A PASSIONATE PILGRIM

By Henry James

I

Intending to sail for America in the early part of June, I determined tospend the interval of six weeks in England, to which country my mind'seye only had as yet been introduced. I had formed in Italy and France aresolute preference for old inns, considering that what they sometimescost the ungratified body they repay the delighted mind. On my arrivalin London, therefore, I lodged at a certain antique hostelry, muchto the east of Temple Bar, deep in the quarter that I had inevitablyfigured as the Johnsonian. Here, on the first evening of my stay, Idescended to the little coffee-room and bespoke my dinner of the geniusof "attendance" in the person of the solitary waiter. No sooner hadI crossed the threshold of this retreat than I felt I had cut agolden-ripe crop of English "impressions. " The coffee-room of the RedLion, like so many other places and things I was destined to see in themotherland, seemed to have been waiting for long years, with just thatsturdy sufferance of time written on its visage, for me to come andextract the romantic essence of it. 

The latent preparedness of the American mind even for the mostcharacteristic features of English life was a matter I meanwhile failedto get to the bottom of. The roots of it are indeed so deeply buriedin the soil of our early culture that, without some great upheavalof feeling, we are at a loss to say exactly when and where and how itbegins. It makes an American's enjoyment of England an emotion moresearching than anything Continental. I had seen the coffee-room ofthe Red Lion years ago, at home--at Saragossa Illinois--in books, invisions, in dreams, in Dickens, in Smollett, in Boswell. It was smalland subdivided into six narrow compartments by a series of perpendicularscreens of mahogany, something higher than a man's stature, furnishedon either side with a meagre uncushioned ledge, denominated in ancientBritain a seat. In each of these rigid receptacles was a narrow table--atable expected under stress to accommodate no less than four pairs ofactive British elbows. High pressure indeed had passed away from theRed Lion for ever. It now knew only that of memories and ghosts andatmosphere. Round the room there marched, breast-high, a magnificentpanelling of mahogany, so dark with time and so polished with unremittedfriction that by gazing a while into its lucid blackness I made outthe dim reflexion of a party of wigged gentlemen in knee-breeches justarrived from York by the coach. On the dark yellow walls, coated bythe fumes of English coal, of English mutton, of Scotch whiskey, were adozen melancholy prints, sallow-toned with age--the Derby favourite ofthe year 1807, the Bank of England, her Majesty the Queen. On the floorwas a Turkey carpet--as old as the mahogany almost, as the Bankof England, as the Queen--into which the waiter had in his lonelyrevolutions trodden so many massive soot-flakes and drops of overflowingbeer that the glowing looms of Smyrna would certainly not haverecognised it. To say that I ordered my dinner of this archaic typewould be altogether to misrepresent the process owing to which, havingdreamed of lamb and spinach and a salade de saison, I sat down inpenitence to a mutton-chop and a rice pudding. Bracing my feet againstthe cross-beam of my little oaken table, I opposed to the mahoganypartition behind me the vigorous dorsal resistance that must haveexpressed the old-English idea of repose. The sturdy screen refused evento creak, but my poor Yankee joints made up the deficiency. 

While I was waiting there for my chop there came into the room a personwhom, after I had looked at him a moment, I supposed to be a fellowlodger and probably the only one. He seemed, like myself, to havesubmitted to proposals for dinner; the table on the other side of mypartition had been prepared to receive him. He walked up to the fire, exposed his back to it and, after consulting his watch, looked directlyout of the window and indirectly at me. He was a man of something lessthan middle age and more than middle stature, though indeed you wouldhave called him neither young nor tall. He was chiefly remarkable forhis emphasised leanness. His hair, very thin on the summit of his head, was dark short and fine. His eye was of a pale turbid grey, unsuited, perhaps, to his dark hair and well-drawn brows, but not altogether outof harmony with his colourless bilious complexion. His nose was aquilineand delicate; beneath it his moustache languished much rather thanbristled. His mouth and chin were negative, or at the most provisional;not vulgar, doubtless, but ineffectually refined. A cold fatalgentlemanly weakness was expressed indeed in his attenuated person. Hiseye was restless and deprecating; his whole physiognomy, his manner ofshifting his weight from foot to foot, the spiritless droop of his head, told of exhausted intentions, of a will relaxed. His dress was neat and"toned down"--he might have been in mourning. I made up my mind on threepoints: he was a bachelor, he was out of health, he was not indigenousto the soil. The waiter approached him, and they conversed in accentsbarely audible. I heard the words "claret, " "sherry" with a tentativeinflexion, and finally "beer" with its last letter changed to "ah. "Perhaps he was a Russian in reduced circumstances; he reminded meslightly of certain sceptical cosmopolite Russians whom I had met on theContinent. While in my extravagant way I followed this train--foryou see I was interested--there appeared a short brisk man withreddish-brown hair, with a vulgar nose, a sharp blue eye and a redbeard confined to his lower jaw and chin. My putative Russian, still inpossession of the rug, let his mild gaze stray over the dingy ornamentsof the room. The other drew near, and his umbrella dealt a playfulpoke at the concave melancholy waistcoat. "A penny ha'penny for yourthoughts!"

My friend, as I call him, uttered an exclamation, stared, then laidhis two hands on the other's shoulders. The latter looked round at mekeenly, compassing me in a momentary glance. I read in its own vaguelight that this was a transatlantic eyebeam; and with such confidencethat I hardly needed to see its owner, as he prepared, with hiscompanion, to seat himself at the table adjoining my own, take from hisovercoat-pocket three New York newspapers and lay them beside hisplate. As my neighbours proceeded to dine I felt the crumbs of theirconversation scattered pretty freely abroad. I could hear almost allthey said, without straining to catch it, over the top of the partitionthat divided us. Occasionally their voices dropped to recovery ofdiscretion, but the mystery pieced itself together as if on purpose toentertain me. Their speech was pitched in the key that may in Englishair be called alien in spite of a few coincidences. The voices wereAmerican, however, with a difference; and I had no hesitation inassigning the softer and clearer sound to the pale thin gentleman, whomI decidedly preferred to his comrade. The latter began to question himabout his voyage. 

"Horrible, horrible! I was deadly sick from the hour we left New York. "

"Well, you do look considerably reduced, " said the second-comer. 

"Reduced! I've been on the verge of the grave. I haven't slept six hoursfor three weeks. " This was said with great gravity. 

"Well, I've made the voyage for the last time. "

"The plague you have! You mean to locate here permanently?"

"Oh it won't be so very permanent!"

There was a pause; after which: "You're the same merry old boy, Searle. Going to give up the ghost to-morrow, eh?"

"I almost wish I were. "

"You're not so sweet on England then? I've heard people say at home thatyou dress and talk and act like an Englishman. But I know these peoplehere and I know you. You're not one of this crowd, Clement Searle, notyou. You'll go under here, sir; you'll go under as sure as my name'sSimmons. "

Following this I heard a sudden clatter as of the drop of a knife andfork. "Well, you're a delicate sort of creature, if it IS your uglyname! I've been wandering about all day in this accursed city, readyto cry with homesickness and heartsickness and every possible sort ofsickness, and thinking, in the absence of anything better, of meetingyou here this evening and of your uttering some sound of cheer andcomfort and giving me some glimmer of hope. Go under? Ain't I under now?I can't do more than get under the ground!"

Mr. Simmons's superior brightness appeared to flicker a moment in thisgust of despair, but the next it was burning steady again. "DON'T 'cry, 'Searle, " I heard him say. "Remember the waiter. I've grown Englishmanenough for that. For heaven's sake don't let's have any nerves. Nerveswon't do anything for you here. It's best to come to the point. Tell mein three words what you expect of me. "

I heard another movement, as if poor Searle had collapsed in hischair. "Upon my word, sir, you're quite inconceivable. You never got myletter?"

"Yes, I got your letter. I was never sorrier to get anything in mylife. "

At this declaration Mr. Searle rattled out an oath, which it was wellperhaps that I but partially heard. "Abijah Simmons, " he then cried, "what demon of perversity possesses you? Are you going to betray me herein a foreign land, to turn out a false friend, a heartless rogue?"

"Go on, sir, " said sturdy Simmons. "Pour it all out. I'll wait tillyou've done. Your beer's lovely, " he observed independently to thewaiter. "I'll have some more. "

"For God's sake explain yourself!" his companion appealed. 

There was a pause, at the end of which I heard Mr. Simmons set down hisempty tankard with emphasis. "You poor morbid mooning man, " he resumed, "I don't want to say anything to make you feel sore. I regularly pityyou. But you must allow that you've acted more like a confirmed crankthan a member of our best society--in which every one's so sensible. "

Mr. Searle seemed to have made an effort to compose himself. "Be so goodas to tell me then what was the meaning of your letter. "

"Well, you had got on MY nerves, if you want to know, when I wrote it. It came of my always wishing so to please folks. I had much better havelet you alone. To tell you the plain truth I never was so horrified inmy life as when I found that on the strength of my few kind words youhad come out here to seek your fortune. "

"What then did you expect me to do?"

"I expected you to wait patiently till I had made further enquiries andhad written you again. "

"And you've made further enquiries now?"

"Enquiries! I've committed assaults. "

"And you find I've no claim?"

"No claim that one of THESE big bugs will look at. It struck me at firstthat you had rather a neat little case. I confess the look of it tookhold of me--"

"Thanks to your liking so to please folks!" Mr. Simmons appeared fora moment at odds with something; it proved to be with his liquor. "Irather think your beer's too good to be true, " he said to the waiter. "Iguess I'll take water. Come, old man, " he resumed, "don't challenge meto the arts of debate, or you'll have me right down on you, and then youWILL feel me. My native sweetness, as I say, was part of it. The ideathat if I put the thing through it would be a very pretty feather inmy cap and a very pretty penny in my purse was part of it. And thesatisfaction of seeing a horrid low American walk right into an oldEnglish estate was a good deal of it. Upon my word, Searle, when I thinkof it I wish with all my heart that, extravagant vain man as you are, ICOULD, for the charm of it, put you through! I should hardly care whatyou did with the blamed place when you got it. I could leave you aloneto turn it into Yankee notions--into ducks and drakes as they call 'emhere. I should like to see you tearing round over it and kicking up itssacred dust in their very faces!"

"You don't know me one little bit, " said Mr. Searle, rather shirking, I thought, the burden of this tribute and for all response to theambiguity of the compliment. 

"I should be very glad to think I didn't, sir. I've been to no smallamount of personal inconvenience for you. I've pushed my way right upto the headspring. I've got the best opinion that's to be had. The bestopinion that's to be had just gives you one leer over its spectacles. Iguess that look will fix you if you ever get it straight. I've beenable to tap, indirectly, " Mr. Simmons went on, "the solicitor of yourusurping cousin, and he evidently knows something to be in the wind. Itseems your elder brother twenty years ago put out a feeler. So you'renot to have the glory of even making them sit up. "

"I never made any one sit up, " I heard Mr. Searle plead. "I shouldn'tbegin at this time of day. I should approach the subject like agentleman. "

"Well, if you want very much to do something like a gentleman you've gota capital chance. Take your disappointment like a gentleman. "

I had finished my dinner and had become keenly interested in poor Mr. Searle's unencouraging--or unencouraged--claim; so interested that Iat last hated to hear his trouble reflected in his voice without beingable--all respectfully!--to follow it in his face. I left my place, wentover to the fire, took up the evening paper and established a post ofobservation behind it. 

His cold counsellor was in the act of choosing a soft chop from thedish--an act accompanied by a great deal of prying and poking with thatgentleman's own fork. My disillusioned compatriot had pushed away hisplate; he sat with his elbows on the table, gloomily nursing his headwith his hands. His companion watched him and then seemed to wonder--todo Mr. Simmons justice--how he could least ungracefully give him up. "I say, Searle, "--and for my benefit, I think, taking me for a nativeingenuous enough to be dazzled by his wit, he lifted his voice a littleand gave it an ironical ring--"in this country it's the inestimableprivilege of a loyal citizen, under whatsoever stress of pleasure or ofpain, to make a point of eating his dinner. "

Mr. Searle gave his plate another push. "Anything may happen now. Idon't care a straw. "

"You ought to care. Have another chop and you WILL care. Have somebetter tipple. Take my advice!" Mr. Simmons went on. 

My friend--I adopt that name for him--gazed from between his two handscoldly before him. "I've had enough of your advice. "

"A little more, " said Simmons mildly; "I shan't trouble you again. Whatdo you mean to do?"

"Nothing. "

"Oh come!"

"Nothing, nothing, nothing!"

"Nothing but starve. How about meeting expenses?"

"Why do you ask?" said my friend. "You don't care. "

"My dear fellow, if you want to make me offer you twenty pounds you setmost clumsily about it. You said just now I don't know you, " Mr. Simmonswent on. "Possibly. Come back with me then, " he said kindly enough, "andlet's improve our acquaintance. "

"I won't go back. I shall never go back. "

"Never?"

"Never. "

Mr. Simmons thought it shrewdly over. "Well, you ARE sick!" he exclaimedpresently. "All I can say is that if you're working out a plan for coldpoison, or for any other act of desperation, you had better give itright up. You can't get a dose of the commonest kind of cold poisonfor nothing, you know. Look here, Searle"--and the worthy man made whatstruck me as a very decent appeal. "If you'll consent to return homewith me by the steamer of the twenty-third I'll pay your passage down. More than that, I'll pay for your beer. "

My poor gentleman met it. "I believe I never made up my mind to anythingbefore, but I think it's made up now. I shall stay here till I take mydeparture for a newer world than any patched-up newness of ours. It's anodd feeling--I rather like it! What should I do at home?"

"You said just now you were homesick. "

"I meant I was sick for a home. Don't I belong here? Haven't I longed toget here all my life? Haven't I counted the months and the years till Ishould be able to 'go' as we say? And now that I've 'gone, ' that is thatI've come, must I just back out? No, no, I'll move on. I'm much obligedto you for your offer. I've enough money for the present. I've about myperson some forty pounds' worth of British gold, and the same amount, say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They'll see me throughtogether! After they're gone I shall lay my head in some Englishchurchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old gnarled black yew. "

I had so far distinctly followed the dialogue; but at this point thelandlord entered and, begging my pardon, would suggest that number 12, a most superior apartment, having now been vacated, it would give himpleasure if I would look in. I declined to look in, but agreed fornumber 12 at a venture and gave myself again, with dissimulation, tomy friends. They had got up; Simmons had put on his overcoat; he stoodpolishing his rusty black hat with his napkin. "Do you mean to go downto the place?" he asked. 

"Possibly. I've thought of it so often that I should like to see it. "

"Shall you call on Mr. Searle?"

"Heaven forbid!"

"Something has just occurred to me, " Simmons pursued with a grin thatmade his upper lip look more than ever denuded by the razor and jerkedthe ugly ornament of his chin into the air. "There's a certain MissSearle, the old man's sister. "

"Well?" my gentleman quavered. 

"Well, sir!--you talk of moving on. You might move on the damsel. "

Mr. Searle frowned in silence and his companion gave him a tap on thestomach. "Line those ribs a bit first!" He blushed crimson; his eyesfilled with tears. "You ARE a coarse brute, " he said. The scenequite harrowed me, but I was prevented from seeing it through by thereappearance of the landlord on behalf of number 12. He represented tome that I ought in justice to him to come and see how tidy they HADmade it. Half an hour afterwards I was rattling along in a hansom towardCovent Garden, where I heard Madame Bosio in The Barber of Seville. Onmy return from the opera I went into the coffee-room; it had occurredto me I might catch there another glimpse of Mr. Searle. I was notdisappointed. I found him seated before the fire with his head sunk onhis breast: he slept, dreaming perhaps of Abijah Simmons. I watched himfor some moments. His closed eyes, in the dim lamplight, looked evenmore helpless and resigned, and I seemed to see the fine grain of hisnature in his unconscious mask. They say fortune comes while we sleep, and, standing there, I felt really tender enough--though otherwise mostunqualified--to be poor Mr. Searle's fortune. As I walked away I notedin one of the little prandial pews I have described the melancholywaiter, whose whiskered chin also reposed on the bulge of hisshirt-front. I lingered a moment beside the old inn-yard in which, upona time, the coaches and post-chaises found space to turn and disgorge. Above the dusky shaft of the enclosing galleries, where lounging lodgersand crumpled chambermaids and all the picturesque domesticity of arattling tavern must have leaned on their elbows for many a year, I madeout the far-off lurid twinkle of the London constellations. At the footof the stairs, enshrined in the glittering niche of her well-appointedbar, the landlady sat napping like some solemn idol amid votive brassand plate. 

