pain, “can you be a man, only a man, and strike so deep?” Then the very anguish of her soul gave her a sudden inspiration. She looked round her with her eyes dilating. “When you can do this,” she said, putting with unconscious eloquence her hand to her heart, “what do you want with things like those?” The sight of the lamp which burned before Walter’s portrait had given her a painful sense of harm and danger when she saw it first. It filled her now with a keen disdain. To be able to pierce the very soul, and yet to use the aid of that! She did not know what its meaning was, yet suffering in every nerve, she scorned it, and turned to him with a questioning look which was full of indignation and contempt.

And he who was so strong, so much above her in power and knowledge, shrank—almost imperceptibly, but yet he shrank—startled, from her look and question. “That?” he said, “you who know so little of your own mind, how can you tell how human nature is affected?—by what poor methods, as well as by great. You understand nothing—not yourself—far less the devices of the wise.”

“Oh, you are wise,” cried Oona, “and cruel. You can make what is best look the worst. You can confuse our souls so that we cannot tell what is good in us, and what evil. I know, I know, you are a great person. Yet you hide and lurk in this place which no man knows; and work by spells and charms like—like—”

“Like what?” a gleam of anger and shame—or of something that might have betrayed these sentiments on any other face—crossed his usually calm and lofty countenance. Oona, opposite to him, returned his look with a passionate face of indignation and disdain. She had forgotten herself altogether, and everything but the thrill and throbbing of the anguish which seemed to have taken the place of her heart in her. She feared nothing now. The blow which she had received had given her the nobleness of desperation.

“Like a poor—witch,” she said; “like the wizard they call you; like one who plays upon the ignorant, not like the powerful spirit you are. You that can beat us down to the dust, both him and me. You that can turn sweet into bitter, and good into evil. Oh, how can you for shame take that way too, like a—juggler,” she cried in her passion; “like a sorcerer; like—”

“You speak like a fool, though you are no fool,” he said, “not knowing the stuff that we are made of.” He made a step towards her as he spoke, and though his tone was rather sad than fierce, there came upon Oona in a moment such a convulsion of terror as proved what the weakness was of which he spoke. She clung with all her failing force to the door which seemed her only support, and broke out into a shrill cry, “Walter, Walter, save me!” afraid of she knew not what, panic seizing her, and the light flickering in her fainting eyes.

CHAPTER XLVI

While Oona was standing on the verge of these mysteries a trial of a very different kind had fallen to Walter. They had exchanged parts in this beginning of their union. It was his to lead the two elder ladies into those rooms which were to him connected with the most painful moments of his life, but to them conveyed no idea beyond the matter of fact that they were more comfortably furnished and inhabitable than was to be expected in such a ruin. Even to Mrs. Methven, who was interrogating his looks all the time, in an anxious endeavour to know what his feelings were, there seemed nothing extraordinary in the place save this. She seated herself calmly in the chair, which he had seen occupied by so different a tenant, and looking smiling towards him, though always with a question in her eyes, began to express her wonder why, with Auchnasheen so near, it had been thought necessary to retain a dwelling-place among these ruins; but since Walter did from time to time inhabit them, his mother found it pleasant that they were so habitable, so almost comfortable, and answered old Macalister’s apologies for the want of a fire or any preparations for their coming with smiling assurances that all was very well, that she could not have hoped to find rooms in such careful repair. Mrs. Forrester was a great deal more effusive, and examined everything with a flow of cheerful remark, divided between Lord Erradeen and his old servant, with whom, as with everybody on the loch, she had the acquaintance of a lifetime.

“I must see your wife, Macalister,” she said, “and make her my compliment on the way she has kept everything. It is really just a triumph, and I would like to know how she has done it. To keep down the damp even in my little house, where there are always fires going, and every room full, is a constant thought—and how she does it here, where it is so seldom occupied—. The rooms are just wonderfully nice rooms, Lord Erradeen, but I would not say they were a cheerful dwelling—above all, for a young man like you.”

“No, they are not a very cheerful dwelling,” said Walter with a smile, which to his mother, watching him so closely, told a tale of pain which she did not understand indeed, yet entered into with instinctive sympathy. The place began to breathe out suffering and mystery to her, she could not tell why. It was cold, both in reality and sentiment, the light coming into it from the cold north-east, from the mountains which stood up dark and chill above the low shining of the setting sun. And the cold affected her from his eyes, and made her shiver.

“I think,” she said, “we must not stay too long. The sun is getting low, and the cold—”

“But where is Oona?” said Mrs. Forrester. “I would not like to go away till she has had the pleasure too. Oh, yes, it is a pleasure, Lord Erradeen—for you see we cannot look out at our own door, without the sight of your old castle before our eyes, and it is a satisfaction to know what there is within. She must have stayed outside among the rains that she was always partial to. Perhaps Macalister will go and look for her—or, oh! Lord Erradeen, but I could not ask you to take that trouble.”

“My lord,” said old Macalister aside, “if it had been any other young lady I wad have been after her before now. Miss Oona is just wonderful for sense and judgment; but when I think upon yon wall—”

“I will go,” said Walter. Amid all the associations of this place, the thought of Oona had threaded through every movement of his mind. He thought now that she had stayed behind out of sympathy, now that it was indifference, now—he could not tell what to think. But no alarm for her safety had crossed his thoughts. He made a rapid step towards the door, then paused, with a bewildering sense that he was leaving two innocent women without protection in a place full of dangers which they knew nothing of. Was it possible that his enemy could assail him through these unsuspecting simple visitors? He turned back to them with a strange pang of pity and regret, which he himself did not understand. “Mother,” he said, “you will forgive me—it is only for a moment?”

“Walter!” she cried, full of surprise; then waved her hand to him with a smile, bidding him, “Go, go—and bring Miss Forrester.” Her attitude, her smile of perfect security and pleasure, went with him like a little picture, as he went down the spiral stairs. Mrs. Forrester was in the scene too, in all her pretty faded colour and animation, begging him—“Dear me, not to take the trouble; for no doubt Oona was just at the door, or among the ruins, or saying a word to Hamish about the boat.” A peaceful little picture—no shadow upon it; the light a little cold, but the atmosphere so serene and still. Strange contrast to all that he had seen there—the conflict, the anguish, which seemed to have left their traces upon the very walls.

He hurried down-stairs with this in his mind, and a lingering of all his thoughts upon the wistful smiling of his mother’s face—though why at this moment he should dwell upon that was a wonder to himself. Oona was not on the grassy slope before the door, nor talking to Hamish at the landing-place, as her mother suggested. There was no trace of her among the ruins. Then, but not till then, Walter began to feel a tremor of alarm. There came suddenly into his mind the recollection of that catastrophe of which he had been told in Edinburgh by its victim; it sent a shiver through him, but even yet he did not seriously fear; for Oona was no stranger to lose herself upon the dangerous places of the ruin. He went hurriedly up the steps to the battlements, where he himself had passed through so many internal struggles, thinking nothing less than to find her in one of the embrasures, where he had sat and looked out upon the loch. He had been startled as he came out of the shadow of the house, by a faint cry, which seemed to issue from the distance, from the other extremity of the water, and which was indeed the cry for help to which Oona had given utterance when she felt the wall crumbling under her feet, which the wind had carried far down the loch, and which came back in a distant echo. Walter began to remember this cry as he searched in vain for any trace of her. And when he reached the spot where the danger began and saw the traces that some other steps had been there before him, and that a shower of crumbling mortar and fragments of stone had fallen, his heart leaped to his throat with sudden horror. This was calmed by the instant reassurance that had she fallen he must at once have discovered the catastrophe. He looked round him bewildered, unable to conceive what had become of her. Where had she gone? The boat lay at the landing-place, with Hamish in waiting; the whole scene full of rest and calm, and everything silent about and around. “Oona!” he cried, but the wind caught his voice too, and carried it away to the village on the other bank, to her own isle away upon the glistening water, where Oona was not. Where was she? His throat began to grow parched, his breath to labour with the hurry of his heart. He stood on the verge of the precipice of broken masonry, straining his eyes over the stony pinnacles above, and the sharp irregularities of the ruin. There he saw something suddenly which made his heart stand still: her glove lying where she had dropped it in her hurried progress along the ledge. He did not pause to think how she got there, which would have seemed at another moment impossible, but with a desperate spring and a sensation as of death in his heart, followed, where she had passed, wherever that might be.

Walter neither knew where he was going nor how he made his way along those jagged heights. He did not go cautiously as Oona had done, but flew on, taking no notice of the dangers of the way. The sound of voices, and of his own name, and Oona’s cry for help, reached his ear as with a leap he gained the stone balcony of the tower. His feet scarcely touched the stones as he flew to her who called him, nor did he think where he was, or feel any wonder at the call, or at the voices on such a height, or at anything that was happening. His mind had no room for any observation or thought save that Oona called him. He flung himself into the dark doorway as if it had been a place he had known all his life, and caught her as her strength failed her. She who had thought she could put herself in his place, and who had been ready to brave everything for him, turned round with her eyes glazing and her limbs giving way, with strength enough only to throw herself upon his breast. Thus Walter found himself once more face to face with his enemy. The last time they had met, Lord Erradeen had been goaded almost to madness. He stood now supporting Oona on his arm, stern, threatening in his turn.

“If you have killed her,” he cried; “if you have hurt her as you did before; if you have made her your victim, as you did before!” There was no shrinking in his look now: he spoke out loudly with his head high, his eyes blazing upon the enemy who was no longer his, but hers, which had a very different meaning; and though he stood against the door where he had found Oona holding it wide open, this was done unconsciously, with no idea of precaution. The time for that was over now.

And with the sensation of his support, the throb of his heart so near hers, Oona came back to herself. She turned slowly round towards the inhabitant of the tower. “Walter, tell him—that though he can make us miserable he cannot make us consent. Tell him—that now we are two, not one, and that our life is ours, not his. Oh!” she cried, lifting her eyes, addressing herself directly to him, “listen to me!—over me you have no power—and Walter is mine, and I am his. Go—leave us in peace.”

“She says true; leave us in peace. In all my life now, I shall do no act that is not half hers, and over her you have no power.”

“You expect me then,” he said, “to give way to this bargain of self-interest—a partnership of protection to you and gain to her. And you think that before this I am to give way.”

“It is not so,” cried Walter, “not so. Oona, answer him. I turned to her for help because I loved her, and she to me for—I know not why—because she loved me. Answer him, Oona! if it should be at this moment for death not for life—”

She turned to him with a look and a smile, and put her arm through his, clasping his hand: then turned again to the other who stood looking on. “If it should be for death,” she said.

There was a moment of intense stillness. He before whom these two stood knew human nature well. He knew every way in which to work upon a solitary being, a soul alone, in his power; but he knew that before two, awake, alive, on the watch one for the other, these methods were without power, and though his experiences were so great the situation was new. They were in the first absolute devotion of their union, invulnerable, no germ of distrust, no crevice of possible separation. He might kill, but he could not move them. This mysterious agent was not above the artifices of defeat. To separate them was the only device that remained to him.

“You are aware,” he said, “that here if nowhere else you are absolutely in my power. You have come to me. I have not gone to you. If you wish to sacrifice her life you can do so, but what right have you to do it? How dare you take her from those who love her, and make her your victim? She will be your victim, not mine. There is time yet for her to escape. It is for her to go—Die? why should she die? Are you worth such a sacrifice? Let her go—”

“Hold me fast—do not loose me, Walter,” cried Oona wildly in his ear.

And here his last temptation took him, in the guise of love, and rent him in two. To let her perish, was that possible? Could he hold her though she was his life, and sacrifice hers? Walter could not pause to think; he tore his hand out of hers, which would not be loosed, and thrust her from him. “Oona,” he cried, his voice sinking to a whisper, “go! Oona, go! Not to sacrifice you—no, no, I will not. Anything but that. While there is time, go!”

She stood for a moment between the two, deserted, cast off by him who loved her. It was the supreme crisis of all this story of her heart. For a moment she said nothing, but looked at them, meeting the keen gaze of the tempter, whose eyes seemed to burn her, gazing at Walter who had half-closed his not to see her go. Then with the sudden, swift, passionate action, unpremeditated and impulsive, which is natural to women, she flung herself before him, and seized with her hands the table upon which the light was burning. “You said,” she cried, breathless, “that you used small methods as well as great—and this is one, whatever it is.” She thrust it from her violently as she spoke. The lamp fell with a great crash and broke, and the liquid which had supplied it burst out and ran blazing in great globules of flames over the floor. The crash, the blaze, the sudden uproar, was like a wall between the antagonists. The curtains swaying with the wind, the old dry tapestries, caught in the fire like tinder. Oona, as wild with fear as she had been with daring, caught at Walter’s hand with the strength of despair, and fled dragging him after her. The door clanged behind them as he let it go, then burst open again with the force of the breeze and let out a great blaze, the red mad gleam of fire in the sunshine and daylight—unnatural, devouring. With a sense that death was in their way before and behind, they went forth clinging to each other, half-stupefied, half-desperate. Then sense and hearing and consciousness itself were lost in a roar as of all the elements let loose—a great dizzy upheaving as of an earthquake. The whole world darkened round them; there was a sudden rush of air and whirl of giddy sensation—and nothing more.

•    •    •    •

The two mothers meanwhile talked calmly in the room below, where Macalister had lighted the fire, and where, in the cheerful blaze and glow, everything became more easy and tranquil and calm. Perhaps even the absence of the young pair, whose high strain of existence at the moment could not but disturb the elder souls with sympathy, made the quiet waiting, the pleasant talk, more natural. Mrs. Methven had been deeply touched by her son’s all unneeded apology for leaving her. She could have laughed over it, and cried, it was so kind, so tender of Walter, yet unlike him, the late awakening of thought and tenderness to which she had never been accustomed, which penetrated her with a sweet and delightful amusement as well as happiness. She had no reason to apprehend any evil, neither was Mrs. Forrester afraid for Oona. “Oh no, she is well used to going about by herself. There is nobody near but knows my Oona. Her family and all her belongings have been on the loch, I might say, since ever it was a loch; and if any stranger took it upon him to say an uncivil word, there is neither man nor woman for ten miles round but would stand up for her—if such a thing could be,” Mrs. Forrester added with dignity, “which is just impossible and not to be thought of. And as for ruins, she knows them well. But I would like her to see the books, and what a nice room Lord Erradeen has here, for often we have been sorry for him, and wondered what kind of accommodation there was, and what good it could do to drag the poor young man out of his comfortable house, if it was only once in the year—”

“And why should he come here once in the year?” Mrs. Methven asked with a smile.

“That is just the strange story: but I could not take upon myself to say, for I know nothing except the common talk, which is nonsense, no doubt. You will never have been in the north before?” said Mrs. Forrester, thinking it judicious to change the subject.

“Never before,” Mrs. Methven replied, perceiving equally on her side that the secrets of the family were not to be gleaned from a stranger; and she added, “My son himself has not yet seen his other houses, though this is the second time he has come here.”

“It is to be hoped,” said the other, “that now he will think less of that weary London, which I hear is just an endless traffic of parties and pleasure—and settle down to be a Scots lord. We must make excuses for a young man that naturally likes to be among his own kind, and finds more pleasure in an endless on-going than ladies always understand. Though I will not say but I like society very well myself, and would be proud to see my friends about me, if it were not for the quiet way that Oona and I are living, upon a little bit isle, which makes it always needful to consider the weather, and if there is a moon, and all that; and besides that, I have no gentleman in the house.”

“I never had a daughter,” said Mrs. Methven; “there can be no companion so sweet.”

“You mean Oona? Her and me,” said Mrs. Forrester, with Scotch grammar and a smile, “we are but one; and you do not expect me to praise myself? When I say we have no gentleman in the house, it is because we cannot be of the use we would wish to our friends. To offer a cup of tea is just all I have in my power, and that is nothing to ask a gentleman to; but for all that it is wonderful how constantly we are seeing our neighbours, especially in the summer time, when the days are long. But bless me, what is that?” Mrs. Forrester cried. The end of her words was lost in a tumult and horror of sound such as Loch Houran had never heard before.

CHAPTER XLVII

The explosion startled the whole country for miles around.

The old castle was at all times the centre of the landscape, standing sombre in its ruin amid all the smiling existence of to-day. It flashed in a moment into an importance more wonderful, blazing up to the sky in fire and flame and clouds of smoke like a great battle. The whole neighbourhood, as far as sight could carry, saw this new wonder, and sprang into sudden excitement, alarm, and terror. Every soul rushed out of the village on the bank; servants appeared half frantic in front of Auchnasheen, pushing out in skiffs and fishing-cobbles upon the water which seemed to share the sudden passion of alarm, and became but one great reflection, red and terrible, of the flames which seemed to burst in a moment from every point. Some yachtsmen, whose little vessel had been lying at anchor, and who had been watching with great curiosity the moving figures on the height of the gallery round the tower, with much laughing discussion among themselves as to the possibility of having seen the ghost—were suddenly brought to seriousness in a moment as the yacht bounded under their feet with the concussion of the air, and the idle sail flapping from the mast grew blood-red in the sudden glare. It was the work of another moment to leap into their boat and speed as fast as the oars could plough through the water, to the rescue, if rescue were needed. Who could be there? they asked each other. Only old Macalister with his wife, who, safe in the lower story, would have full time to escape. But then, what were those figures on the tower? The young men almost laughed again as they said to each other, “The warlock lord!” “Let’s hope he’s blown himself up and made an end of all that nonsense,” said the sceptic of the party. But just then the stalwart boat-load came across a wild skiff dashing through the water, old Symington like a ghost in the stern, and red-haired Duncan, with bare arms and throat, rowing as for life and death.

“My lord is there!” cried the old man with quivering lips, “The leddies are there!”

“And Hamish and Miss Oona!” fell stammering from Duncan, half dumb with horror.

The young yachtsmen never said a word, but looked at each other and flew along over the blood-red water. Oona! It was natural they should think of her first in her sweetness and youth.

The two mothers in their tranquil talk sat still for a moment and looked at each other with pale awe on their faces, when that wild tumult enveloped them, paralysing every other sense. They thought they were lost, and instinctively put out their hands to each other. They were alone—even the old servant had left them—and there they sat breathless, expecting death. For a moment the floor and walls so quivered about them that this alone seemed possible; but nothing followed, and their faculties returned. They rose with one impulse and made their way together to the door—then, the awe of death passing, life rising in them, flew down the stair-case with the lightness of youth, and out to the air, which already was full of the red flashes of the rising flames. But once there, a worse thing befell these two poor women. They had been still in the face of death, but now, with life saved, came a sense of something more terrible than death. They cried out in one voice the names of their children. “My boy!” “Oona!” Old Macalister, speechless, dragging his old wife after him, came out and joined them, the two old people looking like owls suddenly scared by the outburst of lurid light.

“Oh, what will be happening?” said the old woman, her dazed astonishment contrasting strangely with the excitement and terror of the others.

Mrs. Forrester answered her with wild and feverish volubility.

“Nothing will have happened,” she said. “Oona, my darling! What would happen? She knows her way: she would not go a step too far. Oh, Oona, where are you? why will you not answer me? They will just be bewildered like ourselves, and she will be in a sore fright; but that will be for me. Oona! Oona! She will be frightened—but only for me. Oona! Oh Hamish, man, can ye not find your young lady? The fire—I am not afraid of the fire. She will just be wild with terror—for me. Oona! Oona! Oona!” cried the poor lady, her voice ending in a shriek.

Mrs. Methven stood by her side, but did not speak. Her pale face was raised to the flaming tower, which threw an illumination of red light over everything. She did not know that it was supposed to be inaccessible. For anything she knew, her boy might be there perishing within her sight; and she could do nothing. The anguish of the helpless and hopeless gave her a sort of terrible calm. She looked at the flames as she might have looked at executioners who were putting her son to death. She had no hope.

Into the midst of this distracted group came a sudden rush of men from the boats, which were arriving every minute, the young yachtsmen at their head. Mrs. Forrester flung herself upon these young men, catching hold of them as they came up.

“My Oona’s among the ruins,” she said breathlessly. “Oh, no fear but you’ll find her. Oh, find her! find her! for I’m going out of my senses, I think. I know that she’s safe, oh, quite safe! but I’m silly, silly, and my nerves are all wrong. Oh, Harry, for the love of God, and Patrick, Patrick, my fine lad! And not a brother to look after my bairn!”

“We are all her brothers,” cried the youths, struggling past the poor lady, who clung to them and hindered their progress, her voice coming shrill through the roar of the flames and the bustle and commotion below. Amid this tumult her piercing “Oona! Oona!” came in from time to time, sharp with the derision of tragedy for anything so ineffectual and vain. Before many minutes had passed the open space in front of the house which stood intact and as yet unthreatened, was crowded with men, none of them, however, knowing what to do, nor, indeed, what had happened. The information that Lord Erradeen and Oona were missing was handed about among them, repeated with shakings of the head to every new-comer. Mrs. Methven standing in the midst, whom nobody knew, received all the comments like so many stabs into her heart. “Was it them that were seen on the walls just before? Then nothing could have saved them.” “The wall’s all breached to the loch: no cannon could have done it cleaner. It’s there you’ll find them.” “Find them! Oh, hon, oh, hon! the bodies of them. Let’s hope their souls are in a better place.” The unfortunate mother heard what everybody said. She stood among strangers, with nobody who had any compassion upon her, receiving over and over again the assurance of his fate.

The first difficulty here, as in every other case of the kind, was that no one knew what to do; there were hurried consultations, advices called out on every hand, suggestions—many of them impossible—but no authoritative guide to say what was to be done. Mrs. Methven, turning her miserable looks from one to another, saw standing by her side a man of commanding appearance, who seemed to take no share in either advice or action, but stood calmly looking on. He was so different from the rest, that she appealed to him instinctively.

“Oh, sir!” she cried, “you must know what is best to be done—tell them.”

He started a little when she spoke; his face, when he turned it towards her, was full of strange expression. There was sadness in it, and mortification, and wounded pride. She said after that he was like a man disappointed, defeated, full of dejection and indignation. He gave her a look of keen wonder, and then said with a sort of smile—

“Ah, that is true!” Then in a moment his voice was heard over the crowd. “The thing to be done,” he said, in a voice which was not loud, but which immediately silenced all the discussions and agitations round, “is to clear away the ruins. The fire will not burn downward—it has no food that way—it will exhaust itself. The young lady fell with the wall. If she is to be found, she will be found there.”

The men around all crowded about the spot from which the voice came.

“Wha’s that that’s speaking?”

“I see nobody.”

“What were you saying, sir?”

“Whoever it is, it is the right thing,” cried young Patrick from the yacht. “Harry, keep you the hose going on the house. I’ll take the other work; and thank you for the advice, whoever you are.”

Mrs. Forrester too had heard this voice, and the command and calm in it gave to her troubled soul a new hope. She pushed her way through the crowd to the spot from whence it came.

“Oh,” she cried, “did you see my Oona fall? Did you see my Oona? No, no, it would not be her that fell. You are just deceived. Where is my Oona? Oh, sir, tell them where she is that they may find her, and we’ll pray for you on our bended knees, night and morning, every day!”

She threw herself on her knees, as she spoke, on the grass, putting up her quivering, feverish hands. The other mother, with a horror which she felt even in the midst of her misery, saw the man to whom this heartrending prayer was addressed, without casting even a glance at the suppliant at his feet, or with any appearance of interest in the proceedings he had advised, turn quietly on his heel and walk away. He walked slowly across the open space and disappeared upon the edge of the water with one glance upward to the blazing tower, taking no more notice of the anxious crowd collected there than if they had not existed. Nor did any one notice the strange spectator going away at the height of the catastrophe, when everybody far and near was roused to help. The men running hurriedly to work did not seem to observe him. The two old servants of the house, Symington and Macalister, stood crowding together out of the reach of the stream of water which was being directed upon the house. But Mrs. Methven took no note of them: only it gave her a strange surprise in the midst of her anguish to see that while her Walter’s fate still hung in the balance, there was one who could calmly go away.

By this time the sun had set; the evening, so strangely different from any other that ever had fallen on the loch, was beginning to darken on the hills, bringing out with wilder brilliancy the flaming of the great fire, which turned the tower of Kinloch Houran into a lantern, and blazed upwards in a great pennon of crimson and orange against the blue of the skies. For miles down the loch the whole population was out upon the roads gazing at this wonderful sight; the hillsides were crimsoned by the reflection, as if the heather had bloomed again; the water glowed red under the cool calm of the evening sky. Round about Birkenbraes was a little crowd, the visitors and servants occupying every spot from which this wonder could be seen, and Mr. Williamson himself, with his daughter, standing at the gate to glean what information might be attainable from the passers-by. Katie, full of agitation, unable to bear the common babble inside, had walked on, scarcely knowing what she did, in her indoor dress, shivering with cold and excitement. They had all said to each other that there could be no danger to life in that uninhabited place.

“Toots, no danger at all!” Mr. Williamson had said, with great satisfaction in the spectacle. “Old Macalister and his wife are just like rats in their hole, the fire will never come near them; and the ruin will be none the worse—it will just be more a ruin than ever.”

There was something in Katie’s mind which revolted against this easy treatment of so extraordinary a catastrophe. It seemed to her connected, she could not tell how, with the scene which had passed in her own room so short a time before. But for shame she would have walked on to Auchnasheen to make sure that Walter was in no danger. But what would he think of her—what would everybody think? Katie went on, however, abstracted from herself, her eyes upon the blaze in the distance, her heart full of disturbed thoughts. All at once she heard the firm quick step of some one advancing to meet her. She looked up eagerly; it might be Walter himself—it might be—When she saw who it was, she came to a sudden pause. Her limbs refused to carry her, her very breath seemed to stop. She looked up at him and trembled. The question that formed on her lips could not get utterance. He was perfectly calm and courteous, with a smile that bewildered her and filled her with terror.

“Is there any one in danger?” he said, answering as if she had spoken. “I think not. There is no one in danger now. It is a fine spectacle. We are at liberty to enjoy it without any drawback—now.”

“Oh, sir,” said Katie, her very lips quivering, “you speak strangely. Are you sure that there was no one there?”

“I am sure of nothing,” he said with a strange smile.

And then Mr. Williamson, delighted to see a stranger, drew near.

“You need not be so keen with your explanations, Katie. Of course it is the gentleman we met at Kinloch Houran. Alas! poor Kinloch Houran, we will never meet there again. You will just stay to dinner now that we have got you. Come, Katie, where are your manners? you say nothing. Indeed we will consider it a great honour—just ourselves and a few people that are staying in the house; and as for dress, what does that matter? It is a thing that happens every day. Neighbours in the country will look in without preparation; and for my part, I say always, the more the merrier,” said the open-hearted millionaire.

The stranger’s face lighted up with a gleam of scornful amusement.

“The kindness is great,” he said, “but I am on my way to the other end of the loch.”

“You are never walking?” cried Mr. Williamson. “Lord bless us? that was a thing that used to be done in my young days, but nobody thinks of now. Your servant will have gone with your baggage? and you would have a delicacy—I can easily understand—in asking for a carriage in the excitement of the moment; but ye shall not walk past my house where there are conveyances of all kinds that it is just a charity to use. Now, I’ll take no denial; there’s the boat. In ten minutes they’ll get up steam. I had ordered it, ready to send up to Auchnasheen for news. But as a friend would never be leaving if the family was in trouble, it is little use to do that now. I will just make a sign to the boat, and they’ll have ye down in no time; it will be the greatest pleasure—if you are sure you will not stay to your dinner in the mean time, which is what I would like best?”

He stood looking down upon them both from his great height; his look had been sad and grave when he had met Katie, a look full of expression which she could not fathom. There came now a gleam of amusement over his countenance. He laughed out.

“That would be admirable,” he said, offering no thanks, “I will take your boat,” like a prince according, rather than receiving, a favour.

Mr. Williamson looked at his daughter with a confused air of astonishment and perplexity, but he sent a messenger off in a boat to warn the steamer, which lay with its lights glimmering white in the midst of the red reflections on the loch. The father and daughter stood there silenced, and with a strange sensation of alarm, beside this stranger. They exchanged another frightened look.

“You’ll be going—a long journey?” Mr. Williamson said, faltering, scarcely knowing what he said.

“I am going—for a long time, at least,” the stranger said.

He seemed to put aside their curiosity as something trifling, unworthy to be answered, and with a wave of his hand to them, took the path towards the beach.

They turned and looked after him, drawing close to each other for mutual comfort. It was twilight, when everything is confusing and uncertain. They lost sight of him, then saw him again, like a tall pillar on the edge of the water. There was a confusion of boats coming and going, in which they could not trace whither he went, or how. Katie and her father stood watching, taking no account of the progress of time, or of the cold wind of the night which came in gusts from the hills. They both drew a long sigh of relief when the steamer was put in motion, and went off down the loch with its lights like glow-worms on the yards and the masts. Nor did they say a word to each other as they turned and went home. When inquiries were made afterwards, nothing but the most confused account could be had of the embarkation. The boatman had seen the stranger, but none among them would say that he had conveyed him to the steamer; and on the steamer the men were equally confused, answering at random, with strange glances at each other. Had they carried that passenger down to the foot of the loch? Not even Katie’s keen questioning could elicit a clear reply.

But when the boat had steamed away, carrying into the silence the rustle of its machinery and the twinkling of its lights, there was another great explosion from the tower of Kinloch Houran, a loud report which seemed to roar away into the hollow of the mountains, and came back in a thousand rolling echoes. A great column of flame shot up into the sky, the stones fell like a cannonade, and then all was darkness and silence. The loch fell into sudden gloom; the men who were labouring at the ruins stopped short, and groped about to find each other through the dust and smoke which hung over them like a cloud. The bravest stood still, as if paralysed, and for a moment, through all this strange scene of desolation and terror, there was but one sound audible, the sound of a voice which cried “Oona! Oona!” now shrill, now hoarse with exhaustion and misery, “Oona! Oona!” to earth and heaven.

CHAPTER XLVIII

When the curious and the inefficient dropped away, as they did by degrees as night fell, there were left the three youths from the yacht, Hamish, Duncan, and two or three men from the village, enough to do a greater work than that which lay before them; but the darkness and the consternation, and even their very eagerness and anxiety, confused their proceedings. Such lamps as they could get from Macalister were fastened up among the heaps of ruin, and made a series of wild Rembrandt-like pictures in the gloom, but afforded little guidance to their work. The masses of masonry which they laboured to clear away seemed to increase rather than diminish under their picks and spades—new angles of the wall giving way when they seemed to have come nearly to the foundation. And now and then from above a mass of stones penetrated through and through by the fire, and kept in their place only by mere balance, would topple down without warning, dangerously near their heads, risking the very lives of the workers; upon whom discouragement gained as the night wore on, and no result was obtained. After a while, with a mournful unanimity they stopped work and consulted in whispers what was to be done. Not a sound had replied to their cries. They had stopped a hundred times to listen, one more imaginative than the rest, thinking he heard an answering cry; but no such response had ever come, how was it possible, from under the choking, suffocating mass, which rolled down upon them as they worked, almost stopping their breath? They gave up altogether in the middle of the night in dejection and hopelessness. The moon had risen and shone all round them, appearing through the great chasms in the wall, making a glory upon the loch, but lending no help here, the shadow of the lower part of the house lying black over the new-made ruin. What was the use? They stood disconsolately consulting over the possibilities. If Walter and Oona were under those heaps of ruin, it was impossible that they could be alive, and the men asked each other, shaking their heads, what chance there was of any of those fortunate accidents which sometimes save the victims of such a calamity. The wall had been already worn by time, there were no beams, no archways which could have sheltered them—everything had come down in one mass of ruin. After many and troubled discussions they prepared reluctantly to abandon the hopeless work. “Perhaps, in the morning”—it was all that any one could say. The young yachtsmen made a last effort, calling out Walter’s name. “If you can speak, for God’s sake speak? any sign and we’ll have you out. Erradeen! Erradeen!” they cried. But the silence was as that of the grave. A fall of powdery fragments now and then from the heap, sometimes a great stone solemnly bounding downwards from point to point, the light blown about by the night air lighting up the dark group, and the solitary figure of Hamish, apart from them, who was working with a sort of rage, never pausing, pulling away the stones with his hands. This was all; not a moan, not a cry, not a sound of existence under those shapeless piles of ruin. The only thing that broke the silence, and which came now with a heartrending monotony, almost mechanical, was the cry of “Oona! Oona!” which Oona’s mother, scarcely conscious, sent out into the night.

The men stole softly round the corner of the house which remained untouched, to get to their boats, stealing away like culprits, though there was no want of goodwill in them. But they were not prepared for the scene that met them there. The little platform before the door, and the landing-place, were bright almost as day with the shining of the moon, the water one sheet of silver, upon which the boats lay black, the grassy space below all white and clear. In the midst of this space, seated on a stone, was Mrs. Methven. She had scarcely stirred all night. Her companion in sorrow had been taken into the shelter of the house, but she, unknown and half-forgotten, and strong with all the vigour of misery, had remained there, avoiding speech of any one. With all her senses absorbed in listening, not a stroke had escaped her, scarcely a word—for a long time she had stood and walked about, not asking a question, observing, seeing, hearing all that was done. But as the awful hours went on, she had dropped down upon this rough seat, little elevated above the ground, where her figure now struck the troubled gaze of the young men, as if it had been that of a sentinel watching to see that they did not abandon their work. No such thought was in her mind. She was conscious of every movement they had made. For a moment she had thought that their call upon her son meant that they had found some trace of him—but that was a mere instantaneous thrill, which her understanding was too clear to continue to entertain. She had said to herself from the beginning that there was no hope; she had said from the first what the men had said to each other reluctantly after hours of exertion. What was the good? since nothing could be done. Yet all the while as she said this, she was nursing within her bosom, concealing it even from her own consciousness, covering up the smouldering dying fire in her heart, a hope that would not altogether die. She would not even go towards the workers when they called out her son’s name to know what it was; but only waited, waited with a desperate, secret, half-heathen thought, that perhaps if she did not cry and importune, but was silent, letting God do what He would, He might yet relent and bring her back her boy. Oh be patient! put on at least the guise of patience! and perhaps He would be touched by the silence of her misery—He who had not heard her prayers.

She sat going over a hundred things in her heart. That Walter should have come back to her, called her to him, opened his heart to her, as a preparation for being thus snatched from her for ever! She said to herself that by-and-by she would thank God for this great mercy, and that she had thus found her son again if only for two days: but in the mean time her heart bled all the more for the thought, and bereavement became more impossible, more intolerable, even from that, which afterwards would make it almost sweet. As she kept that terrible vigil and heard the sound of the implements with which—oh, what was it?—not him, his body, the mangled remains of him, were being sought, she seemed to see him, standing before her, leaning upon her, the strong on the weak, pouring his troubles into her bosom—as he had not done since he was a child; and now he was lying crushed beneath those stones. Oh no, no, Oh no, no—it was not possible. God was not like that, holding the cup of blessing to a woman’s lips and then snatching it away. And then with an effort she would say to herself what she had said from the first, what she had never wavered in saying, that there was no hope. How could there be any hope? crushed beneath tons of falling stones—oh, crushed out of recognition, out of humanity! her imagination spared her nothing. When they found him they would tell her it was better, better, she the mother that bore him, that she should not see him again. And all the while the moon shining and God looking on. She was callous to the cry that came continually, mechanically, now stronger, now fainter, from the rooms above. “Oona, Oona!” Sometimes it made her impatient. Why should the woman cry, as if her voice could reach her child under those masses of ruin? And she could not cry who had lost her all! her only one! why should the other have that relief and she none—nor any hope? But all the sounds about her caught her ear with a feverish distinctness. When she heard the steps approaching after the pause of which she had divined the meaning, they seemed to go over her heart, treading it down into the dust. She raised her head and looked at them as they came up, most of the band stealing behind to escape her eye. “I heard you,” she said, “call—my son.”

“It was only to try; it was to make an effort; it was a last chance.”

“A last—” though she was so composed there was a catch in her breath as she repeated this word; but she added, with the quiet of despair, “You are going away?”

The young man who was the spokesman stood before her like a culprit with his cap in his hand.

“My brothers and I,” he said, “would gladly stay if it was any use; but there is no light to work by, and I fear—I fear—that by this time—”

“There is no more hope?” she said. “I have no hope. I never had any hope.”

The young man turned away with a despairing gesture, and then returned to her humbly, as if she had been a queen.

“We are all grieved—more grieved than words can say: and gladly would we stay if we could be of any use. But what can we do? for we are all convinced—”

“No me,” cried Hamish, coming forward in the moonlight. “No me!” his bleeding hands left marks on his forehead as he wiped the heavy moisture from it; his eyes shone wildly beneath his shaggy brows. “I was against it,” he cried, “from the first! I said what would they be doing here? But convinced, that I never will be, no till I find—Mem, if ye tell them they’ll bide. Tell them to bide. As sure as God is in heaven that was all her thought—we will find her yet.”

The other men had slunk away, and were softly getting into their boats. The three young yachtsmen alone waited, a group of dark figures about her. She looked up at them standing together in the moonlight, her face hollowed out as if by the work of years.

“He is my only one,” she said, “my only one. And you—you—you are all the sons of one mother.”

Her voice had a shrill anguish in it, insupportable to hear: and when she paused there came still more shrilly into the air, with a renewed passion, “Oona! Oona!” the cry that had not ceased for hours. The young man who was called Patrick flung his clenched hand into the air; he gave a cry of pity and pain unendurable.

“Go and lie down for an hour or two,” he said to the others, “and come back with the dawn. Don’t say a word. I’ll stay; it’s more than a man can bear.”

When the others were gone, this young fellow implored the poor lady to go in, to lie down a little, to try and take some rest. What good could she do? he faltered; and she might want all her strength for to-morrow—using all those familiar pleas with which the miserable are mocked. Something like a smile came over her wan face.

“You are very kind,” she said, “oh very kind!” but no more. But when he returned and pressed the same arguments upon her she turned away almost with impatience. “I will watch with my son to-night,” she said, putting him away with her hand. And thus the night passed.

Mrs. Forrester had been taken only half-conscious into Walter’s room early in the evening. Her cry had become almost mechanical, not to be stopped; but she, it was hoped, was but half aware of what was passing, the unwonted and incredible anguish having exhausted her simple being, unfamiliar with suffering. Mr. Cameron, the minister from the village, had come over on the first news, and Mysie from the isle to take care of her mistress. Together they kept watch over the poor mother, who lay sometimes with her eyes half closed in a sort of stupor, sometimes springing up wildly, to go to Oona who was ill, and wanting her, she cried, distraught. “Oona! Oona!” she continued to cry through all. Mysie had removed her bonnet, and her light faded hair was all dishevelled, without the decent covering of the habitual cap, her pretty colour gone. Sorrow seems to lie harder on such a gentle soul. It is cruel. There is nothing in it that is akin to the mild level of a being so easy and common. It was torture that prostrated the soul—not the passion of love and anguish which gave to the other mother the power of absolute self-control, and strength which could endure all things. Mr. Cameron himself, struck to the heart, for Oona was as dear to him as a child of his own, restrained his longing to be out among the workers in order to soothe and subdue her; and though she scarcely understood what he was saying, his presence did soothe her. It was natural that the minister should be there, holding her up in this fiery passage, though she could not tell why.

And thus the night went on. The moonlight faded outside; the candles paled and took a sickly hue within as the blue dawn came stealing over the world. At that chillest, most awful moment of all the circle of time, Mrs. Forrester had sunk into half-unconsciousness. She was not asleep, but exhaustion had almost done the part of sleep, and she lay on the sofa in a stupor, not moving, and for the first time intermitting her terrible cry. The minister stole down-stairs in that moment of repose. He was himself an old man and shaken beyond measure by the incidents of the night. His heart was bleeding for the child of his spirit, the young creature to whom he had been tutor, counsellor, almost father from her childhood. He went out with his heart full, feeling the vigil insupportable in the miserable room above, yet almost less supportable when he came out to the company of the grey hills growing visible, a stern circle of spectators round about, and realised with a still deeper pang the terrible unmitigated fact of the catastrophe. It was with horror that he saw the other mother sitting patient upon the stone outside. He did not know her, and had forgotten that such a person existed as Lord Erradeen’s mother. Had she been there all night? “God help us,” he said to himself; “how selfish we are, even to the sharers of our calamity.” She looked up at him as he passed, but said nothing. And what could he say to her? For the first time he behaved himself like a coward, and fled from duty and kindness; for what could he say to comfort her? and why insult her misery with vain attempts? Young Patrick had pressed shelter and rest upon her, being young and knowing no better. But the minister could not tell Walter’s mother to lie down and rest, to think of her own life. What was her life to her? He passed her by with the acute and aching sympathy which bears a share of the suffering it cannot relieve. And his own suffering was sore. Oona, Oona, he cried to himself silently in his heart as her mother had done aloud—his child, his nursling, the flower of his flock. Mysie had told him in the intervals, when her mistress was quiet, in whispers and with tears, of all that had happened lately, and of Oona’s face that was like the Sabbath of the Sacrament, so grave yet so smiling as she left the isle. This went to the old minister’s heart. He passed the ruin where Hamish was still plucking uselessly, half-stupefied, at the stones, and Patrick, with his back against the unbroken wall, had fallen asleep in utter weariness. Mr. Cameron did not linger there, but sought a place out of sight of man, where he could weep: for he was old, and his heart was too full to do without some natural relief.

He went through the ruined doorway to a place where all was still green and intact, as it had been before the explosion; the walls standing, but trees grown in the deep soil which covered the old stone floor. He leaned his white head against the roughness of the wall, and shed the tears that made his old eyes heavy, and relieved his old heart with prayer. He had prayed much all the night through, but with distracted thoughts, and eyes bent upon the broken-hearted creature by whose side he watched. But now he was alone with the great and closest Friend, He to whom all things can be said, and who understands all. “Give us strength to resign her to Thee,” he said, pressing his old cheek against the damp and cold freshness of the stones, which were wet with other dews than those of nature, with the few concentrated tears of age, that mortal dew of suffering. The prayer and the tears relieved his soul. He lifted his head from the wall, and turned to go back again—if, perhaps, now fresh from his Master’s presence he might find a word to say to the other woman who all night long, like Rizpah, had sat silent and watched her son.

But as he turned to go away it seemed to the minister that he heard a faint sound. He supposed nothing but that one of the men who had been working had gone to sleep in a corner, and was waking and stirring to the daylight. He looked round, but saw no one. Perhaps, even, there came across the old man’s mind some recollection of the tales of mystery connected with this house; but in the presence of death and sorrow, he put these lesser wonders aside. Nevertheless, there was a sound, faint, but yet of something human. The old stone floor was deep under layers of soil upon which every kind of herbage and even trees grew; but in the corner of the wall against which he had been leaning, the gathered soil had been hollowed away by the droppings from above, and a few inches of the original floor was exposed. The old man’s heart began to beat with a bewildering possibility: but he dared not allow himself to think of it: he said to himself, but it must be a bird, a beast, something imprisoned in some crevice. He listened. God! was that a moan? He turned and rushed, with the step of a boy, to where Patrick sat dozing, and Hamish, stupefied, worked on mechanically. He clutched the one out of his sleep, the other from his trance of exhaustion—“Come here! come here! and listen. What is this?” the old minister said.

CHAPTER XLIX

The two fugitives, holding each other’s hands, had fled from the fire without a word to each other. All that needed to be spoken seemed to them both to be over. They hurried on instinctively, but without any hope, expecting every moment when destruction should overtake them. Walter was the last to give up consciousness: but the sickening sense of a great fall, the whirl and resistance of the air rushing madly against him through the void, the sensation mounting up to his brain, the last stronghold of consciousness, and thrill of feeling, as if life were to end there, in a painful rush of blood, were all that were known to him. What happened really was that, holding Oona insensible in his arms, he was carried downwards with the slide and impetus of the part of the ruin on which he was standing, detached by his own weight, rather than thrown violently down by the action of the explosion. The force of the fall, however, was so great, and the mass falling with them so heavy, that some of the stones, already very unsteady, of the pavement below gave way, and carried them underground to one of the subterranean cellars, half filled up with soil, which ran under the whole area of the old castle. How long they lay there unable to move, and for some part of the time at least entirely without consciousness, Walter could never tell. When he recovered his senses he was in absolute darkness and in considerable pain. Oona had fallen across him and the shock had thus been broken. It was a moan from her which woke him to life again. But she made no reply to his first distracted question, and only gave evidence of life by a faint little cry from time to time—too faint to be called a cry—a breath of suffering, no more. The suffocating terrible sensation of the darkness, a roar of something over them like thunder, the oppression of breathing, which was caused by the want of atmosphere, all combined to bewilder his faculties and take away both strength and will to do anything more than lie there quietly and gasp out the last breath. Walter was roused by feeling in Oona an unconscious struggle for breath. She raised first one hand, then another, as if to take away something which was stifling her, and he began to perceive in the vagueness of his awakening consciousness that her life depended upon his exertions. Then, his eyes becoming more accustomed to the darkness, he caught a faint ray of light, so attenuated as to be no more than a thread in the solid gloom. To drag himself towards this, and with himself the still more precious burden, thus in utter helplessness confided to him, was a more terrible work than Walter in all his life had ever attempted before. There was not room to stand upright, and his limbs were so shaken and aching that he could scarcely raise himself upon them; and one of his arms was useless, and, when he tried to raise it, gave him the most exquisite pain. It seemed hours before he could succeed in dragging her to the little opening, a mere crevice between the stones, through which the thread of light had come. When he had cleared the vegetation from it, a piercing cold breath came in and revived him. He raised Oona in his arms to the air, but the weight of her unconsciousness was terrible to him in his weakened condition, and though she began to breathe more easily, she was not sufficiently recovered to give him any help.

Thus she lay, and he crouched beside her, trying to think, for he could not tell how long. He heard sounds above him indeed, but the roar of the falling stones drowned the human noises, and his brain was too much clouded to think of the search which must be going on overhead for his companion and himself. The worst of all was this dazed condition of his brain, so that it was a long time before he could put one thing to another and get any command of his thoughts. In all likelihood consciousness did not fully return until the time when the men above in despair relinquished their work, for some feeble sense of cries and human voices penetrated the darkness, but so muffled and far off that in the dimness of his faculties he did not in any way connect them with himself, nor think of attempting any reply. Perhaps it was, though he was not aware that he heard it, the echo of his own name that finally brought him to the full possession of himself—and then all his dull faculties centred, not in the idea of any help at hand, but in that of fighting a way somehow to a possible outlet. How was he to do it? The pain of his arm was so great that at times he had nearly fainted with mere bodily suffering, and his mind fluctuated from moment to moment—or was it not rather from hour to hour?—with perplexity and vain endeavour. He was conscious, however, though he had not given any meaning to the sounds he heard, of the strange silence which followed upon the stopping of the work. Something now and then like the movements of a bird (was it Hamish working wildly above, half-mad, half-stupefied, unable to be still?) kept a little courage in him, but the silence and darkness were terrible, binding his very soul.

It was then that he had the consolation of knowing that his companion had come to herself. Suddenly a hand groping found his, and caught it; it was his wounded arm, and the pain went like a knife to his heart, a pang which was terrible, but sweet.

“Where are we?” Oona said, trying to raise herself—oh, anguish!—by that broken arm.

He could not answer her for the moment, he was so overcome by the pain—and he was holding her up with the other arm.

“Do not hold my hand,” he said at last; “take hold of my coat. Thank God that you can speak!”

“Your arm is hurt, Walter?”

“Broken, I think; but never mind, that is nothing. Nothing matters so long as you have your senses. Oona, if we die together, it will be all right?”

“Yes,” she said, raising her face in the darkness to be nearer his. He kissed her solemnly, and for the moment felt no more pain.

“As well this way as another. Nothing can reach us here—only silence and sleep.”

She began to raise herself slowly, until her head struck against the low roof. She gave a faint cry—then finding herself on her knees, put her arm round him, and they leant against each other. “God is as near in the dark as in the day,” she said. “Lord, deliver us—Lord, deliver us!” Then, after a pause, “What happened? You saved my life.”

“Is it saved?” he asked. “I don’t know what has happened, except that we are together.”

Oona gave a sudden shudder and clung to him. “I remember now, the flames and the fire: and it was I that broke the lamp. What did it mean, the lamp? I thought it was something devilish—something to harm you.” She shivered more and more, clinging to him. “Do you think it is He—that has shut us up in this dungeon, to die?”

Walter made no reply; it was no wonder to him that she should speak wildly. He too was tempted to believe that accident had no part in what had befallen them, that they had now encountered the deadly vengeance of their enemy. He tried to soothe her, holding her close to his breast. “I think we are in some of the vaults below—perhaps for our salvation.” As her courage failed there was double reason that he should maintain a good heart. “There must be some outlet. Will you stay here and wait till I try if I can find a way?”

“Oh no, no,” cried Oona, clinging to him, “let us stay together. I will creep after you. I will not hinder you.” She broke off with a cry, echoing, but far more keenly, the little moan that came from him unawares as he struck his arm against the wall. She felt it far more sharply than he did, and in the darkness he felt her soft hands binding round his neck something warm and soft like their own touch in which she had wound the wounded arm to support it. It was the long white “cloud” which had been about her throat, and it warmed him body and soul; but he said nothing by way of gratitude. They were beyond all expressions of feeling, partly because they had reached the limit at which reality is too overpowering for sentiment, and partly because there was no longer any separation of mine and thine between them, and they were but one soul.

But to tell the miseries of their search after a way of escape would demand more space than their historian can afford. They groped along the wall, thinking now that they saw a glimmer in one direction, now in another, and constantly brought up with a new shock against the opaque resistance round them, a new corner, or perhaps only that from which they started; under their feet unequal heaps of damp soil upon which they stumbled, and broken stones over which Oona, with childlike sobs of which she was unconscious, caught her dress, falling more than once as they laboured along. In this way they moved round and round their prison, a long pilgrimage. At length, when they were almost in despair, saying nothing to each other, only keeping close that the touch of each to each might be a moral support, they found themselves in what seemed a narrow passage, walls on each side, and something like an arrowslit over their heads, the light from which showed them where they were, and was as an angel of consolation to the two wounded and suffering creatures, stumbling along with new hope. But when they had reached the end of this narrow passage, Walter, going first, fell for a distance of two or three feet into the lower level of another underground chamber like that which he had left, jarring his already strained and racked frame, and only by an immense effort hindered Oona from falling after him. The force of the shock, and instant recovery by which he kept her back and helped her to descend with precaution, brought heavy drops of exhaustion and pain to his forehead. And when they discovered that they were nothing the better for their struggles, and that the place which they had reached at such a cost, though lighter, was without any outlet whatever except that by which they had come, their discouragement was so great that Walter had hard ado not to join in the tears which Oona, altogether prostrated by the disappointment, shed on his shoulder.

“We must not give in,” he tried to say. “Here there is a little light at least. Oona, my darling, do not break down, or I shall break down too.”

“No, no,” she said submissively through her sobs, leaning all her weight upon him. He led her as well as he was able to a heap of earth in the corner, over which in the roof was a little opening to the light, barred with an iron stanchion, and quite out of reach. Here he placed her tenderly, sitting down by her, glad of the rest, though it was so uninviting. The light came in pale and showed the strait inclosure of their little prison. They were neither of them able to resume their search, but sat close together leaning against each other, throbbing with pain, and sick with weariness and disappointment. It gave Walter a kind of forlorn pride in his misery to feel that while Oona had failed altogether, he was able to sustain and uphold her. They did not speak in their weakness, but after a while dozed and slept, in that supreme necessity of flesh and blood which overcomes even despair, and makes no account of danger. They slept as men will sleep at death’s door, in the midst of enemies: and in the depths of their suffering and misery found refreshment. But in that light sleep little moans unawares came with their breathing, for both were bruised and shaken, and Walter’s broken arm was on fire with fever and pain. It was those breathings of unconscious suffering that caught the ear of the minister as he made his prayer. His step had not disturbed them, but when he came back accompanied by the others, the light was suddenly darkened and the stillness broken by some one who flung himself upon his knees with a heavy shock of sound and a voice pealing in through the opening—“Miss Oona, if ye are there, speak! or, oh for the love of the Almighty, whoever is there, speak and tell me where’s my leddy?” It was Hamish, half mad with hope and suspense and distracted affection, who thus plunged between them and the light.

They both woke with the sound, but faintly divining what it was, alarmed at first rather than comforted by the darkness into which they were plunged. There was a pause before either felt capable of reply, that additional deprivation being of more immediate terror to them, than there was consolation in the half-heard voice. In this pause, Hamish, maddened by the disappointment of his hopes, scrambled to his feet reckless and miserable, and shook his clenched fist in the face of the minister who was behind him.

“How dare ye,” he cried, “play upon a man, that is half wild, with your imaginations! there’s naebody there!” and with something between a growl and an oath, he flung away, with a heavy step that sounded like thunder to the prisoners. But next moment the rage of poor Hamish all melted away into the exceeding and intense sweetness of that relief which is higher ecstasy than any actual enjoyment given to men, the very sweetness of heaven itself—for as he turned away the sound of a voice, low and weak, but yet a voice, came out of the bowels of the earth; a murmur of two voices that seemed to consult with each other, and then a cry of “Oona is safe. Oona is here. Come and help us, for the love of God.”

“The Lord bless you!” cried the old minister, falling on his knees. “Oona, speak to me, if you are there. Oona, speak to me! I want to hear your own voice.”

There was again a pause of terrible suspense. Hamish threw himself down, too, behind the minister, tears running over his rough cheeks, while the young man, who was overawed by the sight, and affected too, in a lesser degree, stood with his face half hidden against the wall.

“I am here,” Oona said feebly, “all safe—not hurt even. We are both safe; but oh, make haste, make haste, and take us out of this place.”

“God bless you, my bairn. God bless you, my dearest bairn!” cried Mr. Cameron: but his words were drowned in a roar of laughter and weeping from the faithful soul behind him—“Ay, that will we, Miss Oona—that will we, Miss Oona!” Hamish shouted and laughed and sobbed till the walls rang, then clamorous with his heavy feet rushed out of sight without another word, they knew not where.

“I’ll follow him,” said young Patrick; “he will know some way.”

The minister was left alone at the opening through which hope had come. He was crying like a child, and ready to laugh too like Hamish.

“My bonny dear,” he said; “my bonny dear—” and could not command his voice.

“Mr. Cameron—my mother. She must be breaking her heart.”

“And mine,” Walter said with a groan. He thought even then of the bitterness of her woe, and of all the miserable recollections that must have risen in her mind: please God not to come again.

“I am an old fool,” said Mr. Cameron, outside: “I cannot stand out against the joy; but I am going. I’m going, my dear. Say again you are not hurt, Oona. Say it’s you, my darling, my best bairn!”

“And me that had not the courage to say a word to yon poor woman,” he said to himself as he hurried away. The light was still grey in the skies, no sign of the sun as yet, but not only the hills distinct around, but the dark woods, and the islands on the water, and even the sleeping roofs so still among their trees on the shores of the loch, had come into sight. The remaining portion of the house which had stood so many assaults, and the shapeless mass of the destroyed tower, stood up darkly against the growing light: and almost like a part of it, like a statue that had come down from its pedestal was the figure of Mrs. Methven, which he saw standing between him and the shore, her face turned towards him. She had heard the hurrying steps and the shout of Hamish, and knew that something had happened. She had risen against her will, against the resolution she had formed, unable to control herself, and stood with one hand under her cloak, holding her heart, to repress, if possible, the terrible throbbing in it. The face she turned towards the minister overawed him in the simplicity of his joy. It was grey, like the morning, or rather ashen white, the colour of death. Even now she would not, perhaps could not, ask anything; but only stood and questioned him with her eyes, grown to twice their usual size, in the great hollows which this night had opened out.

The minister knew that he should speak carefully, and make easy to her the revolution from despair to joy; but he could not. They were both beyond all secondary impulses. He put the fact into the plainest words.

“Thank God! your son is safe,” he cried.

“What did you say?”

“Oh, my poor lady, God be with you. I dared not speak to you before. Your son is safe. Do you know what I mean? He is as safe as you or me.”

She kept looking at him, unable to take it into her mind; that is to say, her mind had flashed upon it, seized it at the first word, yet—with a dumb horror holding hope away from her, lest deeper despair might follow—would not allow her to believe.

“What—did you say? You are trying to make me think—” And then she broke off, and cried out “Walter!” as if she saw him—as a mother might cry who saw her son suddenly, unlooked for, come into the house when all believed him dead—and fell on her knees,—then from that attitude sank down upon herself, and dropped prostrate on the ground.

Mr. Cameron was alarmed beyond measure. He knew nothing of faints, and he thought the shock had killed her. But what could he do? It was against his nature to leave a stranger helpless. He took off his coat and covered her, and then hurried to the door and called up Macalister’s wife, who was dozing in a chair.

“I think I have killed her,” he said, “with my news.”

“Then ye have found him?” the three old people said together, the woman clasping her hands with a wild “Oh hon—oh hon!” while Symington came forward, trembling, and pale as death.

“I had hoped,” he said, with quivering lips, “like the apostles with One that was greater, that it was he that was to have delivered—Oh, but we are vain creatures! and now it’s a’ to begin again.”

“Is that all ye think of your poor young master? He is living, and will do well. Go and take up the poor lady. She is dead, or fainted, but it is with joy.”

And then he went up-stairs. Many an intimation of sorrow and trouble the minister had carried. But good news had not been a weight upon him hitherto. He went to the other poor mother with trouble in his heart. If the one who had been so brave was killed by it, how encounter her whose soft nature had fallen prostrate at once? He met Mysie at the door, who told him her mistress had slept, but showed signs of waking.

“Oh, sir, if ye could give her something that would make her sleep again! I could find it in my heart to give her, what would save my poor lady from ever waking more,” cried the faithful servant; “for oh, what will she do—oh, what will we all do without Miss Oona?”

“Mysie,” cried the minister, “how am I to break it to her? I have just killed the poor lady down-stairs with joy; and what am I to say to your mistress? Miss Oona is safe and well—she’s safe and well.”

“Oh, Mr. Cameron,” cried Mysie, with a sob, “I ken what you are meaning. She’s well, the Lord bless her, because she has won to heaven.”

Mrs. Forrester had woke during this brief talk, and raised herself upon the sofa. She broke in upon them in a tone so like her ordinary voice, so cheerful and calm, that they both turned round upon her with a kind of consternation.

“What is that you are saying—safe and well—oh, safe and well. Thank God for it; but I never had a moment’s doubt. And where has she been all this weary night; and why did she leave me in this trouble? What are ye crying for, Mysie, like a daft woman? You may be sure, my darling has been doing good, and not harm.”

“That is true, my dear lady—that is true, my dear friend,” cried the minister. “God bless her! She has done us all good, all the days of her sweet life.”

“And you are crying too,” said Oona’s mother, almost with indignation. “What were you feared for? Do you think I could not trust God, that has always been merciful to me and mine? or was it Oona ye could not trust?” she said with smiling scorn. “And is she coming soon? For it seems to me we have been here a weary time.”

“As soon—as she can get out of the—place where she is. The openings are blocked up by the ruin.”

“I had no doubt,” said Mrs. Forrester, “it was something of that kind.”

Then she rose up from the sofa, very weak and tottering, but smiling still, her pale and faded face looking ten years older, her hair all ruffled, falling out of its usual neat arrangement. She put up her hands to her head with a little cry.

“Bless me,” she said, “she will think I have gone out of my senses, and you too, Mysie, to take my bonnet off and expose me, with no cap. I must put all this right again before my Oona comes.”

Mr. Cameron left her engaged in these operations, with the deepest astonishment. Was it a faith above the reach of souls less simple? or was it the easy rebound of a shallow nature? He watched her for a moment as she put up her thin braids of light hair, and tied her ribbons, talking all the time of Oona.

“She never was a night out of her bed in all her life before; and my only fear is she may have gotten a chill, and no means here of making her comfortable. Mysie, you will go down-stairs, and try at least to get the kettle to boil, and a cup of tea for her. Did the minister say when she would be here?”

“No, mem,” said Mysie’s faltering voice; “naething but that she was safe and well; and the Lord forgive me—I thought—I thought—”

“Never mind what you thought,” said Mrs. Forrester briskly, “but run down-stairs and see if you can make my darling a good cup of tea.”

By the time she had tied her bonnet strings and made herself presentable, the full light of the morning was shining upon the roused world. The air blew chill in her face as she came down the staircase (strangely weak and tottering, which was “just extraordinary” she said to herself), and emerged upon the little platform outside. Several boats already lay on the beach, and there was the sound of the voices and footsteps of men breaking the stillness. Mrs. Forrester came out with those little graces which were part of herself, giving a smile to old Symington, and nodding kindly to the young men from the yacht who were just coming ashore. “This is early hours,” she said to them with her smile, and went forward to the little group before the door, surrounding Mrs. Methven, who still lay where Mr. Cameron had left her, incapable of movement. “Dear me,” said Mrs. Forrester, “here have I been taking up a comfortable room, and them that have a better right left out of doors. They have given us a terrible night, my child and yours, but let us hope there has been a good reason for it, and that they will be none the worse. They are just coming, the minister tells me. If ye will take the help of my arm, we might step that way and meet them. They will be glad to see we are not just killed with anxiety, which is what my Oona will fear.”

CHAPTER L

The news that Lord Erradeen, and it was supposed several others—some went so far as to say a party of visitors, others his mother, newly arrived as all the world was aware, and to whom he was showing the old castle, with a young lady who was her companion—had perished in the fire, streamed down the loch nobody knew how, and was known and believed to the end of the country before the evening was over. It came to the party at Birkenbraes as they were sitting down to dinner, some time after everybody had come in from gazing at the extraordinary spectacle of the fire, got up, Mr. Williamson assured his guests, entirely for their amusement. The good man, however, had been much sobered out of that jocose mood by his encounter with the strange visitor whom he had first seen at Kinloch Houran, but had begun to draw a little advantage from that too, and was telling the lady next to him with some pride of Lord Erradeen’s relation, a very distinguished person indeed. “I’m thinking in the diplomatic service, or one of the high offices that keep a man abroad all his life. (I would rather for my part live in a cottage at home, but that is neither here nor there.) So as he was leaving and naturally could not trouble the family about carriages just at such a moment, I offered him the boat: and you could see them getting up steam. I find it very useful to have a steam-boat always ready, just waiting at the service of my friends.” The lady had replied as in duty bound, and as was expected of her, that it was a magnificent way of serving your friends, which the millionaire on his side received with a laugh and a wave of his hand, declaring that it was nothing, just nothing, a bagatelle in the way of cost, but a convenience, he would not deny it was a convenience; when that discreet butler who had ushered Lord Erradeen into Katie’s private sitting-room, leaned over his master’s shoulder with a solemn face, and a “Beg your pardon, sir. They say, sir, that Lord Erradeen has perished in the fire.”

“Lord bless us!” said Mr. Williamson, “what is that you say?”

“It is only a rumour, sir, but I hear Kinloch Houran is all in a commotion, and it is believed everywhere. The young lord was seen with some ladies going there in a boat this afternoon, and they say that he has perished in the flames.”

Sanderson was fond of fine language, and his countenance was composed to the occasion.

“Lord bless us!” cried Mr. Williamson again. “Send off a man and horse without a moment’s delay to find out the truth. Quick, man, and put down the sherry, I’ll help myself! Poor lad, poor lad, young Erradeen! He was about this house like one of our own, and no later than yesterday—Katie, do you hear?” he cried, half rising and leaning over the forest of flowers and ferns that covered the table, “Katie! do you hear this terrible news? but it cannot be true!”

Katie had been told at the same moment, and the shock was so great that everything swam in her eyes, as she looked up blanched and terror-stricken in mechanical obedience to her father’s cry. “That man will have killed him,” she said to herself: and then there came over her mind a horror which was flattering too, which filled her with dismay and pain, yet with a strange sensation of importance. Was it she who was to blame for this catastrophe, was she the cause—

“It seems to be certain,” said some one at the table, “that Erradeen was there. He was seen on the battlements with a lady, just before the explosion.”

“His mother!” said Katie, scarcely knowing why it was that she put forth this explanation.

“A young lady. There is some extraordinary story among the people that she—had something to do with the fire.”

“That will be nonsense,” said Mr. Williamson. “What would a lady have to do with the fire? Old stone walls like yon are not like rotten wood. I cannot understand for my part—”

“And there could be no young lady,” said Katie. “Mrs. Methven was alone.”

“Well, well!” said her father. “I am sorry—sorry for Lord Erradeen; he was just as fine a young fellow—But we will do him no good, poor lad, by letting our dinner get cold. And perhaps the man will bring us better news—there is always exaggeration in the first report. I am afraid you will find that soup not eatable, Lady Mary. Just send it away; there is some fine trout coming.”

He was sincerely sorry; but, after all, to lose the dinner would have spared nothing to poor young Erradeen.

Katie said little during the long meal. Her end of the table, usually so gay, was dull. Now and then she would break in with a little spasmodic excitement, and set her companions talking: then relapse with a strange mingling of grief and horror, and that melancholy elation which fills the brain of one who suddenly feels himself involved in great affairs and lifted to heroic heights. If it was for her—if it was she who was the cause of this calamity—She had dreamed often of finding herself with a high heroic part to fulfil in the world, though it seemed little likely that she would ever realise her dream; but now, Katie said to herself, if this was so, never more should another take the place which she had refused to him. If he had died for her, she would live—for him. She would find out every plan he had ever formed for good and fulfil it. She would be the providence of the poor tenants whom he had meant to befriend. She imagined herself in this poetical position always under a veil of sadness, yet not enough to make her unhappy—known in the county as the benefactor of everybody, described with whispers aside as “the lady that was to have married poor young Lord Erradeen.” Katie was profoundly sorry for poor Walter—for the first few minutes her grief was keen; but very soon this crowd of imaginations rushed in, transporting her into a new world. If this were so! Already everybody at table had begun to remark her changed looks, and to whisper that they had been sure there was “something between” Katie and the poor young lord. When the ladies went to the drawing-room they surrounded her with tender cares.

“If you would like to go to your room, my dear, never mind us.”

“Oh, never mind us,” cried the gentle guests, “we can all understand—”

But Katie was prudent even at this crisis of fate. She reflected that the report might not be true, and that it was premature at least to accept the position. She smiled upon the ladies who surrounded her, and put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Of course,” she said, “I can’t help feeling it—every one will feel it on the loch—and we had seen so much of him! But perhaps, as papa says, when the messenger comes back, we may have better news.”

The messenger did not come back till late, when the party were about to separate. He had found the greatest difficulty in getting information, for all that was known at Auchnasheen was that the young lord and his mother had gone in the boat from the isle with the ladies, to see the old castle. With the ladies! Katie could not restrain a little cry. She knew what was coming. And he had been seen, the man went on, with Miss Oona on the walls—and that was all that was known. This stroke went to Katie’s heart. “Oona!” she cried, with something of sharpness and bitterness in the cry; though in the wail that rose from all around who knew the isle, this tone that broke the harmony of grief was lost. But her little fabric of imaginary heroism fell into the dust: and for the moment the shock of a genuine, if alloyed, sentiment thrown back upon herself, and the secret mortification with which she became conscious of the absurdity of her own self-complacence, kept Katie from feeling the natural pity called forth by such a catastrophe, and the deeper pang which by-and-by awakened her heart to the thought of Oona—Oona no rival, but the friend of her youth, Oona the only companion of her mother, the young and hopeful creature whom everybody loved. To think that she should have indulged a little miserable rivalry—on account of a man for whom she did not care the hundredth part so much as she cared for Oona, before realising this real grief and calamity! Katie’s honest little soul was bowed down with shame. She, too, watched that night with many a prayer and tear, gazing from her many-windowed chamber towards the feathery crest of the isle which lay between her and Kinloch Houran. Oh, the desolation that would be there and Oona gone! Oh, the blank upon the loch, and in all the meetings of the cheerful neighbours! Another man on horseback was sent off by break of day for news, and not only from Birkenbraes, but from every house for miles round the messengers hurried. There had been no such excitement in the district for generations.

The news reached the Lodge—Sir Thomas Herbert’s shooting-box—early in the morning when the family met at breakfast. The previous night had been occupied with an excitement of their own. Major Antrobus, Sir Thomas’s friend, brother in sport and arms, had been from the moment of his arrival a disappointment to Sir Thomas. The first evening Julia had caught him in her toils. She had sung and laughed and talked his heart, so much as remained to him, away. He was the man of all others who, his friends were convinced, was not a marrying man. He had a good estate, a house full of every bachelor comfort, and was useful to those in whom he was interested as only a bachelor can be. Nor was it only to men that he was invaluable as a friend. He had a box at Ascot; he had ways of making the Derby delightful to a party of ladies; he was of infinite use at Goodwood; he knew everybody whom it was well to know. Lady Herbert was almost as inconsolable as her husband at the idea of losing him. And that such a man should be brought by Sir Thomas himself into harm’s way, and delivered over to the enemy by the very hands of his friends, was more than flesh and blood could bear. The Herberts saw their mistake before he had been at the Lodge two days. But what could they do? They could not send him away—nor could they send Julia away. Had they done so, that young lady had already made herself friends enough to have secured two or three invitations in a foolishly hospitable country, where everybody’s first idea was to ask you to stay with them! Sir Thomas acted with the noble generosity characteristic of middle-aged men of the world in such circumstances. He told his friend, as they smoked their cigars in the evening, a great many stories about Julia, and all she had been “up to” in her chequered career. He described how Lady Herbert had brought her down here, because of some supposed possibility about Lord Erradeen. “But young fellows like that are not to be so easily taken in,” Sir Thomas said, and vaunted his own insight in perceiving from the first that there was nothing in it. The major listened, and sucked his cigar, and said nothing; but next day on the way home, when the fire at Kinloch Houran was reddening the skies, took his host aside, and said—

“I say, all that may be true, you know. I don’t know anything about that. Girls, you know, poor things! they’ve devilish hard lines, when they’ve got no tin. If she’s tried it on, you know, once or twice before, that’s nothing to me. That’s all their mother’s fault, don’t you know. She’s the jolliest girl I ever met, and no end of fun. With her in the house, you know, a fellow would never be dull, and I can tell you it’s precious dull at Antrobus on off days, when all you fellows are away. I say! I’ve asked her—to be mine, you know, and all that; and she’s—going to have me, Tom!”

“Going to have you! Oh, I’ll be bound she is! and everything you’ve got belonging to you!” in the keenness of his annoyance, cried Sir Thomas.

The major, who was somewhat red in the face, and whose figure was not elegant (but what trifles were these, Julia truly said, in comparison with a true heart!), hemmed a little, and coughed, and set his chin into his shirt collar. He stood like a man to his choice, and would have no more said.

“Of course she is—if she’s going to have me, you know. Fixtures go with the property,” said Major Antrobus, with a hasty laugh. “And, I say, by-gones are by-gones, you know—but no more of them in the future if we’re going to be friends.”

The men had a quarrel, however, before Sir Thomas gave in—which was stopped fortunately before it went too far by his wife, who met them all smiles with both hands extended.

“What are you talking loud about, you two?” she said. “Major, I’m delighted. Of course I’ve seen it all along. She’ll make you an excellent wife, and I wish you all the happiness in the world.”

“Thank you: he don’t think so,” the major said with a growl.

But after this Sir Thomas perceived that to quarrel with a man for marrying your cousin whom he has met in your house is one of the foolishest of proceedings. He relieved his feelings afterwards by falling upon the partner of his life.

“What humbugs you women are! What lies you tell! You said she would make him an excellent wife.”

“And so she will,” said Lady Herbert, “a capital wife! He will be twice as happy, but alas! no good at all henceforward,” she ended with a sigh.

The excitement of this incident was not over, when to the breakfast-table next morning, where Julia appeared triumphant, having overcome all opposition, the news arrived, not softened by any doubt as if the result was still uncertain, but with that pleasure in enhancing the importance of dolorous intelligence which is common to all who have the first telling of a catastrophe. There was a momentary hush of horror when the tale was told, and then Julia, her expression changed in a moment, her eyes swimming in tears, rose up in great excitement from her lover’s side.

“Oh, Walter!” she cried, greatly moved. “Oh that I should be so happy, and he—” And then she paused, and her tears burst forth. “And his mother—his mother!”

She sat down again and wept, while the rest of the party looked on, her major somewhat gloomy, her cousin (after a momentary tribute of silence to death) with a dawning of triumph in his eye.

“You always thought a great deal of young Erradeen, Ju—at least since he has been Lord Erradeen.”

“I always was fond of him,” she cried. “Poor Walter! poor Walter! Oh, you can weigh my words if you like at such a time, but I won’t weigh them. If Henry likes to be offended I can’t help it. He has no reason. Oh, Walter, Walter! I was always fond of him. I have known him since I was that high—and his mother, I have always hated her. I have known her since I was that high. If you think such things go for nothing it is because you have no hearts. Harry, if you love me as you say, get your dog-cart ready this moment and take me to that poor woman—that poor, poor woman! His mother—and she has only him in all the world. Harry, take me or not but I will go—”

“You said you hated her, Julia,” cried Lady Herbert.

“And so I did: and what does that matter? Shall I keep away from her for that—when I am the only one that has known him all his life—that knew him from a child? Harry—”

“I have ordered the dog-cart, my dear; and you are a good woman, Julia. I thought so, but with all your dear friends and people hang me if I knew.”

Julia gave him her hand: she was crying without any disguise.

“Perhaps I haven’t been very good,” she said, “but I never was hard-hearted, and when I think upon that poor woman among strangers—”

“By Jove, but this is something new,” cried Sir Thomas; “the girl that liked young men best without their mothers, Antrobus, hey?”

“Oh hush, Tom,” cried his wife; “and dear Julia, be consistent a little—that you’re sorry for your old—friend (don’t laugh, Tom; say her old flame if you like, but remember that he’s dead, poor fellow), that we can understand. Major Antrobus knows all that story. But this fuss about the mother whom you never could bear. Oh that is a little too much! You can’t expect us to take in that!”

Julia turned upon her relations with what at bottom was a generous indignation. “If you don’t know,” she said, “how it feels to hear of another person’s misfortune, when you yourself are happier than you deserve—and if you don’t understand that I would go on my knees to poor Mrs. Methven to take one scrap of her burden off her! oh all the more because I never liked her—But what is the use of talking, for if you don’t understand, nothing I could say would make you understand. And it does not matter to me now,” cried Julia, less noble feelings breaking in, “now I have got one who is going to stand by me, who knows what I mean, and will put no bad motive—”

The real agitation and regret in her face gave force to the triumph with which she turned to her major, and taking his arm swept out of the room. He, too, had all the sense of dignity which comes from fine feeling misunderstood, and felt himself elevated in the scale of humanity by his superior powers of understanding. Lady Herbert, who remained behind, was saved by the humour of the situation from exploding, as Sir Thomas did. To think that the delicacy of the major’s perceptions should be the special foundation of his bride’s satisfaction was, as she declared with tears of angry laughter, “too good!”

But the second and better news arrived before Julia could set out on her charitable mission. Perhaps it was better that it should end so: for though the first outburst of feeling had been perfectly genuine and sincere, the impulse might have been alloyed by less perfect wishes before she had reached Kinloch Houran. And it is doubtful in any case whether her ministrations, however kind, would have been acceptable to Walter’s mother. As it was, when she led her major back, Julia was too clever not to find a medium of reconciliation with her cousins, who by that time had come to perceive how ludicrous any quarrel open to the world would be. And so peace was established, and Julia Herbert’s difficulties came in the happiest way to an end.

CHAPTER LI

The miseries of the night’s imprisonment were soon forgotten. Oona, elastic in youthful health, recovered in a few days, she said in a few hours, from its effects, and the keen reality of the after events dimmed in her mind the mystery of that extraordinary moment which appeared now like a dream, too wonderful to be true, too inexplicable and beyond experience to come into natural life at all. They spoke of it to each other with bated breath, but not till some time after their rescue, when the still higher excitement of their near approach to death—a thing which reveals the value and charm of life as nothing else does—had somewhat subsided in their minds. But their recollections were confused, they could not tell how; and as Walter had never been sure after they were over, whether the terrible conflicts which he had gone through were not conflicts between the better and worse parts of his own nature, without any external influence, so they asked each other now whether the mysterious chamber, the burning lamp, the strange accessories of a concealed and mysterious life, were dreams of disordered fancy, or something real and actual. They could not explain these things to each other, neither could they understand what it was that made the throwing down of the light of such vital importance. Was it common fire, acting after the ordinary laws of nature and finding ready fuel in the dry wood and antique furniture? or was it something more mystic, more momentous? They gave little explanation to questioners, not so much because they were unwilling, as because they were unable; and when they discussed it between themselves became more and more confused as the days went on. It became like a phantasmagoria, sometimes suddenly appearing in all the vivid lines of reality, sometimes fading into a pale apparition which memory could scarcely retain.

To the world in general the fact of a great fire, a thing unfortunately not very rare in the records of ancient houses, became after a while a very simple piece of history; and the wonderful escape of Lord Erradeen and Miss Forrester, and their subsequent betrothal and marriage, a pretty piece of natural romance. The tower, now preserving nothing more than a certain squareness in its mass of ruins, showed traces of two rooms that might have been, but everything was destroyed except the stones, and any remains that might have withstood the action of the fire were buried deep under the fallen walls; nor could any trace be found of concealed passages or any way of descent into the house from that unsuspected hiding-place. One thing was certain, however, that the being who had exercised so strange an influence on a year of his life never appeared to Walter more. There were moments in which he felt, with a pang of alarm, that concentration of his thoughts upon himself, that subtle direction and intensification of his mind, as if it had suddenly been driven into a dialogue with some one invisible, which had been the worst of all the sufferings he had to bear; but these, after the first terror, proved to be within the power of his own efforts to resist and shake off, and never came to any agonising crisis like that which he had formerly passed through. His marriage, which took place as soon as circumstances would permit, ended even these last contentions of the spirit. And if in the midst of his happiness he was sometimes tortured by the thought that the change of his life from the evil way to the good one had all the results of the most refined selfishness, as his adversary had suggested, and that he was amply proving the ways of righteousness to be those of pleasantness, and godliness to be great gain, that thought was too ethereal for common use, and did not stand the contact of reality. Mr. Cameron, to whom he submitted it in some moment of confidence, smiled with the patience of old age upon this overstrained self-torment.

“It is true enough,” the minister said, “that the right way is a way of pleasantness, and that all the paths of wisdom are peace. But life has not said out its last word, and ye will have to tread them one time or other with bleeding feet, or all is done—if the Lord has not given you a lot apart from that of other men. And human nature,” the old man said, not without a little recollection of some sermon, at which he smiled as he spoke, “is so perverse, that when trouble comes, you that are afraid of your happiness will be the first to cry out and upbraid the good Lord that does not make it everlasting. Wait, my young man, wait—till perhaps you have a boy at your side that will vex your heart as children only can vex those that love them—wait till death steps into your house, as step he must—”

“Stop!” cried Walter, with a wild sudden pang of that terror of which the Italian poet speaks, which makes all the earth a desert—

“Senza quella

Nova, sola, infinita,

Felicitá che il suo pensier figura.”

He never complained again of being too happy, or forgot that one time or other the path of life must be trod with bleeding feet.

“But I’ll not deny,” said the minister, “that to the like of you, my young lord, with so much in your power, there is no happier way of amusing yourself than just in being of use and service to your poor fellow-creatures that want so much and have so little. Man!” cried Mr. Cameron, “I would have given my head to be able to do at your age the half or quarter of what you can do with a scratch of your pen!—and you must mind that you are bound to do it,” he added with a smile.

But before this serene course of life began which Walter found too happy, there was an interval of anxiety and pain. Mrs. Methven did not escape, like the rest, from the consequences of the night’s vigil. She got up indeed from her faint, and received with speechless thanksgiving her son back from the dead, as she thought, but had herself to be carried to his room in the old castle, and there struggled for weeks in the grips of fever, brought on, it was said, by the night’s exposure. But this she would not herself allow. She had felt it, she said, before she left her home, but concealed it, not to be hindered from obeying her son’s summons. If this was true, or invented upon the spur of the moment to prove that in no possible way was Walter to blame, it is impossible to say. But the fever ran very high, and so affected her heart, worn and tired by many assaults, that there was a time when everything was hushed and silenced in the old castle in expectation of death. By-and-by, however, that terror gave place to all the innocent joys of convalescence—soft flitting of women up and down, presents of precious flowers and fruits lighting up the gloom, afternoon meetings when everything that could please her was brought to the recovering mother, and all the loch came with inquiries, with good wishes, and kind offerings. Mrs. Forrester, who was an excellent nurse, and never lost heart, but smiled, and was sure, in the deepest depth, that all would “come right,” as she said, took the control of the sick-room, and recovered there the bloom which she had partially lost when Oona was in danger. And Oona stole into the heart of Walter’s mother, who had not for long years possessed him sufficiently to make it bitter to her that he should now put a wife before her. Some women never learn this philosophy; and perhaps Mrs. Methven might have resisted it, had not Oona, her first acquaintance on the loch, her tenderest nurse, won her heart. To have the grim old house in which the secret of the Methvens’ fate had been laid up, and in which, even to indifferent lookers-on, there had always been an atmosphere of mystery and terror, thus occupied with the most innocent and cheerful commonplaces, the little cares and simple pleasures of a long but hopeful recovery, was confusing and soothing beyond measure to all around. The old servants, who had borne for many years the presence of a secret which was not theirs, felt in this general commotion a relief which words could not express. “No,” old Symington said, “it’s not ghosts nor any such rubbitch. I never, for my part, here or elsewhere, saw onything worse than myself; but, Miss Oona, whatever it was that you did on the tap of that tower—and how you got there the Lord above knows, for there never was footing for a bird that ever I saw—it has just been blessed. ‘Ding down the nests and the craws will flee away.’ What am I meaning? Well, that is just what I canna tell. It’s a’ confusion. I know nothing. Many a fricht and many an anxious hour have I had here: but I am bound to say I never saw anything worse than mysel’.”

“All yon is just clavers,” said old Macalister, waving his hand. “If ye come to that there is naething in this life that will bide explaining. But I will not deny that there is a kind of a different feel in the air which is maybe owing to this fine weather, just wonderful for the season; or maybe to the fact of so many leddies about, which is a new thing here—no that I hold so much with women,” he added, lest Oona should be proud, “they are a great fyke and trouble, and will meddle with everything; but they’re fine for a change, and a kind of soothing for a little whilie at a time, after all we’ve gone through.”

Before the gentle régime of the sick-room was quite over, an unusual and unexpected visitor arrived one morning at Loch Houran. It was the day after that on which Mrs. Methven had been transferred to Auchnasheen, and a great festival among her attendants. She had been brought down to the drawing-room very pale and shadowy, but with a relaxation of all the sterner lines which had once been in her face, in invalid dress arranged after Mrs. Forrester’s taste rather than her own, and lending a still further softness to her appearance, not to be associated with her usual rigid garb of black and white. And her looks and tones were the most soft of all, as, the centre of everybody’s thoughts, she was led to the sofa near the fire and surrounded by that half-worship which is the right of a convalescent where love is. To this pleasant home-scene there entered suddenly, ushered in with great solemnity by Symington, the serious and somewhat stern “man of business” who had come to Sloebury not much more than a year before with the news of that wonderful inheritance so unexpected and unthought of, which had seemed to Mrs. Methven, as well as to her son, the beginning of a new life. Mr. Milnathort made kind but formal inquiries after Mrs. Methven’s health, and offered his congratulations no less formally upon her recovery.

“I need not say to you that all that has happened has been an interest to us that are connected with the family beyond anything that I can express. I have taken the liberty,” he added, turning to Walter, “to bring one to see you, Lord Erradeen, who has perhaps the best right of any one living to give ye joy. I told her that you would no doubt come to her, for she has not left her chamber, as you know, for many a year; but nothing would serve her but to come herself, frail as she is—”

“Your sister!” Walter cried.

“Just my sister. I have taken the liberty,” Mr. Milnathort repeated, “to have her carried into the library, where you will find her. She has borne the journey better than I could have hoped, but it is an experiment that makes me very anxious. You will spare her any—emotion, any shock, that you can help?”

The serious face of the lawyer was more serious than ever: his long upper lip trembled a little. He turned round to the others with anxious self-restraint.

“She is very frail,” he said, “a delicate bit creature all her life—and since her accident—”

He spoke of this, as his manner was, as if it had happened a week ago.

Walter hurried away to the library, in which he found Miss Milnathort carefully arranged upon a sofa, wrapped up in white furs instead of her usual garments, a close white hood surrounding the delicate brightness of her face. She held out her hands to him at first without a word; and when she could speak, said, with a tremble in her voice:

“I have come to see the end of it. I have come to see—her and you.”

“I should have come to you,” cried Walter, “I did not forget—but for my mother’s illness—”

“Yes?” she said with a grateful look. “You thought upon me? Oh, but my heart has been with her and you! Oh, the terrible time it was! the first news in the papers, the fear that you were buried there under the ruins, you—and she; and then to wait a night and a day.”

“I should have sent you word at once—I might have known; but I did not think of the papers.”

“No, how should you? you were too busy with your own life. Oh, the thoughts of that night. I just lay and watched for you from the darkening to the dawning. No, scarcely what you could call praying—just waiting upon the Lord. I bade Him mind upon Walter and me—that had lost the battle. And I thought I saw you, you and your Oona. Was not I wise when I said it was a well-omened name?” She paused a little, weeping and smiling. “I could not tell you all the thoughts that went through my mind. I thought if it was even so, there might have been a worse fate. To break the spell and defeat the enemy even at the cost of your two bonnie lives—I thought it would not be an ill fate, the two of you together. Did I not say it? Two that made up one, the perfect man. That is God’s ordinance, my dear? that is His ordinance. Two—not just for pleasure, or for each other, but for Him and everything that is good. You believed me when I said that. Oh, you believed me! and so it was not in vain that I was—killed yon time long ago—” Her voice was broken with sobs. She leant upon Walter’s shoulder who had knelt down beside her, and wept there like a child—taking comfort like a child. “Generally,” she began after a moment, “there is little account made, little, little account, of them that have gone before, that have been beaten, Walter. I can call you nothing but Walter to-day. And Oona, though she has won the battle, she is just me, but better. We lost. We had the same heart; but the time had not come for the victory. And now you, my young lord, you, young Erradeen, like him, you have won, Oona and you. We were beaten; but yet I have a share in it. How can you tell, a young man like you, how those that have been defeated, lift their hearts and give God thanks?” She made a pause and said, after a moment, “I must see Oona, too.” But when he was about to rise and leave her in order to bring Oona, she stopped him once more. “You must tell me first,” she said, speaking very low, “what is become of him? Did he let himself be borne away to the clouds in yon flames? I know, I know, it’s all done; but did you see him? Did he speak a word at the end?”

“Miss Milnathort,” said Walter, holding her hands, “there is nothing but confusion in my mind. Was it all a dream and a delusion from beginning to end?”

She laughed a strange little laugh of emotion.

“Look at me then,” she said, “for what have I suffered these thirty years? And you—was it all for nothing that you were so soon beaten and ready to fall? Have you not seen him? Did he go without a word?”

Walter looked back upon all the anguish through which he had passed, and it seemed to him but a dream. One great event, and then weeks of calm had intervened since the day when driven to the side of the loch in madness and misery, he had found Oona and taken refuge in her boat, and thrown himself on her mercy; and since the night when once more driven distracted by diabolical suggestions, he had stepped out into the darkness, meaning to lose himself somehow in the gloom and be no more heard of—yet was saved again by the little light in her window, the watch-light that love kept burning. These recollections and many more swept through his mind, and the pain and misery more remote upon which this old woman’s childlike countenance had shone. He could not take hold of them as they rose before him in the darkness, cast far away into a shadowy background by the brightness and reality of the present. A strange giddiness came over his brain. He could not tell which was real, the anguish that was over, or the peace that had come, or whether life itself—flying in clouds behind him, before him hid under the wide-spreading sunshine—was anything but a dream. He recovered himself with an effort, grasping hold of the latest recollection to satisfy his questioner.

“This I know,” he cried, “that when we were flying from the tower, with flames and destruction behind us, the only words I heard from her were a prayer for pardon—‘forgive him,’ that was all I heard. And then the rush of the air in our faces, and roar that was like the end of all things. We neither heard nor saw more.”

“Pardon!” said Miss Milnathort, drying her eyes with a trembling hand, “that is what I have said too, many a weary hour in the watches of the night. What pleasure can a spirit like yon find in the torture of his own flesh and blood? The Lord forgive him if there is yet a place of repentance! But well I know what you mean that it is just like a vision when one awaketh. That is what all our troubles will be when the end comes: just a dream! and good brought out of evil and pardon given to many, many a one that men are just willing to give over and curse instead of blessing. Now go and bring your Oona, my bonnie lad! I am thinking she is just me, and you are Walter, and we have all won the day together,” said the invalid clasping her thin hands, and with eyes that shone through their tears, “all won together! though we were beaten twenty years ago.”

A Beleaguered City

Being
A Narrative of Certain Recent Events
in the City of Semur, in the Department of the Haute Bourgogne

A STORY OF THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN

(1879)

I

THE NARRATIVE OF M. LE MAIRE:
THE CONDITION OF THE CITY

I, Martin Dupin (de la Clairière), had the honour of holding the office of Maire in the town of Semur, in the Haute Bourgogne, at the time when the following events occurred. It will be perceived, therefore, that no one could have more complete knowledge of the facts—at once from my official position, and from the place of eminence in the affairs of the district generally which my family has held for many generations—by what citizen-like virtues and unblemished integrity I will not be vain enough to specify. Nor is it necessary; for no one who knows Semur can be ignorant of the position held by the Dupins, from father to son. The estate La Clairière has been so long in the family that we might very well, were we disposed, add its name to our own, as so many families in France do; and, indeed, I do not prevent my wife (whose prejudices I respect) from making this use of it upon her cards. But, for myself, bourgeois I was born and bourgeois I mean to die. My residence, like that of my father and grandfather, is at No. 29 in the Grande Rue, opposite the Cathedral, and not far from the Hospital of St. Jean. We inhabit the first floor, along with the rez-de-chaussée, which has been turned into domestic offices suitable for the needs of the family. My mother, holding a respected place in my household, lives with us in the most perfect family union. My wife (née de Champfleurie) is everything that is calculated to render a household happy; but, alas one only of our two children survives to bless us. I have thought these details of my private circumstances necessary, to explain the following narrative; to which I will also add, by way of introduction, a simple sketch of the town itself and its general conditions before these remarkable events occurred.

It was on a summer evening about sunset, the middle of the month of June, that my attention was attracted by an incident of no importance which occurred in the street, when I was making my way home, after an inspection of the young vines in my new vineyard to the left of La Clairière. All were in perfectly good condition, and none of the many signs which point to the arrival of the insect were apparent. I had come back in good spirits, thinking of the prosperity which I was happy to believe I had merited by a conscientious performance of all my duties. I had little with which to blame myself: not only my wife and relations, but my dependants and neighbours, approved my conduct as a man; and even my fellow-citizens, exacting as they are, had confirmed in my favour the good opinion which my family had been fortunate enough to secure from father to son. These thoughts were in my mind as I turned the corner of the Grande Rue and approached my own house. At this moment the tinkle of a little bell warned all the bystanders of the procession which was about to pass, carrying the rites of the Church to some dying person. Some of the women, always devout, fell on their knees. I did not go so far as this, for I do not pretend, in these days of progress, to have retained the same attitude of mind as that which it is no doubt becoming to behold in the more devout sex; but I stood respectfully out of the way, and took off my hat, as good breeding alone, if nothing else, demanded of me. Just in front of me, however, was Jacques Richard, always a troublesome individual, standing doggedly, with his hat upon his head and his hands in his pockets, straight in the path of M. le Curé. There is not in all France a more obstinate fellow. He stood there, notwithstanding the efforts of a good woman to draw him away, and though I myself called to him. M. le Curé is not the man to flinch; and as he passed, walking as usual very quickly and straight, his soutane brushed against the blouse of Jacques. He gave one quick glance from beneath his eyebrows at the profane interruption, but he would not distract himself from his sacred errand at such a moment. It is a sacred errand when any one, be he priest or layman, carries the best he can give to the bedside of the dying. I said this to Jacques when M. le Curé had passed and the bell went tinkling on along the street. “Jacques,” said I, “I do not call it impious, like this good woman, but I call it inhuman. What! a man goes to carry help to the dying, and you show him no respect!”

This brought the colour to his face; and I think, perhaps, that he might have become ashamed of the part he had played; but the women pushed in again, as they are so fond of doing. “Oh, M. le Maire, he does not deserve that you should lose your words upon him!” they cried; “and, besides, is it likely he will pay any attention to you when he tries to stop even the bon Dieu?”

“The bon Dieu!” cried Jacques. “Why doesn’t He clear the way for himself? Look here. I do not care one farthing for your bon Dieu. Here is mine; I carry him about with me.” And he took a piece of a hundred sous out of his pocket (how had it got there?) “Vive l’argent” he said. “You know it yourself, though you will not say so. There is no bon Dieu but money. With money you can do anything. L’argent c’est le bon Dieu.”

“Be silent,” I cried, “thou profane one!” And the women were still more indignant than I. “We shall see, we shall see; when he is ill and would give his soul for something to wet his lips, his bon Dieu will not do much for him,” cried one; and another said, clasping her hands with a shrill cry, “It is enough to make the dead rise out of their graves!”

“The dead rise out of their graves!” These words, though one has heard them before, took possession of my imagination. I saw the rude fellow go along the street as I went on, tossing the coin in his hand. One time it fell to the ground and rang upon the pavement, and he laughed more loudly as he picked it up. He was walking towards the sunset, and I too, at a distance after. The sky was full of rose-tinted clouds floating across the blue, floating high over the grey pinnacles of the Cathedral, and filling the long open line of the Rue St. Etienne down which he was going. As I crossed to my own house I caught him full against the light, in his blue blouse, tossing the big silver piece in the air, and heard him laugh and shout “Vive l’argent! This is the only bon Dieu.” Though there are many people who live as if this were their sentiment, there are few who give it such brutal expression; but some of the people at the corner of the street laughed too. “Bravo, Jacques!” they cried; and one said, “You are right, mon ami, the only god to trust in nowadays.” “It is a short credo, M. le Maire,” said another, who caught my eye. He saw I was displeased, this one, and his countenance changed at once.

“Yes, Jean Pierre,” I said, “it is worse than short—it is brutal. I hope no man who respects himself will ever countenance it. It is against the dignity of human nature, if nothing more.”

“Ah, M. le Maire!” cried a poor woman, one of the good ladies of the market, with entrenchments of baskets all round her, who had been walking my way; “ah, M. le Maire! did not I say true? it is enough to bring the dead out of their graves.”

“That would be something to see,” said Jean Pierre, with a laugh; “and I hope, ma bonne femme, that if you have any interest with them, you will entreat these gentlemen to appear before I go away.”

“I do not like such jesting,” said I. “The dead are very dead and will not disturb anybody, but even the prejudices of respectable persons ought to be respected. A ribald like Jacques counts for nothing, but I did not expect this from you.”

“What would you, M. le Maire?” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “We are made like that. I respect prejudices as you say. My wife is a good woman, she prays for two—but me! How can I tell that Jacques is not right after all? A grosse pièce of a hundred sous, one sees that, one knows what it can do—but for the other!” He thrust up one shoulder to his ear, and turned up the palms of his hands.

“It is our duty at all times to respect the convictions of others,” I said, severely; and passed on to my own house, having no desire to encourage discussions at the street corner. A man in my position is obliged to be always mindful of the example he ought to set. But I had not yet done with this phrase, which had, as I have said, caught my ear and my imagination. My mother was in the great salle of the rez-de-chausée, as I passed, in altercation with a peasant who had just brought us in some loads of wood. There is often, it seems to me, a sort of refrain in conversation, which one catches everywhere as one comes and goes. Figure my astonishment when I heard from the lips of my good mother the same words with which that good-for-nothing Jacques Richard had made the profession of his brutal faith. “Go!” she cried, in anger; “you are all the same. Money is your god. De grosses pièces, that is all you think of in these days.”

“Eh, bien, madame,” said the peasant; “and if so, what then? Don’t you others, gentlemen and ladies, do just the same? What is there in the world but money to think of? If it is a question of marriage, you demand what is the dot; if it is a question of office, you ask, Monsieur Untel, is he rich? And it is perfectly just. We know what money can do; but as for le bon Dieu, whom our grandmothers used to talk about—”

And lo! our gros paysan made exactly the same gesture as Jean Pierre. He put up his shoulders to his ears, and spread out the palms of his hands, as who should say, There is nothing further to be said.

Then there occurred a still more remarkable repetition. My mother, as may be supposed, being a very respectable person, and more or less dévote, grew red with indignation and horror.

“Oh, these poor grandmothers!” she cried; “God give them rest! It is enough to make the dead rise out of their graves.”

“Oh, I will answer for les morts! they will give nobody any trouble,” he said with a laugh. I went in and reproved the man severely, finding that, as I supposed, he had attempted to cheat my good mother in the price of the wood. Fortunately she had been quite as clever as he was. She went up-stairs shaking her head, while I gave the man to understand that no one should speak to her but with the profoundest respect in my house. “She has her opinions, like all respectable ladies,” I said, “but under this roof these opinions shall always be sacred.” And, to do him justice, I will add that when it was put to him in this way Gros-Jean was ashamed of himself.

When I talked over these incidents with my wife, as we gave each other the narrative of our day’s experiences, she was greatly distressed, as may be supposed. “I try to hope they are not so bad as Bonne Maman thinks. But oh, mon ami!” she said, “what will the world come to if this is what they really believe?”

“Take courage,” I said; “the world will never come to anything much different from what it is. So long as there are des anges like thee to pray for us, the scale will not go down to the wrong side.”

I said this, of course, to please my Agnès, who is the best of wives; but on thinking it over after, I could not but be struck with the extreme justice (not to speak of the beauty of the sentiment) of this thought. The bon Dieu—if, indeed, that great Being is as represented to us by the Church—must naturally care as much for one-half of His creatures as for the other, though they have not the same weight in the world; and consequently the faith of the women must hold the balance straight, especially if, as is said, they exceed us in point of numbers. This leaves a little margin for those of them who profess the same freedom of thought as is generally accorded to men—a class, I must add, which I abominate from the bottom of my heart.

I need not dwell upon other little scenes which impressed the same idea still more upon my mind. Semur, I need not say, is not the centre of the world, and might, therefore, be supposed likely to escape the full current of worldliness. We amuse ourselves little, and we have not any opportunity of rising to the heights of ambition; for our town is not even the chef-lieu of the department,—though this is a subject upon which I cannot trust myself to speak. Figure to yourself that La Rochette—a place of yesterday, without either the beauty or the antiquity of Semur—has been chosen as the centre of affairs, the residence of M. le Préfet! But I will not enter upon this question. What I was saying was, that, notwithstanding the fact that we amuse ourselves but little, that there is no theatre to speak of, little society, few distractions, and none of those inducements to strive for gain and to indulge the senses, which exist, for instance, in Paris—that capital of the world—yet, nevertheless, the thirst for money and for pleasure has increased among us to an extent which I cannot but consider alarming. Gros-Jean, our peasant, toils for money, and hoards; Jacques, who is a cooper and maker of wine casks, gains and drinks; Jean Pierre snatches at every sous that comes in his way, and spends it in yet worse dissipations. He is one who quails when he meets my eye; he sins en cachette; but Jacques is bold, and defies opinion; and Gros-Jean is firm in the belief that to hoard money is the highest of mortal occupations. These three are types of what the population is at Semur. The men would all sell their souls for a grosse pièce of fifty sous—indeed, they would laugh, and express their delight that any one should believe them to love souls, if they could but have a chance of selling them; and the devil, who was once supposed to deal in that commodity, would be very welcome among us. And as for the bon Dieu—pouff! that was an affair of the grandmothers—le bon Dieu c’est l’argent. This is their creed. I was very near the beginning of my official year as Maire when my attention was called to these matters as I have described above. A man may go on for years keeping quiet himself—keeping out of tumult, religious or political—and make no discovery of the general current of feeling; but when you are forced to serve your country in any official capacity, and when your eyes are opened to the state of affairs around you, then I allow that an inexperienced observer might well cry out, as my wife did, “What will become of the world?” I am not prejudiced myself—unnecessary to say that the foolish scruples of the women do not move me. But the devotion of the community at large to this pursuit of gain-money without any grandeur, and pleasure without any refinement—that is a thing which cannot fail to wound all who believe in human nature. To be a millionaire—that, I grant, would be pleasant. A man as rich as Monte Christo, able to do whatever he would, with the equipage of an English duke, the palace of an Italian prince, the retinue of a Russian noble—he, indeed, might be excused if his money seemed to him a kind of god. But Gros-Jean, who lays up two sous at a time, and lives on black bread and an onion; and Jacques, whose grosse pièce but secures him the headache of a drunkard next morning—what to them could be this miserable deity? As for myself, however, it was my business, as Maire of the commune, to take as little notice as possible of the follies these people might say, and to hold the middle course between the prejudices of the respectable and the levities of the foolish. With this, without more, to think of, I had enough to keep all my faculties employed.

II

THE NARRATIVE OF M. LE MAIRE CONTINUED:
BEGINNING OF THE LATE REMARKABLE EVENTS

I do not attempt to make out any distinct connection between the simple incidents above recorded, and the extraordinary events that followed. I have related them as they happened; chiefly by way of showing the state of feeling in the city, and the sentiment which pervaded the community—a sentiment, I fear, too common in my country. I need not say that to encourage superstition is far from my wish. I am a man of my century, and proud of being so; very little disposed to yield to the domination of the clerical party, though desirous of showing all just tolerance for conscientious faith, and every respect for the prejudices of the ladies of my family. I am, moreover, all the more inclined to be careful of giving in my adhesion to any prodigy, in consequence of a consciousness that the faculty of imagination has always been one of my characteristics. It usually is so, I am aware, in superior minds, and it has procured me many pleasures unknown to the common herd. Had it been possible for me to believe that I had been misled by this faculty, I should have carefully refrained from putting upon record any account of my individual impressions; but my attitude here is not that of a man recording his personal experiences only, but of one who is the official mouthpiece and representative of the commune, and whose duty it is to render to government and to the human race a true narrative of the very wonderful facts to which every citizen of Semur can bear witness. In this capacity it has become my duty so to arrange and edit the different accounts of the mystery, as to present one coherent and trustworthy chronicle to the world.

To proceed, however, with my narrative. It is not necessary for me to describe what summer is in the Haute Bourgogne. Our generous wines, our glorious fruits, are sufficient proof, without any assertion on my part. The summer with us is as a perpetual fête—at least, before the insect appeared it was so, though now anxiety about the condition of our vines may cloud our enjoyment of the glorious sunshine which ripens them hourly before our eyes. Judge, then, of the astonishment of the world when there suddenly came upon us a darkness as in the depth of winter, falling, without warning, into the midst of the brilliant weather to which we are accustomed, and which had never failed us before in the memory of man! It was the month of July, when, in ordinary seasons, a cloud is so rare that it is a joy to see one, merely as a variety upon the brightness. Suddenly, in the midst of our summer delights, this darkness came. Its first appearance took us so entirely by surprise that life seemed to stop short, and the business of the whole town was delayed by an hour or two; nobody being able to believe that at six o’clock in the morning the sun had not risen. I do not assert that the sun did not rise; all I mean to say is that at Semur it was still dark, as in a morning of winter, and when it gradually and slowly became day many hours of the morning were already spent. And never shall I forget the aspect of day when it came. It was like a ghost or pale shadow of the glorious days of July with which we are usually blessed. The barometer did not go down, nor was there any rain, but an unusual greyness wrapped earth and sky. I heard people say in the streets, and I am aware that the same words came to my own lips: “If it were not full summer, I should say it was going to snow.” We have much snow in the Haute Bourgogne, and we are well acquainted with this aspect of the skies. Of the depressing effect which this greyness exercised upon myself personally, greyness exercised upon myself personally, I will not speak. I have always been noted as a man of fine perceptions, and I was aware instinctively that such a state of the atmosphere must mean something more than was apparent on the surface. But, as the danger was of an entirely unprecedented character, it is not to be wondered at that I should be completely at a loss to divine what its meaning was. It was a blight some people said; and many were of opinion that it was caused by clouds of animalculae coming, as is described in ancient writings, to destroy the crops, and even to affect the health of the population. The doctors scoffed at this; but they talked about malaria, which, as far as I could understand, was likely to produce exactly the same effect. The night closed in early as the day had dawned late; the lamps were lighted before six o’clock, and daylight had only begun about ten! Figure to yourself, a July day! There ought to have been a moon almost at the full; but no moon was visible, no stars—nothing but a grey veil of clouds, growing darker and darker as the moments went on; such I have heard are the days and the nights in England, where the seafogs so often blot out the sky. But we are unacquainted with anything of the kind in our plaisant pays de France. There was nothing else talked of in Semur all that night, as may well be imagined. My own mind was extremely uneasy. Do what I would, I could not deliver myself from a sense of something dreadful in the air which was neither malaria nor animalculae, I took a promenade through the streets that evening, accompanied by M. Barbou, my adjoint, to make sure that all was safe; and the darkness was such that we almost lost our way, though we were both born in the town and had known every turning from our boyhood. It cannot be denied that Semur is very badly lighted. We retain still the lanterns slung by cords across the streets which once were general in France, but which, in most places, have been superseded by the modern institution of gas. Gladly would I have distinguished my term of office by bringing gas to Semur. But the expense would have been great, and there were a hundred objections. In summer generally, the lanterns were of little consequence because of the brightness of the sky; but to see them now, twinkling dimly here and there, making us conscious how dark it was, was strange indeed. It was in the interests of order that we took our round, with a fear, in my mind at least, of I knew not what. M. l’Adjoint said nothing, but no doubt he thought as I did.

While we were thus patrolling the city with a special eye to the prevention of all seditious assemblages, such as are too apt to take advantage of any circumstances that may disturb the ordinary life of a city, or throw discredit on its magistrates, we were accosted by Paul Lecamus, a man whom I have always considered as something of a visionary, though his conduct is irreproachable, and his life honourable and industrious. He entertains religious convictions of a curious kind; but, as the man is quite free from revolutionary sentiments, I have never considered it to be my duty to interfere with him, or to investigate his creed. Indeed, he has been treated generally in Semur as a dreamer of dreams—one who holds a great many impracticable and foolish opinions—though the respect which I always exact for those whose lives are respectable and worthy has been a protection to hire. He was, I think, aware that he owed something to my good offices, and it was to me accordingly that he addressed himself.

“Good evening, M. le Maire,” he said; “you are groping about, like myself, in this strange night.”

“Good evening M. Paul,” I replied. “It is, indeed, a strange night. It indicates, I fear, that a storm is coming.”

M. Paul shook his head. There is a solemnity about even his ordinary appearance. He has a long face, pale, and adorned with a heavy, drooping moustache, which adds much to the solemn impression made by his countenance. He looked at me with great gravity as he stood in the shadow of the lamp, and slowly shook his head.

“You do not agree with me? Well! the opinion of a man like M. Paul Lecamus is always worthy to be heard.”

“Oh!” he said, “I am called visionary. I am not supposed to be a trustworthy witness. Nevertheless, if M. Le Maire will come with me, I will show him something that is very strange—something that is almost more wonderful than the darkness—more strange,” he went on with great earnestness, “than any storm that ever ravaged Burgundy.”

“That is much to say. A tempest now when the vines are in full bearing—”

“Would be nothing, nothing to what I can show you. Only come with me to the Porte St. Lambert.”

“If M. le Maire will excuse me,” said M. Barbou, “I think I will go home. It is a little cold, and you are aware that I am always afraid of the damp.” In fact, our coats were beaded with a cold dew as in November, and I could not but acknowledge that my respectable colleague had reason. Besides, we were close to his house, and he had, no doubt, the sustaining consciousness of having done everything that was really incumbent upon him. “Our ways lie together as far as my house,” he said, with a slight chattering of his teeth. No doubt it was the cold. After we had walked with him to his door, we proceeded to the Porte St. Lambert. By this time almost everybody had re-entered their houses. The streets were very dark, and they were also very still. When we reached the gates, at that hour of the night, we found them shut as a matter of course. The officers of the octroi were standing close together at the door of their office, in which the lamp was burning. The very lamp seemed oppressed by the heavy air; it burnt dully, surrounded with a yellow haze. The men had the appearance of suffering greatly from cold. They received me with a satisfaction which was very gratifying to me. “At length here is M. le Maire himself,” they said.

“My good friends,” said I, “you have a cold post to-night. The weather has changed in the most extraordinary way. I have no doubt the scientific gentlemen at the Musée will be able to tell us all about it—M. de Clairon—”

“Not to interrupt M. le Maire,” said Riou, of the octroi, “I think there is more in it than any scientific gentleman can explain.”

“Ah! You think so. But they explain everything,” I said, with a smile. “They tell us how the wind is going to blow.”

As I said this, there seemed to pass us, from the direction of the closed gates, a breath of air so cold that I could not restrain a shiver. They looked at each other. It was not a smile that passed between them—they were too pale, too cold, to smile but a look of intelligence. “M. le Maire,” said one of them, “perceives it too;” but they did not shiver as I did. They were like men turned into ice who could feel no more.

“It is, without doubt, the most extraordinary weather,” I said. My teeth chattered like Barbou’s. It was all I could do to keep myself steady. No one made any reply; but Lecamus said, “Have the goodness to open the little postern for foot-passengers: M. le Maire wishes to make an inspection outside.”

Upon these words, Riou, who knew me well, caught me by the arm. “A thousand pardons,” he said, “M. le Maire; but I entreat you, do not go. Who can tell what is outside? Since this morning there is something very strange on the other side of the gates. If M. le Maire would listen to me, he would keep them shut night and day till that is gone, he would not go out into the midst of it. Mon Dieu! a man may be brave. I know the courage of M. le Maire; but to march without necessity into the jaws of hell: mon Dieu!” cried the poor man again. He crossed himself, and none of us smiled. Now a man may sign himself at the church door—one does so out of respect; but to use that ceremony for one’s own advantage, before other men, is rare—except in the case of members of a very decided party. Riou was not one of these. He signed himself in sight of us all, and not one of us smiled.

The other was less familiar—he knew me only in my public capacity—he was one Gallais of the Quartier St. Médon. He said, taking off his hat: “If I were M. le Maire, saving your respect, I would not go out into an unknown danger with this man here, a man who is known as a pietist, as a clerical, as one who sees visions—”

“He is not a clerical, he is a good citizen,” I said; “come, lend us your lantern. Shall I shrink from my duty wherever it leads me? Nay, my good friends, the Maire of a French commune fears neither man nor devil in the exercise of his duty. M. Paul, lead on.” When I said the word “devil” a spasm of alarm passed over Riou’s face. He crossed himself again. This time I could not but smile. “My little Riou,” I said, “do you know that you are a little imbecile with your piety? There is a time for everything.”

“Except religion, M. le Maire; that is never out of place,” said Gallais.

I could not believe my senses. “Is it a conversion?” I said. “Some of our Carmes déchaussés must have passed this way.”

“M. le Maire will soon see other teachers more wonderful than the Carmes déchaussés,” said Lecamus. He went and took down the lantern from its nail, and opened the little door. When it opened, I was once more penetrated by the same icy breath; once, twice, thrice, I cannot tell how many times this crossed me, as if some one passed. I looked round upon the others—I gave way a step. I could not help it. In spite of me, the hair seemed to rise erect on my head. The two officers stood close together, and Riou, collecting his courage, made an attempt to laugh. “M. le Maire perceives,” he said, his lips trembling almost too much to form the words, “that the winds are walking about.” “Hush, for God’s sake!” said the other, grasping him by the arm.

This recalled me to myself; and I followed Lecamus, who stood waiting for me holding the door a little ajar. He went on strangely, like—I can use no other words to express it—a man making his way in the face of a crowd, a thing very surprising to me. I followed him close; but the moment I emerged from the doorway something caught my breath. The same feeling seized me also. I gasped; a sense of suffocation came upon me; I put out my hand to lay hold upon my guide. The solid grasp I got of his arm re-assured me a little, and he did not hesitate, but pushed his way on. We got out clear of the gate and the shadow of the wall, keeping close to the little watch-tower on the west side. Then he made a pause, and so did I. We stood against the tower and looked out before us. There was nothing there. The darkness was great, yet through the gloom of the night I could see the division of the road from the broken ground on either side; there was nothing there. I gasped, and drew myself up close against the wall, as Lecamus had also done. There was in the air, in the night, a sensation the most strange I have ever experienced. I have felt the same thing indeed at other times, in face of a great crowd, when thousands of people were moving, rustling, struggling, breathing around me, thronging all the vacant space, filling up every spot. This was the sensation that overwhelmed me here—a crowd: yet nothing to be seen but the darkness, the indistinct line of the road. We could not move for them, so close were they round us. What do I say? There was nobody—nothing—not a form to be seen, not a face but his and mine. I am obliged to confess that the moment was to me an awful moment. I could not speak. My heart beat wildly as if trying to escape from my breast—every breath I drew was with an effort. I clung to Lecamus with deadly and helpless terror, and forced myself back upon the wall, crouching against it; I did not turn and fly, as would have been natural. What say I? did not! I could not! they pressed round us so. Ah! you would think I must be mad to use such words, for there was nobody near me—not a shadow even upon the road.

Lecamus would have gone farther on; he would have pressed his way boldly into the midst; but my courage was not equal to this. I clutched and clung to him, dragging myself along against the wall, my whole mind intent upon getting back. I was stronger than he, and he had no power to resist me. I turned back, stumbling blindly, keeping my face to that crowd (there was no one), but struggling back again, tearing the skin off my hands as I groped my way along the wall. Oh, the agony of seeing the door closed! I have buffeted my way through a crowd before now, but I may say that I never before knew what terror was. When I fell upon the door, dragging Lecamus with me, it opened, thank God! I stumbled in, clutching at Riou with my disengaged hand, and fell upon the floor of the octroi, where they thought I had fainted. But this was not the case. A man of resolution may give way to the overpowering sensations of the moment. His bodily faculties may fail him; but his mind will not fail. As in every really superior intelligence, my forces collected for the emergency. While the officers ran to bring me water, to search for the eau-de-vie which they had in a cupboard, I astonished them all by rising up, pale, but with full command of myself. “It is enough,” I said, raising my hand. “I thank you, Messieurs, but nothing more is necessary;” and I would not take any of their restoratives. They were impressed, as was only natural, by the sight of my perfect self-possession: it helped them to acquire for themselves a demeanour befitting the occasion; and I felt, though still in great physical weakness and agitation, the consoling consciousness of having fulfilled my functions as head of the community.

“M. le Maire has seen a—what there is outside?” Riou cried, stammering in his excitement; and the other fixed upon me eyes which were hungering with eagerness—if, indeed, it is permitted to use such words.

“I have seen—nothing, Riou,” I said.

They looked at me with the utmost wonder. “M. le Maire has seen—nothing?” said Riou. “Ah, I see! you say so to spare us. We have proved ourselves cowards; but if you will pardon me, M. le Maire, you, too, re-entered precipitately—you too! There are facts which may appal the bravest—but I implore you to tell us what you have seen.”

“I have seen nothing,” I said. As I spoke, my natural calm composure returned, my heart resumed its usual tranquil beating. “There is nothing to be seen—it is dark, and one can perceive the line of the road for but a little way—that is all. There is nothing to be seen—”

They looked at me, startled and incredulous. They did not know what to think. How could they refuse to believe me, sitting there calmly raising my eyes to them, making my statement with what they felt to be an air of perfect truth? But, then, how account for the precipitate return which they had already noted, the supposed faint, the pallor of my looks? They did not know what to think.

And here, let me remark, as in my conduct throughout these remarkable events, may be seen the benefit, the high advantage, of truth. Had not this been the truth, I could not have borne the searching of their looks. But it was true. There was nothing—nothing to be seen; in one sense, this was the thing of all others which overwhelmed my mind. But why insist upon these matters of detail to unenlightened men? There was nothing, and I had seen nothing. What I said was the truth.

All this time Lecamus had said nothing. As I raised myself from the ground, I had vaguely perceived him hanging up the lantern where it had been before; now he became distinct to me as I recovered the full possession of my faculties. He had seated himself upon a bench by the wall. There was no agitation about him; no sign of the thrill of departing excitement, which I felt going through my veins as through the strings of a harp. He was sitting against the wall, with his head drooping, his eyes cast down, an air of disappointment and despondency about him—nothing more. I got up as soon as I felt that I could go away with perfect propriety; but, before I left the place, called him. He got up when he heard his name, but he did it with reluctance. He came with me because I asked him to do so, not from any wish of his own. Very different were the feelings of Riou and Gallais. They did their utmost to engage me in conversation, to consult me about a hundred trifles, to ask me with the greatest deference what they ought to do in such and such cases, pressing close to me, trying every expedient to delay my departure. When we went away they stood at the door of their little office close together, looking after us with looks which I found it difficult to forget; they would not abandon their post; but their faces were pale and contracted, their eyes wild with anxiety and distress.

It was only as I walked away, hearing my own steps and those of Lecamus ringing upon the pavement, that I began to realise what had happened. The effort of recovering my composure, the relief from the extreme excitement of terror (which, dreadful as the idea is, I am obliged to confess I had actually felt), the sudden influx of life and strength to my brain, had pushed away for the moment the recollection of what lay outside. When I thought of it again, the blood began once more to course in my veins. Lecamus went on by my side with his head down, the eyelids drooping over his eyes, not saying a word. He followed me when I called him: but cast a regretful look at the postern by which we had gone out, through which I had dragged him back in a panic (I confess it) unworthy of me. Only when we had left at some distance behind us that door into the unseen, did my senses come fully back to me, and I ventured to ask myself what it meant. “Lecamus,” I said—I could scarcely put my question into words—“what do you think? what is your idea?—how do you explain—” Even then I am glad to think I had sufficient power of control not to betray all that I felt.

“One does not try to explain,” he said slowly; “one longs to know—that is all. If M. le Maire had not been—in such haste—had he been willing to go farther—to investigate—”

“God forbid!” I said; and the impulse to quicken my steps, to get home and put myself in safety, was almost more than I could restrain. But I forced myself to go quietly, to measure my steps by his, which were slow and reluctant, as if he dragged himself away with difficulty from that which was behind.

What was it? “Do not ask, do not ask!” Nature seemed to say in my heart. Thoughts came into my mind in such a dizzy crowd, that the multitude of them seemed to take away my senses. I put up my hands to my ears, in which they seemed to be buzzing and rustling like bees, to stop the sound. When I did so, Lecamus turned and looked at me—grave and wondering. This recalled me to a sense of my weakness. But how I got home I can scarcely say. My mother and wife met me with anxiety. They were greatly disturbed about the hospital of St. Jean, in respect to which it had been recently decided that certain changes should be made. The great ward of the hospital, which was the chief establishment for the patients—a thing which some had complained of as an annoyance disturbing their rest. So many, indeed, had been the complaints received, that we had come to the conclusion either that the opening should be built up, or the office suspended. Against this decision, it is needless to say, the Sisters of St. Jean were moving heaven and earth. Equally unnecessary for me to add, that having so decided in my public capacity, as at once the representative of popular opinion and its guide, the covert reproaches which were breathed in my presence, and even the personal appeals made to me, had failed of any result. I respect the Sisters of St. Jean. They are good women and excellent nurses, and the commune owes them much. Still, justice must be impartial; and so long as I retain my position at the head of the community, it is my duty to see that all have their due. My opinions as a private individual, were I allowed to return to that humble position, are entirely a different matter; but this is a thing which ladies, however excellent, are slow to allow or to understand.

I will not pretend that this was to me a night of rest. In the darkness, when all is still, any anxiety which may afflict the soul is apt to gain complete possession and mastery, as all who have had true experience of life will understand. The night was very dark and very still, the clocks striking out the hours which went so slowly, and not another sound audible. The streets of Semur are always quiet, but they were more still than usual that night. Now and then, in a pause of my thoughts, I could hear the soft breathing of my Agnès in the adjoining room, which gave me a little comfort. But this was only by intervals, when I was able to escape from the grasp of the recollections that held me fast. Again I seemed to see under my closed eyelids the faint line of the high road which led from the Porte St. Lambert, the broken ground with its ragged bushes on either side, and no one—no one there—not a soul, not a shadow: yet a multitude! When I allowed myself to think of this, my heart leaped into my throat again, my blood ran in my veins like a river in flood. I need not say that I resisted this transport of the nerves with all my might. As the night grew slowly into morning my power of resistance increased; I turned my back, so to speak, upon my recollections, and said to myself, with growing firmness, that all sensations of the body must have their origin in the body. Some derangement of the system easily explainable, no doubt, if one but held the clue—must have produced the impression which otherwise it would be impossible to explain. As I turned this over and over in my mind, carefully avoiding all temptations to excitement—which is the only wise course in the case of a strong impression on the nerves—I gradually became able to believe that this was the cause. It is one of the penalties, I said to myself, which one has to pay for an organisation more finely tempered than that of the crowd.

This long struggle with myself made the night less tedious, though, perhaps, more terrible; and when at length I was overpowered by sleep, the short interval of unconsciousness restored me like a cordial. I woke in the early morning, feeling almost able to smile at the terrors of the night. When one can assure oneself that the day has really begun, even while it is yet dark, there is a change of sensation, an increase of strength and courage. One by one the dark hours went on. I heard them pealing from the Cathedral clock—four, five, six, seven—all dark, dark. I had got up and dressed before the last, but found no one else awake when I went out—no one stirring in the house,—no one moving in the street. The Cathedral doors were shut fast, a thing I have never seen before since I remember. Get up early who will, Père Laserques the sacristan is always up still earlier. He is a good old man, and I have often heard him say God’s house should be open first of all houses, in case there might be any miserable ones about who had found no shelter in the dwellings of men. But the darkness had cheated even Père Laserques. To see those great doors closed which stood always open gave me a shiver, I cannot well tell why. Had they been open, there was an inclination in my mind to have gone in, though I cannot tell why; for I am not in the habit of attending mass, save on Sunday to set an example. There were no shops open, not a sound about. I went out upon the ramparts to the Mont St. Lambert, where the band plays on Sundays. In all the trees there was not so much as the twitter of a bird. I could hear the river flowing swiftly below the wall, but I could not see it, except as something dark, a ravine of gloom below, and beyond the walls I did not venture to look. Why should I look? There was nothing, nothing, as I knew. But fancy is so uncontrollable, and one’s nerves so little to be trusted, that it was a wise precaution to refrain. The gloom itself was oppressive enough; the air seemed to creep with apprehensions, and from time to time my heart fluttered with a sick movement, as if it would escape from my control. But everything was still, still as the dead who had been so often in recent days called out of their graves by one or another. “Enough to bring the dead out of their graves.” What strange words to make use of! It was rather now as if the world had become a grave in which we, though living, were held fast.

Soon after this the dark world began to lighten faintly, and with the rising of a little white mist, like a veil rolling upwards, I at last saw the river and the fields beyond. To see anything at all lightened my heart a little, and I turned homeward when this faint daylight appeared. When I got back into the street, I found that the people at last were stirring. They had all a look of half panic, half shame upon their faces. Many were yawning and stretching themselves. “Good morning, M. le Maire,” said one and another; “you are early astir.” “Not so early either,” I said; and then they added, almost every individual, with a look of shame, “We were so late this morning; we overslept ourselves—like yesterday. The weather is extraordinary.” This was repeated to me by all kinds of people. They were half frightened, and they were ashamed. Père Laserques was sitting moaning on the Cathedral steps. Such a thing had never happened before. He had not rung the bell for early mass; he had not opened the Cathedral; he had not called M. le Curé. “I think I must be going out of my senses,” he said; “but then, M. le Maire, the weather! Did any one ever see such weather? I think there must be some evil brewing. It is not for nothing that the seasons change—that winter comes in the midst of summer.”

After this I went home. My mother came running to one door when I entered, and my wife to another. “O mon fils!” and “O mon ami!” they said, rushing upon me. They wept, these dear women. I could not at first prevail upon them to tell me what was the matter. At last they confessed that they believed something to have happened to me, in punishment for the wrong done to the Sisters at the hospital. “Make haste, my son, to amend this error,” my mother cried, “lest a worse thing befall us!” And then I discovered that among the women, and among many of the poor people, it had come to be believed that the darkness was a curse upon us for what we had done in respect to the hospital. This roused me to indignation. “If they think I am to be driven from my duty by their magic,” I cried; “it is no better than witchcraft!” not that I believed for a moment that it was they who had done it. My wife wept, and my mother became angry with me; but when a thing is duty, it is neither wife nor mother who will move me out of my way.

It was a miserable day. There was not light enough to see anything—scarcely to see each other’s faces; and to add to our alarm, some travellers arriving by the diligence (we are still three leagues from a railway, while that miserable little place, La Rochette, being the chef-lieu, has a terminus) informed me that the darkness only existed in Semur and the neighbourhood, and that within a distance of three miles the sun was shining. The sun was shining! was it possible? it seemed so long since we had seen the sunshine; but this made our calamity more mysterious and more terrible. The people began to gather into little knots in the streets to talk of the strange thing that was happening In the course of the day M. Barbou came to ask whether I did not think it would be well to appease the popular feeling by conceding what they wished to the Sisters of the hospital. I would not hear of it. “Shall we own that we are in the wrong? I do not think we are in the wrong,” I said, and I would not yield. “Do you think the good Sisters have it in their power to darken the sky with their incantations?” M. l’Adjoint shook his head. He went away with a troubled countenance; but then he was not like myself, a man of natural firmness. All the efforts that were employed to influence him were also employed with me; but to yield to the women was not in my thoughts.

We are now approaching, however, the first important incident in this narrative. The darkness increased as the afternoon came on; and it became a kind of thick twilight, no lighter than many a night. It was between five and six o’clock, just the time when our streets are the most crowded, when, sitting at my window, from which I kept a watch upon the Grande Rue, not knowing what might happen—I saw that some fresh incident had taken place. Very dimly through the darkness I perceived a crowd, which increased every moment, in front of the Cathedral. After watching it for a few minutes, I got my hat and went out. The people whom I saw—so many that they covered the whole middle of the Place, reaching almost to the pavement on the other side—had their heads all turned towards the Cathedral. “What are you gazing at, my friend?” I said to one by whom I stood. He looked up at me with a face which looked ghastly in the gloom. “Look, M. le Maire!” he said; “cannot you see it on the great door?”

“I see nothing,” said I; but as I uttered these words I did indeed see something which was very startling. Looking towards the great door of the Cathedral, as they all were doing, it suddenly seemed to me that I saw an illuminated placard attached to it, headed with the word “Sommation” in gigantic letters. “Tiens!” I cried; but when I looked again there was nothing. “What is this? it is some witchcraft!” I said, in spite of myself. “Do you see anything, Jean Pierre?”

“M. le Maire,” he said, “one moment one sees something—the next, one sees nothing. Look! it comes again.” I have always considered myself a man of courage, but when I saw this extraordinary appearance the panic which had seized upon me the former night returned, though in another form. Fly I could not, but I will not deny that my knees smote together. I stood for some minutes without being able to articulate a word—which, indeed, seemed the case with most of those before me. Never have I seen a more quiet crowd. They were all gazing, as if it was life or death that was set before them—while I, too, gazed with a shiver going over me. It was as I have seen an illumination of lamps in a stormy night; one moment the whole seems black as the wind sweeps over it, the next it springs into life again; and thus you go on, by turns losing and discovering the device formed by the lights. Thus from moment to moment there appeared before us, in letters that seemed to blaze and flicker, something that looked like a great official placard. “Sommation!”—this was how it was headed. I read a few words at a time, as it came and went; and who can describe the chill that ran through my veins as I made it out? It was a summons to the people of Semur by name—myself at the head as Maire (and I heard afterwards that every man who saw it saw his own name, though the whole façade of the Cathedral would not have held a full list of all the people of Semur)—to yield their places, which they had not filled aright, to those who knew the meaning of life, being dead. NOUS AUTRES MORTS—these were the words which blazed out oftenest of all, so that every one saw them. And “Go!” this terrible placard said—“Go! leave this place to us who know the true signification of life.” These words I remember, but not the rest; and even at this moment it struck me that there was no explanation, nothing but this vraie signification de la vie. I felt like one in a dream: the light coming and going before me; one word, then another, appearing—sometimes a phrase like that I have quoted, blazing out, then dropping into darkness. For the moment I was struck dumb; but then it came back to my mind that I had an example to give, and that for me, eminently a man of my century, to yield credence to a miracle was something not to be thought of. Also I knew the necessity of doing something to break the impression of awe and terror on the mind of the people. “This is a trick,” I cried loudly, that all might hear. “Let some one go and fetch M. de Clairon from the Musée. He will tell us how it has been done.” This, boldly uttered, broke the spell. A number of pale faces gathered round me. “Here is M. le Maire—he will clear it up,” they cried, making room for me that I might approach nearer. “M. le Maire is a man of courage—he has judgment. Listen to M. le Maire.” It was a relief to everybody that I had spoken. And soon I found myself by the side of M. le Curé, who was standing among the rest, saying nothing, and with the air of one as much bewildered as any of us. He gave me one quick look from under his eyebrows to see who it was that approached him, as was his way, and made room for me, but said nothing. I was in too much emotion myself to keep silence—indeed, I was in that condition of wonder, alarm, and nervous excitement, that I had to speak or die; and there seemed an escape from something too terrible for flesh and blood to contemplate in the idea that there was trickery here. “M. le Curé,” I said, “this is a strange ornament that you have placed on the front of your church. You are standing here to enjoy the effect. Now that you have seen how successful it has been, will not you tell me in confidence how it is done?”

I am conscious that there was a sneer in my voice, but I was too much excited to think of politeness. He gave me another of his rapid, keen looks.

“M. le Maire,” he said, “you are injurious to a man who is as little fond of tricks as yourself.”

His tone, his glance, gave me a certain sense of shame, but I could not stop myself. “One knows,” I said, “that there are many things which an ecclesiastic may do without harm, which are not permitted to an ordinary layman—one who is an honest man, and no more.”

M. le Curé made no reply. He gave me another of his quick glances, with an impatient turn of his head. Why should I have suspected him? for no harm was known of him. He was the Curé, that was all; and perhaps we men of the world have our prejudices too. Afterwards, however, as we waited for M. de Clairon—for the crisis was too exciting for personal resentment—M. le Curé himself let drop something which made it apparent that it was the ladies of the hospital upon whom his suspicions fell. “It is never well to offend women, M. le Maire,” he said. “Women do not discriminate the lawful from the unlawful: so long as they produce an effect, it does not matter to them.” This gave me a strange impression, for it seemed to me that M. le Curé was abandoning his own side. However, all other sentiments were, as may be imagined, but as shadows compared with the overwhelming power that held all our eyes and our thoughts to the wonder before us. Every moment seemed an hour till M. de Clairon appeared. He was pushed forward through the crowd as by magic, all making room for him; and many of us thought that when science thus came forward capable of finding out everything, the miracle would disappear. But instead of this it seemed to glow brighter than ever. That great word “Sommation” blazed out, so that we saw his figure waver against the light as if giving way before the flames that scorched him. He was so near that his outline was marked out dark against the glare they gave. It was as though his close approach rekindled every light. Then, with a flicker and trembling, word by word and letter by letter went slowly out before our eyes.

M. de Clairon came down very pale, but with a sort of smile on his face. “No, M. le Maire,” he said, “I cannot see how it is done. It is clever. I will examine the door further, and try the panels. Yes, I have left some one to watch that nothing is touched in the meantime, with the permission of M. le Curé—”

“You have my full permission,” M. le Curé said; and M. de Clairon laughed, though he was still very pale. “You saw my name there,” he said. “I am amused—I who am not one of your worthy citizens, M. le Maire. What can Messieurs les Morts of Semur want with a poor man of science like me? But you shall have my report before the evening is out.”

With this I had to be content. The darkness which succeeded to that strange light seemed more terrible than ever. We all stumbled as we turned to go away, dazzled by it, and stricken dumb, though some kept saying that it was a trick, and some murmured exclamations with voices full of terror. The sound of the crowd breaking up was like a regiment marching—all the world had been there. I was thankful, however, that neither my mother nor my wife had seen anything; and though they were anxious to know why I was so serious, I succeeded fortunately in keeping the secret from them.

M. de Clairon did not appear till late, and then he confessed to me he could make nothing of it. “If it is a trick (as of course it must be), it has been most cleverly done,” he said; and admitted that he was baffled altogether. For my part, I was not surprised. Had it been the Sisters of the hospital, as M. le Curé thought, would they have let the opportunity pass of preaching a sermon to us, and recommending their doctrines? Not so; here there were no doctrines, nothing but that pregnant phrase, la vraie signification de la vie. This made a more deep impression upon me than anything else. The Holy Mother herself (whom I wish to speak of with profound respect), and the saints, and the forgiveness of sins, would have all been there had it been the Sisters, or even M. le Curé. This, though I had myself suggested an imposture, made it very unlikely to my quiet thoughts. But if not an imposture, what could it be supposed to be?

III

EXPULSION OF THE INHABITANTS

I will not attempt to give any detailed account of the state of the town during this evening. For myself I was utterly worn out, and went to rest as soon as M. de Clairon left me, having satisfied, as well as I could, the questions of the women. Even in the intensest excitement weary nature will claim her dues. I slept. I can even remember the grateful sense of being able to put all anxieties and perplexities aside for the moment, as I went to sleep. I felt the drowsiness gain upon me, and I was glad. To forget was of itself a happiness. I woke up, however, intensely awake, and in perfect possession of all my faculties, while it was yet dark; and at once got up and began to dress. The moment of hesitation which generally follows waking—the little interval of thought in which one turns over perhaps that which is past, perhaps that which is to come—found no place within me. I got up without a moment’s pause, like one who has been called to go on a journey; nor did it surprise me at all to see my wife moving about, taking a cloak from her wardrobe, and putting up linen in a bag. She was already fully dressed; but she asked no questions of me any more than I did of her. We were in haste, though we said nothing. When I had dressed, I looked round me to see if I had forgotten anything, as one does when one leaves a place. I saw my watch suspended to its usual hook, and my pocketbook, which I had taken from my pocket on the previous night. I took up also the light overcoat which I had worn when I made my rounds through the city on the first night of the darkness. “Now,” I said, “Agnès, I am ready.” I did not speak to her of where we were going, nor she to me. Little Jean and my mother met us at the door. Nor did she say anything, contrary to her custom; and the child was quite quiet. We went down-stairs together without saying a word. The servants, who were all astir, followed us. I cannot give any description of the feelings that were in my mind. I had not any feelings. I was only hurried out, hastened by something which I could not define—a sense that I must go; and perhaps I was too much astonished to do anything but yield. It seemed, however, to be no force or fear that was moving me, but a desire of my own; though I could not tell how it was, or why I should be so anxious to get away. All the servants, trooping after me, had the same look in their faces; they were anxious to be gone—it seemed their business to go—there was no question, no consultation. And when we came out into the street, we encountered a stream of processions similar to our own. The children went quite steadily by the side of their parents. Little Jean, for example, on an ordinary occasion would have broken away—would have run to his comrades of the Bois-Sombre family, and they to him. But no; the little ones, like ourselves, walked along quite gravely. They asked no questions, neither did we ask any questions of each other, as, “Where are you going?” or, “What is the meaning of a so-early promenade?” Nothing of the kind; my mother took my arm, and my wife, leading little Jean by the hand, came to the other side. The servants followed. The street was quite full of people; but there was no noise except the sound of their footsteps. All of us turned the same way—turned towards the gates—and though I was not conscious of any feeling except the wish to go on, there were one or two things which took a place in my memory. The first was, that my wife suddenly turned round as we were coming out of the porte-cochère, her face lighting up. I need not say to any one who knows Madame Dupin de la Clairière, that she is a beautiful woman. Without any partiality on my part, it would be impossible for me to ignore this fact: for it is perfectly well known and acknowledged by all. She was pale this morning—a little paler than usual; and her blue eyes enlarged, with a serious look, which they always retain more or less. But suddenly, as we went out of the door, her face lighted up, her eyes were suffused with tears—with light—how can I tell what it was?—they became like the eyes of angels. A little cry came from her parted lips—she lingered a moment, stooping down as if talking to some one less tall than herself, then came after us, with that light still in her face. At the moment I was too much occupied to enquire what it was; but I noted it, even in the gravity of the occasion. The next thing I observed was M. le Curé, who, as I have already indicated, is a man of great composure of manner and presence of mind, coming out of the door of the Presbytery. There was a strange look on his face of astonishment and reluctance. He walked very slowly, not as we did, but with a visible desire to turn back, folding his arms across his breast, and holding himself as if against the wind, resisting some gale which blew behind him, and forced him on. We felt no gale; but there seemed to be a strange wind blowing along the side of the street on which M. le Curé was. And there was an air of concealed surprise in his face—great astonishment, but a determination not to let any one see that he was astonished, or that the situation was strange to him. And I cannot tell how it was, but I, too, though pre-occupied, was surprised to perceive that M. le Cure was going with the rest of us, though I could not have told why.

Behind M. le Curé there was another whom I remarked. This was Jacques Richard, he of whom I have already spoken. He was like a figure I have seen somewhere in sculpture. No one was near him, nobody touching him, and yet it was only necessary to look at the man to perceive that he was being forced along against his will. Every limb was in resistance; his feet were planted widely yet firmly upon the pavement; one of his arms was stretched out as if to lay hold on anything that should come within reach. M. le Curé resisted passively; but Jacques resisted with passion, laying his back to the wind, and struggling not to be carried away. Notwithstanding his resistance, however, this rough figure was driven along slowly, struggling at every step. He did not make one movement that was not against his will, but still he was driven on. On our side of the street all went, like ourselves, calmly. My mother uttered now and then a low moan, but said nothing. She clung to my arm, and walked on, hurrying a little, sometimes going quicker than I intended to go. As for my wife, she accompanied us with her light step, which scarcely seemed to touch the ground, little Jean pattering by her side. Our neighbours were all round us. We streamed down, as in a long procession, to the Porte St. Lambert. It was only when we got there that the strange character of the step we were all taking suddenly occurred to me. It was still a kind of grey twilight, not yet day. The bells of the Cathedral had begun to toll, which was very startling—not ringing in their cheerful way, but tolling as if for a funeral; and no other sound was audible but the noise of footsteps, like an army making a silent march into an enemy’s country. We had reached the gate when a sudden wondering came over me. Why were we all going out of our houses in the wintry dusk to which our July days had turned? I stopped, and turning round, was about to say something to the others, when I became suddenly aware that here I was not my own master. My tongue clave to the root of my mouth; I could not say a word. Then I myself was turned round, and softly, firmly, irresistibly pushed out of the gate. My mother, who clung to me, added a little, no doubt, to the force against me, whatever it was, for she was frightened, and opposed herself to any endeavour on my part to regain freedom of movement; but all that her feeble force could do against mine must have been little. Several other men around me seemed to be moved as I was. M. Barbou, for one, made a still more decided effort to turn back, for, being a bachelor, he had no one to restrain him. Him I saw turned round as you would turn a roulette. He was thrown against my wife in his tempestuous course, and but that she was so light and elastic in her tread, gliding out straight and softly like one of the saints, I think he must have thrown her down. And at that moment, silent as we all were, his “Pardon, Madame, mille pardons, Madame,” and his tone of horror at his own indiscretion, seemed to come to me like a voice out of another life. Partially roused before by the sudden impulse of resistance I have described, I was yet more roused now. I turned round, disengaging myself from my mother. “Where are we going? why are we thus cast forth? My friends, help!” I cried. I looked round upon the others, who, as I have said, had also awakened to a possibility of resistance. M. de Bois-Sombre, without a word, came and placed himself by my side; others started from the crowd. We turned to resist this mysterious impulse which had sent us forth. The crowd surged round us in the uncertain light.

Just then there was a dull soft sound, once, twice, thrice repeated. We rushed forward, but too late. The gates were closed upon us. The two folds of the great Porte St. Lambert, and the little postern for foot-passengers, all at once, not hurriedly, as from any fear of us, but slowly, softly, rolled on their hinges and shut—in our faces. I rushed forward with all my force and flung myself upon the gate. To what use? it was so closed as no mortal could open it. They told me after, for I was not aware at the moment, that I burst forth with cries and exclamations, bidding them “Open, open in the name of God!” I was not aware of what I said, but it seemed to me that I heard a voice of which nobody said anything to me, so that it would seem to have been unheard by the others, saying with a faint sound as of a trumpet, “Closed—in the name of God.” It might be only an echo, faintly brought back to me, of the words I had myself said.

There was another change, however, of which no one could have any doubt. When I turned round from these closed doors, though the moment before the darkness was such that we could not see the gates closing, I found the sun shining gloriously round us, and all my fellow-citizens turning with one impulse, with a sudden cry of joy, to hail the full day.

Le grand jour! Never in my life did I feel the full happiness of it, the full sense of the words before. The sun burst out into shining, the birds into singing. The sky stretched over us—deep and unfathomable and blue,—the grass grew under our feet, a soft air of morning blew upon us; waving the curls of the children, the veils of the women, whose faces were lit up by the beautiful day. After three days of darkness what a resurrection! It seemed to make up to us for the misery of being thus expelled from our homes. It was early, and all the freshness of the morning was upon the road and the fields, where the sun had just dried the dew. The river ran softly, reflecting the blue sky. How black it had been, deep and dark as a stream of ink, when I had looked down upon it from the Mont St. Lambert! and now it ran as clear and free as the voice of a little child. We all shared this moment of joy—for to us of the South the sunshine is as the breath of life, and to be deprived of it had been terrible. But when that first pleasure was over, the evidence of our strange position forced itself upon us with overpowering reality and force, made stronger by the very light. In the dimness it had not seemed so certain; now, gazing at each other in the clear light of the natural morning, we saw what had happened to us. No more delusion was possible. We could not flatter ourselves now that it was a trick or a deception. M. le Clairon stood there like the rest of us, staring at the closed gates which science could not open. And there stood M. le Curé, which was more remarkable still. The Church herself had not been able to do anything. We stood, a crowd of houseless exiles, looking at each other, our children clinging to us, our hearts failing us, expelled from our homes. As we looked in each other’s faces we saw our own trouble. Many of the women sat down and wept; some upon the stones in the road, some on the grass. The children took fright from them, and began to cry too. What was to become of us? I looked round upon this crowd with despair in my heart. It was I to whom every one would look—for lodging, for direction—everything that human creatures want. It was my business to forget myself, though I also had been driven from my home and my city. Happily there was one thing I had left. In the pocket of my overcoat was my scarf of office. I stepped aside behind a tree, and took it out, and tied it upon me. That was something. There was thus a representative of order and law in the midst of the exiles, whatever might happen. This action, which a great number of the crowd saw, restored confidence. Many of the poor people gathered round me, and placed themselves near me, especially those women who had no natural support. When M. le Curé saw this, it seemed to make a great impression upon him. He changed colour, he who was usually so calm. Hitherto he had appeared bewildered, amazed to find himself as others. This, I must add, though you may perhaps think it superstitious, surprised me very much too. But now he regained his self-possession. He stepped upon a piece of wood that lay in front of the gate. “My children”—he said. But just then the Cathedral bells, which had gone on tolling, suddenly burst into a wild peal. I do not know what it sounded like. It was a clamour of notes all run together, tone upon tone, without time or measure, as though a multitude had seized upon the bells and pulled all the ropes at once. If it was joy, what strange and terrible joy! It froze the very blood in our veins. M. le Curé became quite pale. He stepped down hurriedly from the piece of wood. We all made a hurried movement farther off from the gate.

It was now that I perceived the necessity of doing something, of getting this crowd disposed of, especially the women and the children. I am not ashamed to own that I trembled like the others; and nothing less than the consciousness that all eyes were upon me, and that my scarf of office marked me out among all who stood around, could have kept me from moving with precipitation as they did. I was enabled, however, to retire at a deliberate pace, and being thus slightly detached from the crowd, I took advantage of the opportunity to address them. Above all things, it was my duty to prevent a tumult in these unprecedented circumstances. “My friends,” I said, “the event which has occurred is beyond explanation for the moment. The very nature of it is mysterious; the circumstances are such as require the closest investigation. But take courage. I pledge myself not to leave this place till the gates are open, and you can return to your homes; in the meantime, however, the women and the children cannot remain here. Let those who have friends in the villages near, go and ask for shelter; and let all who will, go to my house of La Clairière. My mother, my wife! recall to yourselves the position you occupy, and show an example. Lead our neighbours, I entreat you, to La Clairière.”

My mother is advanced in years and no longer strong, but she has a great heart. “I will go,” she said. “God bless thee, my son! There will no harm happen; for if this be true which we are told, thy father is in Semur.”

There then occurred one of those incidents for which calculation never will prepare us. My mother’s words seemed, as it were to open the flood-gates; my wife came up to me with the light in her face which I had seen when we left our own door. “It was our little Marie—our angel,” she said. And then there arose a great cry and clamour of others, both men and women pressing round. “I saw my mother,” said one, “who is dead twenty years come the St. Jean.” “And I my little René,” said another. “And I my Camille, who was killed in Africa.” And lo, what did they do, but rush towards the gate in a crowd—that gate from which they had but this moment fled in terror—beating upon it, and crying out, “Open to us, open to us, our most dear! Do you think we have forgotten you? We have never forgotten you!” What could we do with them, weeping thus, smiling, holding out their arms to—we knew not what? Even my Agnès was beyond my reach. Marie was our little girl who was dead. Those who were thus transported by a knowledge beyond ours were the weakest among us; most of them were women, the men old or feeble, and some children. I can recollect that I looked for Paul Lecamus among them, with wonder not to see him there. But though they were weak, they were beyond our strength to guide. What could we do with them? How could we force them away while they held to the fancy that those they loved were there? As it happens in times of emotion, it was those who were most impassioned who took the first place. We were at our wits’ end.

But while we stood waiting, not knowing what to do, another sound suddenly came from the walls, which made them all silent in a moment. The most of us ran to this point and that (some taking flight altogether; but with the greater part anxious curiosity and anxiety had for the moment extinguished fear), in a wild eagerness to see who or what it was. But there was nothing to be seen, though the sound came from the wall close to the Mont St. Lambert, which I have already described. It was to me like the sound of a trumpet, and so I heard others say; and along with the trumpet were sounds as of words, though I could not make them out. But those others seemed to understand—they grew calmer—they ceased to weep. They raised their faces, all with that light upon them—that light I had seen in my Agnès. Some of them fell upon their knees. Imagine to yourself what a sight it was, all of us standing round, pale, stupefied, without a word to say! Then the women suddenly burst forth into replies—“Oui, ma chérie! Oui, mon ange!” they cried. And while we looked they rose up; they came back, calling the children around them. My Agnès took that place which I had bidden her take. She had not hearkened to me, to leave me—but she hearkened now; and though I had bidden her to do this, yet to see her do it bewildered me, made my heart stand still. “Mon ami,” she said, “I must leave thee; it is commanded: they will not have the children suffer.” What could we do? We stood pale and looked on, while all the little ones, all the feeble, were gathered in a little army. My mother stood like me—to her nothing had been revealed. She was very pale, and there was a quiver of pain in her lips. She was the one who had been ready to do my bidding: but there was a rebellion in her heart now. When the procession was formed (for it was my care to see that everything was done in order), she followed, but among the last. Thus they went away, many of them weeping, looking back, waving their hands to us. My Agnès covered her face, she could not look at me; but she obeyed. They went some to this side, some to that, leaving us gazing. For a long time we did nothing but watch them, going along the roads. What had their angels said to them? Nay, but God knows. I heard the sound; it was like the sound of the silver trumpets that travellers talk of; it was like music from heaven. I turned to M. le Curé, who was standing by. “What is it?” I cried, “you are their director—you are an ecclesiastic—you know what belongs to the unseen. What is this that has been said to them?” I have always thought well of M. le Curé. There were tears running down his cheeks.

“I know not,” he said. “I am a miserable like the rest. What they know is between God and them. Me! I have been of the world, like the rest.”

This is how we were left alone—the men of the city—to take what means were best to get back to our homes. There were several left among us who had shared the enlightenment of the women, but these were not persons of importance who could put themselves at the head of affairs. And there were women who remained with us, but these not of the best. To see our wives go was very strange to us; it was the thing we wished most to see, the women and children in safety; yet it was a strange sensation to see them go. For me, who had the charge of all on my hands, the relief was beyond description—yet was it strange; I cannot describe it. Then I called upon M. Barbou, who was trembling like a leaf, and gathered the chief of the citizens about me, including M. le Curé, that we should consult together what we should do.

I know no words that can describe our state in the strange circumstances we were now placed in. The women and the children were safe: that was much. But we—we were like an army suddenly formed, but without arms, without any knowledge of how to fight, without being able to see our enemy. We Frenchmen have not been without knowledge of such perils. We have seen the invader enter our doors; we have been obliged to spread our table for him, and give him of our best. But to be put forth by forces no man could resist—to be left outside, with the doors of our own houses closed upon us—to be confronted by nothing—by a mist, a silence, a darkness,—this was enough to paralyse the heart of any man. And it did so, more or less, according to the nature of those who were exposed to the trial. Some altogether failed us, and fled, carrying the news into the country, where most people laughed at there, as we understood afterwards. Some could do nothing but sit and gaze, huddled together in crowds, at the cloud over Semur, from which they expected to see fire burst and consume the city altogether. And a few, I grieve to say, took possession of the little cabaret, which stands at about half a kilometre from the St. Lambert gate, and established themselves there, in hideous riot, which was the worst thing of all for serious men to behold. Those upon whom I could rely I formed into patrols to go round the city, that no opening of a gate, or movement of those who were within, should take place without our knowledge. Such an emergency shows what men are. M. Barbou, though in ordinary times he discharges his duties as adjoint satisfactorily enough (though, it need not be added, a good Maire who is acquainted with his duties, makes the office of adjoint of but little importance), was now found entirely useless. He could not forget how he had been spun round and tossed forth from the city gates. When I proposed to put him at the head of a patrol, he had an attack of the nerves. Before nightfall he deserted me altogether, going off to his country-house, and taking a number of his neighbours with him. “How can we tell when we may be permitted to return to the town?” he said, with his teeth chattering. “M. le Maire, I adjure you to put yourself in a place of safety.”

“Sir,” I said to him, sternly, “for one who deserts his post there is no place of safety.”

But I do not think he was capable of understanding me. Fortunately, I found in M. le Curé a much more trustworthy coadjutor. He was indefatigable; he had the habit of sitting up to all hours, of being called at all hours, in which our bourgeoisie, I cannot but acknowledge, is wanting. The expression I have before described of astonishment—but of astonishment which he wished to conceal—never left his face. He did not understand how such a thing could have been permitted to happen while he had no share in it; and, indeed, I will not deny that this was a matter of great wonder to myself too.

The arrangements I have described gave us occupation; and this had a happy effect upon us in distracting our minds from what had happened; for I think that if we had sat still and gazed at the dark city we should soon have gone mad, as some did. In our ceaseless patrols and attempts to find a way of entrance, we distracted ourselves from the enquiry, Who would dare to go in if the entrance were found? In the meantime not a gate was opened, not a figure was visible. We saw nothing, no more than if Semur had been a picture painted upon a canvas. Strange sights indeed met our eyes—sights which made even the bravest quail. The strangest of them was the boats that would go down and up the river, shooting forth from under the fortified bridge, which is one of the chief features of our town, sometimes with sails perfectly well managed, sometimes impelled by oars, but with no one visible in them—no one conducting them. To see one of these boats impelled up the stream, with no rower visible, was a wonderful sight. M. de Clairon, who was by my side, murmured something about a magnetic current; but when I asked him sternly by what set in motion, his voice died away in his moustache. M. le Curé said very little: one saw his lips move as he watched with us the passage of those boats. He smiled when it was proposed by some one to fire upon them. He read his Hours as he went round at the head of his patrol. My fellow townsmen and I conceived a great respect for him; and he inspired pity in me also. He had been the teacher of the Unseen among us, till the moment when the Unseen was thus, as it were, brought within our reach; but with the revelation he had nothing to do; and it filled him with pain and wonder. It made him silent; he said little about his religion, but signed himself, and his lips moved. He thought (I imagine) that he had displeased Those who are over all.

When night came the bravest of us were afraid. I speak for myself. It was bright moonlight where we were, and Semur lay like a blot between the earth and the sky, all dark: even the Cathedral towers were lost in it; nothing visible but the line of the ramparts, whitened outside by the moon. One knows what black and strange shadows are cast by the moonlight; and it seemed to all of us that we did not know what might be lurking behind every tree. The shadows of the branches looked like terrible faces. I sent all my people out on the patrols, though they were dropping with fatigue. Rather that than to be mad with terror. For myself, I took up my post as near the bank of the river as we could approach; for there was a limit beyond which we might not pass. I made the experiment often; and it seemed to me, and to all that attempted it, that we did reach the very edge of the stream; but the next moment perceived that we were at a certain distance, say twenty metres or thereabout. I placed myself there very often, wrapping a cloak about me to preserve me from the dew. (I may say that food had been sent us, and wine from La Clairière and many other houses in the neighbourhood, where the women had gone for this among other reasons, that we might be nourished by them.) And I must here relate a personal incident, though I have endeavoured not to be egotistical. While I sat watching, I distinctly saw a boat, a boat which belonged to myself, lying on the very edge of the shadow. The prow, indeed, touched the moonlight where it was cut clean across by the darkness; and this was how I discovered that it was the Marie, a pretty pleasure-boat which had been made for my wife. The sight of it made my heart beat; for what could it mean but that some one who was dear to me, some one in whom I took an interest, was there? I sprang up from where I sat to make another effort to get nearer; but my feet were as lead, and would not move; and there came a singing in my ears, and my blood coursed through my veins as in a fever. Ah! was it possible? I, who am a man, who have resolution, who have courage, who can lead the people, I was afraid! I sat down again and wept like a child. Perhaps it was my little Marie that was in the boat. God, He knows if I loved thee, my little angel! but I was afraid. O how mean is man! though we are so proud. They came near to me who were my own, and it was borne in upon my spirit that my good father was with the child; but because they had died I was afraid. I covered my face with my hands. Then it seemed to me that I heard a long quiver of a sigh; a long, long breath, such as sometimes relieves a sorrow that is beyond words. Trembling, I uncovered my eyes. There was nothing on the edge of the moonlight; all was dark, and all was still, the white radiance making a clear line across the river, but nothing more.

If my Agnès had been with me she would have seen our child, she would have heard that voice! The great cold drops of moisture were on my forehead. My limbs trembled, my heart fluttered in my bosom. I could neither listen nor yet speak. And those who would have spoken to me, those who loved me, sighing, went away. It is not possible that such wretchedness should be credible to noble minds; and if it had not been for pride and for shame, I should have fled away straight to La Clairière, to Put myself under shelter, to have some one near me who was less a coward than I. I, upon whom all the others relied, the Maire of the Commune! I make my confession. I was of no more force than this.

A voice behind me made me spring to my feet—the leap of a mouse would have driven me wild. I was altogether demoralised. “Monsieur le Maire, it is but I,” said some one quite humble and frightened.

“Tiens!—it is thou, Jacques!” I said. I could have embraced him, though it is well known how little I approve of him. But he was living, he was a man like myself. I put out my hand, and felt him warm and breathing, and I shall never forget the ease that came to my heart. Its beating calmed. I was restored to myself.

“M. le Maire,” he said, “I wish to ask you something. Is it true all that is said about these people, I would say, these Messieurs? I do not wish to speak with disrespect, M. le Maire.”

“What is it, Jacques, that is said?” I had called him “thou” not out of contempt, but because, for the moment, he seemed to me as a brother, as one of my friends.

“M. le Maire, is it indeed les morts that are in Semur?”

He trembled, and so did I. “Jacques,” I said, “you know all that I know.”

“Yes, M. le Maire, it is so, sure enough. I do not doubt it. If it were the Prussians, a man could fight. But ces Messieurs là! What I want to know is: is it because of what you did to those little Sisters, those good little ladies of St. Jean?”

“What I did? You were yourself one of the complainants. You were of those who said, when a man is ill, when he is suffering, they torment him with their mass; it is quiet he wants, not their mass. These were thy words, vaurien. And now you say it was I!”

“True, M. le Maire,” said Jacques; “but look you, when a man is better, when he has just got well, when he feels he is safe, then you should not take what he says for gospel. It would be strange if one had a new illness just when one is getting well of the old; and one feels now is the time to enjoy one’s self, to kick up one’s heels a little, while at least there is not likely to be much of a watch kept up there—the saints forgive me,” cried Jacques, trembling and crossing himself, “if I speak with levity at such a moment! And the little ladies were very kind. It was wrong to close their chapel, M. le Maire. From that comes all our trouble.”

“You good-for-nothing!” I cried, “it is you and such as you that are the beginning of our trouble. You thought there was no watch kept up there; you thought God would not take the trouble to punish you; you went about the streets of Semur tossing a grosse pièce of a hundred sous, and calling out, ‘There is no God—this is my god; l’argent, c’est le bon Dieu.’”

“M. le Maire, M. le Maire, be silent, I implore you! It is enough to bring down a judgment upon us.”

“It has brought down a judgment upon us. Go thou and try what thy grosse pièce will do for thee now—worship thy god. Go, I tell you, and get help from your money.”

“I have no money, M. le Maire, and what could money do here? We would do much better to promise a large candle for the next festival, and that the ladies of St. Jean—”

“Get away with thee to the end of the world, thou and thy ladies of St. Jean!” I cried; which was wrong, I do not deny it, for they are good women, not like this good-for-nothing fellow. And to think that this man, whom I despise, was more pleasant to me than the dear souls who loved me! Shame came upon me at the thought. I too, then, was like the others, fearing the Unseen—capable of understanding only that which was palpable. When Jacques slunk away, which he did for a few steps, not losing sight of me, I turned my face towards the river and the town. The moonlight fell upon the water, white as silver where that line of darkness lay, shining, as if it tried, and tried in vain, to penetrate Semur; and between that and the blue sky overhead lay the city out of which we had been driven forth—the city of the dead. “O God,” I cried, “whom I know not, am not I to Thee as my little Jean is to me, a child and less than a child? Do not abandon me in this darkness. Would I abandon him were he ever so disobedient? And God, if thou art God, Thou art a better father than I.” When I had said this, my heart was a little relieved. It seemed to me that I had spoken to some one who knew all of us, whether we were dead or whether we were living. That is a wonderful thing to think of, when it appears to one not as a thing to believe, but as something that is real. It gave me courage. I got up and went to meet the patrol which was coming in, and found that great good-for-nothing Jacques running close after me, holding my cloak. “Do not send me away, M. le Maire,” he said, “I dare not stay by myself with them so near.” Instead of his money, in which he had trusted, it was I who had become his god now.

IV

OUTSIDE THE WALLS

There are few who have not heard something of the sufferings of a siege. Whether within or without, it is the most terrible of all the experiences of war. I am old enough to recollect the trenches before Sebastopol, and all that my countrymen and the English endured there. Sometimes I endeavoured to think of this to distract me from what we ourselves endured. But how different was it! We had neither shelter nor support. We had no weapons, nor any against whom to wield them. We were cast out of our homes in the midst of our lives, in the midst of our occupations, and left there helpless, to gaze at each other, to blind our eyes trying to penetrate the darkness before us. Could we have done anything, the oppression might have been less terrible—but what was there that we could do? Fortunately (though I do not deny that I felt each desertion) our band grew less and less every day. Hour by hour some one stole away—first one, then another, dispersing themselves among the villages near, in which many had friends. The accounts which these men gave were, I afterwards learnt, of the most vague description. Some talked of wonders they had seen, and were laughed at—and some spread reports of internal division among us. Not till long after did I know all the reports that went abroad. It was said that there had been fighting in Semur, and that we were divided into two factions, one of which had gained the mastery, and driven the other out. This was the story current in La Rochette, where they are always glad to hear anything to the discredit of the people of Semur; but no credence could have been given to it by those in authority, otherwise M. le Préfet, however indifferent to our interests, must necessarily have taken some steps for our relief. Our entire separation from the world was indeed one of the strangest details of this terrible period. Generally the diligence, though conveying on the whole few passengers, returned with two or three, at least, visitors or commercial persons, daily-and the latter class frequently arrived in carriages of their own; but during this period no stranger came to see our miserable plight. We made shelter for ourselves under the branches of the few trees that grew in the uncultivated ground on either side of the road—and a hasty erection, half tent half shed, was put up for a place to assemble in, or for those who were unable to bear the heat of the day or the occasional chills of the night. But the most of us were too restless to seek repose, and could not bear to be out of sight of the city. At any moment it seemed to us the gates might open, or some loophole be visible by which we might throw ourselves upon the darkness and vanquish it. This was what we said to ourselves, forgetting how we shook and trembled whenever any contact had been possible with those who were within. But one thing was certain, that though we feared, we could not turn our eyes from the place. We slept leaning against a tree, or with our heads on our hands, and our faces toward Semur. We took no count of day or night, but ate the morsel the women brought to us, and slept thus, not sleeping, when want or weariness overwhelmed us. There was scarcely an hour in the day that some of the women did not come to ask what news. They crept along the roads in twos and threes, and lingered for hours sitting by the way weeping, starting at every breath of wind.

Meanwhile all was not silent within Semur. The Cathedral bells rang often, at first filling us with hope, for how familiar was that sound! The first time, we all gathered together and listened, and many wept. It was as if we heard our mother’s voice. M. de Bois-Sombre burst into tears. I have never seen him within the doors of the Cathedral since his marriage; but he burst into tears. “Mon Dieu! if I were but there!” he said. We stood and listened, our hearts melting, some falling on their knees. M. le Curé stood up in the midst of us and began to intone the psalm: [He has a beautiful voice. It is sympathetic, it goes to the heart.] “I was glad when they said to me, Let us go up—” And though there were few of us who could have supposed themselves capable of listening to that sentiment a little while before with any sympathy, yet a vague hope rose up within us while we heard him, while we listened to the bells. What man is there to whom the bells of his village, the carillon of his city, is not most dear? It rings for him through all his life; it is the first sound of home in the distance when he comes back—the last that follows him like a long farewell when he goes away. While we listened, we forgot our fears. They were as we were, they were also our brethren, who rang those bells. We seemed to see them trooping into our beautiful Cathedral. All! only to see it again, to be within its shelter, cool and calm as in our mother’s arms! It seemed to us that we should wish for nothing more.

When the sound ceased we looked into each other’s faces, and each man saw that his neighbour was pale. Hope died in us when the sound died away, vibrating sadly through the air. Some men threw themselves on the ground in their despair.

And from this time forward many voices were heard, calls and shouts within the walls, and sometimes a sound like a trumpet, and other instruments of music. We thought, indeed, that noises as of bands patrolling along the ramparts were audible as our patrols worked their way round and round. This was a duty which I never allowed to be neglected, not because I put very much faith in it, but because it gave us a sort of employment. There is a story somewhere which I recollect dimly of an ancient city which its assailants did not touch, but only marched round and round till the walls fell, and they could enter. Whether this was a story of classic times or out of our own remote history, I could not recollect. But I thought of it many times while we made our way like a procession of ghosts, round and round, straining our ears to hear what those voices were which sounded above us, in tones that were familiar, yet so strange. This story got so much into my head (and after a time all our heads seemed to get confused and full of wild and bewildering expedients) that I found myself suggesting—I, a man known for sense and reason—that we should blow trumpets at some time to be fixed, which was a thing the ancients had done in the strange tale which had taken possession of me. M. le Curé looked at me with disapproval. He said, “I did not expect from M. le Maire anything that was disrespectful to religion.” Heaven forbid that I should be disrespectful to religion at any time of life, but then it was impossible to me. I remembered after that the tale of which I speak, which had so seized upon me, was in the sacred writings; but those who know me will understand that no sneer at these writings or intention of wounding the feelings of M. le Curé was in my mind.

I was seated one day upon a little inequality of the ground, leaning my back against a half-withered hawthorn, and dozing with my head in my hands, when a soothing, which always diffuses itself from her presence, shed itself over me, and opening my eyes, I saw my Agnès sitting by me. She had come with some food and a little linen, fresh and soft like her own touch. My wife was not gaunt and worn like me, but she was pale and as thin as a shadow. I woke with a start, and seeing her there, there suddenly came a dread over me that she would pass away before my eyes, and go over to Those who were within Semur. I cried “Non, mon Agnès; non, mon Agnès: before you ask, No!” seizing her and holding her fast in this dream, which was not altogether a dream. She looked at me with a smile, that smile that has always been to me as the rising of the sun over the earth.

“Mon ami,” she said surprised, “I ask nothing, except that you should take a little rest and spare thyself.” Then she added, with haste, what I knew she would say, “Unless it were this, mon ami. If I were permitted, I would go into the city—I would ask those who are there what is their meaning: and if no way can be found—no act of penitence.—Oh! do not answer in haste! I have no fear; and it would be to save thee.”

A strong throb of anger came into my throat. Figure to yourself that I looked at my wife with anger, with the same feeling which had moved me when the deserters left us; but far more hot and sharp. I seized her soft hands and crushed them in mine. “You would leave me!” I said. “You would desert your husband. You would go over to our enemies!”

“O Martin, say not so,” she cried, with tears. “Not enemies. There is our little Marie, and my mother, who died when I was born.”

“You love these dead tyrants. Yes,” I said, “you love them best. You will go to—the majority, to the strongest. Do not speak to me! Because your God is on their side, you will forsake us too.”

Then she threw herself upon me and encircled me with her arms. The touch of them stilled my passion; but yet I held her, clutching her gown, so terrible a fear came over me that she would go and come back no more.

“Forsake thee!” she breathed out over me with a moan. Then, putting her cool cheek to mine, which burned, “But I would die for thee, Martin.”

“Silence, my wife: that is what you shall not do,” I cried, beside myself. I rose up; I put her away from me. That is, I know it, what has been done. Their God does this, they do not hesitate to say—takes from you what you love best, to make you better—you! and they ask you to love Him when He has thus despoiled you! “Go home, Agnès,” I said, hoarse with terror. “Let us face them as we may; you shall not go among them, or put thyself in peril. Die for me! Mon Dieu! and what then, what should I do then? Turn your face from them; turn from them; go! go! and let me not see thee here again.”

My wife did not understand the terror that seized me. She obeyed me, as she always does, but, with the tears falling from her white cheeks, fixed upon me the most piteous look. “Mon ami,” she said, “you are disturbed, you are not in possession of yourself; this cannot be what you mean.”

“Let me not see thee here again!” I cried. “Would you make me mad in the midst of my trouble? No! I will not have you look that way. Go home! go home!” Then I took her into my arms and wept, though I am not a man given to tears. “Oh! my Agnès,” I said, “give me thy counsel. What you tell me I will do; but rather than risk thee, I would live thus for ever, and defy them.”

She put her hand upon my lips. “I will not ask this again,” she said, bowing her head; “but defy them—why should you defy them? Have they come for nothing? Was Semur a city of the saints? They have come to convert our people, Martin—thee too, and the rest. If you will submit your hearts, they will open the gates, they will go back to their sacred homes and we to ours. This has been borne in upon me sleeping and waking; and it seemed to me that if I could but go, and say, ‘Oh! my fathers, oh! my brothers, they submit,’ all would be well. For I do not fear them, Martin. Would they harm me that love us? I would but give our Marie one kiss—”

“You are a traitor!” I said. “You would steal yourself from me, and do me the worst wrong of all—”

But I recovered my calm. What she said reached my understanding at last. “Submit!” I said, “but to what? To come and turn us from our homes, to wrap our town in darkness, to banish our wives and our children, to leave us here to be scorched by the sun and drenched by the rain,—this is not to convince us, my Agnès. And to what then do you bid us submit—?”

“It is to convince you, mon ami, of the love of God, who has permitted this great tribulation to be, that we might be saved,” said Agnès. Her face was sublime with faith. It is possible to these dear women; but for me the words she spoke were but words without meaning. I shook my head. Now that my horror and alarm were passed, I could well remember often to have heard words like these before.

“My angel!” I said, “all this I admire, I adore in thee; but how is it the love of God?—and how shall we be saved by it? Submit! I will do anything that is reasonable; but of what truth have we here the proof—?”

Some one had come up behind as we were talking. When I heard his voice I smiled, notwithstanding my despair. It was natural that the Church should come to the woman’s aid. But I would not refuse to give ear to M. le Curé, who had proved himself a man, had he been ten times a priest.

“I have not heard what Madame has been saying, M. le Maire, neither would I interpose but for your question. You ask of what truth have we the proof here? It is the Unseen that has revealed itself. Do we see anything, you and I? Nothing, nothing, but a cloud. But that which we cannot see, that which we know not, that which we dread—look! it is there.”

I turned unconsciously as he pointed with his hand. Oh, heaven, what did I see! Above the cloud that wrapped Semur there was a separation, a rent in the darkness, and in mid heaven the Cathedral towers, pointing to the sky. I paid no more attention to M. le Curé. I sent forth a shout that roused all, even the weary line of the patrol that was marching slowly with bowed heads round the walls; and there went up such a cry of joy as shook the earth. “The towers, the towers!” I cried. These were the towers that could be seen leagues off, the first sign of Semur; our towers, which we had been born to love like our father’s name. I have had joys in my life, deep and great. I have loved, I have won honours, I have conquered difficulty; but never had I felt as now. It was as if one had been born again.

When we had gazed upon them, blessing them and thanking God, I gave orders that all our company should be called to the tent, that we might consider whether any new step could now be taken: Agnès with the other women sitting apart on one side and waiting. I recognised even in the excitement of such a time that theirs was no easy part. To sit there silent, to wait till we had spoken, to be bound by what we decided, and to have no voice—yes, that was hard. They thought they knew better than we did: but they were silent, devouring us with their eager eyes. I love one woman more than all the world; I count her the best thing that God has made; yet would I not be as Agnès for all that life could give me. It was her part to be silent, and she was so, like the angel she is, while even Jacques Richard had the right to speak. Mon Dieu! but it is hard, I allow it; they have need to be angels. This thought passed through my mind even at the crisis which had now arrived. For at such moments one sees everything, one thinks of everything, though it is only after that one remembers what one has seen and thought. When my fellow-citizens gathered together (we were now less than a hundred in number, so many had gone from us), I took it upon myself to speak. We were a haggard, worn-eyed company, having had neither shelter nor sleep nor even food, save in hasty snatches. I stood at the door of the tent and they below, for the ground sloped a little. Beside me were M. le Curé, M. de Bois-Sombre, and one or two others of the chief citizens. “My friends,” I said, “you have seen that a new circumstance has occurred. It is not within our power to tell what its meaning is, yet it must be a symptom of good. For my own part, to see these towers makes the air lighter. Let us think of the Church as we may, no one can deny that the towers of Semur are dear to our hearts.”

“M. le Maire,” said M. de Bois-Sombre, interrupting, “I speak I am sure the sentiments of my fellow-citizens when I say that there is no longer any question among us concerning the Church; it is an admirable institution, a universal advantage—”

“Yes, yes,” said the crowd, “yes, certainly!” and some added, “It is the only safeguard, it is our protection,” and some signed themselves. In the crowd I saw Riou, who had done this at the octroi. But the sign did not surprise me now.

M. le Curé stood by my side, but he did not smile. His countenance was dark, almost angry. He stood quite silent, with his eyes on the ground. It gave him no pleasure, this profession of faith.

“It is well, my friends,” said I, “we are all in accord; and the good God has permitted us again to see these towers. I have called you together to collect your ideas. This change must have a meaning. It has been suggested to me that we might send an ambassador—a messenger, if that is possible, into the city—”

Here I stopped short; and a shiver ran through me—a shiver which went over the whole company. We were all pale as we looked in each other’s faces; and for a moment no one ventured to speak. After this pause it was perhaps natural that he who first found his voice should be the last who had any right to give an opinion. Who should it be but Jacques Richard? “M. le Maire,” cried the fellow, “speaks at his ease—but who will thus risk himself?” Probably he did not mean that his grumbling should be heard, but in the silence every sound was audible; there was a gasp, a catching of the breath, and all turned their eyes again upon me. I did not pause to think what answer I should give. “I!” I cried. “Here stands one who will risk himself, who will perish if need be—”

Something stirred behind me. It was Agnès who had risen to her feet, who stood with her lips parted and quivering, with her hands clasped, as if about to speak. But she did not speak. Well! she had proposed to do it. Then why not I?

“Let me make the observation,” said another of our fellow-citizens, Bordereau the banker, “that this would not be just. Without M. le Maire we should be a mob without a head. If a messenger is to be sent, let it be some one not so indispensable—”

“Why send a messenger?” said another, Philip Leclerc. “Do we know that these Messieurs will admit any one? and how can you speak, how can you parley with those—” and he too, was seized with a shiver—“whom you cannot see?”

Then there came another voice out of the crowd. It was one who would not show himself, who was conscious of the mockery in his tone. “If there is any one sent, let it be M. le Curé,” it said.

M. le Curé stepped forward. His pale countenance flushed red. “Here am I,” he said, “I am ready; but he who spoke speaks to mock me. Is it befitting in this presence?”

There was a struggle among the men. Whoever it was who had spoken (I did not wish to know), I had no need to condemn the mocker; they themselves silenced him; then Jacques Richard (still less worthy of credit) cried out again with a voice that was husky. What are men made of? Notwithstanding everything, it was from the cabaret, from the wine-shop, that he had come. He said, “Though M. le Maire will not take my opinion, yet it is this. Let them reopen the chapel in the hospital. The ladies of St. Jean—”

“Hold thy peace,” I said, “miserable!” But a murmur rose. “Though it is not his part to speak, I agree,” said one. “And I.” “And I.” There was well-nigh a tumult of consent; and this made me angry. Words were on my lips which it might have been foolish to utter, when M. de Bois-Sombre, who is a man of judgment, interfered.

“M. le Maire,” he said, “as there are none of us here who would show disrespect to the Church and holy things—that is understood—it is not necessary to enter into details. Every restriction that would wound the most susceptible is withdrawn; not one more than another, but all. We have been indifferent in the past, but for the future you will agree with me that everything shall be changed. The ambassador—whoever he may be—” he added with a catching of his breath, “must be empowered to promise—everything—submission to all that may be required.”

Here the women could not restrain themselves; they all rose up with a cry, and many of them began to weep. “Ah!” said one with a hysterical sound of laughter in her tears. “Sainte Mère! it will be heaven upon earth.”

M. le Curé said nothing; a keen glance of wonder, yet of subdued triumph, shot from under his eyelids. As for me, I wrung my hands: “What you say will be superstition; it will be hypocrisy,” I cried.

But at that moment a further incident occurred. Suddenly, while we deliberated, a long loud peal of a trumpet sounded into the air. I have already said that many sounds had been heard before; but this was different; there was not one of us that did not feel that this was addressed to himself. The agitation was extreme; it was a summons, the beginning of some distinct communication. The crowd scattered; but for myself, after a momentary struggle, I went forward resolutely. I did not even look back at my wife. I was no longer Martin Dupin, but the Maire of Semur, the saviour of the community. Even Bois-Sombre quailed: but I felt that it was in me to hold head against death itself; and before I had gone two steps I felt rather than saw that M. le Curé had come to my side. We went on without a word; gradually the others collected behind us, following yet straggling here and there upon the inequalities of the ground.

Before us lay the cloud that was Semur, a darkness defined by the shining of the summer day around, the river escaping from that gloom as from a cavern, the towers piercing through, but the sunshine thrown back on every side from that darkness. I have spoken of the walls as if we saw them, but there were no walls visible, nor any gate, though we all turned like blind men to where the Porte St. Lambert was. There was the broad vacant road leading up to it, leading into the gloom. We stood there at a little distance. Whether it was human weakness or an invisible barrier, how can I tell? We stood thus immovable, with the trumpet pealing out over us, out of the cloud. It summoned every man as by his name. To me it was not wonderful that this impression should come, but afterwards it was elicited from all that this was the feeling of each. Though no words were said, it was as the calling of our names. We all waited in such a supreme agitation as I cannot describe for some communication that was to come.

When suddenly, in a moment, the trumpet ceased; there was an interval of dead and terrible silence; then, each with a leap of his heart as if it would burst from his bosom, we saw a single figure slowly detach itself out of the gloom. “My God!” I cried. My senses went from me; I felt my head go round like a straw tossed on the winds.

To know them so near, those mysterious visitors—to feel them, to hear them, was not that enough? But, to see! who could bear it? Our voices rang like broken chords, like a tearing and rending of sound. Some covered their faces with their hands; for our very eyes seemed to be drawn out of their sockets, fluttering like things with a separate life.

Then there fell upon us a strange and wonderful calm. The figure advanced slowly; there was weakness in it. The step, though solemn, was feeble; and if you can figure to yourself our consternation, the pause, the cry—our hearts dropping back as it might be into their places—the sudden stop of the wild panting in our breasts: when there became visible to us a human face well known, a man as we were. “Lecamus!” I cried; and all the men round took it up, crowding nearer, trembling yet delivered from their terror; some even laughed in the relief. There was but one who had an air of discontent, and that was M. le Curé. As he said “Lecamus!” like the rest, there was impatience, disappointment, anger in his tone.

