AMY FOSTER

By Joseph Conrad

Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores ofEastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of thelittle town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defendsit from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vastand regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village ofBrenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump oftrees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks thevanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett islow and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, andoccasionally a big ship, windbound or through stress of weather, makesuse of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you asyou stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidatedwindmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier thana rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water's edge halfa mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to theskippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for thepatch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by anirregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchorengraved among them, and the legend "mud and shells" over all. 

The brow of the upland overtops the square tower of the ColebrookChurch. The slope is green and looped by a white road. Ascending alongthis road, you open a valley broad and shallow, a wide green troughof pastures and hedges merging inland into a vista of purple tints andflowing lines closing the view. 

In this valley down to Brenzett and Colebrook and up to Darnford, themarket town fourteen miles away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy. He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards had been thecompanion of a famous traveller, in the days when there were continentswith unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made himknown to scientific societies. And now he had come to a countrypractice--from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting likea corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligenceis of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of thatunappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of ageneral truth in every mystery. 

A good many years ago now, on my return from abroad, he invited me tostay with him. I came readily enough, and as he could not neglect hispatients to keep me company, he took me on his rounds--thirty miles orso of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for him on the roads; the horsereached after the leafy twigs, and, sitting in the dogcart, I could hearKennedy's laugh through the half-open door left open of some cottage. Hehad a big, hearty laugh that would have fitted a man twice his size, abrisk manner, a bronzed face, and a pair of grey, profoundly attentiveeyes. He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and aninexhaustible patience in listening to their tales. 

One day, as we trotted out of a large village into a shady bit of road, I saw on our left hand a low, black cottage, with diamond panes in thewindows, a creeper on the end wall, a roof of shingle, and some rosesclimbing on the rickety trellis-work of the tiny porch. Kennedy pulledup to a walk. A woman, in full sunlight, was throwing a dripping blanketover a line stretched between two old apple-trees. And as the bobtailed, long-necked chestnut, trying to get his head, jerked the left hand, covered by a thick dog-skin glove, the doctor raised his voice over thehedge: "How's your child, Amy?"

I had the time to see her dull face, red, not with a mantling blush, butas if her flat cheeks had been vigorously slapped, and to take in thesquat figure, the scanty, dusty brown hair drawn into a tight knot atthe back of the head. She looked quite young. With a distinct catch inher breath, her voice sounded low and timid. 

"He's well, thank you. "

We trotted again. "A young patient of yours, " I said; and the doctor, flicking the chestnut absently, muttered, "Her husband used to be. "

"She seems a dull creature, " I remarked listlessly. 

"Precisely, " said Kennedy. "She is very passive. It's enough to lookat the red hands hanging at the end of those short arms, at those slow, prominent brown eyes, to know the inertness of her mind--an inertnessthat one would think made it everlastingly safe from all the surprisesof imagination. And yet which of us is safe? At any rate, such as yousee her, she had enough imagination to fall in love. She's the daughterof one Isaac Foster, who from a small farmer has sunk into a shepherd;the beginning of his misfortunes dating from his runaway marriage withthe cook of his widowed father--a well-to-do, apoplectic grazier, whopassionately struck his name off his will, and had been heard to utterthreats against his life. But this old affair, scandalous enough toserve as a motive for a Greek tragedy, arose from the similarity oftheir characters. There are other tragedies, less scandalous and of asubtler poignancy, arising from irreconcilable differences and from thatfear of the Incomprehensible that hangs over all our heads--over all ourheads. .. . "

The tired chestnut dropped into a walk; and the rim of the sun, all redin a speckless sky, touched familiarly the smooth top of a ploughedrise near the road as I had seen it times innumerable touch the distanthorizon of the sea. The uniform brownness of the harrowed field glowedwith a rosy tinge, as though the powdered clods had sweated out inminute pearls of blood the toil of uncounted ploughmen. From the edgeof a copse a waggon with two horses was rolling gently along the ridge. Raised above our heads upon the sky-line, it loomed up against the redsun, triumphantly big, enormous, like a chariot of giants drawn by twoslow-stepping steeds of legendary proportions. And the clumsy figure ofthe man plodding at the head of the leading horse projected itself onthe background of the Infinite with a heroic uncouthness. The end of hiscarter's whip quivered high up in the blue. Kennedy discoursed. 

"She's the eldest of a large family. At the age of fifteen they puther out to service at the New Barns Farm. I attended Mrs. Smith, thetenant's wife, and saw that girl there for the first time. Mrs. Smith, a genteel person with a sharp nose, made her put on a black dress everyafternoon. I don't know what induced me to notice her at all. Thereare faces that call your attention by a curious want of definitenessin their whole aspect, as, walking in a mist, you peer attentively ata vague shape which, after all, may be nothing more curious or strangethan a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slighthesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passesaway with the first word. When sharply spoken to, she was apt to loseher head at once; but her heart was of the kindest. She had never beenheard to express a dislike for a single human being, and she was tenderto every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, to Mr. Smith, to their dogs, cats, canaries; and as to Mrs. Smith's grey parrot, itspeculiarities exercised upon her a positive fascination. Nevertheless, when that outlandish bird, attacked by the cat, shrieked for help inhuman accents, she ran out into the yard stopping her ears, and didnot prevent the crime. For Mrs. Smith this was another evidence of herstupidity; on the other hand, her want of charm, in view of Smith'swell-known frivolousness, was a great recommendation. Her short-sightedeyes would swim with pity for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had beenseen once by some boys on her knees in the wet grass helping a toad indifficulties. If it's true, as some German fellow has said, that withoutphosphorus there is no thought, it is still more true that there is nokindness of heart without a certain amount of imagination. She had some. She had even more than is necessary to understand suffering and to bemoved by pity. She fell in love under circumstances that leave no roomfor doubt in the matter; for you need imagination to form a notion ofbeauty at all, and still more to discover your ideal in an unfamiliarshape. 

"How this aptitude came to her, what it did feed upon, is an inscrutablemystery. She was born in the village, and had never been further awayfrom it than Colebrook or perhaps Darnford. She lived for four yearswith the Smiths. New Barns is an isolated farmhouse a mile away fromthe road, and she was content to look day after day at the same fields, hollows, rises; at the trees and the hedgerows; at the faces of the fourmen about the farm, always the same--day after day, month after month, year after year. She never showed a desire for conversation, and, as itseemed to me, she did not know how to smile. Sometimes of a fine Sundayafternoon she would put on her best dress, a pair of stout boots, alarge grey hat trimmed with a black feather (I've seen her in thatfinery), seize an absurdly slender parasol, climb over two stiles, trampover three fields and along two hundred yards of road--never further. There stood Foster's cottage. She would help her mother to give theirtea to the younger children, wash up the crockery, kiss the little ones, and go back to the farm. That was all. All the rest, all the change, allthe relaxation. She never seemed to wish for anything more. And thenshe fell in love. She fell in love silently, obstinately--perhapshelplessly. It came slowly, but when it came it worked like a powerfulspell; it was love as the Ancients understood it: an irresistible andfateful impulse--a possession! Yes, it was in her to become haunted andpossessed by a face, by a presence, fatally, as though she had been apagan worshipper of form under a joyous sky--and to be awakened at lastfrom that mysterious forgetfulness of self, from that enchantment, from that transport, by a fear resembling the unaccountable terror of abrute. .. . "

With the sun hanging low on its western limit, the expanse of thegrass-lands framed in the counter-scarps of the rising ground took ona gorgeous and sombre aspect. A sense of penetrating sadness, like thatinspired by a grave strain of music, disengaged itself from the silenceof the fields. The men we met walked past slow, unsmiling, with downcasteyes, as if the melancholy of an over-burdened earth had weighted theirfeet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their glances. 