The next morning, not finding the subject of my benevolent curiosity inthe coffee-room, I learned from the waiter that he had ordered breakfastin bed. Into this asylum I was not yet prepared to pursue him. I spentthe morning in the streets, partly under pressure of business, butcatching all kinds of romantic impressions by the way. To the searchingAmerican eye there is no tint of association with which the great grimyface of London doesn't flush. As the afternoon approached, however, I began to yearn for some site more gracefully classic than whatsurrounded me, and, thinking over the excursions recommended to theingenuous stranger, decided to take the train to Hampton Court. The daywas the more propitious that it yielded just that dim subaqueous lightwhich sleeps so fondly upon the English landscape. 

At the end of an hour I found myself wandering through the apartments ofthe great palace. They follow each other in infinite succession, with nogreat variety of interest or aspect, but with persistent pomp and a finespecific effect. They are exactly of their various times. You pass frompainted and panelled bedchambers and closets, anterooms, drawing-rooms, council-rooms, through king's suite, queen's suite, prince's suite, until you feel yourself move through the appointed hours and stagesof some rigid monarchical day. On one side are the old monumentalupholsteries, the big cold tarnished beds and canopies, with thecircumference of disapparelled royalty symbolised by a gildedbalustrade, and the great carved and yawning chimney-places wheredukes-in-waiting may have warmed their weary heels; on the other, in deep recesses, rise the immense windows, the framed and drapedembrasures where the sovereign whispered and favourites smiled, lookingout on terraced gardens and misty park. The brown walls are dimlyillumined by innumerable portraits of courtiers and captains, moreespecially with various members of the Batavian entourage of Williamof Orange, the restorer of the palace; with good store too of thelily-bosomed models of Lely and Kneller. The whole tone of thisprocessional interior is singularly stale and sad. The tints of allthings have both faded and darkened--you taste the chill of the placeas you walk from room to room. It was still early in the day and inthe season, and I flattered myself that I was the only visitor. Thiscomplacency, however, dropped at sight of a person standing motionlessbefore a simpering countess of Sir Peter Lely's creation. On hearingmy footstep this victim of an evaporated spell turned his head and Irecognised my fellow lodger of the Red Lion. I was apparently recognisedas well; he looked as if he could scarce wait for me to be kind to him, and in fact didn't wait. Seeing I had a catalogue he asked the name ofthe portrait. On my satisfying him he appealed, rather timidly, as to myopinion of the lady. 

"Well, " said I, not quite timidly enough perhaps, "I confess she strikesme as no great matter. "

He remained silent and was evidently a little abashed. As we strolledaway he stole a sidelong glance of farewell at his leering shepherdess. To speak with him face to face was to feel keenly that he was no lessinteresting than infirm. We talked of our inn, of London, of the palace;he uttered his mind freely, but seemed to struggle with a weight ofdepression. It was an honest mind enough, with no great cultivation butwith a certain natural love of excellent things. I foresaw that Ishould find him quite to the manner born--to ours; full of glimpses andresponses, of deserts and desolations. His perceptions would be fine andhis opinions pathetic; I should moreover take refuge from his sense ofproportion in his sense of humour, and then refuge from THAT, ah me!--inwhat? On my telling him that I was a fellow citizen he stopped short, deeply touched, and, silently passing his arm into my own, suffered meto lead him through the other apartments and down into the gardens. Alarge gravelled platform stretches itself before the basement of thepalace, taking the afternoon sun. Parts of the great structure arereserved for private use and habitation, occupied by state-pensioners, reduced gentlewomen in receipt of the Queen's bounty and other deservingpersons. Many of the apartments have their dependent gardens, and hereand there, between the verdure-coated walls, you catch a glimpse ofthese somewhat stuffy bowers. My companion and I measured more than oncethis long expanse, looking down on the floral figures of the rest of theaffair and on the stoutly-woven tapestry of creeping plants that mufflethe foundations of the huge red pile. I thought of the various images ofold-world gentility which, early and late, must have strolled in frontof it and felt the protection and security of the place. We peepedthrough an antique grating into one of the mossy cages and saw an oldlady with a black mantilla on her head, a decanter of water in one handand a crutch in the other, come forth, followed by three little dogs anda cat, to sprinkle a plant. She would probably have had an opinion onthe virtue of Queen Caroline. Feeling these things together made usquickly, made us extraordinarily, intimate. My companion seemed to achewith his impression; he scowled, all gently, as if it gave him pain. Iproposed at last that we should dine somewhere on the spot and takea late train to town. We made our way out of the gardens into theadjoining village, where we entered an inn which I pronounced, verysincerely, exactly what we wanted. Mr. Searle had approached our boardas shyly as if it had been a cold bath; but, gradually warming to hiswork, he declared at the end of half an hour that for the first time ina month he enjoyed his victuals. 

"I'm afraid you're rather out of health, " I risked. 

"Yes, sir--I'm an incurable. "

The little village of Hampton Court stands clustered about the entranceof Bushey Park, and after we had dined we lounged along into thecelebrated avenue of horse-chestnuts. There is a rare emotion, familiarto every intelligent traveller, in which the mind seems to swallow thesum total of its impressions at a gulp. You take in the whole place, whatever it be. You feel England, you feel Italy, and the sensationinvolves for the moment a kind of thrill. I had known it from time totime in Italy and had opened my soul to it as to the spirit of theLord. Since my landing in England I had been waiting for it to arrive. Abottle of tolerable Burgundy, at dinner, had perhaps unlocked to it thegates of sense; it arrived now with irresistible force. Just the scenearound me was the England of one's early reveries. Over against us, amidthe ripeness of its gardens, the dark red residence, with its formalfacings and its vacant windows, seemed to make the past definite andmassive; the little village, nestling between park and palace, arounda patch of turfy common, with its taverns of figurative names, itsivy-towered church, its mossy roofs, looked like the property of afeudal lord. It was in this dark composite light that I had read theBritish classics; it was this mild moist air that had blown from thepages of the poets; while I seemed to feel the buried generations in thedense and elastic sod. And that I must have testified in some form orother to what I have called my thrill I gather, remembering it, from aremark of my companion's. 

"You've the advantage over me in coming to all this with an educatedeye. You already know what old things can be. I've never known it but byreport. I've always fancied I should like it. In a small way at home, ofcourse, I did try to stand by my idea of it. I must be a conservative bynature. People at home used to call me a cockney and a fribble. But itwasn't true, " he went on; "if it had been I should have made my way overhere long ago: before--before--" He paused, and his head dropped sadlyon his breast. 

The bottle of Burgundy had loosened his tongue; I had but to choose mytime for learning his story. Something told me that I had gained hisconfidence and that, so far as attention and attitude might go, I was"in" for responsibilities. But somehow I didn't dread them. "Before youlost your health, " I suggested. 

"Before I lost my health, " he answered. "And my property--the little Ihad. And my ambition. And any power to take myself seriously. "

"Come!" I cried. "You shall recover everything. This tonic Englishclimate will wind you up in a month. And THEN see how you'll takeyourself--and how I shall take you!"

"Oh, " he gratefully smiled, "I may turn to dust in your hands! I shouldlike, " he presently pursued, "to be an old genteel pensioner, lodgedover there in the palace and spending my days in maundering about thesevistas. I should go every morning, at the hour when it gets the sun, into that long gallery where all those pretty women of Lely's arehung--I know you despise them!--and stroll up and down and say somethingkind to them. Poor precious forsaken creatures! So flattered and courtedin their day, so neglected now! Offering up their shoulders and ringletsand smiles to that musty deadly silence!"

I laid my hand on my friend's shoulder. "Oh sir, you're all right!"

Just at this moment there came cantering down the shallow glade of theavenue a young girl on a fine black horse--one of those little buddinggentlewomen, perfectly mounted and equipped, who form to alien eyes oneof the prettiest incidents of English scenery. She had distanced herservant and, as she came abreast of us, turned slightly in her saddleand glanced back at him. In the movement she dropped the hunting-cropwith which she was armed; whereupon she reined up and looked shyly atus and at the implement. "This is something better than a Lely, " Isaid. Searle hastened forward, picked up the crop and, with a particularcourtesy that became him, handed it back to the rider. Fluttered andblushing she reached forward, took it with a quick sweet sound, and thenext moment was bounding over the quiet turf. Searle stood watching her;the servant, as he passed us, touched his hat. When my friend turnedtoward me again I saw that he too was blushing. "Oh sir, you're allright, " I repeated. 

At a short distance from where we had stopped was an old stone bench. Wewent and sat down on it and, as the sun began to sink, watched the lightmist powder itself with gold. "We ought to be thinking of the train backto London, I suppose, " I at last said. 

"Oh hang the train!" sighed my companion. 

"Willingly. There could be no better spot than this to feel the Englishevening stand still. " So we lingered, and the twilight hung about us, strangely clear in spite of the thickness of the air. As we sat therecame into view an apparition unmistakeable from afar as an immemorialvagrant--the disowned, in his own rich way, of all the English ages. Ashe approached us he slackened pace and finally halted, touching his cap. He was a man of middle age, clad in a greasy bonnet with false-lookingear-locks depending from its sides. Round his neck was a grimy redscarf, tucked into his waistcoat; his coat and trousers had a remoteaffinity with those of a reduced hostler. In one hand he had a stick; onhis arm he bore a tattered basket, with a handful of witheredvegetables at the bottom. His face was pale haggard and degraded beyonddescription--as base as a counterfeit coin, yet as modelled somehow asa tragic mask. He too, like everything else, had a history. From whatheight had he fallen, from what depth had he risen? He was the perfectsymbol of generated constituted baseness; and I felt before him inpresence of a great artist or actor. 

"For God's sake, gentlemen, " he said in the raucous tone ofweather-beaten poverty, the tone of chronic sore-throat exacerbatedby perpetual gin, "for God's sake, gentlemen, have pity on a poorfern-collector!"--turning up his stale daisies. "Food hasn't passed mylips, gentlemen, for the last three days. " We gaped at him and at eachother, and to our imagination his appeal had almost the force of acommand. "I wonder if half-a-crown would help?" I privately wailed. Andour fasting botanist went limping away through the park with the graceof controlled stupefaction still further enriching his outline. 

"I feel as if I had seen my Doppelganger, " said Searle. "He reminds meof myself. What am I but a mere figure in the landscape, a wanderingminstrel or picker of daisies?"

"What are you 'anyway, ' my friend?" I thereupon took occasion to ask. "Who are you? kindly tell me. "

The colour rose again to his pale face and I feared I had offendedhim. He poked a moment at the sod with the point of his umbrella beforeanswering. "Who am I?" he said at last. "My name is Clement Searle. Iwas born in New York, and that's the beginning and the end of me. "

"Ah not the end!" I made bold to plead. 

"Then it's because I HAVE no end--any more than an ill-written book. Ijust stop anywhere; which means I'm a failure, " the poor man all lucidlyand unreservedly pursued: "a failure, as hopeless and helpless, sir, asany that ever swallowed up the slender investments of the widow andthe orphan. I don't pay five cents on the dollar. What I might havebeen--once!--there's nothing left to show. I was rotten before I wasripe. To begin with, certainly, I wasn't a fountain of wisdom. All themore reason for a definite channel--for having a little character andpurpose. But I hadn't even a little. I had nothing but nice tastes, asthey call them, and fine sympathies and sentiments. Take a turn throughNew York to-day and you'll find the tattered remnants of these thingsdangling on every bush and fluttering in every breeze; the men to whomI lent money, the women to whom I made love, the friends I trusted, thefollies I invented, the poisonous fumes of pleasure amid which nothingwas worth a thought but the manhood they stifled! It was my fault that Ibelieved in pleasure here below. I believe in it still, but as I believein the immortality of the soul. The soul is immortal, certainly--ifyou've got one; but most people haven't. Pleasure would be right if itwere pleasure straight through; but it never is. My taste was to be thebest in the world; well, perhaps it was. I had a little money; it wentthe way of my little wit. Here in my pocket I have the scant dregsof it. I should tell you I was the biggest kind of ass. Just now thatdescription would flatter me; it would assume there's something left ofme. But the ghost of a donkey--what's that? I think, " he went on witha charming turn and as if striking off his real explanation, "I shouldhave been all right in a world arranged on different lines. Beforeheaven, sir--whoever you are--I'm in practice so absurdly tender-heartedthat I can afford to say it: I entered upon life a perfect gentleman. I had the love of old forms and pleasant rites, and I found themnowhere--found a world all hard lines and harsh lights, without shade, without composition, as they say of pictures, without the lovely mysteryof colour. To furnish colour I melted down the very substance of my ownsoul. I went about with my brush, touching up and toning down; a verypretty chiaroscuro you'll find in my track! Sitting here in this oldpark, in this old country, I feel that I hover on the misty verge ofwhat might have been! I should have been born here and not there; heremy makeshift distinctions would have found things they'd have been trueof. How it was I never got free is more than I can say. It might havecut the knot, but the knot was too tight. I was always out of health orin debt or somehow desperately dangling. Besides, I had a horror of thegreat black sickening sea. A year ago I was reminded of the existence ofan old claim to an English estate, which has danced before the eyes ofmy family, at odd moments, any time these eighty years. I confess it's abit of a muddle and a tangle, and am by no means sure that to this hourI've got the hang of it. You look as if you had a clear head: some othertime, if you consent, we'll have a go at it, such as it is, together. Poverty was staring me in the face; I sat down and tried to commit the'points' of our case to memory, as I used to get nine-times-nine byheart as a boy. I dreamed of it for six months, half-expecting to wakeup some fine morning and hear through a latticed casement the cawing ofan English rookery. A couple of months ago there came out to England onbusiness of his own a man who once got me out of a dreadful mess (notthat I had hurt anyone but myself), a legal practitioner in our courts, a very rough diamond, but with a great deal of FLAIR, as they say in NewYork. It was with him yesterday you saw me dining. He undertook, ashe called it, to 'nose round' and see if anything could be made of ourquestionable but possible show. The matter had never seriously beentaken up. A month later I got a letter from Simmons assuring me that itseemed a very good show indeed and that he should be greatly surprisedif I were unable to do something. This was the greatest push I had evergot in my life; I took a deliberate step, for the first time; I sailedfor England. I've been here three days: they've seemed three months. After keeping me waiting for thirty-six hours my legal adviser makes hisappearance last night and states to me, with his mouth full of mutton, that I haven't a leg to stand on, that my claim is moonshine, and thatI must do penance and take a ticket for six more days of purgatorywith his presence thrown in. My friend, my friend--shall I say I wasdisappointed? I'm already resigned. I didn't really believe I hadany case. I felt in my deeper consciousness that it was the crowningillusion of a life of illusions. Well, it was a pretty one. Poor legaladviser!--I forgive him with all my heart. But for him I shouldn't besitting in this place, in this air, under these impressions. This is aworld I could have got on with beautifully. There's an immense charm inits having been kept for the last. After it nothing else would have beentolerable. I shall now have a month of it, I hope, which won't be longenough for it to "go back on me. There's one thing!"--and here, pausing, he laid his hand on mine; I rose and stood before him--"I wish it werepossible you should be with me to the end. "

"I promise you to leave you only when you kick me downstairs. " But Isuggested my terms. "It must be on condition of your omitting from yourconversation this intolerable flavour of mortality. I know nothing of'ends. ' I'm all for beginnings. "

He kept on me his sad weak eyes. Then with a faint smile: "Don't cutdown a man you find hanging. He has had a reason for it. I'm bankrupt. "

"Oh health's money!" I said. "Get well, and the rest will take care ofitself. I'm interested in your questionable claim--it's the questionthat's the charm; and pretenders, to anything big enough, have alwaysbeen, for me, an attractive class. Only their first duty's to begallant. "

"Their first duty's to understand their own points and to know their ownmind, " he returned with hopeless lucidity. "Don't ask me to climb ourfamily tree now, " he added; "I fear I haven't the head for it. I'll trysome day--if it will bear my weight; or yours added to mine. There'sno doubt, however, that we, as they say, go back. But I know nothing ofbusiness. If I were to take the matter in hand I should break in two thepoor little silken thread from which everything hangs. In a better worldthan this I think I should be listened to. But the wind doesn't set toideal justice. There's no doubt that a hundred years ago we suffereda palpable wrong. Yet we made no appeal at the time, and the dust of acentury now lies heaped upon our silence. Let it rest!"