And I, who had wondered where Lecamus had gone; thinking sometimes that he was one of the deserters who had left us! But when he came nearer his face was as the face of a dead man, and a cold chill came over us. His eyes, which were cast down, flickered under the thin eyelids in which all the veins were visible. His face was gray like that of the dying. “Is he dead?” I said. But, except M. le Curé, no one knew that I spoke.

“Not even so,” said M. le Cure, with a mortification in his voice, which I have never forgotten. “Not even so. That might be something. They teach us not by angels—by the fools and offscourings of the earth.”

And he would have turned away. It was a humiliation. Was not he the representative of the Unseen, the vice-gerent, with power over heaven and hell? but something was here more strong than he. He stood by my side in spite of himself to listen to the ambassador. I will not deny that such a choice was strange, strange beyond measure, to me also.

“Lecamus,” I said, my voice trembling in my throat, “have you been among the dead, and do you live?”

“I live,” he said; then looked around with tears upon the crowd. “Good neighbours, good friends,” he said, and put out his hand and touched them; he was as much agitated as they.

“M. Lecamus,” said I, “we are here in very strange circumstances, as you know; do not trifle with us. If you have indeed been with those who have taken the control of our city, do not keep us in suspense. You will see by the emblems of my office that it is to me you must address yourself; if you have a mission, speak.”

“It is just,” he said, “it is just—but bear with me one moment. It is good to behold those who draw breath; if I have not loved you enough, my good neighbours, forgive me now!”

“Rouse yourself, Lecamus,” said I with some anxiety. “Three days we have been suffering here; we are distracted with the suspense. Tell us your message—if you have anything to tell.”

“Three days!” he said, wondering; “I should have said years. Time is long when there is neither night nor day.” Then, uncovering himself, he turned towards the city. “They who have sent me would have you know that they come, not in anger but in friendship: for the love they bear you, and because it has been permitted—”

As he spoke his feebleness disappeared. He held his head high; and we clustered closer and closer round him, not losing a half word, not a tone, not a breath.

“They are not the dead. They are the immortal. They are those who dwell—elsewhere. They have other work, which has been interrupted because of this trial. They ask, ‘Do you know now—do you know now?’ this is what I am bidden to say.”

“What”—I said (I tried to say it, but my lips were dry), “What would they have us to know?”

But a clamour interrupted me. “Ah! yes, yes, yes!” the people cried, men and women; some wept aloud, some signed themselves, some held up their hands to the skies. “Nevermore will we deny religion,” they cried, “never more fail in our duties. They shall see how we will follow every office, how the churches shall be full, how we will observe the feasts and the days of the saints! M. Lecamus,” cried two or three together; “go, tell these Messieurs that we will have masses said for them, that we will obey in everything. We have seen what comes of it when a city is without piety. Never more will we neglect the holy functions; we will vow ourselves to the holy Mother and the saints—”

“And if those ladies wish it,” cried Jacques Richard, “there shall be as many masses as there are priests to say them in the Hospital of St. Jean.”

“Silence, fellow!” I cried; “is it for you to promise in the name of the Commune?” I was almost beside myself. “M. Lecamus. is it for this that they have come?”

His head had begun to droop again, and a dimness came over his face. “Do I know?” he said. “It was them I longed for, not to know their errand; but I have not yet said all. You are to send two—two whom you esteem the highest—to speak with them face to face.”

Then at once there rose a tumult among the people—an eagerness which nothing could subdue. There was a cry that the ambassadors were already elected, and we were pushed forward, M. le Curé and myself, towards the gate. They would not hear us speak. “We promise,” they cried, “we promise everything; let us but get back.” Had it been to sacrifice us they would have done the same; they would have killed us in their passion, in order to return to their city—and afterwards mourned us and honoured us as martyrs. But for the moment they had neither ruth nor fear. Had it been they who were going to reason not with flesh and blood, it would have been different; but it was we, not they; and they hurried us on as not willing that a moment should be lost. I had to struggle, almost to fight, in order to provide them with a leader, which was indispensable, before I myself went away. For who could tell if we should ever come back? For a moment I hesitated, thinking that it might be well to invest M. de Bois-Sombre as my deputy with my scarf of office; but then I reflected that when a man goes to battle, when he goes to risk his life, perhaps to lose it, for his people, it is his right to bear those signs which distinguish him from common men, which show in what office, for what cause, he is ready to die.

Accordingly I paused, struggling against the pressure of the people, and said in a loud voice, “In the absence of M. Barbou, who has forsaken us, I constitute the excellent M. Felix de Bois-Sombre my representative. In my absence my fellow-citizens will respect and obey him as myself.” There was a cry of assent. They would have given their assent to anything that we might but go on. What was it to them? They took no thought of the heaving of my bosom, the beating of my heart. They left us on the edge of the darkness with our faces towards the gate. There we stood one breathless moment. Then the little postern slowly opened before us, and once more we stood within Semur.

V

THE NARRATIVE OF PAUL LECAMUS

M. le Maire having requested me, on his entrance into Semur, to lose no time in drawing up an account of my residence in the town, to be placed with his own narrative, I have promised to do so to the best of my ability, feeling that my condition is a very precarious one, and my time for explanation may be short. Many things, needless to enumerate, press this upon my mind. It was a pleasure to me to see my neighbours when I first came out of the city; but their voices, their touch, their vehemence and eagerness wear me out. From my childhood up I have shrunk from close contact with my fellow-men. My mind has been busy with other thoughts; I have desired to investigate the mysterious and unseen. When I have walked abroad I have heard whispers in the air; I have felt the movement of wings, the gliding of unseen feet. To my comrades these have been a source of alarm and disquiet, but not to me; is not God in the unseen with all His angels? and not only so, but the best and wisest of men. There was a time indeed, when life acquired for me a charm. There was a smile which filled me with blessedness, and made the sunshine more sweet. But when she died my earthly joys died with her. Since then I have thought of little but the depths profound, into which she has disappeared like the rest.

I was in the garden of my house on that night when all the others left Semur. I was restless, my mind was disturbed. It seemed to me that I approached the crisis of my life. Since the time when I led M. le Maire beyond the walls, and we felt both of us the rush and pressure of that crowd, a feeling of expectation had been in my mind. I knew not what I looked for—but something I looked for that should change the world. The “Sommation” on the Cathedral doors did not surprise me. Why should it be a matter of wonder that the dead should come back? the wonder is that they do not. Ah! that is the wonder. How one can go away who loves you, and never return, nor speak, nor send any message—that is the miracle: not that the heavens should bend down and the gates of Paradise roll back, and those who have left us return. All my life it has been a marvel to me how they could be kept away. I could not stay in-doors on this strange night. My mind was full of agitation. I came out into the garden though it was dark. I sat down upon the bench under the trellis—she loved it. Often had I spent half the night there thinking of her.

It was very dark that night: the sky all veiled, no light anywhere a night like November. One would have said there was snow in the air. I think I must have slept toward morning (I have observed throughout that the preliminaries of these occurrences have always been veiled in sleep), and when I woke suddenly it was to find myself, if I may so speak, the subject of a struggle. The struggle was within me, yet it was not I. In my mind there was a desire to rise from where I sat and go away, I could not tell where or why; but something in me said stay, and my limbs were as heavy as lead. I could not move; I sat still against my will; against one part of my will—but the other was obstinate and would not let me go. Thus a combat took place within me of which I knew not the meaning. While it went on I began to hear the sound of many feet, the opening of doors, the people pouring out into the streets. This gave me no surprise; it seemed to me that I understood why it was; only in my own case, I knew nothing. I listened to the steps pouring past, going on and on, faintly dying away in the distance, and there was a great stillness. I then became convinced, though I cannot tell how, that I was the only living man left in Semur; but neither did this trouble me. The struggle within me came to an end, and I experienced a great calm.

I cannot tell how long it was till I perceived a change in the air, in the darkness round me. It was like the movement of some one unseen. I have felt such a sensation in the night, when all was still, before now. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. Yet I was aware, I cannot tell how, that there was a great coming and going, and the sensation as of a multitude in the air. I then rose and went into my house, where Leocadie, my old housekeeper, had shut all the doors so carefully when she went to bed. They were now all open, even the door of my wife’s room of which I kept always the key, and where no one entered but myself; the windows also were open. I looked out upon the Grande Rue, and all the other houses were like mine. Everything was open, doors and windows, and the streets were full. There was in them a flow and movement of the unseen, without a sound, sensible only to the soul. I cannot describe it, for I neither heard nor saw, but felt. I have often been in crowds; I have lived in Paris, and once passed into England, and walked about the London streets. But never, it seemed to me, never was I aware of so many, of so great a multitude. I stood at my open window, and watched as in a dream. M. le Maire is aware that his house is visible from mine. Towards that a stream seemed to be always going, and at the windows and in the doorways was a sensation of multitudes like that which I have already described. Gazing out thus upon the revolution which was happening before my eyes, I did not think of my own house or what was passing there, till suddenly, in a moment, I was aware that some one had come in to me. Not a crowd as elsewhere; one. My heart leaped up like a bird let loose; it grew faint within me with joy and fear. I was giddy so that I could not stand. I called out her name, but low, for I was too happy, I had no voice. Besides was it needed, when heart already spoke to heart?

I had no answer, but I needed none. I laid myself down on the floor where her feet would be. Her presence wrapped me round and round. It was beyond speech. Neither did I need to see her face, nor to touch her hand. She was more near to me, more near, than when I held her in my arms. How long it was so, I cannot tell; it was long as love, yet short as the drawing of a breath. I knew nothing, felt nothing but Her, alone; all my wonder and desire to know departed from me. We said to each other everything without words—heart overflowing into heart. It was beyond knowledge or speech.

But this is not of public signification that I should occupy with it the time of M. le Maire.

After a while my happiness came to an end. I can no more tell how, than I can tell how it came. One moment, I was warm in her presence; the next, I was alone. I rose up staggering with blindness and woe—could it be that already, already it was over? I went out blindly following after her. My God, I shall follow, I shall follow, till life is over. She loved me; but she was gone.

Thus, despair came to me at the very moment when the longing of my soul was satisfied and I found myself among the unseen; but I cared for knowledge no longer, I sought only her. I lost a portion of my time so. I regret to have to confess it to M. le Maire. Much that I might have learned will thus remain lost to my fellow-citizens and the world. We are made so. What we desire eludes us at the moment of grasping it—or those affections which are the foundation of our lives preoccupy us, and blind the soul. Instead of endeavouring to establish my faith and enlighten my judgment as to those mysteries which have been my life-long study, all higher purpose departed from me; and I did nothing but rush through the city, groping among those crowds, seeing nothing, thinking of nothing—save of One.

From this also I awakened as out of a dream. What roused me was the pealing of the Cathedral bells. I was made to pause and stand still, and return to myself. Then I perceived, but dimly, that the thing which had happened to me was that which I had desired all my life. I leave this explanation of my failure [@@@Footnote: The reader will remember that the ringing of the Cathedral bells happened in fact very soon after the exodus of the citizens; so that the self-reproaches of M. Lecamus had less foundation than he thought.] in public duty to the charity of M. le Maire.

The bells of the Cathedral brought me back to myself—to that which we call reality in our language; but of all that was around me when I regained consciousness, it now appeared to me that I only was a dream. I was in the midst of a world where all was in movement. What the current was which flowed around me I know not; if it was thought which becomes sensible among spirits, if it was action, I cannot tell. But the energy, the force, the living that was in them, that could no one misunderstand. I stood in the streets, lagging and feeble, scarcely able to wish, much less to think. They pushed against me, put me aside, took no note of me. In the unseen world described by a poet whom M. le Maire has probably heard of, the man who traverses Purgatory (to speak of no other place) is seen by all, and is a wonder to all he meets—his shadow, his breath separate him from those around him. But whether the unseen life has changed, or if it is I who am not worthy their attention, this I know that I stood in our city like a ghost, and no one took any heed of me. When there came back upon me slowly my old desire to inquire, to understand, I was met with this difficulty at the first—that no one heeded me. I went through and through the streets, sometimes I paused to look round, to implore that which swept by me to make itself known. But the stream went along like soft air, like the flowing of a river, setting me aside from time to time, as the air will displace a straw, or the water a stone, but no more. There was neither languor nor lingering. I was the only passive thing, the being without occupation. Would you have paused in your labours to tell an idle traveller the meaning of our lives, before the day when you left Semur? Nor would they: I was driven hither and thither by the current of that life, but no one stepped forth out of the unseen to hear my questions or to answer me how this might be.

You have been made to believe that all was darkness in Semur. M. le Maire, it was not so. The darkness wrapped the walls as in a winding sheet; but within, soon after you were gone, there arose a sweet and wonderful light—a light that was neither of the sun nor of the moon; and presently, after the ringing of the bells; the silence departed as the darkness had departed. I began to hear, first a murmur, then the sound of the going which I had felt without hearing it—then a faint tinkle of voices—and at the last, as my mind grew attuned to these wonders, the very words they said. If they spoke in our language or in another, I cannot tell; but I understood. How long it was before the sensation of their presence was aided by the happiness of hearing I know not, nor do I know how the time has passed, or how long it is, whether years or days, that I have been in Semur with those who are now there; for the light did not vary—there was no night or day. All I know is that suddenly, on awakening from a sleep (for the wonder was that I could sleep, sometimes sitting on the Cathedral steps, sometimes in my own house; where sometimes also I lingered and searched about for the crusts that Leocadie had left), I found the whole world full of sound. They sang going in bands about the streets; they talked to each other as they went along every way. From the houses, all open, where everyone could go who would, there came the soft chiming of those voices. And at first every sound was full of gladness and hope. The song they sang first was like this: “Send us, send us to our father’s house. Many are our brethren, many and dear. They have forgotten, forgotten, forgotten! But when we speak, then will they hear.” And the others answered: “We have come, we have come to the house of our fathers. Sweet are the homes, the homes we were born in. As we remember, so will they remember. When we speak, when we speak, they will hear.” Do not think that these were the words they sang; but it was like this. And as they sang there was joy and expectation everywhere. It was more beautiful than any of our music, for it was full of desire and longing, yet hope and gladness; whereas among us, where there is longing, it is always sad. Later a great singer, I know not who he was, one going past as on a majestic soft wind, sang another song, of which I shall tell you by and by. I do not think he was one of them. They came out to the windows, to the doors, into all the streets and byways to hear him as he went past.

M. le Maire will, however, be good enough to remark that I did not understand all that I heard. In the middle of a phrase, in a word half breathed, a sudden barrier would rise. For a time I laboured after their meaning, trying hard and vainly to understand; but afterwards I perceived that only when they spoke of Semur, of you who were gone forth, and of what was being done, could I make it out. At first this made me only more eager to hear; but when thought came, then I perceived that of all my longing nothing was satisfied. Though I was alone with the unseen, I comprehended it not; only when it touched upon what I knew, then I understood.

At first all went well. Those who were in the streets, and at the doors and windows of the houses, and on the Cathedral steps, where they seemed to throng, listening to the sounding of the bells, spoke only of this that they had come to do. Of you and you only I heard. They said to each other, with great joy, that the women had been instructed, that they had listened, and were safe. There was pleasure in all the city. The singers were called forth, those who were best instructed (so I judged from what I heard), to take the place of the warders on the walls; and all, as they went along, sang that song: “Our brothers have forgotten; but when we speak, they will hear.” How was it, how was it that you did not hear? One time I was by the river porte in a boat; and this song came to me from the walls as sweet as Heaven. Never have I heard such a song. The music was beseeching, it moved the very heart. “We have come out of the unseen,” they sang; “for love of you; believe us, believe us! Love brings us back to earth; believe us, believe us!” How was it that you did not hear? When I heard those singers sing, I wept; they beguiled the heart out of my bosom. They sang, they shouted, the music swept about all the walls: “Love brings us back to earth, believe us!” M. le Maire, I saw you from the river gate; there was a look of perplexity upon your face; and one put his curved hand to his ear as if to listen to some thin far-off sound, when it was like a storm, like a tempest of music!

After that there was a great change in the city. The choirs came back from the walls marching more slowly, and with a sighing through all the air. A sigh, nay, something like a sob breathed through the streets. “They cannot hear us, or they will not hear us.” Wherever I turned, this was what I heard: “They cannot hear us.” The whole town, and all the houses that were teeming with souls, and all the street, where so many were coming and going was full of wonder and dismay. (If you will take my opinion, they know pain as well as joy, M. le Maire, Those who are in Semur. They are not as gods, perfect and sufficing to themselves, nor are they all-knowing and all-wise, like the good God. They hope like us, and desire, and are mistaken; but do no wrong. This is my opinion. I am no more than other men, that you should accept it without support; but I have lived among them, and this is what I think.) They were taken by surprise; they did not understand it any more than we understand when we have put forth all our strength and fail. They were confounded, if I could judge rightly. Then there arose cries from one to another: “Do you forget what was said to us?” and, “We were warned, we were warned.” There went a sighing over all the city: “They cannot hear us, our voices are not as their voices; they cannot see us. We have taken their homes from them, and they know not the reason.” My heart was wrung for their disappointment. I longed to tell them that neither had I heard at once; but it was only after a time that I ventured upon this. And whether I spoke, and was heard; or if it was read in my heart, I cannot tell. There was a pause made round me as if of wondering and listening, and then, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, a face suddenly turned and looked into my face.

M. le Maire, it was the face of your father, Martin Dupin, whom I remember as well as I remember my own father. He was the best man I ever knew. It appeared to me for a moment, that face alone, looking at me with questioning eyes.

There seemed to be agitation and doubt for a time after this; some went out (so I understood) on embassies among you, but could get no hearing; some through the gates, some by the river. And the bells were rung that you might hear and know; but neither could you understand the bells. I wandered from one place to another, listening and watching—till the unseen became to me as the seen, and I thought of the wonder no more. Sometimes there came to me vaguely a desire to question them, to ask whence they came and what was the secret of their living, and why they were here? But if I had asked who would have heard me? and desire had grown faint in my heart; all I wished for was that you should hear, that you should understand; with this wish Semur was full. They thought but of this. They went to the walls in bands, each in their order, and as they came all the others rushed to meet them, to ask, “What news?” I following, now with one, now with another, breathless and footsore as they glided along. It is terrible when flesh and blood live with those who are spirits. I toiled after them. I sat on the Cathedral steps, and slept and waked, and heard the voices still in my dream. I prayed, but it was hard to pray. Once following a crowd I entered your house, M. le Maire, and went up, though I scarcely could drag myself along. There many were assembled as in council. Your father was at the head of all. He was the one, he only, who knew me. Again he looked at me and I saw him, and in the light of his face an assembly such as I have seen in pictures. One moment it glimmered before me and then it was gone. There were the captains of all the bands waiting to speak, men and women. I heard them repeating from one to another the same tale. One voice was small and soft like a child’s; it spoke of you. “We went to him,” it said; and your father, M. le Maire, he too joined in, and said: “We went to him—but he could not hear us.” And some said it was enough—that they had no commission from on high, that they were but permitted—that it was their own will to do it—and that the time had come to forbear.

Now, while I listened, my heart was grieved that they should fail. This gave me a wound for myself who had trusted in them, and also for them. But I, who am I, a poor man without credit among my neighbours, a dreamer, one whom many despise, that I should come to their aid? Yet I could not listen and take no part. I cried out: “Send me. I will tell them in words they understand.” The sound of my voice was like a roar in that atmosphere. It sent a tremble into the air. It seemed to rend me as it came forth from me, and made me giddy, so that I would have fallen had not there been a support afforded me. As the light was going out of my eyes I saw again the faces looking at each other, questioning, benign, beautiful heads one over another, eyes that were clear as the heavens, but sad. I trembled while I gazed: there was the bliss of heaven in their faces, yet they were sad. Then everything faded. I was led away, I know not how, and brought to the door and put forth. I was not worthy to see the blessed grieve. That is a sight upon which the angels look with awe, and which brings those tears which are salvation into the eyes of God.

I went back to my house, weary yet calm. There were many in my house; but because my heart was full of one who was not there, I knew not those who were there. I sat me down where she had been. I was weary, more weary than ever before, but calm. Then I bethought me that I knew no more than at the first, that I had lived among the unseen as if they were my neighbours, neither fearing them, nor hearing those wonders which they have to tell. As I sat with my head in my hands, two talked to each other close by: “Is it true that we have failed?” said one; and the other answered, “Must not all fail that is not sent of the Father?” I was silent; but I knew them, they were the voices of my father and my mother. I listened as out of a faint, in a dream.

While I sat thus, with these voices in my ears, which a little while before would have seemed to me more worthy of note than anything on earth, but which now lulled me and comforted me, as a child is comforted by the voices of its guardians in the night, there occurred a new thing in the city like nothing I had heard before. It roused me notwithstanding my exhaustion and stupor. It was the sound as of some one passing through the city suddenly and swiftly, whether in some wonderful chariot, whether on some sweeping mighty wind, I cannot tell. The voices stopped that were conversing beside me, and I stood up, and with an impulse I could not resist went out, as if a king were passing that way. Straight, without turning to the right or left, through the city, from one gate to another, this passenger seemed going; and as he went there was the sound as of a proclamation, as if it were a herald denouncing war or ratifying peace. Whosoever he was, the sweep of his going moved my hair like a wind. At first the proclamation was but as a great shout, and I could not understand it; but as he came nearer the words became distinct. “Neither will they believe—though one rose from the dead.” As it passed a murmur went up from the city, like the voice of a great multitude. Then there came sudden silence.

At this moment, for a time—M. le Maire will take my statement for what it is worth—I became unconscious of what passed further. Whether weariness overpowered me and I slept, as at the most terrible moment nature will demand to do, or if I fainted I cannot tell; but for a time I knew no more. When I came to myself, I was seated on the Cathedral steps with everything silent around me. From thence I rose up, moved by a will which was not mine, and was led softly across the Grande Rue, through the great square, with my face towards the Porte St. Lambert. I went steadily on without hesitation, never doubting that the gates would open to me, doubting nothing, though I had never attempted to withdraw from the city before. When I came to the gate I said not a word, nor any one to me; but the door rolled slowly open before me, and I was put forth into the morning light, into the shining of the sun. I have now said everything I had to say. The message I delivered was said through me, I can tell no more. Let me rest a little; figure to yourselves, I have known no night of rest, nor eaten a morsel of bread for—did you say it was but three days?

VI

M. LE MAIRE RESUMES HIS NARRATIVE

We re-entered by the door for foot-passengers which is by the side of the great Porte St. Lambert.

I will not deny that my heart was, as one may say, in my throat. A man does what is his duty, what his fellow-citizens expect of him; but that is not to say that he renders himself callous to natural emotion. My veins were swollen, the blood coursing through them like a high-flowing river; my tongue was parched and dry. I am not ashamed to admit that from head to foot my body quivered and trembled. I was afraid—but I went forward; no man can do more. As for M. le Curé he said not a word. If he had any fears he concealed them as I did. But his occupation is with the ghostly and spiritual. To see men die, to accompany them to the verge of the grave, to create for them during the time of their suffering after death (if it is true that they suffer), an interest in heaven, this his profession must necessarily give him courage. My position is very different. I have not made up my mind upon these subjects. When one can believe frankly in all the Church says, many things become simple, which otherwise cause great difficulty in the mind. The mysterious and wonderful then find their natural place in the course of affairs; but when a man thinks for himself, and has to take everything on his own responsibility, and make all the necessary explanations, there is often great difficulty. So many things will not fit into their places, they straggle like weary men on a march. One cannot put them together, or satisfy one’s self.

The sun was shining outside the walls when we re-entered Semur; but the first step we took was into a gloom as black as night, which did not re-assure us, it is unnecessary to say. A chill was in the air, of night and mist. We shivered, not with the nerves only but with the cold. And as all was dark, so all was still. I had expected to feel the presence of those who were there, as I had felt the crowd of the invisible before they entered the city. But the air was vacant, there was nothing but darkness and cold. We went on for a little way with a strange fervour of expectation. At each moment, at each step, it seemed to me that some great call must be made upon my self-possession and courage, some event happen; but there was nothing. All was calm, the houses on either side of the way were open, all but the office of the octroi which was black as night with its closed door. M. le Curé has told me since that he believed Them to be there, though unseen. This idea, however, was not in my mind. I had felt the unseen multitude; but here the air was free, there was no one interposing between us, who breathed as men, and the walls that surrounded us. Just within the gate a lamp was burning, hanging to its rope over our heads; and the lights were in the houses as if some one had left them there; they threw a strange glimmer into the darkness, flickering in the wind. By and by as we went on the gloom lessened, and by the time we had reached the Grande Rue, there was a clear steady pale twilight by which we saw everything, as by the light of day.

We stood at the corner of the square and looked round. Although still I heard the beating of my own pulses loudly working in my ears, yet it was less terrible than at first. A city when asleep is wonderful to look on, but in all the closed doors and windows one feels the safety and repose sheltered there which no man can disturb; and the air has in it a sense of life, subdued, yet warm. But here all was open, and all deserted. The house of the miser Grosgain was exposed from the highest to the lowest, but nobody was there to search for what was hidden. The hotel de Bois-Sombre, with its great porte-cochère, always so jealously closed; and my own house, which my mother and wife have always guarded so carefully, that no damp nor breath of night might enter, had every door and window wide open. Desolation seemed seated in all these empty places. I feared to go into my own dwelling. It seemed to me as if the dead must be lying within. Bon Dieu! Not a soul, not a shadow; all vacant in this soft twilight; nothing moving, nothing visible. The great doors of the Cathedral were wide open, and every little entry. How spacious the city looked, how silent, how wonderful! There was room for a squadron to wheel in the great square, but not so much as a bird, not a dog; all pale and empty. We stood for a long time (or it seemed a long time) at the corner, looking right and left. We were afraid to make a step farther. We knew not what to do. Nor could I speak; there was much I wished to say, but something stopped my voice.

At last M. le Curé found utterance. His voice so moved the silence, that at first my heart was faint with fear; it was hoarse, and the sound rolled round the great square like muffled thunder. One did not seem to know what strange faces might rise at the open windows, what terrors might appear. But all he said was, “We are ambassadors in vain.”

What was it that followed? My teeth chattered. I could not hear. It was as if “in vain!—in vain!” came back in echoes, more and more distant from every opening. They breathed all around us, then were still, then returned louder from beyond the river. M. le Curé, though he is a spiritual person, was no more courageous than I. With one impulse, we put out our hands and grasped each other. We retreated back to back, like men hemmed in by foes, and I felt his heart beating wildly, and he mine. Then silence, silence settled all around.

It was now my turn to speak. I would not be behind, come what might, though my lips were parched with mental trouble.

I said, “Are we indeed too late? Lecamus must have deceived himself.”

To this there came no echo and no reply, which would be a relief, you may suppose; but it was not so. It was well-nigh more appalling, more terrible than the sound; for though we spoke thus, we did not believe the place was empty. Those whom we approached seemed to be wrapping themselves in silence, invisible, waiting to speak with some awful purpose when their time came.

There we stood for some minutes, like two children, holding each other’s hands, leaning against each other at the corner of the square—as helpless as children, waiting for what should come next. I say it frankly, my brain and my heart were one throb. They plunged and beat so wildly that I could scarcely have heard any other sound. In this respect I think he was more calm. There was on his face that look of intense listening which strains the very soul. But neither he nor I heard anything, not so much as a whisper. At last, “Let us go on,” I said. We stumbled as we went, with agitation and fear. We were afraid to turn our backs to those empty houses, which seemed to gaze at us with all their empty windows pale and glaring. Mechanically, scarce knowing what I was doing, I made towards my own house.

There was no one there. The rooms were all open and empty. I went from one to another, with a sense of expectation which made my heart faint; but no one was there, nor anything changed. Yet I do wrong to say that nothing was changed. In my library, where I keep my books, where my father and grandfather conducted their affairs, like me, one little difference struck me suddenly, as if some one had dealt me a blow. The old bureau which my grandfather had used, at which I remember standing by his knee, had been drawn from the corner where I had placed it out of the way (to make room for the furniture I preferred), and replaced, as in old times, in the middle of the room. It was nothing; yet how much was in this! though only myself could have perceived it. Some of the old drawers were open, full of old papers. I glanced over there in my agitation, to see if there might be any writing, any message addressed to me; but there was nothing, nothing but this silent sign of those who had been here. Naturally M. le Curé, who kept watch at the door, was unacquainted with the cause of my emotion. The last room I entered was my wife’s. Her veil was lying on the white bed, as if she had gone out that moment, and some of her ornaments were on the table. It seemed to me that the atmosphere of mystery which filled the rest of the house was not here. A ribbon, a little ring, what nothings are these? Yet they make even emptiness sweet. In my Agnès’s room there is a little shrine, more sacred to us than any altar. There is the picture of our little Marie. It is covered with a veil, embroidered with needlework which it is a wonder to see. Not always can even Agnès bear to look upon the face of this angel, whom God has taken from her. She has worked the little curtain with lilies, with white and virginal flowers; and no hand, not even mine, ever draws it aside. What did I see? The veil was boldly folded away; the face of the child looked at me across her mother’s bed, and upon the frame of the picture was laid a branch of olive, with silvery leaves. I know no more but that I uttered a great cry, and flung myself upon my knees before this angel-gift. What stranger could know what was in my heart? M. le Curé, my friend, my brother, came hastily to me, with a pale countenance; but when he looked at me, he drew back and turned away his face, and a sob came from his breast. Never child had called him father, were it in heaven, were it on earth. Well I knew whose tender fingers had placed the branch of olive there.

I went out of the room and locked the door. It was just that my wife should find it where it had been laid.

I put my arm into his as we went out once more into the street. That moment had made us brother and brother. And this union made us more strong. Besides, the silence and the emptiness began to grow less terrible to us. We spoke in our natural voices as we came out, scarcely knowing how great was the difference between them and the whispers which had been all we dared at first to employ. Yet the sound of these louder tones scared us when we heard them, for we were still trembling, not assured of deliverance. It was he who showed himself a man, not I; for my heart was overwhelmed, the tears stood in my eyes, I had no strength to resist my impressions.

“Martin Dupin,” he said suddenly, “it is enough. We are frightening ourselves with shadows. We are afraid even of our own voices. This must not be. Enough! Whosoever they were who have been in Semur, their visitation is over, and they are gone.”

“I think so,” I said faintly; “but God knows.” Just then something passed me as sure as ever man passed me. I started back out of the way and dropped my friend’s arm, and covered my eyes with my hands. It was nothing that could be seen; it was an air, a breath. M. le Curé looked at me wildly; he was as a man beside himself. He struck his foot upon the pavement and gave a loud and bitter cry.

“Is it delusion?” he said, “O my God! or shall not even this, not even so much as this be revealed to me?”

To see a man who had so ruled himself, who had resisted every disturbance and stood fast when all gave way, moved thus at the very last to cry out with passion against that which had been denied to him, brought me back to myself. How often had I read it in his eyes before! He—the priest—the servant of the unseen—yet to all of us lay persons had that been revealed which was hid from him. A great pity was within me, and gave me strength. “Brother,” I said, “we are weak. If we saw heaven opened, could we trust to our vision now? Our imaginations are masters of us. So far as mortal eye can see, we are alone in Semur. Have you forgotten your psalm, and how you sustained us at the first? And now, your Cathedral is open to you, my brother. Laetatus sum,” I said. It was an inspiration from above, and no thought of mine; for it is well known, that though deeply respectful, I have never professed religion. With one impulse we turned, we went together, as in a procession, across the silent place, and up the great steps. We said not a word to each other of what we meant to do. All was fair and silent in the holy place; a breath of incense still in the air; a murmur of psalms (as one could imagine) far up in the high roof. There I served, while he said his mass. It was for my friend that this impulse came to my mind; but I was rewarded. The days of my childhood seemed to come back to me. All trouble, and care, and mystery, and pain, seemed left behind. All I could see was the glimmer on the altar of the great candle-sticks, the sacred pyx in its shrine, the chalice, and the book. I was again an enfant de choeur robed in white, like the angels, no doubt, no disquiet in my soul—and my father kneeling behind among the faithful, bowing his head, with a sweetness which I too knew, being a father, because it was his child that tinkled the bell and swung the censer. Never since those days have I served the mass. My heart grew soft within me as the heart of a little child. The voice of M. le Curé was full of tears—it swelled out into the air and filled the vacant place. I knelt behind him on the steps of the altar and wept.

Then there came a sound that made our hearts leap in our bosoms. His voice wavered as if it had been struck by a strong wind; but he was a brave man, and he went on. It was the bells of the Cathedral that pealed out over our heads. In the midst of the office, while we knelt all alone, they began to ring as at Easter or some great festival. At first softly, almost sadly, like choirs of distant singers, that died away and were echoed and died again; then taking up another strain, they rang out into the sky with hurrying notes and clang of joy. The effect upon myself was wonderful. I no longer felt any fear. The illusion was complete. I was a child again, serving the mass in my little surplice—aware that all who loved me were kneeling behind, that the good God was smiling, and the Cathedral bells ringing out their majestic Amen.

M. le Curé came down the altar steps when his mass was ended. Together we put away the vestments and the holy vessels. Our hearts were soft; the weight was taken from them. As we came out the bells were dying away in long and low echoes, now faint, now louder, like mingled voices of gladness and regret. And whereas it had been a pale twilight when we entered, the clearness of the day had rolled sweetly in, and now it was fair morning in all the streets. We did not say a word to each other, but arm and arm took our way to the gates, to open to our neighbours, to call all our fellow-citizens back to Semur.

If I record here an incident of another kind, it is because of the sequel that followed. As we passed by the hospital of St. Jean, we heard distinctly, coming from within, the accents of a feeble yet impatient voice. The sound revived for a moment the troubles that were stilled within us—but only for a moment. This was no visionary voice. It brought a smile to the grave face of M. le Curé and tempted me well nigh to laughter, so strangely did this sensation of the actual, break and disperse the visionary atmosphere. We went in without any timidity, with a conscious relaxation of the great strain upon us. In a little nook, curtained off from the great ward, lay a sick man upon his bed. “Is it M. le Maire?” he said; “à la bonne heure! I have a complaint to make of the nurses for the night. They have gone out to amuse themselves; they take no notice of poor sick people. They have known for a week that I could not sleep; but neither have they given me a sleeping draught, nor endeavoured to distract me with cheerful conversation. And to-day, look you, M. le Maire, not one of the sisters has come near me!”

“Have you suffered, my poor fellow?” I said; but he would not go so far as this.

“I don’t want to make complaints, M. le Maire; but the sisters do not come themselves as they used to do. One does not care to have a strange nurse, when one knows that if the sisters did their duty—But if it does not occur any more I do not wish it to be thought that I am the one to complain.”

“Do not fear, mon ami,” I said. “I will say to the Reverend Mother that you have been left too long alone.”

“And listen, M. le Maire,” cried the man; “those bells, will they never be done? My head aches with the din they make. How can one go to sleep with all that riot in one’s ears?”

We looked at each other, we could not but smile. So that which is joy and deliverance to one is vexation to another. As we went out again into the street the lingering music of the bells died out, and (for the first time for all these terrible days and nights) the great clock struck the hour. And as the clock struck, the last cloud rose like a mist and disappeared in flying vapours, and the full sunshine of noon burst on Semur.

VII

SUPPLEMENT BY M. DE BOIS-SOMBRE

When M. le Maire disappeared within the mist, we all remained behind with troubled hearts. For my own part I was alarmed for my friend. M. Martin Dupin is not noble. He belongs, indeed, to the haute bourgeoisie, and all his antecedents are most respectable; but it is his personal character and admirable qualities which justify me in calling him my friend. The manner in which he has performed his duties to his fellow-citizens during this time of distress has been sublime. It is not my habit to take any share in public life; the unhappy circumstances of France have made this impossible for years. Nevertheless, I put aside my scruples when it became necessary, to leave him free for his mission. I gave no opinion upon that mission itself, or how far he was right in obeying the advice of a hare-brained enthusiast like Lecamus. Nevertheless the moment had come at which our banishment had become intolerable. Another day, and I should have proposed an assault upon the place. Our dead forefathers, though I would speak of them with every respect, should not presume upon their privilege. I do not pretend to be braver than other men, nor have I shown myself more equal than others to cope with the present emergency. But I have the impatience of my countrymen, and rather than rot here outside the gates, parted from Madame de Bois-Sombre and my children, who, I am happy to state, are in safety at the country house of the brave Dupin, I should have dared any hazard. This being the case, a new step of any kind called for my approbation, and I could not refuse under the circumstances—especially as no ceremony of installation was required or profession of loyalty to one government or another—to take upon me the office of coadjutor and act as deputy for my friend Martin outside the walls of Semur.

The moment at which I assumed the authority was one of great discouragement and depression. The men were tired to death. Their minds were worn out as well as their bodies. The excitement and fatigue had been more than they could bear. Some were for giving up the contest and seeking new homes for themselves. These were they, I need not remark, who had but little to lose; some seemed to care for nothing but to lie down and rest. Though it produced a great movement among us when Lecamus suddenly appeared coming out of the city; and the undertaking of Dupin and the excellent Curé was viewed with great interest, yet there could not but be signs apparent that the situation had lasted too long. It was tendu in the strongest degree, and when that is the case a reaction must come. It is impossible to say, for one thing, how treat was our personal discomfort. We were as soldiers campaigning without a commissariat, or any precautions taken for our welfare; no food save what was sent to us from La Clairière and other places; no means of caring for our personal appearance, in which lies so much of the materials of self respect. I say nothing of the chief features of all—the occupation of our homes by others—the forcible expulsion of which we had been the objects. No one could have been more deeply impressed than myself at the moment of these extraordinary proceedings; but we cannot go on with one monotonous impression, however serious, we other Frenchmen. Three days is a very long time to dwell in one thought; I myself had become impatient, I do not deny. To go away, which would have been very natural, and which Agathe proposed, was contrary to my instincts and interests both. I trust I can obey the logic of circumstances as well as another; but to yield is not easy, and to leave my hotel at Semur—now the chief residence, alas! of the Bois-Sombres—probably to the licence of a mob—for one can never tell at what moment Republican institutions may break down and sink back into the chaos from which they arose—was impossible. Nor would I forsake the brave Dupin without the strongest motive; but that the situation was extremely tendu, and a reaction close at hand, was beyond dispute.

I resisted the movement which my excellent friend made to take off and transfer to me his scarf of office. These things are much thought of among the bourgeoisie. “Mon ami,” I said, “you cannot tell what use you may have for it; whereas our townsmen know me, and that I am not one to take up an unwarrantable position.” We then accompanied him to the neighbourhood of the Porte St. Lambert. It was at that time invisible; we could but judge approximately. My men were unwilling to approach too near, neither did I myself think it necessary. We parted, after giving the two envoys an honourable escort, leaving a clear space between us and the darkness. To see them disappear gave us all a startling sensation. Up to the last moment I had doubted whether they would obtain admittance. When they disappeared from our eyes, there came upon all of us an impulse of alarm. I myself was so far moved by it, that I called out after them in a sudden panic. For if any catastrophe had happened, how could I ever have forgiven myself, especially as Madame Dupin de la Clairière, a person entirely comme il faut, and of the most distinguished character, went after her husband, with a touching devotion, following him to the very edge of the darkness? I do not think, so deeply possessed was he by his mission, that he saw her. Dupin is very determined in his way; but he is imaginative and thoughtful, and it is very possible that, as he required all his powers to brace him for this enterprise, he made it a principle neither to look to the right hand nor the left. When we paused, and following after our two representatives, Madame Dupin stepped forth, a thrill ran through us all. Some would have called to her, for I heard many broken exclamations; but most of us were too much startled to speak. We thought nothing less than that she was about to risk herself by going after them into the city. If that was her intention—and nothing is more probable; for women are very daring, though they are timid—she was stopped, it is most likely, by that curious inability to move a step farther which we have all experienced. We saw her pause, clasp her hands in despair (or it might be in token of farewell to her husband), then, instead of returning, seat herself on the road on the edge of the darkness. It was a relief to all who were looking on to see her there.

In the reaction after that excitement I found myself in face of a great difficulty—what to do with my men, to keep them from demoralisation. They were greatly excited; and yet there was nothing to be done for them, for myself, for any of us, but to wait. To organise the patrol again, under the circumstances, would have been impossible. Dupin, perhaps, might have tried it with that bourgeois determination which so often carries its point in spite of all higher intelligence; but to me, who have not this commonplace way of looking at things, it was impossible. The worthy soul did not think in what a difficulty he left us. That intolerable, good-for-nothing Jacques Richard (whom Dupin protects unwisely, I cannot tell why), and who was already half-seas-over, had drawn several of his comrades with him towards the cabaret, which was always a danger to us. “We will drink success to M. le Maire,” he said, “mes bons amis! That can do no one any harm; and as we have spoken up, as we have empowered him to offer handsome terms to Messieurs les Morts—”

It was intolerable. Precisely at the moment when our fortune hung in the balance, and when, perhaps, an indiscreet word—“Arrest that fellow,” I said. “Riou, you are an official; you understand your duty. Arrest him on the spot, and confine him in the tent out of the way of mischief. Two of you mount guard over him. And let a party be told off, of which you will take the command, Louis Bertin, to go at once to La Clairière and beg the Reverend Mothers of the hospital to favour us with their presence. It will be well to have those excellent ladies in our front whatever happens; and you may communicate to them the unanimous decision about their chapel. You, Robert Lemaire, with an escort, will proceed to the campagne of M. Barbou, and put him in possession of the circumstances. Those of you who have a natural wish to seek a little repose will consider yourselves as discharged from duty and permitted to do so. Your Maire having confided to me his authority—not without your consent—(this I avow I added with some difficulty, for who cared for their assent? but a Republican Government offers a premium to every insincerity), I wait with confidence to see these dispositions carried out.”

This, I am happy to say, produced the best effect. They obeyed me without hesitation; and, fortunately for me, slumber seized upon the majority. Had it not been for this, I can scarcely tell how I should have got out of it. I felt drowsy myself, having been with the patrol the greater part of the night; but to yield to such weakness was, in my position, of course impossible.

This, then, was our attitude during the last hours of suspense, which were perhaps the most trying of all. In the distance might be seen the little bands marching towards La Clairière, on one side, and M. Barbou’s country-house (“La Corbeille des Raisins”) on the other. It goes without saying that I did not want M. Barbou, but it was the first errand I could think of. Towards the city, just where the darkness began that enveloped it, sat Madame Dupin. That sainte femme was praying for her husband, who could doubt? And under the trees, wherever they could find a favourable spot, my men lay down on the grass, and most of them fell asleep. My eyes were heavy enough, but responsibility drives away rest. I had but one nap of five minutes’ duration, leaning against a tree, when it occurred to me that Jacques Richard, whom I sent under escort half-drunk to the tent, was not the most admirable companion for that poor visionary Lecamus, who had been accommodated there. I roused myself, therefore, though unwillingly, to see whether these two, so discordant, could agree.

I met Lecamus at the tent-door. He was coming out, very feeble and tottering, with that dazed look which (according to me) has always been characteristic of him. He had a bundle of papers in his hand. He had been setting in order his report of what had happened to him, to be submitted to the Maire. “Monsieur,” he said, with some irritation (which I forgave him), “you have always been unfavourable to me. I owe it to you that this unhappy drunkard has been sent to disturb me in my feebleness and the discharge of a public duty.”

“My good Monsieur Lecamus,” said I, “you do my recollection too much honour. The fact is, I had forgotten all about you and your public duty. Accept my excuses. Though indeed your supposition that I should have taken the trouble to annoy you, and your description of that good-for-nothing as an unhappy drunkard, are signs of intolerance which I should not have expected in a man so favoured.”

This speech, though too long, pleased me, for a man of this species, a revolutionary (are not all visionaries revolutionaries?) is always, when occasion offers, to be put down. He disarmed me, however, by his humility. He gave a look round. “Where can I go?” he said, and there was pathos in his voice. At length he perceived Madame Dupin sitting almost motionless on the road. “Ah!” he said, “there is my place.” The man, I could not but perceive, was very weak. His eyes were twice their natural size, his face was the colour of ashes; through his whole frame there was a trembling; the papers shook in his hand. A compunction seized my mind: I regretted to have sent that piece of noise and folly to disturb a poor man so suffering and weak. “Monsieur Lecamus,” I said, “forgive me. I acknowledge that it was inconsiderate. Remain here in comfort, and I will find for this unruly fellow another place of confinement.”

“Nay,” he said, “there is my place,” pointing to where Madame Dupin sat. I felt disposed for a moment to indulge in a pleasantry, to say that I approved his taste; but on second thoughts I forebore. He went tottering slowly across the broken ground, hardly able to drag himself along. “Has he had any refreshment?” I asked of one of the women who were about. They told me yes, and this restored my composure; for after all I had not meant to annoy him, I had forgotten he was there—a trivial fault in circumstances so exciting. I was more easy in my mind, however, I confess it, when I saw that he had reached his chosen position safely. The man looked so weak. It seemed to me that he might have died on the road.

I thought I could almost perceive the gate, with Madame Dupin seated under the battlements, her charming figure relieved against the gloom, and that poor Lecamus lying, with his papers fluttering at her feet. This was the last thing I was conscious of.

VIII

EXTRACT FROM THE NARRATIVE
OF MADAME DUPIN DE LA CLAIRIÈRE
(née DE CHAMPFLEURIE)

I went with my husband to the city gate. I did not wish to distract his mind from what he had undertaken, therefore I took care he should not see me; but to follow close, giving the sympathy of your whole heart, must not that be a support? If I am asked whether I was content to let him go, I cannot answer yes; but had another than Martin been chosen, I could not have borne it. What I desired, was to go myself. I was not afraid: and if it had proved dangerous, if I had been broken and crushed to pieces between the seen and the unseen, one could not have had a more beautiful fate. It would have made me happy to go. But perhaps it was better that the messenger should not be a woman; they might have said it was delusion, an attack of the nerves. We are not trusted in these respects, though I find it hard to tell why.

But I went with Martin to the gate. To go as far as was possible, to be as near as possible, that was something. If there had been room for me to pass, I should have gone, and with such gladness! for God He knows that to help to thrust my husband into danger, and not to share it, was terrible to me. But no; the invisible line was still drawn, beyond which I could not stir. The door opened before him, and closed upon me. But though to see him disappear into the gloom was anguish, yet to know that he was the man by whom the city should be saved was sweet. I sat down on the spot where my steps were stayed. It was close to the wall, where there is a ledge of stonework round the basement of the tower. There I sat down to wait till he should come again.

If any one thinks, however, that we, who were under the shelter of the roof of La Clairière were less tried than our husbands, it is a mistake; our chief grief was that we were parted from them, not knowing what suffering, what exposure they might have to bear, and knowing that they would not accept, as most of us were willing to accept, the interpretation of the mystery; but there was a certain comfort in the fact that we had to be very busy, preparing a little food to take to them, and feeding the others. La Clairière is a little country house, not a great château, and it was taxed to the utmost to afford some covert to the people. The children were all sheltered and cared for; but as for the rest of us we did as we could. And how gay they were, all the little ones! What was it to them all that had happened? It was a fête for them to be in the country, to be so many together, to run in the fields and the gardens. Sometimes their laughter and their happiness were more than we could bear. Agathe de Bois-Sombre, who takes life hardly, who is more easily deranged than I, was one who was much disturbed by this. But was it not to preserve the children that we were commanded to go to La Clairière? Some of the women also were not easy to bear with. When they were put into our rooms they too found it a fête, and sat down among the children, and ate and drank, and forgot what it was; what awful reason had driven us out of our homes. These were not, oh let no one think so! the majority; but there were some, it cannot be denied; and it was difficult for me to calm down Bonne Maman, and keep her from sending them away with their babes. “But they are misérables,” she said. “If they were to wander and be lost, if they were to suffer as thou sayest, where would be the harm? I have no patience with the idle, with those who impose upon thee.” It is possible that Bonne Maman was right—but what then? “Preserve the children and the sick,” was the mission that had been given to me. My own room was made the hospital. Nor did this please Bonne Maman. She bid me if I did not stay in it myself to give it to the Bois-Sombres, to some who deserved it. But is it not they who need most who deserve most? Bonne Maman cannot bear that the poor and wretched should live in her Martin’s chamber. He is my Martin no less. But to give it up to our Lord is not that to sanctify it? There are who have put Him into their own bed when they imagined they were but sheltering a sick beggar there; that He should have the best was sweet to me: and could not I pray all the better that our Martin should be enlightened, should come to the true sanctuary? When I said this Bonne Maman wept. It was the grief of her heart that Martin thought otherwise than as we do. Nevertheless she said, “He is so good; the bon Dieu knows how good he is;” as if even his mother could know that so well as I!

But with the women and the children crowding everywhere, the sick in my chamber, the helpless in every corner, it will be seen that we, too, had much to do. And our hearts were elsewhere, with those who were watching the city, who were face to face with those in whom they had not believed. We were going and coming all day long with food for them, and there never was a time of the night or day that there were not many of us watching on the brow of the hill to see if any change came in Semur. Agathe and I, and our children, were all together in one little room. She believed in God, but it was not any comfort to her; sometimes she would weep and pray all day long; sometimes entreat her husband to abandon the city, to go elsewhere and live, and fly from this strange fate. She is one who cannot endure to be unhappy—not to have what she wishes. As for me, I was brought up in poverty, and it is no wonder if I can more easily submit. She was not willing that I should come this morning to Semur. In the night the Mère Julie had roused us, saying she had seen a procession of angels coming to restore us to the city. Ah! to those who have no knowledge it is easy to speak of processions of angels. But to those who have seen what an angel is—how they flock upon us unawares in the darkness, so that one is confused, and scarce can tell if it is reality or a dream; to those who have heard a little voice soft as the dew coming out of heaven! I said to them—for all were in a great tumult—that the angels do not come in processions, they steal upon us unaware, they reveal themselves in the soul. But they did not listen to me; even Agathe took pleasure in hearing of the revelation. As for me, I had denied myself, I had not seen Martin for a night and a day. I took one of the great baskets, and I went with the women who were the messengers for the day. A purpose formed itself in my heart, it was to make my way into the city, I know not how, and implore them to have pity upon us before the people were distraught. Perhaps, had I been able to refrain from speaking to Martin, I might have found the occasion I wished; but how could I conceal my desire from my husband? And now all is changed, I am rejected and he is gone. He was more worthy. Bonne Maman is right. Our good God, who is our father, does He require that one should make profession of faith, that all should be alike? He sees the heart; and to choose my Martin, does not that prove that He loves best that which is best, not I, or a priest, or one who makes professions? Thus, I sat down at the gate with a great confidence, though also a trembling in my heart. He who had known how to choose him among all the others, would not He guard him? It was a proof to me once again that heaven is true, that the good God loves and comprehends us all, to see how His wisdom, which is unerring, had chosen the best man in Semur.

And M. le Curé, that goes without saying, he is a priest of priests, a true servant of God.

I saw my husband go: perhaps, God knows, into danger, perhaps to some encounter such as might fill the world with awe—to meet those who read the thought in your mind before it comes to your lips. Well! there is no thought in Martin that is not noble and true. Me, I have follies in my heart, every kind of folly; but he!—the tears came in a flood to my eyes, but I would not shed them, as if I were weeping for fear and sorrow—no—but for happiness to know that falsehood was not in him. My little Marie, a holy virgin, may look into her father’s heart—I do not fear the test.

The sun came warm to my feet as I sat on the foundation of our city, but the projection of the tower gave me a little shade. All about was a great peace. I thought of the psalm which says, “He will give it to His beloved sleeping”—that is true; but always there are some who are used as instruments, who are not permitted to sleep. The sounds that came from the people gradually ceased; they were all very quiet. M. de Bois-Sombre I saw at a distance making his dispositions. Then M. Paul Lecamus, whom I had long known, came up across the field, and seated himself close to me upon the road. I have always had a great sympathy with him since the death of his wife; ever since there has been an abstraction in his eyes, a look of desolation. He has no children or any one to bring him back to life. Now, it seemed to me that he had the air of a man who was dying. He had been in the city while all of us had been outside.

“Monsieur Lecamus,” I said, “you look very ill, and this is not a place for you. Could not I take you somewhere, where you might be more at your ease?”

“It is true, Madame,” he said, “the road is hard, but the sunshine is sweet; and when I have finished what I am writing for M. le Maire, it will be over. There will be no more need—”

I did not understand what he meant. I asked him to let me help him, but he shook his head. His eyes were very hollow, in great caves, and his face was the colour of ashes. Still he smiled. “I thank you, Madame,” he said, “infinitely; everyone knows that Madame Dupin is kind; but when it is done, I shall be free.”

“I am sure, M. Lecamus, that my husband—that M. le Maire—would not wish you to trouble yourself, to be hurried—”

“No,” he said, “not he, but I. Who else could write what I have to write? It must be done while it is day.”

“Then there is plenty of time, M. Lecamus. All the best of the day is yet to come; it is still morning. If you could but get as far as La Clairière. There we would nurse you—restore you.”

He shook his head. “You have enough on your hands at La Clairière,” he said; and then, leaning upon the stones, he began to write again with his pencil. After a time, when he stopped, I ventured to ask—“Monsieur Lecamus, is it, indeed, Those—whom we have known, who are in Semur?”

He turned his dim eyes upon me. “Does Madame Dupin,” he said, “require to ask?”

“No, no. It is true. I have seen and heard. But yet, when a little time passes, you know? one wonders; one asks one’s self, was it a dream?”

“That is what I fear,” he said. “I, too, if life went on, might ask, notwithstanding all that has occurred to me, Was it a dream?”

“M. Lecamus, you will forgive me if I hurt you. You saw—her?”

“No. Seeing—what is seeing? It is but a vulgar sense, it is not all; but I sat at her feet. She was with me. We were one, as of old—.” A gleam of strange light came into his dim eyes. “Seeing is not everything, Madame.”

“No, M. Lecamus. I heard the dear voice of my little Marie.”

“Nor is hearing everything,” he said hastily. “Neither did she speak; but she was there. We were one; we had no need to speak. What is speaking or hearing when heart wells into heart? For a very little moment, only for a moment, Madame Dupin.”

I put out my hand to him; I could not say a word. How was it possible that she could go away again, and leave him so feeble, so worn, alone?

“Only a very little moment,” he said, slowly. “There were other voices—but not hers. I think I am glad it was in the spirit we met, she and I—I prefer not to see her till—after—”

“Oh, M. Lecamus, I am too much of the world! To see them, to hear them—it is for this I long.”

“No, dear Madame. I would not have it till—after—— But I must make haste, I must write, I hear the hum approaching—”

I could not tell what he meant; but I asked no more. How still everything was The people lay asleep on the grass, and I, too, was overwhelmed by the great quiet. I do not know if I slept, but I dreamed. I saw a child very fair and tall always near me, but hiding her face. It appeared to me in my dream that all I wished for was to see this hidden countenance, to know her name; and that I followed and watched her, but for a long time in vain. All at once she turned full upon me, held out her arms to me. Do I need to say who it was? I cried out in my dream to the good God, that He had done well to take her from me—that this was worth it all. Was it a dream? I would not give that dream for rears of waking life. Then I started and came back, in a moment, to the still morning sunshine, the sight of the men asleep, the roughness of the wall against which I leant. Some one laid a hand on mine. I opened my eyes, not knowing what it was—if it might be my husband coming back, or her whom I had seen in my dream. It was M. Lecamus. He had risen up upon his knees—his papers were all laid aside. His eyes in those hollow caves were opened wide, and quivering with a strange light. He had caught my wrist with his worn hand. “Listen!” he said; his voice fell to a whisper; a light broke over his face. “Listen!” he cried; “they are coming.” While he thus grasped my wrist, holding up his weak and wavering body in that strained attitude, the moments passed very slowly. I was afraid of him, of his worn face and thin hands, and the wild eagerness about him. I am ashamed to say it, but so it was. And for this reason it seemed long to me, though I think not more than a minute, till suddenly the bells rang out, sweet and glad as they ring at Easter for the resurrection. There had been ringing of bells before, but not like this. With a start and universal movement the sleeping men got up from where they lay—not one but every one, coming out of the little hollows and from under the trees as if from graves. They all sprang up to listen, with one impulse; and as for me, knowing that Martin was in the city, can it be wondered at if my heart beat so loud that I was incapable of thought of others! What brought me to myself was the strange weight of M. Lecamus on my arm. He put his other hand upon me, all cold in the brightness, all trembling. He raised himself thus slowly to his feet. When I looked at him I shrieked aloud. I forgot all else. His face was transformed—a smile came upon it that was ineffable—the light blazed up, and then quivered and flickered in his eyes like a dying flame. All this time he was leaning his weight upon my arm. Then suddenly he loosed his hold of me, stretched out his hands, stood up, and—died. My God! shall I ever forget him as he stood—his head raised, his hands held out, his lips moving, the eyelids opened wide with a quiver, the light flickering and dying He died first, standing up, saying something with his pale lips—then fell. And it seemed to me all at once, and for a moment, that I heard a sound of many people marching past, the murmur and hum of a great multitude; and softly, softly I was put out of the way, and a voice said, “Adieu, ma soeur.” “Ma soeur!” who called me “Ma soeur”? I have no sister. I cried out, saying I know not what. They told me after that I wept and wrung my hands, and said, “Not thee, not thee, Marie!” But after that I knew no more.

IX

THE NARRATIVE OF MADAME VEUVE DUPIN
(née LEPELLETIER)

To complete the procés verbal, my son wishes me to give my account of the things which happened out of Semur during its miraculous occupation, as it is his desire, in the interests of truth, that nothing should be left out. In this I find a great difficulty for many reasons; in the first place, because I have not the aptitude of expressing myself in writing, and it may well be that the phrases I employ may fail in the correctness which good French requires; and again, because it is my misfortune not to agree in all points with my Martin, though I am proud to think that he is, in every relation of life, so good a man, that the women of his family need not hesitate to follow his advice—but necessarily there are some points which one reserves; and I cannot but feel the closeness of the connection between the late remarkable exhibition of the power of Heaven and the outrage done upon the good Sisters of St. Jean by the administration, of which unfortunately my son is at the head. I say unfortunately, since it is the spirit of independence and pride in him which has resisted all the warnings offered by Divine Providence, and which refuses even now to right the wrongs of the Sisters of St. Jean; though, if it may be permitted to me to say it, as his mother, it was very fortunate in the late troubles that Martin Dupin found himself at the head of the Commune of Semur—since who else could have kept his self-control as he did?—caring for all things and forgetting nothing; who else would, with so much courage, have entered the city? and what other man, being a person of the world and secular in all his thoughts, as, alas! it is so common for men to be, would have so nobly acknowledged his obligations to the good God when our misfortunes were over? My constant prayers for his conversion do not make me incapable of perceiving the nobility of his conduct. When the evidence has been incontestible he has not hesitated to make a public profession of his gratitude, which all will acknowledge to be the sign of a truly noble mind and a heart of gold.

I have long felt that the times were ripe for some exhibition of the power of God. Things have been going very badly among us. Not only have the powers of darkness triumphed over our holy church, in a manner ever to be wept and mourned by all the faithful, and which might have been expected to bring down fire from Heaven upon our heads, but the corruption of popular manners (as might also have been expected) has been daily arising to a pitch unprecedented. The fêtes may indeed be said to be observed, but in what manner? In the cabarets rather than in the churches; and as for the fasts and vigils, who thinks of them? who attends to those sacred moments of penitence? Scarcely even a few ladies are found to do so, instead of the whole population, as in duty bound. I have even seen it happen that my daughter-in-law and myself, and her friend Madame de Bois-Sombre, and old Mère Julie from the market, have formed the whole congregation. Figure to yourself the bon Dieu and all the blessed saints looking down from heaven to hear—four persons only in our great Cathedral! I trust that I know that the good God does not despise even two or three; but if any one will think of it—the great bells rung, and the candles lighted, and the curé in his beautiful robes, and all the companies of heaven looking on—and only us four! This shows the neglect of all sacred ordinances that was in Semur. While, on the other hand, what grasping there was for money; what fraud and deceit; what foolishness and dissipation! Even the Mère Julie herself, though a devout person, the pears she sold to us on the last market day before these events, were far, very far, as she must have known, from being satisfactory. In the same way Gros-Jean, though a peasant from our own village near La Clairière, and a man for whom we have often done little services, attempted to impose upon me about the wood for the winter’s use, the very night before these occurrences. “It is enough,” I cried out, “to bring the dead out of their graves.” I did not know—the holy saints forgive me!—how near it was to the moment when this should come true.

And perhaps it is well that I should admit without concealment that I am not one of the women to whom it has been given to see those who came back. There are moments when I will not deny I have asked myself why those others should have been so privileged and never I. Not even in a dream do I see those whom I have lost; yet I think that I too have loved them as well as any have been loved. I have stood by their beds to the last; I have closed their beloved eyes. Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! have not I drunk of that cup to the dregs? But never to me, never to me, has it been permitted either to see or to hear. Bien! it has been so ordered. Agnès, my daughter-in-law, is a good woman. I have not a word to say against her; and if there are moments when my heart rebels, when I ask myself why she should have her eyes opened and not I, the good God knows that I do not complain against His will—it is in His hand to do as He pleases. And if I receive no privileges, yet have I the privilege which is best, which is, as M. le Curé justly observes, the highest of all—that of doing my duty. In this I thank the good Lord our Seigneur that my Martin has never needed to be ashamed of his mother.

I will also admit that when it was first made apparent to me—not by the sounds of voices which the others heard, but by the use of my reason which I humbly believe is also a gift of God—that the way in which I could best serve both those of the city and my son Martin, who is over them, was to lead the way with the children and all the helpless to La Clairière, thus relieving the watchers, there was for a time a great struggle in my bosom. What were they all to me, that I should desert my Martin, my only son, the child of my old age; he who is as his father, as dear, and yet more dear, because he is his father’s son? “What!” (I said in my heart) “abandon thee, my child? nay, rather abandon life and every consolation; for what is life to me but thee?” But while my heart swelled with this cry, suddenly it became apparent to me how many there were holding up their hands helplessly to him, clinging to him so that he could not move. To whom else could they turn? He was the one among all who preserved his courage, who neither feared nor failed. When those voices rang out from the walls—which some understood, but which I did not understand, and many more with me—though my heart was wrung with straining my ears to listen if there was not a voice for me too, yet at the same time this thought was working in my heart. There was a poor woman close to me with little children clinging to her; neither did she know what those voices said. Her eyes turned from Semur, all lost in the darkness, to the sky above us and to me beside her, all confused and bewildered; and the children clung to her, all in tears, crying with that wail which is endless—the trouble of childhood which does not know why it is troubled. “Maman! Maman!” they cried, “let us go home.” “Oh! be silent, my little ones,” said the poor woman; “be silent; we will go to M. le Maire—he will not leave us without a friend.” It was then that I saw what my duty was. But it was with a pang—bon Dieu!—when I turned my back upon my Martin, when I went away to shelter, to peace, leaving my son thus in face of an offended Heaven and all the invisible powers, do you suppose it was a whole heart I carried in my breast? But no! it was nothing save a great ache—a struggle as of death. But what of that? I had my duty to do, as he had—and as he did not flinch, so did not I; otherwise he would have been ashamed of his mother—and I? I should have felt that the blood was not mine which ran in his veins.

No one can tell what it was, that march to La Clairière. Agnès at first was like an angel. I hope I always do Madame Martin justice. She is a saint. She is good to the bottom of her heart. Nevertheless, with those natures which are enthusiast—which are upborne by excitement—there is also a weakness. Though she was brave as the holy Pucelle when we set out, after a while she flagged like another. The colour went out of her face, and though she smiled still, yet the tears came to her eyes, and she would have wept with the other women, and with the wail of the weary children, and all the agitation, and the weariness, and the length of the way, had not I recalled her to herself. “Courage!” I said to her. “Courage, ma fille! We will throw open all the chambers. I will give up even that one in which my Martin Dupin, the father of thy husband, died.” “Ma mère,” she said, holding my hand to her bosom, “he is not dead—he is in Semur.” Forgive me, dear Lord! It gave me a pang that she could see him and not I. “For me,” I cried, “it is enough to know that my good man is in heaven: his room, which I have kept sacred, shall be given up to the poor.” But oh! the confusion of the stumbling, weary feet; the little children that dropped by the way, and caught at our skirts, and wailed and sobbed; the poor mothers with babes upon each arm, with sick hearts and failing limbs. One cry seemed to rise round us as we went, each infant moving the others to sympathy, till it rose like one breath, a wail of “Maman! Maman!” a cry that had no meaning, through having so much meaning. It was difficult not to cry out too in the excitement, in the labouring of the long, long, confused, and tedious way. “Maman! Maman!” The Holy Mother could not but hear it. It is not possible but that she must have looked out upon us, and heard us, so helpless as we were, where she sits in heaven.

When we got to La Clairière we were ready to sink down with fatigue like all the rest—nay, even more than the rest, for we were not used to it, and for my part I had altogether lost the habitude of long walks. But then you could see what Madame Martin was. She is slight and fragile and pale, not strong, as any one can perceive; but she rose above the needs of the body. She was the one among us who rested not. We threw open all the rooms, and the poor people thronged in. Old Léontine, who is the garde of the house, gazed upon us and the crowd whom we brought with us with great eyes full of fear and trouble. “But, Madame,” she cried, “Madame!” following me as I went above to the better rooms. She pulled me by my robe. She pushed the poor women with their children away. “Allez donc, allez!—rest outside till these ladies have time to speak to you,” she said; and pulled me by my sleeve. Then “Madame Martin is putting all this canaille into our very chambers,” she cried. She had always distrusted Madame Martin, who was taken by the peasants for a clerical and a dévote, because she was noble. “The bon Dieu be praised that Madame also is here, who has sense and will regulate everything.” “These are no canaille,” I said: “be silent, ma bonne Léontine, here is something which you cannot understand. This is Semur which has come out to us for lodging.” She let the keys drop out of her hands. It was not wonderful if she was amazed. All day long she followed me about, her very mouth open with wonder. “Madame Martin, that understands itself,” she would say. “She is romanesque—she has imagination—but Madame, Madame has bon sens—who would have believed it of Madame?” Léontine had been my femme de ménage long before there was a Madame Martin, when my son was young; and naturally it was of me she still thought. But I cannot put down all the trouble we had ere we found shelter for every one. We filled the stables and the great barn, and all the cottages near; and to get them food, and to have something provided for those who were watching before the city, and who had no one but us to think of them, was a task which was almost beyond our powers. Truly it was beyond our powers—but the Holy Mother of heaven and the good angels helped us. I cannot tell to any one how it was accomplished, yet it was accomplished. The wail of the little ones ceased. They slept that first night as if they had been in heaven. As for us, when the night came, and the dews and the darkness, it seemed to us as if we were out of our bodies, so weary were we, so weary that we could not rest. From La Clairière on ordinary occasions it is a beautiful sight to see the lights of Semur shining in all the high windows, and the streets throwing up a faint whiteness upon the sky; but how strange it was now to look down and see nothing but a darkness—a cloud, which was the city! The lights of the watchers in their camp were invisible to us,—they were so small and low upon the broken ground that we could not see them. Our Agnès crept close to me; we went with one accord to the seat before the door. We did not say “I will go,” but went by one impulse, for our hearts were there; and we were glad to taste the freshness of the night and be silent after all our labours. We leant upon each other in our weariness. “Ma mère,” she said, “where is he now, our Martin?” and wept. “He is where there is the most to do, be thou sure of that,” I cried, but wept not. For what did I bring him into the world but for this end?

Were I to go day by day and hour by hour over that time of trouble, the story would not please any one. Many were brave and forgot their own sorrows to occupy themselves with those of others, but many also were not brave. There were those among us who murmured and complained. Some would contend with us to let them go and call their husbands, and leave the miserable country where such things could happen. Some would rave against the priests and the government, and some against those who neglected and offended the Holy Church. Among them there were those who did not hesitate to say it was our fault, though how we were answerable they could not tell. We were never at any time of the day or night without a sound of some one weeping or bewailing herself, as if she were the only sufferer, or crying out against those who had brought her here, far from all her friends. By times it seemed to me that I could bear it no longer, that it was but justice to turn those murmurers (pleureuses) away, and let them try what better they could do for themselves. But in this point Madame Martin surpassed me. I do not grudge to say it. She was better than I was, for she was more patient. She wept with the weeping women, then dried her eyes and smiled upon them without a thought of anger—whereas I could have turned them to the door. One thing, however, which I could not away with, was that Agnès filled her own chamber with the poorest of the poor. “How,” I cried, “thyself and thy friend Madame de Bois-Sombre, were you not enough to fill it, that you should throw open that chamber to good-for-nothings, to va-nu-pieds, to the very rabble?” “Ma mère,” said Madame Martin, “our good Lord died for them.” “And surely for thee too, thou saint-imbécile!” I cried out in my indignation. What, my Martin’s chamber which he had adorned for his bride! I was beside myself. And they have an obstinacy these enthusiasts! But for that matter her friend Madame de Bois-Sombre thought the same. She would have been one of the pleureuses herself had it not been for shame. “Agnès wishes to aid the bon Dieu, Madame,” she said, “to make us suffer still a little more.” The tone in which she spoke, and the contraction in her forehead, as if our hospitality was not enough for her, turned my heart again to my daughter-in-law. “You have reason, Madame,” I cried; “there are indeed many ways in which Agnès does the work of the good God.” The Bois-Sombres are poor, they have not a roof to shelter them save that of the old hotel in Semur, from whence they were sent forth like the rest of us. And she and her children owed all to Agnès. Figure to yourself then my resentment when this lady directed her scorn at my daughter-in-law. I am not myself noble, though of the haute bourgeoisie, which some people think a purer race.

Long and terrible were the days we spent in this suspense. For ourselves it was well that there was so much to do—the food to provide for all this multitude, the little children to care for, and to prepare the provisions for our men who were before Semur. I was in the Ardennes during the war, and I saw some of its perils—but these were nothing to what we encountered now. It is true that my son Martin was not in the war, which made it very different to me; but here the dangers were such as we could not understand, and they weighed upon our spirits. The seat at the door, and that point where the road turned, where there was always so beautiful a view of the valley and of the town of Semur—were constantly occupied by groups of poor people gazing at the darkness in which their homes lay. It was strange to see them, some kneeling and praying with moving lips; some taking but one look, not able to endure the sight. I was of these last. From time to time, whenever I had a moment, I came out, I know not why, to see if there was any change. But to gaze upon that altered prospect for hours, as some did, would have been intolerable to me. I could not linger nor try to imagine what might be passing there, either among those who were within (as was believed), or those who were without the walls. Neither could I pray as many did. My devotions of every day I will never, I trust, forsake or forget, and that my Martin was always in my mind is it needful to say? But to go over and over all the vague fears that were in me, and all those thoughts which would have broken my heart had they been put into words, I could not do this even to the good Lord Himself. When I suffered myself to think, my heart grew sick, my head swam round, the light went from my eyes. They are happy who can do so, who can take the bon Dieu into their confidence, and say all to Him; but me, I could not do it. I could not dwell upon that which was so terrible, upon my home abandoned, my son—Ah! now that it is past, it is still terrible to think of. And then it was all I was capable of, to trust my God and do what was set before me. God, He knows what it is we can do and what we cannot. I could not tell even to Him all the terror and the misery and the darkness there was in me; but I put my faith in Him. It was all of which I was capable. We are not made alike, neither in the body nor in the soul.

And there were many women like me at La Clairière. When we had done each piece of work we would look out with a kind of hope, then go back to find something else to do—not looking at each other, not saying a word. Happily there was a great deal to do. And to see how some of the women, and those the most anxious, would work, never resting, going on from one thing to another, as if they were hungry for more and more! Some did it with their mouths shut close, with their countenances fixed, not daring to pause or meet another’s eyes; but some, who were more patient, worked with a soft word, and sometimes a smile, and sometimes a tear; but ever working on. Some of them were an example to us all. In the morning, when we got up, some from beds, some from the floor,—I insisted that all should lie down, by turns at least, for we could not make room for every one at the same hours,—the very first thought of all was to hasten to the window, or, better, to the door. Who could tell what might have happened while we slept? For the first moment no one would speak,—it was the moment of hope—and then there would be a cry, a clasping of the hands, which told—what we all knew. The one of the women who touched my heart most was the wife of Riou of the octroi. She had been almost rich for her condition in life, with a good house and a little servant whom she trained admirably, as I have had occasion to know. Her husband and her son were both among those whom we had left under the walls of Semur; but she had three children with her at La Clairière. Madame Riou slept lightly, and so did I. Sometimes I heard her stir in the middle of the night, though so softly that no one woke. We were in the same room, for it may be supposed that to keep a room to one’s self was not possible. I did not stir, but lay and watched her as she went to the window, her figure visible against the pale dawning of the light, with an eager quick movement as of expectation—then turning back with slower step and a sigh. She was always full of hope. As the days went on, there came to be a kind of communication between us. We understood each other. When one was occupied and the other free, that one of us who went out to the door to look across the valley where Semur was would look at the other as if to say, “I go.” When it was Madame Riou who did this, I shook my head, and she gave me a smile which awoke at every repetition (though I knew it was vain) a faint expectation, a little hope. When she came back, it was she who would shake her head, with her eyes full of tears. “Did I not tell thee?” I said, speaking to her as if she were my daughter. “It will be for next time, Madame,” she would say, and smile, yet put her apron to her eyes. There were many who were like her, and there were those of whom I have spoken who were pleureuses, never hoping anything, doing little, bewailing themselves and their hard fate. Some of them we employed to carry the provisions to Semur, and this amused them, though the heaviness of the baskets made again a complaint.

As for the children, thank God! they were not disturbed as we were—to them it was a beautiful holiday—it was like Heaven. There is no place on earth that I love like Semur, yet it is true that the streets are narrow, and there is not much room for the children. Here they were happy as the day; they strayed over all our gardens and the meadows, which were full of flowers; they sat in companies upon the green grass, as thick as the daisies themselves, which they loved. Old Sister Mariette, who is called Marie de la Consolation, sat out in the meadow under an acacia-tree and watched over them. She was the one among us who was happy. She had no son, no husband, among the watchers, and though, no doubt, she loved her convent and her hospital, yet she sat all day long in the shade and in the full air, and smiled, and never looked towards Semur. “The good Lord will do as He wills,” she said, “and that will be well.” It was true—we all knew it was true; but it might be—who could tell?—that it was His will to destroy our town, and take away our bread, and perhaps the lives of those who were dear to us; and something came in our throats which prevented a reply. “Ma soeur,” I said, “we are of the world, we tremble for those we love; we are not as you are.” Sister Mariette did nothing but smile upon us. “I have known my Lord these sixty years,” she said, “and He has taken everything from me.” To see her smile as she said this was more than I could bear. From me He had taken something, but not all. Must we be prepared to give up all if we would be perfected? There were many of the others also who trembled at these words. “And now He gives me my consolation,” she said, and called the little ones round her, and told them a tale of the Good Shepherd, which is out of the holy Gospel. To see all the little ones round her knees in a crowd, and the peaceful face with which she smiled upon them, and the meadows all full of flowers, and the sunshine coming and going through the branches: and to hear that tale of Him who went forth to seek the lamb that was lost, was like a tale out of a holy book, where all was peace and goodness and joy. But on the other side, not twenty steps off, was the house full of those who wept, and at all the doors and windows anxious faces gazing down upon that cloud in the valley where Semur was. A procession of our women was coming back, many with lingering steps, carrying the baskets which were empty. “Is there any news?” we asked, reading their faces before they could answer. And some shook their heads, and some wept. There was no other reply.

On the last night before our deliverance, suddenly, in the middle of the night, there was a great commotion in the house. We all rose out of our beds at the sound of the cry, almost believing that some one at the window had seen the lifting of the cloud, and rushed together, frightened, yet all in an eager expectation to hear what it was. It was in the room where the old Mère Julie slept that the disturbance was. Mère Julie was one of the market-women of Semur, the one I have mentioned who was devout, who never missed the Salut in the afternoon, besides all masses which are obligatory. But there were other matters in which she had not satisfied my mind, as I have before said. She was the mother of Jacques Richard, who was a good-for-nothing, as is well known. At La Clairière Mère Julie had enacted a strange part. She had taken no part in anything that was done, but had established herself in the chamber allotted to her, and taken the best bed in it, where she kept her place night and day, making the others wait upon her. She had always expressed a great devotion for St. Jean; and the Sisters of the Hospital had been very kind to her, and also to her vaurien of a son, who was indeed, in some manner, the occasion of all our troubles—being the first who complained of the opening of the chapel into the chief ward, which was closed up by the administration, and thus became, as I and many others think, the cause of all the calamities that have come upon us. It was her bed that was the centre of the great commotion we had heard, and a dozen voices immediately began to explain to us as we entered. “Mère Julie has had a dream. She has seen a vision,” they said. It was a vision of angels in the most beautiful robes, all shining with gold and whiteness.

“The dress of the Holy Mother which she wears on the great fêtes was nothing to them,” Mere Julie told us, when she had composed herself. For all had run here and there at her first cry, and procured for her a tisane, and a cup of bouillon, and all that was good for an attack of the nerves, which was what it was at first supposed to be. “Their wings were like the wings of the great peacock on the terrace, but also like those of eagles. And each one had a collar of beautiful jewels about his neck, and robes whiter than those of any bride.” This was the description she gave: and to see the women how they listened, head above head, a cloud of eager faces, all full of awe and attention! The angels had promised her that they would come again, when we had bound ourselves to observe all the functions of the Church, and when all these Messieurs had been converted, and made their submission—to lead us back gloriously to Semur. There was a great tumult in the chamber, and all cried out that they were convinced, that they were ready to promise. All except Madame Martin, who stood and looked at them with a look which surprised me, which was of pity rather than sympathy. As there was no one else to speak, I took the word, being the mother of the present Maire, and wife of the last, and in part mistress of the house. Had Agnès spoken I would have yielded to her, but as she was silent I took my right. “Mère Julie,” I said, “and mes bonnes femmes, my friends, know you that it is the middle of the night, the hour at which we must rest if we are to be able to do the work that is needful, which the bon Dieu has laid upon us? It is not from us—my daughter and myself—who, it is well known, have followed all the functions of the Church, that you will meet with an opposition to your promise. But what I desire is that you should calm yourselves, that you should retire and rest till the time of work, husbanding your strength, since we know not what claim may be made upon it. The holy angels,” I said, “will comprehend, or if not they, then the bon Dieu, who understands everything.”

But it was with difficulty that I could induce them to listen to me, to do that which was reasonable. When, however, we had quieted the agitation, and persuaded the good women to repose themselves, it was no longer possible for me to rest. I promised to myself a little moment of quiet, for my heart longed to be alone. I stole out as quietly as I might, not to disturb any one, and sat down upon the bench outside the door. It was still a kind of half-dark, nothing visible, so that if any one should gaze and gaze down the valley, it was not possible to see what was there: and I was glad that it was not possible, for my very soul was tired. I sat down and leant my back upon the wall of our house, and opened my lips to draw in the air of the morning. How still it was! the very birds not yet begun to rustle and stir in the bushes; the night air hushed, and scarcely the first faint tint of blue beginning to steal into the darkness. When I had sat there a little, closing my eyes, lo, tears began to steal into them like rain when there has been a fever of heat. I have wept in my time many tears, but the time of weeping is over with me, and through all these miseries I had shed none. Now they came without asking, like a benediction refreshing my eyes. Just then I felt a soft pressure upon my shoulder, and there was Agnès coming close, putting her shoulder to mine, as was her way, that we might support each other.

“You weep, ma mère,” she said.

“I think it is one of the angels Mère Julie has seen,” said I. “It is a refreshment—a blessing; my eyes were dry with weariness.”

“Mother,” said Madame Martin, “do you think it is angels with wings like peacocks and jewelled collars that our Father sends to us? Ah, not so—one of those whom we love has touched your dear eyes,” and with that she kissed me upon my eyes, taking me in her arms. My heart is sometimes hard to my son’s wife, but not always—not with my will, God knows! Her kiss was soft as the touch of any angel could be.

“God bless thee, my child,” I said.

“Thanks, thanks, ma mère!” she cried. “Now I am resolved; now will I go and speak to Martin—of something in my heart.”

“What will you do, my child?” I said, for as the light increased I could see the meaning in her face, and that it was wrought up for some great thing. “Beware, Agnès; risk not my son’s happiness by risking thyself; thou art more to Martin than all the world beside.”

“He loves thee dearly, mother,” she said. My heart was comforted. I was able to remember that I too had had my day. “He loves his mother, thank God, but not as he loves thee. Beware, ma fille. If you risk my son’s happiness, neither will I forgive you.” She smiled upon me, and kissed my hands.

“I will go and take him his food and some linen, and carry him your love and mine.”

“You will go, and carry one of those heavy baskets with the others!”

“Mother,” cried Agnès, “now you shame me that I have never done it before.”

What could I say? Those whose turn it was were preparing their burdens to set out. She had her little packet made up, besides, of our cool white linen, which I knew would be so grateful to my son. I went with her to the turn of the road, helping her with her basket; but my limbs trembled, what with the long continuance of the trial, what with the agitation of the night. It was but just daylight when they went away, disappearing down the long slope of the road that led to Semur. I went back to the bench at the door, and there I sat down and thought. Assuredly it was wrong to close up the chapel, to deprive the sick of the benefit of the holy mass. But yet I could not but reflect that the bon Dieu had suffered still more great scandals to take place without such a punishment. When, however, I reflected on all that has been done by those who have no cares of this world as we have, but are brides of Christ, and upon all they resign by their dedication, and the claim they have to be furthered, not hindered, in their holy work: and when I bethought myself how many and great are the powers of evil, and that, save in us poor women who can do so little, the Church has few friends: then it came back to me how heinous was the offence that had been committed, and that it might well be that the saints out of heaven should return to earth to take the part and avenge the cause of the weak. My husband would have been the first to do it, had he seen with my eyes; but though in the flesh he did not do so, is it to be doubted that in heaven their eyes are enlightened—those who have been subjected to the cleansing fires and have ascended into final bliss? This all became clear to me as I sat and pondered, while the morning light grew around me, and the sun rose and shed his first rays, which are as precious gold, on the summits of the mountains—for at La Clairière we are nearer the mountains than at Semur.

The house was more still than usual, and all slept to a later hour because of the agitation of the past night. I had been seated, like old sister Mariette, with my eyes turned rather towards the hills than to the valley, being so deep in my thoughts that I did not look, as it was our constant wont to look, if any change had happened over Semur. Thus blessings come unawares when we are not looking for them. Suddenly I lifted my eyes—but not with expectation—languidly, as one looks without thought. Then it was that I gave that great cry which brought all crowding to the windows, to the gardens, to every spot from whence that blessed sight was visible; for there before us, piercing through the clouds, were the beautiful towers of Semur, the Cathedral with all its pinnacles, that are as if they were carved out of foam, and the solid tower of St. Lambert, and the others, every one. They told me after that I flew, though I am past running, to the farmyard to call all the labourers and servants of the farm, bidding them prepare every carriage and waggon, and even the charrettes, to carry back the children, and those who could not walk to the city.

“The men will be wild with privation and trouble,” I said to myself; “they will want the sight of their little children, the comfort of their wives.”

I did not wait to reason nor to ask myself if I did well; and my son has told me since that he scarcely was more thankful for our great deliverance than, just when the crowd of gaunt and weary men returned into Semur, and there was a moment when excitement and joy were at their highest, and danger possible, to hear the roll of the heavy farm waggons, and to see me arrive, with all the little ones and their mothers, like a new army, to take possession of their homes once more.

X

M. LE MAIRE CONCLUDES HIS RECORD

The narratives which I have collected from the different eye-witnesses during the time of my own absence, will show how everything passed while I, with M. le Curé, was recovering possession of our city. Many have reported to me verbally the occurrences of the last half-hour before my return; and in their accounts there are naturally discrepancies, owing to their different points of view and different ways of regarding the subject. But all are agreed that a strange and universal slumber had seized upon all. M. de Bois-Sombre even admits that he, too, was overcome by this influence. They slept while we were performing our dangerous and solemn duty in Semur. But when the Cathedral bells began to ring, with one impulse all awoke; and starting from the places where they lay, from the shade of the trees and bushes and sheltering hollows, saw the cloud and the mist and the darkness which had enveloped Semur suddenly rise from the walls. It floated up into the higher air before their eyes, then was caught and carried away, and flung about into shreds upon the sky by a strong wind, of which down below no influence was felt. They all gazed, not able to get their breath, speechless, beside themselves with joy, and saw the walls reappear, and the roofs of the houses, and our glorious Cathedral against the blue sky. They stood for a moment spell-bound. M. de Bois-Sombre informs me that he was afraid of a wild rush into the city, and himself hastened to the front to lead and restrain it; when suddenly a great cry rang through the air, and some one was seen to fall across the high road, straight in front of the Porte St. Lambert. M. de Bois-Sombre was at once aware who it was, for he himself had watched Lecamus taking his place at the feet of my wife, who awaited my return there. This checked the people in their first rush towards their homes; and when it was seen that Madame Dupin had also sunk down fainting on the ground after her more than human exertions for the comfort of all, there was but one impulse of tenderness and pity. When I reached the gate on my return, I found my wife lying there in all the pallor of death, and for a moment my heart stood still with sudden terror. What mattered Semur to me, if it had cost me my Agnès? or how could I think of Lecamus or any other, while she lay between life and death? I had her carried back to our own house. She was the first to re-enter Semur; and after a time, thanks be to God, she came back to herself. But Paul Lecamus was a dead man. No need to carry him in, to attempt unavailing cares. “He has gone, that one; he has marched with the others,” said the old doctor, who had served in his day, and sometimes would use the language of the camp. He cast but one glance at him, and laid his hand upon his heart in passing. “Cover his face,” was all he said.

It is possible that this check was good for the restraint of the crowd. It moderated the rush with which they returned to their homes. The sight of the motionless figures stretched out by the side of the way overawed them. Perhaps it may seem strange, to any one who has known what had occurred, that the state of the city should have given me great anxiety the first night of our return. The withdrawal of the oppression and awe which had been on the men, the return of everything to its natural state, the sight of their houses unchanged, so that the brain turned round of these common people, who seldom reflect upon anything, and they already began to ask themselves was it all a delusion—added to the exhaustion of their physical condition, and the natural desire for ease and pleasure after the long strain upon all their faculties—produced an excitement which might have led to very disastrous consequences. Fortunately I had foreseen this. I have always been considered to possess great knowledge of human nature, and this has been matured by recent events. I sent off messengers instantly to bring home the women and children, and called around me the men in whom I could most trust. Though I need not say that the excitement and suffering of the past three days had told not less upon myself than upon others, I abandoned all idea of rest. The first thing that I did, aided by my respectable fellow-townsmen, was to take possession of all cabarets and wine-shops, allowing indeed the proprietors to return, but preventing all assemblages within them. We then established a patrol of respectable citizens throughout the city, to preserve the public peace. I calculated, with great anxiety, how many hours it would be before my messengers could react: La Clairière, to bring back the women—for in such a case the wives are the best guardians, and can exercise an influence more general and less suspected than that of the magistrates; but this was not to be hoped for for three or four hours at least. Judge, then, what was my joy and satisfaction when the sound of wheels (in itself a pleasant sound, for no wheels had been audible on the high-road since these events began) came briskly to us from the distance; and looking out from the watch-tower over the Porte St. Lambert, I saw the strangest procession. The wine-carts and all the farm vehicles of La Clairière, and every kind of country waggon, were jolting along the road, all in a tumult and babble of delicious voices; and from under the rude canopies and awnings and roofs of vine branches, made up to shield them from the sun, lo! there were the children like birds in a nest, one little head peeping over the other. And the cries and songs, the laughter, and the shoutings! As they came along the air grew sweet, the world was made new. Many of us, who had borne all the terrors and sufferings of the past without fainting, now felt their strength fail them. Some broke out into tears, interrupted with laughter. Some called out aloud the names of their little ones. We went out to meet them, every man there present, myself at the head. And I will not deny that a sensation of pride came over me when I saw my mother stand up in the first waggon, with all those happy ones fluttering around her. “My son,” she said, “I have discharged the trust that was given me. I bring thee back the blessing of God.” “And God bless thee, my mother!” I cried. The other men, who were fathers, like me, came round me, crowding to kiss her hand. It is not among the women of my family that you will find those who abandon their duties.

And then to lift them down in armfuls, those flowers of paradise, all fresh with the air of the fields, all joyous like the birds! We put them down by twos and threes, some of us sobbing with joy. And to see them dispersing hand in hand, running here and there, each to its home, carrying peace, and love, and gladness, through the streets—that was enough to make the most serious smile. No fear was in them, or care. Every haggard man they met—some of them feverish, restless, beginning to think of riot and pleasure after forced abstinence—there was a new shout, a rush of little feet, a shower of soft kisses. The women were following after, some packed into the carts and waggons, pale and worn, yet happy; some walking behind in groups; the more strong, or the more eager, in advance, and a long line of stragglers behind. There was anxiety in their faces, mingled with their joy. How did they know what they might find in the houses from which they had been shut out? And many felt, like me, that in the very return, in the relief, there was danger. But the children feared nothing; they filled the streets with their dear voices, and happiness came back with them. When I felt my little Jean’s cheek against mine, then for the first time did I know how much anguish I had suffered—how terrible was parting, and how sweet was life. But strength and prudence melt away when one indulges one’s self, even in one’s dearest affections. I had to call my guardians together, to put mastery upon myself, that a just vigilance might not be relaxed. M. de Bois-Sombre, though less anxious than myself, and disposed to believe (being a soldier) that a little license would do no harm, yet stood by me; and, thanks to our precautions, all went well.

Before night three parts of the population had returned to Semur, and the houses were all lighted up as for a great festival. The Cathedral stood open—even the great west doors, which are only opened on great occasions—with a glow of tapers gleaming out on every side. As I stood in the twilight watching, and glad at heart to think that all was going well, my mother and my wife—still pale, but now recovered from her fainting and weakness—came out into the great square, leading my little Jean. They were on their way to the Cathedral, to thank God for their return. They looked at me, but did not ask me to go with them, those dear women; they respected my opinions, as I had always respected theirs. But this silence moved me more than words; there came into my heart a sudden inspiration. I was still in my scarf of office, which had been, I say it without vanity, the standard of authority and protection during all our trouble; and thus marked out as representative of all, I uncovered myself, after the ladies of my family had passed, and, without joining them, silently followed with a slow and solemn step. A suggestion, a look, is enough for my countrymen; those who were in the Place with me perceived in a moment what I meant. One by one they uncovered, they put themselves behind me. Thus we made such a procession as had never been seen in Semur. We were gaunt and worn with watching and anxiety, which only added to the solemn effect. Those who were already in the Cathedral, and especially M. le Curé, informed me afterwards that the tramp of our male feet as we came up the great steps gave to all a thrill of expectation and awe. It was at the moment of the exposition of the Sacrament that we entered. Instinctively, in a moment, all understood—a thing which could happen nowhere but in France, where intelligence is swift as the breath on our lips. Those who were already there yielded their places to us, most of the women rising up, making as it were a ring round us, the tears running down their faces. When the Sacrament was replaced upon the altar, M. le Curé, perceiving our meaning, began at once in his noble voice to intone the Te Deum. Rejecting all other music, he adopted the plain song in which all could join, and with one voice, every man in unison with his brother, we sang with him. The great Cathedral walls seemed to throb with the sound that rolled upward, mâle and deep, as no song has ever risen from Semur in the memory of man. The women stood up around us, and wept and sobbed with pride and joy. When this wonderful moment was over, and all the people poured forth out of the Cathedral walls into the soft evening, with stars shining above, and all the friendly lights below, there was such a tumult of emotion and gladness as I have never seen before. Many of the poor women surrounded me, kissed my hand notwithstanding my resistance, and called upon God to bless me; while some of the older persons made remarks full of justice and feeling.

“The bon Dieu is not used to such singing,” one of them cried, her old eyes streaming with tears. “It must have surprised the saints up in heaven!”

“It will bring a blessing,” cried another. “It is not like our little voices, that perhaps only reach half-way.”

This was figurative language, yet it was impossible to doubt there was much truth in it. Such a submission of our intellects, as I felt in determining to make it, must have been pleasing to heaven. The women, they are always praying; but when we thus presented ourselves to give thanks, it meant something, a real homage; and with a feeling of solemnity we separated, aware that we had contented both earth and heaven.

Next morning there was a great function in the Cathedral, at which the whole city assisted. Those who could not get admittance crowded upon the steps, and knelt half way across the Place. It was an occasion long remembered in Semur, though I have heard many say not in itself so impressive as the Te Deum on the evening of our return. After this we returned to our occupations, and life was resumed under its former conditions in our city.

It might be supposed, however, that the place in which events so extraordinary had happened would never again be as it was before. Had I not been myself so closely involved, it would have appeared to me certain, that the streets, trod once by such inhabitants as those who for three nights and days abode within Semur, would have always retained some trace of their presence; that life there would have been more solemn than in other places; and that those families for whose advantage the dead had risen out of their graves, would have henceforward carried about with them some sign of that interposition. It will seem almost incredible when I now add that nothing of this kind has happened at Semur. The wonderful manifestation which interrupted our existence has passed absolutely as if it had never been. We had not been twelve hours in our houses ere we had forgotten, or practically forgotten, our expulsion from them. Even myself, to whom everything was so vividly brought home, I have to enter my wife’s room to put aside the curtain from little Marie’s picture, and to see and touch the olive branch which is there, before I can recall to myself anything that resembles the feeling with which I re-entered that sanctuary. My grandfather’s bureau still stands in the middle of my library, where I found it on my return; but I have got used to it, and it no longer affects me. Everything is as it was; and I cannot persuade myself that, for a time, I and mine were shut out, and our places taken by those who neither eat nor drink, and whose life is invisible to our eyes. Everything, I say, is as it was—everything goes on as if it would endure for ever. We know this cannot be, yet it does not move us. Why, then, should the other move us? A little time, we are aware, and we, too, shall be as they are—as shadows, and unseen. But neither has the one changed us, and neither does the other. There was, for some time, a greater respect shown to religion in Semur, and a more devout attendance at the sacred functions; but I regret to say this did not continue. Even in my own case—I say it with sorrow—it did not continue. M. le Curé is an admirable person. I know no more excellent ecclesiastic. He is indefatigable in the performance of his spiritual duties; and he has, besides, a noble and upright soul. Since the days when we suffered and laboured together, he has been to me as a brother. Still, it is undeniable that he makes calls upon our credulity, which a man obeys with reluctance. There are ways of surmounting this; as I see in Agnès for one, and in M. de Bois-Sombre for another. My wife does not question, she believes much; and in respect to that which she cannot acquiesce in, she is silent. “There are many things I hear you talk of, Martin, which are strange to me,” she says, “of myself I cannot believe in them; but I do not oppose, since it is possible you may have reason to know better than I; and so with some things that we hear from M. le Curé.” This is how she explains herself—but she is a woman. It is a matter of grace to yield to our better judgment. M. de Bois-Sombre has another way. “Ma foi,” he says, “I have not the time for all your delicacies, my good people; I have come to see that these things are for the advantage of the world, and it is not my business to explain them. If M. le Curé attempted to criticise me in military matters, or thee, my excellent Martin, in affairs of business, or in the culture of your vines, I should think him not a wise man; and in like manner, faith and religion, these are his concern.” Felix de Bois Sombre is an excellent fellow; but he smells a little of the mousquetaire. I, who am neither a soldier nor a woman, I have hesitations. Nevertheless, so long as I am Maire of Semur, nothing less than the most absolute respect shall ever be shown to all truly religious persons, with whom it is my earnest desire to remain in sympathy and fraternity, so far as that may be.

It seemed, however, a little while ago as if my tenure of this office would not be long, notwithstanding the services which I am acknowledged, on every hand, to have done to my fellow-townsmen. It will be remembered that when M. le Curé and myself found Semur empty, we heard a voice of complaining from the hospital of St. Jean, and found a sick man who had been left there, and who grumbled against the Sisters, and accused them of neglecting him, but remained altogether unaware, in the meantime, of what had happened in the city. Will it be believed that after a time this fellow was put faith in as a seer, who had heard and beheld many things of which we were all ignorant? It must be said that, in the meantime, there had been a little excitement in the town on the subject of the chapel in the hospital, to which repeated reference has already been made. It was insisted on behalf of these ladies that a promise had been given, taking, indeed, the form of a vow, that, as soon as we were again in possession of Semur, their full privileges should be restored to them. Their advocates even went so far as to send to me a deputation of those who had been nursed in the hospital, the leader of which was Jacques Richard, who since he has been, as he says, “converted,” thrusts himself to the front of every movement.

“Permit me to speak, M. le Maire,” he said; “me, who was one of those so misguided as to complain, before the great lesson we have all received. The mass did not disturb any sick person who was of right dispositions. I was then a very bad subject, indeed—as, alas! M. le Maire too well knows. It annoyed me only as all pious observances annoyed me. I am now, thank heaven, of a very different way of thinking—”

But I would not listen to the fellow. When he was a mauvais sujet he was less abhorrent to me than now.

The men were aware that when I pronounced myself so distinctly on any subject, there was nothing more to be said, for, though gentle as a lamb and open to all reasonable arguments, I am capable of making the most obstinate stand for principle; and to yield to popular superstition, is that worthy of a man who has been instructed? At the same time it raised a great anger in my mind that all that should be thought of was a thing so trivial. That they should have given themselves, soul and body, for a little money; that they should have scoffed at all that was noble and generous, both in religion and in earthly things; all that was nothing to them. And now they would insult the great God Himself by believing that all He cared for was a little mass in a convent chapel. What desecration! What debasement! When I went to M. le Curé, he smiled at my vehemence. There was pain in his smile, and it might be indignation; but he was not furious like me.

“They will conquer you, my friend,” he said.

“Never,” I cried. “Before I might have yielded. But to tell me the gates of death have been rolled back, and Heaven revealed, and the great God stooped down from Heaven, in order that mass should be said according to the wishes of the community in the midst of the sick wards! They will never make me believe this, if I were to die for it.”

“Nevertheless, they will conquer,” M. le Curé said.

It angered me that he should say so. My heart was sore as if my friend had forsaken me. And then it was that the worst step was taken in this crusade of false religion. It was from my mother that I heard of it first. One day she came home in great excitement, saying that now indeed a real light was to be shed upon all that had happened to us.

“It appears,” she said, “that Pierre Plastron was in the hospital all the time, and heard and saw many wonderful things. Sister Genevieve has just told me. It is wonderful beyond anything you could believe. He has spoken with our holy patron himself, St. Lambert, and has received instructions for a pilgrimage—”

“Pierre Plastron!” I cried; “Pierre Plastron saw nothing, ma mère. He was not even aware that anything remarkable had occurred. He complained to us of the Sisters that they neglected him; he knew nothing more.”

“My son,” she said, looking upon me with reproving eyes, “what have the good Sisters done to thee? Why is it that you look so unfavourably upon everything that comes from the community of St. Jean?”

“What have I to do with the community?” I cried—“when I tell thee, Maman, that this Pierre Plastron knows nothing! I heard it from the fellow’s own lips, and M. le Curé was present and heard him too. He had seen nothing, he knew nothing. Inquire of M. le Curé, if you have doubts of me.”

“I do not doubt you, Martin,” said my mother, with severity, “when you are not biassed by prejudice. And, as for M. le Curé, it is well known that the clergy are often jealous of the good Sisters, when they are not under their own control.”

Such was the injustice with which we were treated. And next day nothing was talked of but the revelation of Pierre Plastron. What he had seen and what he had heard was wonderful. All the saints had come and talked with him, and told him what he was to say to his townsmen. They told him exactly how everything had happened: how St. Jean himself had interfered on behalf of the Sisters, and how, if we were not more attentive to the duties of religion, certain among us would be bound hand and foot and cast into the jaws of hell. That I was one, nay the chief, of these denounced persons, no one could have any doubt. This exasperated me; and as soon as I knew that this folly had been printed and was in every house, I hastened to M. le Curé, and entreated him in his next Sunday’s sermon to tell the true story of Pierre Plastron, and reveal the imposture. But M. le Curé shook his head. “It will do no good,” he said.

“But how no good?” said I. “What good are we looking for? These are lies, nothing but lies. Either he has deceived the poor ladies basely, or they themselves—but this is what I cannot believe.”

“Dear friend,” he said, “compose thyself. Have you never discovered yet how strong is self-delusion? There will be no lying of which they are aware. Figure to yourself what a stimulus to the imagination to know that he was here, actually here. Even I—it suggests a hundred things to me. The Sisters will have said to him (meaning no evil, nay meaning the edification of the people), ‘But, Pierre, reflect! You must have seen this and that. Recall thy recollections a little.’ And by degrees Pierre will have found out that he remembered—more than could have been hoped.”

“Mon Dieu!” I cried, out of patience, “and you know all this, yet you will not tell them the truth—the very truth.”

“To what good?” he said. Perhaps M. le Curé was right: but, for my part, had I stood up in that pulpit, I should have contradicted their lies and given no quarter. This, indeed, was what I did both in my private and public capacity; but the people, though they loved me, did not believe me. They said, “The best men have their prejudices. M. le Maire is an excellent man; but what will you? He is but human after all.”

M. le Curé and I said no more to each other on this subject. He was a brave man, yet here perhaps he was not quite brave. And the effect of Pierre Plastron’s revelations in other quarters was to turn the awe that had been in many minds into mockery and laughter. “Ma foi,” said Félix de Bois-Sombre, “Monseigneur St. Lambert has bad taste, mon ami Martin, to choose Pierre Plastron for his confidant when he might have had thee.” “M. de Bois-Sombre does ill to laugh,” said my mother (even my mother! she was not on my side), “when it is known that the foolish are often chosen to confound the wise.” But Agnès, my wife, it was she who gave me the best consolation. She turned to me with the tears in her beautiful eyes.

“Mon ami,” she said, “let Monseigneur St. Lambert say what he will. He is not God that we should put him above all. There were other saints with other thoughts that came for thee and for me!”

All this contradiction was over when Agnès and I together took our flowers on the jour des morts to the graves we love. Glimmering among the rest was a new cross which I had not seen before. This was the inscription upon it:—

À PAUL LECAMUS
PARTI
LE 20 JUILLET, 1875

AVEC LES BIEN-AIMÉS

On it was wrought in the marble a little branch of olive. I turned to look at my wife as she laid underneath this cross a handful of violets. She gave me her hand still fragrant with the flowers. There was none of his family left to put up for him any token of human remembrance. Who but she should have done it, who had helped him to join that company and army of the beloved? “This was our brother,” she said; “he will tell my Marie what use I made of her olive leaves.”

Witcherley Ways

(A CHRISTMAS TALE)

(1857)

How to account for this strange adventure, or what explanation to put upon it, I cannot tell, but it began after a very prosaic fashion—rather more commonplace even than the circumstances under which the Laureate meditated his Legend of Godiva. After a long drive to a little country station, I found, to my dismay, that I had missed the train.

Missed the train! There was not another till twelve o’clock at noon of the next day, and it was then the afternoon between two and three o’clock; for the place in which I was so fortunate as to find myself, was one of the smallest of country stations on a “branch line.” It seems extremely odd, looking back upon it, that there should have been such an unreasonable time to wait; but it did not puzzle, it only discomfited me at the time.

And there was not even a single house, save the half-built little railway house itself, where dwelt the station-master, at this inhospitable station; so I had to be directed by that functionary, and by his solitary porter, how to get to Witcherley village, which lay a mile and a half off across the fields. It was summer, but there had been a great deal of rain, and the roads, as I knew by my morning’s experience, were “heavy”—yet I set off with singular equanimity on my journey across the fields. Altogether I took the business very coolly, and made up my mind to it. It is astonishing how easily one can manage this in a certain frame of mind.

It was rather a pretty country—especially when the sun came glancing down over it, finding out all the rain upon the leaves—when it was only I that found them out instead of the sun. When pushing down a deep lane, my hat caught the great overhanging bough of a hawthorn, and shook over a sparkling shower of water-drops, big and cool like so many diamonds, I cannot say that I entirely enjoyed the impromptu baptism, and the wet matted brambles underfoot were full of treacherous surprises, and the damp path under that magnificent seam of red-brown earth, which had caught my eye half a mile off, caught my foot now with unexampled tenacity. Notwithstanding, the road was pretty; a busy little husbandman of a breeze began to rustle out the young corn, and raise the feeble stalks which had been “laid” by the rain; and everything grew lustily in the refreshed and sweetened atmosphere, through which the birds raised their universal twitter. There appeared white gable-ends, bite of orchard closely planted, a church-spire rising through the trees, and over the next stile I leaped into the extreme end of the little village street of Witcherley—a very rural little village indeed, lying, though within a mile and a half of a railway station, secure and quiet among the old Arcadian fields.

Facing me was a great iron gate—extremely ornamental, as things were made a hundred years ago, with a minute porter’s-lodge shut up, plainly intimating that few carriages rolled up that twilight avenue, to which entrance was given by a little postern-door at the side. The avenue was narrow, but the trees were great and old, and hid all appearance of the house to which they led. Then came three thatched cottages flanking at a little distance the moss-grown wall which extended down the road from the manor-house gates; and then the path made a sharp turn round the abrupt corner of a gable which projected into it, the grey wall of which was lightened by one homely bow-window in the upper story, but nothing more.

This being the Witcherley Arms, I went no further, though some distant cottages, grey, silent, and rude, caught my eye a little way off. The Witcherley Arms, indeed, was the hamlet of Witcherley—it was something between an inn and a farmhouse, with long low rooms, small windows, and an irregular and rambling extent of building, which it was hard to assign any use for, and which seemed principally filled up with long passages leading to closets and cupboards and laundries in a prodigal and strange profusion. A few rude steps led to the door, within which, on one side, was a little bar, and on the other the common room of the inn. Just in front of the house, surrounded by a little plot of grass, stood a large old elm-tree, with the sign swung high among its branches; opposite was the gate of a farmyard, and the dull walls of a half square of barns and offices; behind, the country seemed to swell into a bit of rising-ground, covered with the woods of the manor-house; but the prospect before was of a rude district broken up by solitary roads, crossing the moorland, and apparently leading nowhere. One leisurely country-cart stood near the door, the horse standing still with dull patience, and that indescribable quiet consciousness that it matters nothing to any one how long the bumpkin stays inside, or the peaceable brute without, which is only to be found in the extreme and undisturbed seclusion of very rural districts. I confess I entered the Witcherley Arms with a little dismay, and no great expectations of its comfort or good cheer. The public room was large enough, lighted with two casement windows, with a low unequal ceiling and a sanded floor. Two small tables in the windows, and one long one placed across the room behind, with a bristly supply of hard high-backed wooden chairs, were all the furniture. A slow country fellow in a smock frock, the driver of the cart, drank his beer sullenly at one of the smaller tables. The landlord loitered about between the open outer door and the “coffee-room,” and I took my seat at the head of the big table, and suggested dinner to the open-eyed country maid.

She was more startled than I expected by the idea. Dinner! there was boiled bacon in the house, she knew, and ham and eggs were practicable. I was not disposed to be fastidious under present circumstances, so the cloth was spread, and the boiled bacon set before me, preparatory to the production of the more savoury dish. To have a better look at me, the landlord came in and established himself beside the bumpkin in the window. These worthies were not at all of the ruffian kind, but, on the contrary, perfectly honest-looking, obtuse, and leisurely: their dialect was strange to my ear, and their voices confused; but I could make out that what they did talk about was the “Squire.”

Of course, the most natural topic in the world in a place so primitive; and I, examining my bacon, which was not inviting, paid little attention to them. By-and-by, however, the landlord loitered out again to the door; and there my attention was attracted at once by a voice without, as different as possible from their mumbling rural voices. This was followed immediately by a quick alert footstep, and then entered the room an old gentleman, little, carefully dressed, precise and particular, in a blue coat with gilt buttons, a spotless white cravat, Hessian boots, and hair of which I could not say with certainty whether it was grey or powdered. He came in as a monarch comes into a humble corner of his dominions. There could be no doubt about his identity—this was the Squire.

Hodge at the window pulled his forelock reverentially; the old gentleman nodded to him, but turned his quick eye upon me—strangers were somewhat unusual at the Witcherley Arms—and then my boiled bacon, which I still only looked at! The Squire drew near with suave and compassionating courtesy: I told him my story—I had missed the train. The train was entirely a new institution in this primitive corner of the country. The old gentleman evidently did not half approve of it, and treated my detention something in the light of a piece of retributive justice. “Ah, haste, haste! nothing else will please us nowadays,” he said, shaking his head with dignity; “the good old coach, now, would have carried you comfortably, without the risk of a day’s waiting or a broken limb; but novelty carries the day.”

I did not say that the railway was, after all, not so extreme a novelty in other parts of the world as in Witcherley, and I was rewarded for my forbearance. “If you do not mind waiting half an hour, and walking half a mile,” added the Squire immediately, “I think I can promise you a better dinner than anything you have here—a plain country table, sir, nothing more, and a house of the old style; but better than honest Giles’s bacon, to which I see you don’t take very kindly. He will give you a good bed, though—a clean, comfortable bed. I have slept myself, sir, on occasion, at the Witcherley Arms.”

When he said this, some recollection or consciousness came for an instant across the old gentleman’s countenance; and the landlord, who stood behind him, and who was also an old man, uttered what seemed to me a kind of suppressed groan. The Squire heard it, and turned around upon him quickly.

“If your gable-room is not otherwise occupied to-night,” said the old gentleman—“mind I do not say it will, or is likely to be—put the gentleman into it, Giles.”

The landlord groaned again a singular affirmative, which roused my curiosity at once. Was it haunted? or what could there be of tragical or mysterious connected with the gable-room?

However, I had only to make my acknowledgements, and accept with thanks the Squire’s proposal, and we set out immediately for the manor-house. My companion looked hale, active, and light of foot—scarcely sixty—a comely, well-preserved old gentleman, with a clear frosty complexion, fine eyes without a cloud, features somewhat high and delicate, and altogether, in his refined and particular way, looked like the head of a long-lived patriarchal race, who might live a hundred years. He paused, however, when we got to the corner, to look to the north over the broken country on which the sunshine slanted as the day began to wane. It was a wild solitary prospect, as different as possible from the softer scenes through which I had come to Witcherley. Those broken bits of road, rough cart-tracks over the moor, with heaps of stones piled here and there, the intention of which one could not decide upon; fir-trees, all alone and by themselves, growing singly at the angles of the road—sometimes the long horizontal gleam of water in a deep cutting—sometimes a green bit of moss, prophetic of pitfall and quagmire—and no visible moving thing upon the whole scene. The picture to me was somewhat desolate. My new friend, however, gazed upon it with a lingering eye, sighed, did not say anything—but, turning round with a little vehemence, took some highly-flavoured snuff from a small gold box, and seemed, under cover of this innocent stimulant, to shake off some emotion. As he did so, looking back I saw the inmates of the Witcherley Arms at the door, in a little crowd gazing at him. The landscape must have been as familiar to him as he was to these good people. I began to grow very curious. Was anything going to happen to the old Squire?

The old Squire, however, was of the class of men who enjoy conversation, and relish a good listener. He led me down through the noiseless road, past the three cottages, to the manorial gates, with a pleasant little stream of remark and explanation, a little jaunty wit, a little caustic observation, great natural shrewdness, and some little knowledge of the world. Entering in by that little side-door to the avenue, was like coming out of daylight into sudden night. The road was narrow—the trees tall, old, and of luxuriant growth. I did not wonder that his worship was proud of them, but, for myself, should have preferred something less gloomy. The line was long, too, and wound upwards by an irregular ascent; and the thick dark foliage concealed, till we had almost reached it, the manor-house, which turned its turreted gable-end towards us, by no means unlike the Witcherley Arms.

It was a house of no particular date or character—old, irregular, and somewhat picturesque—built of the grey limestone of the district, spotted over with lichens, and covering here and there the angle of a wall with an old growth of exuberant ivy—ivy so old, thick, and luxuriant, that there was no longer any shapeliness or distinctive character in the big, blunt, glossy leaves. A small lawn before the door, graced with one clipped yew-tree, was the only glimpse of air or daylight, so far as I could see, about the house; for the trees closed in on every side, as if to shut it out entirely from all chance of seeing or being seen. The big hall-door opened from without, and I followed the Squire with no small curiosity into the noiseless house, in which I could not hear a single domestic sound. Perhaps drawing-rooms were not in common use at Witcherley—at all events we went at once to the dining-room, a large long apartment, with an ample fireplace at the upper end—three long windows on one side, and a curious embayed alcove in the corner, projecting from the room like an afterthought of the builder. To this pretty recess you descended by a single step from the level of the dining-room, and it was lighted by a broad, Elizabethan oriel window, with a cushioned seat all round, fastened to the wall. went here, naturally passing by the long dining-table, which occupied the almost entire mid-space of the apartment. These three long dining-room windows looked out upon the lawn and the clipped yew-tree—the oriel looked upon nothing, but was closely over-shadowed by a group of lime-trees casting down a tender, cold, green light through their delicate wavering leaves. There were old panel portraits on the walls, old crimson hangings, a carpet, of which all the colours were blended and indistinguishable with old age. The chairs in the recess were covered with embroidery as faded as the carpet; everything bore the same tone of antiquity. At the same time, everything appeared in the most exemplary order, well-preserved and graceful—without a trace of wealth, and with many traces of frugality, yet undebased by any touch of shabbiness. And as the Squire placed himself in the stiff elbow-chair in this pleasant little alcove, and cast his eye with becoming dignity down the long line of the room, I could not but recognise a pleasant and suitable congeniality between my host and his house.

Presently a grave middle-aged man-servant entered the room, and busied himself very quietly spreading the table—the Squire in the meantime entering upon a polite and good-humoured catechetical examination of myself; but pausing now and then to address a word to Joseph, which Joseph answered with extreme brevity and great respectfulness. There was nothing inquisitive or disagreeable in the Squire’s inquiries; on the contrary, they were pleasant indications of the kindly interest which an old man often shows in a young one unexpectedly thrown into his path. I was by no means uninterested, meanwhile, in the slowly-completed arrangements of the dinner-table, all accomplished so quietly. When Joseph had nearly finished his operations, a tall young fellow in a shooting-coat, sullen, loutish, and down-looking, lounged into the room, and threw himself into an easy-chair. He did not bear a single feature of resemblance to the courtly old beau beside me, yet was his son notwithstanding beyond all controversy—the heir of the house. Then came the earlier instalments of the dinner; and simultaneously with the silver tureen appeared an old lady, who dropped me a noiseless curtsey, and took her seat at the head of the table, without a word. I could make nothing whatever of this mistress of the house. She was dressed in some faded rich brocaded dress, entirely harmonising with the carpets and the embroidered chairs, and wore a large faint brooch at her neck, with a half-obliterated miniature, set round with dull yellow pearls. She sent me soup, and carved the dishes placed before her in a noiseless, seemingly motionless way, which there was no comprehending; and was either the most mechanical automaton in existence, or a person stunned and petrified. The young Squire sat opposite myself, one person only at the long vacant side of the table, with his back to the three windows. An uneasy air of shame, sullenness, and half-resentment hung about him, and he, too, never spoke. In spite, however, of this uncomfortable companionship, the Squire, in his place at the foot of the table, kept up his pleasant, lively, vivacious stream of conversation without the slightest damp or restraint—gave forth his old-fashioned formal witticisms—his maxims of the old world, his dignified country-gentleman reflections upon the errors of the new. Silent sat the presiding shadow at the head—silent the lout in the middle. The old servant, grave, solemn, and almost awe-stricken, moved silently about behind; yet, little assisted by my own discomposed and embarrassed responses, there was quite a lively sound of conversation at the table, kept up by the brave old Squire.

With the conclusion of the dinner, and with another little noiseless curtsey, the old lady disappeared as she came. I had not heard the faintest whisper of her voice during the whole time, nor observed her looking at any one; and it was almost a relief to hear her dress rustle softly as she glided out of the room. It seemed to me, however, that our attendant took an unnecessarily long time in arranging the few plates of fruit and placing the wine upon the table; and lingered with visible anxiety, casting stealthy looks of mingled awe and sympathy at his master, and exercising a watchful and jealous observation of the young Squire. The old Squire, however, took no notice, for his part, of the sullenness of his heir, or the watch of Joseph, but pared his apple briskly, and went on with his description of a celebrated old house in the neighbourhood, which, if I had another day to spare, I would find it very much worth my while to see. “At another time,” said the old gentleman, “I might have offered you my own services as guide and cicerone; but present circumstances make that impracticable; however, I advise you sincerely, go yourself and see.”

As he said these words, there seemed a simultaneous start of consciousness on the part of the young man and of the servant. Joseph’s napkin fell out of his hands, and he hurried from the room without picking it up; while the young Squire, with an evidently irrestrainable motion, pushed back his chair from the table, grew violently red, drank half-a-dozen glasses of wine in rapid succession, and cast a furtive and rapid glance at his father, who, perfectly lively and at his ease, talked on without a moment’s discomposure. Then the young man rose up suddenly, walked away from the table, tossed the fallen napkin into the fireplace with his foot, came back again, grasped the back of his chair, cleared his throat, and, turning his flashed face towards his father without lifting his eyes, seemed trying in vain to invent words for something which he had to say.

Whatever it was, it would not bear words. The young Hercules, a fine, manly, full-grown figure, stood exactly opposite me, with his down-looking eyes; but all that he seemed able to articulate was a beginning—“I say, father; father, I say.”

“No occasion for saying another word about the matter, my boy,” said the old gentleman, “I understand you perfectly—come back as early as you please to morrow, and you’ll find all right, and everything prepared for yon. You may rely upon me.”

Not another word was exchanged between them; the lout plunged his hands into his pockets, and left the room as resentful, sullen, and ashamed as ever, yet with an air of relief. The Squire leaned back in his chair for an instant, and sighed—but whether it was over a household mystery, or the excellence of the wine which he held up to the light, it was impossible to tell, for he resumed what he was saying immediately, and rounded off a handsome little sentence about the advantages of travel to young men.

At this point Joseph entered once more, with looks still more awe-stricken and anxious, on pretence of finding his napkin. “And now that we are alone,” said the Squire, calling him, “we may as well be comfortable. Take the wine, Joseph, into the oriel. We call it the oriel, though the word is a misnomer; but family customs, sir, family customs, grow strong and flourish in an old house. It has been named so since my earliest recollection, and for generations before time.”

“And for generations after, no doubt,” said I, “Your grandchildren—”

“My grandchildren!” exclaimed the old man with a look of dismay; “but, my good sir, you are perfectly excusable—perfectly excusable,” he continued, recovering himself; “you are not aware of my family history, and the traditions of the house. But I observe that you have shown some surprise at various little incidents—understand me, I beg—shown surprise in the most decorous and natural manner consistent with perfect good breeding. I should be uneasy did you suppose I implied anything more. The fact is, you have come among us at a family crisis. Be seated—and to understand it, you ought to know the history of the house.”

I took my seat immediately, with haste and a little excitement. The Squire’s elbow-chair had already been placed by Joseph on the other side of the small carved oak table—the wine with its dull ruby glow, and the old-fashioned tall glasses, small goblets, long-stalked and ornamented, stood between us; and overhead a morsel of inquisitive blue sky, looked into through the close interlacing of those tremulous delicate lime-tree leaves.

The Squire took his seat, paused again, sighed; and then turning round towards the dining-room proper, which began to grow dim as twilight came on, cast a look somewhat melancholy, yet full of dignified satisfaction, upon the array of family portraits, and began his tale.

“We are an old family,” said the old gentleman; “I do not need to say to any one acquainted with this district, or with the untitled gentry of the North of England, how long and how unbroken has been our lineal succession. Witcherley Manor-house, has descended for centuries, without a single lapse, from father to son; and you will observe, sir, one of the distinguishing peculiarities of our race, and the reason of my amazement when you spoke unguardedly of grandchildren, the offspring of every marriage in this house is one son.”

The words were said so solemnly that I started—“One son!”

“One son,” continued the Squire with dignity, “enough to carry on the race and preserve its honours—nothing to divide or encumber. In fact, I feel that the existence of the family depends on this wise and benevolent arrangement of nature. If I have a regret,” said the old man mildly, with a natural sigh, “regarding the approaching marriage of my boy, it is because, he has chosen his wife, contrary to the usage of our house, out of a neighbouring and very large family—yet I ought to have more confidence in the fortunes of the race.”

Being somewhat surprised, not to say dumbfoundered, by these reflections, I thought it better to make no remark upon them, and prudently held my peace.

“We were once rich, sir,” continued the Squire, with a smile, “but that is a period beyond the memory of man. Three centuries ago, an ancestor of mine, a man of curious erudition, a disciple of the Rosy Cross, lost a large amount of the gold he had in search of the mysterious power of making the baser metals into gold. There he hangs, sir, looking down upon us, a most remarkable man. I would call him the founder of our race, but that such a statement would be untrue, and would abridge our ascertained genealogy by many generations; he was, however, the founder of everything remarkable in our history. In the pursuit of science he was so unfortunate as to risk and lose a large portion of his family inheritance—everything, in short, but the Manor-house and lands of Witcherley—I am not ashamed to say a small estate.”

I bent my head to the old man with involuntary respect, as he bowed to me over his wine in his stately old pride and truthfulness; but I made no other interruption, and he immediately resumed his tale.

“In the ordinary course of nature, as people call it, with younger children to be provided for, and daughters to be portioned, the house of Witcherley, sir, must long ago have come to a conclusion. But my ancestor was a wise man; he had purchased his wisdom at no small cost, and knew how to make use of it, and he left to us who came after him the most solemn heirloom of the house, a family vow—a vow which each successive father among us is pledged to administer to his son, and which, I am proud to say, has never been broken in the entire known history of the race.”

“I beg your pardon. I should be grieved to make any impertinent inquiries,” said I—for the Squire came to a sudden pause, and my curiosity was strongly excited—“but might I ask what that was?”

The old gentleman filled his glass and sipped it slowly. The daylight had gradually faded through the soft green lime-leaves; but still the waning rays were cooled and tinted by the verdant medium through which they came. I thought there was a tinge of pallor on my companion’s face; but he sat opposite, in his elbow-chair, with the most perfect calmness, sipping his wine.

“It depends entirely,” he said with deliberation, “upon the providential natural arrangement of succession, which I have already told you of. The family vow is no longer binding upon that Squire of Witcherley who has more than one child—one son.”

“And that contingency, has it never happened?” cried I, with eagerness.

“It threatened to happen, sir, on one occasion,” said the Squire. “My own grandfather married a wife with some fortune, who brought him a daughter. I am grieved to say of so near a relation that his mind was degenerate. Instead of showing any disappointment, he made an exhibition of unseemly satisfaction at the thought of escaping the fate of his race. He took down the old gateway, sir, and erected the piece of foolishness in iron which disfigures my avenue. But it was short-lived—short-lived. Providence stepped in, and withdrew from him both wife and child; and it was only by a second marriage late in life that he escaped the terrible calamity of being the last of his line. No, I am proud to say that contingency has never occurred, nor that vow been broken, for three hundred years.”

“And the vow?” I grew quite excited, and leaned over the little table to listen, with a thrill of expectation. The Squire cleared his throat, kept his eyes fixed upon the table, and answered me slowly. It was not nervousness, but pure solemnity; and it impressed me accordingly.

“Sir,” he said, at last raising his head, “the lands of Witcherley are insufficient to support two households. When the heir is of age, and is disposed to marry, according to the regulation of the family the father ceases; one generation passes away, and another begins. Sir, my son is on the eve of marriage; he will be Squire of Witcherley to-morrow.”

I started to my feet in sudden alarm; then seated myself again, half subdued, half appalled by the composure of the old man. “I beg your pardon,” I said, faltering; “I have misunderstood you, of course. You give up a portion of your authority—a share of your throne. Oh, by no means unusual, I understand.”

“You do not understand me” said the Squire, “nor the ways of this house. I spoke nothing of share or portion; there is no such thing possible at Witcherley. I said, simply, the father ceased and the son succeeds. These were my words. On these lands there can be but one Squire.”

I could not listen in quietness. I rose from my chair again in dismay and apprehension. “You mean to withdraw—to leave the house—to abdicate?” I gasped, scarcely knowing what I said.

“Sir,” said the Squire, looking up with authority, “I mean to cease”

It is impossible to give the smallest idea of the horror of these words, spoken in this strange silent house in the dark room, with its line of long dull windows letting in a colourless ghostly twilight, and the tremulous limes quivering at the oriel. I cried aloud, yet it was only in a whisper: “Why—what—how is this! Murder—suicide! Good heaven, what do you mean?”

“Be seated, sir,” said my companion, authoritatively. “I trust I speak to a gentleman, and a man of honour. Do I betray any unseemly agitation? The means are our secret—the fact is as I tell you. To-morrow, sir, my son will be Squire of Witcherley, and I shall have fulfilled the vow and the destiny of my race.”

How I managed to sit down quietly again in this ghastly half-light at the domestic table of a man who had just made a statement so astounding, and under a roof where the implements of murder might be waiting, or the draught of the suicide prepared, I cannot tell: yet I did so, overawed by the quietness of my companion, in presence of whom, though my head throbbed and my veins swelled, it seemed impossible to say a word. I sat looking at him in silence, revolving a hundred wild schemes of rescue. In England, and the nineteenth century! It was not possible; yet I could not help the shuddering sense of reality, which crept upon me. “And your son?” I exclaimed, abruptly, with a renewed sense of horror—the son’s sullen and guilty shame returning in strong confirmation before my eyes.

“My son,” said the Squire, with again a natural sigh—“yes. I confess it has hitherto been the father who has taken the initiative in this matter; but my boy knew his rights. I was perhaps dilatory. Yes—yes, it is all perfectly right, and I have not the smallest reason to complain.”

“But what—what?—for heaven’s sake, tell me! You are not about to do anything?—what are you about to do?” cried I.

“Sir, you are excited,” said the Squire. “I am about to do nothing which I am not quite prepared for. Pardon me for reminding you. You are a stranger—you are in the country—and in this quiet district we keep early hours. Do me the favour to ring for lights; the bell is close to your hand; and as our avenue is of the darkest, Joseph will guide to the postern.”

I rang the bell, as was desired, with passive obedience. I was struck dumb with amaze and bewilderment, half angry at this sudden dismissal, and half disposed to remain in spite of it; but I was a stranger, indebted to my companion’s courtesy for my introduction here, and without the slightest claim upon him. Lights appeared, as if by magic, in an instant, and Joseph lingered waiting for orders.

“Take your lantern and light the gentleman to the end of the avenue,” said the Squire, coming briskly out of the recess, and arranging for himself a chair and a newspaper at the table. Then he held out his hand to me, shook mine heartily, and dismissed me with the condescending but authoritative bow of a monarch. I muttered something about remaining—about service and assistance—but the old gentleman took no further notice of me, and sat down to his newspaper with dignified impenetrability. Having no resource but to follow Joseph, I went out with no small amount of discomposure. And looking back to the placid old figure at the table, with his lamp and his paper, and struck with the overwhelming incongruity of ideas, the mysterious horror of the story, and the composed serenity of the scene, went out after my guide in perfect bewilderment, ready to believe that my senses had deceived me—that my host laboured under some extraordinary delusion—anything rather than that this was true.

The avenue was black as midnight; darkness was no description of the pitchy gloom of this narrow path, with its crowd of overshadowing trees; and not even the wavering light of Joseph’s lantern, cast upon the ground at my feet, secured me from frequent collisions with the big boles of those gigantic elms. The wind too, unlike a summer breeze, came chill and ghostly up the confined road, and rain was beginning to fall. I presume the old servant scarcely heard my questions, amid the universal rustle of the leaves and patter of the rain. He did not answer, at all events, except by directions and injunctions to take care. I caught him by the arm at last, when we came to the door. “Do you know of anything that is about to happen—quick—tell me!” I cried, my excitement coming to a climax. The lantern almost fell from Joseph’s hand, but I could not see his face.

“A many things happen nowadays,” said Joseph, “but I reckon master wants me more nor you, sir, if that be all.”

“Your master! it is your master I am concerned about,” cried I. “You look like an old servant—do you know what all this means t Is the old man safe? If there’s any danger, tell me, and I’ll go back with you and watch all night.”

“Danger! the squire’s in his own house,” said Joseph, “and not a servant in it but’s been there for twenty years. Thank you all the same; but mind your own business, young gentleman, and ride betimes in the morning, and never think on’t again, whate’er ye may have heard to-night.”

Saying which, Joseph closed abruptly in my face the postern-door, at which we had been standing, and through the open ironwork of the closed gates I saw his light gleam hastily, as he hurried up the avenue. His manner and words excited instead of subduing my agitated curiosity. I stood irresolute in the rain and the darkness, gazing through the iron gate, which now I could distinguish only by touch, and could not see, though I was close to it. What was to be done! What could I do?

Just then I heard a horse’s hoofs upon the road, and turned round eagerly, with the intention of addressing the passenger, whoever it might be. Raising my eyes, though it was impossible to see anything, I cried, “Hold—wait—let me speak to you!” when, with an effect, like a suddenly displayed lantern, the moon broke out through the clouds. My eyes bad been straining, in the darkness, to the unseen face; now, when this fitful illumination revealed it, I started back in confusion. It was the same ashamed sullen resentful face which had lowered upon me at the Squire’s table—his son—and instead of pausing when he perceived me, the young man touched his horse smartly with his whip, and plunged away, at a heavy gallop, into the night. I think this last incident filled up the measure of my confused and bewildering excitement. I turned from the gate at once, and pushed back towards the Witcherley Arms.

Reaching them, I went in with the full intention of rousing the country, and returning in force, to gain an entrance to the manor-house, and save the old man in his own despite. But when I went into the dull public room, with its two flaring melancholy candles, its well-worn country paper, which one clown was spelling over, and another listening to—when, in my haste and heat, I came within this cheerless, lifeless atmosphere, heard the fall of the monotonous slow voices, and saw the universal stagnation of life, my excitement relaxed in spite of myself. In this scene, so coldly, dully commonplace—in this ordinary, unvaried stream of existence, it was impossible: there was no room for mysteries and horrors here.

Yet within the little bar on the other side of the passage, the landlord and his wife were peering out at me with a half-scared curiosity, and holding consultations together in an excited and uneasy restlessness, something like my own. Stimulated once more by seeing this, I hastened up to them, and though they both retreated before me, and made vain attempts to conceal their curiosity and eagerness, my own mind was too much roused to be easily deceived. I asked hastily if them was any constabulary force in the neighbourhood—soldiers, county police, protectors of the peace.

The woman uttered a faint exclamation of terror; but the landlord, with a certain stupid adroitness, which I could not help remarking, took up my question.“Polis! Lord a’ mercy! the gentleman’s been robbed. I’se a constable mysel’.”

“I have not been robbed; but I suspect you know more than I do,” cried I, impatiently. “Your old Squire is in some mysterious danger. If you’re a constable, rouse half-a-dozen men in the neighbourhood, and come up with me to the manor-house—if you’re a constable! I should say, if you’re a man, make haste and follow me. Do you hear? At this very moment the old man may be in peril of his life.”

“What’s wrong, sir? what’s wrong? It cannot be rubbers, for rubbers could ne’er reach to the manor-house,” said the wife, interposing. “Bless and preserve us! is’t the Russians or the French, or the pitmen, or what’s wrong? and if he’s off and away to the manor, who’ll mind his own house?”

“I am sure you know what I mean,” cried I. “Your old master is in danger. I cannot tell you what danger. You know better than I do. Can you look on quietly, and see the Squire lose his life?”

“I know nought about the Squire’s life,” said Giles sullenly, after a pause; “and no more do you, sir, that’s a stranger to Witcherley ways. The Squire’s got his own about him that won’t see wrong to him. It’s no ado o’ mine, and it’s no ado o’ yours; and I’m not a-going on a fool’s errand for any man, let alone a strange gentleman I never set eyes on afore. Do you think I’d go and anger the Squire in his own house, because summat skeared a traveller? I’m not a-going to do no such foolishness. If the Squire takes notions, what’s that to a stranger like you, that’ll may be never see him again?”

“Takes notions?” I caught at this new idea with infinite relief. “What do you mean? Does the Squire take notions? Is it all a delusion of his? Is that what you mean?”

“Sir, it’s in the family; they’re queer, that’s what they are,” said the woman, answering me eagerly, while her husband hung back, and made no response. “It comes strange to the likes of you; for it takes a deal of studyin’ to larn Witcherley ways.”

“Witcherley ways—in the family—a delusion—a monomania,” said I to myself. Certainly this looked the most reasonable explanation. Yea, to be sure; everybody had heard of such. I received the idea eagerly, and calmed down at once. After all, the wonder was, that it bad never struck me before; and then the confusion of the young man—the anxiety of Joseph. No doubt, they trembled for the exhibition of this incipient madness—no doubt, they were afraid of the narrative with which the unfortunate old gentleman was sure to horrify a new listener. I became quite “easy in my mind” as I revolved all this. Monomaniacs, too, are so gravely reasonable in most cases, and have so much method in their madness.

I returned to the dull public-room with restored composure, and thinking it all over, in the lifeless silence, in this place where it seemed impossible that anything could happen, could almost have laughed at myself for my own fears. By-and-by the house was shut up, and I transferred my quarters to the gable-room, which I was to occupy for the night It was a well-sized apartment, somewhat bare, but very clean, and sufficiently comfortable, very much like the best bedroom of a humble country inn, which it was. The bow-window—the only window in the room—looked out into sheer darkness, a heavy visible gloom; the night was somewhat wild, and dismal with wind and rain, and, in spite of the homely comfort of my surroundings, I have seldom spent a more miserable night. Dreary old stories revived out of the oblivion of childhood; tales of the creeping stream of blood from some closed door, the appalling pistol-shot, the horror of the death-gasp and cry, forced themselves on my memory; and when I slept, it was only to see visions of the Squire, or of some one better known to me in his place, standing in ghastly solitude with the knife or the poison, struggling with assassins) or stretched. upon a horrible deathbed, red with murder. Through these feverish fancies came the rounds of the night; the creeping silence, which, like the darkness, was not negative, but positive; the dismal creaking of the sign among the great boughs of the elm tree; the rush of rain against the window; the moaning and sobbing echoes of the wind. These terrors, however, waking and sleeping, did not make me Watch for and start up to meet the earliest dawn, a a might have been supposed; on the contrary, I fell into a heavy slumber as the morning broke, and slept late and long, undisturbed by the early sounds of rustical awakening. When I roused myself at last, it was ten o’clock—a pale, wet, melancholy morning, the very ghost and shadow of the more dismal night.

I cannot tell whether the story of the evening was the first thing which occurred to my mind when I awoke. Indeed, I rather think not, but that a more everyday and familiar apprehension, the dread of once more losing the train, was the earliest thought which occupied me, despite all the horrors of the night. But my mind immediately rebounded with excitement and eagerness into the former channel, when I looked out from my window. Immediately under it, in the pale drizzle of rain, stood the Squire’s son, dressed as his father had been, in a blue coat with gilt buttons, but new, and of the latest fashion, and with a white favour on the breast. His face was flushed with rude half-concealed exultation; his manner seemed arrogant and authoritative, but still he had not lost the downlooking, sullen, resentful shame of the previous night. He was putting money in the hand of Giles, who stood by with a scowl upon his face, and touched his hat with a still more sullen unwillingness. Several other men, a heaving little rustic crowd, lingered around, eyeing the young man askance with looks of scared and unfriendly curiosity. “Let them drink our health, and see that the bells are rung.” I heard only these words distinctly, and the young squire strode away towards the manor-house. When he was out of sight, my phlegmatic landlord threw his money vehemently on the ground with an expression of disgust, and shook his clenched hand after the disappearing figure; but thinking better of it by-and-by, and relenting towards the honest coin, picked it up deliberately, piece by piece, and hastily disappeared within the house. My toilette did not occupy me much after this incident, and as soon as I had hastily completed it, I hurried down stairs. Giles was in the passage, giving directions, intermixed with a low growl of half-spoken curses. When he saw me, he suddenly stopped, and retreated within his little bar. I followed him anxiously. “What has happened?—what of the Squire?”

“The Squire?—it’s none o’ my business—nor yours neither. Mind your breakfast and your train, young gentleman, and don’t you bother about Witcherley—Missus, you’re wanted!—I’ve enow on my own hands.” Saying which Giles fled, and left me unanswered and unsatisfied. Turning to his wife, who appeared immediately with my breakfast, I found her equally impracticable. She, poor woman, seemed able for nothing but to wring her hands, wipe her eyes with an apron, and answer to my eager inquiries, “Don’t you meddle in it—don’t you, then! O Lord! it’s Witcherley ways.”

It was impossible to bear this tantalising bewilderment. I took my hat, and rushed out, equally indifferent to train and breakfast. The same bumpkins stood still loitering in the high-road, in the rain; and, scared and awe-stricken as they seemed, were still able to divert the main subject of their slow thoughts, with some dull observation of myself, as I rushed past. I did not pause, however, to ask any fruitless questions of this mazed chorus of spectators, but hurried along the road to the little postern-gate. To my surprise, I found the great gates open, and another little circle of bystanders, children and women, standing by. I hastened up the dark avenue, when the rain pattered and the leaves rustled in the pallid daylight, as they had done in the blank night. Everything remained exactly as it was yesterday, when I passed up this same tortuous road with the Squire. I rushed on with growing excitement, unable to restrain myself. The hall-door stood slightly ajar. I pushed it open, and entered with a hasty step, which echoed upon the paved hall as though the house were vacant. Roused from a corner by the sound, Joseph rose and came forward to meet me. The poor fellow looked very grave and solemn, and had been sitting in forlorn solitude, reading in this chilly uninhabited hall, But at sight of me the cautiousness of suspicion seemed to inspire Joseph. He quickened his pace, and came forward resolutely, keeping himself between me and the dining-room door.

“I want to see your master—your master—beg him to see me for a moment; I will not detain him,” said I.

“My master?” Joseph paused and looked at me earnestly, as if to ascertain how much or how little I knew. “My master, sir, was married this morning. I couldn’t make so bold as to disturb him; perhaps you could call another day.”

“Married! Now, Joseph,” said I, trying what an appeal would do, “you know it is in vain to attempt deceiving me; your master’s son is married, but I do not want him: I want to see the old Squire.”

“There’s no old Squire, sir,” said Joseph, with a husky voice, “there ain’t. I tell you true; you’re dreaming. My master’s a young gentleman, and married this morning. It’s no good coming here,” cried the old servant, growing excited, “to make trouble, and disturb a quiet house. My master’s a young gentleman—younger than yourself; there can be but one Squire.”

“Joseph, what do you mean?” cried I. “Do you forget what I saw and heard—do you forget that I was here and dined with your old master last night? Where is he? What have you done with him? I’ll rouse the country. I’ll have you all indicted for murder, every soul in the house. Where is the old Squire?”

He laid his hand upon my shoulder fiercely, trembling himself, however, as he did so, with the tremor of weakness. “Will you hold your tongue—will you be quiet—will you leave this house?”

“No,” cried I, raising my voice, and shaking the old man off—“No, I’ll ascertain the truth before I move a step. I will not leave the house. Here, go call your new master; I’ll wait for him where I sat with his father yesterday. His father, poor old man, what have you done with him? I will not move a step till I search this mystery out.”

I pushed my way as I spoke into the dining-room, Joseph following and opposing me feebly. The appearance of the silent untenanted room moved me with a new and mysterious thrill of horror. There it lay unaltered, undisturbed, in the very same formal arrangement as when I left it last bight; the portraits looking darkly from the walls, the tender lime-leaves flickering round the oriel, the long vacant dining-table shining dully in the subdued light. Every chair stood as it had stood yesterday—the very newspaper lay upon the table. But where was the old Squire?

I turned round upon Joseph suddenly—“He sat there, just there, last night. You are as conscious of it as I am. I want to know where he is now.”

A kind of hysteric sob of terror escaped from the old servant’s breast. He retreated hastily, covering his eyes with his hand, yet casting looks of horror at the vacant elbow-chair. “I’ll go, sir—I’ll go—I’ll call my master,” he said, with a cracked unsteady voice; and he went out of the room, not daring, as I fancied, to turn his back upon the ghostly empty seat. I, in my excitement, paced up and down the room, with all my private sense of wrong and horror, and all my public sentiment of justice, giving authority to my step. It did not occur to me that I had no right to enter another man’s house after this fashion, or that I ran any risk in doing so. I was excited beyond the reach of all personal consideration. I thought of nothing but the old Squire; here only last night I had sat at his table, joined him in conversation, and listened to his story, and where—where—ghastly confirmation to that tale of horror—where was he now?

I had heard Joseph’s step, timid and yet hasty, shuffle up the great echoing staircase; but as I stood still to listen, now the silence crept and stagnated around me without a human sound to break it. Nothing but the rain outside, the wet leaves against the window, not even the familiar pulse of a dock to soften the painful stillness. My thoughts were of the blackest. I concluded no better than that murder, cowardly and base, was in this house, which I, alone and unsupported, had come to beard, accuse, and defy in its own stronghold. But, fired with excitement, I feared nothing—thought of nothing but a possible spectacle of horror concealed within one of these unknown rooms, and of the question perpetually on my lips, Where is the Squire?

At length, as I listened, a foot sounded upon the stair, heavy, sometimes rapid, sometimes hesitating, the true step of guilt. I felt assured it was the son, the parricide! My heart beat with choking rapidity, a cold dew rose upon my forehead, and I turned to the door to face the new-comer with the fervour and zeal of an avenger. Now for the solution of this horrible mystery! And now a suspicious uncertain hand tries the door doubtfully—now it creaks upon its hinges—now—

My dearest friend! you cannot be half or a hundredth part so much disappointed as I was; for as the door creaked, and the guilty step advanced, and my heart beat with wild expectation, I awoke—

I am ashamed to confess the humiliating truth—awoke to find myself in my own crimson easy-chair, after dinner, with the fire glowing into the cosy twilight, and no dark avenue or lonely manor-house within a score of miles. Under the circumstances, I am grieved to add that the deepest mystery, a gloom which I fear I may never be able to penetrate, still hangs darkly over the ways of Witcherley, and the fate of the old Squire.

Had Joseph’s young master come only five minutes sooner—but fate is inexorable; and though I have made investigations through a primitive nook of country, and missed a train with resignation in the pursuit of knowledge, I have never fallen upon that rainy pathway across the field, nor come to the Witcherley Arms again.

The Secret Chamber

(1876)

I

Castle Gowrie is one of the most famous and interesting in all Scotland. It is a beautiful old house, to start with,—perfect in old feudal grandeur, with its clustered turrets and walls that could withstand an army,—its labyrinths, its hidden stairs, its long mysterious passages—passages that seem in many cases to lead to nothing, but of which no one can be too sure what they lead to. The front, with its fine gateway and flanking towers, is approached now by velvet lawns, and a peaceful, beautiful old avenue, with double rows of trees, like a cathedral; and the woods out of which these grey towers rise, look as soft and rich in foliage, if not so lofty in growth, as the groves of the South. But this softness of aspect is all new to the place,—that is, new within the century or two which count for but little in the history of a dwelling-place, some part of which, at least, has been standing since the days when the Saxon Athelings brought such share of the arts as belonged to them to solidify and regulate the original Celtic art which reared incised stones upon rude burial-places, and twined mystic knots on its crosses, before historic days. Even of this primitive decoration there are relics at Gowrie, where the twistings and twinings of Runic cords appear still on some bits of ancient wall, solid as rocks, and almost as everlasting. From these to the graceful French turrets, which recall many a grey château, what a long interval of years! But these are filled with stirring chronicles enough, besides the dim, not always decipherable records, which different developments of architecture have left on the old house. The Earls of Gowrie had been in the heat of every commotion that took place on or about the Highland line for more generations than any but a Celtic pen could record. Rebellions, revenges, insurrections, conspiracies, nothing in which blood was shed and lands lost, took place in Scotland, in which they had not had a share; and the annals of the house are very full, and not without many a stain. They had been a bold and vigorous race—with much evil in them, and some good; never insignificant, whatever else they might be. It could not be said, however, that they are remarkable nowadays. Since the first Stuart rising, known in Scotland as “the Fifteen,” they have not done much that has been worth recording; but yet their family history has always been of an unusual kind. The Randolphs could not be called eccentric in themselves: on the contrary, when you knew them, they were at bottom a respectable race, full of all the country-gentleman virtues; and yet their public career, such as it was, had been marked by the strange leaps and jerks of vicissitude. You would have said an impulsive, fanciful family—now making a grasp at some visionary advantage, now rushing into some wild speculation, now making a sudden sally into public life—but soon falling back into mediocrity, not able apparently, even when the impulse was purely selfish and mercenary, to keep it up. But this would not have been at all a true conception of the family character; their actual virtues were not of the imaginative order, and their freaks were a mystery to their friends. Nevertheless these freaks were what the general world was most aware of in the Randolph race. The late Earl had been a representative peer of Scotland (they had no English title), and had made quite a wonderful start, and for a year or two had seemed about to attain a very eminent place in Scotch affairs; but his ambition was found to have made use of some very equivocal modes of gaining influence, and he dropped accordingly at once and for ever from the political firmament. This was quite a common circumstance in the family. An apparently brilliant beginning, a discovery of evil means adopted for ambitious ends, a sudden subsidence, and the curious conclusion at the end of everything that this schemer, this unscrupulous speculator or politician, was a dull, good man after all—unambitious, contented, full of domestic kindness and benevolence. This family peculiarity made the history of the Randolphs a very strange one, broken by the oddest interruptions, and with no consistency in it. There was another circumstance, however, which attracted still more the wonder and observation of the public. For one who can appreciate such a recondite matter as family character, there are hundreds who are interested in a family secret, and this the house of Randolph possessed in perfection. It was a mystery which piqued the imagination and excited the interest of the entire country. The story went, that somewhere hid amid the massive walls and tortuous passages there was a secret chamber in Gowrie Castle. Everybody knew of its existence; but save the earl, his heir, and one other person, not of the family, but filling a confidential post in their service, no mortal knew where this mysterious hiding-place was. There had been countless guesses made at it, and expedients of all kinds invented to find it out. Every visitor who ever entered the old gateway, nay, even passing travellers who saw the turrets from the road, searched keenly for some trace of this mysterious chamber. But all guesses and researches were equally in vain.

I was about to say that no ghost-story I ever heard of has been so steadily and long believed. But this would be a mistake, for nobody knew even with any certainty that there was a ghost connected with it. A secret chamber was nothing wonderful in so old a house. No doubt they exist in many such old houses, and are always curious and interesting—strange relics, more moving than any history, of the time when a man was not safe in his own house, and when it might be necessary to secure a refuge beyond the reach of spies or traitors at a moment’s notice. Such a refuge was a necessity of life to a great medieval noble. The peculiarity about this secret chamber, however, was that some secret connected with the very existence of the family was always understood to be involved in it. It was not only the secret hiding-place for an emergency, a kind of historical possession presupposing the importance of his race, of which a man might be honestly proud; but there was something hidden in it of which assuredly the race could not be proud. It is wonderful how easily a family learns to pique itself upon any distinctive possession. A ghost is a sign of importance not to be despised; a haunted room is worth as much as a small farm to the complacency of the family that owns it. And no doubt the younger branches of the Gowrie family—the lightminded portion of the race—felt this, and were proud of their unfathomable secret, and felt a thrill of agreeable awe and piquant suggestion go through them, when they remembered the mysterious something which they did not know in their familiar home. That thrill ran through the entire circle of visitors, and children, and servants, when the Earl peremptorily forbade a projected improvement, or stopped a reckless exploration. They looked at each other with a pleasurable shiver. “Did you hear?” they said. “He will not let Lady Gowrie have that closet she wants so much in that bit of wall. He sent the workmen about their business before they could touch it, though the wall is twenty feet thick if it is an inch; ah!” said the visitors, looking at each other; and this lively suggestion sent tinglings of excitement to their very finger-points; but even to his wife, mourning the commodious closet she had intended, the Earl made no explanations. For anything she knew, it might be there, next to her room, this mysterious lurking-place; and it may be supposed that this suggestion conveyed to Lady Gowrie’s veins a thrill more keen and strange, perhaps too vivid to be pleasant. But she was not in the favoured or unfortunate number of those to whom the truth could be revealed.

I need not say what the different theories on the subject were. Some thought there had been a treacherous massacre there, and that the secret chamber was blocked by the skeletons of murdered guests,—a treachery no doubt covering the family with shame in its day, but so condoned by long softening of years as to have all the shame taken out of it. The Randolphs could not have felt their character affected by any such interesting historical record. They were not so morbidly sensitive. Some said, on the other hand, that Earl Robert, the wicked Earl, was shut up there in everlasting penance, playing cards with the devil for his soul. But it would have been too great a feather in the family cap to have thus got the devil, or even one of his angels, bottled up, as it were, and safely in hand, to make it possible that any lasting stigma could be connected with such a fact as this. What a thing it would be to know where to lay one’s hand upon the Prince of Darkness, and prove him once for all, cloven foot and everything else, to the confusion of gainsayers!

So this was not to be received as a satisfactory solution, nor could any other be suggested which was more to the purpose. The popular mind gave it up, and yet never gave it up; and still everybody who visits Gowrie, be it as a guest, be it as a tourist, be it only as a gazer from a passing carriage, or from the flying railway train which just glimpses its turrets in the distance, daily and yearly spends a certain amount of curiosity, wonderment, and conjecture about the Secret Chamber—the most piquant and undiscoverable wonder which has endured unguessed and undeciphered to modern times.

This was how the matter stood when young John Randolph, Lord Lindores, came of age. He was a young man of great character and energy, not like the usual Randolph strain—for, as we have said, the type of character common in this romantically-situated family, notwithstanding the erratic incidents common to them, was that of dullness and honesty, especially in their early days. But young Lindores was not so. He was honest and honourable, but not dull. He had gone through almost a remarkable course at school and at the university—not perhaps in quite the ordinary way of scholarship, but enough to attract men’s eyes to him. He had made more than one great speech at the Union. He was full of ambition, and force, and life, intending all sorts of great things, and meaning to make his position a stepping-stone to all that was excellent in public life. Not for him the country-gentleman existence which was congenial to his father. The idea of succeeding to the family honours and becoming a Scotch peer, either represented or representative, filled him with horror; and filial piety in his case was made warm by all the energy of personal hopes when he prayed that his father might live, if not for ever, yet longer than any Lord Gowrie had lived for the last century or two. He was as sure of his election for the county the next time there was a chance, as anybody can be certain of anything; and in the meantime he meant to travel, to go to America, to go no one could tell where, seeking for instruction and experience, as is the manner of high-spirited young men with parliamentary tendencies in the present day. In former times he would have gone “to the wars in the Hie Germanie,” or on a crusade to the Holy Land; but the days of the crusaders and of the soldiers of fortune being over, Lindores followed the fashion of his time. He had made all his arrangements for his tour, which his father did not oppose. On the contrary, Lord Gowrie encouraged all those plans, though with an air of melancholy indulgence which his son could not understand. “It will do you good,” he said, with a sigh. “Yes, yes, my boy; the best thing for you.” This, no doubt, was true enough; but there was an implied feeling that the young man would require something to do him good—that he would want the soothing of change and the gratification of his wishes, as one might speak of a convalescent or the victim of some calamity. This tone puzzled Lindores, who, though he thought it a fine thing to travel and acquire information, was as scornful of the idea of being done good to as is natural to any fine young fellow fresh from Oxford and the triumphs of the Union. But he reflected that the old school had its own way of treating things, and was satisfied. All was settled accordingly for this journey, before he came home to go through the ceremonial performances of the coming of age, the dinner of the tenantry, the speeches, the congratulations, his father’s banquet, his mother’s ball. It was in summer, and the country was as gay as all the entertainments that were to be given in his honour. His friend who was going to accompany him on his tour, as he had accompanied him through a considerable portion of his life—Almeric Ffarrington, a young man of the same aspirations—came up to Scotland with him for these festivities. And as they rushed through the night on the Great Northern Railway, in the intervals of two naps, they had a scrap of conversation as to these birthday glories. “It will be a bore, but it will not last long,” said Lindores. They were both of the opinion that anything that did not produce information or promote culture was a bore.

“But is there not a revelation to be made to you, among all the other things you have to go through?” said Ffarrington. “Have not you to be introduced to the secret chamber, and all that sort of thing? I should like to be of the party there, Lindores.”

“Ah,” said the heir, “I had forgotten that part of it,” which, however, was not the case. “Indeed I don’t know if I am to be told. Even family dogmas are shaken nowadays.”

“Oh, I should insist on that,” said Ffarrington, lightly. “It is not many who have the chance of paying such a visit—better than Home and all the mediums. I should insist upon that.”

“I have no reason to suppose that it has any connection with Home or the mediums,” said Lindores, slightly nettled. He was himself an esprit fort; but a mystery in one’s own family is not like vulgar mysteries. He liked it to be respected.

“Oh, no offence,” said his companion. “I have always thought that a railway train would be a great chance for the spirits. If one was to show suddenly in that vacant seat beside you, what a triumphant proof of their existence that would be! but they don’t take advantage of their opportunities.”

Lindores could not tell what it was that made him think at that moment of a portrait he had seen in a back room at the castle of old Earl Robert, the wicked Earl. It was a bad portrait—a daub—a copy made by an amateur of the genuine portrait, which, out of horror of Earl Robert and his wicked ways, had been removed by some intermediate lord from its place in the gallery. Lindores had never seen the original—nothing but this daub of a copy. Yet somehow this face occurred to him by some strange link of association—seemed to come into his eyes as his friend spoke. A slight shiver ran over him. It was strange. He made no reply to Ffarrington, but he set himself to think how it could be that the latent presence in his mind of some anticipation of this approaching disclosure, touched into life by his friend’s suggestion, should have called out of his memory a momentary realisation of the acknowledged magician of the family. This sentence is full of long words; but unfortunately long words are required in such a case. And the process was very simple when you traced it out. It was the clearest case of unconscious cerebration. He shut his eyes by way of securing privacy while he thought it out; and being tired, and not at all alarmed by his unconscious cerebration, before he opened them again fell fast asleep.

And his birthday, which was the day following his arrival at Glenlyon, was a very busy day. He had not time to think of anything but the immediate occupations of the moment. Public and private greetings, congratulations, offerings, poured upon him. The Gowries were popular in this generation, which was far from being usual in the family. Lady Gowrie was kind and generous, with that kindness which comes from the heart, and which is the only kindness likely to impress the keen-sighted popular judgment; and Lord Gowrie had but little of the equivocal reputation of his predecessors. They could be splendid now and then on great occasions, though in general they were homely enough; all which the public likes. It was a bore, Lindores said; but yet the young man did not dislike the honours, and the adulation, and all the hearty speeches and good wishes. It is sweet to a young man to feel himself the centre of all hopes. It seemed very reasonable to him—very natural—that he should be so, and that the farmers should feel a pride of anticipation in thinking of his future speeches in Parliament. He promised to them with the sincerest good faith that he would not disappoint their expectations—that he would feel their interest in him an additional spur. What so natural as that interest and these expectations? He was almost solemnised by his own position—so young, looked up to by so many people—so many hopes depending on him; and yet it was quite natural. His father, however, was still more solemnised than Lindores—and this was strange, to say the least. His face grew graver and graver as the day went on, till it almost seemed as if he were dissatisfied with his son’s popularity, or had some painful thought weighing on his mind. He was restless and eager for the termination of the dinner, and to get rid of his guests; and as soon as they were gone, showed an equal anxiety that his son should retire too. “Go to bed at once, as a favour to me,” Lord Gowrie said. “You will have a great deal of fatigue—to-morrow.” “You need not be afraid for me, sir,” said Lindores, half affronted; but he obeyed, being tired. He had not once thought of the secret to be disclosed to him, through all that long day. But when he woke suddenly with a start in the middle of the night, to find the candles all lighted in his room, and his father standing by his bedside, Lindores instantly thought of it, and in a moment felt that the leading event—the chief incident of all that had happened—was going to take place now.

II

Lord Gowrie was very grave, and very pale. He was standing with his hand on his son’s shoulder to wake him; his dress was unchanged from the moment they had parted. And the sight of this formal costume was very bewildering to the young man as he started up in his bed. But next moment he seemed to know exactly how it was, and, more than that, to have known it all his life. Explanation seemed unnecessary. At any other moment, in any other place, a man would be startled to be suddenly woke up in the middle of the night. But Lindores had no such feeling; he did not even ask a question, but sprang up, and fixed his eyes, taking in all the strange circumstances, on his father’s face.

“Get up, my boy,” said Lord Gowrie, “and dress as quickly as you can; it is full time. I have lighted your candles, and your things are all ready. You have had a good long sleep.”

Even now he did not ask, What is it? as under any other circumstances he would have done. He got up without a word, with an impulse of nervous speed and rapidity of movement such as only excitement can give, and dressed himself, his father helping him silently. It was a curious scene: the room gleaming with lights, the silence, the hurried toilet, the stillness of deep night all around. The house, though so full, and with the echoes of festivity but just over, was quiet as if there was not a creature within it—more quiet, indeed, for the stillness of vacancy is not half so impressive as the stillness of hushed and slumbering life.

Lord Gowrie went to the table when this first step was over, and poured out a glass of wine from a bottle which stood there,—a rich, golden-coloured, perfumy wine, which sent its scent through the room. “You will want all your strength,” he said; “take this before you go. It is the famous Imperial Tokay; there is only a little left, and you will want all your strength.”

Lindores took the wine; he had never drunk any like it before, and the peculiar fragrance remained in his mind, as perfumes so often do, with a whole world of association in them. His father’s eyes dwelt upon him with a melancholy sympathy. “You are going to encounter the greatest trial of your life,” he said; and taking the young man’s hand into his, felt his pulse. “It is quick, but it is quite firm, and you have had a good long sleep.” Then he did what it needs a great deal of pressure to induce an Englishman to do,—he kissed his son on the cheek. “God bless you!” he said, faltering. “Come, now, everything is ready, Lindores.”

He took up in his hand a small lamp, which he had apparently brought with him, and led the way. By this time Lindores began to feel himself again, and to wake to the consciousness of all his own superiorities and enlightenments. The simple sense that he was one of the members of a family with a mystery, and that the moment of his personal encounter with this special power of darkness had come, had been the first thrilling, overwhelming thought. But now as he followed his father, Lindores began to remember that he himself was not altogether like other men; that there was that in him which would make it natural that he should throw some light, hitherto unthought of, upon this carefully-preserved darkness. What secret even there might be in it—secret of hereditary tendency, of psychic force, of mental conformation, or of some curious combination of circumstances at once more and less potent than these—it was for him to find out. He gathered all his forces about him, reminded himself of modern enlightenment, and bade his nerves be steel to all vulgar horrors. He, too, felt his own pulse as he followed his father. To spend the night perhaps amongst the skeletons of that old-world massacre, and to repent the sins of his ancestors—to be brought within the range of some optical illusion believed in hitherto by all the generations, and which, no doubt, was of a startling kind, or his father would not look so serious,—any of these he felt himself quite strong to encounter. His heart and spirit rose. A young man has but seldom the opportunity of distinguishing himself so early in his career; and his was such a chance as occurs to very few. No doubt it was something that would be extremely trying to the nerves and imagination. He called up all his powers to vanquish both. And along with this call upon himself to exertion, there was the less serious impulse of curiosity: he would see at last what the Secret Chamber was, where it was, how it fitted into the labyrinths of the old house. This he tried to put in its due place as a most interesting object. He said to himself that he would willingly have gone a long journey at any time to be present at such an exploration; and there is no doubt that in other circumstances a secret chamber, with probably some unthought-of historical interest in it, would have been a very fascinating discovery. He tried very hard to excite himself about this; but it was curious how fictitious he felt the interest, and how conscious he was that it was an effort to feel any curiosity at all on the subject. The fact was, that the Secret Chamber was entirely secondary—thrown back, as all accessories are, by a more pressing interest. The overpowering thought of what was in it drove aside all healthy, natural curiosity about itself.

It must not be supposed, however, that the father and son had a long way to go to have time for all these thoughts. Thoughts travel at lightning speed, and there was abundant leisure for this between the time they had left the door of Lindores’ room and gone down the corridor, no further off than to Lord Gowrie’s own chamber, naturally one of the chief rooms of the house. Nearly opposite this, a few steps further on, was a little neglected room devoted to lumber, with which Lindores had been familiar all his life. Why this nest of old rubbish, dust, and cob-webs should be so near the bedroom of the head of the house had been a matter of surprise to many people—to the guests who saw it while exploring, and to each new servant in succession who planned an attack upon its ancient stores, scandalised by finding it to have been neglected by their predecessors. All their attempts to clear it out had, however, been resisted, nobody could tell how, or indeed thought it worth while to inquire. As for Lindores, he had been used to the place from his childhood, and therefore accepted it as the most natural thing in the world. He had been in and out a hundred times in his play. And it was here, he remembered suddenly, that he had seen the bad picture of Earl Robert which had so curiously come into his eyes on his journeying here, by a mental movement which he had identified at once as unconscious cerebration. The first feeling in his mind, as his father went to the open door of this lumber-room, was a mixture of amusement and surprise. What was he going to pick up there? some old pentacle, some amulet or scrap of antiquated magic to act as armour against the evil one? But Lord Gowrie, going on and setting down the lamp on the table, turned round upon his son with a face of agitation and pain which barred all further amusement: he grasped him by the hand, crushing it between his own. “Now my boy, my dear son,” he said, in tones that were scarcely audible. His countenance was full of the dreary pain of a looker-on—one who has no share in the excitement of personal danger, but has the more terrible part of watching those who are in deadliest peril. He was a powerful man, and his large form shook with emotion; great beads of moisture stood upon his forehead. An old sword with a cross handle lay upon a dusty chair among other dusty and battered relics. “Take this with you,” he said, in the same inaudible, breathless way—whether as a weapon, whether as a religious symbol, Lindores could not guess. The young man took it mechanically. His father pushed open a door which it seemed to him he had never seen before, and led him into another vaulted chamber. Here even the limited powers of speech Lord Gowrie had retained seemed to forsake him, and his voice became a mere hoarse murmur in his throat. For want of speech he pointed to another door in the further corner of this small vacant room, gave him to understand by a gesture that he was to knock there, and then went back into the lumber-room. The door into this was left open, and a faint glimmer of the lamp shed light into this little intermediate place—this debatable land between the seen and the unseen. In spite of himself, Lindores’ heart began to beat. He made a breathless pause, feeling his head go round. He held the old sword in his hand, not knowing what it was. Then, summoning all his courage, he went forward and knocked at the closed door. His knock was not loud, but it seemed to echo all over the silent house. Would everybody hear and wake, and rush to see what had happened? This caprice of imagination seized upon him, ousting all the firmer thoughts, the steadfast calm of mind with which he ought to have encountered the mystery. Would they all rush in, in wild déshabille, in terror and dismay, before the door opened? How long it was of opening! He touched the panel with his hand again.—This time there was no delay. In a moment, as if thrown suddenly open by some one within, the door moved. It opened just wide enough to let him enter, stopping half-way as if some one invisible held it, wide enough for welcome, but no more. Lindores stepped across the threshold with a beating heart. What was he about to see? the skeletons of the murdered victims? a ghostly charnel-house full of bloody traces of crime? He seemed to be hurried and pushed in as he made that step. What was this world of mystery into which he was plunged—what was it he saw?

He saw—nothing—except what was agreeable enough to behold,—an antiquated room hung with tapestry, very old tapestry of rude design, its colours faded into softness and harmony; between its folds here and there a panel of carved wood, rude too in design, with traces of half-worn gilding; a table covered with strange instruments, parchments, chemical tubes, and curious machinery, all with a quaintness of form and dimness of material that spoke of age. A heavy old velvet cover, thick with embroidery faded almost out of all colour, was on the table; on the wall above it, something that looked like a very old Venetian mirror, the glass so dim and crusted that it scarcely reflected at all, on the floor an old soft Persian carpet, worn into a vague blending of all colours. This was all that he thought he saw. His heart, which had been thumping so loud as almost to choke him, stopped that tremendous upward and downward motion like a steam piston; and he grew calm. Perfectly still, dim, unoccupied: yet not so dim either; there was no apparent source of light, no windows, curtains of tapestry drawn everywhere—no lamp visible, no fire—and yet a kind of strange light which made everything quite clear. He looked round, trying to smile at his terrors, trying to say to himself that it was the most curious place he had ever seen—that he must show Ffarrington some of that tapestry—that he must really bring away a panel of that carving,—when he suddenly saw that the door was shut by which he had entered—nay, more than shut, undiscernible, covered like all the rest of the walls by that strange tapestry. At this his heart began to beat again in spite of him. He looked round once more, and woke up to more vivid being with a sudden start. Had his eyes been incapable of vision on his first entrance? Unoccupied? Who was that in the great chair?

It seemed to Lindores that he had seen neither the chair nor the man when he came in. There they were, however, solid and unmistakable; the chair carved like the panels, the man seated in front of the table. He looked at Lindores with a calm and open gaze, inspecting him. The young man’s heart seemed in his throat fluttering like a bird, but he was brave, and his mind made one final effort to break this spell. He tried to speak, labouring with a voice that would not sound, and with lips too parched to form a word. “I see how it is,” was what he wanted to say. It was Earl Robert’s face that was looking at him; and startled as he was, he dragged forth his philosophy to support him. What could it be but optical delusions, unconscious cerebration, occult seizure by the impressed and struggling mind of this one countenance? But he could not hear himself speak any word as he stood convulsed, struggling with dry lips and choking voice.

The Appearance smiled, as if knowing his thoughts—not unkindly, not malignly—with a certain amusement mingled with scorn. Then he spoke, and the sound seemed to breathe through the room not like any voice that Lindores had ever heard, a kind of utterance of the place, like the rustle of the air or the ripple of the sea. “You will learn better to-night: this is no phantom of your brain; it is I.”

“In God’s name,” cried the young man in his soul; he did not know whether the words ever got into the air or not, if there was any air;—“in God’s name, who are you?”

The figure rose as if coming to him to reply; and Lindores, overcome by the apparent approach, struggled into utterance. A cry came from him—he heard it this time—and even in his extremity felt a pang the more to hear the terror in his own voice. But he did not flinch, he stood desperate, all his strength concentrated in the act; he neither turned nor recoiled. Vaguely gleaming through his mind came the thought that to be thus brought in contact with the unseen was the experiment to be most desired on earth, the final settlement of a hundred questions; but his faculties were not sufficiently under command to entertain it. He only stood firm, that was all.

And the figure did not approach him; after a moment it subsided back again into the chair—subsided, for no sound, not the faintest, accompanied its movements. It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey, the features those of the picture—a familiar face, more or less like all the Randolphs, but with an air of domination and power altogether unlike that of the race. He was dressed in a long robe of dark colour, embroidered with strange lines and angles. There was nothing repellent or terrible in his air—nothing except the noiselessness, the calm, the absolute stillness, which was as much in the place as in him, to keep up the involuntary trembling of the beholder. His expression was full of dignity and thoughtfulness, and not malignant or unkind. He might have been the kindly patriarch of the house, watching over its fortunes in a seclusion that he had chosen. The pulses that had been beating in Lindores were stilled. What was his panic for? A gleam even of self-ridicule took possession of him, to be standing there like an absurd hero of antiquated romance with the rusty, dusty sword—good for nothing, surely not adapted for use against this noble old magician—in his hand—

“You are right,” said the voice, once more answering his thoughts; “what could you do with that sword against me, young Lindores? Put it by. Why should my children meet me like an enemy? You are my flesh and blood. Give me your hand.”

A shiver ran through the young man’s frame. The hand that was held out to him was large and shapely and white, with a straight line across the palm—a family token upon which the Randolphs prided themselves—a friendly hand; and the face smiled upon him, fixing him with those calm, profound, blue eyes. “Come,” said the voice. The word seemed to fill the place, melting upon him from every corner, whispering round him with softest persuasion. He was lulled and calmed in spite of himself. Spirit or no spirit, why should not he accept this proferred courtesy? What harm could come of it? The chief thing that retained him was the dragging of the old sword, heavy and useless, which he held mechanically, but which some internal feeling—he could not tell what—prevented him from putting down. Superstitition, was it?

“Yes, that is superstition,” said his ancestor, serenely; “put it down and come.”

“You know my thoughts,” said Lindores; “I did not speak.”

“Your mind spoke, and spoke justly. Put down that emblem of brute force and superstition together. Here it is the intelligence that is supreme. Come.”

Lindores stood doubtful. He was calm; the power of thought was restored to him. If this benevolent venerable patriarch was all he seemed, why his father’s terror? why the secrecy in which his being was involved? His own mind, though calm, did not seem to act in the usual way. Thoughts seemed to be driven across it as by a wind. One of these came to him suddenly now—

“How there looked him in the face,

An angel beautiful and bright,

And how he knew it was a fiend.”

The words were not ended, when Earl Robert replied suddenly with impatience in his voice, “Fiends are of the fancy of men; like angels and other follies. I am your father. You know me; and you are mine, Lindores. I have power beyond what you can understand; but I want flesh and blood to reign and to enjoy. Come, Lindores!”

He put out his other hand. The action, the look, were those of kindness, almost of longing, and the face was familiar, the voice was that of the race. Supernatural! was it supernatural that this man should live here shut up for ages? and why? and how? Was there any explanation of it? The young man’s brain began to reel. He could not tell which was real—the life he had left half an hour ago, or this. He tried to look round him, but could not; his eyes were caught by those other kindred eyes, which seemed to dilate and deepen as he looked at them, and drew him with a strange compulsion. He felt himself yielding, swaying towards the strange being who thus invited him. What might happen if he yielded? And he could not turn away, he could not tear himself from the fascination of those eyes. With a sudden strange impulse which was half despair and half a bewildering half-conscious desire to try one potency against another, he thrust forward the cross of the old sword between him and those appealing hands. “In the name of God!” he said.

Lindores never could tell whether it was that he himself grew faint, and that the dimness of swooning came into his eyes after this violence and strain of emotion, or if it was his spell that worked. But there was an instantaneous change. Everything swam around him for the moment, a giddiness and blindness seized him, and he saw nothing but the vague outlines of the room, empty as when he entered it. But gradually his consciousness came back, and he found himself standing on the same spot as before, clutching the old sword, and gradually, as though a dream, recognised the same figure emerging out of the mist which—was it solely in his own eyes?—had enveloped everything. But it was no longer in the same attitude. The hands which had been stretched out to him were busy now with some of the strange instruments on the table, moving about, now in the action of writing, now as if managing the keys of a telegraph. Lindores felt that his brain was all atwist and set wrong; but he was still a human being of his century. He thought of the telegraph with a keen thrill of curiosity in the midst of his reviving sensations. What communication was this which was going on before his eyes? The magician worked on. He had his face turned towards his victim, but his hands moved with unceasing activity. And Lindores, as he grew accustomed to the position, began to weary—to feel like a neglected suitor waiting for an audience. To be wound up to such a strain of feeling, then left to wait, was intolerable; impatience seized upon him. What circumstances can exist, however horrible, in which a human being will not feel impatience? He made a great many efforts to speak before he could succeed. It seemed to him that his body felt more fear than he did—that his muscles were contracted, his throat parched, his tongue refusing its office, although his mind was unaffected and undismayed. At last he found an utterance in spite of all resistance of his flesh and blood.

“Who are you?” he said hoarsely. “You that live here and oppress this house?”

The vision raised its eyes full upon him, with again that strange shadow of a smile, mocking yet not unkind. “Do you remember me,” he said, “on your journey here?”

“That was—a delusion.” The young man gasped for breath.

“More like that you are a delusion. You have lasted but one-and-twenty years, and I—for centuries.”

“How? For centuries—and why? Answer me—are you man or demon?” cried Lindores, tearing the words as he felt out of his own throat. “Are you living or dead?”

The magician looked at him with the same intense gaze as before. “Be on my side, and you shall know everything, Lindores. I want one of my own race. Others I could have in plenty; but I want you. A Randolph, a Randolph! and you. Dead! do I seem dead? You shall have everything—more than dreams can give—if you will be on my side.”

Can he give what he has not? was the thought that ran through the mind of Lindores. But he could not speak it. Something that choked and stifled him was in his throat.

“Can I give what I have not? I have everything—power, the one thing worth having; and you shall have more than power, for you are young—my son! Lindores!”

To argue was natural, and gave the young man strength. “Is this life,” he said, “here? What is all your power worth—here? To sit for ages, and make a race unhappy?”

A momentary convulsion came across the still face. “You scorn me”, he cried, with an appearance of emotion, “because you do not understand how I move the world. Power! ’Tis more than fancy can grasp. And you shall have it!” said the wizard, with what looked like a show of enthusiasm. He seemed to come nearer, to grow larger. He put forth his hand again, this time so close that it seemed impossible to escape. And a crowd of wishes seemed to rush upon the mind of Lindores. What harm to try if this might be true? To try what it meant—perhaps nothing, delusions, vain show, and then there could be no harm; or perhaps there was knowledge to be had, which was power. Try, try, try! the air buzzed about him. The room seemed full of voices urging him. His bodily frame rose into a tremendous whirl of excitement, his veins seemed to swell to bursting, his lips seemed to force a yes, in spite of him, quivering as they came apart. The hiss of the s seemed in his ears. He changed it into the name which was a spell too, and cried, “Help me, God!” not knowing why.

Then there came another pause—he felt as if he had been dropped from something that had held him, and had fallen, and was faint. The excitement had been more than he could bear. Once more everything swam around him, and he did not know where he was. Had he escaped altogether? was the first waking wonder of consciousness in his mind. But when he could think and see again, he was still in the same spot, surrounded by the old curtains and the carved panels—but alone. He felt, too, that he was able to move, but the strangest dual consciousness was in him throughout all the rest of his trial. His body felt to him as a frightened horse feels to a traveller at night—a thing separate from him, more frightened than he was—starting aside at every step, seeing more than its master. His limbs shook with fear and weakness, almost refusing to obey the action of his will, trembling under him with jerks aside when he compelled himself to move. The hair stood upright on his head—every finger trembled as with palsy—his lips, his eyelids, quivered with nervous agitation. But his mind was strong, stimulated to a desperate calm. He dragged himself round the room, he crossed the very spot where the magician had been—all was vacant, silent, clear. Had he vanquished the enemy? This thought came into his mind with an involuntary triumph. The old strain of feeling came back. Such efforts might be produced, perhaps, only by imagination, by excitement, by delusion—

Lindores looked up, by a sudden attraction he could not tell what: and the blood suddenly froze in his veins that had been so boiling and fermenting. Some one was looking at him from the old mirror on the wall. A face not human and life-like, like that of the inhabitant of this place, but ghostly and terrible, like one of the dead; and while he looked, a crowd of other faces came behind, all looking at him, some mournfully, some with a menace in their terrible eyes. The mirror did not change, but within its small dim space seemed to contain an innumerable company, crowded above and below, all with one gaze at him. His lips dropped apart with a gasp of horror. More and more and more! He was standing close by the table when this crowd came. Then all at once there was laid upon him a cold hand. He turned; close to his side, brushing him with his robe, holding him fast by the arm, sat Earl Robert in his great chair. A shriek came from the young man’s lips. He seemed to hear it echoing away into unfathomable distance. The cold touch penetrated to his very soul.

“Do you try spells upon me, Lindores? That is a tool of the past. You shall have something better to work with. And are you so sure of whom you call upon? If there is such a one, why should He help you who never called on Him before?”

Lindores could not tell if these words were spoken; it was a communication rapid as the thoughts in the mind. And he felt as if something answered that was not all himself. He seemed to stand passive and hear the argument. “Does God reckon with a man in trouble, whether he has ever called to Him before? I call now” (now he felt it was himself that said): “go, evil spirit!—go, dead and cursed!—go, in the name of God!”

He felt himself flung violently against the wall. A faint laugh, stifled in the throat, and followed by a groan, rolled round the room; the old curtains seemed to open here and there, and flutter, as if with comings and goings. Lindores leaned with his back against the wall, and all his senses restored to him. He felt blood trickle down his neck; and in this contact once more with the physical, his body, in its madness of fright, grew manageable. For the first time he felt wholly master of himself. Though the magician was standing in his place, a great, majestic, appalling figure, he did not shrink. “Liar!” he cried, in a voice that rang and echoed as in natural air—“clinging to miserable life like a worm—like a reptile; promising all things, having nothing, but this den, unvisited by the light of day. Is this your power—your superiority to men who die? is it for this that you oppress a race, and make a house unhappy? I vow, in God’s name, your reign is over! You and your secret shall last no more.”

There was no reply. But Lindores felt his terrible ancestor’s eyes getting once more that mesmeric mastery over him which had already almost overcome his powers. He must withdraw his own, or perish. He had a human horror of turning his back upon that watchful adversary: to face him seemed the only safety; but to face him was to be conquered. Slowly, with a pang indescribable, he tore himself from that gaze: it seemed to drag his eyes out of their sockets, his heart out of his bosom. Resolutely, with the daring of desperation, he turned round to the spot where he entered—the spot where no door was,—hearing already in anticipation the step after him—feeling the grip that would crush and smother his exhausted life—but too desperate to care.