"Yes, " said the doctor to my remark, "one would think the earth is undera curse, since of all her children these that cling to her the closestare uncouth in body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts wereloaded with chains. But here on this same road you might have seenamongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straightlike a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as thoughthe heart within him had been buoyant. Perhaps it was only the force ofthe contrast, but when he was passing one of these villagers here, thesoles of his feet did not seem to me to touch the dust of the road. Hevaulted over the stiles, paced these slopes with a long elastic stridethat made him noticeable at a great distance, and had lustrous blackeyes. He was so different from the mankind around that, with his freedomof movement, his soft--a little startled, glance, his olive complexionand graceful bearing, his humanity suggested to me the nature of awoodland creature. He came from there. "

The doctor pointed with his whip, and from the summit of the descentseen over the rolling tops of the trees in a park by the side of theroad, appeared the level sea far below us, like the floor of an immenseedifice inlaid with bands of dark ripple, with still trails of glitter, ending in a belt of glassy water at the foot of the sky. The light blurof smoke, from an invisible steamer, faded on the great clearness of thehorizon like the mist of a breath on a mirror; and, inshore, the whitesails of a coaster, with the appearance of disentangling themselvesslowly from under the branches, floated clear of the foliage of thetrees. 

"Shipwrecked in the bay?" I said. 

"Yes; he was a castaway. A poor emigrant from Central Europe bound toAmerica and washed ashore here in a storm. And for him, who knew nothingof the earth, England was an undiscovered country. It was some timebefore he learned its name; and for all I know he might have expected tofind wild beasts or wild men here, when, crawling in the dark overthe sea-wall, he rolled down the other side into a dyke, where it wasanother miracle he didn't get drowned. But he struggled instinctivelylike an animal under a net, and this blind struggle threw him out intoa field. He must have been, indeed, of a tougher fibre than he lookedto withstand without expiring such buffetings, the violence of hisexertions, and so much fear. Later on, in his broken English thatresembled curiously the speech of a young child, he told me himself thathe put his trust in God, believing he was no longer in this world. Andtruly--he would add--how was he to know? He fought his way against therain and the gale on all fours, and crawled at last among some sheephuddled close under the lee of a hedge. They ran off in all directions, bleating in the darkness, and he welcomed the first familiar sound heheard on these shores. It must have been two in the morning then. Andthis is all we know of the manner of his landing, though he did notarrive unattended by any means. Only his grisly company did not begin tocome ashore till much later in the day. .. . "

The doctor gathered the reins, clicked his tongue; we trotted downthe hill. Then turning, almost directly, a sharp corner into the HighStreet, we rattled over the stones and were home. 

Late in the evening Kennedy, breaking a spell of moodiness that had comeover him, returned to the story. Smoking his pipe, he paced the longroom from end to end. A reading-lamp concentrated all its light upon thepapers on his desk; and, sitting by the open window, I saw, afterthe windless, scorching day, the frigid splendour of a hazy sea lyingmotionless under the moon. Not a whisper, not a splash, not a stirof the shingle, not a footstep, not a sigh came up from the earthbelow--never a sign of life but the scent of climbing jasmine; andKennedy's voice, speaking behind me, passed through the wide casement, to vanish outside in a chill and sumptuous stillness. 

". .. The relations of shipwrecks in the olden time tell us of muchsuffering. Often the castaways were only saved from drowning to diemiserably from starvation on a barren coast; others suffered violentdeath or else slavery, passing through years of precarious existencewith people to whom their strangeness was an object of suspicion, dislike or fear. We read about these things, and they are very pitiful. It is indeed hard upon a man to find himself a lost stranger, helpless, incomprehensible, and of a mysterious origin, in some obscure corner ofthe earth. Yet amongst all the adventurers shipwrecked in all the wildparts of the world there is not one, it seems to me, that ever had tosuffer a fate so simply tragic as the man I am speaking of, the mostinnocent of adventurers cast out by the sea in the bight of this bay, almost within sight from this very window. 

"He did not know the name of his ship. Indeed, in the course of time wediscovered he did not even know that ships had names--'like Christianpeople'; and when, one day, from the top of the Talfourd Hill, he beheldthe sea lying open to his view, his eyes roamed afar, lost in an airof wild surprise, as though he had never seen such a sight before. Andprobably he had not. As far as I could make out, he had been hustledtogether with many others on board an emigrant-ship lying at the mouthof the Elbe, too bewildered to take note of his surroundings, too wearyto see anything, too anxious to care. They were driven below into the'tweendeck and battened down from the very start. It was a low timberdwelling--he would say--with wooden beams overhead, like the houses inhis country, but you went into it down a ladder. It was very large, verycold, damp and sombre, with places in the manner of wooden boxes wherepeople had to sleep, one above another, and it kept on rocking all waysat once all the time. He crept into one of these boxes and laid downthere in the clothes in which he had left his home many days before, keeping his bundle and his stick by his side. People groaned, childrencried, water dripped, the lights went out, the walls of the placecreaked, and everything was being shaken so that in one's little box onedared not lift one's head. He had lost touch with his only companion (ayoung man from the same valley, he said), and all the time a greatnoise of wind went on outside and heavy blows fell--boom! boom! An awfulsickness overcame him, even to the point of making him neglect hisprayers. Besides, one could not tell whether it was morning or evening. It seemed always to be night in that place. 

