A SHEAF OF CORN BY THE SAME AUTHOR ROSE AT HONEYPOTTHE PATTEN EXPERIMENTOLIVIA'S SUMMERA LOST ESTATETHE PARISH OF HILBYTHE PARISH NURSEGRAN'MA'S JANEMRS. PETER HOWARDA WINTER'S TALEONE ANOTHER'S BURDENSTHERE WAS ONCE A PRINCEWHEN ARNOLD COMES HOMEMOONLIGHTTHE MATING OF A DOVETHE FIELDS OF DULDITCHAMONG THE SYRINGASSUSANNAHTHE EGLAMORE PORTRAITSTHE MEMORIES OF RONALD LOVE A SHEAF OF CORN BY MARY E. MANN "I WENT A PILGRIM THROUGH THE UNIVERSE, AND COMMUNED OFT WITH STRANGERS AS I STRAYED, IN EVERY CORNER SOME ADVANTAGE FOUND, AND FROM EACH SHEAF OF CORN I DREW A BLADE. " METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W. C. LONDON _First Published in 1908_ CONTENTS PAGE WOMEN O' DULDITCH 1 CLOMAYNE'S CLERK 15 IN A TEA-SHOP 33 A CHALK-MARK ON A GATE--Part I 51 A CHALK-MARK ON A GATE--Part II 63 "AS 'TWAS TOLD TO ME" 77 FREDDY'S SHIP 91 A NERVE CURE 109 THE PRIVATE WARD 135 DORA OF THE RINGOLETS 153 PINK CARNATIONS 167 A LITTLE WHITE DOG 183 IT ANSWERED 195 TO BERTHA IN BOMBAY 209 AUNTIE 223 WILLY AND I 243 A BROKEN BOOT 255 WHEN DEEP SLEEP FALLETH 267 THE EXCELLENT JOYS OF YOUTH 283 CARES OF A CURATE 297 A SHEAF OF CORN WOMEN O' DULDITCH Dinah Brome stood in the village shop, watching, with eyes keen todetect the slightest discrepancy in the operation, the weighing of herweekly parcels of grocery. She was a strong, wholesome-looking woman of three- or four-and-forty, with a clean, red skin, clear eyes, dark hair, crinkling crisplybeneath her sober, respectable hat. All her clothes were sober andrespectable, and her whole mien. No one would have guessed from it thatshe had not a shred of character to her back. The knowledge of this incontrovertible fact did not influence thedemeanour of the shop-woman towards her. There was not better pay inthe village, nor a more constant customer than Dinah Brome. In suchcircumstances, Mrs Littleproud was not the woman to throw stones. "They tell me as how Depper's wife ain't a-goin' to get over this heresickness she've got, " she said, tucking in the edges of thewhitey-brown paper upon the half-pound of moist sugar taken from thescales. "The doctor, he ha'n't put a name to her illness, but 'tis oneas'll carry her off, he say. " "A quarter pound o' butter, " Dinah unmovedly said. "The best, please. Idon't fancy none o' that that ha' got the taste o' the shop in it. " "Doctor, he put his hid in at the door this afternoon, " Mrs Littleproudwent on; "he'd got his monkey up, the old doctor had! ''Tis a rankshame, ' he say, 'there ain't none o' these here lazy women o' Dulditchwith heart enough to go to help that poor critter in her necessity, ' hesay. " "Ler'm help her hisself, " said Mrs Brome, strong in her indifference. "A couple o' boxes o' matches, Mrs Littleproud; and you can gi' me theodd ha'penny in clo' balls for the disgestion. " "You should ha' heered 'm run on! 'Where be that Dinah Brome?' he say, 'that ha' showed herself helpful in other folks' houses. Wha's shea-doin' of, that she can't do a neighbour's part here?'" "And you telled 'm she was a-mindin' of 'er own business, I hope?" MrsBrome suggested, in calmest unconcern. "I'll tell you what I did say, Dinah, bor, " the shop-woman said, transferring the sticky clove-balls from their bottle to her own greasypalm. "'Dinah Brome, sir, ' I say, 'is the most industrousest woman inDulditch; arly and late, ' I say, 'she's at wark; and as for herfloors--you might eat off of 'em. '" She screwed the half-dozen hard redballs in their bit of paper, and stowed them lightly in the customer'sbasket. "That the lot this week, Dinah?" Dinah removed her basket from counter to arm. "What'd he got to say forhisself, then?" she asked. "'A woman like that can allust make time, ' the old doctor he say. 'Tellher to make time to help this here pore sufferin' woman. ' I'm a-sayin'it as he said it, Dinah. I ain't a-hintin' of it myself, bor. " "Ler'm tell me, hisself, an old interfarin' old fule, and he'll ha' therough side o' my tongue, " the customer said; and nodded an unsmilinggood-afternoon, and went on her way. Her way led her past the cottage of the woman of whom they had spoken. Depper's cottage, indeed, was the first in the row of which Dinah's wasthe last--a half-dozen two-roomed tenements, living-room below, bedroomabove, standing with their backs to the road, from which they weredivided by no garden, nor even so much as a narrow path. The lowerwindow of the two allotted to each house was about four or five feetfrom the ground, and was of course the window of the living-room. MrsBrome, as she passed that of the first house in the row, suddenlyyielded to the impulse to stop and look within. A small interior, with furniture much too big for it; a huge chest ofdrawers, of oak with brass fittings; a broken-down couch as big as abed, covered with a dingy shawl, a man's greatcoat, a red flannelpetticoat; a table cumbered with the remains of wretched meals nevercleared away, and the poor cooking utensils of impoverished, shiftyhousekeeping. The woman of whom they had been speaking stood with her back to thewindow. A stooping, drooping skeleton of a woman, who, with weak, shaking hands, kneaded some dough in which a few currants were stuck, before laying it on a black-looking baking tin. "A fine time o' day to bake his fourses cake!" the woman outsidecommented, reaching on tiptoe, the better to look in at the window. The tin having its complement of cakes, the sick woman essayed to carryit to the oven. But its weight was too much for her; it hung limply inher weak grasp; before the oven was reached the cakes were on theragged carpet of the hearth. "God in heaven!" ejaculated the woman looking in. She watched while the poor woman within dropped on all-fours, feeblytrying to gather up the cakes spreading themselves slowly over thedirty floor. "If that don't make me sick!" said Dinah Brome to herself as she turnedand went on her way. The cottage of Dinah Brome, distant from that of Depper's wife by ascore or so of yards, was, in its domestic economy, as removed from itas the North Pole from the South. Small wonder that Depper--his namewas William Kittle, a fact of which the neighbourhood made no practicaluse, which he himself only recalled with an effort--preferred to thedirt, untidiness and squalor of his own abode the spick-and-spancleanliness of Dinah Brome's. Small wonder that in this atmosphere ofwholesomeness and comfort, he chose to spend the hours of the Sabbathduring which the public-house was closed; and other hours. Smallwonder, looking at the fine, capable figure of the woman, now bustlingabout with teapot and cups, he should esteem Mrs Brome personally abovethe slatternly skeleton at his own hearth. Having made a cup of tea and cut a couple of slices ofbread-and-butter, the owner of the fresh-scrubbed bricks, the freshpolished furniture, the dazzlingly white hearth, turned her back on herhousehold gods, and, plate and cup in hands, betook herself, by way ofthe uneven bricked passage separating the row of houses from their rowsof gardens at the back, to the house of the wife of Depper. "I swore I wouldn't, " she said to herself as she went along; "but I'mdinged if the sight o' Depper's old woman a-crawlin' arter themmamucked up bits o' dough ha'n't tarned my stomach!" She knocked at the door with the toe of her boot, her hands being full, and receiving no answer, opened it and went in. Depper's old woman had fallen, a miserable heap of bones and dingyclothing, upon the broken-down couch, and had fainted there. "I'd suner 'twas anyone in the warld than you a-waitin' on me likethis, " she said, when, consciousness having returned during theministrations of the other woman, her weary eyes opened upon thehealthy face above her. "And the las' time you telled me to walk out o' your house, I swore I'dnever set fut in it again, " Mrs Brome made answer. "But I ha' swalleredworse things in my time than my own wards, I make no doubt; and you ha'come to a pass, Car'line Kittle, when you ha' got to take what you cangit and be thankful. " "Pass? I ha' come to a pass, indeed!" the sick woman moaned. "You'rewholly right there, bor; wholly right. " "So now you ha' got to drink this here cup o' hot tea I ha' brought ye;and let me help ye upstairs to yer bed as quick as may be. " "When I ha' baked Depper's fourses cake, and sent it off by 'Meelyer'slittle gal--she ha' lent her to me to go back and forth to theharvest-field, 'Meelyer have--I kin go, " the wife said; "not afore, "hiccoughing loudly over the tea she tried to drink; "not afore--notafore! Oh, how I wish I could, bor; how I wish I could!" "You're a-goin', this instant minute, " the masterful Dinah declared. The other had not the strength to resist. "I'm wholly done, " shemurmured, helplessly, "wholly done at last. " "My! How ha' you got up these here stairs alone?" Dinah, havinghalf-dragged, half-carried the feeble creature to the top, demanded ofher, wiping her own brow. "Crawled, all-fours. " Depper's wife panted out the explanation. "And togit down 'em i' the mornin's--oh, the Lord alone knows how I ha' gotdown 'em i' th' mornin's. Thankful I'd be to know I'd never ha' to comedown 'em agin. " "You never will, " said Mrs Brome. "I don't want to trouble you, no fudder. I can fend for myself now, "the poor woman said, when at length she lay at peace between thesheets; her face bathed, and the limp grimy fingers; the scant dry hairsmoothed decently down the fallen temples. "I'd rather it'd ha' beenanother woman that had done me the sarvice, but I ain't above bein'thankful to you, for all that. All I'll ask of ye now, Dinah Brome, isthat ye'll have an eye to Depper's fourses cake in th' oven, and seethat 'Meelyer's gal take it and his home-brew, comf'table, to th' fieldfor 'm. " Dinah, having folded the woman's clothes, spread them for additionalwarmth upon the poor bed-covering. "Don't you worrit no more aboutDepper, " she said, "Strike me, you're the one that want seem' to now, Car'line. " The slow tears oozed beneath Car'line's closed lids. "I kin fend formyself if Depper ain't put about, " she said. When Depper returned, with the shades of night, from the harvest-field, he might hardly have known his own living-room. The dirty rags ofcarpet had disappeared, the bricks were scrubbed, the dangerous-lookingheap of clothing had been removed from the sofa, and a support added toits broken leg; the fireside chairs, the big chest of drawers, redolentof the turpentine with which they had been rubbed, shone in thecandlelight; the kettle sang on the bars by the side of a saucepan ofpotatoes boiling for the meal. It was the sight of Dinah Brome at thehead of affairs, however, which drew his attention from these details. "Well, I'm jiggered!" Depper said, and paused, door in hand, on his ownfreshly-washed step. "You wipe your feet, afore you come in, " said Mrs Brome, masterful asever. "Here's yer supper ready. I ain't a-goin' to ate it along of you, Depper; but I ha' got a ward or two to say to you afore I go. " Depper entered, closed the door behind him, sat down, hat on head, inthe freshly-polished chair by the hearth; he fixed his eyes, his mouthfallen open, on the fine form of Dinah standing before him, with handson hips, arms akimbo, and the masterful gleam in her eyes. "Depper, yer old woman's a-dyin'" Dinah said. "Marcy on us! Ye don't tell me that! Kind o' piney, like, fer the las'six months, my missus ha' bin', but----" "Now she's a-dyin'. D'ye think I ha'n't got the right use o' my senses, arter all these years? Wheer ha' yer own eyes been? Look at 'er! Nobetter'n a skeercrow of a woman, under yer very nose! She's a-dyin', Itell ye. And, Depper, what du I come here to find? I find a barecupboard and a bare board. Not a mite o' nouragement i' th' house, sechas a pore suff'rin' woman like Car'line's in need of. " "Car'line's a pore manager, as right well you know, Dinah. Ha'n't Itelled ye----?" "You ha' telled me--yes. But have you played th' husban's part? You ha'telled me--and I ha' put the fault o' yer poverty home on ter yer poremissus's shoulders. But since I been here, I ha' seen 'er crawlin' on'er han's and knees to wait on you, wi' yer fourses i' th'harvest-field. I ha' heered her manderin' on, 'let things be comf'tablefor Depper, ' and let her fend for herself. And I can see with half aneye the bute is on t'other fut, Depper. And this here is what I'ma-goin' ter say to you, and don't you make no mistake about it: I'm yerwife's woman while she want me, and none o' yours. " Depper was a small, well-made man, with a curling, grizzled head, and awell-featured face. It is possible that in his youth the word 'dapper'may have applied to him; a forgotten fact which perhaps accounted forhis nickname. He gazed with an open mouth and puzzled, blear eyes atthe woman before him. "You and me, " he said slowly, with an utterance suspiciously slow andthick--"you and me ha' kep' comp'ny, so to speak, fer a sight o' years, Dinah. We never had no fallin's out, this mander, afore, as I can callter mind. I don't rightly onderstan' what you ha' got agin me--cometer put it into wards. " "I ha' got this agin ye, " the valiant Dinah said: "that you ha'nouraged yer own inside and let your missus's go empty. You ha' got toomuch drink aboard ye, now, an' her fit ter die for the want of a dropo' sperrits. And I ha' got this ter say: that we ha' come to a passwhen I ha' got to make ch'ice twixt you and yer old woman. Arter wha'scome and gone, we t'ree can't hob an' nob, as ye may say, together. Mych'ice is made, then, and this is how I ha' fixed it up. When yer day'swark is done, and you come home, I go out o' your house. Sune as yer upan' away i' th' mornin', I come in and ridd up yer missus and wait on'er, while the woman's in need of me. " Whether this plan met with Depper's approval or not, Dinah Brome didnot wait to see. "For Car'line's peace o' mind, arter wha's come andgone, 'tis th' only way, " she said to herself and to him; and by it hehad to abide. It was not for many weeks. The poor unlovely wife, lying in thedismantled four-poster in the only bedroom, was too far gone to benefitby the 'nouragement' Mrs Brome contrived to administer. Thesixpenn'orths of brandy Depper, too late relenting, spared from the sumhe had hitherto expended on his own beer--public-house brandy, poisonous stuff, but accredited by the labouring population of Dulditchwith all but magical restorative powers--for once failed in its effect. Daily more of a skeleton, hourly feebler and feebler, grew Depper's oldwoman; clinging, for all that, desperately to life and the hope ofrecovery for the sake of Depper himself. "Let go the things of this life, lay hold on those of Eternity, " theclergyman said, solemnly reproving her for her worldly state of mind. "Remember that there is no one in this world whose life isindispensable to the scheme of it. Try to think more humbly ofyourself, my poor friend, less regretfully of the world you arehurrying from. Fix your eyes on the heavenly prospect. Try to join withme more heartily in the prayers for the dying. " She listened to them, making no response, with slow tears falling fromshut lids to the pillow. "'Tain't for myself I'm a-pinin', 'tis forDepper, " she said, the parson being gone. "All the same, Car'line, " Mrs Brome said, sharply admonishing, "I'dmarmar a ward now and agin for myself, as the reverend ha' beenadvisin' of ye, if I was you. Depper he can look arter hisself; histime for prayin' ain't, so ter say, come yet. Yours is. I should liketo hear a 'Lord help me, ' now and agin from yer lips, when I tarn ye inthe bed. I don't think but what yu'd be the better for it, porecritter. Your time's a-gettin' short, and 'tis best ter go resigned. " "I cud go resigned if 'tweren't for Depper, " the dying woman made hermoan. "I can't think what he'll du all alone in th' house and me gone!" sheoften whimpered. "A man can't fend for 'isself, like a woman can. Theyha'n't the know ter du it. Depper, he ain't no better'n a child aboutmakin' the kettle bile, and sechlike. It'll go hard, me bein' put outo' th' way, wi' Depper. " "Sarve 'm right, " Mrs Brome always stoically said. "He ha' been a badman to you, Car'line. I don' know whu should speak to that if you andme don't, bor. " "He ha'n't so much as laid a finger on me since I was ill, " Car'linesaid, making what defence for the absent man she could. "All the same, when you're a-feelin' wholly low agin, jes' you say toyourself, 'Th' Lord help me!' 'Tis only dacent, you a dyin' woman, todo it. When ye ha'n't got the strength ter say it, I'll go on my kneesand say it for ye, come to that, Car'line, " the notorious wrongdoerpromised. * * * * * They sent for Depper to the White Hart to come home and see his wifedie. "I ain't, so ter say, narvish, bein' alone with 'er, and would as liefsee the pore sufferin' critter draw her las' breath as not, but I hold'tis dacent for man and wife to be together, come to th' finish; an' soI ha' sent for ye, " Mrs Brome told him. Depper shed as many tears over his old woman as would have beenexpected from the best husband in the world; and Car'line let her dyinggaze rest on him with as much affection, perhaps, as if he had indeedbeen that ideal person. "There'll be money a-comin' in fro' th' club, " were almost her lastwords to him. She was speaking of the burial-club, into which she hadalways contrived to pay the necessary weekly pence; she knew it to bethe surest consolation she could offer him. Depper had made arrangements already for the payment of the elevenpounds from the burial-club; he had drunk a pint or two extra, daily, for the last week, the innkeeper being willing to trust him, inconsideration of the expected windfall. The excitement of this handlingof sudden wealth, and the dying of his wife, and the extra drinkcombined, completely upset his mental equilibrium. In the first momentsof his widower-hood he was prostrate with emotion. Dragged downstairs by the strong arm of Dinah Brome, he subsided intothe chair on the hearth, opposite that for ever empty one of his oldwoman's; and with elbows on knees and head on hand he hiccoughed andmoaned and wept aloud. Above, Dinah Brome and that old woman who had a reputation in Dulditchfor the laying-out of corpses, decked the poor cold body in such warmthof white flannelette, and such garniture of snipped-out frilling as, alive, Car'line Kittle could never have hoped to attain to. These last duties achieved, Dinah descended, her arms full of blanketsand pillows, no longer necessary above. These, with much banging andshaking, she spread upon the downstairs couch, indicating to the stillweeping Depper it was there he was expected to pass the night. "Bor, you may well blubber!" she said to him, with a kind ofcomfortable scorn of him and his sorrow. "You 'ont ketch me a-dryin'yer tears for ye, and so I tell ye flat. A crule husban' yu ha' been asany woman ever had. If ever there was a wife who was kep' short, andused hard, that was _yer_ wife, Depper, my man! Bad you ha' been to herthat's gone to 'er account, in all ways; who should know that better'nme, I'll ask ye? An' if at las' 'tis come home to ye, sarve ye whollyright. Tha's all the comfort ye'll get from me, bor. " "Stop along of me!" Depper cried, as, her work being finished, shemoved to the door. "'Taint right as I should be left here alone; and mefeelin' that low, and a'most dazed with affliction. " "Tha's how you've a right to feel, " the stern woman said, unmoved byhis tears. "I keep a-thinkin' of wha's layin' up above theer, Dinah. " "Pity you di'n't think on 'er more in 'er lifetime. " "'Taint nat'ral as I should be left wholly alone with a dead woman. 'Taint a nat'ral thing, I'm a-sayin', for me to du, Dinah, ter pass thenight alone along o' my old missus's corp. " "Bor, 'taint the fust onnat'ral thing you ha' done i' your life, " MrsBrome said; and went out and shut the door. An hour or so later Depper opened it, and going hurriedly past theintervening cottages, knocked stealthily upon the door of Dinah Brome. She looked out upon him presently from her bedroom window, her dark, crinkled hair rough from the pillow, a shawl pulled over her nightgown. "Whu's that a-distarbin' o' me, as ha'n't had a night's rest for aweek, at this time o' night?" she demanded sharply. "It's me; Depper, " the man's voice answered, whisperingly. "Le' me in, Dinah. I daren't be alone along of 'er no longer. I ha' only got you, Dinah, now my old woman's gone! Le' me in!" "You're a rum un ter call yerself a man and a husban'--you are!" DinahBrome ejaculated; but she came downstairs and opened her door. CLOMAYNE'S CLERK Into the stinging sleet and rain-laden winds of the March morning thereemerged from the door of a physician in Harley Street a boy ofseventeen. He was slightly built, with stooping shoulders, and, meagreof proportions as he was, was protected from the cruel weather by anovercoat much too small. As he faced the biting wind, and "all thevapoury turbulence of heaven, " the dusky pallor of his skin took on abluey tinge, he shivered and trembled in the grim grasp of the storm. A few yards from the door a child, dressed in a long, cheap mackintosh, and carrying within a strap slung over her shoulder a collection ofschool books and papers, awaited him. Into the lustrous dark eyes of the youth she looked, asking with heranxious blue ones a question she did not put in words; for a minute hedid not answer. "Come under my umbrella, " she said, as they walked on together. "Andturn up the collar of your coat, Peter. Didn't he have a fire for you?"she asked, with a distrustful glance in the direction of that greatphysician whose portals the youth had just quitted. "There was a roaring fire, " Peter said. "It isn't the cold somuch--it's the inside of me that's shivering. Cicely, it's going to beno use. He doesn't mean to pass me. " Cicely, a fairly well-grown girl of fourteen, with straight thin legs, straight, thick-hanging, dark hair, a straight, serious face, came to astop on the wet pavement. Answering to a tug upon his coat-sleeve, theyouth stopped too. "He must!" she said. "You shouldn't have left him. You should have_made_ him, Peter. " The tears came into her eyes and her lip shook. "Oh, Peter, he will--he will!" "He spotted that place on my throat, " Peter said, with dejection. "I told you to tie a handkerchief over it!" "Handkerchief? I should think I did! He told me three times before Itook it off. He wouldn't have so much as a rag on me. 'What's this?'says he. 'A little trouble I had a year or so ago, with a gland thatswelled, ' says I. 'It had to be cut, and has been as right as rain eversince. ' Just in that offhand way, Cicely. Quite brisk and cheerful. 'Tubercular, eh?' says he, very soft and thoughtful-like. And I knew itwas all up with me. " "You should have told him it wasn't!" Cicely said, tearfully impatientof him. "Oh, if I'd been there----!" "Don't you be afraid! I told him fast enough, or tried to, but hestopped me. 'That'll do, thank you, ' says he. 'I form my own opinion. 'He wouldn't listen. " "Did you stand like that?" Cicely demanded, with a condemning glance atthe stooping, shivering figure beneath the umbrella; "or did you holdyour head up and throw your shoulders back, and push out your chest asI told you?" "I stood up as brave as a lion, " the young man assured her, his teethchattering. "I yarned to him about how fond I was of athletics andswimming, how many miles I could walk at a stretch. Oh, I wasn't goingto lose the berth for the want of a little gas. Only--" he stopped andsadly shook his head; "he'd made up his mind, " he went on in a droopingtone. "He'd made it up as soon as he looked at me. 'Keep on with yourwalking; live in the open air, ' he said. 'You're not fitted for theoffice-stool. Stooping all day over a desk would be about the worstthing you could do. Thank you. That's all. Good-morning. '" "And you came away? You shouldn't have come away! You should have toldhim what it is to you. What you will have to put up with if you can'tget the berth. You should have said, 'You're taking the bread out of mymouth, you're stealing the coat off my back. It's life and death tome. ' You should have said that, and made him hear. And you came away!" Peter looked back upon that action, sorrowfully considering it. "Ithought it very affable of him to shake hands, " he said, "but he had avery final way of doing it. And, besides, I didn't care to make a taleof my private affairs, and seem to cringe. I didn't want him tothink----" "What does it matter about _him_?" Cicely demanded, with scorn. "Do wecare what _he_ thinks? Oh, Peter, go back to him, dear; do--do go back. Tell him he _must_ pass you. Tell him it's your chance, your only--onlyone. And how you've tried and tried--and this is the only one; and howcruel everyone is at home--just as if it was your fault that no one--noone will give you work to do. And tell him you'd rather be dead than gohome and say you'd lost it. Oh, Peter, say that; it is true--it istrue----!" She was crying. The rain blown on her cheek by the angry wind mingledwith the tears there. She held his wrist--that bony, flat wrist, whichhad had its own tale to tell to the examining physician--protrudingfrom the shabby coat-sleeve, and led him, he nearly unresisting, backto the door. On the door-step he hesitated, looking at the child withbeseeching dark eyes. "He's awfully busy--his room's full--he isn't the sort to takeliberties with--I don't want to bother him again. " But she kept a relentless hold upon the wrist, and herself rang thebell, and when the door opened, pushed him within with remorselessurgency. "Never mind cringing, " she whispered. "Tell him everything. Tell him how they treat you at home. Don't mind what he thinks. " So, in Peter went, and Cicely, her school-books tucked away under herarm for the protection afforded by her mackintosh, the rain coming onfaster and faster, walked the pavement, or waited on the doorstep, andnow and again crossed the road in the baseless hope that she might notfind the other side so wet, for a miserable two hours. "Why, I thought I had finished with you, sir, more than an hour ago, "the physician said, looking up, not too well pleased, when Peter, nervously smiling, his dark-curled head with its pale Jewish featurespushed well forward, appeared in the consulting-room again. The doctor, a fine-looking, red-faced man with keen blue eyes, looked agiant of health and strength and well-being beside the slight andmeagre form. He was physician to the great firm of Clomayne, Company, Limited, who never appointed a clerk to their offices without afavourable report from him. Peter had already passed the educationaltest by which they weeded out the applicants to fill their vacancies. As a typist he had proved himself expert; in shorthand he had attainedthe highest speed. Nothing but the medical examination stood betweenhim and the office-stool, which to him was as much an object of desireas is a throne to a prince. "I think, sir, " he said, his eyes, very dark and softly luminous, onthe doctor's face, --"I'm afraid you didn't form a very high opinion ofmy physique. I wanted to ask you--I wanted to beg you, sir, to pass me. It would be the making of me, sir, to get to Clomayne's. I've beentrying for more than a year to get a clerkship. The market is so veryfull, and I've been unfortunate. This is a great chance for me. I hopevery much, sir, you won't let me lose it. " The doctor looked down from his goodly height upon the stoopingshoulders of the suppliant. "I've got my duty to Clomayne's to perform, you know, " he said. "They send their clerks abroad into all sorts ofclimates--very unhealthy, some of them. Climates where you, my poorfellow, could not live a month. " "I could take my chance, " Peter said quickly. "I'm not afraid, sir. Ishouldn't ask any favour. If I died, it would make no difference toClomayne's. I mean the inconvenience would be mine. " "My dear fellow, you're a phthisical subject--not to mince matters. Youtold me your family history----" "You asked me, sir, " Peter interrupted, with a note of reproach in hissoftly thick voice. "It was my duty to ask. Your father died a year ago of pneumonia, yourmother ten years ago in a decline. Do you ask me to conceal these factsfrom Clomayne's?--to say that I consider you in strong health? Then, you ask what is absolutely impossible. I am sorry, but it isimpossible. I think that is all I have to say on the subject, and--mytime is very short. " "I am going almost at once, sir, " Peter said, speaking with an effortof cheerfulness, but with a load of sorrow and disappointment lying, aphysical weight, upon his heart. "I came because Cicely thought if Itold you 'twas a matter of life and death, sir--. It is that to me, almost--it is. I'm very good at shorthand--hundred and twenty a minute;my arithmetic and book-keeping, too, are more than fair. Myhand-writing's good, I might say. My hands don't always shake likethis----" "My dear boy, " the doctor said, with an impatience at once angry andpitiful, "all that has less than nothing to do with me!" "But if you'd give me a chance, sir!" His eyes were extraordinarilybright and pleading, his slight frame shook with eagerness; he made asthough he swallowed something with difficulty. "After all, I shall haveto cringe, " he said to himself. "Since my father died, I have had todepend on my uncle, sir, " he went on. "I owe everything to him. He'svery good--but there are a lot of his own children; and there's myaunt--and she thinks--. My uncle doesn't grudge me anything, he oftensays so, but he naturally wants me to be getting my own living--and sodoes my aunt; and she doesn't quite understand how difficult it is, nowadays, to get in to anything--and my cousins don't understand iteither, except Cicely, she's different. Of course, I can't at presentcontribute anything for my board and lodging and my clothes. " Hestopped, a minute, and looked down at his shabby overcoat, then liftedhis eyes, alight with their soft, irresistible appeal, to thephysician's face; his voice dropped in a kind of awe. "This berthcarries a pound a week, sir. It would be all the world to me to getit. " "You want me to perjure myself?" Peter did not shrink from the stern tone, nor blush at the imputation. "I want you not to take away my chance, " he said. He did not leave for some fifteen minutes longer, and when he didleave, it was with eyes lit almost to rapture, a glow of happiness onhis pale face, and words of thanks bubbling forth from trembling lips. The doctor had consented not to conceal the state of the young man'spredisposition to tubercular mischief, but to make the best of hischance of escaping the family taint. He had promised, too, to explainmatters to one of the managers with whom he was on very friendly terms. Peter's position at Clomayne's was assured. "I will never forget it, sir, never!" the boy said, stopping again atthe door of the consulting-room to reiterate the fact. "It will be themaking of me. I shall get on--you'll see I will. There's men that don'tmake the most of their chances--but I will. I've got a splendidone--thanks to your goodness--and I will. I feel it in me. You'll neverregret it. " "Oh, that'll do--that'll do, " the doctor said. He was a little ashamedof his weakness in the matter, knew it was a bad precedent, didn't wishto hear any more about it. "Haven't you got something warmer to puton?" he asked. "You're not going out into this pouring rain in thatthin coat?" "This is my great-coat, sir, " Peter explained, with a glance at thesleeve that exposed the flat red wrist. "And Cicely is waiting outsidefor me with an umbrella. " The doctor was sufficiently interested to walk to that window in hisconsulting-room which looked upon the street in order to watch theyouth who had taken what was in his experience the very unusual courseof questioning his fiat. He saw the stooping figure of the lad join theupright one of the child, hurrying to meet him. He almost saw the gladwords of the reversal of his doom upon the young man's lips; he saw thechange on the straight-featured serious face of the child from anexpression of unchildlike anxiety to one of almost womanly joy. Thepair stood for three minutes in the drenching rain before the window, and even at that crisis Cicely did not forget to hoist her drippingumbrella over the head so eagerly thrust forward. Then Peter put a thinwrist through a mackintoshed arm, and looking in each other's faces, and eagerly talking, unconscious of the eyes that watched them, the wetimpatient people pushing past, the boy and girl walked slowly away. The doctor touched the bell that would bring his next patient forinspection, then took one more look through the window. The pair hadtaken hands and were running now, running over the clean-washed, shinypavement. Cicely turned her face so that he saw it once again, and itwas a laughing face. "It's something to be young, " the doctor said to himself as he turnedaway. "Young--and to have the thing you wish for! Yes, even if you'renever to know a day's health while you live, and have got to die alingering, painful death in a year or so. " He only saw Peter once after he obtained his heart's desire and theproud position of a post as a junior clerk in Clomayne's office. It wason a platform of Liverpool Street Suburban line. He was going down toEnfield in his professional capacity, and while he waited for histrain, walking up and down, his attention was caught by a figure whichappeared in some way familiar to him standing at the book-stall. Aminute, and he had recognised it as that of the youth who had been sobent on becoming Clomayne's clerk. He was better dressed now, and wore a warmer over-coat (for the summerwas over, by now, and winter coming on again), and a more fashionablyshaped bowler. Cicely, in her waterproof still, although there was norain, and with her straight, heavy hair upon her shoulders, was by hisside. The physician, having established in his own mind the identity of thepair, resumed his pacing to and fro of the platform, and forgot them. In a minute, a voice at his elbow spoke his name, and glancing down, hesaw, taking off his hat to him, and accosting him with a very eagerlook on the duskily pale face, the youth whose name, even, he hadforgotten. A light of triumphant gladness was in the mild darkness ofthe eyes. "Excuse my speaking to you, sir, " Peter said, "Cicely would have mecome. She thought you'd be pleased to hear our very good news. " "I'm always glad to hear anyone's good news, " the big doctor said. "Let's see--it's Mr----?" "I'm the young man at Clomayne's, " Peter explained. "You were sogood----" "I remember perfectly. And how are you getting on?" "First class, sir. That's what I wanted to tell you. Cicely wanted ittoo. " "You like your work?" "I enjoy my work, sir. I don't have a dull moment. And--" here hisvoice sank with the immensity of the tidings with which it wascharged--"you'll be very glad to hear, sir, I'm promoted. " "I am indeed glad. Doubled your pay, have they?" Peter smiled. "It doesn't affect my pay, sir. But pay isn't everything, I take it. " "Certainly not, " the physician hastened to say. "To be chosen for anhonourable position, for instance----" "It's like this, " Peter said, anxious to proclaim the good fortunewhich had befallen him. "Clomayne & Co. Are starting anotherbranch--you may have heard--and there's heavy work entailed. Clomayne'shave had to put on several of their clerks to stop at the officeover-hours. I'm one of those selected. " "I see, " the doctor said, meeting with his penetrating blue eyes themildly exultant gaze of the black ones. "I've been at it now for a month, " Peter went on. "Instead of gettinghome at seven, I'm at the office till nine, and sometimes ten o'clock. I enjoy it very much. The firm allows us something for our teas. Myfellow-clerks and I have a rattling good time. If it hadn't been foryour kindness, sir, I should never have got to Clomayne's; and Ithought you'd be glad to hear how splendidly I'm doing there. " "And how's the health? Extra hours spent in bending over your deskaren't very good for you. You haven't yet lost your cough?" Peter looked away, evidently not caring to be questioned on that theme. "I've been very fit, thank you, sir, " he said. "The mist--it's been abit misty in the evenings lately--has got on my chest rather. This, being Saturday, " he further explained, "is a holiday. Cicely and Ialways have the Saturday afternoons. " Ah! And how did they spend them, he was asked. In the air, it washoped. Not always, it seemed. For Cicely was fond of pictures, and sometimesthey went to the National Gallery. Cicely was fond of reading too; andonce or twice they had been to Westminster Abbey because she had afancy for Poets' Corner. But this afternoon they were going to theirhome at Edmonton, and if they could get away again, and if it didn'train, they were going to the Chingford hills, for Cicely, of allthings, loved a glorious walk. "Cicely's a dear kiddie. She's my friend. I'm awfully fond of her, " Petersaid. He made the avowal without the slightest embarrassment--from hisinfancy, probably, he had not known what it was to feel shy. "Before Igot that berth at Clomayne's, I should have had a rough time at home ifit hadn't been for Cicely. My aunt and my cousins didn't believe in me, you see, sir. Cicely always did. " The physician looked across to the bookstall where the child stillstood, watchful of him and Peter beneath the shadowing brim of her hat. Obeying a good-natured impulse, he crossed to her and laid a hand onher shoulder, and called her "Cicely, " and said he had been hearing shewas fond of reading. "We both are, " Cicely said, with a calm, middle-aged self-possession. "It is the thing Peter and I like best in the world. " "And what sort of reading?" the doctor asked; and learnt that Peterliked books of adventure and happy stories, but that Cicely lovedpoetry, and liked best stories that were sad. "They make her cry, sir, " Peter explained. "She cries, and cries--don'tyou, Cicely?--but she likes them too. " So a kind doctor, looking over the wares displayed, bought a volume ofLongfellow's poems, which he gave the girl--he knew nothing of poetry, but was sure Longfellow must be safe, as his mother had liked him--andhe got for the boy, Wells's _Sea Lady_. "I don't read such things, myself, " he said, "but I've gathered fromthe newspapers the man has a quite creditable acquaintance withscience, and does not write sentimental rubbish. " Cicely, regarding the donor with an unsmiling face, said--"Thank youvery much, " in her staid, middle-aged way; but Peter, using his tonguevolubly, overwhelmed him with thanks. "It is kind of you!" he said fervently. "I shall always treasure thebook, and so will Cicely hers. We go to the Library--we've got asplendid one, you know, in Edmonton, Passmore Edwards gave us. Before Igot to Clomayne's--they didn't want me at home, and I had nowhere elseto go--I spent most of my days in the Library. Of course I've read H. G. Wells, and I learnt a lot of him by heart to tell Cicely, but I loveto have him for my own. I have very much to be grateful to you for, sir, and I shall be grateful while I live. " "For how long will that be, poor fellow, I wonder!" the doctor said tohimself as he walked away. He had done the poor boy a kindness, and helet his mind dwell on him with a pitying pleasure. It was hard thatFate should grudge to this unfortunate that humble place in the worldof men which he held with such a boyish pride, those poor pleasures inwhich he took such innocent delight! He thought of his own son, as thetrain bore him away to his consultation, good and fairly satisfactory, but guarded on every side, petted, pampered. How much would it cost tobring into his own boy's handsome face the glow of surprised delightwhich had overspread the pale features of this poor lad at the gift ofthe four-and-sixpenny book. But even as the thought passed through his mind, his lips curved with asmile of proud tenderness. The absurdity of the comparison! His ownhandsome, well-grown lad, with his fair, frank face and proudly carriedhead, and the poor little city clerk--the pallor of ill-health andconfinement on the dusky face; the meagre figure; the head, over-heavywith its brown curls, thrust forwards, as if in eagerness to reach thegoal before his feet could carry him there. "Ah, happiness is found in unexpected places, and is a matter oftemperament only, and not of circumstance at all, " the doctor toldhimself, when Clomayne's clerk and the girl he called Cicely, passedthe door of his first-class carriage, their destination reached. Peterwas holding the girl's sleeve and hurrying her along, his head pushedforward, and on his face that look of eager joyousness which to theeyes that watched and that _knew_ was so full of pathos. The volubletongue was wagging as the pair trotted past. He heard his own namementioned. And so Clomayne's clerk passed from the eyes that watched, for ever. "I'll keep an eye on that poor fellow. I'll speak about him to Ladell;and when he begins to go down-hill, I'll lend a helping hand, " thedoctor said, making one of those resolutions that testify surely to thespiritual part of us, and do honour to the hearts that record them, even when, as now, they are not kept. The doctor fully meant to keep his when he made it, but he forgot. He forgot it, until one sunshiny morning in the spring of the nextyear, when, as he sat at his solitary lunch, there was brought to him aletter. It was in a careful and childish hand, and he read it almost ata glance as he ate the biscuit and drank the glass of Burgundy which heallowed himself for his midday meal. "DEAR SIR, " the letter ran--"Peter was coming to tell you he had been promoted again. A junior was wanted to help with some work through the Easter holidays. Peter offered and was accepted. He was coming to tell you, but he was drowned last night in the River Lea. So I thought I would let you know. --Yours affectly. , CICELY. "P. S. He was not to have had more pay, but it was the honour. " The physician, who had never time for anything but his profession, madetime to go to the funeral of Clomayne's clerk, paying his poor remainsa compliment he had refused to those of many a man of distinguishedname and high estate whose fees he had taken. On a Saturday afternoonin the sweetest month of the spring-time, he travelled down to Finchleywith Ladell, that manager of Clomayne's who was his friend. "We asked his people to hurry the funeral by a couple of days, so thatthe clerks could come, " the official said. Peter had looked up to this man as to a king among men. A "good-morning"from him, and a nod in the street in response to an eagerly snatched-offbowler, left the junior clerk elated in spirits for the day. "Mr Ladell asked me if I wouldn't like to change places with Jones whosits nearer the fire, " he said once to Cicely, his eyes humid withgratification. "He'd noticed how cold my hands were when I passed him apen. They shake, you know; I can't stop them. It's something to benoticed like this by him, Cicely! I shall do now!" "He was only one of the youngsters, of course, and not of much account, but he'd made a lot of friends. They've got a wreath as big as ahaystack for the poor little man. They've made him into a hero; andthey're all here--good fellows!" Thus the manager to the physician, asthe train bore them along. "It was simply silly, chucking away a life like that, of course, " hewent on. "A little fellow that could barely swim, to fling himself in, after a casual suicide! A hulking, great beggar who had good reason, nodoubt, for wanting to be rid of his life. He probably wouldn't havethanked the boy, even if he had saved him--which he didn't. " He had a goodly following, poor Peter! How his eyes would haveglistened, could he have known! Quite a regiment of clerks fromClomayne's were there, walking two and two; to say nothing of the unclewho had grudgingly fed him, and the goodly array of cousins who "hadnot believed in him. " He had been put in a burial-club by his nottoo-loving relations; so, although he had gone so long in shabbyclothing, and had known the sorrow of broken boots and wrist-bands thatmust be hidden away, he rode in state to his resting-place, drawn byfour horses, in a silver hearse, his coffin covered with flowers. But his grave was a humble one--the money from the burial-club notbeing sufficient to secure him a decent privacy in decay--and very, very deep. The clerks, crowding forward when the service was over, could hardly read his name and the account of his few years, on thesilver plate of his coffin, so deep in the bowels of the earth theylaid him--poor Peter! "the joys of all whose life were said and sung!"His was the first coffin in the grave destined to hold seven more. The physician, waiting until the rest had turned away, stood for a fewminutes alone, gazing into that profundity. "Such a chucking away of life!" the admired gentleman who had beenPeter's chief had said. But the physician had his own thought on thatmatter. The poor boy--the foolish, enthusiastic, perhaps hystericalboy--enjoying the poor blessings that were his with the propheticeagerness those doomed to an early death so often exhibit, had takenhis seat upon his office-stool as upon a throne; had blessed God forhis career of junior clerk as for a high imperial lot; then had flungaway, his short race hardly begun, the life he prized. True; but in ablind belief in his own strength; and for the high purpose, suggestedby the poetry and the books he and Cicely loved and talked over, ofgiving himself for another! The physician knew that in giving all hehad but exchanged a year or two of failing power, of the pain andweakness of daily dying, the grief of finding himself a burden againupon unwilling shoulders for--what? For the moment of exultation wheninto the dark waters of greedy Lea he had flung his poor little body, clothed as it was in the new coat and trousers of which Cicely and hehad been so proud; the moment of absolute belief in himself and hisstrength; the moment more, perhaps, of recognition that he had failed, but in a great cause. Peter had exhibited an effusive gratitude for thefew favours Life had bestowed upon him; for this last favour of Death'saccording the physician knew he might well have been thankful. That beautiful "floral tribute" for which Clomayne's clerks hadcontributed their shillings, had been lowered upon the coffin, togetherwith one or two humbler, and obviously home-made, wreaths. As thephysician turned away he noticed, lying almost at his feet, a littlebunch of violets, dropped as the flowers had been removed from thecoffin. Attached by a bit of white ribbon to their stalks was a tinysquare of notepaper, and on this was written in the careful butunformed hand the doctor recognised, "From Cicely. " Holding them thoughtfully for a minute, the physician slowly opened hisfingers; and through all that dismal space, soon to be filled withother coffins, Cicely's violets fell upon that which bore Peter's name. Upon the coffin of Clomayne's fortunate junior clerk; in luck's waystill; promoted to the blessed company of those who die in what theybelieve to be a good cause. IN A TEA-SHOP The duties of the tea-shop were not particularly hard, but to Lucilla, whose head was filled with memories of a perfect holiday just over, alittle irksome. The church clock, in the market-place upon which thewindows looked, chimed the half-hour past five. The tea-room closed atsix-thirty. "At last it ringeth to evensong, " Lucilla said. At least, these were the words which repeated themselves in her brain;what she really said was--"Hot toast for two--sixpence; a pot oftea--sixpence; how many pieces of cake, sir? Thank you;cake--fourpence. One shilling and fourpence, if you please. " It had been a busy afternoon, but the couple who paid theone-and-fourpence, pushing some coppers towards the waitress, who, witha dignified motion and an aloof-voiced "We do not receive gratuities, "pushed them back, would in all probability be the last customers. Lucilla having discovered the man's hat for him, restored to the womanthe wrist-bag and pocket-handkerchief and parcel she would have leftbehind her, and watched the pair from the room, yawned aloud as shepiled the soiled teacups, plates, and saucers on the little brownJapanese tray, and carried them to that screened-off angle of the roomwhere china was washed and bread and butter cut all the day long. She returned, yawning still, to dust the crumbs from the little bambootable. Half-past five! What, in those delightful fourteen days whichhad composed her yearly holiday, had she been doing at that hour? Soprecious the memory of that fortnight, so treasured every incident, almost she could have accounted for each minute of the time. As she set the chairs straight before the dozen bamboo tables, put eachillustrated paper in its allotted place, her inward gaze was turnedupon scenes she had left behind with the delightful luxuriousness of alife which, for that small, allotted space, she had been permitted tolive. She had driven, she had motored, she had paid visits, had danced. Yes--danced! She paused on that word, and her lips trembled to a smile. She had read of such an existence, dreamed of it, perhaps; at last, shehad lived it. Would it make her days in the tea-shop--and out ofit--easier? For one thing, she had returned a little ashamed of her work. "Don'tmention about the tea-shop, even before your cousins, dear, " her aunthad admonished her. Her aunt, being an old-fashioned person who did notrealise that a lady can get her living by any honourable means, in thepresent day, and remain a lady still. Lucilla had, of course, obeyedher aunt's injunction, but had felt, for her own part, not theslightest repugnance to mention the means by which she gained herlivelihood, until a couple of evenings before she had returned. Thatevening of the dance, whose memory brought the quiver of a smile toLucilla's lips. "Suppose I had told him!" she said to herself as she moved from tableto table, mechanically putting all in order. "He asked me how I passedmy time. What would have happened? Would he have gone on dancing withme, and gone on sitting out with me when I couldn't dance? I'm glad Ididn't tell, even if it did deceive him--even if I am a snob. I'm gladI had my hour. " She looked out of one of the windows into the market square, aroundwhich the lamps were lighted now, and a pleasing vision rose before hereyes of herself in her cousin Alice's last year's ball-dress, lookingso supremely happy, and as pretty--he had said that--as a dream. Yes;she was thankful he would never have to know. What would he think ofher if he could see her now in her full-skirted brown merino frock, herbrown muslin apron, the big white chrysanthemum, which was the emblemof the tea-shop, embroidered in its corner and on its bib, her highmuslin cap with the stiff strings tied beneath her chin? "He would never recognise me; but I'm glad he will never see me, "Lucilla said. Then she turned from the window at the sound of a step upon the stairs, and saw him coming into the room. He was accompanied by a lady, young and pretty. "Such a crush, and so badly managed, and so under-waited!" she wasvolubly declaring as she came in. "Half a cup of cold tea, and aquarter of an inch of fishy sandwich was all I got hold of. It was asplendid thought of yours to turn in here for a feed, Captain Finch. Icouldn't possibly get along on that till dinner-time. Bread andbutter, please, for two, and a good lot of it. Two hungry people. And--oh, where is the young lady who usually waits?" It was the attendant from behind the screen who was taking the order, agirl with a fine figure, a sharp-featured, high-coloured, alert face, and wearing the brown uniform of the establishment. The other younglady was engaged elsewhere, she said. "Oh!" said the customer on a falling note, and repeated in a flattertone her order. "I wanted you to see this other girl, " she said toCaptain Finch as the waitress moved away. "She is called a beauty. Oneor two men rave about her. Women can't judge of these things. I wantedto hear what you thought of her. " "My word--on such a subject--would be final, " the man said. Lucilla, cutting bread and butter behind the screen, quivered at thevoice, the rather hesitating utterance which was characteristic, thelittle laugh at the finish. Ah, what a mercy she had had that minute inwhich to dash into the corner and to drive Miss Dawson forth to takeher place! She remembered how beautifully, intoxicatingly deferentialhe had been to her in her charming ball-dress, niece to the lady whowas wife of the most influential man in Workingham. Words could notexpress how he must despise her if he saw her now. "They make you judge at all the beauty shows in India, I suppose?" thelively lady was saying. "They'd like to. I couldn't stand the fag. " "Poor dear! You appear to be very much exhausted. " "That beastly wedding! I never was so bored in my life. " "That doesn't excuse your yawning in my face. " "Oh, I say! Did I do that, now? I beg your pardon. " "If only this pretty girl I was telling you about had been here!" "Oh, come! Good-looking women aren't so rare, I know a dozen I can seeany day, Mrs Eaton. But as we're here, can't she be produced?" The lady tinkled the little bell with which her table was supplied. "Some walnut cake, please. " As it was set on the table, "I hope theother young lady has not left?" she inquired. "Oh no, madam. " "A little more hot water. " "An officer, I'll bet my eyes! And a fine-looking fellow! Did you sayhe was a pal of yours, miss?" Miss