III

How wonderful is the blue dawning of the new day before the sun! not rosy-fingered, like that Aurora of the Greeks who comes later with all her wealth; but still, dreamy, wonderful, stealing out of the unseen, abashed by the solemnity of the new birth. When anxious watchers see that first brightness come stealing upon the waiting skies, what mingled relief and renewal of misery is in it! another long day to toil through—yet another sad night over! Lord Gowrie sat among the dust and cobwebs, his lamp flaring idly into the blue morning. He had heard his son’s human voice, though nothing more; and he expected to have him brought out by invisible hands, as had happened to himself, and left lying in long deathly swoon outside that mystic door. This was how it had happened to heir after heir, as told from father to son, one after another, as the secret came down. One or two bearers of the name Lindores had never recovered; most of them had been saddened and subdued for life. He remembered sadly the freshness of existence which had never come back to himself; the hopes that had never blossomed again; the assurance with which never more he had been able to go about the world. And now his son would be as himself—the glory gone out of his living—his ambitions, his aspirations wrecked. He had not been endowed as his boy was—he had been a plain, honest man, and nothing more; but experience and life had given him wisdom enough to smile by times at the coquetries of mind in which Lindores indulged. Were they all over now, those freaks of young intelligence, those enthusiasms of the soul? The curse of the house had come upon him—the magnetism of that strange presence, ever living, ever watchful, present in all the family history. His heart was sore for his son; and yet along with this there was a certain consolation to him in having henceforward a partner in the secret—some one to whom he could talk of it as he had not been able to talk since his own father died. Almost all the mental struggles which Gowrie had known had been connected with this mystery; and he had been obliged to hide them in his bosom—to conceal them even when they rent him in two. Now he had a partner in his trouble. This was what he was thinking as he sat through the night. How slowly the moments passed! He was not aware of the daylight coming in. After a while even thought got suspended in listening. Was not the time nearly over? He rose and began to pace about the encumbered space, which was but a step or two in extent. There was an old cupboard in the wall, in which there were restoratives—pungent essences and cordials, and fresh water which he had himself brought—everything was ready; presently the ghastly body of his boy, half dead, would be thrust forth into his care.

But this was not how it happened. While he waited, so intent that his whole frame seemed to be capable of hearing, he heard the closing of the door, boldly shut with a sound that rose in muffled echoes through the house, and Lindores himself appeared, ghastly indeed as a dead man, but walking upright and firmly, the lines of his face drawn, and his eyes staring. Lord Gowrie uttered a cry. He was more alarmed by this unexpected return than by the helpless prostration of the swoon which he had expected. He recoiled from his son as if he too had been a spirit. “Lindores!” he cried; was it Lindores, or some one else in his place? The boy seemed as if he did not see him. He went straight forward to where the water stood on the dusty table, and took a great draught, then turned to the door. “Lindores!” said his father, in miserable anxiety; “don’t you know me?” Even then the young man only half looked at him, and put out a hand almost as cold as the hand that had clutched himself in the Secret Chamber; a faint smile came upon his face. “Don’t stay here,” he whispered; “come! come!”

Lord Gowrie drew his son’s arm within his own, and felt the thrill through and through him of nerves strained beyond mortal strength. He could scarcely keep up with him as he stalked along the corridor to his room, stumbling as if he could not see, yet swift as an arrow. When they reached his room he turned and closed and locked the door, then laughed as he staggered to the bed. “That will not keep him out, will it?” he said.

“Lindores,” said his father, “I expected to find you unconscious. I am almost more frightened to find you like this. I need not ask if you have seen him—”

“Oh, I have seen him. The old liar! Father, promise to expose him, to turn him out—promise to clear out that accursed old nest! It is our own fault. Why have we left such a place shut out from the eye of day? Isn’t there something in the Bible about those who do evil hating the light?”

“Lindores! you don’t often quote the Bible.”

“No, I suppose not; but there is more truth in—many things than we thought.”

“Lie down,” said the anxious father. “Take some of this wine—try to sleep.”

“Take it away; give me no more of that devil’s drink. Talk to me—that’s better. Did you go through it all the same, poor papa?—and hold me fast. You are warm—you are honest!” he cried. He put forth his hands over his father’s, warming them with the contact. He put his cheek like a child against his father’s arm. He gave a faint laugh, with the tears in his eyes. “Warm and honest,” he repeated. “Kind flesh and blood! and did you go through it all the same?”

“My boy!” cried the father, feeling his heart glow and swell over the son who had been parted from him for years by that development of young manhood and ripening intellect which so often severs and loosens the ties of home. Lord Gowrie had felt that Lindores half despised his simple mind and duller imagination; but this childlike clinging overcame him, and tears stood in his eyes. “I fainted, I suppose. I never knew how it ended. They made what they liked of me. But you, my brave boy, you came out of your own will.”

Lindores shivered. “I fled!” he said. “No honour in that. I had not courage to face him longer. I will tell you by-and-by. But I want to know about you.”

What an ease it was to the father to speak! For years and years this had been shut up in his breast. It had made him lonely in the midst of his friends.

“Thank God,” he said, “that I can speak to you, Lindores. Often and often I have been tempted to tell your mother. But why should I make her miserable? She knows there is something; she knows when I see him, but she knows no more.”

“When you see him?” Lindores raised himself, with a return of his first ghastly look, in his bed. Then he raised his clenched fist wildly, and shook it in the air. “Vile devil, coward, deceiver!”

“Oh hush, hush, hush, Lindores! God help us! what troubles you may bring!”

“And God help me, whatever troubles I bring,” said the young man. “I defy him, father. An accursed being like that must be less, not more powerful, than we are—with God to back us. Only stand by me: stand by me—”

“Hush, Lindores! You don’t feel it yet—never to get out of hearing of him all your life! He will make you pay for it—if not now, after; when you remember he is there; whatever happens, knowing everything! But I hope it will not be so bad with you as with me, my poor boy. God help you indeed if it is, for you have more imagination and more mind. I am able to forget him sometimes when I am occupied—when in the hunting-field, going across country. But you are not a hunting man, my poor boy,” said Lord Gowrie, with a curious mixture of a regret, which was less serious than the other. Then he lowered his voice. “Lindores, this is what has happened to me since the moment I gave him my hand.”

“I did not give him my hand.”

“You did not give him your hand? God bless you, my boy! You stood out?” he cried, with tears again rushing to his eyes; “and they say—they say—but I don’t know if there is any truth in it.” Lord Gowrie got up from his son’s side, and walked up and down with excited steps. “If there should be truth in it! Many people think the whole thing is a fancy. If there should be truth in it, Lindores!”

“In what, father?”

“They say, if he is once resisted his power is broken—once refused. You could stand against him—you! Forgive me, my boy, as I hope God will forgive me, to have thought so little of His best gifts,” cried Lord Gowrie, coming back with wet eyes; and stooping, he kissed his son’s hand. “I thought you would be more shaken by being more mind than body,” he said, humbly. “I thought if I could but have saved you from the trial; and you are the conqueror!”

“Am I the conqueror? I think all my bones are broken, father—out of their sockets,” said the young man, in a low voice. “I think I shall go to sleep.”

“Yes, rest, my boy. It is the best thing for you,” said the father, though with a pang of momentary disappointment.

Lindores fell back upon the pillow. He was so pale that there were moments when the anxious watcher thought him not sleeping but dead. He put his hand out feebly, and grasped his father’s hand. “Warm—honest,” he said, with a feeble smile about his lips, and fell asleep.

•    •    •    •

The daylight was full in the room, breaking through shutters and curtains and mocking at the lamp that still flared on the table. It seemed an emblem of the disorders, mental and material, of this strange night; and, as such, it affected the plain imagination of Lord Gowrie, who would have fain got up to extinguish it, and whose mind returned again and again, in spite of him, to this symptom of disturbance. By-and-by, when Lindores’ grasp relaxed, and he got his hand free, he got up from his son’s bedside, and put out the lamp, putting it carefully out of the way. With equal care he put away the wine from the table, and gave the room its ordinary aspect, softly opening a window to let in the fresh air of the morning. The park lay fresh in the early sunshine, still, except for the twittering of the birds, refreshed with dews, and shining in that soft radiance of the morning which is over before mortal cares are stirring. Never, perhaps, had Gowrie looked out upon the beautiful world around his house without a thought of the weird existence which was going on so near to him, which had gone on for centuries, shut up out of sight of the sunshine. The Secret Chamber had been present with him since ever he saw it. He had never been able to get free of the spell of it. He had felt himself watched, surrounded, spied upon, day after day, since he was of the age of Lindores, and that was thirty years ago. He turned it all over in his mind, as he stood there and his son slept. It had been on his lips to tell it all to his boy, who had now come to inherit the enlightenment of his race. And it was a disappointment to him to have it all forced back again, and silence imposed upon him once more. Would he care to hear it when he woke? would he not rather, as Lord Gowrie remembered to have done himself, thrust the thought as far as he could away from him, and endeavour to forget for the moment—until the time came when he would not be permitted to forget? He had been like that himself, he recollected now. He had not wished to hear his own father’s tale. “I remember,” he said to himself; “I remember”—turning over everything in his mind—if Lindores might only be willing to hear the story when he woke! But then he himself had not been willing when he was Lindores, and he could understand his son, and could not blame him; but it would be a disappointment. He was thinking this when he heard Lindores’ voice calling him. He went back hastily to his bedside. It was strange to see him in his evening dress with his worn face, in the fresh light of the morning, which poured in at every crevice. “Does my mother know?” said Lindores; “what will she think?”

“She knows something; she knows you have some trial to go through. Most likely she will be praying for us both; that’s the way of women,” said Lord Gowrie, with the tremulous tenderness which comes into a man’s voice sometimes when he speaks of a good wife. “I’ll go and ease her mind, and tell her all is well over—”

“Not yet. Tell me first,” said the young man, putting his hand upon his father’s arm.

What an ease it was! “I was not so good to my father,” he thought to himself, with sudden penitence for the long-past, long-forgotten fault, which, indeed, he had never realised as a fault before. And then he told his son what had been the story of his life—how he had scarcely ever sat alone without feeling, from some corner of the room, from behind some curtain, those eyes upon him; and how, in the difficulties of his life, that secret inhabitant of the house had been present, sitting by him and advising him. “Whenever there has been anything to do: when there has been a question between two ways, all in a moment I have seen him by me: I feel when he is coming. It does not matter where I am—here or anywhere—as soon as ever there is a question of family business; and always he persuades me to the wrong way, Lindores. Sometimes I yield to him, how can I help it? He makes everything so clear; he makes wrong seem right. If I have done unjust things in my day—”

“You have not, father.”

“I have: there were these Highland people I turned out. I did not mean to do it, Lindores; but he showed me that it would be better for the family. And my poor sister that married Tweedside and was wretched all her life. It was his doing, that marriage; he said she would be rich, and so she was, poor thing, poor thing! and died of it. And old Macalister’s lease–Lindores, Lindores! when there is any business it makes my heart sick. I know he will come, and advise wrong, and tell me—something I will repent after.”

“The thing to do is to decide beforehand, that, good or bad, you will not take his advice.”

Lord Gowrie shivered. “I am not strong like you, or clever; I cannot resist. Sometimes I repent in time and don’t do it; and then! But for your mother and you children, there is many a day I would not have given a farthing for my life.”

“Father,” said Lindores, springing from his bed, “two of us together can do many things. Give me your word to clear out this cursed den of darkness this very day.”

“Lindores, hush, hush, for the sake of heaven!”

“I will not, for the sake of heaven! Throw it open—let everybody who likes see it—make an end of the secret—pull down everything, curtains, walls. What do you say?—sprinkle holy water? Are you laughing at me?”

“I did not speak,” said Earl Gowrie, growing very pale, and grasping his son’s arm with both his hands. “Hush, boy; do you think he does not hear?”

And then there was a low laugh close to them—so close that both shrank; a laugh no louder than a breath.

“Did you laugh—father?”

“No, Lindores.” Lord Gowrie had his eyes fixed. He was as pale as the dead. He held his son tight for a moment; then his gaze and his grasp relaxed, and he fell back feebly in a chair.

“You see!” he said; “whatever we do it will be the same; we are under his power.”

And then there ensued the blank pause with which baffled men confront a hopeless situation. But at that moment the first faint stirrings of the house—a window being opened, a bar undone, a movement of feet, and subdued voices—became audible in the stillness of the morning. Lord Gowrie roused himself at once. “We must not be found like this,” he said; “we must not show how we have spent the night. It is over, thank God! and oh, my boy, forgive me! I am thankful there are two of us to bear it; it makes the burden lighter—though I ask your pardon humbly for saying so. I would have saved you if I could, Lindores.”

“I don’t wish to have been saved; but I will not bear it. I will end it,” the young man said, with an oath out of which his emotion took all profanity. His father said, “Hush, hush.” With a look of terror and pain, he left him; and yet there was a thrill of tender pride in his mind. How brave the boy was! even after he had been there. Could it be that this would all come to nothing, as every other attempt to resist had done before?

•    •    •    •

“I suppose you know all about it now, Lindores,” said his friend Ffarrington, after breakfast; “luckily for us who are going over the house. What a glorious old place it is!”

“I don’t think that Lindores enjoys the glorious old place to-day,” said another of the guests under his breath. “How pale he is! He doesn’t look as if he had slept.”

“I will take you over every nook where I have ever been,” said Lindores. He looked at his father with almost command in his eyes. “Come with me, all of you. We shall have no more secrets here.”

“Are you mad?” said his father in his ear.

“Never mind,” cried the young man. “Oh, trust me; I will do it with judgment. Is everybody ready?” There was an excitement about him that half frightened, half roused the party. They all rose, eager, yet doubtful. His mother came to him and took his arm.

“Lindores! you will do nothing to vex your father; don’t make him unhappy. I don’t know your secrets, you two; but look, he has enough to bear.”

“I want you to know our secrets, mother. Why should we have secrets from you?”

“Why, indeed?” she said, with tears in her eyes. “But, Lindores, my dearest boy, don’t make it worse for him.”

“I give you my word, I will be wary,” he said; and she left him to go to his father, who followed the party, with an anxious look upon his face.

“Are you coming, too?” he asked.

“I? No; I will not go: but trust him—trust the boy, John.”

“He can do nothing; he will not be able to do anything,” he said.

And thus the guests set out on their round—the son in advance, excited and tremulous, the father anxious and watchful behind. They began in the usual way, with the old state-rooms and picture-gallery; and in a short time the party had half forgotten that there was anything unusual in the inspection. When, however, they were half-way down the gallery, Lindores stopped short with an air of wonder. “You have had it put back then?” he said. He was standing in front of the vacant space where Earl Robert’s portrait ought to have been. “What is it?” they all cried, crowding upon him, ready for any marvel. But as there was nothing to be seen, the strangers smiled among themselves. “Yes, to be sure, there is nothing so suggestive as a vacant place,” said a lady who was of the party. “Whose portrait ought to be there, Lord Lindores?”

He looked at his father, who made a slight assenting gesture, then shook his head drearily.

“Who put it there?” Lindores said, in a whisper.

“It is not there; but you and I see it,” said Lord Gowrie, with a sigh.

Then the strangers perceived that something had moved the father and the son, and, notwithstanding their eager curiosity, obeyed the dictates of politeness, and dispersed into groups looking at the other pictures. Lindores set his teeth and clenched his hands. Fury was growing upon him—not the awe that filled his father’s mind. “We will leave the rest of this to another time,” he cried, turning to the others, almost fiercely. “Come, I will show you something more striking now.” He made no further pretence of going systematically over the house. He turned and went straight up-stairs, and along the corridor. “Are we going over the bedrooms?” some one said. Lindores led the way straight to the old lumber-room, a strange place for such a gay party. The ladies drew their dresses about them. There was not room for half of them. Those who could get in began to handle the strange things that lay about, touching them with dainty fingers, exclaiming how dusty they were. The window was half blocked up by old armour and rusty weapons; but this did not hinder the full summer daylight from penetrating in a flood of light. Lindores went in with fiery determination on his face. He went straight to the wall, as if he would go through, then paused with a blank gaze. “Where is the door?” he said.

“You are forgetting yourself,” said Lord Gowrie, speaking over the heads of the others. “Lindores! you know very well there never was any door there; the wall is very thick; you can see by the depth of the window. There is no door there.”

The young man felt it over with his hand. The wall was smooth, and covered with the dust of ages. With a groan he turned away. At this moment a suppressed laugh, low, yet distinct, sounded close by him. “You laughed?” he said, fiercely, to Ffarrington, striking his hand upon his shoulder.

“I—laughed! Nothing was farther from my thoughts,” said his friend, who was curiously examining something that lay upon an old carved chair. “Look here! what a wonderful sword, cross-hilted! Is it an Andrea? What’s the matter, Lindores?”

Lindores had seized it from his hands; he dashed it against the wall with a suppressed oath. The two or three people in the room stood aghast.

“Lindores!” his father said, in a tone of warning. The young man dropped the useless weapon with a groan. “Then God help us!” he said; “but I will find another way.”

“There is a very interesting room close by,” said Lord Gowrie, hastily—“this way! Lindores has been put out by—some changes that have been made without his knowledge,” he said, calmly. “You must not mind him. He is disappointed. He is perhaps too much accustomed to have his own way.”

But Lord Gowrie knew that no one believed him. He took them to the adjoining room, and told them some easy story of an apparition that was supposed to haunt it. “Have you ever seen it?” the guests said, pretending interest. “Not I; but we don’t mind ghosts in this house,” he answered, with a smile. And then they resumed their round of the old noble mystic house.

•    •    •    •

I cannot tell the reader what young Lindores has done to carry out his pledged word and redeem his family. It may not be known, perhaps, for another generation, and it will not be for me to write that concluding chapter: but when, in the ripeness of time, it can be narrated, no one will say that the mystery of Gowrie Castle has been a vulgar horror, though there are some who are disposed to think so now.

Earthbound

(1880)

I

There was but a small party for Christmas at Daintrey. The family were in mourning, which meant more than it usually means, and the whole life of the place was subdued. Nevertheless, the brothers and sisters were young, and were beginning to rise above the impression of the grief which had come upon them. The gloom had lightened a little; they began to forget the details of death, and regard the image of their brother in an aspect more familiar. It was not long since the news had come, and yet already this change had taken place, as was inevitable. The father and mother were less easily cheered; but life must go on even though death interrupts. The girls and boys could not be made to sit like mutes around a grave. They had to rise up again, and go on with their individual existence. Lady Beresford, who was a wise mother, felt and acknowledged this, though her heart was still bleeding. Christmas was coming; and though there could be no Christmas festivities in the ordinary sense of the word, one or two old friends and connections were invited. Sir Robert, for his part, was opposed to the appearance of strangers. He was never very fond of visitors. “What do you want with people here?” he said, with a kind of growl, in which he disguised his grief. “Surely once in a way the girls might get through Christmas without visitors. Christmas! the very idea of these horrible merry Christmases that we shall have to go through makes me ill!”

“I should do without them only too gladly, Robert: but the girls and the boys are too young to be cooped up. Grief is so monotonous, and they are so young. It is not that they love him the less; but they must live—for that matter, we must all go on living,” she said, keeping with an effort the tears in her eyes. A mother who cannot give herself over to her sorrow, who must work through all her little daily round of duties all the same, and think of the girls’ bonnets, and the boots and flannels of the boys at school, and only now and then in a spare moment can shut her door or turn her face to the wall and weep a little over her dead, the tears that have been gathering slowly while she has smiled and talked and kept everything going through the long day—has a hard task when her troubles come; but Lady Beresford bore her burden as sweetly as a woman could, holding up as long as was possible, then stopping to have her cry out, and rising and going on again. Sir Robert became morose with his grief; but she had no time for self-indulgence. And naturally she had her way, and the few were invited whom it had seemed to her good to invite. One of them was Edmund Coventry, who had been a ward of Sir Robert, and now in his manhood calculated upon being a member of the Daintrey party at all those periods which are specially dedicated to home. He was a young man of excellent character and very fair fortune; and, if the truth must be told, the heads of the house at Daintrey had concluded that he would be a very convenient match for Maud, who was the second girl. Perhaps it would be better to say that one of the heads of the house had already perceived and accepted this view. A matchmaking mother is a thing that is supposed on English soil to be extremely objectionable; and yet if she does not think of the welfare of her girls, who is to do it? The French mother considers it her first duty. Lady Beresford was a high-minded Englishwoman, and not a scheming mamma; but she could not shut her eyes to the fact that Edmund Coventry was exactly suited to Maud. And so, among the few who came to spend a very quiet Christmas at Daintrey, and “cheer a sad house,” which was what she said in her invitations, Edmund was one of the first of whom she thought.

“Poor boy!” she said, “he has always come here. He has no other place where he will care to go. Of course he will know that it will not be lively. But he is a good boy. I do not think he will mind.”

“I am sure, mamma, he will not mind,” said Susan, who was the eldest. Susan was going to make a by no means brilliant marriage. She was to marry a young man who was in the diplomatic service, but had no money, and was scarcely the sort of man to be a diplomat; so that the prizes of that profession seemed improbable to him. And she thought it very desirable that Maud and Edmund Coventry should see a good deal of each other. “He will be glad to be with us in our trouble,” she said; “he was always fond of Willie.” Thus the invitation was given half in love and tender certainty of sympathy, yet half with a certain calculation too.

The other guests were of a very quiet kind—a brother of Sir Robert’s, a lonely bachelor; a widowed sister of Lady Beresford’s with her little boy and girl; the former clergyman of the parish, who had been Willie’s tutor once upon a time; a nephew who was an orphan, and had no home to spend his Christmas in; and Edmund. “He will be the only little bit of liveliness. He will help to cheer us up,” Susan said. Her attaché was to come too, but only for a few days. He was one of those to whom social duties were important, and he had a great many visits to pay. But for this mourning they would have been married before now.

Edmund Coventry was a young man who was very well off, and very greatly esteemed. He was twenty-seven—no longer a boy. He had a very nice estate, and a house in town, and no relations to speak of. He was very well-looking, without being handsome, which is perhaps the sort of compromise with nature which is most approved in England. There are a great many people who do not care for unusually handsome men. Beauty is an extravagance, they feel, in the male portion of the world. But Edmund’s good looks did not go the length of beauty. He was not a tall, muscular, well-developed hero, but slight, and not more than of middle stature. With all he was an ingratiating, lovable young nan, very gentle in manners, very tender in his friendships; no doubt he would make an excellent husband. There was no need to explain to him the position of affairs in the house. He knew all about it, and he sympathised with them in every point. “Mamma hesitated to ask you,” said Maud, “because we were to be so quiet.”

“Could I wish to be anything but quiet?” he said, with a tender half-reproach. “Do you think, after all the happy times here, that I have no feeling.” But, indeed, no one had thought that, as Maud made haste to say.

The carols were sung, but with tears in them. The house was dressed as usual with holly and all the decorations of the time; and there was at least a great deal of conversation which lengthened the gloom and silence of the previous period. Even Sir Robert was glad to talk to Mr. Lightfoot, who had been the rector in former times. On Christmas night the attempt at games was somewhat doleful as it will be, alas! this Christmas in many a sorrowing and many an anxious house; but the talk and the little bustle of renewed movement did everybody good. The commonplace ghost-stories which are among the ordinary foolishnesses of Christmas did not suit with the more serious tone in which their thoughts flowed; but there was some talk among the older people about those sensations and presentiments that seem sometimes to convey a kind of prophecy, only understood after the event, of sorrow on the way; and the young ones amused themselves after a sort with discussions of those new-fangled fancies which have replaced that old favourite lore. They talked about what is called spiritualism, and of many things, both in that fantastic faith and in the older ghostly traditions, which we are all half glad to think cannot be explained. The older people, indeed, unhesitatingly rejected all mediums and supernatural operators of every kind as impostors; but even on this point various members of the party had things to tell which they did not know how to explain. “Is not there some tradition of a ghost about Daintrey?” Mr. Lightfoot, the old rector, said, as they all sat in a wide circle round the great glowing fire just before the moment should arrive for bed-candles and general good-nights. There was not very much light in the room, but, large as it was, it was all ruddy and brilliant with the blaze of the great cheerful fire.

“Nothing of the sort,” said Sir Robert emphatically. It was he who was most strong as to the whole thing being an imposition, and who did not believe a word of the stories he was told.

“I believe there is something—very vague,” said Lady Beresford. But there was a meaning look exchanged between them, and the talk suddenly came to an end.

And by and by the ladies went all flocking out of the room carrying their lights, like a procession of the wise virgins in the parable. But their black dresses made that procession a sad one, though the soft bloom of the young faces came out with even more effect when the light found nothing else to dwell upon. The young men found a little relief from the gravity of the conversation in the smoking-room, where Mr. Beresford the elder, the uncle of the party, discoursed upon town and its charms, and congratulated himself that he was not like his brother Robert, the head of the family, and compelled to pass his winters in the middle of those damp acres of park. “It would kill me in a year,” Mr. Beresford said. On the whole they were all glad that the worst was over, and Christmas got safely done with for that year.

II

Edmund showed no inclination to cut his visit short; he stayed on after Uncle Reginald had returned to his dear club and his rooms in St. James’s Street, and the attaché had gone on upon his round of visits, and young Beresford, the cousin, had returned to his work. The eldest of the sons at home was over twenty; the other two were both at school. And Susan and Maud and little Edie were the girls. It could not be a very sad house, after all, with all that youth in it; and on the whole Daintrey began to turn round as it were, like the earth when a new day is breaking, turning itself to meet the light. Edmund was very much at home and very comfortable, and he was pleased to think that he was doing them good, as Lady Beresford told him with a smile of tender gratitude. It had not yet occurred to him that of all people in the world Maud was the one who would suit him most exactly for a wife. But he was in a very promising way for making that discovery, which had already faintly gleamed upon the consciousness of Maud herself as neither unlikely nor unpleasant. They saw a great deal of each other, though not a bit too much. They were like brother and sister, Lady Beresford said; which was quite true: and yet there was always a possibility of something more.

Daintrey was a handsome house of no particular period, built almost due east and west like a church. The front entrance was by a square court shut in by a screen-wall built between the two wings. At the back the wings were very shallow, projecting but slightly from the corps de logis. On the south side of the house was a green terrace, as high as the windows of the sitting-rooms, ascended by handsome marble steps ornamented with vases as in an Italian garden and separated by the brilliant parterres of the flower-garden from the house. Running along the upper end of the garden and connecting it with the west end of the house was the lime-tree walk, a noble bit of avenue at right angles with the terrace. Both of these were beautiful—but the little square corner which connected them was not beautiful. Here, for no apparent reason at all, a wall had been built, of the date of some hundred years back, a high brick wall, quite out of place, screening in a square and rather gloomy angle of grass, in the midst of which stood a high pedestal surmounted by a large stone vase. Whether this was meant to commemorate anything, or whether it was merely supposed to be ornamental, in the days of George III. nobody could tell; but that it was very funereal and ugly was certain. In the side of this wall farthest from the house was a door which opened into the byway through the park. Perhaps the wall had been built to stop some right of way; perhaps—but there is little use in multiplying peradventures. There stood the wall built to shut out no one knew what; there loomed aloft the funeral urn upon its pedestal raised to commemorate no one knew what. Sometimes the door would be locked by a sulky gardener, and the key had to be hunted for in the house and out of it, high and low. At such moments Sir Robert, especially if he had himself to wait, would vow that he would throw down the wall and abolish both urn and door. But Sir Robert was an absolute Tory in action, though something of a Liberal in politics; and threatened walls live long, especially when there is no reason why they should live.

Edmund had gone out with the intention of walking to the village one of these wintry afternoons. There had been talk of skating, but the ice was not quite solid enough for skating, and his errands to the village were manifold. He was going to see about Maud’s skates, which wanted something done to them. He was going to the Rectory to tell the new rector, who was young and a great athlete, to join the party at the pond to-morrow if the frost “held”; and he had other little commissions to do. When there is nothing better to be done it is something for a man to have commissions in the village—it gives him a reason for his walk; it makes him feel that he is not absolutely without an occupation. The boys were all about the pond, helping it to freeze, as the keeper said—watching, at least, with the most anxious eyes, how this process went on.

Edmund came out at the western door of the house facing a low red sun, which shone into his eyes, casting long level gleams of light across the grass and dying it orange. He was very lighthearted to-day, with a feeling that poor Willie Beresford had died long ago, and that life had begun again, and that the prospects of existence were opening out. Perhaps it was Maud, whose sweetness and pleasant society had suggested to him long stretches, of happy life to come. He went out, glad even of the sharpness of the air, pleased to hear the crackling under his feet which betokened the frost, and admiring the fairy whiteness in which the great trees had robed themselves. All lit up with those red rays, with warm and gorgeous belts of colour upon the sky, and every prospect of cold and fine weather, the things most desirable when there is a frost and it is Christmas, the prospect round him was of itself exhilarating. How foolish, he thought, of the girls not to come out, to get the benefit of the smart walk through the park, and the keen fresh air which made his countenance glow. Talk of summer! The park at Daintrey was lovely always, but it never was more beautiful than it was now, with that red sunshine lighting up all those stately white giants in their robes of rime. He started lightly, closing the door after him with a cheerful bang, and turning his steps towards the lime-tree walk, through which one great beam of sunshine like red gold had pierced in the opening between the two greatest trees. This looked like a golden bridge cutting the little avenue in two; beyond it there was the shadow of the wall already described which thrust itself straight in front of the low sun.

While Edmund admired this great broad blaze of light he was startled by seeing something move beyond it in the darker part—something white, which he could not make out so long as he was himself in the sun. But when he had crossed that bridge of light he was still more surprised to see in front of him, at the end of the avenue, a woman, a lady, walking along with the most composed and gentle tread. The road was not exactly a private road—all the people from the village, almost everybody who came to Daintrey on foot, used it. But Edmund thought he knew all the people about, and he certainly did not know any one whose appearance was at all like that of the lady who preceded him to the door in the wall—unless it were one of the girls masquerading; but he had just left the girls with their mother round the fire, and he could not entertain this idea. The dress, too, struck him with great surprise. It was a white dress, with a black mantle round the shoulders, and a large hat: not unlike the kind of costume which people in aesthetic circles begin to affect, but far more real and natural, it seemed to him—though bow he could judge at this distance and with only the lady’s back visible it would be difficult to tell. The curious thing was that the moment Edmund saw this pretty figure in front of him his heart began to beat. He had the same feeling—which a man sometimes has when he suddenly meets a lovely face and says to himself that, please God, this woman is the one woman for him. But such a thing would be absurd when you consider that it was only her back he saw. Yet it made his heart beat; he was seized with a great desire to follow, to “get a good look” at her, to know what she could be doing here and who she was. What had she been doing there? Surely a creature of so much grace, moving like that, dressed like that, could not possibly have been visiting the servants’ hall; and that she had not been in the drawing-room he was sure. If she only would turn round at the sound of his step:—but she did not turn round. She moved on as if she heard nothing—across the curious little square, straight to the door in the wall. Come, Edmund said to himself, if she is going to the village I must overtake her. And he did not hurry, feeling sure she could not escape him. He was pleased by the little mystery—Who could it be? But he must find out before he returned, for unknown ladies do not walk about in a park in the country, or go to and fro between the village and the great house, without being easily traceable. What a pretty walk she had! so light that her step was not audible—no creaking and crunching upon fallen twigs and stones and frostbound sod as with him. He was charmed with the pretty graceful figure—certainly a little like Maud, slimmer and not quite so straight, with a pretty droop in it of fragility and dependence, but yet certainly like—younger perhaps, though Maud was but nineteen. He followed her softly, promising to himself to quicken his steps as soon as she should have passed the door in the wall to which she was leading the way. Presently, about two minutes before him, she reached the door; he was so near that he could see her half turn round as if to look who was behind: but, though she must have perceived him, she closed the door upon him as she passed through—not very civil, he thought; but perhaps she was espiegle, and could not resist a little merry affront to him, innocently provocative, as is the fashion of girls. He hurried along the few intervening steps of the way, and opened the door. Perhaps after all she knew him; perhaps it was Maud, who was very fond of fun in the old days. The smile was almost a laugh on his mouth when he stepped out of the park and let the door swing carelessly behind him—not shutting it elaborately, as she had taken the trouble to do.

Strange, very strange! There was nobody to be seen on the other side of the door; certainly it must be Maud or one of the girls. She had slipped behind a bush, no doubt, to bewilder him. There were several byways running in different directions—one towards the deserted cricket-ground, another towards the keeper’s cottage, beside the straight road which led to the village. Probably she had tucked up her dress and made a dart among the brushwood out of sight. He stood for a moment looking after her, now one way, now another, but he could see no one. “I know you,” he cried, “I know you; where are you, Maud?” But there was no answer from among the brushwood. Finally, he had to make up his mind that he trick had been successful, that she had got away, and that if he was to execute his commissions in the village he must not lose any time. But he went along with only half the spirit with which he had started, his mind quite absorbed in this adventure. As be resumed his way he met one of the keepers coming in the opposite direction, whom he stopped to ask if he had met a lady on Ids way. The man looked at him as if he thought him mad, but answered No, he had met no one. “A lady in a white dress and a black mantle,” said Edmund. “Lord bless you, sir,” said the keeper, “a white dress!”—and then it occurred to Edmund for the first time how entirely inappropriate such a garb was to the season. It must have been one of the girls who had “dressed up,” as they used to be so fond of doing in the old days, to give him a fright. And yet in his heart he did not in the least believe this explanation he had given to himself. Even Maud, though he liked her so much, had never excited that sudden and causeless emotion in his heart. It was some one new—some one who had never crossed his path before, and who was destined to work he knew not what commotion in it. But then, who could it be?

“Did you go out after I went out?” he asked when he went back to Daintrey. “Tell me, did you or any one take a run into the park?”

“Oh, no; mother would not let us go. She said we could not go to skate to-morrow if we went out so late to-day.”

“Or has any one been here? Did you have any visitors?” Edmund asked, though he knew very well that this could not explain the presence of the lady who must have left the house before he did. Maud looked up at him with her soft blue eyes.

“We have had no one,” she said. “We did not stir all the afternoon. Mother had a headache, and we did not wish to leave her. After you went out we sat and talked till the dressing-bell rang. That was all; but why do you suppose we must have had visitors?” Edmund felt—he could scarcely tell why—a little shyness and unwillingness to explain himself.

“Because I met a lady in the park,” he said, “and could not make out who she was. Have you any new neighbours since I have been gone?”

Maud shook her head. “Nobody,” she said. Nobody had been calling. Nobody had intruded into the neighbourhood. She looked earnestly at the young man, who, for his part, was a little excited by his own questions, but not at all unpleasantly excited.

“I thought for a moment you were playing me a trick. She looked a little like you—that is, her figure looked like you. I did not see her face.”

“Like me?” Maud was half pleased, but more surprised. “I play you a trick? I don’t think,” she said, with a sad look, “that I shall ever do that again.”

“But I hope you will a hundred times,” said the young man; and this pleased her, though she could not have told why. “But help me to find out who it is,” he went on. “I feel annoyed that I don’t know everybody, as I used to do. She was dressed in white with a—”

“In white! You must have been dreaming,” said Maud, in amazement.

He stopped short again. “That’s why I thought it must be you,” he said, yet with a little conscious Jesuitry, for he had not thought so—indeed, had assured himself that the little stir of his being which he had experienced could only mean that this was some one of a different kind from any he had met before: a new woman, a creature born to influence him. “But it is quite true, and I was not dreaming. She had on a white gown. Something black over her shoulders like, the thing ladies have been wearing lately: I forget how you call it—not a cloak nor a scarf—something put round and knotted behind like this,” said Edmund, doing his best to show how, upon himself with his hands.

“A fichu, you mean,” said Maud, suffering herself to be betrayed into a smile.

“A fichu, that’s the thing; and a large broad hat. But she did not look like art-needlework—she looked quite natural.”

“What an interest you must have taken in this lady! When did you meet her? It could not have been any one coming here, for no one has been here all day.”

“I met her—but I did not meet her—I followed her along the lime-tree walk and out by the little corner door.”

“How very strange! I cannot think who it can have been. And where did she go after?”

“That is the strangest of all,” said Edmund. “She disappeared somewhere. That was another reason why I thought it must have been you. I cannot tell where she went. Down by the keeper’s cottage, I suppose; but I saw her no more.”

“I’ll tell you who it was,” said Maud, just a little piqued—“it must have been the keeper’s niece, who has come for a little change. She is in a dressmaker’s in London. Of course she will dress nicely—though to wear white on a winter afternoon, trailing across the damp grass—” She laughed again but not so sweetly as before. “This must have been your lady, Edmund, I fear.”

“I do not believe it. I cannot believe it,” he said, much vexed; but after a good deal of resistance he was brought to allow that as he had only seen her back, and that at a little distance, he could not have any such certainty as he had supposed that she was a lady.

“Besides,” said Maud, with a little gentle triumph, “a girl like that may walk like a lady and dress like a lady. She has got to be among ladies most of her time, and to see the best people. Unless you talked to her and found she dropped her h’s, or had vulgar ideas, how could you tell? Indeed, sometimes they talk even just as nicely as we do,” said the young lady, more just than many of her kind. This seemed to make an end of the question. At least Edmund could find no more to say; and Lady Beresford, who had observed the long and interesting conversation in which he had been engaged with Maud, gave him a still kinder smile than usual when she bade him good night.

III

Next day the frost held; the pond was bearing, and the whole house turned out to skate—even Sir Robert. Lady Beresford looked on with that indulgent wonder with which a woman regards a man’s delight in outdoor amusements, and the charm they exercise over him. She was unfeignedly glad that her husband should be roused from that growling seclusion in the library, which looked like temper and meant grief—glad to the bottom of her heart; and yet there was a wondering in her mind, a sensation of half-grieved, half-smiling surprise. She was glad to get them all out of the house, and said “Thank God!” fervently, that here was something which would take off the strain, which would bring in a little amusement, and help the convalescence of grief which was working itself so quickly in these young people; and then she went up to her own room and shut her door, feeling as if she, who had the best right to it, had got that faithful sorrow all to herself, and uncovered his picture, and read his last letter, and wept out all the tears that had been gathering and gathering. Meanwhile, the rest had got out of the shadow for the moment, and the pond was a merry scene. Sir Robert skated about very solemnly at first, taking long turns round the island that lay at one end of the long piece of water; but by and by he began to help little Edie and give directions to Tom. This diversion filled up the whole day and the next. Edmund had been half vexed, half irritated by the supposed discovery that his white lady was the keeper’s niece, especially as Maud had already given him several little playful reminders and he determined, accordingly, that he would not allow himself to think any more of the little figure which had so charmed him. Of course it was mere imagination, nothing else—a girl’s back, in a black fichu and white gown. What could any one make of that? There was in his mind a lurking purpose of coming home from the ice some evening by the keeper’s cottage, just to see; but even that he did not carry out for those two days. On the third afternoon, however, by some chance, he was left to come home alone. The others had set out before he was ready. He heard their voices sounding cheerily through the frosty night air, a good way on, upon the path before him, when he completed his last long whirl round the island, during which Sir Robert had got impatient, and summoned all his flock about him. They had all lingered to the last moment possible, as there were signs of the frost breaking. It was dark, so dark that Edmund could scarcely see to take his skates off, and all the hollows of the park were full of mist, and the sky overspread and blurred, and covered with clouds. It was clearer in the east, however, and there an early pale-eyed young moon, with a certain eagerness about her, as though full of impatience to see what was going on in the earth, had got up hastily in a bit of blue. She touched the mists, and made them poetical, gradually lightening over the milky expanse of the park, in which the trees stood up like bands of shadows.

Suddenly it came into Edmund’s head that this was the very moment to carry out his intention. He took up his skates hastily, and walked round by the other end of the pond towards the cottage of Ferney the keeper. The moon, getting brighter every moment, threw the whole little settlement of this small habitation in the midst of the park and woods, into brilliant relief. There was a sound of dogs and human voices populating the stillness, and the cluster of low red roofs, the smoke from the chimneys, the cheerful blaze of firelight out of the uncovered windows, seemed to cheer and warm the whole landscape. Half ashamed of his own artifice, Edmund stopped at the door to give some message to the keeper. In the room beyond he saw a young woman seated at a table sewing, the light of a candle throwing a full light upon her. She was dressed in black, with the usual white collar and little locket—a handsome, pale girl; and as Edmund stared in, forgetful of politeness in his curiosity, she got up, with a reserve that was in itself coquettish, and walked to the other end of the room. When he saw this movement he had almost laughed aloud. That the lady of the lime-walk! They might as well have told him that good Mrs, Ferney, with her stout, matronly bulk, and white apron, was the lady he had met. He went off, pleased with his own discrimination, pleased that he had not been mistaken, wondering if he should ever meet her again anywhere. He felt sure that he would know her, wherever he might see her, by her figure and by her walk.

He asked the keeper some trivial question to justify his pause at the house, then walked on, whistling, with cheerful speed, till he came to the little corner door, as it was called; but he had scarcely got within, when he checked himself abruptly. The moon was shining full across the green terrace and the empty beds of the flower-garden, streaming upon this little forlorn angle and its big ugly urn. Full in its light, softly crossing in front of the big pedestal, her pretty figure relieved against it, within half a dozen paces of him, coming towards him, was the lady he had seen before. Her dress was the same, dead white, with the black fichu, all frills and fringe, tied behind; a broad hat, thrown back a little from her face. His heart gave a great jump when he saw that in a moment he must pass close, and that she could not in any way conceal herself from him. He almost stopped short, but she came on softly without embarrassment, without alarm. Certainly she was like Maud: a tender little pensive face, with soft, very large eyes—which must be blue, Edmund felt—a pensive half-smile about the mouth. She was neither startled by the sight of him nor did she take a single step out of his way, but went on at the same composed pace. She had almost passed him, when he bethought himself to pull off his hat. This seemed to give her a little movement of surprise. She half turned her head to look at him, and the half-smile on her delicate lips brightened a little. It was too slight, too evanescent, to be called pleasure; and yet it was something like pleasure that lighted up the gentle face. Then she passed on, and in another moment had gone out by the door. He had not opened it for her, as politeness required. He had been too much taken by surprise—bewildered by the sudden appearance. Even now he stood still, dazed, not knowing what to do, puzzled how to address a lady whom he did not know, to intrude into an acquaintance whether she wished it or not, but yet feeling it impossible to let her go like this. He stood—was it for a moment, or longer?—hesitating, wondering: then rushed after her, meaning to say that she could not possibly cross the park at this hour alone, that she must permit him to accompany her. In his haste he made a dash at the door, threw it open, plunged out into the wide white desert where she had gone. The moon shone full upon all the breadth of the park. The ground was higher here, and there was less mist; the pathway wound along for a hundred yards or so fully visible; but no one was there. “Again!” he cried, speaking the word aloud in his confusion and annoyance. The bushes indeed clustered thick upon the way to the keeper’s cottage. Could this be a second niece, a daughter, another young woman living there? He was so vexed, so disappointed, so tantalised, that he did not know what to do or say.

“Has Ferney a daughter as well as a niece?” he said to Maud, singling her out again, her mother remarked, from all the rest.

“A daughter? Oh, no; nobody but Jane. They brought her up; but that is all. Why do you take so much interest in the Ferneys, Edmund? You have always known them, ever since you first came here.”

Then Edmund told his story. How once more he had seen the strange lady: how she had passed through the door, and once more gone down the keeper’s way; or, at least, so he supposed. Had she gone to the village he must have seen her. This time Maud became excited, too. She took her mother into council. “Mother, do you know any one who has lately come to the village, or to any of the houses about? I should think she must be a crazy person. Edmund has met her twice in the Lime-tree Walk, in a white dress—”

“Edmund must have been dreaming,” Lady Beresford said.

“Not any more than I am now. I saw her quite plain to-night. There is something in her air, generally, that reminds me of Maud. I thought it was Maud herself playing me a trick the first time I saw her.”

“And dressed in white. Such an extraordinary thing!” said Maud. “Who can it be?”

This incident of the dress moved the ladies more than it did the man. He had to explain to them exactly what kind of a dress it was that she wore. “Though I daresay he has not a notion,” said Lady Beresford. “Probably it is only some light colour. Men never know—”

A slight look of uneasiness got into her face. She listened as the dress was described with reluctance, trying to change the subject; but the others were very much interested. “A dress not like anything you ladies wear now,” Edmund said.

“A dress, I should say, very like what the art people wear. It must be some artistic person who has taken lodgings in the village,” said Mrs. Cole, who was Lady Beresford’s sister. “Depend upon it, that is what she is, an art-student, not rich, living in some little rooms, studying the effects of a winter landscape, or something of that sort. Perhaps Ferney has let her his parlour. Hasn’t he got a parlour? That is what this strange visitor must be.”

This was not quite so objectionable to Edmund’s feelings as the other guess, and the talk got quite animated about his lady. Only Lady Beresford did not quite like it. “Please not to say anything about her to Sir Robert,” she said; “he is not fond of strangers about.” And she was visibly uneasy. But no one could tell why.

As for Edmund himself, his mind was very much occupied with this pretty vision. He thought, with a thrill all through him, of the soft look of surprised pleasure that had come over her face as he took off his hat—Why should she be surprised? It was a thing any gentleman ought to have done, meeting her there, all alone, a stranger in the place, where he was himself at home. The thing he regretted was that he had not been a little quicker, that he had not followed her out, and asked to let him see her safely across the park. Perhaps she would not have liked that. Perhaps the suggestion that it was not safe to walk about alone might have offended her. But she did not look at all like one of those women who assert a right to walk alone, and to do whatever pleases them. Anyhow, he would not let her escape him so another time; and no doubt he would meet her again. After this he was continually haunting the Lime-tree Walk. The last day of the skating he made an excuse to return early, but she was not there; and, indeed, he did not see her again till his heart had been sick with disappointment on two or three occasions. The frost broke up; then came a day or two of rain, and all the bondage of the ice melted, and the paths ran in little torrents, and a few feeble spikes of snowdrops began to come up in the empty flower-beds. The weather grew mild all of a sudden. And one day the hounds met near Daintrey, and all the party went out. They came back in the afternoon, tired, and damp, and soiled with the mud; but when the others went in to be warmed and dried, and made comfortable, having had enough of air and exercise for the day, Edmund lingered outside, as he now always did, as long as he could get any excuse for doing so. And this time he was rewarded. In the middle of the Lime-tree Walk he saw her suddenly coming towards him. One moment there had seemed to be nobody about He turned his head to see what was meant by some little stir behind him; and when he turned again she was there, walking towards him, with her soft, gentle, composed tread. Her hands were clasped before her. Her white dress trailed a little behind her, but seemed to have no stain upon it, or mark of the wet. Her head was a little thrown back. Ah, yes! surely they were blue, those eyes; they could not have been anything but blue. And she had very little colour in her face, just enough to make it lifelike, and give an appearance of health and perfection; no sickliness, no incompleteness, was in the hue. The soft little half-smile was still upon the lips—lips that were like rose-coral, not very red, but warm and soft. She came on without paying any attention to Edmund, as if, indeed, she did not see him. And this piqued him a little. But his heart leaped so at the sight of her that he was not capable of cool judgment or criticism. This time his mind was made up. If it was rude, he was very sorry, but he must speak to her, whatever happened. He stopped suddenly when they met, and once more took off his hat. And then, in a moment, like the sun rising, that expression of pleasure came to her face. The smile grew brighter. She stopped, too, and looked at him with such satisfaction, such a tender interest in her eyes, that he was utterly confounded, and stood gazing at her, the words that he had meant to say failing him. Rude! no, evidently she did not think him rude. A gentle delight seemed to spread over her—affectionate pleasure, as if of a happiness she had vainly expected, and for which she was thankful beyond words. After all, it was she who spoke first. She said, in the softest little musical voice, a little thin, but sweet, like the cooing of a dove; and what she said was as remarkable in its simplicity as the fact that she was the first to begin the acquaintance. “So you see me!” was, in tones of gentle pleasure, what she said.

“See you!—indeed this is now the third time that I have the pleasure of seeing you,” said Edmund eagerly. “The last night I could not forgive myself for not asking if I might walk home with you. It was very late for you to walk alone across the park.”

To this she answered nothing, but looked at him with the softest, caressing looks, as if it were a pleasure to her to hear his voice; and yet the perfect modesty, simplicity, and innocence of the virginal countenance uplifted to him, made every thought but those of respect and even reverence impossible to Edmund. At the same time he was slightly abashed by this steadfast look, which might have made a vain man complacent, but for something in it of unapproachable purity and isolation which gave the beholder a sense of awe. Edmund did not know how to go on. It was more difficult than could be told to proceed in the conversation. Phrases about the happiness of making her acquaintance—about the desire of the ladies at Daintrey to know if, they could be of service to the stranger, which he had (though totally without authority) conned and prepared, no longer seemed within his power of utterance. He stammered forth something about “Lady Beresford—would be glad to see you—to be of use.” To which she shook her head half sadly, half with a kind of shadowy amusement. “You have come to the neighbourhood lately?” he said at last.

“No; oh, no; I have been here—about Daintrey—a long, long time.” These strange words were interrupted by a little faint laugh like an echo, like a laugh in music, the most spiritual liquid roll of soft words. “I have been a long time here.”

Edmund grew more and more confused. “If that was so I must have seen you,” he said; “but perhaps you think a little time long. It would be natural, you are so young.”

“Nineteen,” she said; “I never was any more than nineteen; but it is a long, long time ago.”

Then it began to dawn upon Edmund, though it was an idea he received with the greatest reluctance, that this tender, beautiful creature must be, not mad—that was too harsh a word—but like Ophelia, distraught. “Do you come out alone?” he said, gently. “Is there no one with you in these winter nights? it is dreary and cold in the park, I don’t think you ought to be alone.”

She smiled upon him, again not saying anything for a moment. Then she said suddenly and very low, “I am always about here.”

“You mean you are fond of this walk,” Edmund said.

Again she smiled. “I go all about,” she said, very softly, “sometimes into the house; but no one sees me. That is what made me so glad when you spoke. I have seen you often, but you are confused with the other ones. So many, so many I have seen. Now that you have spoken to me I will always remember which is you.”

Certainly she must be distraught . He was very sorry for her, very much touched by her, but also, though why he could not tell, a little alarmed, his heart beating very unsteadily and plunging in his breast.

“I hope,” he said, “not out of any intrusive or impertinent feeling, but for safety, I hope you will let me see you home.”

Again he heard the little roll of the laugh, so utterly soft and distant; but she made no reply. “I have seen a great many, a great many,” she said; “they all come and go, but they do not see me. That is the punishment I have. The house is altered. But I take a great interest in it: I was always fond of it.” Then the innocent little laugh was succeeded by a gentle, scarcely audible sigh.

All this time the evening had been darkening, the sun had set, the mists were creeping up once more in all the hollows. Edmund felt a chill run through him. “It is getting late,” he said, “and cold. If you are going to the village it is a long walk. Forgive me, but I think you should let me take you home.”

She looked at him almost mocking, but with such a tender version of mockery; then turned and went towards the door in the wall. Her movements were so gentle and light that Edmund felt himself noisy, stumbling, awkward in every step he took. Her little feet seemed scarcely to touch the earth. He walked on beside her confused, trembling, afraid, yet full of a strange happiness; and the moon, which had been rising all the time, came shining upon them through the lofty, slender lime branches. It seemed to him in his bewildered condition, that it was like some poem he had read, or some dream he had dreamt, to walk thus in this measured soft cadence, with the moon upon their heads all broken and chequered by the anatomy of the great trees, like dark lines traced upon the sky. Then they came into the full moonlight, in the corner where the urn stood upon its pedestal. It seemed to Edward that she went more slowly, as if lingering. “This is a gloomy corner,” he said, forcing himself to speak. For the charm of the silence had come over him, and words seemed hard things to disturb those soft moments as they flowed away.

“Not gloomy to me. I was always fond of it. When it was put up we were all pleased. That was what was wrong in me. You know,” she said, with her little soft laugh, “I was so fond of the house and the trees, and everything that was our own. I thought there was nothing better, nothing so good. I was all for the earth, and nothing more. That is why I am here so much.” She paused, and gave a little sigh: but then added, brightening, “It is not hard: when you are used to it, when now and then you meet with some one who sees you, it is not so hard. I am a little sad sometimes, but very happy now.”

And again she looked at him with that look of tender pleasure—enough to turn any man’s head. Edmund’s went round and round—he could say nothing more, but stammer, repeating himself, “It is a long walk; you must let me see you safely home across the park.”

She answered him only by that low laugh, but even softer, sweeter, than before. Then he opened the door for her. As she passed through she smiled upon him with a little wave of her hand. For his part he had put his foot on a soft piece of turf sodden with the rain, and it took him a minute to extricate the heel of his boot which had sunk into it. A minute, scarcely so much as a minute, but when he stepped out eagerly after her, his head full of that walk across the park, she was nowhere to be seen. One minute, not so much. Where was she? How had she managed to elude him? He was wild with disappointment and anger. Once more he made a hurried search behind all the bushes, in every little clump of brushwood. There was not a trace of her; though he thought once he heard her low melodious laugh. Was it a trick she was playing him? What was the meaning of it? But when he had walked about for nearly an hour, Edmund had to go back to the house disappointed. Once more she had escaped him; his head was giddy, his heart beating loud, his whole being full of agitation and excitement. What did it mean? and who was she, this mysterious girl?

Edmund felt like a man in a dream as he came down-stairs, and sat among the party at table, where the meal went on amid cheerful conversation. For himself he seemed quite incapable of taking any share in it. It flowed round him like something in which he had no voice. Afterwards the ladies asked him in the drawing-room, their voices coming to him faintly as out of a cloud, whether he had seen the white lady again. But it was impossible to him to speak of her to-night. He answered briefly, saying no, though it was not true; and pretended to have letters to write, that universal excuse for preoccupation. But when he escaped from the circle on this pretence, he did not write any letters. He sat in his room, opening his window, though the night was not so balmy as to make this desirable; and with his head supported by his hands, gazed out upon the great darkness round. The moon set early, and the skies were veiled with clouds, and nothing was discernible but the dark outlines of the trees, and a great dimness of space and air. Now and then he almost thought he saw her below, a flicker of white moving about, as if it might have been her dress; and it was only by strenuous resolution that he kept himself from rushing wildly into the night, with a kind of mad hope of meeting her. Then he gathered together in his mind all that she had said, which was so sweet, so tender, and yet, God help him, so wild. “When you meet with some one who sees you.”—“I was nineteen—but it is long, long ago.” What could it mean? Was it, indeed, the sweet bells jangled out of tune, of some lovely nature? Edmund’s eyes filled with tears. He said to himself that if it was so, he would take more care of her than any one; he would be her tender protector, her keeper to preserve her from everything that could hurt her innocence. What a strange fatal charm was it that had fallen upon him thus unawares? He could think of nothing else. Ophelia—but far more sweet in her madness—pure as a vision, with that dear look of happiness in her face. Could anything be more sweet than that she should be happy when he spoke to her, her face full of pleasure at the sound of his voice? Edmund’s heart melted altogether at this thought. But those sweet fairy-tricks should not suffice her another day. He would find her, whatever might happen; he would secure her beyond all possibility of escape. Her reason, what did it matter about her reason. Love would supply the place. And thus he spent the evening in a kind of soft delirium, able to think of nothing, to see and hear nothing, but his new-born yet all-absorbing love.

IV

Edmund did not sleep all night. He rose excited and restless, in the dim cold dawn of the winter morning; he was silent as a ghost at the cheerful breakfast table; he excused himself from all the occupations of the day. He had “things to do,” he said; and in fact he was impatient and unhappy until he found an opportunity to steal out unseen by any one. He went hastily through the Lime-tree Walk, following exactly the course he had taken the previous evening with her. There he contemplated the park in the clear daylight with wondering and anxious scrutiny. The little road down by the back of the green terrace, which led to the keeper’s cottage, was the only one by which she could possibly have gone. A little plantation of young trees was at the corner, and as it wound downwards, though the declivity was slight, there were various scattered bushes, furze and broom, and a few old knotted hawthorn thickets, darned out and in with pendants of brambles, showing here and there a red leaf still. There any mischievous girl could have played hide-and-seek with a petulant lover for hours together. Edmund felt a little lightening of the anxiety which possessed him as he saw these interruptions of the way. But if it was indeed by this way she had gone, she could not have afterwards emerged into the park without passing at least by Ferney’s cottage. Perhaps, as some one had suggested, she was a lodger there after all. He went slowly towards it, examining every corner of the way, and every bit of cover. His search was so slow and minute that it took him a long time. He emerged upon Ferney’s little enclosure almost before he was aware.

When his step was heard on the gravel, some one came to the window to see who it was, and Edmund heard a little exclamation. “Aunt! here’s that gentleman again.” Was he, then, coming to some real elucidation of all his wonderings? Mrs. Ferney came to the half-open door in answer to his summons. He thought she looked a little disturbed. He spoke peremptorily, to leave her no room for thought, or settling beforehand what she was to say. “I want to know if you have a lodger—a lady living in your house?”

Mrs. Ferney’s countenance grew more disturbed than ever. “Well, sir—, no, Mr. Edmund, I’ve got no lodger. There’s Ferney’s niece staying on a visit.”

“Is that your niece sitting in the room on the right hand?” When Edmund said this, a chair was hastily drawn back out of his range of vision, and a voice said, “La!”

“I mean a totally different person,” he cried, with a little impatience; “a lady; very young; very slight; with blue eyes; in a white dress, and something black round her shoulders.”

Mrs. Ferney was gazing at him with wide open eyes, but a visible air of relief. “No, indeed, sir; nothing of the sort. Not a soul lives here but Ferney and me, and, for the present, Ada Jane.”

“Where, then, can she live?” he said half to himself. Mrs. Ferney thought he had taken leave of his senses. She stood and gazed at him with bewildered looks, making a curtsey, and much relieved to see that he was not “after” Ada Jane. Edmund walked away without so much as a glance at the window where Ada Jane was lurking expectant. He went to the village, where he walked about not knowing what to do, looking in at every window. He could not stop everybody he met there to ask them did they know where he could find a lady with blue eyes and in a white gown? He did the only other thing that was practicable in the circumstances. He went to see the Rector, whom he asked that question, and to whom he told his little story. The Rector was a young man, and he was sympathetic. He thought of all the ladies within twenty miles, and described them, without finding any one who at all resembled the lady whom Edmund sought. “Besides,” the young enquirer had still so much reason left in him as to say, “what would it advantage me if Miss Ingestre, who lives fifteen miles off, were like her? Miss Ingestre would not come here and wander about the Lime-tree Walk.” So that nothing was to be made of it in any direction. When he left the Rectory the short afternoon was beginning to wane. He saw nobody along all the length of the way, and when he came to the door in the wall, found it locked; evidently she had not passed that way to-day.

It was again a misty afternoon; the sun veiled in clouds. Edmund went down by the path that led towards Ferney’s, and got across the brook and round by the corner of the house, which was a way practicable to one who had been a boy there, and knew all about the surroundings and by-ways of the place. What he meant was to hurry round to the conservatories, in which he was likely to find the head gardener, and get the key from him. What if she should come to her favourite walk and find it closed against her? He was breathless with haste scrambling up the bank, rushing along at his most rapid pace, lest this foolish obstacle should prevent their meeting: when suddenly, in the midst of his excitement, all at once his heart stood still. In spite of the locked door, she was standing there. It was earlier than he had ever seen her before. His heart stopped short, then leapt into wilder beating than ever. He did not ask himself how she got through. Why should he think of any such trivial obstacle? She was there, that was all he thought of; and this time it was evident that she was looking for him. She waved her hand to him with the prettiest gesture. She was standing against the pedestal, her white dress standing out from that background. He noticed for the first time how white and pure was the fulness of the flounce where it fell upon the grass, without a mark on it of the wetness around. This seemed to him quite natural,. an exquisite quality, somehow, in herself, which kept everything about her white and pure.

“I was going,” he said, flushed and eager, “to get the key. I thought you would wonder to find it shut. But you came through before it was shut, I suppose.”

She smiled. It seemed to be a rule with her to answer none of his questions. She looked at him with a sort of innocent admiration, mixed with the pleasure in her face. “It is so long since I have spoken to any one—since I have seen any one run to meet me,” she said. “I wonder how it is that you, out of them all—”

“Yes,” he said, taking up her words, “that is what I cannot understand, how I, of all the people in Daintrey, should have been so happy as to meet you. We are like old friends now, are we not? we have seen each other so often. I am Edmund Coventry, once Sir Robert’s ward, and free of the house. Might I ask your name?”

There was no embarrassment in her face. From first to last she was never embarrassed, but always full of sweet composure: and her smile seemed to express a hundred different feelings. There was amusement in it, and a little regret, and always that affectionate pleasure. “I was Maud,” she said, quite simply. Edmund could not understand why she should put her name in the past tense, and it gave him a subtle, little thrill of pain, he could scarcely tell why.

“Maud—it is the very sweetest name,” he said, with a half-adoring passion; “but what else? You will not let me say Maud. Tell me your other name.”

What a strange smile it was! It seemed to go on like an accompaniment in music, confusing the listener who was so anxious to gather every word that came from her lips. He did not seem to know that she had not said anything, so full was the air of that sweet influence. A little while after he began again to speak himself.

“These meetings have made a change in my life,” he said. “I was taking the future quite easily, not thinking what it was to bring forth; but now I see that one ought to select one’s path, to settle, to take up the more serious part of life. All this I have learned since I have known you; since I have loved you,” he added, very low, looking earnestly in her face.

She took the confession quite calmly; not a tinge of additional colour, not the slightest shyness or confusion appeared in her. She kept her quiet, sweet, ease of manner undisturbed. And what was Edmund to say more? He felt somehow baffled, helpless, before this invulnerable calm.

“Won’t you say anything to me?” he cried; “I don’t know who you are, or where you are living, but I love you, Maud. Do not be angry.”

“Oh, no! Not angry,” she said, in her soft voice; “only you cannot understand. I am not here to make friends, though I have always wished that some one might see me and speak. And before you spoke I had noticed you; I thought to myself, This one surely—this one surely I There was something about you; but there had been so many, so many before,” she said, with an innocent, wistful look, like the unconscious protest against neglect, yet acquiescence of a child.

“But you will give me an answer, Maud? I love you, sweet. I do not know,” said Edmund, with passion, “what has happened to you; what it is that makes you wander like this; but I will not mind, whatever it is. I will take care of you; I will watch over you; it will make no difference to me. Do you not understand me, dear?” He put out his hand to take hers, to secure her attention, to show her how serious he was. And then Edmund felt as if the whole misty heaven and earth were going round about him. He could not find the hand he sought. It was as if some spell prevented him from touching her. He felt again more baffled, more confounded, and hopelessly kept back, than words could say.

“You must not ask me questions,” she made answer, softly, after a pause. “It is not permitted to answer questions. I am here—for a time. I have been here no one could tell how long. We do not count as you do. If I told you more than this you would not understand.”

“I will understand if it is about you. But, Maud, Maud, answer me first. Give me your hand. Won’t you give me your hand?”

A look of trouble came into her face; yet so soft, so shadowy, that it did not seem pain. The smile did not go out of her eyes. She shook her head gently, standing so near him, her hands crossed, clasping each other. He had only to put out his arms and take her into them, but he could not. She was close, close to him, and yet—what was it that stood between? Not the mild refusal with which she shook her head; something that chilled his blood in its ardour, and made his heart contract with awe. He put out his hands beseeching, but seemed to come no nearer; and yet she did not draw back, nor move away from him. Edmund did not seem to himself to know what he was saying, what was happening, and yet he heard and meant every word that rushed to his lips. “Sweet! I will understand anything; I know there must be something strange. Whatever it is I accept it, I accept it! Say you will love me, Maud! Say you will—marry me!”

What happened? One of the Beresford boys, as Edmund dimly perceived, had been approaching, rushing along towards the door; bat somehow the intruder had made no difference to him, and had not stopped him in his impassioned suit. At this moment, however, the boy rushed headlong past, dashing against her, touching Edmund’s coat as he plunged along. The lovely, gentle figure was straight in his way. Edmund caught him by the throat with a fury beyond words.

“The lady!” he stammered out; “you brute, do you not see the lady?” and flung him wildly to a distance upon the wet ground.

Fred Beresford was altogether taken by surprise. He was not a boy of a patient temper, and he was in a hurry; but the wildness of the other bewildered him. He picked himself up, and came forward wondering, to where Edmund stood, pale as death, and gazing wildly about him. Fred’s wrath was entirely quailed at this sight. “What is it?” he asked, quite timidly and softly laying his hand on Edmund’s arm.

The young man was trembling in every limb; he did not seem able to move. His eyes were staring wildly here and there. There was no softening dusk as yet to conceal anything; all was white daylight, cold and pale and clear. When he felt Fred’s touch he turned upon him for one second, furious, violently thrusting him away.

“You have killed her!” he said; and then clutching the boy again,

“Where is she? where is she? where is she?” Edmund cried. Fred felt the whole trembling weight of his companion upon him. His boyish strength swayed under the burden.

“Are you ill, old fellow?” he said, alarmed. “What is the matter? I thought you were saying poetry. I don’t know what you mean about a lady.”

“You have killed her,” he said, wildly clutching the boy’s throat; then, all in a moment, he softened, and burst into a transport of cries. “Where is she? where is she? Maud! Maud! come back to me,” cried the young man, with a voice of despair. There was nothing to be seen, Fred swore afterwards, nothing, except the big stone pedestal with the urn upon it, and behind, the mossy old wall.

“I say—you are ill,” said the boy. “Come in, that’s the best thing to do; come in to mother. Maud’s there with her, if it’s Maud you want. Edmund, come along.”

Edmund broke from him, pushing him away. He went all round the pedestal, wandering about it, feeling it with his hands. Then he held out those hands piteously, appealing, into the empty air. “Maud! Maud!” he cried. “Don’t laugh at me; don’t play with me,” as if he were talking to somebody, the astonished boy described. Fred at last ran in alarmed to the library where Sir Robert was sitting. “I wish you’d come out, father, into the Lime-tree Walk to Edmund—he’s gone mad,” the boy cried.

When Sir Robert went out, Edmund was standing leaning against one of the lime trees, gazing at the green space which contained the pedestal and the urn. When he was entreated to come in, he answered quite gently, that if he only waited patiently she would be sure to come back. “This is where she always comes. She is fond of this place,” he said. “There are things I don’t understand about her, but she will come. I am sure she will come if you will only let me wait.” “Tell me, my good fellow, all about it,” Sir Robert said. He was a kind man when his attention was fully roused, and now he remembered that his wife had told him something of a strange lady whom Edmund had seen in the park. Edmund told him the whole story, standing there with his back against the tree. He asked Sir Robert first to stand close to him, almost behind him, that nothing might interfere with his clear vision round. And then he told him all. “She always tricks me,” he said, with an attempt at a laugh. “She is so innocent—like a child. How she got away this time I cannot tell. There seems nothing to hide behind here. But she always does it. I confess, sir,” he added, with great candour and gravity, “there are many things about her I do not understand; but whatever they are, I am ready to accept them all.”

“Have you ever seen her more than once in the same day?” asked Sir Robert. “No?” “Then come with me, Edmund, it is of no use waiting. I think I can tell you something about her.” Sir Robert put his arm into that of the young man. He scarcely knew himself what he meant; but it was clear that something must be done. And Edmund yielded to the mingled reason and temptation. No, he had never seen her twice the same day; and to know about her, was not that what he wanted most in the world? He suffered himself, after one long glance around, to be led away.

Sir Robert took him up-stairs to an old gallery which he remembered very well as a child, which had been given up to the children’s romps on wet days, a place full of pictures, the accumulations of an old house—all kinds of grim portraits of early Beresfords. There were some good pictures among them, he had always remembered to have heard said, and so long as Edmund could recollect there had been an intention expressed of disinterring these treasures. “I don’t know where it is exactly; I don’t know if it is still here. It was by a pupil of Sir Joshua’s, and with something of his feeling. I have always intended to bring it down-stairs,” Sir Robert said, rummaging as he spoke among old dusty canvasses. Edmund stood by listless, in the lull of reaction after his great excitement. It was not here, he thought, that anything would be told him about her. He did not understand what his companion meant. He was only waiting, feeling hazily that he had some further trial of patience to go through, not very anxious now for anything but the end of the day, and that another might dawn, on which, perhaps, he might see her again.

“Was she like this,” said Sir Robert, at last. Edmund went after him slowly, languidly, to the square of light in front of the great window whither he was dragging a picture in an old-fashioned black frame. Then the young man gave a great cry.

There she stood looking out of the old canvas with the smile he knew so well—her blue eyes looking upwards, the soft curve about her mouth, her hands clasped before her, and every detail exactly as he had seen her an hour ago; the white dress with its flounce, the black scarf with all its little frills. Then he fell down on his knees before the beautiful little figure, with a cry which was half alarm and half joy.

Sir Robert drew his breath quick; in fact, he had not been prepared for such success to his experiment. He was confounded by the explanation he had himself suggested. “Do you mean that this is—the person,” he said, in a husky voice, and glanced round him with a certain shrinking. His ruddy countenance paled. “I should prefer,” he said, with a little difficulty, “to tell you the story in my own room. But turn first to the back of the picture and look at the date. Now come along. I don’t like this vacant old place.”

Edward looked at the date; it did not convey any particular idea to his mind.

“Seven, seven, seven,” he said to himself; seven is one of the numbers of perfection. It must be that the painter had meant. Otherwise it made no impression upon him. He went down to the library, having first placed the picture carefully in the light where he could come and worship it again. Sir Robert sat down in his usual chair, looking pale. “Sit down, Edmund,” he said, “my poor boy. I am afraid you are not in your usual health. You must see the doctor; you must try change of scene.”

“What has that to do with it?” said Edmund, astonished. “You were to tell me who she is—that is of far more importance to me than my health, which is excellent, all the same. Who is she? You gave me your promise—”

“Is—?” said Sir Robert. “Edmund, my dear fellow, you must have heard the story, though you don’t remember it. It must have excited your imagination. Did you notice the date on the picture? I told you to look at it.”

“The date! What has that to do with it? Seven, seven, I forget what it was.”

“Seventeen hundred and seventy-seven,” said Sir Robert, solemnly. “Seventeen hundred and seventy-seven—nearly a hundred years ago.”

There was no intelligence in Edmund’s eyes. “I knew there must be something strange about her,” he said; “it would be vain to conceal that from one’s self. There axe many things I don’t understand—but I am willing to accept—anything, Sir Robert-”

“Edward!” cried Sir Robert, almost wildly, “command yourself. You don’t seem to see. My dear fellow, this is all a delusion. You have seen no lady. It has been your imagination working. How in the name of all that is reasonable could you see a woman who has been dead for a hundred years?”

The young man looked up startled. Confusion seemed to envelop everything round him. “A hundred years,” he said to himself, wondering; then laughed, and repeated, “I saw no lady? I am going to marry her, Sir Robert.”

“God bless us all!” said Sir Robert, with a voice of terror. “Edmund, my dear fellow—Edmund, see a doctor, see a clergyman. I’ll send for old Parkins and for the Rector. You can’t, you can’t go on like this, you know.”

Edmund’s brain was still too much confused to take in any impression from what was said. “A hundred years,” he repeated to himself, with a smile. “It is strange; but I always felt there was something strange. I told you there were many things I did not understand. But what may be the meaning—this hundred years? Is this all you have to tell me, sir?” he continued, trying to wake up from the confused sense of mystery, yet almost of pleasure, which the picture brought him. He did not understand it—but then in the whole matter there was so little that he could understand.

“All,” Sir Robert said. He was in great excitement and distress. “I don’t want the ladies to know if we can help it. Don’t say anything to them, I entreat of you. And, my dear boy, if you would go and lie down, I will send for Parkins to come directly. I’ll have the Rector up in half an hour. It will yield to remedies—it will yield to remedies,” Sir Robert said.

“I am quite well,” said Edmund. To him it seemed that Sir Robert was going out of his senses. “But I will not keep you longer, and I will say nothing to the ladies. In the meantime,” he added, in his confusion, “I have got—some letters to write.”

“The very best thing you can do; occupy yourself—occupy yourself, my dear fellow,” said Sir Robert, patting him on the shoulder. Edmund felt that his guardian was glad to be rid of him. Perhaps it was not wonderful that Sir Robert did not understand him; he did not understand himself. His head was confused as if the fog had got into it. To some things he seemed to attach no importance at all, while others were quite clear to him, and had all their natural weight. “Seventeen, seven, seven.” He repeated this over to himself with a smile, but whether it was a charm, or a fact, or what it was, he could not tell; on the other hand, he thought the precaution about the ladies was quite right. And he could not appear without betraying that something had happened to him. He sent word down-stairs by his servant that he had caught a cold and was going to keep his room; and there he received the visit of old Dr. Parkins with much conscious amusement, but would not say a word to him of what had befallen him, and utterly confounded the old doctor, who could say nothing but that his pulse was excited, and that it would be necessary for him to keep quiet for a day or two. Then the Rector came, much abashed, as a man called upon to minister to a mind diseased, and knowing nothing about it, was likely to be. When they were gone Edmund spent the night alone. He wrote a long letter to—he did not know whom—giving an account of the whole, so little as there was of it, and so much. “I know there is something strange,” he wrote, “but nothing to prevent me taking the charge of her, taking care of her. An hour a day of her will be more to me than twenty-four of any other. I know there are things which I can’t understand.” When he had done this it was late, and all the family had gone to bed. He heard them going one by one—a sound of steps in the long passages, mounting the stairs, a little gleam of the passing lights under his door. By and by silence fell upon everything. There was no sound or stir anywhere—all silent, all dark, the doors shut fast, soft waves of quiet breathing going through the house. He came out with his light in his hand and stood for a moment on the threshold of his door—an adventurer bound upon a last voyage, a sailor setting out into unknown seas. Then he went up, up to the upper part of the house, past all the closed doors, moving quietly through lines of unseen sleepers on every side. The great house was as silent as the grave.

The moon was shining full from the west, just about to set, as she had risen, early. There was a large west window in the gallery, and this was full of silvery light pouring in, making all white and dazzling. The portrait, which had been drawn towards this window to get the evening light, stood there still, receiving the white illumination of the moonlight. Edmund walked up—holding in his hand a candle, which flamed yellow and earthly in that radiance from heaven—through the whiteness, a sort of milky way, with the annals of the past on every side of him. He came to the picture of his love, and threw himself down beside it on the floor. There she stood before him, shadowed in the moonlight—the same, and yet not the same. Something disappointing, narrower, smaller, was in the pictured countenance. As he gazed at it the confusion grew in his mind; all that was real seemed to die away from him. In the vehemence of this sense of loss, he began to speak to her, tears filling his eyes, and her face shining more and more like life through that tremulous medium. “Maud! Maud! I do not understand you; I do not know you; but I love you,” he said in a rapture, not knowing that he said it. Then he came to himself with a gasp. There, close to the frame of the picture, her shoulder touching it, stood the original. He held up his candle, like a yellow flaming torch. For the moment, in the silent moonlight, with all the world asleep around, alone with these two—were they two?—his reason went from him. He raised himself to his knees, and knelt like a devotee before a shrine—his arms widely opened, his face raised, wild with worship: were they two, standing side by side, comparing themselves each to each, or were they one?

“You have come to me at last—you have come to me—Maud!” She looked at him as before with her soft smile. There was no reply in her to his passion. “I did wrong to speak to you,” she said; “you do not understand. I was so pleased that you saw me. No one sees me. I come and go, sometimes out, sometimes in. I go to their rooms and they do not see me. Then when I find one that will speak—that will smile, I am glad.” There came from her, mingled together, the soft laugh and the sigh, that made his heart stand still. “But no more—but no more,” she said.

And there seemed to creep about him a chill. He had never felt it before. When he had seen her first all had been soft as her looks, delightful as the bloom on her face. The bloom was still on her face, but shaded as by a mist. Nor could he see as he did before. The moonlight confused the soft features—or perhaps it was his yellow flaming human candle, not everlasting like the other light, ready to burn out and extinguish itself. His strength and his senses seemed to fail.

“I do not understand,” he cried; “I do not understand! but whatever it is, I accept—I accept. Dead or living, Maud, Maud, come with me—let us be together! Come!” he said, stretching his arms wildly.

She did not draw back nor move, but neither did he touch her with his longing arms. Did fear seize them half-way extended? He could not tell. They dropped down by his side, and his heart dropped, sinking within him. She stood before him unmoved—always the same calm, the half smile on her lips, her blue eyes pleased and tender. Then she shook her head slowly, gently.

“It is not permitted. I told you I had loved the earth and all that was on it: and now I am earthbound. I could not go if I would, and I would not if I could. What we have to do, that is what we love best. But I never thought that you would mistake so much—that you would not understand. Now I know why there are so few that see us. It is to keep them from harm,” she said with a soft sigh. “Ah me! when the only thing we long for, it is sometimes to speak—but I will never wish for it more—”

“Maud!” He threw himself at her feet again with a great cry. “Touch me—mark me, that I may be yours always. If not in life, yet in death. Say we shall meet when I die.”

Once more she shook her head. “How can I tell? I do not know you in the soul. You will do what is appointed; but do not be sorry, you will like to do it,” [*] she said, with her sweet look of tender pleasure. “Good-bye, brother—good-bye!”

“I will not let you go!” he cried: “I will not let you go!” and seized her in his arms.

Then in Edmund’s head was a roaring of echoes, a clanging of noises, a blast as of great trumpets and music; and he knew no more.

FOOTNOTE

[@@@]Prima vuol ben; ma non lascia il talento

Che divina giustizia contra voglia,

Come fù al peccar, pone al tormento.

—Purgatorio, Cant. xxi.

•    •    •    •

“Edmund is not in his room; his bed has not been slept in,” said Lady Beresford, coming hastily up-stairs next morning immediately after she had gone down. Sir Robert had not yet left his dressing-room. She was pale and full of alarm. “His door was open; there is no trace of him. I have sent out over all the park. He most have left the house last night. And Fred tells me the strangest story. What is it, Robert?” Sir Robert was very much disturbed himself, but he would make no certain reply.

“I daresay he will be found wandering about somewhere. He has got some nonsense in his head.” Then he hurried down to the Lime-tree Walk, and out to the park, looking under the bushes and trees. If he had found Edmund there lying white and stark, Sir Robert would not have been surprised. They searched for him all the morning, but found no trace anywhere. Later in the day, Sir Robert suddenly bethought himself of another possibility. He hurried up to the old gallery, calling his eldest son to go with him. And there, indeed, they found Edmund—lying on the floor. But not dead, nor raving; pale enough, pale as a ghost, but asleep; his candle long ago burnt out to the socket, and the soft little face he had loved, placidly watching over him from the picture, as unmoved, though not so sweet, as the vision he had seen.

It cannot be said that Edmund Coventry was well enough to leave Daintrey that day, nor for several days. But he went away as soon as it was possible, going off from the great door, and by the drive, not approaching the Lime-tree Walk. He had no brain-fever, nor any other kind of fever. Various changes were perceptible, the Beresfords thought, in his life; but other people were unconscious of them. He had always been a gentle soul, friendly, and charitable, and true. More than a year after, when he met his former guardian and family in town, the old intercourse was renewed, and that came to pass which Lady Beresford had always thought would be so very suitable. He married Maud, and made her a very good husband. But he would never go to Daintrey again. And though there have been a great many versions of the story scattered abroad, and the Beresfords, once so silent on the subject, have become in their hearts a little proud of it—though it is supposed against their will that it should be known—no one else, so far as we have ever heard, has been again accosted by the gentle little lady who was earthbound. Perhaps her time of willing punishment is over, and she is earthbound no more.

The Open Door

(1882)

I took the house of Brentwood on my return from India in 18——, for the temporary accommodation of my family, until I could find a permanent home for them. It had many advantages which made it peculiarly appropriate. It was within reach of Edinburgh; and my boy Roland, whose education had been considerably neglected, could go in and out to school; which was thought to be better for him than either leaving home altogether or staying there always with a tutor. The first of these expedients would have seemed preferable to me; the second commended itself to his mother. The doctor, like a judicious man, took the midway between. “Put him on his pony, and let him ride into the High School every morning; it will do him all the good in the world,” Dr. Simson said; “and when it is bad weather, there is the train.” His mother accepted this solution of the difficulty more easily than I could have hoped; and our pale-faced boy, who had never known anything more invigorating than Simla, began to encounter the brisk breezes of the North in the subdued severity of the month of May. Before the time of the vacation in July we had the satisfaction of seeing him begin to acquire something of the brown and ruddy complexion of his schoolfellows. The English system did not commend itself to Scotland in these days. There was no little Eton at Fettes; nor do I think, if there had been, that a genteel exotic of that class would have tempted either my wife or me. The lad was doubly precious to us, being the only one left us of many; and he was fragile in body, we believed, and deeply sensitive in mind. To keep him at home, and yet to send him to school—to combine the advantages of the two systems—seemed to be everything that could be desired. The two girls also found at Brentwood everything they wanted. They were near enough to Edinburgh to have masters and lessons as many as they required for completing that never-ending education which the young people seem to require nowadays. Their mother married me when she was younger than Agatha; and I should like to see them improve upon their mother! I myself was then no more than twenty-five—an age at which I see the young fellows now groping about them, with no notion what they are going to do with their lives. However; I suppose every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.

Brentwood stands on that fine and wealthy slope of country—one of the richest in Scotland—which lies between the Pentland Hills and the Firth. In clear weather you could see the blue gleam—like a bent bow, embracing the wealthy fields and scattered houses—of the great estuary on one side of you, and on the other the blue heights, not gigantic like those we had been used to, but just high enough for all the glories of the atmosphere, the play of clouds, and sweet reflections, which give to a hilly country an interest and a charm which nothing else can emulate. Edinburgh—with its two lesser heights—the Castle and the Calton Hill—its spires and towers piercing through the smoke, and Arthur’s Seat lying crouched behind, like a guardian no longer very needful, taking his repose beside the well-beloved charge, which is now, so to speak, able to take care of itself without him—lay at our right hand. From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The colour was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its colour and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose.

The village of Brentwood lay almost under the house, on the other side of the deep little ravine, down which a stream—which ought to have been a lovely, wild, and frolicsome little river—flowed between its rocks and trees. The river, like so many in that district, had, however, in its earlier life been sacrificed to trade, and was grimy with paper-making. But this did not affect our pleasure in it so much as I have known it to affect other streams. Perhaps our water was more rapid; perhaps less clogged with dirt and refuse. Our side of the dell was charmingly accidenté, and clothed with fine trees, through which various paths wound down to the river-side and to the village bridge which crossed the stream. The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in Scotland. The blue slates and the grey stone are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior of an old-fashioned hewed and galleried church, with its little family settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape. Still a cluster of houses on differing elevations—with scraps of garden coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening of a street with its rural sociability, the women at their doors, the slow wagon lumbering along—gives a centre to the landscape. It was cheerful to look at, and convenient in a hundred ways. Within ourselves we had walks in plenty, the glen being always beautiful in all its phases, whether the woods were green in the spring or ruddy in the autumn. In the park which surrounded the house were the ruins of the former mansion of Brentwood—a much smaller and less important house than the solid Georgian edifice which we inhabited. The ruins were picturesque, however, and gave importance to the place. Even we, who were but temporary tenants, felt a vague pride in them, as if they somehow reflected a certain consequence upon ourselves. The old building had the remains of a tower—an indistinguishable mass of mason-work, over-grown with ivy; and the shells of walls attached to this were half filled up with soil. I had never examined it closely, I am ashamed to say. There was a large room, or what had been a large room, with the lower part of the windows still existing, on the principal floor, and underneath other windows, which were perfect, though half filled up with fallen soil, and waving with a wild growth of brambles and chance growths of all kinds. This was the oldest part of all. At a little distance were some very commonplace and disjointed fragments of building, one of them suggesting a certain pathos by its very commonness and the complete wreck which it showed. This was the end of a low gable, a bit of grey wall, all incrusted with lichens, in which was a common doorway. Probably it had been a servants’ entrance, a back door, or opening into what are called “the offices” in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered—pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the doorway open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing—closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance which nothing justified.

The summer was a very happy period of repose for us all. The warmth of Indian suns was still in our veins. It seemed to us that we could never have enough of the greenness, the dewiness, the freshness of the northern landscape. Even its mists were pleasant to us, taking all the fever out of us, and pouring in vigour and refreshment. In autumn we followed the fashion of the time, and went away for change which we did not in the least require. It was when the family had settled down for the winter, when the days were short and dark, and the rigorous reign of frost upon us, that the incidents occurred which alone could justify me in intruding upon the world my private affairs. These incidents were, however, of so curious a character, that I hope my inevitable references to my own family and pressing personal interests will meet with a general pardon.

I was absent in London when these events began. In London an old Indian plunges back into the interests with which all his previous life has been associated, and meets old friends at every step. I had been circulating among some half-dozen of these—enjoying the return to my former life in shadow, though I had been so thankful in substance to throw it aside—and had missed some of my home letters, what with going down from Friday to Monday to old Benbow’s place in the country, and stopping on the way back to dine and sleep at Sellar’s and to take a look into Cross’s stables, which occupied another day. It is never safe to miss one’s letters. In this transitory life, as the Prayer-book says, how can one ever be certain what is going to happen? All was well at home. I knew exactly (I thought) what they would have to say to me: “The weather has been so fine, that Roland has not once gone by train, and he enjoys the ride beyond anything.” “Dear papa, be sure that you don’t forget anything, but bring us so-and-so, and so-and-so,”—a list as long as my arm. Dear girls and dearer mother! I would not for the world have forgotten their commissions, or lost their little letters, for all the Benbows and Crosses in the world.

But I was confident in my home-comfort and peacefulness. When I got back to my club, however, three or four letters were lying for one, upon some of which I noticed the “immediate,” “urgent,” which old-fashioned people and anxious people still believe will influence the post-office and quicken the speed of the mails. I was about to open one of these, when the club porter brought me two telegrams, one of which, he said, had arrived the night before. I opened, as was to be expected, the last first, and this was what I read: “Why don’t you come or answer? For God’s sake, come. He is much worse.” This was a thunderbolt to fall upon a man’s head who had one only son, and he the light of his eyes! The other telegram, which I opened with hands trembling so much that I lost time by my haste, was to much the same purport: “No better; doctor afraid of brain-fever. Calls for you day and night. Let nothing detain you.” The first thing I did was to look up the time-tables to see if there was any way of getting off sooner than by the night-train, though I knew well enough there was not; and then I read the letters, which furnished, alas! too clearly, all the details. They told me that the boy had been pale for some time, with a scared look. His mother had noticed it before I left home, but would not say anything to alarm me. This look had increased day by day: and soon it was observed that Roland came home at a wild gallop through the park, his pony panting and in foam, himself “as white as a sheet,” but with the perspiration streaming from his forehead. For a long time he had resisted all questioning, but at length had developed such strange changes of mood, showing a reluctance to go to school, a desire to be fetched in the carriage at night—which was a ridiculous piece of luxury—an unwillingness to go out into the grounds, and nervous start at every sound, that his mother had insisted upon an explanation. When the boy—our boy Roland, who had never known what fear was—began to talk to her of voices he had heard in the park, and shadows that had appeared to him among the ruins, my wife promptly put him to bed and sent for Dr. Simson, which, of course, was the only thing to do.

I hurried off that evening, as may be supposed, with an anxious heart. How I got through the hours before the starting of the train, I cannot tell. We must all be thankful for the quickness of the railway when in anxiety; but to have thrown myself into a post-chaise as soon as horses could be put to, would have been a relief. I got to Edinburgh very early in the blackness of the winter morning, and scarcely dared look the man in the face, at whom I gasped, “What news?” My wife had sent the brougham for me, which I concluded, before the man spoke, was a bad sign. His answer was that stereotyped answer which leaves the imagination so wildly free—“Just the same.” Just the same! What might that mean? The horses seemed to me to creep along the long dark country road. As we dashed through the park, I thought I heard some one moaning among the trees, and clenched my fist at him (whoever he might be) with fury. Why had the fool of a woman at the gate allowed any one to come in to disturb the quiet of the place? If I had not been in such hot haste to get home, I think I should have stopped the carriage and got out to see what tramp it was that had made an entrance, and chosen my grounds, of all places in the world,—when my boy was ill!—to grumble and groan in. But I had no reason to complain of our slow pace here. The horses flew like lightning along the intervening path, and drew up at the door all panting, as if they had run a race. My wife stood waiting to receive me, with a pale face, and a candle in her hand, which made her look paler still as the wind blew the flame about. “He is sleeping,” she said in a whisper, as if her voice might wake him. And I replied, when I could find my voice, also in a whisper, as though the jingling of the horses’ furniture and the sound of their hoofs must not have been more dangerous. I stood on the steps with her a moment, almost afraid to go in, now that I was here; and it seemed to me that I saw without observing, if I may say so, that the horses were unwilling to turn round, though their stables lay that way, or that the men were unwilling. These things occurred to me afterwards, though at the moment I was not capable of anything but to ask questions and to hear of the condition of the boy.

I looked at him from the door of his room, for we were afraid to go near, lest we should disturb that blessed sleep. It looked like actual sleep, not the lethargy into which my wife told me he would sometimes fall. She told me everything in the next room, which communicated with his, rising now and then and going to the door of communication; and in this there was much that was very startling and confusing to the mind. It appeared that ever since the winter began—since it was early dark, and night had fallen before his return from school—he had been hearing voices among the ruins: at first only a groaning, he said, at which his pony was as much alarmed as he was, but by degrees a voice. The tears ran down my wife’s cheeks as she described to me how he would start up in the night and cry out, “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!” with a pathos which rent her heart. And she sitting there all the time, only longing to do everything his heart could desire! But though she would try to soothe him, crying, “You are at home, my darling. I am here. Don’t you know me? Your mother is here!” he would only stare at her, and after a while spring up again with the same cry. At other times he would be quite reasonable, she said, asking eagerly when I was coming, but declaring that he must go with me as soon as I did so, “to let them in.” “The doctor thinks his nervous system must have received a shock,” my wife said. “Oh, Henry, can it be that we have pushed him on too much with his work—a delicate boy like Roland? And what is his work in comparison with his health? Even you would think little of honours or prizes if it hurt the boy’s health.” Even I!—as if I were an inhuman father sacrificing my child to my ambition. But I would not increase her trouble by taking any notice. After awhile they persuaded me to lie down, to rest, and to eat, none of which things had been possible since I received their letters. The mere fact of being on the spot, of course, in itself was a great thing; and when I knew that I could be called in a moment, as soon as he was awake and wanted me, I felt capable, even in the dark, chill morning twilight, to snatch an hour or two’s sleep. As it happened, I was so worn out with the strain of anxiety, and he so quieted and consoled by knowing I had come, that I was not disturbed till the afternoon, when the twilight had again settled down. There was just daylight enough to see his face when I went to him; and what a change in a fortnight! He was paler and more worn, I thought, than even in those dreadful days in the plains before we left India. His hair seemed to me to have grown long and lank; his eyes were like blazing lights projecting out of his white face. He got hold of my hand in a cold and tremulous clutch, and waved to everybody to go away. “Go away—even mother,” he said; “go away.” This went to her heart; for she did not like that even I should have more of the boy’s confidence than herself; but my wife has never been a woman to think of herself, and she left us alone. “Are they all gone?” he said eagerly. “They would not let me speak. The doctor treated me as if I were a fool. You know I am not a fool, papa.”

“Yes, yes, my boy, I know. But you are ill, and quiet is so necessary. You are not only not a fool, Roland, but you are reasonable and understand. When you are ill you must deny yourself; you must not do everything that you might do being well.”

He waved his thin hand with a sort of indignation. “Then, father, I am not ill,” he cried. “Oh, I thought when you came you would not stop me,—you would see the sense of it! What do you think is the matter with me, all of you? Simson is well enough; but he is only a doctor. What do you think is the matter with me? I am no more ill than you are. A doctor, of course, he thinks you are ill the moment he looks at you—that’s what he’s there for—and claps you into bed.”

“Which is the best place for you at present, my dear boy.”

“I made up my mind,” cried the little fellow, “that I would stand it till you came home. I said to myself, I won’t frighten mother and the girls. But now, father,” he cried, half jumping out of bed, “it’s not illness: it’s a secret.”

His eyes shone so wildly, his face was so swept with strong feeling, that my heart sank within me. It could be nothing but fever that did it, and fever had been so fatal. I got him into my arms to put him back into bed. “Roland,” I said, humouring the poor child, which I knew was the only way, “if you are going to tell me this secret to do any good, you know you must be quite quiet, and not excite yourself. If you excite yourself, I must not let you speak.”

“Yes, father,” said the boy. He was quiet directly, like a man, as if he quite understood. When I had laid him back on his pillow, he looked up at me with that grateful, sweet look with which children, when they are ill, break one’s heart, the water coming into his eyes in his weakness. “I was sure as soon as you were here you would know what to do,” he said.

“To be sure, my boy. Now keep quiet, and tell it all out like a man.” To think I was telling lies to my own child! for I did it only to humour him, thinking, poor little fellow, his brain was wrong.

“Yes, father. Father, there is some one in the park—some one that has been badly used.”

“Hush, my dear; you remember there is to be no excitement. Well, who is this somebody, and who has been ill-using him? We will soon put a stop to that.”

“All,” cried Roland, “but it is not so easy as you think. I don’t know who it is. It is just a cry. Oh, if you could hear it! It gets into my head in my sleep. I heard it clear as clear—and they think that I am dreaming, or raving perhaps,” the boy said, with a sort of disdainful smile.

This look of his perplexed me; it was less like fever than I thought. “Are you quite sure you have not dreamed it, Roland?” I said.

“Dreamed?—that!” He was springing up again when he suddenly bethought himself, and lay down flat, with the same sort of smile on his face. “The pony heard it, too,” he said. “She jumped as if she had been shot. If I had not grasped at the reins—for I was frightened, father—”

“No shame to you, my boy,” said I, though I scarcely knew why.

“If I hadn’t held to her like a leech, she’d have pitched me over her head, and never drew breath till we were at the door. Did the pony dream it?” he said, with a soft disdain, yet indulgence for my foolishness. Then he added slowly, “It was only a cry the first time, and all the time before you went away. I wouldn’t tell you, for it was so wretched to be frightened. I thought it might be a hare or a rabbit snared, and I went in the morning and looked; but there was nothing. It was after you went I heard it really first; and this is what he says.” He raised himself on his elbow close to me, and looked me in the face: “‘Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!’” As he said the words a mist came over his face, the mouth quivered, the soft features all melted and changed, and when he had ended these pitiful words, dissolved in a shower of heavy tears.

Was it a hallucination? Was it the fever of the brain? Was it the disordered fancy caused by great bodily weakness? How could I tell? I thought it wisest to accept it as if it were all true.

“This is very touching, Roland,” I said.

“Oh, if you had just heard it, father! I said to myself, if father heard it he would do something; but mamma, you know, she’s given over to Simson, and that fellow’s a doctor, and never thinks of anything but clapping you into bed.”

“We must not blame Simson for being a doctor, Roland.”

“No, no,” said my boy, with delightful toleration and indulgence; “oh, no; that’s the good of him; that’s what he’s for; I know that. But you—you are different; you are just father; and you’ll do something—directly, papa, directly—this very night.”

“Surely,” I said. “No doubt it is some little lost child.”

He gave me a sudden, swift look, investigating my face as though to see whether, after all, this was everything my eminence as “father” came to,—no more than that. Then he got hold of my shoulder, clutching it with his thin hand. “Look here,” he said, with a quiver in his voice; “suppose it wasn’t—living at all!”

“My dear boy, how then could you have heard it?” I said.

He turned away from me with a pettish exclamation,—“As if you didn’t know better than that!”

“Do you want to tell me it is a ghost?” I said.

Roland withdrew his hand; his countenance assumed an aspect of great dignity and gravity; a slight quiver remained about his lips. “Whatever it was—you always said we were not to call names. It was something—in trouble. Oh, father, in terrible trouble!”

“But, my boy,” I said (I was at my wits’ end), “if it was a child that was lost, or any poor human creature—but, Roland, what do you want me to do?”

“I should know if I was you,” said the child eagerly. “That is what I always said to myself—Father will know. Oh, papa, papa, to have to face it night after night, in such terrible, terrible trouble, and never to be able to do it any good! I don’t want to cry; it’s like a baby, I know; but what can I do else? Out there all by itself in the ruin, and nobody to help it! I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” cried my generous boy. And in his weakness he burst out, after many attempts to restrain it, into a great childish fit of sobbing and tears.

I do not know that I ever was in a greater perplexity, in my life; and afterwards, when I thought of it, there was something comic in it too. It is bad enough to find your child’s mind possessed with the conviction that he has seen—or heard—a ghost; but that he should require you to go instantly and help that ghost was the most bewildering experience that had ever come my way. I am a sober man myself, and not superstitious—at least any more than everybody is superstitious. Of course I do not believe in ghosts; but I don’t deny, any more than other people, that there are stories which I cannot pretend to understand. My blood got a sort of chill in my veins at the idea that Roland should be a ghost-seer; for that generally means a hysterical temperament and weak health, and all that men most hate and fear for their children. But that I should take up his ghost and right its wrongs, and save it from its trouble, was such a mission as was enough to confuse any man. I did my best to console my boy without giving any promise of this astonishing kind; but he was too sharp for me: he would have none of my caresses. With sobs breaking in at intervals upon his voice, and the rain-drops hanging on his eyelids, he yet returned to the charge.

“It will be there now!—it will be there all the night! Oh, think, papa, think if it was me! I can’t rest for thinking of it. Don’t!” he cried, putting away my hand—“don’t! You go and help it, and mother can take care of me.”

“But, Roland, what can I do?”

My boy opened his eyes, which were large with weakness and fever, and gave me a smile such, I think, as sick children only know the secret of. “I was sure you would know as soon as you came. I always said, Father will know. And mother,” he cried, with a softening of repose upon his face, his limbs relaxing, his form sinking with a luxurious ease in his bed—“mother can come and take care of me.”

I called her, and saw him turn to her with the complete dependence of a child; and then I went away and left them, as perplexed a man as any in Scotland. I must say, however, I had this consolation, that my mind was greatly eased about Roland. He might be under a hallucination; but his head was clear enough, and I did not think him so ill as everybody else did. The girls were astonished even at the ease with which I took it. “How do you think he is?” they said in a breath, coming round me, laying hold of me. “Not half so ill as I expected,” I said; “not very bad at all.” “Oh, papa, you are a darling!” cried Agatha, kissing me, and crying upon my shoulder; while little Jeanie, who was as pale as Roland, clasped both her arms round mine, and could not speak at all. I knew nothing about it, not half so much as Simson; but they believed in me: they had a feeling that all would go right now. God is very good to you when your children look to you like that. It makes one humble, not proud. I was not worthy of it; and then I recollected that I had to act the part of a father to Roland’s ghost, which made me almost laugh, though I might just as well have cried. It was the strangest mission that ever was intrusted to mortal man.

It was then I remembered suddenly the looks of the men when they turned to take the brougham to the stables in the dark that morning. They had not liked it, and the horses had not liked it. I remembered that even in my anxiety about Roland I had heard them tearing along the avenue back to the stables, and had made a memorandum mentally that I must speak of it. It seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to go to the stables now and make a few inquiries. It is impossible to fathom the minds of rustics; there might be some devilry of practical joking, for anything I knew; or they might have some interest in getting up a bad reputation for the Brentwood avenue.

It was getting dark by the time I went out, and nobody who knows the country will need to be told how black is the darkness of a November night under high laurel-bushes and yew-trees. I walked into the heart of the shrubberies two or three times, not seeing a step before me, till I came out upon the broader carriage-road, where the trees opened a little, and there was a faint grey glimmer of sky visible, under which the great limes and elms stood darkling like ghosts; but it grew black again as I approached the corner where the ruins lay. Both eyes and ears were on the alert, as may be supposed; but I could see nothing in the absolute gloom, and, so far as I can recollect, I heard nothing. Nevertheless there came a strong impression upon me that somebody was there. It is a sensation which most people have felt. I have seen when it has been strong enough to awake me out of sleep, the sense of some one looking at me. I suppose my imagination had been affected by Roland’s story; and the mystery of the darkness is always full of suggestions. I stamped my feet violently on the gravel to rouse myself, and called out sharply, “Who’s there?” Nobody answered, nor did I expect any one to answer, but the impression had been made. I was so foolish that I did not like to look back, but went sideways, keeping an eye on the gloom behind.

It was with great relief that I spied the light in the stables, making a sort of oasis in the darkness. I walked very quickly into the midst of that lighted and cheerful place, and thought the clank of the groom’s pail one of the pleasantest sounds I had ever heard. The coachman was the head of this little colony, and it was to his house I went to pursue my investigations. He was a native of the district, and had taken care of the place in the absence of the family for years; it was impossible but that he must know everything that was going on, and all the traditions of the place. The men, I could see, eyed me anxiously when I thus appeared at such an hour among them, and followed me with their eyes to Jarvis’s house, where he lived alone with his old wife, their children being all married and out in the world. Mrs. Jarvis met me with anxious questions. How was the poor young gentleman? But the others knew, I could see by their faces, that not even this was the foremost thing in my mind.

•    •    •    •

“Noises?—ou ay, there’ll be noises,—the wind in the trees, and the water soughing down the glen. As for tramps, Cornel, no, there’s little o’ that kind o’ cattle about here; and Merran at the gate’s a careful body.” Jarvis moved about with some embarrassment from one leg to another as he spoke. He kept in the shade, and did not look at me more than he could help. Evidently his mind was perturbed, and he had reasons for keeping his own counsel. His wife sat by, giving him a quick look now and then, but saying nothing. The kitchen was very snug and warm and bright—as different as could be from the chill and mystery of the night outside.

“I think you are trifling with me, Jarvis,” I said.

“Triflin’, Cornel? No me. What would I trifle for? If the deevil himsel was in the auld hoose, I have no interest in ’t one way or another—”

“Sandy, hold your peace!” cried his wife imperatively.

“And what am I to hold my peace for, wi’ the Cornel standing there asking a’ thae questions? I’m saying, if the deevil himsel—”

“And I’m telling ye hold your peace!” cried the woman, in great excitement. “Dark November weather and lang nichts, and us that ken a’ we ken. How daur ye name—a name that shouldna be spoken?” She threw down her stocking and got up, also in great agitation. “I tellt ye you never could keep it. It’s no a thing that will hide, and the haill toun [whole town] kens as weel as you or me. Tell the Cornel straight out—or see, I’ll do it. I dinna hold wi’ your secrets, and a secret that the haill toun kens!” She snapped her fingers with an air of large disdain. As for Jarvis, ruddy and big as he was, he shrank to nothing before this decided woman. He repeated to her two or three times her own adjuration, “Hold your peace!” then, suddenly changing his tone, cried out, “Tell him then, confound ye! I’ll wash my hands o’t. If a’ the ghosts in Scotland were in the auld hoose, is that ony concern o’ mine?”

After this I elicited without much difficulty the whole story. In the opinion of the Jarvises, and of everybody about, the certainty that the place was haunted was beyond all doubt. As Sandy and his wife warmed to the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything, it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis’s opinion was that his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house; which was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and December that “the visitation” occurred. During these months, the darkest of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen—at least, nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs. Jarvis said, with unconscious poetry. It began when night fell, and continued, at intervals, till day broke. Very often it was only all inarticulate cry and moaning, but sometimes the words which had taken possession of my poor boy’s fancy had been distinctly audible—“Oh, mother, let me in!” The Jarvises were not aware that there had ever been any investigation into it. The estate of Brentwood had lapsed into the hands of a distant branch of the family, who had lived but little there; and of the many people who had taken it, as I had done, few had remained through two Decembers. And nobody had taken the trouble to make a very close examination into the facts. “No, no,” Jarvis said, shaking his head, “No, no, Cornel. Wha wad set themsels up for a laughin’-stock to a’ the country-side, making a wark about a ghost? Naebody believes in ghosts. It bid to be the wind in the trees, the last gentleman said, or some effec’ o’ the water wrastlin’ among the rocks. He said it was a’ quite easy explained; but he gave up the hoose. And when you cam, Cornel, we were awfu’ anxious you should never hear. What for should I have spoiled the bargain and hairmed the property for no-thing?”

“Do you call my child’s life nothing?” I said in the trouble of the moment, unable to restrain myself. “And instead of telling this all to me, you have told it to him—to a delicate boy, a child unable to sift evidence or judge for himself, a tender-hearted young creature—”

I was walking about the room with an anger all the hotter that I felt it to be most likely quite unjust. My heart was full of bitterness against the stolid retainers of a family who were content to risk other people’s children and comfort rather than let a house be empty. If I had been warned I might have taken precautions, or left the place, or sent Roland away, a hundred things which now I could not do; and here I was with my boy in a brain-fever, and his life, the most precious life on earth, hanging in the balance, dependent on whether or not I could get to the reason of a commonplace ghost-story! I paced about in high wrath, not seeing what I was to do; for to take Roland away, even if he were able to travel, would not settle his agitated mind; and I feared even that a scientific explanation of refracted sound or reverberation, or any other of the easy certainties with which we elder men are silenced, would have very little effect upon the boy.

“Cornel,” said Jarvis solemnly, “and she’ll bear me witness—the young gentleman never heard a word from me—no, nor from either groom or gardener; I’ll gie ye my word for that. In the first place, he’s no a lad that invites ye to talk. There are some that are, and some that are na’. Some will draw ye on, till ye’ve tellt them a’ the clatter of the toun, and a’ ye ken, and whiles mair. But Maister Roland, his mind’s fu’ of his books. He’s aye civil and kind, and a fine lad; but no that sort. And ye see it’s for a’ our interest, Cornel, that you should stay at Brentwood. I took it upon me mysel to pass the word,—‘No a syllable to Maister Roland, nor to the young leddies—no a syllable.’ The women-servants, that have little reason to be out at night, ken little or nothing about it. And some think it grand to have a ghost so long as they’re no in the way of coming across it. If you had been tellt the story to begin with, maybe ye would have thought so yourself.”

This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. We never think what a risk it is to play with young imaginations, but cry out, in the fashionable jargon, “A ghost!—nothing else was wanted to make it perfect.” I should not have been above this myself. I should have smiled, of course, at the idea of the ghost at all, but then to feel that it was mine would have pleased my vanity. Oh, yes, I claim no exemption. The girls would have been delighted. I could fancy their eagerness, their interest, and excitement. No; if we had been told, it would have done no good—we should have made the bargain all the more eagerly, the fools that we are. “And there has been no attempt to investigate it,” I said, “to see what it really is?”

“Eh, Cornel,” said the coachman’s wife, “wha would investigate, as ye call it, a thing that nobody believes in? Ye would be the laughin’-stock of a’ the country-side, as my man says.”

“But you believe in it,” I said, turning upon her hastily. The woman was taken by surprise. She made a step backward out of my way.

“Lord, Cornel, how ye frichten a body! Me!—there’s awfu’ strange things in this world. An unlearned person doesna ken what to think. But the minister and the gentry they just laugh in your face. Inquire into the thing that is not! Na, na, we just let it be.”

“Come with me, Jarvis,” I said hastily, “and we’ll make an attempt at least. Say nothing to the men or to anybody. I’ll come back after dinner, and we’ll make a serious attempt to see what it is, if it is anything. If I hear it—which I doubt—you may be sure I shall never rest till I make it out. Be ready for me about ten o’clock.”

“Me, Cornel!” Jarvis said, in a faint voice. I had not been looking at him in my own preoccupation, but when I did so, I found that the greatest change had come over the fat and ruddy coachman. “Me, Cornel!” he repeated, wiping the perspiration from his brow. His ruddy face hung in flabby folds, his knees knocked together, his voice seemed half extinguished in his throat. Then he began to rub his hands and smile upon me in a deprecating, imbecile way. “There’s nothing I wouldna do to pleasure ye, Cornel,” taking a step further back. “I’m sure she kens I’ve aye said I never had to do with a mair fair, weel-spoken gentleman—” Here Jarvis came to a pause, again looking at me, rubbing his hands.

“Well?” I said.

“But eh, sir!” he went on, with the same imbecile yet insinuating smile, “if ye’ll reflect that I am no used to my feet. With a horse atween my legs, or the reins in my hand, I’m maybe nae worse than other men; but on fit, Cornel—It’s no the—bogles—but I’ve been cavalry, ye see,” with a little hoarse laugh, “a’ my life. To face a thing ye dinna understan’—on your feet, Cornel.”

“Well, sir, if I do it,” said I tartly, “why shouldn’t you?”

“Eh, Cornel, there’s an awfu’ difference. In the first place, ye tramp about the haill countryside, and think naething of it; but a walk tires me mair than a hunard miles’ drive; and then ye’re a gentleman, and do your ain pleasure; and you’re no so auld as me; and it’s for your ain bairn, ye see, Cornel; and then—”

“He believes in it, Cornel, and you dinna believe in it,” the woman said.

“Will you come with me?” I said, turning to her.

She jumped back, upsetting her chair in her bewilderment. “Me!” with a scream, and then fell into a sort of hysterical laugh. “I wouldna say but what I would go; but what would the folk say to hear of Cornel Mortimer with an auld silly woman at his heels?”

The suggestion made me laugh too, though I had little inclination for it. “I’m sorry you have so little spirit, Jarvis,” I said. “I must find some one else, I suppose.”

Jarvis, touched by this, began to remonstrate, but I cut him short. My butler was a soldier who had been with me in India, and was not supposed to fear anything—man or devil—certainly not the former; and I felt that I was losing time. The Jarvises were too thankful to get rid of me. They attended me to the door with the most anxious courtesies. Outside, the two grooms stood close by, a little confused by my sudden exit. I don’t know if perhaps they had been listening—at least standing as near as possible, to catch any scrap of the conversation. I waved my hand to them as I went past, in answer to their salutations, and it was very apparent to me that they also were glad to see me go.

And it will be thought very strange, but it would be weak not to add, that I myself, though bent on the investigation I have spoken of, pledged to Roland to carry it out, and feeling that my boy’s health, perhaps his life, depended on the result of my inquiry,—I felt the most unaccountable reluctance to pass these ruins on my way home. My curiosity was intense; and yet it was all my mind could do to pull my body along. I daresay the scientific people would describe it the other way, and attribute my cowardice to the state of my stomach. I went on; but if I had followed my impulse, I should have turned and bolted. Everything in me seemed to cry out against it: my heart thumped, my pulses all began, like sledge-hammers, beating against my ears and every sensitive part. It was very dark, as I have said; the old house, with its shapeless tower, loomed a heavy mass through the darkness, which was only not entirely so solid as itself. On the other hand, the great dark cedars of which we were so proud seemed to fill up the night. My foot strayed out of the path in my confusion and the gloom together, and I brought myself up with a cry as I felt myself knock against something solid. What was it? The contact with hard stone and lime and prickly bramble-bushes restored me a little to myself. “Oh, it’s only the old gable,” I said aloud, with a little laugh to reassure myself. The rough feeling of the stones reconciled me. As I groped about thus, I shook off my visionary folly. What so easily explained as that I should have strayed from the path in the darkness? This brought me back to common existence, as if I had been shaken by a wise hand out of all the silliness of superstition. How silly it was, after all! What did it matter which path I took? I laughed again, this time with better heart, when suddenly, in a moment, the blood was chilled in my veins, a shiver stole along my spine, my faculties seemed to forsake me. Close by me, at my side, at my feet, there was a sigh. No, not a groan, not a moaning, not anything so tangible—a perfectly soft, faint, inarticulate sigh. I sprang back, and my heart stopped beating. Mistaken! no, mistake was impossible. I heard it as clearly as I hear myself speak; a long, soft, weary sigh, as if drawn to the utmost, and emptying out a load of sadness that filled the breast. To hear this in the solitude, in the dark, in the night (though it was still early), had an effect which I cannot describe. I feel it now—something cold creeping over me, up into my hair, and down to my feet, which refused to move. I cried out, with a trembling voice, “Who is there?” as I had done before; but there was no reply.

I got home I don’t quite know how; but in my mind there was no longer any indifference as to the thing, whatever it was, that haunted these ruins. My scepticism disappeared like a mist. I was as firmly determined that there was something as Roland was. I did not for a moment pretend to myself that it was possible I could be deceived; there were movements and noises which I understood all about—cracklings of small branches in the frost, and little rolls of gravel on the path, such as have a very eerie sound sometimes, and perplex you with wonder as to who has done it, when there is no real mystery; but I assure you all these little movements of nature don’t affect you one bit when there is something. I understood them. I did not understand the sigh. That was not simple nature; there was meaning in it, feeling, the soul of a creature invisible. This is the thing that human nature trembles at—a creature invisible, yet with sensations, feelings, a power somehow of expressing itself.

I had not the same sense of unwillingness to turn my back upon the scene of the mystery which I had experienced in going to the stables; but I almost ran home, impelled by eagerness to get everything done that had to be done, in order to apply myself to finding it out. Bagley was in the hall as usual when I went in. He was always there in the afternoon, always with the appearance of perfect occupation, yet, so far as I know, never doing anything. The door was open, so that I hurried in without any pause, breathless; but the sight of his calm regard, as he came to help me off with my overcoat, subdued me in a moment. Anything out of the way, anything incomprehensible, faded to nothing in the presence of Bagley. You saw and wondered how he was made: the parting of his hair, the tie of his white neckcloth, the fit of his trousers, all perfect as works of art; but you could see how they were done, which makes all the difference. I flung myself upon him, so to speak, without waiting to note the extreme unlikeness of the man to anything of the kind I meant. “Bagley,” I said, “I want you to come out with me to-night to watch for—”

“Poachers, Colonel?” he said, a gleam of pleasure running all over him.

“No, Bagley; a great deal worse,” I cried.

“Yes, Colonel; at what hour, sir?” the man said; but then I had not told him what it was.

It was ten o’clock when we set out. All was perfectly quiet indoors. My wife was with Roland, who had been quite calm, she said, and who (though, no doubt, the fever must run its course) had been better ever since I came. I told Bagley to put on a thick greatcoat over his evening coat, and did the same myself, with strong boots; for the soil was like a sponge, or worse. Talking to him, I almost forgot what we were going to do. It was darker even than it had been before, and Bagley kept very close to me as we went along. I had a small lantern in my hand, which gave us a partial guidance. We had come to the corner where the path turns. On one side was the bowling-green, which the girls had taken possession of for their croquet-ground—a wonderful enclosure surrounded by high hedges of holly, three hundred years old and more; on the other, the ruins. Both were black as night; but before we got so far, there was a little opening in which we could just discern the trees and the lighter line of the road. I thought it best to pause there and take breath. “Bagley,” I said, “there is something about these ruins I don’t understand. It is there I am going. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Be ready to pounce upon any stranger you see—anything, man or woman. Don’t hurt, but seize anything you see.” “Colonel,” said Bagley, with a little tremor in his breath, “they do say there’s things there—as is neither man nor woman.” There was no time for words. “Are you game to follow me, my man? that’s the question,” I said. Bagley fell in without a word, and saluted. I knew then I had nothing to fear.

We went, so far as I could guess, exactly as I had come; when I heard that sigh. The darkness, however, was so complete that all marks, as of trees or paths, disappeared. One moment we felt our feet on the gravel, another sinking noiselessly into the slippery grass, that was all. I had shut up my lantern, not wishing to scare any one, whoever it might be. Bagley followed, it seemed to me, exactly in my footsteps as I made my way, as I supposed, towards the mass of the ruined house. We seemed to take a long time groping along seeking this; the squash of the wet soil under our feet was the only thing that marked our progress. After a while I stood still to see, or rather feel, where we were. The darkness was very still, but no stiller than is usual in a winter’s night. The sounds I have mentioned—the crackling of twigs, the roll of a pebble, the sound of some rustle in the dead leaves, or creeping creature on the grass—were audible when you listened, all mysterious enough when your mind is disengaged, but to me cheering now as signs of the livingness of nature, even in the death of the frost. As we stood still there came up from the trees in the glen the prolonged hoot of an owl. Bagley started with alarm, being in a state of general nervousness, and not knowing what he was afraid of. But to me the sound was encouraging and pleasant, being so comprehensible.

“An owl,” I said, under my breath. “Y—es, Colonel,” said Bagley, his teeth chattering. We stood still about five minutes, while it broke into the still brooding of the air, the sound widening out in circles, dying upon the darkness. This sound, which is not a cheerful one, made me almost gay. It was natural, and relieved the tension of the mind. I moved on with new courage, my nervous excitement calming down.

When all at once, quite suddenly, close to us, at our feet, there broke out a cry. I made a spring backwards in the first moment of surprise and horror, and in doing so came sharply against the same rough masonry and brambles that had struck me before. This new sound came upwards from the ground—a low, moaning, wailing voice, full of suffering and pain. The contrast between it and the hoot of the owl was indescribable; the one with a wholesome wildness and naturalness that hurt nobody; the other, a sound that made one’s blood curdle, full of human misery. With a great deal of fumbling—for in spite of everything I could do to keep up my courage my hands shook—I managed to remove the slide of my lantern. The light leaped out like something living, and made the place visible in a moment. We were inside what would have been the ruined building had anything remained but the gable-wall which I have described. It was close to us, the vacant doorway in it going out straight into the blackness outside. The light showed the bit of wall, the ivy glistening upon it in clouds of dark green, the bramble-branches waving, and below, the open door—a door that led to nothing. It was from this the voice came which died out just as the light flashed upon this strange scene. There was a moment’s silence, and then it broke forth again. The sound was so near, so penetrating, so pitiful, that, in the nervous start I gave, the light fell out of my hand. As I groped for it in the dark my hand was clutched by Bagley, who, I think, must have dropped upon his knees; but I was too much perturbed myself to think much of this. He clutched at me in the confusion of his terror, forgetting all his usual decorum. “For God’s sake, what is it, sir?” he gasped. If I yielded, there was evidently an end of both of us. “I can’t tell,” I said, “any more than you; that’s what we’ve got to find out. Up, man, up!” I pulled him to his feet. “Will you go round and examine the other side, or will you stay here with the lantern?” Bagley gasped at me with a face of horror. “Can’t we stay together, Colonel?” he said—his knees were trembling under him. I pushed him against the corner of the wall, and put the light into his hands. “Stand fast till I come back; shake yourself together, man; let nothing pass you,” I said. The voice was within two or three feet of us; of that there could be no doubt.

I went myself to the other side of the wall, keeping close to it. The light shook in Bagley’s hand, but, tremulous though it was, shone out through the vacant door, one oblong block of light marking all the crumbling corners and hanging masses of foliage. Was that something dark huddled in a heap by the side of it? I pushed forward across the light in the doorway, and fell upon it with my hands; but it was only a juniper-bush growing close against the wall. Meanwhile, the sight of my figure crossing the doorway had brought Bagley’s nervous excitement to a height: he flew at me, gripping my shoulder. “I’ve got him, Colonel! I’ve got him!” he cried, with a voice of sudden exultation. He thought it was a man, and was at once relieved. But at that moment the voice burst forth again between us, at our feet—more close to us than any separate being could be. He dropped off from me, and fell against the wall, his jaw dropping as if he were dying. I suppose, at the same moment, he saw that it was me whom he had clutched. I, for my part, had scarcely more command of myself. I snatched the light out of his hand, and flashed it all about me wildly. Nothing,—the juniper-bush which I thought I had never seen before, the heavy growth of the glistening ivy, the brambles waving. It was close to my ears now, crying, crying, pleading as if for life. Either I heard the same words Roland had heard, or else, in my excitement, his imagination got possession of mine. The voice went on, growing into distinct articulation, but wavering about, now from one point, now from another, as if the owner of it were moving slowly back and forward. “Mother! mother!” and then an outburst of wailing. As my mind steadied, getting accustomed (as one’s mind gets accustomed to anything), it seemed to me as if some uneasy, miserable creature was pacing up and down before a closed door. Sometimes—but that must have been excitement—I thought I heard a sound like knocking, and then another burst, “Oh, mother! mother!” All this close, close to the space where I was standing with my lantern, now before me, now behind me: a creature restless, unhappy, moaning, crying, before the vacant doorway, which no one could either shut or open more.

“Do you hear it, Bagley? do you hear what it is saying?” I cried, stepping in through the doorway. He was lying against the wall, his eyes glazed, half dead with terror. He made a motion of his lips as if to answer me, but no sounds came; then lifted his hand with a curious imperative movement as if ordering me to be silent and listen. And how long I did so I cannot tell. It began to have an interest, an exciting hold upon me, which I could not describe. It seemed to call up visibly a scene any one could understand—a something shut out, restlessly wandering to and fro; sometimes the voice dropped, as if throwing itself down, sometimes wandered off a few paces, growing sharp and clear. “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, mother, let me in! oh, let me in!” Every word was clear to me. No wonder the boy had gone wild with pity. I tried to steady my mind upon Roland, upon his conviction that I could do something, but my head swam with the excitement, even when I partially overcame the terror. At last the words died away, and there was a sound of sobs and moaning. I cried out, “In the name of God, who are you?” with a kind of feeling in my mind that to use the name of God was profane, seeing that I did not believe in ghosts or anything supernatural; but I did it all the same, and waited, my heart giving a leap of terror lest there should be a reply. Why this should have been I cannot tell, but I had a feeling that if there was an answer it would be more than I could bear. But there was no answer; the moaning went on, and then, as if it had been real, the voice rose a little higher again, the words recommenced, “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!” with an expression that was heart-breaking to hear.

As if it had been real! What do I mean by that? I suppose I got less alarmed as the thing went on. I began to recover the use of my senses—I seemed to explain it all to myself by saying that this had once happened, that it was a recollection of a real scene. Why there should have seemed something quite satisfactory and composing in this explanation I cannot tell, but so it was. I began to listen almost as if it had been a play, forgetting Bagley, who, I almost think, had fainted, leaning against the wall. I was startled out of this strange spectatorship that had fallen upon me by the sudden rush of something which made my heart jump once more, a large black figure in the doorway waving its arms. “Come in! come in! come in!” it shouted out hoarsely at the top of a deep bass voice, and then poor Bagley fell down senseless across the threshold. He was less sophisticated than I,—he had not been able to bear it any longer. I took him for something supernatural, as he took me, and it was some time before I awoke to the necessities of the moment. I remembered only after, that from the time I began to give my attention to the man, I heard the other voice no more. It was some time before I brought him to. It must have been a strange scene: the lantern making a luminous spot in the darkness, the man’s white face lying on the black earth, I over him, doing what I could for him, probably I should have been thought to be murdering him had any one seen us. When at last I succeeded in pouring a little brandy down his throat, he sat up and looked about him wildly. “What’s up?” he said; then recognizing me, tried to struggle to his feet with a faint “Beg your pardon, Colonel.” I got him home as best I could, making him lean upon my arm. The great fellow was as weak as a child. Fortunately he did not for some time remember what had happened. From the time Bagley fell the voice had stopped, and all was still.

•    •    •    •

“You’ve got an epidemic in your house, Colonel,” Simson said to me next morning. “What’s the meaning of it all? Here’s your butler raving about a voice. This will never do, you know; and so far as I can make out, you are in it too.”

“Yes, I am in it, Doctor. I thought I had better speak to you. Of course you are treating Roland all right, but the boy is not raving, he is as sane as you or me. It’s all true.”

“As sane as—I—or you. I never thought the boy insane. He’s got cerebral excitement, fever. I don’t know what you’ve got. There’s something very queer about the look of your eyes.”

“Come,” said I, “you can’t put us all to bed, you know. You had better listen and hear the symptoms in full.”

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, but he listened to me patiently. He did not believe a word of the story, that was clear; but he heard it all from beginning to end. “My dear fellow,” he said, “the boy told me just the same. It’s an epidemic. When one person falls a victim to this sort of thing, it’s as safe as can be—there’s always two or three.”

“Then how do you account for it?” I said.

“Oh, account for it!—that’s a different matter; there’s no accounting for the freaks our brains are subject to. If it’s delusion, if it’s some trick of the echoes or the winds—some phonetic disturbance or other—”

“Come with me to-night, and judge for yourself,” I said.

Upon this, he laughed aloud, then said, “That’s not such a bad idea; but it would ruin me for ever if it were known that John Simson was ghost-hunting.”

“There it is,” said I; “you dart down on us who are unlearned with your phonetic disturbances, but you daren’t examine what the thing really is for fear of being laughed at. That’s science!”

“It’s not science—it’s common-sense,” said the Doctor. “The thing has delusion on the front of it. It is encouraging an unwholesome tendency even to examine. What good could come of it? Even if I am convinced, I shouldn’t believe.”

“I should have said so yesterday; and I don’t want you to be convinced or to believe,” said I. “If you prove it to be a delusion, I shall be very much obliged to you for one. Come; somebody must go with me.”

“You are cool,” said the Doctor. “You’ve disabled this poor fellow of yours, and made him—on that point—a lunatic for life; and now you want to disable me. But, for once, I’ll do it. To save appearance, if you’ll give me a bed, I’ll come over after my last rounds.”

It was agreed that I should meet him at the gate, and that we should visit the scene of last night’s occurrences before we came to the house, so that nobody might be the wiser. It was scarcely possible to hope that the cause of Bagley’s sudden illness should not somehow steal into the knowledge of the servants at least, and it was better that all should be done as quietly as possible. The day seemed to me a very long one. I had to spend a certain part of it with Roland, which was a terrible ordeal for me, for what could I say to the boy? The improvement continued, but he was still in a very precarious state, and the trembling vehemence with which he turned to me when his mother left the room filled me with alarm. “Father?” he said quietly. “Yes, my boy, I am giving my best attention to it; all is being done that I can do. I have not come to any conclusion—yet. I am neglecting nothing you said,” I cried. What I could not do was to give his active mind any encouragement to dwell upon the mystery. It was a hard predicament, for some satisfaction had to be given him. He looked at me very wistfully, with the great blue eyes which shone so large and brilliant out of his white and worn face. “You must trust me,” I said. “Yes, father. Father understands,” he said to himself, as if to soothe some inward doubt. I left him as soon as I could. He was about the most precious thing I had on earth, and his health my first thought; but yet somehow, in the excitement of this other subject, I put that aside, and preferred not to dwell upon Roland, which was the most curious part of it all.

That night at eleven I met Simson at the gate. He had come by train, and I let him in gently myself. I had been so much absorbed in the coming experiment that I passed the ruins in going to meet him, almost without thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a coil of taper which he had ready for use. “There is nothing like light,” he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. As we approached the spot we could hear a low moaning, broken occasionally by a bitter cry. “Perhaps that is your voice,” said the Doctor; “I thought it must be something of the kind. That’s a poor brute caught in some of these infernal traps of yours; you’ll find it among the bushes somewhere.” I said nothing. I felt no particular fear, but a triumphant satisfaction in what was to follow. I led him to the spot where Bagley and I had stood on the previous night.

All was silent as a winter night could be—so silent that we heard far off the sound of the horses in the stables, the shutting of a window at the house. Simson lighted his taper and went peering about, poking into all the corners. We looked like two conspirators lying in wait for some unfortunate traveller; but not a sound broke the quiet. The moaning had stopped before we came up; a star or two shone over us in the sky, looking down as if surprised at our strange proceedings. Dr. Simson did nothing but utter subdued laughs under his breath. “I thought as much,” he said. “It is just the same with tables and all other kinds of ghostly apparatus; a sceptic’s presence stops everything. When I am present nothing ever comes off. How long do you think it will be necessary to stay here? Oh, I don’t complain; only when you are satisfied, I am—quite.”

I will not deny that I was disappointed beyond measure by this result. It made me look like a credulous fool. It gave the Doctor such a pull over me as nothing else could. I should point all his morals for years to come; and his materialism, his scepticism, would be increased beyond endurance. “It seems, indeed,” I said, “that there is to be no—”

“Manifestation,” he said, laughing; “that is what all the mediums say. No manifestations, in consequence of the presence of an unbeliever.” His laugh sounded very uncomfortable to me in the silence; and it was now near midnight. But that laugh seemed the signal; before it died away the moaning we had heard before was resumed. It started from some distance off, and came towards us, nearer and nearer, like some one walking along and moaning to himself. There could be no idea now that it was a hare caught in a trap. The approach was slow, like that of a weak person, with little halts and pauses. We heard it coming along the grass straight towards the vacant doorway. Simson had been a little startled by the first sound. He said hastily, “That child has no business to be out so late.” But he felt, as well as I, that this was no child’s voice. As it came nearer, he grew silent, and, going to the doorway with his taper, stood looking out towards the sound. The taper being unprotected blew about in the night air, though there was scarcely any wind. I threw the light of my lantern steady and white across the same space. It was in a blaze of light in the midst of the blackness. A little icy thrill had gone over me at the first sound, but as it came close, I confess that my only feeling was satisfaction. The scoffer could scoff no more. The light touched his own face, and showed a very perplexed countenance. If he was afraid, he concealed it with great success, but he was perplexed. And then all that had happened on the previous night was enacted once more. It fell strangely upon me with a sense of repetition. Every cry, every sob seemed the same as before. I listened almost without any emotion at all in my own person, thinking of its effect upon Simson. He maintained a very bold front, on the whole. All that coming and going of the voice was, if our ears could be trusted, exactly in front of the vacant, blank doorway, blazing full of light, which caught and shone in the glistening leaves of the great hollies at a little distance. Not a rabbit could have crossed the turf without being seen; but there was nothing. After a time, Simson, with a certain caution and bodily reluctance, as it seemed to me, went out with his roll of taper into this space. His figure showed against the holly in full outline. Just at this moment the voice sank, as was its custom, and seemed to fling itself down at the door. Simson recoiled violently, as if some one had come up against him, then turned, and held his taper low, as if examining something. “Do you see anybody?” I cried in a whisper, feeling the chill of nervous panic steal over me at this action. “It’s nothing but a ——— confounded juniper-bush,” he said. This I knew very well to be nonsense, for the juniper-bush was on the other side. He went about after this round and round, poking his taper everywhere, then returned to me on the inner side of the wall. He scoffed no longer; his face was contracted and pale. “How long does this go on?” he whispered to me, like a man who does not wish to interrupt some one who is speaking. I had become too much perturbed myself to remark whether the successions and changes of the voice were the same as last night. It suddenly went out in the air almost as he was speaking, with a soft reiterated sob dying away. If there had been anything to be seen, I should have said that the person was at that moment crouching on the ground close to the door.

We walked home very silent afterwards. It was only when we were in sight of the house that I said, “What do you think of it?” “I can’t tell what to think of it,” he said quickly. He took—though he was a very temperate man—not the claret I was going to offer him, but some brandy from the tray, and swallowed it almost undiluted. “Mind you, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, when he had lighted his candle; “but I can’t tell what to think,” he turned round to add, when he was half-way up-stairs.

All of this, however, did me no good with the solution of my problem. I was to help this weeping, sobbing thing, which was already to me as distinct a personality as anything I knew—or what should I say to Roland? It was on my heart that my boy would die if I could not find some way of helping this creature. You may be surprised that I should speak of it in this way. I did not know if it was man or woman; but I no more doubted that it was a soul in pain than I doubted my own being; and it was my business to soothe this pain—to deliver it, if that was possible. Was ever such a task given to an anxious father trembling for his only boy? I felt in my heart, fantastic as it may appear, that I must fulfil this somehow, or part with my child; and you may conceive that rather than do that I was ready to die. But even my dying would not have advanced me, unless by bringing me into the same world with that seeker at the door.

•    •    •    •

Next morning Simson was out before breakfast, and came in with evident signs of the damp grass on his boots, and a look of worry and weariness, which did not say much for the night he had passed. He improved a little after breakfast, and visited his two patients, for Bagley was still an invalid. I went out with him on his way to the train, to hear what he had to say about the boy. “He is going on very well,” he said; “there are no complications as yet. But mind you, that’s not a boy to be trifled with, Mortimer. Not a word to him about last night.” I had to tell him then of my last interview with Roland, and of the impossible demand he had made upon me, by which, though he tried to laugh, he was much discomposed, as I could see. “We must just perjure ourselves all round,” he said, “and swear you exorcised it;” but the man was too kind-hearted to be satisfied with that. “It’s frightfully serious for you, Mortimer. I can’t laugh as I should like to. I wish I saw a way out of it, for your sake. By the way,” he added shortly, “didn’t you notice that juniper-bush on the left-hand side?” “There was one on the right hand of the door. I noticed you made that mistake last night.” “Mistake!” he cried, with a curious low laugh, pulling up the collar of his coat as though he felt the cold,—“there’s no juniper there this morning, left or right. Just go and see.” As he stepped into the train a few minutes after, he looked back upon me and beckoned me for a parting word. “I’m coming back to-night,” he said.

I don’t think I had any feeling about this as I turned away from that common bustle of the railway which made my private preoccupations feel so strangely out of date. There had been a distinct satisfaction in my mind before, that his scepticism had been so entirely defeated. But the more serious part of the matter pressed upon me now. I went straight from the railway to the manse, which stood on a little plateau on the side of the river opposite to the woods of Brentwood. The minister was one of a class which is not so common in Scotland as it used to be. He was a man of good family, well educated in the Scotch way, strong in philosophy, not so strong in Greek, strongest of all in experience,—a man who had “come across,” in the course of his life, most people of note that had ever been in Scotland, and who was said to be very sound in doctrine, without infringing the toleration with which old men, who are good men, are generally endowed. He was old-fashioned; perhaps he did not think so much about the troublous problems of theology as many of the young men, nor ask himself any hard questions about the Confession of Faith—but he understood human nature, which is perhaps better. He received me with a cordial welcome.

“Come away, Colonel Mortimer,” he said; “I’m all the more glad to see you, that I feel it’s a good sign for the boy. He’s doing well?—God be praised—and the Lord bless him and keep him. He has many a poor body’s prayers, and that can do nobody harm.”

“He will need them all, Dr. Moncrieff,” I said, “and your counsel too.” And I told him the story—more than I had told Simson. The old clergyman listened to me with many suppressed exclamations, and at the end the water stood in his eyes.

“That’s just beautiful,” he said. “I do not mind to have heard anything like it; it’s as fine as Burns when he wished deliverance to one—that is prayed for in no kirk. Ay, ay! so he would have you console the poor lost spirit? God bless the boy! There’s something more than common in that, Colonel Mortimer. And also the faith of him in his father!—I would like to put that into a sermon.” Then the old gentleman gave me an alarmed look, and said, “No, no; I was not meaning a sermon; but I must write it down for the ‘Children’s Record.’” I saw the thought that passed through his mind. Either he thought, or he feared I would think, of a funeral sermon. You may believe this did not make me more cheerful.

I can scarcely say that Dr. Moncrieff gave me any advice. How could any one advise on such a subject? But he said, “I think I’ll come too. I’m an old man; I’m less liable to be frightened than those that are further off the world unseen. It behooves me to think of my own journey there. I’ve no cut-and-dry beliefs on the subject. I’ll come too; and maybe at the moment the Lord will put into our heads what to do.”

This gave me a little comfort—more than Simson had given me. To be clear about the cause of it was not my grand desire. It was another thing that was in my mind—my boy. As for the poor soul at the open door, I had no more doubt, as I have said, of its existence than I had of my own. It was no ghost to me. I knew the creature, and it was in trouble. That was my feeling about it, as it was Roland’s. To hear it first was a great shock to my nerves, but not now; a man will get accustomed to anything. But to do something for it was the great problem; how was I to be serviceable to a being that was invisible, that was mortal no longer? “Maybe at the moment the Lord will put it into our heads.” This is very old-fashioned phraseology, and a week before, most likely, I should have smiled (though always with kindness) at Dr. Moncrieff’s credulity; but there was a great comfort, whether rational or otherwise I cannot say, in the mere sound of the words.

The road to the station and the village lay through the glen, not by the ruins; but though the sunshine and the fresh air, and the beauty of the trees, and the sound of the water were all very soothing to the spirits, my mind was so full of my own subject that I could not refrain from turning to the right hand as I got to the top of the glen, and going straight to the place which I may call the scene of all my thoughts. It was lying full in the sunshine, like all the rest of the world. The ruined gable looked due east, and in the present aspect of the sun the light streamed down through the doorway as our lantern had done, throwing a flood of light upon the damp grass beyond. There was a strange suggestion in the open door—so futile, a kind of emblem of vanity: all free around, so that you could go where you pleased, and yet that semblance of an enclosure—that way of entrance, unnecessary, leading to nothing. And why any creature should pray and weep to get in—to nothing, or be kept out—by nothing, you could not dwell upon it, or it made your brain go round. I remembered, however, what Simson said about the juniper, with a little smile on my own mind as to the inaccuracy of recollection which even a scientific man will be guilty of. I could see now the light of my lantern gleaming upon the wet glistening surface of the spiky leaves at the right hand—and he ready to go to the stake for it that it was the left! I went round to make sure. And then I saw what he had said. Right or left there was no juniper at all! I was confounded by this, though it was entirely a matter of detail nothing at all: a bush of brambles waving, the grass growing up to the very walls. But after all, though it gave me a shock for a moment, what did that matter? There were marks as if a number of footsteps had been up and down in front of the door, but these might have been our steps; and all was bright and peaceful and still.

I poked about the other ruin—the larger ruins of the old house—for some time, as I had done before. There were marks upon the grass here and there—I could not call them footsteps—all about; but that told for nothing one way or another. I had examined the ruined rooms closely the first day. They were half filled up with soil and debris, withered brackens and bramble—no refuge for any one there. It vexed me that Jarvis should see me coming from that spot when he came up to me for his orders. I don’t know whether my nocturnal expeditions had got wind among the servants, but there was a significant look in his face. Something in it I felt was like my own sensation when Simson in the midst of his scepticism was struck dumb. Jarvis felt satisfied that his veracity had been put beyond question. I never spoke to a servant of mine in such a peremptory tone before. I sent him away “with a flea in his lug,” as the man described it afterwards. Interference of any kind was intolerable to me at such a moment.

But what was strangest of all was, that I could not face Roland. I did not go up to his room, as I would have naturally done, at once. This the girls could not understand. They saw there was some mystery in it. “Mother has gone to lie down,” Agatha said; “he has had such a good night.” “But he wants you so, papa!” cried little Jeanie, always with her two arms embracing mine in a pretty way she had. I was obliged to go at last, but what could I say? I could only kiss him, and tell him to keep still—that I was doing all I could. There is something mystical about the patience of a child. “It will come all right, won’t it, father?” he said. “God grant it may! I hope so, Roland.” “Oh, yes, it will come all right.” Perhaps he understood that in the midst of my anxiety I could not stay with him as I should have done otherwise. But the girls were more surprised than it is possible to describe. They looked at me with wondering eyes. “If I were ill, papa, and you only stayed with me a moment, I should break my heart,” said Agatha. But the boy had a sympathetic feeling. He knew that of my own will I would not have done it. I shut myself up in the library, where I could not rest, but kept pacing up and down like a caged beast. What could I do? and if I could do nothing, what would become of my boy? These were the questions that, without ceasing, pursued each other through my mind.

Simson came out to dinner, and when the house was all still, and most of the servants in bed, we went out and met Dr. Moncrieff, as we had appointed, at the head of the glen. Simson, for his part, was disposed to scoff at the Doctor. “If there are to be any spells, you know, I’ll cut the whole concern,” he said. I did not make him any reply. I had not invited him; he could go or come as he pleased. He was very talkative, far more so than suited my humour, as we went on. “One thing is certain, you know; there must be some human agency,” he said. “It is all bosh about apparitions. I never have investigated the laws of sound to any great extent, and there’s a great deal in ventriloquism that we don’t know much about.” “If it’s the same to you,” I said, “I wish you’d keep all that to yourself, Simson. It doesn’t suit my state of mind.” “Oh, I hope I know how to respect idiosyncrasy,” he said. The very tone of his voice irritated me beyond measure. These scientific fellows, I wonder people put up with them as they do, when you have no mind for their cold-blooded confidence.

Dr. Moncrieff met us about eleven o’clock, the same time as on the previous night. He was a large man, with a venerable countenance and white hair—old, but in full vigour, and thinking less of a cold night walk than many a younger man. He had his lantern, as I had. We were fully provided with means of lighting the place, and we were all of us resolute men. We had a rapid consultation as we went up, and the result was that we divided to different posts. Dr. Moncrieff remained inside the wall—if you can call that inside where there was no wall but one. Simson placed himself on the side next the ruins, so as to intercept any communication with the old house, which was what his mind was fixed upon. I was posted on the other side. To say that nothing could come near without being seen was self-evident. It had been so also on the previous night. Now, with our three lights in the midst of the darkness, the whole place seemed illuminated. Dr. Moncrieff’s lantern, which was a large one, without any means of shutting up—an old-fashioned lantern with a pierced and ornamental top—shone steadily, the rays shooting out of it upward into the gloom. He placed it on the grass, where the middle of the room, if this had been a room, would have been. The usual effect of the light streaming out of the doorway was prevented by the illumination which Simson and I on either side supplied. With these differences, everything seemed as on the previous night.

And what occurred was exactly the same, with the same air of repetition, point for point, as I had formerly remarked. I declare that it seemed to me as if I were pushed against, put aside, by the owner of the voice as he paced up and down in his trouble,—though these are perfectly futile words, seeing that the stream of light from my lantern, and that from Simson’s taper, lay broad and clear, without a shadow, without the smallest break, across the entire breadth of the grass. I had ceased even to be alarmed, for my part. My heart was rent with pity and trouble—pity for the poor suffering human creature that moaned and pleaded so, and trouble for myself and my boy. God! if I could not find any help—and what help could I find?—Roland would die.

We were all perfectly still till the first outburst was exhausted, as I knew, by experience, it would be. Dr. Moncrieff, to whom it was new, was quite motionless on the other side of the wall, as we were in our places. My heart had remained almost at its usual beating during the voice. I was used to it; it did not rouse all my pulses as it did at first. But just as it threw itself sobbing at the door (I cannot use other words), there suddenly came something which sent the blood coursing through my veins, and my heart into my mouth. It was a voice inside the wall—the minister’s well-known voice. I would have been prepared for it in any kind of adjuration, but I was not prepared for what I heard. It came out with a sort of stammering, as if too much moved for utterance. “Willie, Willie! Oh, God preserve us! is it you?”

These simple words had an effect upon me that the voice of the invisible creature had ceased to have. I thought the old man, whom I had brought into this danger, had gone mad with terror. I made a dash round to the other side of the wall, half crazed myself with the thought. He was standing where I had left him, his shadow thrown vague and large upon the grass by the lantern which stood at his feet. I lifted my own light to see his face as I rushed forward. He was very pale, his eyes wet and glistening, his mouth quivering with parted lips. He neither saw nor heard me. We that had gone through this experience before, had crouched towards each other to get a little strength to bear it. But he was not even aware that I was there. His whole being seemed absorbed in anxiety and tenderness. He held out his hands, which trembled, but it seemed to me with eagerness, not fear. He went on speaking all the time. “Willie, if it is you—and it’s you, if it is not a delusion of Satan,—Willie, lad! why come ye here frighting them that know you not? Why came ye not to me?”

He seemed to wait for an answer. When his voice ceased, his countenance, every line moving, continued to speak. Simson gave me another terrible shock, stealing into the open doorway with his light, as much awe-stricken, as wildly curious, as I. But the minister resumed, without seeing Simson, speaking to some one else. His voice took a tone of expostulation:—

“Is this right to come here? Your mother’s gone with your name on her lips. Do you think she would ever close her door on her own lad? Do ye think the Lord will close the door, ye faint-hearted creature? No!—I forbid ye! I forbid ye!” cried the old man. The sobbing voice had begun to resume its cries. He made a step forward, calling out the last words in a voice of command. “I forbid ye! Cry out no more to man. Go home, ye wandering spirit! go home! Do you hear me?—me that christened ye, that have struggled with ye, that have wrestled for ye with the Lord!” Here the loud tones of his voice sank into tenderness. “And her too, poor woman! poor woman! her you are calling upon. She’s not here. You’ll find her with the Lord. Go there and seek her, not here. Do you hear me, lad? go after her there. He’ll let you in, though it’s late. Man, take heart! if you will lie and sob and greet, let it be at heaven’s gate, and not your poor mother’s ruined door.”

He stopped to get his breath; and the voice had stopped, not as it had done before, when its time was exhausted and all its repetitions said, but with a sobbing catch in the breath as if overruled. Then the minister spoke again, “Are you hearing me, Will? Oh, laddie, you’ve liked the beggarly elements all your days. Be done with them now. Go home to the Father—the Father! Are you hearing me?” Here the old man sank down upon his knees, his face raised upwards, his hands held up with a tremble in them, all white in the light in the midst of the darkness. I resisted as long as I could, though I cannot tell why; then I, too, dropped upon my knees. Simson all the time stood in the doorway, with an expression in his face such as words could not tell, his under lip dropped, his eyes wild, staring. It seemed to be to him, that image of blank ignorance and wonder, that we were praying. All the time the voice, with a low arrested sobbing, lay just where he was standing, as I thought.

“Lord,” the minister said—“Lord, take him into Thy everlasting habitations. The mother he cries to is with Thee. Who can open to him but Thee? Lord, when is it too late for Thee, or what is too hard for Thee? Lord, let that woman there draw him inower! Let her draw him inower!”

I sprang forward to catch something in my arms that flung itself wildly within the door. The illusion was so strong, that I never paused till I felt my forehead graze against the wall and my hands clutch the ground,—for there was nobody there to save from falling, as in my foolishness I thought. Simson held out his hand to me to help me up. He was trembling and cold, his lower lip hanging, his speech almost inarticulate. “It’s gone,” he said, stammering,—“it’s gone!” We leaned upon each other for a moment, trembling so much, both of us, that the whole scene trembled as if it were going to dissolve and disappear; and yet as long as I live I will never forget it—the shining of the strange lights, the blackness all round, the kneeling figure with all the whiteness of the light concentrated on its white venerable head and uplifted hands. A strange solemn stillness seemed to close all round us. By intervals a single syllable, “Lord! Lord!” came from the old minister’s lips. He saw none of us, nor thought of us. I never knew how long we stood, like sentinels guarding him at his prayers, holding our lights in a confused dazed way, not knowing what we did. But at last he rose from his knees, and standing up at his full height, raised his arms, as the Scotch manner is at the end of a religious service, and solemnly gave the apostolical benediction—to what? to the silent earth, the dark woods, the wide breathing atmosphere; for we were but spectators gasping an Amen!

It seemed to me that it must be the middle of the night, as we all walked back. It was in reality very late. Dr. Moncrieff put his arm into mine. He walked slowly, with an air of exhaustion. It was as if we were coming from a death-bed. Something hushed and solemnized the very air. There was that sense of relief in it which there always is at the end of a death-struggle. And nature, persistent, never daunted, came back in all of us, as we returned into the ways of life. We said nothing to each other, indeed, for a time; but when we got clear of the trees and reached the opening near the house, where we could see the sky, Dr. Moncrieff himself was the first to speak. “I must be going,” he said; “it’s very late, I’m afraid. I will go down the glen, as I came.”

“But not alone. I am going with you, Doctor.”

“Well, I will not oppose it. I am an old man, and agitation wearies more than work. Yes; I’ll be thankful of your arm. To-night, Colonel, you’ve done me more good turns than one.”

I pressed his hand on my arm, not feeling able to speak. But Simson, who turned with us, and who had gone along all this time with his taper flaring, in entire unconsciousness, came to himself, apparently at the sound of our voices, and put out that wild little torch with a quick movement, as if of shame. “Let me carry your lantern,” he said; “it is heavy.” He recovered with a spring; and in a moment, from the awe-stricken spectator he had been, became himself, sceptical and cynical. “I should like to ask you a question,” he said. “Do you believe in Purgatory, Doctor? It’s not in the tenets of the Church, so far as I know.”

“Sir,” said Dr. Moncrieff, “an old man like me is sometimes not very sure what he believes. There is just one thing I am certain of—and that is the loving-kindness of God.”

“But I thought that was in this life. I am no theologian—”

“Sir,” said the old man again, with a tremor in him which I could feel going over all his frame, “if I saw a friend of mine within the gates of hell, I would not despair but his Father would take him by the hand still, if he cried like yon.”

“I allow it is very strange, very strange. I cannot see through it. That there must be human agency, I feel sure. Doctor, what made you decide upon the person and the name?”

The minister put out his hand with the impatience which a man might show if he were asked how he recognized his brother. “Tuts!” he said, in familiar speech; then more solemnly, “How should I not recognize a person that I know better—far better—than I know you?”

“Then you saw the man?”

Dr. Moncrieff made no reply. He moved his hand again with a little impatient movement, and walked on, leaning heavily on my arm. And we went on for a long time without another word, threading the dark paths, which were steep and slippery with the damp of the winter. The air was very still—not more than enough to make a faint sighing in the branches, which mingled with the sound of the water to which we were descending. When we spoke again, it was about indifferent matters,—about the height of the river, and the recent rains. We parted with the minister at his own door, where his old housekeeper appeared in great perturbation, waiting for him. “Eh, me, minister! the young gentleman will be worse?” she cried.

“Far from that—better. God bless him!” Dr. Moncrieff said.

I think if Simson had begun again to me with his questions, I should have pitched him over the rocks as we returned up the glen; but he was silent, by a good inspiration. And the sky was clearer than it had been for many nights, shining high over the trees, with here and there a star faintly gleaming through the wilderness of dark and bare branches. The air, as I have said, was very soft in them, with a subdued and peaceful cadence. It was real, like every natural sound, and came to us like a hush of peace and relief. I thought there was a sound in it as of the breath of a sleeper, and it seemed clear to me that Roland must be sleeping, satisfied and calm. We went up to his room when we went in. There we found the complete hush of rest. My wife looked up out of a doze, and gave me a smile: “I think he is a great deal better; but you are very late,” she said in a whisper, shading the light with her hand that the Doctor might see his patient. The boy had got back something like his own colour. He woke as we stood all round his bed. His eyes had the happy, half-awakened look of childhood, glad to shut again, yet pleased with the interruption and glimmer of the light. I stooped over him and kissed his forehead, which was moist and cool. “All is well, Roland,” I said. He looked up at me with a glance of pleasure, and took my hand and laid his cheek upon it, and so went to sleep.

•    •    •    •

For some nights after, I watched among the ruins, spending all the dark hours up to midnight patrolling about the bit of wall which was associated with so many emotions; but I heard nothing, and saw nothing beyond the quiet course of nature; nor, so far as I am aware, has anything been heard again. Dr. Moncrieff gave me the history of the youth, whom he never hesitated to name. I did not ask, as Simson did, how he recognized him. He had been a prodigal—weak, foolish, easily imposed upon, and “led away,” as people say. All that we had heard had passed actually in life, the Doctor said. The young man had come home thus a day or two after his mother died—who was no more than the housekeeper in the old house—and distracted with the news, had thrown himself down at the door and called upon her to let him in. The old man could scarcely speak of it for tears. To me it seemed as if—Heaven help us, how little do we know about anything!—a scene like that might impress itself somehow upon the hidden heart of nature. I do not pretend to know how, but the repetition had struck me at the time as, in its terrible strangeness and incomprehensibility, almost mechanical—as if the unseen actor could not exceed or vary, but was bound to re-enact the whole. One thing that struck me, however, greatly, was the likeness between the old minister and my boy in the manner of regarding these strange phenomena. Dr. Moncrieff was not terrified, as I had been myself, and all the rest of us. It was no “ghost,” as I fear we all vulgarly considered it, to him—but a poor creature whom he knew under these conditions, just as he had known him in the flesh, having no doubt of his identity. And to Roland it was the same. This spirit in pain—if it was a spirit—this voice out of the unseen—was a poor fellow-creature in misery, to be succoured and helped out of his trouble, to my boy. He spoke to me quite frankly about it when he got better. “I knew father would find out some way,” he said. And this was when he was strong and well, and all idea that he would turn hysterical or become a seer of visions had happily passed away.

•    •    •    •

I must add one curious fact, which does not seem to me to have any relation to the above, but which Simson made great use of, as the human agency which he was determined to find somehow. We had examined the ruins very closely at the time of these occurrences; but afterwards, when all was over, as we went casually about them one Sunday afternoon in the idleness of that unemployed day, Simson with his stick penetrated an old window which had been entirely blocked up with fallen soil. He jumped down into it in great excitement, and called me to follow. There we found a little hole—for it was more a hole than a room—entirely hidden under the ivy and ruins, in which there was a quantity of straw laid in a corner, as if some one had made a bed there, and some remains of crusts about the floor. Some one had lodged there, and not very long before, he made out; and that this unknown being was the author of all the mysterious sounds we heard he is convinced. “I told you it was human agency,” he said triumphantly. He forgets, I suppose, how he and I stood with our lights, seeing nothing, while the space between us was audibly traversed by something that could speak, and sob, and suffer. There is no argument with men of this kind. He is ready to get up a laugh against me on this slender ground. “I was puzzled myself—I could not make it out—but I always felt convinced human agency was at the bottom of it. And here it is—and a clever fellow he must have been,” the Doctor says.

Bagley left my service as soon as he got well. He assured me it was no want of respect, but he could not stand “them kind of things;” and the man was so shaken and ghastly that I was glad to give him a present and let him go. For my own part, I made a point of staying out the time—two years—for which I had taken Brentwood; but I did not renew my tenancy. By that time we had settled, and found for ourselves a pleasant home of our own.

I must add, that when the Doctor defies me, I can always bring back gravity to his countenance, and a pause in his railing, when I remind him of the juniper-bush. To me that was a matter of little importance. I could believe I was mistaken. I did not care about it one way or other; but on his mind the effect was different. The miserable voice, the spirit in pain, he could think of as the result of ventriloquism, or reverberation, or—anything you please: an elaborate prolonged hoax, executed somehow by the tramp that had found a lodging in the old tower; but the juniper-bush staggered him. Things have effects so different on the minds of different men.

The Lady’s Walk

(1882)

I

I was on a visit to some people in Scotland when the events I am about to relate took place. They were not friends in the sense of long or habitual intercourse; in short, I had met them only in Switzerland in the previous year; but we saw a great deal of each other while we were together, and got into that easy intimacy which travelling brings about more readily than anything else. We had seen each other in very great deshabille both of mind and array in the chilly mornings after a night’s travelling, which perhaps is the severest test that can be applied in respect to looks, and amid all the annoyances of journeys short and long, with the usual episodes of lost luggage, indifferent hotels, fusses of every description, which is an equally severe test for the temper; and our friendship and liking (I am at liberty to suppose it was mutual, or they would never have invited me to Ellermore) remained unimpaired. I have always thought, and still think, that Charlotte Campbell was one of the most charming young women I ever met with; and her brothers, if not so entirely delightful, were nice fellows, capital to travel with, full of fun and spirit. I understood immediately from their conversation that they were members of a large family. Their allusions to Tom and Jack and little Harry, and to Mab and Mary, might perhaps have been tedious to a harsher critic; but I like to hear of other people’s relations, having scarcely any of my own. I found out by degrees that Miss Campbell had been taken abroad by her brothers to recover from a long and severe task of nursing, which had exhausted her strength. The little ones had all been down with scarlet fever, and she had not left them night or day. “She gave up seeing the rest of us and regularly shut herself in,” Charley informed me, who was the younger of the two. “She would only go out for her walk when all of us were out of the way. That was the worst of it,” the young fellow said, with great simplicity. That his sister should give herself up to the nursing was nothing remarkable; but that she should deny herself their precious company was a heroism that went to her brother’s heart. Thus by the way I learned a great deal about the family. Chatty, as they called her, was the sister-mother, especially of the little ones, who had been left almost in her sole charge since their mother died many years before. She was not a girl, strictly speaking. She was in the perfection of her womanhood and youth—about eight-and-twenty, the age when something of the composure of maturity has lighted upon the sweetness of the earlier years, and being so old enhances all the charm of being so young. It is chiefly among young married women that one sees this gracious and beautiful type, delightful to every sense and every requirement of the mind; but when it is to be met with unmarried it is more celestial still. I cannot but think with reverence that this delicate maternity and maidenhood—the perfect bounty of the one, the undisturbed grace of the other—has been the foundation of that adoring devotion which in the old days brought so many saints to the shrine of the Virgin Mother. But why I should thus enlarge upon Charlotte Campbell at the beginning of this story I can scarcely tell, for she is not the foremost figure in it, and I am unintentionally deceiving the reader to begin with.

They asked me to come and see them at Ellermore when we parted, and, as I have nothing in the way of a home warmer or more genial than chambers in the Temple, I accepted, as may be supposed, with enthusiasm. It was in the first week of June that we parted, and I was invited for the end of August. They had “plenty of grouse,” Charley said, with a liberality of expression which was pleasant to hear. Charlotte added, “But you must be prepared for a homely life, Mr. Temple, and a very quiet one.” I replied, of course, that if I had chosen what I liked best in the world it would have been this combination, at which she smiled with an amused little shake of her head. It did not seem to occur to her that she herself told for much in the matter. What they all insisted upon was the “plenty of grouse,” and I do not pretend to say that I was indifferent to that.

Colin, the eldest son, was the one with whom I had been least familiar. He was what people call reserved. He did not talk of everything as the others did. I did not indeed find out till much later that he was constantly in London, coming and going, so that he and I might have seen much of each other. Yet he liked me well enough. He joined warmly in his brother’s invitation. When Charley said there was plenty of grouse, he added, with the utmost friendliness, “And ye may get a blaze at a stag.” There was a flavour of the North in the speech of all; not disclosed by mere words, but by an occasional diversity of idiom and change of pronunciation. They were conscious of this and rather proud of it than otherwise. They did not say Scotch, but Scots; and their accent could not be represented by any of the travesties of the theatre, or what we conventionally accept as the national utterance. When I attempted to pronounce after them, my own ear informed me what a travesty it was.

It was to the family represented by these young people that I was going when I started on August 20, a blazing summer day, with dust and heat enough to merit the name of summer if anything ever did. But when I arrived at my journey’s end there was just change enough to mark the line between summer and autumn: a little golden haze in the air, a purple bloom of heather on the hills, a touch here and there upon a stray branch, very few, yet enough to swear by. Ellermore lay in the heart of a beautiful district full of mountains and lochs within the Highland line, and just on the verge of some of the wildest mountain scenery in Scotland. It was situated in the midst of an amphitheatre of hills, not of any very exalted height, but of the most picturesque form, with peaks and couloirs like an Alpine range in little, all glowing with the purple blaze of the heather, with gleams upon them that looked like snow, but were in reality water-white threads of mountain torrents. In front of the house was a small loch embosomed in the hills, from one end of which ran a cheerful little stream, much intercepted by boulders, and much the brighter for its interruptions, which meandered through the glen and fell into another loch of greater grandeur and pretensions. Ellermore itself was a comparatively new house, built upon a fine slope of lawn over the lake, and sheltered by fine trees—great beeches which would not have done discredit to Berkshire, though that is not what we expect to see in Scotland, besides the ashes and firs which we are ready to acknowledge as of northern growth. I was not prepared for the luxuriance of the West Highlands the mantling green of ferns and herbage everywhere, not to say the wealth of flowers, which formed a centre of still more brilliant colour and cultivation amid all the purple of the hills. Everything was soft and rich and warm about the Highland mansion-house. I had expected stern scenery and a grey atmosphere. I found an almost excessive luxuriance of vegetation and colour everywhere. The father of my friends received me at a door which was constantly open, and where it seemed to me after a while that nobody was ever refused admission. He was a tall old man, dignified but homely, with white hair and moustache and the fresh colour of a rural patriarch; which, however, he was not, but an energetic man of business, as I afterwards found. The Campbells of Ellermore were not great chiefs in that much-extended clan, though they were perfectly well-known people and had held their little estate from remote antiquity. But they had not stood upon their gentility, or refused to avail themselves of the opportunities that came in their way. I have observed that in the great and wealthy region of which Glasgow is the capital the number of the irreconcilables who stand out against trade is few. The gentry have seen all the advantages of combining commerce with tradition. Had it not been for this it is likely that Ellermore would have been a very different place. Now it was overflowing with all those signs of care and simple luxury which make life so smooth. There was little show, but there was a profusion of comfort. Everything rolled upon velvet. It was perhaps more like the house of a rich merchant than of a family of long descent. Nothing could be more perfect as a pleasure estate than was this little Highland property. They had “plenty of grouse,” and also of trout in a succession of little lochs and mountain streams. They had deer on the hills. They had their own mutton, and everything vegetable that was needed for the large, profuse household, from potatoes and cabbage up to grapes and peaches. But with all this primitive wealth there was not much money got out of Ellermore. The “works” in Glasgow supplied that. What the works were I have never exactly found out, but they afforded occupation for all the family, both father and sons; and that the results were of the most pleasing description as regarded Mr. Campbell’s banker it was easy to see.

They were all at home with the exception of Colin, the eldest son, for whose absence many apologies, some of which seemed much more elaborate than were at all necessary, were made to me. I was, for my own part, quite indifferent to the absence of Colin. He was not the one who had interested me most; and though Charley was considerably younger than myself, I had liked him better from the first. Tom and Jack were still younger. They were well occupied at “the works,” and came home only from Saturday to Monday. The little trio in the nursery were delightful children. To see them gathered about Charlotte was enough to melt any heart. Chatty, they called her, which is not a very dignified name, but I got to think it the most beautiful in the world as it sounded all over that cheerful, much-populated house. “Where is Chatty?” was the first question everyone asked as he came in at the door. If she was not immediately found, it went volleying through the house, all up the stairs and through the passages—“Chatty! where are you?”—and was always answered from somewhere or other in a full, soft voice, which was audible everywhere though it never was loud. “Here am I, boys,” she would say, with a pretty inversion which pleased me. Indeed, everything pleased me in Chatty—too much, more than reason. I found myself thinking what would become of them all if, for example, she were to marry, and entered into a hot argument with myself on one occasion by way of proving that it would be the most selfish thing in the world were this family to work upon Chatty’s feelings and prevent her from marrying, as most probably, I could not help feeling, they would. At the same time, I perceived with a little shudder how entirely the whole thing would collapse if by any chance Chatty should be decoyed away.

I enjoyed my stay beyond description. In the morning we were out on the hills or about the country. In the evening it very often happened that we all strolled out after dinner, and that I was left by Chatty’s side, “the boys” having a thousand objects of interest, while Mr. Campbell usually sat in his library and read the newspapers, which arrived at that time either by the coach from Oban or by the boat. In this way I went over the whole “policy,” as the grounds surrounding a country house are called in Scotland, with Chatty, who would not be out of reach at this hour, lest her father should want her, or the children. She would bid me not to stay with her, when no doubt it would be more amusing for me to go with the boys; and when I assured her my pleasure was far greater as it was, she gave me a gracious, frank smile, with a little shake of her head. She laughed at me softly, bidding me not to be too polite or think she would mind if I left her; but I think, on the whole, she liked to have me with her in her evening walk.

“There is one thing you have not told me of,” I said, “and that you must possess. I cannot believe that your family has been settled here so long without having a ghost.”

She had turned round to look at me, to know what it was that had been omitted in her descriptions. When she heard what it was she smiled a little, but not with the pleasant mockery I had expected. On the contrary, it was a sort of gentle smile of recognition of something left out.

“We don’t call it a ghost,” she said. “I have wondered if you had never noticed. I am fond of it, for my part; but then I have been used to it all my life. And here we are, then,” she added, as we reached the top of a little ascent and came out upon a raised avenue, which I had known by its name of the Lady’s Walk, without as yet getting any explanation what that meant. It must have been, I supposed, the avenue to the old house, and now encircled one portion of the grounds without any distinct meaning. On the side nearest the gardens and house it was but slightly raised above the shrubberies, but on the other side rose to the summit of a high bank, sloping steeply to the river, which, after it escaped from the loch, made a wide bend round that portion of the grounds. A row of really grand beeches rose on each side of the path, and through the openings in the trees the house, the bright gardens, the silvery gleam of the loch were visible. The evening sun was slanting into our eyes as we walked along; a little soft yet brisk air was pattering among the leaves, and here and there a yellow cluster in the middle of a branch showing the first touch of a cheerful decay. “Here we are, then.” It was a curious phrase; but there are some odd idioms in the Scotch—I mean Scots—form of our common language, and I had become accustomed now to accept them without remark.

“I suppose,” I said, “there must be some back way to the village or to the farmhouse under this bank, though there seems no room for a path?”

“Why do you ask?” she said, looking at me with a smile.

“Because I always hear some one passing along—I imagine down there. The steps are very distinct. Don’t you hear them now? It has puzzled me a good deal, for I cannot make out where the path can be.”

She smiled again, with a meaning in her smile, and looked at me steadily, listening, as I was. And then, after a pause, she said, “That is what you are asking for. If we did not hear them it would make us unhappy. Did you never hear why this was called the Lady’s Walk?”

When she said these words I was conscious of an odd enough change in my sensations—nay, I should say in my very sense—of hearing, which was the one appealed to. I had heard the sound often, and, after looking back at first to see who it was and seeing no one, had made up my mind that the steps were on some byway out of sight and came from below. Now my hearing changed, and I could not understand how I had ever thought anything else; the steps were on a level with us, by our side—as if some third person were accompanying us along the avenue. I am no believer in ghosts, nor the least superstitious, so far as I had ever been aware (more than everybody is), but I felt myself get out of the way with great celerity and a certain thrill of curious sensation. The idea of rubbing shoulders with something unseen gave me a shock in spite of myself.

“Ah,” said Charlotte, “it gives you an—unpleasant feeling. I forgot you are not used to it like me.”

“I am tolerably well used to it, for I have heard it often,” I said. It was cowardly to get to the other side, but I fear I did so with an involuntary movement. Then I laughed, which I felt to be altogether out of place and fictitious, and said, “No doubt there is some very easy explanation of it—some vibration or echo. The science of acoustics clears up many mysteries.”

“There is no explanation,” Chatty said almost angrily. “She has walked here far longer than any one can remember. It is an ill sign for us Campbells when she goes away. She was the eldest daughter, like me; and I think she has got to be our guardian angel. There is no harm going to happen as long as she is here. Listen to her!” she cried, standing still with her hand raised. The low sun shone full on her, catching her brown hair, the lucid clearness of her brown eyes, her cheeks so clear and soft, in colour a little summer-brown too. I stood and listened with a something of excited feeling which I could not control. If I had followed my first impulse I am not sure that I should not have bolted through the shrubbery; but of course I did not. And the sound of this third person, whose steps were not to be mistaken though she was unseen, made my heart beat. It was no doubt the utmost folly; for there must be an explanation for it in nature: of that I could not doubt for a moment.

“You are startled,” she said, with a smile.

“Well, I should not be acting my part, should I, as I ought, if I did not feel the proper thrill. It must be disrespectful to a ghost not to be afraid.”

“Don’t say a ghost,” said Chatty; “I think that is disrespectful. It is the Lady of Ellermore; everybody knows about her. And do you know,” she added, “when my mother died—the greatest grief I have ever known—the steps ceased? Oh, it is true! You need not look me in the face as if there was anything to laugh at. It is ten years ago, and I was only a silly sort of girl, not much good to any one. They sent me out to get the air when she was lying in a doze; and I came here. I was crying, as you may suppose, and at first I did not pay any attention. Then it struck me all at once—the Lady was away. They told me afterwards that was the worst sign. It is always death that is coming when she goes away.”

The pathos of this incident confused all my attempts to touch it with levity, and we went on for a little without speaking, during which time it is almost unnecessary to say that I was listening with all my might to those strange footsteps, which finally I persuaded myself were no more than echoes of our own.

“It is very curious,” I said politely. “Of course you were greatly agitated and too much absorbed in real grief to have any time to think of any explanation—the state of the atmosphere perhaps—”

She gave me an indignant look. We were nearly at the end of the walk, and at that moment I could have sworn that the footsteps, which had got a little in advance, here turned and met us coming back. I am aware that nothing could sound more foolish, and that it could only be some vibration or atmospheric phenomenon. But yet this was how it seemed: it was not an optical but an aural delusion. So long as the steps were going with us it was less impossible to account for it; but when they turned and audibly came back to meet us! Not all my strength of mind could prevent me from springing aside to let them pass. This time they came directly between us, and the agility of my start and withdrawal was naturally much more significant than the faltering laugh with which I excused myself. “It is a very curious sound indeed,” I said, with a tremor which slightly affected my voice.

Chatty gave me a reassuring smile. She did not laugh at me, which was consolatory. She stood for a moment as if looking after the visionary passenger. “We are not afraid,” she said, “even the youngest; we all know she is our friend.”

When we had got back to the side of the loch, where, I confess, I was pleased to find myself, in the free open air without any perplexing shadow of trees, I felt less objection to the subject. “I wish you would tell me the story; for of course there is a story?” I said.

“No, there is no story—at least nothing tragical or even romantic. They say she was the eldest daughter. I sometimes wonder,” Chatty said, with a smile and a faint increase of colour, “whether she might not be a little like me. She lived here all her life, and had several generations to take care of. Oh no, there was no murder or wrong about our Lady; she just loved Ellermore above everything; and my idea is that she has been allowed the care of us ever since.”

“That is very sweet, to have the care of you,” I said, scarcely venturing to put any emphasis on the pronoun; “but, after all, it must be slow work, don’t you think, walking up and down there for ever? I call that a poor sort of reward for a good woman. If she had been a bad one, it might have answered very well for a punishment.”

“Mr. Temple!” Chatty said, now reddening with indignation, “do you think it is a poor thing to have the care of your own people, to watch over them, whatever may happen—to be all for them and their service? I don’t think so; I should like to have such a fate.”

Perhaps I had spoken thus on purpose to bring about the discussion. “There is such a thing as being too devoted to a family. Are they ever grateful? They go away and marry and leave you in the lurch.”

She looked up at me with a little astonishment. “The members may vary, but the family never goes away,” she said; “besides, that can apply to us in our present situation only. She must have seen so many come and go; but that need not vex her, you know, because they go where she is.”

“My dear Miss Campbell, wait a bit; think a little,” I said. “Where she is That is in the Lady’s Walk, according to your story. Let us hope that all your ancestors and relations are not there.”

“I suppose you want to make me angry,” said Chatty. “She is in heaven—have you any doubt of that?—but every day when the sun is setting she comes back home.”

“Oh, come!” I said, “if it is only at the sunset, that is not so bad.”

Miss Campbell looked at me doubtfully, as if not knowing whether to be angry. “You want to make fun of it,” she said, “to laugh at it; and yet,” she added, with a little spirit, “you were very nervous half an hour ago.”

“I acknowledge to being nervous. I am very impressionable. I believe that is the word. It is a luxury like another to be nervous at the fit moment. Frightened, you might say, if you prefer plain speaking. And I am very glad it is at sunset, not in the dark. This completes the circle of my Highland experiences,” I said; “everything now is perfect. I have shot grouse on the hill and caught trout on the loch, and been soaked to the skin and then dried in the wind; I wanted nothing but the family ghost And now I have seen her, or at least heard her—”

“If you are resolved to make a joke of it I cannot help it,” said Chatty, “but I warn you that it is not agreeable to me, Mr. Temple. Let us talk of something else. In the Highlands,” she said, with dignity, “we take different views of many things.”

“There are some things,” I said, “of which but one view is possible—that I should have the audacity and impertinence to laugh at anything for which you have a veneration! I believe it is only because I was so frightened—”

She smiled again in her lovely motherly way, a smile of indulgence and forgiveness and bounty. “You are too humble now,” she said, “and I think I hear some one calling me. It is time to go in.”

And to be sure there was some one calling her; there always was, I think, at all hours of the night and day.

II

To say that I got rid of the recollection of the Lady of Ellermore when I went up-stairs, after a cheerful evening, through a long and slippery gallery to my room in the wing, would be untrue. The curious experience I had just had dwelt in my mind with a touch of not unpleasant perplexity.

“Of course,” I said to myself, “there must be something to account for those footsteps—some hidden way in which the sounds must come.” Perhaps my first idea would turn out to be correct—that there was a byroad to the farm or to the stables, which in some states of the atmosphere, or perhaps it might even be always, echoed back the sounds of passing feet in some subterranean vibration. One has heard of such things, one has heard, indeed, of every kind of natural wonder, some of them no more easy to explain than the other interpretation; but so long as you have science with you, whether you understand it or not, you are all right. I could not help wondering, however, whether, if by chance I heard those steps in the long gallery outside my door, I should refer the matter comfortably to the science of acoustics. I was tormented, until I fell asleep, by a vague expectation of hearing them. I could not get them out of my mind or out of my ears, so distinct were they—the light step, soft but with energy in it, evidently a woman’s step. I could not help recollecting, with a tingling sensation through all my veins, the distinctness of the turn it gave—the coming back, the steps going in a line opposite to ours. It seemed to me that from moment to moment I must hear it again in the gallery, and then how could it be explained?

Next day—for I slept very well after I had succeeded in getting to sleep, and what I had heard did not by any means haunt my dreams—next day I managed to elude all the pleasant occupations of the house, and, as soon as I could get free from observation, I took my way to the Lady’s Walk. I had said that I had letters to write—a well-worn phrase, which of course means exactly what one pleases. I walked up and down the Lady’s Walk, and could neither hear nor see anything. On this side of the shrubbery there was no possibility of any concealed path; on the other side the bank went sloping to the water’s edge. The avenue ran along from the corner of the loch half-way round the green plateau on which the house was planted, and at the upper end came out upon the elevated ground behind the house; but no road crossed it, nor was there the slightest appearance of any mode by which a steady sound not its own could be communicated here. I examined it all with the utmost care, looking behind the bole of every tree, as if the secret might be there, and my heart gave a leap when I perceived what seemed to me one narrow track worn along the ground. Fancy plays us curious pranks even when she is most on her guard. It was a strange idea that I, who had come here with the purpose of finding a way of explaining the curious phenomena upon which so long and lasting a superstition had been built, should be so quickly infected by it. I saw the little track, quite narrow but very distinct, and though of course I did not believe in the Lady of Ellermore, yet within myself I jumped at the certainty that this was her track. It gave me a curious sensation. The certainty lay underneath the scepticism, as if they were two things which had no connection with each other. Had any one seen me it must have been supposed that I was looking for something among the bushes, so closely did I scrutinise every foot of the soil and every tree.

It exercised a fascination upon me which I could not resist. The Psychical Society did not exist in those days, so far as I know, but there are many minds outside that inquisitive body to whom the authentication of a ghost story, or, to speak more practically, the clearing up of a superstition, is very attractive. I managed to elude the family arrangements once more at the same hour at which Miss Campbell and I had visited the Lady’s Walk on the previous evening. It was a lovely evening, soft and warm, the western sky all ablaze with colour, the great branches of the beeches thrown out in dark maturity of greenness upon the flush of orange and crimson, melting into celestial rosy red as it rose higher, and flinging itself in frothy heaps across the serene blue above. The same wonderful colours glowed in reflection out of the loch. The air was of magical clearness, and earth and sky seemed stilled with an almost awe of their own loveliness, happiness, and peace.

“The holy time was quiet as a nun,

Breathless with adoration.”

For my part, however, I noticed this only in passing, being intent on other thoughts. From the loch there came a soft tumult of voices. It was Saturday evening, and all the boys were at home. They were getting out the boats for an evening row, and the white sail of the toy yacht rose upon the gleaming water like a little white cloud among the rosy clouds of that resplendent sky. I stood between two of the beeches that formed a sort of arch, and looked out upon them, distracted for an instant by the pleasant distant sound which came softly through the summer air. Next moment I turned sharply round with a start, in spite of myself; turned quickly to see who it was coming after me. There was, I need not say, not a soul within sight. The beeches fluttered softly in the warm air; the long shadows of their great boles lay unbroken along the path; nothing else was visible, not even a bird on a bank. I stood breathless between the two trees, with my back turned to the loch, gazing at nothing, while the soft footsteps came quietly on, and passed me—passed me! with a slight waft of air, I thought, such as a slight, light figure might have made; but that was imagination perhaps. Imagination! was it not all imagination? or what was it? No shadows or darkness to conceal a form by; full light of day radiant with colour; the most living, delightful air, all sweet with pleasure. I stood there speechless and without power to move. She went along softly, without changing the gentle regularity of her tread, to the end of the walk. The steps grew fainter as they went farther and farther from me. I never listened so intently in my life. I said to myself, “If they go out of hearing I shall know it is merely an excited imagination.” And on they went, almost out of hearing, only the faintest touch upon the ground; then there was a momentary pause, and my heart stood still, but leaped again to my throat and sent wild waves of throbbing to my ears next moment: they had turned and were coming back.

I cannot describe the extraordinary effect. If it had been dark it would have been altogether different. The brightness, the life around, the absence of all that one associates with the supernatural, produced a thrill of emotion to which I can give no name. It was not fear; yet my heart beat as it had never done in any dangerous emergency (and I have passed through some that were exciting enough) before; my breath seemed to go away from me. Would she come back to where I was? She did, passing me once more, with the same movement of the air (or so I thought), and turned again. But by that time my pulses were all clanging so in my ears that I could bear it no longer. I turned and walked precipitately away, stumbling down the little slope and losing myself in the shrubberies which were beneath the range of the low sun, now almost set, and felt dank and cold in the contrast. It was something like plunging into a bath of cold air after the warmth and glory above.

It was in this way that my first experience ended. Miss Campbell looked at me a little curiously with a half-smile when I joined the party at the loch side. She divined where I had been, and perhaps something of the strange agitation I felt, but she took no further notice; and as I was in time to find a place in the boat, where she had established herself with the children, I lost nothing by my meeting with the mysterious passenger in the Lady’s Walk.