"Before that he had been travelling a long, long time on the iron track. He looked out of the window, which had a wonderfully clear glass in it, and the trees, the houses, the fields, and the long roads seemed to flyround and round about him till his head swam. He gave me to understandthat he had on his passage beheld uncounted multitudes of people--wholenations--all dressed in such clothes as the rich wear. Once he was madeto get out of the carriage, and slept through a night on a bench in ahouse of bricks with his bundle under his head; and once for many hourshe had to sit on a floor of flat stones dozing, with his knees up andwith his bundle between his feet. There was a roof over him, whichseemed made of glass, and was so high that the tallest mountain-pinehe had ever seen would have had room to grow under it. Steam-machinesrolled in at one end and out at the other. People swarmed more than youcan see on a feast-day round the miraculous Holy Image in the yard ofthe Carmelite Convent down in the plains where, before he left his home, he drove his mother in a wooden cart--a pious old woman who wanted tooffer prayers and make a vow for his safety. He could not give me anidea of how large and lofty and full of noise and smoke and gloom, andclang of iron, the place was, but some one had told him it was calledBerlin. Then they rang a bell, and another steam-machine came in, andagain he was taken on and on through a land that wearied his eyes by itsflatness without a single bit of a hill to be seen anywhere. One morenight he spent shut up in a building like a good stable with a litterof straw on the floor, guarding his bundle amongst a lot of men, of whomnot one could understand a single word he said. In the morning theywere all led down to the stony shores of an extremely broad muddy river, flowing not between hills but between houses that seemed immense. Therewas a steam-machine that went on the water, and they all stood upon itpacked tight, only now there were with them many women and children whomade much noise. A cold rain fell, the wind blew in his face; he waswet through, and his teeth chattered. He and the young man from the samevalley took each other by the hand. 

"They thought they were being taken to America straight away, butsuddenly the steam-machine bumped against the side of a thing like ahouse on the water. The walls were smooth and black, and there uprose, growing from the roof as it were, bare trees in the shape of crosses, extremely high. That's how it appeared to him then, for he had neverseen a ship before. This was the ship that was going to swim all theway to America. Voices shouted, everything swayed; there was a ladderdipping up and down. He went up on his hands and knees in mortal fearof falling into the water below, which made a great splashing. He gotseparated from his companion, and when he descended into the bottom ofthat ship his heart seemed to melt suddenly within him. 

"It was then also, as he told me, that he lost contact for good and allwith one of those three men who the summer before had been going aboutthrough all the little towns in the foothills of his country. They wouldarrive on market days driving in a peasant's cart, and would set up anoffice in an inn or some other Jew's house. There were three of them, of whom one with a long beard looked venerable; and they had red clothcollars round their necks and gold lace on their sleeves like Governmentofficials. They sat proudly behind a long table; and in the next room, so that the common people shouldn't hear, they kept a cunning telegraphmachine, through which they could talk to the Emperor of America. Thefathers hung about the door, but the young men of the mountains wouldcrowd up to the table asking many questions, for there was work tobe got all the year round at three dollars a day in America, and nomilitary service to do. 

"But the American Kaiser would not take everybody. Oh, no! He himselfhad a great difficulty in getting accepted, and the venerable man inuniform had to go out of the room several times to work the telegraph onhis behalf. The American Kaiser engaged him at last at three dollars, hebeing young and strong. However, many able young men backed out, afraidof the great distance; besides, those only who had some money could betaken. There were some who sold their huts and their land because itcost a lot of money to get to America; but then, once there, you hadthree dollars a day, and if you were clever you could find places wheretrue gold could be picked up on the ground. His father's house wasgetting over full. Two of his brothers were married and had children. He promised to send money home from America by post twice a year. Hisfather sold an old cow, a pair of piebald mountain ponies of his ownraising, and a cleared plot of fair pasture land on the sunny slope ofa pine-clad pass to a Jew inn-keeper in order to pay the people of theship that took men to America to get rich in a short time. 

"He must have been a real adventurer at heart, for how many of thegreatest enterprises in the conquest of the earth had for theirbeginning just such a bargaining away of the paternal cow for the mirageor true gold far away! I have been telling you more or less in my ownwords what I learned fragmentarily in the course of two or three years, during which I seldom missed an opportunity of a friendly chat with him. He told me this story of his adventure with many flashes of whiteteeth and lively glances of black eyes, at first in a sort of anxiousbaby-talk, then, as he acquired the language, with great fluency, but always with that singing, soft, and at the same time vibratingintonation that instilled a strangely penetrating power into the soundof the most familiar English words, as if they had been the words ofan unearthly language. And he always would come to an end, with manyemphatic shakes of his head, upon that awful sensation of his heartmelting within him directly he set foot on board that ship. Afterwardsthere seemed to come for him a period of blank ignorance, at any rate asto facts. No doubt he must have been abominably sea-sick and abominablyunhappy--this soft and passionate adventurer, taken thus out of hisknowledge, and feeling bitterly as he lay in his emigrant bunk his utterloneliness; for his was a highly sensitive nature. The next thingwe know of him for certain is that he had been hiding in Hammond'spig-pound by the side of the road to Norton six miles, as the crowflies, from the sea. Of these experiences he was unwilling to speak:they seemed to have seared into his soul a sombre sort of wonder andindignation. Through the rumours of the country-side, which lasted fora good many days after his arrival, we know that the fishermen of WestColebrook had been disturbed and startled by heavy knocks against thewalls of weatherboard cottages, and by a voice crying piercingly strangewords in the night. Several of them turned out even, but, no doubt, hehad fled in sudden alarm at their rough angry tones hailing each otherin the darkness. A sort of frenzy must have helped him up the steepNorton hill. It was he, no doubt, who early the following morning hadbeen seen lying (in a swoon, I should say) on the roadside grass by theBrenzett carrier, who actually got down to have a nearer look, but drewback, intimidated by the perfect immobility, and by something queer inthe aspect of that tramp, sleeping so still under the showers. As theday advanced, some children came dashing into school at Norton in sucha fright that the schoolmistress went out and spoke indignantly to a'horrid-looking man' on the road. He edged away, hanging his head, fora few steps, and then suddenly ran off with extraordinary fleetness. The driver of Mr. Bradley's milk-cart made no secret of it that he hadlashed with his whip at a hairy sort of gipsy fellow who, jumping up ata turn of the road by the Vents, made a snatch at the pony's bridle. Andhe caught him a good one too, right over the face, he said, that madehim drop down in the mud a jolly sight quicker than he had jumped up;but it was a good half-a-mile before he could stop the pony. Maybe thatin his desperate endeavours to get help, and in his need to get in touchwith some one, the poor devil had tried to stop the cart. Also threeboys confessed afterwards to throwing stones at a funny tramp, knockingabout all wet and muddy, and, it seemed, very drunk, in the narrow deeplane by the limekilns. All this was the talk of three villages for days;but we have Mrs. Finn's (the wife of Smith's waggoner) unimpeachabletestimony that she saw him get over the low wall of Hammond's pig-poundand lurch straight at her, babbling aloud in a voice that was enough tomake one die of fright. Having the baby with her in a perambulator, Mrs. Finn called out to him to go away, and as he persisted in coming nearer, she hit him courageously with her umbrella over the head and, withoutonce looking back, ran like the wind with the perambulator as far as thefirst house in the village. She stopped then, out of breath, and spoketo old Lewis, hammering there at a heap of stones; and the old chap, taking off his immense black wire goggles, got up on his shaky legsto look where she pointed. Together they followed with their eyes thefigure of the man running over a field; they saw him fall down, pickhimself up, and run on again, staggering and waving his long arms abovehis head, in the direction of the New Barns Farm. From that moment heis plainly in the toils of his obscure and touching destiny. There isno doubt after this of what happened to him. All is certain now: Mrs. Smith's intense terror; Amy Foster's stolid conviction held againstthe other's nervous attack, that the man 'meant no harm'; Smith'sexasperation (on his return from Darnford Market) at finding the dogbarking himself into a fit, the back-door locked, his wife in hysterics;and all for an unfortunate dirty tramp, supposed to be even then lurkingin his stackyard. Was he? He would teach him to frighten women. 