Dawson whispered to Lucilla as shereplenished the jug. "If they mention me again, say Miss Browne--you can call me that--isgone home, and isn't coming back any more for a month. " The bell tinkled again. "I thought perhaps you had forgotten the hot water, " the lady saidsweetly. "No, madam, " replied Miss Dawson as she placed the jug on the tray;"Miss Browne, our other young lady, being gone home, we're a littleshort-handed, like. The young person who is taking her place is ratherawkward at the work, and puts us backward, " she raised her voice herethat Lucilla might enjoy the joke. "Ah. I thought things were not quite so nice, " the customer said. "No, madam, " acquiesced Miss Dawson, and giggled, and pinched Lucillaas she retired behind the screen. The lady at the tea-table was a vivacious creature; she rattled on withhardly a break in her stream of chatter through the half-hour, duringwhich she ate all the bread and butter and drank nearly all the tea. Lucilla, behind her screen, listening for the pleasant tones of theman's halting speech, grew weary of the high-pitched, untiring voice. "It is getting late, " Captain Finch said at last. "I had better put youin a cab. " "You aren't going to take me back?" "Sorry. I've got to buy some things. " When they had left the room and were going downstairs, the woman'stongue still volubly running, Lucilla came with a soft rush from behindthe screen and looked from the window. The shops round the market placewere brilliantly lighted now; the elegant backs of the couple emergingfrom the confectioner's beneath the tea-room were easily visible. Theman raised his stick and hailed a hansom. "How wonderfully things happen!" mused Lucilla. "He said, I remember, that he was going to the wedding of a friend; to think that it shouldhave been here!" "If you and him are friends, I can't think why you didn't showyourself, " Miss Dawson called from behind her screen. "I daresay you can't, " said Lucilla to herself. "Where'd you see him first?" Miss Dawson asked. "Did he come up andspeak to you?" The withering glance which Lucilla cast in the direction of the screen. "Come up and speak to me!" she repeated. "And why not, pray? Rubbish!" laughed Miss Dawson, rattling the teacupsshe was washing. "What does it matter in the end? Comes to the samething when you do know them. " "You and I look at such things from a different point of view. " "Heap of nonsense!" Miss Dawson shrilled. "Your father was a lawyerthat failed and couldn't pay his debts; mine was a bankruptgreengrocer. Both of 'em's dead now, and one as good as another; andus, too. " It was not the first time Lucilla had heard the argument; she listenedto it now with compressed lips, in silence. Then she went to themantelpiece, made an entry in a memorandum book lying there, tore outthe page, counted the money in the bag which hung at her side, piled itupon the loose leaf, which she folded around it, preparatory tocarrying it to the desk in the shop below. "If you don't want to know the man, say you've never met him before, and bounce it, " Miss Dawson called after her in contemptuous tones asshe disappeared. Two short flights of stairs led from shop to tearoom, and these weredivided by a small landing, where spare cups and saucers and teapotswere stacked. From the upper flight the lower was invisible. Lucilla, descending, was unaware therefore of the gentleman coming up until shemet him on the square of landing beneath the unshaded gaslight. He helda great, loose bunch of long-stalked violets in his hand; and he was, of course, Lucilla's partner at the heavenly dance, Captain Finch. Lucilla's heart beat tumultuously, her face turned white. "Bounce it, "said the practical Miss Dawson's voice in her ears. She kept her headup, therefore did not notice the proffered hand, would have passed thegentleman by. "Miss Mavis, I have brought you some violets, " he said. "You are mistaken. My name is Miss Browne, " said Lucilla. "I do notaccept flowers from men I do not know. " He stared at her, his lips fallen apart beneath his moustache. "I--wasunder the impression we had met at the dance at Workingham Town Hall, "he said. She took courage from his hesitating manner, and smiled with greatself-possession. "You are unfortunately mistaken. Will you allow me topass?" she said. Lifting his hat, he moved aside; then turned to watch her make herdeliberate descent. The soft folds of her full brown skirt dropped fromstair to stair; the light from the flaring gas-jet fell on the knot ofbrown hair massed between the high, stiff cap and the high, stiffcollar. "Is that you, miss?" It was a voice from above which called the superfluous question; heturned from the contemplation of the young lady in brown, who had nowreached the bottom stair, to that of the young lady in brown who stoodat the top. Towards the latter he mounted with a lingering step, as ifnot quite aware that he did so, and followed her into the tea-room. "That young lady who has just gone down----?" he said. "Miss Browne, sir. " "Er--is that so--really?" He lost himself, apparently; for the momenthad nothing more to say; until, with a happy inspiration, "and--yourname?" he asked. "I'm Miss Dawson, sir. Miss Nellie Dawson. " "Really? Pleased to have made your acquaintance. Er--I've--er--broughtyou some violets, Miss Nellie Dawson, " he said. He appeared again the next morning, and had lunch at the tea-shop; theonly man among a bevy of women lunching off scones and tea. He was shyof his isolated position, perhaps, for he held the illustrated paper hetook up rather persistently before his face. At that hour a servantstood behind the screen and washed the china; both the girls waited. Above the top of his paper and round its edges he watched the moreelegant of the two moving with noiseless tread among the tables, standing with bent head in the attitude of dignified attentiveness toreceive orders, carrying her light burden of brown tea tray and Satsumachina. It was Lucilla he watched, but it was Miss Dawson who waited onhim. He ordered two poached eggs--the most substantial item on the menucard. He had to wait a long while for them, and when they were eaten, and he had given himself time to read his _Punch_ two or three timesthrough, he apparently discovered himself to be still hungry, for heordered two more. By the time these were consumed, and he hadconscientiously looked through _The Ladies' Field_, with which MissDawson had thoughtfully supplied him, the room began to empty. A couple of ladies, evidently from the country, strayed in. One, in alow and secret voice demanded stout, which could not be supplied. Lucilla, with her head at a charming incline, suggested as a substitutetea, coffee, or chocolate; finally took the order for chocolate, supplied it; then, there being no one else to wait on, sat down by thefire, drew a strip of knitting from her apron pocket, began to work onit. Captain Finch, rising from his table, pulled down his waistcoat, pickedup his hat and stick, crossed the room, and placed himself before her. In the hand held in the fall of his back he carried a book. "I--er--will you allow me--to--pay?" he asked. "Foureggs--er--coffee--er. " Lucilla, without raising her eyes from the brown silk she was knittinginto a narrow strip, slightly waved a hand in the direction of MissDawson. "The other young lady, " she said. But Miss Dawson, at that moment, was in spirited controversy with anelderly, handsomely-dressed customer, whose carriage and pair of horsesawaited her at the pastry-cook's door, who could only remember to haveeaten one slice of walnut cake, while Miss Dawson was of opinion thatshe had eaten two. "Am I not permitted to pay Miss--er--Browne--if I prefer to do so?" "It is the rule for each customer to pay the young lady who waits onhim. " "Thank you. Miss--er--Browne, when I had the happiness to meet you atthe Workingham Town Hall--at that delightful dance----" "Pardon me. You did not meet me there. I do not dance. " "You spoke of a wish to read one of--er--Bernard Shaw's plays. I've gotthis for you. " He produced the hand from the small of his back andtendered her the book. She laid down her knitting and rose; a belated customer had appeared. "I am sorry, " she said, without looking at man or book. "The lady youspeak of would doubtless think it very kind of you. I have no wish toread the plays, and could not possibly take the book. " With the slightest inclination of the head she passed him, and, themenu card in hand, leant over the newcomer. Left with the book, Captain Finch poised it in his hand, looking ratherstupidly at it for a few minutes; then tossed it to the mantelpiece, and went from the room. The clock had struck six when he came in for tea, that evening, and allthe little tables were empty. Miss Dawson, who was second in command, was, as usual at that hour, behind the screen; he had come in soquietly that Lucilla had no chance to rush and take her place. Her facepaled as she saw him. The man was persistent, her strength at themoment small; there was only her pride to carry her through. The day had been a busy one, she was fagged, and read in his face thathe saw her to be so. His face, although not a clever one, was soheavenly kind! "I won't trouble you to fetch any tea, " he said. "If I might be allowedto--er--stay here and talk to you for a few minutes----" "Tea or coffee, sir?" "Oh, well, tea, then--confound the stuff!" He threw down his hat and stick, and stood while she placed the browntray, the tiny teapot, the minute muffin-dish before him. "If you knowhow I hate to have you--er--wait on me----" he said; but she gave himno chance to enlarge on the theme. He sat for a few minutes over the tea-tray, not touching its contents, and with his eyes on Lucilla's back as she stood at the mantelpiecemaking her entries, counting the money in her bag. When she moved tothe door he got up and intercepted her. "You are Miss Browne while you are in the--er--shop, I understand?" hesaid. "I don't care for her--for Miss--er--Browne. It is the girl I metat the dance I care for, and want to see again. I can't find her here. Can I--er--find her outside? If I wait at the door for an hour, say, will you--will she be there?" Lucilla drew back, with hurt eyes and a reddening face. As if she wereany Miss Dawson, with the pavement for a rendezvous! "I can't possibly say where you may meet your friends, " she told him. "I, for my part, do not make appointments to meet men who are strangersto me--in the streets. " She passed him then, and went downstairs, her head held high, althoughher heart was sore. She watched, hidden in the shop, for his departure. It seemed to her impatience a long time before he left. Miss Dawson was warbling to herself, with rather shrill-throatedgaiety, whisking her full skirt among the bamboo tables, when Lucillareturned to the tea-room. "I like your friend, miss, " she said. "He hung about for a good time, waiting for you; but as you didn't choose to come back he's gone. " Lucilla had come in with her arms full of great, bronze-colouredchrysanthemums, which had been sent in from the flower shop to deck thetables for the morrow. In silence she went about the work ofreplenishing the vases. Miss Dawson quavered some high notes of hersong. "Did he say that he wanted to see me again?" Lucilla, in spite ofherself, was obliged to ask. "Dear me, no, miss. He said he stayed to thank me for wearing hisflowers. " Lucilla viciously snapped off the stalk of a giant chrysanthemum. ThePrincess violets in the other girl's bosom had been as thorns in herown, all the day. She glanced at the mantelpiece where she had seen himtoss the book of plays. "You've got his book as well, I suppose?" she asked. Miss Dawson gave her high laugh. "Oh yes!" she acknowledged. "I knowit's your leavings; I'm not proud. " She sang in her florid style for a minute or two, then descended tospeech again. "You wouldn't let your friend wait for you outside, miss, " she said. "You're so mighty particular. I ain't. I told him I had no one to walkhome with me to-night; so he's waiting for me. " Captain Finch brought his erect, handsome form, his kind, foolish faceno more to the tea-room. Lucilla, longing as much as she dreaded to seehim, felt her heart throb at the sound of each manly footstep on thestair, paled at the sight of coat and trousers of a certain shade, trembled at the sound of a voice that recalled his hesitating tones. But he came never again. The "bounce" which Miss Dawson had counselledhad had its effect. Either he now disbelieved the evidence of his owneyes, or, more probably, he bowed, as a gentleman would, to her desireto disavow the acquaintanceship. "A man in his position could not meet on equal ground a girl in mine;and--and I won't meet him on any other level, " she said to herself. Aloud, she would not speak of him again. Neither did Miss Dawson anymore allude to the gentleman who had presented the violets and thevolume of plays, and with whom she had gone for a walk on the firstevening of their acquaintanceship. Relations between the young women, never very friendly, had become strained since that evening. "A girl who could do such a thing!" said Lucilla to herself; and heldher head disdainfully, and curled her lip at the other girl. But Miss Dawson, if she noticed that scornful attitude, was not at allimpressed by it. She switched her brown skirt with more than her usualair of jaunty alertness around the chairs and tables, looked in thelittle glass behind the screen at which the pair adjusted their capsand aprons with a smirk of self-satisfaction, and always wore a bunchof Princess violets in the bosom of her dress. Soon, the string ofamber beads at her throat was discarded in favour of a gold chain andpearl and turquoise pendant, which Lucilla despised as imitation, ofcourse, but which, nevertheless, looked real. Then, one day, at an hour when the tea-room was empty, arrived aletter, from her influential aunt at Workingham, for Lucilla. A certain portion of this letter she read again and again; then, theneed to a bursting heart of the outlet of speech being imperative, spake with her tongue. "Your advice to me to--bounce it--wasn't very happy advice, MissDawson, " she said, with bitterness. "Captain Finch knew all the time. He knew when he came to this place. He came to see me. He knew I servedin a tea-shop. It made no difference. He went to my uncle the day afterthe dance, and spoke--spoke about me----" Her voice was not undercontrol; she turned away. Miss Dawson, energetically rubbing a bamboo table on which some coffeehad been spilt, made no answer. "I wish--I wish--" said Lucilla, with her back turned, a world ofregret in her eyes, "I wish I had not been so silly. " Miss Dawson looked up momentarily from her occupation. "You can put itall right with him, you know, " she said; "Captain Finch is stillhanging round. " "Here?" Lucilla cried. "He went three weeks ago!" "Not he. Every night of the three weeks he's waited outside to walkhome with me. For the first week he went to talk about you. For afortnight he hasn't mentioned your name. " She ceased to rub the table, shook the cloth, folded it with nicety, the other girl speechlessly regarding her. "He gives me these every day, " Miss Dawson went on, and dashed a handtowards the violets in her breast. "He gave me this, " she lightlyfingered the turquoise and pearl pendant. "I don't wear his ring yet, our rules not allowing it. " She whisked off with her cloth to the screen, deposited it, reappeared. "His leave's up in six weeks, " she said. "Him and me are to be marriedin a month; have a fortnight's fling, and off to India. I chuck this, at the end of the week. They know, downstairs. I hope you'll like yournew pal when she turns up, miss. " * * * * * Only once, during the few days that remained, did Lucilla and MissDawson speak of matters not strictly concerned with teas, scones, andgirdle-cakes. It was on the last day of her service in the tea-shopthat the latter brought with her, and flung upon the mantelpiece, thebook of plays which Captain Finch, on his second visit, had depositedthere for Lucilla. "This was meant for you, " she said, "and you may as well have it. Suchstuff isn't in my line, thank goodness! and I can't make head or tailof it. But there's a word in it I happened upon, first time I openedthe book; and it's stuck in my memory, for it happens to be holy sense, and not tommy-rot. This is it--or something like it-- "'If you want a thing very badly, go straight for it, and--GRAB it!'" She put her common face close to Lucilla's disdainful one as, with aninsolent emphasis, she made the quotation, then laughed as she turnedaway. "That is what you should have done--you idiot!" she said. A CHALK-MARK ON A GATE PART I She was junior music-mistress at the high school for girls, and hemathematical master at the boys' college hard by. On most afternoons ofthe week it happened that, their day's work being done, theyencountered as they left the scene of their respective duties, and, their homes lying within a few doors of each other, walked theretogether. He was a tall man, loosely put together, with iron-grey hair, stoopingshoulders, and a look on his long-featured face at once dreary andgentle. She was small and dark, alert and pretty, and, from the crownof her neatly-dressed head, in its plain straw hat, to the soles of hersensibly shod feet, wholesome-looking. The day that was soon to melt into evening had been sultry, theclass-rooms airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath theirfeet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir;both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of allcompanionships which demands no effort at sprightliness, nor theutterance of one word not spontaneously spoken. "Shall we see you down by the river to-night?" she asked him, atlength. If he could get away he would go there, he said. "Do come!" she gently urged him. "It does you good to get away. " Then the man's house was reached. It was one in a street of £30-a-yearhouses, with large bow-windows, small gardens, red-and-white stripedcurtains to protect green-painted front doors. He made a motion of hishand, half-heartedly inviting her to enter. She shook her head. "I've been in once to-day, " she said. "Mrs Kilbourne asked me to gether something in the town, and I took it in. " "So long as you remember the caution I gave you----" "You may be quite sure I remember. " As she would have passed on he stopped her. "One minute, " he said. "The rose I told you of is out, to-day. " The tiny garden was fashioned into a square of grass-plot, a bed fullof rose-trees in its midst. The Frau Karl Druschki, recently acquired, had only one half-unfolded bloom. He gathered it and gave to her as shestood beyond the iron rails. "Only one! How could you pull it for me!" she reproached him. "Absolutely pure white--quite flawless, you see, " he said. His touch lingered on the flower, for he loved roses; then he put itinto her hand, and she went on her way. In the bow-windowed front room of Horace Kilbourne's house his wife waslying on the sofa--semi-paralysed, a drunkard. "That you, Horry dear?" she said, as, with a gloomy, hopeless face helooked in upon the unlovely sight. She raised a frowsy head from its pillow, put a dirty hand to her eyesto shade them from the sun entering the darkened room by the open door, smiled fatuously upon her husband. "Come and haul wifey up, and make me comfy, and give me a cup of tea, "she invited him. One side of her was helpless. She was a tall and broadly-made woman, enormously fat. It required the exertion of all his strength to get herinto the desired position. One leg was like a log, and was lifted as ifit did not belong to her. All the cushions had to be shaken up andreplaced, the coverlet respread on her ice-cold feet. But Kilbourne was used to such services; if his face was lowering as heperformed them, his fingers were deft. Tea was set forth with no daintiness upon the untidy, coloured cloth ofthe centre-table. He poured out a cup and took it to her. She receivedit with a coaxing leer in her eyes, looking up at him. "Just a drop!" she whispered, in a thickened whine. "Just a teeny drop, Horry!" He turned his back on her, without a word in reply, and went to his owntea. Two of the three rounds set forth of unappetising bread-and-butterhe ate, swallowed a great cup of lukewarm tea. His eyes were fixeddrearily upon the dish of biscuits which also graced the meal. Hecounted them idly, wondering for how many afternoons the same six haddone duty for the like occasion. "One leetle, teeny drop!" his wife said again. "You know tea gives meindigestion without, Horry. One teeny, weeny one!" She was allowed by the doctor a certain modicum of whisky in the day, and the dose, for safety's sake, Kilbourne always administered himself. "You can have it half now and half when you go to bed at night, if youlike, " he said at length, and got up and poured the portion from abottle, which he locked away again in the sideboard. She sighed heavily with anticipation as he held it to her, and he felther breath upon his face. "You've been having brandy?" he said. "No, Horry, no!" She shook her head, which was already heavily tremulous, and, seeingfear lest the precious beverage with which she was now supplied shouldbe filched from her, buried her face in the cup and gulped it down. "Where'd you get the brandy?" he persisted; and she began feebly tocry. "Naughty Horry, to speak to wifey so! Didn't I promise you and thedoctor I wouldn't touch it? And me left without a penny to buy it with!And only water the whole day long has passed my lips. I'll take anoath! I wish I may die to-night, Horry, if I've had a drop!" He turned from her and rang the bell. "Where did your mistress get the brandy she has had to-day?" he askedof the pert, untidy-looking maid-of-all-work who appeared. "Where'd she get it? Out of the bottle, of course. I fetched it for heraway from the grocer's, right enough, " the servant said, with animpudent face and a tossed-up head. "I thought I had given you orders never to fetch your mistress anythingof the sort?" "An' the missus she give me orders to fetch it, " the girl said. "'Ow doI know which I'm to mind, between ye? An' me shut up with 'er all theday, an' 'er a-badgerin'----" "Take the tea-things. That will do for the present. Go!" he said. He walked to the foot of the sofa, and looked long at the huge, unlovely bulk, once the admired form of his handsome wife, that laythere. "You disgrace!" he said. She whimpered afresh, her mouth shaking, the tears running down hercheeks unrestrained, like those of a child. "There's a way to speak to a poor, suffering wife!" she whined. "And myhead like splitting open! You might feel for me a little, Horry. Lookat my poor arm!" With her able hand she moved the disabled one towardshim. "It's quite numb. Rub it, Horry, " she pleaded, looking weepinglyup at him. "It's numb, yet it aches right up into my throat. And mypoor tongue--poor wifey's tongue--is like fire! Look at it, hubby. " She opened the tremulous mouth, the great, parched tongue lolled out. He looked at her, not stirring, with hard eyes. "You disgrace!" he said again. "Aren't you a disgrace to say so, then?" she whimpered. "Who'd believeyou were my husband, calling me disgraces, and things? No one wouldthink there was any affection between us, going on like that. And mewith one side of me useless, and a fatty heart, as the doctor told meplainly, and said I was to take the greatest care. And who should takecare of me if my own husband doesn't? And you stand there glaring atme, and not a kind word to throw at me! And haven't I always been atrue and loving wife to you?" He looked at her deliberately, with loathing in his eyes. "You have been the curse of my life!" he said. Then he left her. * * * * * In half an hour the pert maid-of-all-work came in. She was in walkingcostume, a string of pearls about her bare throat, a hat-box in herhand. "This 'ere's my luggige, " she explained. "You can go through it, if youlike, to make sure I 'aven't took none of your rubbige away with me!I'm a-going, I am! The master he come and give me notice to leave atthe end o' the month, but I don't choose to stay in no sech a place solong. I've 'ad enough of a tipsy missus, and an' ouse without an atimo' comfit! I'm a-goin!" The woman on the sofa, with the inflamed, red face, the bloodshot, painful-looking eyes, the loose mouth, looked helplessly upon themaid-of-all-work. "A little drop of something to quench my thirst before you go!" sheimplored. "I can't get up to fetch it for myself, as you know, Maria;and my throat's swelled up with being so parched. " "And if you die of it, so much the better!" Maria said frankly. But shewent and pumped some water, all the same, and brought it to her, theglass dimmed in her red, bare hand. "For all I've had to demean myselfto wait on sich as you, I'm a Christian!" she said. "A leetle drop of the brandy left, Maria?" the woman asked. "Trust you for that! Not a drop!" "Drain the bottle and see, Maria. " "You are a one, you are!" the emancipated servant said. "I ha' seen asight o' bad 'uns, but never one like you. And if I was th' master, I'dup and chuck you inter th' street, see if I wouldn't, and git a littlepeace in 'is 'ome with a diff'runt woman than you! 'E wouldn't have togo far, neither, before 'e found one to 'is mind, master wouldn't, an'so I tell you! An' as for me, I'm done with you, so there!" The woman looked after her as she bounced to the door, hiccoughing, holding the now empty glass in her shaking hand. Her brows were knit;she seemed in her muddled brain to be considering something. "The girl Grantley promised she'd come to-day, " she said. "She promisedshe'd bring me something. " "And did so, right enough. But you 'aven't got no memory nor nothin'!" "Where is it, then, Maria dear? For my poor head's splitting----" "Why, in th' basket as stan' agin your sofy, where you put it yourself, for I see ye do it. " Left to herself, the woman put the glass to her lips, sucked from itthe few drops that hung upon its sides, lay with it in her hand, alternately looking into it and looking into space, lifting it to herlips again and again. The machinery of her mind was too far destroyed for it to work in anysuggested groove. It strayed off the line continually into all sorts ofhazy, dim byways. A disgrace! She had broken her word to him, often enough, but he had never beforecalled her that. It was very cruel of him, and not like a husband touse such a word to his wife, that had ever a loving word for him whenhe came home, and was always waiting for him, so obliging and kind. Hermother would vouch for that--she had often said she had a lovingnature. Once she had walked unexpectedly into the little sitting-room at home, and she had heard her mother saying to Horace--"Julia has a very lovingnature. " Why didn't her mother come and say kind things to her now? Shewas all alone. If her mother came and sat by her side-- She would like, if she could walk there, to get off the sofa and go tolook for her in that little sitting-room, at home. It was so cool inthere always, with the window open to the garden. There was a basket ofviolets on the table. She wondered if they were there now. She wouldlike to put her lips, that were so hot and uncomfortable, down uponthem-- With difficulty she half turned on the sofa with the idea of reachingthem; but remembered as she did so that her mother had been dead foryears and years, and that there were no violets now. She cried afresh, and held the empty glass to her lips in the hope aforgotten drop might trickle down upon them. Her mother had once scolded her--once when Horace had told tales--andhad said that she had broken her heart. But, for all that, she wouldnot have liked to hear her called a disgrace. She wished her husband would come in and put her to bed. He would haveto do it alone to-night, as Maria was gone. Or perhaps old Susan wouldcome and help. Old Susan had carried her up to bed quite easily, lastnight--when she was a child. No sticks, nor bother of people pushingand dragging--had carried her up as light as a feather, and popped herinto her cool, soft bed, and tucked her up-- "Susan!" she called. "Susan!" And opened her aching eyes to look forher; and cried again when she remembered why the old servant could notcome, and that she was not a child again any more. A disgrace! It wasn't a nice thing to say to such a good wife, and she soafflicted! He had another name for her when she used to walk about likeother people--like the girl Grantley, for instance, that her husbandalways came home from school with. She used to go to meet Horry, herself, in those days, and go down to the river in the evening withhim, and sit on one of the chairs beneath the trees to watch the boats. To watch the boats! How they glided along--gently, gently! It made yousleepy to look at them. She was in one herself now, rocking, rocking;and the sun was going down behind the trees; and a lot more boats, moreand more, all rocking; and the sound of the oars, and the water lappingat the sides. She would like to put her hand in the river. It looked socool--so cool! The hand dropped heavily at her side, the glass broke; and she was onher sofa still, not in a boat at all; and it was the girl Grantley whosat by the river with Horry. The girl Grantley! Where was that she had brought? The basket intowhich she had dropped it was easily within her reach. Here was theparcel, fastened as chemists' parcels are fastened. She shook it, and agleam came into her eyes. Liquid! Something to drink, to moisten herburning tongue and swollen throat. No matter what-- * * * * * Down by the river, on the broad path beneath the trees, where half thepopulation of the place repaired in the summer evenings, the girlGrantley walked with her brother, and by their side walked HoraceKilbourne. Presently the brother stopped to speak to a friend, and the girl andthe other man walked on--walked through the crowds of people to wherethe crowds grew less, and on still, till there was comparativesolitude. Only the girl talked, telling him of her day's work--of what it hadbrought her of pleasure, of what had gone amiss. She had the habit oftalking out her heart to him, bringing him all her difficulties anddistresses. "It rests me as nothing else does, " she told him, when he had listenedto the end, and said what had to be said. "And you? Have you nothing totell me?" she asked him. "Nothing, " he said. She glanced sideways and upwards at him as he towered above her, walking with drooping head. "Something has happened, " she said softly. "Can't you tell me? Ithelps, to tell a friend. " "It is nothing to which I am not well used, " he said. "The same oldwretched story. I have never told it in so many words. I am too ashamedto tell. You know it, well enough. Who is there that does not know?" She turned on him a face that startled him, who knew it well, and hadlearnt by heart, he thought, its many changes. "Why do you not kill her?" she said. "Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered, surprised and reproving. Her vivid face was aflame with passion; almost, it seemed, with hate. "It would be no crime, " she said. "Do you think God wants His world socumbered? Why should your life, other people's lives, be destroyed? Areyou to bear a burden like that for ever?" "Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered again. He put a hand upon her arm, and gently turned her with him. They beganto retrace their steps. "I was right never to speak to you about it before, " he said presently. "Mutual confidences are for happy people, Kate. Men burthened withgreat sorrows know them to be incommunicable. Forgive me that I for amoment forgot. " Her passion had died away as quickly as it had blazed forth. She heardhim in silence, a sob in her throat. Soon they were back in the perambulating crowd, chattering, laughing, listening to the band upon the river. The broad stream was filled withboats, in which charmingly-dressed women indolently reclined onbright-hued cushions. The occupants propelled themselves by means oflazy hands laid upon the sides of neighbouring boats. Be-flannelledmen, and boys in their slim canoes, slipped here and there among them. The music mingled harmoniously with the light dip of the paddles, thesoft lapping of the water, the murmuring voices. The sweet scent ofhay, freshly cut in the meadows across the river, was in the air, thepeace of the midsummer evening over all. Such a happy, prosperous throng; such a concord of sweet sounds andscents and sights! One man and woman, at least, looked on, sorrowful-eyed, bitterness within their hearts. "I am sorry if I shocked you, " Kate Grantley said at length. "I thoughtif we two spoke together--even of that--face to face----" "It is impossible, " he said. "There are troubles in which no friend canhelp, Kate. The friend that is dearest to me in life cannot help me inmine. " He looked at her steadily, holding her eyes with his own, for a space;then left her and went on his way. He went into his house, the door of which stood open to the night. In the airless, bow-windowed room, upon the untidy sofa where he hadleft her, his wife was lying dead. PART II No inquest was held on Horace Kilbourne's wife. The doctor had attendedher almost daily. For years her husband had been warned her heart wasin such a condition that she might die suddenly, at any moment. She hadso died. Except that it was a happy release for herself, and for herhusband--that over-tired, good, and patient man--one of Heaven'smercies, there was nothing to be said. Unless Kilbourne himself, inremembrance of other days, and in the tenderness of his heart, shed atear for her, there was not a soul to weep for drunken Julia Kilbourne. Although, to the best of his ability, he had lived retired from allsociety, and in his sensitiveness to his wife's shame had kept, as wellas he could, her history to himself, it was well known in the town. There was none who knew who did not respect and pity him. Kind handswere eagerly put out to him. At last he, who had shrunk from going toother men's houses because he could not ask them to his own, was freeto do so. It was a little disappointing that he repulsed all such advances. The only adverse criticism which had been passed on him had been that, a heavily burthened man, he had not known how to conceal hismisfortune, but had carried about with him a face as miserable as hishistory. That his face would now bear witness to his new-found delightof liberty was confidently expected. It was strange that, instead of the looked-for lightening of gloom, there was, if possible, in his bearing, his wife being safely dead andburied, an increase of melancholy. Kate Grantley, who thought she knew him better than the rest, was notsurprised that the little letter she wrote him on the first news of MrsKilbourne's death remained unanswered. The words her pen had writtenhad come warm from a heart realising the shock, the bewilderment, fromwhich it was inevitable that he must suffer. But it was a letter whichit would have been painful to him to answer, perhaps. He had known thatshe would understand. She would not be hurt that he ceased to linger for her at the hour theyboth came out of school. Often she walked to the street which held herhome and his, with his tall figure a dozen yards in front of her. Shewould not hurry a step to overtake him. All in good time. She no moredoubted him--she no more doubted that in due time he would ask her tobe his wife--than she doubted what her answer would be when he did so. Between them there had been no vulgar philandering; no word of whatmight have been, what yet might be, had passed their lips. Yet, deep intheir hearts was guarded an unspoken compact which--she would havestaked her life on it--neither would betray. But she was unpleasantly startled, coming face to face with him oneday, he walking down his garden path, which she was passing, to findthat he did not even purpose to speak to her. Pretending to fumble atthe lock of the gate, he hung back until she was well in front. Later on, the pair had encountered in a shop. She had put out a hand tohim, and he had taken it. But there had been hesitation, almostreluctance, on his part, and it seemed to her that he had looked at herwith intolerable reproach in his eyes. She was haunted by the remembrance. Was it possible that his wife'sdeath could have been really a grief to him? Such a grief as that? Orwas the lonely life he was leading, coming upon the shock of findingthe woman dead, telling upon him physically and mentally? "Go and ask Mr Kilbourne in to supper to-night!" she commanded herbrother. She lived with him in another little bow-windowed house, witha purple clematis over the bow-window, a crimson rambler over the door, and about it the same air of sweetness, of neatness, of wholesomenessits mistress wore. "He is looking ill and wretched. Try to bring himin. " "I have asked him every day of my life. He won't come, " the brothersaid. "He gets out of my way when he can, " he added. "He does not seemto wish to be friendly any more. " She looked at him in silence, considering the statement. Kilbourne'spunctiliousness was exaggerated, but she thought she understood it. Itwas delicacy carried to an extreme, perhaps, but she was proud to thinkit was characteristic of him. "I don't see why he need be afraid of being civil to me, for all that, "the brother said, almost as if she had spoken. The next time Kate Grantley had an opportunity of looking inKilbourne's face she was painfully struck by his appearance. The manwas thinner, more worn, years older. His head seemed to droop beneath aheavier burthen than of yore; he walked as if his feet were shod withlead. Several months, in which she had had no word with him, had gone bysince his wife's death. At this rate, before he dared to stretch out ahand to gather for himself the happiness ready to bloom for him, hewould be dead! She thought she saw that the man, lonely, sensitive, toa fault, was passing his days in brooding melancholy, in unmeritedself-reproach. He had had more than enough of sadness in his life. Foran idea, a stupid convention of other folks' manufacture, and not worthrespecting, he should have no more. He should not be allowed to takehis own path, to push her on one side again. Once resolved on any course, she was a very practical young person, alert to take the opportunity the moment gave. She overtook him determinedly, one afternoon, as he walked ahead of herfrom school, as usual. The holidays, during which neither had lefthome, were over; the summer was over, the winter term well begun. "Mr Kilbourne, will you come into No. 6 for one minute to-day?" shesaid. "I particularly wish to speak to you. " He had been ready enough to go there in the old days, with or withoutpretext; now he had the look of a man called on to do a thing at whichhis soul sickened. "If you will excuse me----" he said. But Kate was resolute. "I cannot excuse you. You must come at once, " she said. She had assumed the little air of authority over him which in her hehad found to be so pleasant. With a look upon his face as if he weregoing to his execution, he obeyed. For many weeks she had gone about, the words she meant to speak to him, of encouragement, of comradeship, upon her lips; the chance to use themhad never come. Now she would not use them, but would speak to him asif there had been no hiatus in their communion, as if no tragedy hadcome between. She faced him as they entered the bright little sitting-room, ofexquisite neatness, and sweet with flowers, which had ever seemed sucha haven of rest to him. "Have you seen Alick?" she began. "Have you heard that they havepromoted him, and that he is to be sent to the Paris branch?" (Alickwas a clerk in one of the banks. ) He had not heard. "He'll be pleased. It's what he wished for, isn't it?" he asked, notlooking at her, gazing before him with lack-lustre eyes. Her heart sank as, seeing him close at hand, she noted the change inhim. Although, with his slouching gait and loose-hung limbs and hanginghead, he had never been a smart-looking man, he had yet been onepossessed of great personal nicety; in that matter--in the shipwreck ofhis life--being careful not to let himself go. But now there was abouthim a look of neglect, making to ache with pity the heart of the womanwho observed it. Alick was pleased, she admitted, with sinking spirit. "But it is aboutmyself I want to ask your advice, " she went on. He glanced at her quickly with his deep, sad eyes, and glanced awayagain. "Shall I throw up what I am doing here, and go with Alick? It is this Iwant to ask you. My brother could share lodgings with a friend he hasthere. He does not really want me; but I used to wish for Paris--longago, before we met, you and I. I might meet with a good appointmentthere. It is a chance for me. Help me to make up my mind. Shall I go?" There fell a complete silence between them. She sat on the music-stool, her back to the open piano, a pretty, slight girl, with a dark and resolute little face. It confronted thegloomy one before it now with an expression progressing fromexpectation to surprise, to irritation, in its gaze. On her part, shedetermined not to say another word to bridge the pause; but it seemedthat the silence would never be broken. At length he slowly lifted his eyes to hers. "I think, perhaps, it would be better for you to go, " he said. She sprang up from the stool, turned to the piano, began sorting, withquick, nervous fingers, the music there. "You think so? Very well; I'll go, then, " she said. "I only wanted tohear what you would think of it. " He had risen with an air of relief and picked up his hat. He looked insilence for a minute at her straight back in its trim Norfolk jacket, at her thick braids of black hair beneath the plain straw hat. "Of course you know best what you wish, " he said hesitatingly. She placed the freshly arranged music with an air of decision on thepiano. "I know very well what I wish, thank you, " she said. There was another silence. "Is that all?" he asked her. "Quite all. Except"--she turned round upon him and showed him that thedark skin of her face had whitened, that her eyes were hurt andangry--"except that Alick has to go next week. I suppose I ought togive a term's notice; but also, if I don't, I suppose they'll dowithout it--I shall be ready to go with him. We shall be busy till westart. I may not see you to speak to again--this will be our good-bye. " "Is that so?" he said. She could hardly believe her ears; she held her breath in the crueltyof the surprise, and set her teeth to help her to bear the pain. "Ours has been a long friendship, " she said, striving to steady hervoice. "Two years--seeing each other every day. Strange, isn't it, howthings come to an end?" "Except some things which are endless, " he said. She took heart of grace at that. "You mean Faith?" she asked; "Love?" She looked at him eagerly. "I mean Pain, " he corrected her, and held out his hand. She would not put hers within it. "If, after these long two years, you can go like that, your friendshipis not what I thought it. It is not worth a hand-clasp. Good-bye, " shesaid, and turned her back upon him, not deigning to watch him go. * * * * * "Do you go or stay?" her brother asked, when he came in from the bankthat afternoon. "I--go!" she said, but not with her usual bright promptness; and, looking at her face across their little tea-table, he saw that it hadlost something of its usual serenity. "Seen Kilbourne?" he asked. She told him yes, with an air of careful unconcern; that he had come inthat morning; that she had told him of their contemplated departure, and had said good-bye to him. "I used to think----" the brother began, but she cut him short. "I know. You often said so; don't say it any more, " she said. "All thatwas a mistake--and absurd. " "You know what they are saying of him, Kate? They are saying he killedhis wife. " Her dark face whitened, her dark eyes opened wide. "They cannot!" "They do. They say he couldn't look such a miserable, hangdog wretchfor nothing. The worst is, the boys at the college have got hold of it. One of the little wretches wrote up on the white wall of his class-roomthe other day, 'Who killed his wife?' Bryant, the science master, toldme Kilbourne took no notice, but his face was sea-green for the rest ofthe morning. " "He should have thrashed the whole class--thrashed them within an inchof their lives!" "Well, he didn't. He did nothing. " Alick dropped his voice. "Bryanttold me he looked as if he were afraid, " he said. "What beasts people are to say such things!" she burst out. "And ofsuch a man! The gentlest, the kindest----" "I know, my dear. I'm sorry for poor old Kilbourne. I daresay he didn'tkill his wife; but something's happened to him, and she did dieuncommonly sudden. Anyhow, from what Bryant said, it's evident he'slost his nerve and his courage. At that rate, he'll precious soon losehis post. " * * * * * Kate Grantley and Kilbourne, arriving from opposite directions, reachedhis gate at the same moment, the next morning. Rudely chalked upon thestone post was the question which had confronted Kilbourne on hisclass-room walls. He pointed to the words with his stick which shook in his hand; hisface was ashen white. "Isn't it fitting that you and I should be confronted by thatquestion?" he asked her. She stared from the writing to him. "I don't think it at all fitting!" she said. "Why don't you send for apoliceman, and stop it?" He pushed open the gate, and, taking no further notice of her, walkedup the little path to his door. Reaching it, he found her behind him. With that air of girlish authority he had once found so pleasant, "I amcoming in, " she said. He led the way into that bow-windowed room in which Mrs Kilbourne haddied. The pervading aroma of alcohol had left it; airiness and acertain formal tidiness now reigned in place of stuffiness and neglect;but the room was perhaps more depressing than before to a sensitivemind. The sofa was in the same place; the basket, which had held the thingsshe liked to have at hand, still stood beside it. The over-large tableat which the unfortunate Julia had so often watched her husband eat hisunappetising meals, and where he still made a pretence of eating themin sight of the empty sofa, still occupied too much of the availablespace. Kilbourne turned and confronted the girl, who had followed him in. Hiseyes shone now, and there was the working of excitement in his face. "I thought we had said our last words, " he began; "I thought that that, at least, was done with--and you were going away. You have no right tofollow me, Kate, to overthrow me in this fashion. My strength is almostexhausted; I have tried too much--too much--and all alone----" "I know, " she said, with her fine air of decision. "That is why I havecome. You mustn't be alone any more. You must come with us. " He had tossed away his hat, and thrust his hands which were shaking, into his coat-pockets. He turned with excitement upon her, but she wentfirmly on. "With Alick and me. You are too good for the post you hold; with yourdegrees you can easily get a better one. Come to Paris. Turn your backupon all that has been depressing and worrying you; upon thismelancholy room"--she gazed round upon the unlovely space--"uponthis"--she waved a peremptory, small hand towards the vacant sofa. He looked at her with his accusing eyes, with a scarcely controlledemotion; but she stopped him when he tried to speak. "We have been good friends, " she said. "If I have not helped youthrough these two years we have walked as comrades together, you, atleast, have helped me. Helped me so much"--she paused a moment, and thelevel tone of her voice quavered musically--"that I cannot lose you;that I need you terribly still. " "And I!" he burst forth then. "And I! Can you ever picture to yourselfthe magnitude of my need of you?" He clenched the hands in his coat-pockets, and turned his back on her, and she saw his shoulders heave. "It is killing me, " he said--"killing me--just that. " His voice, which had been raised, sank brokenly. She listened, when itwas silent, to the beating of her heart. In a minute she went to him and laid a hand upon his arm. "Then, why?" she asked him, whisperingly. "Why?" He flung round upon her, and she fell back from the vehement accusingof his eyes. "Why?" he repeated. "Why?" He threw a hand at the empty sofa. "There!"he said. "There--where you ask me to turn my back--my dead wife liesthere--always for me. And she is between you and me for ever. " It sounded to her but the utterance of morbidity. The strange wordswere only a token of that from which she had come to save him. She hadthe courage to be unmaidenly, to persist. "I, at any rate, do not see it so, " she said. "To have me for yourfriend is to do no wrong to your dead wife. " "How can we be friends--you and I?" he asked her; and she, who knewthey could not now be merely that, did not speak. "I, who for your sake cursed her in my heart, " he went on, his shakenvoice hushed to an awe-struck whisper. "You, who put into her hands thepoison which killed her. " "I?" she breathed, and drew back, staring at him, wondering, for onedreadful moment, had his unhealthy brooding turned his brain. "Killedher? I?" "You!" he said, wildly. He went across the room, and shut the doorbehind her they had left ajar. "If it had been I myself I could haveborne it; but you--_you_--! I found the empty bottle, that night, dropped from her hand; the label--'Poison'--and your name----" "The chloral bottle?" she asked him; and the cloud of fear and dismaylifted from her eyes, and they were alight with understanding and withhope. She went swiftly to him and caught his arm. "Horace, do youremember that you warned me never to give her any narcotic, howeverearnestly she might beg for it--that it would not be safe--that shewould kill herself? Do you remember?" "But you gave it, all the same. Your name was on the bottle----" "On the bottle--of water, " she said. "It never held anything else. Iused to take it home and fill it every day. The doctor told me to doit--it was a harmless fraud we played on her. She used to drink it, never doubting, and fall asleep----" "Kate!" She held him tightly by his arm, and looked with eyes that were dimmedwith tears of most blessed relief upon the working of his face. As, later, they went together through the little garden, and passedagain the rudely-chalked question upon the gate--"Shall I stay herewith you, and face the music, " Kate Grantley asked, "or will you comeaway with me to Paris?" "AS 'TWAS TOLD TO ME" Her husband had died suddenly in the third year of their marriage, andshe had been left a young widow with their only child. The husband had been dead a year--a year passed in close seclusion inher country home--when she went out on a bright morning of the earlyspring, taking her little daughter with her, to gather primroses in theplantation bordering one extremity of the park around her house. She had remembered when she arose in the morning that the day was theanniversary of her husband's death. A year only! It had seemed like twenty years. For she was very young, and fairly rich and much admired, and the life she had hitherto led hadnot prepared her to support loneliness and retirement profitably. Theshock of the sudden death had been terrible. She had thought that sheshould die of it; but she did not even fall ill. And there was thechild, whom she adored. And later there had arisen a new interest. The new interest, in the form of Major Harold Walsh, was at her elbowon this kind morning of sweetest spring. He was a middle-aged man, witha handsome, hard face and a very tender manner, and he chose, as somemay think inopportunely, the anniversary of the husband's death to makethe widow an offer of marriage. The widow reminded him of what had happened on that day a year ago, pointed out that she could not possibly entertain such a proposition sosoon, even cried a little when she spoke of her husband. But in noother way did she discourage the tender-mannered major with the hardface. It would have been well-nigh impossible for a man to make an offer ofmarriage with a child of three years old clinging to her mother'sskirts and incessantly babbling in her mother's ear; so the child withher nurse was sent into the interior of the plantation, in search ofthe lovely primroses said to flourish there, while the two elderswandered with slow steps and down-bent eyes upon the outskirts of thecoppice. So they would have been content to wander for hours, perhaps--hebegging for assurances that she with an only half-feigned, prettyreluctance gave--but that their agreeable dalliance was cut short by asufficiently alarming interruption. She did not absolutely dislike him? Liked him--very much, even? Thatwas well. Years hence, if he waited patiently--and he would try, hewould try to wait--she might even get to love him a little? Was thatasking too much? Well, not just yet, then; he would wait. But he wasnot to go away unhappy? Not utterly discouraged? He need not, for whathad taken place between them, debar himself entirely of the delight ofher society, he might--? It was at that instant of the major's soft-voiced pleading and of thewidow's low, monosyllabic replies, that a voice from out the plantationon their left smote sharply upon their ears. It called affrightedlyupon Mrs Eddington's name. The mother, whose mother-love was, and would always be, the strongestpassion of her life, fled into the wood. Following the direction of thevoice, in