"What then, " I asked, "is the estimated value of your interest?"

"We were instructed from the first to accept a compromise. Compared withthe whole property our ideas have been small. We were once advised inthe sense of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Why a hundred andthirty I'm sure I don't know. Don't beguile me into figures. "

"Allow me one more question, " I said. "Who's actually in possession?"

"A certain Mr. Richard Searle. I know nothing about him. "

"He's in some way related to you?"

"Our great-grandfathers were half-brothers. What does that make us?"

"Twentieth cousins, say. And where does your twentieth cousin live?"

"At a place called Lackley--in Middleshire. "

I thought it over. "Well, suppose we look up Lackley in Middleshire!"

He got straight up. "Go and see it?"

"Go and see it. "

"Well, " he said, "with you I'll go anywhere. "

On our return to town we determined to spend three days there togetherand then proceed to our errand. We were as conscious one as the other ofthat deeper mystic appeal made by London to those superstitious pilgrimswho feel it the mother-city of their race, the distributing heart oftheir traditional life. Certain characteristics of the dusky Babylon, certain aspects, phases, features, "say" more to the American spiritualear than anything else in Europe. The influence of these things onSearle it charmed me to note. His observation I soon saw to be, asI pronounced it to him, searching and caressing. His almost morbidappetite for any over-scoring of time, well-nigh extinct from longinanition, threw the flush of its revival into his face and his talk. 

II

We looked out the topography of Middleshire in a county-guide, whichspoke highly, as the phrase is, of Lackley Park, and took up our abode, our journey ended, at a wayside inn where, in the days of leisure, thecoach must have stopped for luncheon and burnished pewters of rusticale been handed up as straight as possible to outsiders athirst withthe sense of speed. We stopped here for mere gaping joy of itssteep-thatched roof, its latticed windows, its hospitable porch, andallowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweetsentimental observance of the land before approaching the particularbusiness that had drawn us on. The region I allude to is a compendiumof the general physiognomy of England. The noble friendliness of thescenery, its latent old-friendliness, the way we scarcely knew whetherwe were looking at it for the first or the last time, made it arrest usat every step. The countryside, in the full warm rains of the lastof April, had burst into sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of thehedgerows had turned into blooming screens, the sodden verdure of lawnand meadow been washed over with a lighter brush. We went forth withoutloss of time for a long walk on the great grassy hills, smooth arrestedcentral billows of some primitive upheaval, from the summits of whichyou find half England unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the scope of your vision, commingle their green exhalations. Closely beneath us lay the dark rich hedgy flats and the copse-chequeredslopes, white with the blossom of apples. At widely opposite points ofthe expanse two great towers of cathedrals rose sharply out of a reddishblur of habitation, taking the mild English light. 

We gave an irrepressible attention to this same solar reserve, and foundin it only a refinement of art. The sky never was empty and never idle;the clouds were continually at play for our benefit. Over againstus, from our station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, condensed and shifted, blotting the blue with sullen rain-spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of grey, bursting intoan explosion of light or melting into a drizzle of silver. We made ourway along the rounded ridge of the downs and reached, by a descent, through slanting angular fields, green to cottage-doors, a russetvillage that beckoned us from the heart of the maze in which the hedgeswrapped it up. Close beside it, I admit, the roaring train bounces outof a hole in the hills; yet there broods upon this charming hamlet anold-time quietude that makes a violation of confidence of naming it sofar away. We struck through a narrow lane, a green lane, dim with itsbarriers of hawthorn; it led us to a superb old farmhouse, now ratherrudely jostled by the multiplied roads and by-ways that have reduced itsancient appanage. It stands there in stubborn picturesqueness, doggedlysubmitting to be pointed out and sketched. It is a wonderful image ofthe domiciliary conditions of the past--cruelly complete; with bendedbeams and joists, beneath the burden of gables, that seem to ache andgroan with memories and regrets. The short low windows, where lead andglass combine equally to create an inward gloom, retain their opacity asa part of the primitive idea of defence. Such an old house provokes onthe part of an American a luxury of respect. So propped and patched, sotinkered with clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its centralEnglish sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations, so humanised with agesof use and touches of beneficent affection, it seemed to offer to ourgrateful eyes a small rude symbol of the great English social order. Passing out upon the highroad, we came to the common browsing-patch, the "village-green" of the tales of our youth. Nothing was absent: theshaggy mouse-coloured donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and hugeproboscis, the geese, the old woman--THE old woman, in person, withher red cloak and her black bonnet, frilled about the face anddouble-frilled beside her decent placid cheeks--the towering ploughmanwith his white smock-frock puckered on chest and back, his shortcorduroys, his mighty calves, his big red rural face. We greeted thesethings as children greet the loved pictures in a storybook lost andmourned and found again. We recognised them as one recognises thehandwriting on letter-backs. Beside the road we saw a ploughboy straddlewhistling on a stile, and he had the merit of being not only a ploughboybut a Gainsborough. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of ameadow, a footpath wandered like a streak drawn by a finger over asurface of fine plush. We followed it from field to field and fromstile to stile; it was all adorably the way to church. At the church wefinally arrived, lost in its rook-haunted churchyard, hidden from theworkday world by the broad stillness of pastures--a grey, grey tower, ahuge black yew, a cluster of village-graves with crooked headstones andprotrusions that had settled and sunk. The place seemed so to ache withconsecration that my sensitive companion gave way to the force of it. 

"You must bury me here, you know"--he caught at my arm. "It's the firstplace of worship I've seen in my life. How it makes a Sunday where itstands!"

It took the Church, we agreed, to make churches, but we had the sensethe next day of seeing still better why. We walked over some sevenmiles, to the nearer of the two neighbouring seats of that lesson; andall through such a mist of local colour that we felt ourselves a pairof Smollett's pedestrian heroes faring tavernward for a night ofadventures. As we neared the provincial city we saw the steepled mass ofthe cathedral, long and high, rise far into the cloud-freckled blue; andas we got closer stopped on a bridge and looked down at the reflexion ofthe solid minster in a yellow stream. Going further yet we enteredthe russet town--where surely Miss Austen's heroines, in chariotsand curricles, must often have come a-shopping for their sandals andmittens; we lounged in the grassed and gravelled precinct and gazedinsatiably at that most soul-soothing sight, the waning wastingafternoon light, the visible ether that feels the voices of the chimescling far aloft to the quiet sides of the cathedral-tower; saw it lingerand nestle and abide, as it loves to do on all perpendicular spaces, converting them irresistibly into registers and dials; tasted too, asdeeply, of the peculiar stillness of this place of priests; saw a rosyEnglish lad come forth and lock the door of the old foundation-schoolthat dovetailed with cloister and choir, and carry his big responsiblekey into one of the quiet canonical houses: and then stood musingtogether on the effect on one's mind of having in one's boyhood gone andcome through cathedral-shades as a King's scholar, and yet kept ruddywith much cricket in misty river meadows. On the third morning we betookourselves to Lackley, having learned that parts of the "grounds" wereopen to visitors, and that indeed on application the house was sometimesshown. 

Within the range of these numerous acres the declining spurs of thehills continued to undulate and subside. A long avenue wound and circledfrom the outermost gate through an untrimmed woodland, whence youglanced at further slopes and glades and copses and bosky recesses--ateverything except the limits of the place. It was as free and untendedas I had found a few of the large loose villas of old Italy, and I wasstill never to see the angular fact of English landlordism muffle itselfin so many concessions. The weather had just become perfect; it was oneof the dozen exquisite days of the English year--days stamped with apurity unknown in climates where fine weather is cheap. It was as if themellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which starred thedark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had beenmeted out to us by the cubic foot--distilled from an alchemist'scrucible. From this pastoral abundance we moved upon the more composedscene, the park proper--passed through a second lodge-gate, withweather-worn gilding on its twisted bars, to the smooth slopes where thegreat trees stood singly and the tame deer browsed along the bed ofa woodland stream. Here before us rose the gabled grey front of theTudor-time, developed and terraced and gardened to some later loss, aswe were afterwards to know, of type. 

"Here you can wander all day, " I said to Searle, "like an exiledprince who has come back on tiptoe and hovers about the dominion of theusurper. "

"To think of 'others' having hugged this all these years!" he answered. "I know what I am, but what might I have been? What do such places makeof a man?"

"I dare say he gets stupidly used to them, " I said. "But I dare say too, even then, that when you scratch the mere owner you find the perfectlover. "

"What a perfect scene and background it forms!" my friend, however, had meanwhile gone on. "What legends, what histories it knows! My heartreally breaks with all I seem to guess. There's Tennyson's Talking Oak!What summer days one could spend here! How I could lounge the rest of mylife away on this turf of the middle ages! Haven't I some maiden-cousinin that old hall, or grange, or court--what in the name of enchantmentdo you call the thing?--who would give me kind leave?" And then heturned almost fiercely upon me. "Why did you bring me here? Why did youdrag me into this distraction of vain regrets?"

At this moment there passed within call a decent lad who had emergedfrom the gardens and who might have been an underling in the stables. Ihailed him and put the question of our possible admittance to the house. He answered that the master was away from home, but that he thought itprobable the housekeeper would consent to do the honours. I passed myarm into Searle's. "Come, " I said; "drain the cup, bitter-sweet thoughit be. We must go in. " We hastened slowly and approached the fine front. The house was one of the happiest fruits of its freshly-feeling era, a multitudinous cluster of fair gables and intricate chimneys, braveprojections and quiet recesses, brown old surfaces weathered to silverand mottled roofs that testified not to seasons but to centuries. Twobroad terraces commanded the wooded horizon. Our appeal was answered bya butler who condescended to our weakness. He renewed the assertion thatMr. Searle was away from home, but he would himself lay our case beforethe housekeeper. We would be so good, however, as to give him our cards. This request, following so directly on the assertion that Mr. Searlewas absent, was rather resented by my companion. "Surely not for thehousekeeper. "

The butler gave a diplomatic cough. "Miss Searle is at home, sir. "

"Yours alone will have to serve, " said my friend. I took out a card andpencil and wrote beneath my name NEW YORK. As I stood with the pencilpoised a temptation entered into it. Without in the least consideringproprieties or results I let my implement yield--I added above my namethat of Mr. Clement Searle. What would come of it?

Before many minutes the housekeeper waited upon us--a fresh rosy littleold woman in a clean dowdy cap and a scanty sprigged gown; a quaintcareful person, but accessible to the tribute of our pleasure, to saynothing of any other. She had the accent of the country, but the mannersof the house. Under her guidance we passed through a dozen apartments, duly stocked with old pictures, old tapestry, old carvings, old armour, with a hundred ornaments and treasures. The pictures were especiallyvaluable. The two Vandykes, the trio of rosy Rubenses, the sole andsombre Rembrandt, glowed with conscious authenticity. A Claude, aMurillo, a Greuze, a couple of Gainsboroughs, hung there with highcomplacency. Searle strolled about, scarcely speaking, pale and grave, with bloodshot eyes and lips compressed. He uttered no comment on whatwe saw--he asked but a question or two. Missing him at last from my sideI retraced my steps and found him in a room we had just left, on a fadedold ottoman and with his elbows on his knees and his face buried inhis hands. Before him, ranged on a great credence, was a magnificentcollection of old Italian majolica; plates of every shape, with theirglaze of happy colour, jugs and vases nobly bellied and embossed. Thereseemed to rise before me, as I looked, a sudden vision of the youngEnglish gentleman who, eighty years ago, had travelled by slow stages toItaly and been waited on at his inn by persuasive toymen. "What is it, my dear man?" I asked. "Are you unwell?"

He uncovered his haggard face and showed me the flush of a consciousnesssharper, I think, to myself than to him. "A memory of the past!There comes back to me a china vase that used to stand on the parlourmantel-shelf when I was a boy, with a portrait of General Jacksonpainted on one side and a bunch of flowers on the other. How long do yousuppose that majolica has been in the family?"

"A long time probably. It was brought hither in the last century, intoold, old England, out of old, old Italy, by some contemporary dandy witha taste for foreign gimcracks. Here it has stood for a hundred years, keeping its clear firm hues in this quiet light that has never sought toadvertise it. "

Searle sprang to his feet. "I say, for mercy's sake, take me away! Ican't stand this sort of thing. Before I know it I shall do somethingscandalous. I shall steal some of their infernal crockery. I shallproclaim my identity and assert my rights. I shall go blubbering to MissSearle and ask her in pity's name to 'put me up. '"

If he could ever have been said to threaten complications he rathervisibly did so now. I began to regret my officious presentation ofhis name and prepared without delay to lead him out of the house. Weovertook the housekeeper in the last room of the series, a small unusedboudoir over whose chimney-piece hung a portrait of a young man in apowdered wig and a brocaded waistcoat. I was struck with his resemblanceto my companion while our guide introduced him. "This is Mr. ClementSearle, Mr. Searle's great-uncle, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He died young, poor gentleman; he perished at sea, going to America. "

"He was the young buck who brought the majolica out of Italy, " Isupplemented. 

"Indeed, sir, I believe he did, " said the housekeeper without wonder. 

"He's the image of you, my dear Searle, " I further observed. 

"He's remarkably like the gentleman, saving his presence, " said thehousekeeper. 

My friend stood staring. "Clement Searle--at sea--going to America--?"he broke out. Then with some sharpness to our old woman: "Why the devildid he go to America?"

"Why indeed, sir? You may well ask. I believe he had kinsfolk there. Itwas for them to come to him. "

Searle broke into a laugh. "It was for them to come to him! Well, well, "he said, fixing his eyes on our guide, "they've come to him at last!"

She blushed like a wrinkled rose-leaf. "Indeed, sir, I verily believeyou're one of US!"

"My name's the name of that beautiful youth, " Searle went on. "Dearkinsman I'm happy to meet you! And what do you think of this?" hepursued as he grasped me by the arm. "I have an idea. He perished atsea. His spirit came ashore and wandered about in misery till it gotanother incarnation--in this poor trunk!" And he tapped his hollowchest. "Here it has rattled about these forty years, beating its wingsagainst its rickety cage, begging to be taken home again. And I neverknew what was the matter with me! Now at last the bruised spirit canescape!"

Our old lady gaped at a breadth of appreciation--if not at thedisclosure of a connexion--beyond her. The scene was reallyembarrassing, and my confusion increased as we became aware of anotherpresence. A lady had appeared in the doorway and the housekeeper droppedjust audibly: "Miss Searle!" My first impression of Miss Searle was thatshe was neither young nor beautiful. She stood without confidence on thethreshold, pale, trying to smile and twirling my card in her fingers. I immediately bowed. Searle stared at her as if one of the pictures hadstepped out of its frame. 

"If I'm not mistaken one of you gentlemen is Mr. Clement Searle, " thelady adventured. 

"My friend's Mr. Clement Searle, " I took upon myself to reply. "Allow meto add that I alone am responsible for your having received his name. "

"I should have been sorry not to--not to see him, " said Miss Searle, beginning to blush. "Your being from America has led me--perhaps tointrude!"