I did not go near the place for some days afterwards, but I cannot say that it was ever long out of my thoughts. I had long arguments with myself on the subject, representing to myself that I had heard the sound before hearing the superstition, and then had found no difficulty in believing that it was the sound of some passenger on an adjacent path, perhaps invisible from the walk. I had not been able to find that path, but still it might exist at some angle which, according to the natural law of the transmission of sounds—Bah! what jargon this was! Had I not heard her turn, felt her pass me, watched her coming back? And then I paused with a loud burst of laughter at myself. “Ass! you never had any of these sensations before you heard the story,” I said. And that was true; but I heard the steps before I heard the story; and, now I think of it, was much startled by them, and set my mind to work to account for them, as you know. “And what evidence have you that the first interpretation was not the right one?” myself asked me with scorn; upon which question I turned my back with a hopeless contempt of the pertinacity of that other person who has always so many objections to make. Interpretation! could any interpretation ever do away with the effect upon my actual senses of that invisible passer-by? But the most disagreeable effect was this, that I could not shut out from my mind the expectation of hearing those same steps in the gallery outside my door at night. It was a long gallery, running the full length of the wing, highly polished and somewhat slippery, a place in which any sound was important. I never went along to my room without a feeling that at any moment I might hear those steps behind me, or after I had closed my door might be conscious of them passing. I never did so, but neither have I ever got free of the thought.

A few days after, however, another incident occurred that drove the Lady’s Walk and its invisible visitor out of my mind. We were all returning home in the long northern twilight from a mountain expedition. How it was that I was the last to return I do not exactly recollect. I think Miss Campbell had forgotten to give some directions to the watchman’s wife at the lodge, which I volunteered to carry for her. My nearest way back would have been through the Lady’s Walk, had not some sort of doubtful feeling restrained me from taking it. Though I have said and felt that the effect of these mysterious footsteps was enhanced by the full daylight, still I had a sort of natural reluctance to put myself in the way of encountering them when the darkness began to fall. I preferred the shrubberies, though they were darker and less attractive. As I came out of their shade, however, some one met me, coming apparently from that direction. I thought at first it was Charlotte, for the outline was like hers. It was almost dark, and what little light there was was behind her, so that I could not distinguish her features. She was tall and slight, and wrapped apparently in a long cloak, a dress usual enough in those rainy regions. I think, too, that her veil was over her face. The way in which she approached made it apparent that she was going to speak to me, which surprised me a little, though there was nothing extraordinary in it; for of course by this time all the neighbourhood knew who I was and that I was a visitor at Ellermore. There was a little air of timidity and hesitation about her as she came forward, from which I supposed that my sudden appearance startled her a little,—and yet was welcome as an unexpected way of getting something done that she wanted. Tant de choses en un mot, you will say—and yet it was quite true. She came up to me quickly as soon as she had made up her mind. Her voice was very soft, but very peculiar, with a sort of far-away sound, as if the veil or evening air interposed a sort of visionary distance between her and me. “I cannot speak to them. I must not speak to them,” she said, then paused a little and seemed to look at me with eyes that shone dimly through the shadows like stars in a misty sky.

“Can I be of any use to you? I am living here,” I said, very much surprised.

“Tell them it’s Colin! Colin! in trouble and temptation. Oh, and I must not speak!”

“Colin!” I said, startled; then, after a moment, “Pardon me, this is an uncomfortable message to entrust to a stranger. Is he ill? What must I tell them?” I was still less interested than surprised.

“In great trouble and temptation,” she repeated, with a sort of wail. “Oh, the bonnie boy, the bonnie boy!”

“Stop,” I cried, “stop!” for she seemed about to pass on. “If I am to say this there must be something more. Who is it that sends the message? They will ask me, of course. And what is wrong?”

She seemed to wring her hands under her cloak, and looked at me with an attitude and gesture of supplication. “In great trouble,” she said, “in great trouble! And me, I can do nothing; nor even speak, nor even speak!”

And, notwithstanding all that I could say, she left me so, with a wave of her hand, disappearing among the dark bushes. It may be supposed that this was no agreeable charge to give to a guest, one who owed nothing but pleasure and kindness to the Campbells, but had no acquaintance beyond the surface with their concerns. They were, it is true, very free in spirit, and seemed to have as little dessous des cartes in their life and affairs as could be imagined. But Colin was the one who was spoken of less freely than any other in the family. He had been expected several times since I came, but had never appeared. It seemed that he had a way of postponing his arrival, and “of course,” it was said in the family, never came when he was expected. I had wondered more than once at the testy tone in which the old gentleman spoke of him sometimes, and the line of covert defence always adopted by Charlotte. To be sure, he was the eldest, and might naturally assume a greater independence of action than the other young men, who were yet scarcely beyond the age of pupilage and in their father’s house.

But from this, as well as from the still more natural and apparent reason that to bring them bad news of any kind was most disagreeable and inappropriate on my part, the commission I had so strangely received hung very heavily upon me. I turned it over in my mind as I dressed for dinner (we had been out all day, and dinner was much later than usual in consequence) with great perplexity and distress. Was I bound to give a message forced upon me in such a way? If the lady had news of any importance to give, why did she turn away from the house, where she could have communicated it at once, and confide it to a stranger? On the other hand, would I be justified in keeping back anything that might be of so much importance to them? It might perhaps be something for which she did not wish to give her authority. Sometimes people in such circumstances will even condescend to write an anonymous letter to give the warning they think necessary, without betraying to the victims of misfortune that any one whom they know is acquainted with it. Here was a justification for the strange step she had taken. It might be done in the utmost kindness to them, if not to me; and what if there might be some real danger afloat and Colin be in peril, as she said? I thought over these things anxiously before I went down-stairs, but even up to the moment of entering that bright and genial drawing-room, so full of animated faces and cheerful talk, I had not made up my mind what I should do. When we returned to it after dinner I was still uncertain. It was late, and the children were sent to bed. The boys went round to the stables to see that the horses were not the worse for their day’s work. Mr. Campbell retired to his library. For a little while I was left alone, a thing that very rarely happened, Presently Miss Campbell came down-stairs from the children’s rooms, with that air about her of rest and sweetness, like a reflection of the little prayers she has been hearing and the infant repose which she has left, which hangs about a young mother when she has disposed her babies to sleep. Charlotte, by her right of being no mother, but only a voluntary mother by deputy, had a still more tender light about her in the sweetness of this duty which God and her goodwill, not simple nature, had put upon her. She came softly into the room with her shining countenance.

“Are you alone, Mr. Temple?” she said, with a little surprise. “How rude of those boys to leave you,” and came and drew her chair towards the table where I was in the kindness of her heart.

“I am very glad they have left me if I may have a little talk with you,” I said; and then, before I knew, I had told her. She was the kind of woman to whom it is a relief to tell whatever may be on your heart. The fact that it was her own concern seemed to move her less than the care to myself. She was very much surprised and disturbed. “Colin in trouble? Oh, that might very well be,” she said, then stopped herself. “You are his friend,” she said; “you will not misunderstand me, Mr. Temple. He is very independent, and not so open as the rest of us. That is nothing against him. We are all rather given to talking; we keep nothing to ourselves—except Colin. And then he is more away than the rest.” The first necessity in her mind seemed to be this, of defending the absent. Then came the question, From whom could the warning be? Charley came in at this moment, and she called him to her eagerly. “Here is a very strange thing happened. Somebody came up to Mr. Temple in the shrubbery and told him to tell us that Colin was in trouble.”

“Colin!” I could see that Charley was, as Charlotte had been, more distressed than surprised. “When did you hear from him last?” he said.

“On Monday; but the strange thing is, who could it be that sent such a message? You said a lady, Mr. Temple?”

“What like was she?” said Charley.

Then I described as well as I could. “She was tall and very slight; wrapped up in a cloak, so that I could not make out much, and her veil down. And it was almost dark.”

“It is clear she did not want to be recognised,” Charley said.

“There was something peculiar about her voice, but I really cannot describe it; a strange tone, unlike anything—”

“Marion Gray has a peculiar voice; she is tall and slight. But what could she know about Colin?”

“I will tell you who is more likely,” cried Charley, “and that is Susie Cameron. Her brother is in London now; they may have heard from him.”

“Oh, Heaven forbid! oh, Heaven forbid! the Camerons of all people!” Charlotte cried, wringing her hands. The action struck me as so like that of the veiled stranger that it gave me a curious shock. I had not time to follow out the vague, strange suggestion that it seemed to breathe into my mind; but the sensation was as if I had suddenly, groping, come upon some one in the dark.

“Whoever it was,” I said, “she was not indifferent, but full of concern and interest—”

“Susie would be that,” Charley said, looking significantly at his sister, who rose from her chair in great distress.

“I would telegraph to him at once,” she said, “but it is too late to-night.”

“And what good would it do to telegraph? If he is in trouble it would be no help to him.”

“But what can I do? what else can I do?” she cried. I had plunged them into sudden misery, and could only look on now as an anxious but helpless spectator, feeling at the same time as if I had intruded myself upon a family affliction; for it was evident that they were not at all unprepared for “trouble” to Colin. I felt my position very embarrassing, and rose to go away.

“I feel miserably guilty,” I said, “as if I had been the bearer of bad news; but I am sure you will believe that I would not for anything in the world intrude upon—”

Charlotte paused to give me a pale sort of smile, and pointed to the chair I had left. “No, no,” she said, “don’t go away, Mr. Temple. We do not conceal from you that we are anxious—that we were anxious even before—but don’t go away. I don’t think I will tell my father, Charley. It would break his rest. Let him have his night’s rest whatever happens, and there is nothing to be done to-night—”

“We will see what the post brings to-morrow,” Charley said.

And then the consultation ended abruptly by the sudden entrance of the boys, bringing a gust of fresh night air with them. The horses were not a grain the worse, though they had been out all day; even old Grumbling Geordie, the coachman, had not a word to say. “You may have them again to-morrow, Chatty, if you like,” said Tom. She had sat down to her work, and met their eyes with an unruffled countenance. “I hope I am not so unreasonable,” she said, with her tranquil looks; only I could see a little tremor in her hand, as she stooped over the socks she was knitting. She laid down her work after a while, and went to the piano and played accompaniments, to which first Jack and then Tom sang. She did it without any appearance of effort, yielding to all the wishes of the youngsters, while I looked on wondering. How can women do this sort of thing? It is more than one can divine.

Next morning Mr. Campbell asked “by the bye,” but with a pucker in his forehead, which, being now enlightened on the subject, I could understand, if there was any letter from Colin. “No,” Charlotte said (who, for her part, had turned over all her letters with a swift, anxious scrutiny). “But that is nothing,” she said, “for we heard on Monday.” The old gentleman uttered a “Umph!” of displeasure. “Tell him I think it a great want in manners that he is not here to receive Mr. Temple.” “Oh, father, Mr. Temple understands,” cried Charlotte, and she turned upon me those mild eyes, in which there was now a look that went to my heart, an appeal at once to my sympathy and my forbearance, bidding me not to ask, not to speak, yet to feel with her all the same. If she could have known the rush of answering feeling with which my heart replied; but I had to be careful not even to look too much knowledge, too much sympathy.

After this two days passed without any incident. What letters were sent, or other communications, to Colin I could not tell. They were great people for the telegraph, and flashed messages about continually. There was a telegraph station in the little village, which had been very surprising to me at first; but I no longer wondered, seeing their perpetual use of it. People who have to do with business, with great “works” to manage, get into the way more easily than we others. But either no answer or nothing of a satisfactory character was obtained, for I was told no more. The second evening was Sunday, and I was returning alone from a ramble down the glen. It was Mr. Campbell’s custom to read a sermon on Sunday evenings to his household, and as I had, in conformity to the custom of the family, already heard two at church, I had deserted on this occasion, and chosen the freedom and quiet of a rural walk instead. It was a cloudy evening, and there had been rain. The clouds hung low on the hills, and half the surrounding peaks had retired altogether into the mist. I had scarcely set foot within the gates when I met once more the lady whose message had brought so much pain. The trees arched over the approach at this spot, and even in full daylight it was in deep shade. Now in the evening dimness it was dark as night. I could see little more than the slim, straight figure, the sudden perception of which gave me—I could scarcely tell why—a curious thrill of something like fear. She came hurriedly towards me, an outline, nothing more, until the same peculiar voice, sweet but sharp, broke the silence.

“Did you tell them?” she said.

It cost me an effort to reply calmly. My heart had begun to beat with an excitement over which I had no control, like a horse that takes fright at something which its rider cannot see. I said, “Yes, I told them,” straining my eyes, yet feeling as if my faculties were restive like that same horse, and would not obey me, would not look or examine her appearance as I desired. But indeed it would have been in vain, for it was too dark to see.

“But there’s nothing done, nothing done!” she said. “Would I come for nothing?” And there was again that movement, the same as I had seen in Charlotte, of wringing her hands.

“Pardon me,” I said, “will you tell me who you are? I am a stranger here; no doubt if you would see Miss Campbell herself, or tell me who it is—”

I felt the words somehow arrested in my throat, and she drew back from me with a sudden movement. It is hard to characterise a gesture in the dark, but there seemed to be a motion of impatience and despair in it. “Who would I be?” she cried, “that could not speak? It’s because you’re a stranger, and wish them well. Colin, Colin! oh, the bonnie boy!”

“I will carry your message, but, for God’s sake, if it is so important, tell me who sends it,” I said.

She shook her head and went rapidly past me, notwithstanding the anxious appeals that I tried to make. She seemed to put out a hand to wave me back as I stood gazing after her. Just then the lodge door opened. I suppose the woman within had been disturbed by the sound of the voices, and a gleam of firelight burst out upon the road. Across this gleam I saw the slight figure pass quickly, and then a capacious form with a white apron came out and stood in the door. The sight of the coachman’s wife in her large and comfortable proportions gave me a certain ease, I cannot tell why. I hurried up to her. “Who was that that passed just now?” I asked.

“That passed just now? There was naebody passed. I thought I heard a voice, and that it was maybe Geordie; but nobody has passed here that I could see.”

“Nonsense! you must have seen her,” I cried hastily; “she cannot be out of sight yet. No doubt you would know who she was—a lady, tall and slight—in a cloak—”

“Eh, sir, ye maun be joking!” cried the woman. “What lady, if it werna Miss Chatty, would be walking here at this time of the night? Lady! it might maybe be the schoolmaster’s daughter. She has one of those ulsters like her betters. But naebody has passed here this hour back, o’ that I’m confident,” she said.

“Why did you come out, then, just at this moment?” I cried. The woman contemplated me in the gleam from the fire from top to toe. “You’re the English gentleman that’s biding up at the house,” she said. “’Deed, I just heard a step, that was nae doubt your step, and I thought it might be my man; but there has naebody, far less a lady, whatever she had on, passed my door coming or going. Is that you, Geordie?” she cried suddenly, as a step became audible approaching the gate from the outer side.

“Ay, it’s just me,” responded her husband out of the gloom.

“Have ye met a leddy as ye came along? The gentleman here will have it that there’s been a leddy passing the gate, and there’s been no leddy. I would have seen her through the window even if I hadna opened the door.”

“I’ve seen no leddy,” said Geordie, letting himself in with considerable noise at the foot entrance, which I now remembered to have closed behind me when I passed through it a few minutes before. “I’ve met no person; it’s no’ an hour for leddies to be about the roads on Sabbath day at e’en.”

It was at this moment that a wild suggestion darted into my mind. How it came I cannot tell. I was not the sort of man, I said to myself, for any such folly. My imagination had been a little touched, to be sure, by that curious affair of the footsteps; but this, which seemed to make my heart stand still and sent a shiver through me, was very different, and it was a folly not to be entertained for a moment. I stamped my foot upon it instantly, crushing it on the threshold of the mind. “Apparently either you or I must be mistaken,” I said, with a laugh at the high tone of Geordie, who himself had evidently been employed in a jovial way—quite consistent, according to all I had heard, with very fine principles in respect to the Sabbath. I had a laugh over this as I went away, insisting upon the joke to myself as I hurried up the avenue. It was extremely funny, I said to myself; it would be a capital story among my other Scotch experiences. But somehow my laugh died away in a very feeble sort of quaver. The night had grown dark even when I emerged from under the trees, by reason of a great cloud, full of rain, which had rolled up over the sky, quenching it out. I was very glad to see the lights of the house gleaming steadily before me. The blind had not been drawn over the end window of the drawing-room, and from the darkness without I looked in upon a scene which was full of warmth and household calm. Though it was August there was a little glimmer of fire. The reading of the sermon was over. Old Mr. Campbell still sat at a little table with the book before him, but it was closed. Charlotte in the foreground, with little Harry and Mary on either side of her, was “hearing their paraphrase.”[]

[@@@]The Paraphrases are a selection of hymns always printed along with the metrical version of the Psalms in use in Scotland, and more easy, being more modern in diction, to be learned by heart.]

The boys were putting a clever dog through his tricks in a sort of clandestine way behind backs, at whom Charlotte would shake a finger now and then with an admonitory smiling look. Charley was reading or writing at the end of the room. The soft little chime of the children’s voices, the suppressed laughter and whispering of the boys, the father’s leisurely remark now and then, made up a soft murmur of sound which was like the very breath of quietude and peace. How did I dare, their favoured guest, indebted so deeply as I was to their kindness, to go in among them with that mysterious message and disturb their tranquillity once more?

When I went into the drawing-room, which was not till an hour later, Charlotte looked up at me smiling, with some playful remark as to my flight from the evening reading. But as she caught my eye her countenance changed. She put down her book, and after a little consideration walked to that end window through which I had looked, and which was in a deep recess, making me a little sign to follow her.

“How dark the night is,” she said, with a little pretence of looking out, and then in a hurried under-tone, “Mr. Temple, you have heard something more?”

“Not any more, but certainly the same thing repeated. I have seen the lady again.”

“And who is she? Tell me frankly, Mr. Temple. Just the same thing—that Colin is in trouble? no details? I cannot imagine who can take so much interest. But you asked her for her name?”

“I asked her, but she gave me no reply. She waved her hand and went on. I begged her to see you, and not to give me such a commission; but it was of no use. I don’t know if I ought to trouble you with a vague warning that only seems intended to give pain.”

“Oh yes,” she cried, “oh yes, it was right to tell me. If I only knew who it was! Perhaps you can describe her better, since you have seen her a second time. But Colin has friends—whom we don’t know. Oh, Mr. Temple, it is making a great claim upon your kindness, but could not you have followed her and found out who she was?”

“I might have done that,” I said. “To tell the truth, it was so instantaneous and I was so startled.”

She looked up at me quickly with a questioning air, and grew a little pale, gazing at me; but whether she comprehended the strange wild fancy which I could not even permit myself to realise I cannot tell; for Charley, seeing us standing together, and being in a state of nervous anxiety, also here came and joined us, and we stood talking together in an undertone till Mr. Campbell called to know if anything was the matter. “You are laying your heads together like a set of conspirators,” said the old gentleman, with a half-laugh. His manner to me was always benign and gracious; but now that I knew something of the family troubles, I could perceive a vein of suppressed irritation, a certain watchfulness, which made him alarming to the other members of the household.

Charlotte gave us both a warning look. “I will tell him to-morrow—I will delay no longer—but not to-night,” she said. “Mr. Temple was telling us about his ramble, father. He has just come in in time to avoid the rain.”

“Well,” said the old man, “he cannot expect to be free from rain up here in the Highlands. It is wonderful the weather we have had.” And with this the conversation fell into a very domestic channel. Miss Campbell this time could not put away the look of excitement and agitation in her eyes. But she escaped with the children to see them put to bed, and we sat and talked of politics and other mundane subjects. The boys were all going to leave Ellermore next day—Tom and Jack for the “works,” Charley upon some other business. Mr. Campbell made me formal apologies for them. “I had hoped Colin would have been at home before now to do the honours of the Highlands; but we expect him daily,” he said. He kept his eye fixed upon me as if to give emphasis to his words and defy any doubt that might arise in my mind.

Next morning I was summoned by Charley before I came down-stairs to “come quickly and speak to my father.” I found him in the library, which opened from the dining-room. He was walking about the room in great agitation. He began to address me almost before I was in sight.

“Who is this, sir, that you have been having meetings with about Colin? Some gossip or other that has taken ye in. I need not tell you, Mr. Temple, a lawyer and an Englishman, that an anonymous statement”—For once the old gentleman had forgotten himself, his respect for his guest, his fine manners. He was irritated, obstinate, wounded in pride and feeling. Charlotte touched him on the arm with a murmured appeal, and turned her eyes to me in anxious deprecation. But there was no thought farther from my mind than that of taking offence.

“I fully feel it,” I said; “nor was it my part to bring any disagreeable suggestions into this house—if it had not been that my own mind was so burdened with it and Miss Campbell so clear-sighted.”

He cast a look at her, half affectionate, half displeased, and then he said to me testily, “But who was the woman? That is the question; that is what I want to know.”

My eyes met Charlotte’s as I looked up. She had grown very pale, and was gazing at me eagerly, as if she had divined somehow the wild fancy which once more shot across my mind against all reason and without any volition of mine.

III

Mr. Campbell was not to be moved. He was very anxious, angry, and ill at ease; but whether it was that he would not betray to me that the message, which he viewed as an anonymous statement, could cause him any uneasiness, or whether it was perplexity and confusion of mind, or if he really felt a confidence which neither his son nor daughter shared, I cannot tell. But he refused to be influenced in any way by this strange communication. It would be some intrusive woman, he said; some busybody—there were many about—who, thinking she could escape being found out in that way, had thought it a grand opportunity of making mischief. He made me a great many apologies for his first hasty words. It was very ill-bred, he said; he was ashamed to think that he had let himself be so carried away; but he would hear nothing of the message itself. It appeared that Miss Campbell had both written and telegraphed to her brother. To the letter there was as yet no reply; but Colin had answered the telegram by a somewhat angry one, declaring that he was all right. “What more would you have him to do?” Mr. Campbell said, with a sort of restrained fury. Charlotte said nothing more in my presence, but I divined that she was anxiously endeavouring to induce him, if not to go himself, yet to permit her to go to her brother. The position was a very embarrassing one, especially when all the brothers left for their business, which they did by the morning boat. It seemed out of all character that a stranger should remain in the circumstances; so I contrived to have a letter by the midday post summoning me back to town. They were, of course, quite well aware that letters do not come from London on a Monday; but Charlotte at least made no remark. Her father looked at me rather fiercely, being irritated and susceptible, and disposed to take offence at anything that seemed to attach importance to this curious episode; and the children made a great outcry and lamentation; but they did not make any serious attempt to change my resolution. It was even agreeable to Miss Campbell I saw, and this gave me a pang, anxious as I was to be agreeable to her in every way. The last boat would get me to the nearest station in time for the night train, or it was suggested that I might be driven there, which would give me still more time. I had made all my arrangements, and had come down-stairs again, somewhat forlorn, to have my last talk with the woman whose sweet company during these two or three weeks past had been more to me than I could say. I found her with her hat on, waiting for me in the hall. “I thought you would like to take one turn more,” she said, with a smile, in which (I hoped) there was some sadness. There was certainly excitement in her eyes, in her movements a sort of eagerness and almost impatience. We went out and walked across the lawn to the side of the loch. The sun was beginning to sink; the sky was all aglow, putting on by degrees the gorgeous hues of a northern sunset. She said nothing till we were clear of all possibility of listeners—too far off for the children to rush out upon us, as they so often did. Then she paused suddenly, and looked up into my face. “Mr. Temple,” she said, “you will think me heartless, letting you go without a word, though well I know the reason why. You think you are a trouble to us at such a time. Oh no, you are no trouble. But I am selfish; I don’t wish to detain you—I want you to do something for me.”

“Anything,” I cried, “anything—whatever man can.”

“I knew you would say so; that is why I have scarcely said I am sorry. I have not tried to stop you. Mr. Temple, I am not shutting my eyes to it like my father. I am sure that, whoever it was that spoke to you, the warning was true. I want you to go to Colin,” she said abruptly, after a momentary pause, “and let me know the truth.”

“To Colin?” I cried. “But you know how little acquainted we are. It was not he who wrote to me, but Charley—”

“And I. You don’t leave me out, I hope,” she said, with a faint smile. “But what could make a better excuse than that you have been here? Mr. Temple, you will go when I ask you? Oh, I do more—I entreat you! Go, and let me know the truth.”

“Of course I shall go—from the moment you ask me, Miss Campbell; but what if I offend, and make him angry? He may think me a spy upon him. He may think—”

“Oh, Mr. Temple, never mind. You have been so friendly to us. Think what a comfort it will be to me. You have been mixed up in it all. You are not like a stranger; and yet if you knew the comfort, the satisfaction it is that you are a stranger! Do you know what I mean? I can speak to you. It is not like exposing my poor Colin to somebody who has known him all his life, and who will say, ‘I knew this was what would happen.’ Do you know what I mean?” she asked, with the tears in her eyes.

And I hope I was man enough to understand without either offence or thinking too much of the confidence thus given to me. I perceived that I was a sort of forlorn hope; that I was like a rope thrown out to a drowning man; all the more prized because I was not of them—perhaps because I would disappear—my use being served—and be seen no more. But this was not—oh, surely not—what she meant She was not a woman to throw any one over who had served her. We walked up and down the side of the water, which every moment grew more and more into a blazing mirror, a burnished shield decked with every imaginable colour, though our minds had no room for its beauty, and it only touched my eyesight in coming and going. There she told me much about Colin, which I had not known or guessed—about his inclinations and tastes, which were not like any of the others, and how his friends and his ways were unknown to them. “But we have always hoped this would pass away,” she said, “for his heart is good; oh, his heart is good! You remember how kind he was to me when we met you first? He is always kind.”

Thus we walked and talked until I had seen a new side at once of her character and life. The home had seemed to me so happy and free from care; but the dark shadow was there as everywhere, and her heart often wrung with suspense and anguish. We then returned slowly towards the house, still absorbed in this conversation, for it was time that I should go in and eat my last meal at Ellermore.

We had come within sight of the door, which stood open as always, when we suddenly caught sight of Mr. Campbell posting towards us with a wild haste, so unlike his usual circumspect walk that I was startled. His feet seemed to twist as they sped along, in such haste was he. His hat was pushed back on his head, his coat-tails flying behind him—precipitate, like a man pursued, or in one of those panics which take away breath and sense, or, still more perhaps, as if a strong wind were behind him, blowing him on. When he came within speech of us, he called out hurriedly, “Come here! come here, both of you!” and turning, hastened back with the same breathless hurry, beckoning with his hand. “He must have heard something more,” Charlotte said, and rushed after him. I followed a few steps behind. Mr. Campbell said nothing to his daughter when she made up to him. He almost pushed her off when she put her hand through his arm. He had no leisure even for sympathy. He hurried along with feet that stumbled in sheer haste till he came to the Lady’s Walk, which lay in the level sunshine, a path of gold between the great boles of the trees. It was a slight ascent, which tried him still more. He went a few yards along the path, then stopped and looked round upon her and me, with his hand raised to call our attention. His face was perfectly colourless. Alarm and dismay were written on every line of it. Large drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He seemed to desire to speak, but could not; then held up his finger to command our attention. For the first moment or two my attention was so concentrated upon the man and the singularity of his look and gesture, that I thought of nothing else. What did he want us to do? We stood all three in the red light, which seemed to send a flaming sword through us. There was a faint stir of wind among the branches overhead, and a twitter of birds; but in the great stillness the faint lap of the water upon the shore was audible, though the loch was at some distance. Great stillness—that was the word; there was nothing moving but these soft actions of nature. Ah! this was what it was! Charlotte grew perfectly pale too, like her father, as she stood and listened. I seem to see them now: the old man with his white head, his ghastly face, the scared and awful look in his eyes, and she gazing at him, all her faculties involved in the art of listening, her very attitude and drapery listening too, her lips dropping apart, the life ebbing out of her, as if something was draining the blood from her heart.

Mr. Campbell’s hand dropped. “She’s away,” he said, “she’s away,” in tones of despair; then, with a voice that was shaken by emotion, “I thought it was maybe my fault. By times you say I am getting stupid.” There was the most heart-rending tone in this I ever heard—the pained humility of the old confessing a defect, lit up with a gleam of feverish hope that in this case the defect might be a welcome explanation.

“Father dear,” cried Charlotte, putting her hand on his arm—she had looked like fainting a moment before, but recovered herself—“it may be only a warning. It may not be desperate even now.”

All that the old man answered to this was a mere repetition, pathetic in its simplicity. “She’s away, she’s away.” Then, after a full minute’s pause, “You mind when that happened last?” he said.

“Oh, father! oh, father!” cried Charlotte. I withdrew a step or two from this scene. What had I, a stranger, to do with it? They had forgotten my presence, and at the sound of my step they both looked up with a wild, eager look in their faces, followed by blank disappointment. Then he sighed, and said, with a return of composure, “You will throw a few things into a bag, and we’ll go at once, Chatty. There is no time to lose.”

They went down to the house together, arm in arm, and I remained alone in the Lady’s Walk. My head was turning round. Was it the most superstitious folly? What was it? Common sense, which will come in at inconvenient moments and drive one into a corner, stalked forth and looked me, with cynical eyes, in the face. Well! were they mad, or idiots, or what was it? I stood still and listened till my sense of the incongruous and absurd was too much for me. The footsteps which I had once heard so clearly going along this way, and which had in my hearing turned and gone back, were no longer audible. The wind in the branches, the stir of a bird on the bough, the blackbirds singing clear and high in the shrubberies, even, as I have said, the lap of the water on the shore, were audible, but nothing else. I walked along to the end and back again. There was not a sound. Well, I said to myself, I suppose the sound that caused it must be stilled for some reason or other; and I laughed. But next moment I felt the skin creep upon me, a sort of cold shiver rising under the roots of my hair. I was too much, I suppose, under the influence of the family to regard it in a robust and sensible way. Certain it is, that however the science of acoustics might account for it, as a matter of fact those mysterious sounds had ceased and could be heard no more.

The next hour was to me so confused and incoherent that I could make nothing of it. I was left alone. Only a servant came to tell me that the carriage would be at the door at a certain time. Both Charlotte and her father had disappeared, and whether they were going with me, or meant to let me depart without further notice, I could not tell. When the carriage drove to the door, however, they both appeared. Mr. Campbell was carefully wrapped up, though the evening was not cold. He looked more feeble than I had supposed him to be, and older; there was a quiver and twitching about his face, and he tottered as he got with difficulty into the carriage. We drove to the station with scarcely a word. “Have you got the bags right, Chatty? Have you a rug for the journey? Are you sure you brought money enough?”

“Yes, father, yes,” Charlotte said. He was evidently altogether dependent upon her. She directed me with a look to give him my arm when we arrived at the railway station, and ran to and fro herself, taking the tickets and doing all that was needful.

“Let me do it,” I said; “I cannot bear to see you doing such work.”

“You are serving me much better as it is,” she said. And then came the long journey, swinging through the night with that great clang of movement and vibration of the separated air, which seems to deafen the mind as well as the body and crush down anxious thought. Mr. Campbell slept a little, with his fine white head relieved against the cushions, and then Charlotte came closer to me and talked. I asked her instructions humbly as to what I should do, and she begged me, with a certain terror in her face, to stay with them, to go with them to Colin’s lodgings. She talked a great deal to me in soft tones during the night, with a confidence and familiarity that touched me deeply. It seemed to help her to get through the dreary hours. She told me that it was when her mother died that the steps had been inaudible before. She did not use this phraseology. She said, “When the lady went away before.”

“Dear Miss Campbell,” I said, “you who are so reasonable, so full of sense and thought, what could those sounds have to do with matters so serious? It was a holiday, and the people were away from the farm. No doubt that was the cause. There was no echo from the other road, wherever it may be.”

She looked at me with a pitying air. “Do you really believe that?” she said. “And don’t you feel the world poor, poor,”—her voice suspended itself a moment on that little national peculiarity, the repetition which gives force—“when, instead of being a good guardian, a kind soul, it is only a vulgar echo, a thing that is nothing?” The water shone in her eyes when she lingered in the slight chant of her speech upon the good and kind , but dried up and they shone upon me with defiance when she scorned the vulgar, the material. Then she added, with a low voice touched with awe, “And who was it, Mr. Temple, that came to you, that gave you that warning?”

“I have asked myself the question, Miss Campbell.”

“Yes, and you have answered it too. Who else? It is that that makes my heart fail,” she said.

“If,” said I, “we find your brother, as I hope we shall, well and happy—”

Her countenance changed. “In that case—God grant it! oh, God grant it!—you may say what you please, Mr. Temple.” Then after a moment she said quickly, “What is that the French say about the unforeseen being always the thing that happens? In that case”—But she did not tell me what it was that she had foreseen.

To have Charlotte there, altogether a thing so far beyond hope, travelling with me, perhaps to owe something to me, and certainly without any doubt to find myself woven in with the web of her life, was so unexpected and so delightful that I could not perhaps be so deeply affected by their troubles as I might have been otherwise. If it was pain to them, it was good to me—I could not but feel the heart rise in my breast, notwithstanding the pathos there was in the old man’s feebleness, in the broken sleep into which he fell, and the unprotected openness of his slumbering countenance, all revealed in the pain, the anxiety, the irritation of his misery under the wavering lamp. And yet by moments the pity of it would touch me in spite of myself. An old man, a good man, whose life had been full of kindness done to others—I had seen that and heard of it on all sides. He had given every kind of aid to his dependants. At the “works,” to be an orphan was to be the child of the master; and all round him in the country his hand was ever ready—his heart, like his door, always open. And yet this man, who had done so much for others, this was his reward. His own first-born, the apple of his eye!—I did not know, in so many words, what they feared, but it was not disease or death—it was evil in some shape or other—vice, perhaps crime. God help us all! if justice had been the rule in this world, he must have been defended from every harm by the most spotless, the most devoted of children; his own good deeds would have been returned to him in gratitude and blessing; he would have been the happy man of the Psalms, unashamed in the gates. Alas! and now his grey hairs, his white head was bent low.

We reached London in the fresh early daylight, which made us look all the more fatigued and worn; and then they had a consultation what to do. The decision at last was to postpone for an hour or two the visit to Colin, that Mr. Campbell might get a little rest. I went with them to the hotel. Charlotte said nothing, but she gave me an imploring look, and her father’s weakness seemed to grow upon him every hour. He wanted my arm to go up-stairs. He looked for me, and called me to his side with a little querulous movement. Perhaps, by some confusion in his mind, he seemed to consider that he had somehow a right to my services. But, though he felt his weakness, he would not suffer Charlotte to go to her brother alone. “I am all right,” he said; “I am all right. It is because I have not slept. You young people who sleep, that makes all the difference.” He was in reality the only one of us who had slept at all. Breakfast was prepared for us in one of those bare rooms in the great new caravanserai for travellers which are so associated with fatigue and vacancy, with hurried, painful recollections, and melancholy meetings and partings. When I went into it, Charlotte was standing at the window. She called me hastily as soon as I came in. She seized my arm when I came up to her, and drew me close by the window. “Look was that she?” she cried wildly. “Look! look! or she will be gone.” She pointed to the street below, which was alive with a constant succession of passers-by. To make out one from another was difficult enough. They moved and recrossed in front of us, a stream of men and women, never ending. “Is that she?” I looked blankly, now here, now there. “No, no; not that way—to the left,” said Charlotte—“there—there!” I saw nothing but a stream of people following and crossing each other, all equally commonplace and unknown. I made her sit down, for she was trembling. “It is impossible,” I said, “to distinguish any individual in such a crowded street.”

“Oh, not so! not so! I saw her as plainly as I do you now. She was in the midst of a group which seemed to open and let her be seen. She was in a grey cloak and veil, exactly as you described her. She shook her head at me. I almost thought I could hear her speak.”

“It is your imagination that is excited. How could you see at that distance, much less hear?”

“I thought,” said Charlotte solemnly, “that she said, ‘Too late, too late!’ I know I could not hear. Do not find fault with me. I am very unhappy. There! there! you can see her now?”

Somebody in a cloak indeed disappeared in the crowd as I looked out, but who it was, how could I tell? Perhaps a work-woman going to her work, or careful manager out to make her market. I took Charlotte’s hand, which was trembling, and held it in mine. She was sobbing under her breath. “All this is too much for you,” I said. “Find fault with you? Oh that I could take this trouble on my own shoulders, whatever it is!”

She tried to smile as she looked up. “Perhaps,” she said, “it was imagination, as you say. What is imagination? Does it make any difference?” She was not aware how much meaning was in her words, but spoke as one bewildered, not knowing what was real and what unreal about her.

It was about eleven o’clock when they set out. I put Mr. Campbell into a cab, where he sat very square, with his staff between his knees, leaning upon it, and his face like that of a benignant old judge, wound up to make a painful decision. Charlotte took her place beside him. For my own part, I sprang into a hansom, and desired the man to follow. It seemed impossible to predict what might happen. I had begun to be superstitious and fanciful myself, and a dozen times over fancied that I saw a woman in a cloak following our course with wistful looks, or shaking her head, as Charlotte had seen her. Had she seen it, or only imagined it? And if the latter, I asked myself in her own words, What difference did it make?

IV

Colin’s lodgings proved to be in the last place to which I should have thought him likely to have gone—in one of the prim, respectable, old-fashioned streets about Bloomsbury. Probably he felt himself more out of the way of remark there than he would have been in regions more under public inspection, and where acquaintances might have found him more readily. I got out quickly to hand Mr. Campbell from the cab, and he held fast to my arm, apparently with a little confusion of mind. “Yes, I want your arm. I am—a little shaky this morning; don’t leave me, Charley!” he said. “Father, it is Mr. Temple,” said Charlotte. He looked up at me with dim eyes, and a half smile. “Ay, to be sure, it is Mr. Temple. Never mind, he will just come with me all the same.” He had been so determined before not to acknowledge to me any anxiety about Colin, that this sudden abandonment of all reticence struck me with strange surprise. I exchanged a glance with Charlotte over his shoulder. “Will you come, since he says so?” she said. I could not blame her for not wishing for my presence, but I felt by the weight of his hand upon my arm that I was necessary, and said nothing more.

There was evidently a little excitement in the house at the sight of the carriage and the party arriving. The door was opened by a young woman, too much dressed for a servant—the landlady’s daughter, no doubt—who came out with the distinct intention of admitting nobody. Yes, Mr. Campbell lived there, she acknowledged; but he was not very well—he was confined to his room. She believed he was still in bed; he had left orders that he could see nobody. “He will see us,” said Charlotte. “Will you let us pass at once, please, and show me my brother’s room.” The young woman gave a little scream. “Oh! I can’t let you go in,” she cried; “I daren’t. What would they all say to me?”

“What is all this?” said the old man, pushing forward; indeed, it was I whom he pushed forward, like an implement to clear the way. He made his way thus up the steps and in at the door, the girl retreating before him. This put me forward a little in advance of him into the first room that presented itself, an untidy parlour. Here he resigned my arm and sat down. “Go and tell Colin I am here,” he said to his daughter. “Oh! I tell you, Mr. Campbell can’t see you—he is ill in bed,” cried the girl, shutting the door upon us, and standing with her back to it, evidently too frightened to know what to do. The room was good-sized, though completely out of order, badly furnished and faded. It was connected by folding-doors, which were closed, with another room behind. Presently one of these opened and admitted another young woman, a little older than the first, and still more elaborately dressed, who came into the midst of us with sudden impetuosity, but closed carefully the door behind her. “I would like to know,” she said, “who it is that is making so much noise, with a sick person in the house. I am Mrs. Campbell, if you have anything to say to me.” She tossed her head with a determined air, confronting Miss Campbell as if this was her natural antagonist. Charlotte gave a low cry. She put herself in her turn before her father, as if to defend him from an encounter so unlooked for. But the old man caught her dress and thrust her out of the way. He rose up tremulous, feeling for my arm. “You are—what?” he said, putting up his hand to his ear.

“Old gentleman,” cried the young woman, “I don’t know who you are that push in like this to a strange house, nor that person there—that is your daughter, I suppose? If you’ve got any claim upon him, I’m here to answer for him; he’s a gentleman, and we were married at church as good as anybody. If she thinks she has any claim upon him, she’s just got to say it to me—”

“Chatty, will this be Colin’s wife?”

“It looks like it, father,” said Charlotte, with a sorrowful shake of her head. And then she said, “I am very thankful. It might have been worse. If there is no more harm than this, oh, father dear—many a good man has been mistaken. All may be well yet.”

“My God! Colin’s wife!” the old man cried, pushing me away from him and dropping back into his chair. He had raised his voice, and the words seemed to ring through the house. They were answered by a loud cry and groan mingled together from the other side of the closed door. Then it was pulled open forcibly, and, haggard, unshaven, half-dressed, Colin himself looked in. Never have I seen so tragic a figure. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, his beard half grown, the darkness of his countenance and straggling hair thrown up by the white shirt, crumpled and untidy, which covered his shoulders. He gave one terrible glance round, taking in everything; and I have never myself doubted that, not only the sudden appearance of his father and sister, and the old man’s look of death (which none of us perceived at the moment), but the contrast between Charlotte, standing there, and the woman, who immediately began to exclaim at his appearance, and to attempt to force him back again, struck to the very heart of the half-maddened man, and turned the scale at once. He gave one desperate look, pushing off with fury the hand of the wife, which she had laid upon his arm, and disappeared again. The next moment the sharp ring of a pistol shot, close at hand, rang into us all, as if we each had received the bullet. That, I know, was my own sensation. At the same moment there was a heavy fall in the room beyond, and a groan—the only one and the last.

It would be in vain for me to attempt to describe the scene that followed. The woman who had called herself Mrs. Campbell flung open the folding-doors and rushed into the room behind. He was lying in a heap half under a table which had been drawn up to the side of a sofa-bed. He had just risen, it was evident from the tumbled mass of coverings. A cup of tea and the remains of some food were on the table, placed where he could reach them from the bed. He had been at breakfast when this terrible interruption came. On one side of his plate lay a quantity of letters, some of which he had opened. An open case with one pistol in it was on the table. The other lay, with a curl of smoke still about the mouth, on the floor. I followed the woman, who flung herself down beside him on the floor, and made the house resound with her shrieks. I had no special knowledge of such matters, but I had a little experience, and had seen wounds and accidents. I was convinced at the first glance that the doctor, whom I immediately rushed out to seek, was unavailing. The shot had been mortal. But the living had to be cared for, if not the dead. By good fortune I found a doctor only a few doors off, who was still at home, attending to a number of poor patients who crowded about his door. He came with me instantly. I told him what had happened as exactly as I could while we ran from one house to the other. When I took him into the scene of the tragedy, I found the table cleared away, the room open, the morning air from the opened window playing upon the head, heavy as marble, which Charlotte, seated on the floor, was supporting upon her lap. But no one, not even the most inexperienced tyro, would have been deceived in that look. As far from the warm pursuits of the cheerful day as if he had been dead for a century was Colin, never to be called to account for his errors, or shrink from the eye of an angry father in this world any more.

His wife was standing by, crying and scolding together.

“Oh, what did you come here for to drive him wild?” she cried. “He was getting better. And what if he had lost money? there was plenty still. We’d have gone abroad, as he said. We’d have got on. It’s not so very much as him and me could have wanted. What did you come here for to madden him altogether? He said as I wasn’t to have nothing to do with you. Oh, Campbell! Campbell can’t you hear me crying? It’s only a faint. I know it’s only a faint. If you would go away and let him be quiet with me, he would come to himself.”

The doctor opened the shirt, on which there was scarcely any blood, though it was black with the smoke of the pistol, which seemed to have been placed against it. Charlotte, motionless as the form that leaned upon her, sat with her tearless eyes fixed upon him, following every movement. After a brief examination, the doctor laid his hand gently on her arm.

“If you will let me,” he said compassionately, “we will lift him on to the bed.” Then he added, still more gently, “You can do nothing more for him.”

He and I together, not without difficulty, did this last service. The woman behind broke out into tears and cries, and mingled questions and reproaches.

“It’s a faint he is in, doctor. Oh, bring him round, bring him round! What is the good of being a doctor if you cannot do that? It’s all their doing, coming so sudden, and he frightened to face them, they’re so hard and cruel. Oh, doctor, don’t you see he’s in a faint? Give him something; do something to bring him to!”

“Try to be quiet,” said the doctor, with some severity in his tone. He knew who she was, and thought of her, as was evident, only as the landlady’s daughter. “You might take example by this lady, who has far more to do with it. All the doctors in the world could not bring him to, poor fellow! Compose yourself, my good girl, and take the lady away.”

The young woman gave a great shriek. “Who are you calling girl?” she cried. “I’m his wife! his lawful wife! and he is only in a faint. Oh, Campbell! Campbell don’t you hear me? Oh, doctor, for God’s sake, bring him to!”

Poor creature! beyond her passion and her pride there was some real feeling too. She flung herself at the foot of the bed in a passion of weeping, with loud hysterical shrieks that rang through the house. This brought to her her mother and sister, who, awed by Charlotte’s presence, and by the horror of the catastrophe, had been left in the background, but who now rushed in, and, one at either side, began to pour forth mingled wails for the dead and entreaties to the living.

“Take the lady away,” the doctor said, turning to me. Charlotte had not moved. She stood at the end of the bed, with a face like marble, not noticing the noise and tumult near her. She might have been all alone with her dead—so still was she; her eyes fixed upon him, the handkerchief in her hand with which she had been bathing his dead forehead. The blow seemed to have struck her to marble. Sometimes her mouth quivered a little, but she did not shed a tear nor utter a word. I took her hand to lead her away, and then she turned a little toward me with a pitiful look.

“We were too late,” she said.

“Come away; there is nothing you can do now. Oh, let me take you away; there are others who need you!”

“Nothing I can do,” she said dreamily; “nothing any one can do. Too late! too late!” But she did not move. She was in a region where sounds from without did not reach her. Perhaps, for the moment, it was not even pain she felt, but a wondering awe and solemnity which silenced every thought.

“Charlotte,” I cried, being too much moved myself to remember any kind of rule, “where is your father? You have forgotten him! Where has he gone? Your father?” I was alarmed, indeed, at his absence from among the group about poor Colin’s bed.

“Ah!” she said, rousing herself with a sigh, that seemed to come from the very bottom of her heart. “My father!” and turned away slowly from the couch and him that lay upon it. The folding-doors were half open, and showed at first only a portion of the chair on which Mr. Campbell had placed himself, and from which it seemed he had never moved. One limp arm and colourless hand hung from the arm of it. His head, sunk upon his breast, was but half visible. For the moment I had no thought but that he had died there, where he sat, and the sight of him added the last horror to the scene. Both dead, father and son, and by one blow!

Charlotte was at his side in a second, while I had done no more than start in my horror. She had loosened the wrappings about his throat, and changed the position of his head, before I could get to her. She was all thought, all energy; she who a moment before had been smitten, too, into marble! Happily, the doctor, who was still there, went to him at once; and we got him laid upon the shabby sofa in this room, which corresponded to the bed in the other on which his son lay. It was a slight paralytic seizure, the doctor said; a fit out of which he would recover probably soon. The situation altogether was so pitiful that even this stranger was moved. He took me aside, and asked where they were living, and what were the circumstances; and when I explained that they had arrived only this morning, offered to have rooms prepared in his own house, and to take them there until Mr. Campbell should have recovered. I was thankful to accept this proposal in place of anything better, finding myself in the strange position of head of this sad party, and responsible for everything; for Charlotte was entirely occupied with her father, and I could not bear that she should be disturbed by the miserable details which had now to be thought of. I had to leave her to attend to all these, but hurried back as soon as I was able to share her vigil. And I have seldom known anything so terrible as the long watch by that speechless old man; the creeping on of the endless daylight hours, the coming of the evening. She took my presence without remark, and referred to me as if I had been a brother without a word. This gave me a personal pleasure, of which I was half ashamed, at so dreadful a moment; but otherwise the day passed like a dream.

In the evening there was a stir of returning consciousness. He opened his eyes, and seemed to recognise his daughter by his side, and attempted to raise his arm, which was powerless. The inability to do this troubled him, and, perhaps, helped to rouse him. At first his speech was only a confused babble, principally of complaint and annoyance at being kept there. He seemed to think he was bound to his couch, and got very angry in his inarticulate commands to her to loose him. But, by and by, his mind took a milder mood, and his power of speech gradually came back.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” he said, “I’ve maybe been—light-headed. Where is the doctor? Maxwell, where are ye?” and he tried to turn his head to look round. Maxwell was the name of their doctor at home. Charlotte stood almost over him, in her anxiety to prevent him from seeing anything that could bring the scene of the morning to his mind; and by this time it was dark, and two wretched, flickering candles made the room difficult to decipher. He remembered something, however, of what had passed. A flicker of a smile passed over his face.

“But, Chatty, ye’ve—ye’ve found Colin?” he stammered.

“Yes, father.”

“That’s well—that’s well! What’s all that noise and shouting? It’ll be the lads bringing him home.”

I turned away, feeling that I could not bear it, almost afraid, excited and fatigued as I was, of making some hysterical outburst. But she could. She stood perfectly still, with her back to the light, shutting out from him as with wings all those local particulars which might have survived his recollection. She told him, with a voice that never faltered, how he must submit to be carried to bed. And, as a matter of fact, he submitted like a child, and was soon feebly interested by his removal, and refreshed by the soft air of the night that blew in his face, as we placed him in the litter to carry him away. Fortunately, the way was very short, and though there was some difficulty in getting through the crowd which had been gathered around the door for some hours, drawn together by rumours of the tragedy within, we managed it without disturbing him much. I saw him give a tremulous glance about him, and stooped down to hear what he was saying, but all that I could make out was a murmur about “A queer place London, a queer place.” He had, it seemed, forgotten everything except a faint, confused idea of Colin, and that he was found and being brought home.

He fell asleep very soon after he had been settled in bed, in a comfortable room, where there was already a nurse in attendance. Then Charlotte came out to me and held out her hands. “You are tired to death,” she said; “you ought to rest; but I must go back to him.”

“Not to-night, not to-night. All this is enough to kill you. I have seen to everything.”

“That I am sure of,” she said, with a faint, tender smile; “and I’ll not even say that I am thankful. But will you take me back? I will ask no more.”

We went back , as she said, to the room where Colin was lying. Decency and calm had been restored to the chamber of death; the sound of hysterical crying was heard occasionally from above, increasing I thought (but I might be wrong) when it was known who was below. But below all was silent and still; a miserable candle burning, the only watch over the dead. I held up this poor light to show his face, as he lay there in all the vigour of early manhood, a frame that seemed made to resist all the storms of life. He lay as if he had been asleep, perfectly tranquil, as if shame or sorrow had never come near him. She stood silent a long time, not saying a word or shedding a tear. He had been her special companion in all their earlier days—a year younger than she, no more. I comprehended that the pang of this separation was not one to be evaporated in easy tears. I myself, who had so little to do with him, it seemed to me that every hour in which I had seen him, and every word I had ever heard him speak, came back to me in the tragic silence and gloom, only broken by the faint light which flickered in the air from the open window. A young man in the blossom of his days, with everything before him; a rich man’s son, heir of all that money could buy or household love bestow—yet all concluded like this. In squalor and wretchedness, in the company of a woman not worthy to serve his sister as her maid, but made into his wife—in a horror of discovery so deep, that to escape his father’s eye he rushed into God’s presence with his own blood on his hands: out of the calm of existence, everyday and ordinary, what a leap into the mysterious abysses of life and death!

When Charlotte sank down on her knees beside the bed, I could endure it no longer, but, setting down the light, stole away into the adjoining room, the scene of the other chapter of this tragedy, and sat down there in the dark to wait for her, my head throbbing, my whole being confused and shaken. Even at such a moment other thoughts will intrude. It may be imagined that I should have felt, after so wonderful a drawing together of the bonds of intimacy, that there were no hopes I might not entertain. But this was far, far from being the case. Had I ever ventured to imagine that she could detach herself from all the hands that clung to her, and come into my life and become a portion of me? If so, I saw now the utter madness of the thought. I stood at the window looking out upon the lamps, and the glimmer of reflection upon the pavement, which was wet with repeated showers. A few people still hung about the outskirts of a house in which a man had killed himself. The curiosity which waits upon death, especially upon violent death, gaped at the door, as if something of that mystery would be disclosed when it opened. For my part, I felt as if there was no novelty in any incident, but that this, and only this, could have happened from the beginning of time.

When we left the house of death, Charlotte clung to me with a nervous trembling which was the first sign of exhaustion she had shown. Even in her, the claims of human weakness had to be acknowledged; her firm step wavered as she descended the steps, and she was glad to have my arm for support. But the peace of that scene after the tumult of the morning had produced its effect upon her. She began to talk to me of Colin. “He was my brother,” she said. “Don’t you know a large family falls into pairs? Charley’s sister died too, and since then he has been more with me; but it was always Colin and Chatty, Chatty and Colin.”

“He and you will comfort each other,” I said. “Charley is so good a fellow.”

“Ah!” she said, “he is good, and Colin was always a trouble—but he is not Colin. Mr. Temple, if our boy had died by God’s hand and not his own”—She paused a little and trembled, and her voice died away in her throat. “I could almost have been glad,” she added afterwards, with a sudden energy. “He and his life were never at harmony.” I felt her whole frame quiver with the long sigh of a sorrow that was past tears.

“Then it was not only this marriage?”

“Oh, can you think so little of us?” she cried. “We would have made the best of it. Me, there is nothing, nothing I would not have done. Colin’s wife, she would have been sacred. And so long as she loved him”—then she made a pause. “You will hear afterwards,” she said; “I know our name, our honour was in question. Oh, when you hear, do not judge him, Mr. Temple. If he did wrong, he paid for it—always twice over, in misery and pain—and now he is in God’s hand.”

We went on in silence after this. We walked very slowly, for she was worn out, and I should have been glad had every yard been a mile; for it seemed to me that never again would Charlotte be so much mine.

V

Charley, for whom I had telegraphed, came next day, very anxious and miserable, with a horror of the shame and exposure which struck me in the strangest way. To be sure it was not my name which was thus held up to everybody’s observation, as connected with such a catastrophe; but the catastrophe itself was so pitiful, that I scarcely could understand this special aspect in which he viewed it. He shrank even from going about the necessary business, and drew back from everybody that might by possibility recognise him. The first thing he had seen coming into London was the report in the morning paper of the inquest; and the horror of this, and the certainty that it would circulate everywhere, and make all possibility of concealment impossible, was almost more than he could bear. It was from him that I heard the whole state of the case. Colin’s expenditure had been for some years back the trouble and terror of the family, and it appeared that he had plunged into speculation by way of mending this. The letters that were found half read upon his table showed of themselves how the coils of fate were closing around him. It was evident from Charley’s half revelations that the case was clearly desperate for the offender, and not much less so for the family, whose name had been made use of on all hands. This came upon the young man not all in a moment, but by degrees, as Colin’s letters, and various business representations from one side and another, came flowing in. On the eve of the funeral he came to me with the paleness of despair in his face. “What am I to do?” he cried. “My father is not able to pay any attention—they tell me any new shock might kill him.” “Is it so very bad?” I said. “Bad? we’re ruined; that is all,” cried Charley. He was, as I found out afterwards, a very good man of business; but he had never had occasion to take the responsibility on his shoulders, and now, suddenly left alone, suddenly brought face to face with unexampled calamity, his self-command forsook him for the moment. Little by little he opened out to me the state of affairs. The “works” were so profitable and the business so good, that eventually everything might come right; but in the meantime he was paralysed, and did not know what to do. Mr. Campbell was in a sort of tranquil, half-childish state, not suffering much, and quite unconscious of what had happened. To consult him was impossible, and Tom and Jack were but boys, who knew little as yet of the ramifications of the business, or anything beyond the department of which they had charge. “Have you said anything to your sister?” I asked; and then poor Charley broke down. “How can I speak to Chatty?” he said; “he was always her brother. I cannot bide to break her heart. It is bad enough as it is—Colin gone, and all this misery—and my father knowing nothing. If she finds out all he’s brought upon us, what will she do?”

“Do you think she does not know?” I said. “It was not for nothing that your brother took such dreadful means of escape. You may be sure she suspects the worst, even if she does not know.”

“If I could think that!” he said. It gave him a little composure. The mere idea that there was some one to whom he could speak freely was a support. Even to talk it over with me was something. We had been to the house of death to see that all was ready for next day’s melancholy business, and the sight of Mrs. Colin done up in new crape, with the white streamers of a coquettish widow’s cap setting off her commonplace comeliness, had been almost more than either of us could bear. For my part, everything seemed more mysterious to me in the light of this wife. Had Colin squandered the family substance in luxurious chambers, at the feet of one of those beautiful harpies who are never satisfied with luxury, it would have been more comprehensible. But the lodgings in Bloomsbury and the landlady’s daughter seemed to throw an air of burlesque upon the tragedy. The accessories ought to have been bad and vicious, not respectable and commonplace. But it seems there are many ways of courting ruin; and there must have been other unknown chapters in his life before he came to this. Perhaps, indeed, the hasty marriage, the retirement into this shabby retreat, were of themselves efforts to get back into a better way. I walked along with Charley to the house of the doctor, in which his father and sister still were, meaning to leave him there; but he clutched at my arm. “You’ve been through it all,” he said, in a broken voice. Charlotte came down to us in the dining-room of the doctor’s house, the one corresponding to that in which the first chapter of our tragedy had been enacted. She was very pale, yet greeted us with a smile. Her father was always the same—quite comfortable, suspecting nothing, now and then asking if Colin had gone home. “‘The best place for him, Chatty, the best place for him,’ he says to me,” she said, the tears springing to her eyes, “and we must let him think so, the doctor says. He says, ‘You must do the London business, Charley. We must keep it up as long as we can.’”

“If there is any business to do—or if anybody will ever trust us more,” Charley said.

She had been pale enough before, but she seemed to me to grow paler, almost ghastly. “Trust us!” she said, in a faint voice. “Is it so bad as that—have we broken trust?”

“Chatty, I don’t know how you’ll bear it. We are ruined, I think,” the young man cried.

She waved her hand as if this was nothing. “What do you mean about trust?” she asked. “Is there anything that we cannot fulfil?”

“I don’t know how the ‘works’ are to go on. I don’t know how we are to live. We are pledged and bound on every side, and I am not clever, like my father. We will have to sacrifice everything.”

Chatty drew a long breath. “Then let us sacrifice everything, Charley. That is what my father would do. There need be no hesitation about that; but no, not the ‘works’—we must keep the ‘works.’ Cannot you think of anything that will keep them going for the children’s sake?” she cried. “And then think of all the poor men thrown out of work in the middle of winter!”

“We must think of ourselves, Chatty,” her brother said, with a certain indignation.

“I do. They would recover in time. They are your life,” she said. “Save them, if it is possible. Don’t give away our life into other hands.”

“Then,” said Charley, drawing a long breath—he propped himself up against the mantelshelf with a sort of despairing action—“then,” he said, “there is but one thing else for it, Chatty. We must sell Ellermore.”

She stood and gazed at him for a moment with dilating eyes; then she suddenly sat down on the nearest chair. She wanted support of a mechanical kind, as he did. No doubt a vision of her home and all its pleasantness—the place where they had all been born, the centre of their family pride and importance and all their traditions—flashed across her. For a few minutes she made no reply. Then she made an effort to command her voice. “Well,” she said faintly, “well, then, we must make up our minds to it. We must sell Ellermore.”

“Chatty,” cried the young man, with the tears in his eyes, “how good it is to have you to talk to! Is that what you say? Keep the ‘works’ and sell Ellermore? It will bring a fancy price, you know. It’s not just like so many acres. Some Englishman—”

“Oh, Charley, don’t torture me!” she cried, in a voice of anguish; then faintly, “The ‘works’ are your life. And there are so many of us—still. We must think of the boys and the little ones—next after our honour and my father’s name.”

“That was what I thought,” said Charley, “but I was afraid to say it. I thought you would cry out, Ellermore Ellermore! and let the ‘works’ take care of themselves.”

She looked up at him with a faint smile. “I never knew you took me for a fool before. I suppose it is because I am a woman.”

“Chatty, don’t say that!” cried the young man loudly. Such a suggestion begins to rouse the wrath of young men. He almost forgot the gravity of the position in his annoyance.

She went on musingly: “Ellermore means happiness, but the ‘works’ mean life. Life we must have, till—till it is taken away,” she added, with a shiver; “but happiness! oh yes, it will come back. I am not so young or so ignorant as not to know that it will come back, and for all the young ones, soon, soon! There will be you and me will think a little longer, Charley, and me longest of all, but not for ever. But at present we are not happy. We will escape something—the pitying, and the sympathy, and the inquiries—at least we shall escape all that. I am sure my father would think so. But how we are to tell him I don’t know,” she cried again. “He is quite cheerful; he is like a child; but if we take him home, and it is not Ellermore, he will know.”

They had both dried their tears as they contemplated this difficulty, which neither knew how to deal with. I had been naturally left outside of this discussion; but to hear them thus debating, consulting each other, arguing on the main thing to be done, was more than I could bear. I could not but remember the happy house, with all its advantages and homely wealth—the boats on the loch, the grouse on the hills, the luxury and abundance. That door had never been shut upon the stranger or the poor. And they were so entirely to the manner born, seated in their old house among their native hills, it seemed impossible to conceive of them in another place in other circumstances. This made it all the more wonderful to perceive that neither of them hesitated a moment. The thought of how to tell their father, how to keep him in his present state of cheerful unconsciousness, moved them indeed with a pang of bewilderment; but no irresolution, no clinging to what they liked best, no outcry against the cruel fate which deprived them of their home, was in the thoughts of either. There may be people to whom this choice would seem want of feeling. To me the quiet heroism was far more touching than any heroics. I knew the wrench it would be, and I respected them all the more that neither of them made anything of this, or even paused over it, as if the sacrifice were too much. I went home, leaving them together, with a pang in my heart of powerlessness to help them. I wonder whether the very rich are ever worked upon by those burning desires to help, to step forth and act as the providence of the suffering, which so often flame up in the bosoms of the comparatively poor. I had enough for my own wants, and desired riches little, but when I thought of stepping in to their aid, of becoming their surety and helper, my heart burned within me. I thought almost hungrily of an inheritance which was coming to me, which up to this moment I had been very well content to wait for. I wonder, I repeat, if such longings never come to the very rich who could indulge them with ease and without any personal struggle. Perhaps not; or one would hear something of it. As it is, the Quixotes of private life are seldom millionaires. I could do nothing; and perhaps it was for this reason that I desired with such painful yearning what was thus absolutely out of my power.

I have to admit, amid all these most serious thoughts, a curious delusion, as I suppose I must call it, which accompanied me wherever I went. It seemed to me that I constantly met the same figure which had encountered me in the grounds at Ellermore and warned me of Colin’s danger. I took myself to task about it in every way, trying to find out some unsteadiness of nerve, some functional derangement, which could account for it. But I was quite well—my mind was far too much occupied and excited to leave me any time to consider the body, which went along swiftly and easily, occupied with everything rather than itself. These, I think, are the conditions of perfect health; and I was as well as ever I had been in my life. Yet constantly I was conscious of meeting about the streets this veiled and shadowy woman. She would come towards me, so that we encountered each other, face to face, or she would go softly past me, brushing me with her dress, making all my pulses beat wildly. This occurred chiefly in the neighbourhood in which the tragedy had happened; but there were other places far enough from that in which the same strange apparition was visible. Sometimes I could perceive in her that familiar custom, the wringing of the hands, which reminded me of Charlotte. Sometimes I seemed almost to penetrate the obscurity of the veil, and recognise a face not unlike Charlotte’s. I got used to this imagination. I persuaded myself that it was nothing but an impression on my brain, which I could not get rid of, but which was altogether illusory. Though why my heart should leap up in me, and all my pulses throb, because of a thing which was nothing, I could not understand. The last time I thought I saw her was by the grave in which, with a silent misery beyond words, we laid poor Colin. Charley and I alone accompanied him to that last resting-place. Our friend the doctor had managed, I cannot tell how, to keep the wife and her family from attending, as they had all intended to do, in full panoply of woe. He told them, I don’t know what—that it was a thing ladies of social importance never did, a point upon which Mrs. Colin was very susceptible—or some other argument of this description. Anyhow, he succeeded in keeping any such vulgarising element away from the simple ceremonial of the funeral. We followed him alone, Charley and I. Charlotte did not dare to leave her father for so long a time without explanation, and Charley shrank with a painful susceptibility from the sight of everybody he knew. Without any of that mocking garniture of flowers which has become a matter of fashion and vanity, without any indifferent retinue, we two stood by the grave, the young brother with a heart-breaking control of grief, and I with all the reverence of a pity scarcely less heart-rending. When I lifted my eyes from the “deep-delved” bed of utter silence and quiet, I thought I saw her standing by the edge of it, wringing her hands. The sound of a stifled sob from Charley called my attention away for a moment, and when I looked again she was gone. The face—the gesture was like Charlotte. It is impossible for me to describe the mingled tenderness and terror with which I perceived this—as if it might have been Charlotte herself in the spirit who had come forth in sheer longing to her brother’s grave.

“Did you see that lady?” I asked Charley, as we went home.

“What lady?” he said fretfully. He was irritable with grief, and misery, and shame; for he had never been able to get over this accessory of the terrible family misfortune, and his mind, poor fellow, was distracted with thinking what to do, and how to manage the complicated business which had come into his hands. Then he begged my pardon piteously. “I don’t know what I’m doing. To think yon was Colin, and that’s all over with him—him that had more head than us all put together; and if he had only held his hand might have put all right. I would have set my strength to his,” cried the young fellow, unable to restrain himself, “shoulder to shoulder; and we would have redeemed everything.” Then, after a pause, during which he turned away his head to dash off the hot, quick gathering tears, “Did you say there was a lady? I took no notice. It would be his wife.”

I did not say anything more; but I knew very well it was not Colin’s wife. Who was it? or was it nothing more than a delusion, the offspring of my own overwrought and excited brain?

In a few days after I went to the railway with them to see them go away. Mr. Campbell had never mended more than he did the first night. His hand and one side were almost without power, and his mind had fallen into a state which it would be cruel to call imbecility. It was more like the mind of a child recovering from an illness, pleased with, and exacting constant attention. Now and then he would ask questions innumerable. What had become of Colin, if he was ill, if he had gone home? “The best place for him, the best place for him, Chatty,” he would repeat; “and if you got him persuaded to marry, that would be fine.” All this Charlotte had to bear with a placid face, with gentle agreement; and now that Charley was here, I had passed altogether from his mind. When he saw me he made me little apologies about not being in a state to receive strangers. “You see, I am recovering from a severe illness,” he would say. “Tell Mr. Temple, Chatty, how ill I have been.” He was in this condition when I took leave of him in the invalid carriage they had secured for the journey. They had all the habits of luxury, and never hesitated, as people accustomed to the daily sacrifices of poverty would have done, at this expense. He told me that he was glad to go home; that he would have left London some time before but for Chatty, who “wanted to see a little of the place.” “I am going to join my son Colin, who has gone home before us—isn’t that so, Chatty?” “Yes, father,” she said. “Yes, yes; I have grown rather doited, and very, very silly ,” [@@@] the old man said, in a tone of extraordinary pathos. “I am sometimes not sure of what I am saying; but Chatty keeps me right. Colin has gone on before; he has a grand head for business; he will soon set everything right—connected,” he added, with a curious sense which seemed to have outlived his other powers, that explanation of Colin’s actions was necessary—“connected with my retirement. I am past business; but we’ll still hope to see you at Ellermore.”

[@@@] Used in Scotland in the sense of weakness of body—invalidism.]

At Ellermore! Charlotte raised her eyes to mine with a look of anguish, of self-control, and steadfast patience, which was almost sublime. While he spoke thus her hands sought and clasped each other with the same movement I had noted in another. In another—in whom?

VI

Then there ensued a period of total stillness in my life. It seemed to me as if all interest had gone out of it. I resumed my old occupations, such as they were, and they were not very engrossing. I had enough, which is perhaps of all conditions of life, if the most comfortable, the least interesting. If it was a disciple of Solomon who desired that state, it must have been when he was like his master, blasé, and had discovered that both ambition and pleasure were vanity. There was little place or necessity for me in the world. I pleased myself, as people say. When I was tired of my solitary chambers, I went and paid visits. When I was tired of England, I went abroad. Nothing could be more agreeable, or more unutterably tedious, especially to one who had even accidentally come across and touched upon a real and bustling life. Needless to say that I thought of the household at Ellermore almost without intermission. Charlotte wrote to me now and then, and it sometimes seemed to me that I was the most callous wretch on earth, sitting there watching all they were doing, tracing every step and vicissitude of their trouble in my own assured well-being. It was monstrous, yet what could I do? They would not have accepted the help of my small sufficiency. But if, as I have said, such impatient desire to help were to come now and then to those who have the power to do so, is political economy so infallible that the world would not be the better for it? There was not a word of complaint in Charlotte’s letters, but they made me rage over my impotence. She told me that all the arrangements were being completed for the sale of Ellermore, but that her father’s condition was still such that they did not know how to communicate to him the impending change. “He is still ignorant of all that has passed,” Charlotte wrote, “and asks me the most heart-rending questions; and I hope God will forgive me all that I am obliged to say to him. We are afraid to let him see any one lest he should discover the truth; for indeed falsehood, even with a good meaning, is always its own punishment. Dr. Maxwell, who does not mind what he says when he thinks it is for his patient’s good, is going to make believe to send him away for change of air; and this is the artifice we will have to keep up all the rest of his life to account for not going back to Ellermore.” She wrote another time that there was every hope of being able to dispose of it by private bargain, and that in the meantime friends had been very kind, and the “works” were going on. There was not a word in the letter by which it could have been divined that to leave Ellermore was to the writer anything beyond a matter of necessity. She said not a word about her birthplace, the home of all her associations, the spot which I knew was so dear. There had been no hesitation, and there was no repining. Provided only that the poor old man, the stricken father, deprived at once of his home and first-born, without knowing either, might be kept in that delusion—this was all the exemption Charlotte sought.

And I do not think they asked me to go to them before they left the place. It was my own doing. I could not keep away any longer. I said to Charlotte, and perhaps also to myself, by way of excuse, that I might help to take care of Mr. Campbell during the removal. The fact was that I could not stay away from her any longer. I could have risked any intrusion, thrust myself in anyhow, for the mere sake of being near her and helping her in the most insignificant way.

From the time of their leaving London, the appearance I had seen so often had disappeared. I need not say that I thought upon it often enough to have raised up—had it been dependent upon my thoughts—appearances in any number; but this one never came again. I tried in my own mind every way to account for it. That it was a mere delusion of my excited eyes and brain I could not believe, for I had been aware of no excitement or reason for it when I first saw her in the shrubbery at Ellermore; and if imagination was enough to produce such an image, how much more reason was there now that it should have come back to me! And then I thought, which gave me a certain pleasure, of a possibility which had occurred to me, that Charlotte’s anxious heart and thoughts had somehow assumed a shadowy form, a sort of veil of substance, and that it was she herself unawares who had haunted me. If our deepest thoughts could thus take form, how often, when we ourselves were elsewhere, might a visionary-shadow of us be about those we love? It would be little wonder, I said to myself, if Charlotte were to see me, under the trees or by the loch side at Ellermore. Often and often, seated in my rooms, I had been there in the spirit following her, remembering what she would probably be doing at that moment, flitting after her from room to room. This was a solution of the mystery that was very sweet to me. I said to myself, it might very well be that only to one entirely in sympathy with the spirit thus gone out of itself in passionate yearning could it be visible in its love-pilgrimage. Therefore I felt, with a subdued humility, that it was very unlikely she would see any adumbration of my longing and lingering about her; but that I should see her was very natural. And this explained so entirely why I saw nothing now. It was not me she had been thinking of, but of Colin, both living and dead—all the dreadful tragedy of his soon-ended story. If she had ever admitted me to any such place in her thoughts, no doubt I should have seen her now.

I do not give this as a theory by which such apparitions might be accounted for, I only state it as one of the many thinkings on the subject which filled my mind, and the one which gave me most pleasure. I thought that nobody save Charlotte herself—not even a visitor out of the unseen—could have so made my heart beat; but it was all fanciful, founded upon nothing, a supposition among so many other suppositions. It was nearly Christmas when the insistence of myself with myself that I could stay away no longer came to a crisis. They were to leave Ellermore in a week or two. Mr. Campbell had been persuaded that one of the soft and sheltered spots where Scotch invalids are sent in Scotland would be better for him. Charlotte had written to me, with a half despair, of the difficulties of their removal.

“My heart almost fails me,” she said; and that was a great deal for her to say. After this I could hesitate no longer. She was afraid even of the revival of life that might take place when her father was brought out of his seclusion, of some injudicious old friend who could not be staved off, and who might talk to him about Colin. “My heart almost fails me.” I went up to Scotland by the mail train that night, and next day, while it was still not much more than noon, found myself at Ellermore.

What a change! The heather had all died away from the hills; the sun-bright loch was steely blue; the white threads of water down every crevice in the mountains were swollen to torrents. Here and there on the higher peaks there was a sprinkling of snow. The fir trees were the only substantial things in the nearer landscape. The bushes stood about all bare and feathery, with every twig distinct against the blue. The sun was shining almost as brightly as in summer, and scattered a shimmer of reflections everywhere over the wet grass, and across the rivulets that were running in every little hollow. The house stood out among all this light, amid the bare tracery of the trees, with its Scotch-French tourelles , and the sweep of emerald lawn, more green than ever at its feet, with all the naked flower-beds; the blue smoke rising peacefully into the air, the door open as always. There was little stir or movement, however, in this wintry scene. The outdoor life was checked. There was no son at home to leave traces of his presence. The lodge was shut up and vacant. I concluded that the carriage had been given up, and all luxuries, and the coachman and his family were gone. But this was all the visible difference. I was received by one of the maids, with whose face I was familiar. There had never been any wealth of male attendants at Ellermore, and this did not strike me as unusual. She took me into the drawing-room, which was deserted, and bore a more formal look than of old. “Miss Charlotte is mostly with her papa,” the woman said. “He is very frail, but just wonderful contented, like a bairn. She’s always up the stair with the old gentleman. It’s no’ good for her. You’ll find her white, white, sir, and no’ like hersel’.”

In a few minutes Charlotte came in. There was a gleam of pleasure (I hoped) on her face, but she was white, white, as the woman said; worn and pale. After the first greeting, which had brightened her, she broke down a little, and shed a few hasty tears, for which she excused herself, faltering that everything came back, but that she was glad, glad to see me! And then she added quickly, that I might not be wounded, “It has come to that, that I can scarcely ever leave my father; and to keep up the deception is terrible.”

“You must not say deception.”

“Oh, it is nothing else; and that always punishes itself. It is just the terror of my life that some accident will happen; that he will find out everything at once.” Then she looked at me steadily, with a smile that was piteous to see, “Mr. Temple, Ellermore is sold.”

“Is it so—is it so?” I said, with a sort of groan. I had still thought that perhaps at the last moment something might occur to prevent the sacrifice.

She shook her head, not answering my words, but the expression of my face. “There was nothing else to be desired,” she said; and, after a pause, “We are to take him to the Bridge of Allan. He is almost pleased to go; he thinks of nothing further—oh, poor old man, poor old man! If only I had him there safe; but I am more terrified for the journey than I ever was for anything in my life.”

We talked of this for some time, and of all the arrangements she had made. Charley was to come to assist in removing his father; but I think that my presence somehow seemed to her an additional safeguard, of which she was glad. She did not stay more than half an hour with me. “It will be dull, dull for you, Mr. Temple,” she said, with more of the lingering cadence of her national accent than I had perceived before—or perhaps it struck me more after these months of absence. “There is nobody at home but the little ones, and they have grown far too wise for their age, because of the many things that they know must never be told to papa; but you know the place, and you will want to rest a little.” She put out her hand to me again. “And I am glad, glad to see you.” Nothing in my life ever made my heart swell like those simple words. That she should be “glad, glad” was payment enough for anything I could do. But in the meantime there was nothing that I could do. I wandered about the silent place till I was tired, recalling a hundred pleasant recollections. Even to me, a stranger, who a year ago had never seen Ellermore, it was hard to give it up; and as for those who had been born there, and their fathers before them, it seemed too much for the cruellest fate to ask. But nature was as indifferent to the passing away of the human inhabitants, whose little spell of a few hundred years was as nothing in her long history, as she would have been to the falling of a rock on the hillside, or the wrenching up of a tree in the woods. For that matter, of so small account are men, the rock and tree would both have been older dwellers than the Campbells; and why for that should the sun moderate his shining, or the clear skies veil themselves? Afterwards I went in and wandered about the house, which was so silent. A subdued sound indeed came from the children’s rooms, and when I knocked at the door I was received with a tumult of delight; but next moment little Mary lifted her small finger and said, “Oh, Harry! oh, Katie! how can you make a noise and disturb papa!” The old man in his chamber dominated the whole house; the absolute quiet of it and desertion (when the children went out for their afternoon walk) had an indescribable effect upon my mind. It was as if the chamber, still and clean, all garnished and decked as for daily living, yet empty of all visible life, was full of beings unseen, for whom and for whose pleasure they existed. A kind of awe stole over me when I sat down in one of these rooms. I felt myself out of place there—as if all the solemn visitors in their old house must resent the presence of a stranger. Yes, I was a stranger; even Charlotte herself had called me so, though no one had been so near to her, or had so much to do with her life in the last crisis. It gave me a sort of bitter pleasure to think this, even though I might be disowned by those others, as having nothing to do with the house.

My mind was so taken up by these thoughts that it was almost inadvertence that took me, in the course of my solitary rambles about, to the Lady’s Walk. I had nearly got within the line of the birch trees, however, when I was brought hurriedly back to the strange circumstances which had formed an accompaniment to their family history. It gave me a shock and start to hear once more the footsteps of the guardian of Ellermore. She had come back, then! After that first thrill of instinctive emotion this gave me a singular pleasure. I stood between the trees and heard the soft step coming and going with absolute satisfaction. It seemed to me that they were not altogether abandoned so long as she was here. My heart rose in spite of myself. I began to speculate on the possibility even yet of saving the old house. I asked myself how it could be finally disposed of without Mr. Campbell’s consent and signature; and tried to believe that at the last moment some way might open, some wonderful windfall come. But when I turned back to the house, this fantastic confidence naturally failed me. I began to contemplate the other side of the question—the new people who would come in. Perhaps “some Englishman,” as Charley had said with a certain scorn; some rich man, who would buy the moors and lochs at many times their actual value, and bring down, perhaps, a horde of Cockney sportsmen to banish all quiet and poetry from Ellermore. I thought with mingled pity and anger of what the Lady would do in such hands. Would she still haunt her favourite walk when all whom she loved were gone? Would she stay there in forlorn faithfulness to the soil, or would she go with her banished race? Or would she depart altogether, and cut the tie that had bound her to earth? I thought—for fancy once set out goes far without any conscious control from the mind—that it might be possible that the intruders into the home of the Campbells should be frightened by noises and apparitions, and all those vulgarer powers of the unseen of which we hear sometimes. If the Lady of Ellermore would condescend to use such instruments, no doubt she might find lower and less elevated spirits in the unseen to whom this kind of play would be congenial. I caught myself up sharply in this wandering of thought, as if I were forming ideas derogatory to a dear friend, and felt myself redden with shame. She connect her lovely being with tricks of this kind! I was angry with myself, as if I had allowed it to be suggested that Charlotte would do so. My heart grew full as I pursued these thoughts. Was it possible that some mysterious bond of a kind beyond our knowledge connected her with this beloved soil? I was over-awed by the thought of what she might suffer, going upon her solitary watch, to see the house filled with an alien family; yet, perhaps, by and by, taking them into amity, watching over them as she had done over her own, in that sweetness of self-forgetfulness and tender love of humankind which is the atmosphere of the blessed. All through this spiritual being was to me a beatified shadow of Charlotte. I felt that this was what she might be capable of doing, if it were possible that those whom she loved most were no longer dependent upon her care.

You will say all this was very fantastic, and I do not deny that the sentence is just.

Next day passed in something the same way. Charlotte was very anxious. She had wished the removal to take place that afternoon, but when the moment came she was afraid. She said “To-morrow,” with a shiver. “I don’t know what I am afraid of,” she said, “but my heart fails me—my heart fails me.” I had to telegraph to Charley that it was deferred, and another long day went by. It rained, and that was an obstacle. “I cannot take him away in bad weather,” she said. She came down-stairs to me a dozen times a day, wringing her hands. “I have no resolution,” she cried. “I cannot—I cannot make up my mind to it. I feel that something dreadful is going to happen.” I could only take her trembling hand and try to comfort her. “But if it must be done,” I ventured to say, “you will be happier when it is over.” She gave me a wild look of panic. “I don’t know what I am afraid of,” she said. “I wish it might be taken out of my hands.” I understood her, and I made all the arrangements.

Next day, at noon, was to be the time. I ordered a carriage from the nearest town, not without feeling the risk that the old man might perceive it was not his own, and inquire into the meaning of it. Every step of the way was beset by risks; but still, if it had to be done—“if ’twere done when ’tis done, then it were well it were done quickly.” Those words had haunted me before. I settled everything. I made her come out with me to get a little air in the afternoon. “You are killing yourself,” I said. “It is this that makes you so nervous and unlike yourself.” She consented, though it was against her will. A woman who had been all her life in their service, who was to go with them, whom Charlotte treated, as she said, “like one of ourselves,” had charge of Mr. Campbell in the meantime. And I think Charlotte got a little pleasure from her unusual excursion. She was very tremulous, as if she had almost forgotten the way to walk, and leant upon my arm in a way which was very sweet to me. No word of love had ever passed between us; and she did not love me, save as she loved Charley and Harry, and the rest. I think I had a place among them, at the end of the brothers. But yet she had an instinctive knowledge of my heart. And she knew that to lean upon me, to show that she needed me, was the way to please me most. We wandered about there for a time in a sort of forlorn happiness; then, with mutual impulse, took our way to the Lady’s Walk. We stood there together, listening to the steps. “Do you hear them?” said Charlotte, her face lighting up with a smile. “Dear lady! that has always been here since ever I mind.” She spoke as the children spoke in the utter abandonment of her being, as if returning for refreshment to the full simplicity of accent and idiom, the soft, native speech to which she was born. “Will she stay after us, do ye think?” Charlotte said; and then, with a little start, clinging to my arm, “Was that a sound—was that a cry?”

Not a cry, but a sigh. It seemed to wander over all the woods and thrill among the trees. You will say it was only the wind. I cannot tell. To me it was a sigh, personal, heart-rending. And you may suppose what it was to her. The tears dropped from her full eyes. She said, speaking to the air, “We are parting, you and me. Oh, go you back to heaven, and let us trouble you no more. Oh, go back to your home, my bonnie lady, and let us trouble you no more!”

“Charlotte,” I said, taking her arm in mine to support her. She cast me a glance, a smile, like one who could not, even in the midst of the highest thoughts, neglect or be unkind, but drew her hand away and clasped it in the other. “We are of one stock,” she said, the tears always falling, “and the same heart. We are too anxious; but God is above us all. Go back to your pleasant place, and say to my mother that I will never leave them. Go away, my bonnie lady, go away! and trust us to God.”

We waited, and I think she almost expected some reply. But there was none. I took her arm within mine again, and led her away trembling. The moment, the excitement had been too much for me also. I said, “You tell her to go, that she is too anxious, that she must trust you to God—and in the same breath you pledge yourself never to leave them. Do you think if God does not want her He wants you to stand between Him and them?” I grasped her arm so closely and held it so to my side in my passion that I think I almost hurt her. She gave me a startled look, and put up her hand to dry her wet eyes.

“It is very different,” she said; “I am living and can work for them. It has come to me all in a moment to think that one is just like another after all. Perhaps to die does not make a woman wise any more than life does. And it may be that nobody has had the thought to tell her. She will think that she can stop any harm that is coming, being here; but if it was not God’s pleasure to stop it, how could she? You know she tried,” said Charlotte, looking at me wistfully; “she tried—God bless her for that! Oh, you know how anxious she was; but neither her nor me could do it—neither her nor me!”

At this moment we were interrupted by some one flying towards us from the house, calling, “Miss Charlotte, Miss Charlotte you are wanted,” in a wild and agitated tone. It was the woman who had been left in charge of Mr. Campbell, and Charlotte started at the sight of her. She drew her hand from my arm, and flew along the path. “Oh, Margaret, why did you leave him?” she said.

“It was no blame of mine,” said the woman, turning, following her mistress. I hurried on too, after them, and the explanation was to both of us. “He would come down to the library; nothing would stop him. I tried all I could; but what could I do? And there is nothing to be frighted for, Miss Charlotte. Ah! I’ve nae breath to tell it. He is just real like himself.”

Charlotte flew along the path like a creature flying for life. She paused an instant at the door of the house to beckon me to follow her. The library, the room where her father had gone, was one of those which had been partially dismantled. The pictures had been taken down from the walls, a number of books, which she meant to take with her, collected on the tables. Mr. Campbell had displaced some of the books in order to seat himself in his favourite seat. He looked at her curiously, almost with severity, as she came in anxious and breathless. He was greatly changed. He had been robust and hale, like a tower, when I first entered Ellermore, not yet six months since. Now he had shrunken away into half his size. The coat which he had not worn for months hung loosely upon him; his white hair was long, and he wore a beard, which changed his appearance greatly. All this change had come since the time I parted with him in London, when he told me he was going to join his son Colin; but there was another change more remarkable, which I with awe, and Charlotte with terror, recognised at a glance—the prostration of his mind was gone. He looked his daughter in the face with intelligent, almost sternly intelligent, eyes.

“Oh, father, you have wanted me!” Charlotte cried. “I went out for a mouthful of air—I went out—for a few minutes—”

“Why should you not have gone out, Chatty?” he said. “And why was Margaret left in charge of me? I have been ill, I make no doubt; but why should I be watched and spied about my own house?”

She gave me a glance of dismay, and then she faltered, “Oh, not that, father—not that!”

“But I tell you it was that. She would have hindered my coming down-stairs, that woman”—he gave a little laugh, which was terrible to us in the state of our feelings—“and here are you rushing in out of breath, as if there was some cause of fear. Who is that behind ye? Is it one of your brothers—or—”

“It is Mr. Temple, father,” she said, with a new alarm.

“Mr. Temple,” he said, with a shade of displeasure passing over his face. Then he recovered himself, and his old-world politeness. “I am glad to see ye,” he said. “So far as I can remember, the house was much disorganised when you were here before, Mr. Temple. You will think we are always out of order; but I’ve been ill, and everything has fallen out of gear. This is not a place,” he added, turning to Charlotte, “to receive a stranger in. What is all this for?” he added, in a sharp tone, waving his hands towards the books, of which some were heaped at his feet on the floor. Once more she made a pause of dismay.

“They are some books to take with us,” she said; “you remember, father, we are going away.”

“Going away!” he cried irritably. “Where are my letters? Where are your brothers? What are you doing with a gentleman visitor (I beg ye a thousand pardons, Mr. Temple!) and the place in such a state? It is my opinion that there is something wrong. Where are my letters? It is not in reason that there can be no letters. After being cast aside from business for a time, to have your letters kept back from you, you will allow, Mr. Temple,” he said, turning to me with an explanatory air, “is irritating. It is perhaps done with a mistaken notion that I am not equal to them; but if you think I will allow myself to be treated as a child—”

He stammered a little now and then, in his anger, then made a great effort to control himself. And then he looked up at us, once more a little severely, and brought confusion to all our hopes with one simple question.

“Where is Colin?” he said.

What could be more natural? Charlotte gave me one look, and stood, white as death, motionless, her fingers twisting together. How truly she had said that falsehood was its own punishment, even such falsehood as this. She had answered him with ambiguous words when he was in the state of feebleness from which he had thus awoke, and he had been easily satisfied and diverted from too close inquiry. But now she was confounded by the sudden question. She could not confront with a subterfuge her father’s serious eyes; her head drooped, her hands caught at each other with a pitiful clasp, while he sat looking at her with an authoritative, but as yet unalarmed, look.

All this time the door had been left ajar, and Margaret stood waiting outside, listening to all that went on, without any thought of wrong, too much interested and anxious to feel herself out of place. But when she heard this demand the woman was struck with horror. She made a step within the door. “Oh, Ellermore!” she cried. “Oh! my auld maister, dinna break her heart and mine! To hear ye asking for Colin, and Colin in his grave this four long months, poor lad, poor lad!” She threw her apron over her head as she spoke, and burst forth into loud sobs and tears. Charlotte had put out a hand to stop the revelation, but dropped it again, and stood by speechless, her head bent, and wringing her hands, a silent image of grief and guilt, as if it had been her from whom the blow came.

The old man sat and listened with a countenance growing ashy pale, and with intent eyes, that seemed to flicker as if beyond his control. He tried to speak, but in the trembling of his lips could articulate nothing. Then he slowly raised himself up and stood, pallid and dizzy, like a man on the edge of a precipice.

“My son is dead, and I knew it not,” he said slowly, pausing between the words. He stood with his trembling lips falling apart, his countenance all moving and twitching, transfixed, it seemed, by a sort of woeful amaze, wondering at himself. Then he turned upon Charlotte, with a piteous appeal. “Was I told, and have I forgotten?” he asked. The humiliation of that human overthrow overpowered his re-awakened soul.

She came to him quickly, and put her arm round him. “Father dear, you were so ill, they would not let us tell you. Oh, I have known—I have known it would be so much the worse when it came.”

He put her away from him, and sat down again feebly in his chair. In that dreadful moment he wanted no one. The horror of the individual humiliation, the idea that he could have heard and forgotten, was more terrible even than the dreadful novelty which thus burst upon Him. “I’m glad,” he said, “I’m glad,” babbling with his loose lips. I shrank away, feeling it a profanation to be here, a spectator of the last mystery of nature; but Charlotte made a faint motion that kept me from withdrawing altogether. For the first time she was afraid; her heart had failed her.

For some minutes her father continued silent in his chair. The sunset had faded away, the misty twilight was falling. Margaret, guilty and miserable, but still unable altogether to subdue her sobs, shaking her white apron from her head, and looking round with a deprecating, apologetic glance, had withdrawn to the other side of the room. All was silence after that broken interchange of words. He lay back, clasping and unclasping his hands, his lips and features all moving, whether with a wish to speak or with the mere workings of emotions unspeakable, I cannot tell. When suddenly, all at once, with the voice of a strong man, loud and full, he broke out into the cry which has sounded through all the world—the utterance of every father’s anguish. “Oh, Absalom, my son, my son! Would God that I had died for thee, my son, my son!”

We both rushed towards him simultaneously. He did not remark me, fortunately; but again he put Charlotte away. “What are you afraid for?” he said, almost sternly; “that I will forget again? That is not possible. Ye think sorrow kills; but no, it stings ye back to life. It stings ye back to life,” he repeated, raising himself in his chair. Then he looked round him solemnly. “Margaret, my woman, come here, and give me your hand. We’re partners in trouble, you and me, and never shall we part. As long as this is my house there is a place in it for you. Afterwards, when it goes to—ah! when it goes to Charley,” he cried, with a sudden burst of unforeseen sobs.

Charlotte looked at me again. Her face was white with despair. How was this last news to be broken to him? “Father,” she said, standing behind him, “you are sorely tried. Will you not come back to your room and rest till to-morrow, and then you will hear all? Then we will tell you—about all that has happened—”

Her voice shook like a leaf in the wind, but she managed to show no other sign of her terror and despair. There was a long pause after this, and we stood waiting, not knowing how the moment would terminate. I believe it was the sight of me that decided it after all. A quick movement of irritation passed over his face.

“I think you are right, Chatty,” he said; “I think you are right. I am not fit, in my shattered state, and with the information I have just received, to pay the attention I would like to pay”—He paused, and looked at me fixedly. “It is a great trouble to me that we have never been able to show you proper attention, Mr. Temple. You see, my son was detained; and now he is dead, and I’ve never known it till this moment. You will excuse a reception which is not the kind of reception I would like to give you.” He waved his hand. “You were my Colin’s friend. You will know how to make allowances. Yes, my dear, I am best in my own chamber. I will just go, with Mr. Temple’s permission—go—to my bed.”

A faint groan burst from him as he said these words; a kind of dreary smile flickered on his lips. “To my bed,” he repeated; “that is all we can do, we old folk, when we are stricken by God’s hand. Lie down, and turn our faces to the wall—our faces to the wall.” He rose up, and took his daughter’s arm, and made a few steps towards the door, which I was holding open for him. Then he turned and looked round with the air of one who has a favour to bestow. “You may come too, Margaret,” he said. “You can come and help me to my bed.”

This strange interruption of all plans, which it was evident filled Charlotte with despair, gave me much to think of, as I stayed behind in the slowly darkening room. It was evident that now nothing could be concealed from him; and who was there so bold as to tell the bereaved father, in his first grief for his first-born, what horrors had accompanied Colin’s death, and what a penalty the family had to pay? I cast over in my mind every expedient, but nothing seemed practicable, no way of disclosing the situation without such a shock as might kill. The half-dismantled room looked more and more dreary as the light faded away. The door stood open as when that little procession quitted it. My senses were all on the alert. It seemed to me that the premonition of some fresh calamity was in the air; and when Charlotte came down about half an hour later, like a ghost through the dim-coming shadows, I almost expected to hear that it had already occurred. But even in these depths of distress, it was a happiness to me to feel that she came to me for relief. She dropped into a chair close by the window where I was standing. I could just see the soft, pale lines of her face—the look of restrained anxiety in her eyes. She told me that he had gone to bed without asking any further questions, and that Margaret, who had been Colin’s nurse, seemed almost more agreeable to him than herself. He had turned his face to the wall, as he had said, and nothing but a long-drawn, occasional sigh told that he was awake. “I think he is not worse—in body,” she said. “He has borne it far better than we could have thought possible. But how am I to tell him the way it happened, and how am I to tell him about Ellermore?” She wept with a prostration and self-abandonment which alarmed me; but she stopped my remonstrances and entreaties with a motion of her hand. “Oh, let me cry! It is the only ease I have,” she said.

When she had gone away from me, restless, anxious, afraid to be out of hearing, I went out, myself, as restless, as incapable of banishing all these anxieties from my mind as she. The night was almost dark, soft and mild. It was one of those nights when the moon, without being visible, softens and ameliorates the gloom, and makes of night a sort of twilight.

While I went pacing softly about, to occupy myself, a soft, small rain began to fall; but this did not affect me in any way. It was rather soothing than disagreeable. I went down to the side of the loch, where the pale light on the water was touched by innumerable droppings of the rain; then up again, round and round the house, not caring where I went. At this hour I had always avoided the Lady’s Walk, I can scarcely tell why. To-night, in my strange familiarity with everything, and carelessness of all but one subject, I suddenly turned into it with a caprice I could not account for, perhaps with an understood wish for company, for somebody who might understand my thoughts. The mystic footsteps gave me a sort of pleasure. Whether it was habit, or some new sense of human fellowship which Charlotte’s impassioned words had caused, I can scarcely tell; but the excitement with which I had always hitherto regarded the mysterious watcher here was altogether gone out of my mind. I felt a profound and tender pity for her rising in me instead. Was it possible that a spirit could be “over-anxious,” as Charlotte said, endeavouring vainly, and yet not undutifully, to take God’s supreme guardianship out of His hands? The thought was new to me. To think that a good and blessed creature could so err, could mistake so humanly and persevere so patiently, though never able to remedy the evils, seemed somehow more possible than that a guardian from heaven could watch and watch for generations with so little result. This gave me a great compassion for the lonely watcher thus rebelling in a heavenly way of love against the law of nature that separated her from visible life. My old idea that it might be Charlotte herself in an unconscious shadow-shape, whose protecting, motherly love made these efforts unawares, glided gratefully into the feeling that it was an earlier Charlotte, her very kin and prototype, who could not even now let God manage her race without her aid.

While I was thus thinking, I was startled once more by the same sigh which I had heard with Charlotte. Yes, yes, it might be the wind. I had no time to bandy explanations with myself. It was a soft, long sigh, such as draws the very breath out of an over-laden bosom. I turned half round, it was so near to me, and there, by my side, so close that I could have touched her, stood the Lady whom I had imagined so often—the same figure which I had met in the London streets and in the woods of Ellermore. I suppose I stepped back, with a little thrill of the old sensations, for she seemed to put out a hand in the pale gloom, and began to speak softly, quickly, as if there was scarcely time enough for what she had to say.

“I am going away like the rest,” she said. “None of them have ever bid me go before; but it was true—it was true. I have never done any good—just frightened them, or pleased them. It is in better hands—it is in better hands.”

With this there came the familiar movement, the wringing of the hands, which was like Charlotte, and she seemed to weep; but before I could say anything (and what could I have said?) she said again mournfully, “I must not speak to them; but you wish them well, and you may help if you will—if you will—now, again, again!”

“How can I help?” I cried. “Tell me, Lady, whoever you are; I will do it. I will do it—but how can I do it? I have no power. Tell me—”

I put out my hand to touch her dress, but it melted out of my hold. “You may help if you will—if you will,” she seemed to say, with a breathless faintness, as if of haste; and already her voice was farther off, breathing away.

“What can I do?” I cried. So much had I forgot the old terror that I put myself in her path, stopping the way. “Tell me how, how! Tell me, for God’s sake, and because of Charlotte.”

The shadowy figure seemed to retreat before me. It seemed to fade, then reappeared, then dissolved altogether into the white dimness, while the voice floated away, still saying, as in a sigh, “If you will, if you will.” I could hear no more. I went after this sighing voice to the end of the walk. It seemed to me that I was pursuing her, determined to understand, and that she softly fled; the footsteps hurrying, becoming almost inaudible as they flew before me. I went on hotly, not knowing what I did, determined only to know what it was; to get an explanation, by what means I did not care. Suddenly, before I knew, I found my steps stumbling down the slope at the farther end, and the pale water alive with all the dimplings of the rain appearing at my very feet. The steps sank upon the loch side, and ceased with a thrill like the acutest sound in a silence more absolute than any I have heard in nature. I stood gasping, with my foot touching the edge of the water; it was all I could do to arrest myself there.

I hurried back to the house in a state of agitation which I cannot describe. It was partly nervous dread. I do not disguise this; but partly it was a bewildered anxiety and eagerness to know what it was that I might be able to do. That I had the most absolute faith in it I need hardly say. One does not have, or think one has, such an interview as this without believing what is told in it. There was no doubt in my mind, save an anxious, excited wonder—how was it, how could it be? I searched all my horizon for possibilities. Before I reached the house, I had forgotten all the other incidents in my eagerness about this. My pursuit of her seemed nothing but natural, and the sudden silence that had seemed to tingle and thrill about me went clean out of my mind. “You may help if you will! if you will!” I said it over and over to myself a thousand times with a feverish hurry and eagerness. Indeed, I did nothing but repeat it. I could not eat, I could not rest. When Charlotte came down late to tell me her father was asleep, that the doctor who had been sent for had pronounced his recovery real, I was walking up and down the half-lighted drawing-room repeating these wonderful words over and over to myself.

“He says it is wonderful, but it may be complete recovery,” Charlotte said; “only to tell him nothing we can help, to keep all the circumstances from him; especially, if it is possible, about Ellermore. But how is it possible? how can I do it? ‘Help if you will?’ Mr. Temple, what are you saying?”

“It is nothing,” I said; “some old rhyme that has got possession of me.”

She looked very anxiously into my face. “Something else has happened? You have seen or heard—” Her mind was so alive to every tone and glance that it was scarcely possible to conceal a thought from her.

“I have been in the Walk,” I said, “and, being excited and restless, it was more than my nerves could bear.”

She looked at me again wistfully. “You would not deceive me, Mr. Temple,” she said; then returned to her original subject. The doctor was anxious, above all things, that Mr. Campbell should leave Ellermore to-morrow; that he should go early, and, above all, that he should not suspect the reason why. She had the same dread of the removal as ever, but there was no alternative; and not even a day’s delay was to be thought of, for every day, every hour, made the chances of discovery more.

“But you cannot keep up the delusion for ever,” I said, “and what when it is found out?”

Again she wrung her hands. “It is against my judgment; but what can I do?” She paused a moment, and then said, with a melancholy dignity, “It can but kill him, soon or syne. I would not myself have my life saved by a lie; but I am weak where my father is concerned, and God understands all. Oh, I am beginning to feel that so, Mr. Temple. We search and search, and think what is best, and we make a hundred mistakes; but God sees the why and the wherefore. Whoever misunderstands, He never misunderstands.”

She went away from me in the calm of this thought—the secret of all calm. It seemed to me that I, in my blind anxiety, guessing at the enigma that had been given to me, and my poor Lady vagrant from the skies, still trying to be the providence of this house, were left alike behind.

I could not rest all night. It was all I could do to remain in my room after the diminished household had gone to rest. It was a weird night, lighted up by that mystic light of the waning moon, in which there seems to be always something that is baleful and prophesies evil. One can fancy evil creatures about, ill dews falling. I sat at my window, as often as I could persuade myself to keep still at all, with the damp air saturating me, and the cold light enveloping everything below in a whiteness and blackness of exaggerated contrast. I can say nothing less than that I expected to see the anxious, wistful figure which I had seen so often, looking up at me, appealing to me again. But nothing broke the blank of the white light; nothing but the shadow of the bare trees, outlined in every twig above the darkness of the shrubberies below, interrupted the shining of the moon. When I threw myself upon my bed, it was only to think more acutely, more restlessly than before. What was it that I could do? How could I help them? What power of mine could save? The dull morning was a relief to me which I cannot describe, and to hear the first stirrings of the household. Now at least there would be something which I could do—something not lying vague and shadowy among the possibilities, but certain and feasible, which is of all things the greatest relief to anxious thought. Charlotte came down to breakfast with me, which she had not done before. She told me that her father had passed a good night, that he had shed tears on awaking, and begun to talk tenderly and calmly of Colin; and that everything seemed to promise that the softening and mournful pre-occupation of grief, distracting his mind from other matters, would be an advantage to him. It was pleasant to be left with Margaret, who had adored her nursling, and who had been fully warned of the necessity of keeping silence as to the circumstances of his death. The post-bag came in while we were talking. It lay on the table for a few minutes untouched, for neither of us were anxious for our correspondence. We were alone at table, and Charlotte had rested, though I had not, and was almost cheerful now that the moment had arrived for the final severance. The necessity of doing inspirited her, as it did me. And perhaps, though I scarcely dared to think so, this tranquil table at which we sat alone, which might have been our table, in our home, in a new life full of peace and sober happiness, soothed her. The suggestion it conveyed made the blood dance in my veins. For the moment, it seemed as if the hope I dared not even entertain, for one calm hour of blessedness and repose, had come true.

At last she gave me the key, and asked me to open the bag. “I have been loth to disturb this peaceful moment,” she said, with a smile which was full of sweetness and confidence, “and nothing outside seems of much consequence just now; but the boys may have something to tell, and there will be your letters. Will you open it, Mr. Temple?” I, too, was loth—more loth than she—to disturb the calm; and the outside world was nothing to me, while I sat here with her, and could fancy her my own. But I did what she told me.

Letters are like fate; they must be encountered, with all that is good and evil in them. I gave her hers, and laid out some, probably as important to them, though they seemed to me so trifling and unnecessary, that were for the maids. Then I turned to my own share. I had two letters, one with a broad black border, which had been forwarded from one place to another in search of me, and was nearly ten days old—for, like most people, I examined the outside first; the other a large, substantial blue letter, which meant business. I can remember now the indifference with which I opened them, the mourning envelope first. There were so many postmarks on it, that that of its origin, which would have enlightened me at once, never struck me at all.

Heaven above! what was this that met my eyes? An announcement, full of periphrasis, of formal regrets, of the death of my old Cousin Jocelyn ten days before.

I gave a sort of fierce cry—I can hear it now—and tore open the second, the official letter. Of course I knew what it was, of course I was aware that nothing could interfere, and yet the opportuneness of the announcement was such that human nature, accustomed to be balked, would not allow me to believe in the possibility. Then I sprang from my seat. “I must go,” I cried; “there is not a moment to lose. Stop all proceedings—do nothing about the going, for God’s sake, till I come back.”

“Mr. Temple, what has happened? Charley—” cried Charlotte, blanched with terror. She thought some other catastrophe had occurred, some still more fatal news, that I could not tell her. But I was too much absorbed in my own excitement to think of this.

“Do nothing,” I said; “I will meet Charley on the way, and tell him. All will be right, all will be right; only wait till I come back.” I rushed to the door in my haste, then came back again, not knowing what I did, and had caught her in my arms before I knew—not in my arms, but with my hands on her shoulders, holding her for one mad moment. I could hardly see her for the water in my eyes. “Wait,” I said, “wait till I come back! Now I can do what she said! Now my time is come; do nothing till I come back.” I let my hands drop down to hers, and caught them and kissed them in a wild tremor, beyond explanation. Then I rushed away. I have a recollection of meeting the children and pushing aside their little outstretched hands and morning salutations. It was a mile or more to the little quay where the morning boat carried communications back to the world. I seemed to be there as on wings, and scarcely came to myself till I descended into the noise, the haze, the roar of the damp streets, the crowds and traffic of Glasgow. Next moment (for time flew, and I with it, so that I took no note of its progress) I was in the clamour of the “works,” making my way through the grime and mud of a great courtyard, with machinery lying round me on every side, amid the big skeleton houses with their open windows, into the office, where Charley, in close converse with a stranger, jumped up with terror at the sight of me. “What has happened?” he cried, “my father?” I had scarcely breath enough to say what I had to say. “Your father,” I cried, “has come to himself. You can make no sale without him—every arrangement must be stopped at once.” All that I was capable of knowing was, with a certainty, beyond all proof, that the man with whom Charley was talking, a sportsman in every line of his countenance and clothes, was the intending purchaser of Ellermore.

I remember little of the conversation that followed. It was stormy and excited; for neither would Charley be convinced, nor would the other consent to be off his bargain. But I made my point clear. Mr. Campbell having recovered his faculties, it was clear that no treaty could be concluded without his consent. (It would not have been legal in any case, but I suppose they had in some way got over this.) I remember Charley turning upon me with a passionate remonstrance, when, almost by violence and pertinacity, I had driven his Cockney sportsman away. “I cannot conceive what is your object, Temple,” he said. “Are you mad? My father must give his consent; there is no possibility of a question about it. Ellermore must be sold—and as well to him as to another,” he said, with a sigh. I took out my blue letter, which I had huddled into my pocket, and laid it before him. “It is to me that Ellermore must be sold,” I said.

My inheritance had come. There was nothing wonderful about it—it was my right; but never did inheritance come at a more suitable moment. Charley went back with me that afternoon, after a hurried conference with his young brothers, who came round me, shaking my arms nearly off, and calling to each other in their soft young basses, like rolls of mild thunder, that, whatever happened, I was a good fellow, a true friend. If they had not been so bashful they would have embraced me, less, I verily believe, from the sense of escape from a great misery which they had scarcely realised, than from generous pleasure in what they thought a sort of noble generosity. That was their view of it. Charley perhaps was more enlightened. He was very silent during the journey, but at one point of it burst out suddenly upon me. “You are doing this for Chatty, Temple. If you take her away, it will be as bad as losing Ellermore.” I shook my head. Then, if never before, I felt the hopelessness of the position. “There is but one thing you can do for me: say not a word of that to her,” I said.

And I believe he kept counsel. It was of her own accord that Charlotte came up to me after the hurried interview in which Charley laid my proposal before her. She was very grave, though the sweetness of her look drew the heart out of my breast. She held out her hands to me, but her eyes took all warm significance out of this gesture. “Mr. Temple,” she said, “you may think me bold to say it, but we are friends that can say anything to one another. If in your great generosity there may yet be a thought—a thought that a woman might recompense what was done for her and hers”—Her beautiful countenance, beautiful in its love and tenderness and noble dignity, but so pale, was suddenly suffused with colour. She took her hands out of mine, and folded them together—“That is out of my power—that is out of my power!” she said.

“I like it better so,” I cried. God help me! it was a lie, and so she knew. “I want no recompense. I will be recompensed enough to know you are here.”

And so it has remained ever since, and may, perhaps, for ever—I cannot tell. We are dear friends. When anything happens in the family I am sent for, and all is told to me. And so do I with her. We know all each other’s secrets—those secrets which are not of fortune or incident, but of the soul. Is there anything better in marriage than this? And yet there is a longing which is human for something more.

That evening I went back to the Lady’s Walk, with a sort of painful desire to tell her, the other, that I had done her bidding, that she had been a true guardian of her race to the last. I paced up and down through the dim hour when the sun ought to have been setting, and later, long into the twilight. The rain fell softly, pattering upon the dark glistening leaves of the evergreens, falling straight through the bare branches. But no soft step of a living soul was on the well-worn track. I called to her, but there was no answer, not even the answer of a sigh. Had she gone back heart-sick to her home in heaven, acknowledging at last that it was not hers to guard her race? It makes my heart ache for her to think so, but yet it must have been a sweet grief and easily healed in those blessed regions, to know that those she loved were most safe in God’s only care when hers failed—as everything else must fail.

The Portrait

(1885)

At the period when the following incidents occurred, I was living with my father at The Grove, a large old house in the immediate neighbourhood of a little town. This had been his home for a number of years; and I believe I was born in it. It was a kind of house which, notwithstanding all the red and white architecture known at present by the name of Queen Anne, builders nowadays have forgotten how to build. It was straggling and irregular, with wide passages, wide staircases, broad landings; the rooms large but not very lofty; the arrangements leaving much to be desired, with no economy of space; a house belonging to a period when land was cheap, and, so far as that was concerned, there was no occasion to economize. Though it was so near the town, the clump of trees in which it was environed was a veritable grove. In the grounds in spring the primroses grew as thickly as in the forest. We had a few fields for the cows, and an excellent walled garden. The place is being pulled down at this moment to make room for more streets of mean little houses,—the kind of thing, and not a dull house of faded gentry, which perhaps the neighbourhood requires. The house was dull, and so were we, its last inhabitants; and the furniture was faded, even a little dingy,—nothing to brag of. I do not, however, intend to convey a suggestion that we were faded gentry, for that was not the case. My father, indeed, was rich, and had no need to spare any expense in making his life and his house bright if he pleased; but he did not please, and I had not been long enough at home to exercise any special influence of my own. It was the only home I had ever known; but except in my earliest childhood, and in my holidays as a schoolboy, I had in reality known but little of it. My mother had died at my birth, or shortly after, and I had grown up in the gravity and silence of a house without women. In my infancy, I believe, a sister of my father’s had lived with us, and taken charge of the household and of me; but she, too, had died long, long ago, my mourning for her being one of the first things I could recollect. And she had no successor. There were, indeed, a housekeeper and some maids—the latter of whom I only saw disappearing at the end of a passage, or whisking out of a room when one of “the gentlemen” appeared. Mrs. Weir, indeed, I saw nearly every day; but a curtsey, a smile, a pair of nice round arms which she caressed while folding them across her ample waist, and a large white apron, were all I knew of her. This was the only female influence in the house. The drawing-room I was aware of only as a place of deadly good order, into which nobody ever entered. It had three long windows opening on the lawn, and communicated at the upper end, which was rounded like a great bay, with the conservatory. Sometimes I gazed into it as a child from without, wondering at the needlework on the chairs, the screens, the looking-glasses which never reflected any living face. My father did not like the room, which probably was not wonderful, though it never occurred to me in those early days to inquire why.

I may say here, though it will probably be disappointing to those who form a sentimental idea of the capabilities of children, that it did not occur to me either, in these early days, to make any inquiry about my mother. There was no room in life, as I knew it, for any such person; nothing suggested to my mind either the fact that she must have existed, or that there was need of her in the house. I accepted, as I believe most children do, the facts of existence, on the basis with which I had first made acquaintance with them, without question or remark. As a matter of fact, I was aware that it was rather dull at home; but neither by comparison with the books I read, nor by the communications received from my school-fellows, did this seem to me anything remarkable. And I was possibly somewhat dull too by nature, for I did not mind. I was fond of reading, and for that there was unbounded opportunity. I had a little ambition in respect to work, and that too could be prosecuted undisturbed. When I went to the university, my society lay almost entirely among men; but by that time and afterwards, matters had of course greatly changed with me, and though I recognized women as part of the economy of nature, and did not indeed by any means dislike or avoid them, yet the idea of connecting them at all with my own home never entered into my head. That continued to be as it had always been, when at intervals I descended upon the cool, grave, colourless place, in the midst of my traffic with the world: always very still, well-ordered, serious—the cooking very good, the comfort perfect; old Morphew, the butler, a little older (but very little older, perhaps on the whole less old, since in my childhood I had thought him a kind of Methuselah); and Mrs. Weir, less active, covering up her arms in sleeves, but folding and caressing them just as always. I remember looking in from the lawn through the windows upon that deadly-orderly drawing-room, with a humorous recollection of my childish admiration and wonder, and feeling that it must be kept so for ever and ever, and that to go into it would break some sort of amusing mock mystery, some pleasantly ridiculous spell.

But it was only at rare intervals that I went home. In the long vacation, as in my school holidays, my father often went abroad with me, so that we had gone over a great deal of the Continent together very pleasantly. He was old in proportion to the age of his son, being a man of sixty when I was twenty, but that did not disturb the pleasure of the relations between us. I don’t know that they were ever very confidential. On my side there was but little to communicate, for I did not get into scrapes nor fall in love, the two predicaments which demand sympathy and confidences. And as for my father himself, I was never aware what there could be to communicate on his side. I knew his life exactly—what he did almost at every hour of the day; under what circumstances of the temperature he would ride and when walk; how often and with what guests he would indulge in the occasional break of a dinner-party, a serious pleasure,—perhaps, indeed, less a pleasure than a duty. All this I knew as well as he did, and also his views on public matters, his political opinions, which naturally were different from mine. What ground, then, remained for confidence? I did not know any. We were both of us of a reserved nature, not apt to enter into our religious feelings, for instance. There are many people who think reticence on such subjects a sign of the most reverential way of contemplating them. Of this I am far from being sure; but, at all events, it was the practice most congenial to my own mind.

And then I was for a long time absent, making my own way in the world. I did not make it very successfully. I accomplished the natural fate of an Englishman, and went out to the Colonies; then to India in a semi-diplomatic position; but returned home after seven or eight years, invalided, in bad health and not much better spirits, tired and disappointed with my first trial of life. I had, as people say, “no occasion” to insist on making my way. My father was rich, and had never given me the slightest reason to believe that he did not intend me to be his heir. His allowance to me was not unliberal, and though he did not oppose the carrying out of my own plans, he by no means urged me to exertion. When I came home he received me very affectionately, and expressed his satisfaction in my return. “Of course,” he said, “I am not glad that you are disappointed, Philip, or that your health is broken; but otherwise it is an ill wind, you know, that blows nobody good—and I am very glad to have you at home. I am growing an old man—”

“I don’t see any difference, sir,” said I; “everything here seems exactly the same as when I went away—”

He smiled, and shook his head. “It is true enough,” he said; “after we have reached a certain age we seem to go on for a long time on a plane, and feel no great difference from year to year; but it is an inclined plane, and the longer we go on the more sudden will be the fall at the end. But at all events it will be a great comfort to me to have you here.”

“If I had known that,” I said, “and that you wanted me, I should have come in any circumstances. As there are only two of us in the world—”

“Yes,” he said, “there are only two of us in the world; but still I should not have sent for you, Phil, to interrupt your career.”

“It is as well, then, that it has interrupted itself,” I said rather bitterly; for disappointment is hard to bear.

He patted me on the shoulder, and repeated, “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,” with a look of real pleasure which gave me a certain gratification too; for, after all, he was an old man, and the only one in all the world to whom I owed any duty. I had not been without dreams of warmer affections, but they had come to nothing—not tragically, but in the ordinary way. I might perhaps have had love which I did not want but not that which I did want,—which was not a thing to make any unmanly moan about, but in the ordinary course of events. Such disappointments happen every day; indeed, they are more common than anything else, and sometimes it is apparent afterwards that it is better it was so.

However, here I was at thirty—stranded, yet wanting for nothing, in a position to call forth rather envy than pity from the greater part of my contemporaries; for I had an assured and comfortable existence, as much money as I wanted, and the prospect of an excellent fortune for the future. On the other hand, my health was still low, and I had no occupation. The neighbourhood of the town was a drawback rather than an advantage. I felt myself tempted, instead of taking the long walk into the country which my doctor recommended, to take a much shorter one through the High Street, across the river, and back again, which was not a walk but a lounge. The country was silent and full of thoughts—thoughts not always very agreeable—whereas there were always the humours of the little urban population to glance at, the news to be heard, all those petty matters which so often make up life in a very impoverished version for the idle man. I did not like it, but I felt myself yielding to it, not having energy enough to make a stand. The rector and the leading lawyer of the place asked me to dinner. I might have glided into the society, such as it was, had I been disposed for that—everything about me began to close over me as if I had been fifty, and fully contented with my lot.

It was possibly my own want of occupation which made me observe with surprise, after a while, how much occupied my father was. He had expressed himself glad of my return; but now that I had returned, I saw very little of him. Most of his time was spent in his library, as had always been the case. But on the few visits I paid him there, I could not but perceive that the aspect of the library was much changed. It had acquired the look of a business-room, almost an office. There were large business-like books on the table, which I could not associate with anything he could naturally have to do; and his correspondence was very large. I thought he closed one of those books hurriedly as I came in, and pushed it away, as if he did not wish me to see it. This surprised me at the moment without arousing any other feeling; but afterwards I remembered it with a clearer sense of what it meant. He was more absorbed altogether than I had been used to see him. He was visited by men sometimes not of very prepossessing appearance. Surprise grew in my mind without any very distinct idea of the reason of it; and it was not till after a chance conversation with Morphew that my vague uneasiness began to take definite shape. It was begun without any special intention on my part. Morphew had informed me that master was very busy, on some occasion when I wanted to see him. And I was a little annoyed to be thus put off. “It appears to me that my father is always busy,” I said hastily. Morphew then began very oracularly to nod his head in assent.

“A deal too busy, sir, if you take my opinion,” he said.

This startled me much, and I asked hurriedly, “What do you mean?” without reflecting that to ask for private information from a servant about my father’s habits was as bad as investigating into a stranger’s affairs. It did not strike me in the same light.

“Mr. Philip,” said Morphew, “a thing ’as ’appened as ’appens more often than it ought to. Master has got awful keen about money in his old age.”

“That’s a new thing for him,” I said.

“No, sir, begging your pardon, it ain’t a new thing. He was once broke of it, and that wasn’t easy done; but it’s come back, if you’ll excuse me saying so. And I don’t know as he’ll ever be broke of it again at his age.”

I felt more disposed to be angry than disturbed by this. “You must be making some ridiculous mistake,” I said. “And if you were not so old a friend as you are, Morphew, I should not have allowed my father to be so spoken of to me.”

The old man gave me a half-astonished, half-contemptuous look. “He’s been my master a deal longer than he’s been your father,” he said, turning on his heel. The assumption was so comical that my anger could not stand in face of it. I went out, having been on my way to the door when this conversation occurred, and took my usual lounge about, which was not a satisfactory sort of amusement. Its vanity and emptiness appeared to be more evident than usual to-day. I met half-a-dozen people I knew, and had as many pieces of news confided to me. I went up and down the length of the High Street. I made a small purchase or two. And then I turned homeward, despising myself, yet finding no alternative within my reach. Would a long country walk have been more virtuous? It would at least have been more wholesome; but that was all that could be said. My mind did not dwell on Morphew’s communication. It seemed without sense or meaning to me; and after the excellent joke about his superior interest in his master to mine in my father, was dismissed lightly enough from my mind. I tried to invent some way of telling this to my father without letting him perceive that Morphew had been finding faults in him, or I listening; for it seemed a pity to lose so good a joke. However, as I returned home, something happened which put the joke entirely out of my head. It is curious when a new subject of trouble or anxiety has been suggested to the mind in an unexpected way, how often a second advertisement follows immediately after the first, and gives to that a potency which in itself it had not possessed.

I was approaching our own door, wondering whether my father had gone, and whether, on my return, I should find him at leisure—for I had several little things to say to him—when I noticed a poor woman lingering about the closed gates. She had a baby sleeping in her arms. It was a spring night, the stars shining in the twilight, and everything soft and dim; and the woman’s figure was like a shadow, flitting about, now here, now there, on one side or another of the gate. She stopped when she saw me approaching, and hesitated for a moment, then seemed to take a sudden resolution. I watched her without knowing, but with a prevision that she was going to address me, though with no sort of idea as to the subject of her address. She came up to me doubtfully, it seemed, yet certainly, as I felt, and when she was close to me, dropped a sort of hesitating curtsey, and said, “It’s Mr. Philip?” in a low voice.

“What do you want with me?” I said.

Then she poured forth suddenly, without warning or preparation, her long speech—a flood of words which must have been all ready and waiting at the doors of her lips for utterance. “Oh, sir, I want to speak to you! I can’t believe you’ll be so hard, for you’re young; and I can’t believe he’ll be so hard if so be as his own son, as I’ve always heard he had but one, ’ll speak up for us. Oh, gentleman, it is easy for the likes of you, that, if you ain’t comfortable in one room, can just walk into another; but if one room is all you have, and every bit of furniture you have taken out of it, and nothing but the four walls left—not so much as the cradle for the child, or a chair for your man to sit down upon when he comes from his work, or a saucepan to cook him his supper—”

“My good woman,” I said, “who can have taken all that from you? Surely nobody can be so cruel?”

“You say it’s cruel!” she cried with a sort of triumph. “Oh, I knowed you would, or any true gentleman that don’t hold with screwing poor folks. Just go and say that to him inside there for the love of God. Tell him to think what he’s doing, driving poor creatures to despair. Summer’s coming, the Lord be praised, but yet it’s bitter cold at night with your counterpane gone; and when you’ve been working hard all day, and nothing but four bare walls to come home to, and all your poor little sticks of furniture that you’ve saved up for, and got together one by one, all gone—and you no better than when you started, or rather worse, for then you was young. Oh, sir!” the woman’s voice rose into a sort of passionate wail. And then she added, beseechingly, recovering herself, “Oh, speak for us—he’ll not refuse his own son—”

“To whom am I to speak? Who is it that has done this to you?” I said.

The woman hesitated again, looking keenly in my face, then repeated with a slight faltering, “It’s Mr. Philip?” as if that made everything right.

“Yes; I am Philip Canning,” I said; “but what have I to do with this? and to whom am I to speak?”

She began to whimper, crying and stopping herself. “Oh, please, sir! it’s Mr. Canning as owns all the house property about—it’s him that our court and the lane and everything belongs to. And he’s taken the bed from under us, and the baby’s cradle, although it’s said in the Bible as you’re not to take poor folks’ bed.”

“My father!” I cried in spite of myself; “then it must be some agent, some one else in his name. You may be sure he knows nothing of it. Of course I shall speak to him at once.”

“Oh, God bless you, sir,” said the woman. But then she added, in a lower tone, “It’s no agent. It’s one as never knows trouble. It’s him that lives in that grand house.” But this was said under her breath, evidently not for me to hear.

Morphew’s words flashed through my mind as she spoke. What was this? Did it afford an explanation of the much-occupied hours, the big books, the strange visitors? I took the poor woman’s name, and gave her something to procure a few comforts for the night, and went indoors disturbed and troubled. It was impossible to believe that my father himself would have acted thus; but he was not a man to brook interference, and I did not see how to introduce the subject, what to say. I could but hope that, at the moment of broaching it, words would be put into my mouth, which often happens in moments of necessity, one knows not how, even when one’s theme is not so all-important as that for which such help has been promised. As usual, I did not see my father till dinner. I have said that our dinners were very good, luxurious in a simple way, everything excellent in its kind, well cooked, well served—the perfection of comfort without show—which is a combination very dear to the English heart. I said nothing till Morphew, with his solemn attention to everything that was going, had retired; and then it was with some strain of courage that I began.

“I was stopped outside the gate to-day by a curious sort of petitioner—a poor woman, who seems to be one of your tenants, sir, but whom your agent must have been rather too hard upon.”

“My agent? Who is that?” said my father quietly.

“I don’t know his name, and I doubt his competence. The poor creature seems to have had everything taken from her—her bed, her child’s cradle.”

“No doubt she was behind with her rent.”

“Very likely, sir. She seemed very poor,” said I.

“You take it coolly,” said my father, with an upward glance, half-amused, not in the least shocked by my statement. “But when a man, or a woman either, takes a house, I suppose you will allow that they ought to pay rent for it.”

“Certainly, sir,” I replied, “when they have got anything to pay.”

“I don’t allow the reservation,” he said. But he was not angry, which I had feared he would be.

“I think,” I continued, “that your agent must be too severe. And this emboldens me to say something which has been in my mind for some time”—(these were the words, no doubt, which I had hoped would be put into my month; they were the suggestion of the moment, and yet as I said them it was with the most complete conviction of their truth)—“and that is this: I am doing nothing; my time hangs heavy on my hands. Make me your agent. I will see for myself, and save you from such mistakes; and it will be an occupation—”

“Mistakes? What warrant have you for saying these are mistakes?” he said testily; then after a moment: “This is a strange proposal from you, Phil. Do you know what it is you are offering?—to be a collector of rents, going about from door to door, from week to week; to look after wretched little bits of repairs, drains, etc.; to get paid, which, after all, is the chief thing, and not to be taken in by tales of poverty.”

“Not to let you be taken in by men without pity,” I said.

He gave me a strange glance, which I did not very well understand, and said abruptly, a thing which, so far as I remember, he had never in my life said before, “You’ve become a little like your mother, Phil—”

“My mother!” the reference was so unusual—nay, so unprecedented—that I was greatly startled. It seemed to me like the sudden introduction of a quite new element in the stagnant atmosphere, as well as a new party to our conversation. My father looked across the table, as if with some astonishment at my tone of surprise.

“Is that so very extraordinary?” he said.

“No; of course it is not extraordinary that I should resemble my mother. Only—I have heard very little of her—almost nothing.”

“That is true.” He got up and placed himself before the fire, which was very low, as the night was not cold—had not been cold heretofore at least; but it seemed to me now that a little chill came into the dim and faded room. Perhaps it looked more dull from the suggestion of a something brighter, warmer, that might have been. “Talking of mistakes,” he said, “perhaps that was one: to sever you entirely from her side of the house. But I did not care for the connection. You will understand how it is that I speak of it now when I tell you—” He stopped here, however, said nothing more for a minute or so, and then rang the bell. Morphew came, as he always did, very deliberately, so that some time elapsed in silence, during which my surprise grew. When the old man appeared at the door—“Have you put the lights in the drawing-room, as I told you?” my father said.

“Yes, sir; and opened the box, sir; and it’s a—it’s a speaking likeness—”

This the old man got out in a great hurry, as if afraid that his master would stop him. My father did so with a wave of his hand.

“That’s enough. I asked no information. You can go now.”

The door closed upon us, and there was again a pause. My subject had floated away altogether like a mist, though I had been so concerned about it. I tried to resume, but could not. Something seemed to arrest my very breathing; and yet in this dull, respectable house of ours, where everything breathed good character and integrity, it was certain that there could be no shameful mystery to reveal. It was some time before my father spoke, not from any purpose that I could see, but apparently because his mind was busy with probably unaccustomed thoughts.

“You scarcely know the drawing-room, Phil,” he said at last.

“Very little. I have never seen it used. I have a little awe of it, to tell the truth.”

“That should not be. There is no reason for that. But a man by himself, as I have been for the greater part of my life, has no occasion for a drawing-room. I always, as a matter of preference, sat among my books; however, I ought to have thought of the impression on you.”

“Oh, it is not important,” I said; “the awe was childish. I have not thought of it since I came home.”

“It never was anything very splendid at the best,” said he. He lifted the lamp from the table with a sort of abstraction, not remarking even my offer to take it from him, and led the way. He was on the verge of seventy, and looked his age; but it was a vigorous age, with no symptom of giving way. The circle of light from the lamp lit up his white hair and keen blue eyes and clear complexion; his forehead was like old ivory, his cheek warmly coloured; an old man, yet a man in full strength. He was taller than I was, and still almost as strong. As he stood for a moment with the lamp in his hand, he looked like a tower in his great height and bulk. I reflected as I looked at him that I knew him intimately, more intimately than any other creature in the world,—I was familiar with every detail of his outward life; could it be that in reality I did not know him at all?

•    •    •    •

The drawing-room was already lighted with a flickering array of candles upon the mantelpiece and along the walls, producing the pretty, starry effect which candles give without very much light. As I had not the smallest idea what I was about to see, for Morphew’s “speaking likeness” was very hurriedly said, and only half comprehensible in the bewilderment of my faculties, my first glance was at this very unusual illumination, for which I could assign no reason. The next showed me a large full-length portrait, still in the box in which apparently it had travelled, placed upright, supported against a table in the centre of the room. My father walked straight up to it, motioned to me to place a smaller table close to the picture on the left side, and put his lamp upon that. Then he waved his hand towards it, and stood aside that I might see.

It was a full-length portrait of a very young woman—I might say a girl scarcely twenty—in a white dress, made in a very simple old fashion, though I was too little accustomed to female costume to be able to fix the date. It might have been a hundred years old, or twenty, for aught I knew. The face had an expression of youth, candour, and simplicity more than any face I had ever seen,—or so, at least in my surprise, I thought. The eyes were a little wistful, with something which was almost anxiety—which at least was not content—in them; a faint, almost imperceptible, curve in the lids. The complexion was of a dazzling fairness, the hair light, but the eyes dark, which gave individuality to the face. It would have been as lovely had the eyes been blue—probably more so—but their darkness gave a touch of character, a slight discord, which made the harmony finer. It was not, perhaps, beautiful in the highest sense of the word. The girl must have been too young, too slight, too little developed for actual beauty; but a face which so invited love and confidence I never saw. One smiled at it with instinctive affection. “What a sweet face!” I said. “What a lovely girl! Who is she? Is this one of the relations you were speaking of on the other side?”

My father made me no reply. He stood aside, looking at it as if he knew it too well to require to look,—as if the picture was already in his eyes. “Yes,” he said, after an interval, with a long-drawn breath, “she was a lovely girl, as you say.”

“Was?—then she is dead. What a pity!” I said; “what a pity! so young and so sweet!”

We stood gazing at her thus, in her beautiful stillness and calm—two men, the younger of us full-grown and conscious of many experiences, the other an old man—before this impersonation of tender youth. At length he said, with a slight tremulousness in his voice, “Does nothing suggest to you who she is, Phil?”

I turned round to look at him with profound astonishment, but he turned away from my look. A sort of quiver passed over his face. “That is your mother,” he said, and walked suddenly away, leaving me there.

My mother!

I stood for a moment in a kind of consternation before the white-robed innocent creature, to me no more than a child; then a sudden laugh broke from me, without any will of mine something ludicrous, as well as something awful, was in it. When the laugh was over, I found myself with tears in my eyes, gazing, holding my breath. The soft features seemed to melt, the lips to move, the anxiety in the eyes to become a personal inquiry. Ah, no! nothing of the kind; only because of the water in mine. My mother! oh, fair and gentle creature, scarcely woman, how could any man’s voice call her by that name! I had little idea enough of what it meant,—had heard it laughed at, scoffed at, reverenced, but never had learned to place it even among the ideal powers of life. Yet if it meant anything at all, what it meant was worth thinking of. What did she ask, looking at me with those eyes? What would she have said if “those lips had language”? If I had known her only as Cowper did—with a child’s recollection—there might have been some thread, some faint but comprehensible link, between us; but now all that I felt was the curious incongruity. Poor child! I said to myself; so sweet a creature: poor little tender soul! as if she had been a little sister, a child of mine,—but my mother! I cannot tell how long I stood looking at her, studying the candid, sweet face, which surely had germs in it of everything that was good and beautiful; and sorry, with a profound regret, that she had died and never carried these promises to fulfilment. Poor girl! poor people who had loved her! These were my thoughts; with a curious vertigo and giddiness of my whole being in the sense of a mysterious relationship, which it was beyond my power to understand.

Presently my father came back, possibly because I had been a long time unconscious of the passage of the minutes, or perhaps because he was himself restless in the strange disturbance of his habitual calm. He came in and put his arm within mine, leaning his weight partially upon me, with an affectionate suggestion which went deeper than words. I pressed his arm to my side: it was more between us two grave Englishmen than any embracing.

“I cannot understand it,” I said.

“No. I don’t wonder at that; but if it is strange to you, Phil, think how much more strange to me! That is the partner of my life. I have never had another, or thought of another. That—girl! If we are to meet again, as I have always hoped we should meet again, what am I to say to her—I, an old man? Yes; I know what you mean. I am not an old man for my years; but my years are threescore and ten, and the play is nearly played out. How am I to meet that young creature? We used to say to each other that it was for ever, that we never could be but one, that it was for life and death. But what—what am I to say to her, Phil, when I meet her again, that—that angel? No, it is not her being an angel that troubles me; but she is so young! She is like my—my granddaughter,” he cried, with a burst of what was half sobs, half laughter; “and she is my wife,—and I am an old man—an old man! And so much has happened that she could not understand.”

I was too much startled by this strange complaint to know what to say. It was not my own trouble, and I answered it in the conventional way.

“They are not as we are, sir,” I said; “they look upon us with larger, other eyes than ours.”

“Ah! you don’t know what I mean,” he said quickly; and in the interval he had subdued his emotion. “At first, after she died, it was my consolation to think that I should meet her again—that we never could be really parted. But, my God, how I have changed since then! I am another man—I am a different being. I was not very young even then—twenty years older than she was; but her youth renewed mine. I was not an unfit partner; she asked no better, and knew as much more than I did in some things—being so much nearer the source—as I did in others that were of the world. But I have gone a long way since then, Phil—a long way; and there she stands, just where I left her.”

I pressed his arm again. “Father,” I said, which was a title I seldom used, “we are not to suppose that in a higher life the mind stands still.” I did not feel myself qualified to discuss such topics, but something one must say.

“Worse, worse!” he replied; “then she too will be, like me, a different being, and we shall meet as what? as strangers, as people who have lost sight of each other, with a long past between us—we who parted, my God! with—with—”

His voice broke and ended for a moment then while, surprised and almost shocked by what he said, I cast about in my mind what to reply, he withdrew his arm suddenly from mine, and said in his usual tone, “Where shall we hang the picture, Phil? It must be here in this room. What do you think will be the best light?”

This sudden alteration took me still more by surprise, and gave me almost an additional shock; but it was evident that I must follow the changes of his mood, or at least the sudden repression of sentiment which he originated. We went into that simpler question with great seriousness, consulting which would be the best light. “You know I can scarcely advise,” I said; “I have never been familiar with this room. I should like to put off, if you don’t mind, till daylight.”

“I think,” he said, “that this would be the best place.” It was on the other side of the fireplace, on the wall which faced the windows,—not the best light, I knew enough to be aware, for an oil-painting. When I said so, however, he answered me with a little impatience, “It does not matter very much about the best light; there will be nobody to see it but you and me. I have my reasons—” There was a small table standing against the wall at this spot, on which he had his hand as he spoke. Upon it stood a little basket in very fine lace-like wicker-work. His hand must have trembled, for the table shook, and the basket fell, its contents turning out upon the carpet,—little bits of needlework, coloured silks, a small piece of knitting half done. He laughed as they rolled out at his feet, and tried to stoop to collect them, then tottered to a chair, and covered for a moment his face with his hands.

No need to ask what they were. No woman’s work had been seen in the house since I could recollect it. I gathered them up reverently and put them back. I could see, ignorant as I was, that the bit of knitting was something for an infant. What could I do less than put it to my lips? It had been left in the doing—for me.

“Yes, I think this is the best place,” my father said a minute after, in his usual tone.

We placed it there that evening with our own hands. The picture was large, and in a heavy frame, but my father would let no one help me but himself. And then, with a superstition for which I never could give any reason even to myself, having removed the packings, we closed and locked the door, leaving the candles about the room, in their soft, strange illumination, lighting the first night of her return to her old place.

That night no more was said. My father went to his room early, which was not his habit. He had never, however, accustomed me to sit late with him in the library. I had a little study or smoking-room of my own, in which all my special treasures were, the collections of my travels and my favourite books—and where I always sat after prayers, a ceremonial which was regularly kept up in the house. I retired as usual this night to my room, and, as usual, read—but to-night somewhat vaguely, often pausing to think. When it was quite late, I went out by the glass door to the lawn, and walked round the house, with the intention of looking in at the drawing-room windows, as I had done when a child. But I had forgotten that these windows were all shuttered at night; and nothing but a faint penetration of the light within through the crevices bore witness to the installment of the new dweller there.

In the morning my father was entirely himself again. He told me without emotion of the manner in which he had obtained the picture. It had belonged to my mother’s family, and had fallen eventually into the hands of a cousin of hers, resident abroad—“A man whom I did not like, and who did not like me,” my father said; “there was, or had been, some rivalry, he thought: a mistake, but he was never aware of that. He refused all my requests to have a copy made. You may suppose, Phil, that I wished this very much. Had I succeeded, you would have been acquainted, at least, with your mother’s appearance, and need not have sustained this shock. But he would not consent. It gave him, I think, a certain pleasure to think that he had the only picture. But now he is dead, and out of remorse, or with some other intention, has left it to me.”

“That looks like kindness,” said I.

“Yes; or something else. He might have thought that by so doing he was establishing a claim upon me,” my father said; but he did not seem disposed to add any more. On whose behalf he meant to establish a claim I did not know, nor who the man was who had laid us under so great an obligation on his death-bed. He had established a claim on me at least; though, as he was dead, I could not see on whose behalf it was. And my father said nothing more; he seemed to dislike the subject. When I attempted to return to it, he had recourse to his letters or his newspapers. Evidently he had made up his mind to say no more.

Afterwards I went into the drawing-room, to look at the picture once more. It seemed to me that the anxiety in her eyes was not so evident as I had thought it last night. The light possibly was more favourable. She stood just above the place where, I make no doubt, she had sat in life, where her little work-basket was—not very much above it. The picture was full-length, and we had hung it low, so that she might have been stepping into the room, and was little above my own level as I stood and looked at her again. Once more I smiled at the strange thought that this young creature—so young, almost childish—could be my mother; and once more my eyes grew wet looking at her. He was a benefactor, indeed, who had given her back to us. I said to myself, that if I could ever do anything for him or his, I would certainly do it, for my—for this lovely young creature’s sake. And with this in my mind, and all the thoughts that came with it, I am obliged to confess that the other matter, which I had been so full of on the previous night, went entirely out of my head.

•    •    •    •

It is rarely, however, that such matters are allowed to slip out of one’s mind. When I went out in the afternoon for my usual stroll—or rather when I returned from that stroll—I saw once more before me the woman with her baby, whose story had filled me with dismay on the previous evening. She was waiting at the gate as before, and, “Oh, gentleman, but haven’t you got some news to give me?” she said.

“My good woman—I—have been greatly occupied. I have had—no time to do anything.”

“Ah!” she said, with a little cry of disappointment, “my man said not to make too sure, and that the ways of the gentlefolks is hard to know.”

“I cannot explain to you,” I said, as gently as I could, “what it is that has made me forget you. It was an event that can only do you good in the end. Go home now, and see the man that took your things from you, and tell him to come to me. I promise you it shall all be put right.”

The woman looked at me in astonishment, then burst forth, as it seemed, involuntarily, “What! without asking no questions?” After this there came a storm of tears and blessings, from which I made haste to escape, but not without carrying that curious commentary on my rashness away with me—“Without asking no questions?” It might be foolish, perhaps; but after all, how slight a matter. To make the poor creature comfortable at the cost of what—a box or two of cigars, perhaps, or some other trifle. And if it should be her own fault, or her husband’s—what then? Had I been punished for all my faults, where should I have been now? And if the advantage should be only temporary, what then? To be relieved and comforted even for a day or two, was not that something to count in life? Thus I quenched the fiery dart of criticism which my protégée herself had thrown into the transaction, not without a certain sense of the humour of it. Its effect, however, was to make me less anxious to see my father, to repeat my proposal to him, and to call his attention to the cruelty performed in his name. This one case I had taken out of the category of wrongs to be righted, by assuming arbitrarily the position of Providence in my own person—for, of course, I had bound myself to pay the poor creature’s rent as well as redeem her goods—and, whatever might happen to her in the future, had taken the past into my own hands. The man came presently to see me, who, it seems, had acted as my father’s agent in the matter. “I don’t know, sir, how Mr. Canning will take it,” he said. “He don’t want none of those irregular, bad-paying ones in his property. He always says as to look over it and let the rent run on is making things worse in the end. His rule is, ‘Never more than a month, Stevens;’ that’s what Mr. Canning says to me, sir. He says, ‘More than that they can’t pay. It’s no use trying.’ And it’s a good rule; it’s a very good rule. He won’t hear none of their stories, sir. Bless you, you’d never get a penny of rent from them small houses if you listened to their tales. But if so be as you’ll pay Mrs. Jordan’s rent, it’s none of my business how it’s paid, so long as it’s paid, and I’ll send her back her things. But they’ll just have to be took next time,” he added composedly. “Over and over; it’s always the same story with them sort of poor folks—they’re too poor for anything, that’s the truth,” the man said.

Morphew came back to my room after my visitor was gone. “Mr. Philip,” he said, “you’ll excuse me, sir, but if you’re going to pay all the poor folks’ rent as have distresses put in, you may just go into the court at once, for it’s without end—”

“I am going to be the agent myself, Morphew, and manage for my father; and we’ll soon put a stop to that,” I said, more cheerfully than I felt.

“Manage for—master,” he said, with a face of consternation. “You, Mr. Philip!”

“You seem to have a great contempt for me, Morphew.”

He did not deny the fact. He said with excitement, “Master, sir—master don’t let himself be put a stop to by any man. Master’s—not one to be managed. Don’t you quarrel with master, Mr. Philip, for the love of God.” The old man was quite pale.

“Quarrel!” I said. “I have never quarrelled with my father, and I don’t mean to begin now.”

Morphew dispelled his own excitement by making up the fire, which was dying in the grate. It was a very mild spring evening, and he made up a great blaze which would have suited December. This is one of many ways in which an old servant will relieve his mind. He muttered all the time as he threw on the coals and wood. “He’ll not like it—we all know as he’ll not like it. Master won’t stand no meddling, Mr. Philip,”—this last he discharged at me like a flying arrow as he closed the door.

I soon found there was truth in what he said. My father was not angry, he was even half amused. “I don’t think that plan of yours will hold water, Phil. I hear you have been paying rents and redeeming furniture—that’s an expensive game, and a very profitless one. Of course, so long as you are a benevolent gentleman acting for your own pleasure, it makes no difference to me. I am quite content if I get my money, even out of your pockets—so long as it amuses you. But as my collector, you know, which you are good enough to propose to be—”

“Of course I should act under your orders,” I said; “but at least you might be sure that I would not commit you to any—to any—” I paused for a word.

“Act of oppression,” he said, with a smile—“piece of cruelty, exaction—there are half-a-dozen words—”

“Sir—” I cried.

“Stop, Phil, and let us understand each other. I hope I have always been a just man. I do my duty on my side, and I expect it from others. It is your benevolence that is cruel. I have calculated anxiously how much credit it is safe to allow; but I will allow no man, or woman either, to go beyond what he or she can make up. My law is fixed. Now you understand. My agents, as you call them, originate nothing; they execute only what I decide—”

“But then no circumstances are taken into account—no bad luck, no evil chances, no loss unexpected.”

“There are no evil chances,” he said; “there is no bad luck; they reap as they sow. No, I don’t go among them to be cheated by their stories, and spend quite unnecessary emotion in sympathizing with them. You will find it much better for you that I don’t. I deal with them on a general rule, made, I assure you, not without a great deal of thought.”

“And must it always be so?” I said. “Is there no way of ameliorating or bringing in a better state of things?”

“It seems not,” he said; “we don’t get ‘no forrarder’ in that direction so far as I can see.” And then he turned the conversation to general matters.

I retired to my room greatly discouraged that night. In former ages—or so one is led to suppose—and in the lower primitive classes who still linger near the primeval type, action of any kind was, and is, easier than amid the complication of our higher civilization. A bad man is a distinct entity, against whom you know more or less what steps to take. A tyrant, an oppressor, a bad landlord, a man who lets miserable tenements at a rack-rent (to come down to particulars), and exposes his wretched tenants to all those abominations of which we have heard so much—well! he is more or less a satisfactory opponent. There he is, and there is nothing to be said for him—down with him! and let there be an end of his wickedness. But when, on the contrary, you have before you a good man, a just man, who has considered deeply a question which you allow to be full of difficulty; who regrets, but cannot, being human, avert the miseries which to some unhappy individuals follow from the very wisdom of his rule,—what can you do? What is to be done? Individual benevolence at haphazard may balk him here and there, but what have you to put in the place of his well-considered scheme? Charity which makes paupers? or what else? I had not considered the question deeply, but it seemed to me that I now came to a blank wall, which my vague human sentiment of pity and scorn could find no way to breach. There must be wrong somewhere—but where? There must be some change for the better to be made—but how?

I was seated with a book before me on the table, with my head supported on my hands. My eyes were on the printed page, but I was not reading; my mind was full of these thoughts, my heart of great discouragement and despondency, a sense that I could do nothing, yet that there surely must and ought, if I but knew it, be something to do. The fire which Morphew had built up before dinner was dying out, the shaded lamp on my table left all the corners in a mysterious twilight. The house was perfectly still, no one moving: my father in the library, where, after the habit of many solitary years, he liked to be left alone, and I here in my retreat, preparing for the formation of similar habits. I thought all at once of the third member of the party, the new-comer, alone too in the room that had been hers; and there suddenly occurred to me a strong desire to take up my lamp and go to the drawing-room and visit her, to see whether her soft, angelic face would give any inspiration. I restrained, however, this futile impulse—for what could the picture say?—and instead wondered what might have been had she lived, had she been there, warmly enthroned beside the warm domestic centre, the hearth which would have been a common sanctuary, the true home. In that case what might have been? Alas! the question was no more simple to answer than the other: she might have been there alone too, her husband’s business, her son’s thoughts, as far from her as now, when her silent representative held her old place in the silence and darkness. I had known it so, often enough. Love itself does not always give comprehension and sympathy. It might be that she was more to us there, in the sweet image of her undeveloped beauty, than she might have been had she lived and grown to maturity and fading, like the rest.

I cannot be certain whether my mind was still lingering on this not very cheerful reflection, or if it had been left behind, when the strange occurrence came of which I have now to tell. Can I call it an occurrence? My eyes were on my book, when I thought I heard the sound of a door opening and shutting, but so far away and faint that if real at all it must have been in a far corner of the house. I did not move except to lift my eyes from the book as one does instinctively the better to listen; when—— But I cannot tell, nor have I ever been able to describe exactly what it was. My heart made all at once a sudden leap in my breast. I am aware that this language is figurative, and that the heart cannot leap; but it is a figure so entirely justified by sensation, that no one will have any difficulty in understanding what I mean. My heart leaped up and began beating wildly in my throat, in my ears, as if my whole being had received a sudden and intolerable shock. The sound went through my head like the dizzy sound of some strange mechanism, a thousand wheels and springs circling, echoing, working in my brain. I felt the blood bound in my veins, my mouth became dry, my eyes hot; a sense of something insupportable took possession of me. I sprang to my feet, and then I sat down again. I cast a quick glance round me beyond the brief circle of the lamplight, but there was nothing there to account in any way for this sudden extraordinary rush of sensation—nor could I feel any meaning in it, any suggestion, any moral impression. I thought I must be going to be ill, and got out my watch and felt my pulse: it was beating furiously, about one hundred and twenty-five throbs in a minute. I knew of no illness that could come on like this without warning, in a moment, and I tried to subdue myself, to say to myself that it was nothing, some flutter of the nerves, some physical disturbance. I laid myself down upon my sofa to try if rest would help me, and kept still—as long as the thumping and throbbing of this wild, excited mechanism within, like a wild beast plunging and struggling, would let me. I am quite aware of the confusion of the metaphor; the reality was just so. It was like a mechanism deranged, going wildly with ever-increasing precipitation, like those horrible wheels that from time to time catch a helpless human being in them and tear him to pieces; but at the same time it was like a maddened living creature making the wildest efforts to get free.

When I could bear this no longer I got up and walked about my room; then having still a certain command of myself, though I could not master the commotion within me, I deliberately took down an exciting book from the shelf, a book of breathless adventure which had always interested me, and tried with that to break the spell. After a few minutes, however, I flung the book aside; I was gradually losing all power over myself. What I should be moved to do,—to shout aloud, to struggle with I know not what; or if I was going mad altogether, and next moment must be a raving lunatic,—I could not tell. I kept looking round, expecting I don’t know what; several times with the corner of my eye I seemed to see a movement, as if some one was stealing out of sight; but when I looked straight, there was never anything but the plain outlines of the wall and carpet, the chairs standing in good order. At last I snatched up the lamp in my hand, and went out of the room. To look at the picture, which had been faintly showing in my imagination from time to time, the eyes, more anxious than ever, looking at me from out the silent air? But no; I passed the door of that room swiftly, moving, it seemed, without any volition of my own, and before I knew where I was going, went into my father’s library with my lamp in my hand.

He was still sitting there at his writing-table; he looked up astonished to see me hurrying in with my light. “Phil!” he said, surprised. I remember that I shut the door behind me, and came up to him, and set down the lamp on his table. My sudden appearance alarmed him. “What is the matter?” he cried. “Philip, what have you been doing with yourself?”

I sat down on the nearest chair and gasped, gazing at him. The wild commotion ceased; the blood subsided into its natural channels; my heart resumed its place. I use such words as mortal weakness can to express the sensations I felt. I came to myself thus, gazing at him, confounded, at once by the extraordinary passion which I had gone through, and its sudden cessation. “The matter?” I cried; “I don’t know what is the matter.”

My father had pushed his spectacles up from his eyes. He appeared to me as faces appear in a fever, all glorified with light which is not in them—his eyes glowing, his white hair shining like silver; but his looks were severe. “You are not a boy, that I should reprove you; but you ought to know better,” he said.

Then I explained to him, so far as I was able, what had happened. Had happened? Nothing had happened. He did not understand me—nor did I, now that it was over, understand myself; but he saw enough to make him aware that the disturbance in me was serious, and not caused by any folly of my own. He was very kind as soon as he had assured himself of this, and talked, taking pains to bring me back to unexciting subjects. He had a letter in his hand with a very deep border of black when I came in. I observed it, without taking any notice or associating it with anything I knew. He had many correspondents; and although we were excellent friends, we had never been on those confidential terms which warrant one man in asking another from whom a special letter has come. We were not so near to each other as this, though we were father and son. After a while I went back to my own room, and finished the evening in my usual way, without any return of the excitement which, now that it was over, looked to me like some extraordinary dream. What had it meant? Had it meant anything? I said to myself that it must be purely physical, something gone temporarily amiss, which had righted itself. It was physical; the excitement did not affect my mind. I was independent of it all the time, a spectator of my own agitation—a clear proof that, whatever it was, it had affected my bodily organization alone.

Next day I returned to the problem which I had not been able to solve. I found out my petitioner in the back street, and that she was happy in the recovery of her possessions, which to my eyes indeed did not seem very worthy either of lamentation or delight. Nor was her house the tidy house which injured virtue should have when restored to its humble rights. She was not injured virtue, it was clear. She made me a great many curtseys, and poured forth a number of blessings. Her “man” came in while I was there, and hoped in a gruff voice that God would reward me, and that the old gentleman’d let ’em alone. I did not like the look of the man. It seemed to me that in the dark lane behind the house of a winter’s night he would not be a pleasant person to find in one’s way. Nor was this all: when I went out into the little street which it appeared was all, or almost all, my father’s property, a number of groups formed in my way, and at least half-a-dozen applicants sidled up. “I’ve more claims nor Mary Jordan any day,” said one; “I’ve lived on Squire Canning’s property, one place and another, this twenty year.” “And what do you say to me?” said another; “I’ve six children to her two, bless you, sir, and ne’er a father to do for them.” I believed in my father’s rule before I got out of the street, and approved his wisdom in keeping himself free from personal contact with his tenants. Yet when I looked back upon the swarming thoroughfare, the mean little houses, the women at their doors all so open-mouthed and eager to contend for my favour, my heart sank within me at the thought that out of their misery some portion of our wealth came, I don’t care how small a portion; that I, young and strong, should be kept idle and in luxury, in some part through the money screwed out of their necessities, obtained sometimes by the sacrifice of everything they prized! Of course I know all the ordinary commonplaces of life as well as any one—that if you build a house with your hand or your money, and let it, the rent of it is your just due; and must be paid. But yet—

“Don’t you think, sir,” I said that evening at dinner, the subject being re-introduced by my father himself, “that we have some duty towards them when we draw so much from them?”

“Certainly,” he said; “I take as much trouble about their drains as I do about my own.”

“That is always something, I suppose.”

“Something! it is a great deal; it is more than they get anywhere else. I keep them clean, as far as that’s possible. I give them at least the means of keeping clean, and thus check disease, and prolong life, which is more, I assure you, than they’ve any right to expect.”

I was not prepared with arguments as I ought to have been. That is all in the Gospel according to Adam Smith, which my father had been brought up in, but of which the tenets had begun to be less binding in my day. I wanted something more, or else something less; but my views were not so clear, nor my system so logical and well-built, as that upon which my father rested his conscience, and drew his percentage with a light heart.

Yet I thought there were signs in him of some perturbation. I met him one morning coming out of the room in which the portrait hung, as if he had gone to look at it stealthily. He was shaking his head, and saying “No, no,” to himself, not perceiving me, and I stepped aside when I saw him so absorbed. For myself, I entered that room but little. I went outside, as I had so often done when I was a child, and looked through the windows into the still and now sacred place, which had always impressed me with a certain awe. Looked at so, the slight figure in its white dress seemed to be stepping down into the room from some slight visionary altitude, looking with that which had seemed to me at first anxiety, which I sometimes represented to myself now as a wistful curiosity, as if she were looking for the life which might have been hers. Where was the existence that had belonged to her, the sweet household place, the infant she had left? She would no more recognize the man who thus came to look at her as through a veil, with a mystic reverence, than I could recognize her. I could never be her child to her, any more than she could be a mother to me.

•    •    •    •

Thus time passed on for several quiet days. There was nothing to make us give any special heed to the passage of time, life being very uneventful and its habits unvaried. My mind was very much preoccupied by my father’s tenants. He had a great deal of property in the town which was so near us—streets of small houses, the best-paying property (I was assured) of any. I was very anxious to come to some settled conclusion: on the one hand, not to let myself be carried away by sentiment; on the other, not to allow my strongly roused feelings to fall into the blank of routine, as his had done. I was seated one evening in my own sitting-room, busy with this matter,—busy with calculations as to cost and profit, with an anxious desire to convince him, either that his profits were greater than justice allowed, or that they carried with them a more urgent duty than he had conceived.

It was night, but not late, not more than ten o’clock, the household still astir. Everything was quiet—not the solemnity of midnight silence, in which there is always something of mystery, but the soft-breathing quiet of the evening, full of the faint habitual sounds of a human dwelling, a consciousness of life about. And I was very busy with my figures, interested, feeling no room in my mind for any other thought. The singular experience which had startled me so much had passed over very quickly, and there had been no return. I had ceased to think of it; indeed, I had never thought of it save for the moment, setting it down after it was over to a physical cause without much difficulty. At this time I was far too busy to have thoughts to spare for anything, or room for imagination; and when suddenly in a moment, without any warning, the first symptom returned, I started with it into determined resistance, resolute not to be fooled by any mock influence which could resolve itself into the action of nerves or ganglions. The first symptom; as before, was that my heart sprang up with a bound, as if a cannon had been fired at my ear. My whole being responded with a start. The pen fell out of my fingers, the figures went out of my head as if all faculty had departed; and yet I was conscious for a time at least of keeping my self-control. I was like the rider of a frightened horse, rendered almost wild by something which in the mystery of its voiceless being it has seen, something on the road which it will not pass, but wildly plunging, resisting every persuasion, turns from, with ever-increasing passion. The rider himself after a time becomes infected with this inexplainable desperation of terror, and I suppose I must have done so; but for a time I kept the upper hand. I would not allow myself to spring up as I wished, as my impulse was, but sat there doggedly, clinging to my books, to my table, fixing myself on I did not mind what, to resist the flood of sensation, of emotion, which was sweeping through me, carrying me away. I tried to continue my calculations. I tried to stir myself up with recollections of the miserable sights I had seen, the poverty, the helplessness. I tried to work myself into indignation; but all through these efforts I felt the contagion growing upon me, my mind falling into sympathy with all those straining faculties of the body, startled, excited, driven wild by something, I knew not what. It was not fear. I was like a ship at sea straining and plunging against wind and tide, but I was not afraid. I am obliged to use these metaphors, otherwise I could give no explanation of my condition, seized upon against my will, and torn from all those moorings of reason to which I clung with desperation, as long as I had the strength.

When I got up from my chair at last, the battle was lost, so far as my powers of self-control were concerned. I got up, or rather was dragged up, from my seat, clutching at these material things round me as with a last effort to hold my own. But that was no longer possible; I was overcome. I stood for a moment looking round me feebly, feeling myself begin to babble with stammering lips, which was the alternative of shrieking, and which I seemed to choose as a lesser evil. What I said was, “What am I to do?” and after a while, “What do you want me to do?” although throughout I saw no one, heard no voice, and had in reality not power enough in my dizzy and confused brain to know what I myself meant. I stood thus for a moment, looking blankly round me for guidance, repeating the question, which seemed after a time to become almost mechanical, “What do you want me to do?” though I neither knew to whom I addressed it nor why I said it. Presently—whether in answer, whether in mere yielding of nature, I cannot tell—I became aware of a difference: not a lessening of the agitation, but a softening, as if my powers of resistance being exhausted, a gentler force, a more benignant influence, had room. I felt myself consent to whatever it was. My heart melted in the midst of the tumult; I seemed to give myself up, and move as if drawn by some one whose arm was in mine, as if softly swept along, not forcibly, but with an utter consent of all my faculties to do I knew not what, for love of I knew not whom. For love—that was how it seemed—not by force, as when I went before. But my steps took the same course: I went through the dim passages in an exaltation indescribable, and opened the door of my father’s room.

He was seated there at his table as usual, the light of the lamp falling on his white hair; he looked up with some surprise at the sound of the opening door. “Phil,” he said, and with a look of wondering apprehension on his face, watched my approach. I went straight up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Phil, what is the matter? What do you want with me? What is it?” he said.

“Father, I can’t tell you. I come not of myself. There must be something in it, though I don’t know what it is. This is the second time I have been brought to you here.”

“Are you going—?” He stopped himself. The exclamation had been begun with an angry intention. He stopped, looking at me with a scared look, as if perhaps it might be true.

“Do you mean mad? I don’t think so. I have no delusions that I know of. Father, think—do you know any reason why I am brought here? for some cause there must be.”

I stood with my hand upon the back of his chair. His table was covered with papers, among which were several letters with the broad black border which I had before observed. I noticed this now in my excitement without any distinct association of thoughts, for that I was not capable of; but the black border caught my eye. And I was conscious that he too gave a hurried glance at them, and with one hand swept them away.

“Philip,” he said, pushing back his chair, “you must be ill, my poor boy. Evidently we have not been treating you rightly; you have been more ill all through than I supposed. Let me persuade you to go to bed.”

“I am perfectly well,” I said. “Father, don’t let us deceive one another. I am neither a man to go mad nor to see ghosts. What it is that has got the command over me I can’t tell; but there is some cause for it. You are doing something or planning something with which I have a right to interfere.”

He turned round squarely in his chair, with a spark in his blue eyes. He was not a man to be meddled with. “I have yet to learn what can give my son a right to interfere. I am in possession of all my faculties, I hope.”

“Father,” I cried, “won’t you listen to me? No one can say I have been undutiful or disrespectful. I am a man, with a right to speak my mind, and I have done so; but this is different. I am not here by my own will. Something that is stronger than I has brought me. There is something in your mind which disturbs—others. I don’t know what I am saying. This is not what I meant to say; but you know the meaning better than I. Some one—who can speak to you only by me—speaks to you by me; and I know that you understand.”

He gazed up at me, growing pale, and his underlip fell. I, for my part, felt that my message was delivered. My heart sank into a stillness so sudden that it made me faint. The light swam in my eyes; everything went round with me. I kept upright only by my hold upon the chair; and in the sense of utter weakness that followed, I dropped on my knees I think first, then on the nearest seat that presented itself, and, covering my face with my hands, had hard ado not to sob, in the sudden removal of that strange influence, the relaxation of the strain.

There was silence between us for some time; then he said, but with a voice slightly broken, “I don’t understand you, Phil. You must have taken some fancy into your mind which my slower intelligence—Speak out what you want to say. What do you find fault with? Is it all—all that woman Jordan?”

He gave a short, forced laugh as he broke off, and shook me almost roughly by the shoulder, saying, “Speak out! what—what do you want to say?”

“It seems, sir, that I have said everything.” My voice trembled more than his, but not in the same way. “I have told you that I did not come by my own will—quite otherwise. I resisted as long as I could: now all is said. It is for you to judge whether it was worth the trouble or not.”

He got up from his seat in a hurried way. “You would have me as—mad as yourself,” he said, then sat down again as quickly. “Come, Phil: if it will please you, not to make a breach, the first breach between us, you shall have your way. I consent to your looking into that matter about the poor tenants. Your mind shall not be upset about that, even though I don’t enter into all your views.”

“Thank you,” I said; “but, father, that is not what it is.”

“Then it is a piece of folly,” he said angrily. “I suppose you mean—but this is a matter in which I choose to judge for myself.”

“You know what I mean,” I said, as quietly as I could, “though I don’t myself know; that proves there is good reason for it. Will you do one thing for me before I leave you? Come with me into the drawing-room—”

“What end,” he said, with again the tremble in his voice, “is to be served by that?”

“I don’t very well know; but to look at her, you and I together, will always do something for us, sir. As for breach, there can be no breach when we stand there.”

He got up, trembling like an old man, which he was, but which he never looked like save at moments of emotion like this, and told me to take the light; then stopped when he had got half-way across the room. “This is a piece of theatrical sentimentality,” he said. “No, Phil, I will not go. I will not bring her into any such—Put down the lamp, and, if you will take my advice, go to bed.”

“At least,” I said, “I will trouble you no more, father, to-night. So long as you understand, there need be no more to say.”

He gave me a very curt “good-night,” and turned back to his papers—the letters with the black edge, either by my imagination or in reality, always keeping uppermost. I went to my own room for my lamp, and then alone proceeded to the silent shrine in which the portrait hung. I at least would look at her to-night. I don’t know whether I asked myself, in so many words, if it were she who—or if it was any one—I knew nothing; but my heart was drawn with a softness—born, perhaps, of the great weakness in which I was left after that visitation—to her, to look at her, to see, perhaps, if there was any sympathy, any approval in her face. I set down my lamp on the table where her little work-basket still was; the light threw a gleam upward upon her,—she seemed more than ever to be stepping into the room, coming down towards me, coming back to her life. Ah, no! her life was lost and vanished: all mine stood between her and the days she knew. She looked at me with eyes that did not change. The anxiety I had seen at first seemed now a wistful, subdued question; but that difference was not in her look but in mine.

•    •    •    •

I need not linger on the intervening time. The doctor who attended us usually, came in next day “by accident,” and we had a long conversation. On the following day a very impressive yet genial gentleman from town lunched with us—a friend of my father’s, Dr. Something; but the introduction was hurried, and I did not catch his name. He, too, had a long talk with me afterwards, my father being called away to speak to some one on business. Dr. ——— drew me out on the subject of the dwellings of the poor. He said he heard I took great interest in this question, which had come so much to the front at the present moment. He was interested in it too, and wanted to know the view I took. I explained at considerable length that my view did not concern the general subject, on which I had scarcely thought, so much as the individual mode of management of my father’s estate. He was a most patient and intelligent listener, agreeing with me on some points, differing in others; and his visit was very pleasant. I had no idea until after of its special object; though a certain puzzled look and slight shake of the head when my father returned, might have thrown some light upon it. The report of the medical experts in my case must, however, have been quite satisfactory, for I heard nothing more of them. It was, I think, a fortnight later when the next and last of these strange experiences came.

This time it was morning, about noon—a wet and rather dismal spring day. The half-spread leaves seemed to tap at the window, with an appeal to be taken in; the primroses, that showed golden upon the grass at the roots of the trees, just beyond the smooth-shorn grass of the lawn, were all drooped and sodden among their sheltering leaves. The very growth seemed dreary—the sense of spring in the air making the feeling of winter a grievance, instead of the natural effect which it had conveyed a few months before. I had been writing letters, and was cheerful enough, going back among the associates of my old life, with, perhaps, a little longing for its freedom and independence, but at the same time a not ungrateful consciousness that for the moment my present tranquillity might be best.

This was my condition—a not unpleasant one—when suddenly the now well-known symptoms of the visitation to which I had become subject suddenly seized upon me—the leap of the heart; the sudden, causeless, overwhelming physical excitement, which I could neither ignore nor allay. I was terrified beyond description, beyond reason, when I became conscious that this was about to begin over again: what purpose did it answer; what good was in it? My father indeed understood the meaning of it though I did not understand; but it was little agreeable to be thus made a helpless instrument, without any will of mine, in an operation of which I knew nothing; and to enact the part of the oracle unwillingly, with suffering and such a strain as it took me days to get over. I resisted, not as before, but yet desperately, trying with better knowledge to keep down the growing passion. I hurried to my room and swallowed a dose of a sedative which had been given me to procure sleep on my first return from India. I saw Morphew in the hall, and called him to talk to him, and cheat myself, if possible, by that means. Morphew lingered, however, and, before he came, I was beyond conversation. I heard him speak, his voice coming vaguely through the turmoil which was already in my ears, but what he said I have never known. I stood staring, trying to recover my power of attention, with an aspect which ended by completely frightening the man. He cried out at last that he was sure I was ill, that he must bring me something; which words penetrated more or less into my maddened brain. It became impressed upon me that he was going to get some one—one of my father’s doctors, perhaps—to prevent me from acting, to stop my interference, and that if I waited a moment longer I might be too late. A vague idea seized me at the same time, of taking refuge with the portrait—going to its feet, throwing myself there, perhaps, till the paroxysm should be over. But it was not there that my footsteps were directed. I can remember making an effort to open the door of the drawing-room, and feeling myself swept past it, as if by a gale of wind. It was not there that I had to go. I knew very well where I had to go,—once more on my confused and voiceless mission to my father, who understood, although I could not understand.

Yet as it was daylight, and all was clear, I could not help noting one or two circumstances on my way. I saw some one sitting in the hall as if waiting—a woman, a girl, a black-shrouded figure, with a thick veil over her face; and asked myself who she was, and what she wanted there. This question, which had nothing to do with my present condition, somehow got into my mind, and was tossed up and down upon the tumultuous tide like a stray log on the breast of a fiercely rolling stream, now submerged, now coming uppermost, at the mercy of the waters. It did not stop me for a moment, as I hurried towards my father’s room, but it got upon the current of my mind. I flung open my father’s door, and closed it again after me, without seeing who was there or how he was engaged. The full clearness of the daylight did not identify him as the lamp did at night. He looked up at the sound of the door, with a glance of apprehension; and rising suddenly, interrupting some one who was standing speaking to him with much earnestness and even vehemence, came forward to meet me. “I cannot be disturbed at present,” he said quickly; “I am busy.” Then seeing the look in my face, which by this time he knew, he too changed colour. “Phil,” he said, in a low, imperative voice, “wretched boy, go away—go away; don’t let a stranger see you—”

“I can’t go away,” I said. “It is impossible. You know why I have come. I cannot, if I would. It is more powerful than I—”

“Go, sir,” he said; “go at once; no more of this folly. I will not have you in this room: Go-go!”

I made no answer. I don’t know that I could have done so. There had never been any struggle between us before; but I had no power to do one thing or another. The tumult within me was in full career. I heard indeed what he said, and was able to reply; but his words, too, were like straws tossed upon the tremendous stream. I saw now with my feverish eyes who the other person present was. It was a woman, dressed also in mourning similar to the one in the hall; but this a middle-aged woman, like a respectable servant. She had been crying, and in the pause caused by this encounter between my father and myself, dried her eyes with a handkerchief, which she rolled like a ball in her hand, evidently in strong emotion. She turned and looked at me as my father spoke to me, for a moment with a gleam of hope, then falling back into her former attitude.

My father returned to his seat. He was much agitated too, though doing all that was possible to conceal it. My inopportune arrival was evidently a great and unlooked-for vexation to him. He gave me the only look of passionate displeasure I have ever had from him, as he sat down again; but he said nothing more.

“You must understand,” he said, addressing the woman, “that I have said my last words on this subject. I don’t choose to enter into it again in the presence of my son, who is not well enough to be made a party to any discussion. I am sorry that you should have had so much trouble in vain, but you were warned beforehand, and you have only yourself to blame. I acknowledge no claim, and nothing you can say will change my resolution. I must beg you to go away. All this is very painful and quite useless. I acknowledge no claim.”

“Oh, sir,” she cried, her eyes beginning once more to flow, her speech interrupted by little sobs. “Maybe I did wrong to speak of a claim. I’m not educated to argue with a gentleman. Maybe we have no claim. But if it’s not by right, oh, Mr. Canning, won’t you let your heart be touched by pity? She don’t know what I’m saying, poor dear. She’s not one to beg and pray for herself, as I’m doing for her. Oh, sir, she’s so young! She’s so lone in this world—not a friend to stand by her, nor a house to take her in! You are the nearest to her of any one that’s left in this world. She hasn’t a relation—not one so near as you—oh!” she cried, with a sudden thought, turning quickly round upon me, “this gentleman’s your son! Now I think of it, it’s not your relation she is, but his, through his mother! That’s nearer, nearer! Oh, sir! you’re young; your heart should be more tender. Here is my young lady that has no one in the world to look to her. Your own flesh and blood; your mother’s cousin—your mother’s—”

My father called to her to stop, with a voice of thunder. “Philip, leave us at once. It is not a matter to be discussed with you.”

And then in a moment it became clear to me what it was. It had been with difficulty that I had kept myself still. My breast was labouring with the fever of an impulse poured into me, more than I could contain. And now for the first time I knew why. I hurried towards him, and took his hand, though he resisted, into mine. Mine were burning, but his like ice: their touch burnt me with its chill, like fire. “This is what it is?” I cried. “I had no knowledge before. I don’t know now what is being asked of you. But, father, understand! You know, and I know now, that some one sends me—some one—who has a right to interfere.”

He pushed me away with all his might. “You are mad,” he cried. “What right have you to think—? Oh, you are mad—mad! I have seen it coming on—”

The woman, the petitioner, had grown silent, watching this brief conflict with the terror and interest with which women watch a struggle between men. She started and fell back when she heard what he said, but did not take her eyes off me, following every movement I made. When I turned to go away, a cry of indescribable disappointment and remonstrance burst from her, and even my father raised himself up and stared at my withdrawal, astonished to find that he had overcome me so soon and easily. I paused for a moment, and looked back on them, seeing them large and vague through the mist of fever. “I am not going away,” I said. “I am going for another messenger—one you can’t gainsay.”

My father rose. He called out to me threateningly, “I will have nothing touched that is hers. Nothing that is hers shall be profaned—”

I waited to hear no more; I knew what I had to do. By what means it was conveyed to me I cannot tell; but the certainty of an influence which no one thought of calmed me in the midst of my fever. I went out into the hall, where I had seen the young stranger waiting. I went up to her and touched her on the shoulder. She rose at once, with a little movement of alarm, yet with docile and instant obedience, as if she had expected the summons. I made her take off her veil and her bonnet, scarcely looking at her, scarcely seeing her, knowing how it was: I took her soft, small, cool, yet trembling hand into mine; it was so soft and cool—not cold—it refreshed me with its tremulous touch. All through I moved and spoke like a man in a dream; swiftly, noiselessly, all the complications of waking life removed; without embarrassment, without reflection, without the loss of a moment. My father was still standing up, leaning a little forward as he had done when I withdrew; threatening, yet terror-stricken, not knowing what I might be about to do, when I returned with my companion. That was the one thing he had not thought of. He was entirely undecided, unprepared. He gave her one look, flung up his arms above his head, and uttered a distracted cry, so wild that it seemed the last outcry of nature—“Agnes!” then fell back like a sudden ruin, upon himself, into his chair.

I had no leisure to think how he was, or whether he could hear what I said. I had my message to deliver. “Father,” I said, labouring with my panting breath, “it is for this that heaven has opened, and one whom I never saw, one whom I know not, has taken possession of me. Had we been less earthly, we should have seen her—herself, and not merely her image. I have not even known what she meant. I have been as a fool without understanding. This is the third time I have come to you with her message, without knowing what to say. But now I have found it out. This is her message. I have found it out at last.” There was an awful pause—a pause in which no one moved or breathed. Then there came a broken voice out of my father’s chair. He had not understood, though I think he heard what I said. He put out two feeble hands. “Phil—I think I am dying—has she—has she come for me?” he said.

We had to carry him to his bed. What struggles he had gone through before I cannot tell. He had stood fast, and had refused to be moved, and now he fell—like an old tower, like an old tree. The necessity there was for thinking of him saved me from the physical consequences which had prostrated me on a former occasion. I had no leisure now for any consciousness of how matters went with myself.

His delusion was not wonderful, but most natural. She was clothed in black from head to foot, instead of the white dress of the portrait. She had no knowledge of the conflict, of nothing but that she was called for, that her fate might depend on the next few minutes. In her eyes there was a pathetic question, a line of anxiety in the lids, an innocent appeal in the looks. And the face the same: the same lips, sensitive, ready to quiver; the same innocent, candid brow; the look of a common race, which is more subtle than mere resemblance. How I knew that it was so I cannot tell, nor any man. It was the other, the elder—ah, no! not elder; the ever young, the Agnes to whom age can never come, she who they say was the mother of a man who never saw her—it was she who led her kinswoman, her representative, into our hearts.

•    •    •    •

My father recovered after a few days: he had taken cold, it was said, the day before; and naturally, at seventy, a small matter is enough to upset the balance even of a strong man. He got quite well; but he was willing enough afterwards to leave the management of that ticklish kind of property which involves human well-being in my hands, who could move about more freely, and see with my own eyes how things were going on. He liked home better, and had more pleasure in his personal existence in the end of his life. Agnes is now my wife, as he had, of course, foreseen. It was not merely the disinclination to receive her father’s daughter, or to take upon him a new responsibility, that had moved him, to do him justice; but both these motives had told strongly. I have never been told, and now will never be told, what his griefs against my mother’s family, and specially against that cousin, had been; but that he had been very determined, deeply prejudiced, there can be no doubt. It turned out after, that the first occasion on which I had been mysteriously commissioned to him with a message which I did not understand, and which for that time he did not understand, was the evening of the day on which he had received the dead man’s letter, appealing to him—to him, a man whom he had wronged—on behalf of the child who was about to be left friendless in the world. The second time, further letters—from the nurse who was the only guardian of the orphan, and the chaplain of the place where her father had died, taking it for granted that my father’s house was her natural refuge—had been received. The third I have already described, and its results.

For a long time after, my mind was never without a lurking fear that the influence which had once taken possession of me might return again. Why should I have feared to be influenced, to be the messenger of a blessed creature, whose wishes could be nothing but heavenly? Who can say? Flesh and blood is not made for such encounters: they were more than I could bear. But nothing of the kind has ever occurred again.

Agnes had her peaceful domestic throne established under the picture. My father wished it to be so, and spent his evenings there in the warmth and light, instead of in the old library, in the narrow circle cleared by our lamp out of the darkness, as long as he lived. It is supposed by strangers that the picture on the wall is that of my wife; and I have always been glad that it should be so supposed. She who was my mother, who came back to me and became as my soul for three strange moments and no more, but with whom I can feel no credible relationship as she stands there, has retired for me into the tender regions of the unseen. She has passed once more into the secret company of those shadows, who can only become real in an atmosphere fitted to modify and harmonize all differences, and make all wonders possible—the light of the perfect day.

The Library Window

(1896)

I

I was not aware at first of the many discussions which had gone on about that window. It was almost opposite one of the windows of the large old-fashioned drawing-room of the house in which I spent that summer, which was of so much importance in my life. Our house and the library were on opposite sides of the broad High Street of St. Rule’s, which is a fine street, wide and ample, and very quiet, as strangers think who come from noisier places; but in a summer evening there is much coming and going, and the stillness is full of sound—the sound of footsteps and pleasant voices, softened by the summer air. There are even exceptional moments when it is noisy: the time of the fair, and on Saturday nights sometimes, and when there are excursion trains. Then even the softest sunny air of the evening will not smooth the harsh tones and the stumbling steps; but at these unlovely moments we shut the windows, and even I, who am so fond of that deep recess where I can take refuge from all that is going on inside, and make myself a spectator of all the varied story out of doors, withdraw from my watch-tower. To tell the truth, there never was very much going on inside. The house belonged to my aunt, to whom (she says, Thank God!) nothing ever happens. I believe that many things have happened to her in her time; but that was all over at the period of which I am speaking, and she was old, and very quiet. Her life went on in a routine never broken. She got up at the same hour every day, and did the same things in the same rotation, day by day the same. She said that this was the greatest support in the world, and that routine is a kind of salvation. It may be so; but it is a very dull salvation, and I used to feel that I would rather have incident, I whatever kind of incident it might be. But then at that time I was not old, which makes all the difference.