two minutes she came upon the kneeling form of the nurse; andthe nurse's white and terrified face looked up at her across theunconscious form of the little child. "I found her so, " the woman got out through chattering teeth. "I satreading, and she ran to the other side of the tree. She was talking tome, and then she didn't talk, and I went round and found--this!" With shaking fingers the mother tore asunder the broad muslin stringsof the hat upon which the child lay, rent open the dainty dress at thethroat--"Look at mother! Milly! Milly! Look at mother!" she calledwildly, impatiently, fiercely even. As if in answer to the passionate appeal, the child's dark lashesstirred for a moment on the transparent cheek; were still; stirredagain; then the dark eyes, so like the dark eyes of the dead father, opened upon the mother's face. "Only fainted, " the gentleman who had been proposing to officiate asMilly's stepfather said. He was much relieved that the scene, at whichhe had looked on awkwardly enough, was over. That for a three-year-oldchild to faint was an unusual, an alarming occurrence, he did not, ofcourse, understand. Certainly, if Mrs Eddington thought it necessary, he would go for the doctor. He could probably bring him quicker than agroom. Should he carry the little Milly home first? But the mother must carry Milly herself. No; nurse should certainly nottouch her. Never again should nurse, who had let the child for a minuteout of her sight, touch Milly. Nurse, surreptitiously grasping a frill of the child's muslin frock, wept, silent and remorseful, as she walked alongside. Once, the child, who lay for the better part of the half-mile to herhome in a kind of stupor, opened her eyes again beneath her mother'sfrightened gaze and was heard to mutter something about some flowers. "She is asking for the primroses she had gathered!" Mrs Eddingtonwhispered, in a tone of intensest relief. "Did you bring them, nurse?" The unfortunate nurse, of course, had not brought them. "Milly's po'r flo'rs is dead, " Milly grieved in the little weak voicethey heard then for the first time. "Milly's daddy took Milly's flo'rs, and they died. " To that astonishing statement the child adhered during the first daysof her long illness, till she forgot, and spoke of it no more. For anyquestioning, she gave no explanation of her words. She never enlargedupon the first declaration in any way, nor did she even alter the formof the words in which she gave it expression. Always she alluded to thecurious delusion with a grieving voice, often with tears. "Dear daddy is dead, darling, " the mother said to her in an awedwhisper, kneeling at her side. "He could not come to Milly. " "Milly's daddy took Milly's flo'rs, and they died, " the sad littlevoice protested; and the child softly whimpered upon the pillow. "The child can't, of course, even remember her father, " Major Walshsaid, with impatience, being sick of the subject and the importanceattached to it. "She was only two when he died. " "How can you tell what a child of two remembers?" Mrs Eddington asked. "She was very fond of Harry. I think she does remember. " Persistently, in her mind recurred an episode of the last day of herhusband's life. He had carried his little daughter, laughing andprattling to him, down from the nursery, and had put her in hermother's arms. The child, when he turned to go, had clung to him. "Don't leave Milly, daddy. Take Milly too, " she cried. Laughing, he hadkissed her. "Not now--not now, " he had said--"but later I will come andtake Milly. " Then he had gone out, with a smile still on his face, and had fallendead as he walked across the park. It was inevitable that in these days the memory of her husband shouldmore fully occupy the young widow's mind. He had died of heart disease;his child, it was now discovered, had a certain weakness of the heart. A superstitious feeling that she had not remembered him enough, andthat this was her punishment, took possession of Mrs Eddington's brain. She remembered with remorse what had been occurring at the moment herchild had fallen insensible among the primroses. On the veryanniversary of her poor Harry's death she had forgotten him so far!Never would she forget him again. The words the child spoke had recorded a mere delusion, the doctor toldher, of the little dazed brain in the moment preceding unconsciousness;but for all that rational view, they awed the mother, haunted her. "Milly's p'or flo'rs is dead. Milly's daddy took Milly's flo'rs andthey died, " Milly had said. Never would Mrs Eddington leave her child, or forget Milly's daddyagain. * * * * * Yet, when the anniversary of poor Harry Eddington's death came roundagain, Milly had been for three-quarters of a year running about as ofold; her mother had been for two months the wife of Major Walsh. They had spent their honeymoon at Major Walsh's own place in Wiltshire, had stayed for another month in his London house, and they at lastturned their steps in the direction of the home which had been HarryEddington's, where his child had been left under the guardianship ofthe new Mrs Walsh's mother. "You used to complain of the dulness of the place and of how buriedalive you were there. You have been away for eight weeks, and you aremad to get back to it, " the husband said, with a jealous eye upon hisbride. She subdued, judiciously, the joy which had been in her voice. "I amglad to see the old place again--yes, " she said. "Won't it bedelightful for us to be together there, where we first knew eachother?" "It is the child you want--not me, " he said, with grudging reproach. She found it necessary to make some quite exaggerated statements toreassure him. Her mother was in the carriage which met them at the station. "Milly isstaying up, till you come, " she told them. "I left her capering wildlyabout the nursery with delight. " "I hope she won't over-excite herself, " the mother said, and thegrandmother laughed at that anxiety. No child of hers had ever had aweakness of the heart, and she was inclined to ridicule the idea thatMilly required more care than had been given to her own children. Full of longing to see her child, Mrs Walsh sprang from the carriage, and ran up the broad steps to the wide-open doors of her home. Then, with a happy after-thought, turned on the mat, and held out her handsto the new husband. "Welcome--welcome to our home, dear, " she said. He grasped the hands tightly. "After all, I suppose I am a little moreto you than the child?" he asked. She smiled a flattering affirmative; and at the instant there came ascream in a child's voice from a room above, followed by an ominoussilence. When the others reached the nursery from which as they knew, the soundhad come, the mother was already standing there, holding in her armsthe unconscious form of her little girl. From a tiny wound in thechild's white forehead drops of blood were oozing. "I left her for one minute to fetch the water for her bath, " the nursewas saying, hurriedly excusing herself. "She was running up and downand round about, calling, 'Daddy, come to Milly! Come, daddy, come!'" "She fell and struck her head against the sharp corner of this stool, "Major Walsh said. "Look, it has sharp corners. " The child was only unconscious for a minute. She opened her eyes, smiled upon her mother, hid her face in her neck, and presently waswhispering a question again and again in her ear. Mrs Walsh looked up in a bewildered fashion from the little hiddenface. "What does she say?" the grandmother asked. "She says, 'Where is my daddy gone?'" the mother repeated, faltering alittle over the words, and with scared eyes. "He is here, " said the practical grandmother, and took Major Walsh bythe arm. "We have told her her daddy was coming with her mother, " sheexplained. "She was more excited about him even than about you, Millicent. Look up! Here is your daddy, darling. " Slowly the child lifted her head from the mother's shoulder, and lookedat the big man with the hard face now stooping over her--looked forhalf a second, shut her eyes again, and again hid her face. "It isn't my daddy, " she said, with a baby whimper, "Milly wants _my_daddy that came and danced with Milly. Where's my daddy gone?" Later, when the child had been put to bed, the mother, having hurriedlydressed for dinner, knelt by the side of the crib to hold her daughterin her arms; kissing the tiny wound upon her forehead, she asked how itwas she had managed so to hurt herself. "My daddy came and danced. He whirled Milly round and round, " thelittle one said, grievingly. She knew nothing more of the occurrence;it was the only explanation she ever gave. The look of awe which had been there once before came back to MrsWalsh's eyes. Only to the doctor did she ever repeat the child's words. He, being a man of good common sense, refused of course to be impressedwith the coincidence. "She made herself giddy by, as she says, whirling round and round. Inthe moment of losing consciousness--who can tell by what unintelligiblemental process?--the figure of her dead father, undoubtedly impressedwith unusual clearness on the child's memory, was present with her. Avision? yes, if you like to call it so; say, rather, a dream in theinstant before unconsciousness. Such a babe as this knows nodistinction between dreams and realities--between the momentarilydisordered mental vision and the ordinary objects of optical seeing. " For the rest, the unsatisfactory condition of the heart was stillexistent. Nothing that with care might not be obviated. With theabsence of all excitement, with entire rest of mind and body, the childwould outgrow the evil. Yet, in spite of this cheerful view of the case, it was long before MrsWalsh could successfully conceal the uneasiness and unhappiness shefelt. Her punishment again, she told herself with morbid iteration. Shehad turned her back on her child, had forgotten her dead husband; nay, even in the moment of the child's accident, had she not been in the actof welcoming another man to that dead husband's home? So, with a new life just begun for her, and new interests arising onall hands she found her mind continually dwelling on the days of herearlier married life. Often, when bent on any expedition with MajorWalsh, dining with their neighbours, receiving them in her home, walking, driving with him, talking over the details of the business ofthe little estate, she was thinking, thinking how she and that otherman had gone here and there, said this and that to each other. How hehad looked, the words he had said; his gestures, his laugh, camecuriously back to her; and her heart sank beneath a constant sense ofself-reproach. How could she not have remembered all this before, andbeen true to the claims he had on her--that poor young husband who wasthe father of her child? Once, but that was months later, and she was weak in body as well asdepressed in mind, she sat alone over her bedroom fire as the dark cameon, too tired to dress, and longed for her husband to come in and cheerher. Then the memory came to her of how once before, a few weeks beforeMilly was born, she had so sat in that very room, and had longedinexpressibly for that other husband; of how she had felt that shewould die of fright and of longing for his comforting presence if hedid not come; of how he had come at last, bringing warmth and love andcourage to her failing heart; of how he had laughed, and said he hadfelt she was wanting him, and so had put what he was doing on one sideand hurried to her. And as she thought of this, lying with shut eyes inher armchair, a curious feeling that he was there again with her in theroom, took possession of her. She was not afraid; she lay quite still, hardly breathing, feeling "Harry is here! If I open my eyes I shall seehim. " And often, in the weeks that followed, she was haunted by that strangeconsciousness of her first husband's presence; the curious, forcibleimpression that there was between her and him but a slight veil shelacked the resolution to rend, but that, rending it one day, she shouldsee him. Then Harold Walsh's child was born, and these unhealthy fancies werenaturally vanquished. It was a son, and there was much rejoicing. Poor little Milly's nose, it was said, must indeed be put out of joint by this advent of an heirto his father's large estates. The child was born at Royle, his father's place, and christened there, while Milly had stayed on in her own home with her grandmother; thehome where she had been born, where her father and mother had passedtheir brief married life together. When the son and heir was two monthsold, he came with his father and mother to stay in that house also. Then her mother and the neighbours who had known her through all herexperiences of joy and of sorrow were glad to see that the Major's wifehad got back her health and spirits and happiness. The boy was a fine boy, and his mother idolised him; the father, contrary to general expectation, continued to be very much in love. They were a prosperous and happy trio, seeming to suffice tothemselves. Little Milly, who had longed for her mother and the newbrother, found herself of comparatively small importance, and decidedlyon the outside of the completed circle. Who can measure the bitterness, the desolation, which noafter-experience of the unkind tricks of destiny can ever equal, of thelittle heart which feels it is not wanted where it longs to cling? Then Milly's birthday came, and she was six years old; a delicatelylovely child with dark, straight hair, dark eyes, and a complexionwhich was as a finger-post to her father's history and her own, andshould have said "Beware!" Milly had always a birthday-party; this yearalso she must have one. But it was not a party such as Milly had been promised; with the smalldrawing-room turned into a cave of delights, where a real, white-robedfairy with silver wings and a wand presided over presents to be givento Milly and all her little guests. The promise, in the pleasurableexcitement of the Walshs' arrival, had been forgotten by all but Milly. When Milly demanded its fulfilment it was too late. So the little guests could only dance--those that were big enough--orassisted by their elders, in the form of governess or elder sister, play at forfeits and twilight, and blindman's buff. These innocentgambols they carried on in the wide entrance hall. Some flags had beenhung, to please Milly, against the heavy beams of the ceiling, and thegardener had filled every niche and corner with hothouse plants. Bent, apparently, on spoiling his sister's pleasure, the heir of thehouse of Walsh must be taken with a colic on that day. His mother wasanxious about him, fancying him feverish, and insisting on the doctor'spresence. So it came to pass she was oftener sitting in the nursery, seeing her son jogged, howling lustily, on the nurse's lap, than makingmerry with Milly and her friends in the hall. As the afternoon drew to a close, and carriages began to arrive for thechildren and their guardians, Mrs Walsh came out of the nursery, andstanding in the comparative darkness of the corridor, looked down uponthe bright and pretty scene. The children in their dainty whitedresses, with their flushed faces and tossed curls, were as lovely asthe flowers everywhere surrounding them; the music of the chatteringvoices, of the clear laughter, was more agreeable to the ear than thatof the piano Milly's governess was playing. The fun, as is apt to be the case when such a gathering is nearly over, waxed livelier as the time came for the children to part. "Just onemore game!" Milly's little excited voice was heard pleading--"only onemore!" It was Kiss in the Ring, the old world favourite they chose, and theyformed themselves into a circle, putting the littlest boy--boys werescarce among them, and very small--in the centre. It was in the midst of much laughing and chatter and noise that the twolittle girls on either side of Milly Eddington felt her hands turnice-cold in theirs, and slowly slip from their grasp. The next instantshe had fallen to the floor between them. The doctor, luckily on the spot, attending to the baby-brother, waswith her in two minutes. There was nothing to be done. She was dead. She had been the loveliest and the gayest there, laughing her pretty, happy laugh, babbling with the rest. Several of the elder guests, itwas afterwards found, had been looking at the child and listening toher, when all at once she had become silent, had sunk backwards, anddied. So much they who looked on had seen, but nothing more. Her mother, standing above, in the shadow of the corridor, and lookingdown upon the brightly-lit hall below, had seen this-- She had seen the figure of her first husband--the smile upon his facewith which he had left her and her little daughter on the last day ofhis life--come silently into the hall. She had seen him, moving softly, attracting no notice from them, pass the groups of ladies standing nearthe walls, and noiselessly thread his way through the ring of playingchildren, till he stood at the back of his own little girl. She hadseen him, smiling still, and clasping his hands tenderly beneath thechild's chin, pull her softly backwards, and lay her dead upon thefloor. FREDDY'S SHIP "A day or two, and I must return these people's call, " Mrs Macmichelsaid to herself as she passed the Rectory gate. "What a bore!" Two or three days ago the rector and his wife, calling on their newparishioner at the Court, had found her just returned from lunch withthe shooting party in the field. "Bad luck, wasn't it?" she asked, later, of the half-dozen men to whomshe was giving tea in the billiard-room. "If I'd stayed to watch youshoot for another five minutes, I should have escaped them! Not a bad, dowdy little woman--the man a worse stick in the drawing-room than thepulpit, if possible. Subjects: his--parish room he wants to build;hers--son at sea, or going to sea, or has been to sea, or something. What is it to me? If he is drowned fifty fathoms deep at the bottom ofthe sea, do I care?" "Now, if I only have the good luck to pick on a day when they're out!"she said as she stepped briskly along; a tall, and handsome, andfashionable-looking woman, in her hat with the green twisted veil andthe green cock's feathers, her short, workman-like skirt and beltedcoat. Down the short path from the Rectory door to the gate the rectorhimself was coming. Mrs Macmichel bowed a condescending head as shepassed on, receiving no form of salutation but a stare from a pair ofvacant eyes in return. "Well, really! Such people!" the lady said to herself, as she walkeddisdainfully on. "Even _here_ you would expect a man would know he isalways expected to take off his hat when a woman bows to him!" "Mrs Macmichel!" a voice said at her back. A hand was laid upon herarm. She turned a look of astonished questioning upon the man who hadventured to touch her. "Stop, please, " he said; his voice was breathless as of one in greatagitation. "Mrs Macmichel, I think you owe my wife a call? I want youto pay it now--at once----" "It is very kind of you; I----" "You mustn't make excuses. You mustn't deny me. You must go; and youmust--stay. " The thought that he might be mad was succeeded as she looked in hisface by the thought that he must be ill. The healthy colour natural tothem had left his large cheeks, their fatness was only flabbiness, thesmall eyes were filled with a strange, pleading, protesting misery asof a man in terrible bodily discomfort. "Mr Jones, I am afraid you are not well?" He stopped her with an impatiently thrown-up hand. "It's not that--I'mall right. It's worse--it's my son----" "The sailor?" "News has come that the _Doughty_ has gone down. All lost. " "Your son was in that ship?" He did not answer, but pressed his lips, which were piteouslyquivering, together, and looked at her in staring misery. "I am going into the village to wire for--confirmation. Till I returnyou must keep with my wife. " "But, Mr Jones! I am deeply, deeply sorry; but you must let metelegraph, and you, yourself, stay with Mrs Jones. " "No. She would know as soon as she saw my face. I stole away--I darenot see her. " He stayed a minute, biting at lips drawn inward over histeeth. "Our only one!" he said. "No other! When I know--when there isno hope--no hope--I must tell her. I could wish that she might diebefore--that we might both die. " Tears had gushed upon the flabby cheeks; he mumbled his lips for aminute, unable to speak. "If there was anything else I could do--anything!" Mrs Macmichel said. "But this----!" "You will watch over her till I come back, " he said, not even noticingher remonstrance. "It is a service I ask of you by right of our commonhumanity. Go in to her at once, please. " With his hand on her arm he turned her to the gate, and opened it forher. "Let no one else come near her, " he said. "The butcher deliveringour meat gave me the news. He saw it on the newspaper board at thevillage shop. Everyone in the village who reads it will come up at onceto tell my wife. Keep them away. She has a weak heart; told suddenly, she might--Don't let her stir out. Don't let her hold communicationwith anyone till I return. " He put up a trembling hand in the direction of his clerical hat, butlacked the spirit to lift it, and turned hurriedly away. "But, Mr Jones!" she called. She made a step or two after him. "It willbe so awkward--for her, I mean. She won't understand. You see, I hardlyknow your wife. " He raised his strengthless hand for a few inches, and let it fall witha gesture of hopeless wretchedness. "Oh, what do such things matter?"he groaned. She was ashamed to persist. "I thought perhaps someone in thevillage--someone she knew----" "They could do nothing with her, " he explained. "If she wanted them togo, she would tell them to go; she can't tell you. If she wanted to gointo the village, she would go----" "How soon will you be back?" "An hour. Two hours. I must wire to Portsmouth, and wait a reply. " Hebegan to walk on again. "When I come back I shall--know, " he said, andshuffled forward, with drooping back, and legs that shook beneath him, on his way. Once he turned, and, seeing her still at the gate, pointed a weaklyimperative finger at the house without stopping in his progress. Hardly crediting that it could be upon her, Flora Macmichel, accustomedto move in paths so carefully smoothed, to have all ugly things hiddenfrom her sight, that this task of matchless unpleasantness had beenthrust, she turned and walked slowly towards the Rectory door. Thereare so many women in the world, shrieking, gesticulating, ready to rushinto any fray a-brewing; so many quiet and strong and helpful, achingto take other people's burdens upon their shoulders; she had neversought to identify herself with one or the other species, holding thecomfortable doctrine that we cannot all be servers, that in the generalscheme those who only stand to be waited on also hold a useful place. Why need she do this thing? Three weeks ago she had not known thesepeople existed; three days ago had not set eyes on them. For humanity'ssake, he had said. Well! But she thought of the mumbling lips, the look of anguish in the pooreyes, went on, and rang the bell. Mrs Jones was in, of course. She was sitting over the dining-room fire, writing a letter. A short, rather fat, rather dumpy woman, with plainfeatures, an ominous flush on her sallow cheeks, iron-grey hair, andvery large, very luminous dark eyes. "How very good of you to call so soon!" she said, and got up towelcome, rather effusively, the rich woman who had come to be aparishioner. "Let your master know at once that Mrs Macmichel is here, Mabel, " she said to the servant, and gave Mabel a look which indicatedtea was to make its appearance with as little delay as possible. "Areyou walking or driving? Walking? Really? Now, would you rather sit nearthe fire or the open window? It is the kind of day--isn't it?--wheneither is agreeable. " She had a slightly nervous manner, or she was not quite at ease withthe strange caller. She altered the position of the chairs, rattled thepoker in the fire, pushed away the little table which held the writingthings. "I was just writing to my son, " she said, and smiled, as if sure of herinterest in the subject, at the woman, who, chill to the marrow withthe discomfort of her errand, had taken a chair by the side of thefire. "I think I told you he is in the navy? He is commanding the_Doughty_, the new destroyer. Going trips in her every day or so. Isuppose these destroyers are terrible-looking things? Ah! I have neverseen one, but I imagined so. What a comfort to me to know they are, after all, so safe as Freddy tells me they are. " "Such a mild day for the time of year, isn't it? And such a prettystretch of road from the Court here!" "We often say so!" "And just the right length for a walk!" "Exactly a mile and a quarter. " "Really?" "Exactly! We always called it a mile; but the last time he was home onleave Freddy measured it with his new cyclometer. 'Now, mother, ' hesaid, 'please to remember it's a mile and a quarter, and, don't let'shave any dispute about it in future?'" "It's so nice to know--to an inch or two!" "Well, Freddy has a very accurate mind. He can't bear anything slipshodin the way of a statement. Now, you are sure, after your walk, you donot feel the fire too much? Then move into this chair. You have reallytaken the least comfortable in the room. Now, isn't that better?" Mrs Macmichel said that it was delightfully cosy. She was inwardlyshivering; the tips of her fingers felt like ice. She pulled off herloose gloves, and held a pair of white hands blazing with jewels to theflame. She must force herself to talk, and to keep the poor woman offthe topic of her son; but she, who was considered ready-tongued andready-witted, sat dumb, she had not a word to say. "There is so much difference in chairs, " she said, at length. The banality did not affect Mrs Jones to laughter, as the speaker had afear it might have done. She seized eagerly on the remark. "Isn't there? Some are straight in the back, and some slope too muchfor comfort; some are too high in the seat for short legs, and somequite ridiculously low. " "But this is perfect. " "I am so glad you find it so! It is Freddy's. It was one he bought whenhe was in barracks. But he sent it to me. It was much too comfortableto be anywhere but in his own home, he said. Isn't it delightful thatyoung men are so much attached to their homes, nowadays?" It was indeed delightful, Mrs Macmichel answered; and added with aneffort the original remark that home was a delightful place. She supposed it was, the other lady agreed. "I never go away from mine, my health does not allow me, " she said; "and so, perhaps, I can hardlyjudge. " She looked round the rather dismal, rather shabby room with a somethingcritical in her gaze. Perhaps the presence of the fashionably-dressedwoman seated there--a person so evidently out of harmony with hersurroundings--helped her to see the familiar dowdiness with other eyes. She gave a quick sigh as she looked, then turned to her visitor withher nervous smile-- "It is a mercy Freddy does not see the old fashion, the shabbiness. Heonly sees--home, " she said. Always Freddy! Poor Freddy, who would never see home again! Searching wildly in her, at this crisis, stagnant mind for anything toturn the poor woman from her subject, Mrs Macmichel remembered theParish Room. Here should be a mine of conversational wealth. She wouldwork it for all it was worth. "My husband is so--interested in the scheme, " she said, and gulped alittle at the lie. "Tell me over again, please, all those details yougave me before. He would like to know how much you have in hand; whatyou want to complete the room; what the bazaar brought in, and how muchyou expect from the concert. " Mrs Jones rose easily to the bait. She rose, too, talking all the time, to fetch from her writing-case the type-written circular where theparish's need for such a room was stated, and the paper, in herhusband's handwriting, on which the sums already collected, and theirsource, were set forth. A hundred and thirty pounds were still wanted. What was a sum like that to this millionaire at the Court? And what alot of begging, writing, giving of jumble sales, supposing they weremoved to give that sum, would be saved to the Joneses! Mrs Macmichel took the papers, glanced at them, laid them on her lap, tried to say yes and no in the right places to the information noweagerly poured forth to her; tried to keep her eyes from that letterwhich the clergyman's wife had been interrupted in writing. It hadfluttered to the floor as she had looked through her writing-case, andnow lay, unheeded by her, at the visitor's feet. "My own darling boy, " it began. "Such a poor parish. " "So much indifference. " "So disheartening, " fellon Flora Macmichel's unreceptive ear. "My own darling boy. " Something other than curiosity, stronger than her will, glued her eyesto the page. "Your last dear letter reached me----" Last! Yes, last indeed! "Only five shillings and twopence in the bag; and of that, twoshillings were contributed by Mr Jones and myself. Discouraging, is itnot?" "--This subject we will discuss more fully when you come home again, "in spite of herself she read the words. Come home again! Come home again! When the sea gives up its dead! The servant came in, bringing tea; picked up the letter, returned it tothe table. "If you please, ma'am, Mrs Pyman have called, and wish to speak withyou. " "Ask her to wait, " the mistress said; then glanced at her visitor todeprecate the anticipated polite protest on her part. "Anne Pyman willlike very much to sit down in the kitchen for a while, " she said. Butas the maid withdrew she apparently altered her mind. "This good womanis the biggest gossip in the village, " she explained. "She is alwaysrunning up here to tell me this or that which she picks up. I think, after all, if you would excuse me for one minute----?" "Of course!" the visitor said, mechanically; then awoke to theremembrance that she had undertaken to keep Mrs Jones from all outsideintercourse. She turned an anxious look upon her hostess--"I think ifwe could have tea----?" she said. Then she strangled a laugh in her throat--a laugh, sitting in Freddy'schair! What--what must Freddy's mother think of her! "Oh, certainly!" Mrs Jones concurred. The large dark eyes, the onlyhandsome feature she possessed, scanned with a fleeting gaze of inquirythe other woman's face. "I daresay, after your walk----" "If you don't mind. Yes. Quite so. Tea is so very refreshing, don't youthink?" The temptation to say it was the cup which cheered but did notinebriate crossed her mind, but was combated. The bread-and-butter handed to her with her tea was thick, the tea hadnot been creamed; but if food and drink had been fit for theentertainment of the gods, she did not think she could have swallowed. She lifted the bread-and-butter to her lips, then laid it, untasted, down again, she stirred her tea, and glanced at the clock upon themantelpiece. For how long must she sit and talk inanities with thismother whose only child was lying fathoms deep beneath the sea? She hadbeen there barely a quarter of an hour. For an hour and three-quarters, at least, she must sit there still, whatever the other woman thought ofher, however she tried to rid herself of her company. "You, too, have a son, I believe?" Mrs Jones was saying. "Yes. " She had an only son. His name was Connell. He was six years old. "And very dear to you, I know!" The eyes of the woman whose only sonwas drowned shone with sympathy. They were speaking eyes, reallybeautiful with that light in them. "Very dear to me, " responded the woman in Freddy's chair. To her eyescame a sudden, unexpected rush of tears. Of her own child she felt shecould not speak to this unconsciously bereaved mother. "And six years old? Ah! Now I must show you what my dear boy was likeat six. " She got up, and fetched from the mantelpiece a photograph of a tiny boyin a sailor's dress; a plain-featured, ordinary-looking little boy, with dark eyes too solemn for his age. "Now, is your boy as big, do you think? We considered Freddy a fineboy. And whom do you think he takes after?" "He is like you--about the eyes, " Mrs Macmichel said. She gave thephotograph hurriedly back. She could not endure to look upon the eyesclosed now upon their "first dark day of nothingness. " Mrs Jones put the portrait tenderly in its place. "That big photographstanding above the clock was taken only the other day, " she said. "Whenhe was appointed to the _Doughty_, I wished so much to have him in hisuniform. But the trouble I had to get him to have it taken! For noinducement in the world but to please me would he appear in uniformwhen not on duty, he said. " And now he lay, like Nicanor, "dead in his harness. " Mrs Macmichel was seated directly in front of the enlarged photograph. Its eyes looked straight into hers as she lifted them, with, it seemedto her, an infinite sadness. "Is it not strange that we should both be mothers of only sons?" It was not, in fact, a very remarkable coincidence, but the visitorconceded that it was strange. "It ought to be a bond of sympathy between us. " "Yes. " Mrs Macmichel's eyes were turned uneasily upon the door at which theservant had suddenly appeared. "Mrs Pyman is afraid she can't wait any longer now, ma'am. She wouldn'tkeep you more'n a minute, if you could speak to her, she says. " Mrs Macmichel put out a hand and gripped the arm of her hostess as sherose from her seat--"Don't--" she said imploringly, "don't go! We areso--so comfortable. " She could not but be flattered, although she could not help beingsurprised. "Tell Anne Pyman, I am sorry, " Mrs Jones said to the maid, who, however, stood her ground. "And cook say, the butcher have been, and can she speak to you for aminute, ma'am?" she asked. The butcher! He who had brought the terrible news. In her eagerness MrsMacmichel turned to the servant standing at the door. "No, " she said, "certainly not! Your mistress cannot come. " The miserable, not to be repressed chuckle of laughter took her againas the girl withdrew. "You must think me strange, " she said to thelady, gazing at her with astonished eyes. "But I _am_ strange. We aregetting on so well. I don't like to be interrupted. Go on. You weresaying----?" "About the bond of sympathy: our only children. I'm afraid thebread-and-butter is too substantial; will you try a bun instead?" "It is delicious!" Flora Macmichel said, and put the slice again to herlips, and again placed it unbitten in the saucer. "There is, " said the clergyman's wife in a lowered tone, "somethingawful--I mean in the sense of being full of awe--in being entrusted byGod with only one child. Don't you think that much more will berequired of us, and of them--our dear children?" Mrs Macmichel had not thought of it in that light. "You see, we have no others to share our devotion, to distract ourattention. Our only one should be, as near as a mother can make him so, perfect. " "Wouldn't that make him a little--well--uninteresting?" Mrs Jones's eyes blazed reproof as she answered: "Freddy is notuninteresting, " she said. Presently her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. "Then, there is thethought"--she said--"the haunting thought--should he die--should itplease God to take him from us, we lose our all. All!" she repeated;and the word, spoken in that tone of heavy solemnity, dropped like leadupon Flora Macmichel's heart. If she lost Connell there was still, in her case, her husband; but shethought of the husband of Mrs Jones, and was silent. "I have a friend, " she said, suddenly rousing herself to make oneeffort suitable to the occasion, "whose only little girl died lastyear. They thought her heart would break, but it did not. She--in amarvellous way she bore it. Never once did she seem to me tosorrow--painfully. The child, for long and long after she was dead, seemed with her, she told me. " She leant forward in her chair; hervoice, which was a rather harsh-speaking voice, grew low and earnest. Was it possible that she--she, Flora Macmichel--had joined the companyof the preachers! "Don't you think that alleviations undreamed of arealways sent?" she asked, smarting tears in her eyes, her voicebreaking. "Perhaps I ought not to say it, " the other woman said, "it is my wantof faith, of which I should be ashamed; but it seems to me thatnothing--nothing--in this world, of course--could atone. " A bell clashed sharply. By leaning back slightly in her chair, Mrs Jones could get, it seemed, a side view of the door. "Dear me! It is the boy from the telegraph office, " she said. "I neversee him without the dreadful fear that something may be amiss. Isn't itold-fashioned of me?" The flush which told of disease had deepened on her cheeks; she laid ahand upon her chest as she arose. "If you will excuse me for half amoment----?" But Mrs Macmichel had sprung to her feet and was at the door before theother. "Let me!" she said hurriedly. "I--I have my hat on. You mighttake cold----" "Excuse me!" Mrs Jones cried. "You really must allow me!" said Mrs Macmichel. There was quite a scuffle at the door as to which should go out first. It was the younger and stronger woman who dashed across the hall andsnatched the telegram from the boy upon the steps. She came back, crushing the orange envelope, unopened, in her hand. Full well she knewits contents. The authorities had not waited for the father's inquiry, but had wired the news. "It was--was for me, " she said, gasping out the intelligence. The dark eyes of the elder woman questioned her sharply. "Howstrange--how very strange it should have been sent on here!" "My husband knew I was coming to make--a long call. He sent it on. " Mrs Jones sat down again before her tea-tray, and in the speaking eyeswas a dawning of suspicion--"I hope nothing is the matter?" she said. "You will read your telegram, Mrs Macmichel?" Mrs Macmichel thrust the envelope into the pocket of her coat, and kepther hand upon it there. "It is from my dressmaker; she is alwaysbothering, " she said. "But are you sure, as you have not read it?" "Quite sure. I always know when they come from her. " The hand which seized upon her cup again was shaking. The slice ofbread-and-butter was sodden with the tea which had been spilt on it asshe had put it so hurriedly down. "What were we talking of?" she asked. "I--it was so interesting. Please go on. " "It was about our dear children, " said Mrs Jones slowly. She lookedwith a gaze of awakening distrust at her visitor. Her thoughtsevidently turned to her husband. "I will hear if Mr Jones hasreturned, " she said. "He would be so sorry to miss you----" She put out her hand to the bell. Mrs Macmichel stopped her hurriedly. "Don't ring!" she said, in the loud voice of alarm. "Please! I willstay till Mr Jones comes back, however long he is away. I promise. " Ah, if he would only come! Only half an hour lived through of the twohours yet! Yet, for worlds she would not be present at the meeting ofthe wife and husband, who then would--know! "I will stay, if you will let me go the very instant he comes, " sheadded. "If you tell me when you see him coming up the garden path, Iwill run. " "He is here!" Mrs Jones said, with an air of relief. "I heard thegarden-gate; I know his step----" Oh, not for ten worlds would Flora, who had ever shunned the sight ofpain, see that meeting! She almost flung her teacup from her. Sheseized the other's hand. "Good-bye! oh, good-bye!" she said; "I cannot possibly stay anotherminute. I am so sorry! Oh, Mrs Jones, will you please remember, I amnearly dead with sorrow--but I must go. " "She is certainly mad, " said the other woman to herself. She was soastonished that she forgot to rise from her chair, but sat lookingafter her vanishing guest with eyes wide with dismay. On the doorstep the clergyman and the lady encountered. He was pantingas one, all unaccustomed to such exercise, who had run. There was alook of famished eagerness in his eyes, the unhealthy pallor of hisface was beaded with drops of sweat. "They told me--at the office--a telegram had been sent, " he said. She snatched it from her pocket and put it in his hand. "I kept it fromher, " she said. "Take it, and let me go. " And yet she could not go. His shaking fingers had torn open the envelope, had clutched theenclosure. It wavered so, that, standing behind him, she put her armsround his arms--tall woman as she was--her hands over his, and helpedhim to steady it. "Read it, " he said to her; "I can't--I can't see. " So she read aloud to him, in a voice that rose on a note of triumph andfinished in a sob, the single line of the message! "Not on board the _Doughty_. Tell mother all right. " Mrs Jones, coming to the dining-room door, looked out for one instanton her husband, apparently clutched in Mrs Macmichel's embrace. In thenext, the lady was speeding with her long stride down the path to thegate; the clergyman had staggered into a hall chair, a succession ofsounds, something between sobs and hiccoughs, issuing from his throat. "My dear, has she hurt you?" his wife cried excitedly. "She ismad--quite mad, I am sure!" * * * * * Her husband, catching sight of Mrs Macmichel's face as she entered, followed her upstairs to her room. She was lying, dressed as she was, on her bed, with her face hidden. "My dear, what is the matter? What have you been doing with yourself?"he asked. She had been to the Rectory, to call on the Joneses, she told him. "Well?" "The _Doughty_ has gone down. All on board lost. " "So I hear. Well?" "It was their son's ship. " "Well?" "Freddy's. " She sat up and laughed across the sob in her throat. "Youstupid! I am crying because Freddy did not go down in the _Doughty_, "she said. A NERVE CURE "_Well_, what a place!" Julia cried. I had come to it because of an urgent need of change, because it was bythe sea, because it was cheap, because the advertisement had caught myeye at a moment when I was weary of vainly protesting that I wished togo nowhere except to bed. "TO LET, during the months of November and December, a six-roomed cottage; desirable; furnished; free of charge, with exception of caretaker's wage. " A couple of letters from me, a couple in reply from the owner, who wasgoing for the winter months abroad, and the affair was settled. Then my people who--although for ten years I have earned my own living, and helped to keep some of them who have not earned theirs, although Iam five-and-thirty years of age and an absolutely dependableperson--have never let me have my own way in any single matter, insisted that Julia should come with me. She is my youngest sister. Ihave not a word to say against her, of course; only I know that thethings I am content to put up with are never good enough for Julia. "Well, _what_ a place!" Julia repeated; the shifting of the accent didnot denote, I was sure, a more favourable view. It certainly was not a pretty cottage. It was also quite out of thetown, in which we had believed it to be situated, standing at theextremity of an unfinished road which led halfway across the sandywaste lying between the town of Starbay and the village of Starcliff. "A garden, back and front, " Miss Ferriman had promised me in one of herletters. There were the gardens, sure enough, but almost as unfinishedas the road. "An airy situation and uninterrupted view of the sea, " thedescription had continued, and was faithful as far as it went. Thewind, which happened to be blowing a gale, without obstruction of anykind to break its force, buffeted us remorselessly as, having descendedfrom the car which had brought us from the station, we struggled up thepath to the door. Half a mile of blowing sand, with sparse, wiry grasssticking through, was between us and the breakers; yet the ocean, coldand lead-coloured, was beyond, and not so much as a finger-breadth ofimpediment to check the prospect. "Well, what a _place_!" said Julia again. "Let's go back, Isabella. Don't let us go in. " But, once inside, we found the sitting-room which was to be ourscomfortable and prettily furnished; our two bedrooms--there were butthree--were also all that was necessary. Mine faced the sea beyond themelancholy, level Denes, Julia, to my great content, choosing the onelooking out upon the back. The little back garden with its stuntedshrubs, the unmade road beyond, made a melancholy outlook, but one thatsuited Julia better than the sea-view. "The sight of the sea at this time of year gives me the most awfulfeeling, " she declared. She rounded her shoulders, and pressed herhands upon a chest made hollow for the occasion, and her knees gave wayunder her, to prove how strongly she was affected. "Then, why did you come to the sea?" I asked, for I was a little tiredof Julia's grumbling. "I came to look after you and your nerves, Isabella, " she reminded me;"and how could I possibly know I shouldn't like the sea in Novembertill I had seen it?" We had ordered tea to be ready for us, and after our long railwayjourney we were more than ready for the meal. "The woman of the house is a most miserable, frightened-lookingcreature, " Julia remarked. "It is to be hoped that, at any rate, shewill provide us with decently cooked food. " On this score I had no misgivings. Miss Ferriman, in one of herletters, had laid special stress upon the fact that Mrs Ragg, thecaretaker, was an excellent cook. She offered us no solacing specimen of her culinary art, however. Theround table in the bay-window of our sitting-room was spread simplywith the materials for brewing tea and for cutting bread-and-butter. Julia's eyes blazed with hunger and indignation. "This is your fault, Isabella!" she declared. "What did you order, pray?" "Something substantial. It is very annoying, " I could not helpconfessing. Julia angrily jingled the little bell. "We want something to eat, " shesaid, as the caretaker appeared. "Cook us two chops, please; as quicklyas possible. " Mrs Ragg looked at us from the doorway with the same gaze of fascinatedterror with which a half-starved crow might regard two wild cats takingpossession of its cage. With her garments of shabby black, her blackuntidy hair, her long beak and startled eyes, she had something of theappearance of a bedraggled, ill-used bird of that species. Hertrembling, clawlike fingers played with the buttons of her dress; herchin, a very long and pointed feature, seemed to elongate itselfimmensely as her mouth fell; she sucked in the sides of her thincheeks, and looked with a helpless imploring gaze from Julia to me. "You have no chops, I suppose?" I interpreted the beseeching gaze. She had no chops, she confessed. "What have you, then?" the unpitying Julia persisted. "What have yougot for our breakfast tomorrow? for our dinner? You have providedsomething, no doubt?" The hollows in each meagre cheek of the caretaker deepened, the effectof the still further elongating of her chin, the starting eyes turnedfrom my sister to me. "Julia, " I said, with severity, "it will be better not to have twoRichmonds in the field. I, myself, will, with your permission, give MrsRagg what orders are necessary. " Then, in a tone of severity which should have been at once anencouragement to Mrs Ragg and a reproach to my sister, I asked to havesome eggs boiled for tea. There were no eggs. "Go and fetch some, " the irrepressible Julia cried. "I understood the two ladies were to do their shopping themselves, " thecaretaker tremblingly explained. I said of course we would. "Press not a falling man (or woman) toofar, " I quoted to Julia, as, the unhappy Mrs Ragg having left us toourselves, we sat down to our bread-and-butter. Julia, although protesting in the finish that hunger still gnawed hervitals, ate half the loaf. I, who should have been content to put upwith what remained of it for our morning meal, was unable to control mysister's raging determination to forage that night for food. "I refuse to starve, " she said. There was, luckily for us, a full moon, or we might easily have lostthe faintly indicated road, lightly strewn as it was with oyster-shellsand broken bricks, and ploughed through the trackless waste of sandydesert all night. The outskirts of the town reached, there were severalmean-looking streets to pass through, before we found a shop at whichwe thought it desirable to trade. As we walked, buffeted by the windblowing in from the sea, Julia discoursed of the caretaker ofSea-Strand Cottage. "That, mark my words, is a thoroughly bad woman, " she declared. "Shewouldn't be such a forbidding-looking creature unless she was wicked. It wouldn't be fair on the part of the Almighty to have made her so. Iconsider her aspect thoroughly sinister. " "Poor frightened, trembling old wretch!" I said. "Exactly. Why does she tremble? What is she afraid of? In my opinionshe is intending to murder us in our beds. " "You had better go home the first thing in the morning and leave me tomy fate, " I told her. To myself I said I did not believe the worldcontained another woman with the worrying capacity of Julia. It wasbecause she was such a disturbing force in the family that they hadbeen so eager for her to accompany me, I, not without bitterness, suspected. At the shop where we bought our chops for breakfast and a chicken fordinner, I bethought me to enquire of the young woman at the enteringdesk if Mrs Ragg, the caretaker of Sea-Strand Cottage, was known toher. The reply was quite satisfactory. Their cart had always served thecottage; the woman in charge was a most respectable person; a couple ofladies who had taken the cottage in the summer had mentioned that shewas also an excellent cook. The chops were served to us the next morning charred black, uneatable. I pointed them out to Julia on her appearing, and, with a view todeprecating her inevitable wrath, frankly so described them. My sisterregarded the lost hopes of our meal with a preoccupied stare; thenturned upon me with the wide distending of her eyelids which I knewportended a new worry. "What sort of a night had you?" she asked. "Excellent. And you?" "Frightful. My nerves are all on the stretch, in consequence. I giveyou warning, Isabella, if you drop your knife or chink your teacup andsaucer I shall scream aloud. " "You didn't sleep?" "Not a wink. " "Were there noises to disturb you?" "Not a sound. That was it! Not a din, Isabella. " "That's all right, then. " "Is it? You know my room?