"Smith is notoriously hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescriptand miry creature sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, andswinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Thenthis tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud and filth fromhead to foot. Smith, alone amongst his stacks with this apparition, inthe stormy twilight ringing with the infuriated barking of the dog, feltthe dread of an inexplicable strangeness. But when that being, partingwith his black hands the long matted locks that hung before his face, asyou part the two halves of a curtain, looked out at him with glistening, wild, black-and-white eyes, the weirdness of this silent encounterfairly staggered him. He had admitted since (for the story has been alegitimate subject of conversation about here for years) that he mademore than one step backwards. Then a sudden burst of rapid, senselessspeech persuaded him at once that he had to do with an escaped lunatic. In fact, that impression never wore off completely. Smith has not in hisheart given up his secret conviction of the man's essential insanity tothis very day. 

"As the creature approached him, jabbering in a most discomposingmanner, Smith (unaware that he was being addressed as 'gracious lord, 'and adjured in God's name to afford food and shelter) kept on speakingfirmly but gently to it, and retreating all the time into the otheryard. At last, watching his chance, by a sudden charge he bundled himheadlong into the wood-lodge, and instantly shot the bolt. Thereuponhe wiped his brow, though the day was cold. He had done his duty tothe community by shutting up a wandering and probably dangerous maniac. Smith isn't a hard man at all, but he had room in his brain only forthat one idea of lunacy. He was not imaginative enough to ask himselfwhether the man might not be perishing with cold and hunger. Meantime, at first, the maniac made a great deal of noise in the lodge. Mrs. Smithwas screaming upstairs, where she had locked herself in her bedroom; butAmy Foster sobbed piteously at the kitchen door, wringing her hands andmuttering, 'Don't! don't!' I daresay Smith had a rough time of it thatevening with one noise and another, and this insane, disturbing voicecrying obstinately through the door only added to his irritation. Hecouldn't possibly have connected this troublesome lunatic with thesinking of a ship in Eastbay, of which there had been a rumour in theDarnford marketplace. And I daresay the man inside had been very nearto insanity on that night. Before his excitement collapsed and he becameunconscious he was throwing himself violently about in the dark, rollingon some dirty sacks, and biting his fists with rage, cold, hunger, amazement, and despair. 

"He was a mountaineer of the eastern range of the Carpathians, and thevessel sunk the night before in Eastbay was the Hamburg emigrant-ship_Herzogin Sophia-Dorothea_, of appalling memory. 

"A few months later we could read in the papers the accounts of thebogus 'Emigration Agencies' among the Sclavonian peasantry in the moreremote provinces of Austria. The object of these scoundrels was to gethold of the poor ignorant people's homesteads, and they were in leaguewith the local usurers. They exported their victims through Hamburgmostly. As to the ship, I had watched her out of this very window, reaching close-hauled under short canvas into the bay on a dark, threatening afternoon. She came to an anchor, correctly by the chart, off the Brenzett Coastguard station. I remember before the night felllooking out again at the outlines of her spars and rigging that stoodout dark and pointed on a background of ragged, slaty clouds likeanother and a slighter spire to the left of the Brenzett church-tower. In the evening the wind rose. At midnight I could hear in my bed theterrific gusts and the sounds of a driving deluge. 

"About that time the Coastguardmen thought they saw the lights of asteamer over the anchoring-ground. In a moment they vanished; but it isclear that another vessel of some sort had tried for shelter in thebay on that awful, blind night, had rammed the German ship amidships (abreach--as one of the divers told me afterwards--'that you could saila Thames barge through'), and then had gone out either scathless ordamaged, who shall say; but had gone out, unknown, unseen, and fatal, toperish mysteriously at sea. Of her nothing ever came to light, and yetthe hue and cry that was raised all over the world would have found herout if she had been in existence anywhere on the face of the waters. 

"A completeness without a clue, and a stealthy silence as of a neatlyexecuted crime, characterise this murderous disaster, which, as you mayremember, had its gruesome celebrity. The wind would have prevented theloudest outcries from reaching the shore; there had been evidently notime for signals of distress. It was death without any sort of fuss. TheHamburg ship, filling all at once, capsized as she sank, and at daylightthere was not even the end of a spar to be seen above water. She wasmissed, of course, and at first the Coastguardmen surmised that shehad either dragged her anchor or parted her cable some time during thenight, and had been blown out to sea. Then, after the tide turned, the wreck must have shifted a little and released some of the bodies, because a child--a little fair-haired child in a red frock--came ashoreabreast of the Martello tower. By the afternoon you could see alongthree miles of beach dark figures with bare legs dashing in and outof the tumbling foam, and rough-looking men, women with hard faces, children, mostly fair-haired, were being carried, stiff and dripping, onstretchers, on wattles, on ladders, in a long procession past the doorof the 'Ship Inn, ' to be laid out in a row under the north wall of theBrenzett Church. 

"Officially, the body of the little girl in the red frock is the firstthing that came ashore from that ship. But I have patients amongst theseafaring population of West Colebrook, and, unofficially, I am informedthat very early that morning two brothers, who went down to look aftertheir cobble hauled up on the beach, found, a good way from Brenzett, an ordinary ship's hencoop lying high and dry on the shore, with elevendrowned ducks inside. Their families ate the birds, and the hencoop wassplit into firewood with a hatchet. It is possible that a man (supposinghe happened to be on deck at the time of the accident) might havefloated ashore on that hencoop. He might. I admit it is improbable, butthere was the man--and for days, nay, for weeks--it didn't enter ourheads that we had amongst us the only living soul that had escapedfrom that disaster. The man himself, even when he learned to speakintelligibly, could tell us very little. He remembered he had feltbetter (after the ship had anchored, I suppose), and that the darkness, the wind, and the rain took his breath away. This looks as if he hadbeen on deck some time during that night. But we mustn't forget he hadbeen taken out of his knowledge, that he had been sea-sick and batteneddown below for four days, that he had no general notion of a ship or ofthe sea, and therefore could have no definite idea of what was happeningto him. The rain, the wind, the darkness he knew; he understood thebleating of the sheep, and he remembered the pain of his wretchednessand misery, his heartbroken astonishment that it was neither seen norunderstood, his dismay at finding all the men angry and all the womenfierce. He had approached them as a beggar, it is true, he said; but inhis country, even if they gave nothing, they spoke gently to beggars. The children in his country were not taught to throw stones at thosewho asked for compassion. Smith's strategy overcame him completely. Thewood-lodge presented the horrible aspect of a dungeon. What would bedone to him next?. .. No wonder that Amy Foster appeared to his eyeswith the aureole of an angel of light. The girl had not been able tosleep for thinking of the poor man, and in the morning, before theSmiths were up, she slipped out across the back yard. Holding the doorof the wood-lodge ajar, she looked in and extended to him half a loaf ofwhite bread--'such bread as the rich eat in my country, ' he used to say. 