At the time of which I speak the deep recess of the drawing-room window was a great comfort to me. Though she was an old lady (perhaps because she was so old) she was very tolerant, and had a kind of feeling for me. She never said a word, but often gave me a smile when she saw how I had built myself up, with my books and my basket of work. I did very little work, I fear—now and then a few stitches when the spirit moved me, or when I had got well afloat in a dream, and was more tempted to follow it out than to read my book, as sometimes happened. At other times, and if the book were interesting, I used to get through volume after volume sitting there, paying no attention to anybody. And yet I did pay a kind of attention. Aunt Mary’s old ladies came in to call, and I heard them talk, though I very seldom listened; but for all that, if they had anything to say that was interesting, it is curious how I found it in my mind afterwards, as if the air had blown it to me. They came and went, and I had the sensation of their old bonnets gliding out and in, and their dresses rustling; and now and then had to jump up and shake hands with some one who knew me, and asked after my papa and mamma. Then Aunt Mary would give me a little smile again, and I slipped back to my window. She never seemed to mind. My mother would not have let me do it, I know. She would have remembered dozens of things there were to do. She would have sent me up-stairs to fetch something which I was quite sure she did not want, or down-stairs to carry some quite unnecessary message to the housemaid. She liked to keep me running about. Perhaps that was one reason why I was so fond of Aunt Mary’s drawing-room, and the deep recess of the window, and the curtain that fell half over it, and the broad window-seat where one could collect so many things without being found fault with for untidiness. Whenever we had anything the matter with us in these days, we were sent to St. Rule’s to get up our strength. And this was my case at the time of which I am going to speak.

Everybody had said, since ever I learned to speak, that I was fantastic and fanciful and dreamy, and all the other words with which a girl who may happen to like poetry, and to be fond of thinking, is so often made uncomfortable. People don’t know what they mean when they say fantastic. It sounds like Madge Wildfire or something of that sort. My mother thought I should always be busy, to keep nonsense out of my head. But really I was not at all fond of nonsense. I was rather serious than otherwise. I would have been no trouble to anybody if I had been left to myself. It was only that I had a sort of second-sight, and was conscious of things to which I paid no attention. Even when reading the most interesting book, the things that were being talked about blew in to me; and I heard what the people were saying in the streets as they passed under the window. Aunt Mary always said I could do two or indeed three things at once—both read and listen, and see. I am sure that I did not listen much, and seldom looked out, of set purpose—as some people do who notice what bonnets the ladies in the street have on; but I did hear what I couldn’t help hearing, even when I was reading my book, and I did see all sorts of things, though often for a whole half-hour I might never lift my eyes.

This does not explain what I said at the beginning, that there were many discussions about that window. It was, and still is, the last window in the row, of the College Library, which is opposite my aunt’s house in the High Street. Yet it is not exactly opposite, but a little to the west, so that I could see it best from the left side of my recess. I took it calmly for granted that it was a window like any other till I first heard the talk about it which was going on in the drawing-room.

“Have you never made up your mind, Mrs. Balcarres,” said old Mr. Pitmilly, “whether that window opposite is a window or no?” He said Mistress Balcarres—and he was always called Mr. Pitmilly, Morton: which was the name of his place.

“I am never sure of it, to tell the truth,” said Aunt Mary, “all these years.”

“Bless me!” said one of the old ladies, “and what window may that be?”

Mr. Pitmilly had a way of laughing as he spoke, which did not please me; but it was true that he was not perhaps desirous of pleasing me. He said, “Oh, just the window opposite,” with his laugh running through his words; “our friend can never make up her mind about it, though she has been living opposite it since—”

“You need never mind the date,” said another; “the Leebrary window! Dear me, what should it be but a window? up at that height it could not be a door.”

“The question is,” said my aunt, “if it is a real window with glass in it, or if it is merely painted, or if it once was a window, and has been built up. And the oftener people look at it, the less they are able to say.”

“Let me see this window,” said old Lady Carnbee, who was very active and strong-minded; and then they all came crowding upon me—three or four old ladies, very eager, and Mr. Pitmilly’s white hair appearing over their heads, and my aunt sitting quiet and smiling behind.

“I mind the window very well,” said Lady Carnbee; “ay: and so do more than me. But in its present appearance it is just like any other window; but has not been cleaned, I should say, in the memory of man.”

“I see what ye mean,” said one of the others. “It is just a very dead thing without any reflection in it; but I’ve seen as bad before.”

“Ay, it’s dead enough,” said another, “but that’s no rule; for these hizzies of women-servants in this ill age—”

“Nay, the women are well enough,” said the softest voice of all, which was Aunt Mary’s. “I will never let them risk their lives cleaning the outside of mine. And there are no women-servants in the Old Library: there is maybe something more in it than that.”

They were all pressing into my recess, pressing upon me, a row of old faces, peering into something they could not understand. I had a sense in my mind how curious it was, the wall of old ladies in their old satin gowns all glazed with age, Lady Carnbee with her lace about her head. Nobody was looking at me or thinking of me; but I felt unconsciously the contrast of my youngness to their oldness, and stared at them as they stared over my head at the Library window. I had given it no attention up to this time. I was more taken up with the old ladies than with the thing they were looking at.

“The framework is all right at least, I can see that, and pented black—”

“And the panes are pented black too. It’s no window, Mrs. Balcarres. It has been filled in, in the days of the window duties: you will mind, Leddy Carnbee.”

“Mind!” said that oldest lady. “I mind when your mother was marriet, Jeanie: and that’s neither the day nor yesterday. But as for the window, it’s just a delusion: and that is my opinion of the matter, if you ask me.”

“There’s a great want of light in that muckle room at the college,” said another. “If it was a window, the Leebrary would have more light.”

“One thing is clear,” said one of the younger ones, “it cannot be a window to see through. It may be filled in or it may be built up, but it is not a window to give light.”

“And who ever heard of a window that was no to see through?” Lady Carnbee said. I was fascinated by the look on her face, which was a curious scornful look as of one who knew more than she chose to say: and then my wandering fancy was caught by her hand as she held it up, throwing back the lace that dropped over it. Lady Carnbee’s lace was the chief thing about her—heavy black Spanish lace with large flowers. Everything she wore was trimmed with it. A large veil of it hung over her old bonnet. But her hand coming out of this heavy lace was a curious thing to see. She had very long fingers, very taper, which had been much admired in her youth; and her hand was very white, or rather more than white, pale, bleached, and bloodless, with large blue veins standing up upon the back; and she wore some fine rings, among others a big diamond in an ugly old claw setting. They were too big for her, and were wound round and round with yellow silk to make them keep on: and this little cushion of silk, turned brown with long wearing, had twisted round so that it was more conspicuous than the jewels; while the big diamond blazed underneath in the hollow of her hand, like some dangerous thing hiding and sending out darts of light. The hand, which seemed to come almost to a point, with this strange ornament underneath, clutched at my half-terrified imagination. It too seemed to mean far more than was said. I felt as if it might clutch me with sharp claws, and the lurking, dazzling creature bite—with a sting that would go to the heart.

Presently, however, the circle of the old faces broke up, the old ladies returned to their seats, and Mr. Pitmilly, small but very erect, stood up in the midst of them, talking with mild authority like a little oracle among the ladies. Only Lady Carnbee always contradicted the neat, little, old gentleman. She gesticulated, when she talked, like a Frenchwoman, and darted forth that hand of hers with the lace hanging over it, so that I always caught a glimpse of the lurking diamond. I thought she looked like a witch among the comfortable little group which gave such attention to everything Mr. Pitmilly said.

“For my part, it is my opinion there is no window there at all,” he said. “It’s very like the thing that’s called in scientific language an optical illusion. It arises generally, if I may use such a word in the presence of ladies, from a liver that is not just in the perfitt order and balance that organ demands—and then you will see things—a blue dog, I remember, was the thing in one case, and in another—”

“The man has gane gyte,” said Lady Carnbee; “I mind the windows in the Auld Leebrary as long as I mind anything. Is the Leebrary itself an optical illusion too?”

“Na, na,” and “No, no,” said the old ladies; “a blue dogue would be a strange vagary: but the Library we have all kent from our youth,” said one. “And I mind when the Assemblies were held there one year when the Town Hall was building,” another said.

“It is just a great divert to me,” said Aunt Mary: but what was strange was that she paused there, and said in a low tone, “now”: and then went on again, “for whoever comes to my house, there are aye discussions about that window. I have never just made up my mind about it myself. Sometimes I think it’s a case of these wicked window duties, as you said, Miss Jeanie, when half the windows in our houses were blocked up to save the tax. And then, I think, it may be due to that blank kind of building like the great new buildings on the Earthen Mound in Edinburgh, where the windows are just ornaments. And then whiles I am sure I can see the glass shining when the sun catches it in the afternoon.”

“You could so easily satisfy yourself, Mrs. Balcarres, if you were to—”

“Give a laddie a penny to cast a stone, and see what happens,” said Lady Carnbee.

“But I am not sure that I have any desire to satisfy myself,” Aunt Mary said. And then there was a stir in the room, and I had to come out from my recess and open the door for the old ladies and see them down-stairs, as they all went away following one another. Mr. Pitmilly gave his arm to Lady Carnbee, though she was always contradicting him; and so the tea-party dispersed. Aunt Mary came to the head of the stairs with her guests in an old-fashioned gracious way, while I went down with them to see that the maid was ready at the door. When I came back Aunt Mary was still standing in the recess looking out. Returning to my seat she said, with a kind of wistful look, “Well, honey: and what is your opinion?”

“I have no opinion. I was reading my book all the time,” I said.

“And so you were, honey, and no’ very civil; but all the same I ken well you heard every word we said.”

II

It was a night in June; dinner was long over, and had it been winter the maids would have been shutting up the house, and my Aunt Mary preparing to go up-stairs to her room. But it was still clear daylight, that daylight out of which the sun has been long gone, and which has no longer any rose reflections, but all has sunk into a pearly neutral tint—a light which is daylight yet is not day. We had taken a turn in the garden after dinner, and now we had returned to what we called our usual occupations. My aunt was reading. The English post had come in, and she had got her ‘Times,’ which was her great diversion. The ‘Scotsman’ was her morning reading, but she liked her ‘Times’ at night.

As for me, I too was at my usual occupation, which at that time was doing nothing. I had a book as usual, and was absorbed in it: but I was conscious of all that was going on all the same. The people strolled along the broad pavement, making remarks as they passed under the open window which came up into my story or my dream, and sometimes made me laugh. The tone and the faint sing-song, or rather chant, of the accent, which was “a wee Fifish,” was novel to me, and associated with holiday, and pleasant; and sometimes they said to each other something that was amusing, and often something that suggested a whole story; but presently they began to drop off, the footsteps slackened, the voices died away. It was getting late, though the clear soft daylight went on and on. All through the lingering evening, which seemed to consist of interminable hours, long but not weary, drawn out as if the spell of the light and the outdoor life might never end, I had now and then, quite unawares, cast a glance at the mysterious window which my aunt and her friends had discussed, as I felt, though I dared not say it even to myself, rather foolishly. It caught my eye without any intention on my part, as I paused, as it were, to take breath, in the flowing and current of undistinguishable thoughts and things from without and within which carried me along. First it occurred to me, with a little sensation of discovery, how absurd to say it was not a window, a living window, one to see through! Why, then, had they never seen it, these old folk? I saw as I looked up suddenly the faint greyness as of visible space within—a room behind, certainly dim, as it was natural a room should be on the other side of the street—quite indefinite: yet so clear that if some one were to come to the window there would be nothing surprising in it. For certainly there was a feeling of space behind the panes which these old half-blind ladies had disputed about whether they were glass or only fictitious panes marked on the wall. How silly! when eyes that could see could make it out in a minute. It was only a greyness at present, but it was unmistakable, a space that went back into gloom, as every room does when you look into it across a street. There were no curtains to show whether it was inhabited or not; but a room—oh, as distinctly as ever room was! I was pleased with myself, but said nothing, while Aunt Mary rustled her paper, waiting for a favourable moment to announce a discovery which settled her problem at once. Then I was carried away upon the stream again, and forgot the window, till somebody threw unawares a word from the outer world, “I’m goin’ hame; it’ll soon be dark.” Dark! what was the fool thinking of? it never would be dark if one waited out, wandering in the soft air for hours longer; and then my eyes, acquiring easily that new habit, looked across the way again.

Ah, now! nobody indeed had come to the window; and no light had been lighted, seeing it was still beautiful to read by—a still, clear, colourless light; but the room inside had certainly widened. I could see the grey space and air a little deeper, and a sort of vision, very dim, of a wall, and something against it; something dark, with the blackness that a solid article, however indistinctly seen, takes in the lighter darkness that is only space—a large, black, dark thing coming out into the grey. I looked more intently, and made sure it was a piece of furniture, either a writing-table or perhaps a large book-case. No doubt it must be the last, since this was part of the old library. I never visited the old College Library, but I had seen such places before, and I could well imagine it to myself. How curious that for all the time these old people had looked at it, they had never seen this before!

It was more silent now, and my eyes, I suppose, had grown dim with gazing, doing my best to make it out, when suddenly Aunt Mary said, “Will you ring the bell, my dear? I must have my lamp.”

“Your lamp?” I cried, “when it is still daylight.” But then I gave another look at my window, and perceived with a start that the light had indeed changed: for now I saw nothing. It was still light, but there was so much change in the light that my room, with the grey space and the large shadowy bookcase, had gone out, and I saw them no more: for even a Scotch night in June, though it looks as if it would never end, does darken at the last. I had almost cried out, but checked myself, and rang the bell for Aunt Mary, and made up my mind I would say nothing till next morning, when to be sure naturally it would be more clear.

Next morning I rather think I forgot all about it—or was busy: or was more idle than usual: the two things meant nearly the same. At all events I thought no more of the window, though I still sat in my own, opposite to it, but occupied with some other fancy. Aunt Mary’s visitors came as usual in the afternoon; but their talk was of other things, and for a day or two nothing at all happened to bring back my thoughts into this channel. It might be nearly a week before the subject came back, and once more it was old Lady Carnbee who set me thinking; not that she said anything upon that particular theme. But she was the last of my aunt’s afternoon guests to go away, and when she rose to leave she threw up her hands, with those lively gesticulations which so many old Scotch ladies have. “My faith!” said she, “there is that bairn there still like a dream. Is the creature bewitched, Mary Balcarres? and is she bound to sit there by night and by day for the rest of her days? You should mind that there’s things about, uncanny for women of our blood.”

I was too much startled at first to recognise that it was of me she was speaking. She was like a figure in a picture, with her pale face the colour of ashes, and the big pattern of the Spanish lace hanging half over it, and her hand held up, with the big diamond blazing at me from the inside of her uplifted palm. It was held up in surprise, but it looked as if it were raised in malediction; and the diamond threw out darts of light and glared and twinkled at me. If it had been in its right place it would not have mattered; but there, in the open of the hand! I started up, half in terror, half in wrath. And then the old lady laughed, and her hand dropped. “I’ve wakened you to life, and broke the spell,” she said, nodding her old head at me, while the large black silk flowers of the lace waved and threatened. And she took my arm to go down-stairs, laughing and bidding me be steady, and no’ tremble and shake like a broken reed. “You should be as steady as a rock at your age. I was like a young tree,” she said, leaning so heavily that my willowy girlish frame quivered—“I was a support to virtue, like Pamela, in my time.”

“Aunt Mary, Lady Carnbee is a witch!” I cried, when I came back.

“Is that what you think, honey? well: maybe she once was,” said Aunt Mary, whom nothing surprised.

And it was that night once more after dinner, and after the post came in, and the ‘Times,’ that I suddenly saw the Library window again. I had seen it every day and noticed nothing; but to-night, still in a little tumult of mind over Lady Carnbee and her wicked diamond which wished me harm, and her lace which waved threats and warnings at me, I looked across the street, and there I saw quite plainly the room opposite, far more clear than before. I saw dimly that it must be a large room, and that the big piece of furniture against the wall was a writing-desk. That in a moment, when first my eyes rested upon it, was quite clear: a large old-fashioned escritoire, standing out into the room: and I knew by the shape of it that it had a great many pigeon-holes and little drawers in the back, and a large table for writing. There was one just like it in my father’s library at home. It was such a surprise to see it all so clearly that I closed my eyes, for the moment almost giddy, wondering how papa’s desk could have come here—and then when I reminded myself that this was nonsense, and that there were many such writing-tables besides papa’s, and looked again—lo! it had all become quite vague and indistinct as it was at first; and I saw nothing but the blank window, of which the old ladies could never be certain whether it was filled up to avoid the window-tax, or whether it had ever been a window at all.

This occupied my mind very much, and yet I did not say anything to Aunt Mary. For one thing, I rarely saw anything at all in the early part of the day; but then that is natural: you can never see into a place from outside, whether it is an empty room or a looking-glass, or people’s eyes, or anything else that is mysterious, in the day. It has, I suppose, something to do with the light. But in the evening in June in Scotland—then is the time to see. For it is daylight, yet it is not day, and there is a quality in it which I cannot describe, it is so clear, as if every object was a reflection of itself.

I used to see more and more of the room as the days went on. The large escritoire stood out more and more into the space: with sometimes white glimmering things, which looked like papers, lying on it: and once or twice I was sure I saw a pile of books on the floor close to the writing-table, as if they had gilding upon them in broken specks, like old books. It was always about the time when the lads in the street began to call to each other that they were going home, and sometimes a shriller voice would come from one of the doors, bidding somebody to “cry upon the laddies” to come back to their suppers. That was always the time I saw best, though it was close upon the moment when the veil seemed to fall and the clear radiance became less living, and all the sounds died out of the street, and Aunt Mary said in her soft voice, “Honey! will you ring for the lamp?” She said honey as people say darling: and I think it is a prettier word.

Then finally, while I sat one evening with my book in my hand, looking straight across the street, not distracted by anything, I saw a little movement within. It was not any one visible—but everybody must know what it is to see the stir in the air, the little disturbance—you cannot tell what it is, but that it indicates some one there, even though you can see no one. Perhaps it is a shadow making just one flicker in the still place. You may look at an empty room and the furniture in it for hours, and then suddenly there will be the flicker, and you know that something has come into it. It might only be a dog or a cat; it might be, if that were possible, a bird flying across; but it is some one, something living, which is so different, so completely different, in a moment from the things that are not living. It seemed to strike quite through me, and I gave a little cry. Then Aunt Mary stirred a little, and put down the huge newspaper that almost covered her from sight, and said, “What is it, honey?” I cried “Nothing,” with a little gasp, quickly, for I did not want to be disturbed just at this moment when somebody was coming! But I suppose she was not satisfied, for she got up and stood behind to see what it was, putting her hand on my shoulder. It was the softest touch in the world, but I could have flung it off angrily: for that moment everything was still again, and the place grew grey and I saw no more.

“Nothing,” I repeated, but I was so vexed I could have cried. “I told you it was nothing, Aunt Mary. Don’t you believe me, that you come to look—and spoil it all!”

I did not mean of course to say these last words; they were forced out of me. I was so much annoyed to see it all melt away like a dream: for it was no dream, but as real as—as real as—myself or anything I ever saw.

She gave my shoulder a little pat with her hand. “Honey,” she said, “were you looking at something? Is’t that? is’t that?” “Is it what?” I wanted to say, shaking off her hand, but something in me stopped me: for I said nothing at all, and she went quietly back to her place. I suppose she must have rung the bell herself, for immediately I felt the soft flood of the light behind me, and the evening outside dimmed down, as it did every night, and I saw nothing more.

It was next day, I think, in the afternoon that I spoke. It was brought on by something she said about her fine work. “I get a mist before my eyes,” she said; “you will have to learn my old lace stitches, honey—for I soon will not see to draw the threads.”

“Oh, I hope you will keep your sight,” I cried, without thinking what I was saying. I was then young and very matter-of-fact. I had not found out that one may mean something, yet not half or a hundredth part of what one seems to mean: and even then probably hoping to be contradicted if it is anyhow against one’s self.

“My sight!” she said, looking up at me with a look that was almost angry; “there is no question of losing my sight—on the contrary, my eyes are very strong. I may not see to draw fine threads, but I see at a distance as well as ever I did—as well as you do.”

“I did not mean any harm, Aunt Mary,” I said. “I thought you said—But how can your sight be as good as ever when you are in doubt about that window? I can see into the room as clear as—” My voice wavered, for I had just looked up and across the street, and I could have sworn that there was no window at all, but only a false image of one painted on the wall.

“Ah!” she said, with a little tone of keenness and of surprise: and she half rose up, throwing down her work hastily, as if she meant to come to me: then, perhaps seeing the bewildered look on my face, she paused and hesitated—“Ay, honey!” she said, “have you got so far ben as that?”

What did she mean? Of course I knew all the old Scotch phrases as well as I knew myself; but it is a comfort to take refuge in a little ignorance, and I know I pretended not to understand whenever I was put out. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘far ben,’” I cried out, very impatient. I don’t know what might have followed, but some one just then came to call, and she could only give me a look before she went forward, putting out her hand to her visitor. It was a very soft look, but anxious, and as if she did not know what to do: and she shook her head a very little, and I thought, though there was a smile on her face, there was something wet about her eyes. I retired into my recess, and nothing more was said.

But it was very tantalising that it should fluctuate so; for sometimes I saw that room quite plain and clear—quite as clear as I could see papa’s library, for example, when I shut my eyes. I compared it naturally to my father’s study, because of the shape of the writing-table, which, as I tell you, was the same as his. At times I saw the papers on the table quite plain, just as I had seen his papers many a day. And the little pile of books on the floor at the foot—not ranged regularly in order, but put down one above the other, with all their angles going different ways, and a speck of the old gilding shining here and there. And then again at other times I saw nothing, absolutely nothing, and was no better than the old ladies who had peered over my head, drawing their eyelids together, and arguing that the window had been shut up because of the old long-abolished window tax, or else that it had never been a window at all. It annoyed me very much at those dull moments to feel that I too puckered up my eyelids and saw no better than they.

Aunt Mary’s old ladies came and went day after day while June went on. I was to go back in July, and I felt that I should be very unwilling indeed to leave until I had quite cleared up—as I was indeed in the way of doing—the mystery of that window which changed so strangely and appeared quite a different thing, not only to different people, but to the same eyes at different times. Of course I said to myself it must simply be an effect of the light. And yet I did not quite like that explanation either, but would have been better pleased to make out to myself that it was some superiority in me which made it so clear to me, if it were only the great superiority of young eyes over old—though that was not quite enough to satisfy me, seeing it was a superiority which I shared with every little lass and lad in the street. I rather wanted, I believe, to think that there was some particular insight in me which gave clearness to my sight—which was a most impertinent assumption, but really did not mean half the harm it seems to mean when it is put down here in black and white.

I had several times again, however, seen the room quite plain, and made out that it was a large room, with a great picture in a dim gilded frame hanging on the farther wall, and many other pieces of solid furniture making a blackness here and there, besides the great escritoire against the wall, which had evidently been placed near the window for the sake of the light. One thing became visible to me after another, till I almost thought I should end by being able to read the old lettering on one of the big volumes which projected from the others and caught the light; but this was all preliminary to the great event which happened about Midsummer Day—the day of St. John, which was once so much thought of as a festival, but now means nothing at all in Scotland any more than any other of the saints’ days: which I shall always think a great pity and loss to Scotland, whatever Aunt Mary may say.

III

It was about midsummer, I cannot say exactly to a day when, but near that time, when the great event happened. I had grown very well acquainted by this time with that large dim room. Not only the escritoire, which was very plain to me now, with the papers upon it, and the books at its foot, but the great picture that hung against the farther wall, and various other shadowy pieces of furniture, especially a chair which one evening I saw had been moved into the space before the escritoire,—a little change which made my heart beat, for it spoke so distinctly of some one who must have been there, the some one who had already made me start, two or three times before, by some vague shadow of him or thrill of him which made a sort of movement in the silent space: a movement which made me sure that next minute I must see something or hear something which would explain the whole—if it were not that something always happened outside to stop it, at the very moment of its accomplishment. I had no warning this time of movement or shadow. I had been looking into the room very attentively a little while before, and had made out everything almost clearer than ever; and then had bent my attention again on my book, and read a chapter or two at a most exciting period of the story: and consequently had quite left St. Rule’s, and the High Street, and the College Library, and was really in a South American forest, almost throttled by the flowery creepers, and treading softly lest I should put my foot on a scorpion or a dangerous snake.

At this moment something suddenly calling my attention to the outside, I looked across, and then, with a start, sprang up, for I could not contain myself. I don’t know what I said, but enough to startle the people in the room, one of whom was old Mr. Pitmilly. They all looked round upon me to ask what was the matter. And when I gave my usual answer of “Nothing,” sitting down again shamefaced but very much excited, Mr. Pitmilly got up and came forward, and looked out, apparently to see what was the cause. He saw nothing, for he went back again, and I could hear him telling Aunt Mary not to be alarmed, for Missy had fallen into a doze with the heat, and had startled herself waking up, at which they all laughed: another time I could have killed him for his impertinence, but my mind was too much taken up now to pay any attention. My head was throbbing and my heart beating. I was in such high excitement, however, that to restrain myself completely, to be perfectly silent, was more easy to me then than at any other time of my life. I waited until the old gentleman had taken his seat again, and then I looked back. Yes, there he was! I had not been deceived. I knew then, when I looked across, that this was what I had been looking for all the time—that I had known he was there, and had been waiting for him, every time there was that flicker of movement in the room—him and no one else. And there at last, just as I had expected, he was. I don’t know that in reality I ever had expected him, or any one: but this was what I felt when, suddenly looking into that curious dim room, I saw him there.

He was sitting in the chair, which he must have placed for himself, or which some one else in the dead of night when nobody was looking must have set for him, in front of the escritoire—with the back of his head towards me, writing. The light fell upon him from the left hand, and therefore upon his shoulders and the side of his head, which, however, was too much turned away to show anything of his face. Oh, how strange that there should be some one staring at him as I was doing, and he never to turn his head, to make a movement! If any one stood and looked at me, were I in the soundest sleep that ever was, I would wake, I would jump up, I would feel it through everything. But there he sat and never moved. You are not to suppose, though I said the light fell upon him from the left hand, that there was very much light. There never is in a room you are looking into like that across the street; but there was enough to see him by—the outline of his figure dark and solid, seated in the chair, and the fairness of his head visible faintly, a clear spot against the dimness. I saw this outline against the dim gilding of the frame of the large picture which hung on the farther wall.

I sat all the time the visitors were there, in a sort of rapture, gazing at this figure. I knew no reason why I should be so much moved. In an ordinary way, to see a student at an opposite window quietly doing his work might have interested me a little, but certainly it would not have moved me in any such way. It is always interesting to have a glimpse like this of an unknown life—to see so much and yet know so little, and to wonder, perhaps, what the man is doing, and why he never turns his head. One would go to the window—but not too close, lest he should see you and think you were spying upon him—and one would ask, Is he still there? is he writing, writing always? I wonder what he is writing! And it would be a great amusement: but no more. This was not my feeling at all in the present case. It was a sort of breathless watch, an absorption. I did not feel that I had eyes for anything else, or any room in my mind for another thought. I no longer heard, as I generally did, the stories and the wise remarks (or foolish) of Aunt Mary’s old ladies or Mr. Pitmilly. I heard only a murmur behind me, the interchange of voices, one softer, one sharper; but it was not as in the time when I sat reading and heard every word, till the story in my book, and the stories they were telling (what they said almost always shaped into stories), were all mingled into each other, and the hero in the novel became somehow the hero (or more likely heroine) of them all. But I took no notice of what they were saying now. And it was not that there was anything very interesting to look at, except the fact that he was there. He did nothing to keep up the absorption of my thoughts. He moved just so much as a man will do when he is very busily writing, thinking of nothing else. There was a faint turn of his head as he went from one side to another of the page he was writing; but it appeared to be a long long page which never wanted turning. Just a little inclination when he was at the end of the line, outward, and then a little inclination inward when he began the next. That was little enough to keep one gazing. But I suppose it was the gradual course of events leading up to this, the finding out of one thing after another as the eyes got accustomed to the vague light: first the room itself, and then the writing-table, and then the other furniture, and last of all the human inhabitant who gave it all meaning. This was all so interesting that it was like a country which one had discovered. And then the extraordinary blindness of the other people who disputed among themselves whether it was a window at all! I did not, I am sure, wish to be disrespectful, and I was very fond of my Aunt Mary, and I liked Mr. Pitmilly well enough, and I was afraid of Lady Carnbee. But yet to think of the—I know I ought not to say stupidity—the blindness of them, the foolishness, the insensibility! discussing it as if a thing that your eyes could see was a thing to discuss! It would have been unkind to think it was because they were old and their faculties dimmed. It is so sad to think that the faculties grow dim, that such a woman as my Aunt Mary should fail in seeing, or hearing, or feeling, that I would not have dwelt on it for a moment, it would have seemed so cruel! And then such a clever old lady as Lady Carnbee, who could see through a millstone, people said—and Mr. Pitmilly, such an old man of the world. It did indeed bring tears to my eyes to think that all those clever people, solely by reason of being no longer young as I was, should have the simplest things shut out from them; and for all their wisdom and their knowledge be unable to see what a girl like me could see so easily. I was too much grieved for them to dwell upon that thought, and half ashamed, though perhaps half proud too, to be so much better off than they.

All those thoughts flitted through my mind as I sat and gazed across the street. And I felt there was so much going on in that room across the street! He was so absorbed in his writing, never looked up, never paused for a word, never turned round in his chair, or got up and walked about the room as my father did. Papa is a great writer, everybody says: but he would have come to the window and looked out, he would have drummed with his fingers on the pane, he would have watched a fly and helped it over a difficulty, and played with the fringe of the curtain, and done a dozen other nice, pleasant, foolish things, till the next sentence took shape. “My dear, I am waiting for a word,” he would say to my mother when she looked at him, with a question why he was so idle, in her eyes; and then he would laugh, and go back again to his writing-table. But He over there never stopped at all. It was like a fascination. I could not take my eyes from him and that little scarcely perceptible movement he made, turning his head. I trembled with impatience to see him turn the page, or perhaps throw down his finished sheet on the floor, as somebody looking into a window like me once saw Sir Walter do, sheet after sheet. I should have cried out if this Unknown had done that. I should not have been able to help myself, whoever had been present; and gradually I got into such a state of suspense waiting for it to be done that my head grew hot and my hands cold. And then, just when there was a little movement of his elbow, as if he were about to do this, to be called away by Aunt Mary to see Lady Carnbee to the door! I believe I did not hear her till she had called me three times, and then I stumbled up, all flushed and hot, and nearly crying. When I came out from the recess to give the old lady my arm (Mr. Pitmilly had gone away some time before), she put up her hand and stroked my cheek. “What ails the bairn?” she said; “she’s fevered. You must not let her sit her lane in the window, Mary Balcarres. You and me know what comes of that.” Her old fingers had a strange touch, cold like something not living, and I felt that dreadful diamond sting me on the cheek.

I do not say that this was not just a part of my excitement and suspense; and I know it is enough to make any one laugh when the excitement was all about an unknown man writing in a room on the other side of the way, and my impatience because he never came to an end of the page. If you think I was not quite as well aware of this as any one could be! but the worst was that this dreadful old lady felt my heart beating against her arm that was within mine. “You are just in a dream,” she said to me, with her old voice close at my ear as we went down-stairs. “I don’t know who it is about, but it’s bound to be some man that is not worth it. If you were wise you would think of him no more.”

“I am thinking of no man!” I said, half crying. “It is very unkind and dreadful of you to say so, Lady Carnbee. I never thought of—any man, in all my life!” I cried in a passion of indignation. The old lady clung tighter to my arm, and pressed it to her, not unkindly.

“Poor little bird,” she said, “how it’s strugglin’ and flutterin’! I’m not saying but what it’s more dangerous when it’s all for a dream.”

She was not at all unkind; but I was very angry and excited, and would scarcely shake that old pale hand which she put out to me from her carriage window when I had helped her in. I was angry with her, and I was afraid of the diamond, which looked up from under her finger as if it saw through and through me; and whether you believe me or not, I am certain that it stung me again—a sharp malignant prick, oh full of meaning! She never wore gloves, but only black lace mittens, through which that horrible diamond gleamed.

I ran up-stairs—she had been the last to go and Aunt Mary too had gone to get ready for dinner, for it was late. I hurried to my place, and looked across, with my heart beating more than ever. I made quite sure I should see the finished sheet lying white upon the floor. But what I gazed at was only the dim blank of that window which they said was no window. The light had changed in some wonderful way during that five minutes I had been gone, and there was nothing, nothing, not a reflection, not a glimmer. It looked exactly as they all said, the blank form of a window painted on the wall. It was too much: I sat down in my excitement and cried as if my heart would break. I felt that they had done something to it, that it was not natural, that I could not bear their unkindness—even Aunt Mary. They thought it not good for me! not good for me! and they had done something—even Aunt Mary herself—and that wicked diamond that hid itself in Lady Carnbee’s hand. Of course I knew all this was ridiculous as well as you could tell me; but I was exasperated by the disappointment and the sudden stop to all my excited feelings, and I could not bear it. It was more strong than I.

I was late for dinner, and naturally there were some traces in my eyes that I had been crying when I came into the full light in the dining-room, where Aunt Mary could look at me at her pleasure, and I could not run away. She said, “Honey, you have been shedding tears. I’m loth, loth that a bairn of your mother’s should be made to shed tears in my house.”

“I have not been made to shed tears,” cried I; and then, to save myself another fit of crying, I burst out laughing and said, “I am afraid of that dreadful diamond on old Lady Carnbee’s hand. It bites—I am sure it bites! Aunt Mary, look here.”

“You foolish lassie,” Aunt Mary said; but she looked at my cheek under the light of the lamp, and then she gave it a little pat with her soft hand. “Go away with you, you silly bairn. There is no bite; but a flushed cheek, my honey, and a wet eye. You must just read out my paper to me after dinner when the post is in: and we’ll have no more thinking and no more dreaming for to-night.”

“Yes, Aunt Mary,” said I. But I knew what would happen; for when she opens up her ‘Times,’ all full of the news of the world, and the speeches and things which she takes an interest in, though I cannot tell why—she forgets. And as I kept very quiet and made not a sound, she forgot to-night what she had said, and the curtain hung a little more over me than usual, and I sat down in my recess as if I had been a hundred miles away. And my heart gave a great jump, as if it would have come out of my breast; for he was there. But not as he had been in the morning—I suppose the light, perhaps, was not good enough to go on with his work without a lamp or candles—for he had turned away from the table and was fronting the window, sitting leaning back in his chair, and turning his head to me. Not to me—he knew nothing about me. I thought he was not looking at anything; but with his face turned my way.

My heart was in my mouth: it was so unexpected, so strange! though why it should have seemed strange I know not, for there was no communication between him and me that it should have moved me; and what could be more natural than that a man, wearied of his work, and feeling the want perhaps of more light, and yet that it was not dark enough to light a lamp, should turn round in his own chair, and rest a little, and think—perhaps of nothing at all? Papa always says he is thinking of nothing at all. He says things blow through his mind as if the doors were open, and he has no responsibility. What sort of things were blowing through this man’s mind? or was he thinking, still thinking, of what he had been writing and going on with it still? The thing that troubled me most was that I could not make out his face. It is very difficult to do so when you see a person only through two windows, your own and his. I wanted very much to recognise him afterwards if I should chance to meet him in the street. If he had only stood up and moved about the room, I should have made out the rest of his figure, and then I should have known him again; or if he had only come to the window (as papa always did), then I should have seen his face clearly enough to have recognised him. But, to be sure, he did not see any need to do anything in order that I might recognise him, for he did not know I existed; and probably if he had known I was watching him, he would have been annoyed and gone away.

But he was as immovable there facing the window as he had been seated at the desk. Sometimes he made a little faint stir with a hand or a foot, and I held my breath, hoping he was about to rise from his chair—but he never did it. And with all the efforts I made I could not be sure of his face. I puckered my eyelids together as old Miss Jeanie did who was shortsighted, and I put my hands on each side of my face to concentrate the light on him: but it was all in vain. Either the face changed as I sat staring, or else it was the light that was not good enough, or I don’t know what it was. His hair seemed to me light—certainly there was no dark line about his head, as there would have been had it been very dark—and I saw, where it came across the old gilt frame on the wall behind, that it must be fair: and I am almost sure he had no beard. Indeed I am sure that he had no beard, for the outline of his face was distinct enough; and the daylight was still quite clear out of doors, so that I recognised perfectly a baker’s boy who was on the pavement opposite, and whom I should have known again whenever I had met him: as if it was of the least importance to recognise a baker’s boy! There was one thing, however, rather curious about this boy. He had been throwing stones at something or somebody. In St. Rule’s they have a great way of throwing stones at each other, and I suppose there had been a battle. I suppose also that he had one stone in his hand left over from the battle, and his roving eye took in all the incidents of the street to judge where he could throw it with most effect and mischief. But apparently he found nothing worthy of it in the street, for he suddenly turned round with a flick under his leg to show his cleverness, and aimed it straight at the window. I remarked without remarking that it struck with a hard sound and without any breaking of glass, and fell straight down on the pavement. But I took no notice of this even in my mind, so intently was I watching the figure within, which moved not nor took the slightest notice, and remained just as dimly clear, as perfectly seen, yet as indistinguishable, as before. And then the light began to fail a little, not diminishing the prospect within, but making it still less distinct than it had been.

Then I jumped up, feeling Aunt Mary’s hand upon my shoulder. “Honey,” she said, “I asked you twice to ring the bell; but you did not hear me.”

“Oh, Aunt Mary!” I cried in great penitence, but turning again to the window in spite of myself.

“You must come away from there: you must come away from there,” she said, almost as if she were angry: and then her soft voice grew softer, and she gave me a kiss: “never mind about the lamp, honey; I have rung myself, and it is coming; but, silly bairn, you must not aye be dreaming—your little head will turn.”

All the answer I made, for I could scarcely speak, was to give a little wave with my hand to the window on the other side of the street.

She stood there patting me softly on the shoulder for a whole minute or more, murmuring something that sounded like, “She must go away, she must go away.” Then she said, always with her hand soft on my shoulder, “Like a dream when one awaketh.” And when I looked again, I saw the blank of an opaque surface and nothing more.

Aunt Mary asked me no more questions. She made me come into the room and sit in the light and read something to her. But I did not know what I was reading, for there suddenly came into my mind and took possession of it, the thud of the stone upon the window, and its descent straight down, as if from some hard substance that threw it off: though I had myself seen it strike upon the glass of the panes across the way.

IV

I am afraid I continued in a state of great exaltation and commotion of mind for some time. I used to hurry through the day till the evening came, when I could watch my neighbour through the window opposite. I did not talk much to any one, and I never said a word about my own questions and wonderings. I wondered who he was, what he was doing, and why he never came till the evening (or very rarely); and I also wondered much to what house the room belonged in which he sat. It seemed to form a portion of the old College Library, as I have often said. The window was one of the line of windows which I understood lighted the large hall; but whether this room belonged to the library itself, or how its occupant gained access to it, I could not tell. I made up my mind that it must open out of the hall, and that the gentleman must be the Librarian or one of his assistants, perhaps kept busy all the day in his official duties, and only able to get to his desk and do his own private work in the evening. One has heard of so many things like that—a man who had to take up some other kind of work for his living, and then when his leisure-time came, gave it all up to something he really loved—some study or some book he was writing. My father himself at one time had been like that. He had been in the Treasury all day, and then in the evening wrote his books, which made him famous. His daughter, however little she might know of other things, could not but know that! But it discouraged me very much when somebody pointed out to me one day in the street an old gentleman who wore a wig and took a great deal of snuff, and said, That’s the Librarian of the old College. It gave me a great shock for a moment; but then I remembered that an old gentleman has generally assistants, and that it must be one of them.

Gradually I became quite sure of this. There was another small window above, which twinkled very much when the sun shone, and looked a very kindly bright little window, above that dullness of the other which hid so much. I made up my mind this was the window of his other room, and that these two chambers at the end of the beautiful hall were really beautiful for him to live in, so near all the books, and so retired and quiet, that nobody knew of them. What a fine thing for him! and you could see what use he made of his good fortune as he sat there, so constant at his writing for hours together. Was it a book he was writing, or could it be perhaps Poems? This was a thought which made my heart beat; but I concluded with much regret that it could not be Poems, because no one could possibly write Poems like that, straight off, without pausing for a word or a rhyme. Had they been Poems he must have risen up, he must have paced about the room or come to the window as papa did—not that papa wrote Poems: he always said, “I am not worthy even to speak of such prevailing mysteries,” shaking his head—which gave me a wonderful admiration and almost awe of a Poet, who was thus much greater even than papa. But I could not believe that a poet could have kept still for hours and hours like that. What could it be then? perhaps it was history; that is a great thing to work at, but you would not perhaps need to move nor to stride up and down, or look out upon the sky and the wonderful light.

He did move now and then, however, though he never came to the window. Sometimes, as I have said, he would turn round in his chair and turn his face towards it, and sit there for a long time musing when the light had begun to fail, and the world was full of that strange day which was night, that light without colour, in which everything was so clearly visible, and there were no shadows. “It was between the night and the day, when the fairy folk have power.” This was the after-light of the wonderful, long, long summer evening, the light without shadows. It had a spell in it, and sometimes it made me afraid: and all manner of strange thoughts seemed to come in, and I always felt that if only we had a little more vision in our eyes we might see beautiful folk walking about in it, who were not of our world. I thought most likely he saw them, from the way he sat there looking out: and this made my heart expand with the most curious sensation, as if of pride that, though I could not see, he did, and did not even require to come to the window, as I did, sitting close in the depth of the recess, with my eyes upon him, and almost seeing things through his eyes.

I was so much absorbed in these thoughts and in watching him every evening—for now he never missed an evening, but was always there—that people began to remark that I was looking pale and that I could not be well, for I paid no attention when they talked to me, and did not care to go out, nor to join the other girls for their tennis, nor to do anything that others did; and some said to Aunt Mary that I was quickly losing all the ground I had gained, and that she could never send me back to my mother with a white face like that. Aunt Mary had begun to look at me anxiously for some time before that, and, I am sure, held secret consultations over me, sometimes with the doctor, and sometimes with her old ladies, who thought they knew more about young girls than even the doctors. And I could hear them saying to her that I wanted diversion, that I must be diverted, and that she must take me out more, and give a party, and that when the summer visitors began to come there would perhaps be a ball or two, or Lady Carnbee would get up a picnic. “And there’s my young lord coming home,” said the old lady whom they called Miss Jeanie, “and I never knew the young lassie yet that would not cock up her bonnet at the sight of a young lord.”

But Aunt Mary shook her head. “I would not lippen much to the young lord,” she said. “His mother is sore set upon siller for him; and my poor bit honey has no fortune to speak of. No, we must not fly so high as the young lord; but I will gladly take her about the country to see the old castles and towers. It will perhaps rouse her up a little.”

“And if that does not answer we must think of something else,” the old lady said.

I heard them perhaps that day because they were talking of me, which is always so effective a way of making you hear—for latterly I had not been paying any attention to what they were saying; and I thought to myself how little they knew, and how little I cared about even the old castles and curious houses, having something else in my mind. But just about that time Mr. Pitmilly came in, who was always a friend to me, and, when he heard them talking, he managed to stop them and turn the conversation into another channel. And after a while, when the ladies were gone away, he came up to my recess, and gave a glance right over my head. And then he asked my Aunt Mary if ever she had settled her question about the window opposite, “that you thought was a window sometimes, and then not a window, and many curious things,” the old gentleman said.

My Aunt Mary gave me another very wistful look; and then she said, “Indeed, Mr. Pitmilly, we are just where we were, and I am quite as unsettled as ever; and I think my niece she has taken up my views, for I see her many a time looking across and wondering, and I am not clear now what her opinion is.”

“My opinion!” I said, “Aunt Mary.” I could not help being a little scornful, as one is when one is very young. “I have no opinion. There is not only a window but there is a room, and I could show you—” I was going to say, “show you the gentleman who sits and writes in it,” but I stopped, not knowing what they might say, and looked from one to another. “I could tell you—all the furniture that is in it,” I said. And then I felt something like a flame that went over my face, and that all at once my cheeks were burning. I thought they gave a little glance at each other, but that may have been folly. “There is a great picture, in a big dim frame,” I said, feeling a little breathless, “on the wall opposite the window—”

“Is there so?” said Mr. Pitmilly, with a little laugh. And he said, “Now I will tell you what we’ll do. You know that there is a conversation party, or whatever they call it, in the big room to-night, and it will be all open and lighted up. And it is a handsome room, and two-three things well worth looking at. I will just step along after we have all got our dinner, and take you over to the pairty, madam—Missy and you—”

“Dear me!” said Aunt Mary. “I have not gone to a pairty for more years than I would like to say—and never once to the Library Hall.” Then she gave a little shiver, and said quite low, “I could not go there.”

“Then you will just begin again to-night, madam,” said Mr. Pitmilly, taking no notice of this, “and a proud man will I be leading in Mistress Balcarres that was once the pride of the ball!”

“Ah, once!” said Aunt Mary, with a low little laugh and then a sigh. “And we’ll not say how long ago;” and after that she made a pause, looking always at me: and then she said, “I accept your offer, and we’ll put on our braws; and I hope you will have no occasion to think shame of us. But why not take your dinner here?”

That was how it was settled, and the old gentleman went away to dress, looking quite pleased. But I came to Aunt Mary as soon as he was gone, and besought her not to make me go. “I like the long bonnie night and the light that lasts so long. And I cannot bear to dress up and go out, wasting it all in a stupid party. I hate parties, Aunt Mary!” I cried, “and I would far rather stay here.”

“My honey,” she said, taking both my hands, “I know it will maybe be a blow to you, but it’s better so.”

“How could it be a blow to me?” I cried; “but I would far rather not go.”

“You’ll just go with me, honey, just this once: it is not often I go out. You will go with me this one night, just this one night, my honey sweet.”

I am sure there were tears in Aunt Mary’s eyes, and she kissed me between the words. There was nothing more that I could say; but how I grudged the evening! A mere party, a conversazione (when all the College was away, too, and nobody to make conversation!), instead of my enchanted hour at my window and the soft strange light, and the dim face looking out, which kept me wondering and wondering what was he thinking of, what was he looking for, who was he? all one wonder and mystery and question, through the long, long, slowly fading night!

It occurred to me, however, when I was dressing—though I was so sure that he would prefer his solitude to everything—that he might perhaps, it was just possible, be there. And when I thought of that, I took out my white frock though Janet had laid out my blue one—and my little pearl necklace which I had thought was too good to wear. They were not very large pearls, but they were real pearls, and very even and lustrous though they were small; and though I did not think much of my appearance then, there must have been something about me—pale as I was but apt to colour in a moment, with my dress so white, and my pearls so white, and my hair all shadowy perhaps, that was pleasant to look at: for even old Mr. Pitmilly had a strange look in his eyes, as if he was not only pleased but sorry too, perhaps thinking me a creature that would have troubles in this life, though I was so young and knew them not. And when Aunt Mary looked at me, there was a little quiver about her mouth. She herself had on her pretty lace and her white hair very nicely done, and looking her best. As for Mr. Pitmilly, he had a beautiful fine French cambrie frill to his shirt, plaited in the most minute plaits, and with a diamond pin in it which sparkled as much as Lady Carnbee’s ring; but this was a fine frank kindly stone, that looked you straight in the face and sparkled, with the light dancing in it as if it were pleased to see you, and to be shining on that old gentleman’s honest and faithful breast: for he had been one of Aunt Mary’s lovers in their early days, and still thought there was nobody like her in the world.

I had got into quite a happy commotion of mind by the time we set out across the street in the soft light of the evening to the Library Hall. Perhaps, after all, I should see him, and see the room which I was so well acquainted with, and find out why he sat there so constantly and never was seen abroad. I thought I might even hear what he was working at, which would be such a pleasant thing to tell papa when I went home. A friend of mine at St. Rule’s—oh, far, far more busy than you ever were, papa!—and then my father would laugh as he always did, and say he was but an idler and never busy at all.

The room was all light and bright, flowers wherever flowers could be, and the long lines of the books that went along the walls on each side, lighting up wherever there was a line of gilding or an ornament, with a little response. It dazzled me at first all that light: but I was very eager, though I kept very quiet, looking round to see if perhaps in any corner, in the middle of any group, he would be there. I did not expect to see him among the ladies. He would not be with them,—he was too studious, too silent: but, perhaps among that circle of grey heads at the upper end of the room—perhaps—

No: I am not sure that it was not half a pleasure to me to make quite sure that there was not one whom I could take for him, who was at all like my vague image of him. No: it was absurd to think that he would be here, amid all that sound of voices, under the glare of that light. I felt a little proud to think that he was in his room as usual, doing his work, or thinking so deeply over it, as when he turned round in his chair with his face to the light.

I was thus getting a little composed and quiet in my mind, for now that the expectation of seeing him was over, though it was a disappointment, it was a satisfaction too—when Mr. Pitmilly came up to me, holding out his arm. “Now,” he said, “I am going to take you to see the curiosities.” I thought to myself that after I had seen them and spoken to everybody I knew, Aunt Mary would let me go home, so I went very willingly, though I did not care for the curiosities. Something, however, struck me strangely as we walked up the room. It was the air, rather fresh and strong, from an open window at the east end of the hall. How should there be a window there? I hardly saw what it meant for the first moment, but it blew in my face as if there was some meaning in it, and I felt very uneasy without seeing why.

Then there was another thing that startled me. On that side of the wall which was to the street there seemed no windows at all. A long line of bookcases filled it from end to end. I could not see what that meant either, but it confused me. I was altogether confused. I felt as if I was in a strange country, not knowing where I was going, not knowing what I might find out next. If there were no windows on the wall to the street, where was my window? My heart, which had been jumping up and calming down again all this time, gave a great leap at this, as if it would have come out of me—but I did not know what it could mean.

Then we stopped before a glass case, and Mr. Pitmilly showed me some things in it. I could not pay much attention to them. My head was going round and round. I heard his voice going on, and then myself speaking with a queer sound that was hollow in my ears; but I did not know what I was saying or what he was saying. Then he took me to the very end of the room, the east end, saying something that I caught—that I was pale, that the air would do me good. The air was blowing full on me, lifting the lace of my dress, lifting my hair, almost chilly. The window opened into the pale daylight, into the little lane that ran by the end of the building. Mr. Pitmilly went on talking, but I could not make out a word he said. Then I heard my own voice, speaking through it, though I did not seem to be aware that I was speaking. “Where is my window?—where, then, is my window?” I seemed to be saying, and I turned right round, dragging him with me, still holding his arm. As I did this my eye fell upon something at last which I knew. It was a large picture in a broad frame, hanging against the farther wall.

What did it mean? Oh, what did it mean? I turned round again to the open window at the east end, and to the daylight, the strange light without any shadow, that was all round about this lighted hall, holding it like a bubble that would burst, like something that was not real. The real place was the room I knew, in which that picture was hanging, where the writing-table was, and where he sat with his face to the light. But where was the light and the window through which it came? I think my senses must have left me. I went up to the picture which I knew, and then I walked straight across the room, always dragging Mr. Pitmilly, whose face was pale, but who did not struggle but allowed me to lead him, straight across to where the window was—where the window was not;—where there was no sign of it. “Where is my window?—where is my window?” I said. And all the time I was sure that I was in a dream, and these lights were all some theatrical illusion, and the people talking; and nothing real but the pale, pale, watching, lingering day standing by to wait until that foolish bubble should burst.

“My dear,” said Mr. Pitmilly, “my dear! Mind that you are in public. Mind where you are. You must not make an outcry and frighten your Aunt Mary. Come away with me. Come away, my dear young lady! and you’ll take a seat for a minute or two and compose yourself; and I’ll get you an ice or a little wine.” He kept patting my hand, which was on his arm, and looking at me very anxiously. “Bless me! bless me! I never thought it would have this effect,” he said.

But I would not allow him to take me away in that direction. I went to the picture again and looked at it without seeing it: and then I went across the room again, with some kind of wild thought that if I insisted I should find it. “My window—my window!” I said.

There was one of the professors standing there, and he heard me. “The window!” said he. “Ah, you’ve been taken in with what appears outside. It was put there to be in uniformity with the window on the stair. But it never was a real window. It is just behind that bookcase. Many people are taken in by it,” he said.

His voice seemed to sound from somewhere far away, and as if it would go on for ever; and the hall swam in a dazzle of shining and of noises round me; and the daylight through the open window grew greyer, waiting till it should be over, and the bubble burst.

V

It was Mr. Pitmilly who took me home; or rather it was I who took him, pushing him on a little in front of me, holding fast by his arm, not waiting for Aunt Mary or any one. We came out into the daylight again outside, I, without even a cloak or a shawl, with my bare arms, and uncovered head, and the pearls round my neck. There was a rush of the people about, and a baker’s boy, that baker’s boy, stood right in my way and cried, “Here’s a braw ane!” shouting to the others: the words struck me somehow, as his stone had struck the window, without any reason. But I did not mind the people staring, and hurried across the street, with Mr. Pitmilly half a step in advance. The door was open, and Janet standing at it, looking out to see what she could see of the ladies in their grand dresses. She gave a shriek when she saw me hurrying across the street; but I brushed past her, and pushed Mr. Pitmilly up the stairs, and took him breathless to the recess, where I threw myself down on the seat, feeling as if I could not have gone another step farther, and waved my hand across to the window. “There! there!” I cried. Ah! there it was—not that senseless mob—not the theatre and the gas, and the people all in a murmur and clang of talking. Never in all these days had I seen that room so clearly. There was a faint tone of light behind, as if it might have been a reflection from some of those vulgar lights in the hall, and he sat against it, calm, wrapped in his thoughts, with his face turned to the window. Nobody but must have seen him. Janet could have seen him had I called her up-stairs. It was like a picture, all the things I knew, and the same attitude, and the atmosphere, full of quietness, not disturbed by anything. I pulled Mr. Pitmilly’s arm before I let him go,—“You see, you see!” I cried. He gave me the most bewildered look, as if he would have liked to cry. He saw nothing! I was sure of that from his eyes. He was an old man, and there was no vision in him. If I had called up Janet, she would have seen it all. “My dear!” he said. “My dear!” waving his hands in a helpless way.

“He has been there all these nights,” I cried, “and I thought you could tell me who he was and what he was doing; and that he might have taken me in to that room, and showed me, that I might tell papa. Papa would understand, he would like to hear. Oh, can’t you tell me what work he is doing, Mr. Pitmilly? He never lifts his head as long as the light throws a shadow, and then when it is like this he turns round and thinks, and takes a rest!”

Mr. Pitmilly was trembling, whether it was with cold or I know not what. He said, with a shake in his voice, “My dear young lady—my dear—” and then stopped and looked at me as if he were going to cry. “It’s peetiful, it’s peetiful,” he said; and then in another voice, “I am going across there again to bring your Aunt Mary home; do you understand, my poor little thing, my—— I am going to bring her home—you will be better when she is here.”

I was glad when he went away, as he could not see anything: and I sat alone in the dark which was not dark, but quite clear light—a light like nothing I ever saw. How clear it was in that room! not glaring like the gas and the voices, but so quiet, everything so visible, as if it were in another world. I heard a little rustle behind me, and there was Janet, standing staring at me with two big eyes wide open. She was only a little older than I was. I called to her, “Janet, come here, come here, and you will see him,—come here and see him!” impatient that she should be so shy and keep behind. “Oh, my bonnie young leddy!” she said, and burst out crying. I stamped my foot at her, in my indignation that she would not come, and she fled before me with a rustle and swing of haste, as if she were afraid. None of them, none of them! not even a girl like myself, with the sight in her eyes, would understand. I turned back again, and held out my hands to him sitting there, who was the only one that knew. “Oh,” I said, “say something to me! I don’t know who you are, or what you are: but you’re lonely and so am I; and I only—feel for you. Say something to me!” I neither hoped that he would hear, nor expected any answer. How could he hear, with the street between us, and his window shut, and all the murmuring of the voices and the people standing about? But for one moment it seemed to me that there was only him and me in the whole world.

But I gasped with my breath, that had almost gone from me, when I saw him move in his chair! He had heard me, though I knew not how. He rose up, and I rose too, speechless, incapable of anything but this mechanical movement. He seemed to draw me as if I were a puppet moved by his will. He came forward to the window, and stood looking across at me. I was sure that he looked at me. At last he had seen me: at last he had found out that somebody, though only a girl, was watching him, looking for him, believing in him. I was in such trouble and commotion of mind and trembling, that I could not keep on my feet, but dropped kneeling on the window-seat, supporting myself against the window, feeling as if my heart were being drawn out of me. I cannot describe his face. It was all dim, yet there was a light on it: I think it must have been a smile; and as closely as I looked at him he looked at me. His hair was fair, and there was a little quiver about his lips. Then he put his hands upon the window to open it. It was stiff and hard to move; but at last he forced it open with a sound that echoed all along the street. I saw that the people heard it, and several looked up. As for me, I put my hands together, leaning with my face against the glass, drawn to him as if I could have gone out of myself, my heart out of my bosom, my eyes out of my head. He opened the window with a noise that was heard from the West Port to the Abbey. Could any one doubt that?

And then he leaned forward out of the window, looking out. There was not one in the street but must have seen him. He looked at me first, with a little wave of his hand, as if it were a salutation—yet not exactly that either, for I thought he waved me away; and then he looked up and down in the dim shining of the ending day, first to the east, to the old Abbey towers, and then to the west, along the broad line of the street where so many people were coming and going, but so little noise, all like enchanted folk in an enchanted place. I watched him with such a melting heart, with such a deep satisfaction as words could not say; for nobody could tell me now that he was not there,—nobody could say I was dreaming any more. I watched him as if I could not breathe—my heart in my throat, my eyes upon him. He looked up and down, and then he looked back to me. I was the first, and I was the last, though it was not for long: he did know, he did see, who it was that had recognised him and sympathised with him all the time. I was in a kind of rapture, yet stupor too; my look went with his look, following it as if I were his shadow; and then suddenly he was gone, and I saw him no more.

I dropped back again upon my seat, seeking something to support me, something to lean upon. He had lifted his hand and waved it once again to me. How he went I cannot tell, nor where he went I cannot tell; but in a moment he was away, and the window standing open, and the room fading into stillness and dimness, yet so clear, with all its space, and the great picture in its gilded frame upon the wall. It gave me no pain to see him go away. My heart was so content, and I was so worn out and satisfied—for what doubt or question could there be about him now? As I was lying back as weak as water, Aunt Mary came in behind me, and flew to me with a little rustle as if she had come on wings, and put her arms round me, and drew my head on to her breast. I had begun to cry a little, with sobs like a child. “You saw him, you saw him!” I said. To lean upon her, and feel her so soft, so kind, gave me a pleasure I cannot describe, and her arms round me, and her voice saying “Honey, my honey!”—as if she were nearly crying too. Lying there I came back to myself, quite sweetly, glad of everything. But I wanted some assurance from them that they had seen him too. I waved my hand to the window that was still standing open, and the room that was stealing away into the faint dark.

“This time you saw it all?” I said, getting more eager. “My honey!” said Aunt Mary, giving me a kiss: and Mr. Pitmilly began to walk about the room with short little steps behind, as if he were out of patience. I sat straight up and put away Aunt Mary’s arms. “You cannot be so blind, so blind!” I cried. “Oh, not to-night, at least not to-night!” But neither the one nor the other made any reply. I shook myself quite free, and raised myself up. And there, in the middle of the street, stood the baker’s boy like a statue, staring up at the open window, with his mouth open and his face full of wonder—breathless, as if he could not believe what he saw. I darted forward, calling to him, and beckoned him to come to me. “Oh, bring him up! bring him, bring him to me!” I cried.

Mr. Pitmilly went out directly, and got the boy by the shoulder. He did not want to come. It was strange to see the little old gentleman, with his beautiful frill and his diamond pin, standing out in the street, with his hand upon the boy’s shoulder, and the other boys round, all in a little crowd. And presently they came towards the house, the others all following, gaping and wondering. He came in unwilling, almost resisting, looking as if we meant him some harm. “Come away, my laddie, come and speak to the young lady,” Mr. Pitmilly was saying. And Aunt Mary took my hands to keep me back. But I would not be kept back.

“Boy,” I cried, “you saw it too: you saw it: tell them you saw it! It is that I want, and no more.”

He looked at me as they all did, as if he thought I was mad. “What’s she wantin’ wi’ me?” he said; and then, “I did nae harm, even if I did throw a bit stane at it—and it’s nae sin to throw a stane.”

“You rascal!” said Mr. Pitmilly, giving him a shake; “have you been throwing stones? You’ll kill somebody some of these days with your stones.” The old gentleman was confused and troubled, for he did not understand what I wanted, nor anything that had happened. And then Aunt Mary, holding my hands and drawing me close to her, spoke. “Laddie,” she said, “answer the young lady, like a good lad. There’s no intention of finding fault with you. Answer her, my man, and then Janet will give ye your supper before you go.”

“Oh speak, speak!” I cried; “answer them and tell them! you saw that window opened, and the gentleman look out and wave his hand?”

“I saw nae gentleman,” he said, with his head down, “except this wee gentleman here.”

“Listen, laddie,” said Aunt Mary. “I saw ye standing in the middle of the street staring. What were ye looking at?”

“It was naething to make a wark about. It was just yon windy yonder in the library that is nae windy. And it was open as sure’s death. You may laugh if you like. Is that a’ she’s wantin’ wi’ me?”

“You are telling a pack of lies, laddie,” Mr. Pitmilly said.

“I’m tellin’ nae lees—it was standin’ open just like ony ither windy. It’s as sure’s death. I couldna believe it mysel’; but it’s true.”

“And there it is,” I cried, turning round and pointing it out to them with great triumph in my heart. But the light was all grey, it had faded, it had changed. The window was just as it had always been, a sombre break upon the wall.

I was treated like an invalid all that evening, and taken up-stairs to bed, and Aunt Mary sat up in my room the whole night through. Whenever I opened my eyes she was always sitting there close to me, watching. And there never was in all my life so strange a night. When I would talk in my excitement, she kissed me and hushed me like a child. “Oh, honey, you are not the only one!” she said. “Oh whisht, whisht, bairn! I should never have let you be there!”

“Aunt Mary, Aunt Mary, you have seen him too?”

“Oh whisht, whisht, honey!” Aunt Mary said: her eyes were shining—there were tears in them. “Oh whisht, whisht! Put it out of your mind, and try to sleep. I will not speak another word,” she cried.

But I had my arms round her, and my mouth at her ear. “Who is he there?—tell me that and I will ask no more—”

“Oh honey, rest, and try to sleep! It is just—how can I tell you?—a dream, a dream! Did you not hear what Lady Carnbee said?—the women of our blood—”

“What? what? Aunt Mary, oh Aunt Mary—”

“I canna tell you,” she cried in her agitation, “I canna tell you! How can I tell you, when I know just what you know and no more? It is a longing all your life after—it is a looking—for what never comes.”

“He will come,” I cried. “I shall see him to-morrow—that I know, I know!”

She kissed me and cried over me, her cheek hot and wet like mine. “My honey, try if you can sleep—try if you can sleep: and we’ll wait to see what to-morrow brings.”

“I have no fear,” said I; and then I suppose, though it is strange to think of, I must have fallen asleep—I was so worn-out, and young, and not used to lying in my bed awake. From time to time I opened my eyes, and sometimes jumped up remembering everything: but Aunt Mary was always there to soothe me, and I lay down again in her shelter like a bird in its nest.

But I would not let them keep me in bed next day. I was in a kind of fever, not knowing what I did. The window was quite opaque, without the least glimmer in it, flat and blank like a piece of wood. Never from the first day had I seen it so little like a window. “It cannot be wondered at,” I said to myself, “that seeing it like that, and with eyes that are old, not so clear as mine, they should think what they do.” And then I smiled to myself to think of the evening and the long light, and whether he would look out again, or only give me a signal with his hand. I decided I would like that best: not that he should take the trouble to come forward and open it again, but just a turn of his head and a wave of his hand. It would be more friendly and show more confidence,—not as if I wanted that kind of demonstration every night.

I did not come down in the afternoon, but kept at my own window up-stairs alone, till the tea-party should be over. I could hear them making a great talk; and I was sure they were all in the recess staring at the window, and laughing at the silly lassie. Let them laugh! I felt above all that now. At dinner I was very restless, hurrying to get it over; and I think Aunt Mary was restless too. I doubt whether she read her ‘Times’ when it came; she opened it up so as to shield her, and watched from a corner. And I settled myself in the recess, with my heart full of expectation. I wanted nothing more than to see him writing at his table, and to turn his head and give me a little wave of his hand, just to show that he knew I was there. I sat from half-past seven o’clock to ten o’clock: and the daylight grew softer and softer, till at last it was as if it was shining through a pearl, and not a shadow to be seen. But the window all the time was as black as night, and there was nothing, nothing there.

Well: but other nights it had been like that: he would not be there every night only to please me. There are other things in a man’s life, a great learned man like that. I said to myself I was not disappointed. Why should I be disappointed? There had been other nights when he was not there.

Aunt Mary watched me, every movement I made, her eyes shining, often wet, with a pity in them that almost made me cry: but I felt as if I were more sorry for her than for myself. And then I flung myself upon her, and asked her, again and again, what it was, and who it was, imploring her to tell me if she knew? and when she had seen him, and what had happened? and what it meant about the women of our blood? She told me that how it was she could not tell, nor when: it was just at the time it had to be; and that we all saw him in our time—“that is,” she said, “the ones that are like you and me.” What was it that made her and me different from the rest? but she only shook her head and would not tell me. “They say,” she said, and then stopped short. “Oh, honey, try and forget all about it—if I had but known you were of that kind! They say—that once there was one that was a Scholar, and liked his books more than any lady’s love. Honey, do not look at me like that. To think I should have brought all this on you!”

“He was a Scholar?” I cried.

“And one of us, that must have been a light woman, not like you and me. But maybe it was just in innocence; for who can tell? She waved to him and waved to him to come over: and yon ring was the token: but he would not come. But still she sat at her window and waved and waved—till at last her brothers heard of it, that were stirring men; and then—oh, my honey, let us speak of it no more!”

“They killed him!” I cried, carried away. And then I grasped her with my hands, and gave her a shake, and flung away from her. “You tell me that to throw dust in my eyes—when I saw him only last night: and he as living as I am, and as young!”

“My honey, my honey!” Aunt Mary said.

After that I would not speak to her for a long time; but she kept close to me, never leaving me when she could help it, and always with that pity in her eyes. For the next night it was the same; and the third night. That third night I thought I could not bear it any longer. I would have to do something if only I knew what to do! If it would ever get dark, quite dark, there might be something to be done. I had wild dreams of stealing out of the house and getting a ladder, and mounting up to try if I could not open that window, in the middle of the night—if perhaps I could get the baker’s boy to help me; and then my mind got into a whirl, and it was as if I had done it; and I could almost see the boy put the ladder to the window, and hear him cry out that there was nothing there. Oh, how slow it was, the night! and how light it was, and everything so clear no darkness to cover you, no shadow, whether on one side of the street or on the other side! I could not sleep, though I was forced to go to bed. And in the deep midnight, when it is dark dark in every other place, I slipped very softly down-stairs, though there was one board on the landing-place that creaked—and opened the door and stepped out. There was not a soul to be seen, up or down, from the Abbey to the West Port: and the trees stood like ghosts, and the silence was terrible, and everything as clear as day. You don’t know what silence is till you find it in the light like that, not morning but night, no sunrising, no shadow, but everything as clear as the day.

It did not make any difference as the slow minutes went on: one o’clock, two o’clock. How strange it was to hear the clocks striking in that dead light when there was nobody to hear them! But it made no difference. The window was quite blank; even the marking of the panes seemed to have melted away. I stole up again after a long time, through the silent house, in the clear light, cold and trembling, with despair in my heart.

I am sure Aunt Mary must have watched and seen me coming back, for after a while I heard faint sounds in the house; and very early, when there had come a little sunshine into the air, she came to my bedside with a cup of tea in her hand; and she, too, was looking like a ghost. “Are you warm, honey—are you comfortable?” she said. “It doesn’t matter,” said I. I did not feel as if anything mattered; unless if one could get into the dark somewhere—the soft, deep dark that would cover you over and hide you—but I could not tell from what. The dreadful thing was that there was nothing, nothing to look for, nothing to hide from—only the silence and the light.

That day my mother came and took me home. I had not heard she was coming; she arrived quite unexpectedly, and said she had no time to stay, but must start the same evening so as to be in London next day, papa having settled to go abroad. At first I had a wild thought I would not go. But how can a girl say I will not, when her mother has come for her, and there is no reason, no reason in the world, to resist, and no right! I had to go, whatever I might wish or any one might say.

Aunt Mary’s dear eyes were wet; she went about the house drying them quietly with her handkerchief, but she always said, “It is the best thing for you, honey—the best thing for you!” Oh, how I hated to hear it said that it was the best thing, as if anything mattered, one more than another! The old ladies were all there in the afternoon, Lady Carnbee looking at me from under her black lace, and the diamond lurking, sending out darts from under her finger. She patted me on the shoulder, and told me to be a good bairn. “And never lippen to what you see from the window,” she said. “The eye is deceitful as well as the heart.” She kept patting me on the shoulder, and I felt again as if that sharp wicked stone stung me. Was that what Aunt Mary meant when she said yon ring was the token? I thought afterwards I saw the mark on my shoulder. You will say why? How can I tell why? If I had known, I should have been contented, and it would not have mattered any more.

I never went back to St. Rule’s, and for years of my life I never again looked out of a window when any other window was in sight. You ask me did I ever see him again? I cannot tell: the imagination is a great deceiver, as Lady Carnbee said: and if he stayed there so long, only to punish the race that had wronged him, why should I ever have seen him again? for I had received my share. But who can tell what happens in a heart that often, often, and so long as that, comes back to do its errand? If it was he whom I have seen again, the anger is gone from him, and he means good and no longer harm to the house of the woman that loved him. I have seen his face looking at me from a crowd. There was one time when I came home a widow from India, very sad, with my little children: I am certain I saw him there among all the people coming to welcome their friends. There was nobody to welcome me,—for I was not expected: and very sad was I, without a face I knew: when all at once I saw him, and he waved his hand to me. My heart leaped up again: I had forgotten who he was, but only that it was a face I knew, and I landed almost cheerfully, thinking here was some one who would help me. But he had disappeared, as he did from the window, with that one wave of his hand.

And again I was reminded of it all when old Lady Carnbee died—an old, old woman—and it was found in her will that she had left me that diamond ring. I am afraid of it still. It is locked up in an old sandal-wood box in the lumber-room in the little old country-house which belongs to me, but where I never live. If any one would steal it, it would be a relief to my mind. Yet I never knew what Aunt Mary meant when she said, “Yon ring was the token,” nor what it could have to do with that strange window in the old College Library of St. Rule’s.

The Little Dirty Angel

(1888)

She was coming home one wintry afternoon just as it became dark. It had been very cold all day, and her hands were nearly frozen with her work in the park, picking up sticks. She was an old woman, in reality about sixty-five but looking eighty, by reason of hard work and exposure to all sorts of weather. She had an old battered bonnet upon her head, beneath which her grey hair, blown about all day by the wind, looked wild and untidy, a shawl which was wound across her breast with the ends tied behind, and her back bent under a load of sticks which she was carrying home for her fire. She had been out since an early hour in the morning, in the open air upon the damp grass, stooping and bending her old back with monotonous and continual movement, the most wearisome perhaps of any muscular effort. Her boots were bad and her feet were wet, and so were her skirts. This was her occupation day by day, and she did not curse her fate, but was thankful to have the poor little pay which kept her alive: and on this day, though her appearance was so forlorn, her spirits were higher than usual. She had met some ladies in the park, and had shown them where the brilliant red and yellow fungus, great toadstools painted as Aspinall’s enamel could never paint them, grew thick upon the wet and boggy turf: and they had given old Martha a sixpence. A sixpence is a small matter to many people, but it was not a small matter to this poor old woman. It eased her back a little under her load of sticks—it made the way less long to her tired feet. And yet it was a very long way. All the way from Queen Anne’s Drive, in the middle of the park, to the place which is now called River Street, but then Bier Lane—and not a very pleasant place when she got there. The sixpence however made a great deal of difference. It made everything look brighter. As she came out of the park into the road, just below where the fine new fountain and lamp stands, she amused herself by thinking what she could do with it. She thought she would buy a bloater as she went home, to eat as a relish with her tea. She thought that perhaps a rasher of bacon would be nicer, but it would cost more money. She considered whether she would not lay out her fortune to more advantage if she bought some scraps at the butcher’s, which would make her a hot supper and leave enough to take with her to the park for a good dinner to-morrow. And then she considered further that though supper and dinner are very good things, yet it was almost sinful to spend such a sum of money entirely upon eating. Sixpence would almost buy half a hundred weight of coals: but then that would leave nothing at all for a relish with her tea, and her face grew long with this thought.

But as she went along a dreadful temptation came over poor Martha. As she came down the road, and the great beautiful Castle rose before her in a mist against the sky, which was still red and warm with reflections of the sunset though the evening was rapidly growing dark, there suddenly appeared to her a flaming globe which she recognised very well, and knew at half a mile off; a light which had sometimes been baneful to her, but which sent the shock of a new idea into her mind. She was very cold and very tired, and at the sight of this light her legs began to feel more weary and her fingers more frozen than ever. For she knew that if she went in there with her sixpence she could buy a little warmth that would go tingling down to her very toes, and then would mount up to her brain, and make her feel for a moment at least as if the burden was off her back and twenty years off her head. Oh! the difference it would make to her chilled hands and wet feet. It would stand in the stead of food and fire. It would make her feel as if she had everything she wanted, and was as well off as the Queen. She tried to talk to herself as she often did, and to say that this wouldn’t last—that after a while she would be colder than ever and more tired, and would have no rasher, nor even bloater, nor the sense of the sixpence in her pocket, which was so comfortable. Then she thought of the glass that would be handed to her over the counter, and the gulp she would make, and the water that would come into her eyes and the choke in her throat, and then the warmth that would run all through her. It was a long pull still to her home, and then she would have to light the fire and boil the kettle before she could have anything—whereas here it was within reach, and in a minute she would be all in a glow.

Ah! but what would the ladies think who gave her the sixpence if they saw her going into the public house? They would not know how cold she was—and they would shake their heads and say, “That dreadful old woman!” and the old lady would say to the young ones, “Didn’t I tell you she would spend it in drink?” Ah! old lady with all your furs on, what would you do if you were as cold as Martha, and as tired! Do you think you would have the heart to push on past that door, and be patient till you got home and lighted the fire and waited for the kettle to boil? She grew colder and colder as she went along, feeling all the time that there it was within reach, the warm, tingling, comforting draught. She quickened her steps as this thought got possession of her, and hurried on, almost breaking into a run. Poor old woman, wet and weary, with no one to comfort her! The temptation was too strong: she could not resist it. Just a little comfort, something to make her warm.

Some one did care for her, however, and something occurred that stopped her on the road. In the old days it would have been an angel in disguise—and perhaps it was so: but what it looked like was only a little crying child. It was standing against the railings of a house, and with its little fists in its eyes was wailing and weeping, rising now and then into a roar, “O-o-o-h,” it would murmur, and then “Oh-hoo-ho-ho,” with a kind of shriek at the end. It was a ragged little creature, blue with the cold, and its tears falling down had made little clear lines like furrows in the dirt on its cheeks. Martha was off post haste towards the place of temptation when she heard the child crying. She hastened past it, but the cry pursued her, and she could not help stopping. A child crying out in the night is a pitiful thing, and though she was only an old woman working in the park, and very, very much tempted to go and spend her sixpence in the public house, Martha still had a heart—and a warm old heart it was, though she was as cold as an icicle, with her wet skirts beating against her wet ankles, and the bundle of sticks on her back.

“What’s the matter, little ’un,” she said.

The child only answered with “O-o-o-h” and “Oh-hoo-ho-ho” again.

“What’s the matter, I say?” Martha was only human, and she was anxious now to hurry to the public house before her conscience should get up and stop her. So though she could not pass it by, she took hold of the child and gave it a shake. “Stop crying, child, and tell us what’s the matter. Where’s your mother?” she said.

“Mammy’s done and left me,” said the little thing. “O-o-o-h! mammy’s done and left me!” and roused by the comfort of an audience, it wailed and wept more and more.

“Where d’ye live?” said Martha, shaking the child again.

“I don’t live nowhere; mammy done away and left me!” said the child.

“Oh hold your noise,” said Martha, in her haste, “hold your noise, when I tell you, where’s your mammy gone?”

The child took its fist from its eyes, and pointed towards the park. “Mammy’s done away there; she said she tudn’t be bothered with me: mammy’s done and left me.”

“Lord bless us all! gone and left a baby like that!” old Martha said.

By this time some other people had gathered round, who began to advise her, as she was the first to take the responsibility. “Take him to the police office,” “Take him to the Overseer,” “Send him to the workhouse,” they said.

Martha by this time stood quite still, and had ceased to wish to hurry away. She saw that the chance of something hot in the public house had become impossible, and she felt cross and colder than ever. She gave the child a little shake again.

“Havn’t you got no home to go to at all, you little varment?” she said.

But to all questions the poor little thing only wailed and replied that his mammy had done away.

And then everybody round began again to recommend the police office, the workhouse and the Overseer, till Martha lost patience altogether. Something had begun to work in her heart, but it did not make her voice soft all at once. She turned to the child, and said to it roughly, “Will you come along o’ me?”

He took both his fists out of his eyes, and he gazed in her face, and stopped crying: and then he put one of his little fists—such a little fist! into the old woman’s hand.

She had forgotten all about the public house. She led the child past the very door, talking to him all the way, and forgot which it was. Something else had come in to warm her and drive the thought of the steaming glass away. Our poor old grey-haired woman, ragged and damp and cold, what was it that bad come into her heart? It was Charity: that divinest thing which St. Paul interprets and calls Love. It warmed her all about her heart, and put away the other thought. Instead of a little fictitious comfort for herself, to comfort the poor little lost child: that is the kind of exchange that makes a poor old woman as good as the greatest. She led him along and talked to him all the way, saying, “Don’t ye take on, now, little ’un. Don’t ye cry. We’ll be home in a minnit, and you shall have some supper along o’ me, and go to bed along o’ me; and to-morrow we’ll see if we can’t find your mammy: though she must be a rare bad ’un,” said old Martha to herself, “to leave a babby like this upon the road of a winter night. What’s your name, my dear?”

“I’m little Joey, and I ’as matches for to sell,” said the tiny little boy.

“Well, Joey, you and me will ’ave to be mates till we find your mammy,” said old Martha. “I wish I could carry ye, little ’un, but I can’t, ye see, for I’ve all these sticks on my back, and I’m so tired I dunno how to put one foot afore the other; but as soon as we gets home there’ll be a nice little fire, and we’ll boil the kettle and we’ll have our tea: and won’t we be comfortable? Don’t ye cry, little man, it ain’t so far off now.”

“I ain’t a-going to cry,” said little Joey, holding very fast by her hand. The clutch of his little fingers seemed to touch something that went right up the old woman’s arm to her old heart.

“Bless his little soul,” she cried, and a tear came welling up warm into each of her eyes, and made the lamps shine like stars, and the road quite bright; almost as bright as it was in the Jubilee time, when we were all rejoicing for the Queen. And Martha forgot all about the temptations of the road, the shining lamp over the public house, and what was within: and trudged along, so tired she could scarcely walk, but with the warmth in her heart tingling to her very toes.

And so the little angel trudging on half asleep through the road, brought her safely home.

New Year’s Day

(1891)

I

I woke up a little before my usual hour.

It was a Saturday morning, the last day of the old year. The atmosphere was dull, the skies grey and cloudy, the naked trees standing out somewhat grimly in clusters of bare branches against the vague whiteness yet darkness of space—a true English winter day of the duller kind, not bright and crisp, with a lively sunshine and keen air, such as is our northern ideal of the beauty of winter, but grey, quiet, still, the earth lying in a chilled suspense, not tragical, scarcely even melancholy, aware that this was her worst moment, waiting for better to come. I have a fancy for light, even while I sleep, and there were no curtains drawn or shutters closed over my window, through which I liked, on waking, whether in the middle of the night, whether in the legitimate opening of the morning, to see the sky. The sky on this occasion was nothing more than a grey whiteness, without any lines of cloud or indications of the hidden blue. The trees stood up dark against it, without any break of leaf or bud, straight, yet in a confusion of mingled twigs and branches. In summer it was a delight to look into the heart of the big trees, each in itself a mimic forest, with profound depths of green and infinitudes of shade; but at present all was naked, denuded, nothing sweeter about them than a steady patience, biding their time.

The moment of waking is seldom delightful, save to the very young or very happy, which perhaps means the same thing. Those who have come to the manifold experiences of life seldom salute the new day without a consciousness of care behind the curtain, at the bedside, awake before they are awake. Few are the happy souls to whom that first opening of eyes to the new light is a cheerful moment It is always more or less a new imagination, realisation of the world around, which is a world full not of joy but trouble. After a little while one reconciles one’s self, one rises up to the work, the bustles, the distractions of every day. It is only the first moment which is abstract, which brings one, as it were, freshly in contact with all that is abstract in one’s fate, with that profound underlying failure, disappointment, disenchantment, which is life.

On this particular morning, however, I woke without any immediate realisation of care—with a curious new emotion in my mind exceedingly hard to describe as it was hard to realise. It was as if something sweet, delightful, had happened to me overnight, and yet I was sorry, full of tender compunction, ashamed and happy all at once. What a strange combination! Lying still there, looking at the wintry firmament, I tried after awhile to make out this curious, sweet confusion of ideas in which I found myself. The impression on my mind was such as sometimes comes after a quarrel with those whom we love best, when we have made it all up, and kissed, and been forgiven. There is the sweetness of knowing that it is all over; one understands for the first time how wrong one was, how unkind, how foolish, missing every simple explanation, determined to be miserable. Shame and repentance, and even remorse, spring up within us; but, above all, the sense that it is over—that such a stupid, miserable mistake can never occur again. “The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love.” And then comes a profound sense of the faithfulness of love behind all; that which many waters cannot quench, that which nothing indeed can alter, either in our own erring bosom or in that of the other who has forgiven, swells upward with a sweetness which is overwhelming, which carries every other confused and uneasy sentiment away. That we could ever have doubted that! ever been able to persuade ourselves into such disastrous folly! but never again would it be possible, never any more.

The peculiarity in my present feelings was that I had not quarrelled with anybody, or made it up, or in any way, so far as I was aware, brought myself within the reach of this so agitated yet so harmonious state. I was sorry for I knew not what, glad for I knew not what, full of compunctions and delightful surprises, and a low-toned exquisite happiness; though had you asked me I should have said that there were circumstances in my life that made it impossible for me to be happy—and yet I was so, and also miserable, not knowing why. I lay reluctant to disturb this sweet, incomprehensible influx of feeling, enjoying it timidly, wondering what it was. Sometimes the influence of a lovely morning will produce something like it in an elastic mind—a lovely morning, a great deliverance, a piece of good fortune. But the morning was far from lovely, and nothing had happened to make me happy: but yet so I was.

I was roused out of my own personal sensations by a slight noise, and, looking round, I saw my maid standing near my bed. with a look on her face which she puts on when she has a statement to make. My maid was not, as the name suggests, a young woman, but middle-aged like myself; and she often had statements to make. When she came upon me thus, in the utterly defenceless position, not able to get up and move away, of a person in bed, I knew what their general purport was. They concerned in general the bad behaviour of other members of the household—of the cook, who made herself objectionable in many ways as a sort of rival power, and leader of the government down-stairs, while Dawson represented the opposition; or the gardener, who was sometimes rude; or the indoor man, who accused her of telling everything that went on to her mistress. Dawson’s countenance and the set of her lips made me quite clear as to her purpose, and I made a doleful instantaneous calculation, on the data of previous experiences, as to how long it might be before I should be permitted to get up—unless perhaps she meant to give me notice, which was a ceremony which took place from time to time without any particular result.

“I should like to speak a word, if it’s quite convenient,” Dawson said.

“Oh yes,” I replied with a sigh, “as convenient as any other time; but I hope nothing is very wrong.”

“I don’t know as anything is wrong at all, ma’am,” replied Dawson, “except me.”

This alarmed me more than any other beginning, for when Dawson began by assuring me that it seemed she was a person nobody could get on with, and, if all was true that was said of her, not fit to live, I knew I was going to have what the Americans call a bad time, and that the domestic storm would want more smoothing down than usual.

“I hope we shall get over that,” I said, with what I fancy was rather a hypocritical smile; “tell me, at any rate, what it is.”

“Madam,” said Dawson, “I hope as you’ll hear me all through, and not cry out and stop my mouth. Oh, I’ve been a bad woman!—that’s what I wanted to say. I have come day after day disturbing your rest, me that you’ve always been so kind to, though it was my business to keep you comfortable, and see that you wasn’t bothered. I’ve been a wicked, insulting, selfish woman, never satisfied, always quarrelling and finding fault, and thinking as I was slighted, and moving high and low to take my part. Oh, don’t say anything, ma’am, for I know as it’s all true.”

“Dawson!” I cried, as soon as I could get out a word. Astonishment took away my breath. It was true, perhaps; but when a sinner thus discriminates, the judge before whom he or she brings the accusation is ready in most cases to take the culprit’s part. “Stop a moment; you are going too far. I am sure you never meant—”

“No, ma’am, begging your pardon, I’m not saying too much,” Dawson said, with a glimmer in her eyes that looked like tears. “You don’t think I’ve let myself be brought to this without being quite sure in my own mind. Oh, no—it’s all true: I’ve made mischief in the house. I know I have. I’ve told you things as was never meant bad till I went and put a motive to them. I have been that cross and cankered myself that nobody could put up with me, and then I’ve said it was their blame. It’s all come back upon me now.”

“But, Dawson,” I said, “I don’t allow quite all you say. But perhaps there is some truth in it, not without blame on my part, too; for I have been amused with your stories and encouraged you to talk. But what has made you think of all this now?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” said my maid, crying. “I don’t know a bit, any more than the babe unborn—unless it was the grace of God,” she added after an interval in a very low tone amid her sobs.

I held out my hands and drew her close to me. “I think it must be so, my dear,” I said. “We are both the same; we have done a great deal that is wrong.”

“Oh, ma’am, not you, not you!” she cried, falling down on her knees, grasping my hands, with the same impulse which I had felt to prevent her from blaming herself: but perhaps stronger because I was her mistress, and she had not the habit, in my own presence at least, of finding fault with me.

“But we will try,” I said, feeling the tears come into my eyes, and that sweet compunction, pain, pleasure, misery, happiness swelling up within me; “we will try, like two sisters, to do so no more.”

That was the first incident of the morning, and it was a strange one—such as I never could have anticipated—for Dawson was by nature one of the women who are always certain, whatever happens, that they themselves are in the right.

I went down-stairs, wondering a little that there had been no call for me, no impatience at my tardiness, for my husband was a very punctual man, and I was late. He was not in the dining-room, however, though breakfast was on the table. I went to look for him in his library, surprised at this departure from his usual habits. I found him at his writing-table with a mass of papers before him. There was a curve of anxiety which I knew very well on his forehead. He scarcely looked up as I came in, but answered me as if I had called him.

“Don’t wait for me,” he said; “I know I am very late. As soon as I have done this, I will come in.”

“What is it, John? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

He looked up at me with a doubtful smile, “Well, my dear, I don’t know that I ever felt it wrong before. It occurred to me last night to look over our bills for that Moreton will case before sending them in—”

“Well, John?”

He began to shake his head with an abashed look, as if he had found himself out in something. “I never thought of it before,” he said. “We have always gone on the usual lines and done just as other people did. Letty, don’t you know the common saying that lawyers are rogues all?”

“I stop it very easily by saying that my husband is a lawyer, John: for everybody knows that he is a just man.”

He shook his head again. “I should be wretched indeed if you did not think so; but besides all my personal shortcomings—which I never before knew to be so many—Letty, Letty, here is this against me. I should have looked into this before.”

“But what is it?”

“We have been living upon plunder,” he said, with something between a laugh and a groan. “If you saw what charges I have been making, the hair would stand on end upon your honest head. Go and take your breakfast, dear. I don’t deserve any till I have set my accounts right.”

“It is I who have spent those charges, so I must be in it, too. Let me help you to set them right,” I said. However, presently I persuaded him to breakfast first, since the good order of the house, and the maintenance of ordinary rules, demanded this. He was, like myself, in a strangely subdued condition, very tender about the children, very kind—but he was always kind to me. I had intended to amuse him with my little story about Dawson, but somehow the joke faded out before I made it. I had a feeling that he would not see it. He was so much in earnest about his own business: I felt that he had no leisure of mind to be amused. He could not keep from talking of it while we were at table.

“There is one honest thing about us,” he said; “we never advise anybody to go to law. I think I can say that for myself. But when they do, poor people, how they pay for it! According to the estimate of each little scrap of my time it ought to be like the drugs the apothecaries weigh out in drachms and penny-weights. Nobody’s time could be worth so much a minute as mine is represented to be.”

“But it is not only time,” I said. “You could not reckon it as we do the gardener’s time, John, so much a day. In your case there is knowledge, there is education: and your cultivated judgment, and all your professional reading.”

He shook his head, his face had a smile on it, he was almost amused, as well as overwhelmed, by his discovery. Afterwards we went back and worked for an hour or two, going over the matter. I was not quite so much convinced on the subject as he was, but there was nothing that I could say.

Presently I was called away to my housekeeping work. The butcher had brought a little note when he came for his orders, which the cook brought me when I went down to the kitchen. I observed that there was a little stir and confusion down-stairs, but as it was Saturday, and the end of the year, and myself also a little disorganised, I made no remark on the subject. We had our consultation over the dinner before I opened the greasy little note which she had put into my hands.

“I don’t know what the butcher can be writing to me about,” I said, “there have been no complaints to make, I think, this week.”

“The complaints don’t lie with him, ma’am,” said cook, making a little curtsey and beginning to fold a hem upon her apron, with her head bent over it as if it were an affair of great importance. “Nor complaints there wasn’t none, not last week. I’ve been a-saying that to myself, and it’s ’most made me hold my tongue—but I can’t, I can’t.”

“Oh, cook!” I said with alarm, “I hope you are not going to bring me any more stories of Ellen or Mary Jane—”

“Ellen or Mary Jane!” she said in a tone of melancholy contempt, “that’s only playing like at finding fault. The likes of them, they’re like children; I grumble at ’em, but I don’t mean no harm. No, far more serious than that ma’am—it’s me—”

“What is the matter with you? I thought we had settled everything quite comfortably. You are improving very much in your entries. I always said your ideas were good: to take a little more trouble is all you want.”

She stopped to give me a little, a very slight glance, which would have been indignant had she been less near tears.

“If I was as good a Christian as I am a cook!” she cried, then broke off and fell to weeping. “It ain’t entries that are on my mind. Oh! I wish as that was all—it’s the perquisites and the Christmas-boxes, and the dripping, and all I’ve got to answer for. Oh, ma’am! you’ve always been a good mistress, and as little onreasonable as a lady knows how to be—but if you were to look into my book, and just see all as I’ve got there in them boxes. Lord bless you, I’ve kep’ my sister’s family all the winter through, and you never knowed it, out of the scraps.” She said this with a certain mixture of penitence and pride. “I thought the Lord wouldn’t look into it, seeing it was for them and not for me. And then there’s the dripping!” she added after a moment with a burst of sobbing.

There was more of the comic than the tragic in cook’s repentance. She held her little account book very tightly in one hand, while she wiped her tears with the other. On the table before her were a great array of tins, biscuit-boxes, and other receptacles of plunder, I suppose. Her nose was red, and her apron damp with tears. It was necessary that I should receive all these self-accusations with gravity; but it cost me an effort not to laugh.

“I have thought the bills were rather high,” I said, with assumed seriousness, “for some weeks past.”

“Oh, bless you, weeks!” cried cook; there was contempt in her tone mingled with compunction, and with a certain professional superiority. “You might say years: you might say since ever you took up housekeeping, and you wouldn’t be far wrong. But something’s come to me as I can’t bear it no longer. I—can’t—bear it! I’m bad here at my heart. It’s—it’s the dripping, ma’am!” she cried.

I tried my best to soothe her, for the woman was becoming hysterical. “We have all done a great many things we ought not to have done,” I said; “and the only thing I can think of is that we should do better in the future; come, put your boxes away like a good soul.”

She cried out, protesting that she was not a good soul, that she couldn’t put them away, that she would like to melt it all down, to throw it all out, to cut off her hand as took it, to cut out this pain (which was chiefly the dripping) which she thumped upon her breast. Doing better in future did not satisfy the sudden outburst of her compunction. She wanted to do something at once to mark her abhorrence of her evil doings, to destroy either the result or the cause. I don’t know if she would have gone to the length of sacrificing to me her bank book with all her savings, but she was not indisposed to make over to me the gratifications she had received by way of Christmas-boxes.

“Come,” I said at length, “have you no curiosity to know what the butcher has to say?”

I did it by way of distracting her attention from the enormities of her own conduct, and I was myself a little curious about the butcher. His letter was greasy, not because he was a greasy person or defective in any accomplishment. He was, on the contrary, quite a magnificent individual, looking like a guardsman, riding to hounds, on a hunter which would not have disgraced a duke. It was only the hand of the bearer which had soiled his epistle. This was what the butcher wrote:—

“Madam,—

“I am sorry to find, upon making up my books and comparing the prices which for the last few years I have been charging you and others of my most esteemed customers with those which I have been paying to the farmers for meat, that a considerable overcharge has unfortunately been made. I do not attempt to excuse myself for this, though the custom of the trade might be pleaded, and the principle which has always been considered sound in business of selling in the dearest market and buying in the cheapest. I will only express my sorrow that it should have occurred. As it would be almost impossible to calculate the amount of this overcharge and return it to my several customers, I hope you will consider the necessities of the case to be met by the sum which I have placed in our excellent rector’s hands, for the benefit of the poor of the parish. And for the future I beg to enclose corrected price-list, and, by constant attention to orders and an unremitting desire to give satisfaction, to deserve in the future the same kind patronage which has been extended to my late father and myself in the past. With great respect, Madam,

“Your obedient servant,

“R. J. Blayds

“Cook,” said I, “other people besides ourselves are finding out their faults. Listen to the price-list Mr. Blayds has sent over.” When I say that it began with “Sirloins, 7d.” it will, to the knowledgable reader, be unnecessary to say more; my heart beat as I read.

“Is not that delightful?” I cried. “The days of cheap dinners are coming back.”

“Goodness gracious me!” cried cook. Astonishment dried her tears as all my reasoning had not sufficed to do. But after a moment, she added, with great feeling, “He’ll be sorry now as he gave me that Christmas-box.”

I carried off the letter to my husband, whose brows were getting graver and graver over his papers. “You are like the butcher, or the butcher is like you,” I said; “you have both repented of your ill-gotten gains.”

“By Jove!” said John. He was tickled to find himself “in the same box,” as he said, with Mr. Blayds. “The fellow is an oracle,” he cried. “I have just been thinking that to give back one’s gains for years would be ruin, but in abstract justice it ought to be done. Do you think we can follow Mr. Blayds’s example, and stop the mouths of indignant clients with an offering to the poor?”

I had to go out shortly after, leaving him very busy about this work. Our house is in a town so near London that something of the character of a suburb is in the place. It is situated on the bank of the river, with a background of woods which adds greatly to its picturesque aspect. As it happens, however, it is only the little streets that approach the river. We who inhabit the superior part of the town keep it at a distance. But there is much that is venerable and attractive in the appearance of the High Street, where there are old red houses and tiled roofs of every variety of pitch, as well as a town-hall which was built by Sir Christopher Wren, and many other good things. The shops are excellent We think them, on the whole, superior to Bond Street. To be sure there are great bargains to be had occasionally in town when you know exactly where to go for them. But one does not always do that; whereas at home there they are under your hand, and Carey is always to be relied upon. That is our opinion in a general way. The town was in an unusual commotion on this particular day. It was Saturday; it was the last day of the year; but I did not think this quite accounted for it. There were a great many people about the streets; a number of groups at the corners; people walking with each other whom you would not have expected to see walking together, as for instance, Mr. Wellman, the saddler, and Terridge, the oilman, who were known to have quarrelled so bitterly. At the door of Mr. Blayds’ there was a great placard up with the new prices, and a statement in very large print, something to the same effect as the letter he had sent to me. The look of the place altogether was like that of a town in which something very strange had just taken place. There was an air of general excitement. The first person to whom I talked said that it was the change of the weather which restored everybody to good spirits; but there seemed to me more in it than that. I was joined as I went along by Mrs. Randall, a young woman who was a neighbour, and with whose family I had some communication, but whom I did not quite approve of. As she came up, a bright-eyed little woman, very neat and active, I asked myself why it was I did not approve of her? and I was obliged to acknowledge to myself that it was chiefly because she was very much less well off than the rest of us, and was supposed to have some difficulty in making her ends meet. Not that it had ever before occurred to me to state the matter in those words. What I had blamed her for was for having young, inexperienced servants who did not keep everything in such perfect order as my own expensive ones did; for living, as people say, from hand to mouth; having her things in small quantities; wearing dresses that were rather flimsy; making use of none of the expedients of economy. For instance, instead of filling her cellars with coal while they were comparatively cheap, as I did, she kept getting them a few tons at a time all through the worst of the winter, when they were at their dearest. These were “ways” of which I disapproved. When I came to. think of it as I did suddenly to-day, without any special reason for doing so, I perceived that this was what I disliked in her, and not anything in herself. Such a revelation (if it was a revelation) made me ashamed of myself, and this, perhaps, made me more cordial than usual when she came up to me. She had some of her housekeeping books in her hands, and I said (meaning to be kind) that I saw she was, like myself, unwilling to let any little bills run over into the new year.

“Ah, not like you, I fear,” she said, “I have to do it as I can; it would be too great happiness to be able to pay one’s bills all at once. It would be like a little corner of heaven.” She was laughing, but there was little laughter in her mind, as any one could see.

“My dear,” said I, “if you will let me say it, I am a much older woman than you are—paying bills is the very best use to make of your money. You never can have perfect ease of mind so long as you have bills to pay.”

She laughed again, with something that sounded like mockery.

“Dear Mrs. Bertram, you are older than I am; but do you really think you know half or a quarter so much of the misery of bills unpaid as I do? How should you? for you can pay your bills whenever you please.”

“My dear!” I said, for I was startled and did not know how to reply.

“Oh, no, not the quarter, nor the tenth part,” she said. “Don’t be vexed because I laugh. I laugh because of trouble, because of the hardness of it, and because at the bottom I suppose it must be a little my fault. I ought to be as stern as a Spartan, and do without things for the children, but even then—oh, it is not a nice thing to be unable to pay your bills! One would not choose it for pleasure. I am going to tell old Mr. Norton I will give him his money as soon as ever we can, but not to-day.”

I was much abashed by what she said, thinking of all my strictures upon her, and followed her meekly into Mr. Norton’s shop, for I also had a little account to settle there. A little colour came to her face, but she walked up to the counter where the old gentleman stood, very bravely. “I have come to tell you that I will pay you something—as much as I can—in about a fortnight, Mr. Norton. I hope it will not make any difference.”

“Oh, Mrs. Randall! oh, ladies!” said the apothecary. He was an amiable old man, with white hair. He pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, and held up his hand to stop her. “Just when you please, just when it is convenient,” he said. “Oh, my dear young lady, you oughtn’t to have so much to pay. That is the truth, though, perhaps I shouldn’t say it. Those draughts and things, the doctors oughtn’t to order them. It doesn’t become me to go against the doctors. I oughtn’t to make them up. I wouldn’t if I was the honest man I have always considered myself to be. Half what you pay is for water and ingredients that are no good. I’ve often wanted to tell you, but I never had courage till to-day.”

“It’s distilled water,” said a voice from the other counter, “and you have got to pay for that,” just as (it occurred to me) I have said to John about his education and his cultivated judgment; was it not all the same?

“Hold your tongue, Robert! hold your tongue, Robert! And what are you making that dust for, to put out customers’ eyes?”

“It’s all adulterated,” said Robert. “I won’t have it another moment in the shop.”

We did not stop to see what this was, for the dust was pungent. I pushed the money for my bill, which was not much, across the counter, and followed Mrs. Randall out. We had scarcely time to do more than say to each other that adulteration, though no doubt very bad, was less unpleasant so long as one didn’t know of it, than to be choked by a too-zealous vendor of drugs in the act of pouring it away, when we reached the door of Saunders, the grocer, where we both had business too. Saunders and his man were very busy, almost too busy to notice us at first. They were carrying out what seemed to be all the butter in the shop, and loading with it a cart which stood before the door, surrounded by a group of gaping children glad of something to stare at. The grocer observed us at last, and, as I suppose I was a very good customer, stopped in his occupation to attend to me. “But first,” I said, “tell me what you are doing? You seem to me to be sending away all your butter out of the shop.”

Saunders was very hot and red with the exertions he had been making. He put up his apron and wiped his forehead. “I’m ashamed to tell you, ma’am,” he said, “not as I ever served you or any of my best customers with that there confounded stuff.”

“The butter, Mr. Saunders!”

“You have served me with it, I am sure,” said Mrs. Randall by my side.

Upon which Saunders grew redder and redder. “I don’t know, ma’am, what that assistant o’ mine may have done. He’s got no discrimination. It have long been a trouble to me. Butter! bless you, that ain’t butter. It’s all a made-up stuff. I don’t say as it’s bad or good, but it ain’t butter. I’ve done nothing but what all the trade does; but somehow I took a thought this morning, or more like it was the thought that took me, for I couldn’t find no strength in myself to struggle against it. ‘Are you doing your duty?’ I kep’ asking myself; is that doing as you’d be done by? Selling a thing for butter as ain’t butter no more nor I’m butter. I wouldn’t eat it myself, not if you were to pay me,” said Saunders, with a look of disgust.

“But I have eaten it,” said Mrs. Randall with a little grimace. “I thought it very bad butter, and so I told you. How dare you sell me things for my children that you would not eat yourself, if you were paid?”

“It shan’t happen no more,” said the penitent grocer. “It have cost me a deal of money, and I’ll never get a shilling out of it: but the peace of one’s conscience is worth a deal of money. Sam, if you’ve got them all in, jump up and be off—I won’t have anything like it in my shop. Though it pleased them well enough as knew no better, and I never heard as it was unwholesome,” he added, with a tinge of regret

“What are you going to do with it, if it is not unwholesome, and the people that know no better like it? Why should not you tell them that it is not butter, and sell it for what it is worth?”

“Oh, ma’am, don’t put temptation in my way! That’s all in the Act of Parliament, that is. But oleo-margarine’s a long word, and if you put up a name like that, nobody will buy it. But call it butter, and they takes it fast enough. It’s too much of a temptation for a man in my trade. Drive away, Sam, and let the railway have it for greasing the wheels or something. Quick, quick, in case I should change my mind!”

We had scarcely left the shop, both of us in some agitation, but half amused all the same, when we were joined by the rector, who was marching along with considerable excitement, the two churchwardens after him. He is a large man, of the kind that was called muscular Christian in my day—a large, strong, man, once very athletic, but now in the course of nature becoming a little broad—broad, perhaps, in two senses—in person and belief, and with a little innocent pride, as such men will have, in his comprehension of human nature and power of sympathising with men of very different ways of thinking. He was a very communicative man, and, though he was evidently in a hurry, would not pass without a talk. “Things are in the strangest state,” he said. “I don’t know what is coming over us, Mrs. Bertram; I must have your help. Money is pouring in on me. I don’t know what to do with it.”

“That is an unusual difficulty indeed.”

“Isn’t it? On ordinary occasions I might put it aside for the new organ, or to restore the chancel, or some such pious work; but not now. You must help me to think; it is to be for the good of the poor.”

“Oh, give them a little,” cried Mrs. Randall. “To have something when you have nothing is the greatest treat. Coals are pleasant, and roast beef is delightful, but a little money all to yourself, to spend as you please, is the best of all.”

The rector looked at me and I at him. Of all things in this world to trust our poor people with money was the last. Our principle was that it did them harm. Coals and roast beef, and flannels and blankets where they were necessary, but money! “I am afraid it would be said to be demoralising and pauperising, and I don’t know what beside,” he said.

“But it would be happiness for once in a way; or as near happiness as the poor things could have.”

“My dear lady,” said the rector, “happiness is not counted in any charity organisation. It isn’t in our power. Fortunately for us, we have not the responsibility of giving or withholding that. Money can’t buy it.”

My little friend turned away from us a moment with a faraway look in her pretty eyes. “Oh, no,” she said, clasping her hands, “but a little money will sometimes make all the difference.”

“Sir,” said one of the churchwardens, “not to interrupt you, I think we must be moving on. Here’s a man says destruction’s going on wholesale. Perhaps if the ladies would step along with us they might be of use.”

“Yes, I think you might be of use,” said the rector, with an apologetic laugh; and we walked on with a little excitement, for what we had already seen gave us an idea as to what was meant. He led us away quickly through the little streets, where a great many poor people were out at their doors, and children running about, and a general air of confusion, to the meadow on the river-side, which is close to the ferry. Here we found a crowd of people, all in high excitement, with a kind of desperation of purpose about them tempered by hesitation and doubt, and the want of any leader or daring person who would take the first step. Carts laden with cans of milk, great barrels of beer, Mr. Saunders’ kegs of butter, and I don’t how many things besides—eggs, stale fish which tainted the air, even meat. It was as if a great market had been opened by the river-side. But all the people were standing about with a curious, excited hesitation. Some had carried their milk cans to the very edge of the stream, and some had run down their beer barrels to the gravel at the ferry. But there was a pause, as if all these had been cannons, and the gunners were waiting the signal to fire.

As we came out upon the damp grass there suddenly arrived behind us, with a furious jolting and jarring, driven at full speed, and almost upset where the field rose a little from the level of the road, a light cart driven by a man standing up in it, and urging on his horse with shouts and all the fervour of that communicable excitement by which a generous animal can be quickened as well as a human creature. The horse was evidently fully conscious of the master’s passion, and flew with a speed and vivacity, a sort of wild exaggeration of the man’s purpose, which was impressive to behold. But yet it would have been difficult to exaggerate the almost fury of the man. He stood up shouting, shaking the bridle, swaying himself in his whole person, as if the impulse in him would accelerate the speed. His appearance and that of his excited horse was so startling that all the crowd paused, with a gasp of suspended energy, and that yielding of the timid to the bold which is nowhere so marked as in a crowd. The man was well enough known to all of them. He was one of the most noted characters in our town. He was the keeper of a low drinking-place in one of the worst quarters. He had in his cart several barrels of beer, along with kegs and other vessels, which rattled and jolted with a sound of liquid contents as he darted along. The man was clearly almost beyond himself with passionate feeling. “Make way, make way!” he shouted as he went along, jolting over every obstruction, down to the river. Here he drew up his horse with a force that brought the animal on its haunches, and, vaulting out of the cart, seized one of the smaller kegs first, and with furious force pulled out its bung, and flung the open mouth outward to the stream. Another and another and another without a pause! Then there was a loud murmur among the throng. The impulse was given. The men who had been standing waiting, afraid to take the first step, flung themselves upon their cans and barrels, and in a moment there ensued the most wonderful scene. Shouting, shrieking in their excitement, both men and women rushed to the margin of the river, and streams of milk, of beer, of more potent spirit, began to roll and tumble—white, brown, foaming, mingling together in a sort of carnival of waste and destruction—along the bosom of the stream.

For my part, I took little heed of the rest; but when the milk began to flow I rushed forward, imploring, “Oh, why destroy the milk? Oh, stop, stop. Don’t destroy it; what harm can there be in the milk?” I cried, hearing myself shriek in the impossibility of stopping the destruction. I ran from one to another in despair, while the poor women and the children followed close upon me, some trying to catch it as it poured out, in the empty cans that lay about. I had no time to see anything in my excitement, and yet I saw like a little picture, which has never disappeared from my eyes, two little children on the very edge of the river, one kneeling down catching the white flood as it streamed out from the can in its little joined hands, the other with its little face close trying to drink, the strangest little pathetic picture against the background of the strangely streaked river, and the dark trees and misty whiteness of the atmosphere beyond.

I had no time to see what my friends were doing. There was a harsh sound of voices in my ears, all talking together; but in the meanwhile I had got hold violently of one man.

“Why the milk? why the milk? why the milk?” I heard myself saying over and over, again and again.

“Because it isn’t milk. It’s half water; it’s a cheat. Let me alone!” cried the man.

He was our own milkman, and always civil, but he shook off my hand on his arm, and when I seized the can to save it, turned round fiercely upon me.

“Do you want me to be a cheat? to sell what’s a lie? Go along, lady, go along!” he cried, pushing me away.

I am neither young enough nor strong enough for personal struggles, but I kept my hold on the can. I heard myself giving shriek after shriek, of which I scarcely knew the sense, standing thus struggling. He could have pitched me into the river along with the the can, but he did not, he only tried to get it out of my hands.

“Look there,” I cried, “look there; look at the children! it may be bad for you, but it’s still some good for the children! Look at the children!”

Somehow with my cries I got him to stop, and then the others paused to see what it was. The two little things were still there, one with his little face all splashed with the milk, which it tried to drink as from a fountain, the other making a little piteous vessel in which to catch it of its little chubby hands.

This stopped them somehow in the very act of pouring it away; they came round me to hear what I was saying; perhaps it went to their hearts to see all the milk running away.

“What’s the lady saying? what is she saying? what is she pointing at?”

For my part, I lost all my modesty. I never remembered that a woman has no right to speak in public. I got up on a cart without knowing what I was doing, and made my first speech.

“Oh!” I said, “good people, it was wicked to put the water in the milk. I understand why you want to pour it away. But though it is not so good as it ought to be, it is still good for something; don’t destroy it while there are so many poor neighbours that would be glad of it There is some good in it still. Let the children have it. Look at them yonder. Give it to the children, and promise that you will never more, so long as you live, spoil it with water again!”

I never stopped to think whether I had any right to speak to them, or how I was to do it. I just did it with the tears running down my face; and some of them cried too, in the strength of the feeling that had seized upon them, and ran and gave the milk away to whoever would bring a jug or a bowl to fetch it. And as soon as the poor people understood, they came from all sides with their bowls, some with a penny or a half-penny, understanding they were to have a bargain, yet honest still; some eager to take whatever they could get. But some of the milk people still stood doubtful, more ready to pour it away, which was a sacrifice they could understand, than to give it for little or nothing, so that others should be the better, though by-and-by they yielded to the general impulse; and by degrees the rector and the others who had come to help him began to get the upper hand. I stood on my cart like a revolutionary heroine (as I thought afterwards) and looked over the field. Further down the river at the ferry, where there was a dry track, stood a dark cloud of men looking on. They were men of the roughest sort, in their working dress, hanging together, eyeing; with sombre faces the stream that foamed and bubbled with the strange contributions poured into it. They watched all the contents of those barrels running away with a moody silence which contrasted with the noise and commotion in the meadow. They did not say a word. They did nothing to help the gentlemen who came forward remonstrating, trying to save what was good for use.

“Send it to the hospitals if you like—don’t destroy it—There is plenty of use for it in the world without abusing it,” I heard some of my own friends cry, almost struggling, as I had done, about the milk. But the men only stood and looked on. If they had liked they were strong enough to have seized it all, to have made an orgie such as never had been seen. No one could have resisted them. There were so many of them that they might have taken everything into their own hands; but they only stood and stared, with a certain gloom upon their faces—a gloom of self-restraint and self-denial, not impassioned like the impulse of the others, yet giving passive consent to the destruction of so much that meant luxury and enjoyment to them.

After a while the people’s excitement yielded to the influence which we could bring upon them. It was harder to get them to consent to allow us to dispose of that part of their goods which, though not quite genuine, was still fit for food, than to destroy it in a wild, unanimous rush of renunciation, which was what they wished. The lighting of a large bonfire, in which the stale food which was unfit for consumption should be burned, gave, however, a little diversion, and occupied them for a time, all throwing themselves into this work with grim enjoyment; and we managed to secure the grocer’s false butter, the watered milk, the brandy and other adulterated liquors in a considerable quantity. The drugged beer, with all its deleterious ingredients, nobody attempted to save. The whole town was in a tumult, surging about the riverside, but there were no quarrels, no attempts to take anything, no pilfering or fighting. The two children who tried to secure a little milk as it ran away were the only offenders, and these so innocent. The poor people turned out from the most wretched dens of the town, where they lived from hand to mouth, glad if the day’s work would secure a day’s living—stood about and touched nothing. They could have seized all, but attempted nothing—not even the worst, those who had sunk far below improvidence, the reckless, the almost lost. They came to us after a while to buy, when we had explained to them how worthless our goods were. It was like a fair upon the river bank; the great bonfire blazed, consuming all that was useless; a great ring of people surrounding it, throwing in new contributions—a bonfire of something more than vanities. The red flames leapt up into the astonished daylight, and glared in the river in fierce reflection, reddening that rolling turbid stream, all mixed with evil things. Beyond the circle of the dense mass which surrounded the fire we kept up our fair. The brandy was ordered to the hospitals; and by the time the bonfire began to burn low, all our wares were disposed of, and not ours alone. It was market day in the town, and gradually, as our sales went on, all sorts of vehicles came hurrying down to be in the midst of the tumult, in the midst of the opportunity. It went on, I believe, all the rest of the day, the most unusual sight. A band of people who were better off had collected along with the rector. I believe the most of them did, like me, what we all thought so imprudent, what Mrs. Randall had suggested. I know for my part that I emptied my purse with a kind of abandon, an impulse I could not resist, bidding the poor women do the best they could, lay in what store was possible. “To-morrow will be New Year’s Day,” we all said to each other; a new world, a new life was to begin with the New Year.

The rest of that day passed as in a wonderful dream. All sorts of people, some whom I had never known before, came to me to beg my pardon, to ask me to make peace between them and offended friends, to confide money to me for the poor, to ask me to arrange for them the education of children—every kind of good work. It was not one class, but all classes, to whom this impulse had come. The wife of the greatest man in the neighbourhood came running in with tears in her eyes to kiss me and tell me that she was going to town with her husband’s consent—nay at his desire—to seek out a prodigal whom he had turned from his house, almost breaking the mother’s heart. She had snatched a moment on her way to the railway to tell me this news. Everywhere there was a melting and softening, a turning of people’s hearts.

II

You will ask whether I was so happy as to have nothing in my own life to set right. Ah me! how little people know. I cannot for shame make the confession of my own sins here; but not because I was not bowed down by them like the rest. But the dark place in our lives was not our doing. Can I say that with a good conscience? Oh, who is there that can clear themselves when those they love go wrong? Who can tell by what unthought-of ways the tenderest parent, the kindest friends may help to do harm, to turn erring footsteps aside without knowing? We talked it over sometimes, his father and I, asking ourselves, If we had done this other thing? If we had not done that? If we had been suspicious when we were confident, and confident when we were suspicious? God knows! in our groping, human way, never seeing what a day or an hour might bring forth, we had done it all, as we said, for the best And we had failed. It was known that we had failed by all our neighbours, by the whole community in which we lived; the fact, but no more. We were still his champions though he had broken our hearts, and little was known. I made no confidences on the subject, even to my dearest friends, and still less did my husband say a word. Even between ourselves we spoke of it little, though it was never out of our hearts. On the evening of this wonderful Saturday, I sat by myself, in that hour between night and day, when one’s thoughts are saddest when they are sad, and sweetest when they are happy. There was nothing but firelight in the room, and not very much of that—a red and warm glow full of the sentiment of comfort, and quiet, and peace. I sat by the fire, for trouble is always cold, and cried quietly to myself with nobody to see. The girls were still out, the little children not yet come down-stairs; and I was tired. If any one had come in suddenly and found me thus, that is what I should have said: I had been doing a great deal, on foot almost the whole day, and I was a little tired and nervous—that is the explanation I should have made. The silence and the dusk were grateful in the midst of the busy life I led. To sit for a little, and cry, and wonder where he was, and what he might be doing, and remind God of him, as if God needed to be reminded! But who can fathom the mystery of that?—all the mysteries and all the aches of wonder over those mysteries which come when we stand helpless before our Heavenly Father, and do not know how to explain His ways, nor what to say to Him in the anguish of being, were in my heart. Oh, what prayers had gone up to Heaven for that boy! Oh, what thoughts, what appeals, what struggles! And now I, his mother, could do nothing but sit over the fire and cry, not able to do anything for him, for whom I would have gladly given my life.

I was sitting thus, glad to be alone and uninterrupted, when there came a little soft rustle into the room, and a little shadow—it seemed no more—dropped at my side, half visible in the glow of the fire. I could scarcely see who it was, and yet I knew, though she had never done such a thing before, never put herself forward. Poor little girl! We had not even spoken of him together, and yet somehow I knew. She dropped upon her knees by my side, and touched me with a timid little hand.

“Oh!” she said, with a sighing breath, that to me needed no explanation, “can nothing be done? can nothing be done? cannot we let him know?”

“My dear,” I said, without any pause, without hesitating or asking what right had she? “my dear, what is there to let him know? It is not pardon that is wanting or welcome that is wanting. He knows all; he knows already all we could say.”

She drew close, kneeling by my side; the faint glow of the fire did not betray either of us to the other, but I knew what was in her heart, and she knew what was in mine.

“Oh!” she said, “but send him a message. If he were here his heart would be touched too; though he knows, yet tell him again.”

“How shall I tell him?” I said. Her head was very near mine. I leant over her,, putting my arms round her, and my full heart ran over. “How shall I tell him? For we don’t know; oh! Mary, we don’t know—”

I had never told it before. His father and I alone knew the depth of the misery which we hid in our hearts. Our boy—our eldest who had been our pride, God forgive him—we did not even know where he was.

“Oh, Mrs. Bertram!” was all she said. Our cheeks touched, and both were wet. The sob that came out of her young bosom shook me, though I was too old for sobbing. She clung to me and kissed me, with her arms round me. “God will take His own message,” she whispered in my ear.

It was Mary Bernard, Mrs. Randall’s sister. I had known something, but never so much as this before. And that was only one moment in the full and busy day. Thus the old year came to an end.

In the morning we all woke up with a certain expectation, though I could not tell what it was we expected. Notwithstanding the secret trouble with which no one intermeddled, we were a cheerful pair among our children. To overshadow them would have been unjust, and to remain uninfluenced by their buoyant youth would have been unnatural. We were happy with the young ones, notwithstanding—and the happy bustle of the Sunday morning and New Year’s Day all in one, the getting ready for church, the tying of little sashes and buttoning of little gloves, was full of pleasantness. I had told my husband certain ideas I had formed which he regarded as very unlikely, shaking his head at my fancy.

“Going to church is not a thing that will occur to them,” he said.

“I think it is the first thing that will occur to them,” was my reply.

“It is not their habit,” said he.

“It is the first symbol of a desire to be good,” said I. With this mild wrangle we set out in our patriarchal way with all our progeny, and I thought it was a pretty procession. The two girls, woman-grown, and then the schoolboys, and then what were called the little ones, the delight of us all, their little rosy faces showing out of their white furs and fleecy white coats like winter blossoms, so soft and downy, in all the bloom of childhood. But our minds were soon diverted from that admiration of our own, which parents, I hope, may be forgiven. When we came round the first corner I could not but look my husband in the face with a look of triumph. For there was a crowd such as had never been seen before in that very ordinary street The habitual church-goers made a respectable stream enough along the pavements on ordinary occasions, but this was a storm of people, a crowd, a multitude, an army, occupying the whole breadth of the way. The first glance was enough. There they came—not the well-dressed, comfortable people, not even the shabby respectable, not the gentlefolks nor the tradesmen, but the masses, the common crowd, the people who had no Sunday clothes, who thought themselves not fit to be seen; the women with their dingy shawls and jackets, the men in their working garb. They came along with a little shyness, yet resolutely, most of them with an attempt at “cleaning up,” here and there a new piece of apparel, all with faces shining, and a kind of shame-faced confidence. I had spoken to my girls beforehand, though they did not believe me, and now, at a sign from me, though they were reluctant to be out of what, I fear, they called “the fun,” they turned and took the little ones home again.

A crowd of people surrounded the church. If the Queen had been going there, if any great ceremonial had been proceeding, there would not have been so great a crowd. Another flood of people streamed towards the Wesleyan Chapel, the Roman Catholic—every place of worship that was near. The whole population, if it is ever possible to estimate that, had turned out. All the poor streets, the crowded houses had poured their contents forth. We could scarcely push our way through them, we who were the congregations. And here we came in face of a dilemma never perhaps fully considered before. We had spent our lives wishing that the poor people would come to church, lamenting their absence, persuading, imploring, seducing them to come. Oh, the arguments I had myself made use of for this purpose! “No place? Oh, yes, there is plenty of room. No dress? What does dress matter, so long as we are clean, and as neat as we can be? No hymn-books? Oh, I shall see to that.” These little speeches were made when we hoped for a few, for a family here and there whom we were ready to pet and praise as if their coming was a favour to us. But all that was changed. The people had come out en masse to claim their own. Was it not for them those churches were built, those clergy provided? Was it not all theirs to take advantage of it when they would? That at least was the theory—not perhaps in the chapels of the Roman Catholics or of the Wesleyans, both of which, though so different, were built for the instruction and comfort of a detached and separate group. But the church which is called the Church of England was for the people. Who could doubt this? If it were not so it was deserting every theory of its being. When we came to the church doors and found them surrounded by that multitude, we had a rapid decision to make, no time to think or to consult. “For my part I am a pew-opener to-day, and you had better be the same,” my husband said to me, without pausing as he ought to have done to acknowledge that I was in the right Briefly outside we exchanged a few words with others who were in the same position as ourselves. The aspect of the people was wonderful. They did not push in as they might have done and take possession. They stood about, expecting, waiting for what was to be done for them; and what was extraordinary was that they did not seem to be on the outlook for slight or scorn as they so often are; there were no whisperings among them that church was thought too good for the likes of them, as I have heard so often. Neither had any of the ladies that look of angry repulsion with which I have seen many regard the intrusion of a roughly-dressed stranger into their pew, or to their near vicinity. There was nothing of the sort on either side. They seemed to understand the pause of consideration on our part, and we understood the universal rush on theirs. A word or two between ourselves and all were of one mind. We made ourselves into pew-openers as my husband had suggested, and invited our visitors, our friends, our invaders in, putting them into the places which we were accustomed to occupy. Among them was a row of poor women huddling together in poor finery, with traces on their pale faces of the paint and powder that had once been there. Poor souls, they had a frightened look. Of all the strangers there they were the only group that looked at us with alarm, with something more than timidity, with a wistful wonder, as if we might turn our backs upon them or shut the doors against them. When they were brought in like the rest, most of them fell a-crying, hiding their faces in their hands. The others came with a mingled air of pleasure, surprise, and diffidence, with faint protests and looks at each other when they were put into the best places. They were very civil, and whispered, with a desire to be quiet and reverential which was half touching and half grotesque: “Not there, ma’am, anywheres will do for the like of us,” they said. We who were the usual frequenters of the place felt like officials conducting a great strange ceremonial for which there was no precedent, in which every one had to invent his office for himself. The church filled in this manner quietly, swiftly, not in the prolonged interrupted way of an ordinary congregation coming in. In a minute or two it was crammed to the door, every seat filled, and the aisles and every available corner. We brought in what chairs and benches we could find, and they too were filled, and still the people crowded and crushed into the porches and in the doorways. For us there was no place. Most of the younger members of the families had, like mine, been sent home. The gentlemen stood where they could get standing-ground. The ladies kept mostly outside among those who could not get admission; and followed the service, giving a sort of timid lead to the groups who, like ourselves, could not find room within. After some time a little door was opened, and some one signalled to me cautiously. It was the organist, who, though perhaps not less touched than the rest of us, had locked the door which led up to the little organ loft so as to keep himself free of the unusual worshippers. He admitted as many of the ladies as he could find room for, and myself among the rest. It was a wonderful scene upon which we looked down. A crowd of kneeling forms, some with their heads bowed, some raised in a vague yet awestricken wonder, trying to understand. Then, when the prayers came to an end, with a sudden gleam as of light coming over the vast area, a sea of faces all turned one way, all eager, intent, eyes wide open, lips apart, with a flicker of uncertainty and expectation, not knowing what was to come next. No doubt the greater part of them knew more or less what was to come next. But even those to whom the routine of the morning service was familiar were yet sure enough that this was not as every day, that something different, something, answering to a vague and vast expectation, must be coming. I had already thought of this. All the wondering, uninstructed, unaccustomed masses, would the rector have anything to say to them that would be worthy this wonderful occasion; would he be able to free himself from the bonds of the conventional and speak to them in the only way that would affect that crowd? Would he be able to meet this strange emergency? I had been troubled by this thought; but as I stood in the organ loft and looked down upon them, I forgot it. I forgot everything but them—lines on lines of faces—the pale and the ruddy, the strong and the feeble, big men, perhaps the most simple in their half-awakened, half-stupid gaze, little sharp faces of children, women not so rapt in the wonder of the moment but that they had a glance of anxious attention to spare to mark how their husbands were affected. Was this the “he for God only, she for God in him,” or was it the intense sense of all that depended upon the deepening of this impression, upon the securing of the man’s heart, which disturbed the woman’s individual consciousness? This thought flew through my mind with a hundred others. I did not dwell upon it. Everything was suggestive, except the gradually rising feeling, the longing and the sympathy which filled my eyes with tears and made my heart beat I could have spoken to them myself, forgetting utterly who I was and where.

The rector came slowly into the pulpit The sound he made disturbed my rapt attention a little. He was pale, and his countenance wore a tremulous look, highly excited, yet unassured, like a man who has come to the greatest effort, the most important moment of his life, and does not know whether he will be able for it. He stood for a moment looking, as I had done, at this strange overwhelming scene. All the faces which had been turned vaguely towards the altar were now definitely turned and fixed on him. Hundreds—nay, thousands—of eyes gazing at him, faces not dull with use, not respectfully indifferent, quiet in the repose of a habitual attention, which was the usual aspect of his congregation; but all gazing, staring, expectant, waiting as if it were a voice from heaven for what he had to say.

He grew paler and paler; his lips moved without any sound, then he said, “My brethren,” and took his eyes off them for a moment to settle his sermon upon the desk before him, then lifted them again, and said “My brethren—” once more. They were all intent, with their eyes fixed on him, silent, almost breathless, all that multitude. There was a group immediately below where I was standing which attracted my attention, a very big, strong man in fustian, with a red handkerchief round his neck, which seemed to blaze among all the sombre clothing. His face might have been brutal in other circumstances. It was half-stupid, yet full of wonder and attention; the big mouth open, the eyes raised. His wife beside him had a worn little face, which quivered all over with earnestness and eagerness. She had her hand upon his arm with a strange sort of anxious intercession in her look, as if asking something for him. She was breathless for the message that should be for him. The same kind of group was repeated almost in every line of all those endless rows of faces. I forgot in the interest of looking at them that we were waiting all of us for what should be said—the sermon, or the message, the something, they knew not what, I knew not what—nor, to see his face so pale, the quivering of his lips, the look of almost appalled anxiety—neither did he who was to speak. The sermon was placed on the little desk.

“My brethren.” Was that what it was—just as if it were us in our everyday use that were to listen, and not the crowd, the multitude, the people whom we had always been calling and calling to, and who, to confound all our ideas and shatter all our plans, had come at last?

“My brethren—” This time was final; he would attempt it no more. He pushed aside the sermon, hurriedly, and leant over the edge of the pulpit, holding out his hands. “Oh, people!” he cried, “oh, friends! I have no words to tell you how glad I am, how thankful, how joyful to see you here. Thank you for coming; thank God for sending you. This is your house as well as God’s. You have all a right to it—the best right. Here is home where we can all meet and talk, and understand each other. God bless you! God bless you every one, brothers and friends!”

He had struck the right note, thank God! He stopped, for his voice was choked, and there ran a little half-murmur, a thrill of response through the place. They did not answer in words, though I thought I heard something like a “God bless you too!” The woman underneath me gave one quick glance at the man and took her hand off his arm; for upon his big face there had come a faint light, a sort of vague suffusion of a smile, like the soul awakening in it, and she felt herself free to listen for herself—his attention was secured.

The rector stopped to recover himself. He tried once or twice before he could get his voice. Then he broke out suddenly—

“See how foolish I am—like a baby. I am so glad to see you that I should like to cry, or laugh, I don’t know which, for joy and thankfulness. Church is no place to laugh, you will think. Ah, but it is for such a reason as this. For think! there is pleasure in heaven. For one who comes back, who comes out of the careless ways of the world, who leaves off what is wrong, and returns to his Father, there is pleasure in heaven. How much more so when many of you come—come freely, not because it is your custom, or because you have been asked, or for anything but your own free will, because you like to come.

“That,” he said, his voice growing stronger, “is what gives pleasure in heaven—that is what God likes—to see a man, and the women, too, we must not leave out, the women—coming freely of their own will to say, I am sorry, I will return to my Father. You have not any doubt about who your Father is, have you? Some of you are fathers yourselves. When the boy comes home that has been so foolish, that has been wild and wicked and given you so much trouble, when he comes home, and knocks, with his heart trembling, perhaps, not knowing how he is to be received, coming home to his father—”

I saw the sea of faces no more. I saw nothing but the mist in my eyes, and heard only the surging up through all my veins of the blood to my heart. Ah, if that might be! if that might be! Everything went away from me for a time. I sat down with but a murmur in my ear, and in my eyes a vague impression of those lines of listening forms, like the long level of waves upon the sea. Presently it came back again by degrees. The rector was a good man, but not eloquent. He preached usually just as other clergymen preach, telling us what we knew very well already, and not sorry any more than we were when the sermon was over. Perhaps the difference to-day was because it was not a sermon at all—that he wanted with all his heart to say something to them—that it was all so real, the faces staring, intent, not used to what was going on. The man below with the red handkerchief was listening with all his heart. Once he drew the back of his arm across his eyes, two or three times he struck out with his big elbow against the little wife who had ceased watching him, to call her attention—she, in the fervour of her own interest, had forgotten him. She replied with her own elbow more vehemently than I could have thought possible, and breathed something shortly and quickly, no doubt a “Be quiet, will you?” from her thin lips. She had forgotten even her most engrossing care, how he would take it, in the rising of heart and soul within herself.

I lost what he was saying in the great flood of personal feeling which I could not keep down; nor could I recover the thread of it save through the intent faces which were fixed upon him, moving and swaying with every change of his voice. I cannot put down what he said to them, only that they heard him and listened with all their souls, with every faculty alive. When my mind came to be quite clear again, he had sunk to a calmer tone.

“You know what day this is,” he was saying; “it is New Year’s Day; it is a new beginning; it is another life. We can never get hold again of what is past, but every moment of the present is ours. We have got to begin again from to-day. And to-morrow will be harder than to-day. Here in church it is easy, isn’t it? We all feel God is here. You have come back to Him and sat down at the feet of Jesus, to hear what He’s got to say to you. I am but a poor hand, but I know what He wants to be said to you. And it is this. It will be harder to-morrow. We can’t be always sitting in church with the children before us, and all the kind neighbours round, and those whom you call the ladies and gentlemen waiting upon you. If it could be so, you wouldn’t like it; you would get very tired of it; but to-morrow you will have to go to work again; you will have to go past the public-house as you go home, and in the evening you won’t know what to do with yourselves. You men will not know what to do with yourselves. The women are better off, for their work is never done; but you men, what will you do? You can’t keep lounging about the house in the women’s way. What will you do? It will be very bad for you. It all will be hard, from the moment you get up in the morning till the moment you go to bed at night. And it is not as if it were a thing that anybody could do for you. It’s like a soldier fighting; his comrades can’t do it for him; his officers can’t do it for him. He has to stand himself, as if there was not another man in the world. And that is what you will all have to do the moment you leave this place—every man and every woman, and even the little things. We are all one here, sitting together, listening together shoulder to shoulder, and feeling safe. We may be tempted to think wrong, but we cannot do anything wrong if we were to try. But in half an hour it will be different; you will all be free to do whatever you please to do. That’s the whole story, as I told you before. God won’t force you to be good. He has too much respect for you. You are made in His image, and who could force Him? Nothing in this world can force you to be good. The laws punish those that steal and kill, but they cannot punish the man that drinks, or the woman that scolds and makes her home miserable. The thing is all in this. If you don’t like to be good and wish to be good, you can’t be forced, and this day, this delightful blessed New Year’s Day, will have come to nothing. But I think better things of you all. We all mean to be good men and women from this day. We say so of our free will, with all our hearts, we wish it, we like it, we mean it, with all our hearts. Speak up, men! don’t be afraid because you are in church. The church is God’s house—the home of all that are in trouble, of all whose hearts are moved within them. Don’t be afraid to speak; say it out like men. And the women too, say it out in the name of God. You wish it, you love that best, you mean to be good. So help you, God.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then there was a great sound in the church, a sound like the roar of the wind or the sea—a harsh great vibration of human voices, with weeping and lower inarticulate cries, the cries of emotion beyond words. I think most of them said “So help me, God,” the words being familiar to them; and then many of them looked at each other askance, as if ashamed of having spoken at all. And here and there all over the church heads were bowed down, and a great sound of crying went round and round, breaking out like the waves that break in irregular pieces, dividing every time. They kept on breaking, when the rector’s voice resumed.

“And I can promise you one thing, my men, and the women too. God will help you. You will find at your side, like the three young men—don’t you remember?—in the fire, one that is like the Son of Man—ah! more than that, one that is a man like ourselves, Christ Jesus our Lord—who knows everything, so that there is no need to explain to Him. He is not ashamed to go anywhere, or afraid of anything. He will help you past the public-house. He will stand by you whatever happens. He knows all about it, everything, and how hard it is. Don’t suppose He needs to be told that. He knows it is hard, but I promise you every man, I promise you in His name, He will help you past that public-house.

“And the women, too! He always understood the women. He was the kinder to them because you are not always so kind to them as you might be, you men. But we will do better in .that too; we will do better in everything, so help us, God!”

There was another murmur again, not so strong, mingled with a great deal of crying; but he did not wait for any response as he had done before.

“And now we’ve said all we have to say to each other, I wish you all a happy new year, a happy new year to every one. It will be happy, being good. To the women, and to the children, and to you, men, who are the hardest to move, you know you are, a happy new year, a good new year! I hope you will have plenty of work, plenty of food, plenty of pleasure and entertainment and happiness; and if I can help you either to work or play, I will do it. And God bless you, every one. And NOW,” he drew nearly up to his full height, and raised his hands, “I am going to give thanks to God. Stand up with me, let us all stand up brothers and sisters, together, and you who know it say it with me, for you have good cause.”

The sound of their rising up was like the sound of the sea. The women were almost all crying. Here and there a man would burst out with a sob which was like a roar. They stumbled up, startled by the appeal, not knowing most of them what it was they had to say; but yet enough knew to make the words thunder forth as if with a great sweeping bass of accompaniment, “To God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.” The strangeness of it all, the state of emotion and agitation they were in, the climax of this wonderful, unaccustomed act was overpowering. The voice of a multitude unanimous, saying the same thing, is wonderful, whatever it says, and how much more repeating with confusion and awe and self-astonishment that great Amen.

The streaming out of this great people from the church was no less wonderful to see. We stood in the little doorway that led to the organ-loft watching them. They were excited, yet tranquillised. They came pouring out as if the stream would never cease, till we wondered how the church or any church could have held them, and streamed away to every side, but chiefly to the river-side, where the poorest streets were. My big man with the red handkerchief was still conspicuous among the rest, lumbering along with his heavy tread, his great half-awakened face mild with a sort of leonine gentleness, his little wife—for she was very small, by one of those freaks of fancy that makes so many incongruous unions—holding on by his elbow. She had the air of being his habitual guide, but an anxious one, always conscious that her huge vassal might turn upon her and crush all her precautions at any moment. I think I could even discern that sometimes she had felt the weight of that tremendous arm. She held him now with much watchfulness, intent on what he was going to do, following rather than leading. They all passed along, filling the centre of the road, while we habitual church-goers stood wondering on the pavement looking at them. They were very friendly, giving us nods and smiles, and now and then a “Thank you” as they passed. And by-and-by they had streamed quite away, and left all the place, that had so throbbed and rustled with that sea of life, silent, quiet, in its usual decorum. But we could not go away. We stood about the doors, realising the wonder that had happened and all its consequences, and talked it over, and consulted. What was to be done? They had taken us at our word, but where was room to be found for them if—as God grant might be the case!—they were to come every day?

The rector came out to us with the nervous tremor of strong excitement upon him.

“What did I say to them? Was it incoherent? was it extravagant? I don’t know what I said,” he cried, his hands shaking, his eyes like a woman’s filling with tears. Some of the gentlemen walked home with him, doing their best to calm him down. And then there came again the tremendous question, What was to be done? To provide suddenly for the needs of government and the protection of a community is a great responsibility enough—to be the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those that do well—but when a whole population in a moment abandons all its habitual practices, the things that have occupied and amused it, and sets out tremulously, unanimously, on the other unaccustomed way! If anything were done to discourage or repulse them, if anything were not done to help them and keep up this amazing universal impulse, which could be nothing but divine, how should we ever answer for it? It was what every missionary, every philanthropist, every lover of religion and charity, every man who cared for his fellows had been hoping and praying for, though it was so unexpected; and now that it had come, what were we to do?

These questions and consultations and discussions went with us all day. There was room to be provided for them for Sunday. We had, it was supposed, too many churches, too much room, but not in this emergency, which, though it was the object of all our strivings and hopes, had never once presented itself to the most sanguine as a thing to be realised. If a hundred more people had been persuaded to come to church, to make a new beginning of life, we should have been transported with joy; but when it came to be thousands—the entire population!—what were we to do? What for to-morrow, when, as the rector had said, it would be so much harder for them than in all the excitement of the first impulse on Sunday? There was no time to be lost if we were to do anything to keep them from falling back. All day long these anxious consultations went on. It was an emergency no one was prepared for. A whole city full, as Hood says; if it had been summer even! But it was winter, grim and dark, with long, endless evenings. Would the men be content to stay in their little rooms in the way of the women, disturbing the rest of the children? This was a part of the question which the gentlemen entered into more warmly than we did, the women of us. We thought it would be the best thing for them to stay at home.

But we had our difficulty too, a difficulty much more overwhelming which we knew not how to face. I had always been very earnest about the poor girls, and it was to me they came, a little band of them, to ask me how they were to live, where they were to find bread and a refuge for their poor dishonoured heads. This was not how we had met in times past. I and my friends had gone among them, imploring them by every argument we could think of, pleading with them almost on our knees, asking as the greatest boon that could be given us that they would let us help them. When one would consent, a single one, we were as joyful as if it had been a national event. But now when something happened which was really a great event, when they came of themselves asking what were they to do to be saved, we stood blank before them like culprits, and did not know what to say. Never had such a blessed hopeful way opened to us before, never a movement of their own, an appeal of their own, and yet in face of this, which was so much more than we had ever hoped for, we were dumb, and knew not how to reply. If they would have consented to go into the imprisonment of our Homes and Refuges they would have filled them up over and over again. But this they would not do, nor could we suggest it to them. “We want to live honest, but not to be shut up,” they said. “Oh, ma’am, don’t think as we’re proud. We are not fit to speak to ladies like you. We want to earn our living and trouble nobody. We’ll die rather than go back to that life—”

“Rather the river than that,” they all cried.

“But talking of dying is no use. We know as we’ve got to live. We’ve got to live honest and get back our characters if we can. You never would let us alone before; you were always asking us, begging us, promising to help us to be good. And here we are all willing—”

“All willing! All willing!” cried the rest, with eager faces coming found.

“And what are we to do?—Tell us now what are we to do.”

What were we to say to them? That we had never expected this call upon us? That we knew no more than they did what they were to do? But that was no answer to make to those who had so great a claim upon us, to whom we had promised so much. We ladies were busy with that subject all the afternoon. We thought it more important than all the anxiety the gentlemen were giving themselves about the men.

And so the weary, happy, busy day began to come to an end, among cares overwhelming yet joyful.

I will not say what expedients we resorted to for immediate help, for it has yet to be seen how far they will answer to their great purpose, and we are still trembling and full of anxiety; but yet we did come to a practical conclusion. It was almost night when we went down to the Lane, the worst place in the town, to tell these poor creatures what we had settled upon. The night was brighter than the day had been; the moon was in the evening sky, cold but sweet, throwing a gleam upon the river that flowed along undisturbed, with no recollection of the tumult of yesterday, and along the street which on every Sunday night I had known had been full of noise, and disturbance, and quarrels, and horrible laughter, and joking, which was the worst of all. To-night it was quiet; the voices subdued and friendly, the white calm light streaming down, lighting up the groups which, as usual, were standing about, and yet were so little like their usual. I saw my giant, with his red handkerchief, in the middle of the street He was telling some other man, with a low cavernous laugh which seemed to come from depths unknown, “The missus was afraid when she see me come out. She says, ‘Bill, you ain’t a-going’—says she. ‘Lord bless you, wheer ’ud I go? There’s nowheres to go if I wanted, and I don’t.’”

Then I noticed for the first time that the windows which were always alight on Sunday evenings were darkened like the rest to-night. The sight of this frightened me even while it made me glad, for it seemed to me too good to last. The man who had emptied his barrels into the river the day before was patrolling up and down in the soft, misty moonlight.

“No, there’s nowheers to go to,” he said, “nor there shan’t be as long as I’m here. If you chaps knew the stuff as we give you to drink, burning up your insides! You stand by me, Bill, and there shan’t be no more of that”

“All right, governor,” said Bill.

But their talk made me tremble. Could it last? The quiet, and the soft moonlight lighting them up so kindly, as if to make up to them for the loss of their usual pleasures, and the mild freshness of the night, which was not cold, was more tranquillising to an anxious soul.

I was very tired when I got home, so tired and a little sick at heart. I had not let myself think, I had not let myself hope, and yet through everything, when I was so busy, my mind so harassed and anxious and full of perplexity, there had been all through at my heart a quiver of expectation. New Year’s Day: could it be possible that it would pass without any sign? I had said to myself in the silence of the night when I woke and thought of him in the dark, and said my usual never-ending prayer—I had said to myself that little Mary might be right, that God might take him our message. There was no one else to take it. You will say why should the great God, amid all the great worlds, trouble Himself to carry a message from his mother to a wandering foolish boy? Ah, yes! you may say that; but if it ever comes to you to be like me, without news of your son, your first-born, without any way of making him hear, you will not doubt but that God will trouble Himself, if He thinks best. That is the dreadful thing, not that He should trouble Himself, but that perhaps it will not be His time for doing it, perhaps He may not think it best. Sometimes it is clear He does not. This is what stops one’s mouth, but not the trouble; as if He minded the trouble! I went up to my room to rest a little. I was very tired and disappointed, deadly disappointed, though I had never allowed to myself that I had any hope. I did not light the candles; the fire was shining red and clear. I thought I would sit down a little and hide myself in the darkness and cry. I would not upbraid my Father. I would only cry to relieve my heart, not to blame Him; another time it might be His time, and the message would go. I was so tired: disappointment is more tiring than work; the one is cheerful, warming, the other dull and blank and goes to the heart.

Thus I sat down before the fire, and cried and said, “Yet bless him, oh Lord! Never mind me if it must be so, if the time is not come; but send him a message, though not that message; bless him, oh bless him, good Lord!” I did not make any noise with my crying, I was so used to it; and I did not say much, for I had no secrets with God. He knew it all, everything that could be said.

New Year’s Day. “A Happy New Year,” That was what they were all saying. I had said it myself and smiled, all the day through, to one and another. A Happy New Year! And I did not know where he was; my boy, my boy!

There was a sofa by the fire, but drawn away a little out of the glow. The furniture takes strange fashions in the dark—human-like approaches and turnings away, just as if some one had risen up that moment or sat down. I got a fancy in my head that the sofa looked as if some one had pushed it into the shadow: and it came into my mind all at once how one time, years ago, when he was ill, I had brought him here, and laid him down just so, that the light might not be on his eyes. How anxious I had been then. Oh, blessed time when I was so unhappy! when I used to think if but he were grown up and strong how happy I should be! I put my hand out to the sofa, where his little head had lain. I could scarcely reach the place. I drew it towards me, as if that would do me any good to touch the place. At last it was near enough. I stretched out my hand to where his little head had lain. What was this? A sleeping face, hair that curled as I knew how. Oh, my God! the message. Did I not say He would not mind the trouble? My boy, my boy!

When your heart comes suddenly out of the roaring tempest into the peace of heaven; when the ache stills, and the quivering ceases, and the pain is gone, do you know how that feels? Then you will know what in a moment happened to me. I asked no questions. I got a light and looked at him where he lay, fast asleep. Oh, so fast asleep, pale as if he might have died; but breathing peacefully, trusting us utterly, come home to his father and his mother. I did not even stop to kiss him. I flew down through the lighted house for his father, and brought him back too breathless to say a word. There was no explanation. We came in and knelt down together where he lay in that deep sleep, as if God’s angel had carried him and laid him there. Come home! whether it were to live, whether it were to die.

Did you say New Year’s Day; yes, and God bless you! He is sleeping like a child. A happy New year—so happy; come in and look at him. Yes, Mary, yes, my darling. You see God took the message after all.

And so we had our share; if it will but last—if it will but last.

A Visitor and His Opinions

(1893)

I

He came round the corner of the cliff suddenly, no step or rustle as of a wayfarer betraying him before he appeared, with something indefinable in his pose, as if he had just descended from a height, and a quick look around as at an unknown landscape quite new to him. It was near Dover, on the road that leads by the sea past the Castle heights towards the town. A man more than ordinarily tall, of an imposing personality so far as could be seen in the darkening air, clothed not like the usual wayfarers on that road, but in long dark-coloured garments scarcely definable, different from ordinary English dress, though it was scarcely possible to say in what way. His sudden appearance was very startling, as heralded by no sound or step, to the one or two people going in the other direction who met him without any warning, and started aside a little to make way for him without well knowing why. The covering on his head was like a close-fitting Spanish cap, but enveloped with filmy folds of something dark which made it resemble a turban—all vague, however, in the ever-decreasing light. Something shone in the front of this cap, vague also, like a faint star among clouds, or the gleam of one of those little electric lamps that are now so much in use on the stage. It flashed in the eyes of a man on the road and dazzled him so that he had almost fallen over the cliff, though the other with whom he was walking saw nothing at all, but asked, “What light? I saw no light,” when his companion cried out. The passenger, however, neither paused nor questioned, but walked on, with an exceedingly light firm step, and a certain air of noting everything about him, though he did not stop to look either to the right or left. He went on into the town, keeping his way straight, crossing streets, and even the railway itself, without the faintest hesitation or alarm, with the air of one whom neither train nor heavy waggon could hurt, as if he could have wafted them all away by his breath or a wave of his hand. And this air of quietness, of calm assurance as if nothing could harm him, was very impressive, and made people turn to look after him as he went swiftly, lightly past them. Who was he? One knows that princes are not greater to look at, larger, stronger, more powerful, or even more imposing in aspect, than other men; yet there is a certain tradition of grandeur lingering about the name, so that several people said, “He looks like a prince,” as this man went by.

He went to the great hotel, the Lord Warden which we all know, and where, as he rose into the light ascending the steps, much curiosity was excited, and a sudden pause occurred in the little bustle of people coming and going. It was such a pause as might occur if somebody had suddenly said, “The Prince of Wales is coming”: the porters and other attendants about backed into corners, the manager came forward bowing low, and rubbing his hands nervously: and the guests in the hotel drew aside in little clusters, gazing at the new-comer, who, though he had nobody to announce him, and came forward attended by no suite or servants, made this curious impression on all who saw him. He came up to the obsequious manager, with again one almost imperceptible flash of a look round, which took in everything as everybody felt—a true prince’s look, which in a moment recognises whoever there may be who is known; but there did not seem to be any one here known to this great personage. He said a few words to the manager in a tone which was not German or any accent we are used to, but yet not English either—in a large sonorous voice which gave a thrill to every one standing by. The manager bowed more and more, till he seemed almost doubled in two. “It is all right, sir—your Highness—my lord,” he said: and instead of calling any inferior, took up suddenly a pair of silver candlesticks in which the candles had just been lighted for some other guest, and himself went mounting backwards very uncomfortably up the stair, showing the way. The Prince, or whatever he was, smiled, and said, “Walk, sir, as nature intended you.” These words were heard by everybody. They were not very extraordinary in the way of words; but yet they were repeated in the most curious way from one to another, as if they had possessed the most remarkable meaning. “I heard him say it with my own ears,” various people said afterwards, as if they had been made partakers of some great axiom of wisdom. It was to the best apartment in the house that the Stranger was led—a spacious sitting-room, with large windows looking out upon the Channel, which that night was “dirty,” flustered by big waves with white tops which rose and fell, making a fine effect to those who viewed it from the security of the shore.

The room was dark, save for these two twinkling lights and the broad spaces of window through which shone the last of the twilight, and the clearness of a windy sky, and the glimmer and weltering light of the sea. “Your Highness had, I fear, a bad passage,” said the manager: he paused a moment for a reply, and then added, “But the luggage and your Highness’s servant arrived all right.”

At the same time another figure appeared in the doorway between the sitting-room and a bedroom opening from it. No doubt about this individual. A well-bred valet, gentleman’s gentleman, grave, respectful, point-devise. He had a letter in his hand. “From Lord Hillesborough, sir,” he said, at first with less awe than had been hitherto shown at the sight of the Stranger; but on the second look at this majestic figure, half visible, with the light of the candles behind him, even Jerningham felt a thrill. “I was to wait your—your ’Ighness here,” he said, faltering as he drew back within the door.

“You will have the goodness to call me Sir only; I am not accustomed to titles,” said the Stranger. Sir! to be sure! that was what it was right to say to the Prince of Wales himself. Not accustomed to titles! was he perhaps, then, a king incognito? It appeared more like that than anything else to these two persons, accustomed to all the laws of service. Highness, though it means a great deal to other men, would not mean much to a king. To him it would mean a derogation, a sort of disrespect, though unintentional. Sir was the title for him—spelt with an “e” at the end, and not pronounced exactly as the English monosyllable is. Sire—it was pronounced Seer the manager was aware, who knew a little of all the languages of the Continent. He made a lower bow than ever, backing and bowing himself out of the room, murmuring “Yes, Sire,” as he went. As for Jerningham, his soul owned a thrill of alarm to feel himself left alone with this wonderful person, king or potentate. “A gentleman of great distinction,” he was told, had engaged him; a foreign gentleman, not accustomed to English ways. This is not a description which usually fills the English domestic with the graces of humility. It is difficult for him not to despise a personage, however exalted, who is ignorant of English ways. But, though there was an outlandish look about this one, for once Jerningham was really overawed. He retreated from the doorway, and began to occupy himself with unpacking his new master’s luggage; but after a time his curiosity overcame him, and he peeped through the chink of the door to see what ’E was about. And indeed nothing could be more curious than what he was about. He had taken the letter to read it, not to the light of the candles, which burned all by themselves as though nobody wanted them upon the table, but to the window, where he stood reading it in the dark. No, not exactly in the dark either—a soft light fell about him, showing the whiteness of the letter and the attitude of his head bent to read it; a light that seemed suffused over his figure and the very part of the carpet he stood upon, and to shine in the panes of the window against the darkness that was in them from outside. What was it? Had he a taper, then, or some travelling-lamp, or—what? At this point in Jerningham’s curious self-inquiries his new master turned his head half round, and the man felt as if he were being looked at with a sort of mild observant smile, though it could only have been through the woodwork of the door, or the wall itself, which was impossible—for that barrier of physical obstruction was between the gazer in the one room and the sudden observation of the personage in the other. The effect, however, was so real, that Jerningham retreated to the farther corner of the bedroom and turned his face to the wall, and covered it with his hands to escape the sudden sensation. Yet the look which he thought he felt (which was ridiculous, impossible!) was not a severe look but a smiling one,—a look full of indulgence, as if for the error of a child, though so penetrating. Jerningham persuaded himself afterwards that it was that dashed taper or lamp, or whatever it was, by which the Prince was reading his letter, which caught a reflection in his own eye through the chink of the door. But anyhow he did not venture to pursue his own observations any further.

The letter thus read was remarkable in tone, being as it was a letter from an old and distinguished English peer to a man much younger than himself, and, though so remarkable in appearance, coming so suddenly and with so little pretension upon the scene. It was in the most respectful terms, almost more than his own native prince would have called forth from so eminent a subject, though there were no titles of honour employed:

“I have endeavoured to carry out your wishes in the most complete manner in my power, though our arrangements here are necessarily all so incomplete, so little perfect, that I fear you will scarcely be able to understand that I have really done everything I could, remembering your command that there was to be no shutting out of the common conditions of our life, and that your desire, which it is the highest pleasure and honour to me to obey, was to see these conditions in their most simple form. I wish I could hope that the sight would give you any satisfaction; but I await with the most eager anxiety your permission to arrange my poor house here for your reception, with a trembling hope that perhaps the rural life amid which we live, though still so unlike everything you have ever known, will not seem to you so terrible and repulsive as I feel with humiliation that which you have now come into must be. The man whom I have sent is likewise according to your command, neither better nor worse than the ordinary. I could have selected a man of higher character so far as our imperfect knowledge goes, but it appeared to me that this would not be according to the sentiment you had expressed nor the object which you pursue. With what anxiety, what hopes, and what fears, I follow your course in my thoughts, I will not attempt to express: and I should add with what sympathy—were the word such as I could venture to use in the comparison between your elevated nature and that which is the inheritance of one who is always your devoted and most humble servant,

“Hillesborough.”

Signed below this name was a cipher in strange lettering like a second name. The Stranger put down the letter on the table, still with the same smile upon his lip which he had turned upon Jerningham—a look as of indulgence, understanding everything, not unaware of feebleness, of something mingled in the respect, perhaps of a tone of obsequiousness, perhaps of an overstrain of effort—but accepting all with a benignancy which had no criticism in it. Presently he took off the covering from his head, which had the most curious shadowy appearance in the half light, as if the filmy drapery round it were a pair of folded wings, and the soft light that fell round him came from between them like the shining of a star. The last hypothesis was not unjustified, as he took something from among the folds which caused an instant displacement of the lights and shadows about him. What it looked like was a large diamond set in something dark and indefinite, with a white rim as of silver round this strange little lamp of light separating it from the darkness below and around. He put it down upon the table, replacing upon his head the hat or turban upon which the downy dark wings seemed to close more distinctly than ever. It appeared to be habitual to him to have his head covered. He turned back after he had done this to the view from the window—the dark sea tossing its waves, the spray dashing upon the rocks and piers, the long weltering of the ridges of sea as they rose and fell, the lights in the harbour sinking and rising, the shadow of the cliff wrapping everything in deeper darkness. It seemed to have a great fascination for him. During the course of the evening he turned to it again and again, as if with a sensation of relief, perhaps feeling that nature and even storm were more congenial than the surroundings of man. But he was not disposed to separate himself so far as would appear from the life going on around him. He looked at the clothes which Jerningham had arranged for him, spreading them out on the bed, with again a smile.

“This is the dress of England?” he said, with the little accent which not unpleasantly pointed him out as not an Englishman. Jerningham by this time had recovered his self-possession. “Not of England, sir,” he said; “but for the evenin’, as far as I’ve ’eard, the costoome of all the civilised world.”

“ls it so?” said the Prince, with an amused look. He added, “Is it much remarked when a stranger continues to wear the dress of his own country here?”

“Oh, not at all, sir,” cried Jerningham, with a sort of patronage and condescension to ignorance. “There was the Indian princes at the Jubilee in all colours, and blazing with jewels, as the papers said. It was pecooliar, but it was admired. The ladies, they liked it,” he added, perceiving that his new master, now that he saw him more closely, was still a young man, “If I might make so hold as to ask,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “what was your ’Ighness’s country, sir?”

“I do not think,” said the Stranger, “that I will change my dress to-night. Do you belong to this country? have you relations with the people here? do you think you could act as my guide?”

“My last place was ’ere, sir,” said Jerningham, in a slightly alarmed tone. “I was in the commandant’s service; and though I’ve no relations, yet I can find my way about. There ain’t, however, as you might say, very much to see in a place like this,—nothing except the Castle, and—and the cliffs, and—” Jerningham ended abruptly, constrained by his new master’s eye.

“Some thousands of people,” said the Prince. “I wish to see them. Can you guide me to the places where they live? Men—and women—are what I want to see.”

Jerningham looked up with a sudden leer in his eye. “O—oh!” he said. His glance told that he divined in his master a hypocrite of the foulest tastes hidden under this guise of gravity, and that his mind was somewhat relieved by the discovery. He put his hand over his mouth to conceal his suppressed laugh. “I can show your ’Ighness—what we calls life, sir,” he said.

His master looked at him with a mild severity which betrayed no anger, yet, if that were possible to a countenance so full of intelligence, something like a want of understanding. It was the look of an acute observer confronted with something which was a puzzle to him, and called all his faculties into exercise. The mean perplexes the noble as much as the noble disturbs the mean. He did not understand.

“We will go at once,” he said.

“Lord!” said Jerningham to himself, “ain’t he hot on it!” He was pleased to guide a Prince to see life, but there were preliminaries which he felt ought not to be neglected. “If I might make so bold, sir,” he said, “won’t your ’Ighness dine first? After your ’Ighness’s journey—”

“I will go at once,” his master repeated, with the air of a man not accustomed to be contradicted; and turning round, walked towards the door.

“Sir!” said Jerningham. “The weather is a bit cold. Your ’Ighness will put on a big coat at least over your costoome!”

“Put on a coat yourself, my good fellow,” said the Prince, benignantly. “Thank you for thinking of my comfort. I shall not feel the cold.”

He went out without another word, followed by Jerningham, struggling into a greatcoat behind him, with haste and difficulty, not daring to keep this wonderful person waiting. As they went down-stairs the same phenomena occurred as before. The people about the hall of the big hotel, though they were people in some cases thinking no little of themselves, drew back upon each other with the same impulse as moved the busy porters and waiters, and left a clear path for the Stranger and his attendant. The manager bowed to the ground, rubbing his fat hands obsequiously, but caught at Jerningham as he passed with an eager demand, half in pantomime, half in a whisper, “Won’t the Prince dine?” Jerningham answered in the same way, “He’ll do as he likes, and there’s no orders.” He was a little put out, as well as the manager, about this unordered dinner; for if the Prince was not hungry after his journey, Jerningham was, though he had made no journey: and the valet was fond of taking his ease in his inn.

He hurried, however, after the tall figure which went on in front of him, towards the lights of the town. Dover is not a well-lighted town. The twinkles of lamps made the darkness visible, and almost increased the danger of the path across the railway and all the intricacies of the streets, though in the darker parts Jerningham grew curiously aware of a light that seemed diffused around them, of which he could not tell where it came from, but which certainly was there. The darkest corners were somehow lighted by it, so that even Jerningham did not stumble and kick his shins, and the Prince marched forward as if he had known the way all his life; but the man could not tell where it came from, and afterwards got into so dazed a condition from the various surprising incidents of the night that he ceased to remember that strange preliminary, though at first he was constantly turning round, gazing about, and even looking overhead to discover where it came from.

When they came into a street full of flares of gas, many of them unprotected and waving in the breeze, and where all the traffic of a Saturday night was going on—outside stalls and little booths with their set out of provisions, red-and-white joints of beef, high coloured in the flare, deep green piles of vegetables—the Prince walked up and down several times together, now on the lighted side, where all the people were hustling each other, now on the darker pavement opposite, where everything appeared as in a phantasmagoria, the waving flame of the coarse lights, the incessant movement of the shadows, the din of the cries filling the night air with uproar. This was not what Jerningham believed his master desired, and he would have led him by a cross street in another direction but for the wave of his hand, which stopped all explanation.

There was a man half lying in a wheelbarrow towards the middle of the road, in the way of the carts and carriages which passed infrequently. He had something to sell half crushed under him where he lay, but he was past thinking of anything to sell. Whether he was ill or drunk was a difficult question. Jerningham unhesitatingly gave it, however, in favour of the latter, especially when his master stopped beside this partially perceptible figure, which suddenly yet softly became quite visible, showing a face stupefied and sodden, though whether with work or beer, or the sleepiness of fatigue, it was impossible to say. The man was roused, but writhed and twisted himself uncomfortably, as unwilling to be so brought out of his half-unconsciousness; hut it was he who spoke first, struggling up out of his prostrate condition, and crushing the shell-fish over which he was lying as he raised himself on his elbow. “Who are you? and what do you want with me?” he said.

“Get up,” said the Stranger, “and take me to your home.”

“My ’ome?” said the seller of shell fish: but he got clumsily to his feet. “Don’t you shine your lantern into my eyes,” he said. “I’ve got no ’ome.”

“Take me to the place where you live,” the master said again.

“What do you want with the place where I lives? I lives nowhere to speak of—where I can, one time one place, one time another; and no good for me to go there at all, if I don’t sell my winkles and get a somethin’ to tide over Sunday. Hey! I say, don’t turn on that blasted lantern. Come on, then, I’ll go if I must, and you’ll just hear what She says.”

Jerningham found himself after this, with a humiliation not to be described, walking along the flaring street, a wretched barrow trundling in front of him, and a still more wretched man. He had dreamed of something very different—oyster-bars and strange expensive drinks, and smiles—that could be purchased too. The man with the barrow might be what his master understood by life; but Jerningham’s ideas were not of that kind. They went on to the veriest slums—not to the quarters lit with fitful luxury to which Jerningham had intended to introduce his master. And as they went there ran on a sort of monologue of grumbling talk from the costermonger who was their guide.

“Nice streets these are for a man to be trundling about at this hour o’ the night, where there’s not a soul to buy a penn’orth, and not a copper in my pocket, s’help me! Oh, I knows better. Ye needn’t ask me! I knows country roads that are deeper in the mud, and more quiet still; and I knows London. London’s what I like. Ye can lose yourself There, and none knows if ye’re a man or just a bit of the whole blasted thing as is a-going round and round. If ye drops it don’t matter, and if ye goes on it’s all the same.”

“And what has brought you to this?” said the clear voice which sounded over the head of the crouched-up, shambling creature. He gave a side-look up towards his questioner’s face, then blinked and shrank again.

“Where have you got your bull’s-eye thing as blinds a man a-flashing in his eyes? What’s brought me to this? How d’ye know as I wasn’t always like this, crying winkles about the streets? Well, I wasn’t, and that’s the fact, however ye’ve found it out. It’s a many things, if ye will know. My folks was very respectable once. I was put to school and went to church and all that, and wore as good clothes as—you do. Lord! but you’ve got queer clothes on: I never had no outlandish rig like that. You’re a furreeneering chap, I suppose? and what do ye want putting questions to me?”

“I want to know what has brought you to this.” The Stranger had the calm of power in his voice. He made no explanations, and there was no capability of resistance in the individual whom he questioned—at least in the present case.

“Well,” said the man, defiantly; “chief thing, I suppose, is drink. I was a silly when I was young—thought a poor chap could be like a gentleman, and take his pleasure ’stead o’ working, working like a mole. And then came bad company, and then—Lord! when anything’s happened to you as makes you miserable, there’s nothing like a drop o’ drink. Good folks they think it’s your bad ’eart, as if a man wisht to get dead drunk and tumble about the streets. What a man wants is to forget hisself and all his trouble; to get lifted up as if he could fly; to have a dazzle in his eyes that makes everything grand. If it makes ye miserable in the end, I’m not denyin’ of it; but at fust beginning it’s a prince it makes ye, as if ye could fly over all the world.

“And then there’s other things,” said the man, pausing upon his barrow, standing still as in a reflective mood. The Stranger stood like a tower immovable by his side, pausing when he paused; while poor Jerningham, indignant beyond words, not only to be in such company but to be forced to stand and listen, drew back as far as he could from this ridiculous group. The light, whatever it was—concealed lantern or bull’s-eye—shone upon the costermonger’s face, lighting it up with a soft ray. “Lord! when I think what a fool I was!—I thought as I’d always be a young chap able to take my fling: and I thought as being a silly one day was nothing again’ going straight the next. Nor it ain’t neither, that’s a fact, still,” he added, vehemently, “so long as a man can keep his ’ead.”

“Then some men, you think,” said the Stranger, “do keep their heads.”

The man paused a moment reflectively, and then he burst into a harsh laugh. “Fact,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know as many does. There’s a fellow I know as makes believe, and lies low and gets the tin out of poor chaps like me when they has a shilling to spend. That’s one thing as brought me to this pass, as you’re so curious wanting to know. And then there’s the missus—as aggravates a man with her tongue and her sharpness and naggin’, till ye don’t mind a bit what ye do.”

“The missus—that means that you have a wife? How in this state of wretchedness could you bind another being to yours?”

“Wretchedness?” said the man, so stimulated by this reproach that he sprang to his barrow and pushed on so quickly that Jerningham, proudly paying no attention, was left behind, and had almost to run to keep up with his master’s accompanying stride. “I wish you’d talk of what you know, master! She ain’t no more wretched, I can tell you, for being along o’ me. Wretched yourself! and ye ain’t no ’appier than the rest of us. I’ll go any money, if the truth was known! Bless you,” he said, dropping out of his momentary indignation into more ordinary tones, “we weren’t like this, neither her nor me, when we come together. I was a young chap, earning a good wage when I was steady, and she was a young lass as—as wasn’t for any man to turn up his nose at. Lord! she was a tidy one when we come together first! and nice-spoken when her back wasn’t up: but always a bit hasty in the temper, ready to give ye a kiss or a blow. As for wretched, you keep them big words to yourself, master! Jyane, I believe, if you ast her, she’d rather have me and my barrow than many a man as drives his own cart: for I’m a good-tempered one, I am, and takes a deal of worritin’ afore I answers back; and as for liftin’ my hand upon her, much less my boot, as some chaps do, that’s a thing as never happens! ’cept now and again, when I’m devilled with the drink.”

“But how was it,” said the Stranger, “when you were once young and earning a good wage, and she once so tidy and pleasant,—how was it that you did not continue so? You knew that the drink would harm you, did you not? and you knew that your bad company would make you bad too? and you knew that quarrels would spoil your comfort, and idleness would stop your wages? How was it, then?—how was it?”

The costermonger stopped again: he sat down upon the shafts of his barrow to reflect.

“Blessed if I know,” he said. “Lord! I’ve said all that to myself many a day, but it ain’t done no sort of good. Always seems, somehow, as if the wrong thing was the most fun. Governor! don’t you say you don’t know that, for I knows human nature, and I wouldn’t believe you—not I.”

“You thought it over, then?” said the questioner: there was no blame in his voice,—it was the voice of an inquirer anxious to know. “There were times when you stopped and regretted, and wished to turn back to the other way?”

“You don’t speak like a parson,” said the man. “I dunno what kind of a bloke you are. You don’ seem somehow as if you was a-tryin’ to ketch a chap up. Sartain sure as I thought it over many a day. And we’ve kissed and made friends, Jyane and me: and we’ve said we’d never do it no more: but, Lord, afore you’re six steps from your own door there’s a chap coming along as says, ‘Hallo, Joe! goin’ to work o’ Monday mornin’ like you was the boss hisself. Man! I’ll not believe it of you. There’s some fun a-goin’ on down the street. Come you along o’ me.’ And p’raps you stops a moment and jaws, and says he’d best go to work himself, ’stead of stoppin’ them that means better: but, Lord! it always ends the same way,” he added, starting off with his barrow again. “You thinks it’s just for once, and you goes. And then you wishes you had cut your throat sooner. And then you feels as if you’d choke the missus afore she gets out one of her burnin’ blazin’ words. Well! one thing as I can say is this—that it ain’t them as preaches as suffers for it, but you yourself. And that it ain’t never done o’ purpose as they thinks, but just as you says to yourself for once and accidental-like. Lord! don’t you think I’d rather have a good coat to my back, and a good supper to go ’ome to, ’stead of wheelin’ a barrow full o’ dashed winkles as I hain’t sold and ain’t likely to, and not a copper in my pockets to give the missus for to-morrow as is Sunday?—which is your fault, master, now I comes to think of it, draggin’ me out of the market where I could have got rid of every shell o’ them, sure as I’m alive.”

“’Old your tongue,” said Jerningham, glad of an opportunity to display his disgust. “You were lying there drunk and smashing the winkles when you were spoke to—by a gentleman as didn’t ought to touch with the tongs a drunken beast like you!”

“Ho!” cried the costermonger, quick as fire, letting down the shafts of the barrow, and turning upon his new assailant; “you’re a-goin’ it too? but I ain’t that low down as I’ll take abuse from the likes of you.”

Jerningham, who really was the person to be pitied, having his personal dignity so sadly disturbed by such associations, only saved himself by jumping back from the sudden blow levelled at him. But the costermonger’s wrath lasted only for a moment. The Prince laid his hand on the man’s arm, and he calmed at once by an influence which he understood as little as it was contrary to the circumstances altogether. He took up the shafts of his barrow again in haste and silence. And the strange party proceeded without a word through one dark street after another. Yet it was not dark around them. The dark atmosphere of the night, and the thick air contaminated by all the emanations of the crowding miserable houses, seemed just then to be softly cleared, illuminated by a vague radiance scarcely enough to be called light: something softly diffused coming from no point like a lamp or lantern, but moving with them, wrapping them in a tempered warmth and softness. The tall figure of the Stranger was the least revealed of the three. He moved like a shadow, towering over them—a Presence always felt yet vaguely seen. Thus they came at last to the court, opening off a little dingy street, where the seller of shellfish lived. It was a sort of square of dingy houses, each with light in its windows, which filled the ill-smelling enclosure with a sort of squalid cheerfulness, in which, late as it was, children were still playing, and women keeping up a noisy conversation from the doors. The din, the closeness, and the smells quite overcame Jerningham, who was not accustomed, as he said afterwards, to no such slums. He fell back, his devotion to his new master being insufficient to make up for the injury to his feelings. “I’ll be handier here, sir, to call the police, in case you should meet with anything as is disagreeable,” he said. “Quite right. I approve your prudence and thought for me,” said the Prince, looking upon him with that smile which made Jerningham so uncomfortable. “I wish, sir,—I do wish as your ’Ighness would be guided by me, and not risk yourself in no such places,” cried the valet in his irritation. His master only laughed: this was all the answer Jerningham received.

And then there rose a tumult in the court—one of the women darted out from her door, a fury with wild hair flying, with a wild flutter of ragged clothes, and a shawl on her shoulders, from which she flung forth her arms, the heavy drapery lending force to her fierce gesticulations. “You’ve been at it again, you drunken beast! you blasted fool! you darned ass!—you! you! you!” with each an epithet, she cried. “He’s got them all still in the barrow, as I gave him the money to buy for a last chance. And here he’s back without a penny, and my last shillin’ gone to the dogs like all the rest, and nothin’ left to buy a bite for the children—and it Satterday night! Oh! oh! oh!” she burst out in a wild mingled outburst of rage and tears, flying at the throat of the man.

The Stranger stopped her in full career with his hand upon her shoulder, but she did not yield to his influence so quickly as the man. She struggled under his touch, tore herself away, and once more flung herself upon her husband who had seated himself on his barrow, with screams of rage and misery. A mingled din of approval and disapproval came from the lookers-on. “I don’t wonder at her, poor lass, after all as she’s had to bear,” said one woman, who seemed to be on the outlook also for an errant husband; but, “Lord! she’s got to put up with it, and why can’t she take it easy?” said a matron, amiably tipsy, on another doorstep. “Jyane, Jyane, you’ll be sorry after!” said a third, interfering; “and ’im never lifting a hand!” The Stranger drew near the group again. He put his hand once more on her shoulder, and drew her away. “Is this the woman,” he said, “that was so tidy when they came together, and so nice-spoken? and that a man loved? And what has brought her to this pass?”

The woman turned upon him, struggling still. “And who told you that?” she shrieked,—“for you don’t know me, nor I you. Tidy—and that a man loved! Look at him now—is that a man?”

“What has brought you,” he said, “to this pass?—you that were once sweet and young.”

The woman stared in his face, but could not see it, while hers was clear, the seat of many passions, convulsed and struggling. “Let me go!” she cried. “I’ll tear his eyes out, and no person shall stop me. Young! I’m not old yet, to be treated like that. Oh! if I was once tidy and nice-spoken, who’s done it? I’m better than he is. I thinks of my children, I’m not—so bad as he.”

“What has brought you to this pass?” the Prince repeated, with his voice of perfect calm.

The woman flung herself down upon the dirty pavement, and covered her face with her hands.

II

Jerningham had much of the same sort of annoyance to bear during the first month or two of his service with the mysterious Prince. He was made the purse-bearer, which was some slight compensation (indeed on that first never-forgotten Saturday night he was called to pay for the barrow of winkles, and thus smooth down the tumult of the moment between the costermonger and his wife). His master showed a singular indifference to money, which he never touched or had any dealings in, bidding Jerningham do what was necessary whenever there was any question of payment, with a confidence which seemed to proceed rather from a certain contempt for that medium than from any well-founded trust in the man who had been recommended to him as an ordinary man and nothing more. In this situation of dignity, however, the servant accompanied his master through many strange scenes. He went with him to London, and to many places there where Jerningham would willingly have followed, or even led his lord with very different aims from those which the Prince seemed to pursue. And, indeed, the Prince’s aims were not very easy to fathom. He was not a charity organiser, nor an almoner, nor a missionary. He gave, or rather ordered Jerningham to give, money freely on occasion; but this was certainly not his object. He went everywhere with the same inquiry on his lips, “What has brought you to this pass?” and he put it to everybody, sometimes in the most astonishing circumstances, addressing people who it might have been thought would have knocked him down for his impertinence, or at least resented it in some unequivocal way. But though they might be angry at first, they always ended by telling some story of strange things unlike those appearances which met the eye. One of the persons, for instance, thus interrogated was the clergyman of a large parish, a man full of good deeds, who was very indignant with the words—“this pass?” What pass was the excellent rector in, whose hands were only too full of everybody else’s business, who was the Providence of so many? He had looked contemptuously, indignantly at his questioner, with a scorn of him as an unauthorised busybody which was most natural. But then a spell had fallen over that good clergyman. “How did I come to this pass? full of tickets and cases to examine, and subscriptions to be got? How can a man help it? You go out full of faith, and the first person you meet with cheats you, and turns your very heart. Then you rush to the other side and trust nobody; and the first thing you hear is that you have helped to starve some real sufferer. Then one gets wild for a time; and a± the last you come to feel there’s no confidence to be put in anything but figures and cases, and cut-and-dry machinery. There was a time when I was—a young fool; thinking everything was to be done by reasoning with them, and persuading them, and showing your affection. Ah, that’s the grand principle still! the love of God, and the sympathy of our Lord. But then one drifts into the organisation tickets, and elections to hospitals, and so forth. Regret it? ah, that I do with all my heart! If I were a young man again I’d stick to the higher principle: but what can a poor parson do that has to make the best be can of his parish, and keep all his charities going?”

There was never any reproof in the Prince’s eyes: he heard this, and a hundred other strange avowals, with a calm which was never broken, and he was unwearied in hearing them, going about the world everywhere, inquiring from every man the secret of his divergence. He took no notes of these many and varied cases: of the women who began with protestations of having been deceived, then, in the light of his steadfast eyes, burst forth into wailing plaints of folly, of the heedless rush into temptation, the fall, half invited, half defied; or the merchant who had meant no harm, who had staked big friend’s credit for something which only an accident prevented from becoming his friend’s advantage instead of hurt; or the servant who borrowed from his master, meaning nothing but to repay. Overall these persons and hundreds more the light which it was so difficult to define suffused itself, never failing although the sun might. Jerningham made out at last by much study that it proceeded from somewhere just over his master’s head, for it lighted up the faces of those who were before him, and kept himself in a curious depth of shadow, so that the most earnest gaze fixed upon him could scarcely penetrate that dimness. There were many things in Jerningham’s mind as he thus attended upon his master. A strong curiosity in the first place. He could not in any way fathom this man. It was not for charity he went about the world, though sometimes he would be very charitable—so charitable that Jerningham thought that it was nothing but proper in the circumstances to take toll: nor was it for any pleasure to himself that the valet could understand. For what was the good of collecting all these stories? The Prince never talked of them, so far as Jerningham knew; it was not for the sake of gossip. Nor did he seem to intend to write a book, for he never put pen to paper, never wrote a letter. The problem was one which could not be explained in any way.

And there were a great many mysterious things about the master to whose service he had been sent by so unexceptionable a nobleman as the Earl of Hillesborough. He had evidently plenty of money, which was left in Jerningham’s hands, and which he himself never looked at. The Prince lived as if there were no such thing as money in the world. When there was anything to pay he looked at Jerningham, and that was all that was necessary. Jerningham had pretty pickings, it must be allowed. He did not rob his master, nor permit any one else to do it, but he took a percentage for his trouble: this appeared to him perfectly right and justifiable. He did not, indeed, intend to do anything of the kind when he began. He had always been honest, he said to himself, and he never meant to be otherwise. But a percentage, that was allowed everywhere when a man had so much trouble as he had—a trouble which had never been mentioned or thought of when he was engaged.