--just a lath-and-plaster partition between itand hers--that woman's. I ought to have heard every movement, even ifshe turned in her bed. " "It was very thoughtful of Mrs Ragg to lie so still. " "She was not there, Isabella. " "Not there?" "I'd stake my life on it. It worried me so at last--I _had_ to listen, you know--that I got up and put my ear against the partition. Thedeadest stillness!" "But even if she was not there, I don't see it is so very alarming. " "She says she was. I asked her just now if she was sleeping next to me, and she said yes. " "She was, then. " "She wasn't. " I poured out the tea with impatience. What a constant worry Julia was!Without appearing to cast a backward thought upon the chops, shebuttered herself a piece of toast. "Of course, at last, I did fall asleep, " she admitted. "And that wasthe worst of all. Isabella, I dreamt of that horrible little room nextto mine, and of the reason it was so still. " "Well?" "I dreamt there was a dead woman in it. " I laughed at that, and Julia, pausing in the act of taking a bite fromher toast, glared angrily at me. "You are a nice, soothing sort of person to be sent away with onesupposed to be in want of cheering influences!" I said. "You and yourdream of a dead woman!" "I dreamt one was there, " Julia said, going on with her toast. "In myopinion one _was_ there, " she added, doggedly. When she had finished her breakfast, and had withdrawn her thoughtsfrom the engrossing subject of her dream sufficiently to grumble aboutthe aching void where the chops should have been, she sprang up fromthe table and loudly tinkled the little bell. "For Mrs Ragg to clear away, " she explained to me. "While she is doingso, and you, Isabella, keep her attention engaged on things below, I amgoing upstairs to have a look at her bedroom. " "Absurd!" I ejaculated. "Aren't you absurd?" Julia cried, and turned upon me with scorn. "Totake up your abode in a little cut-throat hole like this and not totake the commonest precaution!" She flew upstairs, then, and Mrs Ragg was in the room. In order to obey my sister's injunction to keep the woman's attention Ibegan to talk to her, asking her how long she had lived in Sea-StrandCottage. I had just gathered from her grudging, mumbling speech thatshe had lived there since the cottage was built, when my sister was inthe room again. Julia watched the caretaker shovel the things on to the tray, and, sighing bitterly the while, drag wearily out of the room with them. Sheturned to me, then, with a nod eloquent. "Locked, " she enunciated. "The door was locked. Why--why should thewoman want to lock her bedroom door when she is out of it?" "She returns the compliment you have paid her, and thinks you not to betrusted, " I suggested. "If I have to climb on the roof and pull off the tiles, I'll see whatis in that room before I go to bed tonight!" Julia declared. Then Mrs Ragg came back for the tablecloth. "I slept very badly last night, Mrs Ragg, " said Julia. Mrs Ragg sucked in her cheeks, sighed heavily, made no answer. "And so did you, I'm afraid. You were very restless. You walked abouthalf the night. " "Me, miss?" She had folded the cloth, but she dropped it from hershaking, awkward hands, stooped to recover it, dropped it again. "Begging your pardon, no, miss. " "Who, then?" Julia asked inflexibly. The woman turned away with the cloth and shuffled hastily to the door. "Wait, " commanded Julia. "Who, then? There was no one else in yourbedroom besides you, I suppose?" Mrs Ragg hurriedly rejected the insinuation. She had had a pain in herchest, she remembered now, and had got up for remedies. "Of course you heard me rapping on the wall and asking you to keepstill? You heard that, at least, Mrs Ragg?" "Yes, " Mrs Ragg had heard that, certainly. She admitted the fact as ifit had been a sin, with a look of actual horror upon her face. "You heard?" asked Julia of me in a kind of triumph as we were alone. "There was not a sound through all the night. I never rapped upon thewall. Now, why is she lying? It may be nothing to you, but I mean toknow. " Once more that morning, coming from our own rooms, dressed for walking, Julia tried the caretaker's door. Finding it fast, shook it, and turnedfrom doing so to find Mrs Ragg, arrived on the scene in her felt shoes, standing behind her. "Asking your pardon, miss, that is my room, " the woman said; with afeeble kind of offence she went and put herself before the door. "We have hired the cottage; I presume we have the right to look eveninto your room, if we deem it advisable, " Julia said, with herhaughtiest air. "So, you always keep your room locked, Mrs Ragg?" "When strangers are about I do, " Mrs Ragg replied; and although she wasapparently afraid of us she gazed upon us with no goodwill. As we left the house, Julia called my attention to the fact that theblind in the room next to her own was drawn. "All the same, I don'tsleep again beneath your Mrs Ragg's roof till I've been into herbedroom, " she declared. I had come to Starbay for the benefit of the sea. Julia, however, wouldnot allow me to make nearer acquaintance with it than that possiblefrom my window, but dragged me into the town again. We put down ournames at one of the circulating libraries, and, it coming on to rain, could think of no better than to go upstairs to the reading-room. It happened to have only one other occupant. A man of early middle-age, who, with the marks of delicate health upon him, had a face which, likethat of "my Uncle Toby's, " invited confidence. Julia, for a minute, as we settled to read, looked across the table athim with her direct, sea-green gaze; then turned to her paper andlooked no more until she put the paper down and began to talk to him. It was easy enough to begin with a question about a certain magazine. "Did they take it there?" and to follow on with half a dozen enquiriesabout the town, and the objects of interest in the neighbourhood. Ilistened for a minute or two, reflecting how to my young sister anyhuman document, however casually picked up, exceeded in interest thefinest book ever written, then went on with an article on Education inwhich I happened to be interested. I roused myself from my abstractionto hear Julia mentioning to the strange man the name of Sea-StrandCottage as our abode, and describing in her exaggerated fashion itslocation and appearance. "At the utmost end of Everywhere, and looking like secretassassination, nothing less, when you get there, " my sister was saying. The man, as it happened, knew the place well. "It was the advertisementof Sea-Strand Cottage which brought me to Starbay, " he said. "But whenI saw the place, I----" "You didn't like it! No more did I!" Julia said. "However, the caretaker seemed a comfortable sort of body, and I wasassured an excellent cook, " the man continued. Julia, her hands in her coat-pockets, bent her supple body forwardacross the table, bringing her eager face nearer to the stranger's. "Did you see her?--Mrs Ragg?" she asked. He had seen her. "Well?" "She seemed all right, " he said; and Julia lay back, disappointed, inher chair again. "To me she seems all wrong, " she said. When I thought the conversation had lasted long enough I took Juliaaway from the library. Mrs Ragg had declared herself unable to have ourmeal ready before three o'clock in the afternoon. We went into apastry-cook's therefore, and Julia ate a fair supply of tarts andcustards, and insisted on taking away with her a selection from thestore. "You keep yourself in hand for the chicken cooked by Mrs Ragg; Iintend to be independent of it, " she said, and walked home with herindigestible provender. As we neared Sea-Strand Cottage we saw, coming towards it from theopposite direction, our new acquaintance of the reading-room. We met bythe gate. "I have to do a constitutional of so many prescribed miles everymorning, " he said. "After our conversation just now, I naturally bentmy steps in this direction. " "Do walk this way sometimes, " Julia said, flashing her smile upon him. "If, after a few days, you should see nothing of us, you might bring apoliceman with you and search for our remains. " He smiled too, and said he would certainly do so. "I saw two or threemen here as I went by, just now, " he said; "they might have been theassassins you are expecting, but they looked uncommonly like every-daycarpenters and workmen. " "Coming out of the house, do you mean? _Men?_" Julia asked, instantlyon the alert. "Not from the house--from the outhouse, " he corrected and nodded in itsdirection. Julia and I had inspected this empty outhouse that morning, and haddecided to have our travelling-cases moved there. As our eyes turnedtowards it now, Mrs Ragg came out from it and softly closed the doorbehind her. "This is the Mrs Ragg about whose desirability we disagree, " Julia toldthe stranger, who, with his hand to his hat, was bowing to us andmoving on. He stopped for a moment, looked at the caretaker, lookedback to us with a smile. "The mystery is solved. Your Mrs Ragg and mine are not the sameperson, " he said. * * * * * Julia, who had been round to the back of the house to make inspection, came running to me with the news that the blind was up in thecaretaker's bedroom, and the window open. "There is a ladder against the outhouse, " she said. "You must come andhelp me to fix it, Isabella, and stand on the bottom rung while I climbto the window. " There was no need for such extreme measures, however. Going upstairs toescape from my sister's importunity, I found the door of the hithertolocked room invitingly open. This intelligence being communicated toJulia, she came rushing upstairs, and dragged me unwillingly into MrsRagg's bedroom with her. A most commonplace, mean-looking room, the wind blowing through it fromopen window to open door. The bed still unmade, but the square box of aplace otherwise clean and tidy. "What a home of mystery!" I said, with fine sarcasm, to Julia. "Where'syour corpse, my dear?" Julia gazed with great eyes round the little depressing place. "Itreally is exactly like, " she said slowly. "The bed stood just there. But on it, you know, Isabella--on it----" She shuddered, and gripped my arm. "My teeth chatter. Come away, " shesaid. She was generous enough to share her confectionery with me, and herforethought in bringing it was amply justified. Mrs Ragg had been somuch occupied all the morning that she had forgotten to put the chickenin the oven until she saw us at the gate, she told us. "Of course we can't put up with this. We will leave to-morrow, " Juliadeclared. But I, who had paid the caretaker a week's salary in advance, was of opinion we should have a little more for our money. "Put the chicken back in the oven, and I will see to the cooking ofit, " Julia said, when we had sufficiently contemplated the more thanhalf-raw carcase of the fowl. "My sister is an invalid, " she continued;"I am anxious that she should not be quite starved. I will cook thechicken therefore, and you will be responsible, perhaps, for thebread-sauce, Mrs Ragg. " The woman, looking alarmedly at her, murmured the word "bread-sauce?"and sucked in her cheeks. "You know how to make bread-sauce, Mrs Ragg?" Mrs Ragg had to confess she did not. "But how can you possibly have had a reputation as a cook!" my sisterdemanded. Her eyes continued to blaze forth the inquiry long afterthere was any hope of the woman making a reply. "I'm afraid you are a helpless creature, " Julia told her, with thestern pitilessness that belongs to youth. "I also do not know how tomake bread-sauce, but I will make it. In the meantime, will you go upto our rooms, fetch down the empty packing-cases--you will find themextremely light--and place them in that shed across the yard we sawempty this morning. " Undoubtedly Mrs Ragg was a helpless creature. She stood uncertainlybefore us, her skinny hands playing tremblingly with the buttons of herdress, and did not attempt to move. "Do you not hear me? Go at once, " Julia commanded. But I saw that the woman got no nearer to our rooms than the bottom ofthe staircase. She stood there, clinging to the rail, and lookingaimlessly upward. Running upstairs I brought the two light cases down myself. "There is room for them in the kitchen, " Mrs Ragg said. But, carryingone myself, I told her to bring the other across to the empty shed. Arrived there, however, we found the door of the shed locked. "Fetch the key, " I ordered. She stood and looked at me, but did not move. "Tell me where the key is, and let me fetch it. " The key was lost. "Why have you taken the trouble to lock an absolutely empty shed?" She had no reason to give. She had locked it, and the key was lost. "She has some reason for not wishing us to go into that shed, " Juliasaid, oracularly, when the circumstance was mentioned to her. "Absurd!" I said, but I did begin to experience an uncomfortablesuspicion of the woman. "She has got those men locked up there, " Julia continued, with her airof assurance. "Nonsense! What for?" "Murder, " said Julia, laconically; and energetically crumbled bread forthe sauce. "What were two men doing here this morning?" I asked, with assumedcarelessness, of Mrs Ragg when next we encountered. She mumbled the words "two men?" and stared at me by way of answer. "We were told two men were here this morning. This is a very lonelysituation, Mrs Ragg. I suppose you would admit no one you don't knowall about?" She was, she said, always most particular. "Then, who were these two men, and what were they doing here?" She did not know. "Two men here, Mrs Ragg, and you not know it?" "They weren't here, " she said; and I had to leave it so. I offered to change beds with Julia that night, but she would not hearof it. "Your room is the more comfortable; keep it, " she said. "Whileyou insist on staying here at the peril of our lives, I will sleep aswell as I can with a dead woman laid forth on the bed next mine, andtwo murderers shut up in the shed across the way. " Julia's talk is ever more extravagant even than her notions, but it wasof a disquieting kind. Many of the absurd things she had said in theday recurred to me in the night, assuming a quite different value. Sothat, although I had longed for bed, I found myself, arrived there, quite disinclined for sleep. Surreptitiously I watched the caretaker up to bed. She came upstairs, clinging to the balusters for support, a tired, worn-looking, elderlywoman, with a lank, frail body, and a care-lined, miserable face. Howridiculous were Julia's suspicions! She not only did not lock her doorto-night, but left it ajar. At intervals I peeped through mine to seeif her light was extinguished; she had not--so poorly dressed shewas--the appearance of one who would indulge in the extravagance of acandle burning all night. Yet, long after I knew by the creaking of thespring mattress Mrs Ragg had lain down, I saw the streak of lightshining through the unclosed door. Fears of fire were added to my other disquietudes. Standing on thelanding, I was hesitating if to knock at her door, and remind her shehad not put out her light, when I was conscious of a movement behindme. Starting round with a muffled cry, I encountered a tall whitefigure, which, with an answering cry, grabbed me by both shoulders. "What _are_ you doing here, Isabella?" "How _could_ you frighten me so, Julia!" We clung together and scolded each other for a minute, then eachreturned to her own room. But I not to sleep. Listening acutely forevery sound, yet shrinking from every sound as it came, I tossed andturned with wide-open, feverish eyes. Suspicious circumstances at whichI had been disposed to laugh in the day, took on a sinister complexionin the watches of the night. The loneliness of the place, its distancefrom every habitation--details to which I held no special distastebefore--got hideously upon my nerves at last. Supposing anythinghappened, in what a position did we three women stand! What chance wasthere of help? In my mind I surveyed the prospect from my window. The trackless Denes, the wild, unfriendly sea. Shuddering, I turned mentally to the outlookfrom Julia's room. What of reassuring was there in the rudiments of anunlighted road across a desert of ugly waste lands? I was thinking of the road, I suppose, when at last I fell on sleep;for my dream was a nightmare of toiling over it with Julia, in afrantic attempt to escape from some horror, none the less terrible forbeing undefined, ever close upon our heels. It was some disturbing but uncertain sound that wakened me from thisdreaming to an inner dream. Just a vision, seen in a flash and gone, oftwo men standing in a light thrown from an upper window, and looking upto it. From this apparition so vividly presented to my brain, I was awakenedby a repetition of the disturbing sound, soft but distinct now. I flewup in bed with a beating heart and the certainty that someone, somewhere, had thrown a clod of earth at a window--not mine; at theback of the house; Julia's, or Mrs Ragg's. A minute, and I was out of my bed and into Julia's room. I laid a handon my sister's shoulder. "Julia, " I whispered, "wake up. I've had suchhorrible dreams. " The candle I held in a shaking hand showed the glinting green ofJulia's eyes within their half-opened lids. "I'm so comfy, " shemuttered; "I'm having such a lovely sleep. Go back to bed, Isabella. " But I crept into Julia's bed, instead, and clasped her close for thecomfort of her presence. "I dreamt two men were looking up at a window, " I said, "--do keepawake, Julia. I don't know why it seemed so horrid--nothing has everseemed so horrid before. And--you're going off to sleep again, Julia!--you must listen!--someone flung something at a window. That wasnot a dream. I heard it quite distinctly. " "It wasn't at this window, " Julia declared, in muffled tones. "What anuisance you are, Isabella. " Then in an instant she flung off her sleep and was out of bed. "It musthave been at Mrs Ragg's, " she said. "I am going to see. " Shivering, I followed to the landing. The light no longer showed fromMrs Ragg's door, but the door itself was still ajar. Julia rappedsharply upon it and called the caretaker's name. When no one answered, she pushed the door wide, and we saw, by the light of the candle Icarried, that the room was empty. I scarcely knew why the fact that it was so filled us both with suchdismay. Our faces were white in the candlelight as we looked blankly ateach other; then, seizing hands, we scurried back to Julia's room. Arush of cold air met us on the landing and our light went out. "An outer door is open, " Julia said. We shut and locked our own door and stood together in the darkness, gripping each other, intently listening. Julia's senses are sharper than mine. "Someone is in the garden--at theback, " she whispered. "I can hear footsteps--footsteps of more than oneperson. What shall we do, Isabella? I don't know yet what we ought todo. " Presently we were kneeling at the window. The moon had set, the nightwas quite dark. By degrees, straining our eyes in desperate anxiety, wemade out the stunted form of a shrub or two planted opposite the house;we knew that the blackness of shadow at our left was the shed whose keyhad been lost. As we looked, the shed door opened. We knew it by the light whichsuddenly streamed upon the night. It was the light from a lantern heldhigh, a light flickering and uncertain. It blinked and trembled andswayed as if held in a shaking hand. We knew whose was the lean, lankfigure, fitfully revealed, which held it. "What can she be doing there?" we asked of each other, with chatteringteeth, simultaneously. Neither answered. There was no need. Too well we knew she was lettingout the men whom, to have them handy for our murder at night, she hadlocked in, earlier in the day. They came presently. The fluttering light gave us unsteady glimpses ofthem, and of some large and heavy burden they carried. "_What_ is it?" I demanded of Julia. My arm ached with her grip of it, but she did not answer. All her senses were merged in the sense ofseeing. She could not hear, nor feel, nor speak. Mrs Ragg, holding the lantern high, walked ahead of the obscure group, which slowly followed. The light illumined her stooping, meagre figureas she made her way down the path across the back garden to the gate. Only now and again, by the chance swaying of the lantern, a ray lit theheavy blackness of the mass moving in her wake. She stopped with her lantern at the gate. For the minute it took forthem to pass her we saw more plainly the figures of the men goingheavily beneath their burden. "_What_ is it?" I found myself asking again, expecting no answer, needing none. Very softly Julia pushed up the sash of the window, hung her head withits loose flowing hair into the night. Presently, the form of Mrs Ragg came slowly back again, down the gardenpath. The lantern hung at her side now; its light streaming upwardshowed us her white and frightened face. Julia drew in her head, gentlyclosed the window, turned to me. "They have driven off--for the present, " she said. "I heard the wheels. Before they return--perhaps--we shall have time to escape. " We had risen to our feet now, but we clung together still. "Julia, what_was_ it?" I asked, for the third time, quite senselessly. For my eyesare as good as Julia's, and our opportunities of sight and judgment hadbeen the same. "It was a coffin, " Julia said, and I knew that through the darkness hereyes glared with hardly maintained courage upon my face, and that sheshut down her lips firmly over chattering teeth. Space fails to tell of the remainder of that night: of how we dressedin feverish haste to escape, and then were afraid to go; of how, havingassured ourselves--by the sense of hearing only, for we thought it bestnot to light a candle--of Mrs Ragg's return, and of her retirement forthe second time to bed, and this time to slumber--we depended on ourhearing also for the establishment of the latter fact--we sat andwatched, shivering with cold and apprehension, through the endlesshours for the reappearance of Mrs Ragg's accomplices, straining oureyes to stare in the direction of the garden path down which webelieved they would come. Of how with the first faint light of dawncourage came to us to escape. * * * * * Julia remembered the name of the hotel at which our chance acquaintanceof the reading-room had mentioned he was staying. As we did not knowhis name, it was by good luck that we encountered him on the steps ofthe Royal George setting forth on his before-breakfast constitutional. He showed himself politely sceptical of our story. How Julia's eyesblazed upon him in surprised and angry reproach for his want of faith, he has assured her many times since, he can never forget. We insistedthat he should go at once to the police station and fetch constables toarrest Mrs Ragg on the charge of murder. The alternative course heproposed appeared to us weakly inadequate. However, he being a man andwe being women, he had his way. We returned with him at once toSea-Strand Cottage, the only concession he made to our fears being totake a policeman with him, to wait outside the house in case he shouldbe wanted. "The lonely situation has worked upon your nerves. You have dreamt alittle and imagined the rest, " he said, by way of overcoming ournatural repugnance to return. Julia gave him a scathing glance. "You will see, " she said. Shevouchsafed no further word to him, but with an indignant head heldhigh, walked ahead of him and me as, side by side, we toiled over theuneven road, the policeman bringing up the rear. The caretaker, characteristically oblivious of the fact that herlodgers, who, she had every reason to believe, were still in theirbedrooms, would presently call for their breakfast, was leisurelyeating her own over the newly-lit kitchen fire. At sight of us, unexpectedly appearing before her, of our protectorwith his air of authority, of the policeman, who, contrary toinstructions, introduced himself at the open door, Mrs Ragg rose with awavering cry that was like a whine, from her seat. She sucked in hercheeks till they met, and with her claw-like hands grabbed her shabbyfrock where it loosely covered her bosom. "You are not Mrs Ragg, " our companion said. She grabbed more convulsively at her dress, and made no reply. "Where is Mrs Ragg?" "She is dead, sir. Dead, " the woman said, and sat down and began tocry. "She died the very afternoon the ladies came. I had the doctor toher. You can ask the doctor if you don't believe me. I'd have kept heralive if I could. She was my dear sister. I had only what she gaveme----" "And you undertook to impersonate her?" The poor creature gazed at us with imploring eyes. "'Twas my sisterthat ordered it, " she said, gasping with terror. "'Twas a pity thefifteen shillings a week the ladies were to pay should be lost to thefamily, my sister said. She put it in my head--she laid her orders onme before she died; she----" "And she was laid forth in the bedroom next to mine?" Julia said; "andmoved from there next morning to the shed in the garden. " "And from the shed taken at night to our brother's house, where she iswaiting burial, " the woman, now anxious to unburden herself, explained. But what need is there to set forth any more of such talk? The rest ofthe story tells itself. And we have had perhaps more than enough of thepseudo Mrs Ragg. Julia and I decided we had had enough also of Sea-Strand Cottage. Wetook up our abode temporarily at the Royal George. Our new-madefriend--for after this adventure we could but look on him as afriend--had lived there for a month and could recommend it. It was in abusy thoroughfare of the town, houses on either side, at the back, overthe way; men and women passing and repassing; plentiful gas-lamps, policemen within call. Ah, the blessed feeling of companionship andsecurity! We had had enough of solitude, darkness, mystery, to last usfor the rest of our lives. However, the cost of living at the Royal George was greatly more thanthe cost of living at the Cottage. "It is all very well for this man, who evidently has money to live insuch a place, " I said to Julia. "But we should quickly become bankrupt. At the end of a fortnight we will go. " "Make it three weeks, " Julia said, "and I shall be engaged to the manwith the money. " I scouted the idea, but stayed--perhaps to prove it impossible. Or perhaps at my age I knew well that to the young and the confidentnothing is impossible. THE PRIVATE WARD He had been seized with sudden illness in the suburban hotel in whichhe was staying, and being unknown there, had been removed to thePrincess Mary Cottage Hospital. The dozen beds of the men's ward werefull, and he had been placed in the private ward. He lay now on thenarrow bed, sleeping heavily, the white, bright light of the springmorning showing mercilessly the havoc selfishness and recklessself-indulgence had wrought upon a once sufficiently handsome face. Theemaciation of his long form was plainly seen through the single scarletblanket which covered it. The visiting doctor and the nurse stood, one on either side, lookingdown on him. "What sort of night?" asked the doctor. "Pretty bad, " answered the nurse. The patient had been admitted theprevious day, and she had watched by him through the night. "He wasawake till three, and very restless. " "You repeated at three the dose I ordered?" "Yes. He has lain like this since. When he wakes is he to have itagain?" "H'm!" said the doctor, deliberating, his eyes on the patient's face. "We will, I think, halve the dose. We mustn't overdo it; he seemssusceptible to the drug. " He lifted his eyes from the unconscious face of the patient to theweary face of the nurse, and, as if struck by what he saw there, studied it with attention. "You are more than usually tired this morning, sister, " he said. "Youmust go at once to bed when I leave. " "It is always difficult for me to sleep in the daytime. I shall notsleep to-day, " she said. "But you are tired?" "Dead tired. " The doctor observed her in a minute's silence. Her fine, almost regalform, at which few men looked and turned away, drooped a little thismorning, seemed--but that was impossible--to have faded and shrunksince yesterday. There was, however, no sinking of the white eyelidsover the pale blue eyes which, set in her darkly tinted face, were asurprise and a joy to the beholder. The eyelids were reddened now, andheld wide apart, the eyes shining with a dry feverishness painful tosee. "If you go on night-duty and do not sleep in the day you will be ill, "said the doctor, gently. "Not I, " said the nurse, roughly. He was not, perhaps, sorry to miss in that handsome woman the show ofextreme deference with which it was usual for the nurses to treat thedoctors, but her brusqueness a little surprised him. Imagining that sheresented the personal note, he turned, after a minute's quiet perusalof her face, to the patient. Having given briefly his directions for his treatment and moved away, he stopped, looking at him for a minute still. "His friends been communicated with?" he asked. She shook her head. "By the look of him should you think he has got anyfriends who would care to hear?" she enquired. Pityingly the doctor threw up his head. "Poor wretch!" he sighed. "Whatis his history, I wonder!" To which Sister Marion made no reply. For she knew. * * * * * For the rest of the day she would be off duty. As a rule she took abrisk walk through the suburban town, passed the rows upon rows of neatlittle one-patterned houses, the fine, scattered villa-residences, withtheir spotless gardens, reached the common where the goats and thedonkeys were tethered, the geese screamed with stretched necks, thechildren rolled and played. Plenty of good air there to fill lungsatrophied by long night hours in the sick atmosphere of the wards. Then, at a swinging pace home again to her welcome bed and a few hours'well-earned sleep. To-day, beyond the white walls of the hospital, the sun dancedinvitingly, the spring breezes were astir. Sister Marion heeded themnot at all. Having left the patient in the private ward to the nursewho succeeded her, she lingered listlessly in the wide, white corridorupon which all the wards opened, too preoccupied to remember that shewas doing anything unusual. There the doctor, having made the round of the wards, found herlingering still. "Go to bed!" he said to her, authoritatively. "You will make yourselfill. " "Not I. " "Go to bed!" he said again, and, although his tone was not lessauthoritative, he smiled. The feverish, pale blue eyes looked at him strangely with a regretful, wistful gaze, and he melted in a moment into unmixed gentleness. "Whyare you being obstinate to-day? Go and lie down and get to sleep, " hebegged her. "What does it matter if I do not?" "It matters very much, to you, to your patients, to me. Will you go?" She said yes, turned slowly away, and, passing down a passage leadingfrom the central corridor, went to her tiny room. Arrived, she did nottrouble to undress, but throwing off the cap which was tied beneath herchin, flung herself upon her bed. "It is the last thing he will ask of me and I shall do it, " she said. She had known that she could not sleep. She put her hand above herburning eyes and forcibly closed the lids that remained so achinglyopen. In the darkness so achieved she must think out her plans; shemust think how to get away from this place without attractingobservation, leaving no trace of her removal, giving no clue to herdestination. It was imperative that the step she decided on should betaken soon; she must form her project clearly, and there must be noblundering or mistake. But her overtired brain, refusing to work as shewilled, presented only before her feverish eyes a picture of the youngdoctor coming in the spring sunshine down the hospital ward, a bunch ofviolets in his coat. How clean, and strong, and helpful he looked! Andhis voice--was it not indeed one to obey? It must be her fancy onlythat of late it had taken on a softer tone for her. Her fancy! Her vain, mad fancy! She flung over upon her bed and forced herself to contemplate what itwas she had to do: To get away from the man who lay in the privateward; and from the place in which she had found a refuge till her evilangel had set him upon her track again. Since the day, ten years ago, when she had married him, what a ruin herlife had been! There had been, again and again, thank Heaven! periodsof peace, periods of regained self-respect, of the enjoyment of therespect of others. These had been secured by flight only, byconcealment of her whereabouts, and were of varying lengths ofduration. Two years ago, with her hard-earned savings, she had paid hispassage out to Africa. She had not believed him likely to earn themoney to return, and had looked upon him as happily dead to her. Dead, indeed, perhaps. Until yesterday, when she had helped to lay him, unconscious, in the bed of the private ward. She guessed easily that hehad learnt she was in the place, and had been about to seek her when hehad been struck down. If he should mercifully die! Not he! she said, bitterly. Men sometimes died in _delirium tremens_. In every kind of illness, by every sort of accident, men died everyday. Good and useful men, husbands of adoring wives, loving fathers offamilies, men needed by their country, by humanity, were sweptmercilessly away. Only such carrion as this was left to fester upon theearth, to poison the lives of decent men and women. The doctor, standing above him, looking on the defaced image of what God, for somemysterious purpose, had made, had no thought but to restore to thisfoully-damaged frame the spirit and strength to do its evil work. Nurses, gentle and dutiful women, would give themselves to revive inall its corrupt activity the temporarily dormant mind and body. Ought this to be? Where was the righteousness of it--the sense? Sincethat drug to which he was "so susceptible" was a deadly one, would itnot be better to give him more of it? To rid society of a pestdangerous to its peace, to restore to one suffering, striving, blameless woman the happiness he had cost her? "Would that be a crime?" she asked, and set her teeth and cried, "No, no, " with hatred in her heart. Then, horrified at herself, flungherself over on her pillow, and, burying her face from the light ofday, sobbed long with a tearless sobbing, bringing no relief; and so atlast lay still. * * * * * She did not know if she had slept or only lain in the quiet and blankof mercifully deadened misery when, roused by the sound of her name, she lifted her head to find the matron of the little hospital standingbeside her bed. "We are having so much trouble with the D. T. Patient, sister, " shesaid. "He must not be left for a moment. I am sorry to wake you sosoon, but will you go to him?" She was so used to being alert and ready at the call of duty, that sheforgot her plan had been to escape from the hospital at once, and in aminute was again in the private ward. The doctor was standing besidethe bed, and Sister Marion saw he had been recalled because of theurgency of the case. For whatever reason, it was such a pleasure to seehim again, to let her eyes rest upon the strong and kind and cleverface-- And then, looking at him, she saw that down the broad brow and theclean-shaven cheek red blood was streaming. He put up his hand to wipe the blood from his eyes, and the hand too, she saw, was gashed and bleeding. He laughed at her look of surprise and horror. "This gentleman had apenknife under his pillow, " he explained. "I have taken care that hedoes not do any more mischief. " He nodded in the direction of the patient, and Sister Marion, glancingthat way, saw that the man lying on his back had his hands tied to theiron bed-rail above his head. In the reaction from the late attack hewas lying absolutely still, and she saw, to her surprise, that in theeyes fixed on her face there was recognition. "He is conscious, " she whispered. "Come outside and let me attend toyou. " He followed her to the ward kitchen, the room used by the nurses forthe preparation of the patients' food, but empty now. The doctor smiled and jested, but the blood flowed, the wound smarted, he was a little pale. "He _meant_ to hurt you?" she asked, through her set teeth. "He meant to murder me, the brute!" the doctor said. "Never mind, " she soothed him; "I am accountable for him now. I willsee to it he never hurts you again. " She felt herself to be a different woman; in some curious wayemancipated. It had needed just the wounding of this man to change her. She was ashamed no longer to show him what she felt, nor had she anymore a shrinking from doing what she now believed it right to do. She stood above him as he sat in a new docility before her, and bathedthe cut upon his temple, with lingering, tender touch, pushing back thehair to get at it. She knelt before him and dressed the cut upon hishand. "I managed to do this myself in trying to get the knife away from him, "the doctor explained. With his unwounded hand he took an ivory-handled penknife, stained redwith blood, from his pocket, and held it before her eyes. It had been agift from her to the man who was now her husband in the early days oftheir acquaintance, before the thought of marriage had risen betweenthem. With all the valuables he had pawned and lost and thrown away, strange that this worthless gift of the girl whose life he had ruinedshould have stuck to him; stranger still that after all those years sheshould be able to recognise it beyond possibility of doubt! He held ittowards the basin of water as though to rinse it, but she took it fromhim and laid it aside. "Let it be!" she said. "I shall know what to do with the knife. " The doctor's outside patients might be crying aloud for him; it wasmore than noontide, and he should long have been about his work; thepatient in the private ward should have had Sister Marion at his side;but the pair lingered in the little red-and-white tiled ward kitchen, bathed in the warm rays of the golden afternoon sun. The dressing ofthe wounds was a long business, and to the ministering woman heavenlysweet. Over the cut upon his forehead the short, dark hair had to be combed. By altering the place of parting this was easily done. And SisterMarion, looking down upon him to see the effect, thrilled to find eyes, usually cold and preoccupied, fixed in a rapture of adoration upon herface. "No woman in the world has such a tender touch as you, " he said. "Mymother used to kiss my hurts to make them well. Will you do that toofor me?" Then the woman with murder in her heart stooped and kissed him tenderlyas a mother upon his brow, knelt for an instant before him, and kissedhis hand. "Good-bye, " she said, "Good-bye;" and without another word left him andwent upon her business to the private ward. * * * * * The recognising eyes were upon her as she opened the door. "I did nothave much trouble to find you, this time, " the man said. "I didn't evencome here of my own accord. I don't know anything about it, except thatI feel infernally bad. Can't you give me something, Marion?" "I will give you something presently, " she said. "I wish to talk to youa little first. " "Not until you've untied my hands. What are they tied up for, pray?" "To keep you from working mischief. " "Have I done anything to that long chap that went out with you? If soI'll make amends--I'll make any amends in my power. " "You shall make amends. Don't be afraid. " "You speak as if you had not a particle of pity in you; you are as hardand cold as a stone, as you always were----" "Not always, " she said, grimly--"unluckily for me. " "Any woman who had a grain of pity in her would pity me now. I feel sofrightfully bad, Marion; I believe I am going to die. " "I believe you are. " He called on the name of God at that, and tried ineffectually to rise, and tugged frantically at the bandages which bound him. She watchedhim, standing at the foot of his bed, and could smile as she watched. "You are afraid to die, " she said; "I knew you would be. You werealways a coward. " He cursed her then. His voice was feeble now; it had lost the strengthof delirium. There was something awful in the sound of such words insuch trembling, exhausted tones; yet Marion, listening, smiled on. "I will not be nursed by you!" he cried. "I won't have you near me, glaring at me with your Gorgon stare. Send another nurse to me--sendthe doctor. Get out of my sight, Gorgon! Don't look at me. Go away!" The door behind her had been standing a little ajar; she turned roundand shut it. The window was open to the spring air; she closed andlocked it. "Help yourself, " she said. "I'll rouse the place, " he threatened, and tried to cry aloud, but hisvoice died weakly in his throat. He broke down at that, and began towhine a little. "Have some pity, " he wept. "I'm a suffering man, and you're a woman, and I'm in your hands. It's only decent, it's only human, to be sorryfor me--to do something for me. My tongue's like leather; give mesomething to drink. A drop of water, even. Why should you begrudge me adrop of water?" "There's none in the room, " she said; "and I won't leave you to fetchit. There's only this. " She held up to his eyes the quieting mixturethe doctor had ordered. "There is only one dose, unfortunately. If thebottle had been full, I should have given you the lot, and there wouldhave been no further trouble. As it is, you can drink what there is. The time has not come round for it; but time is not going to be of muchmatter to you, henceforth; we need not wait for it. " He cursed her in his fainting voice again, and again faintly struggled. But she held the bottle steadily to his lips, and he drained it to thelast drop. "That will quiet you, " she said, and sat beside him on the bed. Fromthe pocket of her apron she drew the penknife with which the doctor hadbeen wounded. "Do you remember this?" she asked him. "There is bloodupon it, but that is going to be wiped out. " He looked at her with eyes from which the consciousness was dying, anddid not struggle any more. "Do you remember it?" she asked again. "You had cut your name and mineon a tree in the garden of my home, and you asked for the penknife as amemento. Is it possible you can have forgotten?" She spoke to him with great deliberation, holding the penknife beforehis eyes, and watching the drooping of the heavy lids. "Strange, isn't it, that, so much having been flung away, you shouldhave kept this miserable little keepsake with you till to-day? Isuppose its small blade is its sharp blade still?" Slowly she opened it, and stood up. With an effort he opened his eyes upon her. "I am dead with sleep, " hesaid, in a hollow, far-away voice; "but I can't sleep with my handstied. Set me free, Marion! Set me free!" "It is that I am going to do, " she said. She leant above him then, and, with fingers that never trembled, unbuttoned the wrists of his flannel shirt and rolled the sleeves backto his shoulders. How thin the arms were; how plainly the veins showedup in the white, moist skin. Across one that rose like a fine blue cordfrom the bend of the arm she drew the sharp blade of the knife. He gavebut the slightest start, so heavy was he with sleep. She knelt upon hispillow, leant across him, and in the other arm severed thecorresponding vein. She had thought that the blood would flow quietly--how it spurted andspouted and ran! Before she could untie his hands and lay them beneaththe blanket at his sides the white, lean arms were crimson with blood. At this rate, it would not take him long to die! She rinsed the bloodfrom the little penknife in a basin of water, and turning down theblanket, laid it upon his breast. "You have kept it a good many years, " she said, mockingly. "Keep itstill. " Some blood was on her own hands--how could she have been so clumsy!They were all smeared with blood; they--horrible!--_smelt_ of blood. She flew towards the basin to rinse them, but before she could reachit, without a warning sound the door opened, and the matron was in theroom. With the tell-tale hands behind her back, Sister Marion stood beforeher, intervening between her and the bed. "Your patient is strangely quiet all at once, " the matron said. "He is sleeping, " said the nurse. In spite of herself she had to give way before the matron, who nowstood by the bed. "It does not seem a healthy sleep, " she said. "He has a very exhaustedlook. And why is his blanket tucked so tightly round his arms?" Shewaited for no explanations, but smoothed the man's ruffled hair andlooked down pityingly upon him. "Even now he has a handsome face, " shesaid. "Ten years ago he must have been as handsome as a god. " Ten years ago! Who knew how handsome he had been then better thanSister Marion? In an instant how vivid was the picture of him that rosebefore her eyes! The picture of a young man's laughing face--gay, winning, debonair. A dancing shadow was on his face of the leaves ofthe tree by which he stood, and on which he had carved two names-- With an involuntary movement she was beside him, looking down upon theunconscious face; and wonderful it was to see that all its lines weresmoothing out, and all the marks of years of debauchery. Even thesallow hue of them seemed to be changing in his cheeks. Extraordinarythat the healthy colour of early manhood should reappear in the cheeksof a dying man! In her surprise she called him by his name. Looking up, fearful thatshe had betrayed herself to the matron, she found that she was alonewith him again, the door closed. There was absolute silence in theroom, except a soft, drip-dripping from the bed to the floor. No needto look; she knew what it was. How short a time before the two streamsfrom the veins, emptying themselves of the life-blood, met beneath thebed and trickled, trickled to the door! She flung a towel down to sopup the tiny flood, and saw it swiftly crimson before her eyes. Sheturned back to the bed, a great horror upon her now, and saw that theeyes of the dying man were open and upon her face. "I loved you, " he said. "Once I loved you, Marion!" The words were like a knife in her heart. She groaned aloud, but couldnot speak. "I have been bad--bad, " he went on; "but I will atone. Give me time, Marion, and I will atone. Save me! Don't send me before my God likethis, without a chance. You are my wife. You swore--swore to stick tome. Save me!" In his extremity power had come back to his voice. He struggleddesperately, half raised himself. "Save me!" he shrieked. "Don't sendmy soul to perdition!" She flung the blanket off him, and tried with fingers, that only shookand helplessly fumbled now, to bind a ligature above the opened vein. Misunderstanding, he tried to fling her off. "You are tying me again!Fiend! Fiend!" he cried. He dashed his arms about, fighting for life. Her enveloping white apron was splashed and soaked with blood. Even onher face it fell. As it rained, warm and crimson, upon her, sheshrieked aloud. In an instant the little room was full of surprised and frightenedfaces. "She has killed me!" the man screamed. "Killed me! She is tyingme down to see me die!" "I want to save him--now, " Sister Marion strove to say above theclamour. No one heeded. "She did this, and this, " the man said, showing his wounded arms. "Askher! Ask her!" "It is true, " Marion gasped. Oh, the difficulty of getting her tongueto form words! "But I want to save him--now. " "Too late, " the matron said; and hers and all the faces--the roomseemed full of them--looked at her with loathing, shrinking from her, as she stood before them, spattered with her husband's blood. "The manis dying fast. " At that instant one of the younger nurses who had been ministering tothe figure upon the bed, lifted up a warning hand. "He is dead!" shesaid. How the faces glared at her! Strange as well as familiar ones--crowdsupon crowds of faces. Faces of the nurses who had been her friends, whohad loved her; faces from out the past--how came they there with theirheart-remembered names!--her mother's face--her mother who was with theangels of God! All the forces of Heaven and earth testifying againsther who had done the unspeakable deed. Was there no one on her side--no one who would shield her from theaccusing eyes? The cry with which she called upon the doctor's name in its franticexpression of utmost need must have had power to annihilate time andspace, for while the sound of it still thrilled upon the ear the youngdoctor was in the room. She turned to him with the joy of one who findshis saviour. Standing before her, his hands pressed firmly upon her shoulders, hebent his head till the strong, kind face almost touched her own. "Murderer!" he whispered in her ear, and flung her from him. She lay where he had thrown her; but someone's hands were still pressedupon her shoulders, a voice was still whispering "Murderer!" in herear--or was it--was it "Marion" the voice whispered? * * * * * "Marion, how soundly you have slept--and not even undressed! It iseight o'clock, and time for you to go on night-duty. Doctor is goinghis evening rounds. " Only half-awakened, the horror of her dream still holding her, SisterMarion pushed the nurse away from her, threw herself from her bed, andflew along the corridor. From the door of the private ward the doctorwas issuing; he stared at her wild, white look, her tumbled, uncoveredhair. She seized him by the arm. "Doctor!" she sobbed. "The man inthere has been cruel to me, but I want to nurse him--I want to savehim! Never, never could I have done him any harm!" "Why should you have done him any harm?" the doctor asked, soothingly. "Who would have harmed the poor fellow? Come and see. " He softly opened the door of the private ward, and with his hand uponher arm, led her in. The matron and one of the nurses stood on either side of the bed, fromwhich the scarlet blanket had been removed. The long white sheet whichhad replaced it was pulled up over the face of the recumbent form. "He died an hour ago in his sleep, " the matron said. "He did not regainconsciousness after you left him. I have been with him all the time. " Sister Marion, with dazed eyes, looked down upon her hands--slowly, from one to the other. Clean, clean, thank Heaven! Looked at herspotless apron, at the sheet showing the sharp outline of the figure onthe bed. "Was there, upon his breast, a little ivory-handled penknife?" sheasked. But before they had told her, wonderingly, no, she had fallen on herknees beside the quiet figure and was sobbing to herself a prayer ofthanksgiving. "A sensitive, imaginative woman--she has been wakened too suddenly, "the doctor said. His gaze dwelt lingering upon her bent, dark head as slowly he turnedaway. DORA OF THE RINGOLETS "I wish I c'd du my ringolets same as yu kin, mother. When I carl 'emover my fingers they don't hang o' this here fashion down my back, butgo all of a womble-like; not half s' pretty. " "Tha's 'cause ye twist 'em wrong way, back'ards round yer fingers, " thefaint voice from the bed made answer. "Yu ha' got to larn to du 'em, Dora, don't, yer'll miss me cruel when I'm gone. " The dying woman was propped on a couple of pillows of more or lesssoiled appearance; these were raised to the required height by means ofa folded flannel petticoat and dingy woollen frock, worn through allthe twelve years of her married life, but now to be worn no more. Onthe man's coat, spread for extra warmth over the thin counterpane, laya broken comb and brush. Over her fingers, distorted by hard work, butpale from sickness and languid with coming death, the mother twistedthe locks, vigorously waving, richly gilded, and dragged them inshining, curled lengths over the child's shoulders. Because of the extreme weakness of the hands the process was alaborious one. A heavier pallor was upon the face, a cold moisture uponthe sunken brow when it was accomplished. "I'll kape on while I kin--I don' know as I shall ha' the strength muchlonger, Dora. " The child twitched her curls from the fingers that lay heavily uponthem and turned on her mother fiercely. "Yu ha' got ter du 'em, then!"she cried. She glared upon the faint head slipped sideways on thepillow. "Yu ha'n't got ter put none o' them parts on, du I'll let yeter know. " Her eyes were suddenly wide and brilliant with tears; the fading sightof the mother was dazzled by the yellow shine of them and of therichly-coloured hair. "My pretty gal!" she breathed; "my pretty Dora! Iha'n't got no strength, bor. " "I'll let yer ter know!" Dora cried with fury. "I'll hull yer pillarsaway, and let yer hid go flop, if ye say yer ha'an't got no strength. I'll let yer ter know!" She stopped, because the sobs which had been stormily rising chokedher. She seized in her red little hands the pillow beneath her mother'shead. No word of remonstrance was spoken, the faded eyes gazing wearilyupon the child held no reproof. "What d'ye look at me, that mander, for? Why don't ye ketch me a lumpo' the hid?" the child cried fiercely; then gave way to the suppressedsobbing. "Oh, mother, yu ain't a-dyin'? Yu ain't a-dyin' yit?" She flung her own head on the soiled pillow; all the crisply waving, long ringlets flew over the mother's sunken chest; one fell across herparched lips. She moistened them with her tongue, and made a feeblemotion of kissing. A tear slid slowly down her cheek. "Not yit, my pretty gal, " she whispered. "Mother ain't a-goin' ter laveyer yit. " "Promus! Yer ain't a-tellin' no lies? Yer'll stop along of me till Ikin carl my ringolets myself. I ha' got ter have 'em carled, and thereain't no one else to du 'em for me. " The mother promised. "There's Jim and Jack--they don't want ye, mother. Their hairs isshort. They kin play hopstick i' th' midder, alonger th' other boys. Both on 'em kin put their own collars on. There's on'y me, what havecarls, that'll want yer so. Mother! Mother!" "Don' I kape on a-tellin' of yer I ain't a-goin'. " There was no time to sob for long on the mother's pillow. Dora was dueat school. She wiped her crimsoned cheeks upon the corner of the sheet, stood up and put her sunburnt sailor-hat upon the carefully curledhair. She was neatly dressed in a brown woollen frock nearly covered bya white, lace-trimmed overall; she wore brown stockings and brownshoes. The mother watched her to the door with yearning eyes. "My pretty gal!" she said. The neighbour who waited on her in moments spared from her ownhousehold labours came in. She held a cup of paste made from cornflourin her hand, and stirred the mixture invitingly. "It's time yu had suffin' inside of yer, Mis' Green, " she said. "Yuha'n't tasted wittels since that mossel o' bread-an'-butter yu fanciedlas' night. " She put a spoonful of the food, stirred over a smoky fire, to theparched lips. "I'd suner, a sight, have a drink o' water, " the sick woman said. "There ain't nothin' I fare ter crave 'cept water now. " "There ain't no nouragement in water, Mis' Green. Take this here, instids, " the neighbour said firmly. Two spoonfuls were swallowed with difficulty. "Come! Tha's as ter should be! That comfort ye, Mis' Green, bor?" The faint eyes looked solemnly in the healthy, stolid face above her. "There's nothin' don't comfort me, Mis' Barrett. " "An' why's the raisen?" the neighbour reprovingly demanded. "Becauseyu're a-dyin', Mis' Green, and yu don't give yer mind tu it. I ha' beenby other deathbeds--the Lord reward me for it, as 'tis ter be expectedHe will--and I ha'n't never seed a Christian woman so sot agin goin' asyu are. " The reluctant one shut her eyes wearily; the dropped lids trembled fora minute, then were raised upon the same hard face. "She don' look like a labourer's gal, Dora don't, " she said faintly. "She ha'n't got th' mander o' them sort o' truck. " "What then, Mis' Green?" the neighbour inquired, stern with theconsciousness of her own large family of "truck. " The supposedsuperiority of Dora of the ringolets hurt her maternal pride and raiseda storm of righteous anger in her breast. Mrs Green did not explain; the discoloured lids fell again waveringlyover the dim eyes, the upper lip was drawn back showing the gums abovethe teeth. It was the mere skeleton of a woman who lay there. She had sufferedlong and intensely; no one could look upon her now and doubt that thehour of discharge was very near. The woman standing above her reasonedthat if a word of reproof or advice was to be given there was not muchtime to lose. Often, from open door to open door (for the pairinhabited a double dwelling), often, across the garden fence, she hadcalled aloud her opinion of her neighbour's goings on; she would seizethe opportunity to give it once again. "And why ain't yer Dora like a labourer's gal, then?" she demanded, shrilly accusing. "Oh, Mis' Green! Don't yu, a-layin' there o' yourdeathbed, know right well the why and the wherefore? Ha'n't yu borreredright and left, ha'n't you got inter debt high and low, to put a hapeo' finery on yer mawther's back? Ha'n't yu moiled yerself, an' yu adyin' woman, over her hid o' hair? Put her i' my Gladus's clo'es, an'see what yer Dora 'ud look like. Har, wi' her coloured shues, an' all!" "They was giv' her, " the dying woman faintly protested. "Her UncleWillum sent them brown uns along of her brown hat wi' th' welwet bow. " "Now, ain't yu a-lyin', Mis' Green, as yu lay there o' yer deathbed?Them tales may ha' flung dust i' th' eyes o' yer old man, them i' myhid is too sharp for no sech a story. Di'n't I see th' name o' 'Bunn o'Wotton' on th' bag th' hat come out of? An' don't yer brother Willumlive i' London, and ha'n't he got seven of's own to look arter? Terthink as I sh'd come ter pass ter say sich wards, an' yu a-layin' therea-dyin'! Ain't yer ashamed o' yerself, Mis' Green. I'm a-askin' of yerth' question; ain't yer ashamed o' yerself?" "No, an' ain't, " said Mrs Green, feebly whispering. Beneath the flickering, bruised-looking lids, tears slowly oozed. Theneighbour felt for a pocket-handkerchief under the pillow, and wipedthem away. "Fact o' th' matter, Mis' Green, " she inflexibly pursued her subject, "yu ha' made a raglar idle o' that gal; yu ha' put a sight o' finery on'er back, an' stuffed 'er hid wi' notions; an' wha's a-goin ter becomeon 'r when you're gone?" "I was a-wonderin', " the dying woman said, "s'posin' as I was willin'to speer this here parple gownd o' mine, rolled onder my pillar--I wasa-wonderin', Mis' Barrett, ef so bein' as yu'd ondertake ter carl mygal's ringolets, now an' agin, for 'er?" "No, " the other said, spiritedly, nobly proof against the magnitude ofthe bribe. "That'd go agin my conscience, Mis' Green. I'm sorrer ter bea denyin' of yer, but yer mawther's hid o' hair I ha'n't niver approvedon; I can't ondertake it, an' so, I say, straight forrerd, at oncet. " The face so "accustomed to refusings" did not change, no flush ofresentment relieved its waxen pallor or lightened its fading eyes. "'Tis th' last thing I'm a-askin' of yer, " the poor woman said, weakly. "Try as I kin, I can't live much longer. 