"At this he got up slowly from amongst all sorts of rubbish, stiff, hungry, trembling, miserable, and doubtful. 'Can you eat this?'she asked in her soft and timid voice. He must have taken her for a'gracious lady. ' He devoured ferociously, and tears were falling on thecrust. Suddenly he dropped the bread, seized her wrist, and imprinted akiss on her hand. She was not frightened. Through his forlorn conditionshe had observed that he was good-looking. She shut the door and walkedback slowly to the kitchen. Much later on, she told Mrs. Smith, whoshuddered at the bare idea of being touched by that creature. 

"Through this act of impulsive pity he was brought back again withinthe pale of human relations with his new surroundings. He never forgotit--never. 

"That very same morning old Mr. Swaffer (Smith's nearest neighbour)came over to give his advice, and ended by carrying him off. He stood, unsteady on his legs, meek, and caked over in half-dried mud, while thetwo men talked around him in an incomprehensible tongue. Mrs. Smith hadrefused to come downstairs till the madman was off the premises; AmyFoster, far from within the dark kitchen, watched through the open backdoor; and he obeyed the signs that were made to him to the best of hisability. But Smith was full of mistrust. 'Mind, sir! It may be all hiscunning, ' he cried repeatedly in a tone of warning. When Mr. Swafferstarted the mare, the deplorable being sitting humbly by his side, through weakness, nearly fell out over the back of the high two-wheeledcart. Swaffer took him straight home. And it is then that I come uponthe scene. 

"I was called in by the simple process of the old man beckoning tome with his forefinger over the gate of his house as I happened to bedriving past. I got down, of course. 

"'I've got something here, ' he mumbled, leading the way to an outhouseat a little distance from his other farm-buildings. 

"It was there that I saw him first, in a long low room taken upon thespace of that sort of coach-house. It was bare and whitewashed, with asmall square aperture glazed with one cracked, dusty pane at its furtherend. He was lying on his back upon a straw pallet; they had given him acouple of horse-blankets, and he seemed to have spent the remainderof his strength in the exertion of cleaning himself. He was almostspeechless; his quick breathing under the blankets pulled up to hischin, his glittering, restless black eyes reminded me of a wild birdcaught in a snare. While I was examining him, old Swaffer stood silentlyby the door, passing the tips of his fingers along his shaven upperlip. I gave some directions, promised to send a bottle of medicine, andnaturally made some inquiries. 

"'Smith caught him in the stackyard at New Barns, ' said the old chap inhis deliberate, unmoved manner, and as if the other had been indeed asort of wild animal. 'That's how I came by him. Quite a curiosity, isn'the? Now tell me, doctor--you've been all over the world--don't you thinkthat's a bit of a Hindoo we've got hold of here. '

"I was greatly surprised. His long black hair scattered over the strawbolster contrasted with the olive pallor of his face. It occurred tome he might be a Basque. It didn't necessarily follow that he shouldunderstand Spanish; but I tried him with the few words I know, and alsowith some French. The whispered sounds I caught by bending my ear tohis lips puzzled me utterly. That afternoon the young ladies from theRectory (one of them read Goethe with a dictionary, and the other hadstruggled with Dante for years), coming to see Miss Swaffer, tried theirGerman and Italian on him from the doorway. They retreated, just theleast bit scared by the flood of passionate speech which, turning on hispallet, he let out at them. They admitted that the sound was pleasant, soft, musical--but, in conjunction with his looks perhaps, it wasstartling--so excitable, so utterly unlike anything one had ever heard. The village boys climbed up the bank to have a peep through the littlesquare aperture. Everybody was wondering what Mr. Swaffer would do withhim. 

"He simply kept him. 

"Swaffer would be called eccentric were he not so much respected. Theywill tell you that Mr. Swaffer sits up as late as ten o'clock at nightto read books, and they will tell you also that he can write a chequefor two hundred pounds without thinking twice about it. He himself wouldtell you that the Swaffers had owned land between this and Darnford forthese three hundred years. He must be eighty-five to-day, but he doesnot look a bit older than when I first came here. He is a great breederof sheep, and deals extensively in cattle. He attends market days formiles around in every sort of weather, and drives sitting bowed low overthe reins, his lank grey hair curling over the collar of his warm coat, and with a green plaid rug round his legs. The calmness of advanced agegives a solemnity to his manner. He is clean-shaved; his lips are thinand sensitive; something rigid and monarchal in the set of his featureslends a certain elevation to the character of his face. He has beenknown to drive miles in the rain to see a new kind of rose in somebody'sgarden, or a monstrous cabbage grown by a cottager. He loves to heartell of or to be shown something that he calls 'outlandish. ' Perhaps itwas just that outlandishness of the man which influenced old Swaffer. Perhaps it was only an inexplicable caprice. All I know is that atthe end of three weeks I caught sight of Smith's lunatic digging inSwaffer's kitchen garden. They had found out he could use a spade. Hedug barefooted. 

"His black hair flowed over his shoulders. I suppose it was Swafferwho had given him the striped old cotton shirt; but he wore still thenational brown cloth trousers (in which he had been washed ashore)fitting to the leg almost like tights; was belted with a broad leathernbelt studded with little brass discs; and had never yet ventured intothe village. The land he looked upon seemed to him kept neatly, like thegrounds round a landowner's house; the size of the cart-horses struckhim with astonishment; the roads resembled garden walks, and the aspectof the people, especially on Sundays, spoke of opulence. He wonderedwhat made them so hardhearted and their children so bold. He gothis food at the back door, carried it in both hands carefully to hisouthouse, and, sitting alone on his pallet, would make the sign of thecross before he began. Beside the same pallet, kneeling in the earlydarkness of the short days, he recited aloud the Lord's Prayer before heslept. Whenever he saw old Swaffer he would bow with veneration fromthe waist, and stand erect while the old man, with his fingers over hisupper lip, surveyed him silently. He bowed also to Miss Swaffer, whokept house frugally for her father--a broad-shouldered, big-boned womanof forty-five, with the pocket of her dress full of keys, and a grey, steady eye. She was Church--as people said (while her father was one ofthe trustees of the Baptist Chapel)--and wore a little steel crossat her waist. She dressed severely in black, in memory of one of theinnumerable Bradleys of the neighbourhood, to whom she had been engagedsome twenty-five years ago--a young farmer who broke his neck outhunting on the eve of the wedding day. She had the unmoved countenanceof the deaf, spoke very seldom, and her lips, thin like her father's, astonished one sometimes by a mysteriously ironic curl. 