Another thing was that, as the Prince did not wear the beautiful clothes that had been provided for him, preferring his own“costoome,” as Jerningham said, it seemed wiser that the valet should wear some of them than that they should be thrown away. Jerningham wore the coats to keep the moth out of them. He put on one on a certain day with this excellent object, and another day he put on another. The Prince was larger than he, and much taller, yet somehow they all fitted Jerningham. It could do them nothing but good should the master finally make up his mind to put them on, that they should be worn to air them now and then. With all these things Jerningham did very well for himself and harmed nobody, as he himself believed. It did not occur to him that his master might one day turn upon him with his usual inquiry, “What has brought you to this pass?” and that he might be compelled to reveal everything. This pass! he was in no pass! he was doing nothing wrong. And as for any interrogation from his master, he made very light of that. The Prince did not observe any of these things. In short, Jerningham came by degrees, notwithstanding the mystery that surrounded him, to have on the whole a considerable deal of good-humoured contempt for his Prince.

There was one thing, however, about which he continued to be so very curious that he felt no effort to be too great to find it out. And that was, as has been said before, the mysterious light which accompanied his master everywhere. It flashed upon him suddenly at last what it was. Going into the Prince’s room one evening in the twilight, he was astonished and blinded by the light which shone from a table at which his master had been sitting—a light almost level with the table, proceeding from one central point. Jerningham drew near upon the tips of his toes, though the Prince was not there. He saw then, to his amazement, that it was a jewel in a curious dark setting covered with strange signs—but it was not the setting or the signs that moved him. It was the diamond!—such a diamond as he had never in his life beheld before. You may think he was not likely to have had much experience in diamonds; but Jerningham had been in good places all his life, and had seen a great deal of jewellery in his day, though never, never anything like this! It was of the size of a small watch, and as it lay there on the table seemed to represent Wealth itself incarnate, fortune and all it brings—quite unprotected, within the reach of any chance person that might come into the room. A flood of indignation rushed through Jerningham’s mind at the rashness of his master, who could go and leave such a prize as that open upon the table. He bent over it to look at it, but it so blazed into his eyes that they were dazzled and could see nothing. Lord! what a thing to see lying on a table within reach of your hand worth thousands and thousands, enough to make a man comfortable for life: comfortable! more than that—rich, like a prince. Jerningham made a rapid calculation in his mind how a man—not himself! oh, not himself! but any man might dispose of such a thing. It would be difficult to do, for diamonds of that size are not common anywhere; but no doubt, at least in foreign parts, it could be done. And a man could get away to Holland or some such place before ever anybody knew anything about it. From London a man can get off anywhere. These thoughts flew through Jerningham’s mind with a sort of rush of moral indignation to think how easily it might be done, and how any man could do it. He put out his hand, not without alarm, to touch the wonderful thing which was worth, he said to himself almost bitterly, far more than all a man even in a good service could lay up in his life; but as he was about cautiously to lift it he heard the Prince’s step returning to the room, and fled precipitately, fearing to be asked what he was doing there. This was all that happened the first time.

But it appeared that the Prince, always a strange person in all his habits, had a fancy for reading by the light of his great diamond, and Jerningham saw it many times after this. He began vaguely to define also, after many questions with himself where his master had hitherto hidden it, to make out, putting one thing to another, that this blazing orb of light was in reality no other than the shining jewel which he had hitherto thought no bigger than a glow-worm, which shone among the filmy folds of the Prince’s head-gear when he was out of doors. This made it more wonderful still to think that it could contract and then magnify itself in this way; but Jerningham soon came to the conclusion that its contraction must be caused by some peculiarity in its setting, which partially covered it when worn, and subdued its size and splendour. His mind grew more and more full of this diamond as time went on. He had been so angry at the thought that some one might steal it and escape to Holland with it, that it would be wrong to imagine he had any intention of committing such a crime: and yet his mind was full of the diamond by night and by day.

One night, he could scarcely tell how, he found himself at a late hour in the Prince’s room. Among his other habits was one of walking late, and so far as Jerningham was aware, his master was out, though he had represented to himself that he had heard the bell, and that this was the reason why he made his way thither at so late an hour. He was curious to know also (he said to himself) whether the Prince went out with so valuable an ornament in his hat, alone, and at night, which would have been so foolish a thing to do. Jerningham’s heart gave a jump when he saw the blaze of the jewel on the table. The rest of the room, the bed and the large space behind, lay in total darkness, but a luminous circle was drawn round the table upon which the diamond lay. He paused a moment, his heart beating loud, and then he drifted silently, moving, as he afterwards said, by some sort of compulsion, not by his own will at all, into this circle of light. His face was a sight to see as he came within the range of the illumination out of the shadowy gloom in which all things are softened. It was blazing with excitement, with eager cupidity, with that vehemence of desire which is so strong a passion—to have it, to possess it, even to take it into his hands! but he was also afraid. His master might come in upon him before he could escape. There might be some trap about the dreadful glorious thing itself. It almost blinded him as he looked down into its white flames. At last, in mingled greed and terror, he put out his hand——

Ah! Jerningham’s shriek would have wakened the Seven Sleepers; and there was no one to be awakened here, but only a perfectly collected, self-possessed looker-on, who had seen everything with a pair of serene open eyes from the bed. What the Prince saw was a man fixed and immovable, his countenance contorted with alarm and horror, standing, not as if he held the diamond, but as if it held him, in the centre of the floor, the rays of the gem shining round him, his features convulsed, his whole soul gone forth in that wild shriek. He stood trying vainly to disengage his fingers from the paralysing grasp that seemed to him to have seized him, an image of fright and helplessness.

“Jerningham,” said his master, “is it you? and what has brought you to this pass?”

“Oh, let me go, sir!” he cried. “I’m a fool; I’m a thief. I don’t mind what you call me. Let me go; let me go! Your ’Ighness, I’d ask you on my bended knees, if I could bend a knee or move a finger! Oh, let me go!”

“What did you want with my diamond?” the Prince said.

“Want with it? It was your ’Ighness’s fault leaving of it there, where a man couldn’t help seeing it. Want with it—oh Lord! But I don’t want nothing now but to be let free and never trouble nobody any more.”

“What would you have done with it?” said the Prince, in his calm tones, “had you got it safely away?”

“Oh Lord!—oh Lord!—only let me free of it for one moment! I’d have sold it,” cried Jerningham, feeling the words forced from him, and understanding now in his trouble how it was that every one had answered these questions—a thing he had never understood before.

“To whom? not to any honest dealer, who would know its value.”

“I’d have gone—to Holland. I’d have found some o’ those fellows out. It mightn’t have been its value,” cried Jerningham, “but it would have been a fortune to me. Oh, your ’Ighness! don’t pull the brains and the eyes out of a poor man’s head, but let me go!”

“And what would your life have been afterwards? You would have trembled to see me come in wherever you were and ask for my diamond. You would have been afraid to be seen by any one who knew you. You would have wandered from place to place, and tried every coarse pleasure which you cannot indulge in because you have your character to think of now; and you would have found them all bitter in your mouth.”

“Very likely, sir; very likely, sir,” cried Jerningham in his distress. “It’s true; it’s true. I’ve thought of all that. I knows it as well as any man. Sir, I’ll never ask you for a character nor nothing if your ’Ighness will let me free.”

“You thought of all that?” said the master, in his absolute calm.

“I did; I did! I knows it all. But what’s the good of knowing when a thing drags you as if your soul was coming out of your body? It’s your ’Ighness’s fault for leaving it there.”

“Then you will do it again to-morrow if I let you free.”

“Oh, never, s’help me—oh, never! Yes, perhaps I will. A man never can tell what he’ll do. I can’t tell you a lie though I want to;—perhaps I will. It’s stronger nor me. Oh, your ’Ighness; oh, for the love of God, let me free!”

Jerningham was in torture. The blood in his veins seemed to be turned into fire; sparks came from his broadcloth; his temples throbbed as if some dreadful machinery had been set going within; and the blaze of the diamond in his eyes was like those flames which he had heard of all his life as the reward of those who steal and lie. But suddenly in a moment he felt a dark still shadow over him. The machinery in his head stopped; the flare in his face was subdued; a cool hand touched his; and the cruel thing that held him loosed its clutches. This was what the sensation was—not that the diamond was taken from him by his master’s hand, which was the fact, but as if it had been constrained to let him go. A sudden sense of relief ran through Jerningham’s frame, but along with that—was it possible?—a regret, a pang as of something which had all but been his, yet never would be his again.

The Prince put it down on the table on the same spot as before. “You are sorry,” he said, “that you have not succeeded. You forget already how it punished you. You would try again.”

“No, your ’Ighness; no, your ’Ighness,” said Jerningham. The sense of relief was in all his veins, and yet it was dreadful to him to give it up, and have no further hope of it. There ran through his mind like an arrow the thought, that after he was dismissed there might be a very good chance of coming back privately, and, with gloves or handkerchiefs wrapped round his hands or something, managing better another time. He did not entertain the thought, but it flashed through him all the same. He stood back in the shade, an abashed and penitent sinner, notwithstanding this flash of thought.

“I asks no warning, sir, after what have ’appened; no board-wages nor nothing. I’m thankful to your ’Ighness for a-letting of me off. I asks no character. Mr Jones of the hotel will see, sir, as I leaves everything right, and not a pin out of its place. I’m—I’m a good servant, sir,” said Jerningham. He paused for a moment, his intromissions with his master’s garments and his percentages jumping up suddenly into his face. Then he added, “I mayn’t be strong to resist a great temptation as has been left before my eyes; but I’m a good servant, sir, and nobody can speak different.”

“You intended, then, to go away?” said the Prince, with a smile. “No; you need not go away. I shall not dismiss you. You will, perhaps, attempt to do this again? Well, you know beforehand what the issue will be, and I need not say any more. We understand each other, I think? in this and also in the other little ways—”

“What other little ways, sir?” said Jerningham, holding his head high; but it was very difficult to keep any pretence up in the presence of his master. “If your ’Ighness is satisfied, sir, so am I,” he added, lowering his eyes and his tone.

The Prince’s laugh was not ununkindly, yet it rung into Jerningham’s very heart, and stung him much more than a lecture. “I am satisfied—that we understand each other,” he said, and dismissed the culprit with a wave of his hand.

And this was how the strange incident ended. A master that had no respect for himself as a master; that could find out an attempt at robbery and never dismiss the man; that left the most valuable property about, and all his money in Jerningham’s hands, notwithstanding that he knew Jerningham to be a rogue—as if it didn’t matter—as if nothing mattered! “Lord! I’d have turned him neck and crop out o’ the ’ouse. I’d have in with him into the hands of the police sooner than look at him. He shouldn’t never ’ave ’ad a day’s grace from me!” Jerningham said to himself, putting himself in his master’s place; but he was on the whole relieved to be going to bed as if nothing had happened, with his character safe, and no longer any necessity for flying to Holland or elsewhere in order to realise his ill-gotten gains.

It was shortly after this that the Prince went for the first time to Hillesborough, though, as the reader may recollect, it was Lord Hillesborough who had arranged everything for him on his arrival in England. He was received with great state as became the highest rank—indeed, though he never stood upon his greatness, and his title was never fully announced, he had at the same time never hesitated to accept the name of Prince as natural and befitting his condition. When the old earl came out to the door to meet him, their encounter was considered by many persons to be both curious and touching. Lord Hillesborough had travelled much in his life; he had been all over the world—everywhere, people said, without knowing very well what that word meant. He had penetrated far into the East, he had gone through Africa (as was said; for much less was known of Africa in those days than now). As for Europe and such little holiday journeyings as are to be accomplished there, he thought nothing of them; and that he should have met in his wanderings a mysterious Prince whom nobody knew, yet who was every inch a Prince, bearing his superiority in every feature and action, was a very natural thing. But it was strange and pathetic, as people say, to see that very old man, full of dignities and honours, bowing low before the Stranger, who greeted him with the warmest cordiality, but no such demonstrations of respect. Lord Hillesborough hurried down the steps to open the carriage-door with his own aged ivory hands. He murmured something about so poor a means of conveyance, though his carriage was good enough for the Queen herself. The Prince smiled in the most gracious and affectionate manner; he put his hand to his heart, his lips, and his forehead by way of greeting; finally, when he got out he put an arm round the old gentleman like a son, and seemed to raise him thus like a feather up the flight of majestic steps, which were usually a great strain upon Lord Hillesborough’s limbs and breath. “I am glad to arrive at your house, my old friend,” he said. “And I am honoured above all honours to see you here,” said the old man. The Prince drew the old earl’s arm within his own—and those who were watching saw, as if some air of youth and strength had blown that way, his countenance clear like the sun, and light come into his eyes. See what friendship does, they said, even to so old a man! For he no longer looked old when this glorious young Prince,—so more than common tall, so splendid in his bearing, in his strange yet noble dress, and with—now clearly shining and displayed—a diamond bigger than the Koh-i-noor shining through the filmy folds of his head-dress, had him by the hand.

There was a party of some eminence assembled at Hillesborough, presumably to meet the Prince, though, so far as I am aware, the name of this illustrious convive had not been mentioned directly to any of them. The old earl had spoken, however, to some, of a friend whom he expected, who was making a sort of voyage of discovery in England, a member of a very old princely race, “of a civilisation much anterior to ours,” he said. What did he mean? a Brahmin prince from India—perhaps a sacred Llama from Thibet—“one of old Hillesborough’s swans, who are mere geese,” a witty member of the party said. But they did not laugh when they were presented to the mysterious and noble personage who appeared among them—though there was scarcely one who was not distinguished in one way or another—like an eagle among the lesser birds, rather than a swan. He talked with them freely and upon all subjects, with an easy grace of utterance which was very surprising in a foreigner. And he was not a Hindoo: no dark nor even dusky blood ran in the veins which traversed visibly on his temples, in lines of blue, the milk-white of his complexion. He might have been an Anglo-Saxon for his fairness; but he was not an Anglo-Saxon,—the type was much higher, more intellectual, and finer than anything produced among our races. There was a keen ethnographer among the party who was eager to identify him, yet entirely baffled by the Prince’s imperturbable and smiling incapacity for being questioned. He questioned a great deal himself on his own part, and knew almost everything about the private history of most of the people there, and this almost exclusively from themselves, for he encouraged no gossip. Day by day his fellow-guests wondered more and more at him,—at his points of view, the opinions he expressed, and his curious spectator-attitude in respect to everything that went on. He blamed nothing, they observed, attacked nothing—had not a word to say about the foreign policy of England, nor her treatment of the distant States in which her sons had made their settlements. This was a thing that was eagerly expected from him at first. A foreigner himself, and evidently one from the far East or South, there was nothing so likely as that he should criticise the methods of Great Britain with those conquered or allied provinces, and the vast world of heathenism which she had more or less subdued. But to the surprise especially of a Cabinet Minister, who was one of the party, he said nothing at all on this point. He did not even attempt to make out that his own race was more truly civilised than the British, and might with truth call them barbarians. He never spoke, indeed, of his own race at all. Sometimes he would exchange a recollection with Lord Hillesborough of some particular moment or occurrence through which they had passed together, and on these occasions named him apparently by a name which was quite unknown, and indeed never was caught by any one, each hearer making of it a different sound—a word of a language which nobody had ever heard before.

The mysterious visitor caused great interest and excitement among the guests at Hillesborough. He was heard of through all the county; and people to whom it was half a day’s journey came to call, with a sense that the very crown and climax of all old Lord Hillesborough’s eccentricities was thus to be seen and taken account of. But the Prince’s visit was of still more importance to some of those who were most closely at hand.

III

Lord Hillesborough had never married; but he was not without ties of family on that account. He had led a wild and wandering youth, and for the greater part of his middle age had been pursuing researches, which nobody could quite trace out, in distant parts of the universe, sometimes for years together dropping out of the knowledge of men. He had got beyond the climax of life when he returned and took for the first time possession of his ancestral place and honours. There he had neither been unaware of nor indifferent to the responsibilities of such a position. He had done all that a member of the House of Lords can to stimulate good legislation and control bad—which is the highly important and useful office of that body—taking care that the nation should have full time to think, and do nothing rashly or unadvisedly. He had taken up many schemes which seemed visionary to his colleagues and fellows, and some which were very practical and excellent. His estates were governed with great care under his own special supervision-—no wrong being left without a remedy, and no poverty which could be helped being permitted to exist. Whatever was best in the way of leases and improvements to the farmers, and of good cottages, allotments, and indulgences to the labourers, existed on his land before the younger theorists had begun to speak of such schemes. He was not altogether successful—what man is or can be?—and yet life was as tolerable at and about Hillesborough as it could well be made. He could not change the nature or the character of his surroundings. He that was unclean was unclean still, except now and then when a miracle would happen with which Lord Hillesborough had nothing to do. He did not believe that allotments or anything else that he could do would save either men’s souls or bodies; but when that divine something did come into an erring man’s breast which makes him a good man—a miracle still daily accomplished among us, heaven be praised! which is greater than healing—the old lord acknowledged it with reverence however it came—whether by means of the Methodist preacher in the village, or by the ministrations of an anachronism under the form of a modern brother of St Benedict, or by more intimate and secret help from heaven—always allowing that this gift from God was beyond all allotments, and that to be made good was the one primary necessity of life. This was a point in which he differed from most law-makers of to-day; and yet he was very modern in his way, and scorned no suggestion, even when coming from the least venerable quarter, which seemed to have any good in it. He was surrounded, in consequence, with what might be called a very high average of general well-being. More, perhaps, is scarcely to be looked for, whatever men may do or say.

I have said, however, that he did not want for the ties of a family, notwithstanding that he had never married, and had consequently no children of his own. His house was superintended and reigned over by his sister, Lady Elizabeth Camden, who had an only daughter, to whom the old gentleman was much attached; and it was the home of his nephew and heir, the son of a younger brother, who had been Lord Hillesborough’s favourite in life. It was the evident and most commonplace conclusion that these two young persons, both so dear to the master of the house and both so deeply indebted to his bounty, should marry and carry on the lineage after him; but this most desirable and natural issue had been put aside some time before, when it became evident that Arthur was not likely to turn out so well as had been hoped. There were many excuses for him, people said. Why should he work either at school or college, when he knew there was no need whatever that he should do so, and when, without any exertion, he could have everything that is desirable in life? No doubt he would sow his wild oats, and settle down and marry some nice girl, and be as irreproachable as most of his fathers had been before him. Anyhow, he should not marry Lucy, Lady Elizabeth said, and she was a woman not given to changing her mind. At the same time she had indicated, which perhaps was not so wise, the man who was to marry Lucy, who was already an epitome of all the virtues, a man with very fine estates and a good deal of money, and universally approved of wherever he went. But, unfortunately, Lucy was not of her mother’s opinion in this latter respect. Therefore. even in this admirably regulated house, with such a man as Lord Hillesborough at its head, all was not peace as it ought to have been. He was an example to the whole county, but it was not an example which was efficacious in his own house. And yet these two erring young people were both very fond of him, and considered him the best of men. They would have liked to please him; there was no opposition to him in either of their minds. Sometimes they were both in rebellion in different ways against Lady Elizabeth; but Uncle Hillesborough was to both the most loved and trusted of friends.

It was not long before this state of things was made very apparent to the Prince, He fathomed it the first evening, when he saw the young people doing their utmost to entertain their guests, though nothing could have been more natural or delightful than the family affection between them. What might have been the confidences between him and Lord Hillesborough I cannot say—nor if there were any confidences; but it was not very long before this important and evidently most influential visitor, whose manners were such as gained everybody’s trust, was sought by young Arthur with his tale, and a prayer for his intervention. “For one can see that Uncle Hillesborough thinks nothing too much to do for you,” he said.

“If Lord Hillesborough is so good, is not that a reason why I should be very cautious what I ask him?” said the Prince, with a smile. But he soon was made aware very plainly what it was the young man had to ask. He listened patiently, and then he proceeded in his usual way to trace the trouble to its cause. “What,” he said, in the words he had already used so often, “has brought you to this pass?—for one like you, so young, so full of happiness, so well off, cannot have come to despair in a day. What has brought you to this pass?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the young man, with his hands in his pockets, swaying backward and forward against the light of the broad window—“nothing that was very bad. I got drawn in a bit with fellows I had known at school, not for any harm, only for fun, don’t you know. Every one bets a little; and you never think when you begin that you can’t stop just when you please. Then that leads to other things. When you get into your first hole, and see what an ass you’ve been, the thing you want most is not to think about it. It seems no use thinking about it when you can’t mend it. Then fellows tell you how by risking a little more you have such a good chance of recovering yourself; and then you get awfully excited, and you heap on everything, and you feel sure you must win this time. Some fellows do, and set themselves straight, and then pull up, and are not a bit the worse for it. That’s what I meant. They are actually the better for it, don’t you know, getting such loads of experience; and, after all, nothing but experience ever teaches a man. Well! then when you have everything in the world hanging upon the chance of what is going to happen at a race meeting, or something else of that sort—don’t you see your head’s not any good for work or reading, and you can’t bear home or being quiet. You have got not to think; and the only way not to think is to keep yourself in a whirl with—well, with other things; and so you get into what people call dissipation, without wanting to, without meaning to, just to keep yourself from thinking—”

The Prince said nothing, but shook his head: there was perhaps a half smile on his face—or so at least the young man thought.

“What’s the good of talking?” he said; “I can see you know it all quite well: and of course, however far off your country is, and however mysterious you make it, Uncle Hillesborough and you—human nature, I suppose, is the same there as here.”

The Prince did not make any reply to this: he continued to shake his head. “It seems to me,” he said, “that if, instead of taking precautions against thinking, you had allowed yourself to think, all might have been mended at any moment before things came to this pass.”

“I didn’t come to a man like you,” cried the youth, almost indignantly, “to be told that! Why, any old woman could have told me that! Don’t you know how it draws you on? Oh, hang it all, you must know! You can’t have come to know such lots of things, and to understand men so well, without finding that out. It draws you on; and in a kind of a way you like to be drawn on; and you think it’s life, and all that; and after a while you can’t bear the quiet of home, and the routine. You must have something to excite you, to fill up the gaps. I don’t know why things that are called wrong should always be nicer than things that are called right. They make you spin, they keep you going. But it isn’t because they’re wicked you care for them; it’s because they are fun.”

“To me they seem very poor fun,” the Stranger said.

“Well, perhaps,” said the youth, subdued. “You’re above all that. I shouldn’t suppose they would seem fun to you. I—shouldn’t like it if they were. They’re not always fun, to tell the truth, even to me; but they keep a fellow on. But you don’t blame me badly, do you,—you that know what men are?” he added, after a pause, glancing up with a pleading look, like the insinuating plea of a child.

“Yes,” said the Prince, “I blame you: but still more, I wonder at you, selling your youth and all your chances and hopes for less than the mess of pottage! That was always something, it satisfied a hunger of the moment; but yours are only the husks that the swine eat.”

“Oh, I say!” cried the youth; then he paused, and said, penitently, with a drooping head, “I believe you’re not far wrong. I have been a dreadful ass, that is the truth.” He looked up again with his boyish insinuating plea. “But I’ve learned better now. I’ve bought my experience. Prince! if you will get Uncle Hillesborough to look over things this once, and start me straight, you shall see it will be very different another time.”

“Will it be very different?” said the other. “If you had meant wrong the first time, and now meant right the second, I think there would be better hope: but you meant only fun, as you say; and how can you be sure that you will not mean fun again?”

“Oh, by Jove!” cried the young man, “I know better now! Fun’s very well, but if it can only end in a revolver, one sees that won’t pay. I’m up to a great many things now that I never thought of before. If you’ll stand my friend, Prince—”

“In any way, in every way that is permitted, I shall certainly stand your friend,” the Stranger said, in his grave tones but with his benignant look.

Young Arthur could not burst out with his schoolboy exuberance, “Oh, thank you; thank you awfully!” as he had intended. He was silenced by that look, which seemed to mean so much more than the words meant, which is not the usual way; but yet he did not know what they meant. He went away a little awestricken; yet he was full of hope.

And it was, I think, the same day that Lucy also sought the Stranger with her story. She was more timid than her cousin. She had no confession of wrong-doing to make, in Arthur’s way, but yet it was dreadful to the girl to be in opposition to her mother, and to be appealing to a person she knew so little. She said to him prettily, with downcast eyes, that she did not know how it was that it seemed more natural to speak to him than to any of her old friends whom she had known all her life.

“Perhaps it is because I am a stranger,” said the Prince.

“Oh,” cried Lucy, “perhaps it is that! The others would either take sides with mamma or blame her—and she is not to be blamed, she is right; but oh, Prince, you who know everything, I can’t help thinking I am right too.”

“I am afraid I don’t know everything. I am only an inquirer among you little young people on the earth; but you will teach me to know—”

“I—teach you!” cried Lucy, clapping her hands; “but if you don’t know everything, you understand, and that is better. Oh, Prince, I am so full of trouble and difficulty! One thinks naturally that anything one wishes for, very, very much, must be wrong, you know. But this I am quite, quite sure is not wrong.”

“Tell me what it is,” he said, with a smile.

She gave him a quick glance, and then drooped her head again. “You will know,” she said, very softly, “even though I didn’t tell you, that it must be something about—about my marriage, Prince.”

The last words came out with a little rush, as if Lucy were glad to get them said. “Oh!” he said, “is that so?”

“What else could it be?” said Lucy, with a sigh. “Of course on no other subject would I oppose mamma. I know that she understands most things far better than I do; and she is very, very good. She is my best friend; she loves me more than anybody in the world. Oh, Prince! you must not think I don’t know that.”

The Prince smiled, looking down upon her benignantly, but said no word.

“But when you think that it is I who must pass my life with him, not she—and that there is one whom—whom I——while the other, though I know he is a good man, and that mamma is right about him, and—and all that—yet I could not, I could not bear him, oh, Prince, how could I? when there is another—another!”

Lucy put up her hands to her face with a little sound of tears.

“Tell me about this other,” the Stranger said; “sit down and be composed and tell me—everything you can tell—”

“I can tell you—all!” cried the girl. “I couldn’t to anybody else; but I am sure you must have loved—some one, very, very much, and you understand.”

He smiled over her downcast head, and in answer to the sudden upward glance of her wet eyes; but the smile was mysterious, reticent, opening no confidences on his own part. He did not assent to the assertion she made, nor yet contradict it. His attention was given solely to the suppliant, not disturbed by any reflection from experiences of his own.

“This gentleman,” said Lucy, plunging into the middle of her subject, “whom mamma thinks so much of, is old—at least older a great deal. I seem to have always known him. He is very nice, and he has always been very good to me. I might have done—what mamma and he wanted, and never known anything better, and just lived dull and half alive all my days. But one day last summer I went over quite by accident to see some other girls at Horndean. I had not been invited. It was only because it was a fine day, and Uncle Hillesborough had given me my pretty little pony-cart, and I thought I should like to go: just a fancy—and quite by accident.”

“Quite by accident,” the Prince echoed, in a tone which made Lucy look up at him once more; but she did not understand either his look or his mysterious spectator-smile.

“And there was—some one, who came in for tennis quite by accident too; they had not asked him; they did not even know he was at home. And we drew each other for partners in the game, and we played all the afternoon; and afterwards he walked by the side of the pony-cart half the way home. He walks so quickly and so light, he went as fast as the pony. Oh, Prince, do not you think that when we met like this, without a thought, knowing nothing about it, that it must have been Providence—Providence? heaven itself that brought us together when we never knew!”

“And this was the man?” the Prince asked.

“Oh yes!” cried Lucy with fervour, clasping her hands, too earnest even to blush, “this was the man! the only man—the only, only one that I could ever—— And it is all so different. I might have married the other gentleman whom I was always meant to marry, and never known what it was at all But the first moment I saw Harry I knew. I was ready to put my hand in his and go with him anywhere; and I don’t mind if he is poor or rich, we could always, always get on together. We don’t need even to speak to understand each other. We know what we mean—he me, and I him. And to think that we should have met like that!”

“Quite by accident,” the Prince repeated, in his musing tone.

“I prefer to say,” said Lucy, with great gravity and solemnity, “by Providence, Prince! It seems accident to us, but God,”—the girl lowered her voice with tender reverence and enthusiasm—“God must have put us down for each other long before, and brought it about so, that we might always see His hand in it. He thinks so too. We are quite, quite sure that it has all been brought about by heaven. They say, you know, that marriages are made in heaven,” she added, flashing a wistful smile at him out of her shining wet eyes.

“And is it a proof for that that earth opposes?” the Prince asked.

“Mamma opposes,” said Lucy; “this is my great trial. He is not rich, and the other gentleman of course is; and she still wants me to marry him, as if our love was a mere fancy and meant nothing: when it means everything—our whole lives! Oh, Prince! you can help us; everybody listens to you.”

“But,” he said, “do you not think that your mother knows best? that this gentleman, whom I do not know, whom she has chosen and selected for you, who has thought of you for years, is very likely a better mate for you than one whom you have met without any choice, inadvertently, quite, as you say, by accident.”

“Love doesn’t choose,” cried Lucy, “it comes! it doesn’t think of being suitable or not, it just is, and there is no more to be said. Oh, Prince! I shall think you do not know so much as I supposed, have not had so much experience as I thought, if you don’t know that. It is the only thing in all the world that is quite, quite true.”

“It seems a beautiful thing—through your eyes,” he said; “but if I talked with your mother—”

“Mamma,” cried Lucy, “would not deny that—nobody would deny it; they may try to get over it, but they would not deny it: for everybody at least, though they may go against their knowledge—which is blasphemy—knows what Love is.”

“They know what Love is?”

“Oh yes, yes, Prince! and that it comes like the wind in the Bible where it listeth—bloweth where it listeth—comes when no one is thinking of it, without any invitation, without any arrangement.”

“Quite by accident!” the Prince repeated, with a smile.

IV

The party at Hillesborough being, as has been said, a party composed of very distinguished persons, with aims and pursuits much above the common, was greatly occupied at this particular moment by discussions concerning the best means of reforming society, and especially concerning the condition of the poor, which takes up so much thought and so many anxious plans in this generation. There were some very active advocates of that which calls itself the Service of Man, and which considers itself an immense improvement upon the Service of God, though that has been for many hundred years the rule by which loving your neighbour as yourself was given forth as the half of law and religion. And there were also many who went in the ways of that older faith. Much discussion, not only between these different methods, but upon—to their credit be it said—the best way in which each man could try his own method without assailing his neighbour’s—was naturally rife, and many schemes were debated in the hearing of the Stranger, who listened so courteously to every speaker, but never put in any suggestion or advice of his own. This was his general attitude—hearing everybody speak, without either criticism or judgment, collecting all opinions, and listening with grave respect to what the very humblest had to say. But naturally his imposing presence and all the prestige that surrounded him, the sense of superior intelligence and understanding which everybody felt who approached him, made this silence on his part unnatural, and he soon was referred to on all sides for his opinion. “One who has seen so much as you have,” it was said, “with so many varied experiences—so great a student of human nature—” These words came from different speakers, all pressing upon him to know what he thought.

“A student of human nature, am I?” he said. “Yes, it is perhaps the distinction which I am most willing to adopt. My studies have not been of long duration nor so profound as I should like them to be. But still—human nature is the most interesting thing in the world—a thing which above all, as the Scriptures say, the other races desire to look into.”

“It is flattering to the Scriptures to be quoted by you—if a little unexpected and old-fashioned,” some one said.

“Ah, you think so? I am old-fashioned. I have heard even from some of your clever people that I do not exist,” said the Prince, with a smile.

There was a little chorus of half-laughter. “Berkeley, you mean,” with little liftings of the eyebrows, however, between some of the hearers and a murmur of “Old-fashioned indeed!”

The Prince replied to this murmur as if it had been the voice of the company in general, distinguishing the whisperer, who had been only heard in the shape of an inarticulate murmur by the rest. “Very old-fashioned, as I told you, keeping many primary ideas; and I have always found very great interest in the human race. To us who are bound by other rules, the mere existence of this delightful vagrant in the universe—a creature always choosing, always changing, acting according to a will which is not the same for two days together—is the miracle of miracles: a being so strange! that can lift up its reasonings, its little round of fantastic argument, against the Lord of heaven and earth; that can defy Him, and yet is not consumed; whose laws of living are so unlike everything else; with whom nothing is settled, nothing certain; the plaything, not of chance, as you say, or of fate, as your predecessors said, but of something far more fantastic and wayward still, his own will. Sometimes I have noticed that a woman, that a child, as being a still more marked embodiment of the law of your being, is an object of the same tender amused observation to you as the universe in general gives to your race.”

The circle gathered closer around the Prince, with looks, some of aroused curiosity, others of offended surprise. “Our race—which I suppose, whatever difference there may be in nationality, is yours also. You philosophers of the East take much upon you, but scarcely to be above humanity,” one speaker said.

“The Prince is from Thibet. I knew it,” said another, with a laugh.

But the attitude of Lord Hillesborough was the most curious of all He stood with an expression of the deepest anxiety, and also of an almost agonised entreaty, upon his face, addressing that speechlessly with look and gesture to his friend. The Prince gave him a smile, waving his hand as if gently putting the remonstrance away. He made no reply to the comments of the other spectators.

“Your schemes,” he said, “are good: there is much in them of that divine charity which some of you acknowledge (as if you were paying a compliment to your God) and some of you do not. You will do something by them, all of you, in proportion to the heart you put into them: yet you will never do anything. For why? It is impossible that you should ever succeed.”

“And why should we not ever succeed?” asked one. The circle laughed: it was angry—there was quite a tumult of feeling round the speaker.

“Because you have to do with a race which learns nothing, which makes no progress, which begins again afresh in every generation—”

His voice was lost in a chorus of laughter and exclamations. “This is too much, in the very age and birthday of the Science of Evolution. We allow all that the Mystic can demand as a matter of argument; but no progress! Prince, this is too much!”

“You did not think, I suppose, that I spoke of your machinery?—the great paraphernalia of life-convenience that you build about yourselves. That does not make you true or pure, or to walk humbly with your God. What is it this earth of yours wants to make it happy and free of those evils you contend with?”

“Ah, tell us that!” some one cried.

“I will tell you that; it is simple. It is like what you say to a child: it is to be good. It is that it should get once more into harmony with the will of God. It is that it should eschew evil, learn to do well. It is that it should become natural to be pure, to be temperate, to be true. It is that no man should hurt his neighbour, or tempt his neighbour, or vex his neighbour any more; that there should be no excess, no breach of the rules of nature, no rebellion against the institutions of God—”

“Ah that, par exemple! long sermons and daily prayers and so forth!”

The Prince took no notice. He went on with his calm voice, as of one who knew no argument, who stated only the most evident unassailable fact—“Whereas,” he said, “every human dwelling is full of rebellion and refusal. It is the first thing in the outset of a child upon life. That which is ordained is resisted; the principle of all things is to contradict. It seemed to us others a wonderful possession to have this will, this power of choice—a virtue which none of us could reach who were bound by other laws—the very flower of being: not to follow our Father’s guidance only by necessity of nature, but to do it by choice, selecting His noble will by the glory of its own manifestation as the best, the only way. Who to be so much envied, so much thought of, as Men? Even afterwards there was still a charm. It is more wonderful than any evolution—I take your word,” he said, looking round him with a smile—“to see a creature of God, standing, choosing, amid all the powers of heaven and earth—everything in love and subordination save he—he alone, by his nature free to do what he will. Think of it! We did so and sang for joy. The triumph and the height of all seemed to us to be so made that you could choose. Those who choose not but obey—who know not hatred nor falsehood nor disturbance, but only the law of love—applauded, acclaimed to the farthest depths of the infinite. To us, I tell you, it is a charm still to see every new man come into the world, to see him hesitate which turn he will take, to see everything placed before him and his own soul confirm the lesson, and experience point out and conscience protest. Ah, you know that process, every one of you. It is another evolution than your science dreams of. The father has learned the lesson, but that does not teach the son. Over and over, over and over, your own children show it forth before you. To each new generation the world begins over again: each new man makes his choice like the first man—untaught by what has gone before him, undaunted by the misery of the past.”

The group which had gathered round the Prince was silent. Some of them looked at each other askance, as if saying he has heard of So-and-so or So-and-so: for there were those there who had learned that lesson bitterly in the ruin of their children or their friends. Those who felt in themselves that this stranger was perhaps playing upon the secrets of their lives, confronted him with a pale defiance not to betray their consciousness of that truth; but all were still overawed by his bearing, and the wonder of his attitude, and what he said.

His face suddenly melted as he looked round after that address. A tender smile came upon it. His eyes grew luminous and soft as if with tears. He broke forth in a voice that was slightly broken with a sound of half weeping and half laughter. “But all by accident!” he said. “The new man pauses; he thinks; he chooses in his heart: it is solemn to him as the movement of the spheres—when, lo! a little breeze rises; a little cloud floats over him: a bird sings: a comrade calls: and he turns—into the other way. Not with intention—he has no mind to go wrong: it is only for once—for a moment—and all will be well again. And as it begins so it goes on. His life, that was to be so lofty and so great, becomes an accident—the accident of accidents. He does not know when he wakes in the morning how far he may have gone ere night. He goes out heedless and smiling, and meets Ruin round the first corner. He makes a thousand plans, and then foils them all in a moment by the lifting of his hand. He cannot tell from hour to hour where his steps are to carry him. He remembers, and ponders, and knows yet next time does the same. We who look on are moved by I cannot tell you what wonder, what interest, what pity! We would shout aloud to warn him, but our voices are not as his: and who can warn him who knows all that we could tell him, and the penalties, better than we—yet makes no difference? The wisest cannot tell what he will do next—where his steps may stray. We watch him as you might watch a child upon the edge of a precipice. He totters; he stumbles; he turns aside; the butterfly leads him now to the edge of destruction, now away laughing to the flowery fields: then, while you rejoice, back again like the flight of a bird—over, into the darkness! Ah!” cried the stranger, with a voice that burst forth like a great organ, “that last alone is what appals you. You think then that all is over—whereas it is the great escape.”

He paused a little, nobody saying a word, then resumed in a calmer tone: “How are you to set right this round of accident? You cannot make any man begin where his father left off, or profit by his experience. But I have learned one great thing by coming here, and it has been a consolation to me unspeakable, almost making up for everything. It is that he very rarely means any harm when he begins. What he intends is to do well. Take this to your heart, you that are truly troubled. Very, very rarely do they mean any harm. There is one here who meant to be a noble man like those he belonged to—but one heedless step after another has brought him face to face with despair. Ah!” said the Prince, with a little start of pleasure, looking round him, “this law works also in things which are not evil but good. I see another who went forth one day like a child to her play, and met—another who is to be her companion through earth and heaven. They did not plot it or plan. An hour before they had never heard each other’s names. An hour after and the link that is never to be broken was welded between them. They met—by accident. Can I tell you how this was done? Not I: nor can they. Love is: it is not known how it comes; it is an accident like all the rest.” Here he turned towards his host and called him by that name which no one understood, or could ever catch distinctly. “Brother,” he said, with a tone of mild authority, “you will look to these two, for they are yours. See to it.”

He paused again, then turned to the little anxious crowd which was full of eager curiosity. “The strange thing is,” he said, “that this free soul, this being all will and independence, has never yet, amid all his vagaries, chosen fully and always to be good. This was what we looked for, hoped for, fully expected—that out of so many there would be one here and there who in the fulness of his will would choose. There was One as you all know; but He was the only one in heaven or the universe who could do whatever He would, whose existence was His own to use as He pleased. There might have been some among us who would gladly have tried, but each of us belongs to his own sphere, and has his own duty to render; and who could tell that with man’s will we might not have failed as he does. There was but One bound by no law; and He, you know, has done it. He took your nature and your will, and exposed Himself to all your accidents, and chose the perfect life, and fulfilled it. You all know. And in the face of the Son the Father sees you all. Nay, a greater wonder still than that, if greater wonder can be. When I look at you,” the Prince said, touching lightly his bosom, bowing slightly his head, “it goes to my heart. You are a little like Him! a little—a little! for He is a man in the fulness of your manhood. You remind us all, like little brothers, like far-off relations, always of Him. Think whether those, whose image our Lord wears, are dear to us or not! There is something in all of you—a look, a movement. You wear His features, and flout Him as if He had never been. The wonder of it! But you are a little like Him all the same—all of you, even in what you call the slums. I, who have been there, have been caught by a glance—just a movement of the eyes, perhaps, a lifting of a hand, something, I cannot tell what, that reminded me of my Lord!”

He paused with a long breath of emotion, and there came from the bosom of that little crowd, all gathered round him, a sigh, which was unspeakable, which meant they knew not what—a strange thrill, an indescribable feeling. The Stranger made a slight movement, as if shaking off an impression too deep for the moment. And then he resumed—

“In the meantime, it is very good, very good that you should help your brothers, as that they should help you; and good will come—accidentally, as all your actions are swayed. But you will make no fundamental change. If by giving bread and coals, and education and comfort, you could make them good!—but that is the only thing: and as for these thousands of years they have not chosen it, it is not likely they will to-day. And no one can force them to be good. God may not. His pledge is against it. They are to be free: it is the law of their being, as it is ours to obey. The consolation is that though all do evil, scarcely one—I have never seen one—meant to do it from the beginning; perhaps not one!—they are swept along by accident after accident. And thus your earth sways undestroyed in the great space and breath of God, which is common to us all. And the years go on towards their accomplishment. And your countenance, the face of man, shines over us in heaven.”

“What is all this talk,” said one of the spectators, impatient, who had long been trying to get utterance, “of us and you?—as if you had some superiority over our race, or were not subject to all our penalties. You speak well, Prince, and your traditions may be so different from ours as to give you this feeling. Still I suppose you are a man like the rest of us. I like that you said about no one meaning harm, and about each starting afresh—I have myself felt that. But—”

The speaker paused, confused. He uttered a strange sound as of wonder, remonstrance, bewilderment. Some one said after that there had been a noise in the other part of the room, and that everybody had looked round. I don’t know what explanation of the incident there might be in that, or indeed if it really was so at all. But this is certain, that the gentleman who had begun to reply to the Stranger suddenly paused, making that wonderful sound in his throat. And it immediately became apparent to everybody around that the foreign Prince, Lord Hillesborough’s guest and friend, was no longer there. It happened in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Even had the attention of the other guests been called momentarily away, there was no second door by which he could have left the room, and nobody saw him leave the room. But he was not there. He had been the centre of the group, closely surrounded, and that living circle had not opened that anybody was aware of to let him go forth. But he was not there. There was, as was natural, a great outcry and hubbub. Some of the women fell a-crying; the man who had been speaking stood with his lips apart, as if still in his consciousness giving forth that strange muffled cry. One man cried in mockery, “I told you he was a Mahatma from Thibet!” But perhaps the strangest thing of all was the aspect of old Lord Hillesborough, who was perceived to be standing quite outside the group, with his hands clasped, and the most wonderful expression of tenderness and trouble in his face. Whoever was surprised, it was very evident he was not surprised, which to some seemed the most curious of all.

Arthur, the young heir of the house, rushed out of the room as if with the intention of following and finding the visitor who had disappeared. He returned in a few minutes with Jerningham in a state of great excitement, sobbing, with gasps of utterance, and holding an open paper in his hand, “Which I don’t deserve it, my lord, I don’t deserve it!” he cried. “I’ve done perhaps no worse than others would have done in my place, and I didn’t mean no harm: if he didn’t use ’em himself it seemed—it seemed a kind of a pity not to use ’em: and here he says I’m to have all—but I don’t deserve it, my lord.”

Half a-dozen people precipitated themselves upon the paper in Jerningham’s hand, hoping to discover some mystery: but it was no more than a few simple words, requesting that Jerningham should have all that was in his hands. “He will do better another time,” the paper bore, and it was signed by a curious cipher in a language to which no one there had any clue. Jerningham interposed, with convulsive exclamations. “He have put the big diamond into his ’at again,” he said; “I thought as something must be up. He didn’t leave that—no, my lord, oh no! nor I wouldn’t have touched it if he had, seeing how once it took and grabbed me—me that was doing no harm: oh Lord! no, that’s not true. But oh, gentlemen, he’s took it, and he’s gone—and the best of masters, and I’ll never see his like again—”

The commotion that ensued in the house, and the way in which many of the gentlemen present endeavoured to trace the mysterious visitor, walking all over the park, going to all the railway stations, and making a hundred inquiries, need scarcely be told. Some of them thought they had accounted for his disappearance more or less satisfactorily. As for Lord Hillesborough, who made no inquiries, he was fully satisfied a few days after by the arrival of a letter from the north of Scotland, written in the scratchy and tremulous handwriting of a woman, and one that did not appear to be an educated woman or belonging to his own class. It ran as follows:—

“Dear Sir and Brother,—One that you will know of has just come in bye to me, and bid me to write and tell you his visit was over, but stepped out of his road to give me a word, as a poor person that has had great privileges and been admitted to things she does not attempt to understand. Dear sir, he bids you to know that he is well satisfied, and glad that he was permitted to come, and has now gone to his own place, the which you will understand better than me; and that if you will take his advice about things you are acquainted with, he is free to say it will be well. He sends you his greetings but no farewell, seeing that he awaits your arrival soon, and also that of me, an unworthy sister, scarce daring to put down, though he gives me the permission, dear sir and brother, my new name,

“———”

What followed was in the same cipher as that of the Prince. The old earl had seen it before, but did not know who was the bearer on earth of that name.

He took the advice of his mysterious counsellor, and abounded more than ever, if that were possible, in good deeds and kindness to all. And one day he was found smiling in his chair, where he had sat in a great peace all the night, having departed many hours before any one knew. The last thing he had done was to trace on the paper before him a word in the same cipher as the above, which no doubt was also his name there whither he had gone.

And the Prince, so far as I am aware, has not been seen or heard of more.

Old Lady Mary

(1884)

I

She was very old, and therefore it was very hard for her to make up her mind to die. I am aware that this is not at all the general view, but that it is believed, as old age must be near death, that it prepares the soul for that inevitable event. It is not so, however, in many cases. In youth we are still so near the unseen out of which we came, that death is rather pathetic than tragic—a thing that touches all hearts, but to which, in many cases, the young hero accommodates himself sweetly and courageously. And amid the storms and burdens of middle life there are many times when we would fain push open the door that stands ajar, and behind which there is ease for all our pains, or at least rest, if nothing more. But age, which has gone through both these phases, is apt, out of long custom and habit, to regard the matter from a different view. All things that are violent have passed out of its life,—no more strong emotions, such as rend the heart; no great labours, bringing after them the weariness which is unto death; but the calm of an existence which is enough for its needs, which affords the moderate amount of comfort and pleasure for which its being is now adapted, and of which there seems no reason that there should ever be any end. To passion, to joy, to anguish, an end must come; but mere gentle living, determined by a framework of gentle rules and habits—why should that ever be ended? When a soul has got to this retirement and is content in it, it becomes very hard to die; hard to accept the necessity of dying, and to accustom one’s self to the idea, and still harder to consent to carry it out.

The woman who is the subject of the following narrative was in this position. She had lived through almost everything that is to be found in life. She had been beautiful in her youth, and had enjoyed all the triumphs of beauty; had been intoxicated with flattery, and triumphant in conquest, and mad with jealousy and the bitterness of defeat when it became evident that her day was over. She had never been a bad woman, or false, or unkind; but she had thrown herself with all her heart into those different stages of being, and had suffered as much as she enjoyed, according to the unfailing usage of life. Many a day during these storms and victories, when things went against her, when delights did not satisfy her, she had thrown out a cry into the wide air of the universe and wished to die. And then she had come to the higher table-land of life, and had borne all the spites of fortune,—had been poor and rich, and happy and sorrowful; had lost and won a hundred times over; had sat at feasts, and kneeled by deathbeds, and followed her best-beloved to the grave, often, often crying out to God above to liberate her, to make an end of her anguish, for that her strength was exhausted and she could bear no more. But she had borne it and lived through all; and now had arrived at a time when all strong sensations are over, when the soul is no longer either triumphant or miserable, and when life itself, and comfort and ease, and the warmth of the sun, and of the fireside, and the mild beauty of home were enough for her, and she required no more. That is, she required very little more—a useful routine of hours and rules, a play of reflected emotion, a pleasant exercise of faculty, making her feel herself still capable of the best things in life—of interest in her fellow-creatures, kindness to them, and a little gentle intellectual occupation, with books and men around. She had not forgotten anything in her life—not the excitements and delights of her beauty, nor love, nor grief, nor the higher levels she had touched in her day. She did not forget the dark day when her first-born was laid in the grave, nor that triumphant and brilliant climax of her life when every one pointed to her as the mother of a hero. All these things were like pictures hung in the secret chambers of her mind, to which she could go back in silent moments, in the twilight seated by the fire, or in the balmy afternoon, when languor and sweet thoughts are over the world. Sometimes at such moments there would be heard from her a faint sob, called forth, it was quite as likely, by the recollection of the triumph as by that of the deathbed. With these pictures to go back upon at her will she was never dull, but saw herself moving through the various scenes of her life with a continual sympathy, feeling for herself in all her troubles—sometimes approving, sometimes judging that woman who had been so pretty, so happy, so miserable, and had gone through everything that life can go through. How much that is, looking back upon it!—passages so hard that the wonder was how she could survive them—pangs so terrible that the heart would seem at its last gasp, but yet would revive and go on.

Besides these, however, she had many mild pleasures. She had a pretty house full of things which formed a graceful entourage suitable, as she felt, for such a woman as she was, and in which she took pleasure for their own beauty—soft chairs and couches, a fireplace and lights which were the perfection of tempered warmth and illumination. She had a carriage, very comfortable and easy, in which, when the weather was suitable, she went out; and a pretty garden and lawns, in which, when she preferred staying at home, she could have her little walk, or sit out under the trees. She had books in plenty, and all the newspapers, and everything that was needful to keep her within the reflection of the busy life which she no longer cared to encounter in her own person. The post rarely brought her painful letters; for all those impassioned interests which bring pain had died out, and the sorrows of others, when they were communicated to her, gave her a luxurious sense of sympathy, yet exemption. She was sorry for them; but such catastrophes could touch her no more: and often she had pleasant letters, which afforded her something to talk and think about, and discuss as if it concerned her—and yet did not concern her—business which could not hurt her if it failed, which would please her if it succeeded. Her letters, her papers, her books, each coming at its appointed hour, were all instruments of pleasure. She came down-stairs at a certain hour, which she kept to as if it had been of the utmost importance, although it was of no importance at all: she took just so much good wine, so many cups of tea. Her repasts were as regular as clockwork—never too late, never too early. Her whole life went on velvet, rolling smoothly along, without jar or interruption, blameless, pleasant, kind. People talked of her old age as a model of old age, with no bitterness or sourness in it. And, indeed, why should she have been sour or bitter? It suited her far better to be kind. She was in reality kind to everybody, liking to see pleasant faces about her. The poor had no reason to complain of her; her servants were very comfortable; and the one person in her house who was nearer to her own level, who was her companion and most important minister, was very comfortable too.

This was a young woman about twenty, a very distant relation, with “no claim,” everybody said, upon her kind mistress and friend—the daughter of a distant cousin. How very few think anything at all of such a tie! but Lady Mary had taken her young namesake when she was a child, and she had grown up as it were at her godmother’s footstool, in the conviction that the measured existence of the old was the rule of life, and that her own trifling personality counted for nothing, or next to nothing, in its steady progress. Her name was Mary too—always called “little Mary” as having once been little, and not yet very much in the matter of size. She was one of the pleasantest things to look at of all the pretty things in Lady Mary’s rooms, and she had the most sheltered, peaceful, and pleasant life that could be conceived. The only little thorn in her pillow was, that whereas in the novels, of which she read a great many, the heroines all go and pay visits and have adventures, she had none, but lived constantly at home. There was something much more serious in her life, had she known, which was that she had nothing, and no power of doing anything for herself; that she had all her life been accustomed to a modest luxury which would make poverty very hard to her; and that Lady Mary was over eighty, and had made no will. If she did not make any will, her property would all go to her grandson, who was so rich already that her fortune would be but as a drop in the ocean to him; or to some great-grandchildren of whom she knew very little—the descendants of a daughter long ago dead who had married an Austrian, and who were therefore foreigners both in birth and name. That she should provide for little Mary was therefore a thing which nature demanded, and which would hurt nobody. She had said so often; but she deferred the doing of it as a thing for which there was no hurry. For why should she die? There seemed no reason or need for it. So long as she lived, nothing could be more sure, more happy and serene, than little Mary’s life; and why should she die? She did not perhaps put this into words; but the meaning of her smile, and the manner in which she put aside every suggestion about the chances of the hereafter away from her, said it more clearly than words. It was not that she had any superstitious fear about the making of a will. When the doctor or the vicar or her man of business, the only persons who ever talked to her on the subject, ventured periodically to refer to it, she assented pleasantly,—yes, certainly, she must do it—some time or other.

“It is a very simple thing to do,” the lawyer said. “I will save you all trouble—nothing but your signature will be wanted—and that you give every day.”

“Oh, I should think nothing of the trouble!” she said.

“And it would liberate your mind from all care, and leave you free to think of things more important still,” said the clergyman.

“I think I am very free of care,” she replied.

Then the doctor added bluntly, “And you will not die an hour the sooner for having made your will.”

“Die!” said Lady Mary, surprised. And then she added, with a smile, “I hope you don’t think so little of me as to believe I would be kept back by that?”

These gentlemen all consulted together in despair, and asked each other what should be done. They thought her an egotist—a cold-hearted old woman, holding at arm’s length any idea of the inevitable. And so she did; but not because she was cold-hearted—because she was so accustomed to living, and had survived so many calamities, and gone on so long—so long; and because everything was so comfortably arranged about her—all her little habits so firmly established, as if nothing could interfere with them. To think of the day arriving which should begin with some other formula than that of her maid’s entrance drawing aside the curtains, lighting the cheerful fire, bringing her a report of the weather; and then the little tray, resplendent with snowy linen and shining silver and china, with its bouquet of violets or a rose in the season, the newspaper carefully dried and cut, the letters—every detail was so perfect, so unchanging, regular as the morning. It seemed impossible that it should come to an end. And then when she came down-stairs, there were all the little articles upon her table always ready to her hand; a certain number of things to do, each at the appointed hour; the slender refreshments it was necessary for her to take, in which there was a little exquisite variety—but never any change in the fact that at eleven and at three and so forth something had to be taken. Had a woman wanted to abandon the peaceful life which was thus supported and carried on, the very framework itself would have resisted. It was impossible (almost) to contemplate the idea that at a given moment the whole machinery must stop. She was neither without heart nor without religion, but on the contrary a good woman, to whom many gentle thoughts had been given at various portions of her career. But the occasion seemed to have passed for that as well as other kinds of emotion. The mere fact of living was enough for her. The little exertion which it was well she was required to make produced a pleasant weariness. It was a duty much enforced upon her by all around her, that she should do nothing which would exhaust or fatigue. “I don’t want you to think,” even the doctor would say; “you have done enough of thinking in your time.” And this she accepted with great composure of spirit. She had thought and felt and done much in her day; but now everything of the kind was over. There was no need for her to fatigue herself; and day followed day, all warm and sheltered and pleasant. People died, it is true, now and then, out of doors; but they were mostly young people, whose death might have been prevented had proper care been taken—who were seized with violent maladies, or caught sudden infections, or were cut down by accident—all which things seemed natural. Her own contemporaries were very few, and they were like herself—living on in something of the same way. At eighty-five all people under seventy are young; and one’s contemporaries are very, very few.

Nevertheless these men did disturb her a little about her will. She had made more than one will in the former days during her active life; but all those to whom she had bequeathed her possessions were dead. She had survived them all, and inherited from many of them; which had been a hard thing in its time. One day the lawyer had been more than ordinarily pressing. He had told her stories of men who had died intestate, and left trouble and penury behind them to those whom they would have most wished to preserve from all trouble. It would not have become Mr. Furnival to say brutally to Lady Mary, “This is how you will leave your godchild when you die.” But he told her story after story, many of them piteous enough.

“People think it is so troublesome a business,” he said, “when it is nothing at all—the most easy matter in the world. We are getting so much less particular nowadays about formalities. So long as the testator’s intentions are made quite apparent—that is the chief matter, and a very bad thing for us lawyers.”

“I dare say,” said Lady Mary, “it is unpleasant for a man to think of himself as ‘the testator.’ It is a very abstract title, when you come to think of it.”

“Pooh’” said Mr. Furnival, who had no sense of humour.

“But if this great business is so very simple,” she went on, “one could do it, no doubt, for one’s self?”

“Many people do—but it is never advisable,” said the lawyer. “You will say it is natural for me to tell you that. When they do, it should be as simple as possible. I give all my real property, or my personal property, or my share in so-and-so, or my jewels, or so forth, to—whoever it may be. The fewer words the better, so that nobody may be able to read between the lines, you know; and the signature attested by two witnesses; but they must not be witnesses that have any interest—that is, that have anything left to them by the document they witness.”

Lady Mary put up her hand defensively, with a laugh. It was still a most delicate hand, like ivory, a little yellowed with age, but fine, the veins standing out a little upon it, the finger-tips still pink. “You speak,” she said, “as if you expected me to take the law in my own hands. No, no, my old friend; never fear, you shall have the doing of it.”

“Whenever you please, my dear lady—whenever you please. Such a thing cannot be done an hour too soon. Shall I take your instructions now?”

Lady Mary laughed, and said, “You were always a very keen man for business. I remember your father used to say, Robert would never neglect an opening.”

“No,” he said, with a peculiar look. “I have always looked after my six-and-eightpences; and in that case it is true, the pounds take care of themselves.”

“Very good care,” said Lady Mary; and then she bade her young companion bring that book she had been reading, where there was something she wanted to show Mr. Furnival. “It is only a case in a novel, but I am sure it is bad law; give me your opinion,” she said.

He was obliged to be civil, very civil. Nobody is rude to the Lady Marys of life; and besides, she was old enough to have an additional right to every courtesy. But while he sat over the novel, and tried with unnecessary vehemence to make her see what very bad law it was, and glanced from her smiling attention to the innocent sweetness of the girl beside her, who was her loving attendant, the good man’s heart was sore. He said many hard things of her in his own mind as he went away.

“She will die,” he said bitterly. “She will go off in a moment when nobody is looking for it, and that poor child will be left destitute.”

It was all he could do not to go back and take her by her fragile old shoulders and force her to sign and seal at once. But then he knew very well that as soon as he found himself in her presence, he would of necessity be obliged to subdue his impatience, and be once more civil, very civil, and try to suggest and insinuate the duty which he dared not force upon her. And it was very clear that till she pleased she would take no hint. He supposed it must be that strange reluctance to part with their power which is said to be common to old people, or else that horror of death, and determination to keep it at arm’s length, which is also common. Thus he did as spectators are so apt to do, he forced a meaning and motive into what had no motive at all, and imagined Lady Mary, the kindest of women, to be of purpose and intention risking the future of the girl whom she had brought up, and whom she loved—not with passion, indeed, or anxiety, but with tender benevolence; a theory which was as false as anything could be.

That evening in her room, Lady Mary, in a very cheerful mood, sat by a little bright unnecessary fire, with her writing-book before her, waiting till she should be sleepy. It was the only point in which she was a little hard upon her maid, who in every other respect was the best-treated of servants. Lady Mary, as it happened, had often no inclination for bed till the night was far advanced. She slept little, as is common enough at her age. She was in her warm wadded dressing-gown, an article in which she still showed certain traces (which were indeed visible in all she wore) of her ancient beauty, with her white hair becomingly arranged under a cap of cambric and lace. At the last moment, when she had been ready to step into bed, she had changed her mind, and told Hopgood that she would write a letter or two first. And she had written her letters, but still felt no inclination to sleep. Then there fluttered across her memory somehow the conversation she had held with Mr. Furnival in the morning. It would be amusing, she thought, to cheat him out of some of those six-and-eightpences he pretended to think so much of. It would be still more amusing, next time the subject of her will was recurred to, to give his arm a little tap with her fan, and say, “Oh, that is all settled, months ago.” She laughed to herself at this, and took out a fresh sheet of paper. It was a little jest that pleased her.

“Do you think there is any one up yet, Hopgood, except you and me?” she said to the maid. Hopgood hesitated a little, and then said that she believed Mr. Brown had not gone to bed yet; for he had been going over the cellar, and was making up his accounts. Hopgood was so explanatory that her mistress divined what was meant. “I suppose I have been spoiling sport, keeping you here,” she said good-humouredly; for it was well known that Miss Hopgood and Mr. Brown were engaged, and that they were only waiting (everybody knew but Lady Mary, who never suspected it) the death of their mistress, to set up a lodging-house in Jermyn Street, where they fully intended to make their fortune. “Then go,” Lady Mary said, “and call Brown. I have a little business paper to write, and you must both witness my signature.” She laughed to herself a little as she said this, thinking how she would steal a march on Mr. Furnival. “I give, and bequeath,” she said to herself playfully, after Hopgood had hurried away. She fully intended to leave both of these good servants something, but then she recollected that people who are interested in a will cannot sign as witnesses. “What does it matter?” she said to herself gaily; “If it ever should be wanted, Mary would see to that.” Accordingly she dashed off, in her pretty, old-fashioned handwriting, which was very angular and pointed, as was the fashion in her day, and still very clear, though slightly tremulous, a few lines, in which, remembering playfully Mr. Furnival’s recommendation of “few words,” she left to little Mary all she possessed, adding, by the prompting of that recollection about the witnesses, “She will take care of the servants.” It filled one side only of the large sheet of notepaper, which was what Lady Mary habitually used. Brown, introduced timidly by Hopgood, and a little overawed by the solemnity of the bedchamber, came in and painted solidly his large signature after the spidery lines of his mistress. She had folded down the paper, so that neither saw what it was.

“Now I will go to bed,” Lady Mary said, when Brown had left the room. “And Hopgood, you must go to bed too.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Hopgood.

“I don’t approve of courtship at this hour.”

“No, my lady,” Hopgood replied, deprecating and disappointed.

“Why cannot he tell his tale in daylight?”

“Oh, my lady, there’s no tale to tell,” cried the maid. “We are not of the gossiping sort, my lady, neither me nor Mr. Brown.” Lady Mary laughed, and watched while the candles were put out, the fire made a pleasant flicker in the room—it was autumn and still warm, and it was “for company” and cheerfulness that the little fire was lit; she liked to see it dancing and flickering upon the walls,—and then closed her eyes amid an exquisite softness of comfort and luxury, life itself bearing her up as softly, filling up all the crevices as warmly, as the downy pillow upon which she rested her still beautiful old head.

If she had died that night! The little sheet of paper that meant so much lay openly, innocently, in her writing-book, along with the letters she had written, and looking of as little importance as they. There was nobody in the world who grudged old Lady Mary one of those pretty placid days of hers. Brown and Hopgood, if they were sometimes a little impatient, consoled each other that they were both sure of something in her will, and that in the mean time it was a very good place. And all the rest would have been very well content that Lady Mary should live for ever. But how wonderfully it would have simplified everything, and how much trouble and pain it would have saved to everybody, herself included, could she have died that night!

But naturally, there was no question of dying on that night. When she was about to go down-stairs, next day, Lady Mary, giving her letters to be posted, saw the paper she had forgotten lying beside them. She had forgotten all about it, but the sight of it made her smile. She folded it up and put it in an envelope while Hopgood went down-stairs with the letters; and then, to carry out her joke, she looked round her to see where she would put it. There was an old Italian cabinet in the room, with a secret drawer, which it was a little difficult to open, almost impossible for any one who did not know the secret. Lady Mary looked round her, smiled, hesitated a little, and then walked across the room and put the envelope in the secret drawer. She was still fumbling with it when Hopgood came back; but there was no connection in Hopgood’s mind, then or ever after, between the paper she had signed and this old cabinet, which was one of the old lady’s toys. She arranged Lady Mary’s shawl, which had dropped off her shoulders a little in her unusual activity, and took up her book and her favourite cushion, and all the little paraphernalia that moved with her, and gave her lady her arm to go down-stairs; where little Mary had placed her chair just at the right angle, and arranged the little table, on which there were so many little necessaries and conveniences, and was standing smiling, the prettiest object of all, the climax of the gentle luxury and pleasantness, to receive her godmother, who had been her providence all her life.

But what a pity! oh, what a pity, that she had not died that night!

II

Life went on after this without any change. There was never any change in that delightful house; and if it was years, or months, or even days, the youngest of its inhabitants could scarcely tell, and Lady Mary could not tell at all. This was one of her little imperfections—a little mist which hung, like the lace about her head, over her memory. She could not remember how time went, or that there was any difference between one day and another. There were Sundays, it was true, which made a kind of gentle measure of the progress of time; but she said, with a smile, that she thought it was always Sunday—they came so close upon each other. And time flew on gentle wings, that made no sound and left no reminders. She had her little ailments like anybody, but in reality less than anybody, seeing there was nothing to fret her, nothing to disturb the even tenor of her days. Still there were times when she took a little cold, or got a chill, in spite of all precautions, as she went from one room to another. She came to be one of the marvels of the time—an old lady who had seen everybody worth seeing for generations back; who remembered as distinctly as if they had happened yesterday, great events that had taken place before the present age began at all, before the great statesmen of our time were born; and in full possession of all her faculties, as everybody said, her mind as clear as ever, her intelligence as active, reading everything, interested in everything, and still beautiful, in extreme old age. Everybody about her, and in particular all the people who helped to keep the thorns from her path, and felt themselves to have a hand in her preservation, were proud of Lady Mary and she was perhaps a little, a very little, delightfully, charmingly, proud of herself. The doctor, beguiled by professional vanity, feeling what a feather she was in his cap, quite confident that she would reach her hundredth birthday, and with an ecstatic hope that even, by grace of his admirable treatment and her own beautiful constitution, she might (almost) solve the problem and live for ever, gave up troubling about the will which at a former period he had taken so much interest in. “What is the use?” he said; “she will see us all out.” And the vicar, though he did not give in to this, was overawed by the old lady, who knew everything that could be taught her, and to whom it seemed an impertinence to utter commonplaces about duty, or even to suggest subjects of thought. Mr. Furnival was the only man who did not cease his representations, and whose anxiety about the young Mary, who was so blooming and sweet in the shadow of the old, did not decrease. But the recollection of the bit of paper in the secret drawer of the cabinet, fortified his old client against all his attacks. She had intended it only as a jest, with which some day or other to confound him, and show how much wiser she was than he supposed. It became quite a pleasant subject of thought to her, at which she laughed to herself. Some day, when she had a suitable moment, she would order him to come with all his formalities, and then produce her bit of paper, and turn the laugh against him. But oddly, the very existence of that little document kept her indifferent even to the laugh. It was too much trouble; she only smiled at him, and took no more notice, amused to think how astonished he would be—when, if ever, he found it out.

It happened, however, that one day in the early winter the wind changed when Lady Mary was out for her drive; at least they all vowed the wind changed. It was in the south, that genial quarter, when she set out, but turned about in some uncomfortable way, and was a keen northeaster when she came back. And in the moment of stepping from the carriage, she caught a chill. It was the coachman’s fault, Hopgood said, who allowed the horses to make a step forward when Lady Mary was getting out, and kept her exposed, standing on the step of the carriage, while he pulled them up; and it was Hopgood’s fault, the footman said, who was not clever enough to get her lady out, or even to throw a shawl round her when she perceived how the weather had changed. It is always some one’s fault, or some unforeseen, unprecedented change, that does it at the last.

Lady Mary was not accustomed to be ill, and did not bear it with her usual grace. She was a little impatient at first, and thought they were making an unnecessary fuss. But then there passed a few uncomfortable feverish days, when she began to look forward to the doctor’s visit as the only thing there was any comfort in. Afterwards she passed a night of a very agitating kind. She dozed and dreamed, and awoke and dreamed again. Her life seemed all to run into dreams—a strange confusion was about her, through which she could define nothing. Once waking up, as she supposed, she saw a group round her bed, the doctor, with a candle in his hand, (how should the doctor be there in the middle of the night?) holding her hand or feeling her pulse; little Mary at one side, crying—why should the child cry?—and Hopgood, very, anxious, pouring something into a glass. There were other faces there which she was sure must have come out of a dream, so unlikely was it that they should be collected in her bedchamber; and all with a sort of halo of feverish light about them; a magnified and mysterious importance. This strange scene, which she did not understand, seemed to make itself visible all in a moment out of the darkness, and then disappeared again as suddenly as it came.

III

When she woke again, it was morning; and her first waking consciousness was, that she must be much better. The choking sensation in her throat was altogether gone. She had no desire to cough—no difficulty in breathing. She had a fancy, however, that she must be still dreaming, for she felt sure that some one had called her by her name, “Mary.” Now all who could call her by her Christian name were dead years ago—therefore it must be a dream. However, in a short time it was repeated,—“Mary, Mary! get up; there is a great deal to do.” This voice confused her greatly. Was it possible that all that was past had been mere fancy, that she had but dreamed those long, long years—maturity and motherhood, and trouble and triumph, and old age at the end of all? It seemed to her possible that she might have dreamed the rest, for she had been a girl much given to visions; but she said to herself that she never could have dreamed old age. And then with a smile she mused, and thought that it must be the voice that was a dream; for how could she get up without Hopgood, who had never appeared yet to draw the curtains or make the fire? Hopgood perhaps had sat up late. She remembered now to have seen her that time in the middle of the night by her bedside; so that it was natural enough, poor thing, that she should be late. Get up! who was it that was calling to her so? She had not been so called to, she who had always been a great lady, since she was a girl by her mother’s side. “Mary, Mary!” It was a very curious dream. And what was more curious still was, that by-and-by she could not keep still any longer, but got up without thinking any more of Hopgood, and going out of her room came all at once into the midst of a company of people, all very busy—whom she was much surprised to find, at first, but whom she soon accustomed herself to, finding the greatest interest in their proceedings, and curious to know what they were doing. They, for their part, did not seem at all surprised by her appearance, nor did any one stop to explain, as would have been natural; but she took this with great composure, somewhat astonished, perhaps, being used, wherever she went, to a great many observances and much respect, but soon, very soon, becoming used to it. Then some one repeated what she had heard before. “It is time you got up—for there is a great deal to do.”

“To do,” she said, “for me?” and then she looked round upon them with that charming smile which had subjugated so many. “I am afraid,” she said, “you will find me of very little use. I am too old now, if ever I could have done much, for work.”

“Oh no, you are not old,—you will do very well,” some one said.

“Not old!”—Lady Mary felt a little offended in spite of herself. “Perhaps I like flattery as well as my neighbours,” she said with dignity, “but then it must be reasonable. To say I am anything but a very old woman—”

Here she paused a little, perceiving for the first time, with surprise, that she was standing and walking without her stick or the help of any one’s arm, quite freely and at her ease, and that the place in which she was had expanded into a great place like a gallery in a palace, instead of the room next her own into which she had walked a few minutes ago; but this discovery did not at all affect her mind, or occupy her except with the most passing momentary surprise.

“The fact is, I feel a great deal better and stronger,” she said.

“Quite well, Mary, and stronger than ever you were before?”

“Who is it that calls me Mary? I have had nobody for a long time to call me Mary; the friends of my youth are all dead. I think that you must be right, although the doctor, I feel sure, thought me very bad last night. I should have got alarmed if I had not fallen asleep again.”

“And then woke up well?”

“Quite well: it is wonderful, but quite true. You seem to know a great deal about me.”

“I know everything about you. You have had a very pleasant life, and do you think you have made the best of it? Your old age has been very pleasant—”

“Ah! you acknowledge that I am old, then?” cried Lady Mary with a smile.

“You are old no longer, and you are a great lady no longer. Don’t you see that something has happened to you? It is seldom that such a great change happens without being found out.”

“Yes; it is true I have got better all at once. I feel an extraordinary renewal of strength. I seem to have left home without knowing it; none of my people seem near me. I feel very much as if I had just awakened from a long dream. Is it possible,” she said, with a wondering look, “that I have dreamed all my life, and after all am just a girl at home?” The idea was ludicrous, and she laughed. “You see I am very much improved indeed,” she said.

She was still so far from perceiving the real situation, that some one came towards her out of the group of people about—some one whom she recognized—with the evident intention of explaining to her how it was. She started a little at the sight of him, and held out her hand, and cried: “You here! I am very glad to see you—doubly glad, since I was told a few days ago that you had—died.”

There was something in this word as she herself pronounced it that troubled her a little. She had never been one of those who are afraid of death. On the contrary, she had always taken a great interest in it, and liked to hear everything that could be told her on the subject. It gave her now, however, a curious little thrill of sensation, which she did not understand: she hoped it was not superstition.

“You have guessed rightly,” he said, “quite right. That is one of the words with a false meaning, which is to us a mere symbol of something we cannot understand. But you see what it means now.”

It was a great shock, it need not be concealed. Otherwise, she had been quite pleasantly occupied with the interest of something new, into which she had walked so easily out of her own bedchamber, without any trouble, and with the delightful new sensation of health and strength. But when it flashed upon her that she was not to go back to her bedroom again, nor have any of those cares and attentions which had seemed necessary to existence, she was very much startled and shaken. Died? Was it possible that she personally had died? She had known it was a thing that happened to everybody; but yet—And it was a solemn matter, to be prepared for, and looked forward to, whereas—“If you mean that I too—” she said, faltering a little; and then she added, “it is very surprising,” with a trouble in her mind which yet was not all trouble. “If that is so, it is a thing well over. And it is very wonderful how much disturbance people give themselves about it—if this is all.”

“This is not all, however,” her friend said; “you have an ordeal before you which you will not find pleasant. You are going to think about your life, and all that was imperfect in it, and which might have been done better.”

“We are none of us perfect,” said Lady Mary, with a little of that natural resentment with which one hears one’s self accused—however ready one may be to accuse one’s self.

“Permit me,” said he, and took her hand and led her away without further explanation. The people about were so busy with their own occupations that they took very little notice; neither did she pay much attention to the manner in which they were engaged. Their looks were friendly when they met her eye, and she too felt friendly, with a sense of brotherhood. But she had always been a kind woman. She wanted to step aside and help, on more than one occasion, when it seemed to her that some people in her way had a task above their powers; but this her conductor would not permit. And she endeavoured to put some questions to him as they went along, with still less success.

“The change is very confusing,” she said; “one has no standard to judge by. I should like to know something about—the kind of people—and the—manner of life.”

“For a time,” he said, “you will have enough to do, without troubling yourself about that.”

This naturally produced an uneasy sensation in her mind. “I suppose,” she said, rather timidly, “that we are not in—what we have been accustomed to call heaven?”

“That is a word,” he said, “which expresses rather a condition than a place.”

“But there must be a place—in which that condition can exist.” She had always been fond of discussions of this kind, and felt encouraged to find that they were still practicable. “It cannot be the—Inferno; that is clear, at least,” she added, with the sprightliness which was one of her characteristics; “perhaps—Purgatory? since you infer I have something to endure.”

“Words are interchangeable,” he said: “that means one thing to one of us which to another has a totally different signification.” There was something so like his old self in this, that she laughed with an irresistible sense of amusement.

“You were always fond of the oracular,” she said. She was conscious that on former occasions, if he made such a speech to her, though she would have felt the same amusement, she would not have expressed it so frankly. But he did not take it at all amiss. And her thoughts went on in other directions. She felt herself saying over to herself the words of the old north-country dirge, which came to her recollection, she knew not how—

If hosen and shoon thou gavest nane,
The whins shall prick thee intil the bane.

When she saw that her companion heard her, she asked, “Is that true?”

He shook his head a little. “It is too matter of fact,” he said, “as I need hardly tell you. Hosen and shoon are good, but they do not always sufficiently indicate the state of the heart.”

Lady Mary had a consciousness, which was pleasant to her, that so far as the hosen and shoon went, she had abundant means of preparing herself for the pricks of any road, however rough; but she had no time to indulge this pleasing reflection, for she was shortly introduced into a great building, full of innumerable rooms, in one of which her companion left her.

IV

The door opened, and she felt herself free to come out. How long she had been there, or what passed there, is not for any one to say. She came out tingling and smarting—if such words can be used—with an intolerable recollection of the last act of her life. So intolerable was it that all that had gone before, and all the risings up of old errors and visions long dead, were forgotten in the sharp and keen prick of this, which was not over and done like the rest. No one had accused her, or brought before her judge the things that were against her. She it was who had done it all—she, whose memory did not spare her one fault, who remembered everything. But when she came to that last frivolity of her old age, and saw for the first time how she had played with the future of the child whom she had brought up, and abandoned to the hardest fate—for nothing, for folly, for a jest—the horror and bitterness of the thought filled her mind to overflowing. In the first anguish of that recollection she had to go forth, receiving no word of comfort in respect to it, meeting only with a look of sadness and compassion, which went to her very heart. She came forth as if she had been driven away, but not by any outward influence, by the force of her own miserable sensations. “I will write,” she said to herself, “and tell them; I will go—” And then she stopped short, remembering that she could neither go nor write—that all communication with the world she had left was closed. Was it all closed? Was there no way in which a message could reach those who remained behind? She caught the first passer-by whom she passed, and addressed him piteously. “Oh, tell me—you have been longer here than I—cannot one send a letter, a message, if it were only a single word?”

“Where?” he said, stopping and listening; so that it began to seem possible to her that some such expedient might still be within her reach.

“It is to England,” she said, thinking he meant to ask as to which quarter of the world.

“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “I fear that it is impossible.”

“But it is to set something right, which out of mere inadvertence, with no ill meaning,”—No, no (she repeated to herself), no ill-meaning—none! “Oh sir, for charity! tell me how I can find a way. There must—there must be some way.”

He was greatly moved by the sight of her distress. “I am but a stranger here,” he said; “I may be wrong. There are others who can tell you better; but”—and he shook his head sadly—“most of us would be so thankful, if we could, to send a word, if it were only a single word, to those we have left behind, that I fear, I fear—”

“Ah!” cried Lady Mary, “but that would be only for the tenderness; whereas this is for justice and for pity, and to do away with a great wrong which I did before I came here.”

“I am very sorry for you,” he said; but shook his head once more as he went away. She was more careful next time, and chose one who had the look of much experience and knowledge of the place. He listened to her very gravely, and answered yes, that he was one of the officers, and could tell her whatever she wanted to know; but when she told him what she wanted, he too shook his head. “I do not say it cannot be done,” he said. “There are some cases in which it has been successful, but very few. It has often been attempted. There is no law against it. Those who do it do it at their own risk. They suffer much, and almost always they fail.”

“No, oh no! You said there were some who succeeded. No one can be more anxious than I. I will give—anything—everything I have in the world!”

He gave her a smile, which was very grave nevertheless, and full of pity. “You forget,” he said, “that you have nothing to give; and if you had, that there is no one here to whom it would be of any value.”

Though she was no longer old and weak, yet she was still a woman, and she began to weep, in the terrible failure and contrariety of all things; but yet she would not yield. She cried: “There must be some one here who would do it for love. I have had people who loved me in my time. I must have some here who have not forgotten me. Ah! I know what you would say. I lived so long I forgot them all, and why should they remember me?”

Here she was touched on the arm, and looking round, saw close to her the face of one whom, it was very true, she had forgotten. She remembered him but dimly after she had looked long at him. A little group had gathered about her, with grieved looks, to see her distress. He who had touched her was the spokesman of them all.

“There is nothing I would not do,” he said, “for you and for love.” And then they all sighed, surrounding her, and added, “But it is impossible—impossible!”

She stood and gazed at them, recognizing by degrees faces that she knew, and seeing in all that look of grief and sympathy which makes all human souls brothers. Impossible was not a word that had been often said to be in her life; and to come out of a world in which everything could be changed, everything communicated in the twinkling of an eye, and find a dead blank before her and around her, through which not a word could go, was more terrible than can be said in words. She looked piteously upon them, with that anguish of helplessness which goes to every heart, and cried, “What is impossible? To send a word—only a word—to set right what is wrong? Oh, I understand,” she said, lifting up her hands. “I understand that to send messages of comfort must not be; that the people who love you must bear it, as we all have done in our time, and trust to God for consolation. But I have done a wrong! Oh, listen, listen to me, my friends. I have left a child, a young creature, unprovided for—without any one to help her. And must that be? Must she bear it, and I bear it, for ever, and no means, no way of setting it right? Listen to me! I was there last night,—in the middle of the night I was still there,—and here this morning. So it must be easy to come—only a short way; and two words would be enough—only two words!”

They gathered closer and closer round her, full of compassion. “It is easy to come,” they said, “but not to go.”

And one added, “It will not be for ever; comfort yourself. When she comes here, or to a better place, that will seem to you only as a day.”

“But to her,” cried Lady Mary,—“to her it will be long years—it will be trouble and sorrow; and she will think I took no thought for her; and she will be right,” the penitent said with a great and bitter cry.

It was so terrible that they were all silent, and said not a word; except the man who had loved her, who put his hand upon her arm, and said, “We are here for that; this is the fire that purges us,—to see at last what we have done, and the true aspect of it, and to know the cruel wrong, yet never be able to make amends.”

She remembered then that this was a man who had neglected all lawful affections, and broken the hearts of those who trusted him for her sake; and for a moment she forgot her own burden in sorrow for his.

It was now that he who had called himself one of the officers came forward again; for the little crowd had gathered round her so closely that he had been shut out. He said, “No one can carry your message for you; that is not permitted. But there is still a possibility. You may have permission to go yourself. Such things have been done, though they have not often been successful. But if you will—”

She shivered when she heard him; and it became apparent to her why no one could be found to go—for all her nature revolted from that step, which it was evident must be the most terrible which could be thought of. She looked at him with troubled, beseeching eyes, and the rest all looked at her, pitying and trying to soothe her.

“Permission will not be refused,” he said, “for a worthy cause.”

Upon which the others all spoke together, entreating her. “Already,” they cried, “they have forgotten you living. You are to them one who is dead. They will be afraid of you if they can see you. Oh, go not back! Be content to wait—to wait; it is only a little while. The life of man is nothing; it appears for a little time, and then it vanishes away. And when she comes here she will know—or in a better place.” They sighed as they named the better place; though some smiled too, feeling perhaps more near to it.

Lady Mary listened to them all, but she kept her eyes upon the face of him who offered her this possibility. There passed through her mind a hundred stories she had heard of those who had gone back. But not one that spoke of them as welcome, as received with joy, as comforting those they loved. Ah no! was it not rather a curse upon the house to which they came? The rooms were shut up, the houses abandoned, where they were supposed to appear. Those whom they had loved best feared and fled them. They were a vulgar wonder—a thing that the poorest laughed at, yet feared. Poor, banished souls! it was because no one would listen to them that they had to linger and wait, and come and go. She shivered, and in spite of her longing and her repentance, a cold dread and horror took possession of her. She looked round upon her companions for comfort, and found none.

“Do not go,” they said; “do not go. We have endured like you. We wait till all things are made clear.”

And another said, “All will be made clear. It is but for a time.”

She turned from one to another, and back again to the first speaker—he who had authority.

He said, “It is very rarely successful; it retards the course of your penitence. It is an indulgence, and it may bring harm and not good; but if the meaning is generous and just, permission will be given, and you may go.”

Then all the strength of her nature rose in her. She thought of the child forsaken, and of the dark world round her, where she would find so few friends; and of the home shut up in which she had lived her young and pleasant life; and of the thoughts that must rise in her heart, as though she were forsaken and abandoned of God and man. Then Lady Mary turned to the man who had authority. She said, “If he whom I saw to-day will give me his blessing, I will go—” and they all pressed round her, weeping and kissing her hands.

“He will not refuse his blessing,” they said; “but the way is terrible, and you are still weak. How can you encounter all the misery of it? He commands no one to try that dark and dreadful way.”

“I will try,” Lady Mary said.

V

The night which Lady Mary had been conscious of, in a momentary glimpse full of the exaggeration of fever, had not indeed been so expeditious as she believed. The doctor, it is true, had been pronouncing her death-warrant when she saw him holding her wrist, and wondered what he did there in the middle of the night; but she had been very ill before this, and the conclusion of her life had been watched with many tears. Then there had risen up a wonderful commotion in the house, of which little Mary, her godchild, was very little sensible. Had she left any will, any instructions, the slightest indication of what she wished to be done after her death? Mr. Furnival, who had been very anxious to be allowed to see her, even in the last days of her illness, said emphatically, no. She had never executed any will, never made any disposition of her affairs, he said, almost with bitterness, in the tone of one who is ready to weep with vexation and distress. The vicar took a more hopeful view. He said it was impossible that so considerate a person could have done this, and that there must, he was sure, be found somewhere, if close examination was made, a memorandum, a letter—something which should show what she wished; for she must have known very well, notwithstanding all flatteries and compliments upon her good looks, that from day to day her existence was never to be calculated upon.

The doctor did not share this last opinion. He said that there was no fathoming the extraordinary views that people took of their own case; and that it was quite possible, though it seemed incredible, that Lady Mary might really be as little expectant of death, on the way to ninety, as a girl of seventeen; but still he was of opinion that she might have left a memorandum somewhere.

These three gentlemen were in the foreground of affairs; because she had no relations to step in and take the management. The earl, her grandson, was abroad, and there were only his solicitors to interfere on his behalf, men to whom Lady Mary’s fortune was quite unimportant, although it was against their principles to let anything slip out of their hands that could aggrandize their client; but who knew nothing about the circumstances—about little Mary, about the old lady’s peculiarities, in any way. Therefore the persons who had surrounded her in her life, and Mr. Furnival, her man of business, were the persons who really had the management of everything. Their wives interfered a little too, or rather the one wife who only could do so—the wife of the vicar, who came in beneficently at once, and took poor little Mary, in her first desolation, out of the melancholy house. Mrs. Vicar did this without any hesitation, knowing very well that, in all probability, Lady Mary had made no will, and consequently that the poor girl was destitute. A great deal is said about the hardness of the world, and the small consideration that is shown for a destitute dependent in such circumstances. But this is not true; and, as a matter of fact, there is never, or very rarely, such profound need in the world, without a great deal of kindness and much pity. The three gentlemen all along had been entirely in Mary’s interest. They had not expected legacies from the old lady, or any advantage to themselves. It was of the girl that they had thought. And when now they examined everything and inquired into all her ways and what she had done, it was of Mary they were thinking. But Mr. Furnival was very certain of his point. He knew that Lady Mary had made no will; time after time he had pressed it upon her. He was very sure, even while he examined her writing-table, and turned out all the drawers, that nothing would be found. The little Italian cabinet had chiffons in its drawers, fragments of old lace, pieces of ribbon, little nothings of all sorts. Nobody thought of the secret drawer; and if they had thought of it, where could a place have been found less likely? If she had ever made a will, she could have had no reason for concealing it. To be sure, they did not reason in this way, being simply unaware of any place of concealment at all. And Mary knew nothing about this search they were making. She did not know how she was herself “left.” When the first misery of grief was exhausted, she began, indeed, to have troubled thoughts in her own mind,—to expect that the vicar would speak to her, or Mr. Furnival send for her, and tell her what she was to do. But nothing was said to her. The vicar’s wife had asked her to come for a long visit; and the anxious people, who were for ever talking over this subject and consulting what was best for her, had come to no decision as yet, as to what must be said to the person chiefly concerned. It was too heart-rending to have to put the real state of affairs before her.

The doctor had no wife; but he had an anxious mother, who, though she would not for the world have been unkind to the poor girl, yet was very anxious that she should be disposed of and out of her son’s way. It is true that the doctor was forty and Mary only eighteen—but what then? Matches of that kind were seen every day; and his heart was so soft to the child that his mother never knew from one day to another what might happen. She had naturally no doubt at all that Mary would seize the first hand held out to her; and as time went on, held many an anxious consultation with the vicar’s wife on the subject. “You cannot have her with you for ever,” she said. “She must know one time or another how she is left, and that she must learn to do something for herself.”

“Oh,” said the vicar’s wife, “how is she to be told? It is heart-rending to look at her and to think—nothing but luxury all her life, and now, in a moment, destitution. I am very glad to have her with me: she is a dear little thing, and so nice with the children. And if some good man would only step in—”

The doctor’s mother trembled; for that a good man should step in was exactly what she feared. “That is a thing that can never be depended upon,” she said; “and marriages made out of compassion are just as bad as mercenary marriages. Oh no, my dear Mrs. Bowyer, Mary has a great deal of character. You should put more confidence in her than that. No doubt she will be much cast down at first, but when she knows, she will rise to the occasion and show what is in her.”

“Poor little thing! what is in a girl of eighteen, and one that has lain on the roses and fed on the lilies all her life? Oh, I could find it in my heart to say a great deal about old Lady Mary that would not be pleasant! Why did she bring her up so if she did not mean to provide for her? I think she must have been at heart a wicked old woman.”

“Oh no! we must not say that. I dare say, as my son says, she always meant to do it sometime-”

“Sometime! how long did she expect to live, I wonder?”

“Well,” said the doctor’s mother, “it is wonderful how little old one feels sometimes within one’s self, even when one is well up in years.” She was of the faction of the old, instead of being like Mrs. Bowyer, who was not much over thirty, of the faction of the young. She could make excuses for Lady Mary; but she thought that it was unkind to bring the poor little girl here in ignorance of her real position, and in the way of men who, though old enough to know better, were still capable of folly—as what man is not, when a girl of eighteen is concerned? “I hope,” she added, “that the earl will do something for her. Certainly he ought to, when he knows all that his grandmother did, and what her intentions must have been. He ought to make her a little allowance—that is the least he can do. Not, to be sure, such a provision as we all hoped Lady Mary was going to make for her, but enough to live upon. Mr. Furnival, I believe, has written to him to that effect.”

“Hush!” cried the vicar’s wife; indeed she had been making signs to the other lady, who stood with her back to the door, for some moments. Mary had come in while this conversation was going on. She had not paid any attention to it; and yet her ear had been caught by the names of Lady Mary, and the earl, and Mr. Furnival. For whom was it that the earl should make an allowance enough to live upon? whom Lady Mary had not provided for, and whom Mr. Furnival had written about? When she sat down to the needle-work in which she was helping Mrs. Vicar, it was not to be supposed that she should not ponder these words—for some time very vaguely, not perceiving the meaning of them; and then with a start she woke up to perceive that there must be something meant, some one—even some one she knew. And then the needle dropped out of the girl’s hand, and the pinafore she was making fell on the floor. Some one! it must be herself they meant! Who but she could be the subject of that earnest conversation? She began to remember a great many conversations as earnest, which had been stopped when she came into the room, and the looks of pity which had been bent upon her. She had thought in her innocence that this was because she had lost her godmother, her protectress—and had been very grateful for the kindness of her friends. But now another meaning came into everything. Mrs. Bowyer had accompanied her visitor to the door, still talking, and when she returned her face was very grave. But she smiled when she met Mary’s look, and said cheerfully,

“How kind of you, my dear, to make all those pinafores for me! The little ones will not know themselves. They never were so fine before.”

“Oh, Mrs. Bowyer,” cried the girl, “I have guessed something! and I want you to tell me! Are you keeping me for charity, and is it I that am left—without any provision, and that Mr. Furnival has written—”

She could not finish her sentence, for it was very bitter to her, as may be supposed.

“I don’t know what you mean, my dear,” cried the vicar’s wife. “Charity—well, I suppose that is the same as love—at least it is so in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. You are staying with us, I hope, for love, if that is what you mean.”

Upon which she took the girl in her arms and kissed her, and cried, as women must. “My dearest,” she said, “as you have guessed the worst, it is better to tell you. Lady Mary—I don’t know why; oh, I don’t wish to blame her—has left no will; and, my dear, my dear, you who have been brought up in luxury, you have not a penny.” Here the vicar’s wife gave Mary a closer hug, and kissed her once more. “We love you all the better—if that was possible,” she said.

How many thoughts will fly through a girl’s mind while her head rests on some kind shoulder, and she is being consoled for the first calamity that has touched her life! She was neither ungrateful nor unresponsive; but as Mrs. Bowyer pressed her close to her kind breast and cried over her, Mary did not cry, but thought, seeing in a moment a succession of scenes, and realizing in a moment so complete a new world, that all her pain was quelled by the hurry and rush in her brain as her forces rallied to sustain her. She withdrew from her kind support after a moment, with eyes tearless and shining, the colour mounting to her face, and not a sign of discouragement in her, nor yet of sentiment, though she grasped her kind friend’s hands with a pressure which her innocent small fingers seemed incapable of giving. “One has read of such things—in books,” she said, with a faint courageous smile; “and I suppose they happen—in life.”

“Oh, my dear, too often in life. Though how people can be so cruel, so indifferent, so careless of the happiness of those they love—”

Here Mary pressed her friend’s hands till they hurt, and cried, “Not cruel, not indifferent. I cannot hear a word—”

“Well, dear, it is like you to feel so—I knew you would; and I will not say a word. Oh, Mary, if she ever thinks of such things now—”

“I hope she will not—I hope she cannot!” cried the girl, with once more a vehement pressure of her friend’s hands.

“What is that?” Mrs. Bowyer said, looking round. “It is somebody in the next room, I suppose. No, dear, I hope so too, for she would not be happy if she remembered. Mary, dry your eyes, my dear. Try not to think of this. I am sure there is some one in the next room. And you must try not to look wretched, for all our sakes—”

“Wretched!” cried Mary, springing up. “I am not wretched.” And she turned with a countenance glowing and full of courage to the door. But there was no one there—no visitor lingering in the smaller room, as sometimes happened.

“I thought I heard some one come in,” said the vicar’s wife. “Didn’t you hear something, Mary? I suppose it is because I am so agitated with all this, but I could have sworn I heard some one come in.”

“There is nobody,” said Mary, who, in the shock of the calamity which had so suddenly changed the world to her, was perfectly calm. She did not feel at all disposed to cry or “give way.” It went to her head with a thrill of pain, which was excitement as well, like a strong stimulant suddenly applied; and she added, “I should like to go out a little, if you don’t mind, just to get used to the idea.”

“My dear, I will get my hat in a moment—”

“No, please. It is not unkindness; but I must think it over by myself—by myself,” Mary cried. She hurried away, while Mrs. Bowyer took another survey of the outer room, and called the servant to know who had been calling. Nobody had been calling, the maid said; but her mistress still shook her head.

“It must have been some one who does not ring, who just opens the door,” she said to herself. “That is the worst of the country. It might be Mrs. Blunt, or Sophia Blackburn, or the curate, or half-a-dozen people—and they have just gone away when they heard me crying. How could I help crying? But I wonder how much they heard, whoever it was.”

VI

It was winter, and snow was on the ground.

Lady Mary found herself on the road that led through her own village, going home. It was like a picture of a wintry night, like one of those pictures that please the children at Christmas. A little snow sprinkled on the roofs, just enough to define them, and on the edges of the roads; every cottage window showing a ruddy glimmer in the twilight; the men coming home from their work; the children, tied up in comforters and caps, stealing in from the slides, and from the pond, where they were forbidden to go; and, in the distance, the trees of the great House standing up dark, turning the twilight into night. She had a curious enjoyment in it, simple like that of a child, and a wish to talk to some one out of the fullness of her heart. She overtook, her step being far lighter than his, one of the men going home from his work, and spoke to him, telling him with a smile not to be afraid; but he never so much as raised his head, and went plodding on with his heavy step, not knowing that she had spoken to him. She was startled by this; but said to herself, that the men were dull, that their perceptions were confused, and that it was getting dark; and went on, passing him quickly. His breath made a cloud in the air as he walked, and his heavy plodding steps sounded into the frosty night. She perceived that her own were invisible and inaudible, with a curious momentary sensation, half of pleasure, half of pain. She felt no cold, and she saw through the twilight as clearly as if it had been day. There was no fatigue or sense of weakness in her; but she had the strange, wistful feeling of an exile returning after long years, not knowing how he may find those he had left.

At one of the first houses in the village there was a woman standing at her door, looking out for her children—one who knew Lady Mary well. She stopped quite cheerfully to bid her good evening, as she had done in her vigorous days, before she grew old. It was a little experiment, too. She thought it possible that Catherine would scream out, and perhaps fly from her; but surely would be easily reassured when she heard the voice she knew, and saw by her one who was no ghost, but her own kind mistress. But Catherine took no notice when she spoke; she did not so much as turn her head. Lady Mary stood by her patiently, with more and more of that wistful desire to be recognized. She put her hand timidly upon the woman’s arm, who was thinking of nothing but her boys, and calling to them, straining her eyes in the fading light. “Don’t be afraid, they are coming, they are safe,” she said, pressing Catherine’s arm. But the woman never moved. She took no notice. She called to a neighbour who was passing, to ask if she had seen the children, and the two stood and talked in the dim air, not conscious of the third who stood between them, looking from one to another, astonished, paralysed. Lady Mary had not been prepared for this; she could not believe it even now. She repeated their names more and more anxiously, and even plucked at their sleeves to call their attention. She stood as a poor dependent sometimes stands, wistful, civil, trying to say something that will please, while they talked and took no notice; and then the neighbour passed on, and Catherine went into her house. It is hard to be left out in the cold when others go into their cheerful houses; but to be thus left outside of life, to speak and not be heard, to stand unseen, astounded, unable to secure any attention! She had thought they would be frightened, but it was not they who were frightened. A great panic seized the woman who was no more of this world. She had almost rejoiced to find herself back walking so lightly, so strongly, finding everything easy that had been so hard; and yet but a few minutes had passed, and she knew never more to be deceived, that she was no longer of this world. What if she should be condemned to wander for ever among familiar places that knew her no more, appealing for a look, a word, to those who could no longer see her, or hear her cry, or know of her presence? Terror seized upon her, a chill and pang of fear beyond description. She felt an impulse to fly wildly into the dark, into the night, like a lost creature; to find again somehow, she could not tell how, the door out of which she had come, and beat upon it wildly with her hands, and implore to be taken home. For a moment she stood looking round her, lost and alone in the wide universe; no one to speak to her, no one to comfort her—outside of life altogether. Other rustic figures, slow-stepping, leisurely, at their ease, went and came, one at a time; but in this place, where every stranger was an object of curiosity, no one cast a glance at her. She was as if she had never been.

Presently she found herself entering her own house. It was all shut and silent—not a window lighted along the whole front of the house which used to twinkle and glitter with lights. It soothed her somewhat to see this, as if in evidence that the place had changed with her. She went in silently, and the darkness was as day to her. Her own rooms were all shut up, yet were open to her steps, which no external obstacle could limit. There was still the sound of life below stairs, and in the housekeeper’s room a cheerful party gathered round the fire. It was then that she turned first, with some wistful human attraction, towards the warmth and light rather than to the still places in which her own life had been passed. Mrs. Prentiss, the housekeeper, had her daughter with her on a visit, and the daughter’s baby lay asleep in a cradle placed upon two chairs, outside the little circle of women round the table—one of whom was Hopgood, Lady Mary’s maid. Hopgood sat and worked and cried, and mixed her words with little sobs. “I never thought as I should have had to take another place,” she said. “Brown and me, we made sure of a little something to start upon. He’s been here for twenty years, and so have you, Mrs. Prentiss; and me, as nobody can say I wasn’t faithful night and day.”

“I never had that confidence in my lady to expect anything,” Prentiss said.

“Oh, mother, don’t say that: many and many a day you’ve said, ‘When my lady dies—’”

“And we’ve all said it,” said Hopgood. “I can’t think how she did it, nor why she did it; for she was a kind lady, though appearances is against her.”

“She was one of them, and I’ve known a many, as could not abide to see a gloomy face,” said the housekeeper. “She kept us all comfortable for the sake of being comfortable herself, but no more.”

“Oh, you are hard upon my lady!” cried Hopgood, “and I can’t bear to hear a word against her, though it’s been an awful disappointment to me.”

“What’s you or me, or any one,” cried Mrs. Prentiss, “in comparison of that poor little thing that can’t work for her living like we can; that is left on the charity of folks she don’t belong to? I’d have forgiven my lady anything, if she’d done what was right by Miss Mary. You’ll get a place, and a good place; and me, they’ll leave me here when the new folks come as have taken the house. But what will become of her, the darling? and not a penny, nor a friend, nor one to look to her? Oh, you selfish old woman! oh, you heart of stone! I just hope you are feeling it where you’re gone,” the housekeeper cried.

But as she said this, the woman did not know who was looking at her with wide, wistful eyes, holding out her hands in appeal, receiving every word as if it had been a blow. Though she knew it was useless. Lady Mary could not help it. She cried out to them, “Have pity upon me! Have pity upon me! I am not cruel, as you think,” with a keen anguish in her voice, which seemed to be sharp enough to pierce the very air and go up to the skies. And so, perhaps, it did; but never touched the human atmosphere in which she stood a stranger. Hopgood was threading her needle when her mistress uttered that cry; but her hand did not tremble, nor did the thread deflect a hair’s-breadth from the straight line. The young mother alone seemed to be moved by some faint disturbance. “Hush!” she said, “is he waking?”—looking towards the cradle. But as the baby made no further sound, she too, returned to her sewing; and they sat bending their heads over their work round the table, and continued their talk. The room was very comfortable, bright, and warm, as Lady Mary had liked all her rooms to be. The warm firelight danced upon the walls; the women talked in cheerful tones. She stood outside their circle, and looked at them with a wistful face. Their notice would have been more sweet to her, as she stood in that great humiliation, than in other times the look of a queen.

“But what is the matter with baby?” the mother said, rising hastily.

It was with no servile intention of securing a look from that little prince of life that she who was not of this world had stepped aside forlorn, and looked at him in his cradle. Though she was not of this world, she was still a woman, and had nursed her children in her arms. She bent over the infant by the soft impulse of nature, tenderly, with no interested thought. But the child saw her; was it possible? He turned his head towards her, and flickered his baby hands, and cooed with that indescribable voice that goes to every woman’s heart. Lady Mary felt such a thrill of pleasure go through her, as no incident had given her for long years. She put out her arms to him as his mother snatched him from his little bed; and he, which was more wonderful, stretched towards her in his innocence, turning away from them all.

“He wants to go to some one,” cried the mother. “Oh look, look, for God’s sake! Who is there that the child sees?”

“There’s no one there—not a soul. Now dearie, dearie, be reasonable. You can see for yourself there’s not a creature,” said the grandmother.

“Oh, my baby, my baby! He sees something we can’t see,” the young woman cried. “Something has happened to his father, or he’s going to be taken from me!” she said, holding the child to her in a sudden passion. The other women rushed to her to console her—the mother with reason, and Hopgood with poetry. “It’s the angels whispering, like the song says.” Oh, the pang that was in the heart of the other whom they could not hear! She stood wondering how it could be—wondering with an amazement beyond words, how all that was in her heart, the love and the pain, and the sweetness and bitterness, could all be hidden—all hidden by that air in which the women stood so clear! She held out her hands, she spoke to them, telling who she was, but no one paid any attention; only the little dog Fido, who had been basking by the fire, sprang up, looked at her, and retreating slowly backwards till he reached the wall, sat down there and looked at her again, with now and then a little bark of inquiry. The dog saw her. This gave her a curious pang of humiliation, yet pleasure. She went away out of that little centre of human life in a great excitement and thrill of her whole being. The child had seen her, and the dog; but, oh heavens! how was she to work out her purpose by such auxiliaries as these?

She went up to her old bedchamber with unshed tears heavy about her eyes, and a pathetic smile quivering on her mouth. It touched her beyond measure that the child should have that confidence in her. “Then God is still with me,” she said to herself. Her room, which had been so warm and bright, lay desolate in the stillness of the night; but she wanted no light, for the darkness was no darkness to her. She looked round her for a little, wondering to think how far away from her now was this scene of her old life, but feeling no pain in the sight of it—only a kind indulgence for the foolish simplicity which had taken so much pride in all these infantile elements of living. She went to the little Italian cabinet which stood against the wall, feeling now at least that she could do as she would,—that here there was no blank of human unconsciousness to stand in her way. But she was met by something that baffled and vexed her once more. She felt the polished surface of the wood under her hand, and saw all the pretty ornamentation, the inlaid-work, the delicate carvings, which she knew so well; they swam in her eyes a little, as if they were part of some phantasmagoria about her, existing only in her vision. Yet the smooth surface resisted her touch; and when she withdrew a step from it, it stood before her solidly and square, as it had stood always—a glory to the place. She put forth her hands upon it, and could have traced the waving lines of the exquisite work, in which some artist soul had worked itself out in the old times; but though she thus saw it and felt, she could not with all her endeavours find the handle of the drawer, the richly-wrought knob of ivory, the little door that opened into the secret place. How long she stood by it, attempting again and again to find what was as familiar to her as her own hand, what was before her, visible in every line, what she felt with fingers which began to tremble, she could not tell. Time did not count with her as with common men. She did not grow weary, or require refreshment or rest, like those who were still of this world. Put at length her head grew giddy and her heart failed. A cold despair took possession of her soul.

She could do nothing, then—nothing; neither by help of man, neither by use of her own faculties, which were greater and clearer than ever before. She sank down upon the floor at the foot of that old toy, which had pleased her in the softness of her old age, to which she had trusted the fortunes of another; by which, in wantonness and folly she had sinned, she had sinned! And she thought she saw standing round her companions in the land she had left, saying, “It is impossible, impossible!” with infinite pity in their eyes; and the face of him who had given her permission to come, yet who had said no word to her to encourage her in what was against nature. And there came into her heart a longing to fly, to get home, to be back in the land where her fellows were, and her appointed place. A child lost, how pitiful that is! without power to reason and divine how help will come; but a soul lost, outside of one method of existence, withdrawn from the other, knowing no way to retrace its steps, nor how help can come! There had been no bitterness in passing from earth to the land where she had gone; but now there came upon her soul, in all the power of her new faculties, the bitterness of death. The place which was hers she had forsaken and left, and the place that had been hers knew her no more.

VII

Mary, when she left her kind friend in the vicarage, went out and took a long walk. She had received a shock so great that it took all sensation from her, and threw her into the seething and surging of an excitement altogether beyond her control. She could not think until she had got familiar with the idea, which indeed had been vaguely shaping itself in her mind ever since she had emerged from the first profound gloom and prostration of the shadow of death. She had never definitely thought of her position before—never even asked herself what was to become of her when Lady Mary died. She did not see, any more than Lady Mary did, why she should ever die; and girls, who have never wanted anything in their lives, who have had no sharp experience to enlighten them, are slow to think upon such subjects. She had not expected anything; her mind had not formed any idea of inheritance; and it had not surprised her to hear of the earl, who was Lady Mary’s natural heir, nor to feel herself separated from the house in which all her previous life had been passed. But there had been gradually dawning upon her a sense that she had come to a crisis in her life, and that she must soon be told what was to become of her. It was not so urgent as that she should ask any questions; but it began to appear very clearly in her mind that things were not to be with her as they had been. She had heard the complaints and astonishment of the servants, to whom Lady Mary had left nothing, with resentment. Hopgood, who could not marry and take her lodging-house, but must wait until she had saved more money, and wept to think, after all her devotion, of having to take another place; and Mrs. Prentiss, the housekeeper, who was cynical, and expounded Lady Mary’s kindness to her servants to be the issue of a refined selfishness; and Brown, who had sworn subdued oaths, and had taken the liberty of representing himself to Mary as “in the same box” with herself. Mary had been angry, very angry at all this; and she had not by word or look given any one to understand that she felt herself “in the same box.” But yet she had been vaguely anxious, curious, desiring to know. And she had not even begun to think what she should do. That seemed a sort of affront to her godmother’s memory, at all events, until some one had made it clear to her. But now, in a moment, with her first consciousness of the importance of this matter in the sight of others, a consciousness of what it was to herself, came into her mind. A change of everything—a new life—a new world; and not only so, but a severance from the old world—a giving up of everything that had been most near and pleasant to her.

These thoughts were driven through her mind like the snowflakes in a storm. The year had slid on since Lady Mary’s death. Winter was beginning to yield to spring; the snow was over, and the great cold. And other changes had taken place. The great house had been let, and the family who had taken it had been about a week in possession. Their coming had inflicted a wound upon Mary’s heart; but everybody had urged upon her the idea that it was much better the house should be let for a time, “till everything was settled.” When all was settled, things would be different. Mrs. Vicar did not say, “You can then do what you please,” but she did convey to Mary’s mind somehow a sort of inference that she would have something to do it with. And when Mary had protested. “It shall never be let again with my will,” the kind woman had said tremulously, “Well, my dear!” and had changed the subject. All these things now came to Mary’s mind. They had been afraid to tell her; they had thought it would be so much to her—so important, such a crushing blow. To have nothing—to be destitute; to be written about by Mr. Furnival to the earl; to have her case represented—Mary felt herself stung by such unendurable suggestions into an energy—a determination—of which her soft young life had known nothing. No one should write about her, or ask charity for her, she said to herself. She had gone through the woods and round the park, which was not large, and now she could not leave these beloved precincts without going to look at the house. Up to this time she had not had the courage to go near the house; but to the commotion and fever of her mind every violent sensation was congenial, and she went up the avenue now almost gladly, with a little demonstration to herself of energy and courage. Why not that as well as all the rest?

It was once more twilight, and the dimness favoured her design. She wanted to go there unseen, to look up at the windows with their alien lights, and to think of the time when Lady Mary sat behind the curtains, and there was nothing but tenderness and peace throughout the house. There was a light in every window along the entire front, a lavishness of firelight and lamplight which told of a household in which there were many inhabitants. Mary’s mind was so deeply absorbed, and perhaps her eyes so dim with tears that she could scarcely see what was before her, when the door opened suddenly and a lady came out. “I will go myself,” she said in an agitated tone to some one behind her. “Don’t get yourself laughed at,” said a voice from within. The sound of the voices roused the young spectator. She looked with a little curiosity, mixed with anxiety, at the lady who had come out of the house, and who started, too, with a gesture of alarm, when she saw Mary move in the dark. “Who are you?” she cried out in a trembling voice, “and what do you want here?”

Then Mary made a step or two forward and said, “I must ask your pardon if I am trespassing. I did not know there was any objection—” This stranger to object to her as an intruder! It brought something like a tremulous laugh to Mary’s lips.

“Oh, there is no objection,” said the lady, “only we have been a little put out. I see now; you are the young lady who—you are the young lady that—you are the one that—suffered most.”

“I am Lady Mary’s god-daughter,” said the girl. “I have lived here all my life.”

“Oh, my dear, I have heard all about you,” the lady cried. The people who had taken the house were merely rich people; they had no other characteristic; and in the vicarage, as well as in the other houses about, it was said, when they were spoken of, that it was a good thing they were not people to be visited, since nobody could have had the heart to visit strangers in Lady Mary’s house. And Mary could not but feel a keen resentment to think that her story, such as it was, the story which she had only now heard in her own person, should be discussed by such people. But the speaker had a look of kindness, and, so far as could be seen, of perplexity and fretted anxiety in her face, and had been in a hurry, but stopped herself in order to show her interest. “I wonder,” she said impulsively, “that you can come here and look at the place again, after all that has passed.”

“I never thought,” said Mary, “that there could be—any objection.”

“Oh, how can you think I mean that?—how can you pretend to think so?” cried the other, impatiently. “But after you have been treated so heartlessly, so unkindly, and left, poor thing! they tell me, without a penny, without any provision—”

“I don’t know you,” cried Mary, breathless with quick rising passion. “I don’t know what right you can have to meddle with my affairs.”

The lady stared at her for a moment without speaking, and then she said, all at once, “That is quite true—but it is rude as well; for though I have no right to meddle with your affairs, I did it in kindness, because I took an interest in you from all I have heard.”

Mary was very accessible to such a reproach and argument. Her face flushed with a sense of her own churlishness. “I beg your pardon,” she said; “I am sure you mean to be kind.”

“Well,” said the stranger, “that is perhaps going too far on the other side, for you can’t even see my face, to know what I mean. But I do mean to be kind, and I am very sorry for you. And though I think you’ve been treated abominably, all the same I like you better for not allowing any one to say so. And now, do you know where I was going? I was going to the vicarage—where you are living, I believe—to see if the vicar, or his wife, or you, or all of you together, could do a thing for me.”

“Oh, I am sure Mrs. Bowyer—” said Mary, with a voice much less assured than her words.

“You must not be too sure, my dear. I know she doesn’t mean to call upon me, because my husband is a city man. That is just as she pleases. I am not very fond of city men myself. But there’s no reason why I should stand on ceremony when I want something, is there? Now, my dear, I want to know—Don’t laugh at me. I am not superstitious, so far as I am aware; but—Tell me, in your time was there ever any disturbance, any appearance you couldn’t understand, any—Well, I don’t like the word ghost. It’s disrespectful, if there’s anything of the sort: and it’s vulgar if there isn’t. But you know what I mean. Was there anything—of that sort—in your time?”

In your time! Poor Mary had scarcely realized yet that her time was over. Her heart refused to allow it when it was thus so abruptly brought before her, but she obliged herself to subdue these rising rebellions, and to answer, though with some hauteur, “There is nothing of the kind that I ever heard of. There is no superstition—or ghost—in our house.”

She thought it was the vulgar desire of new people to find a conventional mystery, and it seemed to Mary that this was a desecration of her home. Mrs. Turner, however (for that was her name), did not receive the intimation as the girl expected, but looked at her very gravely, and said, “That makes it a great deal more serious,” as if to herself. She paused and then added, “You see, the case is this. I have a little girl who is our youngest, who is just my husband’s idol. She is a sweet little thing, though perhaps I should not say it. Are you fond of children? Then I almost feel sure you would think so too. Not a moping child at all, or too clever, or anything to alarm one. Well, you know, little Connie, since ever we came in, has seen an old lady walking about the house—”

“An old lady!” said Mary, with an involuntary smile.

“Oh, yes. I laughed too, the first time. I said it would be old Mrs. Prentiss, or perhaps the char-woman, or some old lady from the village that had been in the habit of coming in the former people’s time. But the child got very angry. She said it was a real lady. She would not allow me to speak. Then we thought perhaps it was some one who did not know the house was let, and had walked in to look at it; but nobody would go on coming like that with all the signs of a large family in the house. And now the doctor says the child must be low, that the place perhaps doesn’t agree with her, and that we must send her away. Now I ask you, how could I send little Connie away, the apple of her father’s eye? I should have to go with her, of course, and how could the house get on without me? Naturally we are very anxious. And this afternoon she has seen her again, and sits there crying because she says the dear old lady looks so sad. I just seized my hat, and walked out, to come to you and your friends at the vicarage, to see if you could help me. Mrs. Bowyer may look down upon a city person—I don’t mind that; but she is a mother, and surely she would feel for a mother,” cried the poor lady vehemently, putting up her hands to her wet eyes.

“Oh, indeed, indeed she would! I am sure now that she will call directly. We did not know what a—” Mary stopped herself in saying, “what a nice woman you are,” which she thought would be rude, though poor Mrs. Turner would have liked it. But then she shook her head and added, “What could any of us do to help you? I have never heard of any old lady. There never was anything—I know all about the house, everything that has ever happened, and Prentiss will tell you. There is nothing of that kind—indeed, there is nothing. You must have—” But here Mary stopped again; for to suggest that a new family, a city family, should have brought an apparition of their own with them, was too ridiculous an idea to be entertained.

“Miss Vivian,” said Mrs. Turner, “will you come back with me and speak to the child?”

At this Mary faltered a little. “I have never been there—since the—funeral,” she said.

The good woman laid a kind hand upon her shoulder, caressing and soothing. “You were very fond of her—in spite of the way she has used you?”

“Oh, how dare you, or any one, to speak of her so! She used me as if I had been her dearest child. She was more kind to me than a mother. There is no one in the world like her!” Mary cried.

“And yet she left you without a penny. Oh, you must be a good girl to feel for her like that. She left you without—What are you going to do, my dear? I feel like a friend. I feel like a mother to you, though you don’t know me. You mustn’t think it is only curiosity. You can’t stay with your friends for ever,—and what are you going to do?”

There are some cases in which it is more easy to speak to a stranger than to one’s dearest and oldest friend. Mary had felt this when she rushed out, not knowing how to tell the vicar’s wife that she must leave her, and find some independence for herself. It was, however, strange to rush into such a discussion with so little warning, and Mary’s pride was very sensitive. She said, “I am not going to burden my friends,” with a little indignation; but then she remembered how forlorn she was, and her voice softened. “I must do something—but I don’t know what I am good for,” she said, trembling, and on the verge of tears.

“My dear, I have heard a great deal about you,” said the stranger; “it is not rash, though it may look so. Come back with me directly, and see Connie. She is a very interesting little thing, though I say it; it is wonderful sometimes to hear her talk. You shall be her governess, my dear. Oh, you need not teach her anything—that is not what I mean. I think, I am sure, you will be the saving of her, Miss Vivian; and such a lady as you are, it will be everything for the other girls to live with you. Don’t stop to think, but just come with me. You shall have whatever you please, and always be treated like a lady. Oh, my dear, consider my feelings as a mother, and come; oh, come to Connie! I know you will save her; it is an inspiration. Come back! Come back with me!”

It seemed to Mary too like an inspiration. What it cost her to cross that threshold and walk in a stranger, to the house which had been all her life as her own, she never said to any one. But it was independence; it was deliverance from entreaties and remonstrances without end. It was a kind of setting right, so far as could be, of the balance which had got so terribly wrong. No writing to the earl now; no appeal to friends; anything in all the world, much more honest service and kindness, must be better than that.

VIII

“Tell the young lady all about it, Connie,” said her mother.

But Connie was very reluctant to tell. She was very shy, and clung to her mother, and hid her face in her ample dress; and though presently she was beguiled by Mary’s voice, and in a short time came to her side, and clung to her as she had clung to Mrs. Turner, she still kept her secret to herself. They were all very kind to Mary, the elder girls standing round in a respectful circle looking at her, while their mother exhorted them to “take a pattern” by Miss Vivian. The novelty, the awe which she inspired, the real kindness about her, ended in overcoming in Mary’s young mind the first miserable impression of such a return to her home. It gave her a kind of pleasure to write to Mrs. Bowyer that she had found employment, and had thought it better to accept it at once. “Don’t be angry with me; and I think you will understand me,” she said. And then she gave herself up to the strange new scene.

The “ways” of the large simple-minded family, homely, yet kindly, so transformed Lady Mary’s graceful old rooms that they no longer looked the same place. And when Mary sat down with them at the big heavy-laden table, surrounded with the hum of so large a party, it was impossible for her to believe that everything was not new about her. In no way could the saddening recollections of a home from which the chief figure had disappeared, have been more completely broken up. Afterwards Mrs. Turner took her aside, and begged to know which was Mary’s old room, “for I should like to put you there, as if nothing had happened.” “Oh, do not put me there!” Mary cried, “so much has happened.” But this seemed a refinement to the kind woman, which it was far better for her young guest not to “yield” to. The room Mary had occupied had been next to her godmother’s, with a door between, and when it turned out that Connie, with an elder sister, was in Lady Mary’s room, everything seemed perfectly arranged in Mrs. Turner’s eyes. She thought it was providential, with a simple belief in Mary’s powers that in other circumstances would have been amusing. But there was no amusement in Mary’s mind when she took possession of the old room “as if nothing had happened.”

She sat by the fire for half the night, in an agony of silent recollection and thought, going over the last days of her godmother’s life, calling up everything before her, and realizing as she had never realized till now, the lonely career on which she was setting out, the subjection to the will and convenience of strangers in which henceforth her life must be passed. This was a kind woman who had opened her doors to the destitute girl; but notwithstanding, however great the torture to Mary, there was no escaping this room which was haunted by the saddest recollections of her life. Of such things she must no longer complain—nay, she must think of nothing but thanking the mistress of the house for her thoughtfulness, for the wish to be kind, which so often exceeds the performance.

The room was warm and well lighted; the night was very calm and sweet outside, nothing had been touched or changed of all her little decorations, the ornaments which had been so delightful to her girlhood. A large photograph of Lady Mary held the chief place over the mantelpiece, representing her in the fullness of her beauty—a photograph which had been taken from the picture painted ages ago by a Royal Academician. It fortunately was so little like Lady Mary in her old age that, save as a thing which had always hung there, and belonged to her happier life, it did not affect the girl; but no picture was necessary to bring before her the well-remembered figure. She could not realize that the little movements she heard on the other side of the door were any other than those of her mistress, her friend, her mother; for all these names Mary lavished upon her in the fullness of her heart. The blame that was being cast upon Lady Mary from all sides made this child of her bounty but more deeply her partisan, more warm in her adoration. She would not, for all the inheritances of the world, have acknowledged even to herself that Lady Mary was in fault. Mary felt that she would rather a thousand times be poor and have to gain her daily bread, than that she who had nourished and cherished her should have been forced in her cheerful old age to think, before she chose to do so, of parting and farewell and the inevitable end.

She thought, like every young creature in strange and painful circumstances, that she would be unable to sleep, and did indeed lie awake and weep for an hour or more, thinking of all the changes that had happened; but sleep overtook her before she knew, while her mind was still full of these thoughts; and her dreams were endless, confused, full of misery and longing. She dreamed a dozen times over that she heard Lady Mary’s soft call through the open door—which was not open, but shut closely and locked by the sisters who now inhabited the next room; and once she dreamed that Lady Mary came to her bedside and stood there looking at her earnestly, with the tears flowing from her eyes. Mary struggled in her sleep to tell her benefactress how she loved her, and approved of all she had done, and wanted nothing—but felt herself bound as by a nightmare, so that she could not move or speak, or even put out a hand to dry those tears which it was intolerable to her to see; and woke with the struggle, and the miserable sensation of seeing her dearest friend weep and being unable to comfort her.

The moon was shining into the room, throwing part of it into a cold, full light, while blackness lay in all corners. The impression of her dream was so strong that Mary’s eyes turned instantly to the spot where in her dream her godmother had stood. To be sure, there was nobody there; but as her consciousness returned, and with it the sweep of painful recollection, the sense of change, the miserable contrast between the present and the past, sleep fled from her eyes. She fell into the vividly awake condition which is the alternative of broken sleep, and gradually, as she lay, there came upon her that mysterious sense of another presence in the room which is so subtle and indescribable. She neither saw anything nor heard anything, and yet she felt that some one was there.

She lay still for some time and held her breath, listening for a movement, even for the sound of breathing, scarcely alarmed, yet sure that she was not alone. After a while she raised herself on her pillow, and in a low voice asked, “Who is there? is any one there?” There was no reply, no sound of any description, and yet the conviction grew upon her. Her heart began to beat, and the blood to mount to her head. Her own being made so much sound, so much commotion, that it seemed to her she could not hear anything save those beatings and pulsings. Yet she was not afraid. After a time, however, the oppression became more than she could bear. She got up and lit her candle, and searched through the familiar room; but she found no trace that any one had been there. The furniture was all in its usual order. There was no hiding-place where any human thing could find refuge. When she had satisfied herself, and was about to return to bed, suppressing a sensation which must, she said to herself, be altogether fantastic, she was startled by a low knocking at the door of communication. Then she heard the voice of the elder girl. “Oh, Miss Vivian—what is it? Have you seen anything?” A new sense of anger, disdain, humiliation, swept through Mary’s mind. And if she had seen anything, she said to herself, what was that to those strangers? She replied, “No, nothing; what should I see?” in a tone which was almost haughty, in spite of herself.

“I thought it might be—the ghost. Oh, please, don’t be angry. I thought I heard this door open, but it is locked. Oh! perhaps it is very silly, but I am so frightened, Miss Vivian.”

“Go back to bed,” said Mary; “there is no—ghost. I am going to sit up and write some—letters. You will see my light under the door.”

“Oh, thank you,” cried the girl.

Mary remembered what a consolation and strength in all wakefulness had been the glimmer of the light under her godmother’s door. She smiled to think that she herself, so desolate as she was, was able to afford this innocent comfort to another girl, and then sat down and wept quietly, feeling her solitude and the chill about her, and the dark and the silence. The moon had gone behind a cloud. There seemed no light but her small miserable candle in earth and heaven. And yet that poor little speck of light kept up the heart of another—which made her smile again in the middle of her tears. And by-and-by the commotion in her head and heart calmed down, and she too fell asleep.

Next day she heard all the floating legends that were beginning to rise in the house. They all arose from Connie’s questions about the old lady whom she had seen going up-stairs before her, the first evening after the new family’s arrival. It was in the presence of the doctor, who had come to see the child, and whose surprise at finding Mary there was almost ludicrous, that she heard the story, though much against his will.

“There can be no need for troubling Miss Vivian about it,” he said, in a tone which was almost rude. But Mrs. Turner was not sensitive.

“When Miss Vivian has just come like a dear, to help us with Connie!” the good woman cried. “Of course she must hear it, doctor, for otherwise, how could she know what to do?”

“Is it true that you have come here—here? to help—Good heavens, Miss Mary, here?”

“Why not here?” Mary said, smiling as but she could. “I am Connie’s governess, doctor.”

He burst out into that suppressed roar which serves a man instead of tears, and jumped up from his seat, clenching his fist. The clenched fist was to the intention of the dead woman whose fault this was; and if it had ever entered the doctor’s mind, as his mother supposed, to marry this forlorn child, and thus bestow a home upon her whether she would or no, no doubt he would now have attempted to carry out that plan. But as no such thing had occurred to him, the doctor only showed his sense of the intolerable by look and gesture. “I must speak to the vicar. I must see Furnival. It can’t be permitted,” he cried.

“Do you think I shall not be kind to her, doctor?” cried Mrs. Turner. “Oh, ask her! she is one that understands. She knows far better than that. We’re not fine people, doctor, but we’re kind people. I can say that for myself. There is nobody in this house but will be good to her, and admire her, and take an example by her. To have a real lady with the girls, that is what I would give anything for; and as she wants taking care of, poor dear, and petting, and an ’ome—”

Mary, who would not hear any more, got up hastily, and took the hand of her new protectress, and kissed her, partly out of gratitude and kindness, partly to stop her mouth, and prevent the saying of something which it might have been still more difficult to support. “You are a real lady yourself, dear Mrs. Turner,” she cried. (And this notwithstanding the one deficient letter: but many people who are much more dignified than Mrs. Turner—people who behave themselves very well in every other respect—say “’ome.”)

“Oh, my dear, I don’t make any pretensions,” the good woman cried, but with a little shock of pleasure which brought the tears to her eyes.

And then the story was told. Connie had seen the lady walk up-stairs, and had thought no harm. The child supposed it was some one belonging to the house. She had gone into the room which was now Connie’s room; but as that had a second door, there was no suspicion caused by the fact that she was not found there a little time after, when the child told her mother what she had seen. After this, Connie had seen the same lady several times, and once had met her face to face. The child declared that she was not at all afraid. She was a pretty old lady, with white hair and dark eyes. She looked a little sad, but smiled when Connie stopped and stared at her—not angry at all, but rather pleased—and looked for a moment as if she would speak. That was all. Not a word about a ghost was said in Connie’s hearing. She had already told it all to the doctor, and he had pretended to consider which of the old ladies in the neighbourhood this could be. In Mary’s mind, occupied as it was by so many important matters, there had been up to this time no great question about Connie’s apparition; now she began to listen closely, not so much from real interest as from a perception that the doctor, who was her friend, did not want her to hear. This naturally aroused her attention at once. She listened to the child’s description with growing eagerness, all the more because the doctor opposed.

“Now that will do, Miss Connie,” he said; “it is one of the old Miss Murchisons, who are always so fond of finding out about their neighbours. I have no doubt at all on that subject. She wants to find you out in your pet naughtiness, whatever it is, and tell me.”

“I am sure it is not for that,” cried Connie. “Oh, how can you be so disagreeable? I know she is not a lady who would tell. Besides, she is not thinking at all about me. She was either looking for something she had lost, or—oh, I don’t know what it was!—and when she saw me she just smiled. She is not dressed like any of the people here. She had got no cloak on, or bonnet, or anything that is common, but a beautiful white shawl and a long dress, and it gives a little sweep when she walks—oh no! not like your rustling, mamma; but all soft, like water—and it looks like lace upon her head, tied here,” said Connie, putting her hands to her chin, “in such a pretty, large, soft knot.”

Mary had gradually risen as this description went on, starting a little at first, looking up, getting upon her feet. The colour went altogether out of her face, her eyes grew to twice their natural size. The doctor put out his hand without looking at her, and laid it on her arm with a strong, emphatic pressure. “Just like some one you have seen a picture of,” he said.

“Oh no. I never saw a picture that was so pretty,” said the child.

“Doctor, why do you ask her any more? don’t you see, don’t you see, the child has seen—”

“Miss Mary, for God’s sake, hold your tongue; it is folly, you know. Now, my little girl, tell me. I know this old lady is the very image of that pretty old lady with the toys for good children, who was in the last Christmas number?”

“Oh!” said Connie, pausing a little. “Yes, I remember; it was a very pretty picture—mamma put it up in the nursery. No, she is not like that, not at all, much prettier; and then my lady is sorry about something—except when she smiles at me. She has her hair put up like this, and this,” the child went on, twisting her own bright locks.

“Doctor, I can’t bear any more.”

“My dear, you are mistaken, it is all a delusion. She has seen a picture. I think now, Mrs. Turner, that my little patient had better run away and play. Take a good run through the woods, Miss Connie, with your brother, and I will send you some physic which will not be at all nasty, and we shall hear no more of your old lady. My dear Miss Vivian, if you will but hear reason! I have known such cases a hundred times. The child has seen a picture, and it has taken possession of her imagination. She is a little below par, and she has a lively imagination; and she has learned something from Prentiss, though probably she does not remember that. And there it is! a few doses of quinine, and she will see visions no more.”

“Doctor,” cried Mary, “how can you speak so to me? You dare not look me in the face. You know you dare not: as if you did not know as well as I do! Oh, why does that child see her, and not me?”

“There it is,” he said, with a broken laugh. “Could anything show better that it is a mere delusion? Why, in the name of all that is reasonable, should this stranger child see her, if it was anything, and not you?”

Mrs. Turner looked from one to another with wondering eyes. “You know what it is?” she said. “Oh, you know what it is? Doctor, doctor, is it because my Connie is so delicate? Is it a warning? Is it—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! You will drive me mad, you ladies. Is it this, and is it that? It is nothing, I tell you. The child is out of sorts, and she has seen some picture that has caught her fancy—and she thinks she sees—I’ll send her a bottle,” he cried, jumping up, “that will put an end to all that.”

“Doctor, don’t go away, tell me rather what I must do—if she is looking for something! Oh, doctor, think if she were unhappy, if she were kept out of her sweet rest!”

“Miss Mary, for God’s sake, be reasonable. You ought never to have heard a word.”

“Doctor, think! if it should be anything we can do. Oh, tell me, tell me! Don’t go away and leave me; perhaps we can find out what it is.”

“I will have nothing to do with your findings out. It is mere delusion. Put them both to bed, Mrs. Turner; put them all to bed!—as if there was not trouble enough!”

“What is it?” cried Connie’s mother; “is it a warning! Oh, for the love of God, tell me, is that what comes before a death?”

When they were all in this state of agitation, the vicar and his wife were suddenly shown into the room. Mrs. Bowyer’s eyes flew to Mary, but she was too well bred a woman not to pay her respects first to the lady of the house, and there were a number of politenesses exchanged, very breathlessly on Mrs. Turner’s part, before the new-comers were free to show the real occasion of their visit. “Oh, Mary, what did you mean by taking such a step all in a moment? How could you come here, of all places in the world? And how could you leave me without a word?” the vicar’s wife said, with her lips against Mary’s cheek. She had already perceived, without dwelling upon it, the excitement in which all the party were. This was said while the vicar was still making his bow to his new parishioner, who knew very well that her visitors had not intended to call; for the Turners were dissenters, to crown all their misdemeanours, beside being city people and nouveaux riches.

“Don’t ask me any questions just now,” said Mary, clasping almost hysterically her friend’s hand.

“It was providential. Come and hear what the child has seen.” Mrs. Turner, though she was so anxious, was too polite not to make a fuss about getting chairs for all her visitors. She postponed her own trouble to this necessity, and trembling, sought the most comfortable seat for Mrs. Bowyer, the largest and most imposing for the vicar himself. When she had established them in a little circle, and done her best to draw Mary, too, into a chair, she sat down quietly, her mind divided between the cares of courtesy and the alarms of an anxious mother. Mary stood at the table and waited till the commotion was over. The new-comers thought she was going to explain her conduct in leaving them; and Mrs. Bowyer, at least, who was critical in point of manners, shivered a little, wondering if perhaps (though she could not find it in her heart to blame Mary) her proceedings were in perfect taste.

“The little girl,” Mary said, beginning abruptly. She had been standing by the table, her lips apart, her countenance utterly pale, her mind evidently too much absorbed to notice anything. “The little girl has seen several times a lady going up-stairs. Once she met her and saw her face, and the lady smiled at her; but her face was sorrowful, and the child thought she was looking for something. The lady was old, with white hair done up upon her forehead, and lace upon her head. She was dressed—” here Mary’s voice began to be interrupted from time to time by a brief sob—“in a long dress that made a soft sound when she walked, and a white shawl, and the lace tied under her chin in a large soft knot—”

“Mary, Mary!” Mrs. Bowyer had risen and stood behind the girl, in whose slender throat the climbing sorrow was almost visible, supporting her, trying to stop her. “Mary, Mary!” she cried; “oh, my darling, what are you thinking of? Francis! doctor! make her stop, make her stop.”

“Why should she stop?” said Mrs. Turner, rising, too, in her agitation. “Oh, is it a warning, is it a warning? for my child has seen it—Connie has seen it.”

“Listen to me, all of you,” said Mary, with an effort. “You all know—who that is. And she has seen her—the little girl—”

Now the others looked at each other, exchanging a startled look.

“My dear people,” cried the doctor, “the case is not the least unusual. No, no, Mrs. Turner, it is no warning—it is nothing of the sort. Look here, Bowyer; you’ll believe me. The child is very nervous and sensitive. She has evidently seen a picture somewhere of our dear old friend. She has heard the story somehow—oh, perhaps in some garbled version from Prentiss, or—of course they’ve all been talking of it. And the child is one of those creatures with its nerves all on the surface—and a little below par in health, in need of iron and quinine, and all that sort of thing. I’ve seen a hundred such cases,” cried the doctor, “—a thousand such; but now, of course, we’ll have a fine story made of it, now that it’s come into the ladies’ hands.”

He was much excited with this long speech; but it cannot be said that any one paid much attention to him. Mrs. Bowyer was holding Mary in her arms, uttering little cries and sobs over her, and looking anxiously at her husband. The vicar sat down suddenly in his chair, with the air of a man who has judgment to deliver without the least idea what to say; while Mary, freeing herself unconsciously from her friend’s restraining embrace, stood facing them all with a sort of trembling defiance; and Mrs. Turner kept on explaining nervously that—“no, no, her Connie was not excitable, was not oversensitive, had never known what a delusion was.”

“This is very strange,” the vicar said.

“Oh, Mr. Bowyer,” cried Mary, “tell me what I am to do!—think if she cannot rest, if she is not happy, she that was so good to everybody, that never could bear to see any one in trouble. Oh, tell me, tell me what I am to do! It is you that have disturbed her with all you have been saying. Oh, what can I do, what can I do to give her rest?”

“My dear Mary! my dear Mary!” they all cried, in different tones of consternation; and for a few minutes no one could speak. Mrs. Bowyer, as was natural, said something, being unable to endure the silence; but neither she nor any of the others knew what it was she said. When it was evident that the vicar must speak, all were silent, waiting for him; and though it now became imperative that something in the shape of a judgment must be delivered, yet he was as far as ever from knowing what to say.

“Mary,” he said, with a little tremulousness of voice, “it is quite natural that you should ask me; but, my dear, I am not at all prepared to answer. I think you know that the doctor, who ought to know best about such matters—”

“Nay, not I. I only know about the physical; the other—if there is another—that’s your concern.”

“—who ought to know best,” repeated Mr. Bowyer; “for everybody will tell you, my dear, that the mind is so dependent upon the body. I suppose he must be right. I suppose it is just the imagination of a nervous child working upon the data which have been given—the picture; and then, as you justly remind me, all we have been saying—”

“How could the child know what we have been saying, Francis?”

“Connie has heard nothing that any one has been saying; and there is no picture.”

“My dear lady, you hear what the doctor says. If there is no picture, and she has heard nothing, I suppose, then, your premises are gone, and the conclusion falls to the ground.”

“What does it matter about premises?” cried the vicar’s wife; “here is something dreadful that has happened. Oh, what nonsense that is about imagination; children have no imagination. A dreadful thing has happened. In heaven’s name, Francis, tell this poor child what she is to do.”

“My dear,” said the vicar again, “you are asking me to believe in purgatory,—nothing less. You are asking me to contradict the church’s teaching. Mary, you must compose yourself. You must wait till this excitement has passed away.”

“I can see by her eyes that she did not sleep last night,” the doctor said, relieved. “We shall have her seeing visions too, if we don’t take care.”

“And, my dear Mary,” said the vicar, “if you will think of it, it is derogatory to the dignity of—of our dear friends who have passed away. How can we suppose that one of the blessed would come down from heaven, and walk about her own house, which she had just left, and show herself to a—to a—little child who had never seen her before.”

“Impossible,” said the doctor. “I told you so; a stranger—that had no connection with her, knew nothing about her—”

“Instead of,” said the vicar, with a slight tremor, “making herself known, if that was permitted, to—to me, for example, or our friend here.”

“That sounds reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Bowyer; “don’t you think so, my dear? If she had come to one of us, or to yourself, my darling, I should never have wondered, after all that has happened. But to this little child—”

“Whereas there is nothing more likely—more consonant with all the teachings of science—than that the little thing should have this hallucination, of which you ought never to have heard a word. You are the very last person—”

“That is true,” said the vicar, “and all the associations of the place must be overwhelming. My dear, we must take her away with us. Mrs. Turner, I am sure, is very kind, but it cannot be good for Mary to be here.”

“No, no! I never thought so,” said Mrs. Bowyer. “I never intended—dear Mrs. Turner, we all appreciate your motives. I hope you will let us see much of you, and that we may become very good friends. But Mary—it is her first grief, don’t you know?” said the vicar’s wife, with the tears in her eyes; “she has always been so much cared for, so much thought of all her life—and then all at once! You will not think that we misunderstand your kind motives; but it is more than she can bear. She made up her mind in a hurry, without thinking. You must not be annoyed if we take her away.”

Mrs. Turner had been looking from one to another while this dialogue went on. She said now, a little wounded, “I wished only to do what was kind; but, perhaps I was thinking most of my own child. Miss Vivian must do what she thinks best.”

“You are all kind—too kind,” Mary cried; “but no one must say another word, please. Unless Mrs. Turner should send me away, until I know what this all means, it is my place to stay here.”

IX

It was Lady Mary who had come into the vicarage that afternoon when Mrs. Bowyer supposed some one had called. She wandered about to a great many places in these days, but always returned to the scenes in which her life had been passed, and where alone her work could be done, if it could be done at all. She came in and listened while the tale of her own carelessness and heedlessness was told, and stood by while her favourite was taken to another woman’s bosom for comfort, and heard everything and saw everything. She was used to it by this time; but to be nothing is hard, even when you are accustomed to it; and though she knew that they would not hear her, what could she do but cry out to them as she stood there unregarded? “Oh, have pity upon me!” Lady Mary said; and the pang in her heart was so great that the very atmosphere was stirred, and the air could scarcely contain her and the passion of her endeavour to make herself known, but thrilled like a harp-string to her cry. Mrs. Bowyer heard the jar and tingle in the inanimate world, but she thought only that it was some charitable visitor who had come in, and gone softly away again at the sound of tears.

And if Lady Mary could not make herself known to the poor cottagers who had loved her, or to the women who wept for her loss while they blamed her, how was she to reveal herself and her secret to the men who, if they had seen her, would have thought her an hallucination? Yes, she tried all, and even went a long journey over land and sea to visit the earl, who was her heir, and awake in him an interest in her child. And she lingered about all these people in the silence of the night, and tried to move them in dreams, since she could not move them waking. It is more easy for one who is no more of this world, to be seen and heard in sleep; for then those who are still in the flesh stand on the borders of the unseen, and see and hear things which, waking, they do not understand. But, alas! when they woke, this poor wanderer discovered that her friends remembered no more what she had said to them in their dreams.

Presently, however, when she found Mary established in her old home, in her old room, there came to her a new hope. For there is nothing in the world so hard to believe, or to be convinced of, as that no effort, no device, will ever make you known and visible to those you love. Lady Mary being little altered in her character, though so much in her being, still believed that if she could but find the way, in a moment—in the twinkling of an eye—all would be revealed and understood. She went to Mary’s room with this new hope strong in her heart. When they were alone together in that nest of comfort which she had herself made beautiful for her child,—two hearts so full of thought for each other,—what was there in earthly bonds which could prevent them from meeting? She went into the silent room, which was so familiar and dear, and waited like a mother long separated from her child, with a faint doubt trembling on the surface of her mind, yet a quaint, joyful confidence underneath in the force of nature. A few words would be enough—a moment, and all would be right. And then she pleased herself with fancies of how, when that was done, she would whisper to her darling what has never been told to flesh and blood; and so go home proud, and satisfied, and happy in the accomplishment of all she had hoped.

Mary came in with her candle in her hand, and closed the door between her and all external things. She looked round wistful with that strange consciousness which she had already experienced, that some one was there. The other stood so close to her that the girl could not move without touching her. She held up her hands, imploring, to the child of her love. She called to her, “Mary, Mary!” putting her hands upon her, and gazed into her face with an intensity and anguish of eagerness which might have drawn the stars out of the sky. And a strange tumult was in Mary’s bosom. She stood looking blankly round her, like one who is blind with open eyes, and saw nothing; and strained her ears like a deaf man, but heard nothing. All was silence, vacancy, an empty world about her. She sat down at her little table, with a heavy sigh. “The child can see her, but she will not come to me,” Mary said, and wept.

Then Lady Mary turned away with a heart full of despair. She went quickly from the house, out into the night. The pang of her disappointment was so keen, that she could not endure it. She remembered what had been said to her in the place from whence she came, and how she had been entreated to be patient and wait. Oh, had she but waited and been patient! She sat down upon the ground, a soul forlorn, outside of life, outside of all things, lost in a world which had no place for her. The moon shone, but she made no shadow in it; the rain fell upon her, but did not hurt her; the little night breeze blew without finding any resistance in her. She said to herself, “I have failed. What am I, that I should do what they all said was impossible? It was my pride, because I have had my own way all my life. But now I have no way and no place on earth, and what I have to tell them will never, never be known. Oh, my little Mary, a servant in her own house! And a word would make it right!—but never, never can she hear that word. I am wrong to say never; she will know when she is in heaven. She will not live to be old and foolish, like me. She will go up there early, and then she will know. But I, what will become of me?—for I am nothing here, I cannot go back to my own place.”

A little moaning wind rose up suddenly in the middle of the dark night, and carried a faint wail, like the voice of some one lost, to the windows of the great house. It woke the children and Mary, who opened her eyes quickly in the dark, wondering if perhaps now the vision might come to her. But the vision had come when she could not see it, and now returned no more.

X

On the other side, however, visions which had nothing sacred in them began to be heard of, and “Connie’s ghost,” as it was called in the house, had various vulgar effects. A housemaid became hysterical, and announced that she too had seen the lady, of whom she gave a description, exaggerated from Connie’s, which all the household were ready to swear she had never heard. The lady, whom Connie had only seen passing, went to Betsey’s room in the middle of the night, and told her, in a hollow and terrible voice, that she could not rest, opening a series of communications by which it was evident all the secrets of the unseen world would soon be disclosed. And following upon this, there came a sort of panic in the house—noises were heard in various places, sounds of footsteps pacing, and of a long robe sweeping about the passages; and Lady Mary’s costumes, and the head-dress which was so peculiar, which all her friends had recognized in Connie’s description, grew into something portentous under the heavier hand of the foot-boy and the kitchen-maid. Mrs. Prentiss, who had remained, as a special favour to the new people, was deeply indignant and outraged by this treatment of her mistress. She appealed to Mary with mingled anger and tears.

“I would have sent the hussy away at an hour’s notice, if I had the power in my hands,” she cried, “but, Miss Mary, it’s easily seen who is a real lady and who is not. Mrs. Turner interferes herself in everything, though she likes it to be supposed that she has a housekeeper.”

“Dear Prentiss, you must not say Mrs. Turner is not a lady. She has far more delicacy of feeling than many ladies,” cried Mary.

“Yes, Miss Mary, dear, I allow that she is very nice to you; but who could help that? and to hear my lady’s name—that might have her faults, but who was far above anything of the sort—in every mouth, and her costume, that they don’t know how to describe, and to think that she would go and talk to the like of Betsy Barnes about what is on her mind! I think sometimes I shall break my heart, or else throw up my place, Miss Mary,” Prentiss said, with tears.

“Oh, don’t do that; oh, don’t leave me, Prentiss!” Mary said, with an involuntary cry of dismay.

“Not if you mind, not if you mind, dear,” the housekeeper cried. And then she drew close to the young lady with an anxious look. “You haven’t seen anything?” she said. “That would be only natural, Miss Mary. I could well understand she couldn’t rest in her grave—if she came and told it all to you.”

“Prentiss, be silent,” cried Mary; “that ends everything between you and me, if you say such a word. There has been too much said already—oh, far too much! as if I only loved her for what she was to leave me.”

“I did not mean that, dear,” said Prentiss; “but—”

“There is no but; and everything she did was right,” the girl cried with vehemence. She shed hot and bitter tears over this wrong which all her friends did to Lady Mary’s memory. “I am glad it was so,” she said to herself when she was alone, with youthful extravagance. “I am glad it was so; for now no one can think that I loved her for anything but herself.”

The household, however, was agitated by all these rumours and inventions. Alice, Connie’s elder sister, declined to sleep any longer in that which began to be called the haunted room. She, too, began to think she saw something, she could not tell what, gliding out of the room as it began to get dark, and to hear sighs and moans in the corridors. The servants, who all wanted to leave, and the villagers, who avoided the grounds after nightfall, spread the rumour far and near that the house was haunted.

XI

In the meantime, Connie herself was silent, and saw no more of the lady. Her attachment to Mary grew into one of those visionary passions which little girls so often form for young women. She followed her so-called governess wherever she went, hanging upon her arm when she could, holding her dress when no other hold was possible—following her everywhere, like her shadow. The vicarage, jealous and annoyed at first, and all the neighbours indignant too, to see Mary transformed into a dependent of the city family, held out as long as possible against the good nature of Mrs. Turner, and were revolted by the spectacle of this child claiming poor Mary’s attention wherever she moved. But by-and-by all these strong sentiments softened, as was natural. The only real drawback was, that amid all these agitations Mary lost her bloom. She began to droop and grow pale under the observation of the watchful doctor, who had never been otherwise than dissatisfied with the new position of affairs, and betook himself to Mrs. Bowyer for sympathy and information. “Did you ever see a girl so fallen off?” he said. “Fallen off, doctor! I think she is prettier and prettier every day.” “Oh,” the poor man cried, with a strong breathing of impatience, “You ladies think of nothing, but prettiness!—was I talking of prettiness? She must have lost a stone since she went back there. It is all very well to laugh,” the doctor added, growing red with suppressed anger, “but I can tell you that is the true test. That little Connie Turner is as well as possible; she has handed over her nerves to Mary Vivian. I wonder now if she ever talks to you on that subject.”

“Who? little Connie?”

“Of course I mean Miss Vivian, Mrs. Bowyer. Don’t you know the village is all in a tremble about the ghost at the Great House?”

“Oh yes, I know, and it is very strange. I can’t help thinking, doctor—”

“We had better not discuss that subject. Of course I don’t put a moment’s faith in any such nonsense. But girls are full of fancies. I want you to find out for me whether she has begun to think she sees anything. She looks like it; and if something isn’t done she will soon do so, if not now.”

“Then you do think there is something to see,” said Mrs. Bowyer, clasping her hands; “that has always been my opinion: what so natural—?”

“As that Lady Mary, the greatest old aristocrat in the world, should come and make private revelations to Betsey Barnes, the under housemaid—?” said the doctor, with a sardonic grin.

“I don’t mean that, doctor; but if she could not rest in her grave, poor old lady—”

“You think, then, my dear,” said the vicar, “that Lady Mary, an old friend, who was as young in her mind as any of us, lies body and soul in that old dark hole of a vault?”

“How you talk, Francis! what can a woman say between you horrid men? I say if she couldn’t rest—wherever she is—because of leaving Mary destitute, it would be only natural—and I should think the more of her for it,” Mrs. Bowyer cried.

The vicar had a gentle professional laugh over the confusion of his wife’s mind. But the doctor took the matter more seriously. “Lady Mary is safely buried and done with, I am not thinking of her,” he said; “but I am thinking of Mary Vivian’s senses, which will not stand this much longer. Try and find out from her if she sees anything: if she has come to that, whatever she says we must have her out of there.”

But Mrs. Bowyer had nothing to report when this conclave of friends met again. Mary would not allow that she had seen anything. She grew paler every day, her eyes grew larger, but she made no confession; and Connie bloomed and grew, and met no more old ladies upon the stairs.

XII

The days passed on, and no new event occurred in this little history. It came to be summer, balmy and green, and everything around the old house was delightful, and its beautiful rooms became more pleasant than ever in the long days and soft brief nights. Fears of the earl’s return and of the possible end of the Turners’ tenancy began to disturb the household, but no one so much as Mary, who felt herself to cling as she had never done before to the old house. She had never got over the impression that a secret presence, revealed to no one else, was continually near her, though she saw no one. And her health was greatly affected by this visionary double life.

Such was the state of affairs on a certain soft wet day when the family were all within doors. Connie had exhausted all her means of amusement in the morning. When the afternoon came, with its long, dull, uneventful hours, she had nothing better to do than to fling herself upon Miss Vivian, upon whom she had a special claim. She came to Mary’s room, disturbing the strange quietude of that place, and amused herself looking over all the trinkets and ornaments that were to be found there, all of which were associated to Mary with her godmother. Connie tried on the bracelets and brooches which Mary in her deep mourning had not worn, and asked a hundred questions. The answer which had to be so often repeated, “That was given to me by my godmother,” at last called forth the child’s remark, “How fond your godmother must have been of you, Miss Vivian! She seems to have given you everything—”

“Everything!” cried Mary, with a full heart.

“And yet they all say she was not kind enough,” said little Connie—“what do they mean by that? for you seem to love her very much still, though she is dead. Can one go on loving people when they are dead?”

“Oh yes, and better than ever,” said Mary; “for often you do not know how you loved them, or what they were to you, till they are gone away.”

Connie gave her governess a hug and said, “Why did not she leave you all her money, Miss Vivian? everybody says she was wicked and unkind to die without—”

“My dear,” cried Mary, “do not repeat what ignorant people say, because it is not true.”

“But mamma said it, Miss Vivian.”

“She does not know, Connie; you must not say it. I will tell your mamma she must not say it; for nobody can know so well as I do—and it is not true—”

“But they say,” cried Connie, “that that is why she can’t rest in her grave. You must have heard. Poor old lady, they say she cannot rest in her grave, because—”

Mary seized the child in her arms with a pressure that hurt Connie. “You must not! You must not!” she cried, in a sort of panic. Was she afraid that some one might hear? She gave Connie a hurried kiss, and turned her face away, looking out into the vacant room. “It is not true! it is not true!” she cried, with a great excitement and horror, as if to stay a wound. “She was always good, and like an angel to me. She is with the angels. She is with God. She cannot be disturbed by anything—anything! Oh, let us never say, or think, or imagine—!” Mary cried. Her cheeks burned, her eyes were full of tears. It seemed to her that something of wonder and anguish and dismay was in the room round her—as if some one unseen had heard a bitter reproach, an accusation undeserved, which must wound to the very heart.

Connie struggled a little in that too tight hold. “Are you frightened, Miss Vivian? What are you frightened for? No one can hear; and if you mind it so much, I will never say it again.”

“You must never, never say it again. There is nothing I mind so much,” Mary said.

“Oh,” said Connie, with mild surprise. Then, as Mary’s hold relaxed, she put her arms round her beloved companion’s neck. “I will tell them all you don’t like it. I will tell them they must not—oh!” cried Connie again, in a quick astonished voice. She clutched Mary round the neck, returning the violence of the grasp which had hurt her, and with the other hand pointed to the door. “The lady! the lady! oh, come and see where she is going!” Connie cried.

Mary felt as if the child in her vehemence lifted her from her seat. She had no sense that her own limbs or her own will carried her, in the impetuous rush with which Connie flew. The blood mounted to her head. She felt a heat and throbbing as if her spine were on fire. Connie holding by her skirts, pushing her on, went along the corridor to the other door, now deserted, of Lady Mary’s room. “There, there! don’t you see her? She is going in!” the child cried, and rushed on, clinging to Mary, dragging her on, her light hair streaming, her little white dress waving.

Lady Mary’s room was unoccupied and cold—cold, though it was summer, with the chill that rests in uninhabited apartments. The blinds were drawn down over the windows; a sort of blank whiteness, greyness, was in the place, which no one ever entered. The child rushed on with eager gestures, crying, “Look! look!” turning her lively head from side to side. Mary, in a still and passive expectation, seeing nothing, looking mechanically to where Connie told her to look, moving like a creature in a dream, against her will, followed. There was nothing to be seen. The blank, the vacancy, went to her heart. She no longer thought of Connie or her vision. She felt the emptiness with a desolation such as she had never felt before. She loosed her arm with something like impatience from the child’s close clasp. For months she had not entered the room which was associated with so much of her life. Connie and her cries and warnings passed from her mind like the stir of a bird or a fly. Mary felt herself alone with her dead, alone with her life, with all that had been and that never could be again. Slowly, without knowing what she did, she sank upon her knees. She raised her face in the blank of desolation about her to the unseen heaven. Unseen! unseen! whatever we may do. God above us, and those who have gone from us, and He who has taken them, who has redeemed them, who is ours and theirs, our only hope; but all unseen, unseen, concealed as much by the blue skies as by the dull blank of that roof. Her heart ached and cried into the unknown. “O God,” she cried, “I do not know where she is, but Thou art everywhere. O God, let her know that I have never blamed her, never wished it otherwise, never ceased to love her, and thank her, and bless her. God! God!” cried Mary, with a great and urgent cry, as if it were a man’s name. She knelt there for a moment before her senses failed her, her eyes shining as if they would burst from their sockets, her lips dropping apart, her countenance like marble.

XIII

“And she was standing there all the time,” said Connie, crying and telling her little tale after Mary had been carried away—“standing with her hand upon that cabinet, looking and looking, oh, as if she wanted to say something and couldn’t. Why couldn’t she, mamma? Oh, Mr. Bowyer, why couldn’t she, if she wanted so much? Why wouldn’t God let her speak?”

XIV

Mary had a long illness, and hovered on the verge of death. She said a great deal in her wanderings about some one who had looked at her. “For a moment, a moment,” she would cry; “only a moment! and I had so much to say.” But as she got better, nothing was said to her about this face she had seen. And perhaps it was only the suggestion of some feverish dream. She was taken away, and was a long time getting up her strength; and in the meantime the Turners insisted that the drains should be thoroughly seen to, which were not all in a perfect state. And the earl coming to see the place, took a fancy to it, and determined to keep it in his own hands. He was a friendly person, and his ideas of decoration were quite different from those of his grandmother. He gave away a great deal of her old furniture, and sold the rest.

Among the articles given away was the Italian cabinet, which the vicar had always had a fancy for; and naturally it had not been in the vicarage a day, before the boys insisted on finding out the way of opening the secret drawer. And there the paper was found, in the most natural way, without any trouble or mystery at all.

XV

They all gathered to see the wanderer coming back. She was not as she had been when she went away. Her face, which had been so easy, was worn with trouble; her eyes were deep with things unspeakable. Pity and knowledge were in the lines, which time had not made. It was a great event in that place to see one come back who did not come by the common way. She was received by the great officer who had given her permission to go, and her companions who had received her at the first all came forward, wondering, to hear what she had to say; because it only occurs to those wanderers who have gone back to earth of their own will, to return when they have accomplished what they wished, or it is judged above that there is nothing possible more. Accordingly, the question was on all their lips, “You have set the wrong right—you have done what you desired?”

“Oh,” she said, stretching out her hands, “how well one is in one’s own place! how blessed to be at home! I have seen the trouble and sorrow in the earth till my heart is sore, and sometimes I have been near to die.”

“But that is impossible,” said the man who had loved her.

“If it had not been impossible, I should have died,” she said. “I have stood among people who loved me, and they have not seen me nor known me, nor heard my cry. I have been outcast from all life, for I belonged to none. I have longed for you all, and my heart has failed me. Oh how lonely it is in the world, when you are a wanderer, and can be known of none—”

“You were warned,” said he who was in authority, “that it was more bitter than death.”

“What is death?” she said; and no one made any reply. Neither did any one venture to ask her again whether she had been successful in her mission. But at last, when the warmth of her appointed home had melted the ice about her heart, she smiled once more and spoke.

“The little children knew me. They were not afraid of me; they held out their arms. And God’s dear and innocent creatures—” She wept a few tears, which were sweet after the ice tears she had shed upon the earth. And then some one, more bold than the rest, asked again, “And did you accomplish what you wished?”

She had come to herself by this time, and the dark lines were melting from her face. “I am forgiven,” she said, with a low cry of happiness. “She whom I wronged, loves me and blessed me; and we saw each other face to face. I know nothing more.”

“There is no more,” said all together. For everything is included in pardon and love.

A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen

(1882)

She had been talking of dying only the evening before, with a friend, and had described her own sensations after a long illness when she had been at the point of death. “I suppose,” she said, “that I was as nearly gone as any one ever was to come back again. There was no pain in it, only a sense of sinking down, down—through the bed as if nothing could hold me or give me support enough—but no pain.” And then they had spoken of another friend in the same circumstances, who also had come back from the very verge, and who described her sensations as those of one floating upon a summer sea without pain or suffering, in a lovely nook of the Mediterranean, blue as the sky. These soft and soothing images of the passage which all men dread had been talked over with low voices, yet with smiles and a grateful sense that “the warm precincts of the cheerful day” were once more familiar to both. And very cheerfully she went to rest that night, talking of what was to be done on the morrow, and fell asleep sweetly in her little room, with its shaded light and curtained window, and little pictures on the dim walls. All was quiet in the house: soft breathing of the sleepers, soft murmuring of the spring wind outside, a wintry moon very clear and full in the skies, a little town all hushed and quiet, everything lying defenceless, unconscious, in the safe keeping of God.

How soon she woke no one can tell. She woke and lay quite still, half roused, half hushed, in that soft languor that attends a happy waking. She was happy always, in the peace of a heart that was humble and faithful and pure, but yet had been used to wake to a consciousness of little pains and troubles, such as even to her meekness were sometimes hard to bear. But on this morning there were none of these. She lay in a kind of hush of happiness and ease, not caring to make any further movement, lingering over the sweet sensation of that waking. She had no desire to move nor to break the spell of the silence and peace. It was still very early, she supposed, and probably it might be hours yet before any one came to call her. It might even be that she should sleep again. She had no wish to move, she lay at such luxurious ease and calm. But by and by, as she came to full possession of her waking senses, it appeared to her that there was some change in the atmosphere, in the scene. There began to steal into the air about her, the soft dawn as of a summer morning, the lovely blueness of the first opening of daylight before the sun. It could not be the light of the moon, which she had seen before she went to bed; and all was so still, that it could not be the bustling, wintry day which comes at that time of the year late, to find the world awake before it. This was different; it was like the summer dawn, a soft suffusion of light growing every moment. And by and by it occurred to her that she was not in the little room where she had lain down. There were no dim walls or roof, her little pictures were all gone, the curtains at her window. The discovery gave her no uneasiness in that delightful calm. She lay still to think of it all, to wonder, yet undisturbed. It half amused her that these things should be changed, but did not rouse her yet with any shock of alteration. The light grew fuller and fuller round, growing into day, clearing her eyes from the sweet mist of the first waking. Then she raised herself upon her arm. She was not in her room, she was in no scene she knew. Indeed it was scarcely a scene at all, nothing but light, so soft and lovely, that it soothed and caressed her eyes. She thought all at once of a summer morning when she was a child, when she had woke in the deep night which yet was day, early, so early that the birds were scarcely astir, and had risen up with a delicious sense of daring and of being all alone in the mystery of the sunrise, in the unawakened world which lay at her feet to be explored, as if she were Eve just entering upon Eden. It was curious how all those childish sensations, long forgotten, came back to her as she found herself so unexpectedly out of her sleep in the open air and light. In the recollection of that lovely hour, with a smile at herself, so different as she now knew herself to be, she was moved to rise and look a little more closely about her, and see where she was.

When I call her a little Pilgrim, I do not mean that she was a child; on the contrary, she was not even young. She was little by nature, with as little flesh and blood as was consistent with mortal life; and she was one of those who are always little for love. The tongue found diminutives for her, the heart kept her in a perpetual youth. She was so modest and so gentle, that she always came last, so long as there was any one whom she could put before her. But this little body, and the soul which was not little, and the heart which was big and great, had known all the round of sorrows that fill a woman’s life, without knowing any of its warmer blessings. She had nursed the sick, she had entertained the weary, she had consoled the dying. She had gone about the world, which had no prize or recompense for her, with a smile. Her little presence had been always bright. She was not clever; you might have said she had no mind at all; but so wise and right and tender a heart, that it was as good as genius. This is to let you know what this little Pilgrim had been.

She rose up, and it was strange how like she felt to the child she remembered in that still summer morning so many years ago. Her little body, which had been worn and racked with pain, felt as light and unconscious of itself as then. She took her first step forward with the same sense of pleasure, yet of awe, suppressed delight and daring and wild adventure, yet perfect safety. But then the recollection of the little room in which she had fallen asleep came quickly, strangely over her, confusing her mind. “I must be dreaming, I suppose,” she said to herself, regretfully; for it was all so sweet that she wished it to be true. Her movement called her attention to herself, and she found that she was dressed, not in her night-dress, as she had lain down, but in a dress she did not know. She paused for a moment to look at it, and wonder. She had never seen it before; she did not make out how it was made, or what stuff it was, but it fell so pleasantly about her, it was so soft and light, that in her confused state she abandoned that subject with only an additional sense of pleasure. And now the atmosphere became more distinct to her. She saw that under her feet was a greenness as of close velvet turf, both cool and warm, cool and soft to touch, but with no damp in it, as might have been at that early hour, and with flowers showing here and there. She stood looking round her, not able to identify the landscape because she was still confused a little, and then walked softly on, all the time afraid lest she should awake and lose the sweetness of it all, and the sense of rest and happiness. She felt so light, so airy, as if she could skim across the field like any child. It was bliss enough to breathe and move, with every organ so free. After more than fifty years of hard service in the world, to feel like this, even in a dream! She smiled to herself at her own pleasure; and then once more, yet more potently, there came back upon her the appearance of her room in which she had fallen asleep. How had she got from there to here? Had she been carried away in her sleep, or was it only a dream, and would she by and by find herself between the four dim walls again? Then this shadow of recollection faded away once more, and she moved forward, walking in a soft rapture over the delicious turf. Presently she came to a little mound, upon which she paused to look about her. Every moment she saw a little farther: blue hills far away, extending in long, sweet distance, an indefinite landscape, but fair and vast, so that there could be seen no end to it, not even the line of the horizon—save at one side, where there seemed to be a great shadowy gateway, and something dim beyond. She turned from the brightness to look at this, and when she had looked for some time, she saw, what pleased her still more, though she had been so happy before, people coming in. They were too far off for her to see clearly, but many came each apart, one figure only at a time. To watch them amused her in the delightful leisure of her mind. Who were they? she wondered; but no doubt soon some of them would come this way, and she would see. Then suddenly she seemed to hear, as if in answer to her question, some one say, “Those who are coming in are the people who have died on earth.” “Died!” she said to herself aloud, with a wondering sense of the inappropriateness of the word which almost came the length of laughter. In this sweet air, with such a sense of life about, to suggest such an idea was almost ludicrous. She was so occupied with this, that she did not look round to see who the speaker might be. She thought it over, amused, but with some new confusion of the mind. Then she said, “Perhaps I have died too,” with a laugh to herself at the absurdity of the thought.

“Yes,” said the other voice, echoing that gentle laugh of hers, “you have died too.”

She turned round, and saw another standing by her, a woman, younger and fairer, and more stately than herself, but of so sweet a countenance that our little Pilgrim felt no shyness, but recognized a friend at once. She was more occupied looking at this new face, and feeling herself at once so much happier (though she had been so happy before) in finding a companion who would tell her what everything was, than in considering what these words might mean. But just then once more the recollection of the four walls, with their little pictures hanging, and the window with its curtains drawn, seemed to come round her for a moment, so that her whole soul was in a confusion. And as this vision slowly faded away (though she could not tell which was the vision, the darkened room or this lovely light), her attention came back to the words at which she had laughed, and at which the other had laughed as she repeated them. Died?—was it possible that this could be the meaning of it all? “Died?” she said, looking with wonder in her companion’s face, which smiled back to her.

“But do you mean—You cannot mean—I have never been so well: I am so strong: I have no trouble—anywhere: I am full of life.”

The other nodded her beautiful head with a more beautiful smile, and the little Pilgrim burst out in a great cry of joy, and said—“Is this all? Is it over?—Is it all over? Is it possible that this can be all?”

“Were you afraid of it?” the other said. There was a little agitation for the moment in her heart. She was so glad, so relieved and thankful, that it took away her breath. She could not get over the wonder of it.

“To think one should look forward to it so long, and wonder, and be even unhappy trying to divine what it will be—and this all!”

“Ah, but the angel was very gentle with you,” said the young woman; “you were so tender and worn, that he only smiled and took you sleeping. There are other ways. But it is always wonderful to think it is over, as you say.”

The little Pilgrim could do nothing but talk of it, as one does after a very great event. “Are you sure, quite sure, it is so?” she said. “It would be dreadful to find it only a dream, to go to sleep again, and wake up—there—” This thought troubled her for a moment. The vision of the bedchamber came back; but this time she felt it was only a vision. “Were you afraid too?” she said, in a low voice.

“I never thought of it at all,” the beautiful stranger said; “I did not think it would come to me. But I was very sorry for the others to whom it came, and grudged that they should lose the beautiful earth, and life, and all that was so sweet.”

“My dear!” cried the Pilgrim, as if she had never died, “oh, but this is far sweeter! And the heart is so light, and it is, happiness only to breathe. Is it heaven here? It must be heaven.”

“I do not know if it is heaven. We have so many things to learn. They cannot tell you everything at once,” said the beautiful lady. “I have seen some of the people I was sorry for, and when I told them, we laughed—as you and I laughed just now—for pleasure.”

“That makes me think” said the little Pilgrim; “if I have died, as you say—which is so strange, and me so living—if I have died, they will have found it out. The house will be all dark, and they will be breaking their hearts. Oh, how could I forget them in my selfishness, and be happy! I so light-hearted, while they—”

She sat down hastily, and covered her face with her hands and wept. The other looked at her for a moment, then kissed her for comfort, and cried too. The two happy creatures sat there weeping together, thinking of those they had left behind, with an exquisite grief which was not unhappiness, which was sweet with love and pity. “And oh,” said the little Pilgrim, “what can we do to tell them not to grieve? Cannot you send? cannot you speak? cannot one go to tell them?”

The heavenly stranger shook her head.

“It is not well, they all say. Sometimes one has been permitted; but they do not know you,” she said, with a pitiful look in her sweet eyes. “My mother told me that her heart was so sick for me, she was allowed to go; and she went and stood by me, and spoke to me, and I did not know her. She came back so sad and sorry, that they took her at once to our Father; and there, you know, she found that it was all well. All is well when you are there.”

“Ah,” said the little Pilgrim, “I have been thinking of other things. Of how happy I was, and of them; but never of the Father—just as if I had not died.”

The other smiled upon her with a wonderful smile.

“Do you think he will be offended—our Father—as if he were one of us?” she said.

And then the little Pilgrim, in her sudden grief to have forgotten him, became conscious of a new rapture unexplainable in words. She felt his understanding to envelop her little spirit with a soft and clear penetration, and that nothing she did or said could ever be misconceived more. “Will you take me to him?” she said, trembling yet glad, clasping her hands. And once again the other shook her head.

“They will take us both when it is time,” she said: “we do not go at our own will. But I have seen our Brother—”

“Oh, take me to him!” the little Pilgrim cried. “Let me see his face! I have so many things to say to him. I want to ask him—Oh, take me to where I can see his face!”

And then once again the heavenly lady smiled.

“I have seen him,” she said. “He is always about—now here, now there. He will come and see you, perhaps when you are not thinking. But when he pleases. We do not think here of what we will—”

The little Pilgrim sat very still, wondering at all this. She had thought when a soul left the earth that it went at once to God, and thought of nothing more, except worship and singing of praises. But this was different from her thoughts. She sat and pondered and wondered. She was baffled at many points. She was not changed, as she expected, but so much like herself; still—still perplexed, and feeling herself foolish; not understanding: toiling after a something which she could not grasp. The only difference was that it was no trouble to her now. She smiled at herself and at her dullness, feeling sure that by and by she would understand.

“And don’t you wonder too?” she said to her companion, which was a speech such as she used to make upon the earth, when people thought her little remarks disjointed, and did not always see the connection of them. But her friend of heaven knew what she meant.

“I do nothing but wonder,” she said, “for it is all so natural, not what we thought.”

“Is it long since you have been here?” the Pilgrim said.

“I came before you; but how long or how short I cannot tell, for that is not how we count. We count only by what happens to us. And nothing yet has happened to me, except that I have seen our Brother. My mother sees him always. That means she has lived here a long time, and well—”

“Is it possible to live ill—in heaven?” The little Pilgrim’s eyes grew large, as if they were going to have tears in them, and a little shadow seemed to come over her. But the other laughed softly, and restored all her confidence.

“I have told you I do not know if it is heaven or not. No one does ill, but some do little, and some do much, just as it used to be. Do you remember in Dante there was a lazy spirit that stayed about the gates and never got farther? But perhaps you never read that.”

“I was not clever,” said the little Pilgrim, wistfully; “no, I never read it. I wish I had known more.”

Upon which the beautiful lady kissed her again to give her courage, and said—

“It does not matter at all. It all comes to you, whether you have known it or not.”

“Then your mother came here long ago?” said the Pilgrim. “Ah, then I shall see my mother too.”

“Oh, very soon, as soon as she can come; but there are so many things to do. Sometimes we can go and meet those who are coming; but it is not always so. I remember that she had a message. She could not leave her business, you may be sure, or she would have been here.”

“Then you know my mother? Oh, and my dearest father too?”

“We all know each other,” the lady said with a smile.

“And you? did you come to meet me—only out of kindness, though I do not know you?” the little Pilgrim said.

“I am nothing but an idler,” said the beautiful lady, “making acquaintance. I am of little use as yet. I was very hard worked before I came here, and they think it well that we should sit in the sun and take a little rest, and find things out.”

Then the little Pilgrim sat still and mused, and felt in her heart that she had found many things out. What she had heard had been wonderful, and it was more wonderful still to be sitting here all alone, save for this lady, yet so happy and at ease. She wanted to sing, she was so happy; but remembered that she was old; and had lost her voice; and then remembered again that she was no longer old, and perhaps had found it again. And then it occurred to her to remember how she had learned to sing, and how beautiful her sister’s voice was, and how heavenly to hear her, which made her remember that this dear sister would be weeping, not singing, down where she had come from; and immediately the tears stood in her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, “I never thought we should cry when we came here. I thought there were no tears in heaven.”

“Did you think, then, that we were all turned into stone?” cried the beautiful lady. “It says God shall wipe away all tears from our faces, which is not like saying there are to be no tears.”

Upon which the little Pilgrim, glad that it was permitted to be sorry, though she was so happy, allowed herself to think upon the place she had so lately left. And she seemed to see her little room again, with all the pictures hanging as she had left them, and the house darkened, and the dear faces she knew all sad and troubled, and to hear them saying over to each other all the little careless words she had said as if they were out of the Scriptures, and crying if any one but mentioned her name, and putting on crape and black dresses, and lamenting as if that which had happened was something very terrible. She cried at this, and yet felt half inclined to laugh, but would not, because it would be disrespectful to those she loved. One thing did not occur to her, and that was, that they would be carrying her body, which she had left behind her, away to the grave. She did not think of this, because she was not aware of the loss, and felt far too much herself to think that there was another part of her being buried in the ground. From this she was aroused by her companion asking her a question.

“Have you left many there?” she said.

“No one,” said the little Pilgrim, “to whom I was the first on earth; but they loved me all the same; and if I could only, only let them know—”

“But I left one to whom I was the first on earth,” said the other, with tears in her beautiful eyes; “and oh, how glad I should be to be less happy if he might be less sad!”

“And you cannot go? you cannot go to him and tell him? Oh, I wish,” cried the little Pilgrim; but then she paused, for the wish died all away in her heart into a tender love for this poor, sorrowful man whom she did not know. This gave her the sweetest pang she had ever felt, for she knew that all was well, and yet was so sorry, and would have willingly given up her happiness for his. All this the lady read in her eyes or her heart, and loved her for it; and they took hands and were silent together, thinking of those they had left, as we upon earth think of those who have gone from us, but only with far more understanding and far greater love. “And have you never been able to do anything for him?” our Pilgrim said.

Then the beautiful lady’s face flushed all over with the most heavenly warmth and light. Her smile ran over like the bursting out of the sun.

“Oh, I will tell you,” she said. “There was a moment when he was very sad and perplexed, not knowing what to think; there was something he could not understand. Nor could I understand, nor did I know what it was, until it was said to me, ‘You may go and tell him.’ And I went in the early morning before he was awake, and kissed him, and said it in his ear. He woke up in a moment, and understood, and everything was clear to him. Afterward I heard him say, ‘It is true that the night brings counsel. I had been troubled and distressed all day long, but in the morning it was quite clear to me.’ And the other answered, ‘Your brain was refreshed, and that made your judgment clear.’ But they never knew it was I! That was a great delight. The dear souls, they are so foolish,” she cried, with the sweetest laughter, that ran into tears. “One cries because one is so happy; it is just a silly old habit,” she said.

“And you were not grieved—it did not hurt you—that he did not know—”

“Oh, not then, not then! I did not go to him for that. When you have been here a little longer, you will see the difference. When you go for yourself, out of impatience, because it still seems to you that you must know best, and they don’t know you, then it strikes to your heart; but when you go to help them—ah,” she cried, “when he comes, how much I shall have to tell him! ‘You thought it was sleep, when it was I; when you woke so fresh and clear, it was I that kissed you; you thought it your duty to me to be sad afterward, and were angry with yourself because you had wronged me of the first thoughts of your waking—when it was all me, all through!’”

“I begin to understand,” said the little Pilgrim. “But why should they not see us, and why should not we tell them? It would seem so natural. If they saw us, it would make them so happy and so sure.”

Upon this the lady shook her head.

“The worst of it is not that they are not sure, it is the parting. If this makes us sorry here, how can they escape the sorrow of it, even if they saw us?—for we must be parted. We cannot go back to live with them, or why should we have died? And then we must all live our lives, they in their way, we in ours. We must not weigh them down, but only help them when it is seen that there is need for it. All this we shall know better by and by.”

“You make it so clear, and your face is so bright,” said our little Pilgrim gratefully, “you must have known a great deal, and understood even when you were in the world.”

“I was as foolish as I could be,” said the other, with her laugh that was as sweet as music; “yet thought I knew, and they thought I knew. But all that does not matter now.”

“I think it matters, for look how much you have showed me. But tell me one thing more: how was it said to you that you must go and tell him? Was it some one who spoke? Was it—”

Her face grew so bright that all the past brightness was as a dull sky to this. It gave out such a light of happiness, that the little Pilgrim was dazzled.

“I was wandering about,” she said, “to see this new place. My mother had come back between two errands she had, and had come to see me and tell me everything; and I was straying about, wondering what I was to do, when suddenly I saw some one coming along, as it might be now—”

She paused and looked up, and the little Pilgrim looked up too, with her heart beating, but there was no one. Then she gave a little sigh, and turned and listened again.

“I had not been looking for him, or thinking. You know my mind is too light; I am pleased with whatever is before me. And I was so curious, for my mother had told me many things; when suddenly I caught sight of him passing by. He was going on, and when I saw this a panic seized me, lest he should pass and say nothing. I do not know what I did. I flung myself upon his robe, and got hold of it—or at least I think so. I was in such an agony lest he should pass and never notice me. But that was my folly. He pass! As if that could be!”

“And what did he say to you?” cried the little Pilgrim, her heart almost aching, it beat so high with sympathy and expectation.

The lady looked at her for a little without saying anything.

“I cannot tell you,” she said, “any more than I can tell if this is heaven. It is a mystery. When you see him you will know. It will be all you have ever hoped for, and more besides, for he understands everything. He knows what is in our hearts about those we have left, and why he sent for us before them. There is no need to tell him anything, he knows. He will come when it is time; and after you have seen him you will know what to do.”

Then the beautiful lady turned her eyes toward the gate, and while the little Pilgrim was still gazing, disappeared from her, and went to comfort some other stranger. They were dear friends always, and met often, but not again in the same way.

When she was thus left alone again, the little Pilgrim sat still upon the grassy mound, quite tranquil and happy, without wishing to move. There was such a sense of well-being in her, that she liked to sit there and look about her, and breathe the delightful air, like the air of a summer morning, without wishing for anything.

“How idle I am!” she said to herself, in the very words she had often used before she died; but then she was idle from weakness, and now from happiness. She wanted for nothing. To be alive was so sweet. There was a great deal to think about in what she had heard, but she did not even think about that, only resigned herself to the delight of sitting there in the sweet air and being happy. Many people were coming and going, and they all knew her, and smiled upon her, and those who were at a distance would wave their hands. This did not surprise her at all, for though she was a stranger, she too felt that she knew them all; but that they should be so kind was a delight to her which words could not tell. She sat and mused very sweetly about all that had been told her, and wondered whether she too might go sometimes, and with a kiss and a whisper clear up something that was dark in the mind of some one who loved her. “I that never was clever!” she said to herself, with a smile. And chiefly she thought of a friend whom she loved, who was often in great perplexity, and did not know how to guide herself amid the difficulties of the world.