'Tis on'y nat'ral I shouldthink o' Dora an' th' child'en. " "Yu think a sight too much on 'em, bor! 'Tis time yu give 'em up. Yulay o' yer deathbed, Mis' Green, an' yu a mis'rable sinner; can't youput up a prayer to ask th' Lord ter have marcy on yer?" "No, " said Mrs Green. "'No'--an' why not?" "Cos I don' keer. " "Don' keer, Mis' Green?" "No, Mis' Barrett, so's He look arter Dora an' th' child'en, I don'tkeer what He du ter me. " * * * * * "Mother!" No answer, but a quiver of drooping lids. "Mother!" At the sharp terror of the voice the lids lifted themselves and fellagain. "Yu ain't a-dyin', mother?" "'Course I ain't. " "Yer promussed! Yer said yer warn't a-dyin'!" "An' I ain't. " "Then don't kape a-lookin' o' that mander. Lay hold o' th' comb an' dumy ringolets. " The comb was thrust within cold fingers which did not close upon it. "If so bein' yer don't set ter wark and comb 'em out I'll shake ye. I'll shake ye, mother, du yer hare? Du yer hare, mother? Th' bell'sgone, an' how'm I ter go ter school an' my ringolets not carled?" They were not curled that morning, however, for at the sound of thechild's angry, frightened voice Mrs Barrett came running upstairs andseized her and dragged her from the room. "Yer baggige, yu! Ter spake i' that mander to a dyin' woman!" "She ain't a-dyin', then, " the child screamed as she was thrust fromthe house. "She ain't a-dyin', an' I want my ringolets carled. " Once, when Dora had announced in the hearing of a pupil-teacher thatshe was the prettiest girl in the school: "You ain't, then, " the oldergirl had told her. "You are not pretty at all, Dora, but exactly likeyour brother Jim. " "Jim's ugly! You're a-tazin' of me!" Dora had fiercely cried. "If you hadn't your curls you'd be Jim over again, " the teacher hadpersisted. She was a tempestuous little animal. She had flown to her mother withthe horrid insinuation, had sobbed and screamed, and kicked theinnocent, ugly Jim. If she had not her curls! But she had them. Even this morning, when for the first time she mustappear in school without having them freshly curled, the consciousnessof their weight upon her shoulders was a comfort to the child. As wellas she could without disarranging the set of it, she smoothed each longcurl into order as she walked along. The sun of autumn shone, lyinglike a benediction upon the land whose fruits were gathered; among thehips and haws in the hedges the birds, their family cares all over, sang lightsomely, with vacant hearts. Happiness was in the air. Perhapssomeone would say how pretty the curls were, to-day. Perhaps, as once, blessedly, before had happened, a lady riding slowly along the greenwayside might pull up her horse to inquire whose little girl she was, to give her sixpence, to ask how much she would take for her beautifulcurls. Ah, with what joy on that happy morning Dora had galloped home to givethe account to her mother! The sixpence had gone to buy the blue ribbonDora wore among her locks on Sundays; but how the mother had cheeredup! She had seemed almost well for half an hour that evening, and Dorahad told the tale again and again. "I was a-walkin' along, like this here, not a thinkin' a mite o' myringolets, an' I see th' woman on th' horse keep a-smilin'. So I mademy manners, an' she pulled up 'r horse. 'Whu's little gal be yu?' shesay; 'an' where did yu git yer lovely hair?'" Her mother had eaten two bits of bread-and-butter, that evening, andhad drunk the tea Dora all alone had made her. How happy it had been!Perhaps it would all happen again. Morning school over, she was putting on her hat among a struggling massof children anxious to get into the open, where there was a great bluevault to shout under, and stones to shy, when the schoolmistress fromthe empty class-room called her back. The woman stood by her silentlyfor a minute, one hand on the child's shoulder, the other movingthoughtfully over the shining fell of hair. "Don't shout and play with the others to-day, Dora, " she said atlength. "Wait till they clear off, and then go right home. " "Yes, tacher. " The schoolmistress waited for another minute, smoothing the curls. "You're only right a little girl, Dora, but you're the only one. Youmust try to be good, and look after poor little Jack and Jim, and yourfather--and be a comfort. " "Yes, tacher. " Dora took courage beneath the caressing hand: "I like tobe a comfit to mother best, " she vouchsafed, brightly daring. "But your mother----" the governess said, then stopped and turned awayher head; she could not bring herself to tell the child the news of themother she had heard that morning, since school began. So Dora went, sedately for the first few steps, afterwards with a happyrush, the curls dancing on her shoulders. "Yer mother is a-dyin', she 'ont be here long; you must try to be abetter gal"; how often of late had that phrase offended her ears! Shehad met such announcements with a fury of denial, with storms of tears. She had rushed to her mother with wild reproach and complaint. "Whydon't ye tell 'm yu ain't a-dyin', stids o' layin' there, that mander. They're allust a-tazin' of me?" To-day no one had said the hated words; and mother would like to hearhow teacher had "kep'" her at her side, and coaxed her hair. "I ha'n'tniver seed her du that to Gladus, nor none on 'em, " she would say, andwould remind her mother how these less fortunate girls had not her "hido' hair. " So, her steps quickened with joyful anticipation, she came runningacross the meadow in which was her home. "Here come Dora, " Mrs Barrett, who had been busy in Mrs Green's room, said to the neighbour who had helped her. Both women peeped through thelowered blind. "She'll come poundin' upstairs to her mother. Thereain't no kapin' of 'r away; and a nice how-d'ye-do there'll be!" The elder boy, Jim, whose ugly little face Dora's was said to resemble, was standing against the gate of the neglected garden. He did not shoutat her, nor throw a stone at her, in the fashion of his usual greeting, but pulled open the rickety gate as she came up. "Mother's dead, " he whispered, and looked at her with curiosity. "She ain't, then, " Dora said. He drew his head back to avoid the blowshe aimed at it, and shut the gate after her. Jack, an ugly urchin of five, the youngest of the family, was sittingon the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot ahazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking, was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from hisemployment, or lift his head. "Father's gone for mother's corffin, " he said. The howl he gave when Dora knocked him off the step brought Mrs Barrettupon the scene. She pulled the girl off the fallen Jack with a gentlertouch than usual. "You come along upstairs, along o' me, " she said. * * * * * There was not only the coffin to be ordered in Wotton, but suits ofblack for himself and children, besides the joint of meat to be cookedfor the meal after the funeral. Mr Green did not hurry over hispurchases, but went about them with the leisurely attentiveness of oneanxious to do the right thing, but unaccustomed to the business ofmaking bargains. His wages had been "made a hand on, " lately; there had been brandy and"sech-like" to buy for the missus; the neighbour to pay, leaving littlemore than enough for bread for the rest of them. But now, with thisburying money--! The new-made widower enjoyed the hitherto undreamed-ofexperience of knowing that he might put in for a glass at everypublic-house he passed, and not exhaust it. He treated himself to a tin of salmon to have with his supper, when hegot back to Dulditch. While his wife had been well and about, she hadbeen wont at rare intervals to supply such a "ralish" to the eveningmeal. Having the means to indulge himself, his thoughts had at oncetravelled to the luxury. Yet, arrived at home, he had had too much beer to be very hungry, andthe thought of the dead wife, up there, just beyond the ceiling, destroyed what little pleasure the feast might have held. "Happen she'd been alive, she'd maybe ha' picked a mossel, " he said tohimself. That she could be totally indifferent to the delicacy, even althoughdead and fairly started on her heavenward journeying, was a bewilderingfact his dull brain could scarcely grasp. He got up from the table, andtaking the unshaded lamp, walked heavily upstairs to look upon thismarvel--his wife who was no more. He was a stolid creature, but was shaken enough to give a sharp growlof fear when, from the other side of the rigid form upon the bed, ahead was lifted. "Hello!" he called. "Hello! What yu a-doin' here? Now then! Come out o'that, yu young warmint; don't, I'll hide ye. " The figure lying by the dead woman slipped to the ground. It wore abrown frock and a crumpled white overall trimmed with lace. "Hello!" the man said again. He looked stupidly at his little daughter, then pulled aside the sheet which covered his wife. In the waxen face, with lids still half-open above the dull eyes, withlips drawn back to show the gums, was little change. Beneath the chin alarge white bow of coarse muslin had been tied. It was designed to hidethe thinness of the throat, but gave, besides, a dreadful air ofsmartness to the poor corpse. Above the sunken chest the arms werecrossed, but, over them, and over the thin hands, in a burning, shiningmass of resplendent colour lay-- The husband held the lamp nearer, and bent his dull, red face to peercloser at the scattered heap--the miracle of bronze and red, red livinggold. "Hello!" he said again, then moved the lamp to let its lightshine on his daughter's face, and stared at her. "Hello!" "I ha'n't got no one now to carl my ringolets, " the child sobbed, hervoice rising high in the scale of rebellious misery; "my ringoletsain't no good to me no more. I ha' cut 'em off; mother, she kin have'em. They ain't no good ter me. " The glare of the lamp held awry was upon the broad red face of the girlwith the streaming, yellow eyes, with the unevenly cropped head. "I thought yu was the boy Jim, " her father said. PINK CARNATIONS "You see, they are my lucky flowers, " she said. "I can't very well wearthem on my wedding-dress, but I'm to have some to go away with. Jack'sgoing to bring them down from town with him to-night. " I asked of Daphne, who had been the favourite of fortune from herbirth, in whose cup of sweet no bitter had ever mingled, who had walkedfor all her happy days along a flowery path, what she meant by suchnonsense. She was ready enough to give me her absurd girlish reasons. What she told me was the feeblest folly, of course; but even sillysuperstition must be pardoned to such a pretty person; and the words ofa young woman who is going to be married on the morrow must be treatedby a hopeless spinster, I suppose, with, at least, a semblance ofrespect. There had been an occasion, it seemed, long ago in herchildhood, when she, having lost from her neck a locket which held herdead father's portrait, had found it, all search for it having ceased, on the carnation-bed where she had stooped to pick a flower. On the daythat the news reached them that Hugh, her brother, had won the hurdlerace at Cambridge (one of the chief triumphs, it appeared, of hereventless life) she had just finished arranging a vase of pinkcarnations for her dressing-table. Once, when her mother had beenseriously ill and there had been a fear the disease from which shesuffered was going to take a dangerous turn, she, Daphne, had beenfrightened and very unhappy. Longing for, yet dreading the doctor'sarrival, she had watched him descend from his carriage, wearing a pinkcarnation in his coat. She had known at once that his verdict on hermother's state would be favourable; and it was. A burglar had tried toget in at Daphne's sitting-room window--at least Daphne, on whatappeared to me insufficient evidence, declared that he had done so. Thewindow-box had fallen to the ground, and had put the burglar toflight--that is, if there had been one. At any rate it was clearlyproved that the window-box had fallen. It contained, of course, pinkcarnations. And so on to many other instances, chief among which was the fact thatthe first time she had beheld the handsome face of the Jack she was tomarry to-morrow she had worn a bunch of her favourite flowers in thebodice of her white silk dress. Afterwards, on the day of the CountyBall, at which function he had proposed, he had sent her a bouquetcomposed entirely of pink carnations, and had chosen one of thoseblooms for his own buttonhole. "Without knowing--without my having even mentioned to him that theybrought me luck!" Daphne assured me, the dark, poetic eyes in her smallface large with the mystery of it. "Do you wonder Jack agrees with me I_must_ not be without them on my wedding-day?" By her mother's command, and in order that she might not look, as I amassured many brides do look, a "perfect rag" on her wedding-day, Daphnewas to rest for a certain number of hours, that afternoon. She wasforbidden, even, to write one of the seventy still remaining out of thethree hundred letters of thanks to the donors of wedding-presents. She should have to work them off--so many a day--on her honeymoon, Daphne ruefully supposed. Jack would help. She would make him directthe envelopes. She bore a grudge apparently against the givers of thetreasures under which the tables in the morning-room were groaning. "If you could only know what it has been!" she sighed. "However hard Iwrote I couldn't keep pace. No sooner had I wiped one name off the listthan three more presents had come!" From this onerous duty, however, she was now to desist, and from allfatigue of receiving the guests who were arriving by different trainsthroughout the day. She was to lie at her ease on silken cushions inthat pretty room of her own, upon whose window-box the supposititiousburglar had set his too heavy boot. I was amused to see that the whitechintzes of the chairs and hangings were flowered with pink carnations, and that garlands of the flower, tied with pink ribbons, formed thefrieze of the white wallpaper. "Well, you were always a petted and spoilt child, " I said to her; "andI suppose you are going to be so to the end of the chapter. " "Only more so, " she said, with her youthful arrogance. "You can't thinkwhat a splendid hand at spoiling Jack is. " I laughed, told her to let me know how much he spoilt her in fiveyears' time, and left her. For a servant had interrupted ourconversation with the announcement that Mr Mavor, who had returned fromtown, would be glad to speak to me. "Hughie? how absurd!" Daphne said, who wanted to go on talking to meabout her lover. "As if Hughie could possibly have a thing to say toyou which would not keep, Hannah!" "It is to make me an offer of marriage I have not the slightest doubt, "I told her, being of an age when a woman can make jokes of that kindabout herself and pretend not to feel the heartprick. I found the head of the house in the room which had been turned into amuseum of objects of art--precious and not precious--for exhibition onthe morrow. I had known the young man from boyhood, and I saw at oncethat something was amiss. He had left for town before my arrival thatmorning, and this was our first meeting, but he forgot to come forwardand put out his hand. He stalked past me, instead, and banged the doorby which I had entered; then he seized me by the arm. "Hannah, " he said, "I want to talk to you. I want your advice. We're ina devil of a mess. " "It's the wedding-dress, or the wedding-cake!" I said, staring at him. "One of them hasn't come!" "It's about Marston. Something I only heard to-day. He must not beallowed to marry my sister. " "Hughie!" He took his hand from my arm, laid it on one of the tables spread withthe presents. There was a faint ringing of silver and china to show thehand was not steady. He is a self-contained, sturdily-built, matter-of-fact young man in the early twenties; quite unlike hissister, whose appearance is elegantly fragile, who is filled withnerves, and sensitive to the fingertips. "I got a letter this morning, " he went on, and for a moment fumbled inhis coat-pocket as if with the intention, quickly relinquished, ofshowing it. "It was from a woman; telling me of certain incidents inMarston's career. " "Probably all made up. Lies. " "It isn't. Once for all, don't waste time in saying that. I went upthis morning to the address she gave me. I saw her. She told me worsethan she wrote--poor wretch! I didn't take it for gospel. I gotconfirmation, all round. There isn't room for the shadow of a doubt. She left her husband a year ago for Marston----" "A year ago? Only a year?" "A year. The husband got a divorce; this brute refused to marry her. " "Oh, Hugh!" "It's worse. I can't tell you all. Sufficient that he played thetraitor, the coward, the beast. Left her to face shame, and poverty, and--everything, alone. " "Can it be so bad! You are certain?" He lifted the unsteady hand and laid it open, heavily again upon thetable where the Crown Derby coffee services, the silver inkstands, muffineers and bridge boxes, whose donors had not even been thanked, jingled with a tiny music once more. "Certain. Now, don't keep repeating that word, Hannah. I don't want towaste time producing proofs, but I've got them. It's as certain asdeath. And it's not the only thing. Once I was on his track--late inthe day as it was--I learnt more. We live so in a hole, down here, andnothing like this has ever come near us. We've taken people for whatthey seemed to be--as I, ass that I was, took Marston--and never pokedinto their histories. The man's got a bad record, all along. Decentpeople have closed their doors in his face. " "_What_ will you do, Hugh? What _can_ you do now?" "Do? Stop the marriage, " he said. He glared for a minute upon thecostly display on the table, then turned his back on it all, andcarried his white face to the window. "My sister shall never marry thatscoundrel, " he said. "Daphne's heart will break. " "I know. " He looked out on the wintry landscape with gloomy eyes, and aresolutely held underlip. "That is what my mother says. I do notbelieve it; but if it is so, it does not alter what is the right andonly course to take. " "What else does your mother say?" He moved his shoulders impatiently. "That the wedding must go on; thatit is too late to draw back. " He turned swiftly upon me. "Could youhave believed that _my mother_, of all people, could take such a viewas that?" "I can see how she feels about it. To break it off now is too hideouslypainful----" "And what will it be for Daphne if it goes on? Don't you suppose herlife with a brute like that would be hideously painful?" He held theback of his hand to his forehead for a moment and shut his eyes tightlyas if in painful thought. "My poor little sister!" he said. "PoorDapple!" I sat down and stared stupidly before me, too overcome by the situationto be able even to think. "Your mother says the wedding is to go on; you say it is to bestopped----" He pounced upon me. "I am master here, " he said. He had always seemed a boy to me, and I had never known him to exerthis authority before. His mother and young sister had taken their ownway in affairs, and had never been hampered by the consideration that"Hughie" was a person of importance. Yet, there was no doubt about hisposition. Looking at, and listening to him now, I saw that he meant tohave his way; and my conscience told me that his way was the right one. A word or two more he said to me of incidents in Jack Marston'shistory; showed me how it had happened that these were only recentlyrevealed to him; how, to the Mavors' circle he had been entirely astranger; how the few friends of Hugh's who had had any acquaintancewith the man had wondered at the sister's engagement, but thought it nobusiness of their own. "Have you made your mother understand you are determined in thematter?" "I have told her I will shoot the man before he shall marry my sister. " "And what is she doing? Your mother?" "She is raving like a madwoman in her bedroom. " The stupendousness of the situation, to which at moments I feltinsensible, kept coming over me in waves of comprehension. "Well, I don't wonder!" I said. Long pauses fell between our fragments of speech. He stood before thesquare centre table, black-browed, staring at its glittering burden. The footman appeared at the door. "If you please, sir, Hamley wishes toknow if the dog-cart as well as the brougham and omnibus is to meet the5. 15 this evening?" His master looked at the man with knit brows, as if making a painfuleffort to understand what was said. He pulled out his watch, and for aminute studied it. "Tell Hamley, " then he said, "not to meet the 5. 15 at all. No one willcome by that train. In ten minutes I shall want to send sometelegrams. " The man, staring at the strange order, withdrew. "You are going to stop the rest of the guests?" I asked. "Of course. They were coming to the wedding. There will be no wedding. " "And Jack Marston? You can't _telegraph_ this horrible thing to him!" "Can't I? I shall. " "And Daphne? She is sitting in her room counting the minutes till hecomes to her. " "Hannah, I want you to go and tell her. " "I, Hugh! Why should I be picked out to do such a horrible thing?" "My mother will not. Daphne has always known you. You have sense----" "I will not. So that is the finish, Hugh. I haven't got a stone for aheart. I would cut out my tongue rather than do it. " "Then, I must, " he said, turned on his heels and made for the door. Having reached it and flung it open, he looked back at me with hisdistressed, scowling face. "This is how one's friends fail one in anemergency!" he said. His scorn, at the moment, was nothing to me, but I was beside myselfwith sorrow and dismay. Daphne, with her sweet, small face lying amongher cushions, her dark eyes filled with visions of the lover who wasspeeding to her, of the joyful life just opening before her--andTragedy, pitiless, relentless, awaiting her! Her messenger, oh so muchmore cruel than the messenger of Death, crossing corridors, mountingstairs, hurrying with the inevitableness of Fate upon her! Was therenothing to be done? Was there no hand to save? Hugh was right. Boy as he was, he was acting as a man should act. Hismother, who, to save her ears from the despairing cries of her child, to avoid the painful explanation to invited guests, the perplexity ofinterrupted plans, was willing that the marriage should continue, wasweak, wicked even, perhaps. But I found it in my heart to wish that shemight have her way, that the suffering, since there must be suffering, should be, at any rate, postponed. The engagement had been a short one, and circumstances had of latelimited my intercourse with the family; the bridegroom and I had metbut once. Yet now his handsome face rose before me--a face whose onlyfault was that it was, perhaps, too handsome. I thought of the talesDaphne's mother had told me of his extraordinary passion for the girlwith whom he had fallen in love at first sight. Women love love. Nowoman is too old to thrill at the story of a lover's ardour. The manwas a sinner, no doubt; to Hugh he seemed a scoundrel; but-- I caught up with Hugh as he was going--very slowly going, poorboy--round the last turning to his sister's room. "Hughie, " I gasped, breathless with my haste. "You are right--but don'tbe brutal. Don't _kill_ the child. Listen. Instead of writing to JackMarston, let him come. Let him tell her himself. Give her a chance. Give him one, even. It is a cruel business, anyhow. Don't let's blunderinto making it worse than it is. " I suppose as he had gone to the accomplishment of his heavy task he hadbecome more appreciative of its difficulty. He was very fond of hissister, and must have shrunk with dread from the contemplation of herpain. Anyhow, his purpose had weakened. With a few words more I got himto acquiesce in the amended plan. "How can we be certain he tells her? He will lie to her, " he objected. "We will take measures to be sure he does not. " "He is a specious beggar; she will marry him all the same. " "Then, if he has such an ascendency over her, would she not in anycase? She is of age; her own mistress. " "But not from my house, " the boy said. However, in what I proposed there was respite; and, for better orworse, I had my way. I could not return to witness the innocent happiness of Daphne, and Ispent the rest of the afternoon in trying to soothe the agitation ofDaphne's mother; listening to her tirades against her suddenlymasterful son, hearing her protestations of faith in the rectitude ofJack Marston, alternating with her outbursts of anger and grief at hishitherto unsuspected villainy. "Hugh will see him when he arrives, will confront him with the story, "I told her. "I don't suppose he can utterly deny, but he can palliate. There will be nothing told to Daphne which she can't forgive. Thewedding will go on. " Calm came to her presently, even cheerfulness--so mercifully is themature heart case-hardened to bear its burdens. It is, I am sure of it, the heart of the young only which can break. Terrible things werehanging over the house. Sin and shame in the person of Jack Marstonwere approaching it by the 5. 15 train. Its most idolised inmate was tobe killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to alife of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already asprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw atthe vitals, but a hostess must wear a smiling face. * * * * * The omnibus and the brougham returned duly from the station with thelast expected guests, vehicles containing their luggage and theirservants followed; but the dog-cart, sent specially to meet JackMarston, came back empty. The master of the house heard the intelligence without comment. Presently he came across to me with an ugly look on his set face. "The beggar has got wind of it, you see, and has made a bolt, " he said. I hardly know if it was a relief or not to find that this was not thecase. One of the Mayors' newly-arrived cousins, who had seen thebridegroom at Liverpool Street, had been entrusted with a note to thebride which satisfactorily explained his absence. I carried this note in to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was onlya hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, havingread it, she passed it on to me. "Four whole hours before he gets here!" she lamented. "Oh, Hannah!could anything have been more truly unlucky?" "Darling, " the pencilled lines ran, "I find those beggars in Covent Garden have not sent the carnations. I shall wait till the last minute, and if not here must go after them. I dare not come to you without the carnations! Have me met by the 9. 30. Yours for ever, and ever, and ever--JACK. " "My dear, four hours isn't much, " I reminded her. "Four hours is a lifetime, " she said. She stared, positively with tears in her eyes, at her pretty reflectionin the glass. "I don't know how I shall get through this evening, " shesaid. I don't know how we all did; but it passed somehow, although it did notpass gaily. Hugh was too young and honest to hide with any success thecare that harassed him; his glum face at the head of the dinner-tablewas discouraging to the most persistent cheerfulness. Mrs Mavor did herbest, but she was ill at ease, and, as must have been patent to all, strongly disinclined to talk of to-morrow's event. To Daphne, disappointed of her lover's presence and support, the gathering of theclans was an ordeal and an embarrassment. Standing beside her when coffee was brought to her, I heard her ask ofthe servant if the dog-cart was yet gone to meet Mr Marston. Hebelieved it was just upon the start, the man said. "Let me know as soon as it goes, please, " Daphne said, and presentlythe footman came in again with the desired intelligence. I suppose the poor child wanted to follow in fancy the dog-cart alongthe silent roads and the dark lanes, beneath the starlit sky; to see itarrive at the little wayside station in time for the rush and roar ofthe train, dashing like a jewelled monster out of the desert of night;dashing off again, its great ruby eyes shining in its tail, into theblackness of space, having deposited the one precious item of itsfreight on the platform. A half-hour before Marston could arrive Daphne slipped away. "I shallwait up for Jack, " she said to her mother. "Send him, _the instant hecomes_, to me in my sitting-room. " One by one the ladies of the party followed Daphne's example. The menwent off into the smoking-room. Mrs Mavor and I were left alone. Hernervousness and excitement, suppressed hitherto, were now at feverheat. She moved about the room, pushing chairs into fresh positions, shaking their cushions, taking up and setting down, now this now thatornament, with trembling fingers pulling out and pushing in flowers inthe vases, not improving their arrangement by any means. "The question is what Hughie will do, " she said for the twentieth time. "If only he would leave it alone! If he would not interfere! It hasgone so far, only Heaven should intervene. You know, Hannah, we allmarry men with our eyes blinded. Daphne must take her chance like therest. Supposing it was you, Hannah; if the man was a--murderer--and youloved him, and knew that he madly loved you, would you thank anyone forcoming between? You'd marry him, wouldn't you?" I declined to say how I should proceed with my murderer. If I had it inme to love a man against my reason and my conscience I could not tell. "It's eleven o'clock, " I said. "I thought you told me he would be hereby half-past ten. " She ceased to fidget with the furniture, and came to the mantelpiece bywhich I was standing. "The clock's wrong, " she said. "Fast, a good half-hour. " She seized thelittle gold carriage clock and shook it in her nervous fingers as ifthat would put the matter right. The door opened. "Here he is!" she said, and started violently, almost dropping theclock. It was Hugh who came in, his face pale, a fire of excitement gleamingin his eyes, his watch in his hand. "He should have been here half anhour ago. It is as I told you: he has made a bolt, " he said. "The dog-cart is not back?" "No; but you'll see!" "Are the men gone to bed, Hugh?" "No, they're in there"; he gave a backward toss of his head in thedirection of the smoking-room. "It all makes me sick, " he said. "Ican't sit there and hee-haw with them. " He took up his position between his mother and me, his hands on themantelpiece, his foot on the fender, and gloomed down upon the hearth. When the hands of the little clock showed that another half-hour hadflown, the door was flung open and Daphne came in. "Hasn't he come?" she asked. "I thought you were keeping him away fromme, downstairs. Hasn't he even _come_?" "The train is late, " the mother said. But Daphne was overwrought. She flung herself upon a chair, andtwisting herself so that her arms embraced its back and her face washidden, began to cry hysterically. "There has been an accident, " she sobbed, presently, lifting her head. "Hamley has overturned the dog-cart in the dark; Jack has been pitchedout; there is no one to help, --and you all stand here! You all standhere!" She insisted that her brother should go at once on his bicycle to seewhat was amiss. Her distress unnerved the boy, and softened him. Helifted her from the chair, and put his arm round her and led her to thedoor. "You go to bed, Dapple-ducky, " he said, calling her by the name he hadgiven her in childhood. "It's all right, dear. Don't you be a silly. I'll go along at once and fetch him. " His stern resolve was shaken. If Jack Marston had come then he wouldhave relented; I think the marriage would have taken place. But he did not come. He never came. Halfway to the station Hugh Mavor met the dog-cart returning, the groomalone seated in it. There had been an accident, he said; a couple ofcarriages had run off the line and overturned. He had waited for thesurviving passengers to be brought in. The train bringing them had atlength arrived; Mr Marston was not among them. The accident had happened ten miles down the line. Hugh got into thedog-cart and drove to the scene of the disaster. Mrs Mavor spent the night in Daphne's room. I awaited Hugh, sittingalone by the drawing-room fire, when he returned at four o'clock in themorning of what was to have been his sister's wedding-day. He came in, carrying a florist's tin box in his hand, and I read the news in hisface before he spoke. "Only three killed. He was one. I saw him. I thought I had to. It wasawful. " He sank into the chair where Daphne had sat, hid his face on its backas she had done, while his shoulders heaved with painful sobbing. Aftera few minutes he turned to me. "We shall have to tell her, " he said. "That is the next thing to do. " He got up, and with shaking fingers, not knowing, I think, that he didso, pulled the string from the tin box, which lay on the table beneaththe lamp, pulled it open. "Everything else in the carriage seemed to be in shivers--but this, " hesaid. Inside, beneath the snowy wrappings of cotton wool, great perfectblooms of pink carnations lay. The spicy fragrance rose in our faces;in the light of the lamp the glowing flowers smiled in their faultlessbeauty. "Poor Dapple's lucky flowers!" the boy said. * * * * * Those among us who know more of her dead lover than was ever told toDaphne are disposed to call them her lucky flowers still. A LITTLE WHITE DOG "There!" Elinor cried. "Now, how could you be so careless, Ted?" "The blessed thing must have jumped of its own accord off thechimney-piece, " Ted said. He looked down at his wife on her kneesbeside him, ruefully collecting the fragments of the broken vase. "Iwasn't so much as looking at it, Nell. " "No! If you'd only had the sense to look at it!" Nell sighed. "But you_will_ stand with your heels on the fender, and you push those greatshoulders of yours against the chimney-board, and smash go all myornaments--and a lot you care! However, something had to break to-day, and it might have been worse. " "How do you mean 'had to'?" "That great awkward Emily threw down a soup-plate last night; andI----" "No, not you, surely, Nell?" "It wasn't my fault, of course. I was lifting the hand-glass from mydressing-table as carefully as carefully, and it just dropped out of myhands! 'That is the second, ' I said to myself; 'now I wonder what thethird will be. '" "And why did you say anything so silly?" "Have you actually grown to your enormous age, and not known that whenone thing is broken in a house three are broken? Well, you have had anineffectual sort of education!" "You don't believe such rotten rubbish?" "Don't you? When I tell you of the soup-plate, the hand-mirror, and nowthis vase? You can't call it nonsense, because there it is. A proofbefore your very eyes. You might as well say it isn't unlucky to see asingle crow----" "I'd sooner see one of the mischievous brutes any day than fifty. " "--That you may expect things to go pleasantly on the day you put onyour petticoat the wrong side out----" "I should expect them to take a comic turn on the day I did that, certainly!" "What a ribald boy! Now, listen, Ted; be very attentive, and I willtell you a true, true story. You mustn't laugh the tiniest titter--ah, now, Ted! you won't laugh, will you?" They were very young married people, and were not yet disposed to sitquietly apart and talk to each other. She seized him by the lapels ofhis coat now, and shook him to attention, while he, looking down uponher with the hardly yet familiar pride of possession in his boyisheyes, swayed his big frame in her grasp, flatteringly yielding to hersmall efforts. "Are you going to attend, sir? Well, then--There was once a youngman----" "Who met a small vixen called Nell, and she fell in love with him andmade him marry her. " "Ah, now, Ted, do listen!--A young man, and his mother told him neverto walk under a ladder. " "And he did, naughty youth, and a bricklayer fell on him, and he died?" She pleaded with him. "Seriously, Ted; no nonsense!" So he grasped herby the elbows and looked gravely in her face. "It was mother's cousin Harold--really and truly--not a make-up. " "Hurry up, darling. I'm swallowing every word, and it's most awfullyinteresting. " "And he didn't believe that kind of thing--just like you, youknow--ladders, and crows, and petticoats, and things. And he was goingout to the West Indies to an awfully good appointment--hundreds a year!And his mother went for a walk with him on the last day. And they werebuilding a row of houses----" "Cousin Harold and his mother?" "No. _You_ know. And his mother said, 'Don't go under the ladder, dear'--and he did. " "Naughty boy! Naughty Cousin Harold!" "You're laughing! Very well, just wait. To tease her, he would. 'Now, look here, ' he said, 'every ladder I come to I mean to go under_twice_. ' And he did. And his mother couldn't stop him, and she cried. And--that's all----" "All? But where's the point?" "I didn't say there was a point. You know about mother's CousinHarold. " "I'm hanged if I do. " "He never, never came back. " "Goodness!" "He never even got there. " "Break it gently, Nell. " "The ship he went in sank, and no one escaped to tell the dreadfultale. " "And supposing he hadn't walked under ladders, but was alive in theWest Indies, what relation would he be to you and to me?" She was proceeding to tell him in all good faith, but he stopped her. "And now, " he said, "I will tell you a tale. But first, as my feelingshave been considerably harassed, I will solace myself with a pipe. " She was being taught to fill his pipe, and to light it, and on thisoccasion was made to take a couple of draws to prove to herself thatshe had not properly cleaned it with the hairpin, according toinstructions given last night. So that the story was long delayed, andwhen at length it came it did not amount to much. "There was once an old man who gave a dinner-party. " "That was daddy, " Elinor said, from the arm of the chair where she wasnow sitting with her shoulder against his. "It was on the occasion of the marriage of his only daughter to ahandsome and agreeable young man, the most eligible parti of theneighbourhood. " "That was you and me, " Nell explained, contentedly. "Well, you are avain old boy!" "No interruptions, please, " Ted went on, pulling at his pipe. "Althoughthe occasion was one of rejoicing, there was a melancholy circumstanceconnected with it which cast a shadow over the otherwisesunshiny--'m--sunshine of the scene. " "You're as bad as a newspaper. Go on softly, or you'll never keep itup. I can't think what's coming. " "The guests sat down thirteen to table----" "Well, so they did!" Nell recalled. "Now, that is really very clever ofyou, Ted. I'd quite forgotten. I was horribly frightened then--but I'das clean as clean forgotten!" "Well, there you are!" Ted said. "There's your moral. " "Where? Where?" "Why, here we are, all alive and well and kicking; you and me, yourdaddy and mummy, your uncles and your cousins and your aunts. " "But supposing one of us wasn't!" Nell remarked sagely. "When you askyour thirteen to dinner and one dies it must be horrid; and I shouldthink your guests might--might bring an action against you. " She was holding the hand he had just put up to meet hers, which wasround his neck now, and a thought suddenly struck her. "But the yearisn't up yet, Ted, " she said. The dinner had been an epoch in their young lives; they both rememberedthe date was the eighteenth of October. He pointed to the silvercalendar on the chimney-piece, to which the parlour-maid attended. "This is the eighteenth again, " Ted said. "There aren't two eighteenthsof October in one year. " Elinor was back in memories of the event. "Do you remember Aunt Carrie, and how ill she was? At the very verge of the grave. And how afraidmummy was she should notice there were thirteen? Now, here she is aswell as any of us, and going to get married again. Ah! What are youdoing, Ted? "No, Ted! Oh, no, please! My hair will come down!" "I'm getting another hairpin. " It was such pretty hair, he was always pleased to see it hanging abouther ears, as had been its fashion when he had first met her--not solong ago. So he fought her for the hairpin while she ducked her headand threw it backwards, and laughed, and struggled in his grasp; tosubmit, of course, at last, to yield up the hairpin, to roast it, redhot in the fire, to watch it burn its malodorous passage through hispipe. That ceremony over, she got him his boots, and would have laced themfor him, and kissed them too, if he would have let her, and did grovelat his feet to arrange the roll of his stockings for him. "You _have_ got nice calves, Ted!" she told him. "I don't think I couldlove even you if you had sticks of things like Robert Anstey's. " "Oh, Bob's legs'll do all right, " Ted said, loyally. He stamped a footinto the second boot, and in doing so ground some of the broken vasebeneath his heel. He filliped her cheek, then, smiling into her eyes-- "You and your old woman's superstitions!" he said. "Perhaps you don'tknow I've a--what d'ye call it?--a portent in my own family--or hadwhen I had a family, " he told her, bending again over his boot. "Well, I have, then!" "And what's a portent, silly? I daresay it's nothing to boast of. " "It's a little--white--DOG!" He barked the last word at her, loud and sharp, his face suddenlyprojected into hers. She fell backward and sat on her heels. "Ted! How horrid of you! What does it do?" "I haven't the faintest notion. " "Are you making it up?" "Not I. They all made it up. My father, and my grandfather, and thewhole tribe. They stuck it into each other, and tried to stick it intome, that whenever one of us is going to die he sees this beastly littlehound. " "Ted!" she was clinging to the calf she admired now, in an agreeableecstasy of shuddering. "I wish I had a ghost, too. " "You shall have mine, with pleasure. " "But why didn't you tell me before?" "I clean forgot it till this minute. My father told me about it when Iwas quite a little chap. " "But is it true, Ted?" "Of course it isn't. " "And did they really see it?" "They said they did. You may bet your life they didn't. " When he was ready to walk round the little domain he had inherited fromhis father, Elinor accompanied him to the gate. "I wouldn't have alittle white dog for a ghost!" she said to him, slightingly, as theyparted. "Anyone could have as good a ghost as that if they tried!" "Everyone couldn't have an ancestor who had tortured one to death tospite his wife!" he said. "You can see a dozen little white dogs any day, " she taunted him. "I saw one more than I wanted yesterday when I was out with my gun, " headmitted. "That new little beast of Anstey's ran in front of me intoevery field and frightened the birds. I hardly had a shot. " "Tell Bob to keep it at home, " advised Nell. "I must, " Ted acquiesced, and went. In the course of the morning Bob Anstey, who always appeared some timeduring each day, came in. Elinor found him standing up by thechimney-piece, manipulating the silver calendar. "You're a day too previous in your calculation, " he said. "This isn'tthe eighteenth, but the seventeenth, madame. " "Well, how funny!" Elinor cried. "Now I wonder how Aunt Carrie is! Ishall have to tell Ted the year isn't up, after all. " To Anstey that was rather a cryptic utterance, but he asked for noexplanation. These two were full of little jokes, of allusions, ofreminiscences, interesting to them, in which he had no part, closefriends as they were. "Can you spare Ted to me for an hour or two this afternoon?" he asked. "She could not, " she said, smiling; "she could never spare Ted. " "Then come along with us yourself, madame. I want Ted's opinion of thatmare I've got my eye on at Wenderling. Your ladyship's opinion would beof value, too. " "Ted has nothing to ride. Did you hear that his horse had wrenched itsshoulder yesterday? A wretch of a little dog ran out of a cottage andgot mixed up with Starlight's feet. Ted jerked the horse round to sparethe dog--and Starlight is as lame as a tree. " They would bicycle then, he decided. The roads were good. They wouldget into Wenderling in time for tea, and take it easy, coming home inthe dusk. They must remember to take lamps. They would start at three. She agreed to all arrangements, swaying herself idly in therocking-chair Ted had bought for her; a pretty slip of a girl with ahappy, almost childish face. Anstey little thought as he looked at herhow often and often through all his life he would with his mind's eyesee her so again! As he was going through the door she called a laughing reproach to him. "Your abominable dog spoilt my husband's sport yesterday, Mr Anstey. Why do you keep such a wretch?" "Which dog?" he asked, pulling up, smiling at her. "Your horrid little white dog. " "I haven't got a little white dog, " he said, and laughed, and wentaway. After all, Elinor did not share the expedition to Wenderling; for atlunch-time it came on to rain, and Ted would not let her get wet. Hewas proud of seeing her rough it sometimes; he delighted to take herhunting on days when no other lady was in the field, to see her face, rosy and eager, her bright hair darkened with the wet, the raindropshanging on her hat. He kept her beside him, standing silent and patientin a certain soppy, sodden spot by the river, waiting for the chance ofa wild duck flying homeward above the low-lying mists of the fens. Whatdid not hurt him could not harm her, in her youth and strength andspirit, he thought. "She has the pluck and the staying power of a man, " he was proud totell Anstey; but was proud, too, now and again, to exercise his newprerogative of taking care of the wife who was such a recent, dearpossession. Quite unexpectedly, he would veto some proceeding sheproposed. "I won't have you doing it, " he would say with dignity. And she wasequally proud to obey. "Ted says I mustn't, " or "Ted says I may. " What, in those golden hours, did it matter which? She walked with him, bareheaded, through the drizzling rain to thehouse where the bicycles were kept, and felt the tyres with him, andrubbed a spot of rust off the handle bar, and walked beside him again, he pushing the machine, down the drive to the road. "It's a beastly day, " Ted said, with an eye cocked at the low-hanging, steel-coloured clouds. "If Bob wasn't so keen on my seeing this horse, I'd chuck it and stay with you. " "Come home soon, " she begged him; and, "You may be sure I shall come assoon as I possibly can, " he promised her. "It wasn't Bob's dog that bothered you the other day, " she told him ashe stood ready to mount, his foot on the pedal; "Bob hasn't got alittle white dog. " "It must have been that brute that ran out from Barker's underStarlight's feet the other day, then, " he called, and was off. Nell stood by the gate and watched him till he joined his friend, and, in spite of the faster falling rain, she watched him still. Before theyreached the bend of the road Ted turned his head; she waved a gay handto him, and he, hesitating for a moment, wheeled round and bicycledback. "Did you call me, Nell?" he said. Of course she had not called. "Bob knew you hadn't, but I thought I heard you call; and then you heldup your hand and beckoned me. " "Nonsense! Nothing of the sort!" she laughed. "Be off, Ted. I shallnever get you home again if you don't start. " "You'll have me home in a twinkling, " he promised. And in a flash wasgone. She turned and ran back, with head bent beneath the downpouring rain, light-hearted, to her home, not knowing, never guessing that on thathandsome, smiling, healthy face of her young husband she had looked herlast. For when, a couple of hours later, borne on men's shoulders, he wascarried to his home, he was so crushed and mangled out of his likenessas his wife had known him that, even by force, they prevented her fromlooking upon him. When time had elapsed--Elinor, for some part of it mercifully numbed orunconscious, could not have told if hours, days or weeks--Bob Anstey, at her request, was brought to her. He had been in waiting, knowingthat, sooner or later, that meeting, if they did not die with the painof it, must be lived through. He had expected to see her lying helpless and strengthless with hiddenface. She was standing up against the darkened windows at the end ofthe long room furthest from the door. He started, walking slowly, almost as if he was groping his way, among the familiar chairs andtables, in her direction. But when half the space was traversed, andshe still stood there, uttering no word, dully watching him, hiscourage failed, and he stopped short. It was the sight of Ted's chair, his pipes on the bracket beside it, the picture of him, smiling, in thesilver frame on the mantelpiece, which unmanned him. He had prayed thathe might have strength to support the girl-widow in this interview; andhe found himself suddenly giving way before her, sobbing like a child;while Elinor looked on tearlessly from afar, dangling the tassel of thewindow-blind in her hand. When at length he somewhat mastered his grief and looked up, she hadcome quite close to him, but she did not speak. "I thought you might like to hear, " Anstey said, in sorrow-muffledvoice; and she nodded her head for him to go on. "He--talked of you nearly all the way, " he began. "He said how----" She stopped him. "Not that, " she said, "not yet. The other--the other!" By some instinct he knew what she meant. "It was going down theWenderling Hill, " he said, "just as we got into the town. You know thatsteepish hill? Halfway down was a brewer's waggon. We were going at agood stroke, not saying anything, for the moment. We got up to thewaggon. 'There's that infernal white dog again, ' he said. And I heardhim call loudly, 'Get out of the way, you brute!' He swerved violentlyon one side, as if the dog were in his path--I don't know how ithappened; God knows _why_ it happened!