"The intrusion, madam, has been on our part. And with just thatexcuse--that we come from so far away. "

Miss Searle, while I spoke, had fixed her eyes on my friend as he stoodsilent beneath Sir Joshua's portrait. The housekeeper, agitated andmystified, fairly let herself go. "Heaven preserve us, Miss! It's yourgreat-uncle's picture come to life. "

"I'm not mistaken then, " said Miss Searle--"we must be distantlyrelated. " She had the air of the shyest of women, for whom it was almostanguish to make an advance without help. Searle eyed her with gentlewonder from head to foot, and I could easily read his thoughts. Thisthen was his maiden-cousin, prospective mistress of these hereditarytreasures. She was of some thirty-five years of age, taller than wasthen common and perhaps stouter than is now enjoined. She had smallkind grey eyes, a considerable quantity of very light-brown hair and asmiling well-formed mouth. She was dressed in a lustreless blacksatin gown with a short train. Disposed about her neck was a bluehandkerchief, and over this handkerchief, in many convolutions, a stringof amber beads. Her appearance was singular; she was large yet somehowvague, mature yet undeveloped. Her manner of addressing us spoke of allsorts of deep diffidences. Searle, I think, had prefigured to himselfsome proud cold beauty of five-and-twenty; he was relieved at findingthe lady timid and not obtrusively fair. He at once had an excellenttone. 

"We're distant cousins, I believe. I'm happy to claim a relationshipwhich you're so good as to remember. I hadn't counted on your knowinganything about me. "

"Perhaps I've done wrong. " And Miss Searle blushed and smiled anew. "ButI've always known of there being people of our blood in America, andhave often wondered and asked about them--without ever learning much. To-day, when this card was brought me and I understood a Clement Searleto be under our roof as a stranger, I felt I ought to do something. But, you know, I hardly knew what. My brother's in London. I've done what Ithink he would have done. Welcome as a cousin. " And with a resolutionthat ceased to be awkward she put out her hand. 

"I'm welcome indeed if he would have done it half so graciously!" AgainSearle, taking her hand, acquitted himself beautifully. 

"You've seen what there is, I think, " Miss Searle went on. "Perhaps nowyou'll have luncheon. " We followed her into a small breakfast-room wherea deep bay window opened on the mossy flags of a terrace. Here, for somemoments, she remained dumb and abashed, as if resting from a measurableeffort. Searle too had ceased to overflow, so that I had to relieve thesilence. It was of course easy to descant on the beauties of park andmansion, and as I did so I observed our hostess. She had no arts, noimpulses nor graces--scarce even any manners; she was queerly, almostfrowsily dressed; yet she pleased me well. She had an antique sweetness, a homely fragrance of old traditions. To be so simple, among thosecomplicated treasures, so pampered and yet so fresh, so modest and yetso placid, told of just the spacious leisure in which Searle and I hadimagined human life to be steeped in such places as that. This figurewas to the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood what a fact is to a fairy-tale, an interpretation to a myth. We, on our side, were to our hostesssubjects of a curiosity not cunningly veiled. 

"I should like so to go abroad!" she exclaimed suddenly, as if she meantus to take the speech for an expression of interest in ourselves. 

"Have you never been?" one of us asked. 

"Only once. Three years ago my brother took me to Switzerland. Wethought it extremely beautiful. Except for that journey I've alwayslived here. I was born in this house. It's a dear old place indeed, andI know it well. Sometimes one wants a change. " And on my asking herhow she spent her time and what society she saw, "Of course it's veryquiet, " she went on, proceeding by short steps and simple statements, inthe manner of a person called upon for the first time to analyse to thatextent her situation. "We see very few people. I don't think there aremany nice ones hereabouts. At least we don't know them. Our own family'svery small. My brother cares for nothing but riding and books. He hada great sorrow ten years ago. He lost his wife and his only son, a dearlittle boy, who of course would have had everything. Do you know thatthat makes me the heir, as they've done something--I don't quiteknow what--to the entail? Poor old me! Since his loss my brother haspreferred to be quite alone. I'm sorry he's away. But you must wait tillhe comes back. I expect him in a day or two. " She talked more and more, as if our very strangeness led her on, about her circumstances, hersolitude, her bad eyes, so that she couldn't read, her flowers, herferns, her dogs, and the vicar, recently presented to the living byher brother and warranted quite safe, who had lately begun to light hisaltar candles; pausing every now and then to gasp in self-surprise, yet, in the quaintest way in the world, keeping up her story as if it werea slow rather awkward old-time dance, a difficult pas seul in whichshe would have been better with more practice, but of which she mustcomplete the figure. Of all the old things I had seen in England thisexhibited mind of Miss Searle's seemed to me the oldest, the most handeddown and taken for granted; fenced and protected as it was by conventionand precedent and usage, thoroughly acquainted with its subordinateplace. I felt as if I were talking with the heroine of a last-centurynovel. As she talked she rested her dull eyes on her kinsman withwondering kindness. At last she put it to him: "Did you mean to go awaywithout asking for us?"

"I had thought it over, Miss Searle, and had determined not to troubleyou. You've shown me how unfriendly I should have been. "

"But you knew of the place being ours, and of our relationship?"

"Just so. It was because of these things that I came down here--becauseof them almost that I came to England. I've always liked to think ofthem, " said my companion. 

"You merely wished to look then? We don't pretend to be much to lookat. "

He waited; her words were too strange. "You don't know what you are, Miss Searle. "

"You like the old place then?"

Searle looked at her again in silence. "If I could only tell you!" hesaid at last. 

"Do tell me. You must come and stay with us. "

It moved him to an oddity of mirth. "Take care, take care--I shouldsurprise you! I'm afraid I should bore you. I should never leave you. "

"Oh you'd get homesick--for your real home!"

At this he was still more amused. "By the way, tell Miss Searle aboutour real home, " he said to me. And he stepped, through the window, outupon the terrace, followed by two beautiful dogs, a setter and a youngstag-hound who from the moment we came in had established the fondestrelation with him. Miss Searle looked at him, while he went, as if shevaguely yearned over him; it began to be plain that she was interestedin her exotic cousin. I suddenly recalled the last words I had heardspoken by my friend's adviser in London and which, in a very crude form, had reference to his making a match with this lady. If only Miss Searlecould be induced to think of that, and if one had but the tact to put itin a light to her! Something assured me that her heart was virgin-soil, that the flower of romantic affection had never bloomed there. If Imight just sow the seed! There seemed to shape itself within her theperfect image of one of the patient wives of old. 

"He has lost his heart to England, " I said. "He ought to have been bornhere. "

"And yet he doesn't look in the least an Englishman, " she still ratherguardedly prosed. 

"Oh it isn't his looks, poor fellow. "

"Of course looks aren't everything. I never talked with a foreignerbefore; but he talks as I have fancied foreigners. "

"Yes, he's foreign enough. "

"Is he married?"

"His wife's dead and he's all alone in the world. "

"Has he much property?"

"None to speak of. "

"But he has means to travel. "

I meditated. "He has not expected to travel far, " I said at last. "Youknow, he's in very poor health. "

"Poor gentleman! So I supposed. "

"But there's more of him to go on with than he thinks. He came herebecause he wanted to see your place before he dies. "

"Dear me--kind man!" And I imagined in the quiet eyes the hint of apossible tear. "And he was going away without my seeing him?"

"He's very modest, you see. "

"He's very much the gentleman. "

I couldn't but smile. "He's ALL--"

At this moment we heard on the terrace a loud harsh cry. "It's the greatpeacock!" said Miss Searle, stepping to the window and passing out whileI followed her. Below us, leaning on the parapet, stood our appreciativefriend with his arm round the neck of the setter. Before him onthe grand walk strutted the familiar fowl of gardens--a splendidspecimen--with ruffled neck and expanded tail. The other dog hadapparently indulged in a momentary attempt to abash the gorgeous biped, but at Searle's summons had bounded back to the terrace and leaped uponthe ledge, where he now stood licking his new friend's face. The scenehad a beautiful old-time air: the peacock flaunting in the foregroundlike the genius of stately places; the broad terrace, which flatteredan innate taste of mine for all deserted walks where people may have satafter heavy dinners to drink coffee in old Sevres and where the stiffbrocade of women's dresses may have rustled over grass or gravel; andfar around us, with one leafy circle melting into another, the timberedacres of the park. "The very beasts have made him welcome, " I noted aswe rejoined our companion. 

"The peacock has done for you, Mr. Searle, " said his cousin, "what hedoes only for very great people. A year ago there came here a greatperson--a grand old lady--to see my brother. I don't think that sincethen he has spread his tail as wide for any one else--not by a dozenfeathers. "

"It's not alone the peacock, " said Searle. "Just now there came slippingacross my path a little green lizard, the first I ever saw, the lizardof literature! And if you've a ghost, broad daylight though it be, I expect to see him here. Do you know the annals of your house, MissSearle?"

"Oh dear, no! You must ask my brother for all those things. "

"You ought to have a collection of legends and traditions. You ought tohave loves and murders and mysteries by the roomful. I shall be ashamedof you if you haven't. "

"Oh Mr. Searle! We've always been a very well-behaved family, " she quiteseriously pleaded. "Nothing out of the way has ever happened, I think. "

"Nothing out of the way? Oh that won't do! We've managed better thanthat in America. Why I myself!"--and he looked at her ruefully enough, but enjoying too his idea that he might embody the social scandal orpoint to the darkest drama of the Searles. "Suppose I should turn outa better Searle than you--better than you nursed here in romance andextravagance? Come, don't disappoint me. You've some history among youall, you've some poetry, you've some accumulation of legend. I've beenfamished all my days for these things. Don't you understand? Ah youcan't understand! Tell me, " he rambled on, "something tremendous. WhenI think of what must have happened here; of the lovers who must havestrolled on this terrace and wandered under the beeches, of all thefigures and passions and purposes that must have haunted these walls!When I think of the births and deaths, the joys and sufferings, theyoung hopes and the old regrets, the rich experience of life--!" Hefaltered a moment with the increase of his agitation. His humour ofdismay at a threat of the commonplace in the history he felt about himhad turned to a deeper reaction. I began to fear however that he wasreally losing his head. He went on with a wilder play. "To see it allcalled up there before me, if the Devil alone could do it I'd make abargain with the Devil! Ah Miss Searle, " he cried, "I'm a most unhappyman!"

"Oh dear, oh dear!" she almost wailed while I turned half away. 

"Look at that window, that dear little window!" I turned back to see himpoint to a small protruding oriel, above us, relieved against the purplebrickwork, framed in chiselled stone and curtained with ivy. 

"It's my little room, " she said. 

"Of course it's a woman's room. Think of all the dear faces--all of themso mild and yet so proud--that have looked out of that lattice, and ofall the old-time women's lives whose principal view of the world hasbeen this quiet park! Every one of them was a cousin of mine. And you, dear lady, you're one of them yet. " With which he marched toward her andtook her large white hand. She surrendered it, blushing to her eyesand pressing her other hand to her breast. "You're a woman of the past. You're nobly simple. It has been a romance to see you. It doesn't matterwhat I say to you. You didn't know me yesterday, you'll not know meto-morrow. Let me to-day do a mad sweet thing. Let me imagine in you thespirit of all the dead women who have trod the terrace-flags that liehere like sepulchral tablets in the pavement of a church. Let me say Idelight in you!"--he raised her hand to his lips. She gently withdrew itand for a moment averted her face. Meeting her eyes the next instant Isaw the tears had come. The Sleeping Beauty was awake. 

There followed an embarrassed pause. An issue was suddenly presented bythe appearance of the butler bearing a letter. "A telegram, Miss, " heannounced. 

"Oh what shall I do?" cried Miss Searle. "I can't open a telegram. Cousin, help me. "

Searle took the missive, opened it and read aloud: "I shall be home todinner. Keep the American. "

III

"KEEP the American!" Miss Searle, in compliance with the injunctionconveyed in her brother's telegram (with something certainly oftelegraphic curtness), lost no time in expressing the pleasure it wouldgive her that our friend should remain. "Really you must, " she said;and forthwith repaired to the house-keeper to give orders for thepreparation of a room. 

"But how in the world did he know of my being here?" my companion put tome. 

I answered that he had probably heard from his solicitor of the other'svisit. "Mr. Simmons and that gentleman must have had another interviewsince your arrival in England. Simmons, for reasons of his own, hasmade known to him your journey to this neighbourhood, and Mr. Searle, learning this, has immediately taken for granted that you've formallypresented yourself to his sister. He's hospitably inclined and wishesher to do the proper thing by you. There may even, " I went on, "be morein it than that. I've my little theory that he's the very phoenix ofusurpers, that he has been very much struck with what the experts havehad to say for you, and that he wishes to have the originality of makingover to you your share--so limited after all--of the estate. "

"I give it up!" my friend mused. "Come what come will!"

"You, of course, " said Miss Searle, reappearing and turning to me, "areincluded in my brother's invitation. I've told them to see about a roomfor you. Your luggage shall immediately be sent for. "

It was arranged that I in person should be driven over to our little innand that I should return with our effects in time to meet Mr. Searle atdinner. On my arrival several hours later I was immediately conductedto my room. The servant pointed out to me that it communicated by adoor and a private passage with that of my fellow visitor. I made my wayalong this passage--a low narrow corridor with a broad latticed casementthrough which there streamed upon a series of grotesquely sculpturedoaken closets and cupboards the vivid animating glow of the westernsun--knocked at his door and, getting no answer, opened it. In anarmchair by the open window sat my friend asleep, his arms and legsrelaxed and head dropped on his breast. It was a great relief to see himrest thus from his rhapsodies, and I watched him for some moments beforewaking him. There was a faint glow of colour in his cheek and a lightexpressive parting of his lips, something nearer to ease and peace thanI had yet seen in him. It was almost happiness, it was almost health. Ilaid my hand on his arm and gently shook it. He opened his eyes, gazedat me a moment, vaguely recognised me, then closed them again. "Let medream, let me dream!"

"What are you dreaming about?"

A moment passed before his answer came. "About a tall woman in a quaintblack dress, with yellow hair and a sweet, sweet smile, and a soft lowdelicious voice! I'm in love with her. "

"It's better to see her than to dream about her, " I said. "Get up anddress; then we'll go down to dinner and meet her. "

"Dinner--dinner--?" And he gradually opened his eyes again. "Yes, uponmy word I shall dine!"

"Oh you're all right!" I declared for the twentieth time as he rose tohis feet. "You'll live to bury Mr. Simmons. " He told me he had spent thehours of my absence with Miss Searle--they had strolled together halfover the place. "You must be very intimate, " I smiled. 

"She's intimate with ME. Goodness knows what rigmarole I've treated herto!" They had parted an hour ago; since when, he believed, her brotherhad arrived. 

The slow-fading twilight was still in the great drawing-room when wecame down. The housekeeper had told us this apartment was rarely used, there being others, smaller and more convenient, for the same needs. It seemed now, however, to be occupied in my comrade's honour. At thefurthest end, rising to the roof like a royal tomb in a cathedral, wasa great chimney-piece of chiselled white marble, yellowed by time, inwhich a light fire was crackling. Before the fire stood a small shortman, with his hands behind him; near him was Miss Searle, so transformedby her dress that at first I scarcely knew her. There was in ourentrance and reception something remarkably chilling and solemn. Wemoved in silence up the long room; Mr. Searle advanced slowly, a dozensteps, to meet us; his sister stood motionless. I was conscious of hermasking her visage with a large white tinselled fan, and that her eyes, grave and enlarged, watched us intently over the top of it. The masterof Lackley grasped in silence the proffered hand of his kinsman and eyedhim from head to foot, suppressing, I noted, a start of surprise at hisresemblance to Sir Joshua's portrait. "This is a happy day. " And thenturning to me with an odd little sharp stare: "My cousin's friend is myfriend. " Miss Searle lowered her fan. 