The little Pilgrim half laughed with delight, and then half cried with longing to go, as the beautiful lady had done, and make something clear that had been dark before, to this friend. As she was thinking what a pleasure it would be, some one came up to her, crossing over the flowery greenness, leaving the path on purpose. This was a being younger than the lady who had spoken to her before, with flowing hair all crisped with touches of sunshine, and a dress all white and soft, like the feathers of a white dove. There was something in her face different from that of the other, by which the little Pilgrim knew somehow, without knowing how, that she had come here as a child, and grown up in this celestial place. She was tall and fair, and came along with so musical a motion, as if her foot scarcely touched the ground, that she might have had wings: and the little Pilgrim indeed was not sure as she watched, whether it might not perhaps be an angel; for she knew that there were angels among the blessed people who were coming and going about, but had not been able yet to find one out. She knew that this new-comer was coming to her, and turned towards her with a smile and a throb at her heart of expectation. But when the heavenly maiden drew nearer, her face, though it was so fair, looked to the Pilgrim like another face, which she had known very well—indeed, like the homely and troubled face of the friend of whom she had been thinking. And so she smiled all the more, and held out her hands and said, “I am sure I know you;” upon which the other kissed her and said, “We all know each other; but I have seen you often before you came here,” and knelt down by her, among the flowers that were growing, just in front of some tall lilies that grew over her, and made a lovely canopy over her head. There was something in her face that was like a child: her mouth so soft, as if it had never spoken anything but heavenly words, her eyes brown and golden, as if they were filled with light. She took the little Pilgrim’s hands in hers, and held them and smoothed them between her own. These hands had been very thin and worn before, but now, when the Pilgrim looked at them, she saw that they became softer and whiter every moment with the touch of this immortal youth.

“I knew you were coming,” said the maiden; “when my mother has wanted me I have seen you there. And you were thinking of her now that was how I found you.”

“Do you know, then, what one thinks?” said the little Pilgrim, with wondering eyes.

“It is in the air; and when it concerns us it comes to us like the breeze. But we who are the children here, we feel it more quickly than you.”

“Are you a child?” said the little Pilgrim, “or are you an angel? Sometimes you are like a child; but then your face shines, and you are like—You must have some name for it here; there is nothing among the words I know.” And then she paused a little, still looking at her, and cried, “Oh, if she could but see you, little Margaret! That would do her most good of all.”

Then the maiden Margaret shook her lovely head. “What does her most good is the will of the Father,” she said.

At this the little Pilgrim felt once more that thrill of expectation and awe. “Oh, child, you have seen him?” she cried.

And the other smiled. “Have you forgotten who they are that always behold his face? We have never had any fear or trembling. We are not angels, and there is no other name; we are the children. There is something given to us beyond the others. We have had no other home.”

“Oh, tell me, tell me!” the little Pilgrim cried.

Upon this Margaret kissed her, putting her soft cheek against hers, and said; “It is a mystery; it cannot be put into words; in your time you will know.”

“When you touch me you change me, and I grow like you,” the Pilgrim said. “Ah, if she could see us together, you and me! And will you go to her soon again? And do you see them always, what they are doing? and take care of them?”

“It is our Father who takes cares of them, and our Lord who is our Brother. I do his errands when I am able. Sometimes he will let me go, sometimes another, according as it is best. Who am I that I should take care of them? I serve them when I may.”

“But you do not forget them?” the Pilgrim said, with wistful eyes.

“We love them always,” said Margaret. She was more still than the lady who had first spoken with the Pilgrim. Her countenance was full of a heavenly calm. It had never known passion nor anguish. Sometimes there was in it a far-seeing look of vision, sometimes the simplicity of a child. “But what are we in comparison? For he loves them more than we do. When he keeps us from them, it is for love. We must each live our own life.”

“But it is hard for them sometimes,” said the little Pilgrim, who could not withdraw her thoughts from those she had left.

“They are never forsaken,” said the angel maiden.

“But oh! there are worse things than sorrow,” the little Pilgrim said; “there is wrong, there is evil, Margaret. Will not he send you to step in before them, to save them from wrong?”

“It is not for us to judge,” said the young Margaret, with eyes full of heavenly wisdom; “our Brother has it all in his hand. We do not read their hearts, like him. Sometimes you are permitted to see the battle—”

The little Pilgrim covered her eyes with her hands. “I could not—I could not; unless I knew they were to win the day!”

“They will win the day in the end. But sometimes, when it was being lost, I have seen in his face a something—I cannot tell—more love than before. Something that seemed to say, ‘My child, my child, would that I could do it for thee, my child!’”

“Oh! that is what I have always felt,” cried the Pilgrim, clasping her hands; her eyes were dim, her heart for a moment almost forgot its blessedness. “But he could; oh, little Margaret, he could! You have forgotten, ‘Lord; if thou wilt thou canst—’”

The child of heaven looked at her mutely, with sweet, grave eyes, in which there was much that confused her who was a stranger here, and once more softly shook her head.

“Is it that he will not then?” said the other with a low voice of awe.
“Our Lord, who died—he—”

“Listen!” said the other; “I hear his step on the way.”

The little Pilgrim rose up from the mound on which she was sitting. Her soul was confused with wonder and fear. She had thought that an angel might step between a soul on earth and sin, and that if one but prayed and prayed, the dear Lord would stand between and deliver the tempted. She had meant when she saw his face to ask him to save. Was not he born, did not he live and die, to save? The angel maiden looked at her all the while with eyes that understood all her perplexity and her doubt, but spoke not. Thus it was that before the Lord came to her, the sweetness of her first blessedness was obscured, and she found that here too, even here, though in a moment she should see him, there was need for faith. Young Margaret, who had been kneeling by her, rose up too and stood among the lilies, waiting, her soft countenance shining, her eyes turned towards him who was coming. Upon her there was no cloud nor doubt. She was one of the children of that land familiar with his presence. And in the air there was a sound such as those who hear it alone can describe—a sound as of help coming and safety, like the sound of a deliverer when one is in deadly danger, like the sound of a conqueror, like the step of the dearest beloved coming home. As it came nearer, the fear melted away out of the beating heart of the Pilgrim. Who could fear so near him? Her breath went away from her, her heart out of her bosom to meet his coming. Oh, never fear could live where he was! Her soul was all confused, but it was with hope and joy. She held out her hands in that amaze, and dropped upon her knees, not knowing what she did.

He was going about his Father’s business, not lingering, yet neither making haste; and the calm and peace which the little Pilgrim had seen in the faces of the blessed were but reflections from the majestic gentleness of the countenance to which, all quivering with happiness and wonder, she lifted up her eyes. Many things there had been in her mind to say to him. She wanted to ask for those she loved some things which perhaps he had overlooked. She wanted to say, “Send me.” It seemed to her that here was the occasion she had longed for all her life. Oh, how many times had she wished to be able to go to him, to fall at his feet, to show him something which had been left undone, something which perhaps for her asking he would remember to do. But when this dream of her life was fulfilled, and the little Pilgrim, kneeling, and all shaken and trembling with devotion and joy, was at his feet, lifting her face to him, seeing him, hearing him—then she said nothing to him at all. She no longer wanted to say anything, or wanted anything except what he chose, or had power to think of anything except that all was well, and everything—everything as it should be in his hand. It seemed to her that all that she had ever hoped for was fulfilled when she met the look in his eyes. At first it seemed too bright for her to meet; but next moment she knew it was all that was needed to light up the world, and in it everything was clear. Her trembling ceased, her little frame grew inspired; though she still knelt, her head rose erect, drawn to him like the flower to the sun. She could not tell how long it was, nor what was said, nor if it was in words. All that she knew was that she told him all that ever she had thought, or wished, or intended in all her life, although she said nothing at all; and that he opened all things to her, and showed her that everything was well, and no one forgotten; and that the things she would have told him of were more near his heart than hers, and those to whom she wanted to be sent were in his own hand. But whether this passed with words or without words, she could not tell. Her soul expanded under his eyes like a flower. It opened out, it comprehended and felt and knew. She smote her hands together in her wonder that she could have missed seeing what was so clear, and laughed with a sweet scorn at her folly, as two people who love each other laugh at the little misunderstanding that has parted them. She was bold with him, though she was so timid by nature, and ventured to laugh at herself, not to reproach herself; for his divine eyes spoke no blame, but smiled upon her folly too. And then he laid a hand upon her head, which seemed to fill her with currents of strength and joy running through all her veins. And then she seemed to come to herself, saying loud out, “And that I will! and that I will!” and lo, she was kneeling on the warm, soft sod alone, and hearing the sound of his footsteps as he went about his Father’s business, filling all the air with echoes of blessing. And all the people who were coming and going smiled upon her, and she knew they were all glad for her that she had seen him, and got the desire of her heart. Some of them waved their hands as they passed, and some paused a moment and spoke to her with tender congratulations. They seemed to have the tears in their eyes for joy, remembering every one the first time they had themselves seen him, and the joy of it; so that all about there sounded a concord of happy thoughts all echoing to each other, “She has seen the Lord!”

Why did she say, “And that I will! and that I will!” with such fervour and delight? She could not have told, but yet she knew. The first thing was that she had yet to wait and believe until all things should be accomplished, neither doubting nor fearing, but knowing that all should be well; and the second was that she must delay no longer, but rise up and serve the Father according to what was given her as her reward. When she had recovered a little of her rapture, she rose from her knees, and stood still for a little, to be sure which way she was to go. And she was not aware what guided her, but yet turned her face in the appointed way without any doubt. For doubt was now gone away for ever, and that fear that once gave her so much trouble lest she might not be doing what was best. As she moved along she wondered at herself more and more. She felt no longer, as at first, like the child she remembered to have been, venturing out in the awful lovely stillness of the morning before any one was awake; but she felt that to move along was a delight, and that her foot scarcely touched the grass. And her whole being was instinct with such lightness of strength and life, that it did not matter to her how far she went, nor what she carried, nor if the way was easy or hard. The way she chose was one of those which led to the great gate, and many met her coming from thence, with looks that were somewhat bewildered, as if they did not yet know whither they were going or what had happened to them. Upon whom she smiled as she passed them with soft looks of tenderness and sympathy, knowing what they were feeling, but did not stop to explain to them, because she had something else that had been given her to do. For this is what always follows in that country when you meet the Lord, that you instantly know what it is that he would have you do.

The little Pilgrim thus went on and on toward the gate, which she had not seen when she herself came through it, having been lifted in his arms by the great Death Angel, and set down softly inside, so that she did not know it, or even the shadow of it. As she drew nearer, the light became less bright, though very sweet, like a lovely dawn, and she wondered to herself to think that she had been here but a moment ago, and yet so much had passed since then. And still she was not aware what was her errand, but wondered if she was to go back by these same gates, and perhaps return where she had been. She went up to them very closely, for she was curious to see the place through which she had come in her sleep, as a traveller goes back to see the city gate, with its bridge and portcullis, through which he has passed by night. The gate was very great, of a wonderful, curious architecture, having strange, delicate arches and canopies above. Some parts of them seemed cut very clean and clear; but the outlines were all softened with a sort of mist and shadow, so that it looked greater and higher than it was. The lower part was not one great doorway, as the Pilgrim had supposed, but had innumerable doors, all separate and very narrow, so that but one could pass at a time, though the arch inclosed all, and seemed filled with great folding gates, in which the smaller doors were set, so that if need arose a vast opening might be made for many to enter. Of the little doors many were shut as the Pilgrim approached; but from moment to moment one after another would be pushed softly open from without, and some one would come in. The little Pilgrim looked at it all with great interest, wondering which of the doors she herself had come by; but while she stood absorbed by this, a door was suddenly pushed open close by her, and some one flung forward into the blessed country, falling upon the ground, and stretched out wild arms as though to clutch the very soil. This sight gave the Pilgrim a great surprise; for it was the first time she had heard any sound of pain, or seen any sight of trouble, since she entered here. In that moment she knew what it was that the dear Lord had given her to do. She had no need to pause to think, for her heart told her; and she did not hesitate, as she might have done in the other life, not knowing what to say. She went forward and gathered this poor creature into her arms, as if it had been a child, and drew her quite within the land of peace; for she had fallen across the threshold, so as to hinder any one entering who might be coming after her. It was a woman, and she had flung herself upon her face, so that it was difficult for the little Pilgrim to see what manner of person it was; for though she felt herself strong enough to take up this new-comer in her arms and carry her away, yet she forbore, seeing the will of the stranger was not so. For some time this woman lay moaning, with now and then a great sob shaking her as she lay. The little Pilgrim had taken her by both her arms, and drawn her head to rest upon her own lap, and was still holding the hands, which the poor creature had thrown out as if to clutch the ground. Thus she lay for a little while, as the little Pilgrim remembered she herself had lain, not wishing to move, wondering what had happened to her; then she clutched the hands which grasped her, and said, muttering—

“You are some one new. Have you come to save me? Oh, save me! Oh, save me! Don’t let me die!”

This was very strange to the little Pilgrim, and went to her heart. She soothed the stranger, holding her hands warm and light, and stooping over her.

“Dear,” she said, “you must try and not be afraid.”

“You say so,” said the woman, “because you are well and strong. You don’t know what it is to be seized in the middle of your life, and told that you’ve got to die. Oh, I have been a sinful creature! I am not fit to die. Can’t you give me something that will cure me? What is the good of doctors and nurses if they cannot save a poor soul that is not fit to die?”

At this the little Pilgrim smiled upon her, always holding her fast, and said—

“Why are you so afraid to die?”

The woman raised her head to see who it was who put such a strange question to her.

“You are some one new,” she said. “I have never seen you before. Is there any one that is not afraid to die? Would you like to have to give your account all in a moment, without any time to prepare?”

“But you have had time to prepare,” said the Pilgrim.

“Oh, only a very, very little time. And I never thought it was true. I am not an old woman, and I am not fit to die; and I’m poor. Oh, if I were rich, I would bribe you to give me something to keep me alive. Won’t you do it for pity?—won’t you do it for pity? When you are as bad as I am, oh, you will perhaps call for some one to help you, and find nobody, like me.”

“I will help you for love,” said the little Pilgrim; “some one who loves you has sent me.”

The woman lifted herself up a little and shook her head. “There is nobody that loves me.” Then she cast her eyes round her and began to tremble again (for the touch of the little Pilgrim had stilled her). “Oh, where am I?” she said. “They have taken me away; they have brought me to a strange place; and you are new. Oh, where have they taken me?—where am I?—where am I?” she cried. “Have they brought me here to die?”

Then the little Pilgrim bent over her and soothed her. “You must not be so much afraid of dying; that is all over. You need not fear that any more,” she said softly; “for here where you now are we have all died.”

The woman started up out of her arms, and then she gave a great shriek that made the air ring, and cried out, “Dead! am I dead?” with a shudder and convulsion, throwing herself again wildly with outstretched hands upon the ground.

This was a great and terrible work for the little Pilgrim—the first she had ever had to do—and her heart failed her for a moment; but afterward she remembered our Brother who sent her, and knew what was best. She drew closer to the new-comer, and took her hand again.

“Try,” she said, in a soft voice, “and think a little. Do you feel now so ill as you were? Do not be frightened, but think a little. I will hold your hand. And look at me; you are not afraid of me?”

The poor creature shuddered again, and then she turned her face and looked doubtfully, with great dark eyes dilated, and the brow and cheek so curved and puckered round them that they seemed to glow out of deep caverns. Her face was full of anguish and fear. But as she looked at the little Pilgrim, her troubled gaze softened. Of her own accord she clasped her other hand upon the one that held hers, and then she said with a gasp—

“I am not afraid of you; that was not true that you said! You are one of the sisters, and you want to frighten me and make me repent!”

“You do repent,” the Pilgrim said.

“Oh,” cried the poor woman, “what has the like of you to do with me? Now I look at you, I never saw any one that was like you before. Don’t you hate me?—don’t you loathe me? I do myself. It’s so ugly to go wrong. I think now I would almost rather die and be done with it. You will say that is because I am going to get better. I feel a great deal better now. Do you think I am going to get over it? Oh, I am better! I could get up out of bed and walk about. Yes, but I am not in bed; where have you brought me? Never mind, it is a fine air; I shall soon get well here.”

The Pilgrim was silent for a little, holding her hands. And then she said—

“Tell me how you feel now,” in her soft voice.

The woman had sat up and was gazing round her. “It is very strange,” she said; “it is all confused. I think upon my mother and the old prayers I used to say. For a long, long time I always said my prayers; but now I’ve got hardened, they say. Oh, I was once as fresh as any one. It all comes over me now. I feel as if I were young again—just come out of the country. I am sure that I could walk.”

The little Pilgrim raised her up, holding her by her hands; and she stood and gazed round about her, making one or two doubtful steps. She was very pale, and the light was dim; her eyes peered into it with a scared yet eager look. She made another step, then stopped again.

“I am quite well,” she said. “I could walk a mile. I could walk any distance. What was that you said? Oh, I tell you I am better! I am not going to die.”

“You will never, never die,” said the little Pilgrim; “are you not glad it is all over? Oh, I was so glad! And all the more you should be glad if you were so much afraid.”

But this woman was not glad. She shrank away from her companion, then came close to her again, and gripped her with her hands.

“It is your—fun,” she said, “or just to frighten me. Perhaps you think it will do me no harm as I am getting so well; you want to frighten me to make me good. But I mean to be good without that—I do!—I do! When one is so near dying as I have been and yet gets better—for I am going to get better! Yes! you know it as well as I.”

The little Pilgrim made no reply, but stood by, looking at her charge, not feeling that anything was given her to say; and she was so new to this work, that there was a little trembling in her, lest she should not do everything as she ought. And the woman looked round with those anxious eyes gazing all about. The light did not brighten as it had done when the Pilgrim herself first came to this place. For one thing, they had remained quite close to the gate, which no doubt threw a shadow. The woman looked at that, and then turned and looked into the dim morning, and did not know where she was, and her heart was confused and troubled.

“Where are we?” she said. “I do not know where it is; they must have brought me here in my sleep—where are we? How strange to bring a sick woman away out of her room in her sleep! I suppose it was the new doctor,” she went on, looking very closely in the little Pilgrim’s face; then paused, and drawing a long breath, said softly, “It has done me good. It is better air—it is—a new kind of cure!”

But though she spoke like this, she did not convince herself; her eyes were wild with wondering and fear. She gripped the Pilgrim’s arm more and more closely, and trembled, leaning upon her.

“Why don’t you speak to me?” she said; “why don’t you tell me? Oh, I don’t know how to live in this place! What do you do?—how do you speak? I am not fit for it. And what are you? I never saw you before, nor any one like you. What do you want with me? Why are you so kind to me? Why—why—”

And here she went off into a murmur of questions. Why? why? always holding fast by the little Pilgrim, always gazing round her, groping as it were in the dimness with her great eyes.

“I have come because our dear Lord who is our Brother sent me to meet you, and because I love you,” the little Pilgrim said.

“Love me!” the woman cried, throwing up her hands. “But no one loves me; I have not deserved it.” Here she grasped her close again with a sudden clutch, and cried out, “If this is what you say, where is God?”

“Are you afraid of him?” the little Pilgrim said. Upon which the woman trembled so, that the Pilgrim trembled too with the quivering of her frame; then loosed her hold, and fell upon her face, and cried—

“Hide me! hide me! I have been a great sinner. Hide me, that he may not see me;” and with one hand she tried to draw the Pilgrim’s dress as a veil between her and something she feared.

“How should I hide you from him who is everywhere? and why should I hide you from your Father?” the little Pilgrim said. This she said almost with indignation, wondering that any one could put more trust in her, who was no better than a child, than in the Father of all. But then she said, “Look into your heart, and you will see you are not so much afraid as you think. This is how you have been accustomed to frighten yourself. But now look into your heart. You thought you were very ill at first, but not now and you think you are afraid; but look into your heart—”

There was a silence; and then the woman raised her head with a wonderful look, in which there was amazement and doubt, as if she had heard some joyful thing, but dared not yet believe that it was true. Once more she hid her face in her hands, and once more raised it again. Her eyes softened; a long sigh or gasp, like one taking breath after drowning, shook her breast. Then she said, “I think—that is true. But if I am not afraid, it is because I am—bad. It is because I am hardened. Oh, should not I fear him who can send me away into—the lake that burns—into the pit—” And here she gave a great cry, but held the little Pilgrim all the while with her eyes, which seemed to plead and ask for better news.

Then there came into the Pilgrim’s heart what to say, and she took the woman’s hand again and held it between her own. “That is the change,” she said, “that comes when we come here. We are not afraid any more of our Father. We are not all happy. Perhaps you will not be happy at first. But if he says to you, ‘Go!’—even to that place you speak of—you will know that it is well, and you will not be afraid. You are not afraid now—oh, I can see it in your eyes. You are not happy, but you are not afraid. You know it is the Father. Do not say God—that is far off—Father!” said the little Pilgrim, holding up the woman’s hand clasped in her own. And there came into her soul an ecstasy, and tears that were tears of blessedness fell from her eyes, and all about her there seemed to shine a light. When she came to herself, the woman who was her charge had come quite close to her, and had added her other hand to that the Pilgrim held, and was weeping and saying, “I am not afraid,” with now and then a gasp and sob, like a child who after a passion of tears has been consoled, yet goes on sobbing and cannot quite forget, and is afraid to own that all is well again. Then the Pilgrim kissed her, and bade her rest a little; for even she herself felt shaken, and longed for a little quiet, and to feel the true sense of the peace that was in her heart. She sat down beside her upon the ground, and made her lean her head against her shoulder, and thus they remained very still for a little time, saying no more. It seemed to the little Pilgrim that her companion had fallen asleep, and perhaps it was so, after so much agitation. All this time there had been people passing, entering by the many doors. And most of them paused a little to see where they were, and looked round them, then went on; and it seemed to the little Pilgrim that according to the doors by which they entered each took a different way. While she watched, another came in by the same door as that at which the woman who was her charge had come in. And he too stumbled and looked about him with an air of great wonder and doubt. When he saw her seated on the ground, he came up to her hesitating, as one in a strange place who does not want to betray that he is bewildered and has lost his way. He came with a little pretence of smiling, though his countenance was pale and scared, and said, drawing his breath quick, “I ought to know where I am, but I have lost my head, I think. Will you tell me which is—the way?”

“What way?” cried the little Pilgrim; for her strength was gone from her, and she had no word to say to him. He looked at her with that bewilderment on his face, and said, “I find myself strange, strange. I ought to know where I am; but it is scarcely daylight yet. It is perhaps foolish to come out so early in the morning.” This he said in his confusion, not knowing where he was, nor what he said.

“I think all the ways lead to our Father,” said the little Pilgrim (though she had not known this till now). “And the dear Lord walks about them all. Here you never go astray.”

Upon this the stranger looked at her, and asked in a faltering voice,
“Are you an angel?” still not knowing what he said.

“Oh, no, no; I am only a Pilgrim,” she replied.

“May I sit by you a little?” said the man. He sat down, drawing long breaths, as though he had gone through great fatigue; and looked about with wondering eyes. “You will wonder, but I do not know where I am,” he said. “I feel as if I must he dreaming. This is not where I expected to come. I looked for something very different; do you think there can have been any—mistake?”

“Oh, never that,” she said; “there are no mistakes here.”

Then he looked at her again, and said—

“I perceive that you belong to this country, though you say you are a pilgrim. I should be grateful if you would tell me. Does one live—here? And is this all? Is there no—no—but I don’t know what word to use. All is so strange, different from what I expected.”

“Do you know that you have died?”

“Yes—yes, I am quite acquainted with that,” he said, hurriedly; as if it had been an idea he disliked to dwell upon. “But then I expected—Is there no one to tell you where to go, or what you are to be? or to take any notice of you?”

The little Pilgrim was startled by this tone. She did not understand its meaning, and she had not any word to say to him. She looked at him with as much bewilderment as he had shown when he approached her, and replied, faltering—

“There are a great many people here; but I have never heard if there is any one to tell you—”

“What does it matter how many people there are if you know none of them?” he said.

“We all know each other,” she answered him but then paused and hesitated a little, because this was what had been said to her, and of herself she was not assured of it, neither did she know at all how to deal with this stranger, to whom she had not any commission. It seemed that he had no one to care for him, and the little Pilgrim had a sense of compassion, yet of trouble in her heart; for what could she say? And it was very strange to her to see one who was not content here.

“Ah, but there should be some one to point out the way, and tell us which is our circle, and where we ought to go,” he said. And then he too was silent for a while, looking about him as all were fain to do on their first arrival, finding everything so strange. There were people coming in at every moment, and some were met at the very threshold, and some went away alone with peaceful faces, and there were many groups about talking together in soft voices; but no one interrupted the other, and though so many were there, each voice was as clear as if it had spoken alone, and there was no tumult of sound as when many people assemble together in the lower world.

The little Pilgrim wondered to find herself with the woman resting upon her on one side, and the man seated silent on the other, neither having, it appeared, any guide but only herself, who knew so little. How was she to lead them in the paths which she did not know?—and she was exhausted by the agitation of her struggle with the woman whom she felt to be her charge. But in this moment of silence she had time to remember the face of the Lord, when he gave her this commission, and her heart was strengthened. The man all this time sat and watched, looking eagerly all about him, examining the faces of those who went and came: and sometimes he made a little start as if to go and speak to some one he knew; but always drew back again and looked at the little Pilgrim, as if he had said, “This is the one who will serve me best.” He spoke to her again after a while and said, “I suppose you are one of the guides that show the way.”

“No,” said the little Pilgrim, anxiously. “I know so little! It is not long since I came here. I came in the early morning—”

“Why, it is morning now. You could not come earlier than it is now. You mean yesterday.”

“I think,” said the Pilgrim, “that yesterday is the other side; there is no yesterday here.”

He looked at her with the keen look he had, to understand her the better; and then he said—

“No division of time! I think that must be monotonous. It will be strange to have no night; but I suppose one gets used to everything. I hope though there is something to do. I have always lived a very busy life. Perhaps this is just a little pause before we go—to be—to have—to get our—appointed place.”

He had an uneasy look as he said this, and looked at her with an anxious curiosity, which the little Pilgrim did not understand.

“I do not know,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I have so little experience. I have not been told of an appointed place.”

The man looked at her very strangely.

“I did not think,” he said, “that I should have found such ignorance here. Is it not well known that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of God?”

There words seemed to cause a trembling on the still air, and the woman on the other side raised herself suddenly up, clasping her hands and some of those who had just entered heard the words, and came and crowded about the little Pilgrim, some standing, some falling down upon their knee, all with their faces turned towards her. She who had always been so simple and small, so little used to teach; she was frightened with the sight of all these strangers crowding, hanging upon her lips, looking to her for knowledge. She knew not what to do or what to say. The tears came into her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, “I do not know anything about a judgment-seat. I know that our Father is here, and that when we are in trouble we are taken to him to be comforted, and that our dear Lord our Brother is among us every day, and every one may see him. Listen,” she said, standing up suddenly among them, feeling strong as an angel. “I have seen him! though I am nothing, so little as you see, and often silly, never clever as some of you are, I have seen him! and so will all of you. There is no more that I know of,” she said softly, clasping her hands. “When you see him it comes into your heart what you must do.”

And then there was a murmur of voices about her, some saying that was best, and some wondering if that were all, and some crying if he would but come now—while the little Pilgrim stood among them with her face shining, and they all looked at her, asking her to tell them more, to show them how to find him. But this was far above what she could do, for she too was not much more than a stranger, and had little strength. She would not go back a step, nor desert those who were so anxious to know, though her heart fluttered almost as it had used to do before she died, what with her longing to tell them, and knowing that she had no more to say.

But in that land it is never permitted that one who stands bravely and fails not shall be left without succour; for it is no longer needful there to stand even to death, since all dying is over, and all souls are tested. When it was seen that the little Pilgrim was thus surrounded by so many that questioned her, there suddenly came about her many others from the brightness out of which she had come, who, one going to one hand, and one to another, safely led them into the ways in which their course lay: so that the Pilgrim was free to lead forth the woman who had been given her in charge, and whose path lay in a dim, but pleasant country, outside of that light and gladness in which the Pilgrim’s home was.

“But,” she said, “you are not to fear or be cast down, because he goes likewise by these ways, and there is not a corner in all this land but he is to be seen passing by; and he will come and speak to you, and lay his hand upon you; and afterwards everything will be clear, and you will know what you are to do.”

“Stay with me till he comes—oh, stay with me,” the woman cried, clinging to her arm.

“Unless another is sent,” the little Pilgrim said. And it was nothing to her that the air was less bright there, for her mind was full of light, so that, though her heart still fluttered a little with all that had passed, she had no longing to return, nor to shorten the way, but went by the lower road sweetly, with the stranger hanging upon her, who was stronger and taller than she. Thus they went on, and the Pilgrim told her all she knew, and everything that came into her heart. And so full was she of the great things she had to say, that it was a surprise to her, and left her trembling, when suddenly the woman took away her clinging hand, and flew forward with arms out-spread and a cry of joy. The little Pilgrim stood still to see, and on the path before them was a child, coming towards them singing, with a look such as is never seen but upon the faces of children who have come here early, and who behold the face of the Father, and have never known fear nor sorrow. The woman flew and fell at the child’s feet, and he put his hand upon her, and raised her up, and called her “mother.” Then he smiled upon the little Pilgrim, and led her away.

“Now she needs me no longer,” said the Pilgrim; and it was a surprise to her, and for a moment she wondered in herself if it was known that this child should come so suddenly and her work be over; and also how she was to return again to the sweet place among the flowers from which she had come. But when she turned to look if there was any way, she found one standing by such as she had not yet seen. This was a youth, with a face just touched with manhood, as at the moment when the boy ends, when all is still fresh and pure in the heart; but he was taller and greater than a man.

“I am sent,” he said, “little sister, to take you to the Father; because you have been very faithful, and gone beyond your strength.”

And he took the little Pilgrim by the hand, and she knew he was an angel; and immediately the sweet air melted about them into light, and a hush came upon her of all thought and all sense, attending till she should receive the blessing, and her new name, and see what is beyond telling, and hear and understand.

The Little Pilgrim Goes Up Higher

(1882)

When the little Pilgrim came out of the presence of the Father, she found herself in the street of a great city. But what she saw and heard when she was with Him it is not given to the tongue of mortal to say, for it is beyond words, and beyond even thought. As the mystery of love is not to be spoken but to be felt, even in the lower earth, so, but much less, is that great mystery of the love of the Father to be expressed in sound. The little Pilgrim was very happy when she went into that sacred place, but there was a great awe upon her, and it might even be said that she was afraid; but when she came out again she feared nothing, but looked with clear eyes upon all she saw, loving them, but no more overawed by them, having seen that which is above all. When she came forth again to her common life—for it is not permitted save for those who have attained the greatest heights to dwell there—she had no longer need of any guide, but came alone, knowing where to go, and walking where it pleased her, with reverence and a great delight in seeing and knowing all that was around, but no fear. It was a great city, but it was not like the great cities which she had seen. She understood as she passed along how it was that those who had been dazzled but by a passing glance had described the walls and the pavement as gold. They were like what gold is, beautiful and clear, of a lovely colour, but softer in tone than metal ever was, and as cool and fresh to walk upon and to touch as if they had been velvet grass. The buildings were all beautiful, of every style and form that it is possible to think of, yet in great harmony, as if every man had followed his own taste, yet all had been so combined and grouped by the master architect that each individual feature enhanced the effect of the rest. Some of the houses were greater and some smaller, but all of them were rich in carvings and pictures and lovely decorations, and the effect was as if the richest materials had been employed, marbles and beautiful sculptured stone, and wood of beautiful tints, though the little Pilgrim knew that these were not like the marble and stone she had once known, but heavenly representatives of them, far better than they. There were people at work upon them, building new houses and making additions, and a great many painters painting upon them the history of the people who lived there, or of others who were worthy that commemoration. And the streets were full of pleasant sound, and of crowds going and coming, and the commotion of much business, and many things to do. And this movement, and the brightness of the air, and the wonderful things that were to be seen on every side, made the Pilgrim gay, so that she could have sung with pleasure as she went along. And all who met her smiled, and every group exchanged greetings as they passed along, all knowing each other. Many of them, as might be seen, had come there, as she did, to see the wonders of the beautiful city; and all who lived there were ready to tell them whatever they desired to know, and show them the finest houses and the greatest pictures. And this gave a feeling of holiday and pleasure which was delightful beyond description, for all the busy people about were full of sympathy with the strangers, bidding them welcome, inviting them into their houses, making the warmest fellowship. And friends were meeting continually on every side; but the Pilgrim had no sense that she was forlorn in being alone, for all were friends; and it pleased her to watch the others, and see how one turned this way and one another, every one finding something that delighted him above all other things. She herself took a great pleasure in watching a painter, who was standing upon a balcony a little way above her, painting upon a great fresco: and when he saw this he asked her to come up beside him and see his work. She asked him a great many questions about it, and why it was that he was working only at the draperies of the figures, and did not touch their faces, some of which were already finished and seemed to be looking at her, as living as she was, out of the wall, while some were merely outlined as yet. He told her that he was not a great painter to do this, or to design the great work, but that the master would come presently, who had the chief responsibility. “For we have not all the same genius,” he said, “and if I were to paint this head it would not have the gift of life as that one has; but to stand by and see him put it in, you cannot think what a happiness that is; for one knows every touch, and just what effect it will have, though one could not do it one’s self; and it is a wonder and a delight perpetual that it should be done.”

The little Pilgrim looked up at him and said, “That is very beautiful to say. And do you never wish to be like him—to make the lovely, living faces as well as the other parts?”

“Is not this lovely too?” he said; and showed her how he had just put in a billowy robe, buoyed out with the wind, and sweeping down from the shoulders of a stately figure in such free and graceful folds that she would have liked to take it in her hand and feel the silken texture; and then he told her how absorbing it was to study the mysteries of colour and the differences of light. “There is enough in that to make one happy,” he said. “It is thought by some that we will all come to the higher point with work and thought: but that is not my feeling; and whether it is so or not what does it matter, for our Father makes no difference: and all of us are necessary to everything that is done: and it is almost more delight to see the master do it than to do it with one’s own hand. For one thing, your own work may rejoice you in your heart, but always with a little trembling because it is never so perfect as you would have it—whereas in your master’s work you have full content, because his idea goes beyond yours, and as he makes every touch you can feel ‘That is right—that is complete—that is just as it ought to be.’ Do you understand what I mean?” he said, turning to her with a smile.

“I understand it perfectly,” she cried, clasping her hands together with the delight of accord. “Don’t you think that is one of the things that are so happy here? you understand at half a word.”

“Not everybody,” he said, and smiled upon her like a brother; “for we are not all alike even here.”

“Were you a painter?” she said, “in—in the other—”

“In the old times. I was one of those that strove for the mastery, and sometimes grudged—We remember these things at times,” he said gravely, “to make us more aware of the blessedness of being content.”

“It is long since then?” she said with some wistfulness; upon which he smiled again.

“So long,” he said, “that we have worn out most of our links to the world below. We have all come away, and those who were after us for generations. But you are a new-comer.”

“And are they all with you? are you all—together? do you live—as in the old time?”

Upon this the painter smiled, but not so brightly as before.

“Not as in the old time,” he said, “nor are they all here. Some are still upon the way, and of some we have no certainty, only news from time to time. The angels are very good to us. They never miss an occasion to bring us news; for they go everywhere, you know.”

“Yes,” said the little Pilgrim, though indeed she had not known it till now; but it seemed to her as if it had come to her mind by nature and she had never needed to be told.

“They are so tender-hearted,” the painter said; “and more than that, they are very curious about men and women. They have known it all from the beginning, and it is a wonder to them. There is a friend of mine, an angel, who is more wise in men’s hearts than any one I know; and yet he will say to me sometimes, ‘I do not understand you—you are wonderful.’ They like to find out all we are thinking. It is an endless pleasure to them, just as it is to some of us to watch the people in the other worlds.”

“Do you mean—where we have come from?” said the little Pilgrim.

“Not always there. We in this city have been long separated from that country, for all that we love are out of it.”

“But not here?” the little Pilgrim cried again, with a little sorrow—a pang that she knew was going to be put away—in her heart.

“But coming! coming!” said the painter, cheerfully; “and some were here before us, and some have arrived since. They are everywhere.”

“But some in trouble—some in trouble!” she cried, with the tears in her eyes.

“We suppose so,” he said, gravely; “for some are in that place which once was called among us the place of despair.”

“You mean—” and though the little Pilgrim had been made free of fear, at that word which she would not speak, she trembled, and the light grew dim in her eyes.

“Well!” said her new friend, “and what then? The Father sees through and through it as he does here; they cannot escape him: so that there is Love near them always. I have a son,” he said, then sighed a little, but smiled again, “who is there.”

The little Pilgrim at this clasped her hands with a piteous cry.

“Nay, nay,” he said, “little sister; my friend I was telling you of, the angel, brought me news of him just now. Indeed there was news of him through all the city. Did you not hear all the bells ringing? But perhaps that was before you came. The angels who know me best came one after another to tell me, and our Lord himself came to wish me joy. My son had found the way.”

The little Pilgrim did not understand this, and almost thought that the painter must be mistaken or dreaming. She looked at him very anxiously and said—

“I thought that those unhappy—never came out any more.”

The painter smiled at her in return, and said—

“Had you children in the old time?”

She paused a little before she replied.

“I had children in love,” she said, “but none that were born mine.”

“It is the same,” he said, “it is the same; and if one of them had sinned against you, injured you, done wrong in any way, would you have cast him off, or what would you have done?”

“Oh!” said the little Pilgrim again, with a vivid light of memory coming into her face, which showed she had no need to think of this as a thing that might have happened, but knew. “I brought him home. I nursed him well again. I prayed for him night and day. Did you say cast him off? when he had most need of me? then I never could have loved him,” she cried.

The painter nodded his head, and his hand with the pencil in it, for he had turned from his picture to look at her.

“Then you think you love better than our Father?” he said; and turned to his work, and painted a new fold in the robe, which looked as if a soft air had suddenly blown into it, and not the touch of a skilful hand.

This made the Pilgrim tremble, as though in her ignorance she had done something wrong. After that there came a great joy into her heart. “Oh, how happy you have made me!” she cried. “I am glad with all my heart for you and your son—” Then she paused a little and added, “But you said he was still there.”

“It is true; for the land of darkness is very confusing, they tell me, for want of the true light, and our dear friends the angels are not permitted to help: but if one follows them, that shows the way. You may be in that land yet on your way hither. It was very hard to understand at first,” said the painter; “there are some sketches I could show you. No one has ever made a picture of it, though many have tried; but I could show you some sketches—if you wish to see.”

To this the little Pilgrim’s look was so plain an answer that the painter laid down his pallet and his brush, and left his work, to show them to her as he had promised. They went down from the balcony and along the street until they came to one of the great palaces, where many were coming and going. Here they walked through some vast halls, where students were working at easels, doing every kind of beautiful work: some painting pictures, some preparing drawings, planning houses and palaces. The Pilgrim would have liked to pause at every moment to see one lovely thing or another; but the painter walked on steadily till he came to a room which was full of sketches, some of them like pictures in little, with many figures—some of them only a representation of a flower, or the wing of a bird. “These are all the master’s,” he said; “sometimes the sight of them will be enough to put something great into the mind of another. In this corner are the sketches I told you of.” There were two of them hanging together upon the wall, and at first it seemed to the little Pilgrim as if they represented the flames and fire of which she had read, and this made her shudder for the moment. But then she saw that it was a red light like a stormy sunset, with masses of clouds in the sky, and a low sun very fiery and dazzling, which no doubt to a hasty glance must have looked, with its dark shadows and high lurid lights, like the fires of the bottomless pit. But when you looked down you saw the reality what it was. The country that lay beneath was full of tropical foliage, but with many stretches of sand and dry plains, and in the foreground was a town, that looked very prosperous and crowded, though the figures were very minute, the subject being so great; but no one to see it would have taken it for anything but a busy and wealthy place, in a thunderous atmosphere, with a storm coming on. In the next there was a section of a street with a great banqueting hall open to the view, and many people sitting about the table. You could see that there was a great deal of laughter and conversation going on, some very noisy groups, but others that sat more quietly in corners and conversed, and some who sang, and every kind of entertainment. The little Pilgrim was very much astonished to see this, and turned to the painter, who answered her directly, though she had not spoken. “We used to think differently once. There are some who are there and do not know it. They think only it is the old life over again, but always worse, and they are led on in the ways of evil; but they do not feel the punishment until they begin to find out where they are and to struggle, and wish for other things.”

The little Pilgrim felt her heart beat very wildly while she looked at this, and she thought upon the rich man in the parable, who, though he was himself in torment, prayed that his brother might be saved, and she said to herself, “Our dear Lord would never leave him there who could think of his brother when he was himself in such a strait.” And when she looked at the painter he smiled upon her, and nodded his head. Then he led her to the other corner of the room where there were other pictures. One of them was of a party seated round a table and an angel looking on. The angel had the aspect of a traveller, as if he were passing quickly by and had but paused a moment to look, and one of the men glancing up suddenly saw him. The picture was dim, but the startled look upon this man’s face, and the sorrow on the angel’s, appeared out of the misty background with such truth that the tears came into the little Pilgrim’s eyes, and she said in her heart, “Oh that I could go to him and help him!” The other sketches were dimmer and dimmer. You seemed to see out of the darkness, gleaming lights, and companies of revellers, out of which here and there was one trying to escape. And then the wide plains in the night, and the white vision of the angel in the distance, and here and there by different paths a fugitive striving to follow. “Oh, sir,” said the little Pilgrim, “how did you learn to do it? You have never been there.”

“It was the master, not I; and I cannot tell you if he has ever been there. When the Father has given you that gift, you can go to many places, without leaving the one where you are. And then he has heard what the angels say.”

“And will they all get safe at the last? and even that great spirit, he that fell from heaven—”

The painter shook his head and said, “It is not permitted to you and me to know such great things. Perhaps the wise will tell you if you ask them: but for me I ask the Father in my heart and listen to what he says.”

“That is best!” the little Pilgrim said; and she asked the Father in her heart: and there came all over her such a glow of warmth and happiness that her soul was satisfied. She looked in the painter’s face and laughed for joy. And he put out his hands as if welcoming some one, and his countenance shone; and he said—

“My son had a great gift. He was a master born, though it was not given to me. He shall paint it all for us so that the heart shall rejoice; and you will come again and see.”

After that it happened to the little Pilgrim to enter into another great palace where there were many people reading, and some sitting at their desks and writing, and some consulting together, with many great volumes stretched out open upon the tables. One of these who was seated alone looked up as she paused wondering at him, and smiled as every one did, and greeted her with such a friendly tone that the Pilgrim, who always had a great desire to know, came nearer to him and looked at the book, then begged his pardon, and said she did not know that books were needed here. And then he told her that he was one of the historians of the city where all the records of the world were kept, and that it was his business to work upon the great history, and to show what was the meaning of the Father in everything that had happened, and how each event came in its right place.

“And do you get it out of books?” she asked; for she was not learned, nor wise, and knew but little, though she always loved to know.

“The books are the records,” he said; “and there are many here that were never known to us in the old days; for the angels love to look into these things, and they can tell us much, for they saw it; and in the great books they have kept there is much put down that was never in the books we wrote, for then we did not know. We found out about the kings and the state, and tried to understand what great purposes they were serving; but even these we did not know, for those purposes were too great for us, not knowing the end from the beginning, and the hearts of men were too great for us. We comprehended the evil sometimes, but never fathomed the good. And how could we know the lesser things which were working out God’s way? for some of these even the angels did not know; and it has happened to me that our Lord himself has come in sometimes to tell me of one that none of us had discovered.”

“Oh,” said the little Pilgrim, with tears in her eyes, “I should like to have been that one!—that was not known even to the angels, but only to Himself!”

The historian smiled. “It was my brother,” he said.

The Pilgrim looked at him with great wonder. “Your brother, and you did not know him!”

And then he turned over the pages and showed her where the story was.

“You know,” he said, “that we who live here are not of your time, but have lived and lived here till the old life is far away and like a dream. There were great tumults and fightings in our time, and it was settled by the prince of the place that our town was to be abandoned, and all the people left to the mercy of an enemy who had no mercy. But every day as he rode out he saw at one door a child, a little fair boy, who sat on the steps, and sang his little song like a bird. This child was never afraid of anything—when the horses pranced past him, and the troopers pushed him aside, he looked up into their faces and smiled. And when he had anything, a piece of bread, or an apple, or a plaything, he shared it with his playmates; and his little face, and his pretty voice, and all his pleasant ways, made that corner bright. He was like a flower growing there; everybody smiled that saw him.”

“I have seen such a child,” the little Pilgrim said.

“But we made no account of him,” said the historian. “The Lord of the place came past him every day, and always saw him singing in the sun by his father’s door. And it was a wonder then, and it has been a wonder ever since, why, having resolved upon it, that prince did not abandon the town, which would have changed all his fortune after. Much had been made clear to me since I began to study, but not this: till the Lord himself came to me and told me. The prince looked at the child till he loved him, and he reflected how many children there were like this that would be murdered, or starved to death, and he could not give up the little singing boy to the sword. So he remained; and the town was saved, and he became a great king. It was so secret that even the angels did not know it. But without that child the history would not have been complete.”

“And is he here?” the little Pilgrim said.

“Ah,” said the historian, “that is more strange still; for that which saved him was also to his harm. He is not here. He is Elsewhere.”

The little Pilgrim’s face grew sad; but then she remembered what she had been told.

“But you know,” she said, “that he is coming?”

“I know that our Father will never forsake him, and that everything that is being accomplished in him is well.”

“Is it well to suffer? Is it well to live in that dark stormy country?
Oh, that they were all here, and happy like you!”

He shook his head a little and said—

“It was a long time before I got here; and as for suffering that matters little. You get experience by it. You are more accomplished and fit for greater work in the end. It is not for nothing that we are permitted to wander; and sometimes one goes to the edge of despair—”

She looked at him with such wondering eyes that he answered her without a word.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been there.”

And then it seemed to her that there was something in his eyes which she had not remarked before. Not only the great content that was everywhere, but a deeper light, and the air of a judge who knew both good and evil, and could see both sides, and understood all, both to love and to hate.

“Little sister,” he said, “you have never wandered far; it is not needful for such as you. Love teaches you, and you need no more; but when we have to be trained for an office like this, to make the way of the Lord clear through all the generations, reason is that we should see everything, and learn all that man is and can be. These things are too deep for us; we stumble on, and know not till after. But now to me it is all clear.”

She looked at him again and again while he spoke, and it seemed to her that she saw in him such great knowledge and tenderness as made her glad; and how he could understand the follies that men had done, and fathom what real meaning was in them, and disentangle all the threads. He smiled as she gazed at him, and answered as if she had spoken.

“What was evil perishes, and what was good remains; almost everywhere there is a little good. We could not understand all if we had not seen all and shared all.”

“And the punishment too,” she said, wondering more and more.

He smiled so joyfully that it was like laughter.

“Pain is a great angel,” he said. “The reason we hated him in the old days was because he tended to death and decay; but when it is towards life he leads, we fear him no more. The welcome thing of all in the land of darkness is when you see him first and know who he is; for by this you are aware that you have found the way.”

The little Pilgrim did nothing but question with her anxious eyes, for this was such a wonder to her, and she could not understand. But he only sat musing with a smile over the things he remembered. And at last he said—

“If this is so interesting to you, you shall read it all in another place, in the room where we have laid up our own experiences, in order to serve for the history afterwards. But we are still busy upon the work of the earth. There is always something new to be discovered. And it is essential for the whole world that the chronicle should be full. I am in great joy because it was but just now that our Lord told me about that child. Everything was imperfect without him, but now it is clear.”

“You mean your brother? And you are happy though you are not sure if he is happy?” the little Pilgrim said.

“It is not to be happy that we live,” said he; and then, “We are all happy so soon as we have found the way.”

She would have asked him more, but that he was called to a consultation with some others of his kind, and had to leave her, waving his hand to her with a tender kindness which went to her heart. She looked after him with great respect, scarcely knowing why; but it seemed to her that a man who had been in the land of darkness, and made his way out of it, must be more wonderful than any other. She looked round for a little upon the great library, full of all the books that had ever been written, and where people were doing their work, examining and reading and making extracts, every one with looks of so much interest, that she almost envied them—though it was a generous delight in seeing people so happy in their occupation, and a desire to associate herself somehow in it, rather than any grudging of their satisfaction, that was in her mind. She went about all the courts of this palace alone, and everywhere saw the same work going on, and everywhere met the same kind looks. Even when the greatest of all looked up from his work and saw her, he would give her a friendly greeting and a smile; and nobody was too wise to lend an ear to the little visitor, or to answer her questions. And this was how it was that she began to talk to another, who was seated at a great table with many more, and who drew her to him by something that was in his looks, though she could not have told what it was. It was not that he was kinder than the rest, for they were all kind. She stood by him a little, and saw how he worked and would take something from one book and something from another, putting them ready for use. And it did not seem any trouble to do this work, but only pleasure, and the very pen in his hand was like a winged thing, as if it loved to write. When he saw her watching him, he looked up and showed her the beautiful book out of which he was copying, which was all illuminated with lovely pictures.

“This is one of the volumes of the great history,” he said. “There are some things in it which are needed for another, and it is a pleasure to work at it. If you will come here you will be able to see the page while I write.”

Then the little Pilgrim asked him some questions about the pictures, and he answered her, describing and explaining them; for they were in the middle of the history, and she did not understand what it was. When she said, “I ought not to trouble you, for you are busy,” he laughed so kindly that she laughed too for pleasure. And he said—

“There is no trouble here. When we are not allowed to work, as sometimes happens, that makes us not quite so happy, but it is very seldom that it happens so.”

“Is it for punishment?” she said.

And then he laughed out with a sound which made all the others look up smiling; and if they had not all looked so tenderly at her, as at a child who has made such a mistake as it is pretty for the child to make, she would have feared she had said something wrong; but she only laughed at herself too, and blushed a little, knowing that she was not wise: and to put her at her ease again, he turned the leaf and showed her other pictures, and the story which went with them, from which he was copying something. And he said—

“This is for another book, to show how the grace of the Father was beautiful in some homes and families. It is not the great history, but connected with it; and there are many who love that better than the story which is more great.”

Then the Pilgrim looked in his face and said—

“What I want most is, to know about your homes here.”

“It is all home here,” he said, and smiled; and then, as he met her wistful looks, he went on to tell her that he and his brothers were not always there. “We have all our occupations,” he said, “and sometimes I am sent to inquire into facts that have happened, of which the record is not clear; for we must omit nothing; and sometimes we are told to rest and take in new strength; and sometimes—”

“But oh, forgive me,” cried the little Pilgrim, “you had some who were more dear to you than all the world in the old time?”

And the others all looked up again at the question, and looked at her with tender eyes, and said to the man whom she questioned, “Speak!”

He made a little pause before he spoke, and he looked at one here and there, and called to them—

“Patience, brother,” and “Courage, brother.” And then he said, “Those whom we loved best are nearly all with us; but some have not yet come.”

“Oh,” said the little Pilgrim, “but how then do you bear it, to be parted so long—so long?”

Then one of those to whom the first speaker had called out “Patience” rose, and came to her smiling; and he said—

“I think every hour that perhaps she will come, and the joy will be so great, that thinking of that makes the waiting short: and nothing here is long, for it never ends; and it will be so wonderful to hear her tell how the Father has guided her, that it will be a delight to us all; and she will be able to explain many things, not only for us, but for all; and we love each other so that this separation is as nothing in comparison with what is to come.”

It was beautiful to hear this, but it was not what the little Pilgrim expected, for she thought they would have told her of the homes to which they all returned when their work was over, and a life which was like the life of the old time; but of this they said nothing, only looking at her with smiling eyes, as at the curious questions of a child. And there were many other things she would have asked, but refrained when she looked at them, feeling as if she did not yet understand; when one of them broke forth suddenly in a louder voice, and said—

“The little sister knows only the little language and the beginning of days. She has not learned the mysteries, and what Love is, and what life is.”

And another cried, “It is sweet to hear it again;” and they all gathered round her with tender looks, and began to talk to each other, and tell her, as men will tell of the games of their childhood, of things that happened, which were half-forgotten, in the old time.

After this the little Pilgrim went out again into the beautiful city, feeling in her heart that everything was a mystery, and that the days would never be long enough to learn all that had yet to be learned, but knowing now that this too was the little language, and pleased with the sweet thought of so much that was to come. For one had whispered to her as she went out that the new tongue, and every explanation, as she was ready for it, would come to her through one of those whom she loved best, which is the usage of that country. And when the stranger has no one there that is very dear, then it is an angel who teaches the greater language, and that is what happens often to the children who are brought up in that heavenly place. When she reached the street again, she was so pleased with this thought that it went out of her mind to ask her way to the great library, where she was to read the story of the historian’s journey through the land of darkness; indeed she forgot that land altogether, and thought only of what was around her in the great city, which is beyond everything that eye has seen, or that ear has heard, or that it has entered into the imagination to conceive. And now it seemed to her that she was much more familiar with the looks of the people, and could distinguish between those who belonged to the city and those who were visitors like herself; and also could tell which they were who had entered into the mysteries of the kingdom, and which were, like herself, only acquainted with the beginning of days. And it came to her mind, she could not tell how, that it was best not to ask questions, but to wait until the beloved one should come, who would teach her the first words. For in the mean time she did not feel at all impatient or disturbed by her want of knowledge, but laughed a little at herself to suppose that she could find out everything, and went on looking round her, and saying a word to every one she met, and enjoying the holiday looks of all the strangers, and the sense she had in her heart of holiday too. She was walking on in this pleasant way, when she heard a sound that was like silver trumpets, and saw the crowd turn towards an open space in which all the beautiful buildings were shaded with fine trees, and flowers were springing at the very edge of the pavements. The strangers all hastened along to hear what it was, and she with them, and some also of the people of the place. And as the little Pilgrim found herself walking by a woman who was of these last, she asked her what it was.

And the woman told her it was a poet who had come to say to them what had been revealed to him, and that the two with the silver trumpets were angels of the musicians’ order, whose office it was to proclaim everything that was new, that the people should know. And many of those who were at work in the palaces came out and joined the crowd, and the painter who had showed the little Pilgrim his picture, and many whose faces she began to be acquainted with. The poet stood up upon a beautiful pedestal all sculptured in stone, and with wreaths of living flowers hung upon it—and when the crowd had gathered in front of him, he began his poem. He told them that it was not about this land, or anything that happened in it, which they knew as he did, but that it was a story of the old time, when men were walking in darkness, and when no one knew the true meaning even of what he himself did, but had to go on as if blindly, stumbling and groping with their hands. And “Oh, brethren,” he said, “though all is more beautiful and joyful here where we know, yet to remember the days when we knew not, and the ways when all was uncertain, and the end could not be distinguished from the beginning, is sweet and dear; and that which was done in the dim twilight should be celebrated in the day; and our Father himself loves to hear of those who, having not seen, loved, and who learned without any teacher, and followed the light, though they did not understand.”

And then he told them the story of one who had lived in the old time; and in that air, which seemed to be made of sunshine, and amid all those stately palaces, he described to them the little earth which they had left behind—the skies that were covered with clouds, and the ways that were so rough and stony, and the cruelty of the oppressor, and the cries of those that were oppressed. And he showed the sickness and the troubles, and the sorrow and danger; and how Death stalked about, and tore heart from heart; and how sometimes the strongest would fail, and the truest fall under the power of a lie, and the tenderest forget to be kind; and how evil things lurked in every corner to beguile the dwellers there; and how the days were short and the nights dark, and life so little that by the time a man had learned something it was his hour to die. “What can a soul do that is born there?” he cried; “for war is there and fighting, and perplexity and darkness; and no man knows if that which he does will be for good or evil, or can tell which is the best way, or know the end from the beginning; and those he loves the most are a mystery to him, and their thoughts beyond his reach. And clouds are between him and the Father, and he is deceived with false gods and false teachers, who make him to love a lie.” The people who were listening held their breath, and a shadow like a cloud fell on them, and they remembered and knew that it was true. But the next moment their hearts rebelled, and one and another would have spoken, and the little Pilgrim herself had almost cried out and made her plea for the dear earth which she loved; when he suddenly threw forth his voice again like a great song. “Oh, dear mother earth,” he cried; “oh, little world and great, forgive thy son! for lovely thou art and dear, and the sun of God shines upon thee, and the sweet dews fall; and there were we born, and loved and died, and are come hence to bless the Father and the Son. For in no other world, though they are so vast, is it given to any to know the Lord in the darkness, and follow him groping, and make way through sin and death, and overcome the evil, and conquer in his name.” At which there was a great sound of weeping and of triumph, and the little Pilgrim could not contain herself, but cried out too in joy as if for a deliverance. And then the poet told his tale. And as he told them of the man who was poor and sorrowful and alone, and how he loved and was not loved again, and trusted and was betrayed, and was tempted and drawn into the darkness, so that it seemed as if he must perish; but when hope was almost gone, turned again from the edge of despair, and confronted all his enemies, and fought and conquered—the people followed every word with great outcries of love and pity and wonder. For each one as he listened remembered his own career and that of his brethren in the old life, and admired to think that all the evil was past, and wondered that out of such tribulation and through so many dangers all were safe and blessed here. And there were others that were not of them, who listened, some seated at the windows of the palaces and some standing in the great square—people who were not like the others, whose bearing was more majestic, and who looked upon the crowd all smiling and weeping, with wonder and interest, but had no knowledge of the cause, and listened as it were to a tale that is told. The poet and his audience were as one, and at every period of the story there was a deep breathing and pause, and every one looked at his neighbour, and some grasped each other’s hands as they remembered all that was in the past; but the strangers listened and gazed and observed all, as those who listen and are instructed in something beyond their knowledge. The little Pilgrim stood all this time not knowing where she was, so intent was she upon the tale; and as she listened it seemed to her that all her own life was rolling out before her, and she remembered the things that had been, and perceived how all had been shaped and guided, and trembled a little for the brother who was in danger, yet knew that all would be well.

The woman who had been at her side listened too with all her heart, saying to herself, as she stood in the crowd, “He has left nothing out! The little days they were so short, and the skies would change all in a moment and one’s heart with them. How he brings it all back!” And she put up her hand to dry away a tear from her eyes, though her face all the time was shining with the recollection. The little Pilgrim was glad to be by the side of a woman after talking with so many men, and she put out her hand and touched the cloak that this lady wore, and which was white and of the most beautiful texture, with gold threads woven in it, or something that looked like gold.

“Do you like,” she said, “to think of the old time?”

The woman turned and looked down upon her, for she was tall and stately, and immediately took the hand of the little Pilgrim into hers, and held it without answering, till the poet had ended and come down from the place where he had been standing. He came straight through the crowd to where this lady stood, and said something to her. “You did well to tell me,” looking at her with love in his eyes—not the tender sweetness of all those kind looks around, but the love that is for one. The little Pilgrim looked at them with her heart beating, and was very glad for them, and happy in herself; for she had not seen this love before since she came into the city, and it had troubled her to think that perhaps it did not exist any more. “I am glad,” the lady said, and gave him her other hand; “but here is a little sister who asks me something, and I must answer her. I think she has but newly come.”

“She has a face full of the morning,” the poet said. It did the little Pilgrim good to feel the touch of the warm, soft hand; and she was not afraid, but lifted her eyes and spoke to the lady and to the poet. “It is beautiful what you said to us. Sometimes in the old time we used to look up to the beautiful skies and wonder what there was above the clouds; but we never thought that up here in this great city you would be thinking of what we were doing, and making beautiful poems all about us. We thought that you would sing wonderful psalms, and talk of things high, high above us.”

“The little sister does not know what the meaning of the earth is,” the poet said. “It is but a little speck, but it is the centre of all. Let her walk with us, and we will go home, and you will tell her, Ama, for I love to hear you talk.”

“Will you come with us?” the lady said.

And the little Pilgrim’s heart leaped up in her, to think she was now going to see a home in this wonderful city; and they went along, hand in hand, and though they were three together, and many were coming and going, there was no difficulty, for every one made way for them. And there was a little murmur of pleasure as the poet passed, and those who had heard his poem made obeisance to him, and thanked him, and thanked the Father for him that he was able to show them so many beautiful things. And they walked along the street which was shining with colour, and saw as they passed how the master painter had come to his work, and was standing upon the balcony where the little Pilgrim had been, and bringing out of the wall, under his hand, faces which were full of life, and which seemed to spring forth as if they had been hidden there. “Let us wait a little and see him working,” the poet said; and all round about the people stopped on their way, and there was a soft cry of pleasure and praise all through the beautiful street. And the painter with whom the little Pilgrim had talked before came, and stood behind her as if he had been an old friend, and called out to her at every new touch to mark how this and that was done. She did not understand as he did, but she saw how beautiful it was, and she was glad to have seen the great painter, as she had been glad to hear the great poet. It seemed to the little Pilgrim as if everything happened well for her, and that no one had ever been so blessed before. And to make it all more sweet, this new friend, this great and sweet lady, always held her hand, and pressed it softly when something more lovely appeared; and even the pictured faces on the wall seemed to beam upon her, as they came out one by one like the stars in the sky. Then the three went on again, and passed by many more beautiful palaces, and great streets leading away into the light, till you could see no further; and they met with bands of singers who sang so sweetly that the heart seemed to leap out of the Pilgrim’s breast to meet with them, for above all things this was what she had loved most. And out of one of the palaces there came such glorious music that everything she had seen and heard before seemed as nothing in comparison. And amid all these delights they went on and on, but without wearying, till they came out of the streets into lovely walks and alleys, and made their way to the banks of a great river, which seemed to sing, too, a soft melody of its own.

And here there were some fair houses surrounded by gardens and flowers that grew everywhere, and the doors were all open, and within everything was lovely and still, and ready for rest if you were weary. The little Pilgrim was not weary; but the lady placed her upon a couch in the porch, where the pillars and the roof were all formed of interlacing plants and flowers; and there they sat with her, and talked, and explained to her many things. They told her that the earth though so small was the place in all the world to which the thoughts of those above were turned. “And not only of us who have lived there, but of all our brothers in the other worlds; for we are the race which the Father has chosen to be the example. In every age there is one that is the scene of the struggle and the victory, and it is for this reason that the chronicles are made, and that we are all placed here to gather the meaning of what has been done among men. And I am one of those,” the lady said, “that go back to the dear earth and gather up the tale of what our little brethren are doing. I have not to succour like some others, but only to see and bring the news; and he makes them into great poems, as you have heard; and sometimes the master painter will take one and make of it a picture; and there is nothing that is so delightful to us as when we can bring back the histories of beautiful things.”

“But, oh,” said the little Pilgrim, “what can there be on earth so beautiful as the meanest thing that is here?”

Then they both smiled upon her and said, “It is more beautiful than the most beautiful thing here to see how, under the low skies and in the short days, a soul will turn to our Father. And sometimes,” said Ama, “when I am watching, one will wander and stray, and be led into the dark till my heart is sick; then come back and make me glad. Sometimes I cry out within myself to the Father, and say, ‘O my Father, it is enough!’ and it will seem to me that it is not possible to stand by and see his destruction. And then while you are gazing, while you are crying, he will recover and return, and go on again. And to the angels it is more wonderful than to us, for they have never lived there. And all the other worlds are eager to hear what we can tell them. For no one knows except the Father how the battle will turn, or when it will all be accomplished; and there are some who tremble for our little brethren. For to look down and see how little light there is, and how no one knows what may happen to him next, makes them afraid who never were there.”

The little Pilgrim listened with an intent face, clasping her hands, and said—

“But it never could be that our Father should be overcome by evil. Is not that known in all the worlds?”

Then the lady turned and kissed her; and the poet broke forth in singing, and said, “Faith is more heavenly than heaven; it is more beautiful than the angels. It is the only voice that can answer to our Father. We praise him, we glorify him, we love his name; but there is but one response to him through all the worlds, and that is the cry of the little brothers, who see nothing and know nothing, but believe that he will never fail.”

At this the little Pilgrim wept, for her heart was touched; but she said—

“We are not so ignorant; for we have our Lord who is our Brother, and he teaches us all that we require to know.”

Upon this the poet rose and lifted up his hands and sang again a great song; it was in the other language which the little Pilgrim still did not understand, but she could make out that it sounded like a great proclamation that He was wise as he was good, and called upon all to see that the Lord had chosen the only way: and the sound of the poet’s voice was like a great trumpet sounding bold and sweet, as if to tell this to those who were far away.

“For you must know,” said the Lady Ama, who all the time held the Pilgrim’s hand, “that it is permitted to all to judge according to the wisdom that has been given them. And there are some who think that our dear Lord might have found another way, and that wait, sometimes with trembling, lest he should fail; but not among us who have lived on earth, for we know. And it is our work to show to all the worlds that his way never fails, and how wonderful it is, and beautiful above all that heart has conceived. And thus we justify the ways of God, who is our Father. But in the other worlds there are many who will continue to fear until the history of the earth is all ended and the chronicles are made complete.”

“And will that be long?” the little Pilgrim cried, feeling in her heart that she would like to go to all the worlds and tell them of our Lord, and of his love, and how the thought of him makes you strong; and it troubled her a little to hear her friends speak of the low skies, and the short days, and the dimness of that dear country which she had left behind, in which there were so many still whom she loved.

Upon this Ama shook her head, and said that of that day no one knew, not even our Lord, but only the Father; and then she smiled and answered the little Pilgrim’s thought. “When we go back,” she said, “it is not as when we lived there; for now we see all the dangers of it and the mysteries which we did not see before. It was by the Father’s dear love that we did not see what was around us and about us while we lived there, for then our hearts would have fainted; and that makes us wonder now that any one endures to the end.”

“You are a great deal wiser than I am,” said the little Pilgrim; “but, though our hearts had fainted, how could we have been overcome? For He was on our side.”

At this neither of them made any reply at first, but looked at her; and at length the poet said that she had brought many thoughts back to his mind, and how he had himself been almost worsted when one like her came to him and gave strength to his soul. “For that He was on our side was the only thing she knew,” he said, “and all that could be learned or discovered was not worthy of naming beside it. And this I must tell when next I speak to the people, and how our little sister brought it to my mind.”

And then they paused from this discourse, and the little Pilgrim looked round upon the beautiful houses and the fair gardens, and she said—

“You live here? and do you come home at night?—but I do not mean at night, I mean when your work is done. And are they poets like you that dwell all about in these pleasant places, and the—”

She would have said the children, but stopped, not knowing if perhaps it might be unkind to speak of the children when she saw none there.

Upon this the lady smiled once more, and said—

“The door stands open always, so that no one is shut out, and the children come and go when they will. They are children no longer, and they have their appointed work like him and me.”

“And you are always among those you love?” the Pilgrim said; upon which they smiled again and said, “We all love each other;” and the lady held her hand in both of hers, and caressed it, and softly laughed and said, “You know only the little language. When you have been taught the other you will learn many beautiful things.”

She rested for some time after this, and talked much with her new friends; and then there came into the heart of the little Pilgrim a longing to go to the place which was appointed for her, and which was her home, and to do the work which had been given her to do. And when the lady saw this she rose and said that she would accompany her a little upon her way. But the poet bid her farewell and remained under the porch, with the green branches shading him, and the flowers twining round the pillars, and the open door of this beautiful house behind him. When she looked back upon him he waved his hand to her as if bidding her God-speed, and the lady by her side looked back too and waved her hand, and the little Pilgrim felt tears of happiness come to her eyes; for she had been wondering with a little disappointment to see that the people in the city, except those who were strangers, were chiefly alone, and not like those in the old world where the husband and wife go together. It consoled her to see again two who were one. The lady pressed her hand in answer to her thought, and bade her pause a moment and look back into the city as they passed the end of the great street out of which they came. And then the Pilgrim was more and more consoled, for she saw many who had before been alone now walking together hand in hand.

“It is not as it was,” Ama said. “For all of us have work to do which is needed for the worlds, and it is no longer needful that one should sit at home while the other goes forth; for our work is not for our life as of old, or for ourselves, but for the Father who has given us so great a trust. And, little sister, you must know that though we are not so great as the angels, nor as many that come to visit us from the other worlds, yet we are nearer to him. For we are in his secret, and it is ours to make it clear.”

The little Pilgrim’s heart was very full to hear this; but she said—

“I was never clever, nor knew much. It is better for me to go away to my little border-land, and help the strangers who do not know the way.”

“Whatever is your work is the best,” the lady said; “but though you are so little you are in the Father’s secret too, for it is nature to you to know what the others cannot be sure of, that we must have the victory at the last: so that we have this between us, the Father and we. And though all are his children, we are of the kindred of God, because of our Lord who is our Brother.” And then the Lady Ama kissed her, and bade her when she returned to the great city, either for rest or for love, or because the Father sent for her, that she should come to the house by the river. “For we are friends for ever,” she said, and so threw her white veil over her head, and was gone upon her mission, whither the little Pilgrim did not know.

And now she found herself at a distance from the great city, which shone in the light with its beautiful towers, and roofs, and all its monuments, softly fringed with trees, and set in a heavenly firmament. And the Pilgrim thought of those words that described this lovely place as a bride adorned for her husband, and did not wonder at him who had said that her streets were of gold and her gates of pearl, because gold and pearls and precious jewels were as nothing to the glory and the beauty of her. The little Pilgrim was glad to have seen these wonderful things, and her mind was like a cup running over with almost more than it could contain. It seemed to her that there never could be a time when she should want for wonder and interest and delight, so long as she had this to think of. Yet she was not sorry to turn her back upon the beautiful city, but went on her way singing in unutterable content, and thinking over what the lady had said, that we were in God’s secret, more than all the great worlds above and even the angels, because of knowing how it is that in darkness and doubt, and without any open vision, a man may still keep the right way. The path lay along the bank of the river which flowed beside her and made the air full of music, and a soft air blew across the running stream and breathed in her face and refreshed her, and the birds sang in all the trees. And as she passed through the villages the people came out to meet her, and asked of her if she had come from the city, and what she had seen there. And everywhere she found friends, and kind voices that gave her greeting. But some would ask her why she still spoke the little language, though it was sweet to their ears; and others when they heard it hastened to call from the houses and the fields some among them who knew the other tongue but a little, and who came and crowded round the little Pilgrim, and asked her many questions both about the things she had been seeing and about the old time. And she perceived that the village folk were a simple folk, not learned and wise like those she had left; and that though they lived within sight of the great city, and showed every stranger the beautiful view of it, and the glory of its towers, yet few among them had travelled there; for they were so content with their fields, and their river, and the shade of their trees, and the birds singing, and their simple life, that they wanted no change; though it pleased them to receive the little Pilgrim, and they brought her into their villages rejoicing, and called every one to see her. And they told her that they had all been poor and laboured hard in the old time, and had never rested; so that now it was the Father’s good pleasure that they should enjoy great peace and consolation among the fresh-breathing fields and on the riverside, so that there were many who even now had little occupation except to think of the Father’s goodness, and to rest. And they told her how the Lord himself would come among them, and sit down under a tree, and tell them one of his parables, and make them all more happy than words could say; and how sometimes he would send one out of the beautiful city, with a poem or tale to say to them, and bands of lovely music, more lovely than anything beside, except the sound of the Lord’s own voice. “And what is more wonderful, the angels themselves come often and listen to us,” they said, “when we begin to talk and remind each other of the old time, and how we suffered heat and cold, and were bowed down with labour, and bending over the soil, and how sometimes the harvest would fail us, and sometimes we had not bread, and sometimes would hush the children to sleep because there was nothing to give them; and how we grew old and weary, and still worked on and on.” “We are those who were old,” a number of them called out to her, with a murmuring sound of laughter, one looking over another’s shoulder. And one woman said, “The angels say to us, ‘Did you never think the Father had forsaken you and the Lord forgotten you?’” And all the rest answered as in a chorus, “There were moments that we thought this; but all the time we knew that it could not be.” “And the angels wonder at us,” said another. All this they said, crowding one before another, every one anxious to say something, and sometimes speaking together, but always in accord. And then there was a sound of laughter and pleasure, both at the strange thought that the Lord could have forgotten them, and at the wonder of the angels over their simple tales. And immediately they began to remind each other, and say, “Do you remember?” and they told the little Pilgrim a hundred tales of the hardships and troubles they had known, all smiling and radiant with pleasure; and at every new account the others would applaud and rejoice, feeling the happiness all the more for the evils that were past. And some of them led her into their gardens to show her their flowers, and to tell her how they had begun to study and learn how colours were changed and form perfected, and the secrets of the growth and of the germ, of which they had been ignorant. And others arranged themselves in choirs, and sang to her delightful songs of the fields, and accompanied her out upon her way, singing and answering to each other. The difference between the simple folk and the greatness of the others made the little Pilgrim wonder and admire; and she loved them in her simplicity, and turned back many a time to wave her hand to them, and to listen to the lovely simple singing as it went further and further away. It had an evening tone of rest and quietness, and of protection and peace. “He leadeth me by the green pastures and beside the quiet waters,” she said to herself; and her heart swelled with pleasure to think that it was those who had been so old, and so weary and poor, who had this rest to console them for all their sorrows.

And as she went along, not only did she pass through many other villages, but met many on the way who were travelling towards the great city, and would greet her sweetly as they passed, and sometimes stop to say a pleasant word, so that the little Pilgrim was never lonely wherever she went. But most of them began to speak to her in the other language, which was as beautiful and sweet as music, but which she could not understand; and they were surprised to find her ignorant of it, not knowing that she was but a new-comer into these lands. And there were many things that could not be told but in that language, for the earthly tongue had no words to express them. The little Pilgrim was a little sad not to understand what was said to her, but cheered herself with the thought that it should be taught to her by one whom she loved best. The way by the riverside was very cheerful and bright, with many people coming and going, and many villages, some of them with a bridge across the stream, some withdrawn among the fields, but all of them bright and full of life, and with sounds of music, and voices, and footsteps: and the little Pilgrim felt no weariness, and moved along as lightly as a child, taking great pleasure in everything she saw, and answering all the friendly greetings with all her heart, yet glad to think that she was approaching ever nearer to the country where it was ordained that she should dwell for a time and succour the strangers, and receive those who were newly arrived. And she consoled herself with the thought that there was no need of any language but that which she knew. As this went through her mind, making her glad, she suddenly became aware of one who was walking by her side, a lady who was covered with a veil white and shining like that which Ama had worn in the beautiful city. It hung about this stranger’s head so that it was not easy to see her face, but the sound of her voice was very sweet in the pilgrim’s ear, yet startled her like the sound of something which she knew well, but could not remember. And as there were few who were going that way, she was glad and said, “Let us walk together, if that pleases you.” And the stranger said, “It is for that I have come,” which was a reply which made the little Pilgrim wonder more and more, though she was very glad and joyful to have this companion upon her way. And then the lady began to ask her many questions, not about the city, or the great things she had seen, but about herself, and what the dear Lord had given her to do.

“I am little and weak, and I cannot do much,” the little Pilgrim said. “It is nothing but pleasure. It is to welcome those that are coming, and tell them. Sometimes they are astonished and do not know. I was so myself. I came in my sleep, and understood nothing. But now that I know, it is sweet to tell them that they need not fear.”

“I was glad,” the lady said, “that you came in your sleep; for sometimes the way is dark and hard, and you are little and tender. When your brother comes you will be the first to see him, and show him the way.”

“My brother! is he coming?” the little Pilgrim cried. And then she said with a wistful look, “But we are all brethren, and you mean only one of those who are the children of our Father. You must forgive me that I do not know the higher speech, but only what is natural, for I have not yet been long here.”

“He whom I mean is called—” and here the lady said a name which was the true name of a brother born whom the Pilgrim loved above all others. She gave a cry, and then she said, trembling, “I know your voice, but I cannot see your face. And what you say makes me think of many things. No one else has covered her face when she has spoken to me. I know you, and yet I cannot tell who you are.”

The woman stood for a little without saying a word, and then very softly, in a voice which only the heart heard, she called the little Pilgrim by her name.

“MOTHER,” cried the Pilgrim, with such a cry of joy that it echoed all about in the sweet air, and flung herself upon the veiled lady, and drew the veil from her face, and saw that it was she. And with this sight there came a revelation which flooded her soul with happiness. For the face which had been old and feeble was old no longer, but fair in the maturity of day; and the figure that had been bent and weary was full of a tender majesty, and the arms that clasped her about were warm and soft with love and life. And all that had changed their relations in the other days and made the mother in her weakness seem as a child, and transferred all protection and strength to the daughter, was gone for ever and the little Pilgrim beheld in a rapture one who was her sister and equal, yet ever above her—more near to her than any, though all were so near—one of whom she herself was a part, yet another, and who knew all her thoughts and the way of them before they arose in her. And to see her face as in the days of her prime, and her eyes so clear and wise, and to feel once more that which is different from the love of all, that which is still most sweet where all is sweet, the love of one, was like a crown to her in her happiness. The little Pilgrim could not think for joy, nor say a word, but held this dear mother’s hands and looked in her face, and her heart soared away to the Father in thanks and joy. They sat down by the roadside under the shade of the trees, while the river ran softly by, and everything was hushed out of sympathy and kindness; and questioned each other of all that had been and was to be. And the little Pilgrim told all the little news of home, and of the brothers and sisters and the children that had been born, and of those whose faces were turned towards this better country; and the mother smiled and listened and would have heard all over and over, although many things she already knew. “But why should I tell you, for did not you watch over us and see all we did, and were not you near us always?” the little Pilgrim said.

“How could that be?” said the mother; “for we are not like our Lord, to be everywhere. We come and go where we are sent. But sometimes we knew, and sometimes saw, and always loved. And whenever our hearts were sick for news it was but to go to him, and he told us everything. And now, my little one, you are as we are, and have seen the Lord. And this has been given us, to teach our child once more, and show you the heavenly language, that you may understand all, both the little and the great.”

Then the Pilgrim lifted her head from her mother’s bosom, and looked in her face with eyes full of longing. “You said ‘we,’” she said.

The mother did nothing but smile; then lifted her eyes and looked along the beautiful path of the river to where some one was coming to join them. And the little Pilgrim cried out again, in wonder and joy; and presently found herself seated between them, her father and her mother, the two who had loved her most in the other days. They looked more beautiful than the angels and all the great persons whom she had seen; for still they were hers and she was theirs more than all the angels and all the blessed could be. And thus she learned that though the new may take the place of the old, and many things may blossom out of it like flowers, yet that the old is never done away. And then they sat together, telling of everything that had befallen, and all the little tender things that were of no import, and all the great changes and noble ways, and the wonders of heaven above—and the earth beneath, for all, were open to them, both great and small; and when they had satisfied their souls with these, her father and mother began to teach her the other language, smiling often at her faltering tongue, and telling her the same thing over and over till she learnt it; and her father called her his little foolish one, as he had done in the old days; and at last, when they had kissed her and blessed her, and told her how to come home to them when she was weary, they gave her, as the Father had permitted them, with joy and blessing, her new name.

The little Pilgrim was tired with happiness and all the wonder and pleasure; and as she sat there in the silence; leaning upon those who were so dear to her, the soft air grew sweeter and sweeter about her, and the light faded softly into a dimness of tender indulgence and privilege for her, because she was still little and weak. And whether that heavenly suspense of all her faculties was sleep or not she knew not, but it was such as in all her life she had never known. When she came back to herself, it was by the sound of many voices calling her, and many people hastening past and beckoning to her to join them.

“Come, come,” they said, “little sister: there has been great trouble in the other life, and many have arrived suddenly and are afraid. Come, come, and help them—come and help them!”

And she sprang up from her soft seat, and found that she was no longer by the riverside, or within sight of the great city, or in the arms of those she loved, but stood on one of the flowery paths of her own border-land, and saw her fellows hastening towards the gates where there seemed a great crowd. And she was no longer weary, but full of life and strength; and it seemed to her that she could take them up in her arms, those trembling strangers, and carry them straight to the Father, so strong was she, and light, and full of force. And above all the gladness she had felt, and all her pleasure in what she had seen, and more happy even than the meeting with those she loved most, was her happiness how, as she went along as light as the breeze to receive the strangers. She was so eager that she began to sing a song of welcome as she hastened on. “Oh, welcome, welcome!” she cried; and as she sang she knew it was one of the heavenly melodies which she had heard in the great city; and she hastened on, her feet flying over the flowery ways, thinking how the great worlds were all watching, and the angels looking on, and the whole universe waiting till it should be proved to them that the dear Lord, the Brother of us all, had chosen the perfect way, and that over all evil and the sorrow he was the Conqueror alone.

And the little Pilgrim’s voice, though it was so small, echoed away through the great firmament to where the other worlds were watching to see what should come, and cheered the anxious faces of some great lords and princes far more great than she, who were of a nobler race than man; for it was said among the stars that when such a little sound could reach so far, it was a token that the Lord had chosen aright, and that his method must be the best. And it breathed over the earth like some one saying Courage! to those whose hearts were failing; and it dropped down, down, into the great confusions and traffic of the Land of Darkness, and startled many, like the cry of a child calling and calling, and never ceasing, “Come! and come! and come!”

The Little Pilgrim
in the Seen and Unseen

ALTERNATE TITLE:
The Little Pilgrim Revisits the Paths of Men

(1885)

The little Pilgrim, whose story has been told in another place, and who had arrived but lately on the other side, among those who know trouble and sorrow no more, was one whose heart was always full of pity for the suffering. And after the first rapture of her arrival, and of the blessed work which had been given to her to do, and all the wonderful things she had learned of the new life, there returned to her in the midst of her happiness so many questions and longing thoughts that They were touched by them who have the care of the younger brethren, the simple ones of heaven. These questions did not disturb her peace or joy, for she knew that which is so often veiled on earth, that all is accomplished by the will of the Father, and that nothing can happen but according to His appointment and under His care. And she was also aware that the end is as the beginning to Him who knows all, and that nothing is lost that is in His hand. But though she would herself have willingly borne the sufferings of earth ten times over for the sake of all that was now hers, yet it pierced her soul to think of those who were struggling in darkness, and whose hearts were stifled within them by all the bitterness of the mortal life. Sometimes she would be ready to cry out with wonder that the Lord did not hasten His steps and go down again upon the earth to make all plain; or how the Father himself could restrain His power, and did not send down ten legions of angels to make all that was wrong right, and turn all that was mournful into joy.

“It is but for a little time,” said her companions. “When we have reached this place we remember no more the anguish.” “But to them in their trouble it does not seem a little time,” the Pilgrim said. And in her heart there rose a great longing. Oh that He would send me! that I might tell my brethren—not like the poor man in the land of darkness, of the gloom and misery of that distant place, but a happier message, of the light and brightness of this, and how soon all pain would be over. She would not put this into a prayer, for she knew that to refuse a prayer is pain to the Father, if in His great glory any pain can be. And then she reasoned with herself and said, “What can I tell them, except that all will soon be well? and this they know, for our Lord has said it; but I am like them, and I do not understand.”

One fair morning while she turned over these thoughts in her mind there suddenly came towards her one whom she knew as a sage, of the number of those who know many mysteries and search into the deep things of the Father. For a moment she wondered if perhaps he came to reprove her for too many questionings, and rose up and advanced a little towards him with folded hands and a thankful heart, to receive the reproof if it should be so—for whether it were praise or whether it were blame, it was from the Father, and a great honour and happiness to receive. But as he came towards her he smiled and bade her not to fear. “I am come,” he said, “to tell you some things you long to know, and to show you some things that are hidden to most. Little sister, you are not to be charged with any mission—”

“Oh, no,” she said, “oh, no. I was not so presuming—”

“It is not presuming to wish to carry comfort to any soul; but it is permitted to me to open up to you, so far as I may, some of the secrets. The secrets of the Father are all beautiful, but there is sorrow in them as well as joy; and Pain, you know, is one of the great angels at the door.”

“Is his name Pain? and I took him for Consolation!” the little Pilgrim said.

“He is not Consolation; he is the schoolmaster whose face is often stern. But I did not come to tell you of him whom you know; I am going to take you—back,” the wise man said.

“Back!” She knew what this meant, and a great pleasure, yet mingled with fear, came into her mind. She hesitated, and looked at him, and did not know how to accept, though she longed to do so, for at the same time she was afraid. He smiled when he saw the alarm in her face.

“Do you think,” he said, “that you are to go this journey on your own charges? Had you insisted, as some do, to go at all hazards, you might indeed have feared. And even now I cannot promise that you will not feel the thorns of the earth as you pass; but you will be cared for, so that no harm can come.”

“Ah,” she said wistfully, “it is not for harm—” and could say nothing more.

He laid his hand upon her arm, and he said, “Do not fear; though they see you not, it is yet sweet for a moment to be there, and as you pass, it brings thoughts of you to their minds.”

For these two understood each other, and knew that to see and yet not be seen is only a pleasure for those who are most like the Father, and can love without thought of love in return.

When he touched her, it seemed to the little Pilgrim suddenly that everything changed round her, and that she was no longer in her own place, but walking along a weary length of road. It was narrow and rough, and the skies were dim; and as she went on by the side of her guide she saw houses and gardens which were to her like the houses that children build, and the little gardens in which they sow seeds and plant flowers, and take them up again to see if they are growing. She turned to the Sage, saying, “What are—?” and then stopped and gazed again, and burst out into something that was between laughing and tears. “For it is home,” she cried, “and I did not know it! dear home!” Her heart was remorseful, as if she had wounded the little diminished place.

“This is what happens with those who have been living in the king’s palaces,” he said with a smile.

“But I love it dearly, I love it dearly!” the little Pilgrim said, stretching out her hands as if for pardon. He smiled at her, consoling her; and then his face changed and grew very grave.

“Little sister,” he said, “you have come not to see happiness but pain. We want no explanation of the joy, for that flows freely from the heart of the Father, and all is clear between us and Him; but that which you desire to know is why trouble should be. Therefore you must think of Him and be strong, for here is what will rend your heart.”

The little Pilgrim was seized once more with mortal fear. “O friend,” she cried, “I have done with pain. Must I go and see others suffering and do nothing for them?”

“If anything comes into your heart to do or say, it will be well for them,” the Sage replied: and he took her by the hand and led her into a house she knew. She began to know them all now, as her vision became accustomed to the atmosphere of the earth. She perceived that the sun was shining, though it had appeared so dim, and that it was a clear summer morning, very early, with still the colours of the dawn in the east. When she went indoors, at first she saw nothing, for the room was darkened, the windows all closed, and a miserable watch-light only burning. In the bed there lay a child whom she knew. She knew them all—the mother at the bedside, the father near the door, even the nurse who was flitting about disturbing the silence. Her heart gave a great throb when she recognized them all; and though she had been glad for the first moment to think that she had come just in time to give welcome to a little brother stepping out of earth into the better country, a shadow of trouble and pain enveloped her when she saw the others and remembered and knew. For he was their beloved child; on all the earth there was nothing they held so dear. They would have given up their home and all they possessed, and become poor and homeless and wanderers with joy, if God, as they said, would have but spared their child. She saw into their hearts and read all this there; and knowing them, she knew it without even that insight. Everything they would have given up and rejoiced, if but they might have kept him. And there he lay, and was about to die. The little Pilgrim forgot all but the pity of it, and their hearts that were breaking, and the vacant place that was soon to be. She cried out aloud upon the Father with a great cry. She forgot that it was a grief to Him in His great glory to refuse.

There came no reply; but the room grew light as with a reflection out of heaven, and the child in the bed, who had been moving restlessly in the weariness of ending life, turned his head towards her, and his eyes opened wide, and he saw her where she stood. He cried out, “Look! mother, mother!” The mother, who was on her knees by the bedside, lifted her head and cried, “What is it, what is it, O my darling?” and the father, who had turned away his face not to see the child die, came nearer to the bed, hoping they knew not what. Their faces were paler than the face of the dying, upon which there was light; but no light came to them out of the hidden heaven. “Look! she has come for me,” he said; but his voice was so weak they could not hear him, nor take any comfort. At this the little Pilgrim put out her arms to him, forgetting in her joy the poor people who were mourning, and cried out, “Oh, but I must go with him! I must take him home!” For this was her own work, and she thought of her wonderings and her questions no more.

Some one touched her on the shoulder, and she looked round; and behind her was a great company of the dear children from the better country, whom the Father had sent, and not her—lest he should grieve for those he had left behind—to come for the child and show him the way. She paused for a moment, scarcely willing to give him up; but then her companion touched her and pointed to the other side. Ah, that was different! The mother lay by the side of the bed, her face turned only to the little white body which her child had dropped from him as he came out of his sickness—her eyes wild with misery, without tears; her feverish mouth open, but no cry in it. The sword of the angel had gone through and through her. She did not even writhe upon it, but lay motionless, cut down, dumb with anguish. The father had turned round again and leaned his head upon the wall. All was over! All over! The love and the hope of a dozen lovely years, the little sweet companion, the daily joy, the future trust—all—over—as if a child had never been born. Then there rose in the stillness a great and exceeding bitter cry, “God!” that was all, pealing up to heaven, to the Father, whom they could not see in their anguish, accusing Him, reproaching Him who had done it. Was He their enemy that He had done it? No man was ever so wicked, ever so cruel but he would have spared them their boy—taken everything and spared them their boy; but God, God! The little Pilgrim stood by and wept. She could do nothing but weep, weep, her heart aching with the pity and the anguish. How were they to be told that it was not God, but the Father; that God was only His common name, His name in law, and that He was the Father. This was all she could think of; she had not a word to say. And the boy had shaken his little bright soul out of the sickness and the weakness with such a look of delight! He knew in a moment! But they—oh, when, when would they know?

Presently she sat outside in the soft breathing airs and little morning breezes, and dried her aching eyes. And the Sage who was her companion soothed her with kind words. “I said you would feel the thorns as you passed,” he said. “We cannot be free of them, we who are of mankind.”

“But oh,” she cried amid her tears, “why—why? The air of the earth is in my eyes, I cannot see. Oh, what pain it is, what misery! Was it because they loved him too much, and that he drew their hearts away?”

The Sage only shook his head at her, smiling. “Can one love too much?” he said.

“O brother, it is very hard to live and to see another—I am confused in my mind,” said the little Pilgrim, putting her hand to her eyes. “The tears of those that weep have got into my soul. To live and see another die—that was what I was saying; but the child lives like you and me. Tell me, for I am confused in my mind.”

“Listen!” said the Sage; and when she listened she heard the sound of the children going back with a great murmur and ringing of pleasant voices like silver bells in the air, and among them the voice of the child asking a thousand questions, calling them by their names. The two pilgrims listened and laughed to each other for love at the sound of the children. “Is it for the little brother that you are troubled?” the Sage said in her ear.

Then she was ashamed, and turned from the joyful sounds that were ascending ever higher and higher to the little house that stood below, with all its windows closed upon the light. It was wrapped in darkness though the sun was shining, the windows closed as if they never would open more, and the people within turning their faces to the wall, covering their eyes that they might not see the light of day. “O miserable day!” they were saying; “O dark hour! O life that will never smile again!” She sat between earth and heaven, her eyes smiling, but her mouth beginning to quiver once more. “Is it to raise their thoughts and their hearts?” she said.

“Little sister,” said he, “when the Father speaks to you, it is not for me nor for another that He speaks. And what He says to you is—” “Ah,” said the little Pilgrim, with joy, “it is for myself, myself alone! As if I were a great angel, as if I were a saint. It drops into my heart like the dew. It is what I need, not for you, though I love you, but for me only. It is my secret between me and Him.”

Her companion bowed his head. “It is so. And thus has He spoken to the little child. But what He said or why He said it, is not for you or me to know. It is His secret; it is between the little one and his Father. Who can interfere between these two? Many and many are there born on earth whose work and whose life are ordained elsewhere; for there is no way of entrance into the race of man which is the nature of the Lord, but by the gates of birth; and the work which the Father has to do is so great and manifold that there are multitudes who do but pass through those gates to ascend to their work elsewhere. But the Father alone knows whom he has chosen. It is between the child and Him. It is their secret; it is as you have said.”

The little Pilgrim was silent for a moment, but then turned her head from the bright shining of the skies and the voices of the children which floated farther and farther off, and looked at the house in which there was sorrow and despair. She pointed towards it, and looked at him who was her instructor, and had come to show her how these things were.

“They are to blame,” he said; “but none will blame them. The little life is hard. The Father, though He is very near, seems far off; and sometimes even His word is as a dream. It is to them as if they had lost their child. Can you not remember?—that was what we said. We have lost—”

Then the little Pilgrim, musing, began to smile, but wept again as she thought of the father and the mother. “If we were to go,” she said, “hand in hand, you and I, and tell them that the Father had need of him, that it was not for the little life but for the great and beautiful world above that the child was born; and that he had got great promotion and was gone with the princes and the angels according as was ordained? And why should they mourn? Let us go and tell them—”

He shook his head. “They could not see us; they would not know us. We should be to them as dreams. If they do not take comfort from our Lord, how could they take comfort from you and me? We could not bring them back their child. They want their child, not only to know that all is well with him,—for they know that all is well with him,—but what they want is their child. They are to blame; but who shall blame them? Not any one that is born of woman. How can we tell them what is the Father’s secret and the child’s?”

“And yet we could tell them why it must be so?” said the little Pilgrim. “For they prayed and besought the Lord. O brother, I have no understanding. For the Lord said, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you;’ and they asked, yet they are refused.”

“Little sister, the Father must judge between His children; and he must first be heard who is most concerned. While they were praying, the Father and the child talked together and said what we know not; but this we know, that his heart was satisfied with that which was said to him. Must not the Father do what is best for the child He loves, whatever the other children may say? Nay, did not our own fathers do this on earth, and we submitted to them; how much more He who sees all?”

The little Pilgrim stole softly from his side when he had done speaking, and went back into the darkened house, and saw the mother where she sat weeping and refusing to be comforted, in her sorrow perceiving not heaven nor any consolation, nor understanding that her child had gone joyfully to his Father and her Father, as his soul had required, and as the Lord had willed. Yet though she had not joy but only anguish in her faith, and though her eyes were darkened that she could not see, yet the woman ceased not to call upon God, God, and to hold by Him who had smitten her. And the father of the child had gone into his chamber and shut the door, and sat dumb, opening not his mouth, thinking upon his delightsome boy, and how they had walked together and talked together, and should do so again nevermore. And in their hearts they reproached their God, the giver of all, and accused the Lord to His face, as if He had deceived them, yet clung to Him still, weeping and upbraiding, and would not let Him go. The little Pilgrim wept too, and said many things to them which they could not hear. But when she saw that though they were in darkness and misery, God was in all their thoughts, she bethought herself suddenly of what the poet had said in the celestial city, and of the songs he sang, which were a wonder to the Angels and Powers, of the little life and the sorrowful earth, where men endured all things, yet overcame by the name of the Lord. When this came into her mind, she rose up again softly with a sacred awe, and wept not, but did them reverence; for without any light or guidance in their anguish they yet wavered not, died not, but endured, and in the end would overcome. It seemed to her that she saw the great beautiful angels looking on, the great souls that are called to love and to serve, but not to suffer like the little brethren of the earth; and that among the princes of heaven there was reverence and awe, and even envy of those who thus had their garments bathed in blood, and suffered loss and pain and misery, yet never abandoned their life and the work that had been given them to do.

As she came forth again comforted, she found the Sage standing with his face lifted to heaven, smiling still at the sound, though faint and distant, of the children all calling to each other and shouting together as they reached the gate. “Oh, hush!” she said; “let not the mother hear them! for it will make her heart more bitter to think she can never hear again her child’s voice.”

“But it is her child’s voice,” he said; then very gently, “they are to blame; but no one will be found to blame them either in earth or heaven.”

The earth pilgrims went far after this, yet more softly than when they first left their beautiful country: for then the little Pilgrim had been glad, believing that as all had been made clear to her in her own life, so that all that concerned the life of man should be made clear; but this was more hard and encompassed with pain and darkness, as that which is in the doing is always more hard to understand than that which is accomplished. And she learned now what she had not understood, though her companion warned her, how sharp are those thorns of earth that pierce the wayfarer’s foot, and that those who come back cannot help but suffer because of love and fellow-feeling. And she learned that though she could smile and give thanks to the Father in the recollection of her own griefs that were past, yet those that are present are too poignant, and to look upon others in their hour of darkness makes His ways more hard to comprehend than even when the sorrow is your own.

While she mused thus, there was suddenly revealed to her another sight. They had gone far before they came to this new scene. Night had crept over the skies all grey and dark; and the sea came in with a whisper which sounded to some like the hush of peace, and to some like the voice of sorrow and moaning, and to some was but the monotony of endless recurrence, in which was no soul. The skies were dark overhead, but opened with a clear shining of light which had no colour, towards the west—for the sun had long gone down, and it was night. The two travellers perceived a woman who came out of a house all lit with lamps and firelight, and took the lonely path towards the sea. And the little Pilgrim knew her, as she had known the father and mother in the darkened house, and would have joined her with a cry of pleasure; but she remembered that the friend could not see her or hear her, being wrapped still in the mortal body, and in a close enveloping mantle of thoughts and cares. The Sage made her a sign to follow, and these two tender companions accompanied her who saw them not, walking darkling by the silent way. The heart of the woman was heavy in her breast. It was so sore by reason of trouble, and for all the bitter wounds of the past, and all the fears that beset her life to come, that she walked, not weeping because of being beyond tears, but as it were bleeding, her thoughts being in her little way like those of His upon whose brow there once stood drops as it were of blood; and out of her heart there came a moaning which was without words. If words had been possible, they would have been as His also, who said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” For those who had wounded her were those whom in all the world she loved most dear; and the quivering of anguish was in her as she walked, seeking the darkness and the silence, and to hide herself, if that might be, from her own thoughts. She went along the lonely path with the stinging of her wounds so keen and sharp that all her body and soul were as one pain. Greater grief hath no man than this, to be slain and tortured by those whom he loves. When her soul could speak, this was what it said “Father, forgive them! Father, save them!” She had no strength for more.

This the heavenly pilgrims saw, for they stood by her as in their own country, where every thought is clear, and saw her heart. But as they followed her and looked into her soul—with their hearts, which were human too, wrung at the sight of hers in its anguish—there suddenly became visible before them a strange sight such as they had never seen before. It was like the rising of the sun; but it was not the sun. Suddenly into the heart upon which they looked there came a great silence and calm. There was nothing said that even they could hear, nor done that they could see; but for a moment the throbbing was stilled, and the anguish calmed, and there came a great peace. The woman in whom this wonder was wrought was astonished, as they were. She gave a low cry in the darkness for wonder that the pain had gone from her in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. There was no promise made to her that her prayer would be granted, and no new light given to guide her for the time to come; but her pain was taken away. She stood hushed, and lifted her eyes; and the grey of the sea, and the low cloud that was like a canopy above, and the lightening of colourless light towards the west, entered with their great quiet into her heart. “Is this the peace that passeth all understanding?” she said to herself, confused with the sudden calm. In all her life it had never so happened to her before—to be healed of her grievous wounds, yet without cause; and while no change was wrought, yet to be put to rest.

“It is our Brother,” said the little Pilgrim, shedding tears of joy. “It is the secret of the Lord,” said the Sage; but not even they had seen Him passing by.

They walked with her softly in the silence, in the sound of the sea, till the wonder in her was hushed like the pain, and talked with her, though she knew it not. For very soon questions arose in her heart. “And oh,” she said, “is this the Lord’s reply?” with thankfulness and awe; but because she was human, and knew so little, and was full of impatience, “Oh, and is this all?” was what she next said. “I asked for them, and Thou hast given to me—” then the voice of her heart grew louder, and she cried, with the sound of the pain coming back, “I ask one thing, and Thou givest another. I asked no blessing for me. I asked for them, my Lord, my God. Give it to them—to them!” with disappointment rising in her heart.

The little Pilgrim laid her hand upon the woman’s arm—for she was afraid lest our Lord might be displeased, forgetting (for she was still imperfect) that He sees all that is in the soul, and understands and takes no offence—and said quickly, “Oh, be not afraid; He will save them too. The blessing will come for them too.”

“At His own time,” said the Sage, “and in His own way.”

These thoughts rose in the woman’s soul. She did not know that they were said to her, nor who said them, but accepted them as if they had come from her own thoughts. For she said to herself, “This is what is meant by the answer of prayer. It is not what we ask; yet what I ask is according to Thy will, my Lord. It is not riches, nor honours, nor beauty, nor health, nor long life, nor anything of this world. If I have been impatient, this is my punishment—that the Lord has thought, not of them, but of me. But I can bear all, O my Lord! that and a thousand times more, if Thou wilt but think of them and not of me!”

Nevertheless she returned to her home stilled and comforted; for though her trouble returned to her and was not changed, yet for a moment it had been lifted from her, and the peace which passeth all understanding had entered her heart.

“But why, then,” said the little Pilgrim to her companion, when the friend was gone, “why will not the Father give to her what she asks? for I know what it is. It is that those whom she loves should love Him and serve Him; and that is His will too, for He would have all love Him, He who loves all.”

“Little sister,” said her companion, “you asked me why He did not let the child remain upon the earth.”

“Ah, but that is different,” she cried; “oh, it is different! When you said that the secret was between the child and the Father I knew that it was so; for it is just that the Father should consider us first one by one, and do for us what is best. But it is always best to serve Him. It is best to love him; it is best to give up all the world and cleave to Him, and follow wherever He goes. No man can say otherwise than this: that to follow the Lord and serve Him, that is well for all, and always the best!”

She spoke so hotly and hastily that her companion could find no room for reply. But he was in no haste; he waited till she had said what was in her heart. Then he replied, “If it were even so, if the Father heard all prayers, and put forth His hand and forced those who were far off to come near—”

The little Pilgrim looked up with horror in her face, as if he had blasphemed, and said, “Forced! not so; not so!”

“Yet it must be so,” he said, “if it is against their desire and will.”

“Oh, not so; not so!” she cried, “but that He should change their hearts.”

“Yet that too against their will,” he said.

The little Pilgrim paused upon the way; and her heart rose against her companion, who spoke things so hard to be received, and that seemed to dishonour the work of the Lord. But she remembered that it could not be so, and paused before she spoke, and looked up at him with eyes that were full of wonder and almost of fear. “Then must they perish?” she said, “and must her heart break?” and her voice sank low for pity and sorrow. Though she was herself among the blessed, yet the thorns and briers of the earth caught at her garments and pierced her tender feet.

“Little sister,” said the Sage, “to us who are born of the earth it is hard to remember that the child belongs not first to the parents, nor the husband to the wife, nor the wife to the husband, but that all are the children of the Father. And He is just; He will not neglect the little one because of those prayers which the father and the mother pour forth to Him, although they cry with anguish and with tears. Nor will He break His great law and violate the nature He has made, and compel His own child to what it wills not and loves not. The woman is comforted in the breaking of her heart; but those whom she loves, are not they also the children of the Father, who loves them more than she does? And each is to Him as if there were not another in the world. Nor is there any other in the world: for none can come between the Father and the child.”

A smile came upon the little Pilgrim’s face, yet she trembled. “It is dim before me,” she said, “and I cannot see clearly. Oh, if the time would but hasten, that our Lord might come, and all struggles be ended, and the darkness vanish away!”

“He will come when all things are ready,” said the Sage; and as they went upon their way be showed her other sights, and the mysteries of the heart of man, and the great patience of our Lord.

It happened to them suddenly to perceive in their way a man returning home. These are words that are sweet to all who have lived upon the earth and known its ways; but far, far were they from that meaning which is sweet. The dark hours had passed, and men had slept; and the night was over. The sun was rising in the sky, which was keen and clear with the pleasure of the morning. The air was fresh with the dew, and the birds awaking in the trees, and the breeze so sweet that it seemed to blow from heaven; and to the two travellers it seemed almost in the joy of the new day as if the Lord had already come. But here was one who proved that it was not so. He had not slept all the night, nor had night been silent to him nor dark, but full of glaring light and noise and riot; his eyes were red with fever and weariness, and his soul was sick within him, and the morning looked him in the face and upbraided him as a sister might have upbraided him, who loved him. And he said in his heart, as one had said of old, that all was vanity; that it was vain to live, and evil to have been born; that the day of death was better than the day of birth, and all was delusion, and love but a word, and life a lie. His footsteps on the road seemed to sound all through the sleeping world; and when he looked the morning in the face he was ashamed, and cursed the light. The two went after him into a silent house, where everybody slept. The light that had burned for him all night was sick like a guilty thing in the eye of day, and all that had been prepared for his repose was ghastly to him in the hour of awaking, as if prepared not for sleep but for death. His heart was sick like the watch-light, and life flickered within him with disgust and disappointment. For why had he been born, if this were all?—for all was vanity. The night and the day had been passed in pleasure, and it was vanity; and now his soul loathed his pleasures, yet he knew that was vanity too, and that next day he would resume them as before. All was vain—the morning and the evening, and the spirit of man and the ways of human life. He looked himself in the face and loathed this dream of existence, and knew that it was naught. So much as it had cost to be born, to be fed, and guarded and taught and cared for, and all for this! He said to himself that it was better to die than to live, and never to have been than to be.

As these spectators stood by with much pity and tenderness looking into the weariness and sickness of this soul, there began to be enacted before them a scene such as no man could have seen, which no one was aware of save he who was concerned, and which even to him was not clear in its meanings, but rather like a phantasmagoria, a thing of the mists; yet which was great and solemn as is the council of a king in which great things are debated for the welfare of the nations. The air seemed in a moment to be full of the sound of footsteps, and of something more subtle, which the Sage and the Pilgrim knew to be wings; and as they looked, there grew before them the semblance of a court of justice, with accusers and defenders; but the judge and the criminal were one. Then was put forth that indictment which he had been making up in his soul against life and against the world; and again another indictment which was against himself. And then the advocates began their pleadings. Voices were there great and eloquent, such as are familiar in the courts above, which sounded forth in the spectators’ ears earnest as those who plead for life and death. And these speakers declared that sin only is vanity, that life is noble and love sweet, and every man made in the image of God, to serve both God and man; and they set forth their reasons before the judge and showed him mysteries of life and death; and they took up the counter-indictment and proved to him how in all the world he had sought but himself, his own pleasure and profit, his own will, not the will of God, nor even the good desire of humble nature, but only that which pleased his sick fancies and his self-loving heart. And they besought him with a thousand arguments to return and choose again the better way. “Arise,” they cried, “thou, miserable, and become great; arise, thou vain soul, and become noble. Take thy birthright, O son, and behold the face of the Father.” And then there came a whispering of lower voices, very penetrating and sweet, like the voices of women and children, who murmured and cried, “O father! O brother! O love! O my child!” The man who was the accused, yet who was the judge, listened; and his heart burned, and a longing arose within him for the face of the Father and the better way. But then there came a clang and clamour of sound on the other side; and voices called out to him as comrade, as lover, as friend, and reminded him of the delights which once had been so sweet to him, and of the freedom he loved; and boasted the right of man to seek what was pleasant and what was sweet, and flouted him as a coward whose aim was to save himself, and scorned him as a believer in old wives’ tales and superstitions that men had outgrown. And their voices were so vehement and full of passion that by times they mastered the others, so that it was as if a tempest raged round the soul which sat in the midst, and who was the offender and yet the judge of all.

The two spectators watched the conflict, as those who watch the trial upon which hangs a man’s life. It seemed to the little Pilgrim that she could not keep silent, and that there were things which she could tell him which no one knew but she. She put her hand upon the arm of the Sage and called to him, “Speak you, speak you! he will hear you; and I too will speak, and he will not resist what we say.” But even as she said this, eager and straining against her companion’s control, the strangest thing ensued. The man who was set there to judge himself and his life; he who was the criminal, yet august upon his seat, to weigh all and give the decision; he before whom all those great advocates were pleading—a haze stole over his eyes. He was but a man, and he was weary, and subject to the sway of the little over the great, the moment over the life, which is the condition of man. While yet the judgment was not given or the issue decided, while still the pleadings were in his ears, in a moment his head dropped back upon his pillow, and he fell asleep. He slept like a child, as if there was no evil, nor conflict, nor danger, nor questions, more than how best to rest when you are weary, in all the world. And straightway all was silent in the place. Those who had been conducting this great cause departed to other courts and tribunals, having done all that was permitted them to do. And the man slept, and when it was noon woke and remembered no more.

The Sage led the little Pilgrim forth in a great confusion, so that she could not speak for wonder. But he said, “This sleep also was from the Father; for the mind of the man was weary, and not able to form a judgment. It is adjourned until a better day.”

The little Pilgrim hung her head and cried, “I do not understand. Will not the Lord interfere? Will not the Father make it clear to him? Is he the judge between good and evil? Is it all in his own hand?”

The Sage spoke softly, as if with awe. He said, “This is the burden of our nature, which is not like the angels. There is none in heaven or on earth that can take from him what is his right and great honour among the creatures of God. The Father respects that which He has made. He will force no child of His. And there is no haste with Him; nor has it ever been fathomed among us how long He will wait, or if there is any end. The air is full of the coming and going of those who plead before the sons of men; and sometimes in great misery and trouble there will be a cause won and a judgment recorded which makes the universe rejoice. And in everything at the end it is proved that our Lord’s way is the best, and that all can be accomplished in His name.”

The little Pilgrim went on her way in silence, knowing that the longing in her heart which was to compel them to come in, like that king who sent to gather his guests from the highways and the hedges, could not be right, since it was not the Father’s way, yet confused in her soul, and full of an eager desire to go back and wake that man and tell him all that had been in her heart while she watched him sitting on his judgment-seat. But there came recollections wafted across her mind as by breezes of the past, of scenes in her earthly life when she had spoken without avail, when she had said all that was in her heart and failed, and done harm when she had meant to do good. And slowly it came upon her that her companion spoke the truth, and that no man can save his brother; but each must sit and hear the pleadings and pronounce that judgment which is for life or death. “But oh,” she cried, “how long and how bitter it is for those who love them, and must stand by and can give no aid!”

Then her companion unfolded to her the patience of the Lord, and how He is not discouraged, nor ever weary, but opens His great assizes year by year and day by day; and how the cause was argued again, as she had seen it, before the souls of men, sometimes again and again and over and over, till the pleadings of the advocates carried conviction, and the judge perceived the truth and consented to it. He showed her that this was the great thing in human life, and that though it was not enough to make a man perfect, yet that he who sinned against his will was different from the man who sinned with his will; and how in all things the choice of the man for good or evil was all in all. And he led her about the world so that she could see how everywhere the heavenly advocates were travelling, entering into the secret places of the souls, and pleading with each man to his face. And the little Pilgrim looked on with pitying and tender eyes, and it seemed to her that the heart of the judge, before whom that great question was debated, leaned mostly to the right, and acknowledged that the way of the Lord was the best way; but either that sleep overpowered him and weariness, or the other voices deafened his ears, or something betrayed him that he forgot the reasons of the wise and the judgment of his own soul. At first it comforted her to see how something nobler in every man would answer to the pleadings; and then her heart failed her, to perceive that notwithstanding this the judge would leave his seat without a decision, and all would end in vanity. “And oh, friend,” she cried, “what shall be done to those who see and yet refuse?”—her heart being wrung by the disappointment and the failure. But her companion smiled still, and he said, “They are the children of the Father. Can a woman forget her child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? She may forget; yet will not He forget.” And thus they went on and on.

But time would not suffice to tell what these two pilgrims saw as they wandered among the ways of men. They saw poverty and misery and pain, which came of the evil which man had done upon the earth, and were his punishment, and could be cured by nothing but by the return of each to his Father, and the giving up of all self-worship and self-seeking and sin. But amid all the confusion and among those who had fallen the lowest they found not one who was forsaken, whose name the Father had forgotten, or who was not made to pause in his appointed moment, and to sit upon his throne and hear the pleadings before him of the great advocates of God, reasoning of temperance and righteousness and judgment to come.

But once before they returned to their home, a great thing befell them; and they beheld that court sit, and the pleadings made, for the last time upon earth, which was a sight more solemn and terrible than anything they had yet seen. They found themselves in a chamber where sat a man who had lived long and known both good and evil, and fulfilled many great offices, so that he was famed and honoured among men. He was a man who was wise in all the learning of the earth, standing but a little way below those who have begun the higher learning in the world beyond, and lifting up his head as if he would reach the stars. The travellers stood by him in his beautiful house, which was as the palace of wisdom, and saw him in the midst of all his honours. The lamps were lit within, and the night was sweet without, breathing of rest and happy ease, and riches and knowledge, as if they would endure for ever. And the man looked round on all he had, and all he had achieved, and everything which he possessed, to enjoy it. For of wisdom and of glory he had his fill, and his soul was yet strong to take pleasure in what was his, and he looked around him like God, and said that everything was good; so that the little Pilgrim gazed, and wondered whether this could indeed be one of the brethren of the earth, or if he was one who had wandered hither from another sphere.

But as the thought arose, she heard, and lo! the steps of the pleaders and the sound of their entry. They came slowly like a solemn procession, more grave and awful in their looks than any she had seen, for they were great and the greatest of all, such as come forth but rarely when the last word is to be said. The words they said were few; but they stood round him reminding him of all that had been, and of what must be, and of many things which were known but to God and him alone, and calling upon him yet once more before time should come to an end and life be lost. But the sound of their voices in his ear was but as some great strain of music which he had heard many times and knew and heeded not. He turned to the goods which he had laid up for many years, and all the knowledge he had stored, and said to himself, “Soul, take thine ease.” And to the heavenly advocates he smiled and replied that life was strong and wisdom the master of all. Then there came a chill and a shiver over all, as if the earth had been stopped in her career or the sun fallen from the sky; and the little Pilgrim, looking on, could see the heavenly pleaders come forth with bowed heads and the door of hope shut to, and a whisper which crept about from sea to sea and said, “In vain! in vain!” And as they went forth from the gates an icy breath swept in, and the voice of the Death-Angel saying, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!” The sound went through her heart as if it had been pierced by a sword, and she gave a cry of anguish, for she could not bear that a brother should be lost. But when she looked up at the face of her companion, though it was pale with the pity and the terror of that which had been thus accomplished, there was still upon it a smile; and he said, “Not yet; not yet. The Father loves not less, but more than ever.” “O friend,” she cried, “will there ever come a moment when the Father will forget? IS there any place where He cannot go?”

Then he who was wise turned towards her, and a great light came upon his face; and he said, “We have searched the records, and heard all witnesses from the beginnings of time; but we have never found the boundary of His mercy, and there is no country known to man that is without his presence. And never has it been known that He has shut His ear to those who called upon Him, or forgotten one who is His. The heavenly pleaders may be silenced, but never our Lord, who pleads for all; and heaven and earth may forget, yet will He never forget who is the Father of all. And every child of His is to Him as if there was none other in the world.”

Then the little Pilgrim lifted her face and beheld that radiance which is over all, which is the love that lights the world, both angels and the great spheres above and the little brethren who stumble and struggle and weep; and in that light there was no darkness at all, but everything shone as in the morning, sweet yet terrible, but ever clear and fair. And immediately, ere she was aware, the rough roads of the earth were left far behind, and she had returned to her place, and to her peaceful state, and to the work which had been given her—to receive the wanderers and to bid them a happy welcome as the doors opened and they entered into their inheritance. And thus her soul was satisfied, though she knew now nothing more than she had known always, that the eye of the Father is over all, and that He can neither forget nor forsake.

The Land of Darkness

(1887)

I found myself standing on my feet, with the tingling sensation of having come down rapidly upon the ground from a height. There was a similar feeling in my head, as of the whirling and sickening sensation of passing downwards through the air, like the description Dante gives of his descent upon Geryon. My mind, curiously enough, was sufficiently disengaged to think of that, or at least to allow swift passage for the recollection through my thoughts. All the aching of wonder, doubt, and fear which I had been conscious of a little while before was gone. There was no distinct interval between the one condition and the other, nor in my fall (as I supposed it must have been) had I any consciousness of change. There was the whirling of the air, resisting my passage, yet giving way under me in giddy circles, and then the sharp shock of once more feeling under my feet something solid, which struck, yet sustained. After a little while the giddiness above and the tingling below passed away, and I felt able to look about me and discern where I was. But not all at once; the things immediately about me impressed me first, then the general aspect of the new place.

First of all the light, which was lurid, as if a thunderstorm were coming on. I looked up involuntarily to see if it had begun to rain; but there was nothing of the kind, though what I saw above me was a lowering canopy of cloud, dark, threatening, with a faint reddish tint diffused upon the vaporous darkness. It was, however, quite sufficiently clear to see everything, and there was a good deal to see. I was in a street of what seemed a great and very populous place. There were shops on either side, full apparently of all sorts of costly wares. There was a continual current of passengers up and down on both sides of the way, and in the middle of the street carriages of every description, humble and splendid. The noise was great and ceaseless; the traffic continual. Some of the shops were most brilliantly lighted, attracting one’s eyes in the sombre light outside, which, however, had just enough of day in it to make these spots of illumination look sickly. Most of the places thus distinguished were apparently bright with the electric or some other scientific light; and delicate machines of every description, brought to the greatest perfection, were in some windows, as were also many fine productions of art, but mingled with the gaudiest and coarsest in a way which struck me with astonishment. I was also much surprised by the fact that the traffic, which was never stilled for a moment, seemed to have no sort of regulation. Some carriages dashed along, upsetting the smaller vehicles in their way, without the least restraint or order, either, as it seemed, from their own good sense or from the laws and customs of the place. When an accident happened, there was a great shouting, and sometimes a furious encounter; but nobody seemed to interfere. This was the first impression made upon me. The passengers on the pavement were equally regardless. I was myself pushed out of the way, first to one side, then to another, hustled when I paused for a moment, trodden upon and driven about. I retreated soon to the doorway of a shop, from whence with a little more safety I could see what was going on. The noise made my head ring. It seemed to me that I could not hear myself think. If this were to go on for ever, I said to myself, I should soon go mad.

“Oh, no,” said some one behind me, “not at all. You will get used to it; you will be glad of it. One does not want to hear one’s thoughts; most of them are not worth hearing.”

I turned round and saw it was the master of the shop, who had come to the door on seeing me. He had the usual smile of a man who hoped to sell his wares; but to my horror and astonishment, by some process which I could not understand, I saw that he was saying to himself, “What a d——d fool! here’s another of those cursed wretches, d—— him!” all with the same smile. I started back, and answered him as hotly, “What do you mean by calling me a d——d fool? fool yourself, and all the rest of it. Is this the way you receive strangers here?”

“Yes,” he said with the same smile, “this is the way; and I only describe you as you are, as you will soon see. Will you walk in and look over my shop? Perhaps you will find something to suit you if you are just setting up, as I suppose.”

I looked at him closely, but this time I could not see that he was saying anything beyond what was expressed by his lips: and I followed him into the shop, principally because it was quieter than the street, and without any intention of buying—for what should I buy in a strange place where I had no settled habitation, and which probably I was only passing through?

“I will look at your things,” I said, in a way which I believe I had, of perhaps undue pretension. I had never been over-rich, or of very elevated station; but I was believed by my friends (or enemies) to have an inclination to make myself out something more important than I was. “I will look at your things, and possibly I may find something that may suit me; but with all the ateliers of Paris and London to draw from, it is scarcely to be expected that in a place like this—”

Here I stopped to draw my breath, with a good deal of confusion; for I was unwilling to let him see that I did not know where I was.

“A place like this,” said the shop-keeper, with a little laugh which seemed to me full of mockery, “will supply you better, you will find, than—any other place. At least you will find it the only place practicable,” he added. “I perceive you are a stranger here.”

“Well—I may allow myself to be so—more or less. I have not had time to form much acquaintance with—the place; what—do you call the place?—its formal name, I mean,” I said with a great desire to keep up the air of superior information. Except for the first moment, I had not experienced that strange power of looking into the man below the surface which had frightened me. Now there occurred another gleam of insight, which gave me once more a sensation of alarm. I seemed to see a light of hatred and contempt below his smile; and I felt that he was not in the least taken in by the air which I assumed.

“The name of the place,” he said, “is not a pretty one. I hear the gentlemen who come to my shop say that it is not to be named to ears polite; and I am sure your ears are very polite.” He said this with the most offensive laugh, and I turned upon him and answered him, without mincing matters, with a plainness of speech which startled myself, but did not seem to move him, for he only laughed again. “Are you not afraid,” I said, “that I will leave your shop and never enter it more?”

“Oh, it helps to pass the time,” he said; and without any further comment began to show me very elaborate and fine articles of furniture. I had always been attracted to this sort of thing, and had longed to buy such articles for my house when I had one, but never had it in my power. Now I had no house, nor any means of paying so far as I knew, but I felt quite at my ease about buying, and inquired into the prices with the greatest composure.

“They are just the sort of thing I want. I will take these, I think; but you must set them aside for me, for I do not at the present moment exactly know—”

“You mean you have got no rooms to put them in,” said the master of the shop. “You must get a house directly, that’s all. If you’re only up to it, it is easy enough. Look about until you find something you like, and then—take possession.”

“Take possession”—I was so much surprised that I stared at him with mingled indignation and surprise—“of what belongs to another man?” I said.

I was not conscious of anything ridiculous in my look. I was indignant, which is not a state of mind in which there is any absurdity; but the shop-keeper suddenly burst into a storm of laughter. He laughed till he seemed almost to fall into convulsions, with a harsh mirth which reminded me of the old image of the crackling of thorns, and had neither amusement nor warmth in it; and presently this was echoed all around, and looking up, I saw grinning faces full of derision bent upon me from every side, from the stairs which led to the upper part of the house and from the depths of the shop behind—faces with pens behind their ears, faces in workmen’s caps, all distended from ear to ear, with a sneer and a mock and a rage of laughter which nearly sent me mad. I hurled I don’t know what imprecations at them as I rushed out, stopping my ears in a paroxysm of fury and mortification. My mind was so distracted by this occurrence that I rushed without knowing it upon some one who was passing, and threw him down with the violence of my exit; upon which I was set on by a party of half a dozen ruffians, apparently his companions, who would, I thought, kill me, but who only flung me, wounded, bleeding, and feeling as if every bone in my body had been broken, down on the pavement, when they went away, laughing too.

I picked myself up from the edge of the causeway, aching and sore from head to foot, scarcely able to move, yet conscious that if I did not get myself out of the way, one or other of the vehicles which were dashing along would run over me. It would be impossible to describe the miserable sensations, both of body and mind, with which I dragged myself across the crowded pavement, not without curses and even kicks from the passers-by, and avoiding the shop from which I still heard those shrieks of devilish laughter, gathered myself up in the shelter of a little projection of a wall, where I was for the moment safe. The pain which I felt was as nothing to the sense of humiliation, the mortification, the rage with which I was possessed. There is nothing in existence more dreadful than rage which is impotent, which cannot punish or avenge, which has to restrain itself and put up with insults showered upon it. I had never known before what that helpless, hideous exasperation was; and I was humiliated beyond description, brought down—I, whose inclination it was to make more of myself than was justifiable—to the aspect of a miserable ruffian beaten in a brawl, soiled, covered with mud and dust, my clothes torn, my face bruised and disfigured,—all this within half an hour or there about of my arrival in a strange place where nobody knew me or could do me justice! I kept looking out feverishly for some one with an air of authority to whom I could appeal. Sooner or later somebody must go by, who, seeing me in such a plight, must inquire how it came about, must help me and vindicate me. I sat there for I cannot tell how long, expecting every moment that were it but a policeman, somebody would notice and help me; but no one came. Crowds seemed to sweep by without a pause—all hurrying, restless; some with anxious faces, as if any delay would be mortal; some in noisy groups intercepting the passage of the others. Sometimes one would pause to point me out to his comrades with a shout of derision at my miserable plight, or if by a change of posture I got outside the protection of my wall, would kick me back with a coarse injunction to keep out of the way. No one was sorry for me; not a look of compassion, not a word of inquiry was wasted upon me; no representative of authority appeared. I saw a dozen quarrels while I lay there, cries of the weak, and triumphant shouts of the strong; but that was all.

I was drawn after a while from the fierce and burning sense of my own grievances by a querulous voice quite close to me. “This is my corner,” it said. “I’ve sat here for years, and I have a right to it. And here you come, you big ruffian, because you know I haven’t got the strength to push you away.”

“Who are you?” I said, turning round horror-stricken; for close beside me was a miserable man, apparently in the last stage of disease. He was pale as death, yet eaten up with sores. His body was agitated by a nervous trembling. He seemed to shuffle along on hands and feet, as though the ordinary mode of locomotion was impossible to him, and yet was in possession of all his limbs. Pain was written in his face. I drew away to leave him room, with mingled pity and horror that this poor wretch should be the partner of the only shelter I could find within so short a time of my arrival. I who— It was horrible, shameful, humiliating; and yet the suffering in his wretched face was so evident that I could not but feel a pang of pity too. “I have nowhere to go,” I said. “I am—a stranger. I have been badly used, and nobody seems to care.”

“No,” he said, “nobody cares; don’t you look for that. Why should they? Why, you look as if you were sorry for me! What a joke!” he murmured to himself—“what a joke! Sorry for some one else! What a fool the fellow must be!”

“You look,” I said, “as if you were suffering horribly; and you say you have come here for years.”

“Suffering! I should think I was,” said the sick man; “but what is that to you? Yes; I’ve been here for years—oh, years! that means nothing—for longer than can be counted. Suffering is not the word. It’s torture; it’s agony! But who cares? Take your leg out of my way.”

I drew myself out of his way from a sort of habit, though against my will, and asked, from habit too, “Are you never any better than now?”

He looked at me more closely, and an air of astonishment came over his face. “What d’ye want here,” he said, “pitying a man? That’s something new here. No; I’m not always so bad, if you want to know. I get better, and then I go and do what makes me bad again, and that’s how it will go on; and I choose it to be so, and you needn’t bring any of your d——d pity here.”

“I may ask, at least, why aren’t you looked after? Why don’t you get into some hospital?” I said.

“Hospital!” cried the sick man, and then he too burst out into that furious laugh, the most awful sound I ever had heard. Some of the passers-by stopped to hear what the joke was, and surrounded me with once more a circle of mockers.

“Hospitals! perhaps you would like a whole Red Cross Society, with ambulances and all arranged?” cried one. “Or the Misericordia!” shouted another. I sprang up to my feet, crying, “Why not?” with an impulse of rage which gave me strength. Was I never to meet with anything but this fiendish laughter? “There’s some authority, I suppose,” I cried in my fury. “It is not the rabble that is the only master here, I hope.” But nobody took the least trouble to hear what I had to say for myself. The last speaker struck me on the mouth, and called me an accursed fool for talking of what I did not understand; and finally they all swept on and passed away.

I had been, as I thought, severely injured when I dragged myself into that corner to save myself from the crowd; but I sprang up now as if nothing had happened to me. My wounds had disappeared; my bruises were gone. I was as I had been when I dropped, giddy and amazed, upon the same pavement, how long—an hour?—before? It might have been an hour, it might have been a year, I cannot tell. The light was the same as ever, the thunderous atmosphere unchanged. Day, if it was day, had made no progress; night, if it was evening, had come no nearer; all was the same.

As I went on again presently, with a vexed and angry spirit, regarding on every side around me the endless surging of the crowd, and feeling a loneliness, a sense of total abandonment and solitude, which I cannot describe, there came up to me a man of remarkable appearance. That he was a person of importance, of great knowledge and information, could not be doubted. He was very pale, and of a worn but commanding aspect. The lines of his face were deeply drawn; his eyes were sunk under high arched brows, from which they looked out as from caves, full of a fiery impatient light. His thin lips were never quite without a smile; but it was not a smile in which any pleasure was. He walked slowly, not hurrying, like most of the passengers. He had a reflective look, as if pondering many things. He came up to me suddenly, without introduction or preliminary, and took me by the arm. “What object had you in talking of these antiquated institutions?” he said.

And I saw in his mind the gleam of the thought, which seemed to be the first with all, that I was a fool, and that it was the natural thing to wish me harm, just as in the earth above it was the natural thing, professed at least, to wish well—to say, Good-morning, good-day, by habit and without thought. In this strange country the stranger was received with a curse, and it woke an answer not unlike the hasty “Curse you, then, also!” which seemed to come without any will of mine through my mind. But this provoked only a smile from my new friend. He took no notice. He was disposed to examine me, to find some amusement perhaps—how could I tell?—in what I might say.

“What antiquated things?”

“Are you still so slow of understanding? What were they—hospitals? The pretences of a world that can still deceive itself. Did you expect to find them here?”

“I expected to find—how should I know?” I said, bewildered—“some shelter for a poor wretch where he could be cared for, not to be left there to die in the street. Expected! I never thought. I took it for granted—”

“To die in the street!” he cried with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders. “You’ll learn better by and by. And if he did die in the street, what then? What is that to you?”

“To me!” I turned and looked at him, amazed; but he had somehow shut his soul, so that I could see nothing but the deep eyes in their caves, and the smile upon the close-shut mouth. “No more to me than to any one. I only spoke for humanity’s sake, as—a fellow-creature.”

My new acquaintance gave way to a silent laugh within himself, which was not so offensive as the loud laugh of the crowd, but yet was more exasperating than words can say. “You think that matters? But it does not hurt you that he should be in pain. It would do you no good if he were to get well. Why should you trouble yourself one way or the other? Let him die—if he can—That makes no difference to you or me.”

“I must be dull indeed,” I cried,—“slow of understanding, as you say. This is going back to the ideas of times beyond knowledge—before Christianity—” As soon as I had said this I felt somehow—I could not tell how—as if my voice jarred, as if something false and unnatural was in what I said. My companion gave my arm a twist as if with a shock of surprise, then laughed in his inward way again.

“We don’t think much of that here, nor of your modern pretences in general. The only thing that touches you and me is what hurts or helps ourselves. To be sure, it all comes to the same thing—for I suppose it annoys you to see that wretch writhing; it hurts your more delicate, highly-cultivated consciousness.”

“It has nothing to do with my consciousness,” I cried angrily; “it is a shame to let a fellow-creature suffer if we can prevent it.”

“Why shouldn’t he suffer?” said my companion. We passed as he spoke some other squalid, wretched creatures shuffling among the crowd, whom he kicked with his foot, calling forth a yell of pain and curses. This he regarded with a supreme contemptuous calm which stupefied me. Nor did any of the passers-by show the slightest inclination to take the part of the sufferers. They laughed, or shouted out a gibe, or what was still more wonderful, went on with a complete unaffected indifference, as if all this was natural. I tried to disengage my arm in horror and dismay, but he held me fast with a pressure that hurt me. “That’s the question,” he said. “What have we to do with it? Your fictitious consciousness makes it painful to you. To me, on the contrary, who take the view of nature, it is a pleasurable feeling. It enhances the amount of ease, whatever that may be, which I enjoy. I am in no pain. That brute who is”—and he flicked with a stick he carried the uncovered wound of a wretch upon the roadside—“makes me more satisfied with my condition. Ah! you think it is I who am the brute? You will change your mind by and by.”

“Never!” I cried, wrenching my arm from his with an effort, “if I should live a hundred years.”

“A hundred years—a drop in the bucket!” he said with his silent laugh. “You will live for ever, and you will come to my view; and we shall meet in the course of ages, from time to time, to compare notes. I would say good-bye after the old fashion, but you are but newly arrived, and I will not treat you so badly as that.” With which he parted from me, waving his hand, with his everlasting horrible smile.

“Good-bye!” I said to myself, “good-bye! why should it be treating me badly to say good-bye—”

I was startled by a buffet on the mouth. “Take that!” cried some one, “to teach you how to wish the worst of tortures to people who have done you no harm.”

“What have I said? I meant no harm; I repeated only what is the commonest civility, the merest good manners.”

“You wished,” said the man who had struck me,—“I won’t repeat the words: to me, for it was I only that heard them, the awful company that hurts most, that sets everything before us, both past and to come, and cuts like a sword and burns like fire. I’ll say it to yourself, and see how it feels. God be with you! There! it is said, and we all must bear it, thanks, you fool and accursed, to you.”

And then there came a pause over all the place, an awful stillness—hundreds of men and women standing clutching with desperate movements at their hearts as if to tear them out, moving their heads as if to dash them against the wall, wringing their hands, with a look upon all their convulsed faces which I can never forget. They all turned to me, cursing me with those horrible eyes of anguish. And everything was still—the noise all stopped for a moment, the air all silent, with a silence that could be felt. And then suddenly out of the crowd there came a great piercing cry; and everything began again exactly as before.

While this pause occurred, and while I stood wondering, bewildered, understanding nothing, there came over me a darkness, a blackness, a sense of misery such as never in all my life—though I have known troubles enough—I had felt before. All that had happened to me throughout my existence seemed to rise pale and terrible in a hundred scenes before me, all momentary, intense, as if each was the present moment. And in each of these scenes I saw what I had never seen before. I saw where I had taken the wrong instead of the right step; in what wantonness, with what self-will it had been done; how God (I shuddered at the name) had spoken and called me, and even entreated, and I had withstood and refused. All the evil I had done came back, and spread itself out before my eyes; and I loathed it, yet knew that I had chosen it, and that it would be with me for ever. I saw it all in the twinkling of an eye, in a moment, while I stood there, and all men with me, in the horror of awful thought. Then it ceased as it had come, instantaneously, and the noise and the laughter, and the quarrels and cries, and all the commotion of this new bewildering place, in a moment began again. I had seen no one while this strange paroxysm lasted. When it disappeared, I came to myself, emerging as from a dream, and looked into the face of the man whose words, not careless like mine, had brought it upon us. Our eyes met, and his were surrounded by curves and lines of anguish which were terrible to see.

“Well,” he said with a short laugh, which was forced and harsh, “how do you like it? that is what happens when—— If it came often, who could endure it?” He was not like the rest. There was no sneer upon his face, no gibe at my simplicity. Even now, when all had recovered, he was still quivering with something that looked like a nobler pain. His face was very grave, the lines deeply drawn in it; and he seemed to be seeking no amusement or distraction, nor to take any part in the noise and tumult which was going on around.

“Do you know what that cry meant?” he said. “Did you hear that cry? It was some one who saw—even here once in a long time, they say, it can be seen—”

“What can be seen?”

He shook his head, looking at me with a meaning which I could not interpret. It was beyond the range of my thoughts. I came to know after, or I never could have made this record. But on that subject he said no more. He turned the way I was going, though it mattered nothing what way I went, for all were the same to me. “You are one of the new-comers?” he said; “you have not been long here—”

“Tell me,” I cried, “what you mean by here. Where are we? How can one tell who has fallen—he knows not whence or where? What is this place? I have never seen anything like it. It seems to me that I hate it already, though I know not what it is.”

He shook his head once more. “You will hate it more and more,” he said; “but of these dreadful streets you will never be free, unless—” And here he stopped again.

“Unless—what? If it is possible, I will be free of them, and that before long.”

He smiled at me faintly, as we smile at children, but not with derision.

“How shall you do that? Between this miserable world and all others, there is a great gulf fixed. It is full of all the bitterness and tears that come from all the universe. These drop from them, but stagnate here. We, you perceive, have no tears, not even at moments—” Then, “You will soon be accustomed to all this,” he said. “You will fall into the way. Perhaps you will be able to amuse yourself to make it passable. Many do. There are a number of fine things to be seen here. If you are curious, come with me and I will show you. Or work—there is even work. There is only one thing that is impossible—or if not impossible—” And here he paused again and raised his eyes to the dark clouds and lurid sky overhead. “The man who gave that cry! if I could but find him! he must have seen—”

“What could he see?” I asked. But there arose in my mind something like contempt. A visionary! who could not speak plainly, who broke off into mysterious inferences, and appeared to know more than he would say. It seemed foolish to waste time, when evidently there was still so much to see, in the company of such a man; and I began already to feel more at home. There was something in that moment of anguish which had wrought a strange familiarity in me with my surroundings. It was so great a relief to return out of the misery of that sharp and horrible self-realization, to what had come to be, in comparison, easy and well known. I had no desire to go back and grope among the mysteries and anguish so suddenly revealed. I was glad to be free from them, to be left to myself, to get a little pleasure perhaps like the others. While these thoughts passed through my mind, I had gone on without any active impulse of my own, as everybody else did; and my latest companion had disappeared. He saw, no doubt, without any need for words, what my feelings were. And I proceeded on my way. I felt better as I got more accustomed to the place, or perhaps it was the sensation of relief after that moment of indescribable pain. As for the sights in the streets, I began to grow used to them. The wretched creatures who strolled or sat about with signs of sickness or wounds upon them disgusted me only, they no longer called forth my pity. I began to feel ashamed of my silly questions about the hospital. All the same, it would have been a good thing to have had some receptacle for them, into which they might have been driven out of the way. I felt an inclination to push them aside as I saw other people do, but was a little ashamed of that impulse too; and so I went on. There seemed no quiet streets, so far as I could make out, in the place. Some were smaller, meaner, with a different kind of passengers, but the same hubbub and unresting movement everywhere. I saw no signs of melancholy or seriousness; active pain, violence, brutality, the continual shock of quarrels and blows, but no pensive faces about, no sorrowfulness, nor the kind of trouble which brings thought. Everybody was fully occupied, pushing on as if in a race, pausing for nothing.

The glitter of the lights, the shouts, and sounds of continual going, the endless whirl of passers-by, confused and tired me after a while. I went as far out as I could go to what seemed the out-skirts of the place, where I could by glimpses perceive a low horizon all lurid and glowing, which seemed to sweep round and round. Against it in the distance stood up the outline, black against that red glow, of other towers and house-tops, so many and great that there was evidently another town between us and the sunset, if sunset it was. I have seen a western sky like it when there were storms about, and all the colours of the sky were heightened and darkened by angry influences. The distant town rose against it, cutting the firmament so that it might have been tongues of flame flickering between the dark solid outlines; and across the waste open country which lay between the two cities, there came a distant hum like the sound of the sea, which was in reality the roar of that other multitude. The country between showed no greenness or beauty; it lay dark under the dark overhanging sky. Here and there seemed a cluster of giant trees scathed as if by lightning, their bare boughs standing up as high as the distant towers, their trunks like black columns without foliage. Openings here and there, with glimmering lights, looked like the mouths of mines; but of passengers there were scarcely any. A figure here and there flew along as if pursued, imperfectly seen, a shadow only a little darker than the space about. And in contrast with the sound of the city, here was no sound at all, except the low roar on either side, and a vague cry or two from the openings of the mine—a scene all drawn in darkness, in variations of gloom, deriving scarcely any light at all from the red and gloomy burning of that distant evening sky.

A faint curiosity to go forwards, to see what the mines were, perhaps to get a share in what was brought up from them, crossed my mind. But I was afraid of the dark, of the wild uninhabited savage look of the landscape; though when I thought of it, there seemed no reason why a narrow stretch of country between two great towns should be alarming. But the impression was strong and above reason. I turned back to the street in which I had first alighted, and which seemed to end in a great square full of people. In the middle there was a stage erected, from which some one was delivering an oration or address of some sort. He stood beside a long table, upon which lay something which I could not clearly distinguish, except that it seemed alive, and moved, or rather writhed with convulsive twitchings, as if trying to get free of the bonds which confined it. Round the stage in front were a number of seats occupied by listeners, many of whom were women, whose interest seemed to be very great, some of them being furnished with note-books; while a great unsettled crowd coming and going, drifted round,—many, arrested for a time as they passed, proceeding on their way when the interest flagged, as is usual to such open-air assemblies. I followed two of those who pushed their way to within a short distance of the stage, and who were strong, big men, more fitted to elbow the crowd aside than I, after my rough treatment in the first place, and the agitation I had passed through, could be. I was glad, besides, to take advantage of the explanation which one was giving to the other. “It’s always fun to see this fellow demonstrate,” he said, “and the subject to-day’s a capital one. Let’s get well forward, and see all that’s going on.”

“Which subject do you mean?” said the other; “the theme or the example?”

And they both laughed, though I did not seize the point of the wit.

“Well, both,” said the first speaker. “The theme is nerves; and as a lesson in construction and the calculation of possibilities, it’s fine. He’s very clever at that. He shows how they are all strung to give as much pain and do as much harm as can be; and yet how well it’s all managed, don’t you know, to look the reverse. As for the example, he’s a capital one—all nerves together, lying, if you like, just on the surface, ready for the knife.”

“If they’re on the surface I can’t see where the fun is,” said the other.

“Metaphorically speaking. Of course they are just where other people’s nerves are; but he’s what you call a highly organized nervous specimen. There will be plenty of fun. Hush! he is just going to begin.”

“The arrangement of these threads of being,” said the lecturer, evidently resuming after a pause, “so as to convey to the brain the most instantaneous messages of pain or pleasure, is wonderfully skilful and clever. I need not say to the audience before me, enlightened as it is by experiences of the most striking kind, that the messages are less of pleasure than of pain. They report to the brain the stroke of injury far more often than the thrill of pleasure; though sometimes that too, no doubt, or life could scarcely be maintained. The powers that be have found it necessary to mingle a little sweet of pleasurable sensation, else our miserable race would certainly have found some means of procuring annihilation. I do not for a moment pretend to say that the pleasure is sufficient to offer a just counterbalance to the other. None of my hearers will, I hope, accuse me of inconsistency. I am ready to allow that in a previous condition I asserted somewhat strongly that this was the case; but experience has enlightened us on that point. Our circumstances are now understood by us all in a manner impossible while we were still in a condition of incompleteness. We are all convinced that there is no compensation. The pride of the position, of bearing everything rather than give in, or making a submission we do not feel, of preserving our own will and individuality to all eternity, is the only compensation. I am satisfied with it, for my part.”

The orator made a pause, holding his head high, and there was a certain amount of applause. The two men before me cheered vociferously. “That is the right way to look at it,” one of them said. My eyes were upon them, with no particular motive; and I could not help starting, as I saw suddenly underneath their applause and laughter a snarl of cursing, which was the real expression of their thoughts. I felt disposed in the same way to curse the speaker, though I knew no reason why.

He went on a little farther, explaining what he meant to do; and then turning round, approached the table. An assistant, who was waiting, uncovered it quickly. The audience stirred with quickened interest, and I with consternation made a step forwards, crying out with horror. The object on the table, writhing, twitching to get free, but bound down by every limb, was a living man. The lecturer went forwards calmly, taking his instruments from their case with perfect composure and coolness. “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and inserted the knife in the flesh, making a long clear cut in the bound arm. I shrieked out, unable to restrain myself. The sight of the deliberate wound, the blood, the cry of agony that came from the victim, the calmness of all the lookers-on, filled me with horror and rage indescribable. I felt myself clear the crowd away with a rush, and spring on the platform, I could not tell how. “You devil!” I cried, “let the man go! Where is the police? Where is a magistrate? Let the man go this moment! fiends in human shape! I’ll have you brought to justice!” I heard myself shouting wildly, as I flung myself upon the wretched sufferer, interposing between him and the knife. It was something like this that I said. My horror and rage were delirious, and carried me beyond all attempt at control.

Through it all I heard a shout of laughter rising from everybody round. The lecturer laughed; the audience roared with that sound of horrible mockery which had driven me out of myself in my first experience. All kinds of mocking cries sounded around me. “Let him a little blood to calm him down.” “Let the fool have a taste of it himself, doctor.” Last of all came a voice mingled with the cries of the sufferer whom I was trying to shield, “Take him instead; curse him! take him instead.” I was bending over the man with my arms outstretched, protecting him, when he gave vent to this cry. And I heard immediately behind me a shout of assent, which seemed to come from the two strong young men with whom I had been standing, and the sound of a rush to seize me. I looked round, half mad with terror and rage; a second more and I should have been strapped on the table too. I made one wild bound into the midst of the crowd; and struggling among the arms stretched out to catch me, amid the roar of the laughter and cries—fled—fled wildly, I knew not whither, in panic and rage and horror which no words could describe. Terror winged my feet. I flew, thinking as little of whom I met, or knocked down, or trod upon in my way, as the others did at whom I had wondered a little while ago.

No distinct impression of this headlong course remains in my mind, save the sensation of mad fear such as I had never felt before. I came to myself on the edge of the dark valley which surrounded the town. All my pursuers had dropped off before that time; and I have the recollection of flinging myself upon the ground on my face in the extremity of fatigue and exhaustion. I must have lain there undisturbed for some time. A few steps came and went, passing me; but no one took any notice, and the absence of the noise and crowding gave me a momentary respite. But in my heat and fever I got no relief of coolness from the contact of the soil. I might have flung myself upon a bed of hot ashes, so much was it unlike the dewy cool earth which I expected, upon which one can always throw one’s self with a sensation of repose. Presently the uneasiness of it made me struggle up again and look around me. I was safe; at least the cries of the pursuers had died away, the laughter which made my blood boil offended my ears no more. The noise of the city was behind me, softened into an indefinite roar by distance, and before me stretched out the dreary landscape in which there seemed no features of attraction. Now that I was nearer to it, I found it not so unpeopled as I thought. At no great distance from me was the mouth of one of the mines, from which came an indication of subterranean lights; and I perceived that the flying figures which I had taken for travellers between one city and another were in reality wayfarers endeavouring to keep clear of what seemed a sort of press-gang at the openings. One of them, unable to stop himself in his flight, adopted the same expedient as myself, and threw himself on the ground close to me when he had got beyond the range of pursuit. It was curious that we should meet there, he flying from a danger which I was about to face, and ready to encounter that from which I had fled. I waited for a few minutes till he had recovered his breath, and then, “What are you running from?” I said. “Is there any danger there?” The man looked up at me with the same continual question in his eyes—Who is this fool?

“Danger!” he said. “Are you so new here, or such a cursed idiot, as not to know the danger of the mines? You are going across yourself, I suppose, and then you’ll see.”

“But tell me,” I said; “my experience may be of use to you afterwards, if you will tell me yours now.”

“Of use!” he cried, staring; “who cares? Find out for yourself. If they get hold of you, you will soon understand.”

I no longer took this for rudeness, but answered in his own way, cursing him too for a fool. “If I ask a warning I can give one; as for kindness,” I said, “I was not looking for that.”

At this he laughed, indeed we laughed together—there seemed something ridiculous in the thought; and presently he told me, for the mere relief of talking, that round each of these pit-mouths there was a band to entrap every passer-by who allowed himself to be caught, and send him down below to work in the mine. “Once there, there is no telling when you may get free,” he said; “one time or other most people have a taste of it. You don’t know what hard labour is if you have never been there. I had a spell once. There is neither air nor light; your blood boils in your veins from the fervent heat; you are never allowed to rest. You are put in every kind of contortion to get at it, your limbs twisted, and your muscles strained.”

“For what?” I said.

“For gold!” he cried with a flash in his eyes—“gold! There it is inexhaustible; however hard you may work, there is always more, and more!”

“And to whom does all that belong?” I said.

“To whoever is strong enough to get hold and keep possession—sometimes one, sometimes another. The only thing you are sure of is that it will never be you.”

Why not I as well as another? was the thought that went through my mind, and my new companion spied it with a shriek of derision.

“It is not for you nor your kind,” he cried. “How do you think you could force other people to serve you? Can you terrify them or hurt them, or give them anything? You have not learned yet who are the masters here.”

This troubled me, for it was true. “I had begun to think,” I said, “that there was no authority at all—for every man seems to do as he pleases; you ride over one, and knock another down, or you seize a living man and cut him to pieces”—I shuddered as I thought of it—“and there is nobody to interfere.”

“Who should interfere?” he said. “Why shouldn’t every man amuse himself as he can? But yet for all that we’ve got our masters,” he cried with a scowl, waving his clenched fist in the direction of the mines; “you’ll find it out when you get there.”

It was a long time after this before I ventured to move, for here it seemed to me that for the moment I was safe—outside the city, yet not within reach of the dangers of that intermediate space which grew clearer before me as my eyes became accustomed to the lurid threatening afternoon light. One after another the fugitives came flying past me—people who had escaped from the armed bands whom I could now see on the watch near the pit’s mouth. I could see too the tactics of these bands—how they retired, veiling the lights and the opening, when a greater number than usual of travellers appeared on the way, and then suddenly widening out, throwing out flanking lines, surrounded and drew in the unwary. I could even hear the cries with which their victims disappeared over the opening which seemed to go down into the bowels of the earth. By and by there came flying towards me a wretch more dreadful in aspect than any I had seen. His scanty clothes seemed singed and burned into rags; his hair, which hung about his face unkempt and uncared for, had the same singed aspect; his skin was brown and baked. I got up as he approached, and caught him and threw him to the ground, without heeding his struggles to get on. “Don’t you see,” he cried with a gasp, “they may get me again.” He was one of those who had escaped out of the mines; but what was it to me whether they caught him again or not? I wanted to know how he had been caught, and what he had been set to do, and how he had escaped. Why should I hesitate to use my superior strength when no one else did? I kept watch over him that he should not get away.

“You have been in the mines?” I said.

“Let me go!” he cried. “Do you need to ask?” and he cursed me as he struggled, with the most terrible imprecations. “They may get me yet. Let me go!”

“Not till you tell me,” I cried. “Tell me and I’ll protect you. If they come near I’ll let you go. Who are they, man? I must know.”

He struggled up from the ground, clearing his hot eyes from the ashes that were in them, and putting aside his singed hair. He gave me a glance of hatred and impotent resistance (for I was stronger than he), and then cast a wild terrified look back. The skirmishers did not seem to remark that anybody had escaped, and he became gradually a little more composed. “Who are they?” he said hoarsely. “They’re cursed wretches like you and me; and there are as many bands of them as there are mines on the road; and you’d better turn back and stay where you are. You are safe here.”

“I will not turn back,” I said.

“I know well enough: you can’t. You’ve got to go the round like the rest,” he said with a laugh which was like a sound uttered by a wild animal rather than a human voice. The man was in my power, and I struck him, miserable as he was. It seemed a relief thus to get rid of some of the fury in my mind. “It’s a lie,” I said; “I go because I please. Why shouldn’t I gather a band of my own if I please, and fight those brutes, not fly from them like you?”

He chuckled and laughed below his breath, struggling and cursing and crying out, as I struck him again, “You gather a band! What could you offer them? Where would you find them? Are you better than the rest of us? Are you not a man like the rest? Strike me you can, for I’m down. But make yourself a master and a chief—you!”

“Why not I?” I shouted again, wild with rage and the sense that I had no power over him, save to hurt him. That passion made my hands tremble; he slipped from me in a moment, bounded from the ground like a ball, and with a yell of derision escaped, and plunged into the streets and the clamour of the city from which I had just flown. I felt myself rage after him, shaking my fists with a consciousness of the ridiculous passion of impotence that was in me, but no power of restraining it; and there was not one of the fugitives who passed, however desperate he might be, who did not make a mock at me as he darted by. The laughing-stock of all those miserable objects, the sport of fate, afraid to go forwards, unable to go back, with a fire in my veins urging me on! But presently I grew a little calmer out of mere exhaustion, which was all the relief that was possible to me. And by and by, collecting all my faculties, and impelled by this impulse, which I seemed unable to resist, I got up and went cautiously on.

Fear can act in two ways: it paralyses, and it renders cunning. At this moment I found it inspired me. I made my plans before I started, how to steal along under the cover of the blighted brushwood which broke the line of the valley here and there. I set out only after long thought, seizing the moment when the vaguely perceived band were scouring in the other direction intercepting the travellers. Thus, with many pauses, I got near to the pit’s mouth in safety. But my curiosity was as great as, almost greater than my terror. I had kept far from the road, dragging myself sometimes on hands and feet over broken ground, tearing my clothes and my flesh upon the thorns; and on that farther side all seemed so silent and so dark in the shadow cast by some disused machinery, behind which the glare of the fire from below blazed upon the other side of the opening, that I could not crawl along in the darkness, and pass, which would have been the safe way, but with a breathless hot desire to see and know, dragged myself to the very edge to look down. Though I was in the shadow, my eyes were nearly put out by the glare on which I gazed. It was not fire; it was the lurid glow of the gold, glowing like flame, at which countless miners were working. They were all about like flies—some on their knees, some bent double as they stooped over their work, some lying cramped upon shelves and ledges. The sight was wonderful, and terrible beyond description. The workmen seemed to consume away with the heat and the glow, even in the few minutes I gazed. Their eyes shrank into their heads; their faces blackened. I could see some trying to secret morsels of the glowing metal, which burned whatever it touched, and some who were being searched by the superiors of the mines, and some who were punishing the offenders, fixing them up against the blazing wall of gold. The fear went out of my mind, so much absorbed was I in this sight. I gazed, seeing farther and farther every moment into crevices and seams of the glowing metal, always with more and more slaves at work, and the entire pantomime of labour and theft, and search and punishment, going on and on—the baked faces dark against the golden glare, the hot eyes taking a yellow reflection, the monotonous clamour of pick and shovel, and cries and curses, and all the indistinguishable sound of a multitude of human creatures. And the floor below, and the low roof which overhung whole myriads within a few inches of their faces, and the irregular walls all breached and shelved, were every one the same, a pandemonium of gold—gold everywhere. I had loved many foolish things in my life, but never this; which was perhaps why I gazed and kept my sight, though there rose out of it a blast of heat which scorched the brain.

While I stooped over, intent on the sight, some one who had come up by my side to gaze too was caught by the fumes (as I suppose), for suddenly I was aware of a dark object falling prone into the glowing interior with a cry and crash which brought back my first wild panic. He fell in a heap, from which his arms shot forth wildly as he reached the bottom, and his cry was half anguish yet half desire. I saw him seized by half a dozen eager watchers, and pitched upon a ledge just under the roof, and tools thrust into his hands. I held on by an old shaft, trembling, unable to move. Perhaps I cried too in my horror—for one of the overseers who stood in the centre of the glare looked up. He had the air of ordering all that was going on, and stood unaffected by the blaze, commanding the other wretched officials, who obeyed him like dogs. He seemed to me, in my terror, like a figure of gold, the image perhaps of wealth or Pluto, or I know not what, for I suppose my brain began to grow confused, and my hold on the shaft to relax. I had strength enough, however (for I cared not for the gold), to fling myself back the other way upon the ground, where I rolled backwards, downwards, I knew not how, turning over and over upon sharp ashes and metallic edges, which tore my hair and beard; and for a moment I knew no more.

This fall saved me. I came to myself after a time, and heard the press-gang searching about. I had sense to lie still among the ashes thrown up out of the pit, while I heard their voices. Once I gave myself up for lost. The glitter of a lantern flashed in my eyes, a foot passed, crashing among the ashes so close to my cheek that the shoe grazed it. I found the mark after, burned upon my flesh; but I escaped notice by a miracle. And presently I was able to drag myself up and crawl away; but how I reached the end of the valley I cannot tell. I pushed my way along mechanically on the dark side. I had no further desire to see what was going on in the openings of the mines. I went on, stumbling and stupid, scarcely capable even of fear, conscious only of wretchedness and weariness, till at last I felt myself drop across the road within the gateway of the other town, and lay there with no thought of anything but the relief of being at rest.

When I came to myself, it seemed to me that there was a change in the atmosphere and the light. It was less lurid, paler, grey, more like twilight than the stormy afternoon of the other city. A certain dead serenity was in the sky—black paleness, whiteness, everything faint in it. This town was walled, but the gates stood open, and I saw no defences of troops or other guardians. I found myself lying across the threshold, but pushed to one side, so that the carriages which went and came should not be stopped or I injured by their passage. It seemed to me that there was some thoughtfulness and kindness in this action, and my heart sprang up in a reaction of hope. I looked back as if upon a nightmare on the dreadful city which I had left, on its tumults and noise, the wild racket of the streets, the wounded wretches who sought refuge in the corners, the strife and misery that were abroad, and, climax of all, the horrible entertainment which had been going on in the square, the unhappy being strapped upon the table. How, I said to myself, could such things be? Was it a dream? Was it a nightmare? Was it something presented to me in a vision—a strong delusion to make me think that the old fables which had been told concerning the end of mortal life were true? When I looked back it appeared like an allegory, so that I might have seen it in a dream; and still more like an allegory were the gold mines in the valley, and the myriads who laboured there. Was it all true, or only a reflection from the old life mingling with the strange novelties which would most likely elude understanding on the entrance into this new? I sat within the shelter of the gateway on my awakening, and thought over all this. My heart was calm—almost, in the revulsion from the terrors I had been through, happy. I persuaded myself that I was but now beginning; that there had been no reality in these latter experiences, only a curious succession of nightmares, such as might so well be supposed to follow a wonderful transformation like that which must take place between our mortal life and—the world to come. The world to come! I paused and thought of it all, until the heart began to beat loud in my breast. What was this where I lay? Another world; a world which was not happiness, not bliss? Oh, no—perhaps there was no world of bliss save in dreams. This, on the other hand, I said to myself, was not misery; for was not I seated here, with a certain tremulousness about me, it was true, after all the experiences which, supposing them even to have been but dreams, I had come through,—a tremulousness very comprehensible, and not at all without hope?

I will not say that I believed even what I tried to think. Something in me lay like a dark shadow in the midst of all my theories; but yet I succeeded to a great degree in convincing myself that the hope in me was real, and that I was but now beginning—beginning with at least a possibility that all might be well. In this half conviction, and after all the troubles that were over (even though they might only have been imaginary troubles), I felt a certain sweetness in resting there within the gateway, with my back against it. I was unwilling to get up again, and bring myself in contact with reality. I felt that there was pleasure in being left alone. Carriages rolled past me occasionally, and now and then some people on foot; but they did not kick me out of the way or interfere with my repose.

Presently as I sat trying to persuade myself to rise and pursue my way, two men came up to me in a sort of uniform. I recognized with another distinct sensation of pleasure that here were people who had authority, representatives of some kind of government. They came up to me and bade me come with them in tones which were peremptory enough; but what of that?—better the most peremptory supervision than the lawlessness from which I had come. They raised me from the ground with a touch, for I could not resist them, and led me quickly along the street into which that gateway gave access, which was a handsome street with tall houses on either side. Groups of people were moving about along the pavement, talking now and then with considerable animation; but when my companions were seen, there was an immediate moderation of tone, a sort of respect which looked like fear. There was no brawling nor tumult of any kind in the street. The only incident that occurred was this: when we had gone some way, I saw a lame man dragging himself along with difficulty on the other side of the street. My conductors had no sooner perceived him than they gave each other a look and darted across, conveying me with them, by a sweep of magnetic influence, I thought, that prevented me from staying behind. He made an attempt with his crutches to get out of the way, hurrying on—and I will allow that this attempt of his seemed to me very grotesque, so that I could scarcely help laughing; the other lookers-on in the street laughed too, though some put on an aspect of disgust. “Look, the tortoise!” some one said; “does he think he can go quicker than the orderlies?” My companions came up to the man while this commentary was going on, and seized him by each arm. “Where were you going? Where have you come from? How dare you make an exhibition of yourself?” they cried. They took the crutches from him as they spoke and threw them away, and dragged him on until we reached a great grated door which one of them opened with a key, while the other held the offender (for he seemed an offender) roughly up by one shoulder, causing him great pain. When the door was opened, I saw a number of people within, who seemed to crowd to the door as if seeking to get out; but this was not at all what was intended. My second companion dragged the lame man forwards, and pushed him in with so much violence that I could see him fall forwards on his face on the floor. Then the other locked the door, and we proceeded on our way. It was not till some time later that I understood why.

In the meantime I was hurried on, meeting a great many people who took no notice of me, to a central building in the middle of the town, where I was brought before an official attended by clerks, with great books spread out before him. Here I was questioned as to my name and my antecedents and the time of my arrival, then dismissed with a nod to one of my conductors. He led me back again down the street, took me into one of the tall great houses, opened the door of a room which was numbered, and left me there without a word. I cannot convey to any one the bewildered consternation with which I felt myself deposited here; and as the steps of my conductor died away in the long corridor, I sat down, and looking myself in the face, as it were, tried to make out what it was that had happened to me. The room was small and bare. There was but one thing hung upon the undecorated walls, and that was a long list of printed regulations which I had not the courage for the moment to look at. The light was indifferent, though the room was high up, and the street from the window looked far away below. I cannot tell how long I sat there thinking, and yet it could scarcely be called thought. I asked myself over and over again, Where am I? is it a prison? am I shut in, to leave this enclosure no more? what am I to do? how is the time to pass? I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to realize all that had happened to me; but nothing save a whirl through my head of disconnected thoughts seemed possible, and some force was upon me to open my eyes again, to see the blank room, the dull light, the vacancy round me in which there was nothing to interest the mind, nothing to please the eye—a blank wherever I turned. Presently there came upon me a burning regret for everything I had left—for the noisy town with all its tumults and cruelties, for the dark valley with all its dangers. Everything seemed bearable, almost agreeable, in comparison with this. I seemed to have been brought here to make acquaintance once more with myself, to learn over again what manner of man I was. Needless knowledge, acquaintance unnecessary, unhappy! for what was there in me to make me to myself a good companion? Never, I knew, could I separate myself from that eternal consciousness; but it was cruelty to force the contemplation upon me. All blank, blank around me, a prison! And was this to last for ever?

I do not know how long I sat, rapt in this gloomy vision; but at last it occurred to me to rise and try the door, which to my astonishment was open. I went out with a throb of new hope. After all, it might not be necessary to come back. There might be other expedients; I might fall among friends. I turned down the long echoing stairs, on which I met various people, who took no notice of me, and in whom I felt no interest save a desire to avoid them, and at last reached the street. To be out of doors in the air was something, though there was no wind, but a motionless still atmosphere which nothing disturbed. The streets, indeed, were full of movement, but not of life—though this seems a paradox. The passengers passed on their way in long regulated lines—those who went towards the gates keeping rigorously to one side of the pavement, those who came, to the other. They talked to each other here and there; but whenever two men in uniform, such as those who had been my conductors, appeared, silence ensued, and the wayfarers shrank even from the looks of these persons in authority. I walked all about the spacious town. Everywhere there were tall houses, everywhere streams of people coming and going, but no one spoke to me, or remarked me at all. I was as lonely as if I had been in a wilderness. I was indeed in a wilderness of men, who were as though they did not see me, passing without even a look of human fellowship, each absorbed in his own concerns. I walked and walked till my limbs trembled under me, from one end to another of the great streets, up and down, and round and round. But no one said, How are you? Whence come you? What are you doing? At length in despair I turned again to the blank and miserable room, which had looked to me like a cell in a prison. I had wilfully made no note of its situation, trying to avoid rather than to find it, but my steps were drawn thither against my will. I found myself retracing my steps, mounting the long stairs, passing the same people, who streamed along with no recognition of me, as I desired nothing to do with them; and at last found myself within the same four blank walls as before.

Soon after I returned I became conscious of measured steps passing the door, and of an eye upon me. I can say no more than this. From what point it was that I was inspected I cannot tell; but that I was inspected, closely scrutinized by some one, and that not only externally, but by a cold observation that went through and through me, I knew and felt beyond any possibility of mistake. This recurred from time to time, horribly, at uncertain moments, so that I never felt myself secure from it. I knew when the watcher was coming by tremors and shiverings through all my being; and no sensation so unsupportable has it ever been mine to bear. How much that is to say, no one can tell who has not gone through those regions of darkness, and learned what is in all their abysses. I tried at first to hide, to fling myself on the floor, to cover my face, to burrow in a dark corner. Useless attempts! The eyes that looked in upon me had powers beyond my powers. I felt sometimes conscious of the derisive smile with which my miserable subterfuges were regarded. They were all in vain.

And what was still more strange was that I had not energy to think of attempting any escape. My steps, though watched, were not restrained in any way, so far as I was aware. The gates of the city stood open on all sides, free to those who went as well as to those who came; but I did not think of flight. Of flight! Whence should I go from myself? Though that horrible inspection was from the eyes of some unseen being, it was in some mysterious way connected with my own thinking and reflections, so that the thought came ever more and more strongly upon me, that from myself I could never escape. And that reflection took all energy, all impulse from me. I might have gone away when I pleased, beyond reach of the authority which regulated everything,—how one should walk, where one should live,—but never from my own consciousness. On the other side of the town lay a great plain, traversed by roads on every side. There was no reason why I should not continue my journey there; but I did not. I had no wish nor any power in me to go away.

In one of my long, dreary, companionless walks, unshared by any human fellowship, I saw at last a face which I remembered; it was that of the cynical spectator who had spoken to me in the noisy street, in the midst of my early experiences. He gave a glance round him to see that there were no officials in sight, then left the file in which he was walking, and joined me. “Ah!” he said, “you are here already,” with the same derisive smile with which he had before regarded me. I hated the man and his sneer, yet that he should speak to me was something, almost a pleasure.

“Yes,” said I, “I am here.” Then, after a pause, in which I did not know what to say, “It is quiet here,” I said.

“Quiet enough. Do you like it better for that? To do whatever you please with no one to interfere; or to do nothing you please, but as you are forced to do it—which do you think is best?”

I felt myself instinctively glance round, as he had done, to make sure that no one was in sight. Then I answered, faltering, “I have always held that law and order were necessary things; and the lawlessness of that—that place—I don’t know its name—if there is such a place,” I cried, “I thought it was a dream.”

He laughed in his mocking way. “Perhaps it is all a dream—who knows?” he said.

“Sir,” said I, “you have been longer here than I—”

“Oh,” cried he, with a laugh that was dry and jarred upon the air almost like a shriek, “since before your forefathers were born!” It seemed to me that he spoke like one who, out of bitterness and despite, made every darkness blacker still. A kind of madman in his way; for what was this claim of age?—a piece of bravado, no doubt, like the rest.

“That is strange,” I said, assenting, as when there is such a hallucination it is best to do. “You can tell me, then, whence all this authority comes, and why we are obliged to obey.”

He looked at me as if he were thinking in his mind how to hurt me most. Then, with that dry laugh, “We make trial of all things in this world,” he said, “to see if perhaps we can find something we shall like—discipline here, freedom in the other place. When you have gone all the round like me, then perhaps you will be able to choose.”

“Have you chosen?” I asked.

He only answered with a laugh. “Come,” he said, “there is amusement to be had too, and that of the most elevated kind. We make researches here into the moral nature of man. Will you come? But you must take the risk,” he added with a smile which afterwards I understood.

We went on together after this till we reached the centre of the place, in which stood an immense building with a dome, which dominated the city, and into a great hall in the centre of that, where a crowd of people were assembled. The sound of human speech, which murmured all around, brought new life to my heart. And as I gazed at a curious apparatus erected on a platform, several people spoke to me.

“We have again,” said one, “the old subject to-day.”

“Is it something about the constitution of the place?” I asked in the bewilderment of my mind. My neighbours looked at me with alarm, glancing behind them to see what officials might be near.

“The constitution of the place is the result of the sense of the inhabitants that order must be preserved,” said the one, who had spoken to me first. “The lawless can find refuge in other places. Here we have chosen to have supervision, nuisances removed, and order kept. That is enough. The constitution is not under discussion.”

“But man is,” said a second speaker. “Let us keep to that in which we can mend nothing. Sir, you may have to contribute your quota to our enlightenment. We are investigating the rise of thought. You are a stranger; you may be able to help us.”

“I am no philosopher,” I said with a panic which I could not explain to myself.

“That does not matter. You are a fresh subject.” The speaker made a slight movement with his hand, and I turned round to escape in wild, sudden fright, though I had no conception what could be done to me; but the crowd had pressed close round me, hemming me in on every side. I was so wildly alarmed that I struggled among them, pushing backwards with all my force, and clearing a space round me with my arms; but my efforts were vain. Two of the officers suddenly appeared out of the crowd, and seizing me by the arms, forced me forwards. The throng dispersed before them on either side, and I was half dragged, half lifted up upon the platform, where stood the strange apparatus which I had contemplated with a dull wonder when I came into the hall. My wonder did not last long. I felt myself fixed in it, standing supported in that position by bands and springs, so that no effort of mine was necessary to hold myself up, and none possible to release myself. I was caught by every joint, sustained, supported, exposed to the gaze of what seemed a world of upturned faces; among which I saw, with a sneer upon it, keeping a little behind the crowd, the face of the man who had led me here. Above my head was a strong light, more brilliant than anything I had ever seen, and which blazed upon my brain till the hair seemed to singe and the skin shrink. I hope I may never feel such a sensation again. The pitiless light went into me like a knife; but even my cries were stopped by the framework in which I was bound. I could breathe and suffer, but that was all.

Then some one got up on the platform above me and began to speak. He said, so far as I could comprehend in the anguish and torture in which I was held, that the origin of thought was the question he was investigating, but that in every previous subject the confusion of ideas had bewildered them, and the rapidity with which one followed another. “The present example has been found to exhibit great persistency of idea,” he said. “We hope that by his means some clearer theory may be arrived at.” Then he pulled over me a great movable lens as of a microscope, which concentrated the insupportable light. The wild, hopeless passion that raged within my soul had no outlet in the immovable apparatus that held me. I was let down among the crowd, and exhibited to them every secret movement of my being, by some awful process which I have never fathomed. A burning fire was in my brain; flame seemed to run along all my nerves; speechless, horrible, incommunicable fury raged in my soul. But I was like a child—nay, like an image of wood or wax—in the pitiless hands that held me. What was the cut of a surgeon’s knife to this? And I had thought that cruel! And I was powerless, and could do nothing—to blast, to destroy, to burn with this same horrible flame the fiends that surrounded me, as I desired to do.

Suddenly, in the raging fever of my thoughts, there surged up the recollection of that word which had paralysed all around, and myself with them. The thought that I must share the anguish did not restrain me from my revenge. With a tremendous effort I got my voice, though the instrument pressed upon my lips. I know not what I articulated save “God,” whether it was a curse or a blessing. I had been swung out into the middle of the hall, and hung amid the crowd, exposed to all their observations, when I succeeded in gaining utterance. My God! my God! Another moment and I had forgotten them and all my fury in the tortures that arose within myself. What, then, was the light that racked my brain? Once more my life from its beginning to its end rose up before me—each scene like a spectre, like the harpies of the old fables rending me with tooth and claw. Once more I saw what might have been, the noble things I might have done, the happiness I had lost, the turnings of the fated road which I might have taken—everything that was once so possible, so possible, so easy! but now possible no more. My anguish was immeasurable; I turned and wrenched myself, in the strength of pain, out of the machinery that held me, and fell down, down among all the curses that were being hurled at me—among the horrible and miserable crowd. I had brought upon them the evil which I shared, and they fell upon me with a fury which was like that which had prompted myself a few minutes before; but they could do nothing to me so tremendous as the vengeance I had taken upon them. I was too miserable to feel the blows that rained upon me, but presently I suppose I lost consciousness altogether, being almost torn to pieces by the multitude.

While this lasted, it seemed to me that I had a dream. I felt the blows raining down upon me, and my body struggling upon the ground; and yet it seemed to me that I was lying outside upon the ground, and above me the pale sky which never brightened at the touch of the sun. And I thought that dull, persistent cloud wavered and broke for an instant, and that I saw behind a glimpse of that blue which is heaven when we are on the earth—the blue sky—which is nowhere to be seen but in the mortal life; which is heaven enough, which is delight enough, for those who can look up to it, and feel themselves in the land of hope. It might be but a dream; in this strange world who could tell what was vision and what was true?

The next thing I remember was that I found myself lying on the floor of a great room full of people with every kind of disease and deformity, some pale with sickness, some with fresh wounds, the lame, and the maimed, and the miserable. They lay round me in every attitude of pain, many with sores, some bleeding, with broken limbs, but all struggling, some on hands and knees, dragging themselves up from the ground to stare at me. They roused in my mind a loathing and sense of disgust which it is impossible to express. I could scarcely tolerate the thought that I—I! should be forced to remain a moment in this lazar-house. The feeling with which I had regarded the miserable creature who shared the corner of the wall with me, and who had cursed me for being sorry for him, had altogether gone out of my mind. I called out, to whom I know not, adjuring some one to open the door and set me free; but my cry was answered only by a shout from my companions in trouble. “Who do you think will let you out?” “Who is going to help you more than the rest?” My whole body was racked with pain; I could not move from the floor, on which I lay. I had to put up with the stares of the curious, and the mockeries and remarks on me of whoever chose to criticise. Among them was the lame man whom I had seen thrust in by the two officers who had taken me from the gate. He was the first to jibe. “But for him they would never have seen me,” he said. “I should have been well by this time in the fresh air.” “It is his turn now,” said another. I turned my head as well as I could and spoke to them all.

“I am a stranger here,” I cried. “They have made my brain burn with their experiments. Will nobody help me? It is no fault of mine, it is their fault. If I am to be left here uncared for, I shall die.”

At this a sort of dreadful chuckle ran round the place. “If that is what you are afraid of, you will not die,” somebody said, touching me on my head in a way which gave me intolerable pain. “Don’t touch me,” I cried. “Why shouldn’t I?” said the other, and pushed me again upon the throbbing brain. So far as my sensations went, there were no coverings at all, neither skull nor skin upon the intolerable throbbing of my head, which had been exposed to the curiosity of the crowd, and every touch was agony; but my cry brought no guardian, nor any defence or soothing. I dragged myself into a corner after a time, from which some other wretch had been rolled out in the course of a quarrel; and as I found that silence was the only policy, I kept silent, with rage consuming my heart.

Presently I discovered by means of the new arrivals which kept coming in, hurled into the midst of us without thought or question, that this was the common fate of all who were repulsive to the sight, or who had any weakness or imperfection which offended the eyes of the population. They were tossed in among us, not to be healed, or for repose or safety, but to be out of sight, that they might not disgust or annoy those who were more fortunate, to whom no injury had happened; and because in their sickness and imperfection they were of no use in the studies of the place, and disturbed the good order of the streets. And there they lay one above another,—a mass of bruised and broken creatures, most of them suffering from injuries which they had sustained in what would have been called in other regions the service of the State. They had served like myself as objects of experiments. They had fallen from heights where they had been placed in illustration of some theory. They had been tortured or twisted to give satisfaction to some question. And then, that the consequences of these proceedings might offend no one’s eyes, they were flung into this receptacle, to be released if chance or strength enabled them to push their way out when others were brought in, or when their importunate knocking wearied some watchman, and brought him angry and threatening to hear what was wanted. The sound of this knocking against the door, and of the cries that accompanied it, and the rush towards the opening when any one was brought in, caused a hideous continuous noise and scuffle which was agony to my brain. Every one pushed before the other; there was an endless rising and falling as in the changes of a feverish dream, each man as he got strength to struggle forwards himself, thrusting back his neighbours, and those who were nearest to the door beating upon it without cease, like the beating of a drum without cadence or measure, sometimes a dozen passionate hands together, making a horrible din and riot. As I lay unable to join in that struggle, and moved by rage unspeakable towards all who could, I reflected strangely that I had never heard when outside this horrible continual appeal of the suffering. In the streets of the city, as I now reflected, quiet reigned. I had even made comparisons on my first entrance, in the moment of pleasant anticipation which came over me, of the happy stillness here with the horror and tumult of that place of unrule which I had left.

When my thoughts reached this point I was answered by the voice of some one on a level with myself, lying helpless like me on the floor of the lazar-house. “They have taken their precautions,” he said; “if they will not endure the sight of suffering, how should they hear the sound of it? Every cry is silenced there.”

“I wish they could be silenced within too,” I cried savagely; “I would make them dumb had I the power.”

“The spirit of the place is in you,” said the other voice.

“And not in you?” I said, raising my head, though every movement was agony; but this pretence of superiority was more than I could bear.

The other made no answer for a moment; then he said faintly, “If it is so, it is but for greater misery.”

And then his voice died away, and the hubbub of beating and crying and cursing and groaning filled all the echoes. They cried, but no one listened to them. They thundered on the door, but in vain. They aggravated all their pangs in that mad struggle to get free. After a while my companion, whoever he was, spoke again.

“They would rather,” he said, “lie on the roadside to be kicked and trodden on, as we have seen; though to see that made you miserable.”

“Made me miserable! You mock me,” I said. “Why should a man be miserable save for suffering of his own?”

“You thought otherwise once,” my neighbour said.

And then I remembered the wretch in the corner of the wall in the other town, who had cursed me for pitying him. I cursed myself now for that folly. Pity him! was he not better off than I? “I wish,” I cried, “that I could crush them into nothing, and be rid of this infernal noise they make!”

“The spirit of the place has entered into you,” said that voice.

I raised my arm to strike him; but my hand fell on the stone floor instead, and sent a jar of new pain all through my battered frame. And then I mastered my rage and lay still, for I knew there was no way but this of recovering my strength—the strength with which, when I got it back, I would annihilate that reproachful voice and crush the life out of those groaning fools, whose cries and impotent struggles I could not endure. And we lay a long time without moving, with always that tumult raging in our ears. At last there came into my mind a longing to hear spoken words again. I said, “Are you still there?”

“I shall be here,” he said, “till I am able to begin again.”

“To begin! Is there here, then, either beginning or ending? Go on; speak to me; it makes me a little forget my pain.”

“I have a fire in my heart,” he said; “I must begin and begin—till perhaps I find the way.”

“What way?” I cried, feverish and eager; for though I despised him, yet it made me wonder to think that he should speak riddles which I could not understand.

He answered very faintly, “I do not know.” The fool! then it was only folly, as from the first I knew it was. I felt then that I could treat him roughly, after the fashion of the place—which he said had got into me. “Poor wretch!” I said, “you have hopes, have you? Where have you come from? You might have learned better before now.”