--he was flung right under thewheels. He--thank God, he did not suffer, Nell, or know a moment'sterror or regret. He died instantly. " Elinor was silent for long. She sat, with brow clasped tightly in bothhands, looking intently upon the carpet at his feet, trying, hethought, to understand, to get into a mind too confused to workreceptively what he was saying to her. Presently, still tightly holdingher head, but with more of comprehension in her face, she looked up. "And the dog?" she asked him. "The little white dog?" "It's a strange thing about the dog, " he told her slowly. "There wasn'tone!" IT ANSWERED "And besides all that, the poor little woman is ill, " he said. "Shedidn't complain much, but she looked like a ghost to-day. " "What is the matter with her now?" his wife asked. She was lying back in her chair as if she, herself, were a little tired, and her long white hands busied themselves with four knitting-needlesfrom which depended the leg of a knickerbocker-stocking intended forthe shapely limb of Everard Barett. He looked quickly at her with an air of suspicion and offence. "Now?"he repeated. "What does '_now_' mean, spoken in that tone? I don't wantto talk about Vera if you don't want to hear. You call the little womanyour friend, and ask in that tone, 'What's the matter with her _now_?'" Mrs Barett knitted on in silence during the agitated minute in whichher husband kicked away the chair on whose seat his feet had beenstretched, sat up, punched the cushion behind him three times with avicious fist, and, finding it even then fail intelligently to supporthis head, flung it across the room. "'Matter with her _now_!'" he snorted to himself, in a tone as unlikethat mimicked as possible. "Vera seems to be generally full of complaints, that's all, " the wifesaid. He gave her a furious glance, and stretched a hand backwards for thenewspaper that lay on the table behind him. "We will change thesubject, " he said, loftily. "She has her husband, who is devoted to her, " Mrs Barett reminded him, disregarding the remark. For answer the man moved impatiently, and angrily slapped one of hisslippered feet over the other. She smiled upon her knitting. "I daresay her husband isn't the style ofman you admire, but he is devoted to her all the same, " she said. "Pappy idiot!" Mr Barett ejaculated. He worked himself deeper into hischair, and held his newspaper before his face. His wife knitted on, and presently said, as if of the outcome of herthought, "I will go in and see Vera to-morrow, of course. " The newspaper rustled defiantly as it was turned over. "You know very well, Everard, if Vera is really ill there is no onemore sorry than I. Of course, I shall not neglect her. " He was mollified by that, and lowered the paper sufficiently to gazeover the top of it into the fire. "It would be rather unfair if youdid; and, considering all the little woman did for you when baby wasborn, a little like ingratitude into the bargain, " he said. "You can'thave forgotten all she did?" No. She had not forgotten, Mrs Barett admitted. "Here every day of her life, and sometimes all day long--neglecting herown home, and----" "I remember perfectly, dear, " said Lucilla. "What of it?" Her husband repeated the question in a tone of exasperation, got up, threw away his newspaper, fidgeted about the room, moving the chairsout of his way, staring at the ornaments. "What of it?" he asked. "Isuppose, knowing she was there, and seeing after things--saving mebother in giving orders, coming between me and that infernal nurse, andso on--was a comfort to you, wasn't it?" Mrs Barett, intent on her knitting, made no reply. His position was strong; he repeated his question: "Wasn't it, I say?" "It was a comfort to you, I suppose, " Lucilla said, then. "We willleave it there. " He gave her a quick glance, angrily questioning. He had temporarilyanchored against the fender now, and stood with his heels on it, hishands in his pockets. "I suppose that it was a comfort to me was something, at any rate?" heasked. He shrugged an angry shoulder. "I was the one that had to gothrough the misery of it, I know that. I shan't easily forget the timebefore, when Billy was born, and I was shut up for a solid three weekswith your mother! Heavens! going about with a face like a funeral!Looking at me as if I was a monster every time I took up my hat to goout! I should think Vera Butt was a comfort to me! It wasn't as if youhad been really ill. You know you were always saying you wanted to getup and come downstairs to be with us, weren't you?" "I certainly should have liked better to be with you, " Lucillaadmitted. "Well, and Vera said, 'Here's Luce lying tucked up as jolly as asandboy, why shouldn't we be jolly too?'" "Exactly; and she wasn't fretful, or complaining, or hysterical once, all the time, was she?" His thoughts travelled back over the memories of the weeks of whichthey spoke; the weeks in which he had first begun to find Veraattractive. He saw the face which in that time he had, not withoutsurprise, discovered to be pretty; he thought of the fun they had madebetween them, and heard her chattering, gay voice, and listened totheir mingled laughter. A smile moved his lips for an instant; helooked up, caught his wife's eye, and had a sudden feeling of lookingfoolish in her sight. "She was a good little woman, when we wanted her, and I'm sorry ifshe's ill. That's all, " he said. "The Butts aren't very well off, andshe doesn't get the comforts a woman wants in illness. " "I'll go and see after her to-morrow, " Lucilla said. It had become the custom of Everard Barett to go for a stroll the lastthing at night, to get a "mouthful of air before turning in, " as hesaid. When, later on this evening, he looked in upon his wife beforestarting for his walk, he found her standing by the hearth, gazingthoughtfully down into the fire. "If you're thinking of dropping in at the Butts, " she said, "you mighttake a few grapes to Vera. There are just a couple of bunches left. Shall I get them?" He was putting himself into his topcoat, and he reddened a little withthe exertion. "Oh, grapes?" he said; "I took them this afternoon. I sawthem standing about, and----" "Oh, that's all right, " Lucilla said. "So long as she had them! And isthat where the violets went? I wanted some in, to-day, and gardenersaid they had all been gathered out of the frame. Did you take theviolets, too, to Vera?" "I daresay I did, " said Everard, turning his back. "You daresay?" "Well, I did, then. How should I know you wanted them, or that therewas going to be a piece of work about a handful of violets?" With that he went, and pulled the door to with a slightly unnecessaryemphasis. Everard Barett was the sleeping partner in a large manufacturing firmin that provincial town. He drew his comfortable income from thissource, but had very little else to do with the business; and so it wasthat time hung heavily on his hands. Yet, every now and then, abusiness zeal would seize him, or a weariness of doing nothing, and hewould have himself driven down to the great malodorous factory by theriver, to put away a few hours. From thence he would return in a farmore cheerful spirit than was his on his unoccupied days. On the morrow of the above conversation he came back from such adutiful visit, and going into the drawing-room in search of his wife, he found, lying on the sofa drawn up to the fire, not Lucilla, but thelady who of late had dwelt so dangerously in his thoughts--Vera Butt. She had assumed a charming attitude, which she only changed to throwout a welcoming hand as he came forward. "Here I am, " she said. "It'sreally me. Isn't Luce an angel?" She smiled at him, showing all herteeth, stretching back her head on the pillow to bring her full, roundthroat into prominence, shutting her eyes. "Oh, it is good to be here!"she said. It was good to see her there, he murmured, but not without a littleembarrassment. For, it is one thing for a man to make love to anotherman's wife during a half-hour's call at her house, and another to dothe same when she has taken up a permanent position in his own wife'sdrawing-room. "I'm to stay here till Fred comes back, " Vera told him, opening hereyes upon him. (Fred was the husband. ) "He won't be home for anotherfortnight, at least. Are you prepared to tolerate me for a fortnight?" He thought he was, he smiled; he sat down on the divan not far from hersofa and gazed at her in a rather shamefaced way. "In a company of three, one must be _de trop_. I only hope it won't beme, " she said. She was such a nice little woman! With anyone else he might havethought it "good cheek" to imagine it possible his wife or he could be_de trop_ in their own house. "What talks we'll have!" she went on. "Do you remember when Luce wasill we laughed so loud at some ridiculous thing you said when we weregoing up to her room that the horrid nurse came out and was rude, andasked us to be quiet?" Everard remembered the occasion with resentment. It was he who had madethe witty remark, certainly, but it had been Vera who had boisterouslylaughed. "I never laugh, at home, " she told him. "And if Fred does, I am readyto fly. I can't bear any sudden noise. Luce is going to have nurse takethe babies always down the back stairs, for fear I should hear them asthey come out and in. She has given orders they're not to come intothis part of the house at all while I'm here. " "Of course not, " Everard said. But he thought of his little Billy, whowas two years old, and who was allowed to spend half an hour with hisfather twice each day. His son was very near to his heart. He wonderedhow he should make up to Billy for those lost half-hours. "It is delightful!" Vera said. "I think I should like to lie here forever, only the firelight to see by, and you sitting just there to talkto me. " "We mustn't talk if it hurts your head, " Everard said, with tendercaution. "Well, you to sit there and keep silence, then, " she amended. The divan was not very comfortable. He could not echo her wish that heshould sit so, for ever, silent. "How is the poor head to-day?" he asked. "It is like fire, " she told him. "Feel. " She hitched herself upward, leant on her elbow, and stretched her neckforward, bringing her face within easy distance of his own. What couldhe do but kiss her forehead? He had a very gay look when he burst in upon his wife, who was dressingfor dinner. "So you got her here?" he said. "Isn't that giving you a lot oftrouble, Luce?" "We mustn't think of the trouble, " Lucilla told him. "I shall not beable to be with her always, but fortunately you and she get on sowell----" "Oh, I daresay I can find time to sit with her, now and then, if that'sall you want me to do, " he acquiesced, looking down his nose. "She seems really sadly, " Lucilla told him. "Her head is bad, and hernerves--she's all nerves! Then, she has a sort of seizure, now andthen----" "Heavens!" "Yes. She suddenly becomes, she says, rigid. Can't move hand or foot. " "I say, that must be bad. And what do we do then, Luce?" "Well, " said Lucilla, calmly surveying herself in the glass, andturning her long neck to get a view of her elegant back, "in that caseyou will have to carry her up to bed, and I shall have to undress herand send for the doctor. " "I carry her!" he said to himself, doubtfully, again and again as hedressed. "She's something of a lump for any man to carry. " He was considered a handsome man by himself and his friends; by no onecould he be considered a fine one. Lucilla--he admired her long, graceful figure still--was as tall as he, and he knew himself lackingin muscular strength. "I hope she won't become rigid here, " he said. She had all her meals served in the drawing-room, and she partook ofevery course, and had a really fine appetite. Plates with biscuits, with grapes, basins with beef-tea, glasses of milk, champagne bottles, were always standing around her sofa. "It is making rather a piggery of the place, " Everard said more thanonce to his wife. It was a matter of importance to him, because he found he was expected, both by his wife and Mrs Butt, to spend all his time there. Lucilla, with her nursery, her conservatories, her interest in parochialmatters, had never been exacting; he had come and gone withoutexplanation, as it pleased him. But a half-hour unaccounted for came, with Vera, to mean a sulk, to mean tears, to mean, eventually, anagging such as in all his life Lucilla had never given him. Certainly, if he had prized Vera Butt's society in the days when he could get verylittle of it, he had his fill now. A meal being over, Lucilla would say--"I have such and such a thing todo; you go in, dear, and keep Vera amused for an hour. " And the hourwould stretch to two hours--till the next meal, even. And during thattime Vera gave him no rest. She would call upon him incessantly to tellher things, to amuse her. "Surely something interesting must have happened! Does nothing _ever_happen in this house?" she would pout. "You used to say funnythings--do you remember how we laughed when Luce was ill? Say somethingfunny now, to keep me going?" He, with inward resentment, would decline to be funny at command, andshe would pass on to the reproachful stage, and so, by easy passage, tothe stages of tears and sulks and semi-insensibility; when he wouldhave to dab her forehead with eau-de-Cologne, and rub her hands, or tolift her head higher with his arm beneath the pillow. "I'm a married man, but I never was called on to do this kind of thingbefore, " he would say to himself. And at last--"I'm hanged if I'm not getting fairly sick of it, " hesaid. Then came a day when, before going to his place by the invalid's sofa, he ran up to the nursery and fetched Billy down. "All nonsense, " he said to himself as he carried the child, perched onhis shoulder and delightedly holding on by his hair, downstairs. "Shescreams and cries enough herself; suppose Billy takes his turn!" "Look here!" he said as the pair entered, "here's Boy Billy come to seeyou. " Boy Billy struggled down from the paternal shoulder, ran across theroom as fast as his fat legs would take him, and with a delighted cryof "mummy! mummy!" hurled himself upon the lady on the sofa. To flyback to his father, with outflung arms and a scream of terror, when, instead of the fair, blooming face of his mother with the auburn wavesof hair, the sallow cheeks, the tossed black hair, the great dark eyesof Mrs Butt met his infantile gaze. The howl that Billy gave in the first pang of that disappointment wascertainly out of place in a sick-room. Everard, with one glance at thefigure on the sofa, flinging itself into a sitting posture, and gazingat him in an outraged frenzy, caught his boy in his arms and fled withhim upstairs. "My's mummy! My's mummy! Billy wants my's mummy!" the child screamed. His mummy was sitting over the fire in her own room, and her husband, bursting in, deposited Billy on her lap. The sobs died away against herbreast, but Everard went down on his knees and smoothed and patted thebeloved little head, and talked the foolish language of consolation hisfatherhood had taught him. "Ugly lady!" the child cried, in his broken voice. "Not Billy'smummy--ugly lady!" "Billy's is a pretty mummy, isn't she, darling?" the man tenderly said. "Billy's mummy loves her precious boy, " Lucilla murmured. "'Oves daddy, too, " the child sobbed, feeling the father's touch. She smiled upon the kneeling young man. "Loves dear daddy, too, " shesaid. It had been only a foolish flirtation--just the snatching at somethingto fill his empty days. Everard Barett's heart had been his wife's allalong. He knew it for a certainty, looking at the woman and her childtogether, kneeling before them, with a sudden conviction of his ownunworthiness, and folly, and absurdity. "We all love each other, little man, " he said. "If we three sticktogether, we're all right, Boy Billy--we're all right, Luce. " He got upon his feet presently. "I'm going to the Works this afternoon, dear, " he said. "And after dinner I thought I'd go in and take a handat bridge with the Worleys. I'm afraid you'll have rather a time of it, poor old girl. " "I'm afraid you will, when you come home again, " Lucilla said. He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I say, haven't we had almostenough?" he asked. "A fortnight's a deuce of a time! She's all verywell, but it's jollier when we're alone, Luce. I want us to be aloneagain. " When he came home to dinner, his wife met him in the hall. "Everard, "she said, "it's come. " "In the name of heaven, what?" "The Rigor. _You_ know. She can't move. Can't stir hand nor foot. Allthe afternoon she was in a terrible way, crying, and--well, actuallyfighting me. Then the Rigor came on. " "I'll run for the doctor, " he said. He had an aghast face. "All done. He's here. He's waiting for you to carry Vera to bed. " "Let him carry her himself!" Everard said, fiercely. "Look here, I'mbest out of this. I'll go and dine somewhere. " "My dear, you can't run away like that, " she said, and, of course, prevailed. It was as Lucilla had said. Vera was rigid. She looked up at Everardwith a smile of satisfaction at that fact. "What do you think of menow?" it seemed to ask. "Am I the sort of woman to turn your back on, and neglect?--a woman who at once becomes as stiff as a broomstick?" "She must be got upstairs and undressed, " the doctor said to Barett. "Lean on me and try to walk, " Barett implored the patient. She gave a defiant smile. "If my life depended on it I could not move atoe, " she said. "If I took her head, and you her feet?" Everard suggested to thedoctor--a plan at once negatived by Vera. "I won't be carried in that fashion, " she said. "I am not a long woman, like Luce, " she added. "Fred carries me with perfect ease. " "I think you can manage it, Mr Barett, " the doctor said. There was no help for it. Everard stooped to the task. He ought to havebeen a happy man, perhaps, with that burden in his arms. It was not assuch he described himself to his wife afterwards. Halfway up the stairs he tripped, and she screamed. "Grip me! Grip me! Don't let me drop over the balusters!" she called. He laboured on, the cords bursting in his forehead, his legs bending, his throat swelling, his arms two seats of agony. Lucilla, who had gonebefore, cleared the mats out of his way. "It isn't much farther, " shewhispered. "He is not grasping me right, " Mrs Butt cried in a terrified voice. "It's not how Fred grasps me. I am as easy as a child when he carriesme. Oh! I shall drop--he is going to let me drop!" He thought he was, but made a superhuman effort, and tottered on. Having reached level ground he stopped, then started on again with astaggering run. In piloting her through the bedroom door he banged herhead against the frame, and Vera gave a howl of rage and pain. The next minute she found herself hurled upon the bed. She remained as she fell, upon her face, uttering suffocating moans ofangry shame and misery. Everard waited not a second to watch her there. He reeled from theroom, and reaching the landing again, sank down there, ignominiously, sitting on the carpet, his back to the wall, a wreck of his spruce, dapper self, having bodily and spiritually reached the bounds ofendurance. They telegraphed for her husband. "Let him come and take her home, andcarry her himself!" Everard said, savagely. "It's his place to carryher, not mine. We've done our part--let her go. " He came as soon as the train could bring him. Lucilla was able to tellhim truthfully that his wife had lain and called upon his name allnight. "He is kneeling by her bedside and kissing her, and crying over her, "Lucilla told her husband, running down to him, her own eyes wet withtears. "Isn't it a mercy he loves her so?" "There's nothing whatever the matter with her, you know, " Everard said. "The doctor's just been telling me. Nothing whatever. " "I knew that all along, " Lucilla told him. He took her hand and looked in her face, and his own grew red. "Confession is good for the soul, and you and I should have no secrets, Luce, " he said. "That little woman upstairs--you'll think me an awfulass. She and I--she----" Lucilla nodded, without looking at him. "I knew that all along, too, "she said. "You knew? Yet you asked her here?" He held her before him, and looked in her face, and kissed her. "I don't believe any other woman would have done that. That was a riskything to do, Luce, " he said. "But it answered, " Lucilla said to herself as she turned away. TO BERTHA IN BOMBAY He is a big, heavily-made, healthy-looking man of young middle-age. Hecame into the coffee-room as I was sitting at breakfast, and havinglooked slowly round the room, he placed himself with much deliberationopposite me, at the little table which I had secured to myself. The actdid not prejudice me in his favour. There was room and to spare at alarge centre table where a dozen men were sitting; two of the smallertables were empty. There was something about him I need not bore you bydescribing which stamps the colonial man. From such, one knows what toexpect. He called for a carte and ordered porridge and a sole, and theywere some time in bringing his breakfast. However, as you know, I have not arrived at thirty years without havinglearnt to endure a prolonged gaze with perfect appearance ofindifference. "I hope you have no objection to my sharing your table?" he said; and Ireplied, as I went on with my meal, that I had none. "You have an open window, and a view of the sea, " he remarked, and Iassented, and added that on such a morning these things were desirable. Then his porridge came, and I proceeded with my toast and marmalade, and the letter I had from you in Bombay, which lay beside my plate. Your writing is never too legible, Berthalina, and my head and eyeswere aching, that morning, and I felt less rested than when I had goneto bed. My limbs ached too, and while I looked at those crossed linesof yours, without gathering the sense of what I read, I was wonderingif, in the broiling heat of this sultry weather, I had taken cold, andwas going to be laid up in this strange place, alone in a hotel. Have Itold you that, since the cramming for this last horrid exam. Has sentme, to an extent, off my mental equilibrium, I have a constant terrorof falling ill? It was that which had given me such a fit of horrorswhen I saw my bedroom, the night before. Here, by the orders of aperemptory doctor, for change of air and the sea-breeze, I find myself, after vainly tramping the town for lodging, in a tiny back room of ahuge hotel, with a window which will only open two inches at the top, and a ceiling and four walls crushing in on me like the lid and sidesof a coffin! For prospect, I have a window like my own, at about fiveyards' distance, a few feet of red brick, and a leaden water-pipe! If I were to be ill in this hole! The fear of it kept me awake andfeverish for hours; but falling asleep at last, I had the most vividand delicious dream. I felt myself irresistibly called by something--Idon't know what, the murmur of the sea, perhaps; and I thought Iescaped from that entombment, and walked in my night-gown down a longcorridor, to a door at the other side of the house. The door yielded, in that ridiculous way in which all obstacles yield in dreams, and Iwent through a room which I should know again among ten thousand rooms, to the window--a big window thrown wide open; and through it thesea--the sea--the sea! Such a sea! As effulgent, moon-silvered, glorious, as we may look on in Paradise, Berthalina, if God hears the"silly sailor-folk, " as Kipling has undertaken that He will. Ah! The sea, as revealed by the coffee-room window, sparkling insunshine, dotted with fishing-boats, the white bathing-machinesdefining its margin, is but a vulgar thing, compared with the sea of mydream. "Do you believe in ghosts?" The man opposite put the question quiteunconcernedly, but I was back in the description of your triumphantdinner-party, and was unpleasantly startled. I answered with a littletemper, therefore, that of course I believed in them; and I did notencourage him to further conversation by a glance in his direction. Had I seen any? he inquired; and I answered "Hundreds. " After a minute, repenting of my incivility, I put your letter down, and told him thatthat was why he saw me getting my breakfast before him. And I evenexplained--for why need a self-respecting woman be disagreeable even toan unknown colonial in an ill-made flannel suit, and with roughhair?--that I had been working too hard lately, and that the shades ofpeople, dead or in distant lands, well-known and half-forgotten, hadtaken to appearing before me, when I lifted my eyes from my book. "In fact, I have come here to get rid of ghosts, " I told him; and hesaid he hoped I had not come to the wrong place. "Why, you surely don'tthink 'The Continental' haunted?" I inquired. Then he told me, with an appearance of perfect gravity, that a ghosthad visited him last night. "It is just possible that _my_ ghosts have lost their way in thisbewildering place and have strolled in to you, by mistake, " Isuggested. "You don't happen to have seen any since you came here?" "I only came last night. " "And you didn't see one?" "No! Do I look as if I had?" "Not the ghost of a terrified man, for instance, flying up in bed?" "Good gracious, no! Why?" "I thought you might have done, " he said, and went on with hisbreakfast. You'll say he talked such nonsense to get me to look at him, Berthalina; and of course I did. He has not the appearance of a seer ofghosts: a huge, heavy man, with a hump on a big, characterful nose; apowerful jaw, and very quick, blue eyes beneath shaggy eyebrows. Thetalk of ghosts seemed out of place on such firm lips. "Was your ghost that of a terrified man, etc. ?" I asked him, in spiteof myself. He gave a vigorous shake of his head. "Thank heavens, no!" he said. "Inthat case I shouldn't have given it two thoughts. " "Of what then?" "Of a beautiful woman. " He spoke with much deliberation, and his eyes upon my face wereserious. "What was she like? Describe her. " He turned away to reach a bit of bread from a neighbouring table. "Shewas very much like you, " he said. You may be sure I let him see then that he had gone too far. * * * * * I was standing by the door of my disgraceful little bedroom, dressedfor walking, when I saw him again. He was mounting the broad stairswith his head bent, and not wishing to pass the man on my way down, Iwaited till he had disappeared within the door of his room. That door, with the width of the house between, was directly opposite mine. As itopened, there came to me the first glimmer of the light which was toburst on me in all its terrible force a minute later. When he had reappeared, in his great loose grey flannels, his straw haton his head, a book in his hand, and had gone downstairs, I flew alongthe corridor and pushed open the door of the room he had left. Berthalina, it was the room of my dream! Those details which hadimpressed themselves so clearly on my sleeping vision last night werehere in the flesh--well not exactly in the flesh, but--. I stood at thewindow, wide open from the bottom; the sea lay sparkling in thesunlight-- Of course, you remember the time when I stayed with you, my dearfriend, after that crisis in my stupid life of which you and only oneother knew? You haven't forgotten how I terrified you nearly to deathby walking in my sleep to your room? and how, afterwards, you insistedon keeping the key of my bedroom door under your own pillow? To thebest of my belief I have never sleep-walked either before or since thattime. The certainty came to me now, as I stood at the man's window, that I had done it again last night! * * * * * "And what have you been doing with yourself, all day?" I had turned my back on the pier bands, on the crowds of the esplanade, and had wandered as far as my legs would carry me along the beach--ahard, smooth beach of yellow sand--and was sitting there, with only thewaves for company, when the voice of the man I had successfully dodgedall day spoke at my back. "You were not at lunch, nor at the table d'hôte, to-night, " he added;and I did not consider that the statement demanded comment. He came and sat beside me, and gathered up his knees into his arms andlooked out to sea. "I suppose the beach is free to all?" he remarked;and my silence did not gainsay him. "I am like you, " he went on: "I care nothing for all that, " he jerkedhis head in the direction of the town and the populace. "I'm neverafraid of my own company. And you?" "I prefer it to all other company, " I assured him, and told the liewith the acrimony of truth. "And you have been by the sea all day?" "I have been tramping the town looking for rooms. " "You are not comfortable at the hotel?" "I prefer apartments. " "Perhaps for a young woman, alone, it is better. " Now for my opportunity. "I have not been alone until this morning, " I told him steadily. "Mysister left me by the early train; before breakfast. " "You probably miss her very much?" "I do. She scarcely ever leaves me. We have everything in common. Sheis my twin-sister. You could scarcely tell the one from the other, apart. " The information did not flow from me as I desired, but was, rather, gasped out--or so it seems to me on looking back. I felt him turn his eyes on me--they look absurdly blue and youthful inhis sun-reddened, middle-aged face--but I think I mentioned thisbefore. You know how I love a man's hair clipped to the bone, Berthalina? My dear, this one wears his in a mop! I must admit, however, it is a soft kind of hair, and does not arrange itself badly. "We even share the same bed, " I went on. I had to twist my fingerstogether painfully to maintain the necessary levelness of theindifferent voice. "But that is a matter of precaution. " "Of precaution?" "My sister is--a sleep-walker, " I said, and waited, with the sound ofthe sea and the band and the multitude in the near distance booming inmy head. "Even last night--I awoke to find our door open, " I added. "She had wandered in her sleep. " I had said it; but I declare to you, Berthalina, the effort left meweak as a baby. Before you make up your mind to a career of perfidy, dear, go through a course of physical training. You want the strengthof a Sandow, I assure you. I waited with inward trembling for his comment. He made none, butpointed out to me instead the colour of the brown sail of a littlefishing-boat almost stationary on the placid sea, the light of thesinking sun upon it. A big steamer came into sight upon thehorizon-line. A bare-legged man, pushing a shrimping-net before him, waded through the shallow waters, close inshore. "This is very pleasant, " he said. "You did not mention if you weresuccessful in obtaining rooms?" I shook my head. "But I leave here in four days. " "And until then?" "I must remain at the hotel--where I think it is about time Ireturned. " He rose, as I did. "Have you any objection to my walking at your side?"he asked, and walked there without waiting for permission. "I am alonely man, and a stranger here, " he volunteered. "And you?" I told him that I was used to being alone; that there was no one nowbelonging to me-- "With the exception of your twin sister who never leaves you, " hereminded me, and went on at once to tell me of his life, which had beenpassed for many years in Australia. His sister who lived with him diedthere eight years ago, he is forty years old, he has made money, andhas come home for a holiday. All this, and much more I learnt. He seems quite eager to impartpersonal information--or perhaps I did not learn it all then, butafterwards. For there has been no getting away from the man, Berthalina; you may believe that my will was good. At night, I got the chambermaid to lock me in that atrocious littlecabin of mine. (Oh, I know you are laughing, Berthalina; good gracious!what a fool I feel about it all. ) I knew that he was an early riser, and I did not go down the next morning till I felt sure that he wouldbe enjoying the sea-breezes, and that the coffee-room would be nearlyempty. There he was, patiently keeping guard over the table in thewindow! He strode across to me (he is so huge and self-assured andimportant-looking, that everyone turns to watch him, and the waitersfly at a glance). "I have kept our table, " he said, "and I have takenthe liberty to order for you the same breakfast you had yesterday. " After that, I gave up trying to avoid him. I had put everything rightin his mind, and it was only for four days! Then I must be gettingback, and looking out for ways and means to earn the money I haveborrowed to pay my fees and keep me at the hospital. Oh dear! How itall weighs on my mind! "And so you are going to be a doctor?" he said once, I don't know atwhich meeting. How can I tell--there were so many! "I am a doctor, " I corrected him. "Well, I am a doctor too, " he said. "And perhaps that is the reason Iloathe the thought of any woman meddling in that profession. " "I don't particularly like it myself, " I told him. "It was necessaryfor me to be something, and I had enthusiasm enough to begin with;but----" "What is your sister?" he asked me suddenly; it took me by surprise, but I told him, with blushes, that she was a doctor too. "I wonder what my brother will say to that?" he pondered. "You looksurprised. Is there any reason I should not have a brother? He is adoctor like myself, and shares my prejudices. " "Those prejudices don't affect my sister, " I took courage to remark. "They should. No decent woman can afford to despise the prejudices of adecent man. The place of a young and beautiful woman is not----" "I did not tell you she was young or beautiful. I--she--we are thirtyyears old; and 'pretty, ' 'interesting, ' 'fine-looking, ' are the mostcomplimentary epithets which have ever been applied to us. " "We don't all see with the same eyes, " the man said. It was on our last evening that I sate on a chair in the hotel gardens;he came and smoked his cigar beside me. "You go to-morrow?" he said. I nodded. "And you don't purpose to tell me where you go?" I shook my head. How can I have him coming to my place with that storyof my sister--? "So here, for ever, we say good-bye. I go back to my practice inSydney; and you----?" I said nothing to fill up the pause. "Four days!" he mused, and was silent. The band was playing on the pier; the strains of that pretty thingHayden Coffin sings in _The Greek Slave_ came sorrowfully to us acrossthe sea and the sand. The people in their smart seaside costumes wenttrooping past. "Not a face I know in all these thousands, " he said, and waved the handwhich held the cigar to include pier, parade, beach. "Not a face knownto you. Under such circumstances two people get to know each other infour days as well as in years of ordinary intercourse. When I saygood-bye to you, I shall feel that I am parting with a very dearfriend. A friend I shall hardly know how to replace, or even to livewithout. After four days! Absurd, is it not?" "May I tell you about my brother?" This was after a long pause, duringwhich I had been inwardly shrinking from the dreary struggle before me, and wishing--wishing--wishing that life was all holiday. "He is my twinbrother. Curious, isn't it? You don't think so? Oh, of course we knowthere are twin brothers as well as twin sisters; but--. Still, let metell you a rather curious fact with regard to him. "The night before that morning when I had the happiness to meet you, hewas staying in this hotel--he left by that convenient train beforebreakfast, you know, the early one--and he had a strange experience. Hewas lying awake in bed--the moon was very bright, it was that whichkept him awake--when the door of his room opened, and a woman, youngand beautiful, in her night-gear, with her dark hair, 'straight asrain, ' hanging down her back and over her shoulders, and with eyes fullof all my brother loves to see in a woman's eyes, came into his room. He is not a nervous man, and he saw at once the woman, who in themoonlight was lovely as a vision, walked in her sleep. He held hisbreath, fearing to disturb her. She went to the window, stretched outher arms to the sea, bathed her hands and her adorable face in themoonlight, drank in, in grateful breaths, the cool sea air, and passingsilently through his room, left him as she came. "You think that an interesting experience for my brother, do you not?But I have not quite finished. "My brother is a man not without sentiment, although he has attained tomiddle life without marrying. He has more sentiment, in fact, than inhis young days, when he decided it was best for man to live alone. Hehas seen cause to doubt the wisdom of that creed. He is not withoutregrets and longings, thoughts of what might have been, and what mightyet be. Fairly successful and happy in his career, he has yet come tothink that a woman's love and companionship are perhaps just thosethings he has missed which might have crowned his life. "Having arrived at such a pass, he was moved by that vision of thenight--mightily moved. And he swore to himself that the woman who hadcome to him like that--a living, breathing, beautiful woman, and yetalmost in an angel's guise--was the woman he would seek out and marry, if he could prevail on her to have him. "Tell me what you think of that resolve of my brother's, " he asked mepresently. He turned from watching the passing crowd and looked for thefirst time in my face; and then he got upon his feet. "You will perhapsgive me your opinion later?" he said. "You will think about it, and letme hear when I come back?" I did not wait for his coming back. I went to my room and stayed there. I don't know if he looked for me at our table in the window nextmorning, for I did not go to the coffee-room for breakfast. And byeleven o'clock I was sitting in the ladies' drawing-room--empty asSahara at that hour--with my hotel bill in my hand, wondering how itwas possible that such a little, little holiday should have cost sovery much. Then he came into the room. He sat down opposite to me at the roundtable, and I saw that he had a telegram in his hand. "I have bad news for you, " he said. "Your twin sister is dead. " "Oh!" I breathed. What could I do but sit there turning red and white, and looking like a fool before him? "It is a sad and curious coincidence that my twin brother expired atthe same instant. What is there for us to do but to console eachother?" He reached out a hand, palm upwards, to me across the table. "You willfind life pleasanter as a doctor's wife than as a doctor, " he said. "And----" But I have told you enough till next mail, Berthalina. By that time, perhaps, you will have prepared yourself for the rest of what he saidto me, and what I answered. I wonder if you will think I have been a sensible and self-restrainedwoman all my life to act like a rash, precipitate fool in the finish? I wonder! AUNTIE "And _now_, pray, what are you gnashing your teeth about? You neverrested until I'd made Auntie promise to stay with us. I didn't wish forher; she didn't wish to come; but, as she's here, the least we can dois to behave decently to her. " "Who said we shouldn't behave decently to her?" "Well, to see you standing there cursing and gnashing your teeth whileyou brush your hair!" "I don't curse, or gnash my teeth, or even brush my hair in public, doI?" "Oh, of course, it's the wife who has the monopoly of all such pleasingdemonstrations!" the wife said. Then she pushed her arms through theshort sleeves of the blouse she was going to wear, in honour of Auntie, at dinner that night, and presented her back to Augustus Mellish inorder that he might perform a husband's part and fasten the garment. "You, who have never been in her delightful home at Surbiton, don'tknow the luxurious sort of life Auntie leads, " Mrs Mellish went on. "Travels with her maid, generally; but I told her we could not put herup. Keeps four servants; never does a thing for herself, but ispampered and made much of in every way. Money, of course. There isn'tanything in _Auntie_ to call forth all that devotion. " "Money is a useful thing, " the husband said. "I wish your infernaldressmaker wouldn't make your things so tight. That's the second nailI've broken, confound it!" "Gnashing again! If I were to swear and go on in that ridiculous wayover every little thing I do for you, I wonder what you'd think of it!Brushing your hats, ironing your ties, putting your trousers intostretchers--and if I ask you to fasten a few buttons, you blaspheme. Ifyou had the worries on your shoulders I have on mine! Cook's in one ofher tempers to-day, just because I was anxious for things to go withouta hitch, for Auntie. There's a piece of salmon, at half-a-crown apound, bought because Auntie would think just nothing of the price, andis all the year round _accustomed_ to salmon; cook is certain to sendit in bleeding or to boil it to a rag. You, at your office all daylong, with nothing to think about, and when you come home everythingrunning on oiled wheels----" "Oh, I've heard all that before. My life is all perfect joy, accordingto you, " Augustus said. And in such inspiring intercourse the Mellishespassed the few minutes of their _tête-à-tête_. In the drawing-room, Auntie awaited them: a large, matronly-lookingspinster, with a heavy face and frame, a non-intelligential gaze fromdull brown eyes. Not a promising visitor, from a social point of view. She was expensively attired, her garments rustling richly when shemoved. Her dark hair was fashionably piled on the top of her head. She sat in a chair farthest from the window which she regardeddistrustfully, it being slightly open. In the railway carriage comingdown she had felt sure there was a draught, and now her neck was alittle stiff. She thought slightingly of Grace's drawing-room; indeed, the wholeestablishment wore a paltry air, to her thinking, who had apredilection for the ornately massive in style. But if Grace had beenfoolish enough to marry a lawyer, in a town already too full oflawyers, and he young, and with his way to make, what could she expect?Alfred's daughter should surely have done better than that, Auntie saidto herself. Still, later on, she was bound to admit that the lawyer and his wifedid their best to make her comfortable, and showed her every attention. Augustus, or Gussie, as Grace instructed her to call him, seemed anagreeable person, although no one could consider him a good-lookingone--not half good-looking enough for Grace, who had been considered abeauty. So black he was about the shaven portion of his face, hisclose-cropped hair, and great eyes, so white everywhere else. Auntie, who associated health with a brick-red complexion like her own, decidedthat he could not be a strong man. She spoke to her niece about himafter dinner. "He's chalk-white, " she said. Grace was not at all alarmed for her husband's health. "He's alwayslike that, " she said. "He's never had a day's illness. I do hope youand Gussie will like each other, Auntie. I can tell you, he's bent onpleasing you. " "He seemed agreeable, " Auntie said. "Has he got nerves?" she asked. "Nerves!" repeated Grace, opening her eyes. "Dear, no! Only like otherpeople's. Why?" "I only asked the question, " Auntie said. "When he isn't talking oreating, his mouth still works; and when he smiles he shows his gums. Ithought it was nerves. " "Oh, that's just a habit he's got. He only does it when strangers arepresent. " "I hope Henry won't catch it, " Auntie said. "Children are imitative. " "No fear about Henry. Henry takes after me--colour and all, " MrsMellish said. She was a brown-haired woman, with cheeks like a damaskrose, and Henry was the only child of the house, and was away at aboarding-school. During the evening a neighbour and his wife came in. He and she and thetwo ladies played bridge, while Gussie looked on or fidgeted aimlesslyabout the room, taking up and putting down again books and papers, looking into empty ornamental jars, continually comparing his own watchwith the drawing-room clock. "To tell you the truth, he always goes out in the evening, " Graceinformed Auntie, while seeing her to her bedroom. "He has his club, youknow. They play rather high. I don't think he cares for our carefullittle game. If you don't mind, I think I shall tell him to go thereto-morrow night. He does worry me so when he prowls about thedrawing-room. " "Let him go, by all means. I don't mind at all, " Auntie acquiesced. "I knew she'd win. They always do, when they've money, and don't wantto, " Mellish said to his wife, talking over the evening's game. "Playedthreepence a hundred, didn't she?" "Isn't it mean of her!" Grace said. "With a purse full ofsovereigns--for I saw them when she gave it to me to pay the cab--andthirty more, she told me, in her jewel-case. By the way, the servantsasked for their wages again to-day, Gussie. " "Oh, I daresay! Ask your aunt to pay them. " "I should like to see myself stooping to ask such a thing of Auntie!" "You don't mind stooping to ask money of me every time you open yourmouth. " "I wonder you can dare to say it! I haven't had a penny from you, for aweek. I hadn't even the half-crown to buy the child the new paint-boxhe wrote for. " "Henry? Does he want a paint-box? He shall have it, poor little chap. Iwill see about it tomorrow. " * * * * * "Once he's gone to the office, don't you see him any more, all day?"Auntie asked, as the front door closed on the master of the house, nextmorning. "Not till dinner. He has a biscuit for his lunch, or goes without it. He isn't a man to care for food at any time. " "No. He isn't what I call a restful man, " Auntie said, and spreadherself more at her ease in her chair. "He isn't one, I should say, toenjoy the comforts of home. " "Oh, as for that, I don't care for a man always in your way among thechairs and tables, " Mrs Mellish said. "Gussie isn't a woman's man, yousee, Auntie. He's about as clever as they're made, Gussie is; and whenthey're like that they're _men's_ men; and I like them better so. " Grace's red cheeks were redder. She was a quick-tempered, high-spiritedyoung woman. "Hands off! he's mine, " her manner, more than her words, said to Auntie, who would have liked to listen to a few wifelyconfidences as she and her niece sat _tête-à-tête_ through the longmorning. * * * * * They lived in a provincial town, and on the second night of Auntie'sstay they went to the theatre, at which a London company happened to beperforming. Grace loved the play, and was in high spirits, making an extra toilettefor the occasion. She was not half through it when her husband, who hadhurried over his dressing, left her and went downstairs. He had heardAuntie, who was always too early for everything, and made a merit ofit, leave her room. He found her in the drawing-room, pulling a pair oflong white gloves over her large hands and arms. "I have been stupid enough to leave myself short of cash, " Mellishsaid, beginning lightly at once, almost before he had closed the doorbehind him. "I wonder if you could oblige me, Auntie, with a few poundsfor a couple of days? Say ten or fifteen? Just to carry me on till mymoney-ship comes in. " Auntie, working on her tight gloves, looked at him; his tone wascarefully careless, but his face, which she had called chalk-white, wassurely whiter yet. His question being asked, his lips still moved. "How Grace can bear to sit opposite to him at meals every day, I don'tknow!" Auntie said to herself. "He gives me the creeps. " She drew in her lower lip loosely beneath her teeth, her gaze grewblanker; never a clever-looking woman, now she looked a fool. Slowlyshe shook her head. "No. I am afraid I can't, " she said. "I'm afraid I can't spare it. Ionly brought as much as I should want to get me back home again. " There was a minute's unbroken silence. Gussie's smile, always sopronounced, spread across his gums till his face looked as if it werecut in two. "I can let you have half a sovereign, " Aunty suggested. "Oh, thank you; it's of no consequence, " Gussie said, making a gestureof refusal. He walked about the room as if hurriedly seeking forsomething he never found. Auntie, with her unintelligent gaze divided between his movements andthe glove which so reluctantly covered her arm, offered a tardyexplanation. "I never lend money, " she said. "It was my father's dying request thatI never should. I owe it to him to regard it. " "Quite so; of course, " Gussie said. "The matter just came into my head. I merely mentioned it. Pray don't give it a thought. " As they drove to the theatre, Auntie remarked that she should insist onpaying for her ticket and her share of the cab, a suggestion at whichGussie and Grace were hospitably offended. She asked, then, if thehouse was safe, left with only the maid-servants to protect it. Inorder to reassure her, Augustus informed her that he was intending togo home once in the course of the evening to make sure that things wereall right. "Not that it matters to me, " Auntie told him; "for I have brought myvaluables with me--jewellery and money, too. I always take them withme, in strange places. I could never enjoy the play if my mind were notat rest. I wear a bag concealed in the skirt of my dress on purpose. " "Ah! I wish I could make Grace as thoughtful!" Gussie said. "Give me Auntie's money and jewels, then see!" Grace cried. "And I suppose you go to bed with them, too?" Gussie admiringlyinquired. "Grace has never so much as carried up the plate-basket. " He was quite right. Auntie did go to bed with them, always putting thebag containing them under her pillow. "A wise precaution!" said Gussie. "I'm a heavy sleeper, " Auntie explained. "A robber might break in andtake my property, and I never hear him; but let him touch the pillowbeneath my head, and I'm wide awake on the moment. " "Yes, but--" said Augustus Mellish, and smiled, "a few drops ofchloroform on a handkerchief held over your face, Auntie, and wherewould you and your jewellery be then?" They were at the theatre, by that time, and Auntie did not answer. Butwhen she went to bed that night she thought of what Grace's husband hadsaid. She had a little difficulty with breathing, being a stout woman, and a horror of suffocation. The idea of that handkerchief held overher face was terrible. She loved her money and her jewels, but lovedmore her comfort and her life. "Once they stopped my breath, I should never wake up again!" she saidto herself; and, deciding to alter her usual procedure, she returnedher treasure from the bag hidden in her skirts to her jewel-case. The play had been a moving one. Grace, very susceptible to emotion, hadlaughed and cried beside her; but Auntie was a phlegmatic person. Thecomedy was just make-believe. She thought more, as she undressed, ofAugustus's request for a loan than of the heart-stirring episodes ofthe drama. She had been wise not to begin lending him money, but to sayat once, straight out, "_No. _" He had asked for only a few pounds; ifshe had given them, he would have gone on to ask for more, in allprobability. Auntie liked Grace well enough, rather better than mostpeople, perhaps; but Grace had pleased herself in getting married; theman she had taken must keep her. He had no claim on Grace's Auntie. With such thoughts in her mind, as soon as her head touched the pillow, she slept. She awoke with a sickly, suffocating smell in her nostrils; and hereyes opened wide upon a face bent above her own. She had slept with asmall lamp burning beside her, and by its dim light it seemed to herthat the face was black. As she gazed, the face receded. Its owner drew backwards, pulling oneempty hand from beneath her pillow. The other hand held thehandkerchief whose odour she had felt upon mouth and nostrils. Auntie flew up in bed. "Burglar!" she cried. It was the only word spoken between them. The whole incident was overin a half-minute. By the time that epithet had burst without volitionfrom her lips the robber, with his black-veiled face, had slunk to thedoor and was gone. With an agility she had not displayed since girlhood, Auntie sprangfrom the bed, and, clutching the bag containing her money and jewels, furiously rang the bell. Mrs Mellish, in her nightgown, came running into the room. "Oh, Auntie! Are you ill? Are you on fire?" she cried. The stout lady, strengthless and breathless, was lying in a chair, thejewel-case clasped laxly with one arm. "A robber has been here, " she gasped. "A robber, with black on hisface, and a chloroformed handkerchief. " "Oh, Auntie! Auntie! Never!" "Where is your husband? Is he in your room?" No. For Augustus, ever a restless sleeper, had thought he heardsomething stirring in the room beneath, and, later, a footstep on thestair. He had risen, therefore, had taken the pistol, which always layloaded by his side, and gone down to investigate. Auntie opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without a sound; hereyes, with their most vacant stare, were turned upon her niece; shegathered her underlip loosely beneath her teeth. It was not until the servants, also aroused by the bell, but havingwaited to dress, came to Auntie's room, that Mrs Mellish was at libertyto run down to seek her husband. There was no doubt about the house having been entered, she said, onher return; Auntie had by no means _dreamt_ the burglar. ("No!" interpolated Auntie, with a solemnly emphatic shake of thehead. ) A window broken in the kitchen, and a wide-open sash had showed theexploring Gussie the means of ingress. In the dining-room it wasevident that a couple of glasses of brandy had been drunk, but none ofthe silver on the sideboard had been touched. Too clearly, Auntie andher possessions had been the objects of the attempt. Auntie nodded gloomy affirmation, trembling and gasping in her chair. Where was Gussie, she asked; and showed relief and satisfaction whentold he had gone to give notice of the affair to the police. But noteven the promise that the servants and Grace would sit beside her andwatch her while she slept would induce the poor lady to go to bedagain. "Not in this house. Never again in this house, " she protested. And even when morning brought a cessation of panic and a certain senseof security to all, she could not be persuaded to change her mind. "I should die if I ever trusted myself to fall asleep under this roofagain, " she said. "Let me get away from it as soon as possible. I amfifty years of age, but I've never had a bad shock before in my life. Iwon't risk a second. " The swarthy, fat, foolish face was pale and flabby and aged from thenight's adventure and the sleepless hours following. "Auntie, I am sure you are not well enough to travel, " Grace said. But, with a grim determination, Auntie persisted. "The first train. I should like to get away by the very first. " "It isn't our fault, remember, " Grace said, firing up. "It isn't as ifwe _arranged_ a burglary for you, Auntie. " There was a train at 10. 