The first thing that struck me in Mr. Searle's appearance was his verylimited stature, which was less by half a head than that of his sister. The second was the preternatural redness of his hair and beard. Theyintermingled over his ears and surrounded his head like a huge luridnimbus. His face was pale and attenuated, the face of a scholar, adilettante, a comparer of points and texts, a man who lives in a librarybending over books and prints and medals. At a distance it might havepassed for smooth and rather blankly composed; but on a nearer viewit revealed a number of wrinkles, sharply etched and scratched, of asingularly aged and refined effect. It was the complexion of a man ofsixty. His nose was arched and delicate, identical almost with the noseof my friend. His eyes, large and deep-set, had a kind of auburn glow, the suggestion of a keen metal red-hot--or, more plainly, were fullof temper and spirit. Imagine this physiognomy--grave and solemn, grotesquely solemn, in spite of the bushy brightness which made a sortof frame for it--set in motion by a queer, quick, defiant, perfunctory, preoccupied smile, and you will have an imperfect notion of theremarkable presence of our host; something better worth seeing andknowing, I perceived as I quite breathlessly took him in, than anythingwe had yet encountered. How thoroughly I had entered into sympathywith my poor picked-up friend, and how effectually I had associated mysensibilities with his own, I had not suspected till, within the shortfive minutes before the signal for dinner, I became aware, without hisgiving me the least hint, of his placing himself on the defensive. Toneither of us was Mr. Searle sympathetic. I might have guessed from herattitude that his sister entered into our thoughts. A marked change hadbeen wrought in her since the morning; during the hour, indeed--asI read in the light of the wondering glance he cast at her--that hadelapsed since her parting with her cousin. She had not yet recoveredfrom some great agitation. Her face was pale and she had clearlybeen crying. These notes of trouble gave her a new and quite perversedignity, which was further enhanced by something complimentary andcommemorative in her dress. 

Whether it was taste or whether it was accident I know not; but theamiable creature, as she stood there half in the cool twilight, half inthe arrested glow of the fire as it spent itself in the vastness of itsmarble cave, was a figure for a painter. She was habited in some fadedsplendour of sea-green crape and silk, a piece of millinery which, though it must have witnessed a number of dull dinners, preserved stilla festive air. Over her white shoulders she wore an ancient web of themost precious and venerable lace and about her rounded throat a singleseries of large pearls. I went in with her to dinner, and Mr. Searle, following with my friend, took his arm, as the latter afterwards toldme, and pretended jocosely to conduct him. As dinner proceeded thefeeling grew within me that a drama had begun to be played in which thethree persons before me were actors--each of a really arduous part. Thecharacter allotted to my friend, however, was certainly the least easyto represent with effect, though I overflowed with the desire that heshould acquit himself to his honour. I seemed to see him urge his fadedfaculties to take their cue and perform. The poor fellow tried to dohimself credit more seriously than ever in his old best days. With MissSearle, credulous passive and pitying, he had finally flung aside allvanity and propriety and shown the bottom of his fantastic heart. But with our host there might be no talking of nonsense nor takingof liberties; there and then, if ever, sat a consummate conservative, breathing the fumes of hereditary privilege and security. For an hour, accordingly, I saw my poor protege attempt, all in pain, to meet a newdecorum. He set himself the task of appearing very American, in orderthat his appreciation of everything Mr. Searle represented might seempurely disinterested. What his kinsman had expected him to be I knownot; but I made Mr. Searle out as annoyed, in spite of his exaggeratedurbanity, at finding him so harmless. Our host was not the man toshow his hand, but I think his best card had been a certain implicitconfidence that so provincial a parasite would hardly have good manners. 

He led the conversation to the country we had left; rather as if a leashhad been attached to the collar of some lumpish and half-domesticatedanimal the tendency of whose movements had to be recognised. He spoke ofit indeed as of some fabled planet, alien to the British orbit, latelyproclaimed to have the admixture of atmospheric gases requiredto support animal life, but not, save under cover of a liberalafterthought, to be admitted into one's regular conception of things. I, for my part, felt nothing but regret that the spheric smoothness ofhis universe should be disfigured by the extrusion even of suchinconsiderable particles as ourselves. 

"I knew in a general way of our having somehow ramified over there, " Mr. Searle mentioned; "but had scarcely followed it more than you pretend topick up the fruit your long-armed pear tree may drop, on the other sideof your wall, in your neighbour's garden. There was a man I knew atCambridge, a very odd fellow, a decent fellow too; he and I were rathercronies; I think he afterwards went to the Middle States. They'll be, I suppose, about the Mississippi? At all events, there was thatgreat-uncle of mine whom Sir Joshua painted. He went to America, but henever got there. He was lost at sea. You look enough like him to makeone fancy he DID get there and that you've kept him alive by one ofthose beastly processes--I think you have 'em over there: what do youcall it, 'putting up' things? If you're he you've not done a wise thingto show yourself here. He left a bad name behind him. There's a ghostwho comes sobbing about the house every now and then, the ghost of oneto whom he did a wrong. "

"Oh mercy ON us!" cried Miss Searle in simple horror. 

"Of course YOU know nothing of such things, " he rather dryly allowed. "You're too sound a sleeper to hear the sobbing of ghosts. "

"I'm sure I should like immensely to hear the sobbing of a ghost, " saidmy friend, the light of his previous eagerness playing up into his eyes. "Why does it sob? I feel as if that were what we've come above all tolearn. "

Mr. Searle eyed his audience a moment gaugingly; he held the balance asto measure his resources. He wished to do justice to his theme. Withthe long finger-nails of his left hand nervously playing against thetinkling crystal of his wineglass and his conscious eyes betraying that, small and strange as he sat there, he knew himself, to his pleasure andadvantage, remarkably impressive, he dropped into our untutored mindsthe sombre legend of his house. "Mr. Clement Searle, from all I gather, was a young man of great talents but a weak disposition. His mother wasleft a widow early in life, with two sons, of whom he was the elder andthe more promising. She educated him with the greatest affection andcare. Of course when he came to manhood she wished him to marry well. His means were quite sufficient to enable him to overlook the want ofmoney in his wife; and Mrs. Searle selected a young lady who possessed, as she conceived, every good gift save a fortune--a fine proud handsomegirl, the daughter of an old friend, an old lover I suspect, of her own. Clement, however, as it appeared, had either chosen otherwise or wasas yet unprepared to choose. The young lady opened upon him in vain thebattery of her attractions; in vain his mother urged her cause. Clementremained cold, insensible, inflexible. Mrs. Searle had a character whichappears to have gone out of fashion in my family nowadays; she was agreat manager, a maitresse-femme. A proud passionate imperious woman, she had had immense cares and ever so many law-suits; they had sharpenedher temper and her will. She suspected that her son's affections hadanother object, and this object she began to hate. Irritated by hisstubborn defiance of her wishes she persisted in her purpose. The moreshe watched him the more she was convinced he loved in secret. If heloved in secret of course he loved beneath him. He went about the placeall sombre and sullen and brooding. At last, with the rashness of anangry woman, she threatened to bring the young lady of her choice--who, by the way, seems to have been no shrinking blossom--to stay in thehouse. A stormy scene was the result. He threatened that if she didso he would leave the country and sail for America. She probablydisbelieved him; she knew him to be weak, but she overrated hisweakness. At all events the rejected one arrived and Clement Searledeparted. On a dark December day he took ship at Southampton. The twowomen, desperate with rage and sorrow, sat alone in this big house, mingling their tears and imprecations. A fortnight later, on ChristmasEve, in the midst of a great snowstorm long famous in the country, something happened that quickened their bitterness. A young woman, battered and chilled by the storm, gained entrance to the house and, making her way into the presence of the mistress and her guest, pouredout her tale. She was a poor curate's daughter out of some little holein Gloucestershire. Clement Searle had loved her--loved her all toowell! She had been turned out in wrath from her father's house; hismother at least might pity her--if not for herself then for the childshe was soon to bring forth. Hut the poor girl had been a second timetoo trustful. The women, in scorn, in horror, with blows possibly, droveher forth again into the storm. In the storm she wandered and in thedeep snow she died. Her lover, as you know, perished in that hard winterweather at sea; the news came to his mother late, but soon enough. We'rehaunted by the curate's daughter!"

Mr. Searle retailed this anecdote with infinite taste and point, thehappiest art; when he ceased there was a pause of some moments. "Ah wellwe may be!" Miss Searle then mournfully murmured. 

Searle blazed up into enthusiasm. "Of course, you know"--with which hebegan to blush violently--"I should be sorry to claim any identitywith the poor devil my faithless namesake. But I should be immenselygratified if the young lady's spirit, deceived by my resemblance, wereto mistake me for her cruel lover. She's welcome to the comfort of it. What one can do in the case I shall be glad to do. But can a ghost haunta ghost? I AM a ghost!"

Mr. Searle stared a moment and then had a subtle sneer. "I could almostbelieve you are!"

"Oh brother--and cousin!" cried Miss Searle with the gentlest yet mostappealing dignity. "How can you talk so horribly?" The horrible talk, however, evidently possessed a potent magic for my friend; and hisimagination, checked a while by the influence of his kinsman, beganagain to lead him a dance. From this moment he ceased to steer his frailbark, to care what he said or how he said it, so long as he expressedhis passionate appreciation of the scene around him. As he kept up thisstrain I ceased even secretly to wish he wouldn't. I have wondered sincethat I shouldn't have been annoyed by the way he reverted constantly tohimself. But a great frankness, for the time, makes its own law anda great passion its own channel. There was moreover an irresponsibleindescribable effect of beauty in everything his lips uttered. Freealike from adulation and from envy, the essence of his discourse was adivine apprehension, a romantic vision free as the flight of Ariel, ofthe poetry of his companions' situation and their contrasted generalirresponsiveness. 

"How does the look of age come?" he suddenly broke out at dessert. "Doesit come of itself, unobserved, unrecorded, unmeasured? Or do you woo itand set baits and traps for it, and watch it like the dawning brownnessof a meerschaum pipe, and make it fast, when it appears, just where itpeeps out, and light a votive taper beneath it and give thanks to itdaily? Or do you forbid it and fight it and resist it, and yet feel itsettling and deepening about you as irresistible as fate?"

"What the deuce is the man talking about?" said the smile of our host. 

"I found a little grey hair this morning, " Miss Searle incoherentlyprosed. 

"Well then I hope you paid it every respect!" cried her visitor. 

"I looked at it for a long time in my hand-glass, " she answered withmore presence of mind. 

"Miss Searle can for many years to come afford to be amused at greyhairs, " I interposed in the hope of some greater ease. It had itseffect. "Ten years from last Thursday I shall be forty-four, " she almostcomfortably smiled. 

"Well, that's just what I am, " said Searle. "If I had only come here tenyears ago! I should have had more time to enjoy the feast, but I shouldhave had less appetite. I needed first to get famished. "

"Oh why did you wait for that?" his entertainer asked. "To think ofthese ten years that we might have been enjoying you!" At the vision ofwhich waste and loss Mr. Searle had a fine shrill laugh. 

"Well, " my friend explained, "I always had a notion--a stupid vulgarnotion if there ever was one--that to come abroad properly one had tohave a pot of money. My pot was too nearly empty. At last I came with myempty pot!"

Mr. Searle had a wait for delicacy, but he proceeded. "You're reduced, you're--a--straitened?"

Our companion's very breath blew away the veil. "Reduced to nothing. Straitened to the clothes on my back!"

"You don't say so!" said Mr. Searle with a large vague gasp. "Well--well--well!" he added in a voice which might have meanteverything or nothing; and then, in his whimsical way, went on to finisha glass of wine. His searching eye, as he drank, met mine, and for amoment we each rather deeply sounded the other, to the effect no doubtof a slight embarrassment. "And you, " he said by way of carrying thisoff--"how about YOUR wardrobe?"

"Oh his!" cried my friend; "his wardrobe's immense. He could dress up aregiment!" He had drunk more champagne--I admit that the champagnewas good--than was from any point of view to have been desired. He wasrapidly drifting beyond any tacit dissuasion of mine. He was feverishand rash, and all attempt to direct would now simply irritate him. Aswe rose from the table he caught my troubled look. Passing his arm fora moment into mine, "This is the great night!" he strangely and softlysaid; "the night and the crisis that will settle me. "

Mr. Searle had caused the whole lower portion of the house to be thrownopen and a multitude of lights to be placed in convenient and effectivepositions. Such a marshalled wealth of ancient candlesticks andflambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the dusky wainscots, casting great luminous circles upon the pendent stiffness of sombretapestries, enhancing and completing with admirable effect the varietyand mystery of the great ancient house, they seemed to people the widerooms, as our little group passed slowly from one to another, with adim expectant presence. We had thus, in spite of everything, a wonderfulhour of it. Mr. Searle at once assumed the part of cicerone, and--I hadnot hitherto done him justice--Mr. Searle became almost agreeable. WhileI lingered behind with his sister he walked in advance with his kinsman. It was as if he had said: "Well, if you want the old place you shallhave it--so far as the impression goes!" He spared us no thrill--Ihad almost said no pang--of that experience. Carrying a tall silvercandlestick in his left hand, he raised it and lowered it and cast thelight hither and thither, upon pictures and hangings and carvings andcornices. He knew his house to perfection. He touched upon a hundredtraditions and memories, he threw off a cloud of rich reference toits earlier occupants. He threw off again, in his easy elegant way, adozen--happily lighter--anecdotes. His relative attended with a broodingdeference. Miss Searle and I meanwhile were not wholly silent. 

"I suppose that by this time you and your cousin are almost oldfriends, " I remarked. 

She trifled a moment with her fan and then raised her kind smalleyes. "Old friends--yet at the same time strangely new! My cousin, mycousin"--and her voice lingered on the word--"it seems so strange tocall him my cousin after thinking these many years that I've no one inthe world but my brother. But he's really so very odd!"

"It's not so much he as--well, as his situation, that deserves thatname, " I tried to reason. 

"I'm so sorry for his situation. I wish I could help it in some way. Heinterests me so much. " She gave a sweet-sounding sigh. "I wish I couldhave known him sooner--and better. He tells me he's but the shadow ofwhat he used to be. "

I wondered if he had been consciously practising on the sensibilities ofthis gentle creature. If he had I believed he had gained his point. Buthis position had in fact become to my sense so precarious that I hardlyventured to be glad. "His better self just now seems again to be takingshape, " I said. "It will have been a good deed on your part if you helpto restore him to all he ought to be. "

She met my idea blankly. "Dear me, what can I do?"

"Be a friend to him. Let him like you, let him love you. I dare say yousee in him now much to pity and to wonder at. But let him simply enjoya while the grateful sense of your nearness and dearness. He'll bea better and stronger man for it, and then you can love him, you canesteem him, without restriction. "

She fairly frowned for helplessness. "It's a hard part for poor stupidme to play!"

Her almost infantine innocence left me no choice but to be absolutelyfrank. "Did you ever play any part at all?"

She blushed as if I had been reproaching her with her insignificance. "Never! I think I've hardly lived. "

"You've begun to live now perhaps. You've begun to care for somethingelse than your old-fashioned habits. Pardon me if I seem rathermeddlesome; you know we Americans are very rough and ready. It's a greatmoment. I wish you joy!"

"I could almost believe you're laughing at me. I feel more trouble thanjoy. "

"Why do you feel trouble?"

She paused with her eyes fixed on our companions. "My cousin's arrival'sa great disturbance, " she said at last. 

"You mean you did wrong in coming to meet him? In that case the fault'smine. He had no intention of giving you the opportunity. "

"I certainly took too much on myself. But I can't find it in my heart toregret it. I never shall regret it! I did the only thing I COULD, heavenforgive me!"

"Heaven bless you, Miss Searle! Is any harm to come of it? I did theevil; let me bear the brunt!"

She shook her head gravely. "You don't know my brother!"

"The sooner I master the subject the better then, " I said. I couldn'thelp relieving myself--at least by the tone of my voice--of theantipathy with which, decidedly, this gentleman had inspired me. "Notperhaps that we should get on so well together!" After which, as sheturned away, "Are you VERY much afraid of him?" I added. 

She gave me a shuddering sidelong glance. "He's looking at me!"