“I have come,” he said, “from where we met before. I have come by the valley of gold. I have worked in the mines. I have served in the troops of those who are masters there. I have lived in this town of tyrants, and lain in this lazar-house before. Everything has happened to me, more and worse than you dream of.”

“And still you go on? I would dash my head against the wall and die.”

“When will you learn,” he said with a strange tone in his voice, which, though no one had been listening to us, made a sudden silence for a moment, it was so strange; it moved me like that glimmer of the blue sky in my dream, and roused all the sufferers round with an expectation—though I know not what. The cries stopped; the hands beat no longer. I think all the miserable crowd were still, and turned to where he lay. “When will you learn—that you have died, and can die no more?”

There was a shout of fury all around me. “Is that all you have to say?” the crowd burst forth; and I think they rushed upon him and killed him, for I heard no more until the hubbub began again more wild than ever, with furious hands beating, beating against the locked door.

After a while I began to feel my strength come back. I raised my head. I sat up. I began to see the faces of those around me, and the groups into which they gathered; the noise was no longer so insupportable—my racked nerves were regaining health. It was with a mixture of pleasure and despair that I became conscious of this. I had been through many deaths; but I did not die, perhaps could not, as that man had said. I looked about for him, to see if he had contradicted his own theory. But he was not dead. He was lying close to me, covered with wounds; but he opened his eyes, and something like a smile came upon his lips. A smile—I had heard laughter, and seen ridicule and derision, but this I had not seen. I could not bear it. To seize him and shake the little remaining life out of him was my impulse; but neither did I obey that. Again he reminded me of my dream—was it a dream?—of the opening in the clouds. From that moment I tried to shelter him, and as I grew stronger and stronger and pushed my way to the door, I dragged him along with me. How long the struggle was I cannot tell, or how often I was balked, or how many darted through before me when the door was opened. But I did not let him go; and at last, for now I was as strong as before—stronger than most about me—I got out into the air and brought him with me. Into the air! it was an atmosphere so still and motionless that there was no feeling of life in it, as I have said; but the change seemed to me happiness for the moment. It was freedom. The noise of the struggle was over; the horrible sights were left behind. My spirit sprang up as if I had been born into new life. It had the same effect, I suppose, upon my companion, though he was much weaker than I, for he rose to his feet at once with almost a leap of eagerness, and turned instantaneously towards the other side of the city.

“Not that way,” I said; “come with me and rest.”

“No rest—no rest—my rest is to go on;” and then he turned towards me and smiled and said, “Thanks”—looking into my face. What a word to hear! I had not heard it since— A rush of strange and sweet and dreadful thoughts came into my mind. I shrank and trembled, and let go his arm, which I had been holding; but when I left that hold I seemed to fall back into depths of blank pain and longing. I put out my hand again and caught him. “I will go,” I said, “where you go.”

A pair of the officials of the place passed as I spoke. They looked at me with a threatening glance, and half paused, but then passed on. It was I now who hurried my companion along. I recollected him now. He was a man who had met me in the streets of the other city when I was still ignorant, who had convulsed me with the utterance of that name which, in all this world where we were, is never named but for punishment,—the name which I had named once more in the great hall in the midst of my torture, so that all who heard me were transfixed with that suffering too. He had been haggard then, but he was more haggard now. His features were sharp with continual pain; his eyes were wild with weakness and trouble, though there was a meaning in them which went to my heart. It seemed to me that in his touch there was a certain help, though he was weak and tottered, and every moment seemed full of suffering. Hope sprang up in my mind—the hope that where he was so eager to go there would be something better, a life more livable than in this place. In every new place there is new hope. I was not worn out of that human impulse. I forgot the nightmare which had crushed me before—the horrible sense that from myself there was no escape—and holding fast to his arm, I hurried on with him, not heeding where. We went aside into less frequented streets, that we might escape observation. I seemed to myself the guide, though I was the follower. A great faith in this man sprang up in my breast. I was ready to go with him wherever he went, anywhere—anywhere must be better than this. Thus I pushed him on, holding by his arm, till we reached the very outmost limits of the city. Here he stood still for a moment, turning upon me, and took me by the hands.

“Friend,” he said, “before you were born into the pleasant earth I had come here. I have gone all the weary round. Listen to one who knows: all is harder, harder, as you go on. You are stirred to go on by the restlessness in your heart, and each new place you come to, the spirit of that place enters into you. You are better here than you will be farther on. You were better where you were at first, or even in the mines, than here. Come no farther. Stay; unless—” but here his voice gave way. He looked at me with anxiety in his eyes, and said no more.

“Then why,” I cried, “do you go on? Why do you not stay?”

He shook his head, and his eyes grew more and more soft. “I am going,” he said, and his voice shook again. “I am going—to try—the most awful and the most dangerous journey—” His voice died away altogether, and he only looked at me to say the rest.

“A journey? Where?”

I can tell no man what his eyes said. I understood, I cannot tell how; and with trembling all my limbs seemed to drop out of joint and my face grow moist with terror. I could not speak any more than he, but with my lips shaped, How? The awful thought made a tremor in the very air around. He shook his head slowly as he looked at me, his eyes, all circled with deep lines, looking out of caves of anguish and anxiety; and then I remembered how he had said, and I had scoffed at him, that the way he sought was one he did not know. I had dropped his hands in my fear; and yet to leave him seemed dragging the heart out of my breast, for none but he had spoken to me like a brother, had taken my hand and thanked me. I looked out across the plain, and the roads seemed tranquil and still. There was a coolness in the air. It looked like evening, as if somewhere in those far distances there might be a place where a weary soul might rest; and I looked behind me, and thought what I had suffered, and remembered the lazar-house and the voices that cried and the hands that beat against the door, and also the horrible quiet of the room in which I lived, and the eyes which looked in at me and turned my gaze upon myself. Then I rushed after him, for he had turned to go on upon his way, and caught at his clothes, crying, “Behold me, behold me! I will go too!”

He reached me his hand and went on without a word; and I with terror crept after him, treading in his steps, following like his shadow. What it was to walk with another, and follow, and be at one, is more than I can tell; but likewise my heart failed me for fear, for dread of what we might encounter, and of hearing that name or entering that presence which was more terrible than all torture. I wondered how it could be that one should willingly face that which racked the soul, and how he had learned that it was possible, and where he had heard of the way. And as we went on I said no word, for he began to seem to me a being of another kind, a figure full of awe; and I followed as one might follow a ghost. Where would he go? Were we not fixed here for ever, where our lot had been cast? And there were still many other great cities where there might be much to see, and something to distract the mind, and where it might be more possible to live than it had proved in the other places. There might be no tyrants there, nor cruelty, nor horrible noises, nor dreadful silence. Towards the right hand, across the plain, there seemed to rise out of the grey distance a cluster of towers and roofs like another habitable place; and who could tell that something better might not be there? Surely everything could not turn to torture and misery. I dragged on behind him, with all these thoughts hurrying through my mind. He was going—I dare to say it now, though I did not dare then—to seek out a way to God; to try, if it was possible, to find the road that led back—that road which had been open once to all. But for me, I trembled at the thought of that road. I feared the name, which was as the plunging of a sword into my inmost parts. All things could be borne but that. I dared not even think upon that name. To feel my hand in another man’s hand was much, but to be led into that awful presence, by awful ways, which none knew—how could I bear it? My spirits failed me, and my strength. My hand became loose in his hand; he grasped me still, but my hold failed, and ever with slower and slower steps I followed, while he seemed to acquire strength with every winding of the way. At length he said to me, looking back upon me, “I cannot stop; but your heart falls you. Shall I loose my hand and let you go?”

“I am afraid; I am afraid!” I cried.

“And I too am afraid; but it is better to suffer more and to escape than to suffer less and to remain.”

“Has it ever been known that one escaped? No one has ever escaped. This is our place,” I said; “there is no other world.”

“There are other worlds—there is a world where every way leads to One who loves us still.”

I cried out with a great cry of misery and scorn. “There is no love!” I said.

He stood still for a moment and turned and looked at me. His eyes seemed to melt my soul. A great cloud passed over them, as in the pleasant earth a cloud will sweep across the moon; and then the light came out and looked at me again, for neither did he know. Where he was going all might end in despair and double and double pain. But if it were possible that at the end there should be found that for which he longed, upon which his heart was set! He said with a faltering voice, “Among all whom I have questioned and seen, there was but one who found the way. But if one has found it, so may I. If you will not come, yet let me go.”

“They will tear you limb from limb; they will burn you in the endless fires,” I said. But what is it to be torn limb from limb, or burned with fire? There came upon his face a smile, and in my heart even I laughed to scorn what I had said.

“If I were dragged every nerve apart, and every thought turned into a fiery dart—and that is so,” he said, “yet will I go, if but perhaps I may see Love at the end.”

“There is no love!” I cried again with a sharp and bitter cry; and the echo seemed to come back and back from every side, No love! no love! till the man who was my friend faltered and stumbled like a drunken man; but afterwards he recovered strength and resumed his way.

And thus once more we went on. On the right hand was that city, growing ever clearer, with noble towers rising up to the sky, and battlements and lofty roofs, and behind a yellow clearness, as of a golden sunset. My heart drew me there; it sprang up in my breast and sang in my ears, Come, and come. Myself invited me to this new place as to a home. The others were wretched, but this will be happy: delights and pleasures will be there. And before us the way grew dark with storms, and there grew visible among the mists a black line of mountains, perpendicular cliffs, and awful precipices, which seemed to bar the way. I turned from that line of gloomy heights, and gazed along the path to where the towers stood up against the sky. And presently my hand dropped by my side, that had been held in my companion’s hand; and I saw him no more.

I went on to the city of the evening light. Ever and ever, as I proceeded on my way, the sense of haste and restless impatience grew upon me, so that I felt myself incapable of remaining long in a place, and my desire grew stronger to hasten on and on; but when I entered the gates of the city this longing vanished from my mind. There seemed some great festival or public holiday going on there. The streets were full of pleasure-parties, and in every open place (of which there were many) were bands of dancers, and music playing; and the houses about were hung with tapestries and embroideries and garlands of flowers. A load seemed to be taken from my spirit when I saw all this—for a whole population does not rejoice in such a way without some cause. And to think that after all I had found a place in which I might live and forget the misery and pain which I had known, and all that was behind me, was delightful to my soul. It seemed to me that all the dancers were beautiful and young, their steps went gaily to the music, their faces were bright with smiles. Here and there was a master of the feast, who arranged the dances and guided the musicians, yet seemed to have a look and smile for new-comers too. One of these came forwards to meet me, and received me with a welcome, and showed me a vacant place at the table, on which were beautiful fruits piled up in baskets, and all the provisions for a meal. “You were expected, you perceive,” he said. A delightful sense of well-being came into my mind. I sat down in the sweetness of ease after fatigue, of refreshment after weariness, of pleasant sounds and sights after the arid way. I said to myself that my past experiences had been a mistake, that this was where I ought to have come from the first, that life here would be happy, and that all intruding thoughts must soon vanish and die away.

After I had rested, I strolled about, and entered fully into the pleasures of the place. Wherever I went, through all the city, there was nothing but brightness and pleasure, music playing, and flags waving, and flowers and dancers and everything that was most gay. I asked several people whom I met what was the cause of the rejoicing; but either they were too much occupied with their own pleasures, or my question was lost in the hum of merriment, the sound of the instruments and of the dancers’ feet. When I had seen as much as I desired of the pleasure out of doors, I was taken by some to see the interiors of houses, which were all decorated for this festival, whatever it was, lighted up with curious varieties of lighting, in tints of different colours. The doors and windows were all open; and whosoever would could come in from the dance or from the laden tables, and sit down where they pleased and rest, always with a pleasant view out upon the streets, so that they should lose nothing of the spectacle. And the dresses, both of women and men, were beautiful in form and colour, made in the finest fabrics, and affording delightful combinations to the eye. The pleasure which I took in all I saw and heard was enhanced by the surprise of it, and by the aspect of the places from which I had come, where there was no regard to beauty nor anything lovely or bright. Before my arrival here I had come in my thoughts to the conclusion that life had no brightness in these regions, and that whatever occupation or study there might be, pleasure had ended and was over, and everything that had been sweet in the former life. I changed that opinion with a sense of relief, which was more warm even than the pleasure of the present moment; for having made one such mistake, how could I tell that there were not more discoveries awaiting me, that life might not prove more endurable, might not rise to something grander and more powerful? The old prejudices, the old foregone conclusion of earth that this was a world of punishment, had warped my vision and my thoughts. With so many added faculties of being, incapable of fatigue as we were, incapable of death, recovering from every wound or accident as I had myself done, and with no foolish restraint as to what we should or should not do, why might not we rise in this land to strength unexampled, to the highest powers? I rejoiced that I had dropped my companion’s hand, that I had not followed him in his mad quest. Sometime, I said to myself, I would make a pilgrimage to the foot of those gloomy mountains, and bring him back, all racked and tortured as he was, and show him the pleasant place which he had missed.

In the meantime the music and the dance went on. But it began to surprise me a little that there was no pause, that the festival continued without intermission. I went up to one of those who seemed the masters of ceremony, directing what was going on. He was an old man, with a flowing robe of brocade, and a chain and badge which denoted his office. He stood with a smile upon his lips, beating time with his hand to the music, watching the figure of the dance.

“I can get no one to tell me,” I said, “what the occasion of all this rejoicing is.”

“It is for your coming,” he replied without hesitation, with a smile and a bow.

For the moment a wonderful elation came over me. “For my coming!” But then I paused and shook my head. “There are others coming besides me. See! they arrive every moment.”

“It is for their coming too,” he said with another smile and a still deeper bow; “but you are the first as you are the chief.”

This was what I could not understand; but it was pleasant to hear, and I made no further objection. “And how long will it go on?” I said.

“So long as it pleases you,” said the old courtier.

How he smiled! His smile did not please me. He saw this, and distracted my attention. “Look at this dance,” he said; “how beautiful are those round young limbs! Look how the dress conceals yet shows the form and beautiful movements! It was invented in your honour. All that is lovely is for you. Choose where you will, all is yours. We live only for this; all is for you.” While he spoke, the dancers came nearer and nearer till they circled us round, and danced and made their pretty obeisances, and sang, “All is yours; all is for you;” then breaking their lines, floated away in other circles and processions and endless groups, singing and laughing till it seemed to ring from every side, “Everything is yours; all is for you.”

I accepted this flattery I know not why, for I soon became aware that I was no more than others, and that the same words were said to every new-comer. Yet my heart was elated, and I threw myself into all that was set before me. But there was always in my mind an expectation that presently the music and the dancing would cease, and the tables be withdrawn, and a pause come. At one of the feasts I was placed by the side of a lady very fair and richly dressed, but with a look of great weariness in her eyes. She turned her beautiful face to me, not with any show of pleasure, and there was something like compassion in her look. She said, “You are very tired,” as she made room for me by her side.

“Yes,” I said, though with surprise, for I had not yet acknowledged that even to myself. “There is so much to enjoy. We have need of a little rest.”

“Of rest!” said she, shaking her head, “this is not the place for rest.”

“Yet pleasure requires it,” I said, “as much as—” I was about to say pain; but why should one speak of pain in a place given up to pleasure? She smiled faintly and shook her head again. All her movements were languid and faint; her eyelids drooped over her eyes. Yet when I turned to her, she made an effort to smile. “I think you are also tired,” I said.

At this she roused herself a little. “We must not say so; nor do I say so. Pleasure is very exacting. It demands more of you than anything else. One must be always ready—”

“For what?”

“To give enjoyment and to receive it.” There was an effort in her voice to rise to this sentiment, but it fell back into weariness again.

“I hope you receive as well as give,” I said.

The lady turned her eyes to me with a look which I cannot forget, and life seemed once more to be roused within her, but not the life of pleasure; her eyes were full of loathing and fatigue and disgust and despair. “Are you so new to this place,” she said, “and have not learned even yet what is the height of all misery and all weariness; what is worse than pain and trouble, more dreadful than the lawless streets and the burning mines, and the torture of the great hall and the misery of the lazar-house—”

“Oh, lady,” I said, “have you been there?”

She answered me with her eyes alone; there was no need of more. “But pleasure is more terrible than all,” she said; and I knew in my heart that what she said was true.

There is no record of time in that place. I could not count it by days or nights; but soon after this it happened to me that the dances and the music became no more than a dizzy maze of sound and sight which made my brain whirl round and round, and I too loathed what was spread on the table, and the soft couches, and the garlands, and the fluttering flags and ornaments. To sit for ever at a feast, to see for ever the merrymakers turn round and round, to hear in your ears for ever the whirl of the music, the laughter, the cries of pleasure! There were some who went on and on, and never seemed to tire; but to me the endless round came at last to be a torture from which I could not escape. Finally, I could distinguish nothing—neither what I heard nor what I saw; and only a consciousness of something intolerable buzzed and echoed in my brain. I longed for the quiet of the place I had left; I longed for the noise in the streets, and the hubbub and tumult of my first experiences. Anything, anything rather than this! I said to myself; and still the dancers turned, the music sounded, the bystanders smiled, and everything went on and on. My eyes grew weary with seeing, and my ears with hearing. To watch the new-comers rush in, all pleased and eager, to see the eyes of the others glaze with weariness, wrought upon my strained nerves. I could not think, I could not rest, I could not endure. Music for ever and ever—a whirl, a rush of music, always going on and on; and ever that maze of movement, till the eyes were feverish and the mouth parched; ever that mist of faces, now one gleaming out of the chaos, now another, some like the faces of angels, some miserable, weary, strained with smiling, with the monotony, and the endless, aimless, never-changing round. I heard myself calling to them to be still—to be still! to pause a moment. I felt myself stumble and turn round in the giddiness and horror of that movement without repose. And finally, I fell under the feet of the crowd, and felt the whirl go over and over me, and beat upon my brain, until I was pushed and thrust out of the way lest I should stop the measure. There I lay, sick, satiate, for I know not how long; loathing everything around me, ready to give all I had (but what had I to give?) for one moment of silence. But always the music went on, and the dancers danced, and the people feasted, and the songs and the voices echoed up to the skies.

How at last I stumbled forth I cannot tell. Desperation must have moved me, and that impatience which after every hope and disappointment comes back and back,—the one sensation that never fails. I dragged myself at last by intervals, like a sick dog, outside the revels, still hearing them, which was torture to me, even when at last I got beyond the crowd. It was something to lie still upon the ground, though without power to move, and sick beyond all thought, loathing myself and all that I had been and seen. For I had not even the sense that I had been wronged to keep me up, but only a nausea and horror of movement, a giddiness and whirl of every sense. I lay like a log upon the ground.

When I recovered my faculties a little, it was to find myself once more in the great vacant plain which surrounded that accursed home of pleasure—a great and desolate waste upon which I could see no track, which my heart fainted to look at, which no longer roused any hope in me, as if it might lead to another beginning, or any place in which yet at the last it might be possible to live. As I lay in that horrible giddiness and faintness, I loathed life and this continuance which brought me through one misery after another, and forbade me to die. Oh that death would come—death, which is silent and still, which makes no movement and hears no sound! that I might end and be no more! Oh that I could go back even to the stillness of that chamber which I had not been able to endure! Oh that I could return—return! to what? To other miseries and other pain, which looked less because they were past. But I knew now that return was impossible until I had circled all the dreadful round; and already I felt again the burning of that desire that pricked and drove me on—not back, for that was impossible. Little by little I had learned to understand, each step printed upon my brain as with red-hot irons: not back, but on, and on—to greater anguish, yes; but on, to fuller despair, to experiences more terrible: but on, and on, and on. I arose again, for this was my fate. I could not pause even for all the teachings of despair.

The waste stretched far as eyes could see. It was wild and terrible, with neither vegetation nor sign of life. Here and there were heaps of ruin, which had been villages and cities; but nothing was in them save reptiles and crawling poisonous life and traps for the unwary wanderer. How often I stumbled and fell among these ashes and dust-heaps of the past! Through what dread moments I lay, with cold and slimy things leaving their trace upon my flesh! The horrors which seized me, so that I beat my head against a stone—why should I tell? These were nought; they touched not the soul. They were but accidents of the way.

At length, when body and soul were low and worn out with misery and weariness, I came to another place, where all was so different from the last that the sight gave me a momentary solace. It was full of furnaces and clanking machinery and endless work. The whole air round was aglow with the fury of the fires; and men went and came like demons in the flames, with red-hot melting metal, pouring it into moulds and beating it on anvils. In the huge workshops in the background there was a perpetual whir of machinery, of wheels turning and turning, and pistons beating, and all the din of labour, which for a time renewed the anguish of my brain, yet also soothed it; for there was meaning in the beatings and the whirlings. And a hope rose within me that with all the forces that were here, some revolution might be possible—something that would change the features of this place and overturn the worlds. I went from workshop to workshop, and examined all that was being done, and understood—for I had known a little upon the earth, and my old knowledge came back, and to learn so much more filled me with new life. The master of all was one who never rested, nor seemed to feel weariness nor pain nor pleasure. He had everything in his hand. All who were there were his workmen or his assistants or his servants. No one shared with him in his councils. He was more than a prince among them—he was as a god. And the things he planned and made, and at which in armies and legions his workmen toiled and laboured, were like living things. They were made of steel and iron, but they moved like the brains and nerves of men. They went where he directed them, and did what he commanded, and moved at a touch. And though he talked little, when he saw how I followed all that he did, he was a little moved towards me, and spoke and explained to me the conceptions that were in his mind, one rising out of another, like the leaf out of the stem and the flower out of the bud. For nothing pleased him that he did, and necessity was upon him to go on and on.

“They are like living things,” I said; “they do your bidding, whatever you command them. They are like another and a stronger race of men.”

“Men!” he said, “what are men? The most contemptible of all things that are made—creatures who will undo in a moment what it has taken millions of years, and all the skill and all the strength of generations to do. These are better than men. They cannot think or feel. They cannot stop but at my bidding, or begin unless I will. Had men been made so, we should be masters of the world.”

“Had men been made so, you would never have been—for what could genius have done or thought?—you would have been a machine like all the rest.”

“And better so!” he said, and turned away; for at that moment, watching keenly as he spoke the action of a delicate combination of movements, all made and balanced to a hair’s breadth, there had come to him suddenly the idea of something which made it a hundredfold more strong and terrible. For they were terrible, these things that lived yet did not live, which were his slaves and moved at his will. When he had done this, he looked at me, and a smile came upon his mouth; but his eyes smiled not, nor ever changed from the set look they wore. And the words he spoke were familiar words, not his, but out of the old life. “What a piece of work is a man!” he said; “how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?” His mind had followed another strain of thought, which to me was bewildering, so that I did not know how to reply. I answered like a child, upon his last word.

“We are dust no more,” I cried, for pride was in my heart—pride of him and his wonderful strength, and his thoughts which created strength, and all the marvels he did; “those things which hindered are removed. Go on; go on! you want but another step. What is to prevent that you should not shake the universe, and overturn this doom, and break all our bonds? There is enough here to explode this grey fiction of a firmament, and to rend those precipices, and to dissolve that waste,—as at the time when the primeval seas dried up, and those infernal mountains rose.”

He laughed, and the echoes caught the sound and gave it back as if they mocked it. “There is enough to rend us all into shreds,” he said, “and shake, as you say, both heaven and earth, and these plains and those hills.”

“Then why,” I cried in my haste, with a dreadful hope piercing through my soul—“why do you create and perfect, but never employ? When we had armies on the earth, we used them. You have more than armies; you have force beyond the thoughts of man, but all without use as yet.”

“All,” he cried, “for no use! All in vain!—in vain!”

“O master!” I said, “great and more great in time to come, why?—why?”

He took me by the arm and drew me close.

“Have you strength,” he said, “to bear it if I tell you why?”

I knew what he was about to say. I felt it in the quivering of my veins, and my heart that bounded as if it would escape from my breast; but I would not quail from what he did not shrink to utter. I could speak no word, but I looked him in the face and waited—for that which was more terrible than all.

He held me by the arm, as if he would hold me up when the shock of anguish came. “They are in vain,” he said, “in vain—because God rules over all.”

His arm was strong; but I fell at his feet like a dead man.

How miserable is that image, and how unfit to use! Death is still and cool and sweet. There is nothing in it that pierces like a sword, that burns like fire, that rends and tears like the turning wheels. O life, O pain, O terrible name of God in which is all succour and all torment! What are pangs and tortures to that, which ever increases in its awful power, and has no limit nor any alleviation, but whenever it is spoken penetrates through and through the miserable soul? O God, whom once I called my Father! O Thou who gavest me being, against whom I have fought, whom I fight to the end, shall there never be anything but anguish in the sound of Thy great name?

When I returned to such command of myself as one can have who has been transfixed by that sword of fire, the master stood by me still. He had not fallen like me, but his face was drawn with anguish and sorrow like the face of my friend who had been with me in the lazar-house, who had disappeared on the dark mountains. And as I looked at him, terror seized hold upon me, and a desire to flee and save myself, that I might not be drawn after him by the longing that was in his eyes.

The master gave me his hand to help me to rise, and it trembled, but not like mine.

“Sir,” I cried, “have not we enough to bear? Is it for hatred, is it for vengeance, that you speak that name?”

“O friend,” he said, “neither for hatred nor revenge. It is like a fire in my veins; if one could find Him again!”

“You, who are as a god, who can make and destroy—you, who could shake His throne!”

He put up his hand. “I who am His creature, even here—and still His child, though I am so far, so far—” He caught my hand in his, and pointed with the other, trembling. “Look! your eyes are more clear than mine, for they are not anxious like mine. Can you see anything upon the way?”

The waste lay wild before us, dark with a faintly-rising cloud, for darkness and cloud and the gloom of death attended upon that name. I thought, in his great genius and splendour of intellect, he had gone mad, as sometimes may be. “There is nothing,” I said, and scorn came into my soul; but even as I spoke I saw—I cannot tell what I saw—a moving spot of milky whiteness in that dark and miserable wilderness, no bigger than a man’s hand, no bigger than a flower. “There is something,” I said unwillingly; “it has no shape nor form. It is a gossamer-web upon some bush, or a butterfly blown on the wind.”

“There are neither butterflies nor gossamers here.”

“Look for yourself, then!” I cried, flinging his hand from me. I was angry with a rage which had no cause. I turned from him, though I loved him, with a desire to kill him in my heart, and hurriedly took the other way. The waste was wild; but rather that than to see the man who might have shaken earth and hell thus turning, turning to madness and the awful journey. For I knew what in his heart he thought; and I knew that it was so. It was something from that other sphere; can I tell you what? A child perhaps—O thought that wrings the heart!—for do you know what manner of thing a child is? There are none in the land of darkness. I turned my back upon the place where that whiteness was. On, on, across the waste! On to the cities of the night! On, far away from maddening thought, from hope that is torment, and from the awful Name!

•    •    •    •

The above narrative, though it is necessary to a full understanding of the experiences of the Little Pilgrim in the Unseen, does not belong to her personal story in any way, but is drawn from the Archives in the Heavenly City, where all the records of the human race are laid up.

On the Dark Mountains

(1888)

I

When the little Pilgrim had been thus permitted to see the secret workings of God in earthly places, and among the brethren who are still in the land of hope—these being things which the angels desire to look into, and which are the subject of story and of song not only in the little world below, but in the great realms above—her heart for a long time reposed and was satisfied, and asked no further question. For she had seen what the dealings of the Father were in the hearts of men, and how till the end came He did not cease to send His messengers to plead in every heart, and to hold a court of justice that no man might be deceived, but each know whither his steps were tending, and what was the way of wisdom. After this it was permitted to her to read in the archives of the heavenly country the story of one, who, neglecting all that the advocates of God could say, had found himself, when the little life was completed, not upon the threshold of a better country, but in the midst of the Land of Darkness—that region in which the souls of men are left by God to their own devices, and the Father stands aloof, and hides His face and calls them not, neither persuades them more. Over this story the little Pilgrim had shed many tears; for she knew well, being enlightened in her great simplicity by the heavenly wisdom, that it was pain and grief to the Father to turn away His face; and that no one who has but the little heart of a man can imagine to himself what that sorrow is in the being of the great God. And a great awe came over her mind at the thought, which seemed well-nigh a blasphemy, that He could grieve; yet in her heart, being His child, she knew that it was true. And her own little spirit throbbed through and through with longing and with desire to help those who were thus utterly lost. “And oh!” she said, “if I could but go! There is nothing which could make a child afraid, save to see them suffer. What are darkness and terror when the Father is with you? I am not afraid—if I might but go!” And by reason of her often pleading, and of the thought that was ever in her mind, it was at last said that one of those who knew might instruct her, and show her by what way alone the travellers who come from that miserable land could approach and be admitted on high.

“I know,” she said, “that between us and them there is a gulf fixed, and that they who would come from thence cannot come, neither can any one—”

But here she stopped in great dismay, for it seemed that she had thus answered her own longing and prayer.

The guide who had come for her smiled upon her and said, “But that was before the Lord had ended His work. And now all the paths are free wherever there is a mountain-pass or a river-ford; the roads are all blessed, and they are all open, and no barriers for those who will.”

“Oh,” she cried, “dear friend, is that true for all?”

He looked away from her into the depths of the lovely air, and he replied: “Little sister, our faith is without bounds, but not our knowledge. I who speak to you am no more than a man. The princes and powers that are in high places know more than I; but if there be any place where a heart can stir and cry out to the Father and He take no heed—if it be only in a groan, if it be only with a sigh—I know not that place, yet many depths I know.” He put out his hand and took hers after a pause; and then he said, “There are some who are stumbling upon the dark mountains. Come and see.”

As they passed along, there were many who paused to look at them, for he had the mien of a great prince, a lord among men; and his face still bore the trace of sorrow and toil, and there was about him an awe and wonder which was more than could be put in words. So that those who saw him understood as he went by, not who he was, nor what he had been, but that he had come out of great tribulation, of sorrow beyond the sorrows of men. The sweetness of the heavenly country had soothed away his care, and taken the cloud from his face; but he was as yet unaccustomed to smile—though when he remembered and looked round him and saw that all was well, his countenance lightened like the morning sky, and his eyes woke up in splendour like the sun rising. The little Pilgrim did not know who her brother was, but yet gave thanks to God for him, she knew not why.

How far they went cannot be estimated in words, for distance matters little in that place; but at the end they came to a path which sloped a little downwards to the edge of a delightful moorland country, all brilliant with the hues of the mountain flowers. It was like a flowery plateau high among the hills, in a region where are no frosts to check the glow of the flowers, or scorch the grass. It spread far around in hollows and ravines and softly swelling hills, with the rush over them of a cheerful breeze full of mountain scents and sounds; and high above them rose the mountain heights of the celestial world, veiled in those blue breadths of distance which are heaven itself when man’s fancy ascends to them from the low world at their feet. All the little earth can do in colour and mists, and travelling shadows fleet as the breath, and the sweet steadfast shining of the sun, was there, but with a ten-fold splendour. They rose up into the sky, every peak and jagged rock all touched with the light and the smile of God, and every little blossom on the turf rejoicing in the warmth and freedom and peace. The heart of the little Pilgrim swelled, and she cried out, “There is nothing so glorious as the everlasting hills. Though the valleys and the plains are sweet, they are not like them. They say to us, lift up your heart!”

Her guide smiled, but he did not speak. His smile was full of joy, but grave, like that of a man whose thoughts are bent on other things; and he pointed where the road wound downwards by the feet of these triumphant hills. She kept her eyes upon them as she moved along. Those heights rose into the very sky, but bore upon them neither snow nor storm. Here and there a whiteness like a film of air rounded out over a peak; and she recognized that it was one of those angels who travel far and wide with God’s commissions, going to the other worlds that are in the firmament as in a sea. The softness of these films of white was like the summer clouds that she used to watch in the blue of the summer sky in the little world which none of its children can cease to love; and she wondered now whether it might not sometimes have been the same dear angels whose flight she had watched unknowing, higher than thought could soar or knowledge penetrate. Watching those floating heavenly messengers, and the heights of the great miraculous mountains rising up into the sky, the little Pilgrim ceased to think whither she was going, although she knew from the feeling of the ground under her feet that she was descending, still softly, but more quickly than at first, until she was brought to herself by the sensation of a great wind coming in her face, cold as from a sudden vacancy. She turned her head quickly from gazing above to what was before her, and started with a cry of wonder. For below lay a great gulf of darkness, out of which rose at first some shadowy peaks and shoulders of rock, all falling away into a gloom which eyes accustomed to the sunshine could not penetrate. Where she stood was the edge of the light—before her feet lay a line of shadow slowly darkening out of daylight into twilight, and beyond into that measureless blackness of night; and the wind in her face was like that which comes from a great depth below of either sea or land—the sweep of the current which moves a vast atmosphere in which there is nothing to break its force. The little Pilgrim was so startled by these unexpected sensations that she caught the arm of her guide in her sudden alarm, and clung to him, lest she should fall into the terrible darkness and the deep abyss below.

“There is nothing to fear,” he said; “there is a way. To us who are above there is no danger at all; and it is the way of life to those who are below.”

“I see nothing,” she cried, “save a few points of rock, and the precipice—the pit which is below. Oh, tell me what is it? Is it where the fires are, and despair dwells? I did not think that was true. Let me go and hide myself and not see it, for I never thought that was true.”

“Look again,” said the guide.

The little Pilgrim shrank into a crevice of the rock, and uncovering her eyes, gazed into the darkness; and because her nature was soft and timid there came into her mind a momentary fear. Her heart flew to the Father’s footstool, and cried out to Him, not any question or prayer, but only “Father, Father!” and this made her stand erect, and strengthened her eyes, so that the gloom even of hell could no more make her afraid. Her guide stood beside with a steadfast countenance, which was grave, yet full of a solemn light. And then all at once he lifted up his voice, which was sonorous and sweet like the sound of an organ, and uttered a shout so great and resounding that it seemed to come back in echoes from every hollow and hill. What he said the little Pilgrim could not understand; but when the echoes had died away and silence followed, something came up through the gloom—a sound that was far, far away, and faint in the long distance; a voice that sounded no more than an echo. When he who had called out heard it, he turned to the little Pilgrim with eyes that were liquid with love and pity; “Listen,” he said, “there is some one on the way.”

“Can we help them?” cried the little Pilgrim; her heart bounded forward like a bird. She had no fear. The darkness and the horrible way seemed as nothing to her. She stretched out her arms as if she would have seized the traveller and dragged him up into the light.

He who was by her side shook his head, but with a smile. “We can but wait,” he said. “It is forbidden that any one should help; for this is too terrible and strange to be touched even by the hands of angels. It is like nothing that you know.”

“I have been taught many things,” said the little Pilgrim, humbly. “I have been taken back to the dear earth, where I saw the judgment-seat, and the pleaders who spoke, and the man who was the judge, and how each is judge for himself.”

“You have seen the place of hope,” said her guide, “where the Father is and the Son, and where no man is left to his own ways. But there is another country, where there is no voice either from God or from good spirits, and where those who have refused are left to do as seems good in their own eyes.”

“I have read,” said the little Pilgrim, with a sob, “of one who went from city to city and found no rest.”

Her guide bowed his head very gravely in assent. “They go from place to place,” he said, “if haply they might find one in which it is possible to live. Whether it is order or whether it is license, it is according to their own will. They try all things, ever looking for something which the soul may endure. And new cities are founded from time to time, and a new endeavour ever and ever to live, only to live. For even when happiness fails and content, and work is vanity and effort is naught, it is something if a man can but endure to live.”

The little Pilgrim looked at him with wistful eyes, for what he said was beyond her understanding. “For us,” she said, “life is nothing but joy. Oh, brother, is there then condemnation?”

“It is no condemnation; it is what they have chosen—it is to follow their own way. There is no longer any one to interfere. The pleaders are all silent; there is no voice in the heart. The Father hinders them not, nor helps them, but leaves them.” He shivered as if with cold; and the little Pilgrim felt that there breathed from the depths of darkness at their feet an icy wind which touched her hands and feet and chilled her heart. She shivered too, and drew close to the rock for shelter, and gazed at the awful cliffs rising out of the gloom, and the paths that disappeared at her feet, leading down, down into that abyss; and her heart failed within her to think that below there were souls that suffered, and that the Father and the Son were not there. He, the All-loving, the All-present—how could it be that He was not there?

“It is a mystery,” said the man who was her guide, and who answered to her thought. “When I set my foot upon this blessed land I knew that there, even there, He is. But in that country His face is hidden, and even to name His name is anguish—for then only do men understand what has befallen them, who can say that name no more.”

“That is death indeed,” she cried; and the wind came up silent with a wild breath that was more awful than the shriek of a storm; for it was like the stifled utterances of all those miserable ones who have no voice to call upon God, and know not where He is nor how to pronounce His name.

“Ah,” said he, “if we could have known what death was! We had believed in death in the time of all great illusions, in the time of the gentle life, in the day of hope. But in the land of darkness there are no illusions; and every man knows that though he should fling himself into the furnace of the gold, or be cut to pieces by the knives, or trampled under the dancers’ feet, yet that it will be but a little more pain, and that death is not, nor any escape that way.”

“Oh, brother!” she cried, “you have been there!”

He turned and looked upon her; and she read as in a book things which tongue of man cannot say—the anguish and the rapture, the unforgotten pang of the lost, the joy of one who has been delivered after hope was gone.

“I have been there; and now I stand in the light, and have seen the face of the Lord, and can speak His blessed name.” And with that he burst forth into a great melodious cry, which was not like that which he had sent into the dark depths below, but mounted up like the sounding of silver trumpets and all joyful music, giving a voice to the sweet air and the fresh winds which blew about the hills of God. But the words he said were not comprehensible to his companion, for they were in the sweet tongue which is between the Father and His child, and known to none but to them alone. Yet only to hear the sound was enough to transport all who listened, and to make them know what joy is and peace. The little Pilgrim wept for happiness to hear her brother’s voice; but in the midst of it her ear was caught by another sound—a faint cry which tingled up from the darkness like a note of a muffled bell—and she turned from the joy and the light, and flung out her arms and her little voice towards him who was stumbling upon the dark mountains. And “Come,” she cried, “come, come!” forgetting all things save that one was there in the darkness, while here was light and peace.

“It is nearer,” said her guide, hearing, even in the midst of his triumph song, that faint and distant cry; and he took her hand and drew her back, for she was upon the edge of the precipice, gazing into the black depths, which revealed nothing save the needles of the awful rocks and sheer descents below. “The moment will come,” he said, “when we can help; but it is not yet.”

Her heart was in the depths with him who was coming, whom she knew not save that he was coming, toiling upwards towards the light; and it seemed to her that she could not contain herself, nor wait till he should appear, nor draw back from the edge, where she might hold out her hands to him and save him some single step, if no more. But presently her heart returned to her brother who stood by her side, and who was delivered, and with whom it was meet that all should rejoice, since he had fought and conquered, and reached the land of light. “Oh,” she said, “it is long to wait while he is still upon these dark mountains. Tell me how it came to you to find the way.”

He turned to her with a smile, though his ear too was intent, and his heart fixed upon the traveller in the darkness, and began to tell her his tale to beguile the time of waiting, and to hold within bounds the pity that filled her heart. He told her that he was one of many who came from the pleasant earth together, out of many countries and tongues; and how they had gone here and there each man to a different city; and how they had crossed each other’s paths coming and going, yet never found rest for their feet; and how there was a little relief in every change, and one sought that which another left; and how they wandered round and round over all the vast and endless plain, until at length in revolt from every other way, they had chosen a spot upon the slope of a hill, and built there a new city, if perhaps something better might be found there; and how it had been built with towers and high walls, and great gates to shut it in, so that no stranger should find entrance; and how every house was a palace, with statues of marble, and pillars so precious with beautiful work, and arches so lofty and so fair that they were better than had they been made of gold; yet gold was not wanting, nor diamond stones that shone like stars, and everything more beautiful and stately than heart could conceive.

“And while we built and laboured,” he said, “our hearts were a little appeased. And it was called the city of Art, and all was perfect in it, so that nothing had ever been seen to compare with it for beauty; and we walked upon the battlements and looked over the plain and viewed the dwellers there, who were not as we. And we went on to fill every room and every hall with carved work in stone and beaten gold, and pictures and woven tissues that were like the sun-gleams and the rainbows of the pleasant earth. And crowds came around envying us and seeking to enter; but we closed our gates and drove them away. And it was said among us that life would now become as of old, and everything would go well with us as in the happy days.”

The little Pilgrim looked up into his face, and for pity of his pain (though it was past) almost wished that that could have come true.

“But when the work was done,” he said, and for a moment no more.

“Oh, brother! when the work was done?” “You do not know what it is,” he said, “to be ten times more powerful and strong, to want no rest, to have fire in your veins, to have the craving in your heart above everything that is known to man. When the work was done, we glared upon each other with hungry eyes, and each man wished to thrust forth his neighbour and possess all to himself. And then we ceased to take pleasure in it, notwithstanding that it was beautiful; and there were some who would have beaten down the walls and built them anew; and some would have torn up the silver and gold, and tossed out the fair statues and the adornments in scorn and rage to the meaner multitudes below. And we who were the workers began to contend one against another to satisfy the gnawings of the rage that was in our hearts. For we had deceived ourselves, thinking once more that all would be well; while all the time nothing was changed, and we were but as the miserable ones that rushed from place to place.”

Though all this wretchedness was over and past, it was so terrible to think of that he paused and was silent awhile. And the little Pilgrim put her hand upon his arm in her great pity, to soothe him, and almost forgot that there was another traveller not yet delivered upon the way. But suddenly at that moment there came up through the depths the sound of a fall, as if the rocks had crashed from a hundred peaks, yet all muffled by the great distance, and echoing all around in faint echoes, and rumblings as in the bosom of the earth; and mingled with them were far-off cries, so faint and distant that human ears could not have heard them, like the cries of lost children, or creatures wavering and straying in the midst of the boundless night. This time she who was watching upon the edge of the gloom would have flung herself forward altogether into it, had not her companion again restrained her. “One has stumbled upon the mountains; but listen, listen, little sister, for the voices are many,” he said. “It is not one who comes, but many; and though he falls he will rise again.” And once more he shouted aloud, bending down against the rocks, so that they caught his voice; and the sweet air from the skies came behind him in a great gust like a summer storm, and carried it into all the echoing hollows of the hills. And the little Pilgrim knew that he shouted to all who came to take courage and not to fear. And this time there rose upwards many faint and wavering sounds that did not stir the air, but made it tingle with a vibration of the great distance and the unknown depths; and then again all was still. They stood for a time intent upon the great silence and darkness which swept up all sight and sound, and then the little Pilgrim once more turned her eyes towards her companion, and he began again his wonderful tale.

“He who had been the first to found the city, and who was the most wise of any, though the rage was in him like all the rest, and the disappointment and the anguish, yet would not yield. And he called upon us for another trial, to make a picture which should be the greatest that ever was painted; and each one of us, small or great, who had been of that art in the dear life, took share in the rivalry and the emulation, so that on every side there was a fury and a rush, each man with his band of supporters about him struggling and swearing that his was the best. Not that they loved the work or the beauty of the work, but to keep down the gnawing in their hearts, and to have something for which they could still fight and storm, and for a little forget.”

“I was one who had been among the highest.” He spoke not with pride, but in a low and deep voice which went to the heart of the listener, and brought the tears to her eyes. It was not like that of the painter in the heavenly city, who rejoiced and was glad in his work, though he was but as a humble workman, serving those who were more great. But this man had the sorrow of greatness in him, and the wonder of those who can do much, to find how little they can do. “My veins,” he said, “were filled with fire, and my heart with the rage of a great desire to be first, as I had been first in the days of the gentle life. And I made my plan to be greater than all the rest, to paint a vast picture like the world, filled with all the glories of life. In a moment I had conceived what I should do, for my strength was as that of a hundred men; and none of us could rest or breathe till it was accomplished, but flung ourselves upon this new thing as upon water in the desert. Oh, my little sister, how can I tell you; what words can show forth this wonderful thing? I stood before my great canvas with all those who were of my faction pressing upon me, noting every touch I made, shouting, and saying, ‘He will win! he will win!’ when lo! there came a mystery and a wonder into that place. I had arranged men and women before me according to all the devices of art, to serve as my models, that nature might be in my picture, and life; but when I looked I saw them not, for between them and me had come a Face.”

The eyes of the little Pilgrim dropped with tears. She held out her hands towards him with a sympathy which no words could say.

“Often had I painted that Face in the other life,—sometimes with awe and love, sometimes with scorn; for hire and for bread, and for pride and for fame. It is pale with suffering, yet smiles; the eyes have tears in them, yet light below, and all that is there is full of tenderness and of love. There is a crown upon the brow, but it is made of thorns. It came before me suddenly, while I stood there, with the men shouting close to my ear urging me on, and fierce fury in my heart, and the rage to be first, and to forget. Where my models were, there it came. I could not see them, nor my groups that I had planned, nor anything but that Face. I called out to my men. ‘Who has done this?’ but they heard me not, nor understood me, for to them there was nothing there save the figures I had set—a living picture all ready for the painter’s hand.

“I could not bear it, the sight of that Face. I flung my tools away; I covered my eyes with my hands. But those who were about me pressed on me and threatened; they pulled my hands from my eyes. ‘Coward!’ they cried, and ‘Traitor, to leave us in the lurch! Now will the other side win and we be shamed. Rather tear him limb from limb, fling him from the walls!’ The crowd came round me like an angry sea; they forced my pencils back into my hands. ‘Work,’ they cried, ‘or we will tear you limb from limb.’ For though they were upon my side, it was for rivalry, and not out of any love for me.” He paused for a moment, for his heart was yet full of the remembrance, and of joy that it was past.

“I looked again,” he said, “and still it was there. O Face divine—the eyes all wet with pity, the lips all quivering with love! And neither pity nor love belonged to that place, nor any succour, nor the touch of a brother, nor the voice of a friend. ‘Paint,’ they cried, ‘or we will tear you limb from limb!’ and fire came into my heart. I pushed them from me on every side with the strength of a giant. And then I flung it on the canvas, crying I know not what—not to them, but to Him. Shrink not from me, little sister, for I blasphemed. I called Him Impostor, Deceiver, Galilean; and still with all my might, with all the fury of my soul, I set Him there for every man to see, not knowing what I did. Everything faded from me but that Face; I saw it alone. The crowd came round me with shouts and threats to drag me away but I took no heed. They were silenced, and fled and left me alone, but I knew nothing; nor when they came back with others and seized me, and flung me forth from the gates, was I aware what I had done. They cast me out and left me upon the wild without a shelter, without a companion, storming and raving at them as they did at me. They dashed the great gates behind me with a clang, and shut me out. And I turned and defied them, and cursed them as they cursed me, not knowing what I had done.”

“Oh, brother!” murmured the little Pilgrim, kneeling, as if she had accompanied him all the way with her prayers, but could not now say more.

“Then I saw again,” he went on, not hearing her in the great force of that passion and wonder which was still in his mind, “that vision in the air. Wherever I turned, it was there: His eyes wet with pity, His countenance shining with love. Whence came He? What did He in that place, where love is not, where pity comes not?”

“Friend,” she cried, “to seek you there!”

Her companion bowed his head in deep humbleness and joy. And again he lifted his great voice and intoned his song of praise. The little Pilgrim understood it, but by fragments—a line that was more simple that came here and there. And it praised the Lord that where the face of the Father was hidden; and where love was not, nor compassion, nor brother had pity on brother, nor friend knew the face of friend; and all succour was stayed, and every help forbidden—yet still in the depths of the darkness and in the heart of the silence, He who could not forget nor forsake was there. The voice of the singer was like that of one of the great angels, and many of the inhabitants of the blessed country began to appear, gathering in crowds to hear this great music, as the little sister thought; and she herself listened with all her heart, wondering and seeing on the faces of those dear friends whom she did not know an expectation and a hope which were strange to her, though she could always understand their love and their joy.

But in the middle of this great song there came again another sound to her ear—a sound which pierced through the music like lightning through the sky, though it was but the cry of one distraught and fainting; a cry out of the depths not even seeking help, a cry of distress too terrible to be borne. Though it was scarcely louder than a sigh, she heard it through all the music, and turned and flew to the edge of the precipice whence it came. And immediately the darkness seemed to move as with a pulse in a great throb, and something came through the wind with a rush, as if part of the mountain had fallen—and lo! at her feet lay one who had flung himself forward, his arms stretched out, his face to the ground, as if he had seized and grasped in an agony the very soil. He lay there, half in the light and half in the shadow, gripping the rocks with his hands, burrowing into the cool herbage above and the mountain flowers; clinging, catching hold, despairing, yet seizing everything he could grasp—the tender grass, the rolling stones. The little Pilgrim flung herself down upon her knees by his side, and grasped his arm to help, and cried aloud for aid; and the song of the singer ceased, and there was silence for a moment, so that the breath of the fugitive could be heard panting, and his strong struggle to drag himself altogether out of that abyss of darkness below. She thought of nothing, nor heard nor saw anything but the strain of that last effort which seemed to shake the very mountains; until suddenly there seemed to rise all around the hum and murmur as of a great multitude, and looking up, she saw every little hill and hollow, and the glorious plain beyond as far as eye could see, crowded with countless throngs; and on the high peaks above, in the full shining of the sun, came bands of angels, and of those great beings who are more mighty than men. And the eyes of all were fixed upon the man who lay as one dead upon the ground, and from the lips of all came a low murmur of rapture and delight, that spread like the hum of the bees, like the cooing of the doves, like the voice of a mother over her child; and the same sound came to her own lips unawares, and she murmured “welcome” and “brother” and “friend,” not knowing what she said; and looking to the others, whispered, “Hush! for he is weak”—and all of them answered with tears, with “hush” and “welcome” and “friend” and “brother” and “beloved,” and stood smiling and weeping for joy. And presently there came softly into the blessed air the ringing of the great silver bells, which sound only for victory and great happiness and gain. And there was joy in heaven; and every world was stirred. And throughout the firmament, and among all the lords and princes of life, it was known that the impossible had become true, and the name of the Lord had proved enough, and love had conquered even despair.

“Hush!” she said, “for he is weak.” And because it was her blessed service to receive those who had newly arrived in that heavenly country, and to soothe and help them so that like newborn children they should be able to endure and understand the joy, she knelt by him on the ground and tried to rouse him, though with trembling, for never before had she stood by one who was newly come out of the land of despair. “Let the sun come upon him,” she said; “let him feel the brightness of the light,”—and with her soft hands she drew him out of the shade of the twilight to where the brightness of the day fell like a smile upon the flowers. And then at last he stirred, and turned round and opened his eyes, for the genial warmth had reached him. But his eyes were heavy and dazzled with the light; and he looked round him as if confused from beneath his heavy eyelids. “And where am I?” he said; “and who are you?” “Oh, brother!” said the little Pilgrim, and told him in his ear the name of that heavenly place, and many comforting and joyful things. But he understood her not, and still gazed about him with dazzled eyes, for his face was still towards the darkness, and fear was upon him lest this place should prove no more than a delusion, and the darkness return, and the anguish and pain.

Then he who had been her guide, and told her his tale, came forward and stood by the side of the newly come. And “Brother,” he said, “look upon me, for you know me, and know from whence I come.”

The stranger looked dimly with his heavy eyes. And he replied, “It is as a dream that I know you, and know from whence you came. And the dream is sweet to lie here, and think that I am at peace. Deceive me not, oh! deceive me not with dreams that are sweet; but let me go upon my way and find the end, if there is any end, or if any good can be.”

“What shall we do,” cried the little Pilgrim, “to persuade him that he has arrived and is safe, and dreams no more?”

And they stood round him wondering, and troubled to find how little they could do for him, and that the light entered so slowly into his soul. And he lay on the bank like one left for death, so weary and so worn with all the horrors of the way that his heart was faint within him, and peace itself seemed to him but an illusion. He lay silent while they watched and waited, then turned himself upon the grass, which was as soft to the weary wayfarer as angels’ wings; and then the sunshine caught his eye, as if he had been a newborn babe awakened to the light. He put out his hand to it, and touched the ground that was golden with those heavenly rays, and gathered himself up till he felt it upon his face, and opened wide his dazzled eyes, then shaded them with trembling hands, and said to himself, “It is the sun; it is the sun!” But still he did not dare to believe that the danger and the toil were over, nor could he listen, nor understand what the brethren said. While they all stood around and watched and waited, wondering each how the new-comer should be satisfied, there suddenly arose a sound with which they were all acquainted—the sound of One approaching. The faces of the blessed were all around like the stars in the sky—multitudes whom none could count or reckon; but He who came was seen of none, save him to whom He came. The weary man rose up with a great cry, then fell again upon his knees, and flung his arms wide in the wonder and the joy. And “Lord,” he cried, “was it Thou? Lord, it was Thou! Thine was the face. And Thou hast brought me here!”

The watchers knew not what the other voice said, for what is said to each new-comer is the secret of the Lord. But when they looked again, the man stood upright upon his feet, and his face was full of light; and though he trembled with weakness and with weariness, and with exceeding joy, yet the confusion and the fear were gone from him. And he had no longer any suspicion of them, as if they might betray him, but held out his trembling hands and cried, “Friends: you are friends? and you spoke to me and called me brother? And am I here? And am I here?” For to name the name of that blessed country was not needful any longer, now that he had seen the Lord.

Then a great band and guard of honour, of angels and principalities and powers, surrounded him, and led him away to the holy city, and to the presence of the Father, who had permitted and had not forbidden what the Lord had done. And all the companies of the blessed followed after with wonder and gladness and triumph, because the great love of the Lord had drawn out of the darkness even those who were beyond hope.

II

The little Pilgrim saw them depart from her with love and joy, and sat down upon the rocky edge and sang her own song of peace; for her fear was gone, and she was ready to do her service there upon the verge of the precipice as among the flowers and the sunshine, where her own place was. “From the depths,” she said, “they come, they come!—from the land of darkness, where no love is. For Thy love, O Lord, is more than the darkness and the depths. And where hope is not, there Thy pity goes.” She sat and sang to herself like a happy child, for her heart had fathomed the awful gloom which baffles angels and men; and she had learned that though hope comes to an end and light fails, and the feet of the ambassadors are stayed on the mountains, and the voice of the pleaders is silenced, and darkness swallows up the world, yet Love never fails. As she sang, the pity in her heart grew so strong, and her desire to help the lost, that she rose up and stepped forth into the awful gloom, and had it been permitted, in her gentleness and weakness would have gone forth to the deeps and had no fear.

The ground gave way under her feet, so dreadful was the precipice; but though her heart beat with the horror of it, and the whirl of the descent and the darkness which blinded her eyes, yet had she no hurt. And when her foot touched the rock, and that sinking sense of emptiness and vacancy ceased, she looked around and saw the path by which that traveller had come. For when the eyes are used to the darkness, the horror of the gloom was no longer like a solid thing, but moved into shades of darker and less dark, so that she saw where the rocks stood, and how they sank with edges that cut like swords down and ever down into the abysses; and how here a deep ravine was rent between them, and there were breaks and scars as though some one had caught the jagged points with wounded hand or foot, struggling up the perpendicular surface towards the little ray of light, like a tiny star which shone as on immeasurable heights to show where life was. As she travelled deeper and deeper, it was a wonder to see how far that little ray penetrated down and down through gulfs of darkness, blue and cold like the shimmer of a diamond, and even when it could be seen no more, sent yet a shadowy refraction, a line of something less black than the darkness, a lightening amid the gloom, a something indefinable which was hope. The rocks were more cruel than imagination could conceive—sometimes pointed and sharp like knives, sometimes smooth and upright as a wall with no hold for the climber, sometimes moving under the touch, with stones that rolled and crushed the bleeding feet; and though the solid masses were distinguishable from the lighter darkness of the air, yet it could only be in groping that the travellers by that way could find where any foothold was. The traveller who came from above, and who had the privilege of her happiness, sank down as if borne on wings, yet needed all her courage not to be afraid of the awful rocks that rose all above and around her, perpendicular in the gloom. And the great blast of an icy wind swept upwards like something flying upon great wings, so tremendous was the force of it, whirling from the depths below, sucked upwards by the very warmth of the life above; so that the little Pilgrim herself caught at the rocks that she might not be swept again towards the top, or dashed against the stony pinnacles that stood up on every side. She was glad when she found a little platform under her feet for a moment where she could rest, and also because she had come, not from curiosity to see that gulf, but with the hope and desire to meet some one to whom she could be of a little comfort or help in the terrors of the way.

While she stood for a moment to get her breath, she became sensible that some living thing was near; and putting out her hand she felt that there was round her something that was like a bastion upon a fortified wall, and immediately a hand touched hers, and a soft voice said, “Sister, fear not! for this is the watch-tower, and I am one of those who keep the way.” She had started and trembled indeed, not that she feared, but because the delicate fabric of her being was such that every movement of the wind, and even those that were instinctive and belonged to the habits of another life, betrayed themselves in her. And “Oh,” she said, “I knew not that there were any watch-towers, or any one to help, but came because my heart called me, if perhaps I might hold out my hand in the darkness, and be of use where there was no light.”

“Come and stand by me,” said the watcher; and the little Pilgrim saw that there was a whiteness near to her, out of which slowly shaped the face of a fair and tender woman, whom she knew not, but loved. And though they could scarcely see each other, yet they knew each other for sisters, and kissed and took comfort together, holding each other’s hands in the midst of the awful gloom. And the little Pilgrim questioned in low and hushed tones, “Is it to help that you are here?”

“To help when that may be; but rather to watch, and to send the news and make it known that one is coming, that the bells of joy may be sounded, and all the blessed may rejoice.”

“Oh,” said the little Pilgrim, “tell me your name, that I may do you honour: for to gain such high promotion can be given only to the great who are made perfect, and to those who love most.”

“I am not great,” said the watcher; “but the Lord, who considers all, has placed me here, that I may be the first to see when one comes who is in the dark places below. And also because there are some who say that love is idolatry, and that the Father will not have us long for our own, therefore am I permitted to wait and watch and think the time not long for the love I bear him. For he is mine; and when he comes I will ascend with him to the dear country of the light, and some other who loves enough will be promoted in my place.”

“I am not worthy,” said the little Pilgrim. “It is a great promotion; but oh, that we might be permitted to help, to put out a hand, or to clear the way!”

“Nay, my little sister,” said the watcher, “but patience must have its perfect work; and for those who are coming help is secret. They must not see it nor know it, for the land of darkness is beyond hope. The Father will not force the will of any creature He has made, for He respects us in our nature, which is His image. And when a man will not, and will not till the day is over, what can be done for him? He is left to his will, and is permitted to do it as it seems good in his eyes. A man’s will is great, for it is the gift of God. But the Lord, who cannot rest while one is miserable, still goes secretly to them, for His heart yearns after them. And by times they will see His face, or some thought of old will seize upon them. And some will say, ‘To perish upon the dark mountains is better than to live here.’ And I have seen,” said the watcher, “that the Lord will go with them all the way—but secretly, so that they cannot see Him. And though it grieves His heart not to help, yet will He not; for they have become the creatures of their own will, and by that must they attain.” She put out her hand to the new-comer and drew her to the side of the rocky wall, so that they felt the sweep of the wind in their faces; but were not driven before it. “And come,” she said, “for two of us together will be like a great light to those who are in the darkness. They will see us like a lamp, and it will cheer them, though they know not why we are here. Listen!” she cried. And the little Pilgrim, holding fast the hand of the watcher, listened and looked down upon the awful way; and underneath the sweep of the icy wind was a small sharp sound as of a stone rolling or a needle of rock that broke and fell, like the sounds that are in a wood when some creature moves, though too far off for footstep to sound. “Listen!” said the watcher; and her face so shone with joy that the little Pilgrim saw it clearly, like the shining of the morning in the midst of the darkness. “He comes!”

“Oh, sister!” she cried, “is it he whom you love above all the rest?

Is it he?”

The watcher smiled and said, “If it is not he, yet is it a brother; if it is not he now, yet his time will come. And in every one who passes, I hope to see his face; and the more that come, the more certain it is that he will come. And the time seems not long for the love I bear him. And it is for this that the Lord has so considered me. Listen! for some one comes.”

And there came to these watchers the strangest sight; for there flew past them while they gazed a man who seemed to be carried upon the sweep of the wind. In the midst of the darkness they could see the faint white in his face, with eyes of flame and lips set firm, whirled forward upon the wind, which would have dashed him against the rocks; but as he whirled past, he caught with his hand the needles of the opposite peaks, and was swung high over a great chasm, and landed upon a higher height, high over their heads. And for a moment they could hear, like a pulsation through the depths, the hard panting of his breath; then, with scarcely a moment for rest, they heard the sound of his progress onward, as if he did battle with the mountain, and his own swiftness carried him like another wind. It had taken less than a moment to sweep him past, quicker than the flight of a bird, as sudden as a lightning flash. The little Pilgrim followed him with her eager ears, wondering if he would leap thus into the country of light and take heaven by storm, or whether he would fall upon the heavenly hills, and lie prostrate in weariness and exhaustion, like him to whom she had ministered. She followed him with her ears, for the sound of his progress was with crashing of rocks and a swift movement in the air; but she was called back by the pressure of the hand of the watcher, who did not, like the little Pilgrim, follow him who thus rushed through space as far as there was sound or sight of him, but had turned again to the lower side, and was gazing once more, and listening for the little noises in the gulf below. The little Pilgrim remembered her friend’s hope, and said softly, “It was not he?” And the watcher clasped her hand again, and answered, “It was a dear brother. I have sounded the silver bells for him; and soon we shall hear them answering from the heights above. And another time it will be he.” And they kissed each other because they understood each the other in her heart.

And then they talked together of the old life when all things began; and of the wonderful things they had learned concerning the love of the Father and the Son; and how all the world was held by them and penetrated through and through by threads of love, so that it could never fail. And the darkness seemed light round them; and they forgot for a little that the wind was not as a summer breeze. Then once more the hand of the watcher pressed that of her companion, and bade her hush and listen; and they sat together holding their breath, straining their ears. Then heard they faint sounds which were very different from those made by him who had been driven past them like an arrow from a bow,—first as of something falling, but very far away, and a faint sound as of a foot which slipped. The listeners did not say a word to each other; they sat still and listened, scarcely drawing their breath. The darkness had no voice; it could not be but that some traveller was there, though hidden deep, deep in the gloom, only betrayed by the sound. There was a long pause, and the watcher held fast the little Pilgrim’s hand, and betrayed to her the longing in her heart; for though she was already blessed beyond all blessedness known on earth, yet had she not forgotten the love that had begun on earth, but was for evermore. She murmured to herself and said, “If it is not he, it is a brother; and the more that come, the more sure it is that he will come. Little sister, is there one for whom you watch?”

“There is no one,” the Pilgrim said,—“but all.”

“And so care I for all,” cried the watcher; and she drew her companion with her to the edge of the abyss, and they sat down upon it low among the rocks to escape the rushing of the wind. And they sang together a soft song; “For if he should hear us,” she said, “it may give him courage.” And there they sat and sang; and the white of their garments and of their heavenly faces showed like a light in the deep gloom, so that he who was toiling upwards might see that speck above him, and be encouraged to continue upon his way.

Sometimes he fell, and they could hear the moan he made, for every sound came upwards, however small and faint it might be; and sometimes dragged himself along, so that they heard his movement up some shelf of rock. And as the Pilgrim looked, she saw other and other dim whitenesses along the ravines of the dark mountains, and knew that she was not the only one, but that many had come to watch and look for the coming of those who had been lost.

Time was as nothing to these heavenly watchers; but they knew how long and terrible were the moments to those upon the way. Sometimes there would be silence like the silence of long years; and fear came upon them that the wayfarer had turned back, or that he had fallen, and lay suffering at the bottom of some gulf, or had been swept by the wind upon some icy peak and dashed against the rocks. Then anon, while they listened and held their breath, a little sound would strike again into the silence; bringing back hope; and again and again all would be still. The little Pilgrim held her companion’s hand; and the thought went through her mind that were she watching for one whom she loved above the rest, her heart would fail. But the watcher answered her as if she had spoken, and said, “Oh, no, oh, no; for if it is not he, it is a brother; and the Lord give them joy!” But they sang no more, their hearts being faint with suspense and with eagerness to hear every sound.

Then in the great chill of the silence, suddenly, and not far off, came the sound of one who spoke. He murmured to himself and said, “Who can continue on this terrible way? The night is black like hell, and there comes no morning. It was better in the land of darkness, for still we could see the face of man, though not God.” The muffled voice shook at that word, and then was still suddenly, as though it had been a flame and the wind had blown it out. And for a moment there was silence; until suddenly it broke forth once more—

“What is this that has come to me that I can say the name of God? It tortures no longer, it is as balm. But He is far off and hears nothing. He called us and we answered not. Now it is we who call, and He will not hear. I will lie down and die. It cannot be that a man must live and live for ever in pain and anguish. Here will I lie, and it will end. O Thou whose face I have seen in the night, make it possible for a man to die!”

The watcher loosed herself from her companion’s clasp, and stood upright upon the edge of the cliff, clasping her hands together and saying low, as to herself, “Father, Father!” as one who cannot refrain from that appeal, but who knows the Father loves best, and that to intercede is vain; and longing was in her face and joy. For it was he, and she knew that he could not now fail, but would reach to the celestial country and to the shining of the sun; yet that it was not hers to help him, nor any man’s, nor angel’s. But the little Pilgrim was ignorant, not having been taught; and she committed herself to those depths, though she feared them, and though she knew not what she could do. And once more the dense air closed over her, and the vacancy swallowed her up, and when she reached the rocks below, there lay something at her feet which she felt to be a man; but she could not see him nor touch him, and when she tried to speak, her voice died away in her throat and made no sound. Whether it was the wind that caught it and swept it quite away, or that the well of that depth profound sucked every note upwards, or whether because it was not permitted that either man or angel should come out of their sphere, or help be given which was forbidden, the little Pilgrim knew not: for never had it been said to her that she should stand aside where need was. And surprise which was stronger than the icy wind, and for a moment a great dismay, took hold upon her, for she understood not how it was that the bond of silence should bind her, and that she should be unable to put forth her hand to help him whom she heard moaning and murmuring, but could not see. And scarcely could her feet keep hold of the awful rock, or her form resist the upward sweep of the wind; but though he saw her not nor she him, yet could not she leave him in his weakness and misery, saying to herself that even if she could do nothing, it must be well that a little love should be near.

Then she heard him speak again, crouching under the rock at her feet; and he said faintly to himself, “That was no dream. In the land of darkness there are no dreams nor voices that speak within us. On the earth they were never silent struggling and crying; but there—all blank and still. Therefore it was no dream. It was One who came and looked me in the face; and love was in His eyes. I have not seen love, oh, for so long! But it was no dream. If God is a dream I know not, but love I know. And He said to me, ‘Arise and go.’ But to whom must I go? The words are words that once I knew, and the face I knew. But to whom, to whom?”

The little Pilgrim cried aloud, so that she thought the rocks must be rent by the vehemence of her cry, calling like the other, “Father, Father, Father!” as if her heart would burst; and it was like despair to think that she made no sound, and that the brother could not hear her who lay thus fainting at her feet. Yet she could not stop, but went on crying like a child that has lost its way; for to whom could a child call but to her father, and all the more when she cannot understand? And she called out and said that God was not His name save to strangers, if there are any strangers, but that His name was Father, and it was to Him that all must go. And all her being thrilled like a bird with its song, so that the very air stirred; yet no voice came. And she lifted up her face to the watcher above, and beheld where she stood holding up her hands a little whiteness in the great dark. But though these two were calling and calling, the silence was dumb. And neither of them could take him by the hand nor lift him up, nor show him, far, far above, the little diamond of the light, but were constrained to stand still and watch, seeing that he was one of those who are beyond hope.

After she had waited a long time, he stirred again in the dark and murmured to himself once more, saying low, “I have slept and am strong. And while I was sleeping He has come again; He has looked at me again. And somewhere I will find Him. I will arise and go; I will arise and go—”

And she heard him move at her feet and grope over the rock with his hands; but it was smooth as snow with no holding, and slippery as ice. And the watcher stood above and the Pilgrim below, but could not help him. He groped and groped, and murmured to himself, ever saying, “I will arise and go.” And their hearts were wrung that they could not speak to him nor touch him nor help him. But at last in the dark there burst forth a great cry, “Who said it?” and then a sound of weeping, and amid the weeping, words. “As when I was a child, as when hope was—I will arise and I will go—to my Father, to my Father! for now I remember, and I know.”

The little Pilgrim sank down into a crevice of the rocks in the weakness of her great joy. And something passed her mounting up and up; and it seemed to her that he had touched her shoulder or her hand unawares, and that the dumb cry in her heart had reached him, and that it had been good for him that a little love stood by, though only to watch and to weep. And she listened and heard him go on and on; and she herself ascended higher to the watch-tower. And the watcher was gone who had waited there for her beloved, for she had gone with him, as the Lord had promised her, to be the one who should lead him to the holy city and to see the Father’s face. And it was given to the little Pilgrim to sound the silver bells and to warn all the bands of the blessed, and the great angels and lords of the whole world, that from out the land of darkness and from the regions beyond hope another had come.

She remained not there long, because there were many who sought that place that they might be the first to see if one beloved was among the travellers by that terrible way, and to welcome the brother or sister who was the most dear to them of all the children of the Father. But it was thus that she learned the last lesson of all that is in heaven and that is in earth, and in the heights above and in the depths below, which the great angels desire to look into, and all the princes and powers. And it is this: that there is that which is beyond hope yet not beyond love; and that hope may fail and be no longer possible, but love cannot fail. For hope is of men, but love is the Lord; and there is but one thing which to Him is not possible, which is to forget; and that even when the Father has hidden His face and help is forbidden, yet there goes He secretly and cannot forbear.

But if there were any deep more profound, and to which access was not, either from the dark mountains or by any other way, the Pilgrim was not taught, nor ever found any knowledge, either among the angels who know all things, or among her brothers who were the children of men.

Dies Irae

THE STORY OF A SPIRIT IN PRISON

(1895)

“He that works me good with unmoved face,

Does it but half; he chills me while he aids,—

My benefactor, not my Brother-man.”

—Coleridge

PART I

I had been very ill. I knew that. Strange whisperings had from time to time penetrated to my brain that were not intended for me to hear, and I knew from them that those in waiting upon me had given up all hope of my recovery.

At first I had rebelled, bitterly, clamorously. Still, as I appeared to lie, speechless, helpless, life was at fever-heat in my brain, and my soul was rising up in fierce rebellion. In the full tide of youth and health to be singled out from the multitude to … die! There was surely injustice, cruel injustice, in it. “Threescore and ten years,” I quoted, and I had but lived twenty-five. Never yet had I been denied anything that life could give, and now the common blessing of life itself was to be taken from me at a stroke.

I knew, I did not deny that I knew, that Death had never been a respecter of ages; but “All men think all men mortal but themselves”: and that it should be I against whom the decree had gone forth—it was incredible.

That phase had passed; my fruitless wrath had spent itself; a few salt tears had gathered, and lain in the hollow cups of my eyes, and those that watched had looked more sadly than before upon me.

“Hush! she is dying!” I heard them say, as the first cock crew.

So the “Supreme Moment” was at hand; and, strangely enough, I was now beyond caring for it. Probably I was too weak to care.

“It must be very near,” I thought, as I saw my good pastor kneel by my bedside, a look of intense earnestness contracting his features.

“She must not die. She shall not die. There is much for her to do on earth yet.”

What did he mean? Was it work that I had left undone, and was he going to wrestle for my soul from out the very grip of death, as had done Luther, centuries ago, for his friend?

Ah! I was weary … too weary to think more. Through dimming sight—I could just see the hospital nurse, a kindly dark-eyed woman, who seemed all eyes and cap and spotless linen, move round me as in a dream. Was she praying now too? And my cousin, whom they had brought four hundred miles, because I had no nearer relative, was she too sinking on her knees?… I was growing faint … fainter the air was stifling!… I was struggling … panting … striving … Free!… drawing, it seemed to me, a long, long breath.

Where was I?

Half-way through the room, half-way to the roof, turning with amazed eyes to look on the scene upon which I had just closed my eyes.

There, was the kneeling pastor, with folded upraised hands and supplicating speech; there the nurse, with bent head but professional watchfulness; my little fair-haired cousin, her head buried on her hands; strangest of all, there lay a figure outstretched under a snowy counterpane, that it was impossible to help recognising as myself. For one moment I saw distinctly the white, drawn face, sharpening in the death-agony, the closed eyes, the cup-like hollows filled with the cruel tears I had shed, the white hand on the counterpane.… A moment and all was dark I knew no more.

•    •    •    •

Had I been asleep, or was I awake now?

I was in the open air, a great sense of space, of breath, of life about me.

Behind me lay a valley stretching into the dim distance, encompassed with white mist. Shadows of human beings were faintly discernible in its midst, moving to and fro, and a very distant hum of voices penetrated the air. Here and there I could see figures emerging from its white cloud; sometimes in little bands of three and four—sometimes alone. Was that the earth that lay so close to an encircling world?…

Yes, and it lay behind me now. What was beyond? I looked up with eager inquiry.

Before me rose in a long incline the green slope of a hillside that, through shaded ways, led to a level overshadowed by an amphitheatre of hills—hills whose peaks rose like great white crystals, roseate, golden-tipped, losing themselves in colour.

With bated breath and a strange thrill of expectancy, I asked myself, if perchance my feet had wandered to the threshold of Paradise; if these golden heights were where saints and angels congregated—where they “summered high in bliss upon the hills of God.”

Nor did I fear that I had been deceived, when down the turf-clad path there moved towards me one, half-goddess, half-woman.

Where had I seen or heard of beauty such as hers before? Surely in some dream. Ah! I knew.… How often had I repeated with untiring delight—

“Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem

No wrought flowers did adorn;…

Her hair, that lay along her back,

Was yellow, like ripe corn.”

There, in all the glory of the poet’s picturing, she stood: a Blessed Damozel; and her soft slow steps were surely bringing her to me.

She was close to me. I was looking up into the blue depths of her eyes.

Yes:

“They were deeper than the depths

Of water stilled at even.”

But they were filled with a soft sadness that brought a shapeless fear to mingle with my wonder.

Was she sad for me, this Blessed Damozel? Her whole mien was one of gracious pity.… Was it for me?… A faint feeling began to gather at my heart. The “hills of God” seemed very far away.

PART II

We were slowly climbing the steep, the Blessed Damozel and I. Her hand clasped mine in familiar touch. Her words of welcome had been sweet to my soul, for in saying them, through the depth of sorrow in her eyes there had shone the purest light of love.

“You … love me!” I had said, surprised into speech.

“I have loved you,” she had murmured, “all your life upon the earth.”

“Then I will fear no evil,” I had answered, reassured, and clung to her outstretched hand.

As we went I pointed to the crystal heights on which the glory lay.

“I know them. I have read of them. They are the ‘hills of God.’ Are we going there?”

She lifted a reverent gaze to the far-off peaks.

“These are the ‘hills of Holiness,’” she answered, and with averted gaze pursued her way.

The old faint fear crept coldly round my heart, and my gaze went fearfully forward. Visions of Paradise were slowly melting away from me. In their place the Dies Irae began to repeat itself in my brain.

That Day of Wrath! that dreadful day!…

What was before me?… What awaited me?…

Half-way up the slope a murmur behind made me turn curiously. A little company was just emerging from the mist-filled valley, and following in our steps. My guide looked behind.

“Shall we wait for them?” she asked, and drew me aside into the shade of a grove of trees.

Before long they were nearing us. A little woman led by the hand by a fair guide somewhat like my own, but of a very different type of beauty. The flowing hair was dark, the figure fuller, and there was a very marked difference in her expression. It was of one that triumphed, and in her large dark eyes a light of victory shone. A little company followed them. A widow with streaming eyes, leading by the hand a boy and girl; a maiden, pale-faced and worn; a hard-featured woman, speaking volubly to a deaf audience, but with tears in her eyes.

“Who is she?” I asked, my gaze going back to the small central figure.

“A little maiden lady of seventy years, who left the world this morning. No, she does not look her years. It is the ‘youth of the soul’ that is on her face—immortal youth.”

“And those who are with her, are they all dead? They somehow look different.”

“No; these are the forms of those who have loved her, and whose souls are longing after her so powerfully, that, unknown to themselves, they are here with her, testifying unconsciously to her love and sweet charity while among them.”

“Did … did no one come with me?” I asked, shamed, I knew not why, before the question was well framed.

“She had seventy years of life, you only twenty-five,” my friend answered, very sorrowfully. Her love would evidently fain cover a multitude of sins.

At this moment the group stopped almost opposite to us. The little face had the beauty of a child rather than that of an old woman.

“She has possessed her soul in innocency,” I said, involuntarily. “But what does it all mean? I suppose she was kind to those people, but …”

“Keep your gaze fixed steadily upon her, and you will one by one see the different scenes of her life stand out in clear relief. I see them now, and as she moves up to higher planes, they will stand out in bolder and still bolder relief to every eye.”

I steadied my gaze, and this is what I saw:—

I saw her as a girl seated at a piano, painfully imparting the most elementary knowledge of its use to a perplexed girl as old as herself.

“The girl has to win her bread by teaching. She is trying to fit her for the battle. She has no money. She is giving time … and love.”

The scene had melted away.

Round her was a little house of mean appearance. She was “on household cares intent.” A fretful woman was extended on a sofa, speaking in querulous tones.

I looked to my guide.

“The sick woman is a worn-out music-teacher, homeless, sick. She is no relative, not even a friend, has but the claim of weakness and want. The little maiden lady had very small means. She argued with herself that the only way by which she could help her was to do without any service herself, and to use the cost of service in housing and clothing this poor woman. Like Dr Johnson’s dependants, the music-mistress too often used her opportunities to grumble at her benefactress. But she is worshipping her to-day.”

The woman of voluble speech was indeed on her knees before the little lady. I could hear her murmured thanks, and the troubled protest in response.

When I looked again, she was in other surroundings. The young widow and the boy and girl, whose figures were now fading into the mist, were clustered round her, younger and poorer.

“When the querulous old music-mistress died,” spoke my guide, “the little lady vowed that she would still share her home with the homeless. Out of the crowd came this young widow, penniless, with a boy and girl to rear. These are the mourners whose true sorrow follows her. The widow’s gratitude was not confined to words. Look at the home she made for her.”

I saw a bright and happy household, holding the head in loving reverence, and she growing old among them.

“Now,” said my guide, bringing me back to the present, “she will have her reward.”

At this moment her guide stopped, her face wreathed with smiles, took a crown she had been carefully carrying, and stooping over her with infinite tenderness, placed it on her brow.

She turned her face towards me, alight with soft surprise, and I saw plainly written in letters of gold:—

“I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”

Then they passed away, to where sweet strains of music called. We were alone, I with the tears gathered thick in my eyes.

“And I,” looking round in bewilderment—“I have loved none, helped none, except through others; denied myself for none. What of me?… Ah! God will for Christ’s sake forgive me. I died trusting in Him.”

“God will for Christ’s sake forgive you,” said my sweet Damozel, solemnly, “but …”

“But what? Sweet Damozel, answer me,” for my guide was pursuing her way with sorrowful mien.

“Yet one thing thou lackest,” … she quoted.

“‘One thing thou lackest,’” I repeated after her. “‘Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor.’ But that,… we were told that was not meant literally.”

“Its ‘spirit’ giveth life.”

“Its ‘Spirit’!” …

“Its spirit is Love, and Love is Everlasting Life.”

I was deeply bewildered.

“But”—a strange fear beginning to gather round my heart—“the pains of hell, they at least were an invention of narrow-minded men, of whom Calvin was the chief: not even for the wicked do they exist!”

“I can believe in no hell,” I went on passionately, finding my guide slow to answer, “for with it there could be no heaven. I for one,” daringly, being deeply imbued with the latest sentiments I had listened to on earth—“I could not be happy in the highest heaven if I knew there was one poor soul imprisoned in a hell.”

I thought for a moment that my Blessed Damozel was breathing a prayer for me, so sad was the expression of her uplifted eyes, and slowly but surely the terrors of the Unknown began to encompass me about.

The air was growing colder, purer, more difficult of breath, and an excessive light was blinding me. We had reached the level.

It was, as I had seen from afar, an amphitheatre encircled by high hills; at first it seemed to be closed in entirely, but on looking closer and with straining gaze, I saw openings to right and to left.

With a flash of memory, words that had been familiar to me from childhood repeated themselves in my brain.

“And He set the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left.”

“Where … do they lead?” I asked, with a strange sinking of the heart.

“To God,” answered my guide, solemnly.

Oh, Day of Wrath!… Oh, Dreadful Day!… rhymed on in my brain. “Come!” said my guide; and, with a terror growing ever greater at my heart, I followed to where, as I gazed on the two parting roads, there, out of the light a shape slowly formed itself, terrible in its beauty to any erring child of earth, for its beauty was the beauty of Holiness.

I fell prostrate at its feet. I closed my eyes in the dust. All my complacency fell from me as a garment; all the fair colouring with which I had clothed myself in imagination, melted like a breath before that pure presence. Petty self-deceivings, multiplied self-excusings, they were as if they had never been.

I had but one cry:

“God have mercy upon me, … Christ have mercy upon me.”

Through the silence, and as if it were afar off, I heard the voice of my Blessed Damozel pleading for me.

“Lord, have pity upon her. She has sinned in ignorance.”

… “God have mercy upon me.”

“She is yet of tender years. Only a third of the days allotted to man upon the earth have been granted to her.”

… “Christ have mercy upon me.”

Strangely enough, although I lay prostrate as before, I could as plainly see my pleader and my Judge as if I had been standing upright before them; and although I did not once open my lips, a voice that yet seemed mine took up speech against me, almost without my will.

“Mea culpa! mea culpa!” …

“She brings none with her, it is true, but she lived in a charmed circle. Great wealth of this world’s goods were bequeathed to her. She has known no poverty.”

… “God have mercy upon me.”

“She has known no sorrow.”

… “Christ have mercy upon me.”

“And,” she went on, with pleading earnestness, “she has known no love.”

Then I knew, from the light on my sweet guide’s face, that this last plea had somehow brought amelioration of my sentence.

“Come!” she whispered low, and I kissed the hem of her garment as she gently raised me.

“Where … are you leading me?” I asked in a new humility, when we had gone some distance. “But I know,” … for she was slow to answer. “To Outer Darkness.”

She stopped short, and wound her arms round my neck.

“It is indeed Outer Darkness,” she answered, and made my spirit to fail with her word. “But, my love, you go on a quest that will end in victory,… on a high and holy quest.”

“What quest?” raising weary eyes.

“The quest after Love.”

“Ah! you said I had never known that. I thought I had.”

“It is one thing to love, another to be loved. On earth we too often crave for the second, and so miss the first. Yet the first is of God; the second of self.”

“And when I find Love, shall I be safe?” sorrowfully enough.

Her eyes were very sad. “When you have ceased to ask after safety, you may come within reach of Love.”

“Alas! you talk in riddles.”

“Till the riddle is solved, you will not see God, for … ‘God is Love.’”

I was sorely bewildered, and grievously faint at heart.

“Wherever I go, will you go with me?” I asked, clinging to her in a loneliness that was growing and growing in me.

“You will come back to me,” she answered, her eyes filling slowly with tears as she bent over me. “From the day that you were born, I have had you in my care. Now I may keep you but a very little longer. Ah! I am sad exceedingly for you, for I too have trodden every step of the way. I, like you, came hither trusting in the Christ, but with the very first lessons of the ‘Religion of Love’ unlearned; and only when you have conquered, shall I be free to live the wider life that lies beyond.”

“There is a wider life beyond?”

“Yes!” the joy of all the ages future shining in her eyes, till she was transfigured to a beauty that thrilled me through and through, “a wider life beyond and beyond, and for ever beyond. We shall share it together.”

“I shall never be like you!” I cried, in despair.

“My love, you will one day awake in His likeness,… so shall I,… and we shall be satisfied.”

But now and for me that Outer Darkness beckoned. Already I imagined that shadows were falling around us.

She read my thought.

“I shall wait for you at Dawn,” she whispered.

“Have I then only one long night of horror and of pain before me?” I asked, with conscious relief.

“We count no time here. A night is as a thousand years; a thousand years as a night.”

“You mean that Life is so intense, time is lost sight of.”

“Yes.”

“Why have you changed the word in the passage? why night instead of day?”

“There is no day where you go,” she answered. “It is always night there.”

I began to tremble exceedingly.

“But you will watch for me at Dawn?” in accents that were now piteous entreaty. “You will not fail me?”

“I shall watch with open arms for you at Dawn,” she answered, and therewith fell on my neck and kissed me, mingling her tears with mine.

I thought I heard a sob, but it might have been my own sobbing breath, for my fears had overcome me, and I lay like a child in her arms, holding her fast.

As in a dream I felt the arms loosening slowly from round me, and then my own tenderly unclasped—I seemed to cling with all my might.

“Oh, Blessed Damozel!” I cried, “have pity!… Stay!” …

But it was of no avail. She was gone. I was alone, and swooning for fear and grief.

PART III

When I awoke, the shadows of night were indeed around me. Straining my gaze into their depths, I could distinguish blacker shadows of massive buildings rising higher and higher on every hand; buildings on buildings, dark, gloomy, with endless passages winding in and out among them—passages narrow, foul, and over-shadowed with such darkness as lay on my very soul; for surely it was not the darkness of Nature alone that brooded over that ghostly city.

From a height I looked down on it with ever-quickening gaze. Could these be human beings that crowded storey after storey of the towering masses of stone, and swarmed in swaying multitudes in every darkened passage? They did indeed seem to take shape to my curious gaze. Figures of old and young, sickly infants, and tottering old women, men and women of all ages, mixed in a motley crowd; and ever and anon, to my shrinking ear, from the whole came up a confused wailing of many voices, sounding, it seemed to me, every note of pain, from the feeble wail of infancy to that of torture unendurable, , while loud-mouthed curses, that made my very flesh creep for fear, mingled from time to time with the sounds.

It is, I think, Jean Paul Richter who has recorded his belief that of all Hells the Hell of sound is the worst; and I knew then, as I had never known before, what he meant. It was no long time till, after listening to cry after cry, I put my hands to my ears in the vain endeavour to escape from it all. But no device of earth availed here. There was no closing of the ears. The increasing wail waxed ever louder and more bitter; I even grew to distinguish a horrible laughter mingling itself with it, till, when at last a terror-filled shriek rang and rang through the darkened air, I could bear it no longer. I threw myself on my knees and added my cry to theirs.

“God in Heaven, what have they done, to be so tormented?” I cried. “Is there no mercy in heaven or earth to help them?”

A voice, stern, resolute, sounded in my ear. It bade me rise; and looking up, I found by my side one of terrible aspect, awful in a majesty that made me cower before him.

“Who art thou?” I did not dare to ask, but he had read and answered my thought.

“I am the Avenging Angel,” he answered.

“To these poor people,” I said, with an indignant thrill.

“Of these poor people,” he answered.

And although I knew not what he meant, I shrank before him.

“You are … their …”

But even as I spoke, another of those terror-laden shrieks rent the air and startled me out of all self-control.

“What does it mean?” I sobbed, in almost equal terror.

“It means that cruelty is rampant, and there is none to check it; that lust is unbridled, and the innocent flee before it; that avarice stalks unheeded throughout the land, leaving famine and desolation behind—Look and learn.”

They were words my Blessed Damozel had used; but they were repeated now with a sternness of tone that made me tremble as before a judge. No compassion shone in the eyes of the Avenging Angel as he bent them on me.

I turned my gaze where he directed, and found that by some strange means he had contrived to throw a strong light down on a pair of figures in the far depth of the valley—a pair clasped in each other’s arms; a husband and wife. The woman was wan and worn to a shadow; the man scarcely better. “Avarice has been on their track for years,” said my guide. “She is slowly dying, but she has possessed her soul in patience. She will be at rest to-night.”

“But why are they here at all? What sin did they commit?”

There was no answer. The thoughts of the Avenging Angel were far from me.

“To-morrow at dawn I shall set her free, and she shall sleep till then. But … ‘woe to him by whom the offence cometh.’”

Why should all the graciousness pass from his face when he turned to me? Why should I have to shrink again into the attitude of a culprit? I did not dare to ask the question I was longing to have answered. Did death reign here as in the world? for no such possibility had entered my imagination. But questioning was lost sight of in a new terror.

A cry as of a hunted animal rent the air and startled me into a new agony of fear.

“What?… what is that?” For answer the strange light fell with lurid gleam on a fleeing maiden of tender years and a monster in human shape pursuing.

My heart stood still, then leapt with sudden horror.

“O God, he gains on her!… Stop him!… You are an angel! Oh …”

My shrieks were mingling with the maiden’s as I fell on my face to shut out the hideous horror.

It was long before I raised streaming eyes to my companion.

“You could have helped, you would not move.”

“I am her Avenger,” he answered, grimly.

“You will hurl her destroyer to the lowest hell,” I said.

“Nay, not him alone.”

“On whom will vengeance fall?” I asked, eagerly.

“These are the hidden things of God,” he answered, solemnly. “Each goeth to his own place.”

Each to his own place, and I was here. What had such scenes as those I was witnessing to do with me?…

Even as we spoke a great hum of angry voices was coming again within hearing, swelling as it rose and rose, ever nearer, and bringing with it a new horror before which my spirit quailed. Was there to be no rest for me through all this weary night? I shrank before the ever-growing tumult: children crying, women shrilly calling, men cursing.

“Oh, I cannot bear more!… The night is hideous with sound. A moment, I pray you, of rest. Shut out the sounds from my ears but for one brief moment. Let me dream, were it only for a moment, that I am again back in my old home, all barbarous sounds shut out.… I am a weak and tenderly reared girl.… Such sights and sounds as I have seen and heard to-night, I have never even dreamt of. What,… what is happening now?… Ah, spare me! No more light, I pray. But, my God, what is that?…”

“Cruelty rampant: the victims are at its mercy.”

“Is there none to help? none to answer to such cries?”

“The few help; the many disregard. But the Lord will avenge,” solemnly, “and I am His servant.”

He was awful as he spoke, for the valley rang with execrations, strange oaths, piteous weeping.

I went back to my pleading.

“A moment of respite, I pray you,… I am sick at heart.” …

What was happening? A strange light was spreading far and wide in a large semicircle, leaving the valley below in deeper gloom than before. The night was become light about us. I gazed as, one in a dream at fair gardens stretching down gentle slopes, at stately mansions, at delicate women and strong-limbed men, strolling through softly carpeted rooms or lounging on low settees. Children like to little angels played merrily, and soft laughter welled out to us.

As I looked, recognition slowly came to me. I had got my prayer.

“It is what I left behind!” I cried, in rapture. “Ah, how good it was!”

For a brief moment I gazed, forgetting all the horrors I had gone through. Alas! it was only for a moment. My guide touched me on the shoulder.

“How good it was!” I repeated, ere I responded.

His face was sterner than before as he looked down on me. Slowly raising his hand with an ominous gesture, he pointed to the deep Valley of Shadow I had for the moment been allowed to forget.

“And what of them?” he asked.

I followed his gaze. I was growing truly bewildered.

“What!… Do they lie so near?”

“So near that although those in the Valley cannot climb to those who ‘dwell at ease,’ yet those dwellers at ease can go to the weary and tormented and save them if they will.”

“If they will!” I cried, indignantly. “Who would rest if they could help that struggling multitude?” …

… A curious thing was happening. Slowly the mists enshrouding the Valley were rolling away before my eyes, and as they lifted themselves, the place was assuming a strangely familiar shape. Were not these the towers and fastnesses of my own town rising out of the crowd? Was that streak of grey not the river with its bridges, that separated the old town from the new? Could it be? Was that Valley of wicked strife and dire poverty and cruel disease indeed the picturesque valley in the midst of my childhood’s home? Was this the Valley of Shadow unspeakable I had been contemplating?

It was night. The gas-lit streets were swarming with a swaying multitude, the crowded houses still poured forth their inmates.… They were recognisable for such men and women and children as I had grown up among. At this moment the old town clock I had known from a child tolled out the hour, I counted the strokes mechanically.

“Twelve o’clock!… Midnight!” I said, without thinking.

“Midnight!” repeated my guide, as the last stroke died away. “It is now the ‘Day of Rest.’”

Oh! hideous mockery.

“And that is …”

“The town where you and they were born.”

“And these are …”

“Your sisters … and brothers.”

“It has been a morbid dream,” I cried. “I have had a nightmare.”

But almost before I had dared to uplift my voice, the mists fell as before on all around. I was standing alone with my guide on the mountain-side. Below us stretched the darkened Valley like a Lake of Gloom in the heart of the pretty town: worse than all, that wail of all the weary, that cry of all the suffering, was filling again the void.

“Where are the watchmen?” I asked, with a tone of earth in my voice, which my guide must have recognised.

“In the fray,” answered my guide, “adding to it, saving some, too late for others. They perhaps are least likely to think your dream morbid.”

And, indeed, with that weary, weary wail in my ears, it was difficult to repeat my words.

“My God, it is too awful!” I cried in despair, for sight was now being added to sound; and when I would fain have closed both eyes and ears, it was to find as before that no such escape was possible. “It is too awful! It is hell indeed!”

And so saying, I sank to earth.

“No happiness was possible for you in Heaven, while one poor spirit lay in Hell,” gibed a mocking voice in my ear.

Without looking up, I knew that my stern guide was gone, and that his place had been taken by an imp of darkness, who was grinning at my discomfiture.

“Beautiful dreamer of fair sentiments!” reviled another voice. “Imaginative sympathy is so fine a thing. And so easy.…”

“Learn what this meaneth,” spoke one solemnly in passing; “‘I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.…’”

… “‘And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,… and have not Love,’” quoted another sorrowfully, “‘it profiteth me nothing.’” …

PART IV

“One night is as a thousand years.”

I was in the arms of my Blessed Damozel, sobbing my heart out on her breast.

At last.… At last the day had dawned and set me free, and, as I had never doubted she would be, there, waiting on the fair hillside, had stood my sweet and blessed Lady, the first rays of sunshine lying on her golden hair, her white arms outstretched, her eyes full of tenderest sympathy, and deep with unforgotten sorrow.

I could not speak. I could not bring before her mind one picture of the horrors I had undergone. I could only cling to her neck and sob,… and sob.

“I know it all,” she whispered. “I too have gone every step of the way.”

It seemed too cruel. She too, my Blessed Damozel.

“No! Not cruel, love.” … Did ever saint or angel say that word as did my sweet lady? It fell as balm on the wounded spirit. “Not cruel. I … listen, love,” … for indeed I was refusing to listen—“I would go through every pang of that time to gain what I have gained.”

It was a spiritless questioning I undertook.

“What was your gain?”

“The Crown of Life: Love,” she answered.

I had forgotten. It was a quest after Love I had been supposed to be sent forth on. I had not even once remembered it.

“I … have gained nothing,” I answered.

“Ah, yes, you have.” …

“What?”

“Knowledge.” …

I was too weary for answer. I dropped my head upon her fair bosom. She understood, and presently we reclined on the slope together, I held fast in her arms, the soft air of summer wrapping us round, the trill of birds in our ear, the clear trickling of a brook close by. But what were they all to the loving embrace that held me: tender, true, for all the Eternity that lay before us?

We were “as the angels of God.”

PART V

“A thousand years is as a day.”

It had seemed no more than a day, a too short day, till again the shadows were falling thick around me, and I stood alone with reluctant feet at the entrance to that world of darkness I had learned to name hell.

A force it was useless to resist was impelling me forward, and yet it was only to be met by sounds and sights that as strongly seemed to force me back at every step. Ah, for a door of escape!… And yet.… One glimmer of intelligence shone like a star in a dark firmament, where all was blackness before.

My Blessed Damozel had trodden every step of the way—nay, Christ Himself had trodden it.… I could never be as Christ, or even as my sweet lady, but there might be for me also sweet to be gained by the bitter.

I was moving ever down the slope, nearer and nearer to the black masses of people, deeper into the shadow of gloom, till I was at length myself one of the multitude that swayed this way and that, in the narrow alleys and in the open squares.

Caught into the stream, I had small time given me to think. There at my feet was a little child, disfigured, marred in visage, probably all that was criminal in embryo, but still a child, weak, helpless; and a reeling madman, emerging from the darkness, had his foot raised to kick. With the old cry of pain, I sprang to interpose, but it was only to discover what I had for the moment forgotten, that I was not now of Earth. I could interpose no human body between; the child fell with a moan, and a passer-by lifted it, while another promptly implanted a blow on the drunken wretch, which he was too insensible to feel.

I turned and fled. The old horrors of my night were indeed begun. It was as if all the peaceful homes were hidden from my sight, and light, a strange lurid light, that of itself lent a horrible clearness to the pictures, was poured down on every revolting sight that a city at its lowest can show. Nothing that was not of Earth, and already familiar to me through the newspaper columns of the day; it was only that the light detached them from the whole, and for a time I was made to see them, and only them, in a succession of horrors that was agonising.

Yes, they were all familiar.

That, before which I shrieked, would to-morrow be reported as a murder “under peculiarly revolting circumstances;” that which made me sicken to the verge of unconsciousness would be included in the annual statistics of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children as one of the ten thousand cases that had been brought under their notice; and this, where I had stood at the girl’s elbow, and wept, and implored her to turn from the temptation before her, would be mentioned as a sad case of suicide.

That fair young girl had moved me greatly. A cloud rested on her brain. Temporary illness had some months before stopped the weekly wage for which she worked, and, in her need, she had fallen behind in her payments. The burden of debt had ever since pressed heavily upon her; in the enfeebled state of her health, it had taken undue hold of her imagination, till now, with darkened vision, she stood like a creature at bay, on the brink of the Unknown.

“Help will come to-morrow,” I had pleaded.

“There have been a great many to-morrows,” had been her answer, “and no help came.”

“They do not know,” I pleaded, for the girl looked fiercely up at the gardened slopes where the helpers lay.

“They do not seek to know.”

“Oh yes, they do. If I had known,” …

“They know that we are here, and that we have not bread. They know that where there is not bread there is hunger, and sickness, and bitterness, and loss of self-restraint.”

“They do not know that you have not bread.”

But as I spoke, my confidence melted from me. I remembered that it was only the week before my illness, that I had sat at my comfortable drawing-room fire, brooding over the latest results of inquiries in East London. Twenty-five, if not thirty per cent, of the people living that day below the Poverty Line, one in four not knowing where “Daily Bread” was to come from: one in every ten “Very poor,” This very girl must have been one of these. I had had a week to do it in. Why had I not gone down on the spot into the dark gully, on whose banks we had builded our pleasant homes—why had I not gone down, and putting my arms round her, said to her, “Sister, you must know no more want, while I am here to share with you”?

O God, if I had but done it, if I could but do it now! No one could possibly object to charity like that; they could not say it was “demoralising.” For that had been my great “problem” in these now far-off days. I laughed my problem to scorn as I stood close to my poor sister.

“Sweet, my love,” I said to her, my whole heart going out in a strange yearning that it had never known before, “have patience but a little while. I know good women over there who would be shocked beyond measure if they thought you were on the point of taking away your own life, because of hunger, and cold, and misery. Let me but have time to go to them, and awake them from their slumber, and you will see what life can be yet.”

She smiled bitterly at what she thought was her own better nature speaking.

“Ah, yes, I know well,” she answered, with impatience in her voice, and her eye alight with a pained bewilderment, “that if I could bring myself to be a beggar and go from door to door, I should gather half-crowns in plenty; but ‘to beg I am ashamed.’ … Yet bread I must have or I cannot live. And my work does not suffice. My flesh fails for very weariness before I have coppers enough to buy more food to give strength for more work. Why should I go on?… I have none to care whether I live or die.… There is rest here!”… pointing to the flood below.

“Oh, it is awful!” I said. “So much given, and yet blood at our doors.”

“It is not money we want,” she answered, almost fiercely, her intellect waking up with sudden flash to its clearest. “Yes, indeed, showers of half-crowns are falling, and the scramble for them is not good to see. More and more joining the clamouring crowd.” ., . She suddenly laughed a horrible laugh. “Four coffins finding their way to one man’s deathbed, sent by four different societies!—one will be enough for me.… Ah! I am sick, sick, weary of it all. The scramble for the falling coins, the ‘crumbs from the rich man’s table,’ and those who have no heart or too much pride for the scramble … dying. Listen!” her eye gleaming fire, as she laid her hand on an imaginary listener—or was vision lent to her, that she could see as well as hear me?—“I tell you, tell you truly, what we want is not money but … Love. One loving woman to one struggling sister; one loving brother to one fallen comrade in the fight. One and one alone: caring as a sister would care, not once leaving her till she sees all her wrongs righted, or till her weakness or poverty is a thing of the past. Ah!” looking up to the gardened slopes, passionate pity gathering in her eyes, “were I ever to become rich, would it be possible for me, I wonder, to forget it all; to forget my toiling sisters, going wearily home after hours of sunshine spent in close rooms, home to bare meals, too tired to be amused, if there were amusement provided; only too thankful if kindly sleep await them, instead of perplexing care, care of how the week’s debts are to be met? Would it be possible for me to forget, I wonder, that there must be many and many doing as I have so often done, toiling in spirit with the weary car-horses, feeling that life with them and with me was much the same: on and on: the whip of want, if one threatens to stop? Ah! if I were but one of these,” again looking up to the gardens above, tears in her voice and gathering in her eyes, “I would take one at least from this sorry den and make her life so fair for her; and she should know no want any more, nor care any more,—just as if I were her true sister,—nor bitterness of dependence, for there is no bitterness where Love is, nor shame of beggary. But … it is easy to dream dreams. If I were as they, I should no doubt grow self-absorbed and self-sufficient even as they. Ah!… what nonsense it all is! Only, if my dream came to pass, there could be no talk then of ‘overlapping Charity!’” and she laughed a laugh that was not good to hear. “Oh!” raising her hands to her head, “I shall be glad when my ears are deafened that I cannot hear; the mockery of it all is too great.”

And once more there settled down upon her brain the cloud I now knew myself powerless to combat.

“Let me be your sister,” I would fain have said; but I knew, before the words were spoken, that it was in vain.

My punishment was, that I could not give her help. My love and longing had come all too late.

Yet I had deemed myself a follower of Him who said: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

I sought excuses. It was truly the sin of ignorance. My youth I … Had I then been so young? If one is not to rise to gracious womanhood in twenty-five years, when will the awakening come? I had surely not been too young to know what women of my own age were suffering.

“How old are you?” I found myself asking.

“Twenty-five. My birthday falls to-morrow.”

Twenty-five, and weary of life: weary of disappointment rather; for of life, bright, beautiful, young life, with its joy in colour and movement, this sister of mine had known nothing.

Just then one passed close by us, in satin and pearls, with rouged cheek and glittering white teeth, that laughed us to scorn.

She was a Nana, let loose as a scourge on the weaklings of the day, scattering fortunes as a child scatters bonbons, sending youths forth stripped penniless, as the fruit of a week’s folly; but for herself, all the pleasures a life of sin could give were hers. My companion lifted her head at sound of the laughter, and shuddered as she passed. There was again a flash of sanity.

“I was once as beautiful as she.”

“But you were not tempted.…”

“Never. This,” pointing to the flowing tide, “is better than that.”

I stooped to hide the blinding tears.

“Sister!…” I said, “I am not worthy.… Ah!…”

She had not heard me. Like a bird she had flashed through the gloom into the tide below, and the water had opened to receive her.

What angel would greet her as she emerged from the mist? I thanked heaven that she went into God’s good keeping, and, as the shrill laughter of the woman of sin came again on the still air, once more I thanked God for her.

Turning slowly back to the crowded maze, with weeping eyes and humbled heart, I was conscious of a curious change in myself. What was it? The lagging step was gone, the intense unwillingness to move forward. The bitter outcry that the burden laid upon me was more than I could bear was no more. In its place there had come a strong impulse forward into the heart of the crowd; a great longing to take some one of them to me, the weaker the better, and push the way for him or her and myself out from the shadow into the light. I had forgotten even my Blessed Damozel in the strong interest that had sprung up in my heart.… Yes! in my heart,… that was then the secret.

My heart was awake … at last! Awake in its own regal right,… asking nothing,… giving all.…

“And if I love thee, what is that to thee?” rang down a century’s length and was understood.

And pity as an emotion was swallowed up in pity as a motive.

Instead of closing my ears to the continuous wail of pain, my eyes to the saddening sights, my arms seemed to stretch themselves out in pure yearning towards that sorrowing multitude, my feet were swift to take me into the heart of it.

One loving woman to one struggling sister!… that at least was within reach: to have her and hold her, and care for her and love her … for ever! That at least,… what more the future might unfold … I could leave.

Alas! I had forgotten,… I was not of earth, and could help have come from heaven, these poor souls had been helped long ere now. No such heaven opened before me as I had been picturing. It was to be my fate to wander sadly, helpless, prayerful, in ever-present pain of powerlessness, among that weary multitude—suffering with them, learning from them, feeling myself unworthy to tie the shoe-latchet of the least of them. It was they who were to save me, not I them.

PART VI

The sorrow was all gone from my sweet lady’s eyes as they rested lovingly on mine. For the day had dawned once more, the shadows had melted away from about me, and I was standing in the early sunshine, my hands in hers, in a strong grasp of new strength and comradeship. Was I dreaming, or was that the same light of triumph on her countenance which had so impressed me in the dark-eyed saint who had led the little old lady of seventy to her Lord, and was she triumphing for me?…

But my heart was too full of enlarged life to allow me to linger for more than a moment on this new impression. I hastened to share it with her.

“Sweet sister,…” I did not notice the new equality.… “I have found it. I know … what it is to love.”

The grasp on my hands grew tighter.

“And although there,” glancing back, “and for a little time, it is indeed sorrow,… for all eternity it will be joy.”

Ah! the deep, deep joy that glowed in the eyes of my listener!

“They are coming, are they not,… one by one; all those who have one spark of the Divine in them? And I know now why you pleaded for me so earnestly as my excuse that I had not known poverty, for indeed ‘Hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom.’ It is poverty that has taught many of these poor souls that lesson of self-forgetfulness, which I altogether failed in learning. And sorrow is teaching others; and all,… all except that lowest grade of all, that one in every hundred, which none yet have had power to raise or help—all are living nearer to the lessons of life, than are many of the dwellers at ease on the hillside.”

No word would she speak in answer, but her look was eloquent of triumph at every word I spoke, and pleaded for more,… more.…

“Yes, they are surely closer to each other in their struggling and striving, failing and winning, than are the rich they envy. It is true, they stretch out weary limbs at night, and aching frames are laid on hard couches; but often and often, even then, their hearts make holiday.’ For often, too tired to sleep, they allow their minds to dwell on the hard task completed, the righteous debt paid, want once more tided over for some one dearer than self! Yes, through it all, round the hearts of the loving among them—and there are many such—there never ceases to play that warmth of tender feeling, that only stern workers know who toil for those they love. Ah! to stand in the breach for the weak I … above all, for the weak that we love! .,, I have learned, sweet sister, from that struggling multitude, that there is no joy on earth to compare with that; there is, there can be, no joy in earth or heaven greater than that.” …

Upon which my Blessed Damozel loosened suddenly her grasp of my hands, put her arms round my neck, and our lips met in a kiss that was full of promise. It told that we were one in intent and purpose: that we loved one another, but we loved humanity more; and the joy of the future would be, that, hand in hand, we would go forth together, as “ministers of grace” to “do His pleasure.”

“God bless all those who are trying to add to the sum of human happiness; God bless all those who are trying to lessen the sum of human pain,” had prayed Sunday after Sunday the clergyman of our parish.

Ah! we should be henceforth among “the blessed of God.”

When she drew it back, my Blessed Damozel’s face shone with such beauty that I found myself saying in fresh wonderment, “How very beautiful you are!”

She smiled. “Come,” she said.

And she led me to a lake clear as crystal.

“Look.”

I bent and saw reflected in it two faces side by side. One was that of my companion, smiling back at me with a beauty that again filled me with a great sense of gladness. I loved beauty. I loved her beauty.

Then I turned to the other, and as I looked my wonder grew and grew; and as my wonder grew, the eyes in the looking-glass we had found grew larger and softer and softer, till they filled with tears.

“I … cannot be . like that.…”

“Yon are like that,” whispered my sister; “for that is ‘the beauty of Holiness.’”

“But I am not holy!” said I, in still deeper amazement.

“Holiness is … an Infinite Sympathy for others,” she whispered again. “You remember?” …

Yes, I remembered a sister on Earth had spoken that, and I had thought it very beautiful.

While I was still pondering I felt my companion turn from me, and wafted on the soft air, there came from the direction in which she turned a distant sound of rejoicing.

I raised my head and turned with her. “What … is it?” I asked.

“The ‘Songs of them that triumph,’” said my Blessed Damozel, her eye lighting, her body swaying forward; “‘the Shouts of them that feast,’ Hark! they are calling to us, calling to you and to me.… Come.”

•    •    •    •

With a long, long sigh I was awaking.

Awaking to what? To the twilight of a darkened chamber, to the far, far-off sound of familiar voices: now to the sight of a familiar face.

It was the hospital nurse. She took my hand.

I could hear her speak. I could catch what she was saying.

“She is conscious, I am sure. She pressed my hand.”

Another far-off voice: our clergyman’s. “It was prayer that brought her back. For a moment the soul seemed separate from the body, but I was intent she should not die; with her powers, her riches, her youth, she had so much to do in the world yet.… I would not let her go.”

I struggled for utterance.

“So much to do in the world yet! One loving woman to one struggling sister,… to have her and hold her,… and care for her and love her,—above all, … to love her … for ever.…”

“She is wandering again,” said the nurse.

Was I wandering? Am I wandering still?… Has it been a dream, a dream and nothing more?

The Land of Suspense

(1897)

I

The young man set out upon his walk at the entrance of a broad valley, through which there was visible here and there the glimmer of a great river. It was broken in outline by many little hills, such as one sees in the loveliest part of Italy, each crowned by its little groups of habitations, in varied and delightful inequalities of height and form, which seemed to throw a radiance of life and living over the beautiful green slopes, fields, and trees in which these points of light and peace were set. Lines of blue hills receding towards the distant peaks, which were great enough to be called mountains, stretched in noble ridges on either side; and the landscape was one which filled the traveller with a sense of beauty and satisfaction, while drawing his mind and his steps on by a hundred suggestions of fairer things still unrevealed. And the morning was fresh and sweet, beyond even that “innocent brightness of the newborn day,” of which few can resist the charm. The sky was flooded with the early sunshine. The valley glowed under it with the dew still undried upon the grass, much of which was half buried in flowers, and soft with the whiteness of the daisies rejoicing in the light. The young man had come over a pass between the hills when this prospect bursting upon him for a moment took away his breath—but it was only for a moment. He paused to gaze upon the road before him, and then with a delightful consciousness that his walk would bring him into fuller possession of this new world unknown to him, he set out upon his way.

The curious thing was, that he did not know where he was going, nor what place this was, nor the direction in which it would lead him, though all the while he walked quickly on with the sure and certain steps of a man familiar with every turn of the path. For some time he went on, unconscious of this, or at least without thinking of it in the ease of his being. He had always been fond of walking, and there was a pleasure in the mere sense of movement, after some recent absence from that delight—absence and confinement which he was aware of, though he could not render to himself any reason for it. He was in full career, feeling as if his foot just touched and no more the path which was not then a highroad but a winding path across the slopes, upon which the flowery fields encroached—when it first occurred to him hazily with a happy sense of amusement that he did not in the least know where he was going. No matter—he was going as if he very well knew where: and there came into his mind a scrap of lovely verse, about “a spirit in my feet,” and he began to sing it to himself as he went on. Certainly there was a spirit in his feet that knew better where he was going than he.

Thus he went, without pause or weariness, for a long way,—so long, that at last he began to wonder how it was that the daylight did not change, that there was no difference in the skies to correspond with the hours which he must have been walking. In himself he was like the day, unchanged, without the faintest suggestion of fatigue; and it was only by the long vista behind him, and the distance of the hills from which he had come, that he felt how long a time he had been afoot. When this thought occurred to him he sat down upon the low embankment which marked the line of the wood, for he had by this time reached the highway—to rest, as he said to himself, though he felt no need of rest—really to measure with his eyes the length of the valley before him, which went widening away into the blue recesses of distant hills, so that you could trace no end to it. The highroad led along the side of the river at this point, through groups of beautiful trees; and at some distance on the other side there was planted a great town spreading far back into the valley, which seemed, from the inequalities of its buildings, to be built on innumerable little hills, and shone white under the sunshine with many towers and spires, in great stateliness and beauty. It was here for the first time that the traveller saw any concourse of people. Upon the slopes he had met but few, mostly solitary individuals, with here and there a group of friends. They were a people of genial countenance, smiling, and with friendly looks; but it surprised and a little wounded him that they took no notice of him, did not give him so much as a Good morning—nay, even pushed him off the path, though without the least appearance of any unkindly feeling. As he sat upon the roadside and watched the people of this unknown land coming and going across the bridge from the town, his heart was moved within him by the sight of so many fellow-creatures, all, as it seemed, so gay, so kind, so friendly, but without a sign or look as if they recognised his existence at all. It seemed to him a long time since he had exchanged a word with any one, and a great sense of loneliness took possession of him. He had not felt this upon the little-frequented paths from which he had come; but here, among so many, to receive not even a look from any passer-by seemed to him an injury and a disappointment which it was hard to bear.

He reflected, however, that in the country from which he came such a thing might easily have happened with a wandering foreigner resting upon the roadside, whom nobody knew: yet he was scarcely comforted by this thought, for he felt sure that at least such a stranger would have been looked at, if no more—would have met the questioning of many eyes, some with perhaps a smile in them, and all curious to know what he did there. Even curiosity would have been something: it would have been kinder than to ignore him completely as these people were doing: yet there was nothing in their look to make him believe that they were unfeeling or discourteous. After a while he felt that he could bear this estrangement from his kind no longer, and getting up on his feet, he said “Good morning” to a group that were passing, feeling in himself that there was a wistfulness, almost an entreaty in his tone. He saw that they were startled by his address, and looked round first, as if to see where his voice came from—yet in a moment answered, with what seemed almost an outcry of response and greeting, saying “Good morning,” and “God bless you!” eagerly. Then one made himself the spokesman of a group, and advanced a step towards him, yet still with an uncertainty, and eyes that did not exactly meet his, but wavered as if unable to fix his face. “Are you going to our town?” he said; “can any of us be of use to you?” and there was a murmur among all as of assent, “any of us,” as if to press help upon him if he needed it: but he required no help—it was only recognition that he wanted, a kind word. “No,” he said; “I am going there” and he pointed towards the farther end of the valley. A number had gathered round him, all looking at him with great kindness, but with the same uncertainty of gaze, all eagerly bending toward him to hear what he said. Their looks warmed his heart, yet a little repelled him too, as if there was something between him and them which made it better to go on, and try no further communication. “I am going there” he repeated, moving a step onward: and immediately they all spoke together in a wonderful accord of voices, saying, “God be with you! God save you! God bless you!” some of them so much in earnest that there seemed to him to be tears in their eyes. There was something in these words which seemed to urge him on, and he resumed his journey, passing through, and looking back upon them, and waving his hand to them in sign of farewell. And they all stood looking after him, calling after him “God bless you!” and “God save you!” until the sense of distance from them melted away, and his whole being seemed warmed with their kind looks and good wishes. He could hear them, too, all talking together and saying, “It is one of the travellers,” to which the others answered again, “God save him!” as if it was the greeting of that country to all that went through.

Thus he went on again, always keeping his course towards the western end of the valley, and pleased with this encounter, even though there was that something in it which startled him, as he seemed to have startled them. Looking across the river at the city, with all its white terraces shining in the sun, and its high towers and pinnacles against the sky, and the river at its feet reflecting every point and shining height, as if it were another city at the feet of the true town, he thought he had never seen so beautiful a place; but what town it was or who the people were who dwelt there he knew not. All he knew was that they were his fellows, that they had bidden God bless him, that they wished him well: and this gave him great refreshment as he went on, feeling no fatigue, but now more than ever wondering that though he did not know where he was going, he was yet going on straight and swift as if he were sure of the way. For a little time the road ran by the river, but then parted from its winding course, and presently broke into several ways, where a stranger in that place might so easily have lost himself, not knowing which to take. But he found no difficulty, nor even paused to choose his way, going lightly on without any hesitation, as one who knew exactly how the bearings lay.

By this time the sun was lower in the heavens, and a sweet look of evening had come over the sky—the look which suggests home-going, and that labours of all kinds and travel should be drawing to some end of rest and ease. And since the pause he had made on his journey, short as it was, and his second setting forth, there had stolen into his mind a wonderful sense that he was going, not upon an excursion into an unknown world, but home. The sensation was one that he did not know how to explain to himself, for he knew that it was not the home from which he had come, nor any accustomed place. And he did not know where it was, nor what he might find there; but the impression grew upon him more and more strongly as he went on. And many thoughts came with this thought. He did not think of the home from which he had come. It appeared to him as something far, far away, and different from all that he saw or that surrounded him now. But the thought that he was going home, though not there, brought a seriousness into his thoughts which he had not been conscious of when he set forth first in the morning, in all the enthusiasm of the beautiful unknown place into which he marched forward so confident and full of cheer.

He became more serious now. Vaguely there came into his mind a recollection that his former goings home had not been always happy. There had been certain things in which he was to blame. He could not have said what things, nor how this was, his consciousness and memory being a little blurred, as if something had come between him and the former things which had moved his life; but yet he was vaguely aware that he had been to blame. And his mind filled with all manner of resolutions and thoughts of a goodness to come, which should be perfect as the face of nature, and the purity of the air and the sky. He said to himself that never again—never again! though his recollection failed him when he tried to make clear to himself what it was which should never again be. It was vague to him, leaving only a sense that all had not been as this was about to be; but yet the fervour of his conviction of the better things to come was as intense as if he had perfectly conceived what there was to be done, and what there had been. Never again, never again!—no more as of old: but all perfect and spotless in the new. These resolutions distilled into his mind like dew, they shed themselves through his being like some delightful balm, refreshing him as though his heart had grown dry, but now was filled with calm and a quiet happiness of hoping and anticipation, though he did not know what he anticipated any more than what it was which had made a shadow in the past

In this mood he began again to ascend a little upon a path which broke off from the highway towards one of the little towns or villages raised above the level of the valley, with towers and trees mingling on the little height, which made him think of an old Tuscan picture. He went towards it, with an eagerness rising within him and a confidence that it was here that his destination was. All the day long he knew that he had been travelling to this spot, and recognised it though he knew it not. He went on unhesitating, gradually making out the ranges of building, which were of beautiful architecture, though in a style unknown to him, with graceful pinnacles rising as light as foam against the sky, and open arcades and halls, cool and bright, where every door stood open, and he could see sheer above him as he mounted the winding way the groups of men and women in the houses, and many faces at the windows looking out, as if on the watch for some one who was coming. Were any of them looking out for him he wondered to himself? without any sense that it was unlikely there should be watchers looking for him in a place where he had never been before, in an unknown country which was strange to all his previous knowledge.

But no restraining consciousness like this was on him as he hastened up the steep way, and suddenly turning round the corner of the wall, which was wreathed with blossoming plants in a glow of colour and fragrance, came in sight of the wide and noble gateway all open, with its pillars glowing in the westering light, and no sign of bolt or bar or other hindrance to shut out any wayfarer. In front of it stood a group of figures, which seemed to be on the watch for some one. Did they expect some prince or lordly visitor? were they the warders of the gate? They stood two and two, beautiful in the first glow of youth, their fair, tall, elastic forms clothed in white, with the faint difference which at that lovely age is all that seems to exist between the maiden and the youth. They were like each other as brothers might be, and the traveller felt suddenly with a strange bound of his heart that he knew these faces, though not whom they belonged to, nor who they were. They were as the faces of others whom he had known in the land that was so far off behind him: and all at once he knew that they were looking for no prince or potentate but for himself, all strange as he was, unacquainted with this place, and with all that was here.

They stood looking far along the valley from that height, and asking each other, “Do you see him? do you see him?” but they did not seem to be aware that he was there, standing close to them, looking at them with eager eyes. He stood silent for a moment, thinking they must perceive him, yet wondering how they would know him, having never seen him before: but soon became impatient and troubled by that pause, and, vexed to be overlooked, said suddenly, “I am here—if perhaps you are looking for me.”

They were startled, and turned their faces towards him, but with that strange wistful look as if they saw him not which he had remarked in the people whom he met by the bridge—and then they came hastily forward and surrounded him as if with an angelic guard, and he saw with a strange tremor that tears had come into their eyes.

“Oh our brother!” said one, in a voice so full of pity that it seemed to him that he pitied himself, though he knew not why, in sympathy. And “Speak,” said the others, “Speak, that we may know you.” While, “Oh my brother,” cried the first again, “it is not thus we hoped to see you.” This voice seemed to pierce into his inmost heart, and sadness came over him as if his hope had fallen away from him, and this after all was not his home.

“This is who I am,” he said; and he told them his name, and that he had come from afar off, and had come straight here without a pause, thinking that this was his home.

They surrounded him closely, as closely as if they would embrace him, and said to him, but with tears, one speaking with another, “It is your home: and we are your brothers and your sisters, and we have known you were coming, but hoped that you would come otherwise. But we love you not the less, oh our brother, our brother! we love you none the less—God save you! God bless you! There is no one here that does not love you and bless you and pray for you. Dear brother, son of our mother! would to God you had but come to us in other wise.”

“I cannot tell what you mean,” he said, with a trembling coming over him. “If I am your brother, why do you not take me in? I have travelled far to-day, from the very opening of the valley, and never paused—always thinking that there was home at the end—and now you stand between me and the door, and weep, and will not let me in.”

“Brother,” they said all together, “brother!” It seemed as if in that word lay all sweetness and consolation and pity and love. The circle seemed to open round him, leaving the great wide doorway full of the low sunshine from the west clear before him, and some one came out and stood upon the threshold and stretched out his hands, calling to him, “My son, my son!”

It seemed to the young man that it wanted but a few steps to carry him to the arms of this man who called to him, and to whom his heart went out as if it would burst from his breast. But he that had walked so lightly all day long and felt no weariness, found himself now as one paralysed, incapable of another step. He stood and gazed piteously at the wide open gate, and him who stood there, and knew that this was the place to which he had been travelling, and the home he desired, and the father that he loved. But he could not make another step. His feet seemed rooted to the ground. There came from him a great outburst of tears and anguish, and he cried to them, “Tell me, tell me!—why is it I cannot go?”

The white figures gathered all round him again, as if they would have taken him in their arms, and the first of them spoke, weeping, putting out her hands: “Brother,” she said, “those that come here, those that come home, must first be clothed with the building of God, the house not made with hands; those who are unclothed, as you are, alas! they cannot come in. Brother, we have no power, and you have no power. The doors are open, and the hearts are open, and would to God you could come in; but oh, my brother! what can I say? It is not for us to speak; you know—”

“I know,” he said, and stood still among them silent, his heart hushed in his bosom, his head bowed down with trouble, hearing them weeping round him, and well aware that he could not go up, not had he the strength of a giant. He stood awhile, and then he said, “My home was never closed to me before; never have I failed of entrance there and welcome, and my mother’s light always burning to guide me. She would have torn me from these stones, and brought me in had she been here. Never, never, was there a question! And yet,” he cried wildly, “you called that earth, and this you call heaven!” This he cried, not knowing what he said: for never before had there been any thought in his mind what the name of this country was.

Then his sister called him by his name, and the sound of his name half consoled him, and half made the contrast more bitter, reminding him of that place from whence he came, where his was the innermost seat and the best welcome, while here he was kept outside. “Do not be so sore discouraged,” she said, “for one day you will come and enter at the gate with joy, and nothing will be withheld from you; and we will go to the Great Father and plead with Him, that it may be soon, and then your spirit will be no longer unclothed, and all will be well.”

“Unclothed!” he cried; “I know not what you mean,” and he turned from them, pushing them from him, and hurried down the winding way which he had ascended with so light a heart. There were still the faces at the windows looking out; but though he would not look at them, he saw that they were troubled, and many voices sounded out upon the sweet air, calling to him, “God save you! God bless you!” over and over again, till the whole world seemed full of the sound. But he took no heed of it as he fled along the way in indignation and bitter disappointment, saying to himself, “And that was called earth, and this they say is heaven.”

II

At the foot of the hill was a wood encircling its base, with many winding paths going through, and yet here and there masses of shadow from the trees, in which a man might hide himself from every eye, and even from the shining of the daylight, which seemed to the young man in all the glory of the sunset to mock him as he fled away from the place which was his home. It was the dimness and the shadow that attracted him now, and not the glory of the western sky or the dazzling of the light. In the very heart of the wood, kept by a circle of great trees standing all around like a bodyguard, there was a little opening—a grassy bank like velvet, all soft with mosses, with little woodland blossoms creeping over the soil, and all the woodland scents and fragrance and sound and silence, far from any sound or sight of men. The young man pushed through the copses and between the great boles of the trees, and flung himself upon the cool and soft and fragrant bank; he flung himself upon his face and hid it there, with a longing to be rid even of himself and his consciousness in that soft and sheltering shade; but all the while knowing, as he had often discovered before, that however you might cover your eyes, and even burrow in the earth, you could not escape from that most intimate companion, nor shut your ears to his reasonings or his upbraidings. Elsewhere, when one of those moments came, and himself confronted and seized himself, there had always been those at hand who helped him out of this encounter. The crowd, or the tumult and conflict of living, or pleasure, or pain, or some other creature, had stolen in and stopped that conflict. But now was the hour in which there was nothing to intervene.

And at first what was in his mind was nothing but bitter disappointment and rage and shame. He, whose coming back had always been with joy, even when it came with tears, before whom every door had been thrown open, and whom all about him had thanked with wistful looks for coming home: but now he was shut out. This was too great an event, too unlooked for, to permit any other thought beside it. He remembered himself of all the dear stories of his youth, of him whom his father saw afar off and rushed to meet him, not waiting for the confession that was on his lips. And that was how hitherto it had happened to him: and here, where he now was, was not this the most mercifullest place of all, where everything was love and forgiveness? He said this to himself, not realising what place it was, not knowing anything, though he had seized upon the name of heaven in his first horror of wonder and upbraiding, to point the bewailing and reproach. For a long time he lay with his hot brow pressed against those soft couches of moss, closing out with his hands the light from his eyes, in a despair and anguish unspeakable—asking himself why he had come here at all, to be rejected and shut out? Why, why had he not taken another path he wot of, and plunged, and gone—Where? where? He caught his sobbing breath, that burst from his bosom like a child’s, in heavings and sore reiterations of distress. Where? where? There would have been welcome in that place; and bands of jovial companions, and noise, and shoutings. Where? he did not know where.

But at last this convulsion and passion softened away, and he raised his head and looked himself in the face. Ah, was not this what I said, I said! Was not this what we thought upon many a morning, to forget it ere the night? Was not this what we knew, you and I? but you would not listen or hear. When we saw the mother’s light in the window, when the door was thrown open, wide open, did not we know that the time would come? This was what his other self said in his ear. He leaned his head upon his hands and looked out in the sweetness of the darkening shade, with fixed eyes that saw nothing except the past, which gripped his heart and stayed his breath and came back upon him in dreadful waves of recollection and consciousness. He saw scenes which he had scorned when he was in them, and loathed, and gone back to, and wallowed, foaming—always with rage and shame of himself. And they had cost him already his other life, and pangs innumerable; the price which he had paid for nought, hard blood-money for that which was no bread—which he had known to be no bread even while he consumed it—the husks which the swine did eat. That was how the other man had named it, the man whom his father ran to meet and fell on his neck—but not here. There had been to himself also those who fell upon his neck and forgave him before he said a word—but not here.

This was not how he had felt when he set out this morning upon the beautiful way in the sunshine. He had been sure then that all was well: every evil thought had departed out of his mind; his heart was tender and soft, loving God and man, and the thought of a life in which there should be no reproach, no shadow, no evil, had been sweet to him as is the exquisite relief that comes after pain. He remembered how he had sung songs as he walked, in the ease of his heart. And now! Shut out, a homeless wanderer, unclothed: what was that she said? unclothed: he did not know what she meant; but the rest which he did know was enough—enough and more than enough: he was abandoned, forsaken, the door shut upon him—worse than that, open, but he unable to enter: left to himself to spend the night in the wood—or anywhere, who cared?—though he himself was blameless now, having done nothing to deserve this doom, having felt his heart so soft and a tenderness which was more than innocence, a longing for every good in his heart. Oh the other life which he had left! the homely house, the quiet room, the face all smiling weeping, at the door!

“And that they called earth; and this they say is heaven.”

He said this aloud, unawares—and suddenly he was answered by another voice, which seemed to be near him, the voice of another man standing somewhere close by, which said, “No, you are mistaken; this is not heaven.”

The young man raised his head and looked round him; and the hair rose up upon his head, and a thrill of shrinking and terror went over him, for he saw no one. He looked round him, drawing back against the tree which crowned the bank, and clutching at it in his alarm: he was no coward, but where is the man who can be suddenly accosted by a voice while seeing no one, and not be afraid? “I must have dreamed I heard it,” he said to himself: but rose up with an impulse of agitation to leave the place in which such delusions could be.

Then he heard the voice again, but this time lower down, and now close to him, as if a man had suddenly sat down beside him upon the bank. “Are you so new?” it said, with a half laugh. “Have you not discovered that you too are invisible, like me?”

“Invisible!” The young man’s voice shook with fear and wonder, wavering as if blown out by the wind, though there was no wind.

“Be consoled,” said the other; “it is no bad life: there is no fire nor brimstone here: and there is hope for those who love hope. Let us talk: it wiles the hours away.”

While the other spoke, the young man, with a trembling in every limb, held up his hands into the air, and gazed with his eyes, first at one and then at the other—at the places where he felt them, where they ought to be. He felt every nerve thrill and every finger tremble and shake, but he saw nothing. Awe and terror seized upon him. He rushed from the bank, which sloped under his feet and made him look to his footing, and flung himself against the trunk of one of the great trees. He felt the touch of it, the roughness of the bark, the projection of the twigs here and there: but at the same time he saw it clear, standing with its feet deep in the fern and undergrowth, and no human body against it—this while he felt still the thrill and shock with which he came in contact with that great substantial thing. And he uttered a great cry, “I am then no more a man!” in a voice which rang shrill with horror and misery and dismay.

“Yes,” said the other, “you are still a man. And be consoled. In some things it is better than the old life. You have no wants and no weariness, likewise no work, no responsibility. Be consoled. The discovery is painful for a moment, but you will find companions enough. What has happened to you is no more than has happened to many other men: and we have great freedom, and society at our pleasure. There is a future before us, though it may be thousands of years away.”

“A future!” cried the young man; “nay, let me die and be done with it. What manner of man are you that can look calmly on a future like this? My God, to live and live and be nothing, as I am now!”

“I am,” said the other, “just such a manner of man as you will be to-morrow. It is a shock when you discover it first—but what then? Life is but thought. There is a great prejudice in favour of a visible body, at all events in the race from which we come. But you will perceive how little in reality it matters when you realise how many things you can do and enjoy, even with that deprivation. You might never have found it out, or not for a long time, but for my friendly aid—for it is friendly, I assure you. It breaks the illusion. You will no longer expect from those others that which they have not to give. Sit down by me, and cease measuring yourself against that tree. The tree is solid, but not you—yet there are many consolations. Sit down again, and let us talk.”

The young man stood pressing himself against the tree, his forehead against the roughness of the bark which dinted the soft flesh, his arms stretched round it, not long enough to span its girth, but pricked by the little growths which incrusted it. He clung to the great trunk as if it gave him a hold upon something tangible, the only thing that remained to him. They had not seen him, then, these fair creatures, at the gate. That which they heard, that which they addressed, was only a voice. Nobody had seen him along the way. Those who said “God save you” had meant something which he did not yet understand. There was reason for the pity in their eyes and the tears which he had seen them shed. He had seen them, but not they him. He was no man, but only a voice. The horror grew into an awe which quenched the cries with which his heart was bursting. He without a faculty impaired, hearing everything, seeing everything, feeling with such intensity as he had never felt before! Yet he was now no man, but a voice. The calamity was so great and so unlooked for, that his very voice, the thing he now was, seemed to die in his throat, and his heart in his breast: though all the time he felt his heart beating, bounding, as never in moments of the greatest emotion it had done before, and the blood coursing like a great flood through the veins that were not, and from head to foot of that human frame which existed no longer. Oh terrible doom! oh awful day!

“Come and sit by me, and let us talk,” said the other voice.

And then there came a melting and a softening over this forlorn soul. If he was thus for ever banished from common sight—if he was, indeed, exiled from home and every tender fellowship, a thing that no man or woman could ever take by the hand again—still to hear another voice was something in this awful mystery of anguish. He loosed himself from his tree, but kissed its rough bark with a kind of passion as he drew himself away. His finger had caught a sharp twig, and it hurt him; his brow was marked, he could feel it, with the scales of the bark. This gave him a little comfort in his desolation. And then there was still the Voice. He came back and threw himself upon the flowery bank, which sent forth its wild fragrance suddenly as he pressed it, as it might have done if— This also gave him a little consolation, as if it were a verification of the being which he felt in every pulse and every limb.

“You were saying,” said the other, “that this was called heaven.”

“Ah, no!” said the young man with a voice of despair. “I see my mistake. It is rather—”

“Do not make any more mistakes,” said the other, quickly. “It is neither one nor the other. It is the land of Suspense, where we all are until a day which no one knows—a visionary day which, perhaps, may never come, seeing it has been threatened and delayed for all the ages. Ah! you cannot imagine the worlds-full there are of us! and some of the great Romans tell you that the tradition was in their time as now.”

“The Day of Judgment!” said the young man, very low.

“Well! that is what they say. But in the meantime, not to discourage you, it is better here than life was before. There are few pleasures—those things that one despised one’s self for enjoying, when time was. But the mind is free—and there are a thousand things to learn. And there is society everywhere. We are here in multitudes. There are almost more of us, I believe, than of—those others.”

“Those others!” repeated the young man—he looked up where through the thick foliage there was a glimpse of the towers and roof-trees of that home which he could not enter. His companion spoke as if they were enemies: but his own spirit rebelled against that thought.

“The good people,” said the voice, as with a sneer. “What made them to differ, do you ask? Oh, they made their preparations. While we led joyeuse vie and had no thought for to-morrow, they took their measures. I am not sure that those who have passed by the Temple in the wood have the best of it even now; but at least we have not much to complain of. There is no suffering: we are left to ourselves: we go where we will, and have great facilities: and, as I tell you, the best of company. Only make up your mind to the one loss, and we have really much to congratulate ourselves upon.”

The young man made no reply: he began to hate this voice, with its evenness of speech, the calm and the encouragement of its tone. He had known men who spoke so, who were content to live, though life had no hope, with a sneer at those who were other than they. And though a moment ago he had been almost glad to turn to another being deprived and naked like himself, he felt now that if he were but alone, it would be more easy to bear. The Voice went on talking to him with the pleasure of one who has found a new hearer. And sometimes he listened, and sometimes heard it as though he heard it not. Sometimes even it caught him with an ingenious word and made him laugh; but then his mind would stiffen into silence, and the horror and gloom swept over him again like the dark waves over a wreck at sea.

III

All the night long he sat there leaning his head upon his hands, sometimes leaning against the great trunk of the tree behind him, which gave him a sensation of forlorn comfort, the only thing that recognised him as still tangible, a thing of flesh and blood. He sat there amid all the fragrant breathing of the night as in the lap of a mother who cooled his forehead with dewy touches, and subdued his soul into the calm of inanimate things. And yet there was nothing inanimate in this great realm of nature where the air was fresh and free, like the air upon a mountain-top where there is no wind but only a sense of being far above all hindrance or soil, and near to heaven. The sky above was alive with stars, stars that were something more than stars, that had rounded and expanded into orbs of light and seemed almost within reach, as if there might be means of entering them and knowing their secrets. The light that came from them was enough to make everything visible in a tender and soft radiance where every variety of shade had its own transparency and sweetness of lovely meaning—such a light as never was on sea or shore. Through the openings of the trees he could see far off the whole course of the valley clear in that mystic glow which was without colour, where all was clear as in a vision, unlike the brightness of the day. The towers and pinnacles rose up on his right hand over the trees as if made of silver: the little floating vapours in the sky, the great pulsing and movement of the worlds of light above, the air which was as a rapture of purity and freedom,—all conveyed to the young man’s bosom the sensation of boundless space, and a lofty height beyond the thoughts of men. And there was a subdued glow along the edge of the horizon, as if there it passed into pure light as the stars did round their boundaries, hiding the life within.

Sometimes this young man had felt even upon the homely earth something of that movement that is in the spheres, the swaying of the great planet as it ran its course in the heavens; but here it seemed like a faint stir of life in everything, a subtle and all-pervading current, a movement majestic, almost visible, in rhythm and measure, like God Himself proceeding onward always in His supernal way. After a time, when the beating of the river of life in his own ears, the throbbing of his heart and current of his blood, were calmed by this greater movement and mystery, he gazed abroad upon the majestic night with a hush of reverence and of awe in which there was adoration. He was silent while God passed by, and felt the sweep of the great stars following in His train, and the air upon his face, the breath of their going, and the thrill of that vast procession through illimitable skies. He, a spirit, though not blessed, yet as a spirit recognised the great course of innumerable worlds and circles of being, following the mighty footsteps of their King.

Thus one moment of amazed and trembling revelation gave him rest in the glory of the night, and stilled the lesser voices and murmurs that filled his ears: but as a man is after all the centre of all systems to himself, the tide of thought and feeling rolled back, and with it the despair which the knowledge of his own condition had brought upon him. When his eyes came back to his immediate surroundings, the sudden sight of the green mound on which he sat, with all its undergrowth of moss and starry decoration of minute flowers, vacant under the faint light, as if there was no one there, drove his soul almost to madness in the sudden rediscovery. He felt the soft knots of the grass and cushion of the moss under him, yet when he looked there was nothing there. He grasped it with his hands and found it empty, though the moss seemed to yield and the blades of grass to bend under his weight. It was like madness rising up into his brain, and he felt with a mingling of ideas distraught that he must spring to his feet and rush forth after God upon His awful way, crying to Him, entreating, blaspheming, forcing His attention, though it was through that incomprehensible whirl of space, and threading the unseen path from star to star.

But that wild impulse, like others, died away. A man, be he ever so rebellious, learns to know that the impossible hedges all his steps: and he sank back upon his tree, suppressing himself, binding himself into the submission which he knew at the bottom of his heart was his only hope. He felt no fatigue, notwithstanding his long journey and the dreadful disappointment at the end. None of those imperious needs of the flesh which fill up so much of the time and distract so many of the thoughts of earth, moved him at all. He was free from everything, weariness and pain, and food and sleep and shelter. No thought of these things filled his mind. He did not even remark his exemption, so natural it seemed. He knew only the impossibility that girded him round and round. He could not change the condition he had come to. No one could change it. Such as it was he had to endure it, to find the reason for it, to discover the compensation. To go mad, and dash his head against the confines of the world, and force a reversal from God of his sentence was impossible. Ah! he fell low again, with his face hidden in the softly rustling grass. The impossible girt him round with its circle of iron. Rebel, submit, content himself, go mad—these were all things that could be done. But reverse God’s sentence, no! not if he had the strength of giants, not if he had the power of the whole world, upon a little sod of whose surface his wounded spirit lay.

Presently he had controlled himself, and was sitting again with his back against his tree and his head leaning on his hands, gazing out upon the night, yet seeing nothing. And as he sat there, all his life rolled out before him like a long panorama—his little life with all its broken scenes, of which he had never known the meaning. Often he had thought they had no meaning, as certainly they had no intention, no plan, but only a foolish impulse, a touch from some one here and there, who had pushed him unthinking to one side or another—not the straight way. What a succession of accidents it was to end in this! no purpose in it—no meaning: all a foolish rush here or there haphazard, the affair of a moment, although fate had taken up the changeful threads and woven it into certainty for ever. He saw himself a boy, hesitating with one foot on the upper slope, drawn back by errant fancy, by curiosity, by accident—always by accident!—then, finding the lower road the easier, the higher hard to begin, putting off till to-morrow and to-morrow—but no meaning in it, oh, no purpose, no settled plan of rebellion, no intention to offend. He went over this again and again, till he felt himself a deeply injured man. Never had he meant any harm: he had even tried not to hurt any one else while he took his own pleasure, and he remembered the words that had been in the air following him wherever he went—nobody’s enemy but his own. That was true, that was true! He had not tempted any one, nor ever defied God, whom he never doubted, for whose name, had there been need for that, he felt that he could have died rather than have been apostate to it. The tears came into his eyes with this thought. He had been wrong, very wrong: he had always known that, and hated it—yet done the same again: but never with any blasphemous meaning, never defying God, always knowing that the other way was the best, and hoping one day when his hour of pleasure was over—And what had he not paid already for his folly!—of all that he might have done in the other life, he had done nothing; of all that he might have attained, nothing. He had wrought no deliverance in the earth. It was all loss, loss, miserable failure: and hearts breaking, his own as well as the rest. But no purpose in it. He had never intended any day of his disobedience, from first to last, to deny his Maker or insult Him. Never, never! It was the one thing he was certain of amid all the doubts and changes, all the confusions in his life.

And, perhaps, this was how it happened, that when he had set out on his journey that morning—was it still the same morning, not twenty-four hours off, the morning of yesterday?—his heart had been so light. He had anticipated nothing but good. He had made sure that all the links of his old habits would be broken, that he would be lifted without effort of his to a better sphere. He had not said this to himself in words, nor, indeed, was he clear in his mind that he expected anything definite, or what it was he; expected—but only something good, happiness that would bring back all that he had missed in the time that was past. Of one thing he had been very sure, that he would not err again: he had thought of the ways of men, so vain and melancholy, with a great relief in being done with them. And too glad and thankful he would have been to be done with them! to take his place in the home where he believed he was going, and his share of all the duty there, whatever it might be. But now—no home, no duty, no life for him. He was nothing—no man, a Voice, and no more.

How many times, in what an infinity of time and leisure, did he go over these thoughts? The night stole on, all glorious in quiet and repose—some of the wondrous lights above gliding out of sight as the world in which he was ascended and descended, going down into the night, and then with a half-sensible turn and thrill turning round to the day—and some came up into sight in the great round of the firmament that had been unseen before. Then a thrill ran through the wood, and voices began to awaken in the trees—little tongues of birds twittering, wakest thou, sleepest thou?—among the branches, before all their little world was roused and the great hymn began. The young man had not been prepared for that hymn, and it took him strangely in a surprise and passion of sympathy: he said to himself that he had not known there were birds here, and the moisture came to his eyes. Then he tried to join with a note of his man’s voice and startled them all, till he saw his mistake and tried instead a low and soft whistle, which they took for the note of a new comrade and burst forth again. The young man felt his spirit all subdued by that morning hymn, and tried to say his prayers in a great confusion, stammering, not knowing what words to use. The old prayers seemed so out of place. And then he remembered what all the people had said to him—God save you!—and repeated it with a faltering and a trembling—God save me! God save me! Not “give me this day my daily bread.” Was that old-fashioned? out of date? He trembled, and all his strength seemed to melt like water, and he said only, God save me! God save me! not knowing what he said.

All these strange emotions filled the time and the world about him, yet was his mind free to note the growth of the morning, coming fresh as it seemed out of the hand of God: the great valley came slowly to life and to the light, and the silence filled with sound as water wells up in a fountain. As for himself, he did not stir, but watched, not now despairing, nor even questioning, but still: a spectator wondering and looking on, hushed to the bottom of his heart, to Bee what all things did, having for himself no duty, no work; and feeling, so far as he felt at all, a nothingness, as if he were part of the mound on which he lay, where he fancied vaguely the grasses had begun already to grow over him. What would they do, they who were other than he, they to whom everything belonged, though to him nothing belonged? He watched what they would do, what the morning would bring to them, with much eagerness in his heart; but the thickness of the trees and the brushwood, which was very close in that direction, shut out his view. And perhaps his curiosity was not so great as he thought, for his mind filled with many thoughts which revolved about himself, and presently he forgot all that was around him, and became, still a spectator indeed, but a spectator of his own being, and of those things which were going on in it. And it seemed now that the thing most natural to him, who now possessed nothing of his own, was to go back upon the time when he possessed so much, love and companionship, and hope and the power of doing, and pleasure of every kind. His heart had grown sick of that life before he left it, and he had often felt it empty of everything, and that all was vanity. But now his heart returned to it, longing and wondering how he should ever have been so weary. Then he had been a man, but now was nothing, a Voice only, no more. And when he remembered how, in the smallest thing as in the greatest, he had chosen and taken his own way, and had pleasure in his will and independence, and had done this and that because he pleased, with no other reason for it, and that now there was nothing for him to choose, nothing to do—himself nothing, and all his ways nothing, a straw blown upon the wind! In the other life there had been threatenings of punishment and torture, but never of this—and he thought to himself, though with a shiver, that the fire and the burning would have been more easy to bear, and perhaps a fierce encounter with the devils who tormented lost souls—a rising up against them, and call for justice out of the pit. To fight, to struggle, to resist, these fierce joys seemed to attract him, to revive his heart. But here there was nothing—neither good nor evil, neither use nor destruction. The Power which he had offended despised him, would not lay a finger on him, left him to rot and perish. No! worse by far than that, to go on in nothingness for ever and ever, to be and not to be, at one and the same time—

As these thoughts began to quicken and whirl through his brain—for though he began in quiet they gradually gained velocity and strength, till the rush was like the blazing of fire or the sweep of water in a flood, consuming and carrying him away—he became aware of an external sound which drove them away at once like a flight of birds careering out of sight. And looking up whence the sound came, he saw a movement as of some one searching amid the brushwood, and presently the thick branches were pushed aside and a face suddenly appeared, looking in to the opening in which the young man sat It was a face which awakened in him at first a great throb of loving and kindness, being a countenance he had longed for for many a day, thinking that had it shone upon him on earth it might have saved him from all his follies: but along with this there came a rush of resentment into his mind which checked the cry of “Father!” which had come to his lips. And he sat unmoving, allowing those eyes to search through the shade, though he knew that till he spoke he could never be found. It gave him a kind of angry pleasure to see the curves of anxiety round them, the eagerness of the look. Ah, he was sorry! but what was that when he had shut his door, when he had made no effort to bring the wanderer in. “My mother,” said the young man, “would have been different: never would she have rested and left me outside;” but then there struck him like an arrow the thought of many moments in the past when he had said to himself, “If my father had been here!”

The other figure stood wistfully under the shadow of the tree—a man not old, full of the dignity and strength of life—like one who knew much and had seen much, and whose hands were full of serious affairs. You might have been sure that he had left for a moment many things that called for his care to come here on this quest. His eyes were clear, shining with truth and justice and honour. Such eyes shine like stars even in the earth, and the eyes of the helpless understand and the poor cry to them. Nothing could disturb the heavenly quiet in them, the look of a soul at peace; but the curves of the eyelids were troubled, and the strain of anxious love was in his face. After a moment he said, the softness of his voice seeming to search through the silence as his eyes searched through the void, “My son! are you here, my son!”

The young man still paused a little, unwilling to relieve the other, yet not willing to lose the pleasure of revealing like a reproach his own abandoned state. “I am here,” at last he said.

The father pushed through the trees and came to him quickly, and once more there came into the young man’s mind the story of him who saw his son a long way off, and ran and fell upon his neck. Had he himself been as of old, this was what his father would have done—but how can a man embrace a voice? Yet the movement melted him, and made him rise to his feet to meet the other, though still with that unreasoning resentment in his mind, as though the door had been shut upon him, which was not shut, though he was unable to cross the threshold. There was authority and command, as of one used to rule, in the face of this man who was his father: but everything else was veiled with the great pity and love that was in his voice. “It was not thus we hoped to welcome you, my son, my son!” he cried, coming near, with his arms stretched out.

“How is it,” cried the young man, “that I feel all my members from head to foot, and every faculty, and yet you see me not, touch me not? It makes a man mad to be, and yet not to be.”

“God save you!” said the father, with tears. “God aid you! We know not how it is—nor can we do anything to help. It is for your purification, and because that which is must have its natural accomplishment. The sins of the flesh destroy the flesh, as is just. But you, you are still able to love, to think, to adore your God in His works. My son, accept and submit—and the better day will come.”

“Submit! to be nothing!” said the young man. And then he cried bitterly, “Have I any choice? It is stronger than I am. I must submit, since you will not help, nor any one. If my mother—” and here his voice broke. It was not that his mind felt all the bitterness with which he a poke: and he knew that no one could help him: yet having in him still all the humanness of a child, it gave him pleasure to wound one who might have helped him had things been otherwise, and to prove that he was abandoned and forsaken, he who hitherto had always been helped and forgiven. He looked for reproof, but none came. His father, standing so near him, looking at him with such tender pity, said nothing but “My son!” and as these two words, whether from the Most High God or from the faltering lips of a man, enclose all of love that words can carry, what was there more that could be said?

“My son,” he said, “it is not permitted here that we should discuss or that we should justify the ways of our God. Though you cry out against them, you know that they are just and very merciful, punishing not, but permitting that this which must be, should be accomplished in you. Yet not without hope. All that is of the spirit is yours as before. You can judge, you can understand, you can know. And above all you can love. What is greater than the mind and the heart? You are but naked of this frame, this body which is beloved and blessed because it is as the body of the Lord. But even for this not without hope. My child, the day will come when you will not think only of yourself. You will begin to think of Him who for us lived and died and lived again, and is for ever and ever. You will not consent to wipe out His name, but stand for Him among your fellows. And other things that are not you will fill your heart—”

“That are not me!—but who is so miserable as I?” cried the young man, covering his face with his hands.

The father paused for pity, looking at him with eyes that were full of tears. “It has not been given to you, oh my son,” he said, “to pass by the Temple in the wood: yet still it may be. Heretofore you have done what you would, but not here: for here the will of God reigns alone, and man can contradict it no more. Yet from time to time,” he said, “from time to time there is in this great Land of Suspense, as in all the worlds where the myriads of our brethren dwell, a day of grace, when the Lord Himself passes through. As he goes to visit the spheres of His dominions there is no place where He does not pass through, and hears every cry and heals every soul that comes to Him. Beloved be His name! Blessing and love breathe round about Him, and no one whom it touches can withstand that holy breath.”

The young man looked up, and for a moment it seemed that the eyes of the heavenly man and of the spirit met, and that he who was in the body, that house of God not made with hands, saw him who was out of the body: for the eyes of the son were full of tears like those of the father, and he said with a broken voice, “So I have always been taught to think of Him. I am no stranger, my father, my father! I have sinned but yet I am of His house.”

“God bless thee, my son,” the father said.

IV

After this there came weary mornings and evenings, or what he felt to be such, taking no account of them, yet rousing ever from his thoughts to feel the glory of the day and the sweetness of the night; for neither tempest nor trouble was there, and the other great worlds that are visible in the dark, rolling along their course in the world of space, became as the houses of friends opening their doors, showing ever another and another world of men, some like those others—white men and shining, some in hosts of vague faces like the shadow of crowds which he knew to be as himself: and the sensation of all those multitudes about who peopled what we call the sky, multitudes more than could be numbered, being all those who had lived and died on the earth since its wonderful story began, silenced and soothed him as we are soothed to know that others are as we are, treading the same path. Many things were there which he could not understand. Sometimes it appeared to him that he could see the signs of great commotion in one of those neighbouring worlds, and shouting afar off, which came but as a murmur to his ears; and once it seemed to him that he saw a great procession coming forth, as if the King were making a visitation from one star to another, and a great shining bridge of light was thrown from planet to planet, by which He went and came.

It was a long time, however, before he saw that passing through of which his father had told him. Yet one day, in the rising of the morning, a note as of a silver bugle suddenly penetrated the spheres, and everything stirred with expectation, the very air and the birds in the trees, and everything that had life. He himself, drawn he could not tell how, almost against his will, by something that overmastered him, that made his breath come quick and his heart beat, hastened to the hill behind the wood, and placed himself on the highest point, where he could see all that went on below. Fain would his feet have gone farther, fain would they have carried him to the level of the valley which he could see stretching far to the east and to the west: for already he saw the first of the great procession appearing, and all the inhabitants of the town which should have been his home pouring forth in bands, in glistening garments, with flowers and palms to strew upon the path of Him that was coming. The young man knew who it was that was coming, and his heart seemed to go forth out of his breast towards that great Traveller; but there was something in him that held back, and that made him cover his face in an anguish of shame. For who was he that he should dare to look upon the Lord as He passed, blessing all men upon His way! Something came floating up to him upon the air like a waft of blessing: was it a call to him—the sound of his name? He knew not, but dug his hands into the roots of the grass, and dared not to lift up his eyes. And in the meantime the great procession went on, while his heart, as it were, contended with him and cried, moaning and foaming and struggling, that he should go, while still he kept back ashamed, asking himself how he dared to look the Lord in the face, or hear Him blessing the people, and find there was no word for him? There he lay, feeling every member of his frame contend with him to get to the feet of the Lord, yet he holding back: until all the wonderful marching of the train had passed along and become but an indistinct radiance upon the way, when he lifted his eyes and looked after them, and broke into a great weeping, thinking that still he saw One in the midst like none whom he had ever seen before, One to whom his heart went out, and whom he would have given heaven and earth to follow. But the moment was over, and he could now follow no more.

This happened but once, and it may not be supposed that he spent all the endless time he had at his disposal in so agitating a way. By moments these thoughts came upon him and possessed him: yet seldom, for he was seldom alone, his fellow-inhabitants, both of one side and the other, coming to him continually and occupying him with other plans and ideas. Many visitors he had from the town upon the hill, the dwelling of his kindred: but time fails us to tell of these, and all the tender words they said, and their pity and their love. Sometimes he would speak with them—sometimes, if other things were in his mind, would make no response nor let them know where to find him, preferring the society of those who were as himself, and were with him always, sometimes one, sometimes many, talking and making expeditions here and there. They led him to many wonderful places, and showed him great sights, and many mysteries of the spheres became visible to him, and knowledge not permitted to earth, so that he could now solve many questions and find them simple, which, in the days of his former life, he could remember to have thought upon with awe as things that it was impossible to fathom. Thus he became wise, and more learned than the sages of the former world, and found a certain pleasure in these things which he learned and saw.

And it soon became apparent to him that many of his new companions held the belief that it was they who were the fortunate ones, being disencumbered of all hindrances and cares, with no duty or responsibility, but free to follow their pleasure, to go where they pleased, to enjoy knowledge and science and all the pleasures of the mind. There were some indeed who were like himself, and would not be comforted because of being no longer men but only voices, without identity, without substance, and incapable of uniting themselves to each other save with the loosest ties. They were not brethren for joy and for sorrow, for neither was there: they could not stand by each other, or pledge themselves to be true friends for death and life, for of that there was no need. They were but acquaintances, each lost in the invisible when they parted, walking and talking together as long as each pleased the other, with no fellowship of mutual labour, or the sharing of work trouble. Wherever one voice accosted another there was acquaintance, but nothing that went further; for they had no mutual hopes or fears or anything to link them more closely together.

And many of those who had been long in this condition had made a belief for themselves, and tried to teach it to the new-comers, that this was the perfect life; for was not all freedom among them, no bondage, not even that of staying in one place, or confining yourself to one kind of associates, no pain, no limitations, but each free to learn all he could, to perfect his genius, to increase his knowledge? Was not this enough for any soul? And some of them scoffed at the idea of any reckoning yet to come, pointing oat the unreasonableness of it, the impossibility of even recollecting, far less answering for, the events which had happened perhaps hundreds of years before, during the short time when one inhabited that foolish body, by some thought a disgusting thing, “a collection of sewers.” And if there was no great day to come, which the very oldest spirits said had been threatened thousands of years since in their recollection and had never come to anything, what came of the equally old and foolish traditions of a divine personage ruling over all? As for the men who lived in all those villages and towns, who thought they were better than their neighbours, whom with their restricted faculties they could not see, what were they but labourers still, with work and responsibilities upon them,—how much less happy than they who went free!

There were many, however, who were very uneasy when such conversation as this prevailed, and of these was the young man, whose thoughts were very fluctuating in respect to himself, but never on this point. “If you had seen, as I did,” he would say, “the procession pass; and felt the heart tear out of you to go and fling itself at His feet.” The elders laughed at such words, and bade him wait till he had seen it a hundred times, and without any feeling at all: but the others made a pause which betrayed some uneasy thoughts, and secretly were glad that they could not see each other’s faces or betray the strange response in their own minds to what he said. One voice, a little tremulous, spoke, and said that these things which he called body and heart were an illusion, a distorted recollection of the chrysalis state in which their consciousness began; and another, that the body which had been mentioned was like a dog, and faithful, in its brutal way, to what it had been taught. They were all together, that company of wandering souls, in a great tower which stood upon the extreme edge of the world in which they dwelt, and which was built upon the rock, standing out into the illimitable world of space as into the sea, with precipices immeasurable sinking down below, lower than thought could reach, while the great tower rose higher than thought, swung upon that giddy edge, and, though built of indestructible rock, quivering in the great sweep of the atmosphere more tremendous than on the highest mountain-top. There were all the secrets of the celestial world revealed, and all the movements of the stars, and the workings of the planetary system, and all the wonderful apparatus by which they were observed and noted. And many men of the other kind were in that place, were at work and busy, whose duty it was to watch over the balance and the trim of all these blazing worlds, and to see that each kept in its orbit, and all its attendant stars in their places, that there might be no wavering in the march of the heavens.

The wanderers went and came, through all these wonderful sights, and no one noted their coming and their going: for all the others were busy with their work and occupation, never slackening in their watch. And the young man, and some of his younger companions with him, looked upon them with envy, longing, but in vain, for some part or lot in the matter, and not to be thus unseen and without use in the great universe which seemed to go on without them though enclosing them in its great and mystic round. And as they gazed out from that watch-tower one of the others pointed to a little darkling planet hanging upon the skirts of space, half seen amid the glory of the greater stars. “That speck,” he said, “is what we called the Earth, and bragged of as something great and wonderful in oar time. Look at it, contemptible! dim with smokes and fogs, and the breath of toiling men.”

“Yet it was our mother,” said the young man, “and there we lived, and there we died.”

“If you call that, the throes of the birth-hour, living: and the journey hither dying—trifling incidents of our career.” It was the same voice which had first accosted him when he arrived in that world which now spoke, and there were many with him, the elder spirits: while with the young man were many of the new-comers, still sore and wounded to feel themselves dropped out of everything, and humbled to feel that they were but voices, and no longer men and women as of old. And they turned with the young man as he stretched out his arms, leaning on the parapet, unto the wide and whirling world of space.

“Oh little earth!” he said, “full of vapour and smoke and the thoughts of men, rising up to heaven. At least we were something then, not nothing: and dear Love was there, and all the hopes of God.”

“Why not now also—why not now?” said something, that was but a tremble and a quiver by his side. “Because,” said the elder spirit, “we need not these ancient visions. Free souls are we in the world of thought, despising all that is below, knowing nothing that is above. What do ye murmur at, ye crew? What would ye have, insatiate souls? The universe is ours to admire and to enjoy. We go where we will, we live as we will. You want these phalansteries, these houses on the hills! prisons and bondage. What need ye, beyond what we have?”

The young man leaned over, the great wind playing with him, as if it subdued its force not to carry away this light and petty scrap of being. And stretching out his hands, he said, “What we want—it is God and Love.”

This he said, not so much out of his own heart, as because there was something of that in him which poets have. And being so, he knew that it was true. And the spirits round him murmured and sobbed and repeated, “God and Love.” And the others were silent and said no word.

He went back afterwards to his living place in the wood, which he had come to love because it was near the home of those who were his; and a number of those wanderers went with him, talking of what he had said and of what was in their hearts. “We thought it was here we should have found Him,” they said; “we thought that to come hither was all that was wanted. Tell us, thou! has He failed? We were never His servants, jet we believed that He would save us at the end.”

“This is not the end—it is but the beginning,” the young man said.

“And will He save us, will He save us—at the end?” The voices all together were like a blast of weeping wind.

Then the young man turned upon them and cried, “What are we? what are we? Let us perish if He will, but He be all in all!”

This he said because of something that had come into him he knew not how: he felt it and obeyed its impulse, but knew not why. For still the first thing in his own heart, as in theirs, was to be saved—to be once more a man in His image, and no longer a wandering ghost unclothed. To be and to be seen of his fellows, and to speak with other men—even if it should bring pain and sorrow; for sorrow and pain are higher things than to be nothing, though at your ease and free as the wind.

He sat all that night through on his favourite mound, thinking and pondering within himself; and as he thought of all he had seen and the great Universe that had opened upon him at the height of that watch-tower, the wondrous circle of the stars, and all the mysteries of being which hung upon His breath who made them, he began to understand what he himself had said, and his eyes grew wet as when he had seen the Lord pass and his heart had fought with him to get free to fling itself in the Master’s path. He had held it back then, but not now. He looked up to the skies above him, and saw those glorious worlds for ever moving in that sublime circle around the unseen throne; and this world in which he was swaying softly turning toward the highest Light. And he said to himself what one had said thousands of years ago—a shepherd-boy under the starry heavens—“What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” And it seemed to him that he himself, about whom he had been spending so many thoughts, murmuring because of his losses, and convulsing all the quiet wood with longings after another state—he himself, who had been the centre of the world to him, was indeed nothing, no more than a drop of dew or a blade of grass in the great Universe of God. And he cried out, but softly, to the One that hears all things, “Be Thou! for ever and ever! and let me be nothing, for nothing I am. But Thou, be Thou supreme and all in all!”

V

In the glory of the morning the young man awoke, for even in the solemnity of his act, giving up everything, even hope if the Lord so willed, he had been surprised by that human sweetness of sleep which was not necessary to his state of being, yet delightful as the dew when it came, refreshing the soul. There was never anything but fair weather in that world, yet it seemed to him when he opened his eyes that no day had ever been so fair as this; and he asked himself, Was it perhaps Easter or some great holiday, of which he had lost count in the passing of the years and the days? Everything shone and glistened and sent forth breathings of delight under the shining of the sun, and the whole world was gay, and every drop of dew was like another perfect world of joy and blessing. He could not rest where he was on so happy a morning, but went forth and visited all the wood, as one visits one’s friends when there is a great rejoicing to see that they are rejoicing too.

At last he found himself upon that pleasant knoll from which he could see the whole valley lying in a rapture under the joyful light; and he saw that there was much movement in the town near him, and once more faces at all the windows, and white figures looking over the parapet of the ascent where he had gone up, but had not been admitted. They were looking then for some one, some one who would be of his kindred; and it would be an event for him as well as for them, and perhaps even he would gain something—a companion, a friend. But he stopped these thoughts while they were in his mind, and tried to think what it would be to him if the new-comer was received where he had not been received, and came as a man in the body which God gave—to be among the others, not banished into nothingness. For a long time he was in doubt, for no one came up the ascending path except those whom he knew, whose business it was, and he looked in vain for a stranger; and there began to rise in his heart a half hope half fear that he for whom they were all looking should come as he himself had done—invisible: a voice only, and no man. But lo! while he watched there came forth from the silver line of the great highway a single figure, of one who sang as he came—not in haste, but almost slowly, standing still and looking round him from time to time, as if the beauty of the world was so sweet to him that he could not go on, then turning his face towards the town and proceeding upon his way. The young man put out his hands, and suddenly clasped them together, and gazed in a suspense upon which his whole being seemed to hang. It was he, it was he! He had known the outline against the light while it was still but a shadow; he had recognised every footstep, and the turn of the head, and every line and every movement. Oh, how easy to know those who are one’s own, however far off!—the familiar gesture, the little movement that is nothing, that a stranger would never see. He sprang up to rush down the hill and meet him, calling his name, and reflecting that even those at the gate, though they were there to welcome him, could not know him as he did. But his feet were as rooted to the soil, and he sank down again with a sob in his bosom, and a strong pang that seemed to rend him in twain. Not for him, not for him, was this delight, to meet his brother and fall upon his neck, and ask a thousand things of home! To look on was all that was permitted to him. Why should he go, who was nothing, who could not take his hand, or show his face where those were who were the people of the Lord? He sank down upon his knoll, and covered his face with his hands, and heard the tumult of glad voices, and the welcomes and shouts of joy with which the wayfarer was taken in. He listened to every word, while the voices streamed up the steep ascent and the stranger was brought with rejoicing to his father’s house. Was he glad too? Was there a pang in his heart, thinking that these welcomes had been prepared for him too, till it was discovered what he was? His voice, which was all he had, seemed choked in his throat. He could not speak, he could not cry. Vanity of vanities, nothing of nothingness! even his voice went from him, and he was no more than a thought.

Thus it was that he did not see, because he could not look: but heard every sound and the footsteps on the stones, and the shouts from above and the songs below. When they died away he felt in the bitterness of his heart as if he had been again shut out, as if it had been the day of his first refusal; but, more bitter still, shut out, and for ever shut out, and never again to bold converse with his kin and rejoice with them. For what should he rejoice? That he was shut out, and that the open gates were barred against him, and only him? But at least they might have let him share the joy that his brother had come and was more happy than he. He sprang up and turned away, still covering his face, that he might not see those walls and towers into the heart of which the joy of welcome had swept, and were now but faintly heard—and went quickly away and hid himself in the heart of the wood: not in his accustomed place,—partly because his heart was sick of all that lived and breathed about him, and partly in perversity, that they might not find him when they came to search for him, as he knew they were sure to do. Ah! why was this? why was this, that an event which was so joyful should throw him back, back into the abyss from which his soul had escaped? He had escaped from himself; he had consented to be nothing, and to know that he was nothing—that it was not for him that heaven and earth should be disturbed, as if an atom was to make so much commotion for its own well-being; but now this atom once again blotted out both God and Heaven.

He struggled manfully in his heart to come to an end “I know,” he said to himself, “that it was not fit that I who had sinned should be rewarded. I have come to little harm. I suffer nothing. I have the whole world left, more beautiful than heart had conceived. And once in a thousand years the Lord will pass by, and I shall see Him, even if it be no more. And they will all come to comfort me and talk to me, and not forget me—and my brother—” But he did not say “my brother.” He said a name; and at the sound of that name a great sobbing seized him, and the recollection of so many things that were past, and the home that never had been closed against him, and the love that had been his all his life. And then there came upon him suddenly another thought, at the coming of which his heart stood still, and strained upon all its chords as if it would sink away from him: and he fell upon his knees and lifted up his head and cried with an awful cry, “God! the mother, the mother!” And the far distant earth seemed to roll up under his vision and open, and show a house desolate and a woman who sat within. And he who was himself desolate, yet within sight of the joy, forgot himself and everything that was his, to think of her. The mother, the mother! he flung himself on his face, he rose again to his feet, he stood and held out his hands to God, calling to him and repeating His name, “God! God!” and then “Father!” if, perhaps, that might reach him better. “For now she is alone,” he cried. And then in his trouble he reproached the Most High God, and cried out, “Thou are not alone; Thou hast Thy Son.” And he forgot all his trouble and complaining, and became all one prayer, one cry for another, for one who was desolate and had now no child. Then straight like an arrow from a bow he went away, leaving his wood and the home of his kindred, and the valley, hastening he knew not where. For in his heart he felt that there must be some way, some place in which he could reach the footstool of the great Father, and pray to be forgotten and blotted out for ever, rather than that she should be left to weep alone.

VI

It was close to one of those great bridges by which the Lord passed to the other worlds around—a bridge that rose light as the sea-foam, built of white marble and of alabaster, and every line marked with fine gold, which sometimes shone as if with jewels, and sometimes seemed to melt away in the clouds as if it had not been; but whether it was built of the stones of the earth, or whether of vapours and cloud, flung itself boldly across the abyss, and bore the army and the attendants of the Lord whenever He came. And near to this place, where the broad highway seemed itself to march and continue along the bridge, there was a cathedral in the wood. The young man had heard of it from many. It was by this great temple that those others passed who preserved their being as men: and those who were but Voices moaned and lamented often, saying that they had missed the way. But it was not for this, nor indeed knowingly at all, that the young man made his way here: but only in the height of his anguish, that he might find some holy place where God might listen to his cry.

The day had come towards its end, and the glory of the sunset lit up the white and glorious bridge which spanned the air and clouds, and disappeared into a mystery of the unseen such as no eyes of man could penetrate or trace, to the other side. The young man did not pause to look at this wonder of the world, but turned aside to the temple in the wood. His footsteps were drawn towards it, he scarcely knew how: but until he saw it he knew not that this was that Temple of which he had heard. But of that great cathedral what tongue can tell? for it was not built by hands, nor were its arches created and its pillars put into their place by any workman, whether mortal or immortal; for where it stood it grew with its feet in the living soil, and every column a living tree straight and noble, and the vault above woven of foliage, which changed and moved with every breath, and let in the changings of the light, living too, and moving ceaselessly from east to west through all the brilliant hours of the day; and during the night a great vision of stars was in the place where the lights should be, like silver lamps upon the altar, and in the lofty fragrant roof, where the leaves trembled and glistened: and its floor was made of living flowers throwing up their fragrance, which was sweeter than incense: and day by day it lived and grew, pushing higher and higher towards the skies, straight and tall and strong, reaching upward like the living thing it was. The sunset was still upon the western front, and streaming upon the great doorway, which was ever open, and wreathed in every climbing thing that blows, the long branches clinging one to another to find a place, and the flowers thickening and clustering upon the holy arch in an eagerness to be there: and there was a sound within of noble music and choirs unseen, which sang their hymns of praise to God both through the night and in the day.

The young man went in without a pause, thinking neither of the beautiful place nor of the strangeness of it, but only that it was the temple not made with hands, where the Lord loved to pause on his journey, and where the great Father came to commune with His Son, and which the ever-living Spirit had chosen for a place to dwell in: although not in this place or any other was that great Presence bound, but might be called upon by every path, and even in the common highroad where all men went to and fro. The young man did not remember except in a confusion what it was he had heard of the cathedral in the wood, nor knew he why he came, except with a thought that it was the holiest place; and now there was no thought in his mind but only one, to call upon every Holy name,—that of the Father, who surely knew if there was any knowledge, what love was in the heart of a mother: and of the Son, who knew what sorrow was, and to be forsaken, above all men that ever lived: and of Him whose name was the Comforter. He flung himself upon the floor, and in the great silence—for the music rolled away and was heard no more when he came in—called and called upon these Holy names. “You who are together,” he cried, “leave not her alone!” And in the anguish of his prayer he was bold, and reminded the Lord that this was the image He had chosen of a love that never failed. “Can a woman forget her child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb.” And should He above, who knows best, He who loves most, leave the woman to be alone, alone!

Presently words failed him, and he only knew that he held her as it seemed up in his arms to God. And slowly the living day died out of the cathedral in the wood, and the living night came in and shone through the tracery of the vault above, and the stars in their places lit up the living walls, and everything breathed a silent worship up to the heavens, the flowers with their odours and the leaves with their greenness: and every noble tree stood up and called upon the name of the Lord. And the swallow and the sparrow, God’s little children, and many a singing bird weary with the joy and the song of day, nestled among the branches and went to sleep in His care. And over the young man there came a great calm instead of the anguish of that prayer, and as the soft hours stole on to midnight, and the great stillness wrapt him round and round, fatigue and peace stole over him, and he fell asleep in the middle of his prayer among the flowers.

There were those about who were coming and going for ever, faint with longing and desire to enter the Temple of the wood. But as in that world there are no bolts and bars, but only an unseen bond upon the feet and upon the heart of a man, so that he cannot go where he would until it is his hour—all that these longing souls could do was to linger and gaze and await the moment when they might enter. And many were always gathered about the door, gazing in where they so fain would be. And they saw the young man lying upon the flowers, and wondered at him that he should sleep in so blessed a place. And some said, “God forbid that I should sleep if I were there”; and some, “God save him though he sleeps!” And one who stood almost upon the threshold, and knew that he should be one of the first to pass, hushed these voices and said low, “It is the beginning of the mystery and of the new birth.” And a murmur arose very softly, and a faint crying, “What did he do to attain the heavenly gift?” But the soul upon the threshold hushed them all: “Sleep came upon him while he prayed. Be still and see the goodness of the Lord: he prayed not for himself but for another.”

The night had gone while these voices went and came: and he that spoke last caught with his words the little morning breeze which at that moment sprang up with the first glimmer of the sun; and all around the living walls of that house not made with hands it breathed back the words, “not for himself but another,” like a song: and blowing in at the wide door—for nothing can stop the winds of God, which make all the world pure—breathed over the young man where he lay. And in his sleep he felt the soft touch upon his forehead like the hand of his mother, and waking, having prayed for her till he slept, prayed again when he was roused, with a soft cry of “God save her!” while still he was but half awake. And in the waking he lay a long time forgetting where he was. And he saw something white and wonderful stretched upon the flowers where he lay, and knew not what it was. Then slowly as he came to himself he remembered everything, and saw from the east the first arrow of gold that told of the sunrise, and in the great peace of his heart he prayed no more, for it seemed to him that his prayer was heard. So sweet was that calm that he lay and did not move, recollecting himself, and saying to himself that it was good to be here, and listening to the birds, which were all awake and already singing the morning song which he had learned to know so well. And some descended swift through the air, and perched close to him upon the steps of the altar and on the lower pinnacles, and sang as if to burst their throats in a tumult and outcry of joy. Blessed creatures, little children of God! he followed with a smile one that came almost within reach of his hand. And then his eyes were drawn again to something white and wonderful which lay as he lay upon the floor. Some one, he said to himself, had laid an angel’s mantle over him as he slept; and there came a rush of soft tears to his eyes, and his heart melted with gratitude and kindness. But when he moved it moved with him, and putting out an astonished hand, he suddenly touched and knew that this was he—no mantle even of an angel, but the body of a man. Oh, holy house not made with hands! oh, Temple of the Lord!—for this was he.

And a voice said:

“He hath accepted that which was allotted to him, and acknowledged that it was just; therefore there is now given to him the higher state.

“He hath acknowledged his Lord; wherefore his Lord doth not forget to acknowledge him.

“And here he hath come to seek the face of God, not for himself but for another; wherefore he goes hence blessed, with the blessing he has not sought.”

The young man had not gone back half the way to the city of his fathers when he was met by a shining company, all radiant in their best apparel, with music and with song; and in front of all was his brother, whose arrival he had beheld before he set forth. And lo! while all men looked and held their breath, they stood together, two fair young men—fairer than they had been on earth, or than any man is to whom has not been given the house not made with hands. And together they went back to their father’s house to do the work which God might give them, whether it was humble or whether it was great, until the day should come when the books shall be opened and all the worlds stand together in their armies and battalions before the face of the Lord. But of that day knoweth no man, not even the Son, but the Father—as was told us by our Lord.

As for the prayer which he made, and which was answered in a way he asked not, it is still unfulfilled: yet they know it is not forgotten, for nothing is forgotten before God.

About this eBook

THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN

STORIES OF THE SUPERNATURAL
BY
MRS.  (MARGARET)  OLIPHANT
(1828–1897)

In these collected tales, the writer takes us on chilling excursions to the borderland between the natural and the supernatural, with stories of the attempts of the dead to contact the living and moving accounts of what might lie ahead in the afterlife.

The “grand master” M. R. James admired Oliphant's supernatural fiction, concluding that “the religious ghost story, as it may be called, was never done better than by Mrs. Oliphant in ‘The Open Door’ and ‘A Beleaguered City’”.

The short story “The Library Window” is, quite simply, a little masterpiece.

(This collection presents all of Oliphant’s “Stories of the Seen and Unseen”.)

* * * *

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (born Margaret Oliphant Wilson) (4 April 1828 – 20 June 1897), was a Scottish novelist and historical writer. Her fictional works encompass “domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural”. Highly prolific, she wrote more than 120 works, including novels, books of travel and description, histories, biographies, and volumes of literary criticism.

Although interest in Oliphant’s work declined after her death, a revival has been apparent since the 1980’s. Her best novels, in particular the Carlingford series, have been compared to the work of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, September 2018, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The contents of this book were first published 1857 ~ 1897. Text is in the public domain worldwide, because the author died more than 100 years ago, and the works were published prior to 1923.

Click here for editing notes.

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EDITING NOTES

>>TOC     >>ABOUT

This is my own compilation. Transcripts were obtained from gutenberg.org, gutenberg.net.au, fadedpage.com, and archive.org. PDF scans of early editions were obtained from archive.org.

Obvious textual and typesetting errors were silently corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted. Because double quotation marks predominated (12 of 14 pdf scans), punctuation was regularized to reflect that. Double emdashes as breaks in narrative were converted to single emdash.

Hyphenation/typography was regularized to provide consistency, with instances of the following being changed to match predominating usage:

anyone —» any one
forever —» for ever
someone —» some one
downstairs —» down-stairs
upstairs —» up-stairs
firstborn —» first-born
tonight —» to-night

bed-room —» bedroom
door-way —» doorway
door-step —» doorstep
mantel-piece —» mantelpiece
mean time —» meantime
every thing —» everything
gayly —» gaily
good-by —» good-bye

Story titles are cross-linked to table of contents.

Embedded font “Fontin” by Jos Buivenga used for titling.

Cover element “Gateway” (#1417) by ashensorrow at DeviantArt.

Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.