15 a. M. , and of this Auntie would availherself. No policeman came to the house. Augustus did not return. "He and the detectives have got on a track, and are following it up, "his wife said. "Trust Gussie!" When the ladies were about to sit down to breakfast, and still themaster of the house had not returned, Grace was a little surprised. Theneighbour who had played bridge with them came in. He had heard of theburglary, and was come to offer assistance, he said. He picked up acouple of newspapers lying by Mr Mellish's empty plate. "You let those alone! Gussie hasn't seen them yet, " Gussie's wife said. The Mellishes were on terms of great intimacy with the neighbour. "I'll take them, all the same, " he laughed. "Send Gus to me for them ifhe wants them. " "I tell you what! I think I'll just 'phone up to the office to see ifGussie's there, " Grace said. "I don't see the fun of being kept in thedark like this. I should like to know what's going on, and if they'vecaught anyone. " The face of the friendly neighbour changed as she disappeared to carryout this intention. He walked close to Auntie and whispered in her ear: "Don't let her get hold of a newspaper, " he said. "There's disagreeablenews. I heard it last night. Mellish has got into a scrape--forgery, they say. I hope to heaven he's got away--H-s-s-sh!" There was no need of the caution. Auntie, with the grand talent forsilence which distinguished her, sat with a sucked-in lip lookingheavily after the retreating neighbour, when Grace returned. Grace, bright and pretty in her neat morning blouse, made a laughing dash atthe papers in the neighbour's hand. He flourished them a moment aboveher head and retired. "Gussie's not at the office, " Mrs Mellish said. "He's on the track ofyour burglar, Auntie, you bet. He'll catch him, too! You'll be wantedto identify him; could you swear to him, do you think?" Auntie very hurriedly declared her inability to do this. "All the upperpart of his face was covered, " she said. But she thought of a black-shaved chin below the mask, and a jaw thathad worked silently, in a way of late familiar to her; and she foundherself quite unable to do justice to her niece's eggs and bacon. * * * * * At the door of the first-class railway compartment by which Auntie wasto travel Grace stood. "Gussie will be furious when he comes back and finds you gone, " shesaid. "He'll catch the man, to the deadest certainty. He's got thebrains of the whole police force in his own head. You should havestayed to enjoy the excitement. " Auntie, whitened and flabby-looking under her smart violet toque, reiterated the statement that she could not have stayed another night. "It's been a great shock. I feel as if I might never recover from it;and I wish with all my heart I had never come, " she said. "Well, since you wish it, I wish it, too, " Grace retorted, kindling. "We must console ourselves that it has not been for long, and try toforget all about it. " "I shall be glad to be back in my own home, " Auntie said. She looked so changed from the well-satisfied, prosperous Auntie whomGrace had welcomed to her home two days before, that Mrs Mellish'sresentment faded as she regarded her. "You are sure you like best to travel alone?" she asked her, withanxious kindness. Yes. Auntie preferred her own company. If a man got in at any of thestations, she said, so upset were her nerves, she would certainly beill with the fright. So Mrs Mellish found the guard and intimated to him that the ladywished to be undisturbed. Auntie stopped him when, in his officiouszeal, he was about to lock the carriage door. "I can't bear the feeling of being locked in, " she said. "It makes melose my breath. " She leaned out of the window, and kissed her niece with moredemonstrativeness than was her custom. "You know my address ifyou--want anything. Good-bye, " she said. "Good-bye, " Grace said, and shook a hand at the window. "Don't forgetto eat your sandwiches--you had no breakfast, you know. You've got somebrandy-and-water in your flask, remember. Take care of yourself. Good-bye. " "Silly old goose! Making such a fuss, at her age!" she said to herselfas she walked away. "Well, after all, it's a relief she's gone. I'msure I never wanted her. It was Gussie's idea, not mine. " Evidently the story of the burglary had got about. Mrs Mellish noticedseveral people turning to look at her with unwonted interest as shewalked along. On inquiring of the servants, she found the master had not returned. On his dressing-table, as she took off her hat, she noticed a neatlittle oblong parcel lying. It was addressed in Augustus's writing, "Tomy darling Henry, with all his father's love. " Grace smiled to herself. "Gussie remembered the paint-box, " she said. "He never forgets the boy. " She took the little parcel, and posted it to her son. As the train sped on, Auntie, expanding herself in her corner, felt arevival of health and spirits. She had escaped, thanks be to God. But for her mercifully awakeningbefore the chloroform had taken effect, she would at the present momentbe lying a corpse on the visitors' bed of her niece's house, done todeath by her niece's husband. Once under the chloroform--she wascertain of it--she could not have revived. She could not endure to think of the house in which she had beenattacked, and on which she had now mercifully been permitted to turnher back. The sun had shone brightly within its spotless windows thismorning; fresh flowers had decked the breakfast-table; a neat servanthad brought in the coffee. Grace, at her end of the table, pretty androsy and young, had talked away, only pleasantly excited by the night'sadventure, in her quick, alert manner. And over it all was hanging thiscloud of ruin, horror, disgrace! Let Auntie banish the ever-recurringpicture, if possible, from her mind. Surely she had done well to getaway! But as the train sped on, Grace's image, pretty, brisk, capable, floated persistently before her eyes. She heard her quick speech, herlaugh. She was Auntie's own flesh and blood--Alfred's daughter. Somepeople, who did not appreciate how keenly she felt discomfort, and howdreadfully anything at all unpleasant upset her, might say she shouldhave stayed at Grace's side, and not left her alone to face what wascoming: they might say it to each other, that is. No one had the rightto censure Auntie. "What good could I do? I should only have been in the way, " she said;"best to keep out of it all. " The train sped on. At every station the attentive guard walked by, turned an observant eye, touched his cap. The old girl was good fortwo-and-six at the journey's end, perhaps; also, perhaps, she wouldthank him and give him nothing. A guard can never be sure. Still--! How could Grace, who had been such a nice bright little girl, and whoused to go to Auntie for her holidays, years ago, and give very littletrouble, considering, have tied herself to that mouthing black andwhite man, with his restless little shaking hands, endlessly fidgeting?When she partook of a late supper Auntie sometimes had bad dreams, andawoke with her heart beating into her mouth. She knew what hernightmare would be for the future! There were Grace's sandwiches. To divert her thoughts she took thelittle packet from the bag which held her money and jewels, and drewout also her silver flask. Years ago her doctor had told her never totravel without a little brandy. She looked at the sandwiches, unscrewedthe flask, but found sight and scent to be enough that morning, and putboth aside. It had seemed a long journey, but now London was near. They stopped atBroxbourne. Auntie was not quite sure if this station they flew by wasPonder's End or Angel Road; she put her head out of the window to tryto catch the name on the lamps and benches, failed to do so, and layback again in her corner. What was that? A stirring, a bulging outward of the valances of theopposite seat. Something was emerging. A man. Dragging himself forth onhis stomach, gathering himself up to his hands and knees, rising to hisfull height, collapsing, a dusty, degraded bundle of clothes, in thefurther corner of the carriage. "Guard!" shrieked Auntie. "Gua----!" The word died on her stiff blue lips. She, too, collapsed in hercorner, and lay stonily staring at the face staring back at her: a facewith desperation in its hunted eyes, with black chin, and chalk-whitecheek and brow, and a mouth restlessly mumbling with no sound. Beside the man, on the flat-topped division of the seat, a pistol lay;but the fingers of the small white hand which held it were nerveless. In his bearing was no menace--only the unstrung droop of despair. So they faced each other without a word--the man and woman who for thelast two days had played the _rôles_ of attentive host and gratifiedguest. And the train sped on. Away from the sunny little house, the dainty, capable housewife, the security, the shelter, the heaven of home; awayfrom peace and guiltlessness; away from a life in which the "gnat-likebuzzings of little cares" had once been its heaviest burden, to a lifein death of danger, of degradation, of bottomless despair. As the train slackened speed for the next station, the man arose, dropped the pistol in his pocket; his hand stole out to the handle ofthe door. Cautiously he looked forth over flat landscape of buildingsite, of brickfield, of the huge tanks and lush vegetation of sewagefarms. Gently he pushed the door a little open, and, holding it, paused, as more slowly, slower still the train sped on. There was a shrinking touch upon his arm, and Auntie, livid, heavilybreathing, pointed to the silver flask filled with brandy, to theparcel of sandwiches Grace had cut for her, chatting happily the while, that morning. The man took them without a word, and pushed them in thepocket of his coat. The train was slackening still. Auntie grasped her bag, with weak, half-paralysed fingers drew out the bag of money and jewels for whichthe man had groped last night beneath her pillow, put it in his hand. There came a sound in Augustus Mellish's throat that might have been asob or a strangled word; then the door opened wider; a moment, and hehad slipped from sight. The station was passed, and the train sped on, bearing Auntie, soleoccupant of the carriage, her journey nearly done. At St Pancras the guard, the chances of half-crown or no half-crownstill agitating his mind, came to the door of the first-class carriagehe had taken under his special supervision. He touched his cap with asmile expressive of felicitation that, thanks to his unremitting care, the lady had reached the end of her travels undisturbed and in peacefrom intrusion. But Auntie was lying back in her corner, dead. WILLY AND I When we were little--Willy and I--oh, such a weary long year ago!--welived in a big house, in a wide, quiet street in the old town ofNorwich. Now, although the house was so big, there was allotted to itonly a small square of garden; a garden exquisitely kept and fostered;a garden to smell the roses in, blushing on their neat rows ofstandards; to walk in, holding father's or mother's hand; even, wondrous treat! to take our tea in, sometimes, sitting demurely, wetwo, with a couple of dolls and a few lead soldiers from Willy's lastnew box for company, at the little round table whose root was burieddeep in the ground beneath the red may-tree. A garden for such mildpleasures, but not for play. A garden that was the delight of ourcity-bred father, who protected the sprouting mignonette seeds fromdepredations of snail and slug, who trained with tenderest care theslenderest shoots of sweet-pea and canariense, who tied and pruned andwatered with his own hands when office hours were over. A broken toywould have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a straycat; a little footmark on the verbena bed, a kicked-up stone on thegravel walk, were punishable offences. No room for us two childrenthere. And so, besides the nursery where our toys and books were kept andwhere our soberer hours were passed, there was given up to our use atthe top of the house a large attic, which was called our play-room. It is quite desirable for children to run wild at times, it is good forthem to shout, to scream, to jump, to ramp--good for girls as well asboys. And if you girls who read this have not a big garden where youmay do these things unmolested, I counsel you to demand respectfully ofyour parents a play-room such as was this of ours. I don't for a minuteadvise you to copy Willy and me in aught--for we were often and often anaughty pair--I only suggest that your parents should copy ours inmaking over to you an empty room. We had not many toys there. On looking back I think we spent our timemostly in struggles on the floor, rolling over and over each other withscreams and shouts; with roarings as of wild animals emphasising thefact that we were not Willy and his little sister Polly, but a greatlarge lion and a huge black bear in mortal combat. We played at Frenchand English too. It takes a lot of yelling from lusty lungs, a lot ofstamping and jumping on hollow boards, for one little girl to representat all adequately a mighty and victorious army. Of Willy, as not onlyhis countless followers but as Napoleon at their head, a good deal wasalso required. With all our vigour, we were only ordinary flesh andblood and we always grew tired at last, and then we sat down quietlyupon the floor and looked through our closed window at the windowopposite. There was only a narrow passage between our house and the next; walkingthrough it with outstretched arms you could touch the house walls oneither side. Unless you leaned quite out of the window, so high up werewe, you could not see the little dark-paved court beneath; and a closewire screen covering the window was believed to prevent the possibilityof our looking out at all. But Willy, to whose bold, adventurous spiritI felt my own but a feeble companion, had contrived with hispocket-knife to undo the four screws which attached the woodenframework of the screen to the window-frame. So that the obstacle beingat will removed, and I holding desperately to his knickerbockered legs, the boy could look out upon the black pavement beneath, or drop amarble from his pocket upon the head of a passer-by. It was not the dark passage, however, which as a rule claimed ourattention, but the window exactly opposite our own. We could see quiteplainly into the room, and its occupant could see into ours. This was a small young man with a pale face. So much I remember of him;and the fact that the sight of prominent dark eyes and a runaway chinalways recalls to me this episode in my childhood's career, inclines meto believe that that conformation of features was his. The room had been empty like our own till one day a bed had been set upin it, and a chair and a washstand; and after that the young man hadappeared. "It isn't his play-room, it's his bedroom; he's another lodger atMiller's, " Willy informed me. When we were not at play we used to sit at the window and watch him. Hedid not go to an office, like our father. He seemed to have nothing todo. Sometimes he stood before the window and looked across at us, butoftenest he lay on his back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. "I should jolly well like to have my bedroom up here, and never takeoff my clothes when I go to bed, " Willy said, enviously. It is curious to remember what a new interest that silent watcher of usgave to our gambols. It was with one eye on the pale young man at thewindow that I marched to the tune of Old Bob Ridley on the field ofWaterloo; and Willy became so painfully realistic in giving me myquietus, when I lay dying and at his mercy after the battle, that I hadto turn on my face and cry secretly, he hurt me so. One day--a very sunshiny day, I remember, the sky above our neighbour'sroof was a bright blue--we were holding a lively representation of acircus we had visited the day before. Willy, with the carriage whipbrought up from the hall, took the place of the gentleman in the ring, while I as the piebald palfrey galloped on all fours spiritedly roundthe place, or pranced proudly on my hind legs, to command. We werespurred on to more vivacious action by the knowledge that our neighbourhad opened his window wide, and was standing before it. When we tiredof our equestrian performances, and took up our position opposite him, he, for the first time, nodded and smiled at us, and presently motionedto us to throw up our window likewise. Proud and pleased at this mark of attention, we speedily tore down thescreen, and, both of us going to work together in our eagerness, flungthe window wide. "Nothing like being friendly with your neighbours, " the young man said. "You seem pretty lively across there--how do you do?" We said, both at once, that we were quite well, thank you; that thiswas our play-room; and we asked him how he liked being a lodger. Weasked him many things, besides. Was he ill, or only very tired, that helay on his bed so much? Did he have his dinner up there, or did he godown to get it as we did? Did he eat what he liked, or what Miss Millerliked to give him? Was he fond of Miss Miller? We hated her becauseonce she had seen Willy leaning out of the window and had told father, who had had the horrid screen put up. I don't remember what answers he made to all these questions, pipedforth in eager little voices, whose words tripped each other up intheir hurry, but I know he said he thought the screen a babyishcontrivance and advised us, now we had taken it down, not to put itback again. I reminded Willy that father would be very cross if we didnot, and Willy reminded me that father being out for two nights, _that_ didn't matter. We cautioned our neighbour not to let MissMiller know the window was open or she would be at her tale-tellingagain, and he, on his part, advised our keeping the fact of his beingnow such friends with us secret from the servants. He hated servants, he told us, as much as Miss Miller; and Willy admitted that ours werecertainly sneaks and not to be trusted. I told him that Willy and Ioften had secrets, and volunteered the information that I had once keptone from mother for two whole nights! He should think we were very lonely with father and mother away, andonly cats of servants left to us, he said; and asked what we shouldlike best in the world to play with. We both with one breath cried "a kitten;" because that was the onecoveted treasure which had been persistently denied us hitherto. Then he said that he most fortunately happened to possess the sweetestkitten in all the world, of which he would be happy to make us apresent; and Willy said, in deep-toned satisfaction, "would he really, though?" and I got on my feet to jump for joy. It was just then that nurse's voice came calling us to say good-bye toour father and mother. So we slammed down the window in our newfriend's face, and pushed the screen back into position, and, burstingwith our secret, Willy and I went galloping down the stairs. Oh, those uncarpeted, twisting stairs! Now that Willy and I have "grownup and gone away, " do they creak gaily beneath the happy feet ofchildren still, I wonder, or only groan with the heavy tread of sobergrown-ups? Often and often now, while "In the elders' seat Resting with quiet feet, " I fall asleep and dream I come to the foot of those enchanted stairs, where for my little companion and me stupid law and irksome restraintceased, and the liberty we craved began. Then, once more, Willy and I, whose hands will never meet again on earth, mount hand in hand to theregion we loved. We drove with our father and mother to the station, and, coming back, found we had the tiresome formality of our nursery tea to get throughbefore we were free to make tracks for our happy hunting-ground above. The young man was waiting there, before his open window, his hands inhis trousers-pockets. We tore down the screen, flung up our own window. "Have you got it?" we called to him, breathlessly. "Is it there? Thekitten?" It was in his coat-pocket; a little sandy kitten which trembledexceedingly through all its fluffy fur, and piteously mewed. He held itforth to us, finger and thumb about its tiny neck, across the narrowway; but stretch as far as we could we could not reach it. Willyundertook to catch it if it were thrown, but the young man said thatfor worlds he would not endanger the life of the kitten, and I imploredhim to run no risks. "What is that standing up by the side of your bed?" Willy asked him, pointing. "It was not there before--that long board?" It was a plank, the young man informed us. He was going to make it intoa box. He was a carpenter by trade. Didn't we know it? We told him no, and artlessly informed him we had thought he was agentleman, assuring him politely at the same time we were glad he wasnot. Then Willy suggested that the plank should bridge the space from hisroom to ours, and that the kitten should be induced to walk on it. The young man welcomed the idea as an excellent one, but feared whenKitty saw the great depth below she might turn giddy and fall. Done inthe dark, now, she would not see, nor have any fear. But nurse made us go to bed before dark we told him, and we so longedfor the precious kitten. We should know it would be there, he said. Leave the screen down, andthe window open all night, and we should know it would be there, andcould bring it its breakfast, the first thing in the morning. With this prospect we were obliged to be content; but although atpresent, separated from our new treasure, we stayed in itsneighbourhood as long as we could, learning from the obliging young manmany wrinkles for the education and upbringing of the kitten, whichwould have to live in the play-room, its bread and milk obtained bycunning and subterfuge from under nurse's nose. Inexpressibly I longed to have the little thing in my possession; forwith its present owner, despite his love for it, it seemed less happythan I could wish--stowed away, heedless of its feelings, in hiscoat-pocket, or exposed on the narrow window-ledge, where it shivered, and mewed, and squeezed up to shelter, in an agony of terror lest itmight fall. We stayed with it until we were called to bed, but it was not of thekitten alone we talked. It gave us much pleasure to find what interestour new friend took in us. He even troubled to inquire where, exactly, in our house, which was built like Miss Miller's, did we sleep--hownear to mother's room, how far from the servants? As you went up fromthe back passage to the great square front landing, our mother's doorwas the one that faced you--he knew that-- We laughed, and told him _no_, and cried out in our new delightfulfriendliness how stupid he was! That was our nursery door, and thencame our night nursery, and then mother's, and--so on. It was with much reluctance we tore ourselves away when nurse called;the wind from the open window blew chill upon us as we nodded good-byeto our friend. He waved the mewing kitten to us in farewell. Itprotested loudly, its little fluffy hind legs clawing despairingly atthe empty air. * * * * * In the afternoon of the next day our parents were home again, broughtback by a telegram which told them that their house had been robbed, the strong box in our mother's room broken open, and all the easilyportable articles of plate taken from the housemaid's pantry. We had policemen in the house, all the morning, policemen were closetedwith our father when he came home. Willy, in a suddenly disorganisedhousehold, free from nursery rule, trotted about, proud of his couragein thus daring, at a policeman's heels. Now and again, I would hear himcoming at a rush upstairs to report progress to me, who would not leavethe play-room. All the bars of the doors and shutters were untouched. The thief musthave been let into the house, the policeman said; and our father, whotrusted all his servants, was furious with the policeman. A policeman wasn't a man to be afraid of when you knew him; whywouldn't I come and see this one? He--Willy, quite a hero thatmorning--would take care of me. Then away, with excited face and flying feet, downstairs again. Andpresently, a quieter step upon the stairs--a step I knew well then, hear often in the lonely silence now, shall surely know amid the soundof all the myriad feet that tread the golden floor when I hear itagain--and my mother was in the room. "Where is my little girl, and what is she hiding away for? And whathave you got in your lap, and why are you crying, Polly?" she asked. Then she turned back my little skirt which hid it, and there was thekitten; sobbing wildly, I flew up and pushed it into her arms. "The man--the man at the window--promised it, " I cried, incoherently. "And I wanted it because it was so unhappy--and we left the windowopen--and I loved it so. And it had to walk the plank--and Willy and methought it was asleep, and I picked it up--and it was dead. " Soon, lying with the dead kitten in her arms, I had sobbed outsomething of the story. "It is a secret--a secret, " I told her, wildly;"don't let Willy and the man at the window know I told!" She carried me away, before the policeman and my father had mounted tothe attic. It was Willy, shaken and frightened now, who had to tell thestory of the unscrewed screen, the open window, the plank laid across. They said it was the young man at the window who came over on theplank, sitting on it and pulling himself along; they said he broughtthe kitten, as he had promised, having first choked the life out of itlest it should mew, and wake the house. They said that when they caughtthe robber, Willy and I would have to go and look at him and say, "Thatis the man. " We used to lie shaking in our beds at night, dreading thehour when we should be called on to do this duty. But they never got the jewellery back, they never caught the robber. As time went on, Willy, who was always brave for his age, grew braver, and would often declare he, if policemen were present, and the robberin hand-cuffs, would not be afraid to look upon him; but be sure thatI, who thought of the murdered kitten, had never a wish to see theyoung man with the prominent black eyes and the runaway chin again. * * * * * I made a pilgrimage to that wide street the other day, and stoppedbefore that big old house where we two had lived as children, where Ihad played so contentedly second fiddle to Willy. Willy, who was soeager to act the leading part, so determined to enjoy, to do, toconquer; Willy "Whose part in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills Is that his grave is green!" I stepped into the narrow passage between the two houses, and lookingup, saw that the present neighbours, friendlily inclined, had slung arope across from window to window, upon which towels hung to dry. Icould see only the projecting ledge of the window through which ourlittle faces used to peep and the projecting ledge of that upon whichthe kitten had shivered and mewed. But I looked long at these, and atthe tiny slip of blue sky above, and then came home and wrote thisstory. A BROKEN BOOT "Oh, the insufferable eyes of these poor might-have-beens. " Every morning of the spring and early summer he had walked down thatsun- and shadow-flecked suburban road, and rested on that particulariron chair. The butcher's and fishmonger's boys going their rounds, thepoliceman on his beat, the postman wearily footing it, the dailygoverness returning from her morning's occupation, had become used tohis appearance there; and he watched each one going upon his or herbusiness, wistful-eyed. To-day, on one of the chairs planted by the thoughtfulness of theever-solicitous Town Council at intervals along the road, a tramp hadalso placed himself. He was a tramp of a dirty and unprepossessingappearance, and having cast a sidelong glance at the well-dressed, handsome, and distinguished-looking young man beside him, he had begunin hoarse, faint tones to beg of him. The voice was evidently that of ahungry man; but to the appeal no response was made, unless there wasreply of a sort in a painfully crimsoning cheek and an averted gaze. The tramp pointed to his feet, the ragged boots grey with dust of wearymiles, the naked toe peeping through. The gentleman faintly shook thehead that he continued to hold aside. With an effort the tramp got uponhis feet. "D--n you!" he said. "May your belly go as empty as mine. May hell-fireblister your feet as mine are blistered!" The man left alone upon the iron bench looked after the tramp shufflingpainfully away, with no anger or condemnation in his eyes, only asubmissive sadness. "Poor devil!" he said. "Poor devil! What a beast I must seem to him. " Once again his fingers, hopeless as his eyes, felt over the region ofhis coat and waistcoat-pockets, wandered nervelessly to histrousers-pockets--empty all! How many a time had they flown there inthe last few weeks to make the same discovery--a discovery causing ashock at first, surprise, incredulity, anger; of late, mechanicallyonly, quite hopelessly. And only a short time ago his pockets had been so well lined! He hadbeen in debt, it is true, but money had been forthcoming for who caredto take. No beggar, however "professional, " however visibly lying, hadever asked of him in vain. He had squandered, in a society his father'sson should never have known, the fortune his father had left him; hisextravagance had been mad, his self-indulgence unlimited; but it mustbe told of him that the occasion on which he most bitterly felt hispresent poverty was such an one as this. He missed so much--all thatmade life worth living in that foolish whirl "from gilded bar to gildedbar" which was all his manhood's experience: his credit at histailor's, the cigars he had smoked and given away, his daily games ofbilliards (the one thing at which he had excelled in all his wastedlife was billiards, his fingers sometimes itched with the longing tofeel the cue in his hand again), all the thousand extravagances of sucha young man's day. But up to the present it was this alone which madepoverty intolerable, --the having to refuse when Want asked of him. He watched the tramp hobbling painfully into the distance, and in hispale blue eyes came that pricking which is of tears. "His blistered feet!" he said. "His blistered feet!" And then very slowly he lifted one of his own long legs and laid it atthe ankle upon the other knee, and touching his slender, high-archedfoot very gingerly, he bent his head and examined his own boot. Yes; there, sure enough, was the crack in the leather he had firstdiscovered yesterday, and which had caused him a sleepless night. Thefirst crack in his last pair of boots! The lower lip of that small mouth which had been used to laugh at suchfoolish nothings, and which now so easily drooped to grieving, fellopen as he looked. The crack was quite close to the sole and wasscarcely noticeable yet, but it would take--how few days! to widen to aconsiderable gap! Then the people of the town in which he had beenborn, through which he had ridden his father's horses, and driven hisfather's carriages, would notice that he walked about in broken boots!To-day he had been careful to come by back ways to that favourite roadwhose sunshine and shadow he had run over so often as a boy; to hisseat on that chair which was placed beneath the hedge of the garden inwhose house he had been born. Three months ago, when to his overwhelming astonishment it was firstmade clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he hadgone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of thepatrimony had not been squandered--had been put out to usury rather, bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold--a man living in luxury andholding the respect of his fellow-townsmen. "You can come to me, " the brother had said. "Eat at my table, sleepbeneath my roof. I shall not turn my back upon my brother. But I shallnot pay any bills for you, nor shall I allow you a farthing ofmoney--you have shown us the use you make of money. You will find itinconvenient to be without, and I advise you therefore to get work. " So, for three months he had availed himself of his brother's hospitality, and the brother had kept his word. For three months he had crossed inthe muddiest part of the street because he had feared to look thecrossing-sweeper in the face, he had avoided the placarded blind man, the paralytic woman who had known him well. He carefully made _détours_to escape these, and the shoeblack boys with whom he had been held inhigh favour. As for the people of his own class--the world is not allunkind, but it is very busy, very forgetful--none remembered to seekhim. He had been surrounded by associates of a sort; and he foundhimself quite alone. For the first week or so he had thought it would be an easy thing tofind employment; a few rebuffs where he had looked for a helping hand, a curt refusal or two, seemed to show him it was an impossibility. Hehad no knowledge of book-keeping, he could not take a clerkship;business men, with a mere glance at his handsome, delicate features, atthe shrinking, deprecating glance of his eyes, at his white, nervousfingers, his faultless dress, decided that he was no good. "Work? Yes. But at what can I work?" he had asked his brother atlength, flushing and hesitating; for since he had been a recipient ofhis bounty he had become afraid of his highly-respected relatives, andof the wife who looked at him with hard eyes as he took his place atthe table. To that question no answer but a sour smile of a dragged-down lip and ashrug of the shoulder had come, followed by the reminder that there wasalways a crossing to sweep. "I would rather sweep a crossing than lead the life you are leading, "the brother had said. And the other had acquiesced. It would be better, certainly; but-- For a young man of aristocratic appearance and faultlessly cut clothesto take a place at a crossing in his native town, and beg of thepassers-by, some of whom would be personal friends, for coppers, requires moral courage; he had been all his life, hence hismisfortunes, a moral coward. So, of late, only spasmodically, and with a hopelessness that prepareddefeat, did he make efforts to find occupation. But he was notnaturally an idle man nor in all directions incompetent, and he watchedthe people passing to office, shop, workroom, with a gaze which hadgrown unspeakably wistful. * * * * * When the hour for the midday meal arrived, he had been wont to returnto his brother's house, but to-day he had something else to do. The road being emptied of the stream of passers-by which flowed morefully at that time, he got up and walked to the gate of the house wherehe had been born, and looked long within, upon the garden. It hadalways been a beautiful garden, full of flowering shrubs, and widelawns, and winding, box-edged paths. Very little had it altered sinceto him it had seemed all the world, and he had the fancy to follow nowabout its sunny, shadowy ways into all its pleasant haunts, the figureof a little boy who had played there long ago. It had been a lonely child who had played there, his only brother beingtoo old to play, and he had gone about the garden-ways, carrying hisabsurd jumble of childish fancies, incredible aspirations, babyambitions, on untiring little feet. It pleased the young man at thegate to follow him in fancy, from spot to spot, always in the sunshine, always with flowers around him, and the whisper of trees about him, andthe song of birds overhead. Leaving behind him the gay flower-beds upon which the creeper-coveredhouse looked forth, into many a leafy nook and shrub-bound fastness thephantom little form ran happily. Where the trees grew tall and closeabove an undergrowth of shepherd's-parsley and blue-bell had been afavourite resort of the child's. When the eyes of the young manfollowed him there, and saw him stop beside the smooth trunk of asilver birch, he knew that a new knife had been given him that day, andthat he was going to carve his own name upon the bark. He knew that, the task being accomplished, the child would fetch his mother, and leadher to the tree to see how deep the knife cut, and how always--alwaysthe name would be there! Once, being tired with overmuch play, the child had fallen asleepagainst that tree, and had wakened to hear his mother's voicecalling, -- * * * * * The young man came back to the iron bench, his figure drooping. Thelower lip had fallen open, showing the small, regular teeth. Into theface, "accustomed to refusals, " into the wistful gaze of the pale blueeyes, something of awe had crept. Presently he put up his boot upon hisknee, and once more his eyes fell upon the crack in the side. He movedhis foot within the boot--certainly a bulging showed; by to-morrow thestocking would be seen. To-morrow! Yes. He nodded his handsome head with eyes upon the boot andbreathed the word to himself. How long ago it seemed since this tragedy of the broken boot hadbefallen! Could it have been but yesterday? Was that possible? His great need had developed his strategical powers, and accident hadseemed to further his design. Quick upon the discovery, he hadencountered his brother's page on his way to his brother's shoemaker, bearing that relative's shoes to be repaired. Seizing the opportunity, he had hastily divested himself of his own boot and had added that tothe page's burden. His spirits so easily arose; such a load by that simple manoeuvre hadbeen lifted from his heart! He pushed his feet into his slippers andcame whistling downstairs to lunch. He had a perfect ear, and hiswhistle was most melodious and sweet; the canaries in the dining-roomwindows awoke and joined in shrilly. His brother, standing, with sour, sarcastic face, upon the hearth, held fastidiously between finger andthumb an article which apparently it was not agreeable to him to touch. "I met Payne taking my boots, " he said; "he had managed to get hold ofone of yours by mistake. I rescued it. I think we don't employ the samebootmaker. " * * * * * The young man's cheek did not burn any longer as he recalled thatincident. He felt nothing now, no anger, no bitterness. To such as heit is so easy to forgive. Forgiveness had ever flowed from him in sheerweakness. It had been the habit of his life to love and admire hisbrother--he loved and admired him still. He did not think that hehimself would have been quite so hard on a poor devil in his place; buthis brother was a strong man and he a weak one--no doubt his brotherwas right. It was certain he was not a cruel man--did he not owe him the bread heate? Had he not shed tears over the death of a dog a day or two before?The dog had been in incurable pain, and a pill which had been procuredfrom the chemist had caused that pain instantly to cease. The masterhad given the order of execution, and had turned away from the gaze ofthe suffering brute with the waters of sensibility in his eyes. And how quietly the dog had died! One instant in convulsions of pain, and the next still--quite still! The young man who had carried with himfrom childhood a great dread of death had been much impressed. Afterall, could it be so terrible? Only one little pill had sufficed to produce that great change--wouldsuffice to kill two or three dogs, the chemist had said. But the youngman had brought away with him a second dose for fear of accident. As helooked with unseeing eyes at the broken boot, his finger and thumb heldthe second little pill securely in the corner of his waistcoat pocket. He was afraid of death; but, as a child believes, he believed in God. Through the recklessness, the wildness, the "joyous folastries" ofyouth there had clung to him still the feeling that God was above him;there beyond the stars; he had felt His smile sometimes, or grown coldbeneath His frown. He had not read, nor thought; nor had he listened toclever talk on the absurdities of a worn-out faith, the uselessness ofan obsolete creed. His business had been with enjoying himselfsimply--with none of those things. Of every other foolishness on earthhis lips had babbled, but not blasphemies. He had not trodden thedownward path with lingering steps, he had gone precipitately to hisruin; but at least his eyes had been on the stars. It was for this reason, perhaps, that, although he sat there, amiserable failure, driven by the heartless might of the world to thelast extremity, there was yet a light upon his brow, and about hisweakly-parted lips a sweetness sometimes absent from brows and lips ofmore admirable men. If he went, beneath scented lime-tree, past gay-flowered border, topeep through a certain wistaria-festooned window he should see hisfather with pipe and book in the accustomed chair, the mother wouldlook up from her sewing. A recollection came to him of how once inthose childish years which had been so much with him of late a suddensense of overpowering loneliness had come upon him as he played. He hadrushed to that window to comfort his little soul with the sight of thefamiliar faces, and had found the room empty. He recalled the terrorthat had fallen upon him, the horror of desolation. He would not riskthe shock of disillusion. He saw them quite plainly, as his eyes seemedfixed on the broken boot, but he would not disturb them. No. When thetime came and he entered the gate he would not go near the house, butwould make his way through the shrubbery in which the lawn ended, andwould seek that wilderness which had been his playground. The wild hyacinths were blue about the roots of the tree on which hisname was cut--how low down the sprawling letters were!--the pet name bywhich his mother had called him. If he fell asleep with his backagainst the trunk she might come and call him by it again. It was because he had not slept all night that he was so tired. He hadtossed and turned, tossed and turned upon his bed, seeking in hismuddled, ineffectual brain for an escape from the disgrace of thebroken boot. Quite suddenly there had presented itself to him the wayof escape--the only way--the way he intended to take. The feathery leaves of the shepherd's-parsley would wave above thebroken boot. He would fall so blessedly asleep--so blessedly! The dog, he remembered, had not stirred. The present master of the wistaria-covered house was driven past him, as he sat in the roadside chair, to turn in at the familiar gate; theafternoon sun, sinking towards evening, shone on the smart phaeton, theglossy-sided horse. Lesser men walked by him briskly to their humbledwellings, little children, belated from school or at play, rushed on. He grudged to no man his success, he looked on without bitterness atthe joy of life--he blamed no one, envied no one. He had gone astraysomehow, and was stranded and lost; but it was without rancour, orenmity, or spite that he, a lonely outsider, watched the "flowing, flowing, flowing, of the world. " So, at length, he rose from his place, pushed open the gate, laying atender touch upon the latch that such dear hands had pressed in daysgone by. So he made his way, going with unerring step, beneath theoverbranching of copper-beech, lilac, and red may, to theflower-carpeted wilderness where, with bluebells about its roots andfeathery foliage waving high around its trunk, stood that silverbirch-tree upon whose smooth bark he had long ago carved his name. WHEN DEEP SLEEP FALLETH Ten days of honeymooning passed in a big hotel at Brighton. Ten days offeeling himself--he who, living, a man of wealth, in a small provincialtown, was used to find himself talked about, looked up to, consideredon every side--curiously unimportant and of no account. Then back withhis bride to the imposing if somewhat gloomy-looking old house to whicha dozen years ago he had brought home his first wife. They had left Brighton early in the morning, and reached home as thewinter's afternoon was closing in. In the drawing-room, where many atime she had seen his wife perform that office, the Bride poured outtea for him. "At last, " he said, and stood upon the rug before the fire, cup inhand, and smiled at her. "This is pleasant, isn't it?" With a smile up at him, and a full glance of the dark melancholy eyeshe so much admired, she let him know that indeed she thought itpleasant. Her costly fur coat, one of his wedding-gifts to her, was tossed overthe back of her chair; the firelight gleamed on heavy gold ornaments atwrists and throat. She had been a poor woman, clothing, not dressing, herself, till in her eight-and-thirtieth year all the fine things whichmoney could buy were suddenly lavished upon her. So soon the femininemind accustoms itself to that change! Every woman is born to fineraiment, meant to be softly swathed, richly decked, daintily tired. Cheated of her inheritance though she be, it is as natural to her asher own skin when at length she comes into it. The Bride felt a senseof well-being, but no strangeness. The room in which she sat was perhaps a little overcrowded withbeautiful things. In the days which were past, which she did nottrouble too much to remember, she had sat here on Sundayafternoons--her one holiday, and always spent with the good-naturedwife of the man she had married--and had told herself that the roombore too evident stamp of the wealth of the master of the house, andthe too sumptuous tastes of the mistress. Yet, now that it was her own, so desirable in itself seemed each piece of furniture, so beautifuleach ornament, it would be difficult, she felt, to decide what tobanish. The man's gaze followed hers, speculatively, roaming over the costlyobjects. He was by no means anxious to make a display of his wealth. He dreaded above all things the charge of vulgarity, distrusting hisfirst wife's taste, not being quite sure of his own. A compactly built, well-featured man of middle size and pale complexion; a man careful andcorrect in speech, manner and dress; in his gently reserved, modestbearing giving no sign that he had raised himself far above his origin, that his wealth was new. "Do what you like here, " he said to his wife, as if reading herthoughts. "Alter the disposition of the furniture--do away with italtogether. I am by no means wedded to things as they are. " He crossed as he spoke to a rosewood cabinet placed against theopposite wall. On its polished surface, above its innumerable littleshelves and drawers, a Crown Derby tea and coffee service was setforth. Standing in the midst, propped between a basin and a cup, wasthe unframed photograph of a woman. This the man removed. Holding itloosely between his finger and thumb, still talking to his wife, hereturned with it to his old position on the hearth. "I have not set foot in this room since--for a year, " he said. "Ithought I would leave everything till you came. Do just as you like. " "You are so good to me----" she began, and then started forward in herchair. "Oh, don't, don't, love!" she cried. "Don't burn her picture!" She was too late. For one instant the face of the first wife looked upat her, smiling, fat, fatuous, from the heart of the glowing coals, then, with a stab of the poker, wielded by a remorseless hand, vanishedin the blaze. "Oh, love!" she sighed, reproachfully, "Oh, love!" "Why not?" he asked, with a smile which went no further than hisclose-set lips. He put down the poker on the hearth and rose up again. "She must have laid in a stock of hundreds of those photographs, " hesaid. "The servants appear to have an inexhaustible supply. In spiteof--discouragement--they kept my dressing-room and study-tablegarnished with them till I ordered them to desist. " The new wife looked away from him into the fire in a minute's silence. "It seems cruel, " at last she said, with an obvious effort. "I wish youhad not burnt it, love. At least, not to-night. In this big house thereshould be room for me and--her photographs. " When she found that their bedroom was to be the same which he and hisformer wife had occupied, she was uncomfortably surprised. The servant who showed her to that apartment in time for her to changeher dress for dinner was the middle-aged woman, calling herselfparlour-maid, but who had acted as lady's-maid, factotum, confidante tothe dead wife. She had made confidantes of all who would listen, poorwoman, pouring out the secrets of her heart, and, as far as she knewthem, of her husband's heart, into any stranger's ears. "Can I be of any assistance to you, madam?" the maid had inquired; andmadam, in order not to give offence, accepted for a time her services. "I like to do my hair myself, " she said, "but if you brush it for me Ishall be glad. " She did not like this servant who had been on terms of closefamiliarity with the other woman; while, outwardly acquiescent, sheallowed herself to be buttoned into a dressing-gown by the hard, bonyfingers, in spirit she protested. As the pins were taken out of the heavy dark hair, and the braidsuntwisted, the eyes of the new mistress and the eyes of the old servantmet again and again in the glass. And the thought came to the bride:how often in that same glass those slanting eyes of the maid must haveencountered other eyes! Eyes of shallow blue beneath a fringe ofyellow-dyed, tousled locks. The reflection was not a comforting one, and warm and cosy as was thebrightly-lit room, she shivered. Hastily casting down her gaze it fellupon a photograph of her husband, taken ten years or so ago, shrined inits silver frame amid the silver accessories of the dressing-table. Inorder to break a silence which was getting on her nerves-- "Is that the picture which was always here?" she asked. "Always, " the servant replied. "It stood opposite one of my latemistress, taken at the same time, and framed in the same way. After mylate mistress's death my master wished to have her photographs removed. He destroyed many of them. I think he destroyed the last to-day. " "Now, how in the world did she know that?" the Bride asked herself, guiltily conscious of the tell-tale face in the looking-glass, reddening before the servant's inquisitive eyes. "After all, I will brush my hair myself, " she said hastily. "I am usedto doing it. " The servant, with no sign of either pleasure or displeasure on hershut-up, solemn face, withdrew. "The silver-backed brushes on the table are those of my late mistress, "she said from the door--"my master's last present to her. In the drawerbeneath the looking-glass I think you will find your own brushes. " She found them there, and, lying beneath them, face upwards, aphotograph of the dead wife. The two women for years had called each other friend, but the Bridestarted back from the smiling presentment of the face now as if it hadbeen some loathable thing. Started back, and shut the drawer. Yet, in a minute had recovered herself, had taken out the picture, andlaid it on the table before her, forcing herself to look long into theface that from among the medley of silver-topped bottles, pans andjars, smiled up at her. As she looked, an inexplicable feeling of uneasiness and insecuritytook possession of her. The fat, fatuous, and smiling face! It seemedto look with an air of contemptuous toleration upon her as aninterloper; to say with its shallow gaze--"These are Mine. All this isMine. It is I, you understand, who am mistress here. " Fascinated by this fancied new expression in the once expressionlesseyes, the Bride looked and looked again--looked till the happy presentslipped away from her and she was back in the unhappy past. The humblefriend, her own poor toilette so soon made, sitting, by graciouspermission, to watch the magnificent toilette of the other woman. Inher bitter heart she felt again the scorn which her mind had alwayssecretly held for this poor-witted, vulgar creature, who had not thebrains to adapt herself to her husband's altered circumstances, whoangered and shamed him beneath his still exterior, to his face, andgave him away to the first who would condescend to listen, behind hisback. Who had sat before the dressing-table, watching in the glass thewide expanse of her bare bosom and white arms, and had boasted of herjewels and her dress. Babbled of things which should have been sacredbetween her husband and herself. How that woman sitting beside her, with the poor dress and the melancholy, dark eyes, hated her! With whatan agony of pity she pitied the husband! Of what good were money, position, power to him with such a wife as this! She hated her. Hatedher, as she sat before the glass, smiling at the reflection of her fairbig arms and neck; hated her as, later at the dinner-table, she watchedthe husband's face, listening against his will to the woman gabblingforth some bit of information which the dullest-witted present knew shewas expected to keep to herself. Still lost to her surroundings in her reverie, the Bride heard againthe outburst of foolish laughter with which the wife had once publiclydeclared her husband could keep nothing from her because of his habitof talking in his sleep. What she wished to know that in the daytime hewould not tell her, she got from him at night by asking questions henever failed to answer while he slept. She had hated her; and at last the poor creature, whose smiling facelay there beneath her fascinated gaze, had known it, and with theinferior force of her inferior nature had hated back. She hadlearnt--who knew how?