He was placed with his back to us, holding a large Venetian hand-mirror, framed in chiselled silver, which he had taken from a shelf ofantiquities, just at such an angle that he caught the reflexion of hissister's person. It was evident that I too was under his attention, andwas resolved I wouldn't be suspected for nothing. "Miss Searle, " I saidwith urgency, "promise me something. "

She turned upon me with a start and a look that seemed to beg me tospare her. "Oh don't ask me--please don't!" It was as if she werestanding on the edge of a place where the ground had suddenly fallenaway, and had been called upon to make a leap. I felt retreat wasimpossible, however, and that it was the greater kindness to assist herto jump. 

"Promise me, " I repeated. 

Still with her eyes she protested. "Oh what a dreadful day!" she criedat last. 

"Promise me to let him speak to you alone if he should ask you--any wishyou may suspect on your brother's part notwithstanding. " She coloureddeeply. "You mean he has something so particular to say?"

"Something so particular!"

"Poor cousin!"

"Well, poor cousin! But promise me. "

"I promise, " she said, and moved away across the long room and out ofthe door. 

"You're in time to hear the most delightful story, " Searle began to meas I rejoined him and his host. They were standing before an old sombreportrait of a lady in the dress of Queen Anne's time, whose ill-paintedflesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-light, against her dark draperyand background. "This is Mrs. Margaret Searle--a sort of BeatrixEsmond--qui se passait ses fantaisies. She married a paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler, in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs. Margaret, you must have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she lookslike Miss Searle! But pray go on. What came of it all?"

Our companion watched him with an air of distaste for his boisteroushomage and of pity for his crude imagination. But he took up the talewith an effective dryness: "I found a year ago, in a box of very oldpapers, a letter from the lady in question to a certain Cynthia Searle, her elder sister. It was dated from Paris and dreadfully ill-spelled. It contained a most passionate appeal for pecuniary assistance. Shehad just had a baby, she was starving and dreadfully neglected by herhusband--she cursed the day she had left England. It was a most dismalproduction. I never heard she found means to return. "

"So much for marrying a Frenchman!" I said sententiously. 

Our host had one of his waits. "This is the only lady of the family whoever was taken in by an adventurer. "

"Does Miss Searle know her history?" asked my friend with a stare at therounded whiteness of the heroine's cheek. 

"Miss Searle knows nothing!" said our host with expression. 

"She shall know at least the tale of Mrs. Margaret, " their guestreturned; and he walked rapidly away in search of her. 

Mr. Searle and I pursued our march through the lighted rooms. "You'vefound a cousin with a vengeance, " I doubtless awkwardly enough laughed. 

"Ah a vengeance?" my entertainer stiffly repeated. 

"I mean that he takes as keen an interest in your annals and possessionsas yourself. "

"Oh exactly so! He tells me he's a bad invalid, " he added in a moment. "I should never have supposed it. "

"Within the past few hours he's a changed man. Your beautiful house, your extreme kindness, have refreshed him immensely. " Mr. Searle utteredthe vague ejaculation with which self-conscious Britons so often betraythe concussion of any especial courtesy of speech. But he followed thisby a sudden odd glare and the sharp declaration: "I'm an honest man!" Iwas quite prepared to assent; but he went on with a fury of frankness, as if it were the first time in his life he had opened himself to anyone, as if the process were highly disagreeable and he were hurryingthrough it as a task. "An honest man, mind you! I know nothing about Mr. Clement Searle! I never expected to see him. He has been to me a--a--!"And here he paused to select a word which should vividly enough expresswhat, for good or for ill, his kinsman represented. "He has been to mean Amazement! I've no doubt he's a most amiable man. You'll not deny, however, that he's a very extraordinary sort of person. I'm sorry he'sill. I'm sorry he's poor. He's my fiftieth cousin. Well and good. I'man honest man. He shall not have it to say that he wasn't received at myhouse. "

"He too, thank heaven, is an honest man!" I smiled. 

"Why the devil then, " cried Mr. Searle, turning almost fiercely on me, "has he put forward this underhand claim to my property?"

The question, quite ringing out, flashed backward a gleam of light uponthe demeanour of our host and the suppressed agitation of his sister. Inan instant the jealous gentleman revealed itself. For a moment I was sosurprised and scandalised at the directness of his attack that I lackedwords to reply. As soon as he had spoken indeed Mr. Searle appeared tofeel he had been wanting in form. "Pardon me, " he began afresh, "if Ispeak of this matter with heat. But I've been more disgusted than Ican say to hear, as I heard this morning from my solicitor, of theextraordinary proceedings of Mr. Clement Searle. Gracious goodness, sir, for what does the man take me? He pretends to the Lord knows whatfantastic admiration for my place. Let him then show his respect for itby not taking too many liberties! Let him, with his high-flown paradeof loyalty, imagine a tithe of what _I_ feel! I love my estate; it's mypassion, my conscience, my life! Am I to divide it up at this time ofday with a beggarly foreigner--a man without means, without appearance, without proof, a pretender, an adventurer, a chattering mountebank? Ithought America boasted having lands for all men! Upon my soul, sir, I've never been so shocked in my life. "

I paused for some moments before speaking, to allow his passion fully toexpend itself and to flicker up again if it chose; for so far as I wasconcerned in the whole awkward matter I but wanted to deal with himdiscreetly. "Your apprehensions, sir, " I said at last, "your notunnatural surprise, perhaps, at the candour of our interest, have actedtoo much on your nerves. You're attacking a man of straw, a creatureof unworthy illusion; though I'm sadly afraid you've wounded a manof spirit and conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on yourestate, in which case your agitation is superfluous; or he HAS a validclaim--"

Mr. Searle seized my arm and glared at me; his pale face paler stillwith the horror of my suggestion, his great eyes of alarm glowing andhis strange red hair erect and quivering. "A valid claim!" he shouted. "Let him try it--let him bring it into court!"

We had emerged into the great hall and stood facing the main doorway. The door was open into the portico, through the stone archway of whichI saw the garden glitter in the blue light of a full moon. As the masterof the house uttered the words I have just repeated my companion cameslowly up into the porch from without, bareheaded, bright in the outermoonlight, dark in the shadow of the archway, and bright again in thelamplight at the entrance of the hall. As he crossed the threshold thebutler made an appearance at the head of the staircase on our left, faltering visibly a moment at sight of Mr. Searle; after which, notingmy friend, he gravely descended. He bore in his hand a small silvertray. On the tray, gleaming in the light of the suspended lamp, lay afolded note. Clement Searle came forward, staring a little and startled, I think, by some quick nervous prevision of a catastrophe. The butlerapplied the match to the train. He advanced to my fellow visitor, allsolemnly, with the offer of his missive. Mr. Searle made a movement asif to spring forward, but controlled himself. "Tottenham!" he called ina strident voice. 

"Yes, sir!" said Tottenham, halting. 

"Stand where you are. For whom is that note?"

"For Mr. Clement Searle, " said the butler, staring straight before himand dissociating himself from everything. 

"Who gave it to you?"

"Mrs. Horridge, sir. " This personage, I afterwards learned, was ourfriend the housekeeper. 

"Who gave it Mrs. Horridge?"

There was on Tottenham's part just an infinitesimal pause beforereplying. 

"My dear sir, " broke in Searle, his equilibrium, his ancient ease, completely restored by the crisis, "isn't that rather my business?"

"What happens in my house is my business, and detestable things seem tobe happening. " Our host, it was clear, now so furiously detested themthat I was afraid he would snatch the bone of contention without moreceremony. "Bring me that thing!" he cried; on which Tottenham stifflymoved to obey. 

"Really this is too much!" broke out my companion, affronted andhelpless. 

So indeed it struck me, and before Mr. Searle had time to take the noteI possessed myself of it. "If you've no consideration for your sisterlet a stranger at least act for her. " And I tore the disputed objectinto a dozen pieces. 

"In the name of decency, what does this horrid business mean?" mycompanion quavered. 

Mr. Searle was about to open fire on him, but at that moment our hostessappeared on the staircase, summoned evidently by our high-pitchedcontentious voices. She had exchanged her dinner-dress for a darkwrapper, removed her ornaments and begun to disarrange her hair, athick tress of which escaped from the comb. She hurried down with apale questioning face. Feeling distinctly that, for ourselves, immediatedeparture was in the air, and divining Mr. Tottenham to be a person ofa few deep-seated instincts and of much latent energy, I seized theopportunity to request him, sotto voce, to send a carriage to the doorwithout delay. "And put up our things, " I added. 

Our host rushed at his sister and grabbed the white wrist that escapedfrom the loose sleeve of her dress. "What was in that note?" he quitehissed at her. 

Miss Searle looked first at its scattered fragments and then at hercousin. "Did you read it?"

"No, but I thank you for it!" said Searle. 

Her eyes, for an instant, communicated with his own as I think they hadnever, never communicated with any other source of meaning; then shetransferred them to her brother's face, where the sense went out ofthem, only to leave a dull sad patience. But there was something evenin this flat humility that seemed to him to mock him, so that he flushedcrimson with rage and spite and flung her away. "You always were anidiot! Go to bed. "

In poor Searle's face as well the gathered serenity had been by thistime all blighted and distorted and the reflected brightness of hishappy day turned to blank confusion. "Have I been dealing these threehours with a madman?" he woefully cried. 

"A madman, yes, if you will! A man mad with the love of his home and thesense of its stability. I've held my tongue till now, but you've beentoo much for me. Who the devil are you, and what and why and whence?"the terrible little man continued. "From what paradise of fools do youcome that you fancy I shall make over to you, for the asking, a partof my property and my life? I'm forsooth, you ridiculous person, to goshares with you? Prove your preposterous claim! There isn't THAT in it!"And he kicked one of the bits of paper on the floor. 

Searle received this broadside gaping. Then turning away he went andseated himself on a bench against the wall and rubbed his foreheadamazedly. I looked at my watch and listened for the wheels of ourcarriage. 

But his kinsman was too launched to pull himself up. "Wasn't it enoughthat you should have plotted against my rights? Need you have come intomy very house to intrigue with my sister?"

My friend put his two hands to his face. "Oh, oh, oh!" he groaned whileMiss Searle crossed rapidly and dropped on her knees at his side. 

"Go to bed, you fool!" shrieked her brother. 

"Dear cousin, " she said, "it's cruel you're to have so to think of us!"

"Oh I shall think of YOU as you'd like!" He laid a hand on her head. 

"I believe you've done nothing wrong, " she brought bravely out. 

"I've done what I could, " Mr. Searle went on--"but it's arrant folly topretend to friendship when this abomination lies between us. You werewelcome to my meat and my wine, but I wonder you could swallow them. Thesight spoiled MY appetite!" cried the master of Lackley with a laugh. "Proceed with your trumpery case! My people in London are instructed andprepared. "

"I shouldn't wonder if your case had improved a good deal since you gaveit up, " I was moved to observe to Searle. 

"Oho! you don't feign ignorance then?" and our insane entertainer shookhis shining head at me. "It's very kind of you to give it up! Perhapsyou'll also give up my sister!"

Searle sat staring in distress at his adversary. "Ah miserable man--Ithought we had become such beautiful friends. "

"Boh, you hypocrite!" screamed our host. 

Searle seemed not to hear him. "Am I seriously expected, " he slowly andpainfully pursued, "to defend myself against the accusation of any realindelicacy--to prove I've done nothing underhand or impudent? Think whatyou please!" And he rose, with an effort, to his feet. "I know what YOUthink!" he added to Miss Searle. 

The wheels of the carriage resounded on the gravel, and at the samemoment a footman descended with our two portmanteaux. Mr. Tottenhamfollowed him with our hats and coats. 

"Good God, " our host broke out again, "you're not going away?"--anejaculation that, after all that had happened, had the grandestcomicality. "Bless my soul, " he then remarked as artlessly, "of courseyou're going!"

"It's perhaps well, " said Miss Searle with a great effort, inexpressiblytouching in one for whom great efforts were visibly new and strange, "that I should tell you what my poor little note contained. "

"That matter of your note, madam, " her brother interrupted, "you and Iwill settle together!"

"Let me imagine all sorts of kind things!" Searle beautifully pleaded. 

"Ah too much has been imagined!" she answered simply. "It was only aword of warning. It was to tell you to go. I knew something painful wascoming. "

He took his hat. "The pains and the pleasures of this day, " he said tohis kinsman, "I shall equally never forget. Knowing you, " and he offeredhis hand to Miss Searle, "has been the pleasure of pleasures. I hopedsomething more might have come of it. "

"A monstrous deal too much has come of it!" Mr. Searle irrepressiblydeclared. 

His departing guest looked at him mildly, almost benignantly, from headto foot, and then with closed eyes and some collapse of strength, "I'mafraid so, I can't stand more, " he went on. I gave him my arm and wecrossed the threshold. As we passed out I heard Miss Searle break intoloud weeping. 

"We shall hear from each other yet, I take it!" her brother pursued, harassing our retreat. 

My friend stopped, turning round on him fiercely. "You very impossibleman!" he cried in his face. 

"Do you mean to say you'll not prosecute?" Mr. Searle kept it up. "Ishall force you to prosecute! I shall drag you into court, and you shallbe beaten--beaten--beaten!" Which grim reiteration followed us on ourcourse. 

We drove of course to the little wayside inn from which we had departedin the morning so unencumbered, in all broad England, either withenemies or friends. My companion, as the carriage rolled along, seemedoverwhelmed and exhausted. "What a beautiful horrible dream!" heconfusedly wailed. "What a strange awakening! What a long long day! Whata hideous scene! Poor me! Poor woman!" When we had resumed possession ofour two little neighbouring rooms I asked him whether Miss Searle'snote had been the result of anything that had passed between them onhis going to rejoin her. "I found her on the terrace, " he said, "walkingrestlessly up and down in the moonlight. I was greatly excited--Ihardly know what I said. I asked her, I think, if she knew the story ofMargaret Searle. She seemed frightened and troubled, and she usedjust the words her brother had used--'I know nothing. ' For the moment, somehow, I felt as a man drunk. I stood before her and told her, withgreat emphasis, how poor Margaret had married a beggarly foreigner--allin obedience to her heart and in defiance to her family. As I talked thesheeted moonlight seemed to close about us, so that we stood there ina dream, in a world quite detached. She grew younger, prettier, moreattractive--I found myself talking all kinds of nonsense. Before I knewit I had gone very far. I was taking her hand and calling her 'Margaret, dear Margaret!' She had said it was impossible, that she could donothing, that she was a fool, a child, a slave. Then with a suddensense--it was odd how it came over me there--of the reality of myconnexion with the place, I spoke of my claim against the estate. 'Itexists, ' I declared, 'but I've given it up. Be generous! Pay me for mysacrifice. ' For an instant her face was radiant. 'If I marry you, 'she asked, 'will it make everything right?' Of that I at once assuredher--in our marriage the whole difficulty would melt away like arain-drop in the great sea. 'Our marriage!' she repeated in wonder; andthe deep ring of her voice seemed to wake us up and show us our folly. 'I love you, but I shall never see you again, ' she cried; and shehurried away with her face in her hands. I walked up and down theterrace for some moments, and then came in and met you. That's the onlywitchcraft I've used!"

The poor man was at once so roused and so shaken by the day's eventsthat I believed he would get little sleep. Conscious on my own part thatI shouldn't close my eyes, I but partly undressed, stirred my fireand sat down to do some writing. I heard the great clock in the littleparlour below strike twelve, one, half-past one. Just as the vibrationof this last stroke was dying on the air the door of communication withSearle's room was flung open and my companion stood on the threshold, pale as a corpse, in his nightshirt, shining like a phantom against thedarkness behind him. "Look well at me!" he intensely gasped; "touch me, embrace me, revere me! You see a man who has seen a ghost!"

"Gracious goodness, what do you mean?"

"Write it down!" he went on. "There, take your pen. Put it into dreadfulwords. How do I look? Am I human? Am I pale? Am I red? Am I speakingEnglish? A ghost, sir! Do you understand?"