"These were the people to whom he owed allegiance, and an overwhelmingloneliness seemed to fall from the leaden sky of that winter withoutsunshine. All the faces were sad. He could talk to no one, and had nohope of ever understanding anybody. It was as if these had been thefaces of people from the other world--dead people--he used to tell meyears afterwards. Upon my word, I wonder he did not go mad. He didn'tknow where he was. Somewhere very far from his mountains--somewhere overthe water. Was this America, he wondered?

"If it hadn't been for the steel cross at Miss Swaffer's belt he wouldnot, he confessed, have known whether he was in a Christian country atall. He used to cast stealthy glances at it, and feel comforted. Therewas nothing here the same as in his country! The earth and the waterwere different; there were no images of the Redeemer by the roadside. The very grass was different, and the trees. All the trees but the threeold Norway pines on the bit of lawn before Swaffer's house, and thesereminded him of his country. He had been detected once, after dusk, withhis forehead against the trunk of one of them, sobbing, and talking tohimself. They had been like brothers to him at that time, he affirmed. Everything else was strange. Conceive you the kind of an existenceovershadowed, oppressed, by the everyday material appearances, as if bythe visions of a nightmare. At night, when he could not sleep, he kepton thinking of the girl who gave him the first piece of bread he hadeaten in this foreign land. She had been neither fierce nor angry, nor frightened. Her face he remembered as the only comprehensible faceamongst all these faces that were as closed, as mysterious, and as muteas the faces of the dead who are possessed of a knowledge beyondthe comprehension of the living. I wonder whether the memory of hercompassion prevented him from cutting his throat. But there! I suppose Iam an old sentimentalist, and forget the instinctive love of life whichit takes all the strength of an uncommon despair to overcome. 

"He did the work which was given him with an intelligence whichsurprised old Swaffer. By-and-by it was discovered that he could helpat the ploughing, could milk the cows, feed the bullocks in thecattle-yard, and was of some use with the sheep. He began to pick upwords, too, very fast; and suddenly, one fine morning in spring, herescued from an untimely death a grand-child of old Swaffer. 

"Swaffer's younger daughter is married to Willcox, a solicitor and theTown Clerk of Colebrook. Regularly twice a year they come to stay withthe old man for a few days. Their only child, a little girl not threeyears old at the time, ran out of the house alone in her little whitepinafore, and, toddling across the grass of a terraced garden, pitchedherself over a low wall head first into the horse-pond in the yard below. 

"Our man was out with the waggoner and the plough in the field nearestto the house, and as he was leading the team round to begin a freshfurrow, he saw, through the gap of the gate, what for anybody elsewould have been a mere flutter of something white. But he hadstraight-glancing, quick, far-reaching eyes, that only seemed to flinchand lose their amazing power before the immensity of the sea. He wasbarefooted, and looking as outlandish as the heart of Swaffer coulddesire. Leaving the horses on the turn, to the inexpressible disgustof the waggoner he bounded off, going over the ploughed ground in longleaps, and suddenly appeared before the mother, thrust the child intoher arms, and strode away. 

"The pond was not very deep; but still, if he had not had such goodeyes, the child would have perished--miserably suffocated in the foot orso of sticky mud at the bottom. Old Swaffer walked out slowly into thefield, waited till the plough came over to his side, had a good lookat him, and without saying a word went back to the house. But from thattime they laid out his meals on the kitchen table; and at first, MissSwaffer, all in black and with an inscrutable face, would come and standin the doorway of the living-room to see him make a big sign of thecross before he fell to. I believe that from that day, too, Swafferbegan to pay him regular wages. 

"I can't follow step by step his development. He cut his hair short, wasseen in the village and along the road going to and fro to his work likeany other man. Children ceased to shout after him. He became aware ofsocial differences, but remained for a long time surprised at the barepoverty of the churches among so much wealth. He couldn't understandeither why they were kept shut up on week days. There was nothing tosteal in them. Was it to keep people from praying too often? The rectorytook much notice of him about that time, and I believe the young ladiesattempted to prepare the ground for his conversion. They could not, however, break him of his habit of crossing himself, but he went so faras to take off the string with a couple of brass medals the size of asixpence, a tiny metal cross, and a square sort of scapulary which hewore round his neck. He hung them on the wall by the side of his bed, and he was still to be heard every evening reciting the Lord's Prayer, in incomprehensible words and in a slow, fervent tone, as he had heardhis old father do at the head of all the kneeling family, big andlittle, on every evening of his life. And though he wore corduroys atwork, and a slop-made pepper-and-salt suit on Sundays, strangers wouldturn round to look after him on the road. His foreignness had a peculiarand indelible stamp. At last people became used to see him. Butthey never became used to him. His rapid, skimming walk; his swarthycomplexion; his hat cocked on the left ear; his habit, on warm evenings, of wearing his coat over one shoulder, like a hussar's dolman; hismanner of leaping over the stiles, not as a feat of agility, but in theordinary course of progression--all these peculiarities were, as onemay say, so many causes of scorn and offence to the inhabitants of thevillage. _They_ wouldn't in their dinner hour lie flat on theirbacks on the grass to stare at the sky. Neither did they go about thefields screaming dismal tunes. Many times have I heard his high-pitchedvoice from behind the ridge of some sloping sheep-walk, a voice lightand soaring, like a lark's, but with a melancholy human note, overour fields that hear only the song of birds. And I should be startledmyself. Ah! He was different: innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted intoanother planet, was separated by an immense space from his past andby an immense ignorance from his future. His quick, fervent utterancepositively shocked everybody. 'An excitable devil, ' they called him. One evening, in the tap-room of the Coach and Horses (having drunk somewhisky), he upset them all by singing a love song of his country. Theyhooted him down, and he was pained; but Preble, the lame wheelwright, and Vincent, the fat blacksmith, and the other notables too, wanted todrink their evening beer in peace. On another occasion he tried to showthem how to dance. The dust rose in clouds from the sanded floor; heleaped straight up amongst the deal tables, struck his heels together, squatted on one heel in front of old Preble, shooting out the otherleg, uttered wild and exulting cries, jumped up to whirl on one foot, snapping his fingers above his head--and a strange carter who was havinga drink in there began to swear, and cleared out with his half-pintin his hand into the bar. But when suddenly he sprang upon a table andcontinued to dance among the glasses, the landlord interfered. He didn'twant any 'acrobat tricks in the taproom. ' They laid their hands on him. Having had a glass or two, Mr. Swaffer's foreigner tried to expostulate:was ejected forcibly: got a black eye. 