--of the love between the woman who had been herfriend and her own husband. The eyes had smiled no longer then. The Bride lay back in her chair, motionless, while before her mind'seye rose the altered face of the woman who, deceived for long, wasdeceived no more--who knew! With her there had been no self-respectingreticence, no decency of secret tears. She had heaped insult upon thewoman who had wronged her, she had led her husband a life of hell. That time had been, mercifully, of short duration. A little illness ofwhich no one took account, had ended all for the unhappy wife, had beenthe beginning of a joy beyond words for the other two. She had kept herbed for two days, suffering from a nervous attack, accompanied byexcruciating neuralgia, and had died quite suddenly from the burstingof a vessel on the brain. It had been, of course, in this room she had died. Upon the bed, there. And her husband, sleeping beside her, had not known that she was dead. Slowly the Bride, as if fearing what she might see, looked over hershoulder. The room, with a bright fire, and lit by electric light, wasas cheerful as day. But as her eyes, slowly travelling back again, mettheir own reflection in the glass, she saw in them a haunted look whichfrightened her. She flew to her feet; snatching the portrait from thetable, she hurriedly crossed the room and flung it to the flames. "He is right. Why not?" she said. "To burn a picture isnothing--nothing! And it has given me horrible thoughts. " It was difficult to banish them. When the newly-married pair were alone in the drawing-room afterdinner, and she was seated at the piano, she asked him, through thechords she was softly touching, if there was not another room in thehouse they could take for their sleeping-chamber. "Certainly, " he said; "most certainly if she wished. " He, himself, had not slept there since the night of his first wife'sdeath, he told her. Told her, too, that before leaving for theirwedding-trip, he had given orders to have one of the other roomsprepared against their return. The reason this had not been done, theinvaluable parlour-maid had informed him, was because the wardrobe hehad particularly desired to be moved there had proved too big for theniche which was to have received it. Wardrobe or no wardrobe, however, since she wished it, they would migrate on the morrow. "You do wish it?" he asked her. She nodded, softly striking her chords. "I wonder why? You are no more superstitious or fanciful than I. " She shook her head, bending forward to study the score of the music onthe desk, one of Sullivan's operas they had heard together at Brighton. He, sitting close behind her, his chin touching her shoulder, had fixedhis eyes on the music too, although he could not read a note of it. "Horrid thoughts came to me there, " she said. "I don't think, love, Ishall ever like to be alone in that room. " He named the invaluable maid. "Have her up to dress you, " he advised. The Bride shrugged her shoulders, and her fingers moved more quickly ina livelier movement. "We will change the room, " she said. Later, he had placed himself on the rug at her feet, and she, leaningforward in the armchair drawn over the fire, had her arm about his neckwhile he talked to her of himself, she questioning. Of his early lifehe talked, and what had been for and what against him; of his latersuccess, and his old ambitions. "All achieved now, " he said, and turned to smile at her the curious, characteristic smile accomplished by a twist of a closed lip. "I have not bored you?" he asked her with anxiety, when the evening wasover. "Except to you, I have never in my life talked of myself. It is aluxury in which I must not too much indulge. " She reassured him with the zeal of the newly-wedded, much loved andloving wife. "Promise me that you will always tell me all, that youwill never keep a secret from me, " she said; and he promised, smilingupon her with his twisted lip. "If you do, " she cried, fondly threatening, "I shall know it, Sleep-talker! I shall ask you in your sleep and you will tell me all. " That, under those circumstances, he should probably tell her much thathad no foundation in fact, and much that it would by no means pleaseher to hear, he warned her. She fancied by his tone that he was annoyed, and hastily asserted thatshe had been in fun, that not for a moment could she seriouslyentertain such an intention. "What you do not wish to tell me, be sure I do not wish to hear, " shetold him. He stood by the open drawing-room door and watched her as she ranlightly upstairs. Conscious of his eyes following her, the knowledge of his love andadmiration warm at her heart, she went into their brightly-lit bedroom. For years she had lived such an unloved life, watching her youth fade, fighting only for bread to keep herself alive in a world where nonewanted her. Since, in this man's eyes she was still so young and fair, let her look at herself! She crossed the room to the looking-glass with a quick, exultant step, but having reached the dressing-table, drew back with almost a cry. Standing on it in its old place, facing her husband in his silverframe, was the silver-framed portrait with the elaborately-dressed fairhair, the smiling, shallow eyes of the first wife. The Bride stifled the little cry upon her lips, but with her heartbeating thickly, fell back from the dressing-table, and leant againstthe foot of the bed. A moment's thought reassured her. There was nothing, after all, disturbing in the reappearance of a photograph which had beendisplaced. The invaluable maid with her slanting eyes, with, perhaps, her stupid devotion to a memory, was responsible. At the thought the Bride's nerves steadied themselves, but her angerarose. She moved to the bell--but stopped. Better not to create talkamong the servants by the order she had meditated; rather let thisportrait of the dead wife follow the rest. But when she held it, frame and all, over the fire, she relented anddrew it back. "It is not like me to be a superstitious fool. I willnot, " she said. "She is in her grave, and I am--here. In a way I didnot wish, but could not help, I spoilt the last year of her life. Sheis dead, buried out of mind, shovelled away under the earth, that a joyundreamt of might come to me. This poor triumph at least she shallhave, to keep her old place on the table. I will never dress in themorning without remembering I am in her place. When I prepare for mybed at night she shall not be forgotten. " "'Les morts que l'on fait saigner dans leur tombe se vengenttoujours!'" she quoted to herself as she undressed; and while sheprided herself upon being above superstition, decided upon the abovemethod of propitiating the Shade. In the night she had a dream which bathed her in the sweat of terror. Opening her dreaming eyes upon the dressing-table which faced the footof the bed she saw the figure of the dead wife standing there. Itsback, clothed in its long nightdress, was turned to her, but in theglass which had so often reflected it she saw the foolish, fat face, the over-curled, fair hair. She saw, too, that the figure held in onehand its own photograph, while, with a pencil held in the other itwrote, smiling the while its own fatuous smile, on the reverse of thepicture. In her dream the Bride knew this vision to be a dream, a knowledgewhich by no means lessened the horror of it. "I must awake or die!" shesaid, and in a minute seemed broad awake. It was morning; the sunshine flooding the room shone, with a brilliancewhich hurt the eyes upon the silver frame of the picture on thedressing-table. Nothing else was there; all the silver-topped pans andjars and bottles had disappeared; even the companion photograph was nolonger to be seen; only the face of her one-time friend smiled andsmiled and seemed to beckon from the strangely brilliant, dazzlingframe. With the horror of the dream no whit abated, the Bride rose heavilyfrom her bed, dragged mysteriously attracted feet, that yet seemedweighted with lead, across the floor to the dressing-table; picked upin a hand that fumblingly obeyed the motion of her will, the picture. Upon the back, written in the dead woman's familiar scrawl were thedate of her death, and the words, "Died by my own hand. " In the desperate effort to cast the picture from her paralysed grasp, the Bride awoke. She was really awake at last, and lying, faint with the dews ofremembered terror, upon her bed, her head upon her husband's shoulder. Thank God, awake at last! How horrible that had been! Clinging to him in terror at first, she presently extricated herselffrom the man's encircling arm, and switched on the light. She dared notlie in the darkness with the thoughts that assailed her. Never for oneinstant before had the possibility of the wife's self-destructionoccurred to her. Yet, all at once, how probable, how almost certain itseemed. Died by her own hand! How easy it would have been! An overdose of theopiate the doctor was giving her to ease her pain. And she, weary oflife--life made suddenly hideous to her; all her foolish vanitieskilled, her delight in herself, her belief in her friend, her faith inher husband. The gilding all stripped from the bauble which till thenhad made her happy. How possible! Nay, was it possible longer to doubtit? And who was responsible? The woman who lay in her place, staring outinto the room which had witnessed that foolish, harmless life, whichhad witnessed that tragic death; and the man sleeping beside her. Theytwo. Slowly, lest she should disturb him, the Bride raised herself upon herelbow, looked upon the sleeping face. It was a face still unfamiliar to her in sleep. The always close-shutmouth was open, the straight-cut upper lip was strained tightly overthe gums with a look almost of suffering, the eyes and temples lookedas if sunken in pain. Feeling her gaze upon him, the man's lids halflifted themselves, an incoherent word or two fell from the stretchedlips, the head moved restlessly upon the pillow. Did he too guess this thing? Did he know? "If he does he will never tell it to me, " the Bride said to herself, knowing well he would spare her that pain. In the next moment she was leaning over him, calling him in soft, distinct tones by his name. "Love, " she said, "do you hear me?" He moaned, turning upon his back. The heavy jaw came fully into view, and the too thick throat which in the daytime the tall, close collarhid. With a light touch she swept the hair which, clinging low over hisbrow, so disguised it, backward. "I hear, " he answered in the thick, difficult voice of the sleeper. "Love, I love you, " she said. "Tell me, do you love me?" A pause; then, "With my soul, " he answered heavily. "And--that other wife? Tell me, love. " The answer had always to be waited for, and seemed to come in unwillingresponse to the command of an intelligence afar off. "Hate--I hated her, " the sleeper said. "She knew it--at last. Did she--did she _kill_ herself? Tell me thetruth, love, as you love me. " No answer but a strangled muttering, a head that moved as if in pain. The eyes watching him saw that the sleeper was tortured. "But this once, " she said to herself, "I must ask--I will know. " She bent over, without touching him, and put her lips down close to hisear. "Swear to tell me the truth, " she said in her distinct, arrestingwhisper. Long she waited, watching lips that writhed before speaking, eyes thatseemed to ache to open and were sealed by an invisible hand. At lengthin the low, stumbling, unwilling voice came the response--"I swear. " "Did--she--kill--herself?" "No!" "Oh, love! Are you certain? Will you swear it?" "I swear it, " said the muffled voice. "Why are you so sure? Why? Oh, tell me! Listen: she said she died byher own hand. " "A lie. It is a lie. I killed her. " * * * * * Hours later, the light of morning, outshining the electric light, foundthe woman, the heavily slumbering man beside her, gazing, with astricken face and eyes which looked as if sleep had been banished fromthem for ever, upon the new, unwelcome day. Brightly the rays of the ascending sun struck upon the silver-framedportrait on the dressing-table, upon the smiling presentment of thefatuous-faced, shallow-eyed, dead wife. THE EXCELLENT JOYS OF YOUTH "No head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light. " He had that delicately tinted infantine complexion which onlyaccompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features wellchiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut andloosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not veryagreeable mood, for he had been drinking for the last week, and thiswas the first time he had been thoroughly sober for that period. Hishead ached, his tongue was hot and leathery; he kept his hands in histrousers-pockets because they shook heavily, and he did not want thelodging-house servant to see. The pockets were quite empty. He could not tell where the last fewpounds had gone--if he had lost them at that game of poker heremembered playing before he fell asleep, or if they had been stolensince. He did not remember, and it would be worse than useless toinquire. Not a penny was left to him, and he had not a notion where apenny was to come from--even to pay for the breakfast which he had noappetite to eat. With a heavy gloom upon his face, he stood and looked at the mealspread for him for several minutes before he sat down to table. Therewas smoked haddock, and he shook his head at it; scrambled eggs, andhaving looked at the dish he hastily covered it from sight. Beneath thesideboard a few bottles of soda-water were lying. He opened one, and, there being no glass at hand, poured the contents into hisbreakfast-cup, then drank with a thirst which threatened the cup aswell as what it held. Then he sat down to the table and stared at his reflection in theteapot. "God! What a fool I've been, " he said. "And what the devil am I to donow?" Two or three letters lay beside his plate; he flicked them apart withhis shaking finger. "Bills--bills--bills!" he said. "All bills!" Unopened, he chucked them one by one into the fire, but stopped at thelast. "A lawyer's fist, " he said, regarding the ominously legal-lookinghand-writing. "Someone threatening proceedings again. Let 'em proceed!" He was about to throw that communication also in the fire, but pausedin the act, and laid it down by his plate again, putting another plateon the top of it to conceal it from his sight. He took up the knife, old and worn and sharpened at the point, whichlay by the loaf of bread, and looked at its edge. "This is how poor old Fleming got out of the scrape, " he said. "AndFleming wasn't in a worse hole than I am. " But he turned the knife upon the bread instead of his own throat, andhaving begun with an expression of distaste upon the salt fish, hisappetite arrived with eating, and, that dish disposed of, he attackedthe buttered eggs, and found himself in a fair way to make a good meal. For, in spite of his intemperate habits, he had an invariably goodappetite--an almost indomitable cheerfulness also. The inability totake himself and his misfortunes seriously had been at the bottom ofall his failures. With his family history and his temperament he wasforeordained to disaster; but he met it smiling, with the courage whichwas more the outcome of indifference than of heroism. "Which is the way to the workhouse, Polly?" he inquired of the littlelodging-house servant who came to clear the table. He had filled his pipe and had turned his chair to the fire. His blueeyes shone as brightly, his red hair was watered as carefully free ofcurl, his person was as neat and spruce and daintily cared for as if hehad been the most immaculate of mothers' sons. Polly, at her first place, and with an unbounded admiration and regardfor the lodger who, if he did make a sight of work splashing about inhis bath, was always free with his shillings and full of his fun, looked at the young man distrustfully. "What you got to do wi' th' work'us?" Polly asked resentfully, andseized the bread under one arm and the remains of the haddock under theother. "If folks have no money and don't want to starve, what do they do?" heasked, puffing at his pipe. "They work, " said Polly, laconically; pushed open the door with herfoot, deposited the dishes in the yard-wide hall beyond, and returnedfor the rest of the breakfast-things. "They work if they're lucky and born poor, " he said. "But if they'relike me they can't work, Polly, because they don't know how, and no onewill give them the chance to learn. No. It'll have to be the workhouse, my good girl. " Upon which Polly snuffled loudly, and her tears fell--splash--upon theplates she was carrying away. It was not the first time that theworkhouse had been threatened; the dread of her life was that thethreat should be carried into effect. So she cried, and her poor littlered hands shook as she shuffled the plates together. "Here's a letter, " she snuffled. "Fling it on the fire, Polly. " "'Tain't opened. I 'ont, then. You should ope your letters. " "Open it for me, then. " So the little maid-of-all work opened, and, in obedience to his orders, she being a sixth-standard scholar, and not stumbling once at a hardword, read the letter. And as she read, the young man sat upright in his chair, pulled thepipe from lips which had fallen open in astonishment, and fixedunblinking eyes of innocent blue upon the handmaiden. For in legal phraseology, the sense of which, if not the words, was asore stumbling-block to Polly, the letter set forth that by the deathof a certain James Playford, legatee under the will of Mr DanielThrower's uncle, a sum of money had been released which now, accordingto the said will, was to be divided between the said uncle's nephewsand nieces. Due deduction having been made for this and that, Mr DanielThrower's share was found to amount to the sum of £98, 17s. 6d. , forwhich a cheque was herewith enclosed. "Do you mean to say he's sent the money?" Mr Daniel Thrower demanded, in the accents of incredulity. "There ain't no money--not a farden--only a bit o' paper, " Polly said, with disappointment. Dan seized the cheque from her hand. "All right!" he said; "I shan't goto that institution we spoke of just yet, Polly. We've got anotherchance, my girl. " Truth to say, he had had several in his life, but this seemed to himthe happiest which had ever befallen. After each drunken outburst hemade resolution that it should be the last, and remained a strictlytemperate person till the madness seized him again. The resolution hemade as he sat gazing at the cheque he held in his hand, being thelast, was the one he meant to keep. Years ago an elder brother had goneout to New South Wales, had bought some land there, and had prospered. He was not a very sympathetic brother, and had not responded to thesuggestion that the ungain-doing Dan should take himself, his badfortune, his unsatisfactory habits, also to New South Wales to settledown beside him. Dan was of opinion, however, that, once there, this brother would finda difficulty in getting rid of him. He thought with longing of thatclean and healthy life, the escape from the slough into which his feetwould always wander while he remained here. The means to escape he nowheld in his hand! "Here I keep on sinking, sinking!" Dan said to himself, illustratingthe process with a movement of the hand which held the cheque. "Bill--he's as hard as nails, but he'll hold me up. I shall begin overagain. I shall be free of this infernal embroglio. I shall write myname on a clean page----" He would not stop to repent; he would look out the first steamer thatsailed; he would pay his debts--they were not, after all, many, for hehad a constitutional objection to cheating people, and always paid whenhe could. He would say good-bye to the man for whose friendship's sakehe had come here, and would shake the dust of the miserable little townwhere he had played the fool of late from his feet. It was three orfour days, he remembered, since he had seen the friend of whom hethought; he would have news to take him now! So slipping the letterwhich contained the cheque into his pocket, he walked out into theApril sunshine of the little High Street, and betook himself toGunton's lodgings. Gunton was the not altogether satisfactory assistant to the one doctorin the place. Going thus early, he would catch him before he started onhis rounds. No need to hurry, Dan! Before the good people of Hayford shall seeagain the young doctor flying round on his long legs to visit thepauper patients, or clattering in Doctor Owen's tall gig over thecobblestones of the High Street on his way to those invalids of leastconsideration entrusted to his care, the last trump shall sound. He was not in the little sitting-room where Dan and he had smoked somany pipes together. The visitor was striding across the passage to thebedroom, also on the ground-floor, when the landlady issued therefrom;and the landlady was in tears. "I have kep' these apartments respectable and comf'table, and not aweek unlet, these seventeen year, come Michaelmas, " she sobbed. "Andnever have I had a death in 'em before. " Dan recoiled before the word. "Death?" he said. And she repeated the word. "Poor Mr Gunton, he have had one of histhroats, and he was took worse yesterday morning. He kep' askin' foryou, sir, and no one could say where you was; and now he have sent meto fetch you, whatever happen, and to say as he's a-dyin'!" "It's one of his jokes, " Dan said; but he had grown grey about thelips, and his mouth fell open. He pushed open the bedroom door, half expecting to be greeted by asmothered laugh from Gunton, and a whispered account of the last trickhe'd played the old woman. But Gunton, poor fellow, who had laughed and played his foolish jests, and got into mischief industriously all through his short life, hadlaid his mirth aside to-day. He had done but indifferently well the fewtasks allotted him, shirking them when he could; the business he hadnow on hand was a very serious one, and there was no slipping out ofit. He had to die. He told his friend so in so many words. "What's o'clock now?" he asked. "Eleven? By two I shall be dead. " Dan tried not to believe. "I'll go for the doctor--I'll fetch a nurse!"he said. The other stayed him with his difficult speech. "Don't waste time. It'sno good, " he said. "I've seen men die like this. I know. Owen was heretill ten minutes ago. I told him last night it was all up. You knowwhat an old ass it is--he wouldn't listen. He listens now. He's wiredfor ----" (naming a man locally celebrated in the profession). "He'sdriven, himself, to Fakenham for a nurse. I shall be dead before theyget here. I told him so--the old ass! He's wired for my mother--she'llbe too late. You can say I sent my love, Dan----" All this in a hoarse, broken voice, interrupted by loud and painfulbreathing, and now and again by a short, rough cough. "I didn't know you were seedy, old man! I'd have come at once, " Dansaid. "I've been on the spree again, for a day or so. It's the end. I'mnot going to play the fool that fashion any more!" "The end of my sprees!" poor Gunton said. "We've had one or twotogether, Dan. Don't look at me. I ain't pleasant to watch. Sorry. Itwon't be for long. Dan--my watch and studs, and a chain I neverwore--they're"--he lifted a cold hand and tried to point to a littleheap of trinkets lying on the drawers at the foot of the bed--"they'refor you. Take them, will you? Take them now. " Dan nodded. "I'll take 'em, thank you, old man, " he said, and sobbedsuddenly. "Don't worry, Ted. Don't try to talk, dear old boy. " "I've got to. You know about Kitty. I was going to marry her next week. I took her away from the shop--made her give up her living. She'sbought things to marry me. She can't pay for them. You--you----" A struggle here, upon which Dan, in spite of himself, turned his back. "I know, " he said, brokenly. "I'll pay for them. I'll see to her. It'llbe all right, Ted. " "No! My mother, " the dying boy said; "tell her. She won't be pleased. Ask her to give Kitty a hundred pounds from me--with my love. Promise--promise. " "I promise, " Dan said. "Anything--anything, dear old man. I know whatyou'll want done--don't, for God's sake, talk any more. " But for another hour of misery, of battling for breath, hideous tosuffer and heart-breaking to witness, he would attempt to talk, irrationally at times, but now and again with a startling coherence. His mind ran on that gift of a hundred pounds. He sent message aftermessage to the little shop-girl for whom, with the senselessprodigality of such youth, he had proposed to fling away his future. Again and again he adjured his friend to tell his mother what a goodlittle girl Kitty was, how she had stuck to him and been a brick. They said he was a clever fellow in his profession, the long-haired, long-legged young doctor, with his harum-scarum ways and his readylaugh. He had made a true diagnosis of his own case. Before doctors andnurses could be got to him he was dead. "Don't look at me, " was the last he said. "Pull the sheet over myface--don't look. " And so, with the thoughtfulness for others which had proclaimed himGentleman in that inferior society where it had pleased him to move, hehid his suffering from the man who sat weeping like a woman beside him, and died. * * * * * It was Dan, his face blurred and swollen by crying, his usuallydarkened and subdued red hair proclaiming its curly nature in all thefierceness of its roseate hue--Dan, who at that moment would ratherhave been in any other place on earth--who received the bereavedmother, led her to the door of the death-chamber, and retired inmiserable solitude to await the interview, to avoid which he wouldgladly have blown out his brains. She came to him at last, a long, lean woman who had bent a stubbornback to many sorrows. A meek, unsubdued woman. The lankiness of limb, and the lankness of feature and hair, sufficiently pleasing in poorTed, stretched forth at his long length yonder, were not such agreeablecharacteristics in the mother. Narrow face--narrow nature. In the thinfeatures, contracted nostrils, close, small mouth, Dan might have readpoor hope for Kitty. "I have taken his jewellery, " she said in her toneless voice. "Ithought it best not to leave it about in a lodging-house. I miss aring--a ring I gave him on his last birthday. Can you tell me where itis?" She spread the watch, the chain, the sleeve-links, a certain pearl studwhich Dan had noticed once or twice in his shirt when poor Gunton woredress clothes, upon the table--all the poor, invaluable trifles whichhad lain on the drawers in that pathetic little heap bequeathed to thedead man's friend. "The ring is missing, you see, " she said. She tiedup the articles in a spare white handkerchief and slipped them into thepocket of her dress. "Everything of his has become doubly precious to me, " she said. "Perhaps you will be so good as to make inquiries about the ring. " Dan roused himself. Here was his opportunity. "I think the ring----" hebegan. "I think he gave the ring to Kitty, you know--the girl he wasengaged to, " he got out. "Engaged?" the lady repeated. "My boy engaged--and without myknowledge!" "We don't tell our mothers everything, I'm afraid, " Dan said. He made aghastly attempt to smile, to get back to his habitual easy manner whichhad forsaken him. "'Twouldn't be for our mothers' peace of mind----" She interrupted him with cold dislike. "I know nothing of you and yourmother, " she said. "I know that there was perfect confidence between myson and me. " It was hard, after that, to tell her the story, but he told it, and sawher narrow face change from its frozen grieving to a still more frozenanger. She would not believe, or she affected not to believe, thestory. A girl out of a little country shop to _marry_--her boy! "You have no right to take away his character so, and he not here todefend himself!" she said. "He--I perceive that he has consorted withlow company since he has been here; but he is a gentleman--my son, bybirth and education. " "He _was_ a gentleman, " Dan said gently. Was--was? Ted _was_! Ted, whohad been so alive, so "in it" in the jovial sense always--was! The wordchoked poor Dan, but he stumbled on, and told of the poor fellow's lastcharge to him, his last request to his mother. Sometimes, in his confidential moments, Ted had spoken of this motherof his. "She is a good woman, " he had said; "I suppose she never did, or said, or thought a wicked thing in her life. " She might be good, but she had now a heart as hard as the nethermillstone. She did not choose to credit the story. She would not do herdear son's memory such an insult as to believe it. She looked withsuspicion as well as dislike upon the poor friend with the rumpled redhair, with the fair skin, blurred and mottled, as such fair skins arewont to be, by his weeping. It was quite possible, she told herself inher miserable little wisdom, that he had made up the tale for his ownends. The hundred pounds was for himself, or at least he would shareit. She would not believe; and presently she would hear no more. "I must now really ask you to leave me alone, " she said. "Your goodfeeling will show you that I have enough to bear. " "And you refuse to do this last thing poor Ted asked of you?" Dan saidto her. "I have no proof that he asked it, " she answered. And with that insult ringing in his ears, Dan went. He pulled the door to upon him with a muttered oath on his lips; but hewas not so enraged as another man would have been in his place. The"old girl" wasn't behaving well; but in Dan's experience, so manypeople did not behave well; and as it happened, the thing could be putright. If it had been yesterday, how helpless he would have been in theemergency! But old Playford's death had come just in the nick of time. As for himself and his chance--his last chance--well! He looked acrossat that other door behind which Ted lay. Ted and he had stuck togetherthrough ill report and good, had helped each other out of many ascrape, had had such good times! Dan looked for a moment at the closed door, then stepped across theyard of matting and opened it. Many a time he had run in without waiting for admission to his friend'slodgings, had pushed open the door to call a word to the young doctor, already gone to bed or not yet got up, perhaps. So, once more he openedthe door far enough to admit his red head, and looked in. Ted was dead, he knew; but it takes time to reconcile us to the fact that the deadare also deaf, senseless, past grieving or comfort. "It's all right, old man; don't you worry. I'll see to it, " Dan said. CARES OF A CURATE "November 6th, 1901. ". .. You were with me much down at H---- in the spring, and saw many ofthe ins and outs of a certain affair then going on in which I waspersonally interested, and which took up a large portion of my time;and I think I owe it to you, Charles, to let you know how to all thatfoolishness there came a finish. This 'excellent bachelor' is not to bespoilt by matrimony. She wouldn't have me. And so on, and so on. Ispare you all particulars, and you see that I am alive to tell thetale. It made things a little difficult at H----. I got away as soon asI could and met with another curacy in this place, and I write to youon the evening of my arrival. It looks a cheerful, pretty little spot, but I haven't shaken down yet, and thoughts of H----, and of last Maywhen you were with me, keep turning up in my mind to-night. "My vicar seems all right. I thought it very decent of him to meet mehimself at the station. He apologised for having insisted on an answerto his written question--was I a confirmed bachelor? The ladies of theparish were in favour of a celibate curate, he said, and he himself didnot want to be bothered by a man who would be getting married directly, and going away. I told him there would not be any fear of misdemeanourof that kind with me. "He brought me on here--well no, he didn't, that was what I wished himto do. He took me to the vicarage and gave me tea. His daughter gaveit, rather. You'd like the daughter. Not very young, and not pretendingto be; filled with good sense, a practical, companionable sort of body. She, too, was good enough to approve my estate of confirmedbachelorhood. She said they had found things work so much pleasanter onthese lines. The last three of her father's curates had been devoted tothe single life. I asked, for the sake of conversation, what had becomeof them, and she told me, without the change of a muscle of her face, that they had married. The vicar awoke to the subject of ourconversation here, and said that they had married his three otherdaughters. "'Jessica is the only one left me now, ' he said. "'Jessica must always be left or what will become of you?' the sensibleyoung woman said. "A great many women would have felt it a little awkward, but she wasquite unembarrassed. She very kindly put on her hat to show me the wayto my rooms. Even came in, and sat talking for an hour. She said quitenaturally that the best thing a woman got out of advancing years wasthe possibility of making of a man a friend. She is thirty-five, andisn't ashamed of the fact. Altogether a refreshing woman. "My rooms are not like those at H----. Do you remember that evening inMay when your sister had been on the river with the Hysopps, and sheand Tom and the mother came in, and they brought Mary? The moon was onthe water, and we would not have in the lamps, but sat and talked inthat light. Well, there's no river here, and the moon doesn't shine, and there are one or two other things missing! But Mrs Bust, mylandlady--what a name!--appears a decent sort, and to judge by mysupper to-night, an excellent cook. "By the way, every available jug and jar and glass is filled withchrysanthemums. No less than seven ladies, whose names she gave me, hadbrought up bunches during the day, Mrs Bust said. "This really looks extremely kind of the people. I thought it such apretty way of welcoming a stranger. .. . * * * * * "26_th November_. "I'm not in the least offended. Why should I be? I know, as you say, that lookers-on see most of the game, and I am sure that you areperfectly genuine in your advice. But I have had enough, thank you. Itwill last me my life. Besides, you are mistaken--she wouldn't. A girllike that with four hundred a year--I always knew the money was abar--why should she? I've got no illusions about myself, as a rule. Iwas a fool ever to think it possible. Thank you--but don't say any moreabout it. I ask it as a favour. I have rolled a stone against thatdoor, you understand. 'Want but a few things and complain of nothing'shall be my motto; and although at a certain time of my life I wanted agood deal, at least I won't complain. "If only there were fewer women in the world! Fewer in B----, perhaps, would answer my purpose. The fact of my being a confirmed bachelormakes them feel safe with me, I suppose, but the fact is I can't stirfor them, Charles; I stifle with them. I wish you'd run down and takesome of the pressure off. I wish a few other good fellows would comeand rescue me. Her mother said that Mary (the forbidden topic!) was notsuited for a clergyman's wife, that she hated useful work. Perhaps thatwas why I liked her so much. She never bored me. These women--! "They are as kind as angels. I'm going to run my pen through the above. "I've got in a piano--you know my weakness for strumming? My landlady'sdaughter shares that weakness. I hear the piano begin before I reachthe garden gate, I hear it shut with a bang as I come in at the door. Waltzes, played very quick, and galops with the loud pedal down and animpromptu bass. Her mother suggested to me that Cissy should come inand play to me in the evenings sometimes. I did not exactly jump at theoffer, and Mrs Bust, to remove a possible objection in my mind, explained that of course she had not intended to leave her daughter_alone_ with me; she herself could bring her sewing and chaperon her, she said. "I am beginning to dread my meals because this good woman waits on me. I have begged to be allowed to pour out my own glass of beer and toreach my own salt-cellar. No use. "Mrs Carter, an influential parishioner, living at a nice place calledThe Lawns (I haven't counted how many there are of them, but havenoticed a few yards of grass-plot at the side of the house), said to methe other day that she believed I was a woman-hater. I had encounteredfifteen of them at her house and was in a desperate mood. I said I was. I thought I was safe with Mrs Carter. I've met each one of that fifteensince, and she has in every case stopped to say to me--'Oh, I hearyou're a woman-hater!' They all seemed to be mightily pleased. It putme in a stupid position. I managed to say something civil to each; butI have a bone to pick with Mrs Carter! She is always poking her fun atevery one, and wants to know if I don't make an exception in favour ofJessica. "Jessica!! "She and I get on together, however. So we need; for she is an ardentworker in the parish, and morn and noon and dewy eve are she and Ithrown together. Often, when I think to have an hour to myself forreading or writing, she comes to my room and sits over the fire withme, her petticoats carefully lifted, her feet on the fender--I amtempted to wish her at Jericho; but she is a good sort. .. . * * * * * "5_th December_. "Many thanks for your brilliant suggestion. Very thoughtful of you. Jessica is not in the least that kind of woman. She might have beenmarried ten years ago if she had liked. She told me all about it. Thelast man who married the sister _meant_ to have Jessica. "I say, there's a tragedy, Charles! To feel as you do about the womanyou want to marry, and to have to go through it with another! "She's a splendid manager and organiser, and a devoted worker. She toldme yesterday that if ever she did consent to marry it would have to beher father's curate; she would neither leave the parish nor her father, she said. A lot of women would have been embarrassed in saying that, and I can see the expression of your face as you read it. Spare yourgibes. Jessica is miles above the ordinary tricks and wiles andfalsities of women. You'd know it if you saw her. A stout, strong-looking young woman in thick boots and short skirts; aweather-beaten, serviceable being. "It must have been for her sterling qualities those other men were inlove with Jessica. All the same, dreadful, doubtless, to lose her. "I note your news of H----. I have cut off all relations with thatplace. People there don't know where I am. Have forgotten that I exist, most likely. Do not trouble to send me any further information. "Ah, my dear Charles! If I only might do my work for the next worldafter a manly fashion, as other men do the work of this! These womenwon't let me. They are in everything. They meddle and mar and makemischief. Half of the Fifteen (can you halve them?) are at loggerheadswith the other half because of words I am reported to have said. Theyquarrel with each other, but, heaven help me! they won't quarrel withme. They make me perpetual presents, they ask me endless questions, they consult me in difficulties of their own ingenious making andalways cropping up. Half of them have husbands they might go to, children to occupy their time. One is at least sixty--! "A girl and her mother have been here to see me to-day. Motherindignant, girl in floods of tears. Some one of the Fifteen had saidthat the girl was 'running after' me. Me, with my thirty-eight years, my fortune of a hundred and fifty a year! Can't you see my blushes onthe paper as I write it? Had her daughter by look, by word, by deed, done anything to deserve that cruel slander, the mother wanted to know?Then, was I not ashamed such things should be said? God knows I amashamed, but what can I do? They are always saying such things one ofanother. How can I stop it? "'You must not be so civil to them, ' Jessica says. "I assure her that without positive rudeness I can't be less civil thanI am. "'Then, be rude to them, ' counsels Jessica. "How can one man, standing alone, immersed in rummage sales, parishconcerts, mothers' meetings, school teas, and other feminine functions, be rude to Fifteen women at once? Between you and me, I have tried it, in my desperation, in individual cases, and it has no effect. I havediscovered you can't please a woman better than to bully her. "'You must marry Jessica, ' Mrs Carter says. 'Married to Jessica youwill find yourself a mere man, a very ordinary person. ' "'I should want an extraordinary nerve to do it, ' I was on the point ofsaying, but remembered in time how she had reported me to the Fifteen. The pulpit is becoming the only place where I can enjoy the luxury offree speech. Words spoken in any less public place are brought back tome distorted past recognition. "Heigho! I am always grumbling. As a fact, people put themselves out inthe most flattering manner to be kind to me; I suppose I am ascomfortable here as I should be in any place after H----. "Little Cissy Bust found out that I was fond of flowers. Since then shepulls off a chrysanthemum every morning from the plant in her mother'swindow, and lays it beside my plate. Sweet of the little thing, but Iwatch with dismay the blooms lessening on the maternal plant. Themother is a good sort, in her way, but as I've been working in it allday I don't care to be bothered with the tittle-tattle of the parishwhen I come home at night. She is always bringing me delicacies off herown table. I have to eat them, because she stops to see me do it. .. . * * * * * "19_th December_. "How many afternoon tea-cloths have I had given me since I came, Charles? Guess. "Nine. I haven't the smallest use for one of them. I never get thechance of having tea at home in the afternoon, being always under theobligation to eat muffins in this lady's house or that. Jessica came inthrough wind and rain one day and said she'd like to have a cup. Hereseemed my opportunity. I showed her the nine and facetiously asked herto choose; or should I spread them all at once? She always has too muchin hand to stop to jest over trifles; she waved the tea-cloths aside, and seized her cup off Mrs Bust's tray, and went on talking shop. Idon't want to decry Jessica. She's worth all the rest put together. While they gabble, she does things. If Mrs Carter (who hates the sightof her, by the way) and the rest of them would only let us alone! "So the engagement at H---- is broken off! It must be a blow to poorHolt, but I never thought him suited to her. Who is, I wonder? What amadness it was to think that she and I could pull together. Imaginethat little teasing, irresponsible child in such a box as this, boredto death by these interminable women! For all her naughtiness and herfolly she was wiser than I. But I am wiser now. "Of course, if you hear of any fresh engagements or new freaks of theyoung lady, you will let me know at once. "Mrs Bust was insolent about that cup of tea. I greatly hope Jessicadid not notice the way she banged the tray down. She said afterwardsthat no _single_ lady should come to a _single_ gentleman's rooms, let alone take a meal with him. If there were other rooms to be had Iwould not put up with this creature. My dear Charles, I'm getting tobe, in reality, what I've had the credit for being all along--awoman-hater. "I go a good bit to Mrs Carter's. Her house is comfortable, and she isan amusing creature. Sees jokes, and cheers one up. She teases me aboutmy beset condition, and tries to get me to _say_ things. She calls meJob, and the Fifteen my comforters. Neither witty nor appropriate, butit pleases Mrs Carter. She says the least I can do is to give the ninedonors of the nine tea-cloths tea. I frankly told her of the difficultywith Bust, who is inexorable on the matter of etiquette. It will be allright if she comes, Mrs Carter says. She is so set on it, I've had togive in. I've asked them. They're coming on Thursday. "Oh, my dear old man, how my head aches! "Mrs Carter keeps sending me up chickens, jellies, game, and things. She says I've shrunk three stone since I came. It's love, she says, andI shan't be all right till I'm married to Jessica. "What rot women talk! "Can this be true? She declares to me that the vicar told her inconfidence he would soon be losing his daughter from his house, if notfrom his parish. "You see the inference. There is not another even faintly eligiblebachelor in the whole _charming_ place. (Use your own epithet in placeof the underlined word. I should rather like to hear you do it). "I said, straight out, she had no business to repeat to me what, however silly, had been said in her private ear. She was quiteunimpressed. 'In such a place as this what should we do if we did notrepeat things?' she asked. "She told me, as a huge joke, that her husband had overheard theservants saying she called me by my Christian name! Carter went to herfor an explanation. No doubt she had chosen to call me 'Job, ' or somenonsense of the kind, when the servants were in the room. She'sdelighted, and says Carter was quite annoyed. "He's about the only Man in the woman-ridden place; after this I shallbe ashamed to look him in the face. "When Mrs Bust was taking away my supper to-night she requested me notin future to speak to her daughter as 'Cissy. ' It was so very _marked_. I was not in the mood to receive the rebuff calmly, and she simmereddown. Young girls got such strange ideas in their heads, she said. Itwas better not to be _too_ familiar! "Poor little Cissy, aged sixteen, and her flower on my plate! I've hada certain pleasure in that unfailing mark of a little girl's goodwill;but to receive a flower from _Miss Bust_! I shall hurl it into thecoal-box in the morning. .. . * * * * * "2_nd January_ 1902. "You harp a great deal on one string, old man. I know you mean itkindly, I know you'd like to see things put right for me in thatquarter, but do believe I've had enough. I don't pretend--to you--itwas a pleasant experience. I won't deny it was a nasty knock--but it'sover, and Richard's himself again. "You ask about the tea. Oh, well, there was no tea. At the last minuteMrs Bust refused to make tea for Mrs Carter. To the other nine she didnot actively object--safety in numbers, I suppose--but Mrs Carter, itseems, had asked her during the progress of my last cold if she hadneglected to air the sheets for my room. Such impertinence from anywoman no lady could suffer, Mrs Bust informed me. Into her house MrsCarter shall never set foot again. Seeing that I had laid in the cakesand sweeties and rubbish for the tea she suggested that she herself andCissy should be of the company. In that case the most particular, sheassured me, would have nothing to get hold of. I scrupled not to makeplain to her that her plan did not commend itself to me. "Mrs Carter is delighted, and tells the story, with additions, everywhere. She asked the nine to her own house and I had to show up. Carter was to have come home but of course he didn't. Small blame tohim. By the way, he has become positively uncivil to me lately. In myhearing, the other night, he said something about the clergy 'for eversmothered with women's petticoats, and with their feet under bettermen's tables. ' I have liked Carter hitherto, and shall have it out withhim when I get the chance. "You see, Charles, that girl fooled me thoroughly. I thought she likedme. You thought it yourself; you said so. I thought she meant me toknow she liked. She is so young, so pretty, so rich in everything theworld holds of value. If I had not fancied encouragement I never shouldhave made the attempt. To come down such a crusher! Perhaps what yousay is right. She may seem to think kindly of me now, she may even havespoken to your sister of the episode as you say; but let me put myselfin the same place again and the same thing would happen. I'm notblaming her. God knows I don't blame her. I blame myself for being ablind ass. I hope she'll be happy, poor little girl. I want her to be. With all her irresponsibleness and her outside naughtiness andfrivolity, her carelessness of men's feelings, her nonsense, and herteasing, pretty ways, I know that she is good at heart, sound, and saneand sweet. I want her to be happy! "There is a girl among my Fifteen--she is quite young and has to beprotected against herself. She has haunted me. When I got home shewould be lurking in the dark of the road, when I went out I met hercoming round the corner. Notes in her childish scrawl have fallen onme, thick as autumn leaves. I have had to see her mother at length. Mother, for my pains, told me roundly I was not a gentleman. I declareto you she abused me like a pickpocket, Charles. "But this silly child had the excuse of youth. There is another ofnearly three times her age to whom I had thought it safe to be civil. Well, it wasn't. She pursued me even within my own strong-hold, thepulpit. In a moment's weakness I had owned to her that I likedviolets--pah! I am sick of the scent of them now. On Sunday morning Ifound a bunch of them, done up after a well-known fashion, with driedmaiden-hair as a background, laid beside the pulpit cushion. I had goodreason to know from whence it came. I said to her when she waylaid meon my homeward course that the woman who cleaned the church would haveto be reprimanded. She had let fall a bunch of flowers from her frowsydress upon the pulpit desk and had left them there. An unpardonablepiece of negligence. "'I thought you liked violets?' the foolish old woman said, lookingashamed; and I told her hardily that I loathed the sight of them andhoped never to look upon one again. "This all seems only laughable to you. I can hear you snigger overit--and me! Laugh at me, but don't hate me as I do myself. A mannearing forty years of age, not particularly anything--either clever, or eloquent, or good-looking, or attractive. Don't I know it all? Ican't write of it---- "And yet this one thing more I must tell you before I close. "As I parted from the sensible, self-respecting, self-contained Jessicathe other day--I protest to you my reliance on her womanly dignity andsturdy reasonableness has been to me as the shadow of a great rock in aweary land--I ran against her father, the old vicar. He put his hand onmy shoulder, and looked at me with a kind of playful reproof in theface. "'Ah, how long is this shilly-shallying to go on?' he asked. ". .. I broke off there to see Mrs Carter. It has hitherto been a reliefto see her. The only laughing I've done since I've been here has beenwith her. She did not laugh to-day. She came to me because she had noother friend, she said. She could not trust the gabbling womankind. Herhusband had changed to her. He had become all at once unreasonable andunkind. He had told her that he did not trust her. He would no longerallow her to go to church, he had forbidden her to receive me again inhis house. "In utter bewilderment I could only ask her why. And then she burstinto tears, and then--then there was another scene. "Mrs Bust was no doubt listening at the door. At any rate she burst inupon us. I, for my part, was not sorry, but poor Mrs Carter--! Poor?Fool, idiot! "She is forty years of age, her husband is a decent, honourable sort offellow who worships her---- "That finishes the Carter friendship. "If it were not for Jessica--good, matter-of-fact, reliable Jessica, welcome contrast to these hysterical, half-mad women, who laugh at anddespise her--where should I be, Charles?. .. * * * * * "1_st February_. "You have been a true friend to me and to her. I shall see you soon(D. V. ), and then no doubt I shall say--nothing. But you will rememberthat I am grateful to you to the last drop of my heart's blood--and sois she. "Now as for B. .. . The finish has come; it came to-day. Let us sing andgive thanks with the best member that we have! All the same, the endhas been a shock, and I wish it had come in some other way. "She came in here at eleven this morning. You know who--Jessica. Ithought she came to talk over last night's concert. It was a failure. The room was as empty as the church has been of late. Those--women (mycloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave itwith satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of mylast shred of character. I assure you I am regarded as a libertine inthe place--a professional breaker of hearts, a Don Juan bragging of myconquests! Each of those Fifteen has her own tale to tell of her ownwrongs and of my deceit. They hold indignation meetings in Mrs Carter'shouse. I shouldn't care the value of one of their hairpins, but onedoes not like to see the church empty; and it is not agreeable, havinggone to the bother of getting up a concert, to sing to empty benches. It was not, however, to talk over the concert she had come. "She had come to tell me she thought it would be better for usthoroughly to understand each other. I said I thought we had done sofrom the first. She told me she hoped so, but that we were going tospeak out plainly now. She despised the underhand methods of otherwomen, she said, and when she wanted to know a thing she went to theperson capable of giving an answer and asked a direct question. "Then she asked me, 'Did I mean to make her an offer of marriage?' "In so many words she asked me, and never flinched. "And I didn't flinch. I was so indignant, so outraged! "'No!' I said. "I hope I did not shout the word, but the room seemed to echo with it, somehow. "'You mean that?' she asked; and I said that I meant it fervently. "She got up and went to the door. There she waited, her hands in hercoat-pockets, staring at the door. 'Of course you know that you havebehaved disgracefully?' she said. 'I should never have trusted myselfso much in your society but that I believed you to be an honourableman. I find you are not. If my father were younger he would punish youas you deserve. As it is--. ' "As it is, thank goodness, she went. Where's the good of bothering youwith more of her invective? "And I am going; to make room for another curate--another confirmedbachelor. "She did not spare me of course. Among other agreeable things she saidthat I was a heartless Brute, and she hoped I should get what Ideserved. "I shall get a lot more than I deserve, between you and me, Charles. For, thanks to you and your pegging away, I wrote and asked little Maryonce again if she would have me. "And a letter has come from her this blessed morning to say that shewill. .. . " * * * * * COLSTON AND CO. LTD. , PRINTERS, EDINBURGH