I confess there came upon me by contact a kind of supernatural shock. Ishall always feel by the whole communication of it that I too have seena ghost. My first movement--I can smile at it now--was to spring to thedoor, close it quickly and turn the key upon the gaping blackness fromwhich Searle had emerged. I seized his two hands; they were wet withperspiration. I pushed my chair to the fire and forced him to sit downin it; then I got on my knees and held his hands as firmly as possible. They trembled and quivered; his eyes were fixed save that the pupildilated and contracted with extraordinary force. I asked no questions, but waited there, very curious for what he would say. At last he spoke. "I'm not frightened, but I'm--oh excited! This is life! This is living!My nerves--my heart--my brain! They're throbbing--don't you feel it? Doyou tingle? Are you hot? Are you cold? Hold me tight--tight--tight! Ishall tremble away into waves--into surges--and know all the secrets ofthings and all the reasons and all the mysteries!" He paused a momentand then went on: "A woman--as clear as that candle: no, far clearer! Ina blue dress, with a black mantle on her head and a little black muff. Young and wonderfully pretty, pale and ill; with the sadness of allthe women who ever loved and suffered pleading and accusing in herwet-looking eyes. God knows I never did any such thing! But she took mefor my elder, for the other Clement. She came to me here as she wouldhave come to me there. She wrung her hands and she spoke to me 'marryme!' she moaned; 'marry me and put an end to my shame!' I sat up in bed, just as I sit here, looked at her, heard her--heard her voice melt away, watched her figure fade away. Bless us and save us! Here I be!"

I made no attempt either to explain or to criticise this extraordinarypassage. It's enough that I yielded for the hour to the strange forceof my friend's emotion. On the whole I think my own vision was themore interesting of the two. He beheld but the transient irresponsiblespectre--I beheld the human subject hot from the spectral presence. YetI soon recovered my judgement sufficiently to be moved again to try toguard him against the results of excitement and exposure. It was easilyagreed that he was not for the night to return to his room, and I madehim fairly comfortable in his place by my fire. Wishing above all topreserve him from a chill I removed my bedding and wrapped him in theblankets and counterpane. I had no nerves either for writing or forsleep; so I put out my lights, renewed the fuel and sat down on theopposite side of the hearth. I found it a great and high solemnity justto watch my companion. Silent, swathed and muffled to his chin, he satrigid and erect with the dignity of his adventure. For the most parthis eyes were closed; though from time to time he would open them witha steady expansion and stare, never blinking, into the flame, as if heagain beheld without terror the image of the little woman with the muff. His cadaverous emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles intensified by theupward glow from the hearth, his distorted moustache, his extraordinarygravity and a certain fantastical air as the red light flickered overhim, all re-enforced his fine likeness to the vision-haunted knight ofLa Mancha when laid up after some grand exploit. The night passed whollywithout speech. Toward its close I slept for half an hour. When I awokethe awakened birds had begun to twitter and Searle, unperturbed, satstaring at me. We exchanged a long look, and I felt with a pang that hisglittering eyes had tasted their last of natural sleep. "How is it? Areyou comfortable?" I nevertheless asked. 

He fixed me for a long time without replying and then spoke with aweak extravagance and with such pauses between his words as might haverepresented the slow prompting of an inner voice. "You asked me whenyou first knew me what I was. 'Nothing, ' I said, 'nothing of anyconsequence. ' Nothing I've always supposed myself to be. But I'vewronged myself--I'm a great exception. I'm a haunted man!"

If sleep had passed out of his eyes I felt with even a deeper pang thatsanity had abandoned his spirit. From this moment I was prepared forthe worst. There were in my friend, however, such confirmed habits ofmildness that I found myself not in the least fearing he would proveunmanageable. As morning began fully to dawn upon us I brought ourcurious vigil to a close. Searle was so enfeebled that I gave himmy hands to help him out of his chair, and he retained them for somemoments after rising to his feet, unable as he seemed to keep hisbalance. "Well, " he said, "I've been once favoured, but don't think Ishall be favoured again. I shall soon be myself as fit to 'appear' asany of them. I shall haunt the master of Lackley! It can only meanone thing--that they're getting ready for me on the other side of thegrave. "

When I touched the question of breakfast he replied that he had hisbreakfast in his pocket; and he drew from his travelling-bag a phial ofmorphine. He took a strong dose and went to bed. At noon I found himon foot again, dressed, shaved, much refreshed. "Poor fellow, " he said, "you've got more than you bargained for--not only a man with a grievancebut a man with a ghost. Well, it won't be for long!" It had of coursepromptly become a question whither we should now direct our steps. "AsI've so little time, " he argued for this, "I should like to see thebest, the best alone. " I answered that either for time or eternity I hadalways supposed Oxford to represent the English maximum, and for Oxfordin the course of an hour we accordingly departed. 

IV

Of that extraordinary place I shall not attempt to speak with any orderor indeed with any coherence. It must ever remain one of the supremegratifications of travel for any American aware of the ancient pietiesof race. The impression it produces, the emotions it kindles in themind of such a visitor, are too rich and various to be expressed in thehalting rhythm of prose. Passing through the small oblique streets inwhich the long grey battered public face of the colleges seems to watchjealously for sounds that may break upon the stillness of study, youfeel it the most dignified and most educated of cities. Over and throughit all the great corporate fact of the University slowly throbs afterthe fashion of some steady bass in a concerted piece or that of themediaeval mystical presence of the Empire in the old States of Germany. The plain perpendicular of the so mildly conventual fronts, maskingblest seraglios of culture and leisure, irritates the imaginationscarce less than the harem-walls of Eastern towns. Within their archingportals, however, you discover more sacred and sunless courts, andthe dark verdure soothing and cooling to bookish eyes. The grey-greenquadrangles stand for ever open with a trustful hospitality. The seat ofthe humanities is stronger in her own good manners than in a marshalledhost of wardens and beadles. Directly after our arrival my friend andI wandered forth in the luminous early dusk. We reached the bridgethat under-spans the walls of Magdalen and saw the eight-spired tower, delicately fluted and embossed, rise in temperate beauty--the perfectprose of Gothic--wooing the eyes to the sky that was slowly drainedof day. We entered the low monkish doorway and stood in the dim littlecourt that nestles beneath the tower, where the swallows niche morelovingly in the tangled ivy than elsewhere in Oxford, and passed intothe quiet cloister and studied the small sculptured monsters on theentablature of the arcade. I rejoiced in every one of my unhappyfriend's responsive vibrations, even while feeling that they might asdirefully multiply as those that had preceded them. I may say that fromthis time forward I found it difficult to distinguish in his companybetween the riot of fancy and the labour of thought, or to fix thebalance between what he saw and what he imagined. He had already begunplayfully to exchange his identity for that of the earlier ClementSearle, and he now delivered himself almost wholly in the character ofhis old-time kinsman. 

"THIS was my college, you know, " he would almost anywhere break out, applying the words wherever we stood--"the sweetest and noblest inthe whole place. How often have I strolled in this cloister with myintimates of the other world! They are all dead and buried, but many ayoung fellow as we meet him, dark or fair, tall or short, reminds me ofthe past age and the early attachment. Even as we stand here, they say, the whole thing feels about its massive base the murmurs of the tide oftime; some of the foundation-stones are loosened, some of the breacheswill have to be repaired. Mine was the old unregenerate Oxford, the homeof rank abuses, of distinctions and privileges the most delicious andinvidious. What cared I, who was a perfect gentleman and with my pocketsfull of money? I had an allowance of a thousand a year. "

It was at once plain to me that he had lost the little that remained ofhis direct grasp on life and was unequal to any effort of seeing thingsin their order. He read my apprehension in my eyes and took pains toassure me I was right. "I'm going straight down hill. Thank heaven it'san easy slope, coated with English turf and with an English churchyardat the foot. " The hysterical emotion produced by our late diremisadventure had given place to an unruffled calm in which the sceneabout us was reflected as in an old-fashioned mirror. We took anafternoon walk through Christ-Church meadow and at the river-bankprocured a boat which I pulled down the stream to Iffley and to theslanting woods of Nuneham--the sweetest flattest reediest stream-sidelandscape that could be desired. Here of course we encountered thescattered phalanx of the young, the happy generation, clad in whiteflannel and blue, muscular fair-haired magnificent fresh, whetherfloated down the current by idle punts and lounging in friendly coupleswhen not in a singleness that nursed ambitions, or straining togetherin rhythmic crews and hoarsely exhorted from the near bank. When to theexhibition of so much of the clearest joy of wind and limb we added thegreat sense of perfumed protection shed by all the enclosed lawns andgroves and bowers, we felt that to be young in such scholastic shadesmust be a double, an infinite blessing. As my companion found himselfless and less able to walk we repaired in turn to a series of gardensand spent long hours sitting in their greenest places. They struck us asthe fairest things in England and the ripest and sweetest fruit of theEnglish system. Locked in their antique verdure, guarded, as in the caseof New College, by gentle battlements of silver-grey, outshouldering thematted leafage of undisseverable plants, filled with nightingales andmemories, a sort of chorus of tradition; with vaguely-generous youthssprawling bookishly on the turf as if to spare it the injury oftheir boot-heels, and with the great conservative college countenanceappealing gravely from the restless outer world, they seem places tolie down on the grass in for ever, in the happy faith that life is alla green old English garden and time an endless summer afternoon. Thischarmed seclusion was especially grateful to my friend, and his sense ofit reached its climax, I remember, on one of the last of such occasionsand while we sat in fascinated flanerie over against the sturdy back ofSaint John's. The wide discreetly-windowed wall here perhaps broods uponthe lawn with a more effective air of property than elsewhere. Searledropped into fitful talk and spun his humour into golden figures. Anypassing undergraduate was a peg to hang a fable, every feature of theplace a pretext for more embroidery. 

"Isn't it all a delightful lie?" he wanted to know. "Mightn't one fancythis the very central point of the world's heart, where all the echoesof the general life arrive but to falter and die? Doesn't one feel theair just thick with arrested voices? It's well there should be suchplaces, shaped in the interest of factitious needs, invented to ministerto the book-begotten longing for a medium in which one may dream unwakedand believe unconfuted; to foster the sweet illusion that all's well ina world where so much is so damnable, all right and rounded, smooth andfair, in this sphere of the rough and ragged, the pitiful unachievedespecially, and the dreadful uncommenced. The world's made--work's over. Now for leisure! England's safe--now for Theocritus and Horace, forlawn and sky! What a sense it all gives one of the composite life ofthe country and of the essential furniture of its luckier minds! Thankheaven they had the wit to send me here in the other time. I'm not muchvisibly the braver perhaps, but think how I'm the happier! The mistyspires and towers, seen far off on the level, have been all these yearsone of the constant things of memory. Seriously, what do the spires andtowers do for these people? Are they wiser, gentler, finer, cleverer?My diminished dignity reverts in any case at moments to the nakedbackground of our own education, the deadly dry air in which we gasp forimpressions and comparisons. I assent to it all with a sort of desperatecalmness; I accept it with a dogged pride. We're nursed at the oppositepole. Naked come we into a naked world. There's a certain grandeurin the lack of decorations, a certain heroic strain in that youngimagination of ours which finds nothing made to its hands, which has toinvent its own traditions and raise high into our morning-air, witha ringing hammer and nails, the castles in which we dwell. Noblesseoblige--Oxford must damnably do so. What a horrible thing not to riseto such examples! If you pay the pious debt to the last farthing ofinterest you may go through life with her blessing; but if you let itstand unhonoured you're a worse barbarian than we! But for the better orworse, in a myriad private hearts, think how she must be loved! How theyouthful sentiment of mankind seems visibly to brood upon her! Think ofthe young lives now taking colour in her cloisters and halls. Think ofthe centuries' tale of dead lads--dead alike with the end of the youngdays to which these haunts were a present world, and the close ofthe larger lives which the general mother-scene has dropped into lessbottomless traps. What are those two young fellows kicking their heelsover on the grass there? One of them has the Saturday Review; theother--upon my soul--the other has Artemus Ward! Where do they live, how do they live, to what end do they live? Miserable boys! How can theyread Artemus Ward under those windows of Elizabeth? What do you thinkloveliest in all Oxford? The poetry of certain windows. Do you see thatone yonder, the second of those lesser bays, with the broken corniceand the lattice? That used to be the window of my bosom friend a hundredyears ago. Remind me to tell you the story of that broken cornice. Don'tpretend it's not a common thing to have one's bosom friend at anothercollege. Pray was I committed to common things? He was a charmingfellow. By the way, he was a good deal like you. Of course his cockedhat, his long hair in a black ribbon, his cinnamon velvet suit and hisflowered waistcoat made a difference. We gentlemen used to wear swords. "

There was really the touch of grace in my poor friend's divagations--thedisheartened dandy had so positively turned rhapsodist and seer. Iwas particularly struck with his having laid aside the diffidence andself-consciousness of the first days of our acquaintance. He had becomeby this time a disembodied observer and critic; the shell of sense, growing daily thinner and more transparent, transmitted the tremor ofhis quickened spirit. He seemed to pick up acquaintances, in the courseof our contemplations, merely by putting out his hand. If I left him forten minutes I was sure to find him on my return in earnest conversationwith some affable wandering scholar. Several young men with whom he hadthus established relations invited him to their rooms and entertainedhim, as I gathered, with rather rash hospitality. For myself, I chosenot to be present at these symposia; I shrank partly from being heldin any degree responsible for his extravagance, partly from the pang ofseeing him yield to champagne and an admiring circle. He reported suchadventures with less keen a complacency than I had supposed he mightuse, but a certain method in his madness, a certain dignity in hisdesire to fraternise, appeared to save him from mischance. If theydidn't think him a harmless lunatic they certainly thought him acelebrity of the Occident. Two things, however, grew evident--that hedrank deeper than was good for him and that the flagrant freshness ofhis young patrons rather interfered with his predetermined sense of theelement of finer romance. At the same time it completed his knowledgeof the place. Making the acquaintance of several tutors and fellows, he dined in hall in half a dozen colleges, alluding afterwards to thesebanquets with religious unction. One evening after a participationindiscreetly prolonged he came back to the hotel in a cab, accompaniedby a friendly undergraduate and a physician and looking deadly pale. Hehad swooned away on leaving table and remained so rigidly unconsciousas much to agitate his banqueters. The following twenty-four hours he ofcourse spent in bed, but on the third day declared himself strong enoughto begin afresh. On his reaching the street his strength once moreforsook him, so that I insisted on his returning to his room. Hebesought me with tears in his eyes not to shut him up. "It's my lastchance--I want to go back for an hour to that garden of Saint John's. Let me eat and drink--to-morrow I die. " It seemed to me possible thatwith a Bath-chair the expedition might be accomplished. The hotel, itappeared, possessed such a convenience, which was immediately produced. It became necessary hereupon that we should have a person to propel thechair. As there was no one on the spot at liberty I was about to performthe office; but just as my patient had got seated and wrapped--he nowhad a perpetual chill--an elderly man emerged from a lurking-place nearthe door and, with a formal salute, offered to wait upon the gentleman. We assented, and he proceeded solemnly to trundle the chair before him. I recognised him as a vague personage whom I had observed to loungeshyly about the doors of the hotels, at intervals during our stay, witha depressed air of wanting employment and a poor semblance of findingit. He had once indeed in a half-hearted way proposed himself as anamateur cicerone for a tour through the colleges; and I now, as Ilooked at him, remembered with a pang that I had too curtly declined hisministrations. Since then his shyness, apparently, had grown less orhis misery greater, for it was with a strange grim avidity that henow attached himself to our service. He was a pitiful image of shabbygentility and the dinginess of "reduced circumstances. " He wouldhave been, I suppose, some fifty years of age; but his pale haggardunwholesome visage, his plaintive drooping carriage and the irremediabledisarray of his apparel seemed to add to the burden of his days andtribulations. His eyes were weak and bloodshot, his bold nose was sadlycompromised, and his reddish beard, largely streaked with grey, bristledunder a month's neglect of the razor. In all this rusty forlornnesslurked a visible assurance of our friend's having known better days. Obviously he was the victim of some fatal depreciation in the marketvalue of pure gentility. There had been something terribly affecting inthe way he substituted for the attempt to touch the greasy rim of hisantiquated hat some such bow as one man of the world might make another. Exchanging a few words with him as we went I was struck with thedecorum of his accent. His fine whole voice should have been congruouslycracked. 