"I believe he felt the hostility of his human surroundings. But he wastough--tough in spirit, too, as well as in body. Only the memory of thesea frightened him, with that vague terror that is left by a bad dream. His home was far away; and he did not want now to go to America. I hadoften explained to him that there is no place on earth where true goldcan be found lying ready and to be got for the trouble of the pickingup. How then, he asked, could he ever return home with empty hands whenthere had been sold a cow, two ponies, and a bit of land to pay forhis going? His eyes would fill with tears, and, averting them from theimmense shimmer of the sea, he would throw himself face down on thegrass. But sometimes, cocking his hat with a little conquering air, hewould defy my wisdom. He had found his bit of true gold. That was AmyFoster's heart; which was 'a golden heart, and soft to people's misery, 'he would say in the accents of overwhelming conviction. 

"He was called Yanko. He had explained that this meant little John; butas he would also repeat very often that he was a mountaineer (some wordsounding in the dialect of his country like Goorall) he got it for hissurname. And this is the only trace of him that the succeeding agesmay find in the marriage register of the parish. There it stands--YankoGoorall--in the rector's handwriting. The crooked cross made by thecastaway, a cross whose tracing no doubt seemed to him the most solemnpart of the whole ceremony, is all that remains now to perpetuate thememory of his name. 

"His courtship had lasted some time--ever since he got his precariousfooting in the community. It began by his buying for Amy Foster a greensatin ribbon in Darnford. This was what you did in his country. Youbought a ribbon at a Jew's stall on a fair-day. I don't suppose thegirl knew what to do with it, but he seemed to think that his honourableintentions could not be mistaken. 

"It was only when he declared his purpose to get married that Ifully understood how, for a hundred futile and inappreciable reasons, how--shall I say odious?--he was to all the countryside. Every old womanin the village was up in arms. Smith, coming upon him near the farm, promised to break his head for him if he found him about again. But hetwisted his little black moustache with such a bellicose air and rolledsuch big, black fierce eyes at Smith that this promise came to nothing. Smith, however, told the girl that she must be mad to take up with a manwho was surely wrong in his head. All the same, when she heard him inthe gloaming whistle from beyond the orchard a couple of bars of a weirdand mournful tune, she would drop whatever she had in her hand--shewould leave Mrs. Smith in the middle of a sentence--and she would runout to his call. Mrs. Smith called her a shameless hussy. She answerednothing. She said nothing at all to anybody, and went on her way as ifshe had been deaf. She and I alone all in the land, I fancy, could seehis very real beauty. He was very good-looking, and most graceful inhis bearing, with that something wild as of a woodland creature in hisaspect. Her mother moaned over her dismally whenever the girl came tosee her on her day out. The father was surly, but pretended not to know;and Mrs. Finn once told her plainly that 'this man, my dear, will do yousome harm some day yet. ' And so it went on. They could be seen on theroads, she tramping stolidly in her finery--grey dress, black feather, stout boots, prominent white cotton gloves that caught your eye ahundred yards away; and he, his coat slung picturesquely over oneshoulder, pacing by her side, gallant of bearing and casting tenderglances upon the girl with the golden heart. I wonder whether he saw howplain she was. Perhaps among types so different from what he had everseen, he had not the power to judge; or perhaps he was seduced by thedivine quality of her pity. 

"Yanko was in great trouble meantime. In his country you get an old manfor an ambassador in marriage affairs. He did not know how to proceed. However, one day in the midst of sheep in a field (he was now Swaffer'sunder-shepherd with Foster) he took off his hat to the father anddeclared himself humbly. 'I daresay she's fool enough to marry you, ' wasall Foster said. 'And then, ' he used to relate, 'he puts his hat on hishead, looks black at me as if he wanted to cut my throat, whistlesthe dog, and off he goes, leaving me to do the work. ' The Fosters, ofcourse, didn't like to lose the wages the girl earned: Amy used to giveall her money to her mother. But there was in Foster a very genuineaversion to that match. He contended that the fellow was very good withsheep, but was not fit for any girl to marry. For one thing, he usedto go along the hedges muttering to himself like a dam' fool; and then, these foreigners behave very queerly to women sometimes. And perhaps hewould want to carry her off somewhere--or run off himself. It was notsafe. He preached it to his daughter that the fellow might ill-use herin some way. She made no answer. It was, they said in the village, as ifthe man had done something to her. People discussed the matter. It wasquite an excitement, and the two went on 'walking out' together in theface of opposition. Then something unexpected happened. 

"I don't know whether old Swaffer ever understood how much he wasregarded in the light of a father by his foreign retainer. Anyway therelation was curiously feudal. So when Yanko asked formally for aninterview--'and the Miss too' (he called the severe, deaf Miss Swaffersimply _Miss_)--it was to obtain their permission to marry. Swaffer heard him unmoved, dismissed him by a nod, and then shouted theintelligence into Miss Swaffer's best ear. She showed no surprise, andonly remarked grimly, in a veiled blank voice, 'He certainly won't getany other girl to marry him. '

"It is Miss Swaffer who has all the credit of the munificence: but ina very few days it came out that Mr. Swaffer had presented Yanko witha cottage (the cottage you've seen this morning) and something like anacre of ground--had made it over to him in absolute property. Willcoxexpedited the deed, and I remember him telling me he had a greatpleasure in making it ready. It recited: 'In consideration of saving thelife of my beloved grandchild, Bertha Willcox. '

"Of course, after that no power on earth could prevent them from gettingmarried. 

"Her infatuation endured. People saw her going out to meet him in theevening. She stared with unblinking, fascinated eyes up the road wherehe was expected to appear, walking freely, with a swing from the hip, and humming one of the love-tunes of his country. When the boy was born, he got elevated at the 'Coach and Horses, ' essayed again a song and adance, and was again ejected. People expressed their commiseration fora woman married to that Jack-in-the-box. He didn't care. There was aman now (he told me boastfully) to whom he could sing and talk in thelanguage of his country, and show how to dance by-and-by. 

"But I don't know. To me he appeared to have grown less springy of step, heavier in body, less keen of eye. Imagination, no doubt; but it seemsto me now as if the net of fate had been drawn closer round him already. 

"One day I met him on the footpath over the Talfourd Hill. He told methat 'women were funny. ' I had heard already of domestic differences. People were saying that Amy Foster was beginning to find out whatsort of man she had married. He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his arms one dayas he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a song such as the mothers singto babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it someharm. Women are funny. And she had objected to him praying aloud in theevening. Why? He expected the boy to repeat the prayer aloud after himby-and-by, as he used to do after his old father when he was a child--inhis own country. And I discovered he longed for their boy to grow up sothat he could have a man to talk with in that language that to ourears sounded so disturbing, so passionate, and so bizarre. Why his wifeshould dislike the idea he couldn't tell. But that would pass, he said. And tilting his head knowingly, he tapped his breastbone to indicatethat she had a good heart: not hard, not fierce, open to compassion, charitable to the poor!