"Take me by some long roundabout way, " said Searle, "so that I may seeas many college-walls as possible. "

"You know, " I asked of our attendant, "all these wonderful ins andouts?"

"I ought to, sir, " he said, after a moment, with pregnant gravity. Andas we were passing one of the colleges, "That used to be my place, " headded. 

At these words Searle desired him to stop and come round within sight. "You say that's YOUR college?"

"The place might deny me, sir; but heaven forbid I should seem to takeit ill of her. If you'll allow me to wheel you into the quad I'll showyou my windows of thirty years ago. "

Searle sat staring, his huge pale eyes, which now left nothing elseworth mentioning in his wasted face, filled with wonder and pity. "Ifyou'll be so kind, " he said with great deference. But just as thisperverted product of a liberal education was about to propel him acrossthe threshold of the court he turned about, disengaged the mercenaryhands, with one of his own, from the back of the chair, drew their owneralongside and turned to me. "While we're here, my dear fellow, " he said, "be so good as to perform this service. You understand?" I gave ourcompanion a glance of intelligence and we resumed our way. The lattershowed us his window of the better time, where a rosy youth in a scarletsmoking-fez now puffed a cigarette at the open casement. Thence weproceeded into the small garden, the smallest, I believe, and certainlythe sweetest, of all the planted places of Oxford. I pushed the chairalong to a bench on the lawn, turned it round, toward the front ofthe college and sat down by it on the grass. Our attendant shiftedmournfully from one foot to the other, his patron eyeing himopen-mouthed. At length Searle broke out: "God bless my soul, sir, youdon't suppose I expect you to stand! There's an empty bench. "

"Thank you, " said our friend, who bent his joints to sit. 

"You English are really fabulous! I don't know whether I most admire ormost abominate you! Now tell me: who are you? what are you? what broughtyou to this?"

The poor fellow blushed up to his eyes, took off his hat and wiped hisforehead with an indescribable fabric drawn from his pocket. "My name'sRawson, sir. Beyond that it's a long story. "

"I ask out of sympathy, " said Searle. "I've a fellow-feeling. If you'rea poor devil I'm a poor devil as well. "

"I'm the poorer devil of the two, " said the stranger with an assurancefor once presumptuous. 

"Possibly. I suppose an English poor devil's the poorest of allpoor devils. And then you've fallen from a height. From a gentlemancommoner--is that what they called you?--to a propeller of Bath-chairs. Good heavens, man, the fall's enough to kill you!"

"I didn't take it all at once, sir. I dropped a bit one time and a bitanother. "

"That's me, that's me!" cried Searle with all his seriousness. 

"And now, " said our friend, "I believe I can't drop any further. "

"My dear fellow"--and Searle clasped his hand and shook it--"I too am atthe very bottom of the hole. "

Mr. Rawson lifted his eyebrows. "Well, sir, there's a difference betweensitting in such a pleasant convenience and just trudging behind it!"

"Yes--there's a shade. But I'm at my last gasp, Mr. Rawson. "

"I'm at my last penny, sir. "

"Literally, Mr. Rawson?"

Mr. Rawson shook his head with large loose bitterness. "I've almost cometo the point of drinking my beer and buttoning my coat figuratively; butI don't talk in figures. "

Fearing the conversation might appear to achieve something like gaietyat the expense of Mr. Rawson's troubles, I took the liberty of askinghim, with all consideration, how he made a living. 

"I don't make a living, " he answered with tearful eyes; "I can't makea living. I've a wife and three children--and all starving, sir. Youwouldn't believe what I've come to. I sent my wife to her mother's, whocan ill afford to keep her, and came to Oxford a week ago, thinking Imight pick up a few half-crowns by showing people about the colleges. But it's no use. I haven't the assurance. I don't look decent. Theywant a nice little old man with black gloves and a clean shirt and asilver-headed stick. What do I look as if I knew about Oxford, sir?"

"Mercy on us, " cried Searle, "why didn't you speak to us before?"

"I wanted to; half a dozen times I've been on the point of it. I knewyou were Americans. "

"And Americans are rich!" cried Searle, laughing. "My dear Mr. Rawson, American as I am I'm living on charity. "

"And I'm exactly not, sir! There it is. I'm dying for the lack of thatsame. You say you're a pauper, but it takes an American pauper to gobowling about in a Bath-chair. America's an easy country. "

"Ah me!" groaned Searle. "Have I come to the most delicious corner ofthe ancient world to hear the praise of Yankeeland?"

"Delicious corners are very well, and so is the ancient world, " said Mr. Rawson; "but one may sit here hungry and shabby, so long as one isn'ttoo shabby, as well as elsewhere. You'll not persuade me that it's notan easier thing to keep afloat yonder than here. I wish _I_ were inYankeeland, that's all!" he added with feeble force. Then brooding fora moment on his wrongs: "Have you a bloated brother? or you, sir? Itmatters little to you. But it has mattered to me with a vengeance!Shabby as I sit here I can boast that advantage--as he his five thousanda year. Being but a twelvemonth my elder he swaggers while I go thus. There's old England for you! A very pretty place for HIM!"

"Poor old England!" said Searle softly. 

"Has your brother never helped you?" I asked. 

"A five-pound note now and then! Oh I don't say there haven't been timeswhen I haven't inspired an irresistible sympathy. I've not been what Ishould. I married dreadfully out of the way. But the devil of it is thathe started fair and I started foul; with the tastes, the desires, theneeds, the sensibilities of a gentleman--and not another blessed 'tip. 'I can't afford to live in England. "

"THIS poor gentleman fancied a couple of months ago that he couldn'tafford to live in America, " I fondly explained. 

"I'd 'swap'--do you call it?--chances with him!" And Mr. Rawson lookedquaintly rueful over his freedom of speech. 

Searle sat supported there with his eyes closed and his face twitchingfor violent emotion, and then of a sudden had a glare of gravity. "Myfriend, you're a dead failure! Be judged! Don't talk about 'swapping. 'Don't talk about chances. Don't talk about fair starts and false starts. I'm at that point myself that I've a right to speak. It lies neitherin one's chance nor one's start to make one a success; nor in anythingone's brother--however bloated--can do or can undo. It lies in one'scharacter. You and I, sir, have HAD no character--that's very plain. We've been weak, sir; as weak as water. Here we are for it--sittingstaring in each other's faces and reading our weakness in each other'seyes. We're of no importance whatever, Mr. Rawson!"

Mr. Rawson received this sally with a countenance in which abjectsubmission to the particular affirmed truth struggled with thecomparative propriety of his general rebellion against fate. In thecourse of a minute a due self-respect yielded to the warm comfortablesense of his being relieved of the cares of an attitude. "Go on, sir, goon, " he said. "It's wholesome doctrine. " And he wiped his eyes with whatseemed his sole remnant of linen. 

"Dear, dear, " sighed Searle, "I've made you cry! Well, we speak as fromman to man. I should be glad to think you had felt for a moment theside-light of that great undarkening of the spirit which precedes--whichprecedes the grand illumination of death. "

Mr. Rawson sat silent a little, his eyes fixed on the ground and hiswell-cut nose but the more deeply dyed by his agitation. Then at lastlooking up: "You're a very good-natured man, sir, and you'll neverpersuade me you don't come of a kindly race. Say what you please about achance; when a man's fifty--degraded, penniless, a husband and father--achance to get on his legs again is not to be despised. Something tellsme that my luck may be in your country--which has brought luck to somany. I can come on the parish here of course, but I don't want to comeon the parish. Hang it, sir, I want to hold up my head. I see thirtyyears of life before me yet. If only by God's help I could have a realchange of air! It's a fixed idea of mine. I've had it for the last tenyears. It's not that I'm a low radical. Oh I've no vulgar opinions. OldEngland's good enough for me, but I'm not good enough for old England. I'm a shabby man that wants to get out of a room full of staringgentlefolk. I'm for ever put to the blush. It's a perfect agony ofspirit; everything reminds me of my younger and better self. The thingfor me would be a cooling cleansing plunge into the unknowing and theunknown! I lie awake thinking of it. "

Searle closed his eyes, shivering with a long-drawn tremor which Ihardly knew whether to take for an expression of physical or of mentalpain. In a moment I saw it was neither. "Oh my country, my country, my country!" he murmured in a broken voice; and then sat for some timeabstracted and lost. I signalled our companion that it was time weshould bring our small session to a close, and he, without hesitating, possessed himself of the handle of the Bath-chair and pushed it beforehim. We had got halfway home before Searle spoke or moved. Suddenlyin the High Street, as we passed a chop-house from whose open doors wecaught a waft of old-fashioned cookery and other restorative elements, he motioned us to halt. "This is my last five pounds"--and he drew anote from his pocket-book. "Do me the favour, Mr. Rawson, to acceptit. Go in there and order the best dinner they can give you. Call for abottle of Burgundy and drink it to my eternal rest!"

Mr. Rawson stiffened himself up and received the gift with fingersmomentarily irresponsive. But Mr. Rawson had the nerves of a gentleman. I measured the spasm with which his poor dispossessed hand closed uponthe crisp paper, I observed his empurpled nostril convulsive under theother solicitation. He crushed the crackling note in his palm with apassionate pressure and jerked a spasmodic bow. "I shall not do you thewrong, sir, of anything but the best!" The next moment the door swungbehind him. 

Searle sank again into his apathy, and on reaching the hotel I helpedhim to get to bed. For the rest of the day he lay without motion orsound and beyond reach of any appeal. The doctor, whom I had constantlyin attendance, was sure his end was near. He expressed great surprisethat he should have lasted so long; he must have been living for amonth on the very dregs of his strength. Toward evening, as I sat by hisbedside in the deepening dusk, he roused himself with a purpose I hadvaguely felt gathering beneath his stupor. "My cousin, my cousin, " hesaid confusedly. "Is she here?" It was the first time he had spoken ofMiss Searle since our retreat from her brother's house, and he continuedto ramble. "I was to have married her. What a dream! That day was likea string of verses--rhymed hours. But the last verse is bad measure. What's the rhyme to 'love'? ABOVE! Was she a simple woman, a kind sweetwoman? Or have I only dreamed it? She had the healing gift; her touchwould have cured my madness. I want you to do something. Write threelines, three words: 'Good-bye; remember me; be happy. '" And then aftera long pause: "It's strange a person in my state should have a wish. Whyshould one eat one's breakfast the day one's hanged? What a creatureis man! What a farce is life! Here I lie, worn down to a mere throbbingfever-point; I breathe and nothing more, and yet I DESIRE! My desirelives. If I could see her! Help me out with it and let me die. "

Half an hour later, at a venture, I dispatched by post a note to MissSearle: "Your cousin is rapidly sinking. He asks to see you. " I wasconscious of a certain want of consideration in this act, since it wouldbring her great trouble and yet no power to face the trouble; but outof her distress I fondly hoped a sufficient force might be born. On thefollowing day my friend's exhaustion had become so great that I beganto fear his intelligence altogether broken up. But toward evening hebriefly rallied, to maunder about many things, confounding in a sinisterjumble the memories of the past weeks and those of bygone years. "By theway, " he said suddenly, "I've made no will. I haven't much to bequeath. Yet I have something. " He had been playing listlessly with a largesignet-ring on his left hand, which he now tried to draw off. "I leaveyou this"--working it round and round vainly--"if you can get it off. What enormous knuckles! There must be such knuckles in the mummies ofthe Pharaohs. Well, when I'm gone--! No, I leave you something moreprecious than gold--the sense of a great kindness. But I've a littlegold left. Bring me those trinkets. " I placed on the bed before himseveral articles of jewellery, relics of early foppery: his watchand chain, of great value, a locket and seal, some odds and endsof goldsmith's work. He trifled with them feebly for some moments, murmuring various names and dates associated with them. At last, lookingup with clearer interest, "What has become, " he asked, "of Mr. Rawson?"

"You want to see him?"

"How much are these things worth?" he went on without heeding me. "Howmuch would they bring?" And he weighed them in his weak hands. "They'repretty heavy. Some hundred or so? Oh I'm richer than I thought!Rawson--Rawson--you want to get out of this awful England?"

I stepped to the door and requested the servant whom I kept in constantattendance in our adjacent sitting-room to send and ascertain if Mr. Rawson were on the premises. He returned in a few moments, introducingour dismal friend. Mr. Rawson was pale even to his nose and derived fromhis unaffectedly concerned state an air of some distinction. I led himup to the bed. In Searle's eyes, as they fell on him, there shone for amoment the light of a human message. 

"Lord have mercy!" gasped Mr. Rawson. 

"My friend, " said Searle, "there's to be one American the less--so letthere be at the same time one the more. At the worst you'll be as good aone as I. Foolish me! Take these battered relics; you can sell them; letthem help you on your way. They're gifts and mementoes, but this is abetter use. Heaven speed you! May America be kind to you. Be kind, atthe last, to your own country!"

"Really this is too much; I can't, " the poor man protested, almostscared and with tears in his eyes. "Do come round and get well and I'llstop here. I'll stay with you and wait on you. "

"No, I'm booked for my journey, you for yours. I hope you don't mind thevoyage. "

Mr. Rawson exhaled a groan of helpless gratitude, appealing piteouslyfrom so strange a windfall. "It's like the angel of the Lord who bidspeople in the Bible to rise and flee!"

Searle had sunk back upon his pillow, quite used up; I led Mr. Rawsonback into the sitting-room, where in three words I proposed to hima rough valuation of our friend's trinkets. He assented with perfectgood-breeding; they passed into my possession and a second bank-noteinto his. 

From the collapse into which this wondrous exercise of his imaginationhad plunged him my charge then gave few signs of being likely to emerge. He breathed, as he had said, and nothing more. The twilight deepened; Ilighted the night-lamp. The doctor sat silent and official at the footof the bed; I resumed my constant place near the head. Suddenly ourpatient opened his eyes wide. "She'll not come, " he murmured. "Amen!she's an English sister. " Five minutes passed; he started forward. "She's come, she's here!" he confidently quavered. His words conveyed tomy mind so absolute an assurance that I lightly rose and passed into thesitting-room. At the same moment, through the opposite door, theservant introduced a lady. A lady, I say; for an instant she was simplysuch--tall pale dressed in deep mourning. The next instant I had utteredher name--"Miss Searle!" She looked ten years older. 

She met me with both hands extended and an immense question in herface. "He has just announced you, " I said. And then with a fullerconsciousness of the change in her dress and countenance: "What hashappened?"

"Oh death, death!" she wailed. "You and I are left. "

There came to me with her words a sickening shock, the sense of poeticjustice somehow cheated, defeated. "Your brother?" I panted. 

She laid her hand on my arm and I felt its pressure deepen as she spoke. "He was thrown from his horse in the park. He died on the spot. Six dayshave passed. Six months!"

She accepted my support and a moment later we had entered the room andapproached the bedside, from which the doctor withdrew. Searle openedhis eyes and looked at her from head to foot. Suddenly he seemed to makeout her mourning. "Already!" he cried audibly and with a smile, as Ifelt, of pleasure. 

She dropped on her knees and took his hand. "Not for you, cousin, " shewhispered. "For my poor brother. "

He started, in all his deathly longitude, as with a galvanic shock. "Dead! HE dead! Life itself!" And then after a moment and with a slightrising inflexion: "You're free?"

"Free, cousin. Too sadly free. And now--NOW--with what use for freedom?"

He looked steadily into her eyes, dark in the heavy shadow of her mustymourning-veil. "For me wear colours!"

In a moment more death had come, the doctor had silently attested it, and she had burst into sobs. 

We buried him in the little churchyard in which he had expressed thewish to lie; beneath one of the blackest and widest of English yews andthe little tower than which none in all England has a softer and hoariergrey. A year has passed; Miss Searle, I believe, has begun to wearcolours.