"I walked away thoughtfully; I wondered whether his difference, hisstrangeness, were not penetrating with repulsion that dull nature theyhad begun by irresistibly attracting. I wondered. .. . "

The Doctor came to the window and looked out at the frigid splendour ofthe sea, immense in the haze, as if enclosing all the earth with all thehearts lost among the passions of love and fear. 

"Physiologically, now, " he said, turning away abruptly, "it waspossible. It was possible. "

He remained silent. Then went on--"At all events, the next time I sawhim he was ill--lung trouble. He was tough, but I daresay he was notacclimatised as well as I had supposed. It was a bad winter; and, ofcourse, these mountaineers do get fits of home sickness; and a stateof depression would make him vulnerable. He was lying half dressed on acouch downstairs. 

"A table covered with a dark oilcloth took up all the middle of thelittle room. There was a wicker cradle on the floor, a kettle spoutingsteam on the hob, and some child's linen lay drying on the fender. Theroom was warm, but the door opens right into the garden, as you noticedperhaps. 

"He was very feverish, and kept on muttering to himself. She sat on achair and looked at him fixedly across the table with her brown, blurredeyes. 'Why don't you have him upstairs?' I asked. With a start and aconfused stammer she said, 'Oh! ah! I couldn't sit with him upstairs, Sir. '

"I gave her certain directions; and going outside, I said again thathe ought to be in bed upstairs. She wrung her hands. 'I couldn't. Icouldn't. He keeps on saying something--I don't know what. ' With thememory of all the talk against the man that had been dinned into herears, I looked at her narrowly. I looked into her shortsighted eyes, at her dumb eyes that once in her life had seen an enticing shape, butseemed, staring at me, to see nothing at all now. But I saw she wasuneasy. 

"'What's the matter with him?' she asked in a sort of vacanttrepidation. 'He doesn't look very ill. I never did see anybody looklike this before. .. . '

"'Do you think, ' I asked indignantly, 'he is shamming?'

"'I can't help it, sir, ' she said stolidly. And suddenly she clappedher hands and looked right and left. 'And there's the baby. I amso frightened. He wanted me just now to give him the baby. I can'tunderstand what he says to it. '

"'Can't you ask a neighbour to come in tonight?' I asked. 

"'Please, sir, nobody seems to care to come, ' she muttered, dullyresigned all at once. 

"I impressed upon her the necessity of the greatest care, and then hadto go. There was a good deal of sickness that winter. 'Oh, I hope hewon't talk!' she exclaimed softly just as I was going away. 

"I don't know how it is I did not see--but I didn't. And yet, turningin my trap, I saw her lingering before the door, very still, and as ifmeditating a flight up the miry road. 

"Towards the night his fever increased. 

"He tossed, moaned, and now and then muttered a complaint. And she satwith the table between her and the couch, watching every movement andevery sound, with the terror, the unreasonable terror, of that man shecould not understand creeping over her. She had drawn the wickercradle close to her feet. There was nothing in her now but the maternalinstinct and that unaccountable fear. 

"Suddenly coming to himself, parched, he demanded a drink of water. Shedid not move. She had not understood, though he may have thought hewas speaking in English. He waited, looking at her, burning with fever, amazed at her silence and immobility, and then he shouted impatiently, 'Water! Give me water!'

"She jumped to her feet, snatched up the child, and stood still. Hespoke to her, and his passionate remonstrances only increased herfear of that strange man. I believe he spoke to her for a long time, entreating, wondering, pleading, ordering, I suppose. She says she boreit as long as she could. And then a gust of rage came over him. 

"He sat up and called out terribly one word--some word. Then he got upas though he hadn't been ill at all, she says. And as in fevered dismay, indignation, and wonder he tried to get to her round the table, shesimply opened the door and ran out with the child in her arms. She heardhim call twice after her down the road in a terrible voice--andfled. .. . Ah! but you should have seen stirring behind the dull, blurred glance of these eyes the spectre of the fear which had huntedher on that night three miles and a half to the door of Foster'scottage! I did the next day. 

"And it was I who found him lying face down and his body in a puddle, just outside the little wicket-gate. 

"I had been called out that night to an urgent case in the village, andon my way home at daybreak passed by the cottage. The door stood open. My man helped me to carry him in. We laid him on the couch. The lampsmoked, the fire was out, the chill of the stormy night oozed from thecheerless yellow paper on the wall. 'Amy!' I called aloud, and my voiceseemed to lose itself in the emptiness of this tiny house as if I hadcried in a desert. He opened his eyes. 'Gone!' he said distinctly. 'Ihad only asked for water--only for a little water. .. . '

"He was muddy. I covered him up and stood waiting in silence, catchinga painfully gasped word now and then. They were no longer in his ownlanguage. The fever had left him, taking with it the heat of life. Andwith his panting breast and lustrous eyes he reminded me again of a wildcreature under the net; of a bird caught in a snare. She had left him. She had left him--sick--helpless--thirsty. The spear of the hunter hadentered his very soul. 'Why?' he cried in the penetrating and indignantvoice of a man calling to a responsible Maker. A gust of wind and aswish of rain answered. 

"And as I turned away to shut the door he pronounced the word'Merciful!' and expired. 

"Eventually I certified heart-failure as the immediate cause of death. His heart must have indeed failed him, or else he might have stood thisnight of storm and exposure, too. I closed his eyes and drove away. Not very far from the cottage I met Foster walking sturdily between thedripping hedges with his collie at his heels. 

"'Do you know where your daughter is?' I asked. 

"'Don't I!' he cried. 'I am going to talk to him a bit. Frightening apoor woman like this. '

"'He won't frighten her any more, ' I said. 'He is dead. '

"He struck with his stick at the mud. 

"'And there's the child. '

"Then, after thinking deeply for a while--"'I don't know that it isn'tfor the best. '

"That's what he said. And she says nothing at all now. Not a word ofhim. Never. Is his image as utterly gone from her mind as his lithe andstriding figure, his carolling voice are gone from our fields? He is nolonger before her eyes to excite her imagination into a passion of loveor fear; and his memory seems to have vanished from her dull brain asa shadow passes away upon a white screen. She lives in the cottage andworks for Miss Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for everybody, and the childis 'Amy Foster's boy. ' She calls him Johnny--which means Little John. 

"It is impossible to say whether this name recalls anything to her. Doesshe ever think of the past? I have seen her hanging over the boy's cotin a very passion of maternal tenderness. The little fellow was lying onhis back, a little frightened at me, but very still, with his big blackeyes, with his fluttered air of a bird in a snare. And looking at him Iseemed to see again the other one--the father, cast out mysteriously bythe sea to perish in the supreme disaster